1. To keep the party from being wiped out in a meaningless wandering encounter.
2. To make battles more cinematic and increase tension.
3. To save your villain from a lucky attack by PCs-so that they don't derail a major plot before it can develop.
4. To punish a player who is insulting the DM, or flaunting his combat prowess, or who has somehow taken advantage of the rules... (perhaps he has a heavy flail and disarms anyone that approaches).
Lets look at these closely:
1. "Save the party": The advantage to saving the party is that you will not lose hours or months of time you spent preparing an adventure and developing the plot. If the party gets wiped out, it may take weeks or months to get back on track, if that’s even possible at all. Its possible that a scenario that the DM has prepped for 20+ hours might never get played.
On the other hand, I've been a player in parties that were wiped out, and I've wiped out several parties myself. When a party is wiped out, it makes for a VERY memorable experience... the kind of evening that is talked about for months, if not years afterward. Players usually think of things they might have done better (I wish I took that potion of cure moderate!). After a party is wiped out, players begin to have genuine fear when they get into combat. They feel that they have to be alert and prepared to flee. The term "meaningless random encounter" goes away, since every encounter can be a life-or-death struggle. An encounter is only meaningless if the results have no bearing on the overall plot. Encounters BECOME meaningless when the DM starts fudging the rolls to assure his desired results.
As a DM, it is almost unbearably difficult to see hours of carefully prepared materials go to waste if the party is wiped out. Sometimes the material can be saved, as a new party might follow in the footsteps of the previous group, other times, the material simply goes to waste. The trade-off in wiping out a party is that the "thrill" of the game is significantly enhanced for the players... the rewards that a person feels for "conquering" an adventure directly related to the risks. If the DM is going to fudge rolls to save the party, then there actually is no risk.
Exception: Once in a while, a player may feel very bad about losing their character; they become hurt and/or angry... in my experience, the people who feel a such a deep sense of loss at losing a character are usually not the most socially skilled people, for them the game has become an escape or worse a replacement for real-life social contact. You are better off not having these people at your gaming table. (Cooks only use the best ingredients, likewise, a gaming group should only include the best players.) Your time is valuable, and you should be spending it with fun, social people.
2. "Increasing Tension": Certainly, there is something exciting about a climactic battle coming down to a cinematic edge-of-your-seat conclusion. Perhaps the fighter has been knocked to single digit hit points, the cleric is already unconscious, the wizard has cast her last spell, and your party rogue, who ran away 2 rounds earlier, returns to throw himself off a balcony and get a sneak attack on the villain, saving the party, but knocking himself below 0 HP in the process. Once in a while, things like this happen naturally... other times, your villain might miss a VERY easy saving throw on the first round of combat, perhaps vs. a "charm person". The battle might end before the bad guy even had a single chance to act. An Anticlimactic battle is often a let-down for the DM. In my experience, the players appreciate the victory as much as if it were long and cinematic. The player who struck the lucky blow (or the wizard who cast the fortuitous spell) will have something to be proud of.
If all battles are completely up to chance, the few battles which happen to be cinematic actually mean something. If the players get a lucky roll, or think of a nifty solution to a problem, they should be rewarded for their effort. If you are going to automatically let a villain make their save vs. wizard spells, you are undermining one of the players... basically taking them out of the game. There is no value in casting possible instant-victory spells early in a combat if the DM has doomed those spells to failure. If the DM is fudging rolls, there is actually significantly less tension, because the players feel as if there is no chance to get the lucky spell (or critical hit) that makes a big difference. I played once with a DM who made every combat "cinematic": during the first round or two, the opponents would hit nearly every time, often scoring critical hits. As soon as one of the players was knocked unconscious, or it appeared that we were on the edge of a total party wipeout, the opponents would suddenly start missing every shot. The dm was struggling so hard to fudge the rolls and bend the rules in our favor that it was pretty much of a joke. The first few weeks that we played with the DM it was very exciting, but once it was apparent that the DM was consistently fudging rolls, both for the opponents and for us, all of the thrill left the game. None of the rolls mattered, because as long as we didn't act foolishly, the DM was sure to put the hurt on us for a few rounds, and then let us coast over the opponents.
