Sneaky Ways D&D Players Cheat

[@starhalv2427]

I once made a mistake of forgetting that my kobold artificer had sunlight sensitivity, but my DM just decided "Well, I didn't describe the weather yet, so let's assume it's cloudy"

[@JikooFD]

LMAO ur dm is so goated

[@forest-goddess]

my girlfriend is playing a kobold sorcerer in our game and the dm just straight up doesn't want to deal with sunlight sensitivity so he always made it night or cloudy until he gave her character sunglasses she can wear all the time that negates the sunlight sensitivity so she p much Always has advantage on her attacks. LOL

[@starhalv2427]

@@forest-goddess yeah, my character has sunglasses too, but DM doesn't allow that (Same DM)

[@darkyoda1980]

Lol I just took blind fighting now I don't have to worry about sunlight sensitivity

[@MrTailson1]

I had that same thing for a Shadow Sorcerer based on myself. I asked for sunglasses on my human because I too had that sensitivity, so we balanced it as the sunglasses are the reason he had 120ft dark vision, lol.

[@MycoCane]

As a DM, I gave my party a trick d20 with two 20s on it 😊 it was an item they won for defeating this enemy who was kind of metatextual and knew she was in a game. The party as a whole is allowed to use it once per long rest, on any roll that seems sufficiently important

[@ln9256]

Wooooooah that's so cool!

[@PavanSuresh]

Bit of a necro but what number did the second 20 replace?

[@storm_fling1062]

​@@PavanSuresh1

[@Anotherguy1st]

That seems like a totally cool item and rather fair rules for it!

[@rayquaza5059]

I plan to do something similar with my loaded d6s, just allow my players to use it once per short rest on any d6 they roll

[@zeeeej]

I never cheat deliberately, but the most tempting one for me is changing spell lists during combat. It's always because I have intended to swap out a spell but forgot when we did our last long rest. It's super frustrating to realize that when it comes up.

[@tomb1686]

or realizing I only prepared 19 spells when I can prepare 20, mid combat.

[@CosyMatt]

The latest campaign I’m doing with some work buddies the DM said “if your class can cast it, you can too” so it’s just chaos but nobody really milks it tho. Just for the fun of it lol

[@chameleonx9253]

What I sometimes do is what I call "Shroedinger's Spellbook." If I've never actually cast one of the spells I have on my character sheet in-game, I will sometimes swap it for a different spell that will come in handy in the situation we're in. Once I've cast the spell, it's locked-in, and I won't change it. But as long as the spell is just on my sheet and I haven't used it yet, it's not really "canon."

[@Poppy_AndFriends]

@@chameleonx9253 That's something I've done, but this vid made me realize it's still kinda cheating. I feel like it's just on that borderline where a DM should allow it, but I get why they wouldn't. I'm also hella new and haven't sued most spells in the game, so I think it's a bit more okay for experimentation.

[@zombieninjapitbull3856]

I kind of fall into this category, we will long rest and I will start to prepare my spells but the gm doesn't pause long enough and I get a feel for what is going to happen for that day and can essentially prepare spells knowing what the dm is brewing.

[@TheLucasdms]

I just noticed you guys are getting much better at recording videos. They fell less scripted and much more like a conversation. Keep improving, y'all!

[@michaelsinclair1343]

I'm fairly certain they aren't scripted. Sure, they probably have an outline with bullet points but it's just like a PowerPoint presentation. You just have a topic then some keywords that you then talk about freely from your brain.

[@TheLucasdms]

@@michaelsinclair1343 yes, but older videos felt like they where reading from a script more than talking to the camera. Now their videos feel much more like they are talking with us and that is great.

[@Null--]

I agree, the feel of this video is more dynamic and natural. Excellent work.

[@johnmobley9369]

@@michaelsinclair1343 the older videos were definitely scripted. Nothing wrong with that but you could tell they had previously written down points and took pauses to signal each others expected line. They were still helpful and informational but these new ones definitely have a more relaxed vibe. Feels more like a candid conversation while still being organized and informational.

[@solosmoke7330]

This one definitely felt more natural. Like an ongoing conversation between friends that you've stumbled upon.

[@talmaru3023]

One of my players once said "but the monster manual says this" To which I replied "what is a monster manual, i don't see one on your character sheet? Did you want to pick one up in the next town?"

[@LakeVermilionDreams]

Volo's Guide to Monsters is a real book in Fearun! I'm going to take your idea and have it on a bookshelf of a shop when I run a game next!!

[@winterssunshine]

Cold with it

[@FrankBocker]

The monster manual would be a great magical artifact to give a high-level PC, actually.

[@demoulius1529]

I once had a player straight up googling a monsters stats when they had a dispute (or rather question. They misunderstood the siuation and were asking me to clarify...and thought I took to long to anwser his question) over a thing that happend in the fight. 'well the stat block says this. That isent what happend though, right?' or something to that effect. And I can still renember the sudden silence around the table as the rest of the players realized what the player had just done xD my group is rather....loud. So when the entire group is suddenly as quite as a mouse that also says something. I was trying to find the words on how best to anwser this player. But couldnt find a quik anwser. So asked him to be a little patient and please finish the combat with the rest of the group and I told him id explain it to him right after. Hes autistic so probably dident realize it was not good form what he just did. It also wasent malicious, he was just confused. I dont recall the specifics exactly but I think he got knocked prone. And he never ran into the prone condition before or something like that. So he was just confused about what had happend. Later on when the combat was finished we all discussed it abit more in details and explained the situation. He genuinely dident realize he wasent supposed to look up monster stats. Again dont recall the specifics exactly but it was a burrowing monster of some kind and he failed a DEX saving throw, so he was knocked prone by the monster emerging from the ground. Thats about all I can renember from it. And cudos to the player, he never did do it again (or at least I dident catch him doing it again) but it also makes running custom monsters with their own abilities, stats, attack moves and history alot more fun. The players are far more engrossed by this monster they never met before and noone can 'accidentily' cheat that way.

[@stevencain8266]

​@@LakeVermilionDreamslol. Memorized life experience. That is the MM

[@badsamaritan8223]

I developed bad cheating habits while playing with my first group. They treated me like crap from the beginning, despite inviting me to join. So i didn't have much respect for them, and felt no guilt for cheating, but what i hadn't considered, was that it would carry over into my next group. I felt really guilty, when i realized what i was doing. I've since refocused my interest in D&D towards writing fun characters, and telling great stories, and my enjoyment of D&D has skyrocketed.

[@Raven.flight]

It's great once you embrace failure. A character who fails at stuff can be so much fun. I remember watching one of Seth Skorkowsky's videos about a run of bad luck someone in his group was having. It was like 1 followed by 1 followed by 1. Eventually they got to the Boss fight and he rolled a 20 with a vorpal sword and decapitated the BBEG on the first turn. It was epic, but only more epic because of the run of 1's. If he'd fudged those dice to be successes all the time the BBEG fight being over so quickly would have felt like a let down.

[@ryangerfen7489]

​@@Raven.flight I never have as much fun as when my highly armored cleric misses with a spell, be ause then he gets angry, marches up to whatever creature he missed, and gives them the finger so show his displeasure.

[@tacomiester]

@@Raven.flight when i first started playing i hated getting bad rolls because it always felt like failure nowadays getting a nat 1 is more entertaining to me than a nat 20

[@Raven.flight]

@@tacomiester most definitely. I think some people feel the game is a win/lose thing, but truth be told, it’s a mechanism to tell a story. I almost exclusively play Call of Cthulhu (as Keeper) and the nature of the game is one that the Investigators can be squished like bugs at any time… dice be damned. If you go into CoC with a win/lose mentality, you’re not going to enjoy it, because you’re eventually going to lose. But if you go into it with ‘every ‘Nat 1’ is the opportunity to make story’, then you’ll have a blast. And that can be true of heroic fantasy as well.

[@kori228]

I haven't resorted to cheating in my shit group, but I've lost interest/excitement in playing DnD instead.

[@MichaelB-jw5po]

I had this one friend that I played various TTRPGs with for 3 years. I would have never in a million years thought this dude would cheat. Finally, I got a chance to start a Call of Cthulhu campaign that I had wanted to run for years, and out of nowhere this guy started blatantly fudging his dice rolls. I talked to him about it and he just kept doing it. The drama and fallout that spawned from him cheating ended up breaking up our long-running RPG group and I still get sad and angry thinking about it.

[@stevenmike1878]

fudgers gotta use a computer to roll the dice. they cant fudge that.

[@Haexxchen]

I hate when such stuff happens. My 40K campaign ended 2/3 through from one player accusing another one of always cheating in every game. Then the accuser played sick, we all found out because he was just on another TS server with friends, switched some software to invisible and forgot others. When confronted he asked: "Am I supposed to just lay in bed, when I am sick?" and we were like "No, but you are also not supposed to lie about being online." Then he told us all, that he is still in love with me and how hard that is, 2 years after we dated way before I started the camaign. And 1 year later with lost the accused player from our group as well, when he pulled the same shit in another friends campaign and he blocked us, when we told himit was not okay. Those two guys deserve each other so much and I hate how they brought drama into my and my other buddies games. Fuck 'em.

[@winterssunshine]

@@stevenmike1878 I wish, one of my friends uses a app on his phone and gets a 20 every 3 turns and always never misses during combat or fails saves

[@winterssunshine]

Got any advice for how to deal with that now that you are through it? I have the same problem and am worried on confronting the player fudging his dice.

[@stevenmike1878]

@@winterssunshine another way is to roll in the center of the table where everyone can see. just say your in question of the integrity of the rolls, don't mention who but say this how everyone need to roll from then on.

