D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[FrozenNorth]

I have twice had players actively putting themselves in front of a charging boss while low on HP. Situations where characters can survive a hit, but not a crit is not that rare in D&D pre 5ed. 5ed sort of fixes this, which I now realise sort of invalidates my example - though I have witnessed something similar happening in 5ed with disintegrate.

If a character puts themselves between a charging boss and another character even if there is a chance that the boss’ attack will kill them, it negates their awesome moment if the DM changes the die roll so they survive regardless.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Good point about the possibility of failing.

But your first sentence made me pause, because I don't think GM noticing the odds are overcooked and deciding to insert a reaction roll is necessarily subject to player scrutiny. It can be and I suspect often remains internal cogitation: players see the enactment but they may not see the deciding.

It can be part of GM's job to balance the risks and rewards.

Do you agree with that as an ends? And does deciding in secret matter from your perspective, if the enactment itself is in the open?

The GM cannot--at least, not without pretty thoroughly ruining the experience for most players--make every single decision they ever make completely, totally transparent to the players at every single instant. Doing so would, at the very least, grind the game to a halt.

So, at least logically, I cannot in good conscience demand absolute openness about literally everything under the sun, because to do so would destroy the possibility of meaningfully playing TTRPGs. Hence, at least in principle, I am not able to argue that the GM should always be open about everything.

BUT. I think that it is an extremely serious error to reason from that to "it therefore doesn't matter if you are open or not about any of your decisions". That position strikes me as dire, but I could see folks leaping from my previous paragraph to it. Instead, my position would be that, when genuinely in doubt, err on the side of informing, unless the players have said otherwise or you have other very strong evidence for why you shouldn't in a given, specific case. That, to me, is a huge part of how I come to understand that someone is playing fair--and how I go about showing others that I am playing fair.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I agree, and see that work as also falling on the game designers. For example, games often now incorporate death moves that relieve GM from worrying about critical hits, or are structured to mitigate or even obviate overtuning in prep.

I do notice Daggerheart has this

When planning your session (or even midsession), you can adjust an existing adversary’s stat block to fit the needs of your battle.​

​

(Emphasis mine.) Is re-tuning adversaries midsession fudging?

It is functionally equivalent to doing so, yes, and thus I classify it as such.

What is the difference between "oh crap, that roll was max damage, I'm...just going to pretend the dice were average" and "oh crap, that roll was max damage, I'm...just going to pretend that the monster has a -5 damage modifier instead of whatever positive modifier it has." Or even "I'm going to pretend that the dice were d4s rather than d10s." Modifying a monster mid-combat, without diegetic justification (and thus a justification that is reasonably learn-able by the players, even if they coincidentally end up not learning of it) has identical effects to replacing its rolls with different rolls. I think the only possible exception is specifically to do with crits, but even then there are ways that modifications end up doing the same thing. It'll just be a more roundabout way.

 

[Enrahim]

If a character puts themselves between a charging boss and another character even if there is a chance that the boss’ attack will kill them, it negates their awesome moment if the DM changes the die roll so they survive regardless.

Both of these were very experienced players and had calculated that they had a solid chance of taking the hit under normal circumstances. Both were aghast when I didn't overrule the crit that took them out.

The point in context is that characters ending up in situations that are more dangerous than they might immediately recognise is far from unheard of. In this case exemplified beyond doubt by their active choice. (And now further clarified trough their reaction afterwards)

 

[AlViking]

Both of these were very experienced players and had calculated that they had a solid chance of taking the hit under normal circumstances. Both were aghast when I didn't overrule the crit that took them out.

The point in context is that characters ending up in situations that are more dangerous than they might immediately recognise is far from unheard of. In this case exemplified beyond doubt by their active choice. (And now further clarified trough their reaction afterwards)

In my game the response would have been "You critted AGAIN???"

