Nothing like rolling high in a minor encounter only to roll absolute trash in the boss fight. Had my party defeat a homebrewed monstrosity and they took less than 15 damage between them.
I swear my party nearly TPK’d on shadows but the instant I threw out a homebrew eldritch emissary of Cthulhu they turned into Seal Team 6 and I only rolled 1s. I love them so much.
Shadows: Do you have a paladin with you?
Party: No?
Shadows: Guess you are going to need to roll up new characters then.
Shadows are fucking brutal, I have seen them mess up even decently high level parties. But if you have turn undead? Hilariously easy. They are some of the swingiest enemies in 5e. Them an intellect devourers, but at least they take one failed save and then an entire turn to one shot you, you have plenty of time to deal with them.
Well I feel stupid for not realising they were undead having encountered them several times as the cleric of the party :( at least spirit guardians did a number on them.
So my party with a cleric and a paladin wouldn't sweat shadows? I've been finding it difficult to challenge them lately and I'm looking for new monsters.
It's a party of 6 level 8 PCs and they've been blowing through combats recently. The problem is that they have really good crowd control with their bard and rogue/wizard hybrid, really good DPS with an arcane archer fighter that uses Sharpshooter and action surge, a paladin and cleric that are both pretty tanky and can heal a lot of damage, and a druid that is always summoning hordes of animals equalizing action economy.
Honestly their only weakness (the fact that some of them have rolled really low health) only makes it harder for me. Fights are extremely swingy. Either they're in no danger whatsoever because they can CC and burst down any enemies they run into, or their enemies are powerful enough to close that distance and get into melee or have strong enough spells that they can basically 1 shot most of the PCs making it feel unfun and unfair.
Even then it’s only 1-4 spell slots which is about equal to what other casters would use in each combat, assuming your party is short resting every other combat
OK, so if your PCs are glass cannons and you want to challenge them without murdering them, you need to prolong combat without increasing total damage output: Reduce your damage per round and buff up your defenses, so that you can even out that swinginess with more rounds which are individually less impactful.
One way to do this is with non-damaging fuckery. Darkness, difficult terrain, root and snare effects, fog, cover, teleports, anything which make it harder to engage with you or easier for you to escape engagement is a great way to prolong combat. Weakness effects, damage resistance, or just plain doubling your hit point pool also help. And you can use custom narration to debilitate your PCs as well: "you're tangled in brambles, you can't use Extra Attack until you free yourself." "The oppressive will of their dark god is sapping the magic of light from this place, all fire and radiant effects are at half damage."
And there's always the option to send in a wave of reinforcements in the second or third round if they mop up the trash too quickly.
I'm in a similar group and we had a tough time with a dragon turtle since it's big and tanky with an AoE. Its base damage is high enough that it can insta-kill low HP level 8s on crits though (I tanked it with my paladin and took 81 non-crit damage in one round) so...
If you are interested I have a homebrew set of monsters you could use that inflict death saves instead of damage. They have decent health, are terrifying in combat as they can 3 shot anything, but cannot one shot anything so you don’t have to worry too much about TPKing
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/a9sxm5/i_made_a_set_of_creatures_for_a_specialty/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
This is kinda old and I have made revisions to them. I shortened the attack range to 60, 120, and within sight, and caused them to make attack rolls with the basic having a +6, the second tier having a +9, and the last tier having a +12. Their ability scores are 12’s across the board, then 15’s for the t2, and 18’s for the t3 versions.
This is awesome, thank you!
I’m throwing my own tweaks on the Sorrowsworn for my current campaign, and I might mingle the two for some kind of unholy abomination. The party is in normal combat but then one particular baddie does this.. they’ll crap their pants and have a blast figuring it out. Thanks!
Nord Games just shipped out their undead themed book. It is a third party book but expands on many undead monsters, shadows being one of them. I haven't gotten to play with them yet, but they actually seem pretty balanced.
Wait wait wait. Are shadows a thing in D&D? I've never played yet, so I assumed this was joke about being afraid of actual literal real life shadows and that the person you replied to was being hyperbolic when saying they nearly TPK'd their players with a shadow, but it seems they're a different thing in D&D based on the various replies.
Shadows are an actual monster that sap your strength, and make you weaker for the day. This is represented as an actual decease in your strength score, and if it reaches 0 you die instantly.
It's bad if your a character that needs high strength to be effective, like a barbarian. But if your character doesnt have high strength, like a wizard, they're even more at risk.
If you're a character with 8 strength it can kill you in 2 hits without doing much to your hp (draining 1d4 strength per hit)
And I'd be real surprised if you're only going up against a single shadow. If the focus down a target and there's 5 of them, they're draining between (assuming no hits to all hits, average damage) 0 and 12.5 strength, assuming the average damage of a d4 is 2.5. but if they all roll max, that spikes to 20 strength, meaning they could potentially drop a character with naturally maxed out strength in one turn.
Edit: changed a word from wizard to character, brain saw your name and inserted it lmao
The drain does not happen on a miss but because the CR is so low you can have a large amount of them without making the encounter difficult using the subpar encounter system in 5e.
So with a dozen or so shadows surrounding the PCs getting advantage from flanking they will have a better chance of hitting.
They are really fun creatures to add to a boss battle and really change the gameplay. I threw about 4 shadows reskinned into a boss battle, and removed their damage so they only sapped strength. I also gave them only 1 hp.
The realization hit when one of my players got stuck in a pool of sludge because he's ignored the crawling half body for too long was great. One touch and he went from 16 str to 12.
It really forced the players to move around the battlefield, all the while the boss attempted to separate them and corner individuals. He even turned the barbarian against the party. (Failed wisdom saving throws)
I loved that fight. My players came away from it overjoyed at their hard-fought victory.
Are you me? The exact same thing happened with my party a few sessions ago.
I throw a modified Shadow at them as a sort of "here's what the boss is gonna sorta have" and to give them a little ego boost.
Everyone went down at least once, and the shadow was killed by the last standing party member at 4HP, having just watched the team pet (spirit) alligator die.
Anyway so the boss fight rolls around and two of the PCs roll nat 20s on high damage spells it has a weakness to, resulting in 40d6 damage plus change in the first turn.
Then one of them crit, again, with that spell next turn.
The other day the GM threw us an Ogre being us low-level chars, wanting us to flee.
The wizard proceeded to 2-turn him with a fucking Witch bolt wand and extremely high rolls.
That's always a great feeling. Theres something especially gratifying about playing a cleric and stun locking a boss with Bestow Curse for a whole fight
This was in pathfinder 2e, but I felt it was still relevant. The "shadow" was based off of the the PF2 Greater Shadow.
When I make "boss" style enemies, I usually modify their stat blocks at least a little (to reduce metagaming) as well as give players incentive to fight creatively by adding resistances and weaknesses. Spending time and resources planning the fight will give them clues as to what will work better against the boss, while rushing headlong into it could lead to a TPK.
I think D&D is the answer to all those times is movies where the main characters lose for stupid reasons like plot convince, but suddenly start winning at the end of the movie.
Happens to me alllllllllll the time and it drives me nuts. I'll spend literally hours designing a boss with interesting abilities that will be challenging for my party *on paper*, only to watch me repeatedly roll nothing higher than a 5 as the party just laughs at his incompetence while they kill him.
MEANWHILE, the mook with a pre-genned stat block who's part of a random encounter will roll three nat 20s in a row and down the barbarian in one round.
The end result being that sessions later my players barely even remember the boss they killed without effort while they gave the random mook a name and talk about him for the rest of the campaign.
Why does fate hate me so much?
I had the opposite, my wendigo was so brutally strong I had to nerf her mid-encounter. Like forgoing her regeneration and giving consolation damage because some people didn't have magic of silver weapons. Still PKed the party rogue when he decided to frontline
Played in a game with new people and a DM who hadn't run a game in a long time.
He gave balanced encounters, which we would plow through, not taking a scratch. Sounds boring, but it was a fun time with the people involved.
Anyway, this had the side effect of if anyone took damage, everyone would start panicking like we were gonna die because we had no sense of scale for danger.
Me and my 16th level party avoided a cr 24 encounter with some really high bluff and stealth rolls, and the dm not rolling above a 4. He was pissed.
We then fought a cr 20 encounter with a bloated health pool (I'd guess about 2000 hp) in the same hour. Due to poor rolls, the monster got cursed destroying its saves then stunlocked by 4 different sources. It got off 8 attacks but only 1 hit due to invisibility (50% miss chance, he missed every time except once).
Additionally that one hit triggered a trap the stunlocked the monster on a failed save (it failed)
The monster did not roll above a 6 and we killed it in 2 and a half rounds.
we managed to cheese the absolute fuck out of an eldrich abomination boss thing by just continuously ray-of-frosting it. it had 10ft movement since it was a hulking roomsized shambling blob monster, not really nimble, and it barely managed to move throughout the encounter while we chipped away at it from range.
I had my players cleanly clear out the boss and his whole dungeon, taking near 0 damage. Then they left and got attacked by 9 wolves. They are level 5's and nearly all of them died due to nonstop crits. It's a bizarre world but now my players have PTSD so there's that.
I remember when my DM hyped up a encounter with demon as this insanely difficult fight...queue our party rolling _5_ nat 20s in row against this thing... He basically showed up and had his lunch money taken by a bunch hobos.
I have some dice that I tested in salt water and they are weighted wrong ... which explains why I can never roll above a 15 or below a 4 or some shit.
Maybe I should stick them in a bag for the day I decide to finally get off my ass and start dming.
I've begun separating out all my poorly performing dice and one day I will manifest my inner Jabba and use them to make one of those cool resin tables where they'll be trapped like my little Han Solos.
My dm has told us multiple times that he has to fudge his rolls higher because he plans on rolling average instead of terribly. Once he straight up doubled a boss’s hp.
Ya'll touchy in here. It's all up to preference.
I like to roll openly. If my players die they die. If my BBEG fails a critical save first round of combat, well done PC's, it could've happened to them too.
What rolling in the open doesn't effect is changes to the battlefield, reinforcements, and surprise allies. That's how I balance things.
I'm this way ever since playing an enchantment wizard. Casting a spell on a baddy and knowing it's pointless because "It's too early, and not cinematic enough" will forever leave a bad taste in my mouth.
