In what other games is fudging acceptable?

[S'mon]

If it could be easily and simply stated and codified, then we could put it into our house rules, and it wouldn't be fudging, now would it?

Let me come at the answer a little sideways. Folks who fudge say that they do so to make the game more fun. Opponents of fudging ask, "Well, how do you *know* the fudge will be more fun than what the dice roll?"

My answer is that the only things certain in human life are death and taxes. If I have to wait for certainty to take an action, I'm gong to be sitting on my thumbs most of my life. I don't need to be certain. I only need to have a certain level of confidence.

Where do you get the confidence? From experience, and from your knowledge of your game, your scenario, your players, and their expectations. With that information at hand, when it is time to fudge can be pretty bleeding obvious, even if it is hard to elucidate.

This doesn't really help me see whether fudging might be something I might ever want to do though (and it smacks rather of a high-handed illusionist approach), whereas [MENTION=9037]Elf Witch[/MENTION]'s examples were useful. One thing I got from her two cases was that the player had already been 'beaten down' by real life and in-game events, and the intervention seems a lot less arbitrary when used in such limited circumstances.

I think there's a difference between fudging in an extreme case out of sympathy towards a particular player, and a general 'I know best when to fudge' approach. The former approach potentially retains most of the challenge of the game, because players can know they'll only be cut some slack if they've *already* been put through the ringer.

 

[S'mon]

BTW I think 3e has a big problem with excessive lethality, far worse than 1e-2e. Scaling save DCs contributed, but the biggest problem was huge monster damage output, combined with a very narrow margin between 'fine' and 'dead'. I have a lot of sympathy for DMs who want to run a more story-oriented 3e game and resort to some fudging in consequence. I have used various solutions, such as Fate Points to avoid death, and death at negative (CON+10) rather than at -10. As up-front house rules these are not technically fudging, but achieve a similar result - no PC ever died in the Fate Point campaign, and there was only 1 death in the "CON-10" campaign, that being a ca 6th level Rogue PC who contracted Mummy Rot, went into the final battle with the 10th level Wizard BBEG on 4 hit points, and failed a save vs Fireball.

4e's "death at negative bloodied or 3 failed saves" solved this problem very nicely though, and I have not had to houserule death in 4e at all.

 

[Iosue]

How do you fudgers decide when to fudge to save a PC, and when to let him/her die?

When I was regularly DM'ing, we were using B/X and BECMI, so I took my fudging cues from them. Our style of play was I guess you could say heroic/cinematic, in that we wanted to play characters like in our favorite fantasy literature. So generally what guided my fudging instincts was the dramatic feel. Which is not to say "what was good for my story." This was back in the late 80s, very early 90s, so we weren't thinking "adventure path" or "narrative campaign". It was very much adventure hooks in a semi-sandbox. But it was B/X-BECMI, so, you know, wandering monsters. A heroic death against the villain of the piece was fine. But no one wanted to buy it against wandering monsters. Gandalf went down taking out a Balrog of Morgoth in Middle-earth's most infamous dungeon. He wasn't eaten by spiders in Mirkwood on the way to Hobbiton. It wasn't a fully articulated thought in my head at the time, but looking back I think if the death felt senseless, like it made the campaign so far a shaggy dog story, if reading such a death in a fantasy novel would have left a bad taste in my mouth, then I was inclined to fudge, if the PCs were having bad luck.

There was one time when I threw some level 2-3 characters (with no cleric) against a gold dragon. This was one of those times as DM that I just kicked it, underestimating the punishment the dragon would deal to the characters. (I was fairly inexperienced at the time.) That was a set-piece rather than an off-the-cuff, meaningless encounter, but I was looking at my first TPK, and I felt like it was my fault. I didn't think I'd given the players a fair shake. So I fudged a few rolls in that. A near-miss here, some reduced damage there. I don't regret the fudging, but I did wish I'd planned the encounter better.

I should also note that, while I don't know how other "fudgers" do it, for me fudging was always a matter of 1 or 2 points on a die. If the monster needed 15 to hit, and they got a 15, if it felt like a time to fudge I'd call it a miss. If they got an 18, well, I felt like the fates just weren't with the player, and I'd let it stand. Even when fudging, the dice weren't entirely ignored. I don't know if that's logically consistent; it just felt right at the time.

And I definitely agree with S'mon -- while I haven't yet had the opportunity to DM 4e, just looking over the rules and playing it, I have a hard time imagining fudging in the way I did back in the day. The fudges are practically built into the system. (Action points, self-healing, easy-to-balance encounters, etc.)

 

[S'mon]

[MENTION=6680772]Iosue[/MENTION] - thanks; yes with 4e it rather feels like the lethality-reducing house rules have already been baked into the system, so finally no need to develop your own. I actually started a 4e campaign saying there'd be Fate Points, then quickly realised there was no need for them.

Good point re Classic D&D - with Mentzer Basic especially I think there's a disconnect between the romantic/heroic fantasy implied by the art & text, re the extreme lethality of OD&D "You have 1d8 hp & die at 0". This is a bit like the 3e disconnect "You are a Wuxia superhero, but will probably die if an Orc crits you". With Classic D&D (& retro-clones) again my solution has been house rules - max hp at 1st level & death at -10 works best I think (C&C's approach of stable at 0 to -5 and dying at -6 to -9 is very good); alternatives include adding CON to hp, a 10 hp kicker, and a Death Save at 0 hp.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And yet I've seen it. High-level game of 3.5, maybe an hour into a session and the DM hit a PC with Plane Shift, because that PC had the highest save and just needed to roll a 1 or higher to save.

