D&D 5E Silly/Senseless Rules You Have Found

[GMforPowergamers]

my thought with medicine V Healer kit

Medicine you know how to use the healer kit but don't need it, you also know more

prof in healer kit is only that...

 

[Lerysh]

Kits are what people use when they don't have proficiency in certain checks. You can climb without a climbers kit and heal without a healer's kit, they just make it easier for someone without the skill. They even make the distinction in the name of the object itself, kit vs tool. I'd say they did a pretty good job about all of that.

Except Disguise Kit, Poisoner's Kit, Herbalism Kit and Forgery Kit are all tools. They did a terrible job about making a clear distinction between tools and skill enhancing items (Climber's Kit, Healer's Kit) as evidence by how many people think Healer's Kits are tools you can (or need) to be proficient with to use.

 

[SilverfireSage]

Except Disguise Kit, Poisoner's Kit, Herbalism Kit and Forgery Kit are all tools. They did a terrible job about making a clear distinction between tools and skill enhancing items (Climber's Kit, Healer's Kit) as evidence by how many people think Healer's Kits are tools you can (or need) to be proficient with to use.

Hmm, good point. I suppose the divider instead is under the "tools" section rather than under the "equipment" section? I still don't think this is as bad as people are making it out to be. If you read the book through, without any knowledge of previous editions (which may be causing some of the hang ups) you see that climbers kits and healing kits are not included under tools, but the other kits are. Admittedly, they should have named them Disguising Tools, Poisoner's Tools, etc, if only to make that more clear.

 

[Sadrik]

Ones listed thus far
Heavy Armor interaction with DEX
Two Weapon Fighting and weapon sizes
Darkness as a barrier
Tools as skills
Wizard cantrip spellbook limits

Of the ones listed I think these all could stand for some changes to the RAW. The most egregious is the tools as skills, but this is not a simple fix though. I am uncertain it could even count as a silly or senseless rule. I see no valid reason to separate out tools from the skill system and make a whole new subsystem with them.

Darkness as a barrier, no one should play it this way. If someone is in a dark cave and sees someone with a torch walking. The darkness will not be a barrier for them to see the torch bearer.

Heavy armor removing DEX penalties is dumb. Then again I am a fan of letting DEX not be constrained by armor (like 1e and 2e).

Two-weapon fighting limitations, easy house rule to fix.

Wizard cantrip limits, this goes into the whole notion of a cantrip and I do not like how 5e handles them at all. I argued during the playtest that I felt cantrips should just be regular spells and give casters X# of slots with them. Don't have them auto-scale too. Instead they are a spell subsystem and they had to limit them? Oh well.

 

[Lerysh]

For me you could also add: Dragons can not disadvantage range attacks easily because of how OA's work (oh you are within 5' of me but your reach is 15'? Let me just take 1 step back and shoot you in the face no problems) and OA's in general are wonky with monsters having A) Multiple reaches on different weapons and 2) more likely to have 10'+ reaches which mess up OA's

Clarification-Opportunity-attacks - My #1 most hated rule change.

 

[Plaguescarred]

No HD recovery for 1st level PC after a long rest due to rounding down is silly too : )

 

[SilverfireSage]

Of the ones listed I think these all could stand for some changes to the RAW. The most egregious is the tools as skills, but this is not a simple fix though. I am uncertain it could even count as a silly or senseless rule. I see no valid reason to separate out tools from the skill system and make a whole new subsystem with them.

Well the other option would be to have another few skills, lock picking, crafting, forgery, disguise, perform (instrument), etc. But then you clog up people's skill lists with skills they will never actually use, and in some cases, can never use, getting to the problem that 3.5 had where there were so many skills it became crazy to sort through them all. This way, if you want to be proficient with some other extra stuff, you can, and it doesn't effect anyone else. So yeah, that seems to be their reasoning behind it, and I like it personally.

Darkness as a barrier, no one should play it this way. If someone is in a dark cave and sees someone with a torch walking. The darkness will not be a barrier for them to see the torch bearer.

totally agree, I don't think anyone will play it this way, and I don't think it will ever be an issue, but it is weirdly worded.

Heavy armor removing DEX penalties is dumb. Then again I am a fan of letting DEX not be constrained by armor (like 1e and 2e).

Except, then you get people with absurd armor classes very quickly, and bounded accuracy would make it that much worse. A 4th level fighter could easily have the armor class of the tarrasque with a focus on AC.

Wizard cantrip limits, this goes into the whole notion of a cantrip and I do not like how 5e handles them at all. I argued during the playtest that I felt cantrips should just be regular spells and give casters X# of slots with them. Don't have them auto-scale too. Instead they are a spell subsystem and they had to limit them? Oh well.

See, the opposite is actually what makes little sense to me. Why on earth should a 20th level wizard only be able to cast 6 cantrips a day? Can he seriously not muster up the power to cast Light 7 times? That's utterly ludicrous, and makes them somewhat useless. At least with unlimited cantrips you can find some use for them by casting them over and over.

 

[Tormyr]

No HD recovery for 1st level PC after a long rest due to rounding down is silly too : )

That was updated to a minimum of 1 HD recovered in the Basic PHB version 0.2.

 

[Sadrik]

Well the other option would be to have another few skills, lock picking, crafting, forgery, disguise, perform (instrument), etc. But then you clog up people's skill lists with skills they will never actually use, and in some cases, can never use, getting to the problem that 3.5 had where there were so many skills it became crazy to sort through them all. This way, if you want to be proficient with some other extra stuff, you can, and it doesn't effect anyone else. So yeah, that seems to be their reasoning behind it, and I like it personally.

I don't see how this is any different. Other than creating 2 buckets when 1 would have been fine.

Skills
Stealth
Perception
Acrobatics
Tools
Lock picks
Healing kit

Skills
Stealth
Perception
Acrobatics
Lock picking
Healing

Except, then you get people with absurd armor classes very quickly, and bounded accuracy would make it that much worse. A 4th level fighter could easily have the armor class of the tarrasque with a focus on AC.

My basic answer is that DEX penalties should not disappear when you put on Heavy Armor.

Secondarily, from a game design standpoint armor should not limit DEX in my mind. What should limit it is encumbrance. Armor limiting is just short cut to the actual burden which is you overall encumbrance.

See, the opposite is actually what makes little sense to me. Why on earth should a 20th level wizard only be able to cast 6 cantrips a day? Can he seriously not muster up the power to cast Light 7 times? That's utterly ludicrous, and makes them somewhat useless. At least with unlimited cantrips you can find some use for them by casting them over and over.

What my proposal was in the playtest was your Casting Stat in times per day. That may be ludicrous to you but it is very workable for me. You also happen to not have a cantrip blast things indefinitely (castle walls, dungeon doors etc.)

 

[Tormyr]

You could collapse tools into skills, but the whole point of tool proficiencies is that you need the tool to use the proficiency bonus (or even do the job). In some cases a character could improvise, but by and large they need the tool to do the job. That is why Tool Proficiencies are separate from Skills. Additionally, tool proficiencies are much more rare and specific than skills. Making tool proficiencies into skills means that the skills section on the character sheet is longer and anyone can use a tool that they would otherwise need training in. Other equipment can be used by anybody and provides a benefit that is not a proficiency bonus to a skill check.

A player could work with a DM in certain cases to combine a skill and a tool to give advantage or double proficiency on the skill check. A bard with an instrument proficiency and the perform skill might do this or a con man combining deception and a gamin set. Those kinds of things are usually highly situational and could be worth the non-standard bonus.

Medicine is already a "Healing" skill.