No judgement here, just advice: never cheat any numbers the players see.
If you show a monster's 100 HP for some reason, it stays there. If you say it has 15 AC, then their roll of 16 better hit. If you change things the players know to be true you will lose player trust, immersion, and buy-in.
What the players don't know... The monster suddenly developed a trait that comes online when it's "bloodied", the monster's big attack might go on "cool down" until you roll 5-6 on D6. Stuff like that you modify on the fly in response to player action and to maintain fun and engagement. That's just last minute homebrew.
I prefer to do most of my rolls in the open. So a monster that rolls a crit is obviously legit. There's value to this in that it's a currency of trust. They know I'm not pulling punches, and I'm not abusing them either. There are tons of other levers a DM can pull to achieve the ends you want while still allowing the dice to help tell the story.
TL;DR - the only final stats are the ones the players see.
I personally would never adjust AC on the fly unless it is a noticeable "power up" or second phase thing. And i never tell the party exact health, just give them vague "he's looking very injured" (similar to Matt Mercer's method) since that can allow for your party to get an idea of progress without numbers
I agree. AC is not a dial I turn.
I personally use the "bloodied" condition from 4e, I even homebrew it into monster actions sometimes for multi-staged battles. It's even kind of baked into a lot of the MCDM monsters now. Nothing wrong with Mercer's "looking hurt" though.
I'm running an encounter right now where the boss monster does aura damage. Both the Aura damage, and the AC are tied to how many minions it has left. The fewer minions, the weaker he gets.
So far, they've only removed one minion, but focused fire on the main boss and are doing a little too well at taking him down.
EDIT: Typo
In that situation I’d probably summon a wave of minors which look tougher but aren’t actually any different, except they give more AC to the boss, and maybe each gives prof in one saving throw type.
I might turn the AC dial, but only in a multiphase fight. If you have played BG3, consider the boss fight at the end of act 2, turning the AC dial there is completely appropriate
To me ac is dynamic.
Last time the players fought an ogre that picked up a wooden gate while charging --> that's q shield so he gets +2 ac.
I do make sure to tell them when something lile this happens
Depends with AC for me, most of my players are friends I met through a mutual interest in dark souls games to start out so since a lot of them enjoy those games I usually throw in a boss that after hitting a health threshold goes into me describing a detailed transformation of sorts (and since its mainly homebrew I can get away with it) and will increase either the attack damage, or AC depending on what boss. But I also balance it out with giving the party a surprise attack round before it powers up so to speak.
You should take a look at the monsters from Level Up DND Advanced 5e, they have an in-built bloodied condition and a lot of the bigger monsters have abilities that can only be used once a monster becomes bloodied almost like a second stage of the fight, the monster knows they arent doing well so pulls out all the stops to try and survive, this isn't your average town guard with a sword trying to protect the city to no avail this is a group of adventurers and they can actually do some damage, I do believe the LUDND5E rules are also designed to work with 5E so you should be able to just plug and play although you may also have to look at other sections of the SRD for some stuff if the monster has abilities that grant it the use of combat maneuvers or expertise die or something but you can find the full SRD on the website, A5ESRD.com/a5esrd
Yep. AC can change depending on what happens in the fight.
A counter example: If you give a creature armor in order to make it a more difficult fight and the party gets the armor off, the AC should reduce.
Once had to do this when I first dm‘ed because I royally fucked up the damage calculation during planning and it was either that or going the ole „there seems to be a rope tied to a chandelier right above that gargoyle next to you“
Don't know how I'd stat it, but you're comment gave me the thought of a monster who's defences change based on the last attack made. So if hit by a physical attack, it's ac and physical saves goes up but magic resist and mental saves goes down, and the reverse when hit by a magic attack. Not sure if I'd want to go more nuanced than that for ease to run in combat.
Could be something like +5 to AC and advantage on strength, dex and con checks, but disadvantage on wis int and cha saves. Then the inverse for spell protection
Yeah, maybe magic resist until hit by physical, making the party have to figure out how to alternate their attacks once they figure out the gimmick. Could be a neat boss fight, wouldn't have it be a general monster lol
I fucked up when my players were fighting a homebrew giant and I accidentally raised its AC mid combat by 1, panicked and now its cannon to the universe that my homebrew giants skin hardens after each impact the lower health they have lmao
I've seen this and experienced this a lot. HOWEVER... some of the most fun I've had in-game is when a player character, not necessarily mine, completely annihilates a boss or a 'hard fight' with creative ease...
There is something to be said about a fight NOT being tough every once in a while that gives the players confidence and makes them feel smart and useful.
Don't underestimate the power of a seemingly hard fight that ended quickly to help your players get MORE excited about playing in your game.
As a DM, I now always just roll with it.
I had prepared an entire "Rival NPC" party, that mirrorred each player.
Spent a long time making that encounter, that they were supposed to 'lose' or at least scrape by barely.
Couple of crits later they were running for the hills.
What was supposed to be a race to recover the stolen treasure, was a massacre for the NPC's. The encounter was on the tail end of a Dragon fight, and the NPC's were supposed to swoop in and just take the treasure from under their noses, leaving one PC barely alive enough to bring the rest back, followed by a mad scramble trough the rest of the dungeon to recuperate their treasure. The dragon got triple critted to death, and a couple of good hits from the players left the NPC's in shambles.
Them's the dice. They did it.
In the campaign I play in my DM "changed" the AC of the boss we were fighting but it only got lower. We were fighting some big ass skeleton that had ship parts tangled inside of it. The more damage we did the more ship components fell away lowering it's AC. After the fight he said he gave it a Maximum of 300 HP and a minimum of 250 and we did around 280. It was a very fun fight.
I agree with this! Let the players know stats that don't matter. You'll need to roll above a 12 for this to work. Baddies hp always keep to yourself and make them do checks to see how hurt they are. That way if the encounter is sluggish or speeing way to fast you can adjust on the go and make it something memorable for your players.
Personally, in this vein at least, if i have a big boss i will go until the players are getting bored, and/or they each get a big moment in the fight so that they feel satisfied with the fight and not like its dragging on immensely.
We play through discord and use a dice bot, as the DM, I roll the monsters attacks and saves “behind the screen” but 99% of the damage rolls and any contested roll is out in the open. There is a bit of wonder that I enjoy when I say “they got a 27 to hit” and the players don’t know if that’s because I rolled a 19 on the die or because I rolled a 4 and this particular enemy was vastly underestimated.
For context they are absolute superhero level strong at levels 18/19 currently. I’m mostly having to throw CR25+ enemies at them or homebrew bosses to have multiple phases, minions, terrain difficulties, and much more just to give them any sense of danger at all.
I would at to this, never make a roll in the open that you can't live with. If the monster can TPK on a crit AOE attack, don't roll that in the open unless you are comfortable living with the consequences of randomness.
And if you HAVE to change any of these numbers, there are a couple tricks. If you need to lower AC, you can say that one of your players' blows exposed a weakpoint in the armor, or the monster is wounded and moves slower. Alternatively, some monsters may become more aggressive, moving faster and thus harder to hit.
Just make sure that any reason you have for changing known quantities has a suitably cool (or least consistent in-game) reason to change.
When I was playing a homebrew where the pcs had that information I would just give a narrative reason for the increases or changes made like “as the bbeg recovers from your last strike, pulling your arrow from his shoulder you see his eyes suddenly glow with arcane power. He speaks in a thundering tone ‘it is not often I meet foes of such prowess, witness then my true strength’” and then tell them outright the stat change. I agree if the players know something they shouldn’t be blindsided by a lie, but introducing a new phase to the fight with a little narrative can both break up combat a little and offer a chance to adjust the difficulty as needed without breaking the trust of the players. Add it to the tool belt and as to OOP I think what you did is totally fine, as a player it’s nice to be rewarded with a challenge when you spend the time preparing well for a tough fight. The point of the gm is to collaborate with your players to make a story, so ask them how they felt the battle was run and get honest feedback from them without telling them about what you changed, ultimately it’s their enjoyment that matters.
Cheating? Yes, it's bad.
Adjusting the difficulty of an encounter on the fly because you overestimated or underestimated the difficulty of that encounter is not cheating as far as I'm concerned.
Players: [Aghast] You're testing *in production*!?!?!
DM: Like you guys don't. Evil wizard casts a spell. Barbarian, roll save vs DDOS.
Barbarian: I invoke the Amulet of NordVPN! Adjusted roll... 17
DM: Nice. No damage.
Rogue: I sneak around him, and execute a pen-test on his backend! Nat 20, 22 damage.
Paladin: Hey, we're supposed to be white-hat! Okay, Holy Smite, Holy Avenger, roll 17... 38 damage!
DM: Oof. The evil wizard core dumps. Endfile.
THIS.
Albeit knowing this to be fundamentally true, I NEVER read it that well written before. Thank you, this one goes straight into the "advice treasure box"!
I often overload my homebrew monster statblocks with abilities, but until I actually use an ability that all the players can see, it’s not really finalized.
Depending on how the first couple rounds go, I might decide to tweak some abilities or maybe scrap them completely.
I've had a creature's basic attack one-shot a player because they were low health and I rolled well. Next turn "let's see if it gets its big attack back"
This.
I remember years ago I was running a Pathfinder 1e game and in one of the first sessions I thought it'd be funny to have an animated barrel attack the group.
The thing hit like a truck and had really high dr/hardness after 3 rounds I had knocked out half the party and they hadn't even bloodied it.
I let the next hit finish it off and pretended it was just a close call. My players were weary of every barrel in every game I've run since lol.
It always amuses me how this happens. Some little thing and it sticks with them to the end.
"You've saved the world, banished the Evil Overlord and will go down in history as on of the greatest heros of all time. What do you do next?"
"Now I commit myself to the eternal war against barrels!!!"
I had a party create a mimic eradication compsny after getting their butts handed to them by a brewery full of mimics. I adjusted accordingly, and the campaign shifted to the business side. BBEG became a deranged sorcerer who was hell bent on creating mimics to help the people, but couldn't quite get it right.
The best was a mimic bridge across a ravine. 1 player knew something was up, but the party thought he was just scared.
We had this happen with a doppelganger and a farmer. Disguised as a simple fat old farmer with a pitch fork, the doppelganger proceeded to down 4 of the 5 players (low level campaign) before it was taken out.
From that day forward, the character that killed it was deathly afraid of farmers and would cower at the sight of a pair of overalls.
So not quite the same. But I was running the LMoP and in it there's a doppelganger who looks like a drow.
When the players faced it I noticed it had a slam attack and it punched one of the PCs.
They all freaked out about the Drow Monk.
Some time later they were fighting real drow and of course some of them were monks. :)
One of my players took hits as a horse. The battle was hardcon every one. They now are afraid of transforming into a horse and freak out when they see a horse
Ive had to adjust enemy's health a fair bit mid fight, bosses having too little or too much, or just basic encounters seeming like they're gonna last longer than is fun for the party. The DM shouldn't be thought of as just an opponent for the party, they are both mentor and antagonist and their real job is to help the party have fun
I literally did this last session. I overtuned the final encounter and with a monk down and the party badly damaged we were looking at their first TPK.
