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taltamir
2009-09-26, 04:28 AM
DnD is a cooperative social game. There is no competition, no money at stake. Yet some people cheat. I am of the opinion that doing that just cheats yourself and ruins the fun... And yet, cheating occurs, people used weighed dice or lie to the DM about rolls, their items, etc.

Please share stories here of cases where you had a cheating player, and how was it resolved. Was the played kicked from the team? did he mend his ways? were YOU the cheating player?

Kurald Galain
2009-09-26, 04:46 AM
I remember this guy who could carefully balance a d6 on the edge of his hand, and then drop it so that it turns exactly 90 degrees before it hits the table. Needless to say he rolled a lot of sixes (this was in a boardgame where 1d6 was rolled to hit someone). On the other hand, this looked really conspicious from his first try, and for some reason he got upset when we asked him to stop doing that.

I can't off-hand recall any big cheaters at D&D; I do ban illegible dice from my table but that's more a matter of convenience than fear of cheating. I do recall some players having a few more feats or spells than they're supposed to have at their level, but that may have been simple carelessness as it didn't result in combos or anything.

taltamir
2009-09-26, 04:49 AM
I remember this guy who could carefully balance a d6 on the edge of his hand, and then drop it so that it turns exactly 90 degrees before it hits the table. Needless to say he rolled a lot of sixes (this was in a boardgame where 1d6 was rolled to hit someone). On the other hand, this looked really conspicious from his first try, and for some reason he got upset when we asked him to stop doing that.
Wow, is this as impressive as it sounds like, or did he just slowly and carefully align it with his hand touching the table and slowly increased the angle until it slid down to turn one face?


I can't off-hand recall any big cheaters at D&D; I do ban illegible dice from my table but that's more a matter of convenience than fear of cheating. I do recall some players having a few more feats or spells than they're supposed to have at their level, but that may have been simple carelessness as it didn't result in combos or anything.

Yea, sometimes people make honest mistakes like that... for me its much more rare that i give myself extra stuff by accident then having less than I should... (wait a minute... I seem to be missing a feat! oops...)

Mystic Muse
2009-09-26, 04:51 AM
The only time I can see a player cheating and it being justified is when you're in a group you like but the DM is using rules form "torn asunder."


I have a few players who roll more than they're supposed to but they know they don't get away with those rolls.

Kurald Galain
2009-09-26, 05:12 AM
Wow, is this as impressive as it sounds like, or did he just slowly and carefully align it with his hand touching the table and slowly increased the angle until it slid down to turn one face?
No, the latter. Conspicuous as gehenna, of course.

Oh yeah, I met this guy once who was really proud of the fact that he always cheated at Risk...

Totally Guy
2009-09-26, 05:45 AM
Last session I had an extra point of Armour Class that I shouldn't have had. For the first 3/4 of the session. I'd miscalculated an armour bonus when I'd written it on my sheet.:smallfrown:

I was a little dissappointed as I'd made a really cool character that was doing really well compared to most of the others. I hate to think that this was aided by me writing the wrong number.

Sliver
2009-09-26, 06:02 AM
Last session I had an extra point of Armour Class that I shouldn't have had. For the first 3/4 of the session. I'd miscalculated an armour bonus when I'd written it on my sheet.:smallfrown:

I was a little dissappointed as I'd made a really cool character that was doing really well compared to most of the others. I hate to think that this was aided by me writing the wrong number.

It almost doesn't matter, unless all the attacks failed to hit due to not beating your AC by 1..

Kesnit
2009-09-26, 06:32 AM
When I started playing 4E, I somehow added 2 to all my attack rolls by accident. When I got the character creator from DDI, I had to confess my mistake to the group. They weren't upset since it had been an honest mistake, but I felt horrible for a while.

If I'm having a terrible night with dice, I have been known to cheat a few rolls ("I rolled a 15" instead of the 5 I really rolled.) But that is VERY rare.

daggaz
2009-09-26, 07:14 AM
Ive seen quite a few dice that didnt have opposite valued faces (20 vs 1, 19 vs 2) etc, which if combined with a sleight weight imbalance can _Really_ tip the scales in the players favor. Once I caught somebody with a d20 that had no 1 on it at all. We laughed about it, but it still felt dirty and wrong down inside...

I think the most common form of cheating is munchkinism, where the player conveniently forgets any penalties to X trait or feat or whatnot, but applies the bonuses.

Ledeas
2009-09-26, 07:25 AM
I think the most common form of cheating is munchkinism, where the player conveniently forgets any penalties to X trait or feat or whatnot, but applies the bonuses.

Expecially in games where they come up more often such as the Wite Wolf games or Deadlands.

"hey you get a -2 for it being daytime and another -2 for the enemy being Holy"

I forgot

But they remember the +5 the get to damage for selling their soul....

Curmudgeon
2009-09-26, 07:47 AM
Get some dice cups (which can be cheap plastic tumblers), and insist everybody use them. If that doesn't fix things, I like to have the player directly across the table do the rolling. That frees the player whose turn it is to move their miniature and check their character sheet without having to also have dice in their hands. It's positively amazing how you get really random dice behavior when it's somebody else doing the rolling for you. :smallsmile:

Tyndmyr
2009-09-26, 09:10 AM
Eh, I like doing my own rolling.

I do all rolling publicly. This includes while GMing. This is probably a point of contention, but I like to make it clear that the GM isn't cheating either.

As for cheating...it's not really much of a problem. I've never really played with a cheater, though people make the odd mistake, and there have been plenty "aw, cmon....can I reroll that?", generally followed by much laughing and a "no".

Lkctgo
2009-09-26, 09:50 AM
Eh, I like doing my own rolling.

I do all rolling publicly. This includes while GMing. This is probably a point of contention, but I like to make it clear that the GM isn't cheating either.

As for cheating...it's not really much of a problem. I've never really played with a cheater, though people make the odd mistake, and there have been plenty "aw, cmon....can I reroll that?", generally followed by much laughing and a "no".

Gasp, you mean no fudging of important dice rolls to help the Boss Monster or the PC's? NO WAY.

woodenbandman
2009-09-26, 11:07 AM
Reposting this because it is tragic and hilarious.

So there's this guy who was in my group. A huge jerk. Nobody liked him. Anyway, he butted heads with everyone, but one guy in particular really made him lose it. So one time, he was talking to this mail carrier guy who had just delivered us a giant pile of explosive runes. He said to the guy "Hey man, let me buy you a drank." Or something like that. Player that he butts heads with asks "hey man, how come all your characters buy people drinks?" Not the most polite thing to say, but this guy flies off and yells at him "BECAUSE MY CHARACTERS ARE NICE, AND DECENT, UNLIKE YOUR CHARACTERS! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT TO DO IN THIS SITUATION, SO JUST SWING YOUR SWORD AND LEAVE THE MAGIC TO ME." Now knowing the fact that this guy was playing a half kython wizard/sorceror/ultimate magus and my friend was playing a psychic warrior with a psion cohort, that exchange was really hilarious. My friend points this out. He gets even more angry and finally yells "You know what, make a will save"

Shocked, my friend is like: "What?"
"Make a will save"
"Dude, really, come on. This is really stupid"
"Make a Will save."
"Are you sure you want to do this?"
"MAKE A WILL SAVE. PICK UP THE DAMN DICE AND MAKE A WILL SAVE."
"FINE!" *Rolls* success.
"Okay, I made it, what happens to me?"
"You take 1 point of int and charisma damage. You'll get it back at the end of the day." * (FYI not a real spell)
"Okay, make a will save."
"What?"
"Make a will save"
"Oh come on, man, it's just one point!"
"No, come on, man, make a will save"
"Okay." *rolls, fails. FYI dude, if you're cheating, the time to cheat would've been now.*
"Okay what happens"
"You take 12 charisma damage"
"I still have 4 left" (He actually didn't, he had only 12 to start. Which was weird for a sorceror/wizard/ultimate magus *snicker*)

Then the sword came out and the sparks flew and long story short he don't wanna play no more, and he stormed off ranting about how we were *******s.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-26, 11:22 AM
Gasp, you mean no fudging of important dice rolls to help the Boss Monster or the PC's? NO WAY.

It's not really risk if people think the GM might be fudging dice rolls to keep them alive. =)

Sliver
2009-09-26, 11:26 AM
It's not really risk if people think the GM might be fudging dice rolls to keep them alive. =)

You are saying you should give the players less XP because the PCs aren't in life threatening situations (in combat) due to DM safety net?

Kol Korran
2009-09-26, 11:40 AM
Gasp, you mean no fudging of important dice rolls to help the Boss Monster or the PC's? NO WAY.

as a DM i have tended to fudge rolls for players and importent monsters (mostly the save or suck saves), but in my last game i turned to the suggested policy of all rolls are revealed (we went farther and made all rolls be player rolls, i didn't have to roll a thing) and it improved the game TREMENDEOUSLY. my players especially told me they much prefer it that way- things are more "real" now, the danger was mroe real, the monsters obeyed the same laws, and things felt far more rewarding.

i highly suggest it. also- it usually goes against cheaters.

KellKheraptis
2009-09-26, 12:01 PM
Gasp, you mean no fudging of important dice rolls to help the Boss Monster or the PC's? NO WAY.

Well, you never have to say WHAT you're rolling for. That nat 1 could have been a self-imposed will save by a celestial to determine if they can resist the lure of indebting a party that faces certain disaster ;)

And as for "munchkinry," proper CO is well within the rules. Forgetting penalties is called carelessness at best, and deliberate at worst. The irony is that generally speaking if it's a minor penalty or bonus, I usually forget it too, but adjust on the fly if someone reminds me or the player. Everyone refigures for the next round, and the game doesn't miss a beat, though I try to be more throrough, especially if I'm the player and not the DM, since few are as merciful as I am around here with honest mistakes.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-26, 12:06 PM
You are saying you should give the players less XP because the PCs aren't in life threatening situations (in combat) due to DM safety net?

Im mostly saying that the game isn't as fun without risk. Plus, players feel like their choices matter more. If they see you missed them because of those buffs they chose, it brings a sense of reward. On the flip side, they know you're not inventing that string of crits as some plot device. The only real downside to playing like this is that you need to be a bit more careful in planning encounters because cheating them isn't as easy. Practice helps a lot with that, though.

But yeah, forgetting minor penalties(and sometimes buffs...I forget good stuff too) happens. It really isn't cheating, though you certainly shouldn't overlook stuff intentionally.

valadil
2009-09-26, 12:29 PM
DnD is a cooperative social game. There is no competition, no money at stake.

I've met quite a few players who would disagree with that. Even though it's a team game, they want to be the MVP. You'll always have people like that and some of them are bound to cheat.

Thajocoth
2009-09-26, 01:11 PM
There's a player at the table who has unreadable dice. Completely transparent with the numbers carved in. He has to squint to see them, but he rolls low as often as he does high. They're far better balanced than any other dice at the table, and if he was cheating, he'd be doing so really poorly.

First fight with my first character, I rolled d6s instead of d4s for damage, then re-read the power and fixed that. Accidental though...

taltamir
2009-09-26, 01:33 PM
Ive seen quite a few dice that didnt have opposite valued faces (20 vs 1, 19 vs 2) etc, which if combined with a sleight weight imbalance can _Really_ tip the scales in the players favor. Once I caught somebody with a d20 that had no 1 on it at all. We laughed about it, but it still felt dirty and wrong down inside...

Yea, those are called cheater dice, they sell them online.
Very inconspicuous though. Its not like a weighted die that just rolls well, people can look at it and notice it has two 20s and no 1.


There's a player at the table who has unreadable dice. Completely transparent with the numbers carved in. He has to squint to see them, but he rolls low as often as he does high. They're far better balanced than any other dice at the table, and if he was cheating, he'd be doing so really poorly.

Those are probably game science dice. Expensive, but very well balanced so they roll totally random. It is the anti cheating. because a "regular die" can be "lucky" or "unlucky" in that it is naturally imbalanced from polishing...

I am working on inking my gamescience dice right now with an ultra fine sharpie to make them more legible.


as a DM i have tended to fudge rolls for players and importent monsters (mostly the save or suck saves), but in my last game i turned to the suggested policy of all rolls are revealed (we went farther and made all rolls be player rolls, i didn't have to roll a thing) and it improved the game TREMENDEOUSLY. my players especially told me they much prefer it that way- things are more "real" now, the danger was mroe real, the monsters obeyed the same laws, and things felt far more rewarding.

i highly suggest it. also- it usually goes against cheaters.

Yea, last session party got forcibly separated... wizard (who lost his book but still has spells), artificer and a type of cleric (monster progression celestial) meet up with two bounty hunters that take us on (our disguises sucked; plus we managed to get ourselves in deep trouble due to RP)... my wizard runs out of spells, stabs the big guy with his longspear, crits, 3x damage... 27 damage, brings the guy down to almost dead. Guy hits wizard back... crits... with a 2d4 x4 weapon. wizard goes from 19 hp to -5. It was an amazingly intense battle. by the end the big guy was splattered, the little guy with the knives downed the articer (which I think went down when he shoved a healing potion into the downed clerics mouth). The cleric guy was almost dead, nearly got pushed into lava by little guy (almost made his bull rush roll), who at that point ran to heal us with AoE heal (I, the wizard was at -9 and the artificer at -5 at that point), where upon he managed to push the other guy into the lava...

I got a sense of accomplishment from that battle, we came so close, and we could have died. It also lends a sense of danger, you go against this big guy with this big sword, and you know that one good hit can kill you. (so be careful who and what you go up against)

Sliver
2009-09-26, 01:45 PM
Can people.. I donno.. Stop giving examples of when they had made a mistake that was in their favor and that they felt bad about doing it? It's not cheating, it is just a mistake, and this is not a thread about making confessions..

I somewhat wish my players would have tried to cheat, it would at least show they care about performing better, instead of complaining when they perform bad..

Claudius Maximus
2009-09-26, 02:01 PM
I cheat occasionally as DM, though the players are still in danger of death and failure.

As a player, I never cheat. If my character dies I can just make another one, right? Also, it's fun to fail critically sometimes.

I've had a player try to cheat me before. He rolled a 5 and claimed it was a 15. I called him on it, and nobody ever spoke of it again. Fortunately, I have never had an actual "problem player" with regards to cheating.

Melamoto
2009-09-26, 02:28 PM
[QUOTE=Thajocoth;7004243]There's a player at the table who has unreadable dice. Completely transparent with the numbers carved in. He has to squint to see them, but he rolls low as often as he does high. They're far better balanced than any other dice at the table, and if he was cheating, he'd be doing so really poorly.[QUOTE]

He could still be cheating, just in a different way. He says the truth about the dice, except for when the roll is really important (Save or Die, Scythe Wielder who could die soon), where he gives a higher (Or lower) number.

Jair Barik
2009-09-26, 02:37 PM
I cheated my players once. Its an important part of DMing. Situation is this. Low lvl party meatshield has (in this order) climbed a chimney and been attacked by a spider hiding in it, had all his gear eaten by a rust monster, been poisoned by some giant bees and wasps. They now decide to let a demon go free by completing a ritual for him in exchange for a yet unnamed gift. They had other options as well here but chose to trust it. It responds by summoning a Howler to kill them all. Had planned this before but the party was all in bad shape, rolled for damage and Howler kills the meatshield straight off. However the party are in a tower, the afore mentioned chimney is directly behind the party and I have my DM shield up. I say that the Howler bull rushed the Meatshield into the chimney and then fell down after him. Rest of the party find out both died of fall damage and I give no xp for the encounter.

Thats why a DM needs to cheat, to avoid anticlimatic TPKs

Tyndmyr
2009-09-26, 02:46 PM
Yea, those are called cheater dice, they sell them online.
Very inconspicuous though. Its not like a weighted die that just rolls well, people can look at it and notice it has two 20s and no 1.



I actually have one of those, you can just rotate from one number to the next, since it's all highest on one side, all lowest on the other. It's also ridiculously big, roughly baseball sized. Makes a great counter die.

I've rolled it a few times, but frankly, cheating with anything that big would be incredibly hard. I agree that the standard numbering pattern is better, but someone might be rolling another die without cheating w it.

Inhuman Bot
2009-09-26, 02:48 PM
I tend to be the cheater of my group.

One example for why:

In an Iron Kingdoms game, I was playing a 2nd level Arcane mechanic using point buy, with 7 HP due to a bad HP roll. and the party was on a carrage, going through some woods.

We're mercs currently working for the Khadorans (Think cold war Russians), and we were attacked by Cygnarans (Think cold war Americans). I'm on the roof with one of the Khadoran snipers.

First round: I get shot for a 10 damage crit and die.

I spend the rest of the hour long combat bleeding and stabilizing, as we have no healer of any sort.

Thus, I usually cheat and get higher HP then I should, because I have this tendancy to die in the first round.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-26, 02:50 PM
Alternatively, you can pre-emptively change your planned encounters if the party is doing poorly. Plus, sometimes people do deserve to die. It shouldn't be routine, but freeing a deamon for an unspecified "reward" is clearly asking for trouble.

If a TPK is on the table, either the encounter was poorly planned, or the players did something significantly wrong to deserve it.

Tiktakkat
2009-09-26, 02:58 PM
Thats why a DM needs to cheat, to avoid anticlimatic TPKs

I do not consider that cheating.
As a DM, I am not playing aganst the players, I am resolving the rules around the structure of the adventure. If that means not "letting the dice fall where they may", then so be it.
What I consider the real cheating as a DM is to let the random number generators cause an anticlimatic TPK, as that takes away the fun of the resolution from everyone.

As for cheating by players, one of the more common forms I have seen is what I call "double rolling", though it is often more than just two rolls. This is where the player will sit there, rolling his dice constantly, waiting for some good roll to selectively reserve until it is his turn in combat or what not. I generally deal with that by asking everyone to not roll until I ask them to, and then to roll out in the middle of the table. That tends to put a stop to that.

Rules Weaseling, or the casual "forgetting" of limiting effects on someone's uber-combo of the moment is the next most common effect, which I simply deal with by being a really good Rules Lawyer, and requiring them to produce all of the documentation for what they are trying to do. Inevitably the case that prohibits whatever nonsense they want to get away with is clearly printed in the text. Now and then you need to do a bit of digging in the general rules, but usually it can be found right there.

raitalin
2009-09-26, 03:00 PM
Oh, man I think I've got the thread winner right here, I've posted about him before, but his antics are so mind-numbingly horrible I take every chance I can to complain about him:

He cheats on his die rolls: He always picks the least visible dice and picks them up to read them. I don't think he's ever admitted to rolling below a 14.

He cheats on his character sheet: We started making our DM collect character sheets at the end of the session JUST so that he could check this guy's sheet. He routinely has too many skill points (in one epic game he was over by more than 200), and has been over by double digits on his saves.

He tries to min/max, but fails at all but the most basic builds unless he gets the recipes straight off of CharOp.

When playing a spellcaster he spams spells constantly, but cannot remember the details of the spells he uses. Worst, he doesn't understand that damage is sub-optimal from wizards and doesn't know how to control the field.

When he's not spamming he holds up the game trying to find some obscure perfect-for-this-situation spell that he just *happens* to have memorized. When the DM forces him to turn in a spell list at the beginning of the session he holds up the game for an hour making it.

He has to recalculate his attacks and save DCs Every.Single.Round.

He never role-plays. I haven't heard him speak IC once. He never moves the story forward, just waits until combat.

He gets upset when he gets hit, or fails a save (which basically only happens when he tells the DM a result thinking its high enough, but it isn't) or doesn't succeed in any action he attempts.

He also likes to lay claim to any magic item that benefits his character, no matter how much it may assist another character. He also doesn't understand stacking rules, leading to his abilities being off-the-charts.

So why does he still play with us, you ask? He's an old friend of the DM, and works at the same place. Me and another player are trying to get the DM to either confront him on his play, as it detracts from the fun for the rest of us, or simply tell him we've stopped playing.

Why do people cheat at a game with no winner?!?!

Update: Today is the first day I'm running him in SAGA, a system with much fewer chances to cheat than D&D, no magic items and low ability scores. I'm predicting he quits after 3 sessions.

Claudius Maximus
2009-09-26, 03:05 PM
About half my d20s are the kind that count down by adjacent numbers. Are these really unreliable for rolling, or more easily cheated with?

woodenbandman
2009-09-26, 03:06 PM
My opinion on DM cheating: If I play an encounter with easy monsters and a player does something stupid, they die. Usually though, if it's just absolutely ridiculously bad luck or if I overclocked an encounter, I'll fudge a bit backwards for the PC, for the sake of making the game more fun. In the future, when they get some resurrection capability, then maybe I won't feel bad about killing a PC or two.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-26, 03:55 PM
About half my d20s are the kind that count down by adjacent numbers. Are these really unreliable for rolling, or more easily cheated with?

They are somewhat more easy to cheat with. Realistically, if you're giving the die a proper toss so it tumbles about, it doesn't much matter.

Raum
2009-09-26, 04:39 PM
I do not consider that cheating.
As a DM, I am not playing aganst the players, I am resolving the rules around the structure of the adventure. If that means not "letting the dice fall where they may", then so be it.
What I consider the real cheating as a DM is to let the random number generators cause an anticlimatic TPK, as that takes away the fun of the resolution from everyone.Interesting. Have you ever thought of stating that from a player's point of view? Something like
I do not consider that cheating.
As a Player, I am not playing aganst the DM, I am resolving the rules around the structure of the adventure. If that means not "letting the dice fall where they may", then so be it.
What I consider the real cheating as a Player is to let the random number generators cause an unheroic moment, as that takes away the fun of the resolution from everyone. I don't see any less validity in the second statement.

