Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Not just that. We never let one in because they rabidly wanted to break every magic item we came across. Even 4 fighters wouldn't let a barbarian into the group.
D&D 1E Favorite Obscure Rules from TSR-era D&D
- Thread starter Snarf Zagyg
- Start date
I just re-read an old post-
www.enworld.org
It reminded me of my favorite "obscure" rule...
SYSTEM SHOCK!!!!
To recap, system shock rolls (part of constitution) were the percentage chance that you died when certain things happen.
Little known applications-
1. If the party magic user polymorphs you, you had to save TWICE, once when you were polymorphed, and once when you came back.
2. It applied to all aging affects; that's right, in addition to haste aging you, it had a chance to KILL YOU every time it was used. This also applied when you cast wish, gate, etc.
DM: So, Fizwalter the Slightly Dumb, you cast wish! What do you wish for?
Player: I wish that this spell didn't age me and kill me.
D&D General - Lethality, AD&D, and 5e: Looking Back at the Deadliest Edition
I saw a comment in my favorite meta-thread a week or so ago that, roughly boiled down, was, "Yo. AD&D wasn't that difficult. Heck, combat was much less lethal than later editions like 5e. AD&D was practically easy mode. By fourth level, you really couldn't die in AD&D." Now, when I first read...
www.enworld.org
It reminded me of my favorite "obscure" rule...
SYSTEM SHOCK!!!!
To recap, system shock rolls (part of constitution) were the percentage chance that you died when certain things happen.
Little known applications-
1. If the party magic user polymorphs you, you had to save TWICE, once when you were polymorphed, and once when you came back.
2. It applied to all aging affects; that's right, in addition to haste aging you, it had a chance to KILL YOU every time it was used. This also applied when you cast wish, gate, etc.
DM: So, Fizwalter the Slightly Dumb, you cast wish! What do you wish for?
Player: I wish that this spell didn't age me and kill me.
Jargon- at least, impenetrable, arcane jargon- is avoidable.
That’s something I learned in law school. My professors were very much anti-jargon. One even illustrated jargon’s negative effect on the law by paring down 24 pages of a will down to 2 paragraphs on a single page.
There’s definitely an advantage to a “less is more” approach to drafting rules, in terms of clarity.
The joys of using a word with 2 meanings…for both meanings!
My favorite words are contronyms (also called autantonyms), which are words that have two contradictory meanings.
The one that can pop up in your profession (heh) is sanction.
The court can sanction your behavior (BAD!).
Or the court can sanction your behavior (GOOD!).
the Jester
Legend
Oh god, you're going to make me go there.
I just have four words for you- pummeling, grappling, and overbearing.
System Shock played a factor in the fate of my highly magic & poison resistant dwarf Ftr/Th in DarkSun. After failing a sequence of saving throws against Magic, Poison and System Shock rolls against a bunch of spells, he wound up as a pile of dead frog ashes.I just re-read an old post-
D&D General - Lethality, AD&D, and 5e: Looking Back at the Deadliest Edition
I saw a comment in my favorite meta-thread a week or so ago that, roughly boiled down, was, "Yo. AD&D wasn't that difficult. Heck, combat was much less lethal than later editions like 5e. AD&D was practically easy mode. By fourth level, you really couldn't die in AD&D." Now, when I first read...
It reminded me of my favorite "obscure" rule...
SYSTEM SHOCK!!!!
To recap, system shock rolls (part of constitution) were the percentage chance that you died when certain things happen.
Little known applications-
1. If the party magic user polymorphs you, you had to save TWICE, once when you were polymorphed, and once when you came back.
2. It applied to all aging affects; that's right, in addition to haste aging you, it had a chance to KILL YOU every time it was used. This also applied when you cast wish, gate, etc.
DM: So, Fizwalter the Slightly Dumb, you cast wish! What do you wish for?
Player: I wish that this spell didn't age me and kill me.
My math-degreed buddy calculated the odds of my rolling that many 1s in a row as roughly the same as drawing the winning ticket in the Texas lottery.
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
It says something about me that it never once occurred to me to think of system shock as being an "obscure" rule.I just re-read an old post-
D&D General - Lethality, AD&D, and 5e: Looking Back at the Deadliest Edition
I saw a comment in my favorite meta-thread a week or so ago that, roughly boiled down, was, "Yo. AD&D wasn't that difficult. Heck, combat was much less lethal than later editions like 5e. AD&D was practically easy mode. By fourth level, you really couldn't die in AD&D." Now, when I first read...
It reminded me of my favorite "obscure" rule...
SYSTEM SHOCK!!!!
To recap, system shock rolls (part of constitution) were the percentage chance that you died when certain things happen.
Little known applications-
1. If the party magic user polymorphs you, you had to save TWICE, once when you were polymorphed, and once when you came back.
2. It applied to all aging affects; that's right, in addition to haste aging you, it had a chance to KILL YOU every time it was used. This also applied when you cast wish, gate, etc.
DM: So, Fizwalter the Slightly Dumb, you cast wish! What do you wish for?
Player: I wish that this spell didn't age me and kill me.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
More common here is that spellbooks get damaged or destroyed when a Mage fails a save vs AoE damage and then the book, in turn, also fails.
Less common, as in it's happened only a few times, is a Mage pulls the Deck of Many Things card that destroys all magic; as we have it that spellbooks are slightly magical*, no more spellbook.
Also less common, but I've seen it done, is other PCs intentionally vandalizing a PC Mage's spellbook, usually in an attempt to remove spells with which the Mage has - intentionally or otherwise - previously fried the party.
I'm not sure if as DM I've ever had an NPC outright steal a Mage's spellbook.
* - otherwise it'd count as a mundane possession, and there's a Deck card that whacks those too
.
