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

[Oofta]

And games that try to market to everyone run the very real risk of becoming bland and rote. But I'm sure that would never happen to the "world's greatest role-playing game".

Rules will never make a game interesting for me. The stories that we create at the table are what makes it interesting.

 

[I'm A Banana]

If I can't damage someone with a combat spell why am I casting it?

In the case of Command, its utility in combat in 5e is pretty clearly action denial. You make your enemy do something on its turn other than hurt you or your friends. Cast it on the big damage-dealer or someone who applies an annoying condition and spend the round free to do pay attention to other threats.

I am very OK with players getting creative in what they make the enemy do instead of fight you.

 

[SableWyvern]

You got it backwards.

WOTC designed 5e to attract 1e, 2e, and 3e fans. They failed. So 5e DMs had to teach themselves.

This why 5e has a rep of being terrible to DM.

Oh, OK. That makes much more sense to me now. Given @jayoungr understood you, I will assume the failure of communication was at my end.

 

[Oofta]

Not enough of them.


New to D&D.

The majority of 5e players and DMs started with 5e
The majority of 5e's veteran DMs are DMs who learned on their own or via YT by "trial by fire".

That's why they want to lock down rules. They had to learn to DM as noobs with rules lawyers, munchkins, silly geese, and problematics with little help and a terribly organized DMG.


You got it backwards.

WOTC designed 5e to attract 1e, 2e, and 3e fans. They failed. So 5e DMs had to teach themselves.

This why 5e has a rep of being terrible to DM.

The most popular TTRPG ever is terrible to DM? Someone should tell all those people that started DMing with 5E. Heck, ask them to DM for 1E and try to figure out how to make that mess work.

DMs have always been in somewhat short supply, it's nothing new.

 

[Minigiant]

The most popular TTRPG ever is terrible to DM? Someone should tell all those people that started DMing with 5E. Heck, ask them to DM for 1E and try to figure out how to make that mess work.

DMs have always been in somewhat short supply, it's nothing new.

5e is VERY popular with players,

But it is well known to suck to DM until you learn tricks, drop hard restrictions, or have previous DM knowledge.

 

[Daztur]

I agree, the insistence on allowing players to do stuff like that kinda reeks of the bathos and irony-poisoning that is plaguing mainstream media, where you cannot even try to do a serious scene without someone laughing at you for taking it seriously. Not everyone wants to turn every campaign into MCU, trying to do so like that sends clear message there is tonal dissonance between player and the GM and the thing I would probably do is either shut such gross behavior down, point to our lines and veils or pause the game entierly to talk with the player.

In my experience that kind of bathos is what D&D does best: On Bathos

It is just plain easier to run bathos than pathos in D&D and faaaaaaaaaaaaaaar easier to run D&D with a Swords and Sorcery tone than an Epic Fantasy tone.

I've always found that if you want more pathos and narrative structure in a game, it's far easier to do that with an Indie/Story game in which narrative structure and pathos are build directly into the rules. That sort of thing is hard to cultivate in D&D with how incredibly random it can be and requires the players and party to stay focused and put in the effort. On the other hand if you want the tone of the Dying Earth books by Jack Vance you can get them by just pouring some beer, rolling some dice, and letting loose even if none of the players have ever heard of Cugel the Clever.

Now if you're sick and tired of that sort of mood then how I like to play is not the best fit for you, but it's what goes with the grain of how the basic assumptions of D&D were originally set up. Mike Mornard (the youngest of Gygax's original players) described Gary Gygax's games as Daffy Duck crossed with Conan. And that still works for me 50 years later.

Although with all of this humor it's important to draw a distinction between stuff happening in the game being funny in and off itself vs. things in the game being funny because of our metagame perspective on it. I like the first and don't like the second, I hate things like pop culture references in D&D games and that kind of metagame humor stuff.

The thing is, the Black Company has a consistent tone, even its actually humorous moments, like that time Croaker included One-Eyes horribly written report in the annals. The scene with the ballista is played for drama and it outright increases the dramatic tension, once this fails to kill the bad guy and they have to then jump him, knockin him down (and he doesn't go without a fight), crucify him and feed him something that will burst form his chest like a Xenomorph later.