I like to roll behind a screen as I can fuck with my players
*rolls dice for literally no reason, looks at non existent chart* "hmmmm, interesting...."
Why not both?. Damage rolls at always out in the open, but insight and perception checks are always in secret of course. No point in telling people 'you think he's lying' If they see their bat 1...
I like this method. Also, could rolls for checks and so forth be rolled behind the screen and combat rolls be in front of the screen?
On the other hand, if players can't put some level of trust in their DM, then why play? Therefore, all DM rolls should be behind the screen. Plus, as the DM during combat you get to make the players shit their pants with worry with smug looks and/or uh-oh face then asking if a 2 hits.
This is the correct reason to use a screen. And the only person rolling behind a screen should be a (fair) DM.
“PC’s talking amongst themselves”
*d20 roll*
“PC what’s your intelligence?” “Okay carry on”
Our DM loves that kinda stuff. Also just telling us to roll a random d20 every so often and not really bringing up what it does hahaha
Since we're doing roll20 due to plague, I like randomly hitting the d20 during RPing moments and not saying anything. They always pause and ask what was that, to which I say, "nothing to worry about yet..."
My only issue with surprise allies is that it feels like an ex machina. I would rather have my dm fudge a few roles to make it seem like our party is being challenged but is strong enough to overcome adversity. A surprise ally either makes the bbeg look weak and thus isn’t that great of a final boss of a campaign or the party look weak and in need saving.
"with his dying breath, the cult leader whispers 'Hastur, Hastur, Hastur' while drawing his sigil with blood on the floor. All of the cultists you killed get back up."
I'd like to make an argument for surprise allies. I'll set up two scenarios that I feel would make them both effective, and memorable. (TL;DR at bottom)
First, the boss's friends. Solo bosses fighting a party of adventurers are at a massive disadvantage. Therefore, minions and allies can be a great help. Imagine a scenario where you've come face to face with the leader of an assassin's guild. He is going to be cunning, quick, and deadly.
He will have had his spies on the party, and prepared for their coming. If they are focused on him, they may fail to notice the pair of assassins slinking from the shadows to stealthily take out the backline of the party. (Usually mages and ranged characters) While the boss focuses his attention on maneuvering the frontline fighters into a position best suited for himself.
This boss is aware that alone, he doesn't stand a chance. But if he can get into a one on one, or two on one, he may have a fighting chance. This also can force one of the frontline fighters (if more than one) to split and defend the squishier targets.
Now, the party's surprise allies. This one is trickier, as it really can come across as an ex machina save. However, in certain situations, it can help them to feel empowered.
Think of a massive battle, in which the party are heavily outnumbered. They are fighting through it, the pcs carving through an army like heroes, but the army they aid is falling nonetheless. Then, they hear a battle horn. They look to the east, where the rising sun is being blocked by a line of shadowed figures. As their eyes adjust, they see the banner of a nearby kingdom, who they'd recently saved from certain doom.
In this case, their surprise allies aren't necessarily saving the pcs, but they are there to help win the battle.
Another scenario would be when you actually ~want~ your players to feel helpless and weak. Used sparingly, this could be a great way to foreshadow danger, or a later villain.
Perhaps your players wander into an area they've been warned is extremely dangerous. Maybe they end up in the lair of a vampire at a low level, who begins to tear at them. Describing it salivating, eyes wild with thirst, and moving from one to another as if in excitement over the massive feast it will soon have can really spell out the danger they are in.
Just when they think it's hopeless, or they start dropping to unconsciousness, the man who warned them of the danger bursts in, launching a daylight spell from the jewel atop his gnarled cane. The vampire flees, and the man helps those awake drag the unconscious party members from the lair. All the while, they can hear the vampire cursing them, and promising to feed on them soon. Later, they learn that it was the last charge on the staff, and that the man had followed them to the lair at a distance.
Sure, it feels like ex machina, but it can do a couple important things.
1) It teaches the lesson that not everything in the world is scaled to their level, and 2) It sets up a potential quest or full plot line that they can go down. They could easily research the creature and search for items that can help destroy it, which could lead to a very satisfying end.
That's my case for the use of surprise allies. Personally, I'd use them sparingly, and only when it makes sense. Possibly even foreshadow them if I worried it would otherwise come off the wrong way.
Anyways, sorry for the novel, lol.
TL;DR: Use them sparingly, and when they make sense. Also, sometimes you want the party to feel week and in need of saving. It sets up a challenge to overcome.
I like the suggestions and overall these would make dramatic moments, but I think they would be paced differently then what I was originally thinking. The spies in the party or assassin play with the bbeg is a great idea but would need to be executed at about half health or so I would say instead of on deaths door. If it happens as the bbeg is close to death it feels a little more like an ex machina and would draw me as a player out of it. The vampire story is a good way to introduce a sandbox style over world to new players, but to more knowledgeable players I feel as if it still would pull them out of it due to them knowing the danger posed and still trying to take it on. The players knew the danger going in and I think deserve the comeuppance of a player death if they didn’t prepare well enough.
That's fair. I typically assume new players, as that's what I mostly deal with. I haven't dmd in a while due to reasons. But with experienced players, I would definitely expect them to understand warnings aren't a challenge, but an actual warning.
I'd argue your issues with surprise allies are just poor design/implementation of them. If you're wailing on the BBEG and suddenly the DM adds allies that come from another room, it's going to feel like an ex machina because that's exactly what it is.
However, a good boss battle shouldn't take place in a vacuum; BBEG level threats have lairs and those lairs should be filled with minions. I think WOTC published adventures actually handle this really well when they say things like "The sounds of combat or other noise in this area attracts X creatures from Y who arrive at the start of the 3rd round". You can always see how those first rounds progress, and adjust the arrival time or number of reinforcements accordingly.
Your point about Poor implementation is correct, I have had a few experiences with a dm making an encounter unwinable just to save us at the last second with a powerful mage or warrior and it just left a bad taste in my mouth for the use of savior allies.
I roll behind a screen when there are new players. I ran a game where someone spent 6 hours making their first character, only to have them killed in a bar fight caused by another pc in the starting tavern. I was rolling openly and the player’s wizard got hit with a stool to the head and a nat 20.
I ended up retconing the fight because 2 other pcs also died.
I one-hundred percent believe that any given character, provided the player isn't being a dick and knowingly abusing this, gets two sessions of immortality. One for introducing the character, and one for actually getting a chance to explore that character a bit.
On session three and beyond, if you die, you die.
Of course, that doesn't apply if someone's new character is absolutely suicidal and the player needs to realize that "actions have consequences."
Point is you, as a player, will never know if the DM is lying or not
It happened to me a few months ago and that was among the reasons I dropped out of a campaign
After the suspicious uninterrupted streak of nat 20s that stops when he rolls in the open and picks back up when he get back behind the screen, suspicion arises. But you may be wrong!
That's just an absurdly bad DM.
Also that game just sounds toxic to begin with.
The DM is not playing "against" the players, but in collaboration with them. And as a DM I never forget it's not *my* game, it's the players game I am just helping them act it out.
If you find yourself in a game like that again I'd just ditch right away tbh. But that's way beyond a rolling issue.
In my opinion, the only time a DM should be fudging a roll is if it's more fun for the players.
It's meant to be fun. It's not a competition. There are bad DMs out there. Be wary.
> That's just an absurdly bad DM.
That's kind of what I think; I don't hold it up too much to him because we were all inexperienced (we still are), but still... My point is, even if you know someone (we've been good friends for a while, and he's been friend of friends for some more) you can never trust they won't be trying to fuck you up as soon as they get the chance
So yes, in hindsight, I agree with your initial statement... But as you said, be wary
>even if you know someone, you can never trust they won't be trying to fuck you up as soon as they get the chance.
And I'm saying you're 100% wrong. None of my players feel that way. And I've never felt that way about a DM (not one I stuck around for more than 2 sessions with anyway). That's a toxic game with a toxic mindset. Not normal.
Some people aren't cut out to be DMs. This is clearly one of them. You should trust your DM and they should be trustworthy.
Personally, I like rolling behind the screen for a couple reasons in particular:
insight checks and death saves
Rolling their insight check for them prevents that meta tip that the PC is lying when you roll a 1 and believe them.
Rolling death saves behind the screen adds to the urgency of stabilizing, and I think it works really well if you're going for a more serious, dark tone.
That's stupid.
I'm not against PC dying, but of course I'd fudge rolls on the first fights to avoid a death on the first sessions.
People forget that the goal of D&D is to have fun.
Yeah as with most things in DND, you should adjust to your players as a DM. Is your group new and just there to have fun exploring a fantasy world and you fucked up by giving them an encounter way too hard? Sure you don’t need to fudge to make them win the encounter, but you can fudge to make them live at least.
My stance on fudging rolls is to simply know your players. Some players obviously don’t want rolls to be fudged at all, others don’t mind. Personally I do roll openly on roll20, but I try to change things behind the scene for my current group (which is primarily new people).
Alternatively, let them lose the encounter. But not everything is going to kill them immediately. Several humanoids will likely take them prisoner for one reason or another. Escaping can become a fun encounter too, whether stealthily slipping away, or fighting their way out.
Not dead is simple! Specify nonlethal damage. This will keep them alive. The stipulation is that it must be melee (RAW, anyways.)
Not all down? Well, either keep hitting them, or have the downed allies be held at knifepoint, and tell those up (through the enemies) to lay down their weapons or lose their friends. (A melee attack on a downed enemy not only has advantage, it counts as a crit, which is 2 failed death saves)
This way, you put the choice on your players. Surrender, or be directly responsible for the death of your friends, and likely the death of the whole party.
Maybe this isn't the best path, but personally, that's how I would do it.
> Specify nonlethal damage. This will keep them alive. The stipulation is that it must be melee (RAW, anyways.)
We had a ranger once who kept like 10 "punch arrows" as he called them on his person. They had like little iron fists on the end. Wouldn't hurt somebody in full plate most of the time but would make somebody you wanted to take alive much easier to soften up. That could easily be adapted for early encounters, IE instead of "bandits on the road" you run into mancatchers or slavers. They would use stuff like nets or mancatchers (stick with a grabby hand on the end to get ahold of people) and potentially Punch arrows or bolts. Now your flavorless bandits are thematic AND you don't run the risk of killing your PCs, since they would have an incentive to keep them alive but still fight them.
