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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 8986131" data-attributes="member: 75787">I think we're pretty close to agreement here!In your previous notes, I didn't see examples of (a), (b) or (d) above -- a lot of your language was focused on "putting on kid gloves", "avoiding fights going bad" and essentially focusing on (c) above. So thanks for your explanation.Now, just to confirm. You previously have said that most of the time when you tried to do things like the above, you failed. Is that true for all those categories, or just for (c)-like adjustments? That means that most of time you shorten a fight that is effectively over, it causes your group to have less fun?On the difference between adjusting to make the challenge fit and adjusting to make the outcome fit:This is the sort of fudging we both agree we don't like: Fudging to achieve a desired outcome in the sense of success/failure or deciding party survival / death. Here's the way I do it: Modify to achieve a desired level of challenge. When I see the above situation I don't think "is this encounter going too easily?", I think "is this encounter not challenging enough?". If the reason the goblins are doing so badly is that they have rolled badly and the magical rolled max damage with a fireball and the party have had several critical, then no, although the encounter is going easily, the challenge was appropriate and so I don't do anything.If however, the players have rolled meh, and the goblins relatively well, and it's still looking like a pushover, then I might well add 3 goblins. I am now happy with the challenge of the combat and we carry on. If the goblins are then super lucky and start winning, I apply the same logic again: The encounter is not going well, but the challenge is appropriate, so I don't do anything.I'm pretty sure I've never counter-adjusted as you indicate. I don't think it has ever lead to a TPK but honestly, TPKs are not a big feature of the games I like to run anyway.Nope. Not 100%. But I'd argue about 90%. Because, like you, I think I'm a good GM <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-)" title="Smile    :-)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":-)" />Actually, the last time I did this it was prompted by the player. We had one character who was known as "giant killer" and a different character did a critical to an important giant. The player said "oh no, Cian Giant-Killer should really have the killing blow", so I gave the giant a very few extra hits and let Cian have a swing. If he had missed, I wasn't going to keep doing that though, but since the group agreed that the fun thing was for Cian to make the killing blow, I felt my duty as a GM was to help that be so.And maybe that's another big difference. I think you described your players as liking problem-solving and challenges, so they might be more likely to characterize a GM as "stealing" and that whole more adversarial feel. My players are not only generally happy to share, but good about making their happiness known, so I don't have the kind of issue you're describing.Oh, we were doing so well! But now you are re-introducing the notion of modification only to be concerned with success/failure -- the very thing you were saying was not true at the top of the post! I don't want to try and answer you with two different definitions you are using,  so I'm just going to ignore this statement of yours and move on.This is a straight up no. I have players who like each other and like each other's characters. When one of them feels that it would be more appropriate for a different player to take an action, they are generous and will try and make it happen, and are happy for me to join their attempts. I mentioned the story of Cian Giant-Killer above as an example, and that's really common. I think you see players as more competitive than I do, so you see this action as "stealing" the agency away from one person, whereas for my players it's giving them additional agency -- the character for whom it is important (as agreed explicitly or implicitly by the group) is given a chance to do something that otherwise a random dice roll would have deprived them of. I feel that your language ("stole an important kill", "you felt was more deserving") suggests that your experience of players is a bit less co-operative than mine has been. If you have players who regularly get annoyed with you for helping other players have fun, I guess that could explain why you do it less!Agreed. Most of the time I let people know when I'm adjusting an encounter: "Well, those goblins were a bit under-powered, let's see how you deal with three more!" or "Although it seemed like Sir Owaine felled the giant, the giant seems to have just a little life left as Sir Cian readies for him", "given that the players are all yawning, the opposition too seems unsure if they want to keep fighting and they have a bit less will than you might have expected"I hope this makes my viewpoint more clear; thanks for your comments.</blockquote>

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