Why didn't we switch to 4e/5e?

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Originally Posted by JNAProductions

Okay. A level X PC is supposed to have a 50/50 chance of soloing a CR X monster, correct?

So let's take, say, a Greater Air Elemental (CR 9). Can you build a Fighter that has a reasonable chance of soloing this guy, without any magic items?

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Well, that's not exactly correct. The DMG just says that a CR 9 creature is supposed to be a "good challenge" for a group of 4 9th level characters. So, if "good challenge" is 100% chance of success for you, then a Fighter 9 should have a 25% chance of success, but if "good challenge" is less that 100% chance of success, then that chance of any single character succeeding is going to be lower as well.

The DMG doesn't really outline challenges for individual characters, but for parties.

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Originally Posted by JNAProductions

Okay. A level X PC is supposed to have a 50/50 chance of soloing a CR X monster, correct?

So let's take, say, a Greater Air Elemental (CR 9). Can you build a Fighter that has a reasonable chance of soloing this guy, without any magic items?

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The encounter would much depend on the circumstances (e.g. open areas make Air Elemental's mobility quite fearsome and it has the Whirlwind + reach advantage which makes it an annoying opponent particularly if its feats were picked reasonably. However, damage-wise you could just smack stuff together. Dragonborn [Races of the Dragon] Water Orc (Wings), 22 Str, 24 with level-ups, Power Attack, Shock Trooper [Complete Warrior], Leap Attack [Complete Adventurer], Headlong Rush [Races of Faerun], Battle Jump [Unapproachable East], Power Lunge [Ghostwalk], Mw. weapon and the numbers are 9 BAB, 7 Str, +1 weapon for +17. +19 on Charge, +1 higher ground. You could further ride a Pegasus or whatever, put your ranks in Handle Animal to train it for combat riding to give you more mobility and make it easier to deliver your damage. Even at -2 base, you'll have +10ish by level 9 which enables you to take 10 on the training. Note, you need Jump too so you need some Int.

You're privy to Dragonborn of Bahamut Diving Charge when you Dive from above if we use a Piercing weapon (ride your Pegasus/Whatever above the target and dive, also triggering Battle Jump - you have enough movement in a single action). We can take Law Devotion [Complete Champion] for +3 to ensure we hit on 4 or higher and higher ground bonuses let us hit on 3 or higher. Take e.g. EWP: Greatspear, damage on Charge is (2d6+14+27)*4 = 192 average, which kills a Greater Air Elemental in one hit on average. Now, this is using the weird Leap Attack math the errata causes; the probably intended math would lead you down to 36 Leap Attack damage being easily more than enough to kill. We're talking 8 feats here, so there's room for 1 more even without flaws.

1. Battle Jump
F. Power Attack
F. EWP: Greatspear
3. Law Devotion
F. Power Lunge
6. Headlong Rush
F. Shock Trooper
F. Leap Attack
9.

You could of course e.g. Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization or Aberration/Deformity feats for reach to avoid the attack of opportunity or play a natively Large race (add Half-Minotaur or Half-Ogre to the character for instance) or whatever to further improve on it, but damage is something Fighters are certainly quite competent at when sourcebook diving.

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Originally Posted by Darrin

Admittedly, I've only played about 4 sessions of 5E, and I suspect the DM is using the "Did you roll low/middle/high?" Task Resolution System (i.e., the "Eyeball" method) rather than actually using whatever DC might be in the book.

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Gods above, why have a skills system at all then?

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Originally Posted by AnimeTheCat

Well, that's not exactly correct. The DMG just says that a CR 9 creature is supposed to be a "good challenge" for a group of 4 9th level characters. So, if "good challenge" is 100% chance of success for you, then a Fighter 9 should have a 25% chance of success, but if "good challenge" is less that 100% chance of success, then that chance of any single character succeeding is going to be lower as well.

The DMG doesn't really outline challenges for individual characters, but for parties.

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This, and also - CR/APL includes WBL, so "go build a fighter without magic items" makes no sense.

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Originally Posted by Psyren

Gods above, why have a skills system at all then?

This, and also - CR/APL includes WBL, so "go build a fighter without magic items" makes no sense.

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It's been years since I played 5e, but what I remember the game seems to rather encourage tables to be a bit more liberal with their application of Freeform elements of RPGs.

Having a skill system still gives us the satisfaction of rolling dice and adding numbers, even if the DCs aren't as almighty and powerful as they once were.

