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

[Oofta]

Like I said upthread you're confusing hill to die on with litmus test. For example, if my DM tells me "sneak attack is really OP" then I'm noping out of that game since any DM that thinks that doesn't know 5e mechanics well enough to run a good 5e game. This is the case even if I'm playing a barbarian and nobody at the table has a rogue. It shows me what the DM's approach to the game is and gives me a good enough picture of how they'll roll to know that the game isn't for me.

Similarly if a DM tells me "Command is a badly-written spell, it's too open ended" I'm noping out of that game since any DM that thinks that has a VERY different idea of what is fun than I do, to the extent that I'd struggle to have fun in their campaign. This is the case even if I'm playing a barbarian and nobody at the table has Command on their class spell list. It shows me what the DM's approach to the game is and gives me a good enough picture of how they'll roll to know that the game isn't for me.

And I don't want to sign on for an edition that is written by people who I wouldn't trust to DM a game for me. They obviously don't see eye to eye with me about what makes D&D fun so I don't expect that future D&D products will be fun for me.

Good. Because if you insist on twisting the clear intent and examples of a spell like command, I'm not the DM for you. That's not a bad thing, it just means it's a bad fit. God speed and good luck finding a DM or game that fits.

I have no idea how you actually play at the table, so the rest isn't an observation necessarily directed at you. But I've played with people in every edition that try to twist mangle and mutilate the text of the game to turn spells and abilities into something they're not. I get tired of it and, no, I don't put up with it when I DM. The DM that told me "jump" meant more than just jump in the many ways I could have interpreted it but meant that I had to jump into the ocean was the DM version of it.

For the players that did this? We called them cheese weasels. Always looking for that tiny crumb of ambiguity, that one way someone found to turn a first level power into a one turn dominate spell. The ones that search for some combination of powers, abilities and spells that is only broken because they are clearly ignoring the intent of the spell. When I was running a lot of LG (Living Greyhawk 3.x public) games, we had a group of people like that. They always played together, always sat at the table with the same DM who didn't have a particularly firm grasp of the rules.

If that's the kind of game you want and you find a group that also likes that kind of game, fantastic! Have fun. I just don't want to play at that table and have no problem saying no to these kind of exploits. People that like finding and exploiting holes in the rules aren't bad people, they're just playing the game for different reasons than I do. I like challenges, I don't want an "I win" button. I don't need exploits to build effective characters or to come up with creative solutions. To each their own.

 

[Daztur]

For me, it’s understandable when the speed of turns is too slow. Losing a turn means you don’t get another turn for quite awhile, but I think the goal in that case is speed up the game by reducing the number of dials to fiddle with, or in other words, a less tactical game. But that’s just my two cents.

Agreed completely. I think speeding up people's turns is worth a bit of loss of tactical depth. After all if you can get more turns done in an hour you can often get more interesting tactical decisions made per HOUR even if you're doing less tactically per TURN.

This is why I would love if D&D would put in the Dungeon Masters guide, It's basis assumptions on magic and magic spells. Which affects are available at which levels of spells.

For example:

You can't mind control a single creature type with a spell of 4th level or lower unless it is a type of lower mental faculty like a beast or plant.

You cannot mentally force creature to do something dangerous with a spell of 3rd or lower until you are invoking fear, anger, pain, hunger, or some other base emotion.

The 1e DMG had exactly that. That book was a mess but it was a glorious mess.

Nah. Just another entitled fan who apparently "found something better" but can't stop thinking about and bashing their ex.

Eh, the D&D brand has been owned by asshats since before I was born. And I'm not young.

I'm not going to obsess about that, but (unless my sons wants D&D books for Christian/his birthday) I'm buying 3PP stuff over D&D-branded stuff which I think does more to support the overall hobby. Don't see much of a difference between current D&D leadership and past D&D leadership all the way back to the Blums and possibly earlier though...

