History YMMV / DungeonsAndDragonsFifthEdition

*** 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 "[[SkillGateCharacter baby's first D&D character]]".

** 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. Beast Masters have it particularly bad, as the mechanics behind their animal companions outright suck.
*** 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.

*** 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 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 are generally poorly-designed, even the positive effects being too random or weird to feel justifies playing it over safer options.

** 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 are generally poorly-designed.

** 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 are generally poorly-designed. This only intensified when the ''D&D One'' playtest seemed to double down on the Wild Magic bloodline as emblematic of the Sorcerer class, with multiple spells of questionable usefulness designed to evoke the bloodline's general wacky chaotic weirdness (although without Surges themselves or potential negative effects) baked right into the class progression at the expense of the actually good class features multiple other classes got, so players who like the Sorcerer but didn't like Wild Magic are suddenly finding wild magic style randomness all over the place.

** The Wild Magic Sorcerer subclass falls into AwesomeButImpractical. Whenever you cast a non-cantrip spell, you may have to roll a d20. If you get a 1 on this d20 roll, you then have to roll a d100 for a Wild Magic Surge, which makes something happens at random. Some of the Wild Magic Surge effects are useful: recovering HP, regaining spell slots, casting buff spells like Mirror Image for free, or your next spell needing a Bonus Action instead of an Action. But you can also end up casting Fireball or Confusion centered on yourself, make yourself Frightened of the nearest enemy, or cause necrotic damage to everything around you (including your allies). While fun in theory, the amount of potential negative effects from a Wild Magic Surge makes the sub-class not worth using, as some of the Surges can easily lead to a TotalPartyKill in the wrong spot. Making this worse is that your most interesting ability -- being able to give yourself advantage -- leaves you open to a Wild Magic Surge roll as soon as you do it. So your one outright useful ability is probably going to be a detriment in the end. All of these drawbacks, in exchange for only slightly increasing your chances to cast spells and your damage, are not enough to make the sub-class viable. And to top it all off, you only have to roll for a Wild Magic Surge ''if the DM asks you to''. Depending on their whims and whether they remember a surge is possible, the bulk of this subclass' features may come into play constantly, very rarely, or anywhere in between.

** As written, making a character specializing in thrown weapons was basically impossible for the vast majority of the game's lifespan because there were no mechanics to differentiate weapons designed to be thrown from any others. At ''best'' a character could draw two weapons at once and burn their action drawing two more; fighters get three attacks by level 10 and a lot of throwing weapons are also Light, meaning off-hand attacks were subtly encouraged. Ultimately, a Fighting Style was released to patch these issues (and it ''does'' also pack a nice damage boost), but it still requires players to burn a resource most characters only get one of just to make this specialization functional at the level the other weapon Styles (or at least [[ComplacentGamingSyndrome the good ones]]) start at. Even worse, until the release of the Path of the Giant Barbarian subclass, there was no way to use thrown weapons efficiently past 6th level, which begins to expect the player to get and use magic weapons. Unless the player had a ''really'' kind DM, it would be incredibly difficult to find enough throwable magic items that thrown fighting styles would stay sustainable throughout an entire encounter - more likely, the player will have one magic dagger or throwing axe and then be stuck using nonmagical thrown weapons against creatures with resistance to nonmagical damage. This utterly stymied the potential of thrown weapons and made ranged builds just downright better, since a character only needs a single magical bow to do consistent magical damage.

** 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 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, 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.

*** War Domain is commonly seen as the worst Cleric subclass from the initial selection due to the overly balanced nature of its primary feature: War Priest. War Domain is designed around being the martial focused option for Clerics, but due to the class itself not getting extra attack, the War Priest feature, which lets them use a bonus action to attack per Wisdom modifier per day, is meant to be the crux of the subclass. War Priest generally falls flat as a feature though because its only going to, at most, give the Cleric five extra attacks a day, when dedicated martial classes get extra attack and out pace it. Even the Channel Divinity, which can allow for a Cleric to give themselves a +10 bonus to hit, isn't enough to offset it, as it means the Cleric can only use it to boost their attack up to three times a day. It isn't helped by its level 17 ability being they become resistant to non-magical physical damage, at a level where enemies will entirely be using magical weapons or not even use weapons. There also is the issue of it requiring a lot of min-maxing to play well, since a War Domain Cleric would need to have high Strength and Wisdom to really use its features well. Many players have noted it comes across as being intentionally weak to avoid being too similar to a Paladin, leading many to never play it, and instead play a Paladin. Typically, people going for a 'magical warrior' (or 'gish') build will instead favor one of the melee-focused Bards, the Spores Druid, or the Bladesinger Wizard, if not the obvious choice of Hexblade Warlock, all of whom get either a more reliable secondary attack or have access to melee cantrips like Primal Savagery or Shocking Grasp that steadily increase in power over time. Even the Domain of ''Nature'' is valued over the Domain of War for melee Clerics given their access to Primal Savagery and Shillelagh.

