Why does any spell need to be limited? It's magic after all.
Yup, everything can be a pretty arbitrary "it's magic" but some kinds of magic are more fun for me in the game than others. For example you find no save death effects in a lot of fantasy fiction, but that's not much fun in an actual game.
If you have a set list you know what's going to happen and you don't have to guess how it's going to be interpreted. It's easier to know what the effect will be for player and DM alike.
Seems to me like a lot of people complaining that they're making this spell clearer turn around and bemoan the lack of clarity elsewhere. It's just not a big deal.
It's not always that clear-cut. There's the question of: does fiction take priority over mechanics or do mechanics take priority over fiction? Different DMs and editions of D&D have ruled this in different ways. To bring up the famous 4e example of tripping gelatinous cubes, which should a DM do?
1. Say: "gelatinous cubes are not immune to the prone condition so I'll say that the trip attack made them discombobulated instead of literally tripping them." The specific flavor doesn't matter, the rules for the prone condition apply no matter what. Some people on this thread have been full-throated in their support for this exact thing.
2. Say: "no, you can't trip a gelatinous cube. It's a freaking cube." Many people (me) have been just as insistent in their support of this position.
It's, of course, a matter of taste. One isn't worse than the other. Like in a lot of things, 5e was a messy compromise that worked well enough but 5.5e seems to be shifting more and more towards position #1.
For me "It's easier to know what the effect will be" if the flavor of a spell is very clear, so that I can get everyone on the same page if the players try to MacGyver the spell. If the flavor is more nebulous but the mechanics are crystal clear then it can be very unclear what happens if the spell is used in an off-brand way. For example, some 4e powers are really really vague in terms of flavor and very concrete in terms of mechanics which make them good for some DMs and bad for others.
I'm never going to agree with every decision they make. I just don't see this having any significant impact while also improving it.
Yeah, I agree that this specific spell isn't a big deal (since I can houserule it back to how I like it in 5 seconds just like I did in 3.5e where I never had any DM ever follow the actual rules for Command, all of them always let me use any verb I wanted if I asked nicely). I'm just using it as an example of how 5.5e design is trending. Even though 5e and 5.5e aren't too different, 5.5e is pretty consistently trending away from my tastes.
As soon as Fighters can get access to something--anything--that is half as versatile and potent as command, which I will note is a first-level spell, then I will consider these complaints valid and warranted.
Until then? This is making barely-above-minimum-power magic something slightly less than "incredibly powerful and only constrained by a DM actively waging a vanguard campaign against caster dominance."
Well there's three basic ways of balancing linear warriors/quadratic wizards:
1. Take away all of the versatile reality bending stuff from wizards and make them more straight-forward blasters.
2. Give versatile reality bending stuff to fighters. Plenty of support for this in the crazy powers of mythical heroes.
3. Let wizards keep the versatile reality bending stuff but hit them with the nerf bat and keeping on beating them over and over and over until relative balance has been achieved. It doesn't go far enough to balance things at higher levels but TSR-D&D wizards are muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch more fragile than 5e wizards and that keeps things relatively balanced at lower levels. Another way of limiting things is how things are done with Mongoose d20 Conan 2e which REALLY puts some pretty hard limits on the Scholar (caster) class in that their magic is narrow with pretty limited and has such long casting times that it's hard to use in combat.
#3 is harder to balance because in that system what fighters and wizards are good at is so different. Mongoose d20 Conan 2 worked pretty well in my experience as the consensus was that barbarians were a stronger class than scholars. I don't mind #2 at all though, I just don't want #1.
I don't think it matters to 99% of the time and the removal of the target understanding the words greatly increases it's utility. I can't imagine how this one spell makes more than the tiniest of dents in the versatility of things that happen in a D&D game.
It's such a minor change to be a hill to die on.
It's not a hill to die on (as I can houserule it easily), it's a litmus test. People who don't find Command to be fun don't see eye to eye with me on what are the fun parts of D&D. This goes for when I play barbarians every bit as much as when I play clerics. There are other examples of similar things I don't like in 5.5e, but Command is the clearest and most straight-forward example of how WotC design philosophy has shifted since 2014 so I used that.
Yep. The spell's intended effect is to lose their turn and maybe be placed in a disadvantageous position. The DM should adjudicate non-standard uses of the spell to be on a similar level.
Well "flee" (which is still in place in 5.5e) can potentially be VERY powerful as it gives everyone standing next to the target an AoO so it can end up being a Save or Die spell in practice. Command is a powerful spells and I wouldn't mind it seeing smacked with the nerf bat a bit (maybe advantage on saves if the area is noisy enough or a reduced range?), just don't want to see all of the creativity the makes me love the spell removed.
But everyone else is repeating the line that these players aren’t bad at all. They’re just being creative. That your priest is using the holy powers granted by the gods for a puerile poop joke is both creative and in character.
If someone has a cleric and that cleric honestly believes that the gods would be fine with poop jokes, then that’s not a player I want at my table.
Funny how it’s all “in character “ when it’s to the player’s advantage.
Depends on the priest and the god in question. There is all kind of puerile stuff in myths and legends if you go hunting for it. I mean there is a whole story in the Icelandic Sagas centering around the worship of a horse dick and there are CONSTANT CONSTANT descriptions of chopping people's heads off and shoving their decapitated head up their butt to prevent them from rising as zombies. I could imagine some CN/CE gods being fine with that, other gods less so to the extent that some would remove the spellcasting power of the cleric making a mockery out of their gifts.
And again, the primary reason why I detest plain English spell definitions. It’s such a huge pain to deal with this over and over again. Is it this? Or that? What about this?
Screw that. Spells should have rock solid lists of specific effects. Full stop. The worst thing in the game is open ended effects subject to interpretation.
Those are my very favorite things in D&D when I DM. I love shenanigans, they show that the players are engaged. Of course there is a line between IC creativity and metagaming rules lawyering naughty word, and laying down that line is one of the things I make sure I always do as DM.
And it's OK that we like different things. My main point here in this thread is pointing out how 5.5e is a worse compromise between my views and your views, not that my views are the way that everyone must play D&D.
The problem is that every DM doesn't know to cause those commands to fail.
That's the issue.
Command and other open-ended spells rely on there being a sense of meta knowledge of a curated fanbase.
D&D is too broad and diverse for that.
You'll find many DMs not being able to grasp the most basic naughty word. There was a recent thread on Reddit where player was complaining about his DM claiming that ALL warlock invocations are 1/day.
