I’m relatively new to DMing (I’ve DMed about 2 games) and was talking with one of my players. Somewhere in the conversation I said that I had fudged a roll to avoid a tpk and he got mad. I was wondering what most people thought about this.
Each table is different, so ask your players how they would feel if you fudge rolls. One of the odd things about fudging is that if the players know that you are doing it, then it makes it less fun for them, because they realise that all of the dice that get rolled at the table are kind of meaningless. They then know that they didn't survive the encounter, because the rules had to be broken for them to do so. They then feel that their characters are living by your whim, not by their actions and rolls. Which in a weird way is always sort of true since you can drop a Tarrasque on them out of a clear sky any time you like, but I go by "If I wrote it down when I was planning, I'll stick with it."
I roll some dice behind the screen, but only for things whereby the players don't know what I'm rolling for, e.g. I'm making an enemy's Deception or Stealth check, or rolling for random encounters, or the weather.
Personally unless it's to do with something that the PCs don't know about, I roll everything in the open and I abide by every roll. If that results in a character death then that's fine. If it results in a TPK then unfortunately, that has to be fine too. If it's not fine then the players are rejecting the notion that they could ever lose in the game. I, and my players, would all rather our characters died than survive by fudging rolls - which is essentially just the DM ignoring the rules that they're supposed to be abiding by.
Now D&D is a complicated game. Is there a difference between the DM setting a DC at 26 and the DM choosing what number was rolled on the die, or the DM deciding how many Dragons show up? The DM does invent a lot of stuff... but for me, once a dice roll is called for, if the result is abandoned because it's unfavourable then that means there was no point in rolling any of the dice, because the dice all say what the DM wants them to say: the DM is just deciding to keep some rolls and not others. For me it adds a lot of fun to know that I might crit a character and accidentally kill them, though I always intend to set challenges that it's possible to overcome.
So ultimately I would say that as DM you get to decide what gets rolled for and when, but once the die is rolled then abide by the number.
There is one caveat to this: if you really mess up as the DM - let's say you have friendly NPCs guide the PCs to go into a haunted house and they're level 3, and they do everything right, and you've ill-advisedly placed a vampire in there and it just destroys them all - then that's not a dice failure, that's a planning failure and do what you need to do to amend it. That might involve deciding that the vampire isn't hostile and wants them to do a task for it, or if they attack it then have it capture them instead. Rectify your error so that you don't force a TPK on them. But do it through decision making of the monsters, not by fudging rolls to let them survive things that they couldn't.
The basic problem a DM has to deal with is that you want to give the players a sense of peril but avoid having the campaign end abruptly in a TPK (unless it's a one-shot, then a TPK is fine), and these aren't really compatible goals -- if you give the PCs legitimately dangerous encounters, at some point the dice will go sour and a TPK will ensue. Fudging is a way of avoiding the TPK -- though you want to hide it from the players or they'll cease to believe in the peril.
At 1st level, and maybe 2nd, it is very easy for the dice to massively swing the results of a fight, possibly leading to a TPK.
In our gaming group the DM always rolls out in the open, and they don't ever fudge dice rolls.
Just because dice render a PC unconscious it doesn't mean that they are dead.
There are also other tricks the DM can use to handle combat. Instead of starting off with 8 enemy, start with 4 and have the others arrive as backup on future rounds - if it looks like the party are heading to a TPK, then reduce the number of reinforcements turning up (or don't send them in at all). This way, the players have no idea how many monsters you really intended to send in.
If the players made bad choices and put themselves into the situation, I won’t fudge. But if I maybe made a mistake and overturned the encounter, then I probably would.
I'd say there's a place for fudge and a place for rolling in the open. Neither one is superior on its own merits. Each style aids in certain narrative goals, and it's a matter of matching play style to player and narrative goals.
Pantagruel666 and Sanvael have explained it fairly well. Some players want to checkmate opponents, and so need that perfect information to know that their victories have legitimacy, and sometimes your narrative goal will be to keep those players at the table. Alternately, sometimes your narrative goal is to have a long running story, in which case avoiding a sudden ending which is not tied to narrative causality is a must. Pick your poison...
