I cheat at D&D and it's a better experience

[Abendago]

First let me say I'm expecting a bunch of hate for this post. I cheat at D&D and it's a better experience, I know that's terrible sounding but hear me out.

I use an advantage d20 that replaces the 1, 2 and 3 with an extra 18, 19, 20. Which means the lowest I can roll is 4 and I have a 65% chance of rolling above 10, with a 10% chance of a natural 20 instead of 5%.

More than that, I don't always keep track of my spell slots on purpose. I usually squeeze out a few extra spells.

Why do this? Am I trying to "Win" D&D? No, not at all. But let's all be honest, it sucks to play a session where your character does nothing because of bad rolls. It sucks to run out of fun spells to use. It sucks to waste a spell slot on a missed Spell. It sucks to fail a concentration check. It sucks to fail a saving throw and have to sit out a combat for a few rounds.

These small changes have gone unnoticed in countless games, I still roll a 6 when I desperately need above a 10, I still miss, I still fail saves, and I still roll Nat 1's when I use other dice (I swap between what dice I roll so it's not obvious).

Why am I telling you all this? Because this is a community where discussion is King and am using it as an outlet to start a conversation I think many are afraid to start. I think cheating is okay if I'm doing it in a way where I have more fun and it's unnoticeable to those around me. (I've been doing this for 2 years now). If my cheating really were a problem I think other players would have noticed by now.

There. I said it. *Winces in anticipation of punishment and backlash*

[Bartmanhomer]

First let me say I'm expecting a bunch of hate for this post. I cheat at D&D and it's a better experience, I know that's terrible sounding but hear me out.

I use an advantage d20 that replaces the 1, 2 and 3 with an extra 18, 19, 20. Which means the lowest I can roll is 4 and I have a 65% chance of rolling above 10, with a 10% chance of a natural 20 instead of 5%.

More than that, I don't always keep track of my spell slots on purpose. I usually squeeze out a few extra spells.

Why do this? Am I trying to "Win" D&D? No, not at all. But let's all be honest, it sucks to play a session where your character does nothing because of bad rolls. It sucks to run out of fun spells to use. It sucks to waste a spell slot on a missed Spell. It sucks to fail a concentration check. It sucks to fail a saving throw and have to sit out a combat for a few rounds.

These small changes have gone unnoticed in countless games, I still roll a 6 when I desperately need above a 10, I still miss, I still fail saves, and I still roll Nat 1's when I use other dice (I swap between what dice I roll so it's not obvious).

Why am I telling you all this? Because this is a community where discussion is King and am using it as an outlet to start a conversation I think many are afraid to start. I think cheating is okay if I'm doing it in a way where I have more fun and it's unnoticeable to those around me. (I've been doing this for 2 years now). If my cheating really were a problem I think other players would have noticed by now.

There. I said it. *Winces in anticipation of punishment and backlash*

Wow! You actually cheated?! Way a go, man. Keep up the good work.

[Rynjin]

If you feel the need to hide something you're doing, you already subconsciously know it's wrong, simple as.

[Abendago]

If you feel the need to hide something you're doing, you already subconsciously know it's wrong, simple as.

Like my love of power puff girls? We hide many things that are not wrong but heavily misunderstood.

[Tvtyrant]

First let me say I'm expecting a bunch of hate for this post. I cheat at D&D and it's a better experience, I know that's terrible sounding but hear me out.

I use an advantage d20 that replaces the 1, 2 and 3 with an extra 18, 19, 20. Which means the lowest I can roll is 4 and I have a 65% chance of rolling above 10, with a 10% chance of a natural 20 instead of 5%.

More than that, I don't always keep track of my spell slots on purpose. I usually squeeze out a few extra spells.

Why do this? Am I trying to "Win" D&D? No, not at all. But let's all be honest, it sucks to play a session where your character does nothing because of bad rolls. It sucks to run out of fun spells to use. It sucks to waste a spell slot on a missed Spell. It sucks to fail a concentration check. It sucks to fail a saving throw and have to sit out a combat for a few rounds.

