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NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
Core concept or rule that just bugs you beyond your ability to put up with it?
- Thread starter Quasqueton
- Start date
Olgar Shiverstone
Legend
Monks.
Psionics.
I tolerate one and completely ignore the existence of the other.
Psionics.
I tolerate one and completely ignore the existence of the other.
Aethelstan
First Post
I like AoO in some respects but in my experience it does slow the game down a bit because players spend more time moving their figures around testing from AoO zones.
BlueBlackRed
Explorer
The overall mechanics of D&D I've learned to accept and deal with.
But there are 2 things that I just wanna nuke, and have in my home game.
#1 - Psionics. They've screwed it up so many times I've stopped even looking at it.
#2 - Withdrawal. The option in combat that allows you pretty much leave combat with no AoO from the guy you're running away from. What a crock.
But there are 2 things that I just wanna nuke, and have in my home game.
#1 - Psionics. They've screwed it up so many times I've stopped even looking at it.
#2 - Withdrawal. The option in combat that allows you pretty much leave combat with no AoO from the guy you're running away from. What a crock.
Non-human Resources
First Post
Here are some of my pet peeves:
Spellbooks – In additon to the issues that Rel mentioned: First they are waaaay too expensive. Each page requires 100 gp – that’s two pounds of gold – and yet they are just paper and ink. Second, they are completely useless to anyone but a wizard and even then, a wizard is better off scribing a copy into his own book because of the spellcraft check to learn from another’s spellbook. It’s usually much cheaper to pay the owner of a spellbook to copy just the spells you need (in addition to the scribing cost) than to buy the book outright.
Magic Items – I feel that magic items are too expensive when compared to mundane goods in D&D. A house sells for about 5000 gp and a +2 sword sells for 8000 (plus masterwork costs plus weapon costs). The sword is clearly a better value but I can’t think of anybody who would trade their house in exchange for that sword. Yes, I know that adventurers have different priorities, but still it’s not a good trade.
Favored classes – A favored class is only meaningful if you deviate from the class. A dwarven fighter gains no paticular bonus, while a dwarven cleric/fighter simply avoids a penalty.
Multiclassing in general – Mulitclassing is its own reward and its own penalty. There doesn’t need to be an additional xp cost. Unless you keep your two classess even. For some reason having a “double major” (cleric 5 / fighter 5) isn’t a problem, but if you take cleric 1 and then “change majors” to fighter 9, that one cleric level will always interfer with your fighter studies.
A couple of minor nitpicks:
Falling – In d20 you always land on your feet.
Running – In d20 running doesn’t make you go faster, it makes you go farther.
In response to some of the other topics brought up:
Reflex save – For some reason, they don’t bother me. I guess I am able to internalize that as part of playing a game.
Specialness of magic items – For the record, low plus magic weapons aren’t special. First, they are surprisingly common. Magic weapons are always near the top of an adventurers must have list. They have to be in world where monsters are trying to eat you on a dialy basis. Second, with the exception of penatrating DR of X/magic, you can’t tell the difference from a masterwork dagger (+1 enhancement bonus to hit) and +1 dagger (+1 enhancement bonus to hit and damage). Third, human beings have a minimum difference threshold of about 5%. So spotting a +2 dagger by it’s behavior in combat is going to be very unlikely even when compared to a non-magical masterwork dagger. Fourth, human beings* do* take things for granted. When was the last time you took the time to appreciate the rare and wondrous thing in your life?
Ninety-nine percent of the time people will look at that magic dagger and say “Yeah, it’s nice and shiny. What do you want to do for lunch?”
Spellbooks – In additon to the issues that Rel mentioned: First they are waaaay too expensive. Each page requires 100 gp – that’s two pounds of gold – and yet they are just paper and ink. Second, they are completely useless to anyone but a wizard and even then, a wizard is better off scribing a copy into his own book because of the spellcraft check to learn from another’s spellbook. It’s usually much cheaper to pay the owner of a spellbook to copy just the spells you need (in addition to the scribing cost) than to buy the book outright.
