Mikeavelli
2014-09-02, 12:20 AM
Hello there!
I've been going through the PHB, comparing classes, options, and being very judgmental. I'm starting out with the Melee classes, since they're easier to compare relative to each other. Here are my thoughts and analysis.
Not claiming to be the be-all end-all, especially of a brand new system, but I find it's good to be aware of these things, and promote discussion.
New Legend System:
Black Options are neutral. Nice to have, situationally good, but not going to come up a lot. In most cases, I'll skip over commenting on it entirely.
Green are good abilities / choices. They're not overpowered, but you will not regret taking them.
Purple represent excellent abilities. Many of them are broken in the sense that they're vastly superior to similar abilities of the same level (Rogue's Cunning Action), completely unrelated character concepts would benefit from taking levels in a class just for that ability (Action Surge), or there's very little reason to take any other specialty when this option exists (3rd level Bear Totem).
Red means it's a trap. It is either significantly weaker than abilities of the same level, or actively weakens you as a Party Member.
Low Levels: Bear Totem Barbarian is the best tank in the game, effectively doubling your hit points during rage. Levels 1-3 are loaded with excellent abilities.
Mid Levels: A Solid melee class during mid-game, but it's really just incremental improvements the whole way up.
High Levels: Best melee capstone in the game.
Rage: Your bread and butter. More damage in the Bounded system is powerful. Better defense is icing on the cake. There's a big vulnerability here though that if someone ever DOES overcome your defenses and stuns / disengages to keep you busy for more than a round, your rage ends.
Reckless Attack: It doesn't matter if the opponents have advantage to attack you if they're dead.
Feral Instinct: Depending on how often being surprised comes up in your games.
Relentless Rage: You're going to succeed at the first check almost automatically, probably the second one too. Compare to the Paladin, who has to specialize to get an ability which isn't quite as good.
Primal Champion: Best Melee capstone in the game. 40 more hit points, 2 more damage, 2 more to-hit, both of which are huge in Bounded accuracy.
Paths:
Berserker: Might be Red depending on how often you take long rests. Exhaustion levels 1 and 2 aren't terrible, but if you get to Exhaustion 3 you may as well not even be in the fight.
Frenzy: gives you a bonus attack / round, which most other melee classes can find a way to get without suffering from exhaustion. At worst, they're simply out of abilities, not actively reduced in effectiveness.
Mindless Rage: Barbarians will otherwise have a weak wisdom/int save, and be highly vulnerable to both of these conditions.
Intimidating Presence: Why are you using your action to frighten people when you could be using your action to murder them? Cha is also a dump stat for Barbarians. Would be better if it were based off of Strength.
Retaliation: A nice capstone, but it's really too little too late to save the Berserker.
Totem Warrior:
Bear: 3rd level ability is worth a dip just for itself. Most other Resistance abilities (Sorceror, warlock, etc.) give you resistance to a single type of damage. Bear Totem gives you resistance to everything except the relatively-uncommon psychic type.
Eagle: 3rd level is a worse version of Cunning Action, the 6th level ability is probably the best one, and the 14th level ability only lets you fly in short bursts. It's not a bad choice, it's just that the other options are so much better.
Wolf: Depends entirely on your party makeup. If one of your buddies is a melee Rogue, he's going to be tremendously happy with you. A mostly-melee party is going to make this better than Bear Totem, but if you're the solo tank, it's worthless. 6th level ability is probably going to be the most useful out of the 6th level abilities, and 14th level ability doesn't allow a save, which is nice.
Early Levels: Front-loaded with awesome abilities, the first class to get consistent 3 attacks/round. Compare/Contrast with the Berserker who has to rage and be exhausted afterwards to get a bonus attack every round; you get that for free at level 1.
Mid Levels: Evasion and Diamond Soul mean you enjoy laughing at spellcasters with their silly saves.
Late Levels: Their extra attacks don't scale up, their ki pool doesn't scale properly, and their high-level monastic tradition abilities are often worse than their low-level ones.
The monk has a lot of weird options, it's hard to gauge how effective it's going to be just based on the book. It looks like the sort of class that is going to be exactly as effective as the skill level of the player; no more, no less. It appears, once again, to be designed as a caster-killer; darting across the battlefield in order to assassinate a soft target. Unfortunately, most options lack any way to fly, see invisible, or otherwise get past unique caster defenses. This makes the utility of the Monk somewhat suspect.
Deflect missiles: no longer has a size limit. You can catch ridiculous things like thrown boulders, trebuchet bolts, and cannonballs. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ-DypRhHj8)
Ki Movement powers: are a slightly worse version of Uncanny Action, because they require expending your limited Ki pool. Being slightly worse than one of the best abilities in the game is still pretty good though.
Stunning Strike:: Maybe excellent. You can spam your whole Ki pool to deal damage and make sure someone gets stunned. No wasting Ki on misses, save scales well, and stunned is a great Debuff.
Evasion and Diamond Soul because you're a caster-hunter, so they may as well have a harder time of things against you.
Perfect Self is the worst capstone in the game.
Specializations:
Way of the Open Hand:
Open Hand Technique: are probably the best abilities in this tree. There's no size modifier at all on the Dex-or-knocked prone ability, and the bigger they are, the harder they fall. An Adult Red Dragon (CR 17, Dex Save +6) would probably fall prone to this.
Wholeness of Body: Is a worse version of Lay on Hands.
Tranquility: Lets you cast a first level spell for free, as a 11th level ability that you took a specialization for.
