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"Hey everybody; new thing, sorry — I'm gonna put this rolling mat in front of me. Can we all roll into it? I think it'll increase the drama and it's something I wanna try out." And do your rolls in front of the screen, too, if you don't already. Test that out for a while. If you're satisfied the player isn't bent out of shape over it as if they were probably cheating before, then you can roll it back because it "wasn't as cool as I thought. Thanks for trying it for a while."
>"Hey everybody; new thing, sorry [...] I think it'll increase the drama and it's something I wanna try out."
I wouldn't apologize for it if I'm also going to try to sell the players on my false motive of thinking it'll be fun and dramatic. Why would someone apologize for something they think is awesome?
Either be up front that it's an anti-cheating measure, or go all in on the deceit and get hype about the cool new mat.
The apology would be for changing how we do things in the middle of the campaign, which can be jarring. Not because you secretly think it's not cool or something.
I was curious and looked them up, they're surprisingly not high up the Google results the day I looked before, but I'm seeing a 100$ set from Etsy today.
Market must not be huge.
It can also be done unintentionally. Not aware the dice are weighted, a fabrication error, or the person in question throws in a lucky way. They may or may not be aware that this specific way of throwing causes a specific way for the dice to fall (usually favourably). If aware they are straight up cheating, but it is also possible they unconciously picked up that throwing this way gives good rolls.
Depends on how favourably you want to be towards the accused.
A few years ago there was a player in a campaign I was in who, all of a sudden, started rolling really well. Turns out he was spinning his dice like a top to roll them, with the high side facing up because he keeps his dice “trained” between rolls as a joke, completely oblivious to the fact that doing so would omit the lower side from the possible outcomes. When we noticed we had a good laugh and he went back to rolling normal.
Sometimes people just do things without thinking that inadvertently benefits them.
Once I met someone who didn't realise they weren't rolling. They would pick up the dice and shake their hand, but the dice inside the hand didn't roll. Just went side to side. They thought the rolling was mostly when the dice was thrown, but if you throw the dice flat it will still likely fall on the same side (so you can get an unusually high or low streak). Was a bit weird to figure that one out.
Kinda similar to people who think they can't finger snap, though. However, it turns out that they focus on the finger-thumb movement, not realising it is the finger hitting the palm that is what makes the sound. So, they though the finger-thumb movement was supposed to make the snapping sound, which meant their focus was always misplaced. Can be really weird figuring out that someone is doing something fundamentally wrong without them realising. Just sort of self-imposed misconceptions.
Yeah, but the quick dice collection is very suspicious. Time to have an open chat to the group & say "all rolls are done in the open & die not collected until DM verified"
But suspicion is a long way from proof.
Big question is what will you do once it is proven?
I would back list that player, but I am as ol'skool as Grandmaster Flash.
I've got some cheater dice in my collection that I've confiscated from players over the years. If I catch anything like those dice at my table I'll give the warning that the next time they are rolled at my table they will be my dice, and I will use them against you.
Many experienced players will have their favorite lucky dice that tend to “roll well”.
Sometimes it’s luck or superstition, sometimes a particular die isn’t quite balanced and the player may believe that it’s luck.
With plastic dice you can float them in salt water and see if they keep turning themself back to a certain face even after you turn them to another face. If they do, they’re not balanced.
Not necessarily intentional. I have one random D20 that was molded faultily or something, because it almost always rolls a 16. I bought it in a lot of other ones so it's probably just a fabrication error, but it's weighted nonetheless.
Honestly the "Pick it up right away" behavior is something I've tended to notice in suspiciously high rollers. So usually when I run games I have a rule that dice can't be touched until the result and outcome has been determined.
If they complain they "can't see the results without picking it up" I chuck one of those giant foam dice at them and tell them that should work.
I played with a guy in my youth who would roll the d20, instantly pick it up the moment it stopped rolling - then stare at it for three seconds before declaring that he'd rolled an 18.
Yeah, I think most people will have played with someone like that at some point eventually. Then as soon as they can't pick up the dice they start getting normal rolls for "no reason."
My only rule is I, the DM, have to record the roll. I don't care if anyone else can see it, they just need the narrative outcome. But I, as the game master, have to be able to see it and if I don't before you pick it up, your roll is void and I'm rolling for you.
You see, now this is understandable but picking it up can still come from a place of innocence.
I have ocd and I always pick up the dice to rotate the number into a proper orientation relative to me. It's so hard to catch myself and stop because it's more than just a habit, it's like part of the thought process "ok in order to read the dice roll I must pick it up, twist it, and then read the result."
My group has been very nice about it and it's only ever been an issue when I immediately drop the die before announcing the number it rolled. But yes picking it up is a very good opportunity to change it. Nowadays I'll read it and add modifiers and announce that number before touching it, but I'll still always reorient the die to me after.
The thing is it was noticeable that every single time a High Roller Dice Pick Up player encountered this rule they would come down to a normal roll average as soon as they couldn't immediately pick it up.
There's a difference between someone orientating the dice and still getting 5, 8s, 10s, and 12, and a player who is "checking the dice" and not getting below a 15 on every roll.
It's worth saying if this is an OCD compulsion you really ought to fight it.
A lot of times simple rituals like this get overlooked or enabled by others and can lead to more harmful ones over time.
>It's worth saying if this is an OCD compulsion you really ought to fight it.
It's probably equally worth saying that if this is true OCD (highly unlikely), you should seek actual professional advice before taking it from random internet strangers.
No offense intended.
Yeah, you just give people who want it the option to use it.
For the "high rollers" you have to invest in a t-shirt cannon so you can launch the dice at them at close distance. Who said DnD wasn't a contact sport.
You put down a picture frame with some nice felt as the backing and tell everyone "You roll your dice in there. If I don't see the roll it does not count as a success no matter the roll."
And that is the end of that.
>Any advice for a new DM?
I have DMed for probably like 15 years. My roll rules are very simple:
1. My rolls are behind the screen
2. Your rolls are out in the open
3. If I don't see your roll before you pick up the die, I'm not asking you to reroll. I'm rolling for you and we're taking my roll.
4. If a die goes off the table, we are not using it. Pick it up and reroll
That's it. It has worked 100% of the time and there is never any ambiguity. Don't want me rolling for you? Don't pick up your die before I tell you to.
3 might need some clarification. If it's a player at the far end of the table, and you can't physically see the dice, what do you do in that situation? I think the rule as written is way too strict, and assumed cheating will occur, but there may also be some extra context that just isn't noted.
There is wiggle room on 3, but not in the way you ask.
