Why does everyone recommend 5e?

No, he legitimately doesn't. If he knew how dumb he sounded, he would never post.

M&M is literally the best thing to come from the d20 system and works better for d&d fantasy than d&d does

>want to play D&D
>lmao don't
???

Here's my reasons:

1. Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic
Taken from Cthulhu 7th, this is a great mechanic in both, I love it. It's simple, intuitive and you can still go places with it.

2. Small closed skill list
I'm a fan of those. The system gets around any incompleteness problem by using tool proficiencies.

3. Cantrips
I know those are hated by some, especially the attack cantrips. I still think they're great and they're causing people to stay in the game.

4. Personality, Ideal, Bond, Flaw
A mechanic that rewards rp? Why D&D, wanna come home with me?

I also like the customization via non-class feats and a ton of other things, especially the attempt of the PHB and the GMM to give you a ton of alternative rules to flavor the game just as you like it.

Why don't you just play a game with all of those plus better things like classlessness?

M&M doesn't even do capeshit well.
It's basically-amateur-level designers who knew nothing but d20, made their own not-great houserules for it, and published it to a critical reception of "meh."
Y'know when Kenobi is all "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced"?

Kind of like that, except with a thunderous, resounding "Eh, It's not even one of the better d20 homebrews."

Wait.
Is that you Stephen?
Man, fuck you, Stephen, I don't even gotta look to know you're the only guy who would try to push your Green Ronin shit. You guys gave a bad name for third-party content with all the garbage you published.

I did and will again, but right now it's a 5e campaign for us. It's not like I gotta keep using the system forever.

its better than 5e

Classlessness isn't an inherently good thing. Full customization removes a lot of options in the end.

Not really.

Especially if you play a big game like gurps

It's "Accessable"

Which means they dumbed it down by removing a lot of the crunch allowing casuals to play.

4e is still the best edition and only died because grognards couldn't handle something different.

"Board game"

I played 2 and 3.X and they bored me because to do it "right", you had to plan your character progression right from the start. But what I want is to let the story take my character places that I didn't know he'd end up at. 5e has stopped penalizing me for this.

Plus gurps

It's even better.

Play*

Man my brain

I honestly don't get people who play for story, at that point I'd either write a book or join an improv acting group.

I play for good old pen and paper crunch with lots of character customisation and a DM who knows how to challenge a party.

Cuz it's easy to create a character, dm, feel powerful, tell a story, have fun.

That's all, it's just easy.

And people will argue it you that it's too easy, not understanding that it works for others.

Gurps shills make me feel uncomfortable.

Pretty sure was being sarcastic OP.

I like the mix between improv acting and "let the dice decide", and arguably a good challenge doesn't have to be a skirmish.

On the other hand I'd say I honestly don't get people who play for skirmish, at that point I'd fire up a board game or turn on the computer.

Most board games don't have the range of character customisation TRPGs have, and once you beat a video game you can just have a GM make a new campaign like you can with a TRPG, you either have to wait for mods or
>DLC

At this point they've half convinced me to try it just so I can form an objective and informed opinion for occasions like this.

I just opened a book, saw a load of words and numbers paired together with seemingly no context, structure or formatting and threw it away.

The reason I like 5th edition is that the character sheet doesn't have all those "workspace" sections where you add up modifiers. It's just single numbers for everything, easy.

its more streamlined and its new

Actually when I took a look at it it really didn't seem that bad. Everyone talks about what a bitch it is to figure out, but it seemed like a fairly intuitive system, albeit with a lot of shit you'd have to memorize in order to use it properly.

3.5 is dogshit, 5e is improved dogshit. Play AD&D 2e or be a pleb forever

I guess that's true. I could propose cosims and other stuff now but honestly it's not like I don't build an effective character and wreck a dungeon once in a while, I get the appeal.

However I guess I'm actually more of the "casual" persuasion in that I enjoy how 5e lets me do one of those things without penalizing the other, probably at the cost of some crunch complexity (seriously though modifier tables need to lie down and die, that's some 90s tier barbarism).

It's recommended for two reasons.

1. It's much easier to play in that you don't get bogged down in lots of numbers/status effects etc happening simultaneously and getting in the way of actual roleplaying.
2. You've got a reason to play something other than a Cleric or a Druid now.

It literally is 3d6 vs target number

It's just that sjg is the most OCD writers in the world.

Reminder that gurps is more of the toolset than a game.