*** War Domain is commonly seen as the worst Cleric subclass from the initial selection due to the overly balanced nature of its primary feature: War Priest. War Domain is designed around being the martial focused option for Clerics, but due to the class itself not getting extra attack, the War Priest feature, which lets them use a bonus action to attack per Wisdom modifier per day, is meant to be the crux of the subclass. War Priest generally falls flat as a feature though because its only going to, at most, give the Cleric five extra attacks a day, when dedicated martial classes get extra attack and out pace it. Even the Channel Divinity, which can allow for a Cleric to give themselves a +10 bonus to hit, isn't enough to offset it, as it means the Cleric can only use it to boost their attack up to three times a day. It isn't helped by its level 17 ability being they become resistant to non-magical physical damage, at a level where enemies will entirely be using magical weapons or not even use weapons. There also is the issue of it requiring a lot of min-maxing to play well, since a War Domain Cleric would need to have high Strength and Wisdom to really use its features well. Many players have noted it comes across as being intentionally weak to avoid being too similar to a Paladin, leading many to never play it, and instead playing a Paladin. Typically, people going for a 'magical warrior' (or 'gish') build will instead favor one of the melee-focused Bards, the Spores Druid, or the Bladesinger Wizard, if not the obvious choice of Hexblade Warlock, all of whom get either a more reliable secondary attack or have access to melee cantrips like Primal Savagery or Shocking Grasp that steadily increase in power over time. Even the Domain of ''Nature'' is valued over the Domain of War for melee Clerics given their access to Primal Savagery and Shillelagh.

*** War Domain is commonly seen as the worst Cleric subclass from the initial selection due to the overly balanced nature of its primary feature: War Priest. War Domain is designed around being the martial focused option for Clerics, but due to the class itself not getting extra attack, the War Priest feature, which lets them use a bonus action to attack per Wisdom modifier per day, is meant to be the crux of the subclass. War Priest generally falls flat as a feature though because its only going to, at most, give the Cleric five extra attacks a day, when dedicated martial classes get extra attack and out pace it. Even the Channel Divinity, which can allow for a Cleric to give themselves a +10 bonus to hit, isn't enough to offset it, as it means the Cleric can only use it to boost their attack up to three times a day. It isn't helped by its level 17 ability being they become resistant to non-magical physical damage, at a level where enemies will entirely be using magical weapons or not even use weapons. There also is the issue of it requiring a lot of min-maxing to play well, since a War Domain Cleric would need to have high Strength and Wisdom to really use its features well. Many players have noted it comes across as being intentionally weak to avoid being too similar to a Paladin, leading many to never play it, and instead playing a Paladin.

*** War Domain is commonly seen as the worst Cleric subclass from the initial selection due to the overly balanced nature of its primary feature: War Priest. War Domain is designed around being the martial focused option for cleric's, but due to cleric's not getting extra attack, the War Priest feature, which lets them use a bonus action to attack per Wisdom modifier per day, is meant to be the crux of the subclass. War Priest generally falls flat as a feature though because its only going to, at most, give the cleric 5 extra attacks a day, when dedicated martial classes get extra attack and out pace it. Even the Channel Divinity, which can allow for a Cleric to give themselves +10 to hit, isn't enough to offset it, as it means the Cleric can only use it to boost their attack up to three times a day. It isn't helped by its level 17 ability being they become resistant to non-magical physical damage, at a level where enemies will entirely be using magical weapons or not even use weapons. There also is the issue of it requiring a lot of min-maxing to play well, since a War Domain Cleric would need to have high Strength and Wisdom to really use its features well. Many players have noted it comes across as being intentionally weak to avoid being too similar to a Paladin, leading many to never play it, and instead playing a paladin.

