The 5E feats are usually worth about 2-3 3E feats. Great weapon mastery is Power attack, Cleave, and an extra trigger for cleave when critical hitting. Alert is Improved initiative plus surprise immunity.
You get less feats, but bigger impact.
Dropping of Delay your action was an overall improvement. Yes, I enjoyed it and it worked well in say the ToEE CRPG, but in actual TT it slowed play down. Tired/rookie players would hmm and harr over what action to take and then decide to... do nothing but wait. And later hmm and harr again. It happened too often and was extremely annoying for other players to experience. I believe the stated reason to exclude it was it made players engage with a meta rule of combat that was unimmersive, plus slowed down play.
Warriors might well be more boring than spellcasters; WotC has taken a leaf from BG3 and added weapon combat maneuvers to the 2024 revision. This was developed how we know it in 4E but was lost along the way. Personally, I like simpler classes because for me it frees up attention span to better engage the setting.
Well yes, multiclassing. We've pretty much got the 3E system. These days spellcaster levels stack, cantrips scale by character level. The biggest problem remaining I see are different spellcasting classes using their own DC's. For gameplay simplification, should probably use the highest DC.
I do miss the greater simulationism of 3E, it had so many rule subsets. But you had to be a master to hold them all in your head, and some of the best adventures I ran I handwaved it to keep momentum moving. In this regard, 5E better suits how I actually play.
Back to BG3, a few of the 5E rules I wish they had implemented faithfully were:
- Haste/potions of speed
- Holding and changing weapons (though not as strict as Solasta)
