The D&D editions remind me of the Elder Scrolls in terms of depth and mechanics. First edition is brutally difficult like Arena, Second is stupidly complex like Daggerfall, 3.5 is massively open to playstyle like Morrowind, 4th is a lot more combat-oriented like Oblivion, and 5th is the easiest to get into like Skyrim.

You should do an edition review mini series or a video of the pros and cons of each editions

The best thing I have to say about 4th edition is that while playing as the Treekin race I managed to trade my actual arm and leg for some kind of super shield and then rolled a nat 20 to grow them back within the next three days.

I got banned for a day on 4chan/tg/ for "trolling with the truth is still trolling" by saying in a thread that "If D&D4E had been released with literally any name but D&D it would have been hailed as a landmark in cinematic fantasy superheroes: and a "D&D killer" game.

The Blade singer IS a thing for 5e. It's in the Sword Coast Adventure Guide.

"I do like the minions" now *that* is an abusable soundbite!

I came into D&D with 4th Edition. My DM did a good job with managing between encounters and interactions, so neither were overused. The system gave a helping hand when I didn't know how to react in combat, but enough space to be creative with my actions. It indeed had some comparisons to video-game mechanics, however that was ideal for my group at the time. When combat encounters occurred, the party looked at what they could do, then took to action, taking some time of course, but didn't become excessive as time went on. There were several pros and cons to 4E, but overall the experience was great. After 3 years of playing 4E - now with 5th Edition available - my group is resourceful enough to create their own events and cool reactions to the fantasy world, while still learning from them.

I have to pretend to seasoned tabletop players that I got my start earlier, but 4e D&D was what introduced me to the game and tabletop in general. You're right about it being a good transition for video game players to get into. Now, I am THE girl to come to in my town if you want to know tabletop. My collection fills a stand-alone closet in my garage. I cover a variety of genres and teach games at tabletop conventions. Because 4e was the "transitional" D&D, I try to find other games like it to bridge the gap for people who have been curious about tabletop and use them to make traditional video game players feel more comfortable at the table with seasoned veterans. All in all, much as I try to hide it, 4e did a lot of good in my life.

"In Defense of 4th Edition" - Uh oh... *Nervously looks at number of thumbs down.* Huh... It's a low number. What a relief.

"Two-weapon rangers were pretty common but bow-and-arrow rangers were rare" "monks were crazy overpowered in 3.5" Now I don't have a lot of actual experience with 3.5, personally, but this is literally the only two times I've heard these statements. Everyone says Monks are terrible and that two-weapon fighting sucks.

I think the best advise I got from this is making the encounters very important. When i tried it out with my friends, encournters were heavy as fuck and making them each important instead is probably the better way to go

Hello Jared, usually I don't comment much on KZfaq, but I wanna do it now for a reason. So, I'm in the middle of mid-age crysis or something, and your videos of D&D made me remember the good old days when I use to role play with some friends at some friend's house, basically, good times... and I realized that, I really missed that kind of interaction with people. Role playing it's really a thing of is own, I can't really explain the experience, but is something special. Summing it up, I contacted my old friends and told them to reunite for a D&D session, all of them loved the idea and overwhelmed me with suggestions, thanks for the inspiration Jared.

What I like about 4th edition is that it makes all the character classes equally cool and interesting. Some lose a bit of their uniqueness, such as the sorcerer, but most benefit from the new system of at-will-powers, encounter-powers and daily-powers.

"Look I made an arrow ladder, come on everybody lets go" *arrows snap immediately under weight of PCs*

The three best things that came out of D&D 4e: 1 - Redesign of the Tieflings 2 - The last passive power of the trickster rogue 3 - Will Save World for Gold

I never really understand the hate for any edition, or for other table-top RPGs like Pathfinder. I enjoy and play all of them (haven't tried fourth edition, but may after watching this) and currently I'm playing a campaign of D&D Fifth Edition as well as a Pathfinder campaign. Ultimately, what makes or breaks a game is whether or not: A.) You're with a group of people you like to be around and play games with, and B.) Whether or not the rules and mechanics of that game amplify or reinforce that mutual enjoyment, or allow you and your group to create and experience new and exciting things. That's why I play RPGs. Whichever edition is best is ultimately superfluous. Just enjoy the game!

