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

[kenada]

Difficulty Classes. For skills, there’s a handy table that helps you negate any progression by offering “appropriate” challenges for each level (naturally, people say to put what “makes sense”, but that doesn’t seem to be what published adventures do). For saving throws, the math just seems to break down, resulting in rocket tag or other problems. Especially when creating new creatures and traps, I’d really rather just say “this requires a Reflex saving throw” and not have to care about math while I’m creating something.

Edition specific stuff (based on what I’ve played or ran):

• B/X: XP for gold. I like that it communicates clearly what the game is about, but if you want to run a B/X game that isn’t about that, you need to devise a replacement.
• 3e: Square monsters. More of a 3.5e issue. I liked that large monsters were either tall or long in 3e.
• 4e: The math. It was broken until it was patched, so monsters early in the edition’s life had too much HP. Runner up: the skill system (not having any customization after character creation is boring).
• 5e: Ability score saving throws. Let’s be honest, almost everything is just Fortitude, Reflex, and Will with a different name. I like the way PF2 unified these mechanics more (where one can conceivably make an Athletics saving throw if the situation calls for it).
• PF2: Multiple degrees of success. As written, the outcomes almost always need enumerated (there’s no generic approach). It’s too much, and it results in an absurd skill actions list.
• WWN: Incomplete or confusing rules. Part of this is how the book is written, but some of the rules are just missing (like how fast you move while exploring if you’re not using abstract exploration). I ended up creating an OSE/WWN hybrid to fill in the gaps.

Edit: Add WWN because why not.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Every time I played Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II, there was the one thing that most stuck out to me and irritated me to no end...

...no 2nd level Cure spell.

I think this is exactly where the idea of the Cleric being nothing but a 'healbot' came from, because you had to basically use ALL your 1st level spell slots for nothing but Cure Light Wounds because once the group hit 3rd and 4th level and had so many hit points to have to regain after fights, there just wasn't enough healing available to get people back into a semblance of fighting shape because none of the Cleric's 2nd level spell slots had any use towards it. They basically sat there worthless while the 1st, 3rd, and 4th spell level slots just filled up with cure spells.

People might still complain about "overnight healing", but to me that's miles better than what we used to have to do, which was camp out in the wilderness for days on end doing nothing, all so that the Cleric could prep their Cure Lights, cast them, then we waited a full day for the Cleric to regain their spells, they'd cast their five Cure Lights again... and hope you could get back to some sort of fighting shape without having to go through this a third or fourth time. It was dumb and stupid as a narrative and I'm glad that it's gone.

And in fact... this couples nicely with one of my major complaints of 3rd edition, which was the exponential cost of creating magic items off of a linear spell progression. A wand of a 1st level spell (say Cure Light Wounds) cost a certain amount to make. But a wand of a 2nd level spell (like Cure Moderate Wounds) cost 6 times as much to make (because you were multiplying your costs by your caster level AND spell level), despite the spell only giving you twice as much as its 1st-level equivalent. Which meant everybody did nothing but make piles of Cure Light Wounds wands because you could make six of them for the same cost as one Cure Moderate Wounds. Which meant that while they weren't useful for in-combat healing... as soon as the fight was over the wand-wielder basically spent the next 20 minutes just tapping each and every character with the wand over and over and over and over and over and over again to heal everyone back to full hit points.

And THAT's why in 4E they just decided to skip that stupid middle-man and just have everyone's HP return to full after a long rest... cause it's what most of us were already doing with our endless supply of Cure Light Wound wands that any self-respecting wizard character made by taking the Craft Wand metamagic feat at 5th level.

 

[Oofta]

Rolling for ability scores. I've always hated this. I've always had an idea of what I want a PC to be before I set pencil to paper and don't want dice to dictate it. Back in ye olden days we'd just let people assign that 17 charisma if they wanted to play a paladin or basically "roll until you get something you like". After I played my first Living City game, I adopted a point buy system and never looked back.

