D&D 5E Empowered Evocation plus Magic Missile?

[dmnqwk]

One drawback with clear and precise rules, is they ruin a lot of the story by sacrificing the fun descriptive text for clear rulings on spell interactions, and remove any rule which cannot be written in such a way as to allow for clear and concise rules.

I'll agree Magic Missile can be interpreted in a number of ways, however the errata still fails to be clear and because of that I would use the obvious answer of "it's up to the DM." We regularly get into the position where DMs don't like this, but DND 5th edition is built around letting DMs make rulings, while previous editions are for DMs who need precise, clear, easy to understand rules.

I, personally, would allow each dart to apply the bonus purely because as a 1st level slot, 3d4+18 damage to one creature is neither overpowered, nor worth quibbling over when the level they obtain this is only 1 below adding a third dice to cantrips for a 3d10 output (sure the lack of attack or save can be important, but even then... still not worth quibbling over when Conjure Animals lets you form 8 Giant Owls who deal 2d6+1 damage each in a flyby attack, allow each of them to flank with a single person in some kind of devilish aerobatics display). Power levels of spells is very important to consider when you make rulings and I love the fact 5th edition allows for interpretations now, that I would've hated 15 years ago during my era of "by the book" 3rd edition.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

That's because it is and you're correct that it was an intentional design choice. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot before the gate even opens. They have now spent unknown amounts of hours dealing with tweeted questions, have nominated a lead dev to deal with those questions, have a website to serve as a repository to hold the Q&A and so on. Not what I would have done.

4e and 3e have tried to be precise and there were rule interactions that had the power to really ruin the fun.
No matter how good you believe you are, you will always miss something. And if rules are written in stone, with no wiggle room for the dm it may lead to disaster. Look at the errata of 4e. Look at the 3e polymorph spell, whose most formidable power was to polymorph itself whenever it was written down. There will always be a hole somewhere and the only solution is DM empowerment.

 

[kalil]

One drawback with clear and precise rules, is they ruin a lot of the story by sacrificing the fun descriptive text for clear rulings on spell interactions, and remove any rule which cannot be written in such a way as to allow for clear and concise rules.

Not for me. I never felt tinkering with rules or making rulings to be a particularly fun part of the roleplaying experience, so for me the less rulings the rules need and the more they can "just work" the better they are. But: I fully realize that I am in a tiny minority here.

 

[Noctem]

Not for me. I never felt tinkering with rules or making rulings to be a particularly fun part of the roleplaying experience, so for me the less rulings the rules need and the more they can "just work" the better they are. But: I fully realize that I am in a tiny minority here.

Pretty much this and besides if I really wanted to make rulings and houserules, having a clear and consistent rules base never prevented anyone from doing so. The excuse that clear rules limits roleplaying is akin to the stormwind fallacy imo. I can't RP because the rules are clear and well explained?? Never understood this argument.

Errata exists for a reason guys. If something is not working as intended in development, WOTC has the power to produce errata to fix those problems. And they have done so multiple times so far with 5e, the problem is that 5e not only suffers from both errors and rule interaction problems (like every edition ever published to be fair) but ALSO from a deliberate overall design choice which makes understanding how the rules work even more complicated. And for what? What possible benefit could there be from confusing and making the rules difficult to understand? I've heard people say that it's to encourage rulings, but rulings existed before 5e and will afterwards. DM's making rulings or creating houserules is an integral part of DND outside of specific official events: Adventure League. Which brings me to my next point.

If you create an edition with ambiguity as a core design choice to allow for rulings/houserules and then create AL where DM's are told not to create houserules and to limit their rulings to officially encouraged ones, then what the hell were you thinking? It's in the AL rules for DM's. You can't expect one DM's ruling to move with you to another table and even then if a DM is found to create houserules it's grounds for warnings and then losing the right to DM. It's really silly IME.

Anyway I think that we shouldn't derail the thread so I'll drop this here.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

what is unclear for you may be clear for others. There were rules questions answered where I wondered if the questioner actually read the relevant part. Or wanted to read it in a sensible way. Some things could have been written more clearly. Look at the surprise rules. They are clear. Some people just didn't want it to work as it does...

