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One thing I will note is that the save or sucks don't really, well, work as much as people would hope until they get their hand on the stat boosting items. A wizard in my campaign grabbed a headband of int +6 for the express purpose of getting some saves past the opponents he was dealing with (outsiders).
Generally I don't reveal ACs until the party actually hits them once or twice (by which time they suss them out).
On the issue of encounters ending fast, its important to remember that its a game for the DM too. Its one of the reasons I curse the guy who developed the spell Boneshatter to the deepest depths of poxy hell.
The DM is outnumbered, outmanuevered, and out brained (at least four to one, eight to one in my campaign) at all times. His sole advantage (and a big one) is that he literally has the entire world at his control, its his home-field advantage so to speak.
He's not there to "play fair." He's there to present an interesting story and set of challenges. By the same token that people complain about fudging, there's nothing stopping the DM from RAW, having monsters far beyond the party's CR drop down.
The hue and cry of a party of fourth level characters dealing with a balor assassin with the advanced template would be enormous, and justifiable. But is the DM violating any rule?
Rules of encounter design? There are none. Those are guidelines, just like the WBL. They're placed there to assist the players in having a good experience and being able to fairly deal with the fair encounters they're presumed to deal with.
Abuses can occur, but if the DM wants to avoid a party from stomping around utilizing some abusable hole in the rule or bit of metagaming chicanery dreamed up on an internet forum, he has the tools for it. And a passed save here and there is preferable to the alternative.
Its also preferable to the stuff that people laugh about in Knights of the Dinner Table where the DM and PCs are antagonistic to one another by design, invoking RAW and making demands like litigants in a court room.
"Let's not get ridiculous here. "
You may choose to edit your dice rolsl as a GM but to call my opinion that die rolls never be changed ridiculous, is ridiculous.
The ideas that the dice results should be "sacrosanct" (as in too important to be interfered with), that fudging is a slippery slope or ruins the integrity of the game are, I think, hyperbolic and tipping over into ridiculous.
If you prefer not to fudge, then you prefer not to fudge. But implying that fudging is akin to corruption is ridiculous.
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I'm getting a general consensus here that it's ok to fudge the rolls "every once in a while" especially if to keep a PC breathing another round or enhance the story. There appears to be extremes to this spectrum with some people saying, "hey, I roll a number in my head bro!" vs "if I see any DM's fudge a roll, I'll personally revoke their RPG card!"
I've had the luxury with playing with the same core of people for the last 12 years. We've leanred each others tendencies and we know what kind of behaviors we get whenever someone takes the reigns. Some people I've enjoyed playing under more than others and everyone has different tastes.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, we've made our points about where our opinions lie. Let's appeal to each other's good will and not bash the other guy for what makes the game work for them. The designers go to great lengths to say that Pathfinder is invariably what we make of it, especially in a home game.
In a home brew game I find there is no reason to fudge dice rolls as GM since I'm in control of the encounters. If want bad guys to have better saves they have better saves. This is trivial to do with in the rules. You can adjust stat keeping the CR to APL in mind. You can increase HD and add a feat for every 2 HD you add. That feat could boost saves. You could have consumables that boost saves. A potion of Owls wisdom for example to get +2 on will saves and protect against X for another +2. You can swap feats out to make monster different.
So really I could boost a monster by +6 on their saves if I can justify it and not metagame it. Meaning the bad guys know the party enough to know they bolster their defense against hexes for example.
Now in an AP I have much less control unless I want rework encounter and I do that in the later parts because Paizo can't account for everything party might do as they level up.
I do agree a lot of people cheat. Some cheat with interpretation of their classes features or feats as in, "if I read this one way this is the most useless thing in the world and if I read it the other way it works". And then their are the people you play with that say "I have the feat for that" and by the end of the game you are scratching your head wondering just how many feats this level one character has.
As for fudging I can see the point of not ruining encounters, but say you have a wizard with one bad ass spell and then you negate it, if he is a serious person he certainly would not be happy to find out. I think we should just give the GM a reroll like everyone else gets.
Or we could just trust the GM has our Fun and entertainment in mind when he "fudges."
The speed with which players are willing to break the gm/player trust dynamic these days is asinine.
