The division between arcane and divine magic already existed in D&D third edition, but the six power source division helped to define certain lore aspects, such as barbarians explicitly drawing their power from the same source as druids.
While a four-role division existed in D&D existed since AD&D 2nd edition (grouping classes into warrior, wizard, priest and rogue), and arguably since Original D&D (magic user, fighting man, cleric and thief), D&D 4e was the first to make the division of party role an explicit part of class design.Īdditionally, all classes have a specific power source which describes the origin of their abilities: arcane, divine, martial, primal, psionic, and shadow.
Role defines the purpose of this class within a party: controllers create area effects to manipulate the battlefield or attack many enemies at once, defenders attract and absorb enemy attacks to protect other party members, leaders support the party with healing or other beneficial effects, and strikers deal large amounts of damage.ĭuring development of D&D 4e, the role system was a well known concept in massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft, where these roles were popularly known as crowd control, tank, support and DPS, respectively. However, D&D 4e makes numerous radical changes to the core gameplay, perhaps more than any other edition of D&D.Ĭharacter class roles Main articles: Role, Power sourceĪll character classes are divided into one of four roles: controller, defender, leader, or striker. It retains D&D third edition's d20-based core mechanic, where most rolls use a twenty-sided die with the aim to roll equal to or higher than a target number determined by the dungeon master. Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition retains fundamental gameplay concepts from previous editions of the game, including the core story of dungeon exploration, the six ability scores, character class, experience levels, combat against monsters, and the acquisition of gold and magic items.