D&D Tropes you like but are tired of

[Theo R Cwithin]

"The Sleeping Evil" - This is basically along the same lines as the Cthulhu love/hate thing, whereby something (elder god, demon, plague, alien ship, etc) lies dormant, yet exerts an influence upon the world as it slowly threatens to awaken and enslave/infect/eat/destroy the world, only to be thwarted by the PCs. Or not, as the dice may roll.

Vancian spellcasting - I like it, probably due to familiarity, but really ought to branch into other magical methodologies. (edit: Maybe this isn't a default "trope" anymore since 4e abandoned it?)

DIY magic items - I dislike and actively restrict "magic mart syndrome", but I have a soft spot for allowing PCs to build their own magics with few restrictions. I'd like to bring that to a halt, at least for a campaign or two, to try to make magic interesting.

31 Flavors of Undead - I like undead, and take do advantage of the gazillion of species... but one day I swear I'll cut them all back to variants on few: skeletons, ghouls, ghosts, and vampires. Everything else at its cold, unbeating heart is just one of those.

31,000 flavors of Monster - A big bestiary is cool and all, but I prefer monsters that are just monstrous variants on a handful of themes. Throw in a few unique real monsters drawn from the great number in the MMs, and I'm happy.

The gold piece standard - Shiny, easy to use, meshes nicely with concepts of "dragon hoards" and "pots of gold", but still drives me nuts.

 

[BraveSirKevin]

All dwarves are drunken, scottish sounding comic relief. Don't know where this started, but I suspect it's Blizzard's fault.

All elves are Legolas. Worse since the movies came out.

All human rangers are Aragorn. Much worse since the movies came out XD

Don't hate any of them... Just would like to see something unexpected once in a while.

 

[Relique du Madde]

Didn't someone already do this thread a few month ago?


Tropes that need to die
Anyways....

All dwarves are drunken, scottish sounding comic relief. Don't know where this started, but I suspect it's Blizzard's fault.

Might have originated from warhammer, but if not look in some D&D settings and you might find it because Warcraft was based on the creator's D&D homebrew Blizzard's failed warhammer game.

 

[Ourph]

All dwarves are drunken, scottish sounding comic relief.

Yes!

Also, tracking torches, arrows, sling stones, flasks of oil, spell components, encumbrance, etc. I'm fine with resource management at the power/action level, but I didn't sign up to play Debits & Dollars when I rolled up my Wizard.

 

[BraveSirKevin]

Yes!

Also, tracking torches, arrows, sling stones, flasks of oil, spell components, encumbrance, etc. I'm fine with resource management at the power/action level, but I didn't sign up to play Debits & Dollars when I rolled up my Wizard.

These might help with that.

 

[RainOfSteel]

• Class, Prestige Class, and Feat Splat: This is a system pet peeve. I absolutely despise an endless procession of new classes, new prestige classes, and new feats. This dislike arises form the almost inevitable way in which these new elements become more and more powerful than in the past, creating power creep. This leads to players wanting to shift classes, or even characters, just to pick up the latest and greatest. Most of them also become more and more exotic in order to look like a new idea, and so fitting even those that are of reasonable power into a campaign becomes a pain in the neck. GMs generally cannot keep up with all of the new material, and so admitting constant new material generally means equally constant breaks in the game to stare at rulebooks and make rulings on abilities whose total playtesting time prior to release was probably ten minutes of conceptual thought and, if lucky, one or two hours of game play. These elements are seriously disrupting to any long term campaign.
• Cthulhu: I am just tired of them in general. I would almost certainly not use them in any milieu, at least not recognizably. In some ways, the Obyrith, I feel, are strongly related in concept as near or completely alien beings of evil. Just reading the codex entry on Dagon makes me think of the Cthulhu mythos. I don't need the Cthulhu mythos on top of that. The Far Realm goes with it. If the actual Cthulhu mythos gods and monsters are going to be used, I want to see the milieu and it's cosmology be based on it, or have them appear in the standard wheel just like all the other mythologies.
• Shadow: All elements of the shadow plane, but most especially the Forgotten Realms shadow weave and associated classes.
• The Dying Earth/Jack Vance Spell Memorization System: I have never liked it and never will. At best I tolerate it. Give me mana point-based systems any day.

Dragons and drow? I'm still okay with those things, although I did run a campaign where all the dragons had been killed and the drow were all albinos (like most cave-dwellers), stood seven-feet tall, worshiped Hel instead of Lolth, and specialized in ice-magic (the group never ran into them).