Cheating
Though it’s considered more polite to call it “fudging,” cheating happens—sometimes a GM will be tempted to alter a die roll to make the story go a certain way, or to
save a player character from a blow that would kill them and knock a fun personality out of the game. Should the GM give in to the temptation to cheat? And if the GM is truly in control of the world, and making his or her rolls in secret—is it really cheating at all? There are several schools of thought on the matter. One side says that the dice are there to assist the story, not determine it—if a GM needs to occasionally alter or totally fabricate some die rolls for the sake of making an encounter a perfect challenge for the players without killing them, then he’s just doing his job. Others say that it’s the randomness which creates the realism and sense of danger, and that PCs who believe the GM won’t let them die lose half the fun. And a third notes that GMs who clearly cheat or have too many coincidences—the party’s powerful new items always getting stolen by sticky-f ingered half lings, or villains being saved by miracle rolls when a player comes up with an unexpectedly effective strategy—undermine the players’ enjoyment, and subtly encourage the players to cheat as well. Where you fall on the spectrum is a personal call, but if you do decide to fudge rolls for the sake of the game, it’s best done in secret, and as infrequently as possible. And only—only—if it results in more fun for everyone.
Seems to me that while Paizo, tends to favor the no-fudging rule, they consider both to be legitimate within the system, expecially if it result in more fun for everyone.
The fact that the wizard was not having fun at being killed without a chance to act in any way, seems to indicate that not fudging was definitely not the most fun.
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Seems to me that while Paizo, tends to favor the no-fudging rule, they consider both to be legitimate within the system, expecially if it result in more fun for everyone.
The fact that the wizard was not having fun at being killed without a chance to act in any way, seems to indicate that not fudging was definitely not the most fun.
I think an essential part of good GMing is to work to ensure that the locally most interesting thing that could happen next is what happens next. So if you write an encounter that takes place in a tavern, that encounter happens in whichever tavern the PCs choose to visit because something happening is more fun than nothing, and something you've prepared is generally more interesting than whatever you can come up with off the top of your head.
It's just that "fudging the dice" is the least elegant to do this sort of thing. Generally when it's the players doing stuff to the NPCs, you go with whatever the dice say and you just write your way out of whatever narrative corner you end up in (PCs kill the big bad too early in the campaign on some lucky rolls? Turns out he was a catspaw for the real antagonist). When it's the NPCs doing stuff to the PCs it's tougher though and there are shades of grey here (like I don't ever want to kill a level 1 PC in the first session of a campaign, you try to design winnable encounters, but dice are random by nature.)
If the real sticking point is that the Wizard died in the last encounter, so doesn't exactly go out like the player would have liked, not just that the character died (death is hardly final in this game, particularly for high level characters), probably the best thing to do is to just resurrect the character (with the spell) and run some sort of short epilogue session, so the players can have more input on writing the ends of their stories. They're level 18 characters, so they're probably not going to be used ever again, but I think players still appreciate some sort of meaningful ending for their characters.
...fun is a gamist concern.
That why me most gamist Troll on forums! Woo hoo!
Chocolate also gamist concern. Use battlemap and chocolate miniatures. "My hero great-cleaves slays three humans!" Munch munch munch.
Nothing make Players competitive like who death blow yummy edible miniatures! Lots fun. Everyone regenerate by morning. And learn more how house-rule realistic damage folding chair improvised weapons.
I'm not 100% sure what you were trying to say... but you had me at chocolate miniatures that you eat when you kill them.
"Butthurt Wizard" needs to be a character class...
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"Butthurt Wizard" needs to be a character class...
sounds like a Archetype..or prestige class.
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Putting the battle map to one side for the moment...
What is the difference between a role-playing game and an audience listening to someone tell a story?
Player agency.
In order to actually be an RPG, the players must be able to make the decisions for their character, and those decisions must have meaning, must determine success or failure.
This doesn't mean that luck has no part, or that they perfectly control everything. Take the card game of poker; players aren't in control of the cards they receive or those that will come, can't control the decisions of the other players. But they do know (or can know) what the possibilities are, make judgement calls based on that knowledge, take account of the luck factor by knowing the odds and playing accordingly. The best players don't win every hand, but they consistently perform better than poor players.
Imagine that the dealer knows a player has played a hand excellently against an idiot, but as the last card is dealt the idiot pulls the one card that lets him win. Should the dealer throw it away and deal another card to get the 'correct' result?
