Design Flaws

If you're a gamer then you're forced to use rules to govern your game.  At some point, you've probably come across a rule that was just a mistake on the part of the game designer.  I'm not talking about a typo or a See Page XX.  I'm talking that the game designer clearly made a mistake with something that takes away from your enjoyment of a product.

For my own part, I've found this only when a game based their product off of a license, such as Battlestar Galactica and Lord of the Rings. 

Say, speaking of which, those are my two recent beefs.  Funny how life works, huh?

The Cortex system got ahold of BSG the RPG and in it they have a blatant disregard for everybody's favorite Cylon: Model 6. 
If you've watched the show (trivial spoiler alert) # 6 can hold her own in a fight.  In fact, she actually tends to win every hand to hand fight we see her in.  In particular she beats the hell outta Starbuck who is awesomesauce at everything she does (heck she somehow manages to fight Apollo to a standstill...le sigh...ignoring that his bicep is as big as the actress' head...whatever that's another rant). 

Yet in Cortex, #6 is giving average human Strength, Agility and the near lowest Unarmed Fighting skill you can get (d2 being the lowest, she has d4).  WTF?  She barely lost a fight but she's absolute horribly by the game rules. 

Weak!

LotR put out a much beloved but now failed miniatures games.  Sabertooth games made it (god rest their gaming souls) and did a near perfect job on it.  It was one of my favorite minis games.  It did have a oddity (not a flaw) in that your forces would crash together...and after a blender of blood and hacking, you would wipe the board with tons of figures, leaving a handful of heroes. 

The game suffered a few other flaws but the one that truly killed me, like hurt my soul, was the Balrog.  Here was an awesome miniature (heh...it's like freaking huge!). 

Now the game is governed by d6's.  You get X number of attack dice and if you roll equal to or higher than the Toughness of the opponent, you score a wound!  So Toughness scores range from 1 (hurt by everything) to a 6 (hurt by very little)  Nice and simple. 

The only complexity is that if you roll a 1, you can spend an Action Point to convert that into a 6 (which again, will hurt everything in the game). 

So Tough figures like Aragon might have a 4 or 5.  The original version of Gimli was giving a 6. 

The Balrog?  The Balrog was given a 5.  Okay, for you math 'wiz's that means you have a 33% chance on any die of wounding the Balrog.  I mean a dude with an arrow who rolls 2 dice...on each die you have a 33% chance of wounding this ultimate beast.

...No wait...didn't I just say if you roll a 1 you can convert it into a 6.  Yes.  Yes I did.  And...it's the motherfracking Balrog.  Why would you NOT convert your 1's into 6's?!? 

So on a 1 (converted to a 6) and a natural 5 or 6 you wound the Balrog.  That's 50% of the dice thrown will wound the Balrog.  But not Gimli.  Remember he's tougher with a 6 (allowing only 16% of the hits to wound him or 33% if they are converted from a 1).

Is this the sissy version of the Balrog?  The Balrog in the back who didn't want to fight, who just wants to pick flowers and discuss women's fashion during bridge with its friends?   I'm pretty sure he's got a flaming sword and a whip and breaths fire...but the Balrog who does that is certainly not this uber expensive miniature who can get its ass handed to it but a bunch of Gondorians with steel blades and elves with wooden arrows. 

Anyway, I'll just end my rant with: Greatest.  Tragedy.  Evar.  (In.  A.  Miniatures.  Game.)