No WTF? Moments

[Rune]

My current pet peeve is the Foe to Frog in Heroes of Feywild. Like most of the book, the fluff is so amazingly compelling, and the mechanics are so uninspiring:

A billowing cloud of green fog surrounds your foe. When the fog dissipitates, your enemy is gone, and a miniscule creature such as a frog, a newt, or a mouse stands in its place.
Hit: The target turns into a Tiny beast of your choosing (save ends)
Miss: The target turns into a Tiny beast of your choosing until the end of its turn.
Effect: As a Tiny beast, the target is dazed, and the only actions it can take are to move its speed or shift. All of the target's equipment transforms with it. If it takes damage from any source, this effect ends

I'd rather have no spell at all then this poor crippled beast of a compromise.

I'm curious. You emphasized a couple of lines in this description, but I still don't know what you dislike about the mechanics of this spell. It seems as if you either don't like that the spell has an effect that takes place when you miss with it, or that you wish it did more when you missed with it. Also, it seems like you wish players could gang up on the creature while it is effectively out of the combat (which would be a devastating power to use on a solo--hit or miss, the solo is out of it for at least a round, no matter what--assuming it has no means of granting itself saving throws or shaking conditions, of course).

While I agree that there are a ton of 4e powers with mechanics that don't match, or simply aren't as cool as the flavor text, this one seems well-constructed, to me.

 

[Felon]

Some things here I agree with (like easier-to-skim monster stats) but on the whole I think this represents a bunch of minor concessions that need to made by gamers, not the system.

 

[Glade Riven]

Turn Undead mechanics in 3e/3.5. Never quite understood how it worked. In fact, I'm not sure anyone understands how it works. Nobody in any of my groups did. I think it required a player to have some metagame knowledge on how many HD enemies had. Typically decended into some sort of ad-hoc house-ruling. Pathfinder's Channel Energy is superior, or if the game simply had it work like the Fear spell, only that it effected undead who didn't make their will save.

Fighter-only feats are kinda dumb, regardless of edition. This usually gets house ruled rather quickly. Oh, I understand the point is to try and give the fighter's something special, but d20 modern's talent tree system would have been better way of handling it.

Exponential power curves over the course of leveling up. Above level 12, the power curve should start to level out, with less gains per level (one reason e6 is popular on the forum). I've considered running my game as an e12 game, but we're only @ level 1 right now so there's time to decide on it and talk it over with my players once they understand how the game works. One of the better things I've heard about 2e and before is that the game did this (in most cases). 3e got a little nuts with the power curve (mostly on casters), 4e and Pathfinder have tried to flatten the curve into a straight line progression with...mixed results.

Skill sets seem extremely limited based on class. I'd rather have a secondary background "occupation" that determined class skills instead. 3e and 4e encouraged overspecialization to the point of ridiculessness.

 

[Greg K]

Pathfinder Core - Cleric Domains - Granted Powers
Thrown out initially by the Air Domain granting lightning powers (even when there is a Weather Domain), but why on earth (pun intended) does the Earth Domain grant Acid powers? "I worship, Irthgad, Lord of Stone and all that is solid. Now feel the wrath of his..acid?". Please do not align Elements with Energy types. A simple Bludgeoning power could have done if the power must be a damage one.

My edition of preference is 3e and I agree with your list.

I have not only had the same reaction to various spells listed in 3e domains, i but divine casters having access to pretty much every spell by default. In my opinion, it makes more sense being focused to a small list of spells that make sense for every priest (e.g., communicating with the deity, blessing worshippers, cursing those opposing the deity or its teachings, atonement for the repentant, summoning a creature associated with the deity) and those from the deity's domains.


Other things from 3e (I am going to skip 4e, because there are way too many for me despite finding some things I like with it over 3e)
1. Multiclassing without a trainer and time to train as the default
2. tied to number 1 . gaining access to all of a classes armor and weapon proficiencies and the good save progression.
a. it is a bypass to the armor and weapon proficiency feats and the save feats as well.
b. Those are a by product represent the time and training and experience the character had before adventuring. Becoming proficient in weapons takes time and for many classes we talking about becoming
3. Also tied to one, gaining first level spells without having to go a period of knowing only 0 level spells first.
4. There are other examples of the above as well
5. Being able to take new skills or improve skills when you are in the wrong environment and have not had the ability to utilize the skills.

