D&D 5E (2024) A critical analysis of 2024's revised classes

[Sulicius]

The Barbarian
Tremble in fear of the bitter cold and the almighty toppling wolf

Foreword
For many of these classes, we will need to establish context for the class—perceptions of it, how it fared in the original game, or external factors that affect the class. For the Barbarian, we need to acknowledge a pretty clear issue with the overall game design of 2024 5e.

I'm certain that most of the changes in the revision were made in a complete vacuum from each other—with little consideration for how those changes affect other elements in the game. This leads to rules confusion (RAW, most monsters' melee attacks are invalid for opportunity attacks) and contradictions in effects (most effects that stun reduce movement speed if they fail, but stunning itself doesn't affect movement).

The Barbarian suffers massively from two changes in monster design. The first is that many effects that monsters can cause on hit that previously forced a saving throw now automatically inflict their effects on hit. The majority of such effects are things like knocking prone or poisoning, effects that were countered by the two saves Barbarians are strongest at.

The second is that many monsters beyond low CRs have extra non-B/P/S damage tacked onto their attacks. This means that for most Barbarians, whose damage resistance only applies to B/P/S, their Rage becomes less and less effective at mitigating damage as you progress to higher levels and higher-leveled foes.

These two factors take a class that is supposedly the pinnacle of resilience and might...and coupled with other class features, make them especially vulnerable to anything that doesn't exclusively deal B/P/S damage.

This is just as massively overblown. Yes, monsters deal a lot more energy type damage, but it has never been easier to get energy type resistances either. Barbarians are still the class with the most hit points, and being prone doesn't really matter much since they attack recklessly often. The updated monster design, however, sped up the game and increased monster effectiveness, which was a great improvement. I might also add, that there are also changes in the barbarian's favor, like the vampire bite now requiring a CON save instead of making an attack roll. I do admit, these are less common than the removal of a saving throw.

Most monsters still deal b/p/s damage, and the barbarian weathers it like they did before.

Level 1
Like most martials, Barbarians get Weapon Mastery. Perhaps I'll address my issues with that feature in another post. It is worth noting that of the classes that get Weapon Mastery, Barbarians are the only ones with restriction on what weapons they can take masteries for: melee weapons only. Given that they get proficiency with all ranged weapons nonetheless, it's bizarre for them to have an exclusion.

I personally don't mind it. Barbarians can still take masteries for weapons that have the thrown property.

Unarmored Defense is unchanged.

Rage has a few changes. It now lasts 10 minutes. You get one back on a short rest, which I have mixed feelings about. On one hand, for longer adventures at low levels, this gives the Barbarian a bit more oomph. On the other hand, at higher levels this becomes largely irrelevant for the Barbarian, while for a character who takes a one-level dip into the class, this doubles the number of Rages they get on a day with two short rests.

I really don't see the issue with any of this. You are saying that a hypothetical 1-level dip into barbarian being able to rage after a short rest breaks your verisimilitude or something?

Forcing a saving throw maintains your Rage, but taking damage does not. This means that if you can't make an attack or force a save, you have to use your bonus action to keep your Rage up. It also means you get to spam said BA out of combat to keep your Rage up, which we will get to the problem with later.

Previously, the only instance where this would be a problem is if you get incapacitated. Except now, being incapacitated drops your Rage immediately (until level 15). This is a significant problem for the Barbarian, due to how their features encourage them to make themselves more vulnerable and how they typically rely more on Rage than AC. Anything that can incapacitate knocks them out of their tankiness, leaving them exposed to heavy damage without the saving grace of higher AC that other martials may have.

You have also missed that rage now grants the bonus damage to thrown weapons, which is a big improvement. I have had it many times where my players expected barbarians to deal the damage on thrown weapons as well.
In any case, I think this version of rage is straight up more usable at the table. 10 minutes can help a barbarian get multiple fights in, in a few situations. Maintaining rage while doing something hostile by forcing a saving throw also gives players more options in combat.

Incapacitation doesn't really happen enough to be a big difference, in my experience.

Level 2
Danger Sense now no longer cares if you're blinded or deafened. This isn't a huge change, but it's strange in light of the Evasion change that does now care if you're incapacitated. Lessened restrictions here, increased restrictions there.

Reckless Attack now applies to off-turn attacks and non-melee attacks, which is fine.

Fine? It's great! I have had SO many situations where a player expected Reckless Attack to work on their attacks off-turn. This was a good and sensible change that I think is just good for the game.

Level 3
This is where you can expect to see a mention of 2024 5e removing the flavourful titles for subclasses every time I write a summary up.

