Worse Rules that game designers have made?

[The Grackle]

A lot has already been mentioned, but I don't like "cascading effects" and the big offender here is buffs that affect ability scores, since their modifiers in turn affect almost everything else.

For example, I would much rather have fatigue just give penalties to hit and damage, rather than affecting str and dex, which affects AC, encumbrance (and thus perhaps AC again, if one is not a dwarf), reflex saves, a number of skills, and then to hit and damage.

I totally agree with this.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

The inability to dodge. D20 Modern has that (and many other things) over DnD.

Turn undead.

Grapple.

Some size modifiers. I think big creatures should have a bigger penalty to attack; they never seem to miss. It's almost like every attack is an area-attack, but in novels and movies the heroes always have a chance to "dodge the massive attack"

Some skills - they never seem to get the spotlight the way fighting does. Diplomacy is broken. Intimidate is broken. Bluff would be more reasonable if more classes had access to Sense Motive.

Will disbelief (for illusions).

"Person" spells - eg Hold Person. It's like a DM's only tool. What is that spell doing in the Player's Handbook?

Dominate Person/Monster - ridiculous durations. You should at least have to recast the spell every day (and give up the slot) to keep your slave around.

 

[The Grackle]

I kind of like iterative attacks (and the standard attack vs. full attack).

Players will ALWAYS take any options/abilites to give them more attacks in a round, and in 3.x it seemed like the designers just included that assumption into the combat-oriented classes.

It slows down combat at high levels, but everything slows down combat at high levels.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I would expand this by having the damage die increase at BAB 6, 11, and 16. So a dagger is a 1d4 weapon wielded by a 1st level fighter, a 1d6 weapon by a 6th level fighter, a 1d8 weapon when wielded by an 11th level fighter, and a 2d6 weapon when wielded by 16th level fighter.

Weapon Specialization, Two Weapon fighting, and other feats like Rapid shot would all increase the damage die too.

And the non-casters are once again banished to uselessness, as envisioned by papa Gygax. no thanks. A palty increase of 1 point of damage on average is laughable.

 

[Andre]

I would expand this by having the damage die increase at BAB 6, 11, and 16. So a dagger is a 1d4 weapon wielded by a 1st level fighter, a 1d6 weapon by a 6th level fighter, a 1d8 weapon when wielded by an 11th level fighter, and a 2d6 weapon when wielded by 16th level fighter.

Weapon Specialization, Two Weapon fighting, and other feats like Rapid shot would all increase the damage die too.

My group's solution was to eliminate iterative attacks, but add BAB to damage. It's easy to calculate. The total damage potential tends to be similar (ignoring special situations such as sneak attack damage) as iterative attacks tend to miss often. It limits the effect of Power Attack, as adding a few extra points of damage isn't as significant. It's more granular, with a boost at every increase in BAB, rather than at specific points (+6, +11, etc). We add this damage to any manufactured weapon attack, so archers get it also. As others have said, it allows tanks to move and fight at full potential. Works very well for us - and speeds up combat considerably.

For now, we've kept natural attacks as is, but I'm still kicking around ideas to limit those to one per round. Maybe a bonus to hit per extra natural attack? Creatures vary so much, we may not be able to come up with a good general guideline for them.

As for Turn Undead, the cleric simply deals hit point damage based on level, with his Cha Mod as a bonus. Turn Resistance subtracts from the total. Works nicely, without being an auto-kill except against the weakest of undead.

 

[NilesB]

3) The idea that a round is 6-seconds is kinda goofy, when some people with two weapons can get 9 attacks in a round,

Mohamed Ali, in his prime was clocked at 5 punches a second. It is disappointing that a 20th level character meant to be an Epic hero the rival of Achilles or the Pandavas, if very focused on making as many attack as possible in the shortest time, can only manage about a third Ali's speed.

 

[BryonD]

And Weapon Familiarity. Hasn't it been specifically said that Exotic Weapons were exotic because they required harder training to use, and not because they were from different cultures?

I can't point to a source, but I think quite the opposite is true. It was said that exotic weapons were supposed to represent harder weapons and/or establish certain desired relationships between character types and specific weapons. The best example being monks and monk weapons. I don't think they are considered "better" or "harder to use". But they are protected as being the monk's thing by making them exotic.
Extending that to racial/cultural areas is a good idea, imo. I like dwarves using dwarven waraxes.
Of course most of the other examples are silly and/or pointless.....

 

[BryonD]

Mohamed Ali, in his prime was clocked at 5 punches a second. It is disappointing that a 20th level character meant to be an Epic hero the rival of Achilles or the Pandavas, if very focused on making as many attack as possible in the shortest time, can only manage about a third Ali's speed.

I'm a bit skeptical of that claim. (Unless we're talking about a speed bag or something, which isn't the same as trying to hurt a defending opponent) But I don't consider it an issue.

I've never felt tied to the idea that a character is limited to 1 or 2 "swings" per round.
A 5th level fighter maybe isn't quite good enough to score any real damage with that second or third or even fourth swing. A 6th, they start to score some blows with that second shot.
That isn't to say that I assume the fighter 5 is running around missing with 75%+ of his "swings". It is just an abstraction that applies in varying degree from instance to instance.

 

[JVisgaitis]

Weapon Sizes went from very nice and intuitive in 3.0 to nonsensical in 3.5

That was bad. :\

Amen! I still shudder at the weapon size rules.

 

[Lanefan]

Most of the annoyances have already been dealt with earlier, but...

- Turn Undead worked fine in 1e, 3e seems to have made a mess of it; why?

- Multiclassing is a complete disaster but I've no idea how to fix it.

- Some things are better served by tables with a finer gradation than 1-20...d%, d1000, and so on.

More later...

Lanefan