Rules Misunderstandings Over The Years

[TanisFrey]

This is similar to mine. A friend told me that when he first started playing AD&D1, he thought that characters gained the HIT POINTS of the monsters they killed (added to their own HP total, of course). The cure light wounds spell suddenly became much more useful once they realized their mistake.

1st& 2nd ed had the base xp for defeating a monster plus + some amount based on it's hit points. It read something like 4000 +3/hp. If the monster had 50 hp then you should award a total of 4150 xp for that monster.

However, the first time I read this as an 8 year-old, I thought this meant that you award 4000 xp and the character whom killed it would get 3 hp.

 

[BryonD]

Way back in 1E days I was the only kid in my immediate neighborhood who played D&D. But sometimes I could get some other kids to play for a single session or something. So one time we played for a bit and one of the other guys said he wanted to DM for a bit. So he took the books and came back like 20 minutes later ready to go.

I have no memory what my character was. But in very short order I encounter a dragon. The only detail I clearly remember is him telling me that the dragon starts spewing a stream of swords at me.

I asked what in the world he was talking about.
He pointed to the book and said: It says right there: breath weapon.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Apart from HP rolls (which you average), isn't that basically how 2E Multiclassing works?

I'm pretty sure he'd get all the normal thief skills a Thief 1 would start out with, he'd just increase them more slowly (since his XP would be divided in half).

Yeah, you're right. Now that I read the 2nd Ed. PHB again, what I didn't do right is to split my XP between both classes. So my Illusionist and Thief levels were roughly the same as the other characters' solo class level.

Another thing we got terribly wrong was that the Tumbling non-weapon proficiency. It let you improve your AC to attacks directed solely against the character for one round as long as the character has initiative and doesn't attack. We took the word of the "veteran" who steered me wrong on multiclassing instead of reading the rules and thought it was a flat -4 to AC. Probably the most popular NWP in our games.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The only detail I clearly remember is him telling me that the dragon starts spewing a stream of swords at me.

I asked what in the world he was talking about.
He pointed to the book and said: It says right there: breath weapon.

In all probability, that Dragon ate a LOT of knights in a drunken binge the night before while it was depressed about being fat & lonely.

 

[pawsplay]

I'm kind of sad I could come up with only one story. Honestly, I usually GM, and I tend to be pretty thorough, so most of my stories are riveting like, "Yeah, this one time, the dwarf scout started tumbling past multiple opponents for the first time, but we got halfway through the session before noticing the DC increases for each opponent. Of course, his bonus was still high enough to succeed automatically."

Or, "This one time the PCs were fighting goblins with shortswords, and I forget that shortswords were light weapons when one of them attempted a disarm, which should have gotten a penality."

Real knee-slappers, I know.

 

[amerigoV]

The original DMG had the experience point values for the monsters listed as something like this: Ogre 300XP +4/hp. So if the ogre had 20 hit points he was worth 380 XP.

Our group instead gave out 300 XP and 4 hit points. That was how we survived so long without a cleric.

Boy, I wished we had misread the xp formula that way. Anything to eliminate the 1e cleric would have been great (lets face it - they basically were a big old healing wand since you had to take CxW anyway).

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Yes, Thief was the fastest leveling class and Wizards (Mages, whatever it was then heh) were the slowest. To keep things easy, we used to ask what level characters were being made at and it would be things like "5th level Wizard". Which meant 7th level Rogue. I was a big fan of that 5th level Wizard XP that got used pretty often, especially since most of my friends didn't enjoy Wizards and I got to fling Fireballs heh.

This was only true for the first few levels. At I think level 6, the wizard suddenly levels faster then the fighter, because...screw him, I guess?

 

[nerfherder]

The original DMG had the experience point values for the monsters listed as something like this: Ogre 300XP +4/hp. So if the ogre had 20 hit points he was worth 380 XP.

Our group instead gave out 300 XP and 4 hit points. That was how we survived so long without a cleric.

We did exactly the same! Actually, it was a new guy that joined our group that ran a Monty Haul game that started to give out HP along with XP.

My MU ended up with over 100hp and, since he had also acquired a breath weapon, dished out a ton of damage three times per day.

I did wonder why some monsters gave out hp, but some didn't (e.g. the Demon Lords, who had set HP, only gave XP). Finally, it clicked...

 

[Dedekind]

In 3e, I misinterpreted the resistance/vulnerability rules so that they worked opposite of intention. My players kept blasting these frost giants with fireballs and they would never die!

I still get teased over it...