D&D (2024) Rules that annoy you

[James Gasik]

Also, the casters have exactly the same amount of spell slots. They're more eager to use them to outshine martials outside of combat to not feel like they wasted time preparing utiltiy spells, however. The moment they know its a resource they won't run out of, in my experience, they tend it to slide or even forget about it, letting other classes to shine.

I know this is continuing to sidetrack the thread, but I wanted to point out something with regards to utility spells. There are quite a few in the game that there is no way for other classes to approximate. If you remove those from play, it isn't going to make other classes shine, it's going to leave them grasping at the same straws they are grasping at now, and possibly be annoyed at the caster players for not bringing the answer to the table.

If I'm a Fighter, I cannot:

heal another party member's wounds
remove a curse or other debilitating condition
revive a fallen ally*
provide faster/unusual travel options*
help others survive in a foreign environment (underwater, other planes, what have you)*
deal elemental damage beyond that provided by a torch or vial of acid

*of course, some people don't want these in their game to begin with, which is another whole conversation.

I could go on, but as the game stands now, there's a lot of spells that do not have the ritual tag already that only a spellcaster can provide. The ritual rules help mitigate, but do not completely remove this problem, that there are times when the only solution is either a spell, or a DM coupon ("oh, sure, you can find some firemares that are fast enough to gain access to The Beast's fortress").

If your party encounters a CR 6 Medusa and someone gets turned to stone, the only recourse is "the greater restoration spell or other magic".

If you don't have access to these things, it's time to make a new character. The DM can, of course, allow for other methods to work, but they have to make a change to how the game functions to do so, and it's still not "letting other characters shine" if a mixture of gargoyle and medusa blood can cure petrification (as an example), since that would be something anyone could do.

Until the game gets rid of this silly concept that Fighters and Rogues can't have supernatural abilities, allowing a Fighter to flex his muscles and nope out of being petrified, it's left to the spellcasters (or the DM) to come up with solutions to these problems. Forcing a spellcaster to have all these solutions constantly prepared, to the expense of anything else they'd like to do, isn't a solution unless everyone is perfectly happy carting around a character whose only function is to let the non casters actually go on adventures!

It's the whole "who wants to play the Cleric" problem writ large. In my current game, I have a player who really doesn't want to play a spellcaster and would rather turn their brain off and be a barbarian who smashes things, but is instead playing a spellcaster, because it's too limiting not to be! There are so many situations where the Barbarian would not be able to help the party find solutions to problems that they simply feel like such a character would be more of a burden to the party in the long run!

I tried to explain that I'm not the kind of DM to demand that spells be the only answer to problems, but he said "but that's just you going out of your way to make sure I can play my character, when I could just spare you the trouble."

The game shouldn't be this way, IMO. You wouldn't need to pin back casters if casters weren't necessary to the game's design.

 

[James Gasik]

Side note: the idea of rolling a bunch of dice instead of dice + modifiers reminds me of Earthdawn, which just goes to show how far ahead of it's time that game was.

 

[Voadam]

I have an online game and the spell attack vs saving throw divide trips up my players all the time when they drag the spell effect onto a target and a d20 gets rolled and they get surprised when a high roll means their attack succeeded for some spells but fails for others.

It makes figuring out how the fight is going a little more opaque and takes them a little out of the thrill of combat as a game.

 

[R_J_K75]

how is that easier, you did not get rid of the addition and have to roll more dice

Easier in my opinion because the dice results are right there in front of you to add. Even when players have their PC sheet filled out seems they are always searching for stuff and add spells and other situational modifiers on top of that it slows things down, at least in my experience. The addition is not the problem. Telling a player roll 1d20+1d4 is a lot easier than saying make an attack with your weapon, add +2 for spell "x" and subtract -4 because of situation/condition "y", it either takes longer than it should or with new players, they sometimes get confused.

 

[Voadam]

Easier in my opinion because the dice results are right there in front of you to add. Even when players have their PC sheet filled out seems they are always searching for stuff and add spells and other situational modifiers on top of that it slows things down, at least in my experience. The addition is not the problem. Telling a player roll 1d20+1d4 is a lot easier than saying make an attack with your weapon, add +2 for spell "x" and subtract -4 because of situation/condition "y", it either takes longer than it should or with new players, they sometimes get confused.

Huh, mine is the opposite.

Roll a d20 add five (attack bonus) and add a d4 (bless) three times physically takes longer than roll a d20 and add five (attack bonus) and add plus two (bless) three times because you are looking at more variables and doing a different calculation for each attack instead of looking at half the variables and doing the same calculation.

Having the number on the die in front of you is an interesting point but I don’t see that as being a bigger time factor than looking up more variables and doing different calculations each repeated action.

 

[R_J_K75]

Having the number on the die in front of you is an interesting point but I don’t see that as being a bigger time factor than looking up more variables and doing different calculations each repeated action.

I'm not a game designer so I don't have an answer as to exactly how a dice pool could or should work, but I do believe, whether you are using a dice pool or modifiers it all comes down to how well the DM and players know the rules and how engaged they are during the game.

