* Warning! During the writing of what I thought was going to be a few sentences, it turned into a lecture.*
Dnd 4E. The structure is its strength. The inflexible turn based strategy combat ensured that no matter what class/race/backstory you assign your character, every build is effective and no one play-style breaks the game. Linear warriors AND linear wizards keep every player mechanically useful, unless the player rolls an unnaturally high amount of natural 1's.
Out of combat, it functions exactly like any other RPG, but with the fat trimmed. Instead of separate skills for running, climbing,and swimming, there is a single "Athletics" skill for example. The beautiful thing is, house rules for character idiosyncrasies do not make this a flaw. "Your hydrophobic fighter in full plate armor needs to swim cross a river. Roll an athletics check with a -X penalty." You can similarly subdivide "Arcana" into different schools of magic if the group wishes etc. The "dumbing down" of the role play mechanics takes approximately 10 seconds to reverse without losing the remarkably deep combat. If the group is new to DnD, stick to the rules as stated and have an easier creating and playing your character.
4E being a modern rpg that takes a lot of inspiration from video games in general, status ailments and buffs make up a huge part its system. It is really hard to die in 4E. Really. Unless no one wanted to play an "optimize the party" style leader class. Therefore, the challenge lies in defeating the enemy as efficiently as possible. Even traditionally less combat oriented classes can be instrumental in a decisive victory through damage, such as the Bard.
Yes, 4E turned Bards into spell casters, but the flavour is preserved and it gave them some teeth as well as their usual abilities of hindering enemies/aiding the party. For example, this is the text on an epic tier(level 29)bard attack spell.
["Satire of Leadership" Usable once an in-game day.
"Your verse mocks your foe?s leadership and bends reality to conform with your words; any enemy near your foe is more vulnerable to attack." Range 10. Charisma vs. Will
5d10 plus Charisma mod psychic damage. The target and each enemy within 3 squares of it take a -2 penalty to all defenses and gain vulnerable 5 to all damage (save ends both).]
On a critical, with a matching level enchanted implement, that could do approximately 100 damage. FROM. A. BARD!
At that level however, most enemies are gods/elder monstrosities with thousands of hit points, so its strength lies in the effect to soften the target up for players that can do more damage reliably with the damage as a perk, so as to maintain combat effectiveness without losing focus on the debilitation/optimization abilities the class is designed to do.
4e changed a lot. No argument here about that. Personally, I think its superior to 3/3.5 and Pathfinder combined. What was lost in character creation options I gained more than enough back in sheer fun experimenting with the combat.