 

[kenada]

Pre-3E saving throws. Absolutely nonsensical, to the point of being a serious obstacle to me going back and doing an old-school game, they bug me that much.

Oh, I forgot about those! I like the way they work mechanically, but I could do with better classes. I was creating some traps for an OSE adventure recently, and I’m like: what makes sense for reflexively avoiding a falling portcullis trap?

 

[Scars Unseen]

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.

The way I see it, you only really need 3 types of elves: the uppity elves, the uppity in the trees elves, and the uppity but also downity in the groundity elves.

 

[Blue]

Low level AD&D magic-users being potion bottles. They had one spell, and no cantrips.

Of course, high level magic-users were godlike.

 

[Redwizard007]

Psionics

 

[Vaalingrade]

Only the ones I've played:

3e: Oh what to choose... Alignment is obvious, but more of a problem with D&D in general. Level drain, ability damage, Monster design... all obvious issues.

But I will go with 'All characters are incompetent without a feat'. As much as I love feats as a means of customization, the 'guy at the gym' philosophy reached its apex in what appears to be an attempt to justify some feats -- everyone gets a -4 penalty to basically anything they're not proficient with from punching to grabbing people to not killing people with attacks. It is as if the designers thought normal people regularly gnaw their hands off trying to eat sandwiches without Sandwich Training.

4e: I've got two that are equal because they go so against what 4e was trying to be. I'm not counting Essentials because that was a bad 'edition', not a bad rule.

First, Daily powers whether on classes or on items. We could have slain the Adventuring Day here and now. It could have been done. The nightmare could have been over. And they fumbled on the 1 yard line.

Second, Rogue weapon restrictions. Because your knowledge of weak points and anatomy disappear when you're holding a bigger sword. Removing choice and variety is the opposite of what the rest of 4e was about and to do that to the Good Class in that sense from 3e was just plain insulting.

5e: Bounded Accuracy. Hands down. This rules philosophy is the core of almost every other bad rule in 5e from the feeling of never progressing and struggling to succeed at anything, to ASIs being forcibly pitted against Feats, to armor and magic items setting your AC/score instead of improving them, to the lack of actual bonuses with Ad/Disad for EVYERTHING, limiting the design space, to the bland monster design, and everything surrounding magic items. Bounded Accuracy, The Fun Slayer.

 

[payn]

Only the ones I've played:

3e: Oh what to choose... Alignment is obvious, but more of a problem with D&D in general. Level drain, ability damage, Monster design... all obvious issues.

But I will go with 'All characters are incompetent without a feat'. As much as I love feats as a means of customization, the 'guy at the gym' philosophy reached its apex in what appears to be an attempt to justify some feats -- everyone gets a -4 penalty to basically anything they're not proficient with from punching to grabbing people to not killing people with attacks. It is as if the designers thought normal people regularly gnaw their hands off trying to eat sandwiches without Sandwich Training.

4e: I've got two that are equal because they go so against what 4e was trying to be. I'm not counting Essentials because that was a bad 'edition', not a bad rule.

First, Daily powers whether on classes or on items. We could have slain the Adventuring Day here and now. It could have been done. The nightmare could have been over. And they fumbled on the 1 yard line.

Second, Rogue weapon restrictions. Because your knowledge of weak points and anatomy disappear when you're holding a bigger sword. Removing choice and variety is the opposite of what the rest of 4e was about and to do that to the Good Class in that sense from 3e was just plain insulting.

5e: Bounded Accuracy. Hands down. This rules philosophy is the core of almost every other bad rule in 5e from the feeling of never progressing and struggling to succeed at anything, to ASIs being forcibly pitted against Feats, to armor and magic items setting your AC/score instead of improving them, to the lack of actual bonuses with Ad/Disad for EVYERTHING, limiting the design space, to the bland monster design, and everything surrounding magic items. Bounded Accuracy, The Fun Slayer.

Amazing, everything on this list is the best part of D&D!

 

[Vaalingrade]

Amazing, everything on this list is the best part of D&D!

Note to self: do not eat sandwiches in your campaign.