D&D 5E Mechanics you don't want to see, ever

[Son of the Serpent]

For the benefit of those who reported this post, were silently offended, etc., der_kluge was referencing one of the worst RPGs ever made, F.A.T.A.L., which actually included such a rule.

From the infamous RPGNet review:

HAH!!! Thats a hilarious rule.

It IS terrible though. Not realistic. Muscle mass generally correlates positively with intelligence. Albeit weakly. I suppose the idea is that being mentally retarded can cause bursts of strength where the brain doesnt restrain the body's full potential or some other anime logic.

Still funny.

 

[bedir than]

my Japanese friends are openly honest that they don't really speak or read what the priest is saying. Too old and idiosyncratic.

So, they don't know the language the way people in D&D know languages. That isn't evidence that alignment languages should exist. It's evidence that alignment languages were dumb.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

HAH!!! Thats a hilarious rule.

It IS terrible though. Not realistic. Muscle mass generally correlates positively with intelligence. Albeit weakly. I suppose the idea is that being mentally retarded can cause bursts of strength where the brain doesnt restrain the body's full potential or some other anime logic.

Still funny.

No, you're giving FATAL too much credit (not a sentence I expected to write today). It was written by a few comprehensively horrible people who simply regurgitated every bigoted stereotype about women and various races and the mentally disabled and every other marginalized group you can think of -- while ironically embodying every stereotype you can think of about unsocialized and unwashed basement-dwelling manchildren. There is no "idea" behind this or anything else they wrote beyond "lol retards!"

And no, it's not funny.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

No, you're giving FATAL too much credit (not a sentence I expected to write today). It was written by a few comprehensively horrible people who simply regurgitated every bigoted stereotype about women and various races and the mentally disabled and every other marginalized group you can think of -- while ironically embodying every stereotype you can think of about unsocialized and unwashed basement-dwelling manchildren. There is no "idea" behind this or anything else they wrote beyond "lol retards!"

And no, it's not funny.

Oh...so that was the extent of their wit?

Disappointing...im disappointed...

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Anyway, changing the subject...

How about cross-level balancing mechanics? Like wizards being very weak at low levels but very powerful at high levels. Or even worse, nonhuman races just being straight-up better than humans until they run face-first into a level cap.

We can expand this to all sorts of balance schemes that aren't actually felt before or after a certain point in the campaign. Like limiting character creation choices, which cease to matter the moment the character is created. E.g. race-class limitations.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Anyway, changing the subject...

How about cross-level balancing mechanics? Like wizards being very weak at low levels but very powerful at high levels. Or even worse, nonhuman races just being straight-up better than humans until they run face-first into a level cap.

We can expand this to all sorts of balance schemes that aren't actually felt before or after a certain point in the campaign. Like limiting character creation choices, which cease to matter the moment the character is created. E.g. race-class limitations.

Indeed. Even effectively nonexistent limiters that technically apply forever, like the UA Mariner Fighting Style.

It’s a cool style that I allow anyway because Defensive is boring anyway, but the idea that you can pack more into Defensive if you restrict it to light armor and no shield is...just wrong, because it just means that only characters that would have been lightly armored with no shield anyway will ever take it. There isn’t an actual trade off.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

It’s a cool style that I allow anyway because Defensive is boring anyway, but the idea that you can pack more into Defensive if you restrict it to light armor and no shield is...just wrong, because it just means that only characters that would have been lightly armored with no shield anyway will ever take it. There isn’t an actual trade off.

Yeah, exactly, and putting the label "Mariner" on it doesn't help either, because there are a lot of light armor users who aren't mariners.

To partially address the Defensive-is-boring problem, I did add a fighting style specific to light armor, Mobility. Same as in 3E: +4 AC against opportunity attacks. I'd do the same for the other armor weights, but honestly, what PCs picking heavy armor want the most is usually just AC, so as boring as Defensive is it's probably the right design there. And medium armor in 5E is too meh for me to care about.

 

[Coroc]

Weapon speed, because at least 75% of the players and 100% at Wizards have the total wrong belief that a dagger is faster than a great sword or halberd and should have the potential to attack first. So any additional rule on that doomed to be utter bs, leading to endless discussions with Dr. RAW Rulius Magistarius type of players.

 

[Coroc]

up

I think it's not an issue that one example can prove. 10th to 14th is a five level range where you are all into super levels. So to me it's not surprising that it works well enough in some cases. But by even CR 12 you have 9th level spells possible in the adversary and the odds of the 10th level enchanter having 100 hp is a tad slim.

But now let's propagate this back to say 1st-5th level parry. Odds that the "hero" of three battles in a row is the first level wizard (not even enchanter yet) ard pretty slim, right?

Personally, it would seem to me that before 9th level, the impact of a 5 level range of PCs really hits the lower PC hard. Its not insurmountable- the whole party can scale back thrircefforts, buff up the lesser and if the threats cooperate it can manage, but I would not call that being something that the system handles well.

After 9th, it matters much less, everyone is already super. But typically most games run most of their time in that 1-8 range, not 9-16.

up to 3 levels difference does not hurt at all, even in the range of 1-5. But also context is a factor here. If the level 1 gets jumped by all the mobs, like aggro radius in some MMORPG then it does hurt, but if the dm just steers the mobs in a balanced way then nothing happens.

 

[Hussar]

So, they don't know the language the way people in D&D know languages. That isn't evidence that alignment languages should exist. It's evidence that alignment languages were dumb.

You have to remember, in 1e, when they talk about alignment languages, that's precisely what they are - a specialized language to discuss morality (or lack thereof). IOW, you probably couldn't say, "How was your day" in an alignment language. Alignment language in 1e weren't "languages" in the sense that English or French is a language. It's a "language" in the sense that it's a means of communication regarding something very specialized and fairly esoteric.

IOW, while you might know your Catholic prayers in Latin, no one today could properly have a conversation in Latin. OTOH, there was a time when you could have a pretty detailed discussion about the Bible and Scripture, in Latin, even though, it is a dead language.

One must remember that when we're crossing editions, the rules change considerably. The 5e rules for languages and the 1e rules for languages are not the same.