Lesser of Two Evils: Pathfinder or 5e?

[Blicero]

Fuck off, silva.

1) relative positioning and defenses is not in fact simpler than squares. Not even a little bit, I mean, if you have a true board and turn based, you basically just made the game exactly the same except with vectors that aren't 90 degrees, so that is more complex, if you don't have turn based, you have 2es shitty way more complicated simultaneous acting, which is also more complicated.

If you don't think that, in practice, Theatre of the Mind positioning usually ends up being simpler than count-the-squares battlegrid positioning, then I don't know what to say. You can come up with specific counterexamples involving large numbers of dudes and really complicated battlefields or whatever. But those don't really happen with D&D-sized skirmishes all that often. If you actually require a character to keep track of their displacement vector for every other dude in the battle, then yeah, Theatre of the Mind is more complicated. But I claim that such an implementation almost never happens, precisely because it would be so infeasible.

(Obviously this pruning of complexity puts much more of the onus of deciding positions on the MC, which necessarily makes it more unfair. But it's still simpler.)

2) "most values are static" might be a vague sort of description of a simplicity, in which apparently buffs and debuffs don't exist. But I highly fucking doubt it, since 13th Age was modelled after 4e, and 4e was literally a game about fiddly +1s and nothing else, so I concede that this could possibly describe such a thing, but more likely describes actually just 4e.

3) "has multiple attack modes and d20 decides what attack modes are used" is the furthest thing I could possibly imagine from simplicity.

I think what ruemere might have meant with "most values are static" is that, in 13th Age, all enemies have fixed damage values. That is simpler than 4E, straight up. But it's not super clear from their statement, which ties back into the fact that ruemere wrote a shitty "sell me on 13th Age" pitch.

As far as I know from 4E, characters monsters often have a choice of abilities to use, that might be on a recharge or whatever. 13th Age does the Winds of Fate thing where entities have multiple abilities, but the choice of whether to use those abilities is restricted by the result of your attack roll. So your fighter has "Basic Attack" and "Lunging Attack", but they can only use "Lunging Attack" if their d20 attack roll is an even number or whatever. Which is also simpler than 4E.

[Kaelik]

Sorry Kaelik. Saying your little finger is bigger than your dick won't make it true.

(except if your dick is really that small, that is )

Which one of those do you think is simpler.

[Kaelik]

If you don't think that, in practice, Theatre of the Mind positioning usually ends up being simpler than count-the-squares battlegrid positioning, then I don't know what to say. You can come up with specific counterexamples involving large numbers of dudes and really complicated battlefields or whatever. But those don't really happen with D&D-sized skirmishes all that often. If you actually require a character to keep track of their displacement vector for every other dude in the battle, then yeah, Theatre of the Mind is more complicated. But I claim that such an implementation almost never happens, precisely because it would be so infeasible.

(Obviously this pruning of complexity puts much more of the onus of deciding positions on the MC, which necessarily makes it more unfair. But it's still simpler.)

To the extent that your argument is "this rule is so godawfully complex that no one has ever used it, and instead they just make shit up on the spot, therefore this is simpler" you are just wrong.

The point is if you use a board, it is trivially easy to keep track of your relative position to everything, even if you don't use grids, because boards exist as static objects and no part of the rules prohibit you from using one. But that would be more complex because calculating distances is going to take longer and give you infinitely more possible spots.

To the extent people choose to not actually use the rules and just imagine distances and forget the ones that are inconvenient, they are not following any rules.

I think what ruemere might have meant with "most values are static" is that, in 13th Age, all enemies have fixed damage values. That is simpler than 4E, straight up. But it's not super clear from their statement, which ties back into the fact that ruemere wrote a shitty "sell me on 13th Age" pitch.

Sure I guess that counts.

As far as I know from 4E, characters monsters often have a choice of abilities to use, that might be on a recharge or whatever. 13th Age does the Winds of Fate thing where entities have multiple abilities, but the choice of whether to use those abilities is restricted by the result of your attack roll. So your fighter has "Basic Attack" and "Lunging Attack", but they can only use "Lunging Attack" if their d20 attack roll is an even number or whatever. Which is also simpler than 4E.

Uh... So they have twice as many abilities but use them randomly and this is simpler than... Fuck if I know. I mean that, I really have no idea how you would compare the simplicity of that system to any other system.

