D&D: I've now read through the PHB, once at least, and I like it quite a lot. A few encouraging signs of the times:

Artwork. Females depicted in the book are dressed and posed sensibly. Characters aren't all white, and the styles of armour and clothing and such aren't all European.

In the character creation info, it has a couple of paragraphs with some very inclusive language about choice of gender identity, sexuality and such.

In the character creation info, it has a couple of paragraphs with some very inclusive language about choice of gender identity, sexuality and such.

So happy about this! I* haven't had a chance to check out the full PHB yet, let alone play the new rules, but some of the gender expression stuff was in the preview/starter-pack whatsis, and I'm so glad to hear they're following through with other signs o' the times in the full game as well.

* by which I mean my half-orc butch, Petunia, of course.

WotC has now made available a 60-page pdf of DM info, being mostly stats for a bunch of monsters (including Giant Weasel, Flying Sword and Awakened Shrub). [link]

I'm still reading through the classes section in my PHB (about halfway through Wizard) and I'm liking most of it so far. Kind of miffed about paladins no longer being paragons of righteousness and justice, but at least it's a decent step back from the "paladins of any alignment" mess that was in 4E. I'm not sure how much I like Smites being tied to spells (and no longer being Smite Evil) but I definitely like that they only trigger on a hit, so you're not wasting your extremely limited smiting ability for the day when you roll that natural 1. (Pathfinder's solution was that when you declared a smite, it lasted against the chosen foe the entire combat. Which made paladins awesome against big bad solo monsters like dragons and demons, but also meant you were hesitant to declare a smite against anything that wasn't clearly a "boss" monster.)

I did skip ahead to the feats section and read through that. None of them really blew me away, but I could see where they would be valuable enough to certain character concepts to forgo an ability increase for them.

I do agree that the diversity in the PHB art and text (which builds on what kind of started in 3E and Pathfinder greatly expanded with their own iconics) is welcome to see. It is weird, after almost 15 years, to see art of random adventurers throughout the book instead of specific iconic characters. But it definitely evokes the old-school feel of previous editions they were going for. I dug out my old 2nd Ed PHB (the original style, not the terrible black-and-red covered one) and was amused at how seemingly random a lot of the art was.

I'm not sure how much I like Smites being tied to spells (and no longer being Smite Evil)

I believe your tagline is in agreement with you.

Kind of miffed about paladins no longer being paragons of righteousness and justice

Oath of Devotion paladins are, at least. Though did you notice this sentence in the Alignment section: "Gold dragons, paladins, and most dwarves are lawful good." I thought that was curious, as the Oath of Vengeance paladin specifically contradicts that one. I wonder if paladins were more rigid at some point in the playtest, and that sentence never got revised.

I hadn't noticed that line from the alignment section, or at least I didn't notice the contradiction. Considering how many different iterations of the rules there were during the various playtest phases I'm not surprised some contradictions slipped in. And I realize the Oath of Devotion is the classic paladin. I'm glad it's supported on some manner. I like the other two Oaths, I'm just not super keen on calling them paladins. (Though the fact that all three Oaths are tasked with fighting evil helps.)

I suppose a lot of it was motivated by wanting to provide options in each class. Or they liked this Punisher-style character and didn't want to create a new class for it.

I have more trouble with the environmentally friendly paladin, that just seems like a strange fit. Plus, all that business in its oath about "The Light" reminds me of T'raltixx in Farscape's "Crackers Don't Matter". (So naturally now, if ever I play a paladin, I'll pick that one and spend battles shouting "I MUST HAVE MORE LIGHT!")

I believe the other two Oaths are meant to be versions of 4th Ed classes. The Oath of Vengeance is similar to the 4E Avenger class although I believe that one was a little more rogue/assassin-ish (Pathfinder has their own version of the concept called the Inquisitor) and the Nature Knight Guy has echoes of the 4E Warden (who was a nature-themed tank class).

Not sure Paladin is really the place to put them. I'd have loved to see a callback to some of the old 2nd Ed kits like the Wyrmslayer and Ghosthunter instead. (Or even something like Pathfinder's Warrior of the Holy Light, where you give up spellcasting in favor of various auras and light-based powers.)

Oh, right, the Warden. I'd picked up on the similarity to the Avenger's raison d'être, but missed the other one's antecedent.

The only real commonality - and it's not what I'd deem central to the other two - is the whole oath business. And finally I've come up with a paladin concept I'm interested in, as I now intend to create a gold dragonborn paladin/sorcerer specializing in air magic, called "Oath Windenfyre".

::golf claps::