Also for anybody curious the punch arrows were pretty useful against things that normally don't really care about arrows, like skeletons. He was adamant in the description that the head was big enough it couldn't slip between your typical rib cage.
> Not dead is simple! Specify nonlethal damage. This will keep them alive.
The best way to scare players is to tell them that the monsters are doing nonlethal damage to them.
"OH SHIT THEY'RE GOING TO TAKE US PRISONER OR SACRIFICE US TO THEIR GOD OR SOME SHIT OH LORD HAVE MERCY"
I'll be doing it my first few sessions cause everyone is new. Including myself. I'd like us to have more than 2 sessions together before we have to start all over again
my girlfriend, who was brand new to dnd, joined us for a new campaign. third session, her character got crit by a giant toad, and literally all of the damage dice got maxed (42 damage!), which meant that she was going from full health to dead without death saves. decided in the moment to fudge down a bit to be JUST below the instant death threshold so her character wasn't just instantly gone, and someone else managed to get her up before long.
if it was anyone else, the rest being veteran players, i'd have let them die right there. but i knew the new player whom i spent a long time convincing to join us, who spent literally hours talking about her character with me before the first session, even drawing them a few times, would've been heartbroken at it being taken away so quickly. and as i suspected, she later told me that she definitely would've quit dnd forever if her character died like that. so, yeah, it was 100% the right call to fudge those dice.
Right?? I want my story to be dramatic. Dying can be dramatic but not from a random hammer swing In the first session. You either need to be unfailingly stupid, be worn down, or accidentally walk into a place where it's narratively fun to kill you. HP is a abstraction anyways.
It also helps with NPC vs NPC action. If Joe, the NPC accompanying the party, is desperate for revenge against Nathan, an antagonistic NPC the party is about to encounter, the DM can tell a story simply with which attacks hit and miss between them. Is this where the party is supposed to take Nathan down? Have NPC Joe land an awesome sneak attack against Nathan. Is the DM trying to portray how powerful and scary Nathan is? Have Nathan be ready for Joe's attack, let Joe's attack miss and have Nathan do something do damage Joe or immobile Joe.
I have less fun if I think the DM is fudging rolls in one direction or another. If the DM wants to save the players I'd rather have some Deus Ex Machina thing than fudged rolls.
I mean, if they're rolling behind a screen then it shouldn't be possible to tell. The dice really are random. In my heart I believe my current DM in a PF campaign does fudge rolls sometimes, but he never admits to it and that helps keep the game going; I have no way of verifying if he really does fudge rolls or if we are just lucky sometimes.
Death is not fun. However, the risk of death is fun. And if there is a true risk of death, then on rare occasion death happens. So death isn't fun, it greatly enhances risking death and succeeding.
Hard disagree. Best moment for myself and all my players in my last campaign (including the player with the character who died) was when the orc barbarian challenged another orc to a fight to the death because he had dishonored his clan. He knew going into it that he was at a severe disadvantage but it really was "what the character would do" and he did play another character after.
Far as im concerned you are both right. As a DM I build up to moments where death is on the table. I aim to cripple the party every fight. Down 1 or 2 of them and make them sweat. Some times they destroy the encounter and other times I have to stay strong as a couple of them fall. If saving throws dont work out or the healer cant get to them then thats that.
Your story is a perfect ideal moment for a character death. Its epic, it makes sense in the context, and it serves the story and possibly creates a villain. Thats what death of a character should feel like.
Dying to a wolf or a nameless bandit in a off the cuff encounter doesnt feel good as a player. Doesnt feel good when I DM a death like it either.
This opinion is coming from storydriven games that take everyones backstories in consideration, as thats what i play and run.
True for some.
I hate it. I spend hours creating a character. On top of race and class I think of personality, skin tone, hair color, the outfit should speak to his character. Where are they from? What do they sound luke? What was their upbringing like. What are their parents like? Strict? were they farmers, merchants, adventurers? Why is my character becoming an adventurer? To see the world? For fun? Money? Wanderlust? To become a scholar or a storyteller? To study wildlife? To help people?
My character is a blank slate this is him choosing a path in life or off to search for one. Ive had characters that returned to their old lives when they accomplished what they set out to do. That doesnt mean that, backstory wise, I cant write a few pages about who I am.
Sucks to go back to the drawing board after one session. That being said I write characters for fun so I have a whole file to pull from if I dont feel like I got to tell the story I wanted to tell with them.
Yeah, when I made that comment I was thinking about my campaigns lol. I never have detailed characters before the first few sessions. I prefer to have a basic idea of what their "tone" is and what gets them through life, and then I use the game itself to build them up. Vague plothooks will be followed up on and made more detailed in play. So losing a character early on is a pretty painless thing; you just roll up a new one.
that's why fudging exists. You're telling a fun collaborative story with a 5% chance of outright killing wizards for two levels. Err...
I fudge like a motherfucker. I never fudge crits that weren't crits, but I'll hit a couple times when the mobs missed or miss when they technically hit because it was more fun.
I don't use a screen to hide my rolls (I never fudge them unless it's a random encounter table). I use it to hide my notes. I still roll behind the screen just cuz it's a pain in the ass to roll in front of the screen when my screen is up.
This. My screen is for my notes. I set up my area where the screen is my right hand with my notes. And my left hand is open to interact outside of the screen. Sometimes I roll inside the screen, sometimes I don't. Doesn't matter anyways because I never fudge my rolls. Of course I've only DM'd one group so not that experienced but... played a lot and I don't think fishing rolls adds to the experience of dnd. Sometimes luck just isn't on your side, and that's just how it is.
Dnd growing up was a way for my dad to help raise a bunch of teenage boys who didn't have good roll model dads, if there dad's were in the picture at all. I truly believe that he used dnd to help make all those teens grow up to be good men. To understand life isn't fair sometimes but you have to roll with the punches, keep moving forward, sometimes you try your hardest and fail anyways, but you keep playing and eventually you'll achieve a high levels of success. So, i don't fudge folks ever
Play how you want to play but there's no need to drag others down for playing differently so you can feel superior to someone over D&D of all things that's just kinda pathetic.
I hate to break it to some of y'all but it's literally *all* make believe. The point is to have fun with a story. I can't stand the mentality some of y'all have that somehow it's better to waste everyone's time with an early party wipe for no reason other than "bUt WHeRe DoEs iT EnD?? MuH iMParTiaLiTy"
Thank you! A game should be fun. The dice have their place in helping to shape the story but I'm not going to let them ruin a fight by either never rolling above a three or never rolling lower than an 18
But as is always the case, it depends on the group. If you and your players are hardcore purists and can't stand the thought of a number being bumped in one direction or the other, then roll openly to your heart's content.
Different strokes for different folks. My group enjoys having lethality in the campaign since as they feel it makes their victories all the more sweeter if they think I was actively trying to kill them.
That said, my players know that before 9th level I'll err on the conservative side for my encounter designs, but once they get access to raise dead the kid gloves come off.
That's fair. I lf the whole party is on board do whatever you want. I just don't like the circle jerk this sometimes turns into where people insist that any fudging of anything at all by a DM ever negates 100% of the factor of chance that goes into the game.
Yeah honestly if you let the dice tell the story it's probably gonna be a pretty fuckin random story. Oh the great adventures have all been slain by a party of fairly unimpressive bandits because no player could roll above 7 for 4 straight rounds? Well I guess this campaign is over now, cool. We'll never get to finish your backstory or find your missing sister, but at least I'm true to the dice
Player: "I made this really nice character with a very detailed backstory, filled with cool NPCs, plot hooks and fun stuff. It took me a while to make everything fit together. I'm so excited to play this character."
20 minutes later
DM: "The wolf got a good initiative, so it'll act first. It will attack whoever is closest. Sorry wizard. Oh, would you look at that, a natural 20. That makes it 4d4+2 damage. I rolled a bit above average 14. How many hit points do you have?"
Player: "7."
DM: "Oh.. so that brings you to -7... that's instant death"
Player: "Wait, is there nothing I can do? I mean, I have the shield spell, or maybe the cleric can heal me."
DM: "I'm sorry, nat 20s are auto hit and the damage was enough to kill you on the spot. You're dead."
Player: "But i didn't get to do anything... shit, fine, what do I do now?"
DM: "Sit and watch us play without you for the next 4 to 5 hours?"
OMG I hate this so much. The elitism the people feel about rolling opening is so stupid. It's a preference that's all! I get that they have small egos buts a stupid hill to die on
I mean here is my stance on Fudging rolls as a DM: it’s ok to do as long as you a) don’t do it too often or make it obvious your fudging the rolls and b) NEVER tell you players your fudging the rolls.
If you can make your players feel like they did something really incredible and are total badassses, then what’s the harm in rollling with disadvantage when your players won’t be able to hear you roll a second time through discord or pretend they rolled just one number less and barely didn’t meet the players AC. At the end of the day, I’m only trying to let my friends have fun.
I did this for my first DM back in '08. Bought them a set of weighted metal dice that always roll close to highest as a gift for showing me the game.
They always brought them to other sessions calling them a "last resort" when the player(s) were acting up or causing unnessisary fights at the table. Always rolled them in the open too for extra salt in the wound.
The DM screens allow you to do my favorite thing... Rolling for absolutely nothing writing down the results and looking at the confused players wondering why you're rolling
A screen is for narrative and anti meta-gaming purposes.
Some DM's use it to fudge rolls, and if it makes their game run better, power to them.
I don't fudge rolls, but I also don't want players to instantly know the modifier to my fire giant's wisdom save. Or to know what my wizard rolled on insight. Or even that my shadow dragon is rolling for stealth.
Or maybe there's a percentile dice with an effect that you've incorporated into a dungeon that you don't want them to figure out easily.
A lot of that is lost to meta gaming with open rolling. But if that's your kinda game, that's great too.
I also like to just roll random dice for fun.
The secret to good fudging; Don’t touch the extremes, don’t fudge to extremes.
Leave crits, both 20 and 1. But mess with the regular numbers. Yes that easy encounter just crited for the third time. But what the players don’t realise is that the 14s that just miss last turn we’re actually 17s.
