Strangest Rule Lawyering

[Wee Jas]

I used to go to a lot of dnd tourneys... Every year we play exactly as we should and every year we got screwed.

the last episode: Xaltar and I played in a team tourney. You made your characters and the goal was to get through a maze to the center avoiding/killing mosters and traps.

We made a chaotic evil cleric and fighter and ripped through the module. Got to the center.. were we were attacked by our monsters and everyone elses... killed those and placed the final object in the statues hand in the final room (our objective).

The DM said wrong hand and the statue came alive and attacked us... whic was fine cause we messed it up too.. THEN

"The statue REACHES IN ITS POCKET and pulls out a pill.. that HEALS it fully and gives it STORM GIANT strength!"

So then we lose and the all the other teams get to the room at the middle and duke it out...

DM's friends win.

Everytime I see this guy I hope something bad happens too him.

 

[Dragonblade]

The same paladin got his mount stolen and instead of the mount crying for help via the empathic link, it just went with the horse thieves. When my paladin eventually got to his horse again it was sold and the DM (who's a lawyer in RL) argued that according to our (german) law anything that is bought in good faith is considered to be in the rightful possession of the buyer, even stolen goods and so there wasn't any way for the paladin to get his horse back legally.[/B]

That is the most outrageous thing I have ever heard. A DM who tried something like that with my players would be deposed and never allowed to DM again.

 

[Conaill]

It's nice that 3.5 specifies that lances deal double damage only when wielded from the back of a charging mount, and that they can only be used one-handed while mounted.

Of course, there's nothing stopping you from wielding *two* lances while mounted.

 

[coyote6]

An example of rules lawyering is the one-handed lance thing I talked about above above. Clearly not intended, but technically "legal" thanks to clever rules manipulation.

That's not clever rules manipulation; it's just (ab)using a not-very-good rule -- nothing too clever about it, really. The bucket of snails/blind kobold-Whirlwind Attack-Great Cleave combos -- those might be "clever rules manipulation".

(I think the first email I sent the Sage was a question about the heavy lance -- "why is it this way?". )

The most egregious rules lawyering I've seen was in Champions. With Champions 2e and its supplements, END Batteries were very popular subjects -- put a titanic Increased END Cost Limitation on a power, buy an END Battery on that same power w/a x16 or x32 multiplier (enough to make it an Advantage), then get Increased Recovery (more advantage) 'til you recovered every Segment, then use the rule from Champions II or III that let you recover 1/10th the END Battery per recovery. You could construct a Battery that never ran out, and could make the point cost of the power arbitrarily small (need to save more points? Increased END Cost x128!). Oi.

(I didn't create that trick; I GM'ed for the characters that used 'em. I let the player have fun for a while, then unleashed Demon; the characters ended up being the energy source for Demon's Fiendish Plan of the Month.)

 

[Kae'Yoss]

That is the most outrageous thing I have ever heard. A DM who tried something like that with my players would be deposed and never allowed to DM again.

Well, he'd actually be lucky if he would ever be able to eat without outside help again.

Or, I'd take a big bottle of a carbonic acid beverage and.... let's just say that from this day forward he'll scream whenever he sees a bottle.