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{{trope}}
 
[[File:7 4358.jpg|link=Magic: The Gathering|frame|[[Self-Deprecation|Yes]], this is an [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=9771 official card.] ]]
 
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Compare and contrast [[Nerf]]. May, if the situation is enough of a corner case, result in [[That One Rule]].
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== Board Games ==
* The "ko" rule in Go exists purely to prevent infinite loops.
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** For the first few weeks after the introduction of the Big Wheel (to determine who proceeds to the Showcases), there was no rule about how far it had to be spun. The current rule (at least one complete revolution) was instituted by the end of November 1975.
** They've also tried several tricks to make Clock Game compatible with four-digit prices, so that saying the thousands digits doesn't eat up precious time. In the 1980s, they tried spotting the thousands digit, but that proved too confusing. Prizes of over $1,000 started showing up again in 2008, but after six months in which they proved pretty much unwinnable, it was decided that the contestant should bid only on a ''portion'' of the four-digit prize (e.g., if the prize is a TV and a Blu-Ray player, the player bids on just the Blu-Ray player but wins both for giving the right price).
 
 
== Tabletop Games ==
* This is common in logical puzzles placed in RPGs. You want perfect glue and indestructible rope and disintegration runes so that the players can figure out a clever solution to your logical puzzle - but you don't want them to use those items on anything ''[[Combinatorial Explosion|other]]'' than that puzzle. The cheap solution is to make them work only in a specific place, or on specific objects, or only once.
** In the most recent version of the [[Tomb of Horrors]], the scepter and crown of disintegration (put the crown on your head, touch one end of the scepter to it, you disintegrate) cannot be removed from the room they're in by any means (the description goes to [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|great lengths to cover any eventuality]]). Earlier versions of the Tomb had no such rule at all. The reason eventually emerged during a conversation on a message board: One of the artists working on an earlier copy of the module was invited to a session of the Tomb DMed by none other than [[Word of God|Gary Gygax himself.]] The artist took the scepter and crown from the room, then eventually placed the crown on the {{spoiler|fake skull}} of Acererak and touched the scepter to it, disintegrating the lich instantly. Gygax was stunned, as the eventuality had never occurred to him. The artist, on the other hand, [[Chekhov's Gun|thought that's what they were there for.]] The artist was quite surprised when he was later informed of the rule change.
* Pretty much all of the spell entries more complicated than "You do X damage to Y targets at Z range" in the 3.5 edition rules of ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' consist of long strings of Obvious Rule Patches. There are spells like Polymorph that are one paragraph of explaining what the spell does, and roughly eleven paragraphs of explaining what the spell cannot do.
** One of the most basic Obvious Rule Patch is the rule that bonuses of the same types don't stack - only the largest one takes effect (with the exception of dodge bonuses to AC in third edition). This has led to many rule patching to give untyped bonuses types so they couldn't be so easily stacked.
** 3.0 spellcasters had a bad habit of using summoning heavy creatures in midair, causing them to deal obscene damage as falling objects when they hit opponents. Wizards of the Coast amended the summon spells in 3.5 to prevent creatures from being summoned into an environment that can't support them (i.e., no flying whales).
** You can't sunder armor in 3.5. You can break weapons, shields, even items they're wearing like pendants. Just not armor. It would be easier to just break the fallen paladin's armor and then stab him, leading to silly situations such as the above.
** Another patch was the spell Dimensional Door. In 3.5E its pretty much an early teleport spell, in previous editions (as the name implies) it created a pair of portals through which the [[PCs]] could travel great distances. While that may not sound so bad, [[PCs]] often created [[Portal Cut|horizontal or diagonal doors to bissect enemies (or fortifications!)]] that lead to instant kills. Another tactic was to open a portal into a volcano or sea and use the exit portal to flood an enemy base with lava or drown it completely.
* Fourth Edition ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' errata has had some obvious rule patches: The Ranger ability that let you make continual attacks until you miss was errated to have a 5 attack limit as it was possible to make a build which had an almost zero chance of ever missing, even against the strongest monster in the Monster Manual.
* In most ''D&D''-like games, you can't wear more than one or two magical items of a certain "slot" and benefit from all their powers. While it makes sense that you can't wear multiple pairs of, say, boots, there's no reason for the usual "two rings, one amulet" rule other than balance issues. This is usually justified with a contrived excuse that the magic items will interfere with each other. Even though you can often wear a helmet, armor, and a neck slot item, or gloves, bracers, possibly armor (which probably has gauntlets of some sort included), and a ring.
** In the Fourth Edition, shields count as taking up the magic items arms slot ''and'' a wielding-in-hand slot. It means you can't use bracers+shield or two shields and get the magical effects of both.
* Construction rules in ''[[BattleTech]]'' often have restrictions that often seem arbitrary. For example, Protomechs (not-so [[Humongous Mecha]]) cannot mount Plasma Cannons. This seems to make no sense, as, being only three tons, they seem like perfect weapons to mount on one. Then you think about just how badly five Plasma Cannons would roast any given Battlemech in a single turn.
** There was also an instance where Battle Armor riding on an Omni Mech can be shot off of the 'mech by shots that land on the torso. Doesn't seem too bad, but given that there is no weight penalty for carrying Battle Armor, the [[Human Shield|Battle Armor were always the first to take hits]], and [[Mundane Utility|the 'mech's torso wouldn't begin to take damage until all the Battle Armor were shot off]]... it's understandable why the next rulebook created fixed locations for each Battle Armor.
* ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'': ''A [[Commissar]] (of any rank) will never [[Ate His Gun|execute]] [[Suicide as Comedy|himself]].''
** "Under no circumstances can any [necron] make more than one teleport move in a single turn... There are no exceptions to this, no matter how clever your logic."
** "Please note that it is ''not'' possible to master-craft grenades!" <ref>However, ''[[Dawn of War]] 2'' has an item (and ''Space Marine'' a Perk) that disagrees with that rather blatantly.</ref>
** Space Marine [[Drop Pod|drop pods]] are clearly 10-man craft (visible in the model and still stated in some codexes), but other codexes expanded it to 12 to allow an independent character to deploy with the squad. Without changing the model.
* In ''[[GURPS]]'', it is possible to enchant a pair of permanent Gate spells and then arrange them to create a perpetual motion machine using electromagnetic principles that could then be tapped for an unending mana supply. (Click the link in the subtopic below if you're curious as to technical details.) However, due to the various components required, this would need a setting where both modern science existed, magic existed, and the Draw Power spell from ''GURPS Grimoire 3e'' specifically existed. In the one GURPS setting where this is canonical (''GURPS Technomancer''), three guesses which spell has an entire sidebar devoted to explaining how it specifically does not exist. Hint: Four-letter word, begins with "G".
** This probably had something to do with the fact that David R. Pulver, the writer of ''Technomancer'' [http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.frp.gurps/browse_frm/thread/f65e43a91c0ee511/5f5ba1346c6a7203?hl=en#5f5ba1346c6a7203 participated/lurked in a Usenet thread] where the "Infinite Mana Well" construct was first proposed... at the exact same time ''Technomancer'' was in final playtest.
* In ''[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/11/090511fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=6 The Trillion Credit Challenge]'' (using [[Traveller]]), contestants had to purchase and field a fleet of ships to do battle with other fleets. Doug Lenat fed the parameters of the tournament into a computer (in 1981) which suggested that instead of sending in a balanced fleet of carriers, battleships, cruisers, and so on, he should instead build thousands of tiny patrol boats. He won in a rout - though he took incredible losses, he overwhelmed his opponents through sheer numbers. The organizers then made their first Obvious Rule Patch - they added 'fleet agility' (which could be reduced by several things, most importantly by having damaged ships trying to keep up with undamaged ones) as a parameter for the following year's tournament. When Lenat entered again, his computer used much the same strategy with one change - whenever any of his ships was damaged, they would ''self-destruct'', which kept the average mobility of the fleet up. The organizers then made their second patch - tell Lenat that it was weird to have his unorthodox plans keep winning (since, after all, they relied on ordering millions of men to knowing suicide) and say that if he continued to enter, they would [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys|stop holding the tournament]]. Lenat then bowed out gracefully.
* The rules for creating abominations in [[Old World of Darkness|old]] ''[[Old World of Darkness|World Of Darkness]]''. Briefly: if you attempt to turn a werewolf into a vampire, the werewolf gets a skill roll. He wins, he dies peacefully. He loses, he dies horribly but his soul is free. He [[Critical Failure|botches]], he becomes an abomination, essentially a walking [[Game Breaker]] balanced out by [[Heroic BSOD|crippling depression]]. Since there are all sorts of abilities in ''tWoD'' that can cause a skill roll to fail or critically fail, the editors in Revised Edition state that nothing short of divine intervention can affect the roll.<ref>except the werewolf spending a Willpower point for an automatic success; this is the "in-character" thing to do</ref>
* ''[[Pathfinder]]'' is basically a tweaked ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]] 3.5'' and (to make up for an initial lack of content) was said to be compatible with 3.5 which lead to some game breakers. They tend to fix these by introducing their own version of the feat/skill/class ability/prestige class. Especially noticeable with spells. The Irresistable Dance spell used to be a no save incapacitation spell. Now, it allows a save though even those who make it have to dance uncontrollably for one round.