Quivering Palm is going to be a worse choice than 3 Stunning Fist attacks in most circumstances.
Way of the Shadow:
Shadow Arts: Are useful, but not game-breaking abilities.
Shadow Step: Because being able to be anywhere on the battlefield with a single bonus action is awesome.
Cloak of Shadows: Because you can pay 4 ki points to be invisible for a minute at level 18, or you can be invisible all the time for free at level 11.
Opportunist: Because if there's one thing the Monk needs, it's the ability to punch people in the face even more.
Way of the Four Elements: Ki Point costs are very high for what you get out of them, and the pool of spells you can select is very small. You're supposedly a melee class, so casting a lot of concentration spells is going to be problematic.
The Direct Damage Spells (Fireball, Cone of Cold, etc) are all going to be pretty worthless. Maybe grab one for crowd control if your party doesn't already have a blaster. Casting Hold Person is a a worse choice in most circumstances than Stunning Fist, and not worth 3 ki points.
Fist of unbroken Air and Water Whip let you pull off some awesome battlefield control. Especially if you like fighting around pits.
Ride the Wind and Eternal Mountain Defense are great Self-buffs. Flying is the most important movement power in D&D, so a way for a melee class to get it is awesome.
Low Levels: Lay on Hands restores enough hp to matter, spellcasting comes early, and Divine Smite provides a better damage boost than any other melee class abilities
Mid Levels: You personally aren't as awesome, but Auras give the whole party immunity to very common status effects.
High Levels: High level abilities are very good, and all three specializations give an excellent capstone. This is one class I'd encourage you to always take the full 20 levels in.
Lay on Hands: is one of the better healing abilities in the game. All others are judged against it, and found wanting.
Smite is much more powerful than previous editions, especially with the various Smite Spells that can be added on top of it. The scaling is a little weird; it starts at 2d8, gains 1d8/level, caps at 5d8 (which would be a 4th level spell) - but Paladins get up to 5th level spells.
There's no alignment restrictions to Smite, you can keep doing it as long as you have spells. This makes it one of the best extra-damage sources in the game. Compare to Fighter/BM superiority dice, or Ranger's Colossus Strike, neither of which scale up nearly as well. At 11th level, you gain extra damage all the time without even expending actions or spell slots.
Sacred Oaths:
I'll leave the RP considerations for another thread. Paladin RP threads never turn out well.
Oath of Devotion:
is your classic holy warrior of rightness Paladin.
Sacred Weapon: Gives you even more successful hits, and a magic weapon when those can be hard to come by at this level.
Turn the Unholy: Is a classic Paladin maneuver
Aura of Devotion: Is Helpful.
Purity of Spirit: Is a little redundant, but since you're a Paladin, most of the enemies you fight are going to be evil, so always forcing them to have disadvantage is a big plus.
Holy Nimbus: Is nice. There aren't enough high-level monsters out to determine whether 10 damage / round will be an actual good ability, or just icing on the delicious cake.
Oath of the Ancients:
Nature's Wrath: giving something its choice of Strength or Dex save means the target is generally going to succeed, and you'll have wasted an action. Oh, and it's already within 10 feet, so why aren't you hitting it with your sword?
Turn the Faithless: is like Turn Undead, but for Fiends and Fey.
Aura of Warding: is probably better than Oath of Devotion's Capstone. Your Auras already give you immunity to most debuffs, so most spells cast by fiends and undead against you would be damaging. This ability means you take half damage anyways, while Holy Nimbus means you just have advantage on the save.
Undying Sentinel: will save your bacon once per long rest. Which is good, because this edition of D&D is pretty bloody. I would prefer if it happened earlier than 15th level though.
Elder champion: is the capstone I use to demonstrate why a certain fighter specialization capstone is worthless. Consider going Nova like this:
Casting Destructive Smite (renamed to Destructive Wave) as a bonus action that targets have disadvantage on the save against, followed by 2 attacks you probably have advantage on (Destructive Smite makes them go prone on a failed save), using 4th level Spell slots to Divine Smite (there's no restriction against using Smite more than 1/round). That's 10d6+12d8+Weapon damage, and it makes a Fighter's 8 attack action surge look pitiful.
Oath of Vengeance:
Abjure Enemy is a better, single-target Turn Fiend/undead that also happens to work on everyone else.
Vow of Enmity is awesome. Free Advantage on every attack for what's usually the duration of combat. You can also do some combination of Paladin/Rogue and never have to worry about needing advantage for your sneak attack to work.
Relentless Avenger: means nobody gets to run away from you ever.
Soul of Vengeance: makes the amazing Vow of Enmity even better.
Avenging Angel: Amazing. Excellent Capstone, excellent Oath, excellent class. Powers++. Vhailor would be proud, if he wasn't too busy enforcing justice on every evildoer throughout the Planes.
Early Levels: Colossus Strike is the earliest consistent method of getting extra damage on your attacks.
Mid Levels: It doesn't scale well unfortunately, and the Mid-level abilities for either specialization don't match up.
Late Levels: Foe Slayer is a terrible capstone. It doesn't apply to every encounter. Compare/Contrast the Paladin's abilities, which are even better against fiends/undead/etc. But still apply to every encounter the Paladin gets into. Ranger falls short.
Favored Enemy: Is detached from combat mechanics until level 20, so that's good. It's a bit underwhelming though.
