Spell Lists

I’m not patient enough to do a full before-and-after comparison of spell lists, but I’ll note things that stick out to me.

1. This may seem minor, but I’m used to the lists of Cleric and Druid spells coming before Magic-User spells (and later, Wizard spells). Having them show up first (because “A” is for “Arcane”) is kind of disorienting.
2. A bunch of Warlock spells have been moved to the Arcane list. There’s going to be less distinction magically between Warlocks and other arcane casters.
   1. Eldritch Blast is an exception, but Hex is not. I wonder who would benefit most from taking Hex? I recall it potentially had a long duration if cast using a higher-level spell slot, ultimately limited only by being a Concentration spell…could that be worked around if cast using Glyph of Warding? I wonder if it could be usefully combined with Hunter’s Mark for a set of very long buffs? An arcane caster could have access to all 3 of those now after taking Magic Initiate only once.
   2. I’d say Warlocks are the big winners here – their spell list wasn’t as good as Wizards’. Sorcerers will also benefit, since their spell list was almost precisely a subset of the Wizard spell list, so getting the full list Wizards had plus Warlock spells is at least something.
3. Divine spell list merges Paladin and Cleric lists.
   1. This could be seen as a dilution of the Paladin’s identity as defined by not having to consider the whole Cleric spell list, but it’s more of a return to the status quo ante – they always used to cast off the Cleric list instead of having one of their own, at least prior to 3rd edition.
   2. This does dilute the Paladin’s identity because a number of key features were built as spells (a bunch of Smite spells, Find Steed, etc.) and those are now available to Clerics before Paladins can get to them. For more pointed examples: the Paladin list used to have Banishing Smite and Circle of Power as 5th level spells – ones the Paladin couldn’t cast until 17th level. That’s still when they get access to them, but Clerics can now cast those spells 8 levels earlier, at 9th level.
      1. I think the big issue here is that having distinct spell lists was concealing the issues with  the poor design that tended to turn class features into spells.
4. Primal seems to merge Druid and Ranger lists. Although the Ranger sees their spell access more expanded, I think it’s likely to be more significant for Druids, who have lots of spell slots to blow on the occasional Conjure Volley, or an upcast Hunter’s Mark. Also, it puts Hunter’s Mark on the same spell list as Shillelagh – that isn’t huge or anything, but it’s helpful for characters who take Magic Initiate and feel they need a bit of a boost in weapon-based combat.
5. Enough spells changed schools that they felt they needed it call it out on the spell lists. A few noteworthy changes:
   1. Thunderwave is now Transmutation. This is probably meant as some kind of balancing thing, but it doesn’t seem like a transmutation effect.
   2. Flaming Sphere is now Conjuration – I’m guessing there were too many goodHu 2nd-level offensive Conjuration spells. I don’t like it because I have a personal attachment to it having previously been a Conjuration spell, but it doesn’t feel totally weird at least.
   3. The healing spells have been made Abjuration, which is stupid. They should be Necromancy (since they deal with bodies and life force), or maybe Transmutation. Abjuration would be fine for spells granting temporary HP, but spells that actually heal shouldn’t be listed as Abjuration (which is about protective effects rather than restorative ones). That, or it’s time to get rid of these allegedly-diegetic schools of magic and replace them with descriptions of the game mechanical effects we mean to convey.
6. Drawmij’s Instant Summons is just called “Instant Summons”. Creator names are often dropped from spells in system reference documents, but Bigby and Mordenkainen spells retain their creators’ names here. I wonder if this is just an accident, or an intentional omissions since Drawmij is a pretty clear reference to a real person involved in the creation of early D&D?

Rules Glossary

1. Changing the term Armor Proficiency to Armor Training is good, since it doesn’t use your proficiency bonus at all
2. Attack action
   1. Ability to equip or unequip one weapon per attack made is interesting, but I note that making this part of the action means it can’t be done as part of an attack made via a bonus action or reaction.
   2. The attack action makes a point of specifying you can make an attack with a weapon or an unarmed strike.
      1. I’m hopeful this means a move away from the term “weapon attack”, especially because it introduced ambiguity around whether a weapon was actually required for one of them.
      2. Does this mean attacks derived from bonus actions and reactions don’t have the ability to be based on an unarmed strike?
3. Barkskin gives temporary hit points. However, it’s also Concentration, which means it isn’t likely to help the caster all that much.
