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k bye

The various playtest Rangers were, on the whole, MUCH better than the final product both mechanics-wise and flavor-wise. Rangers were prepared spellcasters all the way up through the final public playtest (September 2013). So their arbitrary switch-over to a spells-known caster came only after...

Not quite. It is one UA Ranger feature option, Tireless, that removes a level of exhaustion with every short rest. It can be taken at Lv. 1, thus making Ranger a way-too-attractive dip for a Berserker Barbarian. (Tireless itself is OK if taken after 6 Ranger levels, so that's what the change...

This makes the feature a lot less flexible. Many spell levels are lacking damage types. If I were to change the feature, I'd require that the Wizard have the spell they want to rip damage type from prepared, thus potentially making them spend one of their precious preparations on a spell they...

It's no more of a pain than a standard familiar. The meat of that feature is the teleportation. The resurrection part of it is a dead-last-resort emergency button and clearly a ribbon. I'm OK with that.

You can say that about the Ranger class and its core features in general.

Loving the Scribe Wizard. It's like the old UA Loremaster except not broken in half and a lot more flavorful. The Genielock is pretty cool, too, though if it makes it to print that pretty much eliminates any chance Limited Wish will be a spell. Didn't like the Phantom Rogue when it debuted and...

Clerics needed a grand total of 1 first-level spell to match or surpass the Paladin and Ranger in physical combat. Druids didn't even need that. All they needed was Wild Shape. And then the Animal Companion made Druids twice as good in physical combat without casting a single spell.

Paladins were Tier 5 in the 3.5 tier list, written up by 3.5 players. Calm down with your edition warrior accusations. They were demonstrably an ineffective class. They were subpar melee characters. Their spellcasting was a joke. Their Smite Evil was weak even when it could be used at all.

The Paladin was just as worthless in 3.0, and unlike the Ranger didn't get any improvements worth mentioning for 3.5. The 3.0 Monk was also quite bad, problem was the 3.5 Monk's "fixes" didn't help much.

Sure, ignore every single point I made showing how that is demonstrably not the case. Well, that sure doesn't speak well for 3e when an older edition of the game was less unbalanced without even trying to be. Yes, 2e mechanics were clunky. I've long acknowledged that. But they also...

There is no way you can tell me with a straight face that 3e was more balanced than 2e. For one, the martial-caster divide was by far the worst it ever was in 3e. All those mechanics that 2e spellcasters had to deal with, clunky as they were, helped rein them in at least a little bit. Removing...

My experience with both editions is the exact opposite of what you describe, in both cases.

But there's a difference between a game that's already good but is made even better by a few houserules, vs. a game that's functional only with a boatload of houserules.

3e: Making the numbers more intuitive (i.e. higher numbers are always better). Unifying the experience/level chart was a step in the right direction also, it's just that the 3e classes weren't rebalanced well around that. Tome of Battle was the first step toward getting martial characters to do...

Which is why I'd keep finesse and add light to the allowed SA weapons. Rapier is an overrated weapon for the Rogue, always has been.

I've been proposing adding light weapons to the list of Sneak Attack weapons since 5e released, basically. And when I DM, that's always a house rule.

The problem with that is there just isn't a situation where this is going to work out in your favor compared to simply attacking and hiding twice.

But you can attack and then hide as a bonus-action every round, anyway, and accomplish the same. And you're not just losing the possibility of two crits with your feature. That's the least of what you're losing. You're also losing an entire round's worth of DEX bonus(es) to damage, since crits...

Or just give the Assassin an in-class bonus to initiative to make Alert less of a feat tax. Like I recommended adding proficiency bonus to it in a post above. "Problem" solved. Skipping attacking your action one round to crit the next is the very definition of a trap. You'd end up losing damage...