This feedback is focused on Status Conditions and their implementation into the game. There is a lot of crossover here between this, and feedback regarding spells and class features, but this will focus primarily on status conditions themselves.
I'll cover the base status conditions, aligning against 5e rules, and look at the differences, and the impact certain changes have on things beyond themselves.
The 5e conditions we have are: Blinded, Charmed, Deafened, Frightened, Grappled, Incapacitated, Invisible, Paralysed, Petrified, Poisoned, Prone, Restrained, Stunned and Unconscious. We can add to that Exhaustion, and must also consider Concentrating.
These are all the conditions that exist in the written 5e rules. They aren't as many as in previous editions because of the simplified design philosophy. Rather than having thirty different progressive status conditions that are slightly different from one another, this set were designed to be easy and intuitive to implement and apply, and to work as soft tools for the DM to adjudicate unforeseen or unusual circumstances. They are simple and broad enough that more or less any situation that could occur to adventurers can be mechanically represented with one, or a combination of several, of these basic status effects.
In addition to this, for the cases where something very specific was wanted, many creatures and spells have specialised 'rider' effects that are contingent upon these conditions, that are each defined properly where they occur.
One of the most common examples of this is in the Frightened effect: on its own, being Frightened is not crippling – it gives you disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls while you can see the source of your fear, and you can't willingly move closer to it, but it doesn't arrest your ability to act in any real way beyond that. Many creatures, however, sport frighten effects with riders that read something like this:
“While frightened by this ability, a creature must use its action on each of its turns to dash, moving as far from the source of its fear as it can. The creature is not forced to move into obviously dangerous or harmful areas. If it can't move further away, it takes the Dodge actionâ€
Between these basic status effects, and simple riders for specific abilities, every situation can be quite simply accounted for in a mechanical sense. I want to compare these to their in-game implementation.
Blinded
I decided to find a quick easy source of Blind for this comparison, and travelled to Waukeen's Rest and its ever-burning fires. This highlights a large problem: You don't get “Blinded†in Waukeen's Rest. You get “Suffocatingâ€, which describes itself as being “The same as Blindedâ€.
This condition doesn't actually tell me what it does. Why does this condition exist, if its only purpose is to be exactly the same as another, and moreover, to not give the details on that other. No status tooltip actually indicates what conditions, mechanically, I'm suffering from, and I have no way of knowing. So, instead, I used colour spray on an ally.
Blinded (In 5e)
A blinded creature can’t see and automatically fails any ability check that requires sight.
Attack rolls against the creature have advantage, and the creature’s attack rolls have disadvantage.
Blinded (In Game)
Ranged attacks and spells have a range of 15 feet
Attack rolls against the creature have advantage, and the creature’s Attack rolls have disadvantage.
This is actually a decently good conversion; it prevents opportunity attacks correctly, though the game doesn't explain opportunity attacks well enough to make it obvious why, and it also goes some way towards equalising the field between ranged casters and ranged shooters: RAW, ranged shooters can attack with disadvantage still, but a large number of spells are technically disallowed, because they require targets or points you can see.
Charmed (In 5e)
A charmed creature can’t Attack the charmer or target the charmer with harmful Abilities or magical Effects.
The charmer has advantage on any ability check to interact socially with the creature.
Charmed (In Game)
A charmed creature attack the caster
The caster has advantage on any ability check in dialogue.
These read more or less similarly, but there are some very pronounced problems with Charm, currently. The first, in combat situations, is that most charm effects come from sources with charm-break riders... it's not part of the core effect, because different charms break in different circumstances, however, by not listing the break rider on the tooltip, we don't know what will end the charm. Our main access to charm in game is Charm Person, which breaks if the caster or their allies damage the target. Charmed targets will often go out of their way to provoke opportunity attacks and thus free themselves of the charm. They seem to do this knowingly and deliberately. That's a problem. Our characters take those opportunity attacks, despite knowing that the target is charmed. Also a problem.
