Knew a guy a while back that it seemed like he was cheating. Almost always got high rolls, and it didn't matter who's game or what system we were playing. So we DM's started having him use other dice in our games. At one point even having other people roll for him. Didn't matter, every roll involving his character was obscene. Great guy though and would totally welcome him to future campaigns.
The first character that I created with my DM I rolled 5 18s and 1 17. I loved my Paladin Kirin for such a long time. But eventually we had to retire him because it was unfair to the rest of our campaign.
I mean maybe? I give some practical advice for dealing with a cheater but in all honesty a guillotine is probably overboard? Maybe? I should probably have a talk with my editor regarding image selection for thumbnails right?
I had a new player recently rolling for stats. I have dice that are always and only used for the stat rolling. So I explain to her how it works and she rolls her first roll. Four sixes "Great beginner's luck!" I say She ended up with 18, 17, 18, 16, 18, 17 That's just unnatural! She continues to roll perfectly and she just borrows whatever dice from the nearest player every session since she doesn't have her own. Other players now consider it good luck to have her fondle random dices for them 😂 She thinks we are weird about it.
The DM Lair:*teaches how to deal with cheaters* Me:*still summons Tarrasque to deal with cheater* Edit: I think some people are thinking this is real, no I do not use in game solutions to solve out of game problems, I made this because it was one of our group jokes in reference to dingo doodles.
You shouldn't use ingame punishments for player problems, that only makes you look like an unfair DM who is out for blood. Player problems are solved by talking to players.
@@deamon6681 Now if they still cheat after you talk to them about it, I think that killing their character should be an option preferably, however try to avoid something that could lead to a TPK. It is always simpler to have sinkhole spontaneous form under the cheater than summoning a monster that could kill the entire party if they aren't smart enough to not engage. Now if the entire party is cheating, go ahead with Tarrasque, falling rocks, or what ever else you prefer.
@@emberfist8347 if they cheat, just properly counter it with an slight change of schedule, just small enough that nobody will notice, but big enough to rebalance the game's story. for example, if there would be treasure, you could have part of it being stolen by something before you get to the treasure. Or ask them nicely whether they are cheating or not.
An advantage of having a physical copy of the DMG as opposed to the PDF is that you can slam it down on the table to remind the bully player who's in charge.
@@rodrikforrester6989 That's up to the individual. I personally dislike PDF's while playing. However, yes, the books are pricey. Even as a player, I feel (personally) scrolling through a PDF slows down play, while a physical book is quicker to flick though. I'm going to be starting my first ever DM sesion soon, so you bet your biscuits I've been flicking through the core manuels :)
@@negative6442 I'm playing a spellslinger wizard-smyth now. I have a +22 to craft ANITHING I ACTUALLY CAN CRAFT. I know in the pathfinder its usual thing, but I played only D&D before, so I was surprised.
Negative yeah in was play a pathfinder campaign and I rolled a 2 on the dice and the DM went “I guess that won’t hit” until I said “that’s a 45” and he looked like he was about to have a heart attack
*sweats as a level 12 human Envoy in Starfinder, where none of my class skills are below 10, 8% of all skills are below 10, 75% of all skills are 17+, and 28% are at or above 20 ranks* The DM groans when I ask him to make sure my math is right, but it’s good-natured. I have several players cross-checking my work when DM is busy because Roll20 refuses to work for me.
I tend to have the opposite problem when it comes to adjusting my sheets. "You pocket a purse of 50 gold coins" "Wow, awesome!" *pause* "Uh... are you gonna write that down?" "Huh? Oh yeah, whoops."
I have done that in shadowrun, was so excited to survive the run, I forgot to jot down the 10.000 nuyen, and when the bills came I told the GM i had to make some loans, but he said when did you spend the cash you got from the last run... HeHe
My players sometimes don't write things down either... Sometimes i prompt them...sometimes I assume that means they didn't want it. 5e gives out so much gold anyway... Lol
This is why, as a DM, I require all ability score rolls be visible in the first place, and I use a customized rolling method, similar to the dice pool method. Roll 24 d6 and assign them into lots of 4d6. Two of these must be the lowest possible, and one must be the highest possible, with the rolls made. The rest are as close to the average of the remaining dice as possible. Then drop the lowest die from each lot and assign them. Usually I have the players roll and assign their dice, but I create the lots, so they don't have to do all the math. I used to combine everyone's dice and have them bid on lots with their starting gold (which was maxed out for their chosen class) players didn't like that part.
@@wilcojar "I have my players roll 4d5+1 drop the lowest, then, after all the scores are made, I put them on separate pieces of paper and put those into a hat then have the players arm wrestle, the ones that win their matches get to pick from the hat, then the players play chess with the winner getting another pick, once a player gets all their scores they can roll a d20 and if they get a 20 they get a free feat but if they roll a 1 they have to exchange their scores with a player that has a lower average score (the player they exchange with doesn't need to have their full set of scores to be exchanged with so sometimes the average increases by the time that player gets their scores, regardless the exchange goes through). Then once everyone has their sheets done I have everyone do a skill check with every skill, and the player who won the most skill checks gets a +1 to all stats." I'm just poking fun here, I don't mean any I'll will by it, you can use whatever method works for you, I just find it funny how in depth and complex everyone's roll-for-stats can get.
I was running Dragon Heist for a party a while back and found out one of the players had bought the module and started reading through it away from the group. Joke was on him, I had an unfortunate knack for screwing up when copying the maps over to game paper so I'd usually wind up putting in extra rooms or having a door in the wrong spot. There were several times he insisted on taking one direction over the other and wound up getting the party lost, until (in character) nobody wanted to follow his notoriously bad directions anymore. I don't play with this guy anymore. Speedrunning is for skyrim, not DnD.
Amazing comment! My mother had a secondary character- a fighter- who couldn’t hit anything until a party member went down. They then got bat 20s every swing - no matter the dice used. Dm switched out the dice for his own and it didn’t change a thing!
@@carbonbeaker409 lol. That's okay, my 1st character was perfectly rolled and could cross class into anything if it was in 5e. It was in 3.5 and he died after literally every role that wasn't selling alcohol was failed.
yep. when I create campaigns I have all players sign a 'constitution'. it's usually house and campaign rules. one rule I had was not allowing any player to read ANY of the source material. then a few YEARS into the campaign one player let something slip during the game. I confronted him and he said he went out and bought the source material I was running. I banned him. the other players whined, and complained EVERY SESSION after that so I walked away from the entire campaign. I rarely run games anymore. the players have made GMing more of a chore than fun anymore.
"Talk to your players like a normal person." The ultimate dm technique a friend taught me a while back. Kinda off topic, my middle school history teacher joking threatened to execute cheating students with a quillotine.
Quillotine! You just mechanically jab a fucking quill through their windpipe, extract it and watch them drown in their own blood! Not nearly as painles, humane or foolproof but it works.
My favorite form when I rolled a 3e character was all 18's, every roll was max. So I picked paladin, got my full plate as part of my backstory, and picked up a masterwork weapon. This character was ready to stomp everything as a 1st level character with a starting ac of 24, and average damage of 8. First combat was with a rat, not a dire rat, not a large rat, just a normal rat. I couldn't hit worth any luck, I think I rolled 4 1's that one combat. He died to a rat, in a barn, and then got looted by the group.
I had a DM who thought I was cheating, he asked for my dice since I was rolling high all night, then he started using my dice and could not roll above 10 at all.
I’ve got one, and been this one myself: The Accidental Cheater. This is the poor sap who, for whatever reason, learned something incorrect about the game, and was never corrected. It LOOKS like their cheating, but they’re just ignorant of something. For me, it’s usually just forgetting a part of the description, but it’s so common for me that my friend group just KNOWS it’s going to happen and always asks “are you sure?” after I say what I want to do that’s technically incorrect.
As a rogue with +8 in perception I once rolled a 20. My character had so much perception that he saw through dimentions. Sadly it was useless, as there was nothing of importance to see lol
I was in a game with an inexperienced DM and one of our fellow players looked up a monster, called out HP as we hit our first real Horror monster in curse of strahd and it totally killed the mood. I felt bad for our DM, so I said something. Then the rest of the party said something. The cheater laughed and said that's how he plays. After that I think we gave our DM enough confidence to move forward with his decision. The cheater wasn't at the next session or any after that.
I definitely think it's cheating. So much so that I made a skill called Knowledge Bestiary (I run PF1e) which you can use to get monster stats, one at a time, to sort of give a release valve for those who used to play jrrpgs with strategy guides. I understand the want to know what your facing. It should just be part of the game. Surely there are books about monsters, rumors about them, and ways to gauge strengths and weaknesses in a world full of monsters. I think this also helps with meta gaming
@@cameronf5893 Not really. Players looking up stats for monsters at the table is rude. It's even ruder if they're breaking others immersion by blurting out their findings. But it's not _cheating,_ since no advantage is gained. If a player just _remembers_ information about a monster, it adds nothing to the game to try to force them to behave as if they didn't. Let them feel clever for their knowledge of the game.
Looking up the stats of a monster that your fighting is absolutely 100% cheating. It absolutely games you an advantage. You know how many hit points it has you know how much damage it needs to take before it goes down. That can inform some of your decisions at the game table. If you know it's resistances or vulnerabilities if you know that it's spell resistant if you know that it is has some special attacks. All of these things give you an advantage at the game table 100% there is no question about it. Looking up the monsters stats is cheating and the highest form of cheating. Calling it out to everyone else at the table is even worse and ruins the game for everyone else who doesn't want to cheat and who just wants to have a fun game. That's like spoiling a movie for people. That's like going off and telling someone who hasn't watched Game of Thrones the latest latest season everything that's happened. That person is ruining the game for others and that's despicable.
You do NOT look up the monsters as a player. If you wanna ask about its ac or possible abilities or other such ask the dm. I can tell you "wearing platemail" "nude" "its radiating fire", any info I wish to keep moe hidden I'll ask for history or arcana to see if you get to know more about it.
6:20 Had A DM do this on me once. I had a pair of 'lucky dice' that I used when I had a really big roll to make. Not every roll, just rolls that mattered. Death-saving throws, big last hit on enemies before I died, and dialogue options when I REALLY needed something to work. (Like convincing the king to pretty please not send us all to the gallows because we were betrayed by an npc who threw us under the bus for his actions.) Not every time did they work, but 90% of the time i felt when I rolled them, the outcome was favorable. My DM upon session 10 of course got suspicious. So he asked to switch dice with me for that session. The dice he gave me gave me average rolls. But my dice? He couldn't get above a 10 with them. Maybe 15% of the rolls he did with those dice gave him 1's. Next session, he gave them back to me, and look at that, my dice are giving me high rolls again! He watched me like a hawk, and again, while sometimes my lucky dice did fail me, most of the times they came in when they counted. The DM was positive I was cheating in some way, like there was some trick to the dice. Can't blame him though, even I was suspicious of myself sometimes.
A one shot group I was in had a rule that if you looked at monster stat blocks you took half your hp worth of wonder damage, aka you take damage and wonder where it came from
@@larsvanbreemen4102 my question would be if 1) the dm knows you are doing this 2) has asked you to. If no to either, maybe you aren't actually being helpful
I have a ringer player. Someone who looks stuff up, as I'm DMing, he helps me keep myself in check mostly, as well as the other players. Obviously, when it's him in question, I have to look myself, but generally he keeps to the rules as well as he can.
In my group we have the interesting case of all being DMs, although some are far more experienced than others...so we all pretty much check when something is in question and use it as a moment to teach eachother obscure rules
I'm pretty much that guy in my games. I play A LOT of DnD and so, I remember most of the rules by heart. When I'm not sure, I usually say "I think it's that, but look it up, I'm not certain". I'm often checking the players around my table to make sure they don't forget to roll their concentration checks, their great weapon fighting style, or stuff like that.
My trouble is with DMs that stick to standard monsters but forget a little "limitation" of their powers or spells. Those are the times I'll likely look up any offending powers or spells and ask the DM to reconsider his interpretation. Obviously, it's all up to the DM as it's his world, but unknowingly changing limitations can really drag a party's morale down.
I've had that problem before but I love to read and learn new things so we usually figure it out after the first problem or two and just roll from there. System works out because we all make mistakes like that and it evens out.
It hadn't actually occurred to me that requiring players to properly declare actions could catch a form of dice cheating. I guess I'll add that to encouraging roleplay, assisting adjudication and discouraging "pulling a rabbit out of a hat". One thing I'd add to assist with complex spell/feature descriptions is to have the _player using it_ have the description on hand. Basically, if a players using a spell or feature, it's their responsibility to have the _full and unedited_ text available if a question arises. And yeah. Zero tolerance for bullies.
For sure the players should have the text of a spelled they're trying to cast further that's from the player handbook or from a nap on their phone. I mean if they don't have the rules descriptions for abilities or spells their trying to use they can't very well use them can they? LOL
My players have created their character sheets with an online program that automatically sums up the character's abilities and features in a shorthand form on the sheet, including spells. One session in and I'm already finding inconsistencies with the shorthand simply leaving essential things out, so I guess I will have to try giving the characters full sheets of what they can do, even if it means their level 5 characters are 10 pages long without backstory.
@@wonderfurret8223 Oh, God ... "shorthand". If a rules question comes up, it's almost always going to require the full text to answer it. I prefer (though obviously it's not ideal) players to just look up the actual spell description in the PHB than have to waste _more_ time finding out the shorthand doesn't explain something and have to look it up anyway. There are shortcuts though. One of my players, for example, has effectively created a spellbook with all the spells her Knowledge Cleric is ever going to have access to. When she decides to cast a particular spell, if it's not something she uses regularly, she always has that book open at the actual spell. And that's a _Cleric._ For classes that can't switch out spells at long rests (Warlocks, Sorcerers, Rangers etc.), the bookkeeping is _way_ less than ten pages. If a player just starts keeping track of spells and features at 1st level, they'll always be on top of it.
What I wound up doing was manually copying the entire spell list into a text file so every time somebody says 'wait how does this spell work' I can spin my chair and CTRL+F it immediately. It took forever and I'm pretty sure having the player's handbook with a bookmark at each letter would have worked just as well. Actually, I'm going to just do that over the next few days and stop having to worry about getting the laptop set up every week.
@@Charoy612 Yeah. Hardcopy is better and if you're going to be looking through the _entire_ spell list, well that's in the PHB. But for a _player_ whose character will never have more than 15 spells ...
I was rolling stats for a new character yesterday and I ended up rolling really well, so I purposefully brought my strength and constitution rolls back a few points because I didn’t want my friends to think I was cheating. I am very, very paranoid, if you couldn’t tell.
I get you.............. For me I rolled my 20 100 times 87 times the number was below ten. For my many failed objectives my group decided to make lower numbers better.... Sence that I've been doing rather well....
@@theDMLair just a question, maybe somebody can answer quickly or tell me a page to look it up, but what is this Honor System? It sounds kinda interesting.....
Some players are lazy when it comes to knowing the limitations of their abilities. One of my players in my first group was horrible for this. As a first time DM with a large group, I was more focused on moving combat at an adequate pace so people were kept engaged (and I think I succeeded there). But numerous times I would still have to correct him on mistakes on what his spells do and what requirements he had to fulfill. He had printed off a near random character from some program that he did a brilliant job of roleplaying, but made lots of choices that made him a stressful player to have at our table. On to the mistakes (off the top of my head): *enemy spell-caster casting something nasty* Player:"Dispel Magic, I end the spell!" Me: "That's not how you use that, you need to use Counterspell because it's a reaction." Player: "Wha?" *Next Week* *enemy spellcaster casts something nasty* Player:"Spellbreaker! I break the spell!" Me: "That's not at all how that ability works. I think you should actually have the book so you can check the full text for your abilities." (He was running an Arcana Cleric but didn't own SCAG) By the end of the campaign he was casting things that required bonus actions to control, or had casting times of 1 minute or longer and trying to sneak past those limitations in combat. His turns were already so long that I gave up double checking his bullshit. I could keep going with these examples, but it's probably best for my own health to stop going through it. I still haven't forgiven him.
