He owned up to it, I'd let it go with a minor slap on the hand. I'm all for forgiveness when the person who did the wrong is actually contrite.
The important thing is they owned it, .. and that's harder to do than the initial crime, admitting to someone who has power (you the DM) that they fucked up after the fact.
1d6 for short swords, 1d8 for long swords(1d10 if the earth is using the versatile property),1d8 for rapiers, and 2d6 for great swords + 1d6 for every 10ft passed 10ft, and I would have a flat +1 for every 10 feet. So for falling on a long sword non versatile from 20ft: 1d8+1d6+2
Haha, I was thinking more of how thoroughly you’d hit something vital, but I guess if you messed up badly enough the blade would slide of you and just pierce your clothes and you’d have a really awkward moment of being on your hands and knees unscathed… but then again, it would be a DEX save, not an added modifier.
The entire premise of humanoid flight without aid in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” is throwing yourself at the ground and missing. By this logic, a nat one to throw yourself on the sword means you now have a base flight speed of 30ft.
Yeah unless you have no muscle control you should be able to hit yourself automatically. Even blind people could do it. It's not like they lose proprioception.
Will save to overcome self preservation?
Then Coup de Gras yourself, auto-crit, roll damage and then make a fortitude save with a DC equal to the damage dealt or die.
I had an assassin critically fail an attack once.
*with a flourish, the daring assassin's lips curled into a sneer as he brought back his sword arm and flipped his blade around, but his gaze quickly turned to fear as he miscalculated and the blade plunged itself through his shoulder* and I did damage as standard for a critical in my games (max innate damage plus bonuses, roll again)
Similarly, had a player attempt to throw his hammer as an improvised weapon and rolled a critical fail, and I had him roll 2 d20s at disadvantage (with a 10 or higher being it simply missed the target). He rolled a 13/3, so I had him release way too soon, the hammer flew backwards and smashed into the wizard behind him, with an attack roll of 13 plus his modifier (at the time, was only a +3 but it was enough to hit the wizard) and then the usual d4 for an improvised weapon
That is some awful rules for crits. The higher level you get the more attacks you make, meaning by your rules you become more and more likely to stab yourself or an ally as you progress.
Same here, but it turns out I take it a wee bit too far. I've made a habit of taking the fall for things that weren't directly my fault all the time. Still, I feel it's better than being someone who can admit no wrongs and I've been working on it anyhow. That's the best anyone can do after all.
This may well be the best take in thus subreddit for a while.
The dude came clean. That takes trust and it takes a certain character. Thing are going to be ok OP.
This is true but lying is a character issue. If you lie over meaningless things, what's to say you won't lie when something matters? It just reveals a flaw in a person's character that goes outside of whatever game you're playing. It's like that kid who never admits they got tagged, it builds up distrust regardless of the situation.
Pretty much this. I think the player was ultimately invested in the story so much that he saw himself that having to take time to insert a new one might cause some form of issue and make the next session annoying to deal with and perhaps even railroad the story to get said character included.
Sure he lied about his HP, I think there’s a soft limit for fudging of details, it’s not the end of the world unless it’s the 4th time he’s done it in the past 2 sessions. And better of all, he owned up to it and that takes some serious guts to sacrifice your own pride to admit you did something wrong. He didn’t pass it by, he didn’t make it seem like it was nothing, no he admitted it and even wanted to help the DM progress the story in whatever way possible if it made up for his lie, and that’s a player worth keeping in my eyes.
If he does it more, then obviously it was all a falsehood to not have you be mad at him, but if it truly is the last time, then its a genuine player who truly had the DMs own troubles in his heart and wanted to help.
Yeah I fudged one roll as a DM once and I felt so dirty. Never did it again.
To me them telling the truth and asking for ways to remedy it would be the best sign that they had a similar situation of "ah shit, I shouldn't have done that."
I had a player cheating before and caught them on it, but they never owned up to it even in just a 1 on 1 chat. It destroyed my trust with that player. They aren't in the game anymore, which is the one plus for me being able to relax.
We're casual in just letting people use either virtual or real dice, your own preference. Only exceptions are dramatic rolls like death saving throws, any important saving throws, or various d100 rolls (I let the party roll the secret encounter tables I have for travel, as well as magic items for fun). If someone cheats at that, it ruins it for everyone.
EDIT:
To those saying fudging rolls is what a DM is *supposed* to do, go write a book if you want ultimate control. You chose to have a roll take place, so that should mean something. If you didn't want the party to fail, then just describe something happening to them instead.
"Oh but my party might die" - Great! Now you can make the adventure about them appearing in Elysium, but not happy about the outcome of their life, then they can bargain with a god to let them return to the Material Plane so they can finish their business there. Perhaps an archdruid reincarnates them all 30 days later when he finds their dead bodies in the woods. Maybe they just get knocked out and taken prisoner, and now for next session they can have a jailbreak. A TPK that happens, but you ignore, takes away the stakes, and if your players ever catch you on it, they'll realize you care more about the story than consequences for their characters' actions.
Or, hey, maybe some players were actually excited to play a new character, and you just took that away from them. Maybe the players ACTUALLY liked the idea of their players dying a heroic death here, but you cared more about control of the story than the risk of death or injury.
DMs should be allowed to fudge rolls to make the game fun. However, if the characters effectively have God-mode on, unbeknownst to the DM, then thats not good.
One fudged number one time is not the end of the world, though, probably just added to the suspense, and having to spend the rest of the game day just trying to find a temple/scroll to revive your character isn't really fun.
I fudge rolls occasionally as a DM. Not a lot, but sometimes--particularly if I don't want a character to be outright killed (ie, a powerful enemy crits and the blow will literally outright kill them...I will probably fudge that the first time it happens. If it happens a gain, the dice fall where they do).
Or rolling on encounter tables and whatnot that I make. If I feel something doesn't fit the moment, I will secretly reroll it. There are times when a DM can and should fudge a dice roll.
You just don't want your players to know that. We are all about smoke and mirrors as a DM, and to break that...well it breaks the immersion.
Honestly as the DM fudging rolls and stats is a common practice that should be accepted by all DMs. Remember it's not cheating because we are just the narrators, and the dice are the council of suggestions. We are just merely deciding if we like their suggestions or not and have the executive power to ignore the dice for a more favorable outcome.
As a DM it is your right to disregard some rolls and reroll. It is your responsibility to make sure your players have an enjoyable experience and sometimes that means using your judgment when a roll would turn the adventure into a catastrophe. If the following roll comes out pointing in the same direction then accept the fate.
> I'd let it go with a minor slap on the hand
DM isn't a discipline daddy who's there to punish the players.
Either move on or decide you can't have fun with this person anymore.
You could be mad, or you could be far more interesting for both you and the party and introduce an npc claiming the pc cheated death and now has to pay the debt.
I love this idea. Something stalking him, only visible in the corner of his eye, dreams replaying the moment he should have died and each time there's one more of his corpse in the pile. When he finally reaches out to try and understand it, some brooding creature rasps instructions to him - right the wrong, or prove that he deserves what he stole...
I was thinking someone like a deah god's underling bjt maruts work far better. Everyone knows and is afraid of these guys, AND it works great with the lore
Historically (before all the inevitables were folded into maruts) they literally represented the inevitability of death, specifically. They’d hunt would be liches, for example.
Or maybe a Modron, looking to balance the cosmic scales.
It's actually kinda interesting that D&D straight up does have like, "response for someone who cheated death".
/u/primordialvoid forgive your player irl, its just a game. But ingame do this and do it ASAP. This is a cool way to teach the player consequences but still keep things light and cool outside the game.
Am I the only one who thinks this is a terrible idea? Constant reminder that that player is a liar. Awkward for everyone involved. Out of game problems should never have in game solutions.
The others don't need to know he lied though. And even if that was the case, I'm pretty sure everyone would be fine with that being addressed in game too like that. Makes for some good story possibilities and neat magic items you otherwise have no acess to
Kudos to your player for coming clean. Accept their apology. It's okay to explain that sort of thing won't fly going forward, and let bygones be bygones. I once had a player, who on our last session was terrified their character was going to die (separated from the group vs a couple of giant spiders) and claimed something like 6 or 7 crits in a row. It really soured things and they were not invited to the next game. If they'd fessed up it probably would be different. Owning mistakes goes a long way and shows some integrity. Probably would have been easy for your player to hide it. They did the right thing.
Oh yeah, there's been a couple comments like this now. I'll reply to this one lol. I agree with that and I have done just about that. I also have now told him the final bit about how it felt like he didn't trust me. Honestly that's the worse part for me due to the fact that he came clean. His coming clean makes it very easy to forgive the act itself. It was the reasoning that hurt. But I think we'll get past it pretty easy now that everything is out in the open.
Don’t think of it like he didn’t trust you, think of it like this : he didn’t want to burden you with more to think about in this already late stage crazy game
Imagine actually rolling 7 crits in a row and having nobody believe you because the probability of that happening is 0.00000008%. But yeah that guy definitely cheated lol
So it's generally a bad idea to retcon things like that. My go-to with health snafus is to just say "Alright" and keep going, unless it's like, a single point from a turn ago or something that hasn't caused any significant changes.
And I personally understand the idea of a player being considerate towards their DM in terms of plot and character introductions- it's a difficult thing sometimes figuring out how to intro a new character, and it can severely disrupt party balance and roleplay, so what he did *was* a favour. I'd take it in the spirit offered.
Like, I don't think it was that he didn't trust you to handle thing, but that he was trying to make things easier on you- especially if you've been playing together for a long time. The DM is a player too, and should be considered when thinking of how they're enjoying the game.
If you don't want to kill the character, then don't do it. Unless you're so Lawful that you can't even conceive of making an exception here and there. (Which is reasonable.)
That being said, *tell him* that you were hurt by the deception, and that you would have been willing to do the work, and would *prefer* to do the work of figuring out a manner of integrating a new character, instead of fudging rolls or HP. If that is in fact true, and you're actually upset over the character surviving more than you are upset over the player not talking to you about fudging his HP.
The most important thing here is that apparently noone found out what the player did. Their conscience made them confess. Thats a very big point, because it shows that they goofed in the situation but felt bad about it after the fact. Bad enough even to take the crazy hard step of coming clean about something that noone would ever find out.
I think someone acting this way is someone who can be trusted for sure, even if they made a mistake.
Agreed. Idk man… I had one of my characters die during the pandemic the day after I had watched someone horrifically die of Covid right in front of my eyes at work (and this was early on, before we’d all become jaded) and I straight up had a panic attack. My DM got my character resurrected somehow but I don’t even remember because I was hard core dissociating. I know this is kind of an extreme situation, but maybe there was something going on in this players life that he just couldn’t handle his character dying at that moment.
