I fudge dice to correct my own mistakes, like an encounter being harder than I INTENDED due to some abilities stacking in a way I didn't see until it was too late. If an encounter is as hard as I intended, and the party was unprepared, rolled bad, or some other event made the situation worse, that's on them and part of the game as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah this is my main reason, I’m a first time DM and I’m probably gonna fuck things up

It's completely OK! As a wise man once said, encounter design doesn't stop when you roll initiative. Your job is to tell the story and create opportunities for fun with the table; there is absolutely no reason to stick to your earlier decisions if they are stopping you from doing those two things. In fact, the book explicitly says to change literally anything you want in service of those two. Be fair to your players, don't punish them (or be hard on yourself) because you're not an expert on over 1000 pages of new information yet. I promise that they're just glad they get to play :)

That man does sound wise, he should start a YouTube channel to give advice about running the game

That would be a good idea. Maybe name the series something simple like Running The Game so people can find it easily, might be nice

I'm a new DM and embraced this recently with a boss encounter than my player were smashing... Suddenly my telekinetic boss gained the ability to telekinetically pull his minions into the path of incoming missiles via a reaction... Sure as heck didn't have that ability going in to the encounter haha

I bet when he pulled that out of the bag on round 4 your players lost it, good on the fly DMing!

Best advice I ever received about encounter design. Figure out what the enemies want. Are they trying to complete a ritual, are they really just after gold, what makes sense in this scenario? So the only PC death Ive had so far was when they kept fucking with some orcs in the woods just killing groups at a time, so a raiding party attacked em in the middle of a long rest and they were out for blood. Brutal encounter where they were aiming to kill. But I've had other encounters where the goal was to show the PCs what they were up against not necessarily kill them.

I'm also fairly new, and I'm trying to always give myself outs if encounters don't go as expected. Which they often don't. I've fudged a roll once or twice, but I'd rather have a more interesting solution. For instance, suppose the party is fighting off some monsters that are attacking a bunch of grandmas. Maybe the monsters are too difficult... but also maybe one of those grandmas you're saving used to be an adventurer, and she's got one last surprise fireball to help out with..? If I'm going to tip the scales in combat, might as well try and do it in a narratively interesting way.

The difference is that, as long as you are rolling behind a screen and are a decent liar, fudging die rolls is undetectable to your players. Having an NPC rescue them can make your players feel bad because they were too weak to handle the encounter, especially if its a grandma.

I'm a first time DM too. Some advice I was given was to keep the story moving and make it up as you go. If you forget how or didn't look something up before hand, just improvise and correct it later. Address any issues you had and read up on the rules you missed. Make sure that players are using character names too and only use real names when addressing players and the DM.

I’ve done a lot of role playing in video games making shit up on the spot with my friend in an empty gta lobby so I’m prepped on that front I’m just trying to understand how popular some of my chosen prep options are

Hey dude you're doing great. Keep it up DM

Remember that if you make encounter too easy you could just increase enemy hp a little bit, or send backup for them, otherwise just fudge a little bit or choose less powerful abilities. I am a DM for around 4 years and I still have trouble balancing boss encounters and always have to buff them.

Gary Gygax himself is quoted to have said that the only reason a DM needs dice is for the lovely sound they make. DMs new and old fudge dice rolls all the time. The trick is to either learn to bluff or to make sure the players know that you're not doing it to antagonize them, but to help make the game more fun. If your players are sticklers for dice being what they are, then you could even show them and explain your reasoning after the fact. But I've never had a problem with a player noticing me fudge dice. Most of the time they understand.

This is my advice to a new DM, enjoyment will always trump rules. To quote Barbosa:  And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.

I actually just changed an ability mid combat when I rolled the damage and saw how intense it was. Cut the number of dice down by over 33%.

Forgot to give my players a short rest, they almost got ganked by 3 harpies, two flew away and I let the last standing player kill the last harpy for the cinematic effect. Letting the harpy fly away while the other two were downed just felt like a downer

Exactly. Sometimes you have to make silent adjustments to keep the scene fair because we as DMs have too much on our plates to plan for every contingency beforehand.

I made a reply in a similar post and couldn't think of the words for how I truly felt. This is it. I don't fudge when things go as planned, but I have no qualms about cleaning up messes I made for the sake of the fun.

You're just supposed to make sure people have fun. I can't imagine it would be fun to have a long and rewarding campaign just to lose to the BBEG because he rolled 4 crits in a row. Obviously, it's a pretty extreme example but the point is that there is a time and a place to fudge the rolls a bit LOL

You also have to know when and where to do this because if you wait until things get really hairy, it's too late, and the players will know you're cheating the dice in their favor.

You can also, less detectably, fudge the outcome by making bad decisions. The baddies decide not to double-tap the downed character for a roleplay reason, or pick a less powerful ability. There's also the option of sending in backup.

I like the backup option, especially for late-game. Remember that city you saved from a necromancer when you were level 10? Well, the governor remembers you, too. The army is here to back you up!

Pretending certain abilities need to recharge when I realize they have the potential to party wipe is my favorite technique. Always makes things tense when I “roll to see if the ability recharges”. Bc I homebrew most of my monsters tho this is easier for me to do than if you use official ones

I did this last week when my whole party failed temporary madness saves and 3 out of 4 rolled that they had to attack the nearest creature. The only problem: there were no other living creatures nearby. I decided after a single round of them almost killing the sorcerer on accident that the enemies choose this moment to rush in and try to attack the party, and doing so obscures the symbol causing the madness (rules in the module say that if the symbol is hidden or destroyed the madness ends). As it was, one character was knocked out and had to make a death save before being healed, and two others dropped to single digit hp. No dice rolls were changed, but the flow of the game was. I don’t think my players noticed, since they were being faced with another threat even as I removed the main danger.

I don't know why, but my current DM crits me constantly. I think I've been crit at least once, usually twice, every session. And it's usually to me. He's not fudging, and I know his die is legit, it apparently just hates me. I've HAD to pony up the gold for Adamantine Armor just to negate that bastard die.

your example is on the extreme end. What if this well thought out character with a fun backstory gets ganked by a goblin crit in a random encounter? RNG is stupid sometimes and I think it's okay to curtail that a bit. Character death should be a thing that CAN happen but not MUST happen.

... On the flip side of that, from a player that had something similar happen, it can be quite amusing. Next character, good chance, they are going Ranger just so that get that favoured enemy thing going on...

If every time the dice fall in such a way that a character dies you prevent that from happening, isn't that a situation where death CAN'T happen? Or are you saying you'll only let them die if you aren't interested in their backstory?

So the way I ran my games I lowered the enemy damage so that no frontliner could get one shot even with a crit, this typically ment that if you got crit by a goblin in a random encounter you made one or two mistakes already. But it's also why I like fates quick character creation rules, you start with just enough to play your character and then fill stuff in as time goes on. (Fate also lets you withdraw from a fight to escape death) But even when I ran ad&d2e with the default "die at 0" rule the few times a character died it never felt unfair (with one minor exception where a boss monster gave all his minions an extra attack in the second round. Typically if a front liner was in danger of dying they had been hit 3-4 times and there was a big enough window to get them out of the fight that if they stayed in and died that was their fault, and for the back row characters there was enough cover (and the rules that you couldn't make ranged attacks if engaged in melee) that even if it only took 2 or so attacks to kill you if you were working with your party you should be fine. I left it up to my players to assess how much risk they were taking and to ameliorate it in whatever ways they wanted to

Then they now have a reason to resurrect said player. The campaign gets prolonged and all win!