The players of an RPG, whether its diceless role-playing or tactical combat, make the decisions that result in success or failure, taking the odds into account. When they get hit by a 'bad beat', if the DM fudges it, then even though he means well he has taken the player's agency away. At that point it stops being an RPG and becomes the players being a mere audience listening to the DM tell a story.
Perhaps that's a bit dramatic. It's not so black and white. But DMs should be very careful about 'fudging', because the more they do it the more it becomes a story told by one person and not an RPG.
The players of an RPG, whether its diceless role-playing or tactical combat, make the decisions that result in success or failure, taking the odds into account. When they get hit by a 'bad beat', if the DM fudges it, then even though he means well he has taken the player's agency away. At that point it stops being an RPG and becomes the players being a mere audience listening to the DM tell a story.
I tend towards using dice fudging on the subsequent after-effects of the player+rules-determined success/failure, rather than to influence one or the other.
For example, letting player decisions decide the success or failure of a combat scene, but then fudging the dice to allow the party to survive and crawl away wounded rather than dead after being defeated.
That way, player decisions still have meaning, and still direct the course of the story, while the fudging only allows them to continue that story down the new path they've chosen for it. Dealing with the consequences of their failure and seeing where that takes them is often far more fun than a TPK followed by a reset+reroll+restart - that way often just leads to the feeling of running at a brick wall with different bodies until it finally yields.
And to weigh into the "fudging" debate...
Hero points are one of the best things ever to be added to the game.
"Fudging" the dice detracts from player agency, as illustrated by several posters above.
Being at the mercy of horrible dice rolls or poor planning (player or GM) can often seriously suck the fun out of the game.
Hero points allow a player a measure of control of fickle fate without relying in the GM, but not so much as to remove risk entirely.
In the situation the OP's party were in, this was a recurring BBEG.We don't know that.It was not stated definitively; however, I re-read the OP, and saw this excerpt:
That's a lot of buffs. That's a very prepared wizard who's been watching everyone's strengths, and has come to respect, as well as understand the fact that the wizard in the party is the most dangerous.Whether the party has directly fought or even encountered the BBEG before, the bolded part at the very least hints at the fact that the BBEG was indeed a recurring (or incurring) BBEG that the PCs would come across eventually.
You assume much. The bolded part simply says the BBEG had loads of time to watch and prepare for this fight, noting he should probably kill their Wizard first.
It says absolutely nothing of the Player knowledge of the BBEG. Verily, it can be implied that the BBEG was so prepared that he could have easily kept that info from them.
Crits happen. If you're going to fudge an NPC's lucky roll, why not start fudging PCs', too? Heck, why not just, like, not give your NPCs scythes and stuff?
If someone finds crits on PCs to be un-fun, maybe crits should just be removed from the game. Crits are part of the risk, and if the players want to avoid that risk, they should be willing to give up their own little chance at brutalizing the BBEG.
EDIT: Just FYI, I agree that the OP messed up and needs to work some retconning magic. I'm not even sure my post here is relevant. I just wanted to say it, since it sounds like we're discussing fudging crits. :P
It is somewhat of an assumption, though more of a correlation. It is an assumption that the players would know, because I'm under the impression that if they didn't know who the heck they were going up against, what the heck would the characters even be doing? Just some random dungeon crawl at 18th level? Why aren't they journeying through the denizens of hell and permanently destroying them instead of some piddly BBEG who isn't going anywhere anytime soon?
It is more of a correlation because a BBEG who watches the group perform in battle (usually against his own minions) would most likely have his existence known to the party; whether they know his actual identity or what he is, isn't stated for sure, but giving the PCs the benefit of the doubt in regards to murderhoboing, they would have came across the BBEG and his regime at some point, make some sort of interaction that would motivate the PCs to fight against the BBEG, and eventually stop his plans.
If the BBEG really was that prepared, keeping his organization and very existence a secret from the party would result in the party dying for no reason other than their detective skills sucked. It also could've resulted in no campaign, since the PCs have no clue what the heck is going on. In comparison to what the Wizard has shown to do in the given combat, it's definitely something way over the party's paygrade if they are that easy to detect and observe.
Crits happen. If you're going to fudge an NPC's lucky roll, why not start fudging PCs', too? Heck, why not just, like, not give your NPCs scythes and stuff?
