My newbie mistakes in D&D

[lukelightning]

Waaaay back when I started playing D&D I misinterpreted lots of things.

I thought cure light wounds only cured wounds caused by light (sunburn and lasers or something).

Magic missile shot rocket-type missiles.

I thought find familiar meant you became familiar with something, like "I think I recognize this person, I find his face familiar."

Burning hands was a spell that made your enemies' hands light on fire (not a bad idea for a spell, btw).

Raise dead was a levitate spell that only worked on corpses.

I thought a cleric was a shopkeeper (as in "clerk"). And for some reason these shopkeepers could become undead (the DM said they could "turn undead").

And I totally didn't understand the old system of ranges; distances were all in "inches" and I thought spells totally sucked "what do you mean my magic missile spell has a range of 12 inches?!?!? that's only a foot!"

 

[Henry]

When I was young, I didn't even completely understand the hit charts, or how to use the various dice, so I made it all up as DM. It wasn't until age 14 or so that I even completely understood said hit charts! (And I never used grapple, because using a d20 for one thing and percentile dice for another combat type action blew my little mind.)

 

[diaglo]

..."what do you mean my magic missile spell has a range of 12 inches?!?!? that's only a foot!"

:rotflmao:

 

[eris404]

Those are fantastic. The first time I played, I was the DM and not knowing any better, I read practically everything in the module outloud, not just the boxed text. Plus I mispronounced everything.

Me: You see three....kol-bolds.
My sister: What's a kol-bold?
Me: I don't know. Maybe it's this dog-like thing in this picture.
(shows the module)
My sister: What does AC7 mean?
Me: Hey! You're not supposed to look at that. They have 10 copper pieces each.
My sister: I throw a rock at it.

 

[Kormydigar]

And I totally didn't understand the old system of ranges; distances were all in "inches" and I thought spells totally sucked "what do you mean my magic missile spell has a range of 12 inches?!?!? that's only a foot!"

" What is this??, a spell for ANTS!!. In order to be useful the spell would have to have at least THREE times that range!!!""

 

[Ilium]

" What is this??, a spell for ANTS!!. In order to be useful the spell would have to have at least THREE times that range!!!""

And it would if you cast it outdoors!

 

[WayneLigon]

I was also confused when I first heard the term 'cleric'. I couldn't imagine why you'd have a game with fighters, wizards, thieves and office workers.

The first time I attempted to run Traveller, I skipped some parts in character generation since all games used 3d6, right? Their characters had some truely amazing stats, let me tell you. (Classic Traveller only uses 2d6 for character stats).

I don't know what I'd have come up with had RPG's existed when I was a younger kid. I imagine it would have been quite humorous.

 

[lukelightning]

I couldn't say the word "bastard sword" because it was swearing.

Oh, and crossbow bolts? Why the heck is a crossbow shooting a metal screw?

Sling bullets confused me too. I kept picturing a modern rifle bullet.

The first time I heard the DM say "the cleric pulls out his holy symbol" I thought he said "cymbal" and thought "that's strange, what is it, a magical percussion instrument?"

On my character sheet, under "deity" I wrote "yes" (I meant that my character had a deity, but didn't know what the choices were). My DM said "what, you think you're god?!?!?"

Alignment was confusing too (and, judging from the boards, it still is). Good and Evil were no problem, it was Lawful and "Chay-ot-ick" that stumped me. I basically decided that lawful meant you were part of the government, with a badge and everything.

 

[lukelightning]

Oh, and then there was my problems with the word "level."

My fifth level magic-user should get fifth-level spells, right?

And as for memorizing spells, I got it in my head that the player had to memorize the spell. Which actually is a good idea, but I also thought that as long as I didn't forget what it did I could cast it over and over.

Needless to say my DM stopped this eventually, but only after he noticed I cast fireball like 10 times in a row.

 

[Agent Oracle]

And I totally didn't understand the old system of ranges; distances were all in "inches" and I thought spells totally sucked "what do you mean my magic missile spell has a range of 12 inches?!?!? that's only a foot!"

Gadoken!