Zardnaar
Legend
Have you seen the BECMI'S system? It makes 5e's system look like elementary school math..
4e MATH was bad. It was fixed come MM2. That's not a failing of Challenge rating though. Still rather have 72 pages of errata than TSR saying "I don't know, what do you think we are, game designers?!"
It was a result of the arms race between PCs using broken splats and monsters designed not to die before they can even act. Then again, D&D since the 1980s didn't view combat as a fail state so they wanted fights that were dynamic and lasted a few rounds. The whole premise of this thread has been that D&D combat ends up ac race to nuke the monsters before they can act and how monsters don't advance quick enough to meet the churn of splats and charops.
I sound like a broken record, but there is an edition where PCs don't get builds and nova potential, HP isn't inflated and monster math stays relevant. BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia. Every other edition ends up in the arms race you're complaining about in some form or another.
B/X is even better than BECMI.
Its on my list of favorite D&Ds. Best D&D to DM.
BUT its a bit to basic. Modern players wont go for it. I can get my groups to play versions that include some AD&D classes and spells eg clones.
And that whole THAC0 thing.
They'll pick 5E every time though.