This new tendency to make features as spells is totally damaging. I understand that from a RP point, it makes sense, but it hurts the players.
The most annoying part is that I need to swap 200+ pages in order to know what my class does. When the book will be printed, the spells will very likely be put together at the end of the new PHB. But that means that in order to properly understand and grasp what my class does, I will need to go from page ~100 to page ~300. I play a wizard? I will have to search 4 times at the end of the book to properly know what my class core features do. I play a sorcerer or warlock? I will have to search 5 times! For. Basic. Class. Features! It's a class feature and this UA hides features behind spells!
I'm a caster, I want to use my feature, you know, the very deep part of who I am, then comes Tuk-Tuk counterspelling it! It's my feature, don't you dare counterspelling it! Counterspell my spells, not my features!
I play a wizard and lose my spellbook (that happens more than you know) and didn't prepare Scribe Spell (who seriously would during an adventure instead of downtime)? Well, I just lost my wizard class entirely! Oh I was smart (?) and prepared Scribe Spell, but I pissed off another mage? Well here comes him counterspelling my Scribe Spell of Scribe Spell at the right time. I just lost my wizard class, again! But even thematically, for wizard, it makes sense that they use their intelligence to cast, modify spells, that they do it through their hard work. Now their hard work is just hand-waved with "a spell does it for you".
I play a sorcerer and want versatility, then I swap one of the feature spell with an arcane spell. Oh, a few levels later, I want it back, I can't because it's not an arcane spell! Hey, you just definitely lost a feature!
I play a warlock, this is the part where it's silly: it's like you took the feature, copy/pasted it into the spell section, added the spell requirements (school, casting time, range, components and duration) and that's it. They look like features, they feel like features, they read like features, but they aren't features, oh and they can be counterspelled.
When you made spells more features like for Hunter's Mark (for Ranger) and Find Steed (for Paladin), it made sense because those are spells that are very linked to the class and they improved the basic, publicly available spell, but here you totally hide entire features behind a spell that is totally restricted to that class, it just doesn't make sense, and it's damaging for the classes.
This new tendency to make features as spells is totally damaging. I understand that from a RP point, it makes sense, but it hurts the players.
It's a class feature and this UA hides features behind spells!
Oh I was smart (?) and prepared Scribe Spell, but I pissed off another mage? Well here comes him counterspelling my Scribe Spell of Scribe Spell at the right time. I just lost my wizard class, again!
But even thematically, for wizard, it makes sense that they use their intelligence to cast, modify spells, that they do it through their hard work. Now their hard work is just hand-waved with "a spell does it for you".
When you made spells more features like for Hunter's Mark (for Ranger) and Find Steed (for Paladin), it made sense because those are spells that are very linked to the class and they improved the basic, publicly available spell, but here you totally hide entire features behind a spell that is totally restricted to that class, it just doesn't make sense, and it's damaging for the classes.
There is another thread that talks about it: https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/unearthed-arcana/170433-turning-class-features-into-spells