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<blockquote data-quote="MothMayI" data-source="post: 9626979" data-attributes="member: 7051957">It says something of the design philosophy of 2024 5e that the most successful edition of 5e ever made use of natural language...but the designers feel the need to rewrite everything to be keyword-based. Keywords don't make rules easier to follow, especially for a complex game like a TTRPG. Bring thorough is what makes rules legible and applicable. If anything, natural language makes rules more inclined to be written in a coherent fashion, since you only need to think about the face value of what words mean rather than the mechanical definition you're giving them. Conversely, Capitalized Terms give the impression of more complex rules behind them, which can make things more difficult to understand especially for new players. A &quot;melee weapon&quot; is self-explanatory, but what is a &quot;Melee weapon&quot;? What significance, if any, does the term &quot;Melee&quot; have?If anything, 2024 5e is a confusing mess because it was rewritten sloppily to revolve around keywords without thoroughly editing the end result. According to the keyword definitions 2024 5e uses, improvised weapons can never actually be used as weapons—they aren't &quot;weapons&quot; in the sense that they appear in the Simple or Martial weapon categories, and thus anything that lets you make an attack with a &quot;weapon&quot; is incompatible with improvised weapons. Most monsters can't use their attacks as opportunity attacks because they don't fit the definitions of &quot;melee weapon&quot; or &quot;Unarmed Strike&quot;.The irony is that the designers would have been far better off taking the language they were already using and giving those terms definitions players could reference. Get rid of the confusion regarding &quot;melee/ranged weapon attack&quot; vs. &quot;attack with a melee/ranged weapon&quot;, for instance. Instead, the end result is confusing and contradictory, with errors they really should have been aware of before it went to printing.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="MothMayI, post: 9626979, member: 7051957"] It says something of the design philosophy of 2024 5e that the most successful edition of 5e ever made use of natural language...but the designers feel the need to rewrite everything to be keyword-based. Keywords don't make rules easier to follow, especially for a complex game like a TTRPG. Bring thorough is what makes rules legible and applicable. If anything, natural language makes rules more inclined to be written in a coherent fashion, since you only need to think about the face value of what words mean rather than the mechanical definition you're giving them. Conversely, Capitalized Terms give the impression of more complex rules behind them, which can make things more difficult to understand especially for new players. A "melee weapon" is self-explanatory, but what is a "Melee weapon"? What significance, if any, does the term "Melee" have? If anything, 2024 5e is a confusing mess because it was rewritten sloppily to revolve around keywords without thoroughly editing the end result. According to the keyword definitions 2024 5e uses, improvised weapons can never actually be used as weapons—they aren't "weapons" in the sense that they appear in the Simple or Martial weapon categories, and thus anything that lets you make an attack with a "weapon" is incompatible with improvised weapons. Most monsters can't use their attacks as opportunity attacks because they don't fit the definitions of "melee weapon" or "Unarmed Strike". The irony is that the designers would have been far better off taking the language they were already using and giving those terms definitions players could reference. Get rid of the confusion regarding "melee/ranged weapon attack" vs. "attack with a melee/ranged weapon", for instance. Instead, the end result is confusing and contradictory, with errors they really should have been aware of before it went to printing. [/QUOTE]

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