History YMMV / DungeonsAndDragonsFifthEdition

*** The Archfey Warlock doesn't see much use, and is often viewed as one of the worst-designed subclasses from the base selection, due to the awkward abilities that simply stop working as the game goes on. The subclass is based around using charms, illusions, and mind-effecting spells that are meant to help the player focus on confusion, making it easier for them to escape enemies, and manipulation effects. The issue is that after a certain point, enemies start getting ContractualBossImmunity to charms and/or fear, making the abilities completely useless when you would want it. To add insult to injury, their other abilities like Misty Escape can simply be covered by spells such as Misty Step while charm immunity can be easily compensated by other features (Elves for instance are resistant to charms; they get advantage on saving throws against them). So choosing an Archfey as their patron essentially gives the player abilities they almost never can use past a few levels, some of which the Warlock is already capable of doing through spells (and said spells can cover the "trickster" aspect better), and doesn't give enough supportive abilities that would offset the drawbacks, making playing as this subclass an active handicap in most situations.

** Monks -- ever since Rangers got some support through a smattering of alternative class features -- have ended up competing for the role of "weakest class in the edition" among much of the playerbase, with the simple reason being that of the damage-dealing classes, Monks just don't do much damage. Sure, Monks have some nifty options for personal utility and survivability, but their method of actually ''fighting'' [[DeathOfAThousandCuts is much more staggered and spread across many moves]] compared to the potential insane burst options of a Rogue or a Fighter, and situations where prolonged one-on-one duels are a better option than just dumping a truckload of damage all at once onto an important target are rare.

** Barbarians, like Monks, have ended up being looked upon as the weakest class in Fifth Edition due in large part to their basic class features not meshing well together. Barbarians are tank classes that can soak up a lot of hits but generally don't have any meaningful way to draw aggro outside of one dedicated subclass, making their position as tanks nigh-useless. This wouldn't be a problem if they were ''actually'' good at hurting enemies to force their foes to pay attention to them; Barbarians have almost no dedicated ranged options, which makes them anemic mid-game where most powerful monsters have a flying speed, and even when reaching the enemy isn't a problem, Barbarians simply don't have anything they can do to significantly hamper enemies. Mid-and-late-game features suggest the Barbarian is ''meant'' to fish for critical hits for their damage output, but there's nothing to support them actually scoring critical hits beyond their Reckless Attack feature, which ''still'' only gives a Barbarian 9.75% chance to land a critical blow per hit - ''very poor odds'' in a game where combats are supposed to last about two to four rounds at most. Like Monks, Barbarians have some powerful subclasses that make them worth using, but those are few and far between.

** Monks -- ever since Rangers got some support through a smattering of alternative class features -- have ended up competing for the role of "weakest class in the edition" among much of the playerbase with Barbarian, with the simple reason being that of the damage-dealing classes, Monks just don't do much damage. Sure, Monks have some nifty options for personal utility and survivability, but their method of actually ''fighting'' [[DeathOfAThousandCuts is much more staggered and spread across many moves]] compared to the potential insane burst options of a Rogue or a Fighter, and situations where prolonged one-on-one duels are a better option than just dumping a truckload of damage all at once onto an important target are rare. Monks also face several issues with longevity, as their d8 hit points just do not support their gameplay loop, especially once attacks of opportunity are factored in. A Monk ''needs'' to multiclass into Rogue to accommodate their hit-and-run playstyle, or else the Monk will run out the ki simply getting away from the enemies they attack. If the Monk ''stands and fights,'' their unique [=AC=] mechanic will do little to help them, especially when they top out at 20 late-game when monsters are routinely attacking at ''+16'' to-hit. Subclasses ''can'' mitigate their issues - Mercy and Long Death Monks are surprisingly durable, while Astral Self and Kensei can hit at a distance so the Monk doesn't need to invest Rogue levels or the Mobile feat into their build - but they typically just come out looking like frail, gimmicky Fighters.