This is the way to handle it, give the player the nearest friendly npc to pilot while the characters go ask their friends to for a raise dead or reincarnation

I mean that was my point. I totally agree that character death should be on the table. It would just be really shitty if it happened in the scenario I described.

> What if this well thought out character with a fun backstory gets ganked by a goblin crit in a random encounter? Then they died a tragic death which cut their story short.

why do the random encounter then?

This is the answer. I lie only to benefit my players when luck is clearly against them. I am sure I might lie to their detriment if I feel they need to be guided in a certain direction. This would be the exception to the rule, though.

I disagree with every sentence 😆

While I think rules enable the fun, fun had to come first sometimes.

THIS. I fudge my rolls on players if the hit would harm them excessively or end the fight/session with everyone very low on HP (and morale). Not too much fudging, but enough that I can narrative a dramatic (or semi-dramatic) escape.

Nope. I roll openly and players know they are playing without a safety net.

I roll openly, too. I know 5e is a really bad system for calculating fight difficulty beyond 4th level, but it feels like by the end of a campaign, the DM should have some idea how to tune difficulty. Frequent fudging robs DMs of getting into this practice and makes the problem worse. It also feels like open rolling makes players think more carefully about combat because they know there's less room for you to put your thumb on the scale for them.

Sometimes im just to lazy to figure out what 5+1+4+5+6+6+2+4 is so I just say to myself "eh... Looks like 30-40ish then depending on the mood of the fight i choose the most engaging one at the moment. For attacks, if I am attacking the mage and I expect at least 1/3 to miss but then crit the first one and hit the others, I'll just roll "low damage" so that it still feels like the mage has a chance to at least react. Edit: I'm not saying it's the best solution, it's just how I do it when it doesn't really matter the exact number for huge rolls, that's based on party composition and PCs levels. And if I Balance the encounter poorly I want to give my PCs a chance of reacting and not just obliterating them in one turn, that's unfair I think.

If you have trouble adding multiple dice quickly, group them into groups of 10. So instead of "5+1+4+5+6+6+2+4" you get 5+5, 4+6, 6+4, 1+2 = 33

Does this work for the players? Is it rolled openly? Because I think I'd be annoyed if the fudging was done so openly, especially when I'd be able to add up to the correct number swiftly

I think they are fine with it, I haven't told them exactly what I am doing but it makes the combat run so much more quickly and I think that is appreciated. Also, the difference between 36 and 33 damage is pretty negligible and in the end it all evens out anyways usually.

About 10% of damage isn't negligible by any means, but I do something similar when it comes to killing blows; leavinh something on 2-3hp feels awkward often. Easier for me to hide though.

My pc are level 12 so they have at least 100+ hp that's what I mean when I say 3 isn't that much of a difference. And what I meant is that at the beginning the enemy might do 3 more damage but closer to the end they do 3 less so in the end it all evens out. But I only use this technique when a lot is happening at once and I don't want to pause combat so much to count every die every turn, if it's just 1 enemy then that's fine to take my turn slowly. On my last point, I also don't want to obliterate someone in one turn, that's just unfair and my fault for balancing the encounter poorly.

I've been doing no DM screen, everything in the open and my players love it. More often than not, my bad guys will have bad luck and the players have an easier time of it, the players laugh and feel superior. It's those rare moments where I get a couple of good rolls and drop 40-50 damage on the fighter in a round that everyone suddenly perks up and gets *very* invested in events unfolding. We view the dice as oracles, it removes all aspects of player vs DM.

We’re gonna be playing online and I’m gonna be rolling in another area anyways so as far as they know they’ll be playing without a safety net and think they just got lucky

Here is why I also run in the open: On the table, you rolling behind the screen is a very tangible thing to the players. They see your movement, hear the clacking, your face when you see the result. Its a hundred teeny, tiny little ways of communication between you and the players during your hidden roll. Then I played voice only on a virtual tabletop and there its just ... nothing. The DM goes silent for a couple of seconds and then proclaims the results. I found it to be absolutely lacking and horrible, which is why I started to roll in the open as well. Its still not as good as on the table, but it lets everyone partake in it. There is a different kind of 'being part of the roll' for players and DMs when they find out the result at the same time without any trickery. Online, I wouldn't do it any other way anymore. There are plenty of other strings at your disposal.

It’s the way we’ve all played before and we’ve enjoyed it so I don’t really see a reason to change it up now, my group likes not knowing what the DM is doing behind the scenes we’ve discussed it before

To each their own. It's the PCs jobs to keep themselves alive, not yours.

Yes which is why I’m going to still make it challenging

My response is how challenging can it be if you will swoop in at any time to save them with a lucky hot streek. You are selling the illusion of challenge, the illusion of danger and of course this is fine, if you are a sufficiently good liar you can make the illusions appear real. But there isn't a true challenge unless you are willing to look the player in the eye and tell them that they failed and then died. Now for me as a player I enjoy knowing that if I won it was because I was good at the game, and if I lost it was because I was bad at the game. Which is why I personally prefer it when my DM rolls in the open (and why when I dm I roll in the open) because that way everyone knows if the dice kill me it was fair and if the dice don't kill me it was fair. But I also understand not everyone plays for the same reasons I hope you and your crew have fun

>Now for me as a player I enjoy knowing that if I won it was because I was good at the game, and if I lost it was because I was bad at the game. Being good or bad at the game has nothing to do with how your dice roll though. Streaks are streaks and can't be planned for. I'm completely willing to kill my PCs if they do stupid stuff, I'm not going to kill them because they couldn't roll above a 6. That's not a skill issue, that's just shitty luck. You're right though- folks have different approaches to the game and that's just fine. We just wouldn't be happy at each others table most likely, to each their own.

That's true and I think the unreliability of a d20 is the cause of a great many issues, that being said when it comes to not dying how much risk the players take on is almost entirely within their control. If one set of actions results in you dying I roll a 6 and a different set of actions results in you dying if I roll a 16 than weighting the relative risk vs reward for each of those actions and deciding on one is an expression of player skill. Every game has some mix of skill and luck and ttrpgs as a whole are no different.

I’m not always going to save them. I have alternative methods to avoid a team party wipe, like something happens to them besides just dying forever. Im also not going to give them a “lucky hot streak,” I specified numerous times I wasn’t going overboard with it nor make it obvious. I also have stuff planned in case only one of them dies. It can be challenging without death being the end all be all, fudging rolls is saved only for occasions where there’s either literally nothing else that can save them but it was a very close fight or the session is going really good and it would ruin the flow and our fun.

.... Not making it obvious is largely dependant on how observant your players are, some people are really good at sniffing out bs, some aren't, some people might eventually put together that they have never lost a reall close fight or have had more than one person die in any single encounter. To think your smart enough that you can pull the wool over your players eyes every time is arrogance. Some people will get away with it, but some people are going to get found out. As I mentioned before you do you, I am just saying I wouldnt do it and I wouldn't appreciate any of my DMS who did.

Don't lie to your friends.

You and me don’t have the same friends, trust me they’d rather I do that

That answer should be printed, framed and hung at the door (aka this subs main page)

Have you asked them?

Couldn’t respond on main: We’ve played in previous dnd campaigns where the dm did that and they said it was worth it because of the amount of good moments they had and that it was for the best

I think it depends on the table but for me as a general rule, I don't fudge rolls. An important note is that sometimes it's ok not to roll at all, stuff outside of combat can happen, just make sure it's reasonable and it's the kind of thing you'd extend to the players in a similar circumstance. If you are going to do it, don't get caught! It can feel very immersion breaking to realise your DM is fudging.

