Surprisingly, I think I disagree with most of what you’ve said in this comment.

While I understand that it can be discouraging for a creator to have the species and cultures that they have worked on not really be explored by the majority of players I don’t think it is an issue most of the time.

It also seems a bit odd to me to lump elf, half-elf, and presumably also dwarves in with humans, given that they usually make for the hard core of fantasy races. If those aren’t considered distinct then I’d wager that maybe the issue isn’t that they are less distinct and cool compared to other races but something else. Either that races that are seen as “distinct” actually lean into some sort of “gimmick”, or that people simply pick what they think looks good, and they aren’t into how Gith look, for example.

While I know there is a large group of people playing Human mainly, I feel like that reflects the fantasy that is being set up by most games that I have engaged with. Humans are the “standard” and other races are exotic, deeply different, and usually rare. At least that’s what seems to me like the most common fantasy setting type (and also my preference). That’s why I don’t mind when the majority plays humans, as that does reflect the story of the game. It seems more odd to me when the party strolls into town and they have a tiefling, drow, aasimar, and lizardfolk. When all those races are stated to be unique, strange, and alien to most people and those players don’t really get a chance to shine with their “weirdness” in the party because there is no baseline that they can compare themselves against. After all: when everyone is super, nobody is.

The only time I can recall this creating a ludo-narrative dissonance is in Guild Wars 2, where humanity is supposed to be a dying (alien) race with few members left. By all accounts the people of the land should be a majority of charr (cat-people, basically). But of course, the “human female meta” as it is called (meaning people playing conventionally attractive human, female characters with “the sexy outfit”) is greater, and as it turns out most people are playing humans. The result being that what you see when walking around is mostly humans when it “should” be mostly charr. A lot of people just play characters they think “look good”.

As for why people are playing humans. I think there is a reason that you haven’t touched on. I, for example, will play a human for almost every one of my characters unless I have a good reason not to. This is because I base my characters around a theme or a story and I want the focus on the character to be on that theme or story, and not on their species.

I also don’t think designers make humans boring or bad on purpose to discourage players from playing them. They could just not include humans if that is what they wanted (Plenty of good examples of this. Mousegard and Humblewood for RPGs. Deep Rock Galactic, Dwarf Fortress and a ton others for video games). I think most often it comes down to people not knowing what to do with humans. Most fantasy races tend to be “human but x”, so when you are making a human you don’t really have anything “but”, meaning that you usually end up is a situation of “humans, well, we all know what a human is, don’t we? I can’t see anything special about humans that one of these other races don’t embody in a greater capacity.”. (Side note: I like how GW2 handled this. The 5 races have fairly good and distinct themes. Charr are militaristic, Asura are obsessed with knowledge, Sylvari are young and still figuring out the world, Norn are shapeshifting and spiritualistic, and Humans are devoted to their gods who brought them to this world.)

I don’t think giving them a feature that says “Multiattack: Master Thief makes 3 attacks. Alternatively it can replace any number of those attacks with Cunning Action or Special Action.” comes too long or cumbersome. Assuming I understood you right and that is what you are looking to do.

Legendary Actions, as has already been suggested is also a good call.

Or you can just give them 3 actions, that works. Because you are the DM you just have to notice and make a call when an unintended interaction comes up and avoid abusing it. Only thing I can think of is abilities where “as an action” is supposed to translate to “as their turn”. Things like breaking out of an Entangle spell. You should probably avoid just doing that multiple times to not make the person who cast the spell feel like it was useless due to this unconventional situation.

Looks good! The only point of critique (other than features in 5e not usually interacting with the inspiration mechanic, but that seems to be changing for 5.5e) is that Inspiring Leader is already the name of a feat, and Commanding Presence is the name of a Battlemaster Manoeuvre (which can be gained through a fighting style or a feat). This could cause a character to have two features with the same name on their sheet, particularly because those abilities play to the same theme (charismatic leader). I don’t know what I would change the names to, though.

