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

[MacConnell]

My other pet peeve is heavy armour. It's not something I would change, however, because it is too entwined with the rules. But seriously, who would go adventuring in dark dangerous dungeons, or wilderness wearing plate? Who would even clank around town in the stuff? Heavy armour was for pitched battles only. Not something you wander around in. I know, D&D is not realistic, and there are lots of silly things in the game. The armour is just the one that has always bugged me.

I'm with you on the armor. PCs want it too be assumed that they are wearing their heavy plate at all times, rain or shine, hot or cold, asleep or awake. I also have issue with cost. One full suit of armor would require a massive amount of steel and cost more than the GNP of a medium size town.

 

[MNblockhead]

This is minor, but the Healing Kit is a problem. Not the kit itself or what it does, that's perfectly fine. My problem is it only taking a round to use. Really? A round to apply bandages or splints? It gets particularly silly with the rogue's ability to use an item as a bonus action during combat. If the rogue has the healing feat, he can attack an orc, and heal a wounded buddy! Is this some kind of magic first aid kit that you can hit someone with and they heal? In my campaign you have to have at least a minute and some breathing space to use a healer's kit.

Funny, this just came up in a book I'm reading. While the use of healing kits in D&D 5e are certainly incredible, it is in keeping with the genre.

I am reading The Swords of Lankmar (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser Book 5), part of series of books that was incredibly influential on D&D, and I just read this passage on my lunch break:

"In two heartbeats he [the Grey Mouser, a Rogue/Thief] had turned his back on his assailents, darted past a somewhat startled-looking Frix and Hisvet, and burst out through the branchy wall of the closet-bower amidst a second and even larger explosion of white blooms.

"Five heartbeats more and as he scurried north across the Plaza of Dark Delights in the light of the new-risen moon, he had buckled on his belt and withdrawn from a small pouch pendant on it a bandage which he began deftly to wrap tightly about his wound.

"Five more heartbeats and he was hastening through a narrow cobbled alleyway that led in the direction of the Marsh Gate."

Considering that a well-trained athlete has a resting heartbeat of about 40 per minutes, we are talking about 7.5 seconds, at most. Given that he just killed to Mingol assasins and was making a hasty retreat, it would have been under 6 seconds (7 heart beats). Actually, all 12 hearbeats probably took place in under 6 seconds given the rate is heart would be beating under the circumstances. Yes, I'm taking "heartbeat" too literally but don't think it is stretching the workds to far to conclude that:

In ONE ROUND the Grey Mouser disengaged, took full movement, and applied a healing kit on himself. Actually, he may have even "dashed" and still was able to disengage and apply a bandage.

The D&D 5e rules are certainly in keeping with their inspiration. If anything, they are too conservative.

 

[MNblockhead]

Oh, and right before fighting the two assassins, he was making out with a wererat, while the wererat's human servant was acting as a body proxy.

Completely off topic, but weird book. More so than the Jack Vance's Dying Earth Series, I see more resemblance in DnD to Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser books. Those and the Conan books.

I hear folks say that Gary was just trying to avoid IP litigation when he claimed that Tolkien had minimal influence on D&D. Partly perhaps, but I think he was sincere when he stated that Leiber and Howard were far greater influences.

 

[innerdude]

Just curious. How much input and agency are DMs providing players regarding these house rules?

I think as GMs we all have some house rules where we go to the players and say, "This is what I'm thinking as a house rule, what do you think?" and then we as a group hash it out.


Then we have some house rules where we say, "This is a house rule. PERIOD. Don't like it? Then you can deal with it or kindly GTFFFFFFO."

 

[Igwilly]

I was the youngest player there by a couple years. 2 guys who were in their 40's at the time ran those 2 groups. I was advised that they wouldn't allow evil characters when I started gaming with them and they prefered a co-operative play style. So I knew going in what kind of play they prefered and gamed with them for a couple years before I ran a game. The main DM, was a little OCD and put a ton of time into preparing the game and he did a great job, but as the DM rarely got to play a Paladin, so when he played that is what he wanted to play. So I knew before hand what he saw as LG behavior, though we didn't see 100% eye to eye in each and every little ruling it was close enough.

In play he was very good at actually acting like his Charisma score was higher than 2. He played it as if he were trying to live up to the ideals. I hate devolving into religion, but its hard not to. He was a Christian, and in a good way. I'm not, but have no problem with people that are. He was the same way in character. He did what he thought was right and how he saw LG being. He understood what DMing was like and was happy to get a chance to just play. Our group didn't normally just go around killing helpless enemies in general, we tended to run into orc women and children on a regular basis for example. So as a group we tended to like playing heroic characters, so certain situations didn't come up. My friend simply treated people the way he wanted to be treated and did not try shoving his belief system down people's throat, so that part of his personality came through in his portrayal of the character. He was good at tactics, in real life he like reading about medieval tactics so that was fun and he brought that into our game. As a DM I was uninterested in putting him in situations to test his paladin hood. That wasn't fun for me, so he was never in danger of losing it This was 1e/2e era. So some of it was player personality, some was the type of game we enjoyed.