[Blicero]

To the extent that your argument is "this rule is so godawfully complex that no one has ever used it, and instead they just make shit up on the spot, therefore this is simpler" you are just wrong.

The point is if you use a board, it is trivially easy to keep track of your relative position to everything, even if you don't use grids, because boards exist as static objects and no part of the rules prohibit you from using one. But that would be more complex because calculating distances is going to take longer and give you infinitely more possible spots.

To the extent people choose to not actually use the rules and just imagine distances and forget the ones that are inconvenient, they are not following any rules.

MC fiat positioning is a simple system. It is a shitty, unfair system. These statements do not conflict with each other.

If we want to do the thing where we ignore what ruemere said and actually look at the 13th Age book, we can see that the writers recommend using maps and minis but ignoring grids, and abstracting distances to "engaged", "blocking", "not engaged", and that sort of thing. "Maps but no grids" is simpler than "maps with grids" and it is less MC fiat-y than "total theatre of the mind". All this established, it's reasonable that you based your objection off of "what ruemere said" instead of "what ruemere said and what the book says".

Uh... So they have twice as many abilities but use them randomly and this is simpler than... Fuck if I know. I mean that, I really have no idea how you would compare the simplicity of that system to any other system.

Okay, let's look at two lizard dude brutes, one from the 13th Age Book and one from the Monster Vault. The Monster Vault guy ("Poisonscale brawler") can choose between clubbing a dude and trying to grab that dude and then crushing him. The 13th Age guy ("Lizard Man Savage") can club a man. If he rolls at least a 16, he can also bite the man and do a special move against him next turn. So the 13th age guy has a simpler attack routine, because the decision of whether or not to do a special move is determined by the attack roll.

[silva]

I can't believe you're still arguing with Kaelik on such an obvious point.

[MGuy]

@Blicero: I'm really not sure how you think maps w/o grids is simpler than maps w/ grids. In what way is that somehow simpler? In what way does adding the grid make things more complex? It seems like things get less complex when things have discreet units rather than unknowable distance between points. Like I can't even imagine how the ability to tell how far things are with more accuracy complicates something. At worst it doesn't change anything.

[Blicero]

@Blicero: I'm really not sure how you think maps w/o grids is simpler than maps w/ grids. In what way is that somehow simpler? In what way does adding the grid make things more complex?

In the case of 13th Age, because distance between people and things is abstracted from discrete five-feet intervals to being "engaged" with someone or "not engaged" with them. If a battle is taking place, it's assumed that any given character can reach any other given character with a single move action, unless you tell the MC that you're moving far away from everything else. There's a limited zone of control system built in, because you can tell the MC that you're in front of your party's squishies. In this case, if enemies try to engage those squishies, you can engage them first and stop their movement or make it harder.

Adding a grid makes things more complex because you can now have things like five-foot steps, quantifiable reach, funky-shaped effect templates, distances other than "far away" and "nearish", and so on.

[Kaelik]

MC fiat positioning is a simple system. It is a shitty, unfair system. These statements do not conflict with each other.

Okay, but that wasn't what was advocated. I agree that if you said "13th age is simpler than 4e because it says 'fuck you PCs, you and all your enemies are where the MC says they are'" that would be a simpler system (well fuck, maybe I don't agree, that seems way more complex for the MC). But that isn't what the book says and that isn't what rue said.

If we want to do the thing where we ignore what ruemere said and actually look at the 13th Age book, we can see that the writers recommend using maps and minis but ignoring grids, and abstracting distances to "engaged", "blocking", "not engaged", and that sort of thing.

If you actually do completely ignore positions and only use 3 tags, that would actually be simpler than actual positioning. But at this point I suspect we are well into option Schroedinger Rules where the book says 4 different contradictory things that may or may not be used together, and doesn't tell you what to actually do in any situations, because it is shit.

"Maps but no grids" is simpler than "maps with grids" and it is less MC fiat-y than "total theatre of the mind". All this established, it's reasonable that you based your objection off of "what ruemere said" instead of "what ruemere said and what the book says".

This part is just actually wrong as shit though. Maps without grids are more complex than maps with grids. That is probably one of the few areas where I am sure I can define complexity and simplicity such that there is definitely one correct answer.

