Which would you rather your DM do (without you knowing of course)?
A) Fudge the dice rolls to make the big bad boys encounter epic, to give glorious death blows, and make story conclusions extra impact full. Epic memories will be forged, even if you don't know they are false.
B) Let the dice land where they land. Sometimes this may make the final boss encounter pitiful, other times it may result in a character's untimely death. But that's the story of the dice.
B every time. I'd sooner live in a sad reality than a pleasant illusion.
It honestly totally depends on the situation.
There are times for one and times for the other. Sticking the just a single one without exception is pretty dumb.
B) because I know if players knew I was doing it they wouldn't be ok with it. I'd rather the game be played by its mechanics rather than to fellate me.
No you don't, otherwise you wouldnt play these games
B. We've had quick encounters. We've had slogfests. We've had near-death encounters. It's how the game is played.
A situation like this came up for me.
The party was figthing inside a living tower, and hanging from the ceiling of the spire was a crystalline heart. Through it it controlled the stairs, the walls, and various weapons. The party struggled, the heart far out of reach of most. And when things looked bleak, the Half-Orcs monk (with a dip in fighter) drank his potion of jumping and soared up the spire. Nat 20 on the athletics check had him soaring to the top, placing him next to the beating heart. The Bards readied action went off, Faerie Fire to give him advantage. The rogue even gave him their inspiration. The monk attacked, flurries, then action surged. And when the aftermath of this was revealed, the heart still had 6 hp left.
Do you give the party their glory or do you just let the rogue finish it off with their crossbow next turn?
I actually do this. I run Savage Worlds (shitty game by the way) and we were getting really sick of the bennies system so we did away with it. Now, you have to pay the GM (me) one dollar to get a benny. You can use the benny right away but you have to pay for it. This is in a super lethal and difficult apocalyptic cyberpunk game where it is easy to die so characters weigh their options carefully. No one has died yet but one player lost 20 bucks in one night when he got surrounded by monsters and didn't want to make a new character.
I figure, this is fair, because I am the GM and I do a lot of work prepping for the campaign. I've been DMing for almost 10 years now and it's basically a second job. So it's only fair that they provide snacks and pay a bit of money to escape my deadly DM traps......mwahahahahaha
nice trips
B, Even if you fudge rolls as a GM(I prefer not to do it myself, but whatever, that's a different debate I've had too many times), you shouldn't do it to make things more "dramatic" or any crap like that. If everything is special, that means nothing is special. If you fudge like that, "epic" moments like that will crop up all the time: they lose their meaning. Just imagine how much more impactful a moment like that would be were it truly unique.
Fuck off Virt.
Rogue finishes it next turn. Close, but no cigar.
...
When I was a fledgling GM, I used to fudge the dice. I had this idea of a perfect story, or a perfect encounter where one side always managed to scrape by at the end, but conveniently without any serious consequence.
I found that when you play almost exclusively by the dice, a lot of things can happen. Sometimes they're awesome, and the dice were on your side, and other times it makes character deaths pitiful, or BBEGs look like chumps. That's the way it goes though, and having moments like those only makes the actual epic moments that much greater. You need something to measure greatness by, even if that means sometimes things just go to shit.
B, because you don't roll unless it matters and because it matters you take what happens. A is for if you are a child and consequences mean tears and tantrums will be had
Rogue finishes it but the monk's attacks provided a weak spot for the rogue to strike
>le epin screenshot
Fuck off.
I don't fudge dice, but I fudge monster HP
I prefer something on the same end of the spectrum as B, but not quite B. If someone gets royally screwed by the dice (like, an entire session of shit rolls kind of screwed), I typically fudge things so they don't lose anything major permanently.
I also fudge things on favor of bosses if I messed up and they would totally have something but I forgot to give it to them. If everything is fine or as it would be, but the PCs get lucky or have a great plan or something like that, I can and have let boss fights end early and anticlimactically.
B, which is really detrimental to me almost exclusively as my players wander past gormless NPCs who buy their story or are actually incredibly knowledgeable about the asked subject.
Most recently my DH BBEG who was performing checks in the background to see how fast his progress was, 6 horribly failed rolls later and I threw out all my notes as he killed himself and most of the people on the hive
B 100%.
