What rules don't work?

[Ridley's Cohort]

I thought of a new rule (or concept) in d20 that really irks me.

The idea that I can pick up one class and automatically gain all those class benefits.

...

I hear all the time about people "cherry-picking" classes to gain different sorts of abilities. The very idea of an ability belonging to a class is an odd concept. In fact, the very idea of a classes is a bit odd, but that's a sacred cow best left untouched, I understand that.

Still, it's kind of broken the way it's currently done.

It seems to be a sacred cow that your 1st level PC of class X is recognizable as highly proficient in their chosen profession. If one sticks to this paradigm this kind frontloading is pretty much inevitable.

In the upgrade from 3.0 to 3.5, they did make some partial corrections such that some of the brand name abilities are spread out for ~4 levels.

If I were to run an Arthurian/Medieval campaign with D&D, teen squires would be Aristocrat1/Fighter1. Your vanilla veteran knight would be Aristocrat1/Fighter4, and you would meet 2nd-6th level NPCs as everyday folk on the streets.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

The so-called Death Spiral works very well in Shadowrun to heighten tension. As a practical matter the GM need only scatter a few light wounds around the party to really crank up the tension.

The Death Spiral is a problem is you have a strong pre-conception of combat as a war of attrition. There are other ways to make the final showdown climatic.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

This is actually pretty realistic. Research has shown that combatants tend to be fully effective until the moment they are rendered ineffective. (...which doesn't necessarily mean dead or even knocked out. You just aren't a significant factor in the combat anymore.) A damaged-but-still-partially-effective combatant is the exception rather than the rule.

That makes sense if we are thinking of D&D as a mass combat system where we do not really care if the "removed figure" is dead or merely disabled.

It is odd that someone taken out of the fight is almost always extremely close to death. Which seems to be the opposite of realism, as you are describing realism here.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

You touch on it in your initial post but for me, one of the stupidist rules is Swallow Whole.

Specifically the ability to cut your way out (!) and then the whole miraculously closes itself 'by muscular action'(!) and the creature can continue fighting without harm even though something has just done an 'Alien' and burst out of its stomach (!!!).

Yeah, right.

IMC the simple change was to make all instances of "swallow whole" into "chew" - you remain in the creatures mouth and it gets to do automatic bite damage every round, you can attempt to make grapple checks to get free or strike with light weapons etc. At least it can't bite anyone else while it is chewing you.

My friends and I joke about "muscular action closing the hole" all the time.D I like your variant, but I think the image of getting swallowed into the gullet of a humongous creature is an important one from both fantasy literature and film.

So, despite the wonky rules and ridiculous image, I'm just not prepared to give it up. Maybe there should be like a gag reflex rule, and any creature that takes a certain amount of damage has the option of spitting up unagreeable adventurer snacks.

 

[Particle_Man]

The idea that I can pick up one class and automatically gain all those class benefits.

Well, you could always ban multi-classing (with the possible exception of multi-classing into a prestige class, on condition you "finish" the prestige class). With all the base classes out there, one should be able to get their concept going just fine without it.

 

[Gold Roger]

The armor system. Mind you, I'm ok with armor as AC. I'm not ok with the existing boni. A character with bad armor always has a bad AC as well. Natural armor shouldn't exist as individual armor bonus. Heavier armors restrict my maximum dex bonus, but not my dodge bonus? Armor doesn't scale well. There are three wothrwhile armors. It's a mess.

Buffs and more specifically, their durations.

Magic items. They hinge completely on straight boni. The Armor and especially Weapon costs are completely messed up.

Extra attacks. Wether it's iterative attacks (should be removed), two-weapon fighting (not necessarily a fighting style that means you make more attacks) or natural attacks (just because he has all those natural weapons doesnt mean he uses them all in 6 seconds). I'd rather see the damage at high levels increased rather than everyone geting bazilions of attacks, the lesser of which will miss most of the time and that you have to stay stationary to use.

While I have no problem with AoO's, I'm don't think they are neccesary (when drinking a potion, you already give up your attack-giving your opponent a free attack, you can prepare to strike opponent moving past you or casting in front of you and casting in melee could just always require a concentration check).

 

[Hussar]

Ooh, yeah, this is the only thing that annoys me to distraction. Something simple would be easy to work up anyway, so it irks me that they didn't do it.

"That skill is trained-only, and you have no ranks in it. Take a -4 penalty on the roll and take a shot at it."

"You want to run down the corridor hacking up guards? Well, okay, but you'll be faking four feats (Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack, a hypothetical feat that allows multiple attacks), so you take a -16 on all of your attack rolls."

