Post your situation and then state whether you'd fudge on a scale of 0-5, with 0 being "Hell No!" and 5 being "You damn skippy!". Feel free to place your reason in a spoiler block that follows. Also feel free to weigh in on other's situations.
Situation: A PC casts a spell that would effectively end an epic battle during the 1st round/surprise round. The BBEG is entitled to a save. You, as the DM roll the save, and realize that the BBEG has failed and the Epic battle is going to end before it even starts. Do you fudge the save and have the BBEG stay in the fight?
Fudge rating:
0 (pres man)** spoiler omitted **
Situation: A pair of monsters are attacking the party. At range they are not very dangerous but in melee they are brutal. Half the party reacts dumbly and charges into melee with them. Half the party drop, but one monster is almost unconscious, if the last hit had done 4 more points it would have knocked the foe out. If both creatures are still up, the remaining party members might have a bit of a struggle, but with one still standing they have a fair chance. Do you fudge the first creature's hit points and have it drop on the last attack?
Fudge rating:
4 (pres man)** spoiler omitted **
Situation 1 I give a 1.
Situation 2. I give a 3.
Situation 1 gets a 1.
...'Epic' fight my butt. Die, chump. You're family's next.
Situation 2 needs more info.
Is there a chance of reasoning with the enemy? Is fleeing an option for either side? Most straight-up combats in my game hurt both sides, quickly and badly. They're also risky. Even after a successful round or two, most opponents still have interests other than "fight to the death." Is there any way I can work with this? Chances are, the players will already be trying to "bottle out" - are the caltrops, oil slicks, web spells and the like already coming to the fore? Well then will it wreck my players' suspension of disbelief by having the monsters do something other than continue the fight? What might that be? Could a few pc's recover, or does dropping here mean DEATH? As DM, I have options.
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Can I ask which definition of fudging are we using? Is this restricted to "lying about a die roll" or does it cover the ignoring of an encounter or change in the flow of the story to get things moving along?
Die rolls I'm less likely to interfere with, but encounters, I may adjust the number of opponents or perhaps the hit points of a single big critter for example.
Cheers,
S.
I regularly do not fudge.
But when I do, I fudge stat blocks, not rolls.
Once I had a player with a bow fighting a monster with deflect arrows and a high AC. After four shots and four misses, he finally scored a solid hit-- just to have it deflected away. The monster died soon after, but he didn't contribute much to the fight.
The next fight they entered into was against another monster with... deflect arrows, and an even higher AC. He fired off a wave of arrows and none of them stuck. A round later, he did it again-- barely scoring a hit with a 20. Instead of deflecting it, I just... erased deflect arrows. He was much happier knowing that it was hard for him to hit but not impossible and that I didn't just spend two encounters with monsters making him useless.
On the flip side, pertaining to my opening statement, the next thing he did on that monster was a sleep hex. Because of how I changed her around, she had a +18 will save. Another +2 versus mind-affecting effects. Another +2 versus enchantments. Iron Will replaced deflect arrows. A +24 vs. a DC 18.
A 1 tanked her and she was CdG'd a few rounds later. (This happened three times throughout that game for me-- twice to blue whinnis poison. the most insulting time was at level 15-- blue whinnis' DC like 3 should not be the winning factor against a CR 16 creature just because of two 1s in a row! ... But it happened, so, I laughed it off.)
Apparently some people would leave the group in a huff because I let him hit with his arrow?
Situation: A PC casts a spell that would effectively end an epic battle during the 1st round/surprise round. The BBEG is entitled to a save. You, as the DM roll the save, and realize that the BBEG has failed and the Epic battle is going to end before it even starts. Do you fudge the save and have the BBEG stay in the fight?
Fudge rating: 0.
I like to have BBEGs pre-cast buff spells so that this doesn't happen. When it does happen? It's awesome. I love it when PCs kill my enemies in one round-- I kind of like it when my players have fun, and nothing is more fun than laughing over the situation where the tyrant of death and misery was vaporized instantly by Tibby Bibbets the gnome arcanist's lucky critical.
