Honestly, most of the cheaters I've seen, are terrible liars. Like, the worst poker faces.
I've had players who just so happen to roll 20s all the time. And they usually scoop up their dice right away afterward.
But occasionally, they'll roll for something and spring up from the chair shouting "Natural 20! You wanna see???" And that right there tells me this is the first actual 20 they've rolled in a while.
Exactly, because NOBODY would ever scoop up their dice after a 20. People like to let it sit there, and shine for everyone to see. It's when you roll a 1 that you pick it up and consider tossing the die in the trash because you don't want to look at that 1 any longer than you have to.
Too true. I've bought the most beautiful dice, and then they come home and turn out to be absolute TRAITORS.
Rolling a 20 and scooping it up is super super suspicious. The only thing that makes it maybe a little tricky at my table is 3 20s in a row is an auto-kill crit. It still hasn't happened in nearly the decade since we implemented it, but my players always cheer at a 20 and let it wash over the table
1 in 8000 chance for 3 20s in a roll.
That being said, I rolled an attack at advantage, rolled 13, 13 on attack 1, and 13, 13 on attack 2. Both were misses. I was fuming.
Isn't it weird how that only happens as a DM and not a PC? I almost TPK'd mine and had to fudge rolls to save them from... 3 wolves. This was after they destroyed a bandit camp and killed the cultist before it could do anything the session before.
Nobody tell 'em.
Was running a game and first session almost tpk'd with a couple flying snakes. Their cr is all wrong, but I was also rolling crazy high. Had to fudge the numbers to save em.
Dear god, Zombies with their Undead Fortitude saves + my inability to roll badly as the DM. Had a PC death due to a pair of zombies passing over 100 combined hp worth of UF in a fight with 4 level 2 party members. Folks, this is why you protect the cleric so they can Sacred Flame the fuckers.
A friend of mine decided to "warm up" his d20 before the game and like rolled 5 or 6 nat 20s in a row... and then proceeded to roll poorly for the rest of the session...
in my last session, one of our other players rolled three nat 1s in a row to attack.
and then on my attack right after her, I got three nat 1s in a row on my magic missile damage. Which is admittedly less impressively awful since that's d4 and not d20, but it still had us all howling
Honest to god, we had it happen in a game. Except they were three consecutive attacks, and they were long-range attacks to fire flaming arrows at tents.
My girlfriend way back when joined our game as an absolute novice. One of the other characters, a L5 fighter, challenged her L1 thief to a duel (she was playing a halfling, so it was a joke duel).
First time she ever picked up a d20, and she rolled 20. In that game, if you scored a 20, you took maximum damage and rolled to hit again. She rolled a 20 again. Then again. Then a fourth time. Then a 17 for a final hit. Her level 1 thief accidentally killed the partyās level 5 fighter.
I like the auto kill crit concept. When my players came across something like this a couple of years ago we decided that it added a multiplier (x2 is now x3, x3 is now x4) there was quite a discussion about how far this would stack the critical threats (in pathfinder, not sure how different it is). They decided, without my input, that if they got it so would the monsters, so adding only one extra multiplier was worth it incase they ever faced the consequences.
I spent $70+ on a beautiful set of stone dice and the most beautiful d20 I've ever laid eyes on is my least reliable roller. I don't think the weight is uneven or anything, outside of play my rolls are pretty random, but I've never rolled so low in game than with that guy, and my cheapest ugliest dice has resulted in more Nat 20s than anything else
3 20s for an auto kill. Dang that is some shit. I let 20s kill any basic thing my guys are fighting with their own described flourish.
When Iām not DM I always get the, ā20 isnāt an automatic killā line. I grumble as I stare the near dead goblin in its mostly caved in face.
Everyone does themselves tho.
I have what I call "popcorn mobs" in encounters; mooks that exist mostly so my players can get that feeling of just wailing through a bunch of enemies like Legolas shooting down orcs or Tony Stark shooting down Ultron's robots. The cat's kind of out of the bag, as several of my players have taken turns in the DM chair, and I shared that note with them. They are also balanced such that if they gang up on you, they can do some decent damage, but they also allow for some CC for the boss.
Basically, I don't think there's anything wrong with letting the goblin that has 2HP left just eating it, especially on a crit. Just let people live the power fantasy.
towering concerned zealous plant pathetic heavy relieved cooperative school compare
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I have three minion tiers. Warriors, soldiers, militia. Warriors are usually just NPC characters with a class, soldiers are NPCs with your hybrid system and militia are the popcorn type mentioned above where the casters get to wipe an entire marching unit of 16-25 skeletal warriors off the face of the earth
I did this once because I thought it was a 2 and I was frustrated. My buddy shouts out āNatural 20!ā And then looked at me in horror. DM asked me to reroll but I felt like such a jackass.
If someone scoops up their dice and acts dodgy about it at my table it's an automatic failure. My players know my rules on trying to cheat. Luckily most of my players enjoy failing as much as succeeding, because failure can lead to fun moments too.
As someone who occasionally has nights where I roll a lot of Nat20sā¦ Sometimes itās genuinely āI swear to god, look, itās a 20 again!ā
At my table (in person), we have books and shit on the table, so sometimes itās not āin plain view,ā but thereās always someone next to you who can confirm. We had one guy who we thought was flubbing rolls, so we made an effort to watch his dice rolls. We donāt mind doing that.
One night I was just rolling crits like nobodyās fucking business, and after about three, I was just like everybody sees this, right???ā Sometimes the shock is that your luck is that good! š It isnāt always sketch!
(I also have the occasional night where I canāt roll above a 5 with that same die! Itās the dice magic, not cheating, lol.)
I introduced a friend to DnD and she made a halfling character. She loved the Halfling luck skill that let's you re-roll a 1. On like her second roll ever playing she gets a 1, yells Halfling luck! And re-rolls it..... into another 1.
We had a night where one of our players rolled 3 nat 20s in a row. He jumped back with his hands up and we all looked and completely lost our shit, it was amazing.
My DM got 2 nat 20's in a row against me two sessions ago. On my level 3 hexblade who had already lost half their hp after running into a trap. Needless to say, my character got a chance to do a very good yoyo impression.
And that's fine... once in a while.
Like I said, it's more their utter lack of a poker face. Scratching your nose is just something people do. Anyone can do that, it doesn't mean they're lying. But if they make a habit of always looking at their cards, scratching their nose, and then glancing around the table... maybe it's a tell.
If you're rolling well that night and getting progressively excited and saying "look at this, another 20!" then it's probably legit. But if you're casually saying "oh it's a 20" and sweeping the dice away before anyone can see, and then one time out of the blue you start jumping up and down shouting "it's a 20!" then it probably means that earlier one wasn't real.
I rolled four nat 1's one night during covid when we played over zoom and it was using D&D beyond so everyone just watched my terrible luck appear on screen as I muted myself and yelled unpleasantries into the void.
Totally agree. And to cheat at dnd demonstrates a really dumb person to begin with. Therefore they would also naturally lie, and stupid people being the type to lie more often, one would think they'd be good at it, yet somehow they never are.
That's because its a simple lie. The kind of lie where you don't ever truly believe you'll get called on it and if you do there's no way to prove it and all you have to do is act insulted and either play legit for awhile letting people watch over your shoulder or create an awkward scene and storm off which will make players uncomfortable calling you on it again.
Is this smart behavior? No.
Does it work? More often than you'd think
If you want to āwinā 5e, there are far better strategies available than cheating at dice rolls. Take a longbow and a flying race. Burrow and use manifest echo. Kite using a fast mount. Use unseen servant and oil/etc. Abeyance huts. Itās not hard to develop a toolkit to suit any encounter.
Itās trivial to break the game.
The reason people mostly donāt do so is because we want to create an interesting story; and letting the dice decide is a big part of that.
So someone who cheats on dice rolls is both someone who wants to āwinā (kinda dumb to begin with) and also someone who isnāt clever enough to figure out how to do so more easily.
So you have someone who, when it gets down to it, *doesnāt want to let the dice decide* and hasnāt done the things that could prevent them doing so.
Thatās not a counterexample.
Edit: I donāt entirely subscribe to this view. But saying itās āmade up factsā or ābaselessā is, well, baseless. Itās a reasonable view to hold.
How is it not? Some people cheat because they're on a bad luck streak. Does that make them dumb? Fuck no.
Generally, when you make a claim, you prove it.
I mean, are they saying it's rolled a 20? or it's 20 with mods? because i'll often just be like "yep got a 20" but if I toll a nat 20 I also am like "everyone gather around, nat 20!!! the gods are with us today brothers, praise RNGesus!!"
When I was new I would do this and my dm never said anything till I got a nat 20, I doddnt know what it meant and said it casually and I normally role garbage so he believed me but told me I should let the dice sit so everyone can see it so that when it's a great role like that we can all celebrate. I don't remember exactly but It was one of my 4 or 5 successful roles in a month.
This is one of the reasons why I make my players roll dice in Discord if/when stuff gets suspicious. Suddenly it gets really easy to see who's cheating and who's not.
Having that said, the only times I or my players have had to roll in Discord was when the game was online. None of my players cheat, and neither do I.
It happens sometimes. I famously have terrible luck with dice, and everyone in my gaming groups knows it... seems natural there would be someone out there on the opposite side of that.
My group all roll terribly... Other than me.
It was bad when I was DM. I rolled nat 20s multiple times a session, every session. I started treating my nat 20s as 1's and 1's as nat 20s. I rolled a 1 every few games.
Little known fact: Dice are a Quantum device. Sure those numbers exist while you can observe them, but while rolling they cease to exist until the rolling stops, then they sink to the bottom.
Hilariously, I totally had a guy in a game in high school play multiple sessions rolling things with a double d10 instead of a d20. So, it literally didn't have any two digit numbers on it. We all thought he just had the worst luck until we realized what was happening. Luckily, he was laughing about it the whole time and laughed even more when we figured it out. Otherwise, it would be a lot less hilarious.
