Fudging damage roll results

[Arwyn]

We're a new group to traditional RPGs and I'm the DM. We're also playing Lost Mines with less than a full compliment of characters. As a result of both of these it is necessary for me to sometimes fudge roll results so I've just been looking through the options to get rolls results the way I'd like.

I've got Show GM Rolls to OFF, and I've also got Show Results to Clients set to Friendly.

This should mean that for example if I roll and attack and it hits, I could bluff and say it was a miss?

I would also want the ability to do this for damage. For example if in LMoP the party manages to make it bloodied and battered to Klarg's cave, and he then one-shots the fighter. I would like a way to soften the blow and reduce the applied damage. But even though the damage roll result is hidden in the chat window, the result is still applied to the character's HP in the CT and character sheet, so the player can see that the damage roll was 12 points and knocked him out right away.

Hiding the damage roll result doesn't seem to be very effective if the result is auto-applied to the character.

Is there a way for the DM to fake a damage roll and apply lesser damage, say 6 instead of 12, to give the party a chance for one more round?

[Zacchaeus]

The only way to 'fake' the damage roll is to make sure that you don't target the character when you make the roll and then apply whatever damage you want to apply manually. The best fudging method though is to declare hits as misses; that way you don't need to roll for damage at all.

[Arwyn]

The only way to 'fake' the damage roll is to make sure that you don't target the character when you make the roll and then apply whatever damage you want to apply manually. The best fudging method though is to declare hits as misses; that way you don't need to roll for damage at all.

Thanks for that, hadn't thought of simply not targeting a PC.

Yeah, sometimes I think though its good to still land a hit but just pull back on the damage a bit - makes it harder for the PCs to suspect you're not being entirely honest. A total miss at a crucial moment is just slightly more obvious than a hit with low-ish damage.

[JohnD]

Put a negative modifier in before you roll.

[Zacchaeus]

Put a negative modifier in before you roll.

Indeed, this is possible although if you put too much into the modifier it stands a good chance of not doing any damage (there's no minimum damage in 5e) at all and that would give the game away too. :)

[epithet]

Just click the disadvantage button on a few rolls for your npcs, it will tip the scales.

[Trenloe]

If you want to reduce damage you can also press the half damage button in the modifier window before rolling.

[damned]

reducing the monsters HD will reduce their likelihood of hitting.
changing the damage dice will reduce overall damage.

[Full Bleed]

Those are all good examples of how to mitigate damage, but don't give the GM precise control. Having a "Confirm/Modify Damage" button in the modifier window so a box would pop-up for the GM before auto-applying damage would be better.

Is something like that doable with an extension?

[Trenloe]

Those are all good examples of how to mitigate damage, but don't give the GM precise control. Having a "Confirm/Modify Damage" button in the modifier window so a box would pop-up for the GM before auto-applying damage would be better.

Is something like that doable with an extension?
Yes. It would need to hook into the ruleset specific Damage action manager (manager_action_damage.lua - in the onDamage function) and the OOB messaging that applies the damage on the GM side (via the notifyApplyDamage function). The main work would be designing the window that would pop up and making sure this works well within the asynchronous nature of dice rolls and that it is obvious without getting in the way of other GM activities.

The main issue I would see here is if there are multiple damage rolls occurring in quick succession. With the HIT/MISS notification of FG I've seen players frequently roll all of their attacks, see which have hit and then immediately roll for damage on all of the attacks that hit without waiting for GM approval to roll damage. As FG dice rolling is asynchronous, this would be possible (rolling multiple damage actions) and nothing would appear in the player chat window until the GM had confirmed/modified damage - and a lot of damage confirmation windows would be appearing on the GM side.

It's certainly possible to do with an extension, but I think there will be usage/UI issues that would make it less than ideal.

But, give it a go - see how it works! I'd be interested in seeing the results. :)

[Moon Wizard]

It ends up being a workflow issue. If the GM has to approve every roll before it is applied, it slows down the game dramatically (mostly during combat).

So, when I DM, I usually take a different approach to adjusting the difficulty. I'll drop the NPC hit points in the tracker, add penalty effects, have creatures run away, allies show up, etc. I find that I can do these things without slowing down the player decision process and workflow, which is usually the longest delay.

Regards,
JPG

[Griogre]

As has been pointed out precise adjustments are really a workflow/game speed issue.

If you feel precise adjustments are necessary to you, then turn off all automatic resolution of rolls so the game is *exactly* like you are at a real table behind the screen. This would be easier than writing an extension to have the DM verify everything thing. :)

Another option is to keep the auto combat resolution and use a less precise adjustment that generally helps or hurts the party but not necessarily an individual PC. I fudge rolls rarely when I run for adult non beginners. But for children or beginners, if you are going to do so its better to just make the monsters do less damage by missing by putting a -5 into their to hits. This is easier to insert into the "game flow" stream. Sure they might still hit with a crit or something but that will be rare. I have to say for children I would go with no auto resolution but I don't run those type of games on VTTs.

