I have a player who has been apart of my table at my FGLS dnd night where I help DM. Who I have been told by one player that the Bard of the group is clearly fudging and lying about his rolls. I  have suspected this for a few weeks now and have had a hard time physically seeing his rolls for a few reasons

A. He sits at the far end of the table away from me.(FLGS table can seat 10 and I run a group of 8)

B. He has rolled high at every table he has been at when another DM was doing it before they stepped down for personal reasons (I was given no warning about this player)

C. Another Players GF who is not a player but has played for a long time in Dnd has told the BF about clearly lying on his rolls. BF has since told me. With the long tables I cannot always see rolls from the far side of the table so I have no direct proof of the cheating

D, As mentioned above I have had player above plus 2 others players ask how I deal with fudging dice rolls.

I do not want to outright call him on it without seeing it with my own eyes. Also this player is a war vet and has his reason for sitting facing the door and at the end of the table so I feel bad asking him to move closer as to not make his PTSD flare up. I have tried to deal with this mentally solo for a while and I thought about when asked and said "well first off if you need to cheat at dnd  then that is between you and god cause dnd is not for money or anything else just a fun get together. All the players don't seem to care he rolls high ALL the time. As a DM ive done the "ill fudge the damage done to him then.' but when you have a second bard cast the exact same spell and clearly isnt cheating and the same checks and is failing its felt kind of dirty. If I had a solution from the community on how to deal with this I would love to hear it. I tend to not want confrontation as a general rule of thumb just cause its out in public and also just not my way. However I have been mulling this over for weeks and it feels like my first open response to players might have left issues for me more so for them cause everyone seems to be having a blast.

I've had this happen at a couple of my tables. The remedy is always the same I tell the table:

'There has been concern raised by players about players cheating on their dice rolls. This game is a narrative one primarily. Failure is part of weaving an interesting story, as is success. It is always worth consulting the players at the table however.

Please raise your hands if you want there to be reasonable opportunities for your characters to fail at things.

[Allow time for players to raise or not raise hands - I've never had any fail to do so]

As the majority of players have expressed a desire for failure to be part of the game. As a result, all player dice rolls must now be made in full view of other players. If I am given, or see any evidence of cheating by players past this point those involved will be removed from the table without another warning. If this makes you uncomfortable, or you are unhappy with my style of running the game you are always welcome to leave the table with no hard feelings. Not every GM suits every player, not every player suits every GM - there is no fault in that.'


For the record, if players did choose for failure to be removed from the game that is possible. You simply explain that they'll succeed at everything, always hit, and always do max damage. Then explain that the same is true of the enemies. Dice are entirely removed from the game - you don't need them any more. Then the group sits around and tells the story together. My GM-only playtest group did this once as an experiment - it was fun for like 10 minutes then it got really quite boring.

Also, if players question the GM rolling behind the screen my standard explanation tends to be as follows:
'The rules for GMs include guidance on 'fudging' dice rolls. No GM is perfect, nor can they be. Sometimes it's possible that I'll set up an encounter or set a DC too high or difficult. In those circumstances, hiding and fudging GM rolls allows me to correct errors made in planning during play without it negatively impacting players. More than that, hiding dice rolls serves an immersion purpose. If I roll a 12 in the open and say that the enemy hits with a 22, you immediately know that the modifier of the enemy is +10. In the world of the game there is no way of your characters knowing this. Hiding these kind of rolls is designed to keep an air of mystery around the enemies you encounter.

Some GMs do prefer to always roll in the open, and never fudge their dice rolls. If the table wants me to try doing this, I am more than happy to do it. However, as GM I have no reason beyond assisting you the players to have fun. I have few reasons to want to increase the dice rolls and force failure. Part of the trust that players need to have in a GM is that the GM isn't simply going to drop a Terrasque into the world when the characters are level 1. Still, if the majority of you would like me to begin rolling in the open now is your chance to tell me.'

Being even more honest, I tend to make it clear at Session 0 - if I have concerns raised by fellow players of harassment, bullying, cheating, fudging or any other bad conduct by players they will be removed without discussion. I only run games for other adults, and at that point you're old enough to know better.

I may have to take you up on that and may openly steal it line for line if you don't mind. I am not sure it will cause the person to leave or not havent gotten a read on him

When it comes to rolling behind the screen I have one rule and will ask the table on a spell like cloudkill or power word kill or something that may end in a party wipe I ask my table " I can roll this damage behind the screen or I can open roll it and we can all calc damage together and see if it kills. 

Please do use what is helpful to you. Be aware though, I know that there are GMs out there who really don't like this and would prefer to talk everything out, having long conversations. I'm autistic, and when rules exist I find comfort in following them. I am therefore an individual with no real time for a grown adult who can't follow pretty simple rules - it is too exhausting to me personally.

On rolling behind the screen, I do something similar. If it's a large amount of dice I'll often roll it in the open. I think it really is a judgement call, again though I know other GMs who've become very entrenched and claim that GMs rolling behind the screen is poor conduct.

Do what works for you.

One thing you could do is write down all of the character's roll modifiers, and then in a combat-heavy session, record all of their results and figure out what the raw dice roll was for each of them. That should tell you if the rolls are suspicious or not.

Ultimately, in person with physical dice that don't have any sort of logs it's hard to "prove" someone is cheating, and I don't like asking players to witch hunt other players, but if someone is consistently lying about dice rolls it might be worth pulling them aside and having a conversation. You don't need to prove it to have a conversation. If they deny things, you can handle it how you see fit. I might let it slide but track the numbers (assuming you have the characters sheet and can quickly log down the results of each roll while, for example, tracking damage on a monster) and look at some statistical analysis afterwards.

Players do have random chances of getting results, I've seen players using virtual dice I have full control over roll both hot and cold streaks statistically confirmed by logging on a VTT, but if you have players that are, say, a standard deviation above the average, and you had a credible report from a player, I'd consider it suspicious enough to maybe pull the player from the table. As much as D&D is about having fun, it's important to be fair to the other players at the table as well, and fudging numbers is one way to break things.

Just a quick note, though, that not everyone with "high" damage is fudging or cheating. Sometimes certain builds might actually result in atypical distributions, such as great weapon fighting turning 1's and 2's on damage dice into 3's. Someone using a greatsword might seem to always roll 6 or higher on their damage because, well, they are always rolling 6 or higher on their damage since they ignore the dice results using a feature. That may or may not be applicable- obviously that is a specific feature- but hopefully your player could explain that when you raise the concern with them.

As a GM I always roll in the open so my players know I am not "cheating". No arguments, no side eye, no accusations of favoritism.

For the player, it can be hard to bring it up and in most cases can make them feel uncomfortable ot angry. Yes, if they are cheating they should just admit it and discontinue the behavior but some folks can get bent about being called out. In can be a sensitive thing.

If the rest of the table is till having a good time then it doesn't matter.

If the other players getting upset about it, then try this. When a player rolls low especially NAT 1s play it up and make the event humorous or dramatic. It can ease the emotional effect of failure.