My biggest concern about 5e ruleset implementation are the new action economy and surface gameplay.
Action economy has some serious problems: AoO free jump & Shove away (not prone, at least) as innate bonus actions screws action economy and feats implementation. In tabletop you have an opportunity cost for disengaging: you can get out of harm's way without expending resources like spells or per rest features but you sacrifice your ability to actively contribute to the battle (not casting spells, not attacking); alternatively you can expend resources (like bonus action Misty Step spell) to safely reposition without sacrificing damage contribution . Some feats and class features (like Mobile, Cunning Action or Shield Master) give you a resourceless and/or economy efficient option, but they are build options you either take instead of other options (feats) or are given to you to balance a class (Cunning Action).
Instead we have even 2 resourceless AND economy efficient actions that screws some interesting feats whose power lies by giving you exactly that: resourceless, economy efficient mobility on top of other goodies. Now everyone can hit some avarage melee enemy, push him away (other way around if you are ranged), retreat 30ft, watch him waste all his movement and do nothing.
Pls, just no. Tactical positioning and movement is the balancing factor between squishy, nimble rogues and tanky, ground rooted fighters. Also not to mantion jump+movement gives you more distance than just movement but i hope this is something to be fixed anyway
Surface gamemplay is simply too much. Surfaces are indeed a thing in d&d, most frequently to support the above tactical positioning: a good combination of cover, chockepoints and difficult terrain can give you a good edge against difficulty odds; again because mobility aint that much on the avarage PG. Damaging surfaces are also a thing: chockepoints + caltrops are the easiest surface gamplay tabletop has to offer, and quite fun; i play pnp and we made very good use of those two to overcome very bad odds. But, again, this comes with resource and opportunity costs: wanna make people fall on theyr ass all the way? Why not, but you have to expend a spell slot to cast Grease... Do you prefer to keep your slots for some big bad guy later in the dungeon? No problem, ball bearings are here, but they cost you a whole action so im sorry but your damage this round is sacrificed for resourceless crowd control.
And then we have these cantrips. Same as above you dont sacrifice anything to both deal damage and create a surface, even more so that some surfaces are way too powerful for the exptected power output of that resource cost (no resource, standard action, ranged):
- cantrip that deals aoe damage and aoe reduce ca by 2, no save and quite big area is just too much.
- Cantrip that do 3 instances of d6 damage, 2 of which without save, and leave a 1 square damaging area that burns flammable entities is again too much.
- Cantrip that reduce movement speed and create a slippery 1 square surface with immediate save or prone is... not as broken as the above, but still too much
This doubles also as 'why are cantrips powerful like 1st level spells, sometimes even more powerful'. Again, because of resource economy. To be fair Im all in to shoot ray of frost to a puddle of water to freeze it or shoot a barrel of oil for some good explosions, but in a balanced and optional way.
Ah right, by having so much sources of so much powerful sufaces (tabletop normal fire surface or caltrops is 1 damage) , so much ways of auto-interaction (firebolt leaving a fire patch without aiming specifically for the ground) surface gameplay is not some other toy to play around: is a core gameplay feature to be aware of and use to your advantage, because enemy definitely will
Just get back to the original ruleset, let it be simply a d&d experience we gamers have been waiting for since NWN 2.
Or maybe, make a gameplay option out of it: classic rules vs larian rules. And then all sort of even more whachy, ridicolous, outrageous homebrew for a fun, DOS like experience
