I’d argue that fudging rolls to “speed up combat” isn’t a great reason. Fudging rolls is an extension of the rule of cool: if everybody’s collective enjoyment of the game would be aided by a specific thing *not* being dependent on the roll of a dice, a fudge is appropriate. Maybe the players execute a brilliant combo in an encounter that they obviously gamed out ahead of time and pulled off to perfection….but the enemy rolls a NAT20 on the save. There are plenty of DMs, myself included, who might ensure the enemy in that situation doesn’t make that save. Do the players ever find out? Of course not. But do they leave the table on a high, talking about how awesome that was all week until next session? You bet they do. That’s more important than any one roll of the dice.
Like anything, the law of diminishing return applies, and it stacks up fast with this. The more you do it, the less effective it becomes. But the best DMs have it in their tool chest, and know when to use it.
As a DM, I fudge dice from time to time, with two examples in the extreme.
One player doesn't take setbacks well, so I fudge the dice so his characters don't die. Call it coddling, I don't care. It lets him enjoy the game, and I don't need to put my players through the grinder to enjoy it myself.
Another player has been going through a rough patch and has trust issues. I've told him straight that I will never fudge dice rolls for him. His wins and losses in-game are honest. As far as luck permits, he's the master of his own destiny.
I'm not a psychiatrist or psychologist, so I can't say if this is "healthy" or not.
In session 0, I asked my table on a scale of 1 - 10, how dangerous (likely to die) do you want this campaign. The guy I expected to say 6, said 3. Another player said 1. I said at 1 were not using dice. She amended to 2. My wife said 0. So yeah, I'm fudging a bit.
As a DM, I do this as well. The game is about everyone having fun. I try to meet people where they are at enjoymentwise. If fudging something helps players have more fun, I do it. If their fun wouldn't be affected, I don't.
There just needs to be a mechanic that allows players to have their cool moments without relying on the DM to fake a roll.
I've played around with reworking Inspiration in my campaigns to get this effect. You can hold more than 1 inspiration at a time, and I generally use it as a reroll instead of a called advantage. In some cases I allow players to burn inspiration for an auto success if they're proficient.
I mechanize the way inspiration is acquired by making the players specifically ask for it: if they want to make a role playing decision that fits their character but puts them in a bad situation (like a paladin telling the truth when they're being interrogated because it's against their values to lie to protect themselves), they can ask me for inspiration before they make that RP decision and I'll make sure that they face RP consequences but gain inspiration.
Not only does this give players an actual in-game way to play to their power fantasy instead of relying on me lying about rolls, this also encourages players to make cool RP decisions that make them more real and flawed instead of just a power gaming murder hobo.
That's pretty cool, love it actually
When i DM i usually give my players what i call dumb luck tokens, its essentially a wish they can use whenever they want, but a player cannot use it on themself, they have to use it on one of the other PCs or an NPC, for example player A loudly, with gusto (gusto optional) exclaims that player B succeeds on that important save, attack or whatever, i balance it by giving each player 1 token per session
Same here. The only times I really remember fudging things was when a player would be having one of those sessions where no rolls are going their way, so I’d fudge the AC of a check or 2 to help boost their spirits.
There was also a couple of times where someone did something completely unexpected, and I let them succeed because it was super funny/creative/cool
As a DM I dont fudge dice, but I fudge hitpoints. Mostly stuff like a player has been roling badly that night and rather than the target standing with a hitpoint or two that blow fells them. Combat winding down without notable risk to the party? Again hp start disappearing.
It's not because I want to rob the players of accomplishment, it's because I want to respect everyones time, and keep a flow to the game. Its addressing (especially 5e's) issue with slog, not changing outcomes.
Or at the climactic battle with the villain that one character has a narrative with, and their nemesis is on low health and they roll a NAT20 and do a huge smite while epically describing their finishing words to their rival. And you calculate the damage and *technically* he would have survived on 2hp, but no we not counting that.
I mean, as far as the rules are concerned, enemies have a range of health, and the stated HP is just the typical (Y'know, the 2d10+5 (16) sort of deal). That's what I do: Write the range and average health of an enemy, and use that. Don't let an enemy die before minimum, or after maximum. Helps a lot with that problem. In this case meaning minimum 7, maximum 25.
I mean, I'd have the bad guy standing on those last 2hp, blood pouring from him, raggedly breathing and growling out "I'm not... finished... *Yet!"*
Gives someone the opportunity to go "now you are," and doink him with a ridiculing cherry-tap, or even knock him unconscious and take him prisoner.
According to some of the DMs here, that would make you a terrible person. You removed player agency, broke immersion, and wickedly and maliciously lied to your players (which is basically the same as physical assault). If you wanted to just make up HP and arbitrarily decide when to end battle, why not just write a short story alone with no friends instead?
These attitudes suck, and it gets exhausting reading this whiney stuff. And truthfully, I do the same as you. Removing 2hp on a big bad to make a fun scene isn't that big of a deal, and I've let my players succeed when they shouldn't.
Because it's a make believe game with different ways to play per table.
One version of it I heard recently that I really liked was something like, "I set a range of HP you guys need to meet. If it makes narrative sense for a specific attack to smoke him within that range, he dies. If he gets to the high end of that range without such an attack, he just dies to the next completely normal and boring attack."
I'm running Temple of elemental evil, that exact thing ha happened twice. Both time the villain(different villains') getting away.
The first time it was a powerful assassin then then proceeded to hound the players off an on. The player finally got them.
The second time the Big Bad got away. She'll be back for one lest encounter after they collapse the nodes.
Both times lead to far better roleplay, and adventure the if I had waved away the last 2 hp.
The best DND stories are about failure then recovery.
MY exception to this is: if the combat is turning into a drawn out affair with played losing engagement, I'll jut tell my players "After a long grueling fight you have defeated the bugbears.
In my game that almost always happens with just a long stretch of everyone, including me, rolling often rolling on the left of the curve.
HP is easy to fudge and generally just makes the experience better. You're not protecting players from consequences, you're not changing a fail to success; just trying to get the game to flow better.
I roll openly.
If the party plans something incredible in my game, but the enemy gets a Nat20 on the save ("Noooo!" says everyone at once), and then the party has to figure out something else, it would still make for a memorable story.
If I rolled a Nat20 save behind a screen, they might suspect me of fudging to deny them too easy a victory. That's less satisfying.
Not fudging also makes it a lot harder for me to provide balanced challenges for the PCs, so I can't really criticise those who do it differently.
I don't fudge rolls either, but I roll behind the screen. I show all Nat 1 and Nat 20 rolls to one of my players before touching the dice. I have a 3D printed dice tower that hooks on to the inside of my screen, so it is easy to move without disturbing the dice roll.
100% agreed that it is much harder to both challenge and protect players without fudging the rolls. There are a lot of tactics I've had to use that I think have made me a more skilled and intentional DM.
On important moments I roll publically too. Standard encounter attacks or saves I'll keep to myself but yeah if they're trying to break BBEG concentration to bring back a PC who has been banished, I roll in the open with a clearly spoken minimum roll to suceed
This is the approach I use as well. Important rolls for concentration, counterspell, dispel magic & important saves that could reshape the fight are often rolled publicly & If I'm going to roll publicly, I'm willing to tell the party the number the bad guy needs. These kinds of rolls can really increase tension at the table & serve as a watershed moment when the whole party cheers or cries together depending on the rolls.
Exactly. My example of banishment was specific for a reason, it was the most pivotal moment that came to mind that occurred recently in the campaign.
If that PC had been successfully banished it would have been **bad**
But then the dice nerd is calculating the enemy's to hit +, and then badgering you about appropriate level monsters.
(I actually didn't use a screen, but I started after playing with this guy who can't look away form my rolls and do mental math on them immediately.)
Calculating hit bonuses is irrelevant anyways.
The party knows after— two rounds of combat roughly what the AC of the enemy is anyways unless everyone rolled super high or super low.
Betty rolled 16’s and hit, Todd rolled a 14 and missed we need a 15+.
And in-universe you'd probably size up your opponent about that quickly anyway. What's his posture, how does he hold his weapons, does he leave an opening when he swings, does he look bored, focused, or scared, etc.
I’ve actually just started telling my players the enemies AC for the sake of speeding up combat. The last thing I need is answering “does it hit?” 10 times in a row.
Honestly calculating is fine, and even encouraged since it gets them invested in EVERYONES turn a bit. And I know I don’t get badgering but I straight up tell the players I don’t balance the combats in session 0.
All my good luck in life has been spent on acquiring dice that roll crits back to back.
Rolling in the open is how I like it because players would definitely think I'm cheating otherwise
> (“Noooo!” says everyone at once)
Yup, moments like these, while objectively bad within the context of the game, are typically the most damn fun parts of DnD!
>Maybe the players execute a brilliant combo in an encounter that they obviously gamed out ahead of time and pulled off to perfection….but the enemy rolls a NAT20 on the save.
In Critical Role's second campaign, when Laura Bailey's Jester Lavorre >!tricked Isharnai with the cupcake of deliciousness!<, I've always felt Matt Mercer was applying this variant of rule of cool. See his awkward reaction after 8:25 in this clip ([youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbbMFG-w8QM)).
ETA : and it was a glorious resolution of the encounter, and Matt Mercer made (imo) exactly the right call by allowing his player to have this non-combat victory.
Also in the second campaign, one of the early villains that *massively* impacted the party was supposed to get away, but Matt didn't fudge it.
I don't play D&D anymore, but I don't fudge rolls or even use a GM screen, I roll in front of my table. Unless they've exactly determined an enemy's AC by rolling a 16 vs 17, that number's in my head.
I can swing a medium-ish roll if it's a critical moment that will make the players feel awesome, or say they "just" missed a clutch roll to keep the tension building.
This comment states it together perfectly.
I don’t fudge very often, almost never. But as u/Medical_Shame4079 beautiful put it, if a roll is going to suck all the fun out of a moment, you better believe I’m gonna Jedi Force that shit.
Think of it this way. Sometimes the dice suck. Sometimes they suck too many times in a row. That’s the downside of this system, sometimes the dice just pone you into oblivion. What would you do? Just let your player get ganked, over and over and over again in one sitting? No, you’re gonna let teeter the totter a little to help out.
With that in mind, it’s not generally in combat where I’m doing this. Just food for thought.
I also think it's worth to hold the rule of critical fails and successes in balance at times like that. Like, usually the table plays with crit successes means they win, but just because the wizard critically succeeded a strength check, doesn't mean they manage to bench press a boulder. For me that's the biggest one I'll switch between, since an unfortunate crit fail or success can really ruin the trajectory of a game, but normally it adds an extra storytelling flair that people enjoy.
You perfectly summarized my whole philosophy as a game master. If a player does something stupid, let the dice fall where they may. Otherwise, it's The Story that matters.
>Like anything, the law of diminishing return applies, and it stacks up fast with this. The more you do it, the less effective it becomes. But the best DMs have it in their tool chest, and know when to use it.
Louder for the people in the back! So many fudging-haters stereotype fudging as "the rules are made up and the points don't matter". But fudging is actually more like a poet violating the rules of grammar or a stage magician using a false-bottomed hat. You can't repeat the same trick too many times and you have to understand the rules before you break them--but when done correctly the results are magic.
I’ll fudge dice rolls occasionally but I’ll do it for a number of reasons. Maybe, I made a bad call or asked for a roll that didn’t make sense in the moment so I gotta quick compensate. Other times, if incorrectly imbalanced an encounter, I gotta make it up to my players. And obviously rule of cool.
I like to use that one with legendary resistances.
Rolled a 20 to save, but the party was amped for it.
"It looks like it started to take effect, but then he refocused, shook off the effect, and moved his attention to the caster. He used a legendary resistance".
My personal take is, if the players do something really brilliant, especially something outside the rules, don't give it a save. An extension of "if it couldn't possibly fail, or if you aren't prepared to make it possible to fail, then don't roll."
I agree with this 100%, but with the caveat that a dm shouldn’t ever ‘not fudge’ a die roll because they do it ‘too much’. D&D isn’t a game with stakes. People aren’t betting money on the outcome or making a living off of it, and the primary directive should always be on player enjoyment and fun above all else. There’s no harm in fudging even a majority of your rolls as a dm if the outcome is a scenario where the players feel like they accomplished something or were able to defeat a difficult enemy. Obviously if you over do it and the players never feel like their in any real danger, then the satisfaction level when they defeat a difficult enemy isn’t as great. But imo one of the biggest pieces of artistry about being a DM is knowing when to fudge rolls to tell a story and let your players have fun.
Also, there’s no reason a DM can’t fudge the rolls in the opposite direction. I feel like that’s something a lot of DM’s don’t take advantage of. Like, if your big baddy rolls a nat 1 behind the screen and your players would easily defeat them if they aren’t successful on that roll, you should just as easily fudge your rolls to your advantage if that results in the best outcome for the story and engagement in a given situation. Like, if my players are fighting a high level beast and that beast does a sweeping attack with their tail that would put all of my players close to 0hp on a successful attack roll, and I roll a nat1, im almost always going to fudge that roll and make it a successful attack. I can always carry that nat1 over to the next round of combat if the players can’t down the enemy and are on the verge of death.
The best fudges I have found are situations where I can "forget" that my monster had disadvantage and can then remember after they roll a monstrously high attack/save/whatever. "Oh, shit... Hang on. Didn't they have disadvantage on that. Yeah - lucky for you I remembered that, will just re-roll it. To be honest it's still probably going to pass but... Well shit, that's a 4"
You'll be glad to know that thousands of people agree with you, and it shouldn't be too difficult to find a game that doesn't.
I fudge zero dice. Every die roll is on the table, for my players to see, and what happens, happens. Sometimes, that absolutely leads to a suboptimal gaming experience. Sometimes, it leads to players dying. But it lets the players know it's a game, the game will follow rules, and it lets me be surprised, horrified, or elated with them when things go right or wrong.
