[Any] DMs; Most you've ever fudged things to help the party.

[Asbestos]

For me, and most recently, it was in a 4e game with my gf and best friend. It was her first time playing and the 1st session of the adventure. I didn't want a character to die so early as I was afraid it might have turned her off the whole thing. Anyway, my friend's sorcerer managed to get trashed by a rat swarm/rats and was at negative hp and zero HS. The rat nearest the to the Spirit Shaman's companion provoked an OA and was hit, which allowed the Shaman to throw a few surgeless hp at the Sorc which kept him alive until the encounter ended.

I think its funny what monsters make it onto the list of things my players never want to encounter again. (Chokers, Rats, Wolves, Kruthiks, and Lycanthropes are quite high)

[TheThan]

Try six critical hits in a row, complete with confirmations and everything. They were level 3ish and the bugbear fighter would have wiped them out.

[Thajocoth]

I've only nudged one die.

If I hadn't, a party member would've hit -bloodied (and died).

I'm still not 100% sure it was the right decision. Though, it was 4 level 4s vs a level 6 solo. The math works out to it being 3.25 levels above them. It was the final round of battle that this nudge occurred in. (I had planned for 5 people. The party's Sorcerer couldn't make it that day.)

[AstralFire]

Party was making a reflex save to jump from a flying carpet to the ledge of a floating castle as they were being bombarded by attacks on all sides. The monk rolls a 1. I say, "due to the long duration of the jump and the monk's many class features on mid-air control and mobility, make another roll."

He rolls a 1 again. I can't fudge this any further. I whip out the player's character sheet out of desperation searching for anything, anything at all... and then I find it.

I describe the party looking over the edge only to find Kurt hanging in mid-air, holding on for dear life to apparently... nothing?

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In an earlier session, the party had killed a high-level NPC during a high-speed chase between an upgraded Apparatus of Kwalish (Apparatus of the Crab in the SRD, the upgrade was a really tricked out turtle made of adamantine) by jettisoning an immovable rod out of the back of the apparatus, using a Mage Hand wand to trigger it as it went out. It went straight into the NPC's heart. The monk's player made sure to retrieve the immovable rod.

The rest of the party handed down a rope and he climbed up.

[kjones]

Probably this encounter from the Red Hand of Doom campaign, at Skull Gorge Bridge. (Look for the nested spoiler in the first block.)

In short, the rogue really should have fallen to her death, but I allowed the ranger to accomplish some fairly illegitimate awesome to save her life.

[Tsotha-lanti]

RuneQuest 3, with notoriously insane poison (as a general rule, failing any save against poison will inflict as much or more damage as is sufficient to kill the average human); playing the intro adventure like 12 years ago, the two PCs were both "killed" by the giant spider twice over - damage to the head plus poison to general hit points. I pretty clumsily fudged things and let them live.

To be fair, when they used their knowledge of the content of the adventure and laughed off the duck bandit with "dummy crossbowmen" in the bushes around them, I had them turn out to be real and nearly murder the PCs with bolts, turning a silly stand-off into a near-lethal ambush. I think it made up for it...

Then there's been a lot of toning down damage without telling the PCs to keep them going in a big fight.

I stopped a couple of years ago: at this point, if my players can't hack it it's their own fault. In D&D, combat is about 75% of the game, so there's no sense fudging to get them through it. In pretty much any other game, it's their own damn fault for getting into a fight to begin with. (Plus most good games have a mechanic to let them control their survival anyways.)

[SilverClawShift]

Our Dm has said coldly and clearly "I will kill you outright if that's what the dice tell me to do".

That said, I personally think he used to lie about die rolls earlier in his career, when he didn't have the firmest grasp on what we were about to do and what we were (or more importantly, were not) capable of. I don't think it's good or bad for a DM to do either way, but I think if you're NOT going to fudge rolls, you should definately let the PCs know that things are played as they fall, and their lives are in the hands of hateful and uncaring gods of chance.

He WILL fudge situations for us tho, especially if a cahracter has become plot relevant.

[Blackjackg]

Wow. As a DM, I fudge die rolls all the time. I guess this would tick off some DMs, but honestly... if a critical hit from a random mook would kill a character and ruin one of my friends' night, I'm not going to give that random mook a critical hit. By the same token, if the dice keep coming up ridiculously low and my supposedly awesome villain is starting to look like a complete wuss, I'll give him a hit here and there just to make the fight interesting.

