D&D General If they thought they could get away with it...

[Baron Opal II]

In my experience, many -- possibly even most -- players have a bit of the exploiter in them, just waiting to find the right unintentional synergy in the rules. The primary difference, as I see it, is that a cheater is embarrassed or apologetic when caught, while an exploiter can't wait to show off their "accomplishment." I take great pleasure in letting them finish their explanation before declaring that it doesn't work the way they think at my table.

Would you be able to find or define what, for you, would be the difference between a Clever Exploit and an Abusive Exploit? However you define it?

For example, back in the day, we used to give +2 / +10% to stealth checks for people underground or in stone buildings if they had a stoneskin spell active. The idea being that the spell had their skin adopt a stony appearance. It also meant that they would need to be nude, or nearly so. Did it come up? Well, at least once, obviously, and one or two times after that. It was a highly situational advantage.

 

[Seramus]

I would rate a clever exploit as Rogues getting sneak attack more than once per round with Sentinel, or similar sources.

I would rate an abusive exploit as a Beast Barbarian getting permanent AC increases from the manticore tail.

 

[DMZ2112]

Would you be able to find or define what, for you, would be the difference between a Clever Exploit and an Abusive Exploit? However you define it?

Abusive exploits generally depend on wordplay in the rules (e.g., the peasant railgun), overinterpretation of punctuation (e.g., Jeremy Crawford's "being seen does not make you visible" interpretation of the invisibility condition), or hoping the dungeon master didn't fully understand the part of the rules that directly invalidates the strategy (e.g., the coffeelock).

The last case would be ignoring RAI that would be obvious to most readers (e.g., D&D 5E - Rules question - Knight of the sword Demoralizing Strike vs creature immune to frightened ), but I acknowledge that target probably moves table-to-table.

For example, back in the day, we used to give +2 / +10% to stealth checks for people underground or in stone buildings if they had a stoneskin spell active. The idea being that the spell had their skin adopt a stony appearance. It also meant that they would need to be nude, or nearly so. Did it come up? Well, at least once, obviously, and one or two times after that. It was a highly situational advantage.

That just seems like a fun house rule.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Looks like things have settled down now. (I probably would have posted sooner, but I've been very busy with some family matters.)

From what I'm seeing, 71 distinct people voted for some form of "definitely wouldn't cheat." Even if we cut out everyone who also voted for either of the it's-more-complicated answers ("not enough information" or "I will explain below"), that still leaves 66 distinct votes that chose one of those three options. Out of 115 votes, as of the time of this post, that would be ~57.4% of voters unequivocally of the belief that the players they've played with overall simply would not cheat. Taking the larger value of 71/115, it rises to ~61.7%, albeit with some complications/reservations/etc. strong enough to warrant explicit reference. Conversely, only 11.3% believed that cheating was guaranteed, only 1 person thought cheating was guaranteed while exploits were possible for any of their games, and 0 people thought cheating was guaranteed but exploits would never happen.

Speaking of, the jury is significantly more split on "exploits," in part because there's much less agreement on what qualifies as an "exploit," and in part because there is no consensus on whether "exploits" (whatever they are defined to be) are appropriate or not. 21 (~18.2%) expressed some amount of "this issue is too complicated" with their votes, and I'm dead certain more expressed that same sentiment with their posts, some of them probably even refusing to vote at all as a consequence.

Ultimately, however, this has largely answered the question I wanted answered: whether "cheating" is considered a rampant and pervasive issue or not by members of the (sub)forum. "Exploits," whatever one means by them, are much more common or at least considered to be a potential issue, but cheating is not. Some players do it, but we don't need a poll to tell us that.