A is just wankery, and even if we don't get proof, we can feel it when the dice are going "too" well for us but not perfectly. It's hard to fib that sort of thing no matter how slick you think you are as a story teller.
No, you fuck off. Veeky Forums is an image board and is built on macros.
A
Having three session of buildup and the grand concluding battre ruined by two npc attacking first, rolling two crits and one-shotting the boss before à anyone get to play is pretty shit.
Same in the other way. lolrandom dices make fun stories on Veeky Forums, not son much fun games. Unless you play mature and gritty stories, I guess.
funny enough this came up last session
DM rolled High, I rolled Low
ended up taking a banshee scream to the face
and failing the death saves
gg, ez, thank you, try again.
after he asked if I'd have liked him to fudge it in my favour, I said no. Sad to see him go, but well the randomness of the dice makes the story, for both the DM and player.
>"The wheel turns, and we must turn with It"
I guess if we got to the last "boss" and wiped them turn 2 I'd expect the DM to not so-much fudge the dice, as add a "problem", you know?
for shame
Well I'll keep saying "B" because I'm not supposed to know the GM is going with "A". As far as my party knows I'm being completely honest, and I usually am.
You aren't ready to be here yet.
B most of the time, A and slightly fudging the results on my players' side if things are too grim.
An example would be when a villain stabs a PC and gets a crit that could immediately kill him in the first turn. Instead, I fudge the result a bit so that the PC is about to die, but his companions get a (slim) chance to save him if they organize themselves.
A. If we don't know, it didn't happen.
As a gm I roll openly on the table. Can't fudge a thing. I know full well my current gm fudges. I know full well my thoroughly plot entrenched pc cannot die.
Every time I get into combat it just kind of becomes, ehh lets see how long this set piece to get pushed over.
That's like if Bard missed his black arrow and Smaug never died. The Hobbit would have been a flop.
As a GM, I just make up the target numbers as I go, so its a combination of A and B. Like, if Im playing PF and somebody wants to use a mind-effecting spell, I roll the die, look at the result and consider whether he should pass the save or not, reasonably. If its a tough encounter and he rolls a 15, chances are he's gonna pass. If its a pushover he's gonna need something a lot stronger. I didnt always do things this way, but I find that most players will do things you do not expect, and as I have a full-time job I cant really plan for every contingency.
It is my silent and constant shame. I dont think any of the players in the three games I run realize Ive been making up all the numbers for about a year now.
I tried out both.
The first big battle was a against a White Dragon. The party had fought their way through the kobold mooks. Dodged traps (one of which the wizard almost got squished), explored caverns, carefully shimmied across narrow ledges. At the bottom of the cavern was the White Dragon. It was a pitiful fight. My dice average was about a 6.5. At one point I fully missed the wizard with a multi attack. At the end of the session, one of the players remarked disappointingly, "Well... was that how you thought the dragon fight would go too?"
One fight was against a corrupted human king. The build up was high as the party spent sessions exploring the ruined castle. In the fight I strategically rolled the dice (If I missed an important attack I let it hit, but made sure to pay it back with a failed roll at some point). The corrupted king battled fiercely and in the end, it was a clutch Mass Healing Word bringing three party members back up that allowed them the final round to bring him down. The party were all smiles at the end of it. Each of them told me how fun the night was. They gossiped about the fight for almost an hour after the session ended.
I know the players would be upset if I told them I rigged it to make it more enjoyable for them. But Betty from HR would also hate my guts if I told her she looks fat in skirts.
That's a cute story and all, but honestly the fight with the dragon sounds way more interesting than the fight with the king. On one hand, you're letting a story happen where a dragon got slapped down. On the other hand, you held a bunch of people hostage to your story to make it (and by proxy, you) look cool.
If you want your players to remember your fights better without having to cheat, just let them know how dangerous the attack WOULD have been had it connected.
"The king makes a swing at you...and you managed to raise your sword and block it just in time, but the force of the blow sends a gust of wind in your direction, knocking your helmet off and cracking the floor behind you." Shit like THAT gets remembered better as the players making a desperate scramble, as opposed to "The king attacks...and misses. Okay, that was pathetic. Bob, your turn."
By the way, nice false dichotomy.
THE HUGE DRAGON SWINGS HIS MASSIVE TALONS AND MISSES.
