D&D 5th Edition XIII: An Inherently Unfinished Product

[PairO'Dice Lost]

See, I've done grappling builds and they somehow manage to be different than how you described. Mainly, I did not know you got to deal unarmed damage on a successful grapple. Also, one of my favourites revolved around a set of rules you didn't mention: Moving an enemy during grapple. Grabbing an enemy, pinning them, and dragging them around a rogue with combat reflexes.

So, in a nutshell, we both didn't know parts of grapple rules

Au contraire. "5) While grappling or pinned, you can use a non-scroll magic item or cast a non-somatic spell, move the grapple with a grapple check as a standard action (enemy gets +4), or retrieve a spell component as a full-round action." As with my modified fireball example earlier, I took the SRD entry and compressed everything, so it's all there.

Eh? It's nowhere near as complicated as the 4e grab. Nowhere close. Are you reading the same rules I am?

The 3e description has more fiddly details, but the general structure is the same. To grapple, make a touch attack (stopped by AoO) and then grapple check against a creature of [your size + 1] as an attack action; if you win, you're both immobilized, you can attack the grappled creature or use a spell, you need to make grapple checks to move on your turn, you don't provoke AoOs from each other but you do from anyone else, the grappled creature can make an Escape Artist check to escape on its turn, and the grapple ends if you release it or are unable to continue the grapple.

To grab, make a Str vs. Ref check against a creature of [your size + 1] as a standard action; if you win, you're both immobilized, you can attack the grappled creature or use a power, you need to make Str vs. Fort checks to move on your turn, you don't provoke AoOs from each other but you do from anyone else, the grabbed creature can make an Athletics/Acrobatics check to escape on its turn, and the grab ends if you release it or are unable to continue the grapple.

The differences are (A) grapple requires a touch attack first, but you also deal unarmed damage so it's more like adding a free attack (like if grab also let you make a free melee basic attack) than requiring an extra roll, and (B) grapple is maintained as an attack action while grab is maintained as a minor action, which means grab is better at low levels and grapple is better at high levels when people start getting multiple attacks, (C) grapple has a list of allowed actions, which is basically 4e's "you must have one hand free and be able to act unhindered" rule that enumerates everything instead of leaving things up to the DM, and (D) you can pin in grapple but not in grab, so a grapple is harder to escape.

A and B are tossups, C is an advantage for grab in simplicity, D is an advantage for grapple in usefulness. Now, grab is definitely a streamlined version of grapple, but the idea that grab is "easy" and is used a lot while grapple is "hard" and never used is simply hyperbole.

Because you're putting detailed rules into those keywords rather than using them as "tags" as (current) 4e does.

The keywords I'm referring to are things like push, ongoing, grab, zone, etc., not Martial or Healing or the like. Those keywords do have mechanics attached, and the rules behind them are described elsewhere, just like their 3e counterparts.

At which point you've gone through the hassle of adding class levels, adjusting saving throws, attacks, calculating DCs, etc. With less hassle in 4e, you take flavorful neat thing as inspiration from a class and put it into 4e monster terms. Done; no overhead.[

Explain how this isn't a rule zero fallacy?

If something here is an Oberoni fallacy, it's your statement that 4e is superior because it requires a DM to make stuff up and alter monsters by fiat rather than providing a system to do so.

Once again: you can make stuff up in any system. If you want to make a fighter-like monster in 3e, you can easily take a "flavorful neat thing as inspiration from a class" and slap it on a monster. Whether you prefer to make stuff up or follow a monster-building system is up to personal taste, but for someone who does like to make stuff up having a monster-building system to fall back on or use for examples and guidance is not a drawback and for someone who likes to use a monster-building system having no system in place is not an advantage.

The standardization nets you zero benefit if you spell them out precisely, as you should in the stat block.

As Kurald said in the last thread:

The point of standardization is to make things easier to remember, which makes combat faster to run.

Take a look at Magic cards: they'll say things like "Flying (cannot be blocked by non-flying creatures)". This is spelled out, so it's useful for beginning players; but it's also standardized, which means that advanced players can stop reading after the word "flying".
Similarly, a D&D creature could read "Pack tactics (+1 to hit for each ally adjacent to the target)" and then use this for multiple creatures. What 4E is doing wrong is that they would give "pack tactics" a different effect on other creatures. One of the earlier playtests of 5E said that Turn Undead would have its effects spelled out in each undead creature and they could be different for each; that is completely missing the point of centralized design.

Fireball was not even consistent in D&D 3.x. A level 5 wizard's fireball deals less damage and has less range than that of a level 6 wizard, or a level 10 wizard.

So it's really nonsense to clamor for all fireballs to be the same, when they're not.

Woe befalls us when the fireball was also modified through metamagics, a feat, and could become either a spell-like or supernatural ability, psionic, psi-like, and stuff like that.

Fireball is not equal to fireball, except that fireball should deal fire over a large area.

CL 6 fireball == CL 6 fireball

empowered CL 5 fireball == empowered CL 5 fireball

(Su) fireball == (Su) fireball

All of those things have standardized rules, and if you know what fireball does and empower does, you can combine them to get an empowered fireball.