Rules you don't use (D&D/PF)

[molten_dragon]

What rules don't you use when playing, and why? This is aimed more at D&D 3.5 and PF, but feel free to answer for whatever you like.

Mine:

Weight of coins
Tracking non-magical ammunition
multiclassing xp penalties
time and cost to scribe scrolls to a wizard's spellbook
chance of items being destroyed when you roll a natural 1 on a reflex save.

For the most part, these are left out due to the fact that they are needless bookkeeping that bogs down the game, or they serve no useful purpose.

[Shadowleaf]

Weight of coins

Nonmagical ammunition

Multiclassing XP costs.

Alignment Restrictions

Alignment indicator on spells.

... Actually, alignment is for the player only. I decide whether or not certain
spells (Protection from Chaos, etc.) affects the player.

That a Sorcerer's cast time increases when using metamagic.

Overland speed. You arrive in XYZ days, or at the speed of plot. I don't want to calculate your Hustle speed.

Random Encounters. I deem when, what and where, unless I'm really not feeling inspired.

Fluff requirements for most prestige classes (not counting stuff like Ur-Priest).

[Katana_Geldar]

In 4E, the amount of times different magic items effects can be used per day. It changes per tier and makes no real sense not being able to not use a magic items power when my group rarely uses them anyways.

[rubycona]

Everything on your list, except ammunition. In an ammo-tight situation, we track it, but otherwise we don't bother.

Weight/volume of coins only when dealing with massive amounts of coinage. (Can 100,000 GP fit in the bag of holding? Maybe. Sure, why not. Can 1,000,000 GP fit? No.)

Diplomacy checks. We've houseruled them into circumstance modifiers only. They're great, and useful... basically, you RP or simply state what you're trying to get across, you diplomacy check to see how well it was done (10-20 sounds good, 20-30 is eloquently put, 30-40 is truly inspiring, 40+ is nearly brainwashingly effective). How the NPC or PC reacts is based on that. A good idea with a bad diplomacy is liable to be blown off... a bad idea with a good diplomacy is liable to be accepted, but no game-breaking either way. And a very, very stubborn NPC won't waver regardless of your diplomacy.

Lots of little edits, lots of "straight rules" to which we say Screw You. Alignment is another system we've practically reinvented.

[MachineWraith]

Weight of coins

Nonmagical ammunition, unless it's some sort of survival horror style game.

Multiclassing XP costs.

Alignment. The players play their characters as they think the characters should be played. If they act evil, people will think they're evil, but I dislike the "I'm just playing my alignment!" excuse. Therefore, the player does not have a set alignment, and must act as their character would act, not as what a line on a piece of paper says. When it comes to being affected by certain spells, I decide the player's alignment based on past actions. With things like a Paladin's smite evil, it's replaced with "smite enemy".

That a Sorcerer's cast time increases when using metamagic.

Overland speed. I tell the players how many days it takes to travel on foot. If they procure mounts or flight, I'll cut travel time.

Random Encounters. Never used one to date.

Fluff requirements for most prestige classes.

Most things regarding a wizard's spellbook. I don't keep track of how many pages, I don't force the wizard to drop cash to scribe scrolls, etc. I also don't make scroll-scribing take time, but I don't allow it in the middle of the adventuring day either. Basically, the wizard scribes during the time it takes him to prepare his spells for the day.

The chance of items being destroyed when you roll a natural 1 on a reflex save.

Also, if a player can word an in-character argument well, and their character could reasonably make the same argument (aka, no Cha 2 barbarians pulling a Winston Churchill), I'll let them do that in place of a Diplomacy/Bluff/Intimidate roll, at their option.

Another note on speech skills: they won't always work. I don't really care if you roll high on a single Diplomacy check, you're not going to convert the religious fanatic sent to kill you into your best friend in 6 seconds.

[Curmudgeon]

Diplomacy making someone a fanatic follower. (I also downgrade what "friendly" and "helpful" mean in this context.)

Leadership, and everything associated with it.

Random encounter tables. Nothing horribly wrong with the idea, but the tables don't make sense in most ecosystems.

Font of Inspiration.

Avengers and other (April Fool's) jokes.

[Siosilvar]

Massive Damage.

[Remmirath]

3rd edition D&D
All of these are based on the play style of the people in the group and the fact that the game has progressed to about 60th level at this point.