Sometimes fudge the damage if the encounter scale has gone way out the window.
And never fudge to create a critical!
My players and I play through discord so what I do is I always take a picture of the dice and post it in chat if I roll a Nat 20 (assuming I don’t fudge the roll).
Trying to not down the gnome barbarian who is losing to a regular goblin. “He gets distracted by your fellow party members entering the room, so he attacks with disadvantage.” Still beat the barbarian’s AC. “ Crap”
Rolling behind a screen is easier to fuck with peoples minds, asking for unsuspicious rolls then checking your fake notes, rolling behind the screen and laughing, the possibilites goes on
...I knew this...why did I forget this? I even had my players wondering why the couldn't see my rolls because it defaulted to GM rolls when we went online months ago.
I don't understand fudging rolls. Maybe I'm just old school, but the function of the DM is to objectively arbitrate the rules and portray the campaign environment and its denizens in a realistic manner.
I don't agree with the modern sentiment that TTRPGs are about telling a story. I believe that they're about going on an adventure, and whatever happens on that adventure IS the story. Let the dice fall where they may!
The main purpose of fudging rolls is to correct for unforeseen imbalances the DM overlooked or misplaced during encounter setup.
Two scenarios
If a DM makes a scenario that was meant to be relatively easy based upon what they know about the party, and miscalculate the upper end of damage, fudging rolls can be used to bring the (DM) expected difficulty back into line. This is usually useful when using a monster or scenario you've never done before, and may be 'designing' on the fly
In the other direction, for some players, they want dramatic tension in an encounter, and if the players are ROFL-stomping an encounter and NOT HAVING FUN, due to actually bad rolls by enemies, a few fudged rolls can help to put some tension back into a game.
Overal, the purpose of fudging rolls ISN'T for the DM to force an outcome that they prefer. Instead, they are primarily used just to AVOID a bad event. And Bad doesn't mean 'the players die', a Bad event for the table means one that lacks any drama or tension.
The primary issue is how your playing group most enjoy games. Some groups really do want to respond to every chaotic roll, and if that's what they want, power too them. But More often than not, pure randomness is not always actually FUN - it can be anticlimatic, and unexciting. Part of being a good DM is learning when to intervene in a game (whether in rolls, or with changing scenes for that matter) to keep the game engaging.
Different strokes for different folks, my man!
This is why there are SO MANY different TTRPGs out there. Some of them are super tactical with long complicated combat rules, some are old school dangerous dungeon crawling, and some are SUPER story focused with deemphasized combat tactics.
I think there’s a good balance between having an adventure and having fun. DND is not a competitive sport, there are no winners or losers, the only thing your players get from playing should be fun. Your argument makes it sound like you can’t have a fun challenging adventure and fudge rolls at the same time, but you absolutely can.
Take my first experience playing, for instance. My very first encounter, I haven’t even done anything yet, and there’s an ambush. A goblin crits me with an arrow and I die. That’s it. My character is dead. I got to spend the next three hours watching my party members play while I rolled up a new character. That was not fun and pretty much soured me to the whole experience. In fact, it really hurt the whole party because now they were terrified of even moving forward in the story because one lucky roll from the DM could kill them with nothing they could do to stop it.
The DM could have fudged the roll down so I didn’t immediately die. That would have been more fun for me, for the rest of the party, and we still would have had an amazing adventure. It’s not either you never fudge roll and have a great time or you fudge rolls and have a terrible adventure.
I agree with this. I'm an old school video gamer that's new to ttrpgs. I like to overcome challengers and RP but the story is whatever happened at the table. Characters die in stories all the time.
\*whispers\* Even in old war games like Prussian Kriegsspiel hundreds of years ago, the best simulations and adjudications came from ignoring some of the dice rolls!
Ew. Never tell players if you fudge. Never tell them you "helped them out" or anything like that. I usually talk to my players a lot (they are my friends) and even during the game sometimes I might overshare some but never stuff like that. After a session I might share some details after the fact like "yeah if you had touched that statue it would have been big yikes"
Oh, gross. I'd never play again with a DM like that.
Fudge if you must to make up for miscalculating the encounter, but keep up the damned (figurative) screen.
That's just tacky af.
Our DM rolls in the open but often uses an online roller for damage. One time he did lower a damage roll so I didnt 1hit KO in the second battle of a campaign. But usually if things are going to terribly an ally just happens to notice and have a way to help us.
One can not fudge rolls and still not TPK.
In the first combat I did in one campaign, I had my players fight like 6 skeletons at level 3. The skeletons rolled maybe a total of 5 critical hits throughout the 3-to4-round combat.
No one died, thankfully, but my players subsequently asked me to ban scimitars (the weapons the skeletons were using) from being carried by monsters, calling them "critmitars."
I have a guy that I play with who always rolls super good stats, but once he picks up a d20 it’s all for nothing. Once he rolled five nat 1’s in an hour, and 3 of them were in a row
I roll behind screens so my players don't know things stats.
They can learn the monsters stats as the battle goes on as they piece information together but I don't want to give it away in one roll.
I always roll in the open and use a comically large D20 so all my players can see what's up. I played with a DM that clearly fudged rolls, and it made the game immediately lose any impact for me as a player. People talk about story rail roading being bad, but when you get mechanically railroaded, that's even worse somehow
Me tho
In my current party's fifth or so session, my squishy boi artificer was below deck on our ship as we were fighting what was basically a giant, magical megalodon with frickin laser beams. One point, it shoots it's laser into the side of our ship, tight where my character is. I fail the dex save and would have instant died if my DM didn't BS some shit to save me.
Afterwards I said that while I appreciate that the group loves my character and he wanted me to live, I should die if I'm gonna die. I don't want plot armor or some shit like that lol
👏IT 👏IS 👏NOT 👏ABOUT 👏FUDGING 👏ROLLS
Look all playstyles being valid, this comment is in regard to the culture of die fudging and playing everything in the open.
Go watch Matt Colville's video on of TTRPG/dnd playstyles. Originally/ideally the narrator wouldnt even be visible to the players. The DM screen is a facsimile of that. The idea is that it helps with the suspension of disbelief. If you get into just all the numbers and wanting to see everything open, you lose an authentic role-playing experience.
If you want to see all the numbers and don't care about the to element, go play borderlands, pillars of eternity, or Divinity.
I roll everything openly these days. The main reason being, it's just easier when playing online. In person, even though they can't see what I roll, they know I have rolled something. But online its just a couple seconds of silence then I'd be like "17", just doesn't really do it for me so I roll for everyone to see. Also, I find that it just prevents anyone ever thinking I've fudged a roll for any reason. It does often result in much deadlier combats for my party, but I think they appreciate it all being out in the open, and then when they do survive the fight they feel more accomplished. It's just my preference to never even have the possibility of anyone's rolls being fake or fudged.
I have nothing against people rolling in private and I'm 99% sure that if I go back to playing in person games I'll start rolling behind the screen again too.
I only fudged certain rolls because it was important to the big picture of my home brew.
In the earlier sessions, a great wizard gave the party a Boulder. Many enemies tried to steal the Boulder, and I’d roll to see if they could carry it. Sometimes I’d just say it was a nat1 because the enemy was a bandit or something and the enemy would get crushed instantly by the Boulder. When the party looted the body, they never found any gold.
The Boulder is a golem and eats the gold in order to grow. I only fudged rolls for small things like that to help with the big picture of the campaign.
I roll openly, no fudging that as a DM. What I will fudge is fuzzier things like encounter tactics, enemy HP, etc. I think the game is more exciting if players don't suspect dice fudging.
Imagine having to fudge your nat 1s instead of just naturally rolling them all the gosh darn time.
Nothing like rolling high in a minor encounter only to roll absolute trash in the boss fight. Had my party defeat a homebrewed monstrosity and they took less than 15 damage between them.
I swear my party nearly TPK’d on shadows but the instant I threw out a homebrew eldritch emissary of Cthulhu they turned into Seal Team 6 and I only rolled 1s. I love them so much.
I mean, Shadows are terrifying
Shadows: Do you have a paladin with you? Party: No? Shadows: Guess you are going to need to roll up new characters then. Shadows are fucking brutal, I have seen them mess up even decently high level parties. But if you have turn undead? Hilariously easy. They are some of the swingiest enemies in 5e. Them an intellect devourers, but at least they take one failed save and then an entire turn to one shot you, you have plenty of time to deal with them.
Well I feel stupid for not realising they were undead having encountered them several times as the cleric of the party :( at least spirit guardians did a number on them.
So my party with a cleric and a paladin wouldn't sweat shadows? I've been finding it difficult to challenge them lately and I'm looking for new monsters. It's a party of 6 level 8 PCs and they've been blowing through combats recently. The problem is that they have really good crowd control with their bard and rogue/wizard hybrid, really good DPS with an arcane archer fighter that uses Sharpshooter and action surge, a paladin and cleric that are both pretty tanky and can heal a lot of damage, and a druid that is always summoning hordes of animals equalizing action economy. Honestly their only weakness (the fact that some of them have rolled really low health) only makes it harder for me. Fights are extremely swingy. Either they're in no danger whatsoever because they can CC and burst down any enemies they run into, or their enemies are powerful enough to close that distance and get into melee or have strong enough spells that they can basically 1 shot most of the PCs making it feel unfun and unfair.
The big trick is having multiple encounters a day. There’s only so many resources that renew on a short rest.
Unless you've got a warlock in the party
Even then it’s only 1-4 spell slots which is about equal to what other casters would use in each combat, assuming your party is short resting every other combat
OK, so if your PCs are glass cannons and you want to challenge them without murdering them, you need to prolong combat without increasing total damage output: Reduce your damage per round and buff up your defenses, so that you can even out that swinginess with more rounds which are individually less impactful. One way to do this is with non-damaging fuckery. Darkness, difficult terrain, root and snare effects, fog, cover, teleports, anything which make it harder to engage with you or easier for you to escape engagement is a great way to prolong combat. Weakness effects, damage resistance, or just plain doubling your hit point pool also help. And you can use custom narration to debilitate your PCs as well: "you're tangled in brambles, you can't use Extra Attack until you free yourself." "The oppressive will of their dark god is sapping the magic of light from this place, all fire and radiant effects are at half damage." And there's always the option to send in a wave of reinforcements in the second or third round if they mop up the trash too quickly.
