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Avor
2009-07-18, 02:52 PM
What is the worst or most pathetic form of cheating you've seen?

A bad cheater I once met, insisted on playing with a screen to hide hid dice rolls and character sheets from everybody. We didn't let him use it, so he neveer did cheat, but we all know why a player would hide his dice result.

I never cheated on purpose, but if look at old character sheet the amount of errors show we just didn't know any better. Also when I roll a 1, I ask the DM if it's accualy a 4, not realy cheating, more like begging for mercy.

Kurald Galain
2009-07-18, 02:59 PM
What is the worst or most pathetic form of cheating you've seen?
Dropping d6's vertically from the edge of his hand. Unsurprisingly, they ended up as sixes more often than not. This was really too obvious.

We had this girl in our group once who would make a character with spells from obscure source books, which she "accidentally" forgot to bring every time. Turns out she also "accidentally" forgot about the drawbacks or exceptions of those spells.

Maltore
2009-07-18, 03:11 PM
In a PbP game, players changing their spell lists (either spells memorised or spells known) to fit the occasion. With spells from sourcebooks that were explicitely disallowed in character generation. When the DM had clearly said they kept a downloaded copy of sheets.

It still boggles me.

Lamech
2009-07-18, 03:15 PM
In a PbP game, players changing their spell lists (either spells memorised or spells known) to fit the occasion. With spells from sourcebooks that were explicitely disallowed in character generation. When the DM had clearly said they kept a downloaded copy of sheets.

It still boggles me.

Did one of them have psychic reformation? One could justify it... kind of...

Xenre
2009-07-18, 03:32 PM
This guy would only use this metal d20, you could be sitting right next to him and not be able to read it. He would crit 9 tomes out of 10. He freaked when his girlfiend (also a player) used whiteout to hilight the numbers. He didn't crit once the whole session, so he says the whiteout changed the balance of the die. If you told him to use a die you could reed he'd pack up and go home. Which sucked becuse his gf had to go with him, and she was fun.

Nero24200
2009-07-18, 03:37 PM
Got a cheater in my current group. I'm planning on confronting him pretty soon (just need to find a right "moment" I guess. I never get a chance to speak to him alone and I'd rather not "out" him in front of others).

His method? Well we play sitting on couches with only a small table, so for the most part we just roll on the books in our laps. Though he lifts his book so we can't see the roll, he doesn' seem to understand that getting natural 20's three-quaters of the time and never, ever rolling a natural 1 (or even getting a poor roll at all) is more obvious than he realises (or the fact that, being a good foot taller than him and the rest of the group, I can still see the results).

Though theres others as well, mostly making up spells that non-core classes gain, relaying on the lack of knowledge the DM has on that specific class.

Swordguy
2009-07-18, 03:45 PM
We're playing an AD&D game right now. Old school. Roll 3d6, in order, to create your character. A guy wants to join the group, and rolls up his character. It's a human wizard. OK, fine. I ask to see his sheet. He doesn't want to hand it over - says he doesn't feel comfortable having other players see his sheet. I remind him I'm the DM, not a player. My table, my rules. He grudgingly hands over the sheet.

Guy "rolled" a 1st level human wizard with an 18 Con, 18 Dex, 18 Wis, 18 Cha...and a 20 Int. On 3d6.

Chunklets
2009-07-18, 03:47 PM
Way back in Junior High, we were getting characters ready for a Basic edition campaign. One guy showed up with his character (a magic-user) already rolled up, and miraculously he didn't have a single ability score under 16 (this was back when you rolled 3d6 for each ability score, in order). However, this was minor cheating compared to his hit points. For a first level magic-user (1d4 hitpoints) with a +3 to Con, he had somehow ended up with 13 hit points. And his only defense for that was a hurt look and repeated insistence that he'd just had "really good luck with the roll."

BloodyAngel
2009-07-18, 04:02 PM
The most common form I've run across is the man with the die that are unreadable at a distance who just makes up what he rolled. (I'm certain that's why they make dice like that!) The worst I've seen was actually a girl... who would roll something, and even if you COULD see what she rolled... would lie to your face about it. She was so abrasive and angry if you called her on it, that most of her friends ignored it... and the DM just made the monsters 20-some times stronger to cope with that girl's character critting 4 times a round!

Said player, when DMing was just as bad... and had a tendency for extreme favoritism towards her npc's or the characters of players who she liked more. Her (then) girlfriend never seemed to fail at anything, and could beat every other character in the group in single combat, despite other characters having more skill in combat.

I stopped playing with her for a long time. Of late, she's gotten much better and is a good friend, but it was pretty bad for a while there.

mistformsquirrl
2009-07-18, 04:07 PM
Worst thing I've encountered are the fudge die rolls. Usually people rolling and scooping so fast that you can't actually see what they rolled. (It barely even stopped moving before they grabbed it!)

That's one thing I love about PBP >.<; can't really fudge the rolls. (Which also eases my mind when I roll incredibly well for stats; because everyone can see that's the actual roll <~_~>m

That's the thing I think that pisses me off the most about cheats really. It's not just that they can throw the game balance off entirely; but that they make everyone else suspect too whenever 'too much good stuff' happens to them.

Mr.Moron
2009-07-18, 04:11 PM
The table I play at is so small there really isn't any room for cheating. Since any dice you roll are basically under everyone else nose.

It's led to a really bad habit where I wind up memorizing someone's modifiers better than they do, and saying the result out loud while they're still adding in their head. I've really gotta stop that.

Cedrass
2009-07-18, 04:16 PM
I had one guy in the last session, I have no proof he actually cheated, but I have some really good reasons to think so.

He has something around, 12 sets of dice, no kidding, and he's always using the ones we can't read... His stats were awesome too, but that could be lucky rolls so I can't say.

We are not playing with this guy anymore, not because of that but our schedule changed and he can't participate, but I'm glad it ended up like that. Why the hell do people use those dice anyways?

Brauron
2009-07-18, 04:30 PM
I used to play with a player who did it all.

He'd ignore drawbacks to class features, spells, feats, etc. He'd stack modifiers that don't stack by RAW. My favorite was when he argued that all non-core D&D classes are well-balanced because if he really wanted to break the game, he could use core only to play a Druid 20 who wildshaped into a Shadow Dragon and dropped Elemental Monoliths on everything.

He'd fudge die rolls blatantly. One time he rolled a d20, and I could see it came up either 7 or 9. He then turned the die so that the 18 was face-up, added his modifiers and told me the result:smallmad: I actually had other players keep an eye on his rolls but he'd sweep them up in his hand before anyone else could get a clear reading.

What infuriated me was when he studied the rulebooks behind my back to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the monsters. I got him back though by changing the physical description of monsters and/or adjusting their stats a little. I had only suspected he was doing this when I started changing stats, and then one session he exclaimed, "Wait, that hit should have dropped it!":smallfurious:

The New Bruceski
2009-07-18, 04:36 PM
The table I play at is so small there really isn't any room for cheating. Since any dice you roll are basically under everyone else nose.

It's led to a really bad habit where I wind up memorizing someone's modifiers better than they do, and saying the result out loud while they're still adding in their head. I've really gotta stop that.

I do the same thing. The other habit I have is moving others' minis for them. Most of my friends don't mind (I have long arms and with a large table it helps) but one guy's really anal about such things, and I should learn to back off and wait for them to *ask* for help.

Thrawn183
2009-07-18, 04:59 PM
I knew a guy who played a paladin with a mount that had multiple attacks. Now, we were high level so it made sense to roll the attacks for the character and the mount simultaneously, but he kept switching which die he used for the character and the mount. I suspect that he was basically getting to use 2d20 and choose the best.

Tyrmatt
2009-07-18, 05:19 PM
At a gaming club I once went to, a kid used to roll and snatch up the dice again. I watched the organizer at one point during a Warhammer match whip out a hand and catch the kid as he went to scoop up his "All 6s!" dice and bend his fingers back while he read them. While jotting down the numbers on a sheet to "add them". No one ever did it ever again.

Most people I've known have been above the whole fudging dice rolls stuff but I introduced a dice tower to my games mostly to stop the dice careering off the table (we have an edgeless table and hardwood floors) but it also ensures random and fair dicerolls. It's really obvious when someone plunges their hand into the bottom of the tower to try and change a natural 1.

AslanCross
2009-07-18, 05:26 PM
I mostly deal with cheating (nobody ever tries it on me, since most of my players are students/former students) by having them roll into a tray in the center of the table. That way they can't grab the die once they let go of it, and everyone can see clearly how the die lands.

I'm actually more concerned when players just "drop" the die, as they tend to roll really badly. :P

josh13905
2009-07-18, 05:39 PM
There's a guy in my group who when rolling die sixes can spin them out of his hand so accurately he can roll a six 4 out of 5 times, No one knew this but we all suspected him, of being extremely lucky. How we found out? He showed it to us, since we have made him roll with a cupped hand motion [It was all in his technique.

Same player also brought 2 larger than normal red d6 with him, they were designed to cheat at craps one had all 5s and the other had 2s and 6s, after his first battle with them we found out and the DM slaughtered his character instantly. Since they have become a long-time joke. [He still brings them]

Vaynor
2009-07-18, 06:30 PM
I had one player who would constantly reroll his dice because it "hit that book" or "when rolling, hit a crack on the table". :smallannoyed:
I also noticed he'd never reroll the dice (even if it hit a book) if the result was good.
I put up with it for a bit but eventually I just cleared off the section of the table he was playing on completely (to avoid the dice hitting anything) and tried to explain what random means.

Another one decided that if he made a new character concept during character creation, he could reroll his stats until he found a concept he liked. Basically he just kept making up bogus concepts until his rolls were good. I didn't notice this at first (he wasn't near me) but I ended up rolling the dice for him (if I recall his scores were quite poor, too). :smallamused:

Mongoose87
2009-07-18, 06:50 PM
I had one player who would constantly reroll his dice because it "hit that book" or "when rolling, hit a crack on the table". :smallannoyed:
I also noticed he'd never reroll the dice (even if it hit a book) if the result was good.
I put up with it for a bit but eventually I just cleared off the section of the table he was playing on completely (to avoid the dice hitting anything) and tried to explain what random means.



