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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6802041" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Did you roll a die to determine something, and then ignore it for determining that thing? Did you present information to the players, intending for it to be taken a particular way, only to later decide that you wanted it to be taken a completely different way?It doesn't sound like you did--and so I wouldn't call this fudging. I would call this successful DM risk management. You foresaw that an unacceptable problem could arise IF you engaged the randomness system, so you instead chose to follow a thematically appropriate alternative. Not fudging.This would bother me for a different kind of reason than most fudging. If you treat "suicidal" characters with kid gloves, you're giving them a meaningful advantage over non-suicidal players. Unless you consequently apply some other, serious but not lethal, penalty to taking such actions, you will in fact be incentivizing suicidal behavior, rather than discouraging it. I'm curious to know more details here (but as I read further it seems you've provided them)....that's...not fudging, nor is it just making things fail to kill someone behaving suicidally. You managed risk, and quite wisely, I'd say. You saw that the situation, if not altered in any way, would result in an undesirable consequence. So you looked for a logical, thematically appropriate modification. In this case, whether or not allies would join the fight. You used random rolling to determine it, and did so "fair and square" (meaning, I presume, that you didn't fudge it). You then ran the combat as normal, but with an NPC ally helping the PC. I don't see where you ignored dice after employing them, nor where you gave or implied (partial) information and then contradicted it later.In fact, literally everything you've done her sounds, to me, like exceptionally good DMing, without even the faintest trace of "fudging."So...since I seem to be not at all thinking "fudging" means the same thing you do, how do you define it?I define it as rolling for something, and then deciding after the roll that no, you won't use the roll, because the rolled result isn't what you want; or, alternatively, as providing information (whole or incomplete) that the players can and should act on if they're playing intelligently, and then later contradicting that information without giving the players any opportunity to correct their now-mistaken understanding.</blockquote>

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