I have become the new DM of a group after the old one had to move and I am looking for help with two of my players. We have a group of five and two of them "frank" and "ronald" are causing me a few problems and may be causing the other three problems as well.
"frank" has been cheating ever since day one. He has used loaded d6, lied about spell lists and spell effects/saves, and even "found" himself a +4 vorpal longsword and said that I okayed it (9 lvl character, and it wasn't a +4 vorpal longsword, but it was an item(s) that his character had no way to afford even with relevant feats to decrease cost) , finally his character would always have over powered stats (and by over powered I mean nothing less than a 14). (on the cheating I and several other players have caught him in the act in this and other games of cheating)
"ronald" is an avid 2.0 DnD player and keeps trying to bring over rules from 2.0 also he seems to think that almost every encounter that doesn't end in 1 round is OP and I need to change it. He also can get very distracted and start talking about things that aren't relevant to the current game, and can take up around an hour of time this way. He also insults some of my other players regularly and when they begin to ask him to stop he just laughs it off as if they are over reacting. How should I deal with this?
Honestly, I'm not sure how you became the DM of this group (did you previously know "frank" and "Ronald?"), but you should tell them that if their behavior is not only negatively affecting you but also the other players, that you won't DM if they don't stop.
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Advise "frank" you are not inviting him back. The lying alone would've gotten him booted from my game. I'm not so desperate to play that I'll suffer a cheater and disrupter at the table. As to "ronald" have a talk about the chatter between games. If he's a true gamer, he'll realize it's bothering other people if you feel it's important enough to bring up. If not, he can join "frank."
Neither of them would stay in a group with for more than 1 session - less, if I were the GM. You may not be able to kick them out of the group, but you can surely walk away and keep your honour intact.
Agreed with Touc, with the caveat that I would probably just ask the other players first. If it turns out that they're fine with it, then you might need to rethink your strategy.
Thank all of you for commenting and helping me out.
I will be talking to the other player's about "frank's" cheating if they are fine with it I will let it roll, if not then I will talk to "frank" once and if he continues to cheat then I will ask him to leave. For "Ronald" I will talk to him and see what he will do if he will stop great if not then I will also ask him to leave.
Assuming that Frank and Ronald are friends, and you are concerned about hard feelings, there are also some more tactful ways of handling things.
First, you can require all rolls to be in the open, with the die to be left in front of the player until the roll is adjudicated. If he is truly using "loaded" dice or dice that are not technically loaded per se, but just not balanced (meaning it has nothing to do with the player and everything to do with poor craftsmanship) this won't exactly solve the problem.
However, if his character continues to dominate, you can pull him aside and say "Hey Frank, your character is awesome, and you did a great job coming up with a cool concept. The problem is, he's just too good. In order to challenge your character, I'm basically going to have to come up with encounters that are almost certain to kill the rest of the party, and that's just not fun for anyone. Let's see if we can't tone him back a little. This sword, for instance, might be a good place to start. I don't recall handing it out, but obviously it was a mistake to do so . . ." etc. In other words, you're not outright calling him a cheat, but still addressing the problem.
As for Ronald, I certainly wouldn't put up with insults at the table. A lot of people like to joke and be a smart arse (myself included) but not everyone appreciates the difference between a joke and an insult. More to the point, definitely look to see how the rest of your group feels about the table talk. My group for instance, engages in a ton of table talk. However, we are also all 30-40 somethings who work long hours and look to our bi-weekly games as a chance to blow off steam. If that means we only get through one or two encounters instead of the planned 4, so be it.
Finally, you can always run Ronald through a couple of 4ed D&D encounters if he thinks your combats are taking too long. :p
Tell them "rule zero", the 2.0 player will especially understand. DM fiat that magic weapons and vorpal weapons don't work. I have no mercy for cheaters.
Oh, just fill a sock with quarters, and tie a good tight knot so the quarters don't fall out. A tube sock should be sturdy enough to cause a bit of bruising before bursting.
Hope this helps! <3
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Really, I don't mean to be flippant here, but just sack up. You're the DM, it's your game. How much disruption are you willing to tolerate? How much unfun do you want these guys to inflict on the entire group? When they cross whatever line that is, and it sounds like they have, then just shut them down.
Talk to each of them, separately, one on one, but let them know how it's got to be.
Frank - No sword. You're level 9, you can have sword with a total modifier of +3, assuming you don't have lots of other magic items, or +2 if you do have lots. Period. And stop faking your rolls; if I can't feel like I can trust and believe you, then we can't continue gaming together. This isn't a competition, it's a shared-storytelling game that we are ALL sharing EQUALLY except you. Fix it or find someone else's group to ruin.
Ronald - This isn't 2.0. I'm always willing to entertain houserules, but you get to state your case for a suggestion once and we'll let the group decide, but I still get final veto power. We'll implement the rules that everyone likes, including me, and ignore the ones we don't need. Pathfinder is supposed to have more interesting and tactical combats; it's what the game is designed to do. So it's time you got on board with that.
Oy, Voidy, tell us what happened if anything.
@Vamptastic: You don't wanna use quarters. Use oranges or bars of soap. They won't leave marks. ;)
True. It's also a shame that phonebooks aren't as common anymore...
For me, cheating is a betrayal of trust. I do not particularly want to game with anyone I cannot trust at least enough not to cheat on game that is supposed to be fun for everyone.
Disruptiveness is a little more gray. Your game, your rules. If your friend wants to run a 2e game, bully for him. At your table, you get to decide the rules.
sorry for not responding for a while but I had to stop and think for a bit. When I talked to "Ronald" he agreed that he might be going too far and apologized and fixed his attitude.
when I brought up "frank's" problems to everybody else. all of my non-troublemakers said they were fine with it because they didn't care about most of the stuff, but they wanted me to talk to him about the loaded dice because that was the only area they felt was truly changing the game (same response from 3 different people in 3 different rooms).