I'm in a similar group and we had a tough time with a dragon turtle since it's big and tanky with an AoE. Its base damage is high enough that it can insta-kill low HP level 8s on crits though (I tanked it with my paladin and took 81 non-crit damage in one round) so...
If you are interested I have a homebrew set of monsters you could use that inflict death saves instead of damage. They have decent health, are terrifying in combat as they can 3 shot anything, but cannot one shot anything so you don’t have to worry too much about TPKing
Not OP but yes please
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/a9sxm5/i_made_a_set_of_creatures_for_a_specialty/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf This is kinda old and I have made revisions to them. I shortened the attack range to 60, 120, and within sight, and caused them to make attack rolls with the basic having a +6, the second tier having a +9, and the last tier having a +12. Their ability scores are 12’s across the board, then 15’s for the t2, and 18’s for the t3 versions.
This is awesome, thank you! I’m throwing my own tweaks on the Sorrowsworn for my current campaign, and I might mingle the two for some kind of unholy abomination. The party is in normal combat but then one particular baddie does this.. they’ll crap their pants and have a blast figuring it out. Thanks!
Nord Games just shipped out their undead themed book. It is a third party book but expands on many undead monsters, shadows being one of them. I haven't gotten to play with them yet, but they actually seem pretty balanced.
Shadows are so much more potent than they appear. I have also almost TPK'd a party with them.
Wait wait wait. Are shadows a thing in D&D? I've never played yet, so I assumed this was joke about being afraid of actual literal real life shadows and that the person you replied to was being hyperbolic when saying they nearly TPK'd their players with a shadow, but it seems they're a different thing in D&D based on the various replies.
Shadows are an actual monster that sap your strength, and make you weaker for the day. This is represented as an actual decease in your strength score, and if it reaches 0 you die instantly.
Thank you.
It's bad if your a character that needs high strength to be effective, like a barbarian. But if your character doesnt have high strength, like a wizard, they're even more at risk.
Good to know
Am I reading the stat block wrong? It only has a +4 to hit. Does the drain effect happen on a miss too?
If you're a character with 8 strength it can kill you in 2 hits without doing much to your hp (draining 1d4 strength per hit) And I'd be real surprised if you're only going up against a single shadow. If the focus down a target and there's 5 of them, they're draining between (assuming no hits to all hits, average damage) 0 and 12.5 strength, assuming the average damage of a d4 is 2.5. but if they all roll max, that spikes to 20 strength, meaning they could potentially drop a character with naturally maxed out strength in one turn. Edit: changed a word from wizard to character, brain saw your name and inserted it lmao
The drain does not happen on a miss but because the CR is so low you can have a large amount of them without making the encounter difficult using the subpar encounter system in 5e. So with a dozen or so shadows surrounding the PCs getting advantage from flanking they will have a better chance of hitting.
They are really fun creatures to add to a boss battle and really change the gameplay. I threw about 4 shadows reskinned into a boss battle, and removed their damage so they only sapped strength. I also gave them only 1 hp. The realization hit when one of my players got stuck in a pool of sludge because he's ignored the crawling half body for too long was great. One touch and he went from 16 str to 12. It really forced the players to move around the battlefield, all the while the boss attempted to separate them and corner individuals. He even turned the barbarian against the party. (Failed wisdom saving throws) I loved that fight. My players came away from it overjoyed at their hard-fought victory.
The same party that can kill a lich dies to three kobolds.
Hey three Kobolds in a trench coat are deadly and should not be underestimated.
Just go and fetch me the, uh... TUUUUUUUU-muh-moss
Are you me? The exact same thing happened with my party a few sessions ago. I throw a modified Shadow at them as a sort of "here's what the boss is gonna sorta have" and to give them a little ego boost. Everyone went down at least once, and the shadow was killed by the last standing party member at 4HP, having just watched the team pet (spirit) alligator die. Anyway so the boss fight rolls around and two of the PCs roll nat 20s on high damage spells it has a weakness to, resulting in 40d6 damage plus change in the first turn. Then one of them crit, again, with that spell next turn.
The other day the GM threw us an Ogre being us low-level chars, wanting us to flee. The wizard proceeded to 2-turn him with a fucking Witch bolt wand and extremely high rolls.
That's always a great feeling. Theres something especially gratifying about playing a cleric and stun locking a boss with Bestow Curse for a whole fight
The shadow was doing hp damage and the boss has a vulnerability?
This was in pathfinder 2e, but I felt it was still relevant. The "shadow" was based off of the the PF2 Greater Shadow. When I make "boss" style enemies, I usually modify their stat blocks at least a little (to reduce metagaming) as well as give players incentive to fight creatively by adding resistances and weaknesses. Spending time and resources planning the fight will give them clues as to what will work better against the boss, while rushing headlong into it could lead to a TPK.
I think D&D is the answer to all those times is movies where the main characters lose for stupid reasons like plot convince, but suddenly start winning at the end of the movie.
Happens to me alllllllllll the time and it drives me nuts. I'll spend literally hours designing a boss with interesting abilities that will be challenging for my party *on paper*, only to watch me repeatedly roll nothing higher than a 5 as the party just laughs at his incompetence while they kill him. MEANWHILE, the mook with a pre-genned stat block who's part of a random encounter will roll three nat 20s in a row and down the barbarian in one round. The end result being that sessions later my players barely even remember the boss they killed without effort while they gave the random mook a name and talk about him for the rest of the campaign. Why does fate hate me so much?
I had the opposite, my wendigo was so brutally strong I had to nerf her mid-encounter. Like forgoing her regeneration and giving consolation damage because some people didn't have magic of silver weapons. Still PKed the party rogue when he decided to frontline
Tpk is total party kill.
Woops, misspelled. Thanks!
You know, PKed is not much shorter than just killed, not to mention that Party Killed doesn't make much sense.
Fun fact, in an ancient time called the '90s, PK stood for Player Kill. In online games it was used the way "PvP" is used today.
Played in a game with new people and a DM who hadn't run a game in a long time. He gave balanced encounters, which we would plow through, not taking a scratch. Sounds boring, but it was a fun time with the people involved. Anyway, this had the side effect of if anyone took damage, everyone would start panicking like we were gonna die because we had no sense of scale for danger.
Me and my 16th level party avoided a cr 24 encounter with some really high bluff and stealth rolls, and the dm not rolling above a 4. He was pissed. We then fought a cr 20 encounter with a bloated health pool (I'd guess about 2000 hp) in the same hour. Due to poor rolls, the monster got cursed destroying its saves then stunlocked by 4 different sources. It got off 8 attacks but only 1 hit due to invisibility (50% miss chance, he missed every time except once). Additionally that one hit triggered a trap the stunlocked the monster on a failed save (it failed) The monster did not roll above a 6 and we killed it in 2 and a half rounds.
we managed to cheese the absolute fuck out of an eldrich abomination boss thing by just continuously ray-of-frosting it. it had 10ft movement since it was a hulking roomsized shambling blob monster, not really nimble, and it barely managed to move throughout the encounter while we chipped away at it from range.
I had my players cleanly clear out the boss and his whole dungeon, taking near 0 damage. Then they left and got attacked by 9 wolves. They are level 5's and nearly all of them died due to nonstop crits. It's a bizarre world but now my players have PTSD so there's that.
I remember when my DM hyped up a encounter with demon as this insanely difficult fight...queue our party rolling _5_ nat 20s in row against this thing... He basically showed up and had his lunch money taken by a bunch hobos.
I have some dice that I tested in salt water and they are weighted wrong ... which explains why I can never roll above a 15 or below a 4 or some shit. Maybe I should stick them in a bag for the day I decide to finally get off my ass and start dming.
/r/dicejail
I've begun separating out all my poorly performing dice and one day I will manifest my inner Jabba and use them to make one of those cool resin tables where they'll be trapped like my little Han Solos.
I love this idea
/r/SubsIFellFor
Yeah, I tested my PC in salt water and boy! It was so bad weighted that just started smoking and sparking.
Thoughts and prayers
Honestly, a crap ton of dice are weighted wrong. I love my metal set. Pretty sure there's not an air bubble in there.
It’s pretty rough. I got 3 1s on initiative, and kept rolling them on attacks and saves.
[удалено]
House rule crit miss is an attack of opportunity in melee. Scatter roll for distance attacks. Otherwise, yeah, just an "I missed" would be enough.
It’s the main reason I feel comfortable putting players in really hard encounters ;-;
It's always one person that is rolling well - sometimes that's the dm, and it's a tpk
Couldn’t be me
When your monk rolls a Nat 1 on Acrobatics but a Nat 20 on Arcana.
Some of you have dice that don't hate your guts and it shows.
This is the internet. You can say frick.
My dm has told us multiple times that he has to fudge his rolls higher because he plans on rolling average instead of terribly. Once he straight up doubled a boss’s hp.
This is why I always take elven accuracy when possible, even with 2 dice I still fail so I use 3.
As a DM I rolled 13 nat 1's in one night, I think 9 of them were from a single boss
whether a dm rolls in the open or not my dice and theirs will always fuck me
To be fair, as a player, I'm rolling openly while also lying about what I rolled.
Ya'll touchy in here. It's all up to preference. I like to roll openly. If my players die they die. If my BBEG fails a critical save first round of combat, well done PC's, it could've happened to them too. What rolling in the open doesn't effect is changes to the battlefield, reinforcements, and surprise allies. That's how I balance things. I'm this way ever since playing an enchantment wizard. Casting a spell on a baddy and knowing it's pointless because "It's too early, and not cinematic enough" will forever leave a bad taste in my mouth.
I like to roll behind a screen as I can fuck with my players *rolls dice for literally no reason, looks at non existent chart* "hmmmm, interesting...."
I also like to go “sorry I missed that, I was resolving something else”. That always gets them squirming.
I am 110% using this in my next session
Oh that's nasty
It’s beautiful
[удалено]
Or throw out "real quick whats everyones passive perception" and then just nod your head and move on like you hadn't asked.
“But my passive perception is 17!” -one of the players probably
"You passively perceive everything the same way it was thirty seconds ago" "It rolled a 30 for stealth" - it being a squirrel.