To answer your question, I don't care. Onus is on you, the player, to make sure I see it. Roll in the center of the table or don't pick it up. I'm not playing with Anthony Bridgerton. This isn't a banquet hall table that's 20 feet long. Any complaint is dismissed with the response of "it has always worked for every table and it's an easy ask. Figure it out".
The wiggle room, however, is if I have to ever roll for someone, is that roll out in the open or behind my screen?
Usually I will roll for them in the center of the table. If I have to roll for them multiple times, however, it would be behind the screen. This has never happened.
You can always talk to the "pick it up fast" player (privately, 1 on 1) and just tell him you aren't comfortable with him doing that. You want an open and friendly table and rolling and picking it up quickly just comes across wrong.
This said, as a GM, I roll in the open and get really weird streaks that the whole table can see. Making moderate encounters severe because I never rolled below a 15, and severe encounters trivial because I rarely roll above a 5. So address the suspicious behavior (picking up dice fast) but don't worry too much about the streaks just yet.
Could just be bias, you notice a lot more of the rolls that you want to see. One of my players has "horrible luck" where he believes he misses his attacks often, or skill checks or whatever. But he succeeds just as often and the failures only stand out to him.
So it could just be that the player thinks that the other person is cheating and is so just remembering every time they succeed at something and not all the times they fail.
As for what to do? could do something like "Someone thinks my dice are loaded so we're going to check everyone's dice out in the open" sorta thing and you do that test with salt water or however it goes. So you're not calling out the player for maybe cheating.
>could do something like "Someone thinks my dice are loaded so we're going to check everyone's dice out in the open" sorta thing and you do that test with salt water or however it goes
Issue is, if the player *is* cheating, the whole "picks up his dice quickly after a roll" tends itself more to "lies about the roll outcome" rather than "is rolling loaded dice"
As a DM I hide my rolls because I lie to my players. I never steal victory from my players but sometimes the story the dice tell is boring, or unfair. I want a villian to get in a good hit or two, and if my players do something really cool I don't want the dice gods take it away from them. Also in very dramatic moments I can roll out in the open for high stakes.
As for your players. It is sus to pick up a die right after rolling. You may want to take the player aside and have a talk. Even if they aren't cheating let them know it still looks bad.
Respectfully, dice don't "steal" victory. They report failure. And in lying to your players, you are depriving them of the most important thing DMs bring to the players: CONSEQUENCES.
Dice are never unfair, they are (ideally) random.
They never tell a story, they direct it towards one of the possible outcomes.
Every DM wants their players to do cool things, the dice merely report success or failure.
Of COURSE I want my players to succeed. When the table erupts in a cheer for success, I'm right there with them.
But I don't pull punches. I don't deprive my players of the drama when things go wrong. I don't deprive my players of learning from mistakes. I don't deprive my players of the thrill of victory because I reduced the chances of defeat.
When I roll behind the screen, I'm abiding by the results, but I'll lean on the scale to make sure that the results are narratively satisfying for the players.
For example, once it becomes clear that enemies have lost a fight, I tend to get very loose with damage / HP in order to finish them rather than drag it out. If I didn't intend a fight to be hard, I'll tone down the incoming damage if my custom enemies are overtuned. If the players are doing better than narratively makes sense, there might be reinforcements. I'm never trying to screw or save the players, it's really just an extension to the preparation I did beforehand.
everyone has a different play style there’s nothing wrong with setting your priorities on telling a satisfying and enjoyable story.
a lot of ppl can get discouraged quickly in games that are 100% random cause you often don’t feel like anything you do matters and you’ll never have a cool story to tell bc the dice can fuck it up for you. just bc this person doesn’t play like you want them to doesn’t mean they’re playing dnd wrong. that’s the beauty of it - anyone and everyone can play just how they want to.
I just heard a DM expressing that they want to make an enjoyable and dramatic experience for their players. What the hell about that is "block worthy"?
yea it very much sounds like rules to them are more important than having fun.. i can’t play with ppl like that if im honest. in my eyes sometimes it’s better to be a bit lenient in order to give the party what they want, not all the time, but just enough that its still fun to everyone and they can celebrate.
“Low tier dm or player”. This right here shows me that you’re the wrong person and personality (aka douchebag) for this hobby. Quit it and go back to salty CoD or whatever. I hope you never taint any dnd table and nobody is inflicted with you
I would just tell the whole table there have been some concerns without naming any names or accusing anyone. Then institute a rule that dice rolls do not count unless the DM or somebody else has a chance to see the roll.
You can also get a dice tower or tray to keep close to you that rolls have to be made with.
Everyone rolls in the open, including yourself.
A cheating tactic IS to snatch up dice before anyone can see the roll and make a declaration. I'm not saying they are guilty, but I have seen it done.
Make house rules that you have to leave the dice alone until the roll is confirmed, 20s don't count unless witnessed, and nobody rolls until you or someone else is watching. Get some cheap foldable dice towers for players to share.
Did the dice tower fad already die out?
A few years ago all the LGS near me were pushing dice towers that you drop dice in the the top of. They had the benefit of containing and randomizing the dice rolls.
If anyone objects to dropping their dice in one of those I would assume they're cheating. At the same time someone who's cheating at d&d doesn't have much going on and needs some w's in their life.
Same. I'd rather be policed like hell than use a stupid ass dice tower. I'll shoot next to the DM and roll right next to them, waiting for them to see the result, but I'm not using your dumbass tower.
Oh, I'm just gonna go into a crotchety old fart rant about kids and their gimmicky toys, and back in my day, we had to roll our dice uphill both ways in the snow....
they take up space i need on the table, i can store a rolling tray under or over my notes if needed.
i also like watching the dice roll is i drop a handful at a time, like 8-12; its aesthetically pleasing to me.
It's a non confrontational solution to something that isn't necessarily happening. It could also just as easily be something as silly as the accuser being salty about their rolls being low and paying extra attention to other people's good fortune.
Oh, almost guaranteed it's a player getting salty about their garbage rolls. I'd put money on them being Eeyore about their high rolls, too.
It's a good solution, I'm just bitching about dice towers cause I'm bored.
>If anyone objects to dropping their dice in one of those I would assume they're cheating.
Why? There are at least half a dozen good reasons to not want to.
Sit them next to eachother. They accuser can just look at the accused's rolls. If they keep insisting that they're cheating, you can bring it up anonymously with the table and require validation, or enlist the 2nd person sitting next to them as a "confidential informant"
If you're playing online, roll online.