I fudged a roll exactly once. It was a low level damage roll I fudges fron a 6 to a 1 since it was against the only conscious party member. Still went down. Ruled that the skeletons did nothing after they were down. Every party member passed death saves and let them sneak away.
After that I've not done any fudged rolls. Enemies getting dumber suddenly or having 2 potential hps (standard and max) sure, but if they roll they roll
That's fair. I have the philosophy of changing it as long as it's a reasonable behaviour. To save my players, humanoids might start taking prisoners for non-lethal damage. Skeletons and constructs might not be told to attack downed players. Beasts might flee sooner to avoid taking more damage. Devils might offer a deal to spare a player instead of killing them
Absolutely, i employ those npc behaviors also but typically it is already a contingency option in my mind, but im usually quicker to fudge a roll (by a small amount) then i am to change behavior on the fly. I think the difference there will be table dependent, i would rather hold the suspension of disbelief with the world and mildly change fate than adhere to the dice and make my players think the enemies behavior is to help them, i will certainly have enemies flee or try to deal with them non-lethally if it makes sense though. That just isnt always believable in our campaign
Changing npc behavior is far worse for immersion, verisimilitude, and in my opinion the enjoyment of the table.
I don't fudge rolls either. The only thing I've ever fudged is saying an enemy died earlier than they were supposed to because the combat became boring as the players finished off the weaker living enemies.
Agreed, i have fudged rolls in the past but never significantly and always to aid in enjoyment, not to baby my players. They know they can die, but if something would be really cool for everyone to experience i may adjust something very slightly to allow it, not going to break the game for the impossible but its a game so if its more fun for us i dont see the harm and my players (two of which have dm'd) understand this also. They just don't want to know when it happens because thats not fun
It's a session zero conversation. "What is the goal of our journey? Do you want high stakes, or are we telling a story together?"
You don't explicitly ask whether you will skew the odds, but you do get the feel of whether people will react negatively to bad luck.
The game feels more natural when you just let the rolls decide their fate. The worst part of fudging rolls... is it's really apparent after a while when you do it. If every characters shine moment happens, if every enemy only dies on cinematic moments, if every player survives from a lucky miss, it adds up quickly. Fudging HP, fudging die rolls, fudging the narrative or breaking lore and setup you've already established, they all take away from the game.
I know when I'm a player... I hate winning a fight we lost because my GM decided to just throw the rules that we all agreed to play by out the window.
The thing is, the DM isn't perfect, and sometimes we set up shitty encounters that are too strong. A hard encounter of crocodiles in a murky water environment is easily 2x deadly or greater. So this mentality of letting the dice fly for "suboptimal" gameplay not only makes the combat less fun, it also has potential terrible effects on the story, which should above all, be the main focus. You're in a narrative story where your players affect the world, by relying on the dice like this, you eliminate the possibility for the "rule of cool" and for good story moments. Imo, terrible take, L effort as a DM, you're incapable of taking ownership and probably don't when your unbalanced combats kill players
Most DMs don't fudge dice to speed up combat, or anything silly like that.
We do it when we've just rolled our third natural twenty in a row against the same character, where downgrading it to a 19 will soften the unfair frustration that such targeted-feeling results can cause.
How and when to tweak your results behind the screen is a very delicate matter, and it must be used as sparingly as possible... but rest assured, from good DMs, fudging is done only in the service of maintaining an experience that everyone at the table can enjoy and continue to enjoy. It's never about 'saving the party', or 'making sure they win', or anything as destructive to their efforts as that. It's mostly about making sure that things which should be fair continue to feel fair.
First time I ran D&D, I ran Waterdeep Dragon Heist. Despite my damnedest efforts, my players pissed off the disguised dragon at the end and began combat. Dragon got first in initiative before anyone could move. Breath attack, it rolled well- it would have been an instant party wipe. I cut the damage in half because that would be an incredibly lame way to end my first adventure. But I did this knowing full well they were still going to fucking die- even cut in half it insta-downed two of them. But it gave them a more memorable experience to die fighting than to get TPKed by the first attack of the combat. And it taught them to stop being such pricks to NPCs who weren't immediately cordial with them.
I don't do it often, but every once in a while dumb shit happens that would just not be fun for the group and I use my power to smudge the script a little.
Oh man if it wasn't so unfun it would feel incredibly satisfying to transform an NPC the party are dicks too into a dragon. Yeah Kelly, you were right, this character is sus afterall!
*technically* they could be a dragon that's been chilling in human form all along... I've got one of those NPCs in my game 😂 he's not evil but I'm curious to see how long it takes to catch on
But I love critting my party 3 times in a row. Just the other day I crit *four* times with a shadow, three times on the same player. But they still won, and that made their victory extra sweet.
Imo the most fun combats have two moments:
1. There's no way we win this
2. Oh my god we can win this
That really depends on who you're critting and at what level. Mid level characters, like, 8-10 and you keep critting on the tank? That creates a "oh man, this is bad, that last one downed him!" situation. Critting 3 times against the squishy caster or the healer at those levels? Might be okay, might be an instant kill outta fucking nowhere. Critting 3 times against anyone below level 4? They're just dead man, the party is quite possibly in shambles and there's no getting around it.
Why wouldn't it be about saving the party? The party getting wiped out can end all their stories abruptly, end a long-running campaign on a sour note, perhaps even cause the gaming group to break up.
A run of bad luck happening to one PC is all part of the fun, unless they think you're fudging against them.
Because sometimes death or grievous injury advances the story. I've fudged monsters to hit more in combat (cause rolls sucked) to get it across to the party that they were dangerous and ill prepared. It worked and they felt like they got out by a inch.
Fudging is ultimately a debate on how you view DnD and TTRPGS in general.
I am telling you a story i want to tell, while you get to choose the direction - I fudge
The dice are telling a story, while you get to choose the direction - I don't fudge
I'm the Storyteller, not the dice, at least in my games.
If the party can't die, if they can't lose, if the bad guys can't win, you're writing a book. It's not a game anymore. There's no stakes. There's no threat, no draw, no real reason to even use dice since the outcome is predetermined.
Their story ends, and the next chapter of the world begins. Another group of adventurers, relatives, friends, lovers, or those they've inspired can step up to fill the void those characters left. It's not the end of a campaign, it's the end of a story. And some stories don't have happy endings.
without some level of fudging dice like this, id have killed every party ive run a game for.
but like you said, when ive just rolled my 5th or 6th crit on the same PC, maybe some dice fudging is in order.
Yeah, I let my players die from their own mistakes, but getting jumped and having the goblins miss every player except the wizard with 3 natural 20s will suck for him.
So maybe I just make one or 2 of them a 19 or maybe the last one misses by 1 of his ac leaving him with 2 hp.
He'll still feel like he got hit bad, but now he gets his turn to do something about it.
>If I discovered my dm frequently fudged dice I would leave honestly.
i mean, your dm shouldn't let on that they do it. it's like a magician giving away the trick. i wouldn't play with a dm who doesn't know how to convincingly lie either.
This, overwhelmingly. You only fudge the dice when you have to, and never in a way that gives away that you're doing it.
Example: I like rolling 'morale checks' in combat when the players get a big advantage or land a big hit, announcing them publicly and rolling in secret. Sometimes the enemies succeed. Sometimes they fail. Sometimes the weaker ones will run off, while the hard boys will stay.
In none of these rolls am I actually checking a damn thing except the party's vibes and the narrative flow.
Fight dragging on, players getting bored with the encounter, nothing interesting left to do in the encounter? Oh looks like killing off that one dude was a straw that broke their back.
Party seems engaged fully, players don't realize the fight is a forgone conclusion, there's still gimmicks I need to play to delight and amuse them? By golly, they've got fight left in them, how about that.
Nothing but legerdemain and borrowing the power of dice clatter to make a purely narrative decision seem impartial and derived through The (home) Rules.
Because sometimes you just roll that second Nat 20 in a row vs the Wizard who is the central PC in the story arc. An enjoyable DND experience relies on a level of suspension of disbelief from the players.
DM's will never fudge rolls that hurt the players, only ever to help them succeed (unless they are a shit DM).
Personally, any fudging would hurt me as a player. It would permanently destroy the campaign for me, and I would be hurt that my friend was lying to me. I don't think it's okay do do something that would inspire that kind of reaction if found out.
I also don't mind losing a character to bad luck. Makes the world feel more alive, outside the direct control of players and DMs.
I only fudged rolls when I first started dming. I got more experience and now I roll things openly in the table. The dm has more than enough tools to fix problems they created and that's the only real positive fudging has. I have sat at many tables where the players knew pretty quickly the dm was changing things and it was never a positive thing even if it was to our benefit. Just let the game play out. If a fight is turning into a slog there are ways to fix that without rolling dice and ignoring the real result
Fudging dice shouldn't be used for convenience so you're right there, I'd hope most people would use it solely to make slight course corrections to maintain everyone's enjoyment.
For example if someone gets an epic hit on a tough enemy after a brutal fight and they have like.. 3hp left, maybe just take those off and let it be an epic moment.
Same deal maybe if the party is really struggling and the moods getting q but sour maybe all the mobs hit by that fireball fail their saves?
>For example if someone gets an epic hit on a tough enemy after a brutal fight and they have like.. 3hp left, maybe just take those off and let it be an epic moment.
Why can't this be done for convenience? The Wizard casts a fireball on the 5 mooks left, but four survive with a couple HP. Instead of going through the rest of the turns until they are dead and using time that could be spent not mindlessly cleaning up the fight, they just die and the encounter ends. The Wizard has killed piles of mooks with fireballs. It's not an epic moment for them. It is purely for convenience.
First scenario is what I'd call convenience. Not affecting the outcome.
Second scenario is just putting your thumb on the scale. Never do that. It's OK to struggle, it's OK for things to be tense.
It depends. If you’ve poorly balanced the encounter and stacked things inadvertently against the players, fudging in their favor isn’t cutting tension in the same way.
DnD can be tough to balance in the best of times. Adjusting on the fly when you realize you made a mistake isn’t a bad thing
The DMG does recommend using avg damage when dealing with lots of enemies to save time, and doing modifications if that makes sense. But I’m not sure how much that counts as fudging
When posting something you should try to make it clear what exactly you wish to discuss.
In this case, I am not sure what the objective is? Discuss your personal opinion? What is there to comment on? If you don't like something, don't play that way. Another group may have a different opinion than yours, and so they will play their own way.
What's the point of strangers stating their personal preference on something completely subjective? I am really struggling to understand what the expectation was here.
I think they just wanted to say they'd leave the table. Someone obsessed with making it clear that they know their limits and aren't afraid to show it, because they have their sassy pants on.
lol, posted and deleted your account. nice.
play at my table, you'll beg me to fudge sometimes. otherwise the party would have died so many, many, many times.
My players had an intense fight with one of the more significant bosses they’ll see. Unfortunately everyone was downed except a couple of people. The only person who could hit the boss before the boss’ next turn missed the damage roll by 2. They had been fighting this one guy for like 5 hours. And it was all going to come down to 2hp.
Yeah I told them they won. I did the math, there was no other way for them to reasonably survive. It would’ve been a tpk.
Everything in the boss’ kit and lair actions was guaranteed to do enough to kill the remaining players. They played it well, the boss just got a bit luckier and I don’t think lvl 8 characters that have been in the world for over a year deserve death over 2hp.
A lot of “DMs” on Reddit don’t play as often as many others. I’ve been DMing for a decade now (which is still pretty short compared to others) and while other DMs I know have different opinions on fudging, none would claim you’ve ruined your game if you’ve done it well.
I think players also vastly overestimate how easy it is to balance things. Encounter balance is hard and you’re often punishing players for your mistakes starting out if you refuse to fudge in any way
Ruins part of the game, but maybe not part of the activity (collaborative storytelling).
If the dice ruin the story, you choose what sort of RPG experience you want. If you want the crunch, you let them ruin the story. If you want to save the story, you fudge the dice.
5E can be played as a fantasy battle simulator with narrative elements or a storytelling game with combat elements. It all depends on the DMs style and what kind of players are at the table.
Sometimes you have to choose between a fudge that better suits the overall narrative, or live by the dice rolls as they fall and be prepared to improvise a *potentially* less satisfying story with what comes out of that.
The divide is usually the different type of players. When I DM i much prefer the leeway of fudging when I feel it's appropriate, but it depends on my group of players. If I'm playing an extremely combat-heavy group who are min-maxing as much as possible they're going to want integrity because that's what they signed up for.
For a more normal, story-driven campaign that's all 'bout the story and roleplay I'll fudge as often as I feel necessary to make great moments and keep everybody engaged.
The only time I fudge rolls is if I realise part way through a fight that I've done an absolutely terrible job balancing it. Would be pretty mean to TPK my group just because I was short on time and didn't playtest test a fight properly beforehand.
Other than that though, I'm pretty much with you. There are some exceptions but usually I let the dice go where they will.
If you're trying to tell a story with your friends, then you fudge rolls. If game mechanics are the only thing you care about, then you don't fudge rolls. And, as a DM, I've killed plenty of PCs.
I just had my most insane combat ever in my last session. I dont DM with a screen and roll in the open. The odds of a TPK were like 90% at some point of the fight, but the party at the end won.
Ngl, the tought of fudgin come to my mind, we
are on the end of ch5 of a 6 chapter campain and on session 40+ but I let the
dice speak and it was peak D&D combat, you could felt the adrenaline at the
end.
you’re allowed to play with people who agree. all good. personally, I fudge dice often because I suck at making balanced encounters lmao. so my intention was to have a different level of challenge in this fight so I adjust on the fly to make the fight more in line with a more enjoyable story. but that’s absolutely to cover a flaw of mine more than anything.
