Most Amusing Rule Misinterpretation?

[Plane Sailing]

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.
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Which is, er, the way I describe it in my post in the first place

 

[Zappo]

We use max HP at first level, half maximum at subsequent levels. That is, 1d4=2 ... 1d12=6. The result is slightly less than the actual average, but I think this is fine since safety is an advantage in itself.

 

[Cor Azer]

Back when I started playing AD&D 2nd edition, during character generation for the first time I made a straight fighter, and then noticed on the Intelligence chart that he had a 75% chance to learn wizard spells... so I proceeded to roll percentage to know each spell from the Player's Handbook. Due to poor rolls, I ended up with about 60% of them

I never did get to play him... with or without the rules blunder.

 

[Pyrex]

Here's a couple from various groups:

Shadowrun:
Oddly enough, everyone I played with in college had the same misconception about when & how often die-pools refreshed. I played SR for years with three different groups of people who all had it wrong. (they are supposed to refresh on each of your actions. everyone I played with misread it to refresh each time you roll initiative)

3.0:
My cleric was seriously proud of his Empowered Dispel Magic for several sessions. For a few months I was pretty confused as to why they even printed Greater Dispel Magic.

Then I read the part where it says you can't do that.

 

[Evilhalfling]

I played 3.0 at gencon just as it was coming out. The tournement DMs were using advanced copies of the DMG and most of us had owned PH's for less than a day.

1) we missed that minutes and rounds were now different - the new spells were awful - I was a 7th wizard and considerd 1/2 my spells useless.

2) running - we were charged by 300 ogres moving 30ft per round/minute. We attacked with a wand of fireballs, and cone of cold, killing enormous numbers as they ran monty pyton like towards the town we were defending.

 

[RangerWickett]

Interesting tidbit from the Munchkin card game. My friend Hamid was playing a thief, and he was stealing stuff from everybody. We finally looked at the Thief's ability, wondering why it was so broken, and realized Hamid had been neglecting to discard a card. The ability said:

Steal: You may discard a card to attempt to steal a small item from another player. Roll, and on a 4 or higher you get the item.

Hamid, very casually, replied, "Oh, no, I don't have to discard the card. See, it says you may discard a card to steal. I don't want to."

As this was Munchkin, and Hamid owned the game, the rule stood.

 

[Asmo]

When we switched to 3ed we played an adventure where we was fighting high level vampires in a castle and the the cleric and the wizard had lots of Daylight spells prepared, because everybody knows that vampires can´t stand daylight. Somehow we never thought of the difference between daylight and sunlight..
Oboy, our dm vas very upset with the completely unbalancing low level spell that kills vampires so easily

Asmo

 

[Lazybones]

When I started playing BD&D with my friends, we didn't realize that mages/elves/clerics got their spells back after rest. We just assumed that you got those spells once and that was it. Luckily we also didn't use experience points, instead granting one level for each "dungeon" that we cleared. This led to misunderstanding when we explored the Keep on the Borderlands, since we ultimately decided that each cave = one "dungeon". Later I made a module similar to KotB that was a spire with dozens of cave-dungeons scattered around it with 3-4 rooms each.

I think we ultimately retired with 30th level characters after a few sessions of play.

 

[tarchon]

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!

Oh... I've been screwing that one up for years then.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Back when I first began playing 1e (in the bright day-glo days of the 80s) we had a player who imported his character from another campaign. He played a 17th level thief with a simply unbelievable Climb Walls score. During one session, he claimed that with modifications for climbing conditions, his total score was 160%, which meant he could simply stroll up a wall and stand flat-footed on a ceiling. He also claimed he couldn't even be knocked off the ceiling by a blow from a bastard sword. He got so angry when the DM flatly said this wasn't so he stormed out claiming we were cheating him because we were jealous of his mastery of the rules.

I could spin yards of yarn about this guy and his completely idiotic playing methods.