D&D 5E (2024) Rules that annoy you

[Micah Sweet]

It's extra annoying when the players tell the dm they don't find crit fails fun, but the dm disagrees an tells the players that they (the players) do find them fun.

Who does that? That doesn't make any sense.

 

[guachi]

And annoyingly they've stuck with Crawford's ruling for the Shield Master feat by specifying that you can't do the Shield Bash until after you've attacked with another weapon (although it is admittedly now a free attack rather than a bonus action one)

My one claim to D&D fame is I made a Twitter account just to ask Crawford this back in 2014. You can thank me for the original (and better!) ruling but I have nothing to do with the change.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm trying to figure out why not just do a taser as STUN-only in a HERO setting. It doesn't even cost extra.

As for terrible rules, anyone remember confirming crits?

Hurray! You lucked out a rolled a twenty! now watch as all the energy drains from the room as you follow that up with a two.

Sorry, you gotta luck out twice to win this game. A crit should be that 1-in-100 lucky shot; 1 in 20 is far too common.

Flip side: you gotta wreck your luck twice to lose - we also have confirm rolls for fumbles, same reason.

 

[James Gasik]

I mean the idea was sound. If every natural 20 rewarded you with a critical hit, then you have situations where a town full of peasants was ensured to be able to score a few criticals on even a dragon. By making you confirm the critical hit, you proved that you were a threat in the first place (or were super lucky to roll two 20's in a row, I guess).

The implementation, however, was clunky. You had to make more die rolls in combat, the critical damage wasn't much to write home about unless you had a x3 or x4 damage weapon (at which case, critical hits were as rare as hen's teeth), and of course, there were many circumstances where you could be denied precision damage as well.

I don't miss it. Mind you, thanks to hit point bloat over the decades, scoring a critical doesn't really feel that amazing to me. Wow, I get an extra 4.5 damage on my long sword attack. Yay.

Sure, some characters (and many monsters) can score huge critical hits, but the idea that critical hits are extreme momentum shifts for some, but are almost a non-even for others just doesn't sit well with me. I don't really know what to do about that, however, since 5e isn't concerned with giving all players equal experiences in the slightest. You want big crits, play a Rogue or a Paladin, or some other class that gets more damage dice instead of more attacks, like, amusingly, a spellcaster's at-will cantrips.

On top of this, WotC designers seem terrified at the idea of someone who could crit more often than 5% of the time, as it's almost solely the province of the Champion (I vaguely recall a few monsters that have a 19-20 critical, but don't quote me on it), as if scoring a critical hit is meant to be something amazing, even though, again, most of the time it's not.

I've made a few enchanted weapons with expanded critical ranges or "on crit" special effects, but they have yet to prove to be any kind of game changers either.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Sorry, you gotta luck out twice to win this game. A crit should be that 1-in-100 lucky shot; 1 in 20 is far too common.

Flip side: you gotta wreck your luck twice to lose - we also have confirm rolls for fumbles, same reason.

I was unaware that double damage was 'winning', or that having to hit the AC you have a good chance to hit anyway was 1-in-100.

And I'm pretty sure crit fumbles have and always shall be house rules.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Who does that? That doesn't make any sense.

It’s happened to me more than once. Sometimes people don’t make sense.

 

[Corinnguard]

It’s happened to me more than once. Sometimes people don’t make sense.

Or their idea of fun differs greatly from what you consider to be fun.

 

[renbot]

The discussion about potions really makes me miss 4E's potions being tied to healing surges. It made it so you couldn't just bring a barrel of healing potions to get through an adventure, you still had a daily cap. And it made healing potions affect the world less, because there's times feeding someone a healing potion won't work.

I've been toying with the idea of all healing triggering hit dice expenditures. Haven't come up with a system I love yet. But maybe if it only applied to potions it would limit the issue of every party wandering around with dozens of healing potions in their backpacks.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Or their idea of fun differs greatly from what you consider to be fun.

But they’re telling me that I’m having fun, even though I think I’m not having fun, because they know better than I do what I enjoy.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Who does that? That doesn't make any sense.

it's more likely IMO the DM finds them fun as their perpetually replacable cast of disposable enemy NPCs insulates them from actually suffering any major downsides from the mechanic and is trying to convince the players to keep the mechanics, and/or 'well i'm having fun with this so if we keep going with it i'm sure you'll learn to like it too'