Strange; I grew up with 3rd and I have the impression that 5th is much less prescriptive than its predecessor (I'm ignoring 4th entirely as an anomaly; I never

Strange; I grew up with 3rd and I have the impression that 5th is much less prescriptive than its predecessor (I'm ignoring 4th entirely as an anomaly; I never played more than two sessions of it so I don't have any insight about it). 3rd had oodles of rules, prestige classes, feats, etc. whereas 5th to me has more of a "make stuff up for flavor" intent behind it. I think this is a direct result of 5th edition's focus on streamlining. This could be because I was involved with Living Greyhawk in 3rd edition, which was by its nature bound pretty strictly to RAW; or because I came into 5th edition when it was brand new and rules-barren. But I feel like they lifted a lot of restrictions in 5th edition. Example: alignment restrictions on classes. These days I don't even play with alignments at all, but the chaotic good paladin of freedom that I rolled in 5th edition would explicitly contradict the 3rd edition rules. And spells that used to interact with alignments have now been rewritten to target more objective things like creature type instead.