D&D 5E What is the best class for a single class only campaign?

[Zardnaar]

I admitt, that i have seen mainly the battlesmith. And I think it keeps up very well with a ranger and a paladin. At lower level. Without any problem.

That's the best one and the beastie is a decent substitute for ranger stuff and smites. It's a self propelled spiritual weapon almost.

Any of the artificers who don't get multiple attacks us gonna struggle and they're not primary casters or rogues with sneak attack.

Then you're stuck with a half caster that's not good at damage, spells, healing,or skills or much else that's overly relevant.

They're good at tools I suppose but rogue is good at skills which are better and gets sneak attack.

I'm probably gonna ban the class due to its trap potential.

 

[see]

But if the DM is providing that NPC cleric for the wizard he/she/they is going to provide it for the fighter and place him within a day's travel

There's a not-remotely-subtle difference between a DM who creates a world that has at least one known-friendly town somewhere on the same plane with both a 9th-level NPC cleric and a teleportation circle, and a DM who makes sure there's always a friendly 9th-level cleric or druid within a day's safe travel of any and every adventure site. And if you're actually playing Tier 3 as "Masters of the Realm" rather than "Tier 2, Part II: Same Adventures, Bigger Numbers", that difference is relevant.

And frankly, if in a party that has four living 13th-level wizards and one dead one, the living don't have (out of their collective 68-or-so prepared spells) anyone with a prepared bug-out spell, it's only because they've been spoon-fed their victories all along. (Similarly, four living 13th-level bards/clerics/sorcerers should have a raise dead or a resurrection or a teleportation circle or something among them, and four living 13th-level druids should have at least one reincarnate or a transport via plants. It's just sense.)

That's an example of a DM building an encounter outside of the monster manual and deliberately choosing a spell he/she/they believes with be highly problematic.

Seriously? "Divide et impera" is old enough it's in Latin, "evil wizard with minions" is a cliche, battlefield control spells have been in the game since the 1970s, and for the people who didn't get the message any sooner, Treantmonk's Guide to Wizards laid out the tactics a decade and a half ago (back in the 3.5 version).

You don't have to build an encounter to specifically try to gut an all-fighter party (which, I agree, would be a "gotcha" approach); just take a "battlefield controller wizard intelligently uses his spells and directs his minions" encounter designed to be a decent challenge to a 13th-level party, and then run the fighters into the resulting meat grinder.

"Intelligently" here includes things like "don't blatantly advertise that you're the only wizard in the group, because in a fight you want to live long enough to actually cast your spells", "have counterspell prepared to deal with opponent spellcasters, including someone trying to counterspell your wall of force", "use wall of force instead of wall of stone because otherwise the enemy casters will drop it with dispel magic", and "keep your minions between you and the people you're attacking so nobody can just run up and start beating you to death with multiattack."

(You know, basic things that any evil wizard who actually has goals he wants to accomplish and a life he wants to live and a brain of a quality reflective of his Intelligence score would have in mind. I grant this might feel like you're dealing with a "gotcha DM" if you're used to opponents being brainless MOBs who exist only to give XP and drop loot after a vigorous round of rolling dice, and accordingly expect DPR to be sufficient to deal with any combat encounter.)

If you're running this encounter against a balanced party, the evil wizard can either put suspected casters inside the dome-of-force (where they'll be able to safely cast spells that just need visual targeting instead of physical effects that actually originate from the caster's position) or leave them out (where they can be hit, but also can cast spells that would be blocked by the dome-of-force). It's still useful, but not nearly as easy or effective as the "the guys with bows, make sure they're the ones inside the dome-of-force, not outside" decision-making when dealing with an all-fighter party.

Don't get so stuck in your box that you forget there's an outside to it. ;-)

Says the guy who considers a 9th-level wizard an unacceptable part of an enemy encounter group because its stablock isn't specifically in the Monster Manual. Despite, you know, pp.282-283 of the Dungeon Master's Guide.

I'd call schrodinger's on that because the likelihood that any class would have all of those just because the class falls into the full caster category doesn't exist.

When you've got five members of a class making up the party, and know you have to cover the array with members of that class, it's not a matter of "Schrodinger's caster", it's a matter of the group making build choices to cover the obvious gaps. Having an Arcana cleric for teleportation circle, or a Divine Soul sorcerer for cleric-list spells, or whatever.

 

[guachi]

I go with Rogue. I like the class. Everyone can have Expertise in sneaking so that Assassin gets to use his 3rd level ability. The subclasses are fun and I think I'd enjoy taking a lesser-used one. Effective at range and in melee.

Plus, and this is most important, it'd be really easy as a player to have motivations to adventure and come up with ideas considering "team of thieves" is a basis for many movies and TV shows.

That being said, I'd play in a campaign where all the PCs were one class except for Sorcerer as that's my least favorite class. And that says a lot about 5e that I like all the classes but one enough to do that.

