D&D 5E Best designed classes in 5e

[Paul Smart]

Hi everyone. I am just curious what classes fellow forum members think are the best designed. For me, I think the Warlock design is great, with lots of intersting decision points. The Paladin is also very well designed in my opinion, a great base for a gish class. What about you and why?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I think that the Cleric, especially with the Life domain, is a great design. It's a great mixture of short-rest and long-rest mechanics, so you can always do something magical, even if it's not just spellcasting.

The Rogue is also pretty solid, and while it lacks the ability of the Fighter or Paladin to suddenly double its own efficiency, I would consider that to be a flaw in those other classes rather than anything the Rogue is missing.

The worst design, hands down, is definitely the Paladin with its smiting and double-smiting and on-crit-smiting. Everything it has is pulling from its spell slots, and it gives you the ability to run through your spell slots faster than anyone else in the game, which absolutely wrecks pacing. (Note how nobody else is allowed to cast two slot-based spells on their turn, since bonus action spells can only be paired with cantrips.)

I'm also not a huge fan of the Warlock, because of the unique and easily-abused short-rest spell slots. Between the patron and the pact, it's also a little bit too complex, considering you still have all of the normal differences from spell selection. It seems like they could have really streamlined it in order to bring it more in line with the Sorcerer.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Flexor the Mighty!]

I've never played the game, just ran it, but I have to say that my players are not finding any one class to be too dominant or too weak. My Paladin player is loving the class and never seems to mind sacrificing spells for smiting. After all smiting the core of the Paladin mission some would say.

 

[TwoSix]

Warlock and rogue.

Every caster in the game could be built on the warlock spellcasting chassis (short rest recharge, spells known, invocations to customize), and boons and pacts allow for multiple avenues of customization. The only change I would make is to add more "one spell per long rest" invocations, and to have them not consume a short rest spell slot. It would allow the player to choose between more at-will resources or long rest resources. Different pacts could offer bonuses to these to fit the flavor (a tome pact might offer more more long rest slots to make the class feel more wizard-like, for example.).

Rogue has a scaling damage feature on a single attack, and an on-demand use for both bonus actions and reactions by level 5. Single attacks are easier to balance and less prone to fiddlyness. Having strong, competitive options for bonus actions and reactions early means less need to seek out options for those actions, and allows other options to be more interesting, because they'll be competitive with other options, not standard. All 6 warrior classes would work better with a rogue framework.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

For me I'd definitely say the wizard. It's focus on pure spellcasting feels elegant to me. It can be built in a number of ways just from spell choice and almost everything in the class is focused on getting the most out of your spells. It's subclasses hit that sweet spot of not being too vague that they don't mean anything (see fighter) and not too specific that they define too much about your character (see sorcerer). In this edition it can do a lot of things, but they solved the problem where it was the ultimate solution to everything.

While I love the paladin I honestly feel it's a bit too powerful in comparison to it's martial peers. The burst damage from smite is often better than the continued damage of rage or hunter's mark at swinging the fight into your favor. Especially in this edition where fights are resolved quicker.

 

[Lanliss]

Warlock, Monk, and Rogue IMO. The only issue I can find with the Warlock is the fact that Eldritch Blast exists, and somehow people want it to be ingrained in the class, to force everyone to use it. Also, working on a homebrew to make Pacts more of the Subclass, and Patrons only show through in Invocations.

Monk is very versatile and fun to play. I feel like the important part about the monk is that it punishes you if you just stand there and hit things. You need to be fluid and creative in your movement, otherwise you get squashed.

Rogue is well designed, IMO, because it doesn't have any limited resources. You can feel like a rogue 24/7, every round of every fight.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I imagine most answers will be biased towards the style of play the individual likes, and therefore there is no real "best" or "worst" designed class.

For example, I my top 3 are probably the fighter, rogue, and monk in that order. I think the extra ASIs for the fighter are highly underrated. Those two give me so much more flexibility to choose how I want to design the class, rather than be forced to take a hard baked in ability already predefined for me. For example, one of my favorite characters was a halfling F/T in AD&D that I ported over as a straight fighter, but using extra feats for stealth and later dungeon delver.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Best designed class is the rogue. It's easy to understand, good at what it's supposed to be good at, has lots of fun look-at-what-I-can-do! tricks despite being nonmagical, and it even gets legacy points for being immediately recognizable to players from previous editions. If there's one complaint I have with it, it's that it gets Thieves' Cant as a core feature when not all rogues are necessarily criminals. Should have been a Thief archetype feature, but that's the problem with not choosing archetypes until after 1st level. (See also: Valor bard weapon proficiencies.) I let players pick a bonus language of their choice if they don't want Thieves' Cant. And when that's the extent of my complaint, you know the class is good.

Fighter is really solid too, although I might actually just be giving it "Most Improved" accolades after the debacle of the 3E version and divisiveness of the 4E one.

The general warlock chassis is all right, but it could use a few improvements. And as far as class specifics go, the decision to make eldritch blast and Agonizing Blast optional-but-clearly-optimal was a poor one.

 

[lowkey13]

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