* WinBackTheCrowd: 5th Edition quickly took back the crown of top-selling tabletop RPG after 4th Edition had been outsold by 3.5E derivative ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}''.

*** War Domain is commonly seen as the worst Cleric subclass from the initial selection due to the overly balanced nature of its primary feature: War Priest. Mechanically, War Domain tries to make a Cleric more of a melee warrior, giving them martial weapons and heavy armor proficiency, and their Channel Divinity is focused around increase the chance to hit for themselves or an ally. However, as Clerics do not get extra attack, instead War Domain gives the Cleric the War Priest feature, which lets them use a bonus action to attack per Wisdom modifier per day. This means its main role as a martial cleric falls flat because its only going to, at most, have 5 extra attacks it can make on a day, when other martial classes will quickly get extra attack and be able to easily outperform a War Cleric. Even the Channel Divinity, which can allow for a Cleric to give themselves +10 to hit, isn't enough to offset it, as it means the Cleric can only use it to boost their attack up to three times a day. It isn't helped by its level 17 ability being they become resistant to non-magical physical damage, at a level where enemies will entirely be using magical weapons or not even use weapons. There also is the issue of it requiring a lot of min-maxing to play well, since a War Domain Cleric would need to have high Strength and Wisdom to really use its features well. Many players have noted it comes across as being intentionally weak to avoid being too similar to a Paladin, leading many to never play it because you can play a Paladin and get a similar, and better, play style, and other Cleric subclasses are just better.

*** The Berserker Primal Path for Barbarians from the Player's Handbook almost never gets used. This is because of a poorly-designed first power called Frenzy, which offers an additional attack per round as a bonus action... at the cost of one level of Exhaustion once the Rage ends. Exhaustion is hard and slow to remove, stacks rapidly to impose awful overlapping penalties, and means that using the Path's power is almost never worth it. The rest of the Primal Path is much better, but such a bad starting power, combined with the lack of anything else to complement it or mitigate the cost, has led many to complain it obviously pre-dates the existing Exhaustion rules and was never updated when they were changed.

** The Exhaustion mechanic is widely hated for how blatantly unfair it is. The idea of it seems to be to encourage players to take rests more since taking a long rest removes one tier of it, and the rules suggest to give it to characters who aren't resting as a form of UnexpectedlyRealisticGameplay, but the effect is so debilitating that it becomes outright unfair to do so. For example: The first penalty is disadvantage on ability checks, which out of the gate is a very punishing debuff, and the second is halved speed, another severely punishing effect. Were the exhaustion condition simply a punishment for not resting, it would be annoying but manageable, but some enemies can inflict it as a debuff, meaning a character can potentially end up being severely weakened with no way to stop it. It also is why the Berserker Barbarian is widely hated since it causes exhaustion for using the core mechanics of the subclass. Some [=DMs=] outright refuse to use the system due to the sheer danger it presents, and what few often do so sparingly.

** 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. In a somewhat telling move, almost every subclass released after the edition's launch did away with negative effects like that, due to poor balancing.

** 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, meaning they aren't prone because they are avoiding ranged fire, but are instead basically knocked to the ground, and this just arbitrarily makes it harder for allies to 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.[[/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 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, 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 Necromancer Wizard is overwhelmingly seen as the worst Wizard subclass to play as. It is held back by the Animate Dead spell; not only do you keep rolling dice to maintain control, but you have to cast the spell at higher levels to have it make more than one undead at a time and get little else out of it. Animate Dead is a 3rd-level spell, meaning you can't even use the main feature of the subclass right away, thus its earlier features are weak and not that helpful. All of the Arcane Tradition's abilities meanwhile offer next to no buffs to the undead you summon, and the Necromancer only gets two buff abilities at all, which don't even really play into the theme of casting Necromancy spells, such as gaining effects from them like other Wizard subclasses get. This doesn't even include the roleplay side of things, where a Necromancer Wizard is highly likely to be treated as suspect, even if the character in question isn't evil-aligned. While later spells help the class out, the core abilities of the Necromancer are simply too weak and don't scale. A Circle of the Shepherd Druid could do everything that a Necromancer Wizard could do but better, all without getting as many dirty looks and providing better buffs to summoned creatures. It also doesn't help that it is potentially unappealing from a table angle, as having to manage the player's undead can slow down combat drastically. It took later materials like the ''Unearthed Arcana'' and ''Tasha's Cauldron of Everything'' giving the Wizard class more spells that synergize with Necromancers before it became genuinely viable, but even with those options it's still one of the weakest Wizard subclasses, to the point that the ''One D&D'' playstyle didn't include it, and it is speculated it is going to be dropped completely.

