"Wait, that didn't work right" - the Dysfunctional Rules Collection

[Douglas]

Is this true? Our campaign has a cleric with a negative dex modifier!!!

Yes, it is. "Bonus" refers specifically to positive modifiers. "Penalty" refers specifically to negative modifiers. If a rule applies to both, it uses the word "modifier". The rule in question is You can’t use your Dexterity bonus to AC (if any) while flat-footed.. Thus, creatures with a dexterity penalty still suffer from it when flat-footed.

[Steward]

That actually makes sense. Being caught off guard by an attack might eliminate any advantage that an agile person would get in a fight, but I don't see why being caught off guard would make someone who is unusually clumsy become less so all of a sudden!

[Eldest]

Random thing: with a very technical reading of Improved Precise Shot, you will hit whoever you are aiming for without a roll. Not quite a failed rule, but one where the feat should have been worded a bit better.

[deuxhero]

Honestly though, being able to ignore AC at level 11 on an underpowered way of attacking is not all that bad an idea for a feat when the wizard+a 0th level cleric spell can erase you from existence if you don't have a good fortitude save from 210 feet away minimum.

[Qwertystop]

Random thing: with a very technical reading of Improved Precise Shot, you will hit whoever you are aiming for without a roll. Not quite a failed rule, but one where the feat should have been worded a bit better.

Honestly though, being able to ignore AC at level 11 on an underpowered way of attacking is not all that bad an idea for a feat when the wizard+a 0th level cleric spell can erase you from existence if you don't have a good fortitude save from 210 feet away minimum.

How so? (for both)

[Kazyan]

Characters take nonlethal damage from hunger and thirst, so you can't die from starvation or dehydration.

[Ksheep]

Characters take nonlethal damage from hunger and thirst, so you can't die from starvation or dehydration.

Yes you can, if the nonlethal is twice your max HP.

[Zombimode]

Random thing: with a very technical reading of Improved Precise Shot, you will hit whoever you are aiming for without a roll.

No, it doesn't.

For reference:

Your ranged attacks ignore the AC bonus granted to targets by anything less than total cover, and the miss chance granted to targets by anything less than total concealment. Total cover and total concealment provide their normal benefits against your ranged attacks.

In addition, when you shoot or throw ranged weapons at a grappling opponent, you automatically strike at the opponent you have chosen.

If you refer to the first part, then you failed to comprehend the grammatical structure of the sentence. Your ranged attacks ignore AC bonus provided by cover (except for total cover, which still applies).
If you refer to the last sentence, then you have confused the game terminology: "strike at" is different from "hit".

[TuggyNE]

Yes you can, if the nonlethal is twice your max HP.

Source? I suspect this is a houserule, as I don't recall seeing this in the SRD, and a few quick searches turn up nothing relevant.

Generally it should be impossible to die from non-lethal damage alone. (In particular, this would make defeating monsters with regeneration considerably easier.)

[Necroticplague]

No, it doesn't.

For reference:


If you refer to the first part, then you failed to comprehend the grammatical structure of the sentence. Your ranged attacks ignore AC bonus provided by cover (except for total cover, which still applies).
If you refer to the last sentence, then you have confused the game terminology: "strike at" is different from "hit".

It's not a completely divergent reading, it's easy to see how he gets it. If it was meant to only apply to covers lesser than total cover, it would say "all covers" not "anything."So RAW says this feat negates the AC bonus of anything that gives a smaller one than being in total cover. You're right about the second part, though, since it defines being "struck" as something different under Combat Modifiers.

[Jack_Simth]

How so? (for both)

Just at a guess on Improved Precise Shot? "Your ranged attacks ignore the AC bonus granted to targets by anything less than total cover, and the miss chance granted to targets by anything less than total concealment. Total cover and total concealment provide their normal benefits against your ranged attacks. "

Total Cover means you can't hit the target at all: "You can’t make an attack against a target that has total cover." - thus, any AC bonus is "less than total cover", and thus, ignored. That +10 Mountain Plate? Less than total cover - the AC bonus it grants is ignored. That +10 Dexterity modifier? Less than total cover - the AC bonus it grants ignored. That +10 Tower Shield? Ditto. That +8 Size modifier to AC for being Fine? It's less than Total Cover too! Ignore it. You're always targetting AC 10 or less, technically, if you are attacking at range with Improved Precise Shot.

