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

[doctorbadwolf]

Personally, when the authors feel they're doing me a service by telling me you can take the "Utilize" action or the "Magic" action, I feel they've lost the thread. Of course I can! You don't need to tell me that!

If you don’t need that, great. Many new players have a much easier time learning the rules when it does tell them those things rather than leaving it unsaid.

Many experienced players find the reminder useful, or simply use keywords in rules as a way to more quickly scan and understand something they couldn’t recall from memory, etc.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If you don’t need that, great. Many new players have a much easier time learning the rules when it does tell them those things rather than leaving it unsaid.

Many experienced players find the reminder useful, or simply use keywords in rules as a way to more quickly scan and understand something they couldn’t recall from memory, etc.

The eternal tension between two goals that do not always point in the same direction:

1. The core books must teach legitimately brand-new players how to play (that's how the hobby grows, rather than, y'know, dying out)
2. The core books must be smooth and easy-to-use for old hands who just want to Get Stuff Done and don't want to faff about (which is what the vast majority of people actually playing the game really need)

It's one reason why IMO there should be a fourth...call it "optional core" book, published after the previous three: Rules Cyclopedia. A dense, no-nonsense, rigorously organized reference manual for the game. None of this "gently ease players into play". Fill it to the brim with rules, options, variants, etc. No magic items (except as part of "make your own items" rules, if present). No monsters (except to illustrate "build your own monster" rules). No spells (except as part of "make your own spells" rules, if present). Etc. Cut the chaff, focus on the most important bits. Reduce the internal art content if necessary, though I'd prefer not to do that because art is just...nice to have.

Cut and dried, THE reference manual if you want to Do Xth Edition Things. Re-issue it every (say) 5 years with all errata directly implemented into the text (perhaps leave ample blank space to account for such alterations?) You don't need to buy the re-issue, it's just more convenient for people just getting in.

Sort of like how one might say that Lost Mine of Phandelver isn't technically a core book, but is a relatively well-made adventure and was the very first adventure specifically published for 5e (included in the Starter Set).

This way, the tone and style of the PHB and DMG can be geared specifically for teaching, introducing, helping the new folks, while the RC and MM can be relatively cut-and-dried, to-the-point reference manuals for folks who want an eminently usable book that won't throw a mess of unnecessary verbiage at them when they just need to answer simple mechanical questions.

 

[MothMayI]

If you don’t need that, great. Many new players have a much easier time learning the rules when it does tell them those things rather than leaving it unsaid.

Many experienced players find the reminder useful, or simply use keywords in rules as a way to more quickly scan and understand something they couldn’t recall from memory, etc.

Utilize and Magic actions are a perfect example of keywords adding an unnecessary obfuscation to simple things, Utilize especially.

Items and things that require your action to use in 2014 5e already specify that they do so. They don't need a specific term to tell you that, and having that term may give the impression of added complexity when there really isn't.

2024 5e has the perfect example of such a thing. What happens when you're below half of your max HP? Well, nothing at all, really. But actually you're "Bloodied" which does...nothing at all. Until you have any sort of feature that interacts with that condition.

The problem there is that if you have something that only takes effect in the rare situation you have something that interacts with it...why is it a condition to track? In 2014 5e, they just directly state when a feature takes effects for creatures below half health. In 2024 5e, if you don't have this niche condition memorized, you then have to look up what "Bloodied" is to determine when a feature applies.