Perhaps it should be expected, but I can't think of a single instance where a player was intentionally cheating and the GM wasn't already fudging - in other words, cheating.

Tiktakkat
2009-09-26, 05:25 PM
Interesting. Have you ever thought of stating that from a player's point of view? Something like I don't see any less validity in the second statement.

Except the player is not creating the framing story, and thus does not have the same responsibility for ensuring the relevance of challenges. A player is never expected to spontaneously play down in ability, or compensate for a run of good luck on his part or bad luck on the DM's part. A DM has to do all of that and more.
That critical difference defines why it is cheating for the player to overrule random chance while it is not for the DM.


Perhaps it should be expected, but I can't think of a single instance where a player was intentionally cheating and the GM wasn't already fudging - in other words, cheating.

I can think of numerous cases, even when the DM was already ensuring the continuation and enjoyment of the story

Raum
2009-09-26, 05:39 PM
Except the player is not creating the framing story, and thus does not have the same responsibility for ensuring the relevance of challenges. A player is never expected to spontaneously play down in ability, or compensate for a run of good luck on his part or bad luck on the DM's part. Not entirely true. Players are still expected to role play...to avoid metagaming...to engage with their character's environment...to have significant impact on that environment...etc. But, even if you were to discount all of that as I'm certain some will, all you've done is given reasons to justify cheating. Justified or not, it's still 'lying about the results of a random mechanic'...which most will term 'cheating'.


I can think of numerous cases, even when the DM was already ensuring the continuation and enjoyment of the storySo you've played in a lot of campaigns where the GM didn't fudge rolls or cheat? Or is the second half of your sentence "crossing your fingers"?

Tyndmyr
2009-09-26, 05:43 PM
Cheating for the "continuation and enjoyment" of the story sounds like one of those times where I notice the DC to hit the mob is rising as the GM realizes we're about to kill his plot-centric character.

This usually leads to players frantically trying to target different weak points, and the GM getting astonishingly good, unverified rolls.



And yes, players can definitely create story.

Solaris
2009-09-26, 05:59 PM
Cheating for the "continuation and enjoyment" of the story sounds like one of those times where I notice the DC to hit the mob is rising as the GM realizes we're about to kill his plot-centric character.

This usually leads to players frantically trying to target different weak points, and the GM getting astonishingly good, unverified rolls.



And yes, players can definitely create story.
That's just bad DMing. Most DMs will fudge a roll to avoid killing a character through bad luck (as opposed to stupidity). That's not cheating, that's running the game the, dare I say it, the way it's supposed to be run.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-26, 06:11 PM
That's just as unenjoyable. How do you feel when you are the player who died because your actions were deemed "stupid", while others were "bad luck"? How do you feel when you know that there isn't any actual risk to your character so long as you play relatively conservatively?

It doesn't particularily matter which way the DM is cheating, it *will* come out eventually or at least be strongly suspected, which is no better. When it does, it makes the actions of the players less important because the outcome is much less variable. Eventually, the monster dies, you get the loot, yay. If there's no chance of failure, then lack of failure is not a success.

Shinizak
2009-09-26, 06:14 PM
I had a player (player 1) roll a dice a while ago to make an attack. Standard stuff right? Well he grabs a dice off the table and rolls it. A three. So he fails, but the player (player 2) next in line goes to roll his dice but can't find it. They soon discover that he had grabbed the wrong dice and roll that instead. So player 1 suddenly goes and grabs his usual dice and rolls. A twenty. I ask what that roll was for and he says that it was for his attack roll. I asked why he was remaking his attack roll (thinking it might have been a class ability I somehow overlooked) and he tells me that the first roll didn't count. I told him that was a load of bull. He got mad and yelled about how he only rolled HIS dice and how he should have been allowed to reroll it. I shot that idea down saying that had Player 2's dice rolled a twenty he would have kept it. He proceeded to tell me for the rest of the night that I was being a jerk over dice.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-26, 06:18 PM
Oh yeah, I had that come up once...I fully agree w you. A roll is a roll, regardless of who owns the die, or if it landed on papers, or what have you. Unless it's an obviously cocked die, or rolls somewhere it can't be read, it's a legit roll.

Tyger
2009-09-26, 06:31 PM
Oh yeah, I had that come up once...I fully agree w you. A roll is a roll, regardless of who owns the die, or if it landed on papers, or what have you. Unless it's an obviously cocked die, or rolls somewhere it can't be read, it's a legit roll.

Normally I agree with this 100% but we have a guy in our group who's dice must always land on his paper in order to count for him. Always. Frigging annoying.

That said, I have seen him roll a 20 that landed off paper, pick the die back up and roll a 3. And take the 3. He may be odd, but at least he's consistent. :smallbiggrin:

Tyndmyr
2009-09-26, 06:43 PM
Eh, so long as it's consistent, it's not really cheating. I do find it easier to stick w the first roll, though, even if it does lead to moving furniture to discover if the necessary roll was made.

seedjar
2009-09-26, 07:02 PM
As a DM, I feel like fudging dice rolls isn't totally unacceptable. It does indicate poor planning, though; if I have to take extreme measures to prevent a TPK or stop the game from grinding to a halt, I'm certainly not happy with myself. When I've miscalculated the encounter, I'll usually try to admit to it. (After all, even the books are guilty of that sometimes; best to just be honest about it and try to do better next time.) But I also try not to rely on lying about rolls to fix it when it happens. Usually, I'll take a moment and adjust my numbers to bring the challenge back in line with what I had in mind. I do my best to have some expected level of challenge for anything I throw at my groups; so long as the players experience something roughly in line with that difficulty level, I feel like I'm doing my job.
There are, of course, alternatives to this kind of thing - sometimes. I like to build my big, potentially TPK-ing encounters so that the antagonists aren't necessarily out to kill the players. My favorite approach is to have the BBEG attempt to extort the party into doing his/her/its dirty work (with various degrees of veiling; if I did it the same way each time the players would catch on fast.) Taking prisoners is good too, but it's easy to paint yourself in a corner that way.
As a player, I have to admit that I'm occasionally guilty of double rolling. I don't have my own dice and usually use a diceroller on my phone or PDA. For some time, the one that I used would often lock up or not respond immediately to a button press, in which case I would do as all computer users compulsively do and keep clicking even when I knew it wasn't going to do any good. Then the roller would wake back up and I'd get two results instead of one. As much as I tried to just take whatever was showing at the time, once the rest of my group stopped caring to look the temptation to report the better number started to get the better of me. Particularly, those occurrences always seemed to coincide with fast-moving or plot-critical moments in the game, and often one of the results would be much more undesirable than the other. Definitely not proud of that - it's one of the reasons I prefer running games over playing them.
~Joe

Volkov
2009-09-26, 07:03 PM
Someone in my party tried to look at the DM's confidential papers concerning future encounters a while back. We got a few dozen dread wraiths to deal with for our troubles.

seedjar
2009-09-26, 07:14 PM
Wow, spying? That seems like it's beyond cheating to me... My gaming groups are made up of my friends. That kind of thing would be a violation of trust.
~Joe

Wraith
2009-09-26, 07:34 PM
Normally I agree with this 100% but we have a guy in our group who's dice must always land on his paper in order to count for him. Always. Frigging annoying.

That said, I have seen him roll a 20 that landed off paper, pick the die back up and roll a 3. And take the 3. He may be odd, but at least he's consistent. :smallbiggrin:

Strangely enough, this is something I like to insist upon when I'm GMing - nothing so strict as 'on your character sheet', but it irks me to no end if Players throw their dice all over the place.

I suppose I'm just a little bit of a control freak and like to be able to randomly 'spot check' dice rolls that seem too good or too poor, but I have a logical grounding for it. In competitive play for boardgames and things (Blood Bowl in my case, if anyone knows it...) throwing dice around not only upsets the board but makes it difficult to see what is being rolled.

To this day, I still remember a game where I spent an hour grinding my teeth at a guy who hurled his dice high into the air and scattered them all over our table AND that of the people playing next to us, only for his to beat me quite convincingly. I can't prove that he was cheating, but then again I couldn't see what half of his dice came up as when they stopped rolling either....

He was also of the habit to point at a miniature, throw a bunch of dice and then declare what had just happened retrospectively. Again, I can't prove that he was cheating (and to be fair he was a nice guy and probably wasn't) but if he was there was no way I could have been able to catch it with so many things flying around for seemingly random reasons.

Indon
2009-09-26, 08:44 PM
I've experienced two types of cheating.

First is the 'oh hey I happened to roll another character with four 18's wouldja look at that' type of player - I only encountered them when I was younger and I never faced them on it, the problem just went away when I moved on to a different group.

Second is the 'oh **** I forgot about this rule' type of thing, which is generally legitimately an accident, but it happens, and I've seen it in every group I've been in. The 4E game I'm playing in, in particular, probably has a lot of this from all the players and the DM, simply because none of us know the rules cover-to-cover - so I figure we're probably all unintentionally playing wrong to some degree or another. If it weren't for the fact that we're using character builder sheets, we'd probably be hopelessly jacked up. My groups minimize this simply by having each other double-check stuff and gently correct errors when they get spotted. Everyone screws up sometimes, and the mature players I play with haven't been sensitive about it, so it's worked well.

Tiktakkat
2009-09-26, 09:20 PM
Not entirely true. Players are still expected to role play...to avoid metagaming...to engage with their character's environment...to have significant impact on that environment...etc. But, even if you were to discount all of that as I'm certain some will, all you've done is given reasons to justify cheating. Justified or not, it's still 'lying about the results of a random mechanic'...which most will term 'cheating'.

I did not say players do not contribute to and have a significant impact on the story. Of course they do. What they do not do is create the basic story that will be interacted with, or the specific encounters. Further, the players do not get 100% foreknowledge of their opponents as they prepare. By all those standards, in a competitive format, the DM is overtly "cheating" as he creates the adventure. Once you have that, how does it matter how else he "cheats"?


So you've played in a lot of campaigns where the GM didn't fudge rolls or cheat? Or is the second half of your sentence "crossing your fingers"?

Well, I think by most objective considerations, I have not played in a "lot" of campaigns in general, I predominantly run games.
As for the percentage of campaigns where the DM never "cheated", as you call it, I would say it was very low.
As for the number where the DM actively "cheated", again as you call it, in favor of the players, the number was relatively high, and the campaigns had long lifespans.
As for the number where the DM actively "cheated", and this would be on the same level as players cheating, the number was relatively low, and said games had extraordinarily short lifespans.
As for the number where I just relied on the die rolls, that is very low, and such campaigns were never as fun as the ones where I "creatively interpreted them to suit the story development". Indeed, by far the vast majority of regrets I have from all of the campaigns and individual games I have run is not the number in which I acted that way, but all of the incidents in which I stuck to the dice as rolled.
YMMV, mine has not.


Cheating for the "continuation and enjoyment" of the story sounds like one of those times where I notice the DC to hit the mob is rising as the GM realizes we're about to kill his plot-centric character.

For me such instances always led to the GM not being wanted or allowed to run any more.


How do you feel when you know that there isn't any actual risk to your character so long as you play relatively conservatively?

Most people I have run for have no issue with that. If it causes them to play more conservatively, it is only because they want to avoid relying on me to save them rather than their own creativity in dealing with encounters.
And at times they have even come right out and requested a character death so they could change characters, allowing me a chance to work it into the story with a dramatic scene.
That allows them to have a reasonable appreciation for overlooking me altering things when their dice go absurdly cold, or I have simply misread an encounter difficulty.


It doesn't particularily matter which way the DM is cheating, it *will* come out eventually or at least be strongly suspected, which is no better. When it does, it makes the actions of the players less important because the outcome is much less variable. Eventually, the monster dies, you get the loot, yay. If there's no chance of failure, then lack of failure is not a success.

Failure can be measured in many ways, as can success.
And it depends on if your story is structured to have only one possible ending.

Consider also the effect the PCs not having a certain degree of plot immunity means. You can never run a campaign where a character is fated to do something or other because killing the character immediately ends that storyline.

The Big Dice
2009-09-26, 09:45 PM
Well, I think by most objective considerations, I have not played in a "lot" of campaigns in general, I predominantly run games.
As for the percentage of campaigns where the DM never "cheated", as you call it, I would say it was very low.
As for the number where the DM actively "cheated", again as you call it, in favor of the players, the number was relatively high, and the campaigns had long lifespans.
As for the number where the DM actively "cheated", and this would be on the same level as players cheating, the number was relatively low, and said games had extraordinarily short lifespans.
As for the number where I just relied on the die rolls, that is very low, and such campaigns were never as fun as the ones where I "creatively interpreted them to suit the story development". Indeed, by far the vast majority of regrets I have from all of the campaigns and individual games I have run is not the number in which I acted that way, but all of the incidents in which I stuck to the dice as rolled.
YMMV, mine has not.

I completely agree with this line of thinking. I might phrase things differently, but I'd say that most GMs cheat by the dictionary definition of the word. And not just a little bit, but great big whopping cheats that would have their players packing their dice away in righteous fury if they realised how bad it really is on the other side of the GM screen.

But the GMs that have their players come back time and again for years on end are the ones who cheat in favour of making the game better, rather than just sticking it to the players.

I've known a couple of players that had obscenely good luckwith their dice rolls. They'd roll fantastic all night until someone complained about their dice not being right. The kind of person who in a Warhammer RPG session killed a Bloodthirster with a fluke exploding damage roll, or when they really need a 20 to come up, it does. At which point they'd swap dice with the disgruntled player and continue to roll great rolls. But that's just some people being lucky at dice rolling. And they'd continue to be lucky when using dice cups or even the popper thing with a d6 in it taken from an old board game.

But I have known one player who isn't just a bit of a cheat, he's an outrageous, barefaced cheat of unprecedented proportions. He would regularly over spend on his characters, and not just a point or two that would be found and corrected. In 1st edition Legend of the Five Rings, I did a sheet audit because something didn't seem right and found he'd over spent by almost 100 points. Not bad for a game that gave you 25 to start with. You know how a lot of people get that moment of counting up math when they roll a dice? This person wouldn't get that at all. He'd just get awesomely good rolls but never leave the dice on the table for long enough for the person next to him to see what was rolled.

Needless to say, he's not in my gaming group anymore.

littlebottom
2009-09-26, 09:52 PM
in my younger years, well, not that much younger, when i started roleplaying, i lied about my roll to save myself from dying, it was like the 4th time id ever played though and i was still getting used to the systems and such, and i didnt want to die! forgive me:smalleek:

Raum
2009-09-26, 10:23 PM
I did not say players do not contribute to and have a significant impact on the story. Of course they do. What they do not do is create the basic story that will be interacted with, or the specific encounters. Further, the players do not get 100% foreknowledge of their opponents as they prepare. By all those standards, in a competitive format, the DM is overtly "cheating" as he creates the adventure. Once you have that, how does it matter how else he "cheats"?Matter? It's a game, none of it really matters...but it is hypocrisy to say "It's good when I cheat and bad when you do!" To me it's an ethical issue. Telling a fantastic story everyone knows is fiction is far different from lying about a random mechanal result.


Well, I think by most objective considerations, I have not played in a "lot" of campaigns in general, I predominantly run games.
As for the percentage of campaigns where the DM never "cheated", as you call it, I would say it was very low. And yet you stated you could think of numerous cases where players cheated while the DM hadn't? That must have been some game.

Tiktakkat
2009-09-26, 11:24 PM
Matter? It's a game, none of it really matters...but it is hypocrisy to say "It's good when I cheat and bad when you do!" To me it's an ethical issue. Telling a fantastic story everyone knows is fiction is far different from lying about a random mechanal result.

Okay then, where in the rules does it say the DM must obey the dice no matter what?
The answer is: nowhere. If anything, the ever popular Rule 0 suggests the DM is free to do exactly the opposite of that.
As such, DM fudging is not cheating. issues of transcendent theoretical ethics notwithstanding.

Nor in fact is it hypocrisy, as the actions are taken with completely different intent.
A DM overruling the dice in favor of the players is acting to enhance the experience of the entire group.
A player ignoring rules, rerolling dice, miscalling his dice, failing to keep track of hit points, or the like, is acting solely in his favor.
If a player were to attempt to "cheat" in order to improve the experience in some fashion, "accidentally" tapping his die until a stabilize check on another party member at -9 hp succeeds, I would "conveniently" be looking the other way, or muttering something about the current roll not being flat on the table and needing to be rerolled, or the like.
You may object to it, but not a single person at any table I have ever run has ever said anything negative to me when I ask for a volunteer to be the person I actually just rolled that critical hit against instead of the person with 3 hit points left.

As for whether it matters, in fact, for many people, it does.
Gaming is a hobby, but that makes enjoying it all the more important. You will find vanishingly few people who drop barbells on their feet as a hobby, or who prefer to make a broken table instead of a useful one in their woodworking shop.
If my misreading a monster's remaining hit points by 50 at a critical moment is the difference between someone walking home on a high after kicking major monster rear end and someone slouching home after getting punked yet again, I am going to assign Grudge Damage to said monster and wallow in it.


And yet you stated you could think of numerous cases where players cheated while the DM hadn't? That must have been some game.

Yes, I did.
And I can.
And yes, they were some games.
They also includ numerous instances where I was the DM and not the player, which since you seem not to have thought of as a possibility for me knowing of so many cases of it happening.

And having a choice, I play with players who do not cheat, and who accept that the DM will place overall enjoyment first, and trust him to make whatever ad hoc modifications are required to achieve it.
If that is beyond your experience, oh well. I guess I am just lucky in having met so many decent players over the years.

And if for whatever reason it makes you feel better to call me a cheater because I believe that a DM altering things to benefit the players is a Good Thing (TM), so be it.
I will, as I always have, point to the number of players, the number of campaigns, the length of those campaigns, and the satisfaction of those players, that I have had over the years, and remain absolutely and completely sure that I am right.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-26, 11:49 PM
I did not say players do not contribute to and have a significant impact on the story. Of course they do. What they do not do is create the basic story that will be interacted with, or the specific encounters. Further, the players do not get 100% foreknowledge of their opponents as they prepare. By all those standards, in a competitive format, the DM is overtly "cheating" as he creates the adventure. Once you have that, how does it matter how else he "cheats"?

That is, however, within the rules. Yes, the DM and the players have different rules, but that's not unique to D&D. All sorts of games have different types of rules for different players.

There are specific guidelines for GMs, and deviations from these should be things accepted by all concerned, not merely ruled by DM fiat. Also, there are loopholes in the rules that would allow the GM to throw pun puns and such at the players. This is as generally unacceptable as players becoming pun pun. Standard gentleman's agreement applies here.

Yes, it *does* matter how the GM cheats.

Sir_Elderberry
2009-09-26, 11:55 PM
Except that the rules quite explicitly say that the GM's authority is above the written rules. The DM isn't a "different kind of player", he is the system.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 12:17 AM
No. They are also the arbiter of the rules, if only because it would probably be less fun to have someone who's sole purpose was to arbitrate between the DMs and the players. It'd be a kinda thankless job, and it's tough enough to find a good DM.

The DM is definitely not the system, and even if they have a great deal of flexibility in selecting challenges, they have a great number of rules governing their behavior. Wealth by level, CR, appropriate encounters, etc. Yes, there is choice within that, but you shouldn't simply ignore those rules unless all concerned are in agreement. If you do, it leads to a crappier game, and less enjoyment(and yes, I've definitely seen this. Often coming from when a GM isn't bothering to learn how to play mobs terribly well, and resorts to just using increasingly high level ones instead.)

See page 13 of the DMG, in the section entitled Player-DM trust for a rules justification of the above.

Gan The Grey
2009-09-27, 12:43 AM
Actually, DM's can't cheat. See, players have to abide completely by the rules, or else acquire a DM's permission to break them. This shows that all rules bend or break before the will of the DM, and the DM alone, and if those rules are 100% within the DM's control, then nothing he could do with them would be considered cheating. The players might not LIKE what he is doing, but you can disagree with him all day long and you still only have 2 options:

1. Suck it up and move on.
2. Quit.

And that really just proves Tiktakkat's point. The only really obligation to the players the DM has is to insure they are having fun. That is the ONLY rule.

As for cheating players, I once had a friend play a wizard. Every time I would start to put out terrain, he would immediately say, "I cast Shield." Eventually, I started putting out terrain when nothing was going on. This is still a running joke in my circle, one that drives me CRZY. I can't put out ONE SINGLE JENGA PIECE without someone in the group casting fake shield.
SIGH!

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 12:45 AM
Option #3: Books fly.

Gan The Grey
2009-09-27, 12:47 AM
Option #3: Books fly.

Oh, now you're just being argumentative. :smallbiggrin:

sonofzeal
2009-09-27, 12:52 AM
Eh, I'm on the side of permissiveness for the DM here. A player cheating puts them at an unfair advantage over their honest peers, but the DM's responsibility is to the group. Ideally... well, what I try to do as DM is make up excuses to give the players extra chances to roll and avoid massive death. Oh, someone failed a balance check and is going to fall into lava? Ref save to grab the edge... Ref save from the people around you to grab YOU.... initiative checks to give them a chance to do something before you land... fail all that, yeah you hit the lava, hope your next guy has more luck. =P

Still, I'm not opposed to fiddling with the dice every once in a while.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 12:56 AM
Well, the "accept it or go home" is kinda a false choice. I've seen mass player uprisings, forcing the DM to abide by the rules. Of course, when it comes to that point, it's a bad sign for the rest of the campaign.

Yes, there are house rules, variant rules, and so forth...but they are still rules, and should not be arbitrarily disregarded. If psionics = magic for the players, the same should be true for the monsters the DM uses, as an example.

