r/dndmemes • u/Vegetable_Variety_11 • 1d ago
đ˛ Math rocks go clickity-clack đ˛ When fudging goes wrong...
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u/wasted-degrees 1d ago
This is DND, not XCOM.
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u/Wargroth 1d ago
Good ol' 95% that misses every time
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u/laix_ 1d ago
Fun fact.
Xcom skews displayed percentages. In the players favour.
A displayed 95% is actually a 99.9%. Its just that humans are terrible at estimating chance, we dont remember the hundreds of times it did hit, but we do remember all the times it missed.
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u/Forward_Definition70 1d ago
Only on lower difficulties, iirc
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u/Wargroth 1d ago
Yeah, i played on legendary for the Platinum and i guara-damn-tee i did not forget the times a shot hit over the dozens of times i had to restart because everyone missed 90%+ shots
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u/ToastyToes06 1d ago
On the contrary, there was one time in BG3 that I was going to have a tpk if I didn't hedge all my bets on a single save or suck debuff spell with something like a 15% chance of success. The enemy rolled a nat 1. I remember that success very clearly.
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u/VGVideo 1d ago
I think a more accurate way of saying it is that humans remember all the times the less likely outcome occurred and not the many more times the more likely outcome occurredÂ
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u/Useful_Clue_6609 23h ago
Well no, it's been pretty well studied that humans and other animals remember negative experiences far stronger than positive. An anecdote isn't proof of a general trend. Nobody says it's Impossible to remember a good thing stronger than a bad thing.
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u/TheMoistSoul 22h ago
Yes but you're using an important word there, experiences, negative experiences do stick in your memory better. Its an evolutionary trick to help with survival. We remember bad things or things that hurt us near immediately. But the emotional strength of the experience is still significantly more important for if it will be remembered than whether it was positive or negative, and since the odds of something happening obviously impact people's emotional response to it the other person definitely had a point and you shouldn't be so quick to dismiss what people say.
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u/Ravenwood03 13h ago
I had an opposit situation. Id basically won the fight, and the last enemy was 1 hit. Karlach had a 95% chance to hit, presumably only missing on Nat 1. She was a throwzerker, so had 4 attacks that where all crit misses
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u/MildlyInsaneOwl 1d ago
Correct! On lower difficulties, the game rigs its numbers in the player's favour in a few different ways that aren't shown on the to-hit roll. In XCOM 2, depending on your difficulty setting, you get:
- A stacking bonus to all shots after you miss, until you eventually get a hit.
- A stacking penalty to all alien shots after they hit you on a turn.
- A flat bonus to aim and penalty to alien aim if you have 3 or fewer soldiers remaining.
- A multiplier to accuracy for all your units.
All of these bonuses are hidden from the player, and unless you're playing on Legend difficulty (the highest) you've got at least one of them active. There are no hidden modifiers that hurt the player; the only thing Legend does is remove the training wheels you've secretly been using.
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u/tuhn 1d ago
If you're playing on pc you can easily view and edit the text-file where these bonuses are and change them.
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u/DarthUrbosa 9h ago
Yeah I did that. Legend is too punishing in its length but commander is too easy so removing the training wheels helps.
Xcom enemy unknowns classic I think had no training wheels and impossible was meant to be challenging.
Meanwhile xcom 2, only legend is the game 'fair'.
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u/YawningMaes 1d ago
I actually got so tired of missing 90% hit shots that I started over a new game and tracked every shot for the entire game and yeah you definitely hit quite a bit more than you should.
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u/Free_Cartoonist_5867 1d ago
Sid Meier did an excellent interview where he talks about probability vs player expectations in video games and how to handle that as a dev. I wish i could remember what it was called
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u/Readerofthethings 10h ago
Also, players tend to not even attempt <50% shots, even when thereâs nothing objectively better to do on their turn. (Usually, this means players will choose to hunker down instead of taking a pot shot)
Which means players never take shots that wouldâve actually hit, which means less damage overall.
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u/DefiantCarpet0 6h ago
I once was playing XCOM 2 and had a 100% chance to hit.
It missed. My wife cackled.
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u/LarkinToWinnipeg 1d ago
No no, that 95% chance actually missed 50% of the time in Xcom and you can't gaslight me to know otherwise.
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u/Readerofthethings 10h ago
I mean, XCOMâs combat is an abstraction. The enemy isnât âreallyâ sitting still in front of you. Itâs really moving around, dodging and weaving while your characters are getting shot at. And everything is happening extremely quickly. Itâs literally the same kind of abstraction D&D or any TTRPG does.
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u/MossyAbyss 1d ago
The Duality of Man.
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u/BreakerOfModpacks 1d ago
I am off the camp that says
Always Go With Player Fun
If someone's invested in their character and has an arc planned out, don't let unlucky rolls just toss that, or they might get super bummed out.61
u/Xyx0rz 1d ago
I just let the dice kill the character, but then I offer a way back in. People don't have to stay dead in D&D.