3: To save the villain from lucky player rolls: Once in a while there are scenarios in which your villain needs to confront the players, perhaps to insult or harass them, perhaps to kidnap a loved one or relative. You fully expect the evil guy to deliver his speech and then escape via Ethereal Jaunt or some such spell. Half way through the big speech, one of the players activates a wand of Dimensional Anchor, or a fighter decides to lunge and grapple your bad guy. As the players destroy your major villain, you have to sit and watch the next several weeks of planned adventures go out the window... your planned chase through city streets, or the manhunt in the forest are no longer necessary. Ideally, the DM should be playing a real villain as if they are intelligent and have contingencies... a villain should probably send a flunky or illusion to deliver the speech. If you need your villain to show up in person, then you should be prepared for the villain to get killed. If the players "get away" with killing the bad guy, they should be able to relish the victory.
In my experience, the players know when they have derailed a major plot. Again, it comes down to rewarding a party for quick thinking or good ideas. If the bad guy is always going to get away, there is less incentive for the players to be on their toes. It is also extremely annoying to be a player and have the great winning combination of ideas, only to have the DM fudge some rolls to thwart your plan. I recently was DMing a session where a barbarian and cleric wandered into a haunted tomb. A ghost materialized and began a speech about how it had died in life, and how it was going to force the players into a game of wits see whether it would let them live or die. In the middle of the speech, the barbarian player interrupted me to say he was going to "bolt for the door and run like hell". I let him roll initiative... he beat the ghost and was far away before the ghost could react. The episode continued with ghost-vs.-cleric ... but the barbarian was the happiest person of all... he figured the only chance he had in a game of wits was never to play it in the first place.
4: To "punish" a player: As the DM, your job is to be an impartial judge... it is not a contest of you vs. the players, but rather it is the players vs the scenario, with you helping to be the arbiter of the rules and to play the part of the opposition and NPCs. If you find that you are "against" a player or need to punish the player, you are doing something wrong. A villain should be played to use every trick in his disposal to beat the players, but the villian must abide by the same rules as the players. (This leads to a future paper about the DM including "grudge monsters", or adding additional wandering monsters if the party is having too easy of a time.) There is nothing wrong with a player exploiting a special ability to snatch a few easy victories. There are probably several scenarios where that special ability is not as useful, and where the player will have to struggle to get by. If you allow your monsters to use their special abilities, then you should allow your players to use theirs.
Why would you want to avoid fudging rolls? Here are 3 reasons:
A. To assure the players that you are an impartial DM. I feel strongly that all "open" rolls, such as monster attacks and damage, should be rolled out in front of the DM screen. The players will be very aware that you might roll a critical hit, but if you do roll a hit they will know it is the luck of the dice. They may begin to fear that as they are wounded, they should be prepared to retreat... because whether the DM wants to kill them or not, a lucky die roll might doom them. They will know that they are taking chances with their life. Astute players will be able to figure out the monster's attack bonus from your die rolls and your declarations of "hit" or "miss"... this shouldn't be too great a problem, as actual combatants should have a feel for how dangerous their opponent is... there is the added benefit of a player going for a round of combat, then seeing that the monster hits on any roll of 4 or higher, and deciding to run away.
B. To assure players that the game is not a contest between player and DM, but rather between the player and the scenario: When the DM is being impartial, you are less likely to have players whining and arguing... well, they will probably still whine, but the arguments are much less likely to be drawn out. Players are more willing to accept a DM decision if they believe the decision was made out of a desire for a fair ruling than out of a desire to "beat" the players.
