What is the "sweet spot" in each edition of Dungeons and Dragons...

But that's tied to PPs and EDs, not power sources, right?

Yes, I'd call it more system dependent than 'lol wizards'

levels 1-10 in 3.5 IF and only IF
>you ban all core classes
>martials must be Tome of Battle Classes
>Casters must be Dread Necromancer, Healer, Warmage, Psion, or Wilder.

Truth

Explain to me how a level 1 wizard with 4 HP is better than a level 1 fighter with 12.

>sleep
>color spray
>etc, etc

Sleep and/or Color Spray.

Pray that the Fighter fails his Will Save, and then plink away at him for a couple of turns with your crossbow.

Even Grease will shut down the Fighter (and will stay relevant when Sleep and Color Spray fall off).

I remember when 4e was completely reviled, and then 5e came out and now everyone loves 4e, mostly because no one bothered to read 5e's rules.

4e is too limited to cardboard-cutout fantasy archetypes, with very little room for variation, for my tastes. Ultimately I prefer classless systems that let you build your own character based on your own concept, like Runequest or Open Legend, but I still prefer 5e D&D to 4e, because it at least has actual multiclassing, which allows for some finagling, instead of the bizarre hybrid system that 4e had. I used to like Pathfinder, not for anime girl kitsune meme reasons, but simply because the vast breadth of class options allowed me to basically play whatever I want. I've almost always played humans anyway. But I've since tried to find what I'm looking for in other systems.

Healers can't heal, though. They only stabilize.

Good.

As someone whose played 4e I've never really felt this to be the case? Between themes, power choices, skill powers, feats and such, I've never really felt restricted in what characters I can make within the system.

Of course, that entirely relies on you being okay with refluffing. I am, and 4e supports it, but I know it goes against the classic D&D thing of a one to one relationship between mechanics and how things are in the world. Personally I've never really given a fuck about that.

>4e is too limited to cardboard-cutout fantasy archetypes, with very little room for variation,

I've never seen even the faintest inklings that this could possibly be true.

My issue with "classless" systems, is that they're never as good at what you want to do as the specialized system that you'd normally use and that you almost universally build along the same tropes that the class systems anyways.

I started at the tail end of 3.5, when the system bloat was at its' worst, and at the start of 4E when I could get in at the very start. I actually liked 4E, and still prefer it over 3.P and 5E.

Sleep breaks the moment the target takes damage, so you get 1 turn, maybe 2, before you get royally fucked. I'll give you color spray.

A sleeping target is helpless, so you can coup de grace them. Not necessarily an instant kill, but an auto-crit is nasty in its own right.

True, but part of my problem is that there are archetypes that I want to play that I don't feel are represented well by 4e or 5e. Again, going back to Pathfinder, I found I rarely had this problem, simply because the breadth of available character options was so immense, but I feel that a classless system is still a better option.

You either poke the fighter with a dagger or staff and HOPE that you deal more than 50% of the fighters HP, shoot him with a crossbow and HOPE that you deal more than 50% of the fighter HP (not even taking into account the fact that you just gave yourself a penalty to hit because he's prone) or you cast a spell and know you're not dealing more that 50% of his HP.

Then either: he stands up and stabs you in the face, he lays there and snipes your ass with his crossbow, or he runs right up to your face and forces you to risk taking opportunity attacks from a very angry man to do anything.

Can you go into what archetypes those are, out of curiosity?

I'm pretty sure between ALL OF THE SPLATS, the multiclassing rules and the hybrid rules, the Paragon paths and Epic Destiny paths. Pretty much everything you can want, in terms of archetypes, should be available.

Coup De Grace hits automatically, crits automatically, and deals maximum damage.

So if the fighter has 12 starting HP, getting a Coup De Grace from the wizard's dagger (assuming 10 str) is 8 damage followed by a DC 18 fort save or instant death.

If the wizard delivered the coup de grace with the crossbow, that's 16 damage coupled with a DC 26 fort save or instant death.

Coup De Grace is no joking matter at any level.

Well, some of them I could roughly recreate through multiclassing and a lot of finagling (and I have), but as a result I won't begin to approach something close to what I'm picturing until my character is very high level. One example for 5e is a crossbow-toting inquisitor/witchhunter sort, who augments his/her crossbow skills with a bit of divine magic, but also studies and masters occult magic in order to better combat it. I made a character like this by multiclassing paladin/fighter/warlock, but it wasn't much of a character until high levels. I want this sort of concept to be available in low-level play. I could always try ranger, but unfortunately the fluff is always somewhat held back by the mechanics, and it wouldn't represent quite what I want.