The Barbarian also gets Primal Knowledge, which in addition to giving them another skill now lets them make certain skill checks using Strength—Acrobatics, Intimidation, Perception, Stealth, or Survival. While most 2024 features have the flavour stripped from them, this one describes how "When you use this ability, your Strength represents primal power coursing through you, honing your agility, bearing, and senses." This is presumably an excuse for how stupid this function is.

For starters, this bears little connection to Barbarian skills. If it applies to all the skills on the Barbarian list, that would make sense for the primal connection. Instead, we are somehow able to Stunt Angrily and Sneak Angrily even though Barbarians have no regular inclination towards the Acrobatics and Stealth skills to begin with.

Furthermore, we have to acknowledge that, by being Strength checks during Rage, these checks automatically get advantage. So we're not just using our best ability for a bunch of skills, but we get advantage on our Tracking Angrily. This gives a huge boost to a Barbarian's early-game skill utility, to the point where a skill with proficiency will give them better performance than the class that eschews combat focus for skill mastery (the Rogue).

Why is it bad that barbarians now have more utility outside of combat? Maybe we play the game different, but one PC being good at a skill doesn't mean other PC's don't use the skill anymore.

Level 9
Yes, we're jumping to level 9, because the 2024 Barbarian gets nothing new between Level 3 and Level 9. This is very much A Thing, because most other classes get significant new boosts in this stretch and a Barbarian gets...nothing.

Instinctive Pounce has been made baseline, and they get a bunch of great features, some of the best in the game, actually. Multiattack, 6th level subclass feature (which has been reworked for many of the subclasses), a feat, extra movement and advantage on initiative is incredible. You seem to want to compare the barbarian to other classes like it's some sort of power ranking, which confuses me. Barbarians do great at this tier.

What we get at 9th level is an overhauled feature. Originally, Barbarians got Brutal Criticals, which beefed up their crits. This was a bit underwhelming, so now we have Brutal Strikes. What Brutal Strikes do is that when you use Reckless Attack and don't have any disadvantage on your attack, you can give up the advantage on one attack to do 1d10 extra damage and an added effect on a hit.

So, to use this feature:
1. You can't have any source of disadvantage (like, say, being bitten by a 1/2 CR snake and getting auto-poisoned).
2. You have to use Reckless Attack, even if you have advantage on an attack already.
3. You have to give up any advantage to get the benefit, making you more likely to miss.

For comparison, in a few levels, Paladins will get +2d8 damage on their baseline number of attacks just for existing. So these added effects better be worth someth...

...oh, you can move an enemy and then yourself, or you can slow an enemy. Remember that pushing and slowing enemies are already things you can do via Weapon Mastery—and even then, on something that's free with every attack, these options are situational unless you're building your strategy around abusing these mechanics.

Yeah I am not a fan of Brutal Strikes. It's a lot of hassle for little effect. Some people dig the crunch like this, I don't. And yes, paladin as a class is the most powerful of all martials. Still, the barbarian I play usually does great alongside them, often better.

Level 11
Relentless Rage is changed so that rather than dropping to 1 hit point, you instead have a number equal to twice your Barbarian level. On one hand, this seems like a benefit. However, you have to remember that 2024 monster damage is significantly inflated due to added non-B/P/S damage, so until you get to high levels, many monsters can wipe out 22 hit points on a Barbarian as easily as they can wipe out 1 hit point.

It's still a buff, oh well.

Level 13
Brutal Strike gets two new options, one which imposes disadvantage on the next saving throw it makes and prevent opportunity attacks and one which imposes a +5 bonus to the next attack someone else makes against it. Even though both of these options are significantly better than the Level 9 options, a single attack is very rarely more impactful than a failed saving throw, so you're going to have one option you'll be using more than everything else.

Much like the other brutal strikes, for my barbarian, I hardly use these. Between reckless, masteries, double masteries from my subclass, I am ok with just hitting most of the time. For these, however, I am happy to have the options.

Level 15
Persistent Rage now lets you restore expended uses of Rage when you roll initiative once per long rest. We're going to see this "restore a resource when you roll initiative once per LR" mechanic in other places, and it always has the exact same problem: the assumption that you're only going to want to refresh a resource for combat, even when there are non-combat uses for that resource.
As mentioned, this makes the one/SR Rage restore a bit useless, but more so, this creates a balance issue with the subclasses. Several of them have features that are limited by rest in use, but you can burn a use of Rage to use them again. Having a big stockpile of Rages means that those subclasses with features you can spam more often become more powerful than subclasses that don't have this mechanic.

It also still abides by the 10-minute limit, but this likely won't have much impact.

