RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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I use simulation as in fixed math for all actions. I use abstraction as in the rules are just there to create some mechanical fairness without an emphasis on specific occurrences. You are encourage to fold complex actions into one roll as a DM because it is just not that import that the player make the needed jump check, attack rolls, and grapple check to leap over the air to trap a goblin in a barrel (just make a strength athletics check).
The skills do not have fixed rules. I know may GMs who only let PF skills do what they say in the book or do what the AP specifically says they can do in a situation. Given how the skills in 5e do not have specific rules what you can do with them is very fluid.
My wife, who is much more of a "casual" gamer than I am, cites this as a major critique of Pathfinder. She feels like whenever she wants to do something cool or "fun" or creative, the GM says, "Well, the first part will need a move action with an Acrobatics check for X and another for Y, and then you'll need a standard action to do a CMB check to try Z, which will provoke..."
Just to do one thing.
She's basically given up and resigned herself to asking me what pre-defined options she has available to her at any given moment, because anything she comes up with on her own gets dissected and arranged into a series of 3-6 checks/rolls, only one of which needs to go low to make the whole thing fail, and probably leave her with a sword in her face.
I haven't seen the DMG, but if it encourages single-check activities, I'd call that a plus. :)
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First, it's totally okay for different people to like different systems.
Second, it's okay for one person to like both systems!
For me, I've played every edition of the game. Each edition was better than the last, up to and including 3.5. I tried 4th for a good while, enjoyed playing...but felt I was playing a complex board game rather than a role-playing game.
When PF came out I absolutely loved it! Then I started noticing the things they changed that make the same mechanic worse in PF than it was in 3.5. Essentially, PF made classes better but made the core mechanics worse; not usually the changes they chose to make but more the mistakes in cut & pasting that left some rules understood in the wrong way, so the 'wrong' way became the official 'right' way. There's a current thread thread about taking free actions while Nauseated that illustrates this nicely: in 3.5 the condition only let you take a single move action per turn (plus free actions but not quickened spells). In PF the bit in parentheses got dropped in the cut & paste to PF, so in PF Nauseated characters cannot take free actions, leading to absurdities like being able to draw a sword or stand up from prone, but being unable to drop a sword or drop prone. Instead of restoring the lost clause, some are trying to get around the restrictions in the Nauseated condition by pointing to a rule which has nothing to do with Nauseated, just to get their free actions back.
That kind of thing is happening with more and more frequency. So I decided to give 5th ed a chance, not really expecting much because of my poor opinion of 4th.
I love it! After 35 years or so, I can finally play a Dex-based swashbuckler at 1st level without a problem!
Like Jiggy, I'm playing a Battle-Master fighter, starting at 1st and he's now 5th. The way I can choose my manouvers as I level up, and the way I choose to use them in battle, feels like that the tactical decisions I make are as important as my game stats.
I am now not limited to moving 5-feet when I use all of the attacks I've earned; what level would I have to be, what feat/class/archetype combo, would I have to be in PF to pull that off? In 5th, everyone can do that straight out of the box.
The choices for character creation are more limited, but that's because the game has only been putting out books for a few months rather than PF's years.
5th ed is not perfect. There are some aspects of PF that I like better. But the cool thing is, I don't have to choose one system and throw the other away! I can (and do) play PF, 5th ed and even 3.5 on different days.
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How's a fella supposed to make a living? ;-)
I haven't seen the DMG, but if it encourages single-check activities, I'd call that a plus. :)
It does, and for the exact reasons you mentioned. Not only do more rolls takes more time, but the more rolls you add the harder you make the action to do.
5E has a lot of gnarly things I'm not keen on, and the "3.5 Lite" feel of the whole thing isn't to my or my group's liking, honestly.
It's fine for teaching new players how to play tabletop RPGs, especially D&D, but for long-time players it's really lacking in a lot of options.
The skills system, for one, really just ticks off pretty much everyone in my group, and multiclassing is just not as nice & easy as in 3.5/Pathfinder (how spells work with multiclassing is a little nice but odd, but that's the only saving grace for it).
