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Having quietly lurked on these forums for a couple of years, I  finally decided to actually say something myself after purchasing the 4e core books.

I started playing D&D 3.5 about 4 years ago, and when 4e was published, I figured the message boards would be transformed into a pro-/anti 4e flame war, and therefore decided to avoid the forums for the time being, read the new core books and form my own opinion about the new edition. So about a week ago I bought the core books.

I must say that there are a couple of things I really like about the new edition. Giving powers to every class is really brilliant. The fighter can finally do more things than simply ”attacking with his longsword”, and with his at-will and encounter spells, the wizard will always have something to do.  (after all, you play a wizard because you want to do magic).

There is however, a huge problem with the new magic system that has not (as far as I have seen) been adressed in-depth on the message boards. A problem that, in my opinion, renders the wizard class and, to some extent, the entire game, unplayable. It is not the system that is the problem (as I said, the at-will/encounter/daily spells are brilliant), but rather the spells themselves.

First of all, there are far too few spells to choose from, and they are all very similar to one another. One spell deals 3d8 points of damage and knocks the target prone, while another does the same but makes the target immobilized instead of prone, and a third damages and knocks prone characters in a small area of effect a bit away. Practically all spells seem to be useful only in combat situations (deal damage, bonus to attacks, penalty to AC and so on). Even several among the utility spells seem to be designed for use only in combat.

What happened to the other, non-combat spells? What happened to summoning demons and demanding their service? What happened to creating powerful illusions, shapechanging into other creatures or becoming gaseous? What happened to charming and dominating people, and talking to them through their dreams? It might sound silly, but even simple spells like create water and discern north gave the impression that magic was something beyond ”3d8 + charisma points of psychic damage”.

While I understand that rituals have been created to serve exactly this purpose, they are nevertheless far too few to compensate for the loss of the non-combat spells of the spellcasting classes.

It feels as if the spellcasters have lost their versatility and have ultimately been stripped down to nothing more than combat machines capable of only dealing some damage and then stunning, dazing or perhaps sliding the target a few feet. What happened to reshaping the ground, changing the weather and creating clones of yourself?

This lack of versatility also becomes apparent when you are designing adventures. When practically all magic is only usable in combat, your adventure design choices drop drastically. No more dominated barons or dukes. Not even the good old necromancer works anymore, since the core books do not mention any magic even remotely similar to animating the dead.


If we turn our attention to combat magic, I cannot help but notice the abscence of spell-like abilities as I flip through the monster manual. The player character's combat choices may have increased, but it seems to me that the monster's choices have been severely restricted. For an extreme example, take a look at Orcus, Demon Prince of the Undead. He has only three different attacks to choose from. He is a Demon Prince and yet he does not have access to any magic at all? What happened to conjuring walls of fire, blasting his enemies with negative energy and imprisoning their souls in jars? A battle against Orcus in which he can do nothing more than to hit his opponents with his rod until he runs out of his 1525 hit points does not seem to be very exciting to me.

To wrap it all up, I feel that the magic system in fourth edition focuses far too much on combat, and leaves the spellcasters with practically no spells that are useful outside a fight. This severely limits the versatility of the spellcasting classes and the game in general, reduces the flavour of the game and makes magic seem less, well, magical.

The new system increases the player's options in battle, but the lack of spell-like abilites greatly restricts the monster's options and inevitably leads to quite boring battles in which the villains is restricted to one or two different attacks.

What are your thoughts on this?

I guess I'll just have to wait for 4.5 and hope they have fixed this problem by then, but it looks like I'll have to stick to 3.5 till then.

Ritual Magic; pg 296 of the Player's Handbook. The stuff that broke the last edition isn't there (minion creation, mental domination, make-god-get-me-stuff spells), but there's a good selection of non-combat magic and there's going to be more with every publication.

As to the rest of your post; You're entitled to your opinions, but I'd suggest giving it all a thorough play-test before you write the system off. Casters now play like everyone else, and that's the point.

I'm too tired to address your post point by point without dissolving into a rant about people who want casters to be able to do everything and how they ruined the last edition, so I'll end this here.

Toftarn wrote:

What happened to the other, non-combat spells?

The game devs decided that it would be much easier to balance the game by removing such effects and making the game entirely about dealing damage. Unfortunately, some people believe that only a system that enforces balance this way can be balanced. This is probably the only reason 4e even exists IMO.

rivaltuna wrote:

I agree. I'm sticking to 3.5 because I simply don't like the flavor of 4.0, the way it handles, or basically anything about it. I absolutely HATE what they have done with Faerun.
I have tried the new system, me and my 4 gaming buddies agree that it is complete and utter ****.
It IS like WoW, which we won't go to D&D to play, if we wanted a tabletop mmo, we'd use the WoW tabletop RPG.
On the bright side, all the 3.5 books are on clearance :D

It's nothing like WoW. But that's your opinion, and your entitled to it. At least you gave it a try. Sorry you didn't enjoy it, and hey, good luck finding a full set of 3.5 books .