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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8592994" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I find this a pretty damn pedantic perspective, but even in context it's questionable. This implies that it is 100% completely impossible to size up an opponent before you attack: the player character must be completely ignorant of anything combat related until actually striking.Even if I allow that, though, people are talking about modifying it after an attack has already been rolled. That is the very observation you seem to be asking for.Outright deceiving your players—not their characters, the players themselves—is a huge risk. Nearly every single person who advocates fudging (whether it be roll-fudging or stat-fudging) is quite clear that they must keep it a secret forever, otherwise it will actively upset or even anger their players when the behavior is revealed. Why would players be upset by a perfectly innocent action? And if them ever discovering it, for any reason, would be an indelible black mark on a campaign, why risk it if there are other methods to achieve the same end (dramatic story beats) that do not carry the risk of player anger?It is not necessary, and almost everyone recognizes it as at best questionable, otherwise they wouldn't work so hard to hide it!Well, looking at the intransitive definitions of "cheat" since that's how I'm using the term (ignoring those related to relationship infidelity)...<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cheat" target="_blank">Merriam-Webster</a>:<a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/cheat" target="_blank">Dictionary.com</a><a href="https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/cheat" target="_blank">Lexico</a> (the new rebranding of the free version of the online OED):I am well within my rights to call dishonesty about how rules are adjudicated "cheating." Only the Lexico definition explicitly includes "gain an advantage," and I still see an advantage gained by the manipulations people discuss here, even if it is an advantage granted to PCs rather than their opponents.Deceptive, secret manipulation of the rules is cheating. That's why players get upset when they learn their DM fudges, and why DMs go to such great lengths to hide that they do it and prevent the players ever discovering that they've done it.Looks like I missed this before.You should know that many people are aware that this happens in games. Strategy games, for example, must often resort to letting computer controlled countries flagrantly violate the rules in order to not crumple, because actually coding intelligent computer behavior is very hard in games like this. You know what TVtropes calls this kind of game design?"The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard."Soooo....yeah. It is something game designers do. It is classified as cheating by many players. And it is seen as an objectively inferior design. Sometimes, game companies do not have the budget or time to avoid this flaw, so players grimace and bear it, but that does not make it acceptable. If a game like Dark Souls or Elden Ring had done things like this, it would have rampantly infuriated the fanbase. The fact that Skyrim DOES scale everything to player level is one of the greatest criticisms of the game (even though it should have been criticized for how buggy and broken it often was), and people specifically used the example of Skyrim in order to criticize 4e during its heyday.Such techniques are controversial at best. Given they are not needed (as noted above), so risky, and not the only means to achieve the desired ends, why employ them? Sure, they're one of the easier means to achieve said ends, but that ease belies their true cost if the players ever discover it.So...why don't DMs who fudge listen to players who would respond extremely negatively to the discovery that the DM fudges? Why would the correct response be "do whatever it takes to prevent them finding out" rather than "stop doing a thing that would (almost surely) upset the players if they found out you do it"?</blockquote>

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