   1. The switch to temporary HP seems like it was designed to work with Wild Shape
   2. Upcasting to allow more targets seems interesting
4. Blindsight is explicit about letting you see anything that isn’t behind total cover, and perceiving creatures that are Invisible or Hidden. This suggests that being Hidden isn’t significantly better than simply being unseen.
5. Climb speed is a much clearer description than was present in 5E, which didn’t make clear what benefits it does or doesn’t provide. Now it’s pretty clear that (1) it only gets rid of extra movement costs for moving, and (2) it only works when climbing vertically. This means it doesn’t help you make checks needed for difficult climbs (though it may not assume those exist), and that it isn’t good for climbing upside-down, for example. It’s also clear that you need the Spider Climb trait to handle #2.
6. Giving inspiration on a natural 1 doesn’t make much sense in-character, but it’s obvious that it’s meant to keep players from feeling bad about rolling a natural 1. I’d prefer the game didn’t fetishize natural 1s and 20s, but I’m sure that’s a lost cause. 
7. Dash changes from upping your speed to giving you an additional Move – Moves weren’t a thing in 5E (that is, you had movement during your turn, but it wasn’t treated as a discrete action you took).
8. Difficult Terrain – whether a space counts as difficult terrain is defined based on criteria external to the creature moving through it. This means a pit or gap of 2-5 feet is difficult even for the Tarrasque or something much larger; a creature that isn’t Tiny makes a space difficult terrain even if it’s the size of a dragon and the creature trying to pass through is itself Tiny; etc. This probably makes it easier to design maps – just mark in advance which spaces are difficult – at the expense of making less sense in play.
9. Divine Spells are defined as drawing on the power of Gods and the Outer Planes; Arcane Spells are also given a definition in terms of what power they draw on. Do they intend to stick to this for setting design? It’s already strange to see a term defined in terms of worldbuilding; it’ll be even weirder if it isn’t consistently applied. I’d think it better to define these types of magic in terms of the types of effects they’re meant to have.
10. Exhausted – I totally hate this change. Exhaustion is one of the few 5E innovations worth stealing (it’s the first alternate damage track for D&D that doesn’t suck), and this change
    1. largely defangs it, by
       1. Increasing the number of levels before death from 5 to 10
       2. Making each level much less significant
    2. Makes each level generic, where previously each level had distinct effects
    3. Relies on variable spell save DCs, which is one of the very bad ideas 3E introduced
11. Grappled – this conditions is much better defined, both in terms of setting out how it ends and in terms of making it a meaningful effect as defined in the condition itself. It’s interesting that the escape now relies on saving throws rather than skill/attribute checks; that keeps some skill proficiencies and Expertise selections from being must-haves? Also, trying to escape happens automatically rather than requiring your Action, though under the old grapple there wasn’t a huge incentive to try escaping – you could do anything you’d normally be able to, except moving using your Speed.
12. Guidance – Now it’s a reaction (good) but a character can only benefit once per Long Rest. That’s bad for 2 reasons:
    1. It defeats the point of making it a Cantrip, since they’re supposed to be at-will effects. Now we have cantrips which are only useful a number of times per Long Rest equal to the number of people in your party
    2. It requires additional bookkeeping – each character needs to track whether they’ve benefited from Guidance since their last Long Rest. That’s bad enough for 1 spell, but as a design pattern which might be applied to other spells and effects it has the potential to lead to a ton of bookkeeping by players who didn’t even opt into that sort of tracking, since they aren’t the ones who took the spell. If the effect is actually that powerful, it should use some sort of resource. This is what the healing surges were for in 4e, and the equivalent resource to use in 5E would be Hit Dice. Or, you know, spell slots.
13. Help limits its ability to assist on ability checks to (1) skills that (2) you’re proficient in. This means that you can’t, for example, help another party member force open a stuck door – something that dates back to OD&D. The wording is also much stiffer for no good reason I can see.
14. Heroic Inspiration
    1. Does the change in name connote that it isn’t meant to be applied to NPCs? If so, the rules should really state that explicitly.
    2. An interesting implication of this: the more often a character makes d20 tests, the more often they’ll roll 1s and therefore get inspiration. Since Inspiration is (mostly) use-it-or-lose-it – the exception being the ability to transfer it to other party members – this is probably meant to encourage characters to use it often. However, this encouragement works better if you tell players about it explicitly instead of hoping they notice it emergently.
       1. It’s good that this clarifies that you can’t gain inspiration from a 1 on a roll that doesn’t get used.
15. Hidden
    1. It’s interesting that Hidden is defined as a condition a character has rather than a relationship between characters – you aren’t hidden from some set of creatures, you’re either hidden from everybody or not hidden at all.
