D&D 5E Odd things in the rules that bug you?

[Don Durito]

I just assume that gold pieces is the way the game measures wealth not the setting. In game, the players might hand over a handful of hacksilver, but it's easiest to just track that in gold pieces.

Like if you bought something on a trip to China and someone back homes asks you how much it costs you probably don't say 240 rmb.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Electrum pieces. Why are they in the game again? I'm guessing it has to do with tradition.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Presumably because 1 minute was deemed far too long, but 1 second gets a bit ridiculous.

A 30-second round makes a lot of sense and doesn’t require any major rule changes.

 

[Lanefan]

A 30-second round makes a lot of sense and doesn’t require any major rule changes.

Funny - long ago I had exactly the same thought about 1e rounds, and ever since then rounds in my game have been 30-seconds.

 

[Lanefan]

Electrum pieces. Why are they in the game again? I'm guessing it has to do with tradition.

Why did the British have sixpence coins and thrup'ny bits? Because there was a need for coins worth more than 1d but less than 1s.

 

[Lanefan]

I remember that was actually the last straw back for me back with 3.5. When a GM had a villain move away from me and then run around a corner and then when I went to follow him on my turn I was told I didn't know which way he had gone because he was "out of sight".

Similar sort of thing happened after not long after my 3e DM had switched from house-ruled 3e to hard-RAW 3.5e.

A rolling spread-out combat and someone had dropped a fog cloud in the middle of it. To get from one part of the combat to the other where things weren't going so well for us, two of us wanted to move through the fog cloud together, holding hands so we wouldn't get separated and using the other PC's direction sense to navigate. I delayed my initiative to match that of the other PC, but the DM - who was going hard by the book - said we still had to move separately because two characters cannot act at the same time in combat.

Cue one long, loud argument. Players lost. And sure enough, two characters went separately into the fog and only the one with direction sense came out; my guy got lost in there for a few rounds.

 

[tetrasodium]

Why did the British have sixpence coins and thrup'ny bits? Because there was a need for coins worth more than 1d but less than 1s.

Yes but the need is not particularly relevant within the economic constraints relevant to playing d&d, especially when price lists don't even bother with using them even when it is an exact 1ep price.

Spoiler: exchange & adventuring gear

Prices of things relevant to a player (ie components for spells, spells cast by an npc, high end mundane armor, magic weapons/armor/items) to quickly rockets into buckets of gold & platinum to make a coin not even used for the price of anything to be meaningful.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Funny - long ago I had exactly the same thought about 1e rounds, and ever since then rounds in my game have been 30-seconds.

The cave troll fight in the "Fellowship of the Ring" movie made me realize that lots of little things happen in combat that are not covered by D&D rules and that hoping to hit the monster once every six seconds is preposterous.

 

[Don Durito]

Changing the time of rounds should affect the movement scale. You can run a lot farther in 30 seconds.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Changing the time of rounds should affect the movement scale. You can run a lot farther in 30 seconds.

Yes, but that's easy to do, isn't it?