Dungeon Hacks: 5 Ways To Prevent Cheating At Your Table

[Neal Litherland]

We hammered together another episode of Dungeon Hacks this month, and we thought we'd get a bit meta. The Dungeon Keeper addresses cheating at your table, and the things you can do to prevent it.

Dungeon Hacks: 5 Ways To Prevent Cheating At Your Table

Did we miss any methods that worked well for you? Or have you used any of these at your table, and found they worked really well?

[Errant Mercenary]

I just windlass reload an arbalest crossbow for 30 seconds in silence and then lay it right next to my d20. Works every time.

As a GM I roll often in the open, dont use a gm screen and I look them in the eye when I say I gave the owlbear a +5 to everything. Because GM'ing is a license to cheat.

I dont think cheating is as prevalent as you make it to be, but surely it'll vary table to table.

[pauljathome]

"Cheating is something that happens at most of our tables"

I vehemently disagree with the whole basis for that article.

My "hack"? Don't play with cheats.

[TomParker]

pauljathome wrote:

"Cheating is something that happens at most of our tables"

I vehemently disagree with the whole basis for that article.

My "hack"? Don't play with cheats.

I agree. Cheating is not something my group is interested in doing.

[Mike J]

To be fair, I didn’t click the link or listen to the podcast or whatever.

You really can’t stop cheaters without grinding the game to a halt. Simple example: I add +1 to every to hit roll where I roll less than 19 on the die. How will you ever catch me doing that short of adding up all the modifiers every time I drop a die? I would never actually do this, it is a hypothetical example.

Solution: Just don’t play with cheats.

[Lady-J]

wtf is a dungeon keeper

[Lady-J]

also if all rolling is done in the open there's not much to cheat

[Nodrog]

Never had a problem with cheaters.

[Dajur]

I played with a guy for a few months last year who rarely rolled low. His initiative was rarely below 15, he rarely missed his attacks and he only misfired a few times out of hundreds of shots with his gunslinger. He also never marked off his ammo. I told several of the other players to keep an eye on him, as I noticed his rolls were unbelievably good. We never talked to him about it though, and only brought it up to the GM a few times, as he was the GM's brother. I believe his trick was that after he rolled, he would pick up the die to inspect it as he had bad eyesight. He would twist the die from a low number to a higher one as he brought it up to his face. He also had a big laptop he would bring with him that blocked the view of most of the people at the table. He moved out of state, and now there is no more (suspected)cheating.

I had a guy cheat in a Shadowrun game we were playing. He was using loaded 6-sided dice. GM killed both of our characters when he noticed that the same dice kept coming up 6's. I was pissed because I didn't know anything about the cheating. I had been playing that character for over 4 years. RIP Gauntlet.

[blahpers]

Yyyyyyeah, this is just not a thing at tables with mature players.

[MrCharisma]

I think a good way to avoid cheating is to have exciting stories about when people at the table messed up.

For Example:
I was playing a monk, fighting some mites in a cave. The mites are on the other side of a 20 foot pit, shooting at us, so I decide it's my time to shine and jump over the pit to make it harder for them to shoot at my buddies crossing the pit (+16 acrobatics or something, can't remember) ... Natural 1 on acrobatics, maxed the dice on my fall damage, I"m now unconscious and woke up some giant beastie in the pit.
While the other players handle the mites, the Paladin jumps down on top of the beastie and proceeds to roll 3 crits in a row to finish it off just in time for a life-saving lay on hands (I was at -9hp or something).

The game is way more exciting if people sometimes fail. If people know that they have no reason to cheat.

[Matthew Downie]

Quote:

Solution: Just don’t play with cheats.

OK. How do I identify if someone is a cheat before I invite them to play?

[Mystic_Snowfang]

Play with your friends and people you trust.
Don't assume cheating where mathematical error would make sense.
I've only had to deal with ONE cheat and I called her on her BS very quickly. She stormed off grumbling, since she was USED to being allowed to do whatever she wanted because her partner was the GM and she threatened to exile him to the couch if she didn't get her way.
This quickly ended when other people started GMing and she stopped playing with us.

So yeah
don't play with people you don't know well
If something seems off ask a question
(this happened to me a few games ago when people were surprised at the damage I was putting out and wondered if maybe there was an error in the program I use to calculate everything. Being the sensitive person I am I started trembling and thinking I was in trouble. Turns out that yes I was doing that much damage)
If there is Actual BS call someone on it. Usually, if they are a habitual cheat they will storm off in a huff.

Okay, I'll admit I do cheat sometimes. But not to do better. If I'm in a funk (usually from low blood sugar) I will purposely say I keep rolling 1s or nerf myself horribly. Does that count as cheating?

[Matthew Downie]

Mystic_Snowfang wrote:

Play with your friends and people you trust.

Out of that very small group, there are zero people who have any desire to play in a weekly RPG.

[pauljathome]

Pathfinder is a quite complicated game, with lots of niggling little situational modifiers.

I ALWAYS play with people who make mistakes :-). I make lots of mistakes too.

So I'm very reluctant to call "cheat" if I notice that a player made a mistake. It takes a pretty regular pattern of behaviour before I'll make that call.