This is actually standard procedure with my GM. He's very easy on us. Maybe a little too easy :smalltongue:.

Zen Master
2009-07-18, 06:58 PM
Snatching dice up the very second they stop rolling, calling out '19! Yay - that means I hit AC XX!'

Buying dice with barely readable numbers.

The two combined are extra pathetic, because everyone knows he cannot read the result on the dice in the few short nanoseconds the dice are still on the table.

Assassin89
2009-07-18, 07:07 PM
Does using an inappropriately leveled character count? Because if so, someone passed off a 1st level monk with the race being a hound archon. The ECL of the hound archon was 6, but that was only due to the +5 LA while ignoring the racial hit dice and still having the normal abilities. The hound archon is no longer in use and the played was later banned from the group.

RandomBlueGuy
2009-07-18, 07:19 PM
My first post on these forums.... yay me

I have a player who never seems to remember how many of those magic +1d6 fire arrows he has left, so i started counting on his behalf...

when i asked how many he had used he said 4 out of 20.... he got really defensive when i told him he had used 30 out of 20.

Another player, who is thankfully no longer part of our group used to always demand to see my dm's dice rolls as he thought i was cheating... i was... but only because his AC added up to 19 but his character sheet said 24.

P.s. i never show my dm dice, unless im particularly shocked by the results and want everyone to see them.

Achilles
2009-07-18, 07:26 PM
The DM is the one that always cheats in my group, usually in our favor. He homebrewed our campaign and recognizes he sometimes makes it a wee bit (impossibly) hard. So sometimes he'll "forget" to make us make a save and have us auto-pass or he'll just flip the dice. Whenever I play a rogue, rules are optional, though usually it'll just be peeking at the monster manual.

huttj509
2009-07-18, 07:29 PM
The DM is the one that always cheats in my group, usually in our favor. He homebrewed our campaign and recognizes he sometimes makes it a wee bit (impossibly) hard. So sometimes he'll "forget" to make us make a save and have us auto-pass or he'll just flip the dice. Whenever I play a rogue, rules are optional, though usually it'll just be peeking at the monster manual.

There's a difference between cheating and DM fudging in the players' favor. The latter is a legitimate balancing act the DM gets to play, as while you might want death to be a threat, if they walk into a room and insta-die no save that's not much fun, unless it was planned for meta-plot yadda yadda.

Thurbane
2009-07-18, 07:31 PM
I've seen examples in my group where some players have way more wealth than others, but I believe this is more poor bookkeeping than intentional cheating (i.e. players who buy gear but forget to mark off gold).

Jack_Simth
2009-07-18, 07:31 PM
That's one thing I love about PBP >.<; can't really fudge the rolls. (Which also eases my mind when I roll incredibly well for stats; because everyone can see that's the actual roll <~_~>m
Well, you can, it's just a little easier to check to see if they are.

See, I can put in (1d20+9)[1](10), with no apparent problems. But anyone who uses the quote feature of the boards will know exactly how I did it, and will be able to see it quite trivially.

Likewise, OpenRPG highlights any fudged rolls (by way of putting a flag on the HTML code for the most common method ... unless it's someone registered as the GM that's using the HTML).

mistformsquirrl
2009-07-18, 07:33 PM
That's what I meant >.> should have been more clear on that, sorry.

Since it's so easy to see through though; I at least haven't encountered anyone even trying it <^_^> I'm sure a few have; but because catching it is relatively simple.

Don't know enough about OpenRPG to comment on that though <@-@>b

Jack_Simth
2009-07-18, 07:36 PM
That's what I meant >.> should have been more clear on that, sorry.

Since it's so easy to see through though; I at least haven't encountered anyone even trying it <^_^> I'm sure a few have; but because catching it is relatively simple.

Don't know enough about OpenRPG to comment on that though <@-@>b

What's really fun with how it's handled on OpenRPG? It flags it for everyone except the guy who made the "roll". Which, you know, gets amusing.

mistformsquirrl
2009-07-18, 07:39 PM
Hah, nice >.>m doesn't even know he's been caught with his pants down <'x'>;

Elfin
2009-07-18, 07:48 PM
During one campaign a couple years back, we played at a large table and everyone got a couple feet of space. One person, who always sat at the head of the table, always stacked his rulebooks to form a sort of wall. Coincidentally, his dice rolls always landed behind the stack.

Coicidentally, he never got a roll less than 15. :smallannoyed:

Mystic Muse
2009-07-18, 08:37 PM
I had one player who would constantly reroll his dice because it "hit that book" or "when rolling, hit a crack on the table". :smallannoyed:
I also noticed he'd never reroll the dice (even if it hit a book) if the result was good.
I put up with it for a bit but eventually I just cleared off the section of the table he was playing on completely (to avoid the dice hitting anything) and tried to explain what random means.

Another one decided that if he made a new character concept during character creation, he could reroll his stats until he found a concept he liked. Basically he just kept making up bogus concepts until his rolls were good. I didn't notice this at first (he wasn't near me) but I ended up rolling the dice for him (if I recall his scores were quite poor, too). :smallamused:

well if by a crack you mean for example you pushed two tables together and it landed in the space between them(only on certain tables does this apply) then he should get to re-roll. if it hits a book or something, well that depends on whether you want it to count as a re-roll. my rule is "if the die hits something you have to re-roll it no matter the result. the DM does not have to follow this rule":smallamused::smallbiggrin:

this isn't really cheating per say because my players know I won't let them get away with it. however a few of my players try to roll a few more times than they're supposed to or allowed to. I am so thankful Santa brought me co-operative players for Christmas:smallbiggrin:

Vaynor
2009-07-18, 09:05 PM
well if by a crack you mean for example you pushed two tables together and it landed in the space between them(only on certain tables does this apply) then he should get to re-roll. if it hits a book or something, well that depends on whether you want it to count as a re-roll. my rule is "if the die hits something you have to re-roll it no matter the result. the DM does not have to follow this rule":smallamused::smallbiggrin:

No, we use our dining room table, and it has a crack in the middle (very small but it bumps the dice a bit) to allow you to put leaves in (to increase the size of the table).

Mystic Muse
2009-07-18, 09:15 PM
No, we use our dining room table, and it has a crack in the middle (very small but it bumps the dice a bit) to allow you to put leaves in (to increase the size of the table).

ah. yeah that doesn't count. it has to be more like there's a giant space in the table where it gets stuck. THEN I can see the person's gripe. I mostly only use my rule when it hits a book or something that greatly interferes with the way the roll would have turned out.

Lupy
2009-07-18, 09:58 PM
In my 2 man SWSAGA game we played on a table with leaves, which meant it had two gaps large enough to snag dice, and for a game screen I used the lid of a box.

One of my players used to roll important rolls into the cracks so that he could re-roll if it was bad. I let it slide because it was a very relaxed campaign.

Mr.Moron
2009-07-18, 09:59 PM
ah. yeah that doesn't count. it has to be more like there's a giant space in the table where it gets stuck. THEN I can see the person's gripe. I mostly only use my rule when it hits a book or something that greatly interferes with the way the roll would have turned out.

Of course, you re-roll that 5 only to get a 1. At a table using critical fumble rules.

Demons_eye
2009-07-18, 10:00 PM
I cheated once when the DM sent a karken at us when we were level 3-4. We looked up the stats for it and killed it with the help of 60 commoners. He killed it and demanded the EXP and Loot.

The Flyin' Lion
2009-07-18, 10:17 PM
I have only ever played, never DM'ed, and so I have a question for some of our experienced folks: I know that, in this part of our campaign, my group will be facing all sorts of demons, specifically followers of Lolth. Is it cheating for me to, using MM and Fiendish Codex, look at general demons, or does it only become cheating when I look something up during the game? I have a vast head for knowledge, so I roughly know the abilities of most things (I knew my level 13 group of 6 could handle a Marilith, but knew to run from two of them.)

Brogen
2009-07-18, 10:24 PM
I have only ever played, never DM'ed, and so I have a question for some of our experienced folks: I know that, in this part of our campaign, my group will be facing all sorts of demons, specifically followers of Lolth. Is it cheating for me to, using MM and Fiendish Codex, look at general demons, or does it only become cheating when I look something up during the game? I have a vast head for knowledge, so I roughly know the abilities of most things (I knew my level 13 group of 6 could handle a Marilith, but knew to run from two of them.)

Well, it all depends on your roll for Knowledge: The Planes, remember your character doesn't know everything you do. So, while yes, you can look up the stats of the monsters, your character can't use that knowledge. It's sorta like when you run into a troll, you might know that you can kill it with fire, but why would your character know that?

Cedrass
2009-07-18, 10:27 PM
I have only ever played, never DM'ed, and so I have a question for some of our experienced folks: I know that, in this part of our campaign, my group will be facing all sorts of demons, specifically followers of Lolth. Is it cheating for me to, using MM and Fiendish Codex, look at general demons, or does it only become cheating when I look something up during the game? I have a vast head for knowledge, so I roughly know the abilities of most things (I knew my level 13 group of 6 could handle a Marilith, but knew to run from two of them.)

That's the kind of thing I ask my players not to do, however, it is not cheater per se.

I don't know what kind of player you are, but my group and I prefer the challenge of fighting something we didn't plan for than having an easy time defeating it since we were ready. It's what makes the game fun for us.

That being said, if a player of mine did it, he'd know that I don't think highly of what he did and they probably would lose XP for this player's actions. The Monster Manual just is not a book a player should read. Of course I have read it and remember some stuff when I play, but I don't try to remember things. If I do remember something, I'll ask my DM if I can use that knowledge.

Mr.Moron
2009-07-18, 10:29 PM
The Monster Manual just is not a book a player should read.


This isn't the solution. It makes summoning spells 3.87 pains in the ass. Theres nothing wrong with knowing monster stats. If somebody can't be trusted to not be a dink and abuse that knowledge, why play with them?

I may know what a hell-hound is, and what it can do. That doesn't mean I'm about to start casting Energy Resistance(Fire) until I either make a knowledge check, or take fire damage from them. You know or see them burning down a building with their fire-breath.

