Bacon Bits
Legend
I think most classes have things about them that suck.
First of all, all the classes that don't let you pick a subclass at level 1 automatically suck. This is such a clear design flaw that they should have picket up on. Letting a subclass modify the weapon, armor, and skill proficiencies seems like such an obvious design space. You could make a Fighter that gives up shields and heavy armor, or a Bard that has more weapons but fewer or different class skills. It lets you do everything you could do with a 2e kit with a 5e subclass. And they blew it. Major design error that has seriously limited the design space for subclasses.
First of all, all the classes that don't let you pick a subclass at level 1 automatically suck. This is such a clear design flaw that they should have picket up on. Letting a subclass modify the weapon, armor, and skill proficiencies seems like such an obvious design space. You could make a Fighter that gives up shields and heavy armor, or a Bard that has more weapons but fewer or different class skills. It lets you do everything you could do with a 2e kit with a 5e subclass. And they blew it. Major design error that has seriously limited the design space for subclasses.
- Bard sucks because until you hit 5th level and get Font of Inspiration, Bardic Inspiration feels terrible to use. You should get that ability far sooner for what Inspiration actually does.
- Valor and Swords don't hold a candle to Lore. Lore takes what Bards are already good at (spellcasting) and makes them better. Swords and Valor take what the class is terrible at (fighting) and makes them better. Swords and Valor fit the class far better than Lore does, but Lore's Magical Secrets is way too flexible and potent. Access to fireball is a lot more compelling.
- Why is this class's primary attribute the same attribute that's keyed to 90% of social interaction? This means the class can have one high attribute and be good in combat and good in social situations. This is stupid design and it's unfair to every non-Cha class in the book.
- Barbarian levels 9 through 19 suck. They're all awful levels. They're so bad that the level 20 capstone that gives you 24 Str and 24 Con is not worth levels 9 through 19. Brutal Critical is close to being the worst ability in the game, and it occupies three levels. Why does Brutal Critical take 3 levels of named abilities to improve, while Sneak Attack counts as one ability that scales every other level? Relentless and Persistent Rage are only useful when you're basically losing combat. They're not benefits. They're eliminations of drawbacks, and they're drawbacks that only come up when you're falling behind. Rage damage scaling isn't worth it. You can switch to Fighter and pick up a Fighting Style or switch to Rogue and pick up Sneak Attack, and you get more benefit from that. You should never need more than 4 rages a day. If you have more than 4 encounters, you're certain to have encounters that don't need you to use rage. Indomitable Might is a ribbon ability. It's cool, but it comes so late that it's not meaningful. Never rolling below a 20 on an Athletics check stops being meaningful long, long before level 18. There are some subclass abilities that are quite potent, but they're like the capstone: You have to eat a big turd sandwich to get to them. It's not worth it.
- Battlerager is terrible. Your major benefit is a special kind of armor. And it's special in that it's worse than not wearing armor at all for most Barbarians. Your benefit is crappy armor.
- Berserker's Frenzy is terrible because Exhaustion is a stupid mechanic to tie to a character ability. Just make it limited to once a day and move on.
- Totem Warrior is stupid because Bear Totem at level 3 is overwhelmingly beneficial. The ability to resist basically all damage types at no cost is far better than any alternative.
- Cleric has so many awful abilities. Destroy Undead feels awful and it takes up five class abilties. You don't remotely care about creatures of the CR listed by the time you get the ability. This makes Cleric 14 perhaps the worst level in the entire game. You get nothing. You get no additional spells per day. You get a hit die and Destroy Undead CR3 (Mummies and Wights). The fact that the level 8 Divine Domain feature is either Potent Spellcasting or Divine Strike is so boring. The fact that Divine Strike means that War Cleric can't get Extra Attack is dumb. Warlock, Wizard and Bard can get it. Not War Cleric. Devoted to War? Nope, can't fight like a Warlock, Wizard or Bard who, by their own subclass descriptions, is just dabbling in martial combat. Also, what's with the terrible spell list? There are so few spells on the Cleric list that are worth casting. Why? And why is Bless better than most 2nd and 3rd level spells?