And there should definitely be better guidelines for taking (x) penalty on a skill to pull off some impressive trick, like the ELH stuff, but within sane bonuses and a lot more of them...

(*It has come to my attention that this board requires a : pondering : smiley.)

Going back a bit, but, there's a real problem in this idea. If you whack a -16 penalty onto an action, why not just say "no" and save everyone at the table a bunch of time? Just because something might be possible doesn't mean that it's a good idea to provide rules for it.

Epic Level Handbook has those kinds of things because ELH characters are, in the words of WOTC, The Poo. I really don't want to deal with every orc being able to run through my entire party and attack everyone, just on the off chance the DM rolls a 20.

 

[Kaodi]

The entire notion that everyone who uses alternate form-like abilities and assumes completely average physical stats for that creature has always rubbed me the wrong way. I mean, if you have Ghakaar, the savage druid 8/barbarian 4 with str 16 dex 10 con 13 int 8 wis 16 cha 12, and Asheeja the delicate druid 8/bard 4 with str 8 dex 13 con 10 int 12 wis 17 cha 15, and they both wildshape into tigers, by the rules they both have str 23, dex 15 and con 17, and look more or less alike except one is male and one is female. It would make more sense, and a better picture to me, if they retained their natural traits in their new forms. So Ghakaar would be a hulking, muscular str 28, dex 14, con 18 and Asheeja would be a lean and sleek str 20, dex 16, con 16. Yeah, Ghakaar would be mean as heck in melee, but he would when they were in their natural forms as well. And if the situation is different, Asheeja probably makes a hell of a lot better nightingale than Ghakaar, if she uses ranks in perform (sing), and there are plenty of stories out there of people being entranced by a beautiful songbird.

 

[DonTadow]

The armor system. Mind you, I'm ok with armor as AC. I'm not ok with the existing boni. A character with bad armor always has a bad AC as well. Natural armor shouldn't exist as individual armor bonus. Heavier armors restrict my maximum dex bonus, but not my dodge bonus? Armor doesn't scale well. There are three wothrwhile armors. It's a mess.

Buffs and more specifically, their durations.

Magic items. They hinge completely on straight boni. The Armor and especially Weapon costs are completely messed up.

Extra attacks. Wether it's iterative attacks (should be removed), two-weapon fighting (not necessarily a fighting style that means you make more attacks) or natural attacks (just because he has all those natural weapons doesnt mean he uses them all in 6 seconds). I'd rather see the damage at high levels increased rather than everyone geting bazilions of attacks, the lesser of which will miss most of the time and that you have to stay stationary to use.

While I have no problem with AoO's, I'm don't think they are neccesary (when drinking a potion, you already give up your attack-giving your opponent a free attack, you can prepare to strike opponent moving past you or casting in front of you and casting in melee could just always require a concentration check).

There's a pretty interesting variant out there where you add a die roll to damage for fullround attacks for each base attack past 5. I use this variant and it works fine, speeds up combat. I'm thinking of applying it to two weapon fighting. Maybe something like any hit that makes it does 1.5 times the damage with 2 weapon fighting.

 

[Greg K]

I'm going to add multiclassing. I think the rules work fine (mostly) for characters that jump classes to dabble or for a character that plans to switch their profession. However, for focused concepts (e.g., warrior mage (battle sorcerer (UA) or Myrmidon (AEG's mercenaries), spellcasting monk (OA Shaman), wilderness rogue) that reflect the character's initial training and continued focus on the concept, I don't think that the multiclassing rules work well at all.

1) The all or nothing focus on a particular class at any given level gives a disjointed feeling of development as a character focuses entirely on one class or the other. This is especially true for skills that would always be class skills for a base class or class variant are class skills one level, but under the multiclassing rules are class skills one level, but not the next.

"Yes, mr. warrior mage, you spent all those years training in Concentration and Spellcraft, but to stay balanced between the two classes, you need to take a level in fighter and have to buy those skills as cross-class" .

"Yes, Mr. Wilderness Rogue. I know that you grew up in a rural area where you learned survival, handle animal, and Ride and, yes, I know you have never been a city rogue. However, to improve those outdoor skills this level either
a) take a level in rogue (which gives you a bunch of skills that you would never know as class skills) and buy your outdoor skills as cross class; or
b) take a level in Barbarian or Ranger.

2) Penalizes the character's caster level for caster. It makes sense for the character to take a hit in spell progression (although, imo a bard's spell progression is better for a concept that combines a non-spellcasting class with a full progression). However, the character still spends time studying magic and the caster level of the spells he does know, imo, should be equal to the caster level (assuming the character stays focused on fighter and wizard. Add in another class and then I think the multiclass rules begin to work well).