What is your least favorite D&D class? For me, it's the fucking Bard...

>What is your least favorite D&D class?
In terms of mechanics I would agree it's the bard. Bard's have sucked since third edition. They still sucked in pathfinder, they stopped sucking a bit in 4th, and now in 5th, they arguably suck worse than they ever have before. They are devoid of a true identity in terms of mechanics, or anything that really makes them unique or useful, and the few cool things they did have, like a huge skill list and versatility, have been whittled away edition after edition until literally, you would have to be an idiot to actually play one. I say that having played them in every edition, because conceptually, they are my favorite class.

In terms of concept, I think the ranger is probably the one I like the least. Partly because it is a sort of meh idea, but mainly because it is horribly mishandled and becomes a collection of themes that don't necessarily work well together. Like, why is there a class that specializes in dual wielding and bows, but not at the same time? Why does it also have magic? Why is that class the hunter/wilderness class, and not some sort of spellsword thing? It's a weird and nonsensical mismash to me with a theme that doesn't match its abilitis If it was just a straight up hunter, that would be cool, but all the cluttered ideas screw it up and it becomes either a fighter who is trying to be a druid or a druid who is trying to be a fighter.

110% Druid for me.

I want to play the character I created, not templates of creatures I had no hand in creating.

Don't even get me started on 5e and the retardation of druids getting a brand new health bar over their existing one every time they transform. Holy fuck is that bad mechanically. It's both super overpowered and super boring at the same time.

Also the whole "MUH NATURE!" and "I HATE CIVILIZATION" thing. Yeah, it works great for villain characters, but in a party of social well-adjusted heroes who are probably from civilization, it's almost as bad as the edgy asshat playing the Chaotic Neutral Rogue who steals from the party. 10/10 times the druid has no reason to be in the party unless the DM asspulls the BBEG as threatening the Druid's forest for no particular reason at all.

Fuck Druids. They actually edge out Bards as the worst class in the game for me, though it's a pretty close race.

I hate Rogues. They always attract the worst breed of THAT GUY, their existence makes every other martial class worst off for their presence, they force every campaign to have traps so that they have something to do (even when the campaign is one where traps wouldn't make sense to find), and they generally serve no purpose in combat aside from sneak attacking one dude.

Wizards. They are always too powerful, both lore wise and mechanics wise, and generally the entire game world has to be designed around their capabilities. They render skills and techniques pointless, since eventually they can override the need for them. Who needs to climb when you can fly? Who needs to pick locks when you can pass through walls? Who needs to ride a horse when you can fucking teleport across continents? There are virtually no limits to Wizards in most of the settings they're in, and the more powerful the PCs get the more you have to design every encounter and all world lore around what they can do. They are the centerpiece to practically every setting they're in. You might as well call D&D "The Adventures Of Wizard, and friends". Combat mechanics are the same deal, the only edition of D&D where they didn't define the entire meta was 4E. In conclusion, fuck Wizards.

Agreed. Pic related kinda sums up my entire opinion of DnD in general.

Shame TTRPGS are already kinda niche around here and you either play DnD or you don't have a game because nobody will play anything else.

And everyone complained in 4E because the classes were (shock horror) balanced and all had lots of options. It's unfortunately a D&D sacred cow they don't want to kill.

Pathfinder/Paizo has gone as far as saying they don't care that fighters are weak at high levels.

>Maybe they're "wizard," maybe its a patron god or spirit, but just being able to dance and perform music doesn't equate to supernatural powers.

the association of music and magic is ancient. if anything the bard is an older concept than the wizard, as D&D presents it.

Warlock, they don't have enough distinction to warrant an entirely different class, and the only reason I even see people play them is for their awesome cantrips.

They really should just be a form of sorcerer (Dragon-blooded, Wild Magic, and then Pact-bound) as sorcerer has the least amount of paths and customization to begin with, not to mention they are both charisma casters.

Druids are my least favorite class, but for me it's just because they're boring to me. Nature magic is uninteresting, and there's only so much you can do with animal transformations before you've reduced yourself to fighter-lite (or super-fighter depending on the edition). Like, I can picture what a level 20 Barbarian or Wizard would look and act like, but druids get nothing iconic. The only level 9 spell unique to them that they get in 5e is Storm of Vengeance, which would be cool if it wasn't as much of a trap option as it's always been.