Once again you make a buff sound like a negative. The refreshing of rages is perfect for a long adventuring day with successive fights where the barbarian gets knocked out of rage a couple times. And yes, the combat class recharges it in combat, isn't that what we want the barbarian to be about?

Level 17
Brutal Strikes goes up in damage to 2d10 and you get to use two effects at once. This will almost always be Staggering and Sundering. It's a bit lazy design-wise that all you get is just "more of the same".

Lazy design? It's called efficient. Just adding more complicated effects is not a good idea at this stage of a campaign. This way the player and the table already know the effects, but the barbarian does become more powerful!

Level 18
Indomitable Might now affects saving throws as well as ability checks. But as we covered in the foreword, many effects that previously called for Strength saves now auto-hit, so this is much less useful than it would have been in 2014 5e.

Not all effects, just some... Once again you make a buff sound like a nerf.

Conclusion
And that's the summary of 2024 Barbarian changes. All in all, as we described, the Barbarian suffers from having its primary niche eroded to a massive degree. Your damage resistance means much less, your saving-throw strengths mean much less, and your mechanics push you to make yourself more vulnerable to your major weaknesses. Once you get the cheesy-at-low-levels Primal Knowledge, you get very little new until Level 9, where you get the underwhelming-at-first Brutal Strikes.

So now that we've touched upon these issues...

Building a Better Barbarian?

• If giving monsters more non-B/P/S damage on attacks is going to be a facet of design, then the class meant to soak up attacks needs an answer for this. Some form of non-B/P/S damage protection would be perfect for a higher-level feature, giving an invested Barbarian more resilience than the quick-dip multiclass builds.
• A better way to handle Primal Knowledge? Make it based on Constitution. That way you don't get the unbalancing auto-advantage, and it incentivizes building up your secondary ability score. Heck, you could give a higher-level feature that extends Rage's benefits to Constitution ability checks and saving throws to make the feature better at high levels.
• If other classes get more new gimmicks earlier on, then so should the Barbarian—they shouldn't have to wait until Level 9 for new toys. I'm frankly of the opinion that, rather than throwing out Brutal Criticals, building on that would have been a much better design direction. Give the Barb a feature at Level 5 that allows added effects on crits—this way the opening options can be more impressive than just "push or slow someone". Retain Brutal Criticals, and add new features that give the Barbarian better crit chance when using Reckless Attack, thus making it an option and incentive but not an explicit requirement.

First, thank you for sharing your insights. I think you presented it really well and I truly appreciate you taking the time for this.

But I don't agree with this assessment at all. Barbarians are still really tough, but are now more flexible and have more utility. The designers were also not afraid to improve their higher level features, which was needed.

• Yes, they have lost some of their durability from their damage resistances at higher levels, but it has never been easier to gain them through species, magic items and spells.
• There is nothing unbalanced about getting advantage on a skill check by spending a rage. Let me know when you see play experience where this is an issue.
• Barbarians got weapon mastery and improved rage, what else do you need early levels?

All of this just doesn't seem to line up with the experiences I have had at the table. The new barbarians are great, do better what they did before and have more options. I have been enjoying playing one, even though I don't care for weapon masteries and brutal strikes much. Maybe it's just because I only started playing one at 13th level after my bard passed away.

 

[eclair~]

The Cleric
Hello God, are you listening? It's me, I need more spellcasting

Foreword
The Cleric is a class that's often type-cast into the role of healer. Many games have moved away from the necessity of a heal-bot party member, and 2014 5e provided many options for Clerics that varied between healing, damage, and support.

2024 5e made a point of buffing various healing spells, often doubling the dice rolled for these spells. This seems like a considerable upgrade, but this is weighed against the increase in monster damage output. So at higher levels, these buffed spells effectively balance out against the heightened damage.

Where this becomes a problem is that almost everything else that heals in the game did not receive any buffs at all, remaining at the same values. This means those sources of healing are now much less effective compared to enemy damage output, and healing magic is all the more vital.

It's not a great design choice, and is one of those 2024 Caster Things where spellcasting is made the most important part of the game in many ways—and something that will likely force more Clerics into the party role of heal-bot.

Level 1
Spellcasting uses a fixed number of spells rather than being based on Level + Wisdom. With subclasses moved to Level 3, this does mean you get fewer to start with, then suddenly get your spell list doubles going from Level 2 to Level 3.

Not getting subclasses at Level 1 is a significant shift, meaning that Clerics get quite a bit less at lower levels than they used to, not having features aside from spellcasting and generic Channel Divinity options until Level 3. Some of these features were very strong for a one- or two-level dip, while others weren't as powerful.