Very dramatic. Not like they havent fought dragons before in other games. Snore.
well I for one cant recall an attack that has ever missed me. I remember saving throws against things like disintegrate and wail of the banshee. But never an attack. I do remember when a Minotaur gored me for 3/4 of my fucking hp though.
>THE HUGE DRAGON SWINGS HIS MASSIVE TALONS AND MISSES.
Nah, that's a shit description. Get visceral, explain with the senses and the shifting of the scenery.
Trips=truth
Generally B. I have never done A and I don't support B as part of a rigid moral code, but I find the game more interesting when luck intervenes to fuck shit up for people.
>Party barbarian spends 7 rounds in single combat against a goblin
>Gets knocked down to 0 hit points
>Rest of the party has to run in and save his dumb ass
It was low level, but fuck it was hilarious with the barbarian swinging like a blind retard while the goblin fought like a half blind retard.
>but I find the game more interesting when luck intervenes to fuck shit up for people.
This. I've used the tiniest sprinklings of A but generally stick to B simply because the rolls themselves tell a story that's often better than what you came up with, and you'd miss it if you keep ignoring them. A isn't wrong by principle in my book, but it's a naive overcorrection in most cases.
>Depends on the situation
You fagmuffins are almost as bad as "hurr durr depends on the setting" guys.
IT DOESN'T DEPEND ON THE SITUATION. EITHER YOU DO ONE. OR OTHER. ONE OR OTHER.
Anything else is double standards and hypocrisy.
B, but the GM has duty to end the combat when it starts to feel like a slogfest due to whiffed rolls etc. Personally I don't want to play a single combat for longer than an hour, and if the GM sees me starting to get bored he should conspire to end the encounter in any way he sees fit. It doesn't always have to be enemies running away, but things like the floor of a rotting castle giving up and dropping the PCs to another level is okay too.
I'd fudge it, call it a culling strike, heart shatters, du du du du da duh da da daaa, move on.
>swinging like a blind retard while the goblin fought like a half blind retard
my sides, all twenty of them
You literally didn't do anything I said. Reread the post.
"The huge dragon swings his massive talons at you...you were about to raise your shield, but sensing danger, you jump out of the way at the last second. The ground beneath you no longer exists, being replaced with three open trenches. Thank god you didn't block that."
Do it like above and see if you get any changes to memory.
>well I for one cant recall an attack that has ever missed me.
3.5 has serious issues with accuracy resulting in 'Past a certain level, attacks are basically certain to hit'
The counterpoint, as provided by Puddleglum.
>"One word, Ma'am," he said...
>"One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things--trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself."
>" Supose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right."
>"But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."
Anyone with a lick of talent, or even understanding, for storytelling would call that the end of it instead of having another 2 or 3 rounds of combat.
This is the GOAT solution
A person with even greater talent would be able to play by the rules AND make it fun and exciting
Damn Kek be laying bantz
Definitely the latter. Describe how the heart is broken and cracked and barely holding itself together after the monk's assault, but still "beating" as good as it can, trying to attack the party with all the traps it's got. Make your players survive its last stand. Then the rogue can shoot the heart dramatically and you can describe it shattering into a million crystal pieces.
Also, on the subject of really unlucky rolls that'd result in a PC's death... I always keep the roll, but if my players are mature enough, I usually pull them aside and ask them if they do want the character to die.
If they wanted to keep exploring that character's arc or felt like the death was unfair or stupid, the PC gets to live, but they have to pick from a list of permanent injuries and associated stat reduction.
Otherwise if they feel like they made bad decisions and deserved it, or if they feel like the death was sufficiently heroic and meaningful, or are chill with making a new character (especially if they were waiting to try out something new) then the PC does die.
Also:
Don't describe the deadly white dragon missing like an idiot. Describe the wizard's adrenaline rush and miraculous dodge.
>the GM has duty to end the combat when it starts to feel like a slogfest
Yeah, this. If my enemies can't hit the players and the players can't hit them, the enemies just decide to ignore the PCs and/or fuck off to accomplish their objective elsewhere. You do give your monsters motivations, right?
Oh my god, this shit sometimes is just the only way to keep things fun for everyone.
>Rouge trader
>3 friend party, with the third friend being a recent addition
>Our dpr is buddy Arch-militant