Now I Caught A Player Cheating Today....

[Patman21967]

maybe he accidentally grabbed a d10. Speaking of funny stories, I ran a game where one of my players characters died. We rolled 4d6 keep the best etc...I gave him 4d3, it was hilarious, because everyone but him noticed. He did not own dice, if you are wondering why I had to lend them to him...

 

[Nomad4life]

I played with a player who kept missing every attack. Nobody was paying close attention to why he was missing. It turned out he'd been rolling a d10. I'm not sure who was dumber - he for rolling a d10 for attacks, or the four of us for not even noticing.

Yup. I’ve had a new guy do this exact same thing. Now, I can understand how all those funky dice might confuse someone new to the game... But the crazy part was that he KNEW he was supposed to be rolling higher than a 12! Perhaps as you say, the real crazy part was that nobody else noticed this until near the end of the combat.

 

[Barak]

I rolled a d12 to attack once. Noticed it as soon as it left my hand, but it didn't stop my players from laughing at me.

We also have a "cheater" with "invisible" dice, but none of us mind. He's the worse tactician and character builder we've ever seen, so it pretty much evens out, in the end.

 

[Numion]

That's an old trick. A duke supposedly won a castle, Ragnhildsholme, nearby in the 13th. c. that way.

He and his brother were discussing who'd inherit what, and decided to roll a dice to see who got the castle. His brother first rolled a six, and then when he rolled the die split and showed a six and a one. They decided that god had intervened, and so he got the castle.
(It's probably not even remotely true, but as a good story it still gets told.)

Maybe he should've split his brothers head instead, that would've done the same trick, and a bigger target to boot!

 

[Contrarian]

Me: Roll for damage
Player: I got a uh nine.
Me: But you rolled a d8.
Player: Oh, right....

You know how d10s and up always have a line or dot underneath the 6 and 9 so players don't read the numbers incorrectly? I have a d20 that has dots under the 16 and 19. I've always wondered "What kind of moron thinks he's rolled a 91 on a d20?" Maybe your player isn't cheating -- maybe he's that kind of moron.

 

[haakon1]

I played with a player who kept missing every attack. Nobody was paying close attention to why he was missing. It turned out he'd been rolling a d10. I'm not sure who was dumber - he for rolling a d10 for attacks, or the four of us for not even noticing.

Nod. We had a player doing that with a d12.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

I had a player use a PDA and a program to roll his stats 62,000 times until he got a set he was pleased with.

I, of course, suggested "Why don't we use point buy? Then you can just buy the stats you want."

His response? "I don't like point buy."

Geez.

 

[Tolen Mar]

I played with a player who kept missing every attack. Nobody was paying close attention to why he was missing. It turned out he'd been rolling a d10. I'm not sure who was dumber - he for rolling a d10 for attacks, or the four of us for not even noticing.

Hey now, I've had that happen. For months I didn't realise that the d20 one of my players was using (which came from my 'community bowl') was actually a double 10. It exlained why he kept getting so frustrated...

 

[Staffan]

I played with a player who kept missing every attack. Nobody was paying close attention to why he was missing. It turned out he'd been rolling a d10. I'm not sure who was dumber - he for rolling a d10 for attacks, or the four of us for not even noticing.

Was it one of the old-school d10s that had 20 sides, numbered 0-9 twice? Someone made that mistake in my old gaming club as well.

 

[Azalnubizar]

we do have a player in our sunday-group that cheats regularily as well... things like using potions he allready used, having still spell-slots allthough he kept casting until the beginning of combat, having HP that no one could every achieve at his level, having attack-values or AC values above everyone else until you go down and recalculate them... He keeps blaming most of the more obvious mistakes (like miscalculated AC or attack) on his program he creates and manages his characters with (I think he uses Redblade, allthough I don't think that the problem was the program).

He keeps on doing it, even if you caught him, and everyone knows he is cheating. He also does things in RP no-one else would even think about and gets killed every so-often... therefore he isn't really unbalancing... it's just kind of weird.

the guy is difficult to game with anyway - but we cannot bring ourselves to kick him, since the group has been together for several years now and we would feel bad about it, somehow...

About giving in-games penalties... mmmh...
...this can be difficult.
If you don't say anything he might think it's ok and continue. On the other hand, if you start handing out IGM-Penalties he might think that this is unfair and try to compensate with cheating or he might think it's ok if you aren't caught.
Best IMO would be to speak with him "out-of-game"... but as you can see in my group sometimes this doesn't help as well... so no real advice, but I'd be carefull bevor you start giving IGM-penalties...