There is a difference between creativity and players trying to turn the game into a joke by force. There's usually plenty of laughs to go around, but we like to take the adventure somewhat seriously. The "I make villain poop his pants" isn't creative or fun, it's juvenile and effectively laughs at everyone at the table for trying to take the collaborative story we're telling seriously. Not everything needs to have a "Hulk vs Loki" scene and at this point people are fed up seeing it everywhere anyway.,

Haven't really had a problem with a consistent tone in my own games as the games stay pretty much the same vaguely-Jack Vance/Glen Cook tone throughout when I DM. I HAVE seen people use Command: Defecate but only in a game that was already thoroughly lighthearted and jokey due to being DMed by someone else (so Monty Python, not Black Company) so it fit the tone just fine. I would never use Defecate as a Command word in a more serious campaign (use stuff like "Climb" or "Repent" or what have you, while my son likes words like "Spin" to try to make the enemy dizzy or things along those lines).

It's not the same for every game.

Every TTRPG is not trying to be mainstream.

That is the rub. Many of the better games are not willing to make mechanical, narrative, and gaming sacrifices to be mainstream.

For better or worse, WOTC is the only company designing a game that Alice, Bob, Charlie, Diana, and Eddie all are willing to play. And spells like Command are neutered to do this.

In my experience spells like Command that I can explain in simple words "you cast the spell and way one verb and if it works they have to do it" goes over faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar better with random newbies than a spell whose description is a bunch of numbers. However, knowing how to DM a spell like Command properly as a newbie DM can take a bit of work.

In my experience the kind of game that works best if:

1. You have a DM who's been doing it for literal decades running a game for a bunch of newbies.

2. You have a first time DM running a game for people who have played a campaign or two.

Are VERY VERY different. The games I like are more #1 since, well I'm a DM who's been doing it for literal decades who is often running a game for a bunch of newbies.

However, I'm not sure if you can categorize the main thrust of 5.5e changes as "make things easier for the newbies." The biggest changes to 5.5e seem to be giving more power boosts and abilities to various classes. That doesn't seem like the sort of things newbies would even notice (and some of the new abilities seem to make playing a simple newbie-friendly character more complicated), it seems to be more the kind of thing to make existing players excited and want to shell out the money for a new PHB. 5.5e marketing seems to be very much focused on existing players, rather than existing DMs or people who currently aren't playing D&D.

See, but that's the problem. It's not the spells that are giving them the flexibility. It's playing silly buggers word games with whatever the Dm will let you get away with. Has nothing whatsoever to do with actual tactics which are all about influencing the game world directly.

I talked about this a bit upthread (me trying to reply to older posts in this thread is meaning a pretty big time delay which is screwing up the flow of this conversation but bear with me) but I think there's a division between rules lawyering and in-character cleverness.

I like really specific flavor for spells that nails down specifically what the spell is doing (which can be used by the player in different ways) that gives the DM good guidelines between what a spell can and can't do. I think that Command specifically does this well, which is why I like it so much. Other spells need their flavor spelled out a bit more thoroughly. Then the DM can decide what kind of MacGyvering makes sense and which doesn't. I think there's a distinction between what kind of decisions a character could make about how to use a spell in a clever way (thinking about a clever verb to Command with) and rule lawyering (carefully parsing the exact text of the PHB to do something stupid with a spell) as the first makes sense in character and the second doesn't and it's important to draw a line between them.

For me, if this is all done right it results in MORE immersion as the details of the flavor of the spells MATTER and aren't just there for color (thinks like shoving wax in your ears to avoid Command being a perfect example of this). The metagamey crap should be shut down by the DM. If done right this is EVERYTHING to do with influencing the game world directly.

It's so funny that we have no problems with wizards smashing down the fourth wall in order to be "sneaky", but even the merest whiff of allowing non-casters to do the same is a complete non-starter.

My preferred solution is to keep the ability of wizards to do these kind of shenanigans but nerf them HARD otherwise to bring them into line while giving higher level martials big ways to buff their saving throws and removing/nerfing hard really problematic spells like force cage. I'm no fan of caster supremacy Would like to see martials being clearly superior to casters in things like DPS. I rather like the Mongoose d20 Conan (2e specifically) approach to this in which in raw power the Barbarian class is definitely superior to the magic-user Scholar class but the scholar has some tricks up their sleeve, just ones that are a lot more limited than in normal D&D (with things like lots of casting times measured in minutes rather than rounds).

Using you godly powers, that thing that is most holy to you, to make someone poop their pants? Yeah, not really in character is it?

Depends on the character. Have had some mature and wise characters, have had some immature characters. I wouldn't use Command: defecate in a more serious game. I'm not a dick and don't hide behind "it's what my character would do." I make characters that fit the tone of the campaign. But have played in some lighthearted Monty Python-ish campaigns in which Command: defecate would be perfectly fine.

 

[TiQuinn]

But everyone else is repeating the line that these players aren’t bad at all. They’re just being creative.