Every class just basically boils down to being a lighter version of their Pathfinder counterparts, which means there's a lot less mechanical customization than in PF.
Again, all this is fine for teaching newbs how to play - you sit down and create a vaguely-cookie-cutter character Warrior, Mage, Cleric, Thief, or Archer character, run through a couple dungeons so that they learn the basic ins & outs of how tabletop RPGs work, and then you move onto the "big kids'" game with much more customization and slightly harder rules.
I've said it in other threads, but 5E vs Pathfinder is basically just the old BECMI vs AD&D rivalry all over again, only this time it's between two companies, rather than an internal rivalry in the same company.
It's not a successor to 4e anymore than it is to 3.5.
I'd say it's a successor to 2e, but I've never actually played that (so I won't say it). It has "old-school" feel to me, based on what people ramble about.
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And compared with 4e, the core mechanics have been made more complicated and the balance made worse.
4e balanced nearly symmetrical mechanics. 5e balances asymmetric mechanics.
Comparing balances of a different kind seems difficult.
EDIT: I also looked through 4e once. I would say it way more complicated.
Also, the OP and several others refer to things being "simplified" and "re-balanced". 5e might have simpler core mechanics and better balance than Pathfinder, but it is not a successor to Pathfinder it is a successor to 4e. And compared with 4e, the core mechanics have been made more complicated and the balance made worse.
I mean, 4E was "balanced" in that it's not hard to achieve "Balance" everyone is playing the same class but wearing a different color.
There's really no two ways about that - the Powers system employed by 4E turned every class into basically a carbon-copy of one another. Everything that made "Martial" classes different than "Primal," "Arcane," or "Divine" was 100% fluff.
You could literally take an ability from the Wizard Powers list, change all instances of Int to Str, throw it into the Fighter Powers List, and voila - new Fighter power. That's not good game design; that's just lazy as hell.
WOTC did exactly that, even - if you do a search, there's an image which illustrates this by showing 3 at-will abilities from 3 different classes which are functional reprints of one another, save for the determining Stat.
Powers would be marginally excusable, as well, if the Classes had multiple abilities which mechanically differentiated themselves from one another; but, no, even then Classes were (generic powers) + (1 unique ability to the class). Ooh, wow... a Rogue can Sneak Attack, while a Paladin can Smite... sooo differeeent...
With 5E, the design team at least made an effort to make the classes all FEEL different than one another by functioning uniquely, and in several different ways.
They didn't go far enough, in some cases, considering that everyone uses the exact same "Proficiency" score determined by level, and Int is basically as useless as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest (since Int is no longer tied to the number of Skills you can get), but at least there's a mechanical difference between casters, martials, etc. again, and classes are largely defined by their various level-granted abilities.
I'll gladly take some mechanical imbalance over being forced to play the same class as everyone else.
Off the top of my head, Int governs 5/18 skills. That makes it pretty important to skills. It governs far more than its far share of skills (probably stole constitution's :P)
I don't get why some people think 4e was so homogenous, classes were distinct from one another with the themes their powers supported. I'd say a Fighter and Barbarian were more different than they are in 3.x.
I don't see 5e drawing much from 4e at all though. It solves the "Stand Still and Full Attack" problem differently, now you can move as you like, as opposed to 4e which did away with multiple attacks entirely (except the ranger).
My wife, who is much more of a "casual" gamer than I am, cites this as a major critique of Pathfinder. She feels like whenever she wants to do something cool or "fun" or creative, the GM says, "Well, the first part will need a move action with an Acrobatics check for X and another for Y, and then you'll need a standard action to do a CMB check to try Z, which will provoke..."Just to do one thing.
She's basically given up and resigned herself to asking me what pre-defined options she has available to her at any given moment, because anything she comes up with on her own gets dissected and arranged into a series of 3-6 checks/rolls, only one of which needs to go low to make the whole thing fail, and probably leave her with a sword in her face.
