D&D 5E Which classes have the least identity?

[tetrasodium]

Sure. I can rate them objectively on damage. It just doesn't matter in the slightest what does a trivial amount of damage more. I'll never notice the effect of it in combat. That objective rating only matters subjectively. If you like more damage, it matters. If you don't, it doesn't.

It certainly matters when the matchup is something like Alice playing any one of the various "broken/OP" fighter builds sitting at the table where Bob is playing a fighter build more on the marinara stain end of the "stuff" scale. When no CharOp & no bonuses are the expectation it creates a situation where any CharOp & any bonuses function multiplicatively on shifting the curve when combined.

Wotc has repeatedly mentioned how choices that led to this were made to reduce the need to & spotlight devouring extremes but all it really did is lower the bar for hitting them to problematic degrees & make players to adopt a mercenary's spreadsheet level outlook on nearly anything.

 

[Remathilis]

Names mean something. A Samurai or Battlemaster will never be a knight subclass, because they are not knight subclasses. They are a Samurai and a Battlemaster. A Cavalier could be a knight, but I'm not interested in only combat, so none of those can match my concept. I'm also glad you didn't get into Echo or Eldritch knights as they also don't match my concept and are in fact worse at it than the Samurai. I don't want magic involved.

Now you get my objection to generic classes. An expert 2/spellcaster1 is not a bard 3.

 

[Maxperson]

Now you get my objection to generic classes. An expert 2/spellcaster1 is not a bard 3.

I've never liked generic classes, either. Except for the NPC expert. It was for NPCs, so I was okay with it. I didn't need more specific baker, smith, cook, and wood worker classes.

 

[Remathilis]

I've never liked generic classes, either. Except for the NPC expert. It was foe NPCs, so I was okay with it. I didn't need more specific baker, smith, cook, and wood worker classes.

Yeah, for NPCs it's not a problem. But PC classes should be defined.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Your declarations are nothing more than that. Declarations. You provided no objective proof that I made a bad choice. Your opinions and declarations are not objective truths.

Can you prove objectively, providing and proving your claims to be facts, that my choice is a bad one?

the banneret's features (aside from at level 7) hinge off of the fighter's base class features. you thus cannot use those banneret features if you use your class resources normally - you instead need to wait until you can trigger the riders to make use of those features. this concern exists for no other fighter subclass. not even the champion has to worry about not being able to use one of their subclass features because they thought now would be a good time to action surge.

rally cry gives out fairly anemic healing, not quite enough to negate a single regular attack from a creature of equal CR. that'd be fine if you could use it repeatedly, but you can only ever second wind once per short rest, meaning - like most 5e healing - the best time to use it is when you have 3 downed allies you can bring up AND you yourself are hurt. that's not exactly a common scenario. the samurai's temp HP and the battle master's rally are similarly anemic (and are temp HP), but fighting spirit also gives you advantage on all attacks for the turn and rally can be used multiple times per short rest, and neither require you to hoard your second wind.

the banneret gains expertise to persuasion, which is anywhere from a +3 (since it's gained at 7th level) to +6, depending on level. the samurai gains their wisdom modifier to persuasion (on top of the proficiency they likely took at level 3 or earlier), which will probably be a +2 or +3 if you care about using it, but they also gain proficiency in wisdom saves (or one of the other mental saves if they already had it) as part of the same feature. the battle master can gain a maneuver which lets them add a superiority die (on average +5 to +7 depending on level, up to 4-7 times a short rest depending on level and fighting style) not just to persuasion checks, but also to performance or intimidation checks. so while the banneret does gain the biggest and most consistent bonus to persuasion, the samurai gains a saving throw proficiency on top, and the battle master has more versatility with what they can apply their bonus to, making the banneret's expertise the most situational of these three features.

inspiring surge is just basically just commander's strike but the ally doesn't do extra damage and you need to spend an action surge. sure, commander's strike takes an attack and bonus action, but at least i don't need to time it with my action surge. it gets better at level 18 when two allies can attack, but that also makes it more situational.

bulwark might be good, and it's the only feature no other subclass can really match but it's only against mental saves and rides on indomitable. fail that save against dominate person? well, you could use indomitable, but then you won't be able to help the sorcerer against feeblemind next round. oh wait, the wizard just used fireball instead. oops.

and once you've used all your base class resources - second wind, action surge, and indomitable - what do you have? well, as a samurai or battle master, you have everything still. as a banneret...you have expertise to persuasion. that's cool, i guess, but at that point why are you even a banneret? why didn't you just take skill expert to pick up expertise to persuasion? hell, that replicates the ENTIRETY of royal envoy, except you can pick whatever skills you want.

but do you see what the banneret is? it's a discount bard. rally cry? (mass) healing word. royal envoy? expertise. inspiring surge? haste (from magical secrets). bulwark? bardic inspiration. you're trading your subclass to be a worse bard.

And whether a class is better or worse than another is further thrown out of whack because games vary in how much each pillar is represented.

how much a particular game represents each pillar is a criterion. you can evaluate whether an option is optimal or not by considering it.

It's impossible to prove that one class is objectively(always) better than another.

sure, but you can prove that one class is objectively better than another during the intended or expected gameplay experience (i.e. roughly equal pillar representation though perhaps leaning away from exploration, 2 short rests per long rest, all classes and subclasses allowed, feats and multiclassing allowed mainly because they're so common). that is the context most people evaluate classes in, because it's an easy reference point. obviously if you're playing a campaign where casters and feats aren't allowed and you're not going to do combat very often that expertise in persuasion might look nice. that's also a very unusual game.