       1. Note that hidden ends if an enemy finds you – that means if one enemy notices you but doesn’t say anything, you instantly cease to be hidden with respect to all enemies. Since the condition is all or nothing, you also can’t sneak up behind an individual enemy and try to silently take them out, unless no other enemies are around.
    2. Invisibility has the same effects as hidden, but doesn’t meet the criteria of being either obscured or behind any cover, so you can’t use invisibility to hide – you actually need to get behind something. It’s weird to have these redundant conditions – I’d expect being Invisible to just qualify the character to Hide and give an automatic Hide check, possibly with some sort of bonus or advantage.
16. Hide
    1. Requires a minimum DC 15 roll, even though you’re supposed to track your total for opposed Perception checks.
       1. DC 15 means that a Rogue specializing in Stealth fails to hide 40% of the time at 1st level, 35% at 4th, 25% of the time at 5th, 20% of the time at 8th, 10% of the time at 9th level, and 0% of the time at 11th – at which point you have a minimum roll of 23. I’m not sure I’d find that satisfying – I’d feel like as a Rogue I’m not particularly good at core abilities until at least 5th level, and more like 9th-11th. Other classes would tend to be even worse…
    2. Hiding requires you to be out of any visible enemy’s line of sight. So you can hide just fine if you’re in line of sight of a bunch of invisible enemies.
    3. Hide also requires you to be behind at least 3/4 cover or Heavily Obscured in addition to being out of line of sight. You can get Heavily Obscured by being in total darkness (but not just in shadows, so everyone in 5E has Hide in Shadows 0%), and total darkness is only counted as dim light if creatures have darkvision. It seems surprisingly difficult to hide…
17. Incapacitated
    1. You can’t take Actions or Reactions. Does this mean you can take Bonus Actions, or are Bonus Actions included in other, non-Bonus Actions (but Reactions are not so included)?
    2. You can’t concentrate or speak, but you are capable of rolling initiative. This is a very specific state of being barely able to function. I’m not even sure why you’d bother to roll initiative – why not just assign a value of -10 or something, so the character’s turn comes after everyone else’s? What are you going to do besides roll saving throws or have effects expire?
18. Influence
    1. The language tries to leave control of this very much with the DM, but even so it doesn’t account for things like attempts to Influence non-sapient beings (mindless constructs like animated objects and golems, mindless undead like skeletons and zombies, animals like e.g. giant ants, etc.), nor for attempts to influence creatures across a communication barrier like lack of a shared language. Disadvantage might be good enough to represent communication barriers (especially when dealing with other humanoid creatures when you can at least try to pantomime), but it feels like it would be insufficient in some cases.
       1. More generally, the game doesn’t actually show much interest in communication barriers – I don’t see any real advice in the 5.x family about how to deal with situations where there are vs aren’t shared languages. 
    2. Attitudes are listed in a strange order: Indifferent, Friendly, Hostile. That’s neither alphabetical (Friendly, Hostile, Indifferent), nor does it follow the spectrum of attitudes (Hostile, Indifferent, Friendly or vice-versa) – I’d think one of those would make more sense.
    3. Influence lets you get creatures to take action or withhold from acting, but doesn’t give you a path to actually modifying their attitudes toward you.
       1. The table obscures that each step in attitude creates a 10-point DC difference in what can be achieved. One wonders if a DC 30 roll on a Hostile creature could get the same results as a DC 20 Indifferent / DC 10 Friendly? Before we dismiss that as nearly impossible, recall that the description of DC 30 is “Nearly impossible”…
          1. Speaking of DCs, I note that 
       2. I seem to recall that in 2nd edition at least, Bards could try to sway creatures’ attitudes toward them.
    4. There’s qualitative variance within some of the attitudes, most notably Hostile:
       1. A Hostile creature “doesn’t necessarily attack [PCs] on sight,” (emphasis added), and “the DM might determine that the Hostile creature is so ill-disposed toward the characters that no Charisma Check can sway it.” These differences suggest there should be at least 2 different Attitudes – I’d probably split these into Unfriendly (the current default Hostile), and Hostile (will attack opportunistically, no Charisma check can sway the creature).