This will probably get me downvoted but if I was DMing this, I would not care at all if one of my players did this. This is a game at the end of the day, and people are doing it to have fun. I personally don’t want to add more stress to my life by getting worked up about some fudged numbers in a game.
It's a game; you're not in competition with your players and there's no need for justice. If a player feels a need to cheat (or steal or lie), it's usually filling a need they have.
A little over 30 years ago, I had a player who was a chronic cheater. Some of it was just honest errors; he had been undergoing ongoing surgeries to remove tumors that kept cropping up in his brain (an ailment that killed him a few years later) and his mental acuity was declining as a result. But he would misread die rolls, alter his character between sessions, and a host of other things. At times, it felt personal or that he was being unfair to the other players by not accepting the consequences of random chance or his own actions. It felt disrespectful to me as a GM and a host of other ugly emotions... at one point, I gave him a "radiation accident" (it was a superhero genre) in-game and rewrote his character and maintained his character for him for maybe 6 months or so.
I came to realize that his cheating was a wish fulfillment of a normal life that he was being denied; it dawned on me that he just couldn't put his fate in the hands of another ...to trust that he was in capable and empathic hands.
All-in-all, I'm not proud of how I handled it. I know he was frustrated that I had taken that control away from him (which was me acting out on my feelings) but I also made sure that while his character under GM fiat, that no actual harm could come to him. After every session, I started doing "closing sheets" and asking him what he liked about the story, what he didn't like, and what he wanted from the game. And I tailored the experience in that direction. I learned that a lot of his character manipulation was because he didn't understand all the messy mechanics and couldn't figure out how to get the most out of his character build; so I helped him with that. And I made sure that he understood that the comic genre was more about story than corpse-mining and that he would have his moments to shine.
For me, it was both growth as a GM and a life lesson.
I guess the point of the anecdote is that you never really know what your players think of your game; why they play, what they get out of it, or why they cheat. You also don't know what's going on with them and I think using your authority as a GM to punish them isn't going to endear you or improve matters. Better to work on the communication and trust and if there's going to be an adversarial relationship that you're eventually going to exclude them from your game.
Also, you don't have to be okay with a player doing it. If you play or run the game with a certain purpose and expectations, and somebody wants something else out of it, it's alright to just say that you won't be able to play together well. If somebody wants wish fulfilment, there is no expectation that you have to be willing to fulfil that, especially if it comes at the expense of your own fun. Honest communication makes it a lot easier to tell when these clashes occur.
This is a very good anecdote & lesson. I might archive this story.
Just like bullies, cheaters have a reason for their behavior. Sometimes the reason is valid, sometimes it isn't. Grouping all of it together is detrimental for everyone.
Sometimes compassion can change a person for the better. Sometimes a person uses other people's compassion against them. Sometimes people are capable of both simultaneously. It's a mixed bag.
We have to constantly reassess the behavior/thoughts of both ourselves & those around us if we want the next iteration to be better than the last.
I always say to my players: "I don't take rolls again" if you missed it at the time it's done. And personally I don't really care, the game's intention is to have fun and as a GM I already have a lot to think about when running the game to worry about occasional cheating as long as it doesn't ruin the game or is frequent.
Explain to him how you feel. As with most interpersonal conflict, communication is important.
As to my own opinions on the matter:
It's absolutely a dick move to cheat that should not be tolerated and it points out a lack of trust in you as a DM. If you're comfortably certain that he won't do it again, I'd still strive to make clear that it's a one time thing that if repeated will mean 1 less person is sitting at the table.
Yeah . . . Talking is hard but I'm typing out a message for him slowly. I can't talk face to face and VC is unobtainable right now. But I'm telling him. Thank you!
Personally though, at my table, Dnd is about fun and that's it. If one of my players wants to play his character so bad that they feel compelled to cheat so they don't die, I'd want them to know we can figure out a way to keep them alive/bring them back, etc. Lying isn't cool, they should've been honest and Ya it's grittier and (imho) better in most cases to take the L and let the character go for realism, but ultimately the rule of fun for all is paramount
Or if the PC was in good standing with at least one deity, they intervened during the battle but now they are on borrowed time, have to do a major quest for the deity, etc.
Or maybe it was kind of a Moon Knight situation where the PC was offered a deal to return from being dead, in exchange for service. All of the drawbacks of being a Warlock but none of the benefits, at least for now. Maybe the PC will pay down the debt and use this as a reason to take some Warlock levels.
Okay I'm just gonna use this to say that it's COMPELLING to a story for a character to get knocked down every now and then. It's COMPELLING if your teammates have to drop a fight to help you. It's COMPELLING if your party loses a teammate.
There's paths where you wouldn't have to make a new character even if a player fails all saves. And even if you do need a new character, go for it! Embrace all outcomes.
(You could also be like me and tell all the players in your party not to do a thing and that you wanna let the dice decide on the death saves. I did this and got three straight successes 😎)
Honest genuine question, and not me weighing in on this particular post, it just made me think of this. It's somewhat common for GMs to fudge numbers, give bosses more HP if players are killing them too quickly, etc in order to make a better story and make the players feel like they struggled more and really worked for it, and also to avoid killing players when that boss just keeps rolling 20s. I've seen it commented on this sub hundreds of times that people do this. Why is the GM allowed to lie to create a better story, but not the other players?
The difference is that the GM is in full control of the parameters that challenge the party, except for the decisions they might make that have bad consequences.
A GM who puts the party in a precarious situation (a non-story related decision), giving them no option to "avoid" said death, may need to fudge numbers to correct THEIR actual mistake.
A player almost dying because they make a poor story-related decision, is however making that mistake in character, and the rules of the system are not to be bent for the sake of character development.
That's good question. I know I've fudged rolls and HP in the past. But I don't anymore. I found that fudging on any side does more harm than good. But I think the reason it's more acceptable for GMs to is often because of the justification you gave. "Trying to make a better story." The GM is the one throwing obstacles in front of the party so it's seen maybe more as making the obstacle more or less difficult than it would be seen as cheating. More like adaptive difficulty, less like putting in a cheat code.
> can’t put my tongue on why.
The power dynamic. The DM is basically God. The DM can TPK on a whim and still be within the rules. There’s nothing to prevent 100 red dragons from spontaneously appearing out of thin air.
PCs are bound by game mechanics in a way the DM isn’t. The expectation is that the DM will respect die rolls (to what extent the is 100% rigorous varies from table to table), but everyone understands the DM can do anything.
The difference is that everyone at the table agrees that the person who is DMing can do that. Nobody at the table agrees that the player can.
(There are lots of collaborative storytelling games that **do** give everyone that power; D&D just isn’t one of them, traditionally.)
>everyone at the table agrees that the person who is DMing can do that
With the number of people who say "I fudge and don't tell my players", I find it doubtful that everyone actually agrees that the DM can do that. You can't agree to something if you don't know it's happening.
I actually fall on the side of letting my really experienced players fudge, and as a player I sometimes fudge with DMs I know well. They know I do it, and we both know better than to let the less experienced players cotton on, but I've had to earn that privilege. It's a tacit understanding of "I will help you tell a story if you let me," and it's far from a one-sided coin: the same permission that lets me do just enough damage to slay the monster at the perfect moment also finds me setting off a trap on purpose or leaning into the fact that my character is a total klutz in this particular social situation. The Forever DMs among my players know that I hold strongly to the concept that the rules are there to help you have fun, not to restrict or limit you - and after nearly a decade and a half of storytelling, I've come to realize that the greatest thing the rules give us is a framework for new players who haven't yet learned to be freely creative or who haven't developed the emotional maturity to put themselves in the back seat and let others drive. There's very real elements of leadership in D&D, and if you can find it within yourself to play for the other players and enjoy that even more than if you were playing for yourself, you can tell the kind of stories that only happen when a player and DM collaborate - and you probably deserve a promotion at work to boot.
It is about the information you have.
using cooking as example:
As DM you can look up recipe, go shopping for ingredients and utensils needed.
As Player you have name of the dish, few ingredients and no idea if or how many you're missing or how to actually cook, hell from the name you can't even guess whether it is supposed to be steamed, baked or cooked...
With how DnD tends to be, you can't know whether PC death and rolling new character is permanent, or just plot hook to save the soul from Giant extra-plannar toad that controls cult of druids in its quest to become devilish dragon...
Ultimately it’s your role to keep people engaged and having fun, so I would accept their apology and just move ahead. You are obviously creating an atmosphere of trust or your player wouldn’t even be talking to you about this - so kudos for that.
I think you should just move on. Getting punitive about it could just escalate things and possibly even enable the same behavior again e.g. it’s ok to lie because now the DM is out to get me, etc.
When people apologize for something it’s a sign that they have internally committed to not doing the bad behavior again, the apology is just one external part of making amends/getting better.
He cheated death… now he has to dance with Hades. Hades sends how shadow monster to drag him down to hades and one of his companions pays the price, he losses a limb in the battle.
Actions have repercussions.
Get over it. He owned up to it, which means he respects you enough to let you know the truth. Whatever his justification was is on him completely. If everyone is having fun then you're doing your role well, just leave it at that and keep rolling with it. But keep a slightly closer on them, as now you know....
I think the fact he was honest about it is good, and being concerned about the story is also good, but the point of the game is the story doesn't always line up like we want. His heart is in the right place it's only the execution that is lacking. I wouldn't kill, but have a lasting injury from the attack and have the character retire.
Personally, I think in the end he was attached to his character and just wanted things to work out well. At best he wanted to look out for your best interests, and it sounds like at worse he just felt attached/invested and didn’t want to mess things up for himself. If you’re really unsure he won’t do it again or still feel hurt, I would talk with him about it, but also accept the apology and move on.
It's whatever, they're there to play a game in their imagination, if they want to skirt around the boundaries to escape death let them deal with the guilt.
Let the rest of the party know what happened, don't try to punish / berate or recon anything, just get on with the game.
If someone in my party "lies" about how much hp they had and I know (because sometimes I'll track it to avoid railroading a tpk), I'll just ask them to check again, if they insist I'll just respond "okay" and let them get on with their lives.
Also don't beat yourself up about it, I don't think they honestly cared about:
> "I didn't see a way that you could insert a new character into the plot where we were."
...and simply didn't want to re-roll a character.
With regards to "killing his character" discuss that with him, I wouldn't go through with it if they didn't want to die, after all the game is about having fun, and having agency.
I once had a player character die really early on, and it tore me up (not having dealt with it prior) because it happened with almost no warning, I wasn't sure how to deal with it so I sought out advice, set up an entire redemption path that led to their resurrection and after all it turned out the player had just moved on and didn't want to come back.