New (or perhaps, "new") to 1st level is Divine Order, which lets you pick between two sets of starting boons—and whereas leaving subclasses to 3rd level might have deterred dips, this encourages dips. Your choices are between martial weapon/heavy armour proficiency, or an extra cantrip and adding your Wisdom modifier to Arcana and Religion checks.

This retains a one-level Cleric dip as a easy entry to heavy armour and shield access—something not even a Fighter or Paladin dip will provide—or a unique boost to two skill checks that stacks with other features like Expertise.

Level 2
2nd level gives you your Channel Divinity, which now gives you two uses to start and recovers one use on a short rest. This gives more uses early on (or for tables that don't bother with short rests), and fewer in the late-game. Nine a day with two short rests is an awful lot, especially for the more overpowered Channel Divinity(s?), but it's an awkward handling.

Turn Undead no longer lets the affected creature take actions (i.e. Dashing away or Dodging if there's nowhere to move). Bizarrely, you becoming incapacitated or dying ends the effect, which doesn't really make sense.

You also get Divine Spark, which lets you use your Channel Divinity to heal or harm a creature. As mentioned above, the buff to healing spells doesn't extend to other sources of healing, and thus Divine Spark is a weak source of healing, even with its effect increasing at higher levels. By the time you're 18th-level, Divine Spark heals as much as a 2nd-level Cure Wounds.

Level 5
Destroy Undead is replaced with Sear Undead, which causes undead that fail the save against Turn Undead to take damage rather than be instantly destroyed if its CR is low enough. This is based on Wisdom modifier, so it caps out very early. On one hand it doesn't trivialize low-CR undead, but on the other hand it won't be particularly impressive at high levels.

Level 7
The subclass-specific damage-boost features (and the Tasha's substitute) at 8th-level is moved to 7th-level. You get either 1d8 extra damage when you hit with a weapon once on your turns, or add your Wisdom modifier to Cleric cantrip damage. (Oddly, the former is limited to once and only on your turn, the latter can apply multiple times on any turn.)

Your choice for this is likely going to boil down to preference, which will likely be influenced by your choice of feats. True Strike builds will inevitably want the weapon choice, War Casters will want the cantrip option.

In fact, with how often 2024 5e removes permanent choices from character options, it's weird that Blessed Strikes is made into an immutable choice that locks in a later option when the Tasha's alternate feature could apply to both weapons and cantrips.

Level 10
Level 10 brings us Divine Intervention, a feature that begs for intervention from the divine gods of D&D (a.k.a. the designers) to elaborate on how it's actually supposed to work. And to explain the balance behind this.

In 2014 5e, a successful attempt at Divine Intervention allowed the DM to provide benediction as they saw fit. 2024 5e generally runs off of an attitude of DM-antagonism, the idea of "the DM won't let you do fun things", and so walls off the DM from you and your features. Instead, what Divine Intervention does is let you cast any 5th-level or lower Cleric spell of your choice, without any spell slot or material component cost, once a day.

Even if you set aside how strong this feature is—a free 5th-level cast, without any component cost—this has resulted in much confusion over the wording "As a Magic action" and "As part of the same action". This isn't limited to spells that only require a single action to cast, so this has caused confusion as to whether a spell with a longer casting time can be cast instantly with this feature.

If that is the case, there's one already-notorious example that breaks the game. The Hollow spell can immediately and irresistibly impose severe hindrances on enemies, if Divine Intervention lets you drop it willy-nilly. Other spells also are very abusable, like Raise Dead for zero-cost revival.

Ironically, the change of language to "As a Magic action" was supposedly meant to create greater clarity, but this is an instance where it has only caused confusion.

Level 14
Improved Blessed Strikes upgrades the earlier option you chose. Getting a bit of extra damage once on your turn just isn't as good as getting double your Wisdom mod in temp HP to yourself or an ally.

I also question as to why this choice is fixed upon your prior choice, why these options can't be permitted with either Blessed Strike option. Why can't I get extra oomph on a cantrip, or why can't I dole out some temp HP on a weapon attack?

Level 20
That's right, we're already at level 20. And here we get Greater Divine Intervention. The previous capstone guaranteed your Divine Intervention would succeed. Here? You get exactly what you wanted when you picked a divine caster.

You get Wish. You get a free cast of Wish. On top of your regular spell slots.

Now, it gets restricted for 2d4 long rests, but even then just having a free casting of Wish is already stupidly powerful. Furthermore, it's kind of lazy to give a divine caster a strong arcane spell as their capstone.

It should be noted as well that the drawback only makes an impact on repeated adventuring days, and if you have downtime after using it, it's liable to be ready for the next time you need Wish.