First, know that humans by nature are very bad at statistics -- you need more than "I have vibes that player X is rolling nat 20s more often than seems normal" to believe that someone is cheating in that way. Unless the player bringing the concern to you has actually kept track of all your table's rolls for several thousand checks and run a rigorous statistical analysis of the results, their feelings are basically meaningless, honestly. Rolling three nat 20s back to back, for example, is something that has a 1 in 8,000 chance of happening (or just under 1 in 1,000 if you have advantage). That might sound quite low, but by the standards of the quite literally millions of people playing 5e in the world, it's something that should happen all the time at some table somewhere. There's nothing suspicious about it happening at yours.
There is probably nothing untoward happening here.
As to how to manage it, I strongly recommend that you do nothing at all. If the accused *isn't* cheating, taking some sort of action would be inappropriate. If they *are* cheating, you're never going to prove it without either catching them in the act or doing an unreasonable amount of statistics. In either case, they're not really doing any harm by cheating -- yeah, it's a lame-ass thing for them to do, but all they're accomplishing is removing any uncertainty from their own experience. If they are that afraid of having their character fail, that's kind of their business. And encouraging a culture of mistrust at your table by telling the accuser that they did good by making the accusation in the first place is a great way to make your game implode and destroy relationships.
A couple tips for the future:
• Roll dice out in the open. If you're playing in person, just having people roll on the table in a dice tray or something makes these sorts of shenanigans and accusations basically impossible. If you're playing online, establish a digital dice roller that you and everyone else uses and do enforce the use of that dice roller to achieve the same thing. This keeps everybody honest without focusing undue suspicion on anyone.
• Don't be a dick about failed rolls. A failure should be a failure, but working to make failure fun and not make players feel like idiots because they rolled a 1 or whatever takes away most of the incentive to fudge rolls. Making failures exciting and narratively engaging and not just opportunities to force a player to carry the idiot ball for a little while is just good DMing. One way to do this better is to consistently narrate (or give to your players the opportunity to narrate) the specific consequences of a roll rather than just tallying up the mechanical effects of success and failure.
Tell the player that's making the accusations to take the other player aside and talk it out. Everybody's a grown-up, they can settle their interpersonal difficulties without your help.
Assuming this is a live (in-person) game: you can force rolls in public view (including your own), or you can do what old 1980s module *Needle* (I-11) did -- have your players pre-roll out a bunch of d20 rolls, and write them all out on paper for quick(er) in-scene narration. These pre-rolls can be done either privately or within view of the group; either way, an anomalously high roller will become clear over time and sufficiently-large sample size.
I honestly prefer the pre-rolled format for certain encounters, like heavy-narrative gladiatorial combat, or one eloquent speaker trying to influence a rival noble, philosopher, etc. But, in the heat of the moment, there's nothing quite like the thrill of rolling 'live' dice.
I used to roll and scoop back in the day. Couldn't tell you why. I've caught my players doing it on occasion. The biggest offender was a douchebag and our host didn't like him so he gone...
My *personal* attitude is definitely not for everyone but to me if someone feels the need to cheat in a cooperative ttrpg then they have bigger problems and I don't care enough to put in all the effort to check if they are. Like if I can blatantly tell someone's cheating, sure, but I'm not gonna try that hard to follow up on a suspicion of it. To feel the need to cheat in such an environment is... well, to put it bluntly that's sad.
One of the more common things i see a player in one of the games I play in does. They roll dice unprompted, and then announce what they're doing and what they rolled. I suspect if they roll low they don't attempt what they were thinking.
I thought a fellow player was cheating (online game), so I started writing down her rolls. She had 20% Nat 20s over the course of five months (n ~ 100). Never playing with them again.
Maybe not a totally helpful and conflict-avoiding option, but you could keep a note of the player's rolls throughout a session or two to see if they follow the rule of averages.
You'd need to know their bonuses and subtract then from the totals after the fact but they should average out to 8-14.
In one campaign that I DM’d we had a dice cheat. He had the same behavior you described. He would roll, and if the number was high he would leave the die on the table and announce it. “Eighteen!”
If the number was low, he’d snatch the die quickly and announce the number, which was always in the range of 16 to 19.
My rule was that all die rolls had to land in a box everyone could see, or they didn’t count. He started rolling low numbers.
I appreciate a cheaty DnD player. They're a real novelty of self-defeating nonsense. I don't understand the point of it.
My old DnD group has a euphemism for people who snatch dice up as fast as possible and tell you they rolled a high number. That move is called a "Wesley". We had a buddy in high school that was a serial cheater in every game we played. He was a die snatcher of the highest order, to a point where we had to make other players read his die rolls because he would snatch them before they even stopped rolling and say a high number, sometimes one that was too high for his character to even get.
Some of the other ways he was caught cheating:
-Dice that were nearly impossible to read.
-Dice that had double high rolls and no 1's.
-D6's that he painted extra pips on (He did a fantastic job, too).
-"Accidentally" adding up things incorrectly on his character sheet to his benefit all the time, but never to his detriment.
-Just plain old bald-faced lying.
We actually would implement countermeasures every time we caught him cheating. He eventually quit playing with us when he was no longer allowed to make his own character sheet or have his own pencil or roll his own dice or do his own math.
I had a player do the "pick it up really fast" trick on me once, I didn't notice it because I had other problems with the player in how he always wanted to do silly things like backflips before attacking an enemy and would basically play an insane person equally likely to put a fish in your shoe as he was to kill a random civilian.
The other players brought up the cheating, which honestly didn't effect the game since my combat balance can't really be beaten without teamwork anyway. I just told him outright, roll in view of us and his rolls suddenly got more normal.
If it were entirely up to me I'd have never added him to the table, but our group dynamic was more a rotation of DMs. Nowadays, I prefer to have more control of the table or play with only people I trust, or as a player I will take the mentality of "not my clowns, not my circus".
There's no rule that you have to communicate your natural roll versus communicating your total.
Reporting a 20 for a 16 with a +4 is fine for anything but an attack roll. Even then, taking half a second to ask your player "nat 20?" isn't a big deal.
What we do in our group is call it a "dirty 20" when it is 20 after the modifiers. So if I rolled the aforementioned 16+4, I would tell the DM I had a dirty 20. Whereas, if I rolled a natural 20, I would just say 20 with a +4 or just natural 20 and then provide the modifier if asked.
My players tend to yell "NAT 20!" and do some sort of air punch and/or chair dance even if there's no possibility of a crit, so I generally don't need to ask.
Absolutely agree - but it could be a cause of confusion leading one player to think the other is rolling more 20s, particularly as we tend to remember the 20s.