Cedrass
2009-07-18, 10:32 PM
I should have been more precise. When they summon/have an animal companion/any event that may need them to look a monster's stats they can.

I just don't want a player who's character is not present for some reason to kill time reading the MM, if you know what I mean.

KillianHawkeye
2009-07-18, 10:32 PM
I have only ever played, never DM'ed, and so I have a question for some of our experienced folks: I know that, in this part of our campaign, my group will be facing all sorts of demons, specifically followers of Lolth. Is it cheating for me to, using MM and Fiendish Codex, look at general demons, or does it only become cheating when I look something up during the game? I have a vast head for knowledge, so I roughly know the abilities of most things (I knew my level 13 group of 6 could handle a Marilith, but knew to run from two of them.)

It's not cheating to look at the Monster Manual (or whatever). It only becomes cheating when you try to use that information in-game, when your character actually shouldn't know that much. And actually, characters would NEVER know things like total HP, ability scores, typical spells prepared, how high its DR is, or exactly how fast it regenerates. Or the DCs to resist its spells and special attacks.

If your character has a few ranks in Knowledge (the planes), then it's usually okay to say "Aha! Looks like some kind of devil! Devil's are usually immune to fire, so we'll need some other way of damaging it."

Mr.Moron
2009-07-18, 10:35 PM
I should have been more precise. When they summon/have an animal companion/any event that may need them to look a monster's stats they can.

I just don't want a player who's character is not present for some reason to kill time reading the MM, if you know what I mean.

It's still annoying. Since looking them at the time of summon takes up time/energy. Choosing your summons (the books also contain some neat expanded summoning options) ahead of time, and writing down their stat blocks makes things much smoother.

The MMs also contain some feats and options that are perfectly legit for players too.

There is no reason to restrict reading the monster manuals. They're interesting and contribute to system mastery. The only way it can become a problem, if the players are prone to the type of behavior that would just pop as a problem in some other context.

Random832
2009-07-18, 10:35 PM
I have only ever played, never DM'ed, and so I have a question for some of our experienced folks: I know that, in this part of our campaign, my group will be facing all sorts of demons, specifically followers of Lolth. Is it cheating for me to, using MM and Fiendish Codex, look at general demons, or does it only become cheating when I look something up during the game? I have a vast head for knowledge, so I roughly know the abilities of most things (I knew my level 13 group of 6 could handle a Marilith, but knew to run from two of them.)

Wait...

:smallconfused: You're asking if it's cheating for you as DM to look in the books? I don't think anyone would say that is the case.

Sanguine
2009-07-18, 11:04 PM
Wait...

:smallconfused: You're asking if it's cheating for you as DM to look in the books? I don't think anyone would say that is the case.

No, he is asking if as a player knowing they are headed into the abyss is it cheating for him to look up stats for demons.

Knaight
2009-07-18, 11:32 PM
Which it is.

Myatar_Panwar
2009-07-18, 11:51 PM
Cheating in D&D of all things has always baffeled me. Hey lets cheat in a game that cannot be won!

Unless its for other reasons:
"I was just trying to impress them"
"With cheating? What were you trying to impress them with?"
"My Dungeons and Dragons sklls"
"......."

Xallace
2009-07-19, 12:10 AM
There was a group that a friend of mine was in where one of the party's wizards was absent for a session, so they asked me to play his character (not something I would have ever suggested as a DM, but whatever). The character was level 1, human, Int 18. He had 72 skill points and two familiars. Apparently not a single other player had ever seen his sheet before, either. Can't say for sure if it was cheating, but sure was suspicious.

Although after cleaning up and correcting his sheet I stuck with his toad familiar, gave it a tiny luchadore mask and named it El Congo. Not related, but I take any chance to mention that mighty amphibian.

ondonaflash
2009-07-19, 12:13 AM
The only one I ever really run to, and one which I tend to look the other way on more often than not is when a player roll's a truly awful D20, then picks it up and re-rolls "Because it just fell flat". The people I play with don't really abuse it so I don't really push it unless it gets ugly.

Raum
2009-07-19, 12:13 AM
I find the many flexible definitions of 'cheating' sadly ironic. "It's ok when I fudge a die roll but not when you do!" It's the whole "do as I say not as I do" method of herding toddlers. Facile ethics of authoritarian philosophies. Not the type of philosophy I want to spend my recreation time enacting.

Details and rules are bound to change between groups. Just as gaming styles differ. One group's houserule is cheating to another. As long as it's applied consistently across a given group, is it 'cheating'? It's the inconsistencies within a group which tend to cause issues.

Jansviper
2009-07-19, 12:13 AM
I have the sneaking suspicion that the psion in the game I'm running right now is "counting" his power points "wrong" if I'm not constantly asking after the running total. We've played 8 hour games earlier in the campaign with numerous fights in a single day, yet...

Last session I kept after him about how many spell points he had, guy was down to forty from his total hundred and twenty some odd at the end of three fights. =/ Somehow I find it hard to believe he is going through them that much faster these days.

It also doesn't help that this is my first (and, surprise, last) time letting anyone play a psionic character in my games. I keep having to go into the rulebooks to read up on what he's doing to make sure he's not forgetting downsides and such.

The same player just loves to rush to the damage dealing part of his spells before telling me what the save is, or rolling for SR, or rolling to hit, etc. etc. etc.

Its kinda annoying.

oxinabox
2009-07-19, 12:17 AM
I had just stated DMing a 4e after about 12 months.
I had a good friend who was a very experienced player, brang along a friend of his, who was also more experenced than me.

My experience friend had to go, had to get dinner and had an assignemnt due.

And i had a warden playing and he asked what sort of an action marking was, and i was like... (i hadn't see the warden rules properly yet) "for now we'll say it's a free action once per round, i'll get back to you next week"


And the friend of a friend who was a warlock started marking things and then saying his powers said he got an extra d6 against them.
ANd he was getting some extra d6's for other things too.

anyway I wasn't too sure about this, but i was thinking.. he's more experecne than me, (even though i was pretty confidant that in PHB1 basically only fighter's could mark (without using special powers).

When i went back to my other firind to drop off his dm screen. he was like watch the the warlock, He can pull d6's out of nowhere.

Saph
2009-07-19, 12:32 AM
I'm luckier than some in this thread, in that I don't have to put up with any really blatant cheaters. What I tend to run into more often in my tabletop games is the "Yeah, it works this way" attitude, where players pick a rule interpretation they like and don't bother reading the rules in detail to make sure if it's right or not. Or they read the drawbacks, and forget them.

It's not strictly cheating, as they don't actually know that it's against the rules . . . but they know that it might be against the rules, and they don't look too closely to check. It's not as bad as full-on cheating, but it's still pretty annoying if I'm running a game for them, as it means I have to double-check everything they do.

A related cousin of this one is when players use numbers which I know are too high, but which are just within the bounds of plausibility. Sometimes it's a case of genuinely forgetting penalties, sometimes it's a case of "miscounting" and then hoping that I won't be sufficiently suspicious to give them an audit. In the short term it's hard to tell which is which - but over a period of time, you start to notice a pattern (they always seem to remember the bonuses, but always seem to forget the penalties).

- Saph

oxinabox
2009-07-19, 12:43 AM
Has anyone else ever noticed when some one rolls a bad roll, and for some reason legitiamte or not
(eg dm is like, stop using that dies it's broken It always rolls under 5)
they always roll worse the second and third time?

Godskook
2009-07-19, 12:44 AM
Not D&D, or even RPG at all, but its dice rolling, so it definitely relevant. We were playing monopoly, about ~7 of us, on a table big enough to do an autopsy on, so needless to say, we were spread out pretty thin despite the numbers. We had a house-rule where rolling snake-eyes was rewarded with 2 bills of every denomination. My younger brother would spend all 6 turns that weren't his rolling his dice anyway, to 'amuse' himself. Needless to say, he didn't 'break' for his serious roll, he just waited a roll or two to see if he could get a pair. He was actually subtle enough about it that we took a few rounds to realize it. When my older brother took his dice away, so that he couldn't cheat anymore, my younger brother jumped clear across the table, and the wrestling began.

Mongoose87
2009-07-19, 12:58 AM
Has anyone else ever noticed when some one rolls a bad roll, and for some reason legitiamte or not
(eg dm is like, stop using that dies it's broken It always rolls under 5)
they always roll worse the second and third time?

My girlfriend is the rogue in our party, and she uses my D20s, because hers hates her. So, after she rolled a 17 to find a trap, I switch out the D20 she's using saying "You never roll high on the same one twice in a row." She goes to disable the trap. Critical failure. Ach.

Kurald Galain
2009-07-19, 03:15 AM
The DM is the one that always cheats in my group, usually in our favor.

I am of the opinion that DMs by definition cannot cheat.

Zaggab
2009-07-19, 03:42 AM
I trust everyone in my current group not to cheat, but a player who used to be in our group before consistently cheated. Nothing big, but really annoying.

For one, he would always "forget" rules. He had barely read the rule books, so him not being an expert on DnD isn't surprising. But he "forgot" the same rules over and over again. Virtually every week we had to remind him that, no, you don't add BAB to damage, and no, you can't take a 5-foot step in the same round you move etc.

We use point buy, and his characters were almost always 2-4 points worth of abilites better than he could be.

One time, when he played a rogue, he did this: "I meant to take that skill, but I forgot, so I'll just reallocate some skill points so that I have it". He did it 5 times during the first 2 sessions. Guess how many different skills were used during that time? Yes, 5.
(Not really cheating, however, more like abusing a possibility as we normally allow people to slightly change their character during the first few sessions. But it's bad form to do it like he did it).

And then it was that time he "forgot" (over the course of 5 levels), that he had to take tower shield proficiency to not suffer -10 to his attack rolls. He also forgot that they always give -2, even with proficiency.

