I'm not sure I understand the difference between 5e bonus action and 4e minor actions. I have never had a problem, or even heard of anybody having a problem, with minor actions slowing play. (The same can't be said about the various kinds of out of turn actions, but that's another discussion.) It was clear what you could do with them, and you either used them, or didn't, depending on what opportunities presented themselves in combat. This suggests to me that bonus actions aren't as well designed as minor actions, but I'm extrapolating, not speaking from experience.
Action economy: I think there are better ways to meet his concerns than to vary the action economy among classes. I feel like, if every class had a different rulebook, the game would bog down on the issue of trying to figure out what each player could do, and the DM would have more to handle in making sure players didn't accidentally, or "accidentally," take the wrong number of actions. And players of classes with more actions would eat up a lot more time than players with fewer actions, which I could see frustrating some players in the short run, and in the long run, pushing players toward classes with more actions. And when everyone plays with economy-maximized characters, combat would slow to a crawl.
4e does have some classes that have the same number of actions, but fewer choices as to what to do with them. So if a player wants to just bash things with a sword, that option is available. And if another player wants to be able to choose between options like pushing a monster out of a position to create a break in the line that the ranger can squeeze through, or knocking a monster on its ass, or marking a monster for punishment if it takes its attention off you to attack one of your allies; then the player can do that. Both of those are fighter subclasses, btw.
Lack of tension: This comes from several places. It appears to me that published WotC adventures have moved from an attrition model of module to a set-piece combat model. This causes a problem because most D&D mechanics are not well designed for a situation where you have no random encounters, but you have the obligatory one (or at least very few) outdoor encounter while travelling from point A to point B. IIRC, spells are no longer Vancian, but hit points/dice are still an attrition mechanic.
Furthermore, the move to make every battle a special snowflake set-piece leads DMs and (possibly) players to think that every combat needs to be some sort of nail-biting challenge. It just can't, if
every fight carries significant risk, most of your campaigns are going to end quickly and abruptly. It also limits player agency if they don't have the ability to choose easier fights over hard ones.
Which leads to my next point. I'm not sure it is accurate to say that players want every fight to be deadly. I think it is common for GMs to
think that's what players want, but when I'm a player, sometimes I want it to be a cakewalk. Sometimes I want to pick a fight if I think I can roll over team monster with brute strength. Sometimes I want to avoid the straight-up battle and figure out a way to drop a mountain on the dragon's head; while the DM is bemoaning the avoidance of his carefully planned set-piece battle, the players are high-fiving each other for their cleverness.
What he is describing really seems to be a game where players don't get a lot of choices about who or when they fight. From what I can recall of Mearls' modules, they tend to be pretty linear hackfests. And I guess, if the only meaningful choices you get to make are the tactics you use in battle, maybe they do all have to be something special?
(When did this forum get a full complement of emojis?)
I note that after a while 4e did shift to increasing monster damage-per-round, and weakening monster defences, and it did noticably improve the game. I know some DMs reduce monster HP further in high level games, but I don't play or run enough high level games to be able to comment.
(I will say that I think there is a good argument for also reducing
PC hit points in the middle and higher tiers of play; PC hit points increase at a far greater rate than monster's ability to damage them. Base monster damage increases by 1 hp each level, while PC hp increase by 4-7 per level. Most monsters might hit a fighter 2-3 times in a melee, and are lucky to hit a wizard even once; given that hp are replenished after every fight as long as there are healing surges to spend, an increase in 4-7 hp each level, while monster damage increases by 2-3 hp, is going to make PCs pretty invulnerable after a while. Between 1st and 7th level, for instance, an average PC will have gained 30 hp
per battle, while the monsters are doing perhaps 15-18 hp more damage
per battle. I have yet to convice my players to accept a change to the hit points rules, however.
WoW: I have watched people play WoW but I've never played it, so I can't comment from personal experience. I expect it is true that 4e was designed to mimic WoW, just like it is probably true that the formatting of PC powers were intended to give it a card game feel like MtG.
I'm not sure to what extent it succceeded. I have heard a lot of players who play both complain that WoW players come to 4e expecting it to work like WoW, and it doesn't; for example, they end up with a lot of dead fighters and paladins, because the "defender" role is not actually a tank; if you want a long adventuring day, you need the squishier classes to take damage from time to time. Otherwise, the limiting factor will always be the number of fighter healing surges. Fighters and the related "defender" classes are really good at preventing monsters from attacking anyone else, but ideally they should turn that off once in a while, or wizards etc. should take some risks, so the fighters don't run out of juice.
I also understand that 4e "leaders" (clerics, bards, some druids, etc.) are different from healers in WoW, in that their buffs are at least as important as the healing, since a large part of their focus is with helping the team kill monsters quicker, or preventing them from taking damage in the first place. (The subtitle of the CharOp warlord thread is "How to Wield a Barbarian One-Handed.") But I stand to be corrected on any of this.
I can say that, despite the defined roles for various classes, it doesn't really hurt the game if you are missing one (although if you don't have any leaders you are going to have to invest in a lot of healing potions). I don't know if WoW works that way or not.
Relately, when I say I don't think the designers really understood the game they designed, I count Mearls as being one of the primary offenders.
Games end at level 7: Yeah, if you are running the same character using the same basic mechanics and nothing about the game changes, you are going to get bored. You know what you could to keep the game interesting? Change the focus of the game. Like, I don't know, maybe the players could settle down, build a territory for themselves - establish a domain, if you wish - and play in that. If only somebody had thought of that earlier.
I gather the DMG 2024 has a section on domains - which are mainly fluff rewards that come more or less automatically as you level - and don't actually have any impact on play, nor can they be affected by play. So, kind of missing the point.
I will say, I think the beard is a good choice.