No one has said that.

 

[Daztur]

Thank you @Daztur you've articulated perfectly how I approach rules and how I want them to work. I want the fiction to come first, and rules to me adjusted if needed in case they conflict with the fiction. I really dislike rules first, fiction as an afterthought approach that was prevalent in 4e.

And the discussion about juvenile humour is a distraction and not relevant. You can insert juvenile humour if you want with either approach. As fluff is flexible in mechanics first approach, you can insert silly fluff if you want. This is not what this is about.

Good point. You can certainly be juvenile in any version of D&D if you want to. In games where "flavor is free" you can reflavor stuff into stupid juvenile antics and that would be your fault, not the fault of the rules.

When the issue was people were abusing the spell to force juvenile behavior into the game where it doesn't belong, I doi not beleive it is irrelevant. It was very clearly an issue people struggled to solve even with session zero o talking to problem players and likely contributed to newshape of Command spell.

Ugh, I really hate rule solutions to player problems. If your players are being immature dicks then changing the text of Command isn't going to fix that. The only way to fix that is to not play with immature dicks.

Although what counts as being an immature dick can really vary from one campaign to another, the Icelandic Sagas are full of murderhobos and dirty jokes and they're 800 or so years old.

But if something is abused in a a common pattern, it suggest the rules of it enable it.

Never had immature naughty word with Command be a problem personally and I've been playing since 1990. Had some issues with people trying to get NPCs to be suicidal with Command but just pointing out the full text of the spell cleared that up shrugs

lol now THAT sounds straight out of the 1e Gygax DMG.

The 1e DMG is an absolute treasure trove...but there's a reason why modern OSR games tend to draw on B/X more than on 1e...That said I would like to see a more crunchy OSR game that draws on all of the insane glory of things like weapon speed factors, round segments, and all the rest and adapts them and changes them to make them more playable in a modern game. A lot of modern OSR games seem to be competing to see who can be the most minimalist and it's gotten a bit much. There's a lot of nuggets of genius in the 1e DMG like the rules about how far the noise if your footsteps carry based on various factors that get lost in the disorganized mess of the 1e DMG.

Why should we allow the game to be designed to carter to that kind of people and to allow any of them to try and drag any other type of game to their level?

All through the 90's I tried to run Very Serious Games about Epic Fantasy with other teens. It never ever worked (although me not being a very good DM back then didn't help). You need to either embrace the mayhem and go for Cugel the Clever and Egil Skallagrimson instead of Aragorn and Gandalf or get a group of players that are FULLY on board with a more serious tone. It doesn't matter what rules you use, if people want to drag a game down to a farce they'll do it and if you try to drop them they'll just get bored and do it harder. Rules can't fix bad players.

So we should teach kids it's ok to try to force your way to displeasure of others?


Your creativity ends on disrespecting other players boundaries. Which I argue the abuse-prone spell like Command enables by giving you an excuse to bypass established boundaries in name of "clever and creative roleplay". It's grotesque.

Again, very much a player problem over a rules problem. If players want to cast Command: defecate in a serious high fantasy game then they will never ever EVER be good players to have in a serious high fantasy game, no matter what rules you use. Very much a thing to be sorted out during Session Zero and running a game that fits the players and/or booting players who can't play the game you want to run.

 

[SableWyvern]

Ugh, I really hate rule solutions to player problems. If your players are being immature dicks then changing the text of Command isn't going to fix that. The only way to fix that is to not play with immature dicks.

It's bizarre to me that anyone would conclude that the way to keep toilet humour out of their game is tighten the definition of a spell that in no way implies it should be used in that way in the first place.

How about the other infinite number of ways this kind of thing could be done in any RPG, with or without spells? If someone wants to make fart and poop jokes in character, they don't need a spell to do it.

When someone says, "Technically, the rules allow it," in response to unwanted behaviour, they're not acting that way because the rules allow it, they're acting that way because that's the way they want to act, and then using the rules as a defence after the fact. If you close off that loophole, they will find another one.

 

[Hussar]

In any case, you don't need to clearly define every spell, you just need a group who are capable of having a reasonable discussion, who aren't playing in an antagonistic fashion and a process for making rulings.

See, but, that's just not true. As evidenced in this thread. The interpretation of "directly harmful" leads to a disagreement. Neither side is being antagonistic or unreasonable. It's simply two interpretations of a vague wording where either interpretation is quite valid.

Painting this as a "problem player" or "problem DM" issue overlooks the fact that these problems come up even when everyone at the table is perfectly resonable, and, because there are so many spells with vague wordings, this issue comes up all the time.