Consider that design intent may not actually be the best solution to your problem.
What I don’t want to do here is tell anyone “this is a dumb question” or “you shouldn’t want this information”. Questions about design intent are on topic, and if that’s what you want to know, that’s great! Ask your question. However, I want to offer some guidance that might help you get better solutions to the problems you are experiencing at the table of play by rethinking the way you look at the problem you’re having.
What we have often seen with this type of question is that while it is phrased as a question of design intent, asking for an author-endorsed ruling on a particular rule, there is typically real conflict or misunderstanding about the rule propping up the question. That is, the querent doesn’t understand a rule, or has experienced conflict at the table of play about a rule, and is looking for the game designers to settle the issue for them. When this is the case, I think we may be engaging in something of an XY Problem, borrowing from this meta.se discussion:
The XY problem is asking about your attempted solution rather than your actual problem.
That is, you are trying to solve problem X, and you think solution Y would work, but instead of asking about X when you run into trouble, you ask about Y.
To translate this to RPG terms, we have some kind of confusion, misunderstanding, or table conflict about some game rules (problem X), and we think that the game designer’s official ruling on the matter will resolve the issue (solution Y). And what I have often seen from questions of this type is a stripping down of the question content, because the querent doesn’t see that actual problem context as important when all they want is the developer’s ruling. This is how we arrive at what that linked meta discussion describes as “The problem”:
This can lead to frustration by people who are trying to help you solve the problem because by the time you ask about it, the solution that you need help with might not have any obvious connections to the problem that you are trying to solve.
If the confusion or conflict you are having is being caused by the broader context a rules interaction occupies, asking a bare question about design intent risks disconnecting the rest of us from the thing that is actually causing your problem. Or as that meta discussion explains “How to avoid it”:
To avoid falling into this trap, always include information about a broader picture along with any attempted solution. If someone asks for more information, or especially a more specific question, do provide details. If there are other solutions which you believe will be suggested and which you've already ruled out, then don't try to avoid going over them again – instead state why you've ruled them out, as this gives more information about your requirements and helps others provide better answers.
Instead of just asking what the design intent for a rule is, put the rule into context for us. What was going on when the rule came up? What do you know about how the rule interacts with other rules? What ruling did you go with at the table, in the moment and why? I know I’m speaking in very general terms, and every situation will be different, warranting different levels of detail.
My intent is to encourage a bit of self-reflection about this type of question. Is design intent really all I care about, or is the problem I’m trying to solve bigger than that? If it really is all you care about that’s fine too, you aren’t wrong for feeling that way. Or it may even be that your question isn't about rules at all, and there is no table conflict to go with it. Not every question tagged designer-reasons even fits into the category of question that might benefit from this sort of reframing, so it certainly doesn’t make sense to bring to bear an expectation that this guidance be acted by question author’s. This is guidance for the one with the question, not guidance for curation and moderation.
Finally, I am not the first to suggest this. The idea I offer here is just old wine in a new wineskin. I stand on the shoulders of giants, so I will echo some of the guidance they provide. However, reader beware, these posts were made in the context of designer-reasons questions being off topic. Now that such questions are on-topic, read these quotes through the lens of improving an already acceptable question, rather than making an off-topic question acceptable:
Useful designer reasoning questions can be reframed into on-topic questions.
A number of designer reasoning questions are secretly other kinds of questions, and can be rewritten as such. For instance, What is the rationale behind the comparatively low number of spells known for Sorcerers? can be reframed as, "Is it unbalanced to increase the number of spells known for Sorcerers?". Likewise, "What have designers said for why they made worn items fireproof? can be rewritten as, "Will making worn items flammable break my game?" (yes, it will).
These DMs are really asking about the practicality of homebrewed rules, which doesn't require a developer to weigh in. In fact, questions like these are probably better served by other DMs who have firsthand experience with similar homebrew rules. Unfortunately, their current formulation actually bans such answers.
In this way, many of the more borderline designer intent questions can be reframed into other topics. This question, about the wording of the rules, is a good example: it is a question about the rules that has some designer intent flavor, but is arguably not a designer intent question per se. Likewise, questions about game design can be asked that are about the game design itself, and not necessarily intent specifically.
-Icyfire
Instead focus on: What problem are you trying to solve at the table?
When a rule looks weird or feels out of whack, a lot of different questions arise, one of which is "what were they thinking?"
"What they were thinking" doesn't matter in our RPG.SE context. I will quote @BESW for a good idea of why "we are here" on this stack:
We aren't here on the Stack to read the rulebooks to people. We're
here to help people learn how to synthesize the mechanics, the
non-mechanical text, the social context, our personal experience, the
learning of the broader community, to apply all that to a particular
real-life problem someone's having and find a solution for it
We need to get the question pointed at the problem to solve so that play at the table isn't impeded by a given rule or decision, rather than being pointed at discomfort with a given design decision.
-KorvinStarmast
Again, these quotes were written in the context of needing to take an off-topic question and rearrange it into an on-topic question. This is no longer necessary, but changing your question in this way might change the kind of answers you receive, so take a moment to consider if your question might benefit from reframing in this way.