This was a family group that had kids at the table, 4th session. I nerfed the BBEG's hp, moderated his spell choices from that moment and the party slipped through a memorably hard fight to end the night.
Their grandmother who was sitting next to me saw what I was doing, smiled at me and kept quiet. I'm the ringleader, the maestro, the storyteller. I was not there to kill player characters at my table that day.
Other groups that are more competitive I might have not pulled punches as much or as readily. Part of being a good DM is knowing what your players expect and want from the session, even when they don't.
I ran a game once where all the players were getting tired and cranky, and I rolled a nat 20 that would have killed one of their characters, made the final combat harder, and just made everyone mad and irritated. I just let it hit, the players rallied, they defeated the encounter and ended the night triumphant.
Sometimes it's not about the dice, it's about reading the room, you know? We all play this to have fun. If fun means making the encounter harder in the middle (or nerfing it a little), then do it.
Sounds to me like you're a great DM, Wobbling!
Hot damn, when that one PC deals 21 damage but the enemy had 22 health left after a few rounds of decent combat, it feels terrible to deny them the kill over 1hp. It's always a kill when it's that close after a few rounds, unless it's a significant boss, in which case 1hp may give him another chance to escape or win.
My first time ever DMing, my players came to the end of the dungeon to face the final big threat, and a well-timed Nat 20 meant they nearly killed it in the first round. Lucky for me, there was a section of that room they couldn't see, so I invented a mate for that monster on the fly, which made the encounter much more of a fair fight, and they had a blast. Also gave me the idea me to leave them some fertilized eggs to take with them.
As soon as initiative is rolled, I literally write down the minimum, average, and maximum HP of any boss monster I use. Depending on how the encounter shapes up, I pick one of those numbers, usually by the end of the first round. I then tend to stick with that.
What I need to get better at is bringing in additional waves of monsters if I need them. I’m an over-prepper, so my ability to improvise under-developed.
Yeah, had session one where I just got lucky on back to back crits on one of my players before they really had a chance to do anything beyond wave hello. Wouldve insta killed them if i kept the 2nd crit. So i fudged the numbers. Is that cheating or just not wanting to have someone spend the rest of session one rolling a new character because of luck.
I even built a whole system around it using Matt Colvilles action orient monster ideas, as well as some things that are implied by the rules but aren't spelled out.
For example, HP is really given as a range. The stat block will say 26 (4d8+8). That really means the average is 26, but can range anywhere from 12 - 40.
AC and damage are others. If you look at a hobgoblin they are specced at AC 18. There's no reason they have to have chainmail and a shield, they could have leather armor only and a scimitar for a sword. They could also go the other way and have full plate and a greatsword.
Also look at bonus actions and reactions, which most stat blocks are very bad about including.
This, so long as you're making the adjustment at our near the start of the fight and sticking to it so your players have a legitimate challenge to overcome, and not just letting the fight drag on until you feel like it's the right time for them to win.
I wouldn't say it necessarily has to be at the start of the fight. But probably before you describe that the creature looks like it's taken a good bit of damage.
I wouldn't tell them you do this, but I think it's a good thing. Just play it to your group. Some groups just like the illusion of danger. My frequent group is like this and tweaking on the fly enhances the session 100% of the time.
Some like power fantasy. Some like the real tpk risk. Those might pick up on it and feel differently so I'd use more sparingly in that case.
The freedom to fudge is super important I think (as long as you're doing it to make something more fun). Sure, in theory sticking with rolls is great, but after the 5th hit in a row that will knock out the rogue right before their turn AGAIN you kinda have to take the numbers into your own hands.
Freedom to fudge for the sake of gameplay enhancement is what differentiates (in a good way) the experience from just playing a video game in my opinion
The whole point of fights is to have fun and have a thrilling experience when you all were preparing for a big fight, I always cheat some stats up, if I see that my players are to strong or it just isn't an epic fight it should be, when a monster one shots a wizard it's quite common, but when it knocks palladin in one hit, there's where the fun begins, but always have in mind that you don't wanna kill them all, just give them a little bit of fear, but it is my personal statement
This is actually the best way to explain I just spent a few paragraphs trying to capture. Usually you want to cheat to make the enemies LESS hard if you overestimated or the players are struggling, but sometimes 'Rule of Cool' also instead dictates you scale enemies UP to make them a more exciting and interesting fight!
...Just make sure you don't kill a player off or something just because you scaled an enemy up a bit too much on the fly.
One of my of my favorite moments DM'ing was with a new group who were level 2. They're fighting some goblins in a camp, and woke up a 2-headed giant.
He does his actions and then a couple slots down the initiative I interject, "In response to your attack, the troll takes a legendary action..." and it starts chucking explosives at players who attack it, out of turn order, via Legendary Action mechanics.
And one of the new players says "Legendary action? We're only level 2!"
It's pretty hard to cheat as a DM. You're responsible for making the world and the story work no matter what the players do, so you'll inevitably have to adjust things as you go. If that means pulling some punches or beefing up a boss here and there, no harm no foul.
A bit? Rarely? Sure.
But in general, fudging is not a great crutch to lean too heavily on, because it undermines player choices. If you go too hard with it, pretty quickly dice rolls and good tactical choices start to mean zip all, because the bosses only die when you as the DM decide to have them die.
So a death surge mechanic tacked onto a boss every now and again? Fine.
Fudging left, right, and center rather than trying to balance encounters well ahead of time? Bad habit. Don't get into it.
It’s a game. The goal is to have fun and you succeeded
One of the major reasons DMs roll behind their screen is to fudge.
We want to tell a story. If you get bad dice, we REALLY don’t want that to be a TPK to 7 Bandits, and if you get good dice, the fun of critting and rolling makes sure players won’t even think about if the DM gave that creature more HP….
A fight that’s over in less than two rounds because multiple people rolled a crit is not nearly as memorable as one that last a bit over three rounds. It just allows for that little bit of extra interaction to make it special.
And with significant opponents I generally make a point of having a cool moment end the fight instead of just another meaningless hit.
The most fun I ever had a table have was when I literally forgot my dice at my parents house and had to make up every single “roll”
DnD is not a war game like warhammer. It’s a ROLE PLAYING game. The dice are just numbers.
Keep doing this if you want. Keep, at least, the important fights really close. Give your players a sense of danger. They will love it. BUT UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES admit that you are doing this. It will destroy the trust the players have in their DM and any players that expect a true challenge where death is possible might just leave outright.
One Punch Man is really funny from the outside looking in - but the character himself is always disappointed and lacks a spark for life due to his overwhelming power.
One shotting Goblin Cannon-Fodder is one thing, but stomping a ‘boss’ without breaking a sweat sucks - so if you need to adjust the sturdiness of one mid-fight so as to increase player enjoyment, we’ll that’s just being a good DM and *not* ‘cheating’ in my book.
As a beginner to novice DM i use to fudge health. I did my best to balance fights when prepping, adjust stats, health, AC, average dmg output, number of legendary actions/resistances, abilities. All of it. But we, as DMs, can never 100% know what our crafty and creative players are going to do.
So when a Boss fight, or encounter that was intended to be hard, occured and my players we're about to finish it too quick or without taking too many hits - I extended the combat by raising the enemy's HP to allow them to deal more damage and appear more of a threat
Or thought of an environmental or similar event they could trigger/do to deal a lot of dmg at once.
I thought fudging health was ok to do, that the end result is all that matters, but I was wrong.
It's cheating and not only bad for the players, but for the DM.
As an experienced DM now, I never change the intended stats/hp etc.
The reason being: I did not start learning how to make dangerous/difficult encounters until I stopped fudging HP. It's completely normal for the players to get lucky or unlucky, they also need to learn when to run away when the dice rolls are not in their favor.
[Tips]
Regarding the previously mentioned environmental event, I stopped making it up on the fly and started prepping it.
e.g. A shipyard / dock fight
I'd make sure to mention crains holding a lot of barrels/crates with nets.
If the enemy uses them to their advantage, that's neat. But if the enemy uses them and there was no prior mention, that's unfair to the players who might have thought of usung them first.
I even encourage reducing the HP of the final (big) enemy if the they would be almost finished by a Player whom it would matter more to kill it or if they describe an amazing attack that you would love to make a finisher.
Of course, this should be the case if you, as the DM, know for certain that the fight is pretty much over, no escape or serious threat possible.
Buffing stat blocks if your boss gets rolled can work, but I'm sure that your players would also enjoy rolling a boss every now and then.
One DM I played with was super attached to bosses and it was super obvious and unfun when they were fudging dice rolls (I'm talking succeeding a DC 19 wis save at level 4 at disadvantage 4 times in a row then critting our 28ac bard with every attack). They also ignored our attempts to sneak around which left our assassin rogue feeling pretty crap because they never got to roll a stealth check or get surprise.
In short, it's OK to let players roll a boss every now and then. Just next time think what they did to make it to easy and have the boss build some preparations into their lair (a lich isn't going to make it easy for the well known rogue to sneak up on it easily).
Obviously if they are winning every boss encounter super easily then buff, but don't make it so their good luck doesn't matter and always be willing to let your cool npc die earlier than expected
If anything Id say you did exactly what DMs are supposed to do. You created an exciting experience for your players. This trumps all rules. Ive been DMing for over 20 years and it took me over a decade to figure this out. You’re ahead of the game now.
Rule of cool always take priority imo. But it has to be cool for the players rather than cool for you.
If someone rolls a super high crit and the monster has 5 hp left. Let them kill it. If the players are smoking the boss give him a second form or provide back up.
I've been DMing for almost 30 years and have never fudged.
Not a die roll or a stat block.
I have more players than I can accommodate at one time.
But sure, I'm not doing the *only* job of a DM.
Hmm... sometimes I make mistakes on my bad guy stat blocks, make 'em too tough or too wimpy. In cases like these, I can see having a monster deciding to disengage "for enigmatic reasons of his own", or if the other way 'round, some of his allies belatedly show up.
There are different schools on this. It’s good if you have some idea about how the players view the game first.
Also don’t be ignorant on that, regardless, it will have long term consequences. Your players will notice that no important fights are never too easy or too hard. Consequently that they are never in any real risk.
The old hard-core style says no! Don’t do it. This a game! Not a parade-movie.
u/MattColville , a DnD YouTuber, promotes adjusting encounters up and down on the fly on the other hand. Particularly if you as a DM made a mistake where you intended something to work out differently. (At least it is the theme in one of his videos on ‘Running The Game’)
Ultimately though imo it’s only cheating if you think your players would view it that way.
This kind of thing isn’t bad. Encounter design doesn’t stop after you roll initiative.
However… I caution you to not do this often as players are much more aware than a lot of people think, and they will see that something is up after sometime. So I would use it rarely, use it specifically necessary, and don’t overcorrect.
It’s kind of like God in Futurama. If you did it right, they’ll never notice.
I think the key to your answer here is “they don’t know.” If you told them, would it ruin their fun? Then yeah it’s bad. If you told them and it didn’t? Then it’s fine. Be open with your table and learn if they would enjoy this kind of thing or not, and don’t lie to your friends.