Conclusion
It's tricky to analyze most full-caster classes on their own since a great deal of their distinguishing aspects comes from their spellcasting and subclass features. Nonetheless, base features still provide a way of defining each caster apart from each other, which makes it disappointing when other features are de-emphasized and Divine Intervention is reduced to nothing but an extension on spellcasting.

At least you can tell a Cleric's features apart from other classes' features, which will be a different story for our next class.

Building a Better Cleric?

• Putting it bluntly: patch the one-level heavy armour dip. Move Divine Order to Level 3. Clerics can live without the benefits until then.
• With subclass features moved to 3rd level, perhaps Channel Divinity could be a 1st-level thing. Divine Spark, as mentioned, is a pretty underwhelming addition—but it does give a little extra at low levels when spell slots are few.
• Let Blessed Strikes be a more flexible feature.
• If you're going to go for the DM-hands-off approach to feature design, give features like Divine Intervention more options than just "cast a spell". And better-written rules, to boot.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think the 2024 Cleric is a huge win, in basically every way. The one thing I am a little disappointed with is the new version of Divine Intervention, which I think almost got it right, but should have let you cast Wish from the beginning, but kept the 2014 “Cleric level % chance to work” if you used it to Wish for anything other than a Cleric spell you can cast, with a casting time of 1 Action. That would have preserved the idea that you can pray for just about anything at a very low chance of working, while giving the player the option to use it in a way that will get a reliable, predictable result, and preserved the DM’s ability to interpret the exact way the intervention manifests if the player wants to use it on something less reliable. Fortunately, it’s a super easy house rule to implement.

 

[djotaku]

The Bard
What do you get for the man who has everything?

Foreword
The Bard's always held a bit of a contentious spot in 5e. Some adore it for its versatility, others feel it is able to do too much and infringes on other classes' niches, especially with abundant skill benefits, the ability to poach spells from other classes' spell lists, and martial-leaning subclasses.

As we'll see, being able to do what other classes do was made even stronger in 2024 5e.

Level 1
One thing to note is that, due to simplifying starting weapon proficiencies, Bards no longer get access to a few martial weapons like rapiers or hand crossbows. It's a wholly needless change, and kind of telling of how 2024 5e shifts towards laziness in design. Was anyone really mystified by the idea that classes could have specific weapon proficiencies rather than blanket categories?

Bardic Inspiration is now used when you fail an ability check, attack roll, or saving throw. This does have some benefit, in avoiding a "wasted" Inspiration when the original roll would have succeeded. It does make the feature unusable for situations where there isn't a strict "failure"—for example, initiative rolls, or other ability checks where the DM grants better success on a higher roll.

Their spellcasting has a bit of an oddity where they get a small boost in spells known early on but lag slightly at higher levels compared to 2014 5e.

I should also known that all spellcasting classes use the language "spells prepared" in 2024 5e, whereas 2014 5e made a distinction between "spells known" for classes that could only change spells at level-up and "spells prepared" for classes that could change on a rest. It's a needless terminology change and makes which rules apply to which classes much less clear.

Level 2
Song of Rest is omitted completely. It's a minor feature, but being minor doesn't make it totally meaningless. (Though with 2024's increased monster damage, the healing it would have provided is very much insignificant.)

Instead, the Bard now gets their first two Expertises at Level 2, along with Jack of All Trades. The latter feature now only explicitly applies to ability checks involving a skill, which plugs a few loopholes like initiative checks and Counterspell/Dispel Magic checks. Getting earlier Expertise, however, makes such easier to get for multiclass builds and diminishes a Rogue's niche in skill checks.

In addition, Magical Inspiration from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is not included. I think that optional feature is a bit unnecessary, and suffers from a caster-favouring problem that became more endemic later in 5e's lifespan (and heavily defines 2024 5e), but it still would have been nice for the Bard to get some more stuff they could do with Bardic Inspiration rather than less.

Level 5
Font of Inspiration now lets you burn spell slots to regain Bardic Inspirations. It's perhaps unnecessary, as you get a sufficient number of them regularly and this benefits subclasses with stronger Bardic-fuelled features much more than others, but it's not the worst "burn spell slots to fuel class features" we'll see.

It is, however, questionable that burning higher-level spell slots doesn't give you any more uses of Bardic Inspiration than a 1st-level slot.

Level 7
Countercharm is now a reaction used on a specific creature, and lets them reroll a failed save against being charmed or frightened with advantage. Arguably a side-grade, since it switches the feature from a proactive ability to a reactive one, with lessened effectiveness (since it only works on one person).