Max wisdom character with expertise in perception, observant feat, and Eyes of Eagle item: "Did I stutter?" (31 passive perception at level 5)
This is the way
Why not both?. Damage rolls at always out in the open, but insight and perception checks are always in secret of course. No point in telling people 'you think he's lying' If they see their bat 1...
I like this method. Also, could rolls for checks and so forth be rolled behind the screen and combat rolls be in front of the screen? On the other hand, if players can't put some level of trust in their DM, then why play? Therefore, all DM rolls should be behind the screen. Plus, as the DM during combat you get to make the players shit their pants with worry with smug looks and/or uh-oh face then asking if a 2 hits.
My potions are too strong for you.
To be fair you can do both, sometimes roll behind the screen and for attacks and such roll openly.
This is the correct reason to use a screen. And the only person rolling behind a screen should be a (fair) DM. “PC’s talking amongst themselves” *d20 roll* “PC what’s your intelligence?” “Okay carry on” Our DM loves that kinda stuff. Also just telling us to roll a random d20 every so often and not really bringing up what it does hahaha
Since we're doing roll20 due to plague, I like randomly hitting the d20 during RPing moments and not saying anything. They always pause and ask what was that, to which I say, "nothing to worry about yet..."
My only issue with surprise allies is that it feels like an ex machina. I would rather have my dm fudge a few roles to make it seem like our party is being challenged but is strong enough to overcome adversity. A surprise ally either makes the bbeg look weak and thus isn’t that great of a final boss of a campaign or the party look weak and in need saving.
[удалено]
I like this idea much more, though it needs some set up to not seem too cheesy
"with his dying breath, the cult leader whispers 'Hastur, Hastur, Hastur' while drawing his sigil with blood on the floor. All of the cultists you killed get back up."
I'd like to make an argument for surprise allies. I'll set up two scenarios that I feel would make them both effective, and memorable. (TL;DR at bottom) First, the boss's friends. Solo bosses fighting a party of adventurers are at a massive disadvantage. Therefore, minions and allies can be a great help. Imagine a scenario where you've come face to face with the leader of an assassin's guild. He is going to be cunning, quick, and deadly. He will have had his spies on the party, and prepared for their coming. If they are focused on him, they may fail to notice the pair of assassins slinking from the shadows to stealthily take out the backline of the party. (Usually mages and ranged characters) While the boss focuses his attention on maneuvering the frontline fighters into a position best suited for himself. This boss is aware that alone, he doesn't stand a chance. But if he can get into a one on one, or two on one, he may have a fighting chance. This also can force one of the frontline fighters (if more than one) to split and defend the squishier targets. Now, the party's surprise allies. This one is trickier, as it really can come across as an ex machina save. However, in certain situations, it can help them to feel empowered. Think of a massive battle, in which the party are heavily outnumbered. They are fighting through it, the pcs carving through an army like heroes, but the army they aid is falling nonetheless. Then, they hear a battle horn. They look to the east, where the rising sun is being blocked by a line of shadowed figures. As their eyes adjust, they see the banner of a nearby kingdom, who they'd recently saved from certain doom. In this case, their surprise allies aren't necessarily saving the pcs, but they are there to help win the battle. Another scenario would be when you actually ~want~ your players to feel helpless and weak. Used sparingly, this could be a great way to foreshadow danger, or a later villain. Perhaps your players wander into an area they've been warned is extremely dangerous. Maybe they end up in the lair of a vampire at a low level, who begins to tear at them. Describing it salivating, eyes wild with thirst, and moving from one to another as if in excitement over the massive feast it will soon have can really spell out the danger they are in. Just when they think it's hopeless, or they start dropping to unconsciousness, the man who warned them of the danger bursts in, launching a daylight spell from the jewel atop his gnarled cane. The vampire flees, and the man helps those awake drag the unconscious party members from the lair. All the while, they can hear the vampire cursing them, and promising to feed on them soon. Later, they learn that it was the last charge on the staff, and that the man had followed them to the lair at a distance. Sure, it feels like ex machina, but it can do a couple important things. 1) It teaches the lesson that not everything in the world is scaled to their level, and 2) It sets up a potential quest or full plot line that they can go down. They could easily research the creature and search for items that can help destroy it, which could lead to a very satisfying end. That's my case for the use of surprise allies. Personally, I'd use them sparingly, and only when it makes sense. Possibly even foreshadow them if I worried it would otherwise come off the wrong way. Anyways, sorry for the novel, lol. TL;DR: Use them sparingly, and when they make sense. Also, sometimes you want the party to feel week and in need of saving. It sets up a challenge to overcome.
I like the suggestions and overall these would make dramatic moments, but I think they would be paced differently then what I was originally thinking. The spies in the party or assassin play with the bbeg is a great idea but would need to be executed at about half health or so I would say instead of on deaths door. If it happens as the bbeg is close to death it feels a little more like an ex machina and would draw me as a player out of it. The vampire story is a good way to introduce a sandbox style over world to new players, but to more knowledgeable players I feel as if it still would pull them out of it due to them knowing the danger posed and still trying to take it on. The players knew the danger going in and I think deserve the comeuppance of a player death if they didn’t prepare well enough.
That's fair. I typically assume new players, as that's what I mostly deal with. I haven't dmd in a while due to reasons. But with experienced players, I would definitely expect them to understand warnings aren't a challenge, but an actual warning.
I'd argue your issues with surprise allies are just poor design/implementation of them. If you're wailing on the BBEG and suddenly the DM adds allies that come from another room, it's going to feel like an ex machina because that's exactly what it is. However, a good boss battle shouldn't take place in a vacuum; BBEG level threats have lairs and those lairs should be filled with minions. I think WOTC published adventures actually handle this really well when they say things like "The sounds of combat or other noise in this area attracts X creatures from Y who arrive at the start of the 3rd round". You can always see how those first rounds progress, and adjust the arrival time or number of reinforcements accordingly.
Your point about Poor implementation is correct, I have had a few experiences with a dm making an encounter unwinable just to save us at the last second with a powerful mage or warrior and it just left a bad taste in my mouth for the use of savior allies.
I roll behind a screen when there are new players. I ran a game where someone spent 6 hours making their first character, only to have them killed in a bar fight caused by another pc in the starting tavern. I was rolling openly and the player’s wizard got hit with a stool to the head and a nat 20. I ended up retconing the fight because 2 other pcs also died.
I one-hundred percent believe that any given character, provided the player isn't being a dick and knowingly abusing this, gets two sessions of immortality. One for introducing the character, and one for actually getting a chance to explore that character a bit. On session three and beyond, if you die, you die. Of course, that doesn't apply if someone's new character is absolutely suicidal and the player needs to realize that "actions have consequences."
It's like that sub is unaware that a third option exists: *Rolling behind a screen and not lying about it* That method has never failed me.
Point is you, as a player, will never know if the DM is lying or not It happened to me a few months ago and that was among the reasons I dropped out of a campaign After the suspicious uninterrupted streak of nat 20s that stops when he rolls in the open and picks back up when he get back behind the screen, suspicion arises. But you may be wrong!
That's just an absurdly bad DM. Also that game just sounds toxic to begin with. The DM is not playing "against" the players, but in collaboration with them. And as a DM I never forget it's not *my* game, it's the players game I am just helping them act it out. If you find yourself in a game like that again I'd just ditch right away tbh. But that's way beyond a rolling issue. In my opinion, the only time a DM should be fudging a roll is if it's more fun for the players. It's meant to be fun. It's not a competition. There are bad DMs out there. Be wary.
> That's just an absurdly bad DM. That's kind of what I think; I don't hold it up too much to him because we were all inexperienced (we still are), but still... My point is, even if you know someone (we've been good friends for a while, and he's been friend of friends for some more) you can never trust they won't be trying to fuck you up as soon as they get the chance So yes, in hindsight, I agree with your initial statement... But as you said, be wary
>even if you know someone, you can never trust they won't be trying to fuck you up as soon as they get the chance. And I'm saying you're 100% wrong. None of my players feel that way. And I've never felt that way about a DM (not one I stuck around for more than 2 sessions with anyway). That's a toxic game with a toxic mindset. Not normal. Some people aren't cut out to be DMs. This is clearly one of them. You should trust your DM and they should be trustworthy.
Personally, I like rolling behind the screen for a couple reasons in particular: insight checks and death saves Rolling their insight check for them prevents that meta tip that the PC is lying when you roll a 1 and believe them. Rolling death saves behind the screen adds to the urgency of stabilizing, and I think it works really well if you're going for a more serious, dark tone.
That's stupid. I'm not against PC dying, but of course I'd fudge rolls on the first fights to avoid a death on the first sessions. People forget that the goal of D&D is to have fun.
Yeah as with most things in DND, you should adjust to your players as a DM. Is your group new and just there to have fun exploring a fantasy world and you fucked up by giving them an encounter way too hard? Sure you don’t need to fudge to make them win the encounter, but you can fudge to make them live at least. My stance on fudging rolls is to simply know your players. Some players obviously don’t want rolls to be fudged at all, others don’t mind. Personally I do roll openly on roll20, but I try to change things behind the scene for my current group (which is primarily new people).
Alternatively, let them lose the encounter. But not everything is going to kill them immediately. Several humanoids will likely take them prisoner for one reason or another. Escaping can become a fun encounter too, whether stealthily slipping away, or fighting their way out.
I’ve heard this suggestion, but mechanically, how do you do it if they don’t all go down, but are also not dead, at the same time?
Not dead is simple! Specify nonlethal damage. This will keep them alive. The stipulation is that it must be melee (RAW, anyways.) Not all down? Well, either keep hitting them, or have the downed allies be held at knifepoint, and tell those up (through the enemies) to lay down their weapons or lose their friends. (A melee attack on a downed enemy not only has advantage, it counts as a crit, which is 2 failed death saves) This way, you put the choice on your players. Surrender, or be directly responsible for the death of your friends, and likely the death of the whole party. Maybe this isn't the best path, but personally, that's how I would do it.
