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I guess the areas where I see "cheating" most often, and I hesitate to even use the word, can broadly be described as going too fast.
I frequently surprise players, both locally and at conventions, when as a GM I call for rolls to:
--identify a magic item they've just found (they're used to just being told what it is)
--successfully use any of the potions or scrolls that remove effects like disease or poison or curses, almost all of which require caster level checks (they're used to such things automatically working)
--and, well, the list goes on...Another one that causes me to scratch my head is attempts to use the Diplomacy skill during combat, which doesn't map onto any reading of the skill as describe in the CRB that I can reasonably entertain.
Broadly speaking, I think many players--in my of course limited experience--are used to cutting corners and having stuff just "work" without reference to the rules behind those things.
I agree with you (and do all that myself as GM) but the specific item of Diplomacy in combat is one that I can certainly understand.
I do it all the time myself; I've run into combat situations where a face/peaceful/dimwitted character wins initiative but in-character has no way to know that the NPC means harm. Unless I have a good reason to buff I'll just spend the first round "attempting diplomacy" but knowing out-of-character that I'll be 9 rounds short of getting to roll.
Also there are quite a few scenarios that specifically allow you to make Diplomacy checks every round. Not all of which are clear to the players. Run into enough of those and it doesn't seem far-fetched to try it all the time.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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As Ultimate Intrigue spells out, the appropriate thing to do in such circumstances is to use the "make a request" use of Diplomacy to call for a cease-fire. While you normally can only make a request of a target that's at least indifferent to you, UI does suggest that GMs could allow it against unfriendly or hostile characters, as long as it's "couched in such a way that they seem to be in the target’s best interests"
SCPRedMage, are we allowed to use those rules in PFS?
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Another one that causes me to scratch my head is attempts to use the Diplomacy skill during combat, which doesn't map onto any reading of the skill as describe in the CRB that I can reasonably entertain.
1) the absolute sola raw view of the rules that PFS gets a reputation as is rarely the way I see PFS run and to be honest from the thankfully few game experiences I've had when it's run that way i would not stick around.
It is entirely possible to show non hostile intent and stop a fight. If someone wants to do that that is pretty obviously diplomacy.
2) You can change the initial attitudes of nonplayer characters with a successful check. The DC of this check depends on the creature’s starting attitude toward you, adjusted by its Charisma modifier.
Someone attempting to bash your head in isn't explicitly but is pretty obviously hostile. Move them off of hostile and maybe they'll stop trying to bash your head in.
3) Ultimate intrigue has some pretty stiff rules for those sorts of things
4) Many scenarios have an ad hoc diplomacy check for doing exactly that sort of thing.
5) You can use this skill to persuade others to agree with your arguments, to resolve differences, and to gather valuable information or rumors from people.
Broadly speaking, I think many players--in my of course limited experience--are used to cutting corners and having stuff just "work" without reference to the rules behind those things.
Or are used to a less mechanical game.
The DM is empowered to deal with unusual tactics. The party stopping to talk to people trying to kill them is pretty weird. As long as you take the characters wants , desires, motivations and purpose in the story into account and not treat a DC 25 diplomacy check like an auto win you should be good.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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There are several scenarios where the writer wants the PCs to attempt Diplomacy checks mid-combat, for example to resolve cases of mistaken identity. It's happened in older scenarios
But IIRC there's also an occurrence in a recent (S7-8?) scenario, just can't come up with the name right now.
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Spindown dice are kind of weird because the way you cheat with them aren't exactly something you can't do with normal dice.
Some GMs have no idea what "spindown" dice are, so of course they'd never be able to catch that kind of cheating.
Yup. If someone has a spindown die at the table, I usually just ask them to make sure I can see it spinning in the air. If you can make it spin in the air and still predispose it to land on a certain half of the die, you deserve the rolls you get!
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I must be somewhere near aboyd as Rob has frequented my store previously, and I have to be honest I have no clue where he could be talking about. I do however acknowledge that I've seen cheating before, and it can be an issue here to an extent. I've even been told by a store official that regardless of how little a certain player knows of his own character, or the correct function of the rules, that since he spends quite a bit at the store I can't really remove him. We have since gotten him a bit better on the rules side but sometimes his numbers are still odd, and not even necessarily in his favor. He'll roll a low number on a skill check he's decently proficient in and just accept his failure, even when he may have succeeded. Truly odd.