Bard 100%. I've never seen somebody play a bard who wasn't a complete asshole in real life.

W hat did you think of the 4e pure martial ranger?

>Bard's have sucked since third edition

>Most busted class in 5e
>Worthless

Druid. Not because of the class is bad, or is designed wrong, nothing like that. I just hate how their public perception, and how they're always played.
>Muh sacred forest
>Muh evil civilization chopping muh sacred forest
>Muh animals
Druid PCs always autistically care about some shit than NO ONE else in the party does, and it's always a challenge to make them work with the group.
>Why would my character adventure with them?
Why did you make asocial hermit who hates people for a game that's all about interacting with people and playing with the party? Now that's the real question.

>Why did you make asocial hermit who hates people for a game that's all about interacting with people and playing with the party?
You know you could argue the same about the wizard archetype. Logically they'd have even less reason to like people; at least the druid is a political leader.

I dislike Warlocks because I don't get the difference between a Warlock and an Evil Cleric.

No, you're just bad at playing Bard. It's never been a bad class, ever, and it's blatantly OP compared to everything else in 5E.

Sorcerer. It's just a more boring Wizard. And warlocks too if the DM doesn't do anything with your backstory. Also barbarians if the DM doesn't let you fight, or keeps shoving OP enemies that you get squished by.

Wizards don't make any sense either because you can't do magic in real life, no matter how hard you study.
It's magic, don't got to explain shit.

Paladin. The basic concept (he's good, like really really good!) is fucking stupid, and cheapens any other morally driven character (sure your fighter is a good guy, but not a good enough guy to be a paladin). They're also a magnet for fuckwads and pure argument fodder.

The fans are also clamorous as hell. They all think they have the "right" way of playing a paladin figured out, and they all think that this way redeems the class of all of its faults.

Also on the note of bards, I think they should be a divine class and flavoured with some sort of divine music that central to the creation of reality or something.

They aren't though. They, like the Ranger have zero explanation for where their magic comes from. Also, there needs to be more mundanes as it is.

Mundanes in dnd suck though

>ln the worlds of D&D, words and music are not just vibrations of air, but vocalizations with power all their own. The bard is a master of song, speech, and the magic they contain. Bards say that the multiverse was spoken into existence, that the words of the gods gave it shape, and that echoes of these primordial Words of Creation still resound throughout the cosmos. The music of bards is an attempt to snatch and harness those echoes, subtly woven into their spells and powers.

>Thanks to their familiarity with the wilds, rangers acquire the ability to cast spells that harness nature's power, much as a druid does. Their spells, like their combat abilities, emphasize speed, stealth, and the hunt.

>>ln the worlds of D&D, words and music are not just vibrations of air, but vocalizations with power all their own. The bard is a master of song, speech, and the magic they contain. Bards say that the multiverse was spoken into existence, that the words of the gods gave it shape, and that echoes of these primordial Words of Creation still resound throughout the cosmos. The music of bards is an attempt to snatch and harness those echoes, subtly woven into their spells and powers.
This sounds a lot more like divine magic than arcane

It being arcane magic is basically just a holdover from 2nd edition, where they just got wizard spells.

But they still do get wizard spells, and cleric spells, and everyone else's spells.

And didn't you need to be some crazy druid/fighter/rogue/cleric mc just to get access to bard in 2e?

That's a specific setting then. Which, is fine. However, it has to be tailored or explained at WC and CC.

Nah, that was first edition where it was some sort of weirdo prestige class before prestige classes. In 2nd it was a full fledged character class, and they were granted a less powerful version of wizard spellcasting (they needed a spellbook and everything).

That sounds like ripoff of Earth Sea's and Tolkien's first age magic system. Still, it's better than nothing. Also, the class doesn't mechanically reflect that very well.

>something in D&D was lifted out of another piece of fantasy

You don't say?

My personal headcanon was that Bards dabble in simple arcane spells while also paying lip-service to any sort of god of music or travel that might exist in the setting.

Essentially, they use their musical ability to better memorize the long-winded arcane texts and prayer chants. Less mastery or precision, and it also only happens to work with a particular subset of those spells, as only certain prayers and spells have a good rhythm or ryhme to them.