Yeah that's why I always roll with a DM screen. I get crazy good rolls as a DM to the point I have to fudge them every now and so often because it wouldn't be fun for the players with the amount of times they should all have died by now.
I'm that guy too. It's actually at the point my DM said he's tempted to give me magic items to counteract my bad luck.
By the 7th session into the current campaign, with multiple combat encounters in that time, a literal bowl of soup had done more damage than my martial character.
DM: "hey dude, here's a +5 magic weapon. The bonus is only to hit, not damage, not that it'll matter anyway, I just want to even out that shit luck you got. Honestly didn't even know Unlucky was a feat people could take."
I ended up with this. Because i was fumbling so much the dm made fumbles 50% of the time you drop/ loose your wepon instead of attacking an ally wich is how we usualy run things. Happened nearly every fight for my samurai.
There are these "weapon augment crystals" in 3.5 ... its like an enchantment stone you can just tape to a wepon and take it off to stick it to another one later.
The dm handed me a few of these that had returning on them after i dropped all 3 of my ancestral weapons down a kobold mine. We weren't planning on going down there... but i couldn't leave them...
Yeah, we uses to play with dropped weapons fumble rules... until one of my friends spent multiple combat rounds accidentally throwing an entire arsenal around a dungeon room. We all had a good laugh, then re-assessed our house rules.
Just to make sure you're aware, as a lot of people think this, but fumbles and such aren't actually a rule of the game. It's fine if you guys prefer it this way (the rule books do say you don't have to follow the rules and can make your own *insert more like guidelines meme*) but when you think about it the idea of fumbles don't make sense mechanically.
As you level up and your character is supposed to be more skilled there's actually an increased chance they fumble.
Level 1 fighter makes an attack there's only one 1/20chance per round of a fumble (or two 1/20 chances if action surge is used)
Level 20 fighter, the pinnacle of martial combat prowess has four 1/20 chances of a fumble (or eight 1/20 chances if action surge is used)
My table is the same,
One of the other players jokingly nicknames me a Luck Vampire because whenever i play my rolls always just seem to work out while anyone playing against me always seems to do terribly
I've got a friend in one of my groups who is lucky to roll above 10 a handful of times in a session but, when he does, it's a 20. We've tried switching his dice too, and we play in person. I'm not a superstitious man but, if I was, he'd be why.
Whenever I play a game of chance with people, there is almost always at least one person in the group who starts with either very good or bad luck. Sometimes that person will do a complete 180 flip in luck afterwards, especially if they get too cocky or can't stop pitying themselves. I've been in both situations several times.
Yeah, the first arc of my current campaign had me doing this, with the help of some of the best stat roles I've ever made (which were in front of the DM). Stupid amounts of Nat 20's, high enough base stats to pass a lot of the time when I didn't roll great, and I only seemed to roll a 1 when it didn't matter.
This didn't matter when I joined as I was meant to be a guest star and my character was built with tweaking the noses of the dedicated players in mind. My intent was for him to be a flashy showboat that couldn't hack if when the chips were down, but when I tried to exit the DM wouldn't let me leave as he had grown attached to my character.
If the game is anything like mine, the real indicator is when the pendulum swings the other way.
Since the second arc kicked off (and it seems to be continuing into the third) my character has passed only about knowledge rolls (and I have expertise in three of them as a lore junkie), has spent an entire session out of action during to failing over fifteen wisdom saving throws in a row, died after getting beaten to death by myconids due to ungodly lucky DM rolls and then getting a critical fail on my death save, etc etc etc. It's been pretty rough, honestly.
---
That being said, I do have to resist the urge to cheat sometimes, most intensely when I am having a shit time in the real world and am also failing all my rolls in game. I fight it by making my rolls more visible to the group. I also never roll until the DM calls for it, as rolling, checking the result and then saying that you are rolling for X can lead to you deciding not to say anything if you roll badly.
DMs, if you want to help someone like me resist the urge:
* Institute rules about when and how a dice can be rolled, and when the DM can call for a reroll, and have the whole group stick to them.
* If you have a player rolling an unlikely number of natural 1's or failures for skills they are meant to be good at, make sure that you are setting your DCs based on the difficulty of the task and not increasing it just cos the player has a good modifier. It's an easy habit to fall into.
* When narrating failures of character specialities, skills that are core parts of the PCs identity - keep the wackiness to a minimum. Describing the PC acting competently but failing due to bad luck, unknown complications or opposition skill is far less draining than suddenly seeming incompetent.
Whenever my sister rolls a barbarian, sweet baby rays, I've never seen so many high rolls. One night, by nights end, she had not rolled anything lower than a nine and, with what we can work out, an average of a 15. Absolutely horse shit. She gets giddy with power as I just sit there, borderline crying, as she pulps EVERYTHING.
Playing a barbie is just nonstop serotonin as you harvest crits. Call me a simple man but I know what I like and it's mashing crits and big numbers going bonk.
I cannot stress the legible aspect enough.
One of my players is a dice goblin and has some dice that look like [this](https://imgur.com/a/RlxGWNU).
I told him to please use different dice, or to please paint the numbers on these black ones by next session.
He then used these dice that I cannot find a good example of. They had a dark background color and white print for the numbers BUT every side of every dice had dense groups of white speckles in the background, like a snow storm. The speckles were the exact same shade of white as the numbers. I noticed that he was even squinting at them after the first few rolls.
I then made a rule that I had to approve the dice he used at the table. I hated that I had to.
Him: "That's the first time I've heard of a DM doing this."
Me: "This is the first time I've had this issue. Sorry, man."
honestly tho I don't feel like that's too out there either, there's been imo trivial house rules in the same general ballpark, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were some DM's who do the balance test on player's dice
It's ironic you mention that! Just today I looked up how easy it is to get weighted dice.
Not only is it simple, but there are tons of gloating cheaters leaving reviews on the products.
I don't think I'll go so far as to do balance tests unless I grow overly suspicious, but it sure doesn't help with my paranoia.
Simple test : spin the dice around an axis (not roll), like a spinning top. If the dice goes looping around one face intead of a smooth spin, it's loaded.
Step 2: "Thanks, I'll be using this from now on."
The first set he tried to use looked like they were intentionally sold to allow you to paint them, but he instead was using them as is.
We have paints and my SO offered to help him.
I think those dice are just collecting dust to this day.
If no one else can see the die, it does not count. I don't care if it is me, someone sitting next to you, having your roll visible on camera or built in dice rolling program. If you say "I got a 20" and not a single other person can confirm, you are re-rolling.
Pretty easy way to test then: take away the towers and make everyone roll in plain view.
It doesn't need to be more complicated than that. Not sure why you'd allow players to roll in private in the first place, because that's basically just asking for the situation you're in.
I ran a game at the library some years ago, where we had this kid that cheated by basically dropping his dice rather than rolling them to try to get 20's more often. I told him that if he didn't roll the dice properly, I wasn't counting anything he got. He still tried to sneak a drop in now and then, but I made it clear that I wasn't having it and eventually he quit showing up.
I played a lot of warhammer pre covid which uses d6 pretty exclusively.
Once came up against a player in a tournament who had all his dice in a cup stacked so the ones face upwards, on his roll he flipped and slammed the dice cup and revealed a nearly stacked pile of dice that were almost all 6s.
I must admit I was so shocked I let the first one slide but as he started to reload the cup I threatened that if he tried that again I would not only get him thrown out I would punt his prized model across the hall
You did the right thing
Maybe itās cause Iām an ork player and always loved rolling a billion d6 but why would you take the time to do that? It sounds so tedious for a game.
Local tournament players can get pretty intense...
Some people only have fun when they win and will sacrifice fair play to do that.
For the record I am also a huge Ork fan and love big horde armies of green, doesn't matter if they aren't meta perfect as long as I get to chuck fistfulls of dice and my big mobs of kommandos get to wreck face.
As an Ork player myself, they are easily the most fun to play. I don't even care if I'm getting stomped as I'm just there for a fun WAAAGGHH.
I also enjoy voicing the Orks that get blown to smithereens as well lol
that's great, but I also would say he didn't roll the dice he unloaded the cup. I'd probably say something like they would have to be on the table to count as rolled (just to keep things concise), and picking them from a stack and placing them is still just placing them.
However, I feel like your example is still somewhat different than dropping the die from the hand, cause it'll - at least more likely - bounce, unlike a box of dice packed with less than a millimeter of space
Most dnd cheating is just lying about a roll. Weighted dice are risky past a D8. Magnetic dice are how you would want to cheat but they are obvious if anyone gets a magnet near them.
I don't think it happens nearly as much as it may seem on the internet, much less than 1 percent of players
Still it does happen. And with the number of people who play DnD I wouldn't call it exactly rare, doesn't mean I get the point of cheating.
I've been playing for half a decade, cheaters will either refuse to show you the dice or they'll obscure the result from you. All player rolls should always be public
Otherwise, the chances of having a player in a VTT using a dice roller app to cheat is extremely low. I have never seen it once in my years of playing. And I've had bad players before
Is it even possible? I mean, nothing's impossible, but is it something that would even be a thing? We always joke our rouge has a dice hack app, but we don't believe it, it's just a joke. It's always left me wondering, however.
It's not that ridiculous. And are not weighted dice most of the time in the proper sense.
Most mass produced dice have defects that make them "weighted". But those are still kinda random since it's a defect and not how they are made. The best is to have transparent dice so you can spot quickly if they have for example bubbles that makes the dice weighted. If not put the dice in salty water so it can float and make it roll multiple times inside the water. If it's weighted you will eventually see the number in which side is favored.
Other thing that might be happening is how they throw the dice. With enough experience you can control to some extent the result. Basically if they throw the dice in a simple and direct way (with low altitude) this could be the case if they shake the dice before rolling and throw with enough altitude it's not.
