D&Disms That Make You Go "Huh?"

[shilsen]

I believe that is a very old fantasy fandom convention, dating back to the forties or so, the reasoning works like this - In Norse mythology there are no female dwarfs --> If dwarfs are a separate species, not diminutive humans there have to be baby dwarfs --> If there are baby dwarfs then there have to be mommy dwarfs --> Then why don't the Norse recognize any female dwarfs? --> 'CAUSE THEY GOT BEARDS!!!

Fandom is a silly place.

The Auld Grump - Picture Poul Anderson windmilling his arms and shouting 'CAUSE THEY GOT BEARDS!!! and it falls into place....

Actually I think it's more likely that it's from Tolkien. In the appendices to LotR, there's a mention that the women of the dwarves are heavily outnumbered by the men and look just like them, so many non-dwarves assume that dwarven women don't exist.

 

[FoxWander]

This is completely off-topic but I feel compelled to answer this. I love exploring how magic could effect every day life- beyond the killing of monsters and taking their stuff.

I read that spell description and it just doesn't make any sense to me.

Here's what it means and an example- From the spell description: You convert material of one sort (wood) into a product (house) that is of the same material (a wooden house).

According to this link, an average 2 bedroom house requires 11,000 board-feet of wood. That's 916.6 cubic feet. So a 10th level wizard could make a complete house (with some wood furniture from the extra) by casting Fabricate 10 times. At two 5th level spells a day, it would take one week to go from wooded plot of land to finished house- and still have the weekend to relax.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Actually I think it's more likely that it's from Tolkien. In the appendices to LotR, there's a mention that the women of the dwarves are heavily outnumbered by the men and look just like them, so many non-dwarves assume that dwarven women don't exist.

Heh, not that is Tolkien addressing the same 'no dwarfen women' problem. He borrowed just a wee bit from Norse mythology you know.... He did so around the same time that American fantasy was breaking into the S.F. magazines. (Astounding, Fantastic, Amazing, and most of all Unknown and Weird Tales - these actually predate the Lord of the Rings in print form.)

Odd as it sounds one of my favorites of Tolkien's writings is 'Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics' - worth a read, if you can find a copy. It deals with admitting that sometimes the monsters (and other fantastic creatures) in mythology are sometimes just that, not allegory, not a mask for something else, but monsters. Tolkien was a fantasist long before being such was popular, but he was not the first, Lord Dunsany is another to look for in this regard.

The Auld Grump, tangent man strikes again....

 

[RFisher]

No, but a few more spells that don't revolve around combat.

So, I reached out & grabbed my closest D&D book. It is, of course, my favorite edition (c. 1981 Expert). Glancing through the lists, I see an awful lot of non-combat spells. Detect Evil, Detect Magic, Purify Food & Water, Find Traps, Know Alignment, Speak with Animal, Cure Disease, Locate Object, Create Water, Speak with Plants, Commune, Create Food, Quest. 13 out of 34 for the Cleric list. It's arguable whether a lot of the rest are combat spells. Light and Continual Light, e.g., can be used in combat... Remove Fear and Resist Cold can help with combat against specific foes, but are they really combat spells?

The Magic-user and Elf lists have more clearly-combat spells, but I'm still seeing a lot of non-combat spells & a lot of gray-area spells.

Now, I don't have my 3e books as handy, but I didn't think the range of spells had changed that much. (Lots more spells but basically the same mix.)

 

[AnonymousOne]

To your "QFT" you added 8 words and attempted an expletive. That sir, is an increasing of your post count by one with a little grumbling on the end. I believe you should just accept that you were QFTing with no greater purpose than watching your post count ascend...[go's to check own post count...hey I'm up one more...]

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

GAH! Foiled again!

Oh look ... that little counter thingy went up by 1.

 

[STARP_Social_Officer]

Dungeons never have bathrooms. Or outhouses.

Mine do. Always.
One time the PCs were exploring and found the outhouses. One of them was a duck blind - the hole led to a secret chamber full of goodies. The PCs figured out quickly the hole was very deep, so they came up with a novel solution. They tied a rope around the protesting halfling and pushed him down.
Of course, he came back up again due to the reverse gravity effect halfway down the shaft. And then he fell up the hole and hit the ceiling.
And then he bounced off.
And fell back down the hole.
And then he bounced back up again and hit the ceiling again.
Good times.

 

[LonePaladin]

Several quirks with the current version of the rules.

• Horses that are 10 feet wide.
• It's impossible for a Small humanoid to climb up a Huge creature, because he can never beat it's grapple check. Good luck hanging on if you do get up there.
• While I'm at it, grappling favors large creatures too heavily. Most things with Improved Grab have high Strength scores and a size bonus, which easily outstrips most PCs.
• The DCs for Tumble checks. Once you can get a +15 bonus, there's practically no reason to ever increase it.
• Heal DCs. This one reaches maximum usability even earlier.
• A 5th-level arcanist can create a permanent magical item in two days, but still needs the better part of a week to make one vial of acid.
• Hide and Move Silently being separate skills. This is something that's always bothered me since the Basic D&D rules, but it's even worse in 3rd edition. Who ever picks up one skill but not the other?
• Any rules that still require you to keep track of facing. They tried to do away with it in 3.0, and did a better job of it in 3.5, but any creature that flies still needs to note which direction they're pointed at, while most of the other rules don't. One or the other, people.
• Making magic items difficult to identify. A lot of DMs neglect to use the rules on cursed items, so there's usually no harm in experimenting (or using one-shot items in an emergency). The latest rules for IDing things in the Magic Item Compendium helps with this, but everything before that made it a real hassle.
• All poisons take one minute to have their full effect, then apparently run their course and vanish from the victim's system. Real-world poisons can take much longer to have an effect, and take a very long time to run their course. (Of course, there are some venoms that can kill in less than a minute, so...) The same goes for diseases; why didn't they include any real-world examples, to give DMs some sort of baseline?
• All languages are apparently grammatically and phonetically separate, with no similarities between them. (Note that this doesn't apply to the Forgotten Realms, where the languages actually have etymologies, thanks to Sean K Reynolds.) In most game worlds, someone who speaks Dwarven has no clue about anything spoken in Giant, even though the two have the same alphabet and are probably somewhat similar.
• If you've bought all the 3.5 rulebooks, there are 3,279 feats to pick from. Unless you're a member of a specific class, you're only going to get 7 before reaching epic level. Couldn't they have released at least one major splatbook that didn't have a bunch of new feats? Just once?

 

[FireLance]

Horses that are 10 feet wide.

Horses aren't 10 feet wide any more than humans or goblins are 5 feet wide. It's just the space they require to maneuver around freely in combat. Horses can fight in a smaller space, but the squeezing rules would apply. See this thread for a zipped powerpoint presentation.

 

[Fifth Element]

It's impossible for a Small humanoid to climb up a Huge creature, because he can never beat it's grapple check.

Small creatures take a -4 penalty to grapple; Huge creatures gain a +8 bonus. The spread of 12 can be overcome with favourable d20 rolls. The Small creature can also have a better BAB which helps as well.

Unless by "impossible" you meant "unlikely"?

 

[Nifft]

Small creatures take a -4 penalty to grapple; Huge creatures gain a +8 bonus. The spread of 12 can be overcome with favourable d20 rolls.

IME there's usually a Strength difference too...

Cheers, -- N