- Druid sucks because Wild Shape still sucks. They consistently make it so that Wild Shape is almost totally useless for scouting or concealment because they're so busy making it a terrible combat ability. Why does it even need to have a lower end size limit? And no flight until level 8? Come on. And what is with the continued awful spell selection? I think Druid gets a worse list than Cleric does, and that's saying something. What do you even take at 3rd level? Every spell is very situational. I would much, much rather Druid grant one form per Druid level from a fixed list like the Land Druid has different spells per terrain. Heck, why not make the available Wild Shapes controlled by the subclass? The game always has absurdly mis-CRed animals and beasts so you get every Druid changing into the same three dang animals. It's boring and it sucks.
- Moon Druid's balance is super, super wonky.
- Fighter sucks because short rests suck. The game told DMs to run twice as many encounters and make them half as challenging to make it so that parties would short rest more often, but if you stray too far outside that sweet spot then classes like Fighter often just have nothing to do. Oops! Hope your campaign doesn't like very few, very difficult encounters because if so you should be a Barbarian or a Paladin. Plus Fighter only gets combat abilities, with virtually no exploration or social abilities at all. And it's the same class that runs out of combat tricks if the party doesn't short rest often enough. The only reason Fighter isn't the worst at combat is because Extra Attack (2) is one of the most absurd abilities in the game. Edit: I forgot about Indomitable! The most feelsbad ability in the game! You'll get only a few uses of it, and by the time you get it you'll want to use it on saves where you only get +0 to +2 vs DC 15. So you'll use your cool ability and always fail the reroll. When I first read the playtest Fighter got advantage on all saves I though it was way too OP, but after getting to the level that you gain Indomitable... nope! Indomitable is 100% trash.
- Someone needs to explain to me why Battlemaster has such a limited number of combat dice. Compare it to Ranger or Rogue. They get bonus damage every turn.
- Champion is unplayably boring without feats. There isn't enough for the class to do, and since every other class has stuff to do in combat, their turns all take a lot longer than yours. Never play a Fighter in a campaign with more than 4 players; you'll never short rest often enough to recover Action Surge (your one active ability) and Second Wind back. That means you get the abilities once a day. And that's all they do. And the level 7 ability (add half your proficiency bonus (round up) to any Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution check you make that doesn’t already use your proficiency bonus) is, for 80% of the game, add +2 to your initiative. That's all it does. It sounds better than that. It's not!
- Also, why is every new Fighter subclass seemingly worse than the last? I almost feel like they don't know what to do with Fighter subclasses or how they should work. It's like they're intimidated by them or something?
- Monk is terrible for the same reason Fighter is terrible. However, it's also terrible because it doesn't really get enough to offset the terrible equipment draw and the requirement to have a ton of high ability scores. Ki points are really low and everything uses them just because they're there, even if it means too many abilities want to use the same resource pool. And why do the bonus Martial Arts attacks not use your equipped weapon? Who thought that was a good way to go? Are we really concerned about the limited resources being spent too quickly?
- The less said about Four Elements the better.
- Paladin sucks because holy crap why can you use Smite multiple times in a round? Why can you use it on attacks you make as a part of spells you cast? Why is there a class that can dump like 20 spell levels in one round? Why does this class get to ignore the action economy and none of the rest do?
- I can't stand that everyone constantly points out that this class "doesn't need a patron deity". It's so often said that it feels like people are just playing Paladins because they get a lot of power and nobody can tell them what to do with it. It feels so dumb. Your Oath should be more restrictive than having a deity in the first place!
- Rangers suck because Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer are abilities that have no text. They never come up. And when they do come up, they don't have an impact. And when they do come up and have an impact, that impact is "nothing happens" (i.e., you don't get lost, you avoid the dangers, you travel more quickly, etc.). Also, Hunter's Mark should not be a spell. It should be a class ability like Paladin's Smite Evil is.
