Examples when you cheated, and why.

[Man in the Funny Hat]

First I can remember cheating was in a memorable, long-running campaign. The method of xp and treasure distribution was such that the rich got much richer and the poor stayed comparatively poorer. I was a natural-strength Elf fighter competing with higher level dwarves with girdle-gauntlet-dwarven thrower combinations as well as paladins with girdle-gauntlet-holy avenger combinations. Eventually there was a time when my dice just refused to roll anything decent. I was not having any fun, was very frustrated so I just started lying about whether or not I hit because nobody was looking at my dice results anyway. It did not make me feel any better and I began a campaign of wheedling and whining to get the DM to at least institute fairer distribution of rewards.

When I first started as DM I cheated a fair amount. I was running 1E by the seat of my pants and did not yet have anywhere near the experience to gauge how many and what kind of monsters to throw at a dozen PC's to present an interesting or challenging fight. I was routinely in danger of wiping them all off the table or actually letting them get bored because they were walking all over whatever came at them. So I would spontaneously toss more monsters in, change armor classes, add to monster hit points (sometimes so eggregiously that they went beyond maximum for their hit dice), simply lie about whether a monster should have hit or missed, alter damage rolls, cheat their saving throws, add to or alter their spell lists on the spot, and more.

I don't know how much my players ever suspected though at times they HAD to have known. But I wasn't having fun doing any of that as DM either. It took longer to become familiar enough with the system to be able to run combats to MY satisfaction. Eventually I spent some time and effort considering the ethics of "cheating" as DM and came to an understanding with myself which I relayed to my players: If I cheat dice rolls it will be in the PC's favor, they will NOT know it, and it will be because doing so will make the game more fun and interesting for the players; and if I roll dice in the open it is likely to be for a very deliberate reason.

I've known a player or two who have cheated. It hasn't ever been anything obnoxious enough to warrant making a thing out of it. I suspect they've cheated a lot more than I've ever noticed - I'm not very observant that way. If they have I understand the motivations. I make it clear how I feel about it and why, and rather than cheat I encourage players to voice concerns or complaints about what is motivating them to want to cheat and in the case of die rolls it's generally because the player/PC simply succeeds at things too seldom (attributable to any number of causes).

 

[Elf Witch]

I was playing in a Forgotten realms 2E game and I rolled fantastic stats openly in front of the DM. I rolled two 18 and he made me drop them to 16 to be fair to the other players who had not rolled so well. So I started the camping a little on the pissy side.

As the game went on I found myself often not being able to keep up with the other fighter who had used skills and powers to make his PC.

The DM gave XP individually so if you were not the one doing as many killing blows you did not get as much XP or even as much treasure. I tried talking to the DM asking if I could make a new character but he said no. So I started fudging my rolls if no one was looking.

The only other time I cheated has been in a game where I designed a wizard who was all about knowledge. My spells were of the variety that were more about party support then blasting things. We had a sorcerer who did that.

Then a new player joined and brought in a bard who was just as good or better in the knowledge dept. He had a higher intelligence more skill points so his rolls tended to always be higher than mine. I started feeling redundant. I tried to talk to the DM who was like does it really matter who gets the information you are a party. So I started saying my roll was higher.

Of course I knew it wasn't so in the end I suicide the character and brought in something else.

I saw my roommate cheating on a save in a game. Later I asked her why and it was because she would have died if she failed and she had just died earlier in the game and she made a new character while we continued playing and she didn't want to do it again so soon.

 

[Rune]

When I started playing D&D I understood very clearly that you had to roll your ability scores. But there wasn't anything in the rules against rolling multiple sets and then picking one, was there? No! So I wrote a program on our Apple II to churn out sets of ability scores, then I just hunted through them until I found the one with the highest stats. That's the one I used. 18 / 18 / 17 / 17 / 16 / 14 would not be an atypical set of scores (you needed one low score so that no one thought you were fudging your dice!)

Then, of course, I had the bad grace to call my friends on it when I was DMing and they tried this with me.

As a DM, I used to consider those thrown-away sets of stats to be siblings that died in childhood. Your characters would have been the lone surviving children of tremendously large families!

 

[Cor Azer]

I've done the GM fudging, usually for purposes of game balance recovery (ie, wow, that is far more hit points than this villain needs)

As a beginning player, I'm sure I did the 'because I want to win, oops, misread the dice'. No real excuse there.

Once I matured as a player, I would wager I only ever cheated if luck was acting against a key specialised aspect of my character on a consistent basis.