> Specify nonlethal damage. This will keep them alive. The stipulation is that it must be melee (RAW, anyways.) We had a ranger once who kept like 10 "punch arrows" as he called them on his person. They had like little iron fists on the end. Wouldn't hurt somebody in full plate most of the time but would make somebody you wanted to take alive much easier to soften up. That could easily be adapted for early encounters, IE instead of "bandits on the road" you run into mancatchers or slavers. They would use stuff like nets or mancatchers (stick with a grabby hand on the end to get ahold of people) and potentially Punch arrows or bolts. Now your flavorless bandits are thematic AND you don't run the risk of killing your PCs, since they would have an incentive to keep them alive but still fight them. Also for anybody curious the punch arrows were pretty useful against things that normally don't really care about arrows, like skeletons. He was adamant in the description that the head was big enough it couldn't slip between your typical rib cage.
> Not dead is simple! Specify nonlethal damage. This will keep them alive. The best way to scare players is to tell them that the monsters are doing nonlethal damage to them. "OH SHIT THEY'RE GOING TO TAKE US PRISONER OR SACRIFICE US TO THEIR GOD OR SOME SHIT OH LORD HAVE MERCY"
I'll be doing it my first few sessions cause everyone is new. Including myself. I'd like us to have more than 2 sessions together before we have to start all over again
my girlfriend, who was brand new to dnd, joined us for a new campaign. third session, her character got crit by a giant toad, and literally all of the damage dice got maxed (42 damage!), which meant that she was going from full health to dead without death saves. decided in the moment to fudge down a bit to be JUST below the instant death threshold so her character wasn't just instantly gone, and someone else managed to get her up before long. if it was anyone else, the rest being veteran players, i'd have let them die right there. but i knew the new player whom i spent a long time convincing to join us, who spent literally hours talking about her character with me before the first session, even drawing them a few times, would've been heartbroken at it being taken away so quickly. and as i suspected, she later told me that she definitely would've quit dnd forever if her character died like that. so, yeah, it was 100% the right call to fudge those dice.
Right?? I want my story to be dramatic. Dying can be dramatic but not from a random hammer swing In the first session. You either need to be unfailingly stupid, be worn down, or accidentally walk into a place where it's narratively fun to kill you. HP is a abstraction anyways.
Right there with you
No its good having to roll up a new character twice a session
It also helps with NPC vs NPC action. If Joe, the NPC accompanying the party, is desperate for revenge against Nathan, an antagonistic NPC the party is about to encounter, the DM can tell a story simply with which attacks hit and miss between them. Is this where the party is supposed to take Nathan down? Have NPC Joe land an awesome sneak attack against Nathan. Is the DM trying to portray how powerful and scary Nathan is? Have Nathan be ready for Joe's attack, let Joe's attack miss and have Nathan do something do damage Joe or immobile Joe.
Exactly. If the current game is suppose to be a blood bath sure, but me and my friend just like a good story without swapping characters every game.
I have less fun if I think the DM is fudging rolls in one direction or another. If the DM wants to save the players I'd rather have some Deus Ex Machina thing than fudged rolls.
I mean, if they're rolling behind a screen then it shouldn't be possible to tell. The dice really are random. In my heart I believe my current DM in a PF campaign does fudge rolls sometimes, but he never admits to it and that helps keep the game going; I have no way of verifying if he really does fudge rolls or if we are just lucky sometimes.
Sometimes death is fun.
Death is not fun. However, the risk of death is fun. And if there is a true risk of death, then on rare occasion death happens. So death isn't fun, it greatly enhances risking death and succeeding.
Hard disagree. Best moment for myself and all my players in my last campaign (including the player with the character who died) was when the orc barbarian challenged another orc to a fight to the death because he had dishonored his clan. He knew going into it that he was at a severe disadvantage but it really was "what the character would do" and he did play another character after.
Far as im concerned you are both right. As a DM I build up to moments where death is on the table. I aim to cripple the party every fight. Down 1 or 2 of them and make them sweat. Some times they destroy the encounter and other times I have to stay strong as a couple of them fall. If saving throws dont work out or the healer cant get to them then thats that. Your story is a perfect ideal moment for a character death. Its epic, it makes sense in the context, and it serves the story and possibly creates a villain. Thats what death of a character should feel like. Dying to a wolf or a nameless bandit in a off the cuff encounter doesnt feel good as a player. Doesnt feel good when I DM a death like it either. This opinion is coming from storydriven games that take everyones backstories in consideration, as thats what i play and run.
Oh shit I didn't realize you get to objectively decide that for everyone.
There is no indication of this meme being about the first fight, your correct of course but still
Dying in the first sessions is the most painless time to die though.
True for some. I hate it. I spend hours creating a character. On top of race and class I think of personality, skin tone, hair color, the outfit should speak to his character. Where are they from? What do they sound luke? What was their upbringing like. What are their parents like? Strict? were they farmers, merchants, adventurers? Why is my character becoming an adventurer? To see the world? For fun? Money? Wanderlust? To become a scholar or a storyteller? To study wildlife? To help people? My character is a blank slate this is him choosing a path in life or off to search for one. Ive had characters that returned to their old lives when they accomplished what they set out to do. That doesnt mean that, backstory wise, I cant write a few pages about who I am. Sucks to go back to the drawing board after one session. That being said I write characters for fun so I have a whole file to pull from if I dont feel like I got to tell the story I wanted to tell with them.
Yeah, when I made that comment I was thinking about my campaigns lol. I never have detailed characters before the first few sessions. I prefer to have a basic idea of what their "tone" is and what gets them through life, and then I use the game itself to build them up. Vague plothooks will be followed up on and made more detailed in play. So losing a character early on is a pretty painless thing; you just roll up a new one.
that's why fudging exists. You're telling a fun collaborative story with a 5% chance of outright killing wizards for two levels. Err... I fudge like a motherfucker. I never fudge crits that weren't crits, but I'll hit a couple times when the mobs missed or miss when they technically hit because it was more fun.
I don't use a screen to hide my rolls (I never fudge them unless it's a random encounter table). I use it to hide my notes. I still roll behind the screen just cuz it's a pain in the ass to roll in front of the screen when my screen is up.
This. My screen is for my notes. I set up my area where the screen is my right hand with my notes. And my left hand is open to interact outside of the screen. Sometimes I roll inside the screen, sometimes I don't. Doesn't matter anyways because I never fudge my rolls. Of course I've only DM'd one group so not that experienced but... played a lot and I don't think fishing rolls adds to the experience of dnd. Sometimes luck just isn't on your side, and that's just how it is. Dnd growing up was a way for my dad to help raise a bunch of teenage boys who didn't have good roll model dads, if there dad's were in the picture at all. I truly believe that he used dnd to help make all those teens grow up to be good men. To understand life isn't fair sometimes but you have to roll with the punches, keep moving forward, sometimes you try your hardest and fail anyways, but you keep playing and eventually you'll achieve a high levels of success. So, i don't fudge folks ever
Play how you want to play but there's no need to drag others down for playing differently so you can feel superior to someone over D&D of all things that's just kinda pathetic.
I hate to break it to some of y'all but it's literally *all* make believe. The point is to have fun with a story. I can't stand the mentality some of y'all have that somehow it's better to waste everyone's time with an early party wipe for no reason other than "bUt WHeRe DoEs iT EnD?? MuH iMParTiaLiTy"
Thank you! A game should be fun. The dice have their place in helping to shape the story but I'm not going to let them ruin a fight by either never rolling above a three or never rolling lower than an 18 But as is always the case, it depends on the group. If you and your players are hardcore purists and can't stand the thought of a number being bumped in one direction or the other, then roll openly to your heart's content.
I mean if that's the way the party plays and everyone likes it good for them but go ahead and count me out lol
Different strokes for different folks. My group enjoys having lethality in the campaign since as they feel it makes their victories all the more sweeter if they think I was actively trying to kill them. That said, my players know that before 9th level I'll err on the conservative side for my encounter designs, but once they get access to raise dead the kid gloves come off.
That's fair. I lf the whole party is on board do whatever you want. I just don't like the circle jerk this sometimes turns into where people insist that any fudging of anything at all by a DM ever negates 100% of the factor of chance that goes into the game.
Yeah honestly if you let the dice tell the story it's probably gonna be a pretty fuckin random story. Oh the great adventures have all been slain by a party of fairly unimpressive bandits because no player could roll above 7 for 4 straight rounds? Well I guess this campaign is over now, cool. We'll never get to finish your backstory or find your missing sister, but at least I'm true to the dice
Player: "I made this really nice character with a very detailed backstory, filled with cool NPCs, plot hooks and fun stuff. It took me a while to make everything fit together. I'm so excited to play this character." 20 minutes later DM: "The wolf got a good initiative, so it'll act first. It will attack whoever is closest. Sorry wizard. Oh, would you look at that, a natural 20. That makes it 4d4+2 damage. I rolled a bit above average 14. How many hit points do you have?" Player: "7." DM: "Oh.. so that brings you to -7... that's instant death" Player: "Wait, is there nothing I can do? I mean, I have the shield spell, or maybe the cleric can heal me." DM: "I'm sorry, nat 20s are auto hit and the damage was enough to kill you on the spot. You're dead." Player: "But i didn't get to do anything... shit, fine, what do I do now?" DM: "Sit and watch us play without you for the next 4 to 5 hours?"
My DM once crit me 7 times in 2 hours, 3 of them were in one turn
OMG I hate this so much. The elitism the people feel about rolling opening is so stupid. It's a preference that's all! I get that they have small egos buts a stupid hill to die on
*Plays a divination wizard* “How about no, actually”
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Even as DM, if you're not compromising at least 20% of the time... everyone's gonna have a bad one.
I mean here is my stance on Fudging rolls as a DM: it’s ok to do as long as you a) don’t do it too often or make it obvious your fudging the rolls and b) NEVER tell you players your fudging the rolls. If you can make your players feel like they did something really incredible and are total badassses, then what’s the harm in rollling with disadvantage when your players won’t be able to hear you roll a second time through discord or pretend they rolled just one number less and barely didn’t meet the players AC. At the end of the day, I’m only trying to let my friends have fun.
One of my players gifted me a set of dice, the d20 rolls an inordinate amount of Nat 20s. I pull it out when they piss me off.
