D&D 5E Happy with Play Test 2 Direction BUT..

[Dausuul]

1.) The first thing is to drop all complete immunity and automatic success from the game. That is just boring.

Totally disagree. Complete immunity should be rare, but I do not ever want to see undead that are affected by poison or disease, or fire elementals taking fire damage. Likewise, you should not have to roll for things that have a negligible chance of failure. The fact that you have to make a Balance check to walk a tightrope does not mean you have a 5% chance to trip over your own feet when walking across an empty room with a level floor.

2.) Spell casters should pit their intelligence, wisdom or charisma against the target's armor class, or their abilities. Spell casters want to roll too.

Meh. As a fellow who's been playing D&D spellcasters for 25 years, I really don't much care. Why would I want to roll? The fun for me is picking the right spell and coming up with a clever use for it. Rolling dice just to roll dice strikes me as deadly dull. This is why I don't go to Vegas.

No spell should be worthless at higher levels. Make that 1st level spell worthy to cast by a 20th level caster by giving it more capabilities.

Now this I do agree with.

3.) Feats are looking good. DC is looking good. But powers should be progressive. For example, levitate should be easier than fly, so organize it. Make levitate available to lower levels and fly available to higher levels. The same thing for feats, easier feats at earlier levels, hard feats at higher levels.

I agree with the sentiment, haven't really looked at the current approach to feats though.

 

[AeroDm]

I disagree on the first two.

Immunities force creativity and remove math. The undead are immune to charm. I can't just throw charm and hope it works because that's exactly what I do in every other fight. That's boring.

HP caps on spell effectiveness means that you might actually have to wear an opponent down rather than just spam the SoS/SoD spells. That's a good idea in my book and it would go a long way in balancing earlier editions too.

I feel differently about immunities on monsters vs PCs. Immunity for a monster does indeed force creativity and speeds along play. Immunity for a PC closes off potential adventure arcs and requires the GM to introduce gimmicks like hyper-poison that still affects dwarves. The game can take shortcuts for monsters because that is efficient. Don't take shortcuts with PCs.