I haven't seen the DMG, but if it encourages single-check activities, I'd call that a plus. :)
I think games with highly detailed rules tend to inspire this sort of GMing. That inspiration, however, can be resisted, particularly in a home game.
But I suspect your GM might do the same thing with 5e even with a simpler action economy and stat checks instead of skill checks...
It's not a successor to 4e anymore than it is to 3.5.
I'd say it's a successor to 2e, but I've never actually played that (so I won't say it). It has "old-school" feel to me, based on what people ramble about.
2E was just about as complicated as 3rd/3.5, but in some different ways.
D&D has never, ever been a "rules light" system by any stretch, except for far back with OD&D before the printing of Supplement 1: Greyhawk. And don't think that was a good thing - OD&D was a pile of barely-decipherable, poorly-written/designed nonsense (OD&D was rushed to print before competitors could print things, with Supplement 1: Greyhawk and Supplement 2: Blackmoor turning it into a fully-functioning game), where your Character could literally be DEAD before you ever started playing. Basic D&D was basically 20% OD&D for only the basic-basic rules and 80% Greyhawk & Blackmoor combined when it was printed.
1st and 2nd Ed AD&D were both extremely rules-heavy, having charts for every one of the six Stats (and a special subset of rules for Strength specifically, because... design philosophy pure idiocy on Gygax's part), strict requirements for entering Classes, overly-complex Dual-Classing and Multiclassing rules, multiple redundant Classes for every single possible variation you could think of, etc.
1st & 2nd Ed even had their own version of Feats/Skills, in the form of Non-Weapon Proficiencies.
5E is really more like 3rd Ed Lite - it has a lot in common with the bare-bones basic idea of 3.0/3.5, but removes Feats, a varied Skill system, and iterative/varied BAB.
The one thing it does have that's radically different than 3.0/3.5 is that it re-introduces lots of Saves (2nd Ed and before had multiple saves - Save Vs: Paralyzation, Poison, or Death Magic; Rod, Staff, or Wand; Petrification or Polymorph; Breath Weapon; Spell), although this time there is NO difference at all between Skill Checks, Saving Throws, and Ability Checks.
It also takes aspects of Pathfinder (like Bloodlines for Sorcerers), and simplifies those rules down heavily (you have 2 possible Bloodlines in 5E - either Dragon or Wildblooded).
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Yes, there are saves for all 6 stats, though most effects target one of the traditional 3 of Dex, Con and Wis.Wait, when did the "traditional" saves become Dex, Con and Wis? Because it certainly wasn't that way in any edition of D&D prior to 2000.
I think 15 years of Fort, Ref, and Will through roughly 3 editions counts as a tradition. That there was another, different tradition before them doesn't negate that.
I don't see 5e drawing much from 4e at all though. It solves the "Stand Still and Full Attack" problem differently, now you can move as you like, as opposed to 4e which did away with multiple attacks entirely (except the ranger).
And everyone gets the same proficiency bonus (as in level-based attack bonus) regardless of class. Skills are effectively trained or untrained rather than invested on with individual skill points. Healing is fast with some variation on short rest healing. 3.5/PF Weapon sizes are gone again. Positive/Negative energy damage is radiant/necrotic.
Considerably more than coming up with a solution to standing still/full attack vs move and standard attack.
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5e DOES have Feats, and they are excellent.
Can we really say bloodlines are a Pathfinder aspect? 4e had Dragon/Wild Sorcs.
To clarify, "old-school feel" for me means I don't feel like I need tons of magic items/gold to succeed in 5e. Thanks to the bounded numbers, the big 6 aren't that taxing.
Also, I think 5e's rogue is my favorite incarnation of the class yet.
Edit@Dunn: Radiant = Positive is pretty much just a flavoring change. Fair point about weapon sizes I guess. I was referring to the major issues though. There's no coaxing healing surges out in combat, only in the 1hr long short rest.
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And compared with 4e, the core mechanics have been made more complicated and the balance made worse.
See, from my perspective, those would be "more interesting" and "better" rather than "more complicated" and "worse".
