D&D 5E Do you want your DM to fudge?

[wedgeski]

No, my response is to set the stakes to something other than (success) you live and (failure) you die. An example of this is in Lost Mine of Phandelver's goblin ambush scene. Defeated characters are knocked unconscious and robbed rather than killed. If you're okay with that as a condition of failure, then no matter how badly the dice run against the players, you'll have no incentive to fudge because you'll be okay with the failure condition.

Is your issue with fudging a philosophical one? I.e. just don't roll that die if you're predetermined that you're not going to hit?

I ask because deciding beforehand that capture, not death, is the consequence of a TPK in that encounter kinda seems like fudging by the back door.

Are the stakes telegraphed to the players? E.g. one of the goblins shouts "Boss would love to have him a few more prisoners, let's take 'em down lads!"

If a DM made that decision after a string of bad d20's left the party on the verge of an unexpected TPK, would you still disapprove? What about if he hadn't telegraphed the likely outcome to the players (i.e. left his options open)..?

I do take the dice out of the equation myself, occasionally. I learned this lesson after a player at my table had consistently *terrible* luck executing flavourful and perfectly in-character japes during combat. Now my players know that describing something ultra-cool might get them a pass on the die roll. Is this fudging?

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Is this fudging?

No.

 

[wedgeski]

No.

Awesome! Why not? Transparency to the players?

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Awesome! Why not? Transparency to the players?

It's not exactly the transparency, but that is a part of it - it's the honesty of admitting that no matter what the die says, you know where things are going.

Fudging is not choosing not to use the dice to decide something; Fudging is telling your players the dice decided even when that isn't true.

 

[Nytmare]

We've talked a lot (a LOT) about dice, but for the anti-fudgers out there, how do you feel about things like adding or trimming hitpoints from a monster after the fact? What about unplanned for second waves of bad guys? What about ignoring the "written in the book" second wave if things went poorly for the PCs straight out of the gate? How about deciding to throw a couple of healing potions into the treasure haul after the fact because people got more beat up than you had been expecting?

These are all things that I see as sharing shelf space with fudging a die roll in my suite of DM tools. Do you see it as being as dishonest as ignoring a die result?

 

[Nagol]

We've talked a lot (a LOT) about dice, but for the anti-fudgers out there, how do you feel about things like adding or trimming hitpoints from a monster after the fact? What about unplanned for second waves of bad guys? What about ignoring the "written in the book" second wave if things went poorly for the PCs straight out of the gate? How about deciding to throw a couple of healing potions into the treasure haul after the fact because people got more beat up than you had been expecting?

These are all things that I see as sharing shelf space with fudging a die roll in my suite of DM tools. Do you see it as being as dishonest as ignoring a die result?

As dishonest? No because there is no lying involved. The DM is in control of the in-game environment and it can respond or mutate to his whim.

That said, I don't use those techniques either. I find them icky (sorry, I had to go with such a technical term).

I don't anticipate how long an encounter "should" last so I feel no need to modify situations to suit that assumption. If a climatic battle ends on the first action, the players get to savour the massive triumph -- they've earned it.
When adjudicating, I trust the designer (also me typically) to have thought the situation through enough that the second wave or lack thereof makes sense inside the environment described. If this leads to a situation where the PCs are feeling over- or under- whelmed, I expect the players to modify their plans, tactics, and goals sufficiently to deal with the actual threat found.

If something is going or about to go completely off the rails because I made a bad call previously, I'll issue a mea culpa and negotiate a correction. I think that happens maybe once a decade; I can't remember the last one.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I think that you are talking about a different thing from what others are when referring to fudging.

Others, myself at the very least, are not talking about a process where in the DM decides "roll that die to see how well your success goes" and a low roll means barely succeeding while a high roll means a more spectacular success, but maybe the exact benchmark for "high enough for barely succeeding" isn't set in stone before the roll. I.e. roll 1d20; 1-5 fails, 6-12 probably succeeds, 13+ succeeds, and a 20 is even coooler.

We are talking about a process where in the DM decides "roll that die to see if you succeed or fail" and has actually arranged things in their head so that no matter what result the die shows, no matter how high, how low, or if the thing spins on a point for a solid minute before dropping out of this dimension of existence, the outcome will always be the same. I.e. roll 1d20; 1-20 succeeds. Or roll 1d20; 1-20 fails.

And in the second case, which is what I thought you were talking about before but this more recent post reveals you are not, I ask "Why not just skip the dice rolling and go straight to the outcome that has already been decided?"

I've just been speaking of fudging in general, of which I'm fine with and don't care whether or not my DM does it. If you all are speaking of that one specific case where the DM has already chosen a result regardless of the dice thrown... then sure, I'd agree there'd be no reason for the DM to request the dice be thrown (but at the same time wouldn't be offended if he did ask, because again, I don't treat dice-rolling as sacrosanct.)

It seemed like all of you on the "never ever fudge" side had been speaking of the idea in total, not from that one specific case that you mentioned... and couldn't understand how anyone else could treat dice-rolling so cavalierly. My points have all been about exactly that. Not treating dice as the end-all-be-all to story generation, but only one of the many tools at our disposal to be used, or jerry-rigged as necessary to create a fun game for those people specific to the tables I sit at.

 

[iserith]

Is your issue with fudging a philosophical one? I.e. just don't roll that die if you're predetermined that you're not going to hit?

I don't know if one would consider it "philosophical," but engaging the game's mechanics to determine an outcome and then ignoring that outcome seems silly to me. The DM is not obligated to bring the rules of the game into play. If the outcome is known, they don't come into play.

I ask because deciding beforehand that capture, not death, is the consequence of a TPK in that encounter kinda seems like fudging by the back door.

Not by any definition of fudging that I understand or has been proffered in the OP.

Are the stakes telegraphed to the players? E.g. one of the goblins shouts "Boss would love to have him a few more prisoners, let's take 'em down lads!"

Absolutely. Telegraphed if not stated outright at the inception of the challenge.

If a DM made that decision after a string of bad d20's left the party on the verge of an unexpected TPK, would you still disapprove? What about if he hadn't telegraphed the likely outcome to the players (i.e. left his options open)..?

Yes, I would disapprove. As DM, I telegraph the stakes if not state them outright and prefer DMs with whom I play do the same.

I do take the dice out of the equation myself, occasionally. I learned this lesson after a player at my table had consistently *terrible* luck executing flavourful and perfectly in-character japes during combat. Now my players know that describing something ultra-cool might get them a pass on the die roll. Is this fudging?

No. The DM decides whether the outcome of an action is successful, not successful, or uncertain and thus requires mechanics and dice to resolve.

 

[iserith]

Combat is almost always uncertain.

That does not diminish my point: The DM decides on uncertainty, not the rules.

When you design a game, the math must be bounded in order for there to be balance. A monster intended for a level 4 party has to have an acceptable random range of X, where X is what the math dictates is an acceptable range for a level 4 party. The math range for that encounter will be different if the party is level 3 or 5. If you go outside of X due to luck, the encounter is broken. It doesn't happen often, but it can and does happen.

This sounds like something you made up to justify your fudging. You don't need to justify yourself - do as you like. I just choose not to do it myself.

 

[Maxperson]

That does not diminish my point: The DM decides on uncertainty, not the rules.

A DM who decides that something that is uncertain is certain so that he can avoid a die roll is a bad DM and needs to be gotten rid of.

This sounds like something you made up to justify your fudging. You don't need to justify yourself - do as you like. I just choose not to do it myself.

Or else it's rules design.