D&D General What rule do you hate most from any edition? (+ Thread)

[Snarf Zagyg]

Do you really have to ask me?

But my third* least favorite thing is probably when Mike Monard pressured Gygax into giving weapons variable damage in D&D.

It's been downhill ever since.



*EDIT- okay, my 1004th most hated thing.
1. Bards.
2. Bards.
3. Bards.
4-1003. The 1000 varieties of soulless, dead-eyed elves that have sprung up like tribbles.
1004. Variable weapon damage.

 

[eyeheartawk]

These are more little foibles than anything else.

2E: How there had to be a Druid Highlander duel to determine who was allowed to be the only 17th level (I think? Could be wrong on the specific level) druid in the world.

5E. The ability to cheese the stand people up from 0HP to 1HP with over and over again, as that is the most efficient use of limited healing resources. I hope that gets fixed in 5.5 or whatever they call it.

 

[Cadence]

Since a lot of folks are going with 1 per set that they hate (if they have one), I'll add my two others. I don't really hate anything that much (with the power of 1,000 ancient red dragons) in B/X, 1e, 2e, or 5e.

13th Age was the only one that had something that annoyed me so much I was a butt to the DM about it - that a "Day" was based on number of encounters, and not the clock or long rests. So, three 24-hour periods into an ocean voyage fleeing from what was left after the second battle since the long rest "Wow, did you guys notice the sun never sets at sea!?! How had we not heard this." and things like that.

In 4E it was the Warlord being able to yell people better. I mean, we all know that HP are an abstraction of an abstraction wrapped in an enigma. But do you have to rub our faces in it!?!? That's what bards are for. I expect better of our fighter related classes.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Here's an unpopular one...

Bounded Accuracy applies to all equally, Fighters hitting are the same as mages hitting.

A trained sniper improves their proficiency bonus as quickly as a Bookworm Librarian.

A White Belt to Black Belt Martial Artists trained in combat as a Special Forces increases just as quickly as a Librarian who goes from having a Associates to a Doctorate.

It's a bigger fantasy to me than anything else in D&D...I think it was written by the Bookworms dreaming that they are just as good at combat as a Navy Seal or something.

In the playtest, different classes had different PB progression for Weapon combat, Spell bonus and Skills. Fighter had the best weapon progression, cleric gained spell bonus slower than mage IIRC, etc.

I guess you could go back to this, having 3 different proficiency bonus: Weapon, Spellpower, and Skill. Then have a specific progression for each class.

Or give casters half PB on weapon attack, and 3/4 for non-fighter. Something like this.

 

[guachi]

5e: Recovering 100% of your HP on a Long Rest of 8 hours.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

4-1003. The 1000 varieties of soulless, dead-eyed elves that have sprung up like tribbles.

High five!

I won't lie, when I was like, 13, I loved the 1000 varieties of elves, but by the time I was even 15-16 I was completely "over it" and chuckling at early-internet mockery of infinite numbers of elf variants and now I think I lose a few brain cells every time I see a new kind of elf. Or aquatic elves or avariels ever. I lowered my IQ just by typing that.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If we're looking at various editions, 3E had a ton of hateful rules, like endless ones, but the absolute worst was iterative attack bonus. Who the hell thought that was a good idea?! It was ghastly on every level.

4E I loved a lot of the rules people don't but did we really need Reactions, Immediate Actions and Interrupts (or whatever they were exactly called?). Maybe we could have just lived with Reactions?

In 3E and 5E, linear HP gain with levels is definitely up there as most hated for me. It's one of the worst things for immersion for me too, and it really warps the game design in an unattractive way too. 2E had a good idea when HP gain slowed over level 10, and 4E had a good idea when you had about level 3 or 4's worth of HP at the start. It's worst in 5E because it should know better.

 

[aco175]

My 9-year-old self was shocked when I rolled a Saucy Tart and found out it was not something like an apple pie, and a Brazen Strumpet was not like a danish.

 

[payn]

This goes for any edition, but rolling for HP at level up.

 

[Blue]

Building monsters using PC rules in high level 3.x play. It just took so long to customize monsters - I would effectively be building and equipping several high level PCs per encounter, for several encounters per session, with character creation rules split among 20+ hardcovers. But with the extreme power creep of well build PrC-laden characters vs. single class PCs or monster-classes, it needed a level of optimization to stay on par with the PCs that was a lot of prep every session.