I literally have no idea what edition this is on about. For 3e, its an autocrit and the aforementioned save, but its not maximized. Maximized crits are a 5e thing.

>Coup de Grace
>As a full-round action, you can use a melee weapon to deliver a coup de grace to a helpless opponent. You can also use a bow or crossbow, provided you are adjacent to the target.
>You automatically hit and score a critical hit. If the defender survives the damage, he must make a Fortitude save (DC 10 + damage dealt) or die. A rogue also gets her extra sneak attack damage against a helpless opponent when delivering a coup de grace.
Fighter HP is 12, ergo Con must be 14 or 15, Fort will be +4. Let's assume Str 10 Wiz.
CdG with Staff = bad odds, 1/6 chance of 6 hp damage. Save about 50% likely to pass
CdG with heavy crossbow = good odds, about 2/5 chance of 6hp damage, same range for save
CdG with fighter's own greatsword because you don't need proficiency = great odds, 3/4 chance of 6hp damage, better peak damage means save is harder
CdG with scythe you brought for the occasion = 93% chance of sufficient damage, save can be brutal
CdG with Oh WAIT don't CdG because you have won the fight, can rob the now incapacitated fighter blind and be on your merry way = best odds.

Because nothing screams safety like a completely hale and healthy enemy classed type who will fucking hate you forever.

He'll hate you more when he wakes up being eaten by whatever lives in the dungeon with no gear. Or be dead, who cares.
Thing is, wizard Save-or-Lose spells buy time, and wizards get a lot more out of time than fighters do. If the fighter waits a couple of levels and tries to get back at you Gary Oak style you'll fuck him up harder.

I guess this goes back to >Of course, that entirely relies on you being okay with refluffing.

If you're trying to mechanically represent every element of that, you're going to struggle in 4e. If you just find a set of mechanics that suit and fill in the gaps with standard multiclassing, themes, etc, I can see it working fine.

But how comfortable you are with that sort of refluffing is a matter of personal preference, I can't call you wrong for not being okay with it.

user, you really need to stop using the mechanics as the basis for the your characters, you are running into the problems of using 1 to 1 mechanics for fluff.

Okay, that's one or two rounds of combat where the Wizard is potentially far more effective than the Fighter. What about the other 14? (Assuming 4 combats a day, each of which has an average length of 3-5 rounds)

Yeah, monster slayer ranger is perfect for that.

Or he could just play in games where the mechanics support his character concepts.

The point is that in 4e there are mechanics that can support the concept, it just requires refluffing.

>Have to do something every round
Wizards just nail their effectiveness in one or two spells and spend the rest of time in combat defending and odd jobs, maybe plinking with a crossbow or reserve feat (or wand, whathaveyou).
One well-placed AoE spell or set of buffs does their share in a turn, and the martials mop up.

Which games are that? I also like that sort of character but that's not the sort of thing that would be doable at all well without a point buy system or a class made specifically for that (which is unlikely since it's very specific and doesn't have a lot of examples in popular fiction).

I can't think of any classes that would work without refluffing in 3.X either, and multiclassing would just gimp you since you'd have level 1ish spells from 2 classes plus an attempt at decent BAB/HP/etc and you'd need a bunch of different stats for that (at least at 12ish if you're just going to cast minor buffs and other things that don't need a save).

The problem is that there is only so much you can refluff. In many ways, fluff IS tied to how it's represented by mechanics. If you want a power that slows enemies down, you can say that your attack causes sluggish movements and slowness all you want, but if it doesn't actually have a mechanical effect to represent that, it's going to feel very lacking. If you want to have a power that costs the user's own life force to use (so edgy), there are only a few limited features that come close to representing that.

That's not to say that the fluff of 4e or 5e is entirely locked into place by the mechanics; there's definitely some wiggle room there, but in many cases, you can only stretch the fluff so far.

One example in which the existing mechanics draw a character concept away from their intended fluff can be seen in warlocks, whose fluff indicates that they're supposed to be the "power at a cost" class, however, there is very little mechanically about warlock that actually costs a character playing one anything more than other spellcasters.
(contd. 1/2)

(contd. 2/2)

In my opinion, a much better example of a character with mechanically represented drawbacks to their powers is the barbarian, especially berserker. In order to maintain their rage, a barbarian must either attack an enemy, or take damage from some source. This means that, if there are no enemies around, and a barbarian wishes to maintain their rage, they will have to take damage from somewhere. (My preference is to have the character perform weak unarmed attacks on themselves, which I represent by them biting their arm in anger, or somesuch) This represents a quantifiable mechanical drawback that Warlock lacks. Berserker takes this even further, granting the character an additional attack as a bonus action, at the cost of exhaustion when their rage ends.

