Inconsistant/Arbitrary rules...

[nightwyrm]

Well I will be damned! I could have sworn it was the other way. Did that change since 3.0? So that means that Joe the Rogue could be converted to evil, join an assassin's cult, kill someone for no other reason than to join the assassins, gain a level in the assassin prestige class, then someone cures him of his evil (say from the helm of opposite alignment), Joe becomes good again, leaves the cult, but still can advance in the assassin class?

The "If you don't meet your PrC prereq, you lose your PrC abilities" rule is updated in Complete Warrior (I think, or it's in one of the other Completes or the PHB2), and not in the SRD.

 

[Woas]

Fall damage. What a joke. d6 per 10 feet, max 20d6? So assuming you rolled a six on every single of those twenty dice that's still only 120 HP damage. Mid-level characters can literary jump off mountains, and with the way HP works, just stand up and keep walking afterwards as though nothing happened.

 

[Particle_Man]

Fall damage. What a joke. d6 per 10 feet, max 20d6? So assuming you rolled a six on every single of those twenty dice that's still only 120 HP damage. Mid-level characters can literary jump off mountains, and with the way HP works, just stand up and keep walking afterwards as though nothing happened.

Again, 1d6 per 10' falling damage used to be more of a threat in 1st ed., when characters had way less hit points (you capped your hit dice around 9th-11th level, and then got a few hit points per level after that, unmodified by con - and even hit dice were not modified by con that much, since the mods were smaller and only applicable to really really high con scores). They changed hit points without changing falling damage rules.

 

[Storminator]

Fall damage. What a joke. d6 per 10 feet, max 20d6? So assuming you rolled a six on every single of those twenty dice that's still only 120 HP damage. Mid-level characters can literary jump off mountains, and with the way HP works, just stand up and keep walking afterwards as though nothing happened.

My favorite falling damage ever was the fighter player going "Wow, that giant with the magic sword is tough! But if I leap out of the cloud city, there's no way I can die when I hit the ground!"

And he was right!

PS

 

[Nikosandros]

Fall damage. What a joke. d6 per 10 feet, max 20d6? So assuming you rolled a six on every single of those twenty dice that's still only 120 HP damage. Mid-level characters can literary jump off mountains, and with the way HP works, just stand up and keep walking afterwards as though nothing happened.

The rule was actually supposed to be 1d6 cumulative for 10' fallen (the correction was in an issue of Dragon). However, the cap at 20d6 is still rather low.

 

[Nikosandros]

One of my faves from way back when:


There is no magical elfin chainmail.

By the time Unearthed Arcana was published, Gary had realized his mistake...

 

[Baron Opal]

Speaking of half-breeds, in 1st ed., half-orcs are shorter than humans and shorter than orcs.

Ligers are bigger than both lions and tigers. No reason why half-orcs can't be smaller than both orcs and humans.

If I remember correctly, the racial picture in the PHB has half-orcs being the tallest of the lot.

 

[billd91]

...almost forgot the big one in 3E: concealment. It's arbitrary and inconsistent. Why attack/defence modifiers for cover, but not concealment?

It's not so arbitrary if you look at it the right way. Cover can stop an attack cold so it increases your defenses much like a shield does. Concealment, by mainly obscuring but not actually blocking you, doesn't specifically add to your defenses. It affects them in a may be aiming right, may not be aiming right, it's hard to see, kind of way. Plus, concealment is unaffected by the skill of the spotter while cover may be decisive or virtually irrelevant depending on the skill of the attacker.

It's different and could have been handled like a straight AC bonus since AC is astract enough, but I think I prefer it with the miss chance. It's an interesting way to model the difference between the two concepts of cover and concealment. But not really arbitrary.

 

[Dire Bare]

Ligers are bigger than both lions and tigers. No reason why half-orcs can't be smaller than both orcs and humans.

That is like totally my favorite animal! My ranger characters take them as animal companions and I give them magical powers . . .

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Inconsistent and arbitrary rules don't bother me in isolation, as long as they serve some purpose. For example, the racial level limits and race/class combinations in 1st ed. AD&D are arbitrary, but they don't bother me--usually--all by themselves. Rather, it's that, stacked with the initiative system, plus weapon restrictions by class, yada, yada, yada--that starts a slow nag that eventually bothers me. Having all elves be fighter/mu in Basic, in contrast, doesn't bother me--because that is part and parcel of its simple charm. It's elaborate expansions that try to keep vestiges of that assumption (sometimes inconsistently) that bother me--a little. 3E favored classes, for example.

Some of the 1E/2E spell list restrictions seemed rather arbitrary to me. Details escape at the moment, but I'd be thinking "cure light wounds" to cleric makes sense. Yep. Now, "hold person" being lower level, can kind of see that. And then there would be some spells where I couldn't readily fathom a rationalization.

I think 3E/3.5 crafting rules are inconsistent with the rest of the system, and thus they always feel tacked on to me. I was never entirely satisfied with spell lists, either. (I liked Arcana Evolved"s unified spell list far better.)

For 4E, put me down as another one bothered by the precise but arbitrary nature of the rogue weapon restrictions. I'd have liked another descriptor on weapons as useful with a sneak attack, as one possible alternative. I don't care for some seemingly arbitrary feat prerequisites, either.