As a note, I might regret the use of the word "dangerous" in this title, because I abhor internet sensationalism, especially when talking about a rather wonky nuance to a work-in-progress update to the rules of a game hobby that players and groups can very easily ignore. So, to any reading, please join me in taking a breath and remembering that we're only passionate about this because we love the hobby, and that, especially in a game like this that exists in books and text documents that aren't going away, nothing's going to change our world (jai guru deva).
I started reading the Pathfinder Second Edition rules, which are all available for free, provided by Paizo online. They bear a lot of similarities with Starfinder, but also incorporate some concepts from D&D 5th Edition that are appealingly familiar. The Proficiency Bonus, an invention of 5E, is not present in Starfinder (and I assume not in Pathfinder 1E either). The PB is a very useful way of tracking the way that a player character will just generally get more powerful as they level up in the broadest, simplest terms. Your hit bonus, your spell save DC, any skills you have, and a number of other features just go up a certain amount as you level up, independent of any other choices or features you have.
This sort of efficient design can be really effective and easy to figure out.
But sometimes, it can be a surprising hinderance.
In the 2014 PHB (the only 5th Edition PHB that yet exists,) every individual class that has the Spellcasting Feature fully explains how spellcasting works. There's a lengthy set of paragraphs and a bolded section that explains the way you calculate a saving throw DC. The same is true of Fighting Style among the Fighters, Paladins, and Rangers. Extra Attack, which Barbarians, Fighters, Monks, Paladins, and Rangers all get, is explained in every class entry.
Likewise, the Dwarf, Elf, Half-Elf, Half-Orc, and Gnome each have Darkvision, and in each instance, the way that Darkvision works is explained.
From an efficiency standpoint, this is horribly inefficient. It's precisely the same feature (sure, Drow get 120 feet instead of 60 feet, but it works the same.) I think the spellcasting segments in particular are huge - taking up maybe a full page of each class segment in the class chapter.
But it also makes it relatively easy to use.
When I was reading the Starfinder rules (and sorry for always going to Starfinder - it's just that it's the only d20 TTRPG for which I both have the rulebook and have read it) I was rolling up a Soldier (rough equivalent to the Fighter) and found myself deeply confused about their capstone ability, Kill Shot. Essentially, a high-level Soldier in Starfinder can sometimes hit someone with a weapon so hard that the target needs to make a Fortitude Saving Throw (literally a Constitution saving throw - Starfinder only has Con, Wis, and Dex saves, but calls them Fortitude, Will, and Reflex saves to make it very clear they're not ability checks) or they instantly die.
But nowhere in the Soldier chapter is it explained how one gets that saving throw DC.
Now, it turns out that before the class section, there's a segment that explains the general formula for figuring out a saving throw DC for class abilities (if memory serves, it's 10 + your class' primary ability modifier + your level in that class, or sometimes half your class level). That's all well and good - numbers go higher in Starfinder than they do in 5th Edition D&D, so having a DC of 28 or something is not unreasonable.
But the problem was that I found myself flipping back and forth for several minutes, sure that I'd gone insane, searching for where the hell I could figure out how to calculate the DC.
Starfinder has an extensive feat system. Every player character gains a feat every other level (I want to say every odd level). In addition, though, classes will often grant you feats. One such feat is weapon proficiency (forgive me if I get some of these terms wrong). At a certain level (2 or 3) in your class, you get the "weapon proficiency feat" in every weapon type that your class is designed to use. The feat allows you to add your level to the damage you deal with a weapon with which you have this feat (again numbers in Starfinder go up a lot higher than in 5E). Technically speaking, this means that a Soldier is picking up maybe a dozen feats at this level-up. They all do essentially the same thing, which is actually quite simple to explain, but reading the class entry in the core rulebook does not explain this to you. Practically, you're supposed to already know how that feat works and skip forward (much as a 5E veteran can typically ignore the whole Spellcasting section when they're playing a Druid after having played a Cleric). But for a new player, this creates a sort of...
You remember the quest in Zelda Ocarina of Time where you had to do this elaborate series of trades in order to get the powerful Biggoron Sword?
The design of One D&D has moved D&D in a more modular, systematic direction, which I think can be wonderful. I like having clear definitions of, for example, what you get out of a Tool Proficiency (for one, it makes Sleight of Hand a clear choice for Rogues to take as a skill).
The embrace of feats as a core gameplay system is part of this, and again, I think it's actually pretty good in a lot of ways. Feats in particular have always felt like a painful trade between more interesting gameplay and the satisfaction of getting things "maxed out," and for this OCD-sufferer, the fact that I can still actually get my most important stat to 20 while taking all feats is a huge relief.
What I worry about, though, purely from a layout and ease-of-use perspective, is that this will encourage WotC to present One D&D in a more efficient, but less comprehensible manner. Yes, Great Weapon Fighting works identically for the Fighter as it does for the Paladin. But when that choice is presented to me, I want to be able to read it in class section, and not have two entries that just say "look at the feat chapter."
Indeed, one of the most bafflingly designed elements of the 2014 PHB is its infamously terrible index. There are tons of entries in there where you'll look up, say, "mounts," and it'll say "see pack animals," which then has the page number - when it would have been literally less ink to simply print the page number under both entries.
I'll confess that I don't know much about the demands of formatting and laying out books like the D&D core rulebooks. And certainly, D&D gets the benefit of being such a beloved brand that they can print three core rulebooks for their game that they expect anyone who wants to run it to buy, rather than a single core rulebook like basically any other TTRPG (admittedly, Starfinder kind of requires two, because there are no monster stat blocks in the Core Rulebook).
More players than ever are enfranchised into D&D thanks to 5th Edition, and none of these concerns I'm voicing are really for myself. I've been DMing since 2015, and I've been following the development of One D&D pretty closely (as you might be able to tell given the volume of blog posts I've made about it).
But one of the things that made 5th Edition D&D so successful was that someone like me, who had basically never played any TTRPGs before (other than a few sessions of the Song of Ice and Fire RPG) could pop these books open, read them, and start running a game with relatively little friction (though I think the DMG encounter building rules were too complicated and discouraged using lots of low-CR monsters, which would have made my early adventures more exciting, rather than having a single Orog downed by the paladin's crit smite before anyone else had a turn).
The point being: sometimes shorthand, and this kind of systematic filing away of certain features can look elegant and efficient, but redundancies can often make things far more comprehensible.
I might even go a little more radical and say that I think that One D&D's impulse to classify many different things as "Feats" is a bad impulse. As it stands, First-level Feats, Fighting Styles, Fourth-level Feats, and Epic Boons are all officially Feats in One D&D, when the equivalent to 2014 5E effectively has 4th level feats as the only thing that work quite the same way. I'm tempted to say that a different word should be used for 1st level feats, and that we should keep Fighting Styles and Epic Boons (which are acknowledged as "20th level feats") should be kept their own thing.
I'm less zealous about the latter proposition, but it's a thought.
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