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.