Most Ridiculous Rules in RPGS

[Professor Gnoll]

I heard an idea once that each spell is actually an independent, living being. Preparing the spell every day is briefly binding that spell to your service, and using it releases it until you can catch another one.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

I've always thought of it as 'they've trained themselves to tap into this energy X amount of times per day', with X being spells per day. I've always kind of pushed aside the fluff about memorizing spells, and thought of it as rather like loading a gun: a wizard does these rituals to cast X spell Y times per day, and gets more efficient when leveling up.

A rule that I find ridiculous: weapon proficiencies in 3.X. While mechanically I like the categories, and I like it a hell of a lot better than most systems where you individually take weapon skills, it sometimes plum doesn't make sense. Simple weapons I think are the worst; spears, clubs, and daggers make sense, but crossbows and slings? Crossbows I can sorta get, with the reloading being the exception (stone-age barbarian might get point-and-shoot, but not reloading), but the sling is a difficult weapon for ANYBODY to use. Hell, a halfling sling staff would be easier, and that's an exotic!

[Jormengand]

Also, for a caster who prepares spells, the spell preparation is essentially most of the casting - it's like the dire half-dragon version of holding the charge on a touch spell, which is why there's a limit on how many you can hold at once - and the "Casting" is actually just finishing off the casting. Unfortunately for you, some spells like resurrection and quest can't be held right at the end - they have to be held about 10 minutes from the end. Fortunately for you, some spells like Feather Fall can be cast pretty much completely at the preparation stage.

[Frozen_Feet]

A lot of the rules called out here aren't ridiculous, or even bad; they just happened to be the first way some idea was implemented in an RPG. In some cases (XP-for-gold, hit points, Vancian magic, random character generation, racial level limits), it's clear the criticism completely fails to even grasp why a the thing would've been done that way.

Alternatives may seem obvious now, but weren't when these were invented, because there was no real comparison point. (Or because the comparison point was something completely different - see Chainmail and wargaming.)

But for truly ridiculous rules, AD&D psionics is a good example. It looks interesting, but in practice is unfeasible - and looking at in-depth reveals it's even worse, having no real tactical depth despite its complexity.

I recall Cyberpunk also had issues due to separating Mathematics to its own skill from, say, Accouting. Even more hilarious was how Library Search was its own skill from Net Database searches. The core of the system was solid, but how the authors ended up categorizing the skills lead to many redundancies and weird interactions.

[Zombimode]

I've always kind of pushed aside the fluff about memorizing spells

Well, thats the thing: this supposed fluff only exists in some peoples heads. It is not part of the 3.5 fluff for magic. To the contrary even, seeing how Read Magic can be prepared from memory.

What is really puzzling to me is that most of those people that cling to the "memorize" fluff are also those who actually really don't like this idea making it a self-made misery.
Once again the quote by the Giant in Psyren sig could not be more fitting.

[Frozen_Feet]

@NinjaXenomorph: even more ridiculous is how they manage to classify kama differently from a sickle, when they're the same damn thing.

While overall fairly inconsequential in the scope of the system, it's clear the designers had very poor idea what many weapons are, nevermind how they were used, and this lead to the weapon system in general being lackluster.

[Max_Killjoy]

Well, thats the thing: this supposed fluff only exists in some peoples heads. It is not part of the 3.5 fluff for magic. To the contrary even, seeing how Read Magic can be prepared from memory.

What is really puzzling to me is that most of those people that cling to the "memorize" fluff are also those who actually really don't like this idea making it a self-made misery.
Once again the quote by the Giant in Psyren sig could not be more fitting.

The D&D family of games did exist before 3.5... and Gygax made repeated references to "memorizing" and "equipping" spells in answering questions about the system.

Are you saying that memorizing spells was never a thing, or that the criticism of Vancian magic is invalid because 3.5 specifically doesn't have it and nothing but 3.5 counts, or what?


Some interesting things regarding the concept, from the original fiction...

On memorizing spells:

...They would be poignant corrosive spells, of such a nature that one would daunt the brain of an ordinary man and two render him mad. Mazirian, by dint of stringent exercise, could encompass four of the most formidable, or six of the lesser spells.

...Mazirian made a selection from his books and with great effort forced five spells upon his brain: ...

On having used a spell:

...The mesmeric spell had been expended, and he had none other in his brain.

On having spells at the ready:

"You may in any event, Mazirian. Are you with powerful spells today?"

Or here -- http://www.dyingearth.com/files/GARY...CK%20VANCE.pdf -- where Gygax talks about it.

