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View Full Version : That Dratted DM Screen, or The Offense Over Defense Theory in Tabletop Gaming



Swiftest
2008-11-10, 04:58 PM
Forgive me if this has been dealt with before, but I wish to bring to light an interesting idea I've had regarding tabletop games.

It strikes me that a DM, managing the action from behind a screen, will often fudge certain rolls so as to make combat seem more interesting. I know I do it myself, all the time, in the game I DM. For example, if his monsters are getting hosed, a DM might make several of them hit when they might otherwise miss just to bring to the PCs that level of tension and desperation in combat that we all crave as players. It's no fun if the party just walks over an encounter that was supposed to be challenging and climactic.

Alternatively, if a particular player has been hit by the last 6 attacks that targeted him due to bad luck, the DM might make the next attack against the player miss even if the roll itself would've hit, just so that the player doesn't feel arbitrarily picked on, even though in truth it was just bad luck.

With me so far? Great. This brings me to my next point -- control. The DM has control over what his monsters roll on attack. He can roll whatever and say he rolled better than he did, and there's nothing the players can do about it because most of the time they won't even know -- it's behind a screen. They're obligated to trust in the DM to a degree or else the game falls apart. Someone could have an insane AC and all sorts of cover or whatever, and if the DM wants his monsters to hit, they'll hit, period. If he has to claim he rolled a 19 when he rolled a 2, he will. The DM has total control of this aspect of the game.

What the DM *does not* have control of, however, is the *defense* of his monsters. Sure, he can set their defense to a certain arbitrary number higher than it should be prior to combat, but once the PCs have seen a certain attack roll hit, they're going to know that every total roll of that number or higher should hit. If the DM tries to fudge things so certain attacks miss, the players will inevitably know if they've been paying attention at all. They have *control* over this process, or at least, the control is split evenly between the DM and the players.

With all of the above noted, it seems clear to me that, if playing with a DM who is known to fudge rolls to help make combat interesting, the PC's should *always prioritize offense over defense when it comes to items, powers, tactics, and stats*. Sure, some DMs might be entirely by the book, no fudge at all, and in that case this all goes out the window. But in the case of DMs who manage combat by actively fudging rolls (especially if they're excessive) or vindictively make their monsters hit when they should miss (just to keep a certain character in line, for instance) the players are always better served by focusing their resources on offense so as to take advantage of the one thing in combat they know can't be adjusted mid-fight -- the monster's defenses. Sure, the DM can buff the thing's HP a little, but if it gets excessive, the players will notice that too.

Thoughts? Am I crazy?

Some background on what made me think about this can be found here, if you're interested:

This came up because I'm being asked to list my 4th edition character's general priorities in terms of offense, defense, and utility items so that the DM can plan what to give us in the long run for loot. At first I wanted to tell him I'd focus on defense, because that is as a rule what my character would do (being a careful sort of wizard -- always fighting from the back, always dropping prone when it's tactically appropriate, etc =p). As I considered it further, however, I realized that I really gain no benefit from prioritizing defense. **** will hit me all the time no matter what I do, or so it seems. I've got a 21 natural AC, a cloak of distortion (ranged attacks from more than 5 squares away take -5 to hit me) and the shield utility power and hobgoblin archers with pathetic attack bonuses are still pegging me from downtown way more than 50% of the time. A lot of this is probably just a fallacy in my own mind, but I happen to know that this DM fudges rolls, and once you know that about a DM it's hard to continue trusting that everything is just bad luck and whatnot.

ChaosDefender24
2008-11-10, 05:07 PM
Since, at least in 3.5, I keep finding that it's *really* easy to get your to-hit in the stratosphere compared to your AC, it's already a great idea. HEEDLESS CHARGE!!!

Nohwl
2008-11-10, 05:16 PM
i wont fudge monster rolls, but ive had players roll poorly all session and its not fun to basically sit and watch during combat (i run a more kick in the door style game). ill give them a bonus of whatever it takes to hit the monster on a few rolls if they are having a bad day.

TheCountAlucard
2008-11-10, 05:16 PM
Quite so! Just use the DMG guidelines to build a pair of gauntlets of continuous true strike, and you're set! :smalltongue: [/sarcasm]

hotel_papa
2008-11-10, 05:17 PM
You're basing strategy on the idea that your DM fudges rolls that make defense irrelevant, despite the fact that your character would prioritize defense.