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OD&D was rushed to print before competitors could print things, with Supplement 1: Greyhawk and Supplement 2: Blackmoor turning it into a fully-functioning game
OD&D was functional before the supplements, but it was VERY different from what we know now. It was essentially a supplement itself, as it required the use of Chainmail to resolve combat. Supplement 1 added the "alternate" combat rules, which became the base upon which all future editions were based. To the point where the fifth and final OD&D supplement, Swords & Spells, which was based on using Chainmail instead of the "alternate" rules, became all but forgotten.
5e really doesn't mechanically resemble any of the previous editions, but it has a general FEEL that come closer to that provided by the pre-d20 editions. Largely because, like those systems, it's intended to be a more fluid system, as opposed to overly codified approach taken in 3.x (and to a somewhat lesser extent, 4e).
I don't get why some people think 4e was so homogenous, classes were distinct from one another with the themes their powers supported. I'd say a Fighter and Barbarian were more different than they are in 3.x.
I don't see 5e drawing much from 4e at all though. It solves the "Stand Still and Full Attack" problem differently, now you can move as you like, as opposed to 4e which did away with multiple attacks entirely (except the ranger).
5E was homogeneous because, as I said, you could take any Power from any class, shove it into another, and you're good to go.
The "thematic" differences amount to nothing - it's like saying that a Criomancer, Pyromancer, and Geomancer are radically different because they use different elements, despite the fact that they all have the same spell that says "do 1d8 + (Int for Crio-, Cha for Pyro-, Wis for Geo-) Cold/Fire/Acid Damage."
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Think of how classes work in Pathfinder: How is a Cavalier different than a Ranger, is different than an Arcanist?
One makes heavy use of a Mount & gains lots of built-in abilities that pump up your Party while giving them Feats they normally don't have; another is a nature-warrior/hunter who gains appropriate built-in abilities which focus on Terrain or Favored Enemies, training with one of several Styles of Combat, and a smidgen of nature-magic; the final is a full-blown Mage who gains many abilities that directly reflect their course of study, as well as actual Spells which function much differently than normal class abilities.
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Powers were a poor excuse of a replacement for Class Abilities. All classes had identical architecture and were only differentiated by what choices what Powers they had available to them; this would be like Paizo making every class into a 3/4 BAB, d8 HD, 6/9 spellcaster class with no class-based abilities but for one very-basic ability, and then calling the game "balanced" and "diverse".
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5E has a lot of gnarly things I'm not keen on, and the "3.5 Lite" feel of the whole thing isn't to my or my group's liking, honestly.
It's fine for teaching new players how to play tabletop RPGs, especially D&D, but for long-time players it's really lacking in a lot of options.
The skills system, for one, really just ticks off pretty much everyone in my group, and multiclassing is just not as nice & easy as in 3.5/Pathfinder (how spells work with multiclassing is a little nice but odd, but that's the only saving grace for it).
Every class just basically boils down to being a lighter version of their Pathfinder counterparts, which means there's a lot less mechanical customization than in PF.
Again, all this is fine for teaching newbs how to play - you sit down and create a vaguely-cookie-cutter character Warrior, Mage, Cleric, Thief, or Archer character, run through a couple dungeons so that they learn the basic ins & outs of how tabletop RPGs work, and then you move onto the "big kids'" game with much more customization and slightly harder rules.
I've said it in other threads, but 5E vs Pathfinder is basically just the old BECMI vs AD&D rivalry all over again, only this time it's between two companies, rather than an internal rivalry in the same company.
I don't think you play the same 5E I do. The downtime rules alone introduce a huge new facet to the game as do factions.
Warlock is a class unique to 5E and not in PF. The difference between an eldritch knight, champion, and battle master are vast and that is just one class out of twelve.
If you include multiclassing, feats, factions, and pick and choose some options from the DMG the game has a huge number of options, many of which are not in the PF Core Rulebook. Changing how default healing works for example or how deadly combat is.
With all of the PF books though, that game is more complex of course. If that is what you meant I agree since 5E is only a few months old. But the comparison breaks down if you include all the PF books released over several years.