More likely than not, that PC is going to get spell turning'd and have to save vs. their own spell, or it's going to bounce off the BBEG's illusion, or Protection from Good will save them, or freedom of movement, or an elemental immunity or two. Barring all of that? Contingency: Heal or Contingency: Dimension Door tied to HP damage cover the rest of the situations they might run into.
And if the PCs get around all of that? Well... damn. You deserve it.
Situation: A pair of monsters are attacking the party. At range they are not very dangerous but in melee they are brutal. Half the party reacts dumbly and charges into melee with them. Half the party drop, but one monster is almost unconscious, if the last hit had done 4 more points it would have knocked the foe out. If both creatures are still up, the remaining party members might have a bit of a struggle, but with one still standing they have a fair chance. Do you fudge the first creature's hit points and have it drop on the last attack?
Fudge Rating: 0
Oh, man. This is what I live for. I wouldn't fudge a single second of this fight. This fight is a proving ground. Does your character carry their weight? Can you succeed on your own merits instead of the party's? What happens when it's all in and the other guy has a winning hand?
The TPK would be awesome. The narrow victory would be awesome. Who would fudge this?
EDIT: Now that I think about it, another thing I fudge is when PCs lose to Save-or-die spells after a "turning point" in a session-- a turning point being a point where, narrative-wise, it'd be immersion breaking to turn back but necessary since you don't want to leave a PC out of the meat of a session. Like, the PCs final assault on the citadel that should take all session and someone drops on the doorstep. The death I'm describing actually happened to me in the CotCT game I was in: The PCs figured they were almost at the end of the game, about to face the final battle, and, well, a 4 on a prismatic spray and a failed fort save killed a PC right on the doorstep. Why prismatic spray can do 20 hp damage, harmlessly send you to Elysium or just outright kill you with magic fairy poison is beyond me, but I just rolled again. He wasn't too happy about me rolling an 8 and having to save versus being plane shifted or turned to stone, but it was a lot more fun for everyone involved since we didn't break off the final assault to go to a church. Just breaks verisimilitude, and my #1 pet peeve is making a player sit out for an entire session.
Now, if he had died in that final battle, or right before? That's fine. But I didn't want to make him watch everyone else play for three or four hours and then have him go home. That's just annoying for everyone involved.
Save or suck on the other hand? Or, say, flesh to stone, or baleful polymorph? They can reverse that. And if they can't? Oh well. But I just dislike instant death saves. Without a ridiculously expensive diamond in your back pocket or something, you're stuck leaving the dungeon and coming back tomorrow even when that makes no sense in the storyline.
Save-or-dies with no reversal used on the party are my least favorite thing about Pathfinder edition. But, after level 15, if you're not doing that, there's no way any monsters can win. It's all rocket launcher save-or-lose and save-or-die past level 17. It's irritating.
Wormcrawl Fissure is for 19th level characters.
There were 5 PCs, at 17th-18th level each IIRC: my wizard 12/wild mage 5, a cleric 17, a psychic warrior (maybe with some levels in marshal or something else -- the guy wasn't much help), a ranger, and a fighter/rogue/assassin.
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(1) The DM who 'fudges', and is caught, loses the players' trust. Trust is doubly vital for the DM because, both as storyteller and as referee, (s)he needs to be believed to have authority. If one bad 'fudge' can wreck both those roles, is it worth doing?
Absolutely not.
A lot of the pro-fudging posts seem to imply that the poster is trying to protect some long-running characters, in a long-running game. That to allow one of these PCs to die would cause the storyline, and the group, to collapse in on itself, like opening the door on a rising cake.For me, it is precisely because I want to maintain a long-running campaign, that I don't want to fudge, in either direction. Because it will be noticed; and it will be viewed badly; and it will result in players walking from the table, refusing to take part in future games I run, and informing other players in town not to do so either.
So, am I going to risk sitting twiddling my thumbs at home for the next few decades, unable to get a game, for the sake of saving someone else's dumb-ass PC, or to big up some disposable NPC, for whom getting killed was his actual (and only) job?
Hmmmm, let me think....<rub chin>
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Because it will be noticed; and it will be viewed badly; and it will result in players walking from the table, refusing to take part in future games I run, and informing other players in town not to do so either.
I'm sorry that would happen to you. See my previous post about my players telling me they want me to fudge.