C. To assure players that their actions have meaningful consequences and that they are in control of their own fate. When the players know that any combat could be their last, and that beating any given scenario comes down to their own ideas and their own die rolls, it gives them a feeling of control. If they win, they will take pride in knowing that they did it themselves, and that the DM wasn't holding their hand or fudging things in their behalf.
DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS AS A GAME OF RISK ASSESSMENT:
Dungeons and dragons is a game of risk analysis and risk assessment. The players must make countless decisions of whether to press on or rest, whether to fight a battle or talk their way out of it. Part of the game is to balance the chance of victory with the chance that things might go horribly awry. If the DM is fudging rolls to assure a pre-determined outcome, the players no longer have any adequate way to asses the levels of risk involved with their decisions.
In almost all endeavors, risk assessment is the crucial element that engages our brains. Football coaches must decide on 4th down whether to punt or try to make the first down. Mountain climbers look at approaching whether patterns and decide to rush for the summit or hunker down in a snow cave and wait for the next day. A poker player tries to read his opponents expressions to guess wither his three jacks is going to win the pot. If the DM is going to play god and alter the results... the game becomes meaningless. It boils down to an exercise in DM storytelling.
DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS AS A GAME OF DEEP IMMERSION STORYTELLING:
Some people play the game as a mutual deep-immersion storytelling, with the players each taking the role of a protagonist, and the DM taking the role of the supporting characters, villains, and scenery. In this type of game, the focus is often more on interaction with NPCs, political developments, and playing "in character". Under these circumstances, why is only one player, the DM, allowed to "cheat". A player is just as likely to know what makes for an interesting story or scenario and react accordingly. I've seen players who enjoy the critical failure roll, because it allows them to blunder spectacularly! What if a player decides that they want to disarm an opponent by throwing a dinner plate to knock the sword out of an opponent's hand? Should they be allowed to "fudge" a roll and declare that they had a critical success regardless of the roll?
It may sound silly: people will tell me that there is a big difference between the player fudging and the DM fudging. What is the difference exactly? If the DM is in charge of the overall plot, why not let players determine their own fate for smaller battles that might not effect the overall plot? If the DM is going to fudge rolls to save a plot or a villain, why not let players fudge to add a little more excitement to battles or to let them indulge in some unlikely yet entertaining heroics? Is the DM smarter or a better judge of action, tension, and heroics than everyone else at the table? If you are answering "yes", then you are not giving your players credit. If you are going to freely fudge rolls to enhance the game, perhaps you should consider allowing your players to fudge rolls as well, or else maybe you should switch to a diceless mode, where EVERYTHING is determined by players ability to tell a story and give a good description of their actions.
If you have to suddenly give the bad guy slick armor, or 10 extra HP to assure that they escape, then you are cheating. How is it different from a player giving themselves 10 extra HP or suddenly deciding that their +1 sword is actually an "undead bane"? If the goal of the game is to be collaborative effort of storytelling, with the Players in the role of heroic protagonists, and the DM playing the role of the villains and NPCs, why is the DM allowed to cheat and not the players?
IF YOU STILL WANT TO FUDGE ROLLS:
Perhaps you should meet with your players and discuss the idea of the DM fudging the rolls. Propose the following questions:
1. Should the DM fudge rolls to save a player's life?
2. Should the DM fudge rolls to save a villain's life?
3. Should the DM fudge rolls to advance a plot?
4. Should the DM fudge rolls to make combat more cinematic?
I think you'll find that most players do NOT want a DM fudging rolls. If the players do not want you to fudge rolls, you should be considerate of their desires. Just as you want to advance a plot or keep the party alive... perhaps they want to feel that they (and the luck of the dice) are responsible for their own fates.
Once in a while, you need to fudge to fix your own mistakes.
Originally posted by olshanski
...why is only one player, the DM, allowed to "cheat". A player is just as likely to know what makes for an interesting story or scenario and react accordingly.