       2. Alternately, I’d probably want to assign a creature a numeric value indicating its modifier to Influence rolls, with numbers falling into various bands (so you can have varying degrees for friendliness, for example – the difference between fair-weather friends and found family who may find themselves in challenging circumstances)
       3. Probably I’d set DCs with Indifferent as a baseline (so centered on 10). Then the range would be something like: Friendly (+6 or greater, nominal value 10), Indifferent (-5 to +5, nominal value 0), Unfriendly (-15 to -6, nominal value 0), and Hostile (-16 or below, nominal value -20). Then our table of results could be based on Indifferent:
          1. Below 0: Attacks opportunistically
          2. 0-9: Offers no help but does no harm
          3. 10-19: Does as asked if there are no risks or sacrifices
          4. 20-29: Does as asked, accepting a minor risk or sacrifice
          5. 30 or above: Does as asked, accepting a significant risk or sacrifice
          6. (This means that even an Indifferent creature might be accidentally provoked to attack by a sufficiently inept attempt at Influence)
    5. Influence needs examples of use in play. Lots of examples of varying situations and with different considerations, not because there are a lot of rules but because there are so few rules – new DMs could use guidelines in how to handle these attempts.
       1. The text indicates a party may have to succeed “on one or more challenging Charisma checks” – this is awful advice. Successive rolls are just a waste of time unless they’re meant to represent distinct outcomes; if you’re asking for 3 favors then 3 rolls might be appropriate, but if you’re only asking for 1 it should be resolved with a single roll. Otherwise you’re bringing in iterative success rolls like 4e skill challenges, and one of the major problems those had was that chances of success on the overall challenge was very hard for most people to intuitively grasp based on the chance of success of any one roll.
19. Invisible
    1. One of its properties is called “Unseeable”, which is…another way of saying “in visible”. It’s also exactly the same functionally as the “Concealed” property of the Hidden condition. In fact, aside from the name of this property and the fact that Concealed has a defined set of conditions which end it, I’d expect these 2 conditions should be merged somehow (as I mentioned above).
20. Jump
    1. This is now an action which doesn’t expend your movement, but the distance you use can’t exceed your speed. I dislike this change, since it makes like jumping attacks require special rules lacunae to pull off.
    2. I also don’t like that you have to move at least 10 feet before attempting to jump vertically without disadvantage – I can see why building up horizontal speed is useful for a horizontal jump, but not for a vertical one.
    3. The distance you clear can’t exceed your speed, but there’s no requirement that it not exceed your remaining movement for the turn. I don’t think this is actually much of an exploit – it’s basically just the Dash action, except with a variable-length (but bounded) portion during which you aren’t traversing a surface.
    4. Jump is based on a Strength roll. That absolutely does make sense in terms of the mechanics of the situation, but:
       1. In terms of game mechanics, it will make melee Fighters – the ones clanking around in heavy armor – better jumpers than light-weapon Fighters, Rogues, or Monks (barring class abilities to the contrary – the Rogues in this playtest packet don’t have anything of the sort).
       2. Also in terms of game mechanics, being Strength-based will make Elephants (Speed 40 feet, 22 Strength) better at Jumping than Cats (Speed 40 feet, 4 Strength).
       3. The basic issue is that there’s no consideration for weight – not just encumbrance the character is dealing with but overall weight. But 5E has shown no interest in any of the logistical concerns of early D&D, so I wouldn’t expect this to be addressed.
21. Light [Weapon Property] – the ability for Light Weapons is fine, but the description could be read to suggest that the character must be using different weapon types in each hand – I’d suggest amending the example to use a shortsword in one hand, and another shortsword in the other hand.
22. Long Rest
    1. These are “available to any creature.” Interestingly, this means that both Undead and Constructs are able to take a long rest. For example, a Golem can take a long rest even though the Long Rest description indicates “you sleep for at least 6 hours,” but the Golem description’s property “Constructed Nature” says “A golem doesn’t require air, food, drink, or sleep.” I guess not requiring those things doesn’t prevent the golem from partaking when desired.
    2. A long rest restores all HP (which it already did in 5E), it also:
       1. Restores all spent HD (previously it restored up to half the character’s total HD in spent HD, so full restoration required up to 2 long rests)
       2. Undoes any reductions to Max HP (totally new; there was no single mundane way for characters to recover from this in 5E))
       3. and Undoes any Ability Score Reductions (also totally new)
    3. Also, if the Long Rest is interrupted but it lasted at least 1 hour, the characters gain the benefits of a Short Rest.
    4. In other words, Long Rests have been made more powerful. I don’t like this, because it provides even greater incentives for players to use Long Rests as often as feasible.
