Why 4th Edition is the "WORST" Edition in Dungeons and Dragons

I stared playing RPGs with PF2e so when I read about 4e it doesn't seem so bad lol

My table just dropped 5e for 4e and I think it was one of our best decisions yet

All d&d (every edition) is combat focused. 4e just took the mask off

4e > 5e, 5e doesnt even deserve to be called a game.

I don't like these attempts at hyper entertainment reviews ...too focused on trying to be funny...and failing

Every edition after Second edition sucks. But fortunately I created my own third edition using players opinions and beliefs.

i took the setting i run from a 4e book! thats why it seems like murder hobo heaven!!! though the fact that the setting literally has a murder hobo FACTION players can join probably doesnt help...

I never got into 4e. Like, never had a game actually really get started and rolling in it. Didn't help that the few times I tried, everything felt... very pigeonholed into doing A or B if I was X class. And there didn't feel like a lot of utility to do anything that wasn't some variation of 'I hit him'.

So 4th edition is basically a telltale games: video game, where 5th edition (& maybe the others) are like a Lego video game,

I am a video game player that really wants to get into D&D

I do wonder how much 4e you played. I agree it had its issues, but I had plenty of awesome heroic adventures in 4e. It seems like you decided to make a quick video about 4e and it how it sucks and then gave the standard three or four facts everyone says with out much details. I would recommend playing it for a bit. Is 4e the greatest no, but I disagree that it’s the worst, and I also disagree it ruined math, 4e’s math is right, it’s the easiest system to mod in the go when it comes to leveling up monsters and knowing they will challenge the level you chose. Example take a 1st level orc and level it to 30th which takes one click, you know that that 30th level orc will challenge a 30th level character. In 3.5 that level up would take you a better part of a month! In the end the golden rule applies if you have fun play a certain edition play it! I find bashing videos like this are beneath us as a community! ❤

Ah 4E Wizards attempt at making DnD into a video game yeah which kinda fell flat on it's face let's take all the classes oh that you have to buy multiple books for you had to buy like 3 books to get all the base classes. Let's streamline all the classes where there is literally no difference between each of the class slots seriously there was no difference between a martial tank and a primal tank. Let's make magical missile miss let's give all magical equipment limited usage yeah no thanks there were reasons why 4E was the shortest running edition between it, 3.5, and 5E.

4E's core issue was being sold as THE DnD edition rather than a side game (DnD Tactics), while being designed around being played using a digital toolset that they couldn't actually finish and publish.

There was also the fact that there were really only 4 classes in the game that each had a bunch of different reskins on them.

It was such a drastic change in what DnD was that an entire studio that had made official adventure modules for 3.X split off and became their biggest competitor, Paizo with Pathfinder (often called DnD 3.75). Another part of it was that they created the Game System License for it instead of using the OGL like in 3.X and 5, which was another big part of why Paizo split off.

The fact that they built 5E based on 3.X and returned to the OGL is a great example of what they did wrong.

"Imagine taking the rules of DND, and then forget everything, the math, the mechanics, everything"
That's literally every edition lmao, also... A whole lot of these complaints can be applied to 5e, especially the "every class feature being combat focused", especially compared to 3.5

Been playing for 20 years now, and 4th edition was easily some of the most fun I have had as a player. One of the best parts of 4th was that everyone had something exciting to do in combat, unlike martial classes now that wait 30 minutes to swing their sword and miss.

I always thought of it as the "special" edition of DnD...

so we went from 3.5 were you could customize everything... you want a wizard in heavy armor with d6 HP? sure thing. You want a dragonborn, sure they even explain dragonborn puberty.

To.... a D20 system with feats and skills that were so unbalanced. that pretty much every character had to take the same feats or get anylated in the first round of combat.

it was short lived not bad. People didnt get it that's all, i am sure the will be played more after this rant. So thx

I admit, it was a shock, but no less a shock as the power gamer maximum math edition called 3.5. Where doing taxes was more entertaining. And it made combats take forever as everyone spent hours squeezing ever last modifier out of a situation. D&D lost it's way mid way through 2nd edition. And hasn't been on the right path since.

This video implies influencers are gods and I don't care for this headcanon

All jokes aside, that is was pretty much the issue with 4e.
It was not technically a "BAD" game. It just wasn't D&D.

The straight answer without the theatrics is that 4E was liable to have extremely long combats (especially for newcomers) on account of things like having lots of stacking temporary modifiers to keep track of for everything, et cetera.
There were some other things that some took issue with, but that's the main gist of why it's so infamous.
I'm sure experienced groups can run it far faster, though, by knowing which beginner's traps in the system to avoid... and having some way of keeping track of everything.

