Characters / Dungeons And Dragons Classes Fifth Edition Classes

Dungeons & Dragons Main Characters Index
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 classes Dungeons & Dragons included and introduced during its 5th Edition. Go to Dungeons & Dragons Classes if you want to check out the classes introduced in other editions.

---

Artificer

Artificer

Prepare to be blinded with science.

Artificers specialize in making magic items, whether by crafting permanent items over a series of levels or by infusing ordinary objects with utility spells. Originally introduced as a wizard subclass, Artificers were fleshed out into a full class in the "Unearthed Arcana: Artificer" article. From there they went through several feedback-driven revisions and overhauls, eventually solidifying as a more powerful and versatile class. Its Gunsmith subclass was renamed to Artillerist and the finalized version of the class was released in the Eberron: Rising from the Last War splatbook on November 19, 2019. For this version, the Artificer gets access to their archetype at 3rd level. Eberron: Rising from the Last War included the Alchemist, Artillerist, and Battle Smith archetypes. The Artificer class and its three original archetypes were later reprinted into the Tasha's Cauldron of Everything splatbook along with some tweaks to make them fit into any D&D setting besides Eberron. In addition, the new splatbook introduces a new Artificer archetype, the Armorer, as well as some new artificer infusions.

1. The Alchemist (TCE), an artificer that specializes in making potions and other magical concoctions.
2. The Artillerist (TCE), an artificer that can craft an eldritch cannon that functions as a turret.
3. The Battle Smith (TCE), a more martial artificer that charges into battle with their steel defender.
4. The Armorer (TCE), an artificer who bonds with their armor to serve as a conduit for their magic and to further enhance their defenses.

---

• Alchemy Is Magic: The alchemist archetype is back. Although this time, they can make an "experimental elixir" that can perform 1 of 6 different effects.
• Amplifier Artifact: The Artillerist can turn a single staff, rod, or wand on their person into an "arcane firearm", which can function as an arcane focus for their spells and any artificer spell cast with their arcane firearm gets a bonus d8 added to one of their damage rolls.
• Animate Inanimate Object: One of the Artificer Infusions the class can take is Homunculus Servant, which can look however they want, provided it's tiny sized. Examples include mechanical hawks, to... Flying alchemy vials and moving cauldrons.
• Arc Number: In a fitting coincidence (probably), the Artificer was the 13th class and the first one introduced outside the core rulebooks. It was introduced in a sourcebook for the Eberron setting, which uses 12+1 as its arc number.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The alchemist artificer. This subclass is very badass in theory. It can throw acid, reattach limbs, and at high levels become resistant to poison and reanimate the dead. But in practice, the other Artificer subclasses have better ways of dealing damage, either with a turret or a mechanical animal, but the alchemist is entirely reliant on cantrips, and spells as a half caster are going to be very weak. Its other abilities such as its formula sounds awesome, but in practice amounts to a randomized first level spell that does not scale well with level while the other artificers are reliably doing more useful stuff. While at higher levels you get access to spells like Lesser Restoration up to five times a day, other classes like the cleric have had access to those abilities for about 7 levels and outshine anything the alchemist can do in terms of utility. By the time you get to level 15 and get actively useful abilities, the subclass is outshined by both the caster classes and the other artificer subclasses.
  • One of their Infusions, the Arcane Propulsion Armor, sounds cool in concept (basically Powered Armor right out of All You Need Is Kill that can also act as a ranged attack). That said, there are more damaging ways to melee, more damaging ways to fight at range, and, with a Game-Breaker of a feat combination like Sharpshooter and Crossbow Expert, do both.
• Awesome by Analysis: Their research of magic now allows them to imitate it, using science.
• Badass Normal: One suggested way of playing this artificer; instead of actually casting spells, they're creating their effects, using their tools.
• The Beastmaster: This version of the artificer has a strong emphasis on specialized pets in some shape or form.
  • The Homunculus Servant created via the same-named artificer infusion can make an attack that does force damage and use their reaction to act as a "channel" for using a touch-ranged spell so long as they're within 120 feet of their creator, basically an improved Familiar.
  • The Artillerist gets a mechanical turret they can deploy. You can choose between three different types of turrets: a flamethrower that shoots a cone of fire, a force ballista that shoots a single beam of force damage, or a protector that emits a field which grants allies temporary hit points. A high-level Artillerist eventually learns to have them deploy Some Kind of Force Field that provides half-cover to nearby allies and even summon two at once that can both shoot on the same bonus action!
  • The Battle Smith is probably the most blatant example of this trope, gaining a mechanical servant called a Steel Defender, which can be shaped like a beast. As its name implies, its abilities focus on acting as a defender for the Battle Smith and its allies, and is even capable of healing them with one ability.
• Boring, but Practical: Some of the Artificer's Infusions include stat up Magic Items, like the Amulet of Health, Headband of Intellect, and Belt of Giant's Strength. Likewise, one of the earliest Infusions is the Bag of Holding. That said, having multiple stats at, or close to, 18-20, makes you a Master of All, and who doesn't know the benefits of storing 500 pounds of stuff in a glorified fanny pack?
• Bottomless Magazines: The Repeating Shot infusion enchants a weapon with the ammo property with the ability to create its own ammo and fire without reloading. This allows the wielder use weapons like guns and crossbows multiple times in one round without the feats that allow them to ignore reloading.
• Canon Immigrant: Artificers originated in Eberron with its debut in 3.5E as the scientists and engineers who created the setting's Magitek. 5E adopted them as an optional base class, though, like the warforged race, also an Eberron import, they don't fit well in a lot of stereotypical Heroic Fantasy settings.
• Chest Blaster: An Armorer who choose Infiltrator mode for their customised armor can choose to incorporate their lightning launcher into the chestplate, if they so desire.
• Combat Medic: Enforced. On top of being a healing subclass, the Alchemist Artificer can also cast "Cloudkill", and other poisonous or otherwise deadly spells. This is to try to keep them still relevant, outside of healing. However, in practice the alchemist is outshone by full casters, casting the spell 8 levels later than the wizards and clerics. Battlesmith and Artillerist both have healing abilities that outshine the Alchemist leaving the Alchemist Overshadowed by Awesome.
• Depending on the Writer: How their spells work is intentionally left ambiguous, for the purpose of having it work however the player wants it to work.
• The Determinator:
  • The Artificer can invoke this in themselves or others, with spells and abilities that can heal and protect their allies.
  • Part of the Artificer's 20th level feature, Soul of Artifice, allows them to use their reaction if they're sent to 0 HP to end one of their infusions, leaving them alive at 1 HP, and can possibly do this up to six times.
• Discard and Draw: Every level, artificers can replace one of their known cantrips and infusions with a new one, invoking this trope.
• The Engineer: While most artificers specialize in using tool kits (or thieves' tools) as arcane focuses, the Artillerist can further it with turrets.
• Expy: The Armorer wears its Iron Man influences on its sleeve, though it could easily be any other type of Power Armor.
• Fantastic Firearms: Artillerists have the ability to build a custom Magitek gun the size of a cannon.
• Foil: To wizards. Both are Spellcasters that gained their craft through studying magic, and are the only Spellcasters to use the Intelligence Modifier to do so. They both also take time between long rests to prepare their spells, can change what spells they have prepared during long rests, can know every possible spell available to them, and are skilled at simple weapons only. However, Wizards unquestionably practice magic, require spellbooks, can't use guns or armor naturally, and have a limited number of weapons they're proficient with. Artificers on the other hand, while they end up having less spells they can prepare than the Wizard, can learn how to use guns just by researching them, can use all simple weapons, have armor proficiency, and are ambiguously spellcasters.
• Gadgeteer Genius: The player is encouraged to describe their spells as being produced by magical gadgets and trinkets. Mechanically, they can create magic items far more quickly than anyone else through their infusion system, and at higher levels through faster and cheaper Item Crafting.
• Genius Bruiser:
  • The Battlesmith gains a trait that allows them to use their Intelligence attribute for weapon attack and damage rolls instead of Strength or Dexterity, so long as the weapon is a magic weapon. Conveniently, this includes Infusions which enhance weapons. They also gain proficiency with Martial weapons which tend to hit slightly harder than simple weapons.
  • The Armorer gains a similar ability - They gain proficiency with heavy armor, and although they aren't proficient in martial weapons they gain either a Power Fist or Lightning Launcher built into their customized armor, and attacks they make with either use intelligence instead of strength or dexterity.
• Having a Blast: On top of turrets, Artillerists get Area-Of-Effect and explosion spells.
• Henshin Hero: Armorer Artificers have the ability to don and remove their armor instantly and their armor expands to cover their entire body if it didn't already. Their armor also comes with a large number of powers.
• Instant Expert: Any other class (Warlocks aside), and you'd be training hard to be able to use a gun of any kind. Artificers automatically get proficiency in them if the DM allows the firearm rules in the DMG.
• Item Caddy: The Artificer starts off with three tool proficiencies as part of their class, one of which is the extremely useful thieves' tools for picking locks and disarming traps. They can also apply minor utility effects to any object they come across. 2nd level introduces Item Infusions and begin granting magic items at a point when most other adventurers are just looking at upgrading from leather to studded leather armor. They pick up another set of proficiencies from their sub-classes at level 3 with bonuses for using the tools and items associated with those sub-classes, and can create any tool kit at-will with merely an hour of work, fashioning it through magic. Latter levels include additional bonus to rolls using their tools, the ability to exceed the normal limit on the number of magic items they can attune with, faster and lower cost magic item crafting, and more.
• Mage Marksman: Played with. The Artificer Class itself is the first official 5e class to include Firearm Proficiency by default.^note Sorta anyways. Technically they need to be in a campaign setting which includes firearms, and need to have some character knowledge about their existence, allowing for Fantasy Gun Control to still apply if the DM wishes it so. Otherwise, it functions exactly as normal as any other starting proficiency The class also includes Infusions that can be applied to ranged weapons, such as a standard magic weapon bonus to hit and damage, or automatically return thrown weapons back to hand. Or, they can remove the whole ammo and reloading concerns altogether with the Repeating Shot infusion.
  • The Armorer and Battlesmith subclasses let the Artificer use their intelligence (their magic casting ability score) in place of the normal strength or dexterity modifiers for weapon attacks made with their Arcane Armor special weapon or any magic weapon respectively, with both having obvious ranged options in the form Armorer's Infiltrator Arcane Armor's Lightning Launcher and the above mentioned infusions. The additional spells for both subclasses also include spells that can help evoke this trope such as Armorer getting Magic Missile acting as a stand in for a Macross Missile Massacre or the Battlesmith's use of Conjure Barrage.
  • Zigzagged with the Artillerist subclass. Despite the name of the subclass and several traits (Eldritch Cannon, Arcane Firearm), the Artillerist isn't technically using any traditional firearms, archery, siege weapons or even throwing weapons, and plays according to the rules closer to being a Wizard. Arcane Firearms are actually standard arcane spell-casting focuses such as wands, staves, and rods with special magical sigils carved into them to increase a spell's damage. The Eldritch cannon is actually a small or tiny sized magical object of any appearance configured to act as a Force Ballista (fires bolts of force with enough punch to knock creatures back), Flamethrower, or Protector which grants it self and creatures designated by the creator Temporary HP standing within a small radius of it. However, thanks to the class' intentional use of Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane as mentioned below and official artwork, Arcane Firearms and Eldritch Cannons can end up playing this trope straight, looking or functioning like a firearm or Ray Gun. One Artillerist's traditional albeit-mechanically enhanced Vancian Magic is another's supply of Magitek crafted Depleted Phlebotinum Shells they were able to prepare for the day. The iconic gnome artillerist Vi from Eberron wields a Ray Gun styled Arcane Firearm and uses a cockatrice-like construct as her Eldritch Cannon, while another piece of artwork in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything portrays an artillerist with an arcane pistol in a holster while he carries an Eldritch Cannon that looks like a regular cannon with some gold/brass embellishments like a Dragon's head at the muzzle across his shoulders.
• Magical Weapon: They have multiple infusions that let them imbue mundane weapons with magical properties which baseline have the +1 enchantment. When the Battlesmith wields any magical weapon they can wield it using their intelligence stat instead of strength or dexterity.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: A lot of ambiguity is made about this new artificer, like how it can cast spells using tool kits. This was done on purpose. The creator wanted it to be a class that could realistically work in any way the player saw fit, from "I'm not casting spells, just making inventions" to "I have cracked the code on magic", or anywhere in between.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Where to start? They cast spells using tool kits (assuming those are even spells they're casting), can change not just their spells between long rests but even one of their cantrips every level, can make unique magic items, and can eventually attune to 6 different magic items, at once.
• Minmaxer's Delight: Artificer is extremely customizable, has several powerful subclasses, and is overall the most mechanically intricate class in 5e, making them a delight to play around with.
• Muggle with a Degree in Magic: One interpretation of the Artificer's spellcasting mechanic is that they aren't casting a spell themselves, but instead they construct gadgets that can replicate spell effects.
• Multiform Balance: Armorers can swap between two armor types: Guardian, a defensive mode with physical attacks, and Infiltrator, a faster form with stealth bonuses and long range attacks.
• My Little Panzer: In this interview, the Artificer's creator, Jeremy Crawford, suggests that one way to play the Artificer is to be a toy maker, using toys to cast the spells.
• Our Homunculi Are Different: Artificers that take the Homunculus Servant infusion can make one, and their exact appearance can be anything the specific Artificer chooses, aside from anything taller than "tiny".
• Robot Dog: The Steel Defender of the Battlesmith Artificer in the artwork example is a dog shaped automaton made of metal.
• Powered Armor: The Armorer archetype allows an artificer to turn any suit of heavy armor that they wear into magic armor. And with their magic, they can also customize their power armor to tailor for either offensive or defensive capabilities.
• Power Fist: An Armorer who chooses the Guardian option for their customised armor incorporates a set of "Thunder Gauntlets" into the suit that lets their punches do thunder damage.
• Sadistic Choice: A Battle Smith with a Steel Defender provides a nasty one for a melee enemy. Do you focus on the Smith himself, knowing that the Steel Defender can impose disadvantage on every one of your attacks (causing unavoidable damage doing so at higher levels), and that the Smith can heal himself through various spells and Arcane Jolt to make the task even more daunting? Or do you opt to first chew through the Defender's sizable (for a pet at least, about 110 health at level 20) health, again, knowing that the Smith can heal and support it, that the Defender can heal itself, and that even if it's destroyed the Smith can rebuild it after the battle with nothing more than a first level spell slot and one minute of work?
• The Smart Guy: Only other class, besides the Wizard, that you need an Intelligence score of 13 or higher, before you can multiclass into it. These guys are the gadget experts with their magiteck and array of tool proficiencies. The Battle Smith can even use their Int modifier for their attack and damage rolls, rather than Strength or Dexterity, although the only caveat is this can only be done with magic weapons.
• The Spark of Genius: Type 3. Their magic items can still be used by others, but how they are made differs greatly, from artificer to artificer, creating a sense of "You either get it, or you don't". This is especially notable by the fact that, to the average person, it looks less like normal science or magic, but some miracle science.
• The Strategist: Artillerist Artificers that make it to level 15 get to control 2 mobile turrets (of two different kinds) at the same time and are able to use them as half cover for themselves and their allies.
• Stone Wall: The Artificer is an exceedingly durable class, having medium armor, shields, excellent defensive spells and features such as Absorb Elements and Spark of Genius and depending on the class the Shield spell as well. But while the class boasts very reliable damage, they often lack the ability to dole out high damage spikes compared to other classes.
• Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: They're essentially Badass Normal people, able to cast magic, simply by researching how to imitate it with their tools.
• Took a Level in Badass: Started as simple subclass for the wizard, became its own class later on, as a Weak, but Skilled class, then got revised again, 2 years later, into a force to be reckoned with.
• The Turret Master: The Artillerist can summon one of 3 turret types into battle. At level 15, they get the ability to summon two of them.
• Ultimate Blacksmith: They can create magical items that are unique to them, such as The Boots of the Winding Path, or the Many-Handed Pouch.
• Unusual Weapon Mounting: The Infiltrator Armorer's Lighting Launcher can be installed on either their fist, such as an Arm Cannon or Power Palms, or as a Chest Blaster. This is also a possible use for the Artillerist's Eldritch Cannons, as there's nothing preventing tiny-sized cannons from climbing the Artillerist to act as Shoulder Cannons or any number of other bodily-mounted configurations.
• Walking Armory: In a way - they can attune up to 6 magic items by level 18.
• Weak, but Skilled: Downplayed; In the past, they were very much this. But now, they got a much needed boost to everything about them, including their weaknesses from the last version. That said, they still only have so many Hit Points, relying more on either buffs, heals, or defensive positioning to be a fierce combatant.