These small changes have gone unnoticed in countless games, I still roll a 6 when I desperately need above a 10, I still miss, I still fail saves, and I still roll Nat 1's when I use other dice (I swap between what dice I roll so it's not obvious).

Why am I telling you all this? Because this is a community where discussion is King and am using it as an outlet to start a conversation I think many are afraid to start. I think cheating is okay if I'm doing it in a way where I have more fun and it's unnoticeable to those around me. (I've been doing this for 2 years now). If my cheating really were a problem I think other players would have noticed by now.

There. I said it. *Winces in anticipation of punishment and backlash*

If the other players wouldn't mind why are you secretly doing it? If they would mind why do you think lying to them is ok?

You can't cheat a game, the rules don't care. You can only cheat people.

[No brains]

In theory you're not hurting anyone, so really you do you.

I've heard stories of people who throw poker games to friends they know are cheaters because those people don't mind losing nearly as much as their friends love to win. If this is how your group rolls, then I just hope it makes everyone's experience more fulfilling.

Just beware if your friends aren't into this. You're playing with a wound-up mousetrap. Hopefully you all have a good laugh when it snaps on somebody.

I also have to caution you that things going terribly, terribly wrong and still leading to a success (or just survival) is what makes TTRPGS uniquely great. A flawless victory is a rush anywhere, but nothing is going to top my memories of the times when I rolled 1s when everything was on the line and I still managed to scrape by with ingenuity and teamwork. Managing to hide from someone on a nat 1 and having my ambush turned around on me with a modified intelligence roll of 0 are some of my favorite memories.

Also if you're cheating and you're the DM. That's what you're supposed to do!

Also oldschool PPG is legit. Samurai Jack and Primal didn't come from nowhere.

[Rynjin]

Like my love of power puff girls? We hide many things that are not wrong but heavily misunderstood.

If you did not believe it to be somehow "wrong", you wouldn't hide it, unless you had some other ulterior motive for doing so; you believe you would be actively harmed by it. If you value you reputation, and believe that revealing a love for a cartoon would somehow tarnish that, you would hide it. Which really feeds back into the main point that if you did not think it was wrong (or at least believe others would think it was wrong, and harm you for it), you wouldn't hide it.

Basically, it's not a matter of something objectively BEING wrong, it's your own belief that holds you back.

In this case, you clearly believe that telling your group this fact would cause an issue. You know they would not like it. You are keeping it a secret because of this. If your logic held true that this "isn't a problem" you would not be keeping it a secret.

By extension, that means this is a problem. You are doing wrong to your group, and know you are doing wrong to your group. So you seek validation from people outside your friend circle, who you can easily take that validation from. Just as easily you can discard any people who disagree with your actions and point them out as wrong, because they "don't know you" or the full context, or whatever other illusions you might want to cover the fact that you understand that what you are doing is wrong, and now feel bad about it and want someone else to make you feel better about it, either via direct validation or stark vitriol against you that you can use to get angry and defensive and set yourself even deeper into he false mindset that what you are doing is somehow not wrong.

If you truly, deeply, and completely felt there was no issue, this thread would not exist. You would be openly cheating and admitting it to your group. As-is, the only reason it's "not a problem" is because of the lie.

[Merellis]

I say let the other players in on the secret by getting them other dice just like that, and telling them to track all their spell slots wrong on purpose. This way, none of them can rat you out ever.

Don't tell the DM so only they have to deal with natural 1's and go to town beating all the encounters.

With that, everyone's having the same amount of fun.

[icefractal]

First off, would you be fine with all the other players doing this? With the GM fudging in favor of the NPCs in the same way? If the answer to either of these is no, then I'd say your stance is inconsistent in a probably-selfish way.