Personally though, I would just as soon exchange them for a full blown Red Mage. You aren't some weird musical savant who gets to shortcut. You're someone who actually has to split their time between bladework, divine magic, and arcane magic. I'd rather have a Fighter/Mage/Preist/Thief multiclass over Bard as a class.

>Also the whole "MUH NATURE!" and "I HATE CIVILIZATION" thing.
I always played mine as an ecologist that understands that humans/elves/dwarves/whatever also serve a purpose and have a niche in the web of life. That means cities are as natural as beaver dam, though there had to be some limit to what's done.

>D&D
>Expecting originality

One has bargained something in a trade for power from a nondiety. The other has devoted their lives to living the precepts of a deity and has been rewarded with powerful abilities by this faith and devotion, and the second they step out of line, they can be stripped of this power. That's the difference between a warlock and a cleric. A warlock doesn't need to worship, they've traded something away, such as their time, a memory, an emotion, or something else near and dear to them.

Warlocks bought something and clerics lease.

Arcane magic is the tools used to harness these echoes or distilled forms of the Words of Creation. Wizards do the same thing but in a different way from bards.

Divine magic is a blessing from the gods using the Words of Creation. the cleric prays for a specific blessing, which is granted or not by the god they worship. They pray for specific blessings in the morning, usually, which the god then uses a tiny fraction of their power and the Words of Creation to set up the miracles ahead of time. The act of casting by a cleric is activating a specific "spell" by way of praying for a specific already made miracle. This is why cleric spells use divine focuses and lots of verbal components, with a smattering of somatic, instead of material, somatic, and verbal components.

I actually feel the opposite. Wizards seem more boring with how they just go to school and get spells from a book. They also lead to annoying setting questions of why magical teaching isn't more widespread.

Magical bloodlines are more common in mythology, allow for greater thematics, and also give more options for the character past being a bookworm.

Hey, some of there stuff can be pretty creative. Planescape, Spelljammer, Dark Sun, Raven Loft, and Dungeon Crawl Classic all come to mind.

>I actually feel the opposite. Wizards seem more boring with how they just go to school and get spells from a book. They also lead to annoying setting questions of why magical teaching isn't more widespread.

Same reason Brain Surgeons are 1 in 10,000,000.

society could and would have a lot more brain surgeons if they were half as useful as wizards.

so close and then you fucked it up at the end...

The reason Brain surgeons are rare is that the world simply does not need that many Brain surgeons.

Being a Wizard by many accounts doesnt require that much intelligence at the lowest levels of spells, and even those are quite useful to simply be able to cast Unseen Servant to clean your house for you or the like.

It's more akin to asking why not everyone in those times learned a trade, which would be a similar case of apprenticeship and instruction, except the things you learn are far more broadly applicable.

Simply put, I don't like the concept of an omnidiciplinary scientist who can warp reality and teach others to do the same as a basic class. Maybe if it only does one thing that isn't useful to your average farmer or craftsman, but when you've got eight schools of magic you're bound to find something that will help you in the day to day. And then you just wind up with Eberron.

I like them all though, but small problem with Clerics; there should've been a Priest class that's the full caster and the Clerics should only go up to 6th level spells (such as a Divine Bard kinda deal), trading spellcasting ability for armor/martial weapons and more immediate bonuses to fights.

Paladin's a whole different deal.

The intelligence requirement isn't really the issue. Wizards are listed as a "Trained" class, which causes the character to be at least +2d6 years older than adulthood (at least for random generation)

What this means essentially is that you have to give 2-12 years of your life just to learn to cast 1st level spells. And that's for adventurers, who are remarkable people that tend to pick things up more quickly than most and can become a master swordsman in a few months.

This is why most wizards are depicted as old and frail, because it requires stupid amounts of study to harness magic, and most people don't have the time or patience for it, even if they're smart enough.

>Being a Wizard by many accounts doesnt require that much intelligence at the lowest levels of spells, and even those are quite useful to simply be able to cast Unseen Servant to clean your house for you or the like.

Your basing that off the PC's stats, right? That doesn't apply to normal people. That applies to epic heroes on any sliding scale of the spectrum. You are talking about the minority of a super impossibly small minority.

Depends a lot on the edition, but even something like Prestidigitation becoming widespread is enough to invalidate the spice trade, jumpstart refrigeration, and help a bunch with sanitation by,being able to magically perfectly clean anything. Throw in Light alongside that and you also have some of the major early benefits of electricity letting people stay up much later.