I might suggest that, if you aren't going to abide by the answer the dice give you, don't bother to ask. (See Also: Role of Dice)
Making a decision to not kill a PC (or party) because you want the story to continue is favoring your creation as a DM, over the actions decided on by the players. There are ways to avoid TPKs that don't involve dictating dice rolls. (See Also: Dials of Monster Difficulty) I'll admit that I have been guilty of being heavy-handed during encounter creation. I'll alter the encounter back to the desired level of difficulty rather than the dice rolls during said encounter. I want the players' choice to join battle to be meaningful and *feel* dangerous, but I also want the encounters to be *winnable*. IMHO, fudging the dice rolls removes some of that meaning from the players' choice.
I'm also 100% behind the idea of setting and adhering to the expectations that combat, PC death or any other sensitive topics be discussed and agreed upon before gameplay ensues. Session 0 is your ally in this. Once that social contract is signed, it can be revisited, but that is the direction that the party has agreed upon.
As always, YMMV.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I'd say there's a place for fudge and a place for rolling in the open. Neither one is superior on its own merits. Each style aids in certain narrative goals, and it's a matter of matching play style to player and narrative goals.
Pantagruel666 and Sanvael have explained it fairly well. Some players want to checkmate opponents, and so need that perfect information to know that their victories have legitimacy, and sometimes your narrative goal will be to keep those players at the table. Alternately, sometimes your narrative goal is to have a long running story, in which case avoiding a sudden ending which is not tied to narrative causality is a must. Pick your poison...
Potentially uniquely within the possibilities of setting parameters, "Should I fudge rolls" is something that you can never actually ask your players. It's something that you as the DM have to decide on personally, and then if you ever fudge a roll, you cannot tell your players that you did - or you get the situation that the OP has found themselves in whereby the player feels upset. Personally I would be gutted if I played in a campaign and then learned that the DM had been letting us win all along.
I don't think almost any player would say "I want you to fudge rolls" even if they preferred the outcomes.
I'd say there's a place for fudge and a place for rolling in the open. Neither one is superior on its own merits. Each style aids in certain narrative goals, and it's a matter of matching play style to player and narrative goals.
Pantagruel666 and Sanvael have explained it fairly well. Some players want to checkmate opponents, and so need that perfect information to know that their victories have legitimacy, and sometimes your narrative goal will be to keep those players at the table. Alternately, sometimes your narrative goal is to have a long running story, in which case avoiding a sudden ending which is not tied to narrative causality is a must. Pick your poison...
Potentially uniquely within the possibilities of setting parameters, "Should I fudge rolls" is something that you generally can't actually ask your players. It's something that you as the DM have to decide on personally, and then if you ever fudge a roll, you cannot tell your players that you did - or you get the situation that the OP has found themselves in whereby the player feels upset. Personally I would be gutted if I played in a campaign and then learned that the DM had been letting us win all along.
I'd say there's a place for fudge and a place for rolling in the open. Neither one is superior on its own merits. Each style aids in certain narrative goals, and it's a matter of matching play style to player and narrative goals.
Pantagruel666 and Sanvael have explained it fairly well. Some players want to checkmate opponents, and so need that perfect information to know that their victories have legitimacy, and sometimes your narrative goal will be to keep those players at the table. Alternately, sometimes your narrative goal is to have a long running story, in which case avoiding a sudden ending which is not tied to narrative causality is a must. Pick your poison...
Potentially uniquely within the possibilities of setting parameters, "Should I fudge rolls" is something that you generally can't actually ask your players. It's something that you as the DM have to decide on personally, and then if you ever fudge a roll, you cannot tell your players that you did - or you get the situation that the OP has found themselves in whereby the player feels upset. Personally I would be gutted if I played in a campaign and then learned that the DM had been letting us win all along.
