Just for Fun repeat: The "Stupidest Rule" contest

[Greenfield]

I think I did this before, but I felt silly so I'm doing it again: What's the stupidest game rule you've encountered?

Background: There's a "game within the game" we play at our table. When we encounter a stupid rule, in any game system, we put it up to a vote on whether it's the stupidest rule we've heard of.

Candidates we've enjoyed:

1) By the book, D&D 3.* Disintegrate spell won't affect trees, since they're described as "objects", yet are alive. The spell describes it's effect on creatures, and on non-living objects. Living objects aren't covered.

2) By the book, D&D 4e Fireball would be safe to throw into a museum of priceless artifacts and documents, or into a room packed with dynamite for that matter. The RAW says it affects all "targets" in the area, and defines "targets" as living creatures. It omits the line found in previous editions about damaging (and possibly igniting) other things in the area.

So pick a system and pick your favorite "stupid" rule. Share it with the rest of us, or just cast your vote for the ones already mentioned!

(Remember, this is for fun. Try to keep blatant system-bashing to a minimum.)

 

[Tuft]

"In order to be reflective, a mirror must have a lightsource." We had lots of jokey discussions about mirrors with attached candles due to that one...

 

[Greenfield]

In 1st edition Shadow Run, damage came with a Rank and a Force: Ranks were Light, Moderate, Serious, Critical and Deadly. You could go higher to Deadly +x, with x being whatever it came to. Each rank had two check boxes. Force was the target number needed to reduce the damage rating. You'd roll "soak" dice of whatever sort, with each dice being a chance for one success.

Falling damage was described as Rank Deadly, with Force equal to the number of meters you fell.

Joe Average would have a Body score of 3, so he'd have three D6 to roll. (6s re-roll to allow higher target numbers, and 1s always fail).

A fall from a bar stool (1 meter) was therefore Rank Deadly, Force 1. Anything but a 1 on the dice succeeds.

So roll three dice and succeed on all three of them (50/50 chance of that happening.) You're still Critically injured (two success drops from Deadly to Critical, and one more success only checks off one injury box in Critical.)

In the same system, hand grenades did damage Rank Moderate. The only way to kill someone with one was to leave the pin in and throw it like a rock. (Normally you can add Strength to thrown weapons, and can scale th damage up by rolling lots of successes on your attack roll. Because of the inherent inaccuracy of hand grenades, you couldn't do this when you pulled the pin.)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Any RPG in which everyone has the same foot speed, alterable only under certain circumstances: makes it hard to chase someone down...

 

[Greenfield]

Any RPG in which everyone has the same foot speed, alterable only under certain circumstances: makes it hard to chase someone down...

in 1st edition D&D, the Quickling was the fastest thing in the game with a move of 96. That worked out to 960 feet per minute (96 ten foot squares in a one-minute round.) Multiply by 60 to get feet per hour you get 57,600. Divide by 5,280, to convert feet per hour into miles per hour, and you get (drum roll...) 10.09090909.

Yeah, the fastest thing in the world moved at ten miles an hour.

People moved six squares, which (rumbles some numbers) translates to 0.68181818 mph, or a shade ove 2/3 of a mile per hour.

As a general rule, RPGs are scaled to the battle mat.

 

[Zustiur]

To be fair to 1E speed was calculated on the assumption that you we're being cautious because you were in a deadly battle or a dangerous dungeon.

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[GX.Sigma]

in 1st edition D&D, the Quickling was the fastest thing in the game with a move of 96. That worked out to 960 feet per minute (96 ten foot squares in a one-minute round.) Multiply by 60 to get feet per hour you get 57,600. Divide by 5,280, to convert feet per hour into miles per hour, and you get (drum roll...) 10.09090909.

Yeah, the fastest thing in the world moved at ten miles an hour.

Wasn't an inch equal to ten yards in outdoor enviroments (so, 3 times that)?

in 1st edition D&D...People moved six squares

Didn't most humanoids have 12" of movement?

 

[Greenfield]

I think it was 6", but I could be wrong. It's been a while.

 

[Stormonu]

I think it was 6", but I could be wrong. It's been a while.

Its 12", you only moved 6" if you also attacked.

My vote goes to the falling object rules in 3.X. A falling object does 1d6 damage per 10 feet per 200 lbs. A Cave bear weighs in at 4 tons. If a druid has it do a flying elbow from the top turnbuckle (i.e., drop 10 ft), it deals 20d6 damage and takes none itself. Meanwhile, the 75 ton great Red Wyrm only deals 2d8 damage with a crush (i.e., "flying drop") attack.

 

[Empirate]

I'm just all over item pricing with this. Completely love how you can make a fortune if you buy enough ladders, chop them up into their component 10' poles, and sell those for a profit. I also like how a masterwork dagger (or other light weapon) sells for more than its own weight in gold.

Runners-up:
1) weight calculations for creatures of small size: you can carry 3/4 as much as a medium-sized creature, but your equipments all weighs half of that used by medium-sized creatures. Hello, carrying capacity buff!
2) you can hide behind a tower shield you're carrying. Nobody's gonna see you. Really.
3) if you've got Delay Death running, or some other effect that lets you not die from HP damage (like the Frenzied Berserker capstone), you can get millions of HP into the negatives with little worries if you want to. Just put your head under water at some point, and start drowning (don't hold your breath): your HP are now set to -1, allowing easy revival on the next turn.
4) the Tarrasque has neither a fly nor a burrow speed.
5) Deck of Many Things. All of it.
6) Undead and Constructs and stuff are immune to ability damage and drain, but not ability penalties.
7) If you put a Fox's Cunning spell on a regular fox, that fox is now cunning enough to be a sentient being, and understands Common by default. For the entire 1 min/lvl duration...