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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6682072" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Personally, I see the "there's more books" thing as entirely superfluous. Someone who's intentionally going out and buying splatbooks for a game almost certainly won't care whether or not they add complexity. And someone who isn't interested in complexity isn't going to buy those things.5e retains essentially all of the complexity of 3e's spellcasting system, with only the minor improvement that Spell X is Spell X (same level, same function) for all classes that can access it, rather than being "Bard 4, Wizard/Sorcerer 3, Cleric 4, Sun 4." It even retains highly differential access to those abilities (e.g. Cleric, Wizard, Bard, and Warlock each have their own 'spin' on the system.) That's a simple fact, and a pretty major component of the "complexity" of 3e. 5e also retains most of the complexity of actually using the various subsystems linked to Proficiency, and to a certain extent even increases the complexity of Saves since there are more of them. Proficiency unifies a lot of things, but also brings in the occasional complexity of its own, like abilities that grant half- or double-proficiency, or the addition of the "tools" proficiency things, which are rather ill-defined--I'd call it a net reduction in complexity, but not a dramatic one. 5e retains all of 3e's "a la carte" multiclassing stuff, while adding back the stat requirements (or something very nearly like them) from 2e, and many more features are now tied to class level rather than character level (e.g. ASIs) so that's an overall gain in complexity for an already fairly complex system. The combat system is essentially unchanged from 3e and 4e, though the return to a mixture of attacks and saves for effect resolution is a net gain in at-table complexity.I could go on, but I don't really feel like doing a detailed rundown of everything. I think it is both safe and accurate to say that 5e has a lower minimum complexity than 4e and 5e in-play, but that average complexity is very close to 3e (up in some areas, down in others) and is difficult to compare to 4e, since 4e puts more complexity on each individual action one can take, while 5e puts more of the complexity into major subsystems like spells (same as 3e did).Now, with that said: in what ways would you say 5e, as the actual system and not "let the DM wing it," is simpler than 3e in what a person needs to do, remember, or calculate during play? Comparisons to 4e are going to be too fraught to be meaningful, IMO, but 3e is extremely close to 5e mechanically so complexity comparisons are natural there.</blockquote>

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