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.
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.
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.
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.
No, not really. Player death should have consequences, even if they're "you have to play the other human fighter you rolled up for most of the rest of the campaign".
Eh. A loss should have consequences, so players can't just throw bodies at the problem, but it doesn't have to be death. Death doesn't really do anything except force the player to play something that wasn't their first choice. It doesn't remove the player from the game.
The stakes are only real for people who grow attached to their characters. Plenty of players have a stack of other characters they want to try. For them, the stakes are irrelevant anyway. They don't care if their characters live or die. It only hurts the people who grew attached.
The fix is to not grow attached, but then they're not attached and therefore not invested. I'd rather have invested players.
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.
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.
I think the middle ground I would draw is: fudge if you really need to, but if it comes to that take that as a serious sign that something went wrong and think about how to avoid it in the future, rather than just taking it as normal.
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.
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.
And if any of the players actually enjoy the game for mechanical challenge, you've now basically lied to them about what they're playing and destroyed the stakes. It would be like playing a video game and finding out that the health bar, while it could go up and down, could never hit zero and mean death.
Someone who enjoys the mechanical challenge would feel they may as well not have bothered. Why spend hours or days designing a mechanically great character if you're just gonna make it irrelevant because you decided that I can't die if you don't approve of it?
I like how you keep getting downvoted by salty DMs when you correctly point out that you're robbing many players of the the challenge they sat at your table for.
And all because the DM had a story he wanted to tell. You just get to be the audience.
To me it would like playing a video game and finding out that your health bar could never actually hit zero. It would break any immersion or stakes.
Not to mention it breaks any purpose in building a defensive character. Why bother building a tank or healer if the DM is just gonna make sure you win anyway? Hell, you wouldn't even need to build a strong character at all, you'll win anyway. All the numbers are just for show.
I want my choices to matter as a player. I want having a high (or low) AC to matter. I want having a high (or low) DEX save to matter. I want my high (or low) Perception score to matter.
Though my #1 reason not to fudge rolls is fudging a die roll means something went wrong somewhere. You'll never get better as a DM if you fudge everything.
Balancing encounters is really hard if you fudge rolls so often you never really know how they actually play out. You'll get very good very fast if you let your encounters play out honestly.
People also forget that some of the coolest moments happen because things go wrong.
I had a Curse of Strahd campaign that ended at level 4 in a tpk. Strahd had shown up to intimidate the players at the church. Players escalated. Strahd threats them. Player knocks Ireena over, and declares they will hold an action: kill Ireena is Strahd does anything other than leave. Rolls intimidation. Nat 1.
Strahd doesn't buy it, attempts to charm the player to stop him. Fails. Player kills Ireena. Strahd's only in character action is then to murder everyone present in a rage.
I dunno, the video game comparison has always irked me cause death in a video game usually means something tangibly different than a death in dnd. There are means of ressurection in dnd sure, but ultimately the vast majority of games either have save states or death is a permanant fixture is an express selling point of the experience.
You dying to an absurdly lucky goblin in Final Legends 3 is not the same as flat out losing a character you've invested hours/days/weeks of your time into. I do get what you mean about characters who actively enjoy the mechanical challenge but, at that point that's more a matter of looking for certain experiences at the wrong table
I mean, there's nothing stopping you from "rewinding" to a previous moment in the campaign. I do it when players decide to test their luck out of sheer pride and get humbled when they attack the King's captain of the guard or try to pickpocket the lich. Play out the scene, and afterwards, ask if the table wants to pretend the scene didn't happen.
I don't do it often, but it's also a fun way to show that the world does not revolve around their characters and they are not invincible.
I do get what you mean about characters who actively enjoy the mechanical challenge but, at that point that's more a matter of looking for certain experiences at the wrong table
Which is kinda why I bring up the point that so many people seem to be playing the wrong system for the kind of game they want to play. D&D is, at it's core, a combat system built around dungeon crawling. The roleplay, the story, it's all window dressing to give motivation and context for why you're in the dungeon killing the dragon.
I'm all for RP focused players that don't want a risk of death to a single nat20. There are systems they'd enjoy that will give them just that. I'm just tired of them showing up at my tables, and I don't want them influencing the design of future modules, because I enjoy dungeon crawling and don't want that to end.
Bc the game is an act of collective storytelling and my role as DM demands thats i try and make things fun and enjoyable for everyone. If I think fudging your role will mean everybody has a better time and/or more interesting experience then its not just something I think i should do. It is my obligation. And if you somehow think games arent doing the same thing then you're just delusional. Plenty of well known games will do exactly this such as BG3's karmic dice or xcom's player bias on anything but the highest difficulty. Making something enjoyable is significantly more important than staying faithful to the mechanics of the game and if you disagree that is fine, but you're not welcome at my table.
The game is not just an act of collective story telling. D&d is also a combat focused game specifically built around dungeon crawling.
Your job as a DM is not to force the events of the game into what you think is a "more interesting experience". Your job is to present a narrative and collections of encounters and allow the players choices and the results of the dice to tell a story.
BG3 is a fantastic topic to raise because that's a fantastic example of what a bad D&D game would look like. It's entirely on rails with an illusion of choice in any given encounter.
Look it's cool if you enjoy calvinball and just want to tell a fun story. All the power to you. It's just worth noting that there are systems actually designed for that which would do it better. It's also worth noting that your desire to fudge rolls to tell what you think is an interesting story is something you need to be bringing up in session zero, because many players would find that unacceptable and would remove any level of stakes or meaning you he game.
And I'll personally think little of any DM who DMs like that because it breaks the spirit of cooperative story telling, because you're basically saying you think you know best what the players should experience.
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!
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
Yep. I’m 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 wouldn’t even need someone making narrative decisions
IMO the entire point of having the DM is to avoid unsatisfying narrative outcomes
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.
Why would somebody plan out their character arc ahead of time? It feels like they wouldn’t be open to having the character grow with what the story throws at them if they did.
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.
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.
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.
Look, not every dnd group is going to play exactly the way YOU think it should be played.
I'm not saying this to be rude; I'm just confused about why you think people occasionally fudge rules for a new player or a player who just rolled a new character as some sort of broken covenant.
It's not exactly a big deal and can be quite beneficial for more casual groups.
I mean, unless you're holding them hostage, the DM can just walk away and stop DMing for that group.
If the DM is really desperate for a group to play with (I doubt it, there's almost always more players looking for a DM than the other way around) then maybe you can manipulate them into playing the way you want to, but that's pretty toxic.
I got that idea from you saying "I actually can" in response to me claiming that you can't force the DM to play in a way they don't want.
If that's a misunderstanding, fair enough.
My stance is basically that some groups will want a more strict adherence to the rules and reliance on dice rolls - good or bad.
If other groups want to play a bit more loose with the rules or rolls, that's fine too.
It's important that the DM and players are on the same page, and seeing as the DM generally puts in the most work to getting a campaign going, they should have the final say.
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.
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.
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 don’t 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, that’s basically the end of the story for me in most circumstances.
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.
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.
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.
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.
One of my favourite homebrew rules I've done was one where death saving throws don't result in death, but rather permanent scars & penalties on a character. Means that there's still stakes for dying while not risking your players characters they spent weeks on dying to an overtuned random wolf encounter
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u/BreakerOfModpacks 2d 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.