D&D 5E To fudge or not to fudge: that is the question

[EzekielRaiden]

Whoah! Whoah! Whoah! Settle down Tex. I never asked for or required anything, let alone consecutive crits and misses.

It doesn't take consecutive crits and misses to wipe a party due to bad luck. It just takes more crits than usual combined with more misses than usual. That's it. All the good planning in the world is bupkis if that happens. And yes, it happens 2-4 times per campaign on average. Sometimes more. I don't remember it being less.

I also frequently run encounters with more than 2 monsters or monsters that have many attacks. Running sims with only two monsters on the DM's side is being very, very chintzy with the real number of attacks that are going to be directed at the PCs over the course of an encounter and campaign.

It was intended to be as maximally fair to Imaculata as possible: assuming only 2 monsters meant few attacks, and thus an increased likelihood of a multi-crit situation. (I also figured, if this is meant to be an actually competent threat, that that would make those crits sufficiently dangerous to matter--getting crit by an attack that does 1d4+1 damage normally probably isn't enough to matter, while one that does 2d12+5 normally is going to hurt like hell.) Increasing the number of DM-rolled attacks simply makes "nearly every/most attacks are crits" an even less likely situation. Hell, even getting 4+ crits out of 16 attacks (4 monsters, 4 rounds) is only p=0.007, or once every ~143 combats.

Anyway, the point was: situations where the party whiffs ultra hard, while the enemy is going full-bore crits everywhere, are statistically quite unlikely, even with playing 200+ combats per campaign. I'm not saying it's impossible for a plan to go south or whatever--just that this example being thrown around, of the enemy critting many times over while the party is segfaulting whiffing all over the place, shouldn't be such a common occurrence that fudging is the only viable solution.

Again, just to reiterate: when a situation like this happens, I think DMs should treat it as a learning opportunity, not as a botheration to be overwritten.

 

[Imaculata]

It was intended to be as maximally fair to Imaculata as possible: assuming only 2 monsters meant few attacks, and thus an increased likelihood of a multi-crit situation. (I also figured, if this is meant to be an actually competent threat, that that would make those crits sufficiently dangerous to matter--getting crit by an attack that does 1d4+1 damage normally probably isn't enough to matter, while one that does 2d12+5 normally is going to hurt like hell.) Increasing the number of DM-rolled attacks simply makes "nearly every/most attacks are crits" an even less likely situation. Hell, even getting 4+ crits out of 16 attacks (4 monsters, 4 rounds) is only p=0.007, or once every ~143 combats.

Anyway, the point was: situations where the party whiffs ultra hard, while the enemy is going full-bore crits everywhere, are statistically quite unlikely, even with playing 200+ combats per campaign. I'm not saying it's impossible for a plan to go south or whatever--just that this example being thrown around, of the enemy critting many times over while the party is segfaulting whiffing all over the place, shouldn't be such a common occurrence that fudging is the only viable solution.

Again, just to reiterate: when a situation like this happens, I think DMs should treat it as a learning opportunity, not as a botheration to be overwritten.

UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

He explained it to you twice now. It was an example, not to be taken literally. Cases where the players roll misses several times in a row, while the monsters do the opposite, can happen quite often. And the results of that can be quite devastating, especially if you play something like 3rd edition, which is far less forgiving than 5th is.

Your statistics are completely irrelevant. You know what the point was that I was trying to make. So please stop derailing it into a tangent about statistical improbabilities. What are you, C3PO?

Extremely bad luck happens to players. That is just a fact. And when a DM is trying to challenge his players, this could mean that a well balanced encounter suddenly turns into quite an unfair one, simply due to the way dice can fall. That is a good reason to fudge.

 

[S'mon]

I largely agree, but I don't like to mislead my players. If I was going to fudge, I'd just tell them that I do it and why, then seek their buy-in.