Yeah I mean at some point the player is kind of required to learn how to play as character right? I mean at least that's kind of My Philosophy for the most part. I could see being super super frustrated with that for sure.
SquatBenchDeadlift oh god I remember those kinds of players. One time I DM’d there was this guy who was dead set that his character with 13 to DEX could dodge an attack on which I got a natural 17+4 (they were fighting goblins) and blamed it on me how I’m unfair to him for not giving him an ability to dodge. A level 1 character. With 13 Dex. Wanted to dodge. He even didn’t want it as a reaction.
An actual game session when rolling stats: Me: (shock) "Are these dice weighted?" DM: "Why?" Me: "I just got an 18, 16, 15, 14, 12, and 10." DM: "Here, use mine and I will watch you roll." Me: (rolls like normal, just toss em on the table and let em roll away to the center) "So an 18, 17, 16, 15, 13, and 9..." DM: "WHAT?!? Here, I will roll for you." (He gets 17, 17, 16, 15, 14, 11) Me: "Like seriously, what is up with your dice?" DM: "Screw it, I know I am not cheating and the base stats board is asinine to make a player use so just keep that last set of rolls. If its too bad we can balance it out later." (Needless to say there was balancing done post game session, it was agreed between me and DM I kept one 17 but lowered every other roll by -2 giving a 15, 14, 13, 12, and he let me keep the last one as a 10)
See I feel those are pretty normal stats when you're using for D6 drop the lowest. That's system tends toward Fairley High stats in my experience. No cheating needed it just happens.
@@theDMLair It was just odd as the other 4 people got unlucky and their highest was 16, out of the 4 of em I mean. But thanks for telling me as every time I roll it just feels weird to see high numbers at level 1. Although that might be because of my favorite class.
Yeah, I wouldn't make you Nerf yourself for just getting lucky on rolls, it's the whole point of rolling stats, being innately random. I also agree with the drop lowest thing, it tends to be pretty high, think the average was 14.
@@WerewolfMinecraft Yeah, we know that now. But at that time we didn't. It was a few years back and we all roughly had 2 games under our belt, so we were new. It was 2nd year of high school, when I was a senior I decided to run the game that year as my senior project. Went pretty good. Unfortunately we need campaigns that last all year, and we hosted once a week so it was roughly 52 1 hour sessions. So every DM that was doing it for a senior project had to have a really long game. It actually came down to the wire and had to nerf the final boss so we could finish on time. Turns out we still had 30 minutes and the clocks were wrong, so I had em fight a post game boss I had planned cuz why not? They ran out of time and the party's mage collapsed the cave on top of them, killed everyone in the party but the bosses who escaped, to "End the game with closure.". We all laughed, and I told everyone their fates after death. Everyone except 1 person who sold their soul to Asmodeus (WILLINGLY!) during the campaign was happy.
If you're going to use a dice rolling system to generate stats, you have to be willing to live by the results -- good or bad. If you want balance between players, use a point-buy system. It's that simple.
Just thought of other ways someone could cheat... Reading an adventure or the DM's notes! Either of those would be a one time offense at my table. Imagine all the things you would possibly have to change to keep them on their toes!
I was running a side game at my home from a group I found on meetup. My Friday games are very intense, and stressful, so I wanted a chill easy game on Saturday. Found 3 people really quick. We started playing tomb of annihilation things went well at first then I noticed some strange things at certain story beats. Like some how making a very well thought out roleplay or solution to a puzzle. I am talking like instantly solving things. I decided to throw a curveball, I made valindra showmantle, good not what she truly is. Roleplayed her like a valley girl. Offending player was visibly frustrated. Next session she plane shifts them to antler place. Which was white plume mountain. As we started that adventure, and players started clearing dungeon, for fun I moved some items into different places. We took a break and the player said why didn’t we find blackrazor with a 22 investigation. I was like how do you know where the sword was, he said I read the adventure this week before the game. I said thank you for telling me, I knew you were doing this, it is cheating of the highest level. Please get your stuff and leave now.
I have caught players reading the adventure before when I ran a mod. It makes it less fun for other players when you solve puzzles to fast from cheating. He was not invited back.
My players cant do that bc I have it all on a google doc or a notepad app or something online that only I can access and dont forget anything, but if I do, it is a couple minutes and then I have it, but I only do that for hige details I have forgotten which I barely ever do. If anybody did, their character would be convicted of a crime they committed while sleepwalking and be executed then the player would be kicked from the table
Homebrewing each monster individually is indeed very complicated. Although adding simple changes to a monster can keep these cheaters, whom lookup the monster statistics or always "have high rolls", in check. At least until the end of the session. I enjoy using lower monsters with a little extra beef like skeletons for example. They're low CR and relatively easy. However, by giving them plate armor or a shield to bump AC and a different weapon for flavor and or reach. It can really change the "same old encounter" and give those cheaters a challenge until a backbone is grown and the conversation is had. These small changes are quick and easy to do on the fly. Thank you for the video!
One of the things I would actually do is to give rangers a sort of "species lore" ability where they could look up abilities of non-undead creatures to make them slightly less useless.
Had a guy who cheated Meta-style, using roll20 and I mentioned you see a *blank* hanging from the wall. He actually said "How do you spell that?" and we could all hear pages flipping over discord. Well said creature's stat blocks got swapped out for something else.
I'll admit I've had that habit early on in my career with searching up a monsters stats. But now a days I just enjoy the flow of combat or if I have a character with decent IN have a roll for it.
We had a cheater in my group that I have nicknamed "Three-Hands Hans" because for some reason his characters always wound up trying to benefit from huge ac by stacking dual-wielding weapons with a shield. Another time he did that, he tried to use a two-handed sword with a shield. Sometimes people just don't understand the limits of human biology.
@@EngelWulf In my games, I might rule a high STR character would need a mythril sword and/or perhaps a homebrew feat to pull it off. Maybe even set the prereq. for the feat to be those races with the 'powerful build' trait. But in general it really doesn't make much sense.
Before I became a DM myself I loved my old DM's punishment. If people abuse inventory a cutpurse always seems to appear. Or if a Wizard abuses spell a mysterious rock always seems to knock it out of their memory. I played with my old crew for over 10 years before leading a party of my own when I moved. But there's always an adjustment period when forming cliques. This is a game but it means that everyone should enjoy it and a great DM must always side on what's fair to all and 1 bad apple can ruin an entire campaign
I had a player who would do this “premature roll” in combat. A few seconds before his turn he would roll the d20. If it came out high he would stick with it, otherwise he would pick up the dice and wait while it was clearly his turn. I’ve also had people do the dice on the floor or dice not level selective reroll, where they try to use the roll if it’s a good one. And I had one guy who did the drop the dice rather than roll it. That’s a lot of cheating for a relatively small group. I quickly established some rules, namely that people could not roll until I said so, and any dice not landing flat in the tray had to be rerolled. Sounds obvious now. I also found that I, the dm, had a dice that favored 18 and 16. At first I refused to believe it because it didn’t seem possible that a d20 could do that, but after some spectacular combat fails for the party we realized I had a lucky dice. I let the players use it for a while and then I got a new d20. Back when this happened though we were playing a system - mostly home brewed - where skill checks required low rolls, so a biased dice did not convey absolute advantage in all things. One problem with the more modern consistency of d&d is that a biased dice causes more issues.
A way around this is a dice tower. Every player must drop their dice they're rolling into it. I also do it on occasion as the DM for dramatic moments and if it's a huge fail infront of players well I just roll with it. If they see the DM takes whatever comes out of the tower, they will too
Once I rolled an 18, followed by a 16, followed by a 17. I was about halfway through rolling stats when someone walked in and assumed I was cheating. I redid those stats... got the same numbers... then proceeded to not get another score above 5... my luck both loves and hates me
Yeah been there. Also have rolled 6x18s before, with the DM watching, using 3d6 not 4d6 discard lowest, switched out the dice and did it again. But have never done it ever again. I have come close, though. I seem to roll a lot of 14s and 15s and then ask the DM if I can replace one with a 16 or 17, and drop two or three of them to 6+1d3 or something, so I have one great Stat and some flavor. A lot of times I'm seeing the same issue in our groups and a few us tend to be DMs more often than not, so its a wonder we haven't just come up with our own array.
I've only ever had one group to run DnD with, being a player personally, my cousin was the DM, his brother played as well and a few of their friends. There was this one guy that, and I don't mean to sound rude here, but he was dyslexic, which is cool whatever, but he was aggressive about being 100% correct in everything he said, he would argue so much that his turns would stretch out forever and I'm talking like we would do 1 combat encounter in an entire session, sure we were all new but the rest of us tried quite hard to make it enjoyable and decently paced. Yet he would consistently argue and it basically ruined every single persons experience of DnD at that table and people would stop turning up because he was there. But here's the thing, he would think he was correct, but would be absolutely off because he never even tried to read what things did, he glanced at them and that was it, the whole group basically broke down when my cousin, the one DMing, lost it and said something along the lines of "Stop arguing about what the rules say when you can't even f***ing read." My cousin is genuinely one of the nicest people I've ever met and loved DMing but that one dude ruined like 6 people's experiences with DnD. I'm finally trying to get back into it (recently bought a little solo campaign from dmsguild which I really loved, even though this Hippogriff that fought with me in the story basically 3 shot the BBEG because I kept rolling Nat 20's on his attacks, seriously glory hog Hippogriff ahahaha) Moral of the story, even if they're not cheating and they are just toxic, get rid of them before other people don't want to be there because of that person. Sorry for the wall of text, btw I am loving your videos! Thanks for helping to get me back into DnD, slowly but surely!
Wow, yeah your cousin sounds real nice lol. Feel like there were numerous other ways to handle that situation. Seems too harsh. Hope the guy handled it fine.
Yeah, that sucks when people get a negative impression about the game because of one person. I'm happy though that you're getting back in the Dungeon & Dragons! Glad you're enjoying the videos to! Always happy to help. 😁
I can say for you guys that we have all remained friends past this point which is one thing I am glad for, that guy seems to have found a group to play with that he fits in well with and the rest have done similar since moving away. Yeah love the videos and gonna be looking for a local group to play with as soon as things stabilise a bit more :)
Yes totally. Forgot about that one. My friend Joe has dice I think they're from Call of Cthulhu or something like that and they're like impossible to read. He will have his face right up to them and he still can't read them sometimes. It's really really bad
@@theDMLair One of our players has dice that are doubly bad on that account. Stone dice that are sized smaller than average with no paint in the number. Its impossible to read across a table. This is coincedentally the same player who created a multiclass monster of a pc none of us thought was legal...but were all too confused about how it worked to figure if he was cheating or not.
To be fair, I've a set of grey steel/metal dice and they can be hard to read. I think how you handle that fact determines if it's cheating. For example, I always roll them on the table where it's clear to see for everyone (or at least most). I leave 'em laying there up until my turn is over/one of the next people has their turn. Gives all interested parties more then enough time to figure it out....
I had dice like that once. Really cool dragon-themed dice I bought. After a couple of sessions, my DM ruled that I couldn't use them anymore. I was disappointed obviously, but I couldn't complain and respected his wishes.
I personally don't mind if my players cheat a little. My players all fear me enough to know to keep it minimal if at all. We all know that success is not the point of the game, just a perk. I own my table, and I set the standard. If a player acts up, no mercy, no inspiration, no perks. Rule #1: Don't piss off an angry nerd with admin privileges.
I never take anything at the table personally. They will cheat. It will not matter. You roll a nat 20 to dodge the poison spear that you know is poisoned because you are metagaming? Remember the nature of a reflex save is you act without thinking.... you dodge the spear, by leaping off the cliff.
I’ll admit I’ve cheated a couple times while playing, but it was only when my character was having an overwhelmingly bad time in a fight (getting pincushioned by everyone and their mother with ranged attacks for example)
I play D&D online, you can't roll privately or have weighted dice. The most privately they can roll is a DM roll, where only the DM and the player who's rolling can see. And all rolls are archived and can be viewed later, so I can check what a player rolled on stats if I'm suspicious. Though I do try to observe rolling stats anyway
Talking about forgetting limitations reminded me of a Star Wars d20 I was in. None of us had read how one of the force powers worked which made it comically OP. It was only supposed to last for one round but we had been playing as though it kept going until you failed your check. And since the check wasn't particularly high, this resulted in us throwing baddies about the room with ease. We all had a good laugh and then adjusted to the rules as written.
@@anthonynorman7545 if it's done for a short enough time, you might be able to get the weight to shift enough for it to bias the rolls in one direction without the distortion being too visible.
What about dice that seem to consistently low? If they have weighted the die, I can understand, but if the die came that way, like it rolls decent, even if just on thought it rolls well, doesnt sound like cheating. Though I do agree that people need to be honest with what perks and abilities do. If it's a honest mistake, okay, but if it's on purpose that sucks.
They always seem to roll too low are similar to dice that always seem to roll too high they could be improperly balanced. It's not cheating but the dice are messed up and should probably be replaced with dice that are better weighted or balanced.
@@theDMLairUnless the injection molding is done with poorly mixed plastic, or includes large air voids, the "improper balancing" comes from the rolling process where the sharp edged are rubbed off in a machine. I have seen a few videos about dice and balance and all that rigmarole, and the consensus I get is to buy metal dice with sharp edges and don't go cheap. Or buy good plastic dice and don't go cheap. And in ALL cases, be willing to change away from dice that seem to roll too consistently near any one face of the die.
I had a long time player quit after I asked him to roll his character at the group. They were all going to make characters together. He said he liked using this phone app to make characters and roll dice. I told him everyone was using the same dice for character creation. He raged out in our forum and quit. I was surprised (I always kinda figured he cheated. He always had at least 2 stats over 18 and nothing under 12) Which surprised me, why would someone cheat on dnd. Failing is just as much fun as success. In my book
For some, that is not true. They have been raised to believe that you only win by succeeding, and that if they fail at anything, then they are a loser and have failed at life. To them, it’s not about the story. They have to WIN.
Yeah that sucks man. It's unfortunate that some people want to cheat so badly that when rules are put in place that prevent them from doing so that they'd rather not play then play honestly. I mean I'm sorry you lost your player. Because that's where the thing really sucks. But yeah when people are like always getting over 18 on their stats at level 1 yeah something's going on.
Yeah I kind of feel the same way in that there is no winning and losing in Dungeons & Dragons. I mean that's like the beautiful part of the game really. It's a collaborative game cooperative game where everyone is on the same side. Even the dungeon master is on the same side as the players at least the way I played the game. So that there needs to be winners and losers for some people is unfortunate.
@@craigstueber8073 Tell that to the Adventure League and living games community. That lost is almost completely peopled with metagaming power-levellers who only care about the mechanics, not the story.
Real talk, I once actually rolled an 18 in every stat except for one (a 12). I was incredulous, and there's no way the DM would have believed it if I hadn't screencapped the rolls (I had used roll20 for it). DM still made me reduce two of my stats "to be fair", although I'll be honest, doesn't really feel fair when RNG blesses you and someone steals it away.
