D&D 5E It is OK for a class to be the worst

[GlassJaw]

why not just accept that it is alright for different things to perform differently?

"Perform differently" is significantly different than "isn't very fun", "lacks clear design direction", or "under performs".

I'm all for fixing the latter three.

 

[Undrave]

Personally I feel like animal companions in DnD are always a ropey proposition. They always mess with action economy in ways that either make you underpowered or way overpowered and I wish WOTC hadn't felt necessary to put it in the PHB and at least wait until they had more data on the game... but you know, Gnome phenomenon and all that...

Doesn't this say more about the player than the class? After all, if you rank things, then something has to be at the bottom. And if a player is going to feel inconsequential because they are not 'the best' at the table then you are ranking the value of the players themselves. Not a table I want to play at.

There's being bad at something and there's being the worst at EVERYTHING. Like, my Way of Shadow Monk is pretty unremarkable in combat compared to our Paladin and Barbarian, but I got great mobility and I'm an excellent scout. I'm never super impressive in battle but in one battle my use of Silence was critical in making a bad situation more manageable and being able to teleport from shadow to shadow is FUN. A class doesn't need to be good at everything all the time to not be 'the worst', it just needs a schtick it can do well enough and often enough that you have story to tell.

It's upsetting but it makes sense. People don't usually get to play all of their pre-built characters so they'll make them using theorycrafting and blog recommendations. They then choose their favorite one if they start a new campaign or their old character dies. The strength of the "weaker" subclasses aren't obvious, so they write them off as weak and never actually play them.

This! We don't all have hours upon hours to try every class and try to find the best one. If a class feels weak in theory, regardless how good it could be with 'skillful play', I'm less likely to give it a chance compared to a class I feel is cool and has some kind of strength.

I'm sure the Ranger can be played well but just looking at the PHB Ranger and I don't find anything particularly interesting about it except a few cool spells.

 

[jaelis]

I'm fairly convinced that the objection to beast master is just white room theorizing and has very little to do with actual play experience. I've got a lot of hours under multiple DMs as a PHB and UA beast master, chiefly because I wanted to see if all the complaining in early D&D 5e was justified. It was all just fine and arguably one of the more memorable characters in any of those games. Red Creek Rufus throwing a net on an enemy and his boar, Belvedere, rushing in out of nowhere to gore and knock the enemy prone so the rest of the party can kick it to death is just good wholesome fun.

I'm not surprised that the plain BM ranger would be fun to play... its not nearly so bad to be unusable. But almost everybody does at least a little theorizing and optimizing when they think about their character, and it can be annoying when you feel like you've got the short end of the stick, even if its not by enough to really matter. Similarly its annoying to look at natural explorer or hide in plain sight and feel like they are clunky, even if they are good enough to use. It's fair to base a criticism on that.

And of course, there's nothing wrong with 'fixing' a class if that's what you enjoy doing, even if it doesn't strickly need fixing.

 

[Guest 6801328]

But almost everybody does at least a little theorizing and optimizing when they think about their character, and it can be annoying when you feel like you've got the short end of the stick, even if its not by enough to really matter.

Along similar lines, it's why I hate the choice between ASI or Feats. I want to take the fun, colorful Feat, but I feel the tug of that more optimal universal +1 modifier.

 

[iserith]

I'm not surprised that the plain BM ranger would be fun to play... its not nearly so bad to be unusable. But almost everybody does at least a little theorizing and optimizing when they think about their character, and it can be annoying when you feel like you've got the short end of the stick, even if its not by enough to really matter. Similarly its annoying to look at natural explorer or hide in plain sight and feel like they are clunky, even if they are good enough to use. It's fair to base a criticism on that.

And of course, there's nothing wrong with 'fixing' a class if that's what you enjoy doing, even if it doesn't strickly need fixing.

Sure, I have no objection to theorizing, optimizing, or changes, even wholesale, anything about the rules. But practical experience will always outweigh forum theory in my view. Practical experience has shown me that many of the complaints are way overblown in my view.

 

[The Old Crow]

Class A is the worst. Fix class A. Now class B is the worst. Fix class B. Repeat forever and power creep each step of the way. Great idea.

Actually, if G is the best class, and one aims for D in power, then fixing the worst class just reduces the the spread from A to G to B to G, and fixing B then reduces the spread from B to G to C to G. If the power spread is huge, this is a good thing; if it is small, it's just tweaks to make it work better for the person who wants them. I don't see how power creep is even an issue if one aims for the middle instead of trying to be better then the best class.

 

[Oofta]

I take all ranking based on spreadsheet simulations with a grain of salt. How many times has someone posted that the "best" option is X only to find out that it's best because at a specific level band option X does .75 more points of damage per round? A few percentage points one way or another doesn't break a build.

There are many factors that impact how effective a PC at their particular role. Ability score generation method, capabilities of the player, style of game, number and difficulty of encounters between short and long rests, gold and magic items.

Video games can be better at balancing things out because they control so many of the variables that just aren't possible in a TTRPG. Even then, people go through and rank options, weapons and builds.

I get that everybody wants to be an armchair quarterback and thinks things could have been designed "better". But "better" much like beauty is in the eye of the beholder and any time you rank things something will be at the bottom.

 

[Redwizard007]

That seems extremely unfair.

You made this thread, and have just labelled all the answers to your question except one as "dishonest" by saying that. I was going to respond, but it seems like if you regard all answers except the one you dislike as "dishonest", then there's hardly any point.

Flawed logic.

Labeling something "most honest" in no way labels other things dishonest. Its not a true/false question, its a sliding scale. Would it have felt more appropriate to you had i said "my favorite?" Then you respond with "how could I have a favorite if I haven't yet seen all the answers?" Its a silly point to get hung up on, but I guess its no sillier than any other arbitrary line folks like to draw.

 

[Minigiant]

I will say something a little controversial.

There will always be a weakest class because some classes are geared to aspects of the game that is not emphasized or apparent at all tables.

 

[Charlaquin]

Regarding the beast master ranger, I think talking about it as “the worst class/subclass” is a red herring. The issue isn’t really that a beast master is mechanically inferior to other classes, it’s that it doesn’t play the way most people who want to play a pet class expect or want it to.