Okay, let's look at two lizard dude brutes, one from the 13th Age Book and one from the Monster Vault. The Monster Vault guy ("Poisonscale brawler") can choose between clubbing a dude and trying to grab that dude and then crushing him. The 13th Age guy ("Lizard Man Savage") can club a man. If he rolls at least a 16, he can also bite the man and do a special move against him next turn. So the 13th age guy has a simpler attack routine, because the decision of whether or not to do a special move is determined by the attack roll.

My point is that I am having an definitional war with myself about whether or not something like that is actually more or less complex. Saying "It does X or Y depending on what the MC feels like" or "It does X or Y depending on what the dice roll" are not obviously more or less complex than each other. Saying "It does X on the first round, then Y on all future rounds" is not clearly more or less complex than "it does X on 20% of all rolls, but every time it does X it hits, otherwise it does Y and is much less likely to hit."

[Blicero]

This part is just actually wrong as shit though. Maps without grids are more complex than maps with grids. That is probably one of the few areas where I am sure I can define complexity and simplicity such that there is definitely one correct answer.

Okay, that was imprecise language use on my part. I do agree that "maps without grids" is a more complex positioning system than "maps with grids" is. Based on my previous statement, I meant for "maps without grids" to also include the engaged/unengaged/far away thing. My error.

My point is that I am having an definitional war with myself about whether or not something like that is actually more or less complex. Saying "It does X or Y depending on what the MC feels like" or "It does X or Y depending on what the dice roll" are not obviously more or less complex than each other. Saying "It does X on the first round, then Y on all future rounds" is not clearly more or less complex than "it does X on 20% of all rolls, but every time it does X it hits, otherwise it does Y and is much less likely to hit."

In your first case, the second option involves no decisions, and the first option involves one decision. That suggests to me that an intuitively appealing definition of complex should label the first option as being more complex than the second. But I am not super well-versed in formal complexity theory, so perhaps there is a better word for what your first option is more of compared to your second option.

edited to clarify a statement

[Kaelik]

In your first case, the second option involves no decisions, and the first option involves one decision. That suggests to me that an intuitively appealing definition of complex should label the first option as being more complex than the second. But I am not super well-versed in formal complexity theory, so perhaps there is a better word for what your first option is more of compared to your second option.

On the other hand, neither option requires any decisions on the part of the PCs. But mind theater requires like 500 decisions on the part of MC and you think that is simple. See what I mean.

[ruemere]

@ruemere: Speaking as someone who is at least mildly sympathetic to 13th Age, that was a super shit attempt to sell anyone on the system.

Nah, I am not selling the system (note the disclaimer at the end). Just trying to provide some information.
If someone makes a big deal out of my little description, well, they should either work on their reading comprehension or look for something else to do with their life.



Regards,
Ruemere

[ruemere]

There are zero elements in that description that are more simple than 4e.

That's not necessarily true. I would say these

- the game uses relative distances and positioning instead of squares, feet and mat.
- most values used by opponents are static, the opponents have several attack modes. D20 attack roll decides whether an attack is a hit and what attack mode is used.

indicate that some aspects of 13th Age are simpler than 4E.

Nope... I tried to concede one of those points, but I couldn't find even one.

1) relative positioning and defenses is not in fact simpler than squares. Not even a little bit, I mean, if you have a true board and turn based, you basically just made the game exactly the same except with vectors that aren't 90 degrees, so that is more complex, if you don't have turn based, you have 2es shitty way more complicated simultaneous acting, which is also more complicated.

2) "most values are static" might be a vague sort of description of a simplicity, in which apparently buffs and debuffs don't exist. But I highly fucking doubt it, since 13th Age was modelled after 4e, and 4e was literally a game about fiddly +1s and nothing else, so I concede that this could possibly describe such a thing, but more likely describes actually just 4e.

3) "has multiple attack modes and d20 decides what attack modes are used" is the furthest thing I could possibly imagine from simplicity.

Regarding #1:
That's because you do not think in three dimensions. Or consider groups.
A group attacked a Barbarian (he is Engaged by a group). On his turn, he uses his class feature to attack them all (Whirlwind attack). All creatures in a group perish (admittedly, the attackers were low level). The mooks can go down even faster.

It is faster, you just need to remember who is Near who, who is Engaged by who, and who is Far away. That's just three categories.
Engaged - you are in melee. Roll Disengage if you need to move without risking attack of opportunity.
Near - these are opponents you can reach in one move and attack.
Far - these are opponents that you can reach after you devote full round to move. You won't be able to attack on your turn.
Of course, there are exceptions.

