Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="FrankTrollman" data-source="post: 1194692" data-attributes="member: 14225">One thing that happened in a lot of AD&D games was an effect I call "ruleslawyer truce". The rules were simply soo unclear about... well... everything, that people gave up trying to make sense of them. Simply, the rules were so arguable that many groups never bothered.In 3rd edition there are precisely four ways to get infinite power in the Core rules (Shadow Farming, Simulacrum Factories, Efreeti Chain Gangs, and Self Awakening). And we can talk about them because the rules are clearly layed out to the point where we can actually discuss that sort of thing.In the AD&D DMG and PHB there were probably about twenty or thirty things which were arguably infinitely powerful in the Psionics chart alone. Recall that the Disintegation Psionic Thingy didn't even bother to say whether or not the target was granted a save (let alone what kind of jank save it might be). But it was all unclear enough that the DM would just sort of announce something, people would shrug, and the game would move on.So in AD&D you would activate your Disintegrate Psioinic Widgit and then the DM would have the prospective victim make a save vs. Paralysis or something - and then he probably wouldn't even die. If your victim did not die, the DM might arbitrarily cause him some damage. Whatever.This wasn't because the rules said to do that - the rules didn't address how the power would go about failing in the first place - let alone what would happen if it did.And so on for just about everything. The rules weren't clear enough for people to actually know what was going on most of the time. The only time you got really bitter arguments was when people from different playgroups sat down at the same table - oogh. People who had been playing by rules they had essentially made up themselves for years were in for a rude awakening when they ran afoul of the fact that every other play group had been doing the same thing - almost invariably to the effect of having different aggregate rules.-Frank</blockquote>

Verification