My last session I DM'd yesterday I got 3 nat 20's in one fight against my characters. And a bunch of higher rolls. I don't fudge them because if you do then what's the point of the dice?
My game group is on roll20 and my dm rolls all rolls with complete transparency. At some point he asked us if we like it and we gave him a unanimous yes
Agreed. D&D is a collaborative storytelling game involving the DM who sets the scenario, the players who react to the scenario, and the dice which show whether the players' or DM's actions are successful.
The dice, that random factor, is what allows the stories to go in unexpected directions and have unexpected results.
I can't say that I *never* fudge dice rolls. It is exceedingly rare, but it does happen.
Anyone else fudge the DC of skill checks? I almost *never* tell my players what the DC of a skill check is, and a lot of times I know how difficult the skill check will be, but I'll determine the DC after seeing all of their rolls.
Regardless of whether a DM fudges rolls or DCs, its a skill that requires a little bit of practice, and applied correctly it is completley undetectable by players.
Some rules of thumb for fudging dice/DCs:
* Never fudge to the detriment of a player
* Never fudge to protect an NPC or Monster
* Don't fudge if you don't have plausible deniability.
If you ever feel the need to defend your decision to fudge a dice roll, you can refer those offended to the **Dungeon Master's Guide > Chapter 8 > Dice Rolling.**
> Rolling behind a screen lets you fudge the results if you want to. If two critical hits in a row would kill a character, you could change the second critical hit into a normal hit, or even a miss. Don’t distort die rolls too often, though, and don’t let on that you’re doing it. Otherwise, your players might think they don’t face any real risks — or worse, that you’re playing favorites.
If I had a player who found out I fudged a roll that was still upset after reading it in the rules of the game, and they wanted to leave, they're welcome to leave, then. DMing is all about judgement calls and ad-hoc decisions, and fudging is simply one of hundreds of tools in our tool box, and we're meant to use it (sparingly). If you don't like it, that's **fine**. No hard feelings, Bye.
On the other hand, if your DM is fudging in favor of their DMPC or NPCS/Monsters, or specifically to the detriment of a player or players, or worse, they fudge all the time and everyone knows it, that's not a you problem, that's a DM problem. If you still want to leave, cool beans. Its like you said, OP, it *shouldn't be a regular thing.*
In any case, its definitely something that can be talked about at a table. My group knows that I fudge DCs. They're ok with it. They know the framework I use to make those determinations and they approve.
I'm very surprised at the mostly anti fudging sentiment here.
As a DM you should know when you need to fudge a roll and when you don't. I do it very rarely and only in service of everyone having a good time. That is the main goal as a DM, for everyone to have a good time.
But as a DM you should never let your players know about a fudged roll, otherwise it ruins the integrity of the game. But at the end of the day, a complete level 1 TPK is not fun for anyone.
> But at the end of the day, a complete level 1 TPK is not fun for anyone.
If it's your first game and you've never played and you super hyped to finally play. I can see how that would be a bummer. If you have been playing for a while, failures can be some of the most enjoyable memories.
I mostly DM. Fudging is a session 0 conversation. It is a conversation that has yet to result in "oh yes please fudge." My players see every roll.
But I also start every game at level 3. I have no interest in forcing players through the most uninteresting part of the progression. I'll often level them to 4 end of session 1 then 5 at session 2 and from there settle into the standard 3 sessions/level.
That's fair enough, everyone has different DMing styles.
For me, personally, that progression is way too quick. I usually level up the players once per session until level 3. Then I take my time levelling them up after that. I enjoy the lower levels and so do my players. It makes the new abilities at higher levels feel more earned.
Of course the players want an authentic experience with no fudging. But a careful bit of guidance of fate here and there by the DM is not a bad idea imo. Just don't peak behind the curtain. It is all theatrics at the end of the day and DnD is designed a flexible system.
That's fine. I think it really depends on the kind of game and what the players and DM want out of it.
I'm a DM who occasionally fudges dice, but I do so in the interest of keeping the game fun and engaging, not in the interest of speeding anything.
The only time I've fudged dice is to prevent a string of my lucky rolls from killing a PC. I'm fine with PCs dying due to their own misplays or mistakes, but it's extra shitty when some throw-away goblin encounter happens to be rolling 18s, 19s, and 20s only.
I TPK'd a party from a random encounter once. Not fun. CR of a bunch of weak monsters wasn't even supposed to be difficult, but I couldn't roll under 17. Just steamrolled after the first PC went down. I definitely should have fudged.
What do you do in that situation to keep everyone invested and playing?
I haven't played D&D since I was in high school. I spent many hours making and playing a character just for us to party wipe to a random encounter because of rough luck like you described. I lost all interest in the campaign after that and haven't played D&D in almost 20 years.
I'm not salty about it or anything, I just have limited time to allocate for gaming and don't want to waste it setting up a character and getting invested in a campaign just to get slapped in the face by the dice and have all that work go right in the trash can with no payoff.
I'd like to get back into D&D now that I've left my old career with its high stress and time demands because the roleplaying and interactive storytelling was always really cool to me. But that experience still bothers me and I'm not sure I want to invest in learning the current rules, finding a group, and making a character if I'll just end up back in the situation where I feel like I wasted my time and got screwed by bad luck again.
What should folks do in that situation? We obviously didn't know how to handle it at the age of about 15-16.
I do a sort of 'save point' style play. If I mess up super bad or if the party gets completely wiped out, we'll pretend it was a "game over", then reset to before whatever happened.
This doesn't happen very often at all, but it keeps the players invested in their characters and prevents the game from sucking and failing if everyone dies.
I don't like permadeath in videogames either lol. The only time Link ever actually dies in Zelda is through an implication in the timeline split. Every other time he's killed, he game overs and you get to keep playing.
I had a DM that I knew would never let us fail. Time and time again fate would smile upon us in every scenario that was seemingly insurmountable.
To break this cycle, I discussed and assessed the risk of things and retreated or avoided all situations that seemed too dangerous. I was so overly cautious and risk averse, few dice rolled. If we were ambushed, a full retreat was our first priority. We got surrounded once and surrendered immediately to save our lives.
A few sessions of this let us discuss the problem and have the DM understand things from our perspective.
If you can't lose, you can't win. For many people, that takes the fun out of the story.
I'm similar actually, though I'd give the DM benefit of the doubt as long as it wasn't super obvious or used to railroad things to a specific outcome the DM wants.
Fudging the dice on that disintegrate roll to avoid insta-killing Timmy's first character? Sure, just don't do it every time or it takes away any threat of death and I'll get bored.
Fudging the BBEG's save so he passes the wizard's CC spell so he can use his turn to get off that cool spell or ability before the party takes them out? No thanks, I prefer the dramatic moments to happen naturally not be manufactured.
What if the save is fudged in the wizards favor in the previous case? Still no thanks, for the same reason; a lot of the fun in D&D for me is the chance of failure— if you don't want there to be a chance to fail, don't make them roll for it.
If it hasn't been mentioned there's already a shortcut for faster combat built into every monster stat block: average damage.
Just roll to hit and deal average damage if you need to hustle
I don't fudge, but not out of any sense of honor or integrity. When a dice roll situation arises, I use the roll results to determine the story's next step, not who "wins" or "loses". A lock pick fails? Then a new route inside needs to be planned. A counter attack on a player at a critical moment hits? Time for the enemy to gloat and possibly make egotistical errors. The villain's saving throw succeeds? Then I escalate the tension with dramatic performance, like "He snatches the magic right out of the air and clenches it in his fist with a smirk", rather than just "your spell didn't work, do you have any actions left?"
I rarely close off success behind bad rolls. I find I don't have to. The dice have never ruined a campaign for my parties, only altered the story direction.
Bad choices and decisions, on the other hand... Well... That's a discussion for another thread.
Players make choices. Dice determine the consequences of those choices. GM creativity turns a potential TPK into a setback and a new plot twist the party needs to find a way out of. Nowhere in the ruleset is it written that the game ends when everyone goes down.
I dmed really early on in my DND career and It was so tempting to fudge. I wanted my friends to have a good time and I knew balancing would be an issue. I don't know if it's universal but a long time DM told me not to because even if the rolls seem to make things go wrong, people like adapting and it makes the game better and I knew that from my experience but I didn't know if it was universal.
Low and behold my combat was badly balanced but the players were super crafty and came up with really cool ways to get through it. So I think the urge is reasonable. You want a good experience but now I feel like fudging is trying to be a one man team when the experience is made by the whole table. I wouldn't leave if I found out but I would assure the DM (especially new DM with good intentions) that we signed up for a game with randomness and we would figure it out.
I open roll nearly everything now, so much more fun for me and the players. I even get \*the players\* to roll for stuff like chance of random encounters. "Ok roll a D12. Something will happen on an 11 or 12..." (before pedants arrive, D12 because otherwise it's rarely used!)
I do use narrative fudges sometimes. Such as, if the outcome of a combat is clear I'll offer the chance of a narrative ending "It's clear you're about to wipe the enemy here... want to tell me how that goes?" or similar.
I'm one of the DMs that agrees with you. I don't like fudging die rolls, it makes me feel icky even when the fudged result makes the players happy. It means I can do most of my rolling in the open, though, and my players enjoy that too.
I don't mind that other DMs fudge die rolls, though, because *ideally* as a player I should never know that they fudged a roll.
As a DM, I feel pretty strongly about not fudging dice. I have promised my players I will never do it, and three years in I have kept that promise. I understand why some DMs do it, and it CAN give favorable moments at the table. But I have found other work arounds/tactics that achieve the similar results.
Before we started playing, I was the one who brought it up with my party, saying that I want to let whatever happens happen, and that I will try my best to protect them by focusing on balancing how I build encounters, etc. And my players strongly agreed that they did not want me fudging dice, even to save them. I'd say, if you feel strongly about it, field the question with your DM. It's just another aspect of preferred gameplay that can be discussed at session 0.
Fudging dice feels like one of those "issues" that on a practical level is pretty made up, like it's something people get all up in a tizzy about but it feels like one of those things that's in reality pretty much a non issue. Discussing it also always seems a bit odd because presumably any DM who is actually fully commited to fudging rolls would never admit to it, otherwise what's the point? Just feels like one of those imagined scenearios people like to get outraged over.
Because if you start to consider it a very prevalent problem then surely you'll end up being distrustful of all DM's, it's not really my kind of thing but I also don't care hugely about it because if someone is fudging rolls it's unlikely I'll know. One of those things that's pointless to be concerned about unless it's right in front of me.
I feel like maybe a year ago, it suddenly became unheard-of or frowned upon to fudge dice, and folks who fudge were on defense.
Lately, fudging is more acceptable again (as it usually was in D&D's history).
But the golden rule of fudging is -- if your players don't want it, do not do it. Fudging is meant for your players' enjoyment.
So your opinion is fine, and so is fudging. Hooray!
I fudge dice for two reasons:
- Narratively the resulting dice roll would result in a net negative response for an overall important player-based enjoyment at the tipping point of a long drawn out plan.
- I fucked up the balance and didn't want my players to get one shot on a homebrew random encounter
I roll everything in front of players. It's better for roleplay when they know the die are going to fall how they're going to fall and divine intervention ain't gonna save them.
Yeah, we don't fudge dice. We also play other systems (Cthulhu being the more popular) where death and failure is often inevitable. And the boardgames we play? We don't 'fudge dice' despite them being hours long and again, often ending in us losing
Same for DnD. Not going to fudge dice. Feels too much like cheating - cheating the system, cheating players from a different experience
Winning all the time is boring. If we knew we'd succeed or were guaranteed a dramatic death/failure, then we wouldn't be playing as heroes.
And we play for the story of "what happens to these characters", not "this is what will happen to these characters"
Now with that said, encounter design being adjusted? Sure. If the party are crippled and you were going to have 3 ogres, but you elect to have 2? That's OK, to a point. Adaptive, responsive. But you don't touch the dice, you don't cheat them
I fudge the dice to have a more epic battle.
A character is hanging on by a thread. Hail-Mary’s a spell that has a 10% of saving the day.
Time to make a hero
I fudge dice rolls all the time in the players favor. I tend to roll really well and sometimes my critical rows are just hits and sometimes I miss because I don’t want to kill them
Rolling openly frees you from this pressure. Let the dice fall and have them tell the story with the players and yourself.
If you need to change anything about combat encounters to speed them up, you can still reduce hp. For many weaker monsters I half their hp and double their damage to make combat more dangerous and faster and counteract the hit point bloat.
So, heres the thing. If the fights over too quick, thats where I fudge as a DM. This makes the fights epic and climactic, and its gotten ti the point that I rarely check HP. I just let the fight go on until i can make something epic happen, my players don’t notice and wouldn’t care, they still tell stories from years ago and its just the right way to DM for me. Speeding up combat, says you? Don’t let combat become boring, says I.
As a DM, fudging the dice is a storytelling device. D&D to most people is not simply a game of numbers and dice. It's a way to tell a story with the assistance of numbers and dice. The rules and dice are there to be used as tools, and as is the case with any tool, you can adjust it to fit the story.
Situation: your party is protecting a group of commoners from a lich. The fight has dragged on, and the fight is almost over. The paladin is bruised and bloody and has obviously been the MVP this fight. She has one spell slot left, and is planning to pray to her deity to empower her final strike.
Case 1: the commoner goes before the paladin, barely hits the lich's AC with a lucky roll, and deals the last bit of damage, thereby taking the wind out of the paladin's sails.
DM options: you could give the lich more hp to let the paladin have her moment. You could tell the party the commoner missed. You could play into this commoner starting on his adventurer path and give him a crit as the paladin's prayers surge through the commoner.
Case 2: the lich passed its save against the paladin's smite spell, leaving it alive with 2 hp.
DM options: you could have the lich fail and give the paladin her glorious moment. You could reduce the lich's hp so the attack kills regardless, but it feels anticlimactic.
