My newbie mistakes in D&D

[eris404]

Who else had to hide their copy of the 1E Monster Manual because their parents considered the illustrations to be borderline soft-core porn?

My cousin drew clothes (a t-shirt and jeans) on the succubus illustration in the 1st ed DMG.

 

[Wraith Form]

THAC0 had me utterly perplexed for the longest time.

 

[IamTheTest]

I still make newbie mistakes...I fear that I always will.

 

[KB9JMQ]

I thought giant rats and centipedes were well you know GIANT. Like 6 foot tall.

 

[tenkar]

Shilsen just reminded me -- in 1E AD&D, one of my buddies had a DM one time who assumed that when a monster was written with "6+6" hit dice that he needed to add six hit points to EVERY roll for the monster's hit points.

The group was fighting some trolls, and did HUMONGOUS amounts of damage, yet the trolls kept coming... he couldn't understand why he had an almost TPK on his hands...

My mistake was just the opposite: I was DMing and all I had was the PHB and the DMG. I used the section that listed the DnD monsters in the DMG to populate my dungeons. I assumed 4HD + 4 meant 4 + 4 = 8 hp. I had no idea monsters had a D8 for Hit Dice. My dungeons were all pushovers for the first month or so

 

[Nonlethal Force]

My wife currently goes over the list of spells and laughs. She's not a gamer, but totally supports my habit. Some of her favorites:

Eyebite

Corpse Candle

Leomund's Tiny Hut (She calls it the phone booth spell)

Prying Eyes (Otherwise known as the Peeping Tom spell)

Prying Eyes, Greater (Which is the Big Brother Spell)

Mordenkainen's Lucubration (Which is really only funny because she read Mordenkainen's Lubrication ...)

Ethereal Jaunt (which makes sense in a D&D context but has other meanings elsewhere)

Otto's Irresistable Dance

 

[erucsbo]

Bohemian Ear Spoon, anyone?

And Holy Water sprinkler. It was so tempting sometimes to drop in a magical weapon of a type that no-one used, let alone heard of.

Who else had to hide their copy of the 1E Monster Manual because their parents considered the illustrations to be borderline soft-core porn?

Deities & Demigods picture of Aphrodite was better than the MM Succubus (imho).
And some of the gorgeous chainmail bikinis in Dragon magazine.

My biggest mistake as a newbie DM was to want to include the really cool stuff from the 1ed DMG (like giving powers to all the gemstones and generating artifacts with strange side-effects). A Dwarven fighter I had as a player (my first character) ended up with the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords (another person was DMing) and one of the side effects was that she could not touch metal. So she'd strip down and wade in to combat with the Axe (wooden handle) and basically ignore weapon damage from all the mooks (who would have swords or other metal items). She'd stick her head through iron doors to see what was on the other side, etc. I'm sure the DM was pulling his hair out by then. Fortunately for me no-one found the Ring of Gaxx that I had hidden away in a 1st level dungeon when I got to DM.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

This thread is too funny! Luke Lightning, I almost thought that you were joking about some of those things when I first started reading. I was thinking "surely no-one could have thought that's what it meant!". I guess some people started playing at a much younger age to me.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Evilhalfling]

When my friend first pulled out a new game call "beast, men and gods" Our responses
I want to be a Minotaur!
I want to be Zues!

I had no idea what the " ment in 1st ed so I just converted it to 10' increments - it worked reasonably well

 

[WarlockLord]

I thought you could cast any spell in a domain at any level (i.e. power word kill at level 1)