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

what is unclear for you may be clear for others. There were rules questions answered where I wondered if the questioner actually read the relevant part. Or wanted to read it.

And not only that, but in the editions where the rules were intended to be written clearly and precisely, rather than casually, there were still constant rules questions that came up.

I haven't actually counted, but I haven't noticed any change in the frequency of posts regarding questions like "what does this rule mean?" or "how does this work?" online in the last 15 years - but I have noticed a great big drop in how many questions come up at my actual table, since the way 5th edition is written is easier for my players to understand (so we have a table of 6 that all understand the general rules of the game, rather than a table of 6 but only 2 of which feel they have any grasp of the rules at all with one spending at least 20 minutes of every session asking the other for clarifications).

 

[TwoSix]

Exactly. Spells that use a single damage roll but can affect multiple targets (Fireball, Magic Missile, etc..) are able to really benefit from this feature.

I'm not arguing for or against the errata, as it doesn't impact any of my current games. But, intuitively, Magic Missile doesn't feel like an AoE spell because it can be used to attack the same target more than once. AoE spells target areas, not individuals. Area spells roll damage once for everyone in the area, individually targeted spells roll damage for each target. I think that's why so many people have a problem with this ruling, it doesn't track with the logic the mechanics normally impose.

 

[Noctem]

Well perhaps we need to let go of the kind of default assumption in an exception based system if it would cause us to arch our backs every time an exception showed up

 

[Kithas]

I'm sure there would still be plenty of rules questions and people not understanding, general user error is always going to be present and I am as guilty of it as anyone else. My problem is when I explain how a rule works and someone asks why it works the way I say it does I have no real room to stand on.

Take Magic the gathering for example, yes the rules get archaic and confusing sometimes but you can always explain neatly and clearly what something does based on the way it is said in the rules text. "Destroy target Permanent." always means the same thing. With the current phb I have about a 90% shot on things that even I think are clear as day :/

As to precise rules ruining roleplay/story. That is completely unrelated, you can have rules text and then flavor text, or vice-versa. Many of the feats/spells already follow this pattern but the rest of the book does not. Mixing rules text and flavor text rarely works well.

Honestly in a game so rich in story telling do we really need the flavor baked in? Would a rules-only phb have hurt the game at all? I think not. Take the game Dominion for example, there are plenty of flavorful cards that have 0 flavor text, all you get is the name, a picture and the rules text, but they feel like what they are supposed to be.
That should be the goal, clear mechanics that translate into flavor. Not watered down mechanics that we slap flavor on to make it feel better.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Honestly in a game so rich in story telling do we really need the flavor baked in? Would a rules-only phb have hurt the game at all? I think not. Take the game Dominion for example, there are plenty of flavorful cards that have 0 flavor text, all you get is the name, a picture and the rules text, but they feel like what they are supposed to be.
That should be the goal, clear mechanics that translate into flavor. Not watered down mechanics that we slap flavor on to make it feel better.

I say: yes, in some places we need it. 4e, as much good ideas there were, and many retained in 5e, did not work out in the long run... If the rules text is written in code words, and every power, no matter how similar they may be, has its own text, all you remember and speak about in a game session is fiddly bits. Now I know how a fireball works, and if a creature casts it, I know exactly what to expect. In 4e even swallow whole was different for each creature. Another thing is reflavouring. In 4e people used it to let a goblin look like a kobold and players could never guess from the look, how dangerous something is. In 5e we also have reskinning, but if I use the scout, I add flavour by adding racial traits (which could be done in 4e too, btw). If a creature is a solo (legendary) creature, I can guess by the look of it. I really believe, the designers of 4e had similar goals in their mind as 5e people, but when more and more people designed for 4e, we got solo goblins and such creatures, and in the end, everything in the world was just a texture over a mechanical balanced world. Choices and advancement of players were nihilated by the world growing with them.
I do still believe 4e was a good edition for a while and I do believe, if "essentials" came first we would still have it around. But this was too little, too late, and noone left (except me) who could be pleased with that.