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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KRT" data-source="post: 2653754" data-attributes="member: 37355">I think there are two issues here 1) whether or not to fudge dices rolls or storyline of a campaign to keep the PCs alive and 2) DMs abusing their power sometimes unintentionally.for the first point it is important to realize that how a player decides to play his PC MUST matter. In otherwords in a campaign where playing smart gives good odds of survival and playing stupidly gets you dead then players will feel more captivated by the game (psuedo-realism). When playing in a campaign where the DM never kills anyone but NPCs the PCs tend to full on charge anything that gets in their way, each trying to earn the kill and do more damage than any other PC. They are played like adolescent gods in their own little playground. How many of you have played Doom (or similar game) in Godmode. Got boring real quick didn't it. Which then leads to more outrageous play, pissing on altars, hitting on the King's fiancee, or having your dire bear animal companion crap on the Khans rug during an audience. These are symptoms of a campaign where the players have learned that there are no real worries for them. So we seguay into the second point. The DM is at a loss now because the PCs are disrespecting the NPCs and by association the campaign, and possibly the DM. So the DM decides the fudging is going to go the other way to teach the players a lesson (when actually its the Dm who needs the lesson first). So a nasty encounter results where the first salvo from the party is pretty much ignored by the Dm and the response from the monsters are impressive. However the party keeps its cool and figures they'll finish of the monsters the next round. The next round a couple of party members drop and the critical cascade will undoubtably follow even as the DM realizes he's gone too far. oops TPK.The way to avoid this is to have trained you players to recognize when they are outmatched an to react accordingly. This cannot be done through pampering or fudging the rolls in the PCs favour. Fix this problem and the second one won't arise, at least not as inevitably.</blockquote>

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