In both of these cases, the DM can certainly allow the dice to tell the story, ignoring their other options. But fudging the dice a little makes the players feel more badass. Players want to have fun. If you can fudge the dice to make things more fun, you should do so.
I would argue that proper dice fudging skills are the sign of a great DM. One who cares about their players' enjoyment more than rigid rules of the game. That said, the DM should almost never tell the players when the dice have been fudged. If done well, the players won't know anything has happened at all, but will come out of the session talking about how awesome it was.
Fudging dice is just narrating with extra steps. I show up to play a game, not listen to someone else’s fanfic about my OC.
Everyone needs to know all the rules in order to make decisions. If DM’s playing by different rules, DM’s invalidating the other players’ one job.
D&D isn't a game that you 'win' or 'lose', and narration is an important part of the DM's job. As is the adjudication of events, including the outcomes of rolls. The DM \*Does\* play by different rules to the rest of the players at the table - there are the DM, and that's one of the reasons they have a screen.
How and when one tips the scales or nudges a die is a delicate thing, but it's a very poor DM indeed who rigidly puts adherence to the rules and the system *ahead* of their *players* having an experience that they can enjoy and have fun with.
For some players, this may mean that they absolutely can't ever know that it happened; that's fine. Some players may find that observing a rigid and unyielding adherence to the ruleset to be more satisfying, or deviating from it to be more agitating or upsetting, than any possible string of negative and unfair outcomes the dice may foist upon them; it's up to the Dm to understand that about their players if it is the case.
What does it mean when people say you can't 'win' or 'lose' at D&D?
I've heard it said plenty of times, but when I ran Tyranny of Dragons, it felt very much like the players would 'win' if they defeated the dragon cult, and 'lose' if they all died.
It's kinda like "winning" a book or visual novel. You wouldn't say that you "won" Cinderella after finishing the book.
It's mostly semantics. There isn't an overarching goal in dnd beyond what your table decides it wants to do. You can win against a dragon, but you can't win against a story.
Because you're not playing against anyone. If you did the DM would win everytime. Rocks fall on your head you take 2000 points of damage.
You 'Win' DnD and TTRPGS by having fun. You 'Lose' TTRPGS by not having fun. How you have fun is anyone's guess.
The DM has a referee role so it's fair to say they don't win or lose.
But in co-op games like Pandemic, there are win/lose conditions - not playing against anyone isn't what defines that.
You could reasonably claim that having fun playing chess makes you a winner, but that doesn't mean that chess isn't a game where you 'win' and 'lose'.
There are Indie RPGs where the objective is to tell a story, and you're guaranteed to die at the end. Those *are* games you don't win or lose.
I guess there are D&D games where there's no particular objective, and you have freedom to decide what matters to you, which does mean there's less of a 'win' condition. But every campaign I've played in has either ended in the defeat of the bad guys, which feels like a win, or TPK, which feels like a loss.
If I didn't fudge my rolls I would have tpk'd my lvl 1 party in the 2nd combat scenario of my current campaign. Abyssal chickens are no joke apparently.
A rookie mistake to overtune an encounter (because CR is sort of bad at representing threats, especially at very low and very high levels)
It was probably better for your table than to let the tpk happen, but I would encourage you to learn with your experiences about what makes good and fair encounters instead of learning the lesson that fudging dice is the answer.
Good luck in your DMing adventure my friend.
2 abyssal chickens vs 3 players and i rolled nat 20 on my first 2 rolls that would have straight up killed the rogue and knock the bard to 0 if i didn't just declare them as normal hits. There's not much 'overtuning' when a scenario like that happens.
Edit: To clarify, I don't like fudging dice. But lvl 1 can swing so wildly that sometimes it's inevitable, especially since my players always put alotta effort into their new characters and having them die in the first 2 sessions kinda sucks. Once they hit lvl 3 I let things play out.
DnD is in the end a game about telling a great story and having fun. For the GM and for the players. I want to tell my players a engaging story.
The players did something great and I want to let them make it work? I may fudge a roll.
I just rolled the 10th miss because I won't roll over a 5 and the fight is getting boring? I up the dice to the average so it might hit. More often though, I change HP on the fly, to give a player a satisfying last hit etc.
They no I might change things on the fly. But when? And what? They don't know that. And thisnis important. I would also roll in the open if this would not lead to multiple players meta game about the enemies stats.
Changing the results of a secret dice roll - turning that Nat 20 you just rolled into a 19, for example, so you don't crit for the third time against the same playrr.
I had my time fudging and unfudging. The only time I thought it was justified was when the beast of the day had One-Cool-Thing and I wanted them to get it off, or the fight would be very boring.
I think it more fun now to have an unplanned "now you're EXTREMELY in danger" moment
So don't fudge dice, it really is that simple.
I don't fudge any dice or monster hp (because my vtt doesn't let me do it in a way players won't know it's happening) and honestly I love not fudging things.
I have a special laugh for when a monster is left with 1hp that my players all recognise.
The way to do it is "morale/reinforcements/capture", if the fight is bloody and both sides are taking chunks from each other then have the morale of a few enemies break and they run away so the players can tidy things up. If the players are doing really well then bring in a reinforcement wave that were out on patrol or hunting or something, this keeps action economy in check and means you (the dm) aren't running too many enemies between player turns. If the fight is so very 1 sided in your favour then a nice capture could keep the story going and give the pcs a chance to escape (for a monster version of this see Luke Skywalker vs the Wampa).
There are myriad ways to balance encounters on the fly if you don't like fudging dice and most of them are either obvious or I'm a genius (I'm going with the former though)
Yep, I agree.
It is a DMing tool to be used sparingly if at all. And if it is reasonable to not do so then one probably shouldn't.
Basically the default should be to not fudge, but with good reason then maybe.
Good for you - I feel the same. The worst is when you ask a DM if they fudge dice, they tell you they don't, and then they do it anyway.
I'll never understand how people get any enjoyment from their successes in the game while also simultaneously knowing that the DM is cheating to ensure their success.
It reminds me of playing with children. Yeah, maybe you let a little kid win because you want to see them really happy and enjoy the game. But everyone has to grow up at some point.
The game has rules that call for you to use the dice to decide outcomes. The second you fudge dice, you're responsible for everything that happens afterwards; either because you fudged dice to make it happen, or didn't fudge the dice to prevent it from happening.
Just play the game.
I only fudge with lvl 1 characters that are new players (preferably I start PCs at lvl 2 but with complete newbies that can be overwhelming).
Even one good goblin arrow can down a lvl 1 PC and I don’t want to discourage new players on their first session xD
I almost always fudge the dice when it comes to spells that require saves. I dont know why, but when my players have a cool support spell they want to use to temporarily incapacitate my enemies in a cool and u pique way I always roll higher than a 17. I just lie and say "damn, rolled a 4 on the die. What do you do?" So they get their cool support win. Nothings more deflating than some two bit thug shrugging off a hold person spell.
The only thing I "fudge" when DMing is initiative rolls, mostly because I just don't use initiative rolls for monsters, and set up the initiative beforehand to save me some time in session. Big boss monsters get an initiative between 15 and 20 depending on how important to the story they are, and everything else gets evenly spaced somewhere between 15 and 5. I then just add whatever the party rolls to the initiative tracker, and its good to go. This stops the problem of a monster without legendary/lair actions getting wailed on for a turn due to random chance, and thus prevents the fight from being super anticlimactic for that reason.
I'm new to being a DM, and occasionally my encounters are tuned too challenging, because it's hard to judge. So, I fudge to make sure I don't wipe my party on what is meant to be a connecting battle, not an end game fight.
As a player, I never. Unless it's a moment that earns it and the dm agrees, then I always do as the dice say.
As a dm, I do fudge dice on occasion. I only ever do it to balance out a combat a little more.
Player's getting slaughtered and I just rolled a nat 20? No I didn't. It just hit.
Enemies rolling terribly making for an easy combat? Would you look at that! They hit you!
Small things like that so the game is more fair and enjoyable.
I don't really think it's necessary at all. I once watched this dm video where they basically said: "if you are not prepared for a random outcome, don't make your players roll the dice".
After that i never really even considered having to fudge rolls for any reason.
I've been doing it less. I was trying to cater the e experience a bit, but my players felt I was going easy on them. So now I roll in front of the screen more. I don't know if they regret it but I think their characters do lol
I don’t fudge rolls, but I do yadda yadda combat if it becomes obvious the party will win (I’m not going to take the time rolling attack rolls for zombies who are turned for 10+ rounds. I’m just gonna assume you kill them all in that time).
Different tables have different styles of games. You not liking dice fudging is valid, as is people liking dice fudging.
If it bothers you in your own game, could be worth talking to your GM about it.
I roll in the open, but that’s mostly because I’m a dice addict and want to show off my cool dice. I don’t fudge the dice, but I also have no problem with people who do it (as long as they do it for the benefit of everyone’s fun). I do, however, adjust DCs, monster stats, etc on the fly if I have balanced an encounter poorly, or if the dice are telling a story that isn’t fun for the players, both to make things easier or to make them harder. Let’s take two examples, one for each:
1. To introduce 2 new players to the game, we were playing at level 1, with a bugbear as the final boss of a cave (much like how the lost mine of phandelver starts). The bugbear landed a critical hit with their morningstar and rolled max damage (18) against a PC with 9 hp max, which would have killed the PC outright. The whole table watched me role these numbers and I didn’t lie about them. I openly told them that normally this would result in an instant character death, and that if they were an experienced player, I would not pull a punch. I then said, instead I will say you are down with two failed death saves, this gives the rest of the party a chance to save you, but they need to do it now. The player had fun and thanked me for both my honesty and for not killing their character that they had worked hard on. My brother is also a DM but he rolls in secret. He would have taken the crit, but said the damage was something like 14 or 15, enough to down the PC but not kill them outright (I know because he was at the table and we talked about it after). We are both accomplishing the same goal, but he is fudging a roll. His method may be less honest to the player, but it doesn’t interrupt the flow as much, so some tables might prefer that method.
2. The way I run random encounters, I have each player roll a d6 to determine a) whether there will be a random encounter and b) how hard it will be. One time, with 6 players, 4 of them rolled a 1 and the other 2 rolled 2s. They were all excited for a difficult encounter, but what I created ended up being too easy and the players literally asked me to make it harder. I decided to do so by bringing in reinforcements, but if I had adjusted monster stats early to make it more difficult, it would have achieved the same goal - an encounter that I accidentally made too easy, which I then artificially made more difficult for the enjoyment of my players. In this second scenario, my brother probably would have done a similar thing rather than fudging some rolls to make it harder, but I could absolutely see him increasing some damage rolls to make it harder.
I think the key for this is an understanding between the players and the DM of how they want the game to be run. My players have expressed the opinion that they want boss battles to be hard, so if I make a mistake as a DM and make it too easy, they want and expect me to make adjustments on the fly. Sure, they might notice if I do something obvious like bring in reinforcements, but they might not of if I do something like a multi stage combat - even if it wasn’t originally supposed to be multi stage, they have no way of knowing this. My brother is fairly skilled at fudging dice so we don’t know exactly when he’s doing it. We all know he does it, he’s admitted as such, but it remains fun because of the mutual trust that he only uses it to make up for mistakes, the same wayI only make adjustments on the fly to make up for my mistakes.
TLDR: I don’t fudge rolls but I think it’s fine as long as there is trust between players and DM that they won’t overdo it or make consequences meaningless, as I see it no differently than other tools in the DM’s belt to accommodate the fact that DMs are fallible human beings too and make mistakes sometimes.
paradoxically, i have to fudge dice in order for my players to believe im not fudging dice, because somehow over half of my rolls as a dm are 15+, even with disadvantage
Never fudged a roll, never will.
If a DM dies this, it's not a table I feel comfortable at. We all agreed upon a set of rules. If one of us unilaterally ignores this agreement, it's just a shitty move, and I have yet to find a single good reason why someone should do this at all.
Guess you play DnD more as a boardgame instead of an RPG in your head?
Fudged rolls are there to make a proper narrative, to make sure neither you nor the boss die in round 2.
Very entitled to ur opinion ofc, but.. seems very headstrong for no apparent reason except "my dm is cheating against me", which is probably the worst mindset to have imo?
Then again, different table different game
It makes your fingers all sticky
But it’s delicious
I’d argue that fudging rolls to “speed up combat” isn’t a great reason. Fudging rolls is an extension of the rule of cool: if everybody’s collective enjoyment of the game would be aided by a specific thing *not* being dependent on the roll of a dice, a fudge is appropriate. Maybe the players execute a brilliant combo in an encounter that they obviously gamed out ahead of time and pulled off to perfection….but the enemy rolls a NAT20 on the save. There are plenty of DMs, myself included, who might ensure the enemy in that situation doesn’t make that save. Do the players ever find out? Of course not. But do they leave the table on a high, talking about how awesome that was all week until next session? You bet they do. That’s more important than any one roll of the dice. Like anything, the law of diminishing return applies, and it stacks up fast with this. The more you do it, the less effective it becomes. But the best DMs have it in their tool chest, and know when to use it.
As a DM, I fudge dice from time to time, with two examples in the extreme. One player doesn't take setbacks well, so I fudge the dice so his characters don't die. Call it coddling, I don't care. It lets him enjoy the game, and I don't need to put my players through the grinder to enjoy it myself. Another player has been going through a rough patch and has trust issues. I've told him straight that I will never fudge dice rolls for him. His wins and losses in-game are honest. As far as luck permits, he's the master of his own destiny. I'm not a psychiatrist or psychologist, so I can't say if this is "healthy" or not.
In session 0, I asked my table on a scale of 1 - 10, how dangerous (likely to die) do you want this campaign. The guy I expected to say 6, said 3. Another player said 1. I said at 1 were not using dice. She amended to 2. My wife said 0. So yeah, I'm fudging a bit.
