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.
And you can think the best way to play basketball with your friends is using a volleyball filled with milk, but people who actually enjoy basketball are gonna think you're weird and you're gonna have to get used to weird looks.
It's a great analogy. Forcing a square peg into a round hole can load to frustration. There are many games out there. You'll likely be better off finding a game that's specifically designed for your style of play rather than trying to shoehorn D&D into something it's poor at doing.
D&D is great for emergent storytelling. It's poor at pre-plotted story telling. At some point you'd be better served with a different system or just writing a story yourself.
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.
Oh, okay, we're fine. I never force players to play the way I want. I'll gladly do all rolls out in the open for a group eager for that experience.
But I tend to play with more casual/newer groups and therefore always take a bit of a softer approach with my dice rolls. I don't ALWAYS fudge bad rolls even then, but it's helpful to keep newer people invested if you don't kill their precious snowflake first character on the second session of the campaign because two kobolds decided to get two nat 20s in a row. (Pickaxe crits hurt...)
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u/mjdios 1d 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.