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Deepbluediver
2012-01-11, 10:45 PM
This is just a thread for anyone who wants to complain about little things in any tabletop RPG that get under your skin.

It's nothing game-breaking, like class imbalance which can be stated simply but is quite complex, these are just little things that annoy you which the rest of your group probably never even thinks about.

Things like....


0-level spells
Seriously. Why the frell couldn't we just have levels 1 through 10? But no, we have level 0, so whenever anyone wants to make a rule concerning spell levels there needs to be an extra line of text specifying how this effect interacts with the lowest level just so games don't grind to a halt with players debating how to divide zero, multiple zero, or (heaven forbid) divide BY zero. I can only imagine how many extra pages in books get devoured by having to explain why certain effects don't let you freeze whole lakes solid with an infinite number of Rays of Frost.
(ok, it's probably like, 1, total, across everything combined, but thats an ENTIRE PAGE OF TEXT!)

Anarion
2012-01-11, 10:47 PM
The fact that negative levels don't actually change your level and temporary HP don't work at all like HP. Why couldn't you have chosen better names Wizards? Why?!

Captain Six
2012-01-11, 11:23 PM
Both are relics of older editions. Negative levels did exactly what they said, took away a level forever, and Cantrip used to be a first level spell encompassing all of what is now 0th level magic. 3.x is/was plagued with relics that no longer made sense due to changes in rules and game philosophy.

Tengu_temp
2012-01-11, 11:25 PM
Pre-3e DND had spells from levels 1-9 (1-7 for clerics and druids). They decided to call the new level of spells 0 instead of 1 and bumping everyone else up because it'd be confusing for everyone who played DND before (why is Magic Missile a level 2 spell? And why can wizards cast level 2 spells from the first level?), and because level 0 spells are supposed to be a low level crutch/minor utility more than anything anyway, to give casters more than 1-2 spells at level 1.

Similarily, negative levels simply took away your levels in AD&D, but that created a whole bunch of mechanical issues and was a pain in the arse to keep track of, so in 3e they simplified them while keeping the old name

Barf, ninjas.

Deepbluediver
2012-01-11, 11:50 PM
Pre-3e DND had spells from levels 1-9 (1-7 for clerics and druids). They decided to call the new level of spells 0 instead of 1 and bumping everyone else up because it'd be confusing for everyone who played DND before (why is Magic Missile a level 2 spell? And why can wizards cast level 2 spells from the first level?), and because level 0 spells are supposed to be a low level crutch/minor utility more than anything anyway, to give casters more than 1-2 spells at level 1.

Similarily, negative levels simply took away your levels in AD&D, but that created a whole bunch of mechanical issues and was a pain in the arse to keep track of, so in 3e they simplified them while keeping the old name

Barf, ninjas.

Is that supposed to help?!? I thought we'd already established that these are things that irrationally upset us!

In fact, I think this makes it worse! They knew they had problems, but rather than actually fix them they simply stuck on the most half-assed bandaid they could come up with.

I can sort-of understand the spell level thing, about not wanting to confuse long time players. I don't agree with it, but at least I can understand it.

But negative levels? Here's how I picture this conversation taking place:
"OK guys, we're replacing this old, funky, never-quite-worked-right game effect with a brand new mechanic that isn't anything like it. We've got everything figured out but the name. Who's got some ideas?.....Anyone? ......Nothing? Really?.....alright, screw it, just stick with the old name. Cut, wrap, send to print, and lets all go get a beer".

They could have called it anything! For example, "Life Drain" because it sucks the energy and strength right out of your body. There, that only took me 3.7 seconds to come up with. You're basically telling me the entire R&D department at WotC couldn't do better. I guess I must be some kind of mega-genius, huh?



*yes, I'm ranting; it's meant to be taken lightly*

bloodtide
2012-01-11, 11:50 PM
0-level spells
Seriously. Why the frell couldn't we just have levels 1 through 10? [/SIZE]

Ok...get this. In 1E you could actually start out at a level less then 1. In the good old days, you started out at -3 level. And -3 level wizards got one single cantrip, a 0 level spell as they did not get 1st level spells until first level. So you had to adventure and go up three levels to get just to first level and become a 'standard character'.

The idea was a wizard would throw out the 0 level spells once they got real 1st level spells, but they could keep them if they wanted too. There were plenty of useful ones so most wizards kept there 0 level spells.

Tengu_temp
2012-01-11, 11:52 PM
Is that supposed to help?

No, just explain where did it come from.

Captain Six
2012-01-11, 11:59 PM
Is that supposed to help? I thought we'd already established that these are things that irrationally upset us!

I am personally fascinated by where things come from when it comes to long runners like this, so I chipped in because I thought it was interesting. Things like that do bug me too. Oh, so my Monk cannot be magically aged? That would have been awesome if Haste still did that!. Of course further changes to haste made it worthless to monks anyway.

With all the relic pile-up WotC did eventually pull a complete overhaul and made 4e. I'm not gonna say it was a bad idea, I'm not gonna say it was a good idea, but I will say that it was a controversial idea. That alone should illustrate why they were as paranoid as they were about touching the existing system. "Diablo 2 Edition", as 3.x was called when it first came out, was already treading on eggshells with the old time fans.

Edit: Nice counter-ninja.

Deepbluediver
2012-01-12, 12:19 AM
Thank you. I'm sure you are all friendly, wonderful, intelligent people. But I do not want your kind words and friendly smiles!

I am a man on a mission, and that mission is flabberblathering insane!

I demand sympathizers! Yes, bring me their heads!....wait, no, that's not right....

I'm looking for stories and anecdotes of the things that personally drive you completely nutty, but you never mention because they are so trivial that you believe no one else has ever shared you pain. Alternatively, tell me about that one thing where you spent at least 5 minutes explaining why, in great detail, it is absolutely the pits of hell and everyone around you grows increasingly concerned and awkwardly refuses to meet your eyes.

Y'know, hypothetically. Because I've never had anything even slightly like that happen to me.

bloodtide
2012-01-12, 12:25 AM
This is just a thread for anyone who wants to complain about little things in any tabletop RPG that get under your skin.


I hate alternative magic systems in D&D. The tiny ones that take up like 3-4 pages in a book somewhere. Where someone thought it would be cool to make 'rune magic' or 'star magic' and they write up a bit of fluff, then ad in an ability or two and then add a couple spells. Of course with four whole pages, they don't get to fit much in, and mostly you get a bunch of wasted space. The dwarven rune master sounds good, but if they get 10 runes a day, and you can only pick from a list of 6, they get boring fast.

Vitruviansquid
2012-01-12, 03:29 AM
Not sure how much this applies to other editions of DnD, but when I'm playing 4E, the wizard always tries to solve every damn problem with some form of prestidigitation. And while I find the cantrips to be too ill-defined and thus useful in general, what really grinds my gears is that no other class has equivalent rules for doing stuff their class stereotypically could do, but aren't important enough to be a power. The result:

The wizard player gets high-fives around the table for using a combination of Mage Hand, Prestidigitating a small flame, and Prestidigitating invisible a baby's skull to set an orc fortress ablaze.

The DM looks at me like I just grew a third arm when I ask whether my Druid can do anything like communicate with forest animals or accelerate the growth of a plant.

Silus
2012-01-12, 03:51 AM
Struggling to locate the simple tables and charts in the 4E books. Takes me ~10 minutes to locate the table about what armor gives what bonuses and how much it costs. And this is from someone that started with 3.5.

Psionics. Just a bad experience ruined them for me. That and the DM that ruined them for me didn't have magic/psionic transparency (I think that's what it's called where some magic affects psionics and vise-versa).

The E6 gaming style. I WANT ALL MY LEVELS!

Killing of all three of the main motivations to play D&D (in my eyes): Advancement (E6), loot (Low wealth game) and/or phenomenal cosmic power (low magic game). Might as well be playing hobos in a D20 Modern game.

Those little instances where the DM is like "Oh, you were supposed to solve it like THIS" and it's something the players would never think of. Like to deactivate the trap and get through the magic boss door, you have to go one floor down, turn the third monkey statue from the left's head a full 360 clockwise, then flip switches 1, 6, 4, and 2 in that order. Of course! it's so obvious! :smallannoyed:

On that topic, inflexible DMs. The party is getting wiped out, I'm the only one running to the spelljammer dry docks and I need something with enough firepower to destroy the time portal and save the party. Why not let the first ship I get to be one I can, you know, pilot? But nope, you have to be able to use magic. In a low magic campaign. But oh yeah, that ship I COULD fly? It was about three rows over. I COULD have gotten to it, but by then the party would have been killed.

Totally Guy
2012-01-12, 04:43 AM
Things that bug me:

When players roll dice without any of the talk to say what the roll means.

And when failure is ever met with "You should try again" or "I will try again".

Geigan
2012-01-12, 05:28 AM
When I take my turn as a cleric having to not only keep track of a spellcaster, but also my 40+ individual skeleton minions, I take less time than the ranger and warlock in my party who at most have an animal companion or possibly a summoned swarm to keep track of besides themselves.

Losing my dice, especially the mountain of little d6s that I bought specifically so I wouldn't run out. :smallmad:

Roderick_BR
2012-01-12, 06:33 AM
1) Players that take forever to make a character. I mean, losing a whole afternoon doing it. Dude, the tables are not too far appart in 3.x. They have an index for it. You are a fighter/rogue. pick some stats, feats, skills, armor, weapon and let's go. You don't need to re-read the whole skills section, I know you know it by heart by now.
2) Players that take forever to check information mid-game. Wizard, you picked that spell and don't even know how it works yet? And takes a long time locating the spell in the book and an hour to read two paragraphs? Rogue, Improved Initiative doesn't work that way. You ever read the basic rules of the book in these past 4 years? FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF...! And don't make rules outta nowhere!
3) How cheap magic is in 3.x. Before, it was a powerful force, that could change the tides of a battle when used right, and casters were squishy. Today, they yawn and casts 4-5 spells and completely destroys the encounter. And casting spells that can bend the fabric of reality is as easy to learn and use as swinging a sword.

Poil
2012-01-12, 08:26 AM
Class skills in dnd and whatever other games that enforce them as harshly. Oh you are a fighter? You have no skill points and you're not allowed to have social skills, perception or knowledge. Oh, a wizard? No social skills for you either. Ah, a rogue, here have a trillion skill points and almost every skill there is. I dislike the whole you are class x your job is x and only x because we said so and arbitrarily decided what job each class has.

If you want your wizard to be able to influence people by talking you either have to multiclass or settle for a half skill. I mean, it's not like there ever was a wizard in fiction who could use his voice for anything other than grumpingly casting spells. (note: I'm fully aware that wizards doesn't need to be better but it's ****** because it prevents rp'ing, especially if your dm refuses to do away with class skills or multiclass penalty)

Even worse for any town watch, city guard or militia which would primarily be made up of fighters or warriors. The people relied upon for protection? Yeah, they don't have spot, listen or sense motive. Good luck with that. Don't give me that crap about how rogues could fill those rolls since it makes no sense that any place would employ a lot of rogues unless it's a bandit camp or thieves guild. Fluff is supposed to be important in a rpg, right?

:smallfurious:

DigoDragon
2012-01-12, 08:34 AM
2) Players that take forever to check information mid-game. Wizard, you picked that spell and don't even know how it works yet?

I been there! I once had an encounter halted for an hour because the party Cleric and Fighter couldn't agree on the area encompassed by a Silence spell. Ugh! I had to build a transparency sheet that spelled out the area of effect so they could just lay it on the battlefield.

And of course since doing so the Cleric never used that spell again. :smallamused:


My biggest personal peeve though? Players that design characters specifically to cause conflict within the party. Conflict to the point that players stop having fun with the game. The DM is perfectly capable of handling conflict without our help, thank you very much. :smallannoyed:

Tytalus
2012-01-12, 09:13 AM
The E6 gaming style. I WANT ALL MY LEVELS!

Killing of all three of the main motivations to play D&D (in my eyes): Advancement (E6), loot (Low wealth game) and/or phenomenal cosmic power (low magic game). Might as well be playing hobos in a D20 Modern game.


That's not a game issue, it's a playstyle issue.

Also, it seems that you haven't had much experience playing it. E6 can be plenty epic, even without high level spells being readily available (they are / can be available, though). Advancement is still there, but the exponential growth in spellcasters' power isn't. YMMV, but that's a good thing.

It has the advantage that it much better balanced than higher-level D&D. As a DM/player who has obviously had considerable problems with the game balance of items, class abilities etc. at mid levels (see your thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=228524)), it acutally seems like a sensible playstyle. Using E6 rules, you wouldn't have had any of the problems you mentioned. HIPS ranger? No. Owlbear shenanigans? No. Unbalanced Amber Amulet? No. Etc.

Almaseti
2012-01-12, 12:53 PM
I bugs me when people think certain classes and alignments HAVE to be played a certain way. Rogues MUST be scoundrels/thieves, they can't just be regular people who prefer cleverness over brute force and are never lawful. Paladins MUST be holier-than-thou and irritating. Bards are spoony. Lawful= stuck up, chaotic = does stupid things at random even when it hurts you. The alignment system in general is kind of bad for roleplaying, imo. Something more nuanced would be a lot better.

polity4life
2012-01-12, 01:11 PM
More on bad roleplayers:

This is about one person specifically but I'll break it out into two, general complaints.

1) Either being unable or unwilling to separate PLAYER knowledge from CHARACTER knowledge. I'm going to speak to him directly in this (I'm part of no games here but I'm not fixing all of the pronouns in this, so deal).
Your CHARACTER has been captured, rendered unconscious, and the party decided to loot your CHARACTER instead of bringing him along as he is a monster (more on this in point 2). Your CHARACTER wakes up angry that he is missing his gear but the PLAYER knows who did it. Your CHARACTER can in no way know who took his gear, unless he is told. In fact, instead of applying rational thought and coming to a more likely conclusion that your assailants stole from you or any other reason that makes more sense than the other PLAYERS deciding to have their CHARACTERS loot yours, you instead find the most meaningless reasons to begrudge other CHARACTERS in game to exact revenge for something your CHARACTER does not know about. News flash: every one of your barbarian, chaotic-herp derp characters cannot be hyper-competent, omniscient demigods at level 1. Lrn2play.

