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

[Vaalingrade]

The idea of having a discussion whenever a spotfix is in order is like if you're at a play and a piece of scenery falls over and instead of just quietly repairing it in the background, the settech shoulder checks the lead to the ground and loudly announces the process of how they're going to fix the piece of scenery. Then expects the play to proceed as normal.

 

[Vaalingrade]

That man does not represent myself or my firm.

 

[iserith]

Not really. I mean, its a human game, with human elements to it. I see no need to remove that human element. As a player you put faith in your DM to run a challenging and fun game, and as a DM you repay that faith and do just that.

Hilariously, even the 'anti fudgers' seem to be totally OK with this human element being involved to ignore charts entirely, or simply selecting results or an outcome the DM wants from a chart, as long as the DM doesnt also roll the dice at the same time.

What about if I selected my random encounter, yet still rolled the dice, but for no other reason other than to hear them hit the table, and I didnt even look at them, or register the result?

Would the anti-fudging crowd still be angry at me?

Why would anyone be angry with you for what you do at your own table other than your players and perhaps yourself?

 

[LordEntrails]

Not ever die roll is an issue. Do people just skip over this part when people mention it?

I don't. But again, why have an option that you won't accept the die roll for? Change the table, set the odds and the outcomes of whatever die roll you are going to do to results that are acceptable to you. I don't see that as fudging.

Yep thought so.

You blokes who complain about balance, diss martials and sook about fudging don't want to engage in actual game play hypotheticals or engage in actual play examples, because you know the results don't favor your argument.

Again, not me. You really need to step back and look at what you are saying. I don't complain about balance. I don't diss martials. You are flat out lying about who I am. Such is not acceptable.

I have engaged in your hypotheticals. Repeatedly. Funny how you totally ignore those parts of my post. You only answer that which seems to server your echo chamber view of who I am and so that you can argue when others are trying to discuss.

Also apparently you're infallible DMs who never find yourselves in a situations where you've thrown an encounter at your group, that they clearly cant handle, so you've never been in a situation where you had to improvise some dues ex machina to keep them alive (or you just TPK'd them anyway).

Please stop stating who I am and what I have done.
Numerous times I have had situations go sideways. Almost never have they gone to an unrecoverable state because to get there, multiple people have to make multiple bad decisions AND bad rolls.

Frankly though, I dont really care. You do you, and I'll do me, going by the RAW and guidance of the DMG that expressly tells me to ignore the dice when the result goes against the story or the game.

Hubris, you seem to have that in spades. You do you and keep ignoring that your impression is not one that your players might be aware of an unhappy with your methods.

edit: removed offending word.

 

[theCourier]

So I decide to run a Pathfinder 1e game and I have brought in a new player in and this will be his first time playing a TTRPG. Creating a new character in Pathfinder can take some time, even more so for a first timer. He's really excited, gets his character done, even spends the time creating a fairly detailed backstory, and is looking forward to playing his first character. Do I risk turning him off and deflating his enthusiasm because during the first night of gaming the dice worked against him and his character should have died or do I fudge so that the killing blow does less damage and he survives to be healed later? This poor guy just put in a bunch of time and effort into his first character and it all quickly goes to waste if I let the dice results stand. I see no harm done here if I fudge. Honestly, there seems to me to be more upside than down in this scenario.

The thing is, we can all create scenarios where fudging seems reasonable and where it isn't. GMs make judgement calls all of the time, some you will agree with and some you won't. If the GM isn't someone that you are willing to trust to make the right call then maybe there is a bigger problem.

You didn't let the player know it's a game where death is on the table?

You didn't create backup characters for if his character died?

You didn't rule death off the table or come up with another consequence for losing so he gets to keep playing that character?

I don't even see where fudging comes up as a solution when you can, and probably should, at least make the type of game you're playing understandable before a session begins.

 

[Charlaquin]

Groan.

OK, you select a 'random' encounter for your PCs instead of rolling, and throw it at them. A bunch of mindless Zombies shamble into the room, as a portcullis drops, trapping the PCs in the room. The encounter is supposed to be a medium difficulty encounter, to spice up an otherwise quiet session. The campaign has been going really well, the players have all gelled, are working together well as a team, and have bought into your campaign. You all have great chemistry and the last campaign ended with a disappointing TPK, which was nearly the end of the group.