The "go build a fighter without magic items" is a tricky concept. Yes, you are supposed to have approximately WBL to count as being at appropriate power level, but having Optimal magic items was never guaranteed, either. Without just outright using the Magic Item Creation rules (which the fighter needs a friendly caster to help with), you can have your entire WBL and then some, only to find yourself not all that much better off for it because the particular arrangement of items was sub-optimal.

I'd vastly prefer it if this thread doesn't develop into deeply-intrenched arguments over the 'edition war'. I just wanted to get other people's reasons why they prefer 3e/3.5e/PF over other systems, if indeed they did. All systems have strengths and weaknesses.

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Originally Posted by atemu1234

I'd vastly prefer it if this thread doesn't develop into deeply-intrenched arguments over the 'edition war'. I just wanted to get other people's reasons why they prefer 3e/3.5e/PF over other systems, if indeed they did. All systems have strengths and weaknesses.

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Ummm, the whole basis of "edition wars" is exactly people stating why they like editions over others.

Actually, I just realized something. Why write a long text if I can just do this:
In 3.5e/PF I can play this as a character:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjVY0a0rxXg
Combined with this as a setting/storyline:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39j5v8jlndM
And it will work mechanically and not seem implausible at any point, unless we dive into Tippyverse. 5e won't let me be Vergil, not even at level 20. And Bahamut doesn't work with bounded accuracy.

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Originally Posted by atemu1234

I'd vastly prefer it if this thread doesn't develop into deeply-intrenched arguments over the 'edition war'. I just wanted to get other people's reasons why they prefer 3e/3.5e/PF over other systems, if indeed they did. All systems have strengths and weaknesses.

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The informative part is looking at what people actually did with their game system and then checking what other systems "rubbed them the wrong way".

I didn't like 4e. But I've found that 5e is good for some kinds of games and 3.5 good for others. As an example, I'd much rather run Ravenloft in 5e and Planescape in 3.5 than the other way around. Pathfinder is my preference for Eberron, though.

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Originally Posted by Pleh

Having a skill system still gives us the satisfaction of rolling dice and adding numbers, even if the DCs aren't as almighty and powerful as they once were.

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The point of a skill system is to reduce randomness. If I'm good at something, I'm supposed to succeed more than I fail, though I might still be able to fail occasionally (depending on circumstance or luck.) If I've optimized to where I can succeed on a 6 or a 3, I've often paid for that specialization elsewhere in my build and should be allowed to.

By leaving it wholly up to chance (i.e. "did he roll low, medium or high?") his DM is invalidating the system entirely. When you're at the whim of the dice to that degree - particularly the even distribution of 1d20 - modifiers and thus character creation become meaningless.

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Originally Posted by Pleh

The "go build a fighter without magic items" is a tricky concept. Yes, you are supposed to have approximately WBL to count as being at appropriate power level, but having Optimal magic items was never guaranteed, either. Without just outright using the Magic Item Creation rules (which the fighter needs a friendly caster to help with), you can have your entire WBL and then some, only to find yourself not all that much better off for it because the particular arrangement of items was sub-optimal.

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Maybe "optimal" items are not, but there is definitely a minimum expectation, even by WotC/Paizo themselves. The Big Six are the most commonly cited baseline, and #6 on the list of why players pick them from that article is even labeled "Required to Play." If your GM is not going to guarantee even that much, they need to tone the encounters you'll face down severely, especially for martial characters.

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Originally Posted by Psyren

Gods above, why have a skills system at all then?

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It's a "roleplay heavy" group with mostly novice players, and everybody is having fun. The DM is good at keeping the story going and waving away the rules when they don't need to be there. So far it's not bothering me all that much. If I really need to know the DC for something I'm rolling, I can look it up and adjudicate it myself if need be.

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Originally Posted by Psyren

Gods above, why have a skills system at all then?

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That is a good question and I´d wager a lot of people can't give a clear answer to it.

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Originally Posted by Florian

That is a good question and I´d wager a lot of people can't give a clear answer to it.

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I answered it myself actually ("The point of a skill system is...") - my objection was more to the ones that let a flat distribution without modifiers decide success or failure.

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Originally Posted by Psyren

I answered it myself actually ("The point of a skill system is...") - my objection was more to the ones that let a flat distribution without modifiers decide success or failure.

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Yeah, doesn't this make investing in any skill modifiers effectively pointless?

I think this is one of my problems with 5e's design in general, DMs should be prepared to deal with PCs succeeding or failing, not handwaving their rolls so they fit whether or not their expectations of success or failure.

