Disappointment

I want to express my observation that, as the game world has evolved over the years, it seems to have become weaker and less flexible. For instance, the spells—particularly in editions 2e and 3.5e—felt very empowering, allowing players to truly embody a wizard's prowess. However, in the current editions like 5e and 5.5e, spells are significantly weaker and come with numerous restrictions, limiting their effectiveness. My concern is that from 1989 to 2026, the game has de-evolved, leading to a diminished sense of agency and freedom. The ability to freely use imagination and creativity appears to be constricted. Why is this happening? Because the rules have become so rigid that they prevent players from exploring and expressing their ideas freely. Thank you

I mean, maybe? Wish used to be pretty open ended. Now it has all sorts of caveats and such.

On the other hand, having massive leaway for dm interpretation means a player will have extremely different experinces moving from one dm to another. Whereas having the rules be more speciifc means qt least the spells should do the same thing regardless of who is dm

I suspect players have -- in general, and consistently -- voiced complaints in the last 20 years about how powerful casters are compared to warriors.

Tables and experiences obviously vary quite a bit. It sounds like maybe you and the people you've played with haven't run into that imbalance in a negative way--great!

But a lot of people have run into the experience of having their brave knight swing a couple times with their weapon and then watch the wizard annihilate the rest of the enemies in one feel swoop. Or the wizard effectively blips the main boss out of existence with one save or suck spell. Or completely bypass the challenge of an interaction with a spell. And that's happened enough that the feedback the designers get is that the gulf between casters and martials is far too wide. They've shrunk the gap, and part of shrinking it has been to reign in the power of spells.

Again, this is just in broad terms, and it's just my assumption. I feel your pain on some of the spell changes, though. It's hard to not miss that power!

Saying spells are weaker now, to me, seems to ignore many of the other changes that have happened in the game. Casting time is the first to come to my mind. (A round used to be broken up into segments. A caster would start casting on their turn, but not finish until later, and could be interrupted while they were casting. You had to be much more strategic in choosing what to cast and when.) And you have things like fireball, which used to have to fill the entire space, so if you cast that 20’ radius spell in a 10’ wide hallway, it was going to blow up in other dimensions to make up for it. And that lightning bolt was just going to ricochet around the room until all 120 feet of it was done. So much geometry back in the day.

But if we’re talking about flexibility, you also have the removal of purely vancian casting, which has given all casters much more flexibility in preparing spells. You have the ability now to take a feat which allows you to access spells you otherwise wouldn’t be able to cast. And cantrips. No longer is the level 1 wizard waiting for their chance to cast their single magic missile spell for the day before they are reduced to throwing darts. 

And another big one is all the non-spell changes as well. In 2e, if you wanted a dwarf wizard, you just flat out weren’t allowed to. Some classes were restricted by your race. And if you were an elf, sure, you could play a wizard, but you had a level cap, where your human friend could go up in level effectively infinitely. In 3, you might technically be able to make a dwarf wizard, but they’d be really pretty bad at it.

Without specific examples, it’s hard to say just what changes we’re talking about. Certainly they’ve eliminated some spells that require judgement calls on how they might work. And I can certainly understand and agree that might really put a cramp in someone’s style. But it also removes lots of arguments around the table and helps people keep the peace.

Cantrips. OP is completely ignoring cantrips.

Oh and Fireball.