D&D (2024) Rules that annoy you

[billd91]

The maths can be annoying to keep track of between sessions but I don't mind the conceptual use of inspirational healing and temp hit points as partially meat and partially will power without the need to be specific. High level hit points don't really make any sense if they're just meat. You would need Level 0 hit points for your meat and then your level-based training/luck hp in a different pool. Inspirational healing would then be way better than clerical healing, since your actual hp would only be about 10hp. Save or die poison damage would be back on the menu!

I suppose that is straightforward enough to implement though. You could do meat HP based on size plus your strength and con bonuses (so a range of 4 to 18). Every hit does 1 meat damage per die rolled or on a crit 1 meat damage +1 per die rolled. D&D would be much more lethal though and you would need more reactions to avoid meat damage even if your skill/luck hp went down, like parrying, rogue uncanny dodge, shield or stoneskin spells etc.

The hit points - meat vs non-meat - is always such a bizarre topic to me. Hit points haven't been tenable as just meat since at least 1st edition, so the insistence that they have to be all meat has always been ridiculous on its face. But the issues of non-meat hit conceptions of hit points persist as well because some ideas just don't work with them.
The simplest solution I've ever thought of is not dividing hit points into meat and non-meat - it's treating each hit point, both in a PC's hit point pool and incoming damage, as both meat and non-meat. As the PC levels up (or wears down), the proportion of what's meat and what's non-meat varies. But the point is the same - there's always a bit of both types of damage in every attack. It may not be particularly bloody, but meat includes strain on the body including being awash with pain, inflammation, pain-managing hormones, strains, sprains, scratching, bruising, and bloody noses and jammed fingers. Non-meat includes divine protection, luck, general weariness, and every other less tangible manifestation of being worn down and closer to losing the next fight.
Then you don't have to worry about whether a poison-carrying attack might hit meat or not, it always does just a little bit - enough to potentially allow the poison to take effect, depending on the save. And yet, most of the damage might still not be flesh and so be amenable to inspirational healing.

The problem with inspirational healing wasn't just the idea of a "warlord shouting someone's arm back on". It was also the idea that most of the healing it generated was from a specified internal resource and could occur so often that the inspirational narrative comeback of the character, drawing from an internal well of grit to pick themselves up off the mat and fight back to a win, was so routine that it became utterly ho-hum and no longer a dramatic, or even distinctive, narrative at all. And that sucked.

 

[Pauln6]

Hit points are always a combination of meat and less tangible qualities, and the latter grows proportionally as level goes up. But the meat is always there, because there are situations where it has to be. My preference has been explained before, but basically I like that, outside of those situations where it has to be meat, the only hit that truly does real damage is the last one that brings you down. My concern has always been more about what happens then over anything before that.

It's a discussion. It shouldn't be scripture no matter what preference you have.

It doesn't work on a hard binary basis, since many magical effects have some physical consequences, as does poison, but I am broadly in agreement. I would say the half hit points/bloodied milestone is also meat damage.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It doesn't work on a hard binary basis, since many magical effects have some physical consequences, as does poison, but I am broadly in agreement. I would say the half hit points/bloodied milestone is also meat damage.

Things like poison fall under the meat exceptions I mentioned.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The hit points - meat vs non-meat - is always such a bizarre topic to me. Hit points haven't been tenable as just meat since at least 1st edition, so the insistence that they have to be all meat has always been ridiculous on its face. But the issues of non-meat hit conceptions of hit points persist as well because some ideas just don't work with them.
The simplest solution I've ever thought of is not dividing hit points into meat and non-meat - it's treating each hit point, both in a PC's hit point pool and incoming damage, as both meat and non-meat. As the PC levels up (or wears down), the proportion of what's meat and what's non-meat varies. But the point is the same - there's always a bit of both types of damage in every attack. It may not be particularly bloody, but meat includes strain on the body including being awash with pain, inflammation, pain-managing hormones, strains, sprains, scratching, bruising, and bloody noses and jammed fingers. Non-meat includes divine protection, luck, general weariness, and every other less tangible manifestation of being worn down and closer to losing the next fight.
Then you don't have to worry about whether a poison-carrying attack might hit meat or not, it always does just a little bit - enough to potentially allow the poison to take effect, depending on the save. And yet, most of the damage might still not be flesh and so be amenable to inspirational healing.

Yep, this is exactly I see it. Every time you take HP damage, you were hurt at least a little bit. It is just that when you gain levels, your ability to take blows and function while injured improve, so what might have been a fatal blow to a low level character is just scratch to a high level one; but both were still physically hit and actually injured.

 

[TravDoc42]

Unsure if it's been mentioned, but I'm not a fan of how  sleep went from being a spell with its own mechanical twist (rolling dice equal to HP, not based on a save), to being just another "Wisdom save or suck" spell.

I do get that the HP version might be slower, but there's something satisfying about whittling down a group of monsters to low HP, and sending them all to sleep, with no save. A happy medium between the two approaches would've been nicer.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Weapon Masteries.

I think I probably would have given up on D&D and switched completely to Shadowdark anyway, but Weapon Masteries annoy me so much that even without Shadowdark I probably would have found a new RPG. Which is a shame because in general I like the 2024 changes. Just playing without them doesn't seem like a good option because that would be a distinct nerf to only some classes.

So, yeah, I wish they weren't included, or that there was a balanced way to exclude them. (Or an alternative rule: e.g. "just add X damage to all attacks".)

P.S. And I HATE HATE HATE that you change your "masteries" after sleeping for 8 hours. I can handwave away an awful lot of metagamey cognitive dissonance, but what exactly do masteries represent if you swap them out while sleeping?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Weapon Masteries.

I think I probably would have given up on D&D and switched completely to Shadowdark anyway, but Weapon Masteries annoy me so much that even without Shadowdark I probably would have found a new RPG. Which is a shame because in general I like the 2024 changes. Just playing without them doesn't seem like a good option because that would be a distinct nerf to only some classes.

So, yeah, I wish they weren't included, or that there was a balanced way to exclude them.

Are martial classes weaker in 5.5 without them than they were in 5.0?

 

[CleverNickName]

Meh. I haven't seen any rule that I can't ignore or change to suit my playstyle. Graze, for example: I don't care for 'damage on a miss,' so I'd replace it with Cleave or Nick or whatever the player prefers. (shrug)

 

[Corinnguard]

Are martial classes weaker in 5.5 without them than they were in 5.0?

I don't believe so.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't believe so.

Then in that case, whatever balance existed in 2014 would be maintained.