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Message: <blockquote data-quote="doctorbadwolf" data-source="post: 9629039" data-attributes="member: 6704184">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. 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.</blockquote>

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