Well, I was agreeing with you that it is a mess, but then you went and argued that language should be natural but they get to reserve some words and ban their natural use. And I see no way for that not to be a mess.
That makes me disturbed and sad. And the character creation is already fucked and incoherently stupid. Step 2 involves recording your hit points, but you haven't actually assigned your stats yet, so you don't know you CON, so you don't know what your final hit points
are. So you record them again, accurately this time, in step 3.
This character creation is simplistic as fuck, and they can't even organize the steps in a functional fashion.
Bonus stupid points for the variant point buy rules which reference a table that doesn't show up for two pages.
Also.... what the fucking fuck. The non humans all get +2 to one stat (Con for Dwarves, Dex for elves and halflings) and +1 to another stat based on sub race. Except for mountain dwarves, who get +2 for strength. I thought this was a typo the first time I saw it, but it is repeated 3 times. Mountain Dwarves: Mechanically better than you. (Though they did notably drop the AC bonus which made them win in the late play test). This wouldn't be all that much of an issue, except
(sub)race = class*, and all ability scores are saving throws, so, you'll want as many actual bonuses as possible.
*as the ability bonuses are the only way to reach 16 in your starting stat at level 1, i.e. what you attack/damage with.
Mountain dwarf= fighter
hill dwarf= cleric
high elf = rogue or wizard (or actually dex fighters, which can be a thing
wood elf = rogue, dex fighter or cleric
halfling = rogue or dex fighter. (sub race stats are charisma and con. whatever)
human= anything since they get +1 to all stats,
the dex fighter is a weird thing since it actually might work, since the numbers are fucked.
The fighting style ability gets you bonuses- you can go +1 AC, or disadvantage on enemy attacks when they attack adjacent buddies, but you can also take +2 to hit with missile weapons (bye,bye bounded accuracy, archers are +7 to hit at level one... remember those Challenge 2 creatueres with +5/6?), +2 damage with a single one handed weapon (dueling build, weird), reroll 1s and 2s with two handed weapons or add stat bonus to offhand attacks when dual wielding (which is to say, +3 damage at level 1).
I'm not particularly convinced these things are balanced (at all), but it does mean the great sword guy is making one attack at +5 for 2d6+3 (reroll 1s and 2s) while the dual wield guy is making two attacks at +5 for 1d6+3 each.
And.... a full page on human ethnicities and name lists from the FR. Why?
This struck me as really odd, since ability scores lack any explanation in the character creation section. I eventually found them, 50 odd pages later.
For fuck's sake. Wizards and clerics get to use certain items (arcane focus or holy symbol) as a spell casting focus. See chapter 5 (equipment), ok... an arcane focus is an orb, crystal, rod, etc to channel the power of arcane spells. See chapter 10. Fuck you. Chapter 10 says: it replaces material components.
Relevant:
D&D Lead Designers: Mike Mearls, Jeremy Crawford
Rules Development: Rodney Thompson, Peter Lee
Writing: James Wyatt, Robert J. Schwalb, Bruce R. Cordell
Editing: Michele Carter, Chris Sims, Scott Fitzgerald Gray,
Christopher Perkins
Producer: Greg Bilsland
You fuckers.
Huh, found something actually thematically interesting:
Overchannel. Basically (though sadly not til 14th level) an evoker can inflict max damage with a spell, but if he does it more than once per long rest cycle, he takes damage, which increases each time he does it.
On the other hand, the first ability (at 2nd level...) the School of Evocation hands out is half time and half cost for scribing evocation spells. Fuck you, don't care.