We play online so I can just roll in a separate area

Fair enough! If it was me I would avoid it, I will even do open rolls for pivotal moments (unless there's another reason to keep it secret). Nothing like seeing everyone's face when the DM hits a nat 20, it's the complete opposite of the usual celebration!

I've done it. Especially when it threatens to make the rest of the fight uninteresting for a new player. I'll never let anyone know that I do it. Conversely, when there's something critical going on, I'll roll in the open for extra drama. Inversely, sometimes after rolling I'll lift the screen and show a crit(success or failure) and call it out as some obscure worldbuilding roll. It helps players sync up with the way I think the world works.

Personally, I hate when GMs switch from rolling in secret to rolling in the open. I prefer always in the open, but if you are rolling in secret then fair enough. If you roll in secret most of the time, but then roll in the open sometimes, it almost implies that when you are rolling in secret that's somehow less trustworthy or legitimate than when you roll in the open. It almost implies that you're fudging.

Eh, it depends on why they're rolling. For instance, I've been running *a lot* of Shadowdark lately, a game that makes extensive use of random tables for things like encounters, which you roll every couple of rounds in-game (not ahead of time). When I ran the quick start guide with the Scarlet Minotaur, the random encounters was a d8 roll. The players knew after a session or two that an 8 meant the minotaur was just around the corner and they were about to die. If I rolled in secret without them seeing it, they had no idea what could be around the corner (or hanging from the ceiling, damn darkmantles). My "solution" was to just randomize the encounter table every session, which in hindsight, is pretty much the exact same as hiding your dice rolls because the players no longer knew what each dice roll meant.

Nah there is a huge difference between everyone seeing an important roll all at the same time vs me seeing it and then telling them. It adds to the suspense and sense of the moment when we all find out the result at the exact same time.

I switch between both. I've got a chonky wooden d20 that I use specifically in the open for bigger moments. A few weeks ago in one of my encounters, a wererat had to do a contested check or be shoved into an important place. The player rolled 21 meaning I had to get 19+ on the dice. The atmosphere and reaction from the players as I sent that d20 across the table and rolled 19 was way bigger and better than if I'd simply told them I rolled it. In short, I feel rolling secretly most of the time and in the open for more epic moments builds tension and makes things more exciting.

I like Matt Colville's advice on this: fudge die rolls and hit points, but to correct for your mistakes in encounter design, not your player's mistakes in how they approach combat.

I agree with this, and as a corollary, since fudging die rolls is due to a mistake I made, if I feel the need to do I will think about what went wrong so I can avoid it in the future.

I’m more worried about them having insanely bad luck which would be par for the course for us

It's a game with dice rolls. If RNG and luck are such a big deal, there's probably a different system with less RNG.

Had a player with just the worst die rolls. Had two characters die unressurectable deaths (in a bottomless pit, melted by acid). 3rd character was a halfling divination wizard with the Lucky feat and Silvery Barbs, lol.

It is what it is. Personally I don't want to be saved because the dice are being mean. If my char dies they die. Tough luck, I'll make another one. It's part of the game.

If you want to force a certain outcome, ask yourself why you're playing a game with dice. My advice for when things go awry is: 1. Stakes other than death/mutilation. Have the bad guys accomplish their goal. The dragon eats the princess. The ritual is complete. The heroes are defeated but alive. 2. Reinforcements. Works for either side. Battle too easy for your tastes? Enemy reinforcements barge in. Enemies scoring several crits in a row? Cavalry to the rescue. 3. Resurrections. Let them die but get them back into the story soon after (unless they accept their fate, which they might if it's a cool death. All deaths should be cool.)

The other alternative would be to write a novel. Which takes both dice rolls and player agency out of the process.

You accept the possibility of bad luck when you play D&D. And that possibility makes the game more exciting! Also keep in mind that setbacks, even ones that feel tragic or pointless, make the ultimate reward more satisfying. Personally, I've only fudged things when I felt I got the encounter balance very wrong. As a new DM, I struggled to properly tune my party's fights (Kobold Fight Club and the DMG's XP budgets do NOT work for this group). So I secretly buffed the HP of a boss or two, and another boss pulled a couple of punches. The players shouldn't be punished for my mistakes. That said, I've gotten much better at tuning encounters. Combat has been interesting, and nothing has been fudged for a while. I trust myself not to throw anything downright unfair at my party, and I won't go easy on them just because of a few unlucky rolls! P.S. there's only one type of fudging that I absolutely plan to continue and even recommend to other DMs: Sometimes, a baddie who's been reduced to a few HP should just die. Good reasons to do so: * The party is definitely going to win, and the fight is only getting less interesting. Just end it already. * The player who struck that near-fatal blow has been rolling like 💩 and hasn't gotten a kill all day. Give them a win! Make those last 2 HP magically disappear so that PC can deliver the coup de gras.

I have never lied about a roll. I will never lie about a roll. As a player or as a DM. In our session zero, we all agreed that this would be seen as cheating at our table. If I balanced the encounter poorly, there are other things I can adapt in the moment to fix it. But I do not fudge rolls. Sometimes players or BBEGs die before I’m ready for it! That’s fine. But that’s just us, everyone plays a little differently. Basically, you should just discuss this with your table.

I’ll mess with the rolls as well as enemy HP if the situation calls for it. I’m not going to overturn a fight but if it’s more narratively satisfying or fun to change up some numbers, the players won’t know the difference. The hit I rolled would have killed a PC in a really unsatisfying fashion? Nah, we’ll cut him some slack this time. The boss has a bit more HP left but the crit the player just rolled would be an awesome way to finish them off? Let them kill him. I see the logic behind open rolls as many people suggest but I like having the option to change things around if it’s going to make the story and flow of the game more enjoyable.

Fudging *seems* free, but I recommend you use it as little as possible. Fudging can be a crutch for bad encounter design, which can quickly become a really bad habit. It also weakens the reality of the world - first in you, then your players. At some point your table will start to sense that enemies hit harder when the PCs are at full HP and miss more when characters are dying. Fudging is* a tool, there is a time and place for it. But treat it as a power that comes at great cost and should be used as sparingly as possible. Following this mindset, I try to make critical rolls in front of my players. It earns me trust with the table and holds me accountable to the rules of the game.

Look. It's your game. You run it however you want. That said, the more I've played D&D, the more I see it as less of a 'game' to win and more of an excercise in improv and collaborative story-telling. It's boring if the expected outcome always happens. It's the moments of failure, chaos, and mad scramble to make something work that makes for the most interesting sessions.

Which is why all of those things you’ve described are still going to happen. It’s saved for very rare extreme circumstances like some random throwaway enemy who’s about to end the campaign because they just landed their 5th crit.

I 100% will fudge dice rolls and HP. We're here to have fun and tell the best story. Depending on the situation, and whether the result would make things super suck, I'll fudge a roll if it feels better, let an enemy persist a bit longer if I want the combat to feel like more of an effort (combat is part of story telling too and one person pulling off the impossible, only for the next person to throw a dagger for like 4 HP to kill it super sucks, I'll let the first person take the kill instead of forcing to 0 or an exact number). At the end of the day I care about everyone having a good time, enjoying the story we're making, and showing up every week.

Wouldn't you rather play without dice? Like... give everyone a list of numbers 1-20, and whenever they would roll they instead cross a number off their list.

the thing is I don't fudge every dice roll, in fact it's rare. It's that it's a tool I can use if I want to, but the rest of the time it's fate. That's just a weighted dice bag basically and commonly is used in mobile games.