2) This player cannot make a coherent personality for his character. You have a nuts-and-bolts background, a race, an alignment that you incorrectly take as prescriptive instead of descriptive, and enough fluff in books to establish motive, sentiments, customs, norms, and quirks. Yet your character is all over the map in every ethical, moral, and rational sense. I understand characters can be schizophrenic and could add depth; perhaps it comes from a curse, a closed-head injury in some battle, or an odd race combination that genetically aren't that compatible. You have options but you eschew them to play an immersion-breaking douche bag who oscillates from hating to loving, grunting replies to waxing poetically about some random thing, and wanting to kill everything that says anything with which, as a player or character, may disagree. Lrn2play.

Dr. Yes
2012-01-12, 01:23 PM
Honestly? The number one thing that bothers me about 3.5 and earlier D&D is Vancian casting. I never liked the fluff of having to a) rest for eight hours before you can "reset" your spells and b) spend an hour each day sitting quietly and doing nothing but that. If the magic comes from you, it should be spontaneous; if it's some arcane mechanism you set in place ahead of time, you shouldn't have to rest to recover it.

Also, players who can't be bothered to learn anything about the system. If you've been playing a fighter for four months and you can't remember to power attack, roll for iterative attacks, add in a flanking bonus, or roll the correct die for attacks and saves, what are you even doing at the table?

Jay R
2012-01-12, 01:42 PM
Any character class that does not fit characters commonly found in traditional fantasy.

DMs who change the rules midstream without telling the players, and then blame the players for expecting the spell to work like it did last week.

Players who attack a monster which is clearly too powerful, and then complain that the DM set an encounter that was "above their level".

Psionics. Ever since it came out in Eldritch Wizardry in 1976.

Buying and selling magic items.

CR. WBL.

Roleplayers who think playing a role means they don't have to play the rules.

Mechanics experts who think playing the rules means they don't need to play a role.

Players who only know three alignments - Lawful Snotty, Neutral Greedy, and Chaotic PvP.

Players who don't read the rules, and then complain that things didn't work the way they expected.

And most of all, people who complain too much.

bloodtide
2012-01-12, 02:50 PM
Players that want to make their character some type of 'storytelling masterpiece' and don't just want to play the game.

Sgt. Cookie
2012-01-12, 03:04 PM
By RAW, Improved evasion can be done in heavy armour.

Manateee
2012-01-12, 06:39 PM
I hate systems that ask players to stop playing and do something else for a while instead. This is usually something that happens when a character dies. Because if a bunch of people are coming together in their free time to hang out and play an RPG, it sucks to have to either hang around without contributing or to have to go play videogames somewhere else.

In a similar vein, I can't stand games that require more than 10-15 minutes prep time. Both because my goal in playing the game is to tell a goofy story, talk in stupid voices and to flex my problem-solving skills in weird contexts (NOT to dig around a book figuring out what Advantage/Feat/Trait I want to tag onto my character) and because I hate having to wait for somebody else to spend an hour digging through books and filling in bubbles in a character sheet.

Traveler
2012-01-12, 06:50 PM
1. Players who take take things done to their character personally, even though they were warned.
2. Buying (nearly) any magic item you like from your local vendor. What happened to actually working for magic items and having an OMG moment when you finally find the stuff you been waiting sessions to find?
3. People who play goblins like they have a learning disability.
4. Not knowing spells you use on a daily basis.
5. Finding myself being a hypocrite about 1 - 4.

Knaight
2012-01-12, 07:01 PM
1. The assumption that all gaming is a particular kind of fantasy. This one is particularly egregious when it persists past terms like "space opera" or "sci fi game".

2. Players who won't track even minor details on their own. That means scratching off your own wound boxes, applying your own penalties, and similar.

3. Poor system organization. At the very least one needs to include an index if the game is more than 40 pages or so.

Also, on little things that bug me: Insects, particularly roaches.

GoodbyeSoberDay
2012-01-12, 07:14 PM
I think my biggest pet peeve in all RPGs, and all Games really, is people who need to Take. Their. Turn. Already. I keep swearing that next time I'm bringing out the chess clock, but I never have the heart to do it. The worst part is when this horrendous amount of inaction dissuades some gamers from playing crunchier/heavier games that I like because "combat takes too long."

TheCountAlucard
2012-01-12, 07:18 PM
That they don't call "hit points" what they should have been called since first edition, "battle fatigue." The fact is, none of the first four attacks from that Fighter took your arm off, and only the last does any actual damage to you. Likewise, the various healing spells should represent that as well, though hopefully with a better name than "Cure Light Numerical Abstraction of Combat Fatigue." :smalltongue:

It would also help solve issues with stuff like Damage Reduction, and the whole "Schrodinger's Poison" bit. :smallamused:

Niek
2012-01-12, 08:29 PM
Players who dont know when to tone down the powergaming in order to coexist with lower-op players.

On a similar note, players hyperspecializing for combat in GURPS and disregarding guidelines for what different skill levels are supposed to represent. No, 14 is not "a barely trained amateur", it is supposed to represent the average person's primary breadwinning skill. You do not need 23 sniper rifle and a 40 DR ablative shield on a 150 point character.

Megosh
2012-01-12, 09:19 PM
I don't understand how a monk, who in theory trains their whole life for physical perfection, can have a reduced BAB. Adding the Flury of Blow penalty means you get to roll a lot of attack dice, but never need to roll damage. Factoring in that you need Wisdom, and decent Int for skills, means you have a type of character who favors training and insight over pure strength.

So the mindless barb, with the high strength already, gets the perfect attack bonus, while the trained, enlightened, and rational student fights no better than a bard?

I would run a monk with perfect BAB in my own game, but doesn't help when I play in other games.

kaomera
2012-01-12, 09:40 PM
Is that supposed to help?!? I thought we'd already established that these are things that irrationally upset us!
OK, these kinds of little nitpicks irrationally upset me. Or rationally upset me (imo) when they intrude on actual play... It's kind of like: at work, I can deal with overplayed songs on the radio far better than I can deal with co-workers complaining about how overplayed the songs are every half-hour. I've had enough of people ruining otherwise fun sessions by going off on some rules minutiae that bothers them (that they knew was part of the game and had to know was going to come up at some point) that even when they're mentioned out-of-game I tend to flinch a bit.

Manateee
2012-01-12, 10:09 PM
I don't understand how a monk, who in theory trains their whole life for physical perfection, can have a reduced BAB. Adding the Flury of Blow penalty means you get to roll a lot of attack dice, but never need to roll damage.
People who don't do the math. :smalltongue:
eg. Even with weapon focus, a level 1-5 Fighter is only going to hit more often than a Flurrying monk of equal Strength against monsters that require the fighter to roll a 16 or 17. Against all other monsters, the Flurrying monk is going to make contact more often. The fighter gets a slight boost at level 6 and 7 and hits more on ACs that require 16-18, then at level 8+, it just completely falls behind.

Of course, expected damage and non-Flurry attacks are different stories.
And that's not mentioning the monk's AC problems, its difficulty setting up flurries, establishing viable combat routines, etc.

Jay R
2012-01-12, 10:52 PM
So the mindless barb, with the high strength already, gets the perfect attack bonus, while the trained, enlightened, and rational student fights no better than a bard?

Nowhere, throughout history, has any body of people similar to monks won a major battle against a similar sized body of armored fighters. Nor has there been any time or place where the average monk-like figure could beat the average fighter-type. The incredible fighting monks are very high level exceptions.

Clumber
2012-01-13, 12:57 AM
What really annoys me is DMs who have a plan and stick to it, no matter what happens.

There was a thief who we had to capture, in the middle of an empty street. Our character who can fly takes to the air and my character rushes to apprehend the criminal, who the DM had said was within a certain distance that I was capable of charging across in a single turn to attack.

Well, the DM has our thief throw a smoke bomb so no one can see and uses some dust of illusion to make me look like him (no save for me). Our player who is in the air never sees anyone leave the smoke cloud, until it clears and he is forced to attack me, thinking it was the bad guy. No stealth check or anything, the guy just got to slip away undetected because that's what the DM wanted (and no he couldn't turn invisible). Oh, and I didn't even get a perception role of any kind to locate the thief in the smoke, even though I had focused on it as my highest skill.

And then we finally catch up to the thief, days and hundreds of miles later, and he's nestled in a clearing. Our DM shoot down our attempt to put our guy who can fly airborn again by saying the forest is too thick around here, and so we simply move in on the ground. My character then falls into the 40 foot wide pit trap with no perception check and no reflex save to avoid it, while the thief pops a potion to let him fly and soars away, which he can do since apparently we were right on the edge of the forest and didn't realize it.


I complained a bunch to my DM about the fact he kept doing things to me without offering saves of any sort to notice/avoid situations, so he listened to me. A Sorcerer of some kind wanted to mind control me into committing suicide, so the DM allowed me to roll to save against the spell...4 times. Yes, it failed the first 3 because I rolled really well, but I finally failed to save against the DC 24+ spell (we were level 6) and was forced to die. Did I mention this was a Sorcerer we never actually got to see, he was just casting this spell while viewing us remotely?

With my new character he did the same thing when he wanted a spirit to possess me in order to attack my teamates, though this time it only took 2 tries before I failed a save.

Delwugor
2012-01-13, 01:13 AM
Just small annoying things that I never mention.

Dice rituals.
d4s, some have numbers at the top some the bottom, and I have a devilish time picking them up.
Not enough uses for d12s.
317 versions of a dragon.
Improved and greater versions of spells and feats. Guess someone should have looked up the word scalability.
Detailed descriptions of rooms, buildings, cities, whatever. I want to imagine what they look like not be told.

Clumber
2012-01-13, 01:13 AM
Same DM, but another thing that really annoys me: bad rulings on the alignment system.

I don't want to get into the specifics, but my DM ruled my neutral character was now evil because of one instance of thievery despite nobody's alignment (not even the Paladin's) being tarnished at all through several instances of torture to get information. And the Paladin's alignment has remained "good" despite him never doing anything for the benefit of anyone else and being an incredibly selfish bastard in general. Not to mention not blinking an eye at the whole torture thing.

Then the DM decides that the alignment is fluid, so I got to regain my neutral alignment by performing good deeds. Because apparently neutrality is the balance of doing evil things and good things in a equal measure to balance each other out. And here I though I was playing a tabletop RPG and not a KOTOR game.

SowZ
2012-01-13, 01:28 AM
People who don't do the math. :smalltongue:
eg. Even with weapon focus, a level 1-5 Fighter is only going to hit more often than a Flurrying monk of equal Strength against monsters that require the fighter to roll a 16 or 17. Against all other monsters, the Flurrying monk is going to make contact more often. The fighter gets a slight boost at level 6 and 7 and hits more on ACs that require 16-18, then at level 8+, it just completely falls behind.

Of course, expected damage and non-Flurry attacks are different stories.
And that's not mentioning the monk's AC problems, its difficulty setting up flurries, establishing viable combat routines, etc.

Sure, but a Fighter is less MAD and so will probably have a higher strength anyway, (which is also more damage,) and it is tough enough to get off a full attack so making a class dependent on it to hit as often as a Fighter with less HP and AC to boot? Monk is a hard, hard road to walk down...

Silus
2012-01-13, 02:02 AM
That's not a game issue, it's a playstyle issue.

Also, it seems that you haven't had much experience playing it. E6 can be plenty epic, even without high level spells being readily available (they are / can be available, though). Advancement is still there, but the exponential growth in spellcasters' power isn't. YMMV, but that's a good thing.

It has the advantage that it much better balanced than higher-level D&D. As a DM/player who has obviously had considerable problems with the game balance of items, class abilities etc. at mid levels (see your thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=228524)), it acutally seems like a sensible playstyle. Using E6 rules, you wouldn't have had any of the problems you mentioned. HIPS ranger? No. Owlbear shenanigans? No. Unbalanced Amber Amulet? No. Etc.

I'd agree with E6 if one of the other two bits were present. Either let me play a caster/have access to magic items, or let us have the ability to gain lots of money to fund...stuff. But the DM that pulled this only ran the Adept class as the ONLY caster available to us and we rarely ever got in "fair" fights that resulted in any meaningful amount of cash reward (Or if we did find loot, it was only a handful of silver or so).

Also, while I'm at it, another thing that ticks me off: Players that cannot/will not read the feeling of the campaign. Two example (the WoD one is real). You're playing a Ravenloft game with a group of 5. 4 of the players have made campaign appropriate characters. The 5th makes a "cute" and "funny" character that comes off as annoying and trolling, and he insists on playing it.

WoD game. We have....2 Mages, 2 Werewolves, a Brujah Vampire (Me =D) and.....a Pooka. One of the mages dabbled in sensory whatnot, and the other routinely increased the mass of the bullets for his Desert Eagle. The two werewolves beat things to death and were the trackers, and I (The vamp) was equal parts face and meat shield (Celerity + 5 points in Melee with a trucker pipe). The Pooka was all about making money (hard to do in a high school setting while investigating the kidnappings and murders of the students) and was using a bright pink Berretta with Hello Kitty on it. Spent 20 minutes trying to get information out of a fething door. General consensus was that if he came back to the game (he left by session 2) that he'd get PKed by the party for being an idiot.

hewhosaysfish
2012-01-13, 08:47 AM
Then the DM decides that the alignment is fluid, so I got to regain my neutral alignment by performing good deeds. Because apparently neutrality is the balance of doing evil things and good things in a equal measure to balance each other out. And here I though I was playing a tabletop RPG and not a KOTOR game.

Oh gawds yes...
If a person is "altrusistic, cares about life and is concerned about the dignity of sentient beings" (and all that jazz) is sacrificing babiese to dark gods then that is a(n apparent) contradiction that needs to be explained not just one step closer to being a person who "has compuctions against killing innocents but lacks the commitment to make sacrifices to help or protect others".

I could go into a rant here but I can't compose my thoughts coherently...

Cirrylius
2012-01-13, 08:55 AM
The Pooka was all about making money (hard to do in a high school setting while investigating the kidnappings and murders of the students) and was using a bright pink Berretta with Hello Kitty on it. Spent 20 minutes trying to get information out of a fething door.
Could be worse. I had a friend in college who was seriously trying to sell a junebug pooka to the ST. He had to roll every time he wanted to pass through a door (esp. a screen door) or slam into it and fall onto his back kicking his arms and legs.:smallbiggrin:

DoctorGlock
2012-01-13, 09:40 AM
Badwrongfun guy. You're paladin isn't a stick in the mud puritan snob?! DOING IT WRONG! Your rogue is not an obnoxious thief who grew up on the streets?! DOING IT WRONG! Your artificer is not a gnome?! JUST ROLEPLAY ALREADY AND STOP POWERGAMING!