** The Quick Draw feat allows you to draw any item from your pack as a free action... except flasks of alchemist's fire or acid. You also cannot [[Back Stab|sneak attack]] with such items, unlike all other weapons. These changes were obviously put in place due to volleys of flasks being popular among 3.5e rogues as a means to fight enemies resistant to physical damage or vulnerable to fire.
* More recent releases of ''[[Arkham Horror]]'', as well as later versions of the rulebook included with some expansions explicitly and seemingly arbitrarily ban certain types of cards from being the initial draw—because the effects of those types can easily render the game unwinnable, typically by making the preparation necessary to actually be able to accomplish much in the game difficult or impossible.
 
 
== Video Games ==
* In an early version of ''[[Neverwinter Nights]]'', a loophole in the rules was found that let monks wear a shield in their offhand, making them virtually unhittable for no real downside. In the very next patch, monks were made unable to wear shields and retain monk dodge / attack bonuses at the same time.
* In an early release of ''[[Battlefield 2142]]'', it was entirely possible for two soldiers with nothing better to do to destroy their own Titan (and thus force their team to lose the round) by forcing a transport through the floor of the hangar bay and into the Core.
* ''[[EVE Online]]'' has had several updates that were borderline Obvious Rule Patches. However, the patch that prevented carriers from transporting loaded cargo ships was a glaringly Obvious Rules Patch.
** Similarly, nowadays [[Hand Wave|graviton harmonics]] prevent [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys|players]] from taking a 3000m^3 cargo container that holds 3300m^3 of cargo... and putting another 3000m^3 container that holds 3300m^3 inside it leaving 300m^3 of free space. With enough cargo containers you could once haul an entire solar system's worth of ore in a single, moderately sized and priced ship.
* A fairly obscure item from ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' called the Luffa would remove any bleed effect. A boss over 20 levels later would put a hefty bleed dot on raid members at fairly regular intervals. Everyone would equip their Luffa and make Moroes a total joke. The next patch put a spell level cap on the Luffa ie. you couldn't remove bleed effects over level 60 anymore.
** Then there's the infamous Corrupted Blood incident from the release of the Zul'Gurub dungeon, which gained enough notoriety to be mentioned in major news media as an example of how populations reacted to the spread of communicable disease. In a nutshell, an exploit of a boss encounter allowed a pet who acquired the debuff to be dismissed and then resummoned in a populated area, instantly spreading it to everyone in the vicinity and decimating entire cities as a result. It was patched several days later so the debuff could not exist outside of the dungeon.
** An old patch for ''[[WoW]]'' allowed everyone in a group to place marks - graphical icons that go above monsters or players and are used to make them more visible or indicate a kill order for the group - instead of only the group's leader being able to do it. There followed an unofficial addon while allowed players to automatically strobe the marks across the group members, rapidly swapping them around, much to the annoyance of many players. The very next patch added a notification of who was setting marks.
** Two patches were done within hours of release. One patch screwed up and gave Warriors extra talent points. Another one was a dupe bug. (Very annoying and difficult to pull off, but mentioning a dupe bug for a ticket gets a very quick response and led to a patch within an hour).
** In July 2009, a hunter was discovered with a worgen (a sentient, werewolf-like creature) for a pet, and within a few hours the hunter community had figured out how and where to get [http://www.wowhead.com/npc=24277 this particular beast]; pretty much everyone who could obtain one had one. Within two days the tamed worgen were patched to have all their skills and attacks completely removed, and after a few more days they were replaced entirely by ordinary white wolves. However, considering that worgen became a playable race in the Cataclysm expansion, this [[Unfortunate Implications|may have been for the better]].
** There was a video posted on [[YouTube]] a few years back where a paladin killed, in one move, a raid boss designed for dozens of players to take several minutes to bring down. The Reckoning talent had the effect that when a paladin was struck they might gain a stack of Reckoning, causing their next attack to hit twice. One enterprising player dueled a rogue many times without ever striking back, then went up to the boss in question and proceeded to hit it more than a thousand times in one blow. Within twenty four hours the talent was nerfed so that it caused you to hit ''twice'' for the next few attacks. Of course, seeing as Reckoning was about the only ability in the entire game that possessed neither stack limit nor duration, this was only to be expected.
* In ''[[Defense of the Ancients]]'', the Batrider hero has a skill, "Sticky Napalm", that amplifies damage from the Batrider on its victims. Players took advantage of this by building the constant DPS aura item Radiance, which turned Batrider into a real damage-dealer. Apparently Icefrog disagreed, as he proceeded to change Sticky Napalm so that Radiance could not (normally) trigger the bonus damage any more.
** ''DotA'' also has an item called "Kelen's Dagger" that allows teleportation of one's own hero. So, it's even possible to teleport yourself into terrain that you cannot escape from, except by using Kelen's Dagger again once the cooldown ends. Two heroes are forbidden from using Kelen's at all. One of them has an ability to swap positions with another hero, and the other who can hook a hero and reel them in to be right next to him. Either of them could trap an enemy hero (or even a friend, if they were traitorous) into a small patch of terrain that said hero might be stuck in for the entire game, unless the other hero happened to also have bought the Dagger.
* Starting in version 1.3, ''[[Iji]]'' tells you in some places (the arena for {{spoiler|Asha's rematch}} comes to mind) that "there's no need to fire your Nanogun here". Sometimes it was literally true, but in many cases it was because firing your Nanogun there could bug out the game.
** ''Iji'' has a few things like this in the later versions. When it became possible to win the game without killing anyone, this necessitated the player not fighting one of the bosses, because the only way to get by {{spoiler|is to kill him}}. The solution? {{spoiler|Have a new character help you by one-shotting him. However, this would mean that a pacifist runthrough on the first couple of levels would be much faster than previous runthroughs, and the developer, Daniel Remar, wanted speedruns to be fair between versions. So 10 minutes are added to your overall time because Iji waits around for 10 minutes to give your helper a head start.}}
** In a later update, it doesn't count as a kill if you reflect an enemy's fire back into them with a force field weapon. Previously, "pacifist" players would gather dropped power-ups by stocking up on health, moving right next to enemies, and catching rockets with the main character's face for the [[Splash Damage]].
* ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'' automatically ends combat with a special message after 30 rounds of combat (or 50 rounds for some bosses) have elapsed with no winner, with a net result equivalent to successfully running away on the 31st round. This was apparently done originally to prevent a possible near-infinite loop that would result if the player's Muscle was too low to hit the monster and his/her Moxie was too high for the monster to hit him/her, while his/her combat initiative was too low to run away. Newer mechanics make such a situation much less plausible, but the rule has remained and still serves to cap the potential effectiveness of any strategy that involves stalling and drawing out combat for per-round effects. For example:
** The [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot]] familiar used to randomly give Meat with a fixed chance of about 1 in 9 per round of combat. Since this made it advantageous to drag out combat to as close to 30 turns as possible without going over and thus using up much more server resources than normal, the NPZR now only gives Meat in the first 10 turns of combat.
** Another much-maligned Obvious Rule Patch came with NS13: Before NS13, players found that increasing monster level (which also increased XP gains) and increasing noncombat encounter chance were both extremely useful. So when NS13 rolled out, the devs added a rule that made increased monster level cancel out increased noncombat chance. Unfortunately, this had the side effect of making monster level increasers less than useless. Over a year and a half later, the devs realized that [[Scrappy Mechanic|nobody liked this in the slightest]] and removed the rule.
** Another rule is "can't use Double Fisted Skull Smashing to wield a Chefstaff in your offhand." Due to the way DFSS (halves the power of offhand weapons but leaves enchantments alone) and Chefstaves (lowest power possible but incredible enchantments) work, this rule prevents two builds, a rather unpleasant one and a horribly broken one: the former, a weapon/chefstaff combo that makes a [[Magic Knight]] with no detriment for either one, the latter, a Chefstaff/Chefstaff combo that results in spells so powerful that it can take down anything almost in one hit.
** The ''KoL'' staff's usual modus operandi in the event of players accomplishing things they didn't count on players accomplishing is to reward the player for their cleverness/tenacity, then change the game so that the stunt can't be repeated.<ref>Or at least, ''theoretically'' can't be repeated; after the first person beat the final boss without the [[Unusual Euphemism|Smurf]], the changes they made turned out not to be sufficient to keep it from happening again. Now you auto-win or auto-lose depending on whether or not you have the item in question</ref>
* In the [[Programming Game]] ''RoboWar'', allowing robots to teleport and fire weapons interchangeably in the same chronon let a robot with sufficient processor speed leap a considerable distance (depending on its current energy) to put a lethal contact shot into another robot, leaving it next to no time to defend or counterattack—and executing another move after the shot (the "jerker" strategy) made it harder to target for a counterattack. That the robot's energy would already go deeply negative in the middle of the chronon didn't matter much (so long as it didn't fall below -200), since it wouldn't become immobilized by having negative energy until the next chronon. This allowed the "dasher" strategy to achieve considerable dominance, and in time most top-placing robots in tournaments, dashers or not, had to use "anti-dasher" techniques. To rebalance the game, an Obvious Rule Patch was instated (amid much controversy) to prevent move/shoot in the same chronon.
