Community

@mellowship:

giving the players enough information so they can prepare the right spells without making things too easy is a tricky balancing act on the DM's part. The only meaningful choices are informed choices. There's no point in allowing players to choose which spells to bring if you don't allow them some avenue where they can choose to expend resources to gain some hint of what spells they should pick. That said, if they're too obtuse to try to scout ahead in dangerous situations, they die. In my campaigns, anyway. Because it makes me laugh maniacally, and I like doing that. Success!

Also note that in 3e, wizards got 3+Int 1st level spells of their choice to start with, and 2 more spells with every caster level they gained.  So at least some spells were truly build choices.  3E casters are absolutely unequivocally problematic. They took 2e casters and removed every brake that any player ever whined about, and people where surprised when casters were suddenly gods? DMs could fix it. More work than I care to do, most days.

How important items found in play should be in determining overall success is another one of those tricky balancing acts.  I don't think any edition really got it right.  No idea how 5e is going to pull this off.
I think AD&D got it pretty 'right'. It says to give other characters enough magic items to balance them with the wizard. Seems like good advice to me, and easy enough to do.


Skill challenges using the latest iteration of the skill math tend to have some skills with hard DCs, some with moderate, and some with easy.  So if you play smart and use skills with easy DCs (a tactical choice made in play) instead of moderate, or skills with moderate DCs instead of hard, you've given yourself much more than a +2 circumstance bonus.  Also keep in mind that +2 is the difference between the high and low end for primary stats using standard arrays.  And it's smart play to want to use skills tied to your primary stat...unless it's at the hard DC where another skill would be at the moderate DC.
As long as the choices made in play matter more than build choices or ability scores, I'm not too concerned about how it comes about.

If I get what you're saying here, the problem with 4e, is that the combination of ability scores with other build choices, the ways that they stack together, can make tactical choices meaningless.  3e had this problem worse, but you don't seem to be a big fan of 3e, so OK.
I was a big fan of 3E. The bookkeeping became annoying, the statblocks became annoying, the build-focus became annoying, the casters were always annoying - but it wasn't enough to make me stop playing. I was ready to jump ship for 4E, though. After about 9 months, the combat was just too long for me, and I couldn't play it anymore. Now, I've been enjoying 1E, and the emphasis it puts (or at least I feel it encourages me to put) on what the players do in the moment.

But please, please don't go back to the old AD&D ability modifier tables.  Those things were an abomination.
I'm not particularly attached to them. They've got a quirky sort of charm, though.

The guideline is: Keep giving them items until they start to overshadow the wizard. Then take one away. Viola.

My idea of good game design is to make it so the game only functions if the DM is nice. This will keep players from being ruined by bad DMs, and we can all live happily ever after.