ability roll cheating

[Joël of the FoS]

We always roll the dices in front of the DM, or other players as witness.

While not impossible, probability wise, his scores seem high to me This said, I have a 2nd ed cavalier with 18 in Str, Dex and Co. But it was rolled in front of other players and the DM.

It reminds me of a guy I knew, not in my group, who "simulated fights with his PC while at home, and got this +3 vorpal by killing random monsters". When back at the game next time, the sword was written on his PC sheet. I don't remember what the other DM did, but I would have said "no way". Things not happening on the game table are not real

Joël

 

[Snapdragyn]

Let the know, that your seriously considering point buy.. (And for them I would recommend 32 points), and that it will be starting.. Immediately after their new pc's die.

Yep that's right, they get to keep their rolled PC's. (Except you need to talk to your one guy.. that 75 point pc is absurdly powerful. And not even remotely fair.. at all. Fair to him, you, the other players. Tell him that your going to do something once, for him, your going to give him 40 points for his first pc in a point buy system.)

I have to greatly disagree with the idea of letting the apparent cheater have a higher PB than the others. This simply says 'we're going to a new system to be fair, but I'm going to let X here have a better deal than anyone else as a reward for being such a great cheater'. NOT the message to be sending here.

 

[Breakdaddy]

These are both examples of disastrous 'advice' to be giving; in both examples it is a case of passive-aggressiveness which will easily be perceived as unfair & lead to further conflict. I cannot imagine either being successful unless your definition of success is to wreck the gaming harmony.

You misunderstand. It is a tactic of dissuasion and IT WORKS. I can cite more than one example of how it worked in my game. You must game with adults/mature individuals first off. Without this, then you are probably right, someone will throw a tantrum or cry foul. All this aside, you claim that it will be perceived as "unfair". In what universe is it "fair" for the majority of PCs to feel like the henchmen of the uber-pc cheater? In the long run, it might spoil their fun anyhow. YMMV.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

I allow only one of two options: roll in front of me and the group, or use point-buy. No exceptions.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

You misunderstand. It is a tactic of dissuasion and IT WORKS. I can cite more than one example of how it worked in my game. You must game with adults/mature individuals first off. Without this, then you are probably right, someone will throw a tantrum or cry foul. All this aside, you claim that it will be perceived as "unfair". In what universe is it "fair" for the majority of PCs to feel like the henchmen of the uber-pc cheater? In the long run, it might spoil their fun anyhow. YMMV.

You can't use such a system with mature adults because mature adults, by definition, cannot act is such a way to need such a system.

It is unfair in that it rewards the competent cheat while at the same time makes a needless threat to all that presumes everyone intends to cheat. "Unfair" is probably not succinct enough, what I really mean is that it implies that everyone is a bad player that needs a heavy hand to stop them from cheating.

The fair universe is where everyone _agrees_ beforehand to some generation method with a wide variance, such as 4d6dl, & naturally 1 player is the most lucky & 1 is least lucky. Everyone agreed beforehand so noone has any right to complain.

****

As my aside, I attacked your post along with another because I have seen such behaviour not work, and badly so. I could not in good concience allow such advice to go unchallenged because there are always a lot of lurkers around & maybe one will follow such advice.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

I allow only one of two options: roll in front of me and the group, or use point-buy. No exceptions.

Ditto: 4d6dl or 25pt buy. The party ranges from 20 to 39pt buy.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

I've got a couple of questions for you:

1. Do you want to talk to him about cheating?
2. Do you want this character toned down?
3. Do you want to prevent this from happening in the future?
4. Do you want to get back at him for cheating?

The strength of the answers to those will really determine the best course of action. Myself, I'd say something along the lines of "Hey, I was looking through everyone's characters recently, and man, you rolled better than everyone else. I'm sorry to do this to you so late, but could you find five to ten points to drop from your stats? I'm just not sure how to set up challenges for your character that still balance for the rest of the group."

The advantages to this method: You're not calling him a cheater. You're being the one with a problem and asking him for help. It's a lot less of a situation where you're saying he's a problem. On the downside, this still can explode when met with abject refusal, it then becomes a respect issue.

 

[amethal]

At this point I realised that he didn't want to pick a set of 6 numbers, he wanted to *roll* the specific set of 6 numbers he had in mind. Many, many rolls later he finally got what he wanted and is very proud he rolled these stats instead of just choosing them <rolls eyes>

I can't even pretend to understand the logic of this, but at least we can start the campaign now.

