D&D (2024) Rules that annoy you

[pukunui]

And yet we're going back to some short hand (and capitalization of game terms!).

As I said here or in another thread, I think that's because there are so many more players for whom 5e is their first / only edition of D&D. They won't have the anti-4e baggage that many players had back at the start of 5e, so it's now "safe" to reintroduce some of that 4e-era UX stuff. The designers are designing for the new players rather than trying to entice lapsed players back as part of a drive to "reunify the fanbase".

 

[Xeviat]

Warlock's relationship with their patron is such a key roleplaying component it's stupid to push it away and spend two levels pretending you have no idea who your patron is. I can actually see reasons why Paladin, Druid or Bard need to prove themselves before being accepted to a group within their class' society in-universe. But Patrons now hiding from their Warlocks for two levels is just weird.

You know, what about this explanation? Gaining a warlock's power is easy, you just have to start delving into the occult and ask for it, and the universe provides. That works for levels 1 and 2. But to go beyond, you have to make a pact.

It's a free trial. Sure, here's some invocations and some pact magic, but if you want more, you have to sell your soul.

 

[Xeviat]

The worst I’ve seen in 5e is the Clay Golem. For reasons that go unexplained (justified by nothing but legacy), when a Clay Golem damages you your maximum HP also goes down! Punishing the tank of the party for doing their job and taking away part of their class feature. How do you cure this curse? A fifth level spell. A single spell. That’s it. It’s already a non-sensical effect for a CLAY golem, but that it only has one option to deal with it is absurd.

Oh oh oh, teacher, call me! I know this one. So the Clay Golem is a being from Jewish stories. At some point, it was supposed to be "only a cleric of X level or higher can heal a clay golem's damage", as in the damage that the clay golem has taken, but it got misread as only a cleric can heal the damage that a clay golem deals.

That's why we changed "Golems" to "Guardians" in Level Up.

 

[cbwjm]

Hmm. I haven't tried either. I know that base artificers get extra attunement slots at the normal rate, but I'm not sure if armorer artificers have been implemented properly (because they get even more attunement slots that are limited to the pieces of their armor).


This is an example of that "we must avoid having 5e resemble 4e in any way" linguistic gymnastics I was talking about upthread. I think the designers were so afraid of putting people off at the beginning of 5e that they went out of their way to avoid using any kind of shorthand/keywords in favor of this cumbersome "natural language".

The other one that annoys me is in monster statblocks when they write out "Recharges after a Short Rest or a Long Rest". Just write "1/Rest" and be done with it!

I've moved to saying 1/rest. I guess it might sometimes come up, but I also think that in most cases, monsters don't need to have an ability that recharges on a rest, they're unlikely to get a chance to rest and recover it.

 

[Xeviat]

I thought of another thing that annoys me; getting rid of the term "Spells Known". Calling everyone's spells list "Prepared spells" is weird when some classes can only "prepare" them when they level up, generally speaking.

The ranger should be a prepared spellcaster, along with Artificer, Cleric, Druid, Eldritch Knight, Arcane Trickster, Paladin, and Wizard. Bards, Sorcerers, and Warlocks should be spells known (but have a way to retrain).

 

[CreamCloud0]

Personally I’m fine with them existing but I would’ve rather they differentiated number of atunement slots between classes, putting aside the artificer which came later everyone came with the same three slots, some classes are clearly designed to rely on magic items more so give them more slots, and it could’ve been a use for INT, having a 15 is +1 atunement slots, 20 is +2.

 

[Xeviat]

I've moved to saying 1/rest. I guess it might sometimes come up, but I also think that in most cases, monsters don't need to have an ability that recharges on a rest, they're unlikely to get a chance to rest and recover it.

1/rest and 1/day are what I use.

 

[James Gasik]

Here's another thing that has annoyed me for multiple editions now: the fact that D&D's combat rules always make dealing damage the most optimal choice. Combat will continue to be a boring, repetitive slog as long as players continue to view doing something other than an attack as a waste of their turn. Some editions have tried harder than others to give players interesting options along with dealing damage, but that hasn't always been received well.


This sort of thing is fine if you're still using paper-and-pencil character sheets (or some other digital sheet), but those of us whose players rely on using D&D Beyond are fairly constrained in how we can house rule stuff like this. (In other words, while you can give PCs extra feats and proficiencies and the like in DDB, you can't give them extra attunement slots. The only work-around would be to recreate the magic item but remove the attunement requirement.)

I suppose, but there are spaces on even DDB sheets to write notes for these sorts of things. Further, DDB sheets are customizable. I used DDB for my last character who was in a friend's Midgard game that used a lot of custom Kobold Press content, and my roommate was able to rig it to track my Luck points and an entire non-WotC subclass for my Wizard.

 

[pukunui]

I suppose, but there are spaces on even DDB sheets to write notes for these sorts of things. Further, DDB sheets are customizable. I used DDB for my last character who was in a friend's Midgard game that used a lot of custom Kobold Press content, and my roommate was able to rig it to track my Luck points and an entire non-WotC subclass for my Wizard.

Yep, but there are limits to the things you can customize on the sheet. I'm not sure attunement slots is one of them. As I said, the easiest work-around is probably just to make a duplicate magic item that doesn't require attunement if you want to allow PCs to have more than the default 3 and you want the DDB sheet to be able to account for any benefits from the extra magic items.

 

[James Gasik]

I hate the general "you can't use this ability again until you finish a long rest" wording. It's so much wordier than "1/day". Look:



Now, what's it look like if we use "1/day" language.



They use 1/day in the Monster stat blocks. The designers say 1/day in interviews. You just have to define "day" as resetting after a long rest (wizards and clerics recover their spells after a long rest, it's not like they're different from each other anymore).

I think this is for groups that use variant rest rules. Like if you decide your "gritty D&D" game has a long rest take a week, then 1/day abilities require you to go back and change them manually.

Plus, you never know, there could be shenanigans like hopping into a convenient fast time demiplane and completing a long rest in half an hour or what have you...