Fighter wrecks my PCs

[cranewings]

Gauss wrote:

Cranewings, I agree that with a group that has tactical skills that fudging dice is not fun. But perhaps I can put it another way: would you fudge the dice at least a little bit if your 8 year old was playing? I think most people would say yes. Not all players are skilled with tactics. Many are the 'charge forth and kill' type. I will eat those types for lunch. The point of the game is to have fun. Your 8 year old's idea of fun is different than a wargamer's idea of fun.

And just to be clear: I sometimes fudge the dice AGAINST the players, not just for them. It depends on the situation. If an encounter is supposed to be something its not because the dice are rolling badly then the DM by all means should fudge the dice. If the BBEG cannot hit the broad side of a barn because of bad dice rolls the players will not have as much fun.

- Gauss

Fair enough. I do fudge the dice for kids when it comes up. That's it though. Fudging dice for fun is definitely a player preference thing. If I detect that it is going on either in my favor or against it, even during a fight with the BBEG, even if it is just for flavor, I mentally check out. I'll probably go to my iPhone and then never come back to play. It really spoils the game for me.

When I run, I roll everything in the open. Sometimes a fight with an orc becomes epic because I keep rolling 20s. Sometimes the dragon misses everything. I really don't care. Luck will give me some epic fights, I just don't try to pick which ones they are. Let the dice fall where they may.

[Adamantine Dragon]

I almost never fudge dice rolls. There are so many other ways to adjust the encounter so that the party is challenged but not overmatched.

My goal is to provide the most compelling game experience I can. Sometimes that means the party has a cakewalk over a weaker enemy, sometimes it means they are pushed to their last resource to defeat the BBEG. Sometimes it means the party better cut and run if they want to survive, and sometimes it means that some PC does die.

But most of that is only tangentially related to the party's actual tactical prowess. I just don't run encounters that way. I don't look at the PC's items, feats, attributes and abilities and say "hmmm... so if the party plays their characters right, then this sort of encounter will tax them." Instead I look at the party's history and say "hmm... based on my experience with this party, this is the sort of encounter that will suit my story's needs at this time."

If I have a party that is not very good at tactics, I try to use encounters as a way to teach them how to be better. Then if they do get better, I adjust my encounters to continue to challenge them appropriately.

For the most part I can adjust the difficulty of the encounter entirely by adjusting the tactics the NPCs employ. I might let the dice fall where they may, but I do my best to have it work out that no matter how the dice fall, the story continues the way I intend.