D&D (2024) Making spell descriptions less dense?

[Incenjucar]

Yeah, the urge to use engineering skill sets to interpret the abstraction of the game causes problems, especially when you start trying to make the rules match the conclusions. I know it's super hard to turn off that part of the brain sometimes, but the game is best served with things focusing on the story beats instead of the hypothetical (and often incorrect!) science as much as possible.
That said, a version of Knock that specifically also works on fasteners would be a great bard spell. :3

 

[tetrasodium]

How so?

There are a lot of areas that needed "the RAW isn't quite where we wanted it to be, this is what the RAI we were aiming for" like the included crawford blurb for the invisible condition or almost any of the druid rulings. Instead it too frequently doubled down on obviously bad wording when it didn't put out a ruling that was not at all supported by any of the RAW or plain reading. Too many of those & the GM is left with a late stage Jenga tower & a table of players who feel like there are a lot of arbitrary GM rulings with minimal if any logic behind them.

 

[Lojaan]

How so?

Because evidence - the internet is full of ways to exploit loopholes in the rules.

Also we don't need a notoriously inconsistent advice/opinion column. We need hard errata that is supported by and supports the game design principles.

 

[Mistwell]

Because evidence - the internet is full of ways to exploit loopholes in the rules.

Also we don't need a notoriously inconsistent advice/opinion column. We need hard errata that is supported by and supports the game design principles.

Almost every "rules exploit" turned out to be wrong. The internet will be full of false loopholes no matter what they write in the rules.

Also, you will have an advice and opinion column regardless of what is written in the rules. It's customer service for a TRPG company.

 

[Mistwell]

There are a lot of areas that needed "the RAW isn't quite where we wanted it to be, this is what the RAI we were aiming for" like the included crawford blurb for the invisible condition or almost any of the druid rulings. Instead it too frequently doubled down on obviously bad wording when it didn't put out a ruling that was not at all supported by any of the RAW or plain reading. Too many of those & the GM is left with a late stage Jenga tower & a table of players who feel like there are a lot of arbitrary GM rulings with minimal if any logic behind them.

It's been nearly a decade and in general that's not the state of the game (though as always the message board contingent varies from the norm) by the nature of message boards).

 

[tetrasodium]

It's been nearly a decade and in general that's not the state of the game (though as always the message board contingent varies from the norm) by the nature of message boards).

Huh? I'm not sure how that relates to my post did you quote the wrong post?

 

[Lojaan]

It's been nearly a decade and in general that's not the state of the game (though as always the message board contingent varies from the norm) by the nature of message boards).

Almost every "rules exploit" turned out to be wrong. The internet will be full of false loopholes no matter what they write in the rules.

Also, you will have an advice and opinion column regardless of what is written in the rules. It's customer service for a TRPG company.

If you are happy with how things are - good for you. This thread is for how things could improve.

 

[Mistwell]

If you are happy with how things are - good for you. This thread is for how things could improve.

This is not a general "how things are" thread. It' a specific topic. And I don't think a lot of people are unhappy about this specific topic. Some spells need to be improved but there isn't widespread complaint about the quantity of text used for spells.

 

[Branduil]

I think this is the entire idea behind sage advice?

Sage Advice isn't easily searchable, even putting aside the validity of every ruling. I think the idea here would be a group has an argument about a rule, looks it up online and gets the more-detailed version with examples and rulings.