Ya take the risk ya suffer the consequences, ya gain the glory.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Pulling out one specific line to call out what I see as a core difficulty here:

They might be fine band aids to get rid of the mourning - but they are not going to produce the experience of triumph a hard won and deserved victory brings along.

But they cannot have that feeling regardless.

You have made clear said that it is not a "hard won and deserved victory", emphasis in original. What you are describing isn't them actually having that feeling, it is you intentionally deceiving them in order to make them believe they deserved a flawless victory when....they didn't. They do not realize that what they are feeling is "we got a victory we think we deserved...but didn't"; but that is what happened, and thus their hollow victory seems legitimate.

That, that precise thing, IS a harmful thing as far as I'm concerned. It is telling the player comforting lies. You have told the players that they deserved victories they did not actually deserve. By instead making it so their hard-fought victories are exactly what the dice say they are, you ensure that those players know, without doubt, that when they feel they've deserved a victory, it is always because they did deserve a victory--not because you conspired to ensure victory in order to spare their feelings.

The problem with all of these 3 suggestions is that all of them are going to be recognised as the deus ex machina they are. They might be fine band aids to get rid of the mourning - but they are not going to produce the experience of triumph a hard won and deserved victory brings along.

Okay, but now we get to the heart of the matter, don't we?

Because now it isn't about preserving the feeling of a deserved victory. It is about you using a deus ex machina--which is what ALL of these things are, including the fudged roll!--appear to not be one, so that the players will feel certain things and not other things. But what is the point of concealing the deus ex machina, if it is occurring either way? As far as I can tell, the only reason is to make the GM look better, by trying to have her cake and eat it too: she gets all of the benefits of committing a deus ex machina, without having any of the downsides, because the players have been denied the ability to know that that's what happened.

The pretense is what matters--not the feelings. That's one of the other reasons why I'm not keen on fudging. That nearly-unavoidable element of preserving the GM's image before their players.

In the disintigrate example mentioned above was in a one shot. One of the players characters sacrificed their personal trinket to gatter the dust of the disintegrated person. The group proceeded to complete the mission. There was no rejoicing. The GM put in Elminster resurrecting the dead character in the epilogue. This lightened the mood a bit, but the after talk felt more like a retrospective on a failure than a victory celebration.

Firstly, I'm sorry that that was a negative experience for you. That's not great, and I totally understand why experiencing that would make you feel terribly tempted to resort to fudging.

However...if this sort of thing is going to be such a mega-downer, then IMO the actual error was that you included disintegrate in the first place. Thus, while an unpleasant experience for those involved, it was a very important learning experience: Don't have magic-using enemies with disintegrate in a one-shot, because it's much too likely to create a severe downer ending that tarnishes the experience. Using disintegrate at all involves careful application of various extremely important GM skills, like reading the room and getting the measure of one's players. That's very hard to do in a one-shot format.

Finally, this after-talk thing brings up something very important, and another GM skill that fudging acts as a way to avoid learning: knowing your players' psychology and personalities. For some players, any death, no matter how well-earned or warranted, tarnishes the experience badly--such that even victory tastes like the ashes of defeat. For others, it would be putting ashes in their mouths to do this. Deceiving them this way is very much acting against their interests, something they would be openly angry about if they discovered. Why is it better to harm those players in a way they don't know, in order to help the other players in a way they don't know? Again it seems to be that the deciding factor is that doing this deceptively preserves the appearance of the GM being above making mistakes.

 

[AlViking]

I don't go out of my way to kill of characters by double tapping. But I think some people are overly concerned about killing off characters. On the other hand I roll death saves in secret (I don't fudge those either, I just don't want players knowing), and there have been times when multiple characters are down. But in 5e after the first few levels and especially now that healing potions are a bonus action I just don't worry about it.

