Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
IMO, the text could also be written to avoid a lot of the battles in the first place... it seems like it was written with a very "whatever" attitude. There's a whole thread about Pact of the Blade that wouldn't be happening if the writers of 5e had spent 10 more minutes on the wording of those two paragraphs.

Something something action economy?
People in a RAW-focused mindset will fight no matter what the wording is. I've seen fights over crystal clear wording. And crystal clear wording for complex subjects tends to be even more annoying to read for those who aren't in that mindset (ie most people). So you can remove a tiny fraction of the arguments (which don't really matter because they happen mostly on forums, not in play) at the cost of making the rules more of a slog for everyone.

I've seen suggestions to have a "defined words" marker and a glossary. Ok, then I have to cross-reference each time there's a defined word instead of using context clues, because it's signaled that the specifics matters. That's a huge time and attention cost. Same with having more tables. And unless you're loophole hunting, the specifics don't matter except for forum arguments.

And yes, that last one is about letting people take more than one bonus action or reaction on a turn. Thanks.