Most people who are in favor of fudging defend it by saying they do it to not ruin the story. For me I can't buy in to the story being told if I know that the narrative comes before the integrity of game mechanics. I can believe a story whatever the outcome if the dice are deciding outcomes which the game decided they should. If I know that by fiat the GM can and will change things as he decides is best, I don't believe that story.
Well, then I got bad news for you. All of that story is constructed and tailored to make you succeed. Why do players only face CR appropiate encounters? Because stumbling upon a bulette as your first opponent when wandering out into the wilderness at level 1 makes for a damn short campaign.
And so on, and so forth. I could name a hundred individual examples of why everybody has to accept that the whole concept of adventurers in a fantasy setting needs some suspension of disbelief, because it obviously is a constructed story.
In general I dont believe in dm fudging. Particulary not on saves. If you have a problem with save or suck spells taking down important enemies, deal with that option at character creation. Its fine to say to a player, hey the slumber hex can make encounters really anticlimactic, and mess with the work that I do. Could you maybe go a different direction with your character? I've done that before. And not just for casters, there are other things that can be an issue. If they are address them by allowing the player to change what is causing an issue.
Yeah I feel like this is my main issue. If you are going to fudge then let people know before hand. Some classes especially the witch, are built around spells and abilities that can easily make for some anticlimactic battles. If my DM sat me down and said "it looks like you have learned suffocate. I just want to warn you that I will only allow that spell to work when I feel like it fits my concept of a good narrative, so you might want to consider something else." I'd say "good to know, I've got a buff cleric concept I'd be up for playing instead." But if the DM did that in secret, well then he's making me waste my time and resources, all the while fooling me into thinking I'm actually able to affect game events.
I do agree a lot of people cheat. Some cheat with interpretation of their classes features or feats as in, "if I read this one way this is the most useless thing in the world and if I read it the other way it works". And then their are the people you play with that say "I have the feat for that" and by the end of the game you are scratching your head wondering just how many feats this level one character has.
As for fudging I can see the point of not ruining encounters, but say you have a wizard with one bad ass spell and then you negate it, if he is a serious person he certainly would not be happy to find out. I think we should just give the GM a reroll like everyone else gets.
Or we could just trust the GM has our Fun and entertainment in mind when he "fudges."
The speed with which players are willing to break the gm/player trust dynamic these days is asinine.
Yes because passive aggressive GMs who secretly don't let players be effective instead of being upfront and banning options IS JUST such a MINOR thing.
I don't see how people COULD'T have fun in such a situation!
In general I dont believe in dm fudging. Particulary not on saves. If you have a problem with save or suck spells taking down important enemies, deal with that option at character creation. Its fine to say to a player, hey the slumber hex can make encounters really anticlimactic, and mess with the work that I do. Could you maybe go a different direction with your character? I've done that before. And not just for casters, there are other things that can be an issue. If they are address them by allowing the player to change what is causing an issue.Yeah I feel like this is my main issue. If you are going to fudge then let people know before hand. Some, classes especially the witch, are built around spells and abilities that can easily make for some anticlimactic battles. If my DM sat me down and said "it looks like you have learned suffocate. I just want to warn you that I will only allow that spell to work when I feel like it fits my concept of a good narrative, so you might want to consider something else." I'd say "good to know, I've got a buff cleric concept I'd be up for playing instead." But if the DM did that in secret, well then he's making me waste my time and resources, all the while fooling me into thinking I'm actually able to affect game events.
^^^^^This^^^^^^^^^
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The speed with which players are willing to break the gm/player trust dynamic these days is asinine.
Because when people agree to play a game together and one person decides to ignore any rules that get in the way of his vision, it's definitely the other person who's breaking trust.
I find another thing interesting. I run a game using a virtual tabletop, and gm rolls aren't seen, numerically, but the results are. There's also a section so the GM can have the PC roll so it doesn't show up (for perception rolls, stealth, etc). Essentially the equivalent of rolling behind the screen for a GM. I give my PCs the option of either rolling in that, or in the open. All but one of my players chooses to roll hidden, so they don't know how well they rolled.
