What rules don't work?

[boredgremlin]

Should we start a list of GURPS rules that don't work?

Thats just cruel and unfair. Lol, even most GURPS players will admit the system sucked and had to be heavily house ruled.

 

[Thanee]

One day you might learn the difference.

No time to learn proper etiquette?

Bye
Thanee

 

[Romnipotent]

thats the thing though, everything needs house rules, but I look at some of the systems in Gurps and those in D20 and its a matter of realism VS cinematic demonstrations

although sometimes cinematic things are there to be made fun of. Like the Barbarian/Bard/Rogue who sings rages sneak attacks and evades! (btw a very fun hobgoblin to play)

 

[boredgremlin]

No time to learn proper etiquette?

Bye
Thanee

Lol hating other pathetic milatary branches goes beyong etiquette. We play a real game of life and death. Being polite is umimportant

 

[Thanee]

Being polite is umimportant.

Not around here.

We play a real game of life and death.

Yeah, but with your allies? Isn't that kind of contra-productive?

Bye
Thanee

 

[boredgremlin]

Politics removed. Give yourself a quick refresher of the Rules please Bored Gremlin

 

[Errant]

"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."

Cool, sounds like my kinda DM'ing style. I'm sure I read a DM'ing tip once, something like "Never say 'NO', just tell them how hard it will be". As long as it helps the story that is.

Getting back to the topic, I hate the standard Hit Points system. No matter how many times you get hit, you're unaffected until you're dying or (if you're really lucky) exactly on 0 hps.

My old house rules were 100% Max HPs you're fine, 99-51% you're bruised (no effect), 50-26% you're Limping (-1 to Attacks, Saves & Skill checks), 25-1% you're Staggering (-2 to Attacks, Saves & Skill checks).

 

[Zappo]

The more I play 3.x, the more I realize that the rules-set as a whole doesn't work. [snip]

An example of this is that the other players in my group wanted me to come up with rules to allow the PCs to buy/sell items on a large scale because they intend to make money by conducting trade/commerce, using a ship that they stole from slavers.

First of all - the player most vocal about requesting it wanted the rules to allow him to determine (beforehand) how much profit he would make - implying that the whole goal of the rule was to have *a rule, any rule* to justify to the DM that they should just get a set amount of money for hauling stuff from point A to point B, regardless of chance, market factors, weather delays, etc. To this, of course, I sort of just nodded and smiled, fully intending to come up with a system that was more realistic (i.e. you wouldn't be guaranteed a set profit, or even to make a profit at all.)

Since we play in FR, I looked at all of the regions and saw what the imports/exports were - including commodities, as well as sizes of population centers. While researching some economic theory, I found out that Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe had an economic simulator and picked up a copy. It was everything I wanted because it is simple, easy to use, and adequately reflects how buying/selling and bargaining is really done.

I discussed it with the DM (and explained it to another player, who said that it seemed pretty cool) and tried to demo it last night. Immediately, the player making the request in the first place declared it to be "stupid" because it didn't allow him to use his Diplomacy skill (which he complained that he had purposely spent ranks in anticipation) to affect the die roll and that it wasn't expanding upon the "Diplomacy as haggling" in Complete Adventurer.

So - because it didn't modify an existing, official WoTC published rule (modified in such a way as to favor the PCs), it was stupid? How about we do what the DM would be perfectly happy with and *not* have a rule at all and roleplay out the haggling... Because it isn't *exactly* what you wanted and not specifically designed to give you a lopsided advantage, it is stupid?

This is the same player who came up with a critical hit chart that would require NPCs and monsters to roll a higher d% roll in order to do the same critical effects as the PCs (i.e. in order to do the same result as a PC with a roll of 11, an NPC would have to roll a 41). This is the same player who dismissed, out of hand, a new crit chart that actually made sense - critical effect severities depending upon die rolls and hit locations (hitting a hand may disarm you or break your wrist, hitting a leg may reduce your mobility, hits to the groin will cause you to be stunned and nauseated, etc.)

It seems to me that this is a classical case of "this is a problem with the player, not with the system". Why wouldn't he behave like this in any other game?

As for my gripes, the most important ones (which are also related) are:

- Crafting doesn't work. Way oversimplified, and as a result the time and costs to make stuff are very unrealistic. Traps seem to be the biggest offenders, but special materials cause lots of problems too.
- Economics don't work.

I think those two problems are caused by the "adventurer-centric" view of the world. I think that design principle has been taken to a bad extreme in those two cases.

 

[DragonLancer]

I agree with about the flying rules. Its too complicated when your trying to run a simple fast flowing game.

Other than that, the only rules I don't like are AoO's. Not for unfitting reasons, more personal ones.

 

[Elemental]

I agree with about the flying rules. Its too complicated when your trying to run a simple fast flowing game.

Other than that, the only rules I don't like are AoO's. Not for unfitting reasons, more personal ones.

I may be the only person here who likes attacks of opportunity. In other games ('Mage' and 'Rifts', namely), I was always getting frustrated with characters who would jog past all the mooks in order to get an attack on the main bad guy (or in one case, snipe at him with ranged weapons while two feet away from a huge demon), with no chance that they could possibly be hit by said mooks.