Do you fudge?

[Aus_Snow]

What Psion said.

Oh, and I voted '0' (I never fudge, ever).

 

[Jdvn1]

i diabetic. fudge is too sweet.

Splenda tastes like sugar because it's made from sugar.

 

[Snotlord]

I sometimes "update" npc tactics when I've forgotten something obvious, or have been pressed for time during prep time.

 

[awayfarer]

I currently play in two games. One with a dm who always rolls in the open and another with a dm who (I suspect) fudges pretty frequently. In the latter game, it always seems like we're getting "rescued" at the last moment and it really drains away the sense of urgency in a fight.

Furthermore, if you're in a game with a dm who fudges a lot and you encounter a situation where he suddenly decides not to, and the result is very negative, you end up feeling cheated. My experience is that it's not good to give players a sense of safety because they begin to expect everything to turn out in their favor and can be a little upset if it turns out otherwise.

 

[Gundark]

I generally avoid fudgnig, and prefer systems and variants that make it so I don't have to. I also don't make encounters threatening unless I want them to be life threatening.

In short, I try to not roll a dice if I am not willing to accept and enforce the outcome of it. Don't roll the dice if you aren't willing to pay the price!

I have always thought DMs were rather silly that put instant death traps in their adventures and then fudge the results to avoid their effects.

QFT

 

[BlueBlackRed]

I fudge early in a game where the PCs are too fragile.
I also fudge when the dice just don't seem to do a little bit of damage to the party.

Otherwise, let the dice fall where they may.
I've lost more than one good campaign thanks to that, but it also lets the players know that I won't pull the punches. Once that's established, they know they have to play it smart (whether they do or not is besides the point).

 

[Nalfeshnee]

in my games, i usually need to fudge in my favour because my PCs are so good, combats become very difficult to adjudicate. either i increase the CR of the creatures to such an extent that any atatck that hits is very dangerous, but otherwise, they would never hit... so i end up fudging to make some creatrues hit. of course it makes little difference, but the players do think that they are in danger this way. i also use a dive roller, but whenever i roll a threat i show the result to the players and roll the confirmition in the open. same thing applies to other important die rolls

 

[Mark CMG]

Do you fudge?

I'm fudging now, IYKWIMAITYD.

 

[freebfrost]

If you don’t fudge constantly, what prompts you to fudge? What event or potentiality warrants a fudge?

Story continuity.

If a series of bad rolls makes for a potential TPK or the like (and assuming the party didn't just blindly walk into their doom), I'll fudge the rolls to give the heroes the chance they deserve.

If a minor encounter turns into a major event because of bad rolls, I'm not above lowering that monster's hit points to finish it off a bit more quickly and get the party back on track.

My last campaign went on summer hiatus after the main villain used the conveniently placed vorpal greatsword intended for the party's half-orc barbarian as treasure as his weapon of choice for the final combat.

The villain's very first attack roll was a natural 20. Threat confirmed. His target? The aforementioned half-orc barbarian. Decapitated. Totally unexpected by everyone including me, but I didn't fudge that. It was a helluva way to go for the barbarian, and his player agreed. And it made for great story continuity.

 

[jeffh]

Hmmm well I used to fudge every now and then. Now I roll in front of the party, not that they asked for that or anything, I just started doing it. So now I voted that I never fudge.

This is exactly my answer, except that I didn't choose 0, to better reflect my status as a reformed occasional-fudger.

Previously, I'd occasionally soften a blow a bit (announce that a barely-successful save on a monster's part actually failed, announce a miss that I was pretty sure would have actually been a hit if I'd bothered to calculate it properly) if I thought a PC might die if I did otherwise or the party were having a tough time through no real fault of their own. One informal rule I had was that if a player had just gotten a really cool new ability that they were really high on, I'd try to give them one free shot at using it really effectively, maybe not the first time they tried to use it, but certainly within a session or two of acquiring it.

Aside from the above "freebie rule", the effects were probably no greater than those of forgetting little modifiers here and there, which everyone in my group is prone to occasionally, including me. I certainly never modified a roll by more than about 3 or 4 points (on a d20). But I still gradually came to feel like I shouldn't do that.

Even more rarely, I'd fudge one or two rolls in a fight in the bad guys' favour just to make it more interesting. I don't think it ever resulted in any major, irreparable harm, it just made a couple of fights a bit more exciting. Nowadays I avoid that as well; the plan for the foreseeable future is to roll all dice in the open.