What are simplest builds in 5e?

[Pinjata]

Simplest to play? Level 7, Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Simplest caster?

For Fighter I know its Champion. What about the other classes?

thanks

[NNescio]

Simplest to play? Level 7, Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Simplest caster?

For Fighter I know its Champion. What about the other classes?

thanks

For full casters? Healbot/Buffbot Cleric. (Usually with Life or War Domain)

Do note that in-combat healing is generally a suboptimal use of actions (and spellslots), since you can usually mitigate more damage by straight-up killing or CC'ing your opponents instead (or buffing your allies to do the same).

Healing Word when used on a dying ally is good though, since it effectively trades your bonus action for a whole turn's worth of your ally's actions.

Buffbot is deceptively strong though. Clerics are very potent force multipliers, even starting from Level 1 (with Bless).

[DireSickFish]

For new players I recommend a Rogue either Thief or Assassin subclass or a Totem Barbarian. They are both attack centric classes that have easy to add mechanics. Everyone likes rolling a bunch of d6's on the rogue and Barbarian's are simple rage hack and slash.

If they want to play a caster I would recommend Warlock. All you really need to do to be an effective Warlock is take Eldrish Blast, Hex, and the ability that gives CHA to damage and you're all set. Then they can experiment with other spells if they want to.

[Kane0]

Champion fighter
Life cleric
Thief rogue
Evoker wizard

Pretty straightforward.

An interesting variation while keeping simplicity might be
Totem barbarian
War or arcana cleric
Assassin or mastermind rogue
Spell point dragon sorcerer

[Ruslan]

Warlock. You Hex, you Eldritch Blast. Occasionally you cast Fear or some other higher level spell, if circumstances are right. Misty Step if trapped in melee. That's it.

[Deadandamnation]

Any Combat Centric build:

Smiter Paladin - Just choose a style and a weapon and smite away your slots except maybe Bless and few other spells.

Rogue - Any subclass except maybe Trickster (As an Archer maybe dipping with fighter for Close Combat Shooter or Archery or as a melee, in both cases take Mobility and Alert)

Ranger Hunter - Spells are pretty easy to use and in the end you can do great things just using Hunter's Mark/Entanglin Strike/Hail of Thorns

Monk - Take Mobility and dive in and out of fights Shadow monk or Empty Hands are both easy.

Barbarian- Grab a weapon, rage and smash things

Fighter - Battlemaster isn't so hard to play, choose a couple of damage manouvers and a combat style and you are set.


As for Casters:

Cleric - Is only long to chose a Domain but you can focus on blast things or fight and buffing is pretty easy.

Sorcerer- Blast things and use metamagic just to quicken or enpower.

Wizard - Evoker again blast things.

Warlock - Blast with Eldritch and some easy magics.

Valor Bard- It's a little more complicate but you can focus on disables, hypnotic pattern, sleep, hold person. Use inspiration on someone and keep fighting as a last resource.

[Georlik]

Actually I rarely recomend casters to new players, but if they are dead set on magic I suggest picking a Moon druid. All you really need to know is "cast barkskin @ turn into a bear". And as your mastery of the system grows, so do your options.

[Logosloki]

(Using only the PHB here)

Fiend Blade Warlock is pretty simple and it offers a good amount of power. Eldritch blast cantrip (2d10 force damage on one target or d10 force damage on two targets) except twice per short rest where you use fireball.

You only have two spell slots per short rest and you only know 7 spells (FIREBALL, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Unseen Servant, Misty Step, Dispel Magic, Invisibility Hallucinatory terrain and Hypnotic pattern so you can be super lazy and super slippery) and 3 cantrips (one of which is going to be Eldritch blast, so maybe prestidigitation and minor illusion for the others).

Pact of the blade gives you the ability to a make magic weapon, which is useful for a side arm, when you get bored or if you can convince the DM that you can give the weapon to a party member since it only dispels if you are more than 5ft away from it for a minute. You can also call dibs on a magic weapon and shunt it into another space so you can pull it out later.