They probably should have worded that first clause something like "Your ranged attacks ignore the AC bonus from cover granted targets by anything less than total cover"

[Quellian-dyrae]

Its existing wording works. "Your ranged attacks ignore the AC bonus granted to targets by [anything less than total] cover" as opposed to "Your ranged attacks ignore the AC bonus granted to targets by anything less than [total cover]".

Could have made it a bit clearer, I suppose, but it'll do well enough.

[Ksheep]

Source? I suspect this is a houserule, as I don't recall seeing this in the SRD, and a few quick searches turn up nothing relevant.

Generally it should be impossible to die from non-lethal damage alone. (In particular, this would make defeating monsters with regeneration considerably easier.)

... So it is. I never noticed that before, yet my group has always played that way, through 5 generations of DMs. I'll have to look more in depth as to where it started (Unearthed Arcana, perhaps?)

[TypoNinja]

... So it is. I never noticed that before, yet my group has always played that way, through 5 generations of DMs. I'll have to look more in depth as to where it started (Unearthed Arcana, perhaps?)

Well one is unconscious when subdual damage equals current HP, and logically at some point one is simply beaten to death.

[sonofzeal]

Well one is unconscious when subdual damage equals current HP, and logically at some point one is simply beaten to death.

I'd use CDG rules for that, if you continued to make unarmed attacks against a downed opponent, although the "melee weapon" caveat might be awkward.

[Chained Birds]

... So it is. I never noticed that before, yet my group has always played that way, through 5 generations of DMs. I'll have to look more in depth as to where it started (Unearthed Arcana, perhaps?)

I believe there is a rule about it in PF, but I'm not sure which 3.5 book might have inspired it or whether the rules (About constant non-lethal damage = eventual death) actually existed.

It is a pretty comical flaw that someone can just starve for several years and then suddenly becomes okay once he/she is force fed some bread or given a touch of magical healing. Would make for interesting Mummy(?) encounters or some very wild background story.

[TuggyNE]

A new one: Mind Over Body heals abiliity damage equal to 1 + your con score.


Take the feat, now it's impossible to recover from con damage naturally.

So, I was scrounging through the thread from the beginning to find good RACSD candidates, and noticed this one. Fortunately, it's not technically a problem; unfortunately, the reason it isn't is entirely non-obvious. If you have less than 13 Con, you lose access to the feat, and drop back to 1 ability damage recovered per day, rather than recovering, say, -1 ability damage per day at 6 Con. So this is a case of "correct, but probably for the wrong reasons" (or if you like, "someone in Design was entirely too clever for their own good").

[Wookie-ranger]

Just found that post on the web site of Sean K. Reynolds.
Its a directs re-post, but it needs to be in here.

"Recently I was involved in a discussion on Monte Cook's boards about which was tougher, an iron golem or an iron statue the size of an iron golem, the question came up of whether the golem was solid iron or hollow.

Short answer: An iron golem is not solid.

5,000 lbs of iron = 2,270 kilograms of iron.

2,270 kilograms of iron = .288 cubic meters of iron (iron's density is 7,874 kg/cu meter) or approximately .3 cubic meters of iron.

An iron golem is "twice the height of a human," and we can assume that if it's proportional then it's twice the width and depth as well, and therefore has eight times the body volume of a human (1 human x2 height x2 width x2 depth = x8).

One human has a body volume of approximately 3 cubic feet, which is approximately 1/9 of a cubic yard (27 cubic feet, which for our purposes is essentially the same as a cubic meter). So eight humans is about 8/9 of a cubic meter, or approximately 1 cubic meter.

If an iron golem's body fills a volume of 1 cubic meter and 5,000 pounds of iron only takes up .3 cubic meters of space, then an iron golem (which is made of 5,000 pounds of iron) has to be hollow, for the remaining .7 cubic meters of space that its body fills must be full of air (or marshmallows, or whatever).