       1. I also don’t like that this turns nearly all threats to characters into one of exactly two possible outcomes: (1) lasts “forever” barring powerful magic (death, petrification, loss of limbs, permanently polymorphed into a toad, etc.), and (2) nothing a good night’s rest can’t cure. I like the idea that there are injuries and ailments you can recover from, but only after some noticeable amount of time like a week or a fortnight or a month – better still if there’s some amount of continuous recovery over that time. There don’t have to be a lot of these, but it does make the risk of adventuring feel a bit more real. Currently only exhaustion meets my needs.
23. Magic [Action] – this is how you cast a spell with a casting time of 1 Action, and how you cast a spell with a casting time of 1 minute or longer (those apparently all require Concentration…). There’s nothing here about casting times greater than 1 Action but less than 1 minute – perhaps those don’t or can’t exist? There’s also nothing here about what you do to cast spells with a casting time of 1 Bonus Action or Reaction.
    1. Requiring Concentration while casting longer spells – which implicitly affects all rituals – is one way to get back some of the classic D&D ability to disrupt a spellcaster by doing damage, though it’s much less reliable now and not likely to affect anything they’d attempt in combat.
24. Move
    1. You can’t use more than one of your Speeds in a turn unless you can take additional Moves (by using the Dash action, for example). That’s honestly a lot easier to explain than the prior rules about accounting for multiple distinct Speeds.
    2. Your Move can be broken up around an Action, but there’s no mention of whether you can do so around a Bonus Action or a Reaction used on your turn (run toward pit, cast Feather Fall as you go down, take Action at bottom, resume running).
       1. As in 5E, the term “Action” seems to be overloaded to refer to the set of all Actions as well as a specific member of that set. This is very confusing – I’d rather they adopt unambiguous terminology, e.g. “An Action is one of the following: Major Action, Minor Action (formerly known as a Bonus Action), Reaction.”
    3. There’s a lot of things that can cause you to spend additional feet of movement – it would be nice if there was a centralized list of that somewhere. So far as I can tell, it includes:
       1. Moving through difficult terrain
       2. Climbing without using a Climb Speed or Swimming without using a Swim Speed
       3. Moving while Slowed
       4. Zeroing your Speed causes other speeds to be zeroed as well is a good rules clarification, but it fights against the imagery of someone successfully grappling a wingless flyer who then proceeds to fly/flail around, trying to scrape the grappler off or just smash them into nearby objects. I think the issue is that this makes sense if all a creature’s speeds come from muscular exertion, but some forms of movement seem like they probably don’t – imagine two people grappling on a flying carpet.
25. Ritual Casting – you no longer need a class feature for Ritual Casting, as long as you have the spell prepared. Previously some casters had Known spells instead of Prepared spells, but Bards and Rangers were among them and in this playtest packet they’re listed as having Prepared spells, so this probably applies to them and to all casters. This seems like it will be a minor benefit to tertiary casters (Eldritch Knights and Spellthieves) and secondary casters (Paladins and Rangers), and possibly a significant benefit to Sorcerers and Warlocks, neither of whom previously had the ability to use ritual casting. It might also be nice for characters who take the Magic Initiate feat, though they only have a single 1st-level spell and can already cast it once per day – it would take very particular spell selection to get any real use out of this.
26. Search [Action]
    1. I sympathize with the desire to unify similar things under a single block of rules – see my comments about Invisible, Hide, and Hidden, above – but I think using the term “Search” to describe attempting to discern a creature’s state of mind or ailments is weird. I almost wonder if the Perception skill should be renamed to Notice and this action have its name changed to Perceive. This renaming would likely be more disruption than it’s worth, at least in a half-edition.
    2. I thought 3rd edition grouping all perception under Wisdom was pretty weird, and as of 5E analysis (at least for Medicine) is being grouped there as well; I would have thought Intelligence should have played a role in these attempts. I understand that keeping Medicine associated with Wisdom reinforces the Cleric’s role as a healer, but I’m a bit put out that Wisdom has become better-defined only by becoming less intuitive to me: Friar Tuck has sharper eyes than Conan.
27. Shortsword – making a shortsword a simple weapon seems like a very minor change, which leads me to wonder what motivated designers to make it.
28. Slowed
    1. This is a new condition – or rather, defining this as a condition instead of as the effects of the Slow spell is new. This presumably means numerous effects will be able to inflict this condition.