You could use the same argument to show that roleplaying games should be completely diceless. But I agree, and in fact, I don't always make the players roll dice. If they think and feel that a certain thing ought to happen for the good of the story, then we simply make it happen. You don't need to rely on, or wait for the dice to come up in order to roleplay a blunder. The player can do that all on his own without any dice.
The DM is foremost a storyteller. The fact that he is an impartial judge of die rolls is the absolutely smallest part of his job, and in no case, should a die roll (or any othe rule) get in the way of the story.
Yes, in many cases, allowing the dice to do their thing results in very memorable adventures. But so too does ignoring dice sometimes result in very memorable adventures. I have had many of both kinds of experiences playing D&D's incarnations sine 1980, and one is not better than the other, IMO.
(I really agree on the things above, but the situation was getting ridiculous....)
I am not replying to argue, because I actually agree with the author. However I would like to ask if the author intends that the DM rolls everything out in the open as well? I can see pros and cons to that.
Giant in the Playground brought up an excellent point. If the DM has made mistakes, the DM should try to fix it as discreetly as possible...
Because of the way I play, I cannot fudge a die roll, but I might decide that a far-too-difficult monster maybe had been weakened in a previous battle or something... perhaps it has less HP or perhaps has an aversion to using one of its special abilities. So in this case, Giant in the Playground was correct... the DM should intervene to fix his own mistakes.
Myrdrhyall said "he might also fudge rolls, because he is so UNBELIVABLY lucky, almost killing 3 level 4 characters, with 6 orcs, because he constantly crit`s.". Yep, this is a tough situation... Hopefully the players will be frightened after the 2nd consecutive crit and start thinkging about running away. I am sometimes pretty lenient about letting the party get away if they are trying to flee... a lot of monsters care enough about their own skin to quit while they are ahead. I once fudged a roll in which an etin scored a critical hit and knocked a character to -10... The character had died in the previous week and lost a level. I felt guilty so I announced to the whole group that I was making an executive DM decision that the crit only knocked the person to -8 and they would have a permanently scar as a result (the scar had no game effect.. just for flavor and a story to tell at the taverns.) I would like to be as hard-line as I stated in my first post... but I sometimes cannot be as impartial as I want to.
Sain: I roll all monster combat out in the open. I privately roll things that must be hidden, such as search, spot and sense motive.
I don't use a DM screen, but I have a small TV-tray that sits next to my chair and holds the maps and my private die rolls. Some rolls that are supposed to be hidden such as gather information and spot I will let people roll out in the open, simply because I trust my group not to meta-game... this is more laziness on my part and the desire to let people roll their own stuff whenever possible.
A group of 6 Orcs is fighting three level 4 characters. I think we can all agree that the Orcs do not know precisely how strong these characters are, although we do.
So, the Orcs start swinging. If a few of them get butchered instantly, they'll probably run away. Conversely, if the adventurers blunder about stupidly, they might try to take them captive, steal their stuff and ransom or torture them.
So after the first 2 critical hits the party is in danger. If, that is, the Orcs continue on their straight out smash everything that moves policy. But why would they? If they were aware that the adventurers were level 4 they would, they'd capitalise on their luck and thank Grumsh that they survived. But they don't know. So now they figure these aren't really adventurers, they're the tavern boy, his girlfriend and the son of the pawn-shop owner, who took some gear from the shelves and went out to become a hero.
Their response changes to suit this, and they begin grappling and disarming, trying to subdue the adventurers. Not taking needless risks, you understand, still using their best tactical options, but having as their intended result captives instead of corpses. Now we've brought in a situation where their natural 20s, while still effective and humiliating for the party, aren't actually going to kill them. They may, if the critical rolls continue for long enough, result in them being hogtied and helpless, which dovetails neatly into a surprise adventure/escape from the village/do a favour for the orc lord/fight in the slave pits. But the extreme likelihood is that the critical rolls won't continue that long. So they've got the fighter down through sheer luck, and it's a big surprise to them when he wakes up and starts fighting properly, shakes them off and brains them.