I do agree a lot of people cheat. Some cheat with interpretation of their classes features or feats as in, "if I read this one way this is the most useless thing in the world and if I read it the other way it works". And then their are the people you play with that say "I have the feat for that" and by the end of the game you are scratching your head wondering just how many feats this level one character has.
As for fudging I can see the point of not ruining encounters, but say you have a wizard with one bad ass spell and then you negate it, if he is a serious person he certainly would not be happy to find out. I think we should just give the GM a reroll like everyone else gets.
Or we could just trust the GM has our Fun and entertainment in mind when he "fudges."
The speed with which players are willing to break the gm/player trust dynamic these days is asinine.Yes because passive aggressive GMs who secretly don't let players be effective instead of being upfront and banning options IS JUST such a MINOR thing.
I don't see how people COULD'T have fun in such a situation!
And there you go assuming that it is an all or nothing situation again.
Fudging is a valid effective tool for enhancing the game as long as it is not abused. Just like any other tool in the GMs tool box. And when it is used properly you the player are completely unaware that it happens.It in no way invalidates the character if this one time your go to action is blocked. If that were the case then every time an actual valid save is made it invalidates the character.
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Fudging is a valid effective tool for enhancing the game as long as it is not abused. Just like any other tool in the GMs tool box. And when it is used properly you the player are completely unaware that it happens.
Then where do you suppose these threads come from? From players whose GMs are providing fun games where the players don't even suspect any fudging?
Side A: Let's stop trying to ignore the fact The rulebook suggests to GMs to fudge rolls. It doesn't say "warn your players if you're doing this." The fact it's printed there on the page implies that unless anyone says otherwise, the GM is going to assume they're free to fudge rolls. Your own dislike of that particular guideline doesn't suddenly make it something that needs announcing first, the onus is on the individual to bring up the suggestion of removing that option if you want it removed from the game.
Side B: Get it into your heads that not everyone wants to play that way, and that "change anything you don't like in this rulebook in order to have fun" also applies to that particular guideline.
(There, now both sides can direct their hate at me :P)
Let me try to explain it a little bit differently.
McSoS is approaching a serious boss fight. Everything he has been able to learn says he will be tough and may be very resistant but not immune to magic in general (high SR) and yet has a strong mind even when something does manage to affect him (pretty high will save bonus). However, McSoS is very good as slipping into even strong minds (high spell DC) and has the power to effect some of the most resistant creatures (greater spell penetration). McSoS figures his best odds are still to use all four of his highest level slots for his signature spell Hold Monster. He will use his quicken rod to rip all 4 of them off as quickly as he can at the monster in the first 2 rounds.
GM decides that a save or suck spell's success in the first few rounds of combat is boring. So it will not succeed no matter what the rolls are. Too bad McSoS, it would have been nice if you contributed something to the fight.
McSoS might as well have stayed home. His planning, build, tactics, intelligence gathering, and plans are completely without value. He has no way of knowing this. Because the GM just decided what he wants to do is boring.
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McBlast is approaching a serious boss fight. Everything he has been able to learn says he will be tough and may be very resistant but not immune to magic in general (high SR) and yet has a quick and often avoids injury even when something might manage to affect him (pretty high reflex save bonus and evasion). However, McBlast is very good as damaging things with acidic effects (high spell DC) and has the power to effect some of the most resistant creatures (greater spell penetration). McBlast figures his best odds are still to use all four of his highest level slots for his signature spell Empowered Acid Ball. He will use his quicken rod to rip all 4 of them off as quickly as he can at the monster in the first 2 rounds.
The GM doesn't have a problem with blast spells since he feels they are exciting. So after 4 Empowered Acid Balls and a few bad saving throw rolls the opponent is viscous puddle of goo on the throne room floor. Hooray for McBlast.
(From what has been written above it doesn't sound like anyone would fudge to make sure the Acid Balls did not work be cause it is not a SoS spell.)
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McAxe is approaching a serious boss fight. Everything he has been able to learn says he will be tough and may be very hard to hurt (high AC) and yet resistant but not immune to physical damage when someone does manage to hit him (high DR). However, McAxe is strong especially when raging and buffed (DPR in the hundreds), rarely misses even fast hard targets (high hit bonus), and his axe can usually affect even the most hard to hurt creatures (adamantine). McAxe figures his best odds are just to charge in with full attacks as quickly as possible. He will use his buff potions before walking in the door to turn himself into a giant veg-o-matic machine.
