Character Classes by Edition: 1st to 3rd (Core | Pre-3rd | 3rd Other) | 3rd & 3.5 (Prestige Classes | NPC Classes) | 4th | 5th
Creatures | Deities | Playable Races
Campaign Settings: Dragonlance | Eberron | Forgotten Realms | Greyhawk | Planescape | Ravenloft | Spelljammer
This is the character sheet for NPC classes Dungeons & Dragons introduced during its 3.5 Edition. Go to Dungeons & Dragons Classes if you want to check out the classes introduced in other editions.
Not everybody can be a hero. These classes are for background characters and Mooks, although you can play them too if you are feeling masochistic (or are using the right crazy build).
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Adept
Adept
Represents the stay-at-temple clergy and the B-students of your local wizard. That said, simply having magic can make them surprisingly effective.- Familiar: The only Divine caster that gets a familiar as a class feature.
- Lethal Joke Character: Typically higher than you'd think on
Character Tiers lists (trending somewhere towards the lower end of mid-tier), as their spell list has some surprisingly useful gems despite its shallowness. We are not kidding when we say it's a higher tier than the Samurai.- Eberron Campaign Setting boosts them so they can add one Cleric domain of spells to their spell list which can boost their versatility significantly or allow them some spells otherwise restricted to a once a day on a cleric.
- Magikarp Power: Intended to be the only class capable of classifying for the Hexer prestige class, which progresses your spellcasting at the same rate as an adept while also giving them full melee ability and powerful curses. In practice, other classes can also qualify through backdoor methods.
- Religion is Magic: Less magical than a Cleric, but magic nonetheless.
- Squishy Wizard: These are normal, average-joe ministers, not badass warrior-priests.
Aristocrat
Aristocrat
Blue-bloods, courtiers, and the rich, aristocrats represent the general 'upper class' and their social skills without the added specialist knowledge of rogues or bards.- Crimefighting with Cash: They have the highest starting gold of any class at 1st level. People who choose to play an aristocrat as a Self-Imposed Challenge tend to take advantage of this by buying expensive armor and items, with some even taking the Mercantile feat to boost starting gold further and give bonuses to buying and selling things. Past that first level, though, it becomes irrelevant since starting gold is piddly next to what you earn from adventuring.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: The armor and weapon proficiencies would suggest this; presumably the aristocrat has enough free time to learn how to swing a sword around, even if they aren't especially good at it.
Commoner
Commoner
Peasants, dirt farmers, unskilled workers: The commoner represents the starving useless masses and is at the bottom of the totem pole for utility.- Lethal Joke Character: The "Chicken Infested" joke "flaw" lets them produce infinite chickens.
- Which can be made into zombie chickens that explode upon death.
- Muggles: A Commoner is about as weak as a class can get without already being dead. Few hit points, skills more suited for menial labor than adventuring, and no unique abilities whatsoever.
- This Loser Is You: Averted. The Dungeon Master's Guide is very clear on the fact that the NPC classes are not suitable for player characters, on the basis of their laughable weakness.
Expert
Expert
Blacksmiths, scribes, candlestick makers or cartographers, the 'expert' is a catch-all class intended to cover any non-magical expert in any field.- Iaijutsu Practitioner: While not as good as the Factotum at it by virtue of no other abilities, an Expert is also able to exploit their "any 10" class skills with this.
- Lethal Joke Character: Experts are meant to be a generic NPC class representing artisans and experts, and this is achieved by having them choose ten skills as class skills. The lethal part comes from there being no restrictions on which ten skills, allowing access to some unusual tricks like iaijutsu as well as being able to qualify for a number of feats and prestige classes.
- New Job as the Plot Demands: The D&D class version. Experts are generic classes that are allowed to have whatever skills the Game Master wants, letting the same class represent any profession.
- Power Creep: Unfortunately, their niche of "any ten class skills" was compromised by the Savant and Factotum, which treat all skills as class skills. Of course, if you were playing an Expert to begin with, you probably don't care about that (and Experts were supposed to be weaker than actual player classes like the Factotum).
Magewright
Magewright
An NPC class integral to the setting of Eberron. They specialise in repeatedly casting the cheap, non-combat utility spells driving the Magitek of the setting.- Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?: Magewrights were born from the question of who is manufacturing all these cheap magic items. See, there are these weak, common arcane spellcasters with only passive spells...
Warrior
Warrior
They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose is identical: To exist in any encounter with non-unique non-boss enemies, attack the heroes one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they wanted to.- Mooks: This is the generic class given to untrained humanoid enemies like orcs and goblins (as well as common guards and foot soldiers), which allows them to handle a sword without actually giving them any distinguishing features. Good for a Zerg Rush and not much else.
- Unskilled, but Strong: It'd be more accurate to say "no skills besides strong." With no abilities aside from pure numbers, a warrior can pick up a sword and hit with it more often than not, and that's basically all he can do.
- Vanilla Unit: Warriors have no special abilities or class features outside of pure stats.
