When is a problem a rules problem?
I think this question plagues this community, on this forum and beyond. Many issues are misintrepreted as being rules issues when they are not. An example would be a background that gives a feature, one with no hard mechanical benefit, being ignored or made useless by a DM. This could be attributed to a rules shortfall, a balance issue per say. But in reality this is a DM issue, one where the severity varies by player expectation.
In this case we have a spell with a open ended spell description. If that spell causes a prolonged rules debate, is that an issue with the spell? Or is that a DM issue as the prior example was?
My inclination is that both of these are DM issues. I think hyper-specificity on rules hems in games with good DMing to prop up those with bad. Removing options from players in an ill-fated attempt to "fix" bad DMing. My biggest fear in this hobby is that we "rule" our way out of dungeon masters and into a video game, and sadly this is a small step in that direction.
Part of the fun of DMing is in making judgements when PC's throw chaos wrenches into your plan. It is, I'd argue, a core delight of the game in actual play for players and DMs - riffing off of the other players. Not knowing what they will do, having them do something unexpected, and figuring out what happens as a result of that. It's the heart of the improv that attracts so many players. It's part of the unique fun of a TTRPG.
With that lens, this spell rewrite is clearly poor design. It removes a deeply fun element of gameplay - riffing off of unexpected things that others do. It replaces advice and inspiration with dry calculation.
But, that unpredictability is also something that really puts off a segment of D&D players (especially the segment that's active online). It's also sometimes seen (incorrectly, IMO) as a "problem" for a lot of design-minded folks, because ambiguity is often seen as a problem that needs to be solved. And, as we've seen in this thread, it is something that's not always welcome.
Through the lens of precision and expectation, this is good design. It removes a potentially problematic element of gameplay - an ineffective spell result (the dreaded "null turn") or a demand on the DM or a swingy result (it's either not powerful enough or it's too powerful depending on DM judgement calls).
It's one of those things that keeps switching between revisions because D&D has some trouble deciding what kind of game it wants to be - does it want to be a game played with friends at a table where chaos and unpredictability can add delight? Or does it want to be a game of strategy and optimization where predictable results are prioritized over potential chaos because potential chaos ruins the experience of strategy and tactics?
Where one sits on this continuum is going to be somewhat predictive of what one thinks of this spell's revision.
My bias is typically toward the fun of the unexpected. I'd rather have a sentence or two of DM guidance in the spell than a specific list of potential commands. (Something like "typical commands can result in creatures dropping prone, moving, or not using their actions" could go a long way) I WANT to spend time on judging what happens when a player does something unexpected with the
Command spell. It's time well spent that often delights the table. It's FUN. I'm OK with a list of potential commands and good DM advice as a way to make that easier, but removing the potential of chaos is playing with bumpers - it's less fun for me. When I sit down to play D&D, I want to riff off of other players.
Seems like D&D'24 is making some changes that make it more predictable. This isn't a new thing. It always leaves the game feeling at least a little less fun to me. There's a balance, of course, and we'll see if the changes tip the balance too much, but I'm pretty skeptical. Things like this show me that the designers are thinking D&D is something that, when I play it, it is very much not. And if that's too strong of a tendency...it'll be kind of a bigger hassle to play D&D for the next few years. Which would kind of suck.