Barbarian

Barbarian

Yes, I would like to Rage please.

A warrior hailing from a distant land far from the comforts of civilization, Barbarians feel uncomfortable within the walls of a town or the claustrophobic confines of a crowd, but in battle they are transformed as they heft their huge weapons and enter the fray in a terrifying rage.

At 3rd level, barbarians can choose between one of a number of primal paths:

1. The Path of the Berserker (PHB), barbarians who fall deeper into their rage.
2. The Path of the Totem Warrior (PHB), barbarians who are on a spiritual journey, accepting spirit animals as guides, protectors, and inspirations.
3. The Path of the Battlerager (SCAG), barbarians that wade into battle while wearing armor covered in spikes.
4. The Path of the Ancestral Guardian (XGE), barbarians who come from cultures that practice ancestor worship and can call on the spirits of those ancestors to defend their allies.
5. The Path of the Storm Herald (XGE), barbarians whose rage draws primal magic from the world around them.
6. The Path of the Zealot (XGE), barbarians who worship deities of war and channel divine magic during their rage.
7. The Path of the Beast (TCE), barbarians with a bestial spark whose rage physically transforms them to match the beast within them.
8. The Path of Wild Magic (TCE), barbarians blessed by Fey magic to become a wellspring of arcane power.
9. The Path of the Giant (BGG), barbarians who call upon the power of giants, allowing them to become giants themselves and granting them elemental powers.

---

• Aggressive Play Incentive: Once a Barbarian has triggered their Barbarian Rage ability (which gives them bonuses to dealing damage and reducing damage they take), they must make an attack or receive damage at least once per round in order to prevent it from ending early. This feature is removed with the Persistent Rage passive ability learned at level 15, where a Barbarian's Rage ends early only if they fall unconscious or choose to end it.
• Animal Battle Aura: Totem Warriors gain both mundane and supernatural effects from their patron spirit animals. Sometimes they gain some form of physical change due to it, such as those who follow the bear gaining excessive body hair, those who follow the eagle having their eyes turn bright yellow, or those who follow the wolf gaining more pronounced canine teeth.
• Armor Is Useless: Unarmored defense means that their AC will generally be just as high or even higher without armor. And they can't wear heavy armor at all (but they can still use shields). Averted with Battleragers, which rely on their spiked armor.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Reckless Attack allows a barbarian to gain advantage on all attack rolls for that turn. The tradeoff is that all attacks they both deal and receive have advantage that turn, as the Barbarian forsakes defense for offense.
• Back from the Dead: Zealots have a variant of this; resurrection spells like Revivify and Raise Dead don't need the material components of those spells to bring the Zealot Barbarian back to life when they die.
• Badass Normal: While they start out as this, it is surprisingly averted for the most part; despite being one of the most overtly physical classes, only the Berserker and Battlerager archetypes can say they don't have some kind of magical or supernatural powers backing them up.
• Barbarian Hero: The PHB describes one aspect of the archetypal barbarian as a tribal leader, defender, or otherwise an alpha-guardian type. There can, of course, be barbarian villains as well.
• Battle Aura: Storm Heralds project an aura of stormy magical energy while they rage. They can choose between a desert storm, a sea storm, or a tundra storm, with each providing various benefits to allies and hindrances to enemies that are within the aura’s radius.
• The Berserker: The class has this trait in general, with the Rage ability. While raging, Barbarians gain additional Rage damage on their attacks, get advantage on Strength checks and saving throws, and gain resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. Also, Reckless Attack gives the Barbarian advantage on attacks made by them and against them. But the aptly named "Berserker" subclass lets the barbarian, among other things, enter a frenzied state which allows you an additional attack each round and when the frenzy ends, the barbarian becomes exhausted, a stacking effect that gets more and more crippling until leading to outright Character Death.
• Beyond the Impossible: Player characters have their ability scores capped at 20 and it's normally impossible to break that limit without extremely high level magical artifacts. The Barbarian's capstone feature breaks the limiter and lets them have a cap of 24 Strength and Constitution. This means they're literally stronger and tougher than a normal person can physically be.
• Boring, but Practical: On paper, their Primal Champion capstone is basically a highly-specialized Ability Score Improvement, one that's boring compared to, say, level 9 magic like Meteor Swarm or Wish. In practice, Primal Champion is considered one of the best capstones of any class, since it increases the Barbarian's Strength and Constitution scores by four points each. If they're already at 20, it bumps these stats beyond the game's normal cap to 24, which can otherwise only be done with rare magic items.
• Carnivorous Healing Factor: At 3rd level, the Path of the Beast Barbarian gains the ability to grow sharp claws, bestial fangs, or a spiked tail while raging. If they choose the fangs/muzzle, they gain the ability to make a bite attack, and if they're below 50% health, once per round when they bite an enemy they regain hitpoints equal to their proficiency bonus. Due to how restricted this ability is, it's viewed as Awesome, but Impractical compared to what's gained from the claws or tail.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Barbarians can potentially get maximum strength and constitution stats of 24 through Ability Score Improvements. To put that into perspective, having 20 in a stat is implicitly superhuman, and worthy of a lower-tier demigod, and the normal maximum through ASIs is 20. Having 24 in a stat is near-superhero levels of power.
• Counter-Attack:
  • High-level Berserkers can use their reaction to attack an adjacent enemy who just damaged them.
  • When a high-level Ancestral Guardian uses their Spirit Shield to defend someone from an attack, the shielding spirits will hit the attacker with unavoidable force damage equal to the amount they just blocked.
• Critical Hit Class: The Brutal Critical feature lets Barbarians roll extra damage dice on a critical hit (up to three more). Reckless Attack also gives them advantage on attack rolls, increasing their chances of landing a critical hit in the first place.
• Damage Reduction: All barbarians become resistant to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage whenever they rage. Some of the primal paths gain additional damage resistances.
  • Bear Totem Warriors are resistant to everything but psychic damage.
  • Storm Herald Barbarians gain resistance to cold, fire, or lightning damage, depending on which storm aura they’ve chosen. They get this damage resistance even when they aren’t raging, and at Level 10, they can extend it to all allies within their aura.
  • Ancestral Guardian Barbarians don’t gain any additional damage resistance, but they can indirectly give their allies damage resistance as part of their Draw Aggro feature. They can also use their reaction to reduce the damage an ally takes by a random amount.
• Death Is Cheap: Zealot Barbarian get the "Warrior of the Gods" perk from 3rd level onwards, which lets others restore them to life (but not undeath) without having to expend material components.
• Draw Aggro: Bear Totem Warriors and Ancestral Guardians can both give their enemies disadvantage on attack rolls which target creatures other than the Barbarian. Bears get this at 14th level and impose it on all adjacent enemies. Ancestral Guardians inflict it upon the first creature they hit with a melee attack each turn, and also give that creature’s target damage resistance if it manages to hit them.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Despite being one of the most overtly physical classes, most barbarian subclasses—namely Ancestral Guardian, Beast, Giant, Storm Herald, Totem Warrior, Wild Magic, and Zealot—have magical or supernatural powers augmenting their rage.
• Fastball Special: While raging, Giant barbarians can throw Medium (later Large) or smaller creatures up to 30 feet as a bonus action, including their allies, allowing the Giant to help their allies get out of—or into—trouble quickly.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: Storm Herald barbarians gain abilities themed around a particular terrain; the desert grants fire-themed abilities, the tundra grants ice-themed, and the sea's abilities are a mix of lightning and water.
• Guardian Entity: Ancestral Guardian Barbarians summon ghostly warriors of their ancestors while raging. These warriors protect the Barbarian’s allies in various ways, most notably drawing the attention of an enemy by making all attacks have disadvantage on every target except the Barbarian who hit them. Later levels also include shielding nearby allies so that they take less damage, and dishing out as much damage as they block with a Counter-Attack.
• An Ice Person: Tundra Storm Heralds project a bitterly cold aura that grants nearby allies temporary hit points by dulling their pain. At higher levels, they can freeze water with a touch, and make hostile creatures so cold that they can’t move.
• In a Single Bound: Totem Warriors with the "Eagle" Totemic Attunement can fly for a single turn when raging.
• The Juggernaut: A Barbarian is a class that's defined by being very hard to bring down with direct damage. Some of their Paths focus on this aspect a bit more than others, but every Barbarian is designed to be tough.
  • All Barbarians have a d12 for their Hit Dice, the largest of any of the classes. With their focus on Constitution, a Barbarian getting a double-digit amount of max HP when leveling up is not uncommon.
  • Every Barbarian gains resistance to slashing, bludgeoning, and piercing damage while raging. Considering that the Barbarian is a frontline fighter, whatever attacks manage to hit them won't be hurting them very much.
  • Bear Totem Warriors resist all damage except psychic while raging, which means they can be very difficult to bring down.
  • Barbarians get Relentless Rage at level 11, where they No-Sell what would be a killing blow by making a DC 10 Constitution save. If the Barbarian makes this save, they survive the blow with one hit point. They can only do this so many times, as the difficulty of the saving throw goes up by five points every time they hit zero HP, only resetting back to DC 10 when they take a long rest. So the Barbarian will eventually fail this save if they hit zero HP enough times, but it's still likely to keep them up for a good while.
  • Zealot Barbarians get the "Rage Beyond Death" ability at level 14. While raging, they can't be knocked unconscious from being reduced to zero HP, and they don't die by failing three death saving throws. They'll still go unconscious or die as soon as they stop raging. But if they do die, their allies will have an easier time reviving them. One of the Zealot Barbarian features, Warrior of the Gods, is a supernatural eternal-battle designation that means a spellcaster does not need the material components of any resurrection spell to bring them back from the dead. This makes a Zealot that's Raging Beyond Death all but impossible to bring down with direct damage.
  • All Barbarians get Persistent Rage at level 15, which makes their rage so fierce that it only ends if they go unconscious, die, or choose to end it.
• Last Chance Hit Point: The Relentless Rage trait allows a raging Barbarian that’s just fallen to zero hit points to make a Constitution saving throw. If they succeed, they drop to one hit point instead of going down. They can do this as many times as they go down to zero HP, but the DC increases every time it happens until they finish a short or long rest, which resets the DC to 10.
• Lightning Bruiser: All Barbarians gain an extra ten feet of movement when not wearing heavy armor at level five, as well as advantage to initiative rolls at level seven, but Eagle Totem Warriors get to hurtle around the battlefield while raging due to also gaining Dash as a bonus action, and anyone who tries an Attack of Opportunity against them has Disadvantage. It is made literal with Path of the Storm Herald's Sea path, as lightning arcs off the Barbarian while raging.
• Made of Iron: Even barbarians whose rage is not augmented with supernatural sources of power can still resist bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage while raging, letting them shrug off deadly punishment.
• Magic Knight: The Paths of the Totem Warrior, Ancestral Guardian, Storm Herald, and Zealot cause/portray obvious supernatural or magical effects.
• Magically Inept Fighter: A Barbarian never naturally gets any spell slots, so a pure Barbarian won't be casting any magic. And even if they multiclass, they lose the ability to cast spells while raging. What few magical effects the Barbarian can get are ones that are all vastly outdone by another class, and a Barbarian also has very few natural defenses against magical effects and spells.
• Natural Weapon: The Path of the Beast Barbarian can grow claws with which to Spam Attack, a sharp tail for extended reach and defense or a fanged maw to Life Drain enemies.
• Nature Hero: The Totem Warrior and Storm Herald are barbarians who get in touch with animal spirits or nature itself, in a shaman-like capacity for magic.
• Necromancer: Ancestral Guardians can invoke the spirits of their ancestors in order to scout out distant locations or ask them questions about the immediate future.
• Not the Fall That Kills You…: Giant barbarians can hurl other creatures up to 30 feet as a bonus action; with no restriction on the direction of this throw, Giants can easily throw their enemies 30 feet in the air, forcing them to take fall damage.
• Our Werebeasts Are Different: The Path of the Beast has a very werebeast flavor, transforming your form to gain beastial natural weapons. One of the suggested origins for the subclass is being the descendent of lycanthropes.
• Power at a Price: Reckless Attack causes the Barbarian's next melee strike to have advantage, but all attacks made against the Barbarian until their next turn will also have advantage.
• Playing with Fire: Desert Storm Heralds project a fiery aura that burns nearby creatures, and can use their reaction to scorch an attacker at higher levels.
• Psychic Static: A Berserker Barbarian's Mindless Rage feature means they cannot be charmed or frightened while they are raging because their mind is too full of "I'M GONNA KILL EVERYTHING!" to be swayed by supernatural influence or fear.
• Religious Bruiser: A Zealot Barbarian is a massive, hulking, pile of muscle and rage that fights in service to their deity.
• Scarily Competent Tracker: Totem Warriors who choose "Wolf" as their Aspect of the Beast get extra ability to track, as well as the ability to move stealthily without slowing down.
• Shock and Awe: Sea Storm Heralds can strike an enemy with lightning once per round.
• Simple, yet Awesome: A Barbarian isn't going to differ in strategy too much beyond "I go into Rage, and I attack the bad guys", but they're so good at what they do in this regard that it's still very viable as a strategy. It is not out of the realm of possibility for a Barbarian to get into triple-digit damage at higher levels just with basic attacks, so there's no need for them to do much else.
• Sizeshifter: Giant barbarians can grow to Large size while raging. At level 14, they can become Huge.
• Spider-Sense: All Barbarians have Danger Sense, which is an "uncanny" instinct-like reflex to danger, thus providing them with advantage on Dex saves as long as they aren't unconscious, blinded, or deafened.
• Spikes of Villainy: Inverted. Battleragers typically wear spiked armor in battle, but most of them are heroic.
• Super-Senses: Totem Warriors who choose "Eagle" as their Aspect of the Beast get telescopic and enhanced low-light vision.
• Super-Toughness:
  • While raging, the barbarian gains resistance to all physical damage — bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing.
  • Every Barbarian learns Relentless Rage at level 11. If the Barbarian drops to 0 hit points while raging and doesn't die outright, they can make DC 10 Constitution saving throw to stay up with one hit point instead. The Barbarian can do this every time they go down to zero HP, but each time this feature is used after the first time, the DC for this saving throw increases by 5 until the Barbarian rests.
  • The Bear Totem Warrior gains resistance to all damage except psychic while enraged.
  • The Primal Champion ability, which the Barbarian obtains at level 20, increases their Constitution by four points and increases their maximum Constitution to 24. Since a 20 in a stat is "best in the world" levels, this would make their toughness explicitly superhuman by the standards of the Forgotten Realms.
• Super-Strength:
  • In combat, the Rage feature gives advantage on Strength checks and saving throws. It's also explicitly recommended that Strength be the Barbarian's highest stat.
  • Totem Warriors who choose "Bear" as their Aspect of the Beast, but only for lifting, carrying, moving or breaking objects.
  • The Primal Champion ability, which the Barbarian obtains at level 20, increases their Strength by four points and increases their maximum Strength to 24. Since a 20 in a stat is "best in the world" levels, this would make their strength explicitly superhuman by the standards of the Forgotten Realms.
• Support Party Member: Ancestral Guardian Barbarians are the "tank" subclass, drawing attention towards them by making the spirits of their ancestors impose disadvantage to all attacks on anyone except the Barbarian. And if the target does hit someone other than the Barbarian, the target has resistance to all damage from the blow. Later levels allow the Guardian to outright reduce damage that their allies take, and even deal the same amount of damage in revenge.
• Stone Wall:
  • Dex and Con-based Barbarian builds trade in all the damage they can do with Strength-based Class Features to become the ultimate tanks, having 20+ AC and tons of health (especially if they take the Tough feat).
  • Totem Barbarians with Bear Totems halve damage against everything but Psychic damage when raging, but don't gain any additional ways to deal damage.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Path of the Giant barbarians specialize in throwing their weapons, granting any held weapon the thrown property while raging, allowing them to add their rage damage bonus to thrown attacks, imbuing their weapon with elemental damage, and allowing them to call it back to their hand.
• Unpredictable Results: Like their sorcerous counterparts, Wild Magic Barbarians roll for random effects when they enter a Rage. The main differences are that they do this with every Rage, their table is much smaller, and all of the possible results are at least somewhat beneficial.
• Unstoppable Rage:
  • Their central mechanic, Rage. It increases Barbarian's damage output by inflicting Rage damage with each hit, halves all types of physical damage against them (bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing, even if it's magical), and gives advantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws. However, a Barbarian must attack or be attacked every turn in order to maintain this Rage.
  • At level 15, every Barbarian class learns Persistent Rage, which removes the need to attack or be attacked every turn. After that, a Barb's Rage ends early only if they fall unconscious or choose to end it early.
  • The Zealot Barbarian gets "Rage Beyond Death" at level 14, which makes them really unstoppable. When activated, a Zealot can't fall unconscious if they hit zero HP, and outright won't die if they fail three death saves, as long as they're still raging. They'll still fall unconscious and/or die when the rage ends, but only if they're still at zero HP. They can still be stopped, it's just much harder to do; a barbarian beyond death is one that tries to take a few enemies with them before they kick the bucket.

