Do you cheat?

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               

I don't consider it cheating if the game engine lets you do it. All you're doing is lowering your challenge level via other means. But personally I don't use such methods unless it's needed to work around a known bug.

Game engine lets you do many things, crashing server, duping items, walk through doors, bring custom items into PW, runshooting and many more. its certainly not OK just because engine allows it.

 

Max HP related - in singleplayer, you decide this rule. In multiplayer you do not so if the server doesnt allow this rerolling till you get max is a form of cheating/exploiting. Very minor because everyone does it and admins usually tolerate it (and is why almost every PW has max hitpoints guaranteed today) but it is.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Gruftlord]

               In single player i like to play with max hit points and no auto fail on 1 for saving throws. On the other hand i enjoy hiding the enemy stats and never use devastating critical.

Every once in a while i play a character with leto'd pc properties to simulate sub-race or werewolf abilities.


I'd call it 'playing with house rules' if i had to give it a name. I don't enjoy hacking unlimited this or that into a game. But i may load the dice to make a character concept work like extra silent movement on a heavy armor ranger for example.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_rogueknight333]

               

With rare exceptions, no, I do not cheat. I do not normally even use max HP. Since in the vast majority of cases I find the modules I play too easy, I see no reason to make them easier still.

 

The main exception (aside from special cases like using Debug Mode commands for actual debugging when one runs into a game-breaking glitch) would be the one Gruftlord mentions: if I wanted to play a sub-race or other non-standard character type for some extra RP flavor I would obviously have to do something non-standard to implement it properly. Although in those cases I would also be just as capable of using "cheats" to implement some of the downsides of such characters (like XP penalties) as well.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MagicalMaster]

               

With rare exceptions, no, I do not cheat. I do not normally even use max HP. Since in the vast majority of cases I find the modules I play too easy, I see no reason to make them easier still.

 

But...but...bigger numbers on the character sheet!

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

Nope I don't cheat, but I do re-roll on occasion but that is for the main stats not the hp. Of the modules I've made I've always tried to make them be roughly of the same difficulty as the OC. That way anybody who wants greater difficulty can always set it to a harder difficulty setting that isn't insanely difficult. So I can't see the point of cheating.

 

TR

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MagicalMaster]

               

The "harder" difficulty settings in NWN are meaningless outside the first few levels.  Unless you count "DnD Hardcore Rules" aka "Fair Rules" to be "harder" difficulty, I guess, but that just makes things even/fair.  And isn't actually any harder in most cases.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_WhiZard]

               

But there is only one difficulty setting above Hardcore.  If you select "Very Hard" the only thing that happens above hardcore is that the monster's base damage is doubled (technically it is just the number of sides of the die that are doubled).  So if you place a monster with 10d20 monster damage on its claw (105 average), the "Very Hard" setting will add 100 damage to that (from 10d20 to 10d40).  If you instead give monsters typical PC weapons like the 2d6 greatsword, then you will only see a 6 additional damage from "Very Hard", not that great.  Even if you give that greatsword a bunch of damage bonuses (e.g. 2d6 acid or enhancement +20) and gave the monster 100 strength, the "Very Hard" setting will still only add 6 damage, because it only affects the base damage of the weapon.

 

So if the builder chooses to, he could make the difference between Very Hard and Hardcore to be quite large, or he could make it quite minute, depending on the type of monsters he designs.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MagicalMaster]

               

If you select "Very Hard" the only thing that happens above hardcore is that the monster's base damage is doubled (technically it is just the number of sides of the die that are doubled).

 

I may have been testing that setting once and accidentally given some bad feedback on a low level module since I might have forgotten it was still on.  Was feeling very frustrated about an NPC at level 2 doing 13+ damage per swing with a greataxe -- couldn't believe the author would do something so stupid.

