Most Amusing Rule Misinterpretation?

[Dalamar]

Didn't happen in my group, but this one I heard trough the grapevine:
A group that had just started with 3E DnD took a look at the Spell Penetration feat and came to the conclusion that it gave you +2 caster level. So they had first level wizards who could throw two magic missiles etc.

 

[Ron]

I started playing with the old basic box but I quickly moved to AD&D. We messed with rounds segments. In the way we interpreted, spells would take several rounds, not segments, to be casted. As such, a magic-user would have to concentrate for three rounds before he could cast a fireball.

It is a completely different way to play the game. Not bad, at all means. It took us one year to figure out the mistake.

 

[JediSoth]

YES! We did this, too, up until about 1994! LoL!

At the back of the 1E DM's guide in those sideways tables for monsters & stuff, there's blurbs next to each monster which says how many exp. the players got for killing the monster. But it was written like "4000 experience points + 4 per hit point".

We skillfully misinterpreted the above (and all others likewise) as meaning the party gets to divide 4000 experience points AND 4 HIT POINTS amongst its members. LoL! So that's how my 7th level dude ended up with 118 hit points!

I'm glad I'm not the only one who did this! I was 8 when I started playing, and some of those rules were really hard to understand. I don't think I fully understood how XP worked for 2 years (the DM would just estimate when he thought you should go up a level).

JediSoth

 

[CombatWombat51]

I'd heard of this once, then I actually got to see it in person with a random group I joined. They believed that excess points healed from the cure spells were added to your hit point total. Permanently! Now, I can understand this mistake from a bunch of new gamers... but these were guys in their late 30's who'd been playing since various phases of 1E, all through 2E and all its additions, and 3E was just about to come out! I couldn't, and still can't, comprehend how a whole group of players could make such a mistake for so many years!

Unfortunately, I can't remember any personal blunders, though I'm sure there were plenty

 

[Henry]

I guess you'll have to be a card gamer to really understand what that means, but it was a ridiculously broken game without that major rule added in.

Ah, yes, I remember the heady days of M:tG and Mox Gems when you could drop almost your entire library (draw pile) into play on your first turn.


My worst rule interpretation was that the multiclassing rules in the 1E Player's Handbook were HORRIBLY explained. I had multiclassed characters that gained hit points WITHOUT dividing by the number of classes, nor did we divide experience. SO if you gained a level, using one of the three experience charts, you gained levels in ALL three. One player had a 23rd level Fighter/Magic-User/Thief with 325 hit points.

 

[Plane Sailing]

A few adventures ago I threw 5 3.5e mummies against the party. Several of them got infected by mummy rot which had an onset time of 1 minute. I assumed (wrongly) that it had a repeat time of 1 minute too, so the party were desperately trying to plan how they could stop three of their number rotting and disintegrating away before their very eyes (they were out of remove curse and remove disease and the nearest town was three days hard ride away. At one save per minute it wasn't likely that anyone infected was going to make it...)

I was thinking to myself "I'm sure these babies should be slightly higher in CR... this is pretty much a death sentence for anyone that gets infected".




Hey, it was amusing for me

 

[Nightchill]

In ad&d 2nd ed I somehow missed out the passage (it *was* very small and obscure iirc) about subtracting their armour class from your thac0... so every new player was having to roll a 20 each time to hit...

damn those fights took a while

 

[Piratecat]

My friends kept rerolling ALL their hitpoints at every level; depending on their rolls, they might have had less at 5th lvl than they did at 4th. As for me, I'm embarrassed to admit that I rolled a d12 instead of a d20 for something like three game sessions. No WONDER my poor monk never hit anything.

 

[Thanee]

Altho, not really a misinterpretation, but rather an actual rule.

I find it extremely funny, that the rules actually state, that you cannot use item creation feats while raging!

Bye
Thanee

 

[Liolel]

Never actually happened in game but when I was looking at the second edition monster manual I noticed that it said that the cyclops (I think, it was some giant) throws boulders for 410 damage. I was always wondering how anyone can survive that and it took years for me to relize it was a typo and was supposed to be 4d10 damage.