D&D (2024) Making spell descriptions less dense?

[Composer99]

Personally, I'm all for trimming down spell descriptions as long as you can convey the same amount of information, or if any information is lost, it's stuff you don't mind losing.

I'm not quite convinced the proposed definition of knock in the OP is quite up to snuff, especially since it does actually reduce the spell's effectiveness (you can no longer end any securement or fastening other than locks with the spell). Personally, I'd also rather that categories of sound be defined separately in the rules so that you can say in spell descriptions that the spell "creates a loud sound" and everyone knows or can easily know what that means without the DM having to make it up on the spot - which also reduces the spell wordcount.

Something a bit more like...

Knock (2nd-level transmutation)
Cast 1 action; Components V,S; Instantaneous
Choose an object you can see within 60 feet of you. This spell either suppresses the effect of an arcane lock affecting the target for 10 minutes, or instantly unlocks, unbars, or unfastens any one thing that is locking, barring, or otherwise securing the target against being opened. The target emits a loud (page ##) knocking sound when the spell is cast upon it.

That's ~73 words (knocking a full ~60 off the 5e spell description), and, as I read it, it allows you to everything you could do with 5e knock, and insofar as there is any "ask your DM" element to the spell, it provides (IMO) clear guidance as to what ought to be affected. A lock on a door, for instance, is clearly and unambiguously a "one thing that is locking, barring, or otherwise securing the target against being opened", and so is, say, an iron spike holding that door shut, while, say, the strap keeping your backpack secured to your person - or an iron spike keeping the door open! - is not.

(If you don't want to have defined sound categories, than you add a few words to indicate the audible range of the knock - to my mind, it should be unambiguous to the players that casting this spell risks inviting any nearby creatures to investigate the noise, which the word "loudly" by itself does not do (IMO) - unless, of course, "loudly" is a defined keyword.)

 

[Bill Zebub]

You might be able to get away with a shorter, snappier spell description if you can somehow remove all the rules lawyers or have players willing to accept DM fiat without question.

I suspect the newer, younger audience…who vastly outnumber us…are as much like that as some of us are/were. I dunno; just a hunch.

 

[Incenjucar]

I mean, if it's good enough for Tolkien...



Emphasis mine.

I immediately stopped reading The Hobbit the moment there was a football simile.

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Given we are in the digital age, I think there is room for the multi-description method. Put the fluffy stuff in the books because people are likely to want to read fluff in books and might protest against the hard-coded details, put the hard-coded material in the digital tools to shut down any lack of clarity from the fluff and minimize the "convince your DM to do what you want" posts from UAs.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I’m surprised nobody has yet suggested just deleting all the casters.

Mazes & Manticore: the Manual of Martial Mastery
" Play as a Fighter, Battemaster, Rogue, Berserker, Ranger, Knight, Monk, Bard or Crafter....all without spells! ''

 

[Grantypants]

I think a variation on the 4e style might be the best option. Provide a line or two in italics describing what the spell does, then give all the dice mechanics, legalese, and exceptions in a box below.
The downside is that takes up more space on the page, but I think the extra flavor on each spell is worth it.

 

[ART!]

I immediately stopped reading The Hobbit the moment there was a football simile.

That sort of thing pretty much disappears once the story leaves the Shire. Tolkien was good at switching prose styles to suit the moment and the tone.

I'm in favor of anything that can be done to make any rules text less dense and still get the gist across.

 

[Neonchameleon]

if the choice is between,

4E style:
View attachment 264259

and 3.5E style:
View attachment 264260

I'm always for 3.5E style!

Meanwhile I absolutely despise the 3.5E style and find it a blight on gaming. Partly because it utterly slows down the act at the table and partly because of how it destroys any physical realism involved in the setting and turns it into just fiat physics that is unconnected to the real world.

I think that we can agree that the 4e and the 3.5 fireball descriptions are roughly equivalent to up to the end of the first paragraph of 3.5 and the major difference in content is the two paragraphs beyond that. If we go by up to the end of the first paragraph and you want to change squares to feet I honestly don't care. But fireball is the textbook example of why I want to see this form of spell writing disappear.