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Can we please stop labeling people based on their gaming preferences?
I started playing D&D in '84, yet I rather like 5E's mechanics. That doesn't mean I'm a "newb" or a child, any more than preferring the relative complexity of Pathfinder means you have no life.
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How is a Cavalier similar to a Ranger? Both are full BAB classes that have a pet and buff their allies. A ranger could have an animal companion mount and freebooter's bond, and they're doing the same thing.
You could trade favored enemy/freebooter's for tactician, just like you claim you can with 4e powers.
If you thought all powers were the same except for the stat they used though, and that you could just swap them freely between classes, I don't think there's much to be done to convince you. They did have different powers, which is more than can be said for the wizard/sorc.
OD&D was rushed to print before competitors could print things, with Supplement 1: Greyhawk and Supplement 2: Blackmoor turning it into a fully-functioning gameOD&D was functional before the supplements, but it was VERY different from what we know now. It was essentially a supplement itself, as it required the use of Chainmail to resolve combat. Supplement 1 added the "alternate" combat rules, which became the base upon which all future editions were based. To the point where the fifth and final OD&D supplement, Swords & Spells, which was based on using Chainmail instead of the "alternate" rules, became all but forgotten.
It WAS functional, literally, but... it wasn't good. Everyone having d6 HD, all damage being 1d6, and 3 Stats doing literally NOTHING besides seeing if you could be one class or another isn't what I'd call "functional."
Those kinds of rules worked fine for Chainmail as an army-based Miniatures wargame, sure, but not for RPGs.
Greyhawk was basically the Service Pack 2 for D&D - it made it into a much better, more varied game
5e really doesn't mechanically resemble any of the previous editions, but it has a general FEEL that come closer to that provided by the pre-d20 editions. Largely because, like those systems, it's intended to be a more fluid system, as opposed to overly codified approach taken in 3.x (and to a somewhat lesser extent, 4e).
Again, though, to call them "fluid" and 3.5 "overly codified" is rose-tinted and patently false.
1st & 2nd Edition had rules upon rules upon rules for the damnedest things, but lacked rules where they needed it most
"Hey! Look! Spellcasters can't cast spells if they're Grappled - it says so over and over again! Awesome!"
"Okay, but... how do you Grapple?"
"F!++ IF I KNOW!!! BUT ISN'T IT AWESOME! SO AWESOME!"
Yeah, that's... not good system design.
Oh, and lets's not forget the fun bits that EVERYONE could have psychic powers, and that was a built-in basic part of the system.
When you really put 2nd Ed side-by-side with Pathfinder, you see lots of rules where PF doesn't have any (racial restrictions on classes, stat requirements for classes, etc.), and gigantic holes in 2nd Ed where rules should be (and are in Pathfinder), but all-in-all, the level of complexity between the two versions isn't very different.
If you thought all powers were the same except for the stat they used though, and that you could just swap them freely between classes, I don't think there's much to be done to convince you. They did have different powers, which is more than can be said for the wizard/sorc.
The thing is, a Wizard and Sorc ARE thematically similar (well, not so much anymore, since the Sorc gains radically different abilities from their Bloodline, and many give them actual melee abilities, while Wizards' Schools tend to shy away from melee).
Wizards, Sorcs, and Arcanists being very similar makes sense.
Cavaliers, Rangers, and even Barbarians being similar makes sense.
Sorcerers and Barbarians being similar makes absolutely no sense. Bloodragers, sure, but that's because it's a melding of two radically different things.
4E had no difference at all between martials, spellcasters, or anything in-between - everything was Powers.
You can't really take "Scorching Ray" from the Wizard/Sorc spell list and give it to the Cavalier, for example, and have it work - you have to also give the Cavalier a Spell-Like Ability, or give them Spellcasting in order to do that; in other words, you have to houserule and radically change how the class is designed.
With 4E, you can take any power from any class, give it to another class, and go without a problem. That's not a great way to create "variation" - it's one way to create "balance," sure, but the same level of Balance can be created in Pathfinder by forcing all players to play the same with different Archetypes.