* ''[[Fire Emblem]]: Rekka no Ken'' had the absurdly broken Luna spell, which has a damage base of 0 but negates enemy resistance to magic when calculating damage, and has a very good base critical rate. For most of the game, enemies have low resistance anyway, and Luna falls somewhere between okay and kind of bad. However, in the last levels of the game, bosses start to have crazy amounts of resistance to counterbalance your ever-strengthening party. The Luna spell, however, just ignores this and allows Canas (who is arguably a broken character to begin with) to completely annihilate the later bosses in just a few attacks. It even makes it entirely possible for Canas to defeat the final boss with just ''[[Game Breaker|two hits]]''.
** It gets nerfed to hell in ''[[Fire Emblem]]: The Sacred Stones'', where its hit rate is barely half what it once was, is critical rate IS half what it was, and it has less uses. It's made extremely obvious because there wasn't a single change to any other spell.
** There's also the Silencer skill in ''[[Fire Emblem]]: Rekka no Ken'' and ''The Sacred Stones'', which gives your Assassin the chance to instantly-kill any foe, so long as they have a chance to land a critical hit. This allowed them to plow through most bosses with ease. While this was negated by the final bosses of both games, whose equipment automatically reduced the enemy's crit chance to 0, it still left most other bosses vulnerable. It was obviously fixed in ''Path of Radiance'' and ''Radiant Dawn'', where the description of the Silencer skill simply states it doesn't work on bosses without any reasoning or attempt at justification.
* In the [[MMORPG]] ''Lords of Legend'', your level bonus is apparently capped at 5 times the number of troops. Few know about the cap, because in order to get even close to the cap, you have to spend weeks doing the exact opposite of what you are supposed to.
** It is also played straight with the 'invisibility' strategy (You don't show up on attack pages if you haven't won an attack yet), which has been severely nerfed with increasingly harsh and arbitrary restrictions on invisible players.
* ''[[Gaia Online]]'' has had quite a few:
** First, there's soulbinding, the most famous and controversial of the lot. In the first couple months of open beta, users were allowed to buy and sell their rings. This caused a few problems. The most obvious, of course, was that people could buy their way through the game, resulting in many CL 10s who had no idea what they were doing. Another effect was on the economy. Charge Orbs, the items that power up rings, were earned in-game, not bought. Higher-level rings are naturally more valued than weak ones, so people were charging up rings and then selling them, effectively creating expensive items with little to no cost to the users. This was quickly changed so that rings were "soulbound", meaning they could no longer be put on the marketplace.
*** But only rings acquired after the update or older rings that are equipped. Unsoulbound rings are still being sold, and there is also a new ring [[Revenue Enhancing Devices|sold for real money]] as a Valentine's Day event item. It has officially been described as being permanently unsoulbound.
** A bit later, CL caps were placed on boss lairs so that people couldn't recruit their CL 10 friends to help them beat the boss. Clever players soon found a way to circumvent this by wearing low-level rings when entering the boss area, then switching out to their stronger ones. The devs soon closed this loophole.
* In ''[[Civilization]] III'', players could initially chop down and replant forests in relatively short order. This made a certain amount of sense, up to a point anyway, but it also created an infinite supply of construction materials. It was quickly patched so that [[Fridge Logic|replanted forests contained no useful wood]].
* In ''[[Half Life|Half Life: Episode One]]'' when Gordon {{spoiler|gets the super-charged gravity gun again}}, any use of it causes all other weapons to vaporize, just like the previous game. The problem is, Alyx is also with you and can kill enemies, causing them to drop their weapons. When they do, the weapons still vaporize for pretty much no reason, almost as if they only held together because [[No Ontological Inertia|a Combine soldier was holding it]].
* In [[Final Fantasy XI]], you gain tactical points (TP) each time you hit an enemy, the amount varying based on the delay of your weapon (higher = more TP per hit). You have to have at least 100% TP (of a 300% cap) in order to perform a weapon skill. This sounds reasonable, except very early on, weapon skills that hit multiple times gave full TP return per hit, leading to being able to perform these weapon skills back-to-back with no need to accumulate TP in the mean time assuming you used a special type of otherwise useless weapon with almost no damage rating and max delay. [[Square Enix]] patched this very quickly so that only the first hit (first two when you're dual-wielding) give full TP, and subsequent hits only give 1%.
** Don't forget [[That One Boss|Absolute Virtue]], who is for all intents and purposes totally invincible due to his ability to use the most powerful abilities of every job, as well as cast high-level black magic that players don't even have access to instantaneously and frequently, wiping out alliances of players in seconds. Every time a method is discovered to defeat him, Square-Enix will immediately squash it by [[New Powers as the Plot Demands|giving Absolute Virtue new resistances and powers as his flaws were discovered]].
*** When players killed him by attacking him from areas he couldn't fight back, the developers gave him the ability to draw players to him if they got too far away.
*** Later on, the devs were pressured into rethinking the absurd difficulty of some of their bosses after some bad publicity involving an [[Bladder of Steel|18-hour-long fight against a different monster]], so they lowered the HP of both that boss and Absolute Virtue and forced them to despawn if not defeated within two hours. Players discovered that a legion of Dark Knights using a combination of the job ability Souleater [[Cast From Hit Points|(consumes HP to increase damage dealt)]] and Blood Weapon (restores HP equal to melee damage inflicted), he could be bumrushed into defeat. Within days, a patch was made that gave Absolute Virtue (and ONLY Absolute Virtue - other monsters that had previously been defeated with this method were totally untouched) increasing resistance to Souleater damage, making it useless.
*** A theoretical method of defeating him involved using the Scholar's Helix line of spells, which deal a fairly large amount of damage over time. The helix was placed on the enemy, and then a group of Scholars simultaneously use a job ability that doubles the damage dealt by the next tic of damage while halving its overall duration. The result is that most enemies in the game will drop dead immediately, although execution requires very precise timing (and, in most cases, botting). As soon as people discussed how it could be used to defeat Absolute Virtue, "certain notorious monsters" were given a resistance to the use of the JA. Guess who was at the top of the priority list?
* [[Pokémon]] had constant problems with the pokemon Wobbuffet. It's supposed to be a pokemon that cannot directly attack but is streamlined to take advantage of damage reflecting attacks, but instead of being forced to attack, an opponent can just simply switch out his current pokemon over and over until Wobbuffet runs out of PP. To prevent that, in Generation III Wobbuffet and its newly introduced pre-evolution Wynaut were both equipped with the Shadow Tag ability, which prevents the opponent from switching Pokémon in a battle against Wobbuffet/Wynaut until they were either recalled or knocked out or if the foe has some other trap-cancel ability that allows them to flee. Fair enough, except for in a competitive battle where both you and your opponents have Wobbuffet (or the much-less-common Wynaut) who are both equipped with Leftovers and facing each other. You can't fight back because Wobbuffet and Wynaut are only able to counter attacks, not dish them out. Their Shadow Tag abilities will also prevent either of them from switching out, and even if the two were to wear themselves down enough to use Struggle (the only move Wynaut/Wobbuffet knows that deals damage), Leftovers would cancel out what horrendously low damage their moves do, resulting in a draw by eliminating any chance that either of the two will faint. From Diamond and Pearl onwards, Shadow Tag was changed so that any Pokémon who has the Shadow Tag ability who is locked into battle with a foe who also has said ability can negate the effect and switch out without problems. Also, Struggle now always takes away 25 percent of the user's ''maximum'' hit points, not 25 percent of the hit point damage the user did to the other guy, so that even if two trainers wound up with Wobbuffet as each person's last Pokémon, once Struggling began the match would end in 5 turns or less (because the 25 percent rounds down, someone with an HP amount that can be divided by 4 with a remainder of 1 could last 1 more turn).
** Now in the new generation of games, (the fifth) there was a glitch involving the new move Sky Drop. The move makes one Pokemon take another into the air [[Captain Obvious|(and then drop it for damage)]], and when a Pokemon is in the air, it cannot move or be hit (except by a few moves, like Thunderbolt). There was previously a move called Gravity which made Flying-types or levatating Pokemon comes to the ground (this meaning they can be hit by Ground-type moves), and also makes Pokemon in the air come to the ground. So in a double battle, if one of your Pokemon uses Sky Drop and the other then uses gravity, both your & the opponents Pokemon will come to the ground... [[Game Breaking Bug|except while your pokemon can move, theirs is treated as being in the air and cannot move, at all, until they are fainted by a move like, say, Thunderbolt.]] The Obvious Rule Patch? Nintendo banned the move in Random online battles.
** The fifth generation games also give us a minor one involving Dream World Pokemon. Almost every Pokemon encountered in the Dream World will have an ability not normally accessible in the main game. This also came with a new breeding mechanic where these abilities could only by passed to offspring if the Pokemon with the ability is female. Starter Pokemon and Eevee's evolutions encountered in the Dream World can never be female, meaning they can have their Hidden Ability or egg moves, but not both. (Possibly due to some of them creating game breaking combinations, such as Speed Boost Blaziken, which through breeding also has access to Swords Dance and Baton Pass.) Within the [[Character Tiers|Dream World tier]] in the [[Metagame|competitive battling]] circle, however, both are allowed in the spirit of simulating a theoretically "complete" metagame. This most likely won't be the case with official tournaments to come in the future, as Nintendo uses different rules than the fandom.
