His front page has a 2-part review of D&D5 that's largely devoid of valuable content, and which is based on a read-through, having never played the game himself, one of the cardinal sins of a reviewer.
As that is the one episode I've seen of his show, I know for certain he tells you really, really clearly at the start of it that this is an extremely early first hand impressions thing of the book as he literally just got it the day before.
If you enter my restaurant and I hand you a shit sandwich, it won't make you feel any less disgusted if I tell you before you bite into it that the sandwich may contain some shit.
Just an idle thought that I had while driving home for Thanksgiving:
How would you all go about fixing the Toughness feat without breaking it in another way? My initial inclination was to tie it to character level, something akin to +1 HP per HD. That'd give it a curve of impact, with it being most useful for the squishiest characters and least useful for those who are naturally toughest. You'd progress from it adding an average of 40% extra HP per level for classes with d4 HD (i.e. the average is 2.5 HP per level, so you'd be bumping that up to 3.5 HP/level effectively, though obviously that's less relevant at lower levels with max HP for 1st level and not enough time for rolls to average out) to an average of ~15% extra HP per level for classes with d12 HD.
That's probably the simplest way I can think of to make it useful without being overpowering, and probably both more balanced and easier to manage than some sort of percentage buff. Thoughts?
First off, few feats offer increasing benefits over time. Compare with Weapon Focus, which does not give more than +1 to hit, and Spell Focus which doesn't increase the DC by more than the original +2. If you want to fix Toughness, here are my suggestions for HP modification:
1: Give more than +3 HP. I personally believe the Dragon Toughness having a prerequisite Fort save but giving +12 HP is ridiculously powerful. That means if you have Toughness give +1 HP per HD then by level 20 that one feat would be contributing +20 HP ... again, overpowered. Improved Toughness is way too complicated: with a few exceptions, if a chart helps explain the rule, you need a simpler rule.
2: Offer a full reroll of all Hit Dice to date when someone chooses Toughness, taking the higher of the two (so your HP won't go down as a result) and turning all 1s rolled into 2s. For this reason, only people who have particularly low HP rolls will take advantage. But for a few, it can make the difference for a sad 6th level Wizard who rolled 6 ones in a row for HP and is seriously considering ditching the character to start over at 1st.
3: Offer DR 1/- fully stacking with any other DR X/-. Allow it to be taken a maximum of once per point of CON modifier; if CON modifier is negative, it can't be taken. You may consider this too powerful for a Barbarian type who already gets DR; consider that monsters frequently deal large amounts of damage in one swing, easily overcoming DR; that various prestige classes grant comparable DR bonuses; that physical DR is still bypassed by energy damage, paralyzation, poison, gas, etc.
4: Allow the player to roll 1d6 DR against one incoming attack in exchange for one of his next set of two Simple Actions (but you can't spend your actions beyond the next set - that is, you can't go into debt for the next 12 rounds to shrug off a hail of arrows). This is the "hit the guy real hard in the face but he just looks back at you and laughs" move. Also usable to improve a tanking character. But not terribly OP because you trade your own actions for the defense which means it's not combinable with other defenses that require the use of actions.
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1
I believe the best feats do not improve a numerical score, but instead give you a cool new thing to do. Power Attack may be an interesting choice because you have to gauge monster AC and remaining HP, but it still just modifies attack and damage. It's only marginally more fun than Weapon Focus. A better choice is Cleave, which gives you bonus hits if you finish off enemies, or magic item creation feats which open up lots of options. These "cool new power" feats are infrequent because you actually have to come up with something creative. It's much easier to give the player a peg to stick in one of the system's holes (such as a +1 to the attack roll).
2
I believe the best feats are thematic and crunchy. For example, rather than Improved Initiative and Lightning Reflexes, I would call it just Lightning Reflexes with different bonuses as you stack slots onto the feat. Say, something like this:
Lightning Reflexes gives +1 to the Reflex save and Initiative roll per feat slot. Every second time the feat is taken, choose one from the menu of special abilities:
You can't be caught flat-footed.
Evasion.
You can make an extra attack with a Full Attack action but all attacks are at -2.
When attacked in melee with a natural 1 you can counter with a free standard melee attack (but this comes from the Cleave pool of extra attacks).
Quick Draw means pulling out an item takes a Free Action instead of Simple (restricted to once per round if you get stupid with this and try to powergame it).Similar sets of feats should be grouped together for consistent theme and to erase feat prerequisite chains (in the above example, you need to spend a feat on a "boring bonus" in order to get the chance to spend a feat on a cool bonus).
This plays into my feelings that 3E would work a lot better without classes. That negates an argument that my Lightning Reflexes above steps on too many protected class abilities.
3
Taken together, these two approaches to feat design result in feats that are interesting, active, and strongly define the character. Someone playing a character with amazing sneaking skills will be obviously a lot different from one playing a fast and agile character, who will be different from a nimble and acrobatic character. And two people who invest heavily in Lightning Reflexes won't necessarily work similarly until they're pretty high up and are just mopping up the remaining abilities that aren't super important to them.
For that reason, I think it might be nice to have Toughness look like this:
Toughness gives +1 to the Fortitude save and +2 HP per feat slot. Every second time the feat is taken, choose one from the menu of special abilities:
Poison and disease onset times and recurrence times are doubled.
DR 1/- stacking with any other DR X/-.
Reroll all your HD, taking the better of the new roll or your old total. Your minimum per die is now 1 higher.
Shrug off 1d6 HP from a single attack by spending one of your next Simple Actions. You can't spend from more than 1 round in the future.
Do not suffer penalties from Fatigue status for (6+CON mod) rounds 1/hour. This doesn't remove your Fatigue, you just ignore it for a while.
(The benefits of the Endurance feat)
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