[@Hogan698]

I love how genuinely nice these guys are. "if someone is cheating with their dice, gift them some new dice and a dice tray". That's such a kind way to deal with cheating. "gift them a dice tower". Like seriously, this is totally the nicest way to handle the situation, and the cheater might even realize why they're getting these gifts. It's a way of letting them know you know they're cheating without actually saying it out loud. This avoids the confrontation, and the backlash that often ruins the game/friendship.

[@demoulius1529]

I dont think they meant actually gifting them those items. But presenting them to the player at the table to use. Or they are that generous. Idk either tbh xD

[@emiellebloemendal1960]

A useful tool to avoid metagaming, is asking the DM: “Would my character know this?” It acknowledges the player has outside knowledge to the whole table, and the DM can give guidance on how to proceed.

[@IsaacSchubert]

eh, if I as a person actually know something, I actually like coming up with an excuse for why my character would know it. thus my rogue is highly paranoid, having spent alot of time secretly reading about cryptids in private libraries. It adds characterization, and makes gives the game and character depth it would not have had otherwise

[@nybbleme]

​​@@IsaacSchubertin exandria unlimited on critical role, this one girl happened to know that if you flip an alligator or crocodile upside down it will just go to sleep and she just said it was some random bit of trivia she picked up in her town as just an odd bit of trivia that got shared and remembered as a result of how odd it was.... The GM googled it to verify that it was real and then allowed it because it was such a wacky and awesome thing to allow in the rule of cool... They managed to perform a strength and agility check of some sort to flip it upside down and it quickly fell asleep.

[@AmaiarAiramand]

It is actually better when you do the opposite, and as a DM you ask your players "How do you know this/How do you know how to" when performing skill checks. Let them be creative and expand further upon their backstory, flavor it, perhaps even make notes of unique hooks you might use later for personal story progression. It also links very smoothly into the famous "How do you want to do this/How do you finish the enemy" phrase, which empowers the player even more by giving them the reins of a certain scene when they're successful

[@joaosoares-rr5mj]

i do that a lot because... unfortunaly, as a dm myself, i know a lot of stuff... so like, for example... in tis campaing, i didnt knew what the campaing would be, but i mande a light cleric, and we went to face some duegar, and i have the daylight spell... and i was like.... "eeeeeeh.... dm.... so.... do i know that duegar have sunlight sensitivity?" and he said yes. but unfortunaly there are things that i cannot avoid... like... i know that a goblin have 7 hp... no matter what, i know that, so when a player says "i'll atack with this or that" i aready know how close the goblin will be from dying... which is a shame... that is inda also why i make my own goblins of different classess, with diferent hp's and different stats, like the goblin archer and the goblin swordsman and so so... this way is harder for the party to learn things like that and it makes fmore fun to them when they start recognising the different kinds of goblins and changing their strategies to fight that specific type of goblin

[@ThePopeOfDrumIsland]

@@joaosoares-rr5mj I just started playing D&D and my favorite question is "would my character know this" because I sure as fuck don't 😭

[@sprouts7768]

Little trick, an honest person normally calls them selves out if they realize they made a mistake. Stopping themselves from doing it again if the realize they messed up

[@demoulius1529]

True. But sometimes you dont catch yourself in the moment.

[@heroicvileplume7184]

There was a really good Exp to Level 3 skit about the monster stats metagaming thing, where a player knows that their boots of speed are still active despite going into a beholder antimagic field, another player asks about it, they start explaining, catch themselves, and offer to roll an arcana check to see if they can explain the rule to offer some parity between in-game and out-of-game knowledge

[@thebeamb1072]

[@BigSeth1090]

I also like to talk to my DMs about “okay, what are subjects my character would reasonably know about?” Like my barb, dragonborn bahamut zealot, raging hatred for chromatic dragons, and DM has ruled that unless told otherwise, I know dragon types’ capabilities and such without a roll. My plane-hopping astral elf bard has a working knowledge of most all of the planes, at least basics. My wizard’s primary research focus is the abyss, so I can skip a lot of rolls related to abyssal entities. I love that sort of “not a box on the character sheet but adds to the character” stuff

[@zwidowca1]

@@BigSeth1090 Good game master. Uses logic, a rare breed. Make sure to feed them snacks so they keep running your games xD

[@silverjohn6037]

In your example I'd saying knowing the Boots would work before he entered the field would be meta-gaming but, if he's already in the field, I'd say a person would have some sort of sensation that a magic effect had stopped working. If nothing else than by the fact he was moving slower.

[@kallei8496]

@Heroic Vileplume do you remember the name of the skit?

[@christhewritingjester3164]

For the fixed dice: I think it would be awesome put one of the D20s with 20 on all sizes in a little display case, and on the case you put "Break in case of Dragon/Intellegence Skill Check" or whatever your most feared enemy is or most failed skill check is.

[@dragonbuster1174]

We almost just got TPKed by a dragon (only speedy gobbo boi escaped). I am definitely doing this to bring some levity for our next session.

[@christhewritingjester3164]

@@dragonbuster1174 Nice! I'd love to hear how the others respond to it.

[@thoughtthru1848]

If I DM'd, I'd tell the party that's the dice I roll any time I catch someone cheating.

[@reloadpsi]

So every time the party needs a 19 on an intelligence skill?

[@jakefrogman]

Break in case of door

[@justincasebro1567]

I explain to my players that "There are 3 parties involved in every story. The Players, the DM and the dice." sometimes the best moments come from botched rolls. Let it happen, you never know what could come from the "1" you tried to change.

[@kylethomas9130]

My Barbarian lost his weapon due to a nat 1, so he just punched the hag to death. Didn't even have Martial Arts or Unarmed Fighting style.

[@dragoninthewest1]

I've learned to accept when I fail because we usually get a good laugh out of it. example: Me: I cast vicious mockery at the Manticore [IC] "hey you! Yeah, you freak of nature!" DM: Sorry, he made the saving throw. "The Manticore looks at you and flicks its tail in rebuke" Me: "everybody's a critic." Entire Chat: [laughing out loud]

[@YourMrBood]

You sound exactly like my DM.

[@TheLanceUppercut]

Some of my favorite moments have come on nat 1s. I'll always remember rolling a 1 on a Wisdom save and getting charmed by an Incubus. DM: The Incubus telepathically commands you to get rid of the halfling, he's asking too many questions. Me: I try to pick him up like he's a baby and carry him out of the room!

[@NotTheBomb]

Had a friend roll a 1 while looking for berries. He found poisonous berries. He then ate them, as he was clueless! He then rolled to see how bad the berries would effect him. He rolled a 20! So he became immune for the day 😂 he came back to camp EATING THE POISON BERRIES! So my character tried some, and I got poisoned. Was a hilarious turn of events.

[@AnnaVahtera]

I did the "I'm so smart, I know how to solve this!" with my character a few years back. The difference was, that I had absolutely NO clue about anything, and that's just how the character was. We ended up in a really tight spot because of that, but it was fun. Next time the character claimed to know "everything", the group's barbarian grappled my character, and stuck her into a sack and tied it close.

[@farrex0]

I am playing an arrogant character, that went in with that attitude..... Problem is that I was intending the character to fail, to make it a growing moment. But the dice somehow, always lands high when I make the character act extremely arrogant. Like once I had 0 in Animal Handling, and I was like "Look and learn, I know everything there is to be about handling animals....". I was prepared to roll a 6 and make it a hilarious fail moment.... and I rolled a Nat 20. I don't think his arrogance is going anywhere, lmao.

[@aiodensghost8645]

​@farrex0 you could play it out as a blessing from a random God... only for that God to be something truly nasty

[@od1401]

Love how monty puts his hand on Kelly's shoulder and says he knew he didn't do the double reaction on purpose. Two good friends :D

[@SmokeADig]

Wholesome AF 👌

[@Tomyironmane]

THAT is trust. It is what makes a TTRPG work, and what the cheater breaks. How can you have that if you gotta be on guard for a cheat? I've heard good advice that more or less says, "You don't necessarily have to stop being someone's friend if you can't trust them, but you really shouldn't play with them."

[@SpinsROCK]

"Good friends" I've always worked on the assumption that they're a bit closer than friends haha

[@tuomasronnberg5244]

@@SpinsROCK Both of them have mentioned before having a partner, so don't get your hopes up 😄

[@SpinsROCK]

@@tuomasronnberg5244 Well thats just as cool then :) Glad they have such a good friendship that they run this channel together!

[@davitto01]

An option, if you're replaying a module and you're playing with new players, could be to have your character be a 'Veteran Adventurer' who is leading the rookies through their first dungeon as an initiation test. So purposely leans back against a wall and breaks out his tobacco saying "Well, go on newbies. Solve it." then if they're really stuck, help out. But agree it all with the DM beforehand and work together to give the new players the best game you can.

[@greyelf1537]

In regards to the "playing by your own rules" segment, I have another example of a rule that can be easy to miss and therefore easily abused: concentration spells. I was playing a Ranger in a campaign once, and while having Hunter's Mark up, I casted Conjure Animals. Well, since I was so used to only using Hunters Mark up until that point for concentration spells, I just flat out forgot it required it, so I had both spells running simultaneously. After the combat, I confessed and apologized to the DM. He was cool with it, but it's definitely something to watch out for because I can see cheaters abusing that. On a side note, Hunter's Mark is dropping concentration in One DND so there is some minor validation to my mistake, lol.

[@Jojrre]

I actually got my DM on it since we were fighting a wizard. She had confusion on our team’s wizard and cast another concentration spell. I was so happy to call it out and the DM was a really good sport about it

[@joshuabryant974]

My one with Hunter's Mark is forgetting it takes a bonus action to flip targets. At the beginning of my current campaign, I used it quite a bit and flipped whenever my target died, even on someone else's turn. Just didn't read the spell properly.