*** The Necromancer Wizard is overwhelmingly seen as the worst Wizard subclass to play as. It is held back by the Animate Dead spell; not only do you keep rolling dice to maintain control, but you have to cast the spell at higher levels to have it make more than one undead at a time and get little else out of it. Animate Dead is a 3rd-level spell, meaning you can't even use the main feature of the subclass right away, thus its earlier features are weak and not that helpful. All of the Arcane Tradition's abilities meanwhile offer next to no buffs to the undead you summon, and the Necromancer only gets two buff abilities at all, which don't even really play into the theme of casting Necromancy spells, such as gaining effects from them like other Wizard subclasses get. This doesn't even include the roleplay side of things, where a Necromancer Wizard is highly likely to be treated as suspect, even if the character in question isn't evil-aligned. While later spells help the class out, the core abilities of the Necromancer are simply too weak and don't scale. A Circle of the Shepherd Druid could do everything that a Necromancer Wizard could do but better, all without getting as many dirty looks and providing better buffs to summoned creatures. It also doesn't help that it is potentially unappealing from a table angle, as having to manage the player's undead can slow down combat drastically. It took later materials like the ''Unearthed Arcana'' and ''Tasha's Cauldron of Everything'' giving the Wizard class more spells that synergize with Necromancers before it became genuinely viable, but even with those options it's still one of the weakest Wizard subclasses, to the point that the ''One D&D'' playstyle didn't include it, and it is speculated it is going to be dropped completely.

** The idea that rolling a Nat 1 or 20 is an automatic fail or success on all dice rolls is a common assumption among people, but in truth it isn't the case, as it only applies to attack rolls and saves (something that has been true in all editions of the game). The assumption it applies to all roles can be chalked up to the nature of rolling either of them; if you roll a 1 on any roll, chances are unless you have crazy high modifiers that would boost the roll, a 1 is very likely a failure by how low the roll will be, while the opposite occurs for rolling a 20, since it means unless you have a large negative modifier to the dice roll, chances are you'll pass whatever you rolled.[[note]] Rolling either doesn't automatically mean a success or failure. For example: if a character rolled a natural 1 on a stealth check, but they have a high stealth bonus, magical effects augmenting it, feats, and/or class features that boost the roll, a character can still succeed due to the sheer numerical bonus they have. On the other side, a character getting a natural 20 on a strength check while having a negative modifier, and the check is meant to be really high, can fail to do so.[[/note]] The ''[=OneD&D=]'' playtest briefly experimented with making this an official rule, but reverted the change within about a week.

*** The Necromancer Wizard is overwhelmingly seen as the worst Wizard subclass to play as. It is held back by the Animate Dead spell; not only do you keep rolling dice to maintain control, but you have to cast the spell at higher levels to have it make more than one undead at a time and get little else out of it. Animate Dead is a 3rd-level spell, meaning you can't even use the main feature of the subclass right away, thus its earlier features are weak and not that helpful. All of the Arcane Tradition's abilities meanwhile offer next to no buffs to the undead you summon, and the Necromancer only gets two buff abilities at all, which don't even really play into the theme of casting Necromancy spells, such as gaining effects from them like other Wizard subclasses get. This doesn't even include the roleplay side of things, where a Necromancer Wizard is highly likely to be treated as suspect, even if the character in question isn't evil-aligned. While later spells help the class out, the core abilities of the Necromancer are simply too weak and don't scale. A Circle of the Shepherd Druid could do everything that a Necromancer Wizard could do but better, all without getting as many dirty looks and providing better buffs to summoned creatures. It also doesn't help that it is potentially unappealing from a table angle, as having to manage the player's undead can slow down combat drastically. It took later materials like the ''Unearthed Arcana'' and ''Tasha's Cauldron of Everything'' giving the Wizard class more spells that synergize with Necromancers before it became genuinely viable, but even with those options it's still one of the weakest Wizard subclasses, to the point that the 'One D&D'' playstyle didn't include it, and it is speculated it is going to be dropped completely.