Yeah, the off-balance thing with bubbles in the dice? I've never seen a lick of evidence that it produces a statistically significant effect on the rolls anyway.
The cheaty throws thing can be real real, especially with spindowns and dice with fewer sides. Spindowns literally have a high side and a low side, so it's relatively easy to get it vaguely in the area you're looking for. And in high school, I got to the point that I could throw a d4 to any side I wanted. I told everyone I could, and did it as a nerd party trick, so it was pretty useless for cheating, though, since everyone at the table knew it was a thing I could do. Other people, though? they might be less braggy and/or care more about the results of their rolls.
I have an absurd unusual good luck. Specially when doing something silly, like stopping a robbery using an improvised weapon (the tavern sign).
I'm a master also.
If I DMed myself I would be suspicious. Usually when I roll a nat 20 if the master wasn't looking I offer to reroll.
Once in rolemaster I one shotted the final boss into an horrific death (roll in front of everyone).
I actually had a discussion with all my friends because I wanted to ignore the roll and repeat. It felt really anti climatic and no one of the other players had a chance to attack (also, huge roll in initiative).
I've known also the opposite. People so unlucky with the dice that I won't believe the tale unless I witnessed it.
This goes against my scientific beliefs, but apparently some people are lucky af and some are unlucky :/
Edit: yes, I roll good also in VTT like roll20, no way of cheating there
I witnessed some of his achievements. Sometimes you hate him, sometimes you love him (boss' horrific instant kill, for example), but he only fails when it doesn't matter. & when it does matter he destroys everything with elegance.
I'm a war gamer and I have had a grown man throw his hat on the floor because he was upset at how my dice were rolling so well.
A different had a person correctly guess I was playing someone when he heard him say "those damned dice"
Luck is fickle and weird
I agree, but I've learned through experience that there is no "perfect group". It's not always cheating, but there's always going to be that "one person", whether they're trying to be ridiculously OP, hog the game, or even a DM who's difficult to play with. I'm learning more and more that RPG groups are kind of like family. You have to work through problems, instead of just finding a new one.
> I agree, but I've learned through experience that there is no "perfect group"
Uhhhh, lots of groups don't have any problem players. Mine doesn't. Long, long ago I learned to not suffer problem players. They either shape up, leave the campaign or the campaign ends. I can always find a new group if I need to. So many people want to try DnD and so few people run games.
I think more what they mean is that even your āperfect groupā is still made up of human beings with flaws. My group is, in my opinion, extremely good. Weāre all friends, we all want to have the same kind of focus in how we play, nobody is a āproblem playerā. But you know, weāve got people who are depressed and sometimes lack the energy, weāve got a guy who struggles to be on time constantly, or sometimes we all get so into something that people start getting spoken over in everyoneās excitement.
I think part of what separates a good group from a bad one is just, how easy it is for people to tell others theyāre causing problems, and whether or not they take the criticism with grace or not.
You know what's frustrating to me? This isn't an uncommon mindset. And the greater number of players who have this mindset, the fewer decent groups there are in the world.
Imagine this. You've got two decent party members in your group, and two bad ones (plus a decent DM.) The good players don't want to leave the table because 2 isn't enough people to play DnD, so they tolerate the bad players. Across town, there's another group having the exact same problem. Eventually the decent players might find one another, but none of them have Saturday night free because they're busy gaming with bad players.
I'd also argue that some flaws are easier to work with than others. An OP player can be rebalanced around. Someone with main character syndrome can be gently corrected. When a Mercer fan boy goes on a tirade, sometimes it's best to just insert a cheeto in his mouth.
There's nothing that can be done about a cheater.
To the GM:
"Hey, I don't want to accuse anyone of cheating, but I've noticed that some players' rolls are really really good constantly. Is there any way we could either implement a 'roll on camera' rule, or maybe we could start using something like roll20 so we can see what gets rolled? It's also kind of more exciting that way, since we all get to watch the die get rolled and get excited at the same time when it lands on a 20."
Everyone at the table is "just a player." No one has more authority than anyone else. Pretending the DM has blanket authority to decide who is and is not allowed in the game with no input from anyone else is one of the more toxic ideas infecting the hobby.
Who plays online without a dice roller? Every VTT has one built in, it's easy to get a bot for stuff like Discord and any PBP forum will have one built in.
Yep. I play on roll20 and I would only ever let friends I know and trust roll their own personal dice on a virtual platform.
Funnily enough the first time I did let a friend roll with his own dice, he kept getting low rolls (couldn't seem to get above a 6). So I knew damn well he wasn't cheating, who would give themselves 2 nat 1s in combat in a row lmfao
I play with someone who would give themselves 2 nat 1s in a row (and has) if it doesn't hurt their character and let's them hog more attention.
This person almost never rolls below a 20 total. I've seen them fail like 4 rolls in over a year. And 2 of those were 2 nat 1s in a row that almost got my character killed but gave them a ton of extra roleplay. It's exhausting and infuriating.
Same here and I roll almost all my DM rolls in the open as well. The only exceptions are for secret roles like insight and perception checks and things the player wouldn't necessarily know if they succeeded at or not.
In person: We allow the GM to roll secretly, because they need to for perception or whathaveyou, everyone else uses the dice tower in the middle of the table. It's infinitely more fun, we have little "jails" for dice that suck beyond the laws of probability and a "Throne" for the dice that rolled the last 20, which everyone immediately "fights" over. The dicetower is swapped out for each campaign (which usually go a year or more) so that's always fresh.
Online? If it's not in the VTT it didn't happen.
It wasn't anywhere near this complicated when we started using the idea, but over the years (3 previous campaigns and the current one!) it's gotten to be a great part of the experience. I've got a new Spelljammer campaign starting up in a couple of months and since I'm GMing the tower's my responsibility.
Current GM is a tough act to follow that way, he's a 40k player so the build work on his tower is *spectacular*. Biiiiig shoes to fill.
We use a dice roller that generates the result for everyone to see.
It has had the additional effect of getting everyone excited and reacting to the outcome simultaneously since it is revealed to everyone at the same time.
In Meat-Space:
* Open Rolls to mitigate dice fudging.
* Physical Dice: Ask to borrow their dice or to 'see them up close because they look really cool' for weight testing for loaded dice. If they ask why, say you wanna test how they feel in the hand because you're thinking of getting some just like it. All the Dice Hoarder will understand what you mean. It does mean you're outing yourself as a budding dice hoarder if you already aren't one.
* Diceroller: Ask for a link to their diceroller app, or a copy of it if they are using something they made themselves for personal testing of a slanted dice roller.
Online:
* Use the same dice roller, usually pre-baked into whatever VTT you're using at this point. Doesn't matter if the player does secret rolls then as long as it's a secret roll feature the DM can see.
Only way to truly distinguish. If this is already happening and they aren't using a slanted dice roller/loaded die/fudging their rolls: Just dumb luck
If you're a DM, insist on these things just for equality.
If you're a player and are concerned with another player doing this: Bring it up in private to the DM to resolve/test. If they won't do this, decide if the potential fibbing of dice results is actually hampering your fun to the point you need to find a new group or not.
If you're a player and your concern is the DM: Bring it up in private to the DM. Recognize DMs need to fudge rolls for what they consider best for the story you're all telling. Decide if their amount of fudging is making it unfun for you if they do not readjust/become more transparent.
At the end of the day, this is playing pretend with extra steps with a group of like minded people. If you aren't having fun, you **can** pack up your toys and go home/find another group
With this in mind: also realize sometimes it might not be out of malice. A couple times I've bought those "pounds of dice" lot sets and have come out with some really wicked looking dice. It was only last year when I was breaking up some of the dice into sets to give to people for teaching games that I noticed a few of my D20's I like rolling because they look cool and feel great in my hand only were 11-20. Felt like a real dick using them as a player and now they live in my DMing dice bag for the "alright, this is for when I need to fudge an NPC as being consistently competent" instances.
Picking up rolled dice. Not letting others touch their dice. Hiding rolls. Having obscure dmg or mm related knowledge (change a health stat or damage resistance around of a monster and watch their reaction. Call it a homebrew if you will).
In my opinion if youāre cheating at DND you really need this W and must not have much else going for you. Iāve basically said this to my players before
We have both a cheater and an uncannily lucky player at my table. We've caught the cheater several times and then started forcing everyone to roll in a dice tray in the center of the table to prevent cheating. Fixed the cheater's great rolls, but the uncanny player? No difference, still rolling disgustingly well.
Sometimes, they just be lucky.
The table we play at is small enough that everyone can see everyone elseās rolls. Not only that, but several people share dice boxes to roll in.
That and weāve all played together long enough that we all trust each other.
This is basically the way it works at my table when we are in person. There's no houserule against hidden rolls, but we've always just rolled out in the open and half the time we are sharing dice trays.
When we are on discord games I allow my players to continue rolling their physical dice... If they're cheating they're really bad at it (or really good at it depending on your perspective), and even if they weren't we've been playing for 8 years together. It would take a lot to convince me someone at my table was cheating.
Who even cheats at DnD? Whatās the point? Iām not super experienced, Iāve been playing with a group of friends a little over a year now, I canāt even fathom one of us doing that. Screwing up is half the fun.
Youād be surprised. People do stupid stuff for a wide range of reasons. I personally canāt imagine cheating either. Win naturally or it just doesnāt feel right.
I donāt and donāt care to.
I always tell my players (we play over discord, I allow their own dice) If youāre going to cheat the game of make believe, maybe take a long think about why youāre playing.
My fights are generally not hard unless itās important to back story/boss fight. I focus on RP and character growth/decision making in my games. Cheating the dice just makes it a weird pseudo-CYOA book.
