Most powerful feature at each level???

I know this is nearly impossible but lets give it a go anyway.

Just curious what everybody thinks is the strongest feature at each level across all classes


1. This is tough. I'm gonna go with Rage for the time being
2. Portent is the first thing that comes to mind, but Action Surge should be up there.
3. Cutting Words is the first thing that comes to mind here, but this is a loaded level for a lot of classes.
4. Same across the board
5. Mostly extra attacks or 3rd level spells but a few classes get extra stuff. This is a tough one. I'm gonna go with extra attack for now.
6. Aura of Protection
7. ???
8. Same across the board
9. ???
10. Magical Secrets maybe?
11. Long Monk's Mastery of Death maybe
12. Same across the board
13. ???
14. Zealot's Rage Beyond Death maybe? This is a loaded level too
15. ???
16. Same across the board
17. Great level for Rogues. Assassin, Theif, and Scout get great features here. I'm sure I'm forgetting other things.
18. Survivor maybe? I don't have a lot of experience in these levels.
19. Same across the board I guess
20. Definitely Foe Slayer! lol ok maybe Archdruid or Primal Champion? Oath of Conquest capstone is pretty awesome too though.

I'm sure there's a bunch of stuff I've overlooked, but here are my picks:

1. Blessing of the Forge (forge cleric). Your choice of a free +1 weapon or +1 armor. At level 1. Whoa. Honorable mentions to Reaper (death cleric) for double-target toll the dead, and Expertise (rogue)*.

[size=-2]*This one is a curious case. Expertise is incredible at high levels, but at level 1, it's pretty meh. Are we rating these abilities at the level they become available, or across the character's lifespan?[/size]

2. Action Surge (fighter). No question. Honorable mentions to Portent (divination wizard) and Smite (paladin).

3. Assassinate (assassin rogue). Autocrits in the first round of combat? Yes please. It's good by itself, but it has ludicrous combo potential.

4. ASI (all classes). Yup yup.

5. Extra Attack (all martial classes). Double your damage output, straight-up.

6. ASI (fighter). Remember that you can use this to pick up Great Weapon Mastery, Polearm Mastery, Sharpshooter, etc... hard to beat that.

7. 4th-level spells (all full casters). The "3rd-level spells" option was beaten out by Extra Attack, but 4th-level doesn't have such stiff competition.

8. ASI (all classes).

9. 5th-level spells (all full casters). Again, weak competition means the spell slot upgrade takes it.

10. ASI (rogue). See level 6.

11. Extra Attack (fighter). Three per round, baby. 6th-level spells are nice, but at one per day, they can't compete.

12. ASI (all classes).

13. Simulacrum (wizard). Forget wish cheese, just this spell used by the book as intended is utterly insane. Even with the 1.5K cost to refill your simulacrum's hit points and spells... insane.

14. Illusory Reality (illusionist wizard). Who needs forcecage? For the cost of a 1st-level spell slot, put your biggest, baddest enemy in a solid adamantine box. Saving throw? What saving throw?

15. 8th-level spells (all full casters). Weak competition here.

16. ASI (all classes).

17. Wish (sorcerers and wizards). This level, the competition is not weak; it's up against the fighter's 4th attack, which is huge. But wish opens up so many avenues for shenanigans, it's wild. For one thing, you can cast simulacrum without a material component, which means you can have a fresh one at the start of every single day. Please note that this is the non-cheesy wish/simulacrum combo. The cheesy one creates infinite clones.

18. Aura Improvements (paladin). The limiting factor of paladin auras is the requirement to bunch up around the paladin. Extending the aura to 30 feet makes them far, far more powerful. Honorable mention to Spell Mastery (wizard).

19. ASI (all classes).

20. Archdruid (moon druid). All druids do pretty well out of Archdruid, but for moon druids, it's amazing. The moon druid's biggest challenge is the inability to cast spells in wild shape. Suddenly that restriction is out the window.

1. Rogue Expertise. Expertise is one of the most influential abilities in any skill based, or even combat based, campaigns. Honestly I take a 1 Level Rogue dip in almost any character I make just for this as there isn't a real good way of getting it any other way.

2. Cunning Action. Again, Rogues are so awesome to dip in, but your generally useless bonus action now gets you get double your movement? Or no opportunity attacks when you need to get out of a situation? Sold.

3. Assassinate. Yea, I'll take that auto crit that also doubles the sneak attack dice on this attack thank you very much. This one rarely goes out of style.

4. Feat.

5. Rogue Uncanny Dodge. This kinda ties with any class that gets extra attacks, but reaction to halve damage, ooh yea. That's 4 out of the first 5 unique to rogues. Rogues are awesome.

6. Aura of Protection. As a side note, the 6th Level Necro trait buffing their minions is surprisingly awesome. At 6th using your Arcane Recovery you can cast 4x 3rd level, keeping up to 16 of these guys at once. So as not to irk my DM I don't keep more than 8 going yet but 16x hits that do 1D6+5, even with only +4 to hit they do a shocking amount of damage as well as keep me well insulated from a lot of bad guys. As long as you don't run into any AOE, but that is always a problem.