If you need props, use tokens. Tokens that touch are engaged. Tokens that are close, are Near, and tokens that are further are Far away. The token can represent single creatures, or can represent groups. You can also draw circles on blank paper if you need everyone to understand.
Note: my group includes two adults, one 11 year old, one 13 year old. Neither adults nor youngsters have any trouble with this system.

Either way, it works faster.

Regarding #2:
Look at monster examples links. You roll d20 once, you do not roll damage. You save at least 50% of your time on each successful monster attack.

Regarding #3:
Since you carefully hinted that you do not like to follow links to further materials, here is a hands-on example of two attacks.
The first one is a complicated example, the other a simple one. Both for fairly advanced creatures (Champion tier).

Medium white dragon attacks (one of the most complicated attack routines in SRD):
----
Claws and bite +6 vs. AC (2 attacks); 4 damage
- Natural 16+: The white dragon can make an ice breath attack as a free action.
[Special trigger] C: Ice breath +6 vs. PD (1d3 nearby enemies); 4 cold damage
- Natural odd hit or miss: The dragon takes 1d4 damage.
----
Instructions (based on the statblock above):
1. Roll d20 twice, and resolve Claws and bite twice.
2. For any roll (Claws and bite) that turns to be 16+, execute Ice breath attack.
3. For any roll (Ice breath) that turns odd hit or miss, the dragon takes 1d4 damage.

For comparison, much simpler Hill Giant:
----
Massive gnarly club +10 vs. AC; 45 damage
- Miss that's a natural 6+: Half damage (sometimes close is good enough).
Ranged: Two-handed boulder throw +8 vs. PD; 35 damage
----
Two different attack modes (use either).
The first one just does damage, with surprise on a miss (in other words, meleeing giant is going to hurt, always).
The second one is Ye Olde Rock Throw with no nasty surprises.

It does not get any harder then this... well, maybe some unique monsters are harder but not by much.

Regards,
Ruemere

[Username17]

It is faster, you just need to remember who is Near who, who is Engaged by who, and who is Far away. That's just three categories.

If you need props, use tokens. Tokens that touch are engaged. Tokens that are close, are Near, and tokens that are further are Far away. The token can represent single creatures, or can represent groups. You can also draw circles on blank paper if you need everyone to understand.

Either way, it works faster.

Faster than what? Because what you're describing is really obviously not faster than having squares on a battle mat. If there are four PCs, then keeping track of which monsters are engaged, near, or far to each PC is 4 pieces of information per monster. While tracking their location in a grid is always at most an X, Y, and Z.

A group attacked a Barbarian (he is Engaged by a group). On his turn, he uses his class feature to attack them all (Whirlwind attack). All creatures in a group perish (admittedly, the attackers were low level).

Whirlwind Attack exists in 3rd edition and 4th edition and does exactly that. The interesting part is how much information you have to track for each monster to determine if they are affected by it. And as long as there are more than 3 PCs, the amount of information is less and obviously less on a grid than it is in your word-based positioning system.

You are describing something that is demonstrably more complicated than the system 4e uses. I don't even like 4e and you aren't making this game sound better. Narrative positioning is different than grid based positioning, and you could try to sell it in different ways. It translates better into play-by-post and other text based mediums, it requires less physical table space and can be played in restaurants. But it's not less complicated. You're really bad at selling this game.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

ruamere, if you are going to address someone's points, it would behoove you to read the rest of the thread to see if that conversation has advanced. When you can explain to me why each of your three responses was a waste of everyone's time, I will bother listening to anything you have to say.

[ruemere]

It is faster, you just need to remember who is Near who, who is Engaged by who, and who is Far away. That's just three categories.

If you need props, use tokens. Tokens that touch are engaged. Tokens that are close, are Near, and tokens that are further are Far away. The token can represent single creatures, or can represent groups. You can also draw circles on blank paper if you need everyone to understand.

Either way, it works faster.

Faster than what? Because what you're describing is really obviously not faster than having squares on a battle mat. If there are four PCs, then keeping track of which monsters are engaged, near, or far to each PC is 4 pieces of information per monster. While tracking their location in a grid is always at most an X, Y, and Z.

If you think like a hammer, all problems... etc.

Unless the encounter is very complicated for some reasons, you are likely to have two groups that are near each other. Then you start going in the initiative order. If a monster attempts to attack a squishy character, another unengaged character may intercept.
That neatly sets up who is engaged by whom smoothly and as a part of everyone's action.

