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

[Warpiglet-7]

We played for almost 10 years before we even know there were miniatures and grids!!!
The "map" was tissue paper swiss cheese at the end of a session with all of the erasing!!!

I remember getting some metal minis in college but thought it was really cool that I used a d4 as a campfire in the middle of the table…

Theater of the mind with the most basic props…I do recall using dice for characters marching order.

Love minis now though…love terrain but some
Of the most fun ever was paper and pencil and dice alone

 

[KYRON45]

I remember getting some metal minis in college but thought it was really cool that I used a d4 as a campfire in the middle of the table…

Theater of the mind with the most basic props…I do recall using dice for characters marching order.

Love minis now though…love terrain but some
Of the most fun ever was paper and pencil and dice alone

3d printers have changed the landscape for sure.*

*this may or may not have been an intentional pun.

 

[Oofta]

All these stories of fancy pants buttons and pennies(!), bah. We weren't no Beverly Hills rich kids! Back in my day we used scraps of paper with our character initials on them* and a string made out of bark fibers to measure distance! For monsters we used rocks and if you somehow managed to kill the monster you ate it! And we liked it!

*about the only 100% true part of this particular rant

 

[Micah Sweet]

I totally get it. I'm just saying WotC saw it as a bug not a feature.

The fact that WotC sees stuff like this as a bug to be corrected is the entire reason for this thread.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is my problem. Most players who think they are being creative with Command aren't looking for the target to just fall prone or waste their turn doing nothing. The suggested (now legal) commands do that. They want the target to do something beyond the bounds of the spell, either as an attempt to deal significantly more damage than a level 1 spell can do (such as falling damage, breathing poison or drowning) or they are looking to ridicule a foe with toilet humor. The second group is not my cup of granny's peach tea, but if you want to waste a level one spell on a prank, that's not my problem. The first group, who think that Command will end encounters or deal more damage than fireball are the ones that get me. Because they always seem so angry when their carefully selected verb doesn't do more than the half-dozen options in the book and most of that clever play doesn't mean more than a dozen different ways to say "run" or "stop".

I'm in the third group, who just wants effects that say they do a certain thing to actually do that thing, by the standards of the setting.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I now provide to you the guidance of the most holy of scriptures, the 1e PHB and DMG!


From the hallowed Handbook of the Players, blessed be its presence as a libram for all adventurers!

Wish spell (p. 94)
Regardless of what is wished for, the exact terminology of the wish spell is likely to be carried through. (This discretionary power of the referee is necessary in order to maintain game balance. As wishing another character dead would be grossly unfair, for example, your DM might well advance the spell caster to a future period where the object is no longer alive, i.e. putting the wishing character out of the campaign.)

From the Guide to the Dungeon Masters! Do not forget the magic incantation or the most unholy of vengeance shall be loosed upon you!*

Ring of Multiple Wishes (p. 130)
As with any wish, you must be very judicious in how you handle the request. If players are greedy and grasping, be sure to ”crock” them. Interpret their wording exactly, twist the wording, or simply rule the request is beyond the power of the magic. In any case, the wish is used up, whether or not (or how) the wish was granted.


*

View attachment 377248


Ask not what the wish can do for you, ask how the wish can screw you.
-DM John F. Kennedy, asking for a jelly donut.

Still good advice as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Daztur]

I'd be surprised if it were that early, for that 5e has to fizzle out considerably in the next 3 years or so. I doubt we can see a new edition before 2032, if then

Upthread someone quoted a WotC statement that they started puttering about with 5.5e pretty much as soon as 5e hit the presses. I expect that they'll be starting the spitballing stage of 6e sometime next year and whether that stays on the backburner to get turned into something publishable a decade from now or gets turned into a priority to get published sooner depends on how well 5.5e does. Looking at the most casual bits of D&D social media (r/DnD) I just don't see much enthusiasm for 5.5e. On r/DnD I had to scroll ALL the way down to the 57th "hottest" post on r/DnD to see ANY mention of 5.5e whatsoever. On the other hand there doesn't seem to be much backlash like there was with 4e. Really too early to tell.

It's not fun for me. It just isn't. It's players trying to game the system, rather than actually playing the game. People can tell me how much fun this is until the cows come home. I have zero interest in playing amateur game designer in the middle of a game session. Vague, open ended effects are simply poor game design as far as I'm concerned.