Does the GM decide it will be boring if he hacks it apart in the first 2 full attack rounds. So he will miss even if he rolls a 20. If so, in the future McAxe should eventually learn to just spend the first few rounds of every fight sitting in the corner waiting until the GM has decided enough time has passed.
OR
Does the GM decide hacking something to bits is epic fantasy. The monsters head is in 6 pieces scattered around the room. Hooray for McAxe. (From what has been written above, I believe you would pick this one.)
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Yes, you can probably fool me if you are careful for a while. But I'm not a complete idiot. Eventually I'm going to figure out that at key events I will just fail every time. Well that is really lots of fun.
Are you necessarily as obvious as the above examples in your games? I would hope not. But once I figure out what is going on, that is what it could feel like.
If you as a GM do not like short boss fights and are not going to let them succeed early in a fight, why not just tell me that preference at character creation? Then I won't try to make a character designed to end dangerous fights quickly. Then you don't have to nerf just me while letting the others succeed.
Why are we calling it fudging? It's cheating. If a player lied about his/her dice rolls it would be called as such and yet somehow the GM gets to call their indiscretions "fudging"?
-MD
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Side A: Let's stop trying to ignore the fact The rulebook suggests to GMs to fudge rolls. It doesn't say "warn your players if you're doing this." The fact it's printed there on the page implies that unless anyone says otherwise, the GM is going to assume they're free to fudge rolls. Your own dislike of that particular guideline doesn't suddenly make it something that needs announcing first, the onus is on the individual to bring up the suggestion of removing that option if you want it removed from the game.
Side B: Get it into your heads that not everyone wants to play that way, and that "change anything you don't like in this rulebook in order to have fun" also applies to that particular guideline.
(There, now both sides can direct their hate at me :P)
I deleted a post I made. I think we are arguing over matters of personal preference, so it's kind of pointless to keep it up. I agree with this post. When I DM I don't fudge. I don't believe that the guy who trades off DMing with me fudges either, although I could be wrong. I hope he doesn't.
Personally as a player I don't like fudging, especially if I'm playing one of the classes most harshly penalized by fudging.But obviously different groups are different. In our group we all have backup characters that we have worked into the plot so that we can pick them up if our current character dies. If my witch dies, I have a bard who has helped the party research some locations of ancient ruins. So in our group we are prepared to transition characters if some unlucky rolls are made. Obviously not everybody plays that way, and a DM might be more averse to letting bad luck kill a character if it means a lot of disruption.
I think that the most memorable moments I've played are when unlikely or crazy things have happened due to funky dice. If I wanted a scripted narrative I would read a book. For me the fun of gaming is that it is unpredictable, and the bad guy could anticlimactically fail, or a lone hobgoblin could, against all odds, wipe out half of the heroes. That's the kind of thing that separates a game based on the roll of dice from a movie based on the monomyth and a formulaic "Save the Cat" beat sheet.
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Why are we calling it fudging? It's cheating. If a player lied about his/her dice rolls it would be called as such and yet somehow the GM gets to call their indiscretions fudging?
-MD
Because its strictly speaking, not.
The DM, not the rulebook, determines the rules of the game. Its basically written in the rules. Now if he goes off the reservation and begins abusing it, there's a rationale, but the 'show me your HMPGA Membership GM Credentials' ethic that he's 'just another player,' isn't true.
The DM's not an antagonistic anti-player who's moves have to be observed. He's the combat system, the story teller, and every single NPC in the game. If you don't trust him to handle it, then go elsewhere since you won't be enjoying anything else he does.
I deleted a post I made. I think we are arguing over matters of personal preference, so it's kind of pointless to keep it up.
:)
See, I don't see why people are so intent on "winning" this argument. There's nothing to win here. There's not even an argument unless someone is suggesting everyone should play their way. As with so many threads, it starts out innocent enough with someone having an issue, and suddenly there's a frackin war over how everyone else is playing the game wrong.