So, not only are you using out of character knowledge of game mechanics to make character decisions, you're using out of player knowledge of the DM's personality to make player decisions.

Congratulations, you're the world's first meta-meta-gamer. Like your character sheet is on the side of a tesseract.

HP

monty
2008-11-10, 05:19 PM
Since, at least in 3.5, I keep finding that it's *really* easy to get your to-hit in the stratosphere compared to your AC, it's already a great idea. HEEDLESS CHARGE!!!

+1 to this. One of my favorite characters often ended up with negative AC in combat (Shock Trooper is made of win), but had gigantic bonuses to hit and damage in return. His theory: they can't hit you if they're dead.

Zeful
2008-11-10, 05:21 PM
What the DM *does not* have control of, however, is the *defense* of his monsters. Sure, he can set their defense to a certain arbitrary number higher than it should be prior to combat, but once the PC's have seen a certain attack roll hit, they're going to know that every total roll of that number or higher should hit. If the DM tries to fudge things so certain attacks miss, the players will inevitably know if they've been paying attention at all. They have *control* over this process, or at least, the control is split evenly between the DM and the players.

This is not necessarily true. Generally you're right but cover, concealment, circumstance etc. can all change round to round. Even two attacks with the same attack bonuses and same rolls could cause a hit or miss, even if they occur within the same round. The DM has absolute control over the monsters in his world, and the players don't see the stat-blocks. There could easily be a contingent blur or displacement on a monster that triggers upon the first hit of the battle. In 4e reaction abilities can add bonuses to various defenses. But there could just as easily not be those abilities, and the defenses of the monsters should stay relatively static (assuming local conditions are unchanged by the PCs).

Were I running a game and trying to spice up the encounters I would write a new arc with a Tippy-esk BBEG fond of Contingent spells (not the feat, the spell) on his minions. This would allow me to run a more dynamic battle as the various Contingencies were activated. The players may call shenanigans at first, but they can't prove I'm doing anything wrong.

Overall, very well though out arguments.

Saph
2008-11-10, 05:21 PM
You're not crazy. :)

However, something you're missing:

DMs generally are more likely to fudge the more one-sided a battle is turning out to be. In particular, if the PCs are doing massive damage to the monster and killing it before it gets a chance to do anything much, the DM is more likely to feel he needs to upgrade the monster to give it a chance to do its stuff. Note that the DM can't easily fudge AC, but he CAN fudge hitpoints! (And in the long term, that works out to almost the same thing.)

On the other hand, if the monster gets several rounds to do its stuff and do some damage, the DM is more likely to feel that the combat's been a good one (which it probably has been) and will be okay about the monster going down.

Hence if your DM fudges a lot, it tends to be in your long-term interest to favour defence over attack. If I was going to give a name, I'd call this the "Defence over Offence Theory in Tabletop Gaming." In short, I've noticed very similar stuff to you, but I've drawn the exact opposite conclusion. :P

- Saph

monty
2008-11-10, 05:23 PM
So the conclusion: make a character that focuses on neither offense nor defense? A balanced character? What is this nonsense?

Irreverent Fool
2008-11-10, 05:23 PM
Solution:

A dynamic AC roll similar to attack rolls.

Or a different system. Seriously. 3.5 is goofy. Love it or leave it.

Swiftest
2008-11-10, 05:28 PM
You're basing strategy on the idea that your DM fudges rolls that make defense irrelevant, despite the fact that your character would prioritize defense.

So, not only are you using out of character knowledge of game mechanics to make character decisions, you're using out of player knowledge of the DM's personality to make player decisions.

Congratulations, you're the world's first meta-meta-gamer. Like your character sheet is on the side of a tesseract.

HP

You're 100% correct. This is indeed taking meta-gaming to a whole new level. Yet I can't help myself. Hold me? :smalleek: It's like finding the 3rd derivative for the first time or attempting to solve a temporal paradox -- we are now one step further down the road to madness, no matter what the end result. To be fair, my character is still prioritizing certain defensive items above anything else, because that's what he'd do *in character*. After that, however ... yeah, experience IN GAME is probably going to teach my wizard that killing the enemy before they can manage to hurt him appears to be the strategy most likely to leave him alive and un-pincushioned.

