Mistakes In Systems & Pet Peeves

>bitch about system issues
>can't bitch about d&d
it's the point mate

>Implying those problems are exclusive to DnD
>Missing the one that was Shadowrun specific
>Being this much of autistic meme-spouting kid

Sure is summer in here. When does school start back up again?

>muh summer
you're worse

2/10

Please, both of you, save it for /b/

Well, since you asked nicely, sure.

C'mon, you don't wanna play Everyone Is John with me?

Non rules light games that don't have hit locations. Helmets adding to total armour just kills me (I'm looking at you, Shadowrun)

Games that don't let players select their hit locations.

I think there's a wide enough spectrum above "rules light" to accommodate games with and without hit locations.

However, not having hit locations BUT having armor pieces with individual bonuses is just retarded. You either have both or neither.

Are there any systems that have hit locations but no rules for called shots?

I know Twilight 2000 didn't have that, but that's a real easy fix. I can't imagine it would ever be a chore.

Yes, that is more akin to what I mean. Shadowrun has helmets, kneepads, arm bracers, whatever, that all add to one single armour value. Considering how rules intensive the system is, it's off the chains that they don't have hit locations.

Plenty of shoddy homebrew systems. The other extreme is too many bleeding hit locations.
>Wrist
>Upper Arm
>Shoulder
>Ankle
>Knee
>Solar Plexus
>North East Corner of Andromeda

I think pic related is a good chart to use, considering that there are actually only four different types of hit locations: Head, Torso, Arms, Legs. The rest of the stuff on the chart is just for fluff, which I think is nice (That and I think there's one piece of armour that actually uses fractional locations. It covers the upper arms, I think.)

I have a different chart fucking somewhere which I fell in love with. Basically that reduced to d100 which I'm modifying because targeting individual limbs is kinda important.

Very important. It may be a little complicated, but I've always had a soft spot for GURPS' hit location chart as well. I like the depth it goes in to, but I don't feel it overbearing at any time. Or maybe that's just because I have a cheat sheet.

Feat Taxes =/= Feat Chains.

It was something kinda like this yeah. I dunno, might amp up the locations the more I think about it.
Fucking augments man, ruining my life.

Called shot to the groin all day every day for that double shock

Riddle of Steel had a great way of handling hit locations. Player chooses the zone their attack is aimed, and if the attack hits then it nails a randomly determined location within that specific zone.

I think it was a good way to emulate the idea that your opponent isn't standing completely still while still having hit locations that actually make fucking sense depending on the direction and type of your attack.

Still not as weird as one my players collecting left arms.

Shit that's actually really good, worth picking up to analyse would you say or just concept fodder?

I think it's worth picking up, I'm kind of a fanboy.

Though it's pretty old, out of print, and there's a number of successors trying to revive the system.
So far all but one that I've seen miss the fucking point or go way overboard with introducing changes and new mechanics. Band of Bastards (make sure to add "rpg" to the google search or else you're just going to get porn) is the said only one that doesn't suck (so far, it's unfinished last I saw).

>Or else you'll get porn
That is the words of a man who can be quoted for saying "Hey there's this new awesome game, lemme show you- OH NO!"

No, as in you'll JUST get porn, and good luck finding the actual game like 8-10+ pages into the search results.

That's a big one. Especially given how lethal WFRP is, unless the GM is very generous with bonuses then it's going to be pratfalls for two sessions, then everyone dies horribly. There's no advancement or progress.

Indeed.
I think you can work around it, if you can get your players into the mindset that they have to roleplay around their lack of skill rather than try to game through it. Most players do not do this, and just end up rage-quitting when they confidently charge a teenage pickpocket, convinced they can handle such a minor threat, and end up taking a critical hit that permanently disables their sword arm, thus crippling their character.

That book looks like SoS

>that moment when your Only War demo expert not only prematurely blows the bridge you were tasked to destroy but does it while everyone was on it
FFG RPG's are some drugs.

>Playing D&D exclusively
>Complaining about D&D being shit
Change the system, you fucking mong

>July just started
>HURRR SUMMER DURRR
And here we go, enduring this shit for next two months...

>Be part of eternal September
>Complain about summer

I'm sure you can understand the imbalance it would cause if the wizard could use any of his learned spells slots number of times each day.
You could also just play a sorcerer and fluff it as a wizard.