Another problem with the charm effect we have access to in game is that if you do successfully cast a spell on the target charming you (such as a buff), the charm immediately breaks.
Deafened (In 5e)
A deafened creature can’t hear and automatically fails any ability check that requires hearing.
Deafened currently doesn't exist in game. While we do not get inflicted with Deafened while in an area of Silence, for example, the game also doesn't really have any metric for managing sound – we can cast thunderwave right behind an enemy and still not alert them. I don't expect to see this condition actually appear unless movement sound and noisy spells (like thunderwave etc.) become a functional mechanic... but they should be. In particular, deafened is relevant for Bards, for whom many of their spells and abilities rely on targets that can hear them.
This does let us bring up Silence, however... The status effect for silence is quite simple; it notes that we can't cast spells with verbal components. The game doesn't visibly track V, S or M, however: a player not familiar with D&D or 5e wouldn't even have any idea that such things exist. They appear to be absent from the game... and yet... Silence, the spell, claims it blocks casting of spells with verbal requirements. It then adds more confusion to the mix, because the status effect of silence reads as “Muted: can't castâ€. Despite this, as it turns out... the game is recording of V/SM requirements under the hood that we can't see, in some way... because we CAN cast Friends, and Minor Illusion, while we are in an area of silence... which just happen to be the only two spells in the game currently which do not have a verbal component. Please clean this up... please give the information that we need to understand things properly, even those not familiar with 5e. Spells should display their V/S/M needs, tooltips should accurately reflect the actual ways that spells have been implemented.
The other important issue with silence is that the Silence status effect says nothing about immunity to thunder damage. The silence Spell, correctly notes that anyone in the aura is immune to thunder damage – this is because it's a magical bubble where sound physically cannot exist... However, the actual status effect for silence doesn't say anything about it... More confusing then, that it is the actual silence effect – not the aura – that grants the immunity to thunder damage. A single creature silenced, with no relation to the silence spell at all (such as by the sussur weapons), also becomes immune to thunder damage, even though no part of the status effect indicates this.
Frightened (In 5e)
A frightened creature has disadvantage on Ability Checks and Attack rolls while the source of its fear is within line of sight.
The creature can’t willingly move closer to the source of its fear.
Frightened (In Game)
Right now the tooltip for frightened reads that a frightened creature has disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls while the source of its fear is in sight. It also says that a frightened target is forced to run away from the source of its fear (This may be a rider for this specific fear – from the hag's pawns, but it doesn't explain the nature of the fleeing – whether just movement, movement and action, reaction upon application, etc.,) Regardless of this, however, the reality here is that frightened, in game, does NOT do this.
Instead, Frightened, in game, is synonymous for “Skip Your Turn†you cannot move, you cannot attack, you cannot cast.... you just auto-run if possible, and then Skip. The line that suggests you have disadvantage on attack rolls is particularly superfluous, in this case, since you can't make attacks while feared like this. Nowhere in the description does it suggest that you are Incapacitated, or otherwise denied your actions – indeed, by saying that you have disadvantage on attack rolls, it rather implies you can still make the attempt. But in reality, you can't. “Why can't I cast a spell, take a disadvantaged shot or even just dash to break line of sight?â€, any sensible player might ask; the game offers no answer. Fear must either behave as per 5e, and allow actions, or else the descriptions must clearly note that it will force you to forgo your turn entirely... at which point it becomes superfluous, because it's just Incapacitated.
Grappled (In 5e)
A grappled creature’s speed becomes 0, and it can’t benefit from any bonus to its speed.
The condition ends if the Grappler is incapacitated (see the condition).
The condition also ends if an Effect removes the grappled creature from the reach of the Grappler or Grappling Effect, such as when a creature is hurled away by the Thunderwave spell.
We don't functionally have grapple in the game for players or creatures yet, but the interplay between grapple and restrain, as it's balanced around monsters and other enemies, is a little bit interwoven; it's used as a launch point for Restrain for many monsters, but there's a good reason that it isn't simple a part of restrain. For a video game, all Grapple should be is a way of zeroing a creature's speed, without any other benefit, and we should be able to substitute one attack for making the attempt. It's a tactical choice that players should have.
