I would agree that overall the rules are sufficiently clear. That doesn't stop the exceptions from becoming recurring topics of debate or confusion.My point is, children understand the rules. The bar of sufficient clarity has been met. The language is precise enough for the purpose intended.
For example, as explictly noted by JC, the meaning of "melee weapon attack" hinges on the lack of a hyphen between "melee" and "weapon". He's entirely correct on that point, but for a reader to be able to understand the intended meaning of "melee weapon attack" three conditions must be met:
- The reader must be familiar with the rules for hyphenating compound adjectives.
- The reader must be willing to assume that the designers correctly used the rules for hyphenating compound adjectives.
- The reader must be willing to assume that the designers were willing to let the meaning of a rule hinge on the presence of absence of a single hyphen.
If the rules has been written more carefully, the writers might have realized that having a rule hinge on a presence or absence of a single hyphen is not a recipe for clarity (especially in casual writing, but also in formal writing). Instead, we have a rulebook that claims to be written casually, where the writers deliberately chose to nevertheless condition full understanding on the minutae of the compound adjective rules. (And we know it's deliberate, thanks to JC's explanation in the SAC.)
So sure, it's generally pretty good, but the exceptions caused by the inconsistent use of casual and technical language can be both recurrent and frustrating.