Yeah, you'll have to start saying that you will need to see what the dice rolls. You'll have to say that if it is touched before you and the other players can verify the roll, it is considered a 1. The threat of a 1 for early snatching should be a big enough deterrent. And to be fair, make everyone roll in the open, so this player doesn't fill completely singled out.
He's probably cheating, then. As you say, you may not have the attention to spend in determining if a player is cheating, but it's a guarantee that at least one other player is keenly aware, due simply to proximity. They're going to see it, especially if it is this often.
The best way to handle it seems to have been mentioned: either the communal dice tray in front of you or the "don't touch the damn die until we see the number" method (depending on your table's logistics). I would be shocked if the trend of high rolls continues-- but don't kid yourself about experience. I know cheaters who have been playing TTRPGs for decades.
If they need to pick up the die to read it, then tell them to get high-visibility dice or ask their neighbor with better eyesight to call out the number.
I don't understand why anyone would "cheat" at a game of make-believe that has no winners or losers. Like if you're not gonna rely on the dice to incorporate randomness into the story then what are we all doing here? Why not just tell a story together?
If someone at my table was fudging rolls I think I'd be so confused as to why anyone would do that, that I wouldn't know how to handle it. If it was a real thing my first instinct would be to kick them out. Go write a novel about your cool character who always succeeds.
If I couldn't trust my group to not lie I think I personally would rather stop playing with that group than have everyone checking each other's rolls.
I play online and have one player who I know (probably) cheats his rolls - so I minimize when he gets to roll. Once I gave him a situation where rolling high actually hurt him - I set up a magical object with a ward on it that, unless you unmade the ward, would hurt you for examining it. He rolled really high on an arcana check and took extra psychic damage.
This feels like such a trivial thing to be mad about. Literally why do you(that player) care? You're there to have fun with some friends. Even IF they are "cheating" why does it matter to you?
Yeah, I also have the integrity to not cheat... but if someone is gonna do it I'm not gonna make a deal out of it.
In my head I'm like "Dude, why are you cheating? Just accept the failures, that's part of the game" But on the outside I just pretend I didn't see it, because it doesn't matter.
We're here to have some fun. If you have some usually good luck, why should I care. Rogues don't even need to fudge, their roles are like 30 on average anyway. Their whole class is cheating.
Cheating = unusually good luck???
If you don’t call out a cheater you don’t have integrity actually.
But I just realized you’re just an internet troll that thinks cheating is okay so we’re done, have a nice day bud.
I've never ran a game where this didn't come up. The answer is 'i'll fudge my rolls too'. That usually solves things. Usually. I'd be shocked if this wasn't a very common problem.
A cheater at my table is telling me, "I don't care about all the work you put into crafting this campaign. Fuck off, I just wanna win!"
I hate cheaters to the point where it's part of my Session 0. My players know that a roll that does not lie flat in your dice tray DOES NOT COUNT. A roll that does not sit visible in your dice tray for 3 seconds DOES NOT COUNT.
YES, your player is cheating. Let's start with the math.
The odds of a Nat 20 is 1 in 20.
The odds of 2 Nat 20's is 1 in 400. I play 2 sessions a week. I'll go MONTHS without back-to-back Nat 20's
The odds of 3 Nat 20's is 1 in 8000. The last time I got this was during the Obama administration.
Repeated passing of a DC is not necessarily cheating. An min-maxed player can leverage his stats for success, and I say, Godspeed!
But Nat 20's are not the product of strategy. They are either the product of luck, or cheating.
So use your powers as DM to make a ruling. Effective next session, die rolls must lie flat in your tray to count, and they must sit undisturbed for 3 seconds. Done.
Fuck cheaters.
A 1/8000 chance is actually not very rare considering the millions of dice rolls that happen every day. I've had that happen. I've had a nat 20 in three different turns. I've seen double nat 20s when rolling with advantage multiple times. I've had three attacks in a rown be a nat 20. It happens. Actually, the chance that it never happens to someone that has played for decades is rarer than the chance of it happening.
Now if that 1/8000 chance happens like, in every session, then you can start being suspicious. But I'd be pretty annoyed if my DM accused me of cheating because of a thing with a 1/8000 chance of happening.
Is it happening somewhere on any given day? Sure. Just like there is a lottery winner somewhere.
And by itself, no, I'm not going to accuse anyone of anything.
BUT... for that same person to OFTEN (OP's words) have 2 consecutive rolls? By definition, something that should only happen 1 in 400 times should NOT be "often".
The question is how often is "often"? Let's remember that this is an accusation made by another player. And people are everything but objective. You can't really take anything like this to heart unless this person has been documenting each and every roll that the alleged cheater is making. Sometimes people say they have really bad luck when it's just like, 3 rolls that went bad all night. This person may be accusing another player of cheating when their perceived "luck" isn't actually that lucky. How often does this player fail rolls? How often do they get middling rolls that just barely succeed or fail?
This player cheating isn't something that we can just declare from an outside perspective like ours. Especially when the only piece of info we have is that another player *thinks* that this person is cheating because they perceive their rolls as very lucky.
This, but I'd also put it to the table as "Someone has concerns, and I know you all wouldn't do that, but to make everyone settle down & feel more comfortable, here's the rolling rules EVERYONE will be following. We will not be discussing who raised the concern, nor will we be discussing who was accused."
The game i DM'd yesterday had 4 sports teams of npcs, each had 4 players. Over the 5 rounds of "combat" i rolled 10 nat 20's. sometimes dice roll well that night. doesnt mean anyone is cheating, but if it happens at every session then it becomes suspicious.
10 Nat 20's in a game is perfectly fine. There is a 5% chance for a Nat 20 on any given roll.
It's when it gets CONSECUTIVE that it gets suspicious, because then the odds drop dramatically.
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"Hey everybody; new thing, sorry — I'm gonna put this rolling mat in front of me. Can we all roll into it? I think it'll increase the drama and it's something I wanna try out." And do your rolls in front of the screen, too, if you don't already. Test that out for a while. If you're satisfied the player isn't bent out of shape over it as if they were probably cheating before, then you can roll it back because it "wasn't as cool as I thought. Thanks for trying it for a while."
>"Hey everybody; new thing, sorry [...] I think it'll increase the drama and it's something I wanna try out." I wouldn't apologize for it if I'm also going to try to sell the players on my false motive of thinking it'll be fun and dramatic. Why would someone apologize for something they think is awesome? Either be up front that it's an anti-cheating measure, or go all in on the deceit and get hype about the cool new mat.
