Worst interpretation of the rules ever?

[Threadnaught]

A damn awful interpretation of the rules.

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Back when we first started playing 3.0, when it was first released, I'm not entirely sure any of us actually read the rules.

On incremental increases to class stuff, e.g. BAB/Saves: Those + signs mean we add right? So from lvl 1 to 2, it was 3. From lvl 2 to lvl 3 it was obviously 3+3. Same thing for saves!

So it wasn't uncommon to have level 12 characters with 3 forms of confusing Bab (+6/+1? obviously we get a second pool of bab! In other words +21/+1)

Greater cleave doesn't let you do those free 5 steps that you can do whenever you aren't moving? Our strategy vs everything was arcane archer storm of arrows, paladin g. cleaves everything. So after every cleave he moved 5 feet, usually going up to 80+ feet to kill everything. In full plate.

Saves were obviously obscenely high, making us wonder how anyone could lose to a mage.

Strangely we got spells right, I think because it wasn't too different from 2nd ed.

Characters came in at level 1, regardless of the level of the rest of the party. I died so many times trying to catch up to party level when they were 10+.

*edit* Oh yeah, Monks were sick good, as not only did you have the obviously better flurry chart due to the number of extra attacks, that eventually began to hit after peaking at -3/-3 to hit, began to hit pretty well. You could dual wield those attacks, with only a -2/-2 to the first chart first 2 numbers! The recent posts about monks flurry in PF reminded me of that. And the damage! A monk was dealing 1D6+1D6+1D6+1D8+1D8+str per hit at level five!

Absolutely awful, and yet I can't help but think it looks like one of the most awesome games ever.

Also Kelb, I got what I think are the most important parts in.

[Medic!]

Speaking of DMs who are literally out to kill their party...

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One of the members of our family + a friend or two group, had been playing with us for about a year and wanted to try his hand at DMing, we were, of course, exstatic to hear this!

The campaign idea was awesome...a traditional D&D setting but our PCs were all locked up in a mental institution, and each of us chose a mental disorder to RP. I don't remember all of them now, sadly, but I do remember that I was playing a paranoid schitzophrenic(sp?) guard/orderly in the facility. The adventure started with me breaking the party out and escaping into the sewers with a DMPC. We progressed down the sewers fighting moon-rats and other CR appropriates for a lvl 1 party until we came to a fork in the road.

The DMPC says "We should go right!" but my character, being paranoid, didn't trust him completely, nor did the rest of the party. So we said "Nope we're going left!"

Now...if it was me, I would say "Ok...you go left!" Then whatever I had planned on the right path would be on the left instead and no harm no foul. The DM decided that this ruined his campaign and foiled his plot and plan. His DMPC then revealed that it was, in reality, a CR 20+ Hellfire Dragon and fired off its breath-weapon in the tight sewer against the party.

One player rolled a nat 20 on his reflex, so he dived into the filth and survived the blast, but was then paralysed by his PC's germaphobia and promptly eaten. Campaign duration: 45 minutes.

[Darthteej]

can i sig this?

YES! Ahem, I mean yes.

[nyjastul69]

I don't know if this is the worst rules interpretation ever but, BITD, playing a weird amalgam of BECMI and 1st ed. AD&D none of us actually bothered to worry about, or look up what 'accumulated' HD actually meant. It was clear. Roll 1 HD at 1st level, 2 at 2nd, 3 at 3rd... Ummm.. yeah, that gets out of control right quick. We played as nigh on gods amongst mortal monsters.

[pwykersotz]

Heh, I've done a lot of these terrible interpretations in the past. Mostly because when I was introduced to D&D, it was with a GM that has been gaming for nearly 40 years and mixes up (sometimes purposefully, sometimes not) rules between editions. I still play with the group, and they still screw up my ideas of what is and isn't. Fortunately for when I DM (with different people), my players are good about throwing books at me when I need it.

