In China, an increasing number of high concrete face rockfill dams (CFRDs) are located in high intensity earthquake zones, some of which are close to the seismic fault line. Recordings suggest that near-fault ground motions are characterized by large one-sided velocity pulses. The conventional dynamic analysis of dams, however, neglects the features of strong ground movements. In this study, under different ground motion levels some numerical dynamic studies considering the one-sided broadband pulses of near-fault earthquakes are presented for CFRDs based on a generalized plasticity model for rockfill materials. The results indicate that the displacements of dam crest corresponding to positive and reverse input of near-fault ground motion make a significant difference, while the displacements of the dam crest under artificial seismic waves are similar. Furthermore, using the horizontal and vertical components as simultaneous excitations near the faults, the displacements of the dam crest before and after reversing the motion produce a larger difference than that using a single component. More importantly, the difference of horizontal displacements of the dam crest caused by polarity reversal of near-fault ground motions increases with the increase of earthquake intensity. Due to the randomness and uncertainties of earthquakes, using a stochastic near-field motion input as excitation without considering the polarity (i.e., positive vs reversed waveform), does not necessarily obtain a conservative result.