If someone finds crits on PCs to be un-fun, maybe crits should just be removed from the game. Crits are part of the risk, and if the players want to avoid that risk, they should be willing to give up their own little chance at brutalizing the BBEG.
EDIT: Just FYI, I agree that the OP messed up and needs to work some retconning magic. I'm not even sure my post here is relevant. I just wanted to say it, since it sounds like we're discussing fudging crits. :P
It's not like characters can't invest in methods to reduce or ignore critical hits entirely or anything...Oh wait, they can! If Crits are that big of a problem, I suggest you invest in them. I myself, as a tank whose is constantly really only hittable with a critical threat/confirmation, invested in some and it has saved my character's life so many times...
If anything, one of those effects on the Wizard would've reduced that killer crit into a minor inconvenience to the Wizard.
And yes, the OP messed up a few things, though nothing too major to result in the PC not being killed. A reduction of 20 damage, from an ~150+ damage critical, in comparison to an 18th level Wizard who would, on average and by the book have ~100 HP, doesn't change the Wizard going from dead to dying. The big mess-up is being able to attack the Fighter as well given the circumstance, but that does nothing for Mr. Wizard.
At best, this would make the difference between the Breath of Life spell keeping the Wizard's character from going to the shredder, or staying out and finishing the campaign, but given what happened in the first round of combat, the cleric of the group is going to have one heck of a time pulling it off, assuming he can.
It is somewhat of an assumption, though more of a correlation. It is an assumption that the players would know, because I'm under the impression that if they didn't know who the heck they were going up against, what the heck would the characters even be doing? Just some random dungeon crawl at 18th level? Why aren't they journeying through the denizens of hell and permanently destroying them instead of some piddly BBEG who isn't going anywhere anytime soon?
It is more of a correlation because a BBEG who watches the group perform in battle (usually against his own minions) would most likely have his existence known to the party; whether they know his actual identity or what he is, isn't stated for sure, but giving the PCs the benefit of the doubt in regards to murderhoboing, they would have came across the BBEG and his regime at some point, make some sort of interaction that would motivate the PCs to fight against the BBEG, and eventually stop his plans.
If the BBEG really was that prepared, keeping his organization and very existence a secret from the party would result in the party dying for no reason other than their detective skills sucked. It also could've resulted in no campaign, since the PCs have no clue what the heck is going on. In comparison to what the Wizard has shown to do in the given combat, it's definitely something way over the party's paygrade if they are that easy to detect and observe.
It's definitely an assumption. You don't think the party would have prepped more than a single spell if they knew they were going to be fighting the BBEG?
And honestly? Not necessarily. It would make complete sense for a powerful mage to set up a puppet leader for this exact kind of scenario and maintain his own secrecy.
"Go to X stronghold of evil, the tyrant is there and must be destroyed. Surprise! Theres an even bigger bad behind it!" Is an extremely common fantasy game trope.
Crits happen. If you're going to fudge an NPC's lucky roll, why not start fudging PCs', too? Heck, why not just, like, not give your NPCs scythes and stuff?
I think scythes are kind of a GM trap. Sometimes you want to give one to an NPC because it's all cool and thematic to have the "Grim Reaper" aesthetic for some villains. If you want to do this, and none of the PCs are using scythes, you might want to just houserule their crit multiplier down to a more manageable x3. You can beef up the statline some other way (though does a scythe really need to be more powerful than a ranseur? Can I just say it's a ranseur that looks like a scythe?), but I'm not really a fan of handing x4 crit multipliers to NPCs (I'm not sure they should even be in the game, to be honest, 20/x4 is not really a great weapon to begin with, since threat range is more important multiplier.)
If you are going to read my post, make sure you read it properly. After all, this was the second sentence in the section you quoted:
Although a fair point, this would also require knowledge as to the character strength and system mastery of each player. Something which the GM should know about, sure, but it is not something we would know
I read your post, which is why I replied with a question rather than a statement. You seemed to be implying that while the GM should know, we (the forum poster's) couldn't possibly know what he did or didn't know. You weren't clear, and seemed to be trying to set up a loophole big enough for the OP to drive a truck through should he so desire. Not my fault if you are being unclear. Thank you for the clarification. I do understand you now.
If character death, at any point, at any time, especially given the assumed precedent of their level (something which, according to you, I shouldn't even do, but there has to be one, otherwise we go to the first part of this quote), wasn't something that could happen, then quite frankly the Wizard wouldn't have even needed to buff or use the scroll, if the GM makes encounters that much of a pushover...