I've never played D&D, but having Jared as a DM for 4th edition sounds like it'd be hella fun!

I think an issue with the editions in DnD is that the community often acts like only one edition should exist at once. If the NEW edition isn't the previous edition done BETTER, it must be discarded. If the new edition is "better", the older ones must not be played anymore. But I like how different 3.5 / 4 / 5 are from each others. After all, they're simply a ruleset, we make the story. It's a bit like we're modding a game, but we have access to three different ruleset to make our mod. So when a new Edition is released, I enjoy seeing them try new things. Even if the new edition doesn't fit with what I like, I still have access to the previous editions. I can still make my games with the rulesets I liked. People sometime see a new edition release, feel it has less choices than what they liked compared to previous editions, and say "DnD now has less choices", but that's false. The new edition might have less choices, but DnD as a whole now has more choices for us to use and experiment with. This isn't meant to discard every complaint thrown at 4th Ed, since criticism is still good (and led to a great 5th ed), only meant to give some context and to remind people that there's nothing wrong in sometime revisiting older editions when creating new campaigns or creating a new DnD group. They're still great games and available to use.

I personally believe that 4th Ed is the best entry point for most folks into Tabletop RPGs. Its designed to appeal to a wider audience and uses concepts that many people who play video games will understand instantly.

Perhaps my favorite thing about 4e was the massive amounts of customization. There were tons of races and classes to choose from, then numerous subclasses and paragon paths and epic destinies. No two characters ever felt alike unless you wanted them to. Sure, all those options can be intimidating, but better to have a plethora of choices than none at all. I really hope that 5e gets a few more race and class options because I really miss the huge number of options that 4e gave. It's somewhat chafing to not have all that variety after getting used to it.

Could you tell a story about a time you played with "that guy"

4th edition was very tactical. I liked the tactical parts. There are other considerations. WotC burned every bridge it could find while transitioning from 3.5 to 4. Their methods are what created Pathfinder, which continues to be their biggest competitor in the market. They drove the market away from them, and it didn't matter how good or bad the game was.

Raise your hand if you've ever been made fun of just because you liked 4th edition of D&D *Raises Hand*

"4th used squares so it sucked!!!" ya know, like OD&D that was literally based on miniatures.

The bladesinger did come back in 5th Ed! it's in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide as an Arcane Tradition for the Wizard!

4e is probably one of my favorite editions. Was a great entry point to TTRPGs for casual players who had never tried a TTRPG and weren't sure how to get started. It had some really nice, deep mechanics without being overwhelming. People love 5e to death but don't realize that half of 5e's sourcebooks are just practically copy-pasting from 4e's. I appreciate the depth of combat without taking away from roleplay. Sad that people hate it so much but it helped create 5e and of course the rules are always there if I want to start another 4e game.

Good god, the way you say Controversial is controversial in of itself

"Oh man I wish my fighter could only swing once instead of having all these cool abilities and powers".

i really want to play DnD except no one i know plays it

4e has a lot of awesome monsters that still haven't been brought to 5e

Wait, there's tabletop combat encounters that don't take hours?

Hey Jared, great video as always, but I have one HUGE request for a D&December video: How exactly do you PLAY D&D? I know that's a rather vague and complicated question, so let me be a bit more specific. - How does combat, magic, and skill checks/saving throws work? (Turn order, attacks, spell preparations, etc.) - How does experience and levelling up work? - How do all the little details work? (Distance, food, healing, resting, etc.) Again, love your videos, you're one of my favourite youtubers. Happy Holidays!

