bans against burocracy

[King of Nowhere]

there are frequent discussions on balance and banning/removing/limiting content that's judged broken for the power level of the table.
however, I noticed that at my table there's another important factor to decide which stuff we use and which stuff we don't, and it's burocracy - that is, that stuff requires too much bookkeeping.

in the case of my table, the main victim of this is the polimorph line of spells. we even had discussions in which we though on how cool it would be to play in a world where everyone in the party was polimorphed. it wasn't even a problem for balance, because everyone would do it.
Then we considered all the stuff that would need to be tracked. Especially when one is hit by a successful dispel, and you have to figure out all the new stats. And we decided it was just too complex and time-consuming to keep track of.
another thing that's hard to track is the various illusions and counters to it. we didn't ban anything there, because there's nothing that can't get beaten by a true sight, but we do tend to not use illusions and to handwave strongly all the problems of who can see what.

what are the things that your table avoids using, not because they are too strong or too weak, but because they are too much of a bother?

[Telonius]

Grappling. (Relevant comic (https://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0233.html)). It's not banned, but it's just really annoying to deal with. On the rare occasion that somebody plays a Monk, they've always been a "stun them" monk, not a "grapple them" monk.

Experience points. PITA to calculate all of that mess for each fight, and arguments about what counts as a challenge (plus all the factors that could make it harder/easier than standard). We use milestone leveling. 1xp=5gp for crafting.

Encumbrance by weight. Everybody gets a handy haversack, it's your personal hammerspace. I don't care how many cans of oil your gnome is going to carry for their lantern. Pay the gp for it, stick it in there, get on with the game already.

[Kurald Galain]

what are the things that your table avoids using, not because they are too strong or too weak, but because they are too much of a bother?

Sacred Geometry feat.

Also, debuffing stacks. If you can inflict fatigue on every hit, plus sicken but it gets a saving throw, plus shaken but it gets an intimidate check, that's nice and all but please don't. Waaaay too fiddly.

And yeah, we've stopped tracking XP as well. I think my 4E banlist also had certain powers on it that took long to resolve and just didn't do a whole lot.

[RandomPeasant]

I tend to avoid the Artificer because it's a class that requires an enormous amount of fiddly tracking, but the only thing it really does differently from traditional spellcasters is be more powerful. If I wanted to optimize more, I would just optimize more, not play a class that required an inherently higher focus on optimization.

polymorph tends to get targeted, as much because figuring out what the spell's rules are is complicated as because it's complicated in play. Did you know, for example, that alter self and polymorph have subtly different language around type restrictions that imply that a Spellguard of Silverymoon can turn a target into a form with alter self that he can't with polymorph? That kind of nonsense is way too much effort to track, so in practice DMs seem to either ban the spells or spot-rule based on whatever seems reasonable.

Similarly, every table I've seen has some kind of gentleman's agreement around minions, but what it is varies a lot. Some of it is power level (no 15th level Wizards with pet Pit Fiends), but some of it is also logistics (you're much more likely to be allowed a single minion from planar binding than twenty 1 HD Skeletons).

I think most people on this forum underrate the degree to which people will ban over-complicated builds. At this point, survivorship bias as reduced it some, but there are plenty of DMs who will look at any build you can't explain in roughly 30 seconds and say no regardless of overall power level.

[King of Nowhere]

Experience points. PITA to calculate all of that mess for each fight, and arguments about what counts as a challenge (plus all the factors that could make it harder/easier than standard). We use milestone leveling. 1xp=5gp for crafting.

Encumbrance by weight. Everybody gets a handy haversack, it's your personal hammerspace. I don't care how many cans of oil your gnome is going to carry for their lantern. Pay the gp for it, stick it in there, get on with the game already.

You know, I'm so used to not tracking that stuff, i didn't mention it because I forgot that you would be supposed to keep track of it:smallbiggrin:

[Kurald Galain]

polymorph tends to get targeted, as much because figuring out what the spell's rules are is complicated as because it's complicated in play.
I recommend using the polymorph rules from Pathfinder, they fix most of the issues that 3.0/3.5 has with them.


