D&D General How do players feel about DM fudging?

[Charlaquin]

It’s intentionally ignoring the dice rolls a number of times to prolong the encounter. The only difference is that it was written down somewhere that this could be done.

And also nobody ever says that using Legendary Resistance can make your players feel like their choices don’t really matter so you should use it sparingly and not let them find out you’re doing it.

Presumably you have decided how many uses that creature has.

If it’s a custom creature, sure. Though, even in that case I’m always going to go with 3 uses, because that’s how many times every monster in the books that has it can use it. But more importantly, it has a fixed limit. It’s a resource that can be spent a specific number of times to achieve a specific result, not just fiat.

Nobody know apart from you right? Unless the players are looking in the MM and holding the DM to account for the number of times written there?

Or they just have basic pattern recognition skills. But more importantly, I announce when I’m using the ability, and everyone’s fine with it. Could the same be said of fudging the result of a die roll? I would bet not.

 

[Lyxen]

Honestly, I find this debate a bit pointless as presented, since it mostly depends on what the table expects. Yes, fudging at a table that expects fights to be totally "fair" and unbiased, and with players who are playing as sport and want victories to be theirs (and consider this playing "well") is bad, it's not what the players expect.

On the other hand, fudging at a table of players who want to enjoy a cool epic story where they are the heroes is certainly a valid way of DMing, in addition to the DM playing probably more using "ignoring the dice" in the DMG.

So I think that the views expressed so far on fudging express more the way to play at the table (with all associated bells an whistles like "The Role of Dice" and "railroading" - which, by the way, is the way all AP and most modules are written anyway, I don't think many players play a complete sandbox) than direct views on fudging itself.

For example, for me, I have had portions of my RPG life where there was 100% no fudging (including a huge campaign where it was "players roll all the dice" which we invented before it was badly written in the 3e UA), and now a long portion using 5e where it is very much story orientated, with "ignoring the dice" being the standard method and some minor fudging (by all DMs, who are also players in other campaigns) when it makes the game more interesting.

In the end, for me, it comes down to you trust your DM:

• Trust him to create fair challenges that you overcome by your wits.
• Trust him to create incredibly interesting stories that you direct through your characters actions.

And personally, I ALWAYS trust my DMs, it's a matter of principle...

 

[Li Shenron]

The DM should adjust things in the spirit of making the game more fun and exciting for the others.

The assumption of this is that the DM knows better what is fun and exciting.

In fact, many people in this thread are saying clearly that if they catch their DM fudging, it pretty much diminishes their fun. So is the DM actually asking their players how they feel, before starting to fudge, or are they making assumptions? How does the DM know in advance their players will like outcome X so much more than outcome Y that fudging becomes acceptable?

I see either a lot of presumption or cowardice in a DM who fudges. I know about that because I used to fudge at the beginning. I was scared that I wasn't being fair in encounter building due to poor DMing experience and I tried to change monsters HP on the fly or fudge monsters attacks rolls if I felt the battle was going too easy to too hard. That was definitely cowardice on my part, but if you can't accept the inherent randomness of the game, you don't have to always roll the dice, make decisions instead of letting the dice decide for you. For instance, I got used to tell my players that should the dice technically kill their PC, we will always decide together if it really means death or another penalty: players who want death to occur will simply go along with it, while players who want a longer story for their PC can feel safe that I'm not going to take it away from them.

 

[clearstream]

This is a sort of a companion thread to the other poll on fudging, which asks DMs, not players. I figure, player responses also matter on this issue. It needs no further description: whatever you consider "fudging" to be, what do you as a player think of DMs doing it?

Word of warning: you cannot change your vote. Pick wisely!

What difference to you draw between fudging and extemporising? Is (in your mind) the latter adding something arbitrarily to the fiction or situation, and the former altering the result of a game mechanic?

 

[Minigiant]

Positive.

And it depends. I am fine with a DM fudging HD of monsters to give them more or less HP. Or if a monster rolls two 3 the DM might roll gain and push one 3 to the next round.. Or the DM might change an evil necromancer's spells mid-fight provided they haveny casted the swapped spell.

It's always fair fudging. Never just swapping out hit and misses to prolong a fight.

 

[TheSword]

And also nobody ever says that using Legendary Resistance can make your players feel like their choices don’t really matter so you should use it sparingly and not let them find out you’re doing it.

If it’s a custom creature, sure. Though, even in that case I’m always going to go with 3 uses, because that’s how many times every monster in the books that has it can use it. But more importantly, it has a fixed limit. It’s a resource that can be spent a specific number of times to achieve a specific result, not just fiat.

Or they just have basic pattern recognition skills. But more importantly, I announce when I’m using the ability, and everyone’s fine with it. Could the same be said of fudging the result of a die roll? I would bet not.

Well I think you absolutely should use legendary resistance sparingly because if every monster had it, it would definitely diminish casters fun.

