D&D 5E Best designed classes in 5e

[Sacrosanct]

For me, one of the best ways to evaluate good design for classes to see how much flexibility I can get without getting overly complicated or rewarding system mastery/char op (ahem, looking at you 3e). And since the fighter is the best at that by nature of having two EXTRA feats (assuming you play with them), it scored high with me.

 

[guachi]

Best-

Wizard
Cleric
Rogue

I don't think there's a subclass that I don't like (well, maybe trickery) for the above three. All are fun and give me a good old-school vibe and warm fuzzies. I think my ideal party would be an Abjurer Wizard, Life Cleric, Thief Rogue, Battlemaster Fighter. A for all three classes.

I love the fighter but think that Champion and Battlemaster should be separate classes. Despite liking both the Champion and Battlemaster, I think the design missed the mark a bit. B (but only because I really like Fighters)

I don't like the basics of Paladin smiting so the entire class is below my expectations. C-

I'd put Sorcerer at the bottom as I think the class is a complete failure and would never play one. D

Beastmaster is a failure, and that's half the Ranger. C

Bard is great class, though I think the full casters bit isn't what I'd like out of the class. So it isn't at the top for me. I'd trade spells (maybe a 3/4 caster if such a thing were possible) for more fun Bard features. It's a grand, fun class otherwise. The class is well-designed for what it does even if "what it does" isn't what I'd like a Bard to do. B+

I care nothing about Warlocks and if they were removed from the game I wouldn't care either way. No grade.

I'd actually play a Monk if I had to, so it's not that bad. It's just the Elemental Monk is weak so it can't get a top grade but the chassis is good. B

Berserker is poor but the Totems are very fun. It's like the entirety of the good part is Totems. Really, though, I don't think the class is necessary and could be subsumed under a generic fighter chassis. C+

EDIT: I forgot Druid. I'm biased that in my current campaign one of my favorite players is having a blast with her Moon Druid so I'm sure she'd give it an 'A' as she has fun with everything she does. I'll have to leave this ungraded, not because I don't care but because I don't think I can be fair.

Rogue A+
Cleric A
Wizard A
Bard B+
Monk B
Fighter B
Barbarian C+
Ranger C
Paladin C-
Sorcerer D
Warlock Ungraded (lower than the Sorcerer as I can't even muster enough neurons to care about the class at all)

Druid Ungraded

 

[Kobold Stew]

For me, a well-designed class offers a wide range of possible builds, with player decisions not just at the point of character creation, but regularly through the character's adventuring career, resulting in viable (but not optimized) builds that do not feel like they are copies of each other.

By that measure, for me, the hands-down winner is the Cleric. Each domain plays different; there are viable builds with STR, DEX, and WIS as the primary stat (and arguably INT); spells are flexible.

I agree with [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] about the robustness of the Rogue, but (again, for me) all Rogues feel more or less alike -- you are always looking to get SA damage on your attacks, and that leads to the same sort of combat tactics. I really want to like the Rogue more, especially since it is one of the few nonmagical classes available (Arcane Trickster excepted).

The Wizard for me falls short because specializations do not materially affect the schools of spells in which the subclass is specialized.

 

[Quickleaf]

I think the classes are all well-designed in a mechanical sense, and haven't noticed glaring issues at the table. They did a great job with 5e.

The sub-classes / archetypes, however, are definitely not equally designed. Nothing game-breaking or fun-wrecking, but there are noticeable imbalances and strange design choices.

Aesthetically, I would have done some of the classes differently (e.g. Sorcerer more unique, Ranger with warlock-esque invocations & revisions, Fighter with complexity/simplicity choice separate from more flavorful subclass choice). But those are not mechanical design issues, they're more artistic issues.

 

[Aslak24]

From my own experience, I would say the rogue and druid of the moon are amongst the two best designed classes. Very simple to play, keep pace of play easily, amazing versatility, able to be useful even without having lots of rests, and genuinely fun classes. One of the the most poorly designed classes is the paladin. Much weaker in terms of pure battle power than the fighter and barbarian, spellcasting is weak and gets blown through incredibly fast, and is very limiting to the "tanky healer" role. I am currently playing a cleric, but I have not had the opportunity to learn the role well enough.

 

[Tony Vargas]

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?

Depends on what design goals you value. I agree that the Warlock is a good design. OTOH, it's not terribly evocative of the classic game, while the Druid, for instance, may be a messier less arguably-balanced design, but is evocative of that class back in the day.

The Paladin is a worthy nominee, too, for that reason - it does evoke the classic paladin, while also getting away from some of its traditional failings.

Then there are classes that just don't deliver, in large part because it seems like they never got the order straight in the first place. The Ranger, most notoriously, is just so muddled in concept that there's no foundation for a good design.

But most 5e classes do a fair job of evoking the past without wrecking the present.

 

[Miladoon]

Probably my favorite thing about the PHB classes is that I can remove the entire chapter of classes and make up my own and still play D&D. If I was going to go all out, I would build one class, an Adventurer, then add a slew of subclasses to add flavor. The Adventurer class would use the 5E Rogue as a template. TwoSix hit on some good points concerning my thoughts on the Rogue.

 

[Yunru]

Barbarian.
It's one of those subtly designed classes that you can run it as a Dex based ranged attack or a Str based melee attacker, while also accounting for ranged combat's advantages.

 

[Gladius Legis]

Just because the Paladin can burn its spell slots rapidly doesn't mean it should. And 9 times out of 10, you shouldn't. Unless you desperately need to kill the boss and you're sure it's the big bad of the adventure ...

... which is exactly a large part of what the Paladin is designed to (be able to) do. And reliably, at that, hence the Smites only getting spent on hit and being able to be saved on crit. Clearly, it's working as intended. Whereas the 3e Paladin just plain didn't work, period, though I suspect the ones complaining about 5e's Paladin (which I'm sure is a pretty small but vocal minority) would prefer the class to be useless if they had their way about it.

 

[Ovarwa]

Hi,

I'll vote for Paladin. It isn't a full-caster, yet has something good or excellent to offer at every level, so that if you start Paladin, taking the next level rather than MCing out always deserves consideration.

Want to protect the party against some eldritch horror? Bless+Aura can provide up to a +9 bonus to saving throws for you and your friends. Want to do high single-target damage? Smite. Want to lead a horde of undead? There's even a paladin for that.

Worst designed class? I'll go with Druid, especially Moon Druid, which most druids in play probably are. At some levels, it is considered way overpowered. At most other levels, it is considered underpowered. Different classes will not have perfect consistency, but Moon Druid wins for inconsistency. The class works poorly with magic items, still an important part of D&D. The animals allowed for Wildshape will be different at every table, but that won't matter at level 10 or beyond because elementals are usually preferred. I'm not saying druids are bad on the whole, just that the class design is bad.

Anyway,

Ken