Things that have bugged you since 1E
- Thread starter Zander
- Start date
dok
First Post
Alignment. Not that they had it, but that they have it as a game mechanic, with interactions of spells, magic items & artifacts, yet when it comes time to define what makes a character good or evil, they chicken out with the "Alignment is not a straight-jacket" excuse. If alignment is all a matter of perspective, and morality is relative, that's OK, just don't blast the poor Rogue for daring to look in the Book of Vile Darkness just because he's got Neutral Good on his character sheet. If alignment really is representational of cosmic forces that actually shape entire planes in the outer realms, support that notion with some game mechanics beyond "casting Animate Dead is an evil act". I don't care which way it goes, I just wish they'd take a stand.
Vancian magic. Fire & Forget. Very gamey. Fine when the fantasy market was small. Now there are dozens of great fantasy writers who have shown many differing views of magic, and none of them have amnesiac wizards.
Clerics all using the same spell list. 2nd edition very nearly fixed this with Specality priests, but unfortunately left the mechanics of designing specality priests too wide open, which in turn led to some terrible abuse. It's annoying that a Cleric of Neptune can drop a Flame Strike.
Vancian magic. Fire & Forget. Very gamey. Fine when the fantasy market was small. Now there are dozens of great fantasy writers who have shown many differing views of magic, and none of them have amnesiac wizards.
Clerics all using the same spell list. 2nd edition very nearly fixed this with Specality priests, but unfortunately left the mechanics of designing specality priests too wide open, which in turn led to some terrible abuse. It's annoying that a Cleric of Neptune can drop a Flame Strike.
Why on Oerth not? I thought that was one of the main reasons alignment exists - so that magic spells and items know who and what to detect/blast/repel. Your rogue was probably a little goody two shoes, little goody two shoes, LITTLE GOODY TWO SHOES!....and the book blasts folks like that. That's it's thing.
Last edited:
apocalypstick
First Post
You want tall elves? Go play Palladium Fantasy. 
bloodymage
House Ruler
I can't think of anything that has bugged me since OAD&D. I fixed it all long ago. Someone mentioned the Vancian system. Not in my game. That was the beauty of OAD&D. If the DM didn't like it, he changed it and that was written into the "rules." Went far beyond "Rule 0," evidently. I came out with my house rules for my 3e game and you should've heard the howl! And that was before they even looked at them.
Sejs
First Post
Overspecialized Elves.
There's 8 billion unique subraces of elves, each with their own special powers. You have normal elves, barbaric elves, other barbaric elves, arctic elves, underwater elves, evil color-swapped subterranian elves, genius elves, winged elves, jungle elves, earth meditative rock elves, etc, etc, etc.
I'm sick to death of overspecialized elves. It's not like they're seperate cultures.. it's just a gimick. And you don't see this with other races.. just elves. You don't have 90 types of halfling running around. Or heaven forbid different stats for different 'subraces' of humans - that wouldn't be very PC would it.. but it's okay for elves. Pah.
All shash I say. Throw out the elven subraces, give elves 1 set of racial abilities and be done with it. If you want Drow, they don't have to be ECL 3, have magic resistance, and all manner of silly crap like that. Change their alignment, cultural facets and m.o and bam - scarey outcast underground elves that worship a demon queen.
... my other big pet peeve is monsters that don't make sense. Monsters that work quite well as a 'gotcha' when gaming, but outside of the game/dungeon context they don't make sense. Take the Rust Monster for example. Great dungeon critter, bane of adventurers everywhere.
Wouldn't live long at all. It eats oxidized metal, all well and good. And with it's feelers it can rust metal it finds for it to nosh on. Also fine. But the thing is, when it comes down to it, there's really only one easily accessable source of metal for rust monters to eat (unless they're always diving around in the earth looking for ore veins) - civilization. And given how damaging they can be to said civilization, they'd be exterminated activly once they were detected.
There's 8 billion unique subraces of elves, each with their own special powers. You have normal elves, barbaric elves, other barbaric elves, arctic elves, underwater elves, evil color-swapped subterranian elves, genius elves, winged elves, jungle elves, earth meditative rock elves, etc, etc, etc.
I'm sick to death of overspecialized elves. It's not like they're seperate cultures.. it's just a gimick. And you don't see this with other races.. just elves. You don't have 90 types of halfling running around. Or heaven forbid different stats for different 'subraces' of humans - that wouldn't be very PC would it.. but it's okay for elves. Pah.
All shash I say. Throw out the elven subraces, give elves 1 set of racial abilities and be done with it. If you want Drow, they don't have to be ECL 3, have magic resistance, and all manner of silly crap like that. Change their alignment, cultural facets and m.o and bam - scarey outcast underground elves that worship a demon queen.
... my other big pet peeve is monsters that don't make sense. Monsters that work quite well as a 'gotcha' when gaming, but outside of the game/dungeon context they don't make sense. Take the Rust Monster for example. Great dungeon critter, bane of adventurers everywhere.
Wouldn't live long at all. It eats oxidized metal, all well and good. And with it's feelers it can rust metal it finds for it to nosh on. Also fine. But the thing is, when it comes down to it, there's really only one easily accessable source of metal for rust monters to eat (unless they're always diving around in the earth looking for ore veins) - civilization. And given how damaging they can be to said civilization, they'd be exterminated activly once they were detected.
