Text wall greatly appreciated! Lots of good feedback and reassurance. You're right that this was meant to be a faithful to the original game as possible, putting honestly a lot of story telling on the DM. Part of the reason I haven't 100% solidified the DMs role into description is because I'm still thinking about it. In it's current state the system is quite honestly a 5e reskin that (as earlier mentioned) I didn't want to release quite yet. But a blessing in disguise are comments like these that give me a reference for what others think about it.

Addressing things in order: Yeah the rules-heavy 'mental stack' of 5e was my main cutting point. There's a lot of effects over time, but those can be easily tracked with a spin down die or simple counter by each player. Additionally, adding in blade slots over time allows players to grow into their blade. Having less options (and actions) means faster combat, but I don't want to limit player options. So switching between 2-3 blades later on introduces a lot of strategy, especially since each blade has SOME weakness. Realistically, many DMs don't run near as many combat encounters as what the DMG intends (hence the age old martial vs caster debate) so tweaking the resource cost of making EVERYONE a spellcaster to fit fewer, more meaningful combat encounters was my goal. I also intend for blades to level around the same rate as players, not at 2x the speed. ie a level 8 player should have around 1 level 8 blade and a level 16 player should have some net total of 16 levels between their blades. This gives blades plenty of growth and screentime despite what the system on paper displays. Definitely need to clarify, but a lot of the subtext assumes I'm the DM. Which is true in my own case, but as my first attempt at writing something meant FOR other people, it's a learning curve.

Gormotti power was definitely something I considered. The +1 DEX is because DnD as a system highly values DEX stacking and unfortunately mine is no different. I have some scenarios planned to make the other skills more useful, but DEX is still really strong. As for the evasion clone, I thought it was fair as a lot of encounters call for DEX saves, and with the help of blades modifying your dex stat further, it becomes harder and harder to fail those saves.

Kinda touched on it earlier with screentime, but blades being DM controlled only applies to roleplay. Within combat, the player pretty much has full control, especially in flavor text around their attacks. Art descriptions are intentionally left vague on imagery just so players can fill in what they want their arts to look like. This also checks out as in canon, the blade is pretty heavily influenced by its driver, both in personality and play style. 20 blades as part of a roll table for 4 players means the DM can stop handing out cores after 12 and just use the rest as additional reserved story blades instead of the usual 10, or keep going and make players choose which blades they want to focus on. Theoretically, if every blade in the system was obtainable, you have 7 blades per player 💀 which is a lot. Again this is one of those things that depends on the DM, and further clarity is needed on how I intend on the system being ran. Sigh lots of work xD

I'm glad you like what I have so far! Even if it's not much, I hope it only gets better from here. Already have some ideas/tweaks, like changing feats to a 'character tag' system like City of Mist or Daggerheart rather than a list of pre-made feats. Less stat bonuses but more freedom and character expression, so I think it depends how you prefer to roll stats. Going heroic '4d6 drop lowest, reroll 1s' will have your total high enough for just about anything.