Baldur's Gate 3

I’m a Dragon Age fan. I’m used to decade long waits by now.

Baldur's Gate 2.

Imagine not just punting goblins into the chasm but punting them into fire. Or that one on a scaffolding you drag towards you. And the bookshelf is now a projectile!

BATTLEFIELD CHAOS!

The thing to know is 4E (and every edition going back to the original, which was just a dungeon crawler) was much more combat focused. 5E is much more roleplay focused. That's fine, but I think the strengths of the game (since the RP has to pre-built options, not full freedom which is what 5E does well) is the combat.

I started playing TTRPGs with Pathfinder (which is basically DnD 3.5 expanded into it's own system, now on 2E). The amount of viable options in combat is so much better. Im fine with tabletop being dnd 5e because it's simpler and more accessible, but a video game where the rules are baked and you don't need to look things up or rule lawyer, something like Pathfinder or other versions of DnD might be better, at least for the combat portion.

There are Pathfinder games though that I haven't tried yet but I've heard are good. I'm planning on checking those out sometime after BG3 (and Armored Core, and Starfield, and Payday 3, and maybe other things about to come out).

Re point #2… was completely agree. Resting has always been horrible in every Baldurs Gate game. There is little to no consequence to resting in these games. Start fight, alpha strike, rest, repeat. It takes me out of the game when the mechanics don’t match the environment. I’m aware that resting is optional, but still… Unless you’re running a pure martial team, you’ll need to rest before the sun hits high noon.

The Owlcat Pathfinder games solved this problem brilliantly. They baked it into the gameplay by adding fatigue after so many in game hours, and the camp was something you setup in place, not some static map you revisit every very time. By far my most favourite resting mechanic I’ve seen in cRPGs. If I could change one thing about BG3, it would be this.

Pillars of Eternity 2 took a different approach to resting by making pretty much everything encounter based, except for some "ultimates". Was a while since I played it last but boy was it refreshing to not "needing" to rest after every encounter. The first game was more traditional with most things returning on rests. Two classes though were entirely encounter based and I used them in pretty much every run. Chanter (Bard) and Cipher (Psyker). Also Larian's two previous cRPGs (Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2) don't use rests.

But resting is a core feature in D&D and in the tabletop there is the trope of the five minute adventuring day for a reason.

Personally, I like the RNG. It means you can't guarantee much. You have to plan on what you might do if you fail. Some players won't like planning for possible failure, which I understand, but I think it adds depth. You can choose to use a spell like magic missile, which is a guaranteed hit but low damage, or you can choose to use a more powerful ability but it may fail, and what will you do if it does. It's one more thing to consider. If it's a guaranteed hit/kill then you don't need to think of how you may have to mitigate what happens on a fail. You can also never be totally safe. Even if you have a lot of armor/health/saves you can still fail, so you need to decide on equipment that might help you when you fail rather than stuff that will just keep you from failing.

Dungeons and Dragons is very old now. When they release a mechanics update, they change the edition. 5e is the current edition of D&D. 4e was the previous edition, 3.5e before that, etc.

The older versions are generally more complex than 5e as it's designed to be a bit more streamlined and accessible, but the old versions aren't strictly harder in terms of difficulty, more just mechanic complexity.

Some of my favorite parts of One DnD are the things that Larian already changed. Starting proficiencies tied to class instead of race? Perfect. Physical features tied to race seems fine to me, i.e. elemental resistances or a free spell or 2. But linking proficiencies limited your choices when creating a new character. Some races were just built better for some classes and some are built really poorly for some classes. That was the first thing they fixed and it made me happy. WotC knows that the majority of people just want a streamlined way to have fun when playing without having to do hours of research and they're clearly moving in that direction. If you want to have a fun game with a large player base, the entry fee needs to be reasonable. I love 5e but when I was first learning the rules and making a character, I realized that if I wanted to actually be happy with my character months later I would need to spend a lot of time planning. If you don't already know all the features and how they work with/against each other, it's real easy to find yourself with an ineffective member of the party if you're just picking whatever feels fun at the time. That can put a lot of people off and the new edition is fixing a lot of that by basically including a lot of house rule stuff that people were already doing to make their own games more fun.

You can beat BG3 on Tactician with a jank-ass build tho. You don't need to do anything "competitive" if you play well. Great Weapon Master is definitely not necessary in BG3.

Source: I beat it on Tactician with a jank-ass build and didn't respec or multiclass any companions at all. Didn't even bring a wizard. Just Wyll (melee even!), Karlach, Sheart, and my bard.

Don't think 4e would have been a mess. It was a streamlined "computergamey" edition that wasn't that well received, hence the creation of Pathfinder. It had a vastly different approach to the battlefield forcing it to be dynamic. So many abilities moving a target in one way or another. As a skirmish game it is pretty neat but severely lacks in the roleplaying department.

Have you considered mods? Extra feat at first level could give you the edge you want.