Changing rules is not the same as cheating, and DMs can definitely cheat.

sonofzeal
2009-09-27, 01:01 AM
Well, the "accept it or go home" is kinda a false choice. I've seen mass player uprisings, forcing the DM to abide by the rules. Of course, when it comes to that point, it's a bad sign for the rest of the campaign.

Yes, there are house rules, variant rules, and so forth...but they are still rules, and should not be arbitrarily disregarded. If psionics = magic for the players, the same should be true for the monsters the DM uses, as an example.

Changing rules is not the same as cheating, and DMs can definitely cheat.
Well, if the DM is changing the rules to give his monsters an "unfair" advantage, yeah, that sucks. If the DM is fudging the occasional die roll to make things a bit harder or give a PC a second chance, I don't really see that as cheating. If victory and defeat are both possible, and the PCs can accomplish both on their own terms, I don't see a problem.

Jade_Tarem
2009-09-27, 01:09 AM
@Those saying DM dice cheating is always bad....

HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION

You've just spent quite a while creating a character. You, being a fantastic, intelligent, and odor-free DnD roleplayer, have worked your butt off to make a character with a realistic personality, a complete and diverse backstory, and a solid statblock. You've spent the previous week getting permission from the DM to tie the character's backstory into the campaign's history, and tweaking aspects of it to your satisfaction. You really like the character. And now, finally, you're ready to play.

So you play for a while, and eventually you get to your first combat. And I, the DM, have Joe Orc attack you in round one, and roll two natural twenties and max damage, beating the 1/3200 odds against it killing your character instantly.

So, question: Do I be a bad, bad, cheating SOB and report less damage than you actually took, or say that he missed? Or do I flush all that effort on your part straight down the toilet in the first round of the first combat?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Ganurath
2009-09-27, 01:12 AM
...Were those dispel rolls against Velshar really that bad that none of them were successful?

Tiktakkat
2009-09-27, 01:13 AM
No. They are also the arbiter of the rules, if only because it would probably be less fun to have someone who's sole purpose was to arbitrate between the DMs and the players. It'd be a kinda thankless job, and it's tough enough to find a good DM.

The DM is definitely not the system, and even if they have a great deal of flexibility in selecting challenges, they have a great number of rules governing their behavior. Wealth by level, CR, appropriate encounters, etc. Yes, there is choice within that, but you shouldn't simply ignore those rules unless all concerned are in agreement. If you do, it leads to a crappier game, and less enjoyment(and yes, I've definitely seen this. Often coming from when a GM isn't bothering to learn how to play mobs terribly well, and resorts to just using increasingly high level ones instead.)

See page 13 of the DMG, in the section entitled Player-DM trust for a rules justification of the above.

"If the players trust you—and through you, the game system—they will recognize that anything that enters the game has been carefully considered."

And in what way would that invalidate a DM arbitrating things in the player's favor is spite of die results?

(And as an aside, the only good way to use mobs is not to.)


There are specific guidelines for GMs, and deviations from these should be things accepted by all concerned, not merely ruled by DM fiat. Also, there are loopholes in the rules that would allow the GM to throw pun puns and such at the players. This is as generally unacceptable as players becoming pun pun. Standard gentleman's agreement applies here.

Yes, it *does* matter how the GM cheats.

Well, citing the DMG, how about page 18?

"Do you cheat? The answer: The DM really can’t cheat. You’re the umpire, and what you say goes. As such, it’s certainly within your rights to sway things one way or another to keep people happy or keep things running smoothly. It’s no fun losing a longterm character who gets run over by a cart. A good rule of thumb is that a character shouldn’t die in a trivial way because of some fluke of the dice unless he or she was doing something really
stupid at the time."

Yes, the next paragraph in that section present the opposing position, and the one after that discusses the issue of perception. That does not change that, lo and behold, according to RAW, it is as I said, the DM cannot really cheat.

And, to me, that last paragraph does not go far enough to stating that the ultimate goal of DMing should be to convince the players that every action and roll is the sole and exclusive element separating them from total defeat or total victory, in complete contradiction to the evidence of their eyes and their meta-gaming awareness. Let them believe it consciously! Then subvert it subconsciously, and let that overtake their conscious understanding of the matter so that they become completely lost in the story.
How do you think action movies work? You "know" Bruce or Jason or Brad or Matt or Vin or whoever is absolutely, positively, not going to die in the first 5 minutes, and barring a few very special cases has total plot immunity through the last 5 minutes as well. But somehow you still wind up on the edge of your seat, heart pounding, gasping as they evade certain death yet again.
Somewhere in there the director (or writer or actors depending) manages to "cheat" and "lie" to you, absolutely convincing you that something bad really could happen to the hero right then and there.
And when it works if you watch the movie a second time or more?

And thus back to what I first said, I do not consider such actions in favor of the players by a DM to be cheating.

Jade_Tarem
2009-09-27, 01:15 AM
...Were those dispel rolls against Velshar really that bad that none of them were successful?

Actually, yes. I couldn't believe it, and I haven't used that online roller since. But that's another issue. :smalltongue:

That said, I stated at the beginning of the game that I might fudge rolls to avoid demolishing a player through excessive bad luck, and the players agreed to play by those rules.

ShadowsGrnEyes
2009-09-27, 01:17 AM
As a GM I have fudged rolls to make plot important combats more difficult or more spectacular. I have also occasionaly avoided cheating by giving my Big Bad's magic items that I invented to give them a little more oomf. In my mind if your players have optomized to the point where your level appropriate CR big bad ISNT a threat. . . then it's your duty as a GM to throw in some extras to challenge them. Without the challenge the game is no fun. It shouldnt be impossible, just a a challenge.

As a player I have on occasion had sloppy character sheets where i would unintentionly give myself a bonus to AC or a higher save DC on a spell and later not know why it was there and have to Audit my sheet then realize i was inadvertently cheating. . .

In my experience I think Cheating at Dnd is a side effect of 3 things. . .
1. Being new to the idea of cooperative play (no winner no looser) games, therefore feeling you need to "be the best" to win.
2. being in a situation where you feel that if you dont roll well that you are going to be overshadowed and ignored (largely with new players again)
3. just being really competative as a person.


Side note: D20's that have 1 right next to 2 and 20 right next to 19 rather than on opposing sides are life count dice from "Magic". They're just fine if you give them a good roll. If your carefully trying to roll to the high side thats cheating.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 01:18 AM
Would it be ok for the player to fudge his saving throw in an otherwise identical situation to save said character?

Would it be ok for the DM to cheat to save an equivalent amount of work on his campaign?

Is it better to kill the character off later, after more time and effort has been put into developing the character?

If it's not acceptable to kill a brand new character, when and why does it become acceptable?

As an aside, that situation is literally a 1/102,400 shot.

MCerberus
2009-09-27, 01:21 AM
I cheated very recently. I was DMing the usual trippyverse 1-shot. Long story short, there was a long battle and the last enemy wouldn't die... or hit anyone. A few rounds go by nobody rolls above a 4. NPC's initiative comes up, a 1 of course. We use critical failures, but the first good roll comes up. 14s turn into 4s so easily. Self-impaled mook.

Jade_Tarem
2009-09-27, 01:26 AM
Would it be ok for the player to fudge his saving throw in an otherwise identical situation to save said character?

The player doesn't have the kind of knowledge needed to make that decision, since DC's shouldn't really be known to him. For this to work, the player would have to be fudging all the time. The DM can do it selectively.

I'd bring up the whole thing about the DM governing the rules, rather than the other way around, but your previous posts have made it very clear that the way your group plays, there are some arbitrarily selected rules that the DM can't change for some reason. And that's fine. But that's not usually how it goes.


Would it be ok for the DM to cheat to save an equivalent amount of work on his campaign?

Yes. Because very little sucks for the players worse than:

"Huh. I guess you got him. Whelp, that was a fun two-session campaign. Anyone up for Halo?"

*discards the other 96% of campaign*


Is it better to kill the character off later, after more time and effort has been put into developing the character?

Maybe - a character death later on has a lot more dramatic meaning to it, and at least the player would have had a chance to play the freaking character. It can be a bad idea then, too, but tell me this - what was the last really good story you read where the main characters die (for real, they die and get buried and don't do anything else), in chapter one, and the rest of the story is the remaining people standing around going, "Hey, you remember that time those guys almost had an epic adventure? Wasn't that great?"



If it's not acceptable to kill a brand new character, when and why does it become acceptable?

See above, regarding drama and storytelling.


As an aside, that situation is literally a 1/102,400 shot.

Would it be any better if it was a 1/102,399 shot?

taltamir
2009-09-27, 01:33 AM
i think players and the dm are there to play and create a story.
If the DM makes an adjustment to the roll it is not the same as you doing so. When a player lies about a roll, he is being antagonistic to the party, endangering them (by causing a shift in their perceived strength and thus the encounters they face) and just all around being a jerk.
If a DM fudges a roll, he is keeping the game moving and alive, because its not really fun to take a one hour break while you roll a new character.

The thing is, if you roll a 1, and fall into the lava; or get hacked to death, or whatever. The DM and sometimes the other players too could come up with some "contrived" explanation on why your survive and the game continues. No lying or cheating required.
If you did something stupid, or people have patience, then you get to roll a new character.

it is the difference really between "going out to play a game" and "going out to win simulated combat".

So, while I cannot universally be against (OR for) DM fudging dice, I am against players doing so. DM fiat to save you from a nat 1 you rolled is different.

sonofzeal
2009-09-27, 01:38 AM
I'll field this one.


Would it be ok for the player to fudge his saving throw in an otherwise identical situation to save said character?
Not really. The DM's the arbiter, he should be the one to make that call. If the player presumes to take that matter into their own hands, that removes virtually all sense of risk and danger from the game, and is unfair to more honest players. If the DM does it, you don't get any of those problems.


Would it be ok for the DM to cheat to save an equivalent amount of work on his campaign?
It'd be selfish of him, and contrary to his role as someone specifically there to entertain the group, not himself. Again, the more elegant approach is to find an "out", something the dice can mean other than a strict end to things.


Is it better to kill the character off later, after more time and effort has been put into developing the character?
First session is usually really bad taste, and should be given extra leniency.


If it's not acceptable to kill a brand new character, when and why does it become acceptable?
I'd generally follow a few basic guidelines.... don't kill PCs at the beginning of sessions, don't kill PCs unless they've made a mistake of some sort, don't kill a PCs if it'd seriously ruin someone's day (but if they're this attached to the character, a quiet word and maybe putting that character on hold for a while might be appropriate). DO kill PCs if they've done something stupid to expose themselves to danger, DO kill PCs if the player wants to retire them, DO kill PCs if they make a heroic last stand in the process. And DO kill PCs if the dice have a thorough and vicious and continuing vendetta against them, not merely one unlucky round.


As an aside, that situation is literally a 1/102,400 shot.
Depends on whether you're rolling twice or doubling, and whether you really care that it's exactly max or just that the total is enough to kill you (ie around 10-15). An Orc with a crit deals an average of 18 damage, more than enough to kill most any lvl1 character, and even minimum damage would probably kill anyone with d8 HD or less.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 01:40 AM
The player doesn't have the kind of knowledge needed to make that decision, since DC's shouldn't really be known to him. For this to work, the player would have to be fudging all the time. The DM can do it selectively.

Saving throws are remarkably easy to calculate. The spell level is a given, the only variable is the primary caster stat. Yes, not all saving throws may be known, but odds are pretty good a player who wanted to cheat his way out of one could.

That's not important. What's important is if he *should*.


I'd bring up the whole thing about the DM governing the rules, rather than the other way around, but your previous posts have made it very clear that the way your group plays, there are some arbitrarily selected rules that the DM can't change for some reason. And that's fine. But that's not usually how it goes.

I find that in practice, gentleman's agreement is quite common. It's not that the specific rules are applied the same in every game, but that whatever rules are applied are done so consistently.


Yes. Because very little sucks for the players worse than:

"Huh. I guess you got him. Whelp, that was a fun two session campaign."

If the DM has his entire plotline invalidated in two sessions, then he clearly missed something pretty significant. At this point, he needs to either get back to work, and figure out how to take the plot in another direction, or fess up to the players that he had other plans, and roll with it from there.

Remember, it can't be cheating if the entire group is ok with something. In that case, it's just the way you play.


Maybe - a character death later on has a lot more dramatic meaning to it, and at least the player would have had a chance to play the freaking character. It can be a bad idea then, too, but tell me this - what was the last really good story you read where the main characters die (for real, they die and get buried and don't do anything else), in chapter one, and the rest of the story is the remaining people standing around going, "Hey, you remember that time those guys almost had an epic adventure? Wasn't that great?"

Well, the guy who dies in chapter one and is not somehow brought back generally doesn't make it to main character status. That said, I've read many a book in which the first character or characters to receive detailed attention brutally died. It's typically used as a device to emphasize danger, etc.

It's not going to be any more epic if he dies to kobolds at level 2, most likely. This sort of thinking ends up removing a great deal of risk from adventuring, and leads to players(even if only subconsciously), only really caring about the boss fights.


Would it be any better if it was a 1/102,399 shot?

Well, the point is that it doesn't happen that often. It could, sure, but it's an incredibly unlikely event.

However, crits are part of the game. If you take them out, you reduce variety. You could do that, sure, but it makes the life of the melee players much less fun.

Tiktakkat
2009-09-27, 01:46 AM
The player doesn't have the kind of knowledge needed to make that decision, since DC's shouldn't really be known to him. For this to work, the player would have to be fudging all the time. The DM can do it selectively.

Heh.
That puts me in mind of something from my AD&D days.

Back then, the save charts were only in the DMG. There was no calculating DC or anything, it was all just the player rolled and the DM looked it up, with no actual statement that the player even knew what the required saves were.
Then out came various character record sheets with spaces to write down your saves. Most players immediately leaped at an excuse to look within the otherwise forbidden DMG, and record some of the ultra-secret information contained therein.
Going by the usual standards at the time, I naturally reacted with shock and outrage to see a player dare to touch the DMG during a game session. I asked what they were doing, got the simple answer that they were writing down their saves, nodded, and calmly noted that they were free to do so, but that it meant I would be unable to "cheat" and keep them alive if they had actual proof otherwise.

The universal response was to snap the DMG shut, pass it back to me, and take an eraser to that section of the character sheet.


Yes. Because very little sucks for the players worse than:

"Huh. I guess you got him. Whelp, that was a fun two session campaign."

Or remeber the "If you knew I was going to break it, why did you give it to me?" Rule:
If you do not want it to die, do not put it where the PCs can get at it.

I do not care if it is a glimpse through a curtain in fog at night a thousand yards away, with 58 different kinds of warding spells and auto-teleport to safety spells; if it is "present", it can be killed, and if you cannot deal with having it killed right then and there, do not put it there.

Mind you, there should usually be a dozen or more other rules and tropes to allow you to get around an incident like that, but always, always, always, expect that if it is present the players will discover it, and will kill it.

DarknessLord
2009-09-27, 01:49 AM
Yes. Because very little sucks for the players worse than:

"Huh. I guess you got him. Whelp, that was a fun two-session campaign. Anyone up for Halo?"

*discards the other 96% of campaign*


Waitwaitwaitwaitwait, you're saying that, two sessions into a campaign, if they kill the supposed BBEG, it's over? You really can't salvage it at this point? Scheming henchmen continues his plot, he was actually working for someone, he has access to the clone spell? (The last one is kinda a jerk move) Heck those are just ways to keep the exact plot, let alone re purposing the work you've done into a new plot as a result of this early death.

Players throwing you a curveball like that should be at the very worst a "Man, I wasn't expecting that, good job guys, I gotta take a bit to figure out where to go from here, so we'll end early today, anyone for Halo?", although if your improvising skills are up to snuff, this should be a 15 minute break or ideally just rolling with it.

Re-working what you got is a much better alternative to cheating, or ending things prematurely (but if you got a legitimate ending by all means call it a two session campaign, and see what you can selvage for your next adventure ).

That's just my 2 coppers.

taltamir
2009-09-27, 01:52 AM
I would like to second the notion that freeing a demon... while heavily injured, without taking any precautions (say, magic circle against evil, planer lock, etc), and then dying... well, they really brought it on themselves.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 01:57 AM
I'll field this one.


Not really. The DM's the arbiter, he should be the one to make that call. If the player presumes to take that matter into their own hands, that removes virtually all sense of risk and danger from the game, and is unfair to more honest players. If the DM does it, you don't get any of those problems.

I would agree that the player should not do it. I disagree that the DM bypasses those problems.

If the players are aware that the DM is cheating, then the sense of risk and danger is again lost. Of course, the argument that it doesn't hurt provided nobody finds out is exactly the same argument used by cheating players. Both are equally flawed.


It'd be selfish of him, and contrary to his role as someone specifically there to entertain the group, not himself. Again, the more elegant approach is to find an "out", something the dice can mean other than a strict end to things.

Agreed. The rules leave a great deal of discretion to the DM in terms of tactics, encounter locations, etc. In a few unanticipated situations, a short break may be required to figure out what's going to happen next, but in general, it's possible to figure out a solution that doesn't ruin the campaign using methods other than fudging die rolls.


I'd generally follow a few basic guidelines.... don't kill PCs at the beginning of sessions, don't kill PCs unless they've made a mistake of some sort, don't kill a PCs if it'd seriously ruin someone's day (but if they're this attached to the character, a quiet word and maybe putting that character on hold for a while might be appropriate). DO kill PCs if they've done something stupid to expose themselves to danger, DO kill PCs if the player wants to retire them, DO kill PCs if they make a heroic last stand in the process. And DO kill PCs if the dice have a thorough and vicious and continuing vendetta against them, not merely one unlucky round.

See, I appreciate the sentiments, but this sort of thing does lead to life and death being heavily reliant on DM judgement. If they've done "something stupid", and die, and another player has "bad luck" and is saved by the DM, how will the "something stupid" player feel?


Depends on whether you're rolling twice or doubling, and whether you really care that it's exactly max or just that the total is enough to kill you (ie around 10-15). An Orc with a crit deals an average of 18 damage, more than enough to kill most any lvl1 character, and even minimum damage would probably kill anyone with d8 HD or less.

I assumed the falchion, as a javelin crit won't kill anyone with over 5hp.

So, dmg for that is 2d4+3. Given that only variable damage is rolled again for crits, it becomes 4d4+3. Any front liner should have at least a d8 hit die, and probably a coupla points of con. Say, 10 hp given a +2 con modifier. That's enough to survive a maxed out crit. At -9, granted, but still savable. In the case of a non-maxed crit, you'll have some time to save them.

Im not sure how you got an average crit dmg of 18, given that the range is 7-19.

Squishy casters and stuff might die to a non-maxed crit roll, but yeah...if you're front lining against melee types as a level 1 caster, and get crit...that happens.

Jade_Tarem
2009-09-27, 02:04 AM
Saving throws are remarkably easy to calculate. The spell level is a given, the only variable is the primary caster stat. Yes, not all saving throws may be known, but odds are pretty good a player who wanted to cheat his way out of one could.

That's not important. What's important is if he *should*.

I find that in practice, gentleman's agreement is quite common. It's not that the specific rules are applied the same in every game, but that whatever rules are applied are done so consistently.

If the DM has his entire plotline invalidated in two sessions, then he clearly missed something pretty significant. At this point, he needs to either get back to work, and figure out how to take the plot in another direction, or fess up to the players that he had other plans, and roll with it from there.

Remember, it can't be cheating if the entire group is ok with something. In that case, it's just the way you play.

They player should not, for the reasons taltamir listed - it puts strain on the party, and misrepresents their strength for when the DM plans future encounters. The DM's occasional fudging does nothing of the sort. Also, generally, it has been my experience that the players would prefer not to die unless they're tired of the character. On more than one occasion, I've had the players discover that I was fudging (I don't have a screen), and demand that I not. Then I proceed to revise the state of combat, faithfully informing them of what's changed and what I really rolled. Invariably, they have told me that they've changed their minds and would prefer the fudging.

Also, DMs can't plan for everything - least of all for 1/102,400 chances to come true. Sometimes a string of dice rolls wrecks a plan and a plot that really should have worked under most reasonable circumstances. Now, your statment that the DM needs to stop the game for a week while he works something else out is one way to do it, but I generally find it easier to say "no, he made his save."

But I don't do it lightly. I've let important fights end more quickly than they were supposed to, but sometimes a PC drills a bad guy that was supposed to do something important.

For instance, I have a bad guy with 100 hp, that I've decided will surrender and give the PCs the information they want if they reduce him to 25 or less. Then the barbarian crits and takes him to -12 in one hit from 33, or the wizard casts Phantasmal Killer and he rolls a 1 on his save, killing him cold. Well, as you've said, I can stop the game and come up with another way to get the information to the players, or I can just tack on a few hit points or fudge the save roll.

I don't know if you think that makes me stupid or just lazy. Maybe sacrificing the pure, cold integrity of a bit of painted plastic and gravity for the sake of moving the game along makes me a terrible DM. But I don't think so, especially when it's given as a valid way to play in the DMG itself.


Well, the guy who dies in chapter one and is not somehow brought back generally doesn't make it to main character status. That said, I've read many a book in which the first character or characters to receive detailed attention brutally died. It's typically used as a device to emphasize danger, etc.

And then they're not the main character. That's the point. The PCs? They are the main characters of their story, and most players are going to be more than a little peeved about you burning their character sheet after five minutes of play. Why should I work hard on a character if he's going to die pointlessly in the first encounter? This just doesn't scream fun to me, which is what the game is about.


