When your DM asks you how many hit points you have left...

[Maliki]

I hate it when a DM openly fudges things to keep me alive. It cheapens everything that my character does after that. Of course as a DM I have done this before(I do try not to make it known to the players however.

 

[maggot]

I usually ask not to fudge the die rolls but to see if we need to double check everything. If you deal 15 damage and the PC has only 5 hit points, you might want to check to see if you calculated everything correctly (Bull's strength not stacking with gauntlets, forgetting that the prayer spell is over, etc.). If the PC had 100 hit points, dealing 15 or 14 if you messed up is less important.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

It's funny, because the Swashbuckling Cards are a PRODUCT of ENWorld -- there's somewhere in the archives a HUGE thread that generated all those ideas. I just put 'em on cards.

Every so often, I mention them in some thread and people are like, "Hey, wow! These are great!"

To which I always want to reply, "I know. They're YOURS, after all."

ENWorld is a great place.

I had forgotten about them! Consider them yoinked for the second time.

 

[fusangite]

I'm one of those DMs who "fudges" -- if I've rolled exceptional damage on the damage dice and average damage would keep the PC alive, I'll scale back to average damage, especially if the PC has suffered the damage doing something exceptionally valiant.

 

[AuraSeer]

I often describe the appearance of an attack before explaining how much damage it does. When I ask how many hit points a character has, it's so I can tell whether to describe a crushing deathblow or a scary near-miss.

For instance, in a recent session a PC suffered a critical hit, and the damage came to 28 points. I asked the PC how many hit points he had, and he said 28. I then described the hit: "The gnoll brings his battleaxe down in a tremendous overhead swing. You dodge backward just enough to avoid having your skull crushed, but the blade slices your face open before crashing into your armor with enormous force. Take 28 points of damage."

If the PC had not drunk a healing potion the previous round, he would have had 17 hit points remaining. Then instead of describing a lucky dodge, I would have described a cloven skull and other unpleasant effects.

No fudging, just appropriate description.

 

[ddougan]

Turning this slightly on its head ...

A while back during a particularly nasty encounter, one of the Rogues took a hit and then declared "right, that's me dead" (I don't track the PC Hit Points myself). So I asked him what he was down to in terms of minuses (cos that's what I consider my sole scope for fudging HP on ...) "oh, no, I'm really dead".

So the fight proceeded, and the remaining characters managed to win through - at which point the player declared his character "jumps up back to life". When I quizzed him on this he said he was feigning death, and since he'd fooled me, it had obviously worked on the monsters!

After the beer had soaked into the carpet, I had to point out the priniciples behind being the GM

 

[Agamon]

I've actually had to talk DMs into allowing my PC to die, a number of times. Personally, I hate when DMs try to fudge after the fact. If they're going to fudge, do it without me knowing. And don't do it so often that no one ever dies, that's no good. When I DM, I rarely ever fudge, though I have if it's meant the end of a campaign, due to TPK. And even then sometimes, it's just not possible without being really obvious. (oh, and I track PC hp in DMF...though I've done this on my DM cheatsheet since I first started roleplaying back during the ice age)

I don't understand the cheating mindset. It makes absolutely no sense to me. If there's something big involved with the outcome, I can see it, but then it's no longer really a game. In a game for fun, like D&D, you have to be a real loser to feel like you need to cheat.

 

[barsoomcore]

I reformatted them so they can print out on business card paper.

???

The PDF available for download on my site already has them formatted for such shenanigans. Honest. But cool that you did it in Word, I guess.

 

[barsoomcore]

In a game for fun, like D&D, you have to be a real loser to feel like you need to cheat.

In a game for fun, like D&D, you have to be a real loser to feel like your priorities are the only ones anyone else should have.

There's lots of reasons for fudging dice rolls that have nothing to do with "cheating" -- some games are more about creating certain kinds of stories than about dealing with the random action of the dice. Doesn't make people who like those kinds of games LOSERS.

Just makes them different from you.

You can dislike that style of play without needing to insult people who do, you know.

 

[frankthedm]

I have to ask because i don't let PCs know how far into the negatives thier allies are. When someone goes down, the onus is on the Party to save that person's life, not calculate how long they can ignore the person bleeding thier last.