Classes are in game constructs guy. Your "paladin" is a holy warrior cleric? How dare you! Refluffing your mace as a sword!? Spend a feat on proficiency! How dare you play the character you want rather than the bleeding class archetype!

Yes, this was the same person and is one of the reasons I am now a designated DM and no longer a player.

LordFluffy
2012-01-13, 10:17 AM
1) Any combat system that doesn't include knives or .22 pistols being able to kill people in one shot, battle axes having some viable use or treats dual wielding as either a) a godlike task that's impossible to learn unless you're the chosen one and/or b) a way to turn an average fighter into a whirling tornado of death.

2) Rules that exist solely because they hide the flaws in the system. Example: I'm looking at the old Marvel Super Heroes rules that has the powers force field and body armor, yet insists you can only choose to be protected by one or the other, mostly because if you're moderately talented at either, you're night invulnerable.

3) Players who don't maintain any real concept of what's in their character's hands. (I'm sorry, but no you cannot drink a potion in the same turn as weilding a two handed sword and playing your flute).

4) Players who forget that the bad guys don't just want to roll over and feed them xp, but each think they're the hero of the tale, down to the lowliest kobald, and sincerely want to win.

5) Systems that treat martial arts as if it is some radically different discipline than hitting things with your fist while not shouting "Kiai!" or whacking something with a stick without having to honor your ancestors in poetry prior to combat.

6) For that matter, any system that deals with "Juggling" and "Being a Doctor" as if they are two equally simple skill sets. There are nuances to juggling, but it's not 8 years of college plus a residency kind of nuances.

7) GM's who forget that you play your character because you want your character to be fun, cool and badass and therefore insist, either initially or during sessions, on making your character look stupid for comic relief, either for other players or themselves. There's a fine line between helping someone not take themselves too seriously and screwing up someone else's fun by being a jerk.

8) Players who completely take their characters or themselves way too seriously. (Yes, your min maxed character is a death machine and that you're proud of how many hours you spent tooling him up to mathematical perfection, but that doesn't mean either him or you are in any way enjoyable company.)

And as for 0-level spells, I understand the rules bending one requires so that you don't break the system with them, but I'm actually a fan. I even like characters built around the concept of having more cantrips.

They were included to have minimal impact while making players who play wizards feel they had something more to do than chuck 3 fireballs a day and then hide behind the fighter until they could get some sleep.

Knaight
2012-01-13, 10:27 AM
Nowhere, throughout history, has any body of people similar to monks won a major battle against a similar sized body of armored fighters. Nor has there been any time or place where the average monk-like figure could beat the average fighter-type. The incredible fighting monks are very high level exceptions.

Sure, but that's less a matter of correct BAB simulation and more a matter of weapons. For instance, being armed does not increase your AC at all, and it is just as easy to avoid being hit when you can't parry, threaten your opponent with a weapon, or even effectively fight outside of easy reach of your opponent. Similarly, being armored doesn't make it easier to hit someone, even though there are a whole host of opportunities to strike that you wouldn't normally have, due to the armor effectively negating many possible strikes your opponent could do while you were striking.

Jay R
2012-01-13, 10:35 AM
The two-dimensional alignment system, whichis inconsistent with every system of ethics and morality ever invented, or with how people really act in actual life.

Gygax used "Law" and "Chaos" to mean the forces of Good and Evil, because that's how the words were used in Michael Moorcock's books. Then people started pointing out that "lawful" and "good" were not synonyms, nor were "chaotic" and "evil".

So they had a choice to make.
1. They could point out that no English word has only one meaning, and that this was being used to add fantasy flavor.
2. They could fix it by substituting the words "good" and "evil".
3. They could hide the mistake by inventing a new rule that served no purpose except to add meaningless complexity.

For Gygax, this was always an easy choice.

So we have had three decades of people being told that their characters would never do what their characters were invented to do, because the player wanted to play a specific type of person, while the DM wanted it to fit one of nine rigid slots.

Knaight
2012-01-13, 10:47 AM
So we have had three decades of people being told that their characters would never do what their characters were invented to do, because the player wanted to play a specific type of person, while the DM wanted it to fit one of nine rigid slots.

Honestly, it's less that the GM wants to fit the character in one of nine rigid slots. It is that the mechanics explicitly have alignment based effects and thus characters have to have an alignment, rather than alignment being an optional development tool.

Deepbluediver
2012-01-13, 11:22 AM
I don't understand how a monk, who in theory trains their whole life for physical perfection, can have a reduced BAB. Adding the Flury of Blow penalty means you get to roll a lot of attack dice, but never need to roll damage. Factoring in that you need Wisdom, and decent Int for skills, means you have a type of character who favors training and insight over pure strength.

So the mindless barb, with the high strength already, gets the perfect attack bonus, while the trained, enlightened, and rational student fights no better than a bard?

I would run a monk with perfect BAB in my own game, but doesn't help when I play in other games.Nowhere, throughout history, has any body of people similar to monks won a major battle against a similar sized body of armored fighters. Nor has there been any time or place where the average monk-like figure could beat the average fighter-type. The incredible fighting monks are very high level exceptions.

After my rant(s) earlier, I'm feeling kind of hypocritical responding like this, but I've always thought of it this way: training your mind and body to attain enlightment or earthly perfection is different from training for war and battle.

That being said, I commiserate with you that the RAW presents a monk who really can't do much more than fight, but isn't very good at it. My very first character was a monk ("look at all those class abilities!") but knowing what I do now, I'm very glad our campaign ended before passing level 10.

If you and your DM aren't opposed to using more extensive homebrew, take a look at my revised monk. He's got plenty of capicity for combat, as well as a few other fun tricks.



Honestly, it's less that the GM wants to fit the character in one of nine rigid slots. It is that the mechanics explicitly have alignment based effects and thus characters have to have an alignment, rather than alignment being an optional development tool.

I, like other people, take issue with inflexible DMs who try to shoehorn players into the established stereotypes.
Personally, I would think that if you are a paladin or a cleric worshipping a goodly diety, they can be merciful and understanding and cut you some slack on occasion. This DOES NOT MEAN paladins are cool with torture, it means you don't need to try and arrest people for littering and jaywalking in foreign cities where you have no legal authority anyway.

Now, if you happen to be worshipping, venerating, or drawing power from an evil diety, and they want to be spiteful, petty, vindicitive, and make your life miserable at the worst possible moment, well thats a different story....

Jay R
2012-01-13, 01:51 PM
Honestly, it's less that the GM wants to fit the character in one of nine rigid slots. It is that the mechanics explicitly have alignment based effects and thus characters have to have an alignment, rather than alignment being an optional development tool.

Yup - that's what I said - "a new rule that served no purpose except to add meaningless complexity"

Velaryon
2012-01-13, 02:49 PM
I've got a lot of little gripes, most of which are related to 3.5 D&D or other d20-based systems.

1. I hate when feats or prestige classes in 3.x have prerequisites that force you to make bad character choices. I don't like having to waste feat slots on garbage like Toughness or Dodge in order to qualify for something.

2. I also don't like the way dual-wielding gets hosed. They need to spend a bunch of feats, and twice as much cash on magical weapons, only to deal less damage per attack, and be unable to use their extra attacks at all most of the time if they didn't take a level in Barbarian to grab a certain alternate class feature.

3. Shield bonuses should apply to touch AC. I know there's a feat for that, but you shouldn't need a feat for that because that's how it should work to begin with! That's what shields do, they keep things from touching you.

4. Firearms rules in most d20 games are terrible. Even a character highly specialized in them generally can't deal anywhere near the kind of damage that's appropriate for their weapons. d20 Modern is a bad offender here, where you can be a high-level character using high-grade military rifles and still have a pretty good chance of dealing single-digit damage with your attacks. About the only firearms that function reasonably well are blasters in Star Wars Saga.

5. Spoilering this one for length.
In Tome of Battle, there is a little clause on page 39 that says "In most cases, you add the full prestige class level to your martial adept level to determine your initiator level." This is all fine and dandy when a martial adept character is jumping in and out of a prestige class, allowing them to keep advancing a little bit and getting maneuvers that are still relevant to the challenges they face at their level.

But when you apply this same rule to non-martial characters taking a late dip into an initiator class, it falls apart for me. Take this hypothetical example: a Warblade 16 decides to take a level of Swordsage. He would add half his Warblade levels to his Swordsage initiator level, thereby having an initiator level of 9 for Swordsage. Meanwhile, a Wizard 5 / whatever arcane prestige class 10 decides to do the same thing, and since prestige class levels count as full instead of half, by RAW as I understand it he starts with an initiator level of 13 for his maneuvers. This is ridiculous and actually caused friction when a similar situation cropped up in a game I was playing in. Why should an arcane character get anywhere near the same benefits, let alone better, for taking the same level dip as any martial character, but especially one who has advanced so far in another martial adept class? It's ridiculous.

DoctorGlock
2012-01-13, 03:42 PM
4. Firearms rules in most d20 games are terrible. Even a character highly specialized in them generally can't deal anywhere near the kind of damage that's appropriate for their weapons. d20 Modern is a bad offender here, where you can be a high-level character using high-grade military rifles and still have a pretty good chance of dealing single-digit damage with your attacks.

I am interested to know how you got this. Without magic brought into it a full BAB character dual weilding automatic pistols like the mac 9 can drop 28d8, a gunslinger dip nets 32d8, and the averages generally work out to sufficient damage to matter. The problem is hitting stuff, but the autofire rules can negate the need for an attack role. When I ran d20 modern firearms seemed fine.

Silus
2012-01-13, 03:49 PM
Could be worse. I had a friend in college who was seriously trying to sell a junebug pooka to the ST. He had to roll every time he wanted to pass through a door (esp. a screen door) or slam into it and fall onto his back kicking his arms and legs.:smallbiggrin:

It was a shame he wasn't there for when my character interrogated some of the suspects that attacked us (they were high-schoolers). Pulled some stuff that makes even Jack Bauer go "....Dude.".

Two minutes into the interrogation...
ST: "She's not going to talk. She also spits on your coat."
Me: "....Ok, I cut her ear off."
Everyone: "Wait, what?!"

SowZ
2012-01-13, 07:15 PM
It was a shame he wasn't there for when my character interrogated some of the suspects that attacked us (they were high-schoolers). Pulled some stuff that makes even Jack Bauer go "....Dude.".

Two minutes into the interrogation...
ST: "She's not going to talk. She also spits on your coat."
Me: "....Ok, I cut her ear off."
Everyone: "Wait, what?!"

Stuck in the middle with you. Badumbum. Stuck in the middle with you...

illyrus
2012-01-13, 09:28 PM
Some good ones already on the list, let's see for me:

The "mundanes/fighters can't have nice things" people. You have an item in ShadowRun that gives the enemy -4 perception, nope doesn't work. A magical power that does the exact same thing, yep works just fine.

Games that become arms races between the players and the GM.

People that agree to a plan and then do the opposite for disastrous results, multiple times.

GMs that have each and every semi-important bad guy have his time in the spotlight and thus they cannot be surprised/ambushed ever. Hint: If the party spends 1 or more whole sessions planning an ambush the players have thought way more about that NPC then they would have with whatever speech you had planned. Don't GM fiat force fail the ambush as that destroys the mood.

Omniscient "allied" NPCs that give you no information past insults.

"It wasn't an evil action [when I chose to attack and sacrifice my team mate to save my hide], my character is Chaotic Good"
"Your character saved my life [while the other good team members fled] but I don't trust them because they don't have good on their character sheet"

People who cannot get past class stereotypes (this one was mentioned before) and won't shut up about it. An example that happened 2 campaigns ago:
P1: "Your barbarian wouldn't check around the corner carefully, he's a barbarian. Barbarians are stupid."
P2: "He has a higher int than everyone but the spellcaster."
P1: "He's a barbarian"
P2: "He's a former merc that was trained in this sort of thing and isn't raging"
P1: "Barbarian"
P2: "Ok fine, my character rounds the corner without looking and charges his full move, he attacks anything that comes within his reach during that charge, friend or foe"
P1: "Wait what are you doing?"
P2: "Barbarian"

Deepbluediver
2012-01-13, 11:17 PM
4. Firearms rules in most d20 games are terrible. Even a character highly specialized in them generally can't deal anywhere near the kind of damage that's appropriate for their weapons. d20 Modern is a bad offender here, where you can be a high-level character using high-grade military rifles and still have a pretty good chance of dealing single-digit damage with your attacks. About the only firearms that function reasonably well are blasters in Star Wars Saga.


If you are talking about a game in a modern game setting that's going for psuedo-realism (like I think d20 modern does), then I definitely agree with you. I've never tried them in medieveal-fantasy sword-and-magic settings though; it just feels weird to me unless the tech is really low level, like musket-loaders low.


People who cannot get past class stereotypes (this one was mentioned before) and won't shut up about it. An example that happened 2 campaigns ago:
P1: "Your barbarian wouldn't check around the corner carefully, he's a barbarian. Barbarians are stupid."
P2: "He has a higher int than everyone but the spellcaster."
P1: "He's a barbarian"
P2: "He's a former merc that was trained in this sort of thing and isn't raging"
P1: "Barbarian"
P2: "Ok fine, my character rounds the corner without looking and charges his full move, he attacks anything that comes within his reach during that charge, friend or foe"
P1: "Wait what are you doing?"
P2: "Barbarian"
That's perfect.

The longest campaign I've ever been in had me playing as a Lawful-good monk, except his idea of "law" was more like "extremely disciplined with a strict personal code of honor". Some people missed that last bit during character introductions, and the other players started questioning me when I DIDN'T attempt to snatch control of the party from our leader and dictate what everyone's reaction to every conflict was, and if I should be allowed to continue advancing as a monk because I wasn't "lawful" enough.
There where quite a few moments like:
"So you WANT me to tell the city guard about the huge pile of treasure we just stumbled over? I'm not the one upgrading his magic weapon every two levels."
"Since I'm not a member of the city guard, or anything except a visitor, even if littering/rudeness/a bar brawl was a crime, I doubt I have the authority to attempt to arrest [NPC in question]."
"No, just because the rogue left me to get flanked-and-subsequently-stabbed in the back while he coup-de-graced that other enemy doesn't mean I'm going to act horribly vindictive towards him, it was a valid tactical decision."

