The way that magic works in Fourth Wing drastically limits the character classes that work for the game. Pretty much anything with spell slots is out. Most Dragon riders are pretty straight up fighters, and so we have to focus on a pretty narrow set of classes in order to give things the right flavor. Just three character classes to be specific:
- Fighter
- Barbarian
- Rogue
It may be that the world of fourth wing broadens out a bit as more books are added to the series, but for now, we don’t have any magic-using PCs that aren’t also trained Dragon Riders (or possibly Griffon Flyers). Some of them are just straight up fighters, some are brutes, and some are sneaky, and that’s what we get with the set of classes above.
For Character Classes, Subclass Will Be the Key
The heavy lifting will have to be done by subclasses, and they’re gonna need to relatively complex subclasses. They’ll have to be able to account for the signet abilities we’ve seen so far. The good news for me in creating them is that they won’t have to go all the way up to level 20. On the first pass I’ll only look at subclass features for the first and second tiers of play. This depends on the way the series plays out. It may be that the characters never really need levels 11-20 to have a full Fourth Wing Adventure. Likewise, I’d have little content to base their abilities on at high levels.
Theres is another thing to consider: From a game standpoint, is that there won’t be a lot of support or complementary abilities. Very few Dragon Riders are “menders” all though you’ll almost certainly hope that one of your players takes that roll. There hasn’t been any mention of healing items in the series so far either. Parties are gonna need a lot of rests in this world…
While I keep working, check out some of my other Fourth Wing-based content.
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