ESPECIALLY if the players mistakes don't always work in the players favour :-). But we're all human and, without cheating, are more likely to forget the negative modifiers than the positive ones

[darth_borehd]

I've played D&D since the 80s and Pathfinder since it was in beta. I have learned one thing: cheating is rampant and you cannot avoid all cheating.

[Mike J]

Matthew Downie wrote:

Quote:

Solution: Just don’t play with cheats.

OK. How do I identify if someone is a cheat before I invite them to play?

You can’t, really. But you can get a good sense of their maturity, which often indicates their likeliness to cheat. Mature people have often come to terms with losing and life in general and are less likely to cheat. Immature people, not so much.

Of course, once someone is caught cheating, stop playing with them. Most cheaters wouldn’t find my hypothetical method of cheating very satifying, even though it is virtually undetectable. A 5% gain on 90% of rolls is pretty huge, but lacks the WOW factor cheaters that I’ve met seem to be looking for. Instead, they are likely to do something stupidly obvious like a level 1 Ranger scoring a 35 on Survival to track (actually happened).

[blahpers]

...Must...resist...urge...gah!

---

Sir Vivi McSurvivalface
Dwarf Ranger 1

20 Wis: +5
Rank: +1
Class skill: +3
Skill focus (Survival): +3
Child of Nature trait: +2

Total: +14 (scores a 34 on a roll of 20)

---

This leaves out a bunch of thing--particularly situational things like a compass, favored enemy, favored terrain, situational feats, alternate racial traits, aid another, the party cleric poking him with guidance, and so on. Any of those would bring a 35 into the realm of possibility. Plus I've undoubtedly forgotten something obvious up there.

(Edit: You only get one feat, genius pig.)

/"eet ees pronunc-ed 'vye-VEE'"

[Matthew Downie]

Mike J wrote:

Matthew Downie wrote:

How do I identify if someone is a cheat before I invite them to play?

You can’t, really. But you can get a good sense of their maturity, which often indicates their likeliness to cheat.

My current group was established by inviting random strangers from the internet on the basis of (a) being reliably available on the same day, and (b) in the event of a tie, good spelling and grammar.

Only one proved untrustworthy. (Not due to cheating; he RSVP'd to say he'd come to the second session, and never turned up, leaving us waiting.)

[Moonclanger]

Cheating's never really bothered me. As long as everyone's having fun, I don't care. I've been GMing for 35 years now and I've never called anybody out for cheating.

[Matthew Downie]

Moonclanger wrote:

Cheating's never really bothered me. As long as everyone's having fun, I don't care.

I guess that makes sense, if it's not too blatant. A lot of GMs are happy to fudge the numbers for the sake of creating a better story. If so, why not allow players the same privilege?

[Moonheart]

Seriously, if your players cheats... just pick up better players.

[The Human Diversion]

Stupid Personal Anecdote Time (SPAT)

Back in the days of Living Greyhawk we had a local player who was having some personal issues; family, work, etc. He was an avid LG player and seemed to use it to escape. My guess is that he was so invested in gaming and it meant so much to him that he was mortified to fail, and thus would often fudge/cheat his dice rolls. He used tiny little dice, would roll them quickly and pick them up and then call out the roll. Rarely a 20, but almost always between 13 and 19.

As a GM, I didn't give a hoot about his personal life; there were between 3 and 5 other players at the table and his character never failing anything, on some level, took away from the other characters. I bought 6 sets of very large dice, all different colors, and asked that players roll out in front of them so I could see them (claiming bad eyesight).

Lo and behold, he started getting a more even statistical spread on his rolls. All was well with the world ...

... except a GM at a major convention discovered that his preferred D20 had a 19 where the 1 should be and he was banned. And then he died of a heart attack a few years later.

[blahpers]

The Human Diversion wrote:

And then he died of a heart attack a few years later.

O_O

[Mike J]

blahpers wrote:

...Must...resist...urge...gah!

---

Sir Vivi McSurvivalface
Dwarf Ranger 1

20 Wis: +5
Rank: +1
Class skill: +3
Skill focus (Survival): +3
Child of Nature trait: +2

Total: +14 (scores a 34 on a roll of 20)

---

This leaves out a bunch of thing--particularly situational things like a compass, favored enemy, favored terrain, situational feats, alternate racial traits, aid another, the party cleric poking him with guidance, and so on. Any of those would bring a 35 into the realm of possibility. Plus I've undoubtedly forgotten something obvious up there.

(Edit: You only get one feat, genius pig.)

/"eet ees pronunc-ed 'vye-VEE'"

Sure, scores that high are possible. But this was a death-archer build (10 WIS, 20 DEX) and the player claimed it was "due to the massive bonus from the Track class feature", which is a whopping +1 at 1st level thanks to the "minimum 1" caveat.

So more like: 10 Wis: +0; Rank +1; Class Skill: +3; Track: +1

Total: +5 (rolls a 13 on a d20) -> declares a 35!!! And at that point, why bother with dice or rules or anything else?

Anywho...I've found that playing with non-cheaters does remove a major distraction and keeps the focus on the PCs and the story.