How to deal with cheaters at the table

[karnokoto]

It DOES take one whole round to reload : /

[Quietus]

Okay, here's my uterus-wielding-standpoint on the girl issue:
Girls who play Dungeons & Dragons are not delicate snowflakes, and they don't expect to be treated as such. You don't NEED to handle female players any differently- hell if we wanted to be treated like girly girls we'd freakin go have a tea party or something. If she's being a douche let her know. To her face. Doesn't matter when, but she has to know. If she freaks out and throws a tantrum, shes not the kind of player you want in your group anyway. If shes calm & cool, awesome.

Raar.

Stop being so sensible, please. Can't you see we're trying to start a lynch mob?

[Eldariel]

Normally I'd say anyone who fudges a diceroll has a complex and a teeny johnson but thats obviously not the case here

Maybe she feels underequipped on other, more feminine areas?

[The Gilded Duke]

Superior Firepower.

I tried the whole calm "It looks like you cheated, could you tell me what is going on." thing before and it backfired horribly, although I could well imagine the person I tried it with was considerably more unbalanced then who you are dealing with.

Depending on their personality, they might feel that they have to defend their reputation. If they feel that way, one of the best ways to do that is to try and destroy yours. If you think that might try something like that catch them in the act instead of being polite about it.

[karnokoto]

Maybe she feels underequipped on other, more feminine areas?

What, a tiny uterus?

[Khanderas]

Is the uterus a finess weapon ? Does using it provoke AoO ?

I had a long line packed with innuendo's here. After I wrote it, but before I posted it, I realised it way way over the top and really shouldnt be shared.

[Simba]

Yeah, this thread is coming off topic fast. Thx for sparing us, I did the same :)

[Michaelos]

Flip this around and consider it in game. You notice that one of your teammates has completely insane luck. You decide that you're sick of this and hit them with a bestow curse spell so they'll stop outshining the rest of the team. Every time they get it removed, you recast it.

This would probably be less painful for the character then going down from cheating dice to normal dice. but chances are the rest of your party would get sick of it and make you stop it.

So from the perspective of a fellow PC, I don't recommend confronting them about this.

From the perspective of a DM, I've had my wife give me plenty of affectionate bribes to allow for better result X when she's playing D&D as a PC. When we did periodically play D&D with my best friend, this was never an issue. I get bonus bribes, she gets her victories, my best friend gets his victories (Since he's a PC and they mostly have the same objectives.)

So from the perspective of a DM, I don't recommend confronting them about this.

But it may be too much to shrug off, or maybe you just want the experience of playing in a more honest rolls game. In that case, then I recommend telling the truth, but as a nameless/blameless how do I handle this way. Something like:

"I think someone at the table has been cheating, and I haven't been having as much fun because of it, but I don't want to call them out explicitly and make a huge scene, particularly since I could be mistaken. What should I do?"

Don't mention the fact that you're SURE they're cheating. Even if you are, and from your statistics measurements I'm sure you ARE sure, giving them the benefit of the doubt will help your messages tone.

[Keshay]

Just another thought. If your friendship can not survive calling them out on cheating at a game you're playing together, then you all really are not that close of friends to begin with.

The simple fact that they cheat to the extent you describe is a clear indication that they do not respect the people at the table, nor the game they are playing.

You could go passive-agressive. Instead of D&D, play Monopoly one night. Frequently and blatantly take money from the bank. If she calls you on it, just say "I certainly didn't expect you of all people to have an issue..." Then start giving her money too.

The dice rolling is one thing, but ignoring the DMs xp rewards and giving herself what she thinks she deserves? This is not a friend you need to play D&D with.

[AtwasAwamps]

A lot of people have been bringing up the “Why complain if she’s not hurting you?” and mentioning that it’s not worth bringing up if she’s not trying to cheat the party, only the DM. Why bring it up? Who’s it hurting?

For some mindsets, that’s totally okay and I do agree. It probably wouldn’t hurt anything. But its obvious that his enjoyment of the game is marred because of this. If the dice rolls really don’t matter to the folks at the table, then they can throw away their books and the DM screen and the dice and just freeform RP for the same level of enjoyment (and as a freeformer at my roots, there is a LOT of enjoyment in that).

But when you sit down to play D&D, there is a tacit and implicit agreement that you have entered a game with rules and that you will obey those rules to some degree that has been reached by consensus. The only person who is understood to not necessarily play by those rules is the DM, but its doubly understood that he will fudge those rules for a good reason, rather than a bad one. A cheating player has no such implied reasons to cheat beyond their own benefit (and by extent the party’s, though there is a high likelihood this is mostly accidental).

If you sit down to play D&D as the game its meant to be, cheating matters. If you don’t care about dice rolls, there are more entertaining ways to RP. When the rulebooks come out and you start rolling 3d6 six times, the line between “roleplayers” and “rollplayers” becomes meaningless. You have to be both if you’re going to be either in D&D.

…so yeah. I’m not sure where I was going with this, but I really like the last paragraph, so I’m posting it anyways. It makes me feel cool.

::puts on sunglasses::
Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!

[truemane]

smarty-pants talk-talk-talk

I agree. You are brilliant. You must sleep with me or you're out of the forum.

[AtwasAwamps]

I agree. You are brilliant. You must sleep with me or you're out of the forum.

I call top bunk

[truemane]

I call top bunk

Sorry. I rolled an average of 15 on my grapple checks. Top bunk is mine.

[AtwasAwamps]

Sorry. I rolled an average of 15 on my grapple checks. Top bunk is mine.

Dude you could have just used the ladder.

[truemane]

Dude you could have just used the ladder.

tl;dr

(Heh. Nice one.)

[Asbestos]

Could someone explain the dice tower suggestion? How would that help?

[Tyndmyr]

I suspect the idea is that it leads to everyone using it, and thus, making rolls very public.

Wouldn't work in my group, thanks to the map hogging most of the central table space, but might help for some. Thankfully, cheaters aren't an issue in my group.

If they cheat routinely...something needs to be done. If you're comfortable talking to them about it, do so. If not, talk to the DM, let them handle it.

[Simba]

Well, using the dice tower, one would have to roll in front of all the others, making cheating much more obvious, unless everyone used his or her own tower.

[UglyPanda]

Dice Tower, I think.

They cut down cheating and since everyone would be using it, it'd seem like you weren't singling out the cheater.

Of course, with her method of cheating, it might not do anything.

If it gets to be horrible, you could switch to cards instead of dice. You get a number of cards that are some multiple of twenty and label them 1 through 20, with an equal amount of each. You flip over the top card in order to "roll" and reshuffle once you hit the bottom. This has the side-effect of people thinking (slightly)* less about luck since you hit every number an even amount of times. Just make sure the DM has a separate deck.

If you're too lazy to make cards yourself, get a normal deck, remove the face cards, and say that black cards are worth 10 more than red.

*It's a game and in any game, everyone complains about luck constantly, even the Statistics Professors.

[Keshay]

My apologies, but the card-draw instead of dice rolling has to be one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. Perhaps it would work if you reshuffled after each draw, but a general rule of thumb is "never do anything to intentionally slow down gameplay".

There is no way I'd ever consider playing a game with the card draw system.

[UglyPanda]

How would it slow anything down? It takes less time to draw a card from the middle of the table as it does to roll a die.

And why would you reshuffle after every draw? That's nuts.

Besides, they use stuff like that for LARPing, where you can't just throw dice into the grass.

I doubt it's the worst idea. Here's a worse one: Lick stray dogs who have rabies.

[Asbestos]

Thanks for the link UglyPanda, I've never encountered such an object. I think I might make a couple as some of my players are really obnoxious with their rolls; at least one die falling off the table, colliding violently with the minis, or mixing with unrolled dice. Every. Single. Turn.

[Tyndmyr]

How would it slow anything down? It takes less time to draw a card from the middle of the table as it does to roll a die.

And why would you reshuffle after every draw? That's nuts.

Because some people are very good at counting cards, and everyone is going to take notice of crits and crit fails, which leads to people realizing things like "hey, all the 1's or 20's have been drawn". This could easily lead to metagaming...it doesn't have to, but the temptation is there, and if someone is already willing to fudge die rolls, it's not a huge stretch to believe they might abuse this system as well.

[UglyPanda]

I'm aware of the cheating potential. However, this girl is bad at cheating. If she were capable of counting cards, she wouldn't be so obvious in her cheating.

Of course, if the DM draws from the same deck and keeps his cards a secret, it cuts down on potential cheating a little. Another possibility would be shuffling at random short intervals with a really large deck.

But, it was just a suggestion.

[truemane]

See, this is the underly sympathetic thing I've been talking about. I don't see the value in changing the game to suit the one person not playing by the rules. If you want to deal with the cheater and then institute some new rules, no problem, that only makes sense.

But why spare her feelings? She's cheating. And if what the OP says, quite blantantly and quite pervasively. And, quite frankly, how she feels about being called out stops being an issue for me.

[UglyPanda]

I'm in the "Call the girl" out crowd too, but using a dice tower in the first place was in the opposite direction, so I made a suggestion of that type. Not a good suggestion, but a suggestion none the less.

It doesn't matter that she has a uterus unless the OP has a crush on her or something. And that doesn't change anything. All it would change is the OP's willingness to call her out on her cheating.

The thing is, cheaters will always deny it and it's her word against yours unless you have a camera or something. Before you do anything, you need to tell the DM and some of the other players. While you do something, you have to make sure she doesn't go nuts denying the accusation (this would not change even with a Y-chromosome, mostly you're just trying not to get punched during this stage). After you do something, you have to decide whether this girl is worth continuing to play with.

[Keshay]

You'll note I said "one of the worst ideas", not the worst. And any reasonable person can assume context when assessing an opinion of value.
ie: the statement "Joe Person is the worst player ever" can only reasonably be taken to mean worst player in the sport being discussed. Comparing him to bad players of other sports is meaningless in terms of progressing a thoguht or discussion.

You have to shuffle after each draw in order to maintain some semblance of random number generation, otherwise the results will be biased by any previous draws, which would be the equivalent of having a dice that were increasingly loaded towards variable results. Imagine if the DM instituted a rule that if you rolled a 20, you had to reroll any additional 20s until you had gotten results of 1 through 19. Would you play that game? If so... I don't know what to tell you, but i would not.

Its just a bad idea to go through a whole deck like that without shuffling.

Since you have to shuffle after each draw in order to maintain a semblance of unbiased results, there is significant slowing. I'm fairly good at shuffling cards, and three passes (minimum to adequately randomize results) takes ~10 seconds.

Imagine you have a Hasted lvl 11 TWF Ranger. There's a full minute right there in order to resolve a single round of atacks.

Its been a long time since I LARPed, but there were no cards used as far as I recall. Such a thing would have led to an even quicker departure from that particualr subculture. Besides, what do you think those little rectangular cases dice come in are for? One quick flick of the wrist and you've rolled your 20 with no chance of losing the die.

[UglyPanda]

You're getting too worked up. I admitted it was bad already, get over it.

[Keshay]

You're getting too worked up. I admitted it was bad already, get over it.

Answering a question or series of questions is getting "worked up".
Gotcha. You know, that does explain a lot. NOt ever answering question woudl have saved me a lot of grief in life.

[UglyPanda]

I think you need to relax a little. That's all I'm saying.