Every player remembers who attacked them (or whom they attacked) last round. If they don't - use tokens, or make a check on a blank sheet.

Full rules are here: http://www.13thagesrd.com/combat-rules

In short, it's an abstract that works really fast. But you can use a mat - it's d20 after all, so you can always fall back on full d20 rules.

Personally, I usually use the abstract fights (in corridors, or against uniform groups of opponents, there is no contest). I add elements of positioning if the number of different opponents makes the players ask me where they are. But that's only for larger and more complicated encounters (like a village attacked by three waves of differently organized undead, from three different directions - 40 skeleton warriors, 10 skeleton hounds, 1 necrid rider, 50 zombies, 10 giant drowns, and finally 4 necrid riders; the defenders numbered players 10 White Mantle scouts, 10 White Mantle knights and 1 White Mantle justiciar).

A group attacked a Barbarian (he is Engaged by a group). On his turn, he uses his class feature to attack them all (Whirlwind attack). All creatures in a group perish (admittedly, the attackers were low level).

Whirlwind Attack exists in 3rd edition and 4th edition and does exactly that. The interesting part is how much information you have to track for each monster to determine if they are affected by it. And as long as there are more than 3 PCs, the amount of information is less and obviously less on a grid than it is in your word-based positioning system.

If a group engaged the Barbarian, that's all there is to it. They are engaged, they are eligible targets.
There are two entities, one of which translates to a number of creatures.

Granted, the system makes it really easy to get downed if you are (a) low AC character like barbarian and (b) you allowed a group to strike first. Therefore, a barbarian who allows their opponents to strike first, is usually a short-lived barbarian.

This is the system where move and reach are secondary concerns. If something is near, you are allowed to say I move and attack. There are exceptions, but that's up to GM to remember that.

You are describing something that is demonstrably more complicated than the system 4e uses. I don't even like 4e and you aren't making this game sound better. Narrative positioning is different than grid based positioning, and you could try to sell it in different ways. It translates better into play-by-post and other text based mediums, it requires less physical table space and can be played in restaurants. But it's not less complicated. You're really bad at selling this game.

-Username17

At best, you can accuse me of using my time to explain stuff to people who are too bothered to check up provided links, and whose experience does not include playing the game.

As for whether it's complicated. As I said, two kids, newcomers to RPGs, found it easy to handle. If you're considering the system to be more complicated than a mat-based wargame, it's OK. Having read some of your books, you're well-read, but also really entrenched in you views, so I know better than to argue.

Have a beer, consider having a look (http://www.13thagesrd.com/combat-rules).

Regards,
Ruemere

[ruemere]

ruamere, if you are going to address someone's points, it would behoove you to read the rest of the thread to see if that conversation has advanced. When you can explain to me why each of your three responses was a waste of everyone's time, I will bother listening to anything you have to say.

I refuse to participate in a who-makes-more-responses-first competitions (aka pissing contests).
Consider yourself a winner by default.

Note: I will reply however if you have any questions directed to me.

Regards,
Ruemere

[Username17]

Unless the encounter is very complicated for some reasons, you are likely to have two groups that are near each other. Then you start going in the initiative order. If a monster attempts to attack a squishy character, another unengaged character may intercept.
That neatly sets up who is engaged by whom smoothly and as a part of everyone's action.

Goddammit. You are describing something that is objectively more complex than having squares.

You could claim it's a good thing. You could claim that the ability to use it in play by post is worth the complexity. You could argue on its behalf in all kinds of ways. But the thing you're doing right now is to continue put your foot in your mouth over and over by claiming that something is true when it is demonstrably false.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

I refuse to participate in a who-makes-more-responses-first competitions (aka pissing contests).

You are a fucking idiot. Nothing about insisting you know the current state of the conversation is a pissing contest.

Like, it is trivially obvious that if you were having a conversation with someone about literally anything, you would want to know what they said that day, not five years ago. Knowing the current state of a conversation is a prerequisite to having anything worthwhile to say.

[John Magnum]

What if instead of tagging each pair of tokens with Adjacent, Near, Far, you had some graph of zones? Each player is in some zone, there's some adjacency relationship, and the relationships you care about are "in the same zone", "in two adjacent zones", and "in two non-adjacent zones". Each token has one item of information stored, and determining two people's relative distance is a pretty quick lookup function.

