D&D 5E On rulings, rules, and Twitter, or: How Sage Advice Changed

[Asisreo]

Sage Advice has, in my opinion, done more harm than good. I don't think its necessarily Crawford's fault, though the books absolutely could have been written much better and clearly.

Its probably because its been popularized. People are really really intent on being able to prove their interpretations right and a source from the divine creator is almost unarguable when they themselves say "What I say is official help."

Some people ask Crawford loaded questions to get the answer they want to throw at their fellow player's face. Some people took a tweet out of context and made it a law that no one dares argue. Heck, if things are even alluded to be the case by Mike Mearls or Jeremy Crawford 7 years ago (has it been that long?) then its unquestionable fact.

It leads to what I consider to be a newer wave of toxicity in the TTRPG format. Its almost like people were told they couldn't be sexist/racist but they still needed to be hateful and validate themselves at the expense of others.

 

[overgeeked]

Well, more specifically, the second interpretation is that it it takes a full 60 minutes total of fighting and any other strenuous activity. So, yes, you could hypothetically fight for 59 minutes under that interpretation, as long as you don’t spend a single minute doing anything else strenuous.

Right. That's the interpretation put forth by Sage Advice. Hence my calling it out when the poster upthread said: "Sage advice is still useful for sane and common sense gaming." The "59 minutes and 59 seconds of combat does not break a long rest" interpretation is neither sane nor common sense.

 

[Charlaquin]

Right. That's the interpretation put forth by Sage Advice. Hence my calling it out when the poster upthread said: "Sage advice is still useful for sane and common sense gaming." The "59 minutes and 59 seconds of combat does not break a long rest" interpretation is neither sane nor common sense.

Yeah, I got that that was the intent of your post, and I found it amusing (hence the “laugh”). I don’t agree that it isn’t a common sense interpretation, but I do agree that it’s an excellent illustration of why the assertion “Sage Advice is useful for common sense gaming” doesn’t hold up, and I’d rather this thread not devolve into an argument about breaking long rests. The RAW is ambiguous, Sage Advice is not a good source for RAI (anymore), so I say play by whatever interpretation you think is RAF.

 

[Krachek]

Right. That's the interpretation put forth by Sage Advice. Hence my calling it out when the poster upthread said: "Sage advice is still useful for sane and common sense gaming." The "59 minutes and 59 seconds of combat does not break a long rest" interpretation is neither sane nor common sense.

so how many fight while trying to long rest is sane? One, two, three, four, ten?

 

[Charlaquin]

so how many fight while trying to long rest is sane? One, two, three, four, ten?

Can we not have this argument here, please? There are two valid interpretations of the text on long rests: that it is interrupted by any amount of combat, or that it takes a total of one hour of any strenuous activity, including combat, to interrupt it. If you want to argue about which one is “sane” or “common sense,” please do so in another thread.

 

[Krachek]

Can we not have this argument here, please? There are two valid interpretations of the text on long rests: that it is interrupted by any amount of combat, or that it takes a total of one hour of any strenuous activity, including combat, to interrupt it. If you want to argue about which one is “sane” or “common sense,” please do so in another thread.

Ok, i won’t debating on text, I will just state that Allowing Party to have long rest is sane for the game and the fun of the players. So being smooth on long rest is a good advice to Dm.

 

[Oofta]

I take SA with a grain of salt. Sometimes I follow it, sometimes I don't.

As far as whether the rules could have been better, of course they could have been. They could always be better. If you want to see what a hot mess can be made out of rules for D&D, look no further than 1E. Gygax had some good ideas but being clear, concise and consistent was not his strong suit.

 

[Shiroiken]

they still needed to be hateful and validate themselves at the expense of others.

Isn't this the definition of Reddit?

 

[FarBeyondC]

What if I told you that the point of 5e's rules being written in natural language was to allow for ambiguity / multiple interpretations, and people's insistence on trying to get an "official" interpretation of the rules was completely missing the point of the rules being written that way to begin with?

 

[Blue]

I don't trust anything on twitter... nor do I have a convenient way to access it, as I have no twitter account and it doesn't like privacy browsers.

If WOTC wanted it to be treated as official communication, they'd host it on their own website instead of a microblogging platform known for politically slanted toxicity.

You're in luck - WotC doesn't treat the twitter as official.

On the other hand, the Sage Advice Compendium, a vetted PDF updated a few times a year, they have explicitly declared as official.

Now, if your table doesn't want to use it, that's always fine like with any source. But absent that, a player may refer to it, since it is considered official, just like the PH.

 

[overgeeked]

What if I told you that the point of 5e's rules being written in natural language was to allow for ambiguity / multiple interpretations, and people's insistence on trying to get an "official" interpretation of the rules was completely missing the point of the rules being written that way to begin with?

I’d tell you that either the designers missed the point of writing a rulebook for a game in that game rules shouldn’t be ambiguous or they missed the point of their own stance on letting DMs decide by putting out something like Sage Advice.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

What if I told you that the point of 5e's rules being written in natural language was to allow for ambiguity / multiple interpretations, and people's insistence on trying to get an "official" interpretation of the rules was completely missing the point of the rules being written that way to begin with?

My response would have been that the rules should have been a lot lighter if that was their design goal. Like, Whitehack levels of light.

 

[Campbell]

What if I told you that it is possible to write rules in a way that allows for GM judgement while still having clear and concise rules? You just specifically call out areas where GMs are expected to exercise their judgment.

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

Crawford's tweets haven't been official rulings for ages


Over two years

 

[pukunui]

What gets me is how they weren’t going to use errata to change the rules ... but they’ve now done that a number of times, like with the beast master ranger (not that it didn’t need it).

 

[Charlaquin]

Crawford's tweets haven't been official rulings for ages


Over two years

No they haven’t, but that hasn’t stopped people from treating them as official, sometimes in the same breath as they say “I know this isn’t ‘official’ but...”

My broader point was that it seems the approach has shifted over time from clearing up ambiguities and giving insight on developer intent, to pure technical readings of RAW.

 

[tetrasodium]

Remind me, how much combat breaks a long rest?

I believe that PHB16pegs the lowest possible number of rounds at

Spoiler: no joke, six hundred

10 rounds per minute, 60 minutes per hour

in order to basically immediately recover all spent hit points spell slots & class abilities expended over the last umpteen many sessions

 

[Charlaquin]

What gets me is how they weren’t going to use errata to change the rules ... but they’ve now done that a number of times, like with the beast master ranger (not that it didn’t need it).

Yeah, I threw that bit in at the end cause it was kind of orthogonal to my thesis, but it is really interesting to read “It would be inappropriate for the design team to use errata as a way to redesign the game,” and then see the way they’ve done exactly that with the ranger, and with several races. And like you said, it isn’t as if those changes weren’t merited. But I can’t help but think there’d be a 6e by now if they had stuck to this approach to errata.

 

[Parmandur]

What if I told you that the point of 5e's rules being written in natural language was to allow for ambiguity / multiple interpretations, and people's insistence on trying to get an "official" interpretation of the rules was completely missing the point of the rules being written that way to begin with?

Exactly this.

 

[cbwjm]

Crawford's tweets haven't been official rulings for ages


Over two years

This is largely the reason why I ignore the ruling on magic missile where you roll once for each missile. Well, that, and the fact that we've always rolled for each missile. Even if it showed up in the sage advice compendium I'd ignore it.