Most Amusing Rule Misinterpretation?

[Guardsmith]

For the longest time in my first AD&D game (1st Edition game), we thought that clerics had to succeed in a "to hit" roll for a ranged weapon in order for a cure spell to work. Needless to say, a lot of trees and rocks around our PCs were quite healthy

Dan

 

[Nightchill]

at each level you rolled all your HD again, keeping the higher of the old total or the new total. One thing that was neat about it was that a low roll on a HD only penalised you for a single level rather than your characters entire gaming life

Hm, I'm liking the sound of that.. I loathe the idea of a fighter in my campaign rolling 1s constantly but wasn't entirely sure what to do about it. This is an interesting possibility.

 

[Thanee]

Hm, I'm liking the sound of that.. I loathe the idea of a fighter in my campaign rolling 1s constantly but wasn't entirely sure what to do about it. This is an interesting possibility.

As long as you do it like I have written above another RPG does it (never apply a result which is lower than your current total), that should actually work fine and result in more 'average' hit points over time.

Bye
Thanee

 

[milo]

The biggest misinterpretation of rules I've seen was on the monk's belt, someone in my group thought that it added 5 levels to your monk for everthing.

Just use a variant reroll rule on hitpoints, don't reroll a d4, reroll a 1 on a d6, 1-2 on d8, 1-3 on d10, 1-4 on d12. That keeps the fighter and barbarian from having less hp than the rogue who always rolls max.

 

[KB9JMQ]

In our first games, back in 1980 with the Basic D&D rules: We thought giant rats were. . . well, GIANT. We had rats the size of cars blocking the dungeon hallway after we killed them. A couple random encounters completely sealed off sections of the dungeon from our explorations.Quasqueton

This is the same thing I did. I was like how do these things fit in here ?

 

[Legion]

Wayyyy back when I first started DMing with Advanced, one of my player's found a potion of fire giant strength. I looked for a long time trying to find a duration and for the life of me couldn't. So I thought it was permanent.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

In my campaign, I allow the player to select 1 of two different ways to determine their hit points upon levelling up.

The characeter can take a preset amount of hit points:

1d4 hit dice gets 3
1d6 hit dice gets 4 (even levels) or 5 (odd levels)
1d8 hit dice gets 6
1d10 hit dice gets 7 (even levels) or 8 (odd levels)
1d12 hit dice gets 9

Or we can match rolls. Both the player and the DM roll the hit dice. The character keeps the highest of the two.

We also match rolls for cure spells. Nobody likes to convert a 1st level spell to a cure spell that only heals 2 hit points.

 

[Khayman]

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

In a similar vein, when we first played BD&D we misinterpreted the THAC0 chart and concluded that you needed an 11 or better to hit *any* target. I figured something was wrong when I realized that those were the same odds as flipping a coin --- ahhh, to be ten years old again.

 

[darklight]

As many others we began playing D&D with the red Basic Set. Level advancement was only detailed for the first three levels like this:

Fighter advancement:
1 0 xp
2 2000 xp
3 4000 xp

The thing is, we thought this meant that a fighter always needed just 2000 xp to level up, no matter what level he was. Our pc's gained levels very quickly Off course, once we got the Expert Set, we realized the error of our ways...

darklight

 

[der_kluge]

I loved the story (I think it was in Dragon) about how a typo in the original books had an entry called "% Liar" (instead of % lair). The entry was supposed to indicate how frequently the creature was found in its lair.

Anyway, the party encountered an imprisoned elf, and the players asked if the elf was in need of being rescued, and the DM, reading the entry literally, rolled the dice, and said with a sorrowful face "no, I'm ok".