For Players That Don't Like Fudging Dice

[Touc]

I'm taking from this discussion that fudging dice isn't preferred by anyone, but if it comes down to the death of a character, exceptions are to be made for some and others accept their character's fate. In such case, it may not be so much an issue about faking die rolls as it is about what groups do with party deaths, which has been another topic thread with hundreds of replies.

Adding to the faking die rolls, I expect my players to be honest about the math of the game, and they presume the same for me, even to their detriment. I'm taking something away from them if I ensure every encounter results in victory through manipulation of the numbers.

However, as an exception to my high-and-mighty arguments, if I see something broken in an encounter (e.g. I keep rolling a 1 for the dragon's recharge on its breath), I might alter tactics for a round or two. Dragon may still kill you with claws and a bite or a spell, but not 5 straight rounds of breath weapons which screams out as just plain wrong. Plus, dragon's got to catch its breath sometime...

[Eirikrautha]

Kydeem de'Morcaine wrote:

From your descriptions, I would say you are actually just a bit to the narrative side of the middle. Not really clear over on the end of the spectrum. But I don't really know that and I could be completely wrong.

That's a fair assessment; I'd agree with you about where I see myself on the spectrum. I've had characters die in many RPGs, some due to completely trivial stuff. Some of those haven't even bothered me...

Reading your response also raised another thought that I think might help me articulate my stance a little better. That would be frequency of death and challenge level.

First, you have a valid point with your comparison with TV/movies, in that they are primarily narratives and do feature extreme loss. I'd take issue with Band of Brothers, however, as it is quite faithful to the real-life events that it portrays. That's not about "directors bailing out characters" as it is the fact that the real human being that this role represented died in Bastogne... I'm kind of uncomfortable with that line of discussion. But overall, the vast majority of TV/movies don't have the main characters die until the end of the story (unless one does for the dramatic effect that I mentioned in my first post). And I don't see my character as a red-shirt... he's Kirk ("Hey, were're all the green women at?")!

Secondly, I'm not even that upset at death due to peon... as long as it was avoidable or infrequent. In my experience (anecdotal as it might be), there is a direct relationship between how non-reluctant an GM is to kill you and the frequency with which deaths occur. I'm only being partially facetious here. The GMs who have no problem with you dying to a random mook also usually have no problem flooding you with too many random mooks too often.

If my death was avoidable by a reasonable action on my part, I can live with dying. If the encounter was fair and not futile from the very beginning, I can handle death. But that happens very infrequently under those circumstances (at least to me and my friends). Too much, and I start questioning the GM and his expertise. Besides, it's not like I couldn't build a car in the time it usually takes for me to build a character (Pathfinder having so few options and all...)! Too many more rebuilds and I'll be in a retirement community...

[Tormsskull]

Eirikrautha wrote:

And I don't see my character as a red-shirt... he's Kirk ("Hey, were're all the green women at?")!

This might be opening another can of worms, but I tend to disagree with this. While the PCs are the focus of the campaign, they aren't necessarily important, especially at low levels. In other words, they don't become "Kirk" until it would make sense, based on the NPCs in the world.

If it is a FR style world where level 20+ wizards are everywhere, then a level 8 PC isn't really all the important. Now, if the level 8 PC has earned a lot of notoriety through various quests/actions, he me become important in certain regions.

If players are all Kirk at level 1, then it makes the campaign world very nonsensical. I remember one campaign where a relatively new DM had explained that his plot hook to level 1 characters was that they had to save the world from some threat or another.

My first question was, "Why would anyone come to level 1 characters to save the world?" Surely there are level 5, 10, etc. level character out there. If not, weird, but fine. But later in the campaign, don't introduce Lord PaladinGuy the Great, Protector of the Realms.

[Scavion]

Tormsskull wrote:

Eirikrautha wrote:

And I don't see my character as a red-shirt... he's Kirk ("Hey, were're all the green women at?")!

This might be opening another can of worms, but I tend to disagree with this. While the PCs are the focus of the campaign, they aren't necessarily important, especially at low levels. In other words, they don't become "Kirk" until it would make sense, based on the NPCs in the world.

If it is a FR style world where level 20+ wizards are everywhere, then a level 8 PC isn't really all the important. Now, if the level 8 PC has earned a lot of notoriety through various quests/actions, he me become important in certain regions.

If players are all Kirk at level 1, then it makes the campaign world very nonsensical. I remember one campaign where a relatively new DM had explained that his plot hook to level 1 characters was that they had to save the world from some threat or another.

My first question was, "Why would anyone come to level 1 characters to save the world?" Surely there are level 5, 10, etc. level character out there. If not, weird, but fine. But later in the campaign, don't introduce Lord PaladinGuy the Great, Protector of the Realms.

Theres a level 1 pathfinder society adventure that literally has you trying to stop an undead army from rising and obliterating a city.

I'm pretty cool with level 1 characters being heroes from the getgo.

