Dumberest D&D tropes and combinations (any edition)

[Dice4Hire]

Mos Eisley Cantina adventuring party.

"You know, I just realized that each of us is the only one of our race on the whole continent."

 

[Plane Sailing]

Friar Tuck was a skilled swordsman

As well as being a renowned worker of divine miracles... No, wait...

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Moses was a warrior. And Muhammad. Religious folk have been making war throughout history.

The only pre-D&D, swords & sorcery kinda fighting priest that I can think of, is Rakhir the Red Archer, warrior-priest of Phum from M.M.'s Elric stories.

William the Bastard's brother, who's name escapes me, was the prototype for the cleric who fought with a mace so that he wouldn't 'spill blood'. But there were others who did the same during the crusades.

 

[saskganesh]

William the Bastard's brother, who's name escapes me, was the prototype for the cleric who fought with a mace so that he wouldn't 'spill blood'. But there were others who did the same during the crusades.

Odo. Odo de Conteville, Bishop of Bayeux, Earl of Kent.

He was also something of a "bastard".

 

[Ratinyourwalls]

The Lazy Warlord.

A dude whose only purpose in the party is to hit things with his sword and yell really loudly.

And that somehow makes the rogue hit harder, the fighter harder to kill, the mage more accurate with her magic and the Ranger able to fire arrows faster. =)

 

[Relique du Madde]

Kleptomaniac halflings.

 

[DogBackward]

The discussion on Clerics and combat brings up something I'd love to see die: hybrid classes. 3e created the basics of a great multiclassing system, and using what was learned from that, 4e and Pathfinder, there's no reason multiclassing can't be easy and balanced. Especially with the flattened power curve, even spellcasters won't be hugely nerfed by having fewer levels. Those few spells you get will be just as (or near enough) useful 5-10 levels down the line as they were when you took them.

So, yes, change the Cleric to the priest-archetype: a divine spellcaster, first and foremost. You want a D&D style cleric that wades into battle with a mace and a shield (what many call a Paladin, actually)? Cleric/Fighter. You want a warrior of the wild with a weak animal companion and only a few nature spells, but the ability to dual-wield awesome blades of fury? Fighter/Druid. You want a Magus/Swordmage/Duskblade/whatever? Fighter Mage.

Mostly, it just seems like a lot of classes exist solely to combine fighter with another type of class. Why not just let people combine fighter (and other classes) with other types of class(es)?

To be honest, the game could do just fine with Fighter, Rogue, Cleric and Wizard, then supporting archetypes with modular class features.

 

[TanithT]

Double-wielding swords or even worse, double-wielding giant hammers.

It can be done and has been done; it's a legit fighting style. I really hated running up against dual wielders in the SCA, since I was sword-and-board. Oh, the openings they can find. One of those buggers broke my arm that way.

Dual wielding giant hammers I'm less sure about. I've never seen it and there might be center of gravity and balance issues. But swords, absolutely no question. Two-swords aren't the most common thing to see in the SCA, fortunately for us sword-and-boarders, but you do definitely see them. And some of them are too bloody good.

Clerics since OD&D right on through Fourth: a cleric should not be a combatant. The examples people always use are either religious knights (id est, paladins) or else examples from fantasy written after the baleful effects of OD&D. But I just refluff clerics as knights templar/jihadists/paladins and carry one with it.

My least favorite trope is the idea that a cleric or paladin of a non-Christian fantasy deity should be celibate. Um, why? You've got the wrong religion there, and it shouldn't be an automatic assumption.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Dusk elves.

A race that can retrained out of is just too stupid to think about.

 

[TanithT]

Huge, famous dungeons are an old school trope. They're huge. They repopulate easily, can never be cleared out and most importantly, most of those adventurers are dead, dead, dead.

The towns have no visible economy. The inhabitants spend all their time in the local tavern quaffing ale and offering adventurers gold to delve into dungeons with no visible ecology. The dungeons have no history, and they exist for no reason except to house an eclectic assortment of monsters that eat nothing but stray adventurers and poop nothing but treasure.

Worldbuilding and backstory or GTFO. "Dungeons" make no sense in the classic trope.