Notable times I made a fool of myself as GM:
Ruling that 5ft steps couldn't be used with a full attack
Psh, +2 is lame, let's hand out artifacts!
No save vs a Wish to turn the party into Dire Rats
Hiding and moving at the same time is impossible!
Critical failure spot check, the sun is a sky palace, you want to get to it!

...I'm not proud of these. But, they were honest mistakes. Fortunately my friends stuck with me through the tougher times.

[Silus]

Not really a rules thing, but I had a DM that didn't know how snow worked with regards to tracking.

We were trying to track a goblin on a barrel (Running on it to roll it) through newly fallen snow while it was still snowing. The DM said we lost the trail after X-amount of time, while it was still snowing.

We obviously contested this, seeing as ~3 out of the 4 players had lived in snowy climates (Myself having lived in Virginia and Germany for some years). But alas, he DMed it away.

[Serpentine]

Critical failure spot check, the sun is a sky palace, you want to get to it!

Usually if one of my players drastically fails a check*, I let them decide what happens, and that's just the sort of thing they'd come up with Always so much harsher than I'd have happen...


*

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In case anyone cares: my houserule is that a natural 1 counts as -10, and a natural 20 counts as +30.

[BobVosh]

So no one noticed that the monk damage table, unlike BAB and saves, did not have a + sign in front of everything?

I imagine monks also ended up with crazy high AC after a while, with the level based bonus scaling up like that.

At this point the player making the character wasn't there for the first session. He was told just to add the values in the chart. It was an attempt to build the character in a short time to hop on into game. I don't believe any monk made it past 5th, and even then we had read that wisdom replaced dex I believe. I think we used a full wisdom value...I can't really remember, it didn't matter too much as the monk was level 1 vs a level 5-6 party. With these silly rules. Also I plead being 13. Not much of an excuse, but meh.

A damn awful interpretation of the rules.


Absolutely awful, and yet I can't help but think it looks like one of the most awesome games ever.

It was amusing mainly due to the DM loving rust monsters and spell casters. Nothing could really harm us with our ubersaves. (Fireballs are great, right?)

[CTrees]

Might be blind, but I don't think I've seen anyone bring up people missing the limits to augmentation of psionic powers.

Anyway, on PF's flurry=TWF thing, look at SKR's logic in conjunction with the Zen Archer, who flurries with a bow... there were threads here around that time dealing with all the problems it causes in a wide variety of situations, but it really goes to "SKR doesn't understand the rules and implications of his own game."

[olentu]

Might be blind, but I don't think I've seen anyone bring up people missing the limits to augmentation of psionic powers.

Anyway, on PF's flurry=TWF thing, look at SKR's logic in conjunction with the Zen Archer, who flurries with a bow... there were threads here around that time dealing with all the problems it causes in a wide variety of situations, but it really goes to "SKR doesn't understand the rules and implications of his own game."

I would consider the missing the limits on augmentation is less of a bad interpretation and more of just not noticing something. Perhaps if we were talking about a DM that knowingly removed the limit.

While zen archer is good, I would say the feral combat training FAQ entry is a better example.

[grarrrg]

Also: i find it funny, because like in 3.5, monks still are not proficient with unarmed strikes in PF

Actually, they are proficient, as is everyone, but now it's a 'general' rule, so it doesn't appear on the Monk class.

Link
"All characters are proficient with unarmed strikes and any natural weapons they gain from their race."

[roguemetal]

This is horrendous, and I'm loving all these awful alternatives to the rules. I thought it was bad when my DM didn't understand how multipliers worked. (Of course I built an UberCharger just for him. )

I've also had a fair share of DMs who didn't know the DCs of skill checks well enough, placing some mundane checks in the epic levels, and epic checks as relatively simple, or just making some stuff up that didn't make any sense. I only need a 20 on sleight of hand to steal a weapon out of someone's hand? Who knew.

[Stegyre]

My meager contribution:

Way, way back, in the days of oD&D, my older brother and his friends thought that clerics' and wizards' spells available were all the spells they could cast until they leveled up.