Roll a d20 add five (attack bonus) and add a d4 (bless) three times physically takes longer than roll a d20 and add five (attack bonus) and add plus two (bless) three times because you are looking at more variables and doing a different calculation for each attack instead of looking at half the variables and doing the same calculation.

This reminds me, I'd get rid of multiple attacks too and figure out a way to represent a hit, more damage and attacking multiple targets in a single roll of dice.

 

[Vaalingrade]

It's amazing how much cantrips get.

Okay, so your sad crossbow or dart is not reflavored to be actual magic with an elemental tag and suddenly it's bad and wrong and overpowered.

 

[James Gasik]

It's amazing how much cantrips get.

Okay, so your sad crossbow or dart is not reflavored to be actual magic with an elemental tag and suddenly it's bad and wrong and overpowered.

I don't really have any problem with cantrips scaling, but I can see a few issues with them.

1- ammunition. Now, I don't personally think tracking arrows and bolts is a big deal, and I use a variant system that, as long as the group remains supplied, they can shoot ranged weapons to their heart's content. But if you do play a game that tracks ammunition, then having to lug around multiple quivers of arrows when the Sorcerer can spam firebolt is a bit unfair. Sure, ranged weapons can have very long ranges, but that probably doesn't come up enough to justify the beancounting.

2- elemental damage is often just superior to weapon damage, as not only are a lot of creatures resistant to nonmagical weapons, but occasionally you need that elemental damage to trigger vulnerabilities or turn off regeneration, and ranged weapons don't offer these options at all! My first 5e character was an archer, and d6+3/2 from my shortbow feels pretty sad vs. d10 from firebolt.

3- about those ranged penalties- spells don't have them! Sure, maybe the range is limited, but never having to worry about disadvantage due to distance is pretty keen.

4- rather than just upping the weapon damage as you level up, 4e style, martial classes have to have extra special powers to increase damage, with things like extra attack or sneak attack. Monsters are perfectly fine with abilities that say "add one die to weapon damage", ala the Gladiator, but PC's are strangely bound to this one die of damage. Sure, 2 x d8+4 blows 2d10 out of the water, but it also burns twice as much ammunition!

5- the fact that there is no special ability required to boost cantrips, it just sort of happens. You can be a 5th level High Elf Fighter with no training in Wizardry at all and have a 2d10 firebolt! And that's not getting into those classes who can add an ability score to their cantrip damage (the most egregious being Warlocks).

6- critical hits. Since most of the time, you're just rolling another weapon die, a critical hit doesn't always feel that impressive- but 6d10 off a firebolt is a whole other story!

7- maybe it strikes you as odd that that leveled spells only get better if you upcast them, using more of your energy, but cantrips just improve? It doesn't take long before you're not even using 1st level slots for damage anymore when you have this ol' reliable cantrip that does way more damage!

I would have preferred a system where you could get more uses of low level spells or even something like spell mastery at much lower levels. I mean, think about this. By the time I could cast magic missile all day long, I have a 4d10 firebolt! This seems backwards, I'd much rather be like "oh hey, you're 7th level? Great, now you can use basic magic missile all day long!".

8- there's also the utility. You need to light a fire in a raging blizzard? Firebolt has you covered- in fact, it has every "light on fire" situation you might have covered (unless the damage burns something to a crisp, lol) at serious range! Sure, not all attack cantrips can affect objects (for, uh, reasons), but a creative spellcaster will get a lot of mileage out of this. It also leads to un-fun interactions like:

DM: "You are unable to get past the arcane locked door."

Player: "Who has two thumbs and can cast a cantrip every round? This guy!"

9- and finally, if you're the kind of person who likes the "limited great power" flavor for spellcasters, where the unwary wizard can find himself throwing darts if he's not cautious, well, have no fear, you apparently have a limitless source of magical energy...which makes no sense. Not that spell slots make tons of sense to begin with ("Why do I have three 3rd level spell slots and one 4th? Why couldn't I turn the 4th into a 1st and a 3rd level spell?"), but it really highlights how much of a gamist element they are and might be difficult to explain in-universe.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

Incapacitated as the condition's name keeps catching me off-guard.

'we were chasing this guy and incapacitated him'
'so you caught him?'
'oh no, he kept running and climbed up a cliff'

You're just unable to take actions, but you can move around normally.

And now, Stunned also no longer prevents you from moving. This becomes silly with Monk's Stunning Strike...
if you succeed at the save, you can only move at half speed
if you fail the save and are stunned, you can move at full speed

 

[pukunui]

Interestingly, I use a proficiency die and it actually makes things LESS swingy, rather than more. Rolling two dice (even different dice) makes it more likely that the total is close to the average.

Sorry. Let me clarify: I don’t think the designers were arguing that the proficiency die made the result too swingy. It was that the die itself was too swingy to represent something like proficiency. Having a static number represent proficiency while the d20 roll represented your effort made more sense to them.