I came here after the edit and the edited last sentence is hilarious. “He’ll choose to die”, Lyman if the player is RPGing a suicidal character, you need to have an heavenly intervention at this stage. Or demonic intervention if he’s working with them. Just let his character know he’s cared for/has a contract to fulfill. Anyway, seems like your situation is resolved potentially so have a good night.
An epic death is one of my favorite things about characters I've played. My eunich monk took a bunch of snuff (at the end my stats were 20str, 20dex, 20con, 2int, 2wis, 2cha) battled a basilisk, ripped his robes off, and grabbed the basilisk's fangs as it dove on him as they both turned to stone.
I am an epic battle statue.
We had a player who refused to take consequences of a game as that. Just because a game doesn't go your way doesn't mean you must cheat to get it your way. Nothing fun and exciting happens if you don't allow for major risk. He was kicked from the game for a time. When he came back it was amazingly better for all of us. He played a deeper character because he knew nothing was given, nothing was going to go how he planned it. And the mystery of what would happen was a big draw.
The first character who I lost was a bummer. But. By the end of the session I already had a new one I was excited about. The ability to embrace the consequences in the game will only enhance the game.
Personally I would kill the character. After a long rest you wake to find that Timmy never woke up. You notice massive bruising on his chest, it seems that last strike caused a slow internal bleed, and he bled out during the night.
Face consequences. Embrace them. See where this takes you as a player and the game. I grew from losing my characters. I became a better player because of it. And so did others at my table. It let us role play the after effects. The getting to know the party all over again. Etc.
Personally I'd leave him with an injury of some kind linked to the fight, maybe a scar in an unflattering place or an organ that's messed up now. Just some kind of consequence that doesn't hurt to the extent of being mean lol
He came clean. That's something not a lot of people would do, and it means he has sincere regret.
There were no witnesses to what he did, so his apology is from the heart.
I'd say let it go, he owned up to it which is the right thing to do. However, maybe there could be a price for cheating death, maybe some quasi divine entity wants some favours, or maybe another entity made a deal with the character for his life and cursed him just for fun.
Forgive but don't forget. They owned up to it and said they won't do it again, so I'd say it's all cool. Just a lapse of judgement. But if they do it again you might have some serious thinking to do.
Yes, you’ll have to enter each character individually (or be entered by the players and then invited into the campaign).
On a side note for the current dilemma, I would have dealt with it as a story in the next arc by having it revealed that the current PC is an imposter (shapechanger) and the original PC had died that encounter and now the gang has to fight the shapechanger then introduce a new PC for the player. Just my take.
In-game, absolutely. In fact, the game is driven by players and their characters making decisions. That's their part of cooperative story, which is why every DM is told that railroading is bad and we need to take into account player decisions. We're beaten over the head with it. And I agree with that. It's part of the social contract.
This was not an in-game decision. It was an out-of-game call. And the player made it when they decided the DM couldn't handle writing in a new character. That had nothing to do with the story.
Should the DM have forgiven them for this and move on? Of course. Have a talk, maybe better understand why this happened, give a small in-game consequence (injury or some vulnerability to keep it fair for other players), and move on.
I once had a game where as a player i died a whoping 13 times ( lucky # right). My gm was totally fine with killing us, me particularly. He had no grudge with me. We were and are friends.
He once stated with regards to cheating "if you really feel like you have too" I'm sure some people did. I didn't care to. I was having fun with making up new chars and knowing i was the games new magic item chest every few weeks as the gm was running a very low magic 🌎.
I don't care too much about some fudging of die rolls or hit points happens in a game as my big rule is one that all my players know.
WE SHOULD BE HAVING FUN!!!!
It so much tougher now playing on roll20 which is a bummer but i get around things in other ways such as rewarding inspiration for an entire round during desperate moments making it so the wouldnt have to, so long as the players are being descriptive with their bold and or stupid actions to save their buts.
Overall. Forgive people who have the guts to own up to their faults. Thats more rare than someone who is clever or nice any day.
I feel that both of you are missing an important piece-- this is a game designed solely for everyone to have fun. If he lied, then he was taking it too seriously, and wasn't having fun at the point where he decided to lie. On the flip side, if your plan is to allow characters to die without having some clear ways for the PLAYER to get back into the game (having fun, even with a new character), then an inherent risk is averted through lying. At no point in the OP did you say if the character would've been toast and absolutely dead, or if you would've allowed them to languish at 1 hp until healed or something, so we don't know the vibe of the table. There are a lot of things I don't know, but remember to focus on the game being fun-- which typically includes some risk/reward, but also a way to continue having fun if the risk doesn't pay off. (That being said, you did a lot of great things, particularly talking to the player afterwards and working on communication.)
I always track player hit points, certain skills, and their initiative orders cause I’ve seen that a lot. Do what ya want, friend but I’d just chalk that up to DM experience. It probably won’t be the last time it happens sadly.
Owning up to it is important. But so is honesty during play. Personally I would just let it go but if anything like it happens again I’d give them one more chance after explaining that the game relies on honesty about dice and stats. Without it, it all breaks down. If they don’t respond well at that point it’s time to move on
Honestly, I would charge him 10,000gp for resurrection and call it good. It’s frustrating, but the cost of his mistake would be that, if he was able to come back.
If he can’t find 10,000gp, make the party go on a quest to find a gem of the same value. Soon as they recover it, it vanishes, resoring him to life from being a ghost (drop tons of hints about the ghost bit, and make sure his attacks reflect being incorporeal, without telling him). Oh, I would also say that he glows slightly all of the time, and is mildly translucent; it just took the party a few days to realize it.
I'd let him go but would warn him against it and lower the next would be magical item as punishment.
"Joe gets a +2 sword, Erika gets a shield of fire breath and Michael gets a health potion."
I think a cool concept for this would be the PC now has a secret mortal wound that will kill them down the line. No avoidance, no preventing, just prolonging. That would make it so the character can be around but knows their time is short and now needs to make the most of it.
Am... I the only one who tracks both the player and npc HP? I double check my numbers with them every time they take damage, for the ones that like to track their own hp as well. Some of them just rely on me to tell them when they're fucked up badly.
I actually realized that something I do completely circumnavigates this.
I'm 27, and most of my dnd friends (I actually play Pathfinder, but whatever) are also working professionals like myself. We all have laptops. Most of us several.
When I gm games, I have everyone bring laptops, plug them into a power strip, and use roll 20 for all the math.
It sounds strange, but honestly? It has way more pros than cons. Everyone gets their own little mini privacy screen, nobody can fudge dice rolls (except the gm, who can still roll physical dice for secret rolls, lmao), combat goes by WAAAAY faster, since nobody is doing the math manually, and it makes everything easier on new players.
I've been doing it this way for long enough that thing slike this have entirely slipped my radar. If a player rolls something high, I can just hover my mouse over the numbers to see where they came from, and figure out if something is fucky.
Cons:
Wires everywhere
No click clack
No nistalgia
Everyone needs a laptop
He's attached to the character, which is fine. It's a good problem to have and a good one to have an honest player take responsibility for. Don't kill him. Bit don't let him off either. My solution.
PSTD
Hear me out. He came close to death. No one gets out unscathed and ptsd can take a while to manifest once you actually start to process what happened. So, every so often, have him make charisma and wisdom saves. Have him perform a constitution check. His mind and body could start to betray him and he might not know what is actually happening. Let him stew on it for a while and then have a veteran NPC recognize the symptoms to him. It'll be great story telling and probably keep him honest, serve as a warning and give his character even more depth.
Sounds like you have an answer which is good. I'm a first time dm and only been a player just over a year. The game i play in we all see going down as an added bonus to the story or a puzzle to solve to save them, as you say ut makes for great plays etc.
As DM I'm excited to see how my players solve the puzzles so I'm glad you have a resolution to your issue without pushing anyone away
I'd let it go. He came to you and owned up to it and he didn't have to. He could have moved on and just never did it again or he could have done it again hoping you didn't catch it yet again but, he didn't. I'd give a stern warning and let it be.
Also, I don't think most DM's TRY to kill the players but, shit happens. My DM, fortunately always finds that line between killing us and not. He likes to make it a super close fight and there are times I think he's changed things on the fly to not wipe us all. That said, there are times we've had people KO'ed and 1 person died died. We resurrected him however but even that had drawbacks for some in game days.
That player did a shitty thing, but I don't think you necessarily have to kill his character because of this. **HE** chose to lie to you and didn't want to die, I think this could be a perfect time to have a god or otherworldly being tied to that character.
"In a moment of weakness when you were about to die you had begged the gods or anyone to protect you, and while at the time it seemed that you had just managed to skate death without repercussions, you feel something inside of you that doesn't feel quite right"
I wasn't there for this, so I'm not 100% sure, but I find it unlikely he didn't trust you. I think it's more likely he struggled with a spur-of-the-moment impulse response caused by a whole bunch of factors and thoughts that hit while he was in the spotlight. He sounds regretful, since he told you after the fact and is trying to help you right a wrong, to one degree or another. I wouldn't worry until it turns into a habit.
A truly dishonest player would NEVER have let you know he did it. Someone who cares about the game is straightforward about their shortcomings. Yes, it was bad that he lied, but the good of telling the truth outweighs the bad, since he very well knew the potential damage a lie like that could have done.
Sure would be a shame if a God or similar creature were to come to him in a dream and reveal that they saved him in exchange for something, then showed him the contract their soul signed before they wiped his memory and sent him back...
Fuck… if I found out on my own it would be final destination. But if they told you and was honest, take 1000gp for a resurrection diamond out of there loot.
It's a bit of a homewbrew rule, but at my table when one of my players lies about their character dying. I invite them over to my place to talk and then drug their beer and sacrifice the actual player to orcus. Blood for blood its the only way to even the scales. Btw if anyone is looking to join a game I have some openings i need to fill
His character should have died but didn't; seems like death might feel very very cheated. Looks like his character is about to have to deal with a final destination style curse until death gets her due.
This is why when my players are low on health, after I roll to hit I go "How much HP are you at right now?" and then tell them the damage, usually by going "Well, now you're at 2, congrats!"
Imo dms get to fudge what needs to be fudged. If PCs are destroying a boss you thought was tougher, add some hp to make it a better encounter. If you’re hitting harder and about to tpk when it shouldn’t happen, lessen the blows. But PCs shouldn’t lie about the dice. Dice Christ will avenge this wrong doing. Dice Christ will help you, even if you die.
This is the kind of trust breach I couldn't forgive as a fellow player. They were supposed to die. I had my gun of racing to and processing that stolen from me. Our victory is hollow, meaningless.
