D&D General Things That Bug You

[Reynard]

As far as I know, I'm the only DM who even uses the travel paces and I don't even use those in every adventure or campaign!

How do people know how long it takes to get from Neverwinter to Waterdeep then?

 

[Reynard]

It may have to do with consent, which can get messy if the summoned creatures are sentient.

Ugh. It's a wolf.

 

[overgeeked]

In non-4E versions of the game, it's bizarre how luck is vastly more important than skill. Even a 20th level thief rogue with expertise your roll on the d20 is still more important than your actual skill.

In 5E, it bugs me that damned near every class in the game is magic and every single class has at least one magic subclass.

In WotC versions of D&D, it bugs me that you heal, as if by magic, overnight. The default should be slower. It shouldn't be the Basic and AD&D 1/hp per day madness. But poof you're all better with a good night's sleep is silly.

I miss the various subsystems using different resolution mechanics. Doing everything as a d20 "unifies" the mechanics, but it makes everything the same and that feels boring. I miss 1d6 for some things, d100 for others, roll high d20 for some, roll low d20 for others, 2d6 for this, and 1d10 for that. Variety is the spice of life and all that.

And just to go full grognard, variable weapon damage still bothers me. Everything should be a d6.

 

[Oofta]

How do people know how long it takes to get from Neverwinter to Waterdeep then?

They travel at the rate of plot?

 

[Dioltach]

Kender. Tinker gnomes. People who play kender and/or tinker gnomes. Names with too many A, Z, AE, Y, TH and PH sounds. Names with apostrophes.

 

[iserith]

How do people know how long it takes to get from Neverwinter to Waterdeep then?

The formula is distance divided by plot.

 

[TwoSix]

The fact that a pantheon might have dozens of gods, all of which cover non-overlapping or even opposed portfolios, and yet their cleric servants all have access to roughly the same spells and same type of abilities.

I just don't like spellcasting clerics, in general. I love the overall mechanics of the class, but I hate using those mechanics for divine worshippers. I'd rather see "chosen of a god" as an explanation for various types of wizards, sorcerers, bards, etc.

 

[el-remmen]

How do people know how long it takes to get from Neverwinter to Waterdeep then?

Personally, I do use travel paces as a basic thumbnail of how long it takes - but then I used that figure out what encounters may be had along the way (what used to be called wandering monsters or random encounters). Even if I don't want there to be encounters, I used that number to narrate the amount of time (within reason) I want it to take.

"The high winds and driving rains make what should have been a three day march into something closer to five days. . ."

Or

"On the first day, while coming over a hill you notice. . ." in which case I am doing a day by day narration and giving PCs a chance to stop along the way, do other stuff each day until they arrive (or don't).

To be clear, the first choice is not a railroad, because I only do that kind of fast-time narration once the PCs have specifically told me something like "We are marching to Saltmarsh and not stopping unless something forces us to stop" or the like.

 

[overgeeked]

In 5E, it really irks me that all of the summoning spells are described as calling form some spirit that then takes the form of the whatever-you-summoned. That is just DUMB. Why not summon the actual thing? It's magic? If I summon wolves -- I literally drag wolves from someplace in the woods to serve me for a short time and send the survivors back.

I think it's mostly to explain how you can summon a wolf in a dungeon, in a tower, on an airship, etc without it breaking what little sense of "realism" or verisimilitude there is in D&D. If it weren't for that spirit rule, you'd see endless arguments about how long it would take the nearest wolf to respond to a summon spell outside their natural habitat.

 

[Reynard]

They travel at the rate of plot?

Yuck.