I think most people on this forum underrate the degree to which people will ban over-complicated builds.
True. I usually self-ban anything with more than three (base + prestige) classes total, and most people in my area don't go higher than two.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

There are spreadsheets for at least some of this stuff.

Like the astral construct power. It's a bit less of a PITA than some of the stuff here, but you still need to build a new construct every time you manifest the power, leading to a lot of players just using a few that they've already statted up. Luckily, there's a spreadsheet for that (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/0B7XkmnK-DY9YRkU5SVhCNWZqS0U/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=100697564537901361748&resourcekey=0-E0cT4QcKdBY_z_8rnHXSJw&rtpof=true&sd=true). (Download and open with a spreadsheet program for best results.)

[Xervous]

3.5e cross class skill costs and non retroactive skill points. It is the worst fiddly, spreadsheet scraping bit of 3.5 when weighed against its actual impact on character potency.

[RandomPeasant]

Not strictly a ban, but I normalize the Advanced Learning progressions for Warmage-types. It's flatly absurd that the three classes that have this class feature all have different progressions for it.


3.5e cross class skill costs and non retroactive skill points. It is the worst fiddly, spreadsheet scraping bit of 3.5 when weighed against its actual impact on character potency.

I dunno, the multi-classing XP penalties might take that title. Not only does it make the already-complicated XP accounting more annoying, they tend to have way less impact on strong characters than weak ones.

[Zanos]

This discussion just reminds me of how much longer it took to play without automation tools. Fireball and quickened fireball, rolling 20d6 and then 2*6 = 12 saves for every monster and figuring out their individual totals after mods. People would take bathroom breaks or go get water/food whenever the wizards turn came up. :smallyuk: I remember some DMs would just use one save for an entire group or just say fireballs did average damage. While I miss physical dice, I do not miss adding everything up, especially for casters.

Automation tools have drastically reduced the amount of stuff I find to be paperwork intensive. I've made some autocalcing spreadsheets to build monsters(i use animate dead a lot), and we use Foundry now which has some cool stuff like built in polymorph/wildshape toggles and you can pre-configure your forms. Still, I greatly frown on inexperienced or indecisive players playing minonmancers, since if it takes you two minutes to decide your action, I don't want you repeating that for your five zombies or four summons or constructs or whatever.


Experience points. PITA to calculate all of that mess for each fight, and arguments about what counts as a challenge (plus all the factors that could make it harder/easier than standard). We use milestone leveling. 1xp=5gp for crafting.
How to you handle non-crafting xp costs? Like spells? Material components?

In any case I loathe milestone leveling. I always run and prefer to play in sandbox campaigns and milestone leveling always feels like "you level up when the DM feels like it, which is usually when you're going down the rails correctly." I prefer making tangible progress and haven't had too many arguments about what does or doesn't constitute a challenge.


3.5e cross class skill costs and non retroactive skill points. It is the worst fiddly, spreadsheet scraping bit of 3.5 when weighed against its actual impact on character potency.
Yeah, if you think there's a mistake in a high level characters skill points you have to go back and figure out what their intelligence modifier was at every level up. It's just silly that it's basically the only non-retroactive thing in the game.

[Seward]

Druids. Basic core vanilla druids, especially those who get into summoning.

Need statblocks for anything they might summon
Need animal companion statblocks
Need character statblocks for any form they might shift into
Need all the buffs they put on stuff, summoned or alternate form
A million actions a round

My wife's a good player, not a "I took druid because I wanted a pet but never read the rules of the game" type, but she hit a complexity limit around level 5, and started summoning only stuff that was tough with a single attack (like dire bat or crocodile) just to limit the complexity, and kept a simple animal companion. Even then she couldn't always get through the options on a high fatigue day like end of convention. This is somebody who played a cleric to L15 and never had any problems with her spell selection, knowing what action to take and all of its effects etc.

