Passing the Torch: A Look Back at 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons

As you may already know, a new edition of Dungeons and Dragons is rolling out over the rest of this year. With the new version coming, I thought it might be nice to look back at the previous version, often known as 4e or 4th ed.

I started my D&D career (hobby? addiction?) in 2010, 2 years into D&D 4th Edition, but I know there was a big outcry against 4e when it was first released. Bigger than usual for a new version of an RPG. It was dumbing it down, it was making things too easy, it stripped out the roleplaying, I’ve heard it all even though I didn’t live through it. What they seemed to be missing, though, was 4th Edition’s theme of empowerment.

An equivalent 5th Edition fighter would have 42HP under impossibly good conditions.

You see, in pretty much every edition of D&D except 4th, your level 1 character was barely better than your average pig farmer. Sure, you might roll well for your stats, but you still had maybe 12hp at most, with earlier editions being even less powerful. In original, first edition D&D, you could have a wizard with 1hp, and once he cast his single spell for the day they could do nothing but hide and pray they survive. On the other side, wizards got insanely powerful as they gained levels while fighters only got slightly better, mostly through equipment. At higher levels 1 wizard was as effective in combat as a group of fighters at the same level. 4th edition was an attempt to really level that playing field. Instead of picking a class because of how powerful you would be at certain levels you were free to play whichever class seemed like the most fun to you. You chose what you wanted, not what would survive long enough to become viable. Everyone starts with at least 20 something HP, a reserve of healing surges, and a bunch of powers.

You have the power(s)!

The way 4e works, there are 3 kinds of powers: At-Wills, Encounters, and Dailies. A Daily power was your big, bad, possibly battle-winning or turning ability and everyone starts with one. Encounter powers can be used once per battle, they’re not as powerful as Dailies but they still pack a punch (or a heal), everyone starts with 1 or 2 of these. At-wills are the last type of power and your bread and butter in 4th edition. Unless you’re a strong fighter, these will essentially replace your basic attacks. You can use them as often as you like, they do a low but acceptable amount of damage and often have an effect or some other bonus tied to them.  This is fundamentally different than previous editions in that everyone starts out more or less equally capable.

Here’s where some more outcry came, at the loss of Spell Slots. Basically, in other version of D&D, a caster would have a certain number of spell casts per level. If you have 2 level 1 spell slots a day you can cast a level 1 spell twice, or two different level 1 spells once each. The spells you could cast each day were chosen from your list of known spells and you could only prepare a certain number a day. This made mages more thoughtful, more cautious, and you really valued a player who was good at choosing spells to prepare and knowing when to use them effectively. In 4e, they’re just types of powers. Cantrips (effectively level 0 spells) are your at-wills, most spells are encounter powers, and you had some big dailies, but couldn’t have all of them ready all the time. That’s how 4e kept the spell choice relevant, by making you prepare your dailies each morning, just like the old spellcasters. This wasn’t as important a decision as preparing all your spells, but it did streamline the process of creating a magic character, especially for new players. And there’s another one of 4th edition’s themes: accessibility!

Making a character in 2nd Edition AD&D is a pain in the butt if you’ve never done it before. First off, you roll stats, IN ORDER (strength first, constitution second, etc) and those stats determine what classes you were allowed to take. Realistic, sure, but not very good for a player who wants a cleric but isn’t wise enough to be one, or wants to be a fighter but rolls a 7 for strength. This could be quite discouraging for a new player.  Other players, upon seeing the list of spells and the paragraph (or two or three) that went along with each spell would just give up then and there. In 4th Edition you still had to choose your spells, but you had a specific list for your class as opposed to a big list for everyone with each spell denoting what classes could use it. It was so much easier to whip up a mage in 4e that I’m sure a lot of people who were scared off them in earlier editions gave them a shot.

Now let’s focus on choice. 4th edition is all about choices. At this point there are, no joke, DOZENS of classes you can choose from. Nearly every “major” class you can think of has 1-3 subclasses, some of which have their own subclass. For example: Andrew once ran an Executioner, which is a subtype of Assassin, which is a variant of the classic Rogue class. It’s a very specialized type of character, but he knew how to use it. Fourth Edition also grouped the classes by role: Striker (high damage, low defense), Defender (high defense, good melee damage), Controller (crowd control, minion elimination), and Leader (buffs/debuffs, sometimes healing). Within each role you can almost always find a class that fits how you want to play. Say you like the Ranger class, but want to be more of a controller, well you can choose Hunter, who has a lot of skill with a bow and some powers that better suit that role.  On top of all this there’s a dozen or so races to choose from, which allows for further customization. I once played a Goblin Ranger who was built to shift (a 5′ step that doesn’t incur attacks). I wove in an out of battle with such speed and ease it was almost unfair. But the monsters are just as ably equipped and annoying, so it was always a fair battle. My ranger played so differently than your normal ranger, it was a whole new experience. This customization and breadth of choices made 4e perfect for D&D Encounters. Every few months you’d get to try out some wacky new concept and really see how it works. Then you might take that character, tweak them a bit, and run them in a serious campaign using all the lessons you learned trying them out at Encounters.