To be fair, I’ve tpked them a few times, but the when I had fudged the roll, it was right off of someone rolling up a new character and I didn’t want the character die.
I understand both arguments for either side, but my table has always been a "Rule of Cool" table. Because of this, I have always fudged dice rolls and probably will continue to do so. This isn't to say that I do it often, it's actually quite a rare occurrence, but I have no problem doing it. To me, the story is more important than the rules and if I have to bend the rules for the story's (or the players') sake, I will. Most of my players know I fudge rolls, but they don't know where and they know it doesn't happen much so they are fine with it. They, like me, care more about the story.
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I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
I think this is okay on certain occasions. Like if a player fails a throw that they are very skilled in. For example, if a really strong man has an arm wrestle with a really weak man and the weaker one wins because the strong one rolls a 1. But if it's something like you failed a stealth check to a person that is looking for you then it wouldn't make sense.
There are many many treatises on fudging, my stance in this regard is uncharacteristically simple and I don't dwell on it too much in reviewing my games. While I understand the "straight roll" camp, I fudge ... I think one sympathetic way of understanding fudging is the DM awarding on the spot inspiration that they're factoring into the dice adjudication. It's sorta a mix of rule of cool and "they've come so far."
Conversely I'll never fudge against a monster's nat 20. That number is sacrosanct.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I’m relatively new to DMing (I’ve DMed about 2 games) and was talking with one of my players. Somewhere in the conversation I said that I had fudged a roll to avoid a tpk and he got mad. I was wondering what most people thought about this.
When I was new to DMing, I also chose to fudge a roll to avoid a TPK for my players. After countless washes, these hands still do not feel clean.
Fudging is ok as long as you the DM NEVEREVER let that fact be known to the players.
If your DMing new inexperienced players that have little to no game time ( say less than 18 hours worth of sessions ), then secretly rolling and fudging with reasonable discretion is fine by my standard.
But once those players surpass that inexperience threshold fudging should be stopped, and if the dice want souls feed it.
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" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
It really depends on how you want your games to be.
Personally, I dislike fudging and roll in the open, because I like the rng aspect of the game and how swingy it can get.
Some DMs like to have the story not being harmed by said rng (As it will happen, a TPK might happen just because the dice gods want to).
In the end, it comes to what you like and what you feel comfortable with. Anyone that says that one way or another is wrong is probably not a good source for advice.
You do you and, as a new DM, test and learn. See what you're more comfortable with and run with it.
I think this is okay on certain occasions. Like if a player fails a throw that they are very skilled in. For example, if a really strong man has an arm wrestle with a really weak man and the weaker one wins because the strong one rolls a 1. But if it's something like you failed a stealth check to a person that is looking for you then it wouldn't make sense.
If you are going to "fudge" the dice in these two situations then just don't roll dice. The strong man will always win against a really weak man, since there's no real chance of them losing.
Rolling behind a screen lets you fudge the results if you want to. If two critical hits in a row would kill a character, you could change the second critical hit into a normal hit, or even a miss. Don’t distort die rolls too often, though, and don’t let on that you’re doing it. Otherwise, your players might think they don’t face any real risks — or worse, that you’re playing favorites.
So in response to those that think that fudging dice rolls is breaking the rules, its not, its built into the game, it is a choice, based on DM style nothing more, nothing less. If you as a DM want to run a table the is controlled by the dice, Go for it! just make sure everyone knows that at session 0. Me personally I will not be at that table. Nothing is more frustrating then a DM who says they have no control over the game. "sorry you all died, not my fault/choice the dice did it" Mostly because that is not true. As the DM your set the encounters, you pick the DC on checks. If you want your table to be a place were player character death and TPKs could happen at any point in the campaign in any encounter that is great as long as all your players know going in to the game that is how things work, again I wont be at that table. but that is what makes DnD such a great game, there is such a wide variety of play styles and DM Styles, there is really something for everyone you just have to find good player and DM matches.
