favorite/despised rules

[Alexander Moonbeam]

Favorite rules:
XP for gold! I don't have to explain this to you folks.

5e-type advantage/disadvantage: it's clean, it's intuitive, and who doesn't like rolling more dice at once?

Despised rules:
Multiclassing in all its forms. First of all, your class is your role in the party. Stay in your lane. If a group really embraces multiclassing, it also introduces a whole new level of system mastery for everyone to keep up with. When I level up, I just want to get better; I don't want to have to consider every other class that I could now go into. And oftentimes the most mechanically optimal multiclass options don't make a lot of narrative sense - 5e's infamous Paladin/Warlock being a good example.

 

[grodog]

I think the most interesting topic brought up was PC death/player loss. Yes, there should be a penalty. So maybe something like generate a character who has 50% of the dead PC's XP?
or -10K XP, whichever is greater? Or maybe lose two levels?

In our college games, new PCs coming into the campaigns began 2 levels below the average party level, which usually meant they were 3-4 levels below the highest level characters in the group.

Allan.

 

[grodog]

For d&d, any edition, share your favorite and despised rules, house or not. [snip] i am seeking each person's opinion with their own commentary. maybe top three of each?

I expanded to 5-ish, since 3e had too many to stick with 3

Favorite 1e rules:
- wandering monsters
- managing light/vision/senses while exploring and mapping
- spell acquisition (including divine emissaries and gods granting higher-level cleric spells, magical spell research)
- treasure maps
- treasure types (including in-lair vs. not in-lair)

Favorite 1e house rules:
- using reaction rolls for treasure sold/bartered in town
- implementing the implied setting—guilds, bardic colleges, druidical circles, monster experiments were created by Zagig, etc., in the campaign
- max damage on a nat 20 if you don’t already need a 20+ to hit; on a nat 1, PC stumbles, loses all following attacks in the round, and rolls 4-6d6 vs. DEX or loses their weapon (which flies off in a Grenade-like Missiles table trajectory)
- so much from Dragon Magazine….

Least favorite 1e rules:
- Enchant an Item required to recharge expendable items (which should also be manufacturable earlier in general)
- weapon specialization and much of UA in general)
- monks
- ubiquitous drow, non-CE drow, and Driz’zt-inspired drow culture
- most FF monsters

Favorite 3e rules:
- metamagic feats and skills (there was a close analogue in an early-ish White Wolf Magazine article on “spell prefixes” that I’d liked at the time too)
- demographics for settlements (which I’ll liberally throw NPC classes into)
- investing XP into magic item creation and epic spells creation
- tweaking some of the planar types and relationships—transitive planes, for example, and integrating the planar architecture more fully into spells and the rules in general, including codified types of magical energies/effects
- physical challenges/skill resolutions: climbing, swimming, falling, etc.

Loathed 3e rules/processes:
- building high-level NPC casters (so arduous!!—I don’t want to need to build PCs/NPCs/monsters with spreadsheets and programs—that kills the improv in gaming)
- gigantic stat blocks that go on and on for pages, which reflected the glacial speed of combat often too
- art/styling/presentation/layout
- dealing with too many stackable bonuses, with too many exceptions on how/when they work together/apply, or don’t
- Greyhawk as the default setting, with its attendant arbitrary changes to the real setting lore/data

I didn’t play 2e, so bagging on the things I hate about it seems petty tonight

Never played 4e.

I haven’t played 5e enough to have favorites/hates.

Allan.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Despised rules:
Multiclassing in all its forms. First of all, your class is your role in the party. Stay in your lane.

Ha, I never realized until just now how much I too despise multiclassing, as a concept. What's tragic is that it was baked into the game from the get-go; OG Paladins and Bards and Monks and whatnot sending players down three different class paths just to play... another class!

 

[The1True]

- most FF monsters

Aw! The FF is like 50% absolute bangers like the gith, and 50% superfluous nonsense (I'm looking at you Carbuncle/Flumph). The artwork before half those guys defected to Warhamster (hissss) was amazing as well.

As a regular player of 3e, I can't take issue with any of your dislikes. I guess it comes down to what your group is looking for in a game. As a DM, I use ETools to generate spellcasters, and so does the other DM in our group. As a result, we've come to recognize the default 3e default caster. Even with digital help, changing the default loadout of a high level caster is a total nightmare. And, as a current player in a 20th lvl campaign, I've come to loathe combat and am going to insane lengths to avoid it (much to the dismay of the Ranger who's combat option tree has far fewer branches than my Wizard). I'd hard pressed to think of an edition that doesn't suck balls after level lvl 12ish though...

I agree about 3e's art style as well. They really captured lightning in a bottle with the art team at early 80's TSR. Even after that, they had a number of spectacular artist-driven campaign worlds. Brom with Dark Sun. DiTerlizzi with Planescape. An argument could be made that Wayne Reynolds did some great stuff for the 3.5 MM's and had a real hand in shaping Eberron, but he didn't really get to shine til Pathfinder let him go wild. I think D&D's symbiotic relationship with artists isn't talked about enough, and greatly misunderstood/underappreciated.