Argyle King
Legend
Right, and OTOH I think 5e got certain things right as well, though it has been argued it was at the expense of other things. I feel like character options in 5e are generally easier to grasp in terms of their thematic relevancy as well as how they mechanically fit into your character build. 4e character builds became pretty baroque over time, and I think the E-classes were one attempt to combat that. I think it can be done better.
So, for instance, in my own Heroes of Myth and Legend 4e hack, there are only 'boons'. There aren't 'feats' and 'proficiencies' and themes and PPs and EDs and etc. etc. etc. Even items are folded into the boon concept (something 4e actually suggested, I just took it to an extreme). Powers become strictly consequences of boons. This tends to greatly simplify applying the mechanics to the characters. Granted there are still many many options, but there's a much smaller tendency to stack them together to create specific composite effects, which was the whole essence of 4e charops.
I also eliminated certain concepts pretty much completely, like multi-attacks. There are still AoEs of course, but there are various ways to avoid stacking up static damage bonuses (like mostly there aren't many and none of them ever stack). Overall TACTICS are still really relevant, but the whole 'recipe approach' to 'character build' is damped down a lot, which feels sort of like 5e (though 5e doesn't totally avoid it).
I mean, its good to have some synergies in the game, but they shouldn't out compete simply building in a thematic way, and the thematics should be pretty obvious!
I felt that the E-classes were a step in the wrong direction for 4E.
One of my common complaints of 4E is that I felt as though a significant chunk of the "official" advice on how to run 4E was bad advice and changes/errata made to the game often went in a direction which made some problems worse.
An exception would be updated monster math. Later monster design was clearly better.
I grasp most of what your post is saying. I can understand why you decided to make the changes you did.
I'm not sure that I fully understand the last paragraph of your statement though. What do you mean by creating a character in a thematic way?