Fantasy Tropes/Cliches that Annoy You

[Potato_Priest]

No dragons. I'm a simple man. I want dragons. Your book would be better with dragons. Maybe a dragon could eat the jerky male lead? Sure werewolves may be Mr. Alpha Predator, but everything's lower on the food chain than giant incendiary reptiles, and it's important to keep this in mind.

I can't really see that as a problem. If an author/DM wants to not include something in their setting because it doesn't fit, whether that thing is werewolves, dragons, or chupacabras, I don't see anything wrong with leaving it out.

Also, to all the Dragons should always be a threat! people: The minute you bind a dragon to in-game math, it is at some point not going to be a significant challenge anymore, even if it does fight tactically. Personally, I'd rather have some weak dragons for players to fight at low levels than make them only a level 20+ challenge, because dragons are cool and I don't want them to be super rare. For dragons to be common (and for them to even exist in many campaigns, since not everyone goes to the high levels), they have to be defeatable under everyday circumstances.

[BRC]

"Latest fad"? IIRC, most dragons in real-world myth were horrendously dangerous beasts, not intelligent enemies.

I wonder if the tradition of Sentient Dragons started by using Dragons as a metaphor for people.

"The Princess was kidnapped by some nearby Baron" gets turned into "The Princess was kidnapped by a Dragon".


There's actually a thing in my current setting where "Dragon" both refers to reclusive, powerful flying lizard creatures who guard important sites/relics/knowledge, AND an especially impressive human. Like, the greatest swordsmith in the empire might be referred to as "The Dragon of The Forge" or something like that.

The first Emperor, after suffering a major defeat in battle, supposedly spent ten years learning different Arts (Tactics, Swordsmanship, Magic, Governance, and Poetry/Philosophy) from five Dragons. Because of this ambiguity, it's unclear if he was trained by magical reptiles, or just revered masters of these various fields.

The fact that Dragons often take human form does not help this confusion at all.

[Bohandas]

"Latest fad"? IIRC, most dragons in real-world myth were horrendously dangerous beasts, not intelligent enemies.

Well. in western myth at any rate (edit: with the exception of depictions of satan as a dragon). But the point still stands as long as it isn't an eastern influenced setting

[Deepbluediver]

"Latest fad"? IIRC, most dragons in real-world myth were horrendously dangerous beasts, not intelligent enemies.

Western dragons, yes- they tended to be more bestial and usually represented the forces of evil, hence "St. George the Dragon Slayer" and stuff like that. Eastern dragons, AFAIK, were usually more intelligent and tended to be either neutral or outright heavenly (though they also interacted less with humans).


Swordsage'd: several other people have said something similar already :(

Well. in western myth at any rate. But the point still stands as long as it isn't an eastern influenced setting

Here's something to talk about- why does our ENTIRE world need to be just one setting? Even in medieval Europe there were different cultures. Admittedly if your whole story takes place in one little area then yes, its understandable, but how many people have gameworld where you could travel between D&D-classic and Oriental Adventures, or something like that? That's the goal for my homebrewed setting, and since the smaller of my two main continents is roughly the size of the entire Eurasian landmass, I think I have enough room to make it work.

[warty goblin]

I can't really see that as a problem. If an author/DM wants to not include something in their setting because it doesn't fit, whether that thing is werewolves, dragons, or chupacabras, I don't see anything wrong with leaving it out.

Also, to all the Dragons should always be a threat! people: The minute you bind a dragon to in-game math, it is at some point not going to be a significant challenge anymore, even if it does fight tactically. Personally, I'd rather have some weak dragons for players to fight at low levels than make them only a level 20+ challenge, because dragons are cool and I don't want them to be super rare. For dragons to be common, they have to be defeatable under everyday circumstances.

That's making some real strong assumptions about the sort of powers that a player can amass. Not every game is D&D. In the basically systemless RP I'm playing with my girlfriend at the moment, there's a dragon I have exactly zero.squat percent chance of ever damaging in the slightest. Running away is the name of the game there, and the game's much better off for it.

