1. Caster hand economy. This whole concept is a mess (I hate that I even have to type "caster hand economy" but there it is), and RAW for it is buried in several separate places.
Yep, we ignore this. We go by spell components. By and large, though, we
never have cared about casting with stuff in your hand. It tends to only harm the cleric, which is typically a class that has needed help because when played straight it's often boring to play.
2. Monster stat blocks. I loved that in 4e you had everything you need for a monster in its block. Now they are back to spell lists so I am printing things out ahead of time or flipping through the PHB. Bummer.
Eh. I got tired of 4e where the DM would say, "He casts
fireball except it's more damage. And it's Fort for some reason." or "I don't know it just says it has a cold aura that causes necrotic damage." or "You all take damage as something hits you." And worse, a constant stream of, "No, you've never seen it before. No, you don't know anything about this creature," because every creature is a palette swap of something from 5 levels earlier with a different name so it has a completely different ability set.
3. Skill/tool proficiency overlap. What the heck? Perform vs. instrument proficiency especially. Not hard to adjudicate around the problem, but RAW it makes little sense.
I disagree. I like that tools can have multiple uses with multiple stats. Separating tools from skills is good. I'd just rather there were more tools.
4. Hiding is all over the place, again. The Twitter de-facto rulings are good.
We ignore Sage Advice fairly often. Our table disagrees with the rulings as just nonsense or as hyperliteral, or sometimes as just breaking the Rule of Cool. No, I don't care about Adventurer's League.
Hide and stealth, however, are absolutely a hot mess.
6. Drawing your weapon as part of the attack action is fine, don't even worry about it, but you can't draw both weapons before attacking with them unless you're implementing an entirely optional system of character customization and wait until level four when you will be allowed to sacrifice your basic stats in order to pick up that capability. Seriously?
Yep, we ignore that. If you've got Two Weapon Fighting style, you know how to draw two weapons quickly. If you're throwing weapons, you can draw and throw with each attack (that may actually be RAW, though).
7. Anyone with a swim speed can swing a maul (or flail) underwater, with no issues whatsoever.
I think the only time we were fighting underwater the DM just said that everyone with slashing and bludgeoning weapons had disadvantage, and ranged weapons had 10 foot range and had disadvantage. Should probably be a rule, but it didn't slow us down.
For us:
8. Polymorph rules still suck. They're
so close, but they still suck. I feel like when the Druid is forced to revert by running out of hp, he should take 1d4 or 1d6 damage for each hit die of the creature he was transformed into.
9. Ranger sucks. I want to play Aragorn. I don't want to play Marc Singer.
10. Feats are really, really uneven. Great Weapon Mastery, Sharpshooter, Crossbow Expert, and Polearm Master are all too much. The fact that so many feats (and Battlemaster abilities) add abilities that should just be in the Combat chapter is really sad. The lack of feats for spellcasters is also pretty sad.
11. Six saves. It's far more complicated than needed. For most classes you end up good at 1 thing, and crap at 5 things. Saves get bad enough as it is at high level. We don't need MAD on top of it. I miss 3e simple three saves. I miss 4e's combined abilities, too.
12. Int sucks. Dex rules.
13. Short rest refresh abilities don't work as intended. In 4e, you had to rest because everybody wanted encounter powers back. Also, in 4e it was 5 minutes. In 5e, too few classes have short rest abilities, so players often never want to short rest. This means Battlemaster Fighters, Monks, and Warlocks really lose out. I'd rather see these abilities have double or triple the uses and have them refresh on a long rest so that characters can actually do something in parties that aren't going to short rest.
14. We miss the Lazylock more than we thought we would. At the very least we need a cantrip:
Commander’s Strike (Not the Battlemaster One)
Transmutation cantrip or Enchantment cantrip I guess
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Touch
Components: V, S
Duration: 1 round
You touch one willing creature. The creature can then make a single melee attack against any creature in range. This spell increases the attack's damage by 1d6 when you reach 5th level (1d6), 11th level (2d6), and 17th level (3d6).
I'm not married to a martial Warlock. I'm fine running a War Cleric or Bard. I just miss the character. He was fun.
15. We miss 4e Fighter's Combat Challenge (mark and provoke) and Combat Superiority (stop movement). Protection style and Sentinel aren't really good enough because they consume your reaction. It doesn't work well without a better action economy for opportunity attacks.
I didn't really care for 4e. Nobody at my table did. However, there were some things we loved. We loved 4e Warlord. We loved 4e Fighter. We loved 4e saves. We also loved at will attacks, but those carried through.
So, my list...
