What is the Worst Class in D&D?

What is the worst designed class in D&D?

  • Barbarian

    Votes: 7 2.5%
  • Bard

    Votes: 78 28.1%
  • Cleric

    Votes: 7 2.5%
  • Druid

    Votes: 19 6.8%
  • Fighter

    Votes: 5 1.8%
  • Monk

    Votes: 16 5.8%
  • Paladin

    Votes: 4 1.4%
  • Psion

    Votes: 29 10.4%
  • Psychic Warrior

    Votes: 14 5.0%
  • Ranger

    Votes: 75 27.0%
  • Rogue

    Votes: 1 0.4%
  • Sorcerer

    Votes: 18 6.5%
  • Wizard

    Votes: 5 1.8%

Shard O'Glase said:
I was going to go with psion or the bard in the end I went with fighter.

Fighters are really only balanced in the dungeon. And yes I realize their name is fighter, before anyone chimes in with this comment.

But it comes down to this all they can effectively do is fight. And that would be fine is they absolutley dominated combat, but they don't every other class other than the bard hangs in there and fights close to as well as they do. But the fighter doesn't come even remotely close to hanging in there outside of the fight compared to any class there except maybe the paladin, who I have too little experience with to know much about.

Considering how mcuh worse the fighter is outside of a fight there should be 0 situations where the rogue outdamages the fighter, 0 situations where the amge outperforms the fighter in a fight etc. It doesn't work that way though, in many situaitons thanks to sneak attacks the rogue exceeds the fighter in damage, thanks to save or dies, creative spellcasting, area of effect spells etc the wiz/sor frequently out fight the fighter, the cleric with buffs, can out fight or = the fighter, and still buff the fighter, throw out area of effect spells, save or die spells, or use harm which will be overfixed in 3.5.

Yet outside of a fight unless your climing or riding a horse the rogue, cleric, wiz/sor will spank the fighter making him look like an incompetent boob who not only can't help the party, but often bungles it so bad as too hinder the party, so just sit down shut up and don't even try fighters. Its not a fight so go play the playstation and wait for us to let you know when you can roll some dice.

I agree completely Shard. Fighters really need some mid and high level feats so they can take advantage of having the most feats in the game. Because of WOTCs decisions to focus on PrCs instead of feats fighters are only launching pads for PrCs now. The might be the best combat generalists but other classes can out do them in differnt form of combat (Barb & melee, Pal & mounted, etc).
 

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Valiantheart said:


I agree completely Shard. Fighters really need some mid and high level feats so they can take advantage of having the most feats in the game. Because of WOTCs decisions to focus on PrCs instead of feats fighters are only launching pads for PrCs now. The might be the best combat generalists but other classes can out do them in differnt form of combat (Barb & melee, Pal & mounted, etc).

When I DM a D&D game in the future, I am incorporating various combat feats from the ELH that will help the fighter take advantage of having so many options. Most of the combat feats in the ELH have requirements that aren't that epic to begin with.
 

I voted Monk and am startled to see how little votes it has recieved.

My opinions are based both on my play as a DM and as a player.

Monk is basically a fighter class with no armor proficiencies, poor weapon selection, and cleric BAB progression. Monk is an extremely weak class for any creature that can't use the unarmed attack to augment its natural attacks (claws or whatever) and doesn't have natural armor. Among PC's, the survival rate of monks is lower than any class which I've DMed. When developing challenges for my players, I often will weaken the encounter by selecting monk as the opponents class.

Monk is a generalist class, much like Bard, and like Bard is ok at many things, but master of none. This is tradiationally a recipe for disaster in RPG's, where specialist almost always out perform generalists. Monks require many high attributes to perform well at anything. Bards actually tend to have a more useful role in a party than Monks, because at least the Bard can rely on his high charisma, and spells to support and 'buff' his party - albeit generally in a weaker fashion than a cleric with a non-combat charisma focus.

The majority of monk class abilities are of rather low value and can be virtually acquired quite easily by other classes using magic items - flight items, boots of striding and springing, rings of featherfall, etc. Assuming you don't mind holding a weapon, a fighter will quickly acquire more combat style feats than a monk. In this way, the monk is similar to a 2nd edition thief. The class is quite weak at low levels, and generally surpassed at high levels. Only an extremely low magic campaign could justify taking a class that turned ones own body into a magic weapon at the expense of other powers.

I'm sorta shocked to see how much derision the Ranger gets. I grant you that for much of its career it is a rather boring class and it is painfully front ended, but it is by no means a patheticly weak class. It has full fighter base attack bonus (unlike the monk). It is a divine spell caster (unlike the Bard), and so can buff itself and its comrades. It clearly outshines the fighter in useful skills, and lags only slightly behind in damage capacity and armor class. It is much less of a one trick pony than a Barbarian. Favored enemy becomes increasingly potent at higher and higher levels. At 20th level, you get bonuses to damage/skills vs. 5 different classes of creature. I'd say that the biggest problem the class has (and one which I've decided to change in my campaign world) is that it can't do bonus damage vs. favored enemies that are immune to critical hits. Aesthetically, the biggest problem is that it still has too much flavor text for a core class.

I'm much less shocked to see the Bard come under fire, as this would have been my 2nd choice. The basic problems here is lack of skill points in a class that survives by its wits, combined with arcane caster that needs to wear armor. A secondary problem is that limited uses for bardic singing.