Bard

Bard

"Where once we're contenders, now a-befrienders, let's celebrate lasses."

An inspiring magician whose power echoes the music of creation. Bards believe that the gods Spoke the multiverse into existence, using the primordial Words of Creation. Inspiring their friends while confusing and debilitating their foes, Bards are also masters of all manner of esoteric knowledge and forgotten lore.

At 3rd level, Bards can join a bardic college:

1. The College of Lore (PHB), bards who focus on learning a bit of everything and whose loyalty lies in the pursuit of beauty and truth.
2. The College of Valor (PHB), daring skalds who tell the tales of great heroes past and inspire future great heroes, wading into the heat of the battlefield to witness history-changing events.
3. The College of Swords (XGE), a rework of the 'Blade' Bard class kit from 2nd Edition. Circus-like performers who blend dazzling tricks with cunning swordplay, and likely to have a double-life as a thief, assassin, etc.
4. The College of Glamour (XGE), bards who learned their craft from creatures of the Feywilds.
5. The College of Whispers (XGE), spymasters who coerce secrets out of people to turn them against one another, often masquerading as being from other Colleges and giving Bards in general a bad name.
6. The College of Creation (TCE), students of the Song of Creation whose performances breathe life into inanimate objects.
7. The College of Eloquence (TCE), orators who win over potential allies with a quick wit and undeniable logic.
8. The College of Spirits (VRGR), storytellers who conjure spirits to borrow the inherent power of the subjects of their stories.

---

• The Bard: As the name would suggest, their class focuses on lore, songs, performance, etc.
• Charm Person: In addition to all Bards having access to the Trope Namer spell, Bards from the College of Glamour are the masters of this trope as they can weave seductive, enthralling fey magic into their performances and charm multiple creatures at once.
• Cherry Tapping: A common usage of Vicious Mockery, a cantrip exclusive to the class. It does incredibly meager damage even for a cantrip^note Starting at 1d4, topping out at 4d4, but many bard players relish the opportunity to take down boss-level characters with one final insult.
• Dead Person Impersonation: Bards from the College of Whispers can magically steal a dead person's shadow and put it on like a costume, making themselves look like that person for up to one hour. Putting on the shadow also gives the bard a general knowledge of what the dead person was like, making it easier to impersonate them.
• The Fair Folk: Glamour bards learned their craft from the Fae and their skills revolve around charms and illusions while temporarily becoming more like them. At 14th level, they permanently look "more lovely and fierce".
• Heroes Prefer Swords: All Bards start off with longswords, rapiers, and shortswords as an option to use in battle. Of them, Bards are more commonly associated with the rapier, largely due to the charismatic nature of the class fitting aesthetically with it.
• Hufflepuff House: Among the four arcane spellcasters, the Bard is the only one that doesn't have a defined origin for their powers. Their magic comes from a poorly defined "music of creation", and it's unclear if they learn their magic through practice (like Wizards) or have it innately (like Sorcerers). Very often, the reason seems to be just them learning it from their Bard college.
• I Know What You Fear: Bards from the College of Whispers have access to an ability called "Shadow Lore" effectively tricking a creature into thinking that the Bard knows its darkest secrets. The target will then follow the Whisper Bard's commands out of utter fear.
• I Shall Taunt You: Invoked by the bard-exclusive cantrip Vicious Mockery and the class feature Cutting Words, both of which debuff the enemy by attacking them where it most counts: in their feelings.
• I Work Alone: Flavor text for Sword Bards states that they often work alone and are never fully trusted by their performing troupes, because of their class's tendency for a double life. This is reflected in how their Bardic Inspiration can be used to fuel their own techniques, Sword Flourishes, instead of supporting allies.
• Intangible Theft: Bards from the College of Whispers can literally steal the shadow off a person who just died, retaining possession of it until they use it or finish a long rest. They can only have one stolen shadow at a time and can’t capture another one without finishing a rest first.
• Jack of All Stats: Ability-wise, the things a Bard naturally learns are all outdone by another class. A Bard can learn a decent pool of magic spells, but they can't augment those spells like a Wizard or a Sorcerer. They're good in melee combat, but not as good as Fighters or Barbarians. They're sneaky and agile, but not as much as a Rogue or a Monk. They can augment their allies' health with healing abilities, but it will never match what a Cleric could do. This is because the Bard's abilities, including those not related to their college, can grant them various options without many natural augments or buffs. So while a Bard can be good at any role, they won't be the best at anything.
• Jack of All Trades: One of their class features, aptly named "Jack of All Trades", allows them to add half of their proficiency bonus into abilities that they aren't proficient in. This includes checks that normally can't get any proficiency bonus, such as initiative and the Telekinesis and Counterspell spells.
• Magic Knight: The Bard's spell list consists of mostly supportive spells, with some offensive spells thrown in. Valor and Sword Bards get medium armor and more weapons, granting them more durability and fighting ability.
• Magic Music: Can use a musical instrument as a spellcasting focus, in lieu of material components.
• Make Some Noise: The Bard's list of attack spells are fairly narrow but they fittingly get a few sound based thunder spells like Thunderclap, Thunderwave and Shatter.
• Master Swordsman: The College of Swords Bard unsuprisingly specializes entirely in swords over any other martial weapon.
• Mind-Control Music: Enchantment and Mind Control spells are a specialty of the Bard and like all their spells they use musical instruments as material components.
• Musical Assassin: The Bard casts spells through their musical instruments, including the ones that harm enemies.
• Music for Courage:
  • The Bard's "Bardic Inspiration" ability gives an ally a one-time bonus to any attack roll, skill check or saving throw they made. The bonus being equal to the roll of an Inspiration die (a d6 initially, a d12 by level 20) of which the Bard has a pool of.
  • Valor bards go beyond this. Their inspiration can be added to damage rolls or AC as well.
• No Self-Buffs: Bards generally aren't allowed to receive the benefit of their own inspiration, and are only allowed to bestow it on another character. College of Swords bards are the only exception, since they can spend inspiration when attacking to turn the attack into a "flourish" and add extra effects to their strikes.
• The Red Mage: The Magical Secrets feature lets Bards take magic from any spell list, giving them options for just about any situation. They're equally adept at both healing and damaging magic — though not as much as Clerics or Wizards are at either — and for Colleges like Sword and Valour especially, can hold their own in a melee — but not to the extent that Fighters or Barbarians can. This middle-of-the-road versatility lands them firmly in this trope.
• Renaissance Man: Lore bards seek out knowledge everywhere in order to learn as much as they can. They find the wizard in the tower, the scholar in the literal college, other bards in taverns, knights in their fortresses, rangers in the wild, etc. This leads to them possessing proficiency in many skills, even by bardic standards.
• The Social Expert: Bards are a natural pick for being the "face" of the party, benefiting from high charisma, having access to spells like Charm Person and Suggestion that can help them manipulate others, and having Skill Expertise and Jack-of-all-trades gives them a better-than-average chance of passing any skill checks that come up in the conversation. The College of Eloquence's Silver Tongue ability further helps with this by ensuring they always roll at least a 10 on diplomacy and deception checks.
• Spell Blade: Bards from the College of Whispers can imbue their weapon attacks with harmful psychic energies. They must spend their Bardic Inspiration dice to do this, so they can only do it so often.
• Supernatural Fear Inducer: Bards from the College of Whispers can lace their words with fear-inducing magic. They use this power to manipulate people, either by frightening them or by making them think that the bard knows their deepest, darkest secret.
• Support Party Member: Bardic Inspiration and other class abilities are meant to aid party members and their diverse skills enable them to slip into any role their party needs at the time. Notably, by default the Bard explicitly cannot use Bardic Inspiration on themselves — only certain Colleges allow it, otherwise the benefit must go to another allied character. In addition, the Bard's spell list is mostly support focus in nature, having fewer damaging spells.
• Utility Party Member: Along with Rogues, Bards are exceptionally versatile and adept at many out-of-combat skills. Their "Jack of All Trades" feature giving half-proficiency bonus to all skill checks where they don't already have proficiency means that parties will turn to the Bard in case the party needs someone to climb a wall, disarm a magical bomb, tame a lion, etc. They also are one of two classes (Rogues being the other) to get Expertise, double-proficiency bonus on some skills.
• Weak, but Skilled:
  • Bards are rather squishy in combat due to their D8 hit dice and few learn to use heavy armor but they have a vast repository of abilities and get expertise in four of them at max level. All bards can gain proficiency in any three skills at character creation with Lore Bards choosing another three.
  • Sword Bards are this compared to Valor Bards. The Sword Bard lacks the defensive options as Valor Bards, don't get any further weapons except scimitars, and they don't get any real buffs to their Bardic Inspiration, but make up for it with their blade flourishes, giving them abilities similar to a Battle Master's Maneuvers, at the cost of their Bardic Inspirations. Said flourishes let them deal damage to more then one target in melee range, give themselves more AC, and push enemies back. They also get a fighting style and the ability to use their weapon as a spellcasting focus in battle, letting them do more damage while also avoiding needing to swap to a spellcasting focus if they want to use spells. All of this combined makes a Sword Bard less powerful outright, but makes one better at singling out single targets, and also staying in the frontline consistently.
• Words Can Break My Bones: The cantrip Vicious Mockery does a tiny amount of psychic damage, which mean you can actually kill someone just by saying something really mean.

Cleric

Cleric

He doesn't hit you with the hammer. He hits you with his faith.

Clerics are the mortal champions of the gods and walking conduits to their miraculous powers, capable of healing their allies, provoking awe or dread, cleansing (or laying!) curses of plague, poison and corruption, and smiting the unworthy with holy fire or simply using heavy maces to crack their skulls.

At 1st level, a Cleric chooses the Domain of their patron deity:

1. Knowledge Domain (PHB), deities of knowledge, learning and understanding.
2. Life Domain (PHB), deities of vitality and healing.
3. Light Domain (PHB), deities of radiance and flame.
4. Nature Domain (PHB), deities of the forests and natural world.
5. Tempest Domain (PHB), deities of storm and wind.
6. Trickery Domain (PHB), deities of mischief and chaos.
7. War Domain (PHB), deities of battle and strife.
8. Death Domain (DMG), deities of undeath and evil.
9. Arcana Domain (SCAG), deities of magic and arcane lore.
10. Forge Domain (XGE), deities of artisans and craftsmen.
11. Grave Domain (XGE), deities of mortality and afterlife.
12. Order Domain (TCE), deities concerned with obedience of the law above all else.
13. Peace Domain (TCE), deities of unity and resolving conflicts.
14. Twilight Domain (TCE), deities of rest, bravery, and the night.