It's not going to be any more epic if he dies to kobolds at level 2, most likely. This sort of thinking ends up removing a great deal of risk from adventuring, and leads to players(even if only subconsciously), only really caring about the boss fights.

Now that is bad DMing. It's all about presentation. I've found that players can care about anything you're willing to make them care about.

FOR EXAMPLE

I'm playing an Undead Survival Horror PbP game on these very boards. We've recently run into a new kind of undead - something the DM calls a Burning Soul. And we've discovered that it's a homebrew monster that is *very* hard to kill. They're resistant to magic, pretty much immune to physical damage, and can shoot a big, nasty stream of fire every round. On the plus side, they're blind, deaf, and apparently whatever they use to detect enemies is pretty vague, which frequently leads to them missing with AOEs. This information was gained the hard way, when two of the players confronted one of these things. Out of dozens.

Boss fight? Not even close, but trust me, we cared - the situation had built them up, and they're guarding a place that we want to get into. We've spent quite a bit of time pondering how to defeat what amounts to an especially tough mook.


However, crits are part of the game. If you take them out, you reduce variety. You could do that, sure, but it makes the life of the melee players much less fun.

I wasn't suggesting removing crits. Just not vaporizing weeks of effort with one for no real reason than that the almighty d20 told me to do it.


I would agree that the player should not do it. I disagree that the DM bypasses those problems.

If the players are aware that the DM is cheating, then the sense of risk and danger is again lost. Of course, the argument that it doesn't hurt provided nobody finds out is exactly the same argument used by cheating players. Both are equally flawed.

:smallsigh:

The sense of risk and danger is artificial to begin with. If the DM can't generate it, it doesn't matter whether he's cheating or not. If he can, then it still doesn't matter.


See, I appreciate the sentiments, but this sort of thing does lead to life and death being heavily reliant on DM judgement. If they've done "something stupid", and die, and another player has "bad luck" and is saved by the DM, how will the "something stupid" player feel?

Bad. Which is kind of the point - it's meant to discourage him from trying to "Leroy Jenkins" in the future.

Really, it's not hard to tell stupidity from bad luck in most cases. If the death is a logical and probable consequence of their actions, then it's stupidity. If the death is random and out of the blue, it's bad luck.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 02:23 AM
They player should not, for the reasons taltamir listed - it puts strain on the party, and misrepresents their strength for when the DM plans future encounters. The DM's occasional fudging does nothing of the sort. Also, generally, it has been my experience that the players would prefer not to die unless they're tired of the character. On more than one occasion, I've had the players discover that I was fudging (I don't have a screen), and demand that I not. Then I proceed to revise the state of combat, faithfully informing them of what's changed and what I really rolled. Invariably, they have told me that they've changed their minds and would prefer the fudging.

Well, of course players prefer not to die, just as players prefer to win. The most memorable victories are the most difficult, though. If we remove the possibility of players dying until they tire of a character, the game experience is lessened.



Also, DMs can't plan for everything - least of all for 1/102,400 chances to come true. Sometimes a string of dice rolls wrecks a plan and a plot that really should have worked under most reasonable circumstances. Now, your statment that the DM needs to stop the game for a week while he works something else out is one way to do it, but I generally find it easier to say "no, he made his save."

Stop the game for a week? No. Find something else to do, yes. If you're going to have them fight some guy, the idea that they'll kill it is a real possibility that should be prepared for. IMO, if they ever deal with a guy, there is some possibility that they will fight it(very chaotic group of usual players for me). There should be some sort of contingency plan, no matter how vague, that you can flesh out if need be.

If you're truly surprised(and it happens to everyone at some point), take a fifteen minute break, and see if you can't figure out such an escape route. Your players will likely be congratulating themselves on wasting a bad guy the DM hadn't even thought they could possibly take. I recommend the following train of thought for a number of ideas: "if this villain were a comic book character, how would he avoid death?"


I don't know if you think that makes me stupid or just lazy. Maybe sacrificing the pure, cold integrity of a bit of painted plastic and gravity for the sake of moving the game along makes me a terrible DM. But I don't think so, especially when it's given as a valid way to play in the DMG itself.

I'm not going to pass judgement on if you are stupid or lazy...I frankly don't know you or your games well enough to say any such thing with accuracy. I'm just discussing what's the preferable course of action.



And then they're not the main character. That's the point. The PCs? They are the main characters of their story, and most players are going to be more than a little peeved about you burning their character sheet after five minutes of play. Why should I work hard on a character if he's going to die pointlessly in the first encounter? This just doesn't scream fun to me, which is what the game is about.

Well then, no, the character that died in encounter #1 is not the main character. The replacement character will be. That said, encounter #1 is not traditionally designed to be terribly lethal(and if it is, that's on the DM), so character deaths then are pretty much invariably attached to making some sort of terrible mistake.


Now that is bad DMing. It's all about presentation. I've found that players can care about anything you're willing to make them care about.

FOR EXAMPLE

I'm playing an Undead Survival Horror PbP game on these very boards. We've recently run into a new kind of undead - something the DM calls a Burning Soul. And we've discovered that it's a homebrew monster that is *very* hard to kill. They're resistant to magic, pretty much immune to physical damage, and can shoot a big, nasty stream of fire every round. On the plus side, they're blind, deaf, and apparently whatever they use to detect enemies is pretty vague, which frequently leads to them missing with AOEs. This information was gained the hard way, when two of the players confronted one of these things. Out of dozens. Boss fight? Not even close, but trust me, we cared - the situation had built them up, and they're guarding a place that we want to get into. We've spent quite a bit of time pondering how to defeat what amounts to an especially tough mook.

And would you have cared at all if they had not been difficult to defeat? If victory was assured regardless?

Yes, there are many interesting puzzles and so forth that can add flavor to the game, but if risk and reward are not tied to them, then it loses part of what makes it a roleplaying game. It's simply a series of encounters.

Jade_Tarem
2009-09-27, 02:37 AM
Waitwaitwaitwaitwait, you're saying that, two sessions into a campaign, if they kill the supposed BBEG, it's over? You really can't salvage it at this point? Scheming henchmen continues his plot, he was actually working for someone, he has access to the clone spell? (The last one is kinda a jerk move) Heck those are just ways to keep the exact plot, let alone re purposing the work you've done into a new plot as a result of this early death.

*Sigh* Look, no, just... just, no, ok? Cripes, you'd think I was trying to advocate taking candy from strangers.

I'm a big advocate of improvisation. I do a lot of it. But generally, every time you have to slap a fix on there, the campaign is a little weaker, which leads to more instances of the players wrecking it or noting contradictions.


Players throwing you a curveball like that should be at the very worst a "Man, I wasn't expecting that, good job guys, I gotta take a bit to figure out where to go from here, so we'll end early today, anyone for Halo?", although if your improvising skills are up to snuff, this should be a 15 minute break or ideally just rolling with it.

Go write a campaign for me. Make it a good one.

Then, I want you to roll a d20, and if it comes up 20, I want you to delete that campaign from your computer and write another one. THE DIE SAID SO. DO NOT QUESTION THE D20.


Re-working what you got is a much better alternative to cheating, or ending things prematurely (but if you got a legitimate ending by all means call it a two session campaign, and see what you can selvage for your next adventure ).

That's just my 2 coppers.

Putting aside, once again, the fact that the DM can't cheat...

I'm glad you have this kind of time. Really. I can't get an RL group together all that often, and when I do, I'd really prefer to spend the time playing rather than revising when a fudge could keep the game going. I'm sorry, it's just better that way.


Well, of course players prefer not to die, just as players prefer to win. The most memorable victories are the most difficult, though. If we remove the possibility of players dying until they tire of a character, the game experience is lessened.

That isn't what I was suggesting. Again. I know very well that challenging victories are more memorable.



Stop the game for a week? No. Find something else to do, yes. If you're going to have them fight some guy, the idea that they'll kill it is a real possibility that should be prepared for. IMO, if they ever deal with a guy, there is some possibility that they will fight it(very chaotic group of usual players for me). There should be some sort of contingency plan, no matter how vague, that you can flesh out if need be.

Perhaps I'm not making myself clear enough:

I. KNOW.

This isn't my first time to the DM rodeo. I've run a number of games, and tried a bunch of things, including contingency plans, improv, and I know very well that players can't be trusted not to kill anything and everything. What I suggest is a method to keep the game moving. The DM shouldn't let the players know that he's fudging, but your continual assertions that the DM's fudging is the same as the players cheating is not logically sound, for reasons given by taltamir that were never responded to.

And the playing hardcore by the dice thing? It's never worked. Not once.


If you're truly surprised(and it happens to everyone at some point), take a fifteen minute break, and see if you can't figure out such an escape route. Your players will likely be congratulating themselves on wasting a bad guy the DM hadn't even thought they could possibly take. I recommend the following train of thought for a number of ideas: "if this villain were a comic book character, how would he avoid death?"

Ironically, it's been my experience that players are much more likely to get upset about a villain making a comic book escape than if I just fudge the rolls and don't tell them.

And frequently, the comic book escape or quick fix is just fudging by another name - not rolling dice at all.


Well then, no, the character that died in encounter #1 is not the main character. The replacement character will be. That said, encounter #1 is not traditionally designed to be terribly lethal(and if it is, that's on the DM), so character deaths then are pretty much invariably attached to making some sort of terrible mistake.

And therein lies the problem. The first encounter isn't designed to kill players, but the dice (the holy relics which cannot be defied) have a curious habit of not cooperating with your expectations.


And would you have cared at all if they had not been difficult to defeat? If victory was assured regardless?

For all I know, victory is assured regardless. I can't see the DM's rolls. I don't know if he's even rolling anything. And I don't want to know, because we're currently in a situation where one of these things getting super lucky will pretty much end that character completely - it's really hard to raise people in this game, and the story doesn't lend itself well to making new characters, so a character death at this point will pretty much forcibly eject a player from the game, unless we want to accept a cheesy "Hey guys, I'm that high level dude that's been here the whole time, um, not helping when you guys desperately needed it. But now I feel like being useful."

And yes, I can think of two ways to introduce a new character regardless, since I appear to be giving off the vibe of having no imagination, but my point stands.


Yes, there are many interesting puzzles and so forth that can add flavor to the game, but if risk and reward are not tied to them, then it loses part of what makes it a roleplaying game. It's simply a series of encounters.

And if the DM is chained absolutely to what the dice say, then DnD is simply fanciful gambling.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 02:48 AM
Well, you keep proposing ludicrous scenarios such as "if the die comes up a 20, delete your campaign".

I'm saying that any campaign that falls apart because someone rolled a 20 wasn't terribly well designed in the first place.

We propose reasonable solutions instead of your strawmen, and you simply reply with "I know"? Cmon, that's hardly fair.


Let's summarize:

1. You've missed the bit about where the critical hit example would not actually kill front liners with a reasonably designed character. This is in addition to a maxed damage critical hit being a long shot to begin with.

2. You continue to assume that players will not discover that the DM is fudging rolls. Why would you assume this is true any more than it would be for a player? If anything, the fact that you roll behind a DM screen makes it more likely for players to assume you fudge the occasional roll, not less.

3. Even if dice rolls are taken exactly as rolled, then D&D is not just gambling any more than poker is just gambling(probably much less so, given the lower reliance on luck). It contains gambling, yes, but it contains tactics, strategy, and all sorts of other things as well.

DarknessLord
2009-09-27, 03:21 AM
I'm tired, and need to go to bed, but there is one point I feel the need to make before then.


Go write a campaign for me. Make it a good one.

Then, I want you to roll a d20, and if it comes up 20, I want you to delete that campaign from your computer and write another one. THE DIE SAID SO. DO NOT QUESTION THE D20.


Aside from a few things like not writing campaigns on my computer and not having the follow through to finish a campaign without having players, The entirety off all my work could not be destroyed on a single in game d20 roll, ever. (unless this d20 roll had some impact on real life, as you suggested above) At the very worst the plot itself may be ruined, sure, but some of those twists, sure the king can actually be a polymorphed Mind-flayer in the next campaign, the kobold's trap-ladden home can be used as the temple housing McGuffin's Lost orb, the watchman with a vendetta against adventurers cause his dad was one and was never around as a result, next time I need a watchman, I already got one give or take a few levels. And hell, there is always the old stand-by "You are a different group who was two steps behind these other guys, cause, you know, you also like saving the world and didn't want to leave it up to someone else" (last resort option, but sometimes that is what the players want to do).

If you get in a situation where ALL your work is contingent on a d20 roll, fine, fudge it, but that is a sign that you need better planning and re-purposing skills, not an excuse to not work on those skills cause cheating is a good fall-back.

And I know I was uber ninjad due to the forum backup, but I'm tired and I didn't roll that 20 that said I needed to delete this (it was a 15).

sonofzeal
2009-09-27, 03:31 AM
I would agree that the player should not do it. I disagree that the DM bypasses those problems.

If the players are aware that the DM is cheating, then the sense of risk and danger is again lost. Of course, the argument that it doesn't hurt provided nobody finds out is exactly the same argument used by cheating players. Both are equally flawed.
The DM fudging one roll does not mean there isn't any danger, only that danger is not that whimsical. If a random lucky crit is about to take someone out and the DM rerolls it, and the players know, they don't usually (at least in my group) automatically assume the DM will bail them out of every danger they find themselves in. Again, I give some nice rules of thumb lower down; sometimes conditions are met and sometimes they aren't, so sometimes the PCs get second chances but there's still a chance of death next time the dice are evil.

And the DM doesn't have to worry about overshadowing other DMs, or getting an "unfair advantage" over more scrupulous ones. If they did, well, that'd be different, and I'd probably be arguing your side right now.


See, I appreciate the sentiments, but this sort of thing does lead to life and death being heavily reliant on DM judgement. If they've done "something stupid", and die, and another player has "bad luck" and is saved by the DM, how will the "something stupid" player feel?
Ideally, you don't tell them why they die, and it never comes up. If it does, you can say that you try not to kill players on lucky criticals, but that's different than when you yell "CHAAAAARGE" right next to a skittish megaraptor, even if you were joking (real example, character almost did die).



I assumed the falchion, as a javelin crit won't kill anyone with over 5hp.

So, dmg for that is 2d4+3. Given that only variable damage is rolled again for crits, it becomes 4d4+3. Any front liner should have at least a d8 hit die, and probably a coupla points of con. Say, 10 hp given a +2 con modifier. That's enough to survive a maxed out crit. At -9, granted, but still savable. In the case of a non-maxed crit, you'll have some time to save them.

Im not sure how you got an average crit dmg of 18, given that the range is 7-19.

Squishy casters and stuff might die to a non-maxed crit roll, but yeah...if you're front lining against melee types as a level 1 caster, and get crit...that happens.
To quote the SRD: "A critical hit means that you roll your damage more than once, with all your usual bonuses, and add the rolls together." I usually do it almost the exact opposite of what you said; static bonuses are always multiplied, while the only variable damage that multiplies is the base weapon damage. In either case, we're looking at 4d4+8 (not sure where your +3 was coming from), for a minimum of 12, an average of 18, and a max of 24. A Dwarven Barbarian with max Con and Toughness has 20 hp and fair odds of survival; everyone else better pray, or can't even do that. A Crusader has a shot, if he can get some healing in the next turn before his damage pool tics over.

Jade_Tarem
2009-09-27, 03:36 AM
*Sigh*

Post removed by forum update. I've got to get to bed.

The scenario wasn't meant to strawman, it was meant to illustrate that fixing something that isn't broken due to bad luck (an inherent possiblity when you have to abide by the dice no matter what) is not something that I look forward to.

In short, there is no campaign that you can write, no scenario that you can concoct, and no amount of planning that you can do, such that enough terrible rolls can't wreck it. So what then?

As for the 'I know,' I'm not particularly interested in fair or not fair. I just want a good game. And one aspect of a good game is that you don't stop it to adjust it every time the players do something unexpected. This leaves you with seat-of-pants improv, a skill which most people are not very good at, or fudging.

Or you can have the players reroll. Which isn't much fun when your dude that you just spent a LOT of time on gets whacked five minutes in. Why should I bother to make a character of equal quality? The pitiless dice are just going to vaporize the next one a few rolls from now.

While this sentiment is not logical, it is understandable. No one likes their work washed away for seemingly no reason, which is why I made the 'ludicrous' example about rewriting on a 20. But maybe I'm wrong! Maybe making fantastic characters and then not playing them is what the game is all about. While not likely it does happen, and it sucks.

Or maybe we could pretend for a bit that the bad guys didn't just all roll above 17 for their base attack rolls. I'm already pretending to be an elven wizard - is it really so hard to believe that my future is not determined by some cosmic entity rolling the dice?

To your questions:

1. I'll see your strawman accusation and raise you a false dilemma. The attacked party member doesn't have to be a frontline fighter. Maybe it's level 1 and the orcs decided to gang up on the wizard instead. Maybe you spent a long time coming up with a backstory and fluff for him and*TOO BAD.* The dice say you're dead. Reroll. But don't worry, at least your death has reinforced the sense of danger that you can only get while sitting around a table, sipping Mountain Dew and rolling dice.

2. I solve this problem by rolling in the open and hiding the stats that I use. That way the players can see the rolls, but have no context with which to determine whether or not I'm fudging - I remain consistent on things like auto hits and misses, as well as anything the players can keep track of, such as AC. But I can generally adjust what the damage means all I want.

And sometimes, for all that, players die anyway. Just not... y'know... every time an enemy gets a little lucky. Typically, the end result is that players that die, even in non-boss fights, have the sense that their character "went out fighting," struggling against incredible odds rather than dying because they didn't duck quick enough while sparring with Guard #27.

3. Of course it does. But again I ask why a twenty sided polygon is more important than pacing, plot, and the enjoyment of the players.

Jair Barik
2009-09-27, 03:37 AM
In my example though it was not a case of horribley bad planning but a series of mistakes by the party and poor luck that lead to the outcome of a TPK risk long before the end of the episode (I run episodic campaigns, so sue me). I had an NPC in town who could potentially reincarnate a player so it seemed the sensible thing to do.

Other times? I'll happily let characters die if its a dramatic end to the game. Example? Beholder as a big boss. It had numerous save or die powers and so if I were to "fudge rolls" what would be th point in it being there? I had it disintigrate the wizard, sleep and fear their fighter having already used telikinesis to throw him about a bit and stoned the thief. All that was left was the party Cleric who was stuck in a desperate one man struggle between him and the mortally wounded boss monster. He was constantly being hit due to his abysmal touch AC but saving with his obscene Fort and Will saves. Was taking damage anyway though. In turn he was out of offensive spells and only had a magic sling to fight back with. The outcome? He made a lucky hit kills the beholder and then proceeds to cure two of the party members. The party wins in a dramatic outcome that sees one of them dead and all of them near defeat.

Katana_Geldar
2009-09-27, 03:43 AM
There is a difference in the DM "cheating" when it is done in comparison to what is happening to the players.

Saving the players from their bad luck is one thing, saving them from their own stupidity and unwillingness to follow what you have set out is something else.

Though sometimes, you have to save players from themselves. Here's a good example of a "cheat" (http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0211.html)

Quietus
2009-09-27, 04:35 AM
It would seem a great many people here would find my style of DMing abhorrent. :smalleek:


The simple honest truth is... I give my monsters whatever I want them to have, to make it interesting. A level 3 orc ranger with quick draw, brutal throw, point blank shot, and precise shot.. and no reason why he's got two free feats. He also doesn't have a specific amount of hit points, and he's got "around 16 AC". For me, sometimes, that's a fully statted NPC.

Why? Because while I'm extremely GOOD with the rules.. I'm not playing to show off how well I can stick to the rules. I'm playing to have a good time with my friends.

Same encounter, a level 3 Orc barbarian. Had around 50 HP, endurance, and diehard. But my players hit it twice in a row for 20+ damage.. it died. Sure, it could've kept going, but the goal of the encounter was to throw some dice around and let the players feel awesome, not to say "Ha ha, look at how much damage you need to do to beat this orc!".

The rule of thumb I go by is... I play the game to have fun. I'll help my players optimize their characters within the rules, I'll even allow rules to be broken in the name of fun. And if they feel they need to cheat in order to feel awesome and have a good time... As long as it's not ruining anyone else's fun, and not being too blatant, I'll allow it. That one guy wants to "preroll" his attack by rolling two or three times till he has something above a ten, because he's had terrible luck? Maybe I just won't notice it. He's not going to have fun rolling terribly all night, but he WILL be more likely to enjoy landing the killing blow, even if he didn't "earn" it because of bad luck. I won't let players openly cheat, because that ruins everyone else's fun, but if they want to put in the effort to make it less noticeable, and the other players don't call them on it... I'm pretty likely to let it pass.

As to people who say they rolled four 18's in character creation, I came up with a great system for fixing that - We don't use dice to create characters. Hell, we don't even use point buy. I told my players, "use whatever stats you want, within the normal dice range +/- racial mods. If you have unusually high stats, provide me with a good, usable plot hook or three." The stats chosen mostly range from 10-18, with one character who has nothing below 14... and that player gave me three pages of backstory and hooks for his character. And everyone got what they want. They get to play the characters they want, the way they envisioned them.. and I get plenty of nice hooks to use, to draw those characters even further into my story. That Paladin's mentor? His mother? The Wyvern that nearly killed his mother? They may all have roles. The ancestral sword the Bard is carrying? It might just have a real purpose later. The silver dragon-blooded dragon shaman, in a world that hates dragons? He's a walking plot hook already, but add in the fact that he knows the location of the hidden dragon-blooded city? That's juicy.

Saph
2009-09-27, 04:36 AM
And therein lies the problem. The first encounter isn't designed to kill players, but the dice (the holy relics which cannot be defied) have a curious habit of not cooperating with your expectations.