Due to this, I've come to prefer systems more focused on narrative, like Open Legend, in which the mechanics are malleable and exist to serve the fluff, not the other way around.

Not him, but I think the best bet would be just using a generalist system. For example, mutants and masterminds would be able to build all that stuff without issue, and refluffing is a key part of the system anyways. You don't even run into the problem of your fluff not matching up with the mechanics because the more finicky stuff is handled by Descriptors or Complications rather than mechanical effects.

>Color Spray/Sleep/any other major disabling spell
>Coup de Grace
>end

Rinse, repeat. You don't even need a party in such circumstances.

>fighter uses bow to avoid color spray
>if he wins initiative and hits with his sword he instakills the wizard unless he has terrible stats

It's pretty much a straight toss-up.

>I'll give you color spray.

Why? It's objectively worse if the fighter has a ranged weapon.

You remind me of the wizard who tried to solo an entire dungeon. He died against monsters 4 CRs below our party. He was doing exactly what Veeky Forums would do, too. Veeky Forums's hateboner for SoDs is valid but is over the top because it fails to take into account multi-creature encounters.

>LMAO I can just deep slumper / flesh to stone everything!
>oh there's more than one minotaur? well rip me

I think that's more people missing the point of the comparisons.

Directly comparing a single fighter against a single caster isn't the entire problem, it's just a simple way of illustrating it. At low level, a wizard not be able to solo an entire dungeon, but they're still going to contribute significantly more to the success of the group than any non-magic user.

This and clerics are literally as capable of fighters when they use buff spells for a few levels iirc

True. I won't deny the caster supremacy meme, it's true. The problem is it's also a meme and leads to morons who take it way too far and think that wizards can do everything 100% of the time from 1st level onwards, while saying that fighters "literally do not function" and that fighters never deal any damage because a wizard auto-one-shots everything in every D&D game that has ever been played because all encounters ever have been a single monster that instantly died to a slay living spell.

The statement that fighters do not function is arguably true, in that the class as presented and described in the book does not actually achieve what the system claims it does.

Summoned monsters and animal companions are better meatshields, doing damage is mostly irrelevant given the number of ways in the system to disable an opponent without ever interacting with HP, and even in their role as someone trying to protect the party, they don't actually have any way of doing so. Unless the GM is intentionally playing along, it's pitifully easy for monsters to just ignore the fighter and go straight for the squishier party members.

To be fair, when 4e was out, nobody read its rules either, which is why they hated it.
People only read the rules of the penultimate edition.

Personally, I like to use 5e while robbing things from 4e that got no equivalent replacement.
Wanna make a particularly terrifying red dragon? Slap on some of the 4e Red dragon's passive abilities, that way it's not just claw claw bite breath with wings.
Skill challenges? Back in, altered slightly. Mostly for things like chase scenes and the like.
1HP minions for dramatic effect? Yup. Of course, my players don't know they're 1hp. Kinda takes the fun out if they did.

In 4e, that's an Invoker.

I'm assuming you talk about 3.pf?

Yeah. It's the poster child edition for caster supremacy.

>Wizards can do everything 100% of the time from 1st level onwards, while saying that fighters "literally do not function"
I mean, that was kind of literally the case in 3.P. Go look at the tier list, Fighter is below some NPC classes, and Wizard is a Tier 1 "Capable of doing absolutely everything, often better than classes that specialize in that thing."

>a single monster that instantly died to a slay living spell
Thinking this is how you wizard shows just how ill suited you are to playing a wizard.

Not only are fighters mechanically inferior, they also tend to be played by inferior players too unfortunately. If it were the other way around, fighters get the tactical and creative solution players while wizards get the "der hit it with damage til it dies" players things would be a lot more balanced.

Why is it that Tier of class is almost exactly inversely proportional to BAB?

Given that 'tactical and creative solution' equates to 'playing Mother May I? with the GM', nope. Martials are still fucked.