---

• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Every single one of the death domain's abilities is devoted to dishing out more damage.
• The Blacksmith: Forge clerics can use their Channel Divinity ability to spend an hour creating a nonmagical item that includes metal in some fashion, although they must have the metal on hand and it can't be worth more than 100 gold pieces.
• Blessing:
  • Clerics gain power from a deity and can cast thaumaturgy.
  • One spell, Bless, gives a blessing from the Cleric's god, which means the spell's targets can add a d4 to their attack rolls and saving throws.
• Blinded by the Light: Light domain clerics can use their Warding Flare feature to impose disadvantage on an enemy's attack rolls by shining a bright light in that enemy's face.
• Bolt of Divine Retribution: One of the suggested ways to play a Tempest cleric is as a representative of their deity's wrath. Appropriately, their Wrath of The Storm feature allows them to deal lightning or thunder damage to enemies that have struck them.
• Combat Medic: All clerics can learn healing spells, but more than half of its subclasses gain proficiency in heavy armor, martial weapons, or both, and likewise more than half have the Divine Strike feature, improving their weapon attacks to compete with more martial classes.
• Characterization Marches On: In early editions, the cleric both made and codified the optional fourth "healer" archetype in the Fighter, Mage, Thief lineup, such that the terms "cleric" and "healer" were almost interchangeable, and still are in most other fantasy Tabletop RPGs. Nowadays that role is relegated specifically to the Life domain (and isn't even your only option for a healer - Paladins, Bards and Druids are all capable healers, even Rangers can do a little wound-mending in a pinch), with the other subclasses being so diverse that looking at a 5e cleric and seeing nothing but a heal dispenser is like looking at a wizard and seeing nothing but a fireball dispenser.
• Curse: Grave Domain Clerics have Path to the Grave as their Channel Divinity, which let's them invoke their deity's power to curse the target with vulnerability to the next attack to hit it until the end of the Cleric's next turn. This includes any boosts to that attack's damage, such as a Paladin's Smite, Rogue's Sneak Attack, or any damage buffs, and has No Saving Throw, making it even more deadly.
• Damage Reduction: Forge clerics gain resistance (and later immunity) to fire damage as they level up, and eventually gain resistance to physical damage as long as they’re wearing heavy armor.
  • War clerics gain resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical weapons, bolstering their prowess as Magic Knights.
  • Nature clerics can use their reaction to grant an ally (or themselves) resistance to acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder damage.
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • Clerics of the Death domain may have spells that revolve around draining life and raising undead monsters, but they can be just as good as the disciples of other domains.
  • Clerics of the Twilight domain are charged with vigilance and protection against the darkness, and their spells and abilities are all focused on defense and support.
  • Clerics of the Grave domain are focused on the nature of death and the afterlife, but rather than being evil, they are instead more focused on the idea that death is sacred, and should not be tampered with. Their description even states that they focus on the balance of life and death, and find beings who resist that balance like Liches or tamper with it wrong. They are almost all about Due to the Dead in this regard.
• Deus ex Machina: Invoked with the Divine Intervention ability, which all Clerics get at level 10. If the Cleric is stuck in a bad spot, they describe the assistance they seek from their god and roll a percentile die. If the result is lower than the Cleric's level, their god will directly intercede. At level 20, this even automatically works. It's equivalent to a free (if quite unreliable) Wish spell; you can't try it again until you finish a long rest if you fail, and you can't use it again for an entire week if you succeed. Bring a recently deceased character Back from the Dead? Temporarily give lightning resistance and Haste to your allies in an arduous battle against a blue dragon? Temporarily become the avatar of your god with huge stat bonuses? You can do all of that and more.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: The Grave Domain cleric believes that death is a natural part of the circle of life, and that one should not fear their death, since We All Die Someday. Instead, death is something to be prepared for, not feared. By the same token, the Grave Domain cleric believes that the undead are all abominations and anathema to their belief system, and must be put down at any cost.
• Everybody Hates Hades: Zigzagged. The Death domain is more symbolic of the fantasy style "Death God as Ender of Life" archetype; it thusly specializes in killing foes swiftly and grants access to necrotic energy-based offensive spells normally found on the wizard's spell list. For this reason, it's placed in the Dungeon Master's Guide as a "villainous" character option. The Grave domain, on the other hand, is derived from the more reality-based "Death God as Guardian of the Dead and Maintainer of the Cycle of Life" archetype, and thusly it specializes in fighting the undead.
• Genius Bruiser: Clerics of the Knowledge domain can temporarily gain proficiency in any skill or tool through the divine knowledge of their gods. They are also Clerics, able to wield weapons and armor and throw down in combat quite effectively.
• Have You Seen My God?: It's theoretically possible to play a Cleric without a god. Ideals and alignment can be the source of the Cleric's divine power.
• Heavy Equipment Class: While all clerics start out with proficiency in Simple Weapons, Light and Medium Armors, and Shields, some Domains can become proficient with Heavy armor and/or Martial weapons.
• Holy Hand Grenade: The Light domain focuses on damaging holy spells.
• Jedi Mind Trick: Knowledge Domain Clerics are the only Clerics with access to the Suggestion spell. This allows them to plant a suggestion in an enemy's mind they will follow, so long as it sounds reasonable. They also have an upgraded version of it later where they bypass the saving throw if they're reading that person's mind at the time.
• Light 'em Up: Light domain clerics, naturally. They can harness the power of sunlight to dispel darkness, blind their enemies, burn them, and make them more susceptible to fire and radiant damage. And of course, they get daylight as one of their domain spells.
• Light Is Good: Archetypal clerics are good and particularly those of the Light and Life domains.
• Magic Knight:
  • Clerics of the War domain gain proficiency in heavy armor and martial weapons, allowing them to wade into the thickest melee with deadly force of arms, while still wielding divine magical power.
  • Clerics of the Tempest Domain gain the same proficiencies, affording them the same prowess in combat, but they tend to focus more on the "Magic" than the "Knight" due to features that encourage the use of spells that deal lightning and thunder damage.
• Master of Illusion: The Trickery Domain grants its clerics potent illusion magic to confuse their foes.
• The Medic: They have access to the best healing spells in the game. Special mention goes to the Life Domain Clerics, who gain boosts to their healing spells and a feature that induces a Heroic Second Wind in an ally (or allies) at less than half health. Grave domain Clerics, in contrast, do better when healing allies that are at Death's door, can negate critical hits, and can eventually steal the remains of an enemy's life force to heal either themselves or an ally.
• Nature Hero: The Nature domain, obviously, is clerics who venerate nature-related deities and undertake pro-nature quests.
• Necromancer: Subverted. In 2nd and 3rd edition, clerics made much better necromancers than wizards did, due to access to unique spells and having the inherent ability to try and force "wild" undead into compliance. By comparison, a wizard had the inferior "Command Undead" spell that was 6th level (of 9) and weaker. But, in 5th edition, the ability to command "wild" undead is inherent to wizards exclusively, and there are no undead-related spells exclusive to the cleric. The Death domain, which in 3e was synonymous with the necromancer-cleric (until the subsequent addition of the Undeath domain), is instead focused on slaying the living in 5e, whilst the Grave domain is specialized in battling the undead.
• No Saving Throw:
  • Grave Domain Clerics have access to the Path to the Grave Channel Divinity, which renders the target vulnerable to all damage from the next attack to hit them (including things like a Rogue's Sneak Attack or a Paladin's Smite). There's no saving throw, so it always works, a rarity among Channel Divinities.
  • Knowledge Domain Clerics have a special ability that allows them to bypass the saving throw on the Suggestion spell so long as they're using their Domain power to read that person's mind.
• Playing with Fire: Light Domain gets fire spells as domain spells. They ultimately get the sun itself, Forge Domain also gets a few fire spells as part of its Ultimate Blacksmith motifs.
• Religion is Magic: The Cleric's devotion to their Gods grants them their divine magical casting.
• The Red Mage:
  • Several domains allow their clerics to use spells outside the cleric list, but the Arcana domain grants two wizard cantrips right off the bat, and ultimately allows the player to pick four spells from 6-9th wizard levels (including wish).
  • Grave Domain serves as the middle ground between Death Domain and Life Domain Clerics, due to representing the balance between life and death. Their spells and features are a mix of damage dealing and healing.
• The Sacred Darkness: The motif of the Twilight Domain, worshiping Gods of Darkness and Night and portraying it as a force that enables peaceful rest.
• Sacred Flames:
  • The aptly named Sacred Flame cantrip, a standard spell for almost every Cleric- as well as the higher level Cleric exclusive spell Flame Strike which does both fire and radiant damage.
  • Light and Forge domain clerics also specialize in fire magic as well as part of their class spells.
• Shock and Awe: The Tempest Domain's portfolio. Clerics of this domain learn plenty of extra spells that are storm-themed and gain features that maximise their ability to deal lightning and thunder damage.
• Telepathy: Knowledge Domain Clerics gain the ability to read minds using their Channel Divinity later on. While doing so, they can use the Suggestion spell to plant a thought in their mind with No Saving Throw.
• Terror Hero: Invoking this trope is one possible way to justify a good-aligned Death cleric.
• Turn Undead: Typical for clerics is the ability to present their holy symbol and force undead to flee from their holy might. As the cleric levels up, this becomes destroy undead. Arcana domain clerics also gain the Arcane Abjuration ability, which lets them turn celestials, elementals, fey, and fiends as well.
• We All Die Someday: Grave Domain Clerics accept death as part of life and don't fear it, rather helping others accept it and protecting the dead. However, it should be noted they're fully allowed to help someone avoid unnatural death so they can live their natural life span, they merely won't help extend someone's life beyond that. They can also help quicken their enemies' unnatural death.
• White Mage: Downplayed, the Cleric is sturdy in medium to heavy armor and they have the most plentiful access to healing magic, but they are also very good at dealing damage with their spells but fittingly the damage types available to them by default are mainly limited to radiant or necrotic damage.
• Winds of Destiny, Change!: Grave Domain Clerics' Sentinel At Death's Door allows them to impede death's progress and change what should have been a critical hit into a normal hit.

Druid

Druid

It's good to live life on the wild side.

The reclusive priests of the Old Faith, druids gain their magical powers from nature itself rather than from a deity. Druids can summon forth the elements to bring low their foes, change into deadly animal forms, commune with the land to shape it in almost any way they desire, and aid their allies with bounties of food and drink as well as spells of recovery.

At 2nd level, Druids gain Wild Shape and join a druidic circle:

1. Circle of the Land (PHB), a druid with a connection to the land itself, gaining a slew of free spells based on the environment they were initiated on and other utilities such as a bonus cantrip, immunity to poison and disease, and spell slot recovery from a short rest.
2. Circle of the Moon (PHB), a druid with a connection to the wilds and the moon, which grants more powerful possible Wild Shape forms, Wild Shape use as a bonus action, and the ability to heal in Wild Shape form by expending spell slots.
3. Circle of Dreams (XGE), a druid with a connection to good fey creatures and some expanded healing powers, a short-distance teleport, and the ability to end spells which hamper you and your allies.
4. Circle of the Shepherd (XGE), a druid with a connection to beasts and animals, granting animal spirit auras, the ability to speak to animals, and other summoning powers.
5. Circle of Spores (TCE), a druid who sees beauty in decay and believes that Life and Death are part of a grand cycle. They even view the Undead as part of the cycle, so long as they don't try to disrupt said cycle.
6. Circle of Stars (TCE), a druid dedicated to observing the constellations and seeks to harness the power of the cosmos by understanding its secrets.
7. Circle of Wildfire (TCE), a druid who knows the value and necessity of destruction, using their powers of flame to foster new life from the ashes.

---

• Animate Dead: Druids of the Circle of Spores can infest a creature which has just died with their spores, turning it into a short-lived zombie under their command. They also get access to the Animate Dead spell.
• Animorphism: The Druid gets the Wildshape power, which allows them to take the form of beasts. The Circle of the Moon druid specializes in using the Wildshape power, and can take more powerful forms than other druids at much lower levels.
• The Beastmaster: All druids get spells that can summon different kinds of animals. Circle of the Shepherd has abilities that make those summoned creatures stronger. Then Tasha's introduced an alternative class feature that lets them spend their Wild Shape uses to cast find familiar instead.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Goodberry merely creates ten berries that heal one HP a piece, and satiate someone for a day. Many druids take it because all it takes is one HP of healing to revive someone from bleeding out, a free day's worth of food per berry saves money previously spent on rations, it's extremely cost-effective, since it only costs a level one slot for ten berries, and, unless you agree to a House Rule that states that Goodberry consumes the material components, that's all on top of the berries being absolutely overpowered in Survival-based campaigns.
  • Circle of the Land Druids don't get a lot of fancy abilities that other subclasses get, but what they do get is bonus spells (some of which aren't even normally available to druids!), an additional cantrip, and the ability to regenerate spell slots on a short rest. As they level up, they gain multiple passive defensive buffs that they don't have to activate. In the right campaign, a Land Druid can just waltz through things that might cripple other characters without having to do anything.
• Celestial Body: Circle of Stars Druids, who can transform themselves into living constellations for short periods of time. Initially, it allows them to simply take on a few characteristics of their constellations, but high-leveled star druids eventually become somewhat intangible as they more fully become cosmic beings, with accompanying resistance to all mundane forms of attack while in constellation form.
• Collector of Forms: The rules for the druid's Wildshape ability state that the druid must have seen a particular type of beast before they can properly shapeshift into it.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Druids are some of the hardest classes for new players because the majority of their spells are meant specifically for battlefield control. They don't have nearly the same amount of overall damage dealing ability as Wizards, let alone specialized 'nukers' like Sorcerers and Warlocks, and their support and debuff abilities pale in comparison to Clerics and Bards. Battlefield control takes a lot of prediction on the part of the player to figure out how a monster moves and how it thinks, but once mastered, a Druid can completely shut down almost any encounter the party runs into, allowing the dedicated damage dealers to completely curbstomp the sequestered foes. This is helped by the sheer variety of control spells Druids have; they have an answer for any enemy, it's just on the player to figure out which spell works best for which monster.
• Doesn't Like Guns: Along with the Sorcerer, is the only class to not get firearms as a class or subclass feature in The My New d20 Modern Campaign article.
• Druid: Reclusive priests of the Old Faith, magic from nature, yes they still fit.
• Elemental Shapeshifter: Circle of the Moon Druids can transform into powerful elementals with their Elemental Wildshape ability.
• The Fair Folk: Druids tend to have these as allies due to practicing the Old Faith, the location they live in etc. They manifest either as themselves or in the forms of animals. Circle of Dream and Shepherd druids in particular specialize in it.
• Festering Fungus: Druids who follow the Circle of Spores have a cloud of fungal spores at their beck and call. They can use these spores to inflict necrotic damage or turn creatures which have just died into zombies under their command, amongst other things.
• The Flame of Life: The Wildfire Druid's abilities and circle spells are a mixture of dealing fire damage to enemies and healing allies, representing wildfire as something destructive, but necessary for bringing new life into the world.
• Gaia's Vengeance: Circle of the Land Druids gain a number of spells depending on the environment where they were initiated - grasslands, forest, mountains, deserts, the Underdark, etc.
• Heal It With Fire: The Circle of Wildfire's healing spells will regenerate more health when their Wildfire Spirit is summoned and they can ignite flames upon the recently deceased which can harm enemies or heal allies.
• Immortality Begins at Twenty: 18th level druids gain the Timeless Body feature. Due to the primal magic they wield, a druid's physical aging is slowed on a 10-to-1 scale: they only physically age a single year over the course of 10 years. They can still die of old age, but old age really isn't going to slow them down at all.
• Language of Magic: Druids exclusively know Druidic and can leave messages written in it. Those who don't know the language can only see the message with a Wisdom check, and still need magic to decipher it. Any Druid who teaches a non-Druid the language risks losing all their powers.
• The Medic: With proper spell selection they can be among the best healers in the game, Circle of Dream, Circle of Shepherd, Circle of Stars and Circle of Wildfire all having abilities that can greatly enhance the druids ability to heal their allies.
• Nature Hero: The 5th edition PHB writes that the vast majority of druids live in isolated places of nature and protect it from abuse. One reason for adventuring is either to gain strength to do so or because their previous home was corrupted.
• Nature Spirit: The Shepherd Druid can summon three different nature spirits, the Unicorn who will increase their healing power, the Bear who increases allies strength and resilience, and the Eagle who will increase their awareness.
• No-Sell: At Level 10, Circle of Land Druids are completely immune to Poison attacks. Attempts to Charm or Frighten them by Elementals or Fey also no longer have any effect on them.
• Playing with Fire: Wildfire Druids gain additional fire-based spells and the ability to summon a fire elemental as a companion.
• Poisonous Person: Circle of Spores has a lot of poison options, hence the name. They come along with a few necromancy Spells with the association of spores growing in dead things.
• Sapping the Shapeshifter: The "wildshape" ability allows them to assume the form of an animal of a certain challenge rating. Each time they use it, they get the full HP pool of that animal, and revert to the same state they were in when they transformed if it's depleted. This is offset by druids only being able to use it twice per short rest, meaning it's possible to whittle through an enemy druid's forms (or deal enough damage to finish them off before they can assume another).
• Shapeshifter Longevity: High-level druids (who can all shapeshift into any animal they've seen) get the Timeless Body ability, at which point they age at 10% of the normal rate.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: Communicating with wild beasts is possible thanks to certain spells, and a specialty of Circle of the Shepherd Druids. It's more useful than it sounds.
• Star Power: Druids of the Circle of Stars focus on drawing power from constellations and using their wildshape to grant themselves a Super Mode complete with Celestial Body.
• Summon Magic: All druids can learn spells that summon animals, plants, fey, and other creatures, but some Circles are better at it than others.
  • The Circle of the Shepherd is the resident expert, granting passive buffs to any creature they summon or create that grow stronger within the area of their spirit totems, and eventually gaining the ability to summon a massive horde of beasts as a Desperation Attack.
  • Circle of Wildfire Druids have a unique ability to summon fire elementals called Wildfire Spirits, which empower their magic when nearby and grow stronger as the druid does.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Their Wild Shape ability. Circle of the Moon Druids specialize in this, gaining the ability to use more powerful forms earlier, and can also use Alter Self spell at will at the 14th level.
• Weaponized Teleportation: The wildfire spirit that wildfire druids can summon can teleport itself and its master's allies short distances, and burns anything left behind in the area it teleported from.
• Weather Manipulation: Druids learn many spells which alter the weather. The mightiest of these, storm of vengeance, is a 9th-level spell which creates a brief but incredibly violent storm to mess up everything within a vast area-of-effect.

Fighter

Fighter

I need a weapon.

