What D&Disms have you never liked?

[Garthanos]

Double post --> see next one

 

[Garthanos]

Yes, that's exactly right. I am shamed.

Well mayhaps they will do one called Slaine.

I am picturing a new yorker accent now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sl%C3%A1ine_(comics)

much more interesting than... ummm ....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sláine_mac_Dela

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Garthanos]

But I think the lightning bolts were actually from his eyes. I believe it was balls of fire from his arse! (So it may have just been the result of a digestive problem rather than a magical attack.)

You honestly missed the poison gas angle...? humorists arent what they used to be.

 

[Garthanos]

Reminds me of Gene Simmons.

Gene is a very primal entity.

 

[Hussar]

A few people have mentioned the plussed weapons/items, but, I finally thought of something that I truly don't like.

Disposable magic items.

My character starts off with the sword of his grandfather, lovingly passed down and bequeathed to him by his dying father (becaue, well, PC's can never have living family apparently). He uses the sword to defend the realm and slay the villains. It serves him well.

For about two levels. Then he finds a +1 sword and his grandfather's pig sticker gets stuffed at the bottom of a trunk somewhere. A couple of levels later, that fantastic sword with the DM's lovingly crafted backstory gets ejected faster than the speed of sound when the PC finds a +2 sword. And so on and so forth.

Repeat for armor, shield, and any other item that scales as well.

I have always hated this. It's so superficial.

 

[Gort]

[*]The standard races. Every damn D&D setting has to have the same old Tolkien retreads jammed into it without rhyme or reason. And now they have to have tieflings and dragonborn too. (Though WotC's decision to de-hobbitize halflings in 3E still makes me happy today.)

"I hate how it's always the same old races except for the new ones, which I hate!"

 

[diaglo]

"I hate how it's always the same old races except for the new ones, which I hate!"

really though that is not a fault of LotR.

it is a fault of the wargame origins. Chainmail in particular.

same with alignment.

it is sides in a battle.

humans can be any side
elf vs orc
dwarf vs goblin
gnome vs kobold

which get carried over into the write ups for the races in the monster books.

 

[Dausuul]

"I hate how it's always the same old races except for the new ones, which I hate!"

I hate how it's always the same races, period.

It isn't that I object to the new races or the old ones per se. My objection is to jamming every single freakin' one of them into every single freakin' published setting. Adding new races to the list makes the problem worse, not better.

If elves suit the theme and atmosphere of a setting, then by all means give it elves. Ditto tieflings, dragonborn, warforged, and the mighty Armadillo People. (Okay, so I probably wouldn't want to run a long-term campaign in a setting where that last one was a natural fit.)

But there are many settings in which elves and dwarves have no particular place, like a gritty, bloody, swords-and-sorcery world inspired by the works of Howard or Moorcock. They are entirely superfluous there. You can reskin them Dark Sun-style to make them fit in better, but you're still shackled to the idea that every world simply must have something called a "dwarf," that bears at least some resemblance to the short, stocky, iron-forging, tunnel-digging, mead-swilling, Scots-accent-mangling stereotype of dwarfdom; and players must be able to play one.

And there are other settings to which dragonborn and warforged are not suited, like a mythologically-inspired, traditional fantasy world in the mold of Tolkien's Middle-Earth.

(Oh, and just for the record, before somebody starts asking me why I'm all bent out of shape when older settings had elves and dwarves... this gripe has nothing to do with 4E Versus All That Came Before. I hated the kitchen sink approach to world-building twenty years ago, and I still hate it now.)