Would love for melee characters to be more like seasoned warriors who carry 3-4 weapons and have the option to pick the best tool for the job. It would also make loot for those characters more interesting more often and might make picking skills a bit more challenging in terms of deciding how specialised or versatile you want to be. Also, enemies could be made a bit more tricky without simply making them have higher HP and damage.
This is how I set up and play my melee characters and party members in the Pathfinder games. D&D 3.5e made this possible. It's yet another way in which 5e sucks.
5e doesn't suck.
It wasn't any fun to play a 3.5 caster. You could could only do a handful of things in day and you chances of succeeding were slim. Any spell could be interrupted by an attack of opportunity or by counter spell. Like you I'm having a blast fighting demons in WOTR but that's only because the devs didn't include the 3.5 let's make casters miserable rules.
But for Martials do you dislike the battlemaster? I think the 5e battle master is probably the strongest archetype in the game.
I've been taking a look at the world of Aetaltis - which has modified the 5e rules to include some of the elements we both like. Notably it's a world of heroes battling against the forces of darkness. Which I like and I think WOTC is wrong to be de-emphasize.
I Like battlemaster. As you may recall, I love playing melee warrior-type characters and don't care much for spellcasting (in both my own PC and in companions and enemies). I think my main reason for antipathy against spellcasting is the whole concept of buffing up one's PC and party with defensive spells before every combat encounter as well as having to de-buff the enemy in order to score hits on them. That's what turns me off to spellcasting in D&D-style games. And I'm happy to admit 5e is better on this issue that 3.5e/Pathfinder.
Thanks for the link. That setting and system indeed look very cool and interesting. Very high praise from some people I have great respect for, such as Greenwood and Cunningham. I wonder if we'll be getting any video games using Aetaltis?