Summoners are just hard, and druids add wildshape and animal companion. It is way too much complexity on one character.

[Telonius]

How to you handle non-crafting xp costs? Like spells? Material components?


Same 5/1 ratio.

[RexDart]

Druids. Basic core vanilla druids, especially those who get into summoning.

Need statblocks for anything they might summon
Need animal companion statblocks
Need character statblocks for any form they might shift into
Need all the buffs they put on stuff, summoned or alternate form
A million actions a round

My wife's a good player, not a "I took druid because I wanted a pet but never read the rules of the game" type, but she hit a complexity limit around level 5, and started summoning only stuff that was tough with a single attack (like dire bat or crocodile) just to limit the complexity, and kept a simple animal companion. Even then she couldn't always get through the options on a high fatigue day like end of convention. This is somebody who played a cleric to L15 and never had any problems with her spell selection, knowing what action to take and all of its effects etc.

Summoners are just hard, and druids add wildshape and animal companion. It is way too much complexity on one character.

The druid in my campaign had similar problems, and retooled from summoning into a more wildshape-focused approach that also didn't work well for her. She's playing a gnome bard in the new campaign, and a lot happier with it.

Has anyone ever encountered, in any RPG, a fun and reasonably logical set of grappling rules?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

The druid in my campaign had similar problems, and retooled from summoning into a more wildshape-focused approach that also didn't work well for her. She's playing a gnome bard in the new campaign, and a lot happier with it.

Has anyone ever encountered, in any RPG, a fun and reasonably logical set of grappling rules?Well, the PF grapple rules are very clear.

https://200e02f3-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/pathfinderogc/images/grapple_flow_chart-01.png?attachauth=ANoY7cr_lNlrC8_L-0yFbpibiRHisYJyCNEOJIdyD3mGa9P2zxcHwEKVoADU4UVvYOk 2GckKQxz7j5eiR29YS4UZaPjYUVDcm_SEqOM1Jfa_kIBuXC5H8 T0B7MyUUICNPZNzMCOF2px8dNkVVp7yEkj54_mM-qF4p_bj9ePCBU5j31az2cbJR4RUaYONeouEWGIQB7EjUpK9P_K qXQXFgWL27cgX8YbcnRk-M4nIebFRPPM76tgL2ZE%3D&attredirects=1https://200e02f3-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/pathfinderogc/images/grapple_flow_chart-02.png?attachauth=ANoY7cqr25uhJ8hP9yFYlZ9jT8NoWROb gPoQSZljiakLBNXQ8UbnbDM_TnnTsPfL84gAQTV4IIqWjgqdum WeW4nLhHmHed7TwiRMJ2__t41WBMZVnq7MXG1c-DTFhrMWXwBQMvZ2qN5kQzJip_ZatfGd3B2vBktPrghHBaOhbSj-0Xbk_2i0kscvWfZDs5MM1ihVxcOfoqF8a71RGwQuJ5dgml4nXS F8Xsfikq3NbRRN1fiSnuemAow%3D&attredirects=1

[RandomPeasant]

The Druid is kind of fascinating, being positioned as both the class with one of the highest technical skill caps and one of the few classes that can be reasonably effective with a 3 in its primary stat. There are other classes that can compete on one end or the other, but I don't think any come close on both.

[Max Caysey]

what are the things that your table avoids using, not because they are too strong or too weak, but because they are too much of a bother?

The short answer is nothing! Its all up to the player. Our DM usually says that if we want to do something specific like followers or grappling or what ever focus, that its all on them to have a clear and and correct understanding of every aspect of said focus...

That might very well mean that there is A a lot of work to be done by one players or B the player has to avoid that particular focus... But there is usually nothing blakedly banned because of heavy bookkeeping alone!

