After their efforts with 4e’s VTT, I’m not surprised they’re so happy to be able to show basic functionality

Yeah, there’s a heck of a lot of overlap between Traveller and 40k- they were developed around the same times (classic traveller was '77, Megatraveller was '86, Rogue Trader was '87 and then Traveller: The New Era was '92) so there’s a lot of cross-pollination between the two

I’d be inclined to agree with you if there wasn’t such a specific divide between the flavour text and the content. For instance, the sharpshooter feat doesn’t specifically let you make shots that others think are impossible- saying “I use my sharpshooter feat to shoot the BBEG in his castle three hundred miles away” would certainly be a shot that others think are impossible, but I doubt any table would let that fly. Saying “I have the crusher feat, so I’m going to break the enemy’s bones to debuff them” would fit directly into the flavour of “You are practiced in the art of crushing your enemies”, but it’s also not what the feat does. For the halflings, you can take the bountiful luck feat, and then use it, despite the flavour text clearly stating “You’re not sure how you do it; you just wish it, and it happens”- thus precluding anyone who knows about the feat or what it does from taking it. Lucky: “You have inexplicable luck that seems to kick in at just the right moment.”, but it’s actually very explicable, follows predictable rules and doesn’t kick in at just the right moment unless the player knows just the right moment to use it.

Jeremy Crawford’s rules are also inconsistent dog shit. That’s why we’re here, looking at this meme :)

The flavour text for the feats doesn’t actually give the details of what rules they have. That’s the issue- the rules are vague, rely on other bits of context which may or may not be considered part of the rules depending on the reader, and are followed up by a series of twitter rulings which tend to muddy things more often than they clear them up. In 5e, RAW, you can bonk people with a crossbow and use the third point on the sharpshooter feat- same as how in 3.5e, RAW, a chicken infested commoner could pull infinite chickens out of their spell component pouch, or an iron heart surge could take out an anti magic field, or drowning could heal someone from -1000HP back to 0. The point isn’t “Hey, look at these things you should totally do in the game”, the point is “here’s what the rules literally say”. And, by a literal reading of the rules, the sentence “Before you make an attack with a ranged weapon that you are proficient with, you can choose to take a -5 penalty to the attack roll. If the attack hits, you add +10 to the attack’s damage.” must stand on it’s own.

My point was more that there is a specified difference between a “Ranged weapon attack”, a “ranged attack”, and “an attack with a ranged weapon”- the three things mean different things. Hitting someone with a crossbow is “an attack with a ranged weapon”, and thus the third point on the sharpshooter feat should apply, for the same reason throwing a dagger doesn’t apply it; if performing a ranged attack with a melee weapon doesn’t count as an attack with a ranged weapon, why would performing a melee attack with a ranged weapon count as a melee weapon attack?

The FGHP is from Traveller, it deals a shedload of damage (2d6 times ten in a system where the average person has 21 ‘hp’), but has the unfortunate side effect of venting radiation all over everything when you fire it. It’s meant to be used in conjunction with a pretty good hazmat suit, but those can get expensive and a cheap enough hireling could run cheaper…

I’d disagree, for example in the specific case of the sharpshooter feat a thrown dagger is a ranged weapon attack, but not an attack with a ranged weapon- so, per Jeremy Crawford, the first two parts of the feat apply when throwing a dagger but not the third.

I won’t- per Jeremy Crawford, a thrown melee weapon isn’t an attack with a ranged weapon, so by the same logic a melee attack with a ranged weapon wouldn’t become a melee weapon attack.

“Fiend pact warlock? No, you misheard- I took Pact of the Demon Core”

Huge fan of having a bell curve for most rolls, my main concern is that in combat the random initiative might make it kind of swingy; the initiative system is that if the hope die is higher the players go next, if the fear die is higher the enemies do, for about a 46% chance of enemies going next each turn. So that’s about a 15% chance of players getting three turns in a row- if the game is balanced for quick combats (which seems likely given what we know) that could make a massive difference in how hard a combat is- and in the counter situation, where enemies get three turns in a row (about a 9% chance) an otherwise easy encounter could go very wrong. This is all speculation, of course, but the initiative system being fully random does worry me, since the action economy seems like it would be a major thing in this system