I started with 4e so it has a very special place in my heart. I still have every single damn book on my computer and finding those were a lot of fun. Now with settings for campaigns, I usually played 4e with an MMO style of combat because the powers are set up like that. However, I've fallen in love with Pathfinder.

I made a nigh-unkillable Warlock in 4e. That was fun

So glad you made this video, Jared. I started with 4e and really loved it. I really enjoy being able to mix classes with the hybrid rules from PH3, picking paragon paths that gave you more focused features on top of your base class, finding cool combos through feats and such and the combat was just awesome. I've been DMing 5e lately. It's fun and all, but I miss a lot of what I liked in 4e and how easy 4e made DMing with monster XP budgets, using minions and such. I really miss playing 4e and it's great to hear someone give it some love.

Roleplaying is not a product of a rule system.

Honestly, I feel like despite 4e shifting the focus a bit away from the non-combat aspects, you can still have a lot of fun roleplaying with 4th edition as long as you have a good GM who knows how to facilitate it in a system-agnostic way. I'm currently running a 4th edition campaign myself that takes a lot of elements from Final Fantasy, and my players (I hope) are very much enjoying the plot and NPC interactions. Skill challenges help for non-combat encounters, though I don't typically use them that often. The basic skill system is usually enough. We're a group that typically plays all sorts of different systems too (currently have a 5e and Pathfinder campaign in the works too), you just gotta play to the strengths of the system. In 4e's case, that would be balance and fun, tactical combat.

I began with 4th edition, and I agree on every point. I'm also glad you mentioned how balanced it is, when my group moved to 5th I was shocked at how once certain classes reached a certain level they could kill the rest of the party 1v4 style.

This makes me so happy; 4th edition was the version I got when all my friends wanted to play...but when I arrived they were disgusted by the fact that I bought that one and not 3.5 like they expected. I was crushed, because what I saw of it looked good and I assumed the newest version was the best one. I always stood by what Jared says when someone says it's "too this" or "too that".....that can always be made up for by a good DM. It's still the version I play to this day...

My biggest problem with 4thed is that it focused so much on having figurines, which I and my friends didn't have. So we mostly used 3.5 and pathfinder until 5thed came out.

My marathon of rewatching, liking, and commenting on every Jared video continues. Video 64

@ProJared -researching DnD to try and get into it I actually found out bladesingers are a thing in 5th edition. they are in the sword coast books I think.

I cut my teeth on AD&D (before 2nd ed). 4th is still my favorite, I was so tired of playing Casters and Caddies . . .

4E has, bar none, the easiest encounter creation of any edition of D&D and possibly in any tabletop RPG. It achieves this through having very balanced monsters. It achieves THAT through 4E's probably worst feature: scaling defenses. Monsters and PCs gain a bonus to their defenses equal to half their level (iirc) and this means you level out of range of monsters like you might in an MMO. This means that monsters -can't- be unbalanced realistically. But it also means monsters have a time limit on their utility. Minions are a "fix" for this, because they still get scaled defenses. If you used a low level monster in 4E, they'd be very very easy to hit and would never hit the party. This means that monsters appear in bands that can't be mixed, so in turn every game ends up featuring the same progression of monsters more-or-less. (unless you make your own)

My favorite addition to D&D overall, though I'm not entirely sure when it was done, was cantrips. Simple spells with minor effects that can be cast as many times as you like, giving magic users at least SOME way to be consistently doing things instead of just blasting one enemy followed by waiting around for an hour to do it again.

I want to see ProJared as a guess on Critical Role.

In a session with a particularly brutal GM I went through a Tactical Warlord who died to Kobolds (got mobbed by all of them, then failed death save 3 times in a row), then a Dragonborn Bard (because why not?) who died during a fight with a goblin/hobgoblin(I think) boss, literally the turn before the fight was over. Then I made a human Rune Priest and put all my feats into death save prevention, and he turned out to be quite durable, often bouncing up from being knocked out.