[Twurps]

I don't think we've ever hard banned anything for this reason at our table. (I know I haven't, not 100% sure on our other DM), but there's a lot stuff we (as players) just don't do including:

-extensive use of minions. (One of our players (a cleric) might summon something once they have to retreat, just as a distraction/cannonfodder, but won't summon anything in actual combat.
-extensive use of debuffs/negative levels. Nobody really likes 'm and it's a nightmare for the DM to keep track.
-Hirelings

We also don't track carrying capacity and/or ammo. And although we do use XP, we've dumbed it down a lot. Everybody gets the same amount always (including players who aren't there). And we generally handwave XP crafting costs as long as nobody abuses that (which we don't apparently, as the system has worked fined for over a decade)

I remember having built a TWF high dex AoO tripper once, wasn't meant to see play, but I brought him in one session when my main character was 'indisposed'. He lasted about 2 combats, and then we were all (myself included) pretty done with the 45+ rolls a round. He parted ways with the party shortly after, never to be heard of again. We broke my main character out of jail without his help just fine.

[Akal Saris]

As a DM, I've never hard banned anything for complexity. However, I have asked players to minimize some activities that disproportionately took up a lot of table time, like planar binding spells or customizing summoned monsters, or worked out agreements with them on other things, like 'I promise you a single Perception check covers the whole corridor, so you don't need to roll every 5 feet'. Similarly, I rarely have enemies cast 'dispel magic' or 'mordenkainen's disjunction' because that forces players to recalculate everything immediately.

I've had this come up before with a novice DM who couldn't understand how swift actions worked, and wanted to blanket-ban them from the game to reduce the perceived complexity.

[Athan Artilliam]

I kinda like complexity I have tons of paper where I matched out magic items & stacking bonuses & such. I do all of that in my free time though, never at the table. I'll use index cards for minions & long term buffs. Games like Shadowrun & 3.5 where you can kinda get lost in the gears & pile all sorts of odd stuff together is pretty fun. Once you've straightened out the abomination of stuff into coherence you get to marvel at all the gears coming together into clockwork that runs smoothly.

Like, recently I was toying with how much defense & attack I could stack on my Artificer, my plan was

Dyyr's Vestments
18 natural dex + 2 from Arm or Nyr
+5 Soulforged Adamantine Defending Spiked Gauntlet built into the Arm of Nyr with a Wand Chamber built into it
+1/+5 Adamantine Chahar-aina
+1 Dastana
+1/+5 Buckler
+5 Ring of Prtection
+5 Amulet of Natural Armor
+1 Ioun Stone
Iron Ward Diamond Greater
Starmantle

This should give me insane AC & 7/- DR, & immunity to non magic attacks

Add to this Persisted buffs of Blur/Displacement etc & it'll be awesome. (Super expensive too)

Or my more immediate plan of casting Animate Sand on Shapesand for a butler who always has the right tool for the job

I love how all the little fiddly bits can go together, not necessarily in a way that breaks the game, I never want to do that, but just fun ways things interact with each other & exploring what one can do

[Kitsuneymg]

Because of table time, we ban

* more than one companion at a time (animal companion, familiar, cohort, sphere conjuration companion, mind controlled npc, etc) participating in combat
* classes with reconfigure abilities that are combat scope (aegis)
* astral construct and any summon spell that you don’t have the stats on hand for. That means asking the GM for a sheet and filling it out for him usually.

[Seward]

Because of table time, we ban

* more than one companion at a time (animal companion, familiar, cohort, sphere conjuration companion, mind controlled npc, etc) participating in combat


Living Greyhawk or Pathfinder Society, can't remember if both or which had it, had a rule like this. Basically you could have all the pets you wanted, but only one could participate in combat (with some leeway for swapping around, or mounts that never acted independent off rider) in a given adventure. Pathfinder society also banned leadership to reduce the complexity on any single player (among other reasons).

And we all groaned a little when somebody would bust out a summon and then start paging through a rulebook for the statblock. Those guys always seemed to have feats that modified the statblock too.

