It is, but I’d have zero say in which version of it is selected. My guess is he’d run 5th as WotC presents it, at least out of the starting gate.
While he has run games with house rules, IME, he’s rarely run one using informal variants or relying on 3PP products. The only exceptions I know of is using some Judge’s Guild adventures & settings for AD&D/2Ed back in the 1990s…some borrowed from me.
AFAIK, he doesn’t really visit gaming forums. And I don’t pressure others into running games in any system. I’ve never seen that work out well. The last time it happened in our group, I acquiesced to my players who didn’t want to play in a Supers game in HERO, but were open to it in M&M. So I translated stuff into M&M. And M&M’s mechanics partly contributed to the campaign’s fizzling.
I have some relatively negative impressions of 5th from what I saw during the playtest and subsequent threads posted here. But it didn’t matter, though, because nobody in my circle was considering running it.
That has changed.
So now, I’m trying to figure out whether or not he could consider be a strong probable player, a marginally probable player, or some flavor of not interested. Hence the thread.
And TBH, I’ve moved from the latter to the middle. I may not like certain mechanics (as noted), and be unable to model certain types of characters I’ve played or designed in the past, BUT 5Ed seems to be relatively amenable to creating characters in harmony with my overall role-playing preferences.