If someone rolls a '1', there have been two ways I've seen GMs run it.
Either
A. Automatic Failure, even if the character has +30 in the skill
or
B. Potential Failure, taking into account the bonus.
The distribution has been about 50-50 on that, so if someone did have a good modifier but ran into that enough times, or heard the rough DC for things for a given scenario enough times may start to think that the die roll 4 plus 25 isn't going to amount to anything...
as a note, in PFS, #1 is wrong. there is absolutely no auto fail on skill checks. Automatic failure only occurs where specificly spelled out, which occurs in the attack roll and saving throw entries.
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Every now and then I'll see someone pick up dice rolls to "read" them closely and set them down on a different number.
I always hope that the act of switching their dice rolls gives them some modicum of happiness. I hope I'm never so despondent in real life that I have to cheat during my escapist hobbies.
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as a note, in PFS, #1 is wrong. there is absolutely no auto fail on skill checks. Automatic failure only occurs where specificly spelled out, which occurs in the attack roll and saving throw entries.I must be somewhere near aboyd as Rob has frequented my store previously, and I have to be honest I have no clue where he could be talking about. I do however acknowledge that I've seen cheating before, and it can be an issue here to an extent. I've even been told by a store official that regardless of how little a certain player knows of his own character, or the correct function of the rules, that since he spends quite a bit at the store I can't really remove him. We have since gotten him a bit better on the rules side but sometimes his numbers are still odd, and not even necessarily in his favor. He'll roll a low number on a skill check he's decently proficient in and just accept his failure, even when he may have succeeded. Truly odd.
If someone rolls a '1', there have been two ways I've seen GMs run it.
Either
A. Automatic Failure, even if the character has +30 in the skill
or
B. Potential Failure, taking into account the bonus.
The distribution has been about 50-50 on that, so if someone did have a good modifier but ran into that enough times, or heard the rough DC for things for a given scenario enough times may start to think that the die roll 4 plus 25 isn't going to amount to anything...
Precisely.
However, there's enough folks out there that don't know it and assume that 'any time a d20 is rolled, a 1 is a failure' that it is a thing that does exist.
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To follow up the combat diplomacy sidebar.
Spoiler:There is a feat in UI, "Call Truce", that lets you get that minute you need to diplomance. It is legal.
I think that book is superb for home games and atrocious for PFS. It suddenly puts in all sorts of rules that now explicitly make illegal things that used to be in the grey area.
And lots of those things just make sense. You should have SOME chance to call a truce in the middle of a fight. It happens in fiction all the time. Even happens in reality (albeit in reality a minute may pass). Happened in PFS games a lot under some GMs.
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In my opinion the feat was needed. Feats are easier to make PFS legal than extra rules. Every sorcerer, bard, oracle, and any other charisma based class can take diplomacy and do it too well. This was a needed feat tax to make it something you build towards, not a side prize. It should be hard to stop a fight that is started, and the DC in the feat reflects that and allows for GM wiggle room.
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Yeah, I gotta say, I like that that feat exists, too. I strongly believe that the Diplomacy skill should be strictly interpreted per the rules for it in the CRB, which are pretty clear about "1 minute of continuous interaction" being necessary to influence a creature's attitude, and I'm pretty sure that "continuous interaction" isn't meant to be understood as involving active attempts by the involved parties to harm one another.
This notion of "calling for a cease-fire" being common in fiction is interesting to me, though, and I certainly agree that fiction is a better model for us in these games than history or current events. I'd be interested in hearing some specific examples from specific sources to use as models for thinking about this issue. Because, though I like to think of myself as well-read (who doesn't, right?), I'm having trouble coming up with many applicable examples from fantasy, science fiction, military fiction, or historical fiction that recognizably involve something like the rules-defined Diplomacy skill.
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I thought of a few more instances where I thought somebody was cheating, although some of what aboyd was describing up-thread I wouldn't go as far as calling cheating as it tends to be a very loaded term.
I've seen lots of we'll say "minor dice malfeasance". Depending on the player I might talk to them in public or in private but generally it goes along the line of "Hey, picking up the dice to read them is a bad habit to get into because it's really easy to accidentally slip to the next number and very occasionally I've seen some people do it to try and cheat so it makes me uncomfortable as a GM or fellow player."
It helps that as a GM I roll most of my dice out into the open and can help set an example.
