Tony Vargas
Legend
Oh, I certainly /experienced/ those "other spells" that had effects based more on player creativity and DM fiat than mechanics. Just not such consistently positive experiences that I missed them as much.
But, on a first read-through, 4e definitely left me with the impression it was going to get old. Only a few power choices at each level? Surely each class is only good for one play-through? But, it turned out a 'play-through' actually did go through to level 30 in a practical sense, not just a theoretical one, and power choices went from a handful to a dozen or more, and it turned out even characters with very similar build choices could end up playing (and RPing) quite differently... so that fear never materialized.
I mean, that's a /little/, a very little, closer to true in 5e than in 4e, but still not true at all. Firebolt doesn't use a weapon - 'weapon' isn't a keyword anymore, so that has less mechanical meaning, but it still has meaning beyond just the 'skin.' Firebolt doesn't use ammunition. Firebolt does, well, fire damage. Those differences seem to add up to it being, well, different.
A save is still a binary pass/fail check on a d20, just rolled by the other guy. Mathematically & conceptually, Sacred Flame is an attack. Calling it a save is mostly just mechanical sleight of hand, adding complexity for the sake of an illusion of difference. (I say mostly because a ranged attack suffers disadvantage if used in melee, while a spell forcing a save works perfectly when cast in melee … hey, speaking of things that 'don't feel right,' casting in melee? perfectly safe? perfectly effective?)
Is that just a long association with weapons using at-will, unvarying, bored-resignation-inducing attack rolls, and with spells using daily, fire-and-forget, frustration-inducing 'saves?'
I mean, it makes sense. Long association will do that, psychologically.
So in the classic game, things like rolled attacks from swords, lance charges, the wand of orcus, arrows, shadows, and the like felt non-magical. While things that forced saves, like Charm Person, Fireball, poison needle traps, scorpions, and psionic blast, felt definitively magical. But, in 3e, more spells, like Ray of Enfeeblement and Disintegrate also stopped feeling magical as they increasingly took attack rolls. And, 4e, of course, was anathema, with all attack spells taking attack rolls, even if they did still inflicts half damage on a miss, nothing was magical, at all, not even the classics like Magic Missile, Fireball & Sleep, heck, even Dispel Magic became non-magical. 5e un-does some of that, of course, but enough?
It's definitely not a dismissal. "modular resolution system" is certainly a very polite way of putting it in the case of 1e.
But, it's true that there were a lot of resolution systems and sub-systems and sub-sub-systems back in the day. Individual spells would often have their own rules. I mean, there are saves vs death and saves vs Spells and "disbelieving" but is any/all of that good enough for Phantasmal Killer? NO! it must have it's own special roll-under INT save! And that's not, like, a proud nail or anything, there were LOTS of spells that had unique resolution mechanics in their descriptions, often a little difficult to tease out from the flavor text.
And, 1e had different systems for pummeling, grappling, and overbearing vs using weapons, and even individual weapons were differentiated by detailed little rules - like space required, length, [/b]weapon-vs-armor-type adjustments[/b], and speed factor - without which any two weapons that did the same amount of damage, like, the battle axe and scimitar, for instance, would have been "the same."
...hmm, look at this corner I've painted myself into: "IF YOU DIDN'T USE WEAPON-VS-ARMOR ADJUSTMENTS IN 1E YOU CAN'T COMPLAIN ABOUT ANYTHING IN ANY OTHER EDITION BEING SAMEY! Because you made scimitars and battle axes the same... ::sigh:: ...oh the injustice."
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