D&D (2024) All 48 Player’s Handbook 2024 Subclasses

The new Player's Handbook contains 12 character classes, each with 4 subclasses, making 48 in total.

• Barbarian: Path of the... Berserker, Wild Heart, World Tree, Zealot.
• Bard: College of... Dance, Gamour, Lore, Valor.
• Cleric: Life, Light, Trickery, War domains.
• Druid: Circle of the... Land, Moon, Sea, Stars.
• Fighter: Battle Master, Champion, Eldritch Knight, Psi Warrior.
• Monk: Warrior of... Mercy, Shadow, The Elements, The Open Hand.
• Paladin: Oath of... Devotion, Glory, The Ancients, Vengeance.
• Ranger: Beast Master, Fey Wanderer, Gloom Stalker, Hunter.
• Rogue: Arcane Trickster, Assassin, Soulknife, Thief.
• Sorcerer: Aberrant Sorcery, Clockwork Sorcery, Draconic Sorcery, Wild Magic.
• Warlock: Archfey Patron, Celestial Patron, Fiend Patron, Great Old One Patron.
• Wizard: Abjurer, Diviner, Evoker, Illusionist.

 

[ECMO3]

Oh dear, you're going to make me pull my dusty 4e books off the shelf, aren't you. Alright then.

Looking down the 1st level at-will abilities, what have we got? Give an ally an off-turn basic melee attack, that's very 4e and only works because basic attacks are standardized. Give an ally a numerical bonus on their next attack, that's the 4e numbers game there. Deny an enemy the ability to move without provoking an Opportunity Attack, that's 4e positional play at work. And give an ally the ability to shift 1 square, that's 4e off-turn actions and positional play again.

Skimming further down the list it's mostly following those themes. Give allies a numerical bonus to this or that. Allow allies off-turn movement and attacks. These are deeply 4e things that have been toned down or eliminated in 5e. There's some fairly standard healing tools, but others that tie into 4e specific concepts like ongoing damage.

As a Warlord fan, would you really say that a 5e Warlord that has roughly a Battle Master Fighter's ability to do those things is really a Warlord? Of course not. What you loved about the Warlord is the ability to control the battlefield like a chess board, sliding your allies around and pushing them into making attacks. Those are not things 5e does because 4e went heavy on the tactical skirmish gameplay and 5e does not.

5e doesn't want people to slow the game down by making players regularly engage with off-turn actions and movement. 5e doesn't want to complicate the game with lots of fiddly little attack bonuses to track, or penalties applied to the NPCs. These are the Warlord's stock in trade, and they're not part of 5e's catalog.

Completely agree. If there was a Warlord in 5E it would not be doing these things ... as I said earlier it would be kind of like the PDK with weaker attack options.

 

[ECMO3]

Yes, but they also buffed grapple as well. It takes 1 attack, not 1 action.

So at level 5, you can grapple, prone, action surge and attack twice (with luck).

Grapple and shove already take 1 attack in 5E if you are a PC with Extra attack (for a creature they are an entire action).

You can already do that at level 5 and you can do it reliably. Under the new rules you can try it, but the chances of succeeding are very low.

Using the example above a 5th level Rune Knight in Giant's Might with an 18 strength (+7 Athletics) who uses action surge has a 87% chance of successfully grappling AND proning an Adult Red Dragon. That is without even optimizing for this at 5th level. If you have skill expert (+10 athletics) this goes up to 96%.

In the switch to the saving throw (DC 15) the chance of doing this successfully using actin surge is 35% without considering Legendary Resistance. With Legendary Resistance it is impossible to do in 1 turn.

Escaping also takes an action. Not a small penalty.

This is the same, but there is a MUCH higher chance of the bad guy succeeding. If you do get lucky and land the shove and the grapple, the chance for the Dragon in this example to escape the grapple in the UA rules for the example above is 70%, so it loses an action but probably have a good result and doesn't have to suffer disadvantage on all its legendary attacks. In 5E against a basic Rune Knight with a +7 Athletics in Giant's Might the chance of a Dragon escaping is 40%. Again this is a Figther who did not even optimize for this.

 

[CapnZapp]

This is an extreme example with an optimized build

First off, thanks.

And you don't need to apologize for using an "extreme" example - every balance discussion SHOULD start in an optimal case, otherwise it's easy to just dismiss concerns.

EVERY rule no matter how imbalanced can be argued is reasonable and "fine" until it meets the reality of a player that knows what he's doing.

That said, isn't it clear to you what is clear to me,: this is exactly why they changed this?

Many games including every edition of D&D that I know falls in the skill vs skill trap, where designers either forget to provide monsters with the skills they need to contest the rules option the PHB gives PCs, and/or forgets that it's never the PC with the average score that engages the monster, it's the character built for the stratospheric score.

Based on your reaction I don't need to enter the discussion whether you believe every dragon fight should devolve into this crippling strategy.

Let's just note the developers found this strategy sufficiently egregious that they actually changed the rules and leave it at that.

Again thanks.

 

[ECMO3]

First off, thanks.

And you don't need to apologize for using an "extreme" example - every balance discussion SHOULD start in an optimal case, otherwise it's easy to just dismiss concerns.

EVERY rule no matter how imbalanced can be argued is reasonable and "fine" until it meets the reality of a player that knows what he's doing.