If you want, you can think about it like this. At the end of each long rest, or whatever, your wizard sorts out all the components and charts and ritual shit he needs for his chosen spells, rolled up into a form he can cast relatively quickly. If he wants a spell he didn't prepare, he can use it, but he's going to need to root around in his baggage for his reagents first.

In 40k rp if you full aim, and take a single shot at close range, your default 'uman has a 75% chance of hitting.

My biggest gripe with their 40k games is poor weapon balance. Multimeltas for example are basically straight worse than las cannons, even at close range. Vanquisher cannons are weaker than lascannons against tanks. The las gun struggles to wound even guardsman tier infantry. It seems like they just assigned pen and damage arbitrarily without thinking how it would effect the balance of the game as a whole.

Low level guns are the worst about this. Your standard trooper has 3 TB and 4AP, so 7 soak total. Your average autogun does 1d10+2 with no pen. So in effect the autogun and stock lasgun do 1d10-5 damage. So it's a 50/50 to do nothing at all, and even if you always rolled max damage it would take 2 shots to get him at zero, and even more to kill him if your gm does critical wounds for randos. In actuality your basic bitch with flak armor can take a dozen shots from a las gun and still be kicking. The variable power setting on the lasgun, and special ammo for bullet guns makes things a bit more deadly, but enemies are still sponges against basic weapons.

And for the players, enemies with lasguns and frag grenades are about as threatening as a stray cat.

I should not need a plasma gun just to wound a guardsman reliability.

>SoS
>Actual book
I want to live in your World

When the system actively lies to you, presenting two options as equally good, but one's dogshit.

I don't need the book to goddamn lie to me.

Bad time to mention we survived the explosion?

Hey Mr. Fighter.

Mr Anyone not a Druid, Cleric or Wizard, thank you very much.

Rules lite systems that have more rules than Rogue Trader.

A system becomes so rules heavy that the players feel they don't have any real options beyond what's written on their sheet.
>I want to try and trip the guy with my non-melee focused character.
>Okay. So you get a -4 for not having the talent (trip), a -6 for not having the appropriate tool, a -3 for not having the skill (combat maneuvers III), and a -5 from your character being 2 hexes away from the target.
>You know what, I'm gonna stick to shooting people.

This is more a minor complaint, but RPG systems with terrible GM sections or horrible advice.

Which is sadly the vast majority of them.

And then players of that system wonder why everyone wants to run DnD or Dungeon World.

Even better when weapon focus doesn't transfer to nearly identical weapons.
>Crap! My revolver which I have skill focus, weapon focus, weapon mastery, and combat mastery with is out of ammo.
>I'll just pick up the plasma revolver the guard dropped. I should be able to use it right?
>>You don't have any proficiencies with plasma revolvers. You have no idea how to shoot it.
>I should actually be better with plasma revolvers since there's no knock back right? Just point and shoot.
>>You don't know what part to point at the enemy. I'll roll and on a %80 or less you shoot yourself.

I hate this the most.

Yeah. In all my sessions of only war I can't think of a time a player has been killed by infantry fire. They've been stomped on by helbrutes, evaporated by a twin 30mm autocannon, pulled apart by a stalk tank, blown up by arty, devoured by spawn, blasted by blight drones, chain axed in two, shot by snipers with mutagenic rounds, drowned after their boat was sunk by mortar fire, but never killed by las gun fire.

Actually I take that back. One my players was killed by a las gun. It was after the party had a run in the the aforementioned helbrute and one of the two surviving PCs ran to what he thought was a friendly PDF chimera. Turns out it wasn't so friendly, and a whole rifle squad of renegades Swiss cheesed him at point blank range.

Fucking this

I also hate ultra detailed point buy skill systems, or at least those that don't provide a baseline competency...

>I'm a hardened mercenary
>but I don't know what to do with this revolver because I thought my 98% in the Handgun skill covered it
>and I forgot to take drive, so I guess I took the bus into all those war zones

It usually also results in tediously slow character creation, and players scrolling down their sheet to figure out what to do next, instead of thinking on their own.

Not a rule mistake but a formatting mistake: Dungeon World types all rules jargon in the same lower case font as other words. It makes reading quite a chore since you have to doublecheck whether they're using English or DWglish.