Ascension
2008-11-10, 05:29 PM
Ordinarily when I'm GMing and I fudge something it's either lowering attack and damage rolls so as not to kill the players' characters or raising a recurring enemy's HP or saves so they don't kill him. I fudge to prevent death on both sides of the screen, not to cause death.

Nohwl
2008-11-10, 05:33 PM
Quite so! Just use the DMG guidelines to build a pair of gauntlets of continuous true strike, and you're set! :smalltongue: [/sarcasm]

so what do you do when a player doesnt roll above a 10 on the last 12 or 13 attack rolls? i think they should hit at least once or twice when they are playing a fighter type character.

Riffington
2008-11-10, 05:37 PM
I agree with Saph.

Also, "fudging" is not the only way a DM reacts to player success/failure. The DM also chooses encounters based on the players' power. If you can take down tough creatures in two rounds, she's going to put you up against tougher ones next time. Tougher monsters tend to hit harder, and what with your low defenses...

Swiftest
2008-11-10, 05:51 PM
Good points Saph =). I've got to give you credit, it could certainly be as you say. Perhaps the best thing overall is simply not to worry about it and to continue playing your character as usual, and not bother trying to tell with whether or not the GM is fudging or making plans to react to it =X.

@Riffington -- Also a good point, although the DM should be keeping track of our parties abilities and capabilities, and should thus know if he's putting us up against a challenge we can't handle. If he does that, and if it's so far beyond us that we have no chance, shame on him, says I! Sure, you could argue we deserved it by front loading offense, but there are ways he could gently teach us that lesson without tpk'ing us and ultimately it's his responsibility not to do that, imo =p. It's a delicate balance, though -- that's for sure. Responsibility for the health of the game is shared by both sides. One piece of advice I can give to GM's everywhere is DON'T EVER LET ON THAT YOU FUDGE ROLLS. Seriously, don't. Just be like "Whoa, damn, that hobgoblin hit AGAIN! CRAZY! How unlikely is that?" Letting on that you fudge just makes players doubt, and doubt is the first step on the road to OMG WTF BBQ. *cough*

Emperor Tippy
2008-11-10, 05:53 PM
Ordinarily when I'm GMing and I fudge something it's either lowering attack and damage rolls so as not to kill the players' characters or raising a recurring enemy's HP or saves so they don't kill him. I fudge to prevent death on both sides of the screen, not to cause death.

What's the point of fudging to keep a BBEG alive? True Res isn't that expensive and being though of as dead has certain advantages. You can generally get away with the PC's killing the same BBEG 4 or 5 times before they finally figure out its the same guy and come up with a way to trap his soul/prevent resurrection. And a little Craft Contigent Spell to stack a Psionic Revivify (make an arcane version if you want) and a Heal spell and the bad guy gets killed and then just stands right back up, ready to continue the fight. And since contingent spells made with craft contingent spell count as an item even a regular dispel won't keep them away for more than 4 rounds.

AslanCross
2008-11-10, 05:53 PM
I have a problem calibrating the damage monsters deal. Either it's way too much (knocking off 1/3 to half of a PC's level on an easy hit), or isn't hitting/hurting at all.

It is indeed far easier to make glass cannon monsters, but unless the group doesn't act in a tactically sound manner (which my group almost NEVER does), someone is going to be hurting a lot more than he/she is hurting the monsters.

This happened last session. The PCs were in an inn overlooking a village square. Ogres and hobgoblins came, looking for the PCs, and when the elder refused to accommodate them, they attacked. What happened was that the ranger/swordsage (she has the highest AC right now at 26) leaped out the window and engaged the ogres.

One thing the group failed to overlook: NONE of them had ranks in jump or tumble aside from the ranger (heck, even the Rogue didn't have ranks in tumble, I discovered to my horror), and all of them were horribly, horribly afraid of the 2d6 damage they'd get from jumping out the window, even the 93 HP paladin/crusader. They took forever to get out of the inn, while the ranger was soaking up +20 attacks dealing 2d6+11 damage from the ogres. I decided NOT to have the ogres do full attacks, since they'd do +16/+16/+11 (2d6+11) and +16 (2d6+5) with dual-wielded morningstars. (Whirling Frenzy variant barbarians)
Didn't help that the cleric and the paladin were about as quick as molasses due to their heavy armor.
Of course, once everyone gets out, the wizard casts glitterdust and the blinded ogres start hitting each other.
The ranger did do an incredible amount of damage on the ogres with a full attack + burning blade (about 53 damage total), but she really would've died if I hadn't pulled back on the punches.

