Level
1st
Casting Time
1 Action
Range/Area
60 ft
Components
V
Duration
Instantaneous
School
Enchantment
Attack/Save
WIS Save
Damage/Effect
Prone
You speak a one-word command to a creature you can see within range. The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or follow the command on its next turn. Choose the command from these options:
Approach. The target moves toward you by the shortest and most direct route, ending its turn if it moves within 5 feet of you.
Drop. The target drops whatever it is holding and then ends its turn.
Flee. The target spends its turn moving away from you by the fastest available means.
Grovel. The target has the Prone condition and then ends its turn.
Halt. On its turn, the target doesn’t move and takes no action or Bonus Action.
Using a Higher-Level Spell Slot. You can affect one additional creature for each spell slot level above 1.
"Choose the command from these options." No ability to come up with new options anymore. After all, creativity was previously the bane of fun gameplay, right?
You'd get a lot of threads with people trying to gimmick strong effects onto Command. Which is what Charm Person, Suggestion, and Dominate Person are for
The old Command allowed the DM to balance on the fly by stating they get to determine how the target behaves. The DM could've easily done what most other enchantment spells say and the creature doesn't do the action if it is inherently self-harmful.
Right into the "I'll be ignoring the revised version" bucket. Needless change.
it was giga awkward to formulate one-word commands in some languages. that shouldnt impact the mechanics of a spell.
It's obvious why they took away the "come up with your own command" option. That option was ripe for abuse and arguments about how the custom command would even work due to how ambiguous it is.
BETRAY!
Another one bites the dust. Let's just pretend this new version doesn't exist and keep the old one.
I'm not going to do that, because this version is still very useful, and there's way less ambiguity to deal with.
Is nobody going to mention how much of an insane buff they gave this spell? A shared language is no longer required, and the undead are no longer immune to it.
Quote from 4L4K4Z4M >>
Is nobody going to mention how much of an insane buff they gave this spell? A shared language is no longer required, and the undead are no longer immune to it.
It also no longer requires the action to not be directly harmful! That means you can prone flying creatures!
About the option "approach" it says the target moves towards me and ends its turn if it's right next to me.
But it doesn't say anything about how like other spells that say "spends its movement" or "takes the dash action".
It's easy To draw a conclusion that it uses all of its movement but because of the bad warding the target could just use its movement to move closer to me, not getting right next to me, and do whatever it wants to with its action and bonus action.
I get it that they say "ending its turn if it moves within 5 feet if you" to make it clear that it should not charge and crush into me but now it's not clear that the target should spend its whole turn for that like the other options.
Since it says the target has to move toward you "by the shortest and most direct route", by definition it has to get as close to you as it can. If it can get within 5 feet of you, then it has to end its turn there and not do anything else. If it can't get within 5 feet of you, it has to get as close as it can, but it can continue its turn as normal after that. Obviously this option isn't a great one to choose if the target is very far away from you.
Takes away unessisary ambiguity and spells out clearly what the spell does. Leads to people feeling less unfairly treated by a DM that interprets the commands differently. It was already something of a problem spell for level 1, this addresses that a little but still a little too powerful. No creature requirement or language restrictions of any sort. Can be devastating against certain monsters even in late game. All for cost of a level 1 spell slot.
The previous version was very different depending on what language you played in - while English have many single words commands, other languages made it very difficult to achieve the same outcomes. This version makes it much more consistent across playgroups.
Noone noticed how the self-harm restriction is gone? I can tell you to jump of a cliff to get away from me or into a river. Massive rework with more value but less discussions with your DM
What's weird is that they took away "come up with your own" but they ALSO removed "will not do if harmful"
So theoretically it is RAW to command someone to walk through 20 feet of spike trap toward you if it's the most direct route, even if the target knows there is a spike trap.
I think, because it's single word commands with descriptions, it's still hard to command them to hurt themselves, but you can now have a druid make dangerous terrain the only path toward you and command X amount of enemies based on level to walk toward you and die.
We'll see how much this gets abused before it becomes "ends if they take damage."