Never got much mileage offa heavy weapons, but infantry combat is fixed by removing the soak of toughness bonus outside of any Unnatural TB points.

Makes the game so much better. Makes all of the versions better.

post more pics of THICC books

50% of hte problem of casters is not enough restrictions that make their access to power come at a reasonable cost, the remaining 99% of the problem with casters is the total spell list available to casters in 3.x is full of bullshit like time stop that breaks chunks of the combat mechanic's core time management and similar.

>rules bloat
>tfw your homebrew 90 pages and combat is only 4 of them

I hate when high level play is the exact same as low level play but with bigger numbers.

I agree with you in almost everything, but specifically wondering, in the case of systems that use xp as currency for some stuff apart from levelups (like making scrolls and wands and stuff in general) how would you (or anyone who'd answer, for that matter) handle those situations?

I think of xp penalties for death only working if there's a way to powerlevel low level players or if xp gain can be uneven. Things like gold=xp works well with this since you can just declare that all gold goes to the low level guy. It makes the xp loss more of a party wide than an individual penalty.

>Mechanics where one player is playing "an entirely different game" within the game.
Huh. My group actively wants to all have completely different skill sets.

>I have zero reading comprehension: the post

user is specifically referring to mechanics which delay the game by placing a single player into their own scenario. When the Decker hacks something, he is essentially playing his own game with its own rules while the party gets to stand by and do nothing for however long 'combat' takes for the Decker.

This would be fine in a book or movie, but in a TTRPG it grinds the game to a dead stop for everyone but the Decker, which is pretty shitty.

Ideally I'd think the DM would try and limit hacking in this form to combat encounters and treat the Decker's turn as part of initiative, but I'm not well versed in Shadowrun's hacking rules.

I know thats what he meant, guess i just didnt phrase it right. That sort of set up where all the PC's do their own thing by themselves is what my players want.

>not co-gm master race
>not being able to split the party whenever you want with no interruptions
get gud

The entire spell system makes more sense when you've read Dying Earth, but it still doesn't make sense.

I hate your players.

>wants magic to be restricted
>complains when it is

I've made a system where focus/proficiency/etc is derived from the action, since that's the bit you have to really understand to get any use out of.

It also means I get to dig up all sorts of bizarre shit so that, for example, someone who's only ever taken weapon focus and other feats for a revolver won't be totally useless in a long range scenario.

On the downside, if you're a revolver user, a break action pistol might as well be a pump action shotgun to you.

I faintly remember an RPG with a bad hit location system that made being mostly in cover worse than being out in the open due to cover not making you harder to hit but removing the body parts in cover from the table, making it much more likely the body parts that weren't in cover (head and an arm) were going to get shot.

>Spell slots
To once again echo the sentiment: Vancian magic has its place, but TTRPGs probably wasn't it. If someone made a new system now with Vancian rules, I don't think it'd go over well--D&D's system is fine enough, but I'm glad that it's mostly restricted to D&D thanks to distaste over it.

>Selectable races
Yeah yeah I know, variety is what it is, but I can't help but feel like it paints worldbuilding into a corner. Races and players tend to get typecast (see: Dwarves), and working multiple races around cultures and vice-versa feeds the restrictions. Ultimately I feel like they make game world "feel" smaller, not bigger. Too often they come out to other end looking like humans with longer ears or tusks or a beard, and it's heartbreaking.
I actually love them in Shadowrun, for whatever that's worth

>Rules-light systems
Say what you will about combat simulators or rules lawyers, but in my experience binary definitions keep things smoother than a "light" system would have you believe.

>Only Divine magic can heal
I do like the idea of separate disciplines being brought up in class concepts, but I agree that segregating the two kinds makes little sense. I enjoy Warlocks and Theurges because of this.
>Level ups after big plot arcs
I don't subscribe to this--I think the granular points feel more organic if used well--but to each their own.

>Systems that prioritize combat and get TOO detailed
I had tried using AD&D2e's Knockdown Rules once upon a time, and it was then that I learned abstraction has its benefits. What we gained in some realism we lost in fluidity. Sometimes it's better to let tension in combat be dictated by outside forces.

This.

And feat tax for basically identical weapons.

Great club: martial weapon
Tetsubo: exotic weapon

It's just a club damn it.

