[Sell Me] 5e. A game for a grognard?

[Willie the Duck]

D&D5e is a "significant contributor" to issues like the one I experienced because, LIKE EVERY OTHER EDITION OF D&D, 5e has NO hard limits on the player's power. The OP is coming back to D&D from other games. The majority of other games place hard limits on magic use and character advancement through a number of different methods but 5e never adopted such limits.

Really? Because I have played a lot of different TTRPGs and I'd be hard pressed to name one with limits so hard you can't go beyond if you use the same techniques one uses to get beyond limitations in D&D.

How is a game that gives Wishes as a SPELL in any way "nerfed?"

We will use this as an example. Outside of Wish being used as access to other spells, it has limits -- it has a 1 in 3 chance of permanently destroying your ability to cast it. The other option is to find it as a magic item. That's treasure, and comes at the cost-benefit expense of any other potential treasure. Those are fairly hard limits. Harder than most open-ended magic systems (be they the White Wolf 'Mage the ____' series, or Hero System, or Fate. If you could point to a specific system, perhaps we could do a compare/contrast, but from where I'm sitting, I can't think of one that has universally harder (as opposed to 'harder, if your primary rating method is XYZ arbitrary measure').

When you combine this with the general attitude of players coming from 21st Century video games, that can create a "perfect storm" of potential abuse

Oh yes, those kids and their video games. That's not an over-worn stereotype. I'm sorry, but I'm going to need an actual functional example of something someone might take from '21st Century video games,' how they might start expecting it in their TTRPGs, and how it will cause problems before I will even begin to take this seriously.

Or find an efreeti bottle or a luck blade.

So, again gated behind DM permission, and presumably part of the party 'treasure' in which case it increasing the party total capacity is par for the course (and not unlike any other magic item).

[JoeJ]

So, again gated behind DM permission, and presumably part of the party 'treasure' in which case it increasing the party total capacity is par for the course (and not unlike any other magic item).

Even the fabled Deck of Many Things. (Who ever thought that item was a good idea? Was it Gygax?)

[Willie the Duck]

Even the fabled Deck of Many Things. (Who ever thought that item was a good idea? Was it Gygax?)

Well, it showed up in Supplement I, so it could have been Gygax or Rob Kuntz. Michael Mornard indicates that artifacts in general were definitely things that showed up in Gygax's campaign. Whether anyone in particular suggested a magical 'pick a card, any card' magic item to Gary, I've not heard anything.

[EggKookoo]

Well, it showed up in Supplement I, so it could have been Gygax or Rob Kuntz. Michael Mornard indicates that artifacts in general were definitely things that showed up in Gygax's campaign. Whether anyone in particular suggested a magical 'pick a card, any card' magic item to Gary, I've not heard anything.

Even if it wasn't, that's the kind of artifact that would eventually get invented by someone. There's an awful lot of "if I can imagine it, I should make it" in the game. We take the good with the bad.