How do I deal with a cheating player?

Cheaters!

No doubt echoing other advice here, but these are some simple things that work for me:

- ask for copies of character sheets. My general policy is that the player gives me a copy of their sheet every time they level up. That way I have a pretty good idea of what they can do and what their bonuses are, and if there's a mistake I can alert the player without calling him on the carpet in the middle of a session.

- establish a die-rolling policy that everybody follows, both to deter "creative" players and to ensure there's no heated arguments about whether a particular roll counts. Generally, I require that all rolls be made on the battlemat (often in a shoebox lid to prevent them from rolling off the table) and all dice have the numbers inked or coloured in so they're pretty easy to see across the table. If everybody rolls this way, then nobody feels singled out. Won't stop a dedicated cheater, but it removes the temptation many casual cheaters seem to feel.

- ensure that players know that failing a roll is unlikely to destroy their fun. 99% of the time, when I've had a player who misreports die rolls, it's because they had a previous DM who seemed to enjoy screwing over any character who rolled low - ranging from describing the character's actions as laughably incompetent to having all the bad guys attack the PC because he looks like the easiest to take out. If players know that their character won't be screwed over either in game terms or narratively when they blow a single roll, they're less likely to feel the need to make every roll count.

When you get a player who rolls results that seem wrong, the tactful way is to question the results. If you make it sound like your questioning their math skills, not their cheating skills, you're not calling them a cheater, just bad at math.

Ultimately, if he is cheating, you will have to deal with it. Either by accepting it, or by confronting him. You can make a big scene out of it, or simply keep it calm and rational.

You can't control how he'll react. That's part of life. If your so concerned about your relationship, consider how he is impacting you already. He's already hurting your relationship.

If he's in a position of authority over you at work, I would seriously question the wisdom of bringing him into your game. There's all sorts of levels of abuse that can stem from that.

How much experience does this player have with the game? I called out one player by saying,"Hmm, that shouldn't be possible. Can I take a look at your character sheet, I'm thinking something is out of whack." The player in question had too many skill points - I tallied them up and showed him his "math mistake," and did not properly apply the level limit to skill ranks (3rd level character with 9 ranks).

We dealt with it as honest mistakes (even though I don't really think they were), and I review his sheet now regularly to "help him out."

Dice rolling issue are tougher - probably should institute an open dice rolling policy for everyone and don't bother with a reason or calling him out.

I want to second the advice for using a character generator or spreadsheet, here. We recently added a new player whose grasp on the rules was so shaky that first he didn't give his wizard any spells, then he wanted to cast spells he hadn't memorized. I sat him down and had him build his character in E-Tools and that made a big difference in both his comprehension of what was and wasn't kosher, and in how well the rest of the party knew his character and what he could and couldn't do.

-The Gneech

Here's some unpopular advice, I say, don't worry about it. Who is he really cheating? Why does the cheater cheat? Basically, there has to be a reason why he feels the need to roll great numbers in an ultimately meaningless game situation. Does he cheat so he can lord it over the rest of you or does he cheat to make himself feel better about himself? Does he needs the ego boost of succeeding so badly that he has to cheat to achieve it? If the answers to these questions are yes and you don't want to deal with these underlying causes of his cheating they you either have to ignore the cheating or not associate with him.

We had a habitual cheater in our gaming group. He was going through some rough times in his personal life and one weekend started cheating at die rolls. When the party rogue goes from mildly useful in combat to slaughtering powerhouse, you notice. We discussed various methods for handling this (most of the passive aggressive). But in the end decided if this was how he needed to play the game to make it interesting to him, let him. Over time the cheating diminished a bit and as his life came back into normality so too did the cheating abate. Maybe he still cheats on the occasional die roll. I dont know.

Have the other players complained that he's cheating? They probably figured it out before you as DM did. Ask some of the other players if they suspect anything amiss and if they think you need to do anything about it. If the other players are not bothered by his cheating then there really isn't any harm caused by his cheating.

Now, since you posted here, his cheating must bother you. Ask yourself does his cheating affect your enjoyment of the game? Why? You have to determine if his cheating really affects you. As I say above, he may be cheating to bolster his own ego. Is someone whose ego is so fragile that they have to cheat at a meaningless RPG to feel good about themselves worth your feelings of, I don't know, resentment? anger? disappointment?

If you take his cheating as a personal affront, step back and think about that. Is he really doing it TO you? If you don't think so, then he is doing it for himself. Why? Since you care about his feelings enough not to just call BS on him immediately, how much of his emotional state are you willing to deal with?

OTOH, he could just be a jerk. In which case forget all I've said above just boot him. But if the cause of his cheating concerns you, perhaps you should just let it be.

I keep copies of all my players character sheets on file - mainly so i can design adventures/treasure around them. Most of the time I print them out and give them to my players since they dont have easy access to a printer.

All but one gives them to me at the end of the session with updates drawn in pen, and I edit them on my file, and bring a new copy for the players the following week.

An upside of this is I know when a character is cheating or not.

Harmon said:

Box is trying to keep this non confrontational. Calling him out- "your numbers are BS!" won't work with that.

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I know the rules better than other players in the group, but that doesn't mean i know everything. We don't call him out, we ask nicely, so we can find out if its a mistake, since misreading or misunderstanding the rules does happen. Its usually the kids that make mistakes, but all of us in the group have done it at least once.

So, I take it that I'm the only one who'd start with "Over the last few sessions it's seemed to me that you're tending to roll a little too well. Could you do me a favor and double check the numbers you're coming up with for accuracy? We can go over your sheet some time if it'd help."

It turns out that, in one case, the player was adding his forcefield to his saves twice. Problem solved. In another case, it was magic weapon stacking with a sword's +2. Also solved. Another time, the crazy luck streak eneded right afterwards.

I'd also think hard about the fact that, if someone is cheating, it may be because I or someone who DMed previously to them had given them a reason to.

Be straightforward about it, but don't be un-necessarrally harsh.

Personally, I'd tell him the probability of rolling 16 natural 20's in a row is... errr... .00000000000000000015% and I'd ask to see his sheet to see how he got the numbers. I'd be nice and laugh about it, the first few times, but after that, ug...

Harmon's approach is good though. He's probably prone to get defensive about it... but it's at least worth a shot.