As far as fudging, the thing is that there have been certain DMs where it feels like they use these tactics on a fairly regular basis, and I could tell. To me, it takes away from my enjoyment of the game.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Maybe. I may adjust the number of adversaries just before the fight because I run a sandbox and they may have skipped over or stumbled into more than I had expected but that's it. I tweak monsters on a pretty regular basis so they fit my vision but that's before the session starts.

Once initiative is rolled? It is what it is. But getting to a certain point during a session before that? Until it's in play most things are in flux.

So changing things mid session doesn't bother me because plans should be flexible.

I take the view that it narrows down with time, and can be nailed down well before the monster itself actually appears, within certain boundaries.

Example: Party is stalking a monster they don't know the identity of, they just know that it's been hunting and killing people in an area. It's actually a magically-mutated bulette that has higher AC than normal due to having had metal plates fused into its skin, but these metal plates make it more vulnerable to lightning, cold, fire, and piercing damage, while making it more resistant to acid, thunder, slashing, and bludgeoning damage.

Step 1, the party collects reports from others who have been searching. This allows them to eliminate several plausible candidates from the list; this is not positive evidence, but it is strong negative evidence for what the creature isn't.
2: Party wizard conducts a scrying ritual which detects residual magic. They learn that the creature has a detectable magical aura of transmutation, due to the fact that it was produced by fusing metal into the body of a creature.
3: At the site of a battle that injured but did not kill the creature, the party finds a small scale pried off of the creature before it killed all of the targets. The Druid is able to examine its physical structure and conclude that the creature naturally has metal plates for skin.
4: The party ranger tracks the beast to a spot where it has eaten some of its prey. They roll only middling on their knowledge checks, so they believe it's a bulette, but they aren't sure--it's behaving oddly for a bulette, perhaps, but the teeth-marks look just right.
5: A lone survivor is found...but it's a child. The child's wizard mother tried to blast the creature away with thunder wave but it didn't work. The child's bard father stabbed it with his flame blade magical weapon...which made the creature shriek in pain, distracted and enraged, thus allowing the child to escape to a place the bulette couldn't reach. The child was too scared to get a good look at the monster and thus describes it in terms too general to identify otherwise.

Etc., etc., etc. Point being, nothing has directly appeared in play, but the players have gotten lots of very good evidence for what kind of creature it is and why it would be like that. As they gain more, more of what the monster is becomes fixed in place. At step 5, for example, it would be unacceptable for the GM to make the creature actually weak to thunder and resistant to fire.

 

[FrozenNorth]

What proof do you have that this behavior from "many, many GMs" is "irrefutable"? Personal anecdote?

Either at ENworlds, or at all other RPG forums, I have never seen anyone defending a player fudging die rolls as something positive.

Other people have pointed to DM guides indicating that fudging is acceptable. Several GMs here and in other forums have indicated the circumstances they themselves are OK with fudging.

You can pretend that there is no evidence that DMs fudge more than players, but you are holding others to a standard of evidence that you do not hold yourself too.

Moreover, it comes across as trying to shut down another poster for raising a point you dislike.

 

[Enrahim]

Pulling out one specific line to call out what I see as a core difficulty here:

But they cannot have that feeling regardless.

I think we are agreeing in all the premises and the conclusion. I think the only thing that seperates us might be this one sentence.

I acknowledged the core you seem to put into it in my first post in this exchange:

Yes, I know that feeling is false.

However even if the feeling is based on a deception, the feeling is felt.

Keeping the deus ex machina hidden makes me the only one at the table not feeling the joy.

By revealing the deus ex machina, I know the players get a more authentic experience, but I also bereft them of that joy they could have felt if I hadn't done so.

This is a trade off. I have arrived at the same conclusion as you have for myself. But this has not been an easy choice. The thing we chose away is something I recognise has a real value for many.

I have had deep conversations with people indicating that they beyond doubt would prefer to be deceived. Who am I to say that their preferences is wrong? I can just decide that I myself am not willing to pay the price of providing them the experience they say they prefer.

So they very much can have that feeling, even if it is false.