[Honest Tiefling]

"Latest fad"? IIRC, most dragons in real-world myth were horrendously dangerous beasts, not intelligent enemies.

1) The Hydra was a big ol' dumb beast that had to get help from a divinely sent crab. No signs of intelligence there, and it's probably one of the grand-daddies of dragon myths of Europe.

2) On similar vein, the Python was another dumb beast.

3) Jörmungandr, despite being the child of a near-divine being, never shows intelligent characteristics.

4) Lindwurms are usually depicted as beasts.

The idea for an intelligent dragon for DnD probably came from Smaug from Tolkien. Many dragons or serpents in Norse mythology are just beasts, with the exception of Fafnir...Who was originally a dwarf, so he might have been intelligent due to that reason alone.

[VoxRationis]

Super-powerful intelligent dragons aren't for every setting. It's hard to have such creatures around without having them sort of dominate everything—even if they don't literally control or dominate the setting, large portions of it are going to have to be written specifically to explain why they don't. Thus, your game about political intrigue among feuding city-states and their uneasy relationships between burghers and nobility is swamped with a lot of time given over to talking about dragons.

[JamesDodds]

Holier than thou paladins.

[BRC]

Holier than thou paladins.

Idea: Paladins as a Punishment Detail.

At 3rd level Paladins become immune to disease. For the purpose of this setting, while Paladins will not spread disease, and suffer no symptoms, the disease itself (at least in some cases) is not eradicated.

Paladins in this setting are criminals who have been infected with a deadly, but not particularly infectious, disease by the resident Theocracy. So long as they dedicate their life to Heroism and follow the Paladins Code, the disease remains dormant.
If they ever Fall, they lose their Divine Health and soon fall sick.

Paladins are, as a rule either shameful and repentant, or snide, grumpy scoundrels performing acts of heroism on pain of terrible death.

[Honest Tiefling]

Holier than thou paladins.

Yeah, in some cases it's weird that paladins get treated as being holier then the clerics, who can cast literal miracles while the paladin can't.

[JamesDodds]

Yeah, in some cases it's weird that paladins get treated as being holier then the clerics, who can cast literal miracles while the paladin can't.

It's moreso that paladins think they are letter of the law and righteous above all else. Or maybe I am just describing lawful good here instead.... hmm..

[Deepbluediver]

Yeah, in some cases it's weird that paladins get treated as being holier then the clerics, who can cast literal miracles while the paladin can't.

D&D kind of blurred the line between Paladins and Clerics (ignoring the magic/melee power imbalance for the moment) but the real issue I think was making them a base-class. That gives a feeling of common-ness IMO that is directly at odds with sense of awe and wonder a paladin is supposed to evoke. Just based on the fluff, I'd say it feels much more like a PrC.

But I kind of have the suspicion that when designing the base-classes for 3.0/3.5; someone on the team said something like "we need more tanks and healers so all the standard RPG roles are filled", and the response was "paladin!"


Edit: IMO Paladins should be RARE. Like, count all the existing paladins on your fingers rare. The PCs, of course, are more likely to encounter or even include one among their number because they are the protagonists of the story, but it should still be something that feels special. The idea of "an order of paladins" or something like that should be laughable because of how few of them there are.

Holier than thou paladins.

One of my favorite novels of all time- The Deed of Paksenarrion, was reportedly written specifically to counter this trope. It really pushes the idea of paladins as friendly and charismatic leaders, not expys of the Spanish Inquisition.

[Honest Tiefling]

It's moreso that paladins think they are letter of the law and righteous above all else. Or maybe I am just describing lawful good here instead.... hmm..

Well, they can both be problems! Through I keep hearing people say that Lawful Good is often more good then Chaotic Good...I can't help but feel like that wasn't quite the intention behind alignments...

[Arbane]

Holier than thou paladins.

in D&D? I can't imagine WHY someone who was literally chosen by the Forces of Righteousness to be their hand in the mundane world would be 'Holier than thou'.

