You know I played 2E and 3.5e for years and I actually prefer 5E for a number of reasons.
Whow !!! Great post, thanks !
(Its on page 3, on the top, if anyone wants to find the post I am answering to. Why cant this forum do links to postings in quotes ? Thats weird)
I mostly agree with your points. Overall D&D5 feels like a substantial improvement to me over previous D&D versions.
The class balance is so much better, its not even funny.
For example I hated Bards in AD&D with a vengeance. They had some largely irrelevant gimmicks plus they've frankly just been heavily nerfed Fighter/Mages. Clearly whoever designed AD&D thought very, very little of Bards. While I started BG with a Bard, after a while I got wiser and stayed away from them ever since.
So in D&D3, like for example NWN2, I ignored them. Sure they've been much better that before. With healing spells. Wearing armor still hampered them, even if it now was "only" spell failure chance now. But they still have been clearly a second tier class and didnt actually served any purpose.
While in D&D5 and BG3 they are suddenly so uber, uber fun !!! Maybe my most favorite class now. They arent disadvantaged spellcasters anymore, especially if you go the Lore route; instead they are on par with other spellcasters. And if you take either of the other two Bard Colleges that aint Lore you'll be a very competent warrior with excellent magic.
Sure they are still Jack of all Trades and Master of none, but the distance to the specialists is no longer so big anymore and they actually feel very useful.
For example Bards are the other skill specialist aside Rogue, and they still arent as good as Rogues at skills. That uber skill to get at least 10 on any skill roll that Rogue gets, oh boy, so powerful. But they are very useful in this regard, too, even with features that Rogue doent get, like Jack of all Trades. And as Lore they even get more proficiencies at Skills than Rogue.
The last remaining thing that still annoys me - why the hell cant Bards inspire THEMSELVES ? You actually have to have two bards in party, just so you can have inspirations on a bard. What ? Is there any other class feature where the person cannot do it on themselves, too ? Like, Paladins do Lay on Hands on themselves just fine, for example. The only example I can think of is this buff spell of Clerics that shares hitpoints between the Cleric and the ally, but there its obvious why such a spell needs two parties involved.
There are many other improvements in D&D5, which you already explained.
Spellcasters arent so unbalanced anymore.
Others here in this thread might have a point and Larian should hopefully finetune the item balance better than it is now. I am basically new to the game and I cant say much about that yet.
But D&D5 feels to me like a clear improvement over previous D&D versions. Many of the core design failures of AD&D and D&D3 are now gone.
Like for example in AD&D and D&D3, on high levels, armor just didnt matter anymore. No matter how high your armor class got buffed, enemies would hit you anyway all the time. The only defense was to have a Priest with Regeneration and hopefully some defense that reduces the damage received. The new Proficiency system (+2 level 1-4, +3 level 5-8, +4 level 9-12, +5 level 13-16, +6 level 17-20) means this is no longer the case.