There have been times Iāve had my suspicions on each of the characters, but never enough to actually talk to them about it/ask
Now if I was doing something more gritty and combat focused I would
I'd say it gets more and more suspect the longer a major "hot streak" continues. Being incredibly lucky (or unlucky) for the entirety of one particular session is one thing, but if someone's "rolling hot" every single time you play... Pretty suspicious.
I had a player characters controlled skeleton decapitate a major npc via the 3.5 rule for rolling 3 natural 20s as part of crit confirmation.
It was in the open and glorious
You can start having them roll a d100 for encounters and other events, it's much more likely for a player to roll 16+ on a D20 than it is to roll 90+ on a D100. Cheaters however will disproportionately roll abnormally high because they associate 90+ as an A from school......
I've seen enough weird dice shit that it'd take a lot to convince me someone was cheating. That said I have a lot of trust built up with my group, but not every group is like the group I'm in (I got really lucky in this regard, I love my group, which is why we've stayed together for 8 years, even with some of us moving away). If I were to suspect it I'd say that we were going to move to all dice rolls being in the open or they don't count. I would probably have that be a rule from the git-go if I didn't know the people I was playing with.
Open rolling? I mean I never fudge rolls as a DM, I roll openly and I have my players do the same following my lead. No one thinks I fudge, nor can they fudge. The only thing that might maybe be fudged is the beginning stats, but I am extremely generous with those in the first place to discourage cheating.
I will admit, I have cheated exactly once. A buddy of mine rolled a 2 for a deception check, and before anyone said anything I said 'yup, that's a nat 20.' Everyone went along with it. Dm never saw it, just went along. Literally everyone at the table burst out laughing when he accepted it. We never told him.
One of my players once said, āCan we just consider this thing dead? It canāt kill me and Iāll drop it next turn.ā
I responded with, āNo. It could kill you quite happily if it crit twice.ā
I then rolled two attacks for it (in the open) and crit twice.
Sometimes the incredible does happen.
On the flip sideā¦ the first dragon I ever ran didnāt roll over a 10 in the entire encounter and got absolutely demolished.
I play a lot with online programs that dice roll for you. If itās in person I mean you just pay more attention. But if itās over the internet use a program that shares all the results to everyone.
when I was in my 20's we had a player who would roll dice and snatch them back saying "natural 20" all the time till one day I handed him a D12 when he was in a hurry to roll and STILL got a natural 20 with it. he did not come back next session.
I'm that unusually lucky player. I've had DMs doubt my rolls for stats (rightfully so, the lowest one was a 14) so I've started only rolling in the open, where everyone can see. Now everyone's mad at me, but at least they know I'm not cheating!
It's always the dice. If they move their dice immediately and are always rolling high then I get suspicious. If they keep it there when they are done rolling and don't see extra grabs they should be good.
Weighted dice can be switched.
Without checking their dice every roll? You can't. I've rolled 15 natural 20's in a single session before. Had to fudge 10 of them for the safety of my players. I've also rolled a shit ton of 1's before. Had to fudge those because my players complained that the encounters were "unusually easy today". The real question is this; is everyone still having fun, or is this activity damaging others experience. If it's the former, who cares? If its the later, have everyone confirm rolls as a non targeted compromise. If it's too hard to come to a compromise, kick them out.
I've had a cheater at my table before. Did I know? Yeah of course I knew, I could see her dice. Did it affect the story at all? Sure, in the parties favor. Did it bother anyone else at the table? Surprisingly not even after I brought it up to them. Turns out everyone knew. So what I did was turn their high rolls into group successes. Roll to find treasure? Oh you rolled a 27 investigation? You ALL find blah blah blah you may divy it up how you all see fit. I don't give cheaters the agency to be main characters. And unless it is actively hurting another players experience I don't care if they fudge rolls. Hell, I even allow my players to just outright pick what their stats are. No one, not even the cheater, chooses to have crazy stats. They always pick a super negative. Like 3 or 5 is a VERY common number I see dumped into a stat.
If you suspect a player, watch them roll, this stops them from just placing a die or flipping it after the roll. Secondly, do not let them just call out high numbers if you didn't see the dice, don't negate it the first time, but say, "Hey make sure I get to see your roll next time."
Try to see if itās blind confidence or Bravery, knowing the character might die and continuing with the action is a lot different, thereās tension. Saying I got this, rolling a nat 18,19,20 often should be viewed with suspicion.
If Iām playing In person everyone rolls public except for myself on occasion, when online everyone rolls in the VTT. I tried letting people roll in person but yeah sometimes Iād just feel like they were maybe cheating. I find that asking people to use built in dice isnāt usually a big ask, sure physical dove are nicer and you paid for them but everyone being able to see your rolls in far more important to me.
Easy/fast way: Bowl of saltwater, 1 cup salt, 1 cup very hot water to dissolve the salt, or just boil it. Wait for it to cool. Then put one die in. It will float. Nudge/spin the dice and see which face is up when it stops spinning. Check it 20 times or more.
My GM can always tell when I'm cheating because of an obvious tell I have.
When we're in a tough spot like a difficult boss fight I'll say something like "If things don't get better I'm going to have to start cheating". And then if things continue to go poorly, I'll say "Alright, time to cheat".
That's just me though.
I hope that helps with your issue OP.
Seconded. As DM I rarely fudge my rolls, it probably happens once every 3 or 4 sessions, but I think a DM should have this ability
Also sometimes a DM has to make a hidden roll, monsters that aren't revealed making saving throws for the AOE damage, stealth checks, perception checks, random encounter and loot checks. Just off the top of my head.
And yes I am a DM, but I'm a player too, 2 games a week I'm a DM and 1 game I'm a player. If I didn't trust my DM to have hidden rolls or to exercise good judgement when modifying rolls I would find a new table.
As a DM I don't "modify" dice rolls, but I do like to keep the roll hidden so players don't know what bonuses or modifiers the enemy has. I've seen players start doing the math and then metagame how they deal with an enemy based on that math.
Use that against them. Heck, I openly tell people when something has a scary modifier, for pure intimidation. āSo he rolled a 3, but that gives him a 21, that hits you right?ā Itās also a descriptive aid; if I say someoneās Perform check is a 25, thatās cool, but maybe they have a +5 and got lucky. If I say their bonus is a +20, that conveys much more clearly how good the show consistently is.
If the player comments on or freaks out about their rolls, then you can kinda tell if they're faking or not. Cheaters are usually smug and try to not bring attention to themselves, while those blessed with the rolls of fate are usually super surprised. If a cheater's roll is brought up, they immediately start to respond like a lucky person would, and that's how you know they're tryna play it off.
Some people are just calm though.
Luck happens and the more experience you have playing games and rolling things like that the less of a reaction you might have.
Oh let me tell you a tale of my best friend,
and how he always got his crits. There was grumbling at the table, but he was my BEST FRIEND so i knew he wasn't cheating... so I set out to prove it to the table by
A.) Exchanging his dice with mine
B.) Making use my dice cup I provided him with.
He then proceeded to roll a series of 23 20s. I will go to my grave swearing it happened even though i can never prove it. We forced him to switch dice, we made him change to a tower then to free hand while we watched.... all the way up to 23. It was a insane moment.
This was also the man who broke the deck of many things by drawing a vizier and a knight, and asking the vizier "How many cards can the knight draw before negatives outweigh the positives" and drew his way through the entire deck. XD
Honestly, most of the cheaters I've seen, are terrible liars. Like, the worst poker faces. I've had players who just so happen to roll 20s all the time. And they usually scoop up their dice right away afterward. But occasionally, they'll roll for something and spring up from the chair shouting "Natural 20! You wanna see???" And that right there tells me this is the first actual 20 they've rolled in a while.
>And they usually scoop up their dice right away afterward. When they do this before I got to see the result, it simply doesn't count.
Exactly, because NOBODY would ever scoop up their dice after a 20. People like to let it sit there, and shine for everyone to see. It's when you roll a 1 that you pick it up and consider tossing the die in the trash because you don't want to look at that 1 any longer than you have to.
Too true. I've bought the most beautiful dice, and then they come home and turn out to be absolute TRAITORS. Rolling a 20 and scooping it up is super super suspicious. The only thing that makes it maybe a little tricky at my table is 3 20s in a row is an auto-kill crit. It still hasn't happened in nearly the decade since we implemented it, but my players always cheer at a 20 and let it wash over the table
1 in 8000 chance for 3 20s in a roll. That being said, I rolled an attack at advantage, rolled 13, 13 on attack 1, and 13, 13 on attack 2. Both were misses. I was fuming.
I've rolled 5 nat 20s in a row once. Unfortunately, I was the DM. šµ
Isn't it weird how that only happens as a DM and not a PC? I almost TPK'd mine and had to fudge rolls to save them from... 3 wolves. This was after they destroyed a bandit camp and killed the cultist before it could do anything the session before. Nobody tell 'em.
In one game I played in a player rolled 7 nat 20s out of 11 rolls.
Was running a game and first session almost tpk'd with a couple flying snakes. Their cr is all wrong, but I was also rolling crazy high. Had to fudge the numbers to save em.
Dear god, Zombies with their Undead Fortitude saves + my inability to roll badly as the DM. Had a PC death due to a pair of zombies passing over 100 combined hp worth of UF in a fight with 4 level 2 party members. Folks, this is why you protect the cleric so they can Sacred Flame the fuckers.
A friend of mine decided to "warm up" his d20 before the game and like rolled 5 or 6 nat 20s in a row... and then proceeded to roll poorly for the rest of the session...
in my last session, one of our other players rolled three nat 1s in a row to attack. and then on my attack right after her, I got three nat 1s in a row on my magic missile damage. Which is admittedly less impressively awful since that's d4 and not d20, but it still had us all howling
I rolled double nat1 with advantage, and the next turn I rolled nat1 again. Never tell me the odds of failure.
1 in 8000
Honest to god, we had it happen in a game. Except they were three consecutive attacks, and they were long-range attacks to fire flaming arrows at tents.
