Ruin Explorer
Legend
I tend to agree.IDK, this feels like yesterdays hot take. 3E's vast gulf of effectiveness in system made GMing it a nightmare (and I say this as someone who prefers PF1 to this day). I think the complaints of unbalanced parties was entirely justified and expecting a GM to correct everything is a big ask. Modern designed games have been much better, albeit in some confining ways, at making the gap completely manageable.
I feel like 5E doesn't really need a "balanced party", so long as the DM is sensible enough to realize that they have to play the campaign for the characters they have, not the characters they want. 5E's main demands are actually just specific spells to counter specific monster abilities, usually after the fact, and the PCs have access to a magic item or NPCs or w/e to deal with the same stuff, even that can go away.
4E just needed you to really include at least one Leader and honestly... that was it. The rest of the roles, it didn't really matter, so long as you had at least one Leader, you were fine.