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Again, though, to call them "fluid" and 3.5 "overly codified" is rose-tinted and patently false.
No more so than every other post in this thread. Basically, feel free to insert "In my less-than-humble opinion" into the beginning of every post I make on these forums.
It WAS functional, literally, but... it wasn't good. Everyone having d6 HD, all damage being 1d6, and 3 Stats doing literally NOTHING besides seeing if you could be one class or another isn't what I'd call "functional."
Those kinds of rules worked fine for Chainmail as an army-based Miniatures wargame, sure, but not for RPGs.
Greyhawk was basically the Service Pack 2 for D&D - it made it into a much better, more varied game
Like I said, before Greyhawk, D&D really wasn't it's own game, it was a fantasy supplement for Chainmail. Literally, given that you needed to own Chainmail in order to have rules to resolve combat.
Once a few supplements had been released, OD&D was't just fully functional, it was one of my favorites, rulewise.
It did have one major problem though, it was organized HORRIBLY. Really, reading through any of the OD&D books it seems that Gygax and Arneson just kind of randomly wrote whatever bits of rules happened to pop into their heads at the time. There doesn't seem to have even be the slightest hint of an attempt at organization.
That's why Swords & Wizardry is so nice. It's OD&D, except organized coherently. :D
1st & 2nd Edition had rules upon rules upon rules for the damnedest things, but lacked rules where they needed it most
One of the reasons that, of the official D&D editions, my favorite is actually the Rules Cyclopedia. Of course, as I've said in the past, one of the great things about the pre-d20 editions is that they are so compatible with each other that you can lift anything out of any of the editions and put it into another editions without ANY conversion, and it WILL work as intended. It might not be exactly the same (ie, a BECMI ogre might have a different statblock than a 1E ogre), but the base systems are essentially the same, so it's perfectly useable.
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I think one of the main reasons that I prefer the earlier eras of D&D is because of their reflective focuses:
AD&D 1e, was, in my opinion, characterized by the adventures. There were far more adventures offered than any other type of product.
AD&D 2e was unquestionably characterized by the campaign settings. While the three setting that had originated in 1E (Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance) stayed as the most popular, 2e was the edition that had an absolute EXPLOSION of settings created for it.
D&D 3.x and 4E were characterized by rule supplements. While there were some adventures and new settings published for these editions, it was blatantly clear that these were secondary to the rules supplements. Even many of the products published as campaign setting specific were less setting/adventure material and more giving rules supplements to play in those settings. For me, this was less interesting than the settings and adventures of the previous eras.
Plus I just like the rules better. :D
So except for the difference, there is no difference.
Just because they use the same power structure doesn't make the powers interchangeable.
It seems akin to saying that since clerics and wizards are both lvl9 prepared casters, you can just give clerics the wizard spell list and proceed without problems.
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Can we please stop labeling people based on their gaming preferences?
I started playing D&D in '84, yet I rather like 5E's mechanics. That doesn't mean I'm a "newb" or a child, any more than preferring the relative complexity of Pathfinder means you have no life.
Agreed. It's unnecessary antagonistic of the people who prefer the edition that feel the need to deem childish / a time sink / whatever negative paintbrush you chose to paint it with.
My thoughts: I like it.
Now where's some kind of license, any kind of license to produce compatible material. Because Wizards is not coming anywhere close to meeting the demand for adventures, additional crunch, settings, etc.
My experience with 5E is pretty limited (I played a abjurer wizard from 1 to 4 in the module Lost Mine of Phandelver), but left me underwhelmed.
The class mechanics are pretty clever, even if it's really limited (as you're pretty much done customizing your character after 3rd level).
Actual game play, less so - I felt that the number flattening went way too far in the other direction from Pathfinder.
In Pathfinder, PCs reach a level of competence and then super-competence pretty quickly.
With the 5E game I played, I never felt like my wizard was actually improving; I just felt like she was picking up new ways to fail.