To my way of thinking, the concept of a spell itself being magical, that its written form carried energy, seemed a perfect way to balance the mage against other types of characters in the game. The memorization of the spell required time and concentration so as to impart not merely the written content but also its magical energies. When subsequently cast—by speaking or some other means—the words or gestures, or whatever triggered the magical force of the spell, leaving a blank place in the brain where the previously memorized spell had been held.

Personally, I find the entire concept of spell slots, memorized or prepared spells, etc, to be rather insipid and inane.

---

@NinjaXenomorph: even more ridiculous is how they manage to classify kama differently from a sickle, when they're the same damn thing.

While overall fairly inconsequential in the scope of the system, it's clear the designers had very poor idea what many weapons are, nevermind how they were used, and this lead to the weapon system in general being lackluster.

That would be par for the course, though... see also the complete misuse of the term "long sword" from the very beginning, "studded leather armor", and any other number of conceptual curses inflicted upon fantasy RPGs.

[CharonsHelper]

I agree completely. But it became much much more ridiculous in 3e when they tried to shoehorn every NPC in the world into the class/level system. So becoming a better baker automatically makes someone better at combat too.

That part was pretty ridiculous. Why should a master tailor be able to beat-up low level adventurers. It reminds my of Everquest and the level 45 merchant I accidentally poked.

I just always houseruled that leveling in Expert only have you skill-points & feats; no BAB/HD/saves.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

While the sword dichotomy is annoying, I will admit that mechanically it works and has a niche. The fact that most blade-type weapons should be able to do both slashing and piercing damage bugs me, but not too much. I don't mind studded leather, though, since there are similar things, like brigandine armor.

[Max_Killjoy]

While the sword dichotomy is annoying, I will admit that mechanically it works and has a niche. The fact that most blade-type weapons should be able to do both slashing and piercing damage bugs me, but not too much. I don't mind studded leather, though, since there are similar things, like brigandine armor.

Brigandine is likely where the studded leather nonsense started, with people misinterpreting artwork or images without examining the actual armor -- the rivets or studs showing on the outside have nothing to do with directly providing protection, they're what's holding the metal plates in place on the inside of the cloth or leather -- it's those plates that provide the protection. Take away the plates, and all you have are "nails" in your armor that a lucky hit will drive into your skin.

On the swords, many CAN be used cutting and thrusting, it's only at the extremes that you can't thrust (because of an extreme curve or unsuited "tip") or can't cut (because of lack of mass or no functional edge).

[Friv]

That part was pretty ridiculous. Why should a master tailor be able to beat-up low level adventurers. It reminds my of Everquest and the level 45 merchant I accidentally poked.

I just always houseruled that leveling in Expert only have you skill-points & feats; no BAB/HD/saves.

Obviously it's because, in D&D, as you level as a tailor or smith you get more and more low-level adventurers arriving at your shop and trying to mug you. So you have to learn to fight to hold them off.

[Thrudd]

Obviously it's because, in D&D, as you level as a tailor or smith you get more and more low-level adventurers arriving at your shop and trying to mug you. So you have to learn to fight to hold them off.

lol Yes. Every D&D town is like the tenement in "Kung Fu Hustle".

[Jay R]

2E dual classing rules. Not only do you need high stats even to qualify, but you are forbidden to use any class features of your original class while advancing in your new class. If you do use such a class feature you get no experience for that particular encounter and half experience for the entire adventure.

This always made perfect sense to me. Suppose you are trying to become a Thief, but faced with a locked door you say, "I don't want to try picking the lock. I'm a high-strength Fighter. I'll just break it down." That's indicative of an attitude that would include not practicing sneaking, etc. You aren't focused on becoming a Thief.

It's no different from a driver trying to become a swimmer. Instead of swimming across the bay, he just drives around the long way. He reached the goal, but he didn't gain any experience as a swimmer.

-------------

The rules that makes no sense to me are many of the results of the multi-classing approach in 3e/3.5e. You can become a barbarian later in life, rather than being raised in a barbaric culture, or become a wizard without ever spending lots of time learning spells, or (worst of all) suddenly become a Fighter without ever training with, or even seeing, the weapons you are now supposed to be proficient with.

[JoeJ]

That part was pretty ridiculous. Why should a master tailor be able to beat-up low level adventurers. It reminds my of Everquest and the level 45 merchant I accidentally poked.

I just always houseruled that leveling in Expert only have you skill-points & feats; no BAB/HD/saves.

Whereas I don't use class or level at all for most NPCs, but simply give them whatever combination of abilities I want them to have. (And I don't play 3.x any more.)

The rules that makes no sense to me are many of the results of the multi-classing approach in 3e/3.5e. You can become a barbarian later in life, rather than being raised in a barbaric culture, or become a wizard without ever spending lots of time learning spells, or (worst of all) suddenly become a Fighter without ever training with, or even seeing, the weapons you are now supposed to be proficient with.

