Single mechanics that hurt an otherwise good game

[Ratskinner]

So, inspired by the Single mechanics from an RPG you love thread.

Is there a game you've played or run that was really good...except for that one mechanic (or perhaps a design decision) that grated on you?






Single mechanics from an RPG you love

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Off the top of my head, D&D 5E is severely hampered by the abundance of healing, which necessitates a constant stream of encounters to try and whittle away HP that is just going to regenerate after any rest.

AD&D 2E had this annoying rule that you were always hit on a natural 20, even if the attack would not otherwise be successful. This was exacerbated by an optional rule that a roll of 20 also dealt double damage.

I'm sure I can think of more. Mostly, I'm pretty good at spotting those rules while reading the book, and I either house rule it away or choose to not play that game. FATE is a great example of a game with one bad mechanic (fate points) that renders the whole game unplayable, so I just choose to not play it.

 

[ccs]

4e: If it weren't for the universal AEDU power structure 4e would've been a better game.

BECMI: There not being any separation between race & class.
Fighter = human
Cleric = human
Thief = human
Magic-User = human
Elf, Dwarf, & Halfling = Elf, Dwarf, & Halfling.....
After about a year, seperating race/class was our 1st actual house rule.
Eventually we found 1e & that helped alot.

1e: 1e is still my favorite edition but that doesn't mean I love all of it's race/class restrictions for the non-humans.
If an NPC can be a class, so can you in our 1e.

3.x/PF: The critical hit confirmation system.

5e: Non-LG Paladins.

All editions of D&D: Psionics.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

The d20. It undermines player choices, character builds, and DM arbitration with the swinginess and range of results. It is also a very poor mechanic to build off for other mechanics, particularly as the core of an entire game system. It is an archaic feature of an old game that has been adhered to for so long it prevents any chance for the system to evolve and continue to run the same treadmill with the same inherited flaws. It evokes a lot of houseruling and alternate methods to compensate or replace it altogether. But you know, sacred cows and stuff.

 

[jasper]

Traveler you could die while rolling up the pc.

 

[amerigoV]

For most systems - Grappling. Its like a catch in the NFL (or football in general) - we all know what it is, but its hard to mechanically define without breaking out the book.

 

[Gradine]

2nd Edition: Race/class restrictions

3.5: Monster creation. Having to build every creature like a PC was such a freaking hassle...

4e: Skill Challenges and Rituals. Skill Challenges were (kind of) fixed eventually, and Rituals work much better in 5e, but together these kind of reinforced how much non-combat gameplay was treated as an afterthought.

5e: Feat implementation. I appreciate that it had to done the way that it was in order to make them optional, but a lot of them are really interesting, if not character-defining, and it's nearly impossible to use them without house-ruling or playing variant human.

Star Wars D20: Dark Side points. They really did not want anyone playing an evil character or even anything remotely approaching shades of grey. Especially not a force user.

AGE: 3 Classes. It worked really well for the video game; but for a TT RPG it really feels extremely limiting. If there were a greater range of options within each class that would be something else, but as it is...

 

[Blue]

These are based on the state of the game at the time - for example I wouldn't ding AD&D for not having a unified resolution mechanic.

D&D versions
(This is subjective, some may disagree or have a workaround.)

5e: Large number of encounters expected to balance long-rest recovery mechanics.

4e: Too many distinct choices for mid and high level characters slows down combat across the board.

3.x: Design decision of prerequisite chains requiring planning out characters many levels in advance.

AD&D 2ed: Racial level limits would hard stop existing character advancement for some existing characters, which was a deal breaker when it happened.

Other RPGs

Star Wars d6 (WEG): Force users were so much more powerful then non-Force users

Deadlands (original): Six-shooters, while iconic, were so much less powerful then rifles that they weren't useful.

Rolemaster: Too many table look ups slowed play.

Mechwarrior (1986): Mech combat ability and everything else ability came from the same pools, so some characters were fantastic in mechs and useless elsewhere, and vice-versa. So neither side of play was satisfying to all.

Hero System (1989): Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. In this case it was taking a system designed for vast flexibility for superheros (Champions) and using that as a universal system including gear-based and "hero-to-zero" play which weren't it's strong points at the time.

Amber Diceless: Hard to add players after campaign start because of whole-party bidding process character creation.

Warhammer Fantasy: High Toughness broke the damage balance between characters.

Dresden Files (2010): Thamaturgy was too subjective and complicated. (Actually, taking a streamlined but flexible system like FATE and trying to mechanically model all of the options in the Dresden Files books may have been the more overarching design flaw. FATE and high mechanical simulation is not the right match.)

13th Age: Overloads the ritual magic system to make up for very limited out-of-combat spell selection.

 

[DEFCON 1]

7th Sea 1st edition: Roll Trait + Knack, Keep Trait. It causes two massive issues.

1: Because you Kept your Trait number in dice... a character with higher "universal" ability was almost always going to succeed in things that even the most trained person in the world would not. So a PC with a 3 Finesse and 2 Dancing (5K3) going up against the most trained dancer in the world with 2 Finesse and 5 Dancing (7K2) will beat that person more often than not. Which narrative-wise makes little sense... especially when connected to point 2.

2: The XP cost to raise Traits were not so much higher than raising individual knacks that it was always more economically sound to spend all XP raising traits... because traits would apply and be Kept dice for every single check involving that trait, whereas knacks were single skills and only be Unkept dice on a check that involved it. So in my experience, no PC would spend the cost to raise a single knack (2 x the new level in XP) when they could raise the applicable trait (5 x the new level in XP) and have it apply to EVERY check that involved that trait.

The solution of course would be to reverse the kept-unkept pair... Roll Knack + Trait, Keep Knack. That way a character's training in a particular knack always made you better at it than just being naturally strong, dextrous, smart etc.

 

[Aldarc]

AGE: 3 Classes. It worked really well for the video game; but for a TT RPG it really feels extremely limiting. If there were a greater range of options within each class that would be something else, but as it is...

Fantasy Age Companion released yesterday.