From canny archers to stalwart soldiers, from noble knights to scarred pit-brawlers, Fighters can be found practically anywhere and are proficient with weapons and armor of all shapes and sizes. Training their bodies and senses to peak excellence, Fighters are always first to step into the fray and always last to leave it.

Fighters can choose a specific fighting style at 1st level from among Archery, Defense, Dueling, Great Weapon Fighting, Protection, and Two-Weapon Fighting. At 3rd level, fighters can choose a martial archetype from which to perfect their fighting style:

1. The Champion (PHB), who focus on training their raw physical power into honed deadly precision.
2. The Battle Master (PHB), who treat combat as an academic field, gaining a number of combat maneuvers to use in battle.
3. The Eldritch Knight (PHB), who combine martial prowess with learning abjuration and evocation magic.
4. The Purple Dragon Knight / Banneret (SCAG), warriors focused on rallying their allies, allowing them to share their abilities with the party. Generically named the "Banneret" for settings other than the Forgotten Realms, where they are more commonly known as Purple Dragon Knights.
5. The Cavalier (XGE), combatants that are at home in the saddle while on the battlefield, and capable of protecting their allies.
6. The Arcane Archer (XGE), fighters who enhance their archery with arcane magic.
7. The Samurai (XGE), fighters who draw on an implacable fighting spirit to overcome foes.
8. The Echo Knight (EGW), fighters who are trained to manipulate a magical energy known as "Dunamis" to summon echoes of themselves that can aid them in combat.
9. The Psi Warrior (TCE), fighters who enhance their fighting prowess with innate psionic energy.
10. The Rune Knight (TCE), fighters who use the magic of Giants to greatly bolster their prowess.

---

• Awesomeness by Analysis: The Battle Master gets the "Know Your Enemy" ability at level 7. If they spend at least one minute observing or interacting with another creature outside combat, they can learn certain information about the enemy's capabilities compared to the fighter's own capability. The Battle Master can learn about the enemy's Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, AC, HP, or level. By doing so, the Battle Master can learn if the stat is superior, equal, or inferior to their own.
• Badass Normal: The Champion, Battle Master, Cavalier, Banneret, and Samurai martial archetypes. No magic, no special powers, just raw physical and mental prowess, yet they can still kick ass with the best of them.
• Barrier Warrior: Psi Warriors can defend themselves and/or their allies from harm by throwing up telekinetic force fields. Mechanically, these fields either block incoming damage or grant temporary cover.
• Blind Weaponmaster: With the Blind Fighting style, they have 10 feet of blindsight, allowing them to fight in complete darkness, or deal with invisible enemies, providing that the foes are within that range.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • The Champion is a throwback to the "vanilla/classic" fighter, a big block of stats and passive bonuses that focuses purely on the fighter's physical skills and their damage in combat, with no additional active abilities. As this includes an additional fighting style and eventually up to a 15% chance of scoring a critical hit with every attack roll, on a class that can eventually make 8 or more attack rolls on their turn with their extra attacks and Action Surge ability, the damage a Champion can do will very quickly add up. Oh, and Regenerating Health to boot if they fall below 50% HP at high levels.
  • The Cavalier subclass from Xanathar's Guide to Everything. It's primarily focused on making you a tank for your party and mounted combat. You get an additional proficiency, better skills when mounted, and skills designed to prevent enemies from attacking your comrades or trample your enemies. All of these are pretty plain, but they allow you to hold down the enemy and prevent them from going after your allies, and make mounted combat better.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Champions focus on reaching the peak of physical performance.
• Combat Medic: When Purple Dragon Knights use their Second Wind feature, they can pick up to three allies within sixty feet of them to share in the healing, each ally getting the amount of hp equal to the Purple Dragon Knight's Fighter level, providing that they can see or hear the Purple Dragon Knight.
• Combat Pragmatist: A Battle Master can engage in some dirty fighting, depending on which maneuvers you pick. Tripping enemies, pushing them, disarming them in the middle of combat, distracting them to give your allies an opening to attack them... the list goes on.
• Critical Hit Class: The Champions' Improved Critical and Superior Critical abilities allow them to score a Critical Hit on rolls of 18 and 19. Since most classes only crit on a roll of 20, this effectively doubles and later triples their critical hit output.
• Cultured Badass: Battle Masters earn a proficiency in a set of artisan's tools and can study people/creatures outside of combat in order to learn more about them. The Purple Dragon Knight and the Samurai are both so cultured and adept at courtly proceedings that they gain their own unique extra skills at persuasion.
• Damage Reduction:
  • The Samurai's Fighting Spirit feature grants them temporary hit points, with the amount granted increasing as the Samurai gets stronger.
  • Psi Warriors gain resistance to psychic damage once they reach 10th level. On top of this, they can throw up protective fields of telekinetic force which reduce incoming damage by a random amount.
• Determinator: The Indomitable feature allows a Fighter to reroll a failed saving throw. They can do this up to three times per long rest.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The Battle Master archetype compared to the Champion's raw power. The Battle Master relies on combat superiority dice, which are spent to perform special maneuvers of various effects. Many of the maneuvers are useful for locking down an enemy, improve your own chances at hitting or avoid being hit, maximizing your action economy, and helping allies move around the battle or get in their own attacks. But it also requires more tactical thinking than most of the archetypes, making it more difficult for starting players. By contrast, the Champion isn't as tactically flexible as the Battle Master, but is still very straightforward and powerful, sacrificing some finesse for damage.
• Disposable Decoy Doppelgänger: The Echo Knight subclass can create a number of One-Hit-Point Wonder echoes. They're grey and translucent, but they can move independently within a 30' radius of the caster, and the Echo Knight can choose to have his attack originate from any of the echoes or switch position with them.
• Doppelgänger Attack: The Echo Knight is able to summon an "echo" of themselves which can attack on their behalf and redirect attacks aimed at the Echo Knight's allies. They can cause a lot of confusion in enemy ranks, as their echoes are indistinguishable from their creator, who can swap places with them and has no limit on how many times they can be summoned. This allows the Echo Knight to make an effective tank, as a lot of incoming damage goes to waste on their echoes, while the echoes effectively allow the Knight to be in multiple places at once and control the battlefield.
• Empowered Badass Normal: They start out as pure physical attackers, but ones who become Eldritch Knights, Arcane Archers, Rune Knights, Echo Knights, or Psi Warriors learn magical or otherwise supernatural abilities.
• The Face: The Purple Dragon Knight basically gets Expertise in Persuasion at level 7. Using Standard Array for stats, even with Charisma being the Dump Stat, they would have, at the very least, a +5 to a Persuasion check at this point, eventually getting better. In this way, the Purple Dragon Knight can be at the very least, a back-up talker in the event other charisma-based characters can't show up. Likewise, Cavalier and Samurai fighters can choose Persuasion (from among several other skills) as a possible Bonus Proficiency, with the Samurai eventually being able to add their Wisdom modifier to their Persuasion checks.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: The Unarmed Fighting Style allows the Fighter to use more effective punches - even more so than the Monk, at least for a few levels.
• The Gunslinger: A Battle Master with the Gunner feat can be built as a Trick Shot and/or Quick Draw, being able to use maneuvers with the guns such as getting bonus on initiative rolls to attack faster or disarming their opponents with their shots.
• Heavy Equipment Class: One of two classes (along with the Paladin) innately capable of using all martial weapons, heavy armor, and shields.
• Heroic Resolve: All fighters embody this to some extent, but Samurai take it to another level. They can grant themselves temporary hit points and advantage on attack rolls through sheer fighting spirit. Once they hit level 18, that same fighting spirit lets a Samurai who was just reduced to 0 hit points take an immediate extra turn, not falling unconscious (or dying) until this turn is over.
• Heroic Second Wind: Literally it is called "Second Wind"; the fighter musters their resolve to power through injuries. It allows the player to roll a single hit die to restore HP.
• Heroic Willpower: Their Indomitable feat allows them a second chance at a failed saving throw and since most fighters are not magical this is generally considered the willpower of a seasoned warrior.
• Jack of All Trades: Probably the biggest reason it comes so recommended for new players. A fighter can be specced to fight in any way, using any kind of weapon. They can be a Fragile Speedster, Stone Wall, or anything in-between.
• Made of Iron: Champions regain hit points equal to 5 plus their Constitution modifier if they fall below half health. The Samurai gets temporary HP whenever they activate their Fighting Spirit ability and their Strength Before Death ability lets them have one last turn when they hit 0 HP. These features are entirely non-magical, instead being considered pure physical or mental toughness.
• Magic Knight: The Eldritch Knight martial archetype is a fighter who dabbles in arcane spellcasting although they're (mostly) restricted to evocation and abjuration spells. The Rune Knight also have a bevy of Runic Magic features unique to the subclass.
• Mage Marksman: Arcane Archers are trained to infuse their arrows with arcane magic.
• Martial Arts for Mundane Purposes: Battle Master fighters gain a free proficiency with one type of artisan's tool of their choice, thanks to their Student of War feature.
• Master Swordsman: A sword-wielding Battle Master is a capable battlefield controller who can disarm, knockdown, or intimidate enemies through pure swordplay.
• Mind over Matter: Psi Warriors can use their powers to telekinetically move a willing ally or unattended object up to 30 feet in a direction of their choice. At level 18, they gain the ability to cast the Telekinesis spell once per long rest.
• Mounted Combat: An added benefit for the Cavalier class. While the original version in Unearthed Arcana was basically a mount-focused Battle Master with fewer combat maneuvers, the Knight was more focused on tanking and defending, while the finalized version is a mixture of the two.
• Mutually Exclusive Power Ups: The Battle Master's maneuvers. A Battle Master Fighter can learn nine maneuvers, out of sixteen (with just the Player's Handbook) or 23 (with expansions). So some picking and choosing must inevitably occur.
• Psychic Powers: The main draw of the aptly named Psi Warrior, with a very Jedi flavor, letting you use your psychic abilities to aid in your jumps, throw enemies around and increase the force of your strikes and reduce the force of enemy attacks and even giving you the telekinesis spell.
• Regenerating Health: Again, Champions can regain HP via their Survivor trait.
• Runic Magic: The aptly named Rune Knight subclass, which inscribes an item with a rune representing a kind of giant granting them a passive ability and an active ability that can be used in combat.
• Sizeshifter: Rune Knights can use Giant's Might to briefly grow to Large size. At level 18, they can become Huge.
• Spam Attack: For most fighters this is their bread and butter, thanks to a combination of gaining the most extra attacks from leveling (aside from Monks using Ki for Flurry of strikes), and their Action Surge ability which grants another action. This is aided more by the fact that basic movement does not prevent anyone from using all of their weapon attacks in 5th edition.
• Strong and Skilled: In contrast with other warrior classes that emphasize either raw power or esoteric tricks, Fighters are all about combining power and skill. This is reflected in both their Simple, yet Awesome Features (i.e. getting extra turns from Action Surge) and them getting more Ability Score Increases than other classes.
• Taking You with Me: The Samurai Fighter gets the Strength Before Death ability at Level 18, which activates upon going down to 0 HP. When the Samurai's health hits zero, they can use their reaction to instantly take one more turn before falling unconscious.
• The Strategist: Battle Masters are focused on controlling the tide of battle through their various Maneuvers.
• Summon to Hand: Eldritch Knights can magically bond two weapons to themselves. They can throw it at the enemy and then call it right back. In the case that they are incapacitated and their weapon is taken from them, they can teleport it right to them.
• Support Party Member: Purple Dragon Knights/Bannerets are all about supporting their allies by making the Fighter's personal class features affect nearby creatures. They heal nearby allies when they use Second Wind, they can have an ally make one attack as a reaction when they use Action Surge, and they allow an ally to reroll a failed saving throw whenever they do the same using their Indomitable trait.
• Weapon Specialization: Well, fighting style, which is where the Fighter chooses to specialize. There is Defensive, Archery, Two Weapon Fighting and more; all shows the potential for customization of the class. The Champion archetype can learn a second one.

Monk

Monk

Whoo-cha!

A master of martial arts, harnessing the power of the body in pursuit of physical and spiritual perfection. Monks train in manipulating ki - the element of magic found in living bodies - in order to enhance their physical prowess, create pseudo-magical effects, or hinder the ki flow of opponents.

3rd level Monks can commit themselves to one of many monastic traditions:

1. The Way of the Open Hand (PHB), the ultimate masters of martial arts.
2. The Way of Shadow (PHB), who value stealth and subterfuge and train as spies and assassins.
3. The Way of the Four Elements (PHB), monks who train their ki to be able to harness the four elements as an extension of themselves.
4. The Way of the Long Death (SCAG), monks obsessed with the means and mechanics of dying.
5. The Way of the Sun Soul (XGE), monks who can focus their ki into radiant energy.
6. The Way of the Kensei (XGE), monks who train with a trio of weapons until they feel like an extension of their own body.
7. The Way of the Drunken Master (XGE), monks who move with jerky, unpredictable motions in an effort to frustrate their opponents' attacks.
8. The Way of Mercy (TCE), monks who use their ki to manipulate the life force of others to heal or harm them.
9. The Way of the Astral Self (TCE), monks who shape their ki into a representation of their spiritual self to fight alongside them.
10. The Way of the Ascendant Dragon (FTD), monks that revere the power and grandeur of dragons, altering their own ki to resonate with a dragon's might.

