There have been some perceived problems in prior editions that spanned multiple editions. I was wondering which problems of Olde bothered people most and if they think 5E has addressed it well.
For example: Through 3rd edition, the cleric often found that the best thing they could do for the party in almost all rounds of combat was to heal. My AD&D cleric reared healing spells in most of their slots. When later editions allowed us to exchange spells to heal, I prepared other spells, but spent most of them on healing anyways. 4E moved a bit away from this problem by having more sources of healing incombat, but 5E has a bit of backslide here as clerics often find that the best option for them is to heal during their turn. They may be tossing off a spiritual weapon on the side, but they end up back in the historic support role often as they heal the front line melee folks on many rounds. It isn't as bad as the lol destination days, but it could be tweaked up a bit. I've lays felt the healing need to be passive and not require spells, etc..
Another example, at high levels, in older editions, the only powerful classes were spellcasters. Melee combatants became nothing more than buffers to protect the spellcasters once the party street to get to medium and high levels. 5E does a great job of balancing the contributions that PCS can make at various levels. The Paladin is the damage king, in my experience, with fighters second in line. A wizard may do decent damage to a lot of enemies with one of their big spells, but the great weapon master melee combatant can easily out deal the damage of one of those spells. Rogues and clerics struggle in my eyes to keep up at high levels, but the balance is generally at an all time high.
Thoughts?
Hmmm.
It's fixed some "problems" and created others. Here I will list only problems that 5E has fixed or alleviated. The things that weren't broke until 5E "fixed" them are
not listed.
* Thieves being annoyingly bad at things they should be good at, like Open Locks and Move Silently: sort of fixed, mostly by making almost everybody good at them. (Anyone can learn Thieves Tools proficiency via background almost a well as a thief.)
* Thieves having no real niche because they're bad in combat and worse than wizards outside of combat: fixed, by making thieves^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hrogues better in combat.
* Magic items too central to gameplay. It's not fun to be the guy whose whole identity is basically wrapped around his magic sword, without which he is nigh-useless--or rather, it's fun only every once in a while. Fixed: in 5E they are almost entirely optional.
* Level limits are not fun to play with. Fixed by removing them entirely. I would have preferred a softer fix (e.g. diminishing returns to XP beyond the level limit) but the 5E version is adequate.
* Monsters don't have stats listed except Intelligence. Makes it hard to judge e.g. their carrying capacity or ability to walk a tightrope, so gameplay leverages saving throws for inappropriate things. Fixed by giving all monsters all six ability stats. Fix is vitiated by the fact that the stats aren't particularly well-chosen for anything but combat. Do I
really believe that a Fire Giant is supposed to be only marginally better at opening stuck mayonaise jars (Strength check) than a high-level Fighter? Not really. This fix is okay, nice to have, but needs a lot of DM work still to finish the job.
* 5E does a good job of explaining why towns can exist in D&D-land. Due to bounded accuracy, humans with longbows are absolute murder on animals like wolves, displacer beasts, T-Rexes, even trolls; even a small town guard of a dozen or so (dedicated, professional) horse-archers could secure an area big enough for a moderate-sized town to cultivate.
* Stat rolling is much gentler in 5E. Because the slope of the stat curve is much gentler, and because stats increase as you level up anyway, even a relatively punishing stat generation technique like 3d6 in order is more fun than it would be in 2nd edition. I think. Or it could just be that I'm older and less munchkin than I was back then--but I think it does help that the stakes are lower. Rolling all 18s in 5E simply isn't as
good as it would be in 2nd edition.
I think that's pretty much it.
