Do you "save" the PCs?

[Piratecat]

Just wanted to say that we appreciate everyone working hard to be polite, even when you don't agree with the other people. Interesting thread.

What do people think about fudging dice to make an encounter harder?

 

[Nagol]

I would go so far as to say that if this is the only objective in your games, you might want to consider broadening the palette a bit. This is only true if your game revolves around nothing but combat.



Never said anything about you. I said, the lesson that I took from high lethality and PC turnover was that I should never really bother engaging in the setting or the character because, well, why bother? I'll just be rolling up another character in a couple of weeks anyway.

I note you only mention the one character that survived. How about the other ones? Are they as engaged in the campaign as your one survivor? How long did they survive? Were they creating new characters every four or five sessions, or did they survive for long periods of time.

Because, if they did, then my point about character turnover does not actually contradict you.

Of course, I can’t speak for Pawsplay, but it sounds like my current campaign is similar. The campaign is six years old playing about 20-25 times a year.. The characters started at first and the highest are now almost 15th. There has been a death or retirement probably once every 4-5 sessions, on average.

Of the six players, two have original characters.

• One player has an original character. That character has never died, but been very close to death a few times.
• One player has an original character. The character had died twice.
• Two players are on their second characters having retired the first. The first characters died maybe once and the second has died once.
• One player has had had 4 different characters. One was retired and the others stayed dead. When she joined the group she was new at D&D (but not RPGs) and at sandbox play. It took her a while to get used to the game flow since she was used to strong DM narrative control prior to joining this group.
• One player has had 5 different characters. All his previous characters have stayed dead. He plays extremely recklessly. It is rare for that player to have a character resurrected, but it has happened. The player has dealt with death probably ten times or about 1/12 sessions on average. His first death and first character loss happened in the first session, first encounter when he took a longbow critical from an encounter I thought was going to be resolved non-combatively. The players involved had other ideas and voila! One dead character.

About 4 session ago, there was a near TPK when having received the answer “Don’t” when divining the question “What will happen if we raid the temple controlled by the nymph?” and proceeded to attack anyway. I didn’t pull punches – not even when an epic monster appeared on the scene.

The players seem quite engaged in the campaign. The most engaged seems to be the most death-ridden.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Unlike Gary Gygax, I don't fudge die rolls and I strongly prefer it if the GM doesn't. But I have no problem with other groups doing it if that's what works for them. I don't see the point in attempting to construct a logical system which proves that what those groups are doing doesn't work, even though they say it does.

The case of a GM fudging things in a subtle way, such that the players don't notice, is an interesting one. I have to admit that what I don't know couldn't hurt me, so if a GM managed to do this and as a result made the game more exciting/dramatic/better, it's hard to say that that's not a good thing. Provided I never found out about it.

Piratecat raises an interesting point about fudging in both directions. While I don't fudge when I GM, I find I still have vast influence over events, even when I do stick to the rules (sometimes I don't), thru the GM's ability to control ad hoc modifiers, make rulings, and decide the actions of NPCs and the way the environment operates. Not to mention being the player's only source of information. That's massive, colossal, gigantic power right there. A power I definitely abuse, almost always to make fights closer than they would otherwise be. In other words I make easy fights harder and really hard fights, where it looks like the PCs are going to lose, easier.

I remember reading in some edition of Champions that the best fights are those where the PCs find it tough, but just manage to scrape a win. Pretty much the way a lot of fights are in fiction. Something like that is, I think, what I'm attempting thru my abuse of GM's authority.

 

[Nagol]

Just wanted to say that we appreciate everyone working hard to be polite, even when you don't agree with the other people. Interesting thread.

What do people think about fudging dice to make an encounter harder?

I treat it the same way as making the encounter easier. I don't do it. In my view, fudging is a method of wresting narrative control away from the group onto a path the DM would prefer.

Although I may like a character, I don't want to take the narration choice and those consequences arising from those choices away from the group and diminish the value of the risks undertaken.

Although I may like an NPC/organisation/future possible encounter set, I don't want to take the narration choice and those consequences arising from those choices away from the group and diminish the value of the rewards earned.

 

[Janx]

Just wanted to say that we appreciate everyone working hard to be polite, even when you don't agree with the other people. Interesting thread.