Natural Explorer: Would still balanced if it always worked, and wasn't limited to a specific type of terrain. As it is, this just forces the DM to plan around your natural terrain, or render one of your big abilities irrelevant.
Primeval Awareness: doesn't reveal the creatures location or number. AKA Any actually useful information.
Hide in Plain Sight and Vanish: Would be even better if you had some kind of sneak attack damage.
Feral Senses: Free detect invisible is basically your role in the party.
Foe Slayer: Is an Awful capstone for reasons already discussed.
Archetypes:
Hunter:
Colossus Slayer: is very strong at low levels, but it looks like it won't scale well. It would be better if it could proc more than once per turn.
Giant killer: depends on you being within 5 feet. The class is best used as an Archer. Pass.
Horde Breaker specifies that the creatures have to be within 5 feet of each other, and within range of your weapon. Great for archers.
Escape the Horde is alright; but you're going to be archering most of the time, and should have enough HP that you can just tank the occasional Opportunity Attack.
Multi-attack defense: might save your bacon if a monster decides you look tastier than the meat shield
Steel will is: Nice? I guess? Frightened is a pretty common debuff.
Volley: Stacks with Horde Breaker, and Spells like Swift Quiver, allowing you to make a positively obscene number of attacks.
Whirlwind Attack: isn't bad, but a Fighter or Barbarian makes a better melee fighter. The only reason for this class is ranged combat, so why are you in melee?
Evasion: Is evasion. We all know what this does.
Stand against the tide: is great if you're going to insist on being a melee ranger
uncanny dodge: I initially thought would be terrible, but then I realized that the way it's written, it stacks with damage resistance. If you were a Bear Totem Barbarian / Ranger, you'd only take 1/4 damage from an attack you chose to use your reaction against.
Beast Master
Ranger's Companion: will force you to use your action on yourself and have your pet stand around doing nothing, or have your pet do something while stand around doing nothing, for levels 3-5. This is my main complaint against the class. Heaven forbid you cross-class.
Exceptional Training makes this slightly more palatable by including the 'Help' Action in the list of things you can have your companion do. Free advantage is fun.
Bestial Fury: Can eventually allow you to get as many attacks as the fighter does, but they won't benefit from your class features, feats, or spells until...
Share Spells: But the number of good spells for your companion is limited. You're looking at Stoneskin and freedom of action.
Early Levels: Action Surge is one of the best abilities in the game. Action Economy reigns supreme
Mid Levels: Up until 11th level, the Fighter doesn't have any particular benefit over any other class.
Late Levels:: Two action surges, 4 attacks/Round. It's not shiny or sexy, but it gets the job done.
Action Surge is fantastic. This and a Fighting Style are good dips for literally any other class to take. Even spellcasters who have no interest in fighting. Breaking the Action Economy is that good.
Indomitable: Is okay. Other classes get better versions of 'succeed on a save you should have failed.'
Specializations:
Champion:
Improved Critical/Superior Critical: Since you're getting loads and loads of attacks, you're going to have loads of opportunities for criticals. They don't need to confirm in this edition, so that's nice.
Remarkable Athelete: Skills are nice. Depends on your group how useful they'll be.
Additional Fighting Style: Would be better, but there are a lot of mutually exclusive fighting styles.
Survivor: Compare this to the Barbarian Capstone or the Elder Guardian Paladin capstone. If you're already down below half your hp, the fight is going poorly enough that you're not going to get back that many more hp.
Battle Master:
Student of War: is nice Fluff
Know your Enemy: Depends entirely on your DM how useful it is. This reminds me of the old 'Common Sense' talent from WoD which the Storyteller would explicitly tell you whether an action you were about to take was a good idea or bad idea. Newbies would take so they had an in-game reason for the storyteller to help them out.
Relentless: It's nice they tried. Would be good if it was a refresh of one die every time you rolled initiative.
Maneuvers:
A slightly different take on bardic music. I liked this class when I first read it, but I'm becoming less and less enamoured of it as I go through the book. Most abilities are balanced by having limited uses (spells, ki pool), or only involving a limited amount of damage / unique circumstances (Colossus Strike, sneak attack). BM Maneuvers are balanced by being weak in every way. You can blow through all six superiority dice in one battle, and get only one back at the start of every battle.
Most Maneuvers are just abilities other classes get all the time with a superiority die added in for damage. If you take a lot of short rests, you'll shine very brightly. If you don't? You'll be lagging behind your fellow party members.
I can see some pretty amazing damage output with 4 Attacks + 4 attack Action Surge + bonus attacks from some other source = Dead Monster in 1 round, but the Barbarian, Paladin, and Ranger can do just as well or better, and have more options to boot.
Eldritch Knight:
Spells: Spells are good. Self-buffs are worse in this game for a melee class like the fighter, because Concentration. But, you can fly, stoneskin, enlarge, all sorts of things.
War Magic: Actually better than I thought it would be. Cantrips scale in damage as you level up without taking up higher-level spell slots. This will be dubiously useful until 11th level, at which point you're giving up 2 normal attacks to be able to cast 1 cantrip.
Eldritch Strike: Would be good if this applied disadvantage to anyone's spells, not just yours. Your spells aren't powerful enough to be worth casting when you could just be hitting them with your sword.
Arcane Charge: Ideally, you're going to be using your Action Surge to kill the **** out of something. What better way to make sure you get in close to do that than teleport right up into their face?
Improved War Magic: now you can cast a spell and land one attack, but your spells aren't powerful enough to justify missing out on two (three at level 20) attacks.