Isn't that kind of why you use dice in the first place? Because they don't cooperate with your expectations?

I think it was the Paranoia rulebook that said something like "If you aren't willing to accept whatever the dice come up with, don't roll them in the first place." It's good advice. If you want something to be impossible, make it impossible.


In short, there is no campaign that you can write, no scenario that you can concoct, and no amount of planning that you can do, such that enough terrible rolls can't wreck it.

Well, my personal way to deal with that problem is not to have any "planning" as such. I have a few places and NPCs ready, and I have a bunch of ideas for what might happen, but I don't have a sequence of events that must happen. So yes, I'd say that I can quite easily set up a game which can't be wrecked by terrible rolls. The difference is that I'm not "writing a campaign" - I'm setting up a campaign world for the PCs to do stuff in.

Lioness
2009-09-27, 04:48 AM
My Dm probably 'cheats' more than the players. He rerolls things that don't go his way, and when we make an abysmal roll on an important check, he lets us reroll.

That being said, we must roll our dice in the open, and any dice that rolls off the table must be rerolled, even if it 'honestly, really did get a 20'. One of the players make a lot of secret dice rolls, and the DM gets back at him by targeting him that little bit more. His reasoning: If he's passing these attack rolls etc. that he really shouldn't be, I'll target him more.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 08:10 AM
To quote the SRD: "A critical hit means that you roll your damage more than once, with all your usual bonuses, and add the rolls together." I usually do it almost the exact opposite of what you said; static bonuses are always multiplied, while the only variable damage that multiplies is the base weapon damage. In either case, we're looking at 4d4+8 (not sure where your +3 was coming from), for a minimum of 12, an average of 18, and a max of 24. A Dwarven Barbarian with max Con and Toughness has 20 hp and fair odds of survival; everyone else better pray, or can't even do that. A Crusader has a shot, if he can get some healing in the next turn before his damage pool tics over.

The variant of simply doubling variable damage instead of rolling it twice is reasonable to speed things up, and frequently used. It does increase the odds of extreme results, though, which is generally more dangerous for the players.

+3 comes from the base orc strength of 17. I think you're doubling the +4, which is the Attack bonus, not the strength bonus. I did leave off the doubling of the +3, so that gives us a damage of 4d4+6, for a range of 10-22. This will likely down most characters, but plenty of front liners will still be alive, and capable of being healed or stabilized.

If this situation worries you this much, for the first encounter, pit them against a larger number of less damaging mobs instead, minimizing the effects of single lucky rolls. Your standard goblin only has 1d6 dmg, no str bonus. Instakills should not be possible with such a creature even on a maxed crit, unless someone made a character with 2hp or less. If someone has a 2hp character going toe to toe with melee types, they deserve that risk.

Indon
2009-09-27, 01:20 PM
Changing rules is not the same as cheating, and DMs can definitely cheat.

No they can't.

They can change, tweak, or create exemptions from the rules poorly (and what constitutes doing it well is highly debatable and variable), which is what you are talking about, and can lead to the players making the logically nonsensical accusation of cheating, but they can not cheat in any game which grants them full control over the mechanics (as D&D does, for instance).

This thread isn't about anything DM's can do - just players. And I'm still interested in discussion about how to deal with players cheating, so this irrelevant tangent is a bit annoying.

Jade_Tarem
2009-09-27, 01:50 PM
Isn't that kind of why you use dice in the first place? Because they don't cooperate with your expectations?

For me, it's always been to model the element of chance in encounters. That said, why should I be restricted to the rules that I have complete control over?


I think it was the Paranoia rulebook that said something like "If you aren't willing to accept whatever the dice come up with, don't roll them in the first place." It's good advice. If you want something to be impossible, make it impossible.

Pardon my inexperience with Paranoia, but I was under the impression that it was a game designed to kill players frequently and often, which is why you get multiple lives, or clones, or something. It makes bad dice rolls have less of an effect.

I've been told that it also penalizes players for trying to second guess and rules lawyer at the DM, which is another fantastic practice.


Well, my personal way to deal with that problem is not to have any "planning" as such. I have a few places and NPCs ready, and I have a bunch of ideas for what might happen, but I don't have a sequence of events that must happen. So yes, I'd say that I can quite easily set up a game which can't be wrecked by terrible rolls. The difference is that I'm not "writing a campaign" - I'm setting up a campaign world for the PCs to do stuff in.

Really? You can set up a game where your NPC bad guys can roll, say, all natural 20's and still keep going?

Don't give me an odds estimation for how unlikely that is. It doesn't have to be reasonable - it's a discussion about when it's ok to fudge dice rolls and when it isn't. So... how many natural 20's do you have to roll before you consider changing a few? Or do you wipe the party every combat? I think that might get old after a while.

For reference, I DM like this too, but my NPC stats tend to be loose and flexible to help both myself and the players. As Quietus pointed out, I don't have to prove anything to them, nor am I accountable to them if they suspect that I might not be absolutely, positively, totally, completely, 100% sticking to the RAW. If they don't like it, they can put someone else in as DM, and more power to them.

But as I've said multiple times, until this thread, I haven't met anyone who didn't prefer the occasional fudging.

Tiktakkat
2009-09-27, 01:56 PM
Pardon my inexperience with Paranoia, but I was under the impression that it was a game designed to kill players frequently and often, which is why you get multiple lives, or clones, or something. It makes bad dice rolls have less of an effect.

In a sense, Paranoia was originally based on an inversion of "standard" game expectations. That is, the goal was not to see how cool and awesome you could be in beating the scenario, but to see how cool and awesome you could be in dying horribly.
Getting blown up and taking out the entire party by fumbling your experimental weapon was much better than accidentally revealing your secret society membership and getting dragged away like a trussed up turkey by Vulture Squadron.


I've been told that it also penalizes players for trying to second guess and rules lawyer at the DM, which is another fantastic practice.

It sort of depends. If there is something absurd in the rules that is fun, go for it. If it is not, then there is always another rule waiting to blow you up.

Raum
2009-09-27, 02:00 PM
No they can't

They can change, tweak, or create exemptions from the rules poorly (and what constitutes doing it well is highly debatable and variable), which is what you are talking about, and can lead to the players making the logically nonsensical accusation of cheating, but they can not cheat in any game which grants them full control over the mechanics (as D&D does, for instance)..Ever read Animal Farm? It sounds like that's what you're describing...they don't "cheat" because they change the rules to fit what they want.


This thread isn't about anything DM's can do - just players. And I'm still interested in discussion about how to deal with players cheating, so this irrelevant tangent is a bit annoying.The DM is just a player! Any differences in control are purely within the context of the game.

To deal with anyone cheating you'll need to deal with why they chose to cheat. Did they feel it was their right? Perhaps they felt it was the only way to avoid being sidelined or over run? Where they trying to make the story better or ensure it continued? Maybe they're simply following the example of a leader.

Figure out why and deal with that...anything else is just treating symptoms.

Indon
2009-09-27, 02:17 PM
Ever read Animal Farm? It sounds like that's what you're describing...they don't "cheat" because they change the rules to fit what they want.
The first rule the pigs made was not, "We can do whatever we want including completely ignore any and all other rules," which is explicitly in at least one version of D&D.


The DM is just a player! Any differences in control are purely within the context of the game.
Cheating is an action which can only exist within the context of the game - and it can't exist for the DM because of that difference of control.

I'll bear in mind your sage advice for approaching the next potential cheater I see in a game with a thorough psychoanalytic approach.

Raum
2009-09-27, 02:30 PM
The first rule the pigs made was not, "We can do whatever we want including completely ignore any and all other rules," which is explicitly in at least one version of D&D.Correct, that was the last rule they made...more or less. :smallwink:


Cheating is an action which can only exist within the context of the game - and it can't exist for the DM because of that difference of control."Cheating" is defined as "deceiving or influencing by fraud". That can be done by anyone, regardless of control.


I'll bear in mind your sage advice for approaching the next potential cheater I see in a game with a thorough psychoanalytic approach.Not sure I'd term it 'psychoanalytical'. It's just a simple recognition that actions have causes. If the individuals involved are willing to be honest with each other, it may be as simple as asking 'Why?'. When there's not enough trust for honesty, observation has to suffice.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 02:32 PM
No they can't.

They can change, tweak, or create exemptions from the rules poorly (and what constitutes doing it well is highly debatable and variable), which is what you are talking about, and can lead to the players making the logically nonsensical accusation of cheating, but they can not cheat in any game which grants them full control over the mechanics (as D&D does, for instance).

This thread isn't about anything DM's can do - just players. And I'm still interested in discussion about how to deal with players cheating, so this irrelevant tangent is a bit annoying.

The DM is one of the players. It's quite difficult to discuss player cheating without involving the DM. As has already been pointed out, if the players feel that the DM is cheating, they may start cheating as well. I suspect we all agree that any such game is going downhill, as mass cheating is never a positive sign.

D&D allows great flexibility within it, this is true. There is never any intent in the rulebooks for this to give DMs a free pass to do absolutely anything and everything, without regard for the players. The rulebooks specifically warn about this repeatedly, especially the DMG. Even if there were no such rules, it's a standard convention that whatever is fair is fair for all. If a player uses a particularly cheesy combo, then so may the DMs creations, and vice versa. Thus, it's quite possible for a DM to cheat the other players, either within the context of the rules, or within the context of the social event.

Tiktakkat
2009-09-27, 02:37 PM
The DM is one of the players.

Not exactly. the DM is the DM. That is why he is given a different name from the players.


There is never any intent in the rulebooks for this to give DMs a free pass to do absolutely anything and everything, without regard for the players.

Oh, well then, since what myself, Jade_Tarem, and others, have been suggesting is that the DM only act in such ways with direct regard for the players, your complaints must not apply to anything we have advocated.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 02:45 PM
The DM is still playing D&D. Yes, they have different titles for clarity within the game, but looking at the game from outside, they are all playing D&D.


Let me clarify. If the rule is one that the players know about, and are ok with, it's not cheating. That's a house rule. They can be good, bad, but hey, that's how that group chooses to play.

If the DM is changing rules arbitrarily, it is cheating. If the DM is forcing rules on everyone that nobody else wishes to play by, yeah...thats cheating.

The entire attitude that "the DM cannot possibly cheat" is one that applies universally, and thus, does not require ANY justification for an action to be legal. It's a rather extreme stance, and one that probably doesn't translate terribly well to actual gameplay.

Yukitsu
2009-09-27, 02:45 PM
I think I told my DM if he held that elitist "above the rules" view of himself I'd beat him humble.

Raum
2009-09-27, 02:48 PM
Not exactly. the DM is the DM. That is why he is given a different name from the players.Is the Quarterback a Football player? Is the Goalie a Soccer player? Yes. Similarly, a DM is a player. Also similarly, the DM has a unique role which is different from the other players' roles.

When it comes down to it, I'm there to play and have fun...whether I'm running a single PC or a bunch of NPCs.

Glass Mouse
2009-09-27, 03:18 PM
I think player cheating is either a desire to win, a feeling of ineffectiveness... or maybe because the players don't trust their GM? The few times I've cheated (not that I'm proud of it) has been when I felt "caught" in the GM's web. Basically, when the GM was railroading or unfair or anything that made me feel like I couldn't trust him to make things cool, or treat my character fairly.
But that may only apply to players who don't cheat to win or promote themselves. If you cheat because of ego... well, then the problem usually isn't just the cheating.


As a GM, I cheat as hell. Partly because I don't know the rules that well yet - partly because I sincerely don't care. The rules are there for the game's sake, the game isn't there for the rules' sake (as said by the best GM I've ever had).

Someone on this forum (I don't remember who, when or where, sorry), wrote a prioritized list, basically a "what trumphs what when I GM" sorta thing, that made a lot of sense to me. Importance increasing from left to right:

RAW > Rule of funny > Rule of fun > Rule of cool

RAW: Is this by the rules?
Rule of Funny: Will this make the players laugh?
Rule of Fun: Will this help the overall fun for everyone?
Rule of Cool: Is this extradinarily awesome?

Of course it's a question of playing style, and there are the potential pitfalls - railroading, players feeling too secure, players feeling entitled to cheat, unpredictability, etc.
But if all agree that the GM is allowed to bend (or even ignore) the rules, and all is having fun, then what is the problem?

It all comes down to "gentlemen's agreement" in the end :smallsmile:

Tiktakkat
2009-09-27, 04:30 PM
Let me clarify. If the rule is one that the players know about, and are ok with, it's not cheating. That's a house rule. They can be good, bad, but hey, that's how that group chooses to play.

Actually, as I pointed out, it is a basic rule, in the DMG.


Is the Quarterback a Football player? Is the Goalie a Soccer player? Yes. Similarly, a DM is a player. Also similarly, the DM has a unique role which is different from the other players' roles.

Is the referee a football player?
Is the umpire a baseball player?
Is the linesman a tennis player?
Are the coaches, managers, and trainers players?
No.
Similarly, a DM is not a player by virtue of his different role, even if he remains a participant in the hobby.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 04:35 PM
The DM is both a referee and an active participant. This is unusual in games, but in D&D, he quite clearly has both roles.

This results in an obvious potential conflict of interest, but with a good DM, that conflict is definitely avoidable.

sonofzeal
2009-09-27, 04:47 PM
The variant of simply doubling variable damage instead of rolling it twice is reasonable to speed things up, and frequently used. It does increase the odds of extreme results, though, which is generally more dangerous for the players.

+3 comes from the base orc strength of 17. I think you're doubling the +4, which is the Attack bonus, not the strength bonus. I did leave off the doubling of the +3, so that gives us a damage of 4d4+6, for a range of 10-22. This will likely down most characters, but plenty of front liners will still be alive, and capable of being healed or stabilized.

If this situation worries you this much, for the first encounter, pit them against a larger number of less damaging mobs instead, minimizing the effects of single lucky rolls. Your standard goblin only has 1d6 dmg, no str bonus. Instakills should not be possible with such a creature even on a maxed crit, unless someone made a character with 2hp or less. If someone has a 2hp character going toe to toe with melee types, they deserve that risk.
The orc is using the weapon twohanded. His +3 strength mod translates into a +4 damage. The SRD agrees with me here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/Orc.htm).

And yes, multiplying the dice rather than rerolling makes for a larger Standard Deviation. The min, mean, mode, and max remain the same though. And you're still killing just about every character except Dwarven Barbarians with Toughness. Point still stands.


Basically, my rule is this - D&D is supposed to be fun. There's supposed to be an element of risk, of unpredictability, of danger, and that's all part of the fun. However, that must be balanced against, again, the fun, with the DM arbitrating that balance. If a character death is decidedly un-fun, such as a crazy-random death or one right at the beginning of the session, I think the DM should do what he can to prevent it, up to and including fudging the dice, but only as a method of last resort. Allowing the occasional death to stand will maintain the risk, the unpredictability, and the danger, while not sacrificing the fun. Since fun is paramount, the occasional DM cheating is justified because it maximizes fun for everyone.

Players cheating on their own rolls removes any element of that risk, that unpredictability, that danger, and is, hence, rather un-fun. It's also un-fun to other players who are (with good reason) liable to resent it. Since fun is paramount, player cheating is unjustified because it damages fun for everyone in the long run, even if it produces a short-term gain for a single player.

Tiktakkat
2009-09-27, 04:54 PM
The DM is both a referee and an active participant. This is unusual in games, but in D&D, he quite clearly has both roles.

This results in an obvious potential conflict of interest, but with a good DM, that conflict is definitely avoidable.

If you insist on being so literal and calling a DM who alters random results to enhance the play experience "cheaters", then it is only fair to apply that same standard to the definition of a "player".
A Player in a D&D game is someone with a character, trying to succeed in the challenges in the adventure. Further, as I noted and as the rules make clear, the DM is not competing against the players, he does not "win" by having his adventure defeat the players. Unless the DM is running a character, he is not a participant the way a player is, and no such conflict of interest exists.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 05:01 PM
The players need not be competing against each other either. D&D is inherently cooperative in nature. There *can* be competition between players, but it's certainly not required to play.

Raum
2009-09-27, 05:04 PM
Is the referee a football player?
Is the umpire a baseball player?
Is the linesman a tennis player?
Are the coaches, managers, and trainers players?
No.Are any of them participating in the game? They shouldn't be. A DM is a participant. And problems often occur when the DM can't separate his role as participant (which is subject to the rules) from his role as referee (which interprets the rules).

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 05:07 PM
Well said. That's the issue right there.

A good DM keeps those things separate. You *could*, in theory, have an entirely different person who does nothing but arbitrate, but while this is probably more fair, it doesn't sound like a terribly fun job.

Tiktakkat
2009-09-27, 05:13 PM
Are any of them participating in the game? They shouldn't be. A DM is a participant. And problems often occur when the DM can't separate his role as participant (which is subject to the rules) from his role as referee (which interprets the rules).

Really?
The DM gets awarded experience and treasure for his PC?
So then no.

Or, we could compare him to the director of a movie or play. Is such a person an actor?
What about the camera crew?
The stage hands?
Are they doing any performing?
How about a gallery director for painting or sculpture?
Or the person providing the raw materials?
Are they doing any art?

A football referee or baseball umpire is participating in the game. The game could not proceed without them, at least not in the expected fashion.
In the same way a DM is participating by being the referee without participating as a player.


Well said. That's the issue right there.

A good DM keeps those things separate. You *could*, in theory, have an entirely different person who does nothing but arbitrate, but while this is probably more fair, it doesn't sound like a terribly fun job.

In what sort of theory?
Where you now have someone competing as "the monsters"?
That is one strange theory, and certainly completely unrelated to the basic concepts already being discussed.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 05:17 PM
All those people are part of the cast. They are all involved in making the movie. Director is a subset of cast in the same way that DM is a subset of those who play D&D.

A DMs role includes more than arbitrating disagreements, and making calls. Thus, this role is more than just an umpire/referee.

The DM actively participates in building the story, and the actual playing of the game. He's there rolling dice, moving models(if you use them), and so forth. Yes, it's a different part of the game from the rest of the players, but it's still a part. An important part, at that. It's not comparable to "the guy I bought paint from".

Tiktakkat
2009-09-27, 05:26 PM
All those people are part of the cast. They are all involved in making the movie. Director is a subset of cast in the same way that DM is a subset of those who play D&D.

Well, no they are not.
They are the crew.
The crew is distinct from the cast in duties and responsibilities.
Someone may be part of both, but that is not the standard.


A DMs role includes more than arbitrating disagreements, and making calls. Thus, this role is more than just an umpire/referee.

It includes writing the script. This is not sufficiently different to merit a change from being part of the staff to being a performer.


The DM actively participates in building the story, and the actual playing of the game. He's there rolling dice, moving models(if you use them), and so forth. Yes, it's a different part of the game from the rest of the players, but it's still a part. An important part, at that. It's not comparable to "the guy I bought paint from".

The DM is arbitrating the results of interacting. He is making a call as to how the non-player characters act, including moving and choice of targets.
He is still not participating the way a player is, advancing a character through the story by overcoming obstacles.

Part of his job is in fact comparable to "the guy I bought the paint from".
Part is comparable to the writer, part to the director, part to nearly all the tasks in production crew and supply. The lesser parts do not diminish the greater parts while the greater parts do not make the lesser parts irrelevant.

Again, if you want to be so literal as to call what I and others have described as actions by a DM as cheating, it is only fair to acknowledge that by a strict definition, a DM is not a player by virtue of his different requirements and responsibilities.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 05:36 PM
It includes writing the script. This is not sufficiently different to merit a change from being part of the staff to being a performer.

I never said it was. However, writing the script is only part of what the DM does.

If someone acts in a movie and writes the script, he is both a scriptwriter and an actor. One does not negate the other.

Mystic Muse
2009-09-27, 05:41 PM
Option #3: Books fly.

Option #4 "hey! Throwing books isn't nice! I'm just going to keep this now.":smallbiggrin:

Fiery Diamond
2009-09-27, 05:43 PM
This is no longer on topic. Tyndmyr, you are wrong, even with regards to the analogy.

A "player" in D&D is one who controls a "PC."
A "DM" does not control a "PC," so he/she is not a "player."

A player plays D&D.
A DM runs D&D.

Tiktakkat
2009-09-27, 05:44 PM
I never said it was. However, writing the script is only part of what the DM does.

Yes, I know, I addressed that.


If someone acts in a movie and writes the script, he is both a scriptwriter and an actor. One does not negate the other.

I addressed that as well.
The DM never functions as a player. He has no character, except in non-standard circumstances.
Thus there is no need for one role to negate another.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 05:48 PM
Well, a couple pages back, it was suggested that player cheating can be triggered by GM cheating. It's hard to discuss that topic unless you agree on if a GM can cheat.

There is much more to playing D&D than having a character. Any external observer is likely to consider you all to be playing D&D...it's hard to see how they could explain it any other way. The differentiation between the roles exists within the game, not externally to it.

SinsI
2009-09-27, 05:54 PM
99.9% of intentional player cheating is DM's fault - he failed to make the game interesting enough and is throwing too high a challenge at a novice player. D&D is a game that enables you to have extremely interesting game sessions without a single round of combat; bad stats/rolls can bring just as much fun (if not more) as the best powergaming and munchkinery.

Mystic Muse
2009-09-27, 05:59 PM
99.9% of intentional player cheating is DM's fault - he failed to make the game interesting enough and is throwing too high a challenge at a novice player. D&D is a game that enables you to have extremely interesting game sessions without a single round of combat; bad stats/rolls can bring just as much fun (if not more) as the best powergaming and munchkinery.


um no. Intentional player cheating is not 99.9% the DM's fault. A lot of players will cheat regardless of the game or the game can be really interesting but the player just doesn't like a rule or something so they make the DM pay in any way possible.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 05:59 PM
How we bout we skip the argument over if DMs are cheating, or merely DMing poorly, and discuss how it applies to players?

