When everything hinges on the roll of the dice...

[Katana_Geldar]

Let's set the scene a little...

It's the second encounter in the 4E superadventure with the crone statue, and the fire mage made a HUGE mistake when he tried to high-five the old lady. She's got a +19 backhand and all I have to do to hit the wizard is roll above a natural one.

He's beaten back, falling down a lot as she hits him and several other more beefy players are knocked flying. The wizard is knocked prone, pumped full of temp hp by the cleric, but he's right at the feet of that annoying statue. And due to the initiative order, he can't be moved and neither can the statue.

It was at this point I decided to fudge a natural one, as it just seemed too mean. The player called shenanigans, as he wanted this to be run fairly. I shrug and roll again, a 2. But it still hits, and we all know the wizard is about to die, there's no way he's surviving 2d10+10 damage. He's ready to die, and I'm ready for him to die He's watching me as I roll the d10s.....

...and I roll a 1 and a 2, a 13. This cleans through his temp hp with a few real hps to spare.

Next thing is the statue's moved away from him and then curb stomped by the monk

 

[The Shaman]

Kudos to your player for calling shenanigans on your fudging.

 

[Katana_Geldar]

Had to hit post before I was ready, but I'm interested if anyone else has had the same situation. It all went well because the DM rolled badly.

I reckon Gary was on our side that night, the wizard wasn't meant to die.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Yeah, it happens. In the 3.5 game I am running, in the next to last epic fight, the group got seperated due to poor tactics and the warrior decided to DD back to the rest of the group. With a concentration of only +4 it was a very hard roll. So he decided to hope the Mouther missed.

It did not.


But its 3d8+4 damage was ........... 7, so a 17 DC concentration check to keep the spell, and he rolled an 18.

Very lucky.

 

[Saeviomagy]

It's 4e. If everyone isn't knocked unconscious twice, it wasn't a real fight.

In other words, don't ever feel like you have to fudge to keep someone standing. Getting taken below zero rarely lasts for more than a round.

 

[Mercurius]

I'm a big advocate of letting the dice dictate the story and never, okay, only very very very rarely fudging. And you know what? The more I let the dice dictate chance, the more magic starts to happen. I can't tell you how many times a combat came down to a single dice roll, or close to a single dice roll. Lives have been saved, battles won, and occasionally lives lost.

I'm not an easy DM, but I'm not a cruel one either. I don't know if it is Old School or New School or Special School, but I let PCs die when they...die. It keeps the players on their toes, not taking anything for granted. I've played with DMs in which you knew that no matter what, you wouldn't die. It is a nice sense of security but takes an element of fun (danger!) out of the game.

We're running the same game, btw, and almost done with the first chapter. Good stuff - two PCs dead already! (Those damn gray angels).

 

[The Shaman]

It all went well because the DM rolled badly.

It all went well because the player made the decision to let the dice fall where they may.

Fudge the dice and get a predictable, artificial result, or let 'em roll and actually hang on the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens next. That's an amazingly simple call for me to make.

 

[Corathon]

Had to hit post before I was ready, but I'm interested if anyone else has had the same situation. It all went well because the DM rolled badly.

I reckon Gary was on our side that night, the wizard wasn't meant to die.

Many times. Most recently a monster critted a PC, leaving her with very few HP remaining. The next round the monster won the initiative. With two attacks, the monster was over 75% likely to hit with at least one, and average damage from one hit would drop the character. The monster attacked and missed - twice (I think that I rolled a 2 and a 3). The party killed the monster in the end.

Last Saturday, the party was getting slaughtered (they had attacked some huge, dormant monsters, rousing them to the attack, and were fighting them as well as the big bad guy). The party's psionicist used the domination discipline on the big bad guy. He needed a really low number to save - but a 4 wasn't high enough. I was worried that we might lose most of the party in that battle, but that failed save turned things around.

 

[Redcrow]

I'm definitely in the "let the dice fall where they may" camp. As a GM I don't fudge dice rolls and usually roll everything out in the open for everyone to see.

As a player I would much rather have my player die from a legitimate dice roll than repeatedly be saved due to fudging the dice. For me the game loses a lot of its appeal when the GM fudges dice rolls whether it be to the PCs benefit or detriment and its usually fairly obvious to me when a GM is doing it.

IMO, if you are going to fudge a dice roll when the result isn't what you wanted why even bother rolling at all. YMMV.

 

[Hussar]

Since we play on a Virtual tabletop, it's pretty difficult to fudge rolls, even if I wanted to. So, rolls are pretty much never fudged.