Low Levels: Cunning Action is Fantastic. Most builds would find it worthwhile to do a 2-level dip into Rogue just for this. Sneak Attack does the most consistent damage out of any ability if you can get advantage often enough.
Mid Levels: Sneak Attack Scales! Nothing else in this game scales so well. Most mid-level abilities give you additional options and defense, but precious little else on the offense. If you're not sneak attacking, you're not contributing any damage to the fight. Sneak attack is good enough that it doesn't really matter though.
High Levels: Sneak Attack scaling falls behind the nova'ing ability of casters and other classes, but no-one else gets high damage so consistently. They all have to pay a price that isn't renenwed without a short or long rest. Stroke of Luck is good, but not overwhelmingly so. It is, in my mind, exactly what a balanced capstone should look like.
Sneak Attack: Excellent damage dealing source. It's a pity it only procs once/turn.
Cunning Action: I haven't gushed enough about this yet, have I?
Uncanny Dodge: Because you need to protect your precious, precious hit points.
Evasion: See above.
Blindsense: It's only 10 feet, so you probably already know about where the opponent is, and just need to be able to hit them.
Stroke of Luck: Once a short rest, when you don't feel like failing, you succeed instead. Just because you want to. That's pretty awesome.
Specialties:
Thief:
Fast hands: The utility depends largely on your group and DM. Using an Item as a bonus action would be nice if you've got a lot of potions.
Second-Story Work: Fun bonus.
Supreme Sneak: Excellent for hiding and killing stuff.
Use Magic Device: It remains to be seen how good this really is. Magic items aren't as common in this edition of D&D, but this single skill could crack the whole system right open in 3.5. My hopes are high.
Thief's Reflexes: You take two turns, which potentially means two sneak attacks at the start of every single fight. Awesome
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Assassin: Overall I'm not as impressed with this class as I thought I would be. The 3rd level ability is very nice, but later ones are a bit lackluster. The DM has to accommodate the campaign to allow you to use your abilities. Would not play one in a Dungeon Crawl, for example.
Bonus Proficiencies: Poison is actually pretty good, and not too expensive for what you get.
Assassinate: Free sneak attacks with high initiative, and auto-crits against surprised enemies makes for happy days.
Infiltration Expertise: Depends the kind of game you're playing really
Imposter: Same deal. Depends on the kind of group how useful this will be.
Death Strike: Still doesn't deal as much damage as your sneak attack, unless this stacks with sneak attack, in which case it goes up to amazing.
Arcane Trickster:
Spells: Are the whole point of this specialization. It synergizes a bit better with thief than it does with Fighter (Eldritch Knight). Use thief skills at a range, cast invisibility, fly, supplement your thief skills, and you're not giving up so much to cast a spell as you would be as a Fighter. Just one attack, which may or may not be dealing sneak attack damage.
Mage Hand Legerdmain: This was a lot of fun with the 3.5 version of this ability. Steal wizard's spell pouches for fun and profit.
Magical Ambush: It would be better if you had more/higher level spells. As it stands, they've got disadvantage to resist spells that aren't going to do so much anyways.
Versatile Trickster: Do you want to get a sneak attack on every attack, ever? This is the ability for you! There's no save, no chance to avoid it. You just get advantage, and sweet sweet damage.
Spell Thief: Would be better if you had higher than 4th level spell slots.
Low Levels: Does not shine at low levels. Not enough spells, spells aren't powerful enough, and Bardic Music doesn't really provide more than minor buffing.
Mid Levels: entirely dependent on how good you are at optimizing, picking spells with Magical Secrets, and overall build quality.
High Levels: You're a full caster with a plethora of picks from every spell list in the game. If you're not winning, you're not trying hard enough.
Bardic Inspiration: It really feels like they included this feature because they had to. It was so iconic in previous editions that it needed to be carried forward, but they didn't really want to, and tried to avoid emphasizing it. It has the nearly unique honor of being subject to being wasted. You have to plan out in advance who gets inspired, and they have to remember they have an inspiration die to roll in the event of an emergency.
Magical Secrets: Access to the whole spell list is awesome. Becomes even more awesome as time goes on, and the system expands.
Superior Inspiration: Actually even worse than the other capstone-restoration things. The system encourages you to hand out bardic inspiration dice in advance of combat, but doesn't restore them until you're in combat. Also, Bardic music isn't even as useful as the other point dice systems like this, so it really falls flat.
Specializations:
College of Lore:
Bonus Proficiencies: Because you're the bard, and you're proficient at things.
Cutting Words: Would be amazing if it also applied to saving throws, but sadly it doesn't. Still an excellent ability though.
Additional Magical Secrets: More spells known? Awesome! We're nearly a wizard now!
Peerless Skill: You can use your own ability on yourself that you could have used on another party member at any time. I'm underwhelmed.
College of Valor:
Combat Inspiration: More Damage for your friends! Or a slightly weaker version of Cutting Words.
Extra Attack: I suppose you could combine this with Polymorph/ True Polymorph and go to town smashing stuff in an overpowered Dragon body. Or you could grab some ranger spells with Magical Secrets and start spamming arrows like a 17th level ranger while you're down at 10th. That would actually be a pretty powerful build, now that I think about it.
Battle Magic: This whole specialization has the same problems as the Arcane Trickster or the Eldritch Knight, just in reverse. You're a mostly arcane caster who can fight some good, but it doesn't really add much to the class unless you bend over backwards to optimize it. It's certainly possible to do that, but you're going to have to try very hard to be successful.