[JohnD]

Here's how I'd like to see this handled from the perspective of the player not having any idea its happening.

1. DM has a box to check called "Fudge Roll". An "OK" button accompanies this check box.
2. When box is checked next roll (attack, damage, whatever) is executed but player sees no shadow dice, so visually nothing has happened - this includes no reporting of a hit or miss or damage amount.
3. DM side, the results of the roll are displayed and the DM can use the Modifier box to +/- the attack to ensure a hit or a miss or +/- a damage roll to increase the damage or give the player a break.
4. DM then can click the OK button and shadow dice are thrown as per whatever the initial roll was and feedback to player is given - its a hit or a miss - the damage is high or just low enough to escape with a 'whew' and fight on another round like a hero.

Nobody knows except the DM and there's been none of the "oops the roll didn't take" or shadow dice rolling and then the message tells you there was a -5 modifier applied to the damage roll or 1/2 damage, which breaks the immersion and lets everyone know you were let off easy.

[Full Bleed]

I'm not sure where all this "work flow/game speed issue" stuff is coming from. ;)

How would what I proposed be any different than what Trenloe suggested earlier?


If you want to reduce damage you can also press the half damage button in the modifier window before rolling.

In the same space have a "Confirm/Modify/Fudge/Whatever Roll" option.

Being able to fudge the occasional damage roll on demand is a far cry from being forced to do it for every roll.


This hearkens back to a discussion had in another thread about automation. I maintain that automation is almost never inherently bad... only the implementation. For the OP, the automation in this case interferes with their ability to run their game they way they'd like... to another user it's a god-send and game stream-liner. Automation doesn't have to be binary (and, for the record, I don't think FG's current implementation *is* totally binary. Decent ways to mitigate the damage roll have been shared... I just don't see them being as ideal as it could be. If we can "half a damage roll" with a single click, being able to fudge a damage roll on demand should be possible with an acceptable hiccup in workflow.)

[Moon Wizard]

One of the challenges with fudging dice is getting the right workflow and UI to support the user's needs. This needs to be built and integrated into every workflow, and needs to handle scenarios with multiple simultaneous rolls. It's non-trivial, but doable. Unfortunately, it's not on our short list right now.

Another consideration is that there are actually 2 classes of fudge workflow.

There's the "fudge before the roll" approach as John laid out. This approach is used when you know you want to fudge rolls in advance, and want everything to appear normal to the players.

Then, there's the "fudge after the roll" approach. This is typically why GMs roll behind a screen. They want to be sure any single roll they make doesn't derail the game or cause a party wipe, simply due to bad luck.

I'm guessing that both methods would be expected.

Cheers,
JPG

[warderbrad]

How would what I proposed be any different than what Trenloe suggested earlier?

Both work, the workflow issue is about the human response time. His suggestion is something that happens without human confirmation and input. Yours requires the DM (a human) to see the roll, consider if it is ok to pass on, if not then change the number and then hit the button to confirm.

In the suggestion by Trenloe the button is pressed before rolling and then the roll happens, there is no delay or waiting on evaluation and entry or confirmation.

That is not to say that such an option is bad, I like the idea for uses of things like Portent and such.

[damned]

Modifying a roll before its rolled is so much easier than after its rolled.
The code and the dependencies on so many of these actions are very involved.
You have stat modifiers, one time modifiers, level modifiers, effect modifiers, target resistances etc. These are totally non trivial to change and when you do add another step in like grabbing this after its rolled and before its displayed adds a whole extra layer of coding to soooo many things. its not a one time coding event. every new feature improvement may have to be allowed for again in the code at some or all of those steps.

In saying all that - I too would love to have the fudge before roll option available.
However it was implemented... maybe you have a fudge input field on the GM screen and you just type a number in there and whatever you put in there the next dice that you roll comes up with that number. If you are rolling a d20 you enter an 11 and it just misses or you are rolling 3d6 you might enter 2,1,3 and it comes up with a 6 and the hero survives another blow from the Manticore with 4 hp left!

[Andraax]

If you want to fudge a "to-hit" or a "damage" roll, just do the roll untargeted (or turn off the "apply to targets" via the reticle on the modifiers box), then figure out how much you want to fudge the roll by, put that change in the modifiers box, then drag and drop the roll onto the target. This will adjust the roll by the amount in the modifiers box before checking for a hit or applying damage. Also, if a player forgets a modifier, they can use this same technique to add the modifier after the fact.

[LordEntrails]

If you want to reduce damage you can also press the half damage button in the modifier window before rolling.

What half damage button?

[damned]

its in the actual modifiers tool not the quick one bottom left.

[Skellan]

Another option could be to give characters hero points that allow them to dodge death from that lucky crit.
It depends what works best for you :)

[demonsbane]

Another option could be to give characters hero points that allow them to dodge death from that lucky crit.
It depends what works best for you :)

I think that Inspiration could work in that way, too.