[@johnnamorton6744]

My worst sun as a player is doing a gimmick. Playing the Tavern Brawler wizard, playing the actress with a temper (barbarian), the Bard whose a professor of herbology. Etc. My two current characters are a monk with all the INT skills who hates weapons, and the Totam Barbarian built for speed... (You laugh but her base speed is 50 feet and when she shifts and rages that's bumped to 75. No joke she's so reckless the DM gave me an amulet that once a day turns a flask of whiskey into a 4D4+4 healing potion. My favorite story we were being chased by carts with ballistia... She jumped off the cart attacked the horses of the chase carts and stole the horse from one of the assailants. Literally carried off with it.

[@shanz7758]

To be fair, too much spells and abilities use concentration in 5e imo, to the point that it is hard even to lvl 15 wizzard to have like, 5 active spells on him. Coming from 3e, I never liked this nerfing of spells in 5e. But hey, everyone's got to have something to like!

[@ADiceySituation]

I think a warlock should be able to beg their patron for different spells by making a high Persuade roll. I actually have a warlock in a story where she gets new spells in her Book of Shadows because her patron adds them in her dreams.

[@Jw87563]

If your group is ok with that, then go for it. Just make sure everyone is on the same page.

[@olivia6252]

I realized like three months after a game ended that I was accidentally cheating the whole time. It was my first time playing a spellcaster, a cleric, and my second campaign and I assumed that I could just use whatever spells I knew and mark off spell slots. I realized my screw up when I went to make a Druid and was like oh shoot I was supposed to be picking a few from this list to prepare 😅

[@VanBurenPhilips]

They were just their god's favourite cleric 😍

[@EmissaryofWind]

To be fair, the rules around spell prep for Clerics and Druids are very poorly explained. I had to ask several people to get a straightforward explanation of how I was supposed to do it

[@TimeLordWereWolf]

Honestly I've been playing DND for years and I still don't know which classes have to prepare and which just Know their spells let alone how domain/pact/oath/circle spells are different from just... Knowing spells. And then there's spellBOOKS. This is why I play barbarian 😂 and in my opinion if it's an honest mistake on a confusing rule then it's not really cheating, it's just kind of a Whoopsie Daisy situation

[@UDF2Archeon]

I did similar, assuming my druid could cast any ritual spell on their list. Wasn't until after the campaign that we realised the spell had to be prepared. So many different rules for spellcasting!

[@Joe-gb3lu]

That's just a modified system of spellcasting :)

[@Coopernicuss]

Beyond should have a DM option for pop up windows when changes are made to character sheets and what the gist of that change is such as ‘Fighter heals 10hps’ or ‘wizard 2nd level spell acid arrow removed’. Could also be colour coded to the theme colour the player uses as well.

[@JarieSuicune]

Anti-cheat can sound neat... but that's going too far. If you can't start from a position of trusting your players then trust isn't going to exist and that is a fracture in the gameplay that will follow. In the case of some online games, it makes sense because of the competitive nature (and idiotic ranking boards) that results. But that doesn't (shouldn't?) exist in TTRPGs, it's a collaborative story. If you suspect cheating, don't try to make cheating impossible. That just becomes an unwinnable arms race pitting the DM vs the Cheater that ruins everything. Instead, establish clear boundaries, rules, and guidelines that the chooses to agree to (if they disagree, work with them! Arbitrary changes for the DM's sake is Chaotic Evil, and never in a good way.) Work with suspected cheaters. BE KIND. Show interest in their side of the table! If they feel like they have to cheat to have fun, it's the DM's job to account for that! And if there is no consensus to be found, it may be necessary to recognize that there may be a clash of interest between either the DM and a player or even the DM and ALL the players. Being a DM means putting on the Big Boy hat. They are Manager, Supervisor, Judge, Jury, President, King, and God of the Campaign. And all of those roles have responsibilities that if they fail at will hurt the game for some if not all players. It takes time to get good (I STILL think I'm not very good despite being almost exclusively a DM for several years now) but learning and growing is also a collaborative part of life. Don't worry too much about cheaters. Try to pay attention for when something seems out of place (too many perfect/high rolls, abilities that seem to suddenly exist or work differently than expected, etc.), but let your players be adults too! TRUST THEM FIRST.

[@bladehoth]

I feel that Monty had an experience of cheating that broke his heart most. I wonder what it may have been.

[@ThisNameIsBanned]

There are spells that literally make your heart stop , so it must be a saving roll against that.

[@OssyPyke]

@@ThisNameIsBanned everything that has to do with the heart is a charisma check, lol

[@TheRawrnstuff]

@@OssyPyke Philter of Love is automatic.

[@borgy1337]

A robber baron NPC took Monty's Scroll of Irrevocability and tore it up in front of him.

[@Sw-nn6le]

When I first started playing, I caught another player cheating in several different ways. It bothered me how pathetically weak it is to cheat at a game of the imagination. Almost made me quit playing. Luckily, now I know better

[@RolyatSille]

When I first started playing, I remember ending like every session learning a new rule I accidentally broke. It was so disheartening at first, but now I’m a few years in and there’s still some things I realize like halfway through a campaign I’ve been doing wrong and it’s just a moment of “Oh. Well shoot, we’ll just have to make a note to not do that in the future.” On the GM side, when I first started running things, I did a quick one shot (turned four shot) to get my bearings on how to manage everything. The next thing I did was set up a short campaign where cheating was encouraged. I had less players, but they were tasked with absolutely ruining things. The idea was to try and cheat in creative ways and if I can catch you on it, we’d roll on a table for something harmless but goofy to happen. Just as a way to try and keep my vigilant on everything so that when I finally set up my long-term home brew campaign, I’ve been able to be on top of monitoring everything. It was a fun, stupid experience and I highly encourage doing it at least once. I feel like it really helped firmly inform me on nuances I never thought about and make myself more capable to make fair and reasonable rulings at the table.

[@demoulius1529]

Ive been DMing for years now and I still sometimes run into a 'oh this mechanic doesent work like that, at all' event every now and again xD Im now a player and not the DM so try to avoid getting involved into rules disputes but its a problem for everyone I think.

[@RolyatSille]

Had a session just today where we had one of those event. One of my players is a Barbarian and wanted to use the Instinctive Pounce optional feature while already raging. Rules wise, you should have to use your bonus to drop the rage and then next turn use it… but that felt silly to us when you’re already burning one of your pretty limited resources to get that desperate little extra bit of movement out. Just called it “Mad part 2” and let it happen as his bonus. Landed some juicy crits on the boss thanks to it and it was a nice moment for him, so damn the rules!

[@johnathanrhoades7751]

My wife was a quick-pickup roller when she started. She wasn’t cheating at all (she rolled plenty of low numbers and has bad eyesight, so it made sense.) but we had to explain that it looked SO sketchy 😂

[@michaellauer8181]

My usual fix for the whole metagaming "do i know how to kill this thing" problem is that i usually just ask if i know it, and if the dm isnt sure, they have me roll (maybe history or nature or arcana) and depending on the roll, you determine if your character has that knowledge.

[@korinholio]

Same. It works nice.

[@ivansanger7985]

We do this too and it's awesome! The player asks the GM: "Do I know monster XYZ?" and they usually answer with a clear: "No, you never heard of them ever" or a "Let's see if you do, roll a history/arcana/nature etc. check for me" and proceeds to explain what exactly they know!

[@BTrillJ]

I played with a guy who took the lucky feat. Great feat. He knows how the feat worked, but decided he’d roll two dice every time behind his lap top and always take the higher unless someone was looking. On top of that, when he would use lucky, he would only track it if we were looking. I, also a player who was on his side in a really tough battle, had to say “how have you used lucky six times without any rest whatsoever dude.”

[@matthewhiatt5070]

I agree because then the DM starts ramping up the difficulty to account for this, then the rest of the party has to suffer

[@TheRawrnstuff]

@@matthewhiatt5070 MMORPGs have this concept called "drawing aggro".

[@BramLastname]

​@@TheRawrnstuff the problem is if the cheating player goes down, Then the party has to deal with a threat they're not equipped for.

[@katlicks]

That's so aggressively blatant.

[@TheRawrnstuff]

@@BramLastname That's not a problem regarding cheaters. That's just how combat is. It's only a problem if you increase the challenge rating of the encounter, *and also* KO the cheater - who was the reason the challenge level got boosted in the first place. But let's say the rogue is cheating. The rogue is easily overwhelmed by swarms or mooks, especially if we assume the rogue doesn't have some special ability to go through enemies. The cheating rogue is drawing aggro, freeing other characters while getting surrounded. The mooks all gather around the rogue, when the party's wizard can fireball them to oblivion. Rogue dances out of the explosion unscathed because they're a rogue, the wizard gets great value out of fireball, and everyone is getting their moments.

[@thesuperjacobshow8151]

During session zero I show my players how failing a roll is often more fun than success and address the temptation to cheat.

[@steveclarkreborn]

I started DnD by learning how to play on my own, making a group, and being the DM. In the first one shot one of my players ran, I played a shadow monk that had the voice and mentality of Shaggy from Scooby Doo (it was my first time playing, I knew I'd only play this character once, and I was working on the impression). When we ran into the hobo screaming about a meatball spaghetti in the sewer destroying his community, i went into full DM mode and realized it was a Beholder, a monster I knew about but hadn't used up until this point. Then I realized I was playing Shaggy, and what would Shaggy do when hearing about a meatball and spaghetti monster? I dove headfirst into the nearest sewer opening I could find

[@shinybugg9156]

As a new player using a cleric, I often forgot to change my spells on a long rest, and it became very tempting to change it when I realized I needed it. I had to start really making sure I took the time to solidify it after long rests, because I didn't want to be a cheater.

