My DM just told me he fudges rolls....

[Janx]

Here's what might be a different way to illustrate the point I'm making about the design stage and fudging during the exectuion:

Let's say you're a pure no-fudge player who wants his victories to be challenges and wants them to be authentic (whatver that means).

Would you prefer that I build a dungeon with a Level 10 BBEG at the bottom for your Level 7 party to choose to hunt and kill?

Thus, because you knew I followed strict rules on threat levels, you also knew that by beating a higher EL, that you were indeed awesome.

Versus, your Level 7 party enters the dungeon and it turns out I put whatever the heck I wanted, because there weren't any guidelines. As such. it turns out the BBEG had 200 more hitpoints than normal, and I did other stuff to "make it harder"

Now I'll respect that in reality, you may not want to talk numbers during the game. The assumption is that your party sought a challenge and you picked one that would be tough, but beatable.

But if I don't have a design system in place that I follow, making up ridiculous stuff is just as bad as jacking with the stats during the game. Mostly because it is misrepresenting was expected. Bait-n-switch.

 

[Janx]

Yeah, but I think it's important to consider that the players are making informed decisions - or at least trying to - and how fudging can effect the decision making process.

I wholly agree. Clues as to monster toughness should be given. Prior to the whole leveled monster era, once you knew the monsters, you could guage for yourself.

But if there's not constraints on the GM for putting TPK stuff in the dungeon, it's just as bad as jacking with the hit points. Either way, it's a screwjob for the players.

As such, until there's a consistent, "fair" design policy, what happens during the game is not wholly your own success, and therefore not something to get one's undies in a bundle over. If you can't ensure the DM followed a difficulty standard, you haven't really beaten anything. (which is the argument for why fudging in-game is there, because some people want that purity of the challenge). I don't think you have that purity, until the entire adventure follows a set of design standards for difficulty rating.

 

[Dausuul]

Here's a different hypothetical. Let's say that, as DM, I give the PCs some feedback on a monster (call it a "greeble"), suggesting that it is a tough threat for a party of their capabilities. (The party fought half a dozen quorgs last adventure and it was a solid fight; later they discover that a similar-sized band of quorgs ambushed a greeble and got torn to shreds.) They go after the greeble and engage it.

In the course of combat, it becomes apparent to me that the greeble's stats are in fact far less powerful than the Monster Manual claimed. It's listed as EL 12, perhaps, but whoever statted out this particular beastie did a crappy job; a more accurate estimate would be EL 8-9. It's not a matter of die rolls. The greeble is simply a paper tiger. There's no way it could take on half a dozen quorgs.

Suppose there is a way that I can, on the fly, tweak the greeble's stats and/or die rolls to bring it up to its original "tough threat" billing, and the players are unlikely to realize what I'm doing. Does this constitute fudging in your definition? And would it be acceptable to do so?

 

[billd91]

Suppose there is a way that I can, on the fly, tweak the monster's stats and/or die rolls to bring it up to its original "tough threat" billing, and the players are unlikely to realize what I'm doing. Does this constitute fudging in your definition? And would it be acceptable to do so?

You're the DM. The answers are yes and yes (assuming you're not using some agreed upon table rule to bar fudging).

 

[Janx]

Here's a different hypothetical. Let's say that, as DM, I give the PCs some feedback on a monster, suggesting that it is a tough threat for a party of their capabilities. They go after the monster and engage it.

In the course of combat, it becomes apparent to me that the monster's stats are in fact far less powerful than the Monster Manual claimed. It's listed as EL 12, perhaps, but whoever statted out this particular beastie did a crappy job; a more accurate estimate would be EL 8-9. It's not a matter of die rolls. The party isn't scoring a lot of natural 20s and the monster isn't rolling a lot of 1s, nor is the party using superior tactics. The monster is simply a paper tiger.

Suppose there is a way that I can, on the fly, tweak the monster's stats and/or die rolls to bring it up to its original "tough threat" billing, and the players are unlikely to realize what I'm doing. Does this constitute fudging in your definition? And would it be acceptable to do so?

yes, and maybe.

Yes because changing the stats on the fly has been called fudging by others, and the goal is to achieve an outcome different from the current trajectory (a harder fight in this case).