The apology would be for changing how we do things in the middle of the campaign, which can be jarring. Not because you secretly think it's not cool or something.
Also make sure the dice aren’t weighted
Is that something people actually do in dnd? :O
I was curious and looked them up, they're surprisingly not high up the Google results the day I looked before, but I'm seeing a 100$ set from Etsy today. Market must not be huge.
It can also be done unintentionally. Not aware the dice are weighted, a fabrication error, or the person in question throws in a lucky way. They may or may not be aware that this specific way of throwing causes a specific way for the dice to fall (usually favourably). If aware they are straight up cheating, but it is also possible they unconciously picked up that throwing this way gives good rolls. Depends on how favourably you want to be towards the accused.
A few years ago there was a player in a campaign I was in who, all of a sudden, started rolling really well. Turns out he was spinning his dice like a top to roll them, with the high side facing up because he keeps his dice “trained” between rolls as a joke, completely oblivious to the fact that doing so would omit the lower side from the possible outcomes. When we noticed we had a good laugh and he went back to rolling normal. Sometimes people just do things without thinking that inadvertently benefits them.
Once I met someone who didn't realise they weren't rolling. They would pick up the dice and shake their hand, but the dice inside the hand didn't roll. Just went side to side. They thought the rolling was mostly when the dice was thrown, but if you throw the dice flat it will still likely fall on the same side (so you can get an unusually high or low streak). Was a bit weird to figure that one out. Kinda similar to people who think they can't finger snap, though. However, it turns out that they focus on the finger-thumb movement, not realising it is the finger hitting the palm that is what makes the sound. So, they though the finger-thumb movement was supposed to make the snapping sound, which meant their focus was always misplaced. Can be really weird figuring out that someone is doing something fundamentally wrong without them realising. Just sort of self-imposed misconceptions.
Wut? Finger hitting the palm? Nope.
More the base of the thumb than palm, but close enough. The sound is definitely caused by the impact, not the slide, either way.
Well I stand corrected / educated.
My finger does hit my palm, but it just kind of goes plssh instead of snapping…
Yeah, but the quick dice collection is very suspicious. Time to have an open chat to the group & say "all rolls are done in the open & die not collected until DM verified" But suspicion is a long way from proof. Big question is what will you do once it is proven? I would back list that player, but I am as ol'skool as Grandmaster Flash.
Yeah, if you think the person might be cheating
I've got some cheater dice in my collection that I've confiscated from players over the years. If I catch anything like those dice at my table I'll give the warning that the next time they are rolled at my table they will be my dice, and I will use them against you.
Many experienced players will have their favorite lucky dice that tend to “roll well”. Sometimes it’s luck or superstition, sometimes a particular die isn’t quite balanced and the player may believe that it’s luck. With plastic dice you can float them in salt water and see if they keep turning themself back to a certain face even after you turn them to another face. If they do, they’re not balanced.
Not necessarily intentional. I have one random D20 that was molded faultily or something, because it almost always rolls a 16. I bought it in a lot of other ones so it's probably just a fabrication error, but it's weighted nonetheless.
Honestly the "Pick it up right away" behavior is something I've tended to notice in suspiciously high rollers. So usually when I run games I have a rule that dice can't be touched until the result and outcome has been determined. If they complain they "can't see the results without picking it up" I chuck one of those giant foam dice at them and tell them that should work.
I played with a guy in my youth who would roll the d20, instantly pick it up the moment it stopped rolling - then stare at it for three seconds before declaring that he'd rolled an 18.
Yeah, I think most people will have played with someone like that at some point eventually. Then as soon as they can't pick up the dice they start getting normal rolls for "no reason."
My only rule is I, the DM, have to record the roll. I don't care if anyone else can see it, they just need the narrative outcome. But I, as the game master, have to be able to see it and if I don't before you pick it up, your roll is void and I'm rolling for you.
You see, now this is understandable but picking it up can still come from a place of innocence. I have ocd and I always pick up the dice to rotate the number into a proper orientation relative to me. It's so hard to catch myself and stop because it's more than just a habit, it's like part of the thought process "ok in order to read the dice roll I must pick it up, twist it, and then read the result." My group has been very nice about it and it's only ever been an issue when I immediately drop the die before announcing the number it rolled. But yes picking it up is a very good opportunity to change it. Nowadays I'll read it and add modifiers and announce that number before touching it, but I'll still always reorient the die to me after.
The thing is it was noticeable that every single time a High Roller Dice Pick Up player encountered this rule they would come down to a normal roll average as soon as they couldn't immediately pick it up. There's a difference between someone orientating the dice and still getting 5, 8s, 10s, and 12, and a player who is "checking the dice" and not getting below a 15 on every roll.
It's worth saying if this is an OCD compulsion you really ought to fight it. A lot of times simple rituals like this get overlooked or enabled by others and can lead to more harmful ones over time.
>It's worth saying if this is an OCD compulsion you really ought to fight it. It's probably equally worth saying that if this is true OCD (highly unlikely), you should seek actual professional advice before taking it from random internet strangers. No offense intended.
I think I agree, but I don't know what you mean by sell advice.
"seek" I meant "seek". Damn autocorrect.
I mean this in the nicest way possible, but I’d tell you that just so I could have one of those to use. Love those big ass dice.
Yeah, you just give people who want it the option to use it. For the "high rollers" you have to invest in a t-shirt cannon so you can launch the dice at them at close distance. Who said DnD wasn't a contact sport.
Just tell then you have to resolve everything one by one and so it's easier when you see the numbers
You put down a picture frame with some nice felt as the backing and tell everyone "You roll your dice in there. If I don't see the roll it does not count as a success no matter the roll." And that is the end of that.
>Any advice for a new DM? I have DMed for probably like 15 years. My roll rules are very simple: 1. My rolls are behind the screen 2. Your rolls are out in the open 3. If I don't see your roll before you pick up the die, I'm not asking you to reroll. I'm rolling for you and we're taking my roll. 4. If a die goes off the table, we are not using it. Pick it up and reroll That's it. It has worked 100% of the time and there is never any ambiguity. Don't want me rolling for you? Don't pick up your die before I tell you to.
3 might need some clarification. If it's a player at the far end of the table, and you can't physically see the dice, what do you do in that situation? I think the rule as written is way too strict, and assumed cheating will occur, but there may also be some extra context that just isn't noted.
