Small but annoying things D&D never got right

[cignus_pfaccari]

There is something I don't like about diseases.

In D&D, you slowly get worse and worse until you get better or die.

I would imagine that for things like the plague, smallpox, etcetera, you get sick very fast (24-48 hours) and possibly die, but then you have a longer recovery period.

The treatment of diseases doesn't bother me too much, except that when I've seen listed DCs for non-fantastic diseases, they seem to be much too high. A DC 12 disease would likely stack commoners up like cordwood, given their lack of any real Fort save and all (when Con = 10 and HD = 3, that's a +1!).

There also isn't a mechanic for chronic illnesses... things that keep you moderately hindered until you are cured. Just like you have blindness or deafness that sticks around until you are cured, I could imagine a use for diseases like consumption or hemophilia that stick with you but don't necessarily kill you outright, and cause some problems until you are magically cured.

This would likely be best handled as being similar to a curse, with a [Disease] tag on it. It's also likely to not ever be a problem for a PC, since they can get hit with a Remove Disease, Remove Curse, or a Heal.

As for my peeves, grappling and other special cases have always been pains in the rear end. It was either useless or horribly broken in previous editions, and in 3.5 you won't ever make the check unless you've been built specifically to do so.

Also, I resent the caster-love that seems to predominate. It's better now than at any time in D&D history, but I'm hoping that casters and non-casters will be much more even in their treatment with 4e.

Brad

 

[brehobit]

Exactly. IME people who have trouble with this concept also complain that it's Strength that modifies attack rolls, rather than Dexterity. Once you get the "to-hit" vs. "to-hurt" distinction, it makes a lot more sense.
-Will

Sort of. Plate mail should make it hard for someone to hurt you with a club. But it won't help much against a huge dragon or a T-rex.

Armor mostly went away when guns got good. The metal armor just slowed you down, it didn't provide protection. D&D does a very poor job of modeling that. I prefer armor as DR but providing an AC penalty. Rolemaster did a very nice job with this. In plate you got hit a LOT, but for nominal damage most of the time.

Mark

 

[wgreen]

Sort of. Plate mail should make it hard for someone to hurt you with a club. But it won't help much against a huge dragon or a T-rex.

Which is part of why huge dragons and T-rexes get high attack bonuses.

-Will

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

Alignment-aligned planes always seemed as silly to me as alignment languages. They are a metamechanic which shouldn't have spells, alignment-restricted magic items or even planes attributed to them.

"This plane is aligned to fighters, only".

"This weapon can only be used by people with a d10 for hit dice"

"This inn restricts anyone of Neutral Good alignment from entering it"

It is just silly.

Another quibble - Protection from Good, Protection from Evil, Protection from Law, Protection from Chaos. I mean, why?! Why not just a Protection spell that gives you general bonuses while hedeging out specific TYPES of summoned creatures?

 

[Szatany]

- encumbrance rules

- definition of hit points and hence its interaction with rules such as falling damage

 

[Sadrik]

Alignment-aligned planes always seemed as silly to me as alignment languages. They are a metamechanic which shouldn't have spells, alignment-restricted magic items or even planes attributed to them.

"This plane is aligned to fighters, only".

"This weapon can only be used by people with a d10 for hit dice"

"This inn restricts anyone of Neutral Good alignment from entering it"

It is just silly.

Another quibble - Protection from Good, Protection from Evil, Protection from Law, Protection from Chaos. I mean, why?! Why not just a Protection spell that gives you general bonuses while hedeging out specific TYPES of summoned creatures?

Agreed 100%!

 

[DM-Rocco]

Which would be kind of cool to have two fighting styles in the game. One based on DEX and the other based on STR.

Well, they kind of do with weapon finesse. A touch attack would be a DEX attack if you had weapon finesse. However, I think they should have some melee weapons that are always finesse (DEX) weapons and some that are always STR weapons and some that are both. I also hate that you need a feat to use a weapon with your DEX.

Is the weapon designed for DEX users? Then you shouldn't need a feat to use your DEX with it, but you might need a feat to use your STR with a rapier.

 

[DM-Rocco]

There is something I don't like about diseases.

In D&D, you slowly get worse and worse until you get better or die.

I would imagine that for things like the plague, smallpox, etcetera, you get sick very fast (24-48 hours) and possibly die, but then you have a longer recovery period.

.

Actually things like the Plague have various type of infection. One person might get sick quickly and take a long time to recover, if at all, and others might be infected for days or weeks, feel and look fine then one day become tired and weak within a few minutes and die. Same disease, different incubations.

My 25+ years of D&D experience, other than the one time that the DM threw a plague across the land, all diseases were magical and became effective right away.

 

[Anti-Sean]

Kender.

Or am I taking the thread title perhaps a bit too literally?

 

[fuindordm]

Back to magic, spells, etc. before this thread derails into another "how should armor be handled" argument:

I definitely approve of Animate Object being a spell for wizards, too.

It still pains me that every spell with multiple uses got split into several spells.

I have always hated psionics that produce enormous physical changes in the subject, such as Enlargement and Metamorphosis.

Monster Summoning would be much cooler if the magician made a pact with a specific monster and summoned the same one every time.