ability roll cheating

[the Lorax]

goto point buy

I cant agree more. I have one player in my groups who I am fairly suspicious of fudging his stat rolls. I am absolutely going to use stat point buy in my next game.

I woke up this morning thinking about stat buy, and one of my concerns with using it is the whole idea of a Stat Dump, and how some classes get signifigant advantages out of it (read: wizards).

That all being said, I'm not terribly concerned with stat cheating, its a game played for fun.
I am somewhat concerned with a reasonable amount of balance. Many races with an ECL adjustment give little beyond stat bonuses. A character with all stats of 16+ is clearly more powerful than is warrented for a character of his level - thus I have been convinced that stat buy is the way.

An idea that came to me was to give bonus points out for spreading the stats out.
Something like + 1 build point if all of you stats are 10+, +2 build points if they are all 11+,
+3 build points if they are all 12+ ect.

That should help out the characters who have multiple stat requirements to do their job, without raising the bar on base points.

Thoughts?

 

[orsal]

I had everyone in my game roll before me, except for one player. He brought in a character that was like 18, 16, 15, 14, 12, 10. It seemed a little pat for me, but I didn't mind as one of the other players rolled 17, 17, 16, 16, 12, 10 in front of me.

Not remotely comparable to the character described in the first post of this thread. The one your character brought in has a total of 85; using the standard 4d6 method you get a result that high about 5-6% of the time. The one you saw rolled has a total of 88; you get a result about that high 2-3% of the time. Those are believable, if unusual. The example that started this thread has a total of 101; you'll get something that high less 0.01% of the time. A one-in-then-thousand character? Most likely the result of cheating.

 

[S'mon]

I woke up this morning thinking about stat buy, and one of my concerns with using it is the whole idea of a Stat Dump, and how some classes get signifigant advantages out of it (read: wizards).

You can eliminate this problem by using an array - the Default Array (15 14 13 12 10 8) is a bit pathetic IMO, at 1st level it has the same bonuses as 22 point buy, but I think the idea is good. I like 18 16 14 12 10 8 for an heroic game, but 16 15 14 12 10 8 would work well, or 15 14 14 12 10 10 if you don't want any low stats.

 

[Elf Witch]

Depending on my mood, I'd do 1 of 3 things with the PC.

I might cause the character to die, then require all new characters be created with point buy, or make sure I watch his rolls.

I might also just tell him to re-roll his stats right now, at the table in front of everyone.

I would most likely tell everyone else at the table what his stats are. The other players will not like him cheating like that and the group pressure will force him to either change his stats, or change his whole character, or leave the group.

And doing all three of these things are just going to cause big problems at the table. The DM allowed the character in game. I really think it is bad DMing to use your power as DM to go out of the way to kill a PC.

The second solution will humilate the player and there is no need for that. You could talk to the player in pricate and have him roll in private with you to fix this.

The other players may not care. I wouldn't I feel that if a player feels the need to cheat to have fun then okay. I wonder why but it does not ruin the game for me.

If it is a huge problem then the DM needs to talk to the player and make a decision if he wants this guy in the group. There is no need for humilation and DM power trips.

 

[IronWolf]

If you have a player that you have suspected of cheating in his ability score rolls before the game even starts I certainly would have laid the groundwork with either using Point buy or rolling the dice in front of the DM. I would certainly remember that in the future.

Now, with two sessions gone you are in a tricky spot. Sure as DM you can make him re-roll, but most players won't take too kindly to that happening once the game has started. Maybe something with permanent stat damage, but even then the player will know what is up unless that chance for permanent stat damage was a possibility for the other players.

It may come down talking to the player....

 

[danzig138]

So my question to you all is: would you accept such a character when all your other players have a more reasonable set of stats?

I wouldn't have let them roll up their stats without me watching. That said, I would probably not sweat it too much, since I have seen players generate stats like this before. Now, I'm inclined to believe that they aren't honest stats, but I've seen enough hot rolling streaks to give the benefit of the doubt.
I would recommend however, that in the future, you have all stat rolls made under your eye, or the group's eye.
What I did for my most recent game was have each player roll a stat. I have 5 players, so I rolled the 6th stat. Everyone then used the generated stats. Worked okay, except one guy rolled a 7.

 

[Glyfair]

I just let people set whatever stats they want. IMO if people can simply build a charcter they want to play there is less incentive to munchkin

I will likely try this one day. It would have to be the right group, though.

This is silly. Use point buy or roll-in-front-of-GM. Otherwise you end up with some players having these silly stat arrays.

One thing I've noticed is that, even with the "roll-in-front-of-the-GM" method, all the players don't typically play what they rolled. Inevitably, one character has well above average stats and one character either is significatly lower than everyone else (but not in the official level where you are allowed to reroll) or has nothing that stands out (all stats are 12-14, for example). Usually, the DM either allows the lower player reroll or the player resents having the lower character.

I find point buy cuts out the middle man and sets the stats at a reasonable level, without having any worries about "X character's stats are so much better than mine."

RE: point buy. I did bring this up prior to the game starting, but the players do not want to use this method, preffering the chance to get higher stats from random rolls.

I find that if you focus on the players character, a lot of players will make this choice. However, if you ask "Do you mind if Joe has a lot better stats than you?" they often look at it more objectively. They especially do this is Joe is the sort who always ends up with his lowest stat being 15 (or maybe an 11, but 3 of 17 or 18), and he like to brag about how good his character is.

 

[The Lost Muse]

Just kill him, and have him make a new character on the spot. If necessary, confiscate his dice. (Because they roll 6 - 6 - 5 or better every time.)

 

[was]

No way I'd accept those scores. We also use point-buy (high-powered - 32 pts).

 

[Romnipotent]

calculate average points of party in point buy, round to nearest agreeable number and allow them to use that.