I do wonder now if Phandelver was just a bad module, though. (I'm don't rememeber there being a single skill check DC lower than 15, which very much reinforced the "y'all are a bunch of bumbling incompetents" feel I had every time our party needed to perform any task.)
Basically, by 4th level I still felt like I was playing a 1st level character.
I didn't find that fun at all.
So except for the difference, there is no difference.
Just because they use the same power structure doesn't make the powers interchangeable.
It seems akin to saying that since clerics and wizards are both lvl9 prepared casters, you can just give clerics the wizard spell list and proceed without problems.
This is why I say 4e has nearly similar mechanics.
No, the classes were not exactly the same, but compared to 3.5, Pathfinder, and 5e, the mechanical difference between classes was relatively small. 4e suffered a lot of flavoring problems. 5e actually has "encounter powers" they are just called powers that refresh every short rest and that a short rest is one hour long (longer or shorter with variant rules in the DMG).
Actually having the gall to call abilities 'encounter powers' is what caused a lot of knee-jerk reactions to the system because they baked meta-language into large swaths of the rules.
4E took a while to hit it's stride, though it was pretty good once it finally did and WotC started exercising some creativity in the power design.
By the time PH2 came about, classes started feeling (and playing) very different from each other, and that trend continued for a while.
And then Essentials happened, and WotC backpedaled like mad to do away with their progress. Essentials (and various shenanigans relating to the D&D Insider Subscription) killed 4E for my entire gaming group.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Actual game play, less so - I felt that the number flattening went way too far in the other direction from Pathfinder.
That was the first negative thing I noticed, as well. I'm not sure I'd put it as strongly as you did (could be the module; 15 is a high DC in 5E, so that sounds like it could be a contributor to your bad experience), but I know the phenomenon you're describing, and I agree.
To put it another way, my first character (before he died) was trained proficient in Stealth, but not Acrobatics. They use the same stat, so the difference between them was purely that (in theory) I was experienced/trained/competent in Stealth, but a total noob in Acrobatics.
But the actual mechanical difference? If I made 20 checks of each skill, I'd only succeed on 2 more Stealth checks than Acrobatics checks.
That doesn't feel like I'm actually proficient in stealth. That feels like a slight knack for it.
Heck, I'm not even saying I want MORE POWER!!!!; I'd happily get that gap through applying a -2 nonproficiency penalty to... basically everything, just so there could be a more tangible difference between something I'm an expert in and something I'm just trying out for the first time.
To look at it from yet another angle, imagine that a 20th-level fighter is training alongside a 1st-level fighter. They're each attacking a target dummy 20 times.
In a series of 20 attacks, the 20th-level fighter only hits his target 4 more times than the 1st-level fighter. What the crap.
So yeah, they definitely "flattened the numbers" (good term; I'm totally stealing it) quite a bit, and I think I'd agree it was perhaps too much. This is one of the things I mentioned in (I think) my first post in this thread about 5E not being perfect and there being trade-offs between it and Pathfinder. It did a lot of things right, but this kind of grates on me.
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To look at it from yet another angle, imagine that a 20th-level fighter is training alongside a 1st-level fighter. They're each attacking a target dummy 20 times.In a series of 20 attacks, the 20th-level fighter only hits his target 4 more times than the 1st-level fighter. What the crap.
Keep in mind that your proficiency bonus isn't the only way you're improving. That 20th level fighter has probably got his strength maxed out now while the 1st level fighter probably doesn't. That'll account for another 1-2 successes. He may have a +1-+3 magic weapon. That's another 1-3 successes. He can attack that dummy 80 times in the time it takes that 1st level fighter to hit it 20 times, alternatively, he gets done in 5 rounds what the 1st level fighter takes 20 to accomplish. And that's without even touching the archetype features he might have or the fact that he's a heck of a lot more durable.
If you ignore every other probable advancement, sure, that 20th level fighter only hits a little more often than that 1st level fighter. But then, he also doesn't have to since most opponents have an AC within the 1st level fighter's ability.