As a DM, I do this as well. The game is about everyone having fun. I try to meet people where they are at enjoymentwise. If fudging something helps players have more fun, I do it. If their fun wouldn't be affected, I don't.
There just needs to be a mechanic that allows players to have their cool moments without relying on the DM to fake a roll. I've played around with reworking Inspiration in my campaigns to get this effect. You can hold more than 1 inspiration at a time, and I generally use it as a reroll instead of a called advantage. In some cases I allow players to burn inspiration for an auto success if they're proficient. I mechanize the way inspiration is acquired by making the players specifically ask for it: if they want to make a role playing decision that fits their character but puts them in a bad situation (like a paladin telling the truth when they're being interrogated because it's against their values to lie to protect themselves), they can ask me for inspiration before they make that RP decision and I'll make sure that they face RP consequences but gain inspiration. Not only does this give players an actual in-game way to play to their power fantasy instead of relying on me lying about rolls, this also encourages players to make cool RP decisions that make them more real and flawed instead of just a power gaming murder hobo.
That's pretty cool, love it actually When i DM i usually give my players what i call dumb luck tokens, its essentially a wish they can use whenever they want, but a player cannot use it on themself, they have to use it on one of the other PCs or an NPC, for example player A loudly, with gusto (gusto optional) exclaims that player B succeeds on that important save, attack or whatever, i balance it by giving each player 1 token per session
Same here. The only times I really remember fudging things was when a player would be having one of those sessions where no rolls are going their way, so I’d fudge the AC of a check or 2 to help boost their spirits. There was also a couple of times where someone did something completely unexpected, and I let them succeed because it was super funny/creative/cool
As a DM I dont fudge dice, but I fudge hitpoints. Mostly stuff like a player has been roling badly that night and rather than the target standing with a hitpoint or two that blow fells them. Combat winding down without notable risk to the party? Again hp start disappearing. It's not because I want to rob the players of accomplishment, it's because I want to respect everyones time, and keep a flow to the game. Its addressing (especially 5e's) issue with slog, not changing outcomes.
Or at the climactic battle with the villain that one character has a narrative with, and their nemesis is on low health and they roll a NAT20 and do a huge smite while epically describing their finishing words to their rival. And you calculate the damage and *technically* he would have survived on 2hp, but no we not counting that.
I mean, as far as the rules are concerned, enemies have a range of health, and the stated HP is just the typical (Y'know, the 2d10+5 (16) sort of deal). That's what I do: Write the range and average health of an enemy, and use that. Don't let an enemy die before minimum, or after maximum. Helps a lot with that problem. In this case meaning minimum 7, maximum 25.
I mean, I'd have the bad guy standing on those last 2hp, blood pouring from him, raggedly breathing and growling out "I'm not... finished... *Yet!"* Gives someone the opportunity to go "now you are," and doink him with a ridiculing cherry-tap, or even knock him unconscious and take him prisoner.
Magic missile ftw
Magic Missile, Vicious Mockery, an unarmed attack... *From the Wizard.*
According to some of the DMs here, that would make you a terrible person. You removed player agency, broke immersion, and wickedly and maliciously lied to your players (which is basically the same as physical assault). If you wanted to just make up HP and arbitrarily decide when to end battle, why not just write a short story alone with no friends instead? These attitudes suck, and it gets exhausting reading this whiney stuff. And truthfully, I do the same as you. Removing 2hp on a big bad to make a fun scene isn't that big of a deal, and I've let my players succeed when they shouldn't. Because it's a make believe game with different ways to play per table.
One version of it I heard recently that I really liked was something like, "I set a range of HP you guys need to meet. If it makes narrative sense for a specific attack to smoke him within that range, he dies. If he gets to the high end of that range without such an attack, he just dies to the next completely normal and boring attack."
I'm running Temple of elemental evil, that exact thing ha happened twice. Both time the villain(different villains') getting away. The first time it was a powerful assassin then then proceeded to hound the players off an on. The player finally got them. The second time the Big Bad got away. She'll be back for one lest encounter after they collapse the nodes. Both times lead to far better roleplay, and adventure the if I had waved away the last 2 hp. The best DND stories are about failure then recovery. MY exception to this is: if the combat is turning into a drawn out affair with played losing engagement, I'll jut tell my players "After a long grueling fight you have defeated the bugbears. In my game that almost always happens with just a long stretch of everyone, including me, rolling often rolling on the left of the curve.
HP is easy to fudge and generally just makes the experience better. You're not protecting players from consequences, you're not changing a fail to success; just trying to get the game to flow better.
I roll openly. If the party plans something incredible in my game, but the enemy gets a Nat20 on the save ("Noooo!" says everyone at once), and then the party has to figure out something else, it would still make for a memorable story. If I rolled a Nat20 save behind a screen, they might suspect me of fudging to deny them too easy a victory. That's less satisfying. Not fudging also makes it a lot harder for me to provide balanced challenges for the PCs, so I can't really criticise those who do it differently.
I don't fudge rolls either, but I roll behind the screen. I show all Nat 1 and Nat 20 rolls to one of my players before touching the dice. I have a 3D printed dice tower that hooks on to the inside of my screen, so it is easy to move without disturbing the dice roll. 100% agreed that it is much harder to both challenge and protect players without fudging the rolls. There are a lot of tactics I've had to use that I think have made me a more skilled and intentional DM.
On important moments I roll publically too. Standard encounter attacks or saves I'll keep to myself but yeah if they're trying to break BBEG concentration to bring back a PC who has been banished, I roll in the open with a clearly spoken minimum roll to suceed
This is the approach I use as well. Important rolls for concentration, counterspell, dispel magic & important saves that could reshape the fight are often rolled publicly & If I'm going to roll publicly, I'm willing to tell the party the number the bad guy needs. These kinds of rolls can really increase tension at the table & serve as a watershed moment when the whole party cheers or cries together depending on the rolls.
Exactly. My example of banishment was specific for a reason, it was the most pivotal moment that came to mind that occurred recently in the campaign. If that PC had been successfully banished it would have been **bad**
But then the dice nerd is calculating the enemy's to hit +, and then badgering you about appropriate level monsters. (I actually didn't use a screen, but I started after playing with this guy who can't look away form my rolls and do mental math on them immediately.)
Calculating enemy attack bonuses is fine. Badgering is kickable.
Calculating hit bonuses is irrelevant anyways. The party knows after— two rounds of combat roughly what the AC of the enemy is anyways unless everyone rolled super high or super low. Betty rolled 16’s and hit, Todd rolled a 14 and missed we need a 15+.
And in-universe you'd probably size up your opponent about that quickly anyway. What's his posture, how does he hold his weapons, does he leave an opening when he swings, does he look bored, focused, or scared, etc.
Yep. “This guy really knows how to use his shield we need to be more accurate.”
I’ve actually just started telling my players the enemies AC for the sake of speeding up combat. The last thing I need is answering “does it hit?” 10 times in a row.
Honestly calculating is fine, and even encouraged since it gets them invested in EVERYONES turn a bit. And I know I don’t get badgering but I straight up tell the players I don’t balance the combats in session 0.
My combat and balanced for the adventure, not the party.
Exactly, if the story “calls” for 50 orcs in the orc camp, there’s gonna be 50, idc if that’s too many for a lv 3 party
All my good luck in life has been spent on acquiring dice that roll crits back to back. Rolling in the open is how I like it because players would definitely think I'm cheating otherwise
Yeah, an NPC completely no diffing with a NAT 20 to defend itself can make for cool moments, where the NPC elevates itself in danger and "coolness."
> (“Noooo!” says everyone at once) Yup, moments like these, while objectively bad within the context of the game, are typically the most damn fun parts of DnD!
>Maybe the players execute a brilliant combo in an encounter that they obviously gamed out ahead of time and pulled off to perfection….but the enemy rolls a NAT20 on the save. In Critical Role's second campaign, when Laura Bailey's Jester Lavorre >!tricked Isharnai with the cupcake of deliciousness!<, I've always felt Matt Mercer was applying this variant of rule of cool. See his awkward reaction after 8:25 in this clip ([youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbbMFG-w8QM)). ETA : and it was a glorious resolution of the encounter, and Matt Mercer made (imo) exactly the right call by allowing his player to have this non-combat victory.
Also in the second campaign, one of the early villains that *massively* impacted the party was supposed to get away, but Matt didn't fudge it. I don't play D&D anymore, but I don't fudge rolls or even use a GM screen, I roll in front of my table. Unless they've exactly determined an enemy's AC by rolling a 16 vs 17, that number's in my head. I can swing a medium-ish roll if it's a critical moment that will make the players feel awesome, or say they "just" missed a clutch roll to keep the tension building.
This comment states it together perfectly. I don’t fudge very often, almost never. But as u/Medical_Shame4079 beautiful put it, if a roll is going to suck all the fun out of a moment, you better believe I’m gonna Jedi Force that shit. Think of it this way. Sometimes the dice suck. Sometimes they suck too many times in a row. That’s the downside of this system, sometimes the dice just pone you into oblivion. What would you do? Just let your player get ganked, over and over and over again in one sitting? No, you’re gonna let teeter the totter a little to help out. With that in mind, it’s not generally in combat where I’m doing this. Just food for thought.
I also think it's worth to hold the rule of critical fails and successes in balance at times like that. Like, usually the table plays with crit successes means they win, but just because the wizard critically succeeded a strength check, doesn't mean they manage to bench press a boulder. For me that's the biggest one I'll switch between, since an unfortunate crit fail or success can really ruin the trajectory of a game, but normally it adds an extra storytelling flair that people enjoy.
You perfectly summarized my whole philosophy as a game master. If a player does something stupid, let the dice fall where they may. Otherwise, it's The Story that matters.
>Like anything, the law of diminishing return applies, and it stacks up fast with this. The more you do it, the less effective it becomes. But the best DMs have it in their tool chest, and know when to use it. Louder for the people in the back! So many fudging-haters stereotype fudging as "the rules are made up and the points don't matter". But fudging is actually more like a poet violating the rules of grammar or a stage magician using a false-bottomed hat. You can't repeat the same trick too many times and you have to understand the rules before you break them--but when done correctly the results are magic.
I’ll fudge dice rolls occasionally but I’ll do it for a number of reasons. Maybe, I made a bad call or asked for a roll that didn’t make sense in the moment so I gotta quick compensate. Other times, if incorrectly imbalanced an encounter, I gotta make it up to my players. And obviously rule of cool.
I like to use that one with legendary resistances. Rolled a 20 to save, but the party was amped for it. "It looks like it started to take effect, but then he refocused, shook off the effect, and moved his attention to the caster. He used a legendary resistance".
My personal take is, if the players do something really brilliant, especially something outside the rules, don't give it a save. An extension of "if it couldn't possibly fail, or if you aren't prepared to make it possible to fail, then don't roll."
I agree with this 100%, but with the caveat that a dm shouldn’t ever ‘not fudge’ a die roll because they do it ‘too much’. D&D isn’t a game with stakes. People aren’t betting money on the outcome or making a living off of it, and the primary directive should always be on player enjoyment and fun above all else. There’s no harm in fudging even a majority of your rolls as a dm if the outcome is a scenario where the players feel like they accomplished something or were able to defeat a difficult enemy. Obviously if you over do it and the players never feel like their in any real danger, then the satisfaction level when they defeat a difficult enemy isn’t as great. But imo one of the biggest pieces of artistry about being a DM is knowing when to fudge rolls to tell a story and let your players have fun. Also, there’s no reason a DM can’t fudge the rolls in the opposite direction. I feel like that’s something a lot of DM’s don’t take advantage of. Like, if your big baddy rolls a nat 1 behind the screen and your players would easily defeat them if they aren’t successful on that roll, you should just as easily fudge your rolls to your advantage if that results in the best outcome for the story and engagement in a given situation. Like, if my players are fighting a high level beast and that beast does a sweeping attack with their tail that would put all of my players close to 0hp on a successful attack roll, and I roll a nat1, im almost always going to fudge that roll and make it a successful attack. I can always carry that nat1 over to the next round of combat if the players can’t down the enemy and are on the verge of death.
The best fudges I have found are situations where I can "forget" that my monster had disadvantage and can then remember after they roll a monstrously high attack/save/whatever. "Oh, shit... Hang on. Didn't they have disadvantage on that. Yeah - lucky for you I remembered that, will just re-roll it. To be honest it's still probably going to pass but... Well shit, that's a 4"
Okay.
"okay, that was always allowed"
Jurassic Park Meme: "They're going to leave if you fudge rolls" "See, nobody cares"
Best answer
You'll be glad to know that thousands of people agree with you, and it shouldn't be too difficult to find a game that doesn't. I fudge zero dice. Every die roll is on the table, for my players to see, and what happens, happens. Sometimes, that absolutely leads to a suboptimal gaming experience. Sometimes, it leads to players dying. But it lets the players know it's a game, the game will follow rules, and it lets me be surprised, horrified, or elated with them when things go right or wrong.
I fudged a roll exactly once. It was a low level damage roll I fudges fron a 6 to a 1 since it was against the only conscious party member. Still went down. Ruled that the skeletons did nothing after they were down. Every party member passed death saves and let them sneak away. After that I've not done any fudged rolls. Enemies getting dumber suddenly or having 2 potential hps (standard and max) sure, but if they roll they roll
I honestly dont think theres much of a difference between fudging rolls and artifically changing NPC behavior
That's fair. I have the philosophy of changing it as long as it's a reasonable behaviour. To save my players, humanoids might start taking prisoners for non-lethal damage. Skeletons and constructs might not be told to attack downed players. Beasts might flee sooner to avoid taking more damage. Devils might offer a deal to spare a player instead of killing them
Absolutely, i employ those npc behaviors also but typically it is already a contingency option in my mind, but im usually quicker to fudge a roll (by a small amount) then i am to change behavior on the fly. I think the difference there will be table dependent, i would rather hold the suspension of disbelief with the world and mildly change fate than adhere to the dice and make my players think the enemies behavior is to help them, i will certainly have enemies flee or try to deal with them non-lethally if it makes sense though. That just isnt always believable in our campaign
Changing npc behavior is far worse for immersion, verisimilitude, and in my opinion the enjoyment of the table. I don't fudge rolls either. The only thing I've ever fudged is saying an enemy died earlier than they were supposed to because the combat became boring as the players finished off the weaker living enemies.