Pretty much this. "God does not roll dice" and all that jazz. I view myself as a storyteller, director, "devil's advocate", working with the players to tell the best tale. I'm not a referee.
I fiudge against the characters mostly....because I suck at rolling dice. Last night, while playing I rolled the d20 16 times. 1- 4x, 2-3x, 5-2x, 19-1x, 20-1x. My average dice roll is about a 6.
But when I run, last thing I want is creatures that just never hit the PCs. Most of the time, my creatures need about a 12 to hit. For me, that is a 75% miss chance. Honestly, it just happens that way. I have had major demons roll 1s against disintegrates when I only needed a 7. And I failed it twice, once for the spell and once for the massive damage. Main monster, super threat to PCs, gone during the surprise round.
So, it seems unfair for me to add 4-5 levels of CR to rebalance the game. I want things to be fun for the PCs. Yes, they thought it was great fun for the big bad monster to die before any of them even drew weapons. I didn't. My game was supposed to run until 10PM, it ended a little after 7:30.
And since that could happen repeatedly, in my case, I will fudge the dice so that the game doesn't fall apart simply because their combat rolls are so much better than mine. The game is supposed to be about adventure and challenge, not about easily killing threats and rolling better than your GM.
as a GM, i personally think it comes down to two different senarios
1. If your players are truly involved in the roleplaying and developement of the game and the story is more important that the rules(as it should be in my mind) then i must say, yes i have fudged, both dm rolls AND changed dc's(lower) so that crucial player actions eventuate to the benefit of the story BUT
2. if your players are loot[******] and rule nazi's who are more concerned that they're not getting ripped of in some obscure way behind the dm screen, then let it be so and leave it to the dice gods, and let them suffer the consequences,1 monster may roll bad, but one day they will roll good(or the player will roll 1 vs death)GM fudging works both ways
I let my players know at the start of a campaign that i will exercise GM perogative to alter results occasionally, if they object i dont do it .but warn them what comes up on the dice stands then...in all things
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Pretty much this. "God does not roll dice" and all that jazz. I view myself as a storyteller, director, "devil's advocate", working with the players to tell the best tale. I'm not a referee.
You sure that quote should be attributed to me? I would agree with if it ended with AND I'm AM the referee.
Cheers,
S.
ive got it! GM's fudge cos Players Powerplay and Metagame, now if everyone remembered what the "R" in RPG stands for, Mr Gygax may stop rolling in his grave over the invasion of his concept by mmo game principles like "builds" etc, if players want to make the "ultimate machine of whirly death" go play WOW or something (i cringed before at seeing a thread asking for people to post cavalier builds) NOT Roleplaying folks.
lol, that did sound slightly harsher than intended.
Im a gruff old GM with a penchant for story oriented games,i would simply say what goes on behind the GM screen is none of the players business, and it should stay that way
forgive my tirade :P
Sounds more like you are claiming that GMs fudge because of roleplaying, not because of powerplay or metagame.
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I fudge when I feel the story calls for it. The primary rule I use is "if the dice roll would ruins the story, ignore the dice". If such an attitude bothers you, well... you're not in my campaign, now are you? My players are aware I occasionally fudge a die roll, but they also know I only do it when its dramatically appropriate.
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Oh, I screw up! I'm running Kingmaker for anywhere from 6-9 characters right now, and I'm trying to balance treasure and experience and encounter difficulty on the fly to make things fun and keep the group on the right experience and treasure level for their place in the AP.... If I go too far one way or the other, I can really mess up - especially since I don't know from one session to the next how many players I may have.
I've seen this complaint a lot; that encounters are having to be adjusted due to missing players.
While it's unfortunate that you miss the camaraderie of the absent players, and the group has less heads to put together for ideas, is there any reason why the number of PCs has to change?
If they give a copy to the GM, or leave one at the venue, it's always there for someone else to use. Someone can't make it, someone else has to double up. If more people drop by, let them play a cohort or other friendly NPC.
I just can't imagine telling a group "Right, you're all set to enter the Pits of Unlife; oh, but Tom can't be here, so you're doing it without a cleric". Or "Okay, we left you last week in The City of Brass. Harry's abjurer has gone AWOL, so you all burn to a crisp".