[@hunterwallace9551]

I did go through with that one and felt really bad about it after

[@demoulius1529]

Think everyone whos played a cleric at some point has made that mistake tbh. I think most DM's wont mind if you quikly change it if you bring it up to them.

[@vikingshark2634]

I (wizard main) am guilty of this. Our DM ran adventures so fast with so little downtime that it seemed impossible to always have the right spell list. After enough times of "well, I would have this spell if I had a chance to swap out spells after our last rest so I'm gonna use it anyway" The DM allowed this but it just didn't sit right with me since I'm such a rules guy and I felt like a cheater. I finally started preparing four different standard lists (wilderness, urban exploration, spying, combat), printing them out, then just picking up whatever list was most appropriate for whatever I thought was going to be happening that day.

[@theblackswan2373]

Back in AD&D ( ya I’m that old ), I had a player that would habitually read every new module that came out… He was shocked when I started “rearranging them” and rewriting key parts of the text. He did become a pretty good player after that….

[@danielbraun6471]

i did that in a recent PF1e module, the look on the player's face when 2+2 did not equal 4 LOL

[@ayrios3172]

I always forget you guys are Canadian, but hearing Kelly's "sorry" at 18:24 is just music to my ears. Love you guys!

[@Madchemist002]

I tend to pickup some of my dice after I roll to read them off, not because I want to cheat, but because I'm colorblind and I made poor decisions when purchasing them.

[@MoutainMannPro]

In my opinion I would just leave it for a moment and let the other players see what it was first.

[@drumlessons833]

My friend, who I trust very much, does this too. Although I trust him, it is bad table etiquette.

[@Madchemist002]

@@MoutainMannPro Yeah. The person to my left can normally see my result before I try to look closer

[@Madchemist002]

@@spooderous I've slowly been doing that. My problem is that I love the color red (my favorite color), but my ability to discern minutae is lacking

[@Mastikator]

@@Madchemist002 You can get bigger dice.

[@shunnthedevil3388]

I once did the pick up dice cheat and... I felt horrible afterwards. I could just feel the weight of distrust my friends had towards me. They played along with the natural 20 I lied about and...the end result wasn't rewarding to me. I vowed I would never cheat in D&D again.

[@Biodebatable]

Same it was on a saving throw that I kept failing and got frustrated, did it without even really thinking and felt really bad afterwards. I think it's natural to be frustrated and tempted even, to the point where a DM might need to look into why. But it's also a situation where instead of cheating in that moment I should've brought it up to him after the session like "hey I don't enjoy being targeted by the frightened or charmed each encounter as it's removing my agency"

[@andrewgoehring9108]

@@Biodebatable Honestly that can be a point where a good DM will notice and cheat for you. Hopefully without going to far, a string of failures can be frustrating and ruin the fun for a player but it's good to know where the line is.

[@ZeakaXorrFitchus]

I was playing with a group of friends during covid where we couldn't meet up person so we video called on Skype. I rolled a saving throw for something and my die landed on 11. In my mind I knew that was too low, so with only half a second of hesitation I announced I rolled a 15. The guilt i felt about that decision stuck with me for weeks. It wasn't even that big of a deal, but it was just the fact that I did it so easily just because i knew i could get away with it made me feel uneasy with myself.

[@LyleAshbaugh]

“Fun is in the failures”. A truer statement has never been told ❤

[@TheFischsalat]

it is to flat and generalized in my point of view. i say yes, failures can be interesting and make for a good narative but if you have a game where every partymember constantly fails every attept to do something productive... this is not gonna be fun. where is the the point in even trying when everything is doomed from the beginning? do not over glorify the faillures but also dont underestimate them. like many hings in life everything depends on a good mixture of both. the sweet taste of success and the bittersweet lessons from faillure both are important and add to the fun of the game

[@winterssunshine]

@@TheFischsalat yeah but you cant memorize all of that.

[@janicemcafee7723]

Our rogue failed several attempts to open a safe after she stabbed the clerk in the room. Didn’t check to see if the clerk was dead or not. Now the clerk and the money are missing and it’s becoming a running red herring in our game.

[@TheMemo659]

The bard in one of my campaigns is a performance machine. Now. His early level failures are things of legend. He once burned down an orphanage trying to entertain the children.

[@LyleAshbaugh]

@@TheMemo659 🤣🤣🤣

[@dhesyca4471]

I had a Rules Lawyer who would take advantage of me as a new DM being unfamiliar with the rules, and would break the rules on purpose. We ended up having a falling out for unrelated reasons, but the game has improved a lot since they left.

[@demoulius1529]

Alwaays rough when that happens but your games are better for it :)

[@obnoxiouspedant]

Yeah I'm a fairly new DM too but i dont tolerate rules lawyers for this reason, if we cant come to an understanding together I am making the ultimate call on what happens

[@penguins776]

I can’t remember where I got this idea, but don’t dm’s get final ruling on whether something is admissible or not?

[@dhesyca4471]

@@penguins776 I was a new DM and trusting more experienced players to help me out. I didn't realize they were taking advantage of me.

[@the0amazing0joe]

We had a player who was really bad for everything except dicerolls, which on a digital platform he couldnt cheat on lol. One other thing he did was... well, he basically gaslit the other players. "you guys gave the gold to my character back then, I didn't realize it was meant to be for the whole party." calling back to a session like 6 months prior, with confidence in his voice. He basically conned the group about various small details from when certain players weren't playing, or from far enough back. Needless to say we've all cut ties.

[@rakew9231]

I once ran a combat where the players were fighting a sphynx and during the combat I was giving the players riddles. One player was scarily good at the riddles. I could hardly get through one players turn without them blurting out the answer. The combat took forever because I had to keep looking up riddles, and I was clearly frantic, panicking, and unable to keep up with both the combat and the riddles. It got to a point where they were interrupting me to say the answer before I had finished speaking. It wasn’t until after they had left the campaign that I learned from the player who was sitting next to them that they had been looking up the answers the entire time. That was the most stressful session I’ve ever run and I think I will ever run. I can’t imagine a worse way to cheat.

[@monkeymanbananas6060]

DM TIP: if you know a player is turning roles higher, make scenarios where a high role is a bad case. An example I have and have used in game is making a tower you see in the distance enchant a character to come towards it against their will. The role is high to see the tower in this case and a low role doesn't see this enchanting tower.

[@winterssunshine]

Im going to use this. Thank you!

[@SoreWristed]

I only once got accused of cheating and it terrified me. I rolled my third natural 20 of the encounter, in plain sight, and the dm just took my dice away and gave me another pair to finish the fight. While it was pretty easy to clear up because the dm couldn't replicate my results, I was almost ready to just get up and walk away from the game.

[@tibarto3067]

If you have run or read a module, there is sooooo much fodder there for a DM. I read through Curse of Strahd before with an intent to run it before the game fell through. Years later, a DM said they wanted to run COS. I was open about knowing some things about it and we came to an agreement of me coming from Barovia and, basically, being an easy way for the DM to dispense knowledge to the party. It was an awesome concept and gave a good backstory for my PC.

[@MsKeylas]

Good point. Van Richten guide book actually tells about the same thing. When you are making horror games you can make your character originate from one of those horror domains

[@JaviusSama]

The good thing about that campaign (specially if you bought the collector's edition) is that you can get the players to make the taroka reading and it's always a different campaign.

[@MsKeylas]

@@JaviusSama I usually do a pre-reading , and then IF players get to Eva and ask her to ''read their fate'' I do second reading which replaces first

[@irishconan722]

I once DMed for a group that had a monster Hunter ranger and with little home brew and communication between us we agreed that he had the monster manual as an action he can consult his notes to see stats about the monster but if that monster fell into his favorite foe category its a bonus action

[@drumlessons833]

This video helped me create a high level magic item: _The Potion of Unending Healing"_ _When you drink this potion, heal for 2d4+2, but don't cross it off in your inventory after._

[@SortKaffe]

Subtle way of telling a player: "I know what you did since last summer"

[@bonapartedavinci]

I had a dm who allowed fudged rolls, so long as we never abused it. We would sometimes claim to roll a nat 1 just for an awesome narrative moment. It helps that we're all experienced dm's. We all had an awesome campaign.