Ellie.

That reminds of me of my brother, in a Dragon Warriors campaign I ran a very long time ago.

He wanted to play a class (warlock?), which required at least 12 in all 6 ability scores (using straight 3d6) to take the class. He wrote a simple BASIC program which would keep rolling up characters for him until it generated one with no score below 12.

As far as he was concerned, the character had been "rolled" fairly, but he would have been horrified at the idea of just making up his ability scores. That would have been cheating.

To address the general issue, I wonder whether some of the problems are just different expectations on the parts of different players.

I'm not going to play a character whose ability scores do not fit my character concept. If given the opportunity to roll at home, then I'll keep rolling until I get a character I'm happy to play.

For example, I wanted to play an archer cleric. My character concept didn't give me a dump stat, as the class required reasonable dexterity and wisdom and no strength penalty (would be using longbows); I didn't want a character with below average intelligence or charisma for roleplaying reasons and I wasn't feeling brave enough to risk a constitution penalty.

I kept rolling until I got a character which had two scores of 14+, one score of 12+ (Elf, so had a -2 to Con to compensate for) and nothing below 10. These modest requirements took me a few attempts (the dice hate me ).

However, by not accepting the first character rolled, I cheated. [The result was a character with (after Elf racial adjustments) Str 12 Dex 18 Con 11 Int 11 Wis 14 Chr 11, which I don't suppose any DM would object to, but that's beside the point.]

There are probably people out there who would not want to play a 1st level cleric with wisdom 14. To play my archer cleric, such a person would have needed to roll some more sets of stats. Where do you draw the line?

Of course, the character mentioned by the original poster was way beyond any sane line.

Had I rolled those stats, there is no way the DM would have "failed to notice in the first session". I'd have taken my character sheet and highlighted the 18 in yellow, the 17s in green and the 16s in blue, and danced around the game room singing a joyful song about how after 20 years of bad luck the dice had finally fallen in my favour ......

 

[Bladesong]

So many opinions (and repeat opinions) so little time. I admit I stopped reading about 2/3 the way through page one.

Here is an option for you that allows some control but some randomness as well:
Each character starts with the following stats: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8. They each then have 3 points which they can assign as they please so they can get an 18, two 16s, etc. For randomness I then allow them (after they have assigned their final stats) to roll either 4d6 and drop the lowest die or 5d6 and drop the lowest two dice and replace any one stat of their choice. This roll MUST be done in my presence. The roll is optional, so if they use the stat array as listed and already have a character ready when they arrive all the better. In fact if they forego the roll I usually grant some small boon such as a low level scroll, potion, a masterwork heirloom weapon or shield, or a handful of magic ammunition for their missile weapon.

There are many options. Find one you like.

Good luck.

 

[delericho]

I'm not going to play a character whose ability scores do not fit my character concept. If given the opportunity to roll at home, then I'll keep rolling until I get a character I'm happy to play.

This is a point that I think deserves more comment, I think.

If the DM sets a character creation scheme that is set for the entire group (say 4d6, drop lowest), what happens when the player gets a set of stats that are not what he wants? Perhaps his character concept required an 'unnecessarily' hige Cha (perhaps for a Fighter), but the dice come up with only a couple of good numbers. This gives the player two choices: ditch the character concept, or play a suboptimal character.

(This is more likely with random rolls than point-buy, I think, but it is possible with some of the lower point-buy totals, where you can create a high-Cha Fighter, but will suffer for the choice.)

There's a question there about how far the DM can go to insist on the 'purity' of the results, versus the rights of the player to play the character he wanted. Too strict, and the DM loses a player. Too loose, and the player can simply declare that his concept requires four 18's, or whatever, and keep 'rolling' until he gets it.

(Now, in actual fact, the answer is that players should be flexible in their character concept. If a random roll scheme is agreed on, the player really can't expect a given number of 'good' stats, or to have no below average numbers, and needs to be able to mold his concept to match what he has available. Otherwise, the group should be using point-buy, which guarantees control. Ideally, the DM should always state clearly what criteria will allow a reroll before the first dice fall. Otherwise, the system isn't random, it's random at the whim of the DM.)

(If that last paragraph seemed harsh, allow me to offer this by way of explanation: I hate random rolls in character management. If I am DMing a game, the group will only use random rolls if the players push me hard into doing so. If the players do so, then they will use the numbers they roll. You don't get to have things both ways.)