Nah.
>Incompetent Fighter, Incompetent Wizard: Konosuba.mp4
>Competent Fighter, Incompetent Wizard: Wizard gets killed or kills others with shitty selections and tactics for more powerful effects; fighter can help carry party slightly (only in combat) if DM throws them bones with magic items
>Incompetent Fighter, Competent Wizard: The wizard's familiar is a better fighter than you anyways, just sit pretty and play Candy Crush til you full attack again while the wizard hands the DM his notebook full of active spell buffs and has his simulacrum suplex Orcus while he sips martinis in his conjured pocket dimension mansion
>Competent Fighter, Competent Wizard: See above, but you're better than a familiar now, maybe the wizard will even use his godlike powers to buff YOU to be amazing for a while instead!

3.pf has spells that are broken strong and broken useless, and the way you can interact with and stack them means that a wily wizard with a goal and prep time can do literally anything he wants. What does the fighter get? A couple feat trees and better in a white room boxing match?

This.
>Insert Feat to do thing
Even worse, Fighters don't get skills like Spot, Listen, or Use Rope/UMD. At least they get Craft. Except that they can't make magic weapons or items with Craft.

I mean, technically the whole game is mother may I.

At any point the GM could say, "Okay, I understand that the rules say these spells do these things, but I am putting my foot down, the buck stops here. If you feel slighted because you chose this spell to do this one thing and it no longer lets you do this weird thing you had planned, I'll let you swap it out, but this is not happening in my game."

At which point the wizard player goes online here to start a "that guy" thread to try to convince us his DM is a "that guy" and complain about him, meanwhile his group by this point have likely been bringing up said wizard's myriad exploits in neckbeard horror stories and "that guy" threads for a while, maybe even the thread the wizard started up to complain about his DM.

This is one thing that always pissed me off about 3.PF, that only magic users could make magic items. That no matter how skilled or how good material they were working with, a smith can't forge a legendary blade because he isn't a fucking wizard.

>Except that they can't make magic weapons or items with Craft
d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/master-craftsman-final/

Huh, neat.

I'm a little conflicted. On one hand, this does do something useful. On the other
>Having to take a feat to qualify to take a feat that a 5th-level caster automatically qualifies for
seems like it demonstrates the problem by partially solving it.

But arguing about some chode's houserules is pointless. Any fucktard can will make retarded ill-considered houserules, just look at the prevalence of "All Money paid to the Bank goes into a pot that you get if you land of Free Parking" in Monopoly.

The only logical way to discuss rules is as they are written or perhaps as they are intended if the Devs have made statements to that effect or issued FAQs.

Yeah, it is like the Expertise, Focus, and Improved Defenses feats in 4e. They are there to fix the math, but in effect become auto-picks because of that. They should have been implemented as Universal Class features at certain levels.

>witchhunter
>practicing the occult
You know what they say about "He who fights monsters"

See, this is why I say we give fighter's a refilling amount of Hero points. Lets you do all the badass things fightan men do in fiction.

Spells main uses are making you better at something than you actually are (Ant Haul, Floating Disk, Magic Missle, Disguise Self, Beast Shape, Bigby's Hand, Invisibility) or to bend reality to your needs (Wall of Stone, Blindness, Summon Monster, Glitter Dust, Fog Cloud, Daylight, Tiny Hut, Major Image)

Those also happen to be the main uses for Hero Points, but take effect in more martial-plausible ways, typically emphasizing you rising to overcome rather than being all cheatyface about it.

Gives them the versatility and narrative power that they ilack but the casters are busy wanking themselves with.

Because the designers severely overvalued basic features like BAB and HD while designing the game. They even said as much.

They tried that. 4e died in 3 years.

That can be achieved in PF with the Master Craftsman feat (pretty sure that's what it's called). It let's you use your ranks in a crafting skill as a caster level for getting Craft Magic Arms and Armor and Craft Wondrous Item.

I mean, it's not a great solution. You don't have any of the needed spells so the DC is gonna be high, and you need to take a feat in order to qualify for the crafting feats.

Still, it can be done.

I mean, let me say my piece on the subject:
If I were to design a system from the ground up, I would have class features connected to a flowchart-based advancement similar to FF Star Wars- with a catch.
>Anyone can pick from any flowchart's features, starting from one of the origin points and moving down.
>You can even spend XP on a different chart's features.
BUT
>Mastery Points are points granted for accomplishing tasks specific to one particular flowchart.
>When you receive Mastery Points, they count as XP that MUST be spent within their originating flowchart.
>Some features must be unlocked with Mastery Points rather than XP, based on the fact that they require specialization rather than just experience.
The idea is to give the modularity and role protection of a class-based system and the versatility of a point-buy system. It's probably already been done but, I'd like to know who pulled it off if it was.