Every time something like this would happen, there be about an hour of awkward silences and not-looking-me-in-the-eye when it was my turn to do anything.
Luckily the DM was cool with it all; we later found out that the monk was secretly his favorite class, and he'd never actually gotten to see some one else play one before. :smallwink:

Velaryon
2012-01-14, 03:27 AM
I am interested to know how you got this. Without magic brought into it a full BAB character dual weilding automatic pistols like the mac 9 can drop 28d8, a gunslinger dip nets 32d8, and the averages generally work out to sufficient damage to matter. The problem is hitting stuff, but the autofire rules can negate the need for an attack role. When I ran d20 modern firearms seemed fine.

Is that with Strong Hero 10 / whatever full BAB advanced classes 10, then Burst Fire and the full two-weapon fighting chain? I'll admit I hadn't tried that, but my own experience with the game was markedly different.

Full BAB isn't possible if you want a class that actually has useful talents for a non-melee character, and being forced to take Strong Hero to be competent with ranged attacks seems like bad design to me. Also, Burst Fire doesn't apply to anything that isn't Autofire, leaving you with the less useful Double Tap as the only way to make pistols or shotguns do more than their base damage. And even that's not really good (or at least not realistic) for snipers, for whom there isn't much good at all.

And anyway, anyone who isn't heavily specialized and dual-wielding is still left with piddly 2 dice of damage and no fixed bonus. The majority of handguns deal 2d6 with only the Desert Eagle being stronger at 2d8 and several guns having only 2d4. With any of those weapons, single-digit damage per hit is not only possible, but pretty likely. This should not be. Even moving up into longarms, where you're mostly dealing in the 2d8 or 2d10 range, single digits are still very possible.

I guess dual-wielding uzis is a viable strategy, provided you can actually hit. You mentioned autofire, but if you're autofiring then not only are you not using Burst Fire, but the Reflex save DC is only 15 against that, which is pretty easy even at fairly low levels.



If you are talking about a game in a modern game setting that's going for psuedo-realism (like I think d20 modern does), then I definitely agree with you. I've never tried them in medieveal-fantasy sword-and-magic settings though; it just feels weird to me unless the tech is really low level, like musket-loaders low.

I meant it as a general statement, for more modern firearms like d20 Modern, as well as settings that use more archaic weapons like muskets and single-shot pistols. In fact, those tend to be even worse, as firearms are often treated as exotic weapons that are strictly inferior to crossbows (let alone regular bows), require feats to reload as anything less than a full-round action, and still deal completely negligible damage.

One more setting I have in mind is 3e Ravenloft. Your firearms choices there are pistols which deal 1d10, muskets which deal 1d12, or the absolutely awful Parthian rapier which requires two Exotic Weapon Proficiency feats in order to punish you for wanting to use guns. There are also two firearm-specific prestige classes, the Pistoleer and the Black Powder Avenger, both of which are strictly worse than playing a Fighter.

Of course I'm not familiar with every single d20-based game that contains firearms rules, but I've yet to find one other than Star Wars Saga that makes them realistically dangerous. Saga does several things right - adding half your level to damage means that any weapon is more dangerous in the hands of an experienced character, so you should pretty much never have characters of mid-to-high levels dealing pathetic damage when they hit. There are also a lot more feats that add bonus damage for different kinds of weapon styles, whether that be pistols, automatic weapons, snipers, or heavy weapons. It's not perfect of course, but I still find it better than the other systems I've experienced.

TheArsenal
2012-01-14, 05:50 AM
That they don't call "hit points" what they should have been called since first edition, "battle fatigue." The fact is, none of the first four attacks from that Fighter took your arm off, and only the last does any actual damage to you. Likewise, the various healing spells should represent that as well, though hopefully with a better name than "Cure Light Numerical Abstraction of Combat Fatigue." :smalltongue:

It would also help solve issues with stuff like Damage Reduction, and the whole "Schrodinger's Poison" bit. :smallamused:

Battle fatigue doesn't make any sense either, I guess your just really tired from ALMOST getting your blood turned into acid....that makes no sense.

TheCountAlucard
2012-01-14, 07:10 AM
Battle fatigue doesn't make any sense either, I guess your just really tired from ALMOST getting your blood turned into acid....that makes no sense.Ahh, yeah, and the Avasculate spell... y'know what? Screw it, never mind. (goes back to playing Exalted)

Jay R
2012-01-14, 10:22 AM
The original Chivalry and Sorcery (FGU, 1977) carefully separated Fatigue from Body damage. Most damage was to Fatigue until it was gone, although one could get the occasional Body hit during a fight. It was a carefully detailed fighting system, attempting to be accurate, and a single melee round of five on five could take upwards of an hour.

Almost any approach to accuracy via increased complexity could be found in C&S, and it was the most beautiful, accurate, lush, unplayable mess I've ever seen.

Silus
2012-01-14, 11:14 AM
Stuck in the middle with you. Badumbum. Stuck in the middle with you...

Pretty much :smallbiggrin:
I think I asked if there was a way we could play that during the interrogation actually =P

Steward
2012-01-14, 12:44 PM
I hate how Nagas are aberrations rather than magical beasts. It makes zero sense.

JellyPooga
2012-01-14, 03:44 PM
- How you need to take a feat to use your Dex modifier when rolling to hit in melee, instead of your Str....in what weird universe does being able to crush cans on your head improve your hand-eye coordination and in what weirder one does it require specialist training to use your agility and aforementioned hand-eye when trying to skewer someone with a sword? :smallconfused:

- "Vancian" casting. I won't start that rant though...:smallmad:

- The assumption that "two weapon fighting" is (and should be) in any way an offensive fighting style.

- Armour Check Penalties. I get them, I agree with them...I just don't like them.

Jay R
2012-01-14, 04:04 PM
- How you need to take a feat to use your Dex modifier when rolling to hit in melee, instead of your Str....in what weird universe does being able to crush cans on your head improve your hand-eye coordination and in what weirder one does it require specialist training to use your agility and aforementioned hand-eye when trying to skewer someone with a sword? :smallconfused:

You're assuming that any "miss" failed to touch the surface. It ain't so. A shot not only has to touch my opponent, but also has to have enough force to do damage through his armor. As an SCA fighter, I am well aware that the stronger fighters can make more shots count than I can.

Almost anybody can take a stick and hit within two inches of where he aims. But there's an opponent trying to block my shot, with shield and sword. I've seen the power guys hit the shield with enough force with the middle of the sword that it forced the shield down and the further end still hits the helm with sufficient force. I could never do that.

Specialized training enables me to add the necessary force to my blows by carefully using coordinated motions of legs, hips, body, arm, elbow and wrist, but the really strong guys could do that without the special training.

There are 10,000 things wrong with D&D fighting as simulation, but the idea that excessive strength makes more of your shots good is not one of them.

Poil
2012-01-14, 05:15 PM
Also in dnd putting on some plate armor makes it a harder to hit you for no reason. Sure it's a lot harder to injure or hurt you if you are wearing proper armor but it does not make it as hard to land a hit as getting a magical +8 dex modifier that makes you dodge like you stepped out of a matrix movie would.

I'm a bit tired so I'll add this if I don't make enough sense. Say you have two level 1 fighters without weapons or shields, one with a fullplate and the other with the +16 dex item. Then you pit them against an orc armed with a battleaxe who will strangely enough have an equal chance of landing a blow on either of them. Both will also be hurt just as easily. In fact with the d12 damage variable the guy wearing armor could easily receive a wound several times as severe. :smalltongue:

Urslingen
2012-01-14, 05:46 PM
Players that want to make their character some type of 'storytelling masterpiece' and don't just want to play the game.

Hey now, boi.

Isn't that a good thing?

As long as the characters fit in the story - I'd me more than happy to have the players come up with pages full of rp-goodies.

Without good storytelling the whole thing just turns into five guys at a table playing Yahtzee. I don't think there is anything more pathetic than that :smallbiggrin: .

That's what bothers me about some games. There's nothing that yells "geek" like someone who tries to "win" a game with made-up characters and paper-sheets. I mean goddamn, if you wan't to be competetive:
Go play some football.

However - at the other end of the spectrum - there are the ultra-geeks. Those who don't seem to do much else in their lives than play Warhammer and RPG:s (No Big Bang Theory-nerds here).

That wouldn't be so bad if they weren't such lousy storytellers - most of them have the charisma and outgooing nature of a slab of concrete.

Peace Out.

-Urslingen

DoctorGlock
2012-01-14, 06:38 PM
Is that with Strong Hero 10 / whatever full BAB advanced classes 10, then Burst Fire and the full two-weapon fighting chain? I'll admit I hadn't tried that, but my own experience with the game was markedly different.

Full BAB isn't possible if you want a class that actually has useful talents for a non-melee character, and being forced to take Strong Hero to be competent with ranged attacks seems like bad design to me. Also, Burst Fire doesn't apply to anything that isn't Autofire, leaving you with the less useful Double Tap as the only way to make pistols or shotguns do more than their base damage. And even that's not really good (or at least not realistic) for snipers, for whom there isn't much good at all.


It was strong 10/gunslinger 3 or 5, whichever got the bonus attack/soldier 5 or 7

Yeah, I suppose outside of automatic weapons d20m does firearms rather poorly at base. My group had the aforementioned dual wield uzi guy, a soldier with a .50 turret and burst fire (4d12/shot) and the last guy used the marksman class which gave SA damage on all shots which we refluffed as a single shot. An assassin type class with death attack might be better but I think d20m had some rather bizarre rules for massive damage which made it a lot easier to just auto die from gunshots/grenade blasts etc.

At base though, yeah, the firearms rules are terrible.

Pelfaid
2012-01-14, 06:44 PM
Maybe it is just me, but I like the Vancian casting mechanic. I like the idea of a wizard who has to twist his mind into the proper shape to hold the spell formulae in it. And then during the process of casting it the magic burns itself out of his brain. In fact if 3e had kept the long memorization times for wizards maybe the 20 minute adventuring day would not be such a prevalent issue.

Jay R
2012-01-14, 07:21 PM
Also in dnd putting on some plate armor makes it a harder to hit you for no reason. Sure it's a lot harder to injure or hurt you if you are wearing proper armor but it does not make it as hard to land a hit as getting a magical +8 dex modifier that makes you dodge like you stepped out of a matrix movie would.

I'm a bit tired so I'll add this if I don't make enough sense. Say you have two level 1 fighters without weapons or shields, one with a fullplate and the other with the +16 dex item. Then you pit them against an orc armed with a battleaxe who will strangely enough have an equal chance of landing a blow on either of them. Both will also be hurt just as easily. In fact with the d12 damage variable the guy wearing armor could easily receive a wound several times as severe. :smalltongue:

It's not an equal chance of landing a blow; it's an equal chance of causing damage with a blow.

Combat isn't a game of tag. When we say that the blow "hit", we aren't saying the sword happened to touch the surface, we mean it actually caused damage. A moderate hit on plate does not damage, and counts as a "miss". The same blow on bare skin would do some real damage. We model that by saying it's harder to hit (meaning to cause damage to) somebody in plate armor.

There are countless inaccuracies in the D&D system, but the notion that fewer blows will damage somebody in plate armor isn't one of them.

Poil
2012-01-15, 05:47 AM
Yeah I know. But a moderate hit on plate can still give you bruises and such and therefore should cause you some damage. The silly part is that either the plate offers complete 100% protection against a blow or it does nothing, same as dodging would.

Jay R
2012-01-15, 11:20 AM
Yeah I know. But a moderate hit on plate can still give you bruises and such and therefore should cause you some damage. The silly part is that either the plate offers complete 100% protection against a blow or it does nothing, same as dodging would.

There's a wide band of blows that would break an unarmored arm or crush an unarmored skull, that do not damage somebody in plate at all.

Yes, one inaccuracy is that the distribution of damage on a blow that actually hits would (probably) be different, but I don't know how to model it, and I doubt anyone else does either. For one thing, it would be very different for a sword, which cannot cut plate and must find chinks, as for a mace, which can crush through plate. According to Fiore de Liberi's 15th century fighting manual, when using a longsword you should never hit the plate at all - the entire discussion is on how to open up a line to the inner elbows and knees, or to slip in under the plates somehow.

And that's the problem. Any attempt to model combat accurately and in detail would be incredibly complex.

(Modeling combat accurately but not in detail is easy. If I have a 2/3 probability to defeat this opponent, roll a single die to see if I do. It's accurate, but not detailed.)

The best way to think about any game combat system is to assume that you are not modeling it blow-by-blow, but minute-by-minute. If you "miss", then in that minute, none of the hits on him caused any damage that will stop him from fighting. (Bruises are annoying, but they don't affect the next few minutes of the fight.) Any "hit" represents all the fatigue and body you've caused him over a minute of fighting, which might include several small hits, distorting his armor that limits his movement, or even his wearing himself out dodging your blows.

white rider
2012-01-15, 04:11 PM
chaotic=does not plan ahead, impulsive
lawful=methodical and slow

I hate these so much. Alignments are ways of looking at society, not how you behave in relation to planning

Moofaa
2012-01-15, 08:17 PM
Rant on players:

Players that always put off making a character for a new game no matter how much advance time you give them.

Players that always make the same type of rogue-ish character for every game no matter what system you are using.

Players that absolutely refuse to choose a side in a conflict and are only ever out for their own survival. Same players that do this with every character in every game. Goblins attacking a caravan? Sit in the bushes and watch to see who wins, then run away from the victor.

Players that never read the rules, then complain their character is broken because the rules didn't work the way they thought they did.

Players that dump you on the game-night you've been telling them to plan for for a week or more, at the last minute or even part way through the session.

Players that never have a current copy of their own character sheet. (I admit to being guilty of this one sometimes myself).

Players that don't read the rules or even their own character sheet. That only make basic attacks because they forget what the abilities they chose actually do, then wonder why NPC's with similar builds deliver a smack-down using the SAME abilities the PC has access to.

Rant on GM's

GM's that give you little to no direction as to what your PC should be doing to advance the plot.

NPC's mysteriously roll crits on you when you take the plot in a random direction because you had no clue what direction to go in to begin with. Doing damage that is mathematecally impossible.

GM's that seem to change the direction of the plot randomly every few sessions, giving no hints as to why the plot suddenly went in that direction and no possible way of finding out why the sudden change.

GM controlled NPC's that only seem to exist to annoy you.