[Athan Artilliam]

Living Greyhawk or Pathfinder Society, can't remember if both or which had it, had a rule like this. Basically you could have all the pets you wanted, but only one could participate in combat (with some leeway for swapping around, or mounts that never acted independent off rider) in a given adventure. Pathfinder society also banned leadership to reduce the complexity on any single player (among other reasons).

And we all groaned a little when somebody would bust out a summon and then start paging through a rulebook for the statblock. Those guys always seemed to have feats that modified the statblock too.

How hard is it for people to slap that on an index card though?

[Jervis]

Sacred Geometry feat.


Why have I never read that feat before, that thing is a hot mess.

[Mechalich]

How hard is it for people to slap that on an index card though?

Not every summon is going to be sourced to a regularly available power. Scrolls & Wands of summon (or animate dead, etc.) exist, and there are a variety of wondrous items that summon up all sorts of weird things. Many players aren't especially well prepared in terms of treasure they got last session that they might want to use in the next.

[Athan Artilliam]

Not every summon is going to be sourced to a regularly available power. Scrolls & Wands of summon (or animate dead, etc.) exist, and there are a variety of wondrous items that summon up all sorts of weird things. Many players aren't especially well prepared in terms of treasure they got last session that they might want to use in the next.

I guess I'm wired different because I would think it's expected to prep that

[icefractal]

Extensive divinations or scouting!
IC, these are useful to do and sometimes have little cost, but OOC they often mean one or more of:
A) Rest of table sitting on their thumbs while the scout / diviner has a solo adventure.
B) GM forced to either pause the game or hastily improvise because a bunch of details that they didn't think would matter for at least 2-3 sessions suddenly become important.
C) Large amount of real time wasted because, well, that's how research tends to work - you get a lot of information, sift through it, and in the end 10% or less is useful.
So, while often cool and useful, IME they don't get used much.

Also, as mentioned, extensive use of minions in combat. Power levels completely aside, if your turn is taking an excessively long time, there's a problem. IMO, this does depend on the player - if you can make all the decisions and do all the rolls quickly, then it's fine, if you can't then play a different build. However, that does put an awkward spotlight on slow players, so many GMs go with a blanket rule like "no minions" or "only one minion".

[Seward]

How hard is it for people to slap that on an index card though?

It isn't. But some don't. It's just like some GM's will obsessively prepare (my usual preference when in that role) and some will crack the adventure for the first time at the table (something I've only done once, because the alternative was no game for anybody. It wasn't the best game I ever ran, but better than everybody going home).

Even with the index cards, if you don't have the stats internalized it can slow things down. Some folks are also just bad at adding up dice. This gets problematic in higher levels when even the dumb barbarian is rolling 5 attacks and doing random other d6 damage that isn't his basic weapon damage. I favor groups of color coded dice.

Also a decade of playing Champions made me a pro at adding up huge numbers of d6's, but not everybody knows the trick of grouping them by stuff that adds up to 10 to speed it along.



A) Rest of table sitting on their thumbs while the scout / diviner has a solo adventure


It is a little ironic that D&D evolved to this state because originally scouting was half the adventure. If you blundered into something like the Temple of Elemental Evil, it wasn't tiered and had areas designed to absolutely TPK a party who didn't figure it out ahead of time, even if you didn't stick your nose into a very high level area. Some of the tpk-setups were right around the corner from the entrance.

That said, I get the point. Your average "research/gather information" session usually gives everybody something to do, and scrying is something everybody can watch and comment on. Physical scouting can be a bit more problematic. My usual solution is to have the actual party as close as possible to the scout, with the idea being that if he gets discovered, they are there to help and it becomes "sneak in until we're spotted, then charge" which is reasonably fun for everybody, as it builds tension before the action but rewards the pc's for not being idiots about breaking into a well defended area.

