And, again, your use of Goodberry is exactly as the spell is defined. How do you know that a Goodberry provides enough food for 24 hours? Because the spell description tells you so.
None of these examples are anything similar to rewording the definition of a spell to make it do something it normally couldn't do- like forcing a character to jump out a window of forcing a character to spend an action to change shape.
We've gone around and around this point on this thread but I literally DO NOT SEE the line that you're drawing here. I'm not trying to put on a rhetorical pose or be argumentative here I'm just confused.
When you compare:
A. Taking the exact reading into the exact wording of "the berry provides enough nourishment to sustain a creature for one day" an jumping from there to "so it must make you feel full, therefore it must make food that you eat after eating a goodberry less appetizing" needs several logical leaps and inferences to do something that the designers didn't really foresee or intend (giving you an edge on a pie baking contest).
B. Reading the spell description of Command and seeing in black and white "You might issue a command other than one described here. If you do so, the DM determines how the target behaves." and then doing exactly what the spell says to do.
I just cannot wrap my mind about A being fine despite it requiring a bit of MacGyvering and some logical leaps and B being bad when it's exactly what the spell text tells you to do. Now nothing in B makes people jump out of windows or turn into a werewolf, the black and white text says the DM determines what happens not the player.
Here's some Commands I've used personally:
-Climb
-Repent
-Spin
-Hug
-Throw
-Give
-Dismantle
-Dismount
I don't see how any of those are abusive, and when I cast them I just give the DM the single word, not an explanation of what I want the critter to do after hearing the word. What the DM does with that word is up to the DM.
I agree with what you are saying here and phrase it slightly differently: I want to be able to trust the mechanics so I can just get on with the game. It's the primary reason I left 2e for 3e - being able to trust the mechanics (the Frisky Chest example above is just the tiniest tip of a HUGE ice burg of nonsensical, contradictory and outright baffling mechanics that make up AD&D 1e and 2e). And, frankly, the biggest issues with 3e come from poorly worded or vague mechanics - how many versions of Polymorph were there?
Now, I do think 4e went too far. But, my bigger issue with 4e was the proliferation of fiddly bit mechanics that made play such a slog - constantly being interrupted by this or that power and the analysis paralysis of players combined with players who were... less than diligent about reading what their characters could actually do.
5e is a big improvement on D&D, IMO. But, one area where I think 5e could be better is cleaning up these legacy elements (and, if you look at most of these open ended effects, nearly all of them are legacy mechanics brought forward for the whole nostalgia trip that powered the early days of 5e) by tightening them up. Not choking them off. No one is calling for a Command spell that has one single result and nothing else. No one wants the 4e version of Command back. At least, I've never seen anyone claim to want that.
But I think that the 2024 version nicely splits the difference here. It makes the overhead on the DM less which, to me, should always be a goal of any mechanic. Within reason. Because I know, as soon as I post this, people will be quoting that and claiming that I hate creativity. To me, the 2024 version really is the compromise. We could go back to the 4e version where the effect is identical no matter how its used - target is dazed and can be slid 3 squares or knocked prone. Does anyone want that? I don't.
resist urge to go off on a rant about the problems with 3e mechanics
OK, if we lay things out as a spectrum with 1e on one end (very open-ended) and 4e on the other end (very locked down) then my preferences would be somewhere between 2e and 3e. 5e is faaaaaaaaaaaaaar to close to 4e to be ideal for me but I could put up with that annoyance, but then 5.5e takes another few steps towards 4e and the camel's back snapped for me.
Although there is some open-ended stuff in 5e they are really outnumbered by the more locked down effects. Looking at 1st level spells most are pretty locked down with only a handful like Catapult, Command, Disguise Self, and Unseen Servants having more open-ended effects. Similarly with class abilities there aren't that many that are open-ended although I do love Fast Hands and Performance of Creation. Later on the summon spells are very open ended since there are all kinds of things you can do with a horse besides attacking people with it. Most of these were targeted in 5.5e with WotC proposing gutting my beloved Fast Hands in a UA in a way that would've made my favorite 5e character completely unplayable before backing down. And yeah, I can understand 5e summons needing nerfing but summoning spells not summoning anything is just lame and they didn't even fix them being overpowered (the 5.5 summoning spells seem to keep popping up in DPS maxing combos) although they do make the action economy less borked (perhaps commanding summoned creatures should take your whole action to make the action economy less naughty word by summoning?).
We can argue where 5.5e lies on the spectrum between 0e and 4e, but certainly 5.5e is closer to 4e in this way (although not in other ways) than any other edition of D&D? As far as a mid-point on the spectrum I think 3.0e is about in the middle.