The party was threatened, so it was exciting. What's more, they were threatened with more than just death. Humiliation, being insulted, being helpless, being stolen from. All these things we have in our dice bag with which to threaten the PCs, and a well rounded game should contain all of them. Just dying isn't really very scary in a game, just as merely living isn't very exciting.
With this ethos, I roll all dice in the open. And if there's a total player kill, I still apologize. Because in the end I was the one who chose to have his monster stand above the helpless character and swing his club, praying for a natural 1. The odds are you won't get it.
Similarly, don't you all have the monsters gang up on whoever's still alive rather than cruising the battlefield and performing coup de grace's on anyone who's unconscious while 1 orc ties up the fighter? Sure, we could kill almost any party just by playing hard and mean, but it wouldn't be as exciting.
Giant in the playground is correct. If the DM has made a mistake, the DM should fix the mistake as discreetly as possible. The way I play, rolling out in the open, I would not be able to fudge a die roll, rather I would simply decide that the monster in question had an aversion to using a special ability, or perhaps it overestimates the party's strength and runs away when it gets hurt... (maybe to come back when they are a bit stronger).
Myrdhraal said that in certain circumstances, the DM might have to fudge.. such as 3 consecutive critical hits. I wouldn't make the players re-roll... same goes for the monsters. After the 2nd critical hit the party should be considering running or changing their tactics... they need to account for my getting lucky in their strategy.
HOWEVER, I'll admit that once I had an etin roll 2 critical hits against a character that I killed the previous week. The character had already lost a level after being raised... and I was feeling guilty. Since the 2nd critical hit knocked him down to exactly -10... I announced to the group I was making an executive DM decision and the player would only be knocked to -8 as well as suffer a permanent scar. (no game effect other than flavor). I wish I were as hard-line as I propsed in my first post, but I was feeling too guilty.
swbuza: yep, I agree people can roleplay their own blunders without rolling dice... or if they are very eager to succeed at a heroic act, I will sometimes let them do it without rolling (or at a significant circumstance bonus), if they have described it well.
Sain: I make all monster rolls in the open... both to-hit rolls and damage rolls. I don't use a screen. I have a TV-tray that sits next to my chair that holds my maps and that is where I roll the few crucial secret rolls.
The crucial secret rolls are things like "Search" and "Sense Motive". I should be rolling spot, listen, and bluff checks in private, but I often let the players roll it themselves... out of a combination of my desire to let people roll their own dice, my own personal laziness, and my faith that my players will not take advantage of meta-game knowledge.
I think its a good idea to find out ahead of time how players feel about saving the party from certain deadly encounters - or saving villains from a premature doom, for that matter.
I agree that in some cases you should allow players to fudge rolls, or at least let them choose to have the DM fudge a couple rolls in favor of making a more interesting encounter.
We had an embaressing encounter where a player managed to fumble 3 rolls, one after another, against a creature we won't name for the sheer hilarity of it. There are times when you can't trust the dice to do what should happen.
I both agree and disagree with you about altering die rolls to keep the story moving. Sometimes you, as DM, royally screw something up. On the other hand, you should keep a campaign flexible enough to change courses in the middle of certain events, alternate paths that the party can take, supposing they lose character X or Y in battle Z, they can possibly go off in direction A, B, or C. Of course, there are some things you can never plan for, and some things that you may have obviously planned a bit too much for.
Do yourself a favor and never grow too attatched to a story to need to fudge lots of rolls, but then again, never rely too heavily on the dice. Sometimes they lie. The dice lie, they do.
It's a bit harsh to call fudging "cheating" - because anyway you look at it, it's still just "fudging".