I typically use a 4 strikes rule. Strike 1: Honest Mistake. You do activity x once. OK, hey player Bob, you did this. Just wanted to let you know that... Strike 2: Do you have amnesia? Activity x occurs again. Hey player Bob, you did this again. We talked about this. I'm not trying to be rude, but... Strike 3: Final Death Saving Throw. Bob. I've talked to you about this three times. Again, not trying to be rude, but this needs to stop. There won't be a fourth time. As a reminder, you did this... Strike 4: Bye. I know this type of conversation is never fun. But its necessary in some cases.
I agree on all others, though I'll slightly differ on the "looking up monster stats"-thing. Knowing monster stats is a function of experience and knowing monster design principles. I don't mind someone who is less experienced/has shitty memory checking up on things. The important thing is whether they abuse that knowledge somehow. I don't balance encounters based on players knowing or not knowing what a particular type of monster can do/is weak against. If they metagame based on that knowledge, they'll have to explain that knowledge in-game.
I agree, didn't mind it so much when its a monster the player never encountered before and they're curious about it. I occasionally liked to pull out really obscure creatures just for my own amusement even if I knew it wouldn't be much of a challenge for them just for the "what the...?!" reaction from them (imagine a party's reaction to being accosted by a roomful of irate flumphs). I used to do the same as a player once we figured out what the monster was and the DM didn't mind as he used put his own twist on everything anyway. Frankly I think the only thing it changed in how we played was how quickly we made the decision to retreat if combat was not going our way whether or not to to stick it out for another round thinking we might be able to finish it off then.
Knowing the rough strength and M.O. of monsters is a character asset. Memorizing the stat blocks is either cheating or lame. Unless that person is ALSO a DM.
I think it is easily sidestepped enough that it should probably just be avoided. For example, why would a player need to look up the monster? It seems to only cause problems if a player neglects to use one of their favorite spells that the monster happens to be immune to or just happens to lead with a spell that the monster is weak against when they wouldn't know. Them not looking it up removes even the thought of accusing them of metagaming or asking which naturally would put them on the defensive. If a player wants to know something more about a monster during a battle, I usually just ask them to perform a check for it. If they're analyzing it on the spot, int. If they're trying to recall anything like it that they've run into, wis. Etc, etc. Then I'll feed them information based on what they roll. If they want to know for matters of curiosity or to appropriate for their own campaigns, then I'd say it is reasonable to wait till after the fight or dungeon or session.
@@youcantbeatk7006I had a character that firmly believed EVERYTHING should be finished off with fire. Troll? fire. Skeleton? fire. rats? fire. Villages? fire. Lots of fire. It works for pretty much everything except fire elementals, phoenixes, demons and such.
what goes in the same-ish field of reading the monster manual.. Reading the module and just.. casually walkink up to all the hidden treasure in EVERY ROOM.. Hello fellow party member ;)
Problem with that is that you can't avoid reading the Monster Manual if you are a DM yourself or just enthusiastic about dnd... at that point it becomes a matter of player vs charakter knowledge doing it in combat is pretty dumb though...
a player straight up reading the module you're running is the moment where you randomly put death traps where treasure should be and then never invite that player at your table in the future
@@francisxavier8374 in my case the Player did die the session after.. and now the entire campaign is over because our DM got so pissed of at her he just.. quit
I actually once rolled 13,13,13,16,16,18 with the 4d6 - the lowest system and was witness rolling it by 3-6 people and decided to re-roll them because even if the DM believed me they wouldn't let me because it is too unbalanced so I re-rolled and got a 9,13,14,18,14,12 and used that. So if its possibly to 13,13,13,16,16,18 then all above 16 stats are possible but too unbalanced and needs to be changed even if it was legit or not.
@@Magikarpador thats way above average, I rolled similar to that, my dm lowered it by about 7 points giving me closer to the partys statline, im above their average still, but not broken
when rolling for stuff, our dm does it all, and everytime our rouge says "i want to punch the steel door" you know he rolled a 20 when the dms eyes widen and he says that he made a hole in the door
I swear to you. No I swear to all that is Holy if I ever find Susie I will rip that Snicker bar out of whatever part of her body that processed it and stored it it away as some molecular structure. I want my Snickers bar back!
As a dm, I'd like your opinion on something our group couldn't agree on. The cantrip mending, could you use it to mend a broken bone, the physical fracture but not regain any hp. Everything fits the perimeters of the spell, broken bone = object, fracture = less than 1ft, and the caster could see and touch it. Would you allow this?
Valdspar I know I’m not the person you asked, but I’m going to give you my opinion and hope it helps. It depends on how literal you are being with the rules. If you are being very literal, then no. Living beings, or parts of them, are generally not considered to be objects in dnd. If you are not being very literal, then sure.
Hi, I know I'm late but here is my two cents. I like to go by the "yes....but" method for things like this. Yes they can heal the fracture... But since the bone is under skin and muscle it is not well mended, meaning until they can find a way to heal the fracture properly, they take disadvantage to dex, and the "Limp" rules apply. Limp. Your speed on foot is reduced by 5 feet. You must make a DC 10 Dexterity saving throw after using the Dash action. If you fail the save, you fall prone. Magical healing removes the limp. Same goes for arm breakages. would apply disadvantage to strength checks and no more two handed weapon use till it's properly fixed.
I was the guy that always had to reduce my roles because I always rolled high, which as a player seems kinda awesome, but as a DM it was more than a little deadly for my group, so I ignored crit after crit after crit cause that was just how the dice came up. When I explained this to my group after a couple crits I allowed to go through on them, they insisted I use their dice. Same thing. In the open, same thing though I made them agree if I wasnt rolling behind the screen, they had to accept the results (yeah, I can be a little evil sometimes lol). Fast forward a few years, my niece started playing. Apparently my brother didnt get the same dice luck because she got his share in spades. That kid can roll some serious dice, and does it in front of the group. Straight up 40s in systems with a wild die (Savage World, d6, etc),. What was weird however, was that when my niece started playing and rolling incredibly ridiculously high my own dice rolls (thankfully) started to average out and be far more normal. As a GM I welcome my much more normal dice rolls, on the rare occasion when I play a PC, I miss my ability to crit 6-7 rolls out of 10, but on the same hand the challenge and fun of having to work around "uh... 3. I missed." in those critical moments is a great deal of fun. So I dont doubt people can roll high. I dont even doubt they can roll high consistently. Having done it and seen it done. However, I will say to those of you who are like, or were like in my case, me and my niece, your missing some really cool role playing chances. Sometimes that miss or that fail or even that critical fail can open up the game to some really stellar and FUN Role Playing moments, and can serve to make your character infinitely more memorable and fun.
We once had a player roll 10 20s in a row with 4 different dice, out in the open. He wasn't cheating, he just got really lucky. Something we found funny was that every time he rolled high that entire session, he decided to bounce the dice off of the DM's mug, which was on the opposite side of the table.
Custom DM Rule for seeing rolls Make it so the face on the other side is the one rolled It’s a good save against Weighted dice ...switching dice also works
TLDR: My monday DM said “If I catch you cheating, you lose 2 levels” (i assume the penalty scales as you level up, we are 4th currently) Context: My Monday DM is doing a “FrostPunk” firearm campaign. He wants us to track bullets, even though most games I have played in do not track ammo as a logistical hassle and the cheap nature of Ammo in DnD. He will routinely mention to mark off ammo. Although I could easily just buy 50 more rounds. None of the weapons are automatic, so that’d last me a good 10 encounters. I still mark the ammo, as I do not mind, and Roll 20 Makes such things very easy.
I just started DMing a homebrew campaign with my regular group. I have a white board with a statement of house rules "no phones at the table, announce intentions before rolling, etc..." it is followed by another statement that if I see you breaking these simple rules(all are mostly common table etiquette to keep things moving and players engaged) you will suffer 2 d10 necrotic damage...my players are currently level 1. We have had issues on these grounds in other sessions lol. Everything seems to be working out though now.
Yeah I don't track ammo my games either for the most part unless it's like a magical Arrow or something. It's just a really big logistical Hassle and it doesn't add any element of fun to the game in my opinion.
MY RECOMMENDATION FOR SPELLS: print the spell list [highlight the ones the players have (if desired)] always have that print out pamphlet nearby and get really comfortable reading/ sourcing it.. there isnt really an easy way to access the vast number of spells in real time outside of memory so start slow and grow..
I definitely agree with the taking time to look up the right rules for things. Basically every time someone uses a new spell or ability in a campaign I’m in, the whole table is interested in seeing exactly how the ability works. The game is cooperative, so knowing how your allies’ abilities can aid you is only helpful to the long term of the game.
once a player rolled a high number (17 maybe?) but I didn't asked for a check, I asked him what was that for, he said "it's an insight check to know if she (NPC) is lying", I told him he can't roll something I'm not aware of and I proceed to explain to the group why that was bad behavior, it might be misinterpreted as cheating (you just back out if the roll was low). I told the player he can keep his high roll on that insight check, but if it happens again I will demand a new roll on the open. jokes to him, the NPC was not lying. ALSO, I had tons of times a specific player try to back out from a bad roll, I tell him NOPE, YOU ALREADY DID THAT.
@@kasuscloud4805 the best one was when the same player found an artifact of an extinct race from the underdark, the guide book they purchased in the surface said it "made your true potential show up", so he decided to "use" said artifact. and I told him "ok, reroll your stats, here is the formula" and he went on "what??, no, I don't use it", "you ALREADY use it, re-roll your stats" (the new formula gave more points in general, so it was a beneficial item, he is just a coward)
Well it’s like my paladin who always rolled high with his luck. I suspected he had loaded dice, so I gave him the “cursed” green dice. They’re normal green dice, but everybody gets screwed over by them. It’s a joke. So I swapped the dice... and he still rolled high. Out in the open... Damn you Braztin
This may not apply equally to a hack-n-slash, but it's been my experience that some of the best roleplay and most memorable FUN moments have come from biffing an important roll or just plain messing up. I once failed a perception check while melded into stone (to sleep "safely" as a drow while the sun was up) and got built into the walls of a pyramid the natives were building.
My brother was a new dm, he wanted to run a campaign while knowing very little, but he was telling a pretty good story, made a friend of his who knew a little bit more co-dm, after one session of him doing 6d10 damage with no spell slots or preparations, I read all of the basics guide and most of the players handbook. I caught him read handed next session and exposed him as a cheater, he admitted to cheating numerous rules, especially in relation to spells, I'm now the co-dm at my brothers table.
I had a character, Smash, who couldn’t land a roll. After a while, I might have fudged a few rolls so he failed when he didn’t. ...it was better roll play!
For the people that look up monster stats I like to just X2 the health and damage of the monster(s) in question so that way it’s not my problem and after the first time the other players usually stop that sort of thing themselves
Tbh IMO the solutions on your last topics are the best. Just get rid of cheaters. They just destroy fun for everyone. I’m not going to watch one of my players with eagle eyes so he doesn’t cheat. That kills all fun. You just don’t Play Games with cheaters. Even worse dnd is a coop game with no winners. It just doesn’t make sense for me to cheat!
Yes I mean ultimately if there's a serious problem with the cheater the best solution at the end of the day if he's not willing to change his behavior is going to be to get rid of him. It's just a question of whether you want to go through a bunch of Hoops and try to curb the behavior whorigins get rid of the problem itself. And that of course is an individual dungeon master decision. But yeah I'm not going to put up with a bunch of crap continuously from a dude depending on of course what he's doing.
@@theDMLair I just have a "cult of warlocks" 30 Eldritch blasts from 600 feet away while they are traveling. The look when I say 120d10+150 is priceless.
Tillie - I feel that everyone is playing the game for slightly different reasons. Some players love the role playing aspect, others just want to kick butt and take names.
My first campaign I ever DMed, we were all pretty new. One of my players was abusing and ability. When I called her out on it, she said, "Oh, I had hoped you wouldn't have read it." The calling out was enough to stop her, but after they defeated a minor boss, I put an necklace on the boss I knew she would want. The necklace was cursed, gave her character nightmares and bound to her. She had to roll every night to see if she got a proper long rest. She subsequently was subject to exhaustion penalties until either embarking on a quest to remove the cursed item, or paying a high level NPC wizard a buttload of gold to remove the curse. Every role, she would give me a look. She knew what it was for. Lesson learned.
Knew someone who cheated, but in a very different way. Instead of doing things with dice rolls he did it with their character. Saying he had the rital caster feat even with a wisdom/intelligence score below 13. And having proficiency in all armor and weapons. Heck he even added his proficiency to the damage rolls. It was clever, but I eventually I caught him. I had to find some form of punishment, but nothing too harsh and nothing too minimal. Thats until I remembered he is an Oath of Devotion paladin and he broke the tenets of Honor(cheating is dishonourable) and honesty(lies). So I made his character believed he was drawing power from an evil deity for a long time, and he most seek absolution from a cleric, or another Paladin. It was a fun little quest that we went on, and when it was over I told him if he cheats again, he must abandon the paladin class. So it got across his head and he hasn't cheated since. :)
I have a certain app on my phone that allows me to save all spells from all Editions well maybe more 5th edition and if someone questions I can just pop up the spell and it gives the whole description it saves a lot of time
Yes I have the exact same thing on my phone. Makes looking up spells very very easy and fast. Most of my players have the same app and we use it all the time during the game. However it doesn't mean that the players always remember exactly to read the entire spell and don't possibly misrepresent what it says. I had to explain two or three times to one player that plane shift doesn't allow him to teleport to some other place in the same plane it actually goes to a different plane. LOL
@@theDMLair yes I know that feeling. I am still new and all but I try my best to exactly remember what I need hell I'm even going the extra mile and saying half of my spell since I'm a druid require me to have ingredients to actually cast my spell so I have to go next session to buy a chemistry bag going to cost me twenty-five gold but it will allow me to still cast my spells and I need to buy a staff because I haven't Druid Focus this is other stuff that most people do not take in consideration. If your spell pacifically says you need ingredients doesn't mean you can just ignore it
@@theDMLair hey I got a very important question for you in the school of druid there's a spell called awaken and it requires the jewel or stone agate for its summoning cost this spell allows you to pretty much charm and control any creature Beast or plant that has the intelligence score lower than 3 giving it a teligence score of 10 a language that you choose that you know and if it's a plant or tree it will grow limbs to be able to look humanoid. It doesn't say anywhere on the spell that you can only do this once so what a crazy idea oh let's say a kobold druid getting his hands on a whole bunch of these Stones then spending a week in the woods casting the spell on trees two pretty much make an army of awakened trees what they all have their own stats in the book then pretty much charge into battle?
IMO, go on, cheat. When as DM I determine that you are not being fairly challenged, I'll fix that shit. Narrative is the goal, not some RNGsus devotion.
I was guilty of fudging my dice rolls now and again because I didn't like the idea that the most dangerous parts of my character's life was left up to some really shitty dice roll. I never got caught, but after watching some friends sit down and play a game and saw the stakes, I understood the fun and honesty of losing, and the benefits it had for other players to shine. From then on, I took up the honor system and let sleeping fogwols lie. Thanks for the reminder, you get a sub
Sometimes the best scenarios happen when you epicly fail dice rolls. I almost died in game and irl because I and my party either crit failed or rolling under 5 consistently. Almost dying irl was from laughing and I wasn't the only one either. My lizardman druid had a bone stuck in her throat. I criticizing failed my Con save and started choaking. I thought I could budge it by forcing water down my throat. I cast create and destroy water. I forced down too much water and crit failed my Con save again. I really start choking. My party members try to save me by rolling medicine checks because guess who was the only healer? They all either crit failed, turn me upside down but dropped me on my head and give me bludgeoning damage, or under 5. I honestly forgot how I survived it because we were all laughing so much. I'm still chuckling about it. So yeah. Fail rolls rule.