Sounds similar to the system they use in WFRP 4e. Also a system that is very elegant and far better than the system used in DnD 5e. Similarly to PF2e (as far as I gather with a brief search) items are assigned a value between 1-3 and players usually have a carry value of around 6 to begin. Any item that is worn gets -1 and items in backpacks/containers do not count towards the limit (but they have weight/bulk/encumbrance points themselves).

Meanwhile my fighter has 18 strength and is encumbered by the items he got from character creation… I don’t think 5e did a very good job with encumbrance. There is a reason most people ignore it.

Command has a range of 60 ft. If it was 5 ft. the approach command would be pretty useless.

Haste already says you can’t use the action it grants to cast a spell. If quickened spell had a similar thing (“If you quicken a spell you can’t casts another leveled spell on the same turn.” or something) it definitely wouldn’t be an issue.

Ah, yes, sorry. I mixed up my terminology a bit there, good catch. Every instance of “round” in my comment was supposed to be “turn”. I’ll edit it. But yes, sneak attack is also once per turn, and not round, which is very odd. It honestly seems like an oversight that just happily caused the balance for the rogue to catch up a bit. Rogue doesn’t really have any ways to consistently trigger it, and while it seems like it might be a case of “extra attacks should get the same effects as regular attacks” (if that makes sense to you) then it is extremely odd that the Barbarian’s advantage from Reckless Attack doesn’t last for the round, only for your own turn. So AoOs don’t have the advantage.

Honestly, as far as I’ve seen most spells aren’t an issue. Only sorcerer quickened spell really makes it an issue, but that’s mainly an issue with quickened spell rather than anything else.

I also believe Jeremy Crawford or someone has mentioned that balance wasn’t the concern when the role was put in place. I’m not able to look for the source right now, but I think Treantmonk had it in a video about this rule.

Yeah, the more I play DnD and other games, the less I end up liking 5e’s system of action, bonus action, reaction. Systems that just have actions are much more appealing, imo.

I don’t like this rule at all. Definitely among one of my least favorite rules in 5e. There are several things wrong with this rule. First, the stated reason why this rule exists is not balance, but it exists to make sure that a spellcasters turn isn’t taking too long, by limiting them to only one ‘noodly’ spell per turn to stop them from flipping through the books trying to find the two perfect spells per turn, rather than just one (cantrips are easier to remember and use, I suppose). Unfortunately it fails at this in my opinion because of reason number two: the placement in the book. The rule is listed under the “bonus action spells” header in the spellcasting section. This is right between the “action spells” and “reaction spells” sections, and both of those just say “You can casts a spell with an action/reaction” and have no real rules. So people basically glance over it and assume there’s nothing important there. This means that new players (thepeople who will take a ton of time on their turns if they have to find two spells) don’t know this rule exist. The people who do know about this rule don’t need it, because they already know what spells they want to use and are much faster at taking their turns (hopefully). Also, the fluff is entierly nonsensical “Because bonus actions spells are espescially swift, you [can’t cast other spells on the same turn]”, what? Wouldn’t it make more sense that swift spells would leave you with more time to cast other spells?

Honestly, it’s even worse than that, because once you know the rule it actually causes the game to slow down because of how noodly it is. When you are casting a spell you stop and think “Wait a minute, is this allowed according to the bonus action casting rule?”, and then you have to find that out (hopefully not on your turn, but it causes you to have to look up this rule more that you really should have to look up any rule). If I am DMing I really don’t care about my players following this rule, but if I am playing I will always follow it to the letter (unless the DM says otherwise, of course), because I have had to look this rule up so many times I can now quote it verbatim from memory.

I think that this rule could be ok, but it needs some changes. First it needs to have it’s own section in the rules book “Casting multiple spells in a turn”, or something. Don’t hide it among stuff people skip over. Second, it should probably be changed to just “Because the casting of spells is a taxing affair, you can not cast more than one spell of first level or higher in the same turn.”. This is how most people think the rule works anyway, the fluff makes a ton more sense, it is simple enough that you don’t have to look it up constantly, and as a bonus it finally would answer all those people who are very confused about how you can cast counterspell in the middle of casting your other spell (you wouldn’t be able to, because that would be two leveled spells in a turn, except it you are counter-counterspelling to save your cantrip, I suppose. But that’s a very strange edge case.)