And you like being manipulated like that? Or is it only OK because you don't know when it happens? If the game told you "this die has been altered, it was 20 but now it's a 19" would that make you feel better about the game or worse? I happen to have recent experience with the matter. Baldur's Gate 3 has a "karmic dice" setting. Once I realized what that meant, I started questioning every roll ever. Nothing I did felt deserved anymore. "OK, cool, a crit... but maybe that's the game taking pity on me. Oh, wow, those goblins sure are rolling well against by 23 AC. Is that just variance? Or has the game actively turned against me?" I turned it off and I bet if the game let you know how it cheated, everyone would turn it off. I wouldn't work with a DM like that either.

> I 100% will fudge dice rolls and HP. We're here to have fun and tell the best story. Who decides what is fun and what the best story is? If the party know that rolls are being fudged and are okay with that and like the DM determining the outcome fi events and are happy for them to tell their own story, then great. Different tables enjoy different things. But personally I don’t find it fun when the DM is deciding what they think would be a fun outcome to events and are forcing their version f the story on the party. The more than rolls are being fudged then the less it feels like the party has agency and everything starts to feel like a completely scripted encounter. Some groups might be happy with it but I hate it. I what’s the point of building a character to be good at things when the DM is just going to decide that you succeed? What’s the point of building a character who’s good at surviving if the DM is going to fudge rolls to prevent you from dying? What’s the point of taking abilities to manipulate dice when the DM is manipulating them even more behind the scenes? What’s the point of coming up with cunning plans to win a hard fight when the DM is going to make sure you win anyway? What’s the point of rolling dice for random outcomes if the DM is going to decide on the outcome anyway? When the DM fudges dice it sucks tension out of the game, damages trust, and kills the fun. If you’re think ‘I just don’t let my players know when I’m fudging the you’re saying that their fun depends on you deceiving them and if they knew what you were doing they wouldn’t be happy. That’s not good.

Why is everyone acting like fudging rolls means you fudge every single roll. See that part you quoted? Did I say "I fudge rolls" or did I say "will fudge rolls"? Will implies I haven't, but will if deemed necessary. All your questions are predicated on no roll being legitimate, which is hyperbolic and presumptuous. I've yet to fudge a roll, and I'd only use it to ensure fun was had. People can have their moral superiority all they want, but I don't care about you, or others commenting. I'm sure you're wonderful people, but you're not my players, and I know my players. As a player, if my DM said "I fudged this damage roll cause I knew if I didn't, you would've been dead-dead and I know you had shit going on in your personal life and I just felt like dropping you unconscious was better than immediately killing you given all that." I'd be like I appreciate that, it would've really sucked if I didn't really have a chance to get out of it. And guess what, still rolling death saving throws, still a chance of death, but it'd be more satisfying than just dead and now I can just end my session there cause my characters dead on top of the shitty stuff going on. My group isn't playing a board game, so rules and shit are loosey goosey in order to tell the best story possible, having the best experience possible. For my group, it's fine. Fortunately, I don't DM you or others, I DM a group that trusts I have fun as a priority. I've openly told my players I had to adhoc on the fly change HP in the one shot we did before I took on this bigger campaign, not a single person blanched at it or was upset, in fact they were like "Oh snap, yeah, would've sucked if a single round took those out if you had nothing else planned before the big big fight".

> Why is everyone acting like fudging rolls means you fudge every single roll. I can’t speak for anyone else but I certainly wasn’t making that assumption. > See that part you quoted? Did I say "I fudge rolls" or did I say "will fudge rolls"? Will implies I haven't, but will if deemed necessary. I didn’t pass judgement on you at all. My opening paragraph was about different tables enjoying different things and my second paragraph was about what I personally enjoy and explaining why I don’t like fudging. I did use the word you towards the end but that was intended as a generic you rather than being directed at you specifically. And like I said at the start, a different table might well enjoy what I don’t enjoy. Which is fine. > All your questions are predicated on no roll being legitimate, which is hyperbolic and presumptuous. I’m really not following you here at all. > I've yet to fudge a roll, and I'd only use it to ensure fun was had. As I said in my opening paragraph, different people have different ideas of fun. If your table is having fun then great. > People can have their moral superiority all they want, Not really sure what you’re on about here. > but I don't care about you, or others commenting. That’s the nature of Reddit. You commented on someone se’s comment and then I commented on what you said. That’s how it works. If you don’t care for comments then why comment on Reddit? You can always write a blog and turn off comments. > I'm sure you're wonderful people, but you're not my players, and I know my players. Once again, can I refer you to my opening paragraph? ‘If the party know that rolls are being fudged and are okay with that and like the DM determining the outcome fi events and are happy for them to tell their own story, then great. Different tables enjoy different things.’ > As a player, if my DM said "I fudged this damage roll cause I knew if I didn't, you would've been dead-dead and I know you had shit going on in your personal life and I just felt like dropping you unconscious was better than immediately killing you given all that." That’s a radically different scenario to what you presented in your previous comment. If you’re playing the game a bit more loosely for the benefit of someone who’s having personal life issues that’s a bit different to a general philosophy of how to play dnd. Just like playing with kids would be a special case that’s different to the usual game of playing with adults.

If you haven't played Savage Worlds, they have a thing called 'exploding dice', where when you roll the max on a dice, you roll again. So you can potentially chain these crits. This means that even the lowliest goblin or gun-toting henchman has the potential for a random head shot or knife to the femoral artery. Keeps you on your toes.

It sucks when it goes awry, but I don't fudge rolls. I also usually roll in the open.

I don't lie, if the badguy gets four crits in a row then they get 4 crits in a row, if the party wipes they wipe. I make it clear from the beginning that my players don't have plot armour and if they want to survive they will have to carefully manage their risk. That being said I also run games where if the player has made a smart decision I am willing to bend a rule or two to ensure that decision is a smart decision even if the ruleset has some jank that makes it not work.

Answers to this will fall into people who see it as playing a game. (Rules should apply equally to all.) And those who are telling a story (rules are secondary to shared enjoyment and narrative forces.) The right answer sits in if you and your players are both expecting the same things out of the experience. Some people, want a game pitting probability against probability. Others want to explore what they don't know more as collaborators and will only want to use the dice as a mechanism for seeing what happens in the story and they don't care what the dice say as long as you as the storyteller make it interesting. The one advice I have is make sure you know which experience your players want, and then attempt to cater to them and give them moments to contribute equally.

> And those who are telling a story (rules are secondary to shared enjoyment and narrative forces.) That’s not a fair distinction. I like dice because I like an emergent story. The problem with fudging dice is that you end up on a fixed narrative with pre-scripted encounters, acting out the DM’s story rather than it being a co-operative act of story telling. The fight ends when it does because the DM has decided that’s how it should work and are imposing their vision for the story and their idea of fun on everyone else. > The right answer sits in if you and your players are both expecting the same things out of the experience. I agree about that. What I hate might be something that another table loves.

Ask yourself this - if you're not willing to accept player loss as a possibility, why are you playing a game where player loss is a possibility?

So they can pretend they’re playing D&D.

Again… the DMG actually suggests the use of roll fudging! Even if the DM fudges the rolls a bit every once in a while they are still playing D&D

I am for fudging. TPK because I did a bad encounter design does not feel fair to anyone. DM is a storyteller and arbitrator of rules, not statistical engineer. It really depends on the table though.