** Barbarians, like Monks, have ended up being looked upon as the weakest class in fifth edition due in large part to the basic class features not meshing well together. Barbarians are tank classes that can soak up a lot of hits but generally don't have any meaningful way to draw aggro outside of one dedicated subclass, making their position as tanks nigh-useless. This wouldn't be a problem if they were ''actually'' good at hurting enemies to force their foes to pay attention to them; Barbarians have almost no dedicated ranged options, which makes them anemic mid-game where most powerful monsters have a flying speed, and even when reaching the enemy isn't a problem, Barbarians simply don't have anything they can do to significantly hamper enemies. Mid-and-late-game features suggest the Barbarian is ''meant'' to fish for critical hits for their damage output, but there's nothing to support them actually scoring critical hits beyond their Reckless Attack feature, which ''still'' only gives a Barbarian 9.75% chance to land a critical blow per hit - ''very poor odds'' in a game where combats are supposed to last about two to four rounds at most.

** Barbarian:

** Monks -- ever since Rangers got some support through a smattering of alternative class features -- have taken the role of "weakest class in the edition" among much of the playerbase, with the simple reason being that of the damage-dealing classes, Monks just don't do much damage. Sure, Monks have some nifty options for personal utility and survivability, but their method of actually ''fighting'' [[DeathOfAThousandCuts is much more staggered and spread across many moves]] compared to the potential insane burst options of a Rogue or a Fighter, and situations where prolonged one-on-one duels are a better option than just dumping a truckload of damage all at once onto an important target are rare.

** Monk:

** Rangers, without the optional class features and general buffs they get from ''Tasha's Cauldron of Everything'', are generally seen as the weakest ''Fifth Edition'' class; [[MasterOfNone there are very few things a Ranger can do in or out of combat that other classes can't do, and probably do better]]. In combat, they rely heavily on a very limited selection of spells, and stack up unfavorably against both Fighters and Paladins. Out of combat, many of the class's core features are only useful against specific prey or on specific terrain. It's telling when a Rogue ''subclass'' is considered to do a better job at being a Ranger than the actual Ranger; the ''very first feature'' the Scout Rogue gets completely overtakes anything the PHB Ranger has. Instead of expertise being dependent on one to three of nine types of terrain (and thus bloody useless in dungeons and cities, which Rangers ''can't'' choose) a Ranger can choose over their career, Scout Rogues just get expertise in Nature and Survival. Quick, easy, hardly game-breaking, and an immediate improvement over the Ranger's ''core'' feature.

** Factions in ''Fifth Edition'', a system where players could be members of one of five ''Forgotten Realms''-based international organizations. This was rarely used outside of the official Adventurer's League games, since not all character concepts fit neatly into them, and the Renown mechanic that influenced a player's standing in the faction was poorly designed and poorly explained. Despite this, early adventure books expected players to have a membership, providing plot hooks for each of them. This was fine in the ''TabletopGame/TyrannyOfDragons'' campaign, where it made sense for the factions to be involved with TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt in play; part of that campaign is a political balancing act for maximum benefit. But it was pretty ridiculous in ''TabletopGame/CurseOfStrahd'', which mostly takes place in Barovia, an entirely separate ''plane of existence'' from the Forgotten Realms controlled by a vampire lord where the factions couldn't be expected to have any sort of influence. Since then, the adventures have toned this mechanic down heavily, and it now features only in adventures where the factions would be expected to appear anyway, such as ''TabletopGame/Waterdeep: Dragon Heist''. Even then, it's commonly house-ruled to be more straightforward or even outright ignored.

** Factions in ''Fifth Edition'', a system where players could be members of one of five ''Forgotten Realms''-based international organizations. This was rarely used outside of the official Adventurer's League games, since not all character concepts fit neatly into them, and the Renown mechanic that influenced a player's standing in the faction was poorly designed and poorly explained. Despite this, early adventure books expected players to have a membership, providing plot hooks for each of them. This was fine in the ''TabletopGame/TyrannyOfDragons'' campaign, where it made sense for the factions to be involved with TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt in play; part of that campaign is a political balancing act for maximum benefit. But it was pretty ridiculous in ''TabletopGame/CurseOfStrahd'', which mostly takes place in Barovia, an entirely separate ''plane of existence'' from the Forgotten Realms controlled by a vampire lord where the factions couldn't be expected to have any sort of influence. Since then, the adventures have toned this mechanic down heavily, and it now features only in adventures where the factions would be expected to appear anyway, such as ''Waterdeep: Dragon Heist''. Even then, it's commonly house-ruled to be more straightforward or even outright ignored.

