Bacon Bits
Hero
I think separating hit point recovery and ability recovery is one solution. I'm not sure what that really looks like in D&D, though. I doubt the player base would accept it.
But I think that long rests are a bigger problem in general. What don't long rests fix? They're a virtual panacea. Basically nothing short of death and other conditions that essentially never come up can't be overcome. Why is long rest so good? Why are the PCs at maximum effectiveness immediately after a long rest if the PCs are supposed to go through multiple encounters before long resting again? Why does the game reward players for long resting after every encounter, and then tell the DM that the players shouldn't long rest after every encounter? That's a dumb design.
Eh. I think the whole point is that the length of a long rest will always feel unreasonable to some tables, and completely irrelevant to other tables. I remember during 4e when people would complain that 5 minutes was too long and they would just be ambushed. I also think they really wanted abilities like Second Wind and Life Cleric's Channel Divinity and other abilities that triggered on a short rest. If a short rest were 5 minutes, then suddenly every Fighter has AD&D style high Con regeneration.
I think the D&D developers are so used to keeping bad designs because of all the sacred cows that they don't know when to abandon bad designs that aren't sacred cows to make the game better.
I really like bounded accuracy, and I hated the pointlessly increasing numbers, especially when both sides got the same bonuses at the same rate. If I wanted my bonus alone to determine success or failure, I'd play a game that actually worked that way from the start like Amber Diceless. I have less than zero interest in playing a game that sets a DC at 25 and then tells one player to roll d20+2, and another player to roll d20+30. That is a stupid game.
I don't think BA is without flaws or without reasons to criticize it -- CR gets pretty meaningless around level 10 -- but I still think it's a much better scheme than the bonus treadmill.
I like concentration limiting how many spells you can have active at once, and causing spells to end when you're incapacitated. I think that's great.
I think losing a spell you're concentrating on from taking damage should either be limited to NPCs or, better yet, eliminated entirely and then spells should just have durations or restrictions that make sense. Want to make flesh to stone permanent? You have to stay within range of the target for the entire 10 minutes to do so. Banishment? Yeah, that lasts 1d6 rounds now. Most other debuff spells already grant a save at the end of every turn.
I don't give a damn about a Advantage's progeny. I first remember encountering it in Deadlands. That's all the Wildcard Die is. If it's good and useful and fast at the table -- and it is all of those -- I'll take it. Rolling bonus dice for circumstantial modifiers is great, whether that's "pick the best" or "add them together" because it's super obvious to the entire table that the circumstance was remembered.
Another great thing about advantage? It doesn't stack! One of the worst parts of 3e was the endless bonus hunt and forgetting bonuses after rolling. It was obnoxious. Stop the game and check the 500 different circumstances that might apply. Terrible game mechanic.
I'm a fan of randomness, but I'm not a fan of adding a ton of die rolls. One die roll ought to be sufficient in nearly every instance where randomness might be required.
I did prefer Healing Surges, though. Hit Dice are... fine... but they're adding a mechanic to an existing term for basically no real good reason. Healing Surges were better.