(I hope you're able to read this comment, ProJared) So coincidentally in D&December, my friends and I have started playing D&D for the first time (we are all brand new to the game, but our friend the DM is a fanatic). We have all quickly become addicted to the game and are meeting quite often to play. So we play with a DM who claims to play by 3.5 rules (we don't use Reflex, Willpower, etc.) yet we use the 4th edition handbooks, we have the 4th edition character sheets, we use minions and utility powers, and we do other stuff that from this video I just found out are fourth-edition exclusive. Personally, I love this game and I love this version! (I might be biased because this is the only really thing I know) But seriously, the combat would be so much more boring if we didn't play with all these rules and weren't allowed to have all this extra versatility to attack enemies in different ways! Our battles do last quite a long time usually (at least a twenty minutes to up to around forty-five depending on the battle) but I didn't realize until now that that was irregular. The thing that is most bothersome to me is that they did away with all the super cool races from fourth edition when transitioning into fifth, like Psyions and Wildens. Two members in our party were these extra-handbook races (myself included) and all of the apps on the Play Store for spellbooks and stuff are in fifth edition and don't include our races! :( Also, another member in our party only plays Archer class, and the class of my second character is a Warlock. Anyway, I thought I'd just share this tidbit of information with you, and let you know that I totally agree with you on the stance that fourth edition can be fun! I'm having a blast with it! (with what fourth-edition aspects we're using...)

I started with 4th, but I moved to 3.5 because it was way more versatile than 4th in character customization.

I have been playing D&D for a decade now. I’ve played almost every edition, 2nd, 3.5, 4th, 5th, and am starting a pathfinder game soon. And through my personal experience, 4th edition is my favourite up to date. It’s easier for me to follow, I have an easier time in spars that my party members engaged in to test our strength. It helped us know our limits and plan for future combat. I only wish others would give it a chance and would play it every once in a while.

This was quite educational. I continued to play 3.5 when 4th came out in part because I tend to buy the books and I was a bit younger so money was tight. But this makes me a bit more interested to look into it as I love 5th and from the sounds of things 4th is different but not bad. Cool

4th edition was the first edition i ever played. it was good to start out with, but after playing 5e, i never wanna go back.

Isn't the bladesinger available as a wizard archetype on 5E? They're in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide if I'm correct.

Great video! It's fun to be reminded of things I really loved about this edition. It brings back so many D&D memories that had faded.

Is the game better or worse if you imagine Minions as the yellow tictacs hoarding the party?

The Spellsinger is a AD&D 2nd edition elf subclass from the Elf Handbook.

I find it amusing when people argue about 4e. No matter the game system it's up to the gamers to have fun with it. Ran the game and role played the heck outta it. My players loved it.

Hey ProJared, just wanted to say, great video. I love your D&December stuff and it really inspires me, as a fledgling DM for my group of friends. I'm loving your stuff, and currently watching through your Ravenloft campaign with Commander Holly and company on the D&D company channel. I'm using it as research material on what to do and not to do in the Ravenloft campaign I will soon be running. Have a great D&December ProJared. :)

4e was amazing for monster building too.

4e was my first campaign, and I loved it then, and loved it now.

I started with 4th edition a few years back, and I haven't tried any other editions. But I'm curious about them. Can anyone tell me the options other editions provide that enhance and expand roleplaying?

You should do a one minute review of each edition! That would be pretty neat.

One I'm really happy this guy is still in the business of content creating.... Two I'm not sure why 4th edition vids keep popping in my feed... Three, I'm loving it... 4th was my first real intro into the series and I really miss playing it

Fourth edition sounds right up my alley. Love tactics thinking. Sounds kinda like the new board game mechs and minions in regards to the minions

always good to see Jared bringing positivity to the dnd world

I play first edition with a buddy of mine as DM, and I found a way to make Clerics useful - Just roll 18 for strength.