The Mentalist
2009-07-19, 03:46 AM
I'm not sure if this is cheating but I'm very fond of my dice (I'm still using my first set from '98) and having gotten used to the weight and such I tend to be able to roll quite well on average. Swap my dice and I'm screwed with anything other than a d6 or d8 (those are easy rolls) I suppose it's cheating in the same way card counting is in blackjack.

tyckspoon
2009-07-19, 04:09 AM
I'm not sure if this is cheating but I'm very fond of my dice (I'm still using my first set from '98) and having gotten used to the weight and such I tend to be able to roll quite well on average. Swap my dice and I'm screwed with anything other than a d6 or d8 (those are easy rolls) I suppose it's cheating in the same way card counting is in blackjack.

It's cheating in the same way that using loaded dice is cheating: you're taking a device that is supposed to be fair and random every time you roll it (that is, it should have equal chances of every result) and making it non-random.

Tangent: counting cards is in no way cheating. It's just using information that is freely available to all players in the game to determine when the odds are naturally in your favor, as they must eventually be unless the decks are recollected and shuffled very frequently. It does not involve doing anything to artificially tip the odds in your favor, which is the point of cheating techniques- it's just playing the game very well. Casinos will still kick you out for it, but that's because they're exercising their right to set the rules of their games and not because you are defrauding them.

Knaight
2009-07-19, 04:19 AM
It also doesn't help that this is my first (and, surprise, last) time letting anyone play a psionic character in my games. I keep having to go into the rulebooks to read up on what he's doing to make sure he's not forgetting downsides and such.

Psionics is actually really well designed, and really well balanced. Give the rule books a good read through, then remember a few things.

1) There is a hard cap on power points you can spend on a single power equal to your manifester level. If this is ignored psionics gets absurdly powerful for nuking and going nova. There are ways around this.

2) There really aren't that many draw backs. Psionic characters don't have to deal with verbal components, somatic components, material components, etc. Slight adjustments to all manifesting is easy.

3) The one drawback there is balances things. Psionic characters have no access to the vast majority of spells. Magic characters do. Psionic characters are also remarkably low on the brokenly overpowered spells. Magic characters not so much.

Its a good system, and pretty basic once you know it. Its also up on the SRD, so learn it, know it, and let it in your games. Don't let a problem player abusing holes in your knowledge keep you away from some of the most elegant mechanics ever written for D&D.

The Mentalist
2009-07-19, 04:25 AM
It's cheating in the same way that using loaded dice is cheating: you're taking a device that is supposed to be fair and random every time you roll it (that is, it should have equal chances of every result) and making it non-random.

Would that not make most dice manufacturers cheaters as well? Your standard D20 is nowhere near random.

Swordguy
2009-07-19, 04:48 AM
Tangent: counting cards is in no way cheating. It's just using information that is freely available to all players in the game to determine when the odds are naturally in your favor, as they must eventually be unless the decks are recollected and shuffled very frequently. It does not involve doing anything to artificially tip the odds in your favor, which is the point of cheating techniques- it's just playing the game very well. Casinos will still kick you out for it, but that's because they're exercising their right to set the rules of their games and not because you are defrauding them.

Tangent to tangent: This is true unless you're playing Deadlands (which uses card draws for many mechanics; counting cards gives you hints as to when would be a good time to take certain actions or how powerfully to use an ability). It's explicitly stated as cheating in that game. But yeah, otherwise agreed.

tcrudisi
2009-07-19, 05:45 AM
I was playing in my D&D group earlier today when I noticed a player cheated twice. The first time, he rolled a 5 on the d20, which he knew wasn't high enough to hit. Yet, the dice landed on someone's paper, so he scooped it up and rerolled it since "it was cocked." It wasn't.

Then, a few minutes later, he was rolling damage. He normally tries to roll his damage on his notebook. Well, one of the d6's fell off, but the other was just on the edge. The one on the edge? It was a 1. So he punches his notebook... the dice doesn't fall. He punches it again, it falls off and changes to a 3. He takes the 3.

/rant If you want to be a striker and do more damage (because a 1 on the dice just isn't enough), play a striker ... not a defender which never marks. /rant off.

Yuki Akuma
2009-07-19, 06:19 AM
Would that not make most dice manufacturers cheaters as well? Your standard D20 is nowhere near random.

No, it makes them terrible manufacturers of dice.

Buy better dice.

misterk
2009-07-19, 07:30 AM
Your standard dice will be fairly random. Most players belief that a particular die is unlucky or not is usually not held out by testing... for the kind of biases one might expect from production I imagine one would have to roll thousands of times to see much difference from the expected distribution. But yes, if your die is truly biased then that would be cheating.

I'm interested by the idea that the die hitting a book makes it biased? So what if it was going to roll something different, as long as the result was random it doesn't matter. That said, any rule like that is fine as long as it is consistently applied. If you only do it for bad rolls then that is cheating.

AslanCross
2009-07-19, 07:37 AM
Hmm. My hands down most frustrating player had a character concept but never took time to read the rules to pick skills and spells. She magically filled them in as the game went along, much to everyone's frustration. Even more frustrating was that in one adventure we didn't have a rogue, and she suddenly put in some cross class ranks as a sorcerer. But she didn't use them deliberately, because she WANTED the Monk to break open the door with a loud crash. Which is not a good idea in a fortress full of hobgoblins.

Said hobgoblins then cornered the party into a small room. It was a frustrating tactical situation, but the party still won. Everyone was livid after that. Only time I ever had someone yell at the top of his voice and throw random objects. That group fell apart rather quickly.

RandomNPC
2009-07-19, 09:36 AM
On both of these i allowed the ECL and they started at a lower level, that in no way excuses what happened.

I had a character with a weretiger, who had "stretchy" chain mail. it was neat. He also must have had built in GPS because he knew were everyone else was all the time (they kept trying to avoid him.

The friend who brought him? yea. Half dragon. But this was a custom build, lets see what i remember
`DR10
`Fire immunity
`40ft. Good flight as a medium creature
`Counted as a large for all good things (str bonus, carry capacity, weapon size) but nothing bad, (AC penalty, hallway sizes, the like) immagine powerfull build with no drawbacks and a mis-reading of some rules
`Greatsword (large of course, 3d6) made from "indestructable" dragon scales, doing 1d6 of each element on a crit, that counted as a +1 weapon.

my other gamers saw these two and turned on them, I don't think there was an in game reason other than the were tiger was annoying and the half dragon was overly violent even in towns. But they made a weretiger skin rug and a half dragon scale covered buckler. (i made it a normal MW buckler that looked spiffy)

so outside of those two, i get the occasional jokes, kind of asking for a cheat.
DM what did you roll
Player: Uh, seventy?
DM natural 1?
Player: yea.

or something like

DM: roll to hit
Player: Thats three in a row, can i re-roll someone elses dice?

thats about it, we play a semi-serious game, i make them take bad rolls, but if it'll cause death i generally allow 1 re-roll a session but its one roll, not a roll a person.

Jalor
2009-07-19, 10:10 AM
In the 4e game I used to play in, some idiot showed up with "jewel dice". These are tiny translucent dice that are nigh unreadable without a magnifying glass. He would roll, cover the die with his hand, lean in, and go "Oh, another natural 20".

He was not allowed to return the next week, needless to say.

FMArthur
2009-07-19, 10:51 AM
The only cheater I know is no longer playing games with me. I wouldn't let him play D&D with me, but in Settlers of Catan he always kept most of his cards in his lap. Under the table. He'd often 'forget' about them when a player was using the robber to steal a card, or when a 7 was rolled and players with over 7 cards had to discard.

One of my better friends happens to have some nice clear dice with white writing on them and we always make the joke about him cheating because of it being hard to read if he rolls well, but it just takes a little longer to read them and I've seen that he doesn't cheat. Sitting right beside me and rolling in view doesn't hurt, either.

Lord Loss
2009-07-19, 10:56 AM
A dm I played with for a short time, who's style I really don't enjoy tells us how much HP a monster has. The players then spend 15 minutes dissecting the battle strategy for the next rounds the odds of killing each monster, etc. Most PCs are lvl 18, except for the Dm. the dm players a level 31 paladin, who orders all the PCs around, making sure we never roll a bluff check, fight other players etc. Not cheating, but real close.

Necrus Philius
2009-07-19, 11:36 AM
Heh our DM cheats for us. Since it's our first time he absolutely refuses to let our chars die, so we gleefully tell him when we roll 1s. We roll alot of 1s and 20s oddly enough.

Behold_the_Void
2009-07-19, 11:47 AM
I won't say it's cheating per se, but there was a girl who I played with who had trouble grasping the rules (this was back in 3.5). We THOUGHT we had explained the proper spellcasting mechanic for her druid to her, but she did not understand it properly. Thus, we checked on her once and realized she was not memorizing spells, but just picking whatever spell she had written down (she made notecards for EVERY castable druid spell) that seemed to fit.

It was a high-powered silly game so it wasn't TOO big a deal overall, but we were kind of annoyed.

I'm still not sure she managed to grasp the concept even after, but if so it wasn't by malice on her part. Just... her being her.

gellerche
2009-07-19, 12:06 PM
I remember one guy always had to be the first at the treasure/idol/thing of value, and would never listen to other members of the party. It was like playing with a hyperactive Chihuahua. But he wouldn't put his mini on the map, so if the thing exploded/etc., he'd claim he was somewhere else in the room. The DM finally had enough of this by putting treasure in a room we hadn't entered yet. Chihuahua-boy went for it, the door sealed behind him, and the room filled with poison gas. We "tried" to save him, but by the time we came up with a plan to enter the room, we were "unfortunately" too late.

Xenogears
2009-07-19, 12:09 PM
It's cheating in the same way that using loaded dice is cheating: you're taking a device that is supposed to be fair and random every time you roll it (that is, it should have equal chances of every result) and making it non-random.

I disagree. It is not like using loaded dice. Using loaded dice is getting an unfair advantage based on nothing. Just being so used to the dice is something based on skill not cheating. Granted in DnD its not such a good thing anyway since you are all supposed to be working together but in another sort of game where it is more of a competition then it should NOT be considered cheating as the advantage is based off of hard won skill.

quick_comment
2009-07-19, 12:13 PM
I was in a PbP arena, and the GM changed my spell list when I was in a battle against him.

Of course, rpol keeps track of the most recent change to your character sheet, so it was sort of obvious....