Sure, it might not be something everyone learns, but Wizards on their own are already enough to make huge waves in the setting, and it basically garuntees you a living once you learn it.

Bards are fucking gay. The only classes are fighter, Barbarian, and sometimes rogues.

And yet the necessary skill and abilities to become a good wizard are still 1 in 10,000,000, just like the brain surgeon.

Teaching a bunch of people to perform a few basic cantrips, which tend to be nothing in the way of having any real magical power, only requires average intelligence, but the really useful spells require people of deft hands and clever minds, and those are much fewer in number as intelligence is a bell curve, with higher intelligence having far fewer people the higher you go. A wizard capable of casting ninth circle spells is a literal genius on par with the greatest minds of our current age, and those are quite few.

A lot of people on Veeky Forums tend to think of themselves as pretty smart, and so vastly overestimate the numbers of people who could be wizards. When in reality we just tend to have a lot of skill points devoted to obscure knowledge skills, while muddling by with intelligence in the range of 8 to 12 on here.

At which point it becomes a glaring oddity in the setting where something so orderly and scientific is also inconsistent with who it can be taught to.

Again, it's a jar of worms that I don't like getting into for these exact reasons.

Which, is why you don't have a lot wizards in your setting. Wizards should tantamount to a dragon or Gandalf. Not a fucking RC adapter for your fridge. Any magic available to the common man should rife with peril.

Sort of. Only if you. Make it something orderly and scientific that can be taught in your setting. Magic shouldn't be conventional, nothing about it should ever cross over into the practical or reasonable. That's why it is interesting.

Except you don't need 9th level spells. You barely need first level spells. Cantrips are insanely useful even as 'weak' as they are. Ray of Frost to get ice cold anything whenever you want along with self defense. Mending to repair broken tools or objects. Everything Prestidigitation can do.

You could make a career off of almost any of these. A couple years to learn A cantrip is atill a good deal in many cases.

Yeah, which as I said, is why I prefer Sorcerers, as rather than having an actual book full of words that they can point to to explain hoe Magic works, they are someone like Gandalf or a Dragon where they just have this innate magical ability based on what they are.

I think the rarity excuse can be any number of reasons. I mean look at real world examples. How many doctors existed back then? Or any actual scientific based occupation. I mean even freaking Masons were thought to have magic powers, and they were just stone workers and architects.

Ray of Frost is actually a fairly piddly cold spell. You'd need to cast it several times, probably on the order of 5 or more, just to get a glass mildly cold. It does minor cold damage in a quick flash and doesn't have the sustained cooling effect that a liquid would need. It's like being blasted by a turned over can of air, but slightly more painful and damaging.

Prestidigitation would actually work better for cooling off a drink than Ray of Frost, which Prestidigitation actually calls out as an ability it has.

Mending is awesome, if the object is about a pound or less for this level one wizard. Of course the wizard is going to spend at least an hour casting the spell (ten minute casting times are a bitch) over and over again since the spell does very minor repairs each time (1d4 hp per casting). Not exactly a complete game changer but could be.

Prestidigitation is a nice spell, but is severely limited. If a dinner is more than a pound in weight, it fails. Takes more than hour to serve? No longer flavored. In fact the flavoring is only good enough for casting on your own serving of food (Remember the spell still must follow line of sight and line of effect so no targeting individual components of a soup if you can't see them or have effect to them) Cleaning is about the best ability it has and even that's only nice. Merely taking a task that would be a few hours for the lady of the house, down to a few minutes.

I dunno. I just find it hard to strike a balance. Either the knowledge is too common and easily shared, at which point you start getting magocracy and other advancemwnts, or it's extremely rare and hard to learn, at which point it isn't much different from any of the other very rare casters from the perspective of most people in the setting, while also raising questions about certain more common magic items like scrolls.

Honestly, I'd probably rather have a Mason class who actually got the magical ability to shape stone and rituals to construct things as they learned and mastered the trade. At least that's still only applicable to being a Mason.

