Worst Observed Rules Interpretations (by DM or Players)

[2xMachina]

Hmm, wondering how fractional Cr works.

3 1/3 for 1 Cr? Double that for Cr+2, so Cr 3?

Or, 2 1/3 Cr for 2.33 Cr (lol)

Does that mean 2 lvl 1 enemies are Cr 3?

[Tinydwarfman]

2 (assumed Level 1 admittedly) PC's vs. 6 skeletons and some zombies is a winnable fight? Really?

Like I said, it might just be my group, by mindless undead are pretty easy to take care of. They won't avoid a grease, won't try and bypass the nearest enemy, and employ no tactics. Zombies are even easier because they can be kited to easily. My group also optimizes fairly well, so that might be part of it.

[Zeful]

My Sorcerer DIDNT get bonus spells from stats, because "It doesnt make sense that the more good looking you are the more spells you get" and my final character

Are you referring to spell slots or spells known? The first is the DM being an idiot, the second is actually the rules.

[Beelzebub1111]

I have a player who thought that you got 4x your skill points at the first CLASS level you take.

[Greenish]

That must have been me. I still feel that way. Actually, I feel that the opposite is one of the worst rules interps I've seen. Well, if the rogue can add his SA only to the first attack, then it would be more mechanically sound for them to go around wielding big two-handers. Extra damage on all attacks is to keep dualwielding light weapons comparable to twohanding.

Besides, it's not like rogues dominate the game even when they can get their SAs off.

[Ormur]

Huh. Maybe it's just the difference between out groups, but that sounds like a hard, but winnable fight to me. Of course it completely depends on the circumstances of the fight, and at level one, two bad rolls in a row mean death.

It's a CR 4 encounter against half a party and it was our first encounter playing d&d. We had no idea skeletons were vulnerable to bludgeoning, we didn't even have bludgeoning weapons. I think I tried killing them with burning hands and a crossbow while the cleric hacked at them with his sword. I hadn't even heard of battlefield control, it was either fire or melee.

[krossbow]

i remember a DM once said that, even if you had exotic weapons proficiency in a fullblade, you took a -4 to hit with it due to its size.

[Gametime]

The game I just finished: AC = 10+Ranks in Tumble....because..you know..Do a Barrel Role.


Here, have an Internet. You deserve it.

[Tinydwarfman]

It's a CR 4 encounter against half a party and it was our first encounter playing d&d. We had no idea skeletons were vulnerable to bludgeoning, we didn't even have bludgeoning weapons. I think I tried killing them with burning hands and a crossbow while the cleric hacked at them with his sword. I hadn't even heard of battlefield control, it was either fire or melee.

Burning hands should actually work fairly well, considering the sheer number of them, and that DR doesn't stop fire. And your cleric didn't turn? That's like, the cleric's only class feature. If it was you're first game, I can see how you died though. I'm saying it would be an easy fight, just not an impossible one.

[IonDragon]

In an seafaring campaign, the DM to the party: "You are ambushed"
The Druid: "My shark should see them coming"
The GM: "Your shark was asleep"
The Druid: "I'm going to need a new shark then, that means it's dead"

The moral of the story: Sharks don't sleep.

[MickJay]

The moral of the story: Sharks don't sleep.

Indeed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark#Sleep :smallwink:

[Boci]

In an seafaring campaign, the DM to the party: "You are ambushed"
The Druid: "My shark should see them coming"
The GM: "Your shark was asleep"
The Druid: "I'm going to need a new shark then, that means it's dead"

The moral of the story: Sharks don't sleep.

Meh, D&D is not 100% accurate and frequently forgets to mention traits of real life animals. Expecting a DM to have a biology digree and know something not mentioned by the animals stat block is unresonable. Sure you as a player can bring it up, but the DM is well within his right to brush it aside. Its your fault for not mentioning it before.
However, in this particular case it sounded like the DM was just being a jerk and deny the party a chance to notice the ambush. Either way however, its not faulty rules interpretation.

[Somebloke]

I once ruled as a DM that the cleric had a small selection of spells to memorize like the wizard, rather than having the entire 'sphere' selection to choose from.

I was 16 at the time- I got better as a DM, thank heavens. The player in question bore it well, all things considered.

[lesser_minion]

It's not the breeding. It's the fact every time a fan girl (or boy) squees, a new one pops into existence. So even if they don't breed, they would soon take over the entirety of space and time. Discussing physics in the context of roleplaying is the only way to keep their numbers down.

Well, no, since they don't grow in population exponentially then, do they?

Fangirls aren't actually common enough to produce all that many catgirls, nor do they squee frequently enough to do any damage.

[Kalaska'Agathas]

Well, no, since they don't grow in population exponentially then, do they?

Fangirls aren't actually common enough to produce all that many catgirls, nor do they squee frequently enough to do any damage.

I sincerely hope you're right.

[Ravens_cry]

Well, no, since they don't grow in population exponentially then, do they?

Fangirls aren't actually common enough to produce all that many catgirls, nor do they squee frequently enough to do any damage.
Gods help us if your wrong. Gods help us all.

[Tiki Snakes]

Fangirls aren't actually common enough to produce all that many catgirls, nor do they squee frequently enough to do any damage.

Oh my stars and garters!
You poor deluded fool.

They may not be common in these parts, but mark my word. They're out there. Watching, waiting. squeeing to each other.

There are entire websites devoted to it. (http://dailysquee.com/)

[Yuki Akuma]

Hmm, wondering how fractional Cr works.

