D&D's lead rules designer admits he changed some spells because of how 'painful' and 'excruciating to cast' they were in Baldur's Gate 3

pcgamer.com:

Dungeons & Dragons is getting a 2024 rules revamp, and while I've had a good old moan today about its baffling pre-order bonus nonsense, I'm overall curious to see what kind of game we'll be getting out of the whole kerfuffle.

Touted as a backwards-compatible reimagining of the game's ruleset (but not a new edition), the 2024 rules seek to retool a ton of the game's spells for the better, as promised by lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford in an interview posted to the Dungeons & Dragons YouTube channel (thanks, Eurogamer).

Overall, Crawford's statements feel accurate, though in the sense that a lot of these issues have been issues for 10 years and relatively unaddressed in rules errata—such as altering Blade Ward and Resistance so they «might actually see use in play»—but hey, better late than never.

Some of these changes, however, have been inspired by Crawford's personal frustrations while playing Baldur's Gate 3, Larian's giga-popular RPG that uses 5th edition D&D as its ruleset. He highlights Cloud of Daggers and Produce Flame as two particular bugbears that bothered him.

For context, Cloud of Daggers is a 2nd level spell that fills a 5-foot space which, on your average battle map grid, is one square. This doesn't make it particularly useful, since most creatures can use around 1/6th of their bountiful movement to simply leave the space—granted, your fighter could keep them grappled or something, but that's a lot to ask for a mighty 4d4 damage every turn.

Of Cloud of Daggers, Crawford reveals that «this spell now lets you move it» after casting. «I as a player, when I have cast Cloud of Daggers, that is often my main frustration with it. [I] cast it, and then the monsters move over there. Even when I've cast Cloud of Daggers in Baldur's Gate 3, I as a player am like 'I wanna be able to move it!'»

I actually found the spell far more useful in Baldur's Gate 3, because I could plonk it in a doorway and watch my enemies (usually after struggling through a Spike