Fiend gives you temp HP if you kill an enemy (low chance of coming up but nice to have) and once per short rest you can add d10 to a roll you have made for an ability check or saving throw after you have made the roll (lower chance of wasting it). Plus you can get fire ball from the fiend list and there are few things in the game at the seventh level that can't be solved with a fireball.

You get four invocations, one of which will be agonizing blast (+cha to eldritch blast). My suggestions are Armour of shadows (at will mage armour, personal favourite because I have been bereft of weapons and armour too many times), Thirsting Blade (extra attack for if you have to beat someone with your magic weapon) and One with the shadows (Turn invisible in dim light or darkness)

[djreynolds]

I find some classes like champion and thief can sometimes be tough to play for newbies. Crazy I know, but no obvious options can be tough.

Evoker wizard, or a blaster sorcerer. Just point and shoot.

Warlock takes some style and panache.

[Tanarii]

Warlock takes some style and panache.IMO it's the simplest level one caster, and you can grow into its complexities. But starting at level 7 it's going to take some finesse.

OtoH that's pretty much true for any caster. Including Cleric.

[Anonymouswizard]

To be honest, when starting at level 7 nothing's going to be simple. 5e pretends to be even more simple than it is the 'death saving throw' rules actually being slightly more complex to me than the bleeding out rules, because they add a whole new thing to track instead of just 1 more hp per round), and classes have so many class features that anybody who hasn't had the chance to actually read the class will get swamped (which is why I highly prefer 2e to it, because I can give someone a Fighter, or Tief at level 15 and have to explain less than a level 7 5e Champion Fighter, even if I'm using non-weapon proficiencies). I love 5e because of how streamlined it is (...except to run, I'll just stick to 2e to run it, because I don't want to have to keep track of everybody's various class abilities and spell layouts when I can sit in the knowledge that the wizard doesn't need a certain subclass ability to decipher a 200 year old lost code* but either an intelligence check or month in the library [ever give problems that can't just be solved the slow way]).

To answer the question, strictly speaking the simplest are Champion Fighter, Thief/Assassin Rogue, Berserker Barbarian, and Warlock or spell point Sorcerer (okay, time out, why didn't 5e just make spell points standard? I could do with a sacred hamburger), with no honourable mentions as I'm AFB. From the sounds of it the Mystic/Psion might be shaping up to be a fairly simple caster-ish class, but we'll see.

* Okay, the 5e one doesn't either, but I also can't be certain that he trained in arcana/ancient ciphers or whatever, whereas in 2e I can safely ignore the NWP system and just call for an INT check.

[Talyn]

At level 7, and he wants to be a caster? Yeesh.

I'd say Devotion or maybe Ancients Paladin. Get into melee, bless, smite, repeat. Use your Lay on Hands in an emergency. Keep your allies close so they can benefit from your auras (which are always on and don't require any bookkeeping, which is nice).

[JakOfAllTirades]

I never really thought of the Warlock as a simple class to play (too many moving parts: cantrips, pact magic, invocations, plus maybe a familiar or a pact blade, or rituals/extra cantrips, patron granted powers, and mystic arcana) but I suppose it would be possible to put together a "point and shoot" warlock build. I'd trick out Eldritch Blast for maximum shooty-ness, grab Hex, and use the rest (spell and invocation slots) for exploration/utility. Great Old Ones/Pact of the Tome would probably work well for this.

[djreynolds]

I never really thought of the Warlock as a simple class to play (too many moving parts: cantrips, pact magic, invocations, plus maybe a familiar or a pact blade, or rituals/extra cantrips, patron granted powers, and mystic arcana) but I suppose it would be possible to put together a "point and shoot" warlock build. I'd trick out Eldritch Blast for maximum shooty-ness, grab Hex, and use the rest (spell and invocation slots) for exploration/utility. Great Old Ones/Pact of the Tome would probably work well for this.

Warlock is tough to make for a newbie. Wizard gives choices but spell scrolls are tough to find, well good ones. A sorcerer can live off of few spells, a good DM will help out with spell choices and the guides here spell it all out.