I was just listening to a Sanderson interview. He's annoyed by it too. It's his publisher wanting the books to be easy to get into. He's dealing with it in Mistborn era 3 where's he's trying to figure out how to re-explain everything and it's annoying him because he just wants to show allomancers doing cool stuff.
He's blaming the publishers now? I only managed to go through like 2 or 3 Mistborns before I got absolutely bored about the "technical" explanations. I've never read a D&D manual but I think it would be as fun.
Now if anyone would invest in him continuing Elantris...