Ruin Explorer
Legend
Yeah I think this is a big place I see D&D as falling down these days.More broadly, I think character generation and advancement resources should be definitively split between the 3 pillars, to encourage capability in all those pillars, which should promote engagement in all three pillars in play.
There's no sense that you get power in all three pillars when you create a character. Many classes have significant power in combat, and relatively little in the others, and the others aren't really highlighted.
Further, as you advance, many classes basically gain nothing in the Exploration and Social pillars. Their skills increase with the PB and stat mods, but that's not really anything. You don't gain more skills (which I think is really, really dumb), and many classes/subclasses gain either literally nothing else, or very, very little else (like 1-2 abilities which are occasionally applicable).
Whereas Full Casters constantly gain access to more and more power in the Exploration and Social pillars. Often kind of insanely more. They're stuck with the same number of skills as others, but they gain this on top of that. They don't necessarily have to use it, but the power and flexibility gain is there.
Personally I think all classes which aren't Full Casters need some significant additions to them in order to actually gain power in those other two pillars as time goes on. Whether that's fiat/narrative abilities (which most spells that function in those pillars are), more skills, skills working better, other abilities (climb speed, ability to avoid climb checks, for example) or whatever. Full Casters probably shouldn't get extra skills etc. because they're already getting their punch in those pillars from the spells.
(As an aside, were I redesigning D&D, I might reduce the number of full casters by a very large amount, possibly just leaving the Wizard lol.)