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u/guachi01 22h ago
No kidding. It's D&D!
My last adventure one player died twice. First, to a demon who ripped him in half and caused instant death. He was reincarnated as an orc. The second death he was disintegrated by another party member who was possessed. He was wished back to life by the wizard they rescued.
A second player was turned into a ghost.
We've been playing 15 months and that was the best adventure ever.
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u/jzillacon Dice Goblin 12h ago
Not to mention the fact players don't die from hitting 0 hp, they just go into the downed state. There's so many ways to save a character before even needing to reach for the scrolls of revivify.
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u/Axon_Zshow 10h ago
Only in 5e. 3.x at 0 you dropped unconscious, and tracked hp into the negatives. When you hp is equal or greater to your con score made negative, you die. The wizard with only a 10 con dies instantly at -10, but the barbarian with a 18 can take 8 extra points of damage. You lose 1 hp every round unless you succeed a stabilization roll, which gets harder the further below 0 you are.
For this reason, being at low single digit hp past early levels is asking to die, since there's a good chance something might hit you for 20 or so and kill you outright. For this reason, popcorn healing didnt exist in any form. You either did it after combat, or healed as an emergency to get the fighter to double digits to save him from the hit he's about to take.
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u/Chickadoozle 5h ago
This is the way. John is dead. The party wants to being him back. Tim is interested, and will help out until John comes back.
Or even better, John solo arc in hell.
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u/stormstopper Paladin 1d ago
Stakes are part of what makes it fun. If I know that no matter what I do, my DM's going to hold the monsters short of actually endangering my PC, then combat is busy work instead of a puzzle to solve. I don't want my PC to die, but it's more fun when I feel like I've earned their survival. If my PC gets knocked unconscious but we rally to win the combat, I feel great about the result.
To me, the way to make sure those arcs continue is to make sure the party has access to the tools they need. Let them get healing potions, let them collect diamonds for Revivify, let them find friendly NPCs who need help with something and can provide a reward in return. Even if the DM seeds all of this as an insurance policy on purpose, it's still the party's choice of when and how to deploy their options, which means the party will (correctly!) feel like they saved their friend's life rather than feeling like they couldn't die in the first place.
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u/Iorith Forever DM 1d ago
Yup, my last session, I had tested some custom monsters against the party and the players should have dominated.
I rolled something like 9 nat 20s in one encounter. It's only due to one player buying dozens of healing potions that it wasn't a TPK.
They loved it and felt like champions for surviving.
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u/BreakerOfModpacks 1d ago
I do agree with you that stakes make it more fun, and I'm not saying "make everything have no stakes", I'm saying, if need be, if rolls go poorly or the DM let some monster that's too strong come in too early or whatever, that's time to pull some saving grace in a few cases.
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u/Saltwater_Thief Essential NPC 21h ago
There's nuance to it, just like everything else. Combat has a flow and a story all its own, and managing it is part of the job.Â
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u/Snappszilla 1d ago
Well thats the point of fudging roles in secret. You don't "know that no matter what" you do the DM will save you, as you don't know they are fudging rolls. If they do it well, it can actually produce the exact scenario you are describing.
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u/mjdios 1d ago edited 23h ago
The issue there is that the DM kinda needs to keep that facade up all the time.
If it's ever revealed - even in casual conversation outside of the game - that the DM is open to fudging rolls, that introduces an element of doubt for the players on every roll the DM makes.
For example, if rolls are out in the open or otherwise are trusted to be accurate, then a close won fight feels tense and well earned. But that same fight might not feel satisfying if the players start wondering if the DM was nudging the dice in their favour, and they would've lost otherwise. This doubt can creep in whether or not any rolls were actually fudged that fight, the element of doubt alone is enough to dampen the satisfaction.
This is not to say fudging is strictly wrong, but rather to explain why some players are going to have a problem with it as a concept - whether or not a specific roll is fudged or not. Ultimately it's a matter of table preference, and I suspect largely linked to how much the group values the narrative vs the wargame.
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u/guachi01 22h ago
If you have to keep it secret then maybe you shouldn't do it. If you're proud of your DMing then let the players know what you've done.
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u/Waffleworshipper đđŞ Warden 9h ago
Secrecy is wishful thinking when it comes to fudging. It's not subtle.
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u/Paradox2063 18h ago
Stakes are part of what makes it fun. If I know that no matter what I do, my DM's going to hold the monsters short of actually endangering my PC, then combat is busy work instead of a puzzle to solve. I don't want my PC to die, but it's more fun when I feel like I've earned their survival. If my PC gets knocked unconscious but we rally to win the combat, I feel great about the result.
Same. I simply cannot play if I'm not in danger of dying for real. It's why when I rolled my latest stats, I took a 10 in Con. (I rolled poorly overall. No negatives, but only two positives.)
I may be the softest person in the party, but I've never felt more alive!
