I'm kicking off a new campaign, so I'm rereading the rules and it occurred to me that I've never run or played a game where bonus XP (+5 or 10%) was handed out to characters with a high prime requisite (Fighter STR>14 or whatever). It seems like such an intuitively stupid thing to give a career-spanning advantage to someone who got lucky on day one's 3d6 down the line. It seems ass backwards. Wouldn't disadvantaged characters learn more from constantly fighting against their lot in life?

What am I missing here? Is there some ancient Dragon article justifying it?

What rules get in your craw?

Quote from: rytrasmi on October 04, 2023, 03:53:03 PMWhat rules get in your craw?

...but yeah, I started ignoring that one early on. "You already have a mechanical edge over everyone else, so here's some extra XP forever, so you get even more of a headstart perpetually."

Vancian magic often gets brought up. I never even bothered to keep track of memorized spells. First house rule I ever made was getting rid of it.

I could probably think of more, but I was about to head out, and just wanted to get that meme out of the way.

Eh, it is unfair in a war of all against all direct comparison sense. But in actual play it was one of those: "Yay, our best junior varsity team hitter can reach varsity earlier now and help us crush our opponents! Now we can all power level off him and later we'll hit regionals, maybe even state!  " It also became a point of responsibility for the benefactor, as the team could now bite off more than they could chew if the big hitter didn't lead or at least speak up.

But then that's just actual play talking. I've learned over the years, just like the Punching/Wrestling Table, and the joys of System Shock as a bone-chilling brush with death, they are way more fun in practice than in reading. Sometimes in the goal to reach idealized parity we miss out on the unexpected thrills & spills baked into the intended experience.

Topc Tax: White Wolf World of Darkness, Rule of One. Ones canceling out successes and if greater than succeses it is a botch. Blows up the whole point of its math-phobic resolution simplicity out of the water. Wrong from the beginning, just rewrite it entirely or omit completely.

Quote from: rytrasmi on October 04, 2023, 03:53:03 PM
I'm kicking off a new campaign, so I'm rereading the rules and it occurred to me that I've never run or played a game where bonus XP (+5 or 10%) was handed out to characters with a high prime requisite (Fighter STR>14 or whatever).

Every AD&D game I ever played in I applied the XP bonus if my PC had the stats for it.  The one rule I hardly ever saw in practice was weapon speed factors.

Quote from: Scooter on October 04, 2023, 08:28:29 PM

Quote from: rytrasmi on October 04, 2023, 03:53:03 PM
I'm kicking off a new campaign, so I'm rereading the rules and it occurred to me that I've never run or played a game where bonus XP (+5 or 10%) was handed out to characters with a high prime requisite (Fighter STR>14 or whatever).

Every AD&D game I ever played in I applied the XP bonus if my PC had the stats for it.  The one rule I hardly ever saw in practice was weapon speed factors.

Another to add to this is the weapon vs armor type adjustment. " Oh man what an awesome hit! You wrecked that guy."  "Um sorry after consulting the weapon vs armor table you do not hit. In fact you could NEVER hit with the possible exception of a natural 20. Sorry."

Quote from: Exploderwizard on October 04, 2023, 08:46:12 PM

Quote from: Scooter on October 04, 2023, 08:28:29 PM

Quote from: rytrasmi on October 04, 2023, 03:53:03 PM
I'm kicking off a new campaign, so I'm rereading the rules and it occurred to me that I've never run or played a game where bonus XP (+5 or 10%) was handed out to characters with a high prime requisite (Fighter STR>14 or whatever).

Every AD&D game I ever played in I applied the XP bonus if my PC had the stats for it.  The one rule I hardly ever saw in practice was weapon speed factors.

Another to add to this is the weapon vs armor type adjustment. " Oh man what an awesome hit! You wrecked that guy."  "Um sorry after consulting the weapon vs armor table you do not hit. In fact you could NEVER hit with the possible exception of a natural 20. Sorry."

Right!  Forgot that one.

Back in the day when I played a lot of Cyberpunk 2020, we found the fumble rolls just came up too frequently.  Too many PC deaths happened too fast for us to feel it was right.  We ended up dropping the fumbles rules altogether and modifying the critical hit rules to make things work for us a bit better.

Quote from: BadApple on October 04, 2023, 09:27:41 PM
Back in the day when I played a lot of Cyberpunk 2020, we found the fumble rolls just came up too frequently.  Too many PC deaths happened too fast for us to feel it was right.  We ended up dropping the fumbles rules altogether and modifying the critical hit rules to make things work for us a bit better.

If you were using the Friday night firefights combat system then to quote Newt " It won't make any difference."

Quote from: Exploderwizard on October 04, 2023, 09:32:21 PM

Quote from: BadApple on October 04, 2023, 09:27:41 PM
Back in the day when I played a lot of Cyberpunk 2020, we found the fumble rolls just came up too frequently.  Too many PC deaths happened too fast for us to feel it was right.  We ended up dropping the fumbles rules altogether and modifying the critical hit rules to make things work for us a bit better.

If you were using the Friday night firefights combat system then to quote Newt " It won't make any difference."

Combat was still intense and lethal, we just didn't have the comedic head shot suicides in the middle  of a fire fight. 

