D&D General What rule do you hate most from any edition? (+ Thread)

[JEB]

Not so much a hate as an annoyance, but... randomly chosen properties for fully detailed artifacts. The Crown of Destiny, forged by seven angels to give the Immortal God-Queen of Perivale power over all animal life, also increases your speed by 10 feet and contains a death slaad.

 

[TheSword]

Pathfinder 1st Ed: 2500 feats and counting. When you need to use a database to build your character you know that things have got bloated.

In Pathfinder 1e Gordon Ramsey would be using the Master chef Feat chain…

Masterchef —> US Masterchef —> Australian Masterchef —> My Kitchen Rules.

 

[Lyxen]

3e/4e: mandatory magic items to have the adequate power for your level.

 

[Lanefan]

I'll first go against the grain here and say I like level drain.

Rules or underlying design principles that bug the hell out of me when I think about them for longer than a moment:

Basic/0e - the three-alignment system; race-as-class
1e - RAW initiative, RAW grappling, gender-based stat limits for Humans; weapon-vs-armour-type; about half of UA
2e - the obvious caving-in to the Satanic-panic crowd in the initial three books
3e - wealth-by-level; too-steep power curve; character and monster design far too complex; way too much emphasis on the 'character build' sub-game; pathetic Rangers
4e - gamism over realism; AEDU; over-emphasis on balancing the minutae; minions; too big a gap between commoners and 1st-level characters
5e - over-generous hit point and-or life recovery; too many caster classes; too easy to recover from negative effects

To all three of 3e-4e-5e add - casting is too easy; additive multiclassing; feats in general; far too many monsters made PC-playable; point-buy and standard array as char-gen options; too-fast level advancement

 

[GreyLord]

Here's an unpopular one...

Bounded Accuracy applies to all equally, Fighters hitting are the same as mages hitting.

A trained sniper improves their proficiency bonus as quickly as a Bookworm Librarian.

A White Belt to Black Belt Martial Artists trained in combat as a Special Forces increases just as quickly as a Librarian who goes from having a Associates to a Doctorate.

It's a bigger fantasy to me than anything else in D&D...I think it was written by the Bookworms dreaming that they are just as good at combat as a Navy Seal or something.

 

[clearstream]

Pick one thing from any edition of D&D, Pathfinder, or 13th Age that you hate with the passion of 1,000 burning Balrogs. Say what it is, and then make a joke or humorous comment about it.

No nit-picking on responses, or contradicting the person who hates it, this is a + thread. Feel free to make a better joke or commiserate with an experience showing why you agree.

The RAI (not RAW, and in conflict with other RAI, but RAI nonetheless) that an hour of fighting doesn't interrupt a long rest. An hour. About the duration of 120 average combats. In encounters, enough fighting to level from 1 to 20.

 

[jeffh]

Pre-3E saving throws. Absolutely nonsensical, to the point of being a serious obstacle to me going back and doing an old-school game, they bug me that much.

 

[ssvegeta555]

3e: Full attacks limiting movement to a 5ft. step. Combat quickly becomes static.

4e: AEDU powers. Just didn't care for the one size fits all for classes.

5e: Feats or Ability score increase. I hate this choice.

3e and 5e: piece meal multiclassing. It never felt good to "start at lvl 1" when I wanted to branch out. And it gets especially messy when multiple classes are being used, this is mostly true with 3rd edition. For a 3e example, seeing Fighter 1/Wizard 3/Eldritch Knight 5/Underwater Basket Weaver 4/Chicken Chaser 2/Abjurant Champion 5 on a character sheet just looks stupid. I hate it. I much prefer multiclassing in 2e even if it wasn't balanced.

 

[Ath-kethin]

The rules I hate above all else:

1. Racial ability score modifiers. Give everyone a +1/+1 or a +2/+1 or whatever and let them put them where they want. You can tell me elves are generally graceful and good with arcane magic, but don't force my character to fit that mold.

2. A la carte multiclassing. A solution in search of a problem. Technically my preferred solution (tweaking classes or creating entirely new ones if necessary) is a more complicated approach, but I've found it to be much more satisfying.

3. Why can't wizards use swords? For that matter, why are classes limited in the weapons they can use at all? 5e kind of solves this problem with its Proficiency-bonus-or-not approach, but still. But DCC solves that one, so it's OK.

I've come around to loving race as class. I like that everything you need for your character is in one place. It's actually less problematic for me than a game with asi and class limitations based on race.

Oddly the game that made me see the value of this is mork borg.

Off-thread a bit: check out Dungeon Crawl Classics, if you haven't already. It's a great solution to basically everything I want in a TTRPG. Every class has its own thing but it's still very rules-light - even with the roll-every-time spellcastng system. It also has my favorite XP system of any game I've ever played, and that's before we get to the amazing and awesome art/cartography!

 

[Scars Unseen]

Rule Zero for sure. How can I insist that other people are playing the game wrong if they're allowed to change the rules any time they like?