i agree especially with the query with Attacking Downed enemies. my main wizard lot of times gets in a loop where he gets downed by an enemy archer end of every round right after he gets helped up (one of the companions were standing next to him only to help him up which worked but its not really lifelike and resulted in long fights). downed chars i think can be a good gameplay element but AI should be tweaked to make it less frustrating indeed. if a monster wants to feed on a downed character it makes sense but enemies running away from my still standing party members to finish off downed chars is kind of strange
Anyway im sure they will find a good balance to this
Regarding resting query, i agree this can be tied to difficulty options, but i have to say the following would be my ideal pacing:
Before party goes to a dungeon we Long rest in camp (preparing for new adventure, filling up resources, discuss our approach with party)
Go to dungeon, camp resting is disabled during this time, which keeps resource management and exploring lethal locations interesting and tense it avoids the immersion break when the party "teleports" back to the woods in the middle of the dungeon
Once getting out of dungeon, ending the day and doing a long rest again to discuss with party what we have found and regenerate for next adventure
Regarding Surface Effects i agree enemies should have less bombs and cantrips should not do surface effects (we will have higher level spells for that)
+1 please add XP for non-violent resolution
regarding classes and actions, i agree fighters suffer because of the disengage story, also i would prefer to have more actions for them like the currently weapon-specific skills like cleave/slash/pindowns (disarming, grappling, breaking armor/weapon etc) to spice up non-magical classes and maybe most of these can be limited to proficiency/class