ok I will bite that example (almost) how about healing being broken because trivial magic item creation in 3e allowed far far too much healing... ever hear that criticism. Rules are part of "systems" if you arent treating them in concert you are doing them wrong. I expect the game designers to have more ability to see that than others.
Yes, rules are part of systems. But was Healing broken, or trivial magic item creation broken?
Let us say I fix healing by saying that you can never heal without magic of X level. Does that fix the problem? No. Because you still have trivial magic item creation. That is the part that has the problem, so if you want to fix it, you have to focus there.
Rules have purposes and its a very very narrow and non game designer view to treat them like you do not know the purpose and goal of particular rules it seems well deceptive ( for the game designers in my opinion ). It is presenting a cosmetic shadow that will not serve the purpose it fulfilled (like healing surges which do not limit healing). I would say variant rules should start with comments about what the goal of this rule is... and follow through with a rule variant to fulfil that.
I would say I agree that that the variant rule should state it's purpose. And healing surges do just that: "This optional rule allows characters to heal up in the thick of combat and works well for parties that feature few or no characters with healing magic, or for campaigns in which magical healing is rare."
The rule isn't meant to reduce the amount of healing, it is meant to increase it for parties that lack magical healing for one reason or another. Allowing them to heal during a combat.
And, the rule does exactly that. Giving players an action (or bonus action if you want even more healing) to essentially get the benefit of a short rest during combat. And then changes the amount of hit dice you recover during rests, since you will be spending more of them for healing.
If you read the rule expecting it to limit healing, that is on you, not the rule, because the purpose of the rule was clearly stated. Now, that might not be the case for all of the rules, but this one seems pretty clear cut.
The purpose of flanking was never to "give combatants a simple way to gain advantage on attack rolls against a common enemy". Advantage is pretty pervasive already IMO why would i want that...
It was a component of the rules to make position significant. Present a collection of rules if you must for the overarching purpose. Then show how the component
provides in this case "reward for position" creates incentive to offset other components that provide difficulties for achieving position.
Flanking was part of a collection of rules, you just said that. So, we need to look at a collection of rules.
The point of flanking always was that if you achieved optimal positioning, it became easier to hit an opponent (which advantage gives us) and it was the other rules which made the movement more difficult and gave other advantages.
Also, it doesn't matter if you don't want more advantage, Flanking states its purpose, and fulfills that purpose. If you want other rules, you need to look at and for other rules.
While misnamed the 5e healing surges actually do accomplish what they are labelled to do ... not actually seeing a variant rule that even seems to try an implement how 4e limited every source of healing based on the internal awesome of the characters.
Because they didn't include it.
So, you'll have to make your own. They also didn't include the healing of 3.5 where you gained 1 hp a day, or equal to your level, or whatever it was.
Hyperbole ... not impossible but so completely not trivial like many seem to present. I almost like my solution to the Fear spell but what other dozen spells and feats are going to popup that have a cascade off of it? I think the game designers themselves were in a much better position to have considered them when producing the rules and variant rules. Starting from more complex design then simplifying so that the variants are basically bringing in the complex rules in a coherent systematized actually modular goal driven way. I think of it perhaps from an engineering perspective.
Engineering is a fine way to look at it, but misses the point of what the designers were doing.
Let us take building a house, an engineering and architectural feat. You can go in, and you can plan how the house will lay, how it will be affected by sunlight, where the pipes will connect to the sewage system, how the electrical systems are laid out.
Now add in the fact that you can change the position of the sun. You can change the tensile strength of the wood being used to build the house. You can alter the strength of the nails being used to hold it together. You are also designing the entire sewer system the house connects to, altering all of its properties. You can also change how electricity is affected by gravity and what materials are conductive and which aren't.
Sure, building a house and taking into consideration all of the factors needed to make a good house can be difficult, because you are accounting for a lot of potential problems.
Doing so while also designing the very baseline reality those problems exist in is many magnitudes of difficult higher.