Incapacitated (In 5e)
An incapacitated creature can’t take Actions (a bonus action is still an action) or Reactions.
Incapacitated (In Game)
It is a mystery!
Incapacitated is an important and very powerful status effect that is a part of several others. Right now, however, The condition itself is inscrutable and difficult to pin down. It is never displayed in any way that we can actually read what it does – it is only ever recorded as a 'tag' at the bottom of other conditions. This would be fine if we had a resource to look at that explained what the status condition did, but currently we have no way of ever knowing. It shares this problem with Unconscious, so I can't even assess what effects are part of which condition (For example: Incapacitated characters can still move, if they have no other conditions preventing it. I don't know whether that's accurate in game or not, and I physically cannot test it). Someone who is not familiar with D&D or 5e will be left truly puzzled as to why various things are locked out for them.
Invisible (In 5e)
An invisible creature is impossible to see without the aid of magic or a Special sense. For the purpose of Hiding, the creature is heavily obscured. The creature’s location can be detected by any noise it makes or any tracks it leaves.
Attack rolls against the creature have disadvantage, and the creature’s Attack rolls have advantage.
Invisible (in game)
Has advantage on attacks, imposes disadvantage on attackers
Invisible works mostly as it should, in game. Two issues have arisen with the status currently: invisible characters will not take opportunity attacks, even when it's advantageous to do so, and players are not given a choice in this matter. If we supposedly have the ability to turn our opportunity attacks on or off, as the UI suggests, then they should be taken, while turned on and available. This behaviour is opposed to characters that will take opportunity attacks against charmed enemies, breaking them out of the charm... again, something which the charmed enemies often go out of their way to arrange, and which the game does not ever, inform the player of. The other issue is that too many things break invisibility currently, when they shouldn't. Dashing, for example. Dashing breaks invisibility. That's ridiculous.
Paralysed (In 5e)
A paralysed creature is Incapacitated (see the condition) and can’t move or speak.
The creature automatically fails Strength and Dexterity Saving Throws.
Attack rolls against the creature have advantage.
Any Attack that hits the creature is a critical hit if the attacker is within 5 feet of the creature.
Paralysed (In game)
A paralysed creature is indeed Incapacitated (I presume; they can't take actions), and that they cannot move.
The target does, indeed, automatically fail Strength and Dexterity saving throws.
Ranged attack rolls against the target are NOT made at advantage (they should be).
Melee attack rolls DO claim to be at advantage, in the combat log... however...
That's irrelevant, because all melee attack rolls are treated as AUTO-HITS,
Which do indeed auto-critical as well.
These details were determined through careful testing. Paralysed suffers the same problem that Incapacitation does, in that its status effect description does not explain what it does, at any point. It just says that it is paralysed and that it also counts as Incapacitated.
What we're able to see in this is awkward programmed redundancy and self-contradiction. We have an effect that, on its own, and without anything else, both causes us to roll advantage, in the circumstance, and only that circumstance, when it also ignores that very roll and hands over an auto-hit. The auto-hit and Auto-crit still connect, even when the advantage roll would not successfully hit the character. This is poor coding, and also poor implementation.
Petrified (In 5e)
A petrified creature is transformed, along with any nonmagical object it is wearing or carrying, into a solid inanimate substance (usually stone). Its weight increases by a factor of ten, and it ceases ageing.
The creature is incapacitated (see the condition), can’t move or speak, and is unaware of its surroundings.
Attack rolls against the creature have advantage.
The creature automatically fails Strength and Dexterity Saving Throws.
The creature has Resistance to all damage.
The creature is immune to poison and disease, although a poison or disease already in its system is suspended, not neutralised.
Petrified (In Game)
Turned to Stone (helpful)
Creature is Incapacitated
The creature automatically fails Strength and Dexterity saving throws (Not listed!)
