That's what I was trying to avoid initially but now I've realized I have to use NBT anyway, so that's probably the most efficient and elegant way to do that, I guess.
How do I add new lines to the tooltip of my block in 1.7.2? In 1.6.4 there was the addInformation() method, but that seems to be missing in 1.7.2. Does anyone know what it has been replaced with?