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Originally Posted by Zanos

Yeah, doesn't this make investing in any skill modifiers effectively pointless?

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Yup. This is probably the longest perennial debate on the 5E forums :smallbiggrin:

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Originally Posted by Zanos

Yeah, doesn't this make investing in any skill modifiers effectively pointless?

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I think I explained this badly. I believe the DM is eyeballing the situation, such as a Rogue making an Acrobatics roll or a Ranger making an Athletics roll, and based on what he knows about the characters (1st level Rogue with high Dex, 1st level Ranger with moderate Str), and for the purposes of expediency, is making a judgement on whether the PC needs to roll low, medium, or high to succeed. So decisions that the player has made (race, class, skills, expertise, etc.) are being accounted for, but in a very informal way. If what's at stake is very low, then the DM can tell at a glance if a low roll or high roll is something where he needs to come up with a complication or an unexpected deviation, or just declare a simple failure/success. If the rolls are for higher stakes, then the players tend to ask about specific modifiers or DCs before rolling, and then he can calculate a more specific DC.

However, it's largely anecdotal, and pertains only to my particular group. I'm not sure it's really worth arguing about as indicative of 5E.

for me, I played 4th edition, found it OK. played 5th, found it OK. had fun playing them, but felt no cumpulsion to switch over. made the jump from 3.5 to pathfinder though as I was already deeply entrenched in 3.5, and I liked the changes.

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Originally Posted by Grod_The_Giant

5e doesn't require magic items in the same way that 3e/4e does; that doesn't mean you're not expected to have them. The "starting equipment at higher levels" table in the DMG says that even low magic campaigns should have a few; if you follow the guidelines for treasure hordes, you wind up getting way more than that. And because they're not part of the expected level scaling, and there's not a baked-in assumption that you can just walk into a city and buy a bunch of magic items, they actually feel more cool and special. Finding even something as dull as a +2 sword is exciting because it'll mean you're ahead of the curve for the entire game. 5e does magic items right.

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Does it? Did it have items as cool as the Wand of Wonder, the Amulet of Caterpillar Control, or the Gem Bow? Have you seen GMs describe items created out of a shaft of sunlight, solidified hatred, or unicorn hair? Does it have rules for crafting your own items that involve collecting butterfly dreams?

Do the items have character, or are they merely math?

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Originally Posted by Grod_The_Giant

I do. 5e mechanics aren't as fun as 3.5 mechanics to theorycraft with, but I'd argue that (for the most part) they're superior to play with. They're much better at getting out of your way and letting you actually pretend to be an elf or whatever. Apart from skills not having fixed DCs (which, in all honesty, I suspect many GMs have never noticed), there's really not much more adjudication required than in previous editions.

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If I'm not mistaken, the thread of thought here wasn't about how fun the rules are, but, rather, how mechanically diverse different characters can be. Or, more accurately, how mechanically diverse different characters with the same "role" can be.

The assertion was, all strikers / tanks / bfc / whatever play the same in 5e, in a way that wasn't true of 3e characters with similar roles.

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Originally Posted by AnimeTheCat

I can agree amoung friends not to powergame, but I can't convince the DM that they need to make this laundry list of changes to a class, race, feat, skill, etc. to make my character concept viable. If I, as the player, can do it under my own power then it is done and unless the DM says "no" then I'm fine and within the rules.

I think what I like about 3.5e versus 5e is that there are so many rules, and while they don't all work in chorus they can serve as a pretty solid framework to tweak. 5e does leave a large amount up to the DM. For the DM, this can be great. For the player, this can really really suck.

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This. In 3e, I can make the character be whatever it needs to be to fit the party. This works so much better than relying on a GM to fix things.

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Originally Posted by Kurald Galain

That's just marketing talk, though.

3.0 does require magic items, in the sense that certain monsters can only be hit by a +X or better magical weapon. 3.5 and PF have removed this rule, and for good reason. Forum talk notwithstanding, this means that they can be played just fine with little or no magic items. 4E has explicit rules ("inherent bonuses") to run campaigns without magic items, and IME it even plays better that way.

In all these games, it must mathematically be true that EITHER the DM has to compensate encounter difficulty depending on the amount of magic items, OR those magic items just don't do a whole lot other than flavor. It is clearly true in 3E/4E that a DM can hand out more magic items and not compensate, and then the players will be ahead of the curve for the entire game. It also clearly true in 5E that a DM can hand out more magic items and compensate, and then the players will NOT be ahead of the curve. This is simple math, it has nothing to do with differences between the games.