This discussion always gets interesting as there are so many different view points. All of my campaigns are very much "rule of cool" for the most part. The unspoken rules of my table (rules for me the DM that I follow) are that if I fudge dice roles it is only in the players favor never against them, and that I only adjust dice rolls in combat situations, to prevent unreasonable player deaths and TPKs. Imo TPKs should only be a possibility in fights against bosses/BB/BBEG and should really not be something that is a possibility every session. with the exception of the party doing something really ridiculous, Lvl 1 party decides they want to go looking for that Ancient Red Dragon they heard about that is laying waste to the farmland far to the north.....yep that's not going to end well for the party, that should be a TPK for sure(assuming your players are experienced and know they have no business going anywhere near a ARD) Although personally I would probably have the dragon enslave them and send them out to do something for it and let them try to find a way to break its control over them, but that is just because I think that makes for a better story then a TPK.
So in response to those that think that fudging dice rolls is breaking the rules, its not, its built into the game, it is a choice, based on DM style nothing more, nothing less. If you as a DM want to run a table the is controlled by the dice, Go for it! just make sure everyone knows that at session 0. Me personally I will not be at that table. Nothing is more frustrating then a DM who says they have no control over the game. "sorry you all died, not my fault/choice the dice did it" Mostly because that is not true. As the DM your set the encounters, you pick the DC on checks. If you want your table to be a place were player character death and TPKs could happen at any point in the campaign in any encounter that is great as long as all your players know going in to the game that is how things work, again I wont be at that table. but that is what makes DnD such a great game, there is such a wide variety of play styles and DM Styles, there is really something for everyone you just have to find good player and DM matches.
I completely agree with you that is a matter of preference.
And what is cool is that, both as a player and as a DM, I am in the completely opposite end of the spectrum from you, I feel like, if the DM is fudging, then, there was no challenge to begin with, it was not a game with actual stakes. I think it put a lot more pressure on the DM balancing encounters though, but there are clever tricks to balance on the fly without fudging to still keep the rng mechanics of the game impactful.
My party almost TPKed last Sunday on a non-boss fight and they were thrilled about the fight. But we are a very mechanical heavy group and, with the rolls on the open, they feel very comfortable with the possible outcomes.
The thing about fudging that I think might be a slippery slope is when it's used against the party, I had experiences with friends that never let their bosses fail save-or-suck Saving Throws, for example. That always leaves a bad taste on the players mouth imo.
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I’m relatively new to DMing (I’ve DMed about 2 games) and was talking with one of my players. Somewhere in the conversation I said that I had fudged a roll to avoid a tpk and he got mad. I was wondering what most people thought about this.
Each table is different, so ask your players how they would feel if you fudge rolls. One of the odd things about fudging is that if the players know that you are doing it, then it makes it less fun for them, because they realise that all of the dice that get rolled at the table are kind of meaningless. They then know that they didn't survive the encounter, because the rules had to be broken for them to do so. They then feel that their characters are living by your whim, not by their actions and rolls. Which in a weird way is always sort of true since you can drop a Tarrasque on them out of a clear sky any time you like, but I go by "If I wrote it down when I was planning, I'll stick with it."
I roll some dice behind the screen, but only for things whereby the players don't know what I'm rolling for, e.g. I'm making an enemy's Deception or Stealth check, or rolling for random encounters, or the weather.
Personally unless it's to do with something that the PCs don't know about, I roll everything in the open and I abide by every roll. If that results in a character death then that's fine. If it results in a TPK then unfortunately, that has to be fine too. If it's not fine then the players are rejecting the notion that they could ever lose in the game. I, and my players, would all rather our characters died than survive by fudging rolls - which is essentially just the DM ignoring the rules that they're supposed to be abiding by.
Now D&D is a complicated game. Is there a difference between the DM setting a DC at 26 and the DM choosing what number was rolled on the die, or the DM deciding how many Dragons show up? The DM does invent a lot of stuff... but for me, once a dice roll is called for, if the result is abandoned because it's unfavourable then that means there was no point in rolling any of the dice, because the dice all say what the DM wants them to say: the DM is just deciding to keep some rolls and not others. For me it adds a lot of fun to know that I might crit a character and accidentally kill them, though I always intend to set challenges that it's possible to overcome.