** The moves Double Team and Minimize would improve evasion (with enough use, could reduce all hit chances to 1/3 their original value), which basically dominated the first gen Metagame, particularly for three types - Psychic (the original Game Breaker type), Water (which only fears Electric and Grass), and Grass (due to abuse of health-draining moves). The second generation introduced an always-hit move of the new Psychic-beating Dark type, and the third gen introduced such moves to hit all three types (Ghost, Electric, Grass, and Flying).
** Speaking of types... Psychic was ''ridiculously'' broken back in Gen. 1, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, its only weakness was Bug, and there were ''very'' few Bug-type moves available, very few actually decent Bug Pokémon, and the best ones couldn't actually learn any Bug-type attacks. Secondly, Special Attack and Special Defense were only the single Special stat, and many Psychics had high Special, allowing them to give out ''and'' absorb insane amounts of Special damage. Incidentally, this also made the move "Psychic" fairly broken, as it lowered the Special stat, causing foes to take ''and'' give less Special damage. Naturally, Gen. II did quite a bit of fixing to this: Ghost became super effective against Psychic like it was supposed to be, and the two new types, Dark and Steel, were immune and resistant, respectively, to Psychic moves, with Dark being super effective as well. More usable Bugs were introduced, along with the Fury Cutter TM, which could be learned by quite a few Bug-Types. Also, Special was split into Special Attack and Special Defense, and Psychic only lowers Special Defense.
* ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'' had a major issue with Gau, a character who normally can't equip weapons but has a high innate attack power to make up for it, and the Merit Award, an accessory that allows its user to equip any type of weapon or armor in the game. When Gau had the Merit Award in the original version of the game, you could equip him with a weapon. Not only did this dramatically boost his attack power, but it also led to some very bizarre [[Game Breaker]] combos, such as the legendary "Wind God Gau". Later remakes of the game prevent Gau from equipping the Merit Award, sadly enough.
** Gogo, while not nearly as [[Game Breaker]] status as Gau, could also achieve "Wind God" status with the Merit Award. This managed to last into the Playstation re-release, but was finally blocked in the GBA update. Another, separate rule patch was that of [http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Psycho_Cyan_Bug "Psycho Cyan"], but savvy players managed to find an alternate means of triggering this glitch anyway.
* ''[[Left 4 Dead]]'' had an issue with melee shoving in VS mode. Players were literally shoving zombies for the entire game instead of actually using their guns, which made it a huge hassle for zombie players to approach and attack since they would [[Cherry Tapping|get shoved to death.]] A patch then introduced melee fatigue, where survivors would have to wait before shoving again if they kept shoving too many times without stopping. This mechanic was made as a main feature in all game modes for the sequel.
** The sequel also had a few things patched for VS mode due to complaints. Explosive ammo was removed due to survivors using the special ammo only on special infected, which basically meant that the survivors could not be touched due to the explosive ammo stumbling the zombie players. Using defibrillators would induce a 25 point penalty per use for the survivors. Spitters that spit their acid into a moving elevator would potentially wipe out the survivor team since they had nowhere to move away from the spit, so a patch was made where spitting into a moving elevator would make the acid quickly fizzle out to prevent a cheap win.
** The sequel also made it where melee weapons were not very effective on a Tank in order to encourage more gunning and running when survivors fight a Tank. Before this patch, survivors would use melee weapons (which ranged from the practical, like a sword, to absurd, like a frying pan) to kill a Tank quickly because each hit took 10% of the Tank's health off, which the Tank could then die in 10 hits. With 4 survivors using melee weapons all at once, it would be quite easy to drop a Tank, which frustrated Tank players in VS mode. A patch addressed this issue where now melee weapons only do half the damage they used to against a Tank.
** The Jockey gained a slight buff after complaints from players in VS mode came pouring in; The Jockey's main attack is to latch onto the survivors and ride them somewhere else while damaging them every second. The problem was the Jockey could be shoved off his victim (which is how it works) before he could do any damage at all if survivor players were quick enough. One patch later, the Jockey can now damage survivors as soon as he grabs them.
*** Something similar happened with the Smoker. The Smoker does damage by grabbing survivors with his tongue, pulling them toward him and trapping them. Originally, the Smoker couldn't cause damage to the player until his tongue attack fully retracted, implying that the tongue itself does no damage, but rather the damage comes from the Smoker hitting the survivor directly. Other survivors, however, were freeing their friends from the Smoker's tongue long before it reached the Smoker, so the attack was changed so that the survivor also takes damage during the dragging part of the attack.
** The Witch in the sequel had received a buff for Realism VS mode after people complained that the Witch was too easy for survivors to kill. Now Witches in Realism VS cannot be instantly killed with a head shot.
** When Survival mode was introduced in Left 4 Dead, people abused exploits and glitches in the maps by placing themselves in areas that the zombies could not "see" them at (players that are "off" the map are considered non existent by zombies), thus they could earn gold meals too easily. While some of the maps were patched to plug up the exploits, many others did not get detected. The sequel upgraded the AI Director to detect cheating in Survival mode where it will spawn Spitter acid onto a player that is not in the map or are in some spot that the zombies can't reach them and if the player avoids this check, the AI Director will just outright damage players until they get back to playing fair.
* In ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'', the Gloves of Running Urgently gave the Heavy a speed boost when wielded, bringing his speed up from "extremely slow" to "about average". Another item, the Buffalo Steak Sandvich, was released later that temporarily increased the Heavy's speed to above average speed. These effects, when used together, allowed the Heavy to become one of the fastest classes in the game. Now, eating a Buffalo Steak cancels out the effect of the GRU.
** The Spy can turn invisible during which he is not able to use any of his attacks but originally he could still taunt while invisible. When the Sniper/Spy update gave him a taunt that could instant kill enemies, taunting while invisible was quickly edited out.
* ''[[Mario Kart]]'' had the problem of snaking. It was a fan made technique where the player performs a power slide on a straight road and builds up a mini-turbo quickly, releases it, and then does it again in the opposite direction, doing this back and forth until they hit a curve. Mario Kart Double Dash had this and it was even more apparent in Mario Kart DS where the best time trial records came from snaking and [[Player Preferred Pattern|everyone online always snaked with the same specific characters/karts]]. To address the issue, Nintendo made it where in Mario Kart Wii, mini-turbos could only be built up by maintaining the power slide in one direction until it gained enough power instead of wiggling the control stick back and forth quickly.
** Mario Kart Wii created a new problem with the bikes. Players quickly found out that popping a wheelie gives a small boost in speed and if it was done enough anywhere, they could boost so much that they can stay ahead of players that didn't do the same or were using a kart (karts can't wheelie). In theory, bikes are supposed to lose a ton of speed if they are bumped into while popping a wheelie but this rarely happened in the hands of skilled players. Mario Kart 7 got rid of bikes entirely due to this.
** The Fake Item Box, which is supposed to fool players by thinking it's a real item box, had been in the Mario Kart series for decades, but it was removed in Mario Kart 7. This was mainly due to the item working a bit too well where players can place the fake box inside real item boxes all the time and basically be guaranteed a player would always fall for it and since it was a big box, it could also be used on narrow paths or before jumps so players could never avoid it at all compared to a smaller item like a banana peel. The fake box became completely useless in Mario Kart DS due to players being able to spot it on the map on the bottom screen and with Mario Kart 7 using the map screen again, the fake box would be useless. With all the reasons listed above, it's understandable why Mario Kart 7 got rid of the item.
* ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]'' has a thermobaric tank that can destroy any building in one shot. There is a [[Mass Monster Slaughter Sidequest|Kill Event]] that involves using one. After doing the event, the player is left with the tank and 50 rounds for the big gun. Patch: If you use the tank to destroy a military base or infected hive, the tank will ''inexplicably vanish'', preventing you from cleaning up the entire map with it.
* Due to the infamous amount of infinite combos and glitches that dominnated competitive play for ''[[Marvel vs. Capcom 2]]'', Capcom's made a point of patching infinite combos out of ''[[Marvel vs. Capcom 3]]''.
 
 
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=== Reality TelevisionLiterature ===
* In ''[[Ender's Game]]'', Ender's final battle as commander pits his Dragon Army against two armies combined. Ender discards all combat strategy and has his boys move as quickly as possible to perform the victory ritual. Since nobody had considered doing this without defeating the opposing army first, the other team is confused enough for him to win. He is promptly told that starting in the next battle fought at Battle School, it would not be possible for an army to perform the victory ritual without first defeating or disabling everyone in the opposing army.
 
 
=== Reality Television ===
* On ''[[The Amazing Race]]'', limits on how many Roadblocks a racer could perform were instigated after Season 5, after the three women who made the Final 3 that year performed a total of three Roadblocks combined.
** In Season 1, teams were only allowed to buy one set of plane tickets, and weren't allowed to switch, even if they found a faster flight or their original flight was delayed. This was changed on the very next season, and multiple flight bookings has become an important part of the [[Metagame]] ever since.