The ogres had 20 AC and about 100 HP each.

Swiftest
2008-11-10, 06:00 PM
Aslancross, that's clearly a situation where some DM fudging was called for, so I say GJ! Unless you were actively looking to teach the PC's a lesson in group management skills, which clearly this time you were not. Hopefully you can gently inform them on how they might have handled that combat better so that next time you won't be too afraid to let loose and get down with your bad self (and bad monsters) :D.

Saph
2008-11-10, 06:04 PM
@Riffington -- Also a good point, although the DM should be keeping track of our parties abilities and capabilities, and should thus know if he's putting us up against a challenge we can't handle. If he does that, and if it's so far beyond us that we have no chance, shame on him, says I! Sure, you could argue we deserved it by front loading offense, but there are ways he could gently teach us that lesson without tpk'ing us and ultimately it's his responsibility not to do that, imo =p.

Of course, they don't always do it. :P

Here's a story I posted up on these boards a while ago. I was playing Niriel, my long-running sun elf wizard/loremaster, and had just reached level 12. It was in the closing stages of a long-running FR campaign, and the DM had some . . . issues over the characters' power level. Here's my description from back then of what happened:

-------------------------------------

Six PCs, five level 11s and one level 12 (me). After a long journey through the Dimensional Locked dungeon, we finally tracked down the boss. We made our way through the last set of traps (including one that dispelled every spell currently active on us) and the fight started off.

The boss was a . . . (deep breath) female redspawn arcaniss dragonblood incorporeal spectral mage fire subtype rogue/sorcerer/spellwarp sniper undead. 15th-level caster, CR 18 or so. The curious (or just sadistic) among you can find the un-advanced version of her here (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fc/20070622a) at the WotC website.

It took about five rounds before we even knew what we were fighting. Once we did we found that with her types, subtypes, and defensive spells, she was immune to almost everything we had and had a 50% chance of dodging everything else. That was when the two shadesteel golems showed up. They had a negative pulse wave that fired every 1d4+1 rounds and did 24d6 negative energy damage to everyone in range (Fort half) and healed the mage for the same amount.

Yeah.

The carnage went on for a while. When it eventually finished one PC was disintegrated, three more were dead, one was at negative HP and stable, and I was the only one left standing, with literally nothing left that could hurt the mage. I surrendered. The DM paused for a while, trying to figure out what to do. Eventually the mage said she'd flip a coin, and if I called it right she'd let me and one other go. The DM flipped the coin. I called heads. It was heads.

And now for the really sadistic part.

The mage nodded and that she'd let me go, along with whoever was left alive. She went from one PC to the other, checking each one, and saying "Dead" each time. When she got to the one who was unconscious but still breathing (a moon elf ranger who was Niriel's best friend in the party), the mage drew a dagger, cut the ranger's throat, then turned to me and smiled. "Nope. She's dead too."

There was nothing left I could do. I walked away. The mage let me get as far as the door, then said, "Oh . . . Niriel?" and shot me in the back. I think it was supposed to kill me, but the DM had forgotten that I still had a greater mirror image spell up, which took the hit. I got out.

So, five out of six dead. Not a total wipeout, but the next closest thing. Couldn't quite call it a TPK, so we settled on calling it an EDD (Everybody's Dead, Dave.)

- Saph

Swiftest
2008-11-10, 06:09 PM
That's ... amazing. AMAZING. Rofl. Very nice.

ClericofPhwarrr
2008-11-10, 06:22 PM
Congratulations, you're the world's first meta-meta-gamer. Like your character sheet is on the side of a tesseract.

The first? Hardly. And he's not thinking far enough along the meta lines, really.

If you want meta-meta-gaming, you need to be looking at how to get the most of THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT RESOURCE of any gaming session: play time. The most powerful fighter in the world is pointless if he's sitting on the sidelines because the group shuns combat in favor of pursuing political intrigue. The particulars of this sort of metagaming will depend from group to group, depending on campaign style, DM preferences, rules system used, and the other characters. There are a few things that tend to consistently work:

Having an interesting character with notable/funny quirks
Not being concerned with the character's death or long-term resources
Finding ways to share the spotlight--if you try keeping it centered on you, the DM may take it away and you'll annoy the other players; try standing in it at the same time as the other players, assisting them in their character's moments of awesome and bringing them along for your own

ClericofPhwarrr
2008-11-10, 06:25 PM
As for Swiftest's theory in the original post, I think a better option would be optimizing for a greater number of options, especially the sort that aren't reliant on rolling. In this case, go for the utility items.