5e player here, I'd like to add onto the magic complaints
>spells that make you completely safe throughout the night
>spells that provide enough food to sustain the party
>spells that nullify the need for other skills (invisibility > stealth checks, flight > climb checks)
>casters are the only actual AOE option, so the entire rest of the team can kill maybe 3 mooks, even if they're super low AC/HP, then when it's the caster's turn he just burning hands or fireballs them all and kills them instantly

separately these would be fine, but a single caster can do all of these things at the same time unless you specifically try to drain every single spell slot they have.

The only good thing about this is that most homebrew caster classes I've seen aren't that overpowered, since they don't add new spells, whereas most homebrew martials, including unearthed arcana, are severely more powerful than default - but at least they feel adequate compared to the party's caster

>any permanent statistics that are determined randomly
I'm looking at you, DnD's ability scores and 3.PF's hit dice system. It was acceptable in the 70's when nobody new any better and it was okay in the 80's and 90's when playing a mathematically weak character and/or a mathematically unbalanced party was almost expected, but modern systems are designed with the assumption that the party will be roughly of a certain power at a certain level, and if say the party fighter rolled 2's on half of his hit dice there's going to be some serious fucking problems.

>spell lists
"Here's a list of the magic things you can do" has always felt so... videogamey. This is a game of imagination and it feels like we're playing with preset, pre-programmed effects. It doesn't feel all that magical. It happens outside of Vancian magic systems too, with lists whatever type of powers are in the system.

>rulebook that is filled halfway (or more) with fluff

>fluff and crunch interspersed throughout the whole thing instead of separate chapters

>the system has a two or three letter acronym for most stats and abilities and the rulebook refers to them by their acronym instead of the actual term while trying to explain how something works

>The character sheet is too long to fit onto a single sheet of paper

>The system doesn't call it a "Game Master" but instead uses some other term

>The book has a whole goddamn section explaining what the fuck Roleplaying even is

>The book is out of print, used copies are either ungodly expensive or impossible to find, digital versions were never released, and the only available PDF's are low-rez, grayscale, out of order, and missing pages

>The core rulebook was printed in paperback

>Game's a system and setting are designed to work together, they compliment one another
>The same system is applied to a half dozen other settings with minimal changes
>When making a new system for the setting, stupid shit that only made sense in the old system carries over

I hate it when systems require miniatures to play properly, especially if it's a genre that's difficult to find good minis for.
Wargames don't count for this nitpick, just to be clear.

>fluff and crunch interspersed throughout the whole thing instead of separate chapters
jesus christ, this. I have trouble getting my group to play anything other than D&D because of how poorly formatted a lot of TTRPG books are. The lore of your world fucking sucks anyway, just be clear on how to play the game.

also,
>games that are rules-heavy as fuck but obtuse and inconsistent in their wording
I didn't learn how to play 5e from the book, I learned it from numerous clarifications on here or the writers twitter accounts, because it's that common for people to not have a clue how key features of the game work.

>mfw reading this as I design my homebrew
>mfw I have no face
This is basically a 'does and don't's of design and I love it. Also
>Routine checks your character who is trained in doing can consistently fuck up because you only have 6/10 chance.
I hate it. It's fucking ROUTINE.

> invisibility > stealth checks

This is a misconception in 5e actually; invisibility only gives you full concealment so you can make a stealth check, but you still need to make stealth rolls. If you fail them the enemies know you are there, you merely get the benefits of being concealed (disadv on hitting you, and you get advantage on your first attack).

>"Here's a list of the magic things you can do" has always felt so... videogamey. This is a game of imagination and it feels like we're playing with preset, pre-programmed effects. It doesn't feel all that magical. It happens outside of Vancian magic systems too, with lists whatever type of powers are in the system.

Riddle of Steels attempt at magic is interesting in that it specifically tries to embrace creativity. It's also a broken mess and way too easy to make a broken "spell" in.

The issue is martial stuff, even when imagined, gets shackled to our known reality. Even action movies keep a thin but tangible relationship with "plausible". Magic on the other hand comes directly from imagination and dreaming. In dreams we can fly by floating about with no restrictions and physics gets to weep in a corner.

So if we let people just do whatever effect they want in their imagination via spellcasting then you quickly run into the kind of issues that plague chatroom roleplaying problems. AKA tons of asspulls.