I find it an odd concept that you make a distinction between custom creatures and stock creatures. To the PCs and particularly the characters they are all just creatures. It’s bad enough that experienced players are meta enough to know the difference but for us as DMs to treat them differently is odd to me.

I certainly would never expect the players to assume a creature has 3 uses of legendary resistance because other creatures did. That seems like pretty bad meta gaming to me, just asking to be disabused.

I mean if you talk to players in an out of game context and show all your rolls then that’s one way to play. A lot of DMs don’t show rolls though and keep descriptions ‘in game’.

The principle remains. The DM extends the encounter by ignoring dice rolls.

 

[Lycurgon]

Honestly, I find this debate a bit pointless as presented, since it mostly depends on what the table expects. Yes, fudging at a table that expects fights to be totally "fair" and unbiased, and with players who are playing as sport and want victories to be theirs (and consider this playing "well") is bad, it's not what the players expect.

On the other hand, fudging at a table of players who want to enjoy a cool epic story where they are the heroes is certainly a valid way of DMing, in addition to the DM playing probably more using "ignoring the dice" in the DMG.

So I think that the views expressed so far on fudging express more the way to play at the table (with all associated bells an whistles like "The Role of Dice" and "railroading" - which, by the way, is the way all AP and most modules are written anyway, I don't think many players play a complete sandbox) than direct views on fudging itself.

For example, for me, I have had portions of my RPG life where there was 100% no fudging (including a huge campaign where it was "players roll all the dice" which we invented before it was badly written in the 3e UA), and now a long portion using 5e where it is very much story orientated, with "ignoring the dice" being the standard method and some minor fudging (by all DMs, who are also players in other campaigns) when it makes the game more interesting.

In the end, for me, it comes down to you trust your DM:

• Trust him to create fair challenges that you overcome by your wits.
• Trust him to create incredibly interesting stories that you direct through your characters actions.

And personally, I ALWAYS trust my DMs, it's a matter of principle...

I completely disagree with those play slyles being the factor in whether fudging is good for a table. I "want to enjoy a cool epic story where they are the heroes". To me that sound much better than "playing as sport". I want my DM "to Create incredible interesting stories that you direct though your characters actions."

But I am also against fudging. I want the combats to be fair and mostly challenging, but I don't want to play as sport. I want to roleplay my character, sometimes doing dumb things, sometimes not, the story and characters matter more to me that winning by wits. But I would still feel like the DM would be taking away from the fun of the game if they fudge rolls and just decide how action will be resolved.

Personnally I am lucky to have talented DMs that are good at running good character driven stories and are good are crafting challenging encounters that are balanced enough so they can be tough and challenging but haven't overdone things to make them too bad to the point of being hopeless. We have had occasional PC deaths, mostly with resurrection coming afterwards, but no TPKs.
So I trust my DMs to make great stories without fudging dice rolls to make it happen.

 

[Lanefan]

Some kinds of fudging are an abuse of authority. Others are not. I do not fudge to favor either myself or the players. In the extremely unlikely event that A) the players made no bad decisions, B) the players are having extreme(not just plain ole) bad luck, and C) I am having extreme(not play ole) good luck, I will fudge a bit to allow them a fighting chance at survival. A TPK should not happen due to extreme die luck.

I disagree; as from the point of view of one who sees D&D to a great extent as being a game built on luck in the first place it's only fair to let luck have its say no matter what it's telling you this time.

That, and IME most players recognize a bad run of luck when it hits and are more than willing to turn tail and run after the first few PCs drop.

That's not an abuse of authority. That's just good DMing.

IMO it is neither an abuse of authority nor good DMing.

 

[Lanefan]

Depends on the reason. We're primarily here at our table with our extremely limited free time to have fun. "Fun" doesn't always mean we win or have it easy, but you know what else isn't fun? Whiffing at a single monster for nearly an hour because the GM refuses to tweak the math.

While at the same time the players are refusing to try a different approach?

That said, I'm much less positive on fudging to increase the difficulty of an encounter. If excellent planning or sheer luck cut an epic encounter short? Take the L. That can be it's own kind of fun, and those are definitely the stories we retell each other the most.

I agree that curb-stomping an epic encounter can be fun and memorable, but I also think what's good for the goose has to be good for the gander; and that sometimes it'll be the PCs' faces meeting the concrete in ways unintended unless they realize things have gone sideways and GTFO.

 

[Lanefan]

As a DM, I often roll the dice (then feign a concerned look on my face, and pretend to look something up, and shake my head ominously) and dont even look at the result.

The dice are a tool, not just a random number generator.

True, they can have multiple uses; and it's on your-as-DM's good faith to keep the fake rolls separate from the real ones.

I also roll way more dice behind the screen than I need to; sometimes to hide a relevant roll, sometimes to generate a bit of paranoia, but most often just out of sheer habit.

I think the point here, though, is that when they are used as a random number generator both a) the number so generated and b) whatever effects and-or outcomes that number would lead to have to be honoured.