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Be verry verry quiet, I'm huntin' wyverns, hehehehehe.
I fudge against munchkin players to punish them, and fudge to the benefit of non-munchkin players to reward them for not being douchebags.
This is my right as a GM, and I do it as I bloody well please. Player peasants cannot challenge my rights, for they are granted to me by the lady of the screen, sides clad in useful rules, holding aloft the invisible GM-hat, signifying by divine providence that _I_, Kamelguru, were to be GM. THAT is why I fudge.
For the chronologically challenged (aka, young people), here is the source of the reference I am making; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAaWvVFERVA (2:10 to 2:40)
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I thought that D&D is whatever type of game you wanted it to be, and this from the begining... You know you can have an entire adventure without a fight right ? You can involve your player in politics, have them to rule a territory, have to go to the embassador party and talk to diverse noble etc.
Has a player 99% of my character sucks at combat... I'm more the rogue/bard type, I always try to get through encounter by cunning, deceipt or by talking my way out.
That's fine, as long as you're always dealing with other civilised people with a distaste for violence.
At some point, the barbarians over the hill are going to realize that your Pacifist Utopia is ripe for the plucking, and that instead of the old warrior-king, who they respected, the place has gone to the dogs, being ruled now by 'some mincing nancy-boy with a lute'.
You can attempt to meet the ravening horde under a flag of truce, but you'll find that all the things you've done, to rack up the Diplomacy bonuses against the effete aristocracy, count as penalties when negotiating with tribes who send their boys out to strangle a bear as a rite of passage.
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Oh, I screw up! I'm running Kingmaker for anywhere from 6-9 characters right now, and I'm trying to balance treasure and experience and encounter difficulty on the fly to make things fun and keep the group on the right experience and treasure level for their place in the AP.... If I go too far one way or the other, I can really mess up - especially since I don't know from one session to the next how many players I may have.I've seen this complaint a lot; that encounters are having to be adjusted due to missing players.
While it's unfortunate that you miss the camaraderie of the absent players, and the group has less heads to put together for ideas, is there any reason why the number of PCs has to change?
If they give a copy to the GM, or leave one at the venue, it's always there for someone else to use. Someone can't make it, someone else has to double up. If more people drop by, let them play a cohort or other friendly NPC.
I ask that players that can't show find a fellow player to handle their character for the week if possible. Sometimes something unexpected comes up and that's not possible, however.
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The second death came during a storm at sea....
...In retrospect I wish that I had either taken the last roll myself and fudged it, if necessary, or just flat-out ruled that he hit the ocean. How would others have dealt with the situation?
Well, come on.
You gave him at least four re-rolls.No-one can say you went all-out to do him in.
I had a similar situation in a Judge Dredd d20 game; a Rookie PC got thrown down a grav-chute, while the power had been shut off.
No big deal, right? He had Good Reflex saves, and high Dex, and I gave him a new save every floor, to grab a handle and swing to safety.
Well, he fell about 6 floors.
Luckily, they built this Judge tough as well, so he survived, but instead of the minor inconvenience I'd expected (lose d6 hp, spend a minute running back upstairs), he crawled off to the toilets to shoot up with stimulants, while joking "I'm so glad those perps sabotaged the security cameras...".
S+@~ happens. You can either play with people who shrug it off and laugh at the situation, or you can play with a table of neurotic Blackleafs.
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Because it will be noticed ... viewed badly ... result in players walking ... refusing to take part in future games ... and informing other players in town not to do so either ....
Wow ... someone lives in a tough neighborhood.
Sure do. LOL
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However how about the rogue falls to the deck, goes straight through a wooden grating into the bunks and hammocks causing numerous broken bones but no deaths. Lots of nasty sailors gunning for him on the rest of the voyage. Or have him land slap dab on the captain killing him instead.
Any good BB?
Not if the captain of the ship was a fellow PC, no.
(Sorry, Frenchie, couldn't help myself...)
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Yep, that would be unfair, unless you were playing him at my table at a Con.
Maybe the way I view it is that after 4 really bad dice rolls his character is fair game for any piece of DM Fiat that I care to use. And just for the record, I agree that letting the players know your plans about fudging at the beginning of a campaign is a good idea. The group I DM were introduced to the game several years by me so they know my golden rule is that "death is not the worst thing I can do to your character. There are far worse things than that."
