what is amusing about your example is that what you say you like is how it works in 4e, but not in 5e.
Half right. Yes, in 4e, you do go from being barely able to touch a higher level monster, to being able to take it on when you come 'even' with it, to completely rolling over it as you're far above it in level.
But, you can do that in 5e, too. The mechanisms are just a little different. In 4e it was mostly about attack bonus and AC, the much-lower-level creature had no chance, but playing through murdering it would be boring. In 5e, it's mostly about hps. The much-lower level creatures will still sting you, but you'll at least kill it quickly. Of course, that's using all of 5e's features, but ignoring one of 4e's: secondary monster roles. What really happens in 4e when you're facing enemies you completely out-class is that the DM will stat them as minions - they'll sting you like in 5e, but won't fold quite as instantaneously, needing actual hits, rather than all be swept away by some low-level AE spell whether they save or not, so your DM can still squeeze an interesting fight out of them.
In 4e, your accuracy and damage both increase significantly as you level. In 5e they don't.
Not true. In 4e, it's mostly your accuracy, your damage edges up, yes, but it doesn't balloon. In 5e, yes, your accuracy improves little over many levels - but your damage advances by leaps and bounds, just via multiple attacks and higher level slots.
Also, given a good enough CON bonus, your hps advance about twice as fast in 5e as 4e.
In spite of Bounded Accuracy censoring 'numbers porn' in attack/AC/skills in 5e, you can still check out some big, throbbing numbers (I said NUmbers!!) when it comes to damage & hps.
In 5e, your attack bonus has increased maybe 2 or 3 points over those 10 levels and your damage per attack has increased by only a point or 2.
But, your number of attacks, for, say, a fighter, has gone from 1 at 1st to 3 at 11th, and your caster has gone from using 1st level slots to using 5th level ones that do far more damage.
I think that what I feel is that 5e fundamentally doesn't challenge you to push the fiction. I'm really seeing this in my current game where nothing much really changes. Yeah, you may get better at X, but you keep just doing X! I mean you got better at X in 4e too, its just that the game encouraged the DM to throw X+1 at you, and etc.
Maybe not the best way to put it, considering the 'Treadmill' criticism.
The fiction in the 4e games seemed to evolve to a much higher degree. There was a real serious difference between levels where by the middle part of the game (paragon) you were thinking "wow, this is a whole different game, its almost a whole different game world!"
Yes, the big difference wasn't that shift - it happened in prior eds, too, it's that the system was still functional.
5e also tries, with Bounded Accuracy, to retain basic functionality at higher levels, but it does seem like it could make 'higher level' less distinct in concept - the flip side of the 4e treadmill making higher levels less distinct in terms of certain net numbers.
In 4e, that was mostly an illusion, though, and I suspect it might be true in 5e, as well. I'll see for sure, if I ever get around to running high level 5e.
I like to explore. I like to see the products of unfettered imagination. I don't want to keep crawling around in the same dungeons, albeit on the 33rd level or whatever. I want to go visit Pandemonium and do something totally crazy.
Ultimately, the DM can stat out Pandemonium or whatever if he likes - or wait for 5e Planescape, or adapt the existing stuff. When he does, he can make the challenges you face there tailored or status quo. The details of doing so well are different, but it's still possible.
Yes, I am not entirely happy with 5E, and I could have been happier with something that used the math from 4E but was presented in a different way.
Because even though 4E had all of the math set up for this to work out, it then went out of its way to tell you how to change the math to better fit the intentions of the system - in order to prevent me from ever hitting 90% of the time, like the math tells me I should, it would have you replace the level 4 elite with a level 16 minion (or whatever).
IDK, the Thief in my current campaign is hitting 90% of the time when she backstabs...
Seriously, though, the way the DM stats out a monster depends on the challenge he wants it to present. I've used some pretty under-leveled monsters when the PCs have, in fact, come back to the same area and faced some exact same old enemies, and it is a tad dramatic the difference, say, 4 or 5 levels make , and doesn't make for the kind of fights you'd want to do a lot of, but once in a while, to demonstrate character growth, it can be fun. I very much found the same was true in 3.x, BTW.
And if I can't pin down what the actual, true, objective stats for an ogre even are, because they change relative to the level of the party, then I can't use it to model the reality of my game world.
The way I look at re-casting a monster in a different secondary role at a much higher or lower level, is that it is 'reaching' or 'toying' respectively. When you take a standard monster of much higher level, and bring it down to a Solo of the same exp value (there's the consistent, 'objective' bit, btw), you give it action-preservation, and additional powers - that represents it 'toying' with party a bit, doing stunts in combat it wouldn't risk against more dangerous enemies, for example. Go the other way, say 'minionizing' a standard 10 levels lower than the party, and it represents sheer desperation - all out attacks, desperate dodging, and dying/cringing in helpless fear/capitulating/running at the first hit.
Same creature, different circumstances, different performance. When you think about it, there's some verisimilitude there that's lacking if it just pushes the same attack buttons regardless of who it's up against.