Sorcerer's casting time being increased with meta-magic

Multiclassing XP penalties

Massive Damage checks (it was easier than assigning a new threshold, and if everybody's doing way more than 50 damage/hit it's pretty silly to save or die each time for it)

1/2 damage on the off-hand weapon for two-weapon fighting

Confirming criticals

Not all damage modifiers being applied on a critical hit

Being able to target only the edge of a weapon's reach

Grappling rules (we use simplified ones)

Weapon Finesse only being able to be taken with certain weapons and having check penalties

Class skills/cross-class skills

Falling damage cap (because 20d6 is really nothing at high levels)

Death Attack requiring a 3 round study

Disable Device checks taking a long time (and only rogues being able to find traps)

Epic Healing seed healing all hit points (instead heals a base of 150. For every +6 added to the Spellcraft DC, the amount is increased by 150)

Chance of failure on a Coup de Grace

Actual rules on Diplomacy, Intimidate, et cetera (they basically just serve as 'how well your character said what you just said')

Anything that requires keeping close track of things (ammo, rations, spell components) unless the item in question is very rare or you're stranded somewhere

Leadership (if your character is going to have followers, they are going to get them by roleplaying it. Not by taking a feat)

Pretty much anything that is not found in the core rulebooks, the Epic Level Handbook, Expanded Psionics or the Draconomicon (there are exceptions, but in general, yeah)

The spells Time Stop and True Resurrection

The chance of items being destroyed when you roll a natural 1 on a reflex save (depends on the circumstances and how powerful the items are, no chance involved)

Length of time for developing epic spells (shortened so as not to cripple the epic spell casters as compared to the non-epic spell meta-magic casters any more than they already are)


- - -

I was going to do the MERP ones, too, but I can't remember them all off the top of my head. We haven't played that game for a couple of months now. They mostly have to do with restricting magic use and the rarer species to give it a more 4th age Middle-earth feel.

[Gensh]

A lot of these are the sorts of things everybody does, but some of them just indicate the general laziness of my party...

Random encounters
XP
Money
Ranged weapons
Diplomacy
Overland speed
Massive damage
Chaotic neutral
Gods other than Vecna and the god of atheism
Magic items that aren't weapons or wondrous items
Crafting
Grappling
Traps

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Massive Damage.

+1 to this. Hi, mister meat shield whose sole job is to hit things and take hits! If you manage to do your job successfully and take a fraction of your HP in damage, you have a 1 in 20 chance of dying outright, while if your squishy friend who can bend reality at will takes the same fraction of *his* HP in damage he laughs it off and keeps firing away. Of course, if an important enemy takes massive damage, the DM will make sure it never rolls low because that would be an anticlimactic death

A lot of the previously-mentioned minutia are only covered when there's something egregiously wrong going on. The 3 strength halfling can't carry much treasure, whether or not no one counts coins for their weight.

[HunterOfJello]

Weight of random unimportant stuff like arrows and gold
Use Rope skill
Paladins as PCs (Pathfinder excluded)
Sorcerers taking longer to use metamagic
Rangers getting a delayed progression for Animal Companions

[Susano-wo]

we've tended to ignore multiclassing penalties...usually the dip itself is enough of a penalty (yeah, I know the right dip at the right time can be awesome, just not an issue generally with our group)

Alignment restrictions that make no sense, such as Bard and Monk [and Assassin]

Confirming criticals (though I keep poppping up with the "give it a try!" opinino--we all took one look at theat rule and said "blech!" But recently I have been wanting to give it a shot)

We play social skills by ear. [and correct me if I'm wrong, but I beleive you need to have a minute of conversation for diplomacy to work, no? its not a six second /instant attitude change, even by RAW]

we folded open lock into disable divice as recomended by the Rules Compendium

WE don't usually keep track of weight. People just only gear up as makes sense

In addition, my main DM generally uses her judgement on rules in individual situations where she feels they don't make sense, which is very cool. :P

[Coidzor]

Weight of coins
Tracking non-magical ammunition
multiclassing xp penalties
time and cost to scribe scrolls to a wizard's spellbook
chance of items being destroyed when you roll a natural 1 on a reflex save.

For the most part, these are left out due to the fact that they are needless bookkeeping that bogs down the game, or they serve no useful purpose.

That sums up most of the ones my group does away with. We also don't track rations or their cost due to not wanting to deal with the book keeping. Just seems silly to keep track of pennies after a certain point, so we axed it completely. And multi-class XP penalties we never got and just decided that they sounded stupid and annoying.

I think we just forget about the reflex save item loss and the scribing of scrolls (then again, we haven't had a wizard player in awhile, so I don't remember if we did that or not for the last wizard... I know he had to pay for the scrolls he got in order to beef up his spellbook but wasn't really paying attention to whether he spent the gold to copy them or not.

[Eurus]

We play social skills by ear. [and correct me if I'm wrong, but I beleive you need to have a minute of conversation for diplomacy to work, no? its not a six second /instant attitude change, even by RAW]

You can take a -10 penalty to do it in one round, IIRC.