Quote from: Opaopajr on October 04, 2023, 08:08:51 PM
Eh, it is unfair in a war of all against all direct comparison sense. But in actual play it was one of those: "Yay, our best junior varsity team hitter can reach varsity earlier now and help us crush our opponents! Now we can all power level off him and later we'll hit regionals, maybe even state!  " It also became a point of responsibility for the benefactor, as the team could now bite off more than they could chew if the big hitter didn't lead or at least speak up.

But then that's just actual play talking. I've learned over the years, just like the Punching/Wrestling Table, and the joys of System Shock as a bone-chilling brush with death, they are way more fun in practice than in reading. Sometimes in the goal to reach idealized parity we miss out on the unexpected thrills & spills baked into the intended experience.

Topc Tax: White Wolf World of Darkness, Rule of One. Ones canceling out successes and if greater than succeses it is a botch. Blows up the whole point of its math-phobic resolution simplicity out of the water. Wrong from the beginning, just rewrite it entirely or omit completely.

What was it about the Punching/Wrestling table?

Scion first edition was a notoriously broken mess, whoever came up with the progression for epic attributes was either on serious drugs or didn't understand mid-grade arithmetic (or both).

Another example of hilariously bad rules is an obscure game from Games Workshop, Inquisitor. Apart from being a generally glorious mess (it was a sort of "evolution" of Necromunda, focusing on small groups fights but using rules that looked like an early alpha version of what will later be Dark Heresy) they were also glaringly inconsistent with the setting. A naked Space Marine could happily punch through power armor, for example, and if the same Marine happened to actually wear his armor he could pump up strength to the point that a knife did more damage than a meltagun.

EDIT:
It is so bad that I was forgetting it: Katana Ra. While the whole game is in the "so bad it's practically a scam" camp, its action resolution rules (the core of the game) win my personal "Designed under heavy drugs" prize.
You roll 1d10, add your skill (which ranges from 1 to 4) and try to match difficulty (14 max); if you succeed, you roll another unmodified d10 and that roll actually determines if you succeed or not: 3-8 means actual success, 2 "partial" success (what "partial" actually means is never explained), 9 is a "great" success (again, nobody knows what "great" means in this context), 1 is a critical failure and permanently lowers your skill by 1 and 10 is a critical success and adds 1 to your skill. This random fluctuation is the only way to change skill values after character creation, and the only way to modify your character without having to buy equipment or getting loot of some kind. There is no experience/advancement mechanic whatsoever in the whole game.

I never liked gold for xp. Finding a chest full of gold doesn't make you a better sword fighter, nor does it increase your knowledge of magic, your faith in hour god, or your ability to find and disarm a trap. Those skills only get better by practice and execution.

I don't like level trainers either.  You're tellimg me that I have been adventuring for a year, killing monsters and doing all sorts of insane shit and I haven't gotten better at my job?  And now, I gotta pay some guy two thousand gold pieces to get more hit points?

So where did the first 10th level character come from of there was no one to train them?

Daggers getting two attacks per round and doing 1d6 damage.  So kit an army out in plate mail and give every soldier 2 daggers. They'll get twice as many attacks and do twice as much damage as any phalanx...oh and they'll attack first because polae arms are 2-handed weapons and go last in the round.

Weapons doing more or less damage vs large sized opponents.  That sword is going to deliver the same amount of kinetic energy to an ogre as it does to a kobold.  It's the targets hit points that make the difference.

Medieval guns (Arquebus) doing exploding dice damage (i.e. if you roll a 10 for damage on a d10, you get to roll another d10 and add the damage, adding another d-10 for each 10 you roll... That's not how medieval guns worked.  Mostly they sucked, they took a minute to reload, were woefully inaccurate, and black powder just didn't have that kind of punch.  You better hope that the alchemist or master gunner mixed the powder correctly...oh, is it raining out?

I should stop here.  I need to go touch some grass.

Every ttrpgs rules for Grabbing/Wrestling?

Quote from: rytrasmi
I'm kicking off a new campaign, so I'm rereading the rules and it occurred to me that I've never run or played a game where bonus XP (+5 or 10%) was handed out to characters with a high prime requisite (Fighter > STR14 or whatever). It seems like such an intuitively stupid thing to give a career-spanning advantage to someone who got lucky on day one's 3d6 down the line. It seems ass backwards. Wouldn't disadvantaged characters learn more from constantly fighting against their lot in life?

What am I missing here? Is there some ancient Dragon article justifying it?

What rules get in your craw?

Well ... your character's ability scores, in theory, help or hinder your character, the idea being that a fighter with a "greater than 14 Strength or whatever" should be a better fighter than one with less than 14 strength or whatever. I think we can all agree on that.

That XP bonus in early D&D editions represented that: by causing faster advancement, your ability score has made you a "better" fighter. That's how we understood the rule -- not that it's particularly cognitively fluid, because the order feels wrong obviously, but in play the math worked.

---

The rule that drives me nuts is a New School horror known as the Spot Check (by any name, in any game).

If you want a good laugh, check out the Truenamer in 3.5E Tome of Magic.

Holy hells. You could tell nobody playtested that. At least the Binder was interesting, but the Truenamer is the only class, across multiple editions of D&D, that actually got worse as you progressed in levels.