Worse Rules that game designers have made?

[Gryffyn]

Iterative attacks have been bugging me for quite a while too. They make rounds too long to play, but combats end up being ridiculously short. One or two rounds, most often.

I prefer combats with more rounds, giving characters more opportunities to do things, and giving a more gradual progression from 100% HP to dead. On the other hand, extra attacks are one of the things that make fighters and big monsters different. How to reconcile these?

My current favored idea is just to cut the number of iterative attacks in half. You get your second attack at +11 BAB, and that's it -- no third or fourth attacks. The second attack would still be at -5, I think. This would apply to monsters as well.

What I hope this would accomplish is combats that take more rounds. Spellcasters would either burn through more spells each encounter, or learn to conserve. A fighter's or monster's round won't take forever to finish. On the other hand, two-weapon fighting will become even more attractive...

 

[Mark CMG]

Synergy bonuses

Yup. Good in theory but difficult to apply consistently.

 

[Lalato]

I guess I see iterative attacks differently. I see them as an abstraction of the combatant getting more skilled at dealing damage. I real combat sequence might only show the Fighter taking one good swing, but that one good swing is represented by iterative attacks.

That said, is there a better way to represent this? Probably.

--sam

 

[CaptainChaos]

My envisioning of 4e would be a large rules overhaul.

You should just cut to the chase and start playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

 

[Vigwyn the Unruly]

Synergy bonuses

Originally, I thought these were a great idea. Much simpler than going the route of GURPS, I thought, but still captures the essence of overlapping areas of study.

But in truth, it's still not simple enough. You have to bounce every skill you have against every other skill you have to see if a synergy exists.

I think you might be putting too much work into it. IIRC, there is a very short table in the PHB listing which skills give synergy bonuses. Simply go down the list to see if whatever you just bought ranks in gives you a bonus. It only takes about 30 seconds. And I think most (all?) of them give the synergy bonus when you have 5 ranks in the skill, so you really only need to think about this on very rare occasions.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Turning undead. It uses a non-standard and unintuitive system. We have to open to the rules every time it happens, and that's just annoying.

And that's why I threw that RAW right out and implemented my own.

 

[Stalker0]

I think you might be putting too much work into it. IIRC, there is a very short table in the PHB listing which skills give synergy bonuses. Simply go down the list to see if whatever you just bought ranks in gives you a bonus. It only takes about 30 seconds. And I think most (all?) of them give the synergy bonus when you have 5 ranks in the skill, so you really only need to think about this on very rare occasions.

Agreed, in 3.0 it was annoying, but the beautiful little table in 3.5 made all the problems go away.

 

[MadMaxim]

I've got to agree with those saying that polymorph needs an overhaul, because unless you're well-prepared with statistics for the forms you're going to assume using the spell the game grinds to a halt. The same goes for Druids using wild shape.

Turning undead is kind of complicated an quickly gets almost useless at higher levels.

I don't think grappling is complicated, but it's rarely a kind of attack that the PCs make use of.

Other than that, I'm pretty happy with Dungeons & Dragons in its current edition (3.5).

 

[Thomas Percy]

I will be glad to see a poll in this thread with a possibility of multiple choices.

 

[lukelightning]

I've got to agree with those saying that polymorph needs an overhaul, because unless you're well-prepared with statistics for the forms you're going to assume using the spell the game grinds to a halt. The same goes for Druids using wild shape.

At least with druids there is a (relatively) small selection of creatures with very limited abilites (e.g. no breath weapons or spell-like abilities). And every PC druid I've played with has prepared the characters "favorite forms" ahead of time; my druid was pretty much "tiger/dire ape/eagle" most of the time.