I've never had it continue to be a problem in the same session.
Every now and then I'll see someone pick up dice rolls to "read" them closely and set them down on a different number.
I always hope that the act of switching their dice rolls gives them some modicum of happiness. I hope I'm never so despondent in real life that I have to cheat during my escapist hobbies.
Come on. I will.pick up the die just to see what I rolled. It looks like I will be using the big dice from now on....
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I have exceedingly poor 'dice control'.
If I try to 'roll them out in the open', they go four tables away. True story.
I loathe the 'dice corrals' that some folks use, but there are few options other than using my plastic character tent, my stack of books, and my character sheet to mitigate the 'crazy dice syndrome'.
*thinks about it*
Would a Yahtzee cup be an acceptable means of rolling dice?
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I would think a Yahtzee cup would be just fine. It's no different from any other dice cup, really, is it? Lots of people use stuff like that.
I'm having trouble coming up with many applicable examples from fantasy, science fiction, military fiction, or historical fiction that recognizably involve something like the rules-defined Diplomacy skill.
"Same thing I always do. Talk my way out of it."
(Arguably Bluff. Really more like the skill Fast-Talk from GURPS.)
A standard trope in lots of movies and TV is the person standing on the edge of the building, or the person holding a gun (on himself or on somebody else), and the hero comes in and talks that person out of jumping/firing. This isn't calling a truce, really, as in these situations the person holding the gun or about to jump isn't fully convinced that he wants to fire or jump; more to the point, the person talking and the person about to shoot didn't start in combat.
Back to Star Wars: Lando convinces Chewie not to strangle him by using his words... and at a disadvantage because he is trying to talk while his windpipe is in the middle of being crushed. This is arguably a "call a truce", with a massive circumstance bonus that Lando could truthfully say exactly what Chewie and the others wanted to hear.
In the ST:TNG episode "Darmok", the two captainless ships are about to blow each other apart when Picard beams in and tells the allegorical tale of Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel. Another important calling of a cease fire by somebody who has key information.
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Wei Ji, have you looked at dice towers or rolling in glasses? If you're rolling one d20 in a glass, you can simply pick the glass up with your palm over the opening, shake it and put it down to get a good roll.
Towers and glasses clink/clank at that 'one wavelength' that's like a white noise punch awl to me (part of the reason I struggle with them when other players have them.
Thought of the Yahtzee cup because it's muffled a bit...
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Except, again, the "calling a cease-fire" section of UI isn't new rules
The stop shooting for a second is new as it's a request whereas before it was a ? , and as ultimate intrigue points out, wouldn't work at all as a request raw without UI.
Since a cease-fire is a type of request, this would
work fine, with the diplomat making the request over
the course of a full round of combat and completing
it just before her next turn. However, a character can
usually only make requests of a target that feels at least
indifferent toward that character, and the vast majority
of battles involve characters that are unfriendly or hostile
toward each other.
So without ultimate intrigue it's a matter of what rule do you break? Both types of actions have clauses in the raw that prevents it from working.
If a creature's attitude toward you is at least indifferent, you can make requests of the creature" or " Using Diplomacy to influence a creature's attitude takes 1 minute of continuous interaction"
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Making a Diplomacy skill check takes a minute. However a character can speak (a reasonable amount allowed by the GM) giving new information and a creature can hear and decide to act in its own interest at any time. It's only if a player wants to alter the outcome in his favour with his character statistics that strict rules, rightly, come into play.
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Making a Diplomacy skill check takes a minute. However a character can speak (a reasonable amount allowed by the GM) giving new information and a creature can hear and decide to act in its own interest at any time. It's only if a player wants to alter the outcome in his favour with his character statistics that strict rules, rightly, come into play.
Even the "hard mechanics" on diplomacy have enough DM's call in them to be functionally DM's call.
. Some requests automatically fail if the request goes against the creature’s values or its nature, subject to GM discretion.
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I once GM'd a game where all 6 players were blatantly cheating. Like, openly calling out roll results that didn't match with the die that was still sitting on the table.
That's insane. I agree. If I wasn't the VC of the area I'd report the players. I'd give them warning first.
One time I was GMing Living Greyhawk and an older guy was using worn dice from an old D&D boxed set. He's role two worn d20s and was calling out numbers that I couldn't read. I asked him to use my dice instead. I've never had anything like that happen.