Honestly, the ease of use that 4e's character builder provided me when comparing multiple builds was amazing, especially because it incorporated nearly all books, magazine and power edits. A character having both a theme and a background allows a character to get useful utility powers and cool storytelling abilities both about the characters past and their future struggles or growth. My favorite addition is just the vast amount of classes, flavoring different combat styles to different power sources is boring on surface level, but the flavor text of each attack makes each attack feel unique. Plus, my first ever DnD character was a dwarf battlemind who for the heck of it multiclassed into cleric. Not only could I give my melee attacks extra powers using power points, I could use magic that relied on my wisdom instead of int. I could do so many things, because there were so many classes to multiclass to.

I really want to play D&D, but this one player keeps kicking my ass!

So D&D did the whole Minions ordeal before Despicable Me?

Wizards + at will powers made it so much less confusing and made them feel always useful

The way you explained fourth edition reminds me of a game that I still play today called Neverwinter, which is free on PS4 and PC. It has all the things you mentioned and it's really fun and I hope one day you could play it on your gaming channel.

Who else thinks ProJared should play D&D with Stephen Georg

Man, now I kinda want to play 4th edition.

5th Edition does have the Bladesinger class. In the Sword Coast player's book they added Bladesingers for Elves to play as.

The Bladesinger is one of my favorite classes. It originated in 2nd edition, and has already come out for 5th. You can find it in the Sword Coast Adventure Guide as a Wizard school. It's REALLY good!

As soon as I heard dragonborn I got some great skyrim flashbacks

I've been wanting to play DnD forever, but never had anyone to play with or any kits, nor do I know much about the editions and such. Any place I can find people to play with?

I'm glad you made this video since I'm about to DM my very first game of D&D this month and I picked 4E even though I also have Pathfinder and 5E. I just thought that 4E would be kinda simple to start with but I must say I have been thinking if I made a right choice.

I loved playing 4e with a local group while it lasted. The problem really came when our DM was pissed that none of the PCs were dying (despite the fact that he would drop at least one of us per combat). It turned into a competition. I got so fed up with it that I made a broken Ardent (my fav 4e class) and he eventually got so fed up with the game that we ended up playing 2nd edition when he decided to run it again. The group fell apart soon after that.

I love videogames and I loved 4th edition. I had a lot if fun with it and enjoyed running games in it.

I got started with 3.5, and moved on to Pathfinder after that, because it was so similar that it was pretty easy for me to learn. I've never gotten to play any other edition of D&D yet (partly because I don't know the rules, and I don't know anyone else IRL who does), but I've been interested in 4th Edition for a few years now. The "video game-y" elements and Swordmage class (I love magic knights) sound appealing enough that I want to at least try it someday. So I can't really talk about 4e at all, since I don't know much. But I do know a decent amount about 3.5 and Pathfinder, so I can say this: Some of the stuff you said at the beginning about Monks and Clerics in 3.5 is... very wrong. Monks are generally considered pretty bad in 3.5, because they were dependent on too many stats at once, and a lot of their abilities didn't mesh too well, and Clerics... well, they call it CoDzilla for a reason. They were definitely good at more than just healing.

As someone who plays a lot of fighter based characters, I loved 4e especially for the reason that it wasn't boring. I never once had to go through an encounter telling the DM that I was doing a full attack round after round. I was able to use these awesome powers in different combinations that allowed tactical manipulation of the miniatures on the table. I finally felt like a full member of the adventuring party that no other edition has been able to reproduce. I will always love 4e over the other editions.

I miss the tactical wizards. I had a 4e wizard named Rellen, and it was always so fun to lay down lasting area affecting attack. The minions would just melt and the big guy would either be cornered for my swordmage friend or be slowly chipped away by my spell, often both.

4e is the s***, i personally enjoyed it a lot, i don't have anything to back that up but still, i enjoyed it and if you didn't, than leave me alone

4th edition is actually the version I played. It was fun, and I agree with everything you say entirely!