Thus, a first level wizard could cast one first level spell. Not one-per day or per week, but ever, until he leveled up. Needless to say, casters tended to hoard their spells.

On the plus side, however, the armor and weapon restrictions on wizards were deemed to apply only to mundane items. Magical arms and armor were a-okay!

[Yahzi]

2. the amount of attacks your BAB bonus allows is your number of standard actions per round, yes even for spellcasters. i dont even know how they came to that conclusion

I didn't read the whole thread to see if this was answered; but if not, it probably comes from 1st ED where a Fighter got attacks per round equal to his level when fighting 0th level foes.

[Firechanter]

I just remembered one occasion at a con, where we were rolling up level 3 characters for a nice dungeoncrawl organized by a local game club. (Some of those characters were then carried over to a longterm campaign.)

There was one guy there who seriously had Knowledge: 3.5 Rules as Phantom Skill and who was going to participate. He kept walking around and gave really awesomely stupid advice.
For example, to the Dwarf Fighter player: "For your two feats, best take Toughness twice, then you have _six hitpoints_ more."
Or to the Halfling Rogue player: "You actually don't need Open Lock and Disable Device, just take Profession: Locksmith and you're good for both." And: "You really should take EWP: Hand Crossbow." And: "Halfling, good, they are awesome at Grappling because they get +4 to their rolls."

So basically, his "advice" ranged anywhere from useless over counterproductive to downright false.
And every time I called him out on something, he'd start an argument about it -- "I'm absolutely certain about that, I'm a DM myself.", then when I showed him the respective paragraph in the PHB to prove him wrong, he said nothing, and a minute later started the next argument about the next piece of bull****.

I mean, sure, everyone can be wrong about a rule here or there, but the reliability of his foulups and his stubborn refusal to admit his mistakes were the stuff of legends.

(FWIW, I helped those players make decent choices for their characters, as much as was possible with the material at hand.)

Later on in the actual game, he'd also start arguing with the DM, who already knew him from the game club, and at several points the DM just said "What did we agree on?" and that shut him up. Later, the DM told me that their "agreement" was that if the player kept arguing about the rules, the DM would take the player's PHB and burn it. xD

[Telonius]

A long while back, I had a DM who allowed an Order of the Bow Initiate to add their precision damage only on anything within 30 feet. I believe the theory was that if Point Blank Shot applied, so did the extra d8.

That wouldn't have been so bad, except he allowed it to combine with Manyshot ... and forgot the clause that precision applies only to the first hit.

[Battleship789]

A long while back, I had a DM who allowed an Order of the Bow Initiate to add their precision damage only on anything within 30 feet. I believe the theory was that if Point Blank Shot applied, so did the extra d8.

That wouldn't have been so bad, except he allowed it to combine with Manyshot ... and forgot the clause that precision applies only to the first hit.

Meh, that's not that bad (basically duplicates a Scout with Skirmish and Greater Manyshot, but with less attack rolls.)

My DM has run a game (which he consulted with me for some mechanics stuff) where he allowed any bonus type to stack. However, the game was gestalt and the players are rather horrible at optimizing, so it wasn't too bad (as far as gestalt goes.)

[Starbuck_II]

A long while back, I had a DM who allowed an Order of the Bow Initiate to add their precision damage only on anything within 30 feet. I believe the theory was that if Point Blank Shot applied, so did the extra d8.

That wouldn't have been so bad, except he allowed it to combine with Manyshot ... and forgot the clause that precision applies only to the first hit.

The Prestiege Class would suck otherwise I think would be a good reason.

[killem2]

Of course, he had a physical copy of the Player's Handbook, 3.0 version, sitting on the chair next to him, so I immediately grabbed it, flipped to feather fall (page 203; I have a good memory for these types of things), pointed the free action casting time to him, and told him to show me the book on his computer that says otherwise... And he opened up the Spell Bible. Which, to his merit, absolutely did have a version of feather fall that was not an immediate action casting time... But it also required manifester levels, and probably wasn't official content (because the psionic equivalent is catfall).