Another rule I force my players to abide by. "If it's not written down you don't have it" This has cost more then one character his life. The fighter -> "But you handed out 6 healing potions from the treasure chest last game!" Me -> "But you didn't write it down so you left them behind." I also keep track of special loots. Like healing potions myself. . So I know when.a player uses one when they don't actually have any left. I don't do it for all loots. But certain key resources are a must.
The thing with people who apparently cheat with unfair dice is sometimes they have no idea they aren't balanced correctly or even the dice used to be balanced correctly but over play an edge got worn down
I GM'd for 15 years and I liked everything you pointed out and suggested in the video. My take on this will be more on the psychological side of cheaters in RPG and I hope it sparks some light in the head of some DMs, but specially players. I see a lot of DMs trusting their players because in their heads they weight the "sin" of cheating as being proportional to the labor the DM needs to go to prepare the sessions, get a date/time that is good for everyone to play (some times only the DM is worried about that) and, well, DMing, which is always more mind challenging than playing. Most players don't see that and/or don't take that into account when they cheat. So for them, they obviously know it's wrong, but its rather an "oopsie" than a betrayal of their friends trust and a disregard or mocking of the DM's efforts. So yeah, keep an eye on them, keep a fair and measured punishment ready (something that will hinder their characters, do not do something that'll affect your entire group) and, if that doesn't change their ways, I'd talk to the player one-on-one after their 2nd strike and expel them from the game after the third.
I once made a character where I legit rolled 16 and above for all of my scores. The DM allowed this because he knows that I don't cheat also I once played a character who had terrible rolls because I rolled badly.
You are missing the most important conversation to have when a player is cheating consistently, at least when the player is also a friend: Talk about their feeeeeelings! :: barf :: Most folk do not cheat in a vacuum, there is usually a reason. Perhaps they crave more power in the game and are anxious about surrendering control to a random element. Or maybe succeeding makes them feel good enough to make cheating attractive. Whatever the reason, if the player is a friend or someone you care about, it is worth sitting down with them privately and asking why they feel they are cheating. Explain that you understand their misapprehensions or their anxieties, and that you can work out *fair* ways to address or even fulfill those personal desires in the game, but that cheating itself is not the right way to do it because everyone at the table has something they want - a shared experience of uncertainty in storytelling - and that they want it to come to them in a fair way. You can have a mature and non-confrontational talk about it and hopefully resolve whatever personal issue is causing the problem. Punishment is whatever - helping friends (so long as said friends are not just assholes who do not actually care about anyone) to grow as people solves the problem in the long run.
@@theDMLair Thanks! :) Of course, sometimes people are just low down no-good dirty rotten cheaters ::spits in the spitoon:: buuut if everyone at the table is a friend away from the table then, well, kindness and understanding is probably the best first line of defense, since (at least in my opinion) a friendship is more important than a game.
At that point it becomes a problem of mental health instead of a game ... which should be handled by experts and the ones who know why it is the way it is...
I have a standing rule at my table, players DO NOT use monster manual or other GM tools during play. I have been known to ask the players not to bring personal books, or just the players guide, as well as radically change monster stats for that encounter. Just because a Cheater is cracking open the monster manual.
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Oh yes the lucky dice roll I literally have my own pair of Lucky Dice that the DM has at times said I can't use them but he has also said at times I am allowed to use them with certain scenarios and I do agree with him this pair of dice and I have rolls extremely well and when somebody else says hey you mind if we get rid of those dice for a little I agree with them and I grabbed another pair of dice I have no problem using other pairs of dice would I want to use the dice that allow me to get a lot of critz yes. But I also understand that it's no fun if I'm the one always getting everything I want and nobody else gets it so that's why these dice only come out when the DM pacifically says we need luck on our side. That's my cue to pull those out.
I played with this kid who would ALWAYS pick up the dice even if it was a very rare high roll since his dice sucked. It got so bad, the DM had to roll for him with said sucky dice in front of everyone. And when anyone called him out, get ready for 2 hours of spammed chat insulting the group and everyone personally so nobody liked him. He then moved onto moving the minis on the board one space at a time (always just his, very suspicious) and when someone finally saw him do it, which honestly didn't take too long, he up and called his ride crying in the restroom and left. He then rage quit through chat. He was just a worse version than the other kid in that group who did the exact same thing but only did the dice part and when he got called out for the final time, he sat up and left without saying anything other than cussing out the players one by one and did the same thing on group chat and left and we never heard from him again. Except when we did a month or 2 later for one session and joined back in the group chat. And I bet you can guess what he did. He did the literal same thing he did the last session he was there and after chat by cussing then leaving never to be seen again, at least I think so. I made a group with my friends and quit that one which I DM and am currently running
I run games using GURPS system instead of DnD and use dice shaker. No cheating possible (through mechanics and lack of access to dice), unless you count me (GM).
Honestly, I never really realized that looking up info on monsters is technically cheating. Whenver I do, it's mainly to see if there is any lore connected to the monsters my party encounters since I personally love to learn to lore of the world I'm playing in. With this in mind, I'll be sure to look up the monsters after the session (Unless that's still considered cheating too).
Our group was playing the curse of strahd and one of the players looked up the pdf of the campaign. I was wondering how she managed to find all the best loot. She was also one of the players that would loot every single body as soon as combat was over and hoard everything. After we left the amber temple she was carrying over a ton of weight in loot. Everyone left most of the items because they were too heavy so she added it all to her inventory.
Just found your channel, love the content. Thanks. :) Currently in a campaign with "The Bully" you described in scenario 6 at 11:36. I'm not the DM, just a player in the game, but yea... it really sucks. I've talked to the DM about it... but I think the biggest issue is this player, and the DM, are related(brother and sister)... so I'm not sure what is going to get done about it. (this player is also a rules lawyer, and a "I want to do all the things ever that could possibly be done ever in one turn") I don't want to leave the campaign, we are running the Descent into Avernus module, and it is super fun... I love my character(which I would probably just take him to a different group if I left), and I have friends in this group that I really enjoy playing with... not sure what to do.
To deal with "the bully", just say "my table, my rules", instead of arguing just make it a house rule each time they disagree with you. Changing the rules while the game is running feels bad, but the bully wants to change it for everyone else, and you declaring it a house rule just sets what everyone knows as a rule regardless of the interpretation. It might make the bully say it's unfair, but I think it's better to have them leave that to kick them out.
Well, if the person has been verified to be cheating, the best way to deal with them is to ask them not to return to the game. Once trust is broken, it most likely isn’t coming back, and even if the cheater promises to stop, they will still cheat.
I think there's some truth to that. I would probably still give the person one conversation and warning. But the reality is that if you catch him cheating once he's been doing it a whole lot and just not been getting caught.
@@youcantbeatk7006 In my experience that is patently untrue. A player who cheats, once caught, will start hiding their methods a little more, but will not stop cheating.
So, this video is a pretty solid guide, and here are my own thoughts as a long-time GM, for each scenario, in order of how much I have to say on them: -Scenario 6: Yeah pretty much. If someone has a conflicting interpretation of the rules, that's fine, but the GM's word is *final*, even if the rulebooks say otherwise. -Scenario 7: I like to have a small handful of abilities that specifically screw with each specific player in my group, so that if they look at the monster stats more than I'm willing to put up with, suddenly the monster has new powers. -Scenario 4: I have only dealt with this one a couple times, at least where it's clearly intentional. It's almost always an honest mistake, and I think because it's so blatantly lying, few players try to get away with it. -Scenario 5: Similarly, I don't see this happen intentionally very often, presumably because it's not something a practiced liar would feel confident they could get away with. It helps that my parties' money and similar resources are treated as communal, so one player can't edit totals without the others seeing. -Scenario 3: I'm actually gonna disagree with this entire thing. If a player's dice are so "lucky" as to basically be loaded dice (pretty much always a result of deliberate tampering), then yeah, bar them from use, but if a given die just happens to throw high numbers disproportionately often (usually the result of imperfections in the manufacturing process or improper storage before purchase in high-temperature climates, like the American southwest), I tend to allow it, because it adds that quasi-mystical edge to the gaming, the mystique of "blessed dice", which is often more entertaining for the players than ensuring perfectly balance dice are used at all times, especially when the "blessed dice" go bad at a critical moment. Generally, dice that are naturally imbalanced don't skew so heavily that it should upset the overall balance of a campaign, and if you *do* start to see that sort of effect, it's time to consider that something fishy is going on. -Scenario 1: While I'm also a proponent of point buys, if doing rolls for character creation, while it's important to ensure honesty, you should at the same time have some sort of safeguard in place to make sure the player isn't left with a character that isn't fun for them. For example, if their rolled stats are lower than what they could get from a point buy (or any other arbitrarily chosen value based on how much power variance you think your players will enjoy), allow them a reroll, or just let them increase their stats until they hit your chosen minimum. That said, I rarely see anyone over the age of twenty attempt the "all 16+" cheated stat array. Adults learn how to make the stat array they want while keeping it believable (and thus balanced), which is basically impossible to reliably spot, so if you definitely want to avoid any kind of cheating, observe those rolls. -Scenario 2: This is by far the most complicated situation, because while the action isn't acceptable, you also have to consider *why* the player is trying to fudge rolls, or else you'll just have an honest player who's *honestly* not having fun. Now, some players just do it to "win" at RPGs (these are the most likely to get caught, as their cheating is constant and consistent), in which case they're really not understanding how the whole hobby works and you need to just tell them to stop it or leave. However, more often, there are two major reasons I've seen players fudge rolls. The first are players who fudge rolls here and there in combat, not even important rolls, just enough so they can hit enemies and generally get the fight over with, or less often skill checks to just keep the story moving. I'll admit I've done this myself in the past (and The Adventure Zone's Travis McElroy has openly admitted to doing it). These players find combat *boring* or think the adventure's moving too slowly and while you should still talk to them about their behavior, maybe also consider putting less emphasis on combat in your campaign or speeding things up (and remind them that they should bring their concerns to you directly rather than skulking around). The other type are players who, whenever they're doing something that's important to their character concept, they always roll more suspiciously. These players are very attached to an image of their character as being good at their specialty. Usually their cheating is prefaced by several failures at using their key skills/abilities, especially if other people at the table point out how "bad" their character is at their job. In this instance, it may be that their character just isn't working in practice the way they thought it would in theory, or it could be that their dice are imbalanced *against* them and they don't have better dice to switch to. See about giving them new dice to use that may be more favorable, let them respec their character to better express their desired specialty (assuming they made some sort of mistake in their build), or even secretly lower the difficulty of this player's key rolls now and then. Also, of course, tell them to quit cheatin'.
I haven't played a session of DnD before and I've only just started listening and learning about it more recently. Why is looking up a monster during combat cheating? This is the only one that really stood out to me. Can anyone explain?
Knew a guy a while back that it seemed like he was cheating. Almost always got high rolls, and it didn't matter who's game or what system we were playing. So we DM's started having him use other dice in our games. At one point even having other people roll for him. Didn't matter, every roll involving his character was obscene. Great guy though and would totally welcome him to future campaigns.
Sometimes people are just lucky and there's no cheating involved. LOL
Some people just have the Dice Gods enslaved to their will.
That man must've had a full Harem of Dice Gods looking after him.
he must have had the blessing of RNGesus
Yep. We also have this guy at our table :D Aaaand - he probably stoly my luck with dice also :D
The first character that I created with my DM I rolled 5 18s and 1 17. I loved my Paladin Kirin for such a long time. But eventually we had to retire him because it was unfair to the rest of our campaign.
"Are you accusing me of using unfair dice?" "No, I'm accusing your dice of being unfair."
"Well then, go get the dice's lawyer!"
😂
Not on purpose of course. The manufacturer sometimes screws up.
I once threw a dice, and it landed ON A CORNER. *come on, what are the odds of that even happening?*
When I said blame the dice I didn’t mean ascribe agency to the polyhedron
Title: "How to deal with a cheater in D&D"
Icon: An image of a guillotine
Do I... even need to watch the video? XD
I mean maybe? I give some practical advice for dealing with a cheater but in all honesty a guillotine is probably overboard? Maybe? I should probably have a talk with my editor regarding image selection for thumbnails right?
@@theDMLair well..... id rather keep my head than cheat. So i assume cheaters would too lol
@@theDMLair it's borderline, but still justified I'd say.
Well hello again, stranger. I haven't seen this much likes since the great Lava Splish Splash of 2013
I mean cheating in a game is unacceptable
I had a new player recently rolling for stats. I have dice that are always and only used for the stat rolling.
So I explain to her how it works and she rolls her first roll.
Four sixes
"Great beginner's luck!" I say
She ended up with 18, 17, 18, 16, 18, 17
That's just unnatural! She continues to roll perfectly and she just borrows whatever dice from the nearest player every session since she doesn't have her own. Other players now consider it good luck to have her fondle random dices for them 😂
She thinks we are weird about it.
She needs to play the lottery. Lol
Holy fucking shit
Nina Nacazanti tell her to go to vegas
Nina Nacazanti ha! She still can’t beat me and the four times, I rolled all 3’s. Every time I’ve tried to play barbarian.
fondle the dice XD
The DM Lair:*teaches how to deal with cheaters*
Me:*still summons Tarrasque to deal with cheater*
Edit: I think some people are thinking this is real, no I do not use in game solutions to solve out of game problems, I made this because it was one of our group jokes in reference to dingo doodles.
LOL. I mean that is one way to deal with cheaters I suppose...
You shouldn't use ingame punishments for player problems, that only makes you look like an unfair DM who is out for blood.
Player problems are solved by talking to players.
@@deamon6681 Now if they still cheat after you talk to them about it, I think that killing their character should be an option preferably, however try to avoid something that could lead to a TPK. It is always simpler to have sinkhole spontaneous form under the cheater than summoning a monster that could kill the entire party if they aren't smart enough to not engage. Now if the entire party is cheating, go ahead with Tarrasque, falling rocks, or what ever else you prefer.
@@emberfist8347 if they cheat, just properly counter it with an slight change of schedule, just small enough that nobody will notice, but big enough to rebalance the game's story. for example, if there would be treasure, you could have part of it being stolen by something before you get to the treasure. Or ask them nicely whether they are cheating or not.
Jürgen Hans roll luck check
You got a 5.
The goddess of chaos smites you.
An advantage of having a physical copy of the DMG as opposed to the PDF is that you can slam it down on the table to remind the bully player who's in charge.
Lol. Great point! 😂
Nah, slam it down on his MINIATURE! That won't just remind the player, it'll PROVE it to them! lol
A disadvantage of having a physical copy of the DMG is that you have to buy it.
@@rodrikforrester6989 That's up to the individual. I personally dislike PDF's while playing. However, yes, the books are pricey. Even as a player, I feel (personally) scrolling through a PDF slows down play, while a physical book is quicker to flick though. I'm going to be starting my first ever DM sesion soon, so you bet your biscuits I've been flicking through the core manuels :)
Another advantage
U can beat them with it
(If it’s the hard copy)
"I Giorno Giovanna have rolled 3 natural 20s."
"This taste is the taste of someone who is lying Giorno Giovanna."
R/unexpectedjojo
"A nat 20 pierce on me? You will never reach that truth. Gold Experience Requiem... I set your rolls back to 1."
"You're fudging rolls, of course! Fudging rolls is VERY bad! How much is DIO paying you to fudge rolls?!"