There's also these
d20pfsrd.com/feats/item-mastery-feats/
Make your armor and swords and such cast spells.
Notable fun includes Dispel Magic.Bestow Curse, Fly, Restoration, Suggestion, Cure ___, and Dimension Door.

No idea why only one of these is considered a combat feat though. And telekinesis of all things.

The entire point of my tirade there was that the main problem with the situation is that you can't really change your direction quickly with the way most class-based systems are implemented. A fighter is stuck with what his class has and whatever feat he can convince the DM to use. So if you really want to give everyone a fighting chance, let advancement be proportional to cost- so a Wizard 3/Fighter 3 would require twice as much XP as a Wizard 3 or Fighter 3, but without the associated glut of hit points and BAB that would come from such a multiclass in D&D.
The Wizard is a much better Wizard than the gish because he's mastered wizarding stuff while the gish has been doing both swordsmanship and channeling.

okay, but like, pathfinder released an "unchained" version for 3 of their classes that they felt needed patching, and fighter was none of those.

I guess they did create stamina points, and suggest that fighters maybe get the stamina point feat for free, but that hardly fixs their issue, those points are typically only usable to gain some minor number benefit, and fighter's issue is an imbalance of kind not size.

>You don't have any of the needed spells so the DC is gonna be high
You can always cast them from scrolls or wands. You have 2+Int skill points. 1 per level in craft (__), and one in UMD. Sure you can't do anything else, but at least you batman/ironman decently what with access to wonderous items, and can keep your weapons and armor maintained, as well as add magic enhancements thereon.

Kinda feels like it should be given to the class as part of features though. Master Craftsman, Magic Arms and Armament, and Wonderous Item as a bonus feats, and a trapfinding-size bonus to crafting armor and weapons.
I mean, what kind of soldier can't maintain his weapon? And improvising some needed special tool in the field is a staple. Think of saving private ryan's "sticky bombs."

>4 HP
>+2 CON
>HP boosting familiar
>still viable at any level with no feats so you don't even have to give a fuck about your feats, enjoy toughness for this dickwaving competition
>in PF there's FCB for an additional +1 HP and you have a d6 base HP
>each of which has an average length of 3-5 rounds
And that's where your assumption is wrong.

>just look at the prevalence of "All Money paid to the Bank goes into a pot that you get if you land on Free Parking" in Monopoly.
Wait, is that not how you're supposed to play?

Nope, read the fucking rules. Also another rule no one plays with is you are supposed to auction properties that aren't bought when people land on them with a starting price of the property's value.

Use those two rules and all of sudden Monopoly becomes a hell of a lot less painful. It still sucks donkey cock, but at least it always is moving forward.

Of note, it says you must use the chosen skill to make the item, and it only counts ONE crafting skill. Meaning you can do weapons, OR bows OR armor, OR one of the like 90 different things wondrous items might take.
But it doesn't count for all of them.
Personally I'd go with whatever one lets you do snapleafs and feather tokens. You're not gonna swap swords often, but one-time use items are great to make on the fly.
Too bad it doesn't let you use spellcraft like normal, as that one counts for all magic item creation feats.

I'm looking at 4e fighter here and I'm not seeing that. I see a Combat Challenge that marks. I see 5e's Sentinel as a class feature. I see Talents to choose from that are basically fighting styles. And I see the powers list. None of these describe what he said.
Care to elaborate your meaning then?

This is the real answer. Aside from the very early levels where the game's math just doesn't really work (e.g. housecat killing human adult) a wizard will always shit on a fighter in his element.

What level 6 actually is is the sweet spot where said element is big enough the wizard doesn't feel like shit but still small enough that he doesn't completely dominate the game.

One or two level 3s, a good selection of lower level spells, he's got a big enough power window to feel good and powerful (and in that window he shits on the fighter and always will at any level) but his window isn't so big it eclipses the rest of the party.

He still has to rest frequently, carefully manage his spells, and he doesn't have the versatility yet to casually do everyone's jobs for them and neutralize whatever the DM does.

Of note:

d20pfsrd.com/feats/item-creation-feats/fleshwarper-item-creation
and
d20pfsrd.com/feats/item-creation-feats/grow-plant-creature-item-creation

Don't require a caster level, and

d20pfsrd.com/feats/item-creation-feats/haunt-scavenger-item-creation
Only requires you have one other item creation feat, such as the two aforementioned.

Oh yeah, speaking of which, what craft skill are Necrografts supposed to be keyed off of? What is "an applicable Craft or Profession skill" for "sew zombie guts into a live human for kicks"
d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/m-p/necrograft/
I guess profession surgeon or something? That's what the guy in Tokyo Ghoul was.