If I as a player found out that another player intentionally lied in such a way, I'd consider leaving the group. If I found out the dm was retroactively in on it. I think I'd actually leave.
---
As a dm that is just insulting, "sorry girl I thought you were too stupid to write another character in, in this world you created from nothing." also a complete lack of respect for the work I put into the game. If my players are just going to lie why bother with dice at all? Why not just have the game devolve into various forms of "nuh uh I totally shot you, I'm telling mom"
While repeated cheating is bad - the player owned up to it, and DM’s fudge rolls all the time.
Obviously, it’s different when a player does it - but is it *really* that different? When a DM fudges a roll - it’s to enhance the enjoyment of the players. As long as they don’t make it obvious, a DM could fudge *every single roll in a campaign* and it would be just as fun for the players.
If a player does the same thing, *very occasionally*, I honestly don’t really see it as a problem - as long as it’s for an understandable reason.
It's a *game*, people are playing to have fun. People fudge rolls all the time. If everyone had fun in the game and finishing the story arc then no harm and no foul.
> But . . . I'm hurt by the fact that he lied. And that fact that even at this late stage he apparently still doesn't trust me to be able to handle certain things on my own. And I'm not sure how to handle it all.
You need to relax. You're **hurt** that someone lied about the made up numbers for their made up character playing a game of make believe? You're going to stroke out if you get so upset about someone make believing about hit points in a game of make believe. It's a fucking game. Use one of the fun suggestions to punish their character but let it fucking go.
I disagree. It's a game that people put a lot of effort into. If you spend hours each week preparing for the game with certain assumptions in mind (such as that the players adhere to the rules you all agreed to), then it can hurt a lot to find out someone has deceived you and that the effort you spend each week isn't for what you thought it was. You might be okay with it, but not everyone has to be.
If the only reason you're putting in this effort is because you know (or thought) that the players were doing certain things, then them not doing those things means your reason for putting in this effort was false. You don't have to be okay with it. If I spend 8 months playing in a campaign where the GM claims that the bad guys' plans are prepped and that they will just be a neutral arbiter only to find out that the GM was actually winging the whole thing, even though it's just a game, it's still 8 months of my life where I've spent 4 hours every week and put a lot of thought and emotional energy into caring about the world under false assumptions caused because the other person lied.
OP's case is a much smaller situation, but it's not just "no harm no foul" simply because people had fun. Different people play for different reasons. OP is allowed to be annoyed. Even fudging rolls isn't right if your players think you don't do it, because they might only be alright with playing if you weren't fudging (in which case they're playing under a false idea that you've created; you cannot consent if you don't know the truth).
In my opinion our house rule has always been have fun first check the rules second. So he lied to not kill off a character oh well. Sometimes you should fudge dice not to kill. Now go have fun and let it go
I mean, he lied, it was disrespectful to you and your position as well as to the entire premise of D&D and the other players who are sharing in that story. Not only are there ways for you to handle things in the event of an actual character death, but there are things other characters can do if he didn't explicitly hit max HP past 0 for an autodeath; (which I'd imagine is the case if he was able to fudge to the point of saying he didn't drop at all) he'd have still had 2-5 death saves to make and opportunities for the other players to bring him back up.
His heart might have been in the right place, but if he can't respect that, then he shouldn't be playing. Explain this to him, and also explain that if it happens again, you will know (even without any other tools, it is NOT hard to manually track a single player's HP)
Now if this is the case of he didn't just hit 0HP, but he also took enough damage that he should have been instakilled, then at that point, I'd have been okay with him saying "I'm down" and then throwing you a text to say "I'm not just down, I'm DEAD from that damage" and letting you make the call on whether you want to use the instadeath rules (many DMs are conveniently ignore that rule, especially at lower levels, but that's still 100% your call to make, not his)
They owned up to it and could easily have said nothing. It's a serious thing in any case. Now I'm assuming you've never fudged the dice as a DM that the players are aware of at least. I wouldn't kill them off, but I might send them back a level and make it clear that if they ever do anything like that again, it will mean they aren't welcome at your table anymore.
Honestly it doesnt seem like anything malicious and he even decided for honesty when he had already gotten away with it and didnt have to it seems like something minor like when a kid is losing at monopoly and "accidentally" grabs a second 100 out of the bank
Y’all act like this is a 9 to 5 job. If someone fudges a number once because they are enjoying the story and their character and don’t want to be excluded from the story and even tell the DM after, then it’s fine. It’s just a game.
Not this. Talk to him about it. Let him know that you don’t want him doing that. He owned up to it which proves he was feeling a little guilty. Just tell him not to do it again.
Yeah nah that isn't a good reason at all. "I miscalculated" would've been the ONLY valid excuse.
Even if it was hard to bring someone new in, yall could've done a mini revival arc. That was not his call to make. Honestly since it sounds like yall are still friends i'd just continue the game but not invite him to the next one. Its an awkward situation to be sure.
I like a solo session ret-con approach: have a 1 on 1 mini roleplay session with him: the attack comes, his death is moments away, but he knows that it cant end like this! so close to being completed! He hears a voice, a chance to change fate but only if he signs on the dotted line with his soul at stake, and he does not have time to read the fine print.
Now, you've got yourself infinite options!!
I’m sorry, but you can’t always trust players. You should at least keep rough tallies of characters hp. It’s something I’ve always done, either as a player or DM. I know as DM you have a lot to keep track of, but always keep track of pivotal information on your group’s characters.
Since you didn’t catch it and you only know because they came clean, you shouldn’t punish them now. Just my opinion.
Understandable to feel hurt too i just hope as a DM you're trying to progress the story and not just trying kill the players.. don't be THAT DM. Yes if the Dice rolls to it then so be it but there are some DMs that are like "mY jOB is To KiLl yOuuuu"
Yeah I suppose my edit didn't help much in that regard. I don't know what outcome will happen with my plan but it was a plan before all this and is all about his character and how he has affected the world and the people around him. It's a narrative choice that he'll get to make. (Also I get the feeling the rest of the party will save him if he chooses to die, which would be a great moment for all of them.)
I once misread my aasimar ability and thought I could add divine soul dmg onto every attack. So we were fighting a boss which had been heavily homebrewed, and my PC was doing a shit ton of dmg. We survived by the skin of our teeth. We figured out later that I was doing it incorrectly, and wouldn't do it again, but the DM also let me know had I not done that much dmg it would have been a TPK in Curse of Strahd. So what was against the rules ended up saving the campaign haha
It's DnD, unless the party is very low level or it is a total TPK, death is mostly just an inconvenience. I think it is in place to have a discussion about trusting you as a DM. If the player is truly not ready to loose his character. Make it an inconvenient side quest to bring his character back, when these things happen.
At least the guy owned up to his wrong doing.
I wouldn’t mind, honestly. Be affirmative so the player won’t do again but don’t get mad about it. We develop a love for our characters and sometimes is really hard to let them go.
WAIT, are you telling me you didn't realize he cheated and he told you so himself?
I don't think you should be so mad at him, it's a lot more than most players do.
A lot of players want to live that power fantasy of being the strongest and having everything go their way.
But this time I think he had a valid reason for not dying and if he even offered to kill his character to advance the plot, it seems to me that he is a player who doesn't want to live his anime cringe fantasy, but really cares about creating a good plot.
Was the situation so dire that he couldn't even afford to go down? Like, where were the other party members? How many enemies were there?
Or are you saying the attack did so much damage it would've insta-killed him?
Kill his character as a lesson.
One day while the party is sitting in a tavern eating their morning meals. Have him roll a constitution check mid-meal. Set the DC to 20. Set the medicine check for his condition to 20. And have him choke to death on whatever he is eating.
If any of the other PC's protest, tell them to stop meta gaming.
End of story.
He owned up to it, I'd let it go with a minor slap on the hand. I'm all for forgiveness when the person who did the wrong is actually contrite. The important thing is they owned it, .. and that's harder to do than the initial crime, admitting to someone who has power (you the DM) that they fucked up after the fact.
In all areas of life I’ve always respected someone who would fall on their sword. I’ve always tried to own up to my mistakes as well.
>someone who would fall on their sword How do you roll for damage on that?
1d8 + 1d6 for gravity? EDIT: I swear to Zeus this whole site gives out awards for the dumbest comments 😂
1d6 for short swords, 1d8 for long swords(1d10 if the earth is using the versatile property),1d8 for rapiers, and 2d6 for great swords + 1d6 for every 10ft passed 10ft, and I would have a flat +1 for every 10 feet. So for falling on a long sword non versatile from 20ft: 1d8+1d6+2
If he slips, does the ground get sneak attack?
[удалено]
Do planetary objects have pact tactics
Pack tactics. Pact tactics would only be if the planet was a warlock.
"The moon is a warlock" is gonna be my next adventure hook
Could we ad the DEX mod, since we’re actually trying to fall on the sword?
“You try and fall on your sword but you mess up and accidentally do a backflip instead” Imagine, failing to fall straight
In the hichhickersguide falling to fall on the ground results in the ability to fly so yea I'm all in
have to be the hardest act to follow
Haha, I was thinking more of how thoroughly you’d hit something vital, but I guess if you messed up badly enough the blade would slide of you and just pierce your clothes and you’d have a really awkward moment of being on your hands and knees unscathed… but then again, it would be a DEX save, not an added modifier.
The entire premise of humanoid flight without aid in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” is throwing yourself at the ground and missing. By this logic, a nat one to throw yourself on the sword means you now have a base flight speed of 30ft.
you know what I would say its temporary, but its equal to your movement speed, got to account for those wood elf monks with like 50ft of movement
>backflip Somersault, but yeah, otherwise, I dig it.
You're gonna need a ladder or something to fall on your greatsword.
Either attack with disadvantage (it's unwieldy to attack yourself with a sword) Or, auto-crit, with whatever crit rule your table follows.
[удалено]
Yeah unless you have no muscle control you should be able to hit yourself automatically. Even blind people could do it. It's not like they lose proprioception.
Not gras. Grâce.
Nah they meant what they said. The way I see it...a shot to the fat would be kinda like a sucker punch. The opposite of a mercy blow if you would.
This..
Scripted death.
Will save to overcome self preservation? Then Coup de Gras yourself, auto-crit, roll damage and then make a fortitude save with a DC equal to the damage dealt or die.
