D&D General What are your Pedantic Complaints about D&D?

generic · Jul 14, 2019

What are the silly, odd, or unusual things that bug you more than they should? What irritates you about D&D?

Here are mine:

1. Snakes should be "Venemous", not "Poisonous".

2. If Gith lay eggs, then why do female Gith have...

3. How? HOW? HOW ON TORIL do Death Kisses have statically-charged blood that literally shocks people?

4. How does Darkvision even work? If there's no light, how do they see at all? This is why I house-rule that all creatures with Darkvision have infravision and infrared bioluminescence...

What are yours, and how ridiculous are they?

Lanefan · Jul 14, 2019

To answer a few of those:

2. Because once the eggs hatch the feeding-the-young process might be largely mammalian. Nothing says Gith biology has to have anything to do with our own...

3. Same way electric eels in the real world do it, or a close variant.

1 and 4, though...

As for mine:

5. The huge gap between up-and-at-'em at 1 h.p. and down-and-dying at 0. Way too binary!

5a. That one can recover from potentially-mortally-injured (but death saves made) to full health and vigour with just an overnight rest.

6. That complicated and sometimes (literally!) earth-shattering spells can be cast in a mere few seconds or even less.

7. That battlefield movement often resembles mini-teleports rather than anything fluid.

Xaelvaen · Jul 14, 2019

Aebir-Toril said:
What are yours, and how ridiculous are they?

1. Dragon alignment based on color. Almost the first fact we disregard anytime we play D&D. I find this a silly dislike because that's just the lore in the worlds D&D runs, and that's cool - we just never play in those worlds, and always make our own, so dragons are just dragons, and color is just a species, and morality and spirituality are all individual concepts.

2. Paladins allowed alignments other than lawful good. Want a dark divine knight? Call 'em something else. Want a chaotic good do-gooder with paladin-like powers? Nifty - call them something else. Leave the darn Paladin alone. I find this one silly because I -know- it's just a name; just my old grognard side rearing its opinion.

That's it off the top of my head; I mean there are mechanical things that transcend editions, but not sure that's the topic of this thread, so I'll stick with the purely pedantic haha.

Nevvur · Jul 15, 2019

I can quaff an ale as a free action, but need an action to consume a healing potion.

Charlaquin · Jul 15, 2019

I have a lot of pedantic gripes with weapon and armor terminology. Slashing and piercing damage should be called cutting and thrusting damage respectively. Shortswords should be called Arming Swords. Scimitars should probably be called Backswords, or maybe Sabres or Long Knives, depending on which generic term you prefer for single-edged one-handed swords. Quarterstaves should just be called Staves. Handaxes should be called Hatchets or maybe Boarding Axes. Longbows should be called Warbows and Shortbows called Hunting Bows. Studded Leather should be Coat of Plates or maybe Jack of Plates. Leather should be Boiled Leather and Hide should be Buff Leather. Scale Mail is acceptable, but I would prefer it be called Lamellar; likewise Banded should probably be Laminar, but I get that those terms aren’t very accessible, so I give them a pass. I don’t even know what to do about the nonsense that is “ringmail...” the closest thing that actually makes sense would be a gousetted brigandine or aketon, but again with the inaccessible language. I don’t think the game would be any poorer for just taking the damn thing out of the armor table entirely since all classes with heavy armor proficiency give better armor in the starting equipment package anyway. I could go on.

DND_Reborn · Jul 15, 2019

Lot so stuff others have mentioned but I will add:

6-second long rounds. Ridiculous. That someone will move dozens of feet and attack or cast spells, not to mention bonus actions, etc. -- all in 6 seconds. While maybe a full minute long round was a bit much in 1ed AD&D, 6-seconds is much too fast. Even 10-seconds would be better and more reasonable IMO.

flametitan · Jul 15, 2019

Pikes. Their weight is borderline absurd for what the weapon provides in game terms.

Bitbrain · Jul 15, 2019

It may just be my perception, but it seems like in every single 5e campaign that I have ever played in or DMed for, Fighters (and only fighters) fall behind every single other class (except the Ranger) in effectiveness, unless given magic weapons that deal at least an extra 1d8 damage dice . . . At which point they skyrocket to being flat-out overpowered.

Nevvur · Jul 15, 2019

Bitbrain said:
It may just be my perception, but it seems like in every single 5e campaign that I have ever played in or DMed for, Fighters (and only fighters) fall behind every single other class (except the Ranger) in effectiveness, unless given magic weapons that deal at least an extra 1d8 damage dice . . . At which point they skyrocket to being flat-out overpowered.

Just an observation, if the only switch between Fighter-Sux and Fighter-Roxtoomuch is +1d8 damage on attacks, you could ... make it +1d4/6?

And then your porridge will be just right.