"You can play without magical items!" may sound innovative until you realize that that's what pretty much every non-D&D RPG has done since the 1980s.

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I'm confused. In 2e and earlier, monsters had "immune to damage unless from a weapon of X or better". It was a very hard "you must be this tall".

In 3e, monsters straight out of the MM could have things like DR 50/+3. Still a clear case of "my first fighter" having no chance.

3.5 changed that. IIRC, DR caped out at around 15 pre epic.

So, before 3.5, clever strategies, heavy optimization, or the McGuffin +x was required to pass. Adding items was like handing out keys to locked doors.

After 3.5, even moderate optimization beyond "my first fighter" could allow a character to bypass DR.

I'm also confused by the text in the middle, which seems to read, "the GM has to maintain balance... unless he doesn't". What were you intending to get across?

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Originally Posted by Pex

In 5E the DC depends on who is DM that day. One DM says you just do it, no roll needed. Another DM says it's DC 10. A third DM says it's DC 15. A fourth DM says you can only try if you're proficient in Acrobatics, which would be officially against the rules since 5E does not distinguish between proficient/not proficient to do some task but is a common distinction added in by DMs.

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So, my character's history will be horribly inconsistent, as he travels from table to table? Yeah, no thanks.

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Originally Posted by Grod_The_Giant

Playable, yes. Easily playable, no-- you have to adjust every encounter for weaker-than-expected characters (unevenly weaker ones at that, given how screwed up balance is in the game), and you have to examine each monster you want to use to make sure that it's still going to be as difficult as originally intended-- does it have a lot of DR/magic? Are its defenses too high for unboosted attack rolls to get through? Is it incorporeal and thus immune to half the party?

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Or, you can just play the world as a CaW simulation, and put the burden on the players to choose what to engage and what to run from, instead of forcing the world to be "CR Appropriate".

Granted, it doesn't make for as fun of a game when either a) players don't know going in that certain classes are "hard mode"; or b) your concept determines whether you're playing easy mode or hard mode, rather than your conscious choice to do so.

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Originally Posted by Darrin

I think I explained this badly. I believe the DM is eyeballing the situation, such as a Rogue making an Acrobatics roll or a Ranger making an Athletics roll, and based on what he knows about the characters (1st level Rogue with high Dex, 1st level Ranger with moderate Str), and for the purposes of expediency, is making a judgement on whether the PC needs to roll low, medium, or high to succeed. So decisions that the player has made (race, class, skills, expertise, etc.) are being accounted for, but in a very informal way. If what's at stake is very low, then the DM can tell at a glance if a low roll or high roll is something where he needs to come up with a complication or an unexpected deviation, or just declare a simple failure/success. If the rolls are for higher stakes, then the players tend to ask about specific modifiers or DCs before rolling, and then he can calculate a more specific DC.

However, it's largely anecdotal, and pertains only to my particular group. I'm not sure it's really worth arguing about as indicative of 5E.

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It kind of is. Because the DC of everything is whatever the DM feels like, at some point a DM gets tired of having to think of a DC for every single instance a player wants to do something. It's easier to base success if the player rolled high or low. If it's in the middle the DM might factor in if the character is proficient or not or then bother to think on it. If he didn't want the thing to happen, the player had to roll high or else.

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Originally Posted by Quertus

Does it? Did it have items as cool as the Wand of Wonder,

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I don't actually like D&D 5E all that much personally, but I do have to defend it here.

Not only does it literally have the Wand of Wonder, with it being described on page 212-213 of the DMG and in fact also having an illustration...

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https://media-waterdeep.cursecdn.com...520399817.jpeg

... the magic item stuff is actually pretty solid and contains not only some really cool options but some pretty amazing illustrations, such the ring of spell storing being a ring that goes over two fingers and is made to look like a scroll;

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https://media-waterdeep.cursecdn.com...492570136.jpeg

Or the sun blade more or less being a lightsabre;

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http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-P8zkMVQmqe...62sunblade.jpg

Granted this is really just doing what the edition ought to have been doing to begin with when it comes to magic items, and continuing the traditions of previous editions.

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Originally Posted by Ignimortis

Note that the post you're quoting refers to 4e, which had a different problem (the DC scaled up to your level), but in 5e the DC stays the same. It's just that you're never good enough to accomplish a DC20 task without a chance of failure, unless you're a level 20 rogue or bard.

