NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ThirdWizard" data-source="post: 2650079" data-attributes="member: 12037">Although it is a nigh impossibility in D&D for such a thing to happen, it would make an awesome story later, so I would go through with it. One might make a case that the DM isn't going to start fudging when the situation is reversed, but that's a bad argument, because like it or not, the DM is secretly cheering for the Players (even if we pretend that we arn't), so completely different circumstances.Overall, I might save them in such a case from a TPK. Not a PC death, mind you, but perhaps a TPK. But, man, a story where a chipmunk beat down a party of adventurers who were trying to take his acorns would probably be waaaay too tempting to pass up.Never seen that! Of course, I've only played a PC once.Slavish rule following? The player can't roll a 2 and then say to himself, "Self, I think this time I should have rolled an 18. I'll make it so." But, the DM can. So, there are two schools of thought as to the answer to the question, why does the DM roll the dice? One group says that the DM rolls because the randomness is an aid to DMing. The DM is free to ignore any rolls, but for the most part the rolling of dice is an aid. The second camp says that they are there to keep the DM impartial and to promote fairness/equality within the game as to NPC and PC actions.I fall into the second camp. The DM is on the Players' side, secretly. However, the game is not on the Players' side. The DM sets up the situations for the PCs, but the outcome of these situations are ultimately resolved by the rules of the game, by the random generation of dice rolls. That's part of the fun for the Player, in my experience. When the DM adheres to dice rolls, it does in fact remove responsibility from the DM. If a PC dies because of the dice rolls, then it isn't the DM who killed the PC.Take that, flip it. Now the DM ignores a small number of rolls. Now the DM is killing the Players. Now the DM is responsible for the TPKs that happen. He's stopped death before, why not this one? He's stopped TPKs before, why not this one? Now its on his shoulders. He's taken the steps of taking the ruling of the game upon himself. He is now the arbitrator on who lives and who dies and not the game system. This is why you say the DM is the one killing the Players, because you ascribe to the first group, and this is why I say that the DM is not the one killing the Players, because I am part of the second group. I have taken the responsibility away from myself. I could stop a TPK, but now I'm showing favortism. Why save John but not Alan? Why save Angela but not Kevin? I choose not to save any of them. Even if they never knew, I would know. Ahhh, but you have it reversed. I'm not enforcing TPKs when I feel like it, you are! By saving the PCs sometimes and not saving them at others, you are arbitrarily enforcing TPKs when you deem them appropriate! I, on the other hand, I am letting the system play out and letting them happen when they happen. My feelings don't intervene for or against the Players.Well, I do come off like that. Definately not saying you are bad and wrong, but it doesn't stir up debate if I say that we're both right! I mean, where's the fun in that??  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

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