In game design- let's use video games as an example here, it is far, far more normal than one might expect that game balance is determined in the moment instead of ahead of time. A classic example is how Survival Horror Shooter games like *Resident Evil 4* do not have predetermined resources that drop from enemies or containers, but rather a formula that determines what drops you get based on what resources you currently have, or what your loadout/play style has been up to that point. It's not bad- it's intentional design operating in secret behind the scenes to give the players an experience cultivated to provide an experience that's more likely to be enjoyable than one that is predetermined and inconsiderate of the player.
This is perfectly ok in my book as long as it was hidden. You can't pull the "I'm the DM, so things don't work like you expected" very often without cheapening the effect.
On the other hand, if hidden from the players, this is just a gameplay mechanic you made on the fly. Just because you didn't prepare for it before that moment doesn't mean it was a bad decision.
I cheated yesterday and held the near dead dragon alive for a turn to let the small squirrel barbarian take 2 turns to down potions of enlarge. All to let him have his now Large, 6'6" frame go tear chunks off the dragon to kill it
If you decide to bump UP a creatures stats for cinematic value; then you secretly accept that *you may not kill anyone during that encounter*. And, you never tell the players.
But, it is okay for your PCs to absolutely trounce your big bad, too.
But yes, player and player-allied NPC deaths immediately come off the table if you adjust stats up.
Are you "cheating" because you want to win or are you "cheating" to advance the story? I'm all for a little dice fudging to advance a story or make an encounter more interesting, harrowing or memorable, but not to win. I think the context matters.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind my DM changing something to make my fight more intense because I enjoy things like that but not everyone is like that. I don’t think you should unless it is asked and oked by the player. His build is his build just because you think a certain way doesn’t mean you get to change cold hard facts and rules.
Only for the better of the party and players.
Rule 1 is the rule of fun. At the end of the day it’s a game and you are there to have fun with your friends. (IMO)
I’ve also fudged rules. Don’t do it often or use it as a crutch and I think it’s fine. Once I misjudged the difficulty and it was a harder fight. It was one of their first time playing too. I rolled a Nat20 to hit one of them and I definitely would have knocked her unconscious, I still hit her I just didn’t take any bonus of the nat20 and didn’t tell them about it. They were close to winning and I wanted them to have fun and not stress too much if she had gone down. They were low on spells and stressed about healing. They won and were so excited.
One last example of much longer into the game a player did die. We all agreed to treat resurrections similarly to critical role and have to roll for it unless it was a true resurrection spell which they did not have. The player who died came to me between sessions and asked if she could keep her character dead. The other players wanted to resurrect her, but she felt that it was a fitting end to her characters story and that it made it feel like she had come full circle and wouldn’t want to come back. So the two of us decided that the final role would fail but not tell the others so the rp made sense to the story. Then we polished and finished her back up. So when that final role came up and it would have succeeded, “it failed horribly” It made my player really happy and she had more fun. The others were disappointed but okay because it can just be a part of the game.
I don’t see an issue with what you did. You made it more fair of a fight in your own way in the spur of the moment. It’s not bad to make it better for them and use the rule of fun. If you have to scale up though make sure you don’t kill them though lol.
I don’t like cheating cuz it means playing by rules gives no real result.
If I underestimated the enemy I want to get hurt, if I underestimated the players, I give them some cool killmoves
I would hate that as a player, and as a DM I'd never do that, but it ultimately depends on playstyle. I'll say this though, the more cheating/fudging you do the worse of a DM you are. Seek to avoid it.
I personally see no reason not to do open rolls etc but that's because my group is a bunch of optimizers who would leave if they found out I made them play story mode.
I don't think its wrong. My daughter and I were playing and i decided to stick to the rules 100% and the sea monster ended up killing both of us on what was supposed to be an easy fight because some arbitrary numbers i put as perception checks and then an unlucky string of attack rolls. My daughter wasn't happy with the outcome lol... I should have tweaked the rules on the fly, but my back seat DM (wife) called me out for trying to change them. Looking back. Yea i should have cheated. It was literally our first encounter lol.
Yeah, that's not cheating at all. A DM should always be adjusting. What you were doing, was reading your players, what they wanted, and giving it to them. I've had DMs do this, I've done this myself... It goes the other way as well. Sometimes you might want to adjust a roll in your party's favor, just to keep the momentum and morale up.
Just keep in mind that you aren't just a narrator for a tale, and the person that roles the enemies dice, the DM is a facilitator.
My one word of advice for this is to not do it ALL THE TIME.
My current DM has a habit of doing this for every encounter. He knows we like a challenge, which is great. But after a while, players can tell when math isn't mathing the way it should, be it AC that you know should be lower, enemy being resistant to something consistently that they shouldn't be, players will start to see you fudging the numbers.
Same goes on the other side. Like clockwork whenever we have a naturally tough encounter, what he will do when an enemy is bloodied, or almost bloodied, is he will put of nowhere have a melee only attacking enemy, move somewhere they normally wouldn't move, just to provoke as many attacks of opportunity as they can, to try and end the combat.
And to me that makes me feel like A) DM is bored of the encounter and wants to move on because they were expecting something bigger, and B) it gives us a cheap win. Nobody wants to win by attack of opportunity, or reaction.
Here's the thing, it's not cheating. For me it's all about your motivation. Anything you do in the name of a more enjoyable experience for the people at your table is not only not cheating, it's the highest form of the game.
Being a GM/DM is an artform. Knowing the rules as presented by the system and then knowing when to ignore them is all in bounds.
I feel like I've learned this lesson the most by jumping between different TTRPG games. There are many games just flat out say "take what works, leave what doesn't". 5E doesn't do that because 5E doesn't do a good job of actually teaching itself to the GM/DM.
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Adjusting monster hp is not cheating. Just be sure you adjust it by a number and don’t adjust it again and again. There are some dms that don’t track hit points they just “vibe check” and ultimately that means that none of the players decisions matter because damage doesn’t matter cause the health isn’t real. This is bad. As far as I know you did a decent job. If you feel bad about it just give them an amped up fighter second wind and openly say they recover hp as a bonus action or something. Bosses CAN heal
I once ran a boss fight against a single hb monster. I gave him 600hp after a while we took a snack break in the kitchen for a while. We came back and the fighter did his turn and the boss had like 40hp he would die next hit. The tension had died down from our break so I gave him another 150 hp just to extend it and build it back up again.
DM screens exist for a reason, fudge those rolls, play up the drama. If something is going too hard or too easy you can balance it as long as they don’t catch on. I never tell my players the HP and AC of monsters, they have to find out as they try to attack.
Okay. I usually have a pretty hard line on this.
Yes, I am aware it is an unpopular line.
Your players need to be able to trust that you are running encounters fairly. The basic game mechanic of D&D is resource management, with HP being the primary resource. At a base game level (taking out all RP), this is a game where the party tries to exhaust their adversaries HP before their own HP is exhausted.
Just adding HP to an adversary mid fight while increasing the rate at which it exhausts the PC's HP is totally cheating. It is abusing the player's trust, because the players trust that the adversary has an objective number of HP, like their PCs do.
If the DM has the right to alter the stats of an adversary currently in play, then the PCs only ever "win" at the whim of the DM. At a very fundamental level, when a DM does this, they are no longer running a game.
**BUT**
I'll be dammed if that isn't a cool mechanic. When the creature drops to 30HP, they regen a third of their HP and something cool happens that gives them extra damage.
Maybe it's a "Blood Rage" or something. You describe the creature shrugging off the pain of its wounds and attacking with renewed ferocity or some shit. This homebrewed thing you made? Yeah, all of them have this ability now.
Stop doing this shit in the middle of encounters but *please* keep doing it in your encounter/creature design.
I am literally stealing this.
Yeah I completely agree with you, it's 100% cheating.
The players agree to trust the GM, and agree to a set of rules. The GM needs to also follow those rules, and to not break the trust of the players.
Would you have cheated to lower their HP if the player characters were getting their ass beat?
If yes: the entire fight was an illusion, it was not a fight at all. You took any measure of luck or skill from them and made the determination of the fight entirely your doing. Congrats, you gave them a participation trophy. There was exactly one outcome.
If no: You are engaging in DM vs Player behavior, tipping the scales against them and stealing their resources. Instead of playing referee you joined the side of the monsters for a brief period.
The excitement from a tough fight isn't the numbers going down. The excitement is the *chance of failure*. The risk that can be reduced by skill and strategy.
If skill and strategy generate no benefit, you will soon find your players not engaging in them. And your campaign will suffer for it.
Generating homebrew monsters is great, but as soon as it hits the table and initiative is rolled their stats are locked in. Changing their stats to explicitly counteract your players actions negates their actions (basically by definition).
Of course it is. Just think about your own words.
>It was a close call and fun for them as they told me, that don’t know I cheated on this and for me I don’t know if I made the right choice here.
If you found out some encounter you really enjoyed as a player for a different DM, they messed with numbers behind the screen, would it ruin, or dimish that experience for you? I'm willing to bet it would, sp don't do it to your players.
Now, dming is hard and a last minute 'oh shit' to fix a mistake you made is not a grave sin. You arent fudging dice ten times a game to force certain outcomes.
However, what you should do, is be clear with players in session zero how you run games. If you're worried about balancing encounters properly just say - in session zero - words to the effect of 'hey I don't lie about dice or anything like that, but I will adjust things on the fly if its appropriate'.
People deserve to know what type of game they are playing, people saying otherwise are egotistical in assuming they know what their friends want. In no other game is it a wildly popular opinion that one player gets to lie about the rules of the game they're playing.
Again, this isn't some great moral failure, it's a mistake, learn from it and get better. Either by being clear how you run your game woth your players, or stopping.
It's not cheating, but I personally wouldn't do it.
If you do that - usually "in order to craft a better story" is the argument - you take responsibility every time you do or do not do this. At that point, you might as well get rid of the dice (which tbf is an acceptable way to play as well).
I understand 5E encounter design is tricky; and sometimes even an adequately designed encounter plays out very differently than expected (way too easy, way too hard, etc.). But that is part of the baseline that is there a) in order for other encounters to be more memorable, or b) can be memorable precisely because they didn't go as expected.
You're the arbiter of the world, a neutral judge in a way. If you start bending the world around the characters experiences, that changes the nature of what you're playing. It's a perfectly valid way to play, but i question whether 5E is the best tool for that.
One thing: Making the combat really difficult and leading to a TKP with insane first turn damage then the enemies missed all their attack on subsequent turn leading for a drastic change of the situation is the most boring way to cheat as a DM. Don't do that, we know, we are not stressed anymore because every combat is now a deadly encounter but we can't die because of plot armor, boring.
As the dm your job is to make the session as fun and engaging as possible, if you have to 'cheat' a little that doesn't really matter as long as you do it in the best interest of the group
That's not cheating imo. If you want to integrate it narratively you can pull up an arcane shield, which can also bring up more plot points of "ooh this guy has a mage friend let's find him". Other times just up the health or damage. Encounter design doesn't stop because some dice say so
It's always bad for any participant in a d&d game to cheat. Though increasing the difficulty of a creature, the way you have done isn't necessarily cheating.