[Blackhawk748]

Super-powerful intelligent dragons aren't for every setting. It's hard to have such creatures around without having them sort of dominate everything—even if they don't literally control or dominate the setting, large portions of it are going to have to be written specifically to explain why they don't. Thus, your game about political intrigue among feuding city-states and their uneasy relationships between burghers and nobility is swamped with a lot of time given over to talking about dragons.

But what about Dragons???

[Deepbluediver]

Well, they can both be problems! Through I keep hearing people say that Lawful Good is often more good then Chaotic Good...I can't help but feel like that wasn't quite the intention behind alignments...

I think trying to rank the various "X-Good" alignments as more or less gooder is the wrong way to look at things. IMO, Chaotic alignments tend to be more self-centered, and I don't mean that in the negative/greedy way. I mean most of the things they care about are internal, whereas Lawful alignments tend to be more externally focused. Both LG and CG characters can have a code or a standard they hold themselves to, but the CG character is more OK with other people developing their own codes for their own reasons, while the LG character would much prefer if everyone tried to live up to his code. If a LG and CG character both come across a government that's oppressing the commonfolk, the LG character sees a system in need of fixing, while the CG character is more likely to see the system itself as the root cause of the problem. The LG character sets about reforming the government, while the CG character tries to educate and empower the populous.

In other words, Good cares about others more than Evil, and Law cares about others more then Chaos. So Lawful-Good is the most outward facing alignment, and conversely Chaotic Evil is the most inward. This is why IMO another good description of CE is "hedonistic"- it's the alignment most likely to do what it wants when it wants, for no greater reason than because it wanted to.

[rs2excelsior]

It's moreso that paladins think they are letter of the law and righteous above all else. Or maybe I am just describing lawful good here instead.... hmm..

Honestly, you aren't describing a paladin or a lawful good alignment. You're describing a paladin (or a lawful good character) being played poorly.

Of course, the Paladin class is, by nature, easy to play poorly, but I still think the root problem lies with the players, not the class. I've got no real interest in igniting another "paladins are an awful class" debate here, so I'll just state my opinion and leave it at that.

Regarding various fantasy species/subspecies... that's a really interesting and detailed take on things. I still can't decide whether I prefer something with internal logic like that (even if it's not outright stated), or just assuming biology doesn't work exactly the same as it does irl. Probably depends a lot on the tone of the setting.

[Honest Tiefling]

Regarding various fantasy species/subspecies... that's a really interesting and detailed take on things. I still can't decide whether I prefer something with internal logic like that (even if it's not outright stated), or just assuming biology doesn't work exactly the same as it does irl. Probably depends a lot on the tone of the setting.

I think I agree with this. If the setting is quite fantastical and there's magic everywhere, then why not have Dragonborn and Tieflings? If the setting is extremely low magic, then maybe Homo Cultro Auris can't interbreed with Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

One would also assume that in higher magic settings, people are likely to accept strange folk a lot better then when travel is extremely difficult. So if no one can teleport and there's several dragons between you and people who look different, I don't think tieflings, war-forged, goliaths or dragonborn or other weirdos are going to do so well.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Regarding various fantasy species/subspecies... that's a really interesting and detailed take on things. I still can't decide whether I prefer something with internal logic like that (even if it's not outright stated), or just assuming biology doesn't work exactly the same as it does irl. Probably depends a lot on the tone of the setting.

Why not both?

I'll admit, my setting was designed somewhat backward. I knew what elements it had to incorporate (since I wanted to include as much of the PHB as possible), and so had to find an internal logic that let them fit. This internal logic included throwing out earthly-biology and inheritance as part of a much bigger central setting issue, but it works coherently (at least in my opinion).

