What D&D cliches are you sick of?

[Lu Wei Fong]

The cliches that really irk me are the typical portrayals of humanoid opponents (like goblinoids) as mindless cannon-fodder that can't figure out which end of the sword to hold without the tyranical supervision of some wizard or dragon. Granted, these races aren't as sophisticated or industrially advanced as the playable races, but if they're so suicidally incompetant that they wait in dungeon rooms for low-level adventurers to come and kill them on the road to "interesting" adventures, then they would have gone extinct ages ago. The Slayers Guides that Mongoose puts out I've found are really helpful in that regard, but haven't really seen too many people use them. *shrug*
Oh well, it's still a great game and I love it regardless.
Huzzah for Monks!

 

[Dirigible]

(shados' #1, 2, 3 & 4)
None of those apply to my games, thank Gord.

I've been thinking about this one issue lately and I think that changing the create water and create food and water spells to a higher level might be appropriate.

The technical term for this, of course, being midnighting. As in:

"I'm going to midnight create food and water"

 

[Harlock]

Biggest cliche: Halfling rgues, Half Orc Barbarians, Elven Wizards, DWarven fighters et al. And it's built right into the system!

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Balance

The notion that my wizard cannot be less powerful at low levels and may not be more powerful at high levely is a sad cliché in D&D nowadays. :shrug:

 

[Darkness]

The economy. Too much gold; silver taking the place of gold (and gold the place of platinum, etc.) would be more to my liking.

 

[TiQuinn]

Let's see....that's a RED dragon over there, so that means he's evil and breathes fire, mmmmkay?

And that one is a GOLD dragon, and that mean's he's good, and breathes gas AND fire, mmmkay?

 

[KenM]

One thing I see at least two times a year at the gaming table that I don't like: Players playing Drizzit clones. Think of something orginal.

 

[Flyspeck23]

One thing I see at least two times a year at the gaming table that I don't like: Players playing Drizzit clones. Think of something orginal.

It could be worse: players playing Gandalf clones. Or Elminster clones. Or... [insert random powerful mage here].
I've seen it all

The worst cliche is the Paladin. Really, that's a walking cliche right there.

Apart from that... well: human-centered worlds, right down to the pantheon of gods. Why does every sentient species get their own god or (sub-) pantheon, and all the other gods are to some degree human gods?

 

[Altalazar]

We all love D&D (we wouldn't be posting here if we didn't), but let's face it- there are some things about the game that we really don't like.
For me:

1. Everyone speaks the same language: I understand this for game reasons. However, it seems very silly to me that EVERYONE in the whole world speak common by default. I can understand a trade language, but the idea of a universal speech that even peasants in isolated communities speak is just absurd.

2. The prevalence of "raise dead spells": Any mid-to-high level cleric can raise the dead. Again, this makes sense from a game perspective, but this really puts a cramp in the internal consistency of most campaign worlds. Why should anyone fear death if they can just be raised later? Although the family of Joe Peasant couldn't afford to have him raised, kings and people in power have little to fear of death creating a powerful dynasty. Assassinations become much harder (since the person can just be raised as long as the body is intact).

3. High prevalence of magic, but no application of it: Although most D&D worlds feature absurd amounts of magic, most people still live in a psuedo-medieval society. If magic was as prevalent as it is in most D&D campaigns, I can imagine wizards getting together and applying it to society. Many people hate the idea of "magic as technology" paradigm, but if even the smallest hamlet has at least a couple of spell casters, why is all D&D magic seem to be centered around adventuring.

4. The default polytheistic assumption: I have nothing against the standard D&D polytheistic pantheon, but it seems to be getting a little cliched. What about different religious systems, such as pantheism (everything is part of the universal spirit), animism (worship of nature spirits), and even monotheism? One of the main problems of most D&D pantheons is that they seem so contrived. All the gods of the pantheons deal with adventuring and kicking-butt. We have war gods, death gods, fire gods, and nature gods for druids, but we usually don't have gods of fertility, or gods of the home which existed in many classical myths.

Any others?

1, 3, 4 are not issues in my world, and never have been. Magic IS seen in many places even at the peasant level, in terms of community benefit, though it probably still wouldn't qualify for "high magic" - but a good king knows that to have the mages and clerics help the crops and such is good for the kingdom as a whole. And my pantheon is filled with gods to things other than war, death, fire, and nature. With special details and differences for each.

Oh, and language - players always take a bunch of different languages and this becomes important because there is no single common tongue...

Raise dead isn't an issue because most people could never afford it - (I have the silver as main currency thing going). I mean, full plate armor was available historically, but realistically, almost no one could afford it.

 

[diaglo]

49) power ups.

50) rolling diplomacy/skill checks without doing or saying anything else

51) gaining ability stats

52) point buy

edit: you can guess where i'm going with this

Original D&D (1974) is the only true game. All the other editions are trite.