7. Paladins Aura of Devotion. Immunity to charm is HUGE and it applies to your nearby allies? Sold. It was close though with Aura of Warding.

8. Feats

9. Vengeance Paladins can now cast 3rd Level spells, and get Haste. You are a badass melee who can cast Haste. That is awesome. The ONLY thing I like about Vengeance paladins as the other two get much better Oath abilities.

10. Aura of Courage. Immune to Charm at 7th, now immune to fear for you and your closest friends? Seriously, screw paladins

11. Improved Divine Smite if you do a lot of fighting in the campaign, so again, screw paladins VERY close runner up is Rogue's Reliable Talent for more skill focused campaigns. With that and expertise you are pretty much guaranteed to make DC 20's on 4 skills, DC 25 on anything using a stat with a 20 in it. That makes you able to sneak around, lie to, climb, sneak up on, notice, open, get insight to, just about anything short of a focused epic level effort to thwart you. Most mortals become your playthings at this point if you do it right.

12. Feat.

13. Rogue Use Magic Device. Doubt me? Then please talk to my Halfing Burglar Dual Wielding his Holy Sword and Staff of the Magi in his Robes of the Archmagi. Also, there aren't a whole lot of awesome 13th abilities out there for most classes.

14. Abjuration Wizard Spell Resistance. Advantage and resistance vs ALL spells? Damn. Monk's getting proficiency with all saves is a close runner up.

15. Devotion Paladin Purity of Spirit. Permanent Protect vs. Evil/Good? That means pretty much every creature CR13+ now has disadvantage to hit you. Have I mentioned screw paladins? Any caster class that can cast Clone is a close second. Who doesn't want a backup in case they die? Or maybe fake their own death. Lotta stuff you can do with that. Like make a clone of your enemy, then magic jar yourself into it and go impersonate.

16. Feat.

17. Any class that can cast Foresight wins this one. 8 hours no concentrate Advantage on everything and everyone else get disadvantage vs you? And you can put it on someone else? Like that assassin you just hired to take out someone? I'm sure some people will argue this but they are all objectively wrong.

18. Wizard Spell Mastery. You get Shield and Misty Step at will, wtf? Or any other 1st and 2nd combo you like? Like 17th, some will no doubt argue this but they are also objectively wrong.

19. Feat.

20. Archdruid. RAW you can simply dance between tough forms as a bonus action each round, going up to full hp. Any opponent(s) unable to drop that form in one round won't even touch your real hp and this can be kept up forever. I doubt any DM that has a 20th Druid PC in their campaign hasn't come up with some nerf agreement with that PC, but RAW, this is the most broken class feature in the game.

This was fun!

[MENTION=12249]Gwarok[/MENTION] "Rogue Use Magic Device. Doubt me? Then please talk to my Halfing Burglar Dual Wielding his Holy Sword and Staff of the Magi ..."

Hope he gets zapped, when the holy sword decides he stole once to many and makes him trip over and , therefore breaking the, staff of the magi, well uncanny dodge might help him though

If a rogue on my table would somehow get access to dual wield these weapons, he'd sure have an accident like this at some point just for trying to be the munch of all kin.

Dausuul said:

I'm sure there's a bunch of stuff I've overlooked, but here are my picks:

1. Blessing of the Forge (forge cleric). Your choice of a free +1 weapon or +1 armor. At level 1. Whoa. Honorable mentions to Reaper (death cleric) for double-target toll the dead, and Expertise (rogue)*.

[SIZE=-2]*This one is a curious case. Expertise is incredible at high levels, but at level 1, it's pretty meh. Are we rating these abilities at the level they become available, or across the character's lifespan?[/SIZE]

2. Action Surge (fighter). No question. Honorable mentions to Portent (divination wizard) and Smite (paladin).

3. Assassinate (assassin rogue). Autocrits in the first round of combat? Yes please. It's good by itself, but it has ludicrous combo potential.

4. ASI (all classes). Yup yup.

5. Extra Attack (all martial classes). Double your damage output, straight-up.

6. ASI (fighter). Remember that you can use this to pick up Great Weapon Mastery, Polearm Mastery, Sharpshooter, etc... hard to beat that.

7. 4th-level spells (all full casters). The "3rd-level spells" option was beaten out by Extra Attack, but 4th-level doesn't have such stiff competition.

8. ASI (all classes).

9. 5th-level spells (all full casters). Again, weak competition means the spell slot upgrade takes it.

10. ASI (rogue). See level 6.

11. Extra Attack (fighter). Three per round, baby. 6th-level spells are nice, but at one per day, they can't compete.

12. ASI (all classes).

13. Simulacrum (wizard). Forget wish cheese, just this spell used by the book as intended is utterly insane. Even with the 1.5K cost to refill your simulacrum's hit points and spells... insane.