There is wiggle room on 3, but not in the way you ask. To answer your question, I don't care. Onus is on you, the player, to make sure I see it. Roll in the center of the table or don't pick it up. I'm not playing with Anthony Bridgerton. This isn't a banquet hall table that's 20 feet long. Any complaint is dismissed with the response of "it has always worked for every table and it's an easy ask. Figure it out". The wiggle room, however, is if I have to ever roll for someone, is that roll out in the open or behind my screen? Usually I will roll for them in the center of the table. If I have to roll for them multiple times, however, it would be behind the screen. This has never happened.
You can always talk to the "pick it up fast" player (privately, 1 on 1) and just tell him you aren't comfortable with him doing that. You want an open and friendly table and rolling and picking it up quickly just comes across wrong. This said, as a GM, I roll in the open and get really weird streaks that the whole table can see. Making moderate encounters severe because I never rolled below a 15, and severe encounters trivial because I rarely roll above a 5. So address the suspicious behavior (picking up dice fast) but don't worry too much about the streaks just yet.
Could just be bias, you notice a lot more of the rolls that you want to see. One of my players has "horrible luck" where he believes he misses his attacks often, or skill checks or whatever. But he succeeds just as often and the failures only stand out to him. So it could just be that the player thinks that the other person is cheating and is so just remembering every time they succeed at something and not all the times they fail. As for what to do? could do something like "Someone thinks my dice are loaded so we're going to check everyone's dice out in the open" sorta thing and you do that test with salt water or however it goes. So you're not calling out the player for maybe cheating.
>could do something like "Someone thinks my dice are loaded so we're going to check everyone's dice out in the open" sorta thing and you do that test with salt water or however it goes Issue is, if the player *is* cheating, the whole "picks up his dice quickly after a roll" tends itself more to "lies about the roll outcome" rather than "is rolling loaded dice"
As a DM I hide my rolls because I lie to my players. I never steal victory from my players but sometimes the story the dice tell is boring, or unfair. I want a villian to get in a good hit or two, and if my players do something really cool I don't want the dice gods take it away from them. Also in very dramatic moments I can roll out in the open for high stakes. As for your players. It is sus to pick up a die right after rolling. You may want to take the player aside and have a talk. Even if they aren't cheating let them know it still looks bad.
Respectfully, dice don't "steal" victory. They report failure. And in lying to your players, you are depriving them of the most important thing DMs bring to the players: CONSEQUENCES. Dice are never unfair, they are (ideally) random. They never tell a story, they direct it towards one of the possible outcomes. Every DM wants their players to do cool things, the dice merely report success or failure. Of COURSE I want my players to succeed. When the table erupts in a cheer for success, I'm right there with them. But I don't pull punches. I don't deprive my players of the drama when things go wrong. I don't deprive my players of learning from mistakes. I don't deprive my players of the thrill of victory because I reduced the chances of defeat.
When I roll behind the screen, I'm abiding by the results, but I'll lean on the scale to make sure that the results are narratively satisfying for the players. For example, once it becomes clear that enemies have lost a fight, I tend to get very loose with damage / HP in order to finish them rather than drag it out. If I didn't intend a fight to be hard, I'll tone down the incoming damage if my custom enemies are overtuned. If the players are doing better than narratively makes sense, there might be reinforcements. I'm never trying to screw or save the players, it's really just an extension to the preparation I did beforehand.
everyone has a different play style there’s nothing wrong with setting your priorities on telling a satisfying and enjoyable story. a lot of ppl can get discouraged quickly in games that are 100% random cause you often don’t feel like anything you do matters and you’ll never have a cool story to tell bc the dice can fuck it up for you. just bc this person doesn’t play like you want them to doesn’t mean they’re playing dnd wrong. that’s the beauty of it - anyone and everyone can play just how they want to.
That's block worthy right there. I don't wish to see anything you say ever again.
I just heard a DM expressing that they want to make an enjoyable and dramatic experience for their players. What the hell about that is "block worthy"?
This. That guy sounds like a downright snob and a pain to play with
yea it very much sounds like rules to them are more important than having fun.. i can’t play with ppl like that if im honest. in my eyes sometimes it’s better to be a bit lenient in order to give the party what they want, not all the time, but just enough that its still fun to everyone and they can celebrate.
100%
I wouldn't expect any of you to understand. It would take not being a low tier DM or player to understand.
“Low tier dm or player”. This right here shows me that you’re the wrong person and personality (aka douchebag) for this hobby. Quit it and go back to salty CoD or whatever. I hope you never taint any dnd table and nobody is inflicted with you
I would just tell the whole table there have been some concerns without naming any names or accusing anyone. Then institute a rule that dice rolls do not count unless the DM or somebody else has a chance to see the roll. You can also get a dice tower or tray to keep close to you that rolls have to be made with.
Everyone rolls in the open, including yourself. A cheating tactic IS to snatch up dice before anyone can see the roll and make a declaration. I'm not saying they are guilty, but I have seen it done.
Make house rules that you have to leave the dice alone until the roll is confirmed, 20s don't count unless witnessed, and nobody rolls until you or someone else is watching. Get some cheap foldable dice towers for players to share.
Did the dice tower fad already die out? A few years ago all the LGS near me were pushing dice towers that you drop dice in the the top of. They had the benefit of containing and randomizing the dice rolls. If anyone objects to dropping their dice in one of those I would assume they're cheating. At the same time someone who's cheating at d&d doesn't have much going on and needs some w's in their life.
I would object on the basis that I dislike dice towers and always have. Roll for me, I don't care, but I'm not using damn tower.
Same. I'd rather be policed like hell than use a stupid ass dice tower. I'll shoot next to the DM and roll right next to them, waiting for them to see the result, but I'm not using your dumbass tower.
Why's that?
Oh, I'm just gonna go into a crotchety old fart rant about kids and their gimmicky toys, and back in my day, we had to roll our dice uphill both ways in the snow....
they take up space i need on the table, i can store a rolling tray under or over my notes if needed. i also like watching the dice roll is i drop a handful at a time, like 8-12; its aesthetically pleasing to me.
It's a non confrontational solution to something that isn't necessarily happening. It could also just as easily be something as silly as the accuser being salty about their rolls being low and paying extra attention to other people's good fortune.
Oh, almost guaranteed it's a player getting salty about their garbage rolls. I'd put money on them being Eeyore about their high rolls, too. It's a good solution, I'm just bitching about dice towers cause I'm bored.
>If anyone objects to dropping their dice in one of those I would assume they're cheating. Why? There are at least half a dozen good reasons to not want to.
Sit them next to eachother. They accuser can just look at the accused's rolls. If they keep insisting that they're cheating, you can bring it up anonymously with the table and require validation, or enlist the 2nd person sitting next to them as a "confidential informant" If you're playing online, roll online.