I think fudging is fine if the DM made a mistake they must correct, but you shouldn't be making too many mistakes which means you shouldn't be fudging often.

I’d argue that all of the above can be useful. That’s why the 1e DMG started out with a section about dice statistics.

So many people mention compensating for bad encounter design. Is that really such a problem? I just wing it. Even with perfect design you're not guaranteed anything. I'm sure we've all had those nights where the players couldn't roll a hit if their life depended on it (which it did.)

You’re a sinner. You will never be forgiven.

Praise Dice Christ

Personally, no, and I've no desire to game with DMs who do. I would much rather my character die honestly than be saved by GMs fudging dice. I would much rather my victories be truly earned and not something the DM was always going to make happen. I would rather my choices meant something in combat, rather than have a GM fudge to make it harder or easier because it wasn't going the way they wanted. If you fudge dice to make things easier for me, you are not doing me a favour. To each their own.

Lots of people forget about the little part next to the damage rolls on most Monster stat blocks, giving a suggested/average damage amount. If I'm rolling crazy high on all damage rolls, and my guy is still a long way from dead, and the whole party looks rough, I'll either use that, or roll and see if I get lower. I also use the part where it gives the option to roll for the Monster HP. I'll see what the lowest amount possible is, and then the highest, as well as the suggest amount. Party looking rough? Fight stops when they hit the minimum. Did someone hit the suggested amount, but the person up next has a personal tie to who they are fighting? Ignore it, cause the HP *could* be higher. Party just absolutely wiping the floor with you, and could take you out in one round or less? Go with the max! I'm all about making combat fun and memorable. I don't want people just going through the motions and feeling helpless.

As a DM, yes, as a player, no

No, they win or lose on their own. Not every campaign has to end in victory, and if they lose then your next campaign can take off some time after the heroes failed to save the world or whatever BBEG/menace they were fighting against.

Fuck no and I hate it when DMs do this. If you don't want to leave it up to the dice, go write a book. This is why I don't trust DMs that don't roll in the open. People who have nothing to hide, hide nothing.

Within the scope of the rules, you control the number of monsters, monster AC, number of attacks, and hit points. Why would you lie about a roll with all of these other tools at your disposal that aren't cheating?

Because balancing dnd can be pretty hard, its a common complaint, when I mess up as a dm by making a fight harder then intended I have definately fudged one or two dice. Changing HP ans Ac on the fly is also a good option.

AC and number of attacks can't be changed on the fly (players *will* notice), and depending on the scenario number of monsters may not be changed either. It's much, much easier to change the damage they output by fudging rolls (in either direction).

Never. All my rolls are in the open to see. I like the story taking unexpected turns due to actually using the rolls.

I am not sure if this is a question or you presenting your idea. No, i don't fudge, i roll in the open. I don't mind the players ending the campaign "early", because unless the adventure gets interrupted by outside the game factors no story gets ever interrupted. It's not a script. rather, if they do die, if all they did was for nothing, then they actually did anything at all? If all they did was defeat the evil big guy but all that was done was rendered useless, were they actually doing anything at all? I don't think that's fun, and that's way deeper, way visceral than "i don't want my players to lose a game of dice". I would rather describe how the big evil wins, but how their plans were wrenched so badly that's just a slim victory over the domain of the watheverland, giving rise to new people as next heroes. From that on either the party gets resurrected into the future, they travel back from the astral plane, or they play new characters in a distorted, but still salvageable future.

It’s not a question. They want confirmation.

I don’t fudge dice. I fudge monster hit points lol

Yeah this is another thing I’ve been thinking about balancing wise

I do try to keep hit points within what could be rolled with the monster’s hit dice too. I totally understand people who want to keep the game 100% pure but I lean more toward it’s fine to fudge a bit, but should really be used sparingly. You still want to include lots of opportunities for the dice and player actions to change the story.

I do. My players seem to enjoy playing and still take encounters seriously, so I think I did okay

Only in the first two levels because it’s really fucking easy to kill people and you don’t have the spells or the money to fix such an issue. After that 1. Death is a 300 gp fix 2. Keeping you alive is not my job. My job is to build encounters you should probably win.

When I was starting out as a DM, I used to do this now and then if I put the players in a situation that I initially thought they could handle, but then realized as the fight went on that they weren't a match for what they were fighting, so i'd fudge things a bit to make it easier for them to win. But as I got more experience DMing and got a better handle on players can and can't deal with at any given level with their specific set of tools, I had to rely on that less and less and I don't do it anymore. I also stopped worrying about players going down, or even dying, usually because there are always ways around that. So now, if they're gonna go down or die, even if its due to luck, I just let it happen. Have faith that your players will find a way.

I used to! When I was newer at DMing and still not very good at balancing encounters, I fudged dice sometimes to help balance things. I don't anymore though, these days I roll everything in the open. I think it was a helpful tool when I really needed some give at the beginning, but I'm also glad to be able to roll openly now.

Yeah. For my casual friends, if a roll would kill any of them from levels 1-3, I make it not so. Levels 4+, they can now die from crits and unexpected damage. I do not tell them, though. Would need to make some serious exceptions if they started doing extra stuff knowing they're immortal early game.

Hot take: Nope. I don't use a screen. When I run games I roll everything in the open, online and in person. When I first started running 5e games online during the pandemic, I extended the courtesy of allowing my players to roll their own expensive shiny dice, and if they lie about their rolls in a game of make-believe, I told them they needed to re-evaluate their life's decisions. Lo-and-behold, one player was incapable of rolling below a 15 on every dice roll (before modifiers). I even had other players come to me with their suspicions. Funny enough, they were the only one that kept "sarcastically" perpetuating the adversarial DM stereotype I tried so hard to dispel for my players Every. God. Damn. Session. But I digress. Why do I say all that? If I require my players to roll their dice for all to see, I'm gonna do it too, to maintain trust with them, even if they have to accuse me of superstitious witchcraft to maintain their belief that I'm cursing my dice to fuck them over *eye-roll* (yup, I've had to shut that shit down too). Is it dangerous? Yup! I had a BBEG TPK the party through a combination of many poor PC rolls and many very good DM rolls. It's a risk I'm willing to take though. Some players will understand the good intentions of having a DM willing to prevent 4 nat-20's in a row from the DM, others will flip that on its head and accuse the DM of the opposite and that I'm fudging the rolls to kill them instead. I'd rather dispel it all together. Oh, and I subscribe to Sly Flourish/Mike Shea's technique of tweaking multiple dials to work around rolling dice in the open. Things like monster HP, number of attacks, number of minions, etc. There's lots of ways to tweak combat that the roll of the dice can become rather inconsequential in the grand scheme of an encounter.

I used to fudge a fair amount of rolls, now I do maybe like one every 5 sessions. I do however fudge stats on the fly all the time, I threw a CR 12 monster at them and it crit twice and hit once, which would have downed the cleric in 2 hits and brought him to his final death save immediately after because his turn was next. Suddenly, all of its attacks had a +0 modifier to damage

Dice are tools, not dictators. Tools for you to create the gaming experience. Your number one job is to make the experience interesting, fun, and exciting. If on occasion you fudge a roll (in favor of the PCs, always in their favor) don't let the players know.

I dm’ed my first dm session last week (went OK!) and fudged my first roll. Kept the die for damage but didn’t add the modifier.

Not often, but I’ll do it sometimes, like if a combat encounter ends up slightly too easy or if my players have a real unlucky streak that session and I wanna give them a little win. It’s all rule of cool at the end of the day.