Your dice are on fire. You roll natural 20 after natural 20. One by one the PCs drop, and they continue to roll poorly. The mood at the table is grim. The Paladin stands grimly over the bodies of his downed comrades, down to 1 HP, but he has a smite remaining, and is facing an equally badly wounded Zombie (the last monster standing). He also has enough lay on hands remaining to stabilise the rest of the party.

You go before him, roll an attack behind your screen, and it's a natural 20. If the result stands, it's a certain TPK, in an encounter not connected to the story, and through no fault of the players.

Do you TPK the party, or fudge the roll?

I roll in the open, so the players would be able to see all the natural 20s. But this is definitely a scenario where I would say to the players “last time we had a TPK it nearly killed the group. What do you all think this time? Can we handle it, or should I pull some sort of Deus Ex Machina?”

 

[Charlaquin]

That's actually a fair point. This would also apply to the GM inventing allies that come to help the PCs or anything like that. And I'm not sure how this would apply to solving out of combat problems in a situation where the GM improvises a lot of the environment. It starts to get pretty muddy.

It definitely can, and the varying opinions on that get you into arguments about quantum ogres and things. It’s definitely not cut and dried, but in general I am more ok with DM fiat over things the PCs have no control over than things they can affect with their decisions. Games with more player-side authorial power probably complicate this assessment as well.

Though I wouldn't characterise the sort of fudging people have said they use in these threads as "picking the result regardless of what the PCs do." It seems to be mostly about mitigating extreme streaks of bad luck.

That’s fair. I think fudging can be picking the result regardless of what the players do, but that is on the extreme end. I do think most of the time people are indeed just using it to try and mitigate bad luck. But I still think doing so is undermining player agency, even if it isn’t totally invalidating it.

(Perhaps d20 system simply is more swingy than some people like?)

Oh, it absolutely is. But, at risk of bringing up an equally contentious point, this is (part of) why I advocate for only calling for rolls when there is a possibility of success and failure and meaningful stakes. The d20 is very swingy, especially with 5e’s smaller modifiers than 3e’s and 4e’s. Because of that, I think the dice should be used sparingly, only called upon when necessary. If you can’t live with all the possible results of the roll, you shouldn’t call for the roll IMO.

 

[Charlaquin]

So you would ignore the requirement to roll on the random monster table and instead just arbitrarily select a result?

How is that different from rolling the dice and ignoring the result and instead arbitrarily selecting a result?

It’s not significantly different, in my opinion. The latter just involves a superfluous roll of the dice.

 

[Charlaquin]

Are they telling you the die roll was something it wasn't (which seems to meet the definition of a lie to me), or are they saying hit or miss (which is something the rules explicitly empower them to do and we're calling fudging on here - just like your ignoring a random encounter roll). You might hate it as much as a lie, but I think a lot of people on here would rather you didn't brand them liars for playing the game the rules say they are fully welcome to.

If you rolled the die and then announced a result that is not consistent with the one the die indicates, that is literally telling a lie. Not all lies are equally harmful, of course - as an actor, I lie all the time, for a living. Your players may be willing to accept the premise that you will sometimes lie to them about the results of the dice rolls, for the sake of the story (for a given definition of “the story” that the players can have no input over, since they don’t know when you are or aren’t fudging). Not all players are.

It feels like in @iserith 's game and in many modules that the players do have some control over what wandering monsters they run into, since the monsters occur at given time intervals (or if they're noisy or what not). And further that the monster are at a discoverable difficulty level, just like BAB bonuses are, for example.

They have a measure of control over when a random encounter occurs, and because of this I don’t think it’s appropriate to force a “random” encounter that isn’t really random, or to fudge a roll made to determine if a random encounter will occur. But, once it has been determined that a random encounter will occur, the PCs actions have no effect on what that encounter will be. Except perhaps in the sense that different areas may have different rosters, in which case, yeah, obviously don’t pull in a monster from a roster other than the one for the area the PCs have chosen to adventure in.

 

[p_johnston]

The wording on the poll is funky. Neutral should have said "Find it acceptable," because that's neutral language. They accept it, but have no further opinion. Positive should have said, "Fudging can be beneficial." And very positive should have said, "fudging is good."

Yeah that's probably more right. I ended up positive because I find fudging (used judiciously) acceptable. If it's something that happens a lot though there's a problem either with the DMs ability to create encounters or their ability to run the game.