Belial_the_Leveler
2008-11-10, 06:36 PM
IF I want to fudge however I want, my monsters get Combat Expertise. Want to fudge attacks? Just fudge attacks. Want to fudge defence? Have the monster take an attack penalty to add to its defence and then fudge attacks to cover up. :smallamused:

monty
2008-11-10, 06:45 PM
IF I want to fudge however I want, my monsters get Combat Expertise. Want to fudge attacks? Just fudge attacks. Want to fudge defence? Have the monster take an attack penalty to add to its defence and then fudge attacks to cover up. :smallamused:

You, my friend, are truly evil.

RPGuru1331
2008-11-10, 06:46 PM
If the guy fudges things for the sake of interest, wouldn't he start beating the tar out of you if you prioritized to hit over defense and made a bunch of glass cannons? The theory is predicated on him not returning like for like, and that seems a poor assumption for someone who's actively trying to make fights interesting.

chiasaur11
2008-11-10, 06:51 PM
So, how meta is making plans to "disable" the other players, allowing you the most game time?

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-11-10, 06:55 PM
You're basing strategy on the idea that your DM fudges rolls that make defense irrelevant, despite the fact that your character would prioritize defense.

So, not only are you using out of character knowledge of game mechanics to make character decisions, you're using out of player knowledge of the DM's personality to make player decisions.

Congratulations, you're the world's first meta-meta-gamer. Like your character sheet is on the side of a tesseract.

HPThis is why I think DMs need to just not fudge at all. It encourages this sort of thinking.

ClericofPhwarrr
2008-11-10, 06:56 PM
So, how meta is making plans to "disable" the other players, allowing you the most game time?

Seeing as you're playing with real people who probably won't put up with those sorts of shenanigans, and especially since you aren't the game's moderator, not very. That sort of thing will almost certainly get noticed and result in backlash against you. Then you get strained friendships/booted from the group/an unfun night/etc.

Unless you're sleeping with the DM, in which case you may get away with it but still tick off the group.

Ravens_cry
2008-11-10, 06:59 PM
I have made in its defence the argument that role playing games are the same thing as computer games, but without the computer. Or rather, the DM is the computer. It isn't real, and it isn't, thought offas real.
Following that metaphor, the DM screen is like source code. It's where you hide stuff that it would be detrimental to game verisimilitude, and helps prevent certain kinds of metegaming. Sure, it allows the DM to cheat, just like AI in games can cheat, for a more challenging experience. But a DM who fudges too many dice rolls, or makes allows Baddies to escape 'just because' too often is going to have dissatisfied players. On the same note, if a player can just look over and see 'oh tomorrow we are fighting such and such, I will prepare this spell, take this sword, buy this potion.' That is metegaming,and if the information is right there in view, it is harder to avoid, even unconsciously.

Starbuck_II
2008-11-10, 07:01 PM
The boss was a . . . (deep breath) female redspawn arcaniss dragonblood incorporeal spectral mage fire subtype rogue/sorcerer/spellwarp sniper undead. 15th-level caster, CR 18 or so. The curious (or just sadistic) among you can find the un-advanced version of her here (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fc/20070622a) at the WotC website.


Hey, at least she didn't send the Incantrix one at you from that link.
The Linked version has no sorceror levels (just natural Sorcery).



It took about five rounds before we even knew what we were fighting. Once we did we found that with her types, subtypes, and defensive spells, she was immune to almost everything we had and had a 50% chance of dodging everything else. That was when the two shadesteel golems showed up. They had a negative pulse wave that fired every 1d4+1 rounds and did 24d6 negative energy damage to everyone in range (Fort half) and healed the mage for the same amount.

She was only immine to status effects and fire. unless she has a multitude of Energy resist items: I don't see how she would be unaffected by spells.

