D&D (2024) Rules that annoy you

[R_J_K75]

any given hit is not necassarily dealing meat damage, other than the ones that are explicitly required to be, but 50% health is when you're explicitly implied to have been starting to take meat damage if you haven't already.

that's my take on it anyway, but honeslty worrying if damage is meat or not is nothing that's ever concerned me at all.

I could see the first 50% of hp damage being getting winded, cramping up or getting exhausted.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I could see the first 50% of hp damage being getting winded, cramping up or getting exhausted.

exactly.

 

[mamba]

I could see the first 50% of hp damage being getting winded, cramping up or getting exhausted.

that is why bloodied was at 50%

 

[Vaalingrade]

I will note that despite many attempts to do so, no one has come up with a way to break up hit points into meat points, luck points, energy points, divine-favor points, and magical-defense points that actually improved the game experience.

Wounds Vitality is almost two decades old by now.

D&D players just won't accept it because, D&D players.

 

[Maxperson]

that is why bloodied was at 50%

And is again apparently. I'm pretty sure they said bloodied was back.

 

[James Gasik]

I really didn't want to open this can of worms ... However, if that which does not kill you does not do "meat point" damage, then why does it matter what type of damage it is? For instance, how do you take poison damage if the poison's not damaging your meat?

Also, how do you explain the various attacks that require a physical wound? The prime example in 5e is devils that inflict infernal wounds. While the text doesn't specify that it's a bleeding physical wound, this is implied by the fact that you have to "stanch" the wound with a Medicine check (or use magical healing).

Another example might be the harpoon gun on the airship in Storm King's Thunder, which specifically "impales" its target on a hit. Can't really impale a creature without dealing "meat point" damage in my book.

Yeah, this is all stuff you've just gotta handwave. It's still annoying, though.

You're not wrong that those things are weird, but in general play, wounds don't debilitate you until you are unable to move. I could hack at a creature with a greataxe for 70 points of damage, but if they have 71 hit points, there's no system shock, no blood loss, no broken bones or torn tendons, and no massive debilitating pain. You keep on going with "super-adrenaline" despite the fact that you by rights should be bleeding more blood than your body can contain.

Just like a movie action hero. Now there are, occasionally, actual debilitating effects in D&D, but most of the time, they don't care about your hit point total, with the exception of those effects that lower your maximum hit points. Hence my statement.

At the end of the day, the only hit point that has any real consequence is the last one. The bloodied condition (which I like and have never really stopped using after 4e) and the idea that "at 50%, damage is real" is not reflected in the rules anywhere either- it's not like becoming bloodied lowers your movement rate or renders an arm unusable.

To assign a narrative to hit point damage when the rules don't enforce one is something I find problematic. Imagine telling a player "you can't attempt to jump that gap, you're missing half your hit points".

There are many who feel that would be an appropriate statement, because it reflects the way they want the game to be. However, there are many who would be alarmed by such a statement, because that doesn't reflect the way the game is.

If a given group wants to play D&D with a more gritty, simulation-based style where the narrative is more important than the rules of the game, and they have fun doing so- by all means, they can. But you have to change the game to make it that way, which is the reason why these "hit points vs. meat" debates really strike me as bizarre. Sure, you can point to examples where hit points surely must be meat, but there are far more examples where nothing makes sense if they are meat.

Even back in the 1e DMG, Gary pointed out that the game isn't a simulation, and the bulk of hit points can't be meat, because you'd have people getting stabbed with swords multiple times and still sprinting around like a superhero. He did, however, admit that there is some meat in there, but refused to define how much, something the game has continued to do ever since.

There are game systems where you have both wounds and vitality, characters lose stamina as they exert themselves, and you slowly accrue penalties in combat as you take damage, until you eventually become unable to do anything. That this leads to a "death spiral" where the act of getting beat up makes it harder for you not to get beat up, has been well documented.

This isn't to say it's a bad mechanic, but many, including the people who make D&D, in the past and the present, feel that this isn't a good mechanic for D&D. Take for example, critical hits.

Gary didn't like them, and there's a good reason why*- ok, I've struck someone in a vulnerable place. Where, exactly? And how vulnerable could it be if it didn't debilitate you in some way? If I struck a human being in the real world in a vulnerable place, they will at the very least suffer debilitating pain, if not require immediate medical attention. But our D&D heroes don't suffer from concussions or missing limbs in the regular course of play, do they? And it's probably good that they don't, or by level 5, they'd be sorry looking messes indeed!

*Of course this is the same man who has Thieves' having to backstab vital areas and put swords that can hack off limbs in the DMG, lol.

In Best of Dragon, there was a reprint of an expansive critical hit chart, with sub-charts for the type of weapon being employed. I thought this was great fun to use, until it's use resulted in a spear hit removing the leg of a PC's Wizard causing them to bleed out over the course of 3 turns while being rendered completely unable to do anything about it. It was decidedly un-fun, and said chart never saw the light of day again lol.