The cleaning effect can apply to people. No more problems with smelly unwashed peasants when you can clean yourself and your clothes in an,instant without having to bath in the river. Also, I've never heard of anyone being that strict with the flavoring effect. Do you really think a Wizard chef can't just take 10 seconds to cast it on the soup and steak before sending it to the table? I can't imagine being such a stickler that you wouldn't let someone target an entire serving of soup and,making,them individually season each potato and carrot in it.

And of course, mending is amazing for basically anyone in the business of making things, since you can enact small repairs in a flash. Depends on the edition how effective it is, but still, quite handy regardless

Im a fairly strict by the book fellow. If the spell says one pound or less of matter per use, than only a pound or less per use. I expect players to take all these restrictions in mind and be clever from there, not just let them do whatever. That's how you get god wizards running around with nothing to stop them (barring certain shitty loopholes or exploits laid out in the rules).

What soup are you eating that's more than a pound?

Well, the soup itself is probably more than a pound, the individual servings aren't, unless it's a pretty heavy soup.

Yeah, so you just cast it for each serving. Or better yet, just flavor a pound of water and mix that in to the main pot. If you're serving it for a dinner or lunch youll be able,to pass out a lot of it within an hour.

The designers of each edition probably only had sex once in their entire lives and it must've been with some pig-faced "wiccan" wearing "ceremonial witching garb" that they picked up on the first of November on sale. That's the only way to explain why druids are so fucking crammed full of stupid abilities and ten brazillion tranformations. I mean, if druids were revamped into Clan of the Cave Bear cavemen that could physically regress when they meditated through their ancestral instincts, then they might be interesting.

I agreed with you until you took a poke at Rangers. Fuck you, i say fuck you.

5e they're pretty cool, especially with the right feat.

My least favorite class is the fucking wizard, or really any primarily magic user except the cleric. Idk why, but I really just don't like magic. I think most magic is fucking gay, in most settings, in most fiction. I see magic as cowardly. I like dovine magic though cause...... I really don't know why I like divine magic actually, but I really like divine magic. Arcane, most of the time, is fucking dumb though.

You drop bits that should be common knowledge to inspire the party or a few lines relevant to the situation. You don't recite the whole damn thing. "Remember how Barry the Brave fended off ten orcs at once and saved the day? Now's your chance to one-up him!" ought to do the trick.

Fuck "I was born this way" sorcerer. Absolutely fuck wild magic, the worst mechanic imaginable. Also fuck dragon blood, it is bad enough we have a furry race devoted to it, they had to double down on making it a subclass? Terrible. You are either a wizard or warlock or gtfo

You conceptually favor the bard? Please explain.

Wizards. Their players tend to be not exactly on the spectrum, but obtuse, and for some reason wotc won't officially balance them.

Ok I play Bard a lot so I feel the need to defend my class a bit

Bard is the traveling companion class, its a very RP heavy class. In my experience with most editions of DnD you can't never really min max a bard to be on par with other classes in the game, you will never be a good enough fighter, caster or healer but you can do a bit of everything and and smooth your group experience with your kit. Bards are supports in every aspect of the game, they can deal some damage, enough to make it a little easier for shit to die, they can do some healing, enough so your cleric doesn't need to dedicate every single waking moment to patch up your group, you can cast a bunch of fairly convenient arcane spells and last but not least you can be very useful in a social situation. So in my opinion that should be the mindset of every bard player, you are there to make your groups life easier, more interesting and fun. You will hardly be the centerpiece of your group in any situation but people will always appreciate you if you focus on being there for them.

As for my least favorite class, I think Wizards are a huge problem in DnD, just because how they break the world after some point, they destroy the fun of every other class because they do everything better than everyone. They are the exact opposite of bards, they are there to make everyone feel useless and become the centerpiece of the game. In 3.5 at high level your group could sit down, grab some popcorn and let the wizard deal with everything on his own, chances are that if you try to help you'll just get in his way.

>In terms of concept, I think the ranger is probably the one I like the least. Partly because it is a sort of meh idea, but mainly because it is horribly mishandled and becomes a collection of themes that don't necessarily work well together. Like, why is there a class that specializes in dual wielding and bows, but not at the same time? Why does it also have magic? Why is that class the hunter/wilderness class, and not some sort of spellsword thing?
It's literally Aragorn with an animal companion and different weapons.

Fuck every subdivision of wizard. Every time someone tries to explain the difference between a wizard and sorcerer, I want to put my head through a goddamned wall.