D&D 5E Capricious Home Rules and DM Pet Peeves

[smbakeresq]

As far as alignment, I enforce those out of old habit when changing alignment carried penalties and level loss. It's what the atonement spell is for. The degree of course depends on attachment, paladins and clerics and religious types should have severe penalties, the rogue going from LN to LE might not.

 

[MechaPilot]

Yeah, that would have been silly. Now if only Gandalf knew some large flying creatures that were friendly to him and the hobbits that could have flown Frodo and the ring to Mount Doom, that would have been much better.

Oh, I totally agree. The absence of the eagles from large swaths of the trilogy is noteworthy.

However, I don't have an issue with flying and flying mounts (with an appropriate aerial ceiling). If you're flying along you can still see the lands you're flying over; you can still see the fires of a town being burned by raiders, a circle of merchant wagons trying to fend off bandits, and so on. You are also potentially at risk of being forcibly dismounted, having your flight spell dispelled, or having your wings (if you're a winged character) injured; either because of flying enemies or because of ranged abilities.

 

[MechaPilot]

Oh yeah, I'm well aware that I'm in the minority. The annoying thing is, it's a genre that I love and I would have expected to love reading them, especially since they are raved about so much. Then I try reading them, get part way in, then quit because I don't find them entertaining.

Yeah, you're definitely not alone.

I could never force myself to actually finish The Hobbit. I liked most of the LotR films and the books; the part I hated most about the LotR books (that whole Tom Bombadil chapter) was mercifully excised from the films.

I do think Tolkien did a masterful job of world-building. I also think his descriptive style really added to the immersive experience of reading the books (it's akin to how descriptions by Bram Stoker, Mary Shelly or Arthur Conan Doyle help draw you in). But, I will say there were certainly places in the books where he used his descriptive style heavily when I would have preferred a much lighter touch, and it slowed down the pacing of the novels (particularly the first one) to a point where I could easily see some readers considering it a "slog" to get through those parts.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But when an ability check comes up I pretty much always have an idea of what interesting thing happens as a result of failure or success, and often I have ideas for what happens if the checks fails/succeeds by 5+ as well. For an exaggerated example of what I mean, here's what's working in the mental background for me as DM when adjudicating a player's Dexterity (Thieves' Tools) roll to open a lock or disarm a trap...

Thanks for reminding me about my biggest pet peeve as a player: DMs who invent new and unpredictable rules to mess with skill checks, so that trying anything has a non-negligible chance of making things worse.

There has never been an edition of D&D where rolling a 1 on a skill check was a critical failure. That is a fundamental cornerstone of everything that D&D stands for. If I roll a 1 to pick a lock, and I have +18 to the roll, then the outcome should be the same as if the untrained paladin had rolled a 20 (with a -1 penalty for low Dex). Stop inventing new ways to hose your players.

And on a related issue, stop going for the cheap laugh, if the players are taking things seriously.

At least, that's my preference.

 

[Igwilly]

Thanks for reminding me about my biggest pet peeve as a player: DMs who invent new and unpredictable rules to mess with skill checks, so that trying anything has a non-negligible chance of making things worse.

There has never been an edition of D&D where rolling a 1 on a skill check was a critical failure. That is a fundamental cornerstone of everything that D&D stands for. If I roll a 1 to pick a lock, and I have +18 to the roll, then the outcome should be the same as if the untrained paladin had rolled a 20 (with a -1 penalty for low Dex). Stop inventing new ways to hose your players.

And on a related issue, stop going for the cheap laugh, if the players are taking things seriously.

At least, that's my preference.

Haha yeah, count me on that one. I'm a DM and I don't particularly like inventing new rules to make PC's more problematic than what already is.
Also, I try to play the game seriously as much as possible. Sometimes, however, things turn out funny.

 

[Mecheon]

Yeah, natural ones as failures really annoys me. Its basically saying "Even the greatest archer in the world completely messes up their arrow shots 1 out of 20 times", or "The world's greatest thief messes up 1 out of every 20 times on the dullest, simplest lock in existence". Its just making any roll, even for something someone's good at, a potential punishment

It just makes players not want to do fun or interesting things and instead do anything they can get away with not rolling for

 

[MNblockhead]

I love natural ones. As a DM you can narrate what the failure it. For Green Arrow, maybe he just misses. For Green Horn, the long bow string takes off his ear.

For my monthly game, we've been use the critical hits and fails decks from Nord Games. When I forget to put them on the table, the players ask for them. They like the extra flavor and uncertainty.

 

[guachi]

Yeah, natural ones as failures really annoys me. Its basically saying "Even the greatest archer in the world completely messes up their arrow shots 1 out of 20 times", or "The world's greatest thief messes up 1 out of every 20 times on the dullest, simplest lock in existence". Its just making any roll, even for something someone's good at, a potential punishment

Well, even the greatest free throw shooter misses more than 5% of the time.

 

[Quickleaf]

Thanks for reminding me about my biggest pet peeve as a player: DMs who invent new and unpredictable rules to mess with skill checks, so that trying anything has a non-negligible chance of making things worse.

There has never been an edition of D&D where rolling a 1 on a skill check was a critical failure. That is a fundamental cornerstone of everything that D&D stands for. If I roll a 1 to pick a lock, and I have +18 to the roll, then the outcome should be the same as if the untrained paladin had rolled a 20 (with a -1 penalty for low Dex). Stop inventing new ways to hose your players.

And on a related issue, stop going for the cheap laugh, if the players are taking things seriously.

At least, that's my preference.

Very interesting you mentioned the "critical fail on a natural 1."

That's actually not the heart of the idea I was sharing, and I think playing with critical fails (and critical successes) is just one style of play. A gradient success / failure with interesting consequences is the heart of the idea I was sharing, and more interesting to me.

Ironically, it was my players who requested critical failures be a thing in the game, and even created massive crit fail tables completely of their own volition and requested I implement them.

Just goes to show you different strokes for different folks!

 

[billd91]

Not alone by a wider margin than originally expected, even.

I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings repeatedly in my youth, but I didn't really have any other fantasy novels to compare to at the time and all the other things I had available to read were different on so many levels as to not be able to realize that "fantasy" didn't have to mean that exact sort of delivery. Once I came across other fantasy authors (or rather came to the age at which I was allowed to select books without parental supervision), I found myself completely devoid of any further urge to re-read Tolkien's works I'd already read, or to dig into the ones I hadn't.

I still have an appreciation for the particular sorts of effort he put into his tales (the languages, maps, and intense depth of history), but I can't say that his writing engages me.

It seems to work the opposite for me. Reading other fantasy writers usually increases my appreciation for LotR and how much I prefer it and its depth and gravity.