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

[Remathilis]

Exactly. "Rulings not rules" was an important part of 5e design. 5.5e is rolling that back. I thought that the changes to 5.5e Command were the clearest example of that. Hence this thread.

This is a pendulum that swings back and forth forever answering the questions the last version of the rules ask. A lot of people wanted clearer rules rather than DM defined ones. It's a balancing act between being too complicated and being too vague.

 

[Daztur]

This is a pendulum that swings back and forth forever answering the questions the last version of the rules ask. A lot of people wanted clearer rules rather than DM defined ones. It's a balancing act between being too complicated and being too vague.

Yup. That's the whole point of this thread. I kept on noticing that this swing was happening and was a bit confused why more people weren't commenting on it since most of the talk about 5.5e was on class balance reshuffles, possible exploits and rule loopholes, etc. etc.

For me this pendulum swing was the single most important change from 5e to 5.5e and I wanted to highlight that it was taking place.

 

[Vaalingrade]

2. The 4e solution. There is a reason there was a big backlash against this solution.

Because it was different and change is bad.

 

[Daztur]

Because it was different and change is bad.

Indeed. I freaking love Whitehack but if 6e was Whitehack rebranded as D&D I'd understand that people would be confused and upset. And edition of an existing game should be an edition of that game, not something that rebuilds basic assumptions of how that game operates.

 

[James Gasik]

Well in 4e's case, it was obvious that 3.x's basic assumptions were not lining up with the game people were playing. DM's didn't want to feel forced to fill game days with a given budget of xp or set number of encounters- sometimes your "day" consists of traveling down a road and maybe a single random encounter!

Trying to manage "per diem" resources, then, became a real hassle, and open-ended, powerful spells were so far out of line with what non-magic characters could do that it was a frequent complaint.

Add onto this complicated NPC and encounter design, magic item creation rules that proved to be far more troublesome than they were worth, WBL being difficult to enforce in a non-gamist fashion, people taking multiple Prestige Classes and ala carte multiclassing for front-loaded classes, and the fact that low-level adventures were difficult to write and play, when even a Fighter could be taken out in a single hit, and the necessity of making healing resources the "job" of a small number of classes (instead of doing other things with their resources), made WotC believe that most people weren't playing D&D the way they thought people would- the very thing that would necessitate a completely new line of thinking.

After experimenting with things like the Tome of Magic Warlock and the Book of Nine Swords, they hit upon the idea of balancing the game per encounter more than per day. This way, running a game day with three encounters wasn't noticeably harder to do than one with six. Healing Surges made it possible to not require a dedicated "healer" as much, and so the DM only needed to worry about how many surges would be used by their encounters. Short, 5 minute "breathers" to recharge abilities didn't interfere with the narrative much either.

Stripping away a lot of the narrative power of spellcasters and balancing classes against each other (but keeping out of combat magic in the game, gated by time and money, and available to everyone, not just a few classes) was a way to avoid a lot of the abuse of high level magic.

I could go on, but we all know how this ended up. It turned out that there was a sizable contingent of players who weren't complaining about the problems 4e was solving, either because they were running traditional games, or they enjoyed the gonzo levels of power and customization 3.x afforded, and didn't care so much if playing a Fighter 12 was strictly inferior to a Fighter 2/Sorcerer 6/Dragon Disciple 10/Eldritch Knight 2 (let alone even crazier things like Incantatrixes or Planar Shepherds), along with all the players who hadn't jumped onto 3e and were certainly not going to accept 4e.

If WotC could have developed a "3.75" and 4e simultaneously, that would have been great, but either they lacked the resources to do so, or were afraid of having multiple game lines competing against one another.

But one thing is sure- the issues of the previous editions of D&D spawned from it's core assumptions not lining up with the game people were actually playing can only be solved by changing those core assumptions. 5e still has a lot of those issues.

This is fine for those who are either used to them, or play a game in line with those assumptions, but isn't so great for those who do not. What the end result of all this will be is uncertain, but a game cannot serve multiple masters.

Now some will say that they're fine with games with different assumptions existing, as long as they are not called D&D, but there's no way anyone is going to shuck a storied and valuable franchise IP to make some other game, and if more people want something different, at some point, any company has to go where the market is.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Indeed. I freaking love Whitehack but if 6e was Whitehack rebranded as D&D I'd understand that people would be confused and upset. And edition of an existing game should be an edition of that game, not something that rebuilds basic assumptions of how that game operates.