[@Geborro]

I feel like it needs to be said that there are some players who can go cheating because of really harsh and unforgiving DM. I was in campaign where situations of reading module as well as checking out monster stats occurred. I can't tell for sure, but I think that in situations like that you just don't like feeling helpless and frustrated all the time, so you do what you can to minimize those feelings, because it's the only way not to feel like shit game after game for months. Eventually when the temperature got too high, it was all addressed, but ignored by DM completely (and they actually blamed players in everything and wasn't going to change anything at all). So the only way was to quit. What I'm trying to say is if you find yourself guilty of something said above in the video and you're sure you don't have "I have to win" mentality - check the mental atmosphere at your table, analyze it. ESPECIALLY if you are playing with close friends, because we tend to be more forgiving to the shit our close ones do to us). Maybe that's the reason you feel like you have/want to cheat

[@JarieSuicune]

I certainly get you there! So far, I doubt anything like that has happened with my group and we've each got pretty good gaming standards. Nor would I want to deal with such a situation in my TTRPGs and so work hard to make my settings interesting and fun for everyone involved! I haven't really gotten to be a player much, so I have extremely little experience on that side of the table. However, there has been one game of My Little Pony where I was a player along with my family and the GM ruled that me using my "Duplication" power while magically turned into a Giant-size creature had absolutely no change on my capabilities of interfering with a rampaging monster. I was literally no better off than a single, normal-sized pony. And that sucked so much... the games since then have been much better with that GM, but that's possibly because they stopped allowing the use of the abilities from the expansion (maybe because of that one game... rather than putting in the time to figure out how to work with those abilities. I know, it's not easy, I'm a DM myself and typically only run homebrew while allowing characters to use all published, and some homebrew, material!). Even then, I still can't find a case where my new pony's Danger Sense ability is allowed to trigger. Sigh. Personally, I far more blame the mechanics for that game rather than the GM. It was written for playing with little kids, rather than adults with experience as a GM in D&D and Call of Cthulhu. (I really hope the new MLP game coming out from Renegade Press is far more complete, mechanically.) Those kind of feelings are exactly what gets me to cheat in certain video games. Not because the game is necessarily badly made or because I want to "just win", but because of encountering aspects of the game that, for me personally, cause major blocks to having fun in the game. In those cases, I've paid for the game and want to at least enjoy the story fully through if not the "full experience" and so will cheat to overcome the parts that I did not know of in advance. Or they turn out to be SO grindy to do that I literally don't have the time to invest to complete the game I have already bought. The typical cheats I use are: -Autokill/infinite HP (for games where the combat has gotten un-fun) -All items (mostly just in Pokemon, and only after already finishing the post-game quests.) -Save edit (to get all items, skills, ideal Pokemon; mostly in Pokemon, and after finishing post-game quests. I don't care for competitive play to begin with and I don't waste time with impossible setups. I just don't have the time for perfect breeding. Borderlands gets a special case, because I don't enjoy the farming aspect for everything every few levels and once I've beaten the game it is very fun to play through with maxed-out skills and weapons on the highest difficulty.) -Unlock bonus rewards (for games where I just don't have the time to replay many hours over and over and over to get that LAST character art. UGH.) -Stupid Achievements (for games where the achievements are annoying for the sake of it AND can be permanently missed in a playthrough. Like in Octopath Traveler, there was one of these for EACH TYPE OF FARMING/COMPLETION; so I used guides, cheated for easy kills and max powers, and at least tried to enjoy the story while spending too much energy watching out for each of those easy-to-permamiss things. UGH. I don't like being a 100% achiever, but I also get very frustrated about seeing something being "incomplete". And those who added achievements prey on that mentality. Thank you Nintendo for being better than them, at least so far.) And I've long ago gotten over any caring about the worthless statements or opinions of gatekeepers. If it's for my gameplay experience, I couldn't care less about what the toxic gaming community thinks.

[@JarieSuicune]

That went far longer than I expected. Curse my easy-to-rant/ramble brain.

[@valandilmann4257]

That is a reason for cheating, not an excuse. You should talk to your DM if the game feels too harsh and unforgiving. If its really so bad that you need to cheat to have fun, you should either be having a serious talk with the DM, or not playing the game anymore. Cheating isn't going to solve that problem

[@totalvoid6234]

Yeah, it's super uncomfortable hearing these guys talk about all their experiences with players cheating and the passive aggressive ways they deal with it when odds are if players are cheating its because they're not having a good time playing straight. It can be an ugly way of finding this out and an awkward conversation to have but it feels like it needs to be acknowledged somewhere.

[@whisperinwind87]

27:30 this became a problem I had in the first campaign I did, but mostly because the DM expected us to do the "a person should know what this is" metagame. The DM described a gaint 6 legged rocky-hide beetle monster and fully expected everyone to know that this was a reskinned Tarrasque since the description was similar to the Tarrasque, even though all of us players were first time players.

[@thoughtthru1848]

I feel the tarrasque ought to only be a background character. eff that guy.

[@demoulius1529]

What kind of DM 'casually' puts the Terrasque infront of new players?

[@whisperinwind87]

@@demoulius1529 The sadistic older brother/veteran D&D player type. Though this is the same DM who put his two level 3 players against a Kraken and a half-demon earlier in that campaign. How we survived the three turns before portal Ex-Machina opened and whisked us away I don't know...

[@NaskaRudd]

I accidentally cheated when we all first started because I didn't understand the difference between Character Level and Spell Level. So at 3rd level I was casting 3rd level spells but while we were all playing our first game none of us knew any better

[@adriannelson4214]

One of my players did that too, 2nd level spells at 2nd level as characters. If I recall, this player also didn't track spell slots. Newest player, never played before, gentle correction and proceed.

[@santosic]

Oh yeah it took me a while to understand as well. My first character ever was a Warlock, so that didn't help things.

[@tobykunze3143]

First time I played, buddy tried explaining all the spell stuff to me. Decided on just being a champion fighter instead. Haha

[@dwdillydally]

To be fair, stream lining this nomenclature *would* make D&D easier to teach and learn.

[@PredatorH2O]

Yeah, did that once too.

[@TJ__821]

I discovered this channel a couple weeks ago so I don't how much y'all read the comments, but I just wanted to let you guys know how helpful your content has been to me as a new DM. I really appreciate how well thought out your advice is and the obvious amount of effort you put into making these videos. Keep up the great work 😁

[@The-0ni]

28:43 I once volunteered to run a module for the DMs league and signed up to play it earlier the same day. I purposefully didn’t read it because I was gonna play through it anyways but I needed to see what mini’s I needed so I looked up in the appendix what monsters the adventure used. One of the stat blocks in the appendix revealed death dogs. A creature slightly more dangerous than a wolf due to its ability to inflict a disease to a tier 1 group that could cause character death unless a Paladin is in the party. I decided dying at tier 1 would suck for anyone playing that day due to the character death penalties/rules that season of adventurers league had so I made a Paladin. Thanks to being the only paladin in the party I saved the life of the kobold wizard who had been unfortunate and caught this disease. Once she realized the following week her kobold would have died without lay on hands the player really was grateful and its the only time I metagamed for AL and have zero regrets because the adventure’s outcome wouldn’t have changed except for the Kobold dying at lvl 1 after successfully completing the adventure alongside us.

[@AncientHydraGaming]

I lost a friend because his wife would do both the quick dice grabs and fraudulent bookkeeping. She would always claim to be bad at math (and this was backed up by experience). It got to the point that the (half-serious) threat was issued that she'd have her character sheet looked over and corrected IN RED PEN each week. Eventually I found digital character sheet programs, namely Hero Lab, and introduced them to my group saying that it'd help her track her bonuses, penalties, ammo, spells/day, hit points, etc. Well things improved for a while. Then later on we couldn't understand how she was getting so much damage on her rolls. I looked over her character portfolio and found she'd added an untyped modifier to weapon damage in the "Personal" tab that is usually used for plot specific or house rule changes that a DM has decided to grant a player. Well I confronted her, showed it to our group but her husband (GM at the time) said he'll look at it later and we ended the session. Turns out on the way home she simply deleted the change from her character and accused ME of lying. His own brother had my back cuz he remembered and, as host, banned her from his gaming table and his own brother until such time as he apologized to me. I haven't spoken to either one since.

[@_Abjuranax_]

I remember reading gaming tips in the 80's that recommended leaving your dice under the windshield of your car under a hot sun with the numbers you wanted on top, lol.

[@Joe-gb3lu]

@@dufjdh3u87rhhdbhfhd you definitely want to train them to feel that 20 on top is their preferred orientation.

[@steven9red]

I had an unfortunate experience one day with my Dnd group (as a player) when our group of heroes entered a town that was suffering under a false hydra. What was awful was that I know the telltale signs of a false hydra because I watched dnd videos for fun. I normally avoid the videos/stories about modules that I'm playing in right now, but since I had already seen the video, I had all the spoilers in my head. I had a number of ideas about subtly getting our group on the right track (the DM isn't the kind that gives helping hands to help get back on track), because anyone who has played a false hydra knows that it's physically impossible to be on the right track with a false hydra, without help from the DM (unless it has been spoiled already for you). Thankfully, I was scheduled for work late one day, and I asked my best friend to sub for me, when I showed up, the final fight had already begun, and the creature was half-dead! So yay for scheduling conflicts! To this day, I not sure how they found out, and I don't care to ask.

[@demoulius1529]

Whats a false hydra? If you can tell without spoiling it anyway.

[@CrazyLikeUhFox]

@@demoulius1529 honestly it’s a made up bullshit meme monster that erases memories. It’s not an official monster, but basically every DnD KZbinr and redditor was cranking out content about it a year or so ago and now the community has basically accepted it.

[@carlosbaroni1158]

I played a druid for a year in my first dnd campaign. I unintentionally “cheated” because I didn’t understand how preparing spells worked and i used max hp on wild shapes cause of a mishearing from the dm.

[@masonparizo705]

Years ago, we were six hours into the final epic conclusion of a multi- year campaign... through a series of bad rolls we were about to wipe at the final battle. It came down to me to bring us back from the brink (I was the healer), I shakily rolled my 20 and got a 7... I looked at my DM and before I could say anything he looked my straight in the eye and said "You got a 20 right". We stared at each other for half a second, and I said yes. We came back and eventually finished the campaign that was so incredibly dear to us. It ended like a movie with people jumping on the couches with joy, 20 years later we still talk about that game. While I understand that the dice usually make the final decision.. however in the setting that we were playing it was worth it to have some divine (DM) intervention to complete such an incredible journey. As you two said it's about the people around the table and the story that you're experiencing together. Does anyone else have a situation like that?

[@smrtt92]

I sometimes go "I didn't see that roll, please do it again" when one of my players needs a break

[@andrewburgess9578]

Back in the day a friend (we were 80s preteens) decided his AC of 2 in plate and sheild wasn't good enough so changed it to 7. The DM let him keep it...