I like games with classes. Lets me worry about playing the character right, and let the game handle the mechanics of building the numbers.

It's a refreshing system that allows "pick up and play" as well as "Session 0 is just preparation" type play.

>Why does everyone sing praises of 5e so much?
Not everyone does. For those that do, they're just chalking up their good experiences with their friends to the work of the 5e design team.

RPGs are more about who you play with than what you play.

Full customization functionally means that everything but the best options can be completely avoided. Classes are good for niche protection.

It's basically what everyone wanted 4E or Pathfinder to be, but it doesn't yet have as much content as either of them.

Note that I say "wanted" 4E to be. The game we got as 4E is fine on its merits, it just isn't what a large number of people had wanted--hence the existence of Pathfinder. But Pathfinder didn't actually fix most of the problems that it claimed it would, it just papered over them by releasing more and more content while letting the wound fester.

That depends entirely on what "best" means, doesn't it? I would suspect people define that differently. See the > 80 points in Guns (rifle) pasta for an extreme example.

M&M is a better system for heroic fantasy than D&D, if only because you martials aren't hamstrung by shitty limitations and every power within the game has the potential to counter one another due to the fact that the power levels are equally high.

It's current, it's not bad, easy to find groups, decent art, currently supported edition.

It's hard to complain about the system, aside from AC issues.

It comes down from a person looking in, 5e is more open, yet limited, while 3.5 as a comparison, can have VERY special builds if they so desire. Some like that some don't.

One thing I like about 5e personally is that it is easy to get into and play, however it is hard to get really deep into a world, as crafting things are murky at best, and it is left to the dm a lot to come up with things sometimes, which doesn't always help when a dm is new perhaps.

Ugh, I mean, to each their own, but I hate math-hammery people who minmax and break the systems.

AC issues?

I think he means how the classes that don't specialize in tanking tend to top out around 17? So they feel a little samey if you're not a Fighter/Cleric/Barbarian/Monk.

It's too hard for player characters to die, especially after 3rd level. Kinda boring, not really a game when there's no tension.

I played a moldvay B/X game last week and it was BRUTAL and fun as fuck.

Why? Breaking systems is only a problem if everyone else at the table isn't in on it, and you really should be in on it if you're playing a crunchy game like 3.PF or Shadowrun anyways.

It's a personal thing for me, but when your AC gets boosted by movement, or penalized for wearing armor, that drives me crazy.

I have no problem with fast/small characters being harder to hit.

But if I'm wearing plate, I think I should be more survivable when I actually get hit.

My group had a houserule which added damage reduction for armor, which kind of fixed the logical issues we had with speed adding to AC.

That's why gurps is so great

Yes one dude can never ever die for 100 points but the GM can just say "no, that doesn't fit the setting"

>too hard for PCs to die

GM problem. Difficulty is entirely set by the GM.

>AC gets boosted by movement
>speed adding to AC
What are you even on?

Speed doesn't add to AC, Dexterity is not the same as movement speed. And AC is supposed to cover glancing blows that didn't do enough to hurt you, anything that does damage already got through the plate.

You can do the same thing in D&D. Hell, I don't allow any of the races as statted in the PHB.

I like classes, and in my experience classless systems tend to more easily lead to twink characters. Turns out when there aren't restrictions on what you can build, you can find some pretty broken combinations of abilities. It also, ironically, tends to encourage even MORE specialization than just sticking to one class, since you'll probably have a role in mind and exclusively take abilities that enhance that role at the expense of others. Compare/contrast playing a rogue in D&D, where you're a striker for damage, yes, but that Dexterity plus all those extra sills means that you're probably going to be at least moderately competent in a variety of other areas without really intending to be.

>It's too hard for player characters to die

There's a few variant rules in the DMG that easily fix that and are probably faster to implement as compared to learning a whole new system AND finding players for said system.

Oh, the dexterity thing. Yeah, I feel you on that too, despite the official game rationale making an alright amount of sense. I've played in games with houseruled armor-as-damage reduction before (not 5e) and it was a bit clunky but not bad. Dexterity as a stat obviously covers a lot of ground but if that's a problem, it's one 5e shares with every edition of D&D ever.

Your Dex value adds to your AC.

Unless you are wearing heavy armor, in which case, it grants no bonus.

I have always felt that it was fair, heavy armour is going to take a lot more hits, it isn't mobile, but when you do get hit, you should survive it, ie, the point of armor.