    2. Compared to the effects of the Slow spell, this is a gigantic nerf. Also a very necessary one – the spell used to hit enemies right in the action economy, dropping them from Reaction + (standard/major) Action + Bonus Action each turn to just one of {(standard) Action, Bonus Action}, they couldn’t make more than 1 melee or ranged attack per turn regardless of their abilities and magic items, and making 50% of 1-actions spells require an extra round to cast. The new condition emulates that by making all movement less effective (as if everything was difficult terrain), but imposing no limits or penalties on other actions
    3. The old condition gave a -2 to AC and Dex saves; now the character has Disadvantage on Dex saves (a buff to the effect) and attackers have advantage on attack rolls (a buff to the effect). The overall effect is still a giant nerf that was very much needed.
29. Study [Action]
    1. I think most Medicine rolls should go under Study rather than Search, but as noted above it’s probably intended to stick with Wisdom to keep Clerics as the primary healers
    2. The idea of “studying” your own memory seems weird to me
    3. I don’t like the idea that we need distinct types of actions for Intelligence vs Wisdom checks. More precisely, I don’t think we actually need two distinct actions, and we probably shouldn’t have them.
30. Tool Proficiency – if you have both a tool proficiency and a skill proficiency that would apply to a check, you get proficiency bonus from one and advantage from the other. The specific wording under tool proficiency suggests that a character who has a skill proficiency which has Expertise applied to it, and also a tool proficiency (but without Expertise), they get the proficiency bonus from the tool proficiency rather than the doubled bonus from the skill proficiency, and the skill proficiency only gives advantage. A couple of quick examples would clear this up much more easily than trying to word everything perfectly.
31. Teleportation
    1. All equipment worn and carried goes with you, but creatures you’re touching don’t unless the effect specifies they do
       1. This means you can teleport out of a grapple. Put another way, it’s difficult to prevent a teleporter from escaping
       2. Can you wear or carry something which itself bears a creature and have them come along that way (e.g. you’re wearing a backpack containing your familiar, or a baby you’re trying to take back to its family)?
       3. What are the limits on what you can be considered to be wearing or carrying is probably a broader question, and also relevant to spells like Polymorph as well.
    2. Teleportation doesn’t expend movement or provoke Opportunity Attacks. I suspect the former wasn’t much in doubt, but the latter was – good to have that clarified.
32. Tremorsense is defined more by its limitations than by what it lets you do: locate things. Notably, it doesn’t let you locate objects which aren’t moving, but it does allow you to locate creatures which aren’t moving (including golems and corporeal undead). It also doesn’t count as a form of sight.
    1. How this works with Hiding is weird – if the creature has both Tremorsense and sight, you can’t hide if you’re in line of sight, but if you break line of sight (say you’re both in total darkness) but within the range of the creature’s Tremorsense, you can hide even though the creature knows exactly where you are. I don’t think this is an issue with Tremorsense, just with the way the rules about hiding are written.
33. Unarmed Strike
    1. Everyone is proficient with unarmed strikes. Given that even Wizards are assumed to be proficient with fighting using multiple types of weapons, it’s reasonable to assume they practiced some form of unarmed fighting while they were learning to knife fools or stave in their heads.
    2. You have a choice of Unarmed Strike effects, chosen when you hit.
       1. Damage does 1 + Strength Bludgeoning. There’s no minimum damage rule in either this playtest packet or the 2014 PHB, so if you have a Strength penalty you might end up doing 0 damage.
       2. Grapple – the target is immediately grappled, and can’t try to hit their Escape DC until the end of their turn (which means you’ve already interfered with their next turn to some degree). Note that being grappled limits your movement and gives disadvantage on attack rolls against anyone except the person grappling you, but
          1. Doesn’t give them any special ability to attack you
          2. Doesn’t impair your ability to attack them (with, say, a greatsword or halberd)
          3. Doesn’t impair your ability to cast spells, concentrate, or do anything that doesn’t involve using your speed or making an attack roll. You can also use a teleportation effect to get out of a grapple.
       3. Shove has no way of resisting it other than to be more than 1 size larger. Or just not get hit. This is much quicker than having the contested roll from the 2014 version of shoving, and prevents someone from Expertise in Athletics from being extraordinary good at shoving people around. 
    3. This is a distinct improvement in terms of unifying unarmed strike options. I suspect this will become more significant when the redesigned Monk becomes available. Grappling still seems weak because the grappled condition appears to be mostly pointless – you can redirect someone’s attacks at yourself and (maybe) carry them around in place. It’s more about tanking a specific enemy rather than doing anything to stop them by inflicting damage or even getting in a position to hurt them.