Flashbacks to Josuke and the alien dice
@@nathanrex8037 that's what I though too
“Almost all of your rolls today have been above a 20 I smell a cheater”
*sweats in pathfinder*
Facts. I got a +9 to hit with my gunslinger, which goes up to +10 if they're within 30 feet.
@@negative6442 I'm playing a spellslinger wizard-smyth now. I have a +22 to craft ANITHING I ACTUALLY CAN CRAFT. I know in the pathfinder its usual thing, but I played only D&D before, so I was surprised.
*rolls Stealth*
DM: What did you get?
Pathfinder Rogue: Yes.
Negative yeah in was play a pathfinder campaign and I rolled a 2 on the dice and the DM went “I guess that won’t hit” until I said “that’s a 45” and he looked like he was about to have a heart attack
*sweats as a level 12 human Envoy in Starfinder, where none of my class skills are below 10, 8% of all skills are below 10, 75% of all skills are 17+, and 28% are at or above 20 ranks*
The DM groans when I ask him to make sure my math is right, but it’s good-natured. I have several players cross-checking my work when DM is busy because Roll20 refuses to work for me.
I tend to have the opposite problem when it comes to adjusting my sheets.
"You pocket a purse of 50 gold coins"
"Wow, awesome!"
*pause*
"Uh... are you gonna write that down?"
"Huh? Oh yeah, whoops."
I have done that in shadowrun, was so excited to survive the run, I forgot to jot down the 10.000 nuyen, and when the bills came I told the GM i had to make some loans, but he said when did you spend the cash you got from the last run... HeHe
My players sometimes don't write things down either... Sometimes i prompt them...sometimes I assume that means they didn't want it. 5e gives out so much gold anyway... Lol
I tell my players regularly that if I give them something and they don't write it down, then they forgot to take it with them and left it behind.
@@somacruz0 I had a GM like that. I became very unpopular with my fellow players at that table 🤣
@@somacruz0 That is _literally a rule_ in Mutant Year Zero. Works great.
Once my dm thought I fudged my ability scores, so he had me reroll.... it was overall better than my previous set with my lowest score being a 14 xD
Win win lol
Fair is fair, lol
This is why, as a DM, I require all ability score rolls be visible in the first place, and I use a customized rolling method, similar to the dice pool method. Roll 24 d6 and assign them into lots of 4d6. Two of these must be the lowest possible, and one must be the highest possible, with the rolls made. The rest are as close to the average of the remaining dice as possible. Then drop the lowest die from each lot and assign them. Usually I have the players roll and assign their dice, but I create the lots, so they don't have to do all the math. I used to combine everyone's dice and have them bid on lots with their starting gold (which was maxed out for their chosen class) players didn't like that part.
@@INCIESSE uuyyyuyuyuuyuuouuiuiio
@@wilcojar "I have my players roll 4d5+1 drop the lowest, then, after all the scores are made, I put them on separate pieces of paper and put those into a hat then have the players arm wrestle, the ones that win their matches get to pick from the hat, then the players play chess with the winner getting another pick, once a player gets all their scores they can roll a d20 and if they get a 20 they get a free feat but if they roll a 1 they have to exchange their scores with a player that has a lower average score (the player they exchange with doesn't need to have their full set of scores to be exchanged with so sometimes the average increases by the time that player gets their scores, regardless the exchange goes through). Then once everyone has their sheets done I have everyone do a skill check with every skill, and the player who won the most skill checks gets a +1 to all stats."
I'm just poking fun here, I don't mean any I'll will by it, you can use whatever method works for you, I just find it funny how in depth and complex everyone's roll-for-stats can get.
I was running Dragon Heist for a party a while back and found out one of the players had bought the module and started reading through it away from the group.
Joke was on him, I had an unfortunate knack for screwing up when copying the maps over to game paper so I'd usually wind up putting in extra rooms or having a door in the wrong spot. There were several times he insisted on taking one direction over the other and wound up getting the party lost, until (in character) nobody wanted to follow his notoriously bad directions anymore.
I don't play with this guy anymore. Speedrunning is for skyrim, not DnD.
Amazing comment! My mother had a secondary character- a fighter- who couldn’t hit anything until a party member went down. They then got bat 20s every swing - no matter the dice used. Dm switched out the dice for his own and it didn’t change a thing!
something something absolute momma bear instinct, even bends luck to protecc
@@carbonbeaker409 lol. That's okay, my 1st character was perfectly rolled and could cross class into anything if it was in 5e. It was in 3.5 and he died after literally every role that wasn't selling alcohol was failed.
yep. when I create campaigns I have all players sign a 'constitution'. it's usually house and campaign rules. one rule I had was not allowing any player to read ANY of the source material. then a few YEARS into the campaign one player let something slip during the game. I confronted him and he said he went out and bought the source material I was running. I banned him. the other players whined, and complained EVERY SESSION after that so I walked away from the entire campaign. I rarely run games anymore. the players have made GMing more of a chore than fun anymore.
Charlotte Roy sage advice at the end
"Talk to your players like a normal person." The ultimate dm technique a friend taught me a while back.
Kinda off topic, my middle school history teacher joking threatened to execute cheating students with a quillotine.
Totally agree talking to your players is the very first step that a dungeon master should take.
@@theDMLair Guillotine is a close second tho.
Quillotine! You just mechanically jab a fucking quill through their windpipe, extract it and watch them drown in their own blood! Not nearly as painles, humane or foolproof but it works.
History teacher!? Well that must have been a well crafted story with irl refferences * -*)
My favorite form when I rolled a 3e character was all 18's, every roll was max. So I picked paladin, got my full plate as part of my backstory, and picked up a masterwork weapon. This character was ready to stomp everything as a 1st level character with a starting ac of 24, and average damage of 8. First combat was with a rat, not a dire rat, not a large rat, just a normal rat. I couldn't hit worth any luck, I think I rolled 4 1's that one combat. He died to a rat, in a barn, and then got looted by the group.
RNGesus giveth, as he doth taketh away.
I had a DM who thought I was cheating, he asked for my dice since I was rolling high all night, then he started using my dice and could not roll above 10 at all.
Soulbound Dice of High-Rolling
@@Cheerybelle the running joke is that lady luck is my gf
loyal dice
Ah my dm banned my dice after rolling 3 nat 20s in a row. And then I couldn't roll anything above a ten with the online dice bot
I’ve got one, and been this one myself: The Accidental Cheater. This is the poor sap who, for whatever reason, learned something incorrect about the game, and was never corrected. It LOOKS like their cheating, but they’re just ignorant of something.
For me, it’s usually just forgetting a part of the description, but it’s so common for me that my friend group just KNOWS it’s going to happen and always asks “are you sure?” after I say what I want to do that’s technically incorrect.
Player:I roll a 18 for perception!
DM:Great you don't need glasses anymore.
But.. but god has spoken :0 kkkkkkkkk
So punish the player for getting a high roll, for no reason?
shouldn't it be if they roll 2 20s they get 20/20 vision?
As a rogue with +8 in perception I once rolled a 20.
My character had so much perception that he saw through dimentions.
Sadly it was useless, as there was nothing of importance to see lol
@@THEPELADOMASTER *I AM 4 PARALLEL UNIVERSES AHEAD OF YOU*
F in the chat for the Snickers bar, damn Susie.
We will get our revenge
F
F, God damnit Susie.
@@goldilock4199 And our revenge will taste like Snickers Bar.
F
U
S
U
Z
I
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I was in a game with an inexperienced DM and one of our fellow players looked up a monster, called out HP as we hit our first real Horror monster in curse of strahd and it totally killed the mood. I felt bad for our DM, so I said something. Then the rest of the party said something. The cheater laughed and said that's how he plays. After that I think we gave our DM enough confidence to move forward with his decision. The cheater wasn't at the next session or any after that.
I don't know if that's cheating exactly. It's definitely rude.
I definitely think it's cheating. So much so that I made a skill called Knowledge Bestiary (I run PF1e) which you can use to get monster stats, one at a time, to sort of give a release valve for those who used to play jrrpgs with strategy guides. I understand the want to know what your facing. It should just be part of the game. Surely there are books about monsters, rumors about them, and ways to gauge strengths and weaknesses in a world full of monsters. I think this also helps with meta gaming
@@cameronf5893 Not really.
Players looking up stats for monsters at the table is rude. It's even ruder if they're breaking others immersion by blurting out their findings. But it's not _cheating,_ since no advantage is gained.
If a player just _remembers_ information about a monster, it adds nothing to the game to try to force them to behave as if they didn't. Let them feel clever for their knowledge of the game.
Looking up the stats of a monster that your fighting is absolutely 100% cheating. It absolutely games you an advantage. You know how many hit points it has you know how much damage it needs to take before it goes down. That can inform some of your decisions at the game table. If you know it's resistances or vulnerabilities if you know that it's spell resistant if you know that it is has some special attacks. All of these things give you an advantage at the game table 100% there is no question about it. Looking up the monsters stats is cheating and the highest form of cheating. Calling it out to everyone else at the table is even worse and ruins the game for everyone else who doesn't want to cheat and who just wants to have a fun game. That's like spoiling a movie for people. That's like going off and telling someone who hasn't watched Game of Thrones the latest latest season everything that's happened. That person is ruining the game for others and that's despicable.
You do NOT look up the monsters as a player. If you wanna ask about its ac or possible abilities or other such ask the dm. I can tell you "wearing platemail" "nude" "its radiating fire", any info I wish to keep moe hidden I'll ask for history or arcana to see if you get to know more about it.
6:20 Had A DM do this on me once. I had a pair of 'lucky dice' that I used when I had a really big roll to make. Not every roll, just rolls that mattered. Death-saving throws, big last hit on enemies before I died, and dialogue options when I REALLY needed something to work. (Like convincing the king to pretty please not send us all to the gallows because we were betrayed by an npc who threw us under the bus for his actions.) Not every time did they work, but 90% of the time i felt when I rolled them, the outcome was favorable. My DM upon session 10 of course got suspicious. So he asked to switch dice with me for that session. The dice he gave me gave me average rolls. But my dice? He couldn't get above a 10 with them. Maybe 15% of the rolls he did with those dice gave him 1's. Next session, he gave them back to me, and look at that, my dice are giving me high rolls again! He watched me like a hawk, and again, while sometimes my lucky dice did fail me, most of the times they came in when they counted. The DM was positive I was cheating in some way, like there was some trick to the dice. Can't blame him though, even I was suspicious of myself sometimes.
A one shot group I was in had a rule that if you looked at monster stat blocks you took half your hp worth of wonder damage, aka you take damage and wonder where it came from
Well i only look up statblocks when playing with a very new DM, with the intent of helping them if they overlook things.
@@larsvanbreemen4102 my question would be if 1) the dm knows you are doing this 2) has asked you to. If no to either, maybe you aren't actually being helpful
I have a ringer player. Someone who looks stuff up, as I'm DMing, he helps me keep myself in check mostly, as well as the other players. Obviously, when it's him in question, I have to look myself, but generally he keeps to the rules as well as he can.
In my group we have the interesting case of all being DMs, although some are far more experienced than others...so we all pretty much check when something is in question and use it as a moment to teach eachother obscure rules
I'm pretty much that guy in my games. I play A LOT of DnD and so, I remember most of the rules by heart. When I'm not sure, I usually say "I think it's that, but look it up, I'm not certain". I'm often checking the players around my table to make sure they don't forget to roll their concentration checks, their great weapon fighting style, or stuff like that.
My trouble is with DMs that stick to standard monsters but forget a little "limitation" of their powers or spells. Those are the times I'll likely look up any offending powers or spells and ask the DM to reconsider his interpretation. Obviously, it's all up to the DM as it's his world, but unknowingly changing limitations can really drag a party's morale down.
I've had that problem before but I love to read and learn new things so we usually figure it out after the first problem or two and just roll from there. System works out because we all make mistakes like that and it evens out.
It hadn't actually occurred to me that requiring players to properly declare actions could catch a form of dice cheating. I guess I'll add that to encouraging roleplay, assisting adjudication and discouraging "pulling a rabbit out of a hat".
One thing I'd add to assist with complex spell/feature descriptions is to have the _player using it_ have the description on hand. Basically, if a players using a spell or feature, it's their responsibility to have the _full and unedited_ text available if a question arises.
And yeah. Zero tolerance for bullies.
For sure the players should have the text of a spelled they're trying to cast further that's from the player handbook or from a nap on their phone. I mean if they don't have the rules descriptions for abilities or spells their trying to use they can't very well use them can they? LOL
My players have created their character sheets with an online program that automatically sums up the character's abilities and features in a shorthand form on the sheet, including spells. One session in and I'm already finding inconsistencies with the shorthand simply leaving essential things out, so I guess I will have to try giving the characters full sheets of what they can do, even if it means their level 5 characters are 10 pages long without backstory.
@@wonderfurret8223 Oh, God ... "shorthand".
If a rules question comes up, it's almost always going to require the full text to answer it. I prefer (though obviously it's not ideal) players to just look up the actual spell description in the PHB than have to waste _more_ time finding out the shorthand doesn't explain something and have to look it up anyway.
There are shortcuts though. One of my players, for example, has effectively created a spellbook with all the spells her Knowledge Cleric is ever going to have access to. When she decides to cast a particular spell, if it's not something she uses regularly, she always has that book open at the actual spell.
And that's a _Cleric._ For classes that can't switch out spells at long rests (Warlocks, Sorcerers, Rangers etc.), the bookkeeping is _way_ less than ten pages. If a player just starts keeping track of spells and features at 1st level, they'll always be on top of it.
What I wound up doing was manually copying the entire spell list into a text file so every time somebody says 'wait how does this spell work' I can spin my chair and CTRL+F it immediately.
It took forever and I'm pretty sure having the player's handbook with a bookmark at each letter would have worked just as well. Actually, I'm going to just do that over the next few days and stop having to worry about getting the laptop set up every week.
@@Charoy612
Yeah. Hardcopy is better and if you're going to be looking through the _entire_ spell list, well that's in the PHB.
But for a _player_ whose character will never have more than 15 spells ...
I was rolling stats for a new character yesterday and I ended up rolling really well, so I purposefully brought my strength and constitution rolls back a few points because I didn’t want my friends to think I was cheating.
I am very, very paranoid, if you couldn’t tell.
Interesting. If the DM allowed me to roll stats on the honor system, I think I would REQUEST a witness.
I get you.............. For me I rolled my 20 100 times 87 times the number was below ten. For my many failed objectives my group decided to make lower numbers better.... Sence that I've been doing rather well....
And no the dice weren't the issue I tried 6 sets........
@@theDMLair just a question, maybe somebody can answer quickly or tell me a page to look it up, but what is this Honor System? It sounds kinda interesting.....
Honor system: page 715
I can give advice too-
don't cheat in a concealed carry state
Very wise advice! 😁
an armed society is a polite society
i'll never forget the "snicker incident" back at MY third grade... i warned them that i ain't me when i'm hungry
I hope you made them pay.
the DM Lair i made them pay 5 bucks for my snickers
"Don't make me hungry. You wouldn't like me when I'm hungry."
Some players are lazy when it comes to knowing the limitations of their abilities. One of my players in my first group was horrible for this. As a first time DM with a large group, I was more focused on moving combat at an adequate pace so people were kept engaged (and I think I succeeded there). But numerous times I would still have to correct him on mistakes on what his spells do and what requirements he had to fulfill. He had printed off a near random character from some program that he did a brilliant job of roleplaying, but made lots of choices that made him a stressful player to have at our table. On to the mistakes (off the top of my head):
*enemy spell-caster casting something nasty*
Player:"Dispel Magic, I end the spell!"
Me: "That's not how you use that, you need to use Counterspell because it's a reaction."
