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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 7956975" data-attributes="member: 93670">I disagree, to answer [USER=6987520]@dnd4vr[/USER] 's question, It falls into a different sort of tuneable, but has some significant avantages that were cut out when they made 5e.  That's not to say that 5e does not improve on things that were problems  in 3.5 (although many of those improvements go too far with a good thing & create new problems).3.5 was a lot more self correcting  than 5e through item churn & the fact that many things were tuned with the expectation that you had +X to your prime stat or +y gear at certain breakpoint levels (I think they were the same tiers we have in 5e).  If the players did not get those things then the difficulty would go up dramatically unless they were getting extremely powerful bonuses to offset it elsewhere  Coupled with the slot limitations of magic items a gm  had more room to give out interesting magic items  due to churn & conflict.  A fighter might really want gauntlets of whatever, but everyone honestly agrees bob the squishy should get them because that fighter needs his gauntlets of ogre power+4  The +2 gauntlets the fighter used to have are probably equipped by someone else in the party who needs strength as a secondary stat but not as much as the fighter so with one item  you frequently have two or more players getting something awesome to them even if some of those people are getting a handmedown. A lot of that wasn't quite explicitly explained despite things like suggested wealth by level tables though so the GM needed to have a certain level of skill & system understanding to be aware  4e tried to improve on that by pretty much just letting players pick whatever they wanted when they reached certain criteria removing some of the gm's ability to juggle things or even deliberately deny others[spoiler="slots and affinities"][ATTACH=full]120489[/ATTACH][/spoiler] On top of that there were a lot more tools in the GM's toolbox that could narrowly knock specific types of characters down a peg or two while simultaneously thrusting a different type of character into the spotlight to save the day. A wraith or rustmonster would put the fear of god in a heavy armor clad character & simultaiously thrust a dex build like rogue or maybe ranger into the spotlight to save the day & "tank" it.   Meanwhile any undead or construct is going to make the rogue cry with equal intensity due to not qualifying for sneak attack.  Tanking was & still is basically a gentlemen's agreement across the table that the gm will make the monsters cooperate to some degree with pc plans rather than just slaughtering the squishies first  every time so tanking in 5e is the same but worse due to the lack of meaningful AoO's & tactical combat options built in.The subjective elements attached to armor like <a href="https://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/armor.htm" target="_blank">arcane spell failure, armor check penalty, speed penalty, max dex, & so on</a> or weapons like critical threat (the numbers on a d20 that trigger a crit) & crit multiplier (how you multiply the damage or dice) along with things like he damage types associated with the weapon. For example take the following weapons that are all usable by a rogue, lets say the rogue has weapon finesse to use dex instead of strength<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> dagger is 1d4 19-20x2 slash/pierce</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">light mace is 1d6x2</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">a punching dagger is 1d4 x3 & all are usable by a rogue for)</li> </ul>various monsters like a skeleton will need bludgeoning so the rogue will be tickled pink  to get the fighter's old +1 light mace  if the party came across a better weapon everyone agrees should go to the fighter.  Often that calculation will be part of why people agree that it should go to the fighter.Lets say that the fighter is moving into becoming a crit fishing build & just hasn't found anything they feel was better than the that +1 light mace & they didn't want to drop down to a +nothing scimitar (1d6slash 19-20x2).  The new weapon that was found could be as simple as 1d4 or 1d6 with a (non)magical bonus that makes it 17-20 or even x3 or x4 & the fighter will probably be thrilled even though all of those are values that could individually e found on a mundane stock off the rack weapon it's important that all of them are on the same weapon.  In 5e that calculation is "I've already got 1d6+1, I don't need a different 1d6+1" & the gm lacks subjective options to make it a difficult decision.  Maybe later the GM wants the ranger to have some nice armor, specifically the nice chain shirt of fanciness the party gave to that rogue a few sessions back.  [ATTACH=full]120490[/ATTACH]The GM can let them come across a set of +nothing  or +1 lstudded leather armor with a -0  acp.  Even though it's an objectively worse or at best equal AC for the rogue now the fact that it will allow him to apply another point of dex to ac later and improve a bunch of skills important to him by two points makes it an immediate wow for him.  Later the rogue might hold off on improving that armor for quite some time & jump straight to a +2 set of studded leather or +3 set of leather even though the first one might hinder some of his skills  while the second one is just an ac bump.  so on & so forth.  4e had fewer subjective dials on weapons & armor but it did have them... 5e might as well just list weapons by die size & if heavy light two handed or ranged  because there is literally no mechanical difference between for example a +1 sickle (1d4+1 magic slash light) & +1 club (1d4+1 magic bludgeon light) & or any number of other combos that may or may not be class specific comparisons due to proficiency.3.5 had a lot of problems with being able to build a character that paints itself into a corner by not planning ahead for feat chains or prerequisites for Prestige classes until it might be too late.  5e corrected that problem, but kept going & made feats too condensed (and very powerful) while giving less of them resulting in many feats that pretty much nobody can afford to seriously consider & could seriously harm their character by taking.Also a problem with 3.5 was that you could spend an inordinate amount of time deciding where to allocate skillpoints  to meet feat/prc requirements or just use & that got more complicated if you took levels in a PrC oe multiclassed because what counts as a class & cross class skill might change among other things.  5e improved on that, but in many cases went too far to overly condense the skills.  Because the skills were so severely condensed you no longer get a +int mod bonus to skill points (or some equivalent like +proficient skills) so the value of int took a hit while charisma got a huge bump by having the charisma skills condensed too much.  That might not sound like much but wizards went from getting 2+int mod skill points to 2 skills proficient &  that's before even getting to the massive overconsolidation of knowledge skills.    That's not an exhaustive list, just a few things that paint a picture of  where 3.5 is in all that & both how it does better as well as how it does worse than 5e are important to framing that picture.</blockquote>

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