Other players over the years played LG more like LN, at best or LAWFUL good, with good being a very very distant second, where IMHO when there was an alignment restriction, it should be lawful GOOD or GOOD lawful if you get what I am trying to say. Players would try to boss around the other players, force them to do what they wanted to do; generally acted like petulant spoiled brats. They were very disruptive in every aspect of play. In some games I played in evil campaigns, not much or often or in a mixed group and the evil characters were less disruptive than the Paladin, even in an all good group. After a while, I just banned the class unless I had a player that was like my friend, which never happened.

Oh, I see. Thank you for sharing this experience! ^^

 

[MNblockhead]

Then we have some house rules where we say, "This is a house rule. PERIOD. Don't like it? Then you can deal with it or kindly GTFFFFFFO."

GTFFFFFFO

Get Thee Fancy-Free, Fat Fanny Fully and Far Outside?

 

[Arilyn]

Funny, this just came up in a book I'm reading. While the use of healing kits in D&D 5e are certainly incredible, it is in keeping with the genre.

I am reading The Swords of Lankmar (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser Book 5), part of series of books that was incredibly influential on D&D, and I just read this passage on my lunch break:

"In two heartbeats he [the Grey Mouser, a Rogue/Thief] had turned his back on his assailents, darted past a somewhat startled-looking Frix and Hisvet, and burst out through the branchy wall of the closet-bower amidst a second and even larger explosion of white blooms.

"Five heartbeats more and as he scurried north across the Plaza of Dark Delights in the light of the new-risen moon, he had buckled on his belt and withdrawn from a small pouch pendant on it a bandage which he began deftly to wrap tightly about his wound.

"Five more heartbeats and he was hastening through a narrow cobbled alleyway that led in the direction of the Marsh Gate."

Considering that a well-trained athlete has a resting heartbeat of about 40 per minutes, we are talking about 7.5 seconds, at most. Given that he just killed to Mingol assasins and was making a hasty retreat, it would have been under 6 seconds (7 heart beats). Actually, all 12 hearbeats probably took place in under 6 seconds given the rate is heart would be beating under the circumstances. Yes, I'm taking "heartbeat" too literally but don't think it is stretching the workds to far to conclude that:

In ONE ROUND the Grey Mouser disengaged, took full movement, and applied a healing kit on himself. Actually, he may have even "dashed" and still was able to disengage and apply a bandage.

The D&D 5e rules are certainly in keeping with their inspiration. If anything, they are too conservative.

First of all, in your example, Grey Mouser did an incredibly quick disengagement and fled the battle. He did not hit an opponent and bandage wounds at the same time. The heartbeat counts, I'm pretty sure are not to be taken literally.

Yes, Gygax preferred Swords and Sorcery over Tolkien. He admitted it. Ironically, D&D does not mimic D&D very well. No self-respecting S&S character would map a dungeon square by square, while poking things carefully with a big stick. Money came and went, so a system mimicking S&S should not count every copper piece a player owns. D&D has never mimicked any particular fantasy genre well. It has always been its own thing. Which brings me back to healing kits. They are still silly, if they can be used in one round.

 

[innerdude]

GTFFFFFFO

Get Thee Fancy-Free, Fat Fanny Fully and Far Outside?

Nailed it.

 

[MNblockhead]

First of all, in your example, Grey Mouser did an incredibly quick disengagement and fled the battle. He did not hit an opponent and bandage wounds at the same time. The heartbeat counts, I'm pretty sure are not to be taken literally.

Yes, Gygax preferred Swords and Sorcery over Tolkien. He admitted it. Ironically, D&D does not mimic D&D very well. No self-respecting S&S character would map a dungeon square by square, while poking things carefully with a big stick. Money came and went, so a system mimicking S&S should not count every copper piece a player owns. D&D has never mimicked any particular fantasy genre well. It has always been its own thing. Which brings me back to healing kits. They are still silly, if they can be used in one round.

Meh, they're a semi-magical poultice that you slap on.

Okay, still silly and I could see not allowing that kind of use. I would not at all mind playing in a game that restricted use of med kits somewhat by making it take more time to apply them.

 

[Corwin]

This is minor, but the Healing Kit is a problem. Not the kit itself or what it does, that's perfectly fine. My problem is it only taking a round to use. Really? A round to apply bandages or splints? It gets particularly silly with the rogue's ability to use an item as a bonus action during combat. If the rogue has the healing feat, he can attack an orc, and heal a wounded buddy! Is this some kind of magic first aid kit that you can hit someone with and they heal? In my campaign you have to have at least a minute and some breathing space to use a healer's kit.

A dying ally will either be dead, or will have stabilized on their own, long before that minute is up.