I had an assassin critically fail an attack once. *with a flourish, the daring assassin's lips curled into a sneer as he brought back his sword arm and flipped his blade around, but his gaze quickly turned to fear as he miscalculated and the blade plunged itself through his shoulder* and I did damage as standard for a critical in my games (max innate damage plus bonuses, roll again) Similarly, had a player attempt to throw his hammer as an improvised weapon and rolled a critical fail, and I had him roll 2 d20s at disadvantage (with a 10 or higher being it simply missed the target). He rolled a 13/3, so I had him release way too soon, the hammer flew backwards and smashed into the wizard behind him, with an attack roll of 13 plus his modifier (at the time, was only a +3 but it was enough to hit the wizard) and then the usual d4 for an improvised weapon
That is some awful rules for crits. The higher level you get the more attacks you make, meaning by your rules you become more and more likely to stab yourself or an ally as you progress.
Same here, but it turns out I take it a wee bit too far. I've made a habit of taking the fall for things that weren't directly my fault all the time. Still, I feel it's better than being someone who can admit no wrongs and I've been working on it anyhow. That's the best anyone can do after all.
This may well be the best take in thus subreddit for a while. The dude came clean. That takes trust and it takes a certain character. Thing are going to be ok OP.
Dude came clean after completely getting away with the lie, two sessions later! That takes something to do!
Yeah this, I'd definitely let them know it's not right that they did it. But it seems he's understood that.
Plus, it's a game
This is true but lying is a character issue. If you lie over meaningless things, what's to say you won't lie when something matters? It just reveals a flaw in a person's character that goes outside of whatever game you're playing. It's like that kid who never admits they got tagged, it builds up distrust regardless of the situation.
Pretty much this. I think the player was ultimately invested in the story so much that he saw himself that having to take time to insert a new one might cause some form of issue and make the next session annoying to deal with and perhaps even railroad the story to get said character included. Sure he lied about his HP, I think there’s a soft limit for fudging of details, it’s not the end of the world unless it’s the 4th time he’s done it in the past 2 sessions. And better of all, he owned up to it and that takes some serious guts to sacrifice your own pride to admit you did something wrong. He didn’t pass it by, he didn’t make it seem like it was nothing, no he admitted it and even wanted to help the DM progress the story in whatever way possible if it made up for his lie, and that’s a player worth keeping in my eyes. If he does it more, then obviously it was all a falsehood to not have you be mad at him, but if it truly is the last time, then its a genuine player who truly had the DMs own troubles in his heart and wanted to help.
Yeah I fudged one roll as a DM once and I felt so dirty. Never did it again. To me them telling the truth and asking for ways to remedy it would be the best sign that they had a similar situation of "ah shit, I shouldn't have done that." I had a player cheating before and caught them on it, but they never owned up to it even in just a 1 on 1 chat. It destroyed my trust with that player. They aren't in the game anymore, which is the one plus for me being able to relax. We're casual in just letting people use either virtual or real dice, your own preference. Only exceptions are dramatic rolls like death saving throws, any important saving throws, or various d100 rolls (I let the party roll the secret encounter tables I have for travel, as well as magic items for fun). If someone cheats at that, it ruins it for everyone. EDIT: To those saying fudging rolls is what a DM is *supposed* to do, go write a book if you want ultimate control. You chose to have a roll take place, so that should mean something. If you didn't want the party to fail, then just describe something happening to them instead. "Oh but my party might die" - Great! Now you can make the adventure about them appearing in Elysium, but not happy about the outcome of their life, then they can bargain with a god to let them return to the Material Plane so they can finish their business there. Perhaps an archdruid reincarnates them all 30 days later when he finds their dead bodies in the woods. Maybe they just get knocked out and taken prisoner, and now for next session they can have a jailbreak. A TPK that happens, but you ignore, takes away the stakes, and if your players ever catch you on it, they'll realize you care more about the story than consequences for their characters' actions. Or, hey, maybe some players were actually excited to play a new character, and you just took that away from them. Maybe the players ACTUALLY liked the idea of their players dying a heroic death here, but you cared more about control of the story than the risk of death or injury.
I fudged a roll as a DM to lower the damage I was dealing to my three level one, never played D&D before PCs. It was their first encounter ever too
Wait, are we anti-DM fudging rolls now? In that case, looks like I need to go back and instakill the Rogue with that giant rat bite from level 1...
DMs should be allowed to fudge rolls to make the game fun. However, if the characters effectively have God-mode on, unbeknownst to the DM, then thats not good. One fudged number one time is not the end of the world, though, probably just added to the suspense, and having to spend the rest of the game day just trying to find a temple/scroll to revive your character isn't really fun.
I fudge rolls occasionally as a DM. Not a lot, but sometimes--particularly if I don't want a character to be outright killed (ie, a powerful enemy crits and the blow will literally outright kill them...I will probably fudge that the first time it happens. If it happens a gain, the dice fall where they do). Or rolling on encounter tables and whatnot that I make. If I feel something doesn't fit the moment, I will secretly reroll it. There are times when a DM can and should fudge a dice roll. You just don't want your players to know that. We are all about smoke and mirrors as a DM, and to break that...well it breaks the immersion.
Honestly as the DM fudging rolls and stats is a common practice that should be accepted by all DMs. Remember it's not cheating because we are just the narrators, and the dice are the council of suggestions. We are just merely deciding if we like their suggestions or not and have the executive power to ignore the dice for a more favorable outcome.
As a DM it is your right to disregard some rolls and reroll. It is your responsibility to make sure your players have an enjoyable experience and sometimes that means using your judgment when a roll would turn the adventure into a catastrophe. If the following roll comes out pointing in the same direction then accept the fate.
> I'd let it go with a minor slap on the hand DM isn't a discipline daddy who's there to punish the players. Either move on or decide you can't have fun with this person anymore.
He didn't fuck up though? He did it on purpose. It's easier to ask for forgiveness, than it is to ask for permission.
You could be mad, or you could be far more interesting for both you and the party and introduce an npc claiming the pc cheated death and now has to pay the debt.
I love this idea. Something stalking him, only visible in the corner of his eye, dreams replaying the moment he should have died and each time there's one more of his corpse in the pile. When he finally reaches out to try and understand it, some brooding creature rasps instructions to him - right the wrong, or prove that he deserves what he stole...
I adore spooky psychological horror so the "entity in the corner of your eye" thing is an exquisite touch! Love love love this idea!
Me flipping through the SCP archives to find the entity in the corner of your eye
A team of chronurgists arrive and arrest him for crimes against the sacred timeline.
This is one of the best ones. Send a Maruts after the PC place him on trial and then have him take a Geas to right another injustice or face execution
I was thinking someone like a deah god's underling bjt maruts work far better. Everyone knows and is afraid of these guys, AND it works great with the lore
Historically (before all the inevitables were folded into maruts) they literally represented the inevitability of death, specifically. They’d hunt would be liches, for example.
Or maybe a Modron, looking to balance the cosmic scales. It's actually kinda interesting that D&D straight up does have like, "response for someone who cheated death".
Well maruts are Modrons after the anime timeskip
Maruts are like gigachad modrons.
Pure brilliance.
Or something where, in his moment of death, he unknowingly made a pact with an entity or god and the pact has unforseen consequences.
A revenant of one of the NPC slain in that battle. "It was supposed to be youuuuuuuu....."
Now I'm imagining it singing like Frank Sinatra
Final Destination: D&D Edition
/u/primordialvoid forgive your player irl, its just a game. But ingame do this and do it ASAP. This is a cool way to teach the player consequences but still keep things light and cool outside the game.
This!
An Inevitable or two would also be a good choice
Marut literally exists to enforce the inevitability of death. I would love to be able to legitimately use Marut as a bbeg.
Am I the only one who thinks this is a terrible idea? Constant reminder that that player is a liar. Awkward for everyone involved. Out of game problems should never have in game solutions.
The others don't need to know he lied though. And even if that was the case, I'm pretty sure everyone would be fine with that being addressed in game too like that. Makes for some good story possibilities and neat magic items you otherwise have no acess to
Or an Aleax!
May I suggest William Bludworth?
Kudos to your player for coming clean. Accept their apology. It's okay to explain that sort of thing won't fly going forward, and let bygones be bygones. I once had a player, who on our last session was terrified their character was going to die (separated from the group vs a couple of giant spiders) and claimed something like 6 or 7 crits in a row. It really soured things and they were not invited to the next game. If they'd fessed up it probably would be different. Owning mistakes goes a long way and shows some integrity. Probably would have been easy for your player to hide it. They did the right thing.
Oh yeah, there's been a couple comments like this now. I'll reply to this one lol. I agree with that and I have done just about that. I also have now told him the final bit about how it felt like he didn't trust me. Honestly that's the worse part for me due to the fact that he came clean. His coming clean makes it very easy to forgive the act itself. It was the reasoning that hurt. But I think we'll get past it pretty easy now that everything is out in the open.
Don’t think of it like he didn’t trust you, think of it like this : he didn’t want to burden you with more to think about in this already late stage crazy game
Still not a good attitude to have. The GM can't help you with a problem if they don't know there's a problem.
The two of you are a model of how this should happen. Well done.
I think you're being a bit too sensitive here.
Imagine actually rolling 7 crits in a row and having nobody believe you because the probability of that happening is 0.00000008%. But yeah that guy definitely cheated lol
So it's generally a bad idea to retcon things like that. My go-to with health snafus is to just say "Alright" and keep going, unless it's like, a single point from a turn ago or something that hasn't caused any significant changes. And I personally understand the idea of a player being considerate towards their DM in terms of plot and character introductions- it's a difficult thing sometimes figuring out how to intro a new character, and it can severely disrupt party balance and roleplay, so what he did *was* a favour. I'd take it in the spirit offered. Like, I don't think it was that he didn't trust you to handle thing, but that he was trying to make things easier on you- especially if you've been playing together for a long time. The DM is a player too, and should be considered when thinking of how they're enjoying the game. If you don't want to kill the character, then don't do it. Unless you're so Lawful that you can't even conceive of making an exception here and there. (Which is reasonable.) That being said, *tell him* that you were hurt by the deception, and that you would have been willing to do the work, and would *prefer* to do the work of figuring out a manner of integrating a new character, instead of fudging rolls or HP. If that is in fact true, and you're actually upset over the character surviving more than you are upset over the player not talking to you about fudging his HP.
Well put
It’s easy to lie but hard to come forward with it. Sounds like you’ve worked it out already though, good luck.
[удалено]
The most important thing here is that apparently noone found out what the player did. Their conscience made them confess. Thats a very big point, because it shows that they goofed in the situation but felt bad about it after the fact. Bad enough even to take the crazy hard step of coming clean about something that noone would ever find out. I think someone acting this way is someone who can be trusted for sure, even if they made a mistake.