The worst edition was and still is 5E just trash, the best is AD&D :-)

I used to hate 4th, but now I am seeing the light. Over time, the game's grown on me, and the combat is simply the most fun and engaging of any RPG. 3.5 is a terrible game after about level 10. And it just gets worse.

Have to disagree with the central take here. 3rd edition was the wild departure from classic DnD: new publishers (WotC instead of TSR) and a focus on character customization rather than "This is one of ~12 classes/kits."
4th edition was a streamline and balance-pass that unfortunately didn't capture the right feeling of gameplay, but most of its changes carried into DnD 5e and Pathfinder 2e.

4th Edition, as a game, has its problems, just like the other editions.
What made it a catastrophe, was WotC and Hasbro's behavior around it:
- Pairing the edition with a restrictive License (the GSL).
- Pushing for virtual tools (that didn't really work).
- Odd monetization decisions, like advertising the mechanics behind a paywall (retroactively).
- Massive layoffs
Etc.

It's a good thing that they learned from Fourth Edition, and will never do the same mistakes again...

best version.

4e is probably the best edition of D&D.

Puffin Forest made a very good vid on what's wrong with 4e and he actually was originally planning it to be a vid defending it. But then all the memories came flooding back and he realized it was actually pretty rubbish.

Short version: Tabletop games are not video games and should not try to be video games. It's not the same thing.

Death saving throws were an optional rule as far back as 1983 red box, and cantrips date back to 1st edition.

I'm glad I only used the books as reference material. The stories I told could be kept together by encountering a thief, without knowing it, and getting your toy stolen. NPCs fix a lot of things lol

Some people love 4e. I have some but Pathfinder is better.

4th edition will always be better than 5e.

"Combat is the main feature of 4th."

Like 5th isn't a combat simulator.

Also, we don't talk about it as much now, but 4e did the same thing as the recent OGL debockle...in addition to having combat that took too long and making the many many many books 3.5 created obsolete.

That said it made martials as mechanically interesting as casters, invented minons, and had monsters with really, really cool abilities.

Why do I feel like people who only play dnd5e are people who don't like tactical combat and just want to play make believe without remembering their character, rules, abilities, inventory, etc? Yes I played with people like that.

A little late to the party, but you want to know what other D&D edition was criticized as being like a video game? 3E! Wild, I know.

I've said it for years and I"ll say it again.
D&D 4e should have been named D&D Tactics.
That's what it is and it works well in that way. Marketing it as just a new edition is what killed it.
But hey, it gave us Pathfinder, and now we have the ORC.

Not sure how they broke math when if anything they had the math down so strict it was almost limiting. Not that it was perfect, mind, but basically every monster of a role would have roughly the same stats, deal about the same damage sans maybe DoTs, and players were expected to have a certain + to hit, AC etc.

Also there was actual structure to roleplay encounters presented in the DM's guide to make them more substantial. I imagine most ignore those Skill Challenge rules, but you can't say they didn't put more effort than other editions where it's mostly just rolling skills as needed and that's it, when it comes to the gameplay part of it.

Objectively terrible edition. I would rather play 5th, and I think 5th is a burning trash pile.

People didn't like 4e because it was harder to cheese, while 3.5e had so many poorly written rules that it was easy to break the game.

I feel like a lot of these comments weren't true as I've gotten into 4e and its failures weren't because of the system but poor management of wotc

4e was a video game without a computer. The problem was, that computers are far better at math than humans.

cringe

I saw someone say that everytime people describe a fix they want for 5e, they're describing 4e or pathfinder2e. I never played 5e, but it's accurate for pathfinder2e.

Still got my 4e books

4th edition is my favorite game to run and misunderstood.

I played 2nd, 3rd, 3.5, 4th and 5th. If I could only choose one edition to play for the rest of my life it would be ed4. Second is just dumb, 3rd is overcomplicated, 3.5 is broken and 5th is boring. The only thing 4th was missing is advantage and disadvantage. Skill challenges by the way is one of the best D&D mechanics.

Cantrips come from Pathfinder, not 4e

4e is definitely my favorite edition as a player. It can be a royal pain in the ass to DM though compared to either 3.5e or 5e.

Most of the "it's too combat focused" criticisms never made much sense to me. Every edition's rules are like 90% combat focused, and 4e actually has more rules pertaining to non-combat stuff than any other. If there was a lack of RP in your 4e campaigns, that's a DM/table issue, not a system one.