Are people really feeling so... threatened, is the only word that comes to mind... that others don't like to play the game the same way? Who cares. (Seriously, someone please tell me why it's so important to prove that everyone other than themselves is wrong?)
The worst bit is that during all this argument hardly anyone remembers the OP has a problem here they'd like help dealing with. All the people just telling them that either they or their GM is right or wrong doesn't really help with that. The OP and his GM need to discuss it, like adults, and agree on how they as a group want to play the game, without either taking the moral high ground, because neither of them have it to stand on.
Why are we calling it fudging? It's cheating. If a player lied about his/her dice rolls it would be called as such and yet somehow the GM gets to call their indiscretions fudging?
-MD
Because its strictly speaking, not.
The DM, not the rulebook, determines the rules of the game. Its basically written in the rules. Now if he goes off the reservation and begins abusing it, there's a rationale, but the 'show me your HMPGA Membership GM Credentials' ethic that he's 'just another player,' isn't true.
The DM's not an antagonistic anti-player who's moves have to be observed. He's the combat system, the story teller, and every single NPC in the game. If you don't trust him to handle it, then go elsewhere since you won't be enjoying anything else he does.
That's cool if you are ok with your GM cheating. It's your game, play it how you like.
I like to know that the dice matter. I enjoy the wild random story the dice tell.
-MD
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Edit: Never mind.
As some are saying, it is personal preference and no one seems to be making any progress in changing the mind of anyone else. I'm going to just let it drop.
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Are people really feeling so... threatened, is the only word that comes to mind... that others don't like to play the game the same way? Who cares. (Seriously, someone please tell me why it's so important to prove that everyone other than themselves is wrong?)
Actually, there are more people trying to prove that their own way is not wrong (responding, of course, to the folks who are indeed trying to say that other people's fun is wrong).
Those people I get. Why the others have to crusade in the first place, I'm as perplexed as you.
Are people really feeling so... threatened, is the only word that comes to mind... that others don't like to play the game the same way? Who cares. (Seriously, someone please tell me why it's so important to prove that everyone other than themselves is wrong?)Actually, there are more people trying to prove that their own way is not wrong (responding, of course, to the folks who are indeed trying to say that other people's fun is wrong).
Those people I get. Why the others have to crusade in the first place, I'm as perplexed as you.
True. It just takes one person to say "you should all be playing this way" to start these things, and before you know it everyone's piling on :(
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I am playing a witch in a hombrew campaign. After the first couple of sessions the bad guys have been on a tear making their saves against my hexes. While they should be making their saves about 30% of the time they are making them about 2/3 of the time now. Over a short time dice can get hot but I am talking about many sessions with multiple combats each with me throwing out hexes more rounds than not. Possible but highly unlikely to be that lucky for that long. I should note that the rolls are behind a screen.
I recognize that that the witch can be a powerful class. I asked the GM if he was uncomfortable with the witch mechanics and would prefer me to switch classes. He told me that it was fine.
Here's the problem. Every time a save is made now I am questioning whether he actually made it or the GM fudged it to balance the fight. It takes a lot of the fun out of it for me. Would it be out of line to ask the GM to roll where we all can see? I respect his right to balance the fight but changing rolls seems like a poor way to go about it.
He may just be rolling that well.
When I GM, most of my rolls are on the high side, no matter which one of my many many d20s I use. So I actually have to fudge so that the monsters fail more often to keep the encounters interesting.|
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If you don't trust him to handle it, then go elsewhere since you won't be enjoying anything else he does.
If a player doesn't trust his GM to run a fun game even while fudging, why do you suppose that might be? Probably because the player just generally has deep-rooted trust issues that keep him suspicious of everyone, but were temporarily dormant when he agreed to the game and then just randomly popped up again later, right?
Why are we calling it fudging? It's cheating. If a player lied about his/her dice rolls it would be called as such and yet somehow the GM gets to call their indiscretions fudging?
-MD
Because its strictly speaking, not.
The DM, not the rulebook, determines the rules of the game. Its basically written in the rules. Now if he goes off the reservation and begins abusing it, there's a rationale, but the 'show me your HMPGA Membership GM Credentials' ethic that he's 'just another player,' isn't true.