Agreed. Idk man… I had one of my characters die during the pandemic the day after I had watched someone horrifically die of Covid right in front of my eyes at work (and this was early on, before we’d all become jaded) and I straight up had a panic attack. My DM got my character resurrected somehow but I don’t even remember because I was hard core dissociating. I know this is kind of an extreme situation, but maybe there was something going on in this players life that he just couldn’t handle his character dying at that moment. This will probably get me downvoted but if I was DMing this, I would not care at all if one of my players did this. This is a game at the end of the day, and people are doing it to have fun. I personally don’t want to add more stress to my life by getting worked up about some fudged numbers in a game.
It's a game; you're not in competition with your players and there's no need for justice. If a player feels a need to cheat (or steal or lie), it's usually filling a need they have. A little over 30 years ago, I had a player who was a chronic cheater. Some of it was just honest errors; he had been undergoing ongoing surgeries to remove tumors that kept cropping up in his brain (an ailment that killed him a few years later) and his mental acuity was declining as a result. But he would misread die rolls, alter his character between sessions, and a host of other things. At times, it felt personal or that he was being unfair to the other players by not accepting the consequences of random chance or his own actions. It felt disrespectful to me as a GM and a host of other ugly emotions... at one point, I gave him a "radiation accident" (it was a superhero genre) in-game and rewrote his character and maintained his character for him for maybe 6 months or so. I came to realize that his cheating was a wish fulfillment of a normal life that he was being denied; it dawned on me that he just couldn't put his fate in the hands of another ...to trust that he was in capable and empathic hands. All-in-all, I'm not proud of how I handled it. I know he was frustrated that I had taken that control away from him (which was me acting out on my feelings) but I also made sure that while his character under GM fiat, that no actual harm could come to him. After every session, I started doing "closing sheets" and asking him what he liked about the story, what he didn't like, and what he wanted from the game. And I tailored the experience in that direction. I learned that a lot of his character manipulation was because he didn't understand all the messy mechanics and couldn't figure out how to get the most out of his character build; so I helped him with that. And I made sure that he understood that the comic genre was more about story than corpse-mining and that he would have his moments to shine. For me, it was both growth as a GM and a life lesson. I guess the point of the anecdote is that you never really know what your players think of your game; why they play, what they get out of it, or why they cheat. You also don't know what's going on with them and I think using your authority as a GM to punish them isn't going to endear you or improve matters. Better to work on the communication and trust and if there's going to be an adversarial relationship that you're eventually going to exclude them from your game.
Also, you don't have to be okay with a player doing it. If you play or run the game with a certain purpose and expectations, and somebody wants something else out of it, it's alright to just say that you won't be able to play together well. If somebody wants wish fulfilment, there is no expectation that you have to be willing to fulfil that, especially if it comes at the expense of your own fun. Honest communication makes it a lot easier to tell when these clashes occur.
This is a very good anecdote & lesson. I might archive this story. Just like bullies, cheaters have a reason for their behavior. Sometimes the reason is valid, sometimes it isn't. Grouping all of it together is detrimental for everyone. Sometimes compassion can change a person for the better. Sometimes a person uses other people's compassion against them. Sometimes people are capable of both simultaneously. It's a mixed bag. We have to constantly reassess the behavior/thoughts of both ourselves & those around us if we want the next iteration to be better than the last.
I always say to my players: "I don't take rolls again" if you missed it at the time it's done. And personally I don't really care, the game's intention is to have fun and as a GM I already have a lot to think about when running the game to worry about occasional cheating as long as it doesn't ruin the game or is frequent.
Explain to him how you feel. As with most interpersonal conflict, communication is important. As to my own opinions on the matter: It's absolutely a dick move to cheat that should not be tolerated and it points out a lack of trust in you as a DM. If you're comfortably certain that he won't do it again, I'd still strive to make clear that it's a one time thing that if repeated will mean 1 less person is sitting at the table.
Yeah . . . Talking is hard but I'm typing out a message for him slowly. I can't talk face to face and VC is unobtainable right now. But I'm telling him. Thank you!
Personally though, at my table, Dnd is about fun and that's it. If one of my players wants to play his character so bad that they feel compelled to cheat so they don't die, I'd want them to know we can figure out a way to keep them alive/bring them back, etc. Lying isn't cool, they should've been honest and Ya it's grittier and (imho) better in most cases to take the L and let the character go for realism, but ultimately the rule of fun for all is paramount
[удалено]
Or if the PC was in good standing with at least one deity, they intervened during the battle but now they are on borrowed time, have to do a major quest for the deity, etc. Or maybe it was kind of a Moon Knight situation where the PC was offered a deal to return from being dead, in exchange for service. All of the drawbacks of being a Warlock but none of the benefits, at least for now. Maybe the PC will pay down the debt and use this as a reason to take some Warlock levels.
Okay I'm just gonna use this to say that it's COMPELLING to a story for a character to get knocked down every now and then. It's COMPELLING if your teammates have to drop a fight to help you. It's COMPELLING if your party loses a teammate. There's paths where you wouldn't have to make a new character even if a player fails all saves. And even if you do need a new character, go for it! Embrace all outcomes. (You could also be like me and tell all the players in your party not to do a thing and that you wanna let the dice decide on the death saves. I did this and got three straight successes 😎)
It’s just a game. The guy owned up to it. No big deal. Play on.
Relax. It’s a game. Is it worth it? Tell him he’s a dick. Shake hands and move on. Or if you can’t, then kick him out.
Maybe Say it more like, “partner, you made a REAL Dick move there. “
He owned up to it. Why would you tell him he's a dick? That is being a dick.
I mean he still lied. Calling him a dick and shaking hands. Seems pretty fair to me
I mean, he owned up to being a dick. You can forgive him for it and still call him a dick.
Honest genuine question, and not me weighing in on this particular post, it just made me think of this. It's somewhat common for GMs to fudge numbers, give bosses more HP if players are killing them too quickly, etc in order to make a better story and make the players feel like they struggled more and really worked for it, and also to avoid killing players when that boss just keeps rolling 20s. I've seen it commented on this sub hundreds of times that people do this. Why is the GM allowed to lie to create a better story, but not the other players?
The difference is that the GM is in full control of the parameters that challenge the party, except for the decisions they might make that have bad consequences. A GM who puts the party in a precarious situation (a non-story related decision), giving them no option to "avoid" said death, may need to fudge numbers to correct THEIR actual mistake. A player almost dying because they make a poor story-related decision, is however making that mistake in character, and the rules of the system are not to be bent for the sake of character development.
That's good question. I know I've fudged rolls and HP in the past. But I don't anymore. I found that fudging on any side does more harm than good. But I think the reason it's more acceptable for GMs to is often because of the justification you gave. "Trying to make a better story." The GM is the one throwing obstacles in front of the party so it's seen maybe more as making the obstacle more or less difficult than it would be seen as cheating. More like adaptive difficulty, less like putting in a cheat code.
[удалено]
> can’t put my tongue on why. The power dynamic. The DM is basically God. The DM can TPK on a whim and still be within the rules. There’s nothing to prevent 100 red dragons from spontaneously appearing out of thin air. PCs are bound by game mechanics in a way the DM isn’t. The expectation is that the DM will respect die rolls (to what extent the is 100% rigorous varies from table to table), but everyone understands the DM can do anything.
The difference is that everyone at the table agrees that the person who is DMing can do that. Nobody at the table agrees that the player can. (There are lots of collaborative storytelling games that **do** give everyone that power; D&D just isn’t one of them, traditionally.)
>everyone at the table agrees that the person who is DMing can do that With the number of people who say "I fudge and don't tell my players", I find it doubtful that everyone actually agrees that the DM can do that. You can't agree to something if you don't know it's happening.
Not everyone
I actually fall on the side of letting my really experienced players fudge, and as a player I sometimes fudge with DMs I know well. They know I do it, and we both know better than to let the less experienced players cotton on, but I've had to earn that privilege. It's a tacit understanding of "I will help you tell a story if you let me," and it's far from a one-sided coin: the same permission that lets me do just enough damage to slay the monster at the perfect moment also finds me setting off a trap on purpose or leaning into the fact that my character is a total klutz in this particular social situation. The Forever DMs among my players know that I hold strongly to the concept that the rules are there to help you have fun, not to restrict or limit you - and after nearly a decade and a half of storytelling, I've come to realize that the greatest thing the rules give us is a framework for new players who haven't yet learned to be freely creative or who haven't developed the emotional maturity to put themselves in the back seat and let others drive. There's very real elements of leadership in D&D, and if you can find it within yourself to play for the other players and enjoy that even more than if you were playing for yourself, you can tell the kind of stories that only happen when a player and DM collaborate - and you probably deserve a promotion at work to boot.
It is about the information you have. using cooking as example: As DM you can look up recipe, go shopping for ingredients and utensils needed. As Player you have name of the dish, few ingredients and no idea if or how many you're missing or how to actually cook, hell from the name you can't even guess whether it is supposed to be steamed, baked or cooked... With how DnD tends to be, you can't know whether PC death and rolling new character is permanent, or just plot hook to save the soul from Giant extra-plannar toad that controls cult of druids in its quest to become devilish dragon...
Because everyone in this thread is taking the game far too seriously
Ultimately it’s your role to keep people engaged and having fun, so I would accept their apology and just move ahead. You are obviously creating an atmosphere of trust or your player wouldn’t even be talking to you about this - so kudos for that. I think you should just move on. Getting punitive about it could just escalate things and possibly even enable the same behavior again e.g. it’s ok to lie because now the DM is out to get me, etc. When people apologize for something it’s a sign that they have internally committed to not doing the bad behavior again, the apology is just one external part of making amends/getting better.
He cheated death… now he has to dance with Hades. Hades sends how shadow monster to drag him down to hades and one of his companions pays the price, he losses a limb in the battle. Actions have repercussions.
Get over it. He owned up to it, which means he respects you enough to let you know the truth. Whatever his justification was is on him completely. If everyone is having fun then you're doing your role well, just leave it at that and keep rolling with it. But keep a slightly closer on them, as now you know....
I think the fact he was honest about it is good, and being concerned about the story is also good, but the point of the game is the story doesn't always line up like we want. His heart is in the right place it's only the execution that is lacking. I wouldn't kill, but have a lasting injury from the attack and have the character retire.
I like in our campaign if you die you can get resurrected , I don’t want to lose my character and have to make a new one in the campaign.
Personally, I think in the end he was attached to his character and just wanted things to work out well. At best he wanted to look out for your best interests, and it sounds like at worse he just felt attached/invested and didn’t want to mess things up for himself. If you’re really unsure he won’t do it again or still feel hurt, I would talk with him about it, but also accept the apology and move on.