And although I am a bit of a fudger, I once spent an evening building a high level wizard only for him to fail his second round saves to phantasmal killer. It was Falrinth in the Temple of Elemental Evil and should have been the penultimate fight of a three year campaign. Instead it was a memorable moment which the players loved.
Finally having played in a long running campaign where the DM hated killing characters and loved combats, I can understand just how boring the game can become if you always expect to survive.
Perhaps the most important part of this thread for me is to never let any players know you have fudged. You may need to be a poker player when they are experienced but also the key is to never let on much about the game after each session, especially when you really want to share something clever on your part. Say nothing and they will soon stop asking awkward questions.
I deeply despise fudging, both in players' favor and against them, but especially the latter. It is only forgivable if the entire system is irretrievably, fundamentally broken, and DnD 3.X is not. Fudging makes the whole mechanical part of the game pointless. And considering how big is that part in DnD, that's a big deal. Fudging makes the game worse by eliminating one of the main sources of tension and drama. Fudging makes the story more boring, by chaining it to the GM's railroad (and encouraging the GM to railroad). Fudging makes the combat less fun, by eliminating both any shade of risk AND the possibility of scoring the jackpot (and encouraging the GM to not work on improving his encounters). Fudging, in its heart, is deceiving players and deceiving them about an extremely important detail of the game - whether their choices have real consequences or not. If sometimes absolutely must happen in a certain way to prevent the game from crashing, then GM should just say that it happens, without bull****ting his players by rolling the dice.
EDIT: This applies to stuff like adjusting enemies on the fly as well. Personaly, I sometimes adjust NPCs beforehand, but once they come into contact with the plot their stats are locked, barring normal means of advancement. If PCs totally steamroll the next group of antagonists, because they thought of something I didn't, cheers to them. If they fail to prepare or react adequately, tough nuts.
I'm curious as to whether any of you fudge in another way--by playing the monsters less competently than you could. If I have to pull my punches, I'll do it by having the bad guy make a weak tactical decision. Maybe he doesn't get as much out of his turn as he could, giving the PCs a chance to regain the upperhand. If my PCs notice it, they never complain.
A few times. In my last campaign, I made opponents act stupider than their Int scores suggested about twice. Once when a customized monster got a strong lead in DPS race, I made her take a turn to heal, instead of likely wiping out a key PC and causing snowballing party collapse, justifying that by her lack of true combat experience and overreaction to injury. Once when the party went against their first dragon and found that it totally does not fight like the opponents they got used to in two previous adventures. So I made the lizard too overconfident and a bit too willing to go into close quarters. But that's about the limit of what I'm willing to do for PCs.
I'm a devout RAW player, and I don't fudge die rolls. I also greatly disagree that Storyteller is offensive, as DM's tells the players what happens based on thier actions, and the effect it has on both the game world and their immediate vicinity.
I DO however find offensive that some people suggest that not fudging rolls is a meta/numbers gamer mentality. I have a codified set of rules that clearly aid in adjudicating most actions taken in game. I will, though be one of the first players at the table to take a non-viable, but backstoried build to all of my toons. I like to play the sword and board fighter, I love to play the healbot, I would greatly enjoy an archery rogue. And I would rather play all of them with every die roll taken at face value, than be coddled because my build was less than "Optimal". I may be amongst the few, but I'm willing to bet if I went back and reread the whole thread, I'm not. Most of those standing for the no-fudging this thread, have stated that the key is to create a great story effect for the reasons for the dice reaching such improbable results. Not because the players needed to learn how to build better characters, to accept appropriate challenges. Most non-fudgers here have stated, change what equals an appropriate encounter so that players can play what they want, because the dice will fall where they may and won't be changed.
Is this really fudging, though? Does not even an incredibly intelligent being on occasion make oversights, act on preconceptions, allow his or her hubris to dictate its actions ...
The operative words are "intelligent" and "on occasion." Some people have their BBEG wizards (Int supposedly 26) load up with useless spells like lightning bolt and then sit in a room with no bodyguards and passively wait for the PCs to come kill them. And when the party does arrive, they do things like targeting fighters with spells, even if they're no threat (for example, a flying, stoneskinned wizard really needs to target enemy spellcasters first).