I've been going through the PHB, comparing classes, options, and being very judgmental. I'm starting out with the Melee classes, since they're easier to compare relative to each other. Here are my thoughts and analysis.
Not claiming to be the be-all end-all, especially of a brand new system, but I find it's good to be aware of these things, and promote discussion.
New Legend System:
Black Options are neutral. Nice to have, situationally good, but not going to come up a lot. In most cases, I'll skip over commenting on it entirely.
Green are good abilities / choices. They're not overpowered, but you will not regret taking them.
Purple represent excellent abilities. Many of them are broken in the sense that they're vastly superior to similar abilities of the same level (Rogue's Cunning Action), completely unrelated character concepts would benefit from taking levels in a class just for that ability (Action Surge), or there's very little reason to take any other specialty when this option exists (3rd level Bear Totem).
Red means it's a trap. It is either significantly weaker than abilities of the same level, or actively weakens you as a Party Member.
Low Levels: Bear Totem Barbarian is the best tank in the game, effectively doubling your hit points during rage. Levels 1-3 are loaded with excellent abilities.
Mid Levels: A Solid melee class during mid-game, but it's really just incremental improvements the whole way up.
High Levels: Best melee capstone in the game.
Rage: Your bread and butter. More damage in the Bounded system is powerful. Better defense is icing on the cake. There's a big vulnerability here though that if someone ever DOES overcome your defenses and stuns / disengages to keep you busy for more than a round, your rage ends.
Reckless Attack: It doesn't matter if the opponents have advantage to attack you if they're dead.
Feral Instinct: Depending on how often being surprised comes up in your games.
Relentless Rage: You're going to succeed at the first check almost automatically, probably the second one too. Compare to the Paladin, who has to specialize to get an ability which isn't quite as good.
Primal Champion: Best Melee capstone in the game. 40 more hit points, 2 more damage, 2 more to-hit, both of which are huge in Bounded accuracy.
Paths:
Berserker: Might be Red depending on how often you take long rests. Exhaustion levels 1 and 2 aren't terrible, but if you get to Exhaustion 3 you may as well not even be in the fight.
Frenzy: gives you a bonus attack / round, which most other melee classes can find a way to get without suffering from exhaustion. At worst, they're simply out of abilities, not actively reduced in effectiveness.
Mindless Rage: Barbarians will otherwise have a weak wisdom/int save, and be highly vulnerable to both of these conditions.
Intimidating Presence: Why are you using your action to frighten people when you could be using your action to murder them? Cha is also a dump stat for Barbarians. Would be better if it were based off of Strength.
Retaliation: A nice capstone, but it's really too little too late to save the Berserker.
Totem Warrior:
Bear: 3rd level ability is worth a dip just for itself. Most other Resistance abilities (Sorceror, warlock, etc.) give you resistance to a single type of damage. Bear Totem gives you resistance to everything except the relatively-uncommon psychic type.
Eagle: 3rd level is a worse version of Cunning Action, the 6th level ability is probably the best one, and the 14th level ability only lets you fly in short bursts. It's not a bad choice, it's just that the other options are so much better.
Wolf: Depends entirely on your party makeup. If one of your buddies is a melee Rogue, he's going to be tremendously happy with you. A mostly-melee party is going to make this better than Bear Totem, but if you're the solo tank, it's worthless. 6th level ability is probably going to be the most useful out of the 6th level abilities, and 14th level ability doesn't allow a save, which is nice.
Early Levels: Front-loaded with awesome abilities, the first class to get consistent 3 attacks/round. Compare/Contrast with the Berserker who has to rage and be exhausted afterwards to get a bonus attack every round; you get that for free at level 1.
Mid Levels: Evasion and Diamond Soul mean you enjoy laughing at spellcasters with their silly saves.
Late Levels: Their extra attacks don't scale up, their ki pool doesn't scale properly, and their high-level monastic tradition abilities are often worse than their low-level ones.
The monk has a lot of weird options, it's hard to gauge how effective it's going to be just based on the book. It looks like the sort of class that is going to be exactly as effective as the skill level of the player; no more, no less. It appears, once again, to be designed as a caster-killer; darting across the battlefield in order to assassinate a soft target. Unfortunately, most options lack any way to fly, see invisible, or otherwise get past unique caster defenses. This makes the utility of the Monk somewhat suspect.
Deflect missiles: no longer has a size limit. You can catch ridiculous things like thrown boulders, trebuchet bolts, and cannonballs. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ-DypRhHj8)
Ki Movement powers: are a slightly worse version of Uncanny Action, because they require expending your limited Ki pool. Being slightly worse than one of the best abilities in the game is still pretty good though.
Stunning Strike:: Maybe excellent. You can spam your whole Ki pool to deal damage and make sure someone gets stunned. No wasting Ki on misses, save scales well, and stunned is a great Debuff.
Evasion and Diamond Soul because you're a caster-hunter, so they may as well have a harder time of things against you.
Perfect Self is the worst capstone in the game.
Specializations:
Way of the Open Hand:
Open Hand Technique: are probably the best abilities in this tree. There's no size modifier at all on the Dex-or-knocked prone ability, and the bigger they are, the harder they fall. An Adult Red Dragon (CR 17, Dex Save +6) would probably fall prone to this.
Wholeness of Body: Is a worse version of Lay on Hands.
Tranquility: Lets you cast a first level spell for free, as a 11th level ability that you took a specialization for.
