So that my players see me roll the dice. As long as they believe the illusion, the roll is real to them, and so their experience is meaningful and memorable; at the end of the day, that’s what matters most to me as a DM.
Play a system that accounts for this.
Fate gives you fate points to spend when you do t like a roll. It also gives you “succeed at a cost” if your fate points are exhausted or not enough.
You can still just roll with it (pun intended) and die to a random goblin if that’s fun. But you also have agreed upon procedure for not doing that. “It looks like the goblin is going to gut me, but (slides fate point across the table) as it says on my sheet I’m a Battle Tested Bodyguard, so I twist at the last second and he misses (because the fate point bumps my defense roll high enough)”
This is pretty easy to import into DND, too, if you like the other parts of it
Inspiration in raw DND is extremely under baked. Bg3 expanded it a little by letting you hold more than one, and actually using it. Most tables I’ve played at don’t use it, or it’s pretty rare.
Fate by default starts you with 3 fate points per session. It expects you to use them and has clear ways of getting more.
I really tried to get my old DND group to use then more, but it didn’t really click. I wasn’t a good fit for that group really.
I don’t fudge rolls, but I do dynamically adjust enemy’s max HP depending on how well my players are doing.
Yeah, I’m not big on fudging rolls, but that’s one thing I will do. In my last campaign, I had statted up the first real villain for my players to fight, and they knocked him out in one punch. I would have made him one level higher, but then his own attacks would have been strong enough to one-shot some of the players. Level 1 woes.
I would have made him one level higher, but then his own attacks would have been strong enough to one-shot some of the players
Level 1 woes are real, but remember, NPCs don’t have to follow player character creation rules
Yeah, I learned that too. I had come up with a villain later on who had a very defense/counterattack focused stationary fighting style combined with sundering armor, and I thought I could make him a big threat, but then he ended up completely flopping because there just wasn’t support for building that style and making it strong. Now I’m playing looser, and stealing lair actions from D&D (minus the lair part most of the time) to make my loner villains work.
There is a reason why the D&D 5e creatures have their HP written in dice values (4d6+10).
It allows for variation within the stat block. But it also gives a maximum and a minimum HP they can have.
Most of the time you use the average. But if the game is too slow, you can lower it to the minimum HP. And if they are steamrolling an encounter, you can just increase the HP to the maximum.
This makes encounters more dramatic and fun.
Rule #1: Maximum Game Fun
To newer DMs: Never admit to your players whether or not you fudge rolls. As the DM, The only thing you need to do to maintain the integrity of your game is to shut your damn mouth when you bend the rules. The players just need the illusion maintained.