Magic Items – I feel that magic items are too expensive when compared to mundane goods in D&D. A house sells for about 5000 gp and a +2 sword sells for 8000 (plus masterwork costs plus weapon costs). The sword is clearly a better value but I can’t think of anybody who would trade their house in exchange for that sword. Yes, I know that adventurers have different priorities, but still it’s not a good trade.
Favored classes – A favored class is only meaningful if you deviate from the class. A dwarven fighter gains no paticular bonus, while a dwarven cleric/fighter simply avoids a penalty.
Multiclassing in general – Mulitclassing is its own reward and its own penalty. There doesn’t need to be an additional xp cost. Unless you keep your two classess even. For some reason having a “double major” (cleric 5 / fighter 5) isn’t a problem, but if you take cleric 1 and then “change majors” to fighter 9, that one cleric level will always interfer with your fighter studies.
A couple of minor nitpicks:
Falling – In d20 you always land on your feet.
Running – In d20 running doesn’t make you go faster, it makes you go farther.
In response to some of the other topics brought up:
Reflex save – For some reason, they don’t bother me. I guess I am able to internalize that as part of playing a game.
Specialness of magic items – For the record, low plus magic weapons aren’t special. First, they are surprisingly common. Magic weapons are always near the top of an adventurers must have list. They have to be in world where monsters are trying to eat you on a dialy basis. Second, with the exception of penatrating DR of X/magic, you can’t tell the difference from a masterwork dagger (+1 enhancement bonus to hit) and +1 dagger (+1 enhancement bonus to hit and damage). Third, human beings have a minimum difference threshold of about 5%. So spotting a +2 dagger by it’s behavior in combat is going to be very unlikely even when compared to a non-magical masterwork dagger. Fourth, human beings* do* take things for granted. When was the last time you took the time to appreciate the rare and wondrous thing in your life?
Ninety-nine percent of the time people will look at that magic dagger and say “Yeah, it’s nice and shiny. What do you want to do for lunch?”
Saeviomagy
Adventurer
coyote6 said:
The only actual house rule you need is to delete the words "she already knows and has recorded in her own spellbook" from the section on borrowed spellbooks. The complete arcane rules are a crock - mainly because it takes so long and is so difficult, and provides no possibility of mastering the lower level spells in a book and not the higher level ones.
My pet peeve right now is the whole "every critter except humans and halflings has vision enhancements". I'd say just scrap all improved sight from monster types and hand it out on a blow-by-blow basis. Does it lurk about at night? Low light. Only in deep caves and caverns? Darkvision. Dwarves and (half-)orcs would be reduced to low-light - they do, after all, come to the surface a lot.
My next pet peeve is "creatures with blindsight/blindsense never need to make spot or listen checks". Change? "Creatures with blindsense may pinpoint a creature or object with a successful spot or listen check. They still suffer concealment". "creatures with blindsight 'see' a creature or object with a successful spot or listen check, ignoring the effects of concealment", and finally "creatures with both blindsight/blindsense and scent may make a survival roll in place of a spot or listen check to pinpoint or see a creature using scent". Oh, and "Creatures with tremorsense may use a listen check to pinpoint an otherwise invisible creature. They still suffer concealment as normal". There. Now move silent and hide are worthwhile skills at high level, instead of being the waste of time that they currently are.
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
devoblue said:
Conan d20 (OK Conan OGL technically) has an interesting variation on the favoured class mechanic which might appeal to you. IIRC every five levels you take in a favoured class you gain a bonus feat. i.e. rather than encouraging multiclassing with the favoured class (current method) it encourages sticking with the favoured class. The D&D way suggests that dwarfs often have a bit of fighter about them, whatever their class (not normally true because multiclassing is generally less effective, but there you go). The Conan way suggests that Cimmerians tend to be barbarians (rather than be other stuff with a bit of extra barbarian).
Cheers
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