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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 2219943" data-attributes="member: 5143">Yes, I keep track of almost everything.  This is, I'm bad at it.  I'm a big rules lawyer.  I like to make sure the players have the same chance of beating an enemy that the rules allow.I agree with an above poster.  I don't feel like I'm telling a story to the players.  I am running a world.  I'm just a referee in the world, I don't make it up.  I control what the bad guys think and do, but I don't control whether it succeeds or not anymore than the players control whether they stop the evil plot or not.This has happened once before when I found out that our DM made up a big, bad fighter that he expected to have a long, drawn out fight with us before dying.  Only he put the fighter at about 2 levels above our average level.  We managed to kill it during the first or second round.  He didn't like that so he kept adding hit points to him every round.  I managed to catch a glance over his DM screen and see the fact that he had "total hitpoints" written down and damage beside it.  He kept stroking off the total hit points and replacing it with a higher number.  I also noticed that the 5th level fighter we were fighting had total hitpoints at the end of the list of 154.  I discussed it with the DM and said I would prefer he not cheat.  He said that it was appropriate to the story and he'd do it again.  I eventually convinced him I didn't like him cheating and he said he'd stop.  But I always assumed he lied to me and just kept cheating.  It made me feel so cheated I never really enjoyed the game anymore.What it comes down to is this as a player: What is the point in having +20 to hit and +30 damage if the DM is going to make the enemy last 5 rounds regardless of the damage you do?  You might as well not play the game at all and have the DM tell you a story.That having been said, if I'm not prepared for a battle in advance, I estimate pluses to hit and damage and abilities of the enemies, trying to be as objective as possible.  I normally write down some estimated stats at the beginning of combat, for instance: +15 hit, 1d8+9 damage, 67 hp.  And stick with that for the combat.  I'm also not perfect.  I've gotten 2 generic guards mixed up in the middle of battle and switched their hit points or forgotten spells cast on them.  But I try to run the battle as correctly as possible.  I want it to mean something when the players get to the end of an adventure, not just have them get there because I wanted them to.</blockquote>

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