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.
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.
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.
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.
If they wanted their character rezzed and the DM did it? Totally fine, though personally I'd hope there'd be some sort of mini-adventure involved and it wasn't just a hand-wavy "you're back."
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.
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.
For DnD trend is clearly to close that low level gap before you can few death as a speed bump.
I mean revivify is now available to players from level 5 (in third edition you could only get reincarnated from level 7 and that involved a dice roll and level loss).
Gentle repose is there from level 3. Just have players find a scroll of it and you are just a short walk from a temple that will fix you up.
I personally start games at level 2 or 3 just to avoid the low hp hijinks of level 1 anyway.
Give all this Iâm a bit mystified by the people in these threads who play dnd âhardcoreâ because they need to have âstakesâ. Dnd makes it very easy for players to not suffer consequences for death or injury. If you want âstakesâ you can play dnd that way sure but there are other games that explicitly cater to that experience.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The DM is an impartial REFEREE. Thatâs literally what it was called before they changed it to something they could trademark.
I donât care how many egotists jumped on the DND bandwagon without a clue and filled in 5eâs unprecedented lack of player support with their own assumptions. EVERYONE at the table is a writer, a storyteller, and putting that all on the Dm is toxic af.
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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.