Jaxyn Fran slams his shoulder against the brick alley wall and tries to breathe, only to start fitfully coughing up spores. The beholder zombie had weakened him, and he still felt the effects of the gas spores on his lungs. Now his airway feels tighter, like someone was sitting on top of him slowly squeezing his throat closed, pushing all of the air out of his chest.
He turns to go when he hears the footpads of the City Watch behind him, and almost stumbles to the ground in a coughing fit when he bumps into another figure clad in black leathers. Short. Stout.
“Sorry,” he mutters, wincing in pain. He presses onward. He has to make it to Xander’s tonight. He stops when the vice grip of a hand closes around his bicep.
“Jax?” the figure says, and he turns to face her. The alley is dark, but he squints and can just make out the silhouette of Istrid Horn. She smiles at him with kind eyes. “Hey you don’t look so good.”
“H-headed back,” he sputters, turning to go.
“Did it work? Did you get it?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“Good… then I’ll walk back with you.”
“Mkay,” Jax says, too weak to argue. He shambles forward several steps before he feels a new tightening in his body. His joints begin to lock up. His muscles cease to function, despite his protests to keep them moving. He stares ahead at the other end of the alleyway he had been moving towards and is frustrated to find that it moves no closer towards him.
Istrid’s hands are on him immediately, picking through his clothing and searching every pocket looking for her target. She spots the bag of holding at his side, slips it from his shoulder, and tears into it. Jax struggles against magical binding, his body seizing with each fruitless attempt to move.
“Ahh there we are,” she says as she plucks the Eye of Golorr from the bag. “I’m sure that collecting this was no easy task. Thanks for making it so easy for me.” She pockets the stone and steps in front of Jax’s paralyzed form once more.
Inside of Jax’s head, he tugs on the telepathic connection he still has with Malachite.
“Istrid Horn… taking the Eye.”
“What?! Where are you.”
“Castle Ward… alleyway.”
“It is a shame you know,” Istrid laments, “I really did appreciate the hospitality this last tenday. But Manshoon is a difficult man to say no to.” Her gaze slips behind Jax as the shouts of the City Watch get closer. “Can’t have you following me.” She brandishes her mace and steps forward, her lips inches away from Jax’s ear. “As a thanks for everything, I’ll make sure you don’t bleed out in this alleyway. But do give a message to your Mother: all of you are in over your heads on this one. Best quit now while you still have your lives.”
“I’ll send Bixi to rendezvous.” Malachite says, even-toned. “Mother says to go after her and get that stone.”
The tightening around Jax’s lungs squeezes once more, but Istrid’s spell holds Jax’s throat muscles in place, not able to shift and allow him to cough. “I can’t.”
“What?”
“I’m… I’m sorry.”
“Jax what’s going on?” she asks, her voice becoming more frantic.
“I-I really did love you… Malachite.” Jax’s vision grows hazier with each second his lungs are denied air, his throat filling with fungal growth. “Tell Shara I love her too.”
“Jax?! JAX?!”
“Take care of my family, Malachite. Make sure they’re okay.”
“No-” she cries. “No I won’t have to. You’ll do it Jax. You’ll come back and you’ll do it. Just- hold on, Bixi is on her-“
The mace comes down and everything fades to black.
So here’s what really happened.
The party was fleeing from Xanathar’s Lair in the sewers beneath the Castle Ward of Waterdeep. On their way out, they ran face first into a beholder zombie and four fungal gas spores. Not knowing what they were, Arleau, the party ranger, sent two crossbow bolts right into one of the spores, which triggered its *Death Burst* ability. This Poisoned three out of four of the party members for the next 1d12 hours. I rolled a d12 on the side and jotted down the 11. Jax had Poisoner’s Kit proficiency, so I asked for a Nature check to learn more about the effect. He rolled a 10. Not high enough, so the fight continued.
After earning victory in the combat, they ran up the staircase of eyes and found themselves back inside the city sewers. Without a map to guide them, they needed to make an investigation check to see if they could reverse their steps and find the exit to the sewers. Jax made this check at disadvantage because of the Poisoned condition, but rolled well enough. It was easy to get back on the city streets.
Xander, the Healer of the Thieves Guild that the group belongs to (back-alley doctor really) has an apartment in the Southern Ward. It’s a bit of a trek from here and the streets will be crawling with City Watch after the recent Gralhund Villa Bloodbath. With half of them covered in blood and coughing up spores, they’ll need to move quickly, but stealthily. Their best bet to move silently would be to move alone. They would split up, head to Xander’s, and funnel in one at a time to receive healing.
Jax split off and began weaving through the alleyways of the city, quickly crossing the larger streets to avoid being seen. He was still Poisoned by the gas spores, and he was down to 5 hit points. He wasn’t looking good. But as long as he could get to Xander’s, he knew that he’d be okay.