Now, again, some people would look at that and say "yes, this is how the game should be!" and see it as a wonderful experience- I don't agree, but that's certainly your right to feel that way. And there are games that do work that way, like Rolemaster or GURPS, where every character is one unlucky roll away from suffer penalties, stat loss, limb loss, and death.

But D&D isn't really that kind of game. You can make it into one if you want, but that's not really the point of it's rules and why they are the way they are. And as we're in a thread about annoying rules- well yes, this is certainly the place to say you hate all of it!

I mean, I had quite a list of items I don't care for as well upthread, lol. But the question I have is, what is it about D&D? Why do so many of us (myself included) continue to play this game that isn't the game we want it to be, and why do we constantly argue about what it should be?

Why haven't we all gravitated to other games that work the way we want them to?

I've put a lot of thought into this over the years and for me, it comes down to nostalgia. I played a lot of D&D in the past, I love the game. I love how it's simple premise ("go fight monsters and take their stuff") and class and level based system for character advancement is familiar, and while it has weaknesses, I know what they are, and feel the strengths are worth putting up with them. And certainly, if I want to push the game in a different direction, it's not impossible to do so.

But it's more than that, of course. D&D has a huge presence. It's the TTRPG everyone has heard of, and most new players want to play. And there's a lot of people who don't want to learn some new system. Better the Devil you know, I suppose. Because for all the good a different system might have, it has bad in there somewhere, and you may find that having your arm sheared off and suffering permanent stat loss in Runequest isn't as much fun as you thought it would be. Or maybe the game designers have some bizarre thoughts about things, like saying Dwarves can't jump or make kick attacks (ala Fantasy Craft 1e) that makes your eye twitch, lol.

Ultimately, D&D has become the system most settle on because it's the least offensive to those involved. Which means we're all locked in here together, quibbling about things like hit points being meat and the pros and cons of Vancian spellcasting until we all graduate to the next campaign in the Afterlife I suppose.

No matter how silly such arguments are, I mean, what is a hit point anyways? What sort of wound is exactly one hit point of damage? And how is that the same for a guy with 100 hit points as the guy with 1? There really is no answer here- it's an abstract unit that exists in a state of quantum flux where it's value is literally subjective from moment to moment. It cannot be quantified. We are left having to assume it's a unit of plot armor -henceforth, I propose we all stop using "hit points" and switch to a more relatable unit of measurement. Just as soon as I find something that can reliably die to one hit point of damage, which is hard, as even a rat could have as many as three hit points in 5e!

 

[Micah Sweet]

Everyone's got their own pet peeves with respect to the D&D rules. Some people will find that theirs have been addressed in the 2024 revision, others will find that theirs have not. Looking through the various reviews, I came across two that still kinda irk me.

1) First Aid: I know we're playing a game, and that if they made it harder to do non-magical first aid, no one would bother with it; however, the idea that you can stop someone from dying (regardless of whether they got stabbed, slashed, burned, acidified, etc) in less than 6 seconds simply by expending a "use" of a healer's kit is, frankly, miraculous! Imagine if modern battlefield medics could save their comrades lives that quickly and easily! (Think of the scene from Saving Private Ryan where the medic gets hit and his squad mates fumble about trying to save his life.)

This issue doesn't bother me as much in a sci-fi game, where you can explain it away with a quick "stimpack" injection or the like. But it does bother me in a pseudo-medieval fantasy game, where nonmagical healing techniques ought to be slow and somewhat awkward.

2) Knocking Someone Out: Again, I know we're playing a game, and this rule seems to be based on movie logic rather than reality; however, the idea that creatures remain unconscious for an hour or more* is a bit ludicrous. In reality, if someone is unconscious for more than a few seconds, they're essentially in a coma and are likely to suffer brain damage and may not ever wake up. I had been toying with the idea of changing the 2014 rule to 1d4 rounds rather than hours, and I may still do that, as I'm not sure I like the auto-short rest rule.

*In the 2014 rules, it was 1d4 hours; in the 2024 rules, it's 1 hour (because short rest).


What rules annoy you (either mechanically or conceptually)? What, if anything, do you like to do about them?

Both of your examples really bother me as well, and I'm perfectly willing to sacrifice "gameability" to fix them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I can't remember where I first saw it, but some game somewhere had you simply pour the potion on the wound itself, which then instantly closed because magic.

Much more believable.

A buddy of mine is running a game featuring a potion-seller where all the potions are topically applied. I really like the feeling that evokes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

5e doesn't let you smack people with a shield, either.

Like I get the game reason (you have to make people stop attacking at some point) but c'mon

Fixed that one in my game too.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Without, of course, introducing unnecessary complexity to the game, given that complexity is a colligative property of rules interplay rather than a property of individual rules.

I feel making sure things make sense in the context of the setting is necessary complexity.