For a number of reasons, D&D 4e is widely considered the most hated iteration of the classic TTRPG. But why? And is the hate fair?
I’m going to look at some of the reasons why people hate on 4e and why I kept my distance for many years.
People are obviously entitled to their opinions and what follows is chiefly my opinions mixed with some online information and thought of folks I’ve met with strong opinions about this version of D&D.
What’s wrong with D&D 4e?
It didn’t feel like D&D
I cut my teeth on Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition. When I started playing, the Player’s Handbook had just came out so we are talking 1989 some time. That’s the D&D I played until about 1995 when the real world took over and I wasn’t able to play very often.
Some of my friends kept playing and moved through D&D 3, and 3.5 but I never really did. D&D for me was THAC0 and descending armor class. All the things. Then something magical happened: I had four boys!
My oldest about about 14 when D&D 5e came out. I bought and read the books and started him and his younger brother playing as soon as we could. The younger two jumped in not long after. My youngest song has played D&D more than half his life.
Let’s be honest about 5e. It’s a kids game. It’s designed for 12 years to be able to play. That’s what I played for a decade before being roped into playing fourth edition. So coming to D&D 4e as an adult was rough.
My first complaint: It feels like an MMO.
My best friend for the last several decades never agreed with that, but he didn’t play Everquest, WoW, or Guild Wars. So he didn’t see things the way I did. Many people felt the same.
In D&D 4e you have a strong push for balance among characters (what’s stronger than a 10th level wizard in 2e?) and a hard shift towards grid play and digital play.
In D&D 4e, everyone had ‘spells’. Now for fighters they were martial powers but were essentially spells. It felt gamified. More like a video game than the old theatre of the mind I was used to.
Everyone looked the same on paper
Everyone had Daily powers, encounter powers, at-will powers, and utility powers. Rogues, warlocks, mages, bards. They were all the same. At least on paper.
For a lot of players, it seemed like 4e was just cycling through your powers in every encounter and either you lived or you died. I’m not to the ‘defend 4e’ section yet, but I had to admit that this perception was true for every iteration of D&D to varying degrees.
Combat took forever
This one is true. Especially in the early versions of the game. For those that don’t know, there were three versions of the Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s guide in D&D 4e. Two versions of the Monster’s Manual but the third didn’t happen.
By the third version of the books the long combat was addressed. Monster HP was adjusted and hit frequency was adjusted as well.
It still took a long time. Especially for new players and higher level characters. D&D 4e went to 30 levels.
The long fights made the game very combat heavy. A lot of players didn’t like that. When I started playing in my late 40s, it was a real hang up for me.
4e dropped as the internet was exploding
There have been some very bad things hit the market over the last 100 years. Chances are, if it happened before 2004 you never heard about it.
As internet forums and chat programs became more prevalent in society, so did the ability to complain globally.
Ironically, one of the greatest tools D&D 4e hoped to exploit became their downfall. Whenever someone had a complaint about, well anything, they ran to their keyboard.
This same tool worked in D&D’s favor during the pandemic when Critical Role took the world by storm and everyone was suddenly playing D&D 5e remotely. D&D over the internet was one of the expressed design goals of 4e that never really got much traction. Which is sad because it really was built for it.
Tune in for the good
Next time I’ll make some counter arguments to these points and discuss a little more about my first experience’s with 4e.
Here is a post about getting your kids started playing D&D