Damage reduction helps with that, nimble characters still avoid damage, but hits hurt them. Tank characters take more hits, and more damage, but see the damage reduced by the armor.

It tends to work very well for us, and makes tanking characters fun for their own reasons.

>but when your AC gets boosted by movement

Dexterity is hand/eye coordination, reflexes, and flexibility, not movement speed.

>or penalized for wearing armor

It's only penalized for wearing armor if you're a very agile person (DEX 16+) wearing armor that notably restricts movement and, thereby, that agility. Even then, even someone with DEX 20 (base AC 15) benefits from wearing either some light, non-restrictive armor (allowing an AC of up to 17) or else totally forgoing agility in favor of defense (with splint (AC 17) or plate (AC 18) armor).

Indeed, I think 5e manages to strike a pretty decent balance between "dodging blows" and "deflecting blows" with AC. And of course in either case your AC only gets better if you have a shield.

Yes, I know that a real knight in full plate could do handstands and somersaults if he were so inclined, but that doesn't change that he could do the same with less effort if he weren't wearing armor at all.

>But if I'm wearing plate, I think I should be more survivable when I actually get hit.

You are. That's why wearing plate confers an AC of 18, whereas a DEX 20 character in studded leather has at most an AC of 17.

I feel it might push things such that a tanking build becomes strictly better than a dodging build, however, unless that DR comes with a slight decrease to the AC that the armor grants.

No, difficulty is ultimately set by how easy it is to make a damaging blow vs. how easy it is to survive a damaging blow.

In Shadowrun, a pistol could easily kill a human in one hit if they don't have armor on to offset the worst of the attack, and even then, damage can easily spiral out of control if the penalties become large enough to affect your dice pool.

In D&D, an arrow will only ever do 1d8+STR, which will quickly fall off as PC's gain more HP to offset the damage that they'd be taking each round. There's no reason to ever be afraid of taking damage unless you are taking 50% of your maximum HP from a single attack and that generally won't happen unless you're fighting something that's vastly outside your weight class or you're going up against a higher level caster.

Because its good you stupid mong

>an arrow will only ever do 1d8+STR
I believe arrows and ranged weapons use DEX, actually

It depends on the bow actually. IIRC, composite bows operate off of STR but they're also treated as masterwork weapons.

What were the complaints?

In 5e, all ranged weapons use DEX besides thrown weapons, which use STR unless they're finesse.

>I love it. It's simple, intuitive and you can still go places with it.
Yeah unless your fucking barbarian wants to use reckless attack then it doesn't stack with anything else like battlemaster aid another maneuver. FUCK advantage. It's stupid shit for normoniggers who can't do math.

>A mechanic that rewards rp? Why D&D, wanna come home with me?
If you need mechanics to reward RP, you're a fucking piece of shit who shouldn't be playing RPGs.

caster supremacy and rules bloat

Ah, my mistake then. The point still stands that the arrow is still dealing only 1d8+Mod. damage
a hit though.

D&D 5e game sucks ass. The only difference between a commoner trying to climb a ledge and a level 1 rogue who trained for years at it, is 10%. Boy I love practicing for years to only get 10% better at something. 5e takes the d20 mechanic's biggest flaw and paints it bold and bright to make it obvious to everyone. This kind of stupid shit where a level 1 commoner can decipher a scroll that a level 1 wizard can't for some dumbass reason, is why d20 mechanic will forever be shit, the modifiers are small as shit and 5e makes them even smaller for "muh bounded accuracy" so a 20th level fighter can be hit by level 1 gnolls 25% of the time. But it's okay, he has a fuckload of hit points! Everything has a fuckload of hit points in this game, the monsters sure do because character damage is off the fucking wall. Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter are basically non-optional feats that obliviate two weapon fighting as a valid combat style. Ranger sucks so much shit it's unbelievable, they already errata'd it because the book was rushed into production. Advantage is retarded, a battlemaster fighter tries to aid another maneuver the barbarian in our group, and it has no effect because he is reckless attacking. Why? NO FUCKING REASON, BESIDES THAT WIZARDS OF THE COAST IS SHIT AT DESIGNING MECHANICS. Advantage / disadvantage is meant to make the game more palatable retarded normies who work at CostCo and can't do basic math. Also thanks to the proliferation of Veeky Forums greentexts on Tumblr, loads of normoniggers are seeing "lol haha funny nat20 story" and are being brought to the game by that, not by an actual interest in the creative part of RPGs that makes them actually fulfilling. Of course, since most RPG players are nu male cucks who are desperately hoping Stacy will want to play D&D with them, they lap it right up, and the quality of the community drops like a shit into a portable toilet. Fuck this dumbed-down Basic-D&D-tier crap.