As a testament to how terrible this rule is, not even this is the right one. The rule is, when you cast a spell (including cantrips) with your bonus action you can’t cast any other spells except a cantrip with a casting time of one action on the same turn. So casting Shillelagh stops you from casting leveled spells and (although I’m not sure why you would want to) from using your action to start or continue casting a cantrip like Mending, because it has a cast time of 1 minute (Aka 10 actions, aka not one action).

So JC supports the reading that the weapon becomes an Inprovised Weapon that doesn’t have any properties then. (Honestly, I feel like Improvised Weapons, along with Unarmed Attacks, could probably be on the table of weapons.)

I think if one is being nitpicky, the reading of the Ammunition Property is that it specifically calls out weapons with ammunition as being treated as Improvised Weapons (which would come with not being able to use the weapon’s properties or proficiency, or at least so it seems to me), rather than redirecting you to read a different part of the rules section. It would be odd (and honestly it is a bit odd with the normal reading as well) to have two distinct properties that qualifies something to fall under the same rule (being a Ranged Weapon and having the Ammunition Property), particularly when one is always going to contain the other.

And the Thrown property on the Dart being useless only really becomes a problem if you take this very specific and nitpicky ruling to be good, which honestly mostly serves as evidence that reading the rules that way is not RAI. It seems to be the RAI intention that the Dart having the Thrown Property is to allow you to use your proficiency for the attack, which you would not be able to if you threw an Improvised Weapon (such as if you were to throw a Sickle).

If you look at the Ammunition Property it says “If you use a weapon that has the ammunition property to make a melee attack, you treat the weapon as an improvised weapon”, which I read as meaning your weapon is an Improvised Weapon rather than a Ranged Weapon. Although I do concede that the improvised weapons rule says that if you are using a Ranged Weapon to make a Melee Attack it will deal 1d4 damage, which I assume means that you can’t use the rule that says that you can treat it like another similar weapon, which I think is odd, but ok.

(Also, if you want to be very nitpicky about it, the ammunition property says you can’t make ranged attacks without loaded ammunition, but any type of attack will spend your ammunition. However, I don’t think that’s a fair reading, and I think the ammunition property simply does not apply, because you are using it as an Improvised Weapon and therefore none of the Properties apply.)

I suppose if you really wanted to get into the details, the rules in the Ammunition section would not apply to weapons that are Ranged Weapons, but do not have the Ammunition Property, like the Dart or Net. But I feel like it would be most reasonable to rule that these are also considered Improvised Weapons and not Ranged Weapons that deal 1d4 damage if used to make a Melee Attack. (Although the Net can not deal damage as per it’s Special Property, so that doesn’t really apply to it, so you would be left with the Dart, which doesn’t have the Heavy Property, and thus isn’t really relevant to the greater discussion here.)

This doesn’t really work as far as I can tell, RAW or RAI. While it is the case that in theory a Melee Attack with a Heavy Ranged Weapon would satisfy both criteria, there is no weapon that can normally perform such an attack, as far as I’m aware. Using a Heavy Crossbow or a Longbow to make a Melee Attack would be attacking with an Improvised Melee Weapon, which is both not a Ranged Weapon and does not have the Heavy property, so neither Feat would be useful.

If we are being generous we could say that attacking with a Heavy Crossbow would be like a Club and a Longbow would be like a Staff, and per the Improvised Weapons rules we could use those weapon stats for our Improvised Weapon, however, note that neither of these have the Heavy property, so you would be unable to use either Feat in this case as well. (The Heavy property, particularly on Ranged Weapons, seems to be not about the weight of the weapon (an intrinsic property of the thing), but about the strength required to attack with such a weapon in it’s intended manner. In this way it would make sense that neither Feat would work.)