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Level 11 Rogue, thank you very much.

Personally, when I first took a look at 5th edition I thought it was a tremendous improvement from 4th and was actually pretty excited to make my first characters and start playing. However, the more I read the rules, the more I found I had issues with the rules and design of the game. Things like bounded accuracy, the gutting of the skill system, the lack of meaningful character creation options, bounded accuracy, the overly onerous concentration mechanics and bounded accuracy.

Overall, I simply decided that there wasn't any point in trying to bludgeon 5e into being the system I wanted when 3.5e already worked perfectly fine.

Also, in case I haven't made myself clear I absolutely hate bounded accuracy on a level that is difficult to properly express without violating forum rules on profanity. It is a rancid pile of noxiousness that was born out of laziness on the part of the designers and module writers and which robs me of an element of the game from which I derive a large part of my enjoyment of the game.

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Originally Posted by Darrin

3E finally had a formal skill system with skill points, but could quickly get extremely wonky if you weren't paying attention to it. You get some very bizarre results, like 20th-level rogues who can't find/disarm traps, or a 4th level commoner riding around a battletitan dinosaur. Among other things, the 3E skill system has scaling issues... can +0 through +23 really cover all the possibilities between mundane tasks and legendary superheroes? To use the "hot mess/hot rod" analogy... if you weren't paying attention to it, it could be unexpectedly vindictive and viciously punitive, but if you *really* knew how to push the right buttons, you could use it to rob a bank with a paperclip.

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Often both phenomena occur on the same character sheet, since the system rewards specialization. Most characters put max ranks into the skills they most want/need and nothing into any other skills (with some exceptions). So you end up with a character whose Spot is so high they can count someone's nose hairs at 50 paces, but whose Sense Motive is so bad they can't tell that the pickpocket they caught was lying when they claim to be the king in disguise.

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Pathfinder tried to split the "have it/eat it" cake between a skill-point system and a class-assigned skill list... and except for a few wrinkles, evened out a lot of the wonkiness from 3E. Classes were innately "good" at certain things, but there was enough optimization options that you still had enough room to differentiate between casual experts and legendary specialists.

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I think my ideal skill system would be something like Star Wars Saga with a few more fiddly bits, and the ability to pick up new skills at higher levels without having to increase your Int modifier. Does Pathfinder come anything close to this?

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Originally Posted by Calthropstu

Same reasons for me. If i buy a book, I am using the book. I am not going online to look up how every one of my abilities should be used. I'm not getting nerfs. I paid for a book, not an rpg update system. Paizo, for the most part, seems to understand that. Most of its errata are odd case scenarios, clarifications on oversight or flushing out things they missed.

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WotC do love their errata for the sake of errata. Always have, going back to the days before they even bought TSR.

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Originally Posted by Ratter

and all you need for a dnd 5e race is 2 stat increases, an ability you make up, and whether or not they have darkvision, they are both very easy to use.

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And that's half the problem for me: that's downright bland.

Ultimately, 3.5 treats classes as tools, 5E treats classes as concepts.

And the whole bounded accuracy thing that's been debated over and over already.

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Originally Posted by Calthropstu

Same reasons for me. If i buy a book, I am using the book. I am not going online to look up how every one of my abilities should be used. I'm not getting nerfs. I paid for a book, not an rpg update system. Paizo, for the most part, seems to understand that. Most of its errata are odd case scenarios, clarifications on oversight or flushing out things they missed.

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How recent is this revelation?

The last time I bothered to look at Pathfinder the rules were in a near constant state of flux, with Jason going in and rewriting stuff all the time-- often without announcement or blog messages to notify players.

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Originally Posted by Psyren

The point of a skill system is to reduce randomness. If I'm good at something, I'm supposed to succeed more than I fail, though I might still be able to fail occasionally (depending on circumstance or luck.) If I've optimized to where I can succeed on a 6 or a 3, I've often paid for that specialization elsewhere in my build and should be allowed to.

By leaving it wholly up to chance (i.e. "did he roll low, medium or high?") his DM is invalidating the system entirely. When you're at the whim of the dice to that degree - particularly the even distribution of 1d20 - modifiers and thus character creation become meaningless.

.

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Worse than being at the whim of the dice, is being at the whim of the DM. There's no excuse for failing at something on one check, then succeeding at a check of that same thing later, in similar circumstances, on the same d20 roll.