Other ways to reward scout-type characters is to have the best scout actually routinely precede the party by 100' or so when traveling. Gives him time to spot all the ambushes, hungry tigers or whatever in the road ahead and a party who comes roaring over the hill to carve up the rogues hiding in the woods (starting from more than 30' away) is a very different encounter from one that starts with them getting sneak attacks from surprise. In dungeons this is the equivalent of just having him "one bend/door in the dungeon" ahead off the party, or wherever their light sources won't give them away, and just having them hold still to not make noise while each area is cleared. It can be described in a minute, but basically has the effect of letting the scout do his job without the GM having to describe anything until the scout encounters something interesting (or gets discovered)

[Particle_Man]

At my latest game, xp went away. We levelled every three levels we cleared in a mega-dungeon.

Encumbrance is usually not something the DM worries about, although players could keep track if they wished.

Oddly enough, the DM was big on keeping track of food, while also banning the usual ways of not worrying about food like rings of sustenance.

Speaking personally, as I get older, and as I play online with a free range five year old running around at home, I am seeing the virtues of simple characters for me personally. Warlock is a relief - a no paper work mage! Warmage is a close second. Just a lot of ways to go boom, really (and besides, who doesn't love Tim the Enchanter?). I also like the sneak attack fighter, as I trade 11 things for 1 thing (sneak attack gets better as one levels, but it is still governed by the same rules). I apply the same principles in NWOD games. In my party there is a Mage and Changeling and that is fine, I will be over here playing a Mortal with the simple stat-boost cyber-augments. I am quite willing to trade away power for simplicity at this point in my life.

When I have played a cleric and used summon monster spells, it was almost always the same monster.

[Kurald Galain]

'I promise you a single Perception check covers the whole corridor, so you don't need to roll every 5 feet'.
Omg, this is what turned me away from Living Greyhawk. In retrospect it probably was one or two bad GMs and not inherent in the system, but having to roll twenty perception checks just to walk down an empty corridor permanently turned me away from that living campaign.


Also, as mentioned, extensive use of minions in combat. Power levels completely aside, if your turn is taking an excessively long time, there's a problem.
To be fair, some players don't require minions to still take excessively long to do their turn. :smallfurious:

[Seward]

When I have played a cleric and used summon monster spells, it was almost always the same monster.

The only druid I played seriously was a person who pretty much wanted to fight as a cat and had a tiger obsession. So she pretty much summoned only cats, except for very unusual utility situations (eg, using a thoqqua to make a hole in stone to pour water down, or some bizzare thing like that). And she didn't have natural spell so mostly didn't summon unless the party was down to the wire and trying to find every last resource to survive its next fight that was closing in.

But yeah, I had all the feline statblocks. They did basically the same thing she did in combat so the same die-rolling arrangement to cope with the 5 attacks of a cat pounce were already sorted, just needed the different numbers in front of me for to-hit, damage, grapple checks etc.

She didn't speak the elemental languages so I didn't try to do the thing with her that I do with my more academic-oriented characters that occasionally summon something. (like order water elementals to put out fire, or fire elementals to start fires, or air elementals to whirlwind away a fog cloud or earth elementals to go through the wall and peek into the other room...or if they speak abbyssal, summon a dretch for all the "manipulate probably trapped stuff" situations)

[Venger]

The standard ones of annoying nonsense that don't make the game more fun (encumbrance, food and water, forced march, heat, light, RAW spot checks, rolling to see if each piece of ammunition breaks, etc) in terms of not including them in actual gameplay.

Metaplay content wise, in my experience, summoners are just not worth it in actual play. On paper, I cannot possibly dispute their utility since they have such a wide array of potential monsters, attacks, special powers, slas, etc on tap.

However, in practice, even one that isn't optimized at all (much less one played correctly) makes combat take forever, even with simplifying factors (all summons act on summoner's init) and party management (every player takes control of a 1 or more summon's sheet to expedite play) it is just an enormous time sink, even if you're employing computer assistance for dice rolling, keeping character sheets handy, etc.