Oh! One other cause - a DM was using wildly horrid critical fumble tables. We had debated its merits and imbalances vs the critical hit table used (fumbles way worse than anything a hit could inflict), and after three fumbles in a row, "luckily" my 1s became 2s. Still misses, but at least my dashing knight never stepped on invisible dead turtles and skewered himself again.

 

[Ranes]

And let's not forget that Bill Gates himself wasn't averse to a little cheating.

 

[jedavis]

I've been known to kinda fudge tactical movement counts in gridded combats. Because being out of position by 5 ft is just dumb when you could totally make it if you were measuring straight lines with a ruler, and we should be playing ungridded anyways . Nobody's called me on it yet.

 

[Pbartender]

I cheated pretty consistently through grade school, because I was the shortest, scrawniest little science geek in class, and if I couldn't literally throw my weight around in real life, I could at least make certain that I could figuratively do it in our collective imaginations...

I perpetually rerolled ability scores, as mentioned above, until I realized I was effectively just picking my stats. So then I started just picking ability scores out of thin air, and made them look like I rolled them after a few hundred tries.

I had several sets of dice that numbers and patterns colored such that were very difficult to read from more then 3 inches away. I'd roll them, and then inflate the number.

I'd award my characters extra experience and gear, and claim that he got them from adventures that I played with other groups.

I'd conveniently forget to mark down damage... Or mark down less damage than he actually took.

I'd neglect to mark off spells that had been cast, or potions, or scrolls that had been used.

I'd mark down the entire load of monetary loot that we found, rather than just my share of it... Or I'd purchase something at "discount".

And probably a lot of other sneaky little tricks, too, that I've forgotten.

Nobody ever called me on it, because for the most part everyone else was doing it too... And we had an awful lot of fun with our late-night, sugar-fueled, pre-adolescent, imaginary power-trips.

 

[Quickleaf]

Our group's current DM uses a "style points" house rule which lets us increase damage, evade attacks, introduce plot twists, and other forms of what is essentially organized cheating within limits. It's been a hit with the entire group.

And I suspect it works to greatly limit any cheating that might otherwise happen. We play 4e and at lower levels the d20's randomness can wreck havoc with character concepts, which as others have pointed out leads to frustration. When I was a kid I'm sure I fudged my rolls as a player, but no specific story springs to mind. Today I get a kick out of roleplaying my PC's failures and have had the entire group laughing to tears at my antics.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

I don't consider fudging die rolls as the GM to be cheating.

I've done my share. In the groups I've played with rolling several sets of character stats and picking the best was sometimes used as a house rule, but I've done it other times as well.

A couple of times I rolled really well for stats, but with one really low one. Changed that one when no one was looking.

As others have said, sometimes the dice gods just hate you and you have to spit in their eye!

One day, when playing with a relatively new group (with a few people from former groups) I noticed one guy blatently cheating on his rolls. I leaned over and whispered to one of the other guys I'd played with before and pointed it out to him. (I wasn't going to say it out loud because I did my share!) His reply was that everyone knew he did it, so the GM compensated. That seemed pretty reasonable to me. We were all there to have fun, right?

 

[jason2250]

I am the DM/GM for my group. All of my players understand that I apply rule 0 behind the scene and generally do it secretly enough that I do not get called on it.

Temporary HP, Extra Spells, additional HD of controlled undead. Modified templates, etc. I have cheated in all these ways.

My groups have a nasty habit of rolling 20s far more often than I would like, and I know they are not cheating because they are rolled in the open. The dice gods hate me and love my players. I often must fudge stats or rolls in order to compensate for the averages falling low for me and high for the PCs. If I do not there is no fun for anyone as the PCs just obliterate my encounters.

My players are also self policing and don't get hot headed over some fudging. Catch them, make comment, problem solved. PCs live and die by the dice and my players respect this.

I also offer a system in call dedication points for long running campaigns. I give players these points for being on time, staying the whole session, and staying in character during table time are all ways of using these points. They can spend them on keeping a character alive past death threshold, an additional feat, automatic success at a d20 roll, or extra skill points with my approval. When I have a player attached to his character this limits the reroll that can alienate a good player or character. Plus heroes are supposed to be heroic.

I view these all small fudges and outright cheats as for the good of the group's fun and my own.

Rule 0 is a DM's best friend. If you DM and don't use it to your advantage you are doing something wrong.

Best,

Paul