I still use the dice, because the randomness often tells a more creative and surprising story than I could come up with by myself, but I'm not going to let them ruin the fun for my players or for myself.

[horus42]

I fudged a roll one time, because if I hadn't, all of the PCs would have died. Funny thing is, I did the math slightly wrong, and they all died anyway.

But it all worked out in the end. They decided to play the loved ones of their former characters and worked up some good dramatic role playing.

[dragoonsgone]

I have only DMed a couple of nights and it was our first encounter of 3.5. I didn't know what the penalty for killing a druids animal companion was I didn't wanna look it up since it was late after making our characters.

I didn't fudge the dice since I rolled it in front of em but the pet only had 1 life left so I didn't bother adding in the +7 damage from the ogre.

I am sure I will do more but I need to figure out how gritty they want to be.

[TheCountAlucard]

Let's just say I'm a lot more inclined to let the players reroll "floor dice" when they come up 1s than when they come up 20s... (shifty eyes)

[AslanCross]

Black dragon. Acid breath. The ranger's -10 HP ended up at -9 instead. I didn't want to kill her off since they were in the middle of the wilderness and it would be really silly to have someone appear all of a sudden.

[Random NPC]

I fudge based on the rules:

Rule of Cool (player's only) > Rule of Funny > Rule of Fun > Written rules.

If it's in the written rules, and the rules say they have to die, they die, unless it's no fun. Rule of Fun wins here

If it's no fun, but the situation is so damn funny (the kobold commoner killed the wildshaped Druid by pure nat 20s), Rule of Funny wins.

If it's no fun, and it's funny the way the player was about to die, but he did it to pull off the most awesome maneuver ever (rolls a natural 1 on the Jump check to try not to fall on the pit of doom after rolling straight 18s, 19s and 20s on the tumbles, balances and climbs). Rule of Cool trumps everything.

[sofawall]

I think your last example is also Rule of Funny.

Also, our group plays mainly the same way.

[FMArthur]

I'm of the opinion that an easy battle isn't even worth wasting time rolling dice over, so my group's encounters are usually at least a CR above party level. I had to fudge a few rolls that guaranteed a TPK early on, but otherwise they're just getting tougher. There will usually be multiple instances of people dropping to negative hit points every session, and I haven't had to fudge any, but I would if some huge damage would outright kill a player who was very healthy before the hit, making it into a barely-survived thing at -8 HP or something.

[Sallera]

Ehm, third session I ran, I had a Large Fire Elemental attack whoever had the highest hp once I realized I'd massively underestimated its strength. Still dropped the cleric to 0 with a crit.

And once when the party was fighting a bunch of Drowned, with a Symbol of Pain in the room. We all forgot about the Symbol until the end, when it was looking like a TPK until the monk remembered he'd failed one of his drowning checks by one because he'd forgotten about his luckstone. Then we remembered the Symbol, and its -4 to ability checks. After realizing what a hopeless battle I'd created due to that nasty synergy, we just ignored the Symbol's effects.

Aside from that, all the rolls in our group happen openly unless it's something like a dragon's breath recharge or a sense motive, so the dice rule.

[Vaynor]

My player had decided to get some extra XP (level one group, he was just a few away from level 2) by killing a rat (they were in town and there were no other monsters, and he wanted to figure out his new stuff while the rest of the party was shopping). So he goes into a local inn and goes down into the basement to kill a rat. He misses his first strike, so the rat attacks back. I roll...20. I roll again...20. I roll again, and it's a hit. We play by the instant death rule (2 natural 20s and a confirmation). So rightfully, he should have been dead, but I let it slide and just had the rat crit.

[Nai_Calus]

Rogue opponent gets a crit on a shortbow, plus sneak attack dice, on the Swashbuckler. Dice say -14 HP. DM does not, since player hadn't been being especially stupid and my dungeon had turned out to be harder than I thought, even with playing the enemies like idiots. <_>;

I wish I could fudge my *players'* dice sometimes. One of my players has horrific dice luck, almost never rolls higher than 10. He almost always misses, and since he's a L6 Scout with just a +1 Shortbow and no STR mod, it's not very exciting when he DOES. His one crit so far, he rolled a 1 for damage. (We started at L6, but I use xp so it's taken a few sessions since combat tends to take a while with these guys.) Worst, we use Fantasy Grounds II, so he can't even exile his dice and use different ones. I've gotten so frustrated at it making combat take even longer that I've actually told him to re-roll his attack once or twice.