The penultimate paragraph I find to be one toxic to communication, roleplaying, and worldbuilding because of the way it implies an alternate physics model that isn't really mentioned elsewhere. The paragraph I'm referring to is, of course:

The fireball sets fire to combustibles and damages objects in the area. It can melt metals with low melting points, such as lead, gold, copper, silver, and bronze. If the damage caused to an interposing barrier shatters or breaks through it, the fireball may continue beyond the barrier if the area permits; otherwise it stops at the barrier just as any other spell effect does.​

For the record Gold and Copper melt at just over a thousand degrees (C) and silver melts at just under it (and bronze has a melting point that that depends on the alloy but is somewhere round there) - so when four out of the five examples are about the same temperature I think we can call this consistent that it melts metals that melt at or below just over a thousand degrees). And it says melt - so the fireball must transfer enough heat to heat the gold, copper, and silver up past the thousand degree mark.

You know what else is just over a thousand degrees? The point where iron gets yellow-hot if we're using a colour spectrum or white hot if we're just talking about red hot vs white hot. Fireball puts enough heat into low melting point metals to melt them - why doesn't it turn swords and armour white hot? And in the process do interesting things to any sort of tempering or hardening.

What else is something that's about a thousand degrees? A low end but functional crematorium. A thousand degrees transferred into a body will do truly horrible things to it, killing it. This makes Indiana-Jones-surviving-a-nuke-in-a-fridge feel a paragon of realism.

So what's going on with fireball? Should it be melting the flesh off peoples' bones and leaving them as charred bodies? Is it some sort of concealed "Heat Metal" spell and if so why doesn't it affect iron? Do metals in D&D just have different properties to the real world and in which case why isn't this mentioned elsewhere? All this because some hack decided to add in a throwaway line they thought would be thematic without bothering to think of the wider implications and the editors didn't stop. 3.5 confuses better fluff and worldbuilding with more fluff and worldbuilding - and by doing so it manages to undermine anyone else wanting to rebuild unless they go through line by line rather than just change fundamental assumptions.

 

[Quickleaf]

Personally, I'm all for trimming down spell descriptions as long as you can convey the same amount of information, or if any information is lost, it's stuff you don't mind losing.

I'm not quite convinced the proposed definition of knock in the OP is quite up to snuff, especially since it does actually reduce the spell's effectiveness (you can no longer end any securement or fastening other than locks with the spell). Personally, I'd also rather that categories of sound be defined separately in the rules so that you can say in spell descriptions that the spell "creates a loud sound" and everyone knows or can easily know what that means without the DM having to make it up on the spot - which also reduces the spell wordcount.

Something a bit more like...

Knock (2nd-level transmutation)
Cast 1 action; Components V,S; Instantaneous
Choose an object you can see within 60 feet of you. This spell either suppresses the effect of an arcane lock affecting the target for 10 minutes, or instantly unlocks, unbars, or unfastens any one thing that is locking, barring, or otherwise securing the target against being opened. The target emits a loud (page ##) knocking sound when the spell is cast upon it.

I really like your writeup. I think it preserves more of the original than my attempt, but still cuts down on the density. I'm curious @Celebrim how Composer's rewrite feels to you? I

 

[Celebrim]

I really like your writeup. I think it preserves more of the original than my attempt, but still cuts down on the density. I'm curious @Celebrim how Composer's rewrite feels to you? I

It's getting there.

I now want to know if I can Knock someone's belt to make their pants fall down (or at the very least force them to forgo the bonus of a belt of health). Similarly for any such targeting of things on a person which might inconvenience them. And is it the intention of the spell that they get no saving throw for such uses?

 

[Storyteller Hero]

In each of my books of magic spells on DMsGuild, I always make sure to have a section with 1-sentence summaries of all the spells in the book, so no matter how wordy I make a spell, it won't be too much of a strain for readers to sift through the spells or get the basic ideas of what they do.

Being free to add as much as I want to a spell, or as much as I feel it needs, gives me creative freedom as a designer. The summaries I make provide relief from the dryness of dense text reading as well as save time for the reader. I feel that this approach might be the more efficient way to meet the needs on "both sides of the page".

Here are links to my works, if anyone is curious:

The Grim: Spells of Necromancy

The Prestige: Spells of Illusion

The Blast: Spells of Evocation

The Artificer (Revised) (contains a section with new spells) -- this one is PWYW

D&D Magic Spell Cheat Sheets -- this one contains 1-sentence summaries for the official published spells