[Remmirath]

Ah, one rather large thing I forgot - the CR system and associated XP calculations. This is mostly just me and not the group as a whole, but I dislike it and prefer to just give each monster a set value. Especially since I'm almost always creating my own monsters anyhow.

[The Glyphstone]

Confirming criticals (though I keep poppping up with the "give it a try!" opinino--we all took one look at theat rule and said "blech!" But recently I have been wanting to give it a shot)
:P

Your group auto-confirms all crits? Wowza. Start stacking the Elemental Burst enchantments on your weapons. :)

[DisgruntledDM]

Overland speed. You arrive in XYZ days, or at the speed of plot. I don't want to calculate your Hustle speed.

Random Encounters. I deem when, what and where, unless I'm really not feeling inspired.

Same. I have a homebrew setting, and I don't plan on calculating any exact distance. I just say something that sounds reasonable like "Three day's ride yadda yadda"

Paladins aren't a basic class in my game - they are now a prestige class.

[d13]

It depends on the campaign style, but mashing up everything, we end up not using:

* XP
* Weight/Encumbrance rules (unless time is a factor). If your character could reasonably carry that, she can.
* Keeping track of nonmagical ammo.
* Keeping track of ammo weight.
* Keeping track of gold weight.
* Actually, gold is just a number written on the charsheet.
* Some spells/clases/etc.
* The way some skills work (most likely social ones, but Tumble is also an offender).

[Drakonzeta]

From the ones I've actually learned about (Some of these I didn't know)
-XP
-Weight of GP
-(Weight in general when we don't use myth-weavers)
-Alignment issues with templates
-Encounter tables (DM chooses all encounters)
-Bonus spells do not count towards spells known
-Move rate. Speed=speed of plot
-Keeping track of rations: Food magically appears for .000000001 cp.
And probably a lot I don't know about

[Sang Real]

Alignment restrictions that make no sense, such as Bard and Monk [and Assassin]

Not to mention the paladin's.

[Susano-wo]

Not to mention the paladin's.

The Paladin's at least makes sense, or can make sense. But I'm sure my main DM would accept either the UA variants, or a non LG Pally if the concept made sense ^ ^

RE Diplomancy: Ah, that probably explains it...so it sounds like that's a good one to add to the list

Well, we haven't had a whole lot of crit fishers, so the critting thing hasn't come up much (and usually don't have access to magic marts), but yeah, it makes that more powerful, and it makes us scratch our heads at what to do with all that adds to confirm rolls stuff :P

[Grommen]

Ah, one rather large thing I forgot - the CR system and associated XP calculations. This is mostly just me and not the group as a whole, but I dislike it and prefer to just give each monster a set value. Especially since I'm almost always creating my own monsters anyhow.

I just tell them when they level. Then I don't have to add and divide exp. EVER

I like the skill checks for diplomacy and stuff, but we use them as more of a guide as to how well or poor the character did. So we kinda roll the check before we start running the mouth. What we say reflects the roll. So if someone rolled bad, they would come up with a really bad response. If someone rolled good. They come up with a more convincing line.

Then again some times someone comes up with something so funny, true, or just plan bad ass. We don't bother to roll.

[Tvtyrant]

Aging Rules.

[Ormur]

Massive damage, mulitclassing penalties. Apparently we don't use ageing rules either.

[LordBlades]

Encumberance (we rather go by common sense instead of trackinge very pound)
Multiclass XP penalty.
Keeping track of most mundane consumables (arrows, rations etc) unless we need to (like being stranded or so)
Handle animal rules. we simply play animal companions/mount as stand alone chars, rather than waste time debating what a trick can/can't do.

[Aotrs Commander]

Let's see, we ignore:

1) Massive Damage

2) Multiclassing penalties, including the "you can't multiclass paladin nd monk" nonsense

3) Cost of scribing wizard's (et al) spells (though not time)

4) Half damage for off-hand TWF (which actually means it's marginally better than THF in some circumstances)

5) Armour Spikes and most of the exotic double weapons (because we consider them stupid; spiked chain barely gets a pass, as does double-bladed sword, though we've only seen the former one one campaign the the latter never)

6) Strict aherance to weight. We keep a rough eye on encumberance¹; however, one of the first things a party usually gets is a set of handy haversacks each and often a bag of holding or portable hole, when we tend to care less. We don't worry about the encumerance of gold at all, though. (And even if we did, we'd use a realistic measure as D&Ds - like much of it's "weight" rules, are way out of line.)

7) We also roll crits as normal damage x multiplier, as opposed to multiple dice (e.g. greataxe crit is (D12+mods) x 3, as opposed to 3D12+modsx3, which I think it's supposed to be.

