Salamandyr
Adventurer
Can't believe I forgot it...but it's so big it deserves its own post instead of a stealth edit:
Castles & Crusades: The SIEGE Engine.
Castles & Crusades: The SIEGE Engine.
Single mechanics that hurt an otherwise good game
The Crimson Binome
Hero
What's the SIEGE Engine? What was it supposed to do, and why did it fail you as a game mechanic?
Salamandyr
Adventurer
Hard to sum up briefly, but the SIEGE engine is the "core mechanic" of C&C. It's basically the D20 vs DC, but arrived at differently.
Everything is an ability check, with a difficulty modifier of 1 on up to infinity, roughly corresponding to level--like a spell cast by a 9th level wizard is +9 to the difficulty.
So each character has 2 or 3 Prime Stats, and if he is rolling an ability against a prime stat, his target is 12+the Difficulty (so 21 in the case of that spell), and 18+difficulty otherwise (so 27)
Sounds easy enough so far...except there is no negative difficulty. The absolutely easiest thing to do in the game is a minimum, in regular D&D terms DC 13. So what do the players roll? They roll stat ability (and stats correspond to B/X D&D so they only go up to +3) plus level--if it's a defined class ability, otherwise they just roll with their bonus. So against an even level challenge...and a challenge level of 1 isn't "a challenge appropriate to a 1st level character" but "literally the easiest thing in the world to do" one has at best, a 50% chance of success, even when it's supposed to be your schtick.
Oh, and there's no chart ever explaining what a level 1 challenge is, or a level 5 or 10 challenge--except the guidance that when acting against a creature it's usually equal to their hit dice.
Almost everybody I've ever talked to who plays, including, apparently, the designers, play it as "You either roll against a 12 or 18 except in extraordinary circumstances" which works, but it's explicitly NOT the way the game is designed. I guess I shouldn't let that bug me as much as it does, but I've grown to really prefer games to actually work right out of the box, and C&C has, hands down, the best fantasy art of any game on the market today...by absolutely no exaggeration; I would really love to like the game more than I do.
EDIT: Seriously; the game is beautiful. I have several pieces hanging on my wall. Look up Peter Bradley; he's incredible. It's a big reason reading 5e makes me feel the way Patton Oswalt does eating at KFC.
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Gradine
The Elephant in the Room (she/her)
I, on the other hand, miss INT making a difference for anyone beyond the Wizard.
Eltab
Lord of the Hidden Layer
Gamma World vol3 dumped a large Armor Class / Weapon Class table for combat, plus a (3e demo?) form of "skill check", in favor of a single chart ... FOR EVERYTHING.
Figuring out which column on the chart you were supposed to use was not intuitive, and the 'color code' that determined the outcome made the d100 you rolled meaningless - d10 would have accomplished the same result.
Classic Traveler (especially Mercenary, High Guard, Scouts, and Merchant Prince) having so many skill charts to roll on, made it impossible (if you actually rolled the dice) to specialize in anything on purpose. I might want to have Pistol-4 so I can be a gunslinger, instead of 1 level each in 4 skills.
I finally decided that you had to roll randomly for the table to use but you could pick a skill from it; there was enough overlap to make it work.
Figuring out which column on the chart you were supposed to use was not intuitive, and the 'color code' that determined the outcome made the d100 you rolled meaningless - d10 would have accomplished the same result.
Classic Traveler (especially Mercenary, High Guard, Scouts, and Merchant Prince) having so many skill charts to roll on, made it impossible (if you actually rolled the dice) to specialize in anything on purpose. I might want to have Pistol-4 so I can be a gunslinger, instead of 1 level each in 4 skills.
I finally decided that you had to roll randomly for the table to use but you could pick a skill from it; there was enough overlap to make it work.
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Psikerlord#
Explorer
For 5e
(1) too much hit die healing
(2) too many death saves
(3) passive perception
(4) concentration being broken by damage AND limited to one spell at a time (should have been one or the other). Also cantrips.
(1) too much hit die healing
(2) too many death saves
(3) passive perception
(4) concentration being broken by damage AND limited to one spell at a time (should have been one or the other). Also cantrips.
CubicsRube
Hero
Giving additional tool proficiencies and/or languages based on int mod can be a nice bonus thay doesnt unbalance the game
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