In 3E if you havent mapped your character build before you named your character you are doing it wrong. Hilariously wrong in fact, you will more than likely end up with a useless gimp. The system was designed with a lot of bad options that will ruin your character, in fact almost every feat, every skill and every class in the game is a trap choice, this also includes around 90% of the prestiges.
This is the shit that traumatized sawyer so bad that he ended up doing a 360º, and ended up being equally bad for different reasons.
Feats and skills (as systems) aren't traps because they are things that everyone gets and are all equally meaningless with the exception of magic feats + Use Magic Device skill. Furthermore, it is very unlikely you will ever make a choice that will "ruin" a character, outside of doing something like playing a Bard without Perform which no decent DM would ever allow you to do. You can of course make tons of bad choices and end up with something suboptimal, but it is almost impossible to screw up a character so bad that they are significantly worse than their bare chasis. Meanwhile, you
can do this in 5E, by picking flatout inferior archetypes like the Berserker Barbarian or the Champion Fighter.
The core problem with 3E is that the difference between the classes in power is unbelievably wide. It is so wide that there is probably no game in existence with it's level of imbalance. The issue with feats and skills are not that you are trapped by taking them, it's that relying on them for a character build (exception, Use Magic Device) is a waste of time because spellcasting is the only class feature that provides a significant increase in power. "Ruining your character" is not the problem, having a character concept that is unplayable from the start is the problem.
If you are trying to optimize your character concept then you are indeed doing something incredibly wrong by not mapping out a build, but this is no different than 5E or really any game ever made.
This is false, you can make a paladin/wizard/rogue and still end up being good, not as strong as a pure class but fairly flexible and with tons of valid options in any given encounter. You can suddenly at level 10 as a cleric take a level in barbarian and get something out of that choice, your character wasnt ruined, you just opened another venue for the character in exchange for closing a different one.
But that's not what I said, I said that characters are fundamentally complete at character creation in 5E. It is true that some effective multiclass dips can greatly increase a character's effectiveness, but since not focusing on a core concept has been a bad idea since the concept of classes have ever existed, you will still be leveling one class over all others, meaning your build is defined by the class features you determine at level 3ish. It's like a World of Warcraft subclass.
Every class is like this, subclasses, which for example as a wizard you pick at level 1, as a fighter at level 3, grant different features until level 17 or so. But a ton of characters can take just the first level of wizard for the level 1 class feature, or the first level of cleric for the first level features and pick a different class to advance. This will not really diminish the character, it will simply open new options at the cost of not opening a different door.
Multiclassing has no significant diminishment on character in 3E either, unless you're playing a Druid because a druid's base chasis is totally nuts.
This is not true tho. In PoE your choices do have consequences, you can end up with a shit character thats a pain to play, or you can end up with one that can solo the entire campaign.
The problem with PoEs system does not lay in the importance of the choices in any given build.
I've never played a solo-run but I have played Path of the Damned and I can assure you that outside of making flatout retarded choices like maxing perception and dumping constitution, you pretty much cannot screw up a character in PoE. The game is so tactically vapid that as long as you put good armor on your tank and have some sort of of hard cc, you will win every time. I remember picking several feats for the Druid companion that I later learned he had absolutely no use for, and gave him really garbage equipment, he was still effective. Likewise my main character was a chanter, generally considered to be the worst class in the game, I had terrible Resolve and it still never mattered.
I'm sure you can somehow game the system and get insanely powerful characters but none of it matters when the game is so vapid, simplistic and meaningless.
This isnt true either. As a wizard you can pick up every spell in the game as you adventure anyway.
I was really only being kind when I said that, it barely matters at all.