Maybe because it really depends on how right you really are. Choosing to make something harder might be thwarting the players of the benefit of their better tactics. How do you know you are right that the monster was built weak-wrong?

Contrast with fudging to protect a player. Now the obvious wrong is that you might be coddling them. But it usually is apparent that something is too tough and it can be corrected by in-game adjustment. If you're wrong, there's always the next encounter to challenge them.

I think I would almost never increase the power of a monster in-game as some sort of correction. I would be more likely to let it play out, and try to make future encounters more dangerous by comparing to this one.

 

[S'mon]

Suppose there is a way that I can, on the fly, tweak the greeble's stats and/or die rolls to bring it up to its original "tough threat" billing, and the players are unlikely to realize what I'm doing. Does this constitute fudging in your definition? And would it be acceptable to do so?

If you are simply adjusting the stats to make it a real EL 12, without regard to the players' ability to beat it, I don't think it's fudging in the normal sense. In your mind it was always EL 12, not EL 8. The book was wrong, you are simply correcting it, as if it were a misprint.

Running 4e I often have to on-the-fly adjust pre-MM3 monster stats to bring them up to standard. I don't regard that as fudging, I'm just making the 5th level monster into a real 5th level monster, and I'm following set formulae to do so. It's much harder in 3e, and my normal 3e approach would be to change the CR, not the stats, (maybe those quorgs were green quorgs) but it could be done.

 

[Janx]

Along the lines of Daasul's question, I see a bunch more. Many along the line of correcting a mistake.

WotC got the stats wrong, do you mind if I fix the stats mid-game to reflect what I think they should be?

You're killing my monster too fast, do you mind if I adjust the stats to make him last longer?

This attack roll will kill you way too quick. Do you mind if I lower the damage?

I can't bloody hit you, do you mind if I fake a few hits?

I got the monster stats wrong, do you mind if I fix them mid-encounter?

 

[Rogue Agent]

If you can't ensure the DM followed a difficulty standard, you haven't really beaten anything.

No. You've still beaten the scenario as it was designed. Whether or not that design was any good is a separate question.

playing with the dice rolls in public view and vowing to never fudge sort of assumes the system is so perfect and balanced (and run correctly by the GM), that all encounters are "fair".

I suspect this matters strongly if the scenario is (a) railroaded and/or (b) dependent on tactically-focused My Perfect Encounters(TM). That design methodology is incredibly fragile and very precarious in its balance.

Like a stealth fighter needing its onboard computer to make constant adjustments because its actual flight profile is untenable, it doesn't surprise me that scenarios designed to be fragile and precariously balanced are probably more likely to require on-the-fly fudging to correct emergent issues.

When you instead design around a totality of strategic expedition, OTOH, both the balance and outcome of any given encounter becomes a lot less finicky/important (because making an encounter too powerful doesn't mean "automatic, unavoidably TPK" and making an encounter too weak doesn't mean "completely pointless").

You know, it's sad to me that every time I've seen this scenario come up, (even with no fudging on the DM's part), the Player/PC rarely takes the hint. And when they do get the hint, I've seen many times when the PC, instead of changing tactics to protect themselves, they pull out their biggest gun in the thought of offing the enemy with their next, (and probably last), shot. I have seen so many PCs get dumber after being hit with the clue bat.

In many cases, it's because the player has been conditioned to expect the GM to save them with fudging. Why run away when you can always count on the GM to fudge things so that you'll win?

This frequently isn't a conscious choice on their part, BTW. It's just become their standard operating procedure after years of exposure to fudging at the game table.

 

[Bullgrit]

Repeating myself in hopes of getting an answer:

Those of you who will fudge to have an opponent, (NPC), make a save against something like a first round save or die effect: Do you tell the Players this? Would it be a good table rule to have agreement between the DM and Players that any first round of combat should not include save or die effects?

Bullgrit

 

[enrious]

Those of you who will fudge to have an opponent, (NPC), make a save against something like a first round save or die effect: Do you tell the Players this?

I can't see myself ever telling the players when I did or did not fudge, barring some sort of unusual situation.

Would it be a good table rule to have agreement between the DM and Players that any first round of combat should not include save or die effects?

It's a neutral rule.