Dungeons and Dragons, more fondly known as D&D, has been around for almost half a century now. In that time there's been multiple editions and supplements released by the companies that have owned it.
Wizards of the Coast is the current holder of the franchise and after releasing what is widely considered to be one of the worst editions (4th), cleaned up their act and released one of the best editions. 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons is on🥂e of the best to date, cutting a lot of the tedious busy work that was present in the other editions while still💝 keeping it light and fun.
Featuring a complete overhaul of all the classes and rules, D&D's biggest change was introducing the advantage system. Instead of flat bonuses or negatives added on to the roll,෴ players roll twice when i𝄹n an advantageous position and take the highest or twice and take the lowest if the situation is unfavorable.
The new rule was extremely well received as was most of the 5th edition, that being said though, it's not perfect. There's still some really weird rules and decisions the game designers made that probably could have been done differently.
Below we've collected some of the strangest so Dungeon Masters heed this warning, should your players try to take advantage of these rules you'll be ready to explain that while yes, the final entry on this list TECHNICALLY is according to the rules, no they can't do it.
25 Talk T💝alk Talk
Sometimes you need to devise a plan to take down the Big Bad Evil Guy you're fighting, but you only get so many actions each round!
Since each round is supposed to represent five seconds, there's only so much you can do right?
Thankfully, talking and planning with your fellow party members is a free action that takes up no time at all. Things begin to get weird though when you cram a long complicated plan, the criticism of said plan from the others, and then it's inevitable rework, into a single turn.
Also, you're coming up with this plan directly in front of the guy you're gonna enact it upon. While the rule is bad, it's kind of the only real option as anything more concrete, like only being able to speak a number of words per turn on your turn, would confuse everyone involved and lead to nothing getting done.
24 Fully �ꦡ�Armoured
There's a question I always get from a few players anytime I say they've been hit by an attack. "Don't I get to try and dodge?" It's especially common for newer players to ask this, which then leads into a really long description about how AC works mechanically and how it adds your ability to dodge into it.
People just really want to be able to roll dice defensively when it comes to being hit, which is weird since everyone hates saving throws.
The rule feels... outdated, it's strange that nothing better has been thought of for the d20 system. Things like Advantage, Disadvantage, and the Dodge action, help but not enough. AC remains a staple annoyance that doesn't look like it's going to go away anytime soon.
23 ไ What I Say Goes
With the advent of DnD fifth edition came a new saying "Make Rulings, Not Rꩲules."
This was a simple phrase that encompassed all of 5e's design.
Not wanting the absolute insanity of a single rule for every single circumstance that ended up bogging down play in edition 3.5, the creators decidꦰed to be a lot vaguer with the rules laid out in the book.
This was to give more freedom to the DM, to make calls based on the situation without needing to look up🔥 a whole supplement book ꧅detailing exactly what happens when an enemy has you grappled by the forearm and is attempting a hip toss.
Sadly, all it wound up doing was made it so the wording on some spells and abilities was open to player exploitation, taking their own interpretations of it and leading to argumen﷽ts about what calls the GM makes.
22 ꦉ Very Polite Of The Enemy
Spellcasters have always been super powerful in Dungeons And Dragons, this has been true across all editions. The designers have, in each edition, done their best to try and ner🃏f the incredible strength of these classes but have never fully succeeded.
In the fifth edition, it feels like they've taken a few steps backward. While concentration checks are helpful, the difficulty check of these rolls is often absurdly low, but that's not the real issue.
The real issue is now that, unlike previously, spells do not give the enemy an attack of opportunity.
An attack of opportunity is essentially a free strike during your turn, they used to happen anytime an enemy or player dropped their guard during melee combat, like casting a spell. 5e's gotten rid of that, now you can cast spells in melee combat without the enemy being able to slap you when you begin waving your arms around wildly to cast Fireball.
21 ꦇ Nine Lives♛
Players tend to forget that commoners are extremely fragile, mostly since ninety percent of the people they interact with are villains or other warriors. Rocking a solid four hit points in the fifth edition, your average joe barte💝nder or farmhand is only slightl♏y more durable than a housecat which has two hit points.
In a legit straight up fight too, the cat has a solid chance of slaughtering a full grown man. They both have about a fifty percent chance of hitting the🐲 other and while the advantage is to the man since he has the chance to do more damage, an unlucky guy could wind up slain by Mr.Snuffles after four rounds.
This doesn't seem exactly balanced, commoners should definitely be a little more durable than two cats in a trench coat.
20 🎐 Choose! Spiderman! 𒉰
Character customization has always been one of DnD's strengths. The creators over the past few editions, however, have tried to cღut back on the multitudes of possibilities in order to make it a lot easier for new players.
One of the major ways they accomplished this was the removal of feats.
Feats were a way to customize your character to fit certain roles or playstyles you wanted mechanically. Like being able to strike and then move without the enemy retaliating. While feats still exist, there's a lot less and they're optional for DM's to allow in their games.
If you do allow the rule, you forc⛎e your players to make the hard decision between specializing with some neat abilities or impro❀ving their base stats when they hit their score increase landmark levels.
19 ಞ Cost Vs. Reward
Identify is a great way to discover wh♕at exactly the device humming with magical energy your bard found does, or maybe your wizard needs to see if one of the kings advisors is being charmed.
It's cost, however, is ridiculous for the payout as you require a pearl worth at least one hundred gold pieces and an owls feather to cast it. You can't even recycle the pearl for later use as it's destroyed in the casting, so you'd better hope whatever you're using the spell on has a value of more than approximately fifty daggers.
Normally magic equipment will be worth far more but I've known DM's to abuse this casting cost and throw in duds every now and then just to mess with players.
18 Magic Missle Massacre♊ 🍸
When you make an attack, people get to defend the𒐪mselves, either through armor, dodging, or resistiꦇng magical effects. Magic Missle, however, is a spell that just ignores all of this and automatically hits every time.
This can make encounters really annoying to balance if you have someone with enough spell slots to just spam the ability, or multiple people capable of casting it. It's base damage cant even be considered low as it can deal out a maximum of fifteen damage at level one spread across three auto hits on three different targets and scales higher based on how much you expend.
If you're paying attention then from the mention of cats you know that commoners only have a maximum of four HP.
A level one spell caster is capable of ending three normal men in less than five seconds.
17 Up, Up, And༺ Away 🔯
Flight is the essence of freedom, so it makes sense that players are eventually g🐓oing to want to have a character capable of doing it. This will annoy dungeon masters to no end as aerial combat in the fifth ed🧜ition is much like grappling in... well, any edition.
It's a right awful mess.
Suddenly things like flight speeds, heights and where the heck your token is on the map or in relation to anything else gets extremely complicated. The worst part is that DnD 5e, thanks to the "Make Ruli꧑ngs, Not Rules" ideal has very little advice on how to handle your characters suddenly manifesting wings or ☂using spells to gain access to the skies.
Please, ﷽I beg you. Stick to the ground and that lovely map your DM has prepared for you.
16 Hippies
A special place in the underworld is reserved for those people who list druid as their favorite class. Essentially everything about the class is broken from the insane🍃ly strong spells to the truly busted wild shape.
For people who don't know, druids can take on animal forms in combat and essentially gain their stats. This also means they gain a second pool of HP and transforming into something large like a bear will give them quite the large boost to it. The most annoying thing is when they drop in their animal form they just return to human form at the same HP they were before they transformed.
There's also nothing to stop them from just doing it again right after.