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

[Celtavian]

I almost never fudge. I prefer to let the die rolls decide events in the world. I roll in front of the players and allow them to make decisions based on the die rolls. I see no reason to play a dice rolling game if I don't abide by their results.

 

[Ranes]

I never, ever fudge. But then, I would say that, wouldn't I?

If I were to fudge, just once, and admit to it or be discovered doing it, my players would never be able to trust that any future victory of theirs was legitimate. My game would die. My DMing reputation would die. Consequently, all my players would have to die. I'd have to bury them under the floorboards and leave all the windows open in the summer.

See?

 

[Tia Nadiezja]

I fudged for the first time in years a couple of days ago. I'd been running the session (a Christmas two-shot) for an hour or so, and literally every monster had rolled natural 3 or lower for initiative. So I rerolled a couple, finally, and let the players know, because a fair number of monsters (far more than was good for the adventure) were failing to get actions at all.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I never, ever fudge. But then, I would say that, wouldn't I?

If I were to fudge, just once, and admit to it or be discovered doing it, my players would never be able to trust that any future victory of theirs was legitimate. My game would die. My DMing reputation would die. Consequently, all my players would have to die. I'd have to bury them under the floorboards and leave all the windows open in the summer.

See?

And I see you refused to vote in the poll, too.

We're onto you, Ranes. You don't know it yet, but we are.

And we are always watching.

 

[Lanliss]

There are different kinds of failing forward. The kind where if you fail, you can find another route to success is not fudging. However, the kind where you either succeed or succeed with a cost is fudging. The die roll is success/failure, not success/success with cost. If you're going to change failure into something other than failure, you are fudging.

I don't know about other DMs, but I generally don't ask for a success/failure roll. I have success with a cost built into the roll, in case they fall just a little short of the success bar, so I ask for a succes/succes with a cost/not horrible failure/failure roll. Unlike Iserith I do not play out the possibilities beforehand, but I do let them know that there are degrees of success and failure they could face.

 

[aramis erak]

If you're going to fudge, don't ever do it on player facing rolls. As in, any roll with a direct impact in play on the PC.

It's fine to fudge on world building or treasure stocking, when you want an input, but need to not let it be too out there.

 

[Azurewraith]

I find the poll results most interesting i expected it to be more tilted one way or the other among the top

 

[Maxperson]

I find the poll results most interesting i expected it to be more tilted one way or the other among the top

It is very tilted. Almost never = yes. So 76% of people in this poll do fudge, even if some of them rarely do so.

 

[Mercule]

It is very tilted. Almost never = yes. So 76% of people in this poll do fudge, even if some of them rarely do so.

This doesn't surprise me, in the least.

While I wouldn't want to play in a game where the GM habitually ignored the dice or grossly changed the outcome of events, I do think part of the GM's job is to keep the action entertaining. Very few groups would be entertained by the outcome of a strict adherence to the dice. Some gamists are probably fine with losing they're playing pieces to a lucky crit from a kobold, but even most simulationists would probably cop to random and sudden death being a bit annoying. Ditto to one-round kills against the BBEG that comes from pure chance, rather than good planning.

 

[Endur]

I don't understand why you need to fudge.

Hypotheticals:

1) Players are bored; GM wants the fight to be over so that we can do something that will be more interesting. Instead of having players insta-kill the monsters on their next to-hit roll, the monsters could flee, surrender, feign death, etc. No fudging required to end the fight. You can also just hand-wave the fight narrartively and say, "the PCs defeat the party of orcs" without rolling dice.

2) Monsters are winning the fight and/or going to reduce one or more players to zero hit points and GM doesn't want players to die. D&D allows you to have people reduced to zero hit points be unconscious, the monsters don't have to kill enemies if they don't want to.

And so on. There are plenty of options for the GMs to accomplish what they want to. No need to modify monsters or die rolls during the fight.

Maybe the GM wants Darth Vader to be an epic bad guy, but Luke rolled a high charisma check to persuade Darth Vader to change sides. I'm not going to increase Darth Vader's resistance to charisma checks just because I didn't like the die roll result.