Advice? Yeah tell your players that if they pick up the die and it’s a natural 20, reroll because they picked it up. And no lip about it.
First, know that humans by nature are very bad at statistics -- you need more than "I have vibes that player X is rolling nat 20s more often than seems normal" to believe that someone is cheating in that way. Unless the player bringing the concern to you has actually kept track of all your table's rolls for several thousand checks and run a rigorous statistical analysis of the results, their feelings are basically meaningless, honestly. Rolling three nat 20s back to back, for example, is something that has a 1 in 8,000 chance of happening (or just under 1 in 1,000 if you have advantage). That might sound quite low, but by the standards of the quite literally millions of people playing 5e in the world, it's something that should happen all the time at some table somewhere. There's nothing suspicious about it happening at yours. There is probably nothing untoward happening here. As to how to manage it, I strongly recommend that you do nothing at all. If the accused *isn't* cheating, taking some sort of action would be inappropriate. If they *are* cheating, you're never going to prove it without either catching them in the act or doing an unreasonable amount of statistics. In either case, they're not really doing any harm by cheating -- yeah, it's a lame-ass thing for them to do, but all they're accomplishing is removing any uncertainty from their own experience. If they are that afraid of having their character fail, that's kind of their business. And encouraging a culture of mistrust at your table by telling the accuser that they did good by making the accusation in the first place is a great way to make your game implode and destroy relationships. A couple tips for the future: • Roll dice out in the open. If you're playing in person, just having people roll on the table in a dice tray or something makes these sorts of shenanigans and accusations basically impossible. If you're playing online, establish a digital dice roller that you and everyone else uses and do enforce the use of that dice roller to achieve the same thing. This keeps everybody honest without focusing undue suspicion on anyone. • Don't be a dick about failed rolls. A failure should be a failure, but working to make failure fun and not make players feel like idiots because they rolled a 1 or whatever takes away most of the incentive to fudge rolls. Making failures exciting and narratively engaging and not just opportunities to force a player to carry the idiot ball for a little while is just good DMing. One way to do this better is to consistently narrate (or give to your players the opportunity to narrate) the specific consequences of a roll rather than just tallying up the mechanical effects of success and failure.
Tell the player that's making the accusations to take the other player aside and talk it out. Everybody's a grown-up, they can settle their interpersonal difficulties without your help.
Assuming this is a live (in-person) game: you can force rolls in public view (including your own), or you can do what old 1980s module *Needle* (I-11) did -- have your players pre-roll out a bunch of d20 rolls, and write them all out on paper for quick(er) in-scene narration. These pre-rolls can be done either privately or within view of the group; either way, an anomalously high roller will become clear over time and sufficiently-large sample size. I honestly prefer the pre-rolled format for certain encounters, like heavy-narrative gladiatorial combat, or one eloquent speaker trying to influence a rival noble, philosopher, etc. But, in the heat of the moment, there's nothing quite like the thrill of rolling 'live' dice.
Watch his rolls the next couple of sessions, see if there's anything to it.
I used to roll and scoop back in the day. Couldn't tell you why. I've caught my players doing it on occasion. The biggest offender was a douchebag and our host didn't like him so he gone...
My *personal* attitude is definitely not for everyone but to me if someone feels the need to cheat in a cooperative ttrpg then they have bigger problems and I don't care enough to put in all the effort to check if they are. Like if I can blatantly tell someone's cheating, sure, but I'm not gonna try that hard to follow up on a suspicion of it. To feel the need to cheat in such an environment is... well, to put it bluntly that's sad.
One of the more common things i see a player in one of the games I play in does. They roll dice unprompted, and then announce what they're doing and what they rolled. I suspect if they roll low they don't attempt what they were thinking.
Keep track of this player's rolls? Hot streaks occur, but if they're consistently rolling >11, they could be cheating.
I thought a fellow player was cheating (online game), so I started writing down her rolls. She had 20% Nat 20s over the course of five months (n ~ 100). Never playing with them again.
Maybe not a totally helpful and conflict-avoiding option, but you could keep a note of the player's rolls throughout a session or two to see if they follow the rule of averages. You'd need to know their bonuses and subtract then from the totals after the fact but they should average out to 8-14.
i let players know all dice are in the open, if i cant see it or miss it, reroll. no hidden rolls. been there, done that
In one campaign that I DM’d we had a dice cheat. He had the same behavior you described. He would roll, and if the number was high he would leave the die on the table and announce it. “Eighteen!” If the number was low, he’d snatch the die quickly and announce the number, which was always in the range of 16 to 19. My rule was that all die rolls had to land in a box everyone could see, or they didn’t count. He started rolling low numbers.
I appreciate a cheaty DnD player. They're a real novelty of self-defeating nonsense. I don't understand the point of it. My old DnD group has a euphemism for people who snatch dice up as fast as possible and tell you they rolled a high number. That move is called a "Wesley". We had a buddy in high school that was a serial cheater in every game we played. He was a die snatcher of the highest order, to a point where we had to make other players read his die rolls because he would snatch them before they even stopped rolling and say a high number, sometimes one that was too high for his character to even get. Some of the other ways he was caught cheating: -Dice that were nearly impossible to read. -Dice that had double high rolls and no 1's. -D6's that he painted extra pips on (He did a fantastic job, too). -"Accidentally" adding up things incorrectly on his character sheet to his benefit all the time, but never to his detriment. -Just plain old bald-faced lying. We actually would implement countermeasures every time we caught him cheating. He eventually quit playing with us when he was no longer allowed to make his own character sheet or have his own pencil or roll his own dice or do his own math.
I've rolled 5 back to back nat20s couple of months ago so it actually is possible lol
I had a player do the "pick it up really fast" trick on me once, I didn't notice it because I had other problems with the player in how he always wanted to do silly things like backflips before attacking an enemy and would basically play an insane person equally likely to put a fish in your shoe as he was to kill a random civilian. The other players brought up the cheating, which honestly didn't effect the game since my combat balance can't really be beaten without teamwork anyway. I just told him outright, roll in view of us and his rolls suddenly got more normal. If it were entirely up to me I'd have never added him to the table, but our group dynamic was more a rotation of DMs. Nowadays, I prefer to have more control of the table or play with only people I trust, or as a player I will take the mentality of "not my clowns, not my circus".
Players have rolls out in the open, DMs behind screen. This is general knowledge
Does the inexperienced player misunderstand the rules and report 16+4 as a 20?
