# 12 Cheats and Their Habits



## Stormonu (Sep 18, 2013)

*The Storylord
*This is the person who will play the game by the rules as long as he is winning.  As soon as things start to go south, the cheater comes out.  He'll misread the dice, miscount bonuses (twice) or when a DC is announced, miraculously beats it by one.   It's fairly easy to figure out the storylord, as they rarely attempt to conceal what they are doing; they feel they are immune to the whims of the dice - or cards, or whatever random factor would deflate their deserved triumph.


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## LonePaladin (Sep 18, 2013)

*The Squinter*
This is an offshoot of the Lord of the Dice, in that this player uses dice that are intentionally hard to read. They may be smaller than an aspirin, or printed in a color pattern that makes the numbers hard to see, or often both. Regardless, the Squinter relies on these dice because he has to peer at them _very_ closely, and can therefore declare them to have whatever results he wants.

He will use the same misdirection methods as the Lord of the Dice, except that he will let the dice sit on the table for quite a bit, while he leans in closely to examine them. Because they are so small and/or hard to read, he can justify having to do this, but this also ensures that no one else at the table is able to see what they rolled.


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## Morrus (Sep 18, 2013)

*The Hoarder*
OK, so this one isn't strictly a cheat.  It's an RPG type who somehow manages to get the lion's share of the treasure every time. The players start complaining that their characters are underpowered for the adventure, and that they have far too few magic items, and the GM is mildly confused.  He's certainly given out more than enough magic items!  What do these guys want?  Only when an audit occurs does everyone realise - there's this one guy with eight magic swords, three magic suits of armour, 92 potions, 14 wands, 9 wondrous items, and somewhere in the region of 89 million GP because somehow he manages to continually buy stuff without his wealth decreasing.  And he can't even use half of them!


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## Hand of Evil (Sep 18, 2013)

*The On-The-Edger*
Seems to always have a dice that rolls off the table of ends up sitting on an edge.  Will re-roll if the result looks bad but will keep the roll if it is good.  Mostly will roll one dice at a time for max effect but also does the *hit low dice roll*, where they hope the dice changes the results.


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## paradoxweaver (Sep 18, 2013)

*The Eidetic Memorist*
As I've got one at my table, I wanted to express this one. 
It's the guy who starts his turn and is remembered to add his ongoing damage and answers "Yeah, I'll add that after my turn to speed things up". Then, he uses a daily magic item power and says "Nah, I don't tick them off, I can remember what I use", the does the exact same thing with his healing surges. 
Suddenly, it's the fifth fight of the day, he still got 8 surges, two of his three daily attack powers and is surprised when everyone looks at him special when he calls one of his daily for what seems like the third time of the day...
*
The Team Player
*A quickie with this one.
At the moment the Eidetic Memorist calls his daily power for the third time, he'll swear that "no, he hasn't use this power still". Same thing for all the other cheaters on this lists. He can vouch for them and add to their limited credibility.


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## fireinthedust (Sep 18, 2013)

*The GM's Girlfriend*
Like the Hoarder, except this is a biased GM who spends his time feeding the GF (or BF, friend, etc.) every gold peice, magic dagger, etc. while the rest of the party has little more than a dagger with "light" cast on it.  They explain it away, saying the beneficiary is playing a Rogue who happens to find loot elsewhere in the adventure while everyone else is killing orcs.  It's role-playing, right?  Or is it a role-playing Wrong?!


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## jasper (Sep 18, 2013)

Bravo Bravo Thanks for a well written write up of these very Rare.... um Common occurring creatures.


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## Fiddleback (Sep 18, 2013)

It's nice to see some of the 'bad guys' you folks have mentioned.  In particular, I hadn't considered The Team Player before, but there often is that one guy who enables the cheating of others all in the name of just trying to get along.

The Storylord is good, too.  Although, with the growing prevalence of story-based games, he may become less of a threat at the table when not playing games tied so heavily to the fall of the dice.  Narrative games may be just his thing.

Keep the suggestions coming.


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## Alzrius (Sep 19, 2013)

*The Tickler*
The best forms of intimidation are subtle, and the Tickler is a master of this. They've identified what the GM (and, sometimes, the other players) finds uncomfortable, and should something happen that the Tickler dislikes, they'll drop hints that they're going to bring that up in the course of the game. Does the GM become embarrassed and self-conscious when having to role-play flirting with a PC? You can be sure the Tickler will insist on playing such a scene should one of the NPCs not give the party something they want. Does someone have trouble dealing with aggressive people? You can be sure the Tickler will role-play their character's anger if they find themselves disagreeing with that person.

Smart Ticklers know to stick to areas that other people blame themselves for not being comfortable handling. They won't engage in areas controversial enough to elicit strong reactions from the group - they'll instead stick to targeted areas based around what the GM/other players know they can't handle, but wish they could. Because the Tickler knows that all it takes is to press a few specific areas to make the other person squirm...


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## kitsune9 (Sep 23, 2013)

I would have to contend with several players at the same game who were Lord of the Dice. They all rolled 18's, 19's, and nat 20's frequently. It was really annoying, because one of the cheaters sat next to me and would do it and when I called him on it, he would get huffy about it. After a couple of game sessions like this, I just stopped going over their house to run stuff for them. Got tired of it really quick.


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## DMZ2112 (Sep 23, 2013)

*The Rules Ambulance Chaser*
Like a rules lawyer, only he always gets the rules wrong -- in some fashion that is in his favor.  "Oh, that isn't what I thought that meant."  Sure it isn't, buddy.

*The Statistical Anomaly*
Those jammy-bastard Phantom Rollers and Lords of the Dice who you watch like a hawk and who still never roll under a 15.  "Dammit, who rolls THREE 18s for ability scores?!"  This guy.

Personally, as a dungeon master, what gets me riled up about cheaters is not that they are fudging rolls but that they are missing the point of the game.  Failure should be just as much a reward as success because of the opportunities for development it provides.

I confess to having been a Squinter as a dungeon master in the past.   Nothing gets under my skin like players who read results off my dice instead of waiting for a call.  "All right!  A 1!"  "Nope, critical hit."  "But the die says--"  "CRITICAL. HIT."


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## Wild Gazebo (Sep 24, 2013)

I'm an enabler...but not a *Team Player*...so I guess I'm nothing' but a minion?

Perhaps a *Silent Witness*?


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## Fiddleback (Sep 24, 2013)

Silent Witness is a good one.  In fact, I like all the suggestions made so far.  Keep 'em coming.


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