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=== Sports ===
* The baseball rules committee instituted the [[wikipedia:Infield Fly Rule|Infield Fly Rule]] in 1895 to block a specific [[Game Breaker]] in which an infielder would let a fly ball drop and go for the easy double play (or, should the runner choose to run, catch the fly ball and throw the runner out before he could tag up for an equally easy double play) instead of just getting the one out that would normally result. Which makes this [[Older Than Radio]].
** Arguably the fly ball rule ''itself'' is such a patch (albeit an even older one)--it means batters can't just hit the ball straight up and run to first base before it comes down.
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* Plenty of such rules resulted from events described in [[Cracked.com|Xavier Jackson]]'s [http://www.cracked.com/article_20717_5-dumb-ways-people-have-won-at-sports.html 5 Dumb Ways People Have Won at Sports].
 
=== TabletopWeb GamesComics ===
* This is common in logical puzzles placed in RPGs. You want perfect glue and indestructible rope and disintegration runes so that the players can figure out a clever solution to your logical puzzle - but you don't want them to use those items on anything ''[[Combinatorial Explosion|other]]'' than that puzzle. The cheap solution is to make them work only in a specific place, or on specific objects, or only once.
** In the most recent version of the [[Tomb of Horrors]], the scepter and crown of disintegration (put the crown on your head, touch one end of the scepter to it, you disintegrate) cannot be removed from the room they're in by any means (the description goes to [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|great lengths to cover any eventuality]]). Earlier versions of the Tomb had no such rule at all. The reason eventually emerged during a conversation on a message board: One of the artists working on an earlier copy of the module was invited to a session of the Tomb DMed by none other than [[Word of God|Gary Gygax himself.]] The artist took the scepter and crown from the room, then eventually placed the crown on the {{spoiler|fake skull}} of Acererak and touched the scepter to it, disintegrating the lich instantly. Gygax was stunned, as the eventuality had never occurred to him. The artist, on the other hand, [[Chekhov's Gun|thought that's what they were there for.]] The artist was quite surprised when he was later informed of the rule change.
* Pretty much all of the spell entries more complicated than "You do X damage to Y targets at Z range" in the 3.5 edition rules of ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' consist of long strings of Obvious Rule Patches. There are spells like Polymorph that are one paragraph of explaining what the spell does, and roughly eleven paragraphs of explaining what the spell cannot do.
** One of the most basic Obvious Rule Patch is the rule that bonuses of the same types don't stack - only the largest one takes effect (with the exception of dodge bonuses to AC in third edition). This has led to many rule patching to give untyped bonuses types so they couldn't be so easily stacked.
** 3.0 spellcasters had a bad habit of using summoning heavy creatures in midair, causing them to deal obscene damage as falling objects when they hit opponents. Wizards of the Coast amended the summon spells in 3.5 to prevent creatures from being summoned into an environment that can't support them (i.e., no flying whales).
** You can't sunder armor in 3.5. You can break weapons, shields, even items they're wearing like pendants. Just not armor. It would be easier to just break the fallen paladin's armor and then stab him, leading to silly situations such as the above.
** Another patch was the spell Dimensional Door. In 3.5E its pretty much an early teleport spell, in previous editions (as the name implies) it created a pair of portals through which the [[PCs]] could travel great distances. While that may not sound so bad, [[PCs]] often created [[Portal Cut|horizontal or diagonal doors to bissect enemies (or fortifications!)]] that lead to instant kills. Another tactic was to open a portal into a volcano or sea and use the exit portal to flood an enemy base with lava or drown it completely.
* Fourth Edition ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' errata has had some obvious rule patches: The Ranger ability that let you make continual attacks until you miss was errated to have a 5 attack limit as it was possible to make a build which had an almost zero chance of ever missing, even against the strongest monster in the Monster Manual.
* In most ''D&D''-like games, you can't wear more than one or two magical items of a certain "slot" and benefit from all their powers. While it makes sense that you can't wear multiple pairs of, say, boots, there's no reason for the usual "two rings, one amulet" rule other than balance issues. This is usually justified with a contrived excuse that the magic items will interfere with each other. Even though you can often wear a helmet, armor, and a neck slot item, or gloves, bracers, possibly armor (which probably has gauntlets of some sort included), and a ring.
** In the Fourth Edition, shields count as taking up the magic items arms slot ''and'' a wielding-in-hand slot. It means you can't use bracers+shield or two shields and get the magical effects of both.
* Construction rules in ''[[BattleTech]]'' often have restrictions that often seem arbitrary. For example, Protomechs (not-so [[Humongous Mecha]]) cannot mount Plasma Cannons. This seems to make no sense, as, being only three tons, they seem like perfect weapons to mount on one. Then you think about just how badly five Plasma Cannons would roast any given Battlemech in a single turn.
** There was also an instance where Battle Armor riding on an Omni Mech can be shot off of the 'mech by shots that land on the torso. Doesn't seem too bad, but given that there is no weight penalty for carrying Battle Armor, the [[Human Shield|Battle Armor were always the first to take hits]], and [[Mundane Utility|the 'mech's torso wouldn't begin to take damage until all the Battle Armor were shot off]]... it's understandable why the next rulebook created fixed locations for each Battle Armor.
* ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'': ''A [[Commissar]] (of any rank) will never [[Ate His Gun|execute]] [[Suicide as Comedy|himself]].''
** "Under no circumstances can any [necron] make more than one teleport move in a single turn... There are no exceptions to this, no matter how clever your logic."
** "Please note that it is ''not'' possible to master-craft grenades!" <ref>However, ''[[Dawn of War]] 2'' has an item (and ''Space Marine'' a Perk) that disagrees with that rather blatantly.</ref>
** Space Marine [[Drop Pod|drop pods]] are clearly 10-man craft (visible in the model and still stated in some codexes), but other codexes expanded it to 12 to allow an independent character to deploy with the squad. Without changing the model.
* In ''[[GURPS]]'', it is possible to enchant a pair of permanent Gate spells and then arrange them to create a perpetual motion machine using electromagnetic principles that could then be tapped for an unending mana supply. (Click the link in the subtopic below if you're curious as to technical details.) However, due to the various components required, this would need a setting where both modern science existed, magic existed, and the Draw Power spell from ''GURPS Grimoire 3e'' specifically existed. In the one GURPS setting where this is canonical (''GURPS Technomancer''), three guesses which spell has an entire sidebar devoted to explaining how it specifically does not exist. Hint: Four-letter word, begins with "G".
** This probably had something to do with the fact that David R. Pulver, the writer of ''Technomancer'' [http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.frp.gurps/browse_frm/thread/f65e43a91c0ee511/5f5ba1346c6a7203?hl=en#5f5ba1346c6a7203 participated/lurked in a Usenet thread] where the "Infinite Mana Well" construct was first proposed... at the exact same time ''Technomancer'' was in final playtest.
* In ''[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/11/090511fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=6 The Trillion Credit Challenge]'' (using [[Traveller]]), contestants had to purchase and field a fleet of ships to do battle with other fleets. Doug Lenat fed the parameters of the tournament into a computer (in 1981) which suggested that instead of sending in a balanced fleet of carriers, battleships, cruisers, and so on, he should instead build thousands of tiny patrol boats. He won in a rout - though he took incredible losses, he overwhelmed his opponents through sheer numbers. The organizers then made their first Obvious Rule Patch - they added 'fleet agility' (which could be reduced by several things, most importantly by having damaged ships trying to keep up with undamaged ones) as a parameter for the following year's tournament. When Lenat entered again, his computer used much the same strategy with one change - whenever any of his ships was damaged, they would ''self-destruct'', which kept the average mobility of the fleet up. The organizers then made their second patch - tell Lenat that it was weird to have his unorthodox plans keep winning (since, after all, they relied on ordering millions of men to knowing suicide) and say that if he continued to enter, they would [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys|stop holding the tournament]]. Lenat then bowed out gracefully.
* The rules for creating abominations in [[Old World of Darkness|old]] ''[[Old World of Darkness|World Of Darkness]]''. Briefly: if you attempt to turn a werewolf into a vampire, the werewolf gets a skill roll. He wins, he dies peacefully. He loses, he dies horribly but his soul is free. He [[Critical Failure|botches]], he becomes an abomination, essentially a walking [[Game Breaker]] balanced out by [[Heroic BSOD|crippling depression]]. Since there are all sorts of abilities in ''tWoD'' that can cause a skill roll to fail or critically fail, the editors in Revised Edition state that nothing short of divine intervention can affect the roll.<ref>except the werewolf spending a Willpower point for an automatic success; this is the "in-character" thing to do</ref>
* ''[[Pathfinder]]'' is basically a tweaked ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]] 3.5'' and (to make up for an initial lack of content) was said to be compatible with 3.5 which lead to some game breakers. They tend to fix these by introducing their own version of the feat/skill/class ability/prestige class. Especially noticeable with spells. The Irresistable Dance spell used to be a no save incapacitation spell. Now, it allows a save though even those who make it have to dance uncontrollably for one round.