8) Many, if not all, of the "special" requirements for PrCs as many of them are simply stupid.

9) Alignment restrictions and classes (with the sole exception of the Paladin), as they are needlessly restrictive.

10) Wealth By Level fairly often, as I usually can't be arsed to work it out. Though I have come a cropped with this on converted AD&D modules sufficently that I'm gonna be at least a BIT more careful next time... (Last time the 19th level PCs sold there excess loot of in Sigil, they got 1.5 million gp...) Still, at least it means the noncasters are coping okay, since they're all so horribly over-equipped...!



¹Within reason, of course. We do care when someone is (even inadvertently) taking the wotsit, as when we discovered the paladin had rather more weapons than was feasible.

Spoiler

Show

[Extract from my email to player]
Please explain this.

Found on Heather's equipment sheet:

Primary (blank)
Off-Hand Ornate Silver Shield Heavy +3
Weapon Guisarme
Weapon Longsword (MW) Longsword (+1M) Mace (+1M)
Weapon Spiked Chain (MW) Spiked Chain Spiked Chain +2
...
...
...
Longsword x 2 longsword MW x 1
Longbow Arrows x 48
Dagger x 2
Spiked Chain Spiked Chain (MW)
Guisarme (MW) Guisarme
Living Chain²

So, according to your character sheet, you are carrying SIX Spiked Chains, THREE Guisarmes, FIVE longswords, two daggers and a longbow...? Nevermind the fact that according to your front sheet you've got a compostite +4 Str longbow as well...

EVEN IF we assume that some of the weapons are duplicated in the weapons line and the lines below, this STILL leaves you with FOUR spiked chains, FOUR longwords and TWO guisarmes!

You are encumbered - yes even with Str 22 - as you stand with just your melee weapons and your armour, let ALONE your other gear! Spiked Chains weigh 10lbs, Gusiarmes 13lbs and longswords 9lbs - that's 141 lbs with just your weapons! (Even with the more conservative estimate that's still 102 lbs.)
And frankly, it's not physically POSSIBLE for your be carrying all that lot around, due to the sheer bulk!

When you come on Wednesday, audit your weapons to a sensible number, please! (And fer cryin' out loud, write down your weapons on your equipment sheet FIRST, THEN your front sheet for attack bonuses; that way you don't loose gear by putting it on the front and not the equipment (Comp Longbow!))

*Facepalm*

[/extract]

²Which is a spiked chain

(By the by, I'm not sure why the weight in the email were slightly out (guisarmes are 12lbs and longswords 4lbs), not sure what source I looked them up in. However it might have been partly from erroneous memory (for longswords) or simply a typo, since I was a bit put out by this point...)

To be as fair as I'm going to be, it was more oversight than deliberate. However, that player was already in the group's bad books because we foolishly let him work out the party gold and he managed to work it out to ten times as much as it should have been or somthing equally daft. Again, due to total incompetance (he was USING A CALCULATOR!!!) rather than on purpose. (As I recall, most of it came from him writing down 120k instead of 12k for something.) Which meant the group had to spend another half-session disgarding kit they'd bought (to the tune of about 20k each, they rest was right so they got some stuff out of it, and they decided they'd rather give some back now and get treasure later, as opposed to not getting any treasure for a while.) And yes, we've never let him forget it - or let him add up the gold since!

[Tyndmyr]

Confirming criticals (though I keep poppping up with the "give it a try!" opinino--we all took one look at theat rule and said "blech!" But recently I have been wanting to give it a shot)

Yeah...this happened in my group until someone made a barb with ludicrous critting ability. We still had 3.0 core books, too, so we were stacking stuff that can no longer be stacked, at the time. Amusing, but generally not practical in actual gameplay.

However, if you really want it, the spell Dolorous Blade makes it legit.

[ericgrau]

Weight of coins

Clearly you have not seen enough 2e adventures. You have slain the copper dragon and collect his horde of 200,000 cp. Town is far away down the bandit ridden road. Aaaaaand... go!

Actually most of the time I can see a lot of time savings in ignoring minor rules.

[Kurald Galain]

• Alignment
• Initiative
• Multiclass XP penalties
• Psionics
• Weight and encumbrance
• Being able to buy any magic item you like
• Random encounters
• Leadership
• Factotums
• Having to pick a target for the Dodge feat (it instead affects every enemy)

[Farlion]

I think to sum up I can say:

Any rule that gives me a hassel without adding to my gaming experience, I just downright ignore. (Which are most of the ones mentioned in this thread)

We usually just go by "common-sense" and "DM-has-the-last-word" with anything we don't want to bother using rules for.

Cheers,
Farlion