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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 6786861" data-attributes="member: 22779">The question I think that @EzekialRaiden is asking though is, does fudging enhance enjoyment?  For me, the answer is now a resounding no.  As a DM or a player, I have zero interest in a game where the DM is telling the story.  The dice, again, for me, tell a much more interesting story.  Even in the extreme situation where a PC dies due to the DM rolling well, is generally a MUCH more memorable event than one where the PC just took a lot of damage before killing the monster.That one time I rolled three crits on three separate attacks in a 3e game and obliterated the party's rogue in a single round became a defining event of that campaign.  The other players role played brilliantly around this entirely random death at the hands of some critter that probably shouldn't have killed anyone.  Had I just fudged the die rolls to keep the PC alive, the campaign would have lost a very poignant moment.  In our current Dragonlance campaign, the DM killing the bard had a major effect on the group.  I used to be like others here and fudge when it "felt right" to do so.  I've learned that gut feelings are rarely as good as I think they are and that letting the dice dictate, at least in part, the story, makes for a much richer experience.Statistics are irrelevant?  How about confirmation bias?  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] is claiming that this sort of thing happens 2-4 times per campaign.  Now, I don't know how many hours of play that is, or how many die rolling events that consists of, but, apparently he feels that it happens often enough that he needs to step in.  But, the odds say that this shouldn't happen that often.  So, who should we believe?  The anecdotal evidence of a single person self-reporting an event, or the statistical probabilities?  Is it more likely that the math is wrong or that confirmation bias is influencing how often people fudge results?  The math says that this should happen about once in a few hundred encounters.  It's not like missing for one round will result in a TPK.  5e math is pretty forgiving.  You can have multiple characters  miss for multiple rounds and still win the fight.  I wonder if people fudge because their "gut" makes them feel like they should step in, where if they actually stepped back and let the dice dictate results, they'd get largely the same results than if they hadn't fudged at all.  Sure, the fight may take a few more rounds, it might result in a dead PC, or it might not.  Just because the party misses the first round and the baddies put the slippers to them, doesn't mean that they will automatically lose.Fudging, for me, is generally a DM who hasn't learned to let go and feels the need to "control" the story.  It's something I have zero interest anymore.  Like I said, our group rolls almost 100% in the open.  Certainly all combat rolls are 100% open.  About the only thing that isn't rolled in the open, and there is still a written transcript available after the game ends for fact checking, is skill checks where you don't know if you succeeded or not.  Things like Stealth and that sort of thing.  Otherwise, everything is in the open.  it's a very liberating way to play and something I highly recommend.</blockquote>

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