It says Vulnerable to Cold too.

chiasaur11
2008-11-10, 07:03 PM
Seeing as you're playing with real people who probably won't put up with those sorts of shenanigans, and especially since you aren't the game's moderator, not very. That sort of thing will almost certainly get noticed and result in backlash against you. Then you get strained friendships/booted from the group/an unfun night/etc.

Unless you're sleeping with the DM, in which case you may get away with it but still tick off the group.

So, kneecapping the other players isn't metagaming?

Man, someone owes me an apology.

Saph
2008-11-10, 07:24 PM
She was only immine to status effects and fire. unless she has a multitude of Energy resist items: I don't see how she would be unaffected by spells.

Undead immunities plus incorporeal immunities plus fire immunity plus half a dozen buff spells added up to quite a lot. The 50% miss chance was what really crippled the damage-dealers.


It says Vulnerable to Cold too.

If we'd known about the vulnerability before the combat was more than half over, that would have been useful, yes. :P

- Saph

Ravens_cry
2008-11-10, 07:26 PM
If we'd known about the vulnerability before the combat was more than half over, that would have been useful, yes. :P

- Saph
But would your CHARACTERS have known that?

Starbuck_II
2008-11-10, 07:50 PM
But would your CHARACTERS have known that?

Totally, most creatures of fire hate cold.

Saph
2008-11-10, 08:14 PM
But would your CHARACTERS have known that?

It was a moot point, since no-one had any cold attacks worth mentioning. The only reason we even learned what we were fighting was because I got a lucky roll on a dispel magic and broke her reflective disguise spell.

- Saph

Raum
2008-11-10, 08:49 PM
Thoughts? Am I crazy?Seems like one more argument against fudging rolls. :)

Hank Dude
2008-11-10, 09:09 PM
I have a problem calibrating the damage monsters deal. Either it's way too much (knocking off 1/3 to half of a PC's level on an easy hit), or isn't hitting/hurting at all.

It is indeed far easier to make glass cannon monsters, but unless the group doesn't act in a tactically sound manner (which my group almost NEVER does), someone is going to be hurting a lot more than he/she is hurting the monsters.

This happened last session. The PCs were in an inn overlooking a village square. Ogres and hobgoblins came, looking for the PCs, and when the elder refused to accommodate them, they attacked. What happened was that the ranger/swordsage (she has the highest AC right now at 26) leaped out the window and engaged the ogres.

One thing the group failed to overlook: NONE of them had ranks in jump or tumble aside from the ranger (heck, even the Rogue didn't have ranks in tumble, I discovered to my horror), and all of them were horribly, horribly afraid of the 2d6 damage they'd get from jumping out the window, even the 93 HP paladin/crusader. They took forever to get out of the inn, while the ranger was soaking up +20 attacks dealing 2d6+11 damage from the ogres. I decided NOT to have the ogres do full attacks, since they'd do +16/+16/+11 (2d6+11) and +16 (2d6+5) with dual-wielded morningstars. (Whirling Frenzy variant barbarians)
Didn't help that the cleric and the paladin were about as quick as molasses due to their heavy armor.
Of course, once everyone gets out, the wizard casts glitterdust and the blinded ogres start hitting each other.
The ranger did do an incredible amount of damage on the ogres with a full attack + burning blade (about 53 damage total), but she really would've died if I hadn't pulled back on the punches.

The ogres had 20 AC and about 100 HP each.
lol Heck with tactics. Heroics rule the day! A dramatic death can't happen if you don't die! I say don't fudge the rolls. The characters will learn sooner or later, and taking the teeth out just removes the thrill of always being near death. It will make them better strategists, or at worst, good sports. (Or get a mountain dew can thrown at you.)

Ascension
2008-11-10, 10:16 PM
What's the point of fudging to keep a BBEG alive? True Res isn't that expensive and being though of as dead has certain advantages. You can generally get away with the PC's killing the same BBEG 4 or 5 times before they finally figure out its the same guy and come up with a way to trap his soul/prevent resurrection. And a little Craft Contigent Spell to stack a Psionic Revivify (make an arcane version if you want) and a Heal spell and the bad guy gets killed and then just stands right back up, ready to continue the fight. And since contingent spells made with craft contingent spell count as an item even a regular dispel won't keep them away for more than 4 rounds.

I was talking about GMing d20 in general, particularly Star Wars, which doesn't have resurrection.

