Funny Thinsg in RAW

[Grayson01]

What are some funny things you have found in RAW?

My Example Down Angle for flying creatures states "Down Angle
The angle at which the creature can descend. "
the chart says as follows
Perfect/Good/Average/Poor/Bad
Down angle: Any/ Any/ Any/ 45°/ 45°

so that means a flyer with Perfect/good/average can fly down at any angle that includes 180*, 360* SO they can fly down by flying up.

[malonkey1]

What are some funny things you have found in RAW?

My Example Down Angle for flying creatures states "Down Angle
The angle at which the creature can descend. "
the chart says as follows
Perfect/Good/Average/Poor/Bad
Down angle: Any/ Any/ Any/ 45°/ 45°

so that means a flyer with Perfect/good/average can fly down at any angle that includes 180*, 360* SO they can fly down by flying up.

Only if you ignore the definition of "Down". The angle can only be considered "down" if it has a negative slope.

[TuggyNE]

What are some funny things you have found in RAW?

There's a lot of messy things in RAW in the Dysfunctional Handbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?267985-Completely-Dysfunctional-Handbook-3-5). Not all are funny, though.


My Example Down Angle for flying creatures states "Down Angle
The angle at which the creature can descend. "
the chart says as follows
Perfect/Good/Average/Poor/Bad
Down angle: Any/ Any/ Any/ 45°/ 45°

so that means a flyer with Perfect/good/average can fly down at any angle that includes 180*, 360* SO they can fly down by flying up.

Not sure why you'd read it that way. "Any down angle" is a more sensible parsing, and is entirely unsurprising in its meaning: they can descend at any angle they wish to. You have to actively try to misread that to get your example weirdness.

[ryu]

Pi is exactly 4.

[Incanur]

My favorite is purchasing permanent-duration polymorph any object into stone giant for 1,200gp according to PHB spellcasting-services rules. A level 3 or so character can manage this as long as they have access to a metropolis. This helps balance monks. :smallwink:

[OldTrees1]

Up and Down flight speeds are weird. If I fly up at a 45 degree angle for +5ft altitude and then fly down at a 1 degree angle for -5ft altitude, how much faster do I travel horizontally than my base fly speed?

[malonkey1]

Up and Down flight speeds are weird. If I fly up at a 45 degree angle for +5ft altitude and then fly down at a 1 degree angle for -5ft altitude, how much faster do I travel horizontally than my base fly speed?

Please don't make me do trig. It's been too long and it's too late at night.

[torrasque666]

Basic trig.

To get the horizontal distance traveled at a 45 degree angle, its Opposite x Cot(45)[Cot(45=1) or in this case (5 x 1) = 5ft horizontal per 5 feet upward. For horizontal distance traveled while descending its 5 x cot(1), 5 x 57.29 = 286.45 ft horizontally per 5 feet vertical movement. So way OP.

[Forrestfire]

For the upwards movement, you'll move at half speed, so it'd cost 10ft of effective movement to get into the next cubic section of space, and since it's a diagonal, it'd be the normal 5-10-5-10 measurement for movement in square (cubic?) grid sections on any further movement. For the downwards movement, it would depend on where the angle is drawn. It can be argued that unless your movement takes you into a 5-foot cube below, it's not actually a descent, so you'd just be moving horizontally in that case.

[nedz]

Pi is exactly 4.

Only sometimes, see below

Ed: Actually I've just noticed that in my signature π has been replaced by p, probably a result of the Forum reformatting. Off to fix this.

[Necroticplague]

Pi is exactly 4.

Also:

Sqrt(2)=1.5

[Gwendol]

For the upwards movement, you'll move at half speed, so it'd cost 10ft of effective movement to get into the next cubic section of space, and since it's a diagonal, it'd be the normal 5-10-5-10 measurement for movement in square (cubic?) grid sections on any further movement. For the downwards movement, it would depend on where the angle is drawn. It can be argued that unless your movement takes you into a 5-foot cube below, it's not actually a descent, so you'd just be moving horizontally in that case.

Please note that moving from up -> down also costs movement for maneuverability average and below. This has an impact due to the minimum forward speed requirement. Tactical aerial combat with anything below Good maneuverability is a pain.

[Ansem]

Pi is exactly 4.

But eventually becomes 2 if you get to really high numbers.

[Incanur]

Time warps profoundly in 3.x combat because of the initiate system and separate turns. As example, imagine a fighter kicks a door in order to assassinate a king. The king is surprised, so the fighter gets a surprise round. There's table between him and the king, so he moves 30ft around the table. Now he's 60ft away. They roll initiative and the fighter wins. He charges 60ft, kills the king, and proceeds to loot.

Sounds like a pretty typical encounter, right? Think about what just happened. As a round is 6 seconds and the fighter used a full 1.5 rounds, the king had close to 9 seconds to react but didn't. 9 seconds. Human reaction time is typically more like 0.5-1.5 seconds even for random mooks like myself. Almost nobody is going to sit there drooling while somebody charges them from 30+ft away, but that's what can happen thanks to initiative system.

You can also delay yet still get you full 6 seconds worth of action. I sure wish I could do that in real life! When character goes first and buffs another, the second character gets the benefit of the buff for their full 6 seconds if it took 3-6 seconds cast. Etc.

I think this is a large reason why combat is so swingy in 3.x. If you lose initiative, you're basically sitting there drooling while the other side beats up on you.