 

[Undrave]

I think it depends on too many factors. If you do 1-2 encounters between long rest? Casters will likely reign in the DPR for most encounters at higher levels. Expect them to be equally effective in all ways? Well, that's apples an oranges. They fill different niches. I don't think they should strive for "perfect" balance because it's an illusion.

They're different, as long as one or the other doesn't dominate it all comes out in the wash.

My idea of balance includes a very simple test: That a group can bring a party of any class composition to a DM that has an adventure ready, and didn't know the party in advance, and that DM doesn't need to come up with 'fixes' or to 'take into account that the party is missing X' and just start playing the adventure.

I despise the idea that you absolutely need a caster to do high level adventures in D&D. Sure, you might need to think outside the box more to overcome obstacles if you come in with a single-class party, but the big effort in this situation should lay on the players' side, and NOT the DM's side. The PCs should be able to overcome their own deficiencies through skilled play and leveraging the abilities they have available to them.

And no, providing NPC casters to just pay a problem away isn't a way out of this, it's the very definition of a 'fix' and still mean that a particular spell was require to complete an adventure.

It's partially why I think the Clay Golem is one of the worst design in the game. That kind of design should simply NOT exist in a game that pretends to be balanced in any way.

 

[ECMO3]

My idea of balance includes a very simple test: That a group can bring a party of any class composition to a DM that has an adventure ready, and didn't know the party in advance, and that DM doesn't need to come up with 'fixes' or to 'take into account that the party is missing X' and just start playing the adventure.

I despise the idea that you absolutely need a caster to do high level adventures in D&D. Sure, you might need to think outside the box more to overcome obstacles if you come in with a single-class party, but the big effort in this situation should lay on the players' side, and NOT the DM's side. The PCs should be able to overcome their own deficiencies through skilled play and leveraging the abilities they have available to them.

And no, providing NPC casters to just pay a problem away isn't a way out of this, it's the very definition of a 'fix' and still mean that a particular spell was require to complete an adventure.

It's partially why I think the Clay Golem is one of the worst design in the game. That kind of design should simply NOT exist in a game that pretends to be balanced in any way.

I agree you don't strictly need casters. I do think though that if you do a party full of Rogues or fighters the game will be easier if some are casters.

In most of my games the players have come up with the fixes for party weaknesses, either by selecting feats, multiclassing, selecting certain spells etc. I will say though sometimes it required pretty darastic moves. The biggest I can remember is in Tomb of Anihilation. The party kept getting lost because we had no one with a high enough survival (even though we had people proficient). After two levels this was a real drag on the campaign and it was so bad one of the players had his fighter take a level in Ranger solely for the ability not to get lost (he was the only character with the required stats to multiclass to Ranger). Ranger was not in his build plan at all. A lot of people would have expected the DM to change the rules on getting lost and make it easier instead of basically forcing a character to radically change their build.

The great thing is 5E is wide open and you can do this, and you can usually do it on the fly and radically change your character on a level up. Older editions with chained feats and mutliclass XP penalties, once you were into a build there were huge reprecusions for deciding to go a different direction.

 

[NaturalZero]

I really want to run a historical fantasy period campaign called Heroes of Iga about Oda Nobunaga's war in the Ida province. His son is leading the first invasion into the mountain region renown for the mythical shinobi and the party is made up of humans and folklore races like tengu, kitsune, oni, et al. Everyone is a "ninja." Every character must be a rogue and I'd brew up a sapper subclass that uses bombs and traps, an acupuncture subclass with some healing and condition-inflicting attacks, a shadow-based ki subclass, and a Str-based brutal scoundrel style subclass. All other rogues subclasses are on the table too.

The entire campaign is espionage based with stealth-oriented combat and exploration encounters. Every fight is stealth, hit-and-run, illusion, shadow, smoke, sneak attack, etc.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

That's the best one and the beastie is a decent substitute for ranger stuff and smites. It's a self propelled spiritual weapon almost.

Any of the artificers who don't get multiple attacks us gonna struggle and they're not primary casters or rogues with sneak attack.

Then you're stuck with a half caster that's not good at damage, spells, healing,or skills or much else that's overly relevant.

They're good at tools I suppose but rogue is good at skills which are better and gets sneak attack.

I'm probably gonna ban the class due to its trap potential.

Better do that. If you think that way.

 

[Zardnaar]

Better do that. If you think that way.

Well I was going to remove some of the archetypes that are traps. Battlesmith might squek through.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Well I was going to remove some of the archetypes that are traps. Battlesmith might squek through.

If that is what your game needs, go for it.
I just add every tasha option for monks and rangers. That helps 4e monk and beastmaster ranger a lot.
Is still don't share your assessment of the artificer, not even the alchemist.

 

[Mind of tempest]

what is the Eric Noah is my half-fiend love child option for anyway?