I understand the rules for Booming Blade and Green-Flame blade as being changed now to a Self/5ft reach which makes them supposedly not work for Reach Weapons.  The thing that I've always looked at about that cantrip is the fact that the Self part of spell is talking about where the spell is cast, ie, on the weapon in your hand, which would be on your Self.

The new rules also state that it can still be used with a Whip or other Reach weapon within that 5ft of you.  What doesnt make sense is that the tip of the whip is the damaging part, and if it went out 6ft from you, then does the back half of the whip stay on fire and the tip just fizzle out?  Like I said, I understand the rules of the two Cantrips as only working within 5ft of the caster, it just seems stupid that a longer weapon that extends past the 5ft mark of a player wouldnt be on fire anymore, so if a character is using a greatsword, and his arms are 2 1/2ft long, then his weapon can ONLY be shorter than 2 1/2ft long or the tip part of the weapons would not be on fire.  A bugbear with long arms would never be able to take advantage of BB or GFB because they are long-limbed and can attack out to 5 more feet with weapons.

This is one reason why I think this spell was very poorly thought of and to have Jeremy Crawford flip-flopping back and forth between erratas is all the more reason why even DnD has said that anything that man says isnt really what the rules are supposed to be.  This man is the freaking lead rules designer of for WoTC and even the company he works for says, "yeah, dont listen to our idiot brother, he's is after all, an idiot."

What? There's nothing stopping you from using a Reach weapon to attack somebody within 5 feet (unless it's a lance, but even then you only get disadvantage). There's also no reason to believe that such a restriction would apply to booming blade and green-flame blade specifically, considering the lack of a general rule.

Quote from trotdawg2k >>

 

This is one reason why I think this spell was very poorly thought of and to have Jeremy Crawford flip-flopping back and forth between erratas is all the more reason why even DnD has said that anything that man says isnt really what the rules are supposed to be.  This man is the freaking lead rules designer of for WoTC and even the company he works for says, "yeah, dont listen to our idiot brother, he's is after all, an idiot."

 The spell is not poorly thought out, it just interacts with other parts of the game in an unfortunate way. You either let the spells work with reach weapons - massively increasing the power and utility of Booming Blade - or you keep things balanced at the expense of it working a bit counterintuitively with reach weapons.

I think they made the right decision, and I feel like 95% of the people who complain about it are people that went through the trouble of making a sweet "OP" Reach BB build before being told that it doesn't work. Whatever JC has said is irrelevant at this point since we have definitive official errata on the subject now.