for the alert mechanic, you can effectively always go first due to the swap mechanic. Immersion wise the swap could represent you being alert to your fellow players reactions, not just the enemy 'alert bard notices the thief turn his head, and acts instead of him, or you rouse some one who wouldn't have been paying attention.
its a straight up better feat at controlling the parties initiative, or going first.
Originally Posted by professoryins
far as alert, its a buff, you can literally always go first in party now. (swap with highest roller) since you can switch, on average, you will have access to a higher roll more often. Its a hugely better feat.
lets say you are an assassin rogue, its way more likely you can attack enemies first.
Sure, allowing you to swap with one of your 3-4 fellow party members' initiatives *might* still enable you to go first, assuming one of them beats the enemy initiatives.
However, you have to pay a pretty large penalty in that the person you swap with now has a lower initiative. What if your CC wizard/cleric was going to go first, and now has to lose out on casting some important AoE battlefield control spell in order for you to go first? I don't think that'd be worth it. Especially with the new critical hit rules; an Assassin going first just gains them advantage and +1d6 damage on a hit, since Sneak Attack is currently no longer doubled on a crit.
The new Alert feat is definitely not a strict buff over the old one, if even a net buff at all.
Edit:
Originally Posted by professoryins
I agree the problem is crits not feeling special, but truth is spellcasters attacks almost all scale with level.
so its not 1d10 versus 1d10 spell vs weapon, after 5 its usually 2+d10 vs 1d10 on weapons. basically spell attacks are designed to get more damage dice. The 'critical' of spells is rolling well on many dice. In the current game crits strongly favor magical abilities, the meta for effective crits is to build large dice pools.
But # of extra attacks also scale with level, which balances everything out (for cantrips at least).
A 5th level fighter gets 2 attacks for (let's say) 1d8+4 damage on each attack. A single crit only grants you an extra 1d8 damage, but with 2 attacks you're a little over twice as likely to crit. A 5th level wizard gets 1 cantrip for (let's say) 2d10 fire damage. A crit grants you an extra 2d10 damage. It's roughly equal.
