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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9357298" data-attributes="member: 6877472">I once had a player that made a pretty ridiculous and underpowered character.  They ignored all advice in character creation, and it wasn't long before they were struggling.  I made a note of it and decided to seed some upcoming adventures with magic items that might help them out.During the next adventure, they started rolling really, really well, constantly getting critical hits and being much more useful.  I didn't think much of it at the time, but one of my other players said they thought they saw player A cheating.I take a dim view of this sort of thing, so I asked player B to keep a close eye on A next session.  During the next session, they got into a fight with a female fiend who dominated player A's character.  I let them keep playing their character, just told them who to attack.  Player A proceeds to go to town on Player C, the strongest character, and took them out with back to back crits!I ended the session soon after.  Player B came up to me and said not only did A cheat, those two crits were completely bogus!  I was steamed and decided to teach them a lesson.During the next session, they encountered some Hobgoblins who used poison.  I had said that the Hobgoblins in my game had access to various poisons, and each tribe has a Poison Master who brews insidious concoctions.After they fight ended, after a minute went by, I told everyone to make a Fortitude save.  I didn't care what the other players rolled- the only person I planned on punishing was player A, who flubbed the roll, but not by a lot.  I told them they felt feverish, but there were no other effects.The truth was, they had been hit with a horrifying poison that did Constitution damage, but in a way where without a good Heal check, the victim didn't notice the effects!  So they kept adventuring, and I kept track of player A's new, lower, maximum hit point total.  Halfway in the fight I told them they dropped to 0 hit points.  They squawked, claiming to have X hit points left, but I grinned and told them how much Con they had lost from the earlier poison.The player was like "Oh, I see."  They left quickly after the session ended.At first I felt vindicated, but then I realized that I had basically taken away all their agency and killed their character as surely as if they'd been struck down by "bolts from the blue".  I didn't confront them.  I didn't get their side of the story.   I gave them no chance to apologize to the group.I just killed their character.  And it didn't matter that I could justify it all in game- I'd still abused my position as a DM.Now I make my position very clear when I run.  If I catch you cheating, I'll tell you to stop it.  If I catch you again, you're out of the game.  I mean, I get it, sometimes you have bad luck, it starts to wear on you, you feel like you can't catch a break and the game stops being fun.  I can overlook the occasional misrepresentation of the numbers.  I don't like it, but I understand it.But if it becomes a habit, then I have to let them go.  Because all they are doing is cheapening the experience for the honest players, and if there's one thing I can't stand, is one player ruining the fun of another player.Also, I'm much more careful about mental domination and "forced" PVP.  It just leaves a bad taste in everyone's mouth, especially if you have a That Guy in your group who takes a little too much pleasure in being able to attack the other PC"s!</blockquote>

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