Although I haven't first hand experience, Psion also seems to be a miserable class for the reasons many people outline. By first hand experience, Psychic Warrior is only slightly better, is extremely weak in the hands of an inexperienced player, and seems to be geared solely arround the creation of a few smackdowns.

Barbarian is a strong class (maybe too strong) burdened with too much flavor text for a core class. Druid and Paladin are moderately weak classes with the same problem, with Paladin suffering much of Ranger's problems with being front-ended and otherwise boring to develop though not quite to the same extent.

Wizard is a strong class but still is too easy to kill at low levels, and suffers horribly from the need to buy all of thier spells and to a lesser extent on the need to burn alot of thier XP on wands and scrolls. Wizards should be able to use the spell books of other wizards. It is rather ridiculous to me that they can't, so I let them and it seems to work fine.

Fighter is a strong class burdened by the lack of secondary professions in D&D. Allow characters to choose a secondary profession that improves thier 'class' skill list, and fighter stops being quite so boring. A secondary concern is the lack of interesting feats in the core rules and the tendancy to put all interesting new ideas into the framework of a PrC. Fighter tends to be the most dabbled in class, with virtually every other class taking 1-4 levels of fighter to load up on feats.

Sorcerer is a good class that shares many of the weaknesses of both fighters and wizards. They are too fragile at low levels and like fighters tend to be one dimensional.

Cleric and rogue are examples of 3rd editions tendancy to overcompensate for the weaknesses of previous editions. Like Barbarian, cleric and rogue may now actually be too strong. They are now in terms of flexibility, role playing potential, and sheer in game prowess probably the best classes in the game. Rogue is probably the second most dabbled in class, usually fighter types looking for some decent skills to fall back on. Cleric is probably the third most dabbled in class, with many fighters and barbarians in my campaigns taking a level to buff up will saves, gain access to all the front end goodness of domain powers, and the ability to use the all powerful wand of cure light wounds.

It baffles me that people would complain about clerics all being the same and sterotyped and so forth, and I'm inclined to chalk that up to a failure of imagination and not the game system. Clerics can be made to fit almost any role you desire of them, and are easily among the most interesting classes to play both as a PC and a DM. I think it is only PC clerics who tend to come out 'all the same' (and not all of them). I've played clerics that were so different they hardly seemed the same class (one came out more like a Paladin, another more like a Bard, and a third something like a Druid). In fact, if I had to complain about a cleric is that they can almost do every class better than that class can.
 

Celebrim said:
I voted Monk and am startled to see how little votes it has recieved.

My opinions are based both on my play as a DM and as a player.

Monk is basically a fighter class with no armor proficiencies, poor weapon selection, and cleric BAB progression.
I'm much less shocked to see the Bard come under fire, as this would have been my 2nd choice. The basic problems here is lack of skill points in a class that survives by its wits, combined with arcane caster that needs to wear armor. A secondary problem is that limited uses for bardic singing.

.


I am begining to be of a mind that Monks should get full BAB as they are essentialy a warrior class and as you've mentioned many of their class abilities have little impact on combat.
As for the Bard stuff...well we're going to see all those fixed in 3er :D
 

Afrodyte said:


When I DM a D&D game in the future, I am incorporating various combat feats from the ELH that will help the fighter take advantage of having so many options. Most of the combat feats in the ELH have requirements that aren't that epic to begin with.


Cool.

I actually already do that. I dont allow any PrCs in my games but I have around 120 feats I have designed to allow my players to customize. Some are epic feats redesigned with more realistic requirements. Some are borrowed directly from PrCs (absolute ambidexterity anyone). Many of them are mid to high feats.
 

Final (?) Observations (4/15 at 7:30 EST)

The Winner of Worst Designed Class...

THE BARD

29% of the vote went toward the bard class.

Ranger was next, gaining 27% of vote.
Psion won third, 10%.

The Rest (in order): Druid, Sorcerer, Psychic Warrior, Monk, Cleric, Barbarian, Wizard, Fighter & Paladin (tie), lastly, the rogue got one stinkin vote.

The major complaints in the debate are nothing new, generalists vs. specialists, sorcerer outgunned by wizard, multiple stat dependency for psionics, fighter types boring in non-combat situations.

However, it was interesting to see how the results stacked up against the supposed fixes for 3.5. Ranger and bard major revision, druids and monks touched up, barbarians tweaked, but what about our poor sorcerer?

Overall, it was interesting to see what classes were poorly though out in the eyes of the core audience.
 

I chose Druid.

Yet, they have some cool stuff but when a campaign features mostly dungeons, they are arguably out of their element.

This is something I've seen more often than not when I watch somebody play a druid.

A close second IMHO is the Ranger.
 

Sorcerer was targeted by the drive-by 3.5 hit too.

When I went to Winter Fantasy, I had the pleasure of attending a 3.5 Q&A by the brand managers and designers.

Andy Collins specifically pointed out that one of his favorite classes... the Sorcerer... is now really cool. I supoose that he was dropping yet more hints. :)

Fear not... the Sorcerer HAS changed.


>;)~
 


Well let me say I wish the designers would all get together on the sorcerer thing cause half of em hint that there changing half hint not. However I seem to remember that Andy Collins is the one who more or less created the sorcerer so I tend to value his input. I certainly hope its true.
It disturbs me a bit that the bard won out in this. I think the 3e bard is pretty good...and once we hit 3er its going to be REALLY good
 

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