Loophole Abuse/Tabletop Games: Difference between revisions

** Then of course there was the infamous pre-alpha version of Time Walk, with the text, "Opponent loses next turn". When it was realised that anyone playing it would cause his opponent to lose the game at the start of his next turn, it was changed to "Take an extra turn after this one".

** An urban legend claims that in one tournament, a player cast a spell with the effect "Target players loses the game," then pointed at a completely different table and said "That guy.". Of course, you can't do that, even if nothing in the rules state the target must be in the game you're playing. That's not something necessary to state explicitly. You can't cast a Lightning Bolt at a player in another game either, or cast Control Magic on one of his creatures, or Counterspell one of his spells.

** Players can turn ''Locate City'' into a nuclear bomb.

*** And then ''[[Fan Nickname|It's Wet Outside]]'' lets someone make a heal check to stop drowning.

** Passing an item hand to hand is a free action (doesn't take up time), so if you line up a few thousand people you can get an object to travel miles in six seconds. Then the last person throws it.<ref>The end result is a regular thrown object, since Dungeons and Dragons only bases thrown-object damage on the strength of the thrower and size of the object.</ref>

** Dropping an item is a free action, as well. And if you happen to be fireproof and are standing next to an enemy while carrying, say, 500 Alchemist's Fires... Though the logistics of actually carrying 500 Alchemist's Fires is a bit screwy in and of itself (seriously, you normally only have two hands to drop them from).

** An [[Obvious Rule Patch]] in 3.5 obviates the need to Rule Zero the above examples -- the DM may now, at his discretion, rule that the circumstances of a free action are such that your turn ends immediately after completing it.

*** And in almost all cases results in even more loopholes when amateurs with poor understanding of the rules to begin with try to tamper with them.

** Perhaps the most true-to-form example of this trope (at least by the alternate name, Ain't No Rule) is that while the state of Dying is explicitly defined in the rules as far as what actions are acceptable, the state of Dead has no restrictions. There literally Ain't No Rule preventing a freshly-killed player from standing up and continuing the fight.

*** Incorrect. The moment of death is mentioned elsewhere in the rules as when the player's soul leaves their body and begins its journey to the Outer Planes, so you ''are'' prevented from getting back up and adventuring with the party -- as you are no longer with the party, in the dungeon, or even on the Prime Material plane. You could theoretically continue to adventure as a petitioner on the relevant Outer Plane, but that's been true anyway ever since Planescape was published.

*** Additionally, by the rules as written becoming a petitioner is an automatic transition to NPC status - it takes Rule Zero to allow petitioner PCs.

*** Besides the obvious (just saying "No,"), a GM could ask "So how many ranks do you have in 'Knowledge: Advanced Physics Not Known In This Universe' and 'Craft: Materials I've Never Heard Of?' anyway? Oh, that's right, zero. The spell fails as your caster can't decide to create something he doesn't know exists. Since the XP cost is paid even if the spell fails, I now need to establish a GP value for priceless antimatter. Huh, seems you didn't have enough XP to cast the spell anyway, so it would fail on that grounds too. You're lucky I'm a stickler for the rules, as they state you can't lose a level for this." Loophole Abuse is equally funny when pushed back in the face of a smarmy [[Rules Lawyer]].

** The various settings tend to have in-universe cases ''somewhere'' in all the history and organizations. For instance, [[Eberron|House Jorasco]] healers are not supposed to treat without payment in money... but there is nothing hindering them from ''lending'' the necessary money and then setting a task as repayment in kind for the loan.

*** In tournament play, it is not. In tabletop play, it is borderline -- Munchkin policy is that unless a rules violation is noted by someone else at the table at the time it is being committed, it does not exist.

** Early versions of the Loaded Dice card did not specify that the value you choose to replace that of a die roll had to be between one and six. And there are plenty of cards to abuse this with, like one monster that gets a bonus to its level equal to the roll of one die.

* The entire concept of Pledges from ''[[Changeling: The Lost]]'' practically begs the player to use this trope; as is frequently the case with [[The Fair Folk]], neither the True Fae nor Changeling Pledges recognize any such thing as "the spirit of the agreement." You just have to make very, very sure that you actually know what you're doing.

** The FAQ articles have had to correct some in the past. The Swooping Hawks' Intercept rule reads "the unit never requires worse than a 4+ to hit an enemy vehicle", which means that the WS 4 Swooping Hawks could hit a WS 5 Venerable Dreadnaught on a 4+ instead of a 5+ as the normal compare-WS table would indicate, for instance. An Ork list that was designed entirely around exploiting the wound allocation rules in fifth edition by giving every model in every unit different gear was briefly popular on the tournament scene.

* This trope is [[Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do In An RPG|Mr. Welch's]] bread and butter, even if the GM doesn't tend to be cooperative. The phrase "even if the rules allow it" and variants thereof appear no less than 47 times throughout the ever-growing list.

** Before it was banned, the card Last Turn was the subject of quite a few loopholes, mainly due to the fact that it didn't negate monster effects while it was in use. To wit, when it's activated, both players choose a monster to be on the field (the activator from their field, the opponent from their deck) and battle; whoever has a monster remaining on the field after the battle wins, otherwise it's a tie. Thing is, the monster left on the field doesn't have to be the one the player chose for the battle, and the card doesn't negate monster effects, so if you have a monster on the field that can prevent Special Summons (thus, preventing the opponent from getting out their chosen monster), or one that can summon out a monster when destroyed (thus leaving you with a monster after the battle), you can easily screw over the opponent with it.

* in the Axis & Allies miniatures game, air units were a late addition, meaning a lot of previous cards weren't prepared for their entry. Thus, units that should not be able to attack planes, like mortars and certain assault guns, can. Worst of all, [[Land Mine Goes Click|land mines]] can affect planes. Those are some ''epically'' [[wikipedia:Bouncing Betty|bouncing betties]].

* In [[Mutant UA]] a robot-class player or NPC could have drones as an "option". Maximum would be 4 without any penalties for too many options, but drones could have their own options, deliberately so for the sake of being useful, but nothing states they couldn't have drones as well. Cue infinite horde of massively powerful drones! (although rule 0 almost always stops this as it's crazy-powerful.

* In the CCG "EVE: The Second Genesis" one of the main ways to gain money (used to play further cards) are location cards. One such location has the effect "When this card comes into play, sacrifice a location". The officially sanctioned loophole around this is to play the card into an uncontrolled region. Because the region is uncontrolled, the location is uncontrolled too and the effect does not activate...

 

 

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