3 1/3 for 1 Cr? Double that for Cr+2, so Cr 3?

Or, 2 1/3 Cr for 2.33 Cr (lol)

Does that mean 2 lvl 1 enemies are Cr 3?

CR 1/2 is basically CR 0, CR 1/3 is CR -1 and CR 1/4 is CR -2.

[Moriato]

Had a dm who claimed that being immune to critical hits meant you also couldn't score critical hits. Because... you know... immune. :smallconfused:

Also thought that entering a threatened squre provoked an attack of opportunity, so a lot of battles consisted of the meleers running up just 5' short of eachother and going "No, you go" "No, please, you first, I insist".

[Tiki Snakes]

Had a dm who claimed that being immune to critical hits meant you also couldn't score critical hits. Because... you know... immune. :smallconfused:

Also thought that entering a threatened squre provoked an attack of opportunity, so a lot of battles consisted of the meleers running up just 5' short of eachother and going "No, you go" "No, please, you first, I insist".

It'd kind of make the whole combat-reflexes spiked-chain thing pretty damn tasty, I imagine.

[Volos]

I recently had to give up being a player and take on the role of DM again for my group due to a horrible rule interpretation by the previous DM. The DM's PC was a 5th level Sorcerer Weretiger. Somehow he thought that it would be cool to run this character alongside of a party of 5th to 3rd level characters. He had some strange idea in his head that if your multiclassed before 5th level, that you should be a 3rd level character in order to make everthing 'even and fair' for the party as a whole. Not only that, but he misinterpretated the rules for Lycanthropes' healing when they change shape. He was under the impression that all the HP would be healed with each transformation, and that transformations could be done at will as a swift action. So he was basically healing between attacks by turning into a hybrid form and back as a swift action.

Needless to say, we haven't invited this fellow into the new game that I'm DMing currently.

[hangedman1984]

Needless to say, we haven't invited this fellow into the new game that I'm DMing currently.

perhaps he was just inexperienced, and by not inviting him to play you are preventing him from learning the game better and making him a better player and a better dm

[DragoonWraith]

There are no privileged frames of reference. That is all.
Assuming Einstein (and all those who have come after him and worked with relativity) are correct. Which is... a safe-ish assumption. "Ish" because it's pretty much guaranteed that they were wrong about a great many things, even restricted to within relativity, but probably not so many things as to make your statement incorrect.

Nonetheless, my point is that as someone who is arguing for a scientific viewpoint, you should be careful to never state things as truths, for one of the fore-most axioms of science is that it cannot tell how things are, merely how they appear to be. For the most part, this works out nicely because things are consistent and even if they don't work the way we think they do, our explanations work out to accurately predict the way they do behave. But it's important to make this distinction because it is essentially required by empiricism; empirical data can never do more than show appearances, and modern science is based on the idea that empiricism is the most accurate way to view the world.

[lesser_minion]

That might be a little more pedantic than I was going for there.

[Math_Mage]

That might be a little more pedantic than I was going for there.

The non-pedant's response, then:

Of course there's a privileged frame of reference. It's whatever frame of reference Chuck Norris is in.

*bows* I'm here all night.

[Zeta Kai]

perhaps he was just inexperienced, and by not inviting him to play you are preventing him from learning the game better and making him a better player and a better dm

Or, he was a jerk. That's just as plausible.

I once played with a guy who insisted on using Diplomacy by RAW (guess what his new Bard had maxxed out?). I told him that I was the DM & that I was using a modded Diplomacy in my game so that we could actually play a game that functioned. He got very mad whenever an NPC didn't fawn all over him & give him all of their stuff without a fight. He didn't last long at my table.

[DragoonWraith]

That might be a little more pedantic than I was going for there.
More verbose then it should have been, I certainly agree - it was late and I was rambling. I do that...

But as for pedantry, eh. Most of that post was intended to show that it wasn't mere pedantry, but an actually important distinction that people with a scientific bent ought to make more clear more often, in my opinion. I think it would reduce the knee-jerk reactionism of luddites. Though I could be wrong about that.

[lesser_minion]

More verbose then it should have been, I certainly agree - it was late and I was rambling. I do that...

But as for pedantry, eh. Most of that post was intended to show that it wasn't mere pedantry, but an actually important distinction that people with a scientific bent ought to make more clear more often, in my opinion. I think it would reduce the knee-jerk reactionism of luddites. Though I could be wrong about that.

It is a worthwhile distinction, yes. I'm not convinced that it should be emphasised, especially in that particular case, where it was intended to be vaguely helpful in respect to someone's complaint about a DM deciding that an immovable rod would gib someone standing east of it.

If I'd been a little more verbose, I'd have said that the simplest assumption is that an immovable rod doesn't move relative to that particular region of the planet (which is also RAW).

Otherwise, there's no easy way to figure out where the rod ends up.

[Ernir]

Huh. Maybe it's just the difference between out groups, but that sounds like a hard, but winnable fight to me. Of course it completely depends on the circumstances of the fight, and at level one, two bad rolls in a row mean death.

As Ormur has explained... first time players. Their first combat. Having to think about which dice to throw in order to make an attack tends to distract people from coming up with an effective strategy. :smalltongue:

Also. Since TPKs are booooring, I decided to let them try the battle again. With some turning and clever use of the environment, they won that time.

(For the record, there has been neither a TPK nor any consideration of rerolling in any of my games since. :smalltongue:)