Obvious Rule Patch/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A rule existing solely to counter one specific situation.

  • Straight: Widgeteers may only have four widgets, because if they could have five, they could win instantly.
  • Exaggerated: The Chalice of Greatness is now counted as a belt to counteract the fact that wearing the Berserker's Belt alongside it gives an extra hit point.
  • Justified: The fact that Widgeteers could win instantly with five widgets was widely regarded to be ruining the game, so they changed it to make it more enjoyable.
  • Inverted: Widgeteers could only have four widgets. They can now have five and so can win instantly
  • Subverted: Widgets are limited to four. Widgeteers, disappointed in their lack of instant win, combine widgets with other effects to make an even more powerful combo.
  • Double Subverted: Widgets are limited to four. Widgeteers, disappointed in their lack of instant win, combine widgets with other effects to make an even more powerful combo. This combo, while looking good on paper, is in fact useless, so the Obvious Rule Patch stands
  • Parodied: Players are no longer allowed to store infinite joke items. The limit is 9001.
  • Deconstructed: The game builds up so many rules patches that there's no possible way for the players to know them.
  • Reconstructed: Full knowledge of all rules patches -- and knowing when to point them out -- becomes part of the game.
    • People stop playing Widgeteers because the five-widget instawin build takes away the challenge.
  • Zig Zagged: The number of widgets a Widgeteer can have is reduced from five to four. Outcry from the players causes this to get changed back to five, then outcry from the other players gets this changed back to four... Repeat as often as neccesary
  • Averted: Widgeteers can have five widgets, allowing them to instantly win the game. Nobody cares.
    • They were never able to instant win in the first place.
  • Enforced: Each team has to be able to win, otherwise it'll screw with the number of players. So the Yellow team gets free counterattacks to negate the fact that their melee units have weaker attack
  • Lampshaded: "So they finally nerfed the Stick, huh? Well, it's not really surprising considering that it could be used by anyone and was better than Death's Scythe..."
  • Invoked: ???
  • Defied: "Like hell I'm playing with the new rules that reduce the Wizard's spell pool to one! That never happened!
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???

Obvious Rule Patch no longer auto-criticals when wearing the Ring of Smiting.