...But I suppose according to you, like the customer of a company, the player is always right, and the company, the GM, is always wrong
Its difficult to take you seriously when you accuse me of not reading your post, and then either mistakenly or deliberately misquote me to make your point. I cant tell if you are actually trying to support your argument or are just trolling me. Lets assume you are serious, and feel free to quote where I've made those assertions.
The Player is not always right. The GM is not always wrong. In this case the Player, and his actual actions (or lack of) and preparation (or lack of) is irrelevant in many ways, and the DM is wrong only by virtue of failing to set a reasonable encounter given the power differential (NPC to Wizard) and in the sense of what is fun for everyone (Clearly the player did not agree the manner of death was justified).
While its been established that the OP had made mistakes in his build, I concede that he could have correctly made a build within the rules that legitimately would deal that much damage. I'm not arguing he couldn't. I'm arguing he shouldn't.
And in likening it to GM fiat death, I'm aware that it had game mechanics rather than instant death. My point is the result is the same whether you stat it or not. "Wizard walks in room, BBEG goes first, wizard dies". To the player its much of a muchness. If the GM wants to pretend it wasn't fiat by statting the encounter then all he's doing is deluding himself. It ain't fooling anyone.
"But its what a smart BBEG would do!" I hear from the future. Sure it is. But the GM controls how powerful the BBEG is. A BBEG that deals half that damage per strike can still be an effective, and potentially lethal, final encounter. A better GM would structure the encounter to leave a player some choices, actions and options and still challenge them.
One of two things happened here;
1) The GM UNKNOWINGLY made the BBEG too powerful, and with 'unlucky' (for the player) rolling killed the wizard outright. This is bad encounter design.
2) The GM KNOWINGLY made the BBEG too powerful, and with 'lucky' (read as 'intended') rolling killed the wizard outright. This is bad GMing
If you want to kill players, exert your authority and dominance or "teach newbs a lesson" - play videogames where you have the freedom to be an anonymous a-hat. If you want to engage friends or colleagues in a meaningful RPG experience this is not the way to do it.
TL:DR; GMs are not wrong all the time. IN THIS CASE the GM was wrong.
@ Seebs: The only DD feat he had was the one where he got to make a single attack; he didn't get the others which would allow him to cleave into the Fighter, which is where the important mechanic was ignored.
Including the critical multiplier, and taking off Rage (+4), Arcane Strike (+20), and Heroism (+8), that's about 32 damage he added on after the crit that should be added. Fair enough, we can subtract that from the total.
Taking the average roll of 18 (4.5 from 2D4, X 4) from the dice, throwing in the correct Power Attack scale of -4, +12(/+48), Strength modifier of 28 via Bull's Strength (+36), and adding in the average Vampiric Touch roll (+35), that's a total of 137 on average, even moreso with a max roll on both damage dice. Maxing out the Vampiric Touch (which would've been pretty boss for a Metamagic, adding an extra 25 damage) as well as the weapon damage dice (which is another 14), would result in a grand possible total of 166.
Taking average HP for each character level, the PC would have a total of 63 before we throw in Favored Class (doubtful that he took it), Con bonuses, and Toughness feat. Assuming a grand total of +4 per character level, it would result in about an extra 68 hit points, a grand total of 131 before he can go unconscious.
By rights, if the dice rolled well enough, the Wizard could get oneshotted. If the Vampiric Touch spell was Maximized as the Metamagic, the Wizard would be dead for sure. Heck, if the BBEG didn't have to DD in, he could've used the EK capstone to pop a spell as a Swift Action and finished the Wizard off that way.
The funny thing is? The Wizard only needed to cast a single spell, and this attack wouldn't have done a damn thing. But he didn't have it memorized, or it didn't occur to him to cast it.
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A ridiculously badass fighter could have two mid-level casters who can cast DD and take two passengers. They delay to the same initiative count, the first casts DD so all three appear so that the fighter is where he wants to be. His turn ends and the fighter's starts, and he full attacks to his heart's content. Then the other caster DDs them all away.
Rinse and repeat.
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Regarding the OP...
The thread title leaves me predisposed to thinking that yes, you did do bad.
Nothing that follows is as bad as I expected it to be. I think this would have gone differently if you guys had played through to high levels organically, starting somewhere more reasonable like 7th level or lower.
