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

[Micah Sweet]

So is it "DM malice" if a DM decides that the NPC targeted by a command responds in the way the player did not intend?

If it makes sense for the fiction, then no, probably not.

 

[pemerton]

They do lose the creativity of an open end on the spell. You can dismiss it, if you wish. But there is an objective restriction when you "restrict" the spell.

There are things that can't be done, sure. I don't concede that that reduces creativity.

If the spell is intended to be one-round dominate, it should be straightforward to spell it out as such. But I think it clearly is not intended in that way: it doesn't permit "Attack" as a command (does it?). But why is that not acceptable?

 

[Oofta]

They do lose the creativity of an open end on the spell. You can dismiss it, if you wish. But there is an objective restriction when you "restrict" the spell.



Sorry if I messed up and incorrectly quoted you.




Malice is based on the intent behind the action. Without knowing intent you cannot know if there was malice. This is a part of the word "malice" as seen in the definition; "the intention or desire to do evil; ill will."

But you haven't answered my question which basically comes down to "Who decides what malice is?"

A PC targets an NPC with a command, the command does not have the effect the player desired. Is that malice? Because we've had people state that if the NPC doesn't do what the player intended it's malice because the DM is taking away the player's creativity.

Turning in around, an NPC targets a PC with a command, the DM decides what the PC does, is that malice? Because I've given my example of when that happened to me and it was decided that the DM was a bad actor.

Take an example. The command "jump" while on a ship. Can the target decide it means jump straight up? Does the caster get to decide it means jump off the ship? Because I've seen people say that if I were a DM that said "swim" doesn't mean they jump in a nearby body of water and swim the DM is the bad guy. When I related the story of the DM telling me "jump" meant jump off the boat, the DM was the bad guy. But they're basically the same thing.

It's easy to say that it works just fine if there are no bad actors, but what does that really mean?

 

[pemerton]

If it makes sense for the fiction, then no, probably not.

But what is the fiction of Command? Is it mind control? Hypnotism (in the pulp sense)? Speaker's intent? Listener's intent? Some "objective" meaning? (Upthread someone, I think @ECMO3, mentioned "literal" meaning - but the "literal" meaning of the command "drop" is not confined to dropping stuff you are holding.)

The fiction is incompletely specified. Which is unsurprising, given that the spell rule is intended as instructions for adjudicating a game move, not a treatise on the magic of an imaginary world.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The purpose it serves is to remove the need for the GM to make complex decisions about the balance of the spell economy vs the action economy during the moment of play.

It does not presume bad faith to take the view that a game with multiple intricate and interacting economies - action economy, rationed spell slots of varying levels intended to reflect spell power, etc - should tell the participants how those economies work, rather than rely upon the GM to establish and maintain the economy on a moment-to-moment basis.

The game notoriously doesn't do that for straightforward combat - the creative action declaration "I chop off the Orc's head!" gets resolved simply as an attack which if it hits does the appropriate weapon dice of damage. (Which contrasts with RPGs that are able to resolve that action declaration literally.) It's a sheer oddity that there is a history of treating non damage-dealing spells differently.

This isn't true in general. I mean, D&D has always had an action economy that regulates the number of attacks a player can declare for their character per round. That is a pretty precise specification of actions! Would the game involve more creativity if there were no action economy? I don't know of any argument that it would.

If the Command spell is limited to a specified suite of effects (whether a list of commands, or a list of parameters of action that can be effected - eg movement + action denial) then player can be as creative as they like in deploying those effects.

As others have said, these are not primarily "fictional descriptors". They are guidelines for resolution. They point towards some sort of fiction, but as @Remathilis has already said, they do not give a complete description of it.

I mean, in the case of the Command spell the fictional descriptor doesn't even tell us if the spell works via direct mind control, via hypnosis, via the victim treating the word as compelling, etc. Why does "drop" always cause the victim to drop an item that they are holding rather than to themselves drop to the floor/ground? The fictional descriptor provides no answer - it is radically incomplete.

Which requires the DM to fill in the blanks when those questions come up. I have no problem with that.

 

[pemerton]

Which requires the DM to fill in the blanks when those questions come up. I have no problem with that.

But upthread you said you do have a problem with filling in the blanks in Command, in Frisky Chest, etc in particular ways.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But what is the fiction of Command? Is it mind control? Hypnotism (in the pulp sense)? Speaker's intent? Listener's intent? Some "objective" meaning? (Upthread someone, I think @ECMO3, mentioned "literal" meaning - but the "literal" meaning of the command "drop" is not confined to dropping stuff you are holding.)

The fiction is incompletely specified. Which is unsurprising, given that the spell rule is intended as instructions for adjudicating a game move, not a treatise on the magic of an imaginary world.

More's the pity. We really need more treatises on the magic of imaginary worlds. I think it would clear a lot of this up.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But upthread you said you do have a problem with filling in the blanks in Command, in Frisky Chest, etc in particular ways.

I think it should be up to the DM, and the table, to fill in the blanks for spells like that. Beyond that, the spell tells you what it does, so anything that logically makes sense based on that description should, IMO, be allowed.

 

[Older Beholder]

Thanks to 5E’s philosophy of rulings over rules you can still use command for ideas outside those given in the 2024 book if that’s what your group wish to do.

 

[ECMO3]

The spell says it does rely on caster's intent or literal definition but DM's discretion. Wouldn't that more likely mean that it's how the creature interprets the word, likely the simplest interpretation?

I do not see that at all in the spell description. I see that you issue a command and it must follow it.

Grovel making a flying creature fall prone would cause it to harm itself which the spell would not allow.

I can see that arguement. I think the difference is in the wording of "directly"

I think command is intended to be a combat spell and making a creature do anything in combat is going to cause harm to it. Yes falling prone causes falling damage and harm, but then falling prone so that big Barbarian who is swinging his greatsword at you is going to cause harm to.

For me, usually I key on the word "directly" falling prone does not directly cause falling damage or damage from the Barbarian's greatsword. It is hitting the ground at the bottom or the greatsword hitting you that does that, but I realize there is a lot of interpretation on that.

My big thing with these sorts of uses are that they are situationally much more powerful than the spell would otherwise be, but as I noted above that is true of other 1st level spells in similar situations too.