The DM's not an antagonistic anti-player who's moves have to be observed. He's the combat system, the story teller, and every single NPC in the game. If you don't trust him to handle it, then go elsewhere since you won't be enjoying anything else he does.
By changing the rules of the game--not introducing new mechanics, but outright changing the way player-chosen abilities work--without informing said players, the GM does not earn that trust. I don't give a rat's left buttock whether the GM thinks it's better for the narrative. If the GM was so worried, the GM should have given the BBEG a legitimate reason for McSoS's ability not to work when designing the encounter. Changing the rules in the middle is itself acting antagonistic toward the players, and that's enough to say "screw it, I'm out".
Edit: I have no problem if you want to play that way. If I did, though, I would probably be playing a storytelling game rather than an RPG. But I'm certainly not making a commitment to play in a year-plus campaign without knowing whether the GM is going to say "lol no" whenever he feels like the story isn't good enough.
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Edit: I have no problem if you want to play that way. If I did, though, I would probably be playing a storytelling game rather than an RPG. But I'm certainly not making a commitment to play in a year-plus campaign without knowing whether the GM is going to say "lol no" whenever he feels like the story isn't good enough.
I'm noticing this false dilemma keeps popping up. Your DM can fudge without being completely 100% arbitrary. Its not a binary equation.
In truth the whole argument kind of reminds me of the theological arguments for and against miracles. With similar arguments that they 'go against the rules' of nature/physics etc, whereas those on the other side see them as a function intrinsically built into the rules by the author of said rules.
My basic response, flippant it may seem is to say this. If you want a campaign run entirely by a fixed set of rules that never change and can be totally and completely codified with no opportunity for the random whims of your game master becoming involved. Just play a CRPG or find one of those one person RPGs that just requires a set of dice.
The computer never cheats or fudges. All his cheating is built in, predictable and ultimately can be planned for and operated around.
If you prefer games run by humans, expect a human to run the game and not follow the book or the whims of whimiscal dice as religiously as a computer's programmed random number generator.
Now that's a false dilemma.
I fudge in two situations: If I, as DM, have been rolling really poorly, I will fudge so that something that was supposed to be a threat comes off as a jobber for essentially rolling d10's instead of d20's instead does at least something to justify its challenge rating. Similarly, if a player is rolling very poorly, I might be unable to actually fudge, but I can ply headknowledge to justify adding numbers to his roll. Recently it was arguing that he had a cover bonus to his reflex save.
The other situation is purely theatric, and I don't allow it unless (a) it's the last fight of the day, and (b) I've resigned the encounter to "Players Win!" and have made the fact that victory is imminent obvious to players through description. I might fudge numbers to give the baddy one last hit or one last round, but only to draw out the tension and allow a more dramatically appropriate finisher than a cherry tap.
I'm trying to think of a good example, but I'm having a hard time. The best I can come up with is this:
We were fighting an Orc cleric and some of his minions in the ruins of a tower. The Cleric managed to blind our magus. A couple of turns later the cleric, with his minions falling around him, retreated the only way he could: up the stairs and out of the tower. The magus, full of rage at being blinded, followed while the rest of us were still engaged with the minions. He got to the top of the tower and listened to try to figure out where the cleric was. The DM made him roll perception, and he failed. He went tearing off towards where he believed the cleric was, and ran right off the top of the tower. The fall brought him to negative hit points and he was bleeding out. We ran outside to save him, and the cleric got away.
This magus is proud of his intellect, and likes to boast that he is smart enough to be a great wizard. Now, whenever he does that the party is quick to remind him of the time he ran off the edge of a tower.
Now, he survived because he got very lucky when he rolled falling damage. But he was already wounded and the fall was very likely to kill him. The DM had a choice. Knowing that the fall would likely be deadly, he could have fudged the perception roll to try to save the magus. (We have the DM roll our perceptions to help avoid metagaming.) Nobody would have been the wiser, and things would have turned out very differently.
Which makes for a more memorable story? That one time the 'genius' magus pulled a Wiley coyote and allowed the cleric to escape, or that one time the magus attacked the cleric and had a 50% miss chance?
Because the GM was willing to let the magus die because of a bad roll, the narrative actually turned out better.