** Some often treat the Arcana proficiency as one's ability to sense/feel magic around them. In truth, Arcana is closer to just a History check, but for magic-related stuff, such as perhaps rolling to know if a character would know spells like something they see, or perhaps the name of magical locations. The Detect Magic spell is supposed to be used to detect magical effects in an area. Some tables just house rule Arcana to have the ability to feel magical energy nearby because Detect Magic isn't considered good enough to be worth using.

** The Wild Magic Sorcerer Bloodline divides opinion in 5e no less than any other edition. Fans love the wild and wooly chaotic weirdness that can result from the class's signature Wild Magic Surge, and argue that the chart is much less punishing than previous editions, with more straight-up beneficial effects and fewer punishing ones. Critics complain that said chart still has centering a ''Fireball'' on yourself on it, and that the mechanics surrounding it, at best, are generally poorly-designed, even the positive effects being too random or weird to feel justified playing it over safer options or, at worst, are purpose-built to enable stupid chaos-gremlin {{Griefing}}: great for making viewers laugh at the rest of the players' misery on a stream but agonizing for said players at the actual table.

* ItsTheSameSoItSucks: A common complaint leveled at ''5th Edition'', even by some fans who disliked ''4th Edition''. After the backlash of ''4E'', the writers of ''5E'' seem determined to go out of their way to return everything to the status quo, retconning even positively received changes in the last edition in order to maintain a more commonly viewed status quo. 1d4chan very aptly describes it as "the Coca-Cola classic to 4e's New Coke."

*** Assassin Rogues suffer from a bad case of CripplingOverspecialization. Since the subclass is designed around, well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin assassination]], the first subclass feature gives Rogues advantage on creatures that haven't acted in combat and advantage on all attacks... for the first round of combat. It has an additional clause that treats any attack as if it were a critical provided you surprise your target, however, it's difficult to pull off depending on the DM and general campaign setting. Its 9th and 13th level features also fall into similar trappings as Infiltration Expertise effectively promotes solo play due to the in-game time commitment of the feature and need to maintain the façade lest all that go to waste from a party member failing a check, while Imposter is ''heavily'' dependent on an RP-focused story as it serves almost no purpose in combat-focused ones. Its capstone feature, Death Strike, at least offers immense damage in conjunction with Assassinate's guaranteed critical but it requires the target to fail a Constitution saving throw, which in the late game is dodgy at best to fail as enemy Constitution is generally high by that point.

*** The Undying Warlock from the ''Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide''. All you get out of it is resistance to disease, an ability that makes it slightly harder for undead to attack you as long as you don't attack them first, a small collection of weak self-healing abilities, and a greatly enhanced lifespan. Undeniably a cool pact from a thematic point of view, but mechanically it's just ''really'' mediocre to the point of being useless, especially when the later released Undead patron basically does the thematic element better on top of better gameplay strengths.
*** The Pact of the Chain's benefit is very weak and fragile, never improves or scales up, and making use of their best ability means making sure it's right inside the range of any [=AoE=] spells an enemy wants to throw. Without the buffs it got from ''Tasha's Cauldron of Everything'', it's the weakest of the Pact Boon options.

** The Exhaustion mechanic is widely hated for how quickly it becomes debilitating and [[CycleOfHurting how difficult it is to be rid of it once it starts accumulating]]. Exhaustion levels are cumulative and go from disadvantage on all ability score checks (painful, but not debilitating), to halved Speed (debilitating), to disadvantage on all other d20 tests (debilitating bordering on crippling for classes like the Rogue that rely on Advantage), to a [[MaximumHPReduction halved HP maximum]] (crippling), to a speed of 0, to dead when Exhaustion hits six levels. It's notoriously difficult to remove too, with only a full long rest with adequate nutrition (capped at once every 24 hours to prevent the infamous "two hour workday" adventures) or a fairly high-level spell with a costly and non-renewable material component (''greater restoration'') stripping one level at a time. Intended as UnexpectedlyRealisticGameplay for characters in punishing survival situations like hostile climates, hypothermia, overwork, inadequate food, going without sleep, and/or other needs-based hardships, it was heavily restricted beyond that in the core books, save for a failure condition on the ''Tenser's transformation'' spell and the Berserker subclass's Frenzy ability (which is widely considered to have made the latter borderline unplayable). For most of the game's lifespan there was exactly one spell (''Sickening radience'') that could inflict it on a hostile creature. But eventually, when monsters were added who could outright inflict Exhaustion on PC in the twilight years of the game (one of them a CR 2 creature!), players began to realize en-masse just how poorly designed and inflexible the rules were when used for anything ''but'' the punishing survival situations they were intended for. Tellingly, Exhaustion was reworked several times in the ''One D&D'' playtest.