Every time the character gets something nice, such as a BMW or Hummer, it is always wrecked/stolen/shot to peices. Same thing goes with all equipment such as a grenade launcher or magical sword, fun with such items is short-lived.

Player that decides to make a character based on the undecipherable herioglyphic arcane rules known as "grappling". Then doesn't actually study the rules.

Rant on Game Systems:

Non-sensical distribution of skill points. Fighters/wizards are only allowed to be good at one or two skills, but rogues get a bazillion points to spend on every skill.

Skills that have dumb class requirements. Apparently fighters and wizards would never need social skills or the ability to sneak through monster-infested dungeons.

Grappling. In every system ever designed.

Systems balanced in such a way that there is little difference in feel between playing a melee class and a spellcaster.

Tytalus
2012-01-16, 07:20 AM
In Tome of Battle, there is a little clause on page 39 that says "In most cases, you add the full prestige class level to your martial adept level to determine your initiator level." This is all fine and dandy when a martial adept character is jumping in and out of a prestige class, allowing them to keep advancing a little bit and getting maneuvers that are still relevant to the challenges they face at their level.

But when you apply this same rule to non-martial characters taking a late dip into an initiator class, it falls apart for me. Take this hypothetical example: a Warblade 16 decides to take a level of Swordsage. He would add half his Warblade levels to his Swordsage initiator level, thereby having an initiator level of 9 for Swordsage. Meanwhile, a Wizard 5 / whatever arcane prestige class 10 decides to do the same thing, and since prestige class levels count as full instead of half, by RAW as I understand it he starts with an initiator level of 13 for his maneuvers. This is ridiculous and actually caused friction when a similar situation cropped up in a game I was playing in. Why should an arcane character get anywhere near the same benefits, let alone better, for taking the same level dip as any martial character, but especially one who has advanced so far in another martial adept class? It's ridiculous.

According to WotC Customer service, the section is supposed to refer not to Prestige Classes in general, but to those from the book only. Yes, it isn't clear in the rules. Makes a whole lot more sense, though.

INDYSTAR188
2012-01-16, 07:49 AM
When my players say "I'm immune to that" and look super annoyed when they are hit by or miss an attack themselves. Example:

DM: "The Fire Elemental throws a cone of pure fire at you! Does a 26 hit your REF?"
PC: "Nope, I'm immune to Fire. Seriously though, of course you hit me you ALWAYS hit me."

Poil
2012-01-16, 09:26 AM
Rolling stats, because everyone else in my group always rolls a lot better than me and they are both much better at optimizing and playing than I am.

I dislike when I read books and find skills, spells or abilities that look really useful but when I play a character with them it turns out they were worthless and my character falls behind the chronic power gamers even more.

That my Shadowrun mage has 14 different spells but the best option is almost always just to (ab)use levitation. Sometimes I get the feeling that when the person who DM's for the evening (the other guys take turns) comes up with an adventure they go a bit "...and his character can use levitate here...". It's a lot my own fault for using it so much though.


There's a wide band of blows that would break an unarmored arm or crush an unarmored skull, that do not damage somebody in plate at all.

Yes, one inaccuracy is that the distribution of damage on a blow that actually hits would (probably) be different, but I don't know how to model it, and I doubt anyone else does either. For one thing, it would be very different for a sword, which cannot cut plate and must find chinks, as for a mace, which can crush through plate. According to Fiore de Liberi's 15th century fighting manual, when using a longsword you should never hit the plate at all - the entire discussion is on how to open up a line to the inner elbows and knees, or to slip in under the plates somehow.

And that's the problem. Any attempt to model combat accurately and in detail would be incredibly complex.

(Modeling combat accurately but not in detail is easy. If I have a 2/3 probability to defeat this opponent, roll a single die to see if I do. It's accurate, but not detailed.)

The best way to think about any game combat system is to assume that you are not modeling it blow-by-blow, but minute-by-minute. If you "miss", then in that minute, none of the hits on him caused any damage that will stop him from fighting. (Bruises are annoying, but they don't affect the next few minutes of the fight.) Any "hit" represents all the fatigue and body you've caused him over a minute of fighting, which might include several small hits, distorting his armor that limits his movement, or even his wearing himself out dodging your blows.
I suppose so. The alternative would be something like Rolemasters armor system, while being a lot better, is slightly more complicated in that every weapon needs a full A4 page of damage and crit results against all the different kinds of armor. :smalltongue:

Velaryon
2012-01-16, 01:36 PM
According to WotC Customer service, the section is supposed to refer not to Prestige Classes in general, but to those from the book only. Yes, it isn't clear in the rules. Makes a whole lot more sense, though.

Do you have a link to that? It would be nice to have as a reference so I can show my group. That was going to be my houserule anyway, so I'm glad to have some official backing on that.


Back to the topic at hand:

Another thing that bothers me is how much 3.5 hoses spontaneous casters in comparison to prepared casters. For example, sorcerers gaining new spell levels a level later than wizards is way too much, especially in combination with not getting bonus feats, having to spend a full round to metamagic things, and having a far smaller pool of available spells.

illyrus
2012-01-16, 03:51 PM
Actually another one:

GMs that retcon stuff without informing the players and then act like it was always that way. Bonus points if they belittle you for getting it wrong when you have proof in writing from the GM.

erikun
2012-01-16, 05:05 PM
Sorcerers. Just Sorcerers.

I get where the class comes from. Back when 3rd edition first came out, the designers wanted to show of a spellcaster class mechanic that didn't use vancian preparation. They also wanted to make use of Charisma, and show how it could be something more practical than a dump stat.

However, the class just never went anywhere from there. We now have Bards for charisma casters, we have Warlocks for charisma characters, and we have 3e Beguilers as (should properly be) charisma characters. We have Marshals and Knights making use of charisma. We even had 3e Dragon Shamans, which incorporated the whole "empowered by dragons to radiate magic" concept far better than the Sorcerer.

Arbane
2012-01-17, 02:47 PM
Maybe it is just me, but I like the Vancian casting mechanic. I like the idea of a wizard who has to twist his mind into the proper shape to hold the spell formulae in it.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the idea, but it bugs me that if there's one fight too many, the caster goes from "GOD INCARNATE" to "Commoner with Crossbow and lousy aim".


Rolling stats, because everyone else in my group always rolls a lot better than me and they are both much better at optimizing and playing than I am.

Rolling hitpoints, for the exact same reason.



I suppose so. The alternative would be something like Rolemasters armor system, while being a lot better, is slightly more complicated in that every weapon needs a full A4 page of damage and crit results against all the different kinds of armor. :smalltongue:

You misspelled "ROLLmaster". :smalltongue:

Eh, you could do it the way games like GURPS and BRP do it: Weapon skill, dodging & shield (if any) determine IF you get hit, armor provides DR. Not too difficult.

Anyway, minor gripes:

Fumble rules in d20. In many games, botching a roll requires exceptionally bad luck. In d20, you can expect a 1 every 20 rolls or so. Failure is its own punishment, I don't need extra humiliating ineptitude piled on top of it. :smallfurious:

Tour Guide GMs: "Welcome to this marvelous fantasy world I've been painstakingly building for the last 15 years! These UberNPCs will escort you on your quest and make sure you DON'T SCREW ANYTHING UP."

D&D Wizards and Books: The classical stereotype of a wizard is an elderly scholar with their nose perpetually in a book, studying Arcane Lore in obscure languages. Most D&D wizards' only use for any book that doesn't have spells written in it is to restock the outhouse. _Call of Cthulhu_ has more of this flavor of wizardry! (Aside from the fact that casting spells there will drive you insane, if whatever you summon doesn't eat you first.)

D&D's impossible economy. I don't need to elaborate, I hope.

Kyberwulf
2012-01-17, 03:17 PM
Dropping the d4 on the floor, and not realizing till you get up to get some chips or something to drink.

bloodtide
2012-01-17, 03:33 PM
When gamers in general ignore the rules of the game, or worse just ignore common sense(but follow the rules) and then sit back and complain that the ''game'' is broken. A perfect example is an optimized, point buy(aka cheat) 'use any feat/class/spell from any book' wizard in a low, low magic game. Sure this character gets over powered quick, but it's not the fault of the game, it's how the game is played.


And the whole 15 minutes day thing really, really bugs me. The adventure starts off fine, with the group leaving at sunup game time. Just a couple minutes later they have a random encounter of some goblin bandits. Each player does a dazzling display of attacks and goes all 'nova'...of course using up all their precious abilities for the day. They then demand to rest and wait a day to 'get back to full power'. I'll try to explain that it's only like 8am and you just left town. And they will whine and complain that each of their characters Must go 'Nova' in every single fight for them to ''have fun''.

Fiery Diamond
2012-01-17, 04:29 PM
And the whole 15 minutes day thing really, really bugs me. The adventure starts off fine, with the group leaving at sunup game time. Just a couple minutes later they have a random encounter of some goblin bandits. Each player does a dazzling display of attacks and goes all 'nova'...of course using up all their precious abilities for the day. They then demand to rest and wait a day to 'get back to full power'. I'll try to explain that it's only like 8am and you just left town. And they will whine and complain that each of their characters Must go 'Nova' in every single fight for them to ''have fun''.

There are two solutions to this that involve allowing them to go nova in every single fight:

-the first is to only have climactic (the culminating fight for any adventure, even a little adventure like "take out the goblin leader") or run-on fights (where they have to fight their way through some place with no chance to rest or retreat), no short little fights that are just random encounter-ish. If you promise them that this is what you're doing, then if they have a fight in the morning they'll be willing to keep going because they know from metagame knowledge that they won't have to fight anything until the next day.

-the second is to break the game rules and make stuff recharge after every encounter for them instead of each day, the new day just allows them to change what they have prepared.

So if they truly want to go nova every single fight and don't feel they're having fun otherwise, you do have a couple options to accommodate them. Not that I'm saying I think that their attitude is the best (I don't), just offering a way to pander to it without allowing 15 minute days.


Things that bother me: Wizards in D&D. The concept of inner magic (sorcerers) has always appealed to me more, as does the idea of not preparing your spells. But wizards DOMINATE. Sometimes with the spell. But mostly just with spells in general.

Tenno Seremel
2012-01-17, 04:46 PM
Effects similar to Searing Spell that allow you to burn Fire Elementals for example…
/hides/

Poil
2012-01-17, 05:06 PM
Rolling d4's. I have nothing against the dice itself but I just dislike rolling them because regardless of what I roll (mostly 1-2) there's no real result from it. Two magic missiles for a total of 5 damage! Yay! :smallyuk:


Effects similar to Searing Spell that allow you to burn Fire Elementals for example…
/hides/
I agree, that's just silly. Being able to burn other things like devils, red dragons, fire giants, etc is fine. Especially since those should really just have a high fire resistance and not immunity. Dnd hands out immunities like candy sometimes.

DoctorGlock
2012-01-17, 05:08 PM
A perfect example is an optimized, point buy(aka cheat)

Point buy is cheating?

Other things that tick me off:

Immunities. If someone has a "thing" stop making everything in the game immune to it. Immune to melee damage (ironguard), immune to grapple (FoM), fire immunity for every Tom, **** and Harry and effects that in general just say no. There should be no binary states of Yes or No but a scale of everything in between. Resistance to fire, bonuses on grapple, AC boosts.

Random generation off all sorts. Bob rolled all his scored higher, he is the ubermensche just because. You on the other hand cannot lift your sword. Suck it up and take it. Bob rolled enough staring wealth to get all his gear. You can buy a wooden mug.

JellyPooga
2012-01-17, 05:12 PM
Point buy is cheating?

Didn't you get the memo? Even 3d6 "down-the-line" is considered cheating now, because it can produce "unfair" results. Only Elite array is legit these days.

:smallwink:

Deepbluediver
2012-01-17, 05:39 PM
Actually another one:

GMs that retcon stuff without informing the players and then act like it was always that way. Bonus points if they belittle you for getting it wrong when you have proof in writing from the GM.

It sounds like there is a fantastic horrible story behind this. :p



And the whole 15 minutes day thing really, really bugs me. The adventure starts off fine, with the group leaving at sunup game time. Just a couple minutes later they have a random encounter of some goblin bandits. Each player does a dazzling display of attacks and goes all 'nova'...of course using up all their precious abilities for the day. They then demand to rest and wait a day to 'get back to full power'. I'll try to explain that it's only like 8am and you just left town. And they will whine and complain that each of their characters Must go 'Nova' in every single fight for them to ''have fun''.
This sounds like a great opportunity for a roaming monster to show up. "Hey don't blame me that you blew all your spells at once; thems the encounter tables". It would (hopefully) teach players to be a little more conservative. Either that or the party wizard can sit on his hands while the melee classes get a chance to shine.

bloodtide
2012-01-18, 03:07 PM
There are two solutions to this that involve allowing them to go nova in every single fight:

-the first is to only have climactic (the culminating fight for any adventure, even a little adventure like "take out the goblin leader") or run-on fights (where they have to fight their way through some place with no chance to rest or retreat), no short little fights that are just random encounter-ish.

I'll add the 'climactic' type plot to the things that bug me. I hate the movie/video game rip off of ''we will fight six weak monsters and then fight the boss monster at the end of the movie/level''. The idea that players can metagame the 'oh this is just a weak fight so don't use any special stuff and save your good attacks for the Boss' is bad.

I hate the whole idea of a 'boss' monster. If you want to fight a boss monster, then go play a video game.

My solution to the '15 minute day' problem, is that I don't let the characters rest. They can sit around right after they have the first fight at 8 am, but they can't sleep. And the world keeps moving around them too.

{{scrubbed}}

Riverdance
2012-01-18, 04:21 PM
Players who think it is their mission to mess up the DM. If you want to be original be imaginative. Just doing whatever you think will screw the DM over isn't original.

DoctorGlock
2012-01-18, 05:40 PM
Unless they feel like the 'special snowflake', they can't play the game.

Or you know, the adventurer hero should be heroic and the player does not want to be denied their concept by random bad luck. And not have the ubermensche travelling next to the leper because of disparate rolls. Honestly, myself every advocate of PB I have met has consider it a matter of balance and not "I gotta be the very best" and saying anyone who uses an endorsed and official alternate is a dirty rotten cheater seems a bit rude.

Arbane
2012-01-18, 06:06 PM
{{Scrubbed}}

Dood, we're playing a game where we play the part of elves and knights and wizards who kill dragons and do hero-y stuff. If you want "Peasant: The Grovelling", I'm sure SOMEBODY's written it. We play the _player characters_ - the sole reason the game exists. Is there some reason they SHOULDN'T be 'special'?

