D&D (2024) Command is the Perfect Encapsulation of Everything I Don't Like About 5.5e

[the Jester]

Would you do the same for weapon attacks?

Trip, disarm, slide the enemy around, damage the environment (cut a rope to make the chandelier fall on your foe), pin the foe to one location- yeah, I think this is basically the same principle at work.

 

[mellored]

I think the same problem that happened in 40 and 5e is happening.

They ran out of time and didn't get to everything by the time corporate said the books need to get to the printers.

Anybody who was involved with the open D&D next and a one D&D play test No that they wasted a lot of time on stuff that didn't get in.

I definitely think they would of liked to have run at least 1 more ranger playtest.

But yea, there was a deadline, and a limited number of paid hours to work on it. At some point you need to put the pencils down and turn in your work.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The only term changes from 2014 that I know of are.

Race -> Species
Ki points-> Focus Points
Feeblemind -> Befuddled
"Attacks, Saves, and ability checks" -> d20 Test.

There are quite a few more round subclass names; they've largely given up each class having a unique subclass name and tweaked the names for a few of them. One that comes to mind is that dragon blood is now I think Draconic - certainly something that doesn't really strongly imply an ancestor did naughty things with a giant lizard

 

[mellored]

Trip, disarm, slide the enemy around, damage the environment (cut a rope to make the chandelier fall on your foe), pin the foe to one location- yeah, I think this is basically the same principle at work.

Do they get to summon a chandelier?

 

[the Jester]

Do they get to summon a chandelier?

No, but command can't do that either. I'm not sure what your point is. I thought you were asking whether a dm would allow creative use of their weapon attacks. "Can you summon a chandelier" in this context is like asking if you can use command to set someone on fire.

 

[Minigiant]

I definitely think they would of liked to have run at least 1 more ranger playtest.

But yea, there was a deadline, and a limited number of paid hours to work on it. At some point you need to put the pencils down and turn in your work.

I imagine a designer in a corner of his office rocking back and forth saying "Half of the people want one thing but the other half of the people want a totally different thing that is mutually exclusive with the first thing"

Then Jeremy Crawford screams "$#@& it! We are reprinting the Tasha ranger, Wildshape is THP."

Then some other designer comes to them with a draft for balanced spells. And he slaps it to the ground yelling "There's no time! We gotta get it to the printer."

Then he slaps a folder of dragon art out of Perkins' hand. And Perkins shrugs and walks to the Dragon Art closet.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Must have missed the tripping an ooze example but doesn’t that at least have a clear rule - oozes can’t be knocked prone (in their description?)

In reality that was the core change - putting it into the description of the monster.

In 3.5 immunities were extremely common and were frequently by monster category. So constructs were blanket immune to critical hits and precision damage because whoever wrote them was thinking of golems, meaning that a clockwork monsters (clearly constructs) were immune to getting parts of their clockwork broken.

4e removed these blanket immunities and only handed them out to individual monsters very stingily; fire elementals were immune to fire but most other monsters had either resistance or triggered effects. And whoever designed the monsters took an "if you're not sure then allow it" approach. So I think there's only one group of monsters immune to being knocked prone in the whole MM1 and it's not oozes (it's Gorgons (bull type not Medusa) if anyone was wondering)

 

[Oofta]

Do they get to summon a chandelier?

The real question is could they summon The Dread Gazebo?

 

[Zaroden]

Completely up to the DM to adjudicate. I kind of loved that it allowed so much creativity while at the same time also kind of hated how it required the DM to completely make up the rules as they go

It's a good point; that should be up to the people to decide.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I've had DMs that abused command. For example a DM that hated players wearing heavy armor was running a game on a ship (this was an AL equivalent game, not a sailing campaign). He had an NPC command my PC to jump and then told me that it was obvious that I should jump off the side of the ship. Instead of ... I don't know ... jump straight up, jump onto some other part of the ship, jump into his arms ... pretty much anything else. Nope, I had to jump off the side of the ship where of course I sunk like a rock.

So I don't have a problem with clear limitations and results for a first level spell. A lot of people avoid it because it's so vague.

That's a related issue. I don't like the impression I get with some games (including 5.5) that some rules changes have been made to protect players against theoretical "bad DMs". Lay out expectations for both players and DMs in the text as advice and suggestions for good play, not as mechanical handcuffs because we assume DMs can't be trusted not to screw over players.