I know that's not a perfect example, I think most DM's would not fudge in that case, but it's an example where fudging to protect a character would have led to a less memorable outcome. And that won't always be the case. But like I said we enjoy an unpredictable game where crazy things can happen.
TLDR:
I guess what I'm trying to say is that, ignoring all the issues of trust and character invalidation and stuff that we've talked about, in my opinion fudging just makes for a less interesting, more predictable, game. But we like it dangerous and random, so YMMV.
Do you play AP's or home brew games? It seems like AP's would be much harder to run without fudging.
Udinaas: In that situation, there is fudging that preserves the narrative. You could just fudge the falling damage roll.
Sure, and if the players found out that there was no danger of dying it would have taken away everything that made that unlikely event fun for us. So I guess, if you are like most regular GMs according to Hama, never let people in on how little effect the dice actually have on important events.
In our case, he let the magus roll his fall damage, and it was a great tense moment when his life was hanging on a single roll of the dice. It was fun, cause we like that kind of thing.
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We were fighting an Orc cleric and some of his minions in the ruins of a tower. The Cleric managed to blind our magus. A couple of turns later the cleric, with his minions falling around him, retreated the only way he could: up the stairs and out of the tower. The magus, full of rage at being blinded, followed while the rest of us were still engaged with the minions. He got to the top of the tower and listened to try to figure out where the cleric was. The DM made him roll perception, and he failed. He went tearing off towards where he believed the cleric was, and ran right off the top of the tower. The fall brought him to negative hit points and he was bleeding out. We ran outside to save him, and the cleric got away.
Certainly nothing wrong with that. But then, the magus did set himself up for it by blindly running off the edge of the tower.
Contrast with this situation:
The characters encountered an skeletal dinosaur. The rogue tried to maneuver around it on her first action and failed on her tumble check (which was, admittedly, ungodly high compared to the thing's CR). The AoO was a crit threat and I confirmed it. Then I rolled the damage and, without knowing how many hit points the PC had left, I decided that the damage was really just too high for the first attack of the encounter so I decided not to add a few points of the skeletal dinosaur's strength bonus and didn't roll the negative energy damage the thing also had. The rogue limped away with a couple of hit points left when she otherwise would have been killed, trying to do handle the combat intelligently, because I happened rolled a 20 on my first attack roll.
It was still a hit. It was still a crit. It just didn't do quite as much damage as it could have based on what I rolled. The PCs still got the message that the skeletal dinosaur was a dangerous enemy and simply rolling out the damage was not going to work well for them. I didn't know how many hp the rogue had when she got hit so I figured the damage could still take her down… but it would be more likely that she'd still be alive if unconscious and would be savable… if the skeletal dinosaur didn't manage to gore them all to death first. But by fudging, the point was made and the rogue could still move away under her own power and no TPK ensued.
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Certainly nothing wrong with that. But then, the magus did set himself up for it by blindly running off the edge of the tower.
Yeah, and I think that's kind of a key difference in play styles. We very often do crazy things if we think our characters would do them, and we are fully prepared to pay the price.
Another example is that we attacked an NPC at a point several levels before we were supposed to finally confront him. Our DM stopped and flat out told us that we weren't supposed to attack him yet and didn't stand a chance. We decided that our characters would have attacked him so we attacked him. The DM didn't want to cause a TPK, so he had the bad guy throw some lower level spells at us and had the town guard come down the road, causing the bad guy to take off. He pulled his punches, and he made it obvious.
So I think that, with your example, with our group of regular players, we would have preferred the rogue getting snacked on while everyone else gets to run away. All the more reason to get revenge against the beast.
But I understand that wouldn't be right for everyone, and that it makes more work for the GM to cycle through characters. I wouldn't be against playing a game where the GM did what you did. Like I've said (despite my regretfully snarky comment about Hama in my last post) I just believe that the GM should do it in a way that let's players know it's happening. That's my issue. If I know a GM is going to fudge, then I will play a class that doesn't rely on spells and abilities that depend on the whim of the GM to be effective, and I would hope that he would make it obvious when he fudged to help a player. Otherwise, how would you know if you actually won a fight or if you just got a gold star for showing up?
And again, other people might prefer never knowing that the GM saved their life. It's just a preference.