(Also, pretty much what DoctorGlocke said.)

Jay R
2012-01-18, 08:09 PM
By the point buy player is simply another aspect of the modern game: the super hero fantasy. The point buy player 'must' be the greatest star in the world to have fun. Unless they feel like the 'special snowflake', they can't play the game.
Dood, we're playing a game where we play the part of elves and knights and wizards who kill dragons and do hero-y stuff. If you want "Peasant: The Grovelling", I'm sure SOMEBODY's written it. We play the _player characters_ - the sole reason the game exists. Is there some reason they SHOULDN'T be 'special'?

(Also, pretty much what DoctorGlocke said.)

There is a wide, wide margin between being special and being the greatest star in the world.

I want my character to be special, but others, and especially the guys I'm fighting, should be as special as I am, or more so.

A character who has become the greatest star in the world should retire. Killing dragons is cool only because dragons are bigger and more powerful than we are.

Fiery Diamond
2012-01-18, 08:16 PM
There is a wide, wide margin between being special and being the greatest star in the world.

I want my character to be special, but others, and especially the guys I'm fighting, should be as special as I am, or more so.

A character who has become the greatest star in the world should retire. Killing dragons is cool only because dragons are bigger and more powerful than we are.

In your opinion. Others have differing opinions. Sure, I think most people would agree that a main antagonist should be at least as powerful as the PCs, but not everyone wants all of their opponents to be. Sometimes being badass is about curb-stomping things that are fearsome to OTHER people. Maybe killing dragons is awesome because dragons are awesome and powerful, not because they are more powerful than you are.

My point is that both ways of looking at things are valid, and this whole idea of deriding someone for "special snowflake syndrome" is both insulting and rude. It's not a little thing that bugs me, it's something that makes me want to mash someone's face against a keyboard (not that I would ever actually do that; I just tend to emotionally overreact when I get mad). It's offensive and elitist.

Edit: And that's completely beside the fact that playing because it's a power fantasy, so long as you let the other players share in the limelight, is a perfectly valid way of approaching RPGs.

nyarlathotep
2012-01-18, 08:25 PM
There is a wide, wide margin between being special and being the greatest star in the world.

I want my character to be special, but others, and especially the guys I'm fighting, should be as special as I am, or more so.

A character who has become the greatest star in the world should retire. Killing dragons is cool only because dragons are bigger and more powerful than we are.

That being said a properly constructed point-buy system doesn't really offer any more "very best in the universe" potential than most random stat generation systems. All it offers is considerably and allowing you to play the character you want rather than the compromise you reach with the dice.

Steward
2012-01-18, 11:09 PM
I feel like while stat generation methods might be little things that bug you, it doesn't really reach the level where you necessarily have to condemn people who use it as being cheaters or whiners or anything like that. To a certain extent, the game seems to invite flexibility -- the DM and the players can come to a mutual understanding of which of the various rules they like the best and go from there. It's really only a problem if one member of a group wants to play in a totally incompatible way from the others. Those guys might turn into whiners if they're not mature enough to manage disagreements well, but I don't think it would be fair to apply that designation to people in groups where everyone accepts that one playstyle.

Hybban
2012-01-19, 04:49 AM
I'm a elf, I have been studying wizardry with the best sages of my people for a century. I'm one with the forces of nature that I comune with every day. I'm level 1. I can cast light. Twice because I'm super smart... :)

illyrus
2012-01-19, 10:48 AM
I'm a elf, I have been studying wizardry with the best sages of my people for a century. I'm one with the forces of nature that I comune with every day. I'm level 1. I can cast light. Twice because I'm super smart... :)

Hah, and one year later they are living it up in their own demi-plane with Solars as butlers.

Arbane
2012-01-19, 01:21 PM
A variation on Special Snowflake Syndrome is one of my pet peeves: Characters wanting to be something unique doesn't bother me (much), but characters who insist on playing someone who CAN'T FIT IN THE GAME do. Everyone else is playing Viking berserkers, they play a pacifist Catholic monk. Everyone else is playing socialite nobles in a game of courtly intrigue, they want to make a pyromaniac orc. I call it "Mary Mary Quite Contrary Syndrome".

Velaryon
2012-01-19, 01:45 PM
A variation on Special Snowflake Syndrome is one of my pet peeves: Characters wanting to be something unique doesn't bother me (much), but characters who insist on playing someone who CAN'T FIT IN THE GAME do. Everyone else is playing Viking berserkers, they play a pacifist Catholic monk. Everyone else is playing socialite nobles in a game of courtly intrigue, they want to make a pyromaniac orc. I call it "Mary Mary Quite Contrary Syndrome".

Oh jeez, this drives me crazy. One player in my group used to be absolutely horrible about this, and compounded it by always wanting to use something homebrew that he'd either found on the net somewhere or gotten one of the other players to make for him (because the problem player here has little understanding of how the game works and could never homebrew anything by himself).

A few of the characters he has either played or tried to play, all in standard D&D games of either Forgotten Realms or Ravenloft:

-a Jedi
-a Final Fantasy-style Blue Mage
-a gargoyle, from the Gargoyles cartoon of the 90's

There have been more but I can't remember them at the time. Fortunately he seems to have gotten over this tendency in recent years.

Tyndmyr
2012-01-19, 04:09 PM
My pet peeve? Inconsistent mechanics. When you're just BSing rules...I can usually tell. And it usually doesn't matter, so long as it's a reasonable thing. However, when my ability to dodge is now suddenly being governed by my mental traits for no other reason than you can't recall which stat does which in a system with...a whopping five stats...yeah, I'm unhappy.

Deepbluediver
2012-01-19, 04:43 PM
{{scrubbed}}

I didn't like point-buy at first, but I've come to appreciate it for when you're trying to play a pre-decided character with a certain build.
People usually have specific things in mind that they want to play, and sometimes the dice just don't roll well for you. Frankly, I'm willing to accept that some people use the point-buy system for min maxing if it means people get to play what they want. It seems like whenever I've done the roll-for-abilities thing we end up with 3 wizards in the party.

Alternatively you insist that players pick their classes before rolling and then you end up with a barbarian who has less health than the bard.

Mustard
2012-01-19, 05:05 PM
I'm a elf, I have been studying wizardry with the best sages of my people for a century. I'm one with the forces of nature that I comune with every day. I'm level 1. I can cast light. Twice because I'm super smart... :)

The way I like to explain this phenomenon is this: an elf's typical work day is 30 minutes. Most of the rest of the day is meditation, frolicking, and other time-fillers that don't advance any sort of skill in anything. When an elf wizard is pushed into an adventuring life, then they discover what productivity is.

Gunpowder
2012-01-19, 07:24 PM
Health. It never seems realistic.

The worst offenders are the systems who just use straight up HP, of course. I can't bear to play any system whose combat system suggests that a character fresh into battle is as effective at fighting as one who's nearly dead. I'm not even happy with the systems I like, though... Savage Worlds has wounds that make fighting harder as you go on, but even they feel a little abstract. It kind of makes up for it with it's permanent/semi-permanent injury table, I guess.

I can't wait to play the Dresden Files rpg. I looks like I've finally found a system that does it right.

Slipperychicken
2012-01-19, 10:45 PM
GMs who BS rules and make up the "story" as they go along, in which every NPC has the GM's exact personality, regardless of race, sex, age, occupation, class, intelligence, drunkenness, mercantile skill, and so on. The drunken teenage whore is exactly as eloquent as the Emperor, for example.

Along this line, NPCs who always make their saving throws, are in epic levels, oneshot PCs, and pop up out of f*cking nowhere JUST TO TROLL THE PCs.

Players who don't know what their class abilities do, and spend an hour (or more) figuring them out mid-combat. Similarly, players who need to re-calculate AC every god-damned round because they can't just write it down in the box labeled "AC".

Anyone who needs a whole character dedicated to healing, when a handful of magic items will do just fine.

GMs who dictates that your character does idiotic things. A trained, expert assassin will not approach his target's camp in broad daylight, in an open plain, while the target is surrounded by well-armed men.

On a related note, a PC introduced as an assassin to kill another PC. I've never had to metagame that much, before or since, to avoid PvP.

Characters whose purpose is to annoy or troll.

Siegel
2012-01-20, 06:47 AM
GMs that buy the Mouse Guard system throw every important rule out of it and replace it with some cobbled together house rule.

Made a whole post for that somewhere else so i won't repeat that.

In general. GMs that don't get the system and blame everything on the system instead of them not understanding what to do with it. And then say this is better for the setting even though the rules totally improve the themes of the setting

:smallfurious::smallfurious::smallfurious::smallfu rious::smallfurious::smallfurious::smallfurious::s mallfurious::smallfurious::smallfurious::smallfuri ous:

Hybban
2012-01-20, 07:05 AM
The way I like to explain this phenomenon is this: an elf's typical work day is 30 minutes. Most of the rest of the day is meditation, frolicking, and other time-fillers that don't advance any sort of skill in anything. When an elf wizard is pushed into an adventuring life, then they discover what productivity is.
I agree that it's what makes the most sense. But, going from 60 years to learn how to create light, throw a magic missile and detect magic (but I do only one each day or I get migraines) to I'm throwing 4 firballs in a row to the white dragon two years after is a little too much. It never made real sense to me...

I also hate the player who in each game you run says that it would be much better played with system X that he bought the day before because it's soooo hyped that the rules makes his wet his boxers, but never run games because he's too lazy. And you buy the book because you're weak and realize the game is just a big pile of... unusable rules.

I hate hyper-hyped games (unless I think they're awesome of course, but I'm the DM).

Totally Guy
2012-01-20, 08:43 AM
GMs that buy the Mouse Guard system throw every important rule out of it and replace it with some cobbled together house rule.

I've met that guy before. So frustrating! I signed up for Mouse Guard, not this other thing!

Deepbluediver
2012-01-20, 09:45 AM
I'm a elf, I have been studying wizardry with the best sages of my people for a century. I'm one with the forces of nature that I comune with every day. I'm level 1. I can cast light. Twice because I'm super smart... :)

I totally agree. So far though, I've never met a DM who really opposed just house-ruling in something that says starting age for characters is adulthood+X years, where X is some standard value depending on class.

Blackfang108
2012-01-20, 10:36 AM
Health. It never seems realistic.

The worst offenders are the systems who just use straight up HP, of course. I can't bear to play any system whose combat system suggests that a character fresh into battle is as effective at fighting as one who's nearly dead. I'm not even happy with the systems I like, though... Savage Worlds has wounds that make fighting harder as you go on, but even they feel a little abstract. It kind of makes up for it with it's permanent/semi-permanent injury table, I guess.

I can't wait to play the Dresden Files rpg. I looks like I've finally found a system that does it right.

Dresden does it well, but it's cinematic/literary, and is still pretty abstract.

Arbane
2012-01-20, 04:21 PM
The way I like to explain this phenomenon is this: an elf's typical work day is 30 minutes. Most of the rest of the day is meditation, frolicking, and other time-fillers that don't advance any sort of skill in anything. When an elf wizard is pushed into an adventuring life, then they discover what productivity is.

My next character will be Potleaf Noonsleeper, 20th level Elven Slacker.

:smallbiggrin:

Averis Vol
2012-01-23, 03:51 AM
I don't understand how a monk, who in theory trains their whole life for physical perfection, can have a reduced BAB. Adding the Flury of Blow penalty means you get to roll a lot of attack dice, but never need to roll damage. Factoring in that you need Wisdom, and decent Int for skills, means you have a type of character who favors training and insight over pure strength.

So the mindless barb, with the high strength already, gets the perfect attack bonus, while the trained, enlightened, and rational student fights no better than a bard?

I would run a monk with perfect BAB in my own game, but doesn't help when I play in other games.

i 100% second this, and monks in my campaigns are actually alot of fun to play seeing as me and a friend "recreated" the class to give them more proficiencies, better BaB, skills that can actually make them the scholar type, and school fighting styles similar to ToB maneuvers (the exact thing we built em off of>.>)...ohh and relevant class features, more physical use rather than spiritual mumbo bull****.

Averis Vol
2012-01-23, 06:20 AM
There are two solutions to this that involve allowing them to go nova in every single fight:


-the second is to break the game rules and make stuff recharge after every encounter for them instead of each day, the new day just allows them to change what they have prepared.

So if they truly want to go nova every single fight and don't feel they're having fun otherwise, you do have a couple options to accommodate them. Not that I'm saying I think that their attitude is the best (I don't), just offering a way to pander to it without allowing 15 minute days.



i played with a group of powergamers once that tried to do this, i was a fighter, the rest of the group was druid, cleric, and wizard. soooo they explode nova on the first fight and i kinda do my own thing fighting a single orc. so we finish the fight and the cleric has 4 kills, the wizard has 3 and the druid has 6 and im sitting at a measly one kill. so there laughing as my character walks back all bruised with his bloody greatsword and they say "we're going to set up and rest to get our abilities back" to the DM, i say "why? we just woke up" and the dm just stares blankly at them and says " so you woke up, walked twenty feet and want to sleep again.....your not tired." by this time i had got up to get a drink and when i came back 4 sodas later the PC's were still screaming at the DM saying that he cant tell them how to play their characters, so he pulls out his psychology(?) book and brings up a page that stated something along the lines of after getting a good night sleep your body physically WONT go back to sleep, and that if you were to sleep you would wake up tired and with a frazzled mind. and therefore wouldnt get your spells anyways. so seeing this i just grabbed a soda, got into my car and drove home. never saw em again.

Orsen
2012-01-23, 11:22 AM
Something that made me a little annoyed last night while DMing was the Parties bardblade using dragonfire inspiration to help the party make mincemeat of my mooks. Now I'm happy that he powers up the whole party and I know mooks should go down easy, but this was a case of most party members would hit and then auto kill because of extra dice damage. I just wanted the mooks to survive long enough to be better distractions for their leader. Also, it made the scene less exciting because things were just too easy for the party. Not a big deal though. Just need slightly stronger distractions next time.

jindra34
2012-01-23, 03:09 PM
Ignoring the DnD combat system (its a big thing that would probably take 2-3 posts to explain why it bugs me), the standard notion that swords were good weapons (minus sabers, cutlasses, some of the lighter fencing ones, and maybe katanas and there kin) bugs me.
The reason the sword is commonly associated with knights is not that it was a superior or equal weapon to axes, hammers, and spears (it wasn't, and thats before factoring in armor, due to the even balance weight) but due to the fact that it took so bloody long to train to be good with it that only nobles could effectively use it.

nyarlathotep
2012-01-23, 03:55 PM
Ignoring the DnD combat system (its a big thing that would probably take 2-3 posts to explain why it bugs me), the standard notion that swords were good weapons (minus sabers, cutlasses, some of the lighter fencing ones, and maybe katanas and there kin) bugs me.
The reason the sword is commonly associated with knights is not that it was a superior or equal weapon to axes, hammers, and spears (it wasn't, and thats before factoring in armor, due to the even balance weight) but due to the fact that it took so bloody long to train to be good with it that only nobles could effectively use it.