>a level 1 rogue who trained for years
I don't think they'd only be level 1 if they trained for years. This just sounds like you wrote too much backstory.
>Advantage is retarded, a battlemaster fighter tries to aid another maneuver the barbarian in our group, and it has no effect because he is reckless attacking.
I guess this is a fair complaint, but it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me. More like a corner case.
>Also thanks to the proliferation of Veeky Forums greentexts on Tumblr, loads of normoniggers are seeing "lol haha funny nat20 story" and are being brought to the game by that, not by an actual interest in the creative part of RPGs that makes them actually fulfilling... rah rah rah fucking chads etc.
This doesn't have anything to do with 5e specifically, unless you're arguing that systems ought to be made intentionally obtuse so nobody picks them up. You're ranting. Calm down.

thats pasta

>I've gotten to the point where I've been chastised for buying 3.5 books instead.

I don't even like 5e and I'm going to chastise you anyway: Either buy 5e or Pathfinder because they are the two most mainstream games on the market right now, and enable you to find a game wherever you go.

Continuing to buy outdated books is a flat out mistake and waste of money on your part.

>use muntants and masterminds
Yes use a system that's just hamfisted wannabe 3.5 with a shittier convoluted damage system.

>It's just better designed
>M&M is a better system
It's really not at all. M&M is poorly balanced, convoluted, and completely lacks any originality or flavor. The only reason the system even survived to make another edition is DC throwing money at them.

This level of delusional fanboi is hilarious.

>M&M is poorly balanced, convoluted, and completely lacks any originality or flavor.
How so?

no in D&D 5e difficulty is set by how many monsters are coming after you bounded accuracy is key and any time the monsters out number the PCs they are on the disadvantaged side. that 1d8+DEX might not seem like much but consider taking it like 20 times (an exaggeration but you get the point) in one round. not to mention all the damage boosting effects monster have that can increase the damage like hobgoblins ability to increase their damage when there fighting together with hobgoblin allies.

If your dm throws only one hard or deadly encounter per day it is going to be easy, party is expected to fight like 3 or 4 times the adventuring day

>no in D&D 5e difficulty is set by how many monsters are coming after you bounded accuracy is key and any time the monsters out number the PCs they are on the disadvantaged side.
Hardly, after level 5, you get so many AoE spells and so much HP that most creatures will never be able to chew through even one PC if the PC in question is beefy enough. I know, my group ran a game of Curse of Strahd from level 3-10 and the wiped the floor with most encounters that featured a small group of encounters.
>that 1d8+DEX might not seem like much but consider taking it like 20 times (an exaggeration but you get the point) in one round.
It still wouldn't matter because there are plenty of ways to either avoid the damage entirely or mitigate it with resistances. Hell, there are more ways to resist physical damage than there is to resist fire damage in 5e.

>and wiped the floor with most encounters that featured a large group of enemies.

>everyone wanted Pathfinder to be
I wanted Pathfinder to be dumb high fantasy bullshit and that is what I got. Really enjoying gestalt PF atm

>Hardly, after level 5, you get so many AoE spells and so much HP that most creatures will never be able to chew through even one PC if the PC in question is beefy enough. I know, my group ran a game of Curse of Strahd from level 3-10 and the wiped the floor with most encounters that featured a small group of encounters.

your Dm's fault for running a pre-made adventure designed for adventure league. here a hint adventure league is was made to bring in new players so the adventures for it, and by extension all the pre-made ones WotC makes, are made so you are not in any real danger because if those new players' characters got killed they might not come back.

>It still wouldn't matter because there are plenty of ways to either avoid the damage entirely or mitigate it with resistances. Hell, there are more ways to resist physical damage than there is to resist fire damage in 5e.

if every single person in your party has physical damage resistance for slashing, piercing ,and bludgeoning all the time then your min-maxing and no matter the edition you will eventually after a certain level find it boring anyways it might take longer then level 3 or 5 in a old school version of D&D but it will happen eventually. also if your DM has not thrown different damage types at you like acid or what not because of your damage resistances to the three basic physical damages then your DM's sounds more and more like shit and does not what to give you a challenge.