** The Quick Draw feat allows you to draw any item from your pack as a free action... except flasks of alchemist's fire or acid. You also cannot [[Back Stab|sneak attack]] with such items, unlike all other weapons. These changes were obviously put in place due to volleys of flasks being popular among 3.5e rogues as a means to fight enemies resistant to physical damage or vulnerable to fire.
* More recent releases of ''[[Arkham Horror]]'', as well as later versions of the rulebook included with some expansions explicitly and seemingly arbitrarily ban certain types of cards from being the initial draw—because the effects of those types can easily render the game unwinnable, typically by making the preparation necessary to actually be able to accomplish much in the game difficult or impossible.
 
== Video Games ==
* In an early version of ''[[Neverwinter Nights]]'', a loophole in the rules was found that let monks wear a shield in their offhand, making them virtually unhittable for no real downside. In the very next patch, monks were made unable to wear shields and retain monk dodge / attack bonuses at the same time.
* In an early release of ''[[Battlefield 2142]]'', it was entirely possible for two soldiers with nothing better to do to destroy their own Titan (and thus force their team to lose the round) by forcing a transport through the floor of the hangar bay and into the Core.
* ''[[EVE Online]]'' has had several updates that were borderline Obvious Rule Patches. However, the patch that prevented carriers from transporting loaded cargo ships was a glaringly Obvious Rules Patch.
** Similarly, nowadays [[Hand Wave|graviton harmonics]] prevent [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys|players]] from taking a 3000m^3 cargo container that holds 3300m^3 of cargo... and putting another 3000m^3 container that holds 3300m^3 inside it leaving 300m^3 of free space. With enough cargo containers you could once haul an entire solar system's worth of ore in a single, moderately sized and priced ship.
* A fairly obscure item from ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' called the Luffa would remove any bleed effect. A boss over 20 levels later would put a hefty bleed dot on raid members at fairly regular intervals. Everyone would equip their Luffa and make Moroes a total joke. The next patch put a spell level cap on the Luffa ie. you couldn't remove bleed effects over level 60 anymore.
** Then there's the infamous Corrupted Blood incident from the release of the Zul'Gurub dungeon, which gained enough notoriety to be mentioned in major news media as an example of how populations reacted to the spread of communicable disease. In a nutshell, an exploit of a boss encounter allowed a pet who acquired the debuff to be dismissed and then resummoned in a populated area, instantly spreading it to everyone in the vicinity and decimating entire cities as a result. It was patched several days later so the debuff could not exist outside of the dungeon.
** An old patch for ''[[WoW]]'' allowed everyone in a group to place marks - graphical icons that go above monsters or players and are used to make them more visible or indicate a kill order for the group - instead of only the group's leader being able to do it. There followed an unofficial addon while allowed players to automatically strobe the marks across the group members, rapidly swapping them around, much to the annoyance of many players. The very next patch added a notification of who was setting marks.
** Two patches were done within hours of release. One patch screwed up and gave Warriors extra talent points. Another one was a dupe bug. (Very annoying and difficult to pull off, but mentioning a dupe bug for a ticket gets a very quick response and led to a patch within an hour).
** In July 2009, a hunter was discovered with a worgen (a sentient, werewolf-like creature) for a pet, and within a few hours the hunter community had figured out how and where to get [http://www.wowhead.com/npc=24277 this particular beast]; pretty much everyone who could obtain one had one. Within two days the tamed worgen were patched to have all their skills and attacks completely removed, and after a few more days they were replaced entirely by ordinary white wolves. However, considering that worgen became a playable race in the Cataclysm expansion, this [[Unfortunate Implications|may have been for the better]].
** There was a video posted on [[YouTube]] a few years back where a paladin killed, in one move, a raid boss designed for dozens of players to take several minutes to bring down. The Reckoning talent had the effect that when a paladin was struck they might gain a stack of Reckoning, causing their next attack to hit twice. One enterprising player dueled a rogue many times without ever striking back, then went up to the boss in question and proceeded to hit it more than a thousand times in one blow. Within twenty four hours the talent was nerfed so that it caused you to hit ''twice'' for the next few attacks. Of course, seeing as Reckoning was about the only ability in the entire game that possessed neither stack limit nor duration, this was only to be expected.
* In ''[[Defense of the Ancients]]'', the Batrider hero has a skill, "Sticky Napalm", that amplifies damage from the Batrider on its victims. Players took advantage of this by building the constant DPS aura item Radiance, which turned Batrider into a real damage-dealer. Apparently Icefrog disagreed, as he proceeded to change Sticky Napalm so that Radiance could not (normally) trigger the bonus damage any more.
** ''DotA'' also has an item called "Kelen's Dagger" that allows teleportation of one's own hero. So, it's even possible to teleport yourself into terrain that you cannot escape from, except by using Kelen's Dagger again once the cooldown ends. Two heroes are forbidden from using Kelen's at all. One of them has an ability to swap positions with another hero, and the other who can hook a hero and reel them in to be right next to him. Either of them could trap an enemy hero (or even a friend, if they were traitorous) into a small patch of terrain that said hero might be stuck in for the entire game, unless the other hero happened to also have bought the Dagger.
* Starting in version 1.3, ''[[Iji]]'' tells you in some places (the arena for {{spoiler|Asha's rematch}} comes to mind) that "there's no need to fire your Nanogun here". Sometimes it was literally true, but in many cases it was because firing your Nanogun there could bug out the game.
** ''Iji'' has a few things like this in the later versions. When it became possible to win the game without killing anyone, this necessitated the player not fighting one of the bosses, because the only way to get by {{spoiler|is to kill him}}. The solution? {{spoiler|Have a new character help you by one-shotting him. However, this would mean that a pacifist runthrough on the first couple of levels would be much faster than previous runthroughs, and the developer, Daniel Remar, wanted speedruns to be fair between versions. So 10 minutes are added to your overall time because Iji waits around for 10 minutes to give your helper a head start.}}
** In a later update, it doesn't count as a kill if you reflect an enemy's fire back into them with a force field weapon. Previously, "pacifist" players would gather dropped power-ups by stocking up on health, moving right next to enemies, and catching rockets with the main character's face for the [[Splash Damage]].
* ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'' automatically ends combat with a special message after 30 rounds of combat (or 50 rounds for some bosses) have elapsed with no winner, with a net result equivalent to successfully running away on the 31st round. This was apparently done originally to prevent a possible near-infinite loop that would result if the player's Muscle was too low to hit the monster and his/her Moxie was too high for the monster to hit him/her, while his/her combat initiative was too low to run away. Newer mechanics make such a situation much less plausible, but the rule has remained and still serves to cap the potential effectiveness of any strategy that involves stalling and drawing out combat for per-round effects. For example:
** The [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot]] familiar used to randomly give Meat with a fixed chance of about 1 in 9 per round of combat. Since this made it advantageous to drag out combat to as close to 30 turns as possible without going over and thus using up much more server resources than normal, the NPZR now only gives Meat in the first 10 turns of combat.
** Another much-maligned Obvious Rule Patch came with NS13: Before NS13, players found that increasing monster level (which also increased XP gains) and increasing noncombat encounter chance were both extremely useful. So when NS13 rolled out, the devs added a rule that made increased monster level cancel out increased noncombat chance. Unfortunately, this had the side effect of making monster level increasers less than useless. Over a year and a half later, the devs realized that [[Scrappy Mechanic|nobody liked this in the slightest]] and removed the rule.
** Another rule is "can't use Double Fisted Skull Smashing to wield a Chefstaff in your offhand." Due to the way DFSS (halves the power of offhand weapons but leaves enchantments alone) and Chefstaves (lowest power possible but incredible enchantments) work, this rule prevents two builds, a rather unpleasant one and a horribly broken one: the former, a weapon/chefstaff combo that makes a [[Magic Knight]] with no detriment for either one, the latter, a Chefstaff/Chefstaff combo that results in spells so powerful that it can take down anything almost in one hit.
** The ''KoL'' staff's usual modus operandi in the event of players accomplishing things they didn't count on players accomplishing is to reward the player for their cleverness/tenacity, then change the game so that the stunt can't be repeated.<ref>Or at least, ''theoretically'' can't be repeated; after the first person beat the final boss without the [[Unusual Euphemism|Smurf]], the changes they made turned out not to be sufficient to keep it from happening again. Now you auto-win or auto-lose depending on whether or not you have the item in question</ref>
* In the [[Programming Game]] ''RoboWar'', allowing robots to teleport and fire weapons interchangeably in the same chronon let a robot with sufficient processor speed leap a considerable distance (depending on its current energy) to put a lethal contact shot into another robot, leaving it next to no time to defend or counterattack—and executing another move after the shot (the "jerker" strategy) made it harder to target for a counterattack. That the robot's energy would already go deeply negative in the middle of the chronon didn't matter much (so long as it didn't fall below -200), since it wouldn't become immobilized by having negative energy until the next chronon. This allowed the "dasher" strategy to achieve considerable dominance, and in time most top-placing robots in tournaments, dashers or not, had to use "anti-dasher" techniques. To rebalance the game, an Obvious Rule Patch was instated (amid much controversy) to prevent move/shoot in the same chronon.