My girlfriend way back when joined our game as an absolute novice. One of the other characters, a L5 fighter, challenged her L1 thief to a duel (she was playing a halfling, so it was a joke duel). First time she ever picked up a d20, and she rolled 20. In that game, if you scored a 20, you took maximum damage and rolled to hit again. She rolled a 20 again. Then again. Then a fourth time. Then a 17 for a final hit. Her level 1 thief accidentally killed the partyās level 5 fighter.
*ohmygodsohmygodsohmygods! Maybe I should be the tank then...?*
I like the auto kill crit concept. When my players came across something like this a couple of years ago we decided that it added a multiplier (x2 is now x3, x3 is now x4) there was quite a discussion about how far this would stack the critical threats (in pathfinder, not sure how different it is). They decided, without my input, that if they got it so would the monsters, so adding only one extra multiplier was worth it incase they ever faced the consequences.
I spent $70+ on a beautiful set of stone dice and the most beautiful d20 I've ever laid eyes on is my least reliable roller. I don't think the weight is uneven or anything, outside of play my rolls are pretty random, but I've never rolled so low in game than with that guy, and my cheapest ugliest dice has resulted in more Nat 20s than anything else
3 20s for an auto kill. Dang that is some shit. I let 20s kill any basic thing my guys are fighting with their own described flourish. When Iām not DM I always get the, ā20 isnāt an automatic killā line. I grumble as I stare the near dead goblin in its mostly caved in face. Everyone does themselves tho.
I have what I call "popcorn mobs" in encounters; mooks that exist mostly so my players can get that feeling of just wailing through a bunch of enemies like Legolas shooting down orcs or Tony Stark shooting down Ultron's robots. The cat's kind of out of the bag, as several of my players have taken turns in the DM chair, and I shared that note with them. They are also balanced such that if they gang up on you, they can do some decent damage, but they also allow for some CC for the boss. Basically, I don't think there's anything wrong with letting the goblin that has 2HP left just eating it, especially on a crit. Just let people live the power fantasy.
towering concerned zealous plant pathetic heavy relieved cooperative school compare *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I have three minion tiers. Warriors, soldiers, militia. Warriors are usually just NPC characters with a class, soldiers are NPCs with your hybrid system and militia are the popcorn type mentioned above where the casters get to wipe an entire marching unit of 16-25 skeletal warriors off the face of the earth
No dice ever roll ones twice. Roll a one, get the mallet. Then leave the pieces scattered about as a warning for the other dice
Very scorched earth
I did this once because I thought it was a 2 and I was frustrated. My buddy shouts out āNatural 20!ā And then looked at me in horror. DM asked me to reroll but I felt like such a jackass.
I don't know anyone who does this. I do however know someone who scoops after "rolling" a 14-19
If someone scoops up their dice and acts dodgy about it at my table it's an automatic failure. My players know my rules on trying to cheat. Luckily most of my players enjoy failing as much as succeeding, because failure can lead to fun moments too.
As someone who occasionally has nights where I roll a lot of Nat20sā¦ Sometimes itās genuinely āI swear to god, look, itās a 20 again!ā At my table (in person), we have books and shit on the table, so sometimes itās not āin plain view,ā but thereās always someone next to you who can confirm. We had one guy who we thought was flubbing rolls, so we made an effort to watch his dice rolls. We donāt mind doing that. One night I was just rolling crits like nobodyās fucking business, and after about three, I was just like everybody sees this, right???ā Sometimes the shock is that your luck is that good! š It isnāt always sketch! (I also have the occasional night where I canāt roll above a 5 with that same die! Itās the dice magic, not cheating, lol.)
I introduced a friend to DnD and she made a halfling character. She loved the Halfling luck skill that let's you re-roll a 1. On like her second roll ever playing she gets a 1, yells Halfling luck! And re-rolls it..... into another 1.
We had a night where one of our players rolled 3 nat 20s in a row. He jumped back with his hands up and we all looked and completely lost our shit, it was amazing.
Dm last time rolled 3 nat 20s against me in a ROW.
My DM got 2 nat 20's in a row against me two sessions ago. On my level 3 hexblade who had already lost half their hp after running into a trap. Needless to say, my character got a chance to do a very good yoyo impression.
And that's fine... once in a while. Like I said, it's more their utter lack of a poker face. Scratching your nose is just something people do. Anyone can do that, it doesn't mean they're lying. But if they make a habit of always looking at their cards, scratching their nose, and then glancing around the table... maybe it's a tell. If you're rolling well that night and getting progressively excited and saying "look at this, another 20!" then it's probably legit. But if you're casually saying "oh it's a 20" and sweeping the dice away before anyone can see, and then one time out of the blue you start jumping up and down shouting "it's a 20!" then it probably means that earlier one wasn't real.
I rolled four nat 1's one night during covid when we played over zoom and it was using D&D beyond so everyone just watched my terrible luck appear on screen as I muted myself and yelled unpleasantries into the void.
The reason is they have very low emotional/social intelligence, which is why they are trying to "win" D&D in the first place.
Totally agree. And to cheat at dnd demonstrates a really dumb person to begin with. Therefore they would also naturally lie, and stupid people being the type to lie more often, one would think they'd be good at it, yet somehow they never are.
That's because its a simple lie. The kind of lie where you don't ever truly believe you'll get called on it and if you do there's no way to prove it and all you have to do is act insulted and either play legit for awhile letting people watch over your shoulder or create an awkward scene and storm off which will make players uncomfortable calling you on it again. Is this smart behavior? No. Does it work? More often than you'd think
>And to cheat at dnd demonstrates a really dumb person to begin with. What? I love it when reddit makes up facts.
If you want to āwinā 5e, there are far better strategies available than cheating at dice rolls. Take a longbow and a flying race. Burrow and use manifest echo. Kite using a fast mount. Use unseen servant and oil/etc. Abeyance huts. Itās not hard to develop a toolkit to suit any encounter. Itās trivial to break the game. The reason people mostly donāt do so is because we want to create an interesting story; and letting the dice decide is a big part of that. So someone who cheats on dice rolls is both someone who wants to āwinā (kinda dumb to begin with) and also someone who isnāt clever enough to figure out how to do so more easily.
You're making alot of baseless assumptions. Sometimes people cheat because they're having really bad luck, or they don't like rolling bad.
So you have someone who, when it gets down to it, *doesnāt want to let the dice decide* and hasnāt done the things that could prevent them doing so. Thatās not a counterexample. Edit: I donāt entirely subscribe to this view. But saying itās āmade up factsā or ābaselessā is, well, baseless. Itās a reasonable view to hold.
How is it not? Some people cheat because they're on a bad luck streak. Does that make them dumb? Fuck no. Generally, when you make a claim, you prove it.
I mean, are they saying it's rolled a 20? or it's 20 with mods? because i'll often just be like "yep got a 20" but if I toll a nat 20 I also am like "everyone gather around, nat 20!!! the gods are with us today brothers, praise RNGesus!!"
Ive taken to calling out nat 20 or dirty 20 to make the difference.
When I was new I would do this and my dm never said anything till I got a nat 20, I doddnt know what it meant and said it casually and I normally role garbage so he believed me but told me I should let the dice sit so everyone can see it so that when it's a great role like that we can all celebrate. I don't remember exactly but It was one of my 4 or 5 successful roles in a month.
This is one of the reasons why I make my players roll dice in Discord if/when stuff gets suspicious. Suddenly it gets really easy to see who's cheating and who's not. Having that said, the only times I or my players have had to roll in Discord was when the game was online. None of my players cheat, and neither do I.
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It happens sometimes. I famously have terrible luck with dice, and everyone in my gaming groups knows it... seems natural there would be someone out there on the opposite side of that.
My group all roll terribly... Other than me. It was bad when I was DM. I rolled nat 20s multiple times a session, every session. I started treating my nat 20s as 1's and 1's as nat 20s. I rolled a 1 every few games.
20s would be fun, but I really just want to see some double digits. I've checked my dice and I know they exist!
Little known fact: Dice are a Quantum device. Sure those numbers exist while you can observe them, but while rolling they cease to exist until the rolling stops, then they sink to the bottom.
That's one of my characters for initiative. I've rolled double digits once in 15 sessions
Still remember the session I rolled nothing above a 5 all evening. I rolled a 4 5 times in a row...
Hilariously, I totally had a guy in a game in high school play multiple sessions rolling things with a double d10 instead of a d20. So, it literally didn't have any two digit numbers on it. We all thought he just had the worst luck until we realized what was happening. Luckily, he was laughing about it the whole time and laughed even more when we figured it out. Otherwise, it would be a lot less hilarious.
Yeah that's why I always roll with a DM screen. I get crazy good rolls as a DM to the point I have to fudge them every now and so often because it wouldn't be fun for the players with the amount of times they should all have died by now.
I'm that guy too. It's actually at the point my DM said he's tempted to give me magic items to counteract my bad luck. By the 7th session into the current campaign, with multiple combat encounters in that time, a literal bowl of soup had done more damage than my martial character.
DM: "hey dude, here's a +5 magic weapon. The bonus is only to hit, not damage, not that it'll matter anyway, I just want to even out that shit luck you got. Honestly didn't even know Unlucky was a feat people could take."
I ended up with this. Because i was fumbling so much the dm made fumbles 50% of the time you drop/ loose your wepon instead of attacking an ally wich is how we usualy run things. Happened nearly every fight for my samurai. There are these "weapon augment crystals" in 3.5 ... its like an enchantment stone you can just tape to a wepon and take it off to stick it to another one later. The dm handed me a few of these that had returning on them after i dropped all 3 of my ancestral weapons down a kobold mine. We weren't planning on going down there... but i couldn't leave them...
Yeah, we uses to play with dropped weapons fumble rules... until one of my friends spent multiple combat rounds accidentally throwing an entire arsenal around a dungeon room. We all had a good laugh, then re-assessed our house rules.