The only instance we have of petrify, as far as I know, is the NPC in the Hag's lair, so it may not be fully detailed yet... but I'm still noting it here in the hope that it doesn't fall through the cracks. In its current state, Petrify does nothing at all, other than inflicting Incapacitated, at least according to its description. Once again, however, the description isn't accurate to the mechanics. Rather, a Petrified creatures does indeed seem to automatically fail strength and dexterity saving throws as it should... but that's an odd anomaly on its own, since the rest of Petrify isn't in effect: it isn't immune to poison or the poisoned condition, attack rolls against it do not have advantage, and it does not gain any other damage resistance. As listed currently, a Petrified creature should be able to move about – because it only Incapacitates, which should not block movement. Those extra words in the 5e description matter.
Poisoned (In 5e)
A poisoned creature has disadvantage on Attack rolls and Ability Checks.
Poisoned (In game)
A poisoned creature has disadvantage on Attack rolls and Ability Checks.
Poisoned works as noted and as written. Huzzah!
Prone (In 5e)
A prone creature’s only Movement option is to crawl, unless it stands up and thereby ends the condition.
The creature has disadvantage on Attack rolls.
An Attack roll against the creature has advantage if the attacker is within 5 feet of the creature. Otherwise, the Attack roll has disadvantage.
Prone (In Game)
Prone creature is knocked down and must spend half of their movement to stand
Enemies have advantage when attacking a Prone creature.
Also counts as Unconscious (!!!)
Or at least, that's what the tooltip says. Being prone does indeed take half of your movement to stand up, although you do not get a choice in this matter; a prone character will automatically stand up at the first opportunity, whether you want them to or not. That's a player choice that we should have. Sometimes you don't want to stand up.
Prone also inflicts Unconscious, for some ridiculous reason. As a result, you become fully Incapacitated while prone... making Prone another “Skip Your Turn†synonym, if it should happen to happen on your own turn – slipping prone causes you to immediately lose any actions you have left, and takes all of your movement, even if you slip prone on the very first step of your turn.
The in game description says that all enemies have advantage on Prone targets. The reality of the in-game mechanic contradicts this, as it works in line with the 5e rules: long ranged attacks (outside of threaten space... another problem in itself) have disadvantage to attack prone creatures; only melee range attacks have advantage.
Particularly broken and silly is the fact that, because it inflicts Unconscious, slipping prone automatically breaks concentration for casters, with no saving throw. If the game wants to consider slipping Prone to be “An enormous distraction†enough to warrant a concentration check, I'd disagree but wouldn't fight it too hard... however, that would still only demand a base line saving throw to maintain through... Having Unconscious attached to Prone is brutally unbalanced and really feels more like a bug than anything else. There is no rational way this can be a deliberate design choice.
Restrained (In 5e)
A restrained creature’s speed becomes 0, and it can’t benefit from any bonus to its speed.
Attack rolls against the creature have advantage, and the creature’s Attack rolls have disadvantage.
The creature has disadvantage on Dexterity Saving Throws.
Restrained (In Game)
Restrained hasn't shown up in game yet. Instead, we have multiple versions of restrained, all called different things, and all with functionally the same effect. This is a poor design choice, and it doesn't help with clarity. It also sets an awkward precedent – it might seem fun to create separate, independent, yet functionally identical status conditions for things like webbing, entangling vines, etc., but unless the game plans to make a plethora of different, functionally identical, restrain variations for every restraining situation the game comes up with, they really should have just implemented the conditions as Restrained, like it's written, and placed riders on the different causes.
In game so far we have “Enwebbedâ€, which is the Restrained condition in all but name. We also have “Ensnaredâ€, which is the Restrained condition, with a small by-turn damage rider. Both of these, along with every other source of restrain that the game eventually throws at us, should all be listed as Restrained, with whatever flavour and extra riders they need by situation.
Stunned (In 5e)
A stunned creature is incapacitated (see the condition), can’t move, and can speak only falteringly.