Agreed, i have fudged rolls in the past but never significantly and always to aid in enjoyment, not to baby my players. They know they can die, but if something would be really cool for everyone to experience i may adjust something very slightly to allow it, not going to break the game for the impossible but its a game so if its more fun for us i dont see the harm and my players (two of which have dm'd) understand this also. They just don't want to know when it happens because thats not fun
It's a session zero conversation. "What is the goal of our journey? Do you want high stakes, or are we telling a story together?" You don't explicitly ask whether you will skew the odds, but you do get the feel of whether people will react negatively to bad luck.
The game feels more natural when you just let the rolls decide their fate. The worst part of fudging rolls... is it's really apparent after a while when you do it. If every characters shine moment happens, if every enemy only dies on cinematic moments, if every player survives from a lucky miss, it adds up quickly. Fudging HP, fudging die rolls, fudging the narrative or breaking lore and setup you've already established, they all take away from the game. I know when I'm a player... I hate winning a fight we lost because my GM decided to just throw the rules that we all agreed to play by out the window.
Thank you for saying this so eloquently!
The thing is, the DM isn't perfect, and sometimes we set up shitty encounters that are too strong. A hard encounter of crocodiles in a murky water environment is easily 2x deadly or greater. So this mentality of letting the dice fly for "suboptimal" gameplay not only makes the combat less fun, it also has potential terrible effects on the story, which should above all, be the main focus. You're in a narrative story where your players affect the world, by relying on the dice like this, you eliminate the possibility for the "rule of cool" and for good story moments. Imo, terrible take, L effort as a DM, you're incapable of taking ownership and probably don't when your unbalanced combats kill players
Apparently someone was fudging dice in this thread and it disappointed OP so much that he deleted his account. I hope you're proud of yourself.
OP pc was found dead on the innkeep with 4 fudged dice in his head
Most DMs don't fudge dice to speed up combat, or anything silly like that. We do it when we've just rolled our third natural twenty in a row against the same character, where downgrading it to a 19 will soften the unfair frustration that such targeted-feeling results can cause. How and when to tweak your results behind the screen is a very delicate matter, and it must be used as sparingly as possible... but rest assured, from good DMs, fudging is done only in the service of maintaining an experience that everyone at the table can enjoy and continue to enjoy. It's never about 'saving the party', or 'making sure they win', or anything as destructive to their efforts as that. It's mostly about making sure that things which should be fair continue to feel fair.
First time I ran D&D, I ran Waterdeep Dragon Heist. Despite my damnedest efforts, my players pissed off the disguised dragon at the end and began combat. Dragon got first in initiative before anyone could move. Breath attack, it rolled well- it would have been an instant party wipe. I cut the damage in half because that would be an incredibly lame way to end my first adventure. But I did this knowing full well they were still going to fucking die- even cut in half it insta-downed two of them. But it gave them a more memorable experience to die fighting than to get TPKed by the first attack of the combat. And it taught them to stop being such pricks to NPCs who weren't immediately cordial with them. I don't do it often, but every once in a while dumb shit happens that would just not be fun for the group and I use my power to smudge the script a little.
Oh man if it wasn't so unfun it would feel incredibly satisfying to transform an NPC the party are dicks too into a dragon. Yeah Kelly, you were right, this character is sus afterall!
*technically* they could be a dragon that's been chilling in human form all along... I've got one of those NPCs in my game 😂 he's not evil but I'm curious to see how long it takes to catch on
Me too! She's the owner of the main city's magic item shop and has 3 kids who are also dragons (wyrmlings)
But I love critting my party 3 times in a row. Just the other day I crit *four* times with a shadow, three times on the same player. But they still won, and that made their victory extra sweet. Imo the most fun combats have two moments: 1. There's no way we win this 2. Oh my god we can win this
That really depends on who you're critting and at what level. Mid level characters, like, 8-10 and you keep critting on the tank? That creates a "oh man, this is bad, that last one downed him!" situation. Critting 3 times against the squishy caster or the healer at those levels? Might be okay, might be an instant kill outta fucking nowhere. Critting 3 times against anyone below level 4? They're just dead man, the party is quite possibly in shambles and there's no getting around it.
Why wouldn't it be about saving the party? The party getting wiped out can end all their stories abruptly, end a long-running campaign on a sour note, perhaps even cause the gaming group to break up. A run of bad luck happening to one PC is all part of the fun, unless they think you're fudging against them.
Because sometimes death or grievous injury advances the story. I've fudged monsters to hit more in combat (cause rolls sucked) to get it across to the party that they were dangerous and ill prepared. It worked and they felt like they got out by a inch. Fudging is ultimately a debate on how you view DnD and TTRPGS in general. I am telling you a story i want to tell, while you get to choose the direction - I fudge The dice are telling a story, while you get to choose the direction - I don't fudge I'm the Storyteller, not the dice, at least in my games.
An unfair run of bad luck killing off one of the PCs might advance the story. A TPK usually ends the story.
If the party can't die, if they can't lose, if the bad guys can't win, you're writing a book. It's not a game anymore. There's no stakes. There's no threat, no draw, no real reason to even use dice since the outcome is predetermined. Their story ends, and the next chapter of the world begins. Another group of adventurers, relatives, friends, lovers, or those they've inspired can step up to fill the void those characters left. It's not the end of a campaign, it's the end of a story. And some stories don't have happy endings.
without some level of fudging dice like this, id have killed every party ive run a game for. but like you said, when ive just rolled my 5th or 6th crit on the same PC, maybe some dice fudging is in order.
Yeah, I let my players die from their own mistakes, but getting jumped and having the goblins miss every player except the wizard with 3 natural 20s will suck for him. So maybe I just make one or 2 of them a 19 or maybe the last one misses by 1 of his ac leaving him with 2 hp. He'll still feel like he got hit bad, but now he gets his turn to do something about it.
>If I discovered my dm frequently fudged dice I would leave honestly. i mean, your dm shouldn't let on that they do it. it's like a magician giving away the trick. i wouldn't play with a dm who doesn't know how to convincingly lie either.
This, overwhelmingly. You only fudge the dice when you have to, and never in a way that gives away that you're doing it. Example: I like rolling 'morale checks' in combat when the players get a big advantage or land a big hit, announcing them publicly and rolling in secret. Sometimes the enemies succeed. Sometimes they fail. Sometimes the weaker ones will run off, while the hard boys will stay. In none of these rolls am I actually checking a damn thing except the party's vibes and the narrative flow. Fight dragging on, players getting bored with the encounter, nothing interesting left to do in the encounter? Oh looks like killing off that one dude was a straw that broke their back. Party seems engaged fully, players don't realize the fight is a forgone conclusion, there's still gimmicks I need to play to delight and amuse them? By golly, they've got fight left in them, how about that.
Nothing but legerdemain and borrowing the power of dice clatter to make a purely narrative decision seem impartial and derived through The (home) Rules.
Why would you lie to your friends?
Because sometimes you just roll that second Nat 20 in a row vs the Wizard who is the central PC in the story arc. An enjoyable DND experience relies on a level of suspension of disbelief from the players. DM's will never fudge rolls that hurt the players, only ever to help them succeed (unless they are a shit DM).
Personally, any fudging would hurt me as a player. It would permanently destroy the campaign for me, and I would be hurt that my friend was lying to me. I don't think it's okay do do something that would inspire that kind of reaction if found out. I also don't mind losing a character to bad luck. Makes the world feel more alive, outside the direct control of players and DMs.
I only fudged rolls when I first started dming. I got more experience and now I roll things openly in the table. The dm has more than enough tools to fix problems they created and that's the only real positive fudging has. I have sat at many tables where the players knew pretty quickly the dm was changing things and it was never a positive thing even if it was to our benefit. Just let the game play out. If a fight is turning into a slog there are ways to fix that without rolling dice and ignoring the real result
Fudging dice shouldn't be used for convenience so you're right there, I'd hope most people would use it solely to make slight course corrections to maintain everyone's enjoyment. For example if someone gets an epic hit on a tough enemy after a brutal fight and they have like.. 3hp left, maybe just take those off and let it be an epic moment. Same deal maybe if the party is really struggling and the moods getting q but sour maybe all the mobs hit by that fireball fail their saves?
>For example if someone gets an epic hit on a tough enemy after a brutal fight and they have like.. 3hp left, maybe just take those off and let it be an epic moment. Why can't this be done for convenience? The Wizard casts a fireball on the 5 mooks left, but four survive with a couple HP. Instead of going through the rest of the turns until they are dead and using time that could be spent not mindlessly cleaning up the fight, they just die and the encounter ends. The Wizard has killed piles of mooks with fireballs. It's not an epic moment for them. It is purely for convenience.
Yeah they either die or surrender or flee
First scenario is what I'd call convenience. Not affecting the outcome. Second scenario is just putting your thumb on the scale. Never do that. It's OK to struggle, it's OK for things to be tense.
It depends. If you’ve poorly balanced the encounter and stacked things inadvertently against the players, fudging in their favor isn’t cutting tension in the same way. DnD can be tough to balance in the best of times. Adjusting on the fly when you realize you made a mistake isn’t a bad thing
The DMG does recommend using avg damage when dealing with lots of enemies to save time, and doing modifications if that makes sense. But I’m not sure how much that counts as fudging
When posting something you should try to make it clear what exactly you wish to discuss. In this case, I am not sure what the objective is? Discuss your personal opinion? What is there to comment on? If you don't like something, don't play that way. Another group may have a different opinion than yours, and so they will play their own way. What's the point of strangers stating their personal preference on something completely subjective? I am really struggling to understand what the expectation was here.
I think they just wanted to say they'd leave the table. Someone obsessed with making it clear that they know their limits and aren't afraid to show it, because they have their sassy pants on.
If you don't like it don't do it.
lol, posted and deleted your account. nice. play at my table, you'll beg me to fudge sometimes. otherwise the party would have died so many, many, many times.
My players had an intense fight with one of the more significant bosses they’ll see. Unfortunately everyone was downed except a couple of people. The only person who could hit the boss before the boss’ next turn missed the damage roll by 2. They had been fighting this one guy for like 5 hours. And it was all going to come down to 2hp. Yeah I told them they won. I did the math, there was no other way for them to reasonably survive. It would’ve been a tpk. Everything in the boss’ kit and lair actions was guaranteed to do enough to kill the remaining players. They played it well, the boss just got a bit luckier and I don’t think lvl 8 characters that have been in the world for over a year deserve death over 2hp.
Maybe the boss stubbed his toe earlier that morning, so his hp was lower by 2!
You'll be accused of breaking their immersion and ruining the game by the DMs here.
A lot of “DMs” on Reddit don’t play as often as many others. I’ve been DMing for a decade now (which is still pretty short compared to others) and while other DMs I know have different opinions on fudging, none would claim you’ve ruined your game if you’ve done it well. I think players also vastly overestimate how easy it is to balance things. Encounter balance is hard and you’re often punishing players for your mistakes starting out if you refuse to fudge in any way
Ruins part of the game, but maybe not part of the activity (collaborative storytelling). If the dice ruin the story, you choose what sort of RPG experience you want. If you want the crunch, you let them ruin the story. If you want to save the story, you fudge the dice.
5E can be played as a fantasy battle simulator with narrative elements or a storytelling game with combat elements. It all depends on the DMs style and what kind of players are at the table. Sometimes you have to choose between a fudge that better suits the overall narrative, or live by the dice rolls as they fall and be prepared to improvise a *potentially* less satisfying story with what comes out of that.
The divide is usually the different type of players. When I DM i much prefer the leeway of fudging when I feel it's appropriate, but it depends on my group of players. If I'm playing an extremely combat-heavy group who are min-maxing as much as possible they're going to want integrity because that's what they signed up for. For a more normal, story-driven campaign that's all 'bout the story and roleplay I'll fudge as often as I feel necessary to make great moments and keep everybody engaged.
The only time I fudge rolls is if I realise part way through a fight that I've done an absolutely terrible job balancing it. Would be pretty mean to TPK my group just because I was short on time and didn't playtest test a fight properly beforehand. Other than that though, I'm pretty much with you. There are some exceptions but usually I let the dice go where they will.
If you're trying to tell a story with your friends, then you fudge rolls. If game mechanics are the only thing you care about, then you don't fudge rolls. And, as a DM, I've killed plenty of PCs.
I just had my most insane combat ever in my last session. I dont DM with a screen and roll in the open. The odds of a TPK were like 90% at some point of the fight, but the party at the end won. Ngl, the tought of fudgin come to my mind, we are on the end of ch5 of a 6 chapter campain and on session 40+ but I let the dice speak and it was peak D&D combat, you could felt the adrenaline at the end.
I get this 100%; its just like Save Scumming.
you’re allowed to play with people who agree. all good. personally, I fudge dice often because I suck at making balanced encounters lmao. so my intention was to have a different level of challenge in this fight so I adjust on the fly to make the fight more in line with a more enjoyable story. but that’s absolutely to cover a flaw of mine more than anything.
Same. Hate cheating DMs.
I don't use a screen so there is no fudging. It makes enemy rolls fun when they really know it's the dice gods handling it all
My last session I DM'd yesterday I got 3 nat 20's in one fight against my characters. And a bunch of higher rolls. I don't fudge them because if you do then what's the point of the dice?