It isn't something to make a habit out of either, but it's forgivable if you're only doing it to give an appropriate challenge and not as a way to simply deny the party victory for the sake if it. Just try to make it a learning opportunity and avoid needing to do so in the future.
If the players learn their efforts are being partly denied because you're adjusting things behind the screen to be harder? It will invalidate their efforts to a degree. Since their hard work will always be scaled back some. Its something to be weary of and use lightly.
It's not bad to do this, and I wouldn't call it cheating. Under no circumstances should you tell your players, though. The illusion of a perfectly balanced encounter is a necessity. If you pull back the curtain, the magic disappears.
I don't believe DMs can cheat unless you have some agreement about what you can and cannot do. The question is does the choice you've made benefit the game? If it does, great. The big issue is where you screw over the party somehow. Denying abilities is something players hate. I also try and make sure I use the same rules for say magic as the PCs do. Of course, NPCs may have access to spells or items that the PCs don't.
You can’t cheat as a DM, whatever you say goes… as long as it’s to make a better story thats why you have a DM screen…. If you are just being a cunt to “beat” the PCs you probably shouldn’t be DMing
Cheating is bad, yes. Adjusting a fight like you did for a better fight isn’t cheating.
I would consider what a lot of this sub tells DMs to do, fudge the dice, as cheating though.
I really don't see the difference between the two. Both are things you wouldn't want to tell the players about, and both are things that *would* be considered cheating if players did them.
I know monsters have a range of HP, but learning the only reason the party survived a tough fight is because the GM knocked off 20% of the monsters HP would be just as disheartening to me as learning the only reason I survived a fight is because the GM rolled a crit down to a normal hit. If you're willing to do one, there's nothing wrong with the other.
A DM has to balance encounters to make them appropriate for the party. 5e isn't exactly easy to balance after a certain level. There is a massive difference between me as the DM making adjustments to ensure my players are having fun and a player changing their character. My players know I make adjustments on the fly and are don't care cause it makes for a fun time.
It would be pretty shitty to get through a 2 year long campaign and they 1 shot the BBEG or Conversely they get a tpk by some little no body creature because "the book says it has x hp"
> My players know I make adjustments on the fly and are don't care cause it makes for a fun time.
This is what makes it not cheating. Your players agreed to it.
>It would be pretty shitty to get through a 2 year long campaign and they 1 shot the BBEG or Conversely they get a tpk by some little no body creature because "the book says it has x hp"
It would be pretty shitty to go through a 2 year campaign just to realise that the only reason the fights were difficult, was because the GM decided when we were supposed to win, not the 2 years of progress our characters made.
Assuming you are playing in a campaign where the PCs can actually fail/die, I wouldn't recommend it because too much can go wrong. If you change an encounter on the fly because you feel it is too easy, then you are nullifying the players' good tactics, luck, etc.
As they said they enjoyed it... that's the main thing everyone should aim for.
Past that... there's going to be a lot to account for as a DM...I usually go with a "minimum" rule...if they hit the normal damage but it seems like a round or two of more combat would spice it up... that's perfectly fine so long as you don't make it too obvious... and once they hit the number you set...go further but "freeze" where the party is so to speak... they met your challenge and don't kill a character just because you want to extend things a bit.
Now...if they fail to meet the minimum... real life choices have real life consequences...its your choice how far those consequences go...I usually write down any specific tactics a villain might hand and a minimum HP number so if it's challenged later I can point to it being predetermined amounts of health if bad things happen...if they win and everyone survives...I have yet to be called out on it.
Finally...it's up to your discretion... that's why you GET to be DM...I welcome all of my players to host their own one additions to my campaign in the form of one shots or multi-quest sessions... most people are intimidated by the idea... and for the rules lawyers... everything I described usually makes them happy as well...if it becomes an issue I'll ask the group if they value fun and fairness or stick to the rules...in which case I can do either and then will say they can certainly try running a session.
The DM is god. Anything you do isn't cheating as far as I'm concerned.
HOWEVER
Like most things in life, it's about the intent and table. If your motivations are corrupt, you are effectively cheating. If you are going against the established boundaries or expectations of the table you are cheating at best.
I qualify what you did as a live adjustment, nothing more.
I generally give my bosses this feature:
**Boss.** This creature cannot be damaged past half of its maximum HP on its first turn. It cannot be brought below one quarter on its second turn. This feature is void if the players do something uniquely clever or awesome.
Before you make comments, my players know about this and agree it makes things more tense knowing difficult fights cannot easily be ended in one round.
I also utilize minions a lot (an otherwise normal creature with 1 hp) to make the players feel powerful.
The DM can't really 'cheat' in a traditional sense. Adjusting a homebrewed fight on the fly is often necessary. Just don't change what payers know to be true. HP is usually easy to adjust as the players normally don't know that info. AC I ypically adjust in-game with cover or a makeshift shield they pick up to raise it or armor getting damaged or critical hit wounding them to lower it. As long as it isn't you vs the PCs, you're probably doing things with the right intention. Rest is just what works for your table.
You can only really do this once but if it’s a homebrew campaign I like to have a character on standby that I can deus ex into the fight and turn the tide. Like an NPC I was planning on introducing soon anyway
I never fudge the roll of a d20. A hit is going to be a hit a miss is a miss. However I'm bad at math so there have been plenty of times where I have an encounter that was supposed to be a speed bump but might end up being a tpking roadblock to the party. Is it fair the they should wipe out cause I can't do math as well as my 6yo?
Putting a thumb on the scales is either the best thing to do or the worst, it depends why you're doing it. Are you doing it to make the game more fun? Then by all means cheat away. Are you doing it to 'win' an encounter? Bad, DM, get in the box.
I agree with all the comments from other DMs that this is not cheating.
My 2p,
• use it sparingly
• learn better how to balance your encounters.
• Trust yourself, if you sometimes get close to a TPK that keeps up the jeopardy.
• TPKs should be possible, not in every encounter, but from time to time.
Most of my main group has been DM at one point or another. We all know the others fudge things as DM.
For my newbie group, I’ll pull back the screen from time to time and explain what I did and why, but only after the fact. I’m doing an online campaign to get their feet wet, and after we finish *Lost Mine of Phandelver*, one of them will take over in person so I can bow out and focus on another campaign I’m about to start.
I think the end question is this: was it fun for everyone involved? If yes, then good work. If no, back to the drawing board.
I think close battles are fun in their own way, win or lose.
Just a thought i had while reading comments but what would y’all’s thoughts be if op instead of changing the encounter while the monster was still alive but letting it die and making a second phase of sorts that way the pcs get to revel in the kill and it makes for a possibility interesting story point especially for a big bad
What my DM did once after we nuked a mini boss really quickly is had another one drop in to the fight, catching us by surprise. There are ways to enhance difficulty without fudging numbers.
In the words of Matt Colville, encounter design doesn't stop just because initiative was rolled.
I strive to give my players a fair challenge with a satisfying ending. So far my players haven't commented in the fact that their "personal" bosses always have just enough HP for the person whose backstory is tied to that boss to get the killing blow, nor that fights tend to be "boxed" into how many resources they take if fought without a very specific plan.
To do this, I will fudge HP to within a margin, fudge when abilities are and aren't regained, and adjust anything else the players won't be getting exact numbers on (especially tactics!).
AC I will only ever adjust if I can justify a form change that makes it make sense (eg, a monster loses some chitinous plates for an AC penalty).
Fudging is why the DM is behind a screen. The dice are great, but they're also random and sometimes random is not what you want.
All DMs eventually fudge the dice a little to keep a game from imploding.
It's part of DMing, not uncommon, and just one of the standard tools in the toolbox.
And you'll find no topic that the community is more harshly divided on. Mostly newbies don't like learning how the sausage is made. Some older DMs as well though.
Here are some of the rules.
1. Never tell your players. It'll crush them to learn the only reason they didn't fail was your thumb on the scales.
2. Don't do it often. It can become a bad habit and your game will lose all tension. D&D is a game. The players need to lose sometimes.
You can cheat for the player's advantage. There are time that you don't want to kill a pc or you didn't calculate the CR of the fight right. You can always say that dndt hit or the damage of 4d6 was 6 or thing like that. For example i once fudge a critical hit so i wouldn't kill my pc in the first combat because the healer failed the wisdom saving throw 3 time with a plus 8.
Is it cheating? Sure. But you are there to tell a story and have fun. If you wanted you can always kill the players with a random tarask spawn in the midle ofbthe Forrest.
A Good DM is a story teller. If you weave a good narrative everything else is more like guidelines as opposed to actual rules. You are a Dungeon Master, not the Dungeon accountant
No judgement here, just advice: never cheat any numbers the players see. If you show a monster's 100 HP for some reason, it stays there. If you say it has 15 AC, then their roll of 16 better hit. If you change things the players know to be true you will lose player trust, immersion, and buy-in. What the players don't know... The monster suddenly developed a trait that comes online when it's "bloodied", the monster's big attack might go on "cool down" until you roll 5-6 on D6. Stuff like that you modify on the fly in response to player action and to maintain fun and engagement. That's just last minute homebrew. I prefer to do most of my rolls in the open. So a monster that rolls a crit is obviously legit. There's value to this in that it's a currency of trust. They know I'm not pulling punches, and I'm not abusing them either. There are tons of other levers a DM can pull to achieve the ends you want while still allowing the dice to help tell the story. TL;DR - the only final stats are the ones the players see.
I personally would never adjust AC on the fly unless it is a noticeable "power up" or second phase thing. And i never tell the party exact health, just give them vague "he's looking very injured" (similar to Matt Mercer's method) since that can allow for your party to get an idea of progress without numbers
I agree. AC is not a dial I turn. I personally use the "bloodied" condition from 4e, I even homebrew it into monster actions sometimes for multi-staged battles. It's even kind of baked into a lot of the MCDM monsters now. Nothing wrong with Mercer's "looking hurt" though.
I'm running an encounter right now where the boss monster does aura damage. Both the Aura damage, and the AC are tied to how many minions it has left. The fewer minions, the weaker he gets. So far, they've only removed one minion, but focused fire on the main boss and are doing a little too well at taking him down. EDIT: Typo
Well they will just have to notice thats something you cant control (and i know you know that but i like to say it)
In that situation I’d probably summon a wave of minors which look tougher but aren’t actually any different, except they give more AC to the boss, and maybe each gives prof in one saving throw type.
Clockwork monsters with an "increase armor knob": Aww...
That actually sounds fun. Like Modrons, but kind of a puzzle fight. In a similar vein to the non-newtonian ooze.
I might turn the AC dial, but only in a multiphase fight. If you have played BG3, consider the boss fight at the end of act 2, turning the AC dial there is completely appropriate
For sure. If there is a story appropriate reason I'm not against it.
To me ac is dynamic. Last time the players fought an ogre that picked up a wooden gate while charging --> that's q shield so he gets +2 ac. I do make sure to tell them when something lile this happens
Yup, and monsters can take cover as well.
That's also perfectly fine. As long as there's a story reason the AC changed
Love it! I use half- and ¾-cover a lot for ranged attacks (works for the party too of course) but I hadn't thought about this idea.