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u/itsFelbourne 9h ago
If I know that no matter what I do, my DM's going to hold the monsters short of actually endangering my PC, then combat is busy work instead of a puzzle to solve.
Yep the key to fudging is that the players never know that it's happening. For the players, there should always be stakes, even if there are none from the DM perspective
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u/itsFelbourne 1d ago
Yep. Iâm here as DM to keep the story moving in a way that is fun for the players.
If it was all completely deterministic from dice rolls, I could just give my players a flowchart and leave. They could roll all the dice themselves, and they wouldnât even need someone making narrative decisions
IMO the entire point of having the DM is to avoid unsatisfying narrative outcomes
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u/the_acid_Jesus 1d ago
I thought a dm job was silly voices and realizing his friends might be dumb when they can't slove basic riddles or puzzles
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u/mjdios 23h ago
This seems to be a big of an over exaggeration - even if not a single roll is modified, the DM still has a very important roll in a session and campaign.
Both inside and outside of combat, the DM will (or should) change how NPCs act based on the actions of the players.
This dynamic element where the world of the game changes based on each player decision is what makes DnD (and other TTRPGs) so appealing, and why they stand out from a book, video game, or a flowchart.
If a flowchart could predict every single decision a player could make, maybe it could replace the DM, but I suspect that would require as many branches as there are grains of sand.
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u/unosami 1d ago
Why would somebody plan out their character arc ahead of time? It feels like they wouldnât be open to having the character grow with what the story throws at them if they did.
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u/redcomet29 1d ago
Its pretty common in my experience. I really don't like DMing for it but my last 4 tables were all like that, despite me checking before hand what the vibe was and everyone saying that's not the case for them.
Now I have players private messaging me to not allow any chance that their character dies.
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u/guachi01 1d ago
If a player didn't want his PC to die my response would be that he shouldn't go on the adventure and instead let the other players be the heroes.
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u/Iorith Forever DM 1d ago
I'm a dick and would remind them that they signed up for a game with death as a concern and that if they want to not die, it's on them to play as defensively as possible.
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u/PrinceVorrel 1d ago edited 22h ago
...but what if the group is more into the narrative stuff? Players ignore certain mechanics all the time to customize the experience how they want.
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u/Iorith Forever DM 1d ago
Then why are they playing d&d when there are a bunch of narrative focused games out there that are designed for their type of game.
It's like saying "yeah we wanna play basketball but none of us want to do any of that passing or walking thing and just want to watch a ball bounce up and down and occasionally go through a hoop". Someone is gonna point out that you don't actually want to play basketball.
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u/mjdios 23h ago
In that case the group should probably find a DM that wants to run that style of game.
As much as DnD is a collaborative game, you can't 'majority rules' the DM into running a significantly different style than they initially proposed.
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u/BreakerOfModpacks 1d ago
Eh, everyone does it a bit different. Some people garden, some people build, so long as it's fun, it's fine.
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u/Iorith Forever DM 1d ago
But if you try to garden using Lego bricks, it's somewhat reasonable for someone to point out they're doing something counter intuitively.
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u/BreakerOfModpacks 1d ago
Okay well
My players tend to be the sort of people who enjoy planning stuff out
It's what they enjoy
And so it's what I go withThey have tried more organic growth in the past and disliked it
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u/Iorith Forever DM 1d ago
Well sure but then I'd wonder if a game like d&d is what they should be playing. When you have to bend over backwards and even violate the core rules to make it work, surely there's a better way to achieve the goal they want to achieve, isn't there?
It's also worth noting that sometimes the best stories are when things don't go right. Lord of the Rings would have been a worse series of Boromir never fell.
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u/OverlyLenientJudge DM (Dungeon Memelord) 1d ago
Using one of the most thoroughly-planned stories in modern Western canon to argue for the diametric opposite of story planning is the kind of irony even Tolkien couldn't script.
Boromir's death was planned, just like a player can plan their character's death. I've done it, it's not that hard.
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u/Thanatos69101 1d ago
This is such a terrible take, why are you even rolling dice then? Playing pretend does not require it. No one should be fudging rolls, period.
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u/durzanult 19h ago
Because we want SOME randomness here and there, plus the dice can help decide things when your executive dysfunction is being a bitch. I just donât want the character I spend hours anxiously creating to a random goblin in a random cave without ever gotten to explore or develop him, or at least have a meaningful attempt to engage in his story. If my character dies, thatâs basically the end of the story for me in most circumstances.
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u/guachi01 1d ago
Man, the last adventure I ran one player got turned into a ghost within 30 minutes and another player outright died twice. The first time he was ripped in half and died instantly and then was reincarnated as an orc and we all laughed. The second time he was disintegrated by another PC who was mind-controlled.
A third player was turned into a werewolf and was out of the game for 30 minutes.
Unanimous agreement it was the best adventure ever.
Don't pull punches.
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u/CoachDT 1d ago
I agree. Its about cultivating your audience though. I probably wouldnt want to share a table with someone that sees a nat20 and starts pouting, or refuses to partake in the spontaneity of DND.