** 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 Necromancer Wizard is overwhelmingly seen as the worst Wizard subclass to play as. It is held back by the Animate Dead spell; not only do you keep rolling dice to maintain control, but you have to cast the spell at higher levels to have it make more than one undead at a time and get little else out of it. Animate Dead is a 3rd-level spell, meaning you can't even use the main feature of the subclass right away, thus its earlier features are weak and not that helpful. All of the Arcane Tradition's abilities meanwhile offer next to no buffs to the undead you summon, and the Necromancer only gets two buff abilities at all, which don't even really play into the theme of casting Necromancy spells, such as gaining effects from them like other Wizard subclasses get. This doesn't even include the roleplay side of things, where a Necromancer Wizard is highly likely to be treated as suspect, even if the character in question isn't evil-aligned. While later spells help the class out, the core abilities of the Necromancer are simply too weak and don't scale. A Circle of the Shepherd Druid could do everything that a Necromancer Wizard could do but better, all without getting as many dirty looks and providing better buffs to summoned creatures. It also doesn't help that it is potentially unappealing from a table angle, as having to manage the player's undead can slow down combat drastically. It took later materials like the ''Unearthed Arcana'' and ''Tasha's Cauldron of Everything'' giving the Wizard class more spells that synergize with Necromancers before it became genuinely viable, but even with those options it's still one of the weakest Wizard subclasses.

* ThatOneRule: Many of these examples, dubbed "Rules As Written", or RAW, are often ignored by the community to avoid players abusing them, since they can often be incredibly broken if exploited, but anyone unfamiliar with some of the rules can expect a headache trying to deal with them.

** One of the more infamous examples was that, as written, someone using a ranged weapon to attack someone hiding in some form of obscuring cloud like effect would not be at disadvantage, because the ranged attacker would be gaining disadvantage from not being able to see the target, but also gaining advantage because the target can't see them, making it a normal roll.
** 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 shoot them. (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.)

** As written, making a character specializing in thrown weapons was basically impossible for the vast majority of the game's lifespan because there were no mechanics to differentiate weapons designed to be thrown from any others. At ''best'' a character could draw two weapons at once and burn their action drawing two more; fighters get three attacks by level 10 and a lot of throwing weapons are also Light, meaning off-hand attacks were subtly encouraged. Ultimately, a Fighting Style was released to patch these issues (and it ''does'' also pack a nice damage boost), but it still requires players to burn a resource most characters only get one of just to make this specialization functional at the level the other weapon Styles (or at least [[ComplacentGamingSyndrome the good ones]]) start at.

** The Indomitable feature, the Fighter's only class feature that cannot be recharged on a short rest, is often derided for being weak; it's essentially a single saving throw re-roll per long rest. Worse, it tends to happen on levels where the Fighter gets no other benefits (minus a second use of Action Surge per short or long rest). Often seen as a blatant attempt to skew things in the caster's favor in the caster-martial dynamic, it's [[PopularGameVariant often reworked]] to either recharge on a short rest or to work like the similar Legendary Resistance ability and let the Fighter choose to succeed instead.

* ThatOneRule:

** One of the more infamous examples was that, as written, someone using a ranged weapon to attack someone hiding in some form of obscuring cloud like effect would not be at disadvantage, because the ranged attacker would be gaining disadvantage from not being able to see the target, but also gaining advantage because the target can't see them, making it a normal roll. Many of these examples, dubbed "Rules As Written", or RAW, are often ignored by the community to avoid players abusing them, since they can often be incredibly broken if exploited, but anyone unfamiliar with some of the rules can expect a headache trying to deal with them.
** The rule that states attacking a prone target with a ranged attack gives disadvantage is something some dislike, because it doesn't really make sense why it exists. The logic seems to be that, while prone, a target can roll to avoid attacks from a distance compared to melee attacks, or that their a smaller target to hit compared to when standing up, but gameplay wise it seems like an arbitrary rule meant to prevent players from ganging up on a prone enemy, when some would argue that it would be harder for a prone enemy to see a ranged attack coming compared to melee attack, and the idea that an enemy on the ground is harder to hit a flimsy justification.
** Challenge Rating system is ''intended'' to help the DM balance encounters, but is infamous for how bad it is at doing so. What qualifies for what rating can feel really random and silly. An infamous example being that an Intellect Devourer is considered a CR 2 creature, something ''nobody'' would ever agree makes sense because of how dangerous said creatures are even at higher levels of play.