I asked Jax’s player to roll a Stealth check (at disadvantage). She rolled a natural 1.
I stopped and thought about the situation and how I would respond. If Jax gets caught by the City Watch, he’ll likely spend the night in a cell until they can figure out where he was coming from. Would they diagnose what had Poisoned him? Would they know that when this particular Poisoned effect wears off, it instantly kills its bearer?
And he was still in telepathic communication with Malachite, the Guild’s sorcerer and communications specialist. Would he tell her where he was? Would she or one of the other members of the Guild go after him? Or would it be too great a risk for the Guild? Could their whole operation be exposed?
I remembered the 11 I had rolled earlier. 11 hours is a long time. It would be morning by the time that Jax expired from the Poisoned effect. More than long enough for an organization like the City Watch to realize that Jax was Poisoned and was dying and get him medical attention. More than long enough for the Guild to find a subtle enough way to get him out of there without risking too much heat.
Jax was going to be fine.
But was that the better story? I could have just as easily rolled a 1 when I rolled that d12. That would have resulted in a very different story indeed. Maybe the Watch doesn’t realize he’s Poisoned before he dies. Maybe the Guild can’t get to him in time.
Maybe Jax would die.
The Guild had more than enough money to resurrect him, so the player wouldn’t permanently lose her character. The story would go on. And how awesome would it be to run that resurrection? How narratively charged would it be if everyone in the Guild had the opportunity to mourn him before getting him back? What if someone in Jax’s family found out? What if it was his overbearing aunt who suspects that he’s up to something when he goes out late at night, but doesn’t suspect that he’s doing something dangerous? What if it was his grandmother, who KNOWS he’s involved in the criminal underworld and isn’t doing anything to stop it? How would they feel? How would they react?
I wanted to find out.
But *fudging* a dice roll? To **kill** a PC? On purpose? Some people would call that a cardinal DMing sin. Some would say I don’t have the right. The game designers at Wizards of the Coast knew what they were doing when they said to roll 1d12 right? Do I, a humble home GM, really know better than the people who designed the game? Do I know better than the Dice Gods, who decided that I would roll an 11??
What does conventional wisdom say? Well, if you Google “dnd fudging dice”, one of the top results is a Reddit post on r/dndnext that asks if this very thing is okay. And the top rated response states: “Does fudging the dice roll stop a player’s fun, or does it increase their fun? Answer that question for each time you consider it, and you have your answer.”
If conventional wisdom is to be trusted, then I had to ask myself, “Would fudging the dice roll increase Jax’s player’s fun?” How would she feel if she knew that I had lied about a dice roll and it ended up killing her character?
All of these thoughts swirled in my head as I looked down at that natural 1 on her Stealth check. There were so many variables. So many different ways the story could go. How can one person, even a DM, make that decision on their own?
So what did I do?
I asked the player.
I explained the situation to her. She didn’t know that the Poisoned effect would kill her character when it expired. She had failed her Nature check to find that out earlier on. But it was important to me that she knew the stakes of the situation we were in. So I also told her about my 11. I told her that Jax would probably be fine… unless we decided that he wouldn’t be.
“You want to kill my boy?” she asked.
“Well, only if you think-“
“God that’s so charged,” she said. “I’m in.”
So we talked it through. What would happen if Jax were to die here? How would that impact the story? How would it affect his relationships with the other characters? Jax had the Eye of Golorr, as well as 3000 gold worth of stolen gems in his bag of holding. Would the City Watch confiscate the bag? Would they search it?
Together we decided we didn’t really want it to be the City Watch who found him. By the Code Legal Jax would be charged with possession of stolen property and would owe the city a hefty fine that he wouldn’t be able to pay. And as much fun as losing the Eye of Golorr would be (it would create the opportunity for another heist, after all!), we didn’t really want the consequence of changing the roll to cheat the party out of the 3000 gold worth of loot.
Istrid Horn had told the party where Xanathar’s Lair was in the first place. What if she double crossed them? What if she had been waiting at the entrance to the sewers for the party? What if she had followed Jax and wanted to get the jump on him? What if that’s what his natural 1 on Stealth meant?
Rather than taking the agency away from the dice and the game design and keeping it for myself, I shared the decision making power with my player. I made sure that she was on board for the consequences of fudging the roll. Instead of just asking myself the question, “Does fudging the dice roll stop a player’s fun, or does it increase their fun?”… I just asked the player. She told me that it would. So we did. And man, was playing out the sequence from the top of this post a lot of fun for both of us.
Are players supposed to have that much control over the story? Does that peek behind the DM screen ruin the magic? Does it make me a bad DM for not making that decision myself? Should I have just listened to what the dice were telling me?
What would you have done?
vengefularia 