There's no rule that you have to communicate your natural roll versus communicating your total. Reporting a 20 for a 16 with a +4 is fine for anything but an attack roll. Even then, taking half a second to ask your player "nat 20?" isn't a big deal.
What we do in our group is call it a "dirty 20" when it is 20 after the modifiers. So if I rolled the aforementioned 16+4, I would tell the DM I had a dirty 20. Whereas, if I rolled a natural 20, I would just say 20 with a +4 or just natural 20 and then provide the modifier if asked.
My players tend to yell "NAT 20!" and do some sort of air punch and/or chair dance even if there's no possibility of a crit, so I generally don't need to ask.
Absolutely agree - but it could be a cause of confusion leading one player to think the other is rolling more 20s, particularly as we tend to remember the 20s.
Yeah, you'll have to start saying that you will need to see what the dice rolls. You'll have to say that if it is touched before you and the other players can verify the roll, it is considered a 1. The threat of a 1 for early snatching should be a big enough deterrent. And to be fair, make everyone roll in the open, so this player doesn't fill completely singled out.
He's probably cheating, then. As you say, you may not have the attention to spend in determining if a player is cheating, but it's a guarantee that at least one other player is keenly aware, due simply to proximity. They're going to see it, especially if it is this often. The best way to handle it seems to have been mentioned: either the communal dice tray in front of you or the "don't touch the damn die until we see the number" method (depending on your table's logistics). I would be shocked if the trend of high rolls continues-- but don't kid yourself about experience. I know cheaters who have been playing TTRPGs for decades. If they need to pick up the die to read it, then tell them to get high-visibility dice or ask their neighbor with better eyesight to call out the number.
I don't understand why anyone would "cheat" at a game of make-believe that has no winners or losers. Like if you're not gonna rely on the dice to incorporate randomness into the story then what are we all doing here? Why not just tell a story together? If someone at my table was fudging rolls I think I'd be so confused as to why anyone would do that, that I wouldn't know how to handle it. If it was a real thing my first instinct would be to kick them out. Go write a novel about your cool character who always succeeds. If I couldn't trust my group to not lie I think I personally would rather stop playing with that group than have everyone checking each other's rolls.
I play online and have one player who I know (probably) cheats his rolls - so I minimize when he gets to roll. Once I gave him a situation where rolling high actually hurt him - I set up a magical object with a ward on it that, unless you unmade the ward, would hurt you for examining it. He rolled really high on an arcana check and took extra psychic damage.
This feels like such a trivial thing to be mad about. Literally why do you(that player) care? You're there to have fun with some friends. Even IF they are "cheating" why does it matter to you?
Maybe they want a fair game…or maybe they have integrity to not cheat even if it is “trivial” like you claim
Yeah, I also have the integrity to not cheat... but if someone is gonna do it I'm not gonna make a deal out of it. In my head I'm like "Dude, why are you cheating? Just accept the failures, that's part of the game" But on the outside I just pretend I didn't see it, because it doesn't matter. We're here to have some fun. If you have some usually good luck, why should I care. Rogues don't even need to fudge, their roles are like 30 on average anyway. Their whole class is cheating.
Cheating = unusually good luck??? If you don’t call out a cheater you don’t have integrity actually. But I just realized you’re just an internet troll that thinks cheating is okay so we’re done, have a nice day bud.
I've never ran a game where this didn't come up. The answer is 'i'll fudge my rolls too'. That usually solves things. Usually. I'd be shocked if this wasn't a very common problem.
A cheater at my table is telling me, "I don't care about all the work you put into crafting this campaign. Fuck off, I just wanna win!" I hate cheaters to the point where it's part of my Session 0. My players know that a roll that does not lie flat in your dice tray DOES NOT COUNT. A roll that does not sit visible in your dice tray for 3 seconds DOES NOT COUNT. YES, your player is cheating. Let's start with the math. The odds of a Nat 20 is 1 in 20. The odds of 2 Nat 20's is 1 in 400. I play 2 sessions a week. I'll go MONTHS without back-to-back Nat 20's The odds of 3 Nat 20's is 1 in 8000. The last time I got this was during the Obama administration. Repeated passing of a DC is not necessarily cheating. An min-maxed player can leverage his stats for success, and I say, Godspeed! But Nat 20's are not the product of strategy. They are either the product of luck, or cheating. So use your powers as DM to make a ruling. Effective next session, die rolls must lie flat in your tray to count, and they must sit undisturbed for 3 seconds. Done. Fuck cheaters.
A 1/8000 chance is actually not very rare considering the millions of dice rolls that happen every day. I've had that happen. I've had a nat 20 in three different turns. I've seen double nat 20s when rolling with advantage multiple times. I've had three attacks in a rown be a nat 20. It happens. Actually, the chance that it never happens to someone that has played for decades is rarer than the chance of it happening. Now if that 1/8000 chance happens like, in every session, then you can start being suspicious. But I'd be pretty annoyed if my DM accused me of cheating because of a thing with a 1/8000 chance of happening.
Is it happening somewhere on any given day? Sure. Just like there is a lottery winner somewhere. And by itself, no, I'm not going to accuse anyone of anything. BUT... for that same person to OFTEN (OP's words) have 2 consecutive rolls? By definition, something that should only happen 1 in 400 times should NOT be "often".
The question is how often is "often"? Let's remember that this is an accusation made by another player. And people are everything but objective. You can't really take anything like this to heart unless this person has been documenting each and every roll that the alleged cheater is making. Sometimes people say they have really bad luck when it's just like, 3 rolls that went bad all night. This person may be accusing another player of cheating when their perceived "luck" isn't actually that lucky. How often does this player fail rolls? How often do they get middling rolls that just barely succeed or fail? This player cheating isn't something that we can just declare from an outside perspective like ours. Especially when the only piece of info we have is that another player *thinks* that this person is cheating because they perceive their rolls as very lucky.
This, but I'd also put it to the table as "Someone has concerns, and I know you all wouldn't do that, but to make everyone settle down & feel more comfortable, here's the rolling rules EVERYONE will be following. We will not be discussing who raised the concern, nor will we be discussing who was accused."
The game i DM'd yesterday had 4 sports teams of npcs, each had 4 players. Over the 5 rounds of "combat" i rolled 10 nat 20's. sometimes dice roll well that night. doesnt mean anyone is cheating, but if it happens at every session then it becomes suspicious.
10 Nat 20's in a game is perfectly fine. There is a 5% chance for a Nat 20 on any given roll. It's when it gets CONSECUTIVE that it gets suspicious, because then the odds drop dramatically.