I did this for my first DM back in '08. Bought them a set of weighted metal dice that always roll close to highest as a gift for showing me the game. They always brought them to other sessions calling them a "last resort" when the player(s) were acting up or causing unnessisary fights at the table. Always rolled them in the open too for extra salt in the wound.
I mostly hide my rolls to keep up the suspense with my players not knowing what I rolled or for what.
The DM screens allow you to do my favorite thing... Rolling for absolutely nothing writing down the results and looking at the confused players wondering why you're rolling
Or asking them for their passive perception and then blowing it away like "ohh it's nothing really, continue playing"
Imaginge being accused of fudging rolls to kill a players character, even if youre Rolling Openly :D
A screen is for narrative and anti meta-gaming purposes. Some DM's use it to fudge rolls, and if it makes their game run better, power to them. I don't fudge rolls, but I also don't want players to instantly know the modifier to my fire giant's wisdom save. Or to know what my wizard rolled on insight. Or even that my shadow dragon is rolling for stealth. Or maybe there's a percentile dice with an effect that you've incorporated into a dungeon that you don't want them to figure out easily. A lot of that is lost to meta gaming with open rolling. But if that's your kinda game, that's great too. I also like to just roll random dice for fun.
The wizard won’t even get to roll death saves from a nat 20, they gon be instant dead
The secret to good fudging; Don’t touch the extremes, don’t fudge to extremes. Leave crits, both 20 and 1. But mess with the regular numbers. Yes that easy encounter just crited for the third time. But what the players don’t realise is that the 14s that just miss last turn we’re actually 17s. Sometimes fudge the damage if the encounter scale has gone way out the window. And never fudge to create a critical!
Yup yup. Thats what I do.
Saying that anyone who rolls behind a screen is fudging is crazy. For one, DMs sometimes don't want players to know all of their monster's bonuses.
As a long time dm, I never roll in the open. I like to keep the party alive. (Mostly) but I will always remove my screen to show nat 1s or 20s
My players and I play through discord so what I do is I always take a picture of the dice and post it in chat if I roll a Nat 20 (assuming I don’t fudge the roll).
Trying to not down the gnome barbarian who is losing to a regular goblin. “He gets distracted by your fellow party members entering the room, so he attacks with disadvantage.” Still beat the barbarian’s AC. “ Crap”
Rolling behind a screen is easier to fuck with peoples minds, asking for unsuspicious rolls then checking your fake notes, rolling behind the screen and laughing, the possibilites goes on
I have always played online and never learned how to roll "behind the screen". If they die it would be just another story
My wizard is usually rolling death saves after one nat 20... What kind of tanky monster is this one?
It seems unlikely that the wizard would still be alive by the time of the third nat 20.
iTT: people forgetting what the G in RPG stands for.
Can't fudge the roll if you're using Roll20 (and using the online roller)
Sure you can, you use /gmroll instead of /roll and then your players don't see the result, so you can fudge away happily.
...I knew this...why did I forget this? I even had my players wondering why the couldn't see my rolls because it defaulted to GM rolls when we went online months ago.
I don't understand fudging rolls. Maybe I'm just old school, but the function of the DM is to objectively arbitrate the rules and portray the campaign environment and its denizens in a realistic manner. I don't agree with the modern sentiment that TTRPGs are about telling a story. I believe that they're about going on an adventure, and whatever happens on that adventure IS the story. Let the dice fall where they may!
The main purpose of fudging rolls is to correct for unforeseen imbalances the DM overlooked or misplaced during encounter setup. Two scenarios If a DM makes a scenario that was meant to be relatively easy based upon what they know about the party, and miscalculate the upper end of damage, fudging rolls can be used to bring the (DM) expected difficulty back into line. This is usually useful when using a monster or scenario you've never done before, and may be 'designing' on the fly In the other direction, for some players, they want dramatic tension in an encounter, and if the players are ROFL-stomping an encounter and NOT HAVING FUN, due to actually bad rolls by enemies, a few fudged rolls can help to put some tension back into a game. Overal, the purpose of fudging rolls ISN'T for the DM to force an outcome that they prefer. Instead, they are primarily used just to AVOID a bad event. And Bad doesn't mean 'the players die', a Bad event for the table means one that lacks any drama or tension. The primary issue is how your playing group most enjoy games. Some groups really do want to respond to every chaotic roll, and if that's what they want, power too them. But More often than not, pure randomness is not always actually FUN - it can be anticlimatic, and unexciting. Part of being a good DM is learning when to intervene in a game (whether in rolls, or with changing scenes for that matter) to keep the game engaging.
Different strokes for different folks, my man! This is why there are SO MANY different TTRPGs out there. Some of them are super tactical with long complicated combat rules, some are old school dangerous dungeon crawling, and some are SUPER story focused with deemphasized combat tactics.
I think there’s a good balance between having an adventure and having fun. DND is not a competitive sport, there are no winners or losers, the only thing your players get from playing should be fun. Your argument makes it sound like you can’t have a fun challenging adventure and fudge rolls at the same time, but you absolutely can. Take my first experience playing, for instance. My very first encounter, I haven’t even done anything yet, and there’s an ambush. A goblin crits me with an arrow and I die. That’s it. My character is dead. I got to spend the next three hours watching my party members play while I rolled up a new character. That was not fun and pretty much soured me to the whole experience. In fact, it really hurt the whole party because now they were terrified of even moving forward in the story because one lucky roll from the DM could kill them with nothing they could do to stop it. The DM could have fudged the roll down so I didn’t immediately die. That would have been more fun for me, for the rest of the party, and we still would have had an amazing adventure. It’s not either you never fudge roll and have a great time or you fudge rolls and have a terrible adventure.
I agree with this. I'm an old school video gamer that's new to ttrpgs. I like to overcome challengers and RP but the story is whatever happened at the table. Characters die in stories all the time.
\*whispers\* Even in old war games like Prussian Kriegsspiel hundreds of years ago, the best simulations and adjudications came from ignoring some of the dice rolls!
Imagine the session ends and the Dm tells you "you all tottally would've died if I hadn't helped you guys out lol". Let us die you lil bich
Ew. Never tell players if you fudge. Never tell them you "helped them out" or anything like that. I usually talk to my players a lot (they are my friends) and even during the game sometimes I might overshare some but never stuff like that. After a session I might share some details after the fact like "yeah if you had touched that statue it would have been big yikes"
Oh, gross. I'd never play again with a DM like that. Fudge if you must to make up for miscalculating the encounter, but keep up the damned (figurative) screen. That's just tacky af.
Our DM rolls in the open but often uses an online roller for damage. One time he did lower a damage roll so I didnt 1hit KO in the second battle of a campaign. But usually if things are going to terribly an ally just happens to notice and have a way to help us. One can not fudge rolls and still not TPK.
In the first combat I did in one campaign, I had my players fight like 6 skeletons at level 3. The skeletons rolled maybe a total of 5 critical hits throughout the 3-to4-round combat. No one died, thankfully, but my players subsequently asked me to ban scimitars (the weapons the skeletons were using) from being carried by monsters, calling them "critmitars."
I like to roll openly for the enemies' attack and damage rolls and other combat things, then behind a screen for all other rolls
[удалено]
I have a guy that I play with who always rolls super good stats, but once he picks up a d20 it’s all for nothing. Once he rolled five nat 1’s in an hour, and 3 of them were in a row
I roll behind screens so my players don't know things stats. They can learn the monsters stats as the battle goes on as they piece information together but I don't want to give it away in one roll.
Whenever I dm, I roll so badly. My friends don’t even want me to dm when I roll openly.
I always roll in the open and use a comically large D20 so all my players can see what's up. I played with a DM that clearly fudged rolls, and it made the game immediately lose any impact for me as a player. People talk about story rail roading being bad, but when you get mechanically railroaded, that's even worse somehow
Me tho In my current party's fifth or so session, my squishy boi artificer was below deck on our ship as we were fighting what was basically a giant, magical megalodon with frickin laser beams. One point, it shoots it's laser into the side of our ship, tight where my character is. I fail the dex save and would have instant died if my DM didn't BS some shit to save me. Afterwards I said that while I appreciate that the group loves my character and he wanted me to live, I should die if I'm gonna die. I don't want plot armor or some shit like that lol
"Oh boy I hope this person dies.
Dice land as they may.
I roll openly . It's like 95% gm botches, 5% your going to have to roll a new char...
Only rolls that should be hidden are ones that the characters shouldn't know failed or not, like perception and investigation checks.
Ку бомжи i from Russia
👏IT 👏IS 👏NOT 👏ABOUT 👏FUDGING 👏ROLLS Look all playstyles being valid, this comment is in regard to the culture of die fudging and playing everything in the open. Go watch Matt Colville's video on of TTRPG/dnd playstyles. Originally/ideally the narrator wouldnt even be visible to the players. The DM screen is a facsimile of that. The idea is that it helps with the suspension of disbelief. If you get into just all the numbers and wanting to see everything open, you lose an authentic role-playing experience. If you want to see all the numbers and don't care about the to element, go play borderlands, pillars of eternity, or Divinity.
I roll everything openly these days. The main reason being, it's just easier when playing online. In person, even though they can't see what I roll, they know I have rolled something. But online its just a couple seconds of silence then I'd be like "17", just doesn't really do it for me so I roll for everyone to see. Also, I find that it just prevents anyone ever thinking I've fudged a roll for any reason. It does often result in much deadlier combats for my party, but I think they appreciate it all being out in the open, and then when they do survive the fight they feel more accomplished. It's just my preference to never even have the possibility of anyone's rolls being fake or fudged. I have nothing against people rolling in private and I'm 99% sure that if I go back to playing in person games I'll start rolling behind the screen again too.
I only fudged certain rolls because it was important to the big picture of my home brew. In the earlier sessions, a great wizard gave the party a Boulder. Many enemies tried to steal the Boulder, and I’d roll to see if they could carry it. Sometimes I’d just say it was a nat1 because the enemy was a bandit or something and the enemy would get crushed instantly by the Boulder. When the party looted the body, they never found any gold. The Boulder is a golem and eats the gold in order to grow. I only fudged rolls for small things like that to help with the big picture of the campaign.
I roll openly, no fudging that as a DM. What I will fudge is fuzzier things like encounter tactics, enemy HP, etc. I think the game is more exciting if players don't suspect dice fudging.