I agree with the main point but have to then kitpick that katanas were just as useless as European swords, minus the fact that they were too light to be used as a club against armored foes. Additionally greatswords had a use in breaking formations, though their wielders almost always died.

jindra34
2012-01-23, 04:08 PM
I agree with the main point but have to then kitpick that katanas were just as useless as European swords, minus the fact that they were too light to be used as a club against armored foes. Additionally greatswords had a use in breaking formations, though their wielders almost always died.

The big difference with the Katana is that with passing familarity it is possible to use it solely for slashing in combat and not be completely inept, where as most European straight swords could take years to reach that point. The only one I listed on there that this isn't true for is the cavalry saber (it takes time to learn due to the whole riding one handed while swing a sword and not breaking your arm when you hit something) which is close in use to a swung cutting version of a lance.

nyarlathotep
2012-01-23, 04:43 PM
The big difference with the Katana is that with passing familarity it is possible to use it solely for slashing in combat and not be completely inept, where as most European straight swords could take years to reach that point. The only one I listed on there that this isn't true for is the cavalry saber (it takes time to learn due to the whole riding one handed while swing a sword and not breaking your arm when you hit something) which is close in use to a swung cutting version of a lance.

It's still a highly impractical weapon only useful against unarmored unmounted targets who have no polearms. Against such opponents you really have already won if you can afford the metallurgy needed to make any sort of sword. So really only useful for dueling and possibly killing peasants (though even most of them would have polearms). A European sword is a mediocre club against armored opponents. Still it ends up being the same sort of weapon as the katana, an expensive one used by rich people to kill those too poor to afford armor. Greatswords being expensive weapons bought by rich people and given to suicide troops to break spear formations.

Averis Vol
2012-01-23, 06:45 PM
Ignoring the DnD combat system (its a big thing that would probably take 2-3 posts to explain why it bugs me), the standard notion that swords were good weapons (minus sabers, cutlasses, some of the lighter fencing ones, and maybe katanas and there kin) bugs me.
The reason the sword is commonly associated with knights is not that it was a superior or equal weapon to axes, hammers, and spears (it wasn't, and thats before factoring in armor, due to the even balance weight) but due to the fact that it took so bloody long to train to be good with it that only nobles could effectively use it.

woah, woah, woah, woah....so what your trying to say is that only single handed, single edged slashing blades are the only usable weapons? {Scrubbed} first of all these blades are single use, which means they can slash things....and thats about it, generally they lack the force to stab or even chop for that matter.
a european longsword has enough weight and length to allow it to not only slash but also has a blade point that could pierce plate armor. equally, not only knights used longswords. the katana requires alot more training then you seem to give it credit for. samurai of feudal japan trained for years with Boken before they were even ALLOWED to touch a real blade. they trained from a young age and never stopped training until they could no longer hold the blade.
ohh yea and as for greatswords no man wanted to get within 6 feet of someone swinging one of these, they had such massive force that even trying to block them with a shield was likely to break your arm. and if there was more then one of them, well just stay away from that side of the battlefield.

jindra34
2012-01-23, 07:03 PM
woah, woah, woah, woah....so what your trying to say is that only single handed, single edged slashing blades are the only usable weapons? {Scrub the post, scrub the quote} first of all these blades are single use, which means they can slash things....and thats about it, generally they lack the force to stab or even chop for that matter.
a european longsword has enough weight and length to allow it to not only slash but also has a blade point that could pierce plate armor. equally, not only knights used longswords. the katana requires alot more training then you seem to give it credit for. samurai of feudal japan trained for years with Boken before they were even ALLOWED to touch a real blade. they trained from a young age and never stopped training until they could no longer hold the blade.
ohh yea and as for greatswords no man wanted to get within 6 feet of someone swinging one of these, they had such massive force that even trying to block them with a shield was likely to break your arm. and if there was more then one of them, well just stay away from that side of the battlefield.

Note that the list was from amongst swords. You want to chop, grab an axe. You want to chop and stab with a reach advantage, here a halbred. Both of which because of their weight distribution can more easily beat out armor, and because there are fewer deadly parts of it are less likely to get you hurt. And remeber pikes, spears, axes, and hammers could technically be picked up by anyone in a few weeks of oversight. And amongst my list of weapons are light fencing weapons which happen to include nice things like the roman gladius. Balanced weapons (swords, staves, clubs and to a lesser degree spears) are less effective at dealing damage than unbalanced ones because the weight is evenly distributed, and if you don't have the weight focused on one striking part. They do have the advantage of being better for defense if you can either shift your grip or its light enough and small enough that you can maintain free and easy movement. Which most swords do not. And the katana is right at the edge of passable.

nyarlathotep
2012-01-23, 07:34 PM
And the katana is right at the edge of passable.

Mainly due to being from a metal poor isolated country.

Knaight
2012-01-24, 06:19 PM
Ignoring the DnD combat system (its a big thing that would probably take 2-3 posts to explain why it bugs me), the standard notion that swords were good weapons (minus sabers, cutlasses, some of the lighter fencing ones, and maybe katanas and there kin) bugs me.
The reason the sword is commonly associated with knights is not that it was a superior or equal weapon to axes, hammers, and spears (it wasn't, and thats before factoring in armor, due to the even balance weight) but due to the fact that it took so bloody long to train to be good with it that only nobles could effectively use it.

That's so far from true it isn't even funny. Swords have been mass produced and used effectively in combat by troops who were not nobles on many occasions - Rome and China both used them heavily, among others, such as late medieval/early renaissance mercenaries. They are fairly fast, quite versatile weapons, that can be easily worn. Are they far better than all other weapons in any circumstance? No, and other weapons often get shorted in systems regarding quality (spears and slings in particular are often portrayed as pretty useless.) Granted, if you are willing to call the Roman gladius a lightweight fencing sword, you pretty much need to include every sword that isn't poorly made in that category - they were all reasonably light, if not the featherweights that modern fencing swords (and to a lesser extent the Renaissance smallsword) are.

Averis Vol
2012-01-24, 06:38 PM
Note that the list was from amongst swords. You want to chop, grab an axe. You want to chop and stab with a reach advantage, here a halbred. Both of which because of their weight distribution can more easily beat out armor, and because there are fewer deadly parts of it are less likely to get you hurt. And remeber pikes, spears, axes, and hammers could technically be picked up by anyone in a few weeks of oversight. And amongst my list of weapons are light fencing weapons which happen to include nice things like the roman gladius. Balanced weapons (swords, staves, clubs and to a lesser degree spears) are less effective at dealing damage than unbalanced ones because the weight is evenly distributed, and if you don't have the weight focused on one striking part. They do have the advantage of being better for defense if you can either shift your grip or its light enough and small enough that you can maintain free and easy movement. Which most swords do not. And the katana is right at the edge of passable.

have you ever actually used a sword, because the "light dainty i could pick my teeth with these swords" were for show and for rich kids who wanted to be bad by carrying around a sword, so their parents gave them something they cant hurt anyone with. a rapier was a dress sword, and a weapon used in "duels for honor".

and no, a sword was for more then just slashing, the european longsword was meant to pierce plate, thats why it had such a narrow point. ofcourse not ALL swords were like this but their purpose was war and you cant afford to NOT be able to get past your enemies defense.

jindra34
2012-01-24, 07:03 PM
have you ever actually used a sword, because the "light dainty i could pick my teeth with these swords" were for show and for rich kids who wanted to be bad by carrying around a sword, so their parents gave them something they cant hurt anyone with. a rapier was a dress sword, and a weapon used in "duels for honor".

and no, a sword was for more then just slashing, the european longsword was meant to pierce plate, thats why it had such a narrow point. ofcourse not ALL swords were like this but their purpose was war and you cant afford to NOT be able to get past your enemies defense.

Axes with most their weight focused at the head do better against armor than any European straight sword. And the rapier falls into the not good category of swords. If you want relatively proper terms, the swords that should be represented as useful are the small swords, cavalry sabers, and chopping (not slashing) swords. And yes the roman gladius at under 3' in length is technically a small sword, while the chinese Dao is a choping sword. The big thing about weapons is not versatility (how many ways you can make a guy dead) but capability (how hard it is for the guy to make you dead or not get himself killed), and swords generally sacrifice the second for the first.

EDIT: If people want to continue this discussion I think we should move it too its own thread.

Morithias
2012-01-24, 07:23 PM
the legion devil's "Legion's Defenses" power from fiendish codex 2.

Here's what it reads.

"If a spell, supernatural ability, or other effect that allows a saving throw targets more than one legion devil, all the devils use the highest d20 result rolled by the group. If three legion devils are caught in a fireball and the d20 rolls for their saves are 17,5, and 8, all three devils use 17 as the result of their roll before adding any modifiers."

Notice anything wrong with that?

Legion devils are IMMUNE TO FIRE, why would they need to roll saves against a FIREBALL spell? Was it really too much work to just write "Cone of cold" instead?

Deepbluediver
2012-01-24, 07:53 PM
Regarding the swords are good/horrible debate:
I've got an actual sword in my closet. It's a piece of mass-produced rubbish I picked up off e-bay for 30 bucks; and I haven't the slightest idea how to actually use it. But if I swing it around good and hard I've chopped apart whole pumpkins, watermelons, and even small tree branches with hardly any effort. I would NOT want my soft, vulnerable flesh to get hit by the thing.

I believe swords are fairly effective weapons against anything except european-style full plate armor, which post-dates the introduction of swords by a few millenia, and which tended to be even more expensive to acquire and use (and therefor even rarer). I know the relationship between Hollywood and realism is the kind that Lifetime normally makes movies about, but just just keep that in mind when you decided to argue about a swords historical effectiveness.



Here's something else that bugs me though: people who complain about "unrealistic" health systems. What exactly do you think a 20th level character getting shot with an arrow would realistically be like? Can you even picture it? NO! If you put real world people into D&D, most of us would be 1st level characters, and even olympic athletes and military special forces probably wouldn't be much higher than 5th or 6th level. A realistic system means that virtually any major wound puts your character down for the count; just try breathing with a punctured lung.
If you actually tracked every little wound, by round 2 of combat would look something like this:
Warrior: I attack the goblin!
DM: ok, give me a minute here, that torso-wound reduces your speed by 20% and your endurance by 15%, and that dagger-slash you took in the arm reduces your attack roll by 3, but the goblin is also wounded so his AC is down by 5 cause he can't dodge as well and you got shot in the knee with an arrow so your slowly bleeding to death at 1 HP per round but because you're still fighting and haven't stopped to bandage it it's actually 3 HP per round, and lemme get out the rule book to see what the specifics about burns are from that trap you triggered in the last hallway....

Do you see what a clusterfudge this turns into? We're playing a game where we can ride gryphons and shoot fireballs out our elbows; I think realism can safely take a back seat to fun. Unless of course you want to play a fully realistic/modern setting game where every fight is essentially rocket tag.

white rider
2012-01-24, 09:01 PM
About swords: I am a fencer, and I have fought SCA people who use other weapons. While difficult, I can defeat them due to one of the factors that you forgot: speed. A polearm, while deadly at range, can easily be bypassed by someone who steps past it. The mace or ax, while powerful, is heavy and can be easily redirected. In the meantime, my sword can cut a person multiple times a second and be stabbed accurately enough to go through the eye-slit on plate armor.

On things that bug me- poisons. Congratulations, you have spent the average farmers income for a decade! You can now make the average person slow down a bit! For almost an hour! I mean, come on. I could go into my neighborhood park and find plants that would put somebody vomiting into a toilet for hours, if not in the hospital, and the only poison in D&D that actually could kill someone (maybe) costs upwards of 1,000 gold.

Steward
2012-01-25, 12:19 AM
the legion devil's "Legion's Defenses" power from fiendish codex 2.

Here's what it reads.

"If a spell, supernatural ability, or other effect that allows a saving throw targets more than one legion devil, all the devils use the highest d20 result rolled by the group. If three legion devils are caught in a fireball and the d20 rolls for their saves are 17,5, and 8, all three devils use 17 as the result of their roll before adding any modifiers."

Notice anything wrong with that?

Legion devils are IMMUNE TO FIRE, why would they need to roll saves against a FIREBALL spell? Was it really too much work to just write "Cone of cold" instead?

It might be a reflex thing. Like, they see a fireball and just start screaming and running around, only to suddenly realize that they're immune to fire. Because legion devils are known for their skittishness and general cowardi--


Their immunity to fear is reflected in their brutal
disregard for casualties. Even as screaming orbs of energy
rip into their ranks and voracious demons rip through their
regiments, the legion devils fight on.

Er, well, they're pretty random and--


Legion devils are the utter ideal of law within Hell. They are
utterly loyal, fearless, and perfectly routine in their lives. They
go through strictly regimented schedules each day, patrolling,
marching in formation, practicing, and maintaining
their camps. Smart adventurers learn to carefully observe
a legion devil camp. Once an observer has determined the
legion devils’ schedule, he can be sure that they will follow
it exactly again and again--

Siegel
2012-01-25, 02:33 AM
Here's something else that bugs me though: people who complain about "unrealistic" health systems. What exactly do you think a 20th level character getting shot with an arrow would realistically be like?


I used to be an adventurer like you...

Morithias
2012-01-25, 02:43 AM
I used to be an adventurer like you...

I was so tempted to make that joke but decided against it.