>your Dm's fault for running a pre-made adventure designed for adventure league.
If the game was actually meant to be difficult then that literally wouldn't matter. I mean, Ravenloft is supposed to be one of the harder modules from back in the day and even tomb of horrors got neutered during the transition between 3.PF and 5e.
>if every single person in your party has physical damage resistance for slashing, piercing ,and bludgeoning all the time then your min-maxing
Blade ward is a cantrip that gives you physical resistance to slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning made with weapon attacks. Also, creatures like vampire spawn are naturally resistant to non-magical attacks, as are barbarians.
>if your DM has not thrown different damage types at you [...] then your DM's sounds more and more like shit
The point was to illustrate how weak weapon damage is in the long run since so much shit in the game is resistant to physical.

Way to move the goalposts.

>The only difference between a commoner trying to climb a ledge and a level 1 rogue who trained for years at it, is 10%.

I wonder if this is true. Let's check.

To me, solving an actual puzzle in game is a fun challenge.

To most 3.PF players, combing homebrews and 3rd party feats to get this highest numbers on a skill check or attack roll is a fun challenge.

To each their own I suppose.

16% it looks like

>If the game was actually meant to be difficult then that literally wouldn't matter. I mean, Ravenloft is supposed to be one of the harder modules from back in the day and even tomb of horrors got neutered during the transition between 3.PF and 5e.

the dm job is to make the game challenging for his players so they enjoy it. going

>if the game was meant to be hard then all the adventures should be hard but since there not that means the games too easy

like i said before the adventure now are not meant for challenge they are there to draw new players that's it.

>Blade ward is a cantrip that gives you physical resistance to slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning made with weapon attacks. Also, creatures like vampire spawn are naturally resistant to non-magical attacks, as are barbarians.

blade ward takes up your action and last until the end of your next turn so for every combat it will take up half of the bards actions but hes free to do that but is seams odd he would. that barbarian is suppose to be a tank so him getting it makes sense but its tide to a limited resources rages what happens when he runs out? as for vampire spawn did your DM actually let a player become one?

my main point was the player characters should not have the physical resistances all the time yes they might have them some of the time but not all the time. and if they do somehow have them all the time they must be minmaxing (how i don't know) and frankly any game you play with that level of minmaxing is gonna be rough. not saying minmaxing is bad but too much can suck all the fun out of playing either for the minmaxer or other players and dm

>The point was to illustrate how weak weapon damage is in the long run since so much shit in the game is resistant to physical.

the point you responded to was just me saying your dm's shit nothing more and i have been saying since the start.

>Way to move the goalposts.

way to look for points that are't central to my argument

Depends on the Strength score of the Rogue. A STR 10, 1st-level Rogue has a 65% chance of hitting a DC 10 "Easy" check assuming training, verses a Commoner, who has a 55% chance. So the 10% thing pans out in that case. For the sake of transparancy, I played a STR 10 rogue in 5e myself.

However, this critique fails to account for a few things. Firstly, a 1st level character is explicitly brand new at adventuring. If human, the rogue is probably somewhere between the ages of 16 and 19 (assuming that starting ages are roughly like those of 3rd edition and earlier, wherein the base age of a rogue was 15+1d4 years) and has literally done NOTHING yet. You haven't been in any battles, except maybe to run away from them. You haven't slain even the weakest kobold. You start with 0 Experience, which means that you haven't done anything to GET experience.

Secondly, a 1st-level rogue may be only marginally better at climbing than a Commoner, but that fails to account for the fact that the rogue is far superior in every single other respect, from armor class to hit points to attack and damage rolls, and so on. Bluntly, there are only so many hours in the day during which you can learn to do a thing, and yet over the same course of time the rogue has become superior to the commoner in most every measurable way. They have been more efficient in their learning curve, basically.

> You start with 0 Experience, which means that you haven't done anything to GET experience.

I want to touch on this for a moment. As a DM and as a player, when I look at character sheets, two things piss me off more than anything else.

1) A 1st level character that has globe-trotted, participated in major battles, met dragons, hung out with kings, etc. Even something relatively low-key like, say, "my character was that kid soldier Aragorn says has a good sword in the Battle of Helm's Deep".

2) High-level characters who seemingly have done nothing to earn their experience. Standing on guard duty, meditating under a waterfall, researching ancient spells, or praying a whole lot, don't get you experience. Going out and DOING shit gets you experience. Anyone who rolls up a 10th level character who hasn't delved at least a few dungeons and participated notably in averting (or causing...) one or two kingdom-level disasters, isn't a real 10th level character.