I agree that players may be provoked to cheat by the DM or campaign...I wouldn't say it's all or even most cases, but if someone is feeling frustrated with the game, and feels like he has no legitimate means of surviving, he might very well be tempted to cheat.

This leads to balanced characters being a means of avoiding cheating. If everyone is on roughly the same power level, it makes such a situation easier to avoid.

Saph
2009-09-27, 06:03 PM
For me, it's always been to model the element of chance in encounters. That said, why should I be restricted to the rules that I have complete control over?

Because sometimes, following the dice makes for a much more interesting story than the one you've planned. But you have to be willing to take the risk, and also to relax your control.

It's always tempting as a DM to override the dice and say "No, that's not what I want to happen". It's tempting for players to do it, too. But while it shuts out the nasty surprises, it shuts out a lot of the more interesting things that can happen, too.


Really? You can set up a game where your NPC bad guys can roll, say, all natural 20's and still keep going?

Don't give me an odds estimation for how unlikely that is. It doesn't have to be reasonable - it's a discussion about when it's ok to fudge dice rolls and when it isn't. So... how many natural 20's do you have to roll before you consider changing a few?

Unfortunately there's no way I can answer this question, because you've told me that you're not interested in hearing odds estimations (which would be an inextricable part of the answer).

Solaris
2009-09-27, 06:14 PM
um no. Intentional player cheating is not 99.9% the DM's fault. A lot of players will cheat regardless of the game or the game can be really interesting but the player just doesn't like a rule or something so they make the DM pay in any way possible.

I agree. Saying it's the DM's fault if a player cheats is kinda like saying it's the store's fault if I shoplift. It's simply foisting the blame for someone's wrongdoing on someone else.

SinsI
2009-09-27, 06:17 PM
um no. Intentional player cheating is not 99.9% the DM's fault. A lot of players will cheat regardless of the game or the game can be really interesting but the player just doesn't like a rule or something so they make the DM pay in any way possible.
And who made that rule?

People cheat if they are frustrated or bored. The former is caused by balance issues - they want their characters to shine more and be able to do incredible things that you forbid, the latter is due to uninteresting campaign and lack of player interaction. Those are all DM's field of expertise.

Raum
2009-09-27, 06:20 PM
Really?
The DM gets awarded experience and treasure for his PC?
So then no.What does that have to do with participating?


Or, we could compare him to the director of a movie or play. Is such a person an actor?
What about the camera crew?
The stage hands?
Are they doing any performing?
How about a gallery director for painting or sculpture?
Or the person providing the raw materials?
Are they doing any art?

A football referee or baseball umpire is participating in the game. The game could not proceed without them, at least not in the expected fashion.
In the same way a DM is participating by being the referee without participating as a player.That's a stretch...a long one. And, since I remember many a pick up game played without referees, it's also observably incorrect.

I'll leave it as pointing back to my earlier comments though - to address cheating, no matter who does it, you need to address the 'why'.

Mystic Muse
2009-09-27, 06:21 PM
And who made that rule?

People cheat if they are frustrated or bored. The former is caused by balance issues - they want their characters to shine more and be able to do incredible things that you forbid, the latter is due to uninteresting campaign and lack of player interaction. Those are all DM's field of expertise.

who made your rule?

Humans do not always do something because it's logical. Many will do something because they WANT to. Even if they want to shine more some people play with other who claim to never roll anything below 13. If you're bored with a campaign why are you cheating? Either tell your DM it's boring or leave. Cheating benefits nobody and just makes the other players and DM pay. I'm not saying some players don't cheat because of those reason. I'm just saying It's not always because of the DM or the campaign. And no, not always does not mean 0.01%

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 06:28 PM
It's a long stretch from saying that's why people cheat to saying that those reasons are justified.

I don't know the exact percentage, but I'd guess 70% or better of cheating is related to other things in the campaign. You get the odd guy who just really can't work with others at all, but they tend to weed themselves out pretty quickly.

Now, other problems doesn't really justify cheating...but it does help explain it, and perhaps find a way to solve it.

Mystic Muse
2009-09-27, 06:31 PM
70% seems to be more believable.

SinsI
2009-09-27, 06:35 PM
who made your rule?

Humans do not always do something because it's logical. Many will do something because they WANT to. Even if they want to shine more some people play with other who claim to never roll anything below 13. If you're bored with a campaign why are you cheating? Either tell your DM it's boring or leave. Cheating benefits nobody and just makes the other players and DM pay. I'm not saying some players don't cheat because of those reason. I'm just saying It's not always because of the DM or the campaign. And no, not always does not mean 0.01%

The problem is that you, as the DM, made your players think that some roll result is "bad" and another one is "good". If the player spend half a year carefully nurturing his character and grew quite attached to him - only to roll "1" on a save and have him destroyed permanently - it provokes cheating. But if at "1" he is transported to Hades and has a unique solo adventure he is not going to look at those rolls as if they are "bad" - they are just an opportunity to have a different kind of gameplay situations, to have broader spectrum of gaming experience.

sonofzeal
2009-09-27, 06:35 PM
How we bout we skip the argument over if DMs are cheating, or merely DMing poorly, and discuss how it applies to players?

I agree that players may be provoked to cheat by the DM or campaign...I wouldn't say it's all or even most cases, but if someone is feeling frustrated with the game, and feels like he has no legitimate means of surviving, he might very well be tempted to cheat.

This leads to balanced characters being a means of avoiding cheating. If everyone is on roughly the same power level, it makes such a situation easier to avoid.
If he's got no legitimate means of surviving, there's little chance at that point to cheat. I think the primary desire is just to seem awesome; people like seeming awesome, don't like failing, and especially don't like failing at things they think their character wouldn't fail at. The Rogue who rolls a nat-1 on his Open Lock check is going to be mighty tempted to say it was a 10; the Fighter who's been rolling mediocre damage when a heavy hit is needed is mighty tempted to make some convenient adding mistakes; a Psion who's just rolled horribly on his save against Charm Person is going to want to fudge that. Sometimes it's hard to be honest!


Unfortunately there's no way I can answer this question, because you've told me that you're not interested in hearing odds estimations (which would be an inextricable part of the answer).
I think his question is fair. It really doesn't matter how unlikely a particular set of rolls is, as long as it comes up. It doesn't even need to be an unbroken string of 20's either, just an unbroken string of successes, which is easier, with maybe the occasional crit thrown in to add injury to injury. Certainly monsters who roll all >15, and/or PCs who rolls all <5, is going to lead to a game that's rather unplayable if it continues long enough. So what do you do, kill PC after PC in fights where they do everything right but the dice hate them? Or cut them some slack from time to time?

Starbuck_II
2009-09-27, 07:20 PM
I find it funny people can say you can't win at D&D and you can cheat in same breath.
You can't cheat at a time if there is no winning.
D&D does have a win: surviving is a win. Thus cheating is possible.

Players cheat because they don't want to die.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 07:32 PM
Is not losing the same as winning?

Kaun
2009-09-27, 07:33 PM
wow blaming cheating on a boring game, thats a new one....

Most people i see cheat do it because they want an advantage over everyone else or because they want to be mvp.
I think people would be less likely to cheat if there bored because if there bored there less likely to care about the outcome of whats going on.

Getting back on topic i have a player im fairly sure is cheating especially after one game where i decided to take note of all the dice roles he rolled on his d20, the exact numbers i dont have with me anymore but it was something along the lines of after 64 rolls in the session only 10 of them were under 15 and only 3 of them were under 10.

The problem with cheating i find is as a DM if a player is doing it is just dumping extra workload on you. This intern slows the game down especial in combat because you have to dedicate extra time an attention to making sure the player is doing things legitimately instead of concentrating on whats going on and whats going to happen.
Also i would guess it is generally the norm that most people play with a group of friends and calling others out about cheating can often end in bad blood and arguments that carry on outside the game.

I have found one quick way of dealing with this is adding to the target number that the offending player needs to succeed, often you will notice that they quickly spot that the other members of the party are seceding with rolls that they failed on but are often reluctant to bring this up due to the potential can of worms it opens up. Sometimes they will realize whats going on and pull there heads in but more then often they wont.

Also you can try just putting a tray or shallow box in the middle of the playing area and make a house rule that all players rolls have to land in that area to be counted. that way other players get a better look at what everyone is rolling and can help keep things legit.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-27, 07:36 PM
On the bright side, if you play with a group of friends, people should be more reluctant to cheat.

Public rolling helps, as do some verifiable means of checking rolls, for pbp games. Neither of these should bother those who don't cheat...on the contrary, they'll probably be happy to have the validity of dice checkable by all so nobody doubts that improbable string of rolls.

Gan The Grey
2009-09-27, 09:09 PM
The problem is that you, as the DM, made your players think that some roll result is "bad" and another one is "good". If the player spend half a year carefully nurturing his character and grew quite attached to him - only to roll "1" on a save and have him destroyed permanently - it provokes cheating. But if at "1" he is transported to Hades and has a unique solo adventure he is not going to look at those rolls as if they are "bad" - they are just an opportunity to have a different kind of gameplay situations, to have broader spectrum of gaming experience.


I disagree. DnD TO A POINT imitates life. That is how we can identify with and understand it as it is written. If there are no unpleasant consequences for failure, then there is no point in being careful/smart/wise/skillful. If I get rewarded with some great solo adventure in Hades everytime I die, it really lessens the impact of that death. Death in DnD, as I see it, is the ultimate slap on the wrist (though it could be argued that general level loss is worse). If death has no meaning, you take away the thrill of beating it.

DnD, like life, must have some good and bad parts to it. I understand what you are saying, and agree that a player can choose to turn an unfortunate situation into an interesting one that sparks character growth. But that is the PLAYER'S responsibility, not the DM's. Pushing everything onto the DM's shoulders is a cop-out.

People cheat because they choose to. Granted, they might be influenced by outside forces, but the choice is within their power, and in the end, no one is at fault but themselves. I've often found that cheating is a symptom of an immature player (I mean immature to DnD). The more a player understands DnD, the less likely they are to cheat, and the more likely they are to accept bad circumstances and turn them around to their advantage.

Also, a boring game is the fault of everyone involved, DM and player alike.

Tiktakkat
2009-09-28, 12:17 AM
What does that have to do with participating?

Because participating =/= being a player.


That's a stretch...a long one. And, since I remember many a pick up game played without referees, it's also observably incorrect.

Except the rules of the game specify requiring a referee, so what you have there is not actually the game, but a home ruled variant.


I'll leave it as pointing back to my earlier comments though - to address cheating, no matter who does it, you need to address the 'why'.

They why is varied:

Some do it because they want attention.
Some do it because they cannot tolerate not always succeeding.
Some do it because they they think they are in a competition and want to win no matter what.
Some do it because they think they should be allowed to ignore any rules they like because they feel like it.
Some do it because the DM starts to treat the game as if he is competition with the players, or even with other DMs to kill the most players, and the players lose respect for the DM, and thus for the rules of the game.
Some do it because the additional house rouse in organized play are often so detrimental to the play experience that they cause a loss of respect.


I disagree. DnD TO A POINT imitates life. That is how we can identify with and understand it as it is written.

I disagree.
D&D does not imitate life, but fantasy fiction, especially heroic fantasy fiction, but sometimes protagonist or anti-hero fantasy fiction.
This causes two basic problems:
1. Plot Immunity, which is what basically leads to DMs altering results to help the PCs
2. Solo or Team versus Ensemble Cast, which is what basically leads to PvP competition and conflict

While some people do not mind, the majority of people I know do not play D&D, or any RPG for that matter, to be casually and vicariously punked in the game as they are in real life.
Yes, there is a desire for a test of skill, but that only goes so far. Most people who want a more direct test of skill will engage in a more intentionally and directly competitive game.
Instead people show up wanting to be the hero (or at least the protagonist), unleash a case of whupping on the bad guys, and ride off with a glorious reward, the acclaim of all, and all that other cool stuff. That means they expect, if they do not say it, at least a bit of plot immunity. Most of the time that comes from just having balanced, level appropriate encounters. Sometimes it requires a bit more help. That is where the DM comes in, providing those ad hoc and instantaneous adjustments to maintain the stability of the game, and produce the suspension of disbelief so the players know their next die roll is the most important one ever, no matter how much the DM might know it is completely irrelevant.

To me, as a DM, the only "cheating" you can do is cheating your players out of that fun experience they want when they sit down, giving up their time to hang out and play. In that respect, D&D is pretty much the exact opposite of imitating life.

Gan The Grey
2009-09-28, 03:16 AM
I disagree.
D&D does not imitate life, but fantasy fiction, especially heroic fantasy fiction, but sometimes protagonist or anti-hero fantasy fiction.
This causes two basic problems:
1. Plot Immunity, which is what basically leads to DMs altering results to help the PCs
2. Solo or Team versus Ensemble Cast, which is what basically leads to PvP competition and conflict

While some people do not mind, the majority of people I know do not play D&D, or any RPG for that matter, to be casually and vicariously punked in the game as they are in real life.
Yes, there is a desire for a test of skill, but that only goes so far. Most people who want a more direct test of skill will engage in a more intentionally and directly competitive game.
Instead people show up wanting to be the hero (or at least the protagonist), unleash a case of whupping on the bad guys, and ride off with a glorious reward, the acclaim of all, and all that other cool stuff. That means they expect, if they do not say it, at least a bit of plot immunity. Most of the time that comes from just having balanced, level appropriate encounters. Sometimes it requires a bit more help. That is where the DM comes in, providing those ad hoc and instantaneous adjustments to maintain the stability of the game, and produce the suspension of disbelief so the players know their next die roll is the most important one ever, no matter how much the DM might know it is completely irrelevant.

To me, as a DM, the only "cheating" you can do is cheating your players out of that fun experience they want when they sit down, giving up their time to hang out and play. In that respect, D&D is pretty much the exact opposite of imitating life.

I think, sir, you completely missed my point, so I will expand. DnD TO A POINT (I capitalized this for a reason) does imitate life. Life is about ups and downs, wins and losses, trials and such. While we don't go fight dragons and run kingdoms and explore ancient dungeons on a day to day basis in real life, the urges inherent to seeking challenges and the consequences for fulfilling those urges exist just as much in our world as they do in DnD.

Now tell me. What person in the real world doesn't want to be the protagonist? The hero? Whup up on the bad guys or at least moderately annoying coworkers? There are really only two things stopping them: Fear, and an unoptimized skill set. DnD fixes both of these things, allowing people to be who they feel they couldn’t be in the real world. Casually and vicariously punked? Sh!t happens. The difference is the lack of fear to stand up for themselves, and the required knowledge to be successful. Both of these things can be obtained in the real world with a little willpower and patience.

Let me tell you how much I love selective quoting. Easy to take something said out of context. I was commenting on how, just because DnD is a fantasy setting, that doesn't mean you should remove the logical, expected action/consequence system inherent to our world. Our minds are programmed to function off of this system, and when that system is discarded, it is easy to become bored/disinterested. Removing the 'bad' consequences so you can always turn something into a bonus for your players is coddling them, reducing the impact of their true successes.

You sorta said this, but I’d like to expand. As the DM, it is your job to present the ILLUSION of danger, the ILLUSION of control, though really, in the end, the players are 100% percent at your mercy. You might disagree with me here, but I task you to look at any game you've DMed. It is all psychology. Can't get a group interested in a plot hook? Change the hook and connect it to the same plot. Players abusing a specific build/weapon/armor/spell? Make it difficult if not impossible to access. Players annihilating your planned BBEG and final encounter? Fudge it a bit to make the combat more memorable. Even in a sandbox world, nothing happens without your say-so(at least nothing interesting). I bet you could run an entire session without you, the DM, using anything you've rolled, and make the session as good or better than you could had you relied on randomness. The players would never even know, unless you roll in front of them.

The only real way a DM can cheat is like you said. Cheating them out of a fun experience.

Glass Mouse
2009-09-28, 03:57 AM
The problem is that you, as the DM, made your players think that some roll result is "bad" and another one is "good". If the player spend half a year carefully nurturing his character and grew quite attached to him - only to roll "1" on a save and have him destroyed permanently - it provokes cheating. But if at "1" he is transported to Hades and has a unique solo adventure he is not going to look at those rolls as if they are "bad" - they are just an opportunity to have a different kind of gameplay situations, to have broader spectrum of gaming experience.

Interesting, and very accurate, point. Also, "1"s should sometimes be played purely for laughs. The always-bragging and arrogant rogue who rolls a bad Move Silently... he really should smash his forehead into a branch, disturb a nest of birds who immediately attack, accidentally knock over a garbage can, etc. Without anything happening except everyone's hearts skipping a beat, and then some laughs.
If bad rolls aren't always grave, you're less likely to cheat.

taltamir
2009-09-28, 04:41 AM
question... why would a half year old character be destroyed permanently for rolling a one? they should have access to resurrect at this point...
And the whole "adventure in hell" thing is also quite a cool and creative way to do things.

As for "cheating players are a DM's fault"... bull****. Not everyone does everything because "society made them that way"... or in this case "the dm was boring".
If the DM is bad I don't cheat, I simply stop playing with them; cheating does not undo a bad DM.
And a ton of people cheat with excellent DMs...

Saying such a thing is a huge insult to every good DM who ever had a cheating player.

Saph
2009-09-28, 04:44 AM
I think his question is fair. It really doesn't matter how unlikely a particular set of rolls is, as long as it comes up. It doesn't even need to be an unbroken string of 20's either, just an unbroken string of successes, which is easier, with maybe the occasional crit thrown in to add injury to injury. Certainly monsters who roll all >15, and/or PCs who rolls all <5, is going to lead to a game that's rather unplayable if it continues long enough.

This is why you need to pay attention to odds to answer the question. The chances of PCs rolling nothing but <5 and enemies rolling nothing but >15 over a long period of time is basically zero. So you're asking me to answer a scenario that is never going to come up.


So what do you do, kill PC after PC in fights where they do everything right but the dice hate them? Or cut them some slack from time to time?

What if it's the PCs who keep on rolling successes? What do you do, kill enemy after enemy in fights where the enemies do everything right but the dice hate them? Or cut them some slack from time to time? Personally I don't think my players would be all that happy if I told them that they were rolling too many high numbers and that I was fudging their dice rolls downwards.

If PCs aren't allowed to get too unlucky, does that also mean NPCs aren't allowed to get too unlucky? Or does it only apply one way?

PhoenixRivers
2009-09-28, 04:51 AM
I'm a believer in fudging die rolls. Sometimes.

It's not an everyday thing, but in campaigns without resurrection assistance, I'll often fudge things enough to allow players to keep their characters (if they're attached), while still removing them from the fight.

I'll also fudge rolls, as a DM, to correct my own errors. If I misinterpreted the party's abilities, and a fight I thought manageable is murdering them, not due to luck, but rather to superior capability, I'm not opposed to having those monsters have a stretch of horrible luck.

Saph
2009-09-28, 05:49 AM
Here's how I generally see fudging:

If I'm fudging rolls as the DM, it's an admission that I've made a mistake. That doesn't mean I don't do it; sometimes the best thing to do IS to admit that you've made a mistake. But it's still a mistake.

The key is to remember that it's YOUR mistake. It's not the fault of the dice. Why? Well, let's take two of the examples from this thread.

Situation: A player rolls a 1 on a save against an enemy's save-or-die, like Finger of Death (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fingerOfDeath.htm).
Response: Who created the enemy in the first place? You did. If you didn't want him to insta-kill the PCs, why did you have him cast Finger of Death against them?

Situation: A 1st-level party run into a couple of Orc Warriors (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/orc.htm). They crit a PC and kill them.
Response: If you didn't want there to be a risk of that happening, why did you pick Orcs as enemies for a 1st-level party?

Have a look at the Orc Warrior's stat block. They attack with falchions for 2d4+4 damage, threat range 18-20. That means that there's a significant chance that at some point they'll crit a PC for 18ish damage. If this isn't what you want, then why in the name of Gygax did you pick those particular enemies in the first place? You're the DM, and this sort of stuff is your responsibility.

If you aren't willing to accept whatever result the dice come up with, you shouldn't be rolling them in the first place. Dice are random; that's the whole point. If there's an outcome you aren't willing to accept, then you should set it up so that outcome's impossible. If you aren't willing to have enemies score critical hits on PCs, ban critical hits from your game. If you don't like save-or-dies, ban those as well. If you don't want PCs dying except when you want them to, then just rule that PCs don't die at -10, they only get knocked unconscious.

However, if you're doing this, I strongly recommend that you be honest about it. If you aren't willing for something to happen, don't try and hide it from the players, just flat-out tell them. It's much better for the players to know the ground rules of your game than to leave them in the dark.

SinsI
2009-09-28, 05:49 AM
I disagree. DnD TO A POINT imitates life. That is how we can identify with and understand it as it is written. If there are no unpleasant consequences for failure, then there is no point in being careful/smart/wise/skillful. If I get rewarded with some great solo adventure in Hades everytime I die, it really lessens the impact of that death. Death in DnD, as I see it, is the ultimate slap on the wrist (though it could be argued that general level loss is worse). If death has no meaning, you take away the thrill of beating it.

DnD, like life, must have some good and bad parts to it. I understand what you are saying, and agree that a player can choose to turn an unfortunate situation into an interesting one that sparks character growth. But that is the PLAYER'S responsibility, not the DM's. Pushing everything onto the DM's shoulders is a cop-out.

