System Bugbears

System Bugbears

This page collects known issues in RPGs which may not be immediately obvious from the books. They might be worth considering before running or playing the game.

13th Age

• The Icon Dice rolled at the start of each session can give results which make no sense in the current context of the adventure.

Capes

• Per RAW there is no restriction on Gloating, potentially allowing two opposing sides of a conflict to repeatedly Gloat at each other to gain an infinite number of story tokens.

Dogs in the Vineyard

• The system as specified has no way to deal with de- escalation of conflicts or separating this from a dice bonus. By RAW a character can pull their gun, add extra dice added to their pool for escalating and their shooting skill, but then immediately put the gun away and resume brawling or talking.

Dungeons and Dragons, 4th Edition

• There are extensive errata for this system which fix many issues - check them all.
• In many cases there is no convincing or reasonable way to prevent a single character making every check in a Skill Challenge.

Dungeons and Dragons, 5th Edition

• Fighting classes are generally dramatically underpowered compared to spellcasters.
• The system gives no guidelines for pricing expendable magic items differently to non-expendable ones.

FATE

• Problems can result from "fate point races", in which conflicts come down to two sides repeatedly trying to find Aspects to invoke to add +2s to a roll.
• Arbitrary wording of aspects may create player argumentation.

Firefly

• The sample adventures are unrepresentative of the intended play experience.

Mutants and Masterminds

• The system makes assumptions about how Villain Points will be spent by the GM; failing to spend them according to these assumptions, which are unstated, may break the system.

Shadowrun (4th Anniversary Edition)

• The rules for grenades make the scatter so wide as to make grenades practically unusable. It may be preferable to use the scatter values from the previous edition, which are exactly half those given.
• The rules for Initiative Passes mean that a character with a higher number of IP must move a shorter distance in each of their IPs, potentially allowing them to be caught in the middle of a move that a "slower" character could make without interruption.

Star Wars (Fantasy Flight)

• The sample adventures are unrepresentative of the intended play experience.

The Riddle Of Steel

• The rules do not make it clear what constitutes working towards an SA and what does not. In particular, there is no convincing argument in the rules as to why any lethal combat does not invoke all a character's SA's because "not dying" is a necessity for all of them.