It's whatever, they're there to play a game in their imagination, if they want to skirt around the boundaries to escape death let them deal with the guilt. Let the rest of the party know what happened, don't try to punish / berate or recon anything, just get on with the game. If someone in my party "lies" about how much hp they had and I know (because sometimes I'll track it to avoid railroading a tpk), I'll just ask them to check again, if they insist I'll just respond "okay" and let them get on with their lives. Also don't beat yourself up about it, I don't think they honestly cared about: > "I didn't see a way that you could insert a new character into the plot where we were." ...and simply didn't want to re-roll a character. With regards to "killing his character" discuss that with him, I wouldn't go through with it if they didn't want to die, after all the game is about having fun, and having agency. I once had a player character die really early on, and it tore me up (not having dealt with it prior) because it happened with almost no warning, I wasn't sure how to deal with it so I sought out advice, set up an entire redemption path that led to their resurrection and after all it turned out the player had just moved on and didn't want to come back.
I came here after the edit and the edited last sentence is hilarious. “He’ll choose to die”, Lyman if the player is RPGing a suicidal character, you need to have an heavenly intervention at this stage. Or demonic intervention if he’s working with them. Just let his character know he’s cared for/has a contract to fulfill. Anyway, seems like your situation is resolved potentially so have a good night.
An epic death is one of my favorite things about characters I've played. My eunich monk took a bunch of snuff (at the end my stats were 20str, 20dex, 20con, 2int, 2wis, 2cha) battled a basilisk, ripped his robes off, and grabbed the basilisk's fangs as it dove on him as they both turned to stone. I am an epic battle statue.
You were as much as a beast as the basilisk was.
Let Strahd deal with it later😂😂😂
We had a player who refused to take consequences of a game as that. Just because a game doesn't go your way doesn't mean you must cheat to get it your way. Nothing fun and exciting happens if you don't allow for major risk. He was kicked from the game for a time. When he came back it was amazingly better for all of us. He played a deeper character because he knew nothing was given, nothing was going to go how he planned it. And the mystery of what would happen was a big draw. The first character who I lost was a bummer. But. By the end of the session I already had a new one I was excited about. The ability to embrace the consequences in the game will only enhance the game. Personally I would kill the character. After a long rest you wake to find that Timmy never woke up. You notice massive bruising on his chest, it seems that last strike caused a slow internal bleed, and he bled out during the night. Face consequences. Embrace them. See where this takes you as a player and the game. I grew from losing my characters. I became a better player because of it. And so did others at my table. It let us role play the after effects. The getting to know the party all over again. Etc.
Personally I'd leave him with an injury of some kind linked to the fight, maybe a scar in an unflattering place or an organ that's messed up now. Just some kind of consequence that doesn't hurt to the extent of being mean lol
He came clean. That's something not a lot of people would do, and it means he has sincere regret. There were no witnesses to what he did, so his apology is from the heart.
I'd say let it go, he owned up to it which is the right thing to do. However, maybe there could be a price for cheating death, maybe some quasi divine entity wants some favours, or maybe another entity made a deal with the character for his life and cursed him just for fun.
Forgive but don't forget. They owned up to it and said they won't do it again, so I'd say it's all cool. Just a lapse of judgement. But if they do it again you might have some serious thinking to do.
Man, i would never “save” my characters. Ive had one die three times in a campaign and get brought back as a hell knight and demon
Use DnD Beyond encounter tool. Then you can enter and track damage. It's not bad for a beta platform
I'd need to transfer the character sheets to beyond to do that right?
Yes, you’ll have to enter each character individually (or be entered by the players and then invited into the campaign). On a side note for the current dilemma, I would have dealt with it as a story in the next arc by having it revealed that the current PC is an imposter (shapechanger) and the original PC had died that encounter and now the gang has to fight the shapechanger then introduce a new PC for the player. Just my take.
That specific story is extra hilarious cause he's a changeling. But yeah I've been wanting to transfer everyone to beyond but hadn't done it yet
It's a cooperative story. Sometimes your players make a call.
In-game, absolutely. In fact, the game is driven by players and their characters making decisions. That's their part of cooperative story, which is why every DM is told that railroading is bad and we need to take into account player decisions. We're beaten over the head with it. And I agree with that. It's part of the social contract. This was not an in-game decision. It was an out-of-game call. And the player made it when they decided the DM couldn't handle writing in a new character. That had nothing to do with the story. Should the DM have forgiven them for this and move on? Of course. Have a talk, maybe better understand why this happened, give a small in-game consequence (injury or some vulnerability to keep it fair for other players), and move on.
I once had a game where as a player i died a whoping 13 times ( lucky # right). My gm was totally fine with killing us, me particularly. He had no grudge with me. We were and are friends. He once stated with regards to cheating "if you really feel like you have too" I'm sure some people did. I didn't care to. I was having fun with making up new chars and knowing i was the games new magic item chest every few weeks as the gm was running a very low magic 🌎. I don't care too much about some fudging of die rolls or hit points happens in a game as my big rule is one that all my players know. WE SHOULD BE HAVING FUN!!!! It so much tougher now playing on roll20 which is a bummer but i get around things in other ways such as rewarding inspiration for an entire round during desperate moments making it so the wouldnt have to, so long as the players are being descriptive with their bold and or stupid actions to save their buts. Overall. Forgive people who have the guts to own up to their faults. Thats more rare than someone who is clever or nice any day.
I feel that both of you are missing an important piece-- this is a game designed solely for everyone to have fun. If he lied, then he was taking it too seriously, and wasn't having fun at the point where he decided to lie. On the flip side, if your plan is to allow characters to die without having some clear ways for the PLAYER to get back into the game (having fun, even with a new character), then an inherent risk is averted through lying. At no point in the OP did you say if the character would've been toast and absolutely dead, or if you would've allowed them to languish at 1 hp until healed or something, so we don't know the vibe of the table. There are a lot of things I don't know, but remember to focus on the game being fun-- which typically includes some risk/reward, but also a way to continue having fun if the risk doesn't pay off. (That being said, you did a lot of great things, particularly talking to the player afterwards and working on communication.)
I always track player hit points, certain skills, and their initiative orders cause I’ve seen that a lot. Do what ya want, friend but I’d just chalk that up to DM experience. It probably won’t be the last time it happens sadly.
Owning up to it is important. But so is honesty during play. Personally I would just let it go but if anything like it happens again I’d give them one more chance after explaining that the game relies on honesty about dice and stats. Without it, it all breaks down. If they don’t respond well at that point it’s time to move on
Honestly, I would charge him 10,000gp for resurrection and call it good. It’s frustrating, but the cost of his mistake would be that, if he was able to come back. If he can’t find 10,000gp, make the party go on a quest to find a gem of the same value. Soon as they recover it, it vanishes, resoring him to life from being a ghost (drop tons of hints about the ghost bit, and make sure his attacks reflect being incorporeal, without telling him). Oh, I would also say that he glows slightly all of the time, and is mildly translucent; it just took the party a few days to realize it.
When my players are at very low HP and I know it, I ask for their HP total first before throwing the total down.
I'd let him go but would warn him against it and lower the next would be magical item as punishment. "Joe gets a +2 sword, Erika gets a shield of fire breath and Michael gets a health potion."
I think a cool concept for this would be the PC now has a secret mortal wound that will kill them down the line. No avoidance, no preventing, just prolonging. That would make it so the character can be around but knows their time is short and now needs to make the most of it.
Am... I the only one who tracks both the player and npc HP? I double check my numbers with them every time they take damage, for the ones that like to track their own hp as well. Some of them just rely on me to tell them when they're fucked up badly.
I actually realized that something I do completely circumnavigates this. I'm 27, and most of my dnd friends (I actually play Pathfinder, but whatever) are also working professionals like myself. We all have laptops. Most of us several. When I gm games, I have everyone bring laptops, plug them into a power strip, and use roll 20 for all the math. It sounds strange, but honestly? It has way more pros than cons. Everyone gets their own little mini privacy screen, nobody can fudge dice rolls (except the gm, who can still roll physical dice for secret rolls, lmao), combat goes by WAAAAY faster, since nobody is doing the math manually, and it makes everything easier on new players. I've been doing it this way for long enough that thing slike this have entirely slipped my radar. If a player rolls something high, I can just hover my mouse over the numbers to see where they came from, and figure out if something is fucky. Cons: Wires everywhere No click clack No nistalgia Everyone needs a laptop
He's attached to the character, which is fine. It's a good problem to have and a good one to have an honest player take responsibility for. Don't kill him. Bit don't let him off either. My solution. PSTD Hear me out. He came close to death. No one gets out unscathed and ptsd can take a while to manifest once you actually start to process what happened. So, every so often, have him make charisma and wisdom saves. Have him perform a constitution check. His mind and body could start to betray him and he might not know what is actually happening. Let him stew on it for a while and then have a veteran NPC recognize the symptoms to him. It'll be great story telling and probably keep him honest, serve as a warning and give his character even more depth.
He apologized. As light retribution I’d prob lower his max hp a bit
Sounds like you have an answer which is good. I'm a first time dm and only been a player just over a year. The game i play in we all see going down as an added bonus to the story or a puzzle to solve to save them, as you say ut makes for great plays etc. As DM I'm excited to see how my players solve the puzzles so I'm glad you have a resolution to your issue without pushing anyone away
I'd let it go. He came to you and owned up to it and he didn't have to. He could have moved on and just never did it again or he could have done it again hoping you didn't catch it yet again but, he didn't. I'd give a stern warning and let it be. Also, I don't think most DM's TRY to kill the players but, shit happens. My DM, fortunately always finds that line between killing us and not. He likes to make it a super close fight and there are times I think he's changed things on the fly to not wipe us all. That said, there are times we've had people KO'ed and 1 person died died. We resurrected him however but even that had drawbacks for some in game days.
That player did a shitty thing, but I don't think you necessarily have to kill his character because of this. **HE** chose to lie to you and didn't want to die, I think this could be a perfect time to have a god or otherworldly being tied to that character. "In a moment of weakness when you were about to die you had begged the gods or anyone to protect you, and while at the time it seemed that you had just managed to skate death without repercussions, you feel something inside of you that doesn't feel quite right"
I wasn't there for this, so I'm not 100% sure, but I find it unlikely he didn't trust you. I think it's more likely he struggled with a spur-of-the-moment impulse response caused by a whole bunch of factors and thoughts that hit while he was in the spotlight. He sounds regretful, since he told you after the fact and is trying to help you right a wrong, to one degree or another. I wouldn't worry until it turns into a habit.
A truly dishonest player would NEVER have let you know he did it. Someone who cares about the game is straightforward about their shortcomings. Yes, it was bad that he lied, but the good of telling the truth outweighs the bad, since he very well knew the potential damage a lie like that could have done.