I started with 4E, and as a DM I loved it. You made all of my points, so I'm not going to make them again. As a player, though... there was too much for me to keep track of. Yeah they introduced a ton of really cool things for players, but the four different types of Defense constantly confused and frustrated me, I didn't really understand the preparation of all spells for every Arcane spellcaster, and I could go on. As a player, I enjoy 5e much more than 4th.

I have only ever played with 4th edition and I'm so glad you made this video. I feel one of the perks to 4th edition was because the classes were built similarly, my friends starting for the first time could try other characters without getting too confused.

4e is by far and away the best edition of d&d. Monsters have roles in this game, its balanced, its clean, every class can almost always bring something to the table. Combat is and should be the main focus of ttrpgs amd 4e is the first and only edition to embrace it and to actually introduce an indepth interesting system that allowed players AND monsters to nearly always have a ton of options. I played 3.5 and pathfinder for most of my life and totally slept on 4e for years, I just believed what people always said, how bad and different it is. Only started playing it about a year ago and honestly it was just years ahead of its time. With the success of 5e (which I dont get btw the game is dull af), I hope more people will try to look into older editions and discover the absolute brilliance of 4e.

I think 4th is so underrated. I've been playing fourth for like 6 years now and I think I'd rather play 4th over 5th by far. Honestly though 3.5 is tied for 4th for me. Both great and better and different aspects of D&D

Me and my friend are actually doing a d&dcember, we are doing a session a week for the whole month, thanks for the idea!

Yo ProJared, nice video and all. By the way, they did release the Bladesinger in the 5th edition, it's in Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.

Played a DnD 4th campaign some years ago, it was actually one of the longest campaigns I've ever played (mostly thanks to our awesome DM). To be honest, even though it's totally different from "normal" DnD, I quite enjoyed it, more than the powerplaying clusterf**k that's 3.5. THERE I SAID IT

At-will magic which became cantrips in 5th were pretty great.

Yo Jared, just wanted to say thanks for all the D&D content, i've only recently gotten into the game and it's awesome that there is so much content going around about the game.

ill always remember when i saw two level 14 monks in 3.5e go toe to toe. one got initiative and rolled in the fourteens and missed all of his attacks, the other hit every one of his attacks and brought the other monk to -10 in one round. fear the monk with the high base stat total, because they snowball like your average avalanche.

I've only played 4th edition. I enjoy it. I have fun with it. I don't get why people are hating on it tbh

You say monks are powerful, one of the things I hear from most of the people I've ever read from or talked with is that monks suck hard. So now I'm rather confused. "4th edition is very tactical!" which is cool! Having a very tactical RPG is a nice option! I have ZERO ability for map tactics. My options would either be to avoid tactically valuable abilities for ones that fit my mental abilities better, or have someone else help me with combat, which, in a combat-heavy system like 4th Edition, pulls away from actually being involved in the game myself. Short rests, now THAT'S where I think 4th's effect on the D&D scene as a whole shines through. That, and (in my opinion) the 5E paths system (picked up from Paragon and the like in 4th). Paladin oaths, Bard colleges, it not only fuels nonstandard class-to-character designs (not every paladin has to be Arthur "Stick-Up-My-Ass" McJustice!), it also helps fuel somewhat more balanced homebrew - instead of having to homebrew an entire new class for a concept that's "like X existing class but different in THIS way!" you can just design a homebrew path for an existing class. And since each path has similar parts with very specific progression, it's more solidified in that manner. Archetypes in Pathfinder served a similar function, but since any given archetype could replace entirely different class features from another archetype, it was still hard to truly balance. 5th edition paths, on the other hand, were their own thing - the only thing one path replaced was that you didn't get another path's bonuses. I think the main problem most people have with 4th edition is that it feels so divorced from the other D&D systems in design while still holding the D&D name.

Bladesinger has been around forever bro, know your content.

Thank you for a positive video, and an informed review of the actual edition, versus some vids I've seen on this. Just the fact that you're not obnoxious is incredibly appreciated.

Ugh Jared bladesingers are in 5e, in the sword coast adventure guide they are a subclass for wizard