Where this gets pretty dumb is when you consider that you can use your music to bolster yourself when you fail at not getting charmed, or the fact that despite the flavour of the feature the target no longer needs to be able to hear your "musical notes or words of power to disrupt mind-influencing effects" to benefit from this, or that this feature no longer specifies that it doesn't work if you yourself are silenced.

Level 9
Your second two Expertises are kicked down to this level, one level earlier. As mentioned in the previous analysis, I'm certain many changes in 2024 5e were made without consideration for other changes, and so I suspect this was done just so that a character could go Bard 9/Rogue 11 to pick up eight Expertises, Jack of All Trades, and Reliable Talent (before Reliable Talent was changed in 2024).

Level 10
Here is where Magical Secrets comes in, and this is...overhauled. Instead of getting two spells from other classes at certain levels, you can now pick any of your spells to be from the Cleric, Druid, and Wizard lists as well. You can replace any of your previous spells with spells from these lists as well.

On one hand, this change was done to keep certain "signature" spells from half-caster or more "unique" casters from easy access by the Bard, and I can understand that. But on the other hand, this means that the Bard can mish-mash spells of all levels from four different spell lists.

As mentioned at the start, blind power creep is not good game design. This is the sort of change that begs the question: is this necessary? Giving the Bard such massive and easy reach for their spell list just isn't a needed change. Magical Secrets was already a strong feature with its preexisting limitations.

And on the subject of keeping certain classes' "signature" spells out of the Bard's hands? There's still a way to do so for the Bard or any other class, albeit to a more limited degree. The Cartomancer feat, coupled with a one-level dip—which in 2024 5e doesn't delay your spell-slot progression if done with a half-caster like the Paladin or Ranger. You can still get access to stuff like Destructive Wave or Conjure Volley, along with other benefits of the dip.

(Incidentally, the College of Lore's 6th-level feature is largely unchanged, meaning it amounts to just getting two extra spells known in the long run.)

Level 18
Superior Inspiration is moved here, and gives you two uses if you have less than that. I find these sorts of features awkward, in that they reward you for having used up all of your resource and thus apply less if you don't blow through all of your Bardic uses.

Level 20
The Bard gets a new capstone at Level 20. And it's probably one of the dumbest capstones in the game.

As we've established, the Bard's ability to expand their spell list has been massively improved. So what would be the perfect capstone for such a class?

A capstone that tells you to use your 9th-level spell slot on two specific spells. Namely, Power Word Heal and Power Word Kill. And you can target two creatures within 10 feet of each other.

If you want to use these spells, that's a nice boon. If you don't, if you dared to use your Magical Secrets feature to do the thing it allowed you to do and pick a 9th-level spell of your choice, then this capstone is effectively wasted whenever you don't use your 9th-level spell slot on those specific spells.

Trying to force a class to use specific spells when a major gimmick of the class is being able to access so many different spells is just an absurd choice.

Conclusion
As mentioned, the Bard gets expanded abilities to Be Good At Everything. But as mentioned, it's not really necessary. The Bard was in a good place previously, and while it may be reasonable to not let them grab 5th-level Paladin or Ranger spells much earlier than those respective classes, that Magical Secrets is the most significant change highlights how 2024 5e values spellcasting as much higher than everything else in the game—even more so than their most unique features.

Building a Better Bard?

• Bardic Inspiration should be more of a class feature. Give a few more ways to use Bardic Inspiration on the base class, rather than fewer. Have Superior Inspiration come online earlier, and have it just be a free use of your Bardic Inspiration feature once per initiative, encouraging more use of it.
• Let Magical Secrets chosen spells be changed, but it's entirely reasonable to maintain a limit on how many spells a Bard can pilfer from other classes. Maybe 9th-level spells should also be off-limits?
• The capstone should not restrict you to specific spells. Or if any spell, the capstone could just be evocative of Wish. Perhaps (in the vein of another capstone questionable for its own reasons) you can ritual-cast Wish once per XdY long rests, using it to cast a spell of 8th- or lower level. It's even flavourful as a feature: think of it as performing a song grand enough to alter reality.

As someone who plays a bard in Tales of the Valiant - I feel like Kobold Press got the balance a little better on their bards. They have a few more base class bardic inspiration uses that work pretty well to allow early level bards to contribute a bit more. I haven't played it yet, but I think the Draw Steel Troubadour also has some interesting ways to consider modifying the bard if there' a 6e. (I think it would probably be too radical of a change for a 5.75e)

 

[djotaku]

The Cleric
Hello God, are you listening? It's me, I need more spellcasting

Foreword
The Cleric is a class that's often type-cast into the role of healer. Many games have moved away from the necessity of a heal-bot party member, and 2014 5e provided many options for Clerics that varied between healing, damage, and support.