So ultimately I would say that as DM you get to decide what gets rolled for and when, but once the die is rolled then abide by the number.
There is one caveat to this: if you really mess up as the DM - let's say you have friendly NPCs guide the PCs to go into a haunted house and they're level 3, and they do everything right, and you've ill-advisedly placed a vampire in there and it just destroys them all - then that's not a dice failure, that's a planning failure and do what you need to do to amend it. That might involve deciding that the vampire isn't hostile and wants them to do a task for it, or if they attack it then have it capture them instead. Rectify your error so that you don't force a TPK on them. But do it through decision making of the monsters, not by fudging rolls to let them survive things that they couldn't.
The basic problem a DM has to deal with is that you want to give the players a sense of peril but avoid having the campaign end abruptly in a TPK (unless it's a one-shot, then a TPK is fine), and these aren't really compatible goals -- if you give the PCs legitimately dangerous encounters, at some point the dice will go sour and a TPK will ensue. Fudging is a way of avoiding the TPK -- though you want to hide it from the players or they'll cease to believe in the peril.
At 1st level, and maybe 2nd, it is very easy for the dice to massively swing the results of a fight, possibly leading to a TPK.
In our gaming group the DM always rolls out in the open, and they don't ever fudge dice rolls.
Just because dice render a PC unconscious it doesn't mean that they are dead.
There are also other tricks the DM can use to handle combat. Instead of starting off with 8 enemy, start with 4 and have the others arrive as backup on future rounds - if it looks like the party are heading to a TPK, then reduce the number of reinforcements turning up (or don't send them in at all). This way, the players have no idea how many monsters you really intended to send in.
If the players made bad choices and put themselves into the situation, I won’t fudge. But if I maybe made a mistake and overturned the encounter, then I probably would.
If it’s just bad luck, probably not.
I always roll in the open so the players know I'm not just making poop up. They can clearly see the hits, the misses, and Nat 20s.
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I'd say there's a place for fudge and a place for rolling in the open. Neither one is superior on its own merits. Each style aids in certain narrative goals, and it's a matter of matching play style to player and narrative goals.
Pantagruel666 and Sanvael have explained it fairly well. Some players want to checkmate opponents, and so need that perfect information to know that their victories have legitimacy, and sometimes your narrative goal will be to keep those players at the table. Alternately, sometimes your narrative goal is to have a long running story, in which case avoiding a sudden ending which is not tied to narrative causality is a must. Pick your poison...
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Potentially uniquely within the possibilities of setting parameters, "Should I fudge rolls" is something that you can never actually ask your players. It's something that you as the DM have to decide on personally, and then if you ever fudge a roll, you cannot tell your players that you did - or you get the situation that the OP has found themselves in whereby the player feels upset. Personally I would be gutted if I played in a campaign and then learned that the DM had been letting us win all along.
I don't think almost any player would say "I want you to fudge rolls" even if they preferred the outcomes.
To be fair, I’ve tpked them a few times, but the when I had fudged the roll, it was right off of someone rolling up a new character and I didn’t want the character die.
I understand both arguments for either side, but my table has always been a "Rule of Cool" table. Because of this, I have always fudged dice rolls and probably will continue to do so. This isn't to say that I do it often, it's actually quite a rare occurrence, but I have no problem doing it. To me, the story is more important than the rules and if I have to bend the rules for the story's (or the players') sake, I will. Most of my players know I fudge rolls, but they don't know where and they know it doesn't happen much so they are fine with it. They, like me, care more about the story.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
- Litany Against Fear, Frank Herbert
I think this is okay on certain occasions. Like if a player fails a throw that they are very skilled in. For example, if a really strong man has an arm wrestle with a really weak man and the weaker one wins because the strong one rolls a 1. But if it's something like you failed a stealth check to a person that is looking for you then it wouldn't make sense.
