D&D 5E Best designed classes in 5e

[Gladius Legis]

Anyway, to actually answer the question, best designed are Paladin and Rogue. Worst designed, BY FAR, is the Ranger; in fact, it's the only 5e class I truly disapprove of. Guess that's why it's getting revised.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Just because the Paladin can burn its spell slots rapidly doesn't mean it should. And 9 times out of 10, you shouldn't. Unless you desperately need to kill the boss and you're sure it's the big bad of the adventure ...

You would be surprised how few encounters you have in a day, when the paladin is encouraged to go all-out with no limits, and the DM isn't willing to cheat in order to prevent resting. You can only contrive a time limit to get through a gauntlet dungeon so many times before players lose interest in your grind-fest. Nine adventuring days out of ten, the Paladin might as well go all-out, since there's unlikely to be more than two encounters in a single day.

Why they'd design one class to burn through its resources over the course of 1-2 fights, while every other class is designed to go all day long, we'll never know.

 

[Paul Smart]

Very interesting and diverse opinions so far. I like it. What do people think of the Eldritch Knight? I think it is a very interesting design and can serve as a base for lots of interesting characters, especially if you open up the schools allowed. Love me my Illusion focused knight.

 

[Gladius Legis]

You would be surprised how few encounters you have in a day, when the paladin is encouraged to go all-out with no limits, and the DM isn't willing to cheat in order to prevent resting. You can only contrive a time limit to get through a gauntlet dungeon so many times before players lose interest in your grind-fest. Nine adventuring days out of ten, the Paladin might as well go all-out, since there's unlikely to be more than two encounters in a single day.

That is completely not my experience, but whatever.

Why they'd design one class to burn through its resources over the course of 1-2 fights, while every other class is designed to go all day long, we'll never know.

No, like every single other class with limited resources, it's entirely up to the player to decide whether to be more conservative with their resources or to decide when to burn them. The Paladin is no different. I'm not going to be burning 3 Divine Smites in a battle with a few Orcs. That's ridiculous.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

No, like every single other class with limited resources, it's entirely up to the player to decide whether to be more conservative with their resources or to decide when to burn them. The Paladin is no different. I'm not going to be burning 3 Divine Smites in a battle with a few Orcs. That's ridiculous.

No, every other class is limited to spending one spell slot per round, due to the injunction against casting a spell with an action and a bonus action in the same round; at most, they might get up to two per round, if a situation presents itself for them to cast a spell as a reaction. Paladins, uniquely, can spend two spell slots along with their attacks and cast a spell as a bonus action or reaction if they feel like it; since their slot usage isn't based around spells that cost an action to cast, they get to bypass the universal slot-expenditure-rate limitation.

In the game I played, which was Princes of the Apocalypse (and therefore somehow legitimized as an intended method of play), the Paladin would frequently use Action Surge to smite four times in a round. (To be fair, the Bard and Cleric would also use Action Surge, and cast two spells in a round; my Rogue was the only character who hadn't multi-classed into Fighter, and it showed.) Those combats rarely lasted long, and it was rare for us to face more than two combats in a day. In the few encounters against non-boss enemies, the Paladin simply wouldn't smite at all, since regular enemies present zero threat in the face of the ludicrously-fast default natural healing rate.

 

[Gladius Legis]

No, every other class is limited to spending one spell slot per round, due to the injunction against casting a spell with an action and a bonus action in the same round; at most, they might get up to two per round, if a situation presents itself for them to cast a spell as a reaction. Paladins, uniquely, can spend two spell slots along with their attacks and cast a spell as a bonus action or reaction if they feel like it; since their slot usage isn't based around spells that cost an action to cast, they get to bypass the universal slot-expenditure-rate limitation.

Well, yes, the Paladin is capable of dumping a lot of resources into one big nova. That's one of their intentional design functions. The class is clearly working as intended and designed, whether you like how it works or not. Note how that's different from, say, the Ranger, a class that to this day I STILL couldn't identify a distinguishing function for.

That doesn't mean the Paladin HAS to do that battle after battle. That's why they have actual spells, too, and actual good ones like Bless, Command, Aura of Vitality, Crusader's Mantle, etc.

In the game I played, which was Princes of the Apocalypse (and therefore somehow legitimized as an intended method of play), the Paladin would frequently use Action Surge to smite four times in a round. (To be fair, the Bard and Cleric would also use Action Surge, and cast two spells in a round; my Rogue was the only character who hadn't multi-classed into Fighter, and it showed.) Those combats rarely lasted long, and it was rare for us to face more than two combats in a day. In the few encounters against non-boss enemies, the Paladin simply wouldn't smite at all, since regular enemies present zero threat in the face of the ludicrously-fast default natural healing rate.

I played the same adventure and had well more than just two combats per day. If your DM is letting you long rest after just two combats every time, your DM probably doesn't know what they're doing. Occam's Razor explanation.

In any event, I've played a Paladin in a campaign with adventuring days of 6-8 combats more often than not. He did just fine.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think the Paladin is the best designed. It has a great mix of old iconic abilities like lay on hands and new ones like Divine Smite. The subclasses give plenty of freedom but also a firm foundation about what he is about.

