OK. First off, I would like to apologize for my ramblings on last post. I must have been on some good drugs that night…. But this isn’t the first time this has happened! I’ve been reading too far into the rules for years, trying to find some insight into the game that, in all probability, doesn’t exist.

I was always confounded by AD&D Combat rules as a teenager. They seemed inanely simple on the surface, until you started applying real-world logic to the scenarios. But then, we were young and dumb, with little or no practical experience. I read (and re-read) the Dungeon Master’s Guide until I could quote page numbers, but things like surprise and initiative had me baffled. It wasn’t until I started running again in 2000 that I really started taking the system apart and seeing why certain rules were there. It was then that I discovered that Gygax authored the book, but editors added their own material, some of which really didn’t work with the stuff that was already in the game! So it wasn’t just me! No matter how many sites I visited in search of answers, I was simply told to use whatever worked for me. In the end that’s what I did.

When 2nd edition came along it looked like a lot of the problems had been cleared up - but a whole new can of worms had opened with the strange initiative system and Non-Weapon Proficiencies which were “optional” yet “integral” (especially if you wanted to use kits). We came up with SOOOOO many house rules, we could have published our own supplement!

3rd edition promised the moon and the stars, clarifying issues and making it all better. For the most part, the classification systems worked a little better, but still not perfectly. There are still unanswered questions and strange procedures that read like they should come from electrical wiring diagram for the space shuttle. Still, I have to admit that the system is a bit smoother in some areas. However, every once in a while I get a flash of insight into the inner mechanism of the game and I cringe. Sometimes, like with the detect evil fiasco last week, I get a little too far into the nomenclature and ignore the simple premises. Other times, the answer is right in front of me and I gloss over all the exceptions to the rules. The switch to 3.5 was a lot more than a simple rules upgrade and assumptions made in 3rd do not carry over into the newest version. That in and of itself is a major stumbling block for people trying to learn the full game beyond the Basic Rule “roll d20 and add this” concept. There is so much more to the rules these days that IS well-covered, but because of the complexity involved or stringent restrictions on usage, no one bothers with it. Take Grappling, Overrun, Trips, or other special combat maneuvers. I’ve seen Metamagic feats used only a handful of times over the past 7 years. People like to stick with a single concept that they understand and not branch out into other aspects unless they have seen it done before. This is what happens whenever I DM a monster who uses a feat or maneuver for the first time. Inevitably someone says, “I didn’t know you could do that!” All I have to respond is, “Well, you would if you actually read the book!”

So do I feel stupid about going off on Detect Evil last time? Not really. I was handling the situation correctly the whole time in the game anyway, and it wasn’t until that false revelation that I realized I was reading way too far into it. I’m sure that others have made wild leaps of logic from a simple sentence before, and I know it won’t be my last either. Have any of you ever read a rulebook and come to a completely erroneous conclusion, either due to ambiguity or just by false assumptions? Has it led to humorous circumstances in your campaign?