I'm just glad that they got rid of the word 'edition' and thus we never got massive, clique-y divisions in the fandom.

Heh. Of all of the trends in modern pop culture that most makes me want to yell at kids to get off my lawn the most it's the refusal to just give things a simple number so we can keep track of which one it is.

Yeah, I think this is a very irony-posoned, bathos-overdosed perspective. If you think d&d is effectively worthless as roleplaying game and any attempt at getting invested into the story or characters should be undermined with fart joke and laughed at, I think we want very different things from the hobby.

shrugs I'm just fine with Honor Among Thieves' overall tone and thing it's pretty representative of what D&D has always been. There was plenty of drama in that among the humor and I don't remember any fart jokes in it...

To be fair, there are always gamers, and games don't have to be in print to be played. They're not really making more B/X, for example.

The industry may (or may not) need WotC, but the community, IMO, does not.

As much as I don't like it personally, Hasbro having the economic muscle to get D&D on store shelves and on movie screens brings in new blood that is essential for the hobby. However, it's just as essential for the hobby for other games to find their niches and introduce players to new ideas. The hobby needs D&D to bring in new blood and D&D needs the rest of the hobby to bring in new ideas, D&D dominating forever as thoroughly as 5e has is bad for the hobby. The boom and bust cycle for D&D has worked out well for the hobby overall so far and D&D's overdue for a bust. I hope that results in people scattering to new games and getting fresh RPG ideas before a future edition of D&D brings in new blood all over again.

The hobby, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.

The community however can't shut up about the industry.

Because despite saying they don't care, the community wants more stuff for their preferred playstyle.

Well of course I do. Especially since the specific playstyle I'd like the most (OSR crossed with Indie with approximately 5e's level of crunch and CharGen detail) doesn't really exist as a marketable thing and I'm to lazy to write my own games from scratch. I just don't think that WotC will ever give me that as giving me that would probably bankrupt them since my ideas are too niche. I would like 5e-level compromise edition that gives me at least a good chunk of what I want though...

Good. Because if you insist on twisting the clear intent and examples of a spell like command, I'm not the DM for you. That's not a bad thing, it just means it's a bad fit. God speed and good luck finding a DM or game that fits.

I don't twist the clear intent and examples of a spell like Command. I run it (as a DM) and use it (as a player) exactly as it's intended to be used and how it was intended to be used in 3.0 and TSR-D&D before that. I don't have any problem with following 5e Command exactly how WotC wanted me to use it when they wrote it in 2014, I freaking love that spell. And that's why I'm annoyed that one of my favorite 5e spells has been replaced with an empty husk of what it used to be.

And yeah, yeah, I know I can houserule it back in five seconds, just like I houseruled the 3.5e Command spell. It's not about Command specifically, it's about trust. I don't trust people who think the 2024 version of the spell is more fun than the 2014 version to make RPG content that I think is fun, since they obviously don't see eye to eye with me on what is fun in D&D. Same as I wouldn't trust WotC to balance naughty word if they wrote up a blog post about how OP sneak attack is.

 

[TiQuinn]

Good. Because if you insist on twisting the clear intent and examples of a spell like command, I'm not the DM for you. That's not a bad thing, it just means it's a bad fit. God speed and good luck finding a DM or game that fits.

I have no idea how you actually play at the table, so the rest isn't an observation necessarily directed at you. But I've played with people in every edition that try to twist mangle and mutilate the text of the game to turn spells and abilities into something they're not. I get tired of it and, no, I don't put up with it when I DM. The DM that told me "jump" meant more than just jump in the many ways I could have interpreted it but meant that I had to jump into the ocean was the DM version of it.

For the players that did this? We called them cheese weasels. Always looking for that tiny crumb of ambiguity, that one way someone found to turn a first level power into a one turn dominate spell. The ones that search for some combination of powers, abilities and spells that is only broken because they are clearly ignoring the intent of the spell. When I was running a lot of LG (Living Greyhawk 3.x public) games, we had a group of people like that. They always played together, always sat at the table with the same DM who didn't have a particularly firm grasp of the rules.