Natael
2009-07-19, 12:30 PM
The closest thing to cheating that I've really had to deal with is players not knowing or forgetting rules. Last night was the closest example, level three characters 3.5 D&D, I was rolling some some attacks with orcs, asked the Bard what his AC was, 19!, the Paladin throws out a "WTF, higher than mine?" so I ask the Bard how he got it, apparently he got it from armor (+4), dex (+3) and a nice little +2 from having ranks in tumble >.> To be fair to the Bard though, his most recent experience with 3.x was Neverwinter Nights, so he was used to pimping out tumble for an AC bonus, we fixed that up, and he was taken to negatives by the next hit from an orc's great axe (those things hit hard even against level three characters, if you can bypass AC).

I've bypassed some rules before myself, though they have been ignorance (using the bind vestige feat to get around hellfire blast instead of taking the binder level, not too unbalancing in a level 20 dungeon crawl of doom game though), nobody the wiser, but never again for that one in my future.

Jaltum
2009-07-19, 01:34 PM
in another sort of game where it is more of a competition then it should NOT be considered cheating as the advantage is based off of hard won skill.

No. Dice are supposed to be random. Replacing a random factor with your own skill is cheating. It is kind of a textbook definition of cheating, actually; it's hard to imagine what could be more cheating, than controlling a supposedly random factor.

Would you seriously say it wouldn't be cheating for a professional magician to use sleight of hand to deal himself whatever cards he wants in poker?

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-07-19, 01:40 PM
I've bypassed some rules before myself, though they have been ignorance (using the bind vestige feat to get around hellfire blast instead of taking the binder level, not too unbalancing in a level 20 dungeon crawl of doom game though), nobody the wiser, but never again for that one in my future.

The feat works that way, from what I've seen.

Aneantir
2009-07-19, 01:46 PM
The feat works that way, from what I've seen.

The feat comes with a pre-set list of abilities you can choose from for the sake of binding a vestige. The Fast Ability Healing isn't one of them, so you don't recieve that ability for binding Naberius without being an actual Binder.

kamuishirou
2009-07-19, 01:46 PM
I was in a PbP arena, and the GM changed my spell list when I was in a battle against him.

Of course, rpol keeps track of the most recent change to your character sheet, so it was sort of obvious....

Wow! Sounds like the GM wanted to 'win'. That's not fun at all.

I've fudged a few die rolls as a GM. Yesterday I did it a few times to help things along. It was already getting close in the battle. But it helped keep the game fun.

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-07-19, 01:54 PM
The feat comes with a pre-set list of abilities you can choose from for the sake of binding a vestige. The Fast Ability Healing isn't one of them, so you don't recieve that ability for binding Naberius without being an actual Binder.

Ok, I think I see it.

Psychosis
2009-07-19, 02:50 PM
Once played with a guy who actually managed to load his d20. He was smart enough to not use it every roll (he used another die more frequently) but whenever he busted that sucker out, natural 20. I managed to get ahold of it after a game once just to check it out. Obvious unequal distribution of weight. I ensured that he "lost" it, and he hasn't tried anything similar since.

jagadaishio
2009-07-19, 03:19 PM
Players who roll with those completely transparent dice that can't be ready from a distance of more than half a foot away. That's one of the main ones. Other than that, the only 'cheating' I've ever seen is people who are genuinely ignorant of the rules.

Random832
2009-07-19, 03:47 PM
It's important to be careful to differentiate between merely using difficult-to-read dice (not cheating) and having suspiciously frequent good rolls (since lying about the number that comes up is cheating)

Mr.Moron
2009-07-19, 03:52 PM
It's important to be careful to differentiate between merely using difficult-to-read dice (not cheating) and having suspiciously frequent good rolls (since lying about the number that comes up is cheating)

My DM once inspected my dice because I was rolling too many 1s in a row.

Milskidasith
2009-07-19, 03:59 PM
I have built the perfect build! It just relies on me getting natural 1s! Nobody will see it coming!

Steward
2009-07-19, 04:16 PM
It's important to be careful to differentiate between merely using difficult-to-read dice (not cheating) and having suspiciously frequent good rolls (since lying about the number that comes up is cheating)

Excellent point. Sometimes, it's just a coincidence that all your dice have tiny numbers. If that's the case, don't immediately snatch them back up and announce the result before the DM can see it. That just looks suspicious, and even if you legitimately got a good roll everyone will assume that you're cheating because of it. In the few real-life games I've played, there was no timer that said that you had to snatch the dice back up the instant it stops moving. It was perfectly acceptable and even recommended that you at least let the DM see the dice before taking it.

thegurullamen
2009-07-19, 04:23 PM
My DM once inspected my dice because I was rolling too many 1s in a row.

Had a friend who did that. Eight natural ones in a three-hour session. The DM felt so bad, he gave him a brand new feat for the trouble:

Luck of Heroes

Once per gaming session, you may treat a natural one as a success. You still fail at the intended task (you miss if you attacked, you still fail if you tried to make a saving throw), but you fail in such a manner that you somehow come out ahead.

Examples include swinging at an ogre and missing, but knocking the fighter's sword into the target even harder; falling prone and finding something valuable on the ground or any other fortunate circumstance you can think of. (Subject tp DM approval.)

The guy put it to a lot of good (and hilarious) use over the course of the campaign.

FlawedParadigm
2009-07-19, 04:32 PM
Psionics is actually really well designed, and really well balanced. Give the rule books a good read through, then remember a few things.

1) There is a hard cap on power points you can spend on a single power equal to your manifester level. If this is ignored psionics gets absurdly powerful for nuking and going nova. There are ways around this.

2) There really aren't that many draw backs. Psionic characters don't have to deal with verbal components, somatic components, material components, etc. Slight adjustments to all manifesting is easy.

3) The one drawback there is balances things. Psionic characters have no access to the vast majority of spells. Magic characters do. Psionic characters are also remarkably low on the brokenly overpowered spells. Magic characters not so much.

Its a good system, and pretty basic once you know it. Its also up on the SRD, so learn it, know it, and let it in your games. Don't let a problem player abusing holes in your knowledge keep you away from some of the most elegant mechanics ever written for D&D.

+1 to this. The last group I actually played in rather than DM'd, the DM and group had gotten to liking the Psionic rules so much, they removed Arcane and Divine magic from their next setting, and had Illithids as the main campaign villains. All the primary caster classes removed, and all the gish-types (Paladin, Ranger, etc.) got their magic replaced with bonuses to skills/feats instead. Practically every Psi-power can be meta'd just by itself in some fashion, although there's still metapsionic feats similar to metamagic (Quicken, etc.), both of which change the cost of the power. Keeping in mind the limit on spent points = manifester level, you can still do all sorts of things that make each power seem like "your own."

On a side note, when you know Illithid are going to be the campaign focus and the group starts at 12th level - ECL, Ranger is a *really* good class. Heh.

Eon
2009-07-19, 09:47 PM
I have seen some people at the table knock dice accidently raising their initiative roll from a 7 to a 15... But even I sometimes do a miscount and do more damage than I should...:smalleek:

Jan Mattys
2009-07-20, 08:04 AM
This guy would only use this metal d20, you could be sitting right next to him and not be able to read it. He would crit 9 tomes out of 10. He freaked when his girlfiend (also a player) used whiteout to hilight the numbers. He didn't crit once the whole session, so he says the whiteout changed the balance of the die. If you told him to use a die you could reed he'd pack up and go home. Which sucked becuse his gf had to go with him, and she was fun.

Fun fact: one of the players in my Call of Cthulhu campaign has a whole set of dice that can't be read (they are dark green, dark purple, dark gray, and the numbers are black). Add to this we often play under the simple light of some candles.

...even funnier fact: the dude doesn't cheat... he's the only one able to see the results of his dice, and still we all know his dice are cursed because he rolls way too bad for his own good :smallbiggrin: Gotta love honesty.

B0nd07
2009-07-20, 09:07 AM
One of my friends that I play with uses a random number generator, which he programmed on his graphing calculator some time ago, pretty much exclusively. While he may not be intentionally cheating (as I have not seen the code he used, let alone know what language it's in) I just don't trust it. He "rolls" too well far too often. I don't think he's even ever gotten a Nat. 1. Even the dice roller I programmed in C++ is/seems more random than his, and it's only pseudo random (based of the time in milliseconds). And it's not like we're short on dice either; four of the six of us have multiple sets.

Random832
2009-07-20, 09:16 AM
You should ask to see the code.

valadil
2009-07-20, 09:37 AM
You should ask to see the code.

Just because he shows you some code, doesn't mean that's the code he's running at game time.

I've been pretty lucky when it comes to cheaters. We had one guy who only rolled 20s on initiative because he really liked going first. Nobody cared and he played fair the rest of the time. Another guy sometimes forgot his character sheet and reconstructed it from memory. We were never quite sure if his skills stayed the same but we never actually caught him doing anything heinous either.

I honestly think I've dealt with more accidental cheating due to stupidity than actual cheating. Like the player who was absolutely positive I told him he didn't have to deal with caps on his skill ranks.

oxinabox
2009-07-20, 09:42 AM
One of my friends that I play with uses a random number generator, which he programmed on his graphing calculator some time ago, pretty much exclusively. While he may not be intentionally cheating (as I have not seen the code he used, let alone know what language it's in) I just don't trust it. He "rolls" too well far too often. I don't think he's even ever gotten a Nat. 1. Even the dice roller I programmed in C++ is/seems more random than his, and it's only pseudo random (based of the time in milliseconds). And it's not like we're short on dice either; four of the six of us have multiple sets.

all random number generators are pesudeo-random.
Computers(=calcualtors) are determinate (almost everything is determinate, it's just some things are too complex for us to conprehend).

There is only a couple of sources of trully random number's.
Here's one, (http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/)

jcsw
2009-07-20, 09:55 AM
all random number generators are pesudeo-random.
Computers(=calcualtors) are determinate (almost everything is determinate, it's just some things are too complex for us to conprehend).

