“So then it’s onboarding people, teaching them how to play D&D, which is really complex”
As a person w/ out d&d experience, who was broadly aware of the game (ie. know classes but not the difference between actions & bonus actions), I didn’t have a terrible time onboarding. I started as a paladin and found that most of what I could do was pretty apparent and my friends who probably knew less than me seemed to catch on just as fast.
Some things like throwing potions wasn’t as obvious but I could see some choice paralysis from being a spellcaster.
For me, all my trouble comes from my party members. I understand my character and his limitations, but managing classes that I don’t fully understand has led to me greying out spells due to armor restrictions or causing my party to accidentally split because the wizard, weighed down by cloth, a book, and a cane, can’t jump as high as my fully-kitted out fighter with ringmail and a greatsword and now is alone in combat against some CR3 monster.
You played one of the simpler classes to be fair, paladins just hit things and hit things harder with smite.
High level wizards are when it can complicated, or you can forego all the complication and just spam fireball as the hammer to every nail