Knaight
2012-01-25, 12:14 PM
About swords: I am a fencer, and I have fought SCA people who use other weapons. While difficult, I can defeat them due to one of the factors that you forgot: speed. A polearm, while deadly at range, can easily be bypassed by someone who steps past it. The mace or ax, while powerful, is heavy and can be easily redirected. In the meantime, my sword can cut a person multiple times a second and be stabbed accurately enough to go through the eye-slit on plate armor.
As a spear fencer, I do have to point out that polearms are at a disadvantage in SCA rules. The lower legs are a much easier target with them than with anything else, the face is a critical target, and that you can move the tip of the polearm from one to the other makes shield use much more difficult. Moreover, a half decent mace or ax is still fairly fast, if not to the level of swords.

illyrus
2012-01-27, 12:24 AM
Players and GMs who have a single strategy and never change from it regardless of the situation. Extra points when they get mad at you because you "countered it".

Players who have a "this guy is going to be so awesome at level 20" character that's worthless until he's almost there... in a campaign set for level 1 to 10.

GMs that force all encounters to be "kick in the door" style by failing any other actions. Bonus points if they bash the players for always kicking in the door.

A GM who fills his world with NPCs that are immune to all forms of intimidation including severe forms like torture.

GMs who go really tough at the beginning of combat bending the rules in their favor only to put on kid gloves halfway though bending the rules the other way. A consistent strength combat would have had the same result and let the players feel like their actions matter.

hewhosaysfish
2012-01-27, 08:15 AM
*anecdote of the 15-minute work day*

Soooo many things wrong. Four, in fact. Four is many.
1) Arcane casters don't require sleep to get spells back, they require rest. Which means that a wizard can get his spells back after spending 8 hours lounging on the sofa watching daytime TV with Potleaf Noonsleeper, if he likes. The DM was wrong for thinking that the wizard's physiological inability to sleep would prevent him from recovering spells.
2) Divine casters need rest nor sleep to prepare their spells. Rather they prepare their spells at a specific time of day (regardless of whether they rested beforehand or not). So the cleric and druid player's were wrong - they would generally have to wait 24 hours between novas, not the 8 hours they wanted to sleep through.
3) If he was waiting for 24 hours for the divine casters to do their daily prayers then the wizard would have 16 hours to get himself good and tired before he goes to bed. So the party would need to sleep but would be able to do so. So the playrs and the DM are all wrong.
4) There are only 3 things on this list when I said there would be 4. So I'm wrong.

nyarlathotep
2012-01-27, 01:39 PM
Also although spells require 8 hours of rest to prepare they still have a strict per day limit.

Knaight
2012-01-27, 10:47 PM
2) Divine casters need rest nor sleep to prepare their spells. Rather they prepare their spells at a specific time of day (regardless of whether they rested beforehand or not). So the cleric and druid player's were wrong - they would generally have to wait 24 hours between novas, not the 8 hours they wanted to sleep through.

Two things.
1) The 24 hour day isn't a safe assumption.
2) They recover their spells at a specific time of day, and many campaign worlds are globes. Given PC movement rates, that can translate to any number of hours even in a 24 hour day system. If it isn't being horribly abused, odds are it will range from 20-28 or so.

RobD
2012-02-12, 11:42 PM
Speaking of Katanas, it always kinda cheesed me off that the DMG (3.5) counts them as automatically masterwork quality.
This line in particular bugs the crap outta me: "While functionally a bastard sword, this sword is the most masterfully made nonmagical weapon in existence."
I mean, come on. Forces me to make hilariously obscene gestures every time I read it.

Same goes for the wakizashi.

Knaight
2012-02-13, 12:06 AM
Speaking of Katanas, it always kinda cheesed me off that the DMG (3.5) counts them as automatically masterwork quality.
This line in particular bugs the crap outta me: "While functionally a bastard sword, this sword is the most masterfully made nonmagical weapon in existence."
I mean, come on. Forces me to make hilariously obscene gestures every time I read it.

Same goes for the wakizashi.

It seems to me that at most one katana can be the most masterfully made nonmagical weapon in existence, which means that the statement implies that there is only one nonmagical katana, and it is the most masterfully made nonmagical weapon in existence. Moreover, it needs to be enchanted or destroyed before another magical katana can be created as D&D rules state that a nonmagical weapon must be created before it can be made into a magical weapon. If a statement is generating logical ramifications like that, it probably has to go.

Sith_Happens
2012-02-13, 06:58 AM
Speaking of Katanas, it always kinda cheesed me off that the DMG (3.5) counts them as automatically masterwork quality.
This line in particular bugs the crap outta me: "While functionally a bastard sword, this sword is the most masterfully made nonmagical weapon in existence."
I mean, come on. Forces me to make hilariously obscene gestures every time I read it.

Same goes for the wakizashi.


It seems to me that at most one katana can be the most masterfully made nonmagical weapon in existence, which means that the statement implies that there is only one nonmagical katana, and it is the most masterfully made nonmagical weapon in existence. Moreover, it needs to be enchanted or destroyed before another magical katana can be created as D&D rules state that a nonmagical weapon must be created before it can be made into a magical weapon. If a statement is generating logical ramifications like that, it probably has to go.

Obligatory link to the (in)famous "Katanas Are Underpowered in d20" thread. (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Katanas_are_Underpowered_in_d20)

Deepbluediver
2012-02-13, 10:31 AM
I don't like how WotC tried to make Samurai something entirely different from fighters. They're really just the eastern-flavored equivalent of knights, and the code of Bushido (if it even existed; I'm sure we can have a debate about that too) was probably followed about as often as the code of Chivalry.
In other words, it made for a good story, and that's about it.


Katanas ended up as thin, whippy razor-bladed weapons because Japan is an iron-poor country. If you think that a longsword is ineffective against plated armor (see about 3 pages of this thread) then how well do you think something weighing less than a pound will fair?
It's sort of like saying a fencing saber is a superior weapon because I can swing it faster.

dsmiles
2012-02-13, 10:46 AM
Perhaps it's already been said, perhaps not:

1. Magic Item creation costing XP. Seriously? If you want some sort of investment, invest Constitution, like you used to. Making magic items should give you XP. After all, you're doing something. Experiencing something. :smallannoyed:

2. Players who refuse to be team players. Okay, okay. We all know you can make a wizard or cleric who can solo the adventure. Not everyone can. How about you play to the level of the group, and help them when they ask for advice, instead of (a) soloing the adventure and calling the other players "dead weight," or (b) trying to force the other players to re-write their characters to be in-line with your ideas of how they should be written? Can we do that? Please? :smallfurious:

3. On that note, players who show up drunk, or show up and proceed to get drunk. In a group that primarily doesn't drink. :smallmad:

@hewhosaysfish: We houseruled that in our group. Casters can regain spells once per game day. Period. Clerics and druids pick a "time of day" (i.e. dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, evening, dusk, night) and prepare spells then. If they fail to do so, whoops! No spells for you.

Slipperychicken
2012-02-13, 04:27 PM
Bad homebrew/houserules. It happens. Someone thinks that monks are underpowered or whatever, then creates a Super Special Awesome Class which gets Timestop 6/day and (Ex) free-action Etherealness because Wizards are overpowered. Same goes for saying crit multipliers stack, all crits are auto-hits, and crits auto-confirm, then building NPCs with 12-20 crit ranges that almost one-round PCs from full health (now all my characters in that group have 100% Fortification armor). And ruling that Combat Reflexes gives all those AoOs on the same provocation, with full knowledge of how the feat actually works. No one abuses these rules except the DM.


Core-only 3.5 games. If everyone knows the rules, and are decent enough players not to break the game or make others feel useless, restricting content simply isn't necessary, and if anything makes the problem worse (seriously, look at the Core class list, now to the Tier list, now back to the Core classes. I'm on a Phantom Steed).


Incomplete houserule lists. Each game I join, I ask the DM for a list of his houserules/preferences/ban list, and each time they miss something like how skills are completely revamped or half the Sorc/Wiz list is banned or nerfed into non-functionality for some reason.

Ornithologist
2012-02-13, 05:01 PM
A variation on Special Snowflake Syndrome is one of my pet peeves: Characters wanting to be something unique doesn't bother me (much), but characters who insist on playing someone who CAN'T FIT IN THE GAME do. Everyone else is playing Viking berserkers, they play a pacifist Catholic monk. Everyone else is playing socialite nobles in a game of courtly intrigue, they want to make a pyromaniac orc. I call it "Mary Mary Quite Contrary Syndrome".

So, uh ... I'm that guy. ... Sorry.

See my post http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=229473&page=2 here.

Though I do go to great pains to make the character background fit within the setting, and mesh with the group...

Fiery Diamond
2012-02-13, 05:14 PM
This one isn't in the games, but in the discussion of games.

-People who can't seem to understand the difference between "inter-" and "intra-" and think "interparty conflict" means conflict within the party. Rrrrrgh!:smallfurious:

TuggyNE
2012-02-13, 06:48 PM
Bad homebrew/houserules. It happens. Someone thinks that monks are underpowered or whatever, then creates a Super Special Awesome Class which gets Timestop 6/day and (Ex) free-action Etherealness because Wizards are overpowered. Same goes for saying crit multipliers stack, all crits are auto-hits, and crits auto-confirm, then building NPCs with 12-20 crit ranges that almost one-round PCs from full health (now all my characters in that group have 100% Fortification armor). And ruling that Combat Reflexes gives all those AoOs on the same provocation, with full knowledge of how the feat actually works. No one abuses these rules except the DM.


Incomplete houserule lists. Each game I join, I ask the DM for a list of his houserules/preferences/ban list, and each time they miss something like how skills are completely revamped or half the Sorc/Wiz list is banned or nerfed into non-functionality for some reason.

Those... don't actually seem all that minor to me. :smalleek:

Makiru
2012-02-14, 08:33 AM
GMs who BS rules and make up the "story" as they go along, in which every NPC has the GM's exact personality, regardless of race, sex, age, occupation, class, intelligence, drunkenness, mercantile skill, and so on. The drunken teenage whore is exactly as eloquent as the Emperor, for example.

Anyone who needs a whole character dedicated to healing, when a handful of magic items will do just fine.

On a related note, a PC introduced as an assassin to kill another PC. I've never had to metagame that much, before or since, to avoid PvP.

Characters whose purpose is to annoy or troll.

I'm sorry you hate me so much.

Kalmageddon
2012-02-14, 10:47 AM
On things that bug me- poisons. Congratulations, you have spent the average farmers income for a decade! You can now make the average person slow down a bit! For almost an hour! I mean, come on. I could go into my neighborhood park and find plants that would put somebody vomiting into a toilet for hours, if not in the hospital, and the only poison in D&D that actually could kill someone (maybe) costs upwards of 1,000 gold.

This, a 100 times.
We usually houserule that a succesful saving throw against poison halves the damage or the duration of the effect instead of totally negating it. For something that is one-use only and sometimes costs as much as a magic item that's the minium.

Also, on a related note: Alchemy in general. It's basically magic for beggars, almost none of the alchemical items does something useful and all the coolest part of alchemical lore has been rolled into real magic, such as homunculus creation.

Encryptedmind
2012-02-14, 11:18 AM
1. Players that take forever to decide thier characters action. I mean, come on, I can plan my entire action usually several turns in advance, why can't you decide on who to swing at or the best way too do it untill its 45 seconds into your action. It got so bad we had to house rule a time limit for actions.

2. People who just play chaotic stupid or chaotic goofy. Come on there is more to this than throwing excrement at poelpe, and it really isn't funny

3. People who view being silly as roleplaying. We have a roleplaying award at the end of each game. Serious gamers vote for role playing. Annoying gamers vote for peopel who poop on the corpses of thier victems, because it made them chuckle

And poeple who decide to play drunk, when everyone else is sober

dsmiles
2012-02-14, 11:53 AM
This, a 100 times.
We usually houserule that a succesful saving throw against poison halves the damage or the duration of the effect instead of totally negating it. For something that is one-use only and sometimes costs as much as a magic item that's the minium.We houseruled this to use the alternate poison rules in Pale Masters. I beleive it's a Green Ronin book. Poisons cause actual HP damage, and some are SoD poisons. We like to up the ante.

Amphetryon
2012-02-18, 10:10 AM
Players trying to retroactively modify rolls because they are worried about the result before success/failure is announced. "I got a 17" 'Oh, I was helping on his check!' 'Can I help too? Does that make it a 21? Did it work?' Target number could have been 16, or 20, or 22, but some players insist on trying to artificially increase rolls for fear of failing a single check.

hamishspence
2012-02-18, 10:25 AM
Legion devils are IMMUNE TO FIRE, why would they need to roll saves against a FIREBALL spell?

Well, there is that Searing Spell feat from Sandstorm...

Necroticplague
2012-02-18, 11:46 AM
Well, there is that Searing Spell feat from Sandstorm...

Or they could be saving against an Explosive Fireball...

TuggyNE
2012-02-18, 07:04 PM
"If a spell, supernatural ability, or other effect that allows a saving throw targets more than one legion devil, all the devils use the highest d20 result rolled by the group. If three legion devils are caught in a fireball and the d20 rolls for their saves are 17,5, and 8, all three devils use 17 as the result of their roll before adding any modifiers."

[...]

Legion devils are IMMUNE TO FIRE, why would they need to roll saves against a FIREBALL spell?

It's a typo, they meant to say "internet backdraft". :smallamused:

Greenish
2012-02-18, 08:48 PM
I don't like how WotC tried to make Samurai something entirely different from fighters.Well, given how screwed-over fighters are in skills, will saves or their dependency on magic weapons, I can't really blame WotC for the OA Samurai.

For CW samurai, there can be no excuse.

They're really just the eastern-flavored equivalent of knightsWell, yes, but then again WotC made Knight into separate class from Fighter. :smallamused:


Incomplete houserule lists.Yes! That's really annoying. Only falls under "little things that bug you" when it's, well, minor stuff, but still.

Jeraa
2012-02-18, 10:33 PM
Legion devils are IMMUNE TO FIRE, why would they need to roll saves against a FIREBALL spell? Was it really too much work to just write "Cone of cold" instead?

Legion devils may be immune to fire, but their equipment isn't. The equipment still wouldn't be damaged unless they roll a 1 on the save, though.

But yes, that example is still silly. Should of used a different spell.

Sgt. Cookie
2012-02-20, 11:00 AM
People forgetting that the Unarmed Swordsage and Arcane Swordage are NOT classes in thier own right. They are proposed variants.

Sith_Happens
2012-02-21, 07:58 AM
People forgetting that the Unarmed Swordsage and Arcane Swordage are NOT classes in thier own right. They are proposed variants.

People who complain about the Arcane Swordsage being "broken" when it isn't even a fully-described (variant) class.