"Why, there are no children here at the 4H club, either! Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong.”

I just find it puzzling that when faced with "literally dozens" of players finding the sort of play I'm talking about fun across decades and in campaign after campaign after campaign...you decide that the best thing for the game is for the designers to step in and change the rules so that this sort of fun is stamped out from D&D instead of...letting the players have some fun?

I mean, we don't allow this for anything other than magical effects in the game. Ever. I'm not allowed to cut off someone's hand with a great axe. Full stop. There is literally no rules in 5e D&D that let me disable a monster's claw attack. Despite the fact that there should be. If I ask the DM, "Hey, can I disable the creature's claw attack instead of dealing damage?" No DM would ever allow it. Just not going to happen.

I would. I'd totally play ball with this kind of called shot. Have done so in the past, will do so again in the future.

Trojan horsing a martials vs. magicals argument into here is a meaningless distraction. It doesn't just move the goalposts, it imagines we're playing a whole different sport. Stay on target.

No, I think he does have a point here. It's generally easier to MacGyver magical effects than martial effects. That means that if you have a campaign full of MacGyver tactics it can boost magic classes. My solution to that is to beat the magical classes upside the head with the nerf bat hard enough to balance out their more flexible powers. Alternate solutions where martials are given more MacGyver-friendly mythical hero powers are also viable. But it CAN be a problem when both martials and casters have a sledgehammer but casters ALSO have a Swiss army knife.

Because, as he has said easily a dozen times in this thread already:

It's not once. If it really were once or twice across an entire campaign, it wouldn't be an issue.

It's over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over. Spell after spell after spell after spell.

Another one for the feature, not bug file I guess. I love this kind of stuff as a DM.

Rolemaster is great for offering a huge number of spells, many of which can be extremely niche, while others are slight variants of other spells. It works great, but if I want that, I'll play RM. If I'm playing D&D, I want more powerful spells in limited numbers, with a motivation to find versatile and interesting uses for them. I love DMing for a 1e Illusionist PC.

Like I said upthread, I find a lot of D&D illusions a bit too open-ended to be my favorite stuff to DM. I like the strict limits and the narrow power of Command, hits a real sweet spot for me.

In the unlikely event I ever wanted to run a 3e-era d20 game again, Mongoose Conan would be the game.

If you haven't checked out Mongoose Conan 2e give it a look, it's a great upgrade to the magic system and replaces the gamey "defensive blast" with a whole slew of panic button options that are much more flavorful, one for each school of magic.

If I was less lazy I'd make a 5e-ized version of Mongoose Conan as it has so many great ideas and I absolutely adore its magic system but all of its 3.5e-isms (naughty word skill synergies etc. etc. etc.) get annoying after a while.

1e and 4e both told DMs how the game was assumed to work. Then DMs know how to change game to how the the tables want....

The problem with 4e was that the way that the game was assumed to work wasn't much fun (see Keep on the Shadowfell). A bit later people on rpg.net and elsewhere found some really fun ways to play 4e (focused more on large but few epic battles and rejecting attritional gameplay) but I don't think 4e does a very good job of teaching people to play 4e in the most fun way possible.

There's a vast difference between open ended gameplay and trying to do things with spells like command that are clearly more effective than the example, and what I consider obvious intent, of the spell.

Your example of defenestrate (a word I had to look up and doubt many people would know) is an prime example. For those who can't be bothered to pull up dictionary.com the meaning is "to throw (a person or thing) out of a window". So you mean it to throw themselves out the window. Why? Why not a handy object or other person like the PC that is near them? You're using it as a one turn dominate person where you seem to be defining exactly how the command is carried out.

Part of the fun of the game for me is working within the limitations of the rules of the game to still be effective. I don't try to push the envelope of what a spell or power does because it's just not necessary. Nor for me whether I'm playing the caster, another PC or the DM, is it fun.

Huh? Defenestrate means to throw something out the window. If a player casts Command: Defenestrate the NPC will throw something random out the window. Don't see the problem here, it's the spell working exactly as intended. No, they won't jump out the window. That's not what defenestrate means and that conflicts with the rules of the spell anyway (unless the window is so close off the ground that it won't hurt them to jump out of it).

Throwing some random object out the window is popular?

