The Fifth.

Dungeons and Dragons calls itself “World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game” , and has the history to defend it, however in 4E roleplaying felt conspicuously absent.

It’s no surprise that Dungeons and Dragons is currently enjoying a renaissance. D&D’s visibility has surged in the last five years, with references coming from Stranger Things to the Tonight Show. The overall rise in boardgaming has been good for D&D, but none of the current success would be possible if the 5th Edition of D&D, released in 2014, was not such a vast improvement over the 4th.

The Flaws Of Fourth

Dungeons and Dragons calls itself “The World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game” , and has the history to defend it, however in 4E roleplaying felt conspicuously absent. Focus in the game was given to combat, and outside of combat, skills and spells were rare. It was difficult to create distinct characters, there were fewer possible alignments (how a character feels about Good vs. Evil) and less choices for personality.

A contributing factor for the problem of poor roleplaying was the lack of class identity. The At-Will, Encounter, Dailey, and Utility power system made it easy to create characters and felt natural to players coming from online games such as World of Warcraft, however, it resulted in all the classes playing essentially the same way i.e. Fighters using combat moves the same way Wizards cast spells. For players used to imagining combat as realistic this system is jarring. Many players describe 4E as feeling “like a board game instead of an RPG”.

The flaws in this system carried over to the way combat worked. Compared to D&D before and after 4E, characters have notably more health points in 4th Edition. One of the complaints about earlier editions was that  low-level characters died frequently. 4E tried to correct this by increasing characters hit-points, which did result in less character death, but also caused combat to draw out in length, further exasperating the “board game” feel of the edition.

What Fifth Did Right

Perhaps the best decision made in regards to 5E was the extended playtesting period. From May 2012 to September 2013 anyone could signup and receive an email playtest packet. The feedback D&D received from playtesters shaped 5th Edition into a set of rules that are easy to use, but provide an immersive roleplaying experience.

Character development takes a central role, players can now choose from an array of backgrounds, goals, ideals, and flaws as they create their character. The older version of alignment was restored and Dungeon Masters are encouraged to reward players for making decisions in character.

D&D scrapped 4E’s combat power system and returned to older editions use of spells and abilities, while using a “proficiency bonus” to reduce the number of statistics players have to keep track of. Each class, even the different spellcasters, feels vividly different, and have different paths available within the class. Abandoning the power system also made combat easier for all groups. In 5th edition the Dungeon Master can use different rule variants to make combat as simple or as complex as they desire.

4th Edition D&D split the RPG community into several different groups; some players played 4E, others stayed with older editions of D&D, and some moved on to other games, such as Pathfinder. 5th Edition corrected many of the flaws of 4E and created a system that any group can use for their own preferred RPG experience.