You learn funny things when you read what the rules actually say.

[Greenfield]

I was shooting the breeze with an old friend tonight, as I often do. We were comparing notes on our campaigns, and he compained about one player's interpretation of a rule.

We decided to look it up, which lead to some more rules research.

As written, the Haste spell grants each recipient an extra attack with any weapon they are holding. That means that unarmed strikes and natural weapons don't get the benefit. My friend has a "super monk" in his game, and he doesn't like it, so that made him very happy.

The Expeditious Retreat spell adds 30 to the character's base ground movement, not to exceed double their normal base. This was the original dispute. He wanted it to be an extra 30 feet per round, but as written it's an extra 30 per move action. Hustle would add 60, Run (quad move) would add 120. He didn't like that.

According to the DMG and SRD, a Cloak of Charisma "grants the possessor" of the cloak the benefits. It doesn't actually have to be worn to get the stat boost, just carried.

Any of you have any unexpected finds in the rules?

 

[Dandu]

As written, the Haste spell grants each recipient an extra attack with any weapon they are holding. That means that unarmed strikes and natural weapons don't get the benefit. My friend has a "super monk" in his game, and he doesn't like it, so that made him very happy.

 

[Herobizkit]

RAW instead of RAI... [MENTION=6669384]Greenfield[/MENTION], you don't just have rules laywers in your group, you have District Attorneys.

But again, if this super-monk is 'the kid', I get it. ^_^

 

[Willie the Duck]

There's another one regarding shield bashing--the rules for shield bashing are set up such that, as stated, shields can only be used as an off-hand weapon. Gotten disarmed and want to use only your shield? Too bad, throw a punch as you primary and the shield as secondary attack. Want to use a heavy shield as your primary weapon and a dagger as your off-hand weapon? Also out of luck. I guess they focused so much on twf builds also with shields that they forgot about other situations where you might choose to shield bash.

What I dislike about this kind of logic is that it penalizes the developers of editions 3 and later for attempting, regardless of how successfully, to have explicit and consistant rules. 2e and before had the unspoken caveat, 'we're going to use plain speach, and the rule of you-know-what-I-mean is in effect'. 3e tried to make the rules more clear, and have heard nothing but internet BS storms every since.

 

[N'raac]

Without looking a lot of stuff up, I'd suggest:

Expeditious Retreat enhances base move, so all the multiples apply;

Cloak of Charisma occupy an item slot, so the possessor must have it occupy that slot or it does not work;

"An unarmed strike is always considered a light weapon.", so I'd apply that to the Haste spell, just as I would apply it to natural weapons.

 

[Celebrim]

There's another one regarding shield bashing...

I have an even bigger philosophical objection to the handling of shields and shield bashing in 3.5e, and that is the rules suggest the primary purpose of a shield is to be an offensive weapon and not a means of protection. That shield bashing is such a major emphasis of the rules and opened up as a 'thing' and not an occasional highly circumstantial tactic strikes me as bizarre.

As for 2e having the unspoken caveat that you were supposed to judge the rule by its intention in the spirit of fair play, the big problem with that is that it was not always clear what was the intended effect or what the writer actually meant and as such endless table arguments were provoked. The internet BS storms you are hearing are just the public expression of what was already with us in earlier editions.

 

[Celebrim]

Expeditious Retreat enhances base move, so all the multiples apply;

Agreed. That has always been my reading of the spell.

Cloak of Charisma occupy an item slot, so the possessor must have it occupy that slot or it does not work;

Agreed. In context, 'possessor' must be considered a technical term meaning something like 'the character which has the item occupying an item slot'. The more generic and general usage of the word to mean 'one that possesses' isn't I think sufficient here, as it isn't usually sufficient to merely have it in a back pack or in a chest in your residence (both are 'possession' in the general sense). To be the possessor you usually have to wear it in an appropriate item slot or in your hand (in the case of an activated item). The only exceptions I can think of are a few cursed items. Loadstones for example explicitly stay possessed.

An unarmed strike is always considered a light weapon.", so I'd apply that to the Haste spell, just as I would apply it to natural weapons.

Agreed that that is the intent, but I can see Greenfield's point regarding the clause "...he is holding". Those three words are unnecessary, but if you take them as actually part of the intention, then a natural weapon is a light weapon but by the rules it isn't a held weapon. So by the rules a natural weapon can't be disarmed, sundered, or interact with the haste spell..

As another point where the distinction between a weapon and a held weapon matters, if you attempt to sunder a spiked gauntlet does it count as a held weapon, or as a worn object, or as worn armor? My instinct from the rules is that it counts as a worn object, but I can see a DM ruling all three and all be perfectly logical.

 

[Dandu]

"An unarmed strike is always considered a light weapon.", so I'd apply that to the Haste spell, just as I would apply it to natural weapons.

If you can touch yourself, you can hold yourself...right?

 

[Greenfield]

The "Supermonk" is in my friend's Pathfinder game, not at my table.

As for "The Kid": He consumes so much of the DM attention, no matter who's DMing, that we're considering booting him from the game. Regardless of what he's doing at any given point, the DM has to ride herd on him so much that the game suffers. Others just aren't having any fun.

And the bottom line is, this is supposed to be fun.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

What I dislike about this kind of logic is that it penalizes the developers of editions 3 and later for attempting, regardless of how successfully, to have explicit and consistant rules. 2e and before had the unspoken caveat, 'we're going to use plain speach, and the rule of you-know-what-I-mean is in effect'. 3e tried to make the rules more clear, and have heard nothing but internet BS storms every since.

There's definitely a balance to be struck between making the rules as explicit as possible and the you-know-what-I-mean approach. I think that game writers should always err on the side of rules clarity and spelling out their intent, because a pure you-know-what-I-mean approach results in confusion and argument, both because common sense ain't common and because writers can easily make incorrect assumptions about what the reader knows. For example, an older gamer recently told me that early D&D lacks AoO-like rules because the writers came from a wargaming background, and they assumed that everyone knows that you don't simply run past an armed enemy. I guess they figured that running past an armed enemy would be such an unusual occurrence that it wasn't worth having official rules for.

But there is a point where game writers can't be held responsible for gamers interpreting their rules as a computer reads an algorithm. At some point, the reader has to be willing to go "Okay, this seems like a weird rule...how might RAI differ from RAW, and what are the consequences of those differences?"

Like, Greenfield's findings are amusing from an OotS kind of perspective, but I really hope his friend doesn't use the 'any weapon they are holding' wording to knock the super-monk down a notch. Unless the group genuinely enjoys playing the game by algorithmic interpretations -- possible I suppose, though unlikely -- I think there are better ways of nerfing an OP character than using such a literalistic reading of the rules. There ought to be a corollary of the 'Don't try to solve OOC problems with IC actions' adage -- something like 'Don't try to narrow power disparity with literalistic rules interpretations.'