D&D (2024) Anyone else dislike the "keyword" style language of 5.24?

[plecostomus]

I don't understand why they felt the need to add those words. If you are blinded, you are blinded. How hard is this? SO MANY EXTRA WORDS. Strong dislike. Very strong. Don't get me started on the stat blocks and all the extra stuff in there....

Heal 2014 doesn't specify that it's curing conditions of Blindness and Deafened, while Lesser Restoration 2014 does. So, do we interpret that Heal 2014 is capable of healing blindness and deafness that exist for reasons other than the condition? It is a 6th Level spell, and Regenerate is coming along next at 7th Level, allowing you to cure entire missing limbs.

Lesser Restoration 2014:
You touch a creature and can end either one disease or one condition afflicting it. The condition can be blinded, deafened, paralyzed, or poisoned.
-
Heal 2014:
Choose a creature that you can see within range. A surge of positive energy washes through the creature, causing it to regain 70 hit points. This spell also ends blindness, deafness, and any diseases affecting the target. This spell has no effect on constructs or undead.
-
There is no confusion with Heal 2024 as to the intent of the spell.
-
Heal 2024:
Choose a creature that you can see within range. Positive energy washes through the target, restoring 70 Hit Points. This spell also ends the Blinded, Deafened, and Poisoned conditions on the target.
-
But the other thing I'll say is that when I searched these spells to see if people have actually asked about the 2014 interpretation, people were mostly asking about Lesser Restoration curing permanent forms of blindness... Victory may not be possible.

 

[Stormonu]

It's all about the edge cases. If it said, "It takes an Action to tie a knot," what happens when the party rogue asks if they can do it with their Fast Hands trait? Now the game has to stop while the DM adjudicates the situation.

I think you're going to have to find a better example than that. That's a less than two-second "sure" or "nope" and move on situation. I wouldn't even bother to look up Fast Hands on that adjudication and its one of those cases where IMHO is why you have a DM instead of some parser in the first place.

 

[MothMayI]

Heal 2014 doesn't specify that it's curing conditions of Blindness and Deafened, while Lesser Restoration 2014 does. So, do we interpret that Heal 2014 is capable of healing blindness and deafness that exist for reasons other than the condition? It is a 6th Level spell, and Regenerate is coming along next at 7th Level, allowing you to cure entire missing limbs.

Lesser Restoration 2014:
You touch a creature and can end either one disease or one condition afflicting it. The condition can be blinded, deafened, paralyzed, or poisoned.
-
Heal 2014:
Choose a creature that you can see within range. A surge of positive energy washes through the creature, causing it to regain 70 hit points. This spell also ends blindness, deafness, and any diseases affecting the target. This spell has no effect on constructs or undead.
-
There is no confusion with Heal 2024 as to the intent of the spell.
-
Heal 2024:
Choose a creature that you can see within range. Positive energy washes through the target, restoring 70 Hit Points. This spell also ends the Blinded, Deafened, and Poisoned conditions on the target.
-
But the other thing I'll say is that when I searched these spells to see if people have actually asked about the 2014 interpretation, people were mostly asking about Lesser Restoration curing permanent forms of blindness... Victory may not be possible.

I think it's a good example of how 2024 5e wanted to focus primarily on the players who see things primarily for gameplay/combat mechanics.

It's reasonable to conclude that 2014 Heal would cure blindness caused by means other than the condition. But what about the 2024 Heal? If someone is blind, then mechanically that would be represented by having the Blinded condition, right? Would casting Heal on them this remove that condition and thus restore their sight? Would they still be blind but not mechanically Blinded? Or would the blind character not actually be Blinded mechanically? Does that imply that there are in fact no magical (or Magic, rather) answers to natural blindness?

 

[Shardstone]

I dislike the 2024 edition, yes, and no small part of that is down to the writing approach versus 2014 5e's.

To say that 2014 didn't use keywords is inaccurate. It used keywords, and defined terms as necessary, but didn't feel the need to define terms that didn't need to be defined. There isn't any meaningful difference between "melee weapon" in 2014 5e and "Melee weapon" in 2024 5e. (Or at least shouldn't be, but editing issues ahoy.)


I'll give a perfect example of my own because it was really glaring when the late 2014-era books started using it: going from "is blinded/knocked prone/etc." to "has the Blinded/Prone/etc. condition". The former makes clear that the condition is the result of the triggering effect, whereas the latter sounds passive and uncorrelated. Even if it used "receives the condition", that would sound better.

Nick (and literally everything related to two-weapon fighting) might just be one of the worst-written things in the 2024 rules.

Doubly so when you consider that the wording of the rule doesn't actually prohibit you from making another attack with a Light weapon as a bonus action, because the "You can make this extra attack only once per turn" line applies only to an attack made with Nick and no such limitation exists on an attack made via the Light property without such.

I agree with your critique of the language in this post, but I feel this is a nitpick and not worth the amount of emotion being invested in it. Passive voice is a minor sin.

 

[Lazybones]

I think you're going to have to find a better example than that. That's a less than two-second "sure" or "nope" and move on situation. I wouldn't even bother to look up Fast Hands on that adjudication and its one of those cases where IMHO is why you have a DM instead of some parser in the first place.

Others have provided more examples, including in the post directly above yours. I have no problem with people who prefer to lean more on DM rulings than clear rules; over the years I have made thousands of those rulings in-game, and have no doubt that I will continue to do so. All I'm suggesting is that clearer rules create fewer opportunities for disagreement. I even said in my original post that I'm not 100% there yet on 5e 2024, but what I've seen so far suggests that there might be less need to make arbitrary rulings in the new ruleset.

 

[Arilyn]

It's all about the edge cases. If it said, "It takes an Action to tie a knot," what happens when the party rogue asks if they can do it with their Fast Hands trait? Now the game has to stop while the DM adjudicates the situation.

My 5e 2024 game is still too new for me to make a definitive answer as to whether I think it's "better," but I can say that so far I've been able to make more firm rulings based on what the language of the rules say and rely less on, "well... I guess it could mean 'x'..." I've spent enough time on Stack Exchange to know that interpretation of language in rules is a slippery slope that people can invest an immense amount of time sliding down.

In my example the word, action is capitalized, therefore indicating that is the action keyword. Saying you can make a utilize object action is not clearer, just more wordy and painful to read.

I have no problem with keywords and concise language in a RPG. I do not like the words action and condition used every single time, when the keywords are already noted with capitalization.

Final pet peeve: use is a much better word choice over utilize.

 

[mamba]

This logic is weak because as far as we know, 2024 has sold better than 2014.

the problem with your logic is that it ignores the growth over those 10 years, 2024 is starting from a very different base than 2014 was

 

[Shardstone]

the problem with your logic is that it ignores the growth over those 10 years, 2024 is starting from a very different base than 2014 was

Indeed.

 

[Chaltab]

Keywords are good, but think the bigger issue is the way they are implemented in 5.24 is kind of clumsy. It's trying to mix natural language and mechanical language together in ways that can be kind of awkward to read and write.

 

[CreamCloud0]

In my example the word, action is capitalized, therefore indicating that is the action keyword. Saying you can make a utilize object action is not clearer, just more wordy and painful to read.

it's clearer to say utilize object action because fast hands doesn't function with all actions, if you want to tie a rope as a rogue if it was just a plain action not utilize object action you'd be plumb out of luck if you wanted to use fast hands.