A typical polymorph or wild shape user will probably have a handful of go-to forms whose sheets they will have the relevant combat stats for on a notecard to help things go smoothly. However with summoners, even if you are a good player with a high degree of system mastery who is not trying to make things difficult for your dm, there may be a normal situation you run into in play which requires a niche utility situations requiring a peculiar summon and require you checking your list or the monster's sla list, like the thoqqua. I don't have their exact powers memorized because they aren't necessarily go-to combat summons like polar bears or big cats.

I just don't think there is a good way to run a summoner without bogging down combats no matter how prepared a player, gm, and table is, so by and large I don't play characters who are focused primarily on summoning.

[Kurald Galain]

The standard ones of annoying nonsense that don't make the game more fun (encumbrance, food and water,

Fair point, except that I find that in a low-level wilderness campaign, it adds to the experience to keep track of how many days of food you have left, and to figure out how to get more. This is as straightforward as tracking hit points, and it doesn't apply to city campaigns or anything mid-to-high level.

[Telonius]

Yeah, food and water is one I really thought about mentioning. To me, it's one of those, "It doesn't matter unless it matters," things. If you're high levels, and have a caster, it's irrelevant. If low levels and you're in town, "Grocery Store: The RPG" is not something anybody's interested in playing. But there are situations where it could be interesting, when you're low-level and going into a dangerous environment, like a desert or a long-range trek through a forest (thinking Mirkwood or similar). At that point, it's not really about the food, it's about overcoming the environmental challenge.

[Kurald Galain]

Yeah, food and water is one I really thought about mentioning. To me, it's one of those, "It doesn't matter unless it matters," things. If you're high levels, and have a caster, it's irrelevant. If low levels and you're in town, "Grocery Store: The RPG" is not something anybody's interested in playing. But there are situations where it could be interesting, when you're low-level and going into a dangerous environment, like a desert or a long-range trek through a forest (thinking Mirkwood or similar). At that point, it's not really about the food, it's about overcoming the environmental challenge.

I remember playing a lengthy overland campaign where the plot was that it was winter and orc raiders had made a point to burn down foodstores. This also meant several villages had no food for sale because they were also near starvation. So hunting and gathering checks were a big deal, and on occasion, cumulative penalties from not eating for several days.

I eventually had to rule that dealing 12 points of Magic Missile damage to a 1-hp rabbit means there's not going to be any edible food left from that. :smallbiggrin:

[RandomPeasant]

Fair point, except that I find that in a low-level wilderness campaign, it adds to the experience to keep track of how many days of food you have left, and to figure out how to get more. This is as straightforward as tracking hit points, and it doesn't apply to city campaigns or anything mid-to-high level.

I think there are a number of things that aren't appropriate in general, but can work for specific campaigns. Leadership, for example, can be okay if every player has it and you lean into a campaign where players are leading organizations. But if one guy takes Leadership and gets another character (plus a bunch of fodder), that's generally too annoying to be worth it.

[Malphegor]

Sacred Geometry feat.

Also, debuffing stacks. If you can inflict fatigue on every hit, plus sicken but it gets a saving throw, plus shaken but it gets an intimidate check, that's nice and all but please don't. Waaaay too fiddly.

And yeah, we've stopped tracking XP as well. I think my 4E banlist also had certain powers on it that took long to resolve and just didn't do a whole lot.


Heh, I keep meaning to play pathfinder one day ever since I heard of Sacred Geometry.

Because it’s the numbers round of Countdown. Every british person who ever watched that show, myself included, has practiced from a young age to try to suss out such simple maths to reach a specific number from a variable pool. And in under a minute too.

We’ve been trained to wizard like that via slightly fancier than normal gameshows. (I’m unsure if the modern version where comedians run it has it but I know there’s an australian show with the same round in it out there whose name escapes me)

[Kurald Galain]

Heh, I keep meaning to play pathfinder one day ever since I heard of Sacred Geometry.

Go for it! (https://warhorn.net/games/search?o=1&c=20&l=en)

[tiercel]

Not a ban but more a requirement: as much as people have pointed out the complexity of summoning in particular….