I suspect this sort of thing didn't cross the designers' minds because they were envisioning the new books around the ability to hyperlink definitions where needed. It's an obvious contributor to many of the issues with the 2024 books' readability.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The eternal tension between two goals that do not always point in the same direction:

1. The core books must teach legitimately brand-new players how to play (that's how the hobby grows, rather than, y'know, dying out)
2. The core books must be smooth and easy-to-use for old hands who just want to Get Stuff Done and don't want to faff about (which is what the vast majority of people actually playing the game really need)

It's one reason why IMO there should be a fourth...call it "optional core" book, published after the previous three: Rules Cyclopedia. A dense, no-nonsense, rigorously organized reference manual for the game. None of this "gently ease players into play". Fill it to the brim with rules, options, variants, etc. No magic items (except as part of "make your own items" rules, if present). No monsters (except to illustrate "build your own monster" rules). No spells (except as part of "make your own spells" rules, if present). Etc. Cut the chaff, focus on the most important bits. Reduce the internal art content if necessary, though I'd prefer not to do that because art is just...nice to have.

Cut and dried, THE reference manual if you want to Do Xth Edition Things. Re-issue it every (say) 5 years with all errata directly implemented into the text (perhaps leave ample blank space to account for such alterations?) You don't need to buy the re-issue, it's just more convenient for people just getting in.

Sort of like how one might say that Lost Mine of Phandelver isn't technically a core book, but is a relatively well-made adventure and was the very first adventure specifically published for 5e (included in the Starter Set).

This way, the tone and style of the PHB and DMG can be geared specifically for teaching, introducing, helping the new folks, while the RC and MM can be relatively cut-and-dried, to-the-point reference manuals for folks who want an eminently usable book that won't throw a mess of unnecessary verbiage at them when they just need to answer simple mechanical questions.

While I agree with having a rules cyclopedia, and never opened a PHB once I had the essentials one in 4e, the 2024 core books do a vastly better job of being good for both reference and for noob-teaching than some folks would apperently have you believe.

Utilize and Magic actions are a perfect example of keywords adding an unnecessary obfuscation to simple things, Utilize especially.

Items and things that require your action to use in 2014 5e already specify that they do so. They don't need a specific term to tell you that, and having that term may give the impression of added complexity when there really isn't.

2024 5e has the perfect example of such a thing. What happens when you're below half of your max HP? Well, nothing at all, really. But actually you're "Bloodied" which does...nothing at all. Until you have any sort of feature that interacts with that condition.

The problem there is that if you have something that only takes effect in the rare situation you have something that interacts with it...why is it a condition to track? In 2014 5e, they just directly state when a feature takes effects for creatures below half health. In 2024 5e, if you don't have this niche condition memorized, you then have to look up what "Bloodied" is to determine when a feature applies.

I suspect this sort of thing didn't cross the designers' minds because they were envisioning the new books around the ability to hyperlink definitions where needed. It's an obvious contributor to many of the issues with the 2024 books' readability.

Nah. Keywords make reference easier. That’s it. Having a bloodied condition allows for more efficient future development of rules elements that interact with being bloodied.
It also allows for something in the future to ignore or induce or reference the condition outside its normal context, with having to input a whole extra sentence explaining how it works. Instead, you just “gain the bloodied condition on a failed save” anytime this particular monster gets a crit or uses its special Rend attack, and then the monster (and its fellow XYZ monsters) has advantage on attacks against bloodied targets. This fits on a statblock with very very very little text, and adds a tactical dimension to combat with the special type of that monster and its baseline versions.

Say Gnolls and a flind, would be perfect to have this setup. All Gnolls get advantage on attacks against bloodied targets, and flinds get the ability to bloody you even when you aren’t at half HP. This is evocative and tactically interesting, especially if say, hyenas and Gnolls can also smell blood and thus this means you can’t escape them once bloodied.

That the designers underutilized a very handy conditional keyword in this case is a different issue, not a problem with keywords. The keyword itself is fantastic.


As for the Utilize action and Magic action, this is literally just “use an object” and “cast a spell” but more efficient and better for future development. It doesn’t obfuscate anything, it future proofs those actions against ambiguity, and makes for clearer reference and rules definition.

 

[Clint_L]

Yeah, having used it for some time now, I concur with the OP - the shift to more manual-like, keyword driven language does not make the game easier and makes the prose uglier. It feels like a concession to the more game-ist philosophy, and I don’t like it. I prefer my TTRPGs to err on the side of DM interpretation and common sense.