If that's the kind of game you want and you find a group that also likes that kind of game, fantastic! Have fun. I just don't want to play at that table and have no problem saying no to these kind of exploits. People that like finding and exploiting holes in the rules aren't bad people, they're just playing the game for different reasons than I do. I like challenges, I don't want an "I win" button. I don't need exploits to build effective characters or to come up with creative solutions. To each their own.

Completely agree with this.

 

[Belen]

Well, from my perspective I feel this entire thread is pathologizing my preference for more immersive and sincere storytelling, my preference for emotionally driven roleplay and my dislike of toilet humor. I had people call me puritan and say I'm too stupid to discern reality from ficiton for not liking your prefered style of play, which has been described as "what d&d is all about" or along those lines.

I am pretty sure most people told you that your way was fine and that you were free to run your group and rule away any type of humor you wish.

Your basic argument boils down to a desire that WOTC change the game to suit you and eliminate any element you find problematic in order to "control" people from playing in a way that you do not like.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

I am pretty sure most people told you that your way was fine and that you were free to run your group and rule away any type of humor you wish.

Your basic argument boils down to a desire that WOTC change the game to suit you and eliminate any element you find problematic in order to "control" people from playing in a way that you do not like.

So you either weren't reading with much attention or are mad I refuse to let you bild a strawman of my argument.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Because, as he has said easily a dozen times in this thread already:

It's not once. If it really were once or twice across an entire campaign, it wouldn't be an issue.

It's over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over. Spell after spell after spell after spell.

Missing the point. It's not that I have to agree with the exploit or being able to rule. I'm perfectly capable of doing that.

I don't want to.

I don't want to have that conversation fifty different times for fifty different spells. It's not fun for me. And, let's be honest here, they've been closing loopholes in the language of spells for years. We can't use Spider Climb to pick pockets. We don't use Create Water as instant death spells. On and on and on.

Yes, I can do it but, it gets absolutely exhausting to have to do it for only half the players all the time. It ruins any momentum in the game. Makes the game frustrating. And encourages players to game the system and not actually engage with the game.

When a PC says something unexpected to an NPC ("I tell the king he's an idiot."), and you need to come up with a response, that's open-ended gameplay. The PC could say something extremely disruptive or use some element to thwart your plans easily. Or if a PC finds a way through a locked door that isn't "find the key I planted," that's open-ended gameplay, where you need to judge what happens based on the shared fiction and not based on explicit mechanics. And the PC could bypass whole dungeon sections if they pick the lock well enough. Or if a PC convinces an NPC to take point and walk through the trap-filled tomb. Or if the PCs do the LotR thing and have the eagles fly them to Mordor. Or a million other things where the gameplay is more about playing off of each others' ideas and adjudicating results rather than following a deliberate script in the rules.

And we do these things as DMs, over and over and over, every session, all the time. For me, they're a core part of the delight of playing D&D, but even if they're not that important to you, they're something you definitely do, minute after minute, while playing D&D.

So, we're comfortable, generally, adjudicating open-ended gameplay, over and over again. We do it. It's part of the game.

Why, then, is it an exception to that when a player introduces some open-ended gameplay due to a class feature they want to use? What's the difference between using the command spell to tell someone standing next to a window to "defenestrate" and shoving that same NPC out of a window, or a PC using acid to dissolve the hinges on a locked door, or a PC offering to cook a meal for the banquet and giving everyone food poisoning? Why is the former a bigger burden, when we are asked to do this same task as a DM, over and over and over again, in many other situations?

 

[Minigiant]

The 1e DMG had exactly that. That book was a mess but it was a glorious mess.