[@onepebbleofmany]

Hilarious 😂

[@johnathanrhoades7751]

Ah. Descending AC confusing people since the 70’s 😂

[@sipjedekat8525]

Probably also made his thac0 higher to boot. So kind of him!

[@RPCauldron]

AHAHAHAHA EPIC

[@zephyrus339]

Recently I played an adventure that one of the players already played before. With the DM he created a backstory that his character was stuck in some sort of groundhog loop, giving him a sense of constant Deja Vu. The rest of the party pulled a Cassandra truth on him so no one believed him. One of the things this resulted in was him pointing at the cleric PC named Bob and shout: "Bob, disable that trap!" The reason was that last time he played there was a PC rogue named Bob. The adventure was fun for all involved.

[@htenerf137]

The most empathy I’ve had for cheaters came out of a group that was meeting in an open table situation at a game store. We eventually took game out of that store b/c the store had some super toxic culture issues. Amazing I made it out with such an amazing group of friends honestly. That said I know that a bunch of folks cheated early in our game (monk had ridiculous movement speed. Never got hit. We rolled for stat improvements and our Barb rolled insanely at low-levels) we had a re-session 0 at level 5 when we left where we all talked about our issues at the table. The folks who had come from hyper deadly DMs who were antagonistic and who didn’t value their characters sort of fell into a habit of just tweaking the game in their favour (in their opinion). That’s a crap environment to learn the game in as well. So I’m sure there are people out there who just assume they’re taking the smarter path to save their character or win the game. Not to say its right but I try to at least give cheaters a chance. Lay down the expectations and don’t stand for people being cheaters. But also not just responding with animosity. Even reading the comments here plenty of folks cheat just through learning process. Leading with kindness definitely has gone a long way.

[@LakeVermilionDreams]

My reply to that is to talk with players about idolizing their characters. That's the disease from which the symptom is cheating stems. A player can and should be excited about their characters but also need to understand they are consenting to playing a game built with combat, HP, Death Saves, and Death mechanics. They need to stop confusing themselves with with their character. They are not their character, their character is not their brother or sister or partner. Their character is not a reflection upon them such that if a character dies it does not mean anything about the player. Character death is NOT failure. It's part of the story you're all collectively unfolding. There, you have no reason to cheat to preserve your character any longer.

[@alfadum]

i had a player fudge their dice rolls and not ticking off spells they used, after a talk with them we found that they lived alone and had a very toxic work environment. so sitting down at our table and being told "what would we have done if you hadn't been healing us" was the only positive reinforcement they would get.

[@SavantApostle]

If you want to cheat, take notes, ask questions, and get prepared. Some sidequests might not be necessary but make the next encounter easier.

[@ooooneeee]

The ultimate "cheat": giving the game all of your attention and taking notes ❤️.

[@graemeclark3181]

We definitely have a player with the fastest hands in the land for "that dice is cocked". Also last Tuesday I ran a one shot where they were changing their spells on the fly. I didn't spot it but another player had their character sheet open from the campaign list and could see them just picking random spells they didn't have selected. I mean, it's a one shot. They were never going to play that character again.

[@UyeGaming]

I always do the balance the dice act for cocked dice. If you can place the same dice on top the dice and it does not fall off, it's not cocked.

[@DarkAvatar1313]

"Oh it's cocked die..." is why almost I want to require dice trays or towers at every game. I did once after a session where that kept happening, so for the next session I went to the dollar store and bought six small tupperware containers (the sandwich holder ones) for everyone so they can roll in them.

[@DINNER-man]

One time a player rolled a check with advantage (the DM didn't give him advantage). When I asked why he rolled with advantage, he picked up the lesser result and said it would've been the higher result anyway, even though he rolled both at the same time.

[@Words-er5ez]

If you remember old school Shadow Run, we had a GM who would always roll very well. He didn't use a screen so we all saw the dice. The players on the other hand had just THE WORST luck so we all barely survived even the most basic fights. A single, unaugmented, perfectly normal guard dog, killed 3 of our team because of the dice. After that the GM gave us extra "luck dice" we could use once per game, after we failed a really important roll to offset the curse.

[@talongreenlee7704]

I’ve had meta game knowledge backfire on me. I as a player know that oozes tend to have high magical resistances, so I advised our wizard not to cast elemental spells against a gelatinous cube we were fighting, but gelatinous cubes actually don’t have any resistances or immunities, even to acid damage. I felt like it was general knowledge that adventurers would know, but when you’re in a situation where there’s an exception and that’s not the case, you can end up getting things wrong.

[@BramLastname]

I had this when my party encountered a bunch of "beasts", As their 'panic button' didn't affect beasts, When in reality they had encountered mostly monstrosities and elementals that had some animal traits, (Think Owlbears and Flail Snails for example) As they later determined after some research, Because they tried to find out why this 'cat' ate mushrooms.

[@kendallchaos]

Yeah I had a similar thing happen to me a few weeks ago, my character was fighting a water spirit and I actually said (out of character) that I would be using ice but I (the player not character) knew despite ice would do more to water IRL it doesn’t work in DND…my DM took pity on me overthinking it and second guessing myself and told me to just use it because it did do more

[@DaleRMorse]

As someone who's played and GM'd for over a decade, I think this is a great and easy to watch or listen to video for someone (especially new GM's) that thinks one of their players might be cheating. Good stuff and hope to see more!

[@TheRawrnstuff]

I have GM'd somewhere around a dozen different groups, sizes 4-7, and I have never had a game where I noticed cheating. If it has ever happened at my table, the effects have been so subtle that they haven't affected the quality of the game. Perhaps it's due to my game style - I never design my games in a way that "success in the game" is reliant on rolling high scores. A low roll might close a door, but open a window instead. That helps create an environment where the players don't feel compelled to cheat.

[@phatcavy98]

First time playing 5E I did a life cleric, and I misread the channel divinity. Up until level 6 I was healing people back up to full HP constantly. Then one time I used almost all my pool to revive the barbarian back to full HP and the DM asked me how I did that. It was then explained that you can't go above half their HP maximum with that ability, he thought I was just burning high level healing spells to supplement the channel divinity. Needless to say combat got allot harder with that newly discovered restriction. It also taught me a valuable lesson about reading the rules of a feature very closely.

[@cthulwho8197]

In olden times, we didn’t have fancy d100 dice with multiples of 10 on. We rolled two different coloured dice with 0-9 on. “Forgetting” to say which dice represented 10s, or seemingly changing which colour they were using as 10s multiple times in a session was quite common.

[@dapperspider3766]

Yeah, metagaming is a hard one to divorce yourself from. I personally know a great deal about a lot of monsters in the Monster manuals, a fact my DM thankfully knows all too well. In the instances of when our characters run into something in our world, I usually ask my DM: "Would I have to roll something to know what I know?"

[@demoulius1529]

When I DM well known monsters I describe them and dont call them out by name. Youd be suprised how many people know stats and trivia about monsters, but dont actually know how they look like xD Or sometimes il reskin them a little. But only do that when im expecting metagaming shenanigans.. They cant abuse the well known weakness to fire of a Troll if they dont know it is one.

[@TheOmegaXicor]

@@demoulius1529 if you haven't run a Troll in this world before, just make them weak to Ice and Thunder instead of Fire and Acid, the characters wouldn't know the difference and the players will know that it is an anti-metagaming technique that helps the whole group.

[@ladytanuki]

Faking or forgetting ability/item/spell uses is why I as a player like to keep track of that stuff for the other players at times and call them out on it (for example, "didn't you already use your reaction to Counterspell?" or [to a level 7 wizard] "you cast Blight three rounds ago, I don't think you can cast Dimension Door unless you have it from an item or something"). I also call it out on myself - for example, when playing a rogue, the DM asked me if I wanted to Uncanny Dodge when I took damage, and I said "I just used that against the other enemy two turns ago". I also appreciate when a player does this when I am the DM, as, like the Dungeon Dudes said, I have a lot to keep track of and often forget things in the moment.

[@hisumim]

As a DM I had a player cheat in the first game I ran. He had asked to multi-class since it made sense for his character, which I agreed to, only for him to continue leveling his base class along with his second class each level so by the time the party reached level 8 he was effectively like level 15 and made combat encounters incredibly one-sided. He always got an attitude when things weren't centered around him so he made the rest of the party essentially unnecessary. The whole experience killed my confidence and has made it really hard for me to pick up the game again, even though I would like to keep DMing for my friends.

[@sipjedekat8525]

There's a lot more going on with a toxic player like that than just cheating. He sounds like the kind of guy who projects his insecurities on other people. Go ahead and enjoy the game, but not with him. People like that rarely change for the better.

[@ooooneeee]

Damn, that sucks. Most players aren't this toxic. Maybe in the future you could dip your toe back into dming by running a one shot?

[@inofficialplaytester3271]

I'm currently in my first game / campaign, and I heard druid was tricky, but I had watched multiple episodes of different actual plays and I thought "can't be that hard right?" Concentration is the bane of my existence. We were once in a fight where we had many small enemies and one important one that shouldn't get away, so I used spike growth to get some passive damage and make the target move less / with risk of damage, but one of the minions knocked me out after my first turn. Only after the fight did one of the other players realize that spike growth was a concentration spell, and realizing that I was still confused whether it should've ended because I never went to 0 hit points, I only got knocked out in a status effect way. Rules be hard. We all learn from our mistakes. And I'm learning a lot 🤷

[@scottspiegelhelgeson5538]

I would happily volunteer to run Curse of Stradh for the two of you. And any others. Id never compare myself to Monty as a dm, but ive been running games since the mid 90s. I love your live plays. It would be an honor to have you at a table

[@cirkleobserver3217]

The way to avoid meta gaming is to get super focused on acting as your character. You need to already have a good grasp of who they are and what they know. This will probably get you killed quite often, but hopefully the DM will appreciate your commitment and take it easy on you.