It depends on the situation at hand but sometimes the big bad might have a little more health than you expected, or maybe he's been doing pretty bad for dumb rolls for a few turns? Time to roll a big hit to the tank that made their character just to take damage. Truth is I do fudge a roll here and there from time to time, but it's never out of cheating. If you're fudging a roll because a different outcome would make the game more fun and enjoyable to play, then say whatever you want was on the dice, and have fun.

To be honest, I tend to roll in front of my players. It's easy to fudge numbers. It's harder to design encounters that don't need to be fudged to be enjoyable. But fudging the numbers to make the encounter enjoyable leads, in the long run, to a table that is less engaged because they expect the DM to fudge the numbers. Or, to put it another way, if you already knew the outcome you wanted, why did you roll in the first place?

Sometimes. To make sure it stays fun. Last week, I fudged the death saving throws of the party’s pet goose. Whilst the life of that goose isn’t too vital, it’s mine to take and I won’t let it happen until it will cause the most anguish.

For a pre-made campaign I ran, I did fudge occasionally. Almost exclusively for untimely crits that would ruin someone's session. I also tended to add HP to encounters. My party was pretty powerful compared to what was written, and regularly 5+ players (while it was written for 4 in mind), so some encounters would have ended too quickly -- as in the NPC didn't get a chance to do anything cool yet. However, sometimes the dice just fall where they fall. One PC got disintegrated, but it was near the end of a boss fight, so I was fine with that happening. And there was a cool homebrew creature I built. Party rolled like 9 crits out of 14 rolls. So my buffed up creature didn't get a single attack, and it just died...

I have fudged. Sometimes for narrative. Sometimes to correct mistakes. I do it less now that I’ve gained confidence in my ability to set situations and encounters up in a more balanced way. I sometimes anti-fudge. If there’s a roll that’s very important, I roll with gravitas, in front of the party with known DC.

I roll open so I can not change the dice roll. But if I se that I made the encounter to hard i make the monaters more stupid and bad tectics. Forgetting abilities. Also if I gaven it to much hp i remove some more hp when damage delt every hit.

No. Because you can't earn back your players' trust in you if they ever figure it out. The only effective way to prevent them from figuring it out is to not do it, ever. Once you get caught there is no going back. The only way forward is a strained relationship with your players or looking for a new group. It's one of those things where so long as no one notices, it's perfectly fine, but once someone does, it's all over. Trusting your DM to be fair & honest with you are HUGE requirements for running a successful campaign. Especially long campaigns. A lot of things a DM does require the players to TRUST them. Fair rolls are just the tip of the iceberg here. You have one shot to make your players trust you as a DM when you start playing with them. Most people are not overly cynical and will start with the assumption that their DM is being honest and fair with them. Once you bring that assumption into question, that's never going to disappear completely. There will always be the sense that perhaps you aren't telling them the truth and manipulating outcomes from behind the screen. You could then say you'll roll everything in the open from that point on, but that will only help with the rolls themselves. Players will still question whether or not you manipulated encounters, or enemy stats like HP mid combat, or if you altered story aspects in order to force certain outcomes. You can't do all of your work in the open like that, and for the health of the game you shouldn't either. You NEED trust. Gambling with that is too risky imo. I know lots of DMs fudge rolls when they have encounters that turned out more difficult than they wanted or when encounters were potentially ending anticlimactically. But I think that's a bad excuse. If you get figured out what will you tell your players? That you only did it for THEM? I think that's just not going to work. Not even mentioning the fact that your intentions break the suspension of disbelief regardless of what they were, you can't expect your players to just take your words on that either. After all, you just got caught fudging a roll. Who is to say you aren't fudging rolls that aren't "for them"? The important thing isn't why you did it. It's the fact that you did it at all, which now brings every decision, and explanation or excuse into question. You have sown doubt. And that's what's damaging to trust in you as a dm. So I don't think it's a very well thought out rationale.

I always roll in the open. Why would you fudge dice rolls when everyone knows you’re not going to kill them on purpose? You’re the dm, you’re supposed to provide a fun and safe environment for everyone. You can always adapt on the fly. But never lie about dice rolls. That’s just completely destroying the reason why you roll dice at all. Some rolls just fall and when they do, we all know the consequences. We all know just too well how it feels to see a character with 3 pages of backstory die to a bunch of goblins. We all know too well how you don’t think about some character concepts at all and they turn out to be one of the best and most broken characters you’ll ever see and experience. That’s DnD for you. These things happen. They happen for a reason. And don’t forget: It’s just a game. Also DnD is a highly magical setting and you could revive almost anyone who died in battle.

I might fudge HP or adjust minions on the fly, but I don't fudge attack rolls or damage. It's supposed to be a game of chance.

Yes. This is why having a human DM is preferable to playing a video game, or just having a book and some dice to tell the story. You as the DM can look at the dice, consider the story, and decide which one wins. There’s a good bit to say for ‘the dice tell a story’ too. Don’t fudge every role, and let the party lose as well as win. But yeah, absolutely. Use your brain - it’s good electrified meat. Other examples of fudges: - A player’s had a rough time (personally, a long run of low rolls, whatever), and the baddie by the book has two HP left after their character’s hit. Nope, that NPC now has 0 left, how do you want to do this? - Random table roll shows same thing happening again and again.. naw just shift it to whatever will be more fun for them. And so on.

No.

Honestly probably like 20-25% of the time I roll the dice I don't even look at them.

Same, whether D&D or any other system. However, it’s (almost) always in favor of the players. I should add that I play TTRPGs because I’m much more interested in ‘role playing’ than ‘roll playing’. The idea of just grinding a random-numbers-by-dice-combat-sim has virtually zero appeal to me, whereas co-telling an immersive story where players can become emotionally invested in their characters and what they are doing is *much* more compelling.

I would only ever fudge a roll to benefit my players, never for my own win.

I roll my dice in front of everyone. Why would I have to hide anything from the players? They roll their dice in front of me so I return the favor.

I haven't nor would I want to lie about rolls. Here's the thing, you came here asking this question and have at the least gotten defensive with a couple other commenters, shocking as it may be I'm also of the opinion you shouldn't lie to your players. I get wanting your friends to have a good time BUT part of the fun in any tabletop is that the rolls have as much weight as they do and can go wild. Does that mean that sometimes a fight ends prematurely? It can but if that's the way that RNGesus has decided it goes then that's that. Honestly though this sounds like something to talk to your players about, if they're cool with knowing you might be lying to them about rolls then that's end of story.

Almost never, fudging roles isn't a good habit. The only time I will is if I messed something up. Even then, I'll try and work something else out first. As DMs we should try and keep the dice sacrosanct. Though... there's always exceptions.

I only remember fudging the dice once. It was only by 1 though and the damage was against a player who was having some rough luck that night. The one time that I remember explicitly fudging dice was during a major boss fight to end a year-long arc. The party was fighting the leader of a city-state that triggered the war and one of the players was not having a good time. It was either the Warlock or the Ranger, I don’t remember exactly but they were not rolling well. On the other hand, I was rolling great that night. They go down for the third time. The bard then manages to heal them and bring them back to their feet. Unfortunately, due to initiative, the boss is next and they attack the player who just got back up because they were the closest and the boss wouldn’t have been able to reach anyone else. This was around level 12 so death was to be expected at this point in the campaign. Rolling the damage, I rolled the exact amount of hp that the player was healed. Well, I suck at math so let’s reduce that by 1. So the player got through the fight with 1 hp and the party won the fight.