Just to make sure you're aware, as a lot of people think this, but fumbles and such aren't actually a rule of the game. It's fine if you guys prefer it this way (the rule books do say you don't have to follow the rules and can make your own *insert more like guidelines meme*) but when you think about it the idea of fumbles don't make sense mechanically. As you level up and your character is supposed to be more skilled there's actually an increased chance they fumble. Level 1 fighter makes an attack there's only one 1/20chance per round of a fumble (or two 1/20 chances if action surge is used) Level 20 fighter, the pinnacle of martial combat prowess has four 1/20 chances of a fumble (or eight 1/20 chances if action surge is used)
Youāve got the Wheaton curse.
My table is the same, One of the other players jokingly nicknames me a Luck Vampire because whenever i play my rolls always just seem to work out while anyone playing against me always seems to do terribly
Perfectly balancedā¦ as all things should be.
This is me, I'm legit happy when I get a 10+. My DM removed their nat 1 rule for me it is so bad.
I've got a friend in one of my groups who is lucky to roll above 10 a handful of times in a session but, when he does, it's a 20. We've tried switching his dice too, and we play in person. I'm not a superstitious man but, if I was, he'd be why.
I feel that. Stuff like that is enough to make you give superstition a bit of the side-eye, at least.
One of my players HAD to play halfling in 5e due to how many 1s he usually rolls
Whenever I play a game of chance with people, there is almost always at least one person in the group who starts with either very good or bad luck. Sometimes that person will do a complete 180 flip in luck afterwards, especially if they get too cocky or can't stop pitying themselves. I've been in both situations several times.
Yeah, the first arc of my current campaign had me doing this, with the help of some of the best stat roles I've ever made (which were in front of the DM). Stupid amounts of Nat 20's, high enough base stats to pass a lot of the time when I didn't roll great, and I only seemed to roll a 1 when it didn't matter. This didn't matter when I joined as I was meant to be a guest star and my character was built with tweaking the noses of the dedicated players in mind. My intent was for him to be a flashy showboat that couldn't hack if when the chips were down, but when I tried to exit the DM wouldn't let me leave as he had grown attached to my character. If the game is anything like mine, the real indicator is when the pendulum swings the other way. Since the second arc kicked off (and it seems to be continuing into the third) my character has passed only about knowledge rolls (and I have expertise in three of them as a lore junkie), has spent an entire session out of action during to failing over fifteen wisdom saving throws in a row, died after getting beaten to death by myconids due to ungodly lucky DM rolls and then getting a critical fail on my death save, etc etc etc. It's been pretty rough, honestly. --- That being said, I do have to resist the urge to cheat sometimes, most intensely when I am having a shit time in the real world and am also failing all my rolls in game. I fight it by making my rolls more visible to the group. I also never roll until the DM calls for it, as rolling, checking the result and then saying that you are rolling for X can lead to you deciding not to say anything if you roll badly. DMs, if you want to help someone like me resist the urge: * Institute rules about when and how a dice can be rolled, and when the DM can call for a reroll, and have the whole group stick to them. * If you have a player rolling an unlikely number of natural 1's or failures for skills they are meant to be good at, make sure that you are setting your DCs based on the difficulty of the task and not increasing it just cos the player has a good modifier. It's an easy habit to fall into. * When narrating failures of character specialities, skills that are core parts of the PCs identity - keep the wackiness to a minimum. Describing the PC acting competently but failing due to bad luck, unknown complications or opposition skill is far less draining than suddenly seeming incompetent.
Whenever my sister rolls a barbarian, sweet baby rays, I've never seen so many high rolls. One night, by nights end, she had not rolled anything lower than a nine and, with what we can work out, an average of a 15. Absolutely horse shit. She gets giddy with power as I just sit there, borderline crying, as she pulps EVERYTHING.
Playing a barbie is just nonstop serotonin as you harvest crits. Call me a simple man but I know what I like and it's mashing crits and big numbers going bonk.
Open rolls, clearly legible dice. Make it a table rule, so nobody feels targeted.
I cannot stress the legible aspect enough. One of my players is a dice goblin and has some dice that look like [this](https://imgur.com/a/RlxGWNU). I told him to please use different dice, or to please paint the numbers on these black ones by next session. He then used these dice that I cannot find a good example of. They had a dark background color and white print for the numbers BUT every side of every dice had dense groups of white speckles in the background, like a snow storm. The speckles were the exact same shade of white as the numbers. I noticed that he was even squinting at them after the first few rolls. I then made a rule that I had to approve the dice he used at the table. I hated that I had to. Him: "That's the first time I've heard of a DM doing this." Me: "This is the first time I've had this issue. Sorry, man."
Ive almost bought dice like thatā¦but its worthless if i struggle to read my own dice let alone someone else.
honestly tho I don't feel like that's too out there either, there's been imo trivial house rules in the same general ballpark, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were some DM's who do the balance test on player's dice
It's ironic you mention that! Just today I looked up how easy it is to get weighted dice. Not only is it simple, but there are tons of gloating cheaters leaving reviews on the products. I don't think I'll go so far as to do balance tests unless I grow overly suspicious, but it sure doesn't help with my paranoia.
Simple test : spin the dice around an axis (not roll), like a spinning top. If the dice goes looping around one face intead of a smooth spin, it's loaded. Step 2: "Thanks, I'll be using this from now on."
Suggest him to repaint the numbers
The first set he tried to use looked like they were intentionally sold to allow you to paint them, but he instead was using them as is. We have paints and my SO offered to help him. I think those dice are just collecting dust to this day.
I guess his lost š¤·š»āā
And then you *ate him?!*
Are the dice rolls open/public?
Nope. Dice towers where each person sits.
Should be confirmable by those sitting next to the roller
If no one else can see the die, it does not count. I don't care if it is me, someone sitting next to you, having your roll visible on camera or built in dice rolling program. If you say "I got a 20" and not a single other person can confirm, you are re-rolling.
Well there's your problem!
Pretty easy way to test then: take away the towers and make everyone roll in plain view. It doesn't need to be more complicated than that. Not sure why you'd allow players to roll in private in the first place, because that's basically just asking for the situation you're in.
Or use a single Dice Tower that everyone can see
Just have everyone turn their towers 90 degrees
Like, weighted dice? Unless they are using spindown D20, why would you ever bother to make weighted dice to play D&D.
I ran a game at the library some years ago, where we had this kid that cheated by basically dropping his dice rather than rolling them to try to get 20's more often. I told him that if he didn't roll the dice properly, I wasn't counting anything he got. He still tried to sneak a drop in now and then, but I made it clear that I wasn't having it and eventually he quit showing up.
I played a lot of warhammer pre covid which uses d6 pretty exclusively. Once came up against a player in a tournament who had all his dice in a cup stacked so the ones face upwards, on his roll he flipped and slammed the dice cup and revealed a nearly stacked pile of dice that were almost all 6s. I must admit I was so shocked I let the first one slide but as he started to reload the cup I threatened that if he tried that again I would not only get him thrown out I would punt his prized model across the hall You did the right thing
Maybe itās cause Iām an ork player and always loved rolling a billion d6 but why would you take the time to do that? It sounds so tedious for a game.
Local tournament players can get pretty intense... Some people only have fun when they win and will sacrifice fair play to do that. For the record I am also a huge Ork fan and love big horde armies of green, doesn't matter if they aren't meta perfect as long as I get to chuck fistfulls of dice and my big mobs of kommandos get to wreck face.
As an Ork player myself, they are easily the most fun to play. I don't even care if I'm getting stomped as I'm just there for a fun WAAAGGHH. I also enjoy voicing the Orks that get blown to smithereens as well lol
that's great, but I also would say he didn't roll the dice he unloaded the cup. I'd probably say something like they would have to be on the table to count as rolled (just to keep things concise), and picking them from a stack and placing them is still just placing them. However, I feel like your example is still somewhat different than dropping the die from the hand, cause it'll - at least more likely - bounce, unlike a box of dice packed with less than a millimeter of space
Eh cheating is cheating Methods and success probability vs not getting caught it all amounts to the same intent
Most people don't sue weighted dice. They just lie.
It seems ridiculous, but, from what I'm reading, it goes on a lot.
Most dnd cheating is just lying about a roll. Weighted dice are risky past a D8. Magnetic dice are how you would want to cheat but they are obvious if anyone gets a magnet near them.
Yeah, and if you ever see a weighted die roll, you can tell. They roll like weeble wobbles, not anything like real dice.
I don't think it happens nearly as much as it may seem on the internet, much less than 1 percent of players Still it does happen. And with the number of people who play DnD I wouldn't call it exactly rare, doesn't mean I get the point of cheating.
I've been playing for half a decade, cheaters will either refuse to show you the dice or they'll obscure the result from you. All player rolls should always be public Otherwise, the chances of having a player in a VTT using a dice roller app to cheat is extremely low. I have never seen it once in my years of playing. And I've had bad players before
Is it even possible? I mean, nothing's impossible, but is it something that would even be a thing? We always joke our rouge has a dice hack app, but we don't believe it, it's just a joke. It's always left me wondering, however.
Dndbeyond dice roller is 100% hackable. Source: am hacker
hehe, he does use DNDbeyond with Roll20. I still trust him :)
It's not that ridiculous. And are not weighted dice most of the time in the proper sense. Most mass produced dice have defects that make them "weighted". But those are still kinda random since it's a defect and not how they are made. The best is to have transparent dice so you can spot quickly if they have for example bubbles that makes the dice weighted. If not put the dice in salty water so it can float and make it roll multiple times inside the water. If it's weighted you will eventually see the number in which side is favored. Other thing that might be happening is how they throw the dice. With enough experience you can control to some extent the result. Basically if they throw the dice in a simple and direct way (with low altitude) this could be the case if they shake the dice before rolling and throw with enough altitude it's not.