The creature automatically fails Strength and Dexterity Saving Throws.
Attack rolls against the creature have advantage.
Stunned (In Game)
Paralysed by electric shock (???)
Stunned in game has a tooltip that suggests that it is just the Paralysed condition. They're quite different things. It doesn't explain what it does in any way that we can check, and it also seems to tie itself to electricity for some unknown reason, even when the source is not electrical at all. Monks' stunning strike will want that cleared up. It also does not seem to actually inflict paralyse, despite saying so; attacks don't get advantage against the stunned target, for example.
Unconscious (In 5e)
An unconscious creature is incapacitated (see the condition), can’t move or speak, and is unaware of its surroundings
The creature drops whatever it’s holding and falls prone.
The creature automatically fails Strength and Dexterity Saving Throws.
Attack rolls against the creature have advantage.
Any Attack that hits the creature is a critical hit if the attacker is within 5 feet of the creature.
Unconscious (In Game)
Unconscious, like Incapacitated, doesn't show up as a status effect itself – it's a tag that appears on the bottom of other status effects, and does not explain itself at any point. When unconscious is applied because a character fell Prone (as ridiculous as that is), for example, we do not have any way of knowing what mechanical effect that actually has on the creature.
This gets confusing in how unclear it is, when our most ready source of “Unconscious†is from casting Sleep. This gives us the in-game status 'Sleeping', which reads:
Sleeping
A sleeping creature cannot move or cast spells (But could in theory attack?)
Automatically fails strength and dexterity saving throws
Attack rolls against it have advantage
Attacks that hit within 5 feet are criticals
Damage breaks state
Also counts as Unconscious
The actual effects of sleep in game don't line up with this: The creature drops Prone (we can presume this comes from Unconscious, but we can't confirm.) The creature does not drop its held items and weapons – but for a video game this is likely the best choice. It tells us that damage will break the state, while the Help action also lets us know that it can remove this condition... however, where the effect diverts from the tooltip in this case is that even non-damaging effects, like shoving, will wake a target up – and further more, a target so woken will immediately and automatically stand up from Prone, outside of their turn.
Without knowing exactly what Unconscious is doing – or exactly what Incapacitated is doing – we can't say exactly WHY Sleeping is locking out our attack actions (it could be from Incapacitated, it could be from Unconscious: we literally have no way of knowing). The tooltip says we can't move or cast spells, but it doesn't say we can't use our actions for other things... we can't of course, but we have no way of verifying if that's built into sleep and the tooltip is misleading, or whether that's just coming from either Unconscious, or Incapacitated; One hopes it is, we don't know.
Regardless, it suffers the same error/design choice/redundant coding as Paralyse, that means that you gain advantage on all-and-only the attacks against a sleeping creature that also disregard your actual roll and give you an auto-hit, and auto-crit. As with Paralyse, too, ranged attack rolls from outside the threatened space suffer disadvantage, as they should, but also not as indicated in the tooltip.
It looks as though we do have working 'Unconscious' and 'Incapacitated' status conditions under the hood, which are flagged in some cases. It also seems like Unconscious itself flags Incapacitated, which is correct.... but whatever the case is, we have no way of seeing what is actually in effect on a creature, where they're actually coming from, and what those effects do, which means we are often in a position of having bonuses, penalties, or skill lock-outs, without the game actually offering a legible explanation for why... even for someone familiar with 5e, this can lead to confusion. For someone not familiar with D&D it is impenetrable.
That's it for the basic status effects, though I'll flag two more important issues while I'm doing this bit:
We currently have no means of dropping Concentration. Tactically releasing our concentration at an opportune time is a valid tactic, and being able to release a concentration spell when we want to, or when keeping it up may be a bad idea, is something we need to be able to do.
Secondly, 'Surprised' as a status is working just fine, and does what it's supposed to, however, all too often initiating a combat with one character actually renders other members in your party surprised as well... this should not happen.
Prof. Dr. Dr. Mad S. Tist 
