Rules that people/you always forget

[RUMBLETiGER]

Ack- where were you when I was involved in a discussion about what induced fatigue and couldn't find explicit wording requiring PCs sleep? Found OTHER text strongly implying it was necessary, but...*sigh*

Sorry Dannyalcatraz, want me to Necro up a thread for you?

 

[El Mahdi]

An Unearthed Arcana rule, but my players seem to have a hard time remembering to subtract their Armor's DR from any damage they incur (we use the Armor as DR mechanic). I know it seems counter-intuitive, players forgetting things that give them an edge, but it happens quite often.

 

[Aluvial]

How about most of the rules... I used to have the 2.0 rules down... ask me anything... I could almost quote the rule verbatim, and the players respected that.

Same group 10 years later and I find that we look up the rules constantly, and for easy things too. What's a climb check when using rope, is a 5 or +5. How many images is it for Mirror Image? (and what is the AC of those images). How does trip differ from disarm? Fighting defensively, what is that (standard or full-round)? Aid another, the DC is 10, right?

Most of the time I remember, but then it comes up in game, I make the ruling (based on what I'm pretty sure the rules is), and then we look it up anyway. I get about 90-some out of 100... but we are always looking it up. The players don't remember, but they do remember that there is a rule somewhere....

I make my players look rules up or they have to go with my ruling... But this leads to a few problems when I make a judgment on the fly, just to have Joe Fighter, NO, Wally Wizard say, "actually, it says on page x that the spell blah, blah, blah..." 5 minutes after I made the ruling. I (almost) always stick to the ruling, but in cases were PC death might be involved I will always reverse the decision if someone has died.

Either way, I'm constantly looking up the rules now. (easily done with the SRD on the laptop)

Aluvial

 

[kitcik]

Yep. In 1E I just memorized all the tables. There weren't that many - although the saving throw table was the toughest as there was no logical progression. After that, the DM made up the rest of the rules as he/she went along.

You want to do what? I would say that is a Str check at -5. Etc. Made for a much faster and, in some ways, more unpredictable and exciting game.

On the other hand, character builds were much more limited and it was difficult to make yourself unique beyond your RP personality. For instance, every 5th level thief was virtually the same in terms of abilities, whereas that is not true in 3E.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Not so much a rule, but a DM forgetfulness.

How about weather?

With the exception of a desert environment or a creative location, where is the rain? How often does a DM say as you wake up around the campfire, "This morning, it's raining"? If you're in a forest, travelling across the plains, near anyplace with agriculture, it needs to rain every so often for plants to grow. Why is it always sunny all the time?

 

[the Jester]

I tend to forget monster powers that would have been really useful the round before I remembered them.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

I tend to forget monster powers that would have been really useful the round before I remembered them.

Same here. Along the same lines, I tend to forget about monsters' combat feats.

For that reason I've taken to explicitly jotting down a "typical tactics" outline for each monster before running a session, as a reminder to myself.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Same here. Along the same lines, I tend to forget about monsters' combat feats.

Like when a monster has a flat footed ac listed (showing ac without dex) but has uncanny dodge (meaning flat footed ac does not lose dex) so the dm needs to;

- catch this
- fix it

On feats. I always forget the awesome blow feat, or the snatch or hover feat.

 

[Vegepygmy]

While there are no specific rules for eating...

As a matter of fact, there are. DMG, page 304:

"In normal climates, Medium characters need at least a gallon of fluids and about a pound of decent food per day to avoid starvation. (Small characters need half as much.)"

...therefore RAI (Or hey, maybe RAW), a character who's not actively eaten in a day (Or lets stretch it to 2 days, for "day-to-day") has died.

Not quite. DMG, page 304:

"A character can go without food for 3 days, in growing discomfort. After this time, the character must make a Constitution check each day (DC 10, +1 for each previous check) or take 1d6 points of nonlethal damage.

"Characters who have taken nonlethal damage from lack of food or water are fatigued (see page 84). Nonlethal damage from thirst or starvation cannot be recovered until the character gets food or water, as needed—not even magic that restores hit points (such as​

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cure light wounds) heals this damage."​