2024 5e made a point of buffing various healing spells, often doubling the dice rolled for these spells. This seems like a considerable upgrade, but this is weighed against the increase in monster damage output. So at higher levels, these buffed spells effectively balance out against the heightened damage.

Where this becomes a problem is that almost everything else that heals in the game did not receive any buffs at all, remaining at the same values. This means those sources of healing are now much less effective compared to enemy damage output, and healing magic is all the more vital.

It's not a great design choice, and is one of those 2024 Caster Things where spellcasting is made the most important part of the game in many ways—and something that will likely force more Clerics into the party role of heal-bot.

Level 1
Spellcasting uses a fixed number of spells rather than being based on Level + Wisdom. With subclasses moved to Level 3, this does mean you get fewer to start with, then suddenly get your spell list doubles going from Level 2 to Level 3.

Not getting subclasses at Level 1 is a significant shift, meaning that Clerics get quite a bit less at lower levels than they used to, not having features aside from spellcasting and generic Channel Divinity options until Level 3. Some of these features were very strong for a one- or two-level dip, while others weren't as powerful.

New (or perhaps, "new") to 1st level is Divine Order, which lets you pick between two sets of starting boons—and whereas leaving subclasses to 3rd level might have deterred dips, this encourages dips. Your choices are between martial weapon/heavy armour proficiency, or an extra cantrip and adding your Wisdom modifier to Arcana and Religion checks.

This retains a one-level Cleric dip as a easy entry to heavy armour and shield access—something not even a Fighter or Paladin dip will provide—or a unique boost to two skill checks that stacks with other features like Expertise.

Level 2
2nd level gives you your Channel Divinity, which now gives you two uses to start and recovers one use on a short rest. This gives more uses early on (or for tables that don't bother with short rests), and fewer in the late-game. Nine a day with two short rests is an awful lot, especially for the more overpowered Channel Divinity(s?), but it's an awkward handling.

Turn Undead no longer lets the affected creature take actions (i.e. Dashing away or Dodging if there's nowhere to move). Bizarrely, you becoming incapacitated or dying ends the effect, which doesn't really make sense.

You also get Divine Spark, which lets you use your Channel Divinity to heal or harm a creature. As mentioned above, the buff to healing spells doesn't extend to other sources of healing, and thus Divine Spark is a weak source of healing, even with its effect increasing at higher levels. By the time you're 18th-level, Divine Spark heals as much as a 2nd-level Cure Wounds.

Level 5
Destroy Undead is replaced with Sear Undead, which causes undead that fail the save against Turn Undead to take damage rather than be instantly destroyed if its CR is low enough. This is based on Wisdom modifier, so it caps out very early. On one hand it doesn't trivialize low-CR undead, but on the other hand it won't be particularly impressive at high levels.

Level 7
The subclass-specific damage-boost features (and the Tasha's substitute) at 8th-level is moved to 7th-level. You get either 1d8 extra damage when you hit with a weapon once on your turns, or add your Wisdom modifier to Cleric cantrip damage. (Oddly, the former is limited to once and only on your turn, the latter can apply multiple times on any turn.)

Your choice for this is likely going to boil down to preference, which will likely be influenced by your choice of feats. True Strike builds will inevitably want the weapon choice, War Casters will want the cantrip option.

In fact, with how often 2024 5e removes permanent choices from character options, it's weird that Blessed Strikes is made into an immutable choice that locks in a later option when the Tasha's alternate feature could apply to both weapons and cantrips.

Level 10
Level 10 brings us Divine Intervention, a feature that begs for intervention from the divine gods of D&D (a.k.a. the designers) to elaborate on how it's actually supposed to work. And to explain the balance behind this.

In 2014 5e, a successful attempt at Divine Intervention allowed the DM to provide benediction as they saw fit. 2024 5e generally runs off of an attitude of DM-antagonism, the idea of "the DM won't let you do fun things", and so walls off the DM from you and your features. Instead, what Divine Intervention does is let you cast any 5th-level or lower Cleric spell of your choice, without any spell slot or material component cost, once a day.

Even if you set aside how strong this feature is—a free 5th-level cast, without any component cost—this has resulted in much confusion over the wording "As a Magic action" and "As part of the same action". This isn't limited to spells that only require a single action to cast, so this has caused confusion as to whether a spell with a longer casting time can be cast instantly with this feature.

If that is the case, there's one already-notorious example that breaks the game. The Hollow spell can immediately and irresistibly impose severe hindrances on enemies, if Divine Intervention lets you drop it willy-nilly. Other spells also are very abusable, like Raise Dead for zero-cost revival.