Choosing daily spells.

Any spellcaster who doesn’t have a fixed (or only changing at levelup) spell list, i.e. one who has choose spells afresh every day, needs to have at least a “default spell list.”

This is doubleplus true for divine casters like Clerics and Druids, whose players could spend… some time leafing through Spell Compendium plus PHB plus possibly PHBII, never mind digging through Complete Everything, Races of All, environment books, etc etc.

Sure, you’re allowed to to swap spells out for a particular purpose, of course, but in general no manual re-picking every spell for every adventuring day. (Having more than one “standard memorization” is also useful, of course.)

The group as a whole or the DM as arbiter can after some reasonable interval say “OK, let’s move it along,” so the group can get back to play.

[Seward]

Sure, you’re allowed to to swap spells out for a particular purpose, of course, but in general no manual re-picking every spell for every adventuring day. (Having more than one “standard memorization” is also useful, of course.)

.

Most skilled players who ran prep casters had a default mix for basic situations...

"on the road/traveling"
"in a city/social setting"
"attacking a hardpoint (dungeon)" or similar known combat day.

All left slots open to fill later as more information happened, and daily spells tweaked based on specifics of the situation. But they didn't slow down play, working out any changes quietly and quickly on their own while play progressed.

[Endless Rain]

Not a ban but more a requirement: as much as people have pointed out the complexity of summoning in particular….

Choosing daily spells.

Any spellcaster who doesn’t have a fixed (or only changing at levelup) spell list, i.e. one who has choose spells afresh every day, needs to have at least a “default spell list.”

This is doubleplus true for divine casters like Clerics and Druids, whose players could spend… some time leafing through Spell Compendium plus PHB plus possibly PHBII, never mind digging through Complete Everything, Races of All, environment books, etc etc.

Sure, you’re allowed to to swap spells out for a particular purpose, of course, but in general no manual re-picking every spell for every adventuring day. (Having more than one “standard memorization” is also useful, of course.)

The group as a whole or the DM as arbiter can after some reasonable interval say “OK, let’s move it along,” so the group can get back to play.

This, more than anything. I eventually had to ban prepared spellcasting altogether because my party's Wizard Just. Would. Not. Make. A. Default. List. The martials and spontaneous casters were spending up to half an hour waiting for her to finish her spell preparation when I put my foot down and banned prepared casting.

Every prepared-casting class in my campaign is now required to be converted to a spontaneous spellcasting variant like the UA spontaneous Cleric and Druid, with classes getting spells known equal to their spells per day + bonus spells known for high mental stats in place of bonus spells per day. We've had a spontaneous Wizard, Cleric, and Shaman since then, and it's worked out much better.

[rel]

{Scrubbed}

Anyway, a few things to note.

First, a lot of the bookkeeping in 3.5, most notably encumbrance is designed to interact with systems, mini-games and styles of play that no longer exist.
As such they are now busy work that exists largely for its own sake and rarely add anything to gameplay.
If you don't have to make meaningful decisions and tradeoffs as a result of a system then it probably isn't serving a useful purpose.

Second, complexity is usually less of a problem than the amount of time things take at the table. While complexity can add to that, it isn't a simple relationship.
If the problem isn't complexity but time being wasted then address the problem; institute a real world time limit.
If the player couldn't finish their turn in time then their character got flustered and wasted the rest of their actions standing around.
If the player couldn't pick spells fast enough then the character was indecisive and has some unusable empty spell slots.

[Kazyan]

what are the things that your table avoids using, not because they are too strong or too weak, but because they are too much of a bother?

A fellow player once tried to use the Duel of Wills rules from Tome of Battle (p27-28). Given that this involved the DM making a sudden choice between three responses and an opposed Intimidate roll, the DM was not amused when the player happily declared that this gave him a totally negligible easily-forgotten bonus that only lasted for the first round of combat against a single opponent. The DM proceeded to ban the Duel of Wills rules on the spot, because ain't nobody got time for that.