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

[CleverNickName]

Women can't have high strength.

Ugh, I know right?

Luisa would like a word.

 

[Maxperson]

Oh, alignment restrictions, especially druid as true neutral. Hated that.

I disliked the true neutral requirement, but really liked 3e's any neutral requirement. Aspects of nature are lawful, chaotic and good.

 

[Gradine]

If I can include meta-rules for a moment, the 3.X "class tier system" that seemed to dominate online discussion of the game, to the extent it was taken as scripture. Like, I can understand why people were attracted to the idea of it, but it's like the easiest way to suck the fun not only of the game itself, but also talking about the game. It got to a point where in many quarters bringing up any character options that were even a little suboptimal was a good way to get yourself run out of town.

 

[Scars Unseen]

If I can include meta-rules for a moment, the 3.X "class tier system" that seemed to dominate online discussion of the game, to the extent it was taken as scripture. Like, I can understand why people were attracted to the idea of it, but it's like the easiest way to suck the fun not only of the game itself, but also talking about the game. It got to a point where in many quarters bringing up any character options that were even a little suboptimal was a good way to get yourself run out of town.

Yeah, that was a pretty big reason I dipped out of online D&D discussion for a while. The sentiment still lives on in discussions, too. I don't resent the existence of CharOp boards, but I definitely think they should be segregated into subforums and not allowed to steer D&D discussion as a whole. If someone wants to take a suboptimal build or even, heavens forbid, make their character build decisions for RP reasons rather than mechanical ones, they should be able to and not catch any flak for it, especially from people who aren't even gaming with them.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Ramsey is 3rd level with Skill Focus (Profession: Chef), max ranks and an Int of 13. If he takes 10, he automatically succeeds at challenging tasks; with a sous chef and a team of line cooks using aid another, he can automatically succeed at DC25 tasks.

Even Jacques Pepin is only 8th level.

I don’t know how to describe or explain why and how this is what I hated about 3.5.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

If I can include meta-rules for a moment, the 3.X "class tier system" that seemed to dominate online discussion of the game, to the extent it was taken as scripture. Like, I can understand why people were attracted to the idea of it, but it's like the easiest way to suck the fun not only of the game itself, but also talking about the game. It got to a point where in many quarters bringing up any character options that were even a little suboptimal was a good way to get yourself run out of town.

Yeah. Tbh I still really hate the tier discourse in 5e. It implies such a vastly greater efficacy difference between options than what actually exists in the game, and just makes any discussion less interesting.

 

[Scars Unseen]

I don’t know how to describe or explain why and how this is what I hated about 3.5.

I think it is a severe overreaction to what some refer to as "rulings not rules" and others call "DM May I." A simpler way of putting it would be "A character built to succeed at a specific activity should, assuming a lack of mitigating circumstances, succeed at that activity." You don't even need to mention the second half, because it should be obvious that they would be able to produce better results with a team of similarly trained assistants.

Instead, 3.x had a big equation with a thousand potential modifiers for everything you could possibly try to do.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

5E. The ability to cheese the stand people up from 0HP to 1HP with over and over again, as that is the most efficient use of limited healing resources. I hope that gets fixed in 5.5 or whatever they call it.

Honestly I have come to hate this as well, mostly because I’m so tired of people refusing to keep another PC up “because it’s a waste unless they’re at 0hp”. Great. My PC would have had a turn this round if he’d had 6 more HP, but fine. Your one spell slot is definitely worth more than my entire turn. Awesome.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Y'know what rule I hate most, even though so many people think it's absolutely vital?

Measuring diagonals as 1-2-1-2-1-2 etc.

It's very tedious, while adding very very little to almost any actual situation. You're still approximating quite heavily, and for most area sizes (in the 10-20 foot radius region) it literally only makes a difference of like 20% area--in the corners, where it's least likely to have an impact. Yeah, I get that this means "square fireballs," but honestly, this is a level of simulationism that just screams obsessive attention to detail. The difference almost never matters in practice and mostly just serves to bog down the process of figuring out what happens. And it STILL isn't accurate to the real world, because it's still more than 6% off from the proper value--sure it's less inaccurate, but at what cost?

The vast majority of the time, just declaring that things cover an NxN area when they have "radius N" is orders of magnitude faster. The efficiency gained is well worth the minor discrepancies from real circles--which frequently get lost in the noise of discrete-square-chunky-area anyway.

Honestly I have come to hate this as well, mostly because I’m so tired of people refusing to keep another PC up “because it’s a waste unless they’re at 0hp”. Great. My PC would have had a turn this round if he’d had 6 more HP, but fine. Your one spell slot is definitely worth more than my entire turn. Awesome.

Welcome to caster-centric design, where yes, this literally can be true, depending on what that spellcaster has prepared.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

I don’t know how to describe or explain why and how this is what I hated about 3.5.

It's clunky, mechanistic, requires inordinate amounts of houseruling and system mastery, purports to model reality well but in fact does so very poorly, and takes forever to play?

I also have an old mower with a funky throttle and a choke that needs constant tweaking. Must be something about my personality.