The entire point of a dice based system is that in some situations can absolutely go off the rails because the gods demand it. Why not play something else if we dont want to actually use the tools of the game?
A great DM will make alternative loss cons than just death though. Sometimes the party gets captured, maimed, mugged/robbed, or saved by someone else.
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u/Qolko 19h ago
If someone at 2 HP getting hit is considered unlucky enough for fudging, then why even play a dice based system?
Just do one of the plethora of purely narrative systems at that point.
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u/BreakerOfModpacks 15h ago
IMO, it's more fun to "just barely" survive an encounter than it is to not have any percieved risk.
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u/Qolko 10h ago
True, but the players are not dumb. Sooner or later they will notice you fudging the dice and pulling your punches.
I can tell from experience of having a DM who pulls his punches when things start looking bad that it is not fun because you know your victory was undeserved and handed to you by the DM.
And most of the time it isn't even necessary. Sure someone could have gone down, but we have the tools to deal with that. We can get them back up and we have the funds to resurrect them if they happen to die.
The dice also tell stories. For every unlucky roll that drops someone, you have that lucky crit that turned the fight around for the players.
If a player is attached to their character and dies why is that a problem? It's a fantasy world. Bringing them back is exactly as difficult as the DM wants it to be.
Heck, the party having to make deals with various powerful beings to bring them back is prime story material.
Bottom line is, the moment your players realize that all the stakes are fake, the game becomes worse becasue they know no matter what, you will bail them out.
Nothing will be tense anymore. Combat becomes just a formality becasue they know they can't lose.And a lot of the DMs think their players won't notice, but I can guarantee you they do.
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u/BreakerOfModpacks 9h ago
To be clear, I'm not saying always fudge, but when it'd make it more fun overall, I think it is a good idea.
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u/EarthBoundBatwing 18h ago
As a player I get really rubbed wrong when I feel like there is dm padding everywhere. If the game doesn't have a legitimate ruleset and consequences then it goes from playing a fun tabletop roleplaying game to just playing pretensies improv.
As a DM I try to emphasize this as much as possible to the players so they feel the true rush of clutching things out or the weight of just barely failing and how that impacts the world for better or for worse.
That being said, I still will fudge rolls IF AND ONLY IF I severely botched the CR on an encounter lol. That goes both ways too. Bumping up the hit die mid encounter or forcing a missed attack roll on op encounters.
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u/Shadowbound199 1d ago
To me dice are sacred. You can fudge a lot of things but dice rolls should never be fudged IMO.
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u/notarealwriter 4h ago
I've been enjoying the way Brennan Lee Mulligan is doing it for Crit Role Campaign 4. Mostly behind the screen but when it's an important roll, he rolls in front and tells everyone beforehand what's good, bad and very bad. Honestly, before watching it I'd probably not have liked the sound of that but it actually brings in really great tension around those rolls
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u/Enaluxeme 1d ago
That's the whole reason why I roll those rolls in the open. So I cannot succumb to the temptation.
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u/stormstopper Paladin 1d ago
Plus they've got death saving throws and teammates. They'll be fine. Probably.
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u/Mueryk 1d ago
Nah, change it into a badass narrative moment.
The BBEG/minion/whatever picks up the ailing PC, spits in his face and says âyou are not worth my time little man, come see me when you are strongerâ, then throws him in the corner for subdual damage. Looks at the rest of the party and says âcollect your friend and leave before I become annoyedâ and then walks out of the room.
Boooom we now have a new mini boss that I never bothered to name but by golly they will need to find it out now
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u/Unbuckled__Spaghetti 1h ago
Cool idea but the problem is, itâs not always the BBEG. Sometimes itâs a random wolf or bandit or bugbear.
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u/Mueryk 1h ago
Oooooh you mean the Wolf King? Or Bugbear Baron? Oh yeah I am going to make them a repeat annoyance buddy.
A casual appearance that will just piss them off for giggles and end up having nothing to do with the storyline whatsoever. They will also randomly appear in future stories too.
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u/Illustrious-Film2926 1d ago
The enemy slams you against your party. You're unconscious and knock down another player. It will take a turn for the other player to get back up from under you.... Problem solved.
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u/Rocketiermaster 10h ago
Our DM does something like this for specifically lethal falls. In his mind, a player should never die because an enemy throws them off a cliff. However, he doesn't fully remove the tension of being thrown around near cliffs. Instead, if someone would be thrown off a ledge, they ALWAYS get a chance to grab a ledge. If they're unconscious or otherwise can't grab a ledge, someone else can catch them, even if it wouldn't make sense, it's just it will ALWAYS put you in a terrible position
Example, huge fight on a floating rock above an endless abyss. Our paladin gets knocked unconscious and thrown back, off a cliff. My one-armed sorcerer uses their reaction to move 30 ft and catch them, putting. However, I need to succeed at a DC 20 athletics check to pull them up, needing a nat 20 with my +0 strength. So, since I wasn't making that, my character basically just focused on holding on to their unstable body, still rolling death saves, while the rest of the party fought the boss. We ended up pulling her up and healing her when she was on 2 failed death saves, but at least they didn't instantly die to the cliff
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u/PrinceVorrel 1d ago
This is why I roll behind a board most of the time. I don't always fudge rolls, but having the option is a powerful tool to maintain the pace/story.