14. Illusory Reality (illusionist wizard). Who needs forcecage? For the cost of a 1st-level spell slot, put your biggest, baddest enemy in a solid adamantine box. Saving throw? What saving throw?

15. 8th-level spells (all full casters). Weak competition here.

16. ASI (all classes).

17. Wish (sorcerers and wizards). This level, the competition is not weak; it's up against the fighter's 4th attack, which is huge. But wish opens up so many avenues for shenanigans, it's wild. For one thing, you can cast simulacrum without a material component, which means you can have a fresh one at the start of every single day. Please note that this is the non-cheesy wish/simulacrum combo. The cheesy one creates infinite clones.

18. Aura Improvements (paladin). The limiting factor of paladin auras is the requirement to bunch up around the paladin. Extending the aura to 30 feet makes them far, far more powerful. Honorable mention to Spell Mastery (wizard).

19. ASI (all classes).

20. Archdruid (moon druid). All druids do pretty well out of Archdruid, but for moon druids, it's amazing. The moon druid's biggest challenge is the inability to cast spells in wild shape. Suddenly that restriction is out the window.

Click to expand...

Mostly this list is good. I would rate the Paladins aura over an ASI though, of feats are used its a bit harder but probably still go with the aura, no feat can duplicate it.

Foresight and Wish would almost be tied t level 17 though, you can use your level 7 slot on simulacrum to get X2 wish or X2 foresight or wait a day and get both.

Hmmmn when you think of simulacrum as double your spell slots -1 7th level spell its kind of bonkers right there.

Level 14 the Monk prof to all saves is a worthy contender IMHO.

[MENTION=6895991]Coroc[/MENTION],

I actually had an NPC "Archmage" that was famous in the land, advised kings and queens and the powerful, who turned to be a high level rogue who'd actually just stumbled across a treasure hoard of ancient wizard gear and then proceeded to make himself a new identity, but he was a charlatan in every sense of the word. But with enough wands and staves and such no one discovered the ruse for a very long time.

Zardnaar said:

Mostly this list is good. I would rate the Paladins aura over an ASI though, of feats are used its a bit harder but probably still go with the aura, no feat can duplicate it.

Click to expand...

Paladin aura is definitely up there. The thing that made me pick the feats was the fact that the aura is limited to 10 feet. That's a serious tactical constraint. Either the paladin - a heavy melee fighter - has to stay back out of the fray, or the squishies have to get uncomfortably close to the enemy. And the bonus to save against, say, a dragon's breath weapon comes at the price of bunching up so the dragon can hit you all at once.

My DM recently gave us some custom magic items that provide temporary hit points each round if all the PCs are within 30 feet of each other. Those temporary hit points are sweet... but I'm finding we get them in less than half of combats. We do too much maneuvering for position. And that's with 30 feet to play with rather than 10.

Even so, +3 to +5 on saves is pretty darn sweet. In a heavy-melee party, or one that does a lot of adventuring in tight dungeon spaces, it would definitely win out.

Dausuul said:

And the bonus to save against, say, a dragon's breath weapon comes at the price of bunching up so the dragon can hit you all at once.

Click to expand...

Even a Young dragon with a cone-shaped breath has a 30-foot cone, which is still likely to hit most if not all of your party, anyway. In that case, you might as well just cuddle up close to the Paladin.

Gladius Legis said:

Even a Young dragon with a cone-shaped breath has a 30-foot cone, which is still likely to hit most if not all of your party, anyway. In that case, you might as well just cuddle up close to the Paladin.

Click to expand...

I refer you back to where my actual party gets temp hit points every round we stay within 30 feet of each other, and even with that rather substantial carrot, we qualify to get it less than half the time. So, no, the dragon is not going to catch us all with a 30-foot cone.

Maybe your party is less mobile than mine, but my experience is that 5E combats range pretty widely across the battlefield unless you're in a tight space to begin with.

1. Rage - Resistance to BSP without the non-magical weapon restriction alone makes it ace
2. Portent - Potential to guarantee your success or enemies' failure.
3. Level 2 spells - Spiritual weapon, Hold Person, Misty Step, Suggestion, Invisibility... suddenly the casters are a lot powerful
4. ASI
5. Extra Attack - Now the martials become good
6. Aura of Protection - You know why
7. Aura of Warding - Free magic resist for me and you. They are certainly hard to come by.
8. Wildshape Improvement - Now druids can fly
9. Level 5 spells
10. Magical Secrets - Bards get to poach any 2 spells, usually paladin 3rd level spells and laugh at them.
11. Reliable Talent - Can't fail, won't fail skill checks no mo
12. ASI
13. Simulacrum
14. Rage Beyond Death - No contest, you can fight while dead, and can only die when rage ends
15. Persistant Rage - Death? What death?
16. ASI
17. Quivering Palm - Omae wa mou shindeiru
18. Aura improvements - 30ft of immunities/resists and plus to saves. Nani?!
19. ASI
20. Archdruid - Broken beyond belief