The solution seems to be making some kind of system and explanation for how magic works and what it can and can't do before letting people have at it with creativity...but that's far easier said then done. Again I point to riddle of steel.

A further issue is that if you drift too far from spell lists and "this is what the spell does" it's possible you lose the "feel of magic". If I just had a system where you can spend mana to raise the damage of a spell that may not feel quite right.

Anyway, if you've come across any systems that manage to do it the way you want let me know. I'd love to check em out.

Natural language is a continual blight on the RPG industry. Fuck 'natural language'.

You don't need to go full DnD4e-style (but if you do, that's good) but you can, at least, at an absolute minimum, have strict rule language templates like *World games.

I've attached an image of what Exalted 3e literally looks like in the book, vs what someone cleaned up the exact same special move to be.
There is literally no point at which the example on the left is better than the example on the right - especially since you can actually sanely somewhat write the sane version on a character sheet.

I literally could not understand the left example without using the right. Jesus.

Enlighten me, what does "natural language" mean in this context?

The one on the left.

Trying to explain the ability with a mix of rules verbiage and non-rules verbiage, mixing the fluff and the crunch.

For the record, the right side should probably have a fluff line at least.

Natural language means giving fluff to abilities.

The one on the right is soulless and fluffless.

>What are the cardinal sins of systems Veeky Forums?

TLOS

>How would you/do you correct these issues?

Use the LOS rules from 4th ed.

Natural language means you can't distinguish rules and non-rules, making the whole system a fucking mess

This. You can add a fluff description below the one on the right and you can have your cake and eat it. But for me trying to read the rule on the fly to make a judgement call that left example is in the fucking way. I should not need to make flash cards like it's always suggested either THE GAME SHOULD DO IT FOR ME.

>What are the cardinal sins of systems Veeky Forums?

Being Strike! RPG.

>>The book is out of print, used copies are either ungodly expensive or impossible to find, digital versions were never released, and the only available PDF's are low-rez, grayscale, out of order, and missing pages
pic related

What's so special about this one anyway?

>The Realm of Yolmi

archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/24505042/

>I don't mind a good spoof, but I would like to know ahead of time that I am buying one. With this review, you out there will have a chance to make that choice.

Alas, it was not very well-received back in the day.

I don't know. I personally just like rare stuff I guess.

Completely agree, with the addition of a portion of flavor text attached to the sane rules at the end. Probably just an edited bit of the first paragraph on the natural language version. Which is impossible to parse.

>Hit points, or at least hit points that grow with lvls
>Classes
>Levels instead of buying your shit directly for xp or whatever character progression metacurrency you're using
>On the other hand, point-buy systems that allow too much minmaxing by allowing to make a totally cripled character that just excels in one thing on god-tier
>Non-abstract wealth
>Overdetailed equipment managing with every pointless item needed to be tracked together with its weight/encumberance instead just assuming that character generally posseses basic equipement for his class
>Alignments
>Wide gap in complexity between combat and non-combat mechanics
>Grid and minis needed/strongly suggested for combat
>Heavy meta in narrative aspect of the game (like Aspects in FATE)

All this shit is so obsolete

And fix? Don't play games that contain those.

Sounds like you just like rules light, friend.

Your resistance only makes my Strikeboner! harder.

Seriously though, it's a good example of a bunch of stuff taken to extremes, and the good and bad effects of it:

>1d6 universal resolution mechanic
+ Consistent, fast
- Swingy, might not be granular enough

>eliminating natural language where possible
+ Rules are crystal clear
- You need to make your own fluff

>Eliminate scaling numbers from attack/defense
+ Fast, no bloat, no need to math in progression
- Less obvious progression

etc.

What if we had 5E casters add all their spell slots together to form a mana pool and use a spell's level as its cost, then started banning spells using the logic of ?

5e already has a spellpoint variant in the DMG.

Stop shilling Strike!

Why does Veeky Forums keep shilling Strike!?

Cause it keeps being relevant!

Basically what 3.X did not only to D&D but it's seep into other systems:

RAW,

An entire gaming generation acting like the most conceited, pedantic, pissants you can comprehend?

Well fuck me.

I'm sorry you somehow expect your standards of rules interpretation to literally exceed those used by actual real word judicial bodies.

So basically most forums.