---

• All Monks Know Kung-Fu: Even the first level monk is an expert at martial arts.
• Arrow Catch: Deflect Missiles lets a monk reduce the damage from one ranged attack made against them every turn. If they reduce the damage from this attack to zero, they can spend ki to grab the projectile out of the air and throw it back at the attacker.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: Monks are the only class to natively deal more than 1 base damage with their unarmed strikes, instead using a d4 which increases in die size as they level up, and their Flurry of Blows allowing them to easily add extra unarmed strikes to their attack action. Way of the Open Hand monks in particular specialize in this, as they gain several potential added effects for their Flurry of Blows as well as the powerful Quivering Palm technique, itself an unarmed attack.
• Breath Weapon: Way of the Ascendant Dragon monks can use their draconic ki to breathe fire, cold, acid, lightning or poison
• Bow and Sword in Accord: The Way of the Kensei learns how to use two weapons to start, typically a longsword or other equal equivalent like a warhammer or battleaxe and the longbow.
• Catch and Return: The monk can use their Deflect Missile ability to catch weapon projectiles like arrows or bullets and if they reduce the damage the attack would do to 0, they have the option to throw it back at an enemy.
• Character Alignment: invoked Even though classes are no longer restricted to alignment, the Player's Handbook does say that Monks are usually lawful, due to their structured lifestyle and the discipline involved to harness ki.
• Cultured Badass: The Way of the Kensei grants Monks proficiency with either calligrapher's supplies or painter's supplies.
• Deadly Dodging: If a melee attack misses a Drunken Master monk, they can use the Tipsy Sway ability to cause the attack to hit one other creature of the Monk's choice.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: With their Flurry of Blows technique monks can easily and repeatedly make up to four attacks a round by adding two unarmed strikes, but the individual damage of their unarmed strikes is comparatively low until higher levels. They're also one of the bigger Fragile Speedster classes.
• Drunken Boxing: The Way of the Drunken Master is based on the real-life martial art, which imitates intoxication for unpredictability and fluid movements.
• Elemental Powers: Four Elements Monks, who do channel supernatural fire, water, earth and air in a similar way to the Benders from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
• Elemental Punch: Ascendant Dragon monks can channel their draconic ki to change the damage type of their unarmed strikes to the element of their choice.
• Enlightenment Superpowers: Several Monk abilities are dependent on the Wisdom modifier.
• Fragile Speedster: Monks have relatively low health, compared to other classes of equal level. They're also among the fastest classes, and can attack up to four times in a single turn.
• Flash Step: Shadow Monks can teleport across great distances silently and quickly, but are restricted to only moving between dark or dimly lit areas, as they need shadows to do so.
• Healing Factor: Open Hand monks gain the ability to use their ki to heal themselves once a day.
• Healing Hands: A class feature of Mercy monks, allowing them to spend a ki point to heal those they touch.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Short swords are one of the few Martial Weapons covered under Martial Arts. That said, the standard Monk alignment is Lawful Good.
• Holy Hand Grenade: Sun Soul monks channel their ki to perform Dragon Ball-style ki blasts that deal radiant damage.
• Immortality Begins at Twenty: 15th level monks gain the Timeless Body feature. Unlike the druid's version, the monk's version functions differently: they are immune to the drawbacks of old age, immune to magical aging, and no longer require food or drink to survive. They can still die of old age, though.
• Kame Hame Hadoken: The special "ki blast" techniques available to monks of the Way of the Sun Soul looks like something out of Dragonball.
• Ki Manipulation: All monks gain the ability to harness their ki from the second level, allowing them to make more attacks with Flurry of Blows and to move more quickly with Step of the Wind and disable enemies with Stunning Strike as well as to power many of their classes abilities.
• Last Chance Hit Point: Long Death monks can spend a ki point to remain conscious with 1 hit point after taking damage that would normally reduce them to 0.
• Le Parkour: At a high enough level, they gain the ability to run up walls and diminish/negate falling damage.
• Life Drain: Long Death monks gain temporary hit points whenever they reduce a creature to 0 hit points.
• Magikarp Power: Generally speaking, the Monk is best described as a 'late bloomer' class. They can't take many hits and almost require the Mobile feat to survive if they aren't a Monk that specializes in ranged combat or Open Palm so that they can employ hit-and-run tactics, and Stunning Strike can only take them so far, especially when they start battling monsters with high constitution saves. Their lack of magical items meant specifically to boost their accuracy also makes them less consistent hitters than Fighters or Warlocks, who do a better job of hitting often and accurately than the Monk does. At mid-level they start gaining useful bonuses, such as complete immunity to poison and the ability to simply end charm and fright conditions on themselves, but it's not until level 14 where they gain amazing staying power. Proficiency in all saves, including Death Saves, and the ability to reroll saves for the low cost of a single Ki point. Almost all of the Subclasses get an incredibly powerful capstone at 17th level, like an instant-death attack or flight or an extra attack or more ac, but the kicker comes at 18th level. For 4 Ki (A pittance at that level), you become invisible, gain resistance to all damage that isn't force, and can maintain both bonuses for free over the course of a minute. At this point this makes the Monk an incredibly fast mini-Barbarian who has advantage on most of their attacks, is barely getting hit back, and can rip into enemies with four moves.
• Martial Arts Staff: Fittingly one of the monk's ideal starting weapons is a humble quarterstaff because of its versatile property's d8 damage die.
• Martial Medic: The Way of Mercy can heal using their martial knowledge as well as they can do harm.
• Multi-Melee Master: Typically the Way of the Kensei monk's usually take a longsword and a longbow as their first weapons, but as they level up they get to add even more weapon types to their arsenal. The Kensei gets anywhere from 2 to 5 weapons, so long as they don't have the heavy or special properties, that count as "kensei weapons". As the Kensei Monk levels up, their ki aura makes their kensei weapons count as magic weapons for the purpose of bypassing resistance and immunity to nonmagical weapons and damage.
• Nerves of Steel: The Stillness of Mind feature allows Monk's to break fear and charm effects on themselves.
• Ninja: Way of Shadow monks are explicitly described as such, being the sneakiest of all the monk subclasses; they can rival the rogue in terms of infiltration and stealth.
• Normally, I Would Be Dead Now: Way of the Long Death monks can just choose not to die when they hit 0 hit points. So long as they have ki points left, they can more or less just ignore guaranteed death blows.
• Omniglot: Their Tongue of the Sun and Moon ability allows them to understand, and be understood by, any language.
• The Paralyzer: The Stunning Stike ability gives the monk the ability to render an opponent stunned for a single round if they fail a constitution saving throw.
• Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: The Flurry of Blows ability all monks learn allow them to make two unarmed strikes with their bonus action, allowing them to make four attacks in one turn from fifth level onward provided they have the ki to do so.
• Shout-Out: The Way of the Four Elements is a nice one to Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Sun Soul archetype is a massive one to Dragon Ball, and the Way of the Astral Self is basically a Stand User.
• Spell Blade: Kensei Monks can infuse their chosen weapons with ki, turning them into magical weapons. They can then spend ki points to make these weapons do extra damage on one attack, or to give them a temporary bonus to attack and damage rolls.
• Supernatural Fear Inducer: Monks who follow the Way of the Long Death can strike fear into the hearts of nearby creatures as an action.
• Supernatural Martial Arts: The monk's use of martial arts are all take inspirations from many magical martial arts series to do things like to control the elements, throw blasts of ki, strike pressure points to induce death, spirit avatars to fight in their place and use Wuxia and Wire Fu staples to run on walls and water.
• Sword and Fist: Encouraged by the Way of the Kensei who gains bonus to their armor when they attack with their weapons and unarmed strikes in the same turn.
• Touch of Death:
  • The classic Quivering Palm technique allows an Open Hand monk to touch a creature, and then snuff out that creature's life at any time within the next few weeks.
  • The level 17 feature for Way of the Long Death lets a monk touch a creature and spend anywhere from 1 to 10 ki points. The touched creature takes necrotic damage proportional to the amount of ki spent.
  • Hand of Harm used by the Way of Mercy will deal an extra martial arts die worth of damage to a target you have stuck with an unarmed strike, and at higher levels will poison them with no save.
• Translator Microbes: Tongue of the Sun and Moon allows them to understand, and be understood by, anyone who speaks a language.
• Walk on Water: They can run on the surface of water, but cannot end their turn their without sinking as normal.
• Wall Run: One of their abilities is to run up walls and it is shockingly viable in 5th Edition, thus allowing the Monk to move swiftly and unpredictably within enclosed spaces.
• Weak, but Skilled: On one hand, they're one of the Fragile Speedster classes. On the other hand, they can stun enemies, punch mobs off ledges, and other means of enemy-messing, and party-assisting tomfoolery.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Open Palm specialists alone can stun enemies, knock them prone, push enemies two squares away, eliminate the enemy's ability to react, and so on. They do all of this by punching them.
• Wuxia: The typical depiction, especially with the flavor of the monastic traditions. Although compared to earlier editions, the relatively balanced magic of fifth edition makes the monk's mobility kit and large pool of varied tricks extremely powerful and never really redundant. In the mid-levels the monk will likely be the only player in the party with full vertical movement, for instance, and most enemies won't have it either.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: The duality of the Way of Mercy is that they always gain an ability to harm and an ability to heal as they level up.
• You Are Already Dead: Quivering Palm, a late-game Open Hand move, which can kill a foe weeks after the actual blow has been dealt.

Paladin

Paladin

Ready to get smited?

Holy warriors bound to sacred oaths, Paladins swear to uphold justice and righteousness wherever they walk and to stand with the good things of the world against the encroaching darkness. Or at least most of them do. Paladins train for years to master their weapons and the combat arts to hunt and destroy the forces of evil where they lurk.

At 3rd level, paladins swear their final oath of their chosen path of upholding the cause of righteousness:

1. The Oath of Devotion (PHB), paladins who aspire to the loftiest ideals of justice, virtue, and order.
2. The Oath of the Ancients (PHB), paladins who cast their lot with the side of the light in the cosmic struggle against darkness because they love the beautiful and life-giving things of the world, not necessarily because they believe in principles of honor, courage, and justice.
3. The Oath of Vengeance (PHB), paladins who are willing to forgo their own righteousness to punish wrongdoers by any means necessary.
4. The Oathbreaker (DMG), decadent paladins who succumb to the darkness in their hearts and willingly break their oaths.
5. The Oath of the Crown (SCAG), paladins sworn to protect the ideals of civilization under the command of a nation or sovereign.
6. The Oath of Conquest (XGE), paladins sworn to enforce order, no matter the cost.
7. The Oath of Redemption (XGE), paladins who believe in using violence only as a last resort, and believe that no one is beyond redemption.
8. The Oath of Glory (TCE), paladins who embrace their destiny of achieving legendary deeds.
9. The Oath of the Watchers (TCE), paladins vigilant in spotting and dealing with extraplanar forces.

