Here are my initial thoughts on the play test packet:
You pick a background, which includes a trait and 2 fields of lore +10 to lore checks in your field of lore. Looks like they kicked bounded accuracy to the curb...
One of the fields of lore is "Hobbyist" and examples include "Dragonchess" or "cormyrian drama"...interest dropping
Artisan background "pay 5gp per month to be in good standing with the irrelevant to 99% of campaigns artisan guild"
Bounty Hunter: "Skip RP and go right to the bounty board" the rest are equally as pointless.
Rolling for scores is the standard method. point buy is optional
The basic four races and classes are core, everything else is up to the DM. Hope you have a generous DM...
Barbarian
Feral Reflexes: You can act during a surprise round as long as you rage on your turn.
Barbarians don't die when they hit 0 hit points. They instead make a DC 10 con save. They can do this every time they get hit, but the DC goes up by 5 each time. So if you have a bunch of Con save feats you basically can't die or have the equivalent of 30x the hit points of everyone else
Oh at 12th you make all saves with advantage, so you just doubled your hp from the not dying part and tt 20th, you don't die at 0 with no save, but make death saves as normal and die after 6 of them.
At 17th you cause creatures hit by your attacks to be frightened (with a failed save), so they get a level 1 Wizard spell at 17th level they can cast at-will
Oh look, auto-advantage on all attacks while raging with the Hawk totem. Well you can never have disadvantage with that build...
At 10th you get regeneration 5 when raging while bloodied
Oh look at 17th advantage on death saves. The Barbarian is simply unkillable past 17th level then. Auto-win a save at 17th and drop out of a rage...
Cleric
When you are out of Cleric spells you can call upon divine intervention and get a free spell effect but you only have a % chance based on your level, so don't bother unless you are totally out of options. You can only try it once every day. In other words it will almost never be used.
Druid
Wild Shape is worthless after a few levels. You will be doing more damage with your spells and regular attacks than you will with wild shape, so it will be relegated to passive bonuses to skill checks.
At 15th level you can do the equivalent of a low level Wizard spell a couple times per day (change appearance to another humanoid form).
At 10th you get battle forms, that are worse than your normal form at that level. Again more acceptable for utility than for anything else.
At 14th and 16th level your shapes almost equal your normal shape, but without the ability to cast spells, you are much weaker than other martial types (since you basically turn into a martial character at that point). In other words not worth shape changing. Behemoth is almost worth it, maybe.
Fighter
Get 1.5 their effective hp with second wind. 2nd level you can do 2 actions once per encounter, kinda nice, but in 4E any class can do that every other encounter, so no biggie. Fighters get Defy Death which is like the Barbarian feature that keeps them from dying except its a higher DC, but it doesn't go up.
13th level they get advantage on all saves, so the above feature gets much better.
Dirty Trick is worthless unless fighting low Wisdom creatures. You have to beat their Wisdom modifier with it so your chances are really low unless they have no modifier or a low modifier.
It seems like all of the maneuvers rely on beating ability modifiers which puts their usefulness at a minimum past low level.
Awareness must be a joke. Minimum 10 on checks while standing watch? Seriously?
An improved critical range is nice, but an extra damage dice is not really that inspiring, especially as its a single die, so if you deal 2d6 with your weapon you don't roll an additional 2d6, you roll an additional 1d6. In other words, ok, but not anything really special.
Effects on critical hits are very unreliable. Even at level 20 you only have a 15% chance of a critical even with advantage it only happens 36.5% of the time, and that's only if you pick the right Fighter sub-class (path).
Overall not impressed. Feats seem to be more powerful than most of the Fighter features.
Wizard (Mage)
Since saves are just as hard to pass as ever and supposedly the monster abilities went down, this means Wizards er... Mages are even more powerful than before.
Arcane recovery is about equivalent to an extra level 1,2, and 3 spell slot. So nothing much to write home about.
You can't scribe scrolls to use until 6th level and when you do, you have to pick a spell of 3rd or lower and you can't have more than a few spells scribed total.
At 18th level you can cast one 1st and one 2nd level spell at-will.
A lot of the features for the Mage seem overpowered like 24 hour duration on charm, recovering your suggestion spell slot if they make the save. Very overpowered. At 8th they get auto charm and force attacks on others when attacked. Way overpowered. At 12th creatures don't remember being charmed, which was the only drawback to the charm spells. Another overpowered ability.
At 16th you can charm anything. "Hey Asmodeus, bud, help me out here..."
At 20th level you can make charms permanent. So you basically charm the Gods and then have them follow you around doing stuff for you. Hmm... that won't be broken will it?
The rest seem equally overpowered.
Over-channeling can be abused horribly. If you have advantage on saves or other bonuses you can potentially get 4-5 over channels before dropping to 0 hp. In other words its better than pretty much any attack.
At 16th you bypass resistances to damage spells you cast. So you are dealing max damage, extra damage from ability modifiers, and nothing can resist your damage.
At 20th you get free lightning bolt and fireball spells at their minimum level at-will. I guess they have no real plans for epic play then.
Mostly all I see is quadratic casters and linear martials. Not a game I would like to play.
What do you think?