FYI, .3 cubic meters of iron is roughly 9 cubic feet of iron, and if a human is 3 cubic feet then 9 cubic feet of iron is enough to make a solid iron statue about 1.45 times the size of a human in all three dimensions, or a figure 8.7 feet tall, which is just shorter than the shortest adult ogre."

[Vladislav]

If an iron golem's body fills a volume of 1 cubic meter and 5,000 pounds of iron only takes up .3 cubic meters of space, then an iron golem (which is made of 5,000 pounds of iron) has to be hollow, for the remaining .7 cubic meters of space that its body fills must be full of air (or marshmallows, or whatever).

Gears, wires, pipes, and cogs.

[Lapak]

If an iron golem's body fills a volume of 1 cubic meter and 5,000 pounds of iron only takes up .3 cubic meters of space, then an iron golem (which is made of 5,000 pounds of iron) has to be hollow, for the remaining .7 cubic meters of space that its body fills must be full of air (or marshmallows, or whatever).

Gears, wires, pipes, and cogs.

You're given the option between boring old machine-parts inside an iron golem and refluffing every iron golem every as a pinata stuffed with candy, and you're choosing machine parts?

[sreservoir]

You're given the option between boring old machine-parts inside an iron golem and refluffing every iron golem every as a pinata stuffed with candy, and you're choosing machine parts?

no, stuffing it with candy would make it too massive.

[Lapak]

no, stuffing it with candy would make it too massive.

Not if it was cotton candy!

[Ksheep]

Gears, wires, pipes, and cogs.

But then it would be a Warforged, not a Golem.

[nedz]

Iron Golems have a soft center ?

[Ksheep]

Iron Golems have a soft center ?

How many licks does it take to get to the center of an Iron Golem?

[Qwertystop]

How many licks does it take to get to the center of an Iron Golem?

Iron Golems: Candy for Rust Monsters!

[Toy Killer]

Did he remember to put cross class ranks into knowldege (local)? If not he doesn't know what race HE IS, or anything about this mysterious thing he himself is. If he DID max out his cross class ranks then we're back to a 40% chance that he STILL doesn't know anything whatsoever about his own race, including even the name.

And remember, there are no retries till you level. There's a fair chance that despite having wasted 4 of his skill points on knowldege local and 4 more on knowledge nature will NEVER figure out what race he is or that farm animal.

I KNOW WHAT THE MONSTER IN THE DARK IS NOW!

[willpell]

Oozes are immune to this ability.

Speaking of Oozes, I was just reading up on them this morning, and I found out that unless the specific ooze variety has some special ability like Split (Blacks and Ochers do, Grays and Cubes don't), an ooze is exactly as vulnerable to weapon damage as any other sort of creature apart from immunity to critical hits. This means that if you fire arrows into a Gelatinous cube, slash it with a sword, or even swing a club at it enough times, it will eventually die. There's no Damage Reduction or Fast Healing or anything inherent in the Ooze type.

[TuggyNE]

Speaking of Oozes, I was just reading up on them this morning, and I found out that unless the specific ooze variety has some special ability like Split (Blacks and Ochers do, Grays and Cubes don't), an ooze is exactly as vulnerable to weapon damage as any other sort of creature apart from immunity to critical hits. This means that if you fire arrows into a Gelatinous cube, slash it with a sword, or even swing a club at it enough times, it will eventually die. There's no Damage Reduction or Fast Healing or anything inherent in the Ooze type.

Well, sure, they're just supposed to be annoying and costly to melee, and tricky to archer-kite to death. (Special weapons, or spells, obviously negate this tendency.) At those CR ranges, making something heavily resistant to physical damage (as well as all the other properties) would be quite inappropriate.

[willpell]

It just seems to me as though a creature which is liquidy enough to be able to Engulf things shouldn't be susceptible to physical damage, like at all. Maybe if you have DBZ power levels, but mostly stabbing an ooze ought to be about as effective as stabbing a lake. Acid and fire and such are "supposed" to be necessary to kill oozes; 3E D&D is one of the few takes on fantasy I've encountered where this doesn't seem to be true.