But there is allways exeptions:
You starts on a brand new champaing with 1st level characters. After 30 minutes of playing you encounters a goblin guard and attack. Suddenly the goblin rolls a killing blow, as a DM I would just roll a critical hit, and forget the killing blow. The reason: ok, it would have been funny and remomerable, but what if you spent 1-2 hours creating this character, you got great scores and the like. Wouldn't it just been a waste of time? OK if it was a terrible character who would soon die any way, let it die, but letting a good character die becouse of a goblin after just 30 minutes of playing... no way! And it would be more exiting with few hit points from a crittical hit
But as I said you shouldn't cheat, I hate when my players cheat. Next time I'm going to toss out a titan or a dragon
For example, my first chararacter was playing The Sunless Citadel. There was a DC 5 shaft to climb. My characeter rolled a 1, which, due to his armor, made him fall. He fell 80 feet. This wouldn't have killed him due to his good Tumble. But, all of the dice were fours or above. The character died in an "encounter" that didn't even rate a CR. This is the best example I can think of where DM fudging should have been used.
In other situations, it depends on the DM, the players, and the circumstances.
My second character, for example, was a monk. He kept using Stunning Attack on the evil wizard, but the wizard made his Fort save every time. Should the DM have fudged? Probably not, but it was a bit ridiculous.
Then, my current character, a tank, charged a mounted Azer with a lance in the first warm-up encounter of an adventure. He didn't worry about the AoO because he had a good AC and Mobility to boot, plus plenty of hit points. Besides, the Azer's mount was dazed and the Azer was on an unstable platform. But he hit, critted, and rolled incredibly well on the damage. In one hit, the first hit of the adventure, my character was reduced to -11 hit points. It wasn't even supposed to be a challenge.
In fact, that campaign was completely ruined by bad dice rolls, to the point where we gave up and started a new one. The first encounter of the campaign was supposed to be a hint that something was wrong with the sorcerer in the party. He was supposed to identify the attacker and get some plot hints in. But the wemic charged, hit, critted, and knocked the sorcerer to some absurdly low total in one hit. See my sig for how we got out of that one (barely). Then the assassin who was supposed to quietly knock us unconscious while we slept woke the barbarian (with no listen ranks) several rooms away, almost ruining the adventure.
These die rolls (and others like them) completely ruined our entire campaign. From now on, our DM will fudge dice.
I take that attitude because some of the best plots, characters, npc's and even campaigns I've ever seen, came out of dice rolls that went awry.
(TPK in an effort to save the world. 200 years later, same world, a small group of adventurers rise up to try and succeed against an evil where others had failed. It was pretty intense.)
The only thing that makes players sweat is the unexpected. Dice are simply a means to facilitate that sense of randomness, of excitement, of chaos.
When dice rolls go bad, it's like being a newbie again, with your first character, in your first dungeon, wondering what's going to happen next, because anything can happen.
Impartial dice rolls change player behavior. When anything can happen: no combat is mundane, every AoO is scary, and every bonus to hit, dmg, svs and skills is important.
When players are unsure of success they often seek ways other then combat to secure victory. When players know the dice can go against them, and the DM won't save them, they're more careful about sizing up their opponents before entering into combat and more thoughtful about their actions in combat. When players realize there is no safety net, it makes all their accomplishments that much more satisfying.
(It also makes the fearless/reckless party barbarian who lets opponents take AoO when he rages and gets banged up as a result seems all the more so because, hey, that guy's crazy. The party fighter would never allow some AoO like that.)
If players even suspect you have fudged, they lose the sense of chaos, of unpredictability, of danger. That loss affects not just the current session, but all the sessions, and campaigns, run by the same DM, that follow. My experience is it typically takes something drastic to restore that feeling that anything can happen once people suspect fudging has occurred.
TPK happens.
Players do stupid things.
DM's make awful mistakes.
Campaigns die unexpectedly.
That's the joy of roleplaying. You don't know what will happen.
The moment you start to fudge rolls you change all of that.
Embrace the chaos. Work with the unexpected. Most campaigns, and the ones that follow, end up being better for it.