It's not just a black and white thing either.
Sometimes it can be something like still allowing the characters to be defeated if the dice say so, and the BBEG's plans to succeed, but allowing the characters to survive the defeat rather than getting killed.
You can let player decisions, actions and rolls still matter, but also give them a chance to pull through, regroup, and continue the story despite that failure.
Yeah, I think there are lots of ways to let characters get away after failing, although it's pretty hard to improvise something like that when everything is falling apart.
Bill Dunn, I think yours scrying witch example is a good one. If I was running that, I don't know what I would do. That's a tough one. I usually don't have to deal with this much because I run the more intrigue and espionage portions of our game and usually don't have to deal with things like rogues vs undead dinosaurs, but that's a situation I'll probably find myself in someday.
Fudging is a valid effective tool for enhancing the game as long as it is not abused. Just like any other tool in the GMs tool box. And when it is used properly you the player are completely unaware that it happens.Then where do you suppose these threads come from? From players whose GMs are providing fun games where the players don't even suspect any fudging?
off hand? I would say from gms abusing the tool.
that or players jumping to the wrong conclusion.|
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Fudging is a valid effective tool for enhancing the game as long as it is not abused. Just like any other tool in the GMs tool box. And when it is used properly you the player are completely unaware that it happens.Then where do you suppose these threads come from? From players whose GMs are providing fun games where the players don't even suspect any fudging?off hand? I would say from gms abusing the tool.
I wonder, then, how helpful it is for a bunch of self-identified GMs to come in and assert the propriety of the thing that's been used to hurt such players—often even going so far as to insinuate developmental deficiencies on the player's part—when an abused player comments on the negative experiences they've had with fudging.
I wonder, then, how helpful it is for a bunch of self-identified GMs to come in and assert the propriety of the thing that's been used to hurt such players—often even going so far as to insinuate developmental deficiencies on the player's part—when an abused player comments on the negative experiences they've had with fudging.
I think it's important to balance against the danger of fudging rolls being seen as something that's "wrong", in the same way that it's important to remember that some people enjoy heavy roleplay, some people enjoy heavy optimization, and some people enjoy both (and indeed, some people may even enjoy neither).
It's wrong in some groups, right in others. It's when people try to make that a black and white argument that problems occur - people need to talk about it, within their own groups, and decide what's right for them. The wrong thing to do is to come on here and argue whether it's right or wrong for the game as a whole, as that's just forcing their playstyle onto everyone.
Some people have tried to point out that the OP should just accept it's going to happen, others have pointed out GMs shouldn't be doing it, period. Quite frankly, both of those groups need to keep their noses out of the OP's game and let him and his GM discuss whether or not it's right for them, the same as we all should in our own games. We can tell him the advantages, and the disadvantages, we can tell him whether it's in the book or not, but none of us are qualified to say whether it's right or wrong at the OP's table.
As with all the other rules in the book, it's a legitimate option to include, or to not include (and even then, to whatever degree to prefer) as the group wishes.
on a aside note..I do roll things secretly that the players have no way of observing..I also just randomly roll dice to make my players paranoid. :)
I randomly roll dice when I'm racking my brain to come up with something on the spot: players think I'm rolling to determine something I've planned when actually I don't know WTF I'm doing.
Works every time ;)
I’ve played diceless RPGs and RPGs where the dice or other randomizers are explicitly to advise the storyteller, not to determine the results of actions. I like those games. I like that they’re close to freeform, cooperative storytelling.
I like Pathfinder, too. I like that in Pathfinder, the dice decide.
Things feel tenser when the dice are in control. You can’t be sure if an encounter will be a cake walk or a death march.
Pathfinder games where the GM is fudging feel pretty bland to me. Why put out your best efforts if the GM is just going to preserve your enemies until he’s satisfied the encounter has gone on long enough? How is it brave to enter combat when you know the GM will blunt any really bad luck you have?
But I wouldn’t really object to a Pathfinder GM who fudged die rolls. I would object to a Pathfinder GM who was deceptive about fudging die rolls. I urge you Pathfinder GMs to tell your players up front when and why you would fudge die rolls, so they know what kind of game they’re playing.
Anything else seems disrespectful to me.