Little Known Rules of D&D

[Slaved]

Per RAW, if you sleep 8 hours in heavy armor, you are more tired than if you walk 48 hours in heavy armor........

I am not sure if you are joking or not, so I will apologize in advance.

Forced March
In a day of normal walking, a character walks for 8 hours. The rest of the daylight time is spent making and breaking camp, resting, and eating.

A character can walk for more than 8 hours in a day by making a forced march. For each hour of marching beyond 8 hours, a Constitution check (DC 10, +2 per extra hour) is required. If the check fails, the character takes 1d6 points of nonlethal damage. A character who takes any nonlethal damage from a forced march becomes fatigued. Eliminating the nonlethal damage also eliminates the fatigue. It’s possible for a character to march into unconsciousness by pushing himself too hard.

 

[pawsplay]

Fun facts about the shortsword:
- Cannot be used to slash, unlike a dagger or longsword
- Cannot be used to Power Attack, as it is light
- Shares a proficiency with the wakizashi (DMG), which is a slashing only weapon

Aasimar can qualify for Eldritch Knight with just 5 levels of wizard and nothing else; their Outsider traits give them proficiency with all martial weapons.

Gnomes can take Craft (alchemy) even if of a nonspellcasting class; the only requirement is being a spellcaster, not the ability to cast spells of a certain level. Gnomes have spell-like abilities, giving them a caster level.

Similarly, a 20th level paladin can craft a scroll with a caster level of 20th, even though his caster level is ordinarily 10th; he has several spell-like abilities, and as no other caster level is specified, their caster level is his HD.

Walking along a 12" wide plank causes you to lose your Dex bonus unless you have 5 or more ranks of Balance. Walking along a 13" plank does not, and apparently requires no balance roll ordinarily. Someone with 5 ranks of Balance retains their Dex bonus on a 2" wide surface, even if they fail to move every turn because they can't beat the Balance DC.

Several epic creatures have divine rank 0 abilities and are specified as being equivalent to a divine rank 0 creature; but creatures with divine ranks, even divine rank 0, are not given a CR modifier in Deities & Demigods along the lines of a true template.

Potions cannot exceed 3rd level; there is no potion of restoration, for instance.

 

[Hypersmurf]

A fairly recent Sage advice answer in Dragon magazine discusses this a bit.

And did he agree with the rules, or get it wrong?

-Hyp.

 

[pawsplay]

And did he agree with the rules, or get it wrong?

-Hyp.

Sometimes the Sage isn't even wrong.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

So did he agree with the rules, in this case?

 

[pawsplay]

I meant in the sense of "this isn't right.... this isn't even wrong," in case that was unclear.

 

[mvincent]

A fairly recent Sage advice answer in Dragon magazine discusses this a bit. Unfortunately, the Sage advice answers from the last several editions of Dragon magazine did not make it into the FAQ as normal.

(from a previous thread) From Dragon 352, Pages 86-87
"Does a celestial or fiendish animal, which has a 3 Intelligence, understand a language?
The celestial and fiendish templates don't indicate that the creature gains the ability to understand any particular language..."

He goes on to say it is a DM call and indicates that least a rudimentary ability to understand a single language would be most reasonable.

I'd have to reread it to get his full thoughts on it.

 

[Hypersmurf]

"The celestial and fiendish templates don't indicate that the creature gains the ability to understand any particular language..."

I agree with him completely.

Which means the "unless otherwise noted" clause kicks in, and the language they understand is Common.

-Hyp.

 

[pawsplay]

I agree with him completely.

Which means the "unless otherwise noted" clause kicks in, and the language they understand is Common.

-Hyp.

A fiendish creature uses all the base creature’s statistics and abilities except as noted here.

 

[Hypersmurf]

A fiendish creature uses all the base creature’s statistics and abilities except as noted here.

Right.

And one of the abilities that changes is Intelligence. Would you say that if a Fiendish Triceratops has an Int of 3 instead of 1, its Search modifier remains unchanged? Or should it increase by 1, since the Int modifier has increased by 1?

-Hyp.