Yeah I have that PDF too.

Three version appear 3.0 PHB, 3.5 PHB, and then Psion Handbook 3.0. That dm was stupid. Everything in the PDF is arranged by sections, so if he had taken a min to scroll up he would have see that. You're better off.

[Shalist]

Protection from evil = mindblank.

Fear? Immune. Paralysis, sleep, confusion, dazed, etc? Yup, they affect your mind, so you're immune.

[jindra34]

I had a DM who did about the lesser half of these things. In a game with rotating DM's. And then claimed that because he was currently DM we couldn't throw him out of the group (not just the game the group). Needless to say he quickly got proven wrong.

[Threadnaught]

I had a DM who did about the lesser half of these things. In a game with rotating DM's. And then claimed that because he was currently DM we couldn't throw him out of the group (not just the game the group). Needless to say he quickly got proven wrong.

Rotating DMs with their own separate campaigns? Or rotating DMs all sharing the same notes therefore no allowance for any long term planning by any DM or characters?

If it's the first one, sure it's a lot of paperwork for every player involved as it means one character per campaign, plus their own campaign. However, it does allow players to experience many different settings and rule interpretations in a single group.

The second is just... How do people even do that? How do people handle having their character stomped by their own misfortune combined with the DM's good luck, without going all out to kill said DM's character when the roles are reversed?
Add to this the fact that every member of the group has to agree with exactly which rules are in play, the exact setting, the exact plot, exactly how NPCs behave and even more.

Let me summarize, if it's rotating DMs with their own campaigns, your group was harsh, at least without further information to explain how said D was a douchey player. If it's the second one, rotating DMs for a single campaign, fair play.

[jindra34]

Rotating DMs with their own separate campaigns? Or rotating DMs all sharing the same notes therefore no allowance for any long term planning by any DM or characters?

If it's the first one, sure it's a lot of paperwork for every player involved as it means one character per campaign, plus their own campaign. However, it does allow players to experience many different settings and rule interpretations in a single group.

The second is just... How do people even do that? How do people handle having their character stomped by their own misfortune combined with the DM's good luck, without going all out to kill said DM's character when the roles are reversed?
Add to this the fact that every member of the group has to agree with exactly which rules are in play, the exact setting, the exact plot, exactly how NPCs behave and even more.
Let me summarize, if it's rotating DMs with their own campaigns, your group was harsh, at least without further information to explain how said D was a douchey player. If it's the second one, rotating DMs for a single campaign, fair play.

It was mostly a series of micro-campaigns within one world and mostly with the same characters. And the DM in question had kinda been being an ass before, and we had already discussed the fact that he needed to get his act together or he was out. Also with the exception of him we were all pretty layed back about the actual game and just trying to have some fun.

[Threadnaught]

series of micro-campaigns within one world and mostly with the same characters

DM in question had kinda been being an ass before

Fair play then, you're better off without them.

[Firechanter]

To add my two cents about rotating DMs: it can work quite nicely, especially in published settings. In one game, we had a regular DM, who sometimes felt he needed a timeout and then he'd pass the sceptre to me. He typically dmed published modules for us and we switched only after a module was finished. So there wasn't really a "campaign" for the most part, the group just tiggered across Faerun and took on whatever task presented itself.

Except on one occasion, when after we wrapped up an adventure, he slipped me a note with the corner stats of the villain that escaped ("ECL 9 Tiefling Sorcerer" and stuff like that). So over the next two sessions, I had the group track down the villain, from Faerun over the Outlands and Curst all the way to Sigil. They managed to capture him, and take him back to the group's employer. We switched back and forth a couple more times before the game ended.

[Ganorenas]

I was not the DM or a player at the time, but a "power gamer" friend of mine, that truly couldn't optimize his way to tier 1 on a wizard, played a shadow dancer that killed Aeries (sorry of I spell his name incorrectly, the Greek diety of war) through a combination of the following:

Strength damage from wounding weapons
The shadow dancer ability didn't teleport him though shadows, it put him on the plane of shadows. Which made him immune to attacks from those on the material plane.