Fighters and Barbarians are more blank slates than Paladins and their mechanics function just as well if not better than his. However, I have to give props not just on mechanical abilities and how they tie into the overall flavor of the class but also to whether the class has the right amount of freedom and focus within it's conceptual space.

For example: All we know about a Fighter is that he can fight. If we know his subclass we may can get a little more detailed about how he fights. That leaves the player with a lot of freedom regarding the class. However, just knowing the class doesn't inform me anything at all about what that character is going to be like or what kinds of things are important to him.

With a Paladin we both know how he fights and we get a general conception of the kinds of things he is fighting to protect. A Paladin class doesn't just inform mechanics like a Fighters but instead actually adds meat to a players story.

This is one reason I believe the Warlock is also so popular. We tend to like classes not just for mechanical reasons and we aren't usually as fond of total blank slates as we are of character's with something built into the class about WHO they are.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Well, yes, the Paladin is capable of dumping a lot of resources into one big nova. That's one of their intentional design functions. The class is clearly working as intended and designed, whether you like how it works or not.

I didn't say it was unintended. I said it was bad. Which it is, empirically, because it is noticeably disruptive when compared to the other classes. It enable the five-minute workday game flaw, in a way which the spellcasting classes were intelligently designed to avoid.

It's either bad at what it's trying to be - an attrition-based class, as we can tell by looking at every other class - or it's bad because it's inconsistent with the other classes.

If you want to say that they intentionally destroyed that balance, because they didn't care, then that's on you. Personally, I think it's nicer to just assume that it was an oversight caused by poor design coordination.

 

[Volund]

What do people think of the Eldritch Knight? I think it is a very interesting design and can serve as a base for lots of interesting characters, especially if you open up the schools allowed.

I like the concept but like you said, unless you open up the spell list, the spell restrictions knock it down a grade for me. I think the emphasis on doing damage with evocation spells was too restricting. The first and second level evocation list doesn't seem any better than plain weapon attacks. I'm not going to get excited about finally getting to cast an 8d6 fireball at 13th level, 8 levels after full casters, when I can make three weapon attacks every turn. I'd rather have spells that give me some sort of help in melee like Mirror Image. Also, Arcane Charge, which seems like it should be the signature EK move, shows up very late. I think it should be a 7th level ability once you get access to 2nd level spells. An EK that had a 1/3 progression through Warlock instead of Wizard would be cool! Get a pact weapon. Use War Magic to cast Eldritch Blast and then make a bonus weapon attack. Hex your opponent's strength for disadvantage against your grapple checks. Cloak yourself in darkness. So many possibilities there.

 

[SmokeyCriminal]

I think the Rogue might be the best designed class, and the Thief is my favourite subclass.

Fun fact, I remember hearing that originally Cunning Action was supposed to be a Thief Feature. But it was so popular (Something north of 90% approval rating, and I think the most popular Feature in the game, at least at the time) that they decided to give it to all the subclasses.

My only nitpick with the Thief is that, more then any other subclass in the game, it's very Multi Skill Dependent in order to cover all its thematic bases. So even tho you technically have more skills then all the other classes, more of them are spoken for.

Only looking at the exploration pillar, and keeping in mind that Perception is useful for everyone, but only thematically necessary for a couple of classes;

Fighter: Athletics
Wizard: History, Arcana
Cleric: Medicine, Religion
Ranger: Survival, Perception, Stealth
Druid: Nature
Barbarian: Athletics
Warlock: Arcana
Bard: Performance, Acrobatics
Sorcerer: Arcana
Thief: Perception (To find Traps), Investigation (To figure out how to disarm traps), Thieves Tool (To disarm Traps), Slight of Hand, Acrobatics, Athletics (For Second-Story Work), Stealth

And it's a weird quirk that you need Arcana to detect and disarm traps but you don't get a chance to have it by default. And they don't even let you know that you will need it. You find out during play, which can be irritating. Not even the Trickster gets a chance to have Arcana if you missed it during your Background selection.

You can argue that a class thematically needs another skill or two to cover its base, or that the Thief doesn't actually need one I listed to cover its base. But I still think overall it's more dependent on skills then the other skill monkeys.

I think that maybe giving the Thief another pair of skill in the later levels like between 5-10 would give it a little more freedom to branch out, as a skill monkey should. And maybe give the Trickster Arcana so he can deal with magical traps because a literal magical thief shouldn't get outclassed at disarming magical traps by a nerdy wizard just because he didn't know he needed to get Arcana from a Background 6 sessions ago.

Also I really like Fast-Hands, especially using mundane items like ball bearings, hunting traps and caltrops during combat. But a Dex save for 10, 13 makes them a questionable option, if not out right bad, outside of very nitch situations. and by 5th level they're hard to justify even to myself (Let alone my team who would much prefer I hide for advantage). I wish there was a feature that made it so the Thief could raise the DC on mundane items, like by adding DEX or proficiancy.

Nitpicks aside, Rogues are the best lol.