Player: "Wha?"
*Next Week*
*enemy spellcaster casts something nasty*
Player:"Spellbreaker! I break the spell!"
Me: "That's not at all how that ability works. I think you should actually have the book so you can check the full text for your abilities." (He was running an Arcana Cleric but didn't own SCAG)
By the end of the campaign he was casting things that required bonus actions to control, or had casting times of 1 minute or longer and trying to sneak past those limitations in combat. His turns were already so long that I gave up double checking his bullshit. I could keep going with these examples, but it's probably best for my own health to stop going through it. I still haven't forgiven him.
Yeah I mean at some point the player is kind of required to learn how to play as character right? I mean at least that's kind of My Philosophy for the most part. I could see being super super frustrated with that for sure.
SquatBenchDeadlift oh god I remember those kinds of players. One time I DM’d there was this guy who was dead set that his character with 13 to DEX could dodge an attack on which I got a natural 17+4 (they were fighting goblins) and blamed it on me how I’m unfair to him for not giving him an ability to dodge. A level 1 character. With 13 Dex. Wanted to dodge. He even didn’t want it as a reaction.
An actual game session when rolling stats:
Me: (shock) "Are these dice weighted?"
DM: "Why?"
Me: "I just got an 18, 16, 15, 14, 12, and 10."
DM: "Here, use mine and I will watch you roll."
Me: (rolls like normal, just toss em on the table and let em roll away to the center) "So an 18, 17, 16, 15, 13, and 9..."
DM: "WHAT?!? Here, I will roll for you." (He gets 17, 17, 16, 15, 14, 11)
Me: "Like seriously, what is up with your dice?"
DM: "Screw it, I know I am not cheating and the base stats board is asinine to make a player use so just keep that last set of rolls. If its too bad we can balance it out later."
(Needless to say there was balancing done post game session, it was agreed between me and DM I kept one 17 but lowered every other roll by -2 giving a 15, 14, 13, 12, and he let me keep the last one as a 10)
See I feel those are pretty normal stats when you're using for D6 drop the lowest. That's system tends toward Fairley High stats in my experience. No cheating needed it just happens.
@@theDMLair It was just odd as the other 4 people got unlucky and their highest was 16, out of the 4 of em I mean. But thanks for telling me as every time I roll it just feels weird to see high numbers at level 1. Although that might be because of my favorite class.
Yeah, I wouldn't make you Nerf yourself for just getting lucky on rolls, it's the whole point of rolling stats, being innately random. I also agree with the drop lowest thing, it tends to be pretty high, think the average was 14.
@@WerewolfMinecraft Yeah, we know that now. But at that time we didn't. It was a few years back and we all roughly had 2 games under our belt, so we were new. It was 2nd year of high school, when I was a senior I decided to run the game that year as my senior project. Went pretty good. Unfortunately we need campaigns that last all year, and we hosted once a week so it was roughly 52 1 hour sessions. So every DM that was doing it for a senior project had to have a really long game. It actually came down to the wire and had to nerf the final boss so we could finish on time. Turns out we still had 30 minutes and the clocks were wrong, so I had em fight a post game boss I had planned cuz why not? They ran out of time and the party's mage collapsed the cave on top of them, killed everyone in the party but the bosses who escaped, to "End the game with closure.". We all laughed, and I told everyone their fates after death. Everyone except 1 person who sold their soul to Asmodeus (WILLINGLY!) during the campaign was happy.
If you're going to use a dice rolling system to generate stats, you have to be willing to live by the results -- good or bad. If you want balance between players, use a point-buy system. It's that simple.
Just thought of other ways someone could cheat... Reading an adventure or the DM's notes! Either of those would be a one time offense at my table. Imagine all the things you would possibly have to change to keep them on their toes!
I was running a side game at my home from a group I found on meetup. My Friday games are very intense, and stressful, so I wanted a chill easy game on Saturday. Found 3 people really quick. We started playing tomb of annihilation things went well at first then I noticed some strange things at certain story beats. Like some how making a very well thought out roleplay or solution to a puzzle. I am talking like instantly solving things. I decided to throw a curveball, I made valindra showmantle, good not what she truly is. Roleplayed her like a valley girl. Offending player was visibly frustrated. Next session she plane shifts them to antler place. Which was white plume mountain. As we started that adventure, and players started clearing dungeon, for fun I moved some items into different places. We took a break and the player said why didn’t we find blackrazor with a 22 investigation. I was like how do you know where the sword was, he said I read the adventure this week before the game. I said thank you for telling me, I knew you were doing this, it is cheating of the highest level. Please get your stuff and leave now.
I have caught players reading the adventure before when I ran a mod. It makes it less fun for other players when you solve puzzles to fast from cheating. He was not invited back.
Yes reading module that you're dungeon master is running for you is so messed up. That is of course the downside of using modules unfortunately.
Oh I had a player doing that once. So anoying
My players cant do that bc I have it all on a google doc or a notepad app or something online that only I can access and dont forget anything, but if I do, it is a couple minutes and then I have it, but I only do that for hige details I have forgotten which I barely ever do. If anybody did, their character would be convicted of a crime they committed while sleepwalking and be executed then the player would be kicked from the table
Homebrewing each monster individually is indeed very complicated. Although adding simple changes to a monster can keep these cheaters, whom lookup the monster statistics or always "have high rolls", in check. At least until the end of the session. I enjoy using lower monsters with a little extra beef like skeletons for example. They're low CR and relatively easy. However, by giving them plate armor or a shield to bump AC and a different weapon for flavor and or reach. It can really change the "same old encounter" and give those cheaters a challenge until a backbone is grown and the conversation is had. These small changes are quick and easy to do on the fly. Thank you for the video!
One of the things I would actually do is to give rangers a sort of "species lore" ability where they could look up abilities of non-undead creatures to make them slightly less useless.
Had a guy who cheated Meta-style, using roll20 and I mentioned you see a *blank* hanging from the wall. He actually said "How do you spell that?" and we could all hear pages flipping over discord. Well said creature's stat blocks got swapped out for something else.
Haha awesome!
I'll admit I've had that habit early on in my career with searching up a monsters stats. But now a days I just enjoy the flow of combat or if I have a character with decent IN have a roll for it.
We had a cheater in my group that I have nicknamed "Three-Hands Hans" because for some reason his characters always wound up trying to benefit from huge ac by stacking dual-wielding weapons with a shield. Another time he did that, he tried to use a two-handed sword with a shield. Sometimes people just don't understand the limits of human biology.
I would imagine if his str was high enough he could pull that off but at a reduced damage or at a disadvantage to hit
You too huh?
@@EngelWulf In my games, I might rule a high STR character would need a mythril sword and/or perhaps a homebrew feat to pull it off. Maybe even set the prereq. for the feat to be those races with the 'powerful build' trait. But in general it really doesn't make much sense.
What race was he?
@@mrmidnightturbo4245 Usually some variety of elf or half-elf.
Before I became a DM myself I loved my old DM's punishment. If people abuse inventory a cutpurse always seems to appear. Or if a Wizard abuses spell a mysterious rock always seems to knock it out of their memory. I played with my old crew for over 10 years before leading a party of my own when I moved. But there's always an adjustment period when forming cliques. This is a game but it means that everyone should enjoy it and a great DM must always side on what's fair to all and 1 bad apple can ruin an entire campaign
I had a player who would do this “premature roll” in combat. A few seconds before his turn he would roll the d20. If it came out high he would stick with it, otherwise he would pick up the dice and wait while it was clearly his turn. I’ve also had people do the dice on the floor or dice not level selective reroll, where they try to use the roll if it’s a good one. And I had one guy who did the drop the dice rather than roll it. That’s a lot of cheating for a relatively small group. I quickly established some rules, namely that people could not roll until I said so, and any dice not landing flat in the tray had to be rerolled. Sounds obvious now.
I also found that I, the dm, had a dice that favored 18 and 16. At first I refused to believe it because it didn’t seem possible that a d20 could do that, but after some spectacular combat fails for the party we realized I had a lucky dice. I let the players use it for a while and then I got a new d20. Back when this happened though we were playing a system - mostly home brewed - where skill checks required low rolls, so a biased dice did not convey absolute advantage in all things. One problem with the more modern consistency of d&d is that a biased dice causes more issues.
A way around this is a dice tower. Every player must drop their dice they're rolling into it. I also do it on occasion as the DM for dramatic moments and if it's a huge fail infront of players well I just roll with it. If they see the DM takes whatever comes out of the tower, they will too
Rolled high for two ability scores and got called a cheater. Feelsbadman.
Once I rolled an 18, followed by a 16, followed by a 17. I was about halfway through rolling stats when someone walked in and assumed I was cheating. I redid those stats... got the same numbers... then proceeded to not get another score above 5... my luck both loves and hates me
Yeah been there. Also have rolled 6x18s before, with the DM watching, using 3d6 not 4d6 discard lowest, switched out the dice and did it again. But have never done it ever again. I have come close, though. I seem to roll a lot of 14s and 15s and then ask the DM if I can replace one with a 16 or 17, and drop two or three of them to 6+1d3 or something, so I have one great Stat and some flavor. A lot of times I'm seeing the same issue in our groups and a few us tend to be DMs more often than not, so its a wonder we haven't just come up with our own array.
I've only ever had one group to run DnD with, being a player personally, my cousin was the DM, his brother played as well and a few of their friends.
There was this one guy that, and I don't mean to sound rude here, but he was dyslexic, which is cool whatever, but he was aggressive about being 100% correct in everything he said, he would argue so much that his turns would stretch out forever and I'm talking like we would do 1 combat encounter in an entire session, sure we were all new but the rest of us tried quite hard to make it enjoyable and decently paced.
Yet he would consistently argue and it basically ruined every single persons experience of DnD at that table and people would stop turning up because he was there.
But here's the thing, he would think he was correct, but would be absolutely off because he never even tried to read what things did, he glanced at them and that was it, the whole group basically broke down when my cousin, the one DMing, lost it and said something along the lines of "Stop arguing about what the rules say when you can't even f***ing read."
My cousin is genuinely one of the nicest people I've ever met and loved DMing but that one dude ruined like 6 people's experiences with DnD.
I'm finally trying to get back into it (recently bought a little solo campaign from dmsguild which I really loved, even though this Hippogriff that fought with me in the story basically 3 shot the BBEG because I kept rolling Nat 20's on his attacks, seriously glory hog Hippogriff ahahaha)
Moral of the story, even if they're not cheating and they are just toxic, get rid of them before other people don't want to be there because of that person.
Sorry for the wall of text, btw I am loving your videos! Thanks for helping to get me back into DnD, slowly but surely!
Wow, yeah your cousin sounds real nice lol. Feel like there were numerous other ways to handle that situation. Seems too harsh. Hope the guy handled it fine.
Yeah, that sucks when people get a negative impression about the game because of one person. I'm happy though that you're getting back in the Dungeon & Dragons! Glad you're enjoying the videos to! Always happy to help. 😁
I can say for you guys that we have all remained friends past this point which is one thing I am glad for, that guy seems to have found a group to play with that he fits in well with and the rest have done similar since moving away.
Yeah love the videos and gonna be looking for a local group to play with as soon as things stabilise a bit more :)
Zack Simmons glad to know it’s all still good. Hope ya many many more enjoyable games.
Another form of dice cheating similar to the obscuring with boxes are dice that are hard to read because of the design.
Yes totally. Forgot about that one. My friend Joe has dice I think they're from Call of Cthulhu or something like that and they're like impossible to read. He will have his face right up to them and he still can't read them sometimes. It's really really bad
@@theDMLair
Lol I have those dice, they can be a bit tricky to read, mostly the 6 and 9 though
@@theDMLair One of our players has dice that are doubly bad on that account. Stone dice that are sized smaller than average with no paint in the number. Its impossible to read across a table. This is coincedentally the same player who created a multiclass monster of a pc none of us thought was legal...but were all too confused about how it worked to figure if he was cheating or not.
To be fair, I've a set of grey steel/metal dice and they can be hard to read. I think how you handle that fact determines if it's cheating. For example, I always roll them on the table where it's clear to see for everyone (or at least most). I leave 'em laying there up until my turn is over/one of the next people has their turn. Gives all interested parties more then enough time to figure it out....
I had dice like that once. Really cool dragon-themed dice I bought.
After a couple of sessions, my DM ruled that I couldn't use them anymore.
I was disappointed obviously, but I couldn't complain and respected his wishes.
I personally don't mind if my players cheat a little. My players all fear me enough to know to keep it minimal if at all. We all know that success is not the point of the game, just a perk. I own my table, and I set the standard. If a player acts up, no mercy, no inspiration, no perks. Rule #1: Don't piss off an angry nerd with admin privileges.
*Pisses off the nerd with admin privileges*
I never take anything at the table personally. They will cheat. It will not matter. You roll a nat 20 to dodge the poison spear that you know is poisoned because you are metagaming? Remember the nature of a reflex save is you act without thinking.... you dodge the spear, by leaping off the cliff.
My NPC (edit: CAN) cheat too. :D
if players cheat so can dms
I’ll admit I’ve cheated a couple times while playing, but it was only when my character was having an overwhelmingly bad time in a fight (getting pincushioned by everyone and their mother with ranged attacks for example)
I play D&D online, you can't roll privately or have weighted dice. The most privately they can roll is a DM roll, where only the DM and the player who's rolling can see. And all rolls are archived and can be viewed later, so I can check what a player rolled on stats if I'm suspicious. Though I do try to observe rolling stats anyway
Talking about forgetting limitations reminded me of a Star Wars d20 I was in. None of us had read how one of the force powers worked which made it comically OP. It was only supposed to last for one round but we had been playing as though it kept going until you failed your check. And since the check wasn't particularly high, this resulted in us throwing baddies about the room with ease. We all had a good laugh and then adjusted to the rules as written.
I new someone who would put dice in a microwave to weigh them high or low so they could get whatever result they wanted by using different dice.
I've heard of people baking them in the oven for similar effects. (If the dice smell like cookies, you have a cheater on your hands! Lol)
That’s a thing? Wouldn’t the dice become deformed?
When I heard this my guts hit the floor, what kind of monster would hurt dice?
No, seriously.
The dice aren't messed up, like visually?
@@anthonynorman7545 if it's done for a short enough time, you might be able to get the weight to shift enough for it to bias the rolls in one direction without the distortion being too visible.
What about dice that seem to consistently low? If they have weighted the die, I can understand, but if the die came that way, like it rolls decent, even if just on thought it rolls well, doesnt sound like cheating. Though I do agree that people need to be honest with what perks and abilities do. If it's a honest mistake, okay, but if it's on purpose that sucks.
They always seem to roll too low are similar to dice that always seem to roll too high they could be improperly balanced. It's not cheating but the dice are messed up and should probably be replaced with dice that are better weighted or balanced.
@@theDMLairUnless the injection molding is done with poorly mixed plastic, or includes large air voids, the "improper balancing" comes from the rolling process where the sharp edged are rubbed off in a machine. I have seen a few videos about dice and balance and all that rigmarole, and the consensus I get is to buy metal dice with sharp edges and don't go cheap. Or buy good plastic dice and don't go cheap. And in ALL cases, be willing to change away from dice that seem to roll too consistently near any one face of the die.
I had a long time player quit after I asked him to roll his character at the group. They were all going to make characters together.
He said he liked using this phone app to make characters and roll dice. I told him everyone was using the same dice for character creation. He raged out in our forum and quit. I was surprised (I always kinda figured he cheated. He always had at least 2 stats over 18 and nothing under 12)
Which surprised me, why would someone cheat on dnd. Failing is just as much fun as success. In my book
For some, that is not true. They have been raised to believe that you only win by succeeding, and that if they fail at anything, then they are a loser and have failed at life. To them, it’s not about the story. They have to WIN.
