I had a response that's no longer applicable so slightly modified ...
Every edition of the game has had parts I liked and didn't like. For TSR era games, it went from copying down a list of numbers on my sheet just to see if I hit to weird math and sometimes wanting to roll low and others high. How was I supposed to have a lucky D20 if it was supposed to go opposites all the time?
There were also way too many save-or-die effects for my taste, although I think most of the groups I played with just avoided those or had some other kind of workaround.
When WOTC redid D&D it was like a breath of fresh air. Always adding, more consistent logic was great. But they went too far on locking down the options in 3e in an attempt to have consistency from one table to the next, but until you hit levels in the teens the game worked just fine. However, there was a pretty huge power level gap between people who were casual about the game and those that new how to optimize or searched the web to find the best builds. On the bright side it fed into my dice addiction because rolling a literal handful of dice with my two-weapon fighter required way, way too many dice and a chart.
The complexity when for example you have 6 attacks with physical damage plus multiple energy types along with as many buffs as the cleric could throw on you was a pretty big barrier, especially at higher levels. System mastery ruled the day, until even that wasn't enough unless you had made the right choices for your character. When you hit about level 14 or so and no matter how effective your character was you were just futzing around waiting for the optimized cleric or wizard to finish the fight in a single turn.
I switched to 4e because of the issues 3e had. With 4e, they tried to reinvent the game and in the short term I enjoyed it. But in the long term it simply didn't work for me or my friends. Unlike feeling like a game that loosely modeled fantasy action heroes, it felt like they started from a board game minis point of view and tried to add on D&D flavor. Toss in that they just tried to cram too many options in with interrupts and interrupts of interrupts, at high levels the game just slowed to a crawl. I think they were overly ambitious and perhaps it would have worked better if they had just focused on levels 1-10 on the first pass instead of going all the way up to 30. If I wanted to play an over the top anime game, I'd play something else.
About the time 5e was released I was ready to quit playing 4e because I simply enjoyed the game less and less. My fighter was no longer just someone really good at swinging a sword, they were magically pulling every creature around them in and turning into the Taz from Loony Toons hitting everything around him. Instead of an action movie hero set in a fantasy world, he was an anime character that for some reason couldn't use the same power twice in a row. You had to read every power separately, a pain point particularly when running public games because some people were inventive in their interpretations. Essentials tried to fix that but it was too little too late.
With 5e I felt like they had taken the best of everything that came before and made a game that wasn't perfect but achieved a blend of 3e and TSR editions with a dash of ideas from 4e. They probably leaned into some old-school aesthetics a bit too much (i.e. half-orcs live in slums but are tough), but they backed off of the WOTC idea that there was one true way to play. I know rulings over rules bugs some people, but I think it's part of what makes the game work for me.
Of course some people are going to prefer old school games, others miss the 3e customization or 4e's power structure. We all game for different reasons. But for me 5e and 5.5e are the best D&D games I've ever played.
Every edition of the game has had parts I liked and didn't like. For TSR era games, it went from copying down a list of numbers on my sheet just to see if I hit to weird math and sometimes wanting to roll low and others high. How was I supposed to have a lucky D20 if it was supposed to go opposites all the time?
There were also way too many save-or-die effects for my taste, although I think most of the groups I played with just avoided those or had some other kind of workaround.When WOTC redid D&D it was like a breath of fresh air. Always adding, more consistent logic was great. But they went too far on locking down the options in 3e in an attempt to have consistency from one table to the next, but until you hit levels in the teens the game worked just fine. However, there was a pretty huge power level gap between people who were casual about the game and those that new how to optimize or searched the web to find the best builds. On the bright side it fed into my dice addiction because rolling a literal handful of dice with my two-weapon fighter required way, way too many dice and a chart.
The complexity when for example you have 6 attacks with physical damage plus multiple energy types along with as many buffs as the cleric could throw on you was a pretty big barrier, especially at higher levels. System mastery ruled the day, until even that wasn't enough unless you had made the right choices for your character. When you hit about level 14 or so and no matter how effective your character was you were just futzing around waiting for the optimized cleric or wizard to finish the fight in a single turn.
I switched to 4e because of the issues 3e had. With 4e, they tried to reinvent the game and in the short term I enjoyed it. But in the long term it simply didn't work for me or my friends. Unlike feeling like a game that loosely modeled fantasy action heroes, it felt like they started from a board game minis point of view and tried to add on D&D flavor. Toss in that they just tried to cram too many options in with interrupts and interrupts of interrupts, at high levels the game just slowed to a crawl. I think they were overly ambitious and perhaps it would have worked better if they had just focused on levels 1-10 on the first pass instead of going all the way up to 30. If I wanted to play an over the top anime game, I'd play something else.
About the time 5e was released I was ready to quit playing 4e because I simply enjoyed the game less and less. My fighter was no longer just someone really good at swinging a sword, they were magically pulling every creature around them in and turning into the Taz from Loony Toons hitting everything around him. Instead of an action movie hero set in a fantasy world, he was an anime character that for some reason couldn't use the same power twice in a row. You had to read every power separately, a pain point particularly when running public games because some people were inventive in their interpretations. Essentials tried to fix that but it was too little too late.
With 5e I felt like they had taken the best of everything that came before and made a game that wasn't perfect but achieved a blend of 3e and TSR editions with a dash of ideas from 4e. They probably leaned into some old-school aesthetics a bit too much (i.e. half-orcs live in slums but are tough), but they backed off of the WOTC idea that there was one true way to play. I know rulings over rules bugs some people, but I think it's part of what makes the game work for me.
Of course some people are going to prefer old school games, others miss the 3e customization or 4e's power structure. We all game for different reasons. But for me 5e and 5.5e are the best D&D games I've ever played.
Seems dangerous . . .