Something else being overlook by the folks claiming one class is better or this choice is optimal and that one is suboptimal is that folks have different objectives. If my objective is to play a Fighter/Purple Dragon Knight, literally another choice I make other than Fighter/Purple Dragon Knight will be sub optimal in achieving my goal and therefore be the bad choice for me.

because that's a ridiculous objective when we're evaluating if something is actually good or not. we're not evaluating if the banneret is good at achieving the objective of playing a banneret. that's redundant.

it's also not what you stated your objective to be. stop changing your objectives.

Goals vary. Classes and choices can't be termed objectively(always) good or bad since folks don't get to tell others what their goals are.

we also assume certain goals in discussions unless other goals are stated. when people say "x subclass is bad", they mean in that assumed intended play state i mentioned earlier. saying "well actually that subclass is good because my goal is to play that subclass" isn't helpful at all.

it's also extremely narrow minded, because usually discussions about how x is bad are intended to discuss how x can be improved. by just going "well, actually, it's good because i want to play it", you're outright trying to prevent any discussion on how to make x better. you are, in effect, hurting your own play experience.

 

[Undrave]

and once you've used all your base class resources - second wind, action surge, and indomitable - what do you have? well, as a samurai or battle master, you have everything still. as a banneret...you have expertise to persuasion. that's cool, i guess, but at that point why are you even a banneret? why didn't you just take skill expert to pick up expertise to persuasion? hell, that replicates the ENTIRETY of royal envoy, except you can pick whatever skills you want.

This is the crux of the Banneret's problem: it doesn't give you anything new to use, it just gives you new way to use the stuff you have! Even the Monk and its Ki hording subclasses doesn't leave you as high and dry in terms of resources.

They never tried a subclass like this again and I don't know why they thought it was a good idea when none of the PHB subclass worked this way? Truly one of the failed experiment of early 5e. Along with racial subclass.

 

[ECMO3]

Names mean something. A Samurai or Battlemaster will never be a knight subclass, because they are not knight subclasses. They are a Samurai and a Battlemaster. A Cavalier could be a knight, but I'm not interested in only combat, so none of those can match my concept. I'm also glad you didn't get into Echo or Eldritch knights as they also don't match my concept and are in fact worse at it than the Samurai. I don't want magic involved.

They do for some players, for others they don't. It is just about as easy for me to make a Knight out of a Wizard or Bard or Battlemaster as it is to make it out of a PDK.

For me the classes and subclasses are just a mix of mechanics and both the name and to a large degree the thematic fluff in the text is meaningless. They could call it subclass 1, subclass 2 and subclass 3 and it would be fine.

In this respect, I think the mechanics for the Samaurai and Battlemaster both work for building a knight (especially if you look beyond the medieval European definition).

 

[Maxperson]

The constant churn of semantic argumentation on this board is instantly tiring.

'Objectively' might be hyperbolic, but it's certainly no worse than a multi-page diversion to yell about it we seem to run into every five threads.

And please do not make this about whether or not it's literally every five threads where semantic and tone arguments wreck threads.

There's a reason why we run into the issues every 5 threads. It's because it's not objective and you have at least two sides to every one of these issues. Quadratic wizards are fine! Quadratic wizards are broken! We need 3 generic classes! We need 3000 classes! And so on.

My issue is with people who are essentially engaging in one true wayism. Telling me a class or subclass is objectively inferior is one true wayism. If they just gave their opinion about it, I might agree or disagree, but the way this discussion has gone wouldn't have happened.

 

[Maxperson]

It certainly matters when the matchup is something like Alice playing any one of the various "broken/OP" fighter builds sitting at the table where Bob is playing a fighter build more on the marinara stain end of the "stuff" scale. When no CharOp & no bonuses are the expectation it creates a situation where any CharOp & any bonuses function multiplicatively on shifting the curve when combined.

Wotc has repeatedly mentioned how choices that led to this were made to reduce the need to & spotlight devouring extremes but all it really did is lower the bar for hitting them to problematic degrees & make players to adopt a mercenary's spreadsheet level outlook on nearly anything.

What you are describing it a group composition issue, not an issue with the classes. If you have a power gamer of that intensity in a group of roleplayers, there's going to be problems. Alice doesn't belong in that group.

 

[Maxperson]

different objectives of different players don't matter to this, the gameplay pillars are measured by their own standards and we can compare those to themselves and the resulting exchange rates, how much combat potential does a rogue start with and how much potential do they give up to invest in social pillar? ok that much i see, and how much does the fighter have to give up in combat for social potential? oh, they got way less in the social pillar for what they gave up didn't they..., and the wizard? oh the wizard can just swap out any of their spells as they like and spec into whatever they like every day you say! hmmm i don't know if that's properly balanced.

Different objectives are all that matters period. Optimal only matters to your objective(s).

Those "standards" you mention are arbitrary, though. There really are not any standards at all and the ones out there are too high. 5e is so easy that there is no class or subclass that doesn't do well.

I do agree that once you set an arbitrary standard, you can measure classes up to that standard to see if the class falls on, above or below it. Not that it matters if the player is establishing other goals and standards.