If I have multiple questions about the same spell, should I make a separate post for each question, or group them into a single post?

Question

I have several related questions concerning the slow spell in D&D 5E. Should I post each one separately, or group them in a single post?

Answer 1

It depends on the questions you have about it. Your questions should focus on one specific problem you're having. That usually means one question per question, but can sometimes closely interrelated questions can be asked together.

Our Q&A system's default is one question per question. We work best when you ask a single, discrete question to which people can give a single well-polished answer. It means respondents can leverage their expertise on that specific issue to write a single, very clear answer they can be confident in. When you ask about multiple different things, respodnents have to provide multiple different answers at once, which gets messy: imagine you ask Question A and Question B together, and one respondent gets the answer to A wrong and B right, and the other gets B wrong and A right. We want to avoid this, so we want A and B to be asked separately.

We bend this rule in a specific circumstance: when those questions really don't make much sense being asked separately. They're interconnected because they're both part of solving the same problem you're having.

So the rule of thumb I'd suggest you consider is: do these questions make any sense being asked separately? If yes, ask them separately. If they make no sense at all separately, ask them together. Focus on individual problems you're having with the thing you're asking about to help guide you.

If you've got a lot of questions about the slow spell, you'll probably wind up asking some separately and some together.

Some examples:

• “I want to know if [Spell] can stop a Fireball. I also want to know if it can summon a good book for me.” — Two really different problems; ask about them separately. They may be about the same spell, but they're not related at all.
• “Can [Spell] create a good defense for me? Can it create a wall or a shield or something?” — There's two question marks here, but they're interrelated. The second is kind of asking for elaboration on the first. You can/should ask these together, they don't make any sense being asked separately.

Sometimes the only way you can find out is to just ask, and have people who know more about the subject do community moderation: maybe you asked these questions separately but they should be asked together, and maybe you asked them together but they have to be split out. There's nothing altogether wrong with this happening (provided you're putting in the work to learn and try to do it right the first time), it's just the community doing its work, and we'll sort things out with you through it.

Answer 2

My rule of thumb is, if I can make the question clearer by rephrasing two or more queries into a single question, then I should do that before posting.

If I can't make it clearer by reducing it to one question, then I feel it would be clearer as two posts.

The alternative to splitting unclearly combined questions is potentially multiple partial answers and/or partial duplication of other questions.

Take for instance, (from doppelgreener's answer ):

Can [Spell] create a good defense for me? Can it create a wall or a shield or something?

This feels better phrased as :

Can [Spell] create a good defense for me, such as a wall or a shield or something?

Makes sense, as walls and shields are examples of defense. It's clear the sort of defense we're talking about.

If the spell was maybe, Intellect Fortress, then a different wording (e.g. "What kind of fortress does Intellect Fortress make?") is clearer. But I find a single focused question is often clearer than multiple (closely) related questions.

Then a good answer will address all the points in the title/body of your post.

On the other hand:

I want to know if [Spell] can stop a Fireball, or summon a good book for me.

Is not clear enough, on a purely surface reading. Why would the spell do one of those things? Stopping Fireballs and Summoning books are not related, or examples of something else mentioned in the question.

Note, however, if the [Spell] is called 'Summon Fireproof Novel' then the above phrasing might make sense, if you can clarify what 'good' means? Even then, I'd prefer phrasing it as "What can the book summoned by 'Summon Fireproof Book' do?" or similar.

Now, maybe you can't think of a good way to phrase your queries into a single (or multiple, but fewer than number of questions) post, I'd still have a go at reducing it to the minimum you can with the above rule of thumb, and we can hash out the details (whether a post needs an edit, and a separate question asked) after you post it.

But if you can make the question clearer by rephrasing two or more queries into a single question, then I feel you should do that before posting.