D&D 5E Question: How robust is 5th edition vs absent character?

[Lwaxy]

My personal opinion:

Everyone of us sees the game from their own experiences, and what was said somewhere before is likely true - there will be 4e players thinking it all goes too pre-4e, and non-4e players thinking there is too much from 4e in it. And sometimes, the reason for this is silly and sometimes it's not.

Also, please keep in mind that while 3e has already experienced loss of support and many of us got at least a bit angry, 4e players are in the situation now. 4e, which is a perfectly good game for them to play, is losing WotC support left and right. Of course, if they look to 5e as a replacement, they would want to at least recognize parts of their game in it. This is probably also why giving things names from the editions we don't play makes us feel uncomfortable. At least I would personally prefer to take as little terminology from 4e as possible, even if the rules came from 4e, because I am unfamiliar with them. But that will not make my opinion about 5e change. I can understand why it would upset someone though.

 

[Lwaxy]

So how robust would 5th edition rules be with my groups play habits?

How do you or did you handle this in non-4e games?

I never have issues with running another player's PC as NPC when needed - i can't quite get how starting with one set of characters an ending with another set should work if there is to be some sort of logic in the story, but anyhow...

If you have it so different encounters are independent from each other, with chances to switch out PCs, then it should make no difference there. As to how balanced those groups would be... I don't think e can know yet, but my personal bet would be "better balanced than in 3.5 and less than in 4th" - providing that, as should be for every game, the party is in itself balanced and probably learns a few things not necessarily part of their base class (like healing skills, a bit of tracking, whatever fits for the campaign). If you let them know in advance what would be needed most save healing, you'd probably get a well rounded group with backgrounds and all.