There is only a couple of sources of trully random number's.
Here's one, (http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/)

Technically dice aren't fully random either. Not just due to uneven weight but also due to the way you release the die. Both digital RNGs and dice are "random" enough for gaming though.

quick_comment
2009-07-20, 09:59 AM
One of my friends that I play with uses a random number generator, which he programmed on his graphing calculator some time ago, pretty much exclusively. While he may not be intentionally cheating (as I have not seen the code he used, let alone know what language it's in) I just don't trust it. He "rolls" too well far too often. I don't think he's even ever gotten a Nat. 1. Even the dice roller I programmed in C++ is/seems more random than his, and it's only pseudo random (based of the time in milliseconds). And it's not like we're short on dice either; four of the six of us have multiple sets.
Nearly all randomness on computers (calculators included) is mere pseudo-randomness, it's nothing to be ashamed of. For real randomness, you need an actual outside source of entropy. (A common high-quality suggestion is a device that measures radioactive decay; other less reliable ones are input from webcams observing a changing physical system (say a lava lamp), or "software background noise" from a desktop machine in active use, such as network delays, keyboard input, mouse movements, and the like, all put together.) For almost every purpose (the exceptions being applications that may come under intensive statistical attack, say cryptography and gambling), a correct implementation of a good, suitable PRNG will suffice -- in fact, it will almost certainly be very much superior to physical dice; because physical dice can come with physical defects and, moreover, become worn with age.

It's possible that he is using a very bad algorithm that does yield noticeably flawed results (a famously horrid one gave alternately odd and even numbers), or that he's botched the implementation. Of course he could also have "botched" the implementation in his own favour deliberately.. if he doesn't let you inspect the code, and insists on using his own program, I'd definitely be suspicious.

If you really want to investigate it, instead of quarrelling about the code, just note down all his dice rolls until you have enough to see if they resemble a uniform distribution. Dice superstitions aside, in the long term, good and bad luck will even out with any fair generator.

Random832
2009-07-20, 10:01 AM
Just because he shows you some code, doesn't mean that's the code he's running at game time.

He should still ask to see it. Fully inspect the source code listings, and inspect the calculator's programs menu to make sure there aren't any alternate versions.

Still doesn't prevent him from lying about the number, or double-pressing the button for a reroll, but it's a start.

And also, what ^he said - he could have screwed it up by accident (if you're not sure what you're looking at, you should have him post it here).

archon_huskie
2009-07-20, 10:11 AM
The worst case of cheating I have encountered was a guy in a Vampire Larp. The game uses rock paper scissors instead of dice. This guy wanted to be different. He had three cards each with a picture of a rock, paper or scissors.

Now this would not have a been a big issue. But the rock card had a corner folded over and the paper card had a corner ripped off. One person would throw rock, and he would take a few seconds to draw the paper card.

He did not understand why people refused to let him use the cards.

valadil
2009-07-20, 10:16 AM
He should still ask to see it. Fully inspect the source code listings, and inspect the calculator's programs menu to make sure there aren't any alternate versions.

Still doesn't prevent him from lying about the number, or double-pressing the button for a reroll, but it's a start.


Would you suggest doing this every session as well? What about other programs with innocuous names? Pythagorean.exe has every right to be on a calculator but could be anything.

Random832
2009-07-20, 10:24 AM
Would you suggest doing this every session as well?

It depends on how suspicious you are - if the player doesn't like it, he can use real dice.

archon_huskie
2009-07-20, 10:31 AM
What sort of graphing calculator is used? They generally have simple programing. And Pythagorean.exe should have two input prompt for A, B, or C to calculate the remaining one.

Jarawara
2009-07-20, 10:31 AM
I used to run an AD&D game which was more of a mass combat campaign rather than the 'small party adventuring' game (ie, the usual fare). The party consisted of several dozen PC's as well as henchmen, hirelings, workmen, and guards. We fought large scale battles, though when it came to the actual art of dungeoneering, usually only a small strike force was selected to go in, leaving the rest to maintain camp.

The key point, however, was that it wasn't just 4 PC's and an army of extras that the DM provided - it was several dozen PC's, each with a character sheet written up by the player. The stats seemed reasonable, no massively high scores or anything, and the equipment was properly detailed out. But one day, I was randomly looking over the list of characters, and began to notice the pattern.

Every single one of his characters had exactly maximum hit points... minus 1.

He didn't give them maximum hit points... that would be too obvious. Instead, he had each and every character have one 'roll' come up one point short. He thought that with Constitution scores creating a visual variable, it would obscure the pattern, or something. Unfortunately for him, I'm good at math.

"Hmmm... 3rd level fighter, +1 Con, 32 hit points. Huh, 1 point shy of max. Next guy, 3rd level cleric, no Con bonus. 23 hit points. Huh, 1 point shy of max there too. 4th level fighter, +2 Con bonus, 47 hp. Huh! 4th level rogue, +1 Con bonus. 27 hp. Uhhh... I think I see a pattern here?"

He answers: "Really? I didn't know that. I must be just lucky with my dice. Those are probably my luckiest, the others probably don't follow suit." (Yeah, they did, all 30+ of them.)

It wasn't a big deal, though, as it was only him and me, so I just tossed more monsters at him and we had bigger fights. But still, I wonder if he still does that in his current games, and if the DM notices. He mostly DM's now, so I guess he can get away with it all he wants there.

Jarawara
2009-07-20, 10:42 AM
As for computers used for number generation...

My very first player wrote a program for his computer to generate ability scores for his characters. He showed me the code (back in the good ol days of 'Basic', so I could actually understand it). It randomly determined a number between 1 and 6, then times three, to produce results of 3-18.

If you don't see the problem... look again and you'll see, it doesn't randomly produce a 1-6 range three times and add them together.... it produced a single 1-6 range, and multiplies that by three. I pointed that out, but he seemed unconcerned.

So he creates characters with ability scores of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, or 18, each of equal commonality.

"Gee, Mike, this is your third character in a row that has an 18, and also a 3. You got extremely lucky *AND* unlucky dice there."

Funny thing was, he didn't cheat. He enjoyed a lot of 18's, but kept every single one of those 3's, and took them in whatever order they rolled. His cleric had a 3 strength and an 18 charisma, his fighter had a 15 strength, and 18 constitution, and a 3 dexterity. Good times!

Hunter Noventa
2009-07-20, 10:56 AM
One of the players in our current campaign is pretty blatantly cheating. We have several players who play online, and he is one of them. The other two we trust, and they fail often enough that it's obvious they don't cheat. But this other guy almost never roll below a 15. Which is important since he uses a scimitar and has improved critical, so the vast majority of his attacks are crit threats.

Finally we broke down and had everyone who was online use the die roller in gametable. he bitched, but still did just fine in the fight we had, so it worked out. We'll see if it continues this week.

Dogmantra
2009-07-20, 10:59 AM
So he creates characters with ability scores of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, or 18, each of equal commonality.

Tangent: That's actually awesome. I may have my next game with 2d6b1*3 abilities.

Jolly Steve
2009-07-20, 11:05 AM
There's a difference between cheating and DM fudging in the players' favor.

Cheating is treating someone as an enemy. DM fudging is treating someone as a child.

DMs, if you think I'm not mature enough to play by grown-ups rules, how about you don't have me in your group?

Random832
2009-07-20, 11:05 AM
One possible way to deal with players falsely announcing their die roll results (which has been mentioned about a dozen times in the thread so far)

"I want everyone [this is important, don't single one player out] to announce the actual die roll and bonus being added together for each d20 roll, so I can write it down for statistical purposes."

If you just let them think you're gathering statistics, this may be enough to keep them honest - and it's not a lot of effort to actually write them down, if you have a laptop and Excel.

Note that it is legitimate for the distribution itself to be uneven, especially in just a few hundred rolls - you do have to consider carefully what questions you're asking the numbers... for example, in 45 rolls, the probability of not getting a single 1 (or a single 20) is 10%.

This can also be used to find unlucky dice. [while "luck" is a superstition, it is scientifically true that a die can be biased via uneven wear, poor manufacturing, etc]

(Of course, the simpler answer is to just have everyone roll the dice in the middle of the table. Any possible solution has the problem that it says "I don't trust you", but you wouldn't be worried about this if you did trust all your players)

valadil
2009-07-20, 11:20 AM
Cheating is treating someone as an enemy. DM fudging is treating someone as a child.

DMs, if you think I'm not mature enough to play by grown-ups rules, how about you don't have me in your group?

Fudging is what happens when a GM prioritizes story over game, which is a perfectly valid decision for a GM to make. It has nothing to do with maturity.

Jolly Steve
2009-07-20, 11:21 AM
Cheating in D&D of all things has always baffeled me. Hey lets cheat in a game that cannot be won!

As someone said on another board: cheating at D&D is like cheating at washing. You'll get away with it, but it won't make anyone like you.

Jolly Steve
2009-07-20, 11:28 AM
Fudging is what happens when a GM prioritizes story over game, which is a perfectly valid decision for a GM to make. It has nothing to do with maturity.

I think maybe sometimes the GM wants to tell a story more than the players want to hear it. Their title is 'Game Master' after all.

Milskidasith
2009-07-20, 11:30 AM
Cheating is treating someone as an enemy. DM fudging is treating someone as a child.

DMs, if you think I'm not mature enough to play by grown-ups rules, how about you don't have me in your group?

Really? The DM fudging in the party's favor when they get TPK'd in their first encounter due to the enemies getting a crit would be treating them as children? Personally, I think fudging in the player's favor would be OK in that situation, as long as it didn't go to full on railroading, just because it would be pretty silly to have taken the time to set up your character and then have him die instantly.*

*Note: At higher levels, when the party has more opportunities for sound tactical decisions and ways to excape with their lives, saving them would be less acceptable. It also doesn't seem like a great idea to save the players if they do something stupid and then when you say "are you sure?" they still do it.

Jolly Steve
2009-07-20, 11:31 AM
I have only ever played, never DM'ed, and so I have a question for some of our experienced folks: I know that, in this part of our campaign, my group will be facing all sorts of demons, specifically followers of Lolth. Is it cheating for me to, using MM and Fiendish Codex, look at general demons, or does it only become cheating when I look something up during the game? I have a vast head for knowledge, so I roughly know the abilities of most things (I knew my level 13 group of 6 could handle a Marilith, but knew to run from two of them.)