1e and 4e both told DMs how the game was assumed to work. Then DMs know how to change game to how the the tables want....

see where you're going here but the problem is that that just creates the need for so so so many spells. More spells than there is room for in core. Maybe a good solution would be a spell splatbook that's nothing but one big fat book of hundreds and hundreds of spells with some guidance about which ones are appropriate for different campaigns. But there just isn't enough room in a PHB for all of the spells your approach would require so the best solution for a mainstream game like D&D is a slew of spells that work in different ways to create a messy and imperfect compromise, i.e. more or less what 5e does

hence why I say spells and magic items should be their own book

The core iconic required spells should go into the PHB and DMG.

But the Spell Book should get all the weird spells.

 

[Oofta]

When a PC says something unexpected to an NPC ("I tell the king he's an idiot."), and you need to come up with a response, that's open-ended gameplay. The PC could say something extremely disruptive or use some element to thwart your plans easily. Or if a PC finds a way through a locked door that isn't "find the key I planted," that's open-ended gameplay, where you need to judge what happens based on the shared fiction and not based on explicit mechanics. And the PC could bypass whole dungeon sections if they pick the lock well enough. Or if a PC convinces an NPC to take point and walk through the trap-filled tomb. Or if the PCs do the LotR thing and have the eagles fly them to Mordor. Or a million other things where the gameplay is more about playing off of each others' ideas and adjudicating results rather than following a deliberate script in the rules.

And we do these things as DMs, over and over and over, every session, all the time. For me, they're a core part of the delight of playing D&D, but even if they're not that important to you, they're something you definitely do, minute after minute, while playing D&D.

So, we're comfortable, generally, adjudicating open-ended gameplay, over and over again. We do it. It's part of the game.

Why, then, is it an exception to that when a player introduces some open-ended gameplay due to a class feature they want to use? What's the difference between using the command spell to tell someone standing next to a window to "defenestrate" and shoving that same NPC out of a window, or a PC using acid to dissolve the hinges on a locked door, or a PC offering to cook a meal for the banquet and giving everyone food poisoning? Why is the former a bigger burden, when we are asked to do this same task as a DM, over and over and over again, in many other situations?

There's a vast difference between open ended gameplay and trying to do things with spells like command that are clearly more effective than the example, and what I consider obvious intent, of the spell.

Your example of defenestrate (a word I had to look up and doubt many people would know) is an prime example. For those who can't be bothered to pull up dictionary.com the meaning is "to throw (a person or thing) out of a window". So you mean it to throw themselves out the window. Why? Why not a handy object or other person like the PC that is near them? You're using it as a one turn dominate person where you seem to be defining exactly how the command is carried out.

Part of the fun of the game for me is working within the limitations of the rules of the game to still be effective. I don't try to push the envelope of what a spell or power does because it's just not necessary. Nor for me whether I'm playing the caster, another PC or the DM, is it fun.

 

[Belen]

There's a vast difference between open ended gameplay and trying to do things with spells like command that are clearly more effective than the example, and what I consider obvious intent, of the spell.

Your example of defenestrate (a word I had to look up and doubt many people would know) is an prime example. For those who can't be bothered to pull up dictionary.com the meaning is "to throw (a person or thing) out of a window". So you mean it to throw themselves out the window. Why? Why not a handy object or other person like the PC that is near them? You're using it as a one turn dominate person where you seem to be defining exactly how the command is carried out.

Part of the fun of the game for me is working within the limitations of the rules of the game to still be effective. I don't try to push the envelope of what a spell or power does because it's just not necessary. Nor for me whether I'm playing the caster, another PC or the DM, is it fun.

I learned the word because of D&D. Defenestrate is pretty popular.

 

[billd91]

What's the difference between using the command spell to tell someone standing next to a window to "defenestrate" and shoving that same NPC out of a window

Honestly? Well, defenestrate means to throw someone or something out the window... not jump out the window. None of the Defenestrations of Prague (believe it or not it happened 3 times over 2 centuries) involved anyone jumping out a window - they were thrown.
So, word to the wise, don't try to be too clever with your commands.