As for getting good at something, the 5e system of 'you can always fail' is horrible with most skills. If I do something every day, for months or years on end, then OF COURSE I'm going to get so good at it that I fail less than 5% of the time (i.e. rolling a 1). So why shouldn't my character be able to get so good at something that the only possible way to fail at the task is a crit-fail on my roll?

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Originally Posted by Darrin

I believe the DM is eyeballing the situation, such as a Rogue making an Acrobatics roll or a Ranger making an Athletics roll, and based on what he knows about the characters (1st level Rogue with high Dex, 1st level Ranger with moderate Str), and for the purposes of expediency, is making a judgement on whether the PC needs to roll low, medium, or high to succeed. So decisions that the player has made (race, class, skills, expertise, etc.) are being accounted for, but in a very informal way.

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I guess I don't believe the DM should be able to just 'make a judgment.' I need consistency, not informality, in the ACTUAL MECHANICS of the game. If the DM wants me to fail, or have a higher chance of failure, then they need to be able to explain why this skill check has a higher DC than the last time I skill checked for this very same thing.

For me, the appeal of 3/3.5/P is the way it simultaneously constrains and enables world-building for me as a DM. I tried so hard to like 4E, I really did, but the out of combat rules support was just too minimal. There weren't enough ways for my players to manipulate the setting I created other than negotiating with me. With 3rd's design theory, it worldbuilding feels like playing with legos. With most other systems I've played, including 4e, it's more akin to painting a picture. The legos are 3d. Once I build my castle or whatever, my friends can play in it, they can take pieces off and move them, or add stuff. The legos are a toy, and they're much more fun to play with than a finished drawing.

The other piece is just sunk cost. I've put a lot of time and effort into my setting and my homebrew, and they're heavily linked to the assumptions of low-level 3.P. I haven't played 5e, but I suspect that if and when I do it will be fun enough but I'll mostly just be looking for interesting bits to loot and carry home to my set of 3.P houserules.

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Originally Posted by Darrin

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3E finally had a formal skill system with skill points, but could quickly get extremely wonky if you weren't paying attention to it. You get some very bizarre results, like 20th-level rogues who can't find/disarm traps, or a 4th level commoner riding around a battletitan dinosaur. Among other things, the 3E skill system has scaling issues... can +0 through +23 really cover all the possibilities between mundane tasks and legendary superheroes? To use the "hot mess/hot rod" analogy... if you weren't paying attention to it, it could be unexpectedly vindictive and viciously punitive, but if you *really* knew how to push the right buttons, you could use it to rob a bank with a paperclip.

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See, here's the rub. The bolded part? That's a feature, not a bug.

Who says rogues have to be able to find and disarm traps? Why can't a rogue be an assassin or a social butterfly? Or both, but learn the need to learn how to disarm traps also?

Ever if the game lets me pick an archetype, I'm then locked with that progression and those abilities. What if I want to dabble a bit? My character progression, while often mostly planned out, does have it's odd "I learned Neutralise Poison" moments, I want for the adventure to be able to affect my character's growth.

So maybe the sneaky, trap disarming rogue let his one true friend die, because he just couldn't cut it when fighting. Or he tried talking their way out of a pickle and just dug himself deeper.

Ultimately, 5E tries to dictate the characters through its bounded progression, and that just kills it for me.

The fact the archetypes are fairly stereotypical and don't mix well doesn't help any.

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Originally Posted by Ratter

and all you need for a dnd 5e race is 2 stat increases, an ability you make up, and whether or not they have darkvision, they are both very easy to use.

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And you see no problem with this? That's extremely bland compared to something like playing a Mindflayer in D&D 3.5.

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Originally Posted by Quertus

So, before 3.5, clever strategies, heavy optimization, or the McGuffin +x was required to pass. Adding items was like handing out keys to locked doors.

After 3.5, even moderate optimization beyond "my first fighter" could allow a character to bypass DR.

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Precisely my point. 3.0 and earlier editions literally require magical items. 3.5/PF/4E do not. So the idea that 5E is innovative because it doesn't require magical items is clearly marketing hype.

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I'm also confused by the text in the middle, which seems to read, "the GM has to maintain balance... unless he doesn't". What were you intending to get across?

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I was pointing out the contradiction that (according to some people) if in 3E the characters end up with more magical items than normal, that's a balance issue that the DM needs to compensate for; whereas if in 5E the characters end up with more magical items, that's great because they'll be "ahead of the curve" for the entire campaign.