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

[EzekielRaiden]

For example, some people recommend reflavoring Eldritch Blast to make it a gun if a player wants to play a gunslinger class. I don't like that since I'd feel like a dick if someone rolled up a warlock reflavored as a gunslinger and tried shooting their gun in a pouring rainstorm and I told them their powder was too wet and it didn't work, but I WANT things like rain making a gunslinger's powder wet to be a factor in the kind of game I want to play. If the flavor is built into the game I feel fine rewarding or punishing players depending on that flavor and I really like that and enjoy making flavor matter, but if the flavor is stuff that players make up themselves I feel a lot less comfortable as a DM rewarding them or punishing them depending on how their flavor fits specific circumstances so "flavor is free" is an annoyance to me as a DM.

Don't mean to add to your backlog, but part of this was quoted and I want to address it.

This is flavor that pretty much only causes the following (mechanical) effects:

1. Punishment because of something either outside of one's control (such as weather) or which is obscure and difficult to predict. I get that this makes it more "realistic", but the vast, vast, vast majority of the time, all it does is make things suck more for the player in question. That's the single biggest reason folks don't want this.
2. Significant effort invested simply to avoid the aforementioned punishments, without any actual benefit gained. Mechanics that work solely by applying a penalty for failure, but do nothing for success/clever play/etc., are generally not well-liked and often get ignored or downplayed. That's why most "encumbrance" type mechanics fail.
3. Extreme fiddly-ness. This arises from both of the previous things, but can also just happen on its own. Having to keep in mind a bazillion little effects here and there is often tedious and time-consuming, when players would much rather get to the action. Doubly so when the fiddly stuff feels like a mere distraction if it doesn't really change the result any.

I get it, I really do, you want to have a world that manifestly makes all the real considerations of "using black-powder weapons" or "fighting with blades" or whatever else actually meaningful. That level of detail excites you, gets you pumped, makes you WANT to engage and explore and do all the things. Unfortunately...for a lot of people, including myself, it does exactly the opposite for us. It feels like having to file your taxes just to not get slapped with a nasty penalty or to be merely allowed to do the cool adventurous thing you signed up to do, and then you find out you failed to include supplemental form #238B in triplicate with a blood sample, so now you're paying the Rainy Day Fund penalty.

Like...the fact that you can grok how the Warlock would be annoyed by this with a re-skinned eldritch blast shows you get that people can be deeply, deeply annoyed by this kind of stuff. There's just one small leap to make from there: people who want to play Gunslingers very frequently (as in, almost all the time) also feel that annoyed when they find out that suddenly their gun-slinging is useless crap because of bad weather.

 

[Lanefan]

Exactly what are the limitations of a first-level mind control spell in your opinion?

That it only lasts one round.

The age old Command Question: What is the effect if I tell the target to "die" ?

The target, on a failed save, thinks it's dying and collapses. Next round it wonders why it was so foolish, gets up, and carries on.

 

[Lanefan]

And forbidden by the 5.0 wording of the spell, emphasis added: "The spell has no effect if the target is undead, if it doesn't understand your language, or if your command is directly harmful to it." A sapient being is able to tell that "walking" or "flying" off a ledge/beam is directly harmful to it. As for the others...

• Dismount: A valid command...but only for the first bit. The second (dismount while at a gallop/etc.) is forbidden, again because dismounting while in motion is harmful.
• Dive: Sure, but that's a spell slot sacrificed to get a single turn's worth of temporary inaction. Creative and valid, but mostly wasteful...and requires the target be in liquid. "Drop" achieves the same effect, without requiring that folks be in liquid first, and may be exploited by allies (grabbing the dropped item/s).
• Breathe (while in noxious gas): Again, forbidden by the 5.0 text of the spell.
• Eat: Not really seeing the creativity here? What does this even accomplish?
• Scream/Yell while sneaking: Most likely forbidden by the 5.0 wording. At the very least, none of the 5.0 DMs I've ever had would have permitted this. (In fact, if it weren't explicitly one of the listed commands, I doubt most DMs would even allow "Drop"!)

Seeing as only three of the seven examples (non-moving Dismount, Dive, and Eat) were unequivocally valid under the previous wording, your list does not really inspire much confidence that that much has been lost here. As with a lot of so-called "creative" uses of spells, much of it comes from wheeling-and-dealing away the actual limitations thereof, rather than

Yeah, were it me that "not directly harmful" piece would mostly come out. The specific action itself cannot be harmful (breathing, walking, yelling, etc. are harmless actions that people do all the time) but the direct result of performing the action in that situation should IMO be able to be harmful e.g. breathing in noxious fumes or falling off a narrow ledge or alerting the neighbourhood to your presence.

