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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9442998" data-attributes="member: 42582">You quoted me saying the following:That says nothing about malice on anyone's part. It quotes the rule, notes that the rule does not refer to player or to character intent, and infers that the target's behaviour should in some fashion correlate to the word used.In my post just upthread I ask the question, why does the command "drop" cause the target to drop what they are holding rather than to themself drop to the floor/ground? The spell description doesn't answer this question. That's not a proposition about anyone's malice - it's just a simple observation about the rules text.My primary argument is simple: to take the view that action economy and spell level matter for damage-dealing spells, but not for other spell effects, in a RPG that is one of the most pedantic ever written as far as those sorts of things are concerned, makes no sense. And to put the onus of ensuring the proper working and balance of those things onto the GM, in the moment of play, is poor design.My secondary argument is also pretty simple: the magic clearly does not depend upon the caster's intent (because the caster might say "drop" intending the target to drop to the ground, yet the effect will be that the target drops what they are holding) nor upon the target's interpretation of what is said (because the target might hear the command "drop" and interpret that as meaning that they should drop to the ground, yet the effect will be to drop what they are holding). The magic depends upon some sort of "objective" meaning of the command uttered. Which means that "creative" uses depend upon the GM deciding what, in the fiction, is the "objective" meaning of some or other uttered command. But also has to do so in the context of the spell forbidding directly harmful commands. This is a challenging task, which in my view is a recipe for friction at the table.I think the spell would be better if it specified the parameters of victim action that can be affected (movement; action denial; no direct harm) and then said that command will take effect within those parameters, as intended by the caster, and offered a few examples to illustrate.A one-round dominate effect could then also be spelled out expressly, as a spell of the appropriate level (presumably 2nd or 3rd level? in 4e D&D Command is a 3rd level cleric power that combines action denial with knocking prone or forced movement; and one-round dominate is a 5th level bard power).</blockquote>

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