Yes, I hafta agree.
If anything the only easy thing to hack in 4e was the little things, the things that doesn't change much.
Odd. My current DM hacks away at just about whatever he wants--creating new skills (it's a sci-fantasy game), adding to or altering the uses of current skills, tweaking the specifics of powers, giving my character special race-specific bonuses and penalties because of that race's origin (they were created by the now-missing hyper-advanced precursor race, and are thus subject to certain influences that naturally-evolved races aren't), altering monsters of all stripes (minions/standards/elites/solos) freely and sometimes on the fly, adjudicating uses of powers outside their 'normal' context (I've used Lay on Hands multiple times to revive an ally from unconsciousness during a non-combat scene, even though that's not "what it's for"), etc. Other DMs have provided alternative "simple" minor actions (like +1 to hit from 'focusing on your target' or whatever--something simple but reliable), completely reconfigured the non-combat resolution system, and adopted systemic fix-'em-up things that eliminate many of the remaining mechanical concerns (like baking Expertise/Improved Defenses into the natural progression).
Like, I'm curious what you consider "things that don't change much," because no 4e DM I've known has been completely happy with the system, and has found its transparency freeing, because you generally
know what the consequences of a change will be, whether sweeping or specific. The only exception I can think of is screwing with the definitions of existing keywords (and maybe altering the definitions of conditions)...but I mean, why would you even need to do that?
Hacking 3e or 5e is much more satisfying.
Well, satisfaction is always a matter of taste. Personally, I find it very bothersome that 5e is
almost always heavily hacked...so I never really know what to expect from a game even if a DM *tries* to tell me in advance...and if it
isn't, well the system leaves an awful lot to be desired when run "as written," in my experience.
And 5e wins because the lighter emphasis on balance. In 3e or 4e, it would be easy to get the feeling "don't change anything or you're ruining the balance".
See above--I've never understood this. Why does balance make things harder to modify? The balance is literally just "abilities and monsters scale in a predictable fashion." Adding fancy magic items, giving out shiny special +N armor/weapons (which nobody seems to want to do ANYWAY in 5e...), adding or removing skills, tweaking races/classes/backgrounds/themes/etc., hell maybe even some pretty extreme stuff like letting all Martial characters take any Martial power of their level or lower...none of this is at all impossible, and in fact very little of it will do anything meaningful to 4e's balance. Because the balance is
more fundamental than that. Give someone a +4 sword at level 1, and sure, they'll hit a lot more often and do noticeably more damage, but they'll still run out of resources at roughly the same time and won't be able to prevent their allies from running out either.
So...what exactly is it about "things have been made to just work, and don't go pear shaped if you push a little or fall a little behind" that makes people so, frankly,
afraid to make changes?
5e is more like AD&D in that regard. The occasional imbalance might be noteworthy, but not the end of the world.
Honestly, I have yet to see a single indication that this
isn't true of 4e. People act like the tiniest shift would make the whole system implode...and yet I've never, not once, heard or seen anything to that effect from those who ACTUALLY played it and ACTUALLY modified it. Much the opposite, in fact.