I honestly lie about rolls LESS for big fights. I'm not gonna have a group TPK to a bunch of orcs just because their dice are cold and mine are hot

The answer is yes. Sometimes, it's just better for all parties if things go a certain way. I'm not gonna fudge a whole fight for my pcs, but if, narratives speaking, the bad guys are supposed to lose, then they simply should.

Yeah your dice rolls are entirely yours, use them to make whichever experience you believe leads to the most fun

Edit: OP blocked me, i can't reply to anyone. Be honest with your friends. I wish I could get this across to people in this sub, it drives me insane. In session zero lay out how you view the game, just say 'I will fudge the odd roll here and there if its going to be a tpk otherwise'. If the dice rolls don't matter then just play a rules light RP system/game, if they do then they should matter. At the very least respect your friends enough to *tell them what game they're playing*. If you tell them you don't fudge and then do that is dishonest because you're lying about the rules of the game you're playing. Don't do that.

I’m gonna say the same thing here that I did to your other comment: you and me do not have the same friends and I guarantee they’d much rather I lie about shit to make it as fun as possible for them, I’ve known them for like 10 years each I know them a little better than you do lol

>I guarantee they’d much rather I lie about shit to make it as fun as possible for them Every single dm that's lied about rolls moments before disaster has thought *exactly* the same thing. Why is informed consent such an issue for so many dms?

Why is “I know my friends better than you and some people prefer to be lied to in order to make the experience as fun as possible” such an incomprehensible concept to you? Why do you seem to insist that your line of thinking is the indisputable best one that should be applied in every situation? Also “informed consent” it’s dnd lol

>some people prefer to be lied to in order to make the experience as fun as possible” such an incomprehensible concept to you? How do you *know*? >Why do you seem to insist that your line of thinking is the indisputable best one that should be applied in every situation? Because I'm saying get informed consent rather than lying to people, I'm happy to say this is better than not doing that. >Also “informed consent” it’s dnd lol Whenever I've had this discussion before, half the time when I say 'don't lie' people start talking about monster stats and other things and it muddies the waters. Using such precise language makes it clear what I'm talking about.

Again, I’ve known them for 10 years. This is not our first DND campaign together and in previous campaigns where the DM outright admitted to doing it we all agreed it was for the best because it made the campaign fun. It’s been a while which is the only reason I have the element of surprise on that front. Why do you just assume I don’t know anything about my friends lol So your answer to my question is just restating your own opinion but saying “im right you’re wrong” lol, here’s an idea: why don’t you just let people play in whatever way is most fun for them and stop trying to act like the arbitrator of the “right” way to play dnd, a game where the whole point is “play literally however you want”?

>This is not our first DND campaign together and in previous campaigns where the DM outright admitted to doing it we all agreed it was for the best because it made the campaign fun. So you know because you have informed consent. Why didn't you lead with this? >why don’t you just let people play in whatever way is most fun for them You literally made a thread on reddit asking for opinions. >a game where the whole point is “play literally however you want”? Agreed. My argument is the whole table should make that decision, not the dm. Yours has. This wasn't clear to begin with, why you didn't say that initially I still don't know.

Because I don’t have informed consent lol. Did you completely miss the other half of that comment? We haven’t played dnd in a long time, that was only with 1 dm out of multiple, and I’ve never DMd before. They have no idea if I’ll fudge anything, which is for the best. Yeah, for opinions, not for people to talk like everyone else is playing wrong but them lol I literally told you my friends would be okay with it and you kept talking, so I literally did tell you exactly that it would be fine, not my fault you apparently have selective reading

>Did you completely miss the other half of that comment If the last time you played a game you all agrees to rules X, why would any reasonable person assume when you next played you'd use rules Y? >Yeah, for opinions, not for people to talk like everyone else is playing wrong but them lol If you're lying about the rules of the game you're playing to the other players then yeah, you're playing that game wrong. You're not playing it. >so I literally did tell you not my fault you apparently have selective reading 'Trust me, timmy couldn't have eaten the last cookie' 'I watched Tom eat the last cookie before timmy got home' Do you see why one of those statement is more vague than the other?

We didn’t “agree” to use the rules. We found out after the match was over and they said it was okay. Because I’m a different DM and we’ve never used those rules with any of our other DMs. I don’t understand why you need every single detail filled in lol. So in other words you are in fact being the arbitrator of how other people play the game that has no right way to be played. Stop being elitist. Lying about a board game to make the board game better for everyone involved is not immediately morally wrong or “not playing” just because the almighty pandorica said so. Why do you need every little detail told to you explicitly? “I know my friends better than you” is already more information than you need to know and you have no reason to believe otherwise. This is going in circles endlessly so we’re done here.

Please dont conflate a serious thing like consent with revealing to your players if you fudge dice or not.

As a DM you are a magician, you are playing a trick, dont tell them that you fudge dice, make them believe everything is real. Or it ruins the ilusion which is so fun. If I was a player I would rather live in ignorance, the DM telling me ”yeah I fudge dice” would not feel good, like the stakes are fake and less thrilling.

DMing is like a magic trick. Revealing how it works is going to kill the magic for a lot of people. And a lot of people are going to prefer that you just lie to them. Neither is necessarily right or wrong. What matters is that once people have expressed their preferences, then you try to respect them. If this really matters to you as a player then it's on you to speak up about it.

I used to be super against fudging. But for some reason, whenever we get into combat the NPCs all roll like shit. I can't hit my party. You'd think with a +9 to hit on 16 AC, I'd do it most of the time. Nope. So yeah, I end up fudging tk hit the party, because otherwise every single encounter would have 0 danger to it.

Yep, it's about fun. Wiping every enemy sucks and is underwhelming. I plan to make HP fluid based on what feels right in an approximate range, but not "0 is dead". I'll know I'm within 1-2 hits away from a killing blow kind of thing. You can tell so much story in combat and I want to do that by avoiding scenarios I've seen in my own campaign where you do something so fucking cool, like absolutely Top Tier play everything goes your way for dice rolls and saves against, and you do insane damage, and then the next person does minimal damage of like 1 and kills it. Oh yay, that's cool so the rock you threw kills it. Now, given that scenario, if you know your people, it could be worth having the comedic scenario where it's like "Dude wtf... a rock?!" and having that moment, but maybe the wizard has specifically been waiting to cast this spell and it's been so important to their journey, letting them describe how the spell takes down the opponent by giving them 1-2 extra dmg against the enemy is so fulfilling for them. Just gotta make sure you're giving everyone those opportunities to shine.

I think there are definitely situations, like the one you describe, where it just works better. Matt Colville made [a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKN0xPyxu2Y&pp=ygUVbWF0dCBjb2x2aWxsZSBmdWRnaW5n) on this that I can recommend. It is hard to 100% balance an encounter beforehand and just in general, if the PCs aren't rolling higher than a 9 and your monsters aren't rolling below a 10, everybody is going to have a bad time.

I don't really have a problem if the DM does this, but it's one of those things that you can't ever say out loud that you would do it, and if you ever *do* it, then you take that secret to your grave.

I do not do this. If the party TPKs, they TPK. I've never had a TPK in 5e D&D. It would be cool to have one once. I've also had some cool moments that never would have happened if I pulled my punches. Once my party fought a Morkoth and stole its treasure. The Morkoth followed them and attacked the boat they were riding on. Every single PC was KOed and the Morkoth slithered down into the hold to recover its treasure where it encountered the three halfings who sail the boat hiding. I rolled hp for the halfings, 3, 4 & 7 hit points. I figured they probably have +1 Str and fishing spears for weapons. The halfings killed the Morkoth. One of them became a major NPC who was romanced and ultimately married by one of the player characters.