It's especially silly if you don't require any sort of training, or even downtime, to gain levels. Except for classes like sorcerer, with hereditary abilities based on a particular bloodline. That's equally ridiculous with or without training.

[Spore]

In Degenesis: Rebirth nonlethal combat damages (like from a fist fight) "ego" instead of health points. Your ego can be so bruised that you have to recover a whole day. Possibly mostly complaining and whining. It's like hero points or wilpower from WoD except that you black out when at 0.

[JoeJ]

Not a rule per se, but a common way of evaluating rules that I've always found ridiculous is the idea that a game should be "balanced" in such a way that every PC is approximately as good as every other PC at winning a series of white room combats against randomly chosen "level appropriate" enemies.

[Honest Tiefling]

In Degenesis: Rebirth nonlethal combat damages (like from a fist fight) "ego" instead of health points. Your ego can be so bruised that you have to recover a whole day. Possibly mostly complaining and whining. It's like hero points or wilpower from WoD except that you black out when at 0.

Clearly, you mean HILARIOUS. I want to play this game and try to heal my ego by writing bad poetry. 'It was a dark and stormy night...JUST LIKE MY SOUL.'

[JoeJ]

This reminds me of the old Murphy's Rules column from Space Gamer.

Which, a quick Google search reveals, have been compiled into a book by Steve Jackson Games. They even helpfully posted a free preview.

[JAL_1138]

I recall Cyberpunk also had issues due to separating Mathematics to its own skill from, say, Accouting. Even more hilarious was how Library Search was its own skill from Net Database searches. The core of the system was solid, but how the authors ended up categorizing the skills lead to many redundancies and weird interactions.

Accounting doesn't take good math skills, just a pocket calculator or an Excel spreadsheet to handle the arithmetic. What it actually takes is knowledge of a complex mess of rules, regulations, laws, generally-accepted accounting practices, and in many cases the particular business entity in question (to determine whether adjusting entries need to be made, or how to classify a particular item, etc). Separating those actually does make sense.

[napoleon_in_rag]

The most ridiculous rule for D&D has always been alignments.

[AMFV]

The most ridiculous rule for D&D has always been alignments.

Well it can certainly lead to ridiculousness, but the actual premise makes some kind of sick sense if you use the standard cosmology and the standard cosmological stuff.

[thirdkingdom]

RPGS try to create a semblance of realism but many rules are so ridiculous that you can't even see the logic behind them.

My most ridiculous rule: The gold to exp rule was pretty ridiculous in AD&D 2e. One time I had a player open up a gold mine to gain exp through this method. From there on, I scrapped that rule.

What is your most ridiculous rule.

See, I would totally let the players do this if they wanted, and even give them XP for the gold they sell. I don't have my Dungeoneer's Survival Guide handy, but I do have some rules for ACKS based off the 2e Complete Dwarves. Let's see. The average gold mine is going to produce ore that is 50% pure gold; a team of 17 miners (this is detailed in ACKS terms, which I'm not bothering with here) produces one miner week per week and costs 40 gp. Based on the rules one miner week will yield 6 stone of gold ore; at 50% this yields 3 stone of smelted gold. A unit of gold weighs 4 stone and has a base value of 600 gp. Therefore, in one month you can yield enough ore to yield 24 stone of gold ore. When smelted this produces 12 stone of refined gold, or 3 total units with a base price of 1800 gp. You've got a total of 160 in wages to pay the miner for this, plus the cost (and time) of refining, plus the cost (and time) of transporting this gold to the market, plus the cost of any mercenaries hired to guard the mine/caravan whatever, plus the time your PCs spend overseeing the mine versus adventuring . . . . Let's assume they can clear 1400 gp per month for every "tree" of miners they have working the mine. Plus, the average mine is going to last for 51 miner-weeks, which means it will be played out in a year. Over the course of that year they will make 16,800 gp. Assuming a party if five adventurers and no henchmen they'd each earn 3,360 XP, which will basically take the average fighter from 1st to the upper middle of 2nd level . . . .

But if that's what my players really wanted to do with their time I would have no problem letting them do this.

Eh, but the way it was used was my players would bypass whatever monster collect the loot and escape. I did change the ruling though to promote exploration by giving players exp bonuses when they explored in new areas.

Again, that's kind of how the game was meant to be played. Out of curiosity, were you using encumbrance? Because ignoring that and allowing your PCs to escape from a monster lair carrying piles of coins would be certainly part of the problem.

[CharonsHelper]

Not a rule per se, but a common way of evaluating rules that I've always found ridiculous is the idea that a game should be "balanced" in such a way that every PC is approximately as good as every other PC at winning a series of white room combats against randomly chosen "level appropriate" enemies.

