Rules Void?

[The Grumpy Celt]

In what area – for a D&D game – are there insufficient rules, either no rules or the existing rules are inadequate for one reason or another? This is not limited to books produced by Wizards of the Coast, but everything with the open license.

Namely, now there are rules for at least:
• Arcane magic
• Divine magic
• Each of the player races
• Each of the standard classes
• Exotic races
• Biblical settings
• Standard Pseudo-European settings
• Prestige classes
• Oriental settings
• Modern setting
• Future settings
• Epic level playing
• Lovecraftian settings
• Steampunk
• Ruling lands
• Middle Ages settings
• Psionics
• Building strongholds
• Horror
• Sex
• African type setting
• Etc…

That said, what are their not rules and mechanics (or a setting) for, but probably should be.

At a guess – and there may be rules for this that I have missed – I would provide

• Useful Mass combat
• Renaissance setting
• Psuedo-American-Indian setting that’s not offensive
• Comedy (as a counter point to horror)

I am tabling my typical insanity and pessimisms here and really trying to start a dialogue. A great many D&D books these days are repetitive and thus some of them are arguably useless – I mean, how many books on the drow are really needed?

So what would be a useful book coving something that has not been covered or has been covered poorly?

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Good rules on poison use, gathering, distilling, etc. There's scattered rules here and there, but none really mesh together for a consistent ruling.

 

[pogre]

Hey Grumpy Celt -

Would you mind defining useful mass combat rules?

I'm interested in mass combat rules myself, and thus my curiosity.

 

[Wormwood]

I'd like to see some decent treatments of:

Mass Combat/Warfare
Something tactical yet easily playable. I don't want a full d20 mini-game, neither do I want a treatise on historical warfare—just a system that uses the current D&D rules 'kernel' to quickly determine the outcome of large-scale combat.

Social Interaction
I'd like to see some rules that make negotiating over the price of a +1 sword as exciting as a typical combat—a system that introduces elements of strategy and game-play to socialization.

 

[CRGreathouse]

Malhavoc Press's Cry Havoc has good mass-combat rules, IMO; it has three default scales to play on, too, so you can decide how far to zoom out.

The smallest is done minute-by-minute and uses small (5-30) groups as units. It's played tactically, like default combat. The rules are gearned toward making this quick and easy; there are, for example, conversion notes for many PH spells used on this scale.

The next is hour-by-hour and matches army against army, with strong modifiers based on the quality of command and various matchups between the two (relative mobility, defense, etc.). The strategy here is choosing basic tactics to best your opponent, based on the terrain and your army's strengths.

The final is totally strategic, resolving a war in a few die rolls.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

Malhavoc Press's Cry Havoc has good mass-combat rules...

I have seen mixed reviews of Malhavoc Press's “Cry Havoc” — at least one asserting its rules for mass combat break down if there are more than a few hundred combatants employed — and it is the only mass combat system I am aware of.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

Good rules on poison use...

There are several books on poisons, poison making, poison use and so forth. They include: Pale Designs: A Poisoner's Handbook (Bastion Press), Plot and Poison (Green Ronin Publishing), Poisoncraft: The Dark Art (Blue Devil Games), The Assassins Guide to Poisons (Ronin Arts). Surely one of them is worth the purchase price.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

...a system that introduces elements of strategy and game-play to socialization.

This sounds interesting, but could you be more specific in you mean by “social interaction?”

Also - and this is a question for everyone, not just Wormwood - if there are no new areas that need rules and/or mechanical exploration, is the future of D&D 3.5 limited to rehashing old material? If so, what would be the point of buying further books if you already have ones adequately coving the subject in question.

 

[UltimaGabe]

In my opinion, the rules don't cover inventing spells nearly as much as they should have.

Also, I think that there's too much of the game focused on life-or-death situations- that is, there are too many Fireballs, and Lightning Bolts, and Slay Livings, and all sorts of those. The entire game is battle-oriented by nature. What if you just want to have fun, and not go around killing things? Whatever happened to all of the good spells like Sneeze? Why are there no spells that help with everyday activities? Clerics have plenty of things to let them raise the dead and destroy undead, but what about baptisms? Why are the Craft and Profession rules ignored as much as they are? Everything in the game that has to do with everyday, non-combat-oriented actions are summed up in 0- or 1st- level spells, and then there's hundreds more spells in the game that have to do with killing people. The game, as it is, is designed for hack-and-slash, for the most part.

 

[Crothian]

Good rules on poison use, gathering, distilling, etc. There's scattered rules here and there, but none really mesh together for a consistent ruling.

Poisoncraft by Blue Devil Games

We even nominate it for an ENnie and people don't know about this gem.