* ''[[Fire Emblem]]: Rekka no Ken'' had the absurdly broken Luna spell, which has a damage base of 0 but negates enemy resistance to magic when calculating damage, and has a very good base critical rate. For most of the game, enemies have low resistance anyway, and Luna falls somewhere between okay and kind of bad. However, in the last levels of the game, bosses start to have crazy amounts of resistance to counterbalance your ever-strengthening party. The Luna spell, however, just ignores this and allows Canas (who is arguably a broken character to begin with) to completely annihilate the later bosses in just a few attacks. It even makes it entirely possible for Canas to defeat the final boss with just ''[[Game Breaker|two hits]]''.
** It gets nerfed to hell in ''[[Fire Emblem]]: The Sacred Stones'', where its hit rate is barely half what it once was, is critical rate IS half what it was, and it has less uses. It's made extremely obvious because there wasn't a single change to any other spell.
** There's also the Silencer skill in ''[[Fire Emblem]]: Rekka no Ken'' and ''The Sacred Stones'', which gives your Assassin the chance to instantly-kill any foe, so long as they have a chance to land a critical hit. This allowed them to plow through most bosses with ease. While this was negated by the final bosses of both games, whose equipment automatically reduced the enemy's crit chance to 0, it still left most other bosses vulnerable. It was obviously fixed in ''Path of Radiance'' and ''Radiant Dawn'', where the description of the Silencer skill simply states it doesn't work on bosses without any reasoning or attempt at justification.
* In the [[MMORPG]] ''Lords of Legend'', your level bonus is apparently capped at 5 times the number of troops. Few know about the cap, because in order to get even close to the cap, you have to spend weeks doing the exact opposite of what you are supposed to.
** It is also played straight with the 'invisibility' strategy (You don't show up on attack pages if you haven't won an attack yet), which has been severely nerfed with increasingly harsh and arbitrary restrictions on invisible players.
* ''[[Gaia Online]]'' has had quite a few:
** First, there's soulbinding, the most famous and controversial of the lot. In the first couple months of open beta, users were allowed to buy and sell their rings. This caused a few problems. The most obvious, of course, was that people could buy their way through the game, resulting in many CL 10s who had no idea what they were doing. Another effect was on the economy. Charge Orbs, the items that power up rings, were earned in-game, not bought. Higher-level rings are naturally more valued than weak ones, so people were charging up rings and then selling them, effectively creating expensive items with little to no cost to the users. This was quickly changed so that rings were "soulbound", meaning they could no longer be put on the marketplace.
*** But only rings acquired after the update or older rings that are equipped. Unsoulbound rings are still being sold, and there is also a new ring [[Revenue Enhancing Devices|sold for real money]] as a Valentine's Day event item. It has officially been described as being permanently unsoulbound.
** A bit later, CL caps were placed on boss lairs so that people couldn't recruit their CL 10 friends to help them beat the boss. Clever players soon found a way to circumvent this by wearing low-level rings when entering the boss area, then switching out to their stronger ones. The devs soon closed this loophole.
* In ''[[Civilization]] III'', players could initially chop down and replant forests in relatively short order. This made a certain amount of sense, up to a point anyway, but it also created an infinite supply of construction materials. It was quickly patched so that [[Fridge Logic|replanted forests contained no useful wood]].
* In ''[[Half Life|Half Life: Episode One]]'' when Gordon {{spoiler|gets the super-charged gravity gun again}}, any use of it causes all other weapons to vaporize, just like the previous game. The problem is, Alyx is also with you and can kill enemies, causing them to drop their weapons. When they do, the weapons still vaporize for pretty much no reason, almost as if they only held together because [[No Ontological Inertia|a Combine soldier was holding it]].
* In [[Final Fantasy XI]], you gain tactical points (TP) each time you hit an enemy, the amount varying based on the delay of your weapon (higher = more TP per hit). You have to have at least 100% TP (of a 300% cap) in order to perform a weapon skill. This sounds reasonable, except very early on, weapon skills that hit multiple times gave full TP return per hit, leading to being able to perform these weapon skills back-to-back with no need to accumulate TP in the mean time assuming you used a special type of otherwise useless weapon with almost no damage rating and max delay. [[Square Enix]] patched this very quickly so that only the first hit (first two when you're dual-wielding) give full TP, and subsequent hits only give 1%.
** Don't forget [[That One Boss|Absolute Virtue]], who is for all intents and purposes totally invincible due to his ability to use the most powerful abilities of every job, as well as cast high-level black magic that players don't even have access to instantaneously and frequently, wiping out alliances of players in seconds. Every time a method is discovered to defeat him, Square-Enix will immediately squash it by [[New Powers as the Plot Demands|giving Absolute Virtue new resistances and powers as his flaws were discovered]].
*** When players killed him by attacking him from areas he couldn't fight back, the developers gave him the ability to draw players to him if they got too far away.
*** Later on, the devs were pressured into rethinking the absurd difficulty of some of their bosses after some bad publicity involving an [[Bladder of Steel|18-hour-long fight against a different monster]], so they lowered the HP of both that boss and Absolute Virtue and forced them to despawn if not defeated within two hours. Players discovered that a legion of Dark Knights using a combination of the job ability Souleater [[Cast From Hit Points|(consumes HP to increase damage dealt)]] and Blood Weapon (restores HP equal to melee damage inflicted), he could be bumrushed into defeat. Within days, a patch was made that gave Absolute Virtue (and ONLY Absolute Virtue - other monsters that had previously been defeated with this method were totally untouched) increasing resistance to Souleater damage, making it useless.
*** A theoretical method of defeating him involved using the Scholar's Helix line of spells, which deal a fairly large amount of damage over time. The helix was placed on the enemy, and then a group of Scholars simultaneously use a job ability that doubles the damage dealt by the next tic of damage while halving its overall duration. The result is that most enemies in the game will drop dead immediately, although execution requires very precise timing (and, in most cases, botting). As soon as people discussed how it could be used to defeat Absolute Virtue, "certain notorious monsters" were given a resistance to the use of the JA. Guess who was at the top of the priority list?
* [[Pokémon]] had constant problems with the pokemon Wobbuffet. It's supposed to be a pokemon that cannot directly attack but is streamlined to take advantage of damage reflecting attacks, but instead of being forced to attack, an opponent can just simply switch out his current pokemon over and over until Wobbuffet runs out of PP. To prevent that, in Generation III Wobbuffet and its newly introduced pre-evolution Wynaut were both equipped with the Shadow Tag ability, which prevents the opponent from switching Pokémon in a battle against Wobbuffet/Wynaut until they were either recalled or knocked out or if the foe has some other trap-cancel ability that allows them to flee. Fair enough, except for in a competitive battle where both you and your opponents have Wobbuffet (or the much-less-common Wynaut) who are both equipped with Leftovers and facing each other. You can't fight back because Wobbuffet and Wynaut are only able to counter attacks, not dish them out. Their Shadow Tag abilities will also prevent either of them from switching out, and even if the two were to wear themselves down enough to use Struggle (the only move Wynaut/Wobbuffet knows that deals damage), Leftovers would cancel out what horrendously low damage their moves do, resulting in a draw by eliminating any chance that either of the two will faint. From Diamond and Pearl onwards, Shadow Tag was changed so that any Pokémon who has the Shadow Tag ability who is locked into battle with a foe who also has said ability can negate the effect and switch out without problems. Also, Struggle now always takes away 25 percent of the user's ''maximum'' hit points, not 25 percent of the hit point damage the user did to the other guy, so that even if two trainers wound up with Wobbuffet as each person's last Pokémon, once Struggling began the match would end in 5 turns or less (because the 25 percent rounds down, someone with an HP amount that can be divided by 4 with a remainder of 1 could last 1 more turn).
** Now in the new generation of games, (the fifth) there was a glitch involving the new move Sky Drop. The move makes one Pokemon take another into the air [[Captain Obvious|(and then drop it for damage)]], and when a Pokemon is in the air, it cannot move or be hit (except by a few moves, like Thunderbolt). There was previously a move called Gravity which made Flying-types or levatating Pokemon comes to the ground (this meaning they can be hit by Ground-type moves), and also makes Pokemon in the air come to the ground. So in a double battle, if one of your Pokemon uses Sky Drop and the other then uses gravity, both your & the opponents Pokemon will come to the ground... [[Game Breaking Bug|except while your pokemon can move, theirs is treated as being in the air and cannot move, at all, until they are fainted by a move like, say, Thunderbolt.]] The Obvious Rule Patch? Nintendo banned the move in Random online battles.
** The fifth generation games also give us a minor one involving Dream World Pokemon. Almost every Pokemon encountered in the Dream World will have an ability not normally accessible in the main game. This also came with a new breeding mechanic where these abilities could only by passed to offspring if the Pokemon with the ability is female. Starter Pokemon and Eevee's evolutions encountered in the Dream World can never be female, meaning they can have their Hidden Ability or egg moves, but not both. (Possibly due to some of them creating game breaking combinations, such as Speed Boost Blaziken, which through breeding also has access to Swords Dance and Baton Pass.) Within the [[Character Tiers|Dream World tier]] in the [[Metagame|competitive battling]] circle, however, both are allowed in the spirit of simulating a theoretically "complete" metagame. This most likely won't be the case with official tournaments to come in the future, as Nintendo uses different rules than the fandom.
