i understand the immersion thing.
but it depends ont he kind of game. In dragons dogma, having low arrow range would piss me off.
In OS2 i dont care, its mechanical abstraction and to me, gameplay > realism.

1 - Spell slots are easier to keep track of in a PnP game, in a video game its automated so it doesnt matter. Im personally not a big fan of mana either.
my issue with spell slot is not the time limitaiton, the issue is that a wizard works differently to a warrior and that creates a stupid situation where either the wizard twiddles his thumbs or the warrior constantly has to watch the wizard taking nappies.
the AEDU system fixed this. but everyone hated it.
2 - Yes, honestly 5E is nothing compared to Pathfinder in terms of trap options. Pathfinder has literal Tier lists to warn people about unplayable classes. Im not just talking about feats that are bad, theres just classes that are flat out worse at the thing they are supposed to excel at compared to a class that only does this as a side option
3 - NWN is a video game, so a lot of the stuff you can do in PnP doesnt work. And PvP servers also dont have the pause option, which makes it a lot harder for Wizards to do their wizard thing. also NWN is basedo n 3.5 where monks were significantly better than in 5E, in 5E monks, along with rangers are basically joke options.


And realy, you need to read the links ive provided. this is not about DPR.
Damage is irrelevant. sure a fighter and a monk can maybe outdamage a wizard. But a Wizard can just make the encounter go away without fighting. And the wizard can change his spell layout every rest.
If the fighter doesnt pick up an item that lets him fly, hes basically screwed in later levels.
And that is BY THE RULES.
I know what you are saying. But i disagree. The DM is not supposed to develop the game. WOTC is supposed to do that. The DM is not supposed to houserule spells to make Wizards not have access to them. Especialy since then the DM would have to ban most high level spells.

And that doesnt even begin to get into the situaiton where the wizards dont just use their spells as discribed in the rules, but start getting creative with them.

TL;DR: It was never about Damage, damage is irrelevent when you can just solve an encounter another way.
Martials get no utility options. and if the DM is required to houserule to balance the Wizard, then yes the wizard IS op.