What rules don't work?

[Al'Kelhar]

Other rules I really don't like are:
...
I have NEVER liked armor as a means to make you harder to hit. Armor should absorb damage. Period.

[AAARGHH! OK, take a deep breath now.]

Since D&D 1st edition, AC has never been representative of how hard it is to hit a creature. AC has always been representative of how hard it is to injure a creature. Armour makes you harder to injure. Whether it makes you harder to hit is irrelevant. Advocates of the "armour = DR" philosophy are tinkering with the fundamental mechanical workings of D&D. Go down this path, and you'd better start thinking about the consequences for BAB, DR, feats like Power Attack etc. You can do it, but IMHO it's too much effort for the reward of saying "I have a game system in which armour represents resistance to injury". Like D&D is realistic anyway. (I won't at this stage, begin debating the merits of 3E damage reduction vs AC. All I'll say is that DR is AC by another name; strictly, DR is unnecessary, but it is more mechanically convenient than creatures having different ACs against different weapon types, and different ACs against different opposing BABs.)

Cheers, Al'Kelhar

 

[Yair]

[AAARGHH! OK, take a deep breath now.]

Since D&D 1st edition, AC has never been representative of how hard it is to hit a creature. AC has always been representative of how hard it is to injure a creature. ... (I won't at this stage, begin debating the merits of 3E damage reduction vs AC. All I'll say is that DR is AC by another name; strictly, DR is unnecessary, but it is more mechanically convenient than creatures having different ACs against different weapon types, and different ACs against different opposing BABs.)

The problem is that HP also represent the same thing; dropping in HP means you are closer to being hurt, not that you have been hurt, until you reach 0 hit points (mechanically, at least). So you have a two-tier system - AC and HP - to represent basically the same thing, where a character who is "hit" [attack roll above the AC] is not actually hit and a character that takes "damage" [loss of hit points] didn't suffer any damage... that's a very odd system to work with.
I'm still waiting for that conversion that will make a "hit" mean a hit and "damage" mean damage.

 

[Steverooo]

Try using the d6 per 10' per 10,' cumulative:

10' 1d6
20' 3d6
30' 6d6
40' 10d6
50' 15d6
60' 21d6 (terminal velocity)

Or, use your judgment and impose a save vs. death for 500' plummets.

And, those 50 & 60' falls, on average, require a save vs. massive damage, as they average over 50 points... Enforcing that rule helps a lot...

 

[Ryltar]

[AAARGHH! OK, take a deep breath now.]

Advocates of the "armour = DR" philosophy are tinkering with the fundamental mechanical workings of D&D. Go down this path, and you'd better start thinking about the consequences for BAB, DR, feats like Power Attack etc. You can do it, but IMHO it's too much effort for the reward of saying "I have a game system in which armour represents resistance to injury".

Well, actually, it's not that difficult ... there are several books out there that use a "Armor as DR" + Base Defense bonus concept - Conan, D20m, even the variant rules in Unearthed Arcana come to mind. And while they may still not present an entirely accurate depiction of "reality", they are closer to it than the original system. That's good enough for me.

 

[S'mon]

And, those 50 & 60' falls, on average, require a save vs. massive damage, as they average over 50 points... Enforcing that rule helps a lot...

I use similar, but instead of ridiculous numbers of dice I use 1d6 x (1 per 10', cumulative) - up to 100', then beyond 100' reduce additional damage per 10' at the same rate, with terminal velocity still at 200' not 50' (IRL it's ca 270').

So 10' fall does 1d6, 20' does 3xd6, 30' 6xd6, 40' 10xd6, etc. This means that low level characters can conceivably survive long drops but high levellers can be killed by even a 40' fall.

 

[Soel]

Grappling, complications and poorly written rules lead to confusion.

Yes, indeed. A revised Grappling system is sorely needed.

 

[Pants]

What I don't care for in D&D:

1. The HP system. I can live with it, but I don't care for it that much. Like someone (Psion?) said earlier, in an HP system, by the established rules, having someone at gun/bow point or holding a knife to their throat really doesn't work.

2. Swallow Hole. It's stupid and it doesn't make a lick of sense.

3. Grappling. Grappling isn't that bad, but the obscene bonuses that creatures larger than medium get to their grapple checks basically amount to 'You get grappled, you're f**ked.'

4. Save or Dies. I hate these, I really hate them. This is the one thing I truly do not like about high level play.

 

[sniffles]

@Kid Socrates - good idea for your girlfriend. I just do not understand why Wizards felt it necessary to give the actions so many "types". An action is an action. I guess I'll be perpetually befuddled by having learned RuneQuest before I learned D&D. In RQ you get two actions per round, and they can be move-move, move-attack, attack-defend, move-cast, etc.
I think that's a nicely simple way of defining what your character can do. I know it's basically the same in D&D, it's just that calling them by so many different names is confusing.

Why is it that when you take two-weapon fighting, you still don't get to apply your full strength bonus to damage? I look at that feat and its various iterations as demonstrating that my character has trained to use two weapons. He is effectively ambidextrous, but only with weapons. Therefore he should be just as strong with his off hand as he is with his primary hand.

Why don't mounts increase their hit points? If you've been riding the same horse for 3 years, one would think that it would get better at being your mount!

 

[TBoarder]

Barbarian's Rage - the *only* class ability that is inherently lethal. It's impossible for a Barbarian to get have a dramitic, down-to-the-wire knock-down-drag-out fight with an enemy, both down to the last hit point, simply because the Barbarian is automatically dead at this point if he doesn't have some kind of magical healing. Our group's barbarian has died 4 or 5 times because of this... it's gotten to the point that he never rages anymore.

Grappling - We have a player who loves all of the weird combat moves, especially grappling. Every... single... time that he says he's going to grapple, we groan, crack open the PHB, and sift through the rules, trying to make some kind of sense out of them, trying to find *some* way that we can expedite the rules for the future, always tono avail. He says "I grapple" and that automatically means the next 30 minutes are gonna be spent trying to figure out how, and what the grappler and glapplee can do.

 

[LostSoul]

AC has always been representative of how hard it is to injure a creature.

So why don't you get an armour bonus to your Reflex save when you get hit with a fireball?



Oh, here's another rule I don't care for all that much: if the average guy (Str 10, bab +0) starts punching a door or a 5'x5' section of the ground, there is a 20% chance that he'll miss.