 

But...yeah.  It's an awful "difficulty" setting.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Nick The Noodle]

               

I ca

 

I may have been testing that setting once and accidentally given some bad feedback on a low level module since I might have forgotten it was still on.  Was feeling very frustrated about an NPC at level 2 doing 13+ damage per swing with a greataxe -- couldn't believe the author would do something so stupid.

 

But...yeah.  It's an awful "difficulty" setting.

I can see why you might want to play the OC on the hardest setting.  Once you have played that module in double figures, you know what to expect, and prepare accordingly.

 

When it comes to modules that you are playing for the first time, this hardest setting can be a tad sticky. 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy__Guile]

               There is no such thing as "cheating" per se, there is what is allowed, and what is not allowed, then there are bugs, which are often exploited (used to gain an unfair advantage).  The difference is, how well a module is coded to stop said exploits / cheats, or what have you....

There is no fix for every exploit / hack / cheat, sorry...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MagicalMaster]

               

I can see why you might want to play the OC on the hardest setting.  Once you have played that module in double figures, you know what to expect, and prepare accordingly.

 

When it comes to modules that you are playing for the first time, this hardest setting can be a tad sticky. 

 

It wasn't the OC, and I was testing to see what the setting even did.  And the "hardest" setting is simply completely stupid -- it's insane at low levels (can easily get one or two shot) and completely irrelevant at higher levels.  It doesn't actually make it harder.

 

I mean, go play HotU and I doubt you'd ever even notice the "hardest" setting.

 

There is no such thing as "cheating" per se, there is what is allowed, and what is not allowed,

 

##DebugMode 1

## SetSTR 100

## SetDEX 100

## SetCON 100

## SetINT 100

## SetWIS 100

## SetCHA 100

##DebugMode 0

 

...that's "cheating," per se.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MrZork]

               LOL! Let's not get into another semantics discussion over whether cheating is meaningfully possible in single-player games.

My read of the OP's intent by "cheating" is when people knowingly do things that the game/module designers wouldn't want them to do in order to give their toons an advantage. Obviously, there is no bright-line test for such things (unless someone is a mind reader), but I think most of us have a notion about it.

As it happens the OP's example of getting maximum HP at level up is one that most people don't really consider cheating anyway. I don't, since it anyone who knows what the "Cancel" button in the level summary screen does will know that it's possible to re-roll poor HP rolls. It's what I tend to do, even on PWs that don't have the max HP setting enabled, unless it's a slow level to re-do and I am in a party with people waiting.

Meanwhile, I make plenty of changes to many modules I play. Sometimes, it gives my toons an edge and sometimes it makes things harder for them. For example I almost always have Moskwa's PnP Tenser's in my override, which is certainly more useful to most mages than Bioware's, even though not that many module builders include it (I suspect most don't know about it). And, I have modified many encounters in modules I replay to make them more difficult, including re-writing a good chunk of the OnEnter scripts in Sands of Fate to buff the encounter spawns. So, I suppose some of those changes are an advantage and some are a disadvantage to my toons.

But, mostly, my goal isn't to do either, but rather to make some aspect of gameplay more interesting. Or, at least, less tedious. If I think something I do furthers that goal, then I don't hesitate to do it.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_icywind1980]

               

Who effin cares how a person plays in a single player mod? When there's other people involved, that's something to consider, but I'm a personal fan of play however the hell you please as long as it doesn't interfere with anyone else.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MrZork]

               To be fair, I don't think anyone here has expressed any concern about moral aspects of "cheating" in SP games. The (unjustified, from what I could see) assumption that someone was making a moral judgement by using the term was one of the reasons such discussions were so unproductive in the past. Generally, it seemed like the topic was intended to be "Do you use X, Y, or Z techniques when you play (which are sometimes called cheating)?", but people got defensive as if the topic had been "Do you do X, Y, or Z, which makes you a cheater and a bad person?" The latter discussion, IMO, tend to be pointless in this venue.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Nick The Noodle]

               

Cheated today, by buying two items, instead of transferring my character directly from one module to its part 2. Appears to have made next to no difference, so I should not have done it.  Next time I won't.