---

• Anti-Escape Mechanism: As paladins are typically tanky but slow frontline combatants, certain subclasses mitigate this weakness with features that ensure that their enemies won't be able to evade their attacks.
  • The Oath of Vengeance has its Relentless Avenger which allows the paladin to move and pursue a fleeing enemy after they hit it with an opportunity attack.
  • The Oath of The Crown has its Champion Challenge, which causes enemies to be unable to move away from the paladin.
  • The Oath of Conquest has its Aura of Conquest, which causes frightened enemies to be unable to move at all.
• Attack Reflector: Oath of Redemption Paladin's Channel Divinity, Rebuke the Violent, allows the Paladin to make an enemy take the same amount of damage they just dealt to the Paladin or one of their allies. Their capstone, Emissary of Redemption, automatically deals half of any damage the Paladin takes back at the opponent, so long as the Paladin hasn't gone on the offensive against that specific enemy. Neither of these abilities remove damage.
• Automaton Horses: The paladin-specific spells Find Steed and Find Greater Steed allow paladins to magically summon a Cool Horse or other suitable mount. Though they may eventually succumb to exhaustion or hunger, Death Is a Slap on the Wrist for them, as their bodies simply disappear and they can just be summoned once more at full health.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: The Oathbreaker paladin, who is mandatorily evil and possesses powers such as creating and controlling undead creatures, enhancing the damage made by fiends and undead around him, and creating an aura of faint darkness around him and using the shadows in the aura to directly attack his enemies. The Conquest paladin gets abilities that break a foe's will and inflict terror. However, since other oaths like Vengence and Conquest also lend themselves toward being evil, many players and DMs utilize the idea of an oathbreaker who was originally one of those but who then pulled a Heel–Face Turn. This twists the situation into Bad Powers, Good People. This however runs contrary to the flavor text of the Oathbreaker, who aren't just forsaking their oaths, but abandoning them for personal power and consort with fiends to do so. So, based on the flavor text, an Oath of Conquest Paladin who becomes an Oathbreaker isn't seeing the light and abandoning their evil oath. They've decided that their original oath isn't hardcore enough and starts sacrificing those conquered people to fiends.
• Beyond Redemption: The Oath of Redemption is one of the Paladin's subclasses, which centers around redeeming sinners. One of the four tenets of the oath is to have the wisdom to acknowledge that there eventually comes a point where someone can't or won't seek forgiveness for their evil actions, and to make the careful and grim final judgement that there is no hope of redeeming the subject in question. At that point, the Oath of Redemption Paladin needs to follow through with ending that villain's existence for the safety of the world.
• Blind Weaponmaster: With the Blind Fighting style, they have 10 feet of blindsight, allowing them to fight in complete darkness, or deal with invisible enemies, providing that the foes are within that range.
• Character Alignment: invoked Fifth Edition paladins aren't restricted to Lawful Good like all the past iterations were. That said, each Oath encompasses one or more Alignments: Devotion is the typical Lawful Good; Ancients is Neutral Good or Chaotic Good; Vengeance is Lawful Neutral or True Neutral; Oathbreaker is Evil-aligned; Crown is Lawful Good or Lawful Neutral; Conquest is Lawful Neutral or Lawful Evil; Redemption is Good-aligned. Tropes Are Tools though in that, save Oathbreakers, all Paladins can be played by any alignment provided the character has a justified reason for doing so.
• Close-Range Combatant: Encouraged by their features. Though nothing's stopping them from using ranged weapons, and some of their spells are long-ranged, melee weapons remain their primary source of damage. Both Divine Smites and Improved Divine Smites can only activate through melee weapons, their Aura of Protection and Aura of Courage encourage them to stay close to their allies to provide passive buffs and their proficiency in heavy armor as well as greater bulk than most classes allow them to survive being in melee ranged better than most of their peers.
• Combat Medic: While not as robust as Clerics, Paladins have their Lay on Hands ability and access to healing magic.
• Damage Reduction: Many Sacred Oaths grant the paladin resistance to one or more damage types.
  • An Oath of the Ancients paladin gains resistance to damage from spells at 7th level, and extends this damage resistance to all allies within their aura.
  • The Oath of the Crown can become resistant to non-magical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage for 1 hour as part of their capstone feature.
  • Conquest and Redemption paladins both gain resistance to all damage at level 20. For Conquest it’s temporary, while for Redemption it’s always active so long as they don’t actively harm another creature.
• Draw Aggro:
  • The Compelled Duel spell compels one creature to duel the paladin. It imposes disadvantage on attack rolls which target anything other than the paladin and forces the creature to make a Wisdom save whenever it tries to move away from the paladin.
  • Crown paladins can use their Channel Divinity to issue a challenge to all hostile creatures within 30 feet. If the creatures fail their saving throw, they cannot willingly move further away from the paladin.
• For Happiness: The tenets of The Oath of the Ancients is all about spreading, protecting and partaking in all of life's "light".
• Glory Seeker: Inherent to the Oath of Glory. These paladins train to become inspiring heroes, with many of their features dedicated to rushing into battle and performing feats of heroism. The Oath forbids its paladins from becoming Glory Hounds, stating that they should "Strive to be known by glori­ous deeds, not words."
• Good Is Not Dumb:
  • All of the Oaths which lean towards the side of good have parts of their tenets written in a way to encourage this trope and to avoid the pitfalls of taking their code of conduct to a negative extreme. Most can be summed up as "while you are encouraged to grant mercy, or mete out justice where appropriate, temper your judgement of when to provide either with wisdom and that The Needs of the Many is often the path to the Greater Good".
  • One of the Oath of Redemption's four tenets is to have the wisdom to acknowledge that there eventually comes a point where someone can't or won't seek forgiveness for their evil actions, and to make the careful and grim final judgement that there is no hope of redeeming the subject in question. At which point, they will follow through with ending that villain's existence for the safety of the world.
• Good Powers, Bad People: Evil paladins and even Oathbreakers have access to the same Lay on Hands and Divine Smite features and divinely-themed spellcasting that good paladins have.
• Green Thumb: The Oath of the Ancients have several abilities that leverage control over plants such as their Channel Divinity: Nature's Wrath and spell list includes Ensnaring Strike, Plant Growth, and Tree Stride.
• Healing Factor: At 15th level, Oath of Redemption magically heals every turn if they're below half health. This is to counterbalance many of their abilities promoting taking damage.
• Healing Hands: Their Lay on Hands ability allows them to heal allies with a slowly growing amount of HP as they level.
• Heavy Equipment Class: One of two classes (along with the Fighter) innately capable of using all martial weapons, heavy armor, and shields.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: It is possible for the good-aligned paladin to become an Oathbreaker, gain redemption (with the DM's discretion) and become an Oathbreaker again. Thankfully, the DMG prohibits the second redemption, to prevent this trope from reaching ridiculous heights.
• Heel–Face Turn: The end goal for paladins following the Oath of Redemption is to cause their foes to rethink their lives and forsake evil.
• Heroic Second Wind: The 15th level ability for the Oath of Redemption is an automatic, once-per-round heal that triggers when the Paladin is below half health.
• Heroic Vow: This is the defining character trait of all paladins. Upon reaching level 3, a paladin swears a Sacred Oath which not only defines their subclass and features, but binds them to a code of conduct that they must uphold. Oathbreakers are defined by their willingness to forsake their oath, and their abilities reflect this.
• Holy Hand Grenade: Their reflavored Signature Move, the Divine Smite, allows them to use their divine power to deal extra radiant damage on melee weapon attacks. It deals even more damage to undead and fiends. Overlaps with Light Is Not Good, as this feature is also available to evil paladins and oathbreakers.
• Hope Bringer: Several Paladin oaths have a tenet to inspire others and lift spirits, flavored to their specific Oath. Ancients, for instance, are instructed to "Kindle the Light."
• Hope Crusher: Conquest Paladins have a tenet to "Douse the Flame of Hope."
• Hour of Power: Unlike other classes, the capstone feature for the Paladin is dependent on which Oath they have sworn to follow. The one thing most of them have in common is that for a specific period of time, usually anywhere from a minute to an hour, the Paladin in question becomes an avatar of divine might that gains a variety of offensive and defensive benefits based on their Oath. This is inverted for Oath of Redemption, where they become and stay an avatar of peace without any need for activation, catapulting their defences, but it automatically "shuts down" with regard to specific creatures until the paladin does a long rest if the paladin damages or cast a spell on said creature.
• Immortality Begins at Twenty: In a sense. 15th level Paladins of the Ancients earn the Undying Sentinel trait, which makes them immune to both magical aging and the drawbacks of old age. Jeremy Crawford ruled that for Ancients Paladin, immunity to drawbacks of old age here also means that they can't die due to old age, unlike the Monk's version of the ability.
• Knight in Shining Armor: Paladins who make the Oath of Devotion are the stereotypical For Great Justice type who enforce chivalrous ideas of honor and justice with the point of a sword and a righteous soul. The Oath of the Crown or Oath of the Ancients can also fit this, although a bit less explicitly (Crown is about the "ideals of civilization" and Ancients is more supportive of happiness and beauty than honor and justice). The rest mostly avert this.
• Knight in Sour Armor: A paladin who makes the Oath of Vengeance will often be this because they disdain fair play and may be cynical about justice but are still trying to protect the innocent and smite evil.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Oath of Redemption gives the paladins two features that facilitate this. Firstly, their Channel Divinity allows them to return full or half the damage a creature deals to another creature (except the paladin themselves). Secondly, their final feature allows them to incur half the damage dealt to them back to any attacker while this feature is active.
• Last Chance Hit Point: The Undying Sentinel feature of the Oath of The Ancients also allows their paladins to instead drop to 1 hit point when they are reduced to 0 hit points and aren't outright killed, once every long rest.
• Light 'em Up:
  • 20th-level Devotion paladins can project an aura of searing light which burns nearby enemies.
  • Redemption paladins can punish acts of violence by blasting the offending creature with radiant energy.
• Lightning Bruiser: Vengeance paladins, who get Haste, Misty Step, movement during opportunity attacks, a minute of guaranteed advantage against one enemy through Vow of Enmity and, at level 20, a whopping hour of 60 feet flying speed per day.
• Magic Knight: Quite literally; the 5e paladin is a Knight in Shining Armor who possesses (divine) magical spells as a secondary ability. The "Sword Coast Adventure Guide" sourcebook even notes that reflavoring Oath of the Crown Paladins as drawing their magic from arcane sources instead of divine ones could be used to easily portray them as elite wizard-knights.
• Martial Pacifist: Oath of Redemption paladins have powers geared towards ending and preventing violence. That said, their Oath does not forbid violence, merely dictate it to be a last resort.
• Mighty Glacier: They tend to play this way most of the time. They wear heavy armor and can dish out fairly impressive damage, but they don't get a speed boost and prefer to stay near the rest of the party where their protective auras can be of most benefit. Vengeance Paladins are the exception to this, being a more offensively oriented Lightning Bruiser. That said, they also uniquely get access ot the Find Steed spell, which significantly boosts their mobility while riding the steed, and also gives the paladin flight at later level.
• Mounted Combat: Paladins uniquely get the Find Steed spell, which allows them to summon an animal to fight at their side. Nothing's stopping the paladin from using them as an extra combatant for the party, or a scout, but the animal is clearly intended to be used primarily as a mount, which helps to increase the paladin's otherwise subpar mobility significantly.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: The Oath of the Crown is beholden to their sovereign and/or ruling city, though they are held to account if they cross the line.
• Nature Hero: Oath of the Ancients paladins gain several Druid spells, and most of their powers have a nature theme. They use these powers to protect and nurture "the light", which here means the life and beauty of nature.
• The Oathbreaker: The Oathbreaker subclass, obviously. On taking it all of the abilities and powers from the Paladin's original subclass are replaced by more evil-flavored versions.
• Oathbound Power: The Paladin gains their divine magic from the oath they swear and straying from it will strip them of their powers and abilities.
• The Paladin:
  • This trope applies to most subclasses for the 5th edition paladin, as even though the alignment restriction no longer applies, many of the oaths prescribe codes of conduct which we would normally consider "good" to some extent. Of course, this trope doesn't apply to the Oathbreaker.
  • This is subverted for the Oaths of Vengeance and Conquest, which still produce honor-bound Magic Knights, but they focus less on being good and more on punishing evil or maintaining order by any means necessary.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: One of the suggested ways to play an Oath of Vengeance paladin is as The Unfettered member of the party, who inflicts unto evildoers the same cruelty they did unto their victims. This is seen in tenets such as "My qualms can't get in the way of exterminating my foes."
• The Power of Love: An Oath of Redemption Paladin uses the Agape version of this to turn themselves into a Stone Wall that acts as an Attack Reflector upon the aggressor in their presence, or take the damage from an attack that hits someone near them in their place. They eventually gain resistance to all damage, Regenerating Health, and when combined with the standard array of Paladin abilities can be nearly impossible to take down.
• The Redeemer: A paladin who takes the Oath of Redemption becomes this trope. They seek to solve problems nonviolently if at all possible, working on the presumption that everyone starts out innocent and can be turned back to that path with the paladin's example.
• Resistant to Magic: Thanks to their Aura of Warding ability, Oath of the Ancients paladins will only ever take half damage or less from all spells as long as they are concious.
• Spell Blade: The Divine Smite ability wreathes a Paladin's weapon strikes in sacred power, the Smite line of spells are also a version of this trope varying from the standard Flaming Sword, striking fear into the hearts of those struck and banishing enemies to another plane of existence.
• Space Police: The Oath of the Watchers are effectively this in terms of how they operate. Their job is to protect the material plane from threats from beyond it, essentially acting as stewards for the world by stopping threats from beyond. Notably, their spells and class features are more focused on Abjuration magic and providing their allies with ways of protecting themselves from magical effects, something threats from beyond the material plane tend to rely on.
• Stone Wall: Oath of Redemption makes the paladin exceptionally durable. As a paladin, they already have access to a host of features that help them survive encounters, such as Lays on Hand, healing spells and Heavy Armor proficiency. Oath of Redemption adds some more spells, all of which improve their own or the party's survivability, especially Sanctuary, Counterspell, Stoneskin and Wall of Force. At level 15, they gain a passive ability to heal every turn while they are under half their maximum hit points. Finally, their final feature gives them resistance to ALL damage so long that they do not damage or cast a spell upon another creature. Put together, Oath of Redemption makes the paladin much more difficult to put down.
• Stop Being Stereotypical: According to Xanathar's Guide to Everything, many paladins of the Oath of Conquest hate "Hell Knights", those who take the oath as part of a Deal with the Devil to serve The Nine Hells, viewing them as dangerous extremists.
• Summon a Ride: Paladins are the only class that can normally learn the Find Steed and Find Greater Steed spells. Both of these allow them to summon a rideable creature of some description and use it as a mount.
• Super Mode: The capstone feature for most Paladin Oaths is a temporary transformation which makes the paladin more powerful in various ways. Some of these transformations provide benefits to the paladin's allies, while others instead hinder the paladin's enemies.
• Supernatural Fear Inducer: An Oath of Conquest paladin's entire shtick. Their core feature is their Conquering Presence, which magically causes nearby creatures to become frightened of them. They also have features that allow them to take advantage of this, such as their Aura of Conquest, which causes frightened enemies to be unable to move.
• Taking the Bullet: Crown and Redemption paladins can absorb damage that would hit their allies at level 7.
• Terror Hero: Oath of Conquest paladins gain a lot of abilities that revolve around causing fear, hoping to force their enemies to kneel instead of die. While this can be used to heroic purposes, such as martial-pacifism, it can also lead into villainy.
• Token Evil Teammate: Downplayed with the Oath of Conquest. They're generally geared towards breaking the will of one's foe and they are the most morally grey in terms of what they represent. They still are considered viable by those who want to play a good-aligned Paladin because their tenets are such that one can still conquer and fight evil at the same time.
• The Unfettered: Good-aligned paladins of the Oaths of Vengeance and Conquest will tend to be this, either by engaging in Dirty Business to defeat a greater evil or using force to impose order. This is seen in tenets such as "By Any Means Necessary," and "Rule With An Iron Fist."

Ranger

Ranger

Only you can prevent forest fires.

Rangers stalk the wilderness hunting the deadly creatures which lurk on the edges of civilization. Emphasizing quickness and stealth, Rangers can become knowledgeable at stalking and slaying specific foes from rampaging orcs to vicious dragons, communing with the beasts of the wild, and using some nature magic.

3rd level rangers can choose a Ranger archetype:

1. Hunters (PHB), who accept their place as a bulwark between civilization and the terrors of the wilderness, learning more specialized techniques for fighting the threats of the wilderness.
2. Beast Masters (PHB), rangers who embody a friendship between the civilized races and the beasts of the world.
3. Gloom Stalkers (XGE), rangers who solely fight the horrors of the Underdark.
4. Horizon Walkers (XGE), rangers who defend the Material Plane from extraplanar entities.
5. Monster Slayers (XGE), rangers who specialize in eliminating powerful magical threats such as vampires and dragons.
6. Fey Wanderers (TCE), rangers who are imbued with fey magic, becoming a bridge between the mortal and fey realms.
7. Swarmkeepers (TCE), rangers who gather fey spirits around them, which take the forms of swarms of tiny mortal animals.
8. Drakewardens (FTD), rangers who use their magical connection with nature to form a bond with a minor dragon: a drake.

Due to how divisive the vanilla Rules-as-Written Ranger was, WotC released several variants for playtesting, and the splatbook Tasha's Cauldron of Everything included a bevy of alternative class features that help fix the class.

---

• The Beastmaster:
  • One of the two default archetypes is one with the animal companion and it is not particularly well liked for two reasons: 1) your companion is limited to creatures with a Challenge Rating of one-fourth and lower; and 2) you have to spend an Action to give it any order other than moving ^note  Until seventh level. Exceptional Training makes this a little better. , rather than it acting on its own or using Animal Handling to give it orders as a Free Action.
  • Tasha's has a variant of the feature, "Primal Companion", that lets you summon a primal beast of either the Land, Air, or Sea that scales with the Ranger.
  • The Drakewarden gets a drake companion that it can magically summon to themselves, similar to a paladin's Find Steed. The drake remains until killed or dismissed, so it's essentially a permanent companion.
• Blind Weaponmaster: With the Blind Fighting style, they have 10 feet of blindsight, allowing them to fight in complete darkness, or deal with invisible enemies, providing that the foes are within that range.
• Bow and Sword in Accord: Part of their standard "quick setup" is a longbow and either 2 short swords or 2 simple weapons.
• Breath Weapon: Drakewardens of 11th level and up can exhale a cone of destructive elemental energy once per long rest. Alternatively, they can have their pet drake exhale this energy instead.
• Combat Medic: Emphasis on “combat,” but they share some of the Druid’s early healing spells.
• Crippling Overspecialization:
  • As written in The Player's Handbook, a ranger has to choose early on what sort of terrain they are capable in (Forests, mountains, et cetera) and what sort of creatures they are familiar with, neither of which can be changed and new ones learned only at a fairly-slow rate. Which means if the ranger equipped for travel in the forest ends up in a campaign primarily in swamps or plains, they don't do anything another class with their relevant skills couldn't do. Unlike the paladin, fighter, or rogue, all of which gain useful combat powers out of the box, a first level ranger gains no combat benefits of any kind.
  • The Revised Ranger fixes this by making all wilderness terrains the expertise of the Ranger, and making the categories of creatures that the Ranger is good at fighting much more encompassing (ie, "humanoids" rather than picking specific types of humanoid like orc or gnoll), as well as making sure that the options on the first tier of Favored Enemy were common enemies for lower levels, while the options on the second tier were more "epic" monsters like giants and dragons that are much more commonly faced on the higher levels. It also adds a damage and defensive benefit against Favored Enemies, meaning that a first-level ranger now has some kind of combat niche.
  • The class feature variants in Tasha's end up bringing them out of this niche in its own ways: Deft Explorer (replacing Natural Explorer) shows off their expertise, maneuverability, and endurance; while Favored Foe (replacing Favored Enemy) is a lower powered version of the 'hunter's mark' spell that, while lasting for 1 minute, doesn't require spell slots or action economy to use and has scaling damage.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: A Swarmkeeper's Storm of Minions ability creates a cloud of tiny beasts ^note these can be anything from cats to bees to velociraptors that deal constant damage to any poor soul caught within.
• Discard and Draw:
  • The Martial Versatility feature they get from Tasha's enables them to switch out their fighting style whenever they get an ASI.
  • Using a magic ritual, a ranger can replace one type of primal beast with another. When the new one arrives, the old one vanishes.
• Dragon Rider: At lv. 7, the Drakewarden's drake becomes large enough to ride, though it can't fly with a rider until lv. 15.
• Dragon Tamer: The schtick of the Drakewarden is that they have a magical draconic beast known as a Drake accompanying them.
• Dual Wielding: One of their fighting styles is two-weapon fighting.
• The Face: The Fey Wanderer can add their Wisdom modifier (minimum of +1) to their Charisma Checks. Thus, assuming Charisma is the Dump Stat (8 with Standard Array, without racial modifiers), and Wisdom is the second highest stat (14 with Standard Array, without racial modifiers), all the Ranger's Charisma-based skills and saves will be at least a +1. That being said, Fey Wanderers also have a choice between Deception, Performance, or Persuasion as bonus skills that they can be proficient in, meaning at least one of these skills will be at least a +3 at Level 3.
• Forest Ranger: You can have a ranger that was born, raised, and trained in the forest. You can also have a Desert ranger or a Mountain ranger etc. if you want to. Higher leveled ones can be skilled in many terrains.
• Heroic Second Wind: The "Tireless" feature enables the ranger to push away exhaustion and minor injuries (through temporary HP) a number of times per long rest equal to their proficiency.
• Hunter of Monsters: Their Favored Enemy ability increases skill checks made against specific creatures, Foe Slayer lets them damage their Favored Enemy more, and they tend to prefer to hunt these same creatures for varying reasons. Some of the archetypes have their own general focus on what they fight against.
• Implacable Man: The "Deft Explorer" features from Tasha's makes them really hard to get away from. For instance, a given ranger could track you down with expertise in Survival, march across a grassland a bit faster than characters of comparable level, swim across a river and then scale a cliff without slowing down, force march to catch up to you and then shrug off the exhaustion with a short rest. If they cast a sufficiently high-leveled Hunter's Mark on you before you got away in the first place, then you are really screwed.
• Lightning Bruiser:
  • The Hunter archetype had already fared much better than the Beastmaster due to its focus on increased damage output. The revisions in Unearthed Arcana give it increased mobility and advantage on initiative rolls. It also gains many useful defensive tricks on top of the class's native high hitpoints and good armor, with Multiattack Defense in particular being a fantastic counter to many monsters with high attack volume.
  • The Horizon Walker learns Haste (increasing armor class and speed, as well as an extra attack), gaining a once-per-turn damage boost not unlike the paladin's divine smite, and being nearly impossible to pin down due to its signature Teleport Spam. At higher levels, they can resist large amounts of damage with an Uncanny Dodge like class feature that lets them halve damage against any one attack once per round.
• Mage Killer: The Monster Slayer gets a lot of ways to counter enemy magic, being designed to take on supernatural prey.
• Mage Marksman: Quite a few of their exclusive spells lean in this direction, usually by enchanting a Trick Arrow or multiplying ammunition to fill an area of effect.
• Magic Knight: Good with weapons and spells alike. In fact, the purpose of their signature spell, Hunter's Mark, is to make their weapon attacks do more damage.
• Mighty Glacier: The Primeval Guardian's Guardian Form makes the ranger bigger, increases hit points and damage, emits an area-of-effect aura that heals allies and slows down enemies, and can only move 5 feet per turn.
• Nature Hero: They tend to live in the wilderness, receive most of their powers from nature itself, and, like the druid and barbarian, will seek to protect it from harm.
• Not Quite Flight: Swarmkeeper rangers gain a flight speed via riding atop their swarms.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The Drakewarden's pet drake is the physical manifestation of a draconic spirit which personifies the ranger's connection to the natural world. It starts out as a small flightless creature with the ability to imbue nearby allies' weapon attacks with elemental energy and grows larger and stronger as the ranger gains experience, eventually gaining an elemental bite, working wings, and the ability to carry its ranger into battle.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: Two of the spells they have are 'animal friendship', which lets them convince a creature they mean no harm, and 'speak with animals', which lets them gather information from the local wildlife.
• Stealth Expert: The class in general is pretty good at this, learning spells like Pass Without A Trace and knowing the landscape. The Gloom Stalker in particular specializes in ambush tactics.
  • Tasha's Cauldron of Everything brings the Nature's Veil ability which allows a ranger to use a bonus action to become invisible for one turn.
• Teleport Spam: Horizon Walkers not only get access to teleport spells like misty step, but also have the ability to temporarily enter the ethereal plane for the duration of their turn and eventually to teleport up to ten feet before every attack they make.