I mean, you never tell them. You cant be like "Oh btw you lost, i had to cheat for you"
There are many many treatises on fudging, my stance in this regard is uncharacteristically simple and I don't dwell on it too much in reviewing my games. While I understand the "straight roll" camp, I fudge ... I think one sympathetic way of understanding fudging is the DM awarding on the spot inspiration that they're factoring into the dice adjudication. It's sorta a mix of rule of cool and "they've come so far."
Conversely I'll never fudge against a monster's nat 20. That number is sacrosanct.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
When I was new to DMing, I also chose to fudge a roll to avoid a TPK for my players. After countless washes, these hands still do not feel clean.
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Fudging is ok as long as you the DM NEVER EVER let that fact be known to the players.
If your DMing new inexperienced players that have little to no game time ( say less than 18 hours worth of sessions ), then secretly rolling and fudging with reasonable discretion is fine by my standard.
But once those players surpass that inexperience threshold fudging should be stopped, and if the dice want souls feed it.
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
It really depends on how you want your games to be.
Personally, I dislike fudging and roll in the open, because I like the rng aspect of the game and how swingy it can get.
Some DMs like to have the story not being harmed by said rng (As it will happen, a TPK might happen just because the dice gods want to).
In the end, it comes to what you like and what you feel comfortable with. Anyone that says that one way or another is wrong is probably not a good source for advice.
You do you and, as a new DM, test and learn. See what you're more comfortable with and run with it.
If you are going to "fudge" the dice in these two situations then just don't roll dice. The strong man will always win against a really weak man, since there's no real chance of them losing.
From the DMG:
So in response to those that think that fudging dice rolls is breaking the rules, its not, its built into the game, it is a choice, based on DM style nothing more, nothing less. If you as a DM want to run a table the is controlled by the dice, Go for it! just make sure everyone knows that at session 0. Me personally I will not be at that table. Nothing is more frustrating then a DM who says they have no control over the game. "sorry you all died, not my fault/choice the dice did it" Mostly because that is not true. As the DM your set the encounters, you pick the DC on checks. If you want your table to be a place were player character death and TPKs could happen at any point in the campaign in any encounter that is great as long as all your players know going in to the game that is how things work, again I wont be at that table. but that is what makes DnD such a great game, there is such a wide variety of play styles and DM Styles, there is really something for everyone you just have to find good player and DM matches.
This discussion always gets interesting as there are so many different view points. All of my campaigns are very much "rule of cool" for the most part. The unspoken rules of my table (rules for me the DM that I follow) are that if I fudge dice roles it is only in the players favor never against them, and that I only adjust dice rolls in combat situations, to prevent unreasonable player deaths and TPKs. Imo TPKs should only be a possibility in fights against bosses/BB/BBEG and should really not be something that is a possibility every session. with the exception of the party doing something really ridiculous, Lvl 1 party decides they want to go looking for that Ancient Red Dragon they heard about that is laying waste to the farmland far to the north.....yep that's not going to end well for the party, that should be a TPK for sure(assuming your players are experienced and know they have no business going anywhere near a ARD) Although personally I would probably have the dragon enslave them and send them out to do something for it and let them try to find a way to break its control over them, but that is just because I think that makes for a better story then a TPK.
I completely agree with you that is a matter of preference.
And what is cool is that, both as a player and as a DM, I am in the completely opposite end of the spectrum from you, I feel like, if the DM is fudging, then, there was no challenge to begin with, it was not a game with actual stakes. I think it put a lot more pressure on the DM balancing encounters though, but there are clever tricks to balance on the fly without fudging to still keep the rng mechanics of the game impactful.
My party almost TPKed last Sunday on a non-boss fight and they were thrilled about the fight. But we are a very mechanical heavy group and, with the rolls on the open, they feel very comfortable with the possible outcomes.
The thing about fudging that I think might be a slippery slope is when it's used against the party, I had experiences with friends that never let their bosses fail save-or-suck Saving Throws, for example. That always leaves a bad taste on the players mouth imo.