But let's say you are fine with both of those, is there an issue? Maybe.
* The cheat with the biggest likelyhood of being an issue is ignoring spells per day. Because if the rest of the party is abiding by it, you're taking a larger share of the spotlight by always having the spells for the job and always being able to nova if you want to.
* Second biggest is the extra chance of rolling crits, for the same reason.
* While being less likely to fail and/or die isn't fair, I don't think it's as much an issue as the others in practice. I've never felt overshadowed by someone else being able to survive things, anyway.


And in the spirit of the OP, I will confess to the one thing I fudge as a player - costs for useless divinations.
Like when you use a divination/info-gathering ability and effectively get blocked (too vague to have any use, for example, or the same info you already had restated) not because of an in-setting reason, but because revealing the desired info would skip all the content the GM has ready and they don't want to fly by the seat of their pants.

In those cases, I'm not going to complain unless it happens a lot - GMing's not easy, and given that full improv isn't something I can successfully do in most games, it would be hypocritical to expect it of someone else. However, I also won't spend any resources for that non-result.

[Bartmanhomer]

Speaking of cheating, I read a new Marvel comic book by a new superhero called Cheater-Man! His superpowers is cheating and he also cheats on his wife with another woman.

[Composer99]

One of my favourite D&D stories to tell is a game we played using the late-AD&D 2e Player's Option character building rules. I built a dwarf fighter who was all but immune to poison, who died as a result of... you guessed it, poison. I can't even really remember the dungeon we were exploring or what monster killed me, but I think it was from a Dungeon magazine or a collection of mini-dungeons? The important part was the delicious irony of the manner of his death.

One of my other favourite D&D moments was playing Sunless Citadel in a game with a bunch of my cousins. We were fighting the goblins and one of the players had recklessly exposed us to the various goblin bosses. We were down several PCs, and I had to run my cleric into reach of the goblin warboss to try to deliver a cure light wounds spell to get someone back on their feet. He missed his attack of opportunity by thiiiiis much, and we erupted in celebratory cheers.

Since I do a lot of DMing, the times that I or my players roll low, especially in clutch situations, often seems just as dramatic and interesting as the times we roll high.

On the whole, since D&D isn't a competitive game, I don't find bad rolls anything like as irritating as when I'm playing a competitive game such as World in Flames or Blood Bowl, even if it means sitting out a fight for a round or even dying. And the taste of victory is all the sweeter knowing that it could have been the gall of defeat.

Obviously, you feel differently. That's fine, as far as it goes.

If you are playing at a table where your proclivities are both openly known of and approved of, well and good. If not, then the problem isn't really that you're using a rigged die or being intentionally sloppy with spell slots, it's that you're misleading your fellow players (including the DM/GM). If the table culture or social contract expects you to be straight about such things, it just doesn't seem right.

[ImNotTrevor]

I think others have successfully identified the problem with cheating, but I'll try to simplify it a bit:

The act of using improper dice is innocuous if it is a known quantity and everyone knows and partakes. Hell, a campaign run with only those d20s might be interesting. Magnify the rocket tag a bit.

But it wouldn't be cheating.

If you played a game where spell slots weren't tracked for anyone, that could be pretty fun.

And wouldn't be cheating.


You see, it's because you don't know what cheating actually, fundamentally is.
It isn't using loaded dice.
It isn't fudging spell slots.

Neither of these are cheating if done honestly and openly. There is an extra step needed to require them to become cheating: You have to lie.

Cheating is Lying. They are the same thing. The only difference is that the former is used in the specific context of games. (Other contexts being here acknowledged and deemed irrelevant.)

And in the context of just having a fun time with friends? Lying to get ahead seems...
Well, on top of wrong, it's certainly extremely pathetic.

[False God]

Well, you are trying to "win" at D&D. What you're trying to "win" is a good experience, which is represented by succeeding at goals, completing quests, saving the princess, and so on.

Other games have come up with better ways to do this. Dice pools even out the often radical variance of the d20, try for example, rolling 2d10, 3d6, or 5d4 instead using "snakeyes" as the lowest possible roll. Replace "numbers" with representative symbols that are interpreted by the player or the DM into grades of success, failure and numerous other creative outcomes.

