Cheater Dice? Why?

[RFisher]

Nobody I’ve gamed with could resist showing off such a die, thus making moot the point of whether they’d actually try to cheat with it.

I do know people who would probably try to cheat in this manner, but they aren’t the type of people who would play role-playing games.

In any case, this is—IMHO—a minor cheat anyway. It only skews things 5%. Of course, I tend to avoid special “nat 1” and “nat 20” rules. Those do make it a bit more significant. Still...<shrug>

I hope you are kidding, ever thought of rolling 2d10? it would give you the results you want without skewing the odds.

^_^ A post that’s full of irony but not sarcasm!

 

[Arivendel]

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[Dausuul]

Now, if you mean cheating as in "no way in hell is that program anywhere close to perfectly random," I'd agree. Far too many times the number generator program used result in continuous strings of very high or low results. Or worse, a certain person will continuously get poor or high rolls. Last session, one of the players had that kind of rut. Imagine a full BAB class missing 4 rounds in a row! Eventually I took pity and allowed a reroll. He rolled badly AGAIN. Then I just rolled the die, got a 15, and said "take that." Felt so bad for him.

That's the behavior of a random system. "Streaks" of good and bad luck are normal and a well-written random number generator will frequently produce them. I've often seen the same thing happen with real dice (and no, they weren't loaded or cheater dice; players don't generally cheat to give themselves bad rolls).

 

[Fifth Element]

That's the behavior of a random system. "Streaks" of good and bad luck are normal and a well-written random number generator will frequently produce them.

Human brains excel at detecting patterns. They're so good at it, they often see patterns when there are none. Truly random things will often have sections that appear not to be random, at least to the human eye. If you ask a human to write out a sequence of numbers that appears to be random, you'll find the result is not random, because too much effort is put into avoiding long streaks, which occur naturally in random sequences.

Point is, you can't trust your judgment to know whether something's random or not. Between small sample size (when dealing with die rolls, for instance) and your brain's insistence on seeing patterns, you can't trust your senses in this regard.

 

[twilsemail]

I've known a couple people I wished I could slip a d20 weighted roll low....



Actually I have an old d20 that's got 1-10 on it twice a friend of mine grabbed out of my bag by mistake and used for a while, much hilarity ensued when we realized what was going on.

I spent the entirety of my first 4e game doing this. Afterwards I hunted down my own dice like a gorram bloodhound.

 

[Alan Shutko]

My first game with my current 4e character started with rolling two 1s on two dice. The rest of the session was equally futile. I no longer use those dice....

 

[jujutsunerd]

I like them. Or, rather, the player whose birthday it was liked them.

I told him that "Today, and only today (Happy Birthday!) you (and only you) can use this set of cheat dice."

Much fun was had by all. Or, at least by me as the DM. (He didn't roll a single twenty even though he used the cheat die all day.

/Jonas

 

[Obryn]

My first game with my current 4e character started with rolling two 1s on two dice. The rest of the session was equally futile. I no longer use those dice....

Some of my players have had those days

Sometimes I start fudging the numbers for them. I can actually see giving a player a cheat die for a casual game like I run.

-O

 

[Dausuul]

As evidence for the above streakish behavior, my gaming group includes a player whose bad luck with the d20s is really amazing. He rolls these endless strings of low single-digit numbers, week after week.

It got so bad that I gave him the option to "reverse" his rolls in my campaign. Before rolling, he can declare a given roll to be reversed; he rolls, then takes the number on the d20 and subtracts it from 21 to get his actual result (so a 1 on the die is treated as a 20, a 2 on the die is treated as a 19, et cetera). Doesn't make any difference statistically speaking, but it does give him a way to feel like he's fighting back.

The funny thing was, right about the time he started reversing rolls, the bad streak ended and his dice began exhibiting the usual range of highs and lows in my game. He still suffers from the problem in other campaigns though.

 

[Allegro]

I’ve used a d24 instead of a d20 for a custom magic sword for players. I think this cheater dice would be a hoot for some particularly fatalistic players. It is just up to the DM to make sure the cost of the weapon is appropriate with a little stat work.

Some people hate losing and will not hesitate to cheat. They are the same players who have bad math on their character sheets or fudge a saving throw. I’d say there is a spectrum between law abiding and cheating that every person occupies. For example, I’ve bought a couple of pounds of dice and I think a green mottled d20 is especially lucky perhaps it is too lucky. Is it cheating for me to continue using this dice? Perhaps it is crooked, perhaps I’m just looking for a pattern, or perhaps I just remember my wins and not my loses.