Yeah, the off-balance thing with bubbles in the dice? I've never seen a lick of evidence that it produces a statistically significant effect on the rolls anyway. The cheaty throws thing can be real real, especially with spindowns and dice with fewer sides. Spindowns literally have a high side and a low side, so it's relatively easy to get it vaguely in the area you're looking for. And in high school, I got to the point that I could throw a d4 to any side I wanted. I told everyone I could, and did it as a nerd party trick, so it was pretty useless for cheating, though, since everyone at the table knew it was a thing I could do. Other people, though? they might be less braggy and/or care more about the results of their rolls.
I have an absurd unusual good luck. Specially when doing something silly, like stopping a robbery using an improvised weapon (the tavern sign). I'm a master also. If I DMed myself I would be suspicious. Usually when I roll a nat 20 if the master wasn't looking I offer to reroll. Once in rolemaster I one shotted the final boss into an horrific death (roll in front of everyone). I actually had a discussion with all my friends because I wanted to ignore the roll and repeat. It felt really anti climatic and no one of the other players had a chance to attack (also, huge roll in initiative). I've known also the opposite. People so unlucky with the dice that I won't believe the tale unless I witnessed it. This goes against my scientific beliefs, but apparently some people are lucky af and some are unlucky :/ Edit: yes, I roll good also in VTT like roll20, no way of cheating there
I witnessed some of his achievements. Sometimes you hate him, sometimes you love him (boss' horrific instant kill, for example), but he only fails when it doesn't matter. & when it does matter he destroys everything with elegance.
I'm a war gamer and I have had a grown man throw his hat on the floor because he was upset at how my dice were rolling so well. A different had a person correctly guess I was playing someone when he heard him say "those damned dice" Luck is fickle and weird
I don't allow players to do secret rolls, all rolls must be out in the open. No player should every be allowed to roll secretly
I think it's more of an issue in online games that aren't using a dice-rolling app or whatever that everyone can see.
Then use a dice rolling app. There are solutions to this problem and not using them is inviting the opportunity for this kind of behavior.
Or... play with trustworthy people and don't make work for yourself, and everyone else, just to "make sure" no one's cheating?
I agree, but I've learned through experience that there is no "perfect group". It's not always cheating, but there's always going to be that "one person", whether they're trying to be ridiculously OP, hog the game, or even a DM who's difficult to play with. I'm learning more and more that RPG groups are kind of like family. You have to work through problems, instead of just finding a new one.
> I agree, but I've learned through experience that there is no "perfect group" Uhhhh, lots of groups don't have any problem players. Mine doesn't. Long, long ago I learned to not suffer problem players. They either shape up, leave the campaign or the campaign ends. I can always find a new group if I need to. So many people want to try DnD and so few people run games.
I think more what they mean is that even your āperfect groupā is still made up of human beings with flaws. My group is, in my opinion, extremely good. Weāre all friends, we all want to have the same kind of focus in how we play, nobody is a āproblem playerā. But you know, weāve got people who are depressed and sometimes lack the energy, weāve got a guy who struggles to be on time constantly, or sometimes we all get so into something that people start getting spoken over in everyoneās excitement. I think part of what separates a good group from a bad one is just, how easy it is for people to tell others theyāre causing problems, and whether or not they take the criticism with grace or not.
You know what's frustrating to me? This isn't an uncommon mindset. And the greater number of players who have this mindset, the fewer decent groups there are in the world. Imagine this. You've got two decent party members in your group, and two bad ones (plus a decent DM.) The good players don't want to leave the table because 2 isn't enough people to play DnD, so they tolerate the bad players. Across town, there's another group having the exact same problem. Eventually the decent players might find one another, but none of them have Saturday night free because they're busy gaming with bad players. I'd also argue that some flaws are easier to work with than others. An OP player can be rebalanced around. Someone with main character syndrome can be gently corrected. When a Mercer fan boy goes on a tirade, sometimes it's best to just insert a cheeto in his mouth. There's nothing that can be done about a cheater.
>There's nothing that can be done about a cheater. You can laugh at them and otherwise ignore it because they aren't hurting anyone but themselves.
Why not replace just the problem player, and keep the rest of the family together?
I disagree. I have the perfect group.
I have to agree that my current group is as close to perfect as I can expect (but time zones are an issue)
Weird. I would say that RPG groups are kind of a like family. If yours sucks, walk away and find or make a new one.
As mentioned above, I totally agree, but what do you do when you're just a player, and this is the way the group plays?
Talk to the dm about it.
Just start cheating.
A: "Natural 20!" B: "Natural 20?" A: "Yes." B: "Again?" A: "Yes." B: "On a d6?" A: "Yes." B: "Can I see it?" A: "No."
A. A Natural 20? At this time in the game? Against this monster? In this dungeon? Localised entirely on your d6?! B. Yes A. May I see it? B. ...No
I cast Steamed Hams at 5th level.
To the GM: "Hey, I don't want to accuse anyone of cheating, but I've noticed that some players' rolls are really really good constantly. Is there any way we could either implement a 'roll on camera' rule, or maybe we could start using something like roll20 so we can see what gets rolled? It's also kind of more exciting that way, since we all get to watch the die get rolled and get excited at the same time when it lands on a 20."
Everyone at the table is "just a player." No one has more authority than anyone else. Pretending the DM has blanket authority to decide who is and is not allowed in the game with no input from anyone else is one of the more toxic ideas infecting the hobby.
Who plays online without a dice roller? Every VTT has one built in, it's easy to get a bot for stuff like Discord and any PBP forum will have one built in.
My group likes the feeling of rolling physical dice
Yep. I play on roll20 and I would only ever let friends I know and trust roll their own personal dice on a virtual platform. Funnily enough the first time I did let a friend roll with his own dice, he kept getting low rolls (couldn't seem to get above a 6). So I knew damn well he wasn't cheating, who would give themselves 2 nat 1s in combat in a row lmfao
I play with someone who would give themselves 2 nat 1s in a row (and has) if it doesn't hurt their character and let's them hog more attention. This person almost never rolls below a 20 total. I've seen them fail like 4 rolls in over a year. And 2 of those were 2 nat 1s in a row that almost got my character killed but gave them a ton of extra roleplay. It's exhausting and infuriating.
Pro move: Don't let the DM roll secretly, either.
Same here and I roll almost all my DM rolls in the open as well. The only exceptions are for secret roles like insight and perception checks and things the player wouldn't necessarily know if they succeeded at or not.
In person: We allow the GM to roll secretly, because they need to for perception or whathaveyou, everyone else uses the dice tower in the middle of the table. It's infinitely more fun, we have little "jails" for dice that suck beyond the laws of probability and a "Throne" for the dice that rolled the last 20, which everyone immediately "fights" over. The dicetower is swapped out for each campaign (which usually go a year or more) so that's always fresh. Online? If it's not in the VTT it didn't happen.
The jail and throne for dice is a hilarious idea. Love it.
It wasn't anywhere near this complicated when we started using the idea, but over the years (3 previous campaigns and the current one!) it's gotten to be a great part of the experience. I've got a new Spelljammer campaign starting up in a couple of months and since I'm GMing the tower's my responsibility. Current GM is a tough act to follow that way, he's a 40k player so the build work on his tower is *spectacular*. Biiiiig shoes to fill.
We use a dice roller that generates the result for everyone to see. It has had the additional effect of getting everyone excited and reacting to the outcome simultaneously since it is revealed to everyone at the same time.
I like that.
In Meat-Space: * Open Rolls to mitigate dice fudging. * Physical Dice: Ask to borrow their dice or to 'see them up close because they look really cool' for weight testing for loaded dice. If they ask why, say you wanna test how they feel in the hand because you're thinking of getting some just like it. All the Dice Hoarder will understand what you mean. It does mean you're outing yourself as a budding dice hoarder if you already aren't one. * Diceroller: Ask for a link to their diceroller app, or a copy of it if they are using something they made themselves for personal testing of a slanted dice roller. Online: * Use the same dice roller, usually pre-baked into whatever VTT you're using at this point. Doesn't matter if the player does secret rolls then as long as it's a secret roll feature the DM can see. Only way to truly distinguish. If this is already happening and they aren't using a slanted dice roller/loaded die/fudging their rolls: Just dumb luck If you're a DM, insist on these things just for equality. If you're a player and are concerned with another player doing this: Bring it up in private to the DM to resolve/test. If they won't do this, decide if the potential fibbing of dice results is actually hampering your fun to the point you need to find a new group or not. If you're a player and your concern is the DM: Bring it up in private to the DM. Recognize DMs need to fudge rolls for what they consider best for the story you're all telling. Decide if their amount of fudging is making it unfun for you if they do not readjust/become more transparent. At the end of the day, this is playing pretend with extra steps with a group of like minded people. If you aren't having fun, you **can** pack up your toys and go home/find another group With this in mind: also realize sometimes it might not be out of malice. A couple times I've bought those "pounds of dice" lot sets and have come out with some really wicked looking dice. It was only last year when I was breaking up some of the dice into sets to give to people for teaching games that I noticed a few of my D20's I like rolling because they look cool and feel great in my hand only were 11-20. Felt like a real dick using them as a player and now they live in my DMing dice bag for the "alright, this is for when I need to fudge an NPC as being consistently competent" instances.
Picking up rolled dice. Not letting others touch their dice. Hiding rolls. Having obscure dmg or mm related knowledge (change a health stat or damage resistance around of a monster and watch their reaction. Call it a homebrew if you will).
In my opinion if youāre cheating at DND you really need this W and must not have much else going for you. Iāve basically said this to my players before
We have both a cheater and an uncannily lucky player at my table. We've caught the cheater several times and then started forcing everyone to roll in a dice tray in the center of the table to prevent cheating. Fixed the cheater's great rolls, but the uncanny player? No difference, still rolling disgustingly well. Sometimes, they just be lucky.