Roleplaying vs. Rollplaying and fudging
I believe the majority of both the pro-fudging and anti-fudging folks feel the way they do for roleplaying reasons. The pro-fudging folks feel that way because of the story that IS. The anti-fudging folks feel that way because of the story that COULD BE. Trying to claim that one side believes what they do because they are rollplayers and not roleplayers is a red herring, IMO.
The reason why this comes up is because of fact that people that do "builds" (and a build can be taking W/X/Y/Z classes or just 20 levels in a single class) tend to want the rules to be "stable". It is a pain to take three feats to get to that fourth feat only to find out that the GM causally nerfs it.
Your entire party stayed within a 10 foot radius effect? Were you shrunk to the size of ants?SR is a joke.
*a bunch of stuff that doesn't work in PF or D&D cut out*
Artifact sword fix. That's funny.
So far all you've said is that if your DM is a total jerk, he can make your class not work by arbitrarily declaring your abilities stop working. But what you aren't saying is that as a non caster your class can stop working even if the DM is playing nice.
The words Folding Chair of Salvation are coming to mind here.
The Anti-magic field was significantly larger than 10' Radius. Because it wasn't a single spell cast by a single caster, it was a feature of the area.
SR is only a joke RAW. A few tweaks, and suddenly it becomes very effective.
The things that you say that don't work in D&D/PF do in fact work in D&D/PF.
The artifact sword fix was a variation on the Saberhagen Swords books. When the campaign is centered on the weapons and armors created by the gods for a god-game involving those who wear the armor and wield the weapons, it makes the spell-casting take second fiddle.
Now, I understand that you don't think D&D/PF is the correct system for any of these ideas, and in some cases I might even agree a different system could handle it better.
However, it doesn't stop these other games from working, or from being fun. I also have played all-caster SWAT teams. Also fun. I've played no-magic games in the 'Seven Samurai' mode, and all-rogue games in a version of Sanctuary where the spell casting was limited to NPCs.
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Is this really fudging, though? Does not even an incredibly intelligent being on occasion make oversights, act on preconceptions, allow his or her hubris to dictate its actions ...
The operative words are "intelligent" and "on occasion." Some people have their BBEG wizards (Int supposedly 26) load up with useless spells like lightning bolt and then sit in a room with no bodyguards and passively wait for the PCs to come kill them. And when the party does arrive, they do things like targeting fighters with spells, even if they're no threat (for example, a flying, stoneskinned wizard really needs to target enemy spellcasters first).
Not just that, but they blow their fortune on building riddle-me-ree rooms, which give clues and rewards to the people trying to cut their builder's head off.
"Answer me
These questions three,
And you will trounce
Your en-em-eeeeee!"
Absolute twaddle.
If you're going to put a riddle room in your lair, it's to identify the intelligent enemies, so you can deal with them.
Get it right, you get disintegrated.
Get it wrong, well....come this way, turnip-headed eejit, I need a strong, but dumb body to act as chassis for my Magic Jar...
Get it wrong, well....come this way, turnip-headed eejit, I need a strong, but dumb body to act as chassis for my Magic Jar...
I've said my bit on fudging but ... this is pretty funny.
Not just that, but they blow their fortune on building riddle-me-ree rooms, which give clues and rewards to the people trying to cut their builder's head off.
"Answer me
These questions three,
And you will trounce
Your en-em-eeeeee!"Absolute twaddle.
If you're going to put a riddle room in your lair, it's to identify the intelligent enemies, so you can deal with them.
Get it right, you get disintegrated.
Get it wrong, well....come this way, turnip-headed eejit, I need a strong, but dumb body to act as chassis for my Magic Jar...
You're ignoring the effects of magic on high level evil mages making them insane and peculiar...
PC mages are just as bad, to be honest...
Because it will be noticed ... viewed badly ... result in players walking ... refusing to take part in future games ... and informing other players in town not to do so either ....Wow ... someone lives in a tough neighborhood.Sure do. LOL
That's nothing. If we found out Snorter fudged in his games, we would stop him from telling anecdotes at the table.
Fate worse than death.