EDIT:@LincolnHills number 2 has already come into play the in-game explanation was that when monsters are getting hit really hard by only one pc they target that pc.
I've found problem players, no matter what the age, respond as well as my kids and I treat them as such. I'm not saying this to badmouth my players and I'm not trying to talk smack about anyone. I'm merely saying that keeping things simple works best for me but the reactions I get are equally childish.
Ex: we had a disruptor in my games. I had a frank heart-to-heart w/him between games, suggesting the disruptions were affecting everyone...to which he demanded proof. The next game we played he disrupted, and after the game I cited it for him; he still was not convinced. It was at that point that I went into "Dad" mode.
I stated that after the previous game I'd talked to him; that was strike 1. This game I'd talked again and I'd cited a specific example. This meant strike 2 and strike 3 would mean he'd have to leave the game. 2 sessions later strike 3 hit in a big, public way and my game imploded. The cherry on top was this player acting like it was my fault and pouting...like one of my kids.
The epilogue to this story is much nicer than the event itself. I now work with the gentleman I asked to leave. I thought it would be awkward but we've had lunch a few times and reconciled; he's even invited me to HIS game. The long and the short of it is that in my experience its good to talk to your players, keep it simple, and lay out both expectations of behavior as well as consequences of breaking the rules.
You don't have to be a tyrant or a dad. For example, let "Frank" know lying isn't ok and that he needs to not use loaded dice, get spell lists approved and submit his vorpal sword for Sundering. If not, he's free to leave until such time as he's willing to follow the rules. If he complies now and backslides later, he'll get one (or 2 or whatever) warning(s), and after that he'll be asked to leave.
Get him the baseball sized dice of shame, make him roll them so everyone can see it for every roll he needs to make.
Call them the dice of shame let the other players know why he has to roll them, if your players are like any that i have played with through the years they will have fun with it and maybe one day Frank will see the point in the game is to have fun with people, not just win the game...
MOST THINGS HAVE ALREADY BEEN SAID. THE BEST WAY IS TALKING TO YOUR PLAYERS.
With my first gaming group in our early teens we had similar problems. Most of my players tried to cheat on the die rolls. There were also other problems like players frequently trying to kill each other etc.
Only one guy went so far to change his character sheet, which was really annoying. His drow Rogue-Ranger-Paladin-Barbarian-Ninjaprestigeclass increased her stats until she had 18 everywhere. Her two +1 Bastardswords, suddenly became +3 Vorpal and random Rings of Protection and Amuletts of Natural Armor appeared in her equipment. And all of her classes seemed to get skill points like a rogue.
My solution was to have the players start a new group. The player was so weirdly obsessed with creating the perfect character(something he totally failed by overly multiclassing), that he put everything into this plan. His drow had to the most sexy, the strongest and the most versatile hero ever. When he saw her not killing everything with her dual-wielded Bastardswords, he began to summon equipment to tune her.
When we made the new group, his next character was a tanky healbot support dvarwen cleric. Not disruptive at all.
I'm personally a super-fan of the whole "OH HOLY T@&& THAT GUY HAS A VORPAL, TAKE IT."
That being said, you could just have a rival adventuring party, maybe a band of thieves made rather well and intrinsically built into the story, but secretly have them Special-made to seek out magical items. A band of thieves made to seek out adventurers, who've developed tactics for these things.
Have the lead man be a Fighter who loves to disarm, and just to drive the nail in, have him be a two-weapon fighter on top of this, who uses the disarmed weapon along with his own.
Make sure that the fight is disadvantageous to the PC's, if only because of terrain and how easy it is to get the drop on them. Thieves attack in towns, not on roads. Have them start with stealing a PC's gold purse very carefully, something the runt of the litter of the group can do. Don't even roll for the steal, just make it a decent perception check that can't be noticed easily, even with the loaded dice.
- He didn't notice? Awesome, he lost some money.
- He did notice? Good luck catching a 40 move-speed rogue with a 6 second lead.
DEVELOPMENT: The PC's will of course follow if they have even the slightest clue as to what's going on. The thieves have been watching them for a while, and know who the spellcaster is, so they start the confrontation (No doubt one lead into an alleyway far from the guards by runt) by neutralizing, what else, an archer with some form of str poison with enough potency to crush someone under the weight of their own hair.
Pick a (SPECIFIC) item, and make one of the rogues an arcane trickster; the escape man. Solid fog, acid fog, stinky fog, fog fog, whichever one helps you get away. If he happens to be a wizard of any merit, solid fog and make a wall of stone in the alleyway. They won't notice them, and it's so thin in the alleyway that your party members won't be able to flank. Stay in full defense, and disarm whenever possible.
Don't keep the weapon the whole time after this is all over. Make sure to make the CR a little above-par, as it should be. If your local wizard PC has a spell he likes to nuke with, give the disarm guy a ring of cancellation, picked by the Arcane Trickster. Make sure the trickster has the spell too, otherwise you're just being mean at this point. (You're allowed to be mean at this point.)
Player rages? Good, he's got motivation. This is all a wonderful ploy to make them hate the adventuring party and eventually stage a back-attack, as the thieving group could be working for a character that they've provoked in the past, whether they did it knowingly or not. Runt is INTENDED to be caught in the middle of this, as he's the ass of the group and the other 3 (4?) don't really care about him.
There, I just solved the majority of your weapon-related problems and I even entwined it into the story.
(They never find the sword, and if he suddenly pulls another one out of his ass, kick him, he's a dick anyway.)