D&D General It's not a video game.

[not-so-newguy]

They get accused of cheating. At least I was when I changed things up to pull the rug out from under a player like this.

The proper response to this accusation is a big $h!t- eating grin.
Nobody has time for that sort of nonsense.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Similarly, players who ask how to beat a particular D&D scenario are also likely to use their character sheet like it is a video game controller: "I use Insight on the king!" Or "I Investigate the room!" (Granted, D&D Beyond doesn't help in this). The play loop should be reviewed with these players early and often.

 

[jmartkdr2]

But I am scratching my head at this. It has not been my experience. Are you saying a 5e DM lacks the ability to create a challenging encounter? I'm not understanding where you are coming from on this. Can you say more?

I have yet to find a constant, fair way to threaten pcs within the framework of the game. 5e pcs are just extremely hard to kill without either flatly negating their abilities or throwing stuff at them they just don't have a chance against (like hugely overleveled enemies.)

I am defining 'challenge' as being dependent on player skill - just being less likely to win isn't more challenging. Requiring greater skill to win is more challenging. And in 5e, the amount of skill you need to master the game is piddly compared to many other games.

 

[overgeeked]

Optimizing and playing tactically isn't really what OP is talking about. He's baffled (and rightly so!) with people asking for advice on how to "beat" specific published modules. Usually over Reddit.

I think they’re definitely related. They're both coming from a place of “beating” the game.

I'm with you on this.

But I am scratching my head at this. It has not been my experience. Are you saying a 5e DM lacks the ability to create a challenging encounter? I'm not understanding where you are coming from on this. Can you say more?

D&D5E is rather hard to make challenging, mechanically. You have to run so many combats per day or PCs just walk over the enemies. Even when you run the recommended amount of combat, most published material has drastically under-tuned fights as the default. Except a few places where they swing wildly in the other direction. For 5E to be challenging you have to basically throw an endless string of near-deadly, deadly, or fewer even more deadly encounters at the PCs in a day. The math is so weighted to the PCs favor it’s kinda silly.

 

[Nefermandias]

I think they’re definitely related. They're both coming from a place of “beating” the game.

D&D5E is rather hard to make challenging, mechanically. You have to run so many combats per day or PCs just walk over the enemies. Even when you run the recommended amount of combat, most published material has drastically under-tuned fights as the default. Except a few places where they swing wildly in the other direction. For 5E to be challenging you have to basically throw an endless string of near-deadly, deadly, or fewer even more deadly encounters at the PCs in a day. The math is so weighted to the PCs favor it’s kinda silly.

I'm glad I'm not alone in this. People were piling up on me on another thread when I said 5e is easy mode compared to previous editions and the PCs are indeed, nearly unkillable.

 

[billd91]

To a certain degree, this is understandable. It may be that people are looking for ways to have a character fit the AP, not just neutralize challenges - like making sure they've got good favored enemies/terrains for Rangers, or making sure the adventure will be a good fit for paladins (compare and contrast Skull and Shackles with Wrath of the Righteous). That's a pretty acceptable degree.

Others, particularly when looking at organized play, want to play adventurers were they can get treasure best suited for their characters, but might not be looking for other spoilers. I've heard about people doing it for PFS and will match their characters with the treasure they might expect to obtain. I find it questionable, but it's not all that different from going to a DM and saying that you want to go adventuring for a particular item and having the DM present them with the research result.

I do think that some players take it too far, particularly if seeking an unearned advantage by relying on spoilers. But they're mainly just cheating themselves of part of the experience. If they're OK with that, even playing an adventure more than once, and they're ABLE TO DO SO WITHOUT SPOILING ANYONE ELSE'S FUN, it's a relatively benign issue.

 

[overgeeked]

I'm glad I'm not alone in this. People were piling up on me on another thread when I said 5e is easy mode compared to previous editions and the PCs are indeed, nearly unkillable.