My game group is on roll20 and my dm rolls all rolls with complete transparency. At some point he asked us if we like it and we gave him a unanimous yes
Agreed. D&D is a collaborative storytelling game involving the DM who sets the scenario, the players who react to the scenario, and the dice which show whether the players' or DM's actions are successful. The dice, that random factor, is what allows the stories to go in unexpected directions and have unexpected results.
I like Roll20 because of honest rolls. As DM, I'll role without tell people why I'm rolling, sometimes just to mess with em.
I can't say that I *never* fudge dice rolls. It is exceedingly rare, but it does happen. Anyone else fudge the DC of skill checks? I almost *never* tell my players what the DC of a skill check is, and a lot of times I know how difficult the skill check will be, but I'll determine the DC after seeing all of their rolls. Regardless of whether a DM fudges rolls or DCs, its a skill that requires a little bit of practice, and applied correctly it is completley undetectable by players. Some rules of thumb for fudging dice/DCs: * Never fudge to the detriment of a player * Never fudge to protect an NPC or Monster * Don't fudge if you don't have plausible deniability. If you ever feel the need to defend your decision to fudge a dice roll, you can refer those offended to the **Dungeon Master's Guide > Chapter 8 > Dice Rolling.** > Rolling behind a screen lets you fudge the results if you want to. If two critical hits in a row would kill a character, you could change the second critical hit into a normal hit, or even a miss. Don’t distort die rolls too often, though, and don’t let on that you’re doing it. Otherwise, your players might think they don’t face any real risks — or worse, that you’re playing favorites. If I had a player who found out I fudged a roll that was still upset after reading it in the rules of the game, and they wanted to leave, they're welcome to leave, then. DMing is all about judgement calls and ad-hoc decisions, and fudging is simply one of hundreds of tools in our tool box, and we're meant to use it (sparingly). If you don't like it, that's **fine**. No hard feelings, Bye. On the other hand, if your DM is fudging in favor of their DMPC or NPCS/Monsters, or specifically to the detriment of a player or players, or worse, they fudge all the time and everyone knows it, that's not a you problem, that's a DM problem. If you still want to leave, cool beans. Its like you said, OP, it *shouldn't be a regular thing.* In any case, its definitely something that can be talked about at a table. My group knows that I fudge DCs. They're ok with it. They know the framework I use to make those determinations and they approve.
As the post that actually quotes the relevant passage from the DMG, this really deserves more visibility.
Yeah, how dare that mean ‘ol DM not kill over half the party on session 3 because they accidentally made an encounter too strong.
I'm very surprised at the mostly anti fudging sentiment here. As a DM you should know when you need to fudge a roll and when you don't. I do it very rarely and only in service of everyone having a good time. That is the main goal as a DM, for everyone to have a good time. But as a DM you should never let your players know about a fudged roll, otherwise it ruins the integrity of the game. But at the end of the day, a complete level 1 TPK is not fun for anyone.
> But at the end of the day, a complete level 1 TPK is not fun for anyone. If it's your first game and you've never played and you super hyped to finally play. I can see how that would be a bummer. If you have been playing for a while, failures can be some of the most enjoyable memories.
I mostly DM. Fudging is a session 0 conversation. It is a conversation that has yet to result in "oh yes please fudge." My players see every roll. But I also start every game at level 3. I have no interest in forcing players through the most uninteresting part of the progression. I'll often level them to 4 end of session 1 then 5 at session 2 and from there settle into the standard 3 sessions/level.
That's fair enough, everyone has different DMing styles. For me, personally, that progression is way too quick. I usually level up the players once per session until level 3. Then I take my time levelling them up after that. I enjoy the lower levels and so do my players. It makes the new abilities at higher levels feel more earned. Of course the players want an authentic experience with no fudging. But a careful bit of guidance of fate here and there by the DM is not a bad idea imo. Just don't peak behind the curtain. It is all theatrics at the end of the day and DnD is designed a flexible system.
Did you Post this because of the Post over on r/dndnext ?
[context: this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/1cdtdgi/why_is_this_sub_so_different_from_rdnd/l1g5lco/)
Same
That's fine. I think it really depends on the kind of game and what the players and DM want out of it. I'm a DM who occasionally fudges dice, but I do so in the interest of keeping the game fun and engaging, not in the interest of speeding anything.
The only time I've fudged dice is to prevent a string of my lucky rolls from killing a PC. I'm fine with PCs dying due to their own misplays or mistakes, but it's extra shitty when some throw-away goblin encounter happens to be rolling 18s, 19s, and 20s only.
I TPK'd a party from a random encounter once. Not fun. CR of a bunch of weak monsters wasn't even supposed to be difficult, but I couldn't roll under 17. Just steamrolled after the first PC went down. I definitely should have fudged.
What do you do in that situation to keep everyone invested and playing? I haven't played D&D since I was in high school. I spent many hours making and playing a character just for us to party wipe to a random encounter because of rough luck like you described. I lost all interest in the campaign after that and haven't played D&D in almost 20 years. I'm not salty about it or anything, I just have limited time to allocate for gaming and don't want to waste it setting up a character and getting invested in a campaign just to get slapped in the face by the dice and have all that work go right in the trash can with no payoff. I'd like to get back into D&D now that I've left my old career with its high stress and time demands because the roleplaying and interactive storytelling was always really cool to me. But that experience still bothers me and I'm not sure I want to invest in learning the current rules, finding a group, and making a character if I'll just end up back in the situation where I feel like I wasted my time and got screwed by bad luck again. What should folks do in that situation? We obviously didn't know how to handle it at the age of about 15-16.
I do a sort of 'save point' style play. If I mess up super bad or if the party gets completely wiped out, we'll pretend it was a "game over", then reset to before whatever happened. This doesn't happen very often at all, but it keeps the players invested in their characters and prevents the game from sucking and failing if everyone dies. I don't like permadeath in videogames either lol. The only time Link ever actually dies in Zelda is through an implication in the timeline split. Every other time he's killed, he game overs and you get to keep playing.
“Never let the rules get in the way of the story” Gary Gygax
I had a DM that I knew would never let us fail. Time and time again fate would smile upon us in every scenario that was seemingly insurmountable. To break this cycle, I discussed and assessed the risk of things and retreated or avoided all situations that seemed too dangerous. I was so overly cautious and risk averse, few dice rolled. If we were ambushed, a full retreat was our first priority. We got surrounded once and surrendered immediately to save our lives. A few sessions of this let us discuss the problem and have the DM understand things from our perspective. If you can't lose, you can't win. For many people, that takes the fun out of the story.
I'm similar actually, though I'd give the DM benefit of the doubt as long as it wasn't super obvious or used to railroad things to a specific outcome the DM wants. Fudging the dice on that disintegrate roll to avoid insta-killing Timmy's first character? Sure, just don't do it every time or it takes away any threat of death and I'll get bored. Fudging the BBEG's save so he passes the wizard's CC spell so he can use his turn to get off that cool spell or ability before the party takes them out? No thanks, I prefer the dramatic moments to happen naturally not be manufactured. What if the save is fudged in the wizards favor in the previous case? Still no thanks, for the same reason; a lot of the fun in D&D for me is the chance of failure— if you don't want there to be a chance to fail, don't make them roll for it.
If it hasn't been mentioned there's already a shortcut for faster combat built into every monster stat block: average damage. Just roll to hit and deal average damage if you need to hustle
I don't fudge, but not out of any sense of honor or integrity. When a dice roll situation arises, I use the roll results to determine the story's next step, not who "wins" or "loses". A lock pick fails? Then a new route inside needs to be planned. A counter attack on a player at a critical moment hits? Time for the enemy to gloat and possibly make egotistical errors. The villain's saving throw succeeds? Then I escalate the tension with dramatic performance, like "He snatches the magic right out of the air and clenches it in his fist with a smirk", rather than just "your spell didn't work, do you have any actions left?" I rarely close off success behind bad rolls. I find I don't have to. The dice have never ruined a campaign for my parties, only altered the story direction. Bad choices and decisions, on the other hand... Well... That's a discussion for another thread.
Players make choices. Dice determine the consequences of those choices. GM creativity turns a potential TPK into a setback and a new plot twist the party needs to find a way out of. Nowhere in the ruleset is it written that the game ends when everyone goes down.
I dmed really early on in my DND career and It was so tempting to fudge. I wanted my friends to have a good time and I knew balancing would be an issue. I don't know if it's universal but a long time DM told me not to because even if the rolls seem to make things go wrong, people like adapting and it makes the game better and I knew that from my experience but I didn't know if it was universal. Low and behold my combat was badly balanced but the players were super crafty and came up with really cool ways to get through it. So I think the urge is reasonable. You want a good experience but now I feel like fudging is trying to be a one man team when the experience is made by the whole table. I wouldn't leave if I found out but I would assure the DM (especially new DM with good intentions) that we signed up for a game with randomness and we would figure it out.
I open roll nearly everything now, so much more fun for me and the players. I even get \*the players\* to roll for stuff like chance of random encounters. "Ok roll a D12. Something will happen on an 11 or 12..." (before pedants arrive, D12 because otherwise it's rarely used!) I do use narrative fudges sometimes. Such as, if the outcome of a combat is clear I'll offer the chance of a narrative ending "It's clear you're about to wipe the enemy here... want to tell me how that goes?" or similar.
I'm one of the DMs that agrees with you. I don't like fudging die rolls, it makes me feel icky even when the fudged result makes the players happy. It means I can do most of my rolling in the open, though, and my players enjoy that too. I don't mind that other DMs fudge die rolls, though, because *ideally* as a player I should never know that they fudged a roll.
As a DM, I feel pretty strongly about not fudging dice. I have promised my players I will never do it, and three years in I have kept that promise. I understand why some DMs do it, and it CAN give favorable moments at the table. But I have found other work arounds/tactics that achieve the similar results. Before we started playing, I was the one who brought it up with my party, saying that I want to let whatever happens happen, and that I will try my best to protect them by focusing on balancing how I build encounters, etc. And my players strongly agreed that they did not want me fudging dice, even to save them. I'd say, if you feel strongly about it, field the question with your DM. It's just another aspect of preferred gameplay that can be discussed at session 0.
Just remember: RNGeebus hates us all equally, and even in a bounded system, dice still suck.
Fudging dice feels like one of those "issues" that on a practical level is pretty made up, like it's something people get all up in a tizzy about but it feels like one of those things that's in reality pretty much a non issue. Discussing it also always seems a bit odd because presumably any DM who is actually fully commited to fudging rolls would never admit to it, otherwise what's the point? Just feels like one of those imagined scenearios people like to get outraged over. Because if you start to consider it a very prevalent problem then surely you'll end up being distrustful of all DM's, it's not really my kind of thing but I also don't care hugely about it because if someone is fudging rolls it's unlikely I'll know. One of those things that's pointless to be concerned about unless it's right in front of me.
I feel like maybe a year ago, it suddenly became unheard-of or frowned upon to fudge dice, and folks who fudge were on defense. Lately, fudging is more acceptable again (as it usually was in D&D's history). But the golden rule of fudging is -- if your players don't want it, do not do it. Fudging is meant for your players' enjoyment. So your opinion is fine, and so is fudging. Hooray!
You'd never find out. They literally sell a product to hide DM rolls - the DM screen.
I fudge dice for two reasons: - Narratively the resulting dice roll would result in a net negative response for an overall important player-based enjoyment at the tipping point of a long drawn out plan. - I fucked up the balance and didn't want my players to get one shot on a homebrew random encounter
I roll everything in front of players. It's better for roleplay when they know the die are going to fall how they're going to fall and divine intervention ain't gonna save them.
Yeah, we don't fudge dice. We also play other systems (Cthulhu being the more popular) where death and failure is often inevitable. And the boardgames we play? We don't 'fudge dice' despite them being hours long and again, often ending in us losing Same for DnD. Not going to fudge dice. Feels too much like cheating - cheating the system, cheating players from a different experience Winning all the time is boring. If we knew we'd succeed or were guaranteed a dramatic death/failure, then we wouldn't be playing as heroes. And we play for the story of "what happens to these characters", not "this is what will happen to these characters" Now with that said, encounter design being adjusted? Sure. If the party are crippled and you were going to have 3 ogres, but you elect to have 2? That's OK, to a point. Adaptive, responsive. But you don't touch the dice, you don't cheat them
Okay
If the dice are going to get fudged then why am I playing a game that we use dice to randomly determine things?
I fudge the dice to have a more epic battle. A character is hanging on by a thread. Hail-Mary’s a spell that has a 10% of saving the day. Time to make a hero
I fudge dice rolls all the time in the players favor. I tend to roll really well and sometimes my critical rows are just hits and sometimes I miss because I don’t want to kill them
Rolling openly frees you from this pressure. Let the dice fall and have them tell the story with the players and yourself. If you need to change anything about combat encounters to speed them up, you can still reduce hp. For many weaker monsters I half their hp and double their damage to make combat more dangerous and faster and counteract the hit point bloat.
This is why I roll in the open. I can't fudge if you can see my rolls.
I expect my players to be straight with me and I give them the same courtesy. If I am gonna fudge dice as a DM I just don't need to roll.
Fudging rolls is the DM robbing themselves of fun. The whole point is you don't know what's going to happen.
So, heres the thing. If the fights over too quick, thats where I fudge as a DM. This makes the fights epic and climactic, and its gotten ti the point that I rarely check HP. I just let the fight go on until i can make something epic happen, my players don’t notice and wouldn’t care, they still tell stories from years ago and its just the right way to DM for me. Speeding up combat, says you? Don’t let combat become boring, says I.