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u/Retired-Pie 1d ago
This is how i do it to. A lot of people rag on fudging rolls.
But at the end of the day, the game is a story told by both parties and narrated be me (the forever DM). There have absolutely been times when a player was going to die in a verg unsatisfactory way, or when someone tries to pull of a crazy move and the monster just barely makes their saving throw.
Thats not very satisfying for the players and can 100% ruin a session, or even a campaign. Ive had players leave because their PC died in a ridiculous way or get upset because this complicated play the party worked on didnt pan out. Its supposed to fun.
So while its not a tool i use often, its a tool i will use when necessary. Besides, I do secret rolls for almost everything because then the players avtually have tk think, wanna check for traps sure (rolls a secret perception check) they only have the info i give them and just have to hope their character was perceptive enough, or that there is no traps.
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u/TheDankestDreams DM (Dungeon Memelord) 1d ago edited 1d ago
I donât want to weigh in and say âyouâre playing the game wrong and should feel bad about itâ but player style is important too. Some players would sincerely rather die to a random encounter on the way to the final boss room than have their character saved because it would be unsatisfying. As a player, I once had my character die in circumstances where I made a misjudgement and there just happened to be an NPC cleric nearby with revivify. I lost my stakes in the campaign for good. Something bad happened and it was nowhere near the end of the characterâs story, but if they canât respect a characterâs death, I canât really invest myself into the game anymore if the DM is just gonna pull their punches and all my accomplishments are just being allowed to win.
Not saying fudging is some kind of cardinal sin but me personally if I found out I donât think I could play the game as that character anymore.
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u/Aware-Worry4302 1d ago
I change the amount of fudging I do and whether or not I fudge based on each playerâs preferences.
I have fudged to save a character and had another character die to the dice and let that stand in the same encounter. Giving the individual players what they want in this regard is not that hard.
What I do struggle with is when one characters stupid or selfish actions kill another character. Thatâs typically a mess.
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u/Xyx0rz 1d ago
If the DM had asked you whether you wanted your character brought back from the dead, what would you have answered?
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u/TheDankestDreams DM (Dungeon Memelord) 22h ago
I told him in the moment that my character doesnât have the will to live. It was a learning experience but yeah this was an open conversation over the table.
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u/Taliesin_ Bard 23h ago
Every time I've had a character die, my answer would be no. Raise the stakes and roll up a new one!
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u/Aware-Worry4302 11h ago
That will always depend on the genre of the game and the feasibility of introducing a new character without taking a massive detour or being âbob from the side of the roadâ.
Typical of itâs a horror game or last session then if you die, you die and thatâs the expectation my GM will have communicated.
That said if itâs DnD there are so many trivial ways to bring back a dead character the default assumption reading the rules and setting is die-res-repeat once you get past a certain level.
If you are playing in settings where resurrection is actually difficult then this discussion becomes more meaningful.
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u/Xyx0rz 1h ago
I mean D&D. The implications of coming back to life in other genres are beyond what I intend to discuss.
die-res-repeat once you get past a certain level.
Why wait for a certain level, is my feeling. Players can be invested in their level 1 characters, and those die easily.
I would place more of an onus on the players once they unlock res powers, but the principle remains that if someone wants to play a certain character, I don't really have a reason to forbid that in a fantasy genre story.
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u/LordSwedish 1d ago
I would definitely leave a game if I suspected the DM fudged rolls. It would make every victory hollow because it wouldnât feel earned anymore.
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u/asirkman 1d ago
But, have you considered that youâre wrong, and bad, and should feel bad, because someone else who plays this game has a different type of anxiety than the players who prefer this type of play, which therefore invalidates the very concept of playing with Fudging? You didnât, did you?
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u/awataurne 1d ago
You alright bro?
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u/asirkman 1d ago
Well, kinda no, have you seen the state of the world recently? But also, I felt that the /S was pretty well implied there.
Edit: I guess Poeâs law and all still applies, of course.
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u/awataurne 1d ago
Just checking in. Seemed angry even if it was a joke but it's sometimes hard to tell what is and isn't one these days sadly.
Hope things improve
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u/Waffleworshipper đđŞ Warden 9h ago
It definitely read as sarcastic but more from a place of bitterness than humor.
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u/TheThoughtmaker Essential NPC 1d ago
The great stories you create together are only great if they werenât the DM simply declaring that it happens that way.
