There is support as in "here's something ready for you to use", and there is support in the general sense of allowing you to play the game you want and add material later. The second is certainly not narrowed down. The first of course it is, but I'm trying to tell you that the PHB etc. are going to be full of usable stuff, and yet of course it's limited. It cannot be otherwise. So if you want variety in a certain area, you have to accept less in another. You can't say 5e "doesn't support variety" or "doesn't support options" (what the hell does it mean anyway?). It just doesn't have all the things you wanted out of the box. I personally wished for many more subclasses and feats to increase PC variety, but didn't get them, so I can say 5e at the moment doesn't support enough variety in feats, but as a whole there's still 320 pages of variety. And still a much more flexible system overall compared to previous editions.
As for settings, once again the PHB supports as much as it can with its 320 pages. Can you play FR with the PHB? Yes you can (even with Basic you can), nothing there prevents you to do so. Does it give you enough crunch to create mechanically different Clerics for 20 FR deities? Sadly no, but if it did, then it had to give somebody else something less.
In the meantime, while you're waiting for a FR sourcebook, try to play with what you have or make your own stuff like in the good old days.
This is all well and good, but none of it really speaks to the topic of this thread. Who is denying that 5E has lots of options? Quote please!
Maybe it's me and I forgot or can't find it (sadly I have done this before! I "have form"!)
But I don't think so. 5E has lots of options, I agree, but it seems like, if the RUMOURS we've heard here are true, then some serious strange design decision have been taken that appear to FLY IN THE FACE of the general design ethos of 5E. This would not be for the first time in D&D. 2E, 3E and 4E all have a couple of "Man what..." design decisions that undermine the general stuff, and I guess with 5E, the "Man what..." stuff is going to be about "Death = EVIIIIIIIL!" and "Necrotic = EEEEEEVIIIIIL!" (spooky voice, btw!).
I'm saying, if true, these design decisions are bad decisions. That's orthogonal to whether 5E has a lot of options.
Le Sigh!
EDIT!
Ok I see what you mean, that if they just avoided any good/evil characterization, then it would be broader because every gaming group could decide their own. E.g. group #1 could play a setting where good clerics cast radiant spells and evil clerics cast death spells, while group #2 could have both cast both and let motivations differentiate them.
Only IMXP it's not that simple. People play the game with different assumptions on what's not written. Having the book decide for you is both a restriction and a guideline or track to follow. Experienced gamers will probably focus on the restriction and dislike, beginners and casual gamers mostly do the opposite (and a lot of people see D&D also as a meta-setting so they like having some stuff defined). But experienced gamers should also have much less problems customizing the stuff (you probably don't even need to create material in this case) to lift the restrictions, compared to inexperienced players having to add definitions and characterizations.
I get what you're saying, I just think the basic design should support like, mainstream D&D, and IME, mainstream D&D has Neutral Death gods, so stuff like Death Domain = Evil, is, to me, wacky "Man what..." stuff that detracts from the power of the meta-setting, and makes me want to say "HELL WITH THE META SETTING YO".
As for new players, I can only speak for myself and my wife, when we both, quite separately, came to to D&D (because we discussed this), and we both had pretty strong feelings about the meta-setting and the ingrained assumptions and so on, and didn't take it for granted or casually accept it in the way you seem to be suggesting beginners/casual gamers do. Perhaps this is because we both read fantasy and have opinions on Good/Evil and so on, but I don't think either trait is uncommon in people coming to D&D!
Anyway, I think we probably both get this as well as we are going to, so I won't bore you with it further unless you say something tremendously fascinating on it and I can't resist!
