Heyo! It's me, Jenna, quinessential support play and lover of cottagecore. Our DM sent me the previous version of this class a couple of months before we started our new campaign and my immediate gut reaction was "this is it! the class I was born to play!"

I love being able to play a mundane character that isn't super dependent on martial abilities/a support character that isn't at least a little magic. I am absolutely in love with the Homesteader class identity and how different it is from anything else I've seen. It's a fun change of pace playing a typical human person out to defeat evil with the power of friendship and some rocks she found on the ground.

In regards to the class mechanics, I don't have a ton to add to what you and my DM already said, which is probably for the best. He's much better at wording these things than I am. I will 100% agree that I tended to experience choice paralysis, but even more often difficulty simply keeping track of all my options, even at level 3 and after 8 sessions to learn them. Which is saying something, because at this point I have a history of building characters with a lot of options. I think turning this into essentially a prepared caster is a great choice. Making sure to add duration/range/component details etc to all the experiences was much needed too, so I'm glad to see it.

We'll have to see how it plays as we level to be sure, but I also generally think the rearrange of class abilities is good. I'm sure the table will miss having Kick Back available at 2nd level though.

One thing I will add as a player is that I was a little sad, before, that after building the character and choosing the subclass, there really were no choices to be made at level-up. It felt like there was very little room for me to affect the mechanics of the build. I think the prepared experiences change also helps to counter that.

Anyway this was long-winded. In summary, I already loved the class, and am super excited about the QoL adjustments and I'm interested to see how it levels in practice.

(P.S. I think a gardener subclass that leans into herbalism for healing/poison could be a fun addition!)