@@jesternario those kind of people shouldn't be playing dnd. The game is about story and having fun. There is no winning and losing in it
Yeah that sucks man. It's unfortunate that some people want to cheat so badly that when rules are put in place that prevent them from doing so that they'd rather not play then play honestly. I mean I'm sorry you lost your player. Because that's where the thing really sucks. But yeah when people are like always getting over 18 on their stats at level 1 yeah something's going on.
Yeah I kind of feel the same way in that there is no winning and losing in Dungeons & Dragons. I mean that's like the beautiful part of the game really. It's a collaborative game cooperative game where everyone is on the same side. Even the dungeon master is on the same side as the players at least the way I played the game. So that there needs to be winners and losers for some people is unfortunate.
@@craigstueber8073 Tell that to the Adventure League and living games community. That lost is almost completely peopled with metagaming power-levellers who only care about the mechanics, not the story.
Real talk, I once actually rolled an 18 in every stat except for one (a 12). I was incredulous, and there's no way the DM would have believed it if I hadn't screencapped the rolls (I had used roll20 for it). DM still made me reduce two of my stats "to be fair", although I'll be honest, doesn't really feel fair when RNG blesses you and someone steals it away.
I typically use a 4 strikes rule.
Strike 1: Honest Mistake. You do activity x once. OK, hey player Bob, you did this. Just wanted to let you know that...
Strike 2: Do you have amnesia? Activity x occurs again. Hey player Bob, you did this again. We talked about this. I'm not trying to be rude, but...
Strike 3: Final Death Saving Throw. Bob. I've talked to you about this three times. Again, not trying to be rude, but this needs to stop. There won't be a fourth time. As a reminder, you did this...
Strike 4: Bye.
I know this type of conversation is never fun. But its necessary in some cases.
I agree on all others, though I'll slightly differ on the "looking up monster stats"-thing. Knowing monster stats is a function of experience and knowing monster design principles. I don't mind someone who is less experienced/has shitty memory checking up on things. The important thing is whether they abuse that knowledge somehow. I don't balance encounters based on players knowing or not knowing what a particular type of monster can do/is weak against. If they metagame based on that knowledge, they'll have to explain that knowledge in-game.
I agree, didn't mind it so much when its a monster the player never encountered before and they're curious about it. I occasionally liked to pull out really obscure creatures just for my own amusement even if I knew it wouldn't be much of a challenge for them just for the "what the...?!" reaction from them (imagine a party's reaction to being accosted by a roomful of irate flumphs). I used to do the same as a player once we figured out what the monster was and the DM didn't mind as he used put his own twist on everything anyway. Frankly I think the only thing it changed in how we played was how quickly we made the decision to retreat if combat was not going our way whether or not to to stick it out for another round thinking we might be able to finish it off then.
Knowing the rough strength and M.O. of monsters is a character asset. Memorizing the stat blocks is either cheating or lame. Unless that person is ALSO a DM.
I think it is easily sidestepped enough that it should probably just be avoided. For example, why would a player need to look up the monster? It seems to only cause problems if a player neglects to use one of their favorite spells that the monster happens to be immune to or just happens to lead with a spell that the monster is weak against when they wouldn't know. Them not looking it up removes even the thought of accusing them of metagaming or asking which naturally would put them on the defensive. If a player wants to know something more about a monster during a battle, I usually just ask them to perform a check for it. If they're analyzing it on the spot, int. If they're trying to recall anything like it that they've run into, wis. Etc, etc. Then I'll feed them information based on what they roll. If they want to know for matters of curiosity or to appropriate for their own campaigns, then I'd say it is reasonable to wait till after the fight or dungeon or session.
So expect these seasoned adventurers to not know that burnt cells can't regenerate?
@@youcantbeatk7006I had a character that firmly believed EVERYTHING should be finished off with fire. Troll? fire. Skeleton? fire. rats? fire. Villages? fire. Lots of fire. It works for pretty much everything except fire elementals, phoenixes, demons and such.
what goes in the same-ish field of reading the monster manual.. Reading the module and just.. casually walkink up to all the hidden treasure in EVERY ROOM.. Hello fellow party member ;)
Yeah reading the module that your dungeon master is running is the highest form of cheating as well. Like that's completely messed up.
Problem with that is that you can't avoid reading the Monster Manual if you are a DM yourself or just enthusiastic about dnd... at that point it becomes a matter of player vs charakter knowledge
doing it in combat is pretty dumb though...
Personally I wouldn't say anything if I saw him/her do that just turn it into a quick action trap
a player straight up reading the module you're running is the moment where you randomly put death traps where treasure should be and then never invite that player at your table in the future
@@francisxavier8374 in my case the Player did die the session after.. and now the entire campaign is over because our DM got so pissed of at her he just.. quit
I actually once rolled 13,13,13,16,16,18 with the 4d6 - the lowest system and was witness rolling it by 3-6 people and decided to re-roll them because even if the DM believed me they wouldn't let me because it is too unbalanced so I re-rolled and got a 9,13,14,18,14,12 and used that. So if its possibly to 13,13,13,16,16,18 then all above 16 stats are possible but too unbalanced and needs to be changed even if it was legit or not.
Screw that dm for taking away a bit above average rolls.
@@Magikarpador thats way above average, I rolled similar to that, my dm lowered it by about 7 points giving me closer to the partys statline, im above their average still, but not broken
@@StrategyWasTaken ive seen higher plenty of times. No fun allowed type of dm if you ask me
@@Magikarpador he is fun, just wanted to keep the balance. I still have stats way above average, my average is now 15 instead of 16.
when rolling for stuff, our dm does it all, and everytime our rouge says "i want to punch the steel door" you know he rolled a 20 when the dms eyes widen and he says that he made a hole in the door
I have one simple rule...if I catch you cheating once...you get a warning. The next time...you get shown the door.
I think Luke has some hang ups from third great about his snickers bar
I swear to you. No I swear to all that is Holy if I ever find Susie I will rip that Snicker bar out of whatever part of her body that processed it and stored it it away as some molecular structure. I want my Snickers bar back!
You need way more subs and publicity for the amount of work you put into these skits.
As a dm, I'd like your opinion on something our group couldn't agree on. The cantrip mending, could you use it to mend a broken bone, the physical fracture but not regain any hp. Everything fits the perimeters of the spell, broken bone = object, fracture = less than 1ft, and the caster could see and touch it. Would you allow this?
Valdspar I know I’m not the person you asked, but I’m going to give you my opinion and hope it helps. It depends on how literal you are being with the rules. If you are being very literal, then no. Living beings, or parts of them, are generally not considered to be objects in dnd. If you are not being very literal, then sure.
Hi, I know I'm late but here is my two cents.
I like to go by the "yes....but" method for things like this.
Yes they can heal the fracture... But since the bone is under skin and muscle it is not well mended, meaning until they can find a way to heal the fracture properly, they take disadvantage to dex, and the "Limp" rules apply.
Limp. Your speed on foot is reduced by 5 feet. You must make a DC 10 Dexterity saving throw after using the Dash action. If you fail the save, you fall prone. Magical healing removes the limp.
Same goes for arm breakages. would apply disadvantage to strength checks and no more two handed weapon use till it's properly fixed.
A broken bone is not an object unless it is not attached to a creature.
I was the guy that always had to reduce my roles because I always rolled high, which as a player seems kinda awesome, but as a DM it was more than a little deadly for my group, so I ignored crit after crit after crit cause that was just how the dice came up. When I explained this to my group after a couple crits I allowed to go through on them, they insisted I use their dice. Same thing. In the open, same thing though I made them agree if I wasnt rolling behind the screen, they had to accept the results (yeah, I can be a little evil sometimes lol).
Fast forward a few years, my niece started playing. Apparently my brother didnt get the same dice luck because she got his share in spades. That kid can roll some serious dice, and does it in front of the group. Straight up 40s in systems with a wild die (Savage World, d6, etc),. What was weird however, was that when my niece started playing and rolling incredibly ridiculously high my own dice rolls (thankfully) started to average out and be far more normal. As a GM I welcome my much more normal dice rolls, on the rare occasion when I play a PC, I miss my ability to crit 6-7 rolls out of 10, but on the same hand the challenge and fun of having to work around "uh... 3. I missed." in those critical moments is a great deal of fun.
So I dont doubt people can roll high. I dont even doubt they can roll high consistently. Having done it and seen it done. However, I will say to those of you who are like, or were like in my case, me and my niece, your missing some really cool role playing chances. Sometimes that miss or that fail or even that critical fail can open up the game to some really stellar and FUN Role Playing moments, and can serve to make your character infinitely more memorable and fun.
We once had a player roll 10 20s in a row with 4 different dice, out in the open. He wasn't cheating, he just got really lucky. Something we found funny was that every time he rolled high that entire session, he decided to bounce the dice off of the DM's mug, which was on the opposite side of the table.
How dare you bring up Suzie after all this time, Luke.
Low blow.
[Sees thumbnail]
Well, that seems a bit extreme... Actually, I think I'm on board with this. I like this idea.
2:31 Yeah, I know my friends. Thats why I watch them like a hawk when they roll XD
TheWizardMiner lol
As with most questions castration is the answer
*takes notes feverishly*
And for the ladies?
Title: How to deal with a cheater
thumbnail: *how to with a deal cheater*
Very well done. Made me laugh out loud a couple times. Keep up the great work!
Thanks, Professor! 😁
Custom DM Rule for seeing rolls
Make it so the face on the other side is the one rolled
It’s a good save against Weighted dice
...switching dice also works
DnD Dude usually if I suspect weighted dice I make them use one of my sets, I have like 4.
TLDR: My monday DM said “If I catch you cheating, you lose 2 levels” (i assume the penalty scales as you level up, we are 4th currently)
Context: My Monday DM is doing a “FrostPunk” firearm campaign.
He wants us to track bullets, even though most games I have played in do not track ammo as a logistical hassle and the cheap nature of Ammo in DnD.
He will routinely mention to mark off ammo. Although I could easily just buy 50 more rounds. None of the weapons are automatic, so that’d last me a good 10 encounters. I still mark the ammo, as I do not mind, and Roll 20
Makes such things very easy.
I just started DMing a homebrew campaign with my regular group. I have a white board with a statement of house rules "no phones at the table, announce intentions before rolling, etc..." it is followed by another statement that if I see you breaking these simple rules(all are mostly common table etiquette to keep things moving and players engaged) you will suffer 2 d10 necrotic damage...my players are currently level 1. We have had issues on these grounds in other sessions lol. Everything seems to be working out though now.
Yeah I don't track ammo my games either for the most part unless it's like a magical Arrow or something. It's just a really big logistical Hassle and it doesn't add any element of fun to the game in my opinion.
A white board or other visible thing with all the etiquette rules on it is a really good idea.
MY RECOMMENDATION FOR SPELLS:
print the spell list [highlight the ones the players have (if desired)]
always have that print out pamphlet nearby and get really comfortable reading/ sourcing it..
there isnt really an easy way to access the vast number of spells in real time outside of memory so start slow and grow..
I definitely agree with the taking time to look up the right rules for things. Basically every time someone uses a new spell or ability in a campaign I’m in, the whole table is interested in seeing exactly how the ability works. The game is cooperative, so knowing how your allies’ abilities can aid you is only helpful to the long term of the game.
once a player rolled a high number (17 maybe?) but I didn't asked for a check, I asked him what was that for, he said "it's an insight check to know if she (NPC) is lying", I told him he can't roll something I'm not aware of and I proceed to explain to the group why that was bad behavior, it might be misinterpreted as cheating (you just back out if the roll was low).
I told the player he can keep his high roll on that insight check, but if it happens again I will demand a new roll on the open.
jokes to him, the NPC was not lying.
ALSO, I had tons of times a specific player try to back out from a bad roll, I tell him NOPE, YOU ALREADY DID THAT.
I hate it when players of mine try and backpedal from a bad roll. Own that shit fam!
@@kasuscloud4805 the best one was when the same player found an artifact of an extinct race from the underdark, the guide book they purchased in the surface said it "made your true potential show up", so he decided to "use" said artifact.
and I told him "ok, reroll your stats, here is the formula" and he went on "what??, no, I don't use it", "you ALREADY use it, re-roll your stats"
(the new formula gave more points in general, so it was a beneficial item, he is just a coward)
I typically use targeted aggression. Snipers for example.
Or make a trap that kills anyone who makes it hehehe.
Well it’s like my paladin who always rolled high with his luck. I suspected he had loaded dice, so I gave him the “cursed” green dice. They’re normal green dice, but everybody gets screwed over by them. It’s a joke.
So I swapped the dice... and he still rolled high. Out in the open...
Damn you Braztin
This may not apply equally to a hack-n-slash, but it's been my experience that some of the best roleplay and most memorable FUN moments have come from biffing an important roll or just plain messing up. I once failed a perception check while melded into stone (to sleep "safely" as a drow while the sun was up) and got built into the walls of a pyramid the natives were building.
My brother was a new dm, he wanted to run a campaign while knowing very little, but he was telling a pretty good story, made a friend of his who knew a little bit more co-dm, after one session of him doing 6d10 damage with no spell slots or preparations, I read all of the basics guide and most of the players handbook. I caught him read handed next session and exposed him as a cheater, he admitted to cheating numerous rules, especially in relation to spells, I'm now the co-dm at my brothers table.
I had a character, Smash, who couldn’t land a roll. After a while, I might have fudged a few rolls so he failed when he didn’t. ...it was better roll play!
For the people that look up monster stats I like to just X2 the health and damage of the monster(s) in question so that way it’s not my problem and after the first time the other players usually stop that sort of thing themselves
Tbh IMO the solutions on your last topics are the best. Just get rid of cheaters. They just destroy fun for everyone. I’m not going to watch one of my players with eagle eyes so he doesn’t cheat. That kills all fun. You just don’t Play Games with cheaters. Even worse dnd is a coop game with no winners. It just doesn’t make sense for me to cheat!
Yes I mean ultimately if there's a serious problem with the cheater the best solution at the end of the day if he's not willing to change his behavior is going to be to get rid of him. It's just a question of whether you want to go through a bunch of Hoops and try to curb the behavior whorigins get rid of the problem itself. And that of course is an individual dungeon master decision. But yeah I'm not going to put up with a bunch of crap continuously from a dude depending on of course what he's doing.
@@theDMLair I just have a "cult of warlocks" 30 Eldritch blasts from 600 feet away while they are traveling. The look when I say 120d10+150 is priceless.
Why do minmaxers minmax? They want to be the best in the group... that's so boring ...
Tillie - I feel that everyone is playing the game for slightly different reasons. Some players love the role playing aspect, others just want to kick butt and take names.
My first campaign I ever DMed, we were all pretty new. One of my players was abusing and ability. When I called her out on it, she said, "Oh, I had hoped you wouldn't have read it." The calling out was enough to stop her, but after they defeated a minor boss, I put an necklace on the boss I knew she would want.
The necklace was cursed, gave her character nightmares and bound to her. She had to roll every night to see if she got a proper long rest. She subsequently was subject to exhaustion penalties until either embarking on a quest to remove the cursed item, or paying a high level NPC wizard a buttload of gold to remove the curse.
Every role, she would give me a look. She knew what it was for. Lesson learned.