My advice: ask your DM to 're-skin' everything. So when you face a 'demon', it might have the stats of a dragon, or a character of your level, or split into a horde of vermin. Then you can read away in good conscience, and a successful Knowledge roll will really tell you something.

Jolly Steve
2009-07-20, 11:42 AM
Really? The DM fudging in the party's favor when they get TPK'd in their first encounter due to the enemies getting a crit would be treating them as children?

It'd be treating us as people who can't handle the disappointment of losing due to bad luck in a game.

The problem of characters taking forever to roll up is a real one, but that's a system problem more than anything. Anyway the DM can always allow you to rename your character and give them the same stats if they want to.

Jolly Steve
2009-07-20, 11:43 AM
It also doesn't seem like a great idea to save the players if they do something stupid and then when you say "are you sure?" they still do it.

At the risk of starting an argument, I consider saying "are you sure?" to be fudging in the players' favour as well.

But whatever I guess, it's only a game, whatever is the most fun for everyone. I just think that sometimes the DM assumes that they have to do this to make it fun, and perhaps if they asked the players they might find that it's not true.

Jarawara
2009-07-20, 11:52 AM
Anyway the DM can always allow you to rename your character and give them the same stats if they want to.

Which is the same as fudging to keep the character alive. At least fudging the dice might remain a secret, allowing the player to think he survived by the skin of his teeth. Having the character die then be replaced by an exact copy with a new name is simply undoing the death, an after-the-fact fudge.

If you're going to undo death, I'd prefer you fudge to avoid it in the first place.

Mongoose87
2009-07-20, 11:56 AM
It'd be treating us as people who can't handle the disappointment of losing due to bad luck in a game.

The problem of characters taking forever to roll up is a real one, but that's a system problem more than anything. Anyway the DM can always allow you to rename your character and give them the same stats if they want to.

The real problem is that all the work the DM has done up to this point is wasted, or needs to be drastically altered for the new party, post-TPK. Or, you've just had a four-hour session end three hours early.

Jarawara
2009-07-20, 11:56 AM
No doubt you'd conclude that I was either patronising, or sleazy.

Incorrect conclusion on your part. Plus, insufficient information. Maybe she's new? I have no problem if you're easy on the new guy or girl.


So, would you rather I was patronising/sleazy to everyone, or to no-one?

Yes.

Jolly Steve
2009-07-20, 11:59 AM
The real problem is that all the work the DM has done up to this point is wasted, or needs to be drastically altered for the new party, post-TPK. Or, you've just had a four-hour session end three hours early.

Couldn't they just keep the game going with new characters?

Jolly Steve
2009-07-20, 12:02 PM
Which is the same as fudging to keep the character alive. At least fudging the dice might remain a secret, allowing the player to think he survived by the skin of his teeth. Having the character die then be replaced by an exact copy with a new name is simply undoing the death, an after-the-fact fudge.

If you're going to undo death, I'd prefer you fudge to avoid it in the first place.

I didn't mean like "OK, suddenly YOURGUY2 appears." I mean as in the survivors retreat, and in town there's another ranger they can hire. They don't have to be a 'clone' of the old character, just have the same skills.

Random832
2009-07-20, 12:08 PM
You keep editing points you make in your posts; it's annoying. I can't find the "patronizing/sleazy" Jarawara replied to, and I edited out my own response to your implication that you have a problem with the default standard "4d6 best 3" method of rolling stats.


Couldn't they just keep the game going with new characters?

Sure if you're just doing plot-free dungeon crawls, rather than your characters being involved in any long-term intrigue plotlines.

Milskidasith
2009-07-20, 12:08 PM
I said TPK; there wouldn't "be" a group left to retreat and find a new character. And either way, it's still fudging, except by hiding the rolls, you can have your party barely survive (at that early point where rolls matter more than skill and tactical decisions to win), but by saying "you all die. Now... near exact clones with a similar backstory all appear and go to the plot hook NPC and get the same quest" you take some realism out of it. And having to write another character sheet and backstory for something that isn't your fault is dumb.

Also, you have to consider everybody else. Sure, saying "are you sure?" to the guy when he does something suicidal is going to keep him from dying stupidly, but if he had it would have ruined everybody elses experience as well. If you think that "fudging" is just as bad as blatently cheating and that it's worse than having your players, you know, have fun, and have weird definitions of fudging where "characters die, clones show up to replace them" isn't fudging but "The orcs were using blunt arrows, you are tied up and captured" isn't, then that's how you DM, I suppose.

Jolly Steve
2009-07-20, 12:23 PM
Also, you have to consider everybody else. Sure, saying "are you sure?" to the guy when he does something suicidal is going to keep him from dying stupidly, but if he had it would have ruined everybody elses experience as well.

That's what initiative is for. They can always tackle/hold the sword arm/put their hand over the mouth.



You keep editing points you make in your posts;

Well, I wanted to change what I said.


Fudging is what happens when a GM prioritizes story over game

Characters dying is story.

"Many have entered these caverns, yet none have returned". Or, more generally, "this is a dangerous world full of monsters."

One of the most common bits of advice for would-be writers is to 'show, don't tell'.


by saying "you all die. Now... near exact clones with a similar backstory all appear and go to the plot hook NPC and get the same quest" you take some realism out of it.

If that was what I said, it would indeed have been bad advice.


Sure if you're just doing plot-free dungeon crawls, rather than your characters being involved in any long-term intrigue plotlines.

If the characters are protected from dying, it's not really intrigue.

B0nd07
2009-07-20, 12:23 PM
@Random832:

As valadil said, it doesn't mean it's the same code he's using.


@oxinabox, quick comment:

I know that. I have a degree in programming and game design. One of the first things I learned.

Even if he shows me the code, it doesn't mean I'll understand it. DirectX confused the hell out of me, and it's just an expansion of C++.


@archon huskie:

It's a TI-83.


@Jarawara:

Funny you should mention that. I made one too, except mine actually works as intended. :smallbiggrin:


Man, I didn't think such a minor thing would spark so much conversation. :smalltongue:
Any way, I'll ask to see the code sometime. I'll probably just have him use dice or some other dice roller on his computer (that he only listens to music on and talks in some chat room with) when I DM.

[Edit] OK, Jolly Steve, I think there is a rule about double (or in this case quintuple) posting, but it's been awhile since I read the rules. Would you mind just going back and editing your posts? Much better, Jolly Steve. Thanks.

Jolly Steve
2009-07-20, 12:26 PM
If you think that "fudging" is just as bad as blatently cheating and that it's worse than having your players, you know, have fun

Like I said above, I think DMs often assume that the players need to be 'protected' in order to have fun.

It's common for a DM to say that they do this to make the game more fun, yet rare for players to say that they want the DM to do it.

only1doug
2009-07-20, 12:31 PM
Well, I wanted to change what I said.

Its fine to change what you said, it's nice to do it without deleting the old text by using strikethrough to highlight the change.

5 posts in a row is a bit excessive, you could edit in afterthoughts as well.

Edit: On topic, One player in a campaign I was in had started with a magic weapon that was worth more than his total starting WBL...

Other players stole it from him in game and handed it to another (who didn't know the origin and handed it to me to identify, I named it as the "Sling of Chee Tah".

Random832
2009-07-20, 12:35 PM
@Random832:

As valadil said, it doesn't mean it's the same code he's using.

No, but if it's a surprise inspection at the beginning of a session he probably won't have "fake code" prepared. Also, this sort of thing is easy to get wrong if you don't have a solid grasp of how the random number functions you're using work, so it could be messed up purely by accident.


@oxinabox, quick comment:

I know that. I have a degree in programming and game design. One of the first things I learned.

Even if he shows me the code, it doesn't mean I'll understand it. DirectX confused the hell out of me, and it's just an expansion of C++.

Yeah, well, TI Basic isn't nearly as complex as even plain vanilla C++

B0nd07
2009-07-20, 12:51 PM
No, but if it's a surprise inspection at the beginning of a session he probably won't have "fake code" prepared. Also, this sort of thing is easy to get wrong if you don't have a solid grasp of how the random number functions you're using work, so it could be messed up purely by accident.



Yeah, well, TI Basic isn't nearly as complex as even plain vanilla C++

Nothing says he doesn't already have an alternate program. Also, he's in a programming course too.

And yes, I've looked into it now, and the random function is quite simple. I've just never programmed on a TI-anything before.

valadil
2009-07-20, 12:57 PM
"Many have entered these caverns, yet none have returned". Or, more generally, "this is a dangerous world full of monsters."

One of the most common bits of advice for would-be writers is to 'show, don't tell'.


Oh I agree. If you tell your players something is risky and the characters take that risk, they're free to die. I'm more likely to fudge away freak accidents or random encounter deaths. That or fudge up encounters when I realize I underestimated the PCs. I'd rather give them a long drawn out fight than a quick and boring one.

Jolly Steve
2009-07-20, 01:04 PM
Oh I agree. If you tell your players something is risky and the characters take that risk, they're free to die. I'm more likely to fudge away freak accidents or random encounter deaths. That or fudge up encounters when I realize I underestimated the PCs. I'd rather give them a long drawn out fight than a quick and boring one.

But they already know that they're adventurers in a dangerous fantasy world. The game is only about the people who knew it was dangerous and took the risk. You've always told them.

misterk
2009-07-20, 01:12 PM
To be fair, while there are obvious cheaters around, it can be easy to think something is odd when theres nothing really going on. If you want to test to see if a die is acting oddly check out the chi squared test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson%27s_chi-square_test). You'll need to record a lot of rolls in a row though.

Quietus
2009-07-20, 01:23 PM
Like I said above, I think DMs often assume that the players need to be 'protected' in order to have fun.

It's common for a DM to say that they do this to make the game more fun, yet rare for players to say that they want the DM to do it.

And yet, if a DM who HAS been fudging rolls for a while stops.. his players will be upset because their characters won't be alive.