(My Shadowrun DM and party once made me use someone else's dice to re-roll after between skill dice, control pool dice and using a karma point, I'd rolled something like 17 dice and gotten two successes on something after an evening of crappy rolls. The party made me keep using the other guy's dice after it actually worked the second time. The party had rather a vested interest in me succeeding on rolls, though, since I was the Rigger and I was driving all of them while being chased at the time. >_>; )

[Krazddndfreek]

Adventure I just ran the other day, the fighter (who uses a bow) was the first to climb this steepish hill. (steep enough for a climb check) There's a tower at the end of the climb and the orcs in the tower notice him. He got orc-javelin'd. Twice. Then, all the other orcs come running down, and hack the crap out of him while he's holding the rope for our full-plate dwarf fighter. I fudged a couple of rolls that time because (miraculously) even though the dwarf fighter decided to put a couple of ranks in climb and made it up (in full-plate) in record time, no one else in the party made it up, so the two fighters suffered heavy damage, and would've otherwise died.

[Saph]

I honestly can't think of one on short notice. I'm a notoriously ruthless DM. When I posted the list of PC fatalities for my Red Hand of Doom campaign, one of the posters on this board told me that he'd run games of Paranoia with fewer character deaths. :P

Oh wait, there's one. In my Phantasy Star campaign, I ignored the clause in Reincarnate/Raise Dead that says they don't work on targets killed by death magic. So I let a PC get raised when they shouldn't technically have been able to be.

On the oooooother hand . . . given that the reason that they'd died was because they'd been fighting a boss who was literally unkillable and had a ranged Slay Living attack that he could use at will . . . yeah, I don't think that earns me many points.

- Saph

[Oslecamo]

Oh wait, there's one. In my Phantasy Star campaign, I ignored the clause in Reincarnate/Raise Dead that says they don't work on targets killed by death magic. So I let a PC get raised when they shouldn't technically have been able to be.

One of these days you're gonna have to tell us more details about that infamous PS campaign using D&D rules. I would love to hear it. Or by any chance did you post the campaign report somewhere and I missed it?

As for myself, I have to admit I sometimes fudge the rolls to save the party, but it's only on a campaign's beggining. Basically I give my players one or two "extra" lives as they get used to the power level of the campaign. But if the dices keep telling that they should die, well, they die. Ditto if they die due to their own fault and not because my moster just rolled maximum damage on a crit.

[Quietus]

I fudge rolls like a champion. Hell, I fudge anything I want, and though I try not to make that common knowledge (since it'd cheapen the story), I don't hide it, either.

Case in point : my enemies don't have HP. At least, not a specific score. They either have half HP (the norm), max HP (what we give for my group), or anywhere in between. In essence, I have a minimum for how much has to be dealt, a maximum where I say "Okay, screw waiting for a good moment", and any time in between there, I'll end the fight if it's dramatic and cool. This generally only applies to important foes, however; Mooks tend to be half HP always, unless they prove to be remarkably underpowered in practice.

Attack and damage rolls are much the same. They're hidden from player view, and that's because there's a fair portion of the time that I'll either A) Not let a monster do more than half its damage because it's "holding back", B) Not let a monster do LESS than half it's damage because it's turned out less powerful than I thought, or C) don't want to see accomplished PCs that the players have put lots of time into being killed by a random bandit.

The exception to these, of course, is that I refuse to fudge in favor of a player who's doing something excessively stupid. Like they just realized that the kobold they noticed is a much more powerful spellcaster than they are (L6 sorcerer kobold vs two L3 caster PCs; Not a huge difference, but significant enough), so they decide... to charge in, head-on, and attack it for being a kobold. I suppose I'm party to blame there, though, since I'm the one that made them hate kobolds with a fiery passion..

[only1doug]

Our Dm has said coldly and clearly "I will kill you outright if that's what the dice tell me to do".

That said, I personally think he used to lie about die rolls earlier in his career, when he didn't have the firmest grasp on what we were about to do and what we were (or more importantly, were not) capable of. I don't think it's good or bad for a DM to do either way, but I think if you're NOT going to fudge rolls, you should definately let the PCs know that things are played as they fall, and their lives are in the hands of hateful and uncaring gods of chance.