People cheat because they choose to. Granted, they might be influenced by outside forces, but the choice is within their power, and in the end, no one is at fault but themselves. I've often found that cheating is a symptom of an immature player (I mean immature to DnD). The more a player understands DnD, the less likely they are to cheat, and the more likely they are to accept bad circumstances and turn them around to their advantage.

Also, a boring game is the fault of everyone involved, DM and player alike.
Really foolish player decisions that deserve to be punished (like being too careless and thus dying multiple times) don't really need rolls; you don't even leave them an opportunity to cheat.
Here's a very relevant webcomic (http://www.dorktower.com/2001/01/05/comics-archive-13/).


Rephrasing Belkar, "The power to punish has always been mine, I just needed to use it more often".

Deadmeat.GW
2009-09-28, 06:17 AM
This is why you need to pay attention to odds to answer the question. The chances of PCs rolling nothing but <5 and enemies rolling nothing but >15 over a long period of time is basically zero. So you're asking me to answer a scenario that is never going to come up.


Actually...this is the exact scenario my group ran into with LotFR a couple of weeks back...

The party highest roll for the first hour of the games was...23 (and that was a failure as the enemy was target number 25 to hit and the player had no dice he could add for more then 1 extra point making his total 24 and still a failure).

The lowest roll against the party was an attack roll of 18 (which incidently hit as the player was not wearing armour and was target number 13 without his armour).

The net result was that the whole party ended unconscious instead of dead as this was such an anti-climatic way to go out that the GM took pity on us (well...given that his average dice rolls were over 38 for that game and we had an average of 12 on our side we as players really did not have much of a chance, as an example on my notice dice roll of 6 D10, keeping 3 dice and adding 3 to the total I had a grand total of 6 on my first roll, 9 on the second roll and 8 on the third roll... I will let you figure out what the odds on that happening is :). Just for your information the first roll I had consisted of 6 rolls of a one...)

Most of the players were very unhappy with their results, two of us, and this included me, were busy creating new and exciting characters already as we thought we were all dead anyway and we just saw it as an opportunity to play something new.

But you are right it is such an outlandish scenario that you pretty much are set with crying or laughing yourself into stomach cramps and not much else.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-28, 01:13 PM
Actually...this is the exact scenario my group ran into with LotFR a couple of weeks back...

The party highest roll for the first hour of the games was...23 (and that was a failure as the enemy was target number 25 to hit and the player had no dice he could add for more then 1 extra point making his total 24 and still a failure).

The lowest roll against the party was an attack roll of 18 (which incidently hit as the player was not wearing armour and was target number 13 without his armour).

So, the enemies were effectively AC 25 and your player was AC13? I realize it's a different game, but it strikes me as possible that this was not purely bad luck, but that the players were up against something significantly tougher than they were.

The ECL system is not perfect, but the intentions behind it are good. ECL appropriate encounters should not pose a large risk to the party unless someone is terminally stupid, but do consume resources. If your encounters routinely deviate from that, odds are that your difficulty level is off.

Tiktakkat
2009-09-28, 01:53 PM
I think, sir, you completely missed my point, so I will expand.

No, I got it.
I am saying that one element of controlling the game is to control, and frequently minimize, the downs, so they do not threaten the fantasy fulfillment aspect.

When a player simply misses the entire night it sucks on a truly significant, and destructive, level.
When that missing leads to not merely the player achieving nothing for an entire session, but the entire party suffering, it becomes even worse.

On that level, it is no longer a question of whether or not I am rewarding a player with some special side mission for failing, it is whether the game is absolutely not imitating life, because the consequences of life are just not what most people want.
To take from your next point, what they want is the illusion of ups and downs, but the occurrence of absolutely no downs.
I think there is a preponderance of support as to how well players respond to "captured and stripped of equipment" scenarios, even moreso when such are predicated on fiat. Even just taking away some minor item will send more than a few players into a frenzy or depression.


You sorta said this, but I’d like to expand. As the DM, it is your job to present the ILLUSION of danger, the ILLUSION of control, though really, in the end, the players are 100% percent at your mercy. You might disagree with me here, but I task you to look at any game you've DMed.

You do not have to, I have said that for years.
And I have done things like that, including ad hoc revisions of plot hooks in published adventures. (After learning the hard way that not every player or group likes every plot hook.)


The only real way a DM can cheat is like you said. Cheating them out of a fun experience.

Indeed. Which is why I have said, the only regrets I have are not ignoring the rules more often.


This is why you need to pay attention to odds to answer the question. The chances of PCs rolling nothing but <5 and enemies rolling nothing but >15 over a long period of time is basically zero. So you're asking me to answer a scenario that is never going to come up.

"Nothing but" I have yet to see.

"Disproportionately to the point of being both statistically significant and game affecting" I have.
And if we got to <10, I have seen it repeatedly.


If this isn't what you want, then why in the name of Gygax did you pick those particular enemies in the first place? You're the DM, and this sort of stuff is your responsibility.

Indeed.
That is a natural partner with what I noted previously about not placing NPCs in places they can get killed if you are not prepared for it to happen.

And I will note, I have seen supposedly "great" adventure authors respond when asked about this with either "So? The rules say is is balanced." (for the potential killer encounters) or "He just gets away because I say so." (for NPCs granted plot immunity).

Tyndmyr
2009-09-28, 02:41 PM
No, I got it.
I am saying that one element of controlling the game is to control, and frequently minimize, the downs, so they do not threaten the fantasy fulfillment aspect.

When a player simply misses the entire night it sucks on a truly significant, and destructive, level.
When that missing leads to not merely the player achieving nothing for an entire session, but the entire party suffering, it becomes even worse.

The entire night only gets missed if the player died right away. If encounter #1 drops a party member, it's possible that the difficulty level is too high. Remember, there is typically more than one encounter, and resources are limited. Generally, it's better to put boss fights torward the end, where players can happily nova off whatever they have left, and if someone does die, it's less disruptive.

Yes, some people like playing extremely lethal games, and some like playing much safer missions where risk of death is low. Neither of these is "right", but they are pretty incompatible. In short, if you don't want people to die in the first fight, it's not hard to design the fight so it won't happen.

As for most people preferring success...the standard ECL system is designed so that the vast majority of fights are quite winnable by the players, without a terribly large risk of death. All you really have to do is abide by that, and be aware that some creatures were labeled poorly by ECL.

Gamerlord
2009-09-28, 02:58 PM
I know a player that I am 90% sure is a cheater, either that or he is REALLY lucky, he rolls all his dice out of my view, whenever he has a poor roll in my sight he rerolls because " It bounced off of (insert object here)" and always seems to get high rolls.

Tiktakkat
2009-09-28, 03:04 PM
The entire night only gets missed if the player died right away. If encounter #1 drops a party member, it's possible that the difficulty level is too high. Remember, there is typically more than one encounter, and resources are limited. Generally, it's better to put boss fights torward the end, where players can happily nova off whatever they have left, and if someone does die, it's less disruptive.

No, for that player the entire night is a waste.
He showed up and not merely succeeded at nothing, they wound up harming the party by all of their failures. If he had stayed home the entire party would have been better off cause they would not have relied on him to contribute something.


As for most people preferring success...the standard ECL system is designed so that the vast majority of fights are quite winnable by the players, without a terribly large risk of death. All you really have to do is abide by that, and be aware that some creatures were labeled poorly by ECL.

No, most creatures are labeled quite well by CR.
The problem, which is recognized though poorly dealt with in 4E, is that not every monster is equal in its CR at every PL, or in every roll.
An ogre is very much CR 3 - against a PL 3 group. It is more a CR 5 against a PL 1 group, and still fairly functional against a PL 7 group.
Meanwhile a CR 11 hezrou is an auto-TPK against PL 8 group, a reasonable challenge to a PL 11 group, while being only slighly above the the speedbump level to a PL 13 group, even if you have 4 or more of them.
It is only when those creatures function outside their exact CR that their threat varies so widely.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-28, 03:24 PM
You entirely missed the point. The point is not to challenge"the night is a waste for the player" if he dies in fight #1, the point is that if this is happening, it's the DM's fault.

C'mon, three kobolds are, in 3.5, theoretically equal to two orcs. However, it's vastly more likely that the two orc encounter will result in a dead or incapacitated player(assuming level 1, CR 1 encounter here). Even at the same level, equal CR encounters are not always of equal difficulty. Treat the CRs as guidelines, and look over the mobs yourself.

A CR 3 mob is not a CR 5 encounter vs a level 1 party. It's still CR 3. Which, btw, is a pretty harsh thing to throw at a level 1 party. If the DM is doing that as fight #1, and someone dies from it, it is indeed the DM's fault.

Jade_Tarem
2009-09-28, 03:29 PM
This is why you need to pay attention to odds to answer the question. The chances of PCs rolling nothing but <5 and enemies rolling nothing but >15 over a long period of time is basically zero. So you're asking me to answer a scenario that is never going to come up.

Ah, but you haven't answered the question.

It's very unlikely that it will occur. No one is arguing that. But the wacky thing about inconvenient ethical questions is that probability isn't a factor. Improbable occurances can happen, and I'm asking you what you do if something like this does happen.

So once again, are you willing to run a game where the players don't succeed at anything and die all the time becuase of dice hate? Or do you fudge?


What if it's the PCs who keep on rolling successes? What do you do, kill enemy after enemy in fights where the enemies do everything right but the dice hate them? Or cut them some slack from time to time? Personally I don't think my players would be all that happy if I told them that they were rolling too many high numbers and that I was fudging their dice rolls downwards.

If PCs aren't allowed to get too unlucky, does that also mean NPCs aren't allowed to get too unlucky? Or does it only apply one way?

It can apply both ways. Good grief, you don't tell the players you're doing it. That's immersion breaking and silly.

And yes. I've fudged rolls both for and against the players. Since this seems to blow everyone's mind, let me iterate that I do not do it often. I don't fudge all the time, or even every time that it would be convenient for me to do so. Just sometimes - because sometimes it's my judgment that the players would be happier if they could continue down a path that I had prepared for rather than haring off to the other side of nowhere because they were luckier, or unluckier, than they should have been.


Here's how I generally see fudging:

If I'm fudging rolls as the DM, it's an admission that I've made a mistake. That doesn't mean I don't do it; sometimes the best thing to do IS to admit that you've made a mistake. But it's still a mistake.

The key is to remember that it's YOUR mistake. It's not the fault of the dice. Why? Well, let's take two of the examples from this thread.

Situation: A player rolls a 1 on a save against an enemy's save-or-die, like Finger of Death (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fingerOfDeath.htm).
Response: Who created the enemy in the first place? You did. If you didn't want him to insta-kill the PCs, why did you have him cast Finger of Death against them?

Situation: A 1st-level party run into a couple of Orc Warriors (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/orc.htm). They crit a PC and kill them.
Response: If you didn't want there to be a risk of that happening, why did you pick Orcs as enemies for a 1st-level party?

Have a look at the Orc Warrior's stat block. They attack with falchions for 2d4+4 damage, threat range 18-20. That means that there's a significant chance that at some point they'll crit a PC for 18ish damage. If this isn't what you want, then why in the name of Gygax did you pick those particular enemies in the first place? You're the DM, and this sort of stuff is your responsibility.

Ok, stop. Let's be clear on one thing.

Every single monster in the Monster Manual that has a CR within about five of your group can kill your party, given the correct circumstances i.e. dice rolls. It's cold, hard fact.

That doesn't mean that I'm being too gosh darn mean when an underpowered monster gets a string of successful hits. It also doesn't mean that I want to initiate TPK and start over. Again, it's immersion breaking and goofy. So instead of throwing away a lot of effort and good characters, or breaking immersion to remind everyone that we're a bunch of people rolling dice on a table, you can fudge, getting the best of both worlds.


If you aren't willing to accept whatever result the dice come up with, you shouldn't be rolling them in the first place. Dice are random; that's the whole point. If there's an outcome you aren't willing to accept, then you should set it up so that outcome's impossible. If you aren't willing to have enemies score critical hits on PCs, ban critical hits from your game. If you don't like save-or-dies, ban those as well. If you don't want PCs dying except when you want them to, then just rule that PCs don't die at -10, they only get knocked unconscious.

However, if you're doing this, I strongly recommend that you be honest about it. If you aren't willing for something to happen, don't try and hide it from the players, just flat-out tell them. It's much better for the players to know the ground rules of your game than to leave them in the dark.

Lord of the Rings wouldn't have continued had Aragorn been impaled by Uruk-hai #6176 at the battle of Helm's Deep, or had Gandalf rolled a natural 1 on his ride check at the end and fallen off Shadowfax to be accidentally trampled to death by the Riders of Rohan. I don't think anyone in the theater expected that to happen, either, and yet the battle is still pretty intense. The illusion of danger is maintained, even though everyone knows that Legolas getting blown up in the wall explosion just isn't going to happen.

The same thing applies to the players. While most players say they want danger and gritty reality, the truth is that getting splattered by a random mephit or hobgoblin is the last thing they want. They're here to enact heroic fantasy, and they can't do that if every enemy rolls above 15 for an entire encounter. While death in real life can be petty and meaningless, it shouldn't be for the main characters of a story. If their characters die, they would prefer that it be awesome, or at least humorous.

Taking away everything that makes the game dangerous is also not what they want. Once again, we're already pretending to be elves and wizards - total honesty is not a prerequisite to playing the game. The DM's job - his first and foremost job - is to provide fun. And to provide fun, at least in the context of the story, you need to be able to create an illusion, a fantasy. Announcing that the players can't die is a bad way to go about it. Not using anything with dice rolls is another bad way to go. Letting them get splattered in their first encounter is, in my book, a similarly subpar method of operation.

I am not now, nor have I ever, suggested that a DM should fudge whenever something goes the least little bit wrong. But I do think there are times when it helps keep things moving.

Yukitsu
2009-09-28, 03:31 PM
Why do I get the feeling I'm the only one here where the DM is fudging stats against the party, and not in an "I want the BBEG around a few rounds longer" kind of fudging way?

Tyndmyr
2009-09-28, 03:46 PM
I've seen that too, Yukitsu. Fudging stats against the party is...very dangerous. Like playing a DMPC, I am willing to concede that there may, possibly, somewhere be a case where it works out just fine, I've never actually seen it happen, and I've seen some horrible abuses. Enough that I advise just staying away from it altogether.

Jade, a CR 1 encounter should not kill a level 6 party, if played fairly. At higher levels, the CR difference is less extreme...and in theory, a CR 15 encounter might be able to hurt a level 20 party...but it's still extremely unlikely.

As for rolls, lets consider how many rolls are made in a fight. We'll assume a stock party of 4 against an appropriately encountered(ECL = party level) group of 4 mobs, where neither surprises the other, or has significant advantages. This means the die rolls will be approximately equal for both sides.

4 for init. 4 for attacking(if melee, ranged or using touch attacks), up to 4 for damage(if hit). In the case of casters that are using save spells, they don't need to roll, the other side merely saves. This means each side will get 4+(rounds*players*1.5) rolls, more or less. In practice, this number climbs quickly due to AOE spells, full attacks, etc....but we'll give you a situation that fits your assumptions.

An equal ECLed encounter should not be killing off your party in less than three rounds. In all likelihood, some characters could survive longer. This is a pretty bad scenario, too...plenty of combats go longer than three rounds, without any party deaths at all. So, in a pretty optimal scenario for few dice rolls, each side rolls around 22 dice.

The odds that all of the mobs dice will be in the top 10, and the players in the bottom ten is 2^44th power, which comes out to about 1.7592186 × 10^13. So the odds are 1.76 in ten trillion of this happening.

I don't think that scenario is likely enough to plan for. To put this in perspective, stars in the galaxy are dying all the time. Our galaxy has approximately 100b stars in it. You would probably be better off planning for the spontanious destruction of the sun during your gaming session than such an event.

Jade_Tarem
2009-09-28, 04:03 PM
I've seen that too, Yukitsu. Fudging stats against the party is...very dangerous. Like playing a DMPC, I am willing to concede that there may, possibly, somewhere be a case where it works out just fine, I've never actually seen it happen, and I've seen some horrible abuses. Enough that I advise just staying away from it altogether.

Jade, a CR 1 encounter should not kill a level 6 party, if played fairly. At higher levels, the CR difference is less extreme...and in theory, a CR 15 encounter might be able to hurt a level 20 party...but it's still extremely unlikely.

As for rolls, lets consider how many rolls are made in a fight. We'll assume a stock party of 4 against an appropriately encountered(ECL = party level) group of 4 mobs, where neither surprises the other, or has significant advantages. This means the die rolls will be approximately equal for both sides.

4 for init. 4 for attacking(if melee, ranged or using touch attacks), up to 4 for damage(if hit). In the case of casters that are using save spells, they don't need to roll, the other side merely saves. This means each side will get 4+(rounds*players*1.5) rolls, more or less. In practice, this number climbs quickly due to AOE spells, full attacks, etc....but we'll give you a situation that fits your assumptions.

An equal ECLed encounter should not be killing off your party in less than three rounds. In all likelihood, some characters could survive longer. This is a pretty bad scenario, too...plenty of combats go longer than three rounds, without any party deaths at all. So, in a pretty optimal scenario for few dice rolls, each side rolls around 22 dice.

The odds that all of the mobs dice will be in the top 10, and the players in the bottom ten is 2^44th power, which comes out to about 1.7592186 × 10^13. So the odds are 1.76 in ten trillion of this happening.

I don't think that scenario is likely enough to plan for. To put this in perspective, stars in the galaxy are dying all the time. Our galaxy has approximately 100b stars in it. You would probably be better off planning for the spontanious destruction of the sun during your gaming session than such an event.

Aaaaaaaaaaand we've missed the point and become sidetracked on numbers again. This is putting aside the fact that the probabilities don't have to be that extreme to make your players (and you) have a bad, bad day.

It probably seems like a super noble goal to never, ever, ever fudge the dice because it's a bad bad thing to do. In theory. On paper. Maybe even in your gaming experience.

But not in mine. I've had bigger problems with following the dice precisely all the time. And the response I get is that I must be balancing the encounters wrong.

Bull.

I've seen encounters go south that had CRs three under the party. That monstrous crab thing can kill parties at a level 4 higher than its CR frequently. Five might have been a stretch. Fine. Typically I can balance an encounter just fine, though, yet a random element to the fight means that what's balanced once might go really sour the next time, and a fight requiring 1/4 the party's resources might suddenly require 150% of the party's resources. That's not my fault, as Saph seems to suggest, but rather an unfortunate occurence. Saph's alternative is to either Hand of God it away, or else remove all random elements from DnD. This is a false either/or dilemma when I can fudge a roll and keep both the illusion of danger, the mechanics, and the game intact and running.

Several posters seem to be of the idea that the players have some sort of fudge radar, and that they instantly know the instant you start fudging and will hate you forever for it. This is just silly. The actors in a play don't stop every few minutes and explain how they just did some stunt. Yoda didn't have CGI tatooed on his forehead in the Star Wars prequels. This is one of those things that you do rarely and discreetly. The audience knows that Anakin's actor didn't really have all his limbs hacked off - but that's not what they're thinking about when Obi-Wan harvests his legs.

So it goes with DMing. A lot if it is behind the scenes. And all of it is under your control. The players don't think about that, or if they do, then it's a more relaxed and metagamey situation with casual characters and they probably don't care too much if one gets the axe.


The other response that I get is that I should drop what I'm doing, halt the game, and respond to whatever the dice do like some kind of circus animal. But I'm not the perfect DM - no one is - and sometimes I'd rather just alter a roll than redo a bunch of work or kill a character. Now, I understand that this is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE to the way that you play. I can respect that. But what started this argument was the implication that to fudge rolls is cheating, which in addition to being mechanically impossible for the DM to do strongly implies that those who do it are bad people, or at least inherently inferior to DMs who do not fudge rolls.

Let's remember that we're talking about playstyles, here.

So you don't like it when DMs fudge - that's fine and dandy. But telling me that it's always bad to do it against years of empirical evidence on my end isn't going to sway me.

gdiddy
2009-09-28, 04:13 PM
And the most important rule in being a magician? Never ever ever tell anyone how the tricks work.

Fudging rolls is a trust breaker. If you do it, it has to be done seldom, with believability, and with only concern for the party's collective fun. And you should never tell them about it. Because that will make them question every achievement and event they've ever been part of in your game.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-28, 04:29 PM
The problem when fudging dice rolls, regardless of if it's a player or a DM is not just "what happens if I never get caught". If you assume you'll never be caught, you can rationalize away all sorts of things.

It also includes "What happens when I do get caught?" and "What happens if they don't know, but have a suspicion that it's happening?"

Jade_Tarem
2009-09-28, 05:08 PM
And the most important rule in being a magician? Never ever ever tell anyone how the tricks work.

Fudging rolls is a trust breaker. If you do it, it has to be done seldom, with believability, and with only concern for the party's collective fun. And you should never tell them about it. Because that will make them question every achievement and event they've ever been part of in your game.

You'd think so, but I find that players would rather trust that I not whimsically discard their characters. I've had them find out that I was fudging before, and as I've said, the universal response has been, "Yeah, I see why you did that." No one has ever reacted with "You ass, now I feel cheated of all my fantasy accomplishments!"

@Tyndmyr:

The DM doesn't have to rationalize OOC decisions. The players have agreed to play by his rules, in return for which he is supposed to provide him with a good time.

I never said you'd never be caught, but once again, all of my accumulated experience as a DM says that they'd rather I fudge rolls. They're also not likely to look too hard - ignorance is bliss.