- The less said about Beastmaster the better.
- Rogues suck because they don't suck. They're the best designed class in the game, and it's annoying that there's only one class this well put together. It has good abilities at low level that are useful the entire campaign, and the abilities it gets at high level are good at high level. The class feels potent in actual play, but also doesn't dominate every combat it's involved in. The class has no limited resources, but it still has a myriad of options and it support a plethora of play styles. Subclasses bring unique and different flavors that don't just work like a different coat of paint, they actually change the way the class plays. I really wish I enjoyed playing this class more because it's elegant, simple, and complex enough to stay interesting.
- The only other thing that sucks is the wonky Stealth and Hiding rules. And the Aim ability from UA resolves 90% of the weirdness with Hide because now you don't have to suspend disbelief in order to make Hide work the way the books tell you it should.
- Sorcerers suck because they're directly worse than Wizards. Their spell list is virtually a strict subset of the Wizard list, and it's missing almost every utility spell from the Wizard list. You're virtually forced to be a blaster. They get so few spells known that you will never have flexibility. Metamagic is interesting, but doesn't make up for a spell list with no depth.
- Speaking of no depth, Warlock sucks because it's a class whose primary draw is a few stupid tricks. Eldritch Blast spam with Agonizing Blast's non-standard mechanics and Hex, Devil's Sight/Darkness dumbness, and Hexblade for even more overloading of Cha. Because Cha doesn't already do absolutely everything for spell casting and social interaction, it also has to make you good at melee combat. What a great design idea! The problem is that there's like nothing else in the class. No matter what you do you're going to end up spamming Eldritch Blast because Warlock also sucks for the same reason that Fighter does: it's tightly linked to short rest in order to do anything cool. The class abilities are so shallow that there's nothing else you can do here except exploit the stupid tricks. That's why it's used to the point of abuse for multiclassing. You get 80% of your abilities through level 2 or 3, and then you have to wait until like level 12 for them to actually get better. This class's mechanical design is horrible. And why don't you automatically know the spells on your patron list? Why do they just become available and then you have to pick them? Literally noneof the other classes work like that! Not even Artificier, Paladin and Ranger!
- What's the deal with patrons giving away power for nothing? Seriously, what do the patrons ask for in exchange? The class description seems to make it pretty clear that the Warlock gets power and doesn't have to do anything for it. Why not? Why isn't the patron still involved? You've got this great backstory hook, and then the game tells you that the patron is completely toothless. This is such a waste!
- Also, why are the characters that literally make deals with demons -- which is somehow not evil or a problem -- also the same characters who make the best party face? This is dumb. Are we to believe that the Warlock tricked their patron with their high Charisma? This also seems dumb.
- Stop making Charisma do everything. Either don't make classes have Charisma as a primary combat ability, or move some of the social abilities away from Charisma you jerks. The game should not say, "There are four classes that are extra good at all social skills for free, and the rest are mediocre at best." Combat ability shouldn't be linked to social prowess, and it absolutely is with Bard, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Paladin! Stop it!
- Wizard sucks because the Wizard spell list can still do everything, and nobody else's spell list has half of what Wizard does. The ability to use rituals without preparation is pretty stupid. Also, this class has way, way too many subclasses in the PHB. Also, why does Int suck so bad? It doesn't do hardly anything anymore. Why isn't being smart more useful? Why doesn't it do anything? Are we to believe that being smart doesn't help in a dungeon, but being attractive does? And why is the class that's literally presented as the scholar class not scholarly at all? Why don't Wizards know things? Every Wizard from literature knows things. That's what Wizards are supposed to do.
- And lest you thought I forgot, Artificer sucks because it's everything Fighter and Ranger wish they could be. Even the Alchemist, which isn't a great class, feels like it has a ton more options and features than the Fighter and Ranger.
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