He WILL fudge situations for us tho, especially if a cahracter has become plot relevant.

Last Leg

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The three of them stood around for a while, debating on what to do with me. My stone legs were absolutely shattered. Peicing them back together would take god knows how long, and that's if they could even find all the right peices in the gravely rubble. Closer examination revealed that a lot of the gravel was actually stone insects, so the odds of peicing me back together was nill. Then the Swashbuckler raised the gruesome possibility of my mangled legs rotting off of me if they did something wrong.
It was THAT comment that made them decide to resurrect me sans lower limbs.

So, THAT SUCKS.

The Dragon Shaman thinks it's ironic justice. I skipped over the ability to fly at will in order to have zombie mounts. Now I NEED a zombie mount to MOVE under my own power. He chuckled. I glared.
<snip>
My current plan, two levels from now, is to IMMEDIATELY take the Fell Flight invocation so I can fly under my own power, and then to IMMEDIATELY purches a floor length dress. I'll be floating like a wraith, but at least I'll be more or less where I was before.

Ahem, Petrified statue of a warlock falls to the floor and both legs are shattered. when unpetrified warlock is still alive, just legless. by RAW and RAI I think the warlock would be dead, Rule of Cool and Plot Relevance conspire to allow you to continue (with major problems).

Personally I think SCS has a perfect example of how a GM should fudge to keep things rolling.

[Saph]

One of these days you're gonna have to tell us more details about that infamous PS campaign using D&D rules. I would love to hear it. Or by any chance did you post the campaign report somewhere and I missed it?

No, I never did a full writeup. I did keep fairly detailed session plan notes, though, along with stats for most of the opponents, and I've still got the character sheets for Zio and the Profound Darkness.

It made for a really good campaign, all in all. Some of the events have passed into group legend, such as the Sandworm Incident. :)

- Saph

[Oslecamo]

No, I never did a full writeup. I did keep fairly detailed session plan notes, though, along with stats for most of the opponents, and I've still got the character sheets for Zio and the Profound Darkness.

Any chance you could share those with me us?

[Saph]

Any chance you could share those with me us?

Sure, PM me your email address, and I'll send them to you. :)

The only part that I fully wrote up on these boards was the final boss, The Profound Darkness. (Looking at that should give a good indication of why I'm considered ruthless.)

- Saph

[Xyk]

I once made a friendly cleric appear...I am ashamed. I told them the town they were rescuing sent him to help, but it was pretty terrible.

[Epinephrine]

Wow. As a DM, I fudge die rolls all the time. I guess this would tick off some DMs, but honestly... if a critical hit from a random mook would kill a character and ruin one of my friends' night, I'm not going to give that random mook a critical hit. By the same token, if the dice keep coming up ridiculously low and my supposedly awesome villain is starting to look like a complete wuss, I'll give him a hit here and there just to make the fight interesting.

I still use the dice, because the randomness often tells a more creative and surprising story than I could come up with by myself, but I'm not going to let them ruin the fun for my players or for myself.

I'm in this camp, somewhat. I don't mind the occasional big bad dying fast though - the PCs just wiped the floor with a stupidly powerful mindflayer opponent (Zyrxog, for those who know him - I can't believe they did it either. Then again, going in prepped helps a ton), for example, when not a single one of the warblade's full attacks missed due to displacement, and he scores crits mixed in there.

[Narmoth]

I do it all the time. I barely look at what the die ends up on, and simply use the statistical amount of expected hits if it's more than just one or a few monsters at a time.
I guess I'm more of a storyteller than combat encounter dm.

[Callista]

I will generally fudge it if it was my mistake that made the encounter unwinnable, for example, if I didn't realize just how strong that monster was, and the party was about to get TPK'd... then again, once I had the enemies take them captive instead, and that was rather interesting. (It was also a chance for the underpowered monk to really shine.) If it's the players' bad strategy, though, I'll let the PC get killed--especially at higher levels when getting briefly and occasionally killed should be expected.

Biggest fudge? Well, there was the time I discovered you don't set second level characters against vampire spawn if their players don't know squat about vampires. That Domination ability is the first thing they logically use--and logically against the party fighter--so... yeah. I eventually had to pretend his HP total was a lot lower than it was before the fighter killed everybody else, because nobody was good enough at archery to shoot him down from the ceiling. Lesson learned: Check PC weaknesses before choosing enemies.