YMMV / Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition

• Broken Base: After WotC released a new set of core books called "Essentials", there was a heavy flame war between people who liked "pre-E" D&D and those who like "post-E". The former group tended to call the new set "4.5", the latter getting positively enraged at seeing this moniker.
• Critical Backlash: During its release, some of the overwhelming fan backlash to 4e was so over the top that even people who admitted to not liking the game came out and said it wasn't that bad. In the years since, as fan reception to Pathfinder's Hackmaster approach of stubbornly adapting third edition Warts and All slowly cooled and 5e became one of the most successful versions of the system ever, incorporating a few of 4e's old ideas in the process, it's more and more common to hear people talking about 4e in terms of its ambitions to deal with longstanding problems with D&D, even if it didn't always succeed. Some have argued that 5e is too risk-averse in a reaction to 4e's reception, the "Coca-Cola Classic" to 4e's "New Coke." Even the old criticism that 4e was clearly just trying to Follow the Leader to pick up some shine from the then world-shatteringly popular World of Warcraft has lost some luster, both in terms of gaming historians unearthing similar criticisms of 3e and Diablo II and questioning whether or not the AEDU system was ever a fair comparison to the way World of Warcraft handled class powers instead of an easy way to paint complaints about core changes as Follow the Leader rather than just changes.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Warlord is well-liked for being an effective magic-less support class, including unique mechanics for bolstering, rearranging, and supporting allies by giving them more options ("a Barbarian hits you with his axe, a Warlord hits you with his Barbarian"). A variation that took this to its ultimate extreme was the "Lazylord" build that never used a single attack themselves, always granting their attack to an ally. The class had some significant critics, though, and so didn't make it into 5E as a separate class, instead being turned into a couple of fighter subclasses, with the Battlemaster in the PHB and the Low-Tier Letdown Banneret in the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide. Keith Baker made an unofficial bard variant in his Exploring Eberron sourcebook that covered some of the same ground.
  • As far as races go, the Warforged from Eberron were very well received (though they had been around since the 3.5 version of the setting. The Shifters were also well-liked, but not as much as the Warforged. These two races (and Changelings) were put in as monsters in the first Monster Manual for 4E, and Shifters were introduced as a playable race in the second 4E Player's Handbook. Warforged were made playable in any setting thanks to a free(!) Dragon article on Wizards' official site.
• Fandom Rivalry: Paizo Publishing, who published Dragon magazine for WotC from 2002 to 2007, developed their own campaign setting called Pathfinder for 3.5E. Amidst the mixed reception to 4E, they came up with their own significantly less drastic rework of 3.5E (to the point where most splats can be ported with a few minutes' pencilwork with the aid of an official guide) to go with their setting, and marketed it as an alternative to 4E under the Open Gaming License. This was the inevitable result.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Essentials. Not in-and-of themselves, mind you, and not so much if you're in an all-Essentials group, but consider the following. Prior to the release of Essentials, basic attacks were just that, basic. They were usually the weakest hitting things for damage dealers, and didn't have all the cool effects other powers did. Thus, classes such as Bards, Warlords and the like which gave out basic attacks like candy would only marginally influence the tide of battle. Now enter the Essentials, which are based around improving or replacing basic attacks: Slayers that wield 2-handed weapons that deal as much as 4 weapon damage on a single basic attack; Scouts that get granted one melee attack and are suddenly making 3 or more of them; latter additions give us Vampires that effectively become unkillable as long as they keep hitting, and the Bladesinger that adds a burst of various magical damage each time he hits. Yikes.
  • Clerics have a level 1 daily power called "Moment Of Glory", which gives the entire group resist 5 to all damage until the end of the fight, which is pretty much an automatic "we win" at low levels (as most creatures at level 1 could barely do enough damage to actually hurt anyone.) It gets less ridiculous at high levels, (where most enemies do enough damage per hit to still pose a threat), but by then the Cleric probably gets new daily powers anyway.
  • There is a 15th level Ranger power called "Blade Cascade," which allows multiple hits as long as the previous hit connects. This inspired game-breaking accuracy builds; one such (Kenshiro "Ratata" Orcuslayer) could kill Orcus at level 15 as long as the player did not roll a 1 (which is an automatic failure) on the d20. Wizards of the Coast quickly issued an errata stating that the maximum number of hits on the power was 5 (1 per 1.25 seconds of the combat round).'
  • Sleep is a first level Daily spell that knocks people out, making them vulnerable to continuous Coup de Grâce attacks. You can use Salves of Power, (which cost 5000 GP and a Healing Surge) to regain this power. And until recently, getting a -16 continuous penalty to saves was quite easy (now it's basically impossible, although you can still get a fairly high penalty to saving throws for one or two rounds).
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The complaints about 4E ripping off World of Warcraft got at least a bit funnier when another Blizzard game was released that featured character roles that lined up pretty well with 4E's (Offense, Defense, Tank, and Support vs. Striker, Controller, Defender, and Leader).
• Older Than They Think: Ritual magic needing a much longer time to cast earned a lot of flak, but in reality many of the spells that were given the Ritual treatment in 4e had already had casting times measured in turns, minutes, hours or even days in older editions, including 3rd.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • It'd be easier to list what didn't elicit this reaction; there's a reason 4E is widely regarded as the single-most controversial edition in D&D's history.
  • The AEDU system, which provides a universal underlying system and layout for all attacks rather than making weapon combat and spellcasting use entirely separate systems, was widely criticized as "turning all classes into spellcasters" or "trying to copy World of Warcraft."
• Vindicated by History: Of a sort. The game was savaged for being "oversimplified" and too much like an MMORPG. But as time went on, players started to realize it actually did a few things right:
  • The most notable thing about it was how easily it blended miniatures and combat experience together. While miniatures have always been a thing with Dungeons & Dragons, they were themselves subject to a somewhat Broken Base. Additionally, the way combat was treated, when combined with the use of miniatures, allowed for some very tactical and methodical combat — this allowed for some much more elaborate combative and even dungeon-based scenarios made for the Dungeon Master to have an easier time with.
  • One of the reasons the rules were "oversimplified" was due to how daunting 3.5E was. Players scoffed at this, but as The New '10s went on players came to appreciate more "accessible" rules, since Pathfinder had a tendency to scare people with the density and granularity of its rules even at a core level. One particularly example is the way Pathfinder 2nd Edition changes were meant to address issues with PF 1E that had been carried over from D&D 3.5, so ultimately similar mechanics resulted in both D&D 4E and PF 2E (probably also contributed to by one of the key designers of PF 2E having previously been part of the D&D 4E design team). However, it proved to be so dense that it wasn't a viable competitor until 5E was Overshadowed by Controversy.
  • It was also very much appreciated for helping to balance the martial and caster disperacy. 3.5E and even Pathfinder were notorious for martial classes like Fighter only being able to hit harder at higher levels while Wizards could solo entire encounters, Clerics and Druids easily rendering martials almost completely redundant, and many things intended to balance them either didn't work or were controversial. Additionally, utility spells in this edition saw a new use in combat that allowed casters to manipulate the battlefield and see more results, while the ritual mechanic helped reduce feelings of opportunity cost for using them to creatively solve problems away from the battlefield.

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