 

[Connorsrpg]

[MENTION=5038]Greg K[/MENTION]

Hi. I could not agree more about the spell lists of the divine casters. For 3.5E I use to keep a list of all the spells from each source. To hand that to every cleric was overwhelming.

We actually made more use of Descriptors (expanding Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed even further). We added a lot of our own inc Combat, Speed, etc (Not sure of names now). Some spells were on a universal list and then a cleric (or druid) got extra spells based upon the descriptors. Ended up with decent sized, focused spell lists for the divine spell casters. Worked very well.

Re the rest. So a lack of training mechanics in some editions is your WT? (Maybe you should make a thread for this? This was in our House Rules for 3E too . I am not sure about it now?)

 

[Greg K]

[MENTION=5038]Greg K[/MENTION]
Re the rest. So a lack of training mechanics in some editions is your WT? (Maybe you should make a thread for this? This was in our House Rules for 3E too . I am not sure about it now?)

The 3e DMG had variant rules for training and needing a trainer. I felt this was something that should have been default.

I also have my own house rules regarding multi-classing. Multi-classing did not grant armor and weapon proficiencies. It also did not grant the new classes good saves. Also, most classes, have some kind of pre-req for multiclassing into it. I had posted this on ENWorld in the past.

 

[Stormonu]

1E) Combats in which attackers only swing a sword once a minute, and can run all of 120 feet in a minute when moving flat out.

2E) Can't think of one off the top of my head - most are the same as 1E.

3E) Dire bears that do shoulder drops of 10' and inflict 40d6 damage to anything they land on. Whilst poor Colossal Red Dragons only do 2d8 with a crush attack. (This actually happened in a game. The bear killed 4 ghosts. Ghosts)

4E) Bloodied skeletons.

Dragonlance spoiler
[sblock]
As an aside: The most absurd D&D death goes to Kharas of DL4 - Dragons of Desolation. A dwarf hero who dies from the sting of a common scorpion.[/sblock]

 

[Connorsrpg]

[MENTION=52734]Stormonu[/MENTION]
Yes, the whole 1 round = 1 minute! A complete WT?

What was with the bear? How did that happen?

What about 4E Skeletons in general? AS easily taken out with arrows as maces. Kind of wished there were more vulnerabilities, but with 4E removing Bludgeoning, Piercing and Slashing, this could not be written into the core

[MENTION=5038]Greg K[/MENTION]
I reckon SW Saga had the simplest and best MC system. From memory you get 1 of the bonus starting feats of the other class (which inc proficiencies).

 

[Stormonu]

@Stormonu

What was with the bear? How did that happen?

We were playing Bloody Jack's Gold and there was a druid with the party who had the Dire Bear as an animal companion. They entered a large cavern filled with a zigguraut that nearly reached to the ceiling. The zigguraut had only a narrow walkway leading up to it, the rest of the floor was actually a dark pool of some sort. The whole zigguraut's surface was crawling with undead.

Someone cast spider climb on the bear and both it and the druid entered the fray by walking up the cavern wall to the top of the zigguraut. The bear then dropped 10' on the zigguraut's top, where four ghosts were waiting. We paused to look up how much damage a 10' fall would deal to the ghost. I was floored when I saw that it was 1d6 per 200 lbs. per 10' fallen. A dire bear weighs 8,000 lbs., thus that dealt 40d6, and the bear was big enough (4 squares) to cover the top of the zigguraut where the ghosts were waiting for it. Even with a 50% miss chance, it "hit" all four ghosts and turned them to paste.

Since it had done a "controlled" drop, the bear in turn took only 1d6 non-lethal damage in return.

I threw that rule out right there and then, especially after I pointed out that the Red Dragon's crush only did a max of 2d8 for essentially the same sort of maneuver.

The druid was crushed at the decision. >ahem<

 

[SlyDoubt]

Why can't magic-users use swords? They're basically just like long daggers...and the longer ones are like quarterstaffs.

(see illustration on this page

http://www.thearma.org/Fight-Earnestly.htm )

Well if you choose to be an elf you can use a longsword from lvl 1 in 3E/PF. My friend always tries to play a character of that kind, usually with terribly consequences.

I think on one occasion he attempted to hack at a giant spider, missed and on the spiders turn was immediately bleeding out on the floor and poisoned.

Though I realize this isn't EXACTLY what you meant.