Quivering Palm is going to be a worse choice than 3 Stunning Fist attacks in most circumstances.
Way of the Shadow:
Shadow Arts: Are useful, but not game-breaking abilities.
Shadow Step: Because being able to be anywhere on the battlefield with a single bonus action is awesome.
Cloak of Shadows: Because you can pay 4 ki points to be invisible for a minute at level 18, or you can be invisible all the time for free at level 11.
Opportunist: Because if there's one thing the Monk needs, it's the ability to punch people in the face even more.
Way of the Four Elements: Ki Point costs are very high for what you get out of them, and the pool of spells you can select is very small. You're supposedly a melee class, so casting a lot of concentration spells is going to be problematic.
The Direct Damage Spells (Fireball, Cone of Cold, etc) are all going to be pretty worthless. Maybe grab one for crowd control if your party doesn't already have a blaster. Casting Hold Person is a a worse choice in most circumstances than Stunning Fist, and not worth 3 ki points.
Fist of unbroken Air and Water Whip let you pull off some awesome battlefield control. Especially if you like fighting around pits.
Ride the Wind and Eternal Mountain Defense are great Self-buffs. Flying is the most important movement power in D&D, so a way for a melee class to get it is awesome.
Low Levels: Lay on Hands restores enough hp to matter, spellcasting comes early, and Divine Smite provides a better damage boost than any other melee class abilities
Mid Levels: You personally aren't as awesome, but Auras give the whole party immunity to very common status effects.
High Levels: High level abilities are very good, and all three specializations give an excellent capstone. This is one class I'd encourage you to always take the full 20 levels in.
Lay on Hands: is one of the better healing abilities in the game. All others are judged against it, and found wanting.
Smite is much more powerful than previous editions, especially with the various Smite Spells that can be added on top of it. The scaling is a little weird; it starts at 2d8, gains 1d8/level, caps at 5d8 (which would be a 4th level spell) - but Paladins get up to 5th level spells.
There's no alignment restrictions to Smite, you can keep doing it as long as you have spells. This makes it one of the best extra-damage sources in the game. Compare to Fighter/BM superiority dice, or Ranger's Colossus Strike, neither of which scale up nearly as well. At 11th level, you gain extra damage all the time without even expending actions or spell slots.
Sacred Oaths:
I'll leave the RP considerations for another thread. Paladin RP threads never turn out well.
Oath of Devotion:
is your classic holy warrior of rightness Paladin.
Sacred Weapon: Gives you even more successful hits, and a magic weapon when those can be hard to come by at this level.
Turn the Unholy: Is a classic Paladin maneuver
Aura of Devotion: Is Helpful.
Purity of Spirit: Is a little redundant, but since you're a Paladin, most of the enemies you fight are going to be evil, so always forcing them to have disadvantage is a big plus.
Holy Nimbus: Is nice. There aren't enough high-level monsters out to determine whether 10 damage / round will be an actual good ability, or just icing on the delicious cake.
Oath of the Ancients:
Nature's Wrath: giving something its choice of Strength or Dex save means the target is generally going to succeed, and you'll have wasted an action. Oh, and it's already within 10 feet, so why aren't you hitting it with your sword?
Turn the Faithless: is like Turn Undead, but for Fiends and Fey.
Aura of Warding: is probably better than Oath of Devotion's Capstone. Your Auras already give you immunity to most debuffs, so most spells cast by fiends and undead against you would be damaging. This ability means you take half damage anyways, while Holy Nimbus means you just have advantage on the save.
Undying Sentinel: will save your bacon once per long rest. Which is good, because this edition of D&D is pretty bloody. I would prefer if it happened earlier than 15th level though.
Elder champion: is the capstone I use to demonstrate why a certain fighter specialization capstone is worthless. Consider going Nova like this:
Casting Destructive Smite (renamed to Destructive Wave) as a bonus action that targets have disadvantage on the save against, followed by 2 attacks you probably have advantage on (Destructive Smite makes them go prone on a failed save), using 4th level Spell slots to Divine Smite (there's no restriction against using Smite more than 1/round). That's 10d6+12d8+Weapon damage, and it makes a Fighter's 8 attack action surge look pitiful.
Oath of Vengeance:
Abjure Enemy is a better, single-target Turn Fiend/undead that also happens to work on everyone else.
Vow of Enmity is awesome. Free Advantage on every attack for what's usually the duration of combat. You can also do some combination of Paladin/Rogue and never have to worry about needing advantage for your sneak attack to work.
Relentless Avenger: means nobody gets to run away from you ever.
Soul of Vengeance: makes the amazing Vow of Enmity even better.
Avenging Angel: Amazing. Excellent Capstone, excellent Oath, excellent class. Powers++. Vhailor would be proud, if he wasn't too busy enforcing justice on every evildoer throughout the Planes.
Early Levels: Colossus Strike is the earliest consistent method of getting extra damage on your attacks.
Mid Levels: It doesn't scale well unfortunately, and the Mid-level abilities for either specialization don't match up.
Late Levels: Foe Slayer is a terrible capstone. It doesn't apply to every encounter. Compare/Contrast the Paladin's abilities, which are even better against fiends/undead/etc. But still apply to every encounter the Paladin gets into. Ranger falls short.
Favored Enemy: Is detached from combat mechanics until level 20, so that's good. It's a bit underwhelming though.
Natural Explorer: Would still balanced if it always worked, and wasn't limited to a specific type of terrain. As it is, this just forces the DM to plan around your natural terrain, or render one of your big abilities irrelevant.
