These are bad news for BG3 I guess. It seems we might get a hack 'n slash combat system rather than a tactical one, which characterized the classic Infinity Engine games. I still hope that Larian will find a way to balance it properly.

It can be tactical when done right. But the rules are very hand-holding'ish. Skillpoints are gone too. You dont have much say in how your character levels up.

That being said - BG 1 and 2 didn't offer any complex leveling up either.

It depends on the class. It's quite simple when it comes to warriors etc. Mages and sorcerers are much more complex. You need to be careful especially when leveling up sorcerers. It's easy to make bad decisions when selecting spells. But in general I agree. The leveling system of both BG is quite simple and mostly automated.

Does 5ed remove the ability of sorcerers (and sorceresses) to swap learnt spells on level-up, as one can do in 3ed?

I have no idea. I never played 5ed myself.

From the D&D 5th Edition Compendium

"Additionally, when you gain a level in this class, you can choose one of the Sorcerer Spells you know and replace it with another spell from the Sorcerer spell list, which also must be of a level for which you have Spell Slots."

So you can turn a bunch of known 1st level spells into a bunch of known 5th level spells?

So long as you have spell slots for that level, so it seems.

Huh. I wonder if they still have the issue where a whole bunch of spells of one level are more useful than most of the spells of a different level.

Thank you. :)
I did not know that. (I knew you could increase a spell's parameters and cast it as a higher level spell.) I shall check that out next time I play it.
What do you mean?

5e is the edition where you can increase a spell's parameters by using it in a higher level slot. 3.x gives you metamagic feat, which let you modify a spell in a specific way at the cost of a higher level slot, but the rules allow you to use the higher level slot without using metamagic feats, in case you decide that, for example, you'd rather use your 4th level spell slot for Fireball rather than for an actual 4th level spell. (By the way, this is also useful for clerics, particularly in 3.0; you can spontaneously cast a cure wounds spell in a place of a memorized spell, but 3.0 has no such spells abovc 4th level (Heal doesn't count, and neither does Healing Circle in 3.0), so in a pinch you might need to use a higher level spell slot to cast an emergency Cure Critial Wounds spell.)

Basically, in 4e they radically changed the way the game works. For example, there's the system of at-will, encounter, and daily powers; every class gets these, and they replace the spellcasting systems found in other editions. This is a rather significant change to how the game plays; you no longer have fighters having infinite weak attacks and mages having limited use game-altering abilities; rather, each class gets some of each. There's other mechanics too, like the healing surge mechanic which limits how much a character can be healed per day. Other differences include such things as how HP is calculated (my understanding is that you start with more, but get them more slowly). These changes solve some of the issues of earlier editions (no more Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards, and more HP at the start makes low level combat less immediately lethal), but comes at the cost of drastically changing the feel of the game.

5e does incorporate a few ideas from 4e (there's something like healing surges, but instead of a limit on healing, they instead act as an extra source of between-battle healing that every class has access to), but in other respects, it works more like earlier editions (level segregated spell slots are back (though now clerics and wizards spontaneously cast from a list that can be changed each day, I believe (reminds me of how the DS CRPG The Dark Spire handled this)), for example, and you also have the old way of gaining HP (though with the option of removing dice rolls from HP gains).

So, in summary:
* 3.x: D&D evolved further, though feats add more complexity, and some don't like the possibility of taking one or two leels in lots of classes (which is viable for fighter builds, but not caster builds).
* 4e: Basically a different game that lacks some of the issues of other editions, but also plays very differently; it doesn't really play like D&D, to my understanding.
* 5e: More like older editions, but incorporates a few design elements of 4e while still playing like D&D.

(I am intentionally trying to not make a value judgement of 4e; some players like it, others do not. I have not actually tried 4e and 5e, and I don't know the rules for them that well, but I do know some things about these editions.)

The invite is basically to be able to ask questions, assuming you are willing.

Thank you for the summary. :)
(I haven't played PnP since release 2, so your notes are very informative.)

You make a good case for a separate domain for the 4th edition. I see why they did what they did, since all the corrections are aimed at weaknesses in the game (opportunities for players to metagame instead of roleplay) and some of the solutions [attempt to] fix some of what I found irritating in the earlier releases.

For instance, hitpoints are, realistically, the only effective way to introduce random outcomes (otherwise you would have predetermined outcomes, as for Amber) but they are also very silly at high levels. (As any victor will admit, candidly, luck plays a factor in all success —— martial or otherwise.) Instead, perhaps, a better process would be to increase damage resistance, rather than total hitpoints, for higher skill / more experienced player characters. After all, ever human has a very similar capacity to absorb damage, but better experience in martial pursuits grants some people the ability to avoid the worst damage in an encounter. (Certainly add some small amount to the hitpoint total: this seems trivially sensible; but multiples of a base die implies higher level characters have geometric increases in fighting skills, which seems less sensible.)

For instance, the Shadowrun methodology heals the last wound when a fight ends. If hitpoints are some sort of measure of the fatigue and duress of a particular encounter, then this seems a good compromise, also considering there exist medical items that heal a set amount (varying by the skill of the character who applies it).

I wonder what 4e plays like? Such a large diversion from the core assumptions would no doubt create a lot of unintended problems, so it sounds like 5e might be far superior to the third edition, which I find better (though more complex, which is irrelevant since the computer does all the calculations in a video game) than the second edition. (I would place 3.5 as incrementally better than 3, and 3 better than 2, if I had to rank them for my own satisfaction.)