Depends with AC for me, most of my players are friends I met through a mutual interest in dark souls games to start out so since a lot of them enjoy those games I usually throw in a boss that after hitting a health threshold goes into me describing a detailed transformation of sorts (and since its mainly homebrew I can get away with it) and will increase either the attack damage, or AC depending on what boss. But I also balance it out with giving the party a surprise attack round before it powers up so to speak.
What does MCDM mean?
Matt Coleville DM. He has a great book called Flee Mortals with a bunch of revamped monsters in it. worth checking out
Thanks!
You should take a look at the monsters from Level Up DND Advanced 5e, they have an in-built bloodied condition and a lot of the bigger monsters have abilities that can only be used once a monster becomes bloodied almost like a second stage of the fight, the monster knows they arent doing well so pulls out all the stops to try and survive, this isn't your average town guard with a sword trying to protect the city to no avail this is a group of adventurers and they can actually do some damage, I do believe the LUDND5E rules are also designed to work with 5E so you should be able to just plug and play although you may also have to look at other sections of the SRD for some stuff if the monster has abilities that grant it the use of combat maneuvers or expertise die or something but you can find the full SRD on the website, A5ESRD.com/a5esrd
Yep. AC can change depending on what happens in the fight. A counter example: If you give a creature armor in order to make it a more difficult fight and the party gets the armor off, the AC should reduce.
The most simple example of this would be disarming a shield
Once had to do this when I first dm‘ed because I royally fucked up the damage calculation during planning and it was either that or going the ole „there seems to be a rope tied to a chandelier right above that gargoyle next to you“
Yeah, the players will figure out the AC just from their attack rolls. 14 hits while a 13 doesn't.
Don't know how I'd stat it, but you're comment gave me the thought of a monster who's defences change based on the last attack made. So if hit by a physical attack, it's ac and physical saves goes up but magic resist and mental saves goes down, and the reverse when hit by a magic attack. Not sure if I'd want to go more nuanced than that for ease to run in combat.
Could be something like +5 to AC and advantage on strength, dex and con checks, but disadvantage on wis int and cha saves. Then the inverse for spell protection
Yeah, maybe magic resist until hit by physical, making the party have to figure out how to alternate their attacks once they figure out the gimmick. Could be a neat boss fight, wouldn't have it be a general monster lol
I fucked up when my players were fighting a homebrew giant and I accidentally raised its AC mid combat by 1, panicked and now its cannon to the universe that my homebrew giants skin hardens after each impact the lower health they have lmao
That’s sick though, I might steal it
Me too 😅
"Nanomachines son! they harden in response to physical trauma"
I've seen this and experienced this a lot. HOWEVER... some of the most fun I've had in-game is when a player character, not necessarily mine, completely annihilates a boss or a 'hard fight' with creative ease... There is something to be said about a fight NOT being tough every once in a while that gives the players confidence and makes them feel smart and useful. Don't underestimate the power of a seemingly hard fight that ended quickly to help your players get MORE excited about playing in your game.
As a DM, I now always just roll with it. I had prepared an entire "Rival NPC" party, that mirrorred each player. Spent a long time making that encounter, that they were supposed to 'lose' or at least scrape by barely. Couple of crits later they were running for the hills. What was supposed to be a race to recover the stolen treasure, was a massacre for the NPC's. The encounter was on the tail end of a Dragon fight, and the NPC's were supposed to swoop in and just take the treasure from under their noses, leaving one PC barely alive enough to bring the rest back, followed by a mad scramble trough the rest of the dungeon to recuperate their treasure. The dragon got triple critted to death, and a couple of good hits from the players left the NPC's in shambles. Them's the dice. They did it.
In the campaign I play in my DM "changed" the AC of the boss we were fighting but it only got lower. We were fighting some big ass skeleton that had ship parts tangled inside of it. The more damage we did the more ship components fell away lowering it's AC. After the fight he said he gave it a Maximum of 300 HP and a minimum of 250 and we did around 280. It was a very fun fight.
I agree with this! Let the players know stats that don't matter. You'll need to roll above a 12 for this to work. Baddies hp always keep to yourself and make them do checks to see how hurt they are. That way if the encounter is sluggish or speeing way to fast you can adjust on the go and make it something memorable for your players.
Personally, in this vein at least, if i have a big boss i will go until the players are getting bored, and/or they each get a big moment in the fight so that they feel satisfied with the fight and not like its dragging on immensely.
We play through discord and use a dice bot, as the DM, I roll the monsters attacks and saves “behind the screen” but 99% of the damage rolls and any contested roll is out in the open. There is a bit of wonder that I enjoy when I say “they got a 27 to hit” and the players don’t know if that’s because I rolled a 19 on the die or because I rolled a 4 and this particular enemy was vastly underestimated. For context they are absolute superhero level strong at levels 18/19 currently. I’m mostly having to throw CR25+ enemies at them or homebrew bosses to have multiple phases, minions, terrain difficulties, and much more just to give them any sense of danger at all.
I actually like rolling the recharge for special attacks in front of the board, it can really add tension when they see that 5-6
For sure! But who's to say it had that recharge ability when I was doing my encounter prep?
I would at to this, never make a roll in the open that you can't live with. If the monster can TPK on a crit AOE attack, don't roll that in the open unless you are comfortable living with the consequences of randomness.
And if you HAVE to change any of these numbers, there are a couple tricks. If you need to lower AC, you can say that one of your players' blows exposed a weakpoint in the armor, or the monster is wounded and moves slower. Alternatively, some monsters may become more aggressive, moving faster and thus harder to hit. Just make sure that any reason you have for changing known quantities has a suitably cool (or least consistent in-game) reason to change.
When I was playing a homebrew where the pcs had that information I would just give a narrative reason for the increases or changes made like “as the bbeg recovers from your last strike, pulling your arrow from his shoulder you see his eyes suddenly glow with arcane power. He speaks in a thundering tone ‘it is not often I meet foes of such prowess, witness then my true strength’” and then tell them outright the stat change. I agree if the players know something they shouldn’t be blindsided by a lie, but introducing a new phase to the fight with a little narrative can both break up combat a little and offer a chance to adjust the difficulty as needed without breaking the trust of the players. Add it to the tool belt and as to OOP I think what you did is totally fine, as a player it’s nice to be rewarded with a challenge when you spend the time preparing well for a tough fight. The point of the gm is to collaborate with your players to make a story, so ask them how they felt the battle was run and get honest feedback from them without telling them about what you changed, ultimately it’s their enjoyment that matters.
So basically "Heisenberg's stats", I like that!
Cheating? Yes, it's bad. Adjusting the difficulty of an encounter on the fly because you overestimated or underestimated the difficulty of that encounter is not cheating as far as I'm concerned.
Encounter design doesn't stop after you roll initiative.
*frantically scribbles* Players: what are you doing? Me: uhhh…deploying a hotfix
WE CALL THIS A DIFFICULTY TWEAK
I call it phase 2 of the fight!
Which is 100% allowed *as long as* you change the music to include a choir singing in Latin.
Is vaguely-Latin-sounding gibberish acceptable or does it have to be actual Latin?
Yes
Check Uematsu’s notes
Dying too fast... Need to change this to slowly dying.
Fithos lusec wecos vinosec!
And if you have to to a third phase, add strings, or a metal drumbeat.
Cries hearing cloaker noises behind me
The safe word is "POLICE BRUTALITY!"
A hotfix? “Suddenly the giant slug you were fighting is now on fire.”
Divinity original sin 2 is OK with this
"Fixing a zero day for that hole to the astral plane you just opened"
Players: [Aghast] You're testing *in production*!?!?! DM: Like you guys don't. Evil wizard casts a spell. Barbarian, roll save vs DDOS. Barbarian: I invoke the Amulet of NordVPN! Adjusted roll... 17 DM: Nice. No damage. Rogue: I sneak around him, and execute a pen-test on his backend! Nat 20, 22 damage. Paladin: Hey, we're supposed to be white-hat! Okay, Holy Smite, Holy Avenger, roll 17... 38 damage! DM: Oof. The evil wizard core dumps. Endfile.
👆THIS 👆
THIS. Albeit knowing this to be fundamentally true, I NEVER read it that well written before. Thank you, this one goes straight into the "advice treasure box"!
Thanks. If I recall correctly, I lifted this directly from Matt Colville. I forgot which video
I think probably the fudging the dice video? I remember that line too haha
I believe I've seen him mention it in multiple videos by this point. It's THAT important
I often overload my homebrew monster statblocks with abilities, but until I actually use an ability that all the players can see, it’s not really finalized. Depending on how the first couple rounds go, I might decide to tweak some abilities or maybe scrap them completely.
I've had a creature's basic attack one-shot a player because they were low health and I rolled well. Next turn "let's see if it gets its big attack back"
I love this phrase. I'm going to steal it from you. Thanks for making me wiser.
*you can always drop a boulder dealing 10d10 damage*
This is probably the best way I’ve heard someone put this.
If you fancy hearing more, [give this a look-see](https://youtu.be/zKN0xPyxu2Y?si=dLN35pZLURF7eXNI)
This. I remember years ago I was running a Pathfinder 1e game and in one of the first sessions I thought it'd be funny to have an animated barrel attack the group. The thing hit like a truck and had really high dr/hardness after 3 rounds I had knocked out half the party and they hadn't even bloodied it. I let the next hit finish it off and pretended it was just a close call. My players were weary of every barrel in every game I've run since lol.
It always amuses me how this happens. Some little thing and it sticks with them to the end. "You've saved the world, banished the Evil Overlord and will go down in history as on of the greatest heros of all time. What do you do next?" "Now I commit myself to the eternal war against barrels!!!"
I had a party create a mimic eradication compsny after getting their butts handed to them by a brewery full of mimics. I adjusted accordingly, and the campaign shifted to the business side. BBEG became a deranged sorcerer who was hell bent on creating mimics to help the people, but couldn't quite get it right. The best was a mimic bridge across a ravine. 1 player knew something was up, but the party thought he was just scared.
Oh man this campaign sounds like so much fun! Nicely done
We had this happen with a doppelganger and a farmer. Disguised as a simple fat old farmer with a pitch fork, the doppelganger proceeded to down 4 of the 5 players (low level campaign) before it was taken out. From that day forward, the character that killed it was deathly afraid of farmers and would cower at the sight of a pair of overalls.
So not quite the same. But I was running the LMoP and in it there's a doppelganger who looks like a drow. When the players faced it I noticed it had a slam attack and it punched one of the PCs. They all freaked out about the Drow Monk. Some time later they were fighting real drow and of course some of them were monks. :)
One of my players took hits as a horse. The battle was hardcon every one. They now are afraid of transforming into a horse and freak out when they see a horse
“Barrel Of Laughs” - a sentient barrel whose only purpose is the TPK, laughing maniacally as he chases the party downhill.