Even after years of playing loads of pathfinder and frequenting the messageboard's I'm not really comfortable as a player or a GM in encounters above, say, 14th level.
What i dont understand is how someone who is studying them carefully is not also being "studied".
Also the wizard did not seem prepared?
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But my usual assumption would be that characters who are used to ambushes will prep, and if characters aren't used to ambushes, this is a pretty crazy way to open the thing up.
This. When I see a party that is woefully unprepared for highly lethal ambush combat, it inclines me to think that being ambushed by enemies who could one-shot unprepared characters before they have the chance to act wasn't part of the campaign expectations. It's no different than not tracking food and water supplies at any point in the campaign, then suddenly hammering the players with penalties mid-battle because none of them have have supplies, so they're obviously starving and dehydrated.
@ Seebs: The only DD feat he had was the one where he got to make a single attack; he didn't get the others which would allow him to cleave into the Fighter, which is where the important mechanic was ignored.I'm really confused here. So far as I can tell, the first feat in the chain (dimensional agility) would let you use cleave, because cleave is a standard action. So I would allow the use of cleave after a quickened dimension door if you had dimensional agility.
Taking the average roll of 18 (4.5 from 2D4, X 4) from the dice, throwing in the correct Power Attack scale of -4, +12(/+48), Strength modifier of 28 via Bull's Strength (+36), and adding in the average Vampiric Touch roll (+35), that's a total of 137 on average, even moreso with a max roll on both damage dice.I don't buy the bull's strength without someone explicitly saying that a 20th-level combat-oriented character hasn't got any +strength items. The strength of 24 was "wished up", so he had a base of 19. That's pretty high for someone who's at least partially a caster.
Taking average HP for each character level,But we don't need this, we have an exact total for the PC. The PC had 168hp. Which is high, but not impossibly so if he has good con.
The funny thing is? The Wizard only needed to cast a single spell, and this attack wouldn't have done a damn thing. But he didn't have it memorized, or it didn't occur to him to cast it.Yeah, there's a lot of issues on that side too. But my usual assumption would be that characters who are used to ambushes will prep, and if characters aren't used to ambushes, this is a pretty crazy way to open the thing up.
Mostly, though... The wizard could get oneshotted, but the BBEG would then be standing there among the party for a full round before he could act again. He can't do *another* quickened dimension door...
My bad on the DD feat. I assumed it only allowed you to make a single attack as part of casting DD, as others were trying to say. That's what I get for believing what other people say without checking the facts; I mess up. (Poor GM didn't do that, and everyone is calling him a jerkoff goober for it.)
I re-read the OP's calculations, and his base calculation was 2D4+7 for a regular, unamplified attack. That's actually incorrect, since if the base Strength is 24 (possible with a rolled/buyed 18 Strength, +1 for character advancement, then +5 from inherent bonuses via Wish), the result would actually be a +10 base instead of +7, assuming a total of 24 Strength, since he is using the weapon in 2 hands. He also added a +2 damage bonus to factor in Bull Strength's increase, which would actually be +3, resulting in a Strength bonus of +13 total (X4 critical equating to +52 damage caused from Strength). Adding 16 to my otherwise assumed 36 total results in 153 damage on that critical.
Ah. So he would be hanging on by a thread and not actually dead, given the average. A high roll would still take him under, however. Though the Fighter would also have lost a big chunk, since the BBEG's Cleave is infact valid. The Wizard would have to have an effect ~22 Con for that to be plausible, something which is a lot more questionable than a EK BBEG with 28 Strength.
To be honest, there's so much you can do at 18th level to ambush with, it's practically the most common and most effective strategy, especially given Surprise Round antics one can do (even moreso with abilities that allow you to take a full rounds worth of actions). If you aren't preparing for that, anything with a relative CR for their level is going to TPK the party, and the Wizard is practically the only real means to fight until the Wizard locks down the threat to be nothing more than playthings for the Martials who just poke stuff.
Correct, he can't, though the GM's strategy was to DD in, then have lackeys cast Sanctuary on him to protect himself from party, then he DD's out as a Swift next turn, presumably to drop a Fireball or something of that effect. He didn't really have anything to worry about, since he had both his entrance and retreat covered by his lackeys.
Considering that the Wizard had Displacement up from a scroll it's reasonable to assume that the party had at least a little prep time as Displacement is not something that you have up 24/7.