Primeval Awareness: doesn't reveal the creatures location or number. AKA Any actually useful information.
Hide in Plain Sight and Vanish: Would be even better if you had some kind of sneak attack damage.
Feral Senses: Free detect invisible is basically your role in the party.
Foe Slayer: Is an Awful capstone for reasons already discussed.
Archetypes:
Hunter:
Colossus Slayer: is very strong at low levels, but it looks like it won't scale well. It would be better if it could proc more than once per turn.
Giant killer: depends on you being within 5 feet. The class is best used as an Archer. Pass.
Horde Breaker specifies that the creatures have to be within 5 feet of each other, and within range of your weapon. Great for archers.
Escape the Horde is alright; but you're going to be archering most of the time, and should have enough HP that you can just tank the occasional Opportunity Attack.
Multi-attack defense: might save your bacon if a monster decides you look tastier than the meat shield
Steel will is: Nice? I guess? Frightened is a pretty common debuff.
Volley: Stacks with Horde Breaker, and Spells like Swift Quiver, allowing you to make a positively obscene number of attacks.
Whirlwind Attack: isn't bad, but a Fighter or Barbarian makes a better melee fighter. The only reason for this class is ranged combat, so why are you in melee?
Evasion: Is evasion. We all know what this does.
Stand against the tide: is great if you're going to insist on being a melee ranger
uncanny dodge: I initially thought would be terrible, but then I realized that the way it's written, it stacks with damage resistance. If you were a Bear Totem Barbarian / Ranger, you'd only take 1/4 damage from an attack you chose to use your reaction against.
Beast Master
Ranger's Companion: will force you to use your action on yourself and have your pet stand around doing nothing, or have your pet do something while stand around doing nothing, for levels 3-5. This is my main complaint against the class. Heaven forbid you cross-class.
Exceptional Training makes this slightly more palatable by including the 'Help' Action in the list of things you can have your companion do. Free advantage is fun.
Bestial Fury: Can eventually allow you to get as many attacks as the fighter does, but they won't benefit from your class features, feats, or spells until...
Share Spells: But the number of good spells for your companion is limited. You're looking at Stoneskin and freedom of action.
Early Levels: Action Surge is one of the best abilities in the game. Action Economy reigns supreme
Mid Levels: Up until 11th level, the Fighter doesn't have any particular benefit over any other class.
Late Levels:: Two action surges, 4 attacks/Round. It's not shiny or sexy, but it gets the job done.
Action Surge is fantastic. This and a Fighting Style are good dips for literally any other class to take. Even spellcasters who have no interest in fighting. Breaking the Action Economy is that good.
Indomitable: Is okay. Other classes get better versions of 'succeed on a save you should have failed.'
Specializations:
Champion:
Improved Critical/Superior Critical: Since you're getting loads and loads of attacks, you're going to have loads of opportunities for criticals. They don't need to confirm in this edition, so that's nice.
Remarkable Athelete: Skills are nice. Depends on your group how useful they'll be.
Additional Fighting Style: Would be better, but there are a lot of mutually exclusive fighting styles.
Survivor: Compare this to the Barbarian Capstone or the Elder Guardian Paladin capstone. If you're already down below half your hp, the fight is going poorly enough that you're not going to get back that many more hp.
Battle Master:
Student of War: is nice Fluff
Know your Enemy: Depends entirely on your DM how useful it is. This reminds me of the old 'Common Sense' talent from WoD which the Storyteller would explicitly tell you whether an action you were about to take was a good idea or bad idea. Newbies would take so they had an in-game reason for the storyteller to help them out.
Relentless: It's nice they tried. Would be good if it was a refresh of one die every time you rolled initiative.
Maneuvers:
A slightly different take on bardic music. I liked this class when I first read it, but I'm becoming less and less enamoured of it as I go through the book. Most abilities are balanced by having limited uses (spells, ki pool), or only involving a limited amount of damage / unique circumstances (Colossus Strike, sneak attack). BM Maneuvers are balanced by being weak in every way. You can blow through all six superiority dice in one battle, and get only one back at the start of every battle.
Most Maneuvers are just abilities other classes get all the time with a superiority die added in for damage. If you take a lot of short rests, you'll shine very brightly. If you don't? You'll be lagging behind your fellow party members.
I can see some pretty amazing damage output with 4 Attacks + 4 attack Action Surge + bonus attacks from some other source = Dead Monster in 1 round, but the Barbarian, Paladin, and Ranger can do just as well or better, and have more options to boot.
Eldritch Knight:
Spells: Spells are good. Self-buffs are worse in this game for a melee class like the fighter, because Concentration. But, you can fly, stoneskin, enlarge, all sorts of things.
War Magic: Actually better than I thought it would be. Cantrips scale in damage as you level up without taking up higher-level spell slots. This will be dubiously useful until 11th level, at which point you're giving up 2 normal attacks to be able to cast 1 cantrip.
Eldritch Strike: Would be good if this applied disadvantage to anyone's spells, not just yours. Your spells aren't powerful enough to be worth casting when you could just be hitting them with your sword.
Arcane Charge: Ideally, you're going to be using your Action Surge to kill the **** out of something. What better way to make sure you get in close to do that than teleport right up into their face?
Improved War Magic: now you can cast a spell and land one attack, but your spells aren't powerful enough to justify missing out on two (three at level 20) attacks.