As a DM, I've no problem fudging rolls here and there - I don't like to crit first-level players, for example, and my monsters NEVER have a set amount of hit points. They die when dramatically appropriate. And I'd prefer to have a giant with 50 HP left die when critted for 47 with a greataxe, than have it get critted, and drop to a 3 damage crossbow bolt.


Ultimately, I go for drama and interesting scenes. An orc jumping out of a bush and killing (not dropping, KILLING) a player with a lucky crit isn't interesting, it's frustrating. And since I put in the extra work to get my players to give me goals and motivations for their characters, which I tie into the story that we as a group are telling, I don't like to see players die for stupid reasons. Big important fights, or they do something stupid? The gloves are off, and they know it. Three orcs raiding a wagon? That's a lame way to die.

Of course, my players don't know this, and I make sure that even if I'm not going to kill them, I DO challenge them - the three orcs might rough them up, they just won't land a crit that'd drop them past -10.

Jolly Steve
2009-07-20, 01:30 PM
I'm starting a different thread on fudging rolls, as it's not the main subject of the thread.

EDITED TO ADD: How about I, and everyone who replied to me, delete their posts, so the thread stays on track?

Jarawara
2009-07-20, 02:52 PM
Nah, keep the posts where they are, and the thread can get back to the topic of cheaters.

I'll follow you over to the new thread, and we'll continue from there.

Jade_Tarem
2009-07-20, 04:26 PM
I too, would like to add in two cents on the fudging, but for the sake of this thread:

INITIATING THREAD REBOOT...
LOADING...
LOADING...
THREAD ON TRACK

The worst instances of cheating I've seen also come under the heading of dice roll interpretation. The places we have available to us to play DnD frequently have us spread out, unable to see each other's rolls. That said, all the players in our group have result distributions that you might expect, with rolls running the gamut from one to twenty, and a healthy dose of both natural 1s and 20s.

Except this guy. He doesn't play with us anymore (mostly due to a crippling inability to stick to a plot rather than his unfortunate tendency to cheat), but he would almost always announce critical success - sometimes before the dice stopped rolling. Even better, sometimes he would not have the correct die for the job, and in order to "keep the game running smoothly" he would just "pick a number at random" which would almost always be "greater than or equal to the maximum possible roll for the die in question."

Ok, that last quote wasn't from him, but it got pretty annoying after a while. Add in some wonderful, blissful ignorance about certain rules, and he was getting on everyone's nerves, and someone finally called him on it - at least in a specific instance. Three different people alternated DMing in our group at the time, and at this point the one DMing was our powergamer, probably the most experienced and mechanically sound player we have, and he was running his souped-up Temple of Elemental Evil module. We were in the room with a bunch of razor-sharp wires and three caster opponents, when the problem player decided he wanted to cut one of the mithral wires. He managed to come up with "twenty damage to the wire."

Our DM had finally had enough, and cut in:

DM: "How?"
Player: "The dagger does six damage..."
DM: "Four, at most."
Player: "Four then-"
DM: "Roll it."
Player: "Huh?"
DM: "Roll for damage."
Player: "I don't have a d4, can't we just-"
DM (Rolls his d4): "A base damage of 2. What's your strength?"
Player: "Um, 12."
DM: "That's three physical damage."
Player: "The dagger is flaming."
DM: "Fine, roll for that damage."
Player: "I did, it was a si-"
DM: "Roll it again, where I can see it."
Player: "But-"
DM: "Roll it."
Player (rolls, gets a 1);
DM: "That will round to 0, being fire damage to a mithral wire."
Player: "Fine, 15 damage then."
DM: "From what?"
Player (smirking): "Holy!"
DM: "IT'S NOT AN EVIL WIRE!"
Player (souring): "Fine, three damage."
DM: "Which goes to zero, after hardness."
Player: "..."
Player: "Can I redo my tu-"
DM: "No. Next turn, who had initiative 13 again?"

This exchange didn't fix the problem, but boy, was it satisfying. As I mentioned above, this player doesn't play with us much anymore, but now whenever a player in our group rolls really well, we jokingly state that they're "channeling [insert player name]."

Random832
2009-07-20, 04:32 PM
You know... it's a wire. It's not in RAW, but it would at least be reasonable to reduce the DR of objects less than 1/[HP/in] inches thick.

It also should have had a Break DC.

Signmaker
2009-07-20, 04:55 PM
If there DID happen to be evil wires, what would good wires do?

"Oh hey, I'm razor-sharp, but I really do mean the best for you! :smallsmile:"

Oslecamo
2009-07-20, 05:06 PM
If there DID happen to be evil wires, what would good wires do?

"Oh hey, I'm razor-sharp, but I really do mean the best for you! :smallsmile:"

It would be like that japanese legend about swords, where the two greatest weaponsmiths(one evil and the other good of course), to see wich of their worcks were better, asked a monck to be the judge.

The monck told them to hold the swords still inside a river.

The "evil" blade cut perfectly anything that passed over it. Leaves, fishes, rock, all split into halves.

The "good" blade, on the other hand, didn't cut anything but the water. Leaves, fishes and rocks just slided by it's side whitout a scratch.

The monk declared the "good" blade the winner, since it didn't cut anything that didn't deserved to be cut, while the "evil" blade mercilessly destroyed everything on it's path.

I picute the good wire wouldn't hurt anyone trying to hold onto it, while the evil wire would make some nasty cut just by being touched:smallsmile:

Jade_Tarem
2009-07-20, 05:07 PM
You know... it's a wire. It's not in RAW, but it would at least be reasonable to reduce the DR of objects less than 1/[HP/in] inches thick.

It also should have had a Break DC.

Wire was a convenient term. The wires in question could be most accuately described as triangular prisms of mithral stretching across a cylindrical chamber along various vectors. The wires were approximately an inch thick, flat on top (ish), greased, and razor sharp on the bottom. Their primary purpose was to slow flight (or cause damage to reckless fliers), or to give the enemy arcane trickster and cat-burglar-ish master thrower something to balance and run around on.

Besides, even a reduction to 1/4 hardness would have stopped the player's real damage, but nothing could have stopped his string of natural twenties. :smallmad: The DM was mostly calling him out for hax rolls.

Yuki Akuma
2009-07-20, 05:52 PM
If it's an inch thick, it's really more a cable than a wire.

Steward
2009-07-20, 07:05 PM
However, if it's between .25 to .5-inch thick, then it's more of a cord than a cable. And if it's much greater than 1 inch, then it's more of a ligature than a cord. But if you want to get technical about it...

Riffington
2009-07-20, 07:28 PM
If there DID happen to be evil wires, what would good wires do?

It burns us!

comicshorse
2009-07-20, 07:56 PM
One guy I know would roll up his stats and come with me to them. In a cyberpunk game where you roll a D10 for all 9 Stats he came to me with a character who had 85 points of Stats. Defended it with a 'I was a bit lucky '
Another time same guy left his character for 2nd Ed 'Shadowrun' behind, we discovered he had taken top priority for Magic ( and top priority for Stats, and for skills and for money) also he had gained about 90 more Karma than the rest of the group ( thats about 20 sessions worth) and belonged to a magical group that had more ork, gator shamnas than ALL the number of magic users in the city

AslanCross
2009-07-20, 08:02 PM
On the topic of rolling stats, there was this one guy who would "roll stats when he's bored" and archive them so that whenever he built a character, he'd just cherry pick from his archive, defending that they really were rolled. :P He also had a tendency to use a dice rolling app on his cellphone that had a tendency to roll really high.

Because of this I imposed very specific rules on stat rolling:
-4d6 drop 1
-roll only in my presence with my dice

He actually rolled decently for the character that he was supposed to use in my current RHOD run, but he kept whining that he didn't have any 18s and only had 2 16s. :smallannoyed: He never got to join, though.

Guancyto
2009-07-20, 08:13 PM
Ahh, the stat rolls would probably be a topic all on its own.

I remember a guy who was making a character for an online game with 4d6b3, stats rolled in AIM chat. He rolled them in a main chatroom (so nobody could accuse him of making them up, presumably), but the DM wasn't present and apparently hadn't laid any restriction on rerolls.

He must've rolled thirty arrays before he got one he liked. Around the tenth was something like two seventeens, two sixteens, a fifteen and a twelve. He tossed it out too and cursed his luck. "Give me eighteens, dammit!"

One of the other people in the chatroom who had been making his equipment list first piped up with, "dude, if you don't want those stats I will gladly take them."

So he did. And proceeded to kick ass.

Milskidasith
2009-07-20, 08:15 PM
So would you consider the guy who "borrowed" the stat array as a cheater as well, or just the crazy guy who gave it up?

Guancyto
2009-07-20, 08:23 PM
We'll call it "a collaborative effort to encourage the DM to stick with his story-heavy campaign where stats aren't quite as meaningful as they could be otherwise." Yeah, let's go with that.

Plus the borrower was playing a Monk and the borrowee was playing a Fighter, so...

RandomNPC
2009-07-20, 09:29 PM
not really cheating but this was interesting.

Someone at another messageboard i used to frequent made a new character generator for his "high power" game. use standard classes and races, but build the character with 60 point buy. After stat distribution you could spend extra points on feats and abilities you could have, because the game would be that tough. He made a list and challenged us (the internet) to break the build.

here's what i remember:
Half Orc barb.
Str 20 Dex 18 Con 18
Int 3 Wis 18 Cha 3
The books say min stat three so i didn't loose int. or cha. Obviously this would break another game, but i had more points to spend. This also gave me the best will save i could find. (immagine this guy being mind controled)

Flight: good 40 ft.
Power Attack, as the feat.
Water breathing, for constitution score in hours at a time.

there was more, it was disgusting, everyones argument was with first level HP things will either be to challenging or not a challenge at all. Considering I could have alone taken on the dreaded flying sharks... (google image, i dare you, for added fun tack on the words "motivational poster")

Szilard
2009-07-20, 10:16 PM
I once snuck into the DM's room with my friend Robert. He copied a map while I copied the directions through a giant spider web, only parts of which were stable. Our DM was bamboozled.:smalltongue:

bytbyt
2009-07-21, 11:56 AM
There's this guy in my group who controls an lvl 20 silver dragon NPC insisting its ok because she doesn't participate in combat