What do people think about fudging dice to make an encounter harder?

As a player, I don't like it, as of course it increases the danger that I may have worked hard to mitigate. Basically undoing my efforts.

As a DM, I don't recall ever doing it. I generally follow a rule of thumb for "level appropriateness" for the range of threats. Once I pick the threat, if the PCs make it look like a cake walk, well, that's my mistake to their benefit.

Now my friend and old DM on the other hand, even just recently, admitted to me that he kept adding HP to the BBEG his party faced a few sessions back. Some big bad demon in the 9 hells, and the party was high level, and plowing through him too fast. He wanted to scare the players that this guy was no pushover (though they did beat him, as he expected). Bear in mind, his players are the power-gamers of my old crew, so these are the guys who love to build a PC to crank out damage and over-power encounters.

 

[Raven Crowking]

What do people think about fudging dice to make an encounter harder?

My opinion is unchanged.

Harder, easier; both are the GM fudging die rolls to make the encounter resolve in accordance to his wishes.

What do you think about a player fudging die rolls?


RC

 

[Piratecat]

This becomes particularly relevant with 4e groups who experience "grind," when the battle is pretty clearly won but the monsters are stubbornly, and boringly, sticking around.

I wonder how big a divide there is for the GM between fudging die rolls in either direction vs. adjusting the number of monsters or hit points of monsters on the fly. For instance, I don't like fudging dice but I don't mind using six or eight minions instead of the normal four-per-monster. Is this at all equitable to fudging dice? Is die fudging (either harder or easier) a bigger "sin" than other sorts of on-the-fly monster adjustment?

I'm not sure I have a great answer. I know that adjusting minions on the fly to make a fight more exciting (or occasionally reducing hit points to make a non-challenging fight end more quickly) is more palatable to me than adjusting dice rolls.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Here's a really, really simple rule:

Your character shall not die unless you consider that fun.

I would amend that to:

No PC may die without that player's consent.

It's interesting to note that one could run a game under that rule that could look exactly like a hardcore, old school, tougher-than-softie-Gygax game, *provided* the players always gave permission. Which they may well do if that's the sort of challenging game they're after.

I pretty much ran my last campaign with that rule, though it was never written down, and even then I had two permanent PC deaths over 20 sessions (and this was a superhero game). The players were not exactly overjoyed for their PCs to die but they fully accepted it as the consequence of situations, die rolls and so forth. I would say that they gave their consent to their PC dying.

For my current group, I think I'd have to have a rule like that as one player is very much of the 'if I die, I die' mindset, while another really, really wants his PC to keep on existing, no matter what. So, gotta leave it up to the players.

 

[Hussar]

My opinion is unchanged.

Harder, easier; both are the GM fudging die rolls to make the encounter resolve in accordance to his wishes.

What do you think about a player fudging die rolls?


RC

Players are not given the authority within the rules to fudge die rolls. DM's are. Specifically so in some editions, but certainly covered in Rule 0 of pretty much every RPG out there. In most RPG's, you'll find a paragraph or two in there that gives at least tacit permission to the DM/GM to alter things to make the game better.

I don't recall ever seeing an RPG given such permission to a player. Then again, I also don't recall any RPG specifically giving a player a screen to hide die rolls behind either.

AFAIC, I think that you're splitting hairs. If you engineer the encounter at the outset so that the player will face much reduced threat, or you simply change the encounter mid stream to reduce the threat, the end result is identical - an encounter with a reduced threat.

Put it another way. Is there a significant difference between spotting me a queen and both rooks at the beginning of the game and spotting me the same pieces after the first move? How about the second move? Tenth? At what point is it unacceptable to spot me those pieces?

And, if there is a difference between spotting me the pieces before play or during play, what is that difference?

 

[Doug McCrae]

Is this at all equitable to fudging dice? Is die fudging (either harder or easier) a bigger "sin" than other sorts of on-the-fly monster adjustment?

I think the idea is that a GM's power is so easy to abuse, it's a good idea to restrict oneself with some rules, such as "Prepared written material is fixed once the session starts". Lines that even the GM can't cross, for fear of sliding down a slippery slope.