>my main point was the player characters should not have the physical resistances all the time yes they might have them some of the time but not all the time. and if they do somehow have them all the time they must be minmaxing (how i don't know) and frankly any game you play with that level of minmaxing is gonna be rough. not saying minmaxing is bad but too much can suck all the fun out of playing either for the minmaxer or other players and dm

I meant all of the player characters in the party i should reread my post more often

>the dm job is to make the game challenging for his players so they enjoy it.
And that process becomes more and more difficult when the game goes out of its way to suck out as much challenge as possible from any balanced encounter you could create.
>like i said before the adventure now are not meant for challenge they are there to draw new players that's it.
And this philosophy obviously extends to the rest of the game as well.
>my main point was the player characters should not have the physical resistances all the time yes they might have them some of the time but not all the time.
There are plenty of ways to offset physical attacks resistances are just one of many options available.
>the point you responded to was just me saying your dm's shit nothing more and i have been saying since the start.
You can't blame the DM when the game neuters the difficulty as much as possible, there's only so much you can do without accidentally causing a TPK.

No one encounter in 5e is dangerous, but 5e's system is designed around the idea that a typical adventuring day will have around 5-7 encounters in a day. It's a game of attrition and resource management.

The point isn't to make things "easy". The point is to force players to learn to think like adventurers and make judicious use of their limited abilities.

Of course, the DM is also well advised to add the additional factor of time to all of his adventure designs, i.e., "okay, there's nothing stopping you from taking a short rest here, but you know that if you do Lord Badguy is going to get an extra hour ahead of you, right?"

>there's only so much you can do without accidentally causing a TPK.

Eh, fuck 'em. In my experience 90% of TPKs are caused by player stupidity, not the DM, nor even bad luck. Yes, you do get the occasional unlucky die roll or DM who has decided he hates his players and wants to sic Tiamat on them.

But most of the time they come down to instead:
1) The players were too stupid to run away; or
2) The players were stupid enough to pick a fight they couldn't win (and should have known they couldn't win).

The latter almost happened to me over this past weekend; the players were trying to negotiate with some duergar guards to enter their city of Gracklstugh, and the damn bard tried to Intimidate his way in by intimating that the party could trivially slaughter all 18 duergar surrounding them if they didn't do what he wanted.

A number of expended spells and one hasty retreat later...

>And that process becomes more and more difficult when the game goes out of its way to suck out as much challenge as possible from any balanced encounter you could create.

sigh... prove it. I'm sorry, I know most if not all the rules of the game (not necessary every class option and spell of the top of my head though) and have read the GM's guide almost front to back. So my take from it was you could create a balanced encounter that also offers a challenge. It's usually is a matter of how much you throw at the party between each long rest but you can also do other things as well like like using terrain or tactics as well as extra monster abilities.

>And this philosophy obviously extends to the rest of the game as well.

I disagree, I feel like that philosophy is for adventures league only. I see no indication that that philosophy is in anyway shape or form a core part of the game.

>There are plenty of ways to offset physical attacks resistances are just one of many options available.

Such as? genuinely curious here i want to see all the options your talking about.

>You can't blame the DM when the game neuters the difficulty as much as possible, there's only so much you can do without accidentally causing a TPK.

Again I disagree you DM sounds like shit and you cant but the blame on me for thinking like that your the one who makes him sound that way.

It resembles the ideal of 3.5 that people loved, but isn't quite as retardedly broken as the reality of 3.5.

It's also got a lot less retardedly specific crunch (I'm looking at you, PF, where there's a feat for being able to harm someone's reputation with social skills- implying it isn't something you can do normally), and made the very wise decision of listing most things as variants: It's much easier to add things on to a system than to take them off.

There's certainly better systems out there, but 5e plays quickly enough and has a low entry barrier.

I agree, my argument isn't that systems with classes are better, it's just that classes systems aren't inherently better and there are good reasons for classes and similar limited choice systems.

It doesn't take a whole lot of time for people to find the best choices and ignore large amounts of material and combinations for the best choices which will always exist. It's a whole lot less of a problem in RPGs compared to video games and other competitive games though, so classless systems are still a lot of fun.

Practically I'm mostly just complaining about stuff like when Only War and Black Crusade opened up advancement to a freeform system and advancement generally collapsed to a fairly homogeneous rush for the strongest skills and talents.

I like things about both systems.