That said, isn't it clear to you what is clear to me,: this is exactly why they changed this?

Many games including every edition of D&D that I know falls in the skill vs skill trap, where designers either forget to provide monsters with the skills they need to contest the rules option the PHB gives PCs, and/or forgets that it's never the PC with the average score that engages the monster, it's the character built for the stratospheric score.

Based on your reaction I don't need to enter the discussion whether you believe every dragon fight should devolve into this crippling strategy.

Let's just note the developers found this strategy sufficiently egregious that they actually changed the rules and leave it at that.

Again thanks.

I actually think they changed it because saves are faster in play than contests (or at least that is what one of the DMs I play with said), but I suppose it could be this either alternatively or in addition to faster play.

I think the ability to do this is pretty cool having seen it in play on both sides of the DM screen, and far from OP considering to what full casters can do with spells.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Sword and Valor both got weapons stuff. You definitely didn't need both.

They’re completely different.

 

[CapnZapp]

I think the ability to do this is pretty cool having seen it in play on both sides of the DM screen, and far from OP considering to what full casters can do with spells.

I don't disagree.

I don't think this is nerfed because it is overpowered. I think it is nerfed by a combination.

Many players (not you) feel size and mass should still mean something.

WotC probably instead have realized it is an unintentional rules "exploit". I put exploit within scare quotes because it isn't exactly a hidden exploit - they could have asked me in 2014 and I would have asked them to check twice: "you sure you understand what the various Athletics (Intimidation, etc) checks will do to monsters..?"

This is because 5E is not the first nor the last game where, evidently, developers don't fully comprehend the consequences of having rules where skills can meaningfully reduce a monster's combat ability.

It is also not limited to combat. There are games where it's trivial to create a character who routinely can, through a Persuasion check, turn hostile NPCs into best friends, no magic involved.

Main difference: such non-combat skill outcomes are easy to ignore, much easier than effects that tie into the combat subsystem (by giving out status effects like Prone or Restrained, for instance)

 

[Remathilis]

The martials are more powerful and versatile than they were previously, but so are the casters, especially since it is easier to swap spells. At the top of the food chain the Wizard gets a ton of improvements that widen the gap compared to what it was.

For example, if you are playing a UA playtest Barbarian in a game with a 5E Wizard it is closer than it was before, but if you are playing a UA Barbarian with a UA Wizard the gap is wider. This is especially true when you consider subclasses as the best non-caster subclasses are not in the UA (or the new PHB).



I have played some of them (Fighter and Monk specifically). The Monk should be weak at low and mid level, that is what the class is about for me and that is what the identity has been since the 1970s. The bad ass brawler beating guys up with their hand should be a fighter until very high levels IMO. The Monk should be more refined and tactical. That is just my opinion though.

Can we PLEASE quit balancing classes on the premise that "you might suck at level one, but you'll rip at level nine"? It's tiring to play a class that barely functions for half the game only to get powerful right at the same time the game starts to wind down.

 

[ECMO3]

Can we PLEASE quit balancing classes on the premise that "you might suck at level one, but you'll rip at level nine"? It's tiring to play a class that barely functions for half the game only to get powerful right at the same time the game starts to wind down.

No we can't. At least not if you want to talk about class balance, because most classes, particularly non-caster classes, vary widely in relative power at different levels.

People like to say "Monk is the weakest martial" but is not a factually true statement. Among non-casters it is middle of the pack at low level, weak from level 4-7, about middle of the pack from 8-13 and by far the strongest non-caster at level 14+. The Monk's problems are from level 4-7 so unless you are playing in this narrow window it is not a problem (as far as non-casters go).

Same with Barbarian, the class's relative power varies widely. Barbarian is probably the strongest non-caster up until level 5 and then quickly falls off becoming one of the weakest and then the overall weakest class for the next 15 levels of play.

Casters have this as well, to a smaller degree. Wizard is widely regarded as the strongest class overall, but it is the weakest caster at level 1 and still generally weak compared to other full casters until level 5. In a level 1-4 campaign Wizard is going to be that "class that barely functions" for a lot of it.

So yeah, we do need to consider the balance over the entire course of the campaign, and that is presumably 1-20 unless you start caveating the specific level range you want to discuss.

Finally, I will point out that I played the 5E Monk from level 1 to level 20 and loved the whole time, including the parts of the campaign where it was the weakest PC at the table.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Long thread, brief thoughts-

1. It seems that they are going all-in on "psionics" (aka, the spell system psionics) and "fey" by adding explicit subclasses in the core rules.

2. Most classes are keeping their core identity subclasses. Usually two.

3. Barbarian is an exception; not sure how I feel about the thematic overlap between Berserker and Zealot.

4. I always loved the idea of the trickery domain for clerics, but not so much the execution.

5. Monk keeps its core three identities (Open Hand - kung fu, Shadow- ninja, Four Elements- anime blaster) and adds Mercy, which is niche but also the best subclass they made for it.

6. Ranger gets Gloom Stalker, which is popular.

7. Warlock is missing hexblade, but this might be within pact of blade (I think).

8. And Rogue and Fighter both seem a little hamstrung by tradition; Thief, Assassin, and Arcane Trickster (for rogue) and Champion, Battle Master, and Eldritch Knight (for fighter) are iconic, but then we're just getting the psionic subclass.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

People weren't given a chanc to like it.

How so? Was around for quite a few years.