Knew someone who cheated, but in a very different way. Instead of doing things with dice rolls he did it with their character. Saying he had the rital caster feat even with a wisdom/intelligence score below 13. And having proficiency in all armor and weapons. Heck he even added his proficiency to the damage rolls. It was clever, but I eventually I caught him. I had to find some form of punishment, but nothing too harsh and nothing too minimal. Thats until I remembered he is an Oath of Devotion paladin and he broke the tenets of Honor(cheating is dishonourable) and honesty(lies). So I made his character believed he was drawing power from an evil deity for a long time, and he most seek absolution from a cleric, or another Paladin. It was a fun little quest that we went on, and when it was over I told him if he cheats again, he must abandon the paladin class. So it got across his head and he hasn't cheated since. :)
I have a certain app on my phone that allows me to save all spells from all Editions well maybe more 5th edition and if someone questions I can just pop up the spell and it gives the whole description it saves a lot of time
Yes I have the exact same thing on my phone. Makes looking up spells very very easy and fast. Most of my players have the same app and we use it all the time during the game. However it doesn't mean that the players always remember exactly to read the entire spell and don't possibly misrepresent what it says. I had to explain two or three times to one player that plane shift doesn't allow him to teleport to some other place in the same plane it actually goes to a different plane. LOL
@@theDMLair yes I know that feeling. I am still new and all but I try my best to exactly remember what I need hell I'm even going the extra mile and saying half of my spell since I'm a druid require me to have ingredients to actually cast my spell so I have to go next session to buy a chemistry bag going to cost me twenty-five gold but it will allow me to still cast my spells and I need to buy a staff because I haven't Druid Focus this is other stuff that most people do not take in consideration. If your spell pacifically says you need ingredients doesn't mean you can just ignore it
@Michelle M. the app I use is called spell book 5th edition or D&D spell 5E
@@theDMLair hey I got a very important question for you in the school of druid there's a spell called awaken and it requires the jewel or stone agate for its summoning cost this spell allows you to pretty much charm and control any creature Beast or plant that has the intelligence score lower than 3 giving it a teligence score of 10 a language that you choose that you know and if it's a plant or tree it will grow limbs to be able to look humanoid. It doesn't say anywhere on the spell that you can only do this once so what a crazy idea oh let's say a kobold druid getting his hands on a whole bunch of these Stones then spending a week in the woods casting the spell on trees two pretty much make an army of awakened trees what they all have their own stats in the book then pretty much charge into battle?
What's the app?
This is a great guide for DMs, but also contains lots of advice for cheaters as well :) I enjoyed the video!
DMs ARE cheaters.
IMO, go on, cheat. When as DM I determine that you are not being fairly challenged, I'll fix that shit. Narrative is the goal, not some RNGsus devotion.
I was guilty of fudging my dice rolls now and again because I didn't like the idea that the most dangerous parts of my character's life was left up to some really shitty dice roll. I never got caught, but after watching some friends sit down and play a game and saw the stakes, I understood the fun and honesty of losing, and the benefits it had for other players to shine. From then on, I took up the honor system and let sleeping fogwols lie. Thanks for the reminder, you get a sub
Sometimes the best scenarios happen when you epicly fail dice rolls. I almost died in game and irl because I and my party either crit failed or rolling under 5 consistently. Almost dying irl was from laughing and I wasn't the only one either.
My lizardman druid had a bone stuck in her throat. I criticizing failed my Con save and started choaking. I thought I could budge it by forcing water down my throat. I cast create and destroy water. I forced down too much water and crit failed my Con save again. I really start choking. My party members try to save me by rolling medicine checks because guess who was the only healer? They all either crit failed, turn me upside down but dropped me on my head and give me bludgeoning damage, or under 5. I honestly forgot how I survived it because we were all laughing so much. I'm still chuckling about it. So yeah. Fail rolls rule.
I tend to forget to mark spell slots but I usually realise later and mark them off.
Spell cards are wonderful and help keep pace in my game.
I activate my spell card, Pot of Greed!
Me: SMITE
My friends: you cant do that
Awlso me: I SMITE THEE FOR YOUR HEALTH DOUBLED
Mi9hty Limpit I also prefer to do the godly smite method for cheaters, I prefer to do 1d20 x your character level though
Another rule I force my players to abide by.
"If it's not written down you don't have it"
This has cost more then one character his life.
The fighter -> "But you handed out 6 healing potions from the treasure chest last game!"
Me -> "But you didn't write it down so you left them behind."
I also keep track of special loots. Like healing potions myself. .
So I know when.a player uses one when they don't actually have any left.
I don't do it for all loots.
But certain key resources are a must.
The thing with people who apparently cheat with unfair dice is sometimes they have no idea they aren't balanced correctly or even the dice used to be balanced correctly but over play an edge got worn down
I GM'd for 15 years and I liked everything you pointed out and suggested in the video.
My take on this will be more on the psychological side of cheaters in RPG and I hope it sparks some light in the head of some DMs, but specially players.
I see a lot of DMs trusting their players because in their heads they weight the "sin" of cheating as being proportional to the labor the DM needs to go to prepare the sessions, get a date/time that is good for everyone to play (some times only the DM is worried about that) and, well, DMing, which is always more mind challenging than playing.
Most players don't see that and/or don't take that into account when they cheat. So for them, they obviously know it's wrong, but its rather an "oopsie" than a betrayal of their friends trust and a disregard or mocking of the DM's efforts.
So yeah, keep an eye on them, keep a fair and measured punishment ready (something that will hinder their characters, do not do something that'll affect your entire group) and, if that doesn't change their ways, I'd talk to the player one-on-one after their 2nd strike and expel them from the game after the third.
When I was playing my group didn't have a big table, we just rolled on the Maps.
I once made a character where I legit rolled 16 and above for all of my scores. The DM allowed this because he knows that I don't cheat also I once played a character who had terrible rolls because I rolled badly.
You are missing the most important conversation to have when a player is cheating consistently, at least when the player is also a friend:
Talk about their feeeeeelings!
:: barf ::
Most folk do not cheat in a vacuum, there is usually a reason. Perhaps they crave more power in the game and are anxious about surrendering control to a random element. Or maybe succeeding makes them feel good enough to make cheating attractive. Whatever the reason, if the player is a friend or someone you care about, it is worth sitting down with them privately and asking why they feel they are cheating.
Explain that you understand their misapprehensions or their anxieties, and that you can work out *fair* ways to address or even fulfill those personal desires in the game, but that cheating itself is not the right way to do it because everyone at the table has something they want - a shared experience of uncertainty in storytelling - and that they want it to come to them in a fair way.
You can have a mature and non-confrontational talk about it and hopefully resolve whatever personal issue is causing the problem.
Punishment is whatever - helping friends (so long as said friends are not just assholes who do not actually care about anyone) to grow as people solves the problem in the long run.
Great point!
@@theDMLair Thanks! :) Of course, sometimes people are just low down no-good dirty rotten cheaters ::spits in the spitoon:: buuut if everyone at the table is a friend away from the table then, well, kindness and understanding is probably the best first line of defense, since (at least in my opinion) a friendship is more important than a game.
At that point it becomes a problem of mental health instead of a game ... which should be handled by experts and the ones who know why it is the way it is...
@@Furry19931993 It is really not - and friends should always endeavor to help their friends.
I hope you take this as a compliment... your videos are really great to watch when I'm high XD you're so entertaining.
lol same
I have a standing rule at my table, players DO NOT use monster manual or other GM tools during play. I have been known to ask the players not to bring personal books, or just the players guide, as well as radically change monster stats for that encounter. Just because a Cheater is cracking open the monster manual.
What are some other ways of cheating, and how would you deal with them?
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Oh yes the lucky dice roll I literally have my own pair of Lucky Dice that the DM has at times said I can't use them but he has also said at times I am allowed to use them with certain scenarios and I do agree with him this pair of dice and I have rolls extremely well and when somebody else says hey you mind if we get rid of those dice for a little I agree with them and I grabbed another pair of dice I have no problem using other pairs of dice would I want to use the dice that allow me to get a lot of critz yes. But I also understand that it's no fun if I'm the one always getting everything I want and nobody else gets it so that's why these dice only come out when the DM pacifically says we need luck on our side. That's my cue to pull those out.
I played with this kid who would ALWAYS pick up the dice even if it was a very rare high roll since his dice sucked. It got so bad, the DM had to roll for him with said sucky dice in front of everyone. And when anyone called him out, get ready for 2 hours of spammed chat insulting the group and everyone personally so nobody liked him. He then moved onto moving the minis on the board one space at a time (always just his, very suspicious) and when someone finally saw him do it, which honestly didn't take too long, he up and called his ride crying in the restroom and left. He then rage quit through chat. He was just a worse version than the other kid in that group who did the exact same thing but only did the dice part and when he got called out for the final time, he sat up and left without saying anything other than cussing out the players one by one and did the same thing on group chat and left and we never heard from him again. Except when we did a month or 2 later for one session and joined back in the group chat. And I bet you can guess what he did. He did the literal same thing he did the last session he was there and after chat by cussing then leaving never to be seen again, at least I think so. I made a group with my friends and quit that one which I DM and am currently running
One of my players often roles as if he had advantage even when he didn’t, also, as a penalty, should I force him to stop playing warlock.
I run games using GURPS system instead of DnD and use dice shaker. No cheating possible (through mechanics and lack of access to dice), unless you count me (GM).
Can you make a video of a d and d games with your friends that would be awesome
Honestly, I never really realized that looking up info on monsters is technically cheating. Whenver I do, it's mainly to see if there is any lore connected to the monsters my party encounters since I personally love to learn to lore of the world I'm playing in. With this in mind, I'll be sure to look up the monsters after the session (Unless that's still considered cheating too).
I feel like there’s a demographic that just watches the first minute of videos for the bit at the beginning
I'm sure there is. lol
Our group was playing the curse of strahd and one of the players looked up the pdf of the campaign. I was wondering how she managed to find all the best loot. She was also one of the players that would loot every single body as soon as combat was over and hoard everything. After we left the amber temple she was carrying over a ton of weight in loot. Everyone left most of the items because they were too heavy so she added it all to her inventory.
Just found your channel, love the content. Thanks. :)
Currently in a campaign with "The Bully" you described in scenario 6 at 11:36. I'm not the DM, just a player in the game, but yea... it really sucks. I've talked to the DM about it... but I think the biggest issue is this player, and the DM, are related(brother and sister)... so I'm not sure what is going to get done about it.
(this player is also a rules lawyer, and a "I want to do all the things ever that could possibly be done ever in one turn")
I don't want to leave the campaign, we are running the Descent into Avernus module, and it is super fun... I love my character(which I would probably just take him to a different group if I left), and I have friends in this group that I really enjoy playing with... not sure what to do.
To deal with "the bully", just say "my table, my rules", instead of arguing just make it a house rule each time they disagree with you.
Changing the rules while the game is running feels bad, but the bully wants to change it for everyone else, and you declaring it a house rule just sets what everyone knows as a rule regardless of the interpretation.
It might make the bully say it's unfair, but I think it's better to have them leave that to kick them out.
Ive dealt with both the bully and the monster-looker-upper. And their both gone from my game so... back bone 5th lv
Well, if the person has been verified to be cheating, the best way to deal with them is to ask them not to return to the game. Once trust is broken, it most likely isn’t coming back, and even if the cheater promises to stop, they will still cheat.
I think there's some truth to that. I would probably still give the person one conversation and warning. But the reality is that if you catch him cheating once he's been doing it a whole lot and just not been getting caught.
Everyone is different. They probably only cheated because they thought they could get away with it. Knowing they can't they are most likely to stop.
@@youcantbeatk7006 In my experience that is patently untrue. A player who cheats, once caught, will start hiding their methods a little more, but will not stop cheating.
So, this video is a pretty solid guide, and here are my own thoughts as a long-time GM, for each scenario, in order of how much I have to say on them:
-Scenario 6: Yeah pretty much. If someone has a conflicting interpretation of the rules, that's fine, but the GM's word is *final*, even if the rulebooks say otherwise.
-Scenario 7: I like to have a small handful of abilities that specifically screw with each specific player in my group, so that if they look at the monster stats more than I'm willing to put up with, suddenly the monster has new powers.
-Scenario 4: I have only dealt with this one a couple times, at least where it's clearly intentional. It's almost always an honest mistake, and I think because it's so blatantly lying, few players try to get away with it.
-Scenario 5: Similarly, I don't see this happen intentionally very often, presumably because it's not something a practiced liar would feel confident they could get away with. It helps that my parties' money and similar resources are treated as communal, so one player can't edit totals without the others seeing.
-Scenario 3: I'm actually gonna disagree with this entire thing. If a player's dice are so "lucky" as to basically be loaded dice (pretty much always a result of deliberate tampering), then yeah, bar them from use, but if a given die just happens to throw high numbers disproportionately often (usually the result of imperfections in the manufacturing process or improper storage before purchase in high-temperature climates, like the American southwest), I tend to allow it, because it adds that quasi-mystical edge to the gaming, the mystique of "blessed dice", which is often more entertaining for the players than ensuring perfectly balance dice are used at all times, especially when the "blessed dice" go bad at a critical moment. Generally, dice that are naturally imbalanced don't skew so heavily that it should upset the overall balance of a campaign, and if you *do* start to see that sort of effect, it's time to consider that something fishy is going on.
-Scenario 1: While I'm also a proponent of point buys, if doing rolls for character creation, while it's important to ensure honesty, you should at the same time have some sort of safeguard in place to make sure the player isn't left with a character that isn't fun for them. For example, if their rolled stats are lower than what they could get from a point buy (or any other arbitrarily chosen value based on how much power variance you think your players will enjoy), allow them a reroll, or just let them increase their stats until they hit your chosen minimum. That said, I rarely see anyone over the age of twenty attempt the "all 16+" cheated stat array. Adults learn how to make the stat array they want while keeping it believable (and thus balanced), which is basically impossible to reliably spot, so if you definitely want to avoid any kind of cheating, observe those rolls.
-Scenario 2: This is by far the most complicated situation, because while the action isn't acceptable, you also have to consider *why* the player is trying to fudge rolls, or else you'll just have an honest player who's *honestly* not having fun. Now, some players just do it to "win" at RPGs (these are the most likely to get caught, as their cheating is constant and consistent), in which case they're really not understanding how the whole hobby works and you need to just tell them to stop it or leave. However, more often, there are two major reasons I've seen players fudge rolls. The first are players who fudge rolls here and there in combat, not even important rolls, just enough so they can hit enemies and generally get the fight over with, or less often skill checks to just keep the story moving. I'll admit I've done this myself in the past (and The Adventure Zone's Travis McElroy has openly admitted to doing it). These players find combat *boring* or think the adventure's moving too slowly and while you should still talk to them about their behavior, maybe also consider putting less emphasis on combat in your campaign or speeding things up (and remind them that they should bring their concerns to you directly rather than skulking around). The other type are players who, whenever they're doing something that's important to their character concept, they always roll more suspiciously. These players are very attached to an image of their character as being good at their specialty. Usually their cheating is prefaced by several failures at using their key skills/abilities, especially if other people at the table point out how "bad" their character is at their job. In this instance, it may be that their character just isn't working in practice the way they thought it would in theory, or it could be that their dice are imbalanced *against* them and they don't have better dice to switch to. See about giving them new dice to use that may be more favorable, let them respec their character to better express their desired specialty (assuming they made some sort of mistake in their build), or even secretly lower the difficulty of this player's key rolls now and then. Also, of course, tell them to quit cheatin'.
I haven't played a session of DnD before and I've only just started listening and learning about it more recently.
Why is looking up a monster during combat cheating? This is the only one that really stood out to me. Can anyone explain?