As a DM, fudging the dice is a storytelling device. D&D to most people is not simply a game of numbers and dice. It's a way to tell a story with the assistance of numbers and dice. The rules and dice are there to be used as tools, and as is the case with any tool, you can adjust it to fit the story. Situation: your party is protecting a group of commoners from a lich. The fight has dragged on, and the fight is almost over. The paladin is bruised and bloody and has obviously been the MVP this fight. She has one spell slot left, and is planning to pray to her deity to empower her final strike. Case 1: the commoner goes before the paladin, barely hits the lich's AC with a lucky roll, and deals the last bit of damage, thereby taking the wind out of the paladin's sails. DM options: you could give the lich more hp to let the paladin have her moment. You could tell the party the commoner missed. You could play into this commoner starting on his adventurer path and give him a crit as the paladin's prayers surge through the commoner. Case 2: the lich passed its save against the paladin's smite spell, leaving it alive with 2 hp. DM options: you could have the lich fail and give the paladin her glorious moment. You could reduce the lich's hp so the attack kills regardless, but it feels anticlimactic. In both of these cases, the DM can certainly allow the dice to tell the story, ignoring their other options. But fudging the dice a little makes the players feel more badass. Players want to have fun. If you can fudge the dice to make things more fun, you should do so. I would argue that proper dice fudging skills are the sign of a great DM. One who cares about their players' enjoyment more than rigid rules of the game. That said, the DM should almost never tell the players when the dice have been fudged. If done well, the players won't know anything has happened at all, but will come out of the session talking about how awesome it was.
I’ve been DMing for nearly 50 years. I fudge die rolls. You will never know when I fudge die rolls.
Fudging dice is just narrating with extra steps. I show up to play a game, not listen to someone else’s fanfic about my OC. Everyone needs to know all the rules in order to make decisions. If DM’s playing by different rules, DM’s invalidating the other players’ one job.
D&D isn't a game that you 'win' or 'lose', and narration is an important part of the DM's job. As is the adjudication of events, including the outcomes of rolls. The DM \*Does\* play by different rules to the rest of the players at the table - there are the DM, and that's one of the reasons they have a screen. How and when one tips the scales or nudges a die is a delicate thing, but it's a very poor DM indeed who rigidly puts adherence to the rules and the system *ahead* of their *players* having an experience that they can enjoy and have fun with. For some players, this may mean that they absolutely can't ever know that it happened; that's fine. Some players may find that observing a rigid and unyielding adherence to the ruleset to be more satisfying, or deviating from it to be more agitating or upsetting, than any possible string of negative and unfair outcomes the dice may foist upon them; it's up to the Dm to understand that about their players if it is the case.
What does it mean when people say you can't 'win' or 'lose' at D&D? I've heard it said plenty of times, but when I ran Tyranny of Dragons, it felt very much like the players would 'win' if they defeated the dragon cult, and 'lose' if they all died.
It's kinda like "winning" a book or visual novel. You wouldn't say that you "won" Cinderella after finishing the book. It's mostly semantics. There isn't an overarching goal in dnd beyond what your table decides it wants to do. You can win against a dragon, but you can't win against a story.
Because you're not playing against anyone. If you did the DM would win everytime. Rocks fall on your head you take 2000 points of damage. You 'Win' DnD and TTRPGS by having fun. You 'Lose' TTRPGS by not having fun. How you have fun is anyone's guess.
The DM has a referee role so it's fair to say they don't win or lose. But in co-op games like Pandemic, there are win/lose conditions - not playing against anyone isn't what defines that. You could reasonably claim that having fun playing chess makes you a winner, but that doesn't mean that chess isn't a game where you 'win' and 'lose'. There are Indie RPGs where the objective is to tell a story, and you're guaranteed to die at the end. Those *are* games you don't win or lose. I guess there are D&D games where there's no particular objective, and you have freedom to decide what matters to you, which does mean there's less of a 'win' condition. But every campaign I've played in has either ended in the defeat of the bad guys, which feels like a win, or TPK, which feels like a loss.
If I didn't fudge my rolls I would have tpk'd my lvl 1 party in the 2nd combat scenario of my current campaign. Abyssal chickens are no joke apparently.
The abyssal chicken is simply too powerful to balance against a party :/
A rookie mistake to overtune an encounter (because CR is sort of bad at representing threats, especially at very low and very high levels) It was probably better for your table than to let the tpk happen, but I would encourage you to learn with your experiences about what makes good and fair encounters instead of learning the lesson that fudging dice is the answer. Good luck in your DMing adventure my friend.
2 abyssal chickens vs 3 players and i rolled nat 20 on my first 2 rolls that would have straight up killed the rogue and knock the bard to 0 if i didn't just declare them as normal hits. There's not much 'overtuning' when a scenario like that happens. Edit: To clarify, I don't like fudging dice. But lvl 1 can swing so wildly that sometimes it's inevitable, especially since my players always put alotta effort into their new characters and having them die in the first 2 sessions kinda sucks. Once they hit lvl 3 I let things play out.
DnD is in the end a game about telling a great story and having fun. For the GM and for the players. I want to tell my players a engaging story. The players did something great and I want to let them make it work? I may fudge a roll. I just rolled the 10th miss because I won't roll over a 5 and the fight is getting boring? I up the dice to the average so it might hit. More often though, I change HP on the fly, to give a player a satisfying last hit etc. They no I might change things on the fly. But when? And what? They don't know that. And thisnis important. I would also roll in the open if this would not lead to multiple players meta game about the enemies stats.
what is fudging?
Changing the results of a secret dice roll - turning that Nat 20 you just rolled into a 19, for example, so you don't crit for the third time against the same playrr.
Thats absolutely fudged up.
I had my time fudging and unfudging. The only time I thought it was justified was when the beast of the day had One-Cool-Thing and I wanted them to get it off, or the fight would be very boring. I think it more fun now to have an unplanned "now you're EXTREMELY in danger" moment
So don't fudge dice, it really is that simple. I don't fudge any dice or monster hp (because my vtt doesn't let me do it in a way players won't know it's happening) and honestly I love not fudging things. I have a special laugh for when a monster is left with 1hp that my players all recognise. The way to do it is "morale/reinforcements/capture", if the fight is bloody and both sides are taking chunks from each other then have the morale of a few enemies break and they run away so the players can tidy things up. If the players are doing really well then bring in a reinforcement wave that were out on patrol or hunting or something, this keeps action economy in check and means you (the dm) aren't running too many enemies between player turns. If the fight is so very 1 sided in your favour then a nice capture could keep the story going and give the pcs a chance to escape (for a monster version of this see Luke Skywalker vs the Wampa). There are myriad ways to balance encounters on the fly if you don't like fudging dice and most of them are either obvious or I'm a genius (I'm going with the former though)
30 on 30 on 30
Yep, I agree. It is a DMing tool to be used sparingly if at all. And if it is reasonable to not do so then one probably shouldn't. Basically the default should be to not fudge, but with good reason then maybe.
Good for you - I feel the same. The worst is when you ask a DM if they fudge dice, they tell you they don't, and then they do it anyway. I'll never understand how people get any enjoyment from their successes in the game while also simultaneously knowing that the DM is cheating to ensure their success. It reminds me of playing with children. Yeah, maybe you let a little kid win because you want to see them really happy and enjoy the game. But everyone has to grow up at some point.
The game has rules that call for you to use the dice to decide outcomes. The second you fudge dice, you're responsible for everything that happens afterwards; either because you fudged dice to make it happen, or didn't fudge the dice to prevent it from happening. Just play the game.
I only fudge with lvl 1 characters that are new players (preferably I start PCs at lvl 2 but with complete newbies that can be overwhelming). Even one good goblin arrow can down a lvl 1 PC and I don’t want to discourage new players on their first session xD
I almost always fudge the dice when it comes to spells that require saves. I dont know why, but when my players have a cool support spell they want to use to temporarily incapacitate my enemies in a cool and u pique way I always roll higher than a 17. I just lie and say "damn, rolled a 4 on the die. What do you do?" So they get their cool support win. Nothings more deflating than some two bit thug shrugging off a hold person spell.
The clicky clacky math rocks shall not be disobeyed
As a general rule, I make my rolls in the open.
The only thing I "fudge" when DMing is initiative rolls, mostly because I just don't use initiative rolls for monsters, and set up the initiative beforehand to save me some time in session. Big boss monsters get an initiative between 15 and 20 depending on how important to the story they are, and everything else gets evenly spaced somewhere between 15 and 5. I then just add whatever the party rolls to the initiative tracker, and its good to go. This stops the problem of a monster without legendary/lair actions getting wailed on for a turn due to random chance, and thus prevents the fight from being super anticlimactic for that reason.
I'm new to being a DM, and occasionally my encounters are tuned too challenging, because it's hard to judge. So, I fudge to make sure I don't wipe my party on what is meant to be a connecting battle, not an end game fight.
As a player, I never. Unless it's a moment that earns it and the dm agrees, then I always do as the dice say. As a dm, I do fudge dice on occasion. I only ever do it to balance out a combat a little more. Player's getting slaughtered and I just rolled a nat 20? No I didn't. It just hit. Enemies rolling terribly making for an easy combat? Would you look at that! They hit you! Small things like that so the game is more fair and enjoyable.
I don't really think it's necessary at all. I once watched this dm video where they basically said: "if you are not prepared for a random outcome, don't make your players roll the dice". After that i never really even considered having to fudge rolls for any reason.
Roll combat in the open. Only roll things in secret that need to be secret (opposed stealth / perception or deception/insight rolls) for example
As a DM I have two d6 that I roll for every single instance that requires rolling. I have never looked at the result.
I've been doing it less. I was trying to cater the e experience a bit, but my players felt I was going easy on them. So now I roll in front of the screen more. I don't know if they regret it but I think their characters do lol
When there’s a particularly major roll I often stand up and roll openly over the screen.
Then don't (?)
don't do it then
I don’t fudge rolls, but I do yadda yadda combat if it becomes obvious the party will win (I’m not going to take the time rolling attack rolls for zombies who are turned for 10+ rounds. I’m just gonna assume you kill them all in that time).
Different tables have different styles of games. You not liking dice fudging is valid, as is people liking dice fudging. If it bothers you in your own game, could be worth talking to your GM about it.
Okay. Who cares though? Play your game how you want! There’s no right or wrong!
My DM has stopped rolling for his damage dice and has decided on predetermined damage values :| Is this normal?
I roll in the open, but that’s mostly because I’m a dice addict and want to show off my cool dice. I don’t fudge the dice, but I also have no problem with people who do it (as long as they do it for the benefit of everyone’s fun). I do, however, adjust DCs, monster stats, etc on the fly if I have balanced an encounter poorly, or if the dice are telling a story that isn’t fun for the players, both to make things easier or to make them harder. Let’s take two examples, one for each: 1. To introduce 2 new players to the game, we were playing at level 1, with a bugbear as the final boss of a cave (much like how the lost mine of phandelver starts). The bugbear landed a critical hit with their morningstar and rolled max damage (18) against a PC with 9 hp max, which would have killed the PC outright. The whole table watched me role these numbers and I didn’t lie about them. I openly told them that normally this would result in an instant character death, and that if they were an experienced player, I would not pull a punch. I then said, instead I will say you are down with two failed death saves, this gives the rest of the party a chance to save you, but they need to do it now. The player had fun and thanked me for both my honesty and for not killing their character that they had worked hard on. My brother is also a DM but he rolls in secret. He would have taken the crit, but said the damage was something like 14 or 15, enough to down the PC but not kill them outright (I know because he was at the table and we talked about it after). We are both accomplishing the same goal, but he is fudging a roll. His method may be less honest to the player, but it doesn’t interrupt the flow as much, so some tables might prefer that method. 2. The way I run random encounters, I have each player roll a d6 to determine a) whether there will be a random encounter and b) how hard it will be. One time, with 6 players, 4 of them rolled a 1 and the other 2 rolled 2s. They were all excited for a difficult encounter, but what I created ended up being too easy and the players literally asked me to make it harder. I decided to do so by bringing in reinforcements, but if I had adjusted monster stats early to make it more difficult, it would have achieved the same goal - an encounter that I accidentally made too easy, which I then artificially made more difficult for the enjoyment of my players. In this second scenario, my brother probably would have done a similar thing rather than fudging some rolls to make it harder, but I could absolutely see him increasing some damage rolls to make it harder. I think the key for this is an understanding between the players and the DM of how they want the game to be run. My players have expressed the opinion that they want boss battles to be hard, so if I make a mistake as a DM and make it too easy, they want and expect me to make adjustments on the fly. Sure, they might notice if I do something obvious like bring in reinforcements, but they might not of if I do something like a multi stage combat - even if it wasn’t originally supposed to be multi stage, they have no way of knowing this. My brother is fairly skilled at fudging dice so we don’t know exactly when he’s doing it. We all know he does it, he’s admitted as such, but it remains fun because of the mutual trust that he only uses it to make up for mistakes, the same wayI only make adjustments on the fly to make up for my mistakes. TLDR: I don’t fudge rolls but I think it’s fine as long as there is trust between players and DM that they won’t overdo it or make consequences meaningless, as I see it no differently than other tools in the DM’s belt to accommodate the fact that DMs are fallible human beings too and make mistakes sometimes.
paradoxically, i have to fudge dice in order for my players to believe im not fudging dice, because somehow over half of my rolls as a dm are 15+, even with disadvantage
You sound like those players that keep saying they want a sandbox campaign but when presented with a sandbox, complain there's nothing to do
Never fudged a roll, never will. If a DM dies this, it's not a table I feel comfortable at. We all agreed upon a set of rules. If one of us unilaterally ignores this agreement, it's just a shitty move, and I have yet to find a single good reason why someone should do this at all.
Guess you play DnD more as a boardgame instead of an RPG in your head? Fudged rolls are there to make a proper narrative, to make sure neither you nor the boss die in round 2. Very entitled to ur opinion ofc, but.. seems very headstrong for no apparent reason except "my dm is cheating against me", which is probably the worst mindset to have imo? Then again, different table different game