As for "Eat", it's pure action denial; the target stops whatever else it's doing and tries to find food, eating it if some is found before the round is done.

 

[Hussar]

I was responding directly to a discussion of using the loose wording to insert unwanted toilet humour into the game. At best, this a problem of mismatched expecations; it simply is not a problem with wording of the spell.

In general though, I agree it's not necessarily about "problem players" or "problem GMs," but it is about poor communication and/or socialisation skills in genereal, which is almost certainly going to lead to problems regardless how any specific spell is worded. It just shouldn't be that hard to have a reasonable discussion and arrive at a resolution, whether temporary or permanent, and move on with the game.

Sorry, but, that's just a long winded way of saying the problem lies in antogonistic players/DM's. Blaming the players/DMs for the fact that the mechanics are vaguely written.

At what point can we say that the problem lies in poorly written mechanics?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeah, were it me that "not directly harmful" piece would mostly come out. The specific action itself cannot be harmful (breathing, walking, yelling, etc. are harmless actions that people do all the time) but the direct result of performing the action in that situation should IMO be able to be harmful e.g. breathing in noxious fumes or falling off a narrow ledge or alerting the neighbourhood to your presence.

As for "Eat", it's pure action denial; the target stops whatever else it's doing and tries to find food, eating it if some is found before the round is done.

Well, you'll be happy to know, it has been removed from the 5.5e version! You just can't invent any command you want now.

Most folks seem to think this is a pretty significant buff, alongside the removed requirement that the target understand the language you're using, and I would tend to agree. Being able to order someone to do something obviously harmful, even if only from a restricted list, seems rather more powerful than being able to order whatever you want, but it can't be harmful to the target.

 

[SableWyvern]

Sorry, but, that's just a long winded way of saying the problem lies in antogonistic players/DM's. Blaming the players/DMs for the fact that the mechanics are vaguely written.

At what point can we say that the problem lies in poorly written mechanics?

I wouldn't define the sort of thing we're talking about as vaguely or poorly written rules, I consider them written in an open-ended fashion, leaving room for interesting interpretations and GM adjudication on edge cases. This is a good thing, in my opinion, not a problem. But yes, I do consider the problem to be with the participants, not the rules.

You are welcome to call them poorly written at any point you would like; I'm just likely to disagree with the point you're going to choose. I like the open-endedness of many of the early spells and, like the OP, I'm not a fan of attempts to lock them down into more concrete definitions. As I've mentioned multiple times, I have never had issues with open-ended rules causing arguments or grinding games to a halt, not across a wide range of games, D&D and otherwise, and even back in my early teens when you'd expect this kind of thing to be most likely to rear it's head. All that being the case, I really struggle to understand the perspective of people who consider disruptive, in-game disputes to be expected or normal behaviour if the rules aren't locked down with strict and utterly unambiguous language. I would much prefer open-ended language that leaves room for imaginative repurposing and player ideas beyond the scope of what the author originally envisaged.

 

[Hussar]

What I genuinely don't understand are people saying that their groups will devolve into endless arguments if they don't have this tighter wording,

The problem isn't with one "endless argument". It's that you have one argument, then another, then another, then another, endlessly because there are just so many vaguely worded spells.

Good grief, 50 years of Sage Advice isn't exactly for nothing.

 

[SableWyvern]

The problem isn't with one "endless argument". It's that you have one argument, then another, then another, then another, endlessly because there are just so many vaguely worded spells.

Good grief, 50 years of Sage Advice isn't exactly for nothing.

shrug

An ongoing sequence of short arguments that disrupt the game is no less alien to me, and I remain unable to understand how or why anyone would play like that.

I would not game with the sort of people who go to Sage Advice (or Reddit, or whatever) seeking ammunition to win an argument at their table, and thus I have no need for rules designed to keep such players quiet.

 

[MarkB]

The majority of 5e players and DMs started with 5e

Yes, that's an inevitable consequence of the game massively increasing in popularity since 5e was released. With so many new people playing, even if every single DM actively playing every single prior edition had switched over to 5e, the majority of DMs would still be people who started with 5e, simply because there are so many more people playing the game than there used to be.

 

[TiQuinn]

Umm, literally several posters have said exactly that. Good grief, I just quoted one in my last post:

Dunno what thread you're reading.

But, again, to me, playing silly buggers semantics with vague spell descriptions has nothing whatsoever to do with being creative. It's deliberately going out of your way to break the game without any thought to the in game reality.

I’m reading a thread where several people including myself have said that spell descriptions are not going to turn bad players into good players, and that many of the problems being described have to do with lack of communication around what the group wants out of their game, I.E. a session zero.

How you’ve turned that into “there’s no bad players. Only creative ones” is beyond me.