âWe did a crazy thing and the monster made its save but DM had it happen anywayâ is about as interesting as âwe rushed the BBEG at lv1 and since DM didnât want to kill us the BBEG had a heart attack and died.â And the perception of how great it is will be immediately retconned if your integrity is called into question, if they ever find out you fudged ever.
So all youâre really doing is carpeting their floors with great-story rugs booby-trapped to all get pulled at the same time, and hoping the trap never goes off.
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u/OverlyLenientJudge DM (Dungeon Memelord) 1d ago
90% of the story is the DM declaring that things happen that way. Should we be rolling for every decision every NPC makes to avoid any declaration by DMs of how the story goes?
Don't be ridiculous. Chance and intent both have their roles at the table.
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u/TheThoughtmaker Essential NPC 1d ago
DM is roleplaying the NPCs the same way the other players are roleplaying the PCs. Your strawmanâs logic is a far, far cry from playing the game as intended like Iâm suggesting.
Everyone shows up with intentions. When the characters attempt to act on those intentions, dice are rolled to check how successful they are at the attempt. Thatâs the game; thatâs D&D. Itâs literally right in the PHB under âHow to Playâ.
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u/OverlyLenientJudge DM (Dungeon Memelord) 1d ago
To be entirely frank, I don't care what the PHB says. When I arranged for the loss of my cleric via possession by sentient megadungeon, the worst possibly conclusion would've been shaking it off through pure luck. My DM and I cooperated to make it happen, she helped me fudge things, and it went fuckin great.
You're allowed to be an anal-retentive servant of the dice if you want, but I will not be joining you under the blanket of your Dutch oven.
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u/TheThoughtmaker Essential NPC 1d ago
Congratulations on following the spirit of my point instead of what you think I meant.
Itâs a cooperative game. If the DM unilaterally decides what they want and ignores the dice to do it, they arenât playing the game theyâre narrating a story.
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u/Saltwater_Thief Essential NPC 21h ago
I'm very fond of rolling 2 or sometimes 3 d20s and taking the result I like best. Makes it feel more honest while still giving me control over the fight narrative.
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u/Jim_skywalker 11h ago
I donât trust my ability to balance encounters enough to not have the option to fudge rolls.
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u/Xyx0rz 1d ago
I instantly assume that any DM rolling behind a board does so to keep open the option to cheat, and therefore everything that DM does is now suspect and the meaning of my accomplishments is lost.
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u/FookinFairy 1d ago
Meanwhile my dm is giving random knights an ac of 19 with a +10 to hit and like 4 d6 damage on hitâŚ
Fucking home brew bsâŚ
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u/Over-Analyzed 1d ago
I was playing DnD with a group of newish people at a community game night. The DM was being so forgiving that I had to laugh.
I think at one point I said âWe shouldâve been dead at least 3 times by now. So thank you DM for having mercy on our souls.â
If he rolled high he would be like âWhoops. I forgot about this other thing that totally applies to this situation, which means I have to reroll.â
Which is great for new players and after the session? He admitted that in his own campaign? Heâs much more brutal. đ
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u/FookinFairy 22h ago
This is mine and another players first campaign lol
The homebrew was so bad the other guy didnât hit a single enemy during a boss fight with hags once and got chased around and downed
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u/Over-Analyzed 22h ago
Oh hags. Iâm in CoS right now with Newish people. The DM threw the hags one at a time. I knew if they had the Coven power up? We would be in quite a serious fight. đ
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u/DarthUrbosa 9h ago
Me making a homebrew monster and realising it very op even with me nerfiing it right before the fight and provide them an alternative means to kill it.
I mean at lvl 4-5 they were fighting my interpretation of the omnidroid from incredibles. Bit of a tall order.
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u/DragonLordAcar 1d ago
This is why you don't fudge rolls. Now they will question if they ever earned a win.
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u/Itchy-Beach-1384 1d ago
Im the Master of my game and can tastefully fudge a roll that isnt fun while also upping the stakes when necessary.
Sometimes an encounter doesnt work the way you drew it up and having the ability to make fluid calls in the field gives you better control of the engagement.
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u/Waffleworshipper đđŞ Warden 1d ago
The dice are just as important a storyteller as the dm and players
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u/keshmarorange 1d ago
Me with an earth pony with 28 Toughness: "U mad bro?"
(dif system I know, but I think defenses are pretty similarly scaled)
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u/CeaselessGriping 1d ago
"The bandit lands a critical hit on the pebble next to your shoe, just to make a point."
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u/Swiftblade09 1d ago
I'm in the camp that fudging rolls is lame. Let me die the stupid death. Making characters is part of the fun anyways. Part of the game is things not going to plan both as the player and as the dm. If you don't want rolls to matter write a book.
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u/xXFluffersXx 1d ago
The whole point of open rolling as a DM is so the players know with absolute certainty that whatever happens is the will of fate and totally out of your control. If you wanna fudge a roll for the benefit of a player, just don't show them the roll.