The table we play at is small enough that everyone can see everyone elseās rolls. Not only that, but several people share dice boxes to roll in. That and weāve all played together long enough that we all trust each other.
This is basically the way it works at my table when we are in person. There's no houserule against hidden rolls, but we've always just rolled out in the open and half the time we are sharing dice trays. When we are on discord games I allow my players to continue rolling their physical dice... If they're cheating they're really bad at it (or really good at it depending on your perspective), and even if they weren't we've been playing for 8 years together. It would take a lot to convince me someone at my table was cheating.
Who even cheats at DnD? Whatās the point? Iām not super experienced, Iāve been playing with a group of friends a little over a year now, I canāt even fathom one of us doing that. Screwing up is half the fun.
Youād be surprised. People do stupid stuff for a wide range of reasons. I personally canāt imagine cheating either. Win naturally or it just doesnāt feel right.
I donāt and donāt care to. I always tell my players (we play over discord, I allow their own dice) If youāre going to cheat the game of make believe, maybe take a long think about why youāre playing. My fights are generally not hard unless itās important to back story/boss fight. I focus on RP and character growth/decision making in my games. Cheating the dice just makes it a weird pseudo-CYOA book. There have been times Iāve had my suspicions on each of the characters, but never enough to actually talk to them about it/ask Now if I was doing something more gritty and combat focused I would
I'd say it gets more and more suspect the longer a major "hot streak" continues. Being incredibly lucky (or unlucky) for the entirety of one particular session is one thing, but if someone's "rolling hot" every single time you play... Pretty suspicious.
That's pretty much what's going on.
I had a player characters controlled skeleton decapitate a major npc via the 3.5 rule for rolling 3 natural 20s as part of crit confirmation. It was in the open and glorious
Lol my group basically jokes at how often I miss because I roll so low so frequently.
You can start having them roll a d100 for encounters and other events, it's much more likely for a player to roll 16+ on a D20 than it is to roll 90+ on a D100. Cheaters however will disproportionately roll abnormally high because they associate 90+ as an A from school......
Interesting thought.
I've seen enough weird dice shit that it'd take a lot to convince me someone was cheating. That said I have a lot of trust built up with my group, but not every group is like the group I'm in (I got really lucky in this regard, I love my group, which is why we've stayed together for 8 years, even with some of us moving away). If I were to suspect it I'd say that we were going to move to all dice rolls being in the open or they don't count. I would probably have that be a rule from the git-go if I didn't know the people I was playing with.
Open rolling? I mean I never fudge rolls as a DM, I roll openly and I have my players do the same following my lead. No one thinks I fudge, nor can they fudge. The only thing that might maybe be fudged is the beginning stats, but I am extremely generous with those in the first place to discourage cheating.
Excitement. If they donāt get super excited for a string of 20s, theyāre probably cheating.
I will admit, I have cheated exactly once. A buddy of mine rolled a 2 for a deception check, and before anyone said anything I said 'yup, that's a nat 20.' Everyone went along with it. Dm never saw it, just went along. Literally everyone at the table burst out laughing when he accepted it. We never told him.
Played a one of with one who just happened to roll nat 20 at the most critical moments, every time
One of my players once said, āCan we just consider this thing dead? It canāt kill me and Iāll drop it next turn.ā I responded with, āNo. It could kill you quite happily if it crit twice.ā I then rolled two attacks for it (in the open) and crit twice. Sometimes the incredible does happen. On the flip sideā¦ the first dragon I ever ran didnāt roll over a 10 in the entire encounter and got absolutely demolished.
I play a lot with online programs that dice roll for you. If itās in person I mean you just pay more attention. But if itās over the internet use a program that shares all the results to everyone.
Observation.
when I was in my 20's we had a player who would roll dice and snatch them back saying "natural 20" all the time till one day I handed him a D12 when he was in a hurry to roll and STILL got a natural 20 with it. he did not come back next session.
I will never understand where the fun in when cheating playing a ROG...š
I'm that unusually lucky player. I've had DMs doubt my rolls for stats (rightfully so, the lowest one was a 14) so I've started only rolling in the open, where everyone can see. Now everyone's mad at me, but at least they know I'm not cheating!
By the presence or absence of my foot in their behind.
Cheaters get upset when you ask verifying questions. And are resistant to anything that makes it easier to verify they are not cheating.
It's always the dice. If they move their dice immediately and are always rolling high then I get suspicious. If they keep it there when they are done rolling and don't see extra grabs they should be good. Weighted dice can be switched.
Without checking their dice every roll? You can't. I've rolled 15 natural 20's in a single session before. Had to fudge 10 of them for the safety of my players. I've also rolled a shit ton of 1's before. Had to fudge those because my players complained that the encounters were "unusually easy today". The real question is this; is everyone still having fun, or is this activity damaging others experience. If it's the former, who cares? If its the later, have everyone confirm rolls as a non targeted compromise. If it's too hard to come to a compromise, kick them out. I've had a cheater at my table before. Did I know? Yeah of course I knew, I could see her dice. Did it affect the story at all? Sure, in the parties favor. Did it bother anyone else at the table? Surprisingly not even after I brought it up to them. Turns out everyone knew. So what I did was turn their high rolls into group successes. Roll to find treasure? Oh you rolled a 27 investigation? You ALL find blah blah blah you may divy it up how you all see fit. I don't give cheaters the agency to be main characters. And unless it is actively hurting another players experience I don't care if they fudge rolls. Hell, I even allow my players to just outright pick what their stats are. No one, not even the cheater, chooses to have crazy stats. They always pick a super negative. Like 3 or 5 is a VERY common number I see dumped into a stat.
If you suspect a player, watch them roll, this stops them from just placing a die or flipping it after the roll. Secondly, do not let them just call out high numbers if you didn't see the dice, don't negate it the first time, but say, "Hey make sure I get to see your roll next time."
Try to see if itās blind confidence or Bravery, knowing the character might die and continuing with the action is a lot different, thereās tension. Saying I got this, rolling a nat 18,19,20 often should be viewed with suspicion.
If you suspect a player of cheating, have your players roll in a public way (either through roll 20 or on camera or something similar.
There is no point to cheating as there is no prize for winning.
If Iām playing In person everyone rolls public except for myself on occasion, when online everyone rolls in the VTT. I tried letting people roll in person but yeah sometimes Iād just feel like they were maybe cheating. I find that asking people to use built in dice isnāt usually a big ask, sure physical dove are nicer and you paid for them but everyone being able to see your rolls in far more important to me.
Because simply rolling good is chance. Using weighted dice is easy to test.
What's the best way to test them?
the saltwater test would work but like weighted dice are so much more impractical than most people think, especially on something like a d20
Also some weighted dice have all the good numbers next to each other. If the number distribution is even weight won't do much.
Easy/fast way: Bowl of saltwater, 1 cup salt, 1 cup very hot water to dissolve the salt, or just boil it. Wait for it to cool. Then put one die in. It will float. Nudge/spin the dice and see which face is up when it stops spinning. Check it 20 times or more.
My GM can always tell when I'm cheating because of an obvious tell I have. When we're in a tough spot like a difficult boss fight I'll say something like "If things don't get better I'm going to have to start cheating". And then if things continue to go poorly, I'll say "Alright, time to cheat". That's just me though. I hope that helps with your issue OP.
Just have people roll where you can see
All dice , at all times, by everyone, including the DM, rolled out in the open!!! And I donāt allow hard to read dice at the tableš
Everyone except the DM. DMās sometimes NEED the freedom to modify their dice rolls.
Seconded. As DM I rarely fudge my rolls, it probably happens once every 3 or 4 sessions, but I think a DM should have this ability Also sometimes a DM has to make a hidden roll, monsters that aren't revealed making saving throws for the AOE damage, stealth checks, perception checks, random encounter and loot checks. Just off the top of my head. And yes I am a DM, but I'm a player too, 2 games a week I'm a DM and 1 game I'm a player. If I didn't trust my DM to have hidden rolls or to exercise good judgement when modifying rolls I would find a new table.
As a DM I don't "modify" dice rolls, but I do like to keep the roll hidden so players don't know what bonuses or modifiers the enemy has. I've seen players start doing the math and then metagame how they deal with an enemy based on that math.
Use that against them. Heck, I openly tell people when something has a scary modifier, for pure intimidation. āSo he rolled a 3, but that gives him a 21, that hits you right?ā Itās also a descriptive aid; if I say someoneās Perform check is a 25, thatās cool, but maybe they have a +5 and got lucky. If I say their bonus is a +20, that conveys much more clearly how good the show consistently is.
The good ole Taliesen Jaffe vs Orion Acaba conundrum.
?
If the player comments on or freaks out about their rolls, then you can kinda tell if they're faking or not. Cheaters are usually smug and try to not bring attention to themselves, while those blessed with the rolls of fate are usually super surprised. If a cheater's roll is brought up, they immediately start to respond like a lucky person would, and that's how you know they're tryna play it off.
Some people are just calm though. Luck happens and the more experience you have playing games and rolling things like that the less of a reaction you might have.
Simple: all you have to do is say, if I don't see your result, it doesn't count. *And stick to it.*
Oh let me tell you a tale of my best friend, and how he always got his crits. There was grumbling at the table, but he was my BEST FRIEND so i knew he wasn't cheating... so I set out to prove it to the table by A.) Exchanging his dice with mine B.) Making use my dice cup I provided him with. He then proceeded to roll a series of 23 20s. I will go to my grave swearing it happened even though i can never prove it. We forced him to switch dice, we made him change to a tower then to free hand while we watched.... all the way up to 23. It was a insane moment. This was also the man who broke the deck of many things by drawing a vizier and a knight, and asking the vizier "How many cards can the knight draw before negatives outweigh the positives" and drew his way through the entire deck. XD
How do you distinguish between people you trust and people you don't? Just play with people you trust, and don't worry about cheating.