Yukitsu
2009-09-28, 05:10 PM
You'd think so, but I find that players would rather trust that I not whimsically discard their characters. I've had them find out that I was fudging before, and as I've said, the universal response has been, "Yeah, I see why you did that." No one has ever reacted with "You ass, now I feel cheated of all my fantasy accomplishments!"


I have, because of the above mentioned line of fudging.

Saph
2009-09-28, 06:31 PM
Ah, but you haven't answered the question.

It's very unlikely that it will occur. No one is arguing that. But the wacky thing about inconvenient ethical questions is that probability isn't a factor. Improbable occurances can happen, and I'm asking you what you do if something like this does happen.

Why should I care? If something's sufficiently improbable, it simply isn't worth my time. Make your scenario likely enough that I've got a reason to care about it, and I'll give you a proper answer.


It can apply both ways. Good grief, you don't tell the players you're doing it.

I can generally tell if a DM makes a habit of fudging, FYI. Most experienced players can. There are various small but noticable clues.


That doesn't mean that I'm being too gosh darn mean when an underpowered monster gets a string of successful hits. It also doesn't mean that I want to initiate TPK and start over. Again, it's immersion breaking and goofy. So instead of throwing away a lot of effort and good characters, or breaking immersion to remind everyone that we're a bunch of people rolling dice on a table, you can fudge, getting the best of both worlds.

I really don't think it's the best of both worlds. Fudging can cause significant problems in a game, and the problems get worse the more often you do it.


The same thing applies to the players. While most players say they want danger and gritty reality, the truth is that getting splattered by a random mephit or hobgoblin is the last thing they want. They're here to enact heroic fantasy, and they can't do that if every enemy rolls above 15 for an entire encounter.

You seem awfully sure about what all players want. Have you asked them? Because I'd prefer it if you didn't fudge rolls in my game, and I don't think I'm the only one.

FMArthur
2009-09-28, 06:43 PM
As a DM I 'cheat' by treating any dice rolled off the table as 1s. So. Annoying.

DarknessLord
2009-09-28, 06:50 PM
Well, IF I was in the unlikely situation of my players rolling all <5, while I was getting all >15, I really couldn't do anything about it, my players are smart and remember that the 4 they rolled last time still doesn't hit when they rolled it this time, so all I could really do would be to pretend that my dice were as bad as the players, which would turn it into a miss fest, which is, in my humble opinion, more boring and less fun then a TPK, at least something is happening then.

And honestly, if a fight is going that badly, it might be time for the PCs to high-tail it out of there, which I may suggest, but is ultimately up to them.

tcrudisi
2009-09-28, 07:14 PM
Darn. I was having fun on the first page reading about the different ways people have cheated. Suddenly, the thread was hijacked about a discussion on whether the DM can cheat or not.

I almost created another thread about players getting caught cheating... but I decided (because I'm lazy), that I'd rather see this one get back on track. Whether you consider the DM a player, whether you think the DM can or can not cheat, it doesn't matter. Can we please just tell stories about players getting caught cheating?

I used to play with some people who would roll ridiculously well. I always suspected them of cheating but never had any proof. After all, they would show up to games with 18, 18, 18, 17, 17, 14 and then complain about how they rolled really poorly. Yeah, right. Finally, we were playing Werewolf one day and I was actually a Black Spiral Dancer hidden among the pack when one of the guys that always rolls well managed to get 6 successes on 5 dice. Now, for those of you going, "Well, it's possible in WoD!" ... it IS possible, but only if you have a trait of 4 or 5 so you can have a specialty. He didn't. He had 2 for his trait, 2 for a skill, and 1 for some merit he had. The repurcusions of this? Nothing in that session. It was realized way too late for us to do anything about it. However, after that, I refused to play with that guy. He just rolls too darn well. There comes a point which it ceases to be luck and becomes instead cheating. (I suppose it is statistically possible to roll one hundred 18's in a row with three dice... but if that happened? I'd feel safe calling them out for cheating.)

Gan The Grey
2009-09-28, 07:37 PM
I agree. This thread has degenerated into something of a yelling match. People are arguing unprovable points, and some people are even arguing the same points and they don't even realize it. Some people are just arguing to argue, and don't really make much sense anymore. So...let's get back on topic.

I used to think monks were an overpowered class, because the only person who would ever play one was a cheating bastard. He would never miss more than once on a specific mob. Before we discovered his cheating, we really wouldn't question his builds, or his usage of magic items. GOD, once we figured it out...he basically had to make a new character. He used EVERYTHING wrong. Stacking bonuses wrong, changing bonuses, adding wrong. I think he thought that your BAB and Saves would ADD the next levels number, as opposed to increase TO that number.

He was funny though. When he wasn't fighting, he was 'meditating', which consisted of making out with his GF or having sex with her in his car.

AgentPaper
2009-09-28, 08:14 PM
Back on topic, I don't think any of my players have actually cheated on purpose, but there was this one time where we had borrowed some dice from a friend, and used them for a while, and only realized a few weeks later that one of the d20s had two 20s and no 1, and that two of the d6s had two 6s and no 1. We were all pretty surprised to find this out, and we'd all been using the dice, so there wasn't really any harm that came of it, but it was amusing that we had all used it that entire time without even noticing. :smallamused:

When we pointed this out to the person we borrowed the dice from (who doesn't really play RPGs much, and had gotten them from a friend or some such) it turned out that he hadn't known about it either. In the end, we all had a good laugh about it, but I made sure we wouldn't use those dice again by mistake, since they looked the same as other, normal dice, at least at a glance. :smalltongue:

I also have another friend who really is just extremely lucky, and another who is very un-lucky. The first would commonly roll something like 18, 16, 16, 14, 14, 12 for his character, (in front of me, and that exact layout something like 3 times in a row once, or at least close to it) and crits almost once a turn, but I know he isn't cheating, because he'll use any dice, and the dice are definitely rolling and tumbling like they should, but they just always land high somehow.

The other player, on the other hand, would often roll something like 12, 10, 8, 8, 6, 4 or something for his character (which I'd always let him re-roll, until he got something at least half-decent, or let him point buy, or let the above mentioned lucky player roll for him) and almost never rolled anything above a 10. :smallamused:

And the funny thing is, both these players would use the same dice, (we had a pool of dice everyone just took what they needed at the time from) one of them rolling a string of 16s, 18,s and 20s, while the other could roll ten times and not get a single number above 8 sometimes.

Not that this was always the case, of course, as the lucky player would occasionally miss or get a 1 even, while the unlucky player would hit sometimes, and even occasionally get a lucky crit, but it just goes to show that "random" really doesn't mean "evenly distributed". (Though getting both of those at the same time would probably be something like the holy grail of RPGs :smallwink:)

Kroy
2009-09-28, 08:22 PM
I had this one player who constantly got high scores. I know he cheated. He comes in with a character that has 3 18s, 2 16, and a 15. I make reroll with my dice. In a cup. 4 18s, a 15, and 12. He was just a shocked as I was. I let him keep those scores.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-28, 09:29 PM
(I suppose it is statistically possible to roll one hundred 18's in a row with three dice... but if that happened? I'd feel safe calling them out for cheating.)

Heck, if someone claimed they rolled straight 18's for stats in D&D using only 3d6, I'd immediately call bull**** and make them reroll, and that's a mere six rolls.

Of course, each 18 on three dice is a 1/216 shot. Doing that six times in a row is ridiculously improbable.



Frankly, if *anyone* is cheating enough to matter, it will eventually come out. It might not be right away, but eventually the trend will be noticed, even if it's only that "lucky roll" when it's really needed.

The RL group I play with rolls everything publicly...we've done this for as long as I can remember. If someone has good stats, nobody questions it because we saw it happen. This is vastly preferable, IMO.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-28, 09:31 PM
As a DM I 'cheat' by treating any dice rolled off the table as 1s. So. Annoying.

This is seriously begging for that feat to count any natural 1 as a natural 20 on attack rolls.

CockroachTeaParty
2009-09-28, 09:36 PM
I rarely cheat as a DM, but I have cheated as a player before. Typically, I cheat only to speed up an encounter that has turned into a boring slog. If it's down to the party vs. one enemy or whatever, and there's nothing exciting left to be accomplished in the fight, I magically start rolling critical hits, etc., if I can get away with it.

I only rarely do this. This usually occurs during extreme examples of tedious monotony. If I can't get the DM to agree to simply end the encounter without further slogging, I might start cheating. :smallamused:

As a general rule of thumb, if I'm cheating as a player, it's because the DM is doing a poor job / being a tool. Sure, it's a little mean, but the point of the game is to have fun, not mindlessly roll dice until they lose all meaning.

Jade_Tarem
2009-09-28, 10:02 PM
Why should I care? If something's sufficiently improbable, it simply isn't worth my time. Make your scenario likely enough that I've got a reason to care about it, and I'll give you a proper answer.

How likely does it have to be for you to care about it?


I can generally tell if a DM makes a habit of fudging, FYI. Most experienced players can. There are various small but noticable clues.

I really don't think it's the best of both worlds. Fudging can cause significant problems in a game, and the problems get worse the more often you do it.

Which is, again, why you don't do it very often.


You seem awfully sure about what all players want. Have you asked them? Because I'd prefer it if you didn't fudge rolls in my game, and I don't think I'm the only one.

Why should I care? If something's sufficently improbable, it simply isn't worth my time. And so far, in my experience, players having a big beef with fudging is almost never a problem. Were you playing in a game I was running, I wouldn't do it. For your enjoyment.

I've mentioned many times (and it should be implied strongly enough for you to pick up on it anyway, especially for someone who can always tell when a DM is fudging) that my statements are based on the spectrum of my experience and the players that I've played with. I have made no claim to telepathy or omniscience.

As Gan has pointed out, we're arguing in circles.

Deadmeat.GW
2009-09-29, 05:51 PM
So, the enemies were effectively AC 25 and your player was AC13? I realize it's a different game, but it strikes me as possible that this was not purely bad luck, but that the players were up against something significantly tougher than they were.

The ECL system is not perfect, but the intentions behind it are good. ECL appropriate encounters should not pose a large risk to the party unless someone is terminally stupid, but do consume resources. If your encounters routinely deviate from that, odds are that your difficulty level is off.

My character normally runs around wearing heavy armour, heavy armour adds 10 to your TN to be hit, making my target number 23 to be hit.
Not massive, decidely average.
But without my armour I am only 13 to hit.
Low Reflexes stat which is used to work out your TN to be hit.

Reflexes times 5 plus any armour is the TN to hit for LotFR.

On the other hand my character normally rolls 8 ten-sided dice, picks the three highest rolls and adds 11 to this total, if I don't use my free raise (and extra 5 to add to my roll).
I also kept missing the TN of 25 the GM had for his mooks...
For perception rolls I roll 6 ten-sided dice and keep the three highest rolls, after which I add 3 to the total.

For the average samurai in this game hitting TN 25 is not such a big challenge.
Heck, a starting character Samurai usually rolls 6 ten-sided dice and adds 3 to the result and should hit that TN a substantial amount of the time.
Like 35% of the time.
My character (Insight rank 2, i.e. quite an experienced fighter) should hit 25 TN pretty much all the time.
When you, like my group did, not only not hit consistently but the GM also rolls very, very high every time (the enemies were worse then the average starting samurai) you run into trouble fast.

Tyndmyr
2009-09-29, 06:53 PM
So you play for a while, and eventually you get to your first combat. And I, the DM, have Joe Orc attack you in round one, and roll two natural twenties and max damage, beating the 1/3200 odds against it killing your character instantly.



Don't give me an odds estimation for how unlikely that is. It doesn't have to be reasonable



Why should I care? If something's sufficently improbable, it simply isn't worth my time.

I agree with the last quote, but I don't see how it works with the first two. The odds of getting a player who disagrees with you on this matter seems quite a bit more likely than getting instagibbed right off the bat in an appropriate ECL fight by chance.

As for the other game...Im afraid I don't know the system well enough to calculate the odds. That said, i've seen the dice blamed for all sorts of things in all sorts of games. I've actually kept logbooks to prove to people that they were not supernaturally unlucky. Luck is a convenient target of blame for all sorts of things.

Jade_Tarem
2009-09-29, 06:59 PM
I agree with the last quote, but I don't see how it works with the first two. The odds of getting a player who disagrees with you on this matter seems quite a bit more likely than getting instagibbed right off the bat in an appropriate ECL fight by chance.

*Shrug* For you, maybe it is. For me, I've met zero players who care about the fudging (until you and Saph) and more than a dozen instances of times when the dice go sour.


Luck is a convenient target of blame for all sorts of things.

As is the DM.

FlyingWhale
2009-09-29, 07:08 PM
I had to deal with one terribly rotten apple who just needed a slap to the mouth. He had a paladin who used his lay on hands a hundred times a day. On every party member, and himself. To heal hundreds of hit points. And he would always do this slapping his chest thing like some sort of gorilla and day "LOH". After slapping him with a phb a few hundred times explaining how it works... He'd still say, "I don't need to heal, I've got LOH". I'd say, "ASDHSKIGFHAKSHIQWAHEIDF"

This was the same player who has yet in his D&D 4 year career roll less than a 35. Even with a level one character. Even when his die says 6. Even when he doesn't even have a character sheet. Even when he is dropped off in Miami for being retarded... No offense meant to our mentally handicapped brethren. I stopped playing the game occasionally because I just couldn't stand him speaking... That reminds me of every spellcaster that has ever played with me... They don't have spell-lists... Seems to be the most common issue I've ran in to.

Raum
2009-09-29, 07:09 PM
*Shrug* For you, maybe it is. For me, I've met zero players who care about the fudging (until you and Saph) and more than a dozen instances of times when the dice go sour.A side note (but hopefully an amusing one) many have noticed. See the 28 Types of Game Masters (http://www.kaila.pl/rpg/28gm.htm) which has been wandering the web for years. :smallsmile:

sofawall
2009-09-29, 07:13 PM
That monstrous crab thing can kill parties at a level 4 higher than its CR frequently.

Well there's your problem.

That monstrous crab thing is known to be roughly as under-CR as Dragons.

FlyingWhale
2009-09-29, 07:13 PM
Heck, if someone claimed they rolled straight 18's for stats in D&D using only 3d6, I'd immediately call bull**** and make them reroll, and that's a mere six rolls.

Of course, each 18 on three dice is a 1/216 shot. Doing that six times in a row is ridiculously improbable.



Frankly, if *anyone* is cheating enough to matter, it will eventually come out. It might not be right away, but eventually the trend will be noticed, even if it's only that "lucky roll" when it's really needed.

The RL group I play with rolls everything publicly...we've done this for as long as I can remember. If someone has good stats, nobody questions it because we saw it happen. This is vastly preferable, IMO.

I hear that all up and down. We even roll things like 6x6 squares. But we roll them openly, I mean, that's a lot of rolls that could be fudged... It's not exactly like we don't trust each other... It's more, everyone gets to see everyone and we have a good time joshing around and laughing at bad rolls... and cheering on 18's... Public rolling? I have always liked it. But we have all been friends for years, and even in the serious games we laugh when someone rolls a 1 or a 20... It happens. I roll most of my rolls in public too as the DM.

Delwugor
2009-09-29, 09:38 PM
Last session I had an extra point of Armour Class that I shouldn't have had. For the first 3/4 of the session. I'd miscalculated an armour bonus when I'd written it on my sheet.:smallfrown:

I am very bad at keeping things straight on my character sheet, especially in D&D 3.x, and had been accused several times in the past of cheating. Then I switched to using PCGen and when accused again just point to the program, turns out the two times it was actually correct. (BTW PCGen really stinks and is a slow memory hog. I now use HeroForge which doesn't cause as much problems.)

I have only seen blatant cheating in one group which I left after 3 sessions anyway. I really just ignored it and do what I always do, pay attention to my character and play.
Never ran across it as a GM but I wouldn't make a big deal out of it, at least in the open. I'd talk to him privately (and hopefully tactfully) and if that doesn't work some of my GM rolls against him could counter his rolls...

KeresM
2009-09-29, 10:05 PM
I had a player that was notorious for fudging his spell list.

He always had just the proper spell prepped for any occasion, never seemed to run out of fireballs, and liked to 'forget' about expensive components and spell side effects (like a spell that cost the caster 1d6 con each time it was cast).

He still lost more characters than all the other players combined.

AgentPaper
2009-09-29, 10:32 PM
I had a player that was notorious for fudging his spell list.

He always had just the proper spell prepped for any occasion, never seemed to run out of fireballs, and liked to 'forget' about expensive components and spell side effects (like a spell that cost the caster 1d6 con each time it was cast).

He still lost more characters than all the other players combined.

Heh, reminds me of the time way back when I didn't even know how meta-magic feats actually worked, and threw out an empowered, maximized fireball and ice storm (in two rounds, since I didn't know quicken let you cast twice in the same round) and wiped out a group of ogres. The DM apparently didn't know the rules much better than me, because he didn't even comment on it. That campaign ended shortly after anyways. :smallamused:

Tyndmyr
2009-09-29, 11:11 PM
That reminds me of every spellcaster that has ever played with me... They don't have spell-lists... Seems to be the most common issue I've ran in to.

That is a sadly common problem. Part of it seems to be just honest laziness, as people don't bother to actually track what they know or have prepared, but occasionally, people seem to use it as "yeah, I know that". Index cards work great for keeping track of spells per day.

The different types of DM was indeed hilarious. Sadly, I've met a great number of those, including some that were multiple types. A common combo seems to be the DMs who feel that running monty haul campaigns somehow makes up for mostly ignoring the CR system in an attempt to kill as many players as possible. *sigh*

EndlessWrath
2009-09-30, 02:43 AM
One can understand why cheating is bad. but you gotta look at the other option too. How much time and energy one puts into the campaign your in.

I had a scenario occur: The DM said no rerolls, no remaking characters, he had a long list of people who wanted to join the game and if you died than you died. We spent a year playing this game, 1 casualty and we revived him. the final act of the campaign is about to start and it'll play a pretty strong climax for the next 4 months. From this point on there isn't time to find the money to revive people. The first battle and the player is running down a hallway. a trap occurs. very easy. DC 15 save. for level 12 characters.. DC 15 is pretty easy to beat. Especially for a monk focusing on his saves. He rolls a 1. No problem, it means he's been hit by the arrow. Poison tipped arrow. Fort save 10 or die fort save 20 or paralyzed for 1d6 rounds.... His fort save is +15 at least. He rolls a 1. Critical Failure. He's spent a year into this game and twice the luck of his die has conspired against him...knowingly not wanting to be kicked out, but not wanting to wait till the end of the game to be revived. He doesn't nudge it to a 20. He nudges the die to a 2. He takes paralyzation and received a 6 on paralyzed. THe party protects him and the game ended happily, no friends were jaded...no people were hurt.. and no one had to quit or leave.

Cheating is wrong. don't get me wrong, but It can't all be Black and White. Everything is circumstantial

BritishBill
2009-10-04, 09:06 AM
I had to deal with one terribly rotten apple who just needed a slap to the mouth. He had a paladin who used his lay on hands a hundred times a day. On every party member, and himself. To heal hundreds of hit points. And he would always do this slapping his chest thing like some sort of gorilla and day "LOH". After slapping him with a phb a few hundred times explaining how it works... He'd still say, "I don't need to heal, I've got LOH". I'd say, "ASDHSKIGFHAKSHIQWAHEIDF"

This was the same player who has yet in his D&D 4 year career roll less than a 35. Even with a level one character. Even when his die says 6. Even when he doesn't even have a character sheet. Even when he is dropped off in Miami for being retarded... No offense meant to our mentally handicapped brethren. I stopped playing the game occasionally because I just couldn't stand him speaking... That reminds me of every spellcaster that has ever played with me... They don't have spell-lists... Seems to be the most common issue I've ran in to.
jeff....tommmy? which one was it lol? Or was it both :smallsigh:

oxinabox
2009-10-04, 10:06 AM
When playing nWod, the bigger my dice pool the worse i roll

Take last session for example:
eg on a dice pool of 3 i get 2 successes
on a dicce bool of 9 i get 1 (twice in one session)
and on 7 i got 0;


Wereas another player has incredible luck:
he rolled 5 zeros in a row,
on most rolls he gets greatert than 50% success.

I have seen him drop dice (but i don't think he lined them up) ather than rolling on a crucial roll.

Now I applease the random number god, by rolling all the bad out of my dice:
Roll them till they get 2 ones in a row - the chances of getting 3 one in a row are 1/30.
(I have done Probitity, and know that this doesn't work)
He appieses the random number god by natural selection.
Rolls the Dice* anumber of times - keeps the ones that roll the most successes. (*these dice are from a big box owned by the club, i provbide my own)
This may explain some of his luck.

When it comes to cruical rolls, we ocationly ask him to do the rolling,. and he noirmally rolls well.
He claims he's always been lucky and hopes he always will.

FlyingWhale
2009-10-04, 11:21 AM
jeff....tommmy? which one was it lol? Or was it both :smallsigh:

This one is all about tommy... Also a post about tommy in #128... The one with the herpes :smallconfused:... the one with the hat.http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124210&page=43 Talk about "cheating players" :smallbiggrin: Yes, yes! This is delicious!!!

Orcus comes out of the ground and eats you while rocks fall, you die. As you pass your death saving throw he hands you a note, it reads "I prepared empowered, maximized exploding runes today."

Oh, we have this one player, his name is Lawrence... Although he does not actually cheat it is fun to notice that he has never died by the hands of an enemy(npc)... Ever. In fact, his entire D&D, Starwars, etc etc etc... He has NEVER been killed by a DM/GM controlled character... Never. Not even as a fluke. Ever. Moral of the story is... Eat your veggies kids.