** The moves Double Team and Minimize would improve evasion (with enough use, could reduce all hit chances to 1/3 their original value), which basically dominated the first gen Metagame, particularly for three types - Psychic (the original Game Breaker type), Water (which only fears Electric and Grass), and Grass (due to abuse of health-draining moves). The second generation introduced an always-hit move of the new Psychic-beating Dark type, and the third gen introduced such moves to hit all three types (Ghost, Electric, Grass, and Flying).
** Speaking of types... Psychic was ''ridiculously'' broken back in Gen. 1, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, its only weakness was Bug, and there were ''very'' few Bug-type moves available, very few actually decent Bug Pokémon, and the best ones couldn't actually learn any Bug-type attacks. Secondly, Special Attack and Special Defense were only the single Special stat, and many Psychics had high Special, allowing them to give out ''and'' absorb insane amounts of Special damage. Incidentally, this also made the move "Psychic" fairly broken, as it lowered the Special stat, causing foes to take ''and'' give less Special damage. Naturally, Gen. II did quite a bit of fixing to this: Ghost became super effective against Psychic like it was supposed to be, and the two new types, Dark and Steel, were immune and resistant, respectively, to Psychic moves, with Dark being super effective as well. More usable Bugs were introduced, along with the Fury Cutter TM, which could be learned by quite a few Bug-Types. Also, Special was split into Special Attack and Special Defense, and Psychic only lowers Special Defense.
* ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'' had a major issue with Gau, a character who normally can't equip weapons but has a high innate attack power to make up for it, and the Merit Award, an accessory that allows its user to equip any type of weapon or armor in the game. When Gau had the Merit Award in the original version of the game, you could equip him with a weapon. Not only did this dramatically boost his attack power, but it also led to some very bizarre [[Game Breaker]] combos, such as the legendary "Wind God Gau". Later remakes of the game prevent Gau from equipping the Merit Award, sadly enough.
** Gogo, while not nearly as [[Game Breaker]] status as Gau, could also achieve "Wind God" status with the Merit Award. This managed to last into the Playstation re-release, but was finally blocked in the GBA update. Another, separate rule patch was that of [http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Psycho_Cyan_Bug "Psycho Cyan"], but savvy players managed to find an alternate means of triggering this glitch anyway.
* ''[[Left 4 Dead]]'' had an issue with melee shoving in VS mode. Players were literally shoving zombies for the entire game instead of actually using their guns, which made it a huge hassle for zombie players to approach and attack since they would [[Cherry Tapping|get shoved to death.]] A patch then introduced melee fatigue, where survivors would have to wait before shoving again if they kept shoving too many times without stopping. This mechanic was made as a main feature in all game modes for the sequel.
** The sequel also had a few things patched for VS mode due to complaints. Explosive ammo was removed due to survivors using the special ammo only on special infected, which basically meant that the survivors could not be touched due to the explosive ammo stumbling the zombie players. Using defibrillators would induce a 25 point penalty per use for the survivors. Spitters that spit their acid into a moving elevator would potentially wipe out the survivor team since they had nowhere to move away from the spit, so a patch was made where spitting into a moving elevator would make the acid quickly fizzle out to prevent a cheap win.
** The sequel also made it where melee weapons were not very effective on a Tank in order to encourage more gunning and running when survivors fight a Tank. Before this patch, survivors would use melee weapons (which ranged from the practical, like a sword, to absurd, like a frying pan) to kill a Tank quickly because each hit took 10% of the Tank's health off, which the Tank could then die in 10 hits. With 4 survivors using melee weapons all at once, it would be quite easy to drop a Tank, which frustrated Tank players in VS mode. A patch addressed this issue where now melee weapons only do half the damage they used to against a Tank.
** The Jockey gained a slight buff after complaints from players in VS mode came pouring in; The Jockey's main attack is to latch onto the survivors and ride them somewhere else while damaging them every second. The problem was the Jockey could be shoved off his victim (which is how it works) before he could do any damage at all if survivor players were quick enough. One patch later, the Jockey can now damage survivors as soon as he grabs them.
*** Something similar happened with the Smoker. The Smoker does damage by grabbing survivors with his tongue, pulling them toward him and trapping them. Originally, the Smoker couldn't cause damage to the player until his tongue attack fully retracted, implying that the tongue itself does no damage, but rather the damage comes from the Smoker hitting the survivor directly. Other survivors, however, were freeing their friends from the Smoker's tongue long before it reached the Smoker, so the attack was changed so that the survivor also takes damage during the dragging part of the attack.
** The Witch in the sequel had received a buff for Realism VS mode after people complained that the Witch was too easy for survivors to kill. Now Witches in Realism VS cannot be instantly killed with a head shot.
** When Survival mode was introduced in Left 4 Dead, people abused exploits and glitches in the maps by placing themselves in areas that the zombies could not "see" them at (players that are "off" the map are considered non existent by zombies), thus they could earn gold meals too easily. While some of the maps were patched to plug up the exploits, many others did not get detected. The sequel upgraded the AI Director to detect cheating in Survival mode where it will spawn Spitter acid onto a player that is not in the map or are in some spot that the zombies can't reach them and if the player avoids this check, the AI Director will just outright damage players until they get back to playing fair.
* In ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'', the Gloves of Running Urgently gave the Heavy a speed boost when wielded, bringing his speed up from "extremely slow" to "about average". Another item, the Buffalo Steak Sandvich, was released later that temporarily increased the Heavy's speed to above average speed. These effects, when used together, allowed the Heavy to become one of the fastest classes in the game. Now, eating a Buffalo Steak cancels out the effect of the GRU.
** The Spy can turn invisible during which he is not able to use any of his attacks but originally he could still taunt while invisible. When the Sniper/Spy update gave him a taunt that could instant kill enemies, taunting while invisible was quickly edited out.
* ''[[Mario Kart]]'' had the problem of snaking. It was a fan made technique where the player performs a power slide on a straight road and builds up a mini-turbo quickly, releases it, and then does it again in the opposite direction, doing this back and forth until they hit a curve. Mario Kart Double Dash had this and it was even more apparent in Mario Kart DS where the best time trial records came from snaking and [[Player Preferred Pattern|everyone online always snaked with the same specific characters/karts]]. To address the issue, Nintendo made it where in Mario Kart Wii, mini-turbos could only be built up by maintaining the power slide in one direction until it gained enough power instead of wiggling the control stick back and forth quickly.
** Mario Kart Wii created a new problem with the bikes. Players quickly found out that popping a wheelie gives a small boost in speed and if it was done enough anywhere, they could boost so much that they can stay ahead of players that didn't do the same or were using a kart (karts can't wheelie). In theory, bikes are supposed to lose a ton of speed if they are bumped into while popping a wheelie but this rarely happened in the hands of skilled players. Mario Kart 7 got rid of bikes entirely due to this.
** The Fake Item Box, which is supposed to fool players by thinking it's a real item box, had been in the Mario Kart series for decades, but it was removed in Mario Kart 7. This was mainly due to the item working a bit too well where players can place the fake box inside real item boxes all the time and basically be guaranteed a player would always fall for it and since it was a big box, it could also be used on narrow paths or before jumps so players could never avoid it at all compared to a smaller item like a banana peel. The fake box became completely useless in Mario Kart DS due to players being able to spot it on the map on the bottom screen and with Mario Kart 7 using the map screen again, the fake box would be useless. With all the reasons listed above, it's understandable why Mario Kart 7 got rid of the item.
* ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]'' has a thermobaric tank that can destroy any building in one shot. There is a [[Mass Monster Slaughter Sidequest|Kill Event]] that involves using one. After doing the event, the player is left with the tank and 50 rounds for the big gun. Patch: If you use the tank to destroy a military base or infected hive, the tank will ''inexplicably vanish'', preventing you from cleaning up the entire map with it.
* Due to the infamous amount of infinite combos and glitches that dominnated competitive play for ''[[Marvel vs. Capcom 2]]'', Capcom's made a point of patching infinite combos out of ''[[Marvel vs. Capcom 3]]''.
 
 
== Web Comics ==
* In ''[[Chasing the Sunset]]'', the rules are [http://www.fantasycomic.com/index.php?p=c553 automatically] patched.
* [http://xkcd.com/246/ This] xkcd panel.
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=== LiteratureReal Life/Law ===
* In ''[[Ender's Game]]'', Ender's final battle as commander pits his Dragon Army against two armies combined. Ender discards all combat strategy and has his boys move as quickly as possible to perform the victory ritual. Since nobody had considered doing this without defeating the opposing army first, the other team is confused enough for him to win. He is promptly told that starting in the next battle fought at Battle School, it would not be possible for an army to perform the victory ritual without first defeating or disabling everyone in the opposing army.
 
== Real Life/Law ==
* In general when someone gets away with a crime via [[Loophole Abuse]] on a level under the federal one, it's quickly closed while bureaucracy stops the federal one from doing anything for all but the most major evasions.
* The United States Constitution was vague on how succession of a dead president worked. It took almost 200 years to add the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and actually codify what should happen.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/1440754"