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In my Prelude to Armageddon world, the civilizations are split into along the Chaos/Law axis. Lawful civilizations are those of the road and wall. They value rules and organizations over individual connection, on a society level; the Crown is more important than the Queen who wears it. Lawful...

No, 4e doesn't produce a balanced game. I played 4e extensively. Suppose we start with per-essentials. A level 30 PC in 4e has 18 feats, 3 encounter powers, 3 daily powers, 1 paragon path, 1 epic destiny, 1 race, 1 theme, 1 class, 1 subclass, and about 10 items of consequence. By the rules...

Huh? Who hurt you? Characters have plenty of cool things. Feats, class levels, etc. Sure they do, if the DM throws deadly encounters at the party and/or plays enemies like a tactical rpg. But encounter difficulty in 5e is really easy to scale. PCs that are 2x as powerful or 0.5x as...

Sure. 4e by level 30 I can provide a 20x ratio of damage output between naive and optimized characters, near complete immunity to damage by any published monster, almost perfect shutdown of almost every monster visible in an encounter, and other stuff. Pre-essentials 4e prescribes how magic...

If the issue of "martial PCs who lack magic weapons have problems damaging foes immune or resistant to non-magic weapons" is a primary concern, then I'm not worried about 5e martial:caster problems. That problem looks trivial to solve. So no, I'm not addressing it? It is like people...

I hate to tell you, there aren't any RPGs out there that aren't non-ultra-simple-mechanics roleplaying games that satisfy your requirements. Zero, non, zilch. You can buy the "here are stumps of wood as chairs" version of the RPG, or you can buy ones with fancy chairs that require the end-user...

That is the wrong conclusion. I can make a fighter that makes an unoptimized wizard unfairy weak. The tools DMs have iis for the general problem. A structural imbalance in optimization is within their scope. And perfect balance is hard and not worth the cost. So you need to provide those...

Naw, just realize that in 5e D&D, the DM has a suite of tools delegated to them. They are world plots, boons and magic items. And if you can't fix any spotlight imbalance problems using those tools, you aren't creative enough.

4e attempted to make the Martial types and the Spellcaster types balanced. To that end, Martial types gained many cool things they could do to impact the game narrative beyond "I swing a sword and deal HP damage", and resource management to limit their tool use. On the other hand, Spellcaster...

Sure; and a Hero without a Power Source has a HD and can use a sword and other weapons. They are unable to gain levels. It emulates being a Zero reasonably well. In game, they may succeed at some deed that gives them a power source - a potential to gain levels - but until then they are no...

Hero A Hero is elevated above the common mortal by some means. This is called the Hero's power source. Each Hero starts with a Power Source at level 1, and for each level in this class they must level up a power source as well. Some power sources have max levels. Heroes can gain additional...

Sure. How hard is it to guess the low saves of a creature from even a cursory description or a tiny bit of knowledge? A 30 foot tall giant isn't likely to have a super dex save. A golem or programmed automaton is probably going to not have a high intelligence. Etc. Even barring common...

The problem with "the most powerful" here is that the existence of power spells that use saving throws doesn't harm wizards. It just adds to their options. "There are high level wizard spells that are extremely powerful that use saving throws" is true, but that statement makes wizards...

That is why, fiction wise, I've been playing with explicit power sources as mechanical hooks. Mechanically, a power source starts out as something like a feat or an attuned magic item (a small to medium sized thing attached to a character), but you can use it to justify gaining levels in a...

Things this doesn't support well, but I would prefer if it did: * Fights with phases. Ie, imagine you get in a fight with rats. You choose to save HD and only roll a few. Then, baboom, WERERATS RIDING DIRE RATS ARRIVE. As written, either the DM has to decide "new fight!" or the existence of...

Prior to this change, grapple was junk except for grapple optimized PCs. On grapple optimized PCs, it was crazy good. You bypassed saves, legendary resists, and got to add twice your proficiency to your attack and defence checks. The enemy eventually ended up prone, granting advantage to all...

The DM determines when a check is warranted. They listen at the door. Ok; you hear nothing. Or maybe you hear orcs. Whatever. They identify a religious symbol. Seems legit, it is X. Neither of these really need a roll. Basically, it means that the DM should only call for a roll when...

A fighter performing a Deed every turn (a) Makes each turn have more narrative impact (b) Brings fighter turn spotlight time up to approach spellcasters The alternative to "you do a deed every turn" is "your baseline turn is 'I attack and roll damage'". If combat is extremely fast and longer...

I don't want a game of "disarm disarm disarm" or "trip trip trip". But the D&D combat state space isn't large enough or detailed enough to cover "their weapon is open" or "they are off balance". Random openings are the best I can imagine to emulate this.

One rule, vs a table. What happens with 1d12 and 2d6 ends up siginifcantly changing how 2H weapons balance. Maybe fiddly is the wrong word. Just a lookup table with significant balance implications that are not easy to fix without adding in yet more subsystems, or punting. Damage boost is...