Low Levels: Cunning Action is Fantastic. Most builds would find it worthwhile to do a 2-level dip into Rogue just for this. Sneak Attack does the most consistent damage out of any ability if you can get advantage often enough.
Mid Levels: Sneak Attack Scales! Nothing else in this game scales so well. Most mid-level abilities give you additional options and defense, but precious little else on the offense. If you're not sneak attacking, you're not contributing any damage to the fight. Sneak attack is good enough that it doesn't really matter though.
High Levels: Sneak Attack scaling falls behind the nova'ing ability of casters and other classes, but no-one else gets high damage so consistently. They all have to pay a price that isn't renenwed without a short or long rest. Stroke of Luck is good, but not overwhelmingly so. It is, in my mind, exactly what a balanced capstone should look like.
Sneak Attack: Excellent damage dealing source. It's a pity it only procs once/turn.
Cunning Action: I haven't gushed enough about this yet, have I?
Uncanny Dodge: Because you need to protect your precious, precious hit points.
Evasion: See above.
Blindsense: It's only 10 feet, so you probably already know about where the opponent is, and just need to be able to hit them.
Stroke of Luck: Once a short rest, when you don't feel like failing, you succeed instead. Just because you want to. That's pretty awesome.
Specialties:
Thief:
Fast hands: The utility depends largely on your group and DM. Using an Item as a bonus action would be nice if you've got a lot of potions.
Second-Story Work: Fun bonus.
Supreme Sneak: Excellent for hiding and killing stuff.
Use Magic Device: It remains to be seen how good this really is. Magic items aren't as common in this edition of D&D, but this single skill could crack the whole system right open in 3.5. My hopes are high.
Thief's Reflexes: You take two turns, which potentially means two sneak attacks at the start of every single fight. Awesome
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Assassin: Overall I'm not as impressed with this class as I thought I would be. The 3rd level ability is very nice, but later ones are a bit lackluster. The DM has to accommodate the campaign to allow you to use your abilities. Would not play one in a Dungeon Crawl, for example.
Bonus Proficiencies: Poison is actually pretty good, and not too expensive for what you get.
Assassinate: Free sneak attacks with high initiative, and auto-crits against surprised enemies makes for happy days.
Infiltration Expertise: Depends the kind of game you're playing really
Imposter: Same deal. Depends on the kind of group how useful this will be.
Death Strike: Still doesn't deal as much damage as your sneak attack, unless this stacks with sneak attack, in which case it goes up to amazing.
Arcane Trickster:
Spells: Are the whole point of this specialization. It synergizes a bit better with thief than it does with Fighter (Eldritch Knight). Use thief skills at a range, cast invisibility, fly, supplement your thief skills, and you're not giving up so much to cast a spell as you would be as a Fighter. Just one attack, which may or may not be dealing sneak attack damage.
Mage Hand Legerdmain: This was a lot of fun with the 3.5 version of this ability. Steal wizard's spell pouches for fun and profit.
Magical Ambush: It would be better if you had more/higher level spells. As it stands, they've got disadvantage to resist spells that aren't going to do so much anyways.
Versatile Trickster: Do you want to get a sneak attack on every attack, ever? This is the ability for you! There's no save, no chance to avoid it. You just get advantage, and sweet sweet damage.
Spell Thief: Would be better if you had higher than 4th level spell slots.
Low Levels: Does not shine at low levels. Not enough spells, spells aren't powerful enough, and Bardic Music doesn't really provide more than minor buffing.
Mid Levels: entirely dependent on how good you are at optimizing, picking spells with Magical Secrets, and overall build quality.
High Levels: You're a full caster with a plethora of picks from every spell list in the game. If you're not winning, you're not trying hard enough.
Bardic Inspiration: It really feels like they included this feature because they had to. It was so iconic in previous editions that it needed to be carried forward, but they didn't really want to, and tried to avoid emphasizing it. It has the nearly unique honor of being subject to being wasted. You have to plan out in advance who gets inspired, and they have to remember they have an inspiration die to roll in the event of an emergency.
Magical Secrets: Access to the whole spell list is awesome. Becomes even more awesome as time goes on, and the system expands.
Superior Inspiration: Actually even worse than the other capstone-restoration things. The system encourages you to hand out bardic inspiration dice in advance of combat, but doesn't restore them until you're in combat. Also, Bardic music isn't even as useful as the other point dice systems like this, so it really falls flat.
Specializations:
College of Lore:
Bonus Proficiencies: Because you're the bard, and you're proficient at things.
Cutting Words: Would be amazing if it also applied to saving throws, but sadly it doesn't. Still an excellent ability though.
Additional Magical Secrets: More spells known? Awesome! We're nearly a wizard now!
Peerless Skill: You can use your own ability on yourself that you could have used on another party member at any time. I'm underwhelmed.
College of Valor:
Combat Inspiration: More Damage for your friends! Or a slightly weaker version of Cutting Words.
Extra Attack: I suppose you could combine this with Polymorph/ True Polymorph and go to town smashing stuff in an overpowered Dragon body. Or you could grab some ranger spells with Magical Secrets and start spamming arrows like a 17th level ranger while you're down at 10th. That would actually be a pretty powerful build, now that I think about it.
Battle Magic: This whole specialization has the same problems as the Arcane Trickster or the Eldritch Knight, just in reverse. You're a mostly arcane caster who can fight some good, but it doesn't really add much to the class unless you bend over backwards to optimize it. It's certainly possible to do that, but you're going to have to try very hard to be successful.