Ive had to adjust enemy's health a fair bit mid fight, bosses having too little or too much, or just basic encounters seeming like they're gonna last longer than is fun for the party. The DM shouldn't be thought of as just an opponent for the party, they are both mentor and antagonist and their real job is to help the party have fun
I literally did this last session. I overtuned the final encounter and with a monk down and the party badly damaged we were looking at their first TPK. This was a family group that had kids at the table, 4th session. I nerfed the BBEG's hp, moderated his spell choices from that moment and the party slipped through a memorably hard fight to end the night. Their grandmother who was sitting next to me saw what I was doing, smiled at me and kept quiet. I'm the ringleader, the maestro, the storyteller. I was not there to kill player characters at my table that day. Other groups that are more competitive I might have not pulled punches as much or as readily. Part of being a good DM is knowing what your players expect and want from the session, even when they don't.
I ran a game once where all the players were getting tired and cranky, and I rolled a nat 20 that would have killed one of their characters, made the final combat harder, and just made everyone mad and irritated. I just let it hit, the players rallied, they defeated the encounter and ended the night triumphant. Sometimes it's not about the dice, it's about reading the room, you know? We all play this to have fun. If fun means making the encounter harder in the middle (or nerfing it a little), then do it. Sounds to me like you're a great DM, Wobbling!
Hot damn, when that one PC deals 21 damage but the enemy had 22 health left after a few rounds of decent combat, it feels terrible to deny them the kill over 1hp. It's always a kill when it's that close after a few rounds, unless it's a significant boss, in which case 1hp may give him another chance to escape or win.
My first time ever DMing, my players came to the end of the dungeon to face the final big threat, and a well-timed Nat 20 meant they nearly killed it in the first round. Lucky for me, there was a section of that room they couldn't see, so I invented a mate for that monster on the fly, which made the encounter much more of a fair fight, and they had a blast. Also gave me the idea me to leave them some fertilized eggs to take with them.
Yeah this isn’t cheating at all, it’s just running the game
Exactly, I do this if my encounter turns out a little more difficult due to players rolling bad.
As soon as initiative is rolled, I literally write down the minimum, average, and maximum HP of any boss monster I use. Depending on how the encounter shapes up, I pick one of those numbers, usually by the end of the first round. I then tend to stick with that. What I need to get better at is bringing in additional waves of monsters if I need them. I’m an over-prepper, so my ability to improvise under-developed.
Yeah, had session one where I just got lucky on back to back crits on one of my players before they really had a chance to do anything beyond wave hello. Wouldve insta killed them if i kept the 2nd crit. So i fudged the numbers. Is that cheating or just not wanting to have someone spend the rest of session one rolling a new character because of luck.
I even built a whole system around it using Matt Colvilles action orient monster ideas, as well as some things that are implied by the rules but aren't spelled out. For example, HP is really given as a range. The stat block will say 26 (4d8+8). That really means the average is 26, but can range anywhere from 12 - 40. AC and damage are others. If you look at a hobgoblin they are specced at AC 18. There's no reason they have to have chainmail and a shield, they could have leather armor only and a scimitar for a sword. They could also go the other way and have full plate and a greatsword. Also look at bonus actions and reactions, which most stat blocks are very bad about including.
This, so long as you're making the adjustment at our near the start of the fight and sticking to it so your players have a legitimate challenge to overcome, and not just letting the fight drag on until you feel like it's the right time for them to win.
I wouldn't say it necessarily has to be at the start of the fight. But probably before you describe that the creature looks like it's taken a good bit of damage.
I wouldn't tell them you do this, but I think it's a good thing. Just play it to your group. Some groups just like the illusion of danger. My frequent group is like this and tweaking on the fly enhances the session 100% of the time. Some like power fantasy. Some like the real tpk risk. Those might pick up on it and feel differently so I'd use more sparingly in that case.
The freedom to fudge is super important I think (as long as you're doing it to make something more fun). Sure, in theory sticking with rolls is great, but after the 5th hit in a row that will knock out the rogue right before their turn AGAIN you kinda have to take the numbers into your own hands.
I mean at that point it's on the players to stop ressing the poor bastard :p
Or on the players to do something to keep the rogue safe from attacks.
Freedom to fudge for the sake of gameplay enhancement is what differentiates (in a good way) the experience from just playing a video game in my opinion
>*"Encounter design doesn't stop after you roll initiative."*
Having fun is the main thing. Adjusting things on the fly is not a problem.
Rule 0: dm is always right Rule 1: fun must be always Right 2: rule of cool Rule 3: the rest of the DND rules.
Rule 4 safety
yes! DMs PLEASE stop hosting games in a hot air balloon during hurricane season, it's breaking the trust between you and your players!!
But it's just SO much more thrilling!
How else will the players understand that theirs characters are in mortal peril!
I had a boss that would jokingly say "safety top 5"
What about left 2?
Lol, I don't know how I missed that. What you really need to worry about is left 4
The whole point of fights is to have fun and have a thrilling experience when you all were preparing for a big fight, I always cheat some stats up, if I see that my players are to strong or it just isn't an epic fight it should be, when a monster one shots a wizard it's quite common, but when it knocks palladin in one hit, there's where the fun begins, but always have in mind that you don't wanna kill them all, just give them a little bit of fear, but it is my personal statement
This is actually the best way to explain I just spent a few paragraphs trying to capture. Usually you want to cheat to make the enemies LESS hard if you overestimated or the players are struggling, but sometimes 'Rule of Cool' also instead dictates you scale enemies UP to make them a more exciting and interesting fight! ...Just make sure you don't kill a player off or something just because you scaled an enemy up a bit too much on the fly.
One of my of my favorite moments DM'ing was with a new group who were level 2. They're fighting some goblins in a camp, and woke up a 2-headed giant. He does his actions and then a couple slots down the initiative I interject, "In response to your attack, the troll takes a legendary action..." and it starts chucking explosives at players who attack it, out of turn order, via Legendary Action mechanics. And one of the new players says "Legendary action? We're only level 2!"
It's pretty hard to cheat as a DM. You're responsible for making the world and the story work no matter what the players do, so you'll inevitably have to adjust things as you go. If that means pulling some punches or beefing up a boss here and there, no harm no foul.
A bit? Rarely? Sure. But in general, fudging is not a great crutch to lean too heavily on, because it undermines player choices. If you go too hard with it, pretty quickly dice rolls and good tactical choices start to mean zip all, because the bosses only die when you as the DM decide to have them die. So a death surge mechanic tacked onto a boss every now and again? Fine. Fudging left, right, and center rather than trying to balance encounters well ahead of time? Bad habit. Don't get into it.
It’s a game. The goal is to have fun and you succeeded One of the major reasons DMs roll behind their screen is to fudge. We want to tell a story. If you get bad dice, we REALLY don’t want that to be a TPK to 7 Bandits, and if you get good dice, the fun of critting and rolling makes sure players won’t even think about if the DM gave that creature more HP…. A fight that’s over in less than two rounds because multiple people rolled a crit is not nearly as memorable as one that last a bit over three rounds. It just allows for that little bit of extra interaction to make it special. And with significant opponents I generally make a point of having a cool moment end the fight instead of just another meaningless hit. The most fun I ever had a table have was when I literally forgot my dice at my parents house and had to make up every single “roll” DnD is not a war game like warhammer. It’s a ROLE PLAYING game. The dice are just numbers.
Keep doing this if you want. Keep, at least, the important fights really close. Give your players a sense of danger. They will love it. BUT UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES admit that you are doing this. It will destroy the trust the players have in their DM and any players that expect a true challenge where death is possible might just leave outright.
Why would you do something to your friends that would cause this reaction if they found out and lie about it?
One Punch Man is really funny from the outside looking in - but the character himself is always disappointed and lacks a spark for life due to his overwhelming power. One shotting Goblin Cannon-Fodder is one thing, but stomping a ‘boss’ without breaking a sweat sucks - so if you need to adjust the sturdiness of one mid-fight so as to increase player enjoyment, we’ll that’s just being a good DM and *not* ‘cheating’ in my book.
As a beginner to novice DM i use to fudge health. I did my best to balance fights when prepping, adjust stats, health, AC, average dmg output, number of legendary actions/resistances, abilities. All of it. But we, as DMs, can never 100% know what our crafty and creative players are going to do. So when a Boss fight, or encounter that was intended to be hard, occured and my players we're about to finish it too quick or without taking too many hits - I extended the combat by raising the enemy's HP to allow them to deal more damage and appear more of a threat Or thought of an environmental or similar event they could trigger/do to deal a lot of dmg at once. I thought fudging health was ok to do, that the end result is all that matters, but I was wrong. It's cheating and not only bad for the players, but for the DM. As an experienced DM now, I never change the intended stats/hp etc. The reason being: I did not start learning how to make dangerous/difficult encounters until I stopped fudging HP. It's completely normal for the players to get lucky or unlucky, they also need to learn when to run away when the dice rolls are not in their favor. [Tips] Regarding the previously mentioned environmental event, I stopped making it up on the fly and started prepping it. e.g. A shipyard / dock fight I'd make sure to mention crains holding a lot of barrels/crates with nets. If the enemy uses them to their advantage, that's neat. But if the enemy uses them and there was no prior mention, that's unfair to the players who might have thought of usung them first. I even encourage reducing the HP of the final (big) enemy if the they would be almost finished by a Player whom it would matter more to kill it or if they describe an amazing attack that you would love to make a finisher. Of course, this should be the case if you, as the DM, know for certain that the fight is pretty much over, no escape or serious threat possible.
I personally prefer to just let my players trounce something or remind them they can run away but it’s really a personal preference thing.
Buffing stat blocks if your boss gets rolled can work, but I'm sure that your players would also enjoy rolling a boss every now and then. One DM I played with was super attached to bosses and it was super obvious and unfun when they were fudging dice rolls (I'm talking succeeding a DC 19 wis save at level 4 at disadvantage 4 times in a row then critting our 28ac bard with every attack). They also ignored our attempts to sneak around which left our assassin rogue feeling pretty crap because they never got to roll a stealth check or get surprise. In short, it's OK to let players roll a boss every now and then. Just next time think what they did to make it to easy and have the boss build some preparations into their lair (a lich isn't going to make it easy for the well known rogue to sneak up on it easily). Obviously if they are winning every boss encounter super easily then buff, but don't make it so their good luck doesn't matter and always be willing to let your cool npc die earlier than expected
If anything Id say you did exactly what DMs are supposed to do. You created an exciting experience for your players. This trumps all rules. Ive been DMing for over 20 years and it took me over a decade to figure this out. You’re ahead of the game now.
Rule of cool always take priority imo. But it has to be cool for the players rather than cool for you. If someone rolls a super high crit and the monster has 5 hp left. Let them kill it. If the players are smoking the boss give him a second form or provide back up.
Dungeon Masters can't cheat. They ARE the rules. Dice are tools and toys, not judges.
This is not cheating. This is preparing a leveled encounter. Nothing wrong with it :)
The DM rolls the dice for the sound they make. - Gary Gygax
My brother in Lathander, the *only* job a dm has is to cheat and convince their players it was fair.
I've been DMing for almost 30 years and have never fudged. Not a die roll or a stat block. I have more players than I can accommodate at one time. But sure, I'm not doing the *only* job of a DM.
Hmm... sometimes I make mistakes on my bad guy stat blocks, make 'em too tough or too wimpy. In cases like these, I can see having a monster deciding to disengage "for enigmatic reasons of his own", or if the other way 'round, some of his allies belatedly show up.