No, and it actively makes the game slower and grindier. Playtime for a game of monopoly played by all the rules that come in the box that nobody reads is actually like 45 minutes tops.
youtube.com/watch?v=QeowNXMn10g
youtube.com/watch?v=9gxUPbxxz6g

5e's Fighter was supposed to be all Battlemaster style, but was scrapped because of the 3.x grognards shitting over the concept of the fighter having abilities other than 1. do damage and 2. do more damage.

What lacks in the fighter is versatility. Have the fighter be a blacksmith, or scout, or engineering, or artillery or any specializations of warfare, since the broad strokes of ol' fighting man got away when they introduced the ranger and barbarian. Make the fighter the military, professional fighter, so the fighter (engineer) is better at detecting traps since he studied how buildings are done, and deal extra damage to constructs since he sees their weak point, and the fighter (smith) can repair/craft weapon and armor, maybe being able to improve a common one for a couple of battles x/day, or a soldier (officer) that fucking works like warlord giving orders and have social skills to deal with negotiations.

For 5E, you should have a look at the Blood Hunter custom class. It definitely fits the "martial who juices up with bad stuff to purge evil"-shtick, especially if you go with Order of the Ghostslayer, or the Profane Soul. Its skill choices makes it a good fit for an inquisitor too.

I was actually talked into giving it a try by my DM. It's been pretty fun so far.

>5th edition - fucking never
Hmmm?

I've been considering writing up some sort of special moves thing for 5e fighters that both allow for out-of-combat utility and give them in-combat options other than "Go here, hit this nigga as many times as you can in a single turn, repeat until he dies." What are your thoughts on this?

>And I see the powers list. None of these describe what he said.
>Care to elaborate your meaning then?

Not him, but the powers list kinda does, if you squint hard enough. I mean, it's AEDU not points, but the underlying principle of "the fighter gets hios own list of awesome shit to do, just like the wizard gets his" is the same.

The main problem with adding versatility (and such, complexity) to the fighter is that the fighter is considered the newbie class, since his role is just "I attack" without too much thinking to avoid option paralysis. This is too why 4E AEDU is limited to less then 15 powers total

After a while, the tweaks are such that building a whole new version of D&D is better than to try fix it.

Fighters are designed to suck, so making them good would make them Fighters no longer.

Why do you think every other martial class in the game (besides Monk and Rogue) are so much better than the Fighter is?

I hope both of you get penile cancer and have to get your dicks cut off.

t. butthurt martialfag too stupid to play a Barbarian.

"Too late i'm a tranny"

This thread is really making me feel like 3.5's reign was the golden age of tbt online communities.

It's just nice to have a mammoth, extremely comprehensive system that every knows a lot about, such that lengthy and involved discussion can take place about said system. In contrast to discussion only involving highly generalized concepts that "depends on setting" or "depends on system", and when you try to narrow it down to a system or setting, at least three quarters of the audience tunes out because its something they're unfamiliar with.

Don't get me wrong, 3.5 had its problems as a system, but they were all pretty manageable with a good DM, and they never stopped me from having fun.

And 5e really just feels like an insult to me. It's a nicer version of 3.5 sure, when it first came out I was hyped. But after playing it for a few years I've realized that it polished the parts of 3.5 that were secondary and missed the soul of it, verisimilitude.

3.5 had rules for fucking everything. Most games I played, the table combined didn't know ALL the rules, just most of them. Then something would come up we weren't sure how to mechanically resolve and. . . We looked it up. The rules were there, and discovering them felt like experiencing something real and dramatic in the game rather than just having an arbitration from your DM. Also, they always made sense, because they were so large and convoluted as to cover all interactions and intentions, rather than 5e's "grappling reduces your movement to 0" type rules, tiny and frustratingly minimal.

The statblocks for monsters were big and confusing, because the monsters had to have stats to interact with every part of the system, and the rules covered all their bases with special interactions and the details of how their magical qualities functioned. 5e monsters are stated with abilities like from a videogame, and often require GM arbitration again to make sense.

Lastly, the system is so small that if you play more than a couple campaigns you've seen everything it can do. I still learn things about possible characters, monsters, magic items, and spells in 3.5 after a decade of artistically pouring over it. This kind of size makes everything in the system feel more real, in contrast to that of 5e which has an effect similar to running into an invisible wall in a /v/rpg.

BUT, 5e was still close enough that it stole all the thunder and populace of 3.5. Pic related.