Maybe the problem is coming up with a graph that's actually informative and models terrain interestingly. But it at least doesn't seem to have a super high information burden relative to specifying X Y Z for each participant.

[Username17]

What if instead of tagging each pair of tokens with Adjacent, Near, Far, you had some graph of zones? Each player is in some zone, there's some adjacency relationship, and the relationships you care about are "in the same zone", "in two adjacent zones", and "in two non-adjacent zones". Each token has one item of information stored, and determining two people's relative distance is a pretty quick lookup function.

Maybe the problem is coming up with a graph that's actually informative and models terrain interestingly. But it at least doesn't seem to have a super high information burden relative to specifying X Y Z for each participant.

Now you're talking about really big squares. So you have like 4 squares (or "zones" if you prefer) in the battle and everyone in a square is able to use "melee" powers on everyone else. That's the kind of thing that can be used in text mediums and also is much simpler than using smaller squares. It has its own problems of course, but being more complicated than 4e D&D's positioning system is not one of them.

But that's not what 13th Age uses and not the system that ruemere is attempting to convince us is simpler than using small squares. He keeps trying to convince us that a topology map with a node for every player and a node for every monster or group of monsters is somehow less complicated than 4e's positioning system even though it obviously is not.

-Username17

[John Magnum]

Right. I was suggesting this as an alternative to ruemere's and 13A's systems, not a clarification or restatement, and looking for quick reactions to it. Thanks, Frank.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

I played and ran several games of 13th Age, and didn't find it faster than 4e, because it has the same crappy core mechanic: you roll a d20, but you can never get to the point where all results on a d20 are a success.

So you stand around and whiff at some monsters who are nothing but a pile of numbers, until the PCs are the only ones left standing, because PCs have healing surges and monsters don't.

As far as positioning goes, it was moot anyway, because I played a Cleric, who's healing effectively granted other PCs extra actions, while also being able to deal damage on the same turn. So practically speaking, we knew exactly where the monsters were in every fight: being kited by me, in a circle.

[Hiram McDaniels]

Interesting. That's probably the most positive thing I've seen on here about 5E. And the example is good for me because most of my D&D experience is from 2E and before. I admit I'm still catching up on the developments in TTRPG's over the past few years. I like how prevalent discussions on the problem with Linear Warriors and Quadratic Wizards have become. That stuff already was known back in the 2E days of both D&D and Shadowrun. Just not a lot of crunchy solutions.

The martial vs. caster disparity is still very much present in 5E, though the concentration rules rein magic-users in somewhat. It's definitely a low-powered game compared to 2/3E, for good or ill.

If you and your group are coolies with lite crunch games held together by DM fiat (I am), then sure give 5E a shot. Give 3.x/Pathfinder a shot too. You can pretty easily sample both games for free, and that way you can see what works best for you at the table.

[norms29]

I have one session of 5e under my belt, and everyone was drunk. but that wasn't a huge impediment because 5e seems to be trying really hard to be babby's first RPG; skills, attack bonus, a bunch of racial abilities are all based on "proficiency bonus" based on character level, either you get the bonus or you don't, you might get double the bonus on one or two things in your mainshtick (and you can't just stack multiple sources of single bonus)

Character customization has the shit kicked out of it compared to third. you've picked all the skills you'll ever have at character creation and feats are now "optional". incidentally there's no longer a "skills" chapter. now it's call "ability checks" because apparently the skills are just a minor adjunct to that

The martial vs. caster disparity is still very much present in 5E, though the concentration rules rein magic-users in somewhat.

what about the spell preparation limits, are they not as major as they look?

because I found it kind of alarming

[norms29]

I have one session of 5e under my belt, and everyone was drunk. but that wasn't a huge impediment because 5e seems to be trying really hard to be babby's first RPG; skills, attack bonus, a bunch of racial abilities are all based on "proficiency bonus" based on character level, either you get the bonus or you don't, you might get double the bonus on one or two things in your mainshtick (and you can't just stack multiple sources of single bonus)

Character customization has the shit kicked out of it compared to third. you've picked all the skills you'll ever have at character creation and feats are now "optional". incidentally there's no longer a "skills" chapter. now it's call "ability checks" because apparently the skills are just a minor adjunct to that

The martial vs. caster disparity is still very much present in 5E, though the concentration rules rein magic-users in somewhat.

what about the spell preparation limits, are they not as major as they look?

because I found it kind of alarming