Outright Cheating

Some players will simply try to make illegal characters and hope that the GM won't make waves. There are levels to this, at the lowest levels, such things can be dealt with in-game the same way that min-maxing can be or by simply pointing it out. At higher levels, when player creation cheating gets very powerful and/or very blatant something needs to be done.

It goes without saying that the GM should take a close look at every character sheet before game day. This gives the GM a chance to think up ways of challenging the team and also allows the GM a chance to see what needs to be dealt with an why. In the case of high level cheating, that can come in several forms all of which are dependent upon how often the player cheats like this.

In the first instance, it is often enough to modify the character until it is acceptable and simply give the player the revised character sheet on game day and tell the player that you corrected a few errors and that they should read the sheet over before play starts. By calling them errors you are not accusing them of cheating, and may be able to avoid a conflict. Repeated occurances and the refusal to use revised characters may require a GM to consider banning the player or to assign the player stock characters at the beginning of each game.