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<blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9618926" data-attributes="member: 7026594">Yup, good summary. Building on it a bit...4E &quot;Trained&quot; for skills giving a flat +5 bonus is a pretty different concept from 5E Proficiency. Where in 5E being proficient is an on/off switch that scales with level IF it's &quot;on&quot;, 4E instead has Trained for skills, which gives a substantial bonus but that bonus shrinks in importance as characters level up.&nbsp; It's still significant, but the general half level bonus everyone gets means that at high levels characters are broadly competent, with Trained characters in a skill being better, but the differentiation not being as stark.&nbsp; Whereas in 5E if you never acquire Proficiency with a saving throw, weapon, or skill you are generally way behind those who are (and it gets worse at higher levels), due to there being no other level-based increase.4E does have proficiency bonus for weapons, but it's basically a flat +2 or +3 depending on the weapon, if you are proficient with it.A tangent of this, for me, is IMO the significant flaw in the 3E and 5E saving throw systems, where there is a big disparity between strong saves and weak saves on higher level characters.&nbsp; In 5E you can easily have a 14th level character with a +0 total bonus to a particular save, where another has a +10, and in 3E you could commonly see a similar +15 to +5 disparity.&nbsp; This is another way casters in these editions can be even more powerful, due to the ability to target weak saves and the difficulty of covering all bases (even covering most of them normally requires some min/maxing).This is an issue 4E mitigated quite a bit, between the half level bonus to defenses and deriving the ability bonus from the better of two different ability scores for each of Fort, Ref, and Will. The latter feature gives greater flexibility in character builds and mitigates the issue of Dex and Wis (and to some extent Con) being &quot;god stats&quot; in 5E.TSR editions made saves primarily based on character level, secondarily on magic gear, and only to a limited extent giving bonuses from ability scores.&nbsp; Which also meant disparity in saves was less of an issue than we see in 3E and 5E.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mannahnin, post: 9618926, member: 7026594"] Yup, good summary. Building on it a bit... 4E "Trained" for skills giving a flat +5 bonus is a pretty different concept from 5E Proficiency. Where in 5E being proficient is an on/off switch that scales with level IF it's "on", 4E instead has Trained for skills, which gives a substantial bonus but that bonus shrinks in importance as characters level up. It's still significant, but the general half level bonus everyone gets means that at high levels characters are broadly competent, with Trained characters in a skill being better, but the differentiation not being as stark. Whereas in 5E if you never acquire Proficiency with a saving throw, weapon, or skill you are generally way behind those who are (and it gets worse at higher levels), due to there being no other level-based increase. 4E does have proficiency bonus for weapons, but it's basically a flat +2 or +3 depending on the weapon, if you are proficient with it. A tangent of this, for me, is IMO the significant flaw in the 3E and 5E saving throw systems, where there is a big disparity between strong saves and weak saves on higher level characters. In 5E you can easily have a 14th level character with a +0 total bonus to a particular save, where another has a +10, and in 3E you could commonly see a similar +15 to +5 disparity. This is another way casters in these editions can be even more powerful, due to the ability to target weak saves and the difficulty of covering all bases (even covering most of them normally requires some min/maxing). This is an issue 4E mitigated quite a bit, between the half level bonus to defenses and deriving the ability bonus from the better of two different ability scores for each of Fort, Ref, and Will. The latter feature gives greater flexibility in character builds and mitigates the issue of Dex and Wis (and to some extent Con) being "god stats" in 5E. TSR editions made saves primarily based on character level, secondarily on magic gear, and only to a limited extent giving bonuses from ability scores. Which also meant disparity in saves was less of an issue than we see in 3E and 5E. [/QUOTE]

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