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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7414256" data-attributes="member: 996">I'm not sure what you mean by 'solves its issues?'  The issues of the immediately-preceding half-ed?   If so, I'm afraid that's not a lot clearer to me, because I also found it hard to tell if 3.5 was really an improvement, overall, compared to 3.0 - initially it couldn't help but be, as it removed, for practical purposes, the little bit of bloat that had already begun to afflict 3.0, but obviously, that didn't last long.  Some 3.5 changes did seem like improvements, by themselves, others quite the opposite, and, overall, it made some arguable problems with 3.0 worse.  It took a long while of playing 3.5 before I had to admit that 3.0 was actually the slightly better edition, especially as some of the things 3.5 'fixed' were more issues of interpretation that, were it not for the 3.x/PF community's reverence for RAW, could've been handled by the DM.  5e relatively to 3.5 I find similar.  It /is/ a greater departure from 3.5 than 3.5 was from 3.0, of course, but it still mixes some details that look like clear improvements in isolation, while being less clearly so overall, with some countervailing new issues of its own.  But, mainly, the huge glaring difference between 3.5 and 5e is one of attitude.  The natural-language presentation, frequent invocation of DM rulings by the 'RAW,' limited player options, and slow pace of supplementation of 5e all conspire to support it's mandate of DM Empowerment, putting a burden on the DM as onerous as that of 3.5 but, IMHO much more engaging & rewarding.   In contrast, 3.5's wealth of options and its community's sanctification of RAW made it a very player-Empowering edition.  If I had only every played, it'd be easy to conclude that 3.5 is the better of the two.   If I had only ever DMed, it'd be easy to say that 5e is, especially if I was sick of the 'player entitlement' of the WotC era to that point.  It's part of the tightrope-walking WotC did to make 5e acceptable to those veteran gamers and their ilk, while still keeping it accessible to new & returning players.  It seems to have worked really well:  'warring' against 5e is vanishingly slight, so it must be at least minimally acceptable to the critical minority of fans willing to go to such extremes to register their disapproval; the number of players is growing rapidly, so it's presentation is not intimidating or disconcerting enough to keep new/returning players from trying it, at all.  The result is very good for the brand.But, the resulting system is really kinda ill-defined and "softballed,' yeah.  It's up to the DM to choose a shape for his 5e campaign, remove from or add to 5e until it fits that mold, and polish it to the spedific luster preferred by his group....3.5, OTOH, is what it is, by the RAW ('Rule 0' notwithstanding), love it or grudgingly respect it.</blockquote>

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