Rogue

Rogue

"Elusive. Evasive. Persistent."

Rogues come from all walks of life: thieves, assassins, charlatans, vagabonds, spies, and exterminators. Hence they can perfect an unmatchable assortment of skills, from lockpicking to acrobatics. Rogues prefer cunning and surprise to physical or magical might, striking unseen to knock the enemy out of the fight with a single strike to the vitals.

At 3rd level, Rogues can choose to focus their skills towards different archetypes:

1. Thieves (PHB), who hone their larcenous arts.
2. Assassins (PHB), who focus on the art of death.
3. Arcane Tricksters (PHB), who enhance their skills and agility with magic enchantments and illusions.
4. Swashbucklers (XGE), master duelists.
5. Masterminds (XGE), a sort of spymaster and master manipulator.
6. Inquisitive (XGE), who focus on empowered Sneak Attacks and seeing through deception.
7. Scouts (XGE), rogues more skilled at surviving in the wilderness than their contemporaries.
8. Phantoms (TCE), rogues that blur the line between life and death, gaining abilities themed around necromancy and manipulating the souls of their foes.
9. Soulknife (TCE), rogues who channel psionic power to strike with the mind, cutting through barriers both physical and psychic.

---

• Awesome, but Impractical: The Assassin rogue subclass's primary ability, Assassinate, is really strong on paper, as it provides advantage when attacking a foe that hasn't yet acted in battle, and ensures an attack is a guaranteed crit against a surprised foe. The issue is that it relies on going before a target, and getting the jump on them. If it lines up, then it is possible for a rogue to do a lot of damage in one hit, but all the factors needing to align make it really unlikely to use it.
• Back Stab: Their signature Sneak Attack bonus allows them to deal more damage when they have advantage on their attacks, when an ally is within threat range or they are hidden from the foe. Part of the rogue strategy is finding a way to enable your sneak attack every round.
• Badass Normal: Much like fighters, there's nothing magical or otherwise special about a basic rogue's kit, but they can still carry their weight in combat. This carries over into their Assassin, Inquisitive, Mastermind, Scout, Swashbuckler, and Thief subclasses, which are all specialists in their field without enhancing them via supernatural means.
• Born Lucky: Their "Stroke of Luck" feature allows them to turn a missed attack into a hit and a failed ability check into a success.
• Combat Pragmatist: Stab an unwitting opponent in the back! Skewer an opponent with a critical hit before they can even take their turn! Confuse your enemies with illusions and invisibility! Coat your blades in poison making even a tiny scratch deadly! Use wands and other magical devices that were never intended for you to blow enemies away! Rogues provide loads of tricks for getting the edge over an opponent who would otherwise kick your ass in a fair fight. Hey, they're suckers for wanting one anyway.
• Confusion Fu: Cunning Action, Fast Hands, and Use Magic Device can all make the Thief archetype a highly unpredictable fighter, depending on what's in their inventory.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Rogues start out as a completely non-magical class, but those that opt for the Arcane Trickster, Phantom, or Soulknife subclasses supplement their abilities via magic or otherwise supernatural means.
• Five-Finger Discount: While not exclusively a Rogue skill, Sleight Of Hand is one of their class skills and can be used for pickpocketing or planting objects on someone, which can be made easier to accomplish thanks to Rogue's Expertise and Reliable Talent traits. The Arcane Trickster archetype lets a Rogue perform this from a short distance away thanks to their legerdemain ability with the Mage Hand cantrip.
• Glass Cannon: All rogues are somewhat fragile since they typically don't wear heavy armor but their sneak attack can be brutal to enemies. The Swashbuckler is a notable example since it's the only archetype meant to fight enemies head-on.
• Great Detective: The Inquisitive is basically a detective adventurer.
• Indispensable Scoundrel: Rogues often fill this role in a party. They're mechanically built to be the "skill monkey", with some unique skills like Thieves Cant, and have proficiency with thieves' tools, which means only they can bypass certain obstacles (while the Quirky Bard is usually a Jack of All Trades, they can't access these). They also have much more "expertise" and ability score increases in 5th Edition, effectively allowing them to take more feats, and letting them roll much higher on specific skill checks. There's an assumption that they're usually untrustworthy sorts, and the archetypal rogue is an "edgy" character with a tragic past, although naturally the player can decide how straight their character plays this.
• Item Caddy: The Thief archtype lets the Rogue use objects as a bonus action with the Fast Hands ability, allowing them to throw vials of acid, alchemist's fire, caltrops and use Healer's Kits. With the right feats enhancing the potency of these items allows them to be excellent non-magical healers and grenadiers.
• Living Ghost: The Phantom subclass gives them ghost themed powers, including the ability to temporarily turn into a ghost for a time, making them intangible and able to fly.
• Living Lie Detector: Inquisitives can’t roll less than an 8 on Insight checks made to figure out if someone is lying.
• Lovable Rogue: One of the suggested quick builds in the Player's Handbook is to pick Charisma as a tertiary attribute and several of the social skills, such as Persuasion, Deception, and Insight.
• Magic Knight: Well, magic rogue. The Thief archetype can use any magic device once they hit level 13. Arcane Tricksters, previously a prestige class, focus on learning enchanting and illusion magic.
• Master of Disguise: Assassin rogues gain the ability to craft fake identities for themselves and to mimic the speech, handwriting, and mannerisms of others, to better carry out their work.
• Master of Unlocking: All rogues get proficiency with thieves' tools at first level, and have the option of doubling their proficiency bonus with thieves' tools with Expertise.
• Muggle with a Degree in Magic: The Thief's Use Magic Device class feature lifts the class, race, and level restrictions on magic items, meaning they could, for example, use the magic powers of a stave specifically designed for wizards despite having no spellcasting ability themselves.
• Nature Hero: The Scout archetype gets proficiency in the Nature and Survival skills and has their proficiency bonuses for those skills doubled. Unlike other classes with this trope, they are not inherently interested in nature itself; just skilled at (anti-)heroic deeds within it.
• Necromancer: The Phantom may not learn any Necromancy spells per se, but the archetype still leans heavily into this trope as all its abilities are linked to the power of death itself. Spirits of the dead are naturally drawn to the Phantom which impart knowledge in the form of temporary skill boosts, and it can use spiritual shards of the slain to either communicate with the dead, or enhance combat capabilities, and it can even partially shift in the realm of the dead.
• Power Parasite: If a level 17 Arcane Trickster has a spell from 1st level and up cast on them, they can use their reaction to potentially "steal" the spell from the caster's memory and put it into their own. They then have an 8 hour window of time to cast said spell before it leaves their own memory.
• Professional Killer: The Assassin archetype, previously a prestige class, is a rogue who specializes in reaching a target and doing as much damage as they can with their first surprise strike.
• Psychic Block Defense: Masterminds that reach 17th level gains Soul of Deceit, which lets them actively protect their mind from being read by any means and lets them fool magic that compels them to tell the truth.
• Psychic Powers: The Soulknife which uses a very Psylocke flavor, using their powers to make their Psi Blast knife shaped, cutting into their enemies' minds and leaving no visible wounds. They also gain some Telepathy, the ability to boost their abilities with their psychic knack and render themselves invisible.
• Sherlock Scan: The Inquisitive Rogue can quickly surmise details about others through observation, which grants them bonuses both in and out of combat.
• Signature Move: Arcane Tricksters automatically learn the mage hand spell, and can use it in ways that other classes cannot.
• Stealth Expert: Stealth is one of the rogue's class skills and a good pick to apply the double-proficiency bonus from Expertise to, given how likely they are to use the skill. The Thief archetype's Supreme Sneak ability takes this further by giving them advantage on stealth checks when moving slowly.
• The Spymaster: The Mastermind archetype is a rogue focused for spy work.
• Thieves' Cant: All Rogues are familiar with a language of criminal jargon which can be mixed into normal conversation, or scrawled codes and symbols which indicate things like territory which is dangerous or claimed by another thief, or the location of loot, easy marks and safehouses. Rogues can use the cant to identify other Rogues and organize criminal activity in an area with a strong authoritarian presence which would otherwise swiftly swoop down on lawbreakers.
• Utility Party Member: The original and still arguably the best, along with Bards. On top of getting Expertise (double-proficiency on some skills) earlier than Bards do, their Reliable Talent feature lets them treat all d20 result of 9 or lower as 10 for all proficient skill checks. Rogues also get proficiency with Thieves' Tools as standard.
• Weak, but Skilled: Rogues start with proficiency in four skills from their skill list, an additional two from their background, and possibly up to two more from their race for a potential of eight skills they're proficient in at first level when most other classes might have four to six. Plus they also start off with thieves' tools proficiency and at first gain Expertise (Double Proficiency bonus) in two of those skills or one skill and thieves' tools, and another two choices at sixth level. Rogues also eventually get the Reliable Talent trait, which causes any dice roll for an ability check they're proficient in to count as a ten plus bonuses, if they roll nine or less on the dice. In combat, they can deal high damage from a single attack thanks to their Sneak Attack damage, routinely can take various movement and stealth related actions as bonus actions instead, and gain several defensive abilities which lets them dodge attacks and spells, reduce damage taken, and eventually add a third saving throw proficiency. The catch, however, is that they're limited to light armor, use the second smallest Hit Dice for determining Hit Points, and only make a single attack each turn without Dual Wielding, feats, an archetype ability, or multi-classing.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: One of the abilities of the Phantom archetype lets them trap the souls of the recently dead inside trinkets called "soul tokens", which they can use to fuel the other abilities granted by the class

Sorcerer

Sorcerer

Zap.

A spellcaster who draws on inherent magic from exposure to raw magic, a family curse, an inhuman or supernatural bloodline, or some other fluke of birth. A Sorcerer's magic is very powerful, but also very unpredictable, being the only magic-using class who can use Metamagic and can tap into the wellspring of magic deep within themselves to allow themselves to cast more spells each day.

At 1st level, Sorcerers choose the origins of their magical powers:

1. Draconic Bloodline (PHB), Sorcerers who draw on their draconic heritage.
2. Wild Magic (PHB), Sorcerers who channel uncontrollable, chaotic magic.
3. Storm Sorcery (XGE), Sorcerers whose magic comes from the power of elemental air.
4. Divine Soul (XGE), Sorcerers blessed by a divine being.
5. Shadow Sorcery (XGE), Sorcerers whose magic stems from the Shadowfell.
6. Aberrant Mind (TCE), Sorcerers touched by Psionic forces that altered their minds.
7. Clockwork Soul (TCE), Sorcerers who have become entangled in the machinations of the modrons, connecting them to the plane of absolute order.
8. Lunar Sorcery (DSDQ), Sorcerers who draw their power from the moon, and can change their skillset like the moon changes phases.

---

• Barrier Warrior: 6th level Clockwork Soul sorcerers can spend sorcery points to surround themselves or an ally with the Bastion of Law, a protective shield of pure order.
• Blinded by the Light: 18th-level lunar sorcerers can release a burst of blinding moonlight while in their Full Moon phase.
• Born Lucky: 6th level Wild Sorcerers can spend two sorcery points to twist fate to their favor.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • The Draconic Bloodline's starting feature gives them an extra hit point per level, and an AC on par with mage armor. It’s less flashy than what other Sorcerers get at level 1, but it frees up a valuable spell (and spell slot) while making Draconic Sorcerers the toughest of their ilk.
  • As a class, sorcerers are the only full-casters with automatic proficiency in Constitution saves. Concentration checks are made with Constitution, so a sorcerer is, by default, better at concentrating on spells than other casters, which would need Feats in order to match. So while players may mock the sorcerer for lacking the same options as other casters, none of them can deny how important it is to pass concentration checks when flying 100 feet above the ground, or setting up combos with Haste, or guarding with Stone-Skin when you really can't afford to take full damage. The practicality of getting Con as a proficiency is enough that some suggest starting off as a Sorcerer first before multi-classing just to have that as a feature.
• Casting a Shadow:
  • Shadow Magic Sorcerers automatically learn the darkness spell and can cast it with Sorcery Points instead of a spell slot. At higher levels they can also summon a shadowy hound to do their bidding, teleport from one shadow to another, and turn themselves into an intangible shadow for 1 minute.
  • High-level Lunar sorcerers can produce a burst of magical darkness while in their New Moon phase, damaging and slowing enemies caught in the blast.
• The Chosen One: The Favored/Divine Soul origin, which was previously its own separate class, is now a sorcerer who is favored by a deity or has Semi-Divine heritage.
• Combat Medic: The Divine Soul origin grants a Sorcerer access to Cleric spells, as well as specific features that allow them to help heal better than their normal abilities can do.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Sorcerers are more narrowly focused than the Wizard, and are designed to be used in a specific manner of play. Each origin means that a Sorcerer will need to double-down on what their origin focuses on if they want to stay consistent in damage and utility. This means that they are incredibly strong when they are able to use their full arsenal without restraint or limits, but if the enemy either resists or can No-Sell their area of expertise, expect the Sorcerer to struggle or become powerless. For instance, a Draconic Bloodline sorcerer has to chose an element to focus around, so they can end up being really good when they fight enemies who aren't resistant to it, but almost useless if the enemy is.
• Damage Reduction: Certain Sorcerous origins grant resistance to various damage types.
  • Draconic Bloodline Sorcerers can make themselves resistant to one damage type for one hour. The type depends on their dragon ancestor.
  • Shadow Magic Sorcerers become resistant to all damage except radiant and force damage while in their Umbral Form.
  • Storm Sorcerers gain resistance (and later immunity) to lightning and thunder damage.
  • Aberrant Mind sorcerers get resistance to psychic damage.
  • Lunar sorcerers gain resistance to necrotic and radiant damage while in their Crescent Moon phase.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Shadow Sorcerers, who get their power from the inherently life-corrupting, perpetually dark Shadowfell plane and gain darkness-related abilities, can still be as good as any other Sorcerer archetype. Even if the resulting personality quirks make them Creepy Good.
• Doesn't Like Guns: Along with the Druid, Sorcerer was the only class to not get firearms as a class or subclass feature in the Unearthed Arcana: My New d20 Modern Campaign article.
• Draconic Humanