I can think of several ways of handling the situation...
1. They should go to a games convention and be forced to walk around naked accompanied by a nun with a bell crying "shame".
2. They should be literally pilloried next to a large D20 marked 11 to 20 twice and a barrel of rotten fruit. Invite the public to roll the D20 and if they get 11 or better they get to lob some manky vegetable matter at the culprit.
3. A vastly inferior way of handling the situation is to send them a private message on whatever messaging service you're using in the game saying something like "wow, you are one lucky MF. Can you check your D20's not biased as another player and I have noticed you don't seem to roll less than a 12?" and see what the response is. If it's something like "Oh expletive, I didn't notice! I'll buy new dice!" then you're golden. If it's something else then you have to play it by ear.
Get a Discord dicebot, use Roll20, create an Unseen Servant account for the game, or otherwise get an online place where all players can roll their dice virtually with the results being something you can see. Have everyone roll there. Everyone is using the same dice, and you can see the results so there's no option to cheat. If you don't want to, you don't even have to necessarily confront the problem player (but seriously, you should talk to them about it, because that's really not acceptable behavior).
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
One of my players has gained the nickname "Nat 20." Across maybe 20-25 sessions he has never failed a skill check or save. He usually misses one or two attacks per session but otherwise always hits and always scores unnaturally high damage. And as the nickname suggest, about 25% of his rolls are natural 20's.
Both I and the other players call him out repeatedly. He denies it vehemently and usually misses a few attacks right after we call him out. By the end of the session however, it is back to 19, 17, 20, etc. I did a test... as part of a huge grand melee in a tournament I asked all the players to describe what they wanted to do and then I had them all make a ton of rolls ("Okay, give me a DEX save, a CON save, and roll 3 attacks AC 15...") and then kept that up. But the whole think was scripted and it was just an excuse to collect some data on Nat 20's rolls. On 60 rolls in that melee, he rolled 1 11, 2 13's and everything else was above 15. Not a single out of 60 rolls below 10.
And it is worst of all on things like perception checks and attempts to find things or seek out hidden objects. He is kind of a control freak/perfectionist so he always Nat 20s rolls that he thinks are important.
I used to add hit points to monsters (it was normal for this group to fight monsters with 120+ hit points since this dual wield ranger was doing 25+ damage by himself every round. But when the other players started complaining about skeletons with 60+ hp I realized I wasnt holding back Nat 20, I was just hurting everyone else. So now we just accept it. If we want to play with this guy we have to live with the fact he cheats. And that is his problem... because its not a win/lose game and there is no reason to cheat in the first place.
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PC - Ethel - Human - Lvl 4 Necromancer - Undying Dragons * Serge Marshblade - Human - Lvl 5 Eldritch Knight - Hoard of the Dragon Queen
DM -(Homebrew) Heroes of Bardstown *Red Dead Annihilation: ToA *Where the Cold Winds Blow : DoIP * Covetous, Dragonish Thoughts: HotDQ * Red Wine, Black Rose: CoS * Greyhawk: Tides of War
If we want to play with this guy we have to live with the fact he cheats. And that is his problem... because its not a win/lose game and there is no reason to cheat in the first place.
Yup... as I have said. Someone like this is not going to stop. Ever. At least, not voluntarily and not as long as he can keep doing it.
You could theoretically prevent it with a VTT and open rolls by everyone at the table which are shown in the chat window/etc. BUT... I suspect a player like this, who seems to NEED to succeed at everything his character does, would simply stop playing with you, rather than accept the failures that a (mostly fair) random number generator would impose on him. He would be miserable if prevented from cheating. He will make everyone else at the table miserable for some period of time, while demanding to go back to the old way. And if you persist in forcing open rolls through the VTT, he will just slowly fade away from the game group (while never once, ever, admitting he has actually cheated -- because it's part of the pathology that these folks need everyone around them to believe their character is this good,).
We had a player like this in Champions. Of course we were in like 8th-9th grade. He could not cheat with die rolls because we were all sitting there, and to be frank his basic math skills were the poorest in the group, so everyone sitting near him could add 10D6 or whatever he was rolling faster than he could. D6 with pips are very easy to see from across the room, especially the ones we used in those days which were white with black pips and fairly large. Even the GM across the screen could read your 3-6-4 and know you rolled a 13 to hit. Damage was harder to do that quickly but again, we were faster than he was so it was a moot point.
So if he didn't cheat on rolls what did he do? Well, he cheated on his STUN (hit points) and END (spell slots). He would use a bunch of powers and erase some END off his sheet but not as much as he should have. Or you would say the attack did 45 STUN, and he had 30 ED, so he was supposed to take 15 STUN. He'd subtract from his 50 stun and write 45, instead of 35, on his sheet. Unless you were going to lean over and look, you wouldn't notice. And in those days writing and erasing in pencil on the character sheet, after a while there was just a huge smudge there and it was impossible to read unless you were right there.
So how did he get caught. Well, the one guy who had never GMed before, but was great at math, became suspicious that something was up when the character had taken tons of damage and used a bunch of powers but still had most of his STUN and END left. So then when this smarter guy became GM, he asked as a new GM, could he have a copy of everyone's character sheet. The cheater guy was reluctant, but finally turned his sheet over for photocopying. Then the good GM kept records behind his GM screen during his first battle. After 3 or so phases of combat, the cheater had his character run a force field, turn desolid, fly through a wall, turn solid, and fire an energy blast. This would have taken a bunch of END. The GM then said, "OK, and you take" (rolls 3D6) "11 STUN as Endurance." (The rule in Champions is, if you hit 0 END, and you keep using END, you start taking STUN damage until you get KOed, 1D6 for every 2 END you spend or something like that.)
The Cheater said "WHAT????" What do you mean." The GM calmly explained that he only had 14 END left and had spent 20, so he had to take 3D6 stun as endurance. The cheater said no, he had 28 END or something left. "I'm sorry," the GM said, "But I have been keeping track of your endurance this whole battle." He then read off every single power the character had used and how much END and tallied it up. Of course the GM was right.
Did this shame the cheater? Was he embarrassed? Nope. He started a yelling match with the GM, accusing the GM of "not trusting him" (of course not!), of violating his "privacy" all kinds of nonsense.
Nobody believed him. And the GM was adamant. And the other players (who took turns GMing) now knew he was a cheater so the jig was up. His character suddenly became WAY less effective in combat (he was a wildly inefficient character builder in Champions, and his character was an END guzzler). It was not long after this that he stopped playing with us. I wonder why.
My point here, which agrees with Bart's, is that you are not going to change people like this. Either you let them keep doing it and pretend not to notice, or you impose some sort of countermeasure that stops them (polite or even harsh words will not work alone), and they stop playing with you. Because they cannot play RPGs without cheating -- it's a psychological issue.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I think your best choice, since you are playing online anyway, is to use a dice roller either integrated into your VTT or whatever other software you are using.
I think Discord has one, DDB has one, Roll20 has one ... pitch to the players as simplifying the process for everyone.
Keep in mind though that even "verified" random number dice rollers like Roll20 DO produce streaks just like any other random number generator. As DM, I've rolled three crits in a row, had a night where it seemed like none of the monsters failed a save and another night where every single monster failed. I've also seen double 1s or double 20s rolled (since I use Roll20 with the always on advantage option for die rolls since it speeds things up). Unlikely events happen and it is not necessarily a sign of an issue with the dice roller.
Since this player appears to have been cheating their die rolls for years ... I don't think you will fix it by talking to them. The only real option if you want to do something about it (and as a player or DM I would want to since I don't care for cheating even if it is low impact) is an independent die rolling mechanism.
OK update! I called the player aside and asked him to use the Beyond20 application for his rolls and he really liked it! his attacks are calculated much faster and he started using his actions smarter and is actually doing better in combat than before and much more legit too! I didn't accuse him of cheating I just showed him the new application and how excited I was for it and he hopped on board. It looks as if it has been resolved, I'm very thankful for all of the thoughtful suggestions and for introducing me to such a wonderful application!
Thanks all
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Learning is power, power corrupts, study hard be Evil.
OK update! I called the player aside and asked him to use the Beyond20 application for his rolls and he really liked it! his attacks are calculated much faster and he started using his actions smarter and is actually doing better in combat than before and much more legit too! I didn't accuse him of cheating I just showed him the new application and how excited I was for it and he hopped on board. It looks as if it has been resolved, I'm very thankful for all of the thoughtful suggestions and for introducing me to such a wonderful application!
Thanks all
A good outcome. But his sins are still unpardonable. You need to assert your dominance as DM next session by killing his character with an adamantine Tarrasque in the first five minutes, and warning the others they're next if they misbehave. It's the only way you'll get respect. Trust me. I did this to one of my players and now he flinches every time I reach for my dice tray.
You could also just fail his checks as consistently as his high rolls are and see his reaction. One or two sessions won't hurt much. If someone wants to cheat a DM it's worse than playing a casino, and the house loads wins. Then that might spark the conversation, or maybe he'll realize you're onto him and start playing correctly. But I'm also not shy of confronting my friends about this stuff. That's why they're my friends, because we can confront each other and still be friends. Or just let him meet a basilisk and turn him to stone, then have a chat with him. Curable but makes a point. We're DM's it's our joy to be creative, so get creative with it. Have some entertainment. Red harring some stuff. Make high rolls have some odd outcomes he may not want. Keep him guessing on stuff so that high rolls aren't necessarily sought after. Being good at something bad, is still just bad. He rolls high on performance and gets the attention of a creep constantly bothering and sabotaging him. Succeeds at a strength check and over does it breaking something like a brute. Great intelligence check and now he's fascinated by something you describe that's totally useless and another party member finds the clue with a lower roll. Etc.
You could also just fail his checks as consistently as his high rolls are and see his reaction. One or two sessions won't hurt much. If someone wants to cheat a DM it's worse than playing a casino, and the house loads wins. Then that might spark the conversation, or maybe he'll realize you're onto him and start playing correctly. But I'm also not shy of confronting my friends about this stuff. That's why they're my friends, because we can confront each other and still be friends. Or just let him meet a basilisk and turn him to stone, then have a chat with him. Curable but makes a point. We're DM's it's our joy to be creative, so get creative with it. Have some entertainment. Red harring some stuff. Make high rolls have some odd outcomes he may not want. Keep him guessing on stuff so that high rolls aren't necessarily sought after. Being good at something bad, is still just bad. He rolls high on performance and gets the attention of a creep constantly bothering and sabotaging him. Succeeds at a strength check and over does it breaking something like a brute. Great intelligence check and now he's fascinated by something you describe that's totally useless and another party member finds the clue with a lower roll. Etc.
The problem was already resolved. There's no need for thread necromancy, even if the OP is the Necrocomicon.
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All stars fade. Some stars forever fall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homebrew (Mostly Outdated):Magic Items,Monsters,Spells,Subclasses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
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I can think of several ways of handling the situation...
1. They should go to a games convention and be forced to walk around naked accompanied by a nun with a bell crying "shame".
2. They should be literally pilloried next to a large D20 marked 11 to 20 twice and a barrel of rotten fruit. Invite the public to roll the D20 and if they get 11 or better they get to lob some manky vegetable matter at the culprit.
3. A vastly inferior way of handling the situation is to send them a private message on whatever messaging service you're using in the game saying something like "wow, you are one lucky MF. Can you check your D20's not biased as another player and I have noticed you don't seem to roll less than a 12?" and see what the response is. If it's something like "Oh expletive, I didn't notice! I'll buy new dice!" then you're golden. If it's something else then you have to play it by ear.
Get a Discord dicebot, use Roll20, create an Unseen Servant account for the game, or otherwise get an online place where all players can roll their dice virtually with the results being something you can see. Have everyone roll there. Everyone is using the same dice, and you can see the results so there's no option to cheat. If you don't want to, you don't even have to necessarily confront the problem player (but seriously, you should talk to them about it, because that's really not acceptable behavior).
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Hah. Its funny to see this happens everywhere.
One of my players has gained the nickname "Nat 20." Across maybe 20-25 sessions he has never failed a skill check or save. He usually misses one or two attacks per session but otherwise always hits and always scores unnaturally high damage. And as the nickname suggest, about 25% of his rolls are natural 20's.