I don't think that most would promote balance in that sense, but I am a big fan of balance in how a character is able to shape the world as a whole. In a combat heavy game, this might be largely combat skills, but that's certainly not the only form of balance. If the system is cyberpunk espionage based, a hacker might be much weaker in a fight, but he pulls his weight by... hacking instead.

If you have absolutely no balance, the gaming can easily become an episode of Angel Summoner & BMX Bandit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw

And that's not any fun for BMX Bandit, and (depending upon the player) probably less fun for Angel Summoner too.

[napoleon_in_rag]

Well it can certainly lead to ridiculousness, but the actual premise makes some kind of sick sense if you use the standard cosmology and the standard cosmological stuff.

The idea that you can describe incredibly complex stuff like morality, ethics, motivation, religion, etc with a simple table is pretty ridiculous.

[JoeJ]

I don't think that most would promote balance in that sense, but I am a big fan of balance in how a character is able to shape the world as a whole. In a combat heavy game, this might be largely combat skills, but that's certainly not the only form of balance. If the system is cyberpunk espionage based, a hacker might be much weaker in a fight, but he pulls his weight by... hacking instead.

If you have absolutely no balance, the gaming can easily become an episode of Angel Summoner & BMX Bandit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw

And that's not any fun for BMX Bandit, and (depending upon the player) probably less fun for Angel Summoner too.

So how would you describe the balance in a game where Clark Kent and Lois Lane are both good character choices?

[AMFV]

The idea that you can describe incredibly complex stuff like morality, ethics, motivation, religion, etc with a simple table is pretty ridiculous.

There are certainly real world moral philosophies that explain things in fairly simple terms. Of course getting everything to fit into those terms can be tricky at best. But I would argue it's not particularly ridiculous if it can have sense. There can be logical parameters used for the alignment system. And it makes sense in-universe.

Of course, the difficulty with it, is that there's not usually sufficient time to go into it in-depth.

[CharonsHelper]

So how would you describe the balance in a game where Clark Kent and Lois Lane are both good character choices?

Unless it's an abstract system (FATE etc.) that sounds terrible. Keep Lois as an NPC. (Not that I'd want to play Superman either. He's too powerful to be interesting to me.)

[JoeJ]

Unless it's an abstract system (FATE etc.) that sounds terrible. Keep Lois as an NPC. (Not that I'd want to play Superman either. He's too powerful to be interesting to me.)

Why would that be terrible? I've never played the Smallville RPG, but the reviews I've seen all indicate that it works quite well. Which makes sense, actually, because if your metric is not combat power but ability to affect a dramatic storyline, Lois and Clark are pretty close to equal.

[The Glyphstone]

Why would that be terrible? I've never played the Smallville RPG, but the reviews I've seen all indicate that it works quite well. Which makes sense, actually, because if your metric is not combat power but ability to affect a dramatic storyline, Lois and Clark are pretty close to equal.

That's quite similar to how FATE works, at least in regards to its Aspects. So if that's how the Smallville RPG works, then the two are working on similar lines. But in any skill/objective-based system (not necessary combat power, look at Call of Cthulhu as an extremely objective/skill-centric game where combat is a last resort) the guy with all his stats maxed out through the roof is going to overshadow the regular human.

[ElFi]

I love the system as a whole, but Mutants and Masterminds' damage system leaves a lot to be desired.

• There is exactly one attack method in the entire game that can straight-up kill an opponent (the Disentegration power), and even then only if the opponent rolls really poorly. Otherwise, lethal damage is assumed to leave the target near death even if it should've left them as a bloody smear on the wall.
• Assuming the group's using critical fail rolls (mine does), a single roll of a 1 will leave your character unconscious and/or dying.
• Getting disabled (failing by 10 or more but less than 15 on a Toughness save against lethal damage) is the absolute worst thing that can happen to somebody, since it ostensibly keeps you in the fight while preventing you from actually doing anything.
• 3E has no rules for lethal damage whatsoever. All attacks are automatically assumed to be nonlethal, even if you're hitting somebody with a death ray or dropping a building on them.

In addition, the system is hilariously biased against characters with good Initiative rolls, since hitting somebody who's still flat-footed has a lot more benefits than it does in most other systems.

More dumb than ridiculous, but the fact that the Mental Shield and Sensory Shield powers exist when it's possible to become outright immune to mental and dazzle effects (which those two powers provide saving throw bonuses against respectively) for a pittance of points.

Create Object's rules are woefully underdeveloped. So, can I create spikes for a trap using this power? What about summoning a weapon? And what exactly does the Precise feat allow me to create?