A 1 later and the PC was out of the session...as was the player.

The player never returned. I don't blame him.

sure it happens. I guess my point is I would prefer the GM deal with it in some other way than fudging. It just really annoys me when the GM saves my skin, it makes the whole game feel rigged to win. I do agree making a player sit on the side for 7 hours is not a good thing other. But there are solutions to the problem other than saving the PC.

 

[ExploderWizard]

There was one time when I threw some level 2-3 characters (with no cleric) against a gold dragon. This was one of those times as DM that I just kicked it, underestimating the punishment the dragon would deal to the characters. (I was fairly inexperienced at the time.) That was a set-piece rather than an off-the-cuff, meaningless encounter, but I was looking at my first TPK, and I felt like it was my fault. I didn't think I'd given the players a fair shake. So I fudged a few rolls in that. A near-miss here, some reduced damage there. I don't regret the fudging, but I did wish I'd planned the encounter better.

It seems like part of the problem contributing to the feel for the need to fudge is heavy handed Dming. There is a difference between such characters encountering a gold dragon and there being a mandatory combat. If the DM is constantly "throwing" the PCs into violent conflict with little choice in the matter then I can see where the guilt that inspires fudging comes from.

 

[Iosue]

It seems like part of the problem contributing to the feel for the need to fudge is heavy handed Dming. There is a difference between such characters encountering a gold dragon and there being a mandatory combat. If the DM is constantly "throwing" the PCs into violent conflict with little choice in the matter then I can see where the guilt that inspires fudging comes from.

Perhaps my word choice was poor, and I should clarify. The PCs certainly had a choice. Combat was not mandatory. The problem wasn't that I made them fight. The problem was I thought the players could, after a good fight, handle the dragon. They thought they could handle the dragon. As I said, I was inexperienced at the time and did not have a full handle on how best to scale encounters. (In my defense, this was exactly an easy thing in Basic, at least until the encounter challenge formula came out in the Master Set). Had I been aware of just how dangerous the dragon would be, I would have given them a heads up, suggested putting off the lair for a while, or else stocking up on potions, scrolls and the like. Or tweaked the stats of the dragon.

As it was, the dragon was encountered, combat was joined, and started off well. While the players of course had no idea how many hp the dragon had (and trusted that I wouldn't give them an opponent above their level without fair warning), I could see that given the damage they were putting out compared to that of the dragon (and the wizard having emptied his big guns), they were rather overmatched. I didn't fudge to let them win; I fudged to try and bring the challenge level more to the point I had originally envisioned, and had implicitly promised the players through our playstyle.

 

[Umbran]

Some of the people above have made pretty persuasive arguments for particular cases of fudging. But I'd say "How do you fudgers decide when to fudge to save a PC, and when to let him/her die?" is still a good question; that's part of the place we get the confidence from, from talking to other people about when they fudged, and evaluating it for ourselves.

This doesn't really help me see whether fudging might be something I might ever want to do though (and it smacks rather of a high-handed illusionist approach), whereas [MENTION=9037]Elf Witch[/MENTION]'s examples were useful.

Yes, well, S'mon here didn't expressly ask for examples, or any specific form of answer, and I thought Elf Witch's examples were quite good. So, rather than be repetetive, I went with a different approach, to cover ground more broadly. Sorry if you didn't find it as useful.

My approach is by no means high-handed (at least how I understand that term), whether or not it is illusionist. Note how I mention that knowledge of your players is important? Note how I've mentioned in the past that I *asked* my players if they had a problem with it, in general? I'm a service-oriented GM, and the player's sensibilities are most certainly in the forefront of my mind.

I think there's a difference between fudging in an extreme case out of sympathy towards a particular player, and a general 'I know best when to fudge' approach.

The two are by no means exclusive.

The former approach potentially retains most of the challenge of the game, because players can know they'll only be cut some slack if they've *already* been put through the ringer.

Any approach when the players cannot depend on the fudging retains the challenge of the game. If you fudge frequently, and telegraph that you're not going to let them die, then much of the tactical wargame challenge may be washed out, sure. If it is infrequent, and subtle when done, then the challenge remains.

 

[Umbran]

It seems like part of the problem contributing to the feel for the need to fudge is heavy handed Dming.

I will analogize:

Maybe you like to repair cars using only crescent wrenches. Me, I like to also have a ratchet nut driver in my toolbox.

The ratchet driver isn't better for everything, but neither is it a fundamentally inferior tool. I have one not because I feel some insecurity, or because my approach to fixing cars is generally flawed. It is simply because sometimes there's a tight corner, and the ratchet driver manages the job more easily than the crescent.

 

[rogueattorney]

Good point re Classic D&D - with Mentzer Basic especially I think there's a disconnect between the romantic/heroic fantasy implied by the art & text, re the extreme lethality of OD&D "You have 1d8 hp & die at 0".

No doubt at all. This same disconnect is present in late-1e and 2e as most infamously exhibited in the Dragonlance modules "obscure death" rule for certain pcs and npcs.

The D&D support materials changed with the general shift in fantasy literature - that began in the late '70s and culminated in the late '80s - from the picaresque weird fantasy that inspired Gygax and Arneson to epic quest fantasy. But the game rules didn't change to match the change in tone of the support materials except for little blurbs of advice (like the bit quoted from the Mentzer rules previously), which basically advised the DM to ignore the results at which the rules were set up to arrive.