3.5's Legacy in 5e

In my last post, I said that 3.x and 5e are almost like two independent revisions of AD&D for as much as they have in common. However, there are some 3rd edition revisions that 5e has kept around---basically, anything that made 3.x easier to play than AD&D is retained, while things that made it more complicated (like touch AC, damage reduction, and the four-fold attack modifier) are jettisoned:

What's still around:

1. All modifiers are still based on ability scores. In AD&D, THAC0, saving throw bonuses, and kill bonuses all came from a huge array of tables at the end of the player's handbook. 3.5 simplified(!) things here by making all those +n bonuses to things based on your ability scores.

2. Skills replace table lookups. In AD&D, most things required a table lookup from some weirdly specific table, like "bending strong bars" or something odd like that. 3rd Edition introduced skills, which meant you could resolve most situations with a skill check. Even if there was some lengthy, detailed rule explaining how to do something specific, you could in practice just ignore it and have the player roll a skill check. This also means anyone can *try* to do just about anything.

3. Feats and class options are back. I think making character builds was what a lot of people loved about 3rd edition. The options are aggressively simplified (a 3.5 character would have at least 7 feats by level 20; a 5e character can have no more than four and may have zero.

4. Ability scores can improve as you level up. In AD&D, if you rolled a weak character, you had little recourse. 3rd edition introduced the idea of getting +1 to an ability every 4 levels. Of course, it had ability-enhancing magic items, too. 4th edition got rid of the items, but increased this to alternating +2 to two/+1 to all, which could result in ridiculous ability scores. 5th edition dials it back a little. You get either +2 ability points or a feat every 4 levels (except the fighter).

5. Multiclassing is simple again. Dual-classing in AD&D was cumbersome and weird. 3rd made it so that you just take levels in whatever class. This was easy to exploit, so 4e slapped the concept so hard that it turned into nothing more than a few feats and powers. 3rd-style multiclassing is back in 5e, but  it's much, much harder to exploit.