Yahzi
2008-11-11, 12:27 AM
Thoughts? Am I crazy?
Not crazy; simply rational. Why even buy armor if you know the DM won't let your character die?

This is why I never, ever fudge rolls. I roll everything out in front of the players - heck, most of the time, I make them roll it. If they die, they die. I fudge the situation if I can ("Oh, look, the king and his knights happen to be riding by. They rescue you from the goblins, make fun of you, and take all the loot.") But the dice - the dice are inviolate. They are the very hand of Fate, and immune to mortal tampering.

Mikeavelli
2008-11-11, 12:57 AM
Mmm, has anyone ever run into the problem of the DM fudging saving throws for their monsters?

I'll admit Wizards are powerful enough without being able to kill things with a single standard action, but it gets old when anything worth save-or-killing automatically makes its saving throw. It becomes especially ridiculous once you've tried to charm the fighter-types in every battle and never once succeeded.

Eventually I got wise to this DM's antics, and just Banned the whole enchantment school as part of my wizard Specialization. I went from there to focusing entirely on spells that didn't allow a save or Spell Resistance, it got to the point where, if it allowed the DM to make any roll or action to negate it, I didn't even bother to memorize the spell.

Eventually creatures started appearing that could resist even spells with no spell resistance allowed. I just gave up at this point, and went for Polymorph.

Talic
2008-11-11, 01:39 AM
I would like to point out the various defensive actions, spells, activated abilities, and so on that increase defense.

And a character that Wished to be harder to hit in combat should at least see a decent boost. Considering the XP cost, and the spell level, a boost of +10 for a day, or +20 for a minute is in line with the power level. Entirely ad-hoc, but if you go with duplicating existing spells, then something such as Ironguard, or energy immunity can change the results of offensive actions, as can illusions.

Fishy
2008-11-11, 02:11 AM
Meta ^N gaming:

The DM wants the people he enjoys playing with to come back the next session. Ideally, one of those players will buy pizza. A fudge-happy DM is willing to use any of the resources 'behind the screen' to make this happen.

If you are a jerk, the DM has no incentive to bring you back. Don't be a jerk.

A player that sits around being bored the entire night is much less likely to come back. The DM will try to arrange things so that, over the course of the session, everyone eventually does something cool. The more the DM is forced to fudge, though, the more he risks ticking off someone like Mikeavelli, who won't come back.

So, we're looking for one really Cool Thing that your character can do, once or twice a session.

Sleep, Entangle, and the traditional Batman save-or-dies are *terrible*, because they end the encounter and prevent other players from doing their Cool Things. Fudge-Happy DM has to intercede to prevent that from happening, and if he does that too often, players get pissed off.

If you optimize for offense, and have enough Power Attack to drop a monster dead in one go, you prevent that monster from doing cool things, and you prevent any players from doing any of their Cool Things to that guy.

You want things that are Cool, and can help other players do cool things. Stuff like Mass Snake's Swiftness, and the White Raven school from ToB (And a few of the swordsage's throws are pretty awesome for our purposes as well).

BobVosh
2008-11-11, 02:49 AM
Follow paranoia on this one, only roll the die if you don't know what you want to happen. Why bother otherwise?

Harp
2008-11-11, 03:22 AM
Considering dead opponents typically cannot hit back, offense is generally a better overall strategy than defense, particularly abilities that limit the effectiveness or options of an opponent. A small penalty to attack isn't going to alter an NPC Barbarian's strategy in most cases, but a significant one against an opponent with average melee options might force him into a course of action he didn't originally intend on.

Ultimately, a character is bound to have weaknesses. A high AC fighter that hits well is going to have a crappy will save, mages have almost no HP or Fort save, and so on (clerics and druids, not so much). Eventually an enemy will come along and hit them where it hurts with abilities it cannot exhaust 90% of the time, at which point the question of going on the defensive is simply silly.

That said, your thoughts on metagaming an opponents AC is interesting. Options like Defensive Fighting and Total Defense still exist, not to mention any number of defensive spells and potions, so don't feel shy about mixing it up.

Hyooz
2008-11-11, 03:35 AM
As a DM, I've fudged before, and I've had DMs fudge before. They've told me they fudge, but hey, I don't mind, and my players don't mind.

Know why? Because we only fudge in favor of fun. Fudges go both ways, if it means keeping things interesting and fun.