Healing is ridiculous. Safe rests are easy to get. You regain all spells and all hit points overnight. You have so many spells that unless the DM really hammers on you or you burn them stupidly, you’re not going to run out. Monster hp is about 3/4 where it should be and the action economy is borked. The default is one monster, generally with 1-2 attacks, against 4 PCs with generally 2 or more attacks (between martial characters and multi-fire spells, etc). The game is designed to be a cakewalk. The DM has to really try to make it even something near challenging.

 

[toucanbuzz]

...moreover it is basically cheating.

Not only cheating at the rules, but cheating yourself out of the experience. D&D isn't supposed to be about "winning" the game by surviving and getting loot, despite it appearing that way, especially in organized play. It's about creating a really cool story with others.

Anyway, like I said, I have seen it popping up with an increasing frequency and I found it baffling.

It's always been around, but yeah, technology has made it easier for like-minded people to find one another.

Has anyone experienced this in real life? Have you ever had a player cheat at the table in this manner (reading the module beforehand or whatever)? Is it new or am I just noticing it now?

Yeah, a few times unfortunately.

Player CHEATER bought AD&D boxed mega-adventure, wanted me to run it.

Spoiler

Nice gesture....but other players suspected he cheated and read it ahead. We coordinated to test this theory by moving an awesome treasure hoard that had an item he'd want, and by having a player agree to trigger a nasty trap by acting "in character." When the party entered the chamber with a big magical tome on a podium, CHEATER immediately said he was checking the eastern wall for secret doors (where the treasure was, no room prompts to suggest anything special about the eastern wall). Wizard player "in character" said he was going to read the tome. CHEATER yelled "NO! Don't do that." Wizard said "why not?" No answer, so Wizard said "I'm reading the tome." CHEATER declared "my character tackles him."

Afterwards, the player opened the secret door...and nothing in there but some coins and crap. CHEATER asked if I was sure that was all. He thoroughly checked for more. Nada. We then confronted him. He denied, but after session fessed up. We ditched the mega-adventure and told him this could never happen again. He was a long-time friend and had been having issues at home. Doesn't justify him cheating, but it does justify us giving him a second chance knowing perhaps he wasn't his usual self.

Player COULDN'T HELP HIMSELF (CHH) had played Curse of Strahd before a tryout at our table and agreed not to benefit from this knowledge because it might ruin the game for everyone who hadn't played it and were avoiding going on the Internet to find clues and hints about how to "win" the game and get the best loot.

Ah, you know how this one goes. He got booted.

 

[Nefermandias]

Healing is ridiculous. Safe rests are easy to get. You regain all spells and all hit points overnight. You have so many spells that unless the DM really hammers on you or you burn them stupidly, you’re not going to run out. Monster hp is about 3/4 where it should be and the action economy is borked. The default is one monster, generally with 1-2 attacks, against 4 PCs with generally 2 or more attacks (between martial characters and multi-fire spells, etc). The game is designed to be a cakewalk. The DM has to really try to make it even something near challenging.

If you never target people on the ground, you're never going to kill anyone. On the other hand, if you do target people on the ground, you are almost certain to kill them, which puts all the burden on the DM.
It would be much more honest and clean if people just died at 0 HP.

 

[el-remmen]

And this is true because 5e DnD isn't hard. It's just not a very challenging game, and really can't be

Having run 5E for over a year now, I find this claim a lot harder to understand than the attitude of buying the module to read it ahead of playing and try to "win."

The latter is something I have heard about but never really encountered. But I understand it as something younger/less mature players might get up to. Then again, I make sufficient revisions to most modules that about 50% of the time I am happy running it for someone who has played it before as long as it has been five years or more. Heck, I am running Ghost of Saltmarsh for my remote group currently and when we get to The Final Enemy I can't wait to see how much one of the players remembers as I ran that module for a 2E group he was a part of back in 1994. Of course, he doesn't know I plan to do this, so he may not realize at all!

As for the former, two sessions ago, my wife was laughing after I was done running a remote game because she overheard a player from upstairs saying "We're in really bad shape!" in a worried voice multiple times.