Both I and the other players call him out repeatedly. He denies it vehemently and usually misses a few attacks right after we call him out. By the end of the session however, it is back to 19, 17, 20, etc. I did a test... as part of a huge grand melee in a tournament I asked all the players to describe what they wanted to do and then I had them all make a ton of rolls ("Okay, give me a DEX save, a CON save, and roll 3 attacks AC 15...") and then kept that up. But the whole think was scripted and it was just an excuse to collect some data on Nat 20's rolls. On 60 rolls in that melee, he rolled 1 11, 2 13's and everything else was above 15. Not a single out of 60 rolls below 10.
And it is worst of all on things like perception checks and attempts to find things or seek out hidden objects. He is kind of a control freak/perfectionist so he always Nat 20s rolls that he thinks are important.
I used to add hit points to monsters (it was normal for this group to fight monsters with 120+ hit points since this dual wield ranger was doing 25+ damage by himself every round. But when the other players started complaining about skeletons with 60+ hp I realized I wasnt holding back Nat 20, I was just hurting everyone else. So now we just accept it. If we want to play with this guy we have to live with the fact he cheats. And that is his problem... because its not a win/lose game and there is no reason to cheat in the first place.
PC - Ethel - Human - Lvl 4 Necromancer - Undying Dragons * Serge Marshblade - Human - Lvl 5 Eldritch Knight - Hoard of the Dragon Queen
DM - (Homebrew) Heroes of Bardstown * Red Dead Annihilation: ToA * Where the Cold Winds Blow : DoIP * Covetous, Dragonish Thoughts: HotDQ * Red Wine, Black Rose: CoS * Greyhawk: Tides of War
Have you considered booting the cheater? I mean, why continue playing with the guy if he's going to be like that?
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Yup... as I have said. Someone like this is not going to stop. Ever. At least, not voluntarily and not as long as he can keep doing it.
You could theoretically prevent it with a VTT and open rolls by everyone at the table which are shown in the chat window/etc. BUT... I suspect a player like this, who seems to NEED to succeed at everything his character does, would simply stop playing with you, rather than accept the failures that a (mostly fair) random number generator would impose on him. He would be miserable if prevented from cheating. He will make everyone else at the table miserable for some period of time, while demanding to go back to the old way. And if you persist in forcing open rolls through the VTT, he will just slowly fade away from the game group (while never once, ever, admitting he has actually cheated -- because it's part of the pathology that these folks need everyone around them to believe their character is this good,).
We had a player like this in Champions. Of course we were in like 8th-9th grade. He could not cheat with die rolls because we were all sitting there, and to be frank his basic math skills were the poorest in the group, so everyone sitting near him could add 10D6 or whatever he was rolling faster than he could. D6 with pips are very easy to see from across the room, especially the ones we used in those days which were white with black pips and fairly large. Even the GM across the screen could read your 3-6-4 and know you rolled a 13 to hit. Damage was harder to do that quickly but again, we were faster than he was so it was a moot point.
So if he didn't cheat on rolls what did he do? Well, he cheated on his STUN (hit points) and END (spell slots). He would use a bunch of powers and erase some END off his sheet but not as much as he should have. Or you would say the attack did 45 STUN, and he had 30 ED, so he was supposed to take 15 STUN. He'd subtract from his 50 stun and write 45, instead of 35, on his sheet. Unless you were going to lean over and look, you wouldn't notice. And in those days writing and erasing in pencil on the character sheet, after a while there was just a huge smudge there and it was impossible to read unless you were right there.
So how did he get caught. Well, the one guy who had never GMed before, but was great at math, became suspicious that something was up when the character had taken tons of damage and used a bunch of powers but still had most of his STUN and END left. So then when this smarter guy became GM, he asked as a new GM, could he have a copy of everyone's character sheet. The cheater guy was reluctant, but finally turned his sheet over for photocopying. Then the good GM kept records behind his GM screen during his first battle. After 3 or so phases of combat, the cheater had his character run a force field, turn desolid, fly through a wall, turn solid, and fire an energy blast. This would have taken a bunch of END. The GM then said, "OK, and you take" (rolls 3D6) "11 STUN as Endurance." (The rule in Champions is, if you hit 0 END, and you keep using END, you start taking STUN damage until you get KOed, 1D6 for every 2 END you spend or something like that.)
