D&D 5E Rant about Forced Movement

[FrogReaver]

Of course, the game uses the terms basically the opposite. "Move into" means voluntarily go into, while "enter" means happen to find yourself in the area if effect by any means.

Is this explained somewhere in the new book or is it back to tweet/youtube land?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That is an excellent way of putting it.

Why should it do more damage to enter and leave a spell effect multiple times than just to be in it the entire time?

There are three answers to this question. Only one of them is non-diegetic.

1. The rules for spells aren't just game rules, they're actually part of the "hacks" into reality's code. So, because you're already mangling reality to generate the effect you want, some occasional weirdness is to be expected.
2. Because of the "shock" factor. After all, it's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end. Making someone suffer the sudden stop repeatedly (e.g. falling down stairs) is different from having them fall further before a single impact.
3. Because you want spells of this kind (zone control/area denial) to be an unusual or niche choice, rather than the standard go-to, but don't want to empower the standard go-to into the stratosphere just to make it competitive.

Alternatively, you can just...design such spells to already factor in this potential usage to some extent, and tell people to have at it.