The Gaming Den

Isn't it presumptuous to assume that people fudging the dice are lazy and uncreative? The times I've fudged something I've actually thought about the alternative, and came to the conclusion that it would be less memorable/fun.

For instance, there was this one monster that rolled a natural 1 on its massive damage save because of a lucky crit from a 2nd level spell that rolled max damage, where I then fudged it because the monster was the BBEG of a two-adventure build-up.

I knew what would happen if I had let that monster just die on the first round of combat like that, it would be just another notch on their belt, never to be considered again. They already had the pride of even being able to force a save for massive damage with a 2nd level spell.

By the way, the party subsequently schooled it and hunted it down across three planes like a wounded dog (still one fight), which is a much more impressive way to defeat a monster.

Did I mention that full casting classes outshining all the non-full casting classes is not fun, especially when you are not a full caster and one is in your party?

Yes. It has been noted. Repeatedly, I daresay. But it's cool... this is a problem that needs to be noted since it seems endemic to most systems.

rapanui at [unixtime wrote:1184636559[/unixtime]]Yes. It has been noted. Repeatedly, I daresay. But it's cool... this is a problem that needs to be noted since it seems endemic to most systems.

Being able to have your character alter reality in a way that all others cannot is a recipe for game imbalance, regardless of system. UNLESS said characters were restricted in such a way as to keep them on the same level as noncasters. But then that takes the feel out of magic.
Or you could play a Harry Potter-esque campaign which is designed with the fact that spell casters rule and are in power, and thus all characters are spell casters, because playing a noncaster in said setting would be like playing a Commoner in D&D, or a character with a Garlic fetish in Vampire: The Requiem.

You can technically play a non-caster in a setting dominated by casters, but this requires you to be virtually immune to magic and able to limit your opponent's access to magic (through disrupting casting, anti-magic fields, dispelling effects, etc).

Hey! There is such a monster! Oh... right... it's a golem... created by magic-users...

Back in 2E I used to fudge one thing on occasion. There was no AOO, but we often did the "partng attack" when someone broke from combat and ran away. Sometimes if things were going bad for the monsters/NPCS and they PCS tried to run away, I might be tempted to fudge the parting attack shot and give the PC that one point of damage.

But that's only because in general most creatures were killed by the PCS parting shots when they finally ran away with slightly over a hit point.