If you only learned it because people were using it as a command word, it's an exploit. It also likely wouldn't work when I DM because the target of the spell has to understand what the heck the word means. Even then, the target gets to decide how to follow that command.

How is getting an NPC to throw something random out the window an exploit? That seems perfectly in keeping with the intent of the spell.

 

[Lanefan]

To each his own I guess.

To me, this is the absolute number one thing I hate about DMing D&D.

And I don't think I'm quite as alone here as all that. Because, as a player or as a DM, I've noticed that those "open ended" spells are either top of DM's banned lists, or are just not taken by players. I mean, sure, illusions are great on paper. But, how many illusion spells (and I mean straight up creating image spells, not simply stuff like invisibility or hypnotic patern) have you seen cast in, say, the last ten sessions you played or ran

None, sadly, mostly because there's so few Illusionists in play. My own game hasn't seen one since about 2019, other than in a one-off all-star game in 2023. There's one in the game I play in but because the player tends not to think beyond direct damage and Illusionists have been given a few more direct-damage options in our game, she never bothers with illusions any more.

Me? None. The players never use them because they're just too random. Who knows how they're going to be adjudicated? Is it going to be done with the intent of the game? Or is it going to be nothing but Monkey Paws all the way down.

They don't get cast here either but that's not the reason why.

It's the reason I see players come to my table who will spend two hours trying to word a wish because they automatically assume that the DM will try to weasel out of it.

Depends on what's being wished for. If someone's being greedy or trying to do something ridiculous I'll twist those words into knots. If someone's trying to do something relatively simple and not overpowered it'll work as intended every time.

Last night's session was a perfect example. The party enters a temple of Vecna and there's an ongoing ritual going on. Lots of chanting and whatnot. Party Psi-fighter uses his flying power to fly into the room, which triggers the ongoing Mass Suggestion effect for anyone entering.

Me: Ok, you failed your save. The suggestion is to sit down and start praying.
Player: Ok, well, I'm in mid air, so, I stop and sit down in mid air. When my turn is up, I fall and take damage, so, I get another saving throw.
Me: Facepalm.

Why, though? You've got a player willingly taking damage to his character, which is great; and if all it gives is another save then so what? Never mind that if he lands on someone when he falls that could cause its own headaches...

Yeah, as DM I could have fun with that scenario!

It's exactly that sort of crap that I detest. Cheesemonkey weaseling out of effects because I didn't write a freaking ten page contract in order to give the exact wording of the Suggestion.

Meh, to me this one's not a cheesemonkey. That whoever cast the Mass Suggestion didn't take flight into consideration is reasonable, and good on the player for coming up with a possibly-valid workaround.

And I guarantee that if I did it the other way - if the party had cast the Suggestion and I did that, they'd be the first ones to cry foul.

Maybe so, but what's good for the goose...

 

[Oofta]

..
Huh? Defenestrate means to throw something out the window. If a player casts Command: Defenestrate the NPC will throw something random out the window. Don't see the problem here, it's the spell working exactly as intended. No, they won't jump out the window. That's not what defenestrate means and that conflicts with the rules of the spell anyway (unless the window is so close off the ground that it won't hurt them to jump out of it).



How is getting an NPC to throw something random out the window an exploit? That seems perfectly in keeping with the intent of the spell.

If all someone is doing is throwing some random object out the window then it's just wasting an action. You'd be better with grovel which makes them prone and wastes half their move standing next round. But that's not what the post I was responding to was saying, it was that the target would throw themselves out the window.

 

[mamba]

Upthread someone quoted a WotC statement that they started puttering about with 5.5e pretty much as soon as 5e hit the presses. I expect that they'll be starting the spitballing stage of 6e sometime next year and whether that stays on the backburner to get turned into something publishable a decade for now or gets turned into a priority to get published sooner depends on how well 5.5e does.

it will definitely depend on how well 2024 does, but at a minimum I am expecting one ‘of Everything’ book before they call it quits. That probably will be late 2026 / early 27 and they won’t wrap the version up right after that either, so a 6e playtest before 2029 is imo unlikely, and at that point they won’t make a print release in 2030.

As to WotC having started on the next version in 2014, I doubt that was much more than collecting topics to look into at a later stage and maybe some brainstorming. They certainly have not been refining the 2024 version for 10 years.

Really too early to tell.

yes, too early to say definitively, but I would bet against the next edition being released in 2030 based on what I ‘know’ today