[Segev]

In 1e AD&D, the paladin was a "subclass" of Fighter, which really was just its own class which fit a similar role to the fighter. It also did double-duty as a divine gish, a way to play a single-class fighter/cleric. (Admittedly, since it used the magic-user XP track, it wasn't leveling up much faster than a fighter/cleric.) It was, however, also extremely powerful for its level and XP count. It could dish out damage like a fighter, heal almost like a cleric, and use the coolest magical swords out there. This is not sarcasm or a joke; that was a big draw. Class restrictions on magic item use actually made fighters much more attractive than they otherwise would be, because the really powerful items were intelligent, multiple-spells-per-day-slinging swords and the like which outstripped any other kind of companion you could bring with you, and they tended to be fighter, paladin, or ranger-only.

3e's Paladin is...better than fighter. That's about all you can say for it. Its MAD and its strict RP requirements now are just drags on an already sub-par class.

[Guancyto]

Helpless questgivers.

Recently had a bit in a game where some sort of gribbly was snatching away a farmer's herd. Apparently it had kidnapped or killed a full third of his herd by the time the adventurers go there, but here's the key: he didn't know what it looked like. He didn't know when it struck. He didn't know how it killed except by what was left behind. He had, apparently, simply sat around and hoped it would go away while his livelihood was steadily destroyed.

Now I know a few farmers, and there's not a one among them that wouldn't have at least waited up nights to try and get a look at what was doing it or tried to identify what was going on so they could present the authorities with as much information as possible. Many I know would've waited up nights with a shotgun (crossbow in our fantasy setting) and tried to solve the problem themselves.

That was kind of a repeating pattern in the game. And the thing that makes it stick in my craw is that there was this 2edgy4u character who kept going on about how people were weak and needed to be dominated for their own good. And over the course of the game my idealistic paladin finally had to go, 'you know what? He's actually got a point, these people suck.'

I hate this. Hate hate hate this. NOW. If the questgiver is genuinely powerless and/or marginalized (a bunch of kids know what the monster is, but they live in a place where people don't listen to kids; a woman knows what the Baron is up to, but she lives in a society where women have no power; a peasant would actually very much like to kill the monster, but he lives in a society where peasants are not allowed to own weapons) then I'm okay with them having made no progress at their goal and needing adventurers to swing in and save the day.

But without that sort of caveat, let the hero get in on the tail end of a farmer's two-long-month struggle with the gribbly where he's shot it twice and it wasn't fazed and it almost took his leg so he finally admits he's in over his head, so now he needs a hero of renown to take care of it for him. Let the randos have some pride, man.

[BRC]

Helpless questgivers.

Recently had a bit in a game where some sort of gribbly was snatching away a farmer's herd. Apparently it had kidnapped or killed a full third of his herd by the time the adventurers go there, but here's the key: he didn't know what it looked like. He didn't know when it struck. He didn't know how it killed except by what was left behind. He had, apparently, simply sat around and hoped it would go away while his livelihood was steadily destroyed.

Now I know a few farmers, and there's not a one among them that wouldn't have at least waited up nights to try and get a look at what was doing it or tried to identify what was going on so they could present the authorities with as much information as possible. Many I know would've waited up nights with a shotgun (crossbow in our fantasy setting) and tried to solve the problem themselves.

That was kind of a repeating pattern in the game. And the thing that makes it stick in my craw is that there was this 2edgy4u character who kept going on about how people were weak and needed to be dominated for their own good. And over the course of the game my idealistic paladin finally had to go, 'you know what? He's actually got a point, these people suck.'

I hate this. Hate hate hate this. NOW. If the questgiver is genuinely powerless and/or marginalized (a bunch of kids know what the monster is, but they live in a place where people don't listen to kids; a woman knows what the Baron is up to, but she lives in a society where women have no power; a peasant would actually very much like to kill the monster, but he lives in a society where peasants are not allowed to own weapons) then I'm okay with them having made no progress at their goal and needing adventurers to swing in and save the day.

But without that sort of caveat, let the hero get in on the tail end of a farmer's two-long-month struggle with the gribbly where he's shot it twice and it wasn't fazed and it almost took his leg so he finally admits he's in over his head, so now he needs a hero of renown to take care of it for him. Let the randos have some pride, man.