The Cheater said "WHAT????" What do you mean." The GM calmly explained that he only had 14 END left and had spent 20, so he had to take 3D6 stun as endurance. The cheater said no, he had 28 END or something left. "I'm sorry," the GM said, "But I have been keeping track of your endurance this whole battle." He then read off every single power the character had used and how much END and tallied it up. Of course the GM was right.
Did this shame the cheater? Was he embarrassed? Nope. He started a yelling match with the GM, accusing the GM of "not trusting him" (of course not!), of violating his "privacy" all kinds of nonsense.
Nobody believed him. And the GM was adamant. And the other players (who took turns GMing) now knew he was a cheater so the jig was up. His character suddenly became WAY less effective in combat (he was a wildly inefficient character builder in Champions, and his character was an END guzzler). It was not long after this that he stopped playing with us. I wonder why.
My point here, which agrees with Bart's, is that you are not going to change people like this. Either you let them keep doing it and pretend not to notice, or you impose some sort of countermeasure that stops them (polite or even harsh words will not work alone), and they stop playing with you. Because they cannot play RPGs without cheating -- it's a psychological issue.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I think your best choice, since you are playing online anyway, is to use a dice roller either integrated into your VTT or whatever other software you are using.
I think Discord has one, DDB has one, Roll20 has one ... pitch to the players as simplifying the process for everyone.
Keep in mind though that even "verified" random number dice rollers like Roll20 DO produce streaks just like any other random number generator. As DM, I've rolled three crits in a row, had a night where it seemed like none of the monsters failed a save and another night where every single monster failed. I've also seen double 1s or double 20s rolled (since I use Roll20 with the always on advantage option for die rolls since it speeds things up). Unlikely events happen and it is not necessarily a sign of an issue with the dice roller.
Since this player appears to have been cheating their die rolls for years ... I don't think you will fix it by talking to them. The only real option if you want to do something about it (and as a player or DM I would want to since I don't care for cheating even if it is low impact) is an independent die rolling mechanism.
Not even to teach your other dice a lesson?
OK update! I called the player aside and asked him to use the Beyond20 application for his rolls and he really liked it! his attacks are calculated much faster and he started using his actions smarter and is actually doing better in combat than before and much more legit too! I didn't accuse him of cheating I just showed him the new application and how excited I was for it and he hopped on board. It looks as if it has been resolved, I'm very thankful for all of the thoughtful suggestions and for introducing me to such a wonderful application!
Thanks all
Learning is power, power corrupts, study hard be Evil.
Awesome, that is the best possible outcome.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
A good outcome. But his sins are still unpardonable. You need to assert your dominance as DM next session by killing his character with an adamantine Tarrasque in the first five minutes, and warning the others they're next if they misbehave. It's the only way you'll get respect. Trust me. I did this to one of my players and now he flinches every time I reach for my dice tray.
You could also just fail his checks as consistently as his high rolls are and see his reaction. One or two sessions won't hurt much. If someone wants to cheat a DM it's worse than playing a casino, and the house loads wins. Then that might spark the conversation, or maybe he'll realize you're onto him and start playing correctly. But I'm also not shy of confronting my friends about this stuff. That's why they're my friends, because we can confront each other and still be friends. Or just let him meet a basilisk and turn him to stone, then have a chat with him. Curable but makes a point. We're DM's it's our joy to be creative, so get creative with it. Have some entertainment. Red harring some stuff. Make high rolls have some odd outcomes he may not want. Keep him guessing on stuff so that high rolls aren't necessarily sought after. Being good at something bad, is still just bad. He rolls high on performance and gets the attention of a creep constantly bothering and sabotaging him. Succeeds at a strength check and over does it breaking something like a brute. Great intelligence check and now he's fascinated by something you describe that's totally useless and another party member finds the clue with a lower roll. Etc.
The problem was already resolved. There's no need for thread necromancy, even if the OP is the Necrocomicon.
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Homebrew (Mostly Outdated): Magic Items, Monsters, Spells, Subclasses
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If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.