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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6316511" data-attributes="member: 2067">Well, it depends on what one means by user-friendly, right? Different people use the rules in different ways. The 4e power could be printed on a character sheet or carried on a card and would always tell you everything you need to know about what that power did. That is immensely portable and convenient. The 5e version takes up more space, so that strength is largely out the window. A new player who doesn't know the spell very well needs to cart around the book with all the spells in it to reference at the table, and needs to carefully read those paragraphs before launching the spell. That can be a drain.The 5e version takes up less "brain space," however, in that the spell's fluff is also the spell's rules: you tell someone what to do, and on a failed save they waste their next turn to do it. It's intuitive in a way that the 4e format doesn't quite capture. So it's harder to reference, but likely easier to learn...which is curious.I wonder if this dovetails with the "limited splats" WotC is planning for in 5e. If the cleric's spell list is fairly static, if they don't just slam a bunch of new spells into the game, players will see and experience spells like command over and over again, and this means that these spells become more iconic and ingrained. Perhaps every 5e spell is more like a rule you need to learn than an effect you need to reference, and in that respect, keeping the mechanics striaghtforward and open-ended but grounded in what is happening in the fiction is smart. A DM knows that if the player commands the orc to CRY!, that the orc can lose its turn blubbering on the ground, or that if they command the orc to DANCE! that they can make the orc move to a spot and end their turn dancin' up a storm without having to reference the spell itself. In that light, the "no undead" prohibition makes a little less sense -- special exceptions can be hard to remember. But maybe it hit within the realm of acceptable complexity for the devs and benefits the play experience in some other way (undead typically do not respond to enchantments, sure!). I wonder if that's not the intent. The idea isn't that DMs memorize every word of that description, or that they open up the book and read the rules carefully. The only thing more convenient than a 4e statblock would be a 5e where just by the name and the description of the spell, you know what to do. That could be quite clever, if they pull it off well. No on would complain about spells being hard to reference because no one would need to be referencing spells because D&D just teaches you how to use that particular rule. ....maybe the best 4e-formatted version would be something likeCommand <> 1st-Level EnchantmentYou issue a one-word command with the authority of the gods that your target obeysRange 2Save WISFailed Save: The target spends its next turn obeying your one-word command. Undead creatures or creatures that don't understand your language automatically succeed on their saves. ...that's pretty compact! I just stripped out the embedded examples, which are useful, but unnecessary if all you're looking for is a reference.Definitely learning stuff with their track here....</blockquote>

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