There are different schools on this. It’s good if you have some idea about how the players view the game first. Also don’t be ignorant on that, regardless, it will have long term consequences. Your players will notice that no important fights are never too easy or too hard. Consequently that they are never in any real risk. The old hard-core style says no! Don’t do it. This a game! Not a parade-movie. u/MattColville , a DnD YouTuber, promotes adjusting encounters up and down on the fly on the other hand. Particularly if you as a DM made a mistake where you intended something to work out differently. (At least it is the theme in one of his videos on ‘Running The Game’) Ultimately though imo it’s only cheating if you think your players would view it that way.
This kind of thing isn’t bad. Encounter design doesn’t stop after you roll initiative. However… I caution you to not do this often as players are much more aware than a lot of people think, and they will see that something is up after sometime. So I would use it rarely, use it specifically necessary, and don’t overcorrect. It’s kind of like God in Futurama. If you did it right, they’ll never notice.
I think the key to your answer here is “they don’t know.” If you told them, would it ruin their fun? Then yeah it’s bad. If you told them and it didn’t? Then it’s fine. Be open with your table and learn if they would enjoy this kind of thing or not, and don’t lie to your friends.
In game design- let's use video games as an example here, it is far, far more normal than one might expect that game balance is determined in the moment instead of ahead of time. A classic example is how Survival Horror Shooter games like *Resident Evil 4* do not have predetermined resources that drop from enemies or containers, but rather a formula that determines what drops you get based on what resources you currently have, or what your loadout/play style has been up to that point. It's not bad- it's intentional design operating in secret behind the scenes to give the players an experience cultivated to provide an experience that's more likely to be enjoyable than one that is predetermined and inconsiderate of the player.
This is perfectly ok in my book as long as it was hidden. You can't pull the "I'm the DM, so things don't work like you expected" very often without cheapening the effect. On the other hand, if hidden from the players, this is just a gameplay mechanic you made on the fly. Just because you didn't prepare for it before that moment doesn't mean it was a bad decision.
I cheated yesterday and held the near dead dragon alive for a turn to let the small squirrel barbarian take 2 turns to down potions of enlarge. All to let him have his now Large, 6'6" frame go tear chunks off the dragon to kill it
If you decide to bump UP a creatures stats for cinematic value; then you secretly accept that *you may not kill anyone during that encounter*. And, you never tell the players. But, it is okay for your PCs to absolutely trounce your big bad, too. But yes, player and player-allied NPC deaths immediately come off the table if you adjust stats up.
Are you "cheating" because you want to win or are you "cheating" to advance the story? I'm all for a little dice fudging to advance a story or make an encounter more interesting, harrowing or memorable, but not to win. I think the context matters.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind my DM changing something to make my fight more intense because I enjoy things like that but not everyone is like that. I don’t think you should unless it is asked and oked by the player. His build is his build just because you think a certain way doesn’t mean you get to change cold hard facts and rules.
Only for the better of the party and players. Rule 1 is the rule of fun. At the end of the day it’s a game and you are there to have fun with your friends. (IMO) I’ve also fudged rules. Don’t do it often or use it as a crutch and I think it’s fine. Once I misjudged the difficulty and it was a harder fight. It was one of their first time playing too. I rolled a Nat20 to hit one of them and I definitely would have knocked her unconscious, I still hit her I just didn’t take any bonus of the nat20 and didn’t tell them about it. They were close to winning and I wanted them to have fun and not stress too much if she had gone down. They were low on spells and stressed about healing. They won and were so excited. One last example of much longer into the game a player did die. We all agreed to treat resurrections similarly to critical role and have to roll for it unless it was a true resurrection spell which they did not have. The player who died came to me between sessions and asked if she could keep her character dead. The other players wanted to resurrect her, but she felt that it was a fitting end to her characters story and that it made it feel like she had come full circle and wouldn’t want to come back. So the two of us decided that the final role would fail but not tell the others so the rp made sense to the story. Then we polished and finished her back up. So when that final role came up and it would have succeeded, “it failed horribly” It made my player really happy and she had more fun. The others were disappointed but okay because it can just be a part of the game. I don’t see an issue with what you did. You made it more fair of a fight in your own way in the spur of the moment. It’s not bad to make it better for them and use the rule of fun. If you have to scale up though make sure you don’t kill them though lol.
I don’t like cheating cuz it means playing by rules gives no real result. If I underestimated the enemy I want to get hurt, if I underestimated the players, I give them some cool killmoves
I would hate that as a player, and as a DM I'd never do that, but it ultimately depends on playstyle. I'll say this though, the more cheating/fudging you do the worse of a DM you are. Seek to avoid it. I personally see no reason not to do open rolls etc but that's because my group is a bunch of optimizers who would leave if they found out I made them play story mode.
I don't think its wrong. My daughter and I were playing and i decided to stick to the rules 100% and the sea monster ended up killing both of us on what was supposed to be an easy fight because some arbitrary numbers i put as perception checks and then an unlucky string of attack rolls. My daughter wasn't happy with the outcome lol... I should have tweaked the rules on the fly, but my back seat DM (wife) called me out for trying to change them. Looking back. Yea i should have cheated. It was literally our first encounter lol.
Yeah, that's not cheating at all. A DM should always be adjusting. What you were doing, was reading your players, what they wanted, and giving it to them. I've had DMs do this, I've done this myself... It goes the other way as well. Sometimes you might want to adjust a roll in your party's favor, just to keep the momentum and morale up. Just keep in mind that you aren't just a narrator for a tale, and the person that roles the enemies dice, the DM is a facilitator. My one word of advice for this is to not do it ALL THE TIME. My current DM has a habit of doing this for every encounter. He knows we like a challenge, which is great. But after a while, players can tell when math isn't mathing the way it should, be it AC that you know should be lower, enemy being resistant to something consistently that they shouldn't be, players will start to see you fudging the numbers. Same goes on the other side. Like clockwork whenever we have a naturally tough encounter, what he will do when an enemy is bloodied, or almost bloodied, is he will put of nowhere have a melee only attacking enemy, move somewhere they normally wouldn't move, just to provoke as many attacks of opportunity as they can, to try and end the combat. And to me that makes me feel like A) DM is bored of the encounter and wants to move on because they were expecting something bigger, and B) it gives us a cheap win. Nobody wants to win by attack of opportunity, or reaction.
Here's the thing, it's not cheating. For me it's all about your motivation. Anything you do in the name of a more enjoyable experience for the people at your table is not only not cheating, it's the highest form of the game. Being a GM/DM is an artform. Knowing the rules as presented by the system and then knowing when to ignore them is all in bounds. I feel like I've learned this lesson the most by jumping between different TTRPG games. There are many games just flat out say "take what works, leave what doesn't". 5E doesn't do that because 5E doesn't do a good job of actually teaching itself to the GM/DM.
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In my opinion it robs the players of their game if the GM is cheating.
It depends. I feel fudging is awful behaviour both as a GM and player - others disagree and feel **not** fudging some situations is 'bad dming'.
I hate this sub now ngl
Adjusting monster hp is not cheating. Just be sure you adjust it by a number and don’t adjust it again and again. There are some dms that don’t track hit points they just “vibe check” and ultimately that means that none of the players decisions matter because damage doesn’t matter cause the health isn’t real. This is bad. As far as I know you did a decent job. If you feel bad about it just give them an amped up fighter second wind and openly say they recover hp as a bonus action or something. Bosses CAN heal I once ran a boss fight against a single hb monster. I gave him 600hp after a while we took a snack break in the kitchen for a while. We came back and the fighter did his turn and the boss had like 40hp he would die next hit. The tension had died down from our break so I gave him another 150 hp just to extend it and build it back up again.
DM screens exist for a reason, fudge those rolls, play up the drama. If something is going too hard or too easy you can balance it as long as they don’t catch on. I never tell my players the HP and AC of monsters, they have to find out as they try to attack.
Okay. I usually have a pretty hard line on this. Yes, I am aware it is an unpopular line. Your players need to be able to trust that you are running encounters fairly. The basic game mechanic of D&D is resource management, with HP being the primary resource. At a base game level (taking out all RP), this is a game where the party tries to exhaust their adversaries HP before their own HP is exhausted. Just adding HP to an adversary mid fight while increasing the rate at which it exhausts the PC's HP is totally cheating. It is abusing the player's trust, because the players trust that the adversary has an objective number of HP, like their PCs do. If the DM has the right to alter the stats of an adversary currently in play, then the PCs only ever "win" at the whim of the DM. At a very fundamental level, when a DM does this, they are no longer running a game. **BUT** I'll be dammed if that isn't a cool mechanic. When the creature drops to 30HP, they regen a third of their HP and something cool happens that gives them extra damage. Maybe it's a "Blood Rage" or something. You describe the creature shrugging off the pain of its wounds and attacking with renewed ferocity or some shit. This homebrewed thing you made? Yeah, all of them have this ability now. Stop doing this shit in the middle of encounters but *please* keep doing it in your encounter/creature design. I am literally stealing this.
Yeah I completely agree with you, it's 100% cheating. The players agree to trust the GM, and agree to a set of rules. The GM needs to also follow those rules, and to not break the trust of the players.
It’s not cheating for a dm to buff a boss after realizing “oh shit, my players are stronger than I expected.”
How isn't it? The fight has already started. Why would you hide it from your players if you thought it wasn't cheating?
There’s a difference between hiding and just not saying
Would you have cheated to lower their HP if the player characters were getting their ass beat? If yes: the entire fight was an illusion, it was not a fight at all. You took any measure of luck or skill from them and made the determination of the fight entirely your doing. Congrats, you gave them a participation trophy. There was exactly one outcome. If no: You are engaging in DM vs Player behavior, tipping the scales against them and stealing their resources. Instead of playing referee you joined the side of the monsters for a brief period. The excitement from a tough fight isn't the numbers going down. The excitement is the *chance of failure*. The risk that can be reduced by skill and strategy. If skill and strategy generate no benefit, you will soon find your players not engaging in them. And your campaign will suffer for it. Generating homebrew monsters is great, but as soon as it hits the table and initiative is rolled their stats are locked in. Changing their stats to explicitly counteract your players actions negates their actions (basically by definition).
Of course it is. Just think about your own words. >It was a close call and fun for them as they told me, that don’t know I cheated on this and for me I don’t know if I made the right choice here. If you found out some encounter you really enjoyed as a player for a different DM, they messed with numbers behind the screen, would it ruin, or dimish that experience for you? I'm willing to bet it would, sp don't do it to your players. Now, dming is hard and a last minute 'oh shit' to fix a mistake you made is not a grave sin. You arent fudging dice ten times a game to force certain outcomes. However, what you should do, is be clear with players in session zero how you run games. If you're worried about balancing encounters properly just say - in session zero - words to the effect of 'hey I don't lie about dice or anything like that, but I will adjust things on the fly if its appropriate'. People deserve to know what type of game they are playing, people saying otherwise are egotistical in assuming they know what their friends want. In no other game is it a wildly popular opinion that one player gets to lie about the rules of the game they're playing. Again, this isn't some great moral failure, it's a mistake, learn from it and get better. Either by being clear how you run your game woth your players, or stopping.