Like 3e?

And 2e?

And 5e?

 

[pemerton]

I think Gygax screwed up his wording a bit here, "suicide" is always a noun AFAIK, not something that can be a noun.

According to Merriam-Webster, "suicide" can be used as a verb: Definition of SUICIDE

For me, THE ENTIRE AND ONLY REASON I prefer RPGs to other games is that they have a GM who's constantly making rulings. If you remove rulings then I just don't see the point of playing an RPG instead of some other kind of game. What other unique things do RPGs bring to the table that no other kind of game can do?

RPGs, like some wargames, permit the fiction to matter to resolution. They also generally involve asymmetrical participant roles, in that one participant manages the scenes and how these unfold from the backstory, while another participant (or multiple participants) manage particular protagonists within the fiction.

It's the combination of fiction-sensitive wargaming with the "first person"/"avatar" player perspective that I think is the core of most RPGing.

A game having the features I've just described doesn't really depend on the GM making rulings. A game can have those features - ie the unique things that RPGs bring to the table - and also have clear rules about who gets to say what when about what is happening in the shared fiction.

 

[SableWyvern]

RPGs, like some wargames, permit the fiction to matter to resolution. They also generally involve asymmetrical participant roles, in that one participant manages the scenes and how these unfold from the backstory, while another participant (or multiple participants) manage particular protagonists within the fiction.

It's the combination of fiction-sensitive wargaming with the "first person"/"avatar" player perspective that I think is the core of most RPGing.

A game having the features I've just described doesn't really depend on the GM making rulings. A game can have those features - ie the unique things that RPGs bring to the table - and also have clear rules about who gets to say what when about what is happening in the shared fiction.

While I agree entirely with @Daztur that GMs making rulings is one of the cornerstones of what makes TTRPGs worthwhile to me, I also have to acknowledge that clearly that's not essential to an RPG, given that GMless games exist.

Some would point to solo-roleplaying as another example, although at that point I feel strongly that we're really talking about a closely related activity, and not the same thing.

 

[Hussar]

Really?

You could use "scream" to cause someone to attract the attention of something that responds to sound.

Scream is a noun. Fails to work.

"Salute" to get them to salute, which could in turn be a gesture the begins some attempted betrayal, leaking the knowledge that this will be the signal, so that individual appears to be the instigator.

Salute is a noun. Fails to work.

"Drink" to force them to test the wine you suspect may be poisoned.

Not a verb.

"Spit" to make them insult the lord you are meeting.

Not a verb. And, even if it was, casting a spell in front of the lord and then forcing someone to spit is probably not going to work.

"Confess" when you have the thief (or a patsy) before the judge.

"Yes, it's true. My name is Hussar."

"Recant" similarly, for a witness.

"I cannot tell a lie. I did fart a few minutes ago.

"Transform" to prove they're a shapeshifter.

So, we're allowing 1st level spells to recreate the effect of 3rd level spells now? Moonbeam? Wow, that's a hell of a spell.

"Deface" as they gaze upon the King's portrait.

Yeah, because mind controlling someone to commit a crime isn't going to be a problem. And, "The NPC puts a hand in front of their face" They're defaced. Since you cannot force somone to act on another object using this spell it doesn't work.

While these are pretty niche, that's the point -- the more versatile, the more niches it can be used for.

I'm not sure why you feel that the spell can or should only be used in combat.

Umm, because all the basic descriptions of the standard Commands are combat effects?

But, yeah, all these "creative" uses either rely on the DM ignoring the actual rules of the spell (forcing the NPC to take an action using an object they they are not holding) or ignore the rules of the English languages. You want to a mind control spell? Take Domination. You want a short term duration action denial and battlefield control spell? Take Command.

 

[Hussar]

The original intent of the spell was a good bit broader than you're implying. And yes I know that the intent behind D&D has changed a good bit across editions, but a lot of 5e spells have a decades old legacy. I don't think that using spells with the same kind of intent as Gygax had is anything too disruptive.

Considering that we've spent the last 40 years trying to iron out all the crap rules in the spells that Gygax put into the game from back then, I would respectfully disagree.

There's a reason Sleep no longer instantly kills things. Create Water is no longer a Save or Die effect. Invisibility is no longer an auto win. On and on and on. I would argue that Gygax's intent are EXACTLY what we want to avoid.