The best ways to cheat as a DM of a DnD game

Dungeons & Dragons offers dungeon masters endless tools to create a unique world and memorable encounters that are specific to your table. While there's technically no way for dungeon masters to legitimately cheat in D&D, you can break the rules in ways the players can't to rule things in your favor.

These could be changing the number rolled on a die or making NPCs act in ways they shouldn't and should always be kept behind the DM's screen. However, when done right, you can enhance the experience for your meal. and you can make sure that the time you spend adventuring with your friends is always an epic experience.

1

Steal plot ideas from your players

Every DM will eventually encounter one of his players who tries to divine the plot or secrets of your campaign. just to be wrong, but also to make the hypothesis sound more appealing than what you planned. When this happens, steal the idea and implement it in the campaign notes.

Not only will this make your player feel like a genius for figuring it out, but if it enhances the game, then it's a valid form of storytelling for TTRPGs. Make sure you never reveal the true source of the change until at least a few years after the campaign is over.

2

Change the health of monsters

One of the most popular forms of cheating among dungeon masters is adding an extra zero to the end of your bosses' health when your players take an unexpected amount of damage far too early. Since you are not expected to be a human computer capable of creating perfect encounters, you should change the health of the monsters even if they are taking damage.

This can be used to allow a particular player's character to deliver the finishing blow to a villain that is crucial to their backstory, or to ensure that the dragon is actually seen as a credible threat that the city was unable to girl. This shouldn't be for every monster though, as it can be satisfying for players to land a one-hit kill.

Experienced players may find that your standard goblin survives far too many attacks, so use it sparingly.

3

Choose your order of initiative

While there are many ways to manage initiative correctly, sometimes you'd prefer a certain order for your monsters to act that would increase the dramatic stakes of the encounter. For example, make sure the goblin raiders chasing the party wagon go first so the Wizard player doesn't summon a wall and immediately end the fight.

This can also be done to save your players who are messing with a monster far too strong for them, making sure they go after the cleric, who can make sure the rest of the party is healed. Most of the time, you can only do this to spread out the monsters so they aren't all first or last.

4

Change your travel time

One of the hardest things for DMs to design in their homebrewed world is the time it takes to travel certain distances. Without a cartography degree or access to real-world tools, this can be more or less a guessing game with dire consequences for the table.

Especially if you haven't given your players a specific travel time, make sure to find out how long it takes to get to your destination and add or remove days based on their reactions. This is to favor if your group prefer encounters along the way or those who prefer to explore big cities and don't want to wait to get to the next one.

5

Gives Monsters Intelligence

While some tables only care about combat, others tend to use creative solutions to encounters involving enchantment or mistargeting that only work on certain types of enemies. By giving creatures with very low intelligence a higher intelligence score or even the ability to speak, this can open up new ways to handle encounters.

For example, by giving a phase spider access to the Common, the party can convince it to forage elsewhere, with the promise of returning fresh food if they can get through unscathed. This can also allow monsters with very low intelligence to realize when they are interacting with an illusion so they are not permanently fooled.

6

Add or remove curses

Curses can be a great way to add threats and consequences that the party can't see coming, but it's not always the easiest to implement. For example, in The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, players who take a certain treasure pack are cursed forever until the treasure is returned.

It's quite possible that your party won't connect the dots and will be cursed by the end of the campaign and will be increasingly annoyed by the presence of disadvantage in all their rolls. By adding timers to curses or otherwise removing them for your players, you can save them headaches that won't go away on their own.

You can also add curses to items you feel should be cursed or as a way to warn players of the NPC's dark side.

7

Let the Stealth succeed

Hidden quests in D&D are usually long, time-sensitive challenges that have high stakes if they force players to avoid combat. To make sure they don't screw up as soon as it starts, have your guards keep an eye on the crouching Rogue who takes the keys from his pocket.

This can also allow your players to establish an advantageous position against powerful enemies, which should be a tactic that pays off. After the objective is achieved or the players move to the correct location, let the dice tell the story again.

Failure is still an important part of D&D, but failure before it even starts can cause bad feelings about the game.

8

Make your villain discover the party

One of the best tips for dungeon masters with a central villain in the campaign is to make sure players meet them early. This is frequently done in Curse of Strahd to give players a face to Strahd's name and see his powers and cruelty first hand.

However, it may not always make sense for your villain to know your group exists and not have an excuse to interact with them. Here you can insert any number of reasons why they were found, whether it's random shouts or information planted by a loyal servant that didn't otherwise exist.