In Golarion there aren't a ton of high level folks walking about and thats why I like it =)

[mkenner]

Eirikrautha wrote:

If you feel the purpose of your Pathfinder game is to tell a compelling story involving the various characters your players have created, then death should be part of the narrative/story... it should make "sense" (be meaningful) in terms of your game.

I feel that the purpose of a pathfinder game is to observe the emergent narrative created through the intersections of people's meaningful choices. That's what makes role-playing the most compelling form of narrative for me, everyone is an author and no one knows how it's going to end.

When I hear someone talking about avoiding death for the sake of the narrative, I find myself imagining the book-store scene in the Never Ending Story movie.
"Have you ever been Captain Nemo, trapped inside your submarine as the giant squid attacked? You thought you couldn't escape."
"Yes, but it's not real, it's only a story."
"That's what I mean, the books you read are safe."

Quote:

With this in mind, I will tell you that I am much more a "RPG as Narrative" sort of person. I'm building an alter ego to explore, not just a set of numbers to challenge.

Doesn't your alter ego face the random dangers of the unknowable future? Isn't that worth exploring, particularly if their career is an extremely dangerous one.

[Avatar-1]

I don't know if we're still talking about just the act of fudging dice or playing on easy mode vs hard mode in general anymore.

Advocating easy mode (and this doesn't apply to hard mode), I don't ever mean you should never die or that a GM should go out of their way every time to ensure players don't die.

If the GM and the players have a specific kind of game they want to play that way, that's fine, but I'm speaking more generally.

There's probably even specific guidelines you could draw from:

if a character falls unconscious, turn to rest of the party to attack, maybe especially whoever's trying to heal them if the bad guy is intelligent enough. If the rest of the party is temporarily absent (like from a fear effect), the character is still unconscious and out of the fight, so focus on when his friends come back to help, not on killing the downed character.

if a character repeatedly gets back up and doesn't learn their lesson - but has had a chance to learn that lesson - only then is it time to take it to the next level and punish the character after they drop.

if the party tries to abuse these guidelines, such as knowing the bad guy won't kill the downed character and leaving to come back for another day, when they had a perfectly solid opportunity to go back and give them immediate help, the downed character should be punished, and this should punish the whole party to lose their friend. This might not apply if for some reason the party doesn't want their downed friend to live.

if the characters were adequately warned in advance by a talking NPC who is crystal clear in telling them that if they fall, he'll immediately finish them off, then it's a valid tactic. The same thing applies if it's a long running bad guy who's gained a reputation through the campaign, and the characters have heard this before and it's crystal clear to them that that's what action he'll be keen to take. A failed knowledge check doesn't count. Attempting and passing a knowledge check to learn this might count, that's just the price you pay for knowing more about your enemy as a matter of balancing the game. This only applies to PCs, not other NPCs that the bad guy might be more savage with.

[born_of_fire]

i'm certainly not advocating a game with no death. games aren't much fun when there's no chance of dying. i just don't agree that the contrivances required to introduce a new party to replace one that wiped are more acceptable than the contrivance of a dm choosing not to slaughter the entire party. we're delving through a magical dungeon in the middle of no where. it took us months and months of investigation to find its location and how to enter. in a situation like this, there are few reasonable explanations for where, how and why another party of high level adventurers appears with all the required information and ready to take over the job.
there is death in our game but we don't have many tpk's; even less now that the dm is using herolab. when players fail, their characters die, as frequently, horribly and spectacularly as in any typical game i'd say. there's always good old-fashioned betrayed by the dice and terrible luck too but the dm considers it his failure when the whole party dies. the adventure is derailed until we get the new group on track. getting a new one together is usually possible but very disruptive. far, far more disruptive than the dm having a monster turn to an upright, threatening target rather than finishing off an unconscious one, as avatar-1 suggested and a common tactic of my dm.

[Xaratherus]

Earlier in the thread, redward asked if anyone prefers to have dice rolls fudged for the sake of story.

As both a GM and a player, I have to answer, "Yes . . . and no."

If I'm GMing and the players are playing their characters well and are acting in a well-informed in-character manner, then I hate the idea of a string of bad rolls taking out a character, especially when it comes to 'save or suck' abilities that are obviously going to lead to character death or TPK.

But if the players are rolling decently, and a character (or the party) dies, then that is a different matter. Or if the players are being particularly dense in-character, and acting rashly - even if doing so is in-character for them - then death is death.

And in those instances where the players are doing their damndest to win through, and just don't quite make it, and are about to TPK - I tak eno joy in a TPK. Honestly, I'll usually just flat-out ask the players. "Okay guys, you're beaten. How do you want to handle it? Deus ex machina, or wipe it and start over?" If they want to continue on, there are ways to make it happen, and if they want to start over, then we'll start over.

I guess the best way to put it is that circumstances alter cases, with the fates weighted more heavily in favor of the heroes than the villains.