Roll Fudging

I dont know how possible this is, but having a means for a DM to be able to decide on a roll if they want to would be really helpful to be able to cater to the experience of our players. A way for us to select the result for a dice but appear to the party as though it had been rolled normally.

I don't see how this would be useful in any way, or how it could be implemented as the rolls need to be hidden to the players at first but then selectable with a toggle to show to the players / show to all. In Germany we call that ' Spielleiterwillkür' (possible translation: 'Gamemaster arbitrariness'). My Tipp for you: Roll to yourself and just tell your players the outcome.

TheMarkus1204 said: I don't see how this would be useful in any way, or how it could be implemented as the rolls need to be hidden to the players at first but then selectable with a toggle to show to the players / show to all. Agreed.  At a minimum I would expect this would have to be an option that all players at the table know is either on or off (i.e., the GM of this game has the ability to change rolls to whatever he/she wants.)  Otherwise it would call into question the authenticity of all of us GMs that do not fudge dice rolls, do not want to fudge dice rolls, and want to dispel any hint of the possibility of fudging dice rolls. If the desire is trick players into believing a roll is a legit roll, the best solution would be to hide all of the GMs rolls and use the "trust me" method just like some choose to do in tabletop games. -Adam

If you still prefer to display all the GM rolls but want to give the players the illusion that they're interacting with a powerful NPC, you could nerf that NPC by using a copy of it with reduced stats. For instance (Using a D&D 5e NPC as an example) , if the party will be encountering an Ogre who's normal greatclub attack has +6 to hit modifier and does 2d8+4 damage, make a duplicate of the Ogre's character sheet and decrease or eliminate its "to hit" modifier and/or change the damage dice. (Remember to edit the duplicate's token settings to link to the correct character sheet) . The downside is that this is more work for you, and you'll need to keep the collection of these altered NPCs in your game (or a library game) for later use. Also, metagaming players will be able to hover over the results in chat and see that the mods and/or damage rolls aren't standard, but if the players are that game savvy you shouldn't be needing to fudge die rolls in the first place. Adam Caramon said: If the desire is trick players into believing a roll is a legit roll, the best solution would be to hide all of the GMs rolls and use the "trust me" method just like some choose to do in tabletop games. -Adam

Baobhan said: I dont know how possible this is, but having a means for a DM to be able to decide on a roll if they want to would be really helpful to be able to cater to the experience of our players. A way for us to select the result for a dice but appear to the party as though it had been rolled normally. What you can do: roll public and if a roll does not fit you telling the story, then just tell exactly this to your players and just roll anew! (e.g. if an enemy would kill one of your players outright and you do not want this to happen.)

Some people just don't get it. Players don't want to be aware you may have fudged dice in their favor. And while transparency is not just good but great, sometimes it only hurts the over all setup when people see beyond the magician's curtains. There was a macro I used for blind skill checks for instance, where players would click a button and I would explain how things went based on their rolls, instead of having players who might roll a natural 1 or just really low, and then immediately break immersion by saying, you should try Joe, I rolled bad. As mentioned above, I just roll to gm for most things monsters do, because I've also had players doing the math of the enemies + to hit or damage and start using that as a basis for out of character references and mechanics statements.  So how about instead of fudging dice, there's a way to hide the roll entirely in general, but have it announce a nat 1 or a nat 20. Since in most cases those are the biggest uhoh or yay moments. No DM likes to rob their players of seeing a nat 20 come out of their efforts, and the nat 1 speaks for itself. But these days, owing to about 4 years of experience (online) with multiple games, players sadly need all the help they can get to dive into the immersive aspect of the game as opposed to purely obsessing over the stats and numbers. If you're running a simulator then all that number crunching is part of it all, if it's an rp setup, that stuff can kill immersion. Alternatively, get rid of the ability of players to hover over gm rolls to break down the stats. Just show the end result of the roll. 

This right here! I'd really prefer that the players not know that something is giving a particular NPC a modifier to their die roll. I want them to wonder if that NPC's consistently higher than average die rolls are just from blind luck or something else. I could see having the players be able to see the formula for their own rolls, but not anyone else's. loki said: Alternatively, get rid of the ability of players to hover over gm rolls to break down the stats. Just show the end result of the roll. 

Fudging rolls can be a valuable tool in the DM arsenal.  In a real world game, if you want fudging to be an option in your toolkit, you need to roll behind a DM screen.  Roll20 already supports a "DM Screen" by giving the option to hide all of your rolls. I've done this in the past, and it worked very well. I don't think any kind of new feature is necessary to improve upon this.

I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to tell people why a suggestion is bad (in our view), but only offer constructive criticism in these posts. That said, there are a lot of good reasons to fudge dice rolls (and bad ones, also, I admit).  Just as an example: if you're about to kill the last player standing, maybe missing what should be a hit, or making a critical a normal blow, will give the party a chance to avoid a total party kill, and pull off an unlikely but heroic save. And you really don't want them to know that, or at least I don't. I want them to own the save, I merely gave them the opportunity. And yeah, narratively it's not the best choice, but the point of a game is to have fun, not write the great american novel.  I've fudged rolls to benefit the players more than once over the years. I'm also very careful not to do it arbitrarily, but only with what I see as need. As Rick A. noted, It's also useful if you don't want the players to guess from the rolls that the enemy has a +3 sword or some other magic item. I often want to hide advantages like that from the players, and let them discover them in-game, not by analyzing roll values. Being able to block "hover to see" the modifiers to a DM's rolls would be useful in a lot of contexts.  I'm not sure how you'd implement a "I don't like that roll, let's do it again" in chat though. But I don't need to figure that out, that's Roll20's job. My own approach is what Ian said: I simply hide ALL of my rolls from the players, except in rare cases where I want them to see the roll. Either I roll with physical dice out-of-camera, or I modify all NPCs in my games to "only whisper rolls" to me. It helps that I've played with the same people for decades, and they know I'm fair. But ultimately, it's the same as a "real tabletop" with the DM rolling dice behind their shield, which is how D&D, and other early RPGs, was played originally. And is roll fudging really different from roll hiding? Either way, you have to trust the DM's motivations. And if you can't, maybe it's time to find another DM. I'm giving this suggestion a +1. Although I do think it would be useful for "can fudge rolls" to somehow be a game setting that is displayed to players as an attribute of a game, so there can be game sessions that explicitly do not allow fudging, which could be useful for pick-up games with strangers or some paid games.

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