Except when a Fighter and a Wizard hit multiple targets in a small area, in 3e and 5e, the Wizard casts a spell and the DM rolls saving throws while the fighter makes multiple attack rolls.
And if I were to make a Videogame where every "Spellmaster" had the same 10 templates of powers but you could change the damage type from Fire to Ice and it would make the visual change as well... It would still be a Fireball dealing Ice Damage. You'd still feel like you're playing the exact same character if you made them a Lightning Spellmaster because there's no actual difference in how the spells would function
When you wanna force a door open using an Ability Check the Wizard and the Barbarian both have the same chance to do it because Strength and Intelligence are interchangeable for the task. When you wanna hurt a bad guy you just add your modifiers and roll a d20 regardless of how you're hurting them. And on and on and on it went.
There's just a point where it becomes so homogenous that it gets dull for some people. Apparently not you or Neon Chameleon. Which is great. Seriously. I'm happy that you guys can play the naughty word out of 4e and enjoy yourselves.
But what I would prefer, which I kinda described? Is very much not 4e.
You're correct that 4e makes it so spells use attack rolls. But 5e also includes spells that involve attack rolls, lots of them actually. Everything from cantrips (
fire bolt) to banishment effects (
plane shift, used as a banishment, requires a ranged spell attack). According to 5e.tools, 34 spells currently include some component that involves a melee or ranged spell attack. (14 melee, 20 ranged.) And, as noted, there's at least one non-caster means by which one may attack multiple foes, such as the
Sweeping Attack maneuver (available to anyone with a feat), and
numerous maneuvers and non-spell effects call for saving throws. I don't understand why 5e is "not samey," when spells and attacks can do either thing (attack rolls, saving throws).
It is worth noting here that there's an important rationale behind specifically making all offensive actions attack rolls: it makes playing a support character much easier. Instead of having to balance both an accuracy buff AND an ally-save-DC-buff, you only have to balance one thing, attack roll bonuses. This means (for example) the 4e Warlord doesn't have to have long-winded features or multiple distinct mechanics in order to play nicely with both a Ranger and a Sorcerer, despite the former having (mostly) non-magical attack powers and the latter having very explicitly magical attack powers.
Your other points, here, are...uh, just wrong? Like I'm really confused how you got to those ideas, because they just aren't true.
There aren't 10 templates of powers. Powers run the gamut of all sorts of things: they include keywords (which, officially, only the DM is allowed to alter--but they did support DMs doing so to help make a player's character more thematic, just as 5e does), but you could have Effects (stuff that Just Happens when you use the power) or not, could cause secondary or even tertiary attacks/effects, and could (often did) have riders that hook into other class features. Just as, in 5e, every spell has a specific format--level, school, casting time, range, components etc.--even if it doesn't necessarily
need all of those parts, exactly the same thing applies to 4e powers, there's a format and you use whatever parts of it are needed to achieve the power's effect. Like, if your standard is that there's only a few templates that then get tweaked,
5e is worse, because spells have ONE template! It is literally almost never the case that two powers for the same class in 4e work perfectly identically; you
do sometimes get two powers that work identically across two different classes, but that's not particularly common due to rider effects.
And...I don't even know what you're talking about with the "Strength and Intelligence are interchangeable for the task" thing, because...that's literally just false. Flat out. There
were some ways, by layering together various benefits, that you could substitute Arcana checks for several other kinds of checks, but I've
never heard of any way to substitute Intelligence for Strength when making an Athletics roll. If anything,
5e is the one that you should be leveling this criticism at, because it actually includes official rules options for substituting different stats with a given skill!
Like, if you just don't like the idea that spells and attacks use a common resolution mechanic, that's fine. But don't say things that are...simply, demonstrably
untrue in the process.