Presentaion of Spells: To Prose or Not To Prose?

[JSpades]

I think I prefer straight prose, since I found myself having to read descriptions in 3rd edition anyway; and find straight mechanics requiring no adjudication to be too... well, mechanical. The 5e spells I saw seemed very straightforward and elegant in their presentation. If anything, the main thing I think I missed from previous editions was a listing of required components. I always thought that was great flavor, in part because it was so ignorable and outside the straight crunch of the game.

In any case, I always had a piece of notebook paper to track my memorized spells in 3rd edition and Pathfinder, which I wrote down page numbers and whatever other info I felt I needed to know; and think there's usually enough time between turns in a normal-sized group to look up a spell and parse a paragraph. 4ed made things much simpler, but in a way I think grabbing for a book and reading through a spell got ingrained into me as part of the Wizard-playing experience from previous editions, and I found myself missing it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't care where they stick the spells; with the classes, in their own chapter or in an appendix. I was only thinking that if they're going full on with the prosaic spells, that I'd like to get a big table of condensed versions of all the spells, either in the PHB or in a printable PDF. The prose description would still be the canon and could be looked up if any doubts arise.

The 1e DMG took a stab at that with monsters (mainly because IIRC the original MM didn't have XP values). It was of course so obsolete within no time that it wasn't really worth much. You still had to look the thing up in the actual book mostly anyway, and if the monster was so simply you didn't need to then it was already scratched down on your room description (or in your module).

I think summarizing tables just aren't really worth it. They also didn't work too well in 4e for feats. There you just ended up still needing to look it up to know exactly what it did because every detail was important, and the summary was barely any simpler than the writeup.

The real pain IMHO when you have to look stuff up AT ALL is you have to figure out which book it is in, dig out that book, find the page, and then read the whole thing. 4e's power cards are a HUGE time saver (DDI too). While I'm sure some sort of DDI is possible for freeform spells without any structure it will be harder to use and very hard to summarize a spell so you can fit it on a card. Admittedly some spells will never fit on a card, but most will, and the few exceptions you probably need to look up no matter what.

 

[Arlough]

I don't care where they stick the spells; with the classes, in their own chapter or in an appendix. I was only thinking that if they're going full on with the prosaic spells, that I'd like to get a big table of condensed versions of all the spells, either in the PHB or in a printable PDF. The prose description would still be the canon and could be looked up if any doubts arise.

Ah, I misunderstood.

While I agree that there is much utility to be found from a condensed list of statblock style spells (say that while drunk) I would also like a cut-and-dry game mechanics description of what the spell does in the place where the spells are found. We should be able to have both.

Also, I don't really think the prose should be the cannon, necessarily.

I would use the current Sleep spell as written, but I think that even referencing sentences of it would violate the agreement.
So instead I will use 4e examples of prose vs. mechanics, with 4e supposedly being the one with the least fluff and that supposedly being somehow bad.

Example 1:

Name: Vorpal Tornado
Type: Fighter Attack 17
Summary: Targets enemies adjacent to you that are visible. If you hit them it does very minor damage, pushes them away from you one square, and knocks them to the ground.
Incongruity: Am I using a Vorpal™ Quarterstaff? Even since I started really playing in AD&D 2nd edition, Vorpal has meant chopping off heads and limbs. This attack sounds awesome and is actually quite terrible, but even if it was good it is not vorpal in the D&D sense.​

Example 2:

Name: Spikes of the Manticore
Type: Ranger Atack 7
Flavor: You unleash two arrows in rapid succession.
Summary: Make two ranged attacks with a ranged weapon and do more damage to the first than the second
Incongruity: You mean I can't throw daggers, shuriken, or even use a sling? There is nothing about this that actually requires arrows, and if something did so, then it would limit the build options of this character significantly. But the flavor text specifically says arrows.​

The new Sleep spell has something similar where it mentions you tossing something that has some great SP-FX, and then when you look at the range in the spell, you have to reconsider the existence of wind resistance.

 

[dd.stevenson]

Another vote for multiple formats, available in appendixces/pdf downloads.

Of all the things that divide our community, "dealbreakers" over presentation format are perhaps the most unnecessary.

 

[Mr. Wilson]

Give me A.

There is a reason why I always ended up having to make notecards whenever I played a spell caster in any prior DnD edition prior to 4E (AD&D, 3, 3.5, pathfinder). In the above cases, I'd use A out of the box, B and C would force me to make notecards again. C wouldn't be quite as bad, because at least I could find the info I needed quickly.


If I'm casting a spell, I don't want to have to dig through a bunch of fluff we just handwave to get to the actual stuff that matters (the crunch).

 

[Danzauker]

Fluff is great, but I want to to be able to play my character just with its 1 max 2 sheets without having to refer to other books 99% of the times.

So, C. Complete stat block above, with fluff below. Better still, an appendix, possibly in addition, not in stead of, of all spell blocks in tabular form at the end of the book, ready to photocopy or write as needed on the char sheet.

Redundancy is not always a bad thing.