I was a player in a Dresden Files RPG campaign and it was a lot of fun. Except for one part…anyone playing a wizard very quickly becomes overpowered. To the point that I started to feel like I was playing the sidekick. I get that it matches the source material, but man, was it a bummer, and a glaring design flaw.
Agreed. I'm not really sure how a total "normie" can stand next to an experienced wizard in that setting, but it does seem like they could have worked a little harder to make that happen.
The most obvious place it doesn't fit what you're asking for is magic. Magic is subtle, hard, comes at a cost and can be very dangerous to cast. Like magic should, but doesn't in D&D.
It's one way to do magic, but hardly the way it "should be".
OP, maybe some further clarification of what you want out of a system?
There seem to be a few incompatible perceptions of what you want out of the game in this thread.
For instance, I can't find anything in this thread that points to you needing more realism than 5e provides.
You call out heroic scaling (goblins to dragons), big flashy boom magic, crunchy combat, and actual solid rules for things other than combat, with the last one being the thing that 5e is most missing for you and your group.
Thus, the recommendation of looking at games like Dresden and The One Ring (Adventures In Middle Earth) to take bits from and add them to 5e. Because 5e is
mostly just missing that stuff. Pretty easy to convert a part of one system into another, when it deals with a part of the game that the target system doesn't really do much for.
I'd also consider checking out 4e, as [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] suggested. It has much clearer rules for skill use, and as long as you use the latest version (Rules Compendium, IIRC) of Skill Challenges, 4e does non combat encounters really
really well, while remaining within the same basic framework as the rest of the system.
Ultimately, I think your best bet is to stick with DnD, because of the amount of system elements that you want to "keep" from DnD, and add/convert system elements from other games into DnD.
I assure you, plenty of folks here, on RPG.net, and elsewhere, will be eager to give you advice on converting or adding specific things, and 5e is really malleable. WHile I prefer 4e overall, IMO the best thing about 5e is how much you can tinker optional rules and homebrew without tanking the whole system.