There is a question I try to have an answer for, whether proposing a plan as a player, or dangling a plot hook as a GM, which is "Why hasn't somebody else done this already".
It's not always a hard question to answer, but it IS an important one.

I recently ran a murder mystery session in my campaign, the murders had been going on for some time, but I put a lot of work into baking in explanations for why the PC's could figure it out now, but the earlier (fairly competent) investigators could not.

1) The latest batch of murders (Occuring mere hours before the PC's arrived) had several unique clues that hadn't come up before and helped shed light on the murders.
2) This particular method of murder would have been impossible without new tricks that the Villains developed, tricks the PCs were familiar with.
3) The killers methods exploited something that the Locals considered commonplace, but the PC's found unusual, prompting them to focus on it as the key element.

[Potato_Priest]

Helpless questgivers.

That does sound bad.

Personally, I am more annoyed by its inverse cousin, however, the godlike questgiver who could easily solve the problem themselves if it wasn't for that one wee little prophesy.

[Honest Tiefling]

I can't help but feel that the helpless quest giver thing might be a reaction to DMPCs ruining campaigns and friendships. Can't be accused of super powerful NPCs with Farmer McDimwit!

[Lord Raziere]

I can't help but feel that the helpless quest giver thing might be a reaction to DMPCs ruining campaigns and friendships. Can't be accused of super powerful NPCs with Farmer McDimwit!

Yeah, its kind of the lesser of two evils.

I mean.

at least the weaker guy seeking out stronger people to help him solve the problem makes sense...you DMPC it though, and the players will probably NEVER forgive you, not judging by how I've seen people on the forum react to the idea of ANY DMPC ever.

[Beleriphon]

The idea for an intelligent dragon for DnD probably came from Smaug from Tolkien. Many dragons or serpents in Norse mythology are just beasts, with the exception of Fafnir...Who was originally a dwarf, so he might have been intelligent due to that reason alone.

Dragons in Norse myth are usually unintelligent, but also powerful engines of destruction.

That said Smaug is very much the current mold of the intelligent, powerful dragon.

[2D8HP]

Starting in a tavern.

May I suggest an alternative?

Start in a Dungeon which the PC's are trying to escape with the silver & gold they have looted, then have them try to avoid some bandits who are lurking about ready to fleece adventurers who have survived the Dungeon, and then reward the PC's with XP if and only if they spend their loot on ale and good times in the Tavern!






That's a proper ending!

[Deepbluediver]

Starting in a tavern.

May I suggest an alternative?

Start in a Dungeon which the PC's are trying to escape with the silver & gold they have looted, then have them try to avoid some bandits who are lurking about ready to fleece adventurers who have survived the Dungeon, and then reward the PC's with XP if and only if they spend their loot on ale and good times in the Tavern

I've never had the chance to run it, but I kind of want to do an adventure where the PCs start off in prison (or at least jail).

Starting off as an established adventuring group who were back in town celebrating their latest successful haul, and the last thing anyone remembers is that orc challenging you to a drinking contest....

Have the players go through all the ringamarol of making mid-level characters, figuring out their items, their abilities, etc. Then strip 'em down and toss them in a cell, with the local Duke/Magistrate/Town-Council wanting to bring vague charges against them. The mood-whiplash alone should crank that classic adventurer-paranoia up to 11 and pin it there for a while.

[8BitNinja]

It's moreso that paladins think they are letter of the law and righteous above all else. Or maybe I am just describing lawful good here instead.... hmm..

How dare you say that of our noble cause! I should smite you just for saying that!

But in all seriousness, some people just don't know how to play paladins right. A good example of a paladin done right (in my opinion) is Reinhard from the anime/light novel Re: Zero. (I'm on episode 14 of the anime, so if something is revealed about him that makes him not paladin-like, I didn't know.

[Honest Tiefling]

I've never had the chance to run it, but I kind of want to do an adventure where the PCs start off in prison (or at least jail).

I admit, as a player, if I got a promise of getting enough gear to be semi-functional eventually, I would be tempted to agree to this just to avoid having to figure out my character's inventory beforehand.