[@demoulius1529]

I find that not all players can put their characters in harms way like that. Even if its completly in character. Also its not always completly clear if something is common knowledge in universe. Or just common knowledge amongst us players. Personally when I want to use 'common knowledge' I check up with the DM first if it is actually common knowledge. Avoid alot of headaches and harsh arguments that way ;)

[@TheOmegaXicor]

@@demoulius1529 It's a sad option but if you have players who can't help but Metagame, just change the scenario, the Troll is weak to Ice and Lightning, the switch behind the bookcase is now under the floor, the puzzle where you have to arrange panels to make a purple light, now it's green (make sure you change any appropriate hints in game or it's just unfair) but then players can't metagame, though it's a lot of work for the DM when you have to go against your inbuilt knowledge of the monsters/adventures

[@XanceMRevola]

I almost made a problem of the metagaming issue in a recent session. I had picked out a rug of smothering for use in a homebrew setting, and at least a month or two later, encountered one in Curse Of Strahd. Luckily, the only thing I retained was the part about it smothering things and that it was a bit strong. I was the target of its smothering attack, and as it was attacked by my party, I was reminded of its other features and I found out one of them that I hadn't truly grasped the first time I read it. So, in short, have a brain that relies on stat blocks in front of you and you'll never be able to cheat

[@Richard-sy1ej]

There was one player in a group I was in that was fudging their dice rolls some of the time. I saw them and asked them about it. They weren't stealing the spotlight during the sessions and if anything were taking more of a backseat compared to some of the other players, especially during combat, as they'd built a character more around social skills and deception, so I was curious as to what the issue was. They said that they felt like they weren't really being given much to do by the DM, and felt like they were mostly being ignored and/or punished significantly if ever they rolled poorly. They essentially felt so left out of the game that if they didn't fudge their dice rolls occasionally, they thought weren't contributing to the party overall and adventure - and that they didn't feel comfortable talking to the DM about how they felt. I actually had to have a word to the DM to say "Hey, this player is feeling left out and like they're being ignored with their character choices." The DM was a bit taken aback, but did make an effort after that to make sure they paid more attention to that player and their choices, and the player stopped fudging their dice rolls as the game went on. So if a player IS fudging their dice rolls, it might NOT just be because they want to hog the spotlight; it might be because they feel like they're not ever getting the spotlight.

[@WundawuziAT]

Regarding the "Read the book" metagaming part... I recently had a talk with a friend who is - like me - currently running his Dungeons of Drakkenheim campaign (for players, quit reading, spoilers ahead) and he told me he had a player that warned everyone about Black Ivory Inn "looking like it was stuck in time" when first seeing it. He continued to warn players about eating the food and asked to get a room, just to then upstairs listen to all the doors if he could hear someone. Said friend then made a smart move and on the fly changed some things. He said his player was incredibly confused when they entered the cellar and instead of a band of bandits in a room there was an underground cave system. Its such a sad thing to do. One story that keeps telling told till today was when we played our very first campaign (whichwas Lost mines of Phandelver, spoilers ahead). The enteres the mansion searching for Glasstaff and in the first room they had a fight with some thugs and one of my players had an Ideal like "Only a clean weapon can deliver a clean blow" or something, so he moved his mini to the cistern and declared that he wanted to dunk his bloody sword into the pool to clean he. He literally took the one spot where i had marked that Glasstaff placed his secret satchel. It ended with them chasing him to the cistern where he was obviously super confused (and soon super dead) because his escape plan was denied. 100% guarantee that player had no idea that stash was there.

[@thekaxmax]

one of the players in our Living Greyhawk (3.0/3.5) groups got given, by several of the GMs, a 4 cm D20 that was easy-to-read white numbers on red. Each one of them had the same reason given: "My eyes; I need to see." And he not only had to use that die at all times, but roll when asked rather than his habitual 'pre-roll' trick. When they started this he stopped getting confirmed crit hits every session. Strange, that. Also, he as playing in the GM's training groups, rather than public play groups, but never ever GMd himself. He wanted to play only with the 'elite' players. Trolls: use Norse trolls instead, call the D&D trolls something else and make them fey. Or abberations.

[@philipmeade7789]

My favorite trick die is a d20 that only goes from 1-10. Great to give to friends as a little prank in (very) friendly games

[@johnathanrhoades7751]

In the first campaign I played in, a friend had one of those and we were all really confused for a while why he couldn’t roll above a ten until someone noticed 😅

[@Voronore]

When I started playing, ALL d20 were numbered 1-0 twice, but weren't intended as "trick dice". The idea was that you would paint/crayon the numbers in two colors, to differentiate 1-10 and 11-20. They started printing the double-digit numbers a few years later.

[@johnathanrhoades7751]

@@Voronore yeah, I believe he had his dad’s dice, so it was likely one of those.

[@Allvaldr]

And I totally agree with you on public play. I haven't run AL for 5E myself, but I have done years and years of Pathfinder's Society and seen ALL the examples shown here during that time. Organised play can be great. But there will always be folks abusing it.

[@hathus5536]

In the campaign I'm playing in, I'm currently playing a Druid and I'm still relatively new to that type of character so I always forget that I can change my spells on a rest. I have been guilty of changing spells on the fly but usually in a point where there is a bit of downtime like some of the other characters are RPing and doing their thing. Never in combat and typically I'll bring it up with the DM that I'm doing so to see if they are okay with it.

[@Camthalion666]

I *think* there was a thing in 3.5 where you could swap out some prepared spells without taking a rest. But it took 10mins per level of the spell or something. Also, the way prepared spells worked back then was a lot less flexible, since you had to prepare each casting separately. I.e., if you wanted to cast Fireball twice that day, you prepared it two times. So having the option to swap out some spells was a lot more of a necessity than it is now.

[@pgb8000]

I'm a druid too. After a long rest, the DM often jumps straight into the next bit of the story and I'm still rearranging which spells I have for that next day (I'm quite new to the class, so often still reading what they do). It's happened that combat has started and I'm still picking spells...

[@CunningLingu1st]

When I was first learning D&D, I approached it with a competitive mindset to win an imaginary prize instead of for the experience. I started with a barbarian, but due to a string of bad rolls quickly got frustrated and started losing interest. My DM empathized with my frustration and informed me of a pseudo middle ground in Rogue’s “Reliable Talent”. This provided guard rails against perpetual failure and allowed me to focus more on the narrative, sharing the adventure with friends, and ultimately prioritizing fun, even in failure, over “infallible demigod with impenetrable plot armor”. Nowadays, I predominantly opt to take a 1 to see how glorious my failure will be. What started as a primary source of aggravation has become a primary source of enjoyment.

[@eruditecaptain3117]

Okay, but that trick D20 that can't roll less than ten is kinda a funny idea for rogues with reliable talent. I know it's not actually the same, balance-wise, of course.

[@RoninXDarknight]

I had a D20 that couldn't roll over 12 ;)

[@djohns9295]

“Ive seen cheating happen from friends I thought I could trust,” Monty says and looks at Kelly… 🤔🤣

[@Kceam]

One thing about cheating: sometimes it's a symptom of other deeper problems at the table, for example if a person feels like the DM is being unfair or especially targeting them all the time. Or when the player feels like certain rules (or more often homebrew rules) are unbalanced and they have to make up for it. This might lead to them cheating in return. Cheating is bad, but sometimes its good to look into what might have caused it. It's not always Players wanting to win or be better than everyone else. It might be a lack of communication, or players not feeling able to talk openly about what they dislike in the game and trying to make up for it by "correcting" for it by cheating secretly.

[@sipjedekat8525]

I agree. Especially with younger players, they can feel intimidated by others or are inherently introverted, and therefore feel all the more need to be more badass than reasonable. Especially teens, whose hormones tell them they need to be cool at all times and have an overwhelming urge to hide flaws. They don't yet see the fun in failure, or the story potential in flawed characters.

[@atyrannosaurusrex]

As someone who cheated when I began roleplaying, I can also say that it can also be a symptom of an unhealthy understanding about what roleplaying means. When I began roleplaying, I brought my experience as a writer and a videogamer and when wanted to make sure that my characters didn't fail when I needed them to. Teaching players that failure should be a part of the narrative experience and can lead to enriching or hilarious moments is important. The dice are what turns your RPG from a fanfic to an interactive experience. It's all about framing. It's something I definitely regret now because of how many experiences and opportunities to overcome adversity I cheated myself out of.

[@jamesm2577]

No.. jumping to blaming the GM is harmful in that it provides cover for actual toxic behavior while ignoring the fact that players are not always blameless victims. Seth Skorkowsky has a great video on it here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/a2W8l5ufetSIebs

[@Kceam]

@@jamesm2577 I didn't say it was the GM's fault, it seldom is, and it's still always the player that is actively cheating. I just said that the players might have reasons for their cheating that point to other problems at the table like lack of communication, or the players feeling like the DM is biased against them, even if that isn't the case. One example where I know a friend of mine cheated: we played a game with a non DnD Homebrew rule system, which was pretty broken and unbalanced, especially at higher levels. However the DM said that he would not adjust the rules because it was too much work and the campaign wasnt going for too much longer. The friend was playing a fighter, who scaled by getting extra attacks. But at the same time there were critical fumbles in the system when rolling a 1 or 2. They lead to chaotic outcomes, often involving accidentally hitting other player characters. The DM didn't think it was that big of a problem that the guy was getting statistically worse by getting extra attacks and therefore a higher probability to fail every turn, and refused to change the rules after having been asked. I know my friend cheated by adjusting 1s or 2s to 3s or 4s from time to time, still missing but not almost killing the other party members by fumbling all the time. So in this case, of course the cheating wasn't the right solution, but I did get why it was happening, the DM was very stubborn about potentially changing rules, because he thought critical fumbles were funny and because he didn't have much time to do so. So the cheating was a symptom of other problems at the table, like bad communication but in this case also problematic behaviour by the DM.