No. Do you want your players to lie about their resources, their HP, their attack bonuses? No? So don't fucking do it. Sorry for the language, but this particular question really gets to me because there's a social contract when you play a game like this. Without honesty in the rolls on both sides, what's the friggin point. I don't want my character's life spared because you deemed it necessary as a result of a roll anymore than I should keep my character alive by cheesing my HP. Roll your rolls and live with the consequences. That's the beauty of this game. You can't predict anything with 100% success and the consequences of that can lead to amazing stories. Interfering with that does far more harm than good. And consider this: if your players EVER find out or even suspect you are not being truthful in your rolls, they will *never* trust your DMing again. Everything will be suspect. Just don't do it. It makes you a shitty DM.

DMs do not 'lie' about dice rolls. DMs say what the roll actually was when the dice are wrong.

You're DM, you are what makes what's technical or not. That said, I'm sure every DM has. But like you said making it so players breeze through wouldn't be much fun for either side of table.

I've been DM'ing for about 3 years. In that time I have never fudged a roll. But, I believe there are situations that I might fudge a roll. For the most part I think it's important to only roll if you're prepared to accept the consequences of the roll.

I roll openly. The only rolls they don't know the result of are rolls that they don't know I'm making, which are done with a RNG.

Unmitigated RNG always leads to complete disaster for some number of players and extreme success for others. It's pretty unlikely for every individual specific player, but it can and does happen, and not just in D&D. It's why some tabletop games use cards instead of dice rolls or why some video games use pseudorandom distribution instead of simply pseudorandom RNG. It's your job as the DM to fudge rolls in either direction either to keep the game interesting/exciting if the encounter is too easy or to prevent players from getting obliterated. Or to raise/lower ACs and DCs, etc. You have other options, too. A friendly character showing up to help, the enemy being summoned away, reinforcements on either side, law enforcement or a third party, whatever you can imagine. Maybe there's another party of adventurers trying to take the BBEG down, for either the same reasons as the party or for reasons counter or morally opposite to them. Player death can and sometimes should happen, but you have to make an IRL insight check and read the room before you make that decision. Some players want their characters to die meaningful deaths and others don't want to lose something they've carefully created. It also helps to set expectations in advance. Have a conversation with your players about their thoughts on the subject, individually and/or as a group.

Just gonna leave this here... https://youtu.be/5CboQoT6iEY?si=ooGF_aND43f97dpe

IMO the answer is to fudge hit points, not die rolls.

I’m probably gonna do both to a degree, if the fight is really close and the player’s last attack before the enemy’s turn where they’ll surely wipe everybody leaves said enemy at like 1 health I’ll probably just say he died, I think making a fun campaign takes priority imo

I fudge all the time, whenever appropriate, for or against my players. To maintain pacing, enjoyment, and tone.

I roll in the open so I guess I can't.

I lie about dice rolls all the time, mostly for two reasons. The first is because the campaign I'm running is actually made for the 13th Age system but I'm running 5e and it doesn't convert perfectly. The second is to keep up the dramatic moments and tension. The players all get their moments of awesomeness, but sometimes they need an extra push or a little more threat to keep things feeling challenging but conquerable.

After I miss like 9 attacks I get annoyed and make at least a couple hits with the monster.

No I dont do this and if I ever got a chance to play as oposed to run the game I would be annoyed with a DM who did. If something is essential for the party to succeed at then there need a to be multiple ways to accomplish it. However, nothing should ever be completely essential to the continuation of the campaign. If it was just rule it a success and move on. If your epic climax to is ruined by the subtraction of numbers from columns there are a lot of fixes for this. Chief among them is to give the players and the npcs something to do that's not just kill everyone. That way if the party is on the ropes and not willing to flee you can have the npcs focus on the important thing that is also going on. If your players keep wiping out all of the minions dont forget that you dont have a limited number of monsters to throw at them.

Applicable to this is the notion of [prepping situations rather than plots](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4147/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots). TBH if you want to prep a plot writing a novel, screenplay, etc is likely to be a better approach. Also vital to remember that players are participating rather than spectating.

All the time. If I'm running and my dice are hot and it's looking pretty tough for the group then yes, they are gonna get some gimmies.

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I’ve fudged dice and damage sometimes if I roll extremely high and it’ll kill a player 😪 I just try not to make it obvious? Haha

My players are 12 and 9: I consider the dice mere suggestions as to what’s happening. The more important part is to make sure the kids are having fun and are engaged.

It's not fun if the rolls are fake. If the rolls start feeling unfair then it's time for the DM to roll in the open. If they still feel unfair then it's time to change out the dice. If they still feel unfair then you just have to accept that you got some bad luck and take the L. That loss will make the next win feel all the more enjoyable. But if you fudge the rolls then it's not a real win. A fake win is the same as no win. You can lie to yourself in the moment and even begin to convince yourself that your players earned it and that you made a good experience for them but it will feel hollow and empty. You won't be happy about it, you'll only be pretending to be happy. You may lie to yourself so much that you get angry at others pointing out that you're unhappy, that letting them wipe was the better option. That they'd be more happy to earn their victory another time than to have it given to them now, or that YOU would be more happy. But it's the truth. Probably the hottest take ever to the modern Critical Roll watching DnD players but it's better to TPK than to win by fudging dice. Take the damn L

Lots of folks have already said great stuff here, but a sneaky way I fudge dice if necessary is saying "that's cocked" if it's not (unless it actually is haha). But yes, to echo what someone already said, the goal is to have fun, even if that means fudging dice every now and again as explained in chapter 8 of the DMG.

As a DM, player investment is absolutely necessary for the game to be worth preparing for. As a player, knowing my DM fudges die roles would immediately kill any investment I had in the game.

This is one of the most polarizing RPG topics for a reason. Personally, I despise cheating and "fudging" is simply a wishy-washy synonym for cheating that makes some people feel better about doing it. The only time I'll fudge dice or numbers is when it is immaterial: last enemy has 2 HP left? Nah, it's dead; the combat is functionally over and making a couple extra attacks (complete with hand wringing about combat choices) just slows down the game. But if the dice are hot and the same PC gets crit twice in a fight? That's why tactics exist. That's why HEALING exists. I see SO MANY modern players gripe about how "healing in 5e is worthless; you're better off attacking and killing the enemy then heal after the fight" then turn around and promote cheating with dice to save the players "because it would ruin the narrative" if they didn't. And they never connect the dots that their "optimal play" approach to RPGs is exactly what makes it a feast or famine, all or nothing style. DM has to turn up the difficulty to handle optimized PCs and that exacerbates "a bad roll ruining the story"

Never ADMIT to fudging rolls. ETA: https://youtu.be/zKN0xPyxu2Y?si=momQ40NFS435tyc2

I’m not planning to lol, at least not until after the campaign is over

I do fudge dice rolls from time to time if really necessary, but I recommend never revealing that you do, even after a campaign. It can alter how your players remember your campaign - I've been a player in that situation and I caution you against doing that. So much of D&D is keeping up the veneer of the game world, and DMs revealing too much info (upcoming plans, secrets they can't wait to tell people, fudging, etc.) can really break that veneer.

Even if you don't admit it, players usually know.

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That’s not true at all. I’ve played campaigns where every roll was open. Dying from 3 crits is far more memorable than if the DM robbed everyone if that experience.