I agree. The solution to players disliking GM dishonesty is NOT to get better at lying! If
you as GM don't want a PC killed by a crit, instead of lying to the player, just tell them "You're
KO'd". Players IME don't mind that at all. They are fine with GMs not being 'slaves to the
dice'. It's being lied to that they can't stand.

 

[iserith]

You can make this into a mechanic if you want:

Fudge That Noise: Spend Inspiration to change one of the DM's attack rolls from a critical hit to a normal hit or a normal hit into a miss.

 

[Pvt. Winslow]

I agree. The solution to players disliking GM dishonesty is NOT to get better at lying! If
you as GM don't want a PC killed by a crit, instead of lying to the player, just tell them "You're
KO'd". Players IME don't mind that at all. They are fine with GMs not being 'slaves to the
dice'. It's being lied to that they can't stand.

To be fair, I don't think anyone particularly likes being lied to, unless it's a "does this dress make me look..." question, and in that case you're already in for a wild ride.

 

[Maxperson]

It was intended to be as maximally fair to Imaculata as possible: assuming only 2 monsters meant few attacks, and thus an increased likelihood of a multi-crit situation. (I also figured, if this is meant to be an actually competent threat, that that would make those crits sufficiently dangerous to matter--getting crit by an attack that does 1d4+1 damage normally probably isn't enough to matter, while one that does 2d12+5 normally is going to hurt like hell.) Increasing the number of DM-rolled attacks simply makes "nearly every/most attacks are crits" an even less likely situation. Hell, even getting 4+ crits out of 16 attacks (4 monsters, 4 rounds) is only p=0.007, or once every ~143 combats.

You are still way off base. Most/all attacks being crits is not the criteria. It just has to be a higher number of crits than usual, which is far more likely with more monsters. Combine that with a situation where the party misses a lot more often than usual and that's what we are talking about.

Anyway, the point was: situations where the party whiffs ultra hard, while the enemy is going full-bore crits everywhere, are statistically quite unlikely, even with playing 200+ combats per campaign. I'm not saying it's impossible for a plan to go south or whatever--just that this example being thrown around, of the enemy critting many times over while the party is segfaulting whiffing all over the place, shouldn't be such a common occurrence that fudging is the only viable solution.

It happens about 2-4 times per campaign. Assuming that we are now talking about the actual situation and not hyperbole where the crits are coming "full bore", but are simply happening at a higher rate than normal.

Again, just to reiterate: when a situation like this happens, I think DMs should treat it as a learning opportunity, not as a botheration to be overwritten.

Why would I cause 2-4 TPKs a campaign due to nothing more than bad luck? It wasn't my fault. I planned the encounter properly. It wasn't the the players' fault. Their tactics and decisions were sound.

 

[Maxperson]

You can make this into a mechanic if you want:

Fudge That Noise: Spend Inspiration to change one of the DM's attack rolls from a critical hit to a normal hit or a normal hit into a miss.

That's a really good idea. I don't think it would entirely eliminate the need to fudge, but it would certainly reduce the frequency, which is already rare.

 

[Pvt. Winslow]

That's a really good idea. I don't think it would entirely eliminate the need to fudge, but it would certainly reduce the frequency, which is already rare.

I wonder if it wouldn't occur to some players to start saving Inspiration and only using it to save themselves from a hit or crit. It might be better to make it so you can use Inspiration to give the enemy Disadvantage, that way it's very unlikely they will crit, it gives a second chance they'll miss you, and it better mirrors the advantage for the PCs

 

[Maxperson]

I wonder if it wouldn't occur to some players to start saving Inspiration and only using it to save themselves from a hit or crit. It might be better to make it so you can use Inspiration to give the enemy Disadvantage, that way it's very unlikely they will crit, it gives a second chance they'll miss you, and it better mirrors the advantage for the PCs

It might, but I don't have a problem with that. I see it as no different than saving that potion of healing for the best time. If

 

[Miladoon]

When playing, I prefer a DM that almost never fudges.