So many feats!

Continuing with the theme of choice, there are Feats. I know 3e/3.5e both had a ton of feats and 4e does not disappoint in that area. There are far too many to count, but you can do almost anything you want with a character if you choose the right feats. I had a level 14 Warlock (4e goes to level 30) who, thanks to a feat, knew EVERY LANGUAGE IN THE PLAYERS HANDBOOK. With another feat, I got a +1 bonus to insight checks for every language I knew. At level 14, with those 2 feats, my insight check was +22, making my passive insight score a 31. For those who don’t know, that’s very VERY good.

Now no one can lie to me!

That campaign also has a player who took the feat Pacifist Healer. If he ever attacked a bloodied creature ( at 50% health or lower) he would be stunned for one round, but in exchange he got bonus dice to any divine healing powers he used. A lot of bonus dice, and they saved my character’s life at least twice. My favorite feat for Encounters characters was Stormhawk’s Vengeance. You see, I died nearly every week at Encounters. Sometimes it was a mistake on my part, but more often than not it was just a really good attack and damage rolls from the DM. Then Andrew pointed out this little feat to me and I started incorporating it into nearly all my characters. It’s simple, really: the moment you drop to 0 or lower hp the feat deals 10 thunder damage to the creature that did the damage. With this one feat was I able to make my almost certain death have some value to the party. Hell, in one session, the damage caused by my death killed the boss monster! And that’s just 4 of the hundred or so feats available for tweaking your character in just the right way.

Now let’s get to combat, where the real outcry seems to come from. Fourth Edition D&D is a very combat focused game, the books concentrate on it the most and every power is presented in terms of how it works in combat. Many people seem to think this meant you were to throw roleplaying out the window, but it’s more like they just shifted the focus. In any good D&D game, roleplaying comes naturally. Sure, the DM has to include it in his campaign, but you can’t really have a campaign without it unless you’re doing a straight dungeon crawl, and even then you have to RP a bit back in town. The books may not focus much on it, but everything you need for roleplaying is there for you to use. Every class has a good description of how they operate and see the world and the same goes for every race. Paragon paths all describe what kind of character would choose these areas of focus. Even the epic destinies, what happens to your character upon reaching level 30, all have a fleshed out description to help inform your decision. The only real dismissal of RP in 4th edition is that they gloss over roleplaying in the core books and make little mention of gaining experience points for them. But, as usual, that kind of thing is all up to the DM.

But combat is where 4e really shines. Battles may take a while, but they’ve always been fun for me and everyone I’ve played with. Your choices become validated, you show off for your friends, you and your party work together and develop a flow that can’t be beat. You are superhuman from the start and everyone knows it. It’s no longer a matter of avoiding every attack, it’s now about how you and your party can help each other and cooperate to defeat a foe, or foes. Your controller steps up and takes out half the minions (1hp enemies with high defense) with one spell. This gives your fighter a path to the bigger baddies that he begins to wail on. Your ranged player takes up a vantage point and helps the fighter from afar. And all the while your assassin is sneaking through the shadows to deliver devastating blows to unaware opponents. You’re proc-ing powers off of each other, you’re solving a puzzle with a dozen moving pieces, you are combat GODS. And it feels glorious! And that is the empowerment I’m talking about, being able to handle any situation as long as you keep on your toes. This made D&D accessible to a generation of videogamers who would be put off by the low starting power, and the power cards the Character Creator generates gave it an MMO feel these gamers could easily indentify with.

Just like your WoW action bar!

At it’s heart, 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons is roleplaying heavy miniatures combat game with a ton of options. I liked what little I played of 2e AD&D, and I really love how 5e/Next is shaping up, but I’ll always have a special place in my heart for the edition I started with. It’s big, loud, bombastic D&D. It’s a game were 4 level 1 characters can kick in the door and really clean house, as long as they think and work as a team. It’s a game where, like every good RPG, you and your friends weave amazing stories you’ll be retelling for years to come.