I don't think the rest of the party cares if they win a lot thanks to your cheater ways. Maybe some feel deprived of a "earned loss", but I doubt there are few who are truly happy when the RNG gods hand them a string of failures in tasks they should be good at for no other reason than a 1 is just as likely as any other number to appear on the die.

Of course it's a better experience (for many) when you win more often, when your party/players have a good time, when you have fun, creative adventures where you get to keep adventuring. But I think cheating is an unfair way to go about this endgoal.

Agree with your group to keep "permadeath" off the table. Find DMs who prefer to knock-out rather than kill. Find groups that play this sort of heroic adventure against impossible odds that always seems to come out on top, and "losing" isn't "reroll". Use a variant way to roll dice to produce more middle-ground results, or play a system that doesn't grade success and failure in black and white.

[el minster]

Speaking of cheating, I read a new Marvel comic book by a new superhero called Cheater-Man! His superpowers is cheating and he also cheats on his wife with another woman.

Thats just ridiculous

[Tangleweed]

It seems people enjoy the game for different reasons and try to achieve different things. Personally I play rpgs pretty much like an improv session and try to get the best “story”. I also enjoy intense situations. And I love loosing. A couple of sessions ago the party was out of resources after a day of being heroes when we where attacked by assassins sent by our enemies. What ensued was a hectic panic flight where we tried to save our skins. And we got away by the skin of you teeth. I love that stuff. If we knew we could just auto-crit every fight and have infinite spells I don’t think it would have been nearly as intense.

I also like the game as a way to bond with friends and tell stories together.

I have a friend, who in this same game, who is in my opinion a cheater and in his own mind a very skilled gamer. He rolled stats and he has some superb stats. Now I know from the DM that he started by rolling 18 and put that in dex and was super happy but then proceeded to roll a 5 that he insisted was unreasonable and argued to an 8 and then put in his dump stat. The characters backstory makes shire they are pretty much awesome at everything. He loves to have fun and having fun means winning. We let him do this because we don’t really care to much about the rules and he loves winning. But it gets a bit boring at times because there is no reason to interact with his character. No need help him out with buff spells because he always roll high when needed. He has this wired d20 where the numbers are really hard to read. But he has gotten really good at it and just calls out a number and picks it up before anyone else can read it. He also always finds a way to find ways to get advantage and sneak stack, so no need for faerie fire or similar, and is always able to hide somewhere. So whenever we do something mechanical heavy I just sit back and let him handle it as there is no real need for me, or anyone law, to chip in. We split the party a lot and I try not to be in that group. Actually, we send this character on their own way on scouting or flanking missions a lot.

[MoiMagnus]

If my cheating really were a problem I think other players would have noticed by now.

That's wrong.

They could be silently thinking they are being overshadowed by your character, but blaming game mechanics ("spellcasters are OP anyways in D&D"), blaming their luck, or blaming their own capacity ("I must really be bad at resource management or stupid if I manage to run out of resources before Abendago who appears to always use some when he wants to but never runs out when needed"), or even blaming the GM for somehow secretly having you as a favourite.

The bonus you gave to yourself are subtle, so the effect they have are subtle enough to be blamed onto other things or peoples. But that does not mean there is no effect at all. Moreover, even if they noticed, accusing someone of cheating is not something peoples do casually.

(Oh, and obviously, you're making a breach in the implicit social contract with your fellow players by actively and repeatedly "lying" about you applying faithfully the game mechanics. But that point is discussed enough by the other posters.)

[Lacco]

I cheat at D&D and it's a better experience, I know that's terrible sounding but hear me out.

If this were actually a widespread thing, I'd ask if the failure is in the ruleset - but based on reading the answers, it seems that it's more or less mismatch of player expectations vs. game rules.

You expect to play a heroic-type of character, that seldom (if ever) fails. The rules support traditional heroic characters that overcome the bad events.

Why am I telling you all this? Because this is a community where discussion is King and am using it as an outlet to start a conversation I think many are afraid to start.

What specifically is the conversation that many are afraid to start which you'ld like to kickstart here?

That rules - as they exist - are not providing the kind of play you enjoy and should be changed?

Or that cheating is OK and should be allowed provided the rules of cheating are observed?

Please specify if possible.

[Quertus]

Lots of good responses; just to pick a few…

Like my love of power puff girls? We hide many things that are not wrong but heavily misunderstood.

I've heard stories of people who throw poker games to friends they know are cheaters because those people don't mind losing nearly as much as their friends love to win. If this is how your group rolls, then I just hope it makes everyone's experience more fulfilling.

Just beware if your friends aren't into this. You're playing with a wound-up mousetrap. Hopefully you all have a good laugh when it snaps on somebody.

Nailed it.

When I first started playing RPGs, I hated cheaters. Then, eventually, it hit me: why should I care? If that's what makes the game fun for them, unless it somehow makes the game unfun for me, who cares?

Further, for some, is the actual act of cheating itself that some find fun. Crazy, right? It's like getting visceral pleasure out of holding physical dice over just using a die roller, or enjoying distracting people with "mood music", or wanting "rules" instead of just letting people do cool stuff.

Balance to the table. If their cheating makes them into (or is caused by their desire to be) a spotlight hog, then I'll address that. If it pushes their character outside the balance range of the group, then I'll address that. But I'm happy playing as a Sentient Potted Plant alongside not!Thor - I'm comfortable with a pretty wide balance range. Gaming alongside a statistical anomaly is pretty "meh" by comparison.

I also have to caution you that things going terribly, terribly wrong and still leading to a success (or just survival) is what makes TTRPGS uniquely great. A flawless victory is a rush anywhere, but nothing is going to top my memories of the times when I rolled 1s when everything was on the line and I still managed to scrape by with ingenuity and teamwork. Managing to hide from someone on a nat 1 and having my ambush turned around on me with a modified intelligence roll of 0 are some of my favorite memories.

Heartily agree.

Will the OP some day enjoy this? Will a certain 8-year-old some day enjoy flavors other than SWEET? Who knows. I encourage everyone to learn to love as diverse an array of things as they can.

Personally, I love success and failure in a game, but only so long as I come by them honest. IRL? I could go for this world's GM cheating to give me some more successes

Also if you're cheating and you're the DM. That's what you're supposed to do!

First off, would you be fine with all the other players doing this? With the GM fudging in favor of the NPCs in the same way? If the answer to either of these is no, then I'd say your stance is inconsistent in a probably-selfish way.

Gaming alongside a statistical anomaly is fine - myself, my brother, and several of my friends all do that without cheating (and not necessarily in a good way). However, when the GM cheats, when 99.99+% of the world doesn't feel the need to obey the rules that the rest of us are following? Yeah, no. At that point, I'll just ignore the rules, and start narrating what my character does, because why bother with rules at that point?

So I don't think "I can cheat, but the GM can't" (or my "other players cheating is fine, but the GM cheating is not") is inherently inconsistent.

-----

In the spirit of the thread, I enjoy "cheating" in terms of finding cool rules interactions that clearly aren't RAI, but work by RAW.

[JNAProductions]

I think others have successfully identified the problem with cheating, but I'll try to simplify it a bit:

The act of using improper dice is innocuous if it is a known quantity and everyone knows and partakes. Hell, a campaign run with only those d20s might be interesting. Magnify the rocket tag a bit.

But it wouldn't be cheating.

If you played a game where spell slots weren't tracked for anyone, that could be pretty fun.

And wouldn't be cheating.


You see, it's because you don't know what cheating actually, fundamentally is.
It isn't using loaded dice.
It isn't fudging spell slots.

Neither of these are cheating if done honestly and openly. There is an extra step needed to require them to become cheating: You have to lie.

Cheating is Lying. They are the same thing. The only difference is that the former is used in the specific context of games. (Other contexts being here acknowledged and deemed irrelevant.)

And in the context of just having a fun time with friends? Lying to get ahead seems...
Well, on top of wrong, it's certainly extremely pathetic.

Yeah, I'll echo this.

If you feel you're not powerful enough, talk to the DM and other players. But don't lie to them. Open and honest communication is important for playing TTRPGs, because EVERYONE should be having fun-not just you.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'll echo the sentiment of 'the problem is not the cheating itself, but the hiding it'.

You'll notice that in some ways more obvious mores of cheating get a better rep. I've previously used openly biased dice in a game, because the bias was upfront and was relatively minor (rolled a four about 1/5 of the time, as well as a 6 about 1/5 of the time), conversely the reveal that one person had cheated their skill points in the same game was a lot more derisive when it was founf out (mainly because they were 20-30XP ahead of everybody else).

If such a die was admitted upfront I wouldn't mind too much (I'd be happier if it wasn't quite so weighted, but that's personal preference), but I'd personally be a bit more annoyed by the spell slot manipulation (then again, mitigating that is why I mainly switched to systems with a small number of spell points that refresh relatively quickly, there's less of an urge to cheat them if they'll be back in an in-game hour). Mainly because you're sidestepping a cost, and my view is that if you don't want your character to have drawbacks and limitations, don't pick a class/build with drawbacks and limitations.

That said, I want to bring up the idea of tracking ammunition to explain it. Very few people I've met track ammunition for ranged weapons, in science fiction or modern day games they might track the number of shots until reload, but very rarely will players I've met track the absolute number of bullets or clips in their inventory. This is fine if everybody is doing it, but becomes a problem if three people are marking off arrows with every shot but one player doesn't, because eventually it'll become obvious that one player is still firing their bow six combat after everybody else ran out.

The exact same thing happens with encumbrance: most tables I've played at don't track it, and the one table I played at that did track it I ran several items past the GM to see if they were encumbrance-free. The problem comes when everybody else is tracking encumbrance, and then Belkar picks up 100,000 copper pieces without a problem.

[Tvtyrant]

In my experience Encumbrance just makes D&D look more like a caravan than a small squad of hitmen. First the party buys pack mules, then people to hold the mules, pretty soon they are going town to town with a murder posse.

[Anonymouswizard]

In my experience Encumbrance just makes D&D look more like a caravan than a small squad of hitmen. First the party buys pack mules, then people to hold the mules, pretty soon they are going town to town with a murder posse.

Sure, and there's no problem with not tracking it. The problem is when most people are tracking and somebody isn't. Although in my experience, if you're not dungeon delving, it does make players travel lighter, but they'll very much vary from group to group. I once spent fifteen minutes trimming my kit to avoid encumbrance penalties, because I knew we'd have a chance to drop off anything we'd pick up before moving tot he next location (it was a city-based adventure, and if push came to shove a houserule was you could drop your pack as a free action).

[Vinyadan]

Wow, you registered a new user for this? But this could be a great copypasta. It's in the style of the Terminator Morning Routine.

First let me say I'm expecting a bunch of hate for this post. I cheat at imaginary chess and it's a better experience, I know that's terrible sounding but hear me out.

In my set I replace pawns 1, 2 and 3 with an extra king, tower, and queen. Which means the slowest I can win is 40 turns and I have a 65% chance of a victory below 10, with a 10% chance of checkmate in the first 5.

More than that, I don't always keep track of my pieces on purpose. I usually squeeze out a few extra knights.

First let me say I'm expecting a bunch of hate for this post. I eat at Domino's and it's a better experience, I know that's terrible sounding but hear me out.

They have a menu that replaces the 1, 2 and 3 with an extra 18, 19, 20. Which means the lowest I can spare is 4$ and I have a 65% chance of sparing above 10$, with a 10% chance of getting 32 fries instead of just 24.

More than that, I don't always keep track of my beverages on purpose. I usually squeeze out a few extra cokes.

Why do this? Am I trying to "Win" at lunch? No, not at all. But let's all be honest, it sucks to pay for lunch and get almost nothing because of small doses. It sucks to run out of coke. It sucks to waste a dollar on a ketchup packet. It sucks to forget little things because you are still hungry. And it sucks to go into the red for a few rounds.

The one thing I feel like saying is that cheating in a collaborative game is different from cheating in a competitive game. In practice, you are making the team perform better. It also means different difficulty levels for different players. From a personal enjoyment point of view, consider that Paladins were explicitly modified in 4th because their abilities failed too often (iirc). Failing is a letdown. It means not interacting with the world for that turn, trying to play and being cut out instead. Over time, this is a source of frustration. So removing flat failure and substituting it with low results that still do something looks like a gain to me. In the Goose Game, your throw always has an effect.

But these are game mechanics, which can be implemented by talking. A special die you can use once in a while isn't too different from a cheat deliberately added to a videogame to let players skip or win a tediously difficult level. It's totally legitimate. Not discussing it, however, isn't.

[Spellweaver]

Well, of course cheating is just about always wrong. And it's sure wrong in this case as your hiding it. Just tell your DM and other players that you are cheating and see what their reactions are....

Would you be ok if everyone in the game cheated?

And if you say yes, consider the slippery slope: So you cheat on your d20 rolls in a way you can still fail sometimes and you justify that as being ''good" cheating or at least cheating the way you approve of. So the DM will also cheat, and her way is "all 1 to 10's rolled on a d20 are always 10", so she will only get results of 10-20. Is that "good" cheating you approve of, or does that go to far and is too much? How about a player that counts any even number as a twenty?

So...see the problem?

If everyone just cheats at a game, you will have a mess of a game or maybe not even a game anymore. For things to work, you need some type of structure on what and how to cheat. Or, really, cheating rules.

And when you get down to making cheating rules....really, in effect, you are making house rules and your not even "cheating" any more.

[ExLibrisMortis]

[...]

You see, it's because you don't know what cheating actually, fundamentally is.
It isn't using loaded dice.
It isn't fudging spell slots.

Neither of these are cheating if done honestly and openly. There is an extra step needed to require them to become cheating: You have to lie.

Cheating is Lying. They are the same thing. [...]

I agree with this definition. I also disapprove of lying, especially when you're lying to your friends over a shared leisure activity. And don't kid yourself: you are deceiving your friends for personal gain. The assumption of the game is that you use a normal d20, and you use your die as if it is a normal d20. By using that die at all, you've broken your friends' trust.

What makes this even worse--and it's already pretty bad--is that there's no need to cheat. You could easily mitigate the effect of bad rolls within the game rules--if your game is 3.5, anyway. (Likewise for resource management, but I'll focus on the dice here.)

D&D is a rules-heavy game. Even 5th edition isn't super light-weight. Part of the fun of a rules-heavy game is working with the mechanics as they are*, evoking the character you want to portray. You play the game and you play the character. And while bad decisions and bad die rolls will, on occasion, force you to play your character differently than you imagined, that too is part of the game. How does your character deal with danger and setbacks? It matters, as a question of roleplaying and as a question of optimization. It doesn't sound like you want the question to be asked at all.

Being rules-heavy, there are mechanics in D&D that let you mitigate bad die rolls. Some are variant rules, intended to be used throughout the campaign, like action points. A common homebrew mechanic is to offer rerolls as quest rewards or for good role-playing. Have you asked your group to use those mechanics, because it makes the game more fun for you? I guess you haven't, but perhaps you have, and you can't rely on those things. No matter: there are many ways to make individual characters tolerant of bad die rolls. You can build a character that doesn't have to roll often, like a dragonfire adept with lots of immunities. You can build a character that can reroll many times a day, like a [luck] specialist. You can even build a character that rolls 2d20 on everything, with Persistent choose destiny. You can use so many other tools--I'm just mentioning the Pride domain, surge of fortune, Craft Contingent Spell, unfettered heroism, and Aura of Perfect Order--that die rolls need never bother you, if you play the game well. I bet you haven't used any of these tricks. It doesn't sound like you are playing the game well.

You're apparently not playing a character that can take bad die rolls as well as you'd like. Instead of optimizing your character, you're resorting to cheating. That suggests that you're either unable to build such a character, or uninterested in doing so. You're taking a shortcut to "success" that bypasses most of the game, and you're lying about it to your friends. That makes me ask: why are you still playing D&D? If you don't want to put in a lot of effort to play a character that can take the punches as they come, there are games out there that do this better than D&D. Why cheat your friends in a game you can't or won't play well, instead of playing a game that gives you what you want, and play it well? I can't imagine that cheating the wrong game feels as satisfying as "beating" the right game.


tl;dr If you prefer cheating to playing, find a different game.


*Subject to homebrew and houserule, naturally, but as-is once tableside.

[Tvtyrant]

Again, the group isn't obligated to follow the rules and the rules don't have to be identical. I have given players free reroll dice and other homebrew effects to help them because they are poor at strategy or optimization, but the group needs to agree on that.

Also in a lot of games there are no-roll builds or classes, you might look at those. Dragonfire Adepts are almost roll independent in 3.5, Lazy Lords in 4E, I'm not sure if 5E has one but I imagine they exist.

[Lacco]

As someone who rolls terribly most of the time (yeah, last game I played I ended up succeeding exactly in 3 rolls... during whole evening...), I can understand the wish to have some way to overcome the bad luck. I know the temptation to fudge a roll, to reverse the misfortune by one single great roll. You know, bouncing back as heroes of 90's movies taught us.

It is never a good idea. It's better to earn your victories.

But these are game mechanics, which can be implemented by talking. A special die you can use once in a while isn't too different from a cheat deliberately added to a videogame to let players skip or win a tediously difficult level. It's totally legitimate. Not discussing it, however, isn't.

Also: rerolls based on certain metagame currency? Actually a thing in few games. You just made it to this milestone? Here, have a reroll token. You made the whole group laugh on IC joke? Great, here, have another reroll token. You just defeated your father who killed your evil brother? Here. Have two reroll tokens.

I think one of the D&D editions tried implementing something similar (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).

[Tvtyrant]

Action Points work like that, two editions had them. Not sure why 5E dropped them except the desire to purge 4E from existence.

[DeTess]

I think one of the D&D editions tried implementing something similar (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).

5e has inspiration, which isn't really something you can hoard (you either have it or you don't), which can be used to get a reroll.

edit: Regarding the OP, I'll add my voice the chorus. There's nothing wrong with changing the rules so everyone succeeds more, but it's wrong to unilaterally decide that you, and only you, get to do better. What would you think if the GM, at the start of the game had told one player that they had unlimited spell slots and could reroll all rolls below a 4, while enforcing the rules as written on everyone else?

[Lacco]

Action Points work like that, two editions had them. Not sure why 5E dropped them except the desire to purge 4E from existence.

5e has inspiration, which isn't really something you can hoard (you either have it or you don't), which can be used to get a reroll.

See? No need to cheat.

Just persuade your GM to use these and maybe houserule that hoarding inspiration is a thing. Then it becomes another resource, like a spell slot, to be used at correct time.

EDIT:

edit: Regarding the OP, I'll add my voice the chorus. There's nothing wrong with changing the rules so everyone succeeds more, but it's wrong to unilaterally decide that you, and only you, get to do better. What would you think if the GM, at the start of the game had told one player that they had unlimited spell slots and could reroll all rolls below a 4, while enforcing the rules as written on everyone else?

It would either make me dislike the GM, the player, or both. I do not often agree with Quertus, but I will give him credit where it's due: his "balance to the table" rule actually works well.

If the other players knew what OP was doing, maybe they'd applaud - we do not know and can not know (we can make educated guesses, but even those can be wrong: a table with killer GM could love a player who 'sticks it to the man'). But speaking for myself: had a player like that. Had to have the unpleasant talk. Wasn't pretty.

It worked out, but they had to stop. And we switched the system.