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ShortQuests -- Pocket Sized Adventures! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed for 1-2 game sessions.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jdavis" data-source="post: 524279" data-attributes="member: 8704">I wasn't implying that that is what should of happened, I was stating that is something that happens alot. When I DM I never make any role the PC's can see and I try to not even let them know I am rolling for most things, If you say "make a spot role DC 20 and nobody suceeds then nobody saw anything but the players know they missed something and whether they mean to or not act with that in mind. I like to keep a list of the characters frequently used rolls and do it without them knowing, that way if they didn't see anything they didn't even know they missed it. As far as fudging the rules to stop a campaign from ending on a TPK well it does happen (and I will repeat if a DM does fudge any roles or goes easy on PC's to stop a TPK, it is imperative that the PC's don't know, or even suspect for that matter). I'll give a quick example of a TPK that ended a campaign very badly. I will keep it short and general. The party was in the middle of a campaign arc that had them trying to prove they were innocent of murder and to find a stolden artifact (which they were accused of stealing.) The characters had been around for almost a year before hand and had finished a campaign and started this one (thus old and well loved characters with highly fleshed out backgrounds). This campaing had gone on for a month, the DM had written nearly a hundred pages of information and had planned for every possible occurance. Well it turned out that he took a break one weekend and let somebody else run a side adventure, it was supposed to be a short easy little adventure to give him a break. To make a long story short the whole party got wiped out by a random encounter with giant spiders. So the party is dead the campaign is dead everybody is mad because they spent alot of time on there characters and they were killed by a random encounter, these were fairly high level characters. No big ending, the campaign came crashing to a halt, you couldn't plug in new characters and you couldn't start again, it was a total loss, months of planning and preparing were down the drain all because the other guy couldn't of fudged on freaking role and let at least one of the party get away and go for help, we had resurection scrolls on the ship, all we needed was for the bodies to be recovered and we could of went on but no the campaign ended because of a big spider(and yes it was the guy running's fault, he messed up the encounter by making it almost imposible to win). The DM tossed the campaign and soon after stopped gaming all together. I don't believe in any way that the battles should be fixed or that the characters should always win, I actually try to kill at least one character in every fignt I run, but I don't try to kill them all, even then it can happen but sometimes it is better to fudge a little and save a campaign than to let a party be eaten by giant spiders for no freaking good reason. If a party is stupid and brings it on themselves well that is thier fault, kill them maybe they will learn, but if it is just bad rolling or a DM mistake in preparing an encounter I don't see a problem in finding a way to stop the TPK and if the DM is good you will never know anything odd happened at all.</blockquote>

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