[@jamesm2577]

@@Kceam That scenario is even worse , it's not the player's role to decide what rules to change or not. Cheating because the GM wouldn't change a rule someone wants changed is entirely counterproductive *because* it prevents the GM from seeing a baseline that would show if/why a rule needs to be changed or reverted. A player doing this also might be the reason why the GM started making changes that they can't revert while the cheating continues. This is a situation that 5e makes worse because the PCs don't need anything from the GM so the GM can't hold back on cheating Bob's needs or give to noncheating Alice a bit more generously since there's nothing allotted by the system math to hold back or give.

[@shirosenshiesq]

once played with a guy who cheated constantly, but the DM was either blind or didn't care. First he used metal die, which weren't designed to be rolled, but rather were paper weights. All d6s, but not with numbers - they had pips. So he built a character around using d6s, and would casually drop the die on the table to make it land directly on a high number every time. After he got caught, he tried shaving die to favour certain sides, and even took to injecting die with glue to weigh them down. When he got caught with that, he moved onto buying trick die. His masterpiece was a custom made dice tower which, if you put a d6 in it, had a series of pegs inside that would make it tick down in a specific orientation and pop out as a specific number. He learned what numbers facing up would put out which ones at the end and would try and throw people off of the scent by occasionally rolling poorly. He then tried to design a few others that would work for other die, but it was much harder to pull off.

[@ac3nigthmare238]

When you compared pre reading the module to getting a game manual/walkthrough. My older brother used to do this. He bought the guide book to every game we ever got as kids and played the game page by page. And of course being the older brother he got to play games first so i was never surprised by a game. I had watched my brother do it already perfect the first time. This is probably the reason i turned to TTRPGs and open world non story driven video games.

[@thoughtthru1848]

I admit it. I changed a cantrip to "spare the dying" because I really needed it --- as the very first spell my character ever cast. I have no intention of changing anything else, but consider this my "last character tweak" as I was just introducing my character.

[@anthonyrenli8740]

as a lifetime DM - I find it REALLY hard to stop myself from Metagaming monsters etc. What I do to stop myself is I just ask the DM flat out: "I know what this monster is as a player, but would my Character know what it is and what would my Character know about it's strengths, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities." I then try to play as best I can based off of their ruling.

[@Stray_GM]

This is so hard to deal with as a forever DM.

[@sipjedekat8525]

As a DM I work around this by never using the exact stat blocks on monsters, giving them unique abilities for fun, or just invent new monsters on the go. If my player tells me the giant should have a lower AC, i shrug and tell them this one's tougher than the rest. Oh, and he uses a custom ground slam with his tree trunk, roaring like a madman while doing so. Roll a save.

[@Hogan698]

Same here. Metagaming is pretty easy to do if you're familiar with a lot of monsters/spells etc. I usually tell the DM "I know what this is out of game, but would my character know?" This happened just yesterday. I knew what a spell was all about, so I just shut up and let the other players figure it out.

[@immortalmonk2891]

As a DM/player the easy fix for me as a player with my DM is to ask if my character can roll a history or related skill check regarding a monster to determine how much I know of them based on my training and experience. That way they know I'm being honest with my DM knowledge and knowledge of the monster manual but I'm also respecting their game world.

[@drivecFC]

I was playing a rogue(planned on going scout) and I chose nature and survival at lvl 1 without relizing at lvl 3 I would get double pro without needing to have learned them already. I though I needed to be prof to get double pro from survivalist. I felt really bad and changed my character sheets without telling anyone I should have talk to the dm because later in a game i ended up having medicine prof which I didn't earlier in the campaign felt guilty and embarrassed for so long even after telling the dm why.

[@flamingbull3438]

Re-specing your character is totally normal! Especially if you are a newer player or are playing a class for the first time. Even for experienced players, as a DM, if one of my players didn’t like how their character was built, I’d be more than happy to work with them to change their character.

[@SveinJohnnyFedje]

You didn't cheat. Read in Chapter 4 of the PHB: PROFICIENCIES: Each background gives a character proficiency in two skills. Skills are described in chapter 7. In addition, most backgrounds give a character proficiency with one or more tools. Tools and tool proficiencies are detailed in chapter 5.If a character would gain the same proficiency from two different sources, he or she can choose a different proficiency of the same kind (skill or tool) instead.

[@dodobarthel2249]

Honestly that doesn't sound like cheating to me at all, most DMs I know would allow you to take those proficiencies at lvl 1 and then respec them at 3 just so you don't end up with less...

[@SortKaffe]

The rules about picking a different proficiency is specific to proficiencies gained from your background (effectively, you're following the guidelines on creating a custom background) and only apply to character creation. After that, you need to talk to your DM. That said, I find it silly when feats or class features give you a specific proficiency without letting you choose a different one when you already have it - going from zero knowledge to expert when you hit level 3 is just inconsistent.

[@arcady0]

5:50 - years ago I used to be a dice cheater. I couldn't resist the urge. I cured myself by buying giant dice. Each of my dice was basically tennis ball sized. Then I'd roll them out across the table and I was stuck with what I threw out. Being large and loud made my rolls silly moments and that 'distracted me' just enough to work. After that I just trained myself to enjoy the story and not care about the success of an individual character I was playing. But the giant dice was my 'gimmick' to get past the urge to sneakily manipulate a roll.

[@ribkoboldscout6740]

An old manager of mine told me about playing dnd as a kid with his older brother as the dm. My manager gave his character unrealistically high stats, and when his brother realized, he basically threw my manager into a tomb of horrors style trap while the other pcs watched him get killed

[@scottgudal945]

My family has a dice rule called "Andy's Rules". Named after my Grandfather. Any dice that is cockeyed, stacked, hits anything, or falls off the playing field is automatic reroll. It has "rolled" into my party's rules.

[@Natt_Skapa]

The worst I've cheated was lowering the enemies ac by one to make sure that the big thematic attack hit so my player could feel like they were able to contribute

[@Satchel_Gizmo]

That's not cheating? That's called being a fun DM?

[@hathus5536]

I don't feel like that is cheating per se. I've run a few one shots and there have been numerous times where I overestimated or underestimated the players' capabilities and have adjusted the encounters on the fly. As long as it's not to the detriment of the players.

[@thetowndrunk988]

That’s perfectly acceptable on the DM side. I’ve even had the ac “lower with hp” just because my players were so beat up.

[@K_i_t_t_y84]

That's literally not an example of cheating at all.

[@ChiefBloodrain]

A player once told me their character knew the language a newly introduced and somewhat foreign NPC was speaking, but when I checked their sheet later, they didn't have that as a spoken language. Part of the encounter was meant to be the language barrier, and it got resolved instantly by a lie.

[@matthewpekelny9761]

One idea to potentially use trick dice in a more legitimately, is you can incorporate them into a magic item, like a magic weapon that for a certain number of times per day can make attack rolls with that all 10+ die. I imagine using a unique die like that would make the item memorable to the player that uses it.

[@valerius88]

I remember when I played a Drow Paladin. I started off following my Sunlight Sensitivity, but sometimes I forgot. I distinctly remembered (and felt bad about) when I had been forgetting it in an outdoor combat encounter, and I didn't bring it up to the DM. Later on, at higher levels, I asked my DM if, as a Light Paladin, I could forego this Sunlight Sensitivity, and he was cool with it and allowed it. But yeah, as thematic as being a Drow was for that character, I would never play one again, because Sunlight Sensitivity was way more painful than I thought it would be.

[@TheRewyn]

Great video! That said, can't wait to see some of your PF2E coverage.

[@mokenstrudel]

Been watching the channel as long as I've been a DM. I've grown and learned much with you two. I'm amazed you guys still have good and informative video ideas. Love the flow guys, keep it up :)

[@allenfortenberry9924]

when it comes to monster stats that I know but my character might not I often ask the DM what I know about that type of creature and then act based off of that

[@hewhogoesbymanynames]

The hard part is "experimentation." Like if we know that the troll is regenerating but nobody rolled high enough to know why (or nobody wants to spend a damn action to try to roll), is the Wizard metagaming for casting a fire spell when they have like 3 fire and 3 other spells? What if they cycle through elements, in what order must they hit fire?

[@mackalinsteyn7343]

With regards to bookkeeping, I actually had something happen when I first played the game. I made my Paladin on DNDbeyond but my DM wanted a physical sheet. Back then, I just copied my sheet as it was and then used the physical sheet, but before we started, he reminded me I had a shield and I needed to add a +2 to my AC. Turns out, DNDbeyond did that already and I ended up with an AC of 20 at 1st level. We both didn't realize until the boss of the first session missed and the DM asked how did I have a 20. We then realized and changed immediately. Thankfully I learnt from then and double and triple check everything

[@zwinmar21]

Back in the day I did: the reasoning was the long long string of bad luck with random number generators. It was so bad that everyone was commenting on it and it was very common to have to make a new character (or even 2 or 3)every session, It was so bad the DM eventually just made my character a demilich (modified) so that I didnt have to keep rolling up a new one.