Ironically, the change of language to "As a Magic action" was supposedly meant to create greater clarity, but this is an instance where it has only caused confusion.

Level 14
Improved Blessed Strikes upgrades the earlier option you chose. Getting a bit of extra damage once on your turn just isn't as good as getting double your Wisdom mod in temp HP to yourself or an ally.

I also question as to why this choice is fixed upon your prior choice, why these options can't be permitted with either Blessed Strike option. Why can't I get extra oomph on a cantrip, or why can't I dole out some temp HP on a weapon attack?

Level 20
That's right, we're already at level 20. And here we get Greater Divine Intervention. The previous capstone guaranteed your Divine Intervention would succeed. Here? You get exactly what you wanted when you picked a divine caster.

You get Wish. You get a free cast of Wish. On top of your regular spell slots.

Now, it gets restricted for 2d4 long rests, but even then just having a free casting of Wish is already stupidly powerful. Furthermore, it's kind of lazy to give a divine caster a strong arcane spell as their capstone.

It should be noted as well that the drawback only makes an impact on repeated adventuring days, and if you have downtime after using it, it's liable to be ready for the next time you need Wish.

Conclusion
It's tricky to analyze most full-caster classes on their own since a great deal of their distinguishing aspects comes from their spellcasting and subclass features. Nonetheless, base features still provide a way of defining each caster apart from each other, which makes it disappointing when other features are de-emphasized and Divine Intervention is reduced to nothing but an extension on spellcasting.

At least you can tell a Cleric's features apart from other classes' features, which will be a different story for our next class.

Building a Better Cleric?

• Putting it bluntly: patch the one-level heavy armour dip. Move Divine Order to Level 3. Clerics can live without the benefits until then.
• With subclass features moved to 3rd level, perhaps Channel Divinity could be a 1st-level thing. Divine Spark, as mentioned, is a pretty underwhelming addition—but it does give a little extra at low levels when spell slots are few.
• Let Blessed Strikes be a more flexible feature.
• If you're going to go for the DM-hands-off approach to feature design, give features like Divine Intervention more options than just "cast a spell". And better-written rules, to boot.

While I think it makes the game simpler the learn and (maybe?) easier to balance with all subclasses at 3rd level - I think there are some classes where it doesn't make sense. If a cleric is about devotion to a deity, shouldn't that be a level 1 thing? If Warlocks get their powers from a pact with a being - shouldn't that be a level 1 thing? Otherwise where do your level 1 and 2 powers come from? (Obviously, you can roleplay this away. It was always the Feylord, Cthulhu, Demon, etc - you just didn't know who until level 3)

 

[Not a Decepticon]

And yes, paladin as a class is the most powerful of all martials.

I agree with your entire post but I do find it funny how Paladin and Ranger are considered casters or martials depending on who is asking and what the argument is.

Once again you make a buff sound like a nerf.

Yeah, I have noticed that op went from "blind power creep is not good game design" to "any increase of power of underpowered class is automatically bad because reasons".

 

[Not a Decepticon]

If Warlocks get their powers from a pact with a being - shouldn't that be a level 1 thing?

I've been saying the same thing

 

[djotaku]

I've been saying the same thing

I haven't played or run PF2e, but I have the books from a humble bundle and I think that's for sure one thing they are doing right with classes/subclasses.

 

[Charlaquin]

While I think it makes the game simpler the learn and (maybe?) easier to balance with all subclasses at 3rd level - I think there are some classes where it doesn't make sense. If a cleric is about devotion to a deity, shouldn't that be a level 1 thing? If Warlocks get their powers from a pact with a being - shouldn't that be a level 1 thing? Otherwise where do your level 1 and 2 powers come from? (Obviously, you can roleplay this away. It was always the Feylord, Cthulhu, Demon, etc - you just didn't know who until level 3)

It doesn’t even have to be that you didn’t know until level 3. If you start at level 1, and you already know which Domain or which Patron you want to take when you get to level 3, there’s absolutely no reason you can’t have that deity be the source of your class features from the beginning and have your character know that. Just because you don’t get any features from that subclass until level 3 doesn’t mean you can’t make the choice and have it be locked in at level 1 if you want to. The only thing this changes is that it makes it possible to not know your patron, or to not have been dedicated to the service of a specific deity (or to a specific domain) at level 1. And that was the point of the change. They didn’t want players who may never have played a Cleric or Warlock before to feel like they have to read every Cleric or Warlock subclass before they can start playing one.

 

[Charlaquin]

I've been saying the same thing

There’s no reason it can’t be a level 1 thing if you want it to. Just because the subclass feature comes online at level 3 doesn’t mean you can’t have been a member of that subclass since level 1.