Combat went like this:

He would shadow jump, hide, sneak attack, sunder the ARMOR, shield, weapons, everything aeries had (who could not retaliate due to lack of knowing he was there.) then fought him and killed him straight up, mono e mono, with wounding weapons (killing him by Str damage).

What I learned:
The DM was lacking in the ability to read diety immunities.
Battle sense, and other sensing abilities were ignored.
Greek dieties cannot seethe future, or plane shift. Or teleport.
Greek dieties stand around while their items are being destroyed.

This player doesn't know how shadows work.
This player didn't point out any of the above, because he also had no idea, and refused to believe he would have lost had the diety been played by someone with a moderate amount of reading skill and an int score.

Wounding weapons pierce diety immunities "because it was all in his stuff"
Sundering armor works. =\



I still laugh to myself, since I DM for him, the day he will challenge a diety I control.


(I understand how it all shouldn't have worked, and pointing these out to him don't help, he is one of those guys that think they rule the game, without true system mastery)

[mishka_shaw]

(I understand how it all shouldn't have worked, and pointing these out to him don't help, he is one of those guys that think they rule the game, without true system mastery)

My god I understand that heh. So many times have I mis-read a rule than said to another player that the fight might of gone worse if done properly and so they should be careful when rushing that type of enemy again. They than go on about "well I would of done this instead" ...I than have to point out how that would of failed too but alas they never listen.

The worst intepretation of the rules so far has been when my friend DM stated that a PC can be intimidated and you HAVE to comply. Granted you can't intimidate someone to jump into lava but if I was told to sheaf my weapon or get off my mount, which would be suicide if I was ambushed after, than I have to comply. Same goes for intimidating loot to yourself.

Although I myself intepreted a rule wrong when I first started my own campaign. I thought those additional spells per day, from attributes, were not restricted by level. So people with 18 charisma could cast level 4 spells at level 1.
I guess in my defence I eventually read the ruels and fixed it....a year later.

[hymer]

I remember a fellow player who was visibly distraught and a little angry, when he was informed that no, his singleclass Githzerai monk would not end up having a spell resistance of 15+(2*class level). The DM actually felt he should only get the better of the racial SR and Diamond Soul.
It was the same player who was very happy multiclassing as a fighter with his gish. Turned out it wasn't just the advantage of bonus feats - it was the belief that you don't have to live up to the requirements of bonus feats, and he really wanted Improved Precise Shot (or whatever feat it was) now, at level 4.

Edit: He also once asked if he could trade a first level spell slot into a permanent shillelagh spell, though I think that was in 2nd edition. And he had these wonderful ideas about how he would trade away 11th level class features (or somesuch) to very tangible bonuses now at level 2 he'd just got to.
Very... creative. Really a nice guy, though.

[Spuddles]

Well I would expect his voice to have some weight among his peers, though. And when I hear SKR, I primarily think of his personal homepage and the hilarious nonsense he wrote there in full earnest. Really, read it to catch a glimpse of how this man understands the game he has helped write. It may cost some Sanity Points, though.
What's probably taking the cake would be his proposed "feat point system", where just for example he expresses the opinion that Skill Focus is twice as valuable as Quicken Spell.

So, yeah... when I read "SKR", I don't really expect anything more than a facepalm.

Or how, on a ten point system, TWF is 11 points, Great Fortitude is is 10, and Natural Spell is worth 5.

[Venger]

mono e mono

deity rules are awful, but there's no excuse for that

NB: this gave me a great mental image of him beating the tar out of Ares with am amp or a radio or something, or him and Ares dueling on cheap electric guitars.

Mano a mano means "hand to hand" in spanish, with mano being hand (yes, it's "hands: the hands of fate" ) which sounds like what they were doing (somehow)

sundering armor, dude what?