@Tony Vargas
I probably phrased what I said upthread the wrong way. Basically when I say to myself "Let's play or run Dungeons and Dragons" my brain thinks Moldvay B/X. Modern iterations of the game offer fundamentally different play experiences to the point where I do not see them as the same game. I do not like particularly care what they are called and I cherish the existence of many of them. Fifth Edition would not be half as good if Fourth Edition never existed. It also helped broaden my experience of what a roleplaying game could be.
I do think running ACKS, Stars Without Number or Godbound despite the massive changes in the poetry layer (setting) feel a lot more like Moldvay than modern versions of the game.
On an unrelated tangent I need to track down a reference, but I am pretty sure Rob Heinsoo at one point said that there was internal division on balancing the wizard with the fighter with core members of the design team being vehemently opposed. So at least within Wizards of the Coast the primacy of magic was a very real concern.I do not think it tells the whole story, but there are definitely some people who want to keep the fighter and rogue definitely mundane.
There is also a fair bit of hand wringing over this on the Paizo boards. Pathfinder 2 is a game that definitely directly associates everything directly to the fiction, maintains structural differences between casters and martial classes, and has no abstract martial resources. All limited use abilities are either emphatically supernatural or make your character fatigued. Many of the more abstract resources have simply been removed. Rage is now at will and lasts for a minute or until no enemies can be perceived, but cannot be used for a minute afterwords or while fatigued. Like Bruce Banner in the Marvel movies they are always angry.
Still there are definitely people who are not happy that martial characters just do some things better than spell casters. They basically curated the spell lists to make each type of spell caster a specialist in certain areas, made it so some spells that use to obviate other characters give wizards a chance to replace them, but are better off cast on dedicated specialists, and made some things that were automatic more uncertain. They also defined niches for skills so they could do some things spells can not while spells can do some things skills cannot. They have also made many spells like Scry and Teleport Uncommon, meaning they require GM permission to get or need to be found through play. Basically they have attempted to balance martial classes with spell casters while retaining structural differences.
As an example Medicine is great for post fight recovery, but takes significant time to use. It can also remove the wounded condition. Heal on the other hand provides great spike healing and can absolutely rib through Undead and if specced right Demons. There is a place for both.
Some people are very unhappy about this. Very very unhappy. I am loving it. It's a great dungeon crawler. Things are more uncertain and tense. I am actually looking forward to playing casters more because there is more drama to playing one, but some folks definitely want the magic to be more powerful and martial characters to be less powerful.
I do think the fact that Fourth Edition was not very well suited for dungeon crawls or attrition fights does have a lot to do with its reception. Not being good at the foundational activity of the brand is not a good look. It's a great game for heroic fantasy, but scrounging in the muck with oozes, traps, and rust monsters really is not its forte. Modern versions of the game have moved away from dungeon crawls, but usually at least will have some short ones.