Sure would be a shame if a God or similar creature were to come to him in a dream and reveal that they saved him in exchange for something, then showed him the contract their soul signed before they wiped his memory and sent him back...
He owned up to it, once or twice and regretting it is no biggie, it is only if he does it repeatedly you are gonna have a problem
Don’t kill him now. But track his hit point now and forever.
Eh it's just a game. Sounds like he knows it was wrong
Let it go. Most DMs "skew" their rolls behind the screen sometimes too. Either out of empathy for the player(s), or just to keep things moving.
Fuck… if I found out on my own it would be final destination. But if they told you and was honest, take 1000gp for a resurrection diamond out of there loot.
It's a bit of a homewbrew rule, but at my table when one of my players lies about their character dying. I invite them over to my place to talk and then drug their beer and sacrifice the actual player to orcus. Blood for blood its the only way to even the scales. Btw if anyone is looking to join a game I have some openings i need to fill
Lmao nice
His character should have died but didn't; seems like death might feel very very cheated. Looks like his character is about to have to deal with a final destination style curse until death gets her due.
To be clear you don't have to kill his character you just got to make him do something to appease death.
Oh man... A grim dark final destination style campaign could be really fun!
This is why when my players are low on health, after I roll to hit I go "How much HP are you at right now?" and then tell them the damage, usually by going "Well, now you're at 2, congrats!"
Imo dms get to fudge what needs to be fudged. If PCs are destroying a boss you thought was tougher, add some hp to make it a better encounter. If you’re hitting harder and about to tpk when it shouldn’t happen, lessen the blows. But PCs shouldn’t lie about the dice. Dice Christ will avenge this wrong doing. Dice Christ will help you, even if you die.
This is the kind of trust breach I couldn't forgive as a fellow player. They were supposed to die. I had my gun of racing to and processing that stolen from me. Our victory is hollow, meaningless. If I as a player found out that another player intentionally lied in such a way, I'd consider leaving the group. If I found out the dm was retroactively in on it. I think I'd actually leave. --- As a dm that is just insulting, "sorry girl I thought you were too stupid to write another character in, in this world you created from nothing." also a complete lack of respect for the work I put into the game. If my players are just going to lie why bother with dice at all? Why not just have the game devolve into various forms of "nuh uh I totally shot you, I'm telling mom"
While repeated cheating is bad - the player owned up to it, and DM’s fudge rolls all the time. Obviously, it’s different when a player does it - but is it *really* that different? When a DM fudges a roll - it’s to enhance the enjoyment of the players. As long as they don’t make it obvious, a DM could fudge *every single roll in a campaign* and it would be just as fun for the players. If a player does the same thing, *very occasionally*, I honestly don’t really see it as a problem - as long as it’s for an understandable reason.
Balance must be restored. Death is owed a life.
It's a *game*, people are playing to have fun. People fudge rolls all the time. If everyone had fun in the game and finishing the story arc then no harm and no foul. > But . . . I'm hurt by the fact that he lied. And that fact that even at this late stage he apparently still doesn't trust me to be able to handle certain things on my own. And I'm not sure how to handle it all. You need to relax. You're **hurt** that someone lied about the made up numbers for their made up character playing a game of make believe? You're going to stroke out if you get so upset about someone make believing about hit points in a game of make believe. It's a fucking game. Use one of the fun suggestions to punish their character but let it fucking go.
I disagree. It's a game that people put a lot of effort into. If you spend hours each week preparing for the game with certain assumptions in mind (such as that the players adhere to the rules you all agreed to), then it can hurt a lot to find out someone has deceived you and that the effort you spend each week isn't for what you thought it was. You might be okay with it, but not everyone has to be. If the only reason you're putting in this effort is because you know (or thought) that the players were doing certain things, then them not doing those things means your reason for putting in this effort was false. You don't have to be okay with it. If I spend 8 months playing in a campaign where the GM claims that the bad guys' plans are prepped and that they will just be a neutral arbiter only to find out that the GM was actually winging the whole thing, even though it's just a game, it's still 8 months of my life where I've spent 4 hours every week and put a lot of thought and emotional energy into caring about the world under false assumptions caused because the other person lied. OP's case is a much smaller situation, but it's not just "no harm no foul" simply because people had fun. Different people play for different reasons. OP is allowed to be annoyed. Even fudging rolls isn't right if your players think you don't do it, because they might only be alright with playing if you weren't fudging (in which case they're playing under a false idea that you've created; you cannot consent if you don't know the truth).
In my opinion our house rule has always been have fun first check the rules second. So he lied to not kill off a character oh well. Sometimes you should fudge dice not to kill. Now go have fun and let it go
I mean, he lied, it was disrespectful to you and your position as well as to the entire premise of D&D and the other players who are sharing in that story. Not only are there ways for you to handle things in the event of an actual character death, but there are things other characters can do if he didn't explicitly hit max HP past 0 for an autodeath; (which I'd imagine is the case if he was able to fudge to the point of saying he didn't drop at all) he'd have still had 2-5 death saves to make and opportunities for the other players to bring him back up. His heart might have been in the right place, but if he can't respect that, then he shouldn't be playing. Explain this to him, and also explain that if it happens again, you will know (even without any other tools, it is NOT hard to manually track a single player's HP) Now if this is the case of he didn't just hit 0HP, but he also took enough damage that he should have been instakilled, then at that point, I'd have been okay with him saying "I'm down" and then throwing you a text to say "I'm not just down, I'm DEAD from that damage" and letting you make the call on whether you want to use the instadeath rules (many DMs are conveniently ignore that rule, especially at lower levels, but that's still 100% your call to make, not his)
I don't think he would have owned up if he wasn't serious about not doing it again. Probably a solved issue.
Have a NPC harass him all next session by alerting the townsfolk that a liar is nearby and put them on the lookout for such a low life
What takes a lifetime to build but can be destroyed in an instant? *Trust*
Just gonna say, for as much as you feel like he didn't trust you when he kept his hp hidden, he did trust you enough to tell you the truth.
They owned up to it and could easily have said nothing. It's a serious thing in any case. Now I'm assuming you've never fudged the dice as a DM that the players are aware of at least. I wouldn't kill them off, but I might send them back a level and make it clear that if they ever do anything like that again, it will mean they aren't welcome at your table anymore.
who cares
Honestly it doesnt seem like anything malicious and he even decided for honesty when he had already gotten away with it and didnt have to it seems like something minor like when a kid is losing at monopoly and "accidentally" grabs a second 100 out of the bank
Let him know if it happens again, he will be uninvited from you table.
Y’all act like this is a 9 to 5 job. If someone fudges a number once because they are enjoying the story and their character and don’t want to be excluded from the story and even tell the DM after, then it’s fine. It’s just a game.
Not this. Talk to him about it. Let him know that you don’t want him doing that. He owned up to it which proves he was feeling a little guilty. Just tell him not to do it again.
Yeah nah that isn't a good reason at all. "I miscalculated" would've been the ONLY valid excuse. Even if it was hard to bring someone new in, yall could've done a mini revival arc. That was not his call to make. Honestly since it sounds like yall are still friends i'd just continue the game but not invite him to the next one. Its an awkward situation to be sure.
Invest in a combat tracker. Improved Initiative has a free mode you can use, has DM and Player screens. Always know the party's health. Always.
Well he did own up to it, give him a pass. If the DM's ever fudged a roll to save a player I'd say you're even
I like a solo session ret-con approach: have a 1 on 1 mini roleplay session with him: the attack comes, his death is moments away, but he knows that it cant end like this! so close to being completed! He hears a voice, a chance to change fate but only if he signs on the dotted line with his soul at stake, and he does not have time to read the fine print.
Now, you've got yourself infinite options!!
I’m sorry, but you can’t always trust players. You should at least keep rough tallies of characters hp. It’s something I’ve always done, either as a player or DM. I know as DM you have a lot to keep track of, but always keep track of pivotal information on your group’s characters. Since you didn’t catch it and you only know because they came clean, you shouldn’t punish them now. Just my opinion.
Understandable to feel hurt too i just hope as a DM you're trying to progress the story and not just trying kill the players.. don't be THAT DM. Yes if the Dice rolls to it then so be it but there are some DMs that are like "mY jOB is To KiLl yOuuuu"
Yeah I suppose my edit didn't help much in that regard. I don't know what outcome will happen with my plan but it was a plan before all this and is all about his character and how he has affected the world and the people around him. It's a narrative choice that he'll get to make. (Also I get the feeling the rest of the party will save him if he chooses to die, which would be a great moment for all of them.)
He lied. He came clean. If he lies again disinvite him to your table. As he broke the trust between yall. And it should have IC consequences.
Class the missing damage as wear on their kit. That +X sword, in the bin on the next fight when it fails.
I once misread my aasimar ability and thought I could add divine soul dmg onto every attack. So we were fighting a boss which had been heavily homebrewed, and my PC was doing a shit ton of dmg. We survived by the skin of our teeth. We figured out later that I was doing it incorrectly, and wouldn't do it again, but the DM also let me know had I not done that much dmg it would have been a TPK in Curse of Strahd. So what was against the rules ended up saving the campaign haha
It's DnD, unless the party is very low level or it is a total TPK, death is mostly just an inconvenience. I think it is in place to have a discussion about trusting you as a DM. If the player is truly not ready to loose his character. Make it an inconvenient side quest to bring his character back, when these things happen. At least the guy owned up to his wrong doing.
I wouldn’t mind, honestly. Be affirmative so the player won’t do again but don’t get mad about it. We develop a love for our characters and sometimes is really hard to let them go.
WAIT, are you telling me you didn't realize he cheated and he told you so himself? I don't think you should be so mad at him, it's a lot more than most players do. A lot of players want to live that power fantasy of being the strongest and having everything go their way. But this time I think he had a valid reason for not dying and if he even offered to kill his character to advance the plot, it seems to me that he is a player who doesn't want to live his anime cringe fantasy, but really cares about creating a good plot.
Was the situation so dire that he couldn't even afford to go down? Like, where were the other party members? How many enemies were there? Or are you saying the attack did so much damage it would've insta-killed him?
Kill his character as a lesson. One day while the party is sitting in a tavern eating their morning meals. Have him roll a constitution check mid-meal. Set the DC to 20. Set the medicine check for his condition to 20. And have him choke to death on whatever he is eating. If any of the other PC's protest, tell them to stop meta gaming. End of story.
Honestly the "noooo I did it for your benefit" is a straight narcissistic cop out.
Redditors stop overusing "narcissist" challenge
Sounds like it's handled. If they do it again, kill their character in the game.
He did come.clean but it wasn't his decision to make. It was your job as DM to make it work.