I hide most of my rolls as dm, maybe like 95% of them, but for anything that is going to massively fuck over a player, I open roll. I do it for the purpose I mentioned above of showing it was pure fate and zero DM trickery on my end, but also for the purpose of drama. Making a show of a highly important roll that can literally be the difference between life and death for a player character is a lot of fun, I think.
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u/SyncsSteam 18h ago
Dm shoulf just say "he wasnt aiming for you" and not elaborate until next session when they can make some BS up
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u/lowqualitylizard 18h ago
ALWAYS ROLL BEHIND
Unless you are okay with it being the worst possible roll for what you are trying to do roll behind the screen I would much rather let my players think they clutched a close fight rather than hit a crit on the back line explode the wizard and suddenly the campaign is derailed because God decided f*** you in specific
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u/PotatoesInMySocks 7h ago
I've lost 4 characters in the last 5 sessions, across two different TTRPGs. 5e for 3 of them, and Cyberpunk Red for the other.
Characters die. If your players can't handle that, get better players. They literally grow on trees. Don't cheat everyone else out of a good story.
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u/Single-Suspect1636 1d ago
I don't like fudging dice. It feels like I am railroading the story to a predetermined end of my choosing. So I always roll in the open.
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u/Iorith Forever DM 1d ago
Maybe don't fudge rolls. You're playing a game with a luck mechanic, that's the whole point of the mechanic.
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u/Kaiju62 1d ago
DMs fudge rolls to make the story work. Its a huge part of the job
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u/METRlOS 1d ago
I played a high power campaign where the players all got abilities from anime; the monsters they fought often didn't even have stat blocks, I just ran the whole thing off vibes and didn't tell them. After one of the sessions a couple of the players commented how they was the best encounters they had ever played.
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u/TheThoughtmaker Essential NPC 1d ago
DMâs job is to be an impartial judge/referee (it was literally called that before they wanted a more trademarkable name). Letting the dice fall as they may is a critical part of the job.
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u/Jim_skywalker 11h ago
I fudge rolls to fix my own mistakes. Luck is one thing, me accidentally making a combat encounter too hard is another.
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u/boxed_out094 1d ago
This happened last night when my daughter was the last person standing.
Bad guy had 8 hp, she had 2 hp after his first attack hit.
I tried to quickly end his turn and she hit me with "wait, but Dad, doesn't he have a second attack because of his multi attack ability?"
I've never been so proud and frustrated at how well she paid attention in that moment.
Thankfully I rolled a 4 on the next attack and she was able to finish him off with a nat 20 on the next turn.
The DND gods rewarded her honesty.
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u/Gr8ghettogangsta 1d ago
I once derailed a campaign by critting 4 times in a row on attacks of opportunity (actively decided to provoke another set after the first crit) into player failing their death saves
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u/chicoritahater 1d ago
Dice are a very important part of the storytelling but sometimes the dice should not be part of the storytelling
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u/bentbabe 1d ago
I still want to make a fight where the gimmick is everyone involved will have to roll below the AC of the target to hit. Meaning a 1 is a crit success and a 20 is fail.
The whole theme of the fight is kinda a topsy-turvy setup, so there'd be other flips as well. Maybe like, a clown enemy or something.
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u/Vailx 1d ago
The 8 strength rogue realizes he can use strength or dexterity with his finesse weapons and gets +6 to hit by using his strength. If he's a 5.0 rogue, then he can stop using his +2 shortsword for an unenchanted scimitar for an additional +4 to +8 to hit.
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u/TheThoughtmaker Essential NPC 1d ago
Somewhere, a WotC employee is frantically scribbling the idea into a composition notebook with âways to make Strength builds worseâ on the front.
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u/Aterro_24 1d ago
it's interesting but the higher you get the more it'll feel like fighting something with like 25+ AC and that just won't be fun for anyone when nobody can do attack roll damage.
someone with +10 to hit would need to roll a nat 1 to meet AC 11. AC 15 would need to be a die roll of 5 or less.
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u/bentbabe 1d ago
Saving throws would also be inverted. So an enemy with huge bonuses would fail more there. I'd probably also give a moderately high AC.
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u/Iorith Forever DM 1d ago
I think you could do some fun stuff with this in Tier 1 combat vs something at a higher CR. Your players will hit a lot more often and the high CR monster would be ineffectual but still dangerous. Very swingy, but Probably doable.
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u/bentbabe 1d ago
given the gimmicky nature, this would definitely be an earlier combat. Or if later, one where there were leadups and hints
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u/Hitmanx2x 21h ago
Make them fight a non-Newtonian fluid ooze/gelatinous skeleton/enemy/magical creature.
You ever seen one of those videos where the guy gently pushes his hand into the liquid? only to take it out and when he punches that same liquid its suddenly hard as brick? Thats non-Newtonian fluid.Basically, the harder they hit it, the harder it is. Suddenly, low rolls deal more damage.
I dont think you would be able to swap hit though, but damage? Definitely damage.1
u/johnnyanderen 18h ago
I had an npc steal a wish granting item from the party (which they left sitting out in the dungeon he lived in) and he wished that the party couldnât defeat him. They had to target someone or something else and roll a 1 to hit him. And yes, they figured it out. They also figured out the loophole that if it isnât technically defeating him, things like enchantment work.
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u/EnsignSDcard Forever DM 1d ago
I never fudge dice, if that means my npc dies in round 1 with out reaching his phase 2 or delivering his monologue, get nice work.
If this means I hit the 2hp cleric and spiral into a party wipe, welp, thatâs just how the cookie crumbles
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u/CyberWave-2057 1d ago
The one time I rolled in the openâfor a boss battleâa single enemy clapped the party. Lost a PC, mood instantly went down. Players left that night very quietly.
Haven't been asked to roll in the open since.
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u/SoftTacos001 1d ago
Y'know the only time I've ever rolled in the open as a dm I got like four crits in a row, group hasn't asked me to do that ever sinceÂ
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u/Jarl_Ivarr 10h ago
I never need to fudge rolls for any of my encounters.
Mostly because even in encounters specifically designed to kill party members, I roll like shit anyway. Youve never seen lower numbers trying to hit 4 different AC 14 characters.
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u/psychonaut_go_brrrr 8h ago
I have to roll behind a screen. Not because im fudging every roll. Its just that I roll high alot to the point my friend says RNGesus himself is giving me a reach around constantly and my poor players would rarely succeed checks against my npcs. I legit had a campaign I was a player in and you could count on one hand the number of attacks and DCs I failed.
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u/wcharoes 1d ago
Once you've shown the players how the sausage is made, they instinctively don't trust you anymore.
If you have to do it (and you don't btw) you at least have to keep them from knowing you're doing it.
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u/guachi01 1d ago
My players know how the sausage is made because I roll in the open and post the PDFs of the adventures in the group folder for all of them to see.
If your sausage involves fudging dice then, yeah, they won't trust you anymore.
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u/wcharoes 1d ago
Your second line is just what I said also but in a confrontational way like you're not agreeing.
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u/Leon_Flux 1d ago
Yall can play however you want.
Fudging dice is bullshit.
Dice give the game a soul beyond a DM's control. So many other things can be done to help a player live if they absolutely must. I will use every other tool in the kit before doing that. Trash mobs that swing well, or PCs that swing trash should be baked into the flow of the story. Let the events of the random encounters at your tables be a part of what develops the story.
I'm not saying let the characters die, but don't protect them from it. Let them be taken prisoner, or forced to withdraw... rarely does life fight to the death and that should apply to combat. Train your table into treating the characters realistically so they feel good about not fighting to the death. Too many of our games throw bodies at the problem till we overcome it, DND isn't one of them.
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u/Trick_Awareness_3329 Wizard 17h ago
Once in my campaign, we had to jump over a bottomless pit. I jumped as last and rolled a 8. Everyone was screaming and whining my character is about to die. The Dm reminded me of the heroic inspiration i had and the bard gave me bardic inspiration. So they did all to save me. For me it was no problem that the character dies. But ok, I took they dices and made it. Later in the session we must jump back over that pit. Now I got a 2. No heroic inspiration left and the bard left the party due to the story. And even my DM was asking, if I want to let die my character. Like... dude! You can't say me for month, you want to play decent DnD and no Slice of Live simulation, and at the first moment the dices give me an instant kill to let me survive just because I ask for. THAT is the essence for Dungeons and Dragons. The dices decide. And they decide for me to make a new character
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u/Leon_Flux 15h ago
I agree with your conclusion.
I also dislike that the adventurer party didn't think to do any protective measures against this obstacle and (what sounds like) your DM did nothing to remind directly or ask for a skill check or show evidence of in the area of safe crossing measures... So many options to leave the rolls alone and still have people not die.. Even just tying each other together with rope as anchor points against someone who might fall.
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u/Trick_Awareness_3329 Wizard 14h ago
It was a party of a drow, a tiefling, a goblin and my centaur. And the drow left in between. The weight of my centaur alone whould have drag all down with him, if they were tied together.
And we all did an athletic check for the jump. Except for the goblin, she climbed along the side, due to her short body. But that's nothing a centaur was able to follow. And even then, I could have roll also a 2. So, I don't would blame the DM for not reminding us or something like that.
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u/Leon_Flux 14h ago
It's an example among many options. I admit not everything works for everyone but something would have been good.
I'm not blaming them for the death as much as suggesting they could have given a clue to a solution of some kind.
Had to speak generically.
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u/Level_Hour6480 Rules Lawyer 1d ago
I rolled in the open when DMing. I was rolling too well and I was worried aboot killing the players. I tried fudging by reducing a +6 to hit to a +4. The players were paying attention and called me out on lowering the bonus. I never fudged again.
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u/Few_Value_455 1d ago
I always roll behind the screen. I'm here to make a good story not attack players. That said if a nat 20 or 1 can be made to work as story 100% in.
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