** Some subclasses from the initial launch are often disliked because they impose negative effects on the player for using some part of their skills. For example, the Berserker primal path for Barbarians is hated for the Frenzy ability, allowing a Barbarian to use a Bonus Action to attack again, at the cost of a level of Exhaustion, while the Wild Magic Sorcerer is hated for the Wild Magic Surge, which lets the DM roll on a table of random effects when the player uses specific parts of their subclass, but only when the DM remembers and even if they've been reduced since previous editions, said table still has many negative effects like ''Fireball''. In a somewhat telling move, almost every subclass released after the edition's launch did away with negative effects like that, due to negative feedback.
** The Underdark subraces (like Drow or Duergar) are not very popular in terms of gameplay usage due to the Sunlight Sensitivity racial feature, which imposes disadvantage on Perception checks, and attack rolls, if in sunlight. Considering how most modules have sunlight in them, unless one happens to be playing somewhere like the Underdark, very few players want to deal with being handicapped at all times by something they can't counter, especially considering their other racial features may not be enough to justify the downsides. While Drow are popular, and run in spite of this for EvilIsCool reasons, you'll never see other Underdark subraces played because it isn't worth such a drastic weakness.

** Infamously, there are many rules for this edition that seemed to not be made with awareness of other mechanics or rules, creating infamous causes of something that should not really work but does because of how the rules work. For example, Lycanthropes are immune to non-magical weapons that aren't silvered, but as written, this only applies to damage from weapons, which means that, according to the rules, pushing one off a cliff would not qualify as an attack when they hit the ground due to how falling damage works, meaning they would take normal fall damage[[labelnote:However...]]WordOfGod says [[https://twitter.com/ChrisPerkinsDnD/status/793670349946621952 it only applies to attacks]][[/labelnote]].

** Ranged attacks being at disadvantage against prone targets. The idea is that someone being shot at can throw themselves flat defensively and crawl, as is done to throw off ranged fire in real life, but in practice a lot of prone targets are that way because they've been ''smashed'' prone in a fight and this just arbitrarily makes it harder for allies to follow up and shoot them.[[note]]In fairness, in real life, you'd basically never shoot into a melee that contains friendly targets either, but while previous editions had some rules to simulate this, fifth edition bowed to the reality that players basically did everything in their power to circumvent them anyway and accepted ranged attacks against engaged melee targets as AcceptableBreaksFromReality, with at most the target getting cover if you're shooting through someone to get to them.[[/note]]

** The mechanics of spellcasting aren't ''that'' big an issue... unless you're a MagicKnight with two weapons or a shield. A character always needs a free hand or to be physically holding the object in question to manipulate their focus or components every time they cast a spell with a material component; this is trivial for most of the arcane full casters who only bother with one-handed weapons anyway if at all (and half the time their weapon ''is'' their focus anyway), but if anyone else isn't using a two-handed weapon (letting go with one hand to manipulate something on your person is free the first time each round) they'll have to drop or sheathe it first, since shields take an action to strip off. Half the reason for War Caster's popularity is simply ''not having to deal with these rules'' and being able to use the weapon already in your hand as a spellcasting focus.

*** The Champion from the ''Player's Handbook'' is a weird example in that it's widely hated not necessarily because it's terrible, but rather because it's '''boring'''. Champions get nothing but passive features, which can certainly be effective, but when you combine that with a class that doesn't have much versatility in what it can do beyond "I hit the enemy with my weapon", it makes the Champion into a bit of a PoorPredictableRock and doesn't lead to very interesting play patterns, leading the subclass to be dismissed by most seasoned fans as "[[SkillGateCharacters baby's first D&D character]]".