** Backgrounds featured special abilities to grant a player social or practical benefits, usually either for interacting with others of a similar background or for being able to find and fit in at places relevant to the background in question. The Acolyte background for instance made interacting with those who shared the same faith as the player easier while also letting them use religious sources easier, while Noble aimed to make it easier for the character to get into high society easily. Unfortunately, because they were a new feature rather than a redux of features from previous editions, and because they didn't have rolls or mechanics attached to them and instead required creativity on the part of both the player and the GM to actually use, they tended to be ignored by many groups, and the ''Strixhaven'', ''Dragonlance'', ''Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants'', and the ''Book of Many Things'' sourcebooks replaced them with a free feat instead, something the ''One D&D'' playtest seems set to follow in the footsteps of.

** Backgrounds featured special abilities to grant a player social or practical benefits, usually either for interacting with others of a similar background or for being able to find and fit in at places relevant to the background in question. The Acolyte background for instance made interacting with those who shared the same faith as the player easier while also letting them use religious sources easier, while Noble aimed to make it easier for the character to get into high society easily. Unfortunately, because they were a new feature rather than a redux of features from previous editions, and because they didn't have rolls or mechanics attached to them and instead required creativity on the part of both the player and the GM to actually use, they tended to be ignored by many groups, and the ''Dragonlance'' sourcebook replaced them with a free feat instead, something the ''One D&D'' playtest seems set to follow in the footsteps of.

** Backgrounds featured special abilities to grant a player social or practical benefits, usually either for interacting with others of a similar background or for being able to find and fit in at places relevant to the background in question. Unfortunately, because they were a new feature rather than a redux of features from previous editions, and because they didn't have rolls or mechanics attached to them and instead required creativity on the part of both the player and the GM to actually use, they tended to be ignored by many groups, and the ''Dragonlance'' sourcebook replaced them with a free feat instead, something the ''One D&D'' playtest seems set to follow in the footsteps of.

** Mounted combat, such as on horses or using vehicles, is something that has several dedicated class features, feats, and skills towards using, but as an actual mechanic, isn't all that used or developed. Very few modules have vehicles for the players to use, there aren't a lot of outright rules or mechanics for how to run them in combat, and mounted combat is hardly accounted for due to the nature of combat (players are rarely going to be fighting in a space to have mounted combat be viable). Most of the details around the concept basically treat it as just rolling skill checks, which doesn't really make having skills in any of them all that exciting or helpful. It doesn't help that without certain dedicated class and subclass combination, like the Drakewarden Ranger, there are no real mechanics for obtaining any mount better than a warhorse. What this means in practical terms is that beyond fourth level, a player is entirely at the mercy of their [=DM=] allowing and accounting for the potential of the player to mount creatures like wyverns or mammoths, because ''past'' 4th level, not even the Mounted Combatant feat, which can redirect attacks made on a mount to instead hit the rider, will save a warhorse from the bevy of [=AoE=] spells flying around like Lightning Bolt or Hunger of Hadar.

** Mounted combat, such as on horses or using vehicles, is something that has several dedicated class features, feats, and skills towards using, but as an actual mechanic, isn't all that used or developed. Very few modules have vehicles for the players to use, there aren't a lot of outright rules or mechanics for how to run them in combat, and mounted combat is hardly accounted for due to the nature of combat (players are rarely going to be fighting in a space to have mounted combat be viable). Most of the details around in basically treat it as just rolling skill checks, which doesn't really make having skills in any of them all that exciting or helpful.

** Backgrounds featured special abilities to grant a player social or practical benefits, usually either for interacting with others of a similar background or for being able to find and fit in at places relevant to the background in question. Unfortunately, because they were a new feature rather than a redux of features from previous editions, and because they didn't have rolls or mechanics attached to them and instead required creativity on the part of both the player and the GM to actually use, they tended to be ignored by many groups, and the ''Dragonlance'' sourcebook replaced them with a free feat instead, something the ''One ''D&D''" playtest seems set to do as well.