I want to be but I'm really worried my DM is going to implement the sleeping in armor rule.
I was hoping for something better myself. If I were to institute a sleeping in armor rule (and I haven't yet because it just hasn't been an issue in any of the games I run), I'd put a Con check in there first. Pass the check, and you're fine. Fail, and then you've got the consequences.
Better yet, you could just make it something simple like: if you're proficient in the armor you're sleeping in, you're fine. If you're not, then you don't gain the benefits of a long rest.
Almost all the subclasses fail at the conceptual level ...
Indeed. Many of them just don't seem at all interesting. Others are quite cool conceptually but don't live up to their potential.
The new magic crafting system, for example, doesn't fix the existing system so much as replace it, which might be alright if the new system didn't have its own inherent problems. So now we have a choice between using Flawed System A or Flawed System B. That sort of conundrum is introduced by other sections of the book as well.
Agreed. I liked the look of the new downtime activities introduced in UA, but they had their own problems, and, at first glance, it doesn't look like they've done enough to address those problems here.
As time goes on, I'm becoming more disillusioned with the playtest process. I feel like often times our feedback just doesn't make a difference. The monstrous races in
Volo's, for instance: they are virtually unchanged from their draft form. Despite all the talk about the slower release schedule meaning better quality, I'm really not seeing that. It's like they can't even be bothered sometimes. I'm all for "rulings not rules", but I feel like lately they've been using it as a bit of a cop-out. "We'll just chuck these half-baked ideas out there and let the DMs polish them up properly."