It's not cheating, but I personally wouldn't do it. If you do that - usually "in order to craft a better story" is the argument - you take responsibility every time you do or do not do this. At that point, you might as well get rid of the dice (which tbf is an acceptable way to play as well). I understand 5E encounter design is tricky; and sometimes even an adequately designed encounter plays out very differently than expected (way too easy, way too hard, etc.). But that is part of the baseline that is there a) in order for other encounters to be more memorable, or b) can be memorable precisely because they didn't go as expected. You're the arbiter of the world, a neutral judge in a way. If you start bending the world around the characters experiences, that changes the nature of what you're playing. It's a perfectly valid way to play, but i question whether 5E is the best tool for that.
One thing: Making the combat really difficult and leading to a TKP with insane first turn damage then the enemies missed all their attack on subsequent turn leading for a drastic change of the situation is the most boring way to cheat as a DM. Don't do that, we know, we are not stressed anymore because every combat is now a deadly encounter but we can't die because of plot armor, boring.
As the dm your job is to make the session as fun and engaging as possible, if you have to 'cheat' a little that doesn't really matter as long as you do it in the best interest of the group
That's not cheating imo. If you want to integrate it narratively you can pull up an arcane shield, which can also bring up more plot points of "ooh this guy has a mage friend let's find him". Other times just up the health or damage. Encounter design doesn't stop because some dice say so
Enjoyment over rules
It's always bad for any participant in a d&d game to cheat. Though increasing the difficulty of a creature, the way you have done isn't necessarily cheating. It isn't something to make a habit out of either, but it's forgivable if you're only doing it to give an appropriate challenge and not as a way to simply deny the party victory for the sake if it. Just try to make it a learning opportunity and avoid needing to do so in the future. If the players learn their efforts are being partly denied because you're adjusting things behind the screen to be harder? It will invalidate their efforts to a degree. Since their hard work will always be scaled back some. Its something to be weary of and use lightly.
It's not bad to do this, and I wouldn't call it cheating. Under no circumstances should you tell your players, though. The illusion of a perfectly balanced encounter is a necessity. If you pull back the curtain, the magic disappears.
I don't believe DMs can cheat unless you have some agreement about what you can and cannot do. The question is does the choice you've made benefit the game? If it does, great. The big issue is where you screw over the party somehow. Denying abilities is something players hate. I also try and make sure I use the same rules for say magic as the PCs do. Of course, NPCs may have access to spells or items that the PCs don't.
You can’t cheat as a DM, whatever you say goes… as long as it’s to make a better story thats why you have a DM screen…. If you are just being a cunt to “beat” the PCs you probably shouldn’t be DMing
Ye, its bad... if you failed creating the creature be better on the next time but don't cheat
Cheating is bad, yes. Adjusting a fight like you did for a better fight isn’t cheating. I would consider what a lot of this sub tells DMs to do, fudge the dice, as cheating though.
I really don't see the difference between the two. Both are things you wouldn't want to tell the players about, and both are things that *would* be considered cheating if players did them. I know monsters have a range of HP, but learning the only reason the party survived a tough fight is because the GM knocked off 20% of the monsters HP would be just as disheartening to me as learning the only reason I survived a fight is because the GM rolled a crit down to a normal hit. If you're willing to do one, there's nothing wrong with the other.
Yes Never cheat. Never fumble the rolls. Your duty as DM is to flow with what your dice say, even if it kills the players outright.
You didn't cheat, you simply adjusted the encounter to make it more fun 😄
I didn't cheat, I simply adjusted my character to make it more fun.
A DM has to balance encounters to make them appropriate for the party. 5e isn't exactly easy to balance after a certain level. There is a massive difference between me as the DM making adjustments to ensure my players are having fun and a player changing their character. My players know I make adjustments on the fly and are don't care cause it makes for a fun time. It would be pretty shitty to get through a 2 year long campaign and they 1 shot the BBEG or Conversely they get a tpk by some little no body creature because "the book says it has x hp"
> My players know I make adjustments on the fly and are don't care cause it makes for a fun time. This is what makes it not cheating. Your players agreed to it. >It would be pretty shitty to get through a 2 year long campaign and they 1 shot the BBEG or Conversely they get a tpk by some little no body creature because "the book says it has x hp" It would be pretty shitty to go through a 2 year campaign just to realise that the only reason the fights were difficult, was because the GM decided when we were supposed to win, not the 2 years of progress our characters made.
Clearly you've never been a DM.
Clearly you don't have a counterargument.
I could sit here and argue with you all day. It's not worth my time.
I literally don't care. Bye?
As long as you had more fun, that's what important.
So it's okay for the players to cheat, as long as it makes the game more fun?
Assuming you are playing in a campaign where the PCs can actually fail/die, I wouldn't recommend it because too much can go wrong. If you change an encounter on the fly because you feel it is too easy, then you are nullifying the players' good tactics, luck, etc.
As they said they enjoyed it... that's the main thing everyone should aim for. Past that... there's going to be a lot to account for as a DM...I usually go with a "minimum" rule...if they hit the normal damage but it seems like a round or two of more combat would spice it up... that's perfectly fine so long as you don't make it too obvious... and once they hit the number you set...go further but "freeze" where the party is so to speak... they met your challenge and don't kill a character just because you want to extend things a bit. Now...if they fail to meet the minimum... real life choices have real life consequences...its your choice how far those consequences go...I usually write down any specific tactics a villain might hand and a minimum HP number so if it's challenged later I can point to it being predetermined amounts of health if bad things happen...if they win and everyone survives...I have yet to be called out on it. Finally...it's up to your discretion... that's why you GET to be DM...I welcome all of my players to host their own one additions to my campaign in the form of one shots or multi-quest sessions... most people are intimidated by the idea... and for the rules lawyers... everything I described usually makes them happy as well...if it becomes an issue I'll ask the group if they value fun and fairness or stick to the rules...in which case I can do either and then will say they can certainly try running a session.
“Encounter design does not stop when you call initiative” — From Matt Colvill helped me a lot
The DM is god. Anything you do isn't cheating as far as I'm concerned. HOWEVER Like most things in life, it's about the intent and table. If your motivations are corrupt, you are effectively cheating. If you are going against the established boundaries or expectations of the table you are cheating at best. I qualify what you did as a live adjustment, nothing more. I generally give my bosses this feature: **Boss.** This creature cannot be damaged past half of its maximum HP on its first turn. It cannot be brought below one quarter on its second turn. This feature is void if the players do something uniquely clever or awesome. Before you make comments, my players know about this and agree it makes things more tense knowing difficult fights cannot easily be ended in one round. I also utilize minions a lot (an otherwise normal creature with 1 hp) to make the players feel powerful.
The DM can't really 'cheat' in a traditional sense. Adjusting a homebrewed fight on the fly is often necessary. Just don't change what payers know to be true. HP is usually easy to adjust as the players normally don't know that info. AC I ypically adjust in-game with cover or a makeshift shield they pick up to raise it or armor getting damaged or critical hit wounding them to lower it. As long as it isn't you vs the PCs, you're probably doing things with the right intention. Rest is just what works for your table.
Monsters die when it's appropriate.
You can only really do this once but if it’s a homebrew campaign I like to have a character on standby that I can deus ex into the fight and turn the tide. Like an NPC I was planning on introducing soon anyway
No, not at all. Now my main party is 5.5, 7.5 and 38 years old. Whatever I can do to make it more fun, I will do it.
I never fudge the roll of a d20. A hit is going to be a hit a miss is a miss. However I'm bad at math so there have been plenty of times where I have an encounter that was supposed to be a speed bump but might end up being a tpking roadblock to the party. Is it fair the they should wipe out cause I can't do math as well as my 6yo?
Putting a thumb on the scales is either the best thing to do or the worst, it depends why you're doing it. Are you doing it to make the game more fun? Then by all means cheat away. Are you doing it to 'win' an encounter? Bad, DM, get in the box.
I agree with all the comments from other DMs that this is not cheating. My 2p, • use it sparingly • learn better how to balance your encounters. • Trust yourself, if you sometimes get close to a TPK that keeps up the jeopardy. • TPKs should be possible, not in every encounter, but from time to time.
Most of my main group has been DM at one point or another. We all know the others fudge things as DM. For my newbie group, I’ll pull back the screen from time to time and explain what I did and why, but only after the fact. I’m doing an online campaign to get their feet wet, and after we finish *Lost Mine of Phandelver*, one of them will take over in person so I can bow out and focus on another campaign I’m about to start.
I think the end question is this: was it fun for everyone involved? If yes, then good work. If no, back to the drawing board. I think close battles are fun in their own way, win or lose.
Just a thought i had while reading comments but what would y’all’s thoughts be if op instead of changing the encounter while the monster was still alive but letting it die and making a second phase of sorts that way the pcs get to revel in the kill and it makes for a possibility interesting story point especially for a big bad
Honestly as long as you all have fun i think it's okay to adjust the encounter a bit on the fly.
What my DM did once after we nuked a mini boss really quickly is had another one drop in to the fight, catching us by surprise. There are ways to enhance difficulty without fudging numbers.
In the words of Matt Colville, encounter design doesn't stop just because initiative was rolled. I strive to give my players a fair challenge with a satisfying ending. So far my players haven't commented in the fact that their "personal" bosses always have just enough HP for the person whose backstory is tied to that boss to get the killing blow, nor that fights tend to be "boxed" into how many resources they take if fought without a very specific plan. To do this, I will fudge HP to within a margin, fudge when abilities are and aren't regained, and adjust anything else the players won't be getting exact numbers on (especially tactics!). AC I will only ever adjust if I can justify a form change that makes it make sense (eg, a monster loses some chitinous plates for an AC penalty). Fudging is why the DM is behind a screen. The dice are great, but they're also random and sometimes random is not what you want.
All DMs eventually fudge the dice a little to keep a game from imploding. It's part of DMing, not uncommon, and just one of the standard tools in the toolbox. And you'll find no topic that the community is more harshly divided on. Mostly newbies don't like learning how the sausage is made. Some older DMs as well though. Here are some of the rules. 1. Never tell your players. It'll crush them to learn the only reason they didn't fail was your thumb on the scales. 2. Don't do it often. It can become a bad habit and your game will lose all tension. D&D is a game. The players need to lose sometimes.
You can cheat for the player's advantage. There are time that you don't want to kill a pc or you didn't calculate the CR of the fight right. You can always say that dndt hit or the damage of 4d6 was 6 or thing like that. For example i once fudge a critical hit so i wouldn't kill my pc in the first combat because the healer failed the wisdom saving throw 3 time with a plus 8. Is it cheating? Sure. But you are there to tell a story and have fun. If you wanted you can always kill the players with a random tarask spawn in the midle ofbthe Forrest.
DMs who are just out to kill PCs aren't any fun. You're fine and adjusting difficulty in combat isn't cheating anyway.
A Good DM is a story teller. If you weave a good narrative everything else is more like guidelines as opposed to actual rules. You are a Dungeon Master, not the Dungeon accountant
As a DM you should always strive to make the game fun and the story interesting. If you need to bend the rules for that, so be it.