 

[MothMayI]

Nah. Keywords make reference easier. That’s it. Having a bloodied condition allows for more efficient future development of rules elements that interact with being bloodied.
It also allows for something in the future to ignore or induce or reference the condition outside its normal context, with having to input a whole extra sentence explaining how it works. Instead, you just “gain the bloodied condition on a failed save” anytime this particular monster gets a crit or uses its special Rend attack, and then the monster (and its fellow XYZ monsters) has advantage on attacks against bloodied targets. This fits on a statblock with very very very little text, and adds a tactical dimension to combat with the special type of that monster and its baseline versions.

Say Gnolls and a flind, would be perfect to have this setup. All Gnolls get advantage on attacks against bloodied targets, and flinds get the ability to bloody you even when you aren’t at half HP. This is evocative and tactically interesting, especially if say, hyenas and Gnolls can also smell blood and thus this means you can’t escape them once bloodied.

So here's the problem with what you're suggesting.

You want to use the Bloodied condition to trigger a creature feature. You then want to be able to impose the Bloodied condition under special circumstances to make that feature more threatening. So you hit a PC with an attack, they fail a save and are now "Bloodied" without being below half HP—

—oh, and now they're regenerating HP up to their maximum, because they have a feature that allows them to recover HP each turn when Bloodied and is meant to only be able to heal them up to half HP.*

There's nothing that couldn't simply be written as "if creature is below half HP" rather than introducing a rarely-relevant keyword for such, and you can't do something that imposes the Bloodied condition under abnormal circumstances that doesn't consequentially trigger other effects tied to being Bloodied having the Bloodied condition and normally balanced around the typical circumstances of the condition.

*But to be frank, given other changes to the rules and features/magic items to allow egregious exploits, it wouldn't surprise me if something like this eventually became possible.

 

[The Firebird]

Oh, don't even get started on the mess that is stuff relating to those terms.

Remember that a melee attack, a melee weapon attack, a weapon attack, and an Attack are four completely different things.

("A melee attack" is a single instance of making an attack roll specifically as a melee thing, regardless of why you're making it, e.g. some spells have melee spell attacks. A melee weapon attack is a single instance of striking an opponent with a weapon, regardless of what the weapon is for normally. A weapon attack is any attack, ranged or melee or spell, that uses a weapon. An Attack is the use of the Attack action, which may involve up to five attacks, presuming a dual-wielding 20th level Fighter with the Nick mastery.)

5.0 has a vestigial keyword system, and it uses that system very clumsily in several places. 5.5 has an aggressively-pushed keyword system, and it uses that system very clumsily in several places.

I've heard a number of complaints about this online but in a decade of playing I've never seen it cause any confusion at the table.

 

[jayoungr]

It's one of those things where no matter which option you choose, a sizeable portion of the fanbase is going to dislike it. WotC just seems to be swinging back and forth on which group of fans are annoyed.

 

[Azzy]

It's one of those things where no matter which option you choose, a sizeable portion of the fanbase is going to dislike it. WotC just seems to be swinging back and forth on which group of fans are annoyed.

Yeah, there's no one-size-fits-all solution, so WotC just has to pick a lane like they have.

 

[MothMayI]

It's one of those things where no matter which option you choose, a sizeable portion of the fanbase is going to dislike it. WotC just seems to be swinging back and forth on which group of fans are annoyed.

I'd say this isn't really true, given that if people have been playing 5e, they're obviously fine with natural-language rules writing. It's clearly not a deal-breaker for them.

Heck, the switch to Keyword rules Writing might not even be an issue for many if it wasn't for them taking the third option of "change the style and do it poorly".

(I think it is telling of the design philosophy that they felt the need to make this style change when clearly the vast majority of players have no problem with how the rules were previously written, but still there is a subset of players who think it makes the rules Better to be written in this fashion.)