Do you like the older RPG systems better than the newer ones?

[Max_Killjoy]

What I have grown to dislike is having to plan out builds. 3e D&D is the big offender in this where you really want to plan out your skills, feats, class abilities, etc so that you can later pick up the things you really want. If you want a certain prestige class (even a fluffy roleplaying one) you will need to make sure you pick up the certain skills, feats and abilities needed to pick up that class. That just gets so tiresome (and sadly for me in many cases the most fun thing in 3e is building characters rather than playing them as I find 3e to be less fun in actual play). Other versions you may have builds but the amount of work required is much different and you do not really have to plan them out ahead so much (though you can).

Based on reading the 5e subforum, I'd say that "planned build" approach is alive and well -- whether the system itself still "encourages" as much as earlier editions or not. Take a look at how often build advice comes in the form of "when you hit X level in <Class>, you'll do such and such..."

I think it's just inherent in a system that reserves significant parts of the "signature ability" list for well into the progression.

And yeah, for me personally, it's one of the turnoffs of the system.

I really hate to keep grinding this axe... but those are all functions of the 3.X multiclassing system. It's always been bad.

The ease of multiclassing makes it a much less definitive character decision, so you get class-dipping.

And because it's trivial to snag the first two levels in any given class, the iconic class features of every class have to be spread out further than most games run.

Prestige Classes replaced Kits... but you can't get into your "main class" until 6th level and then only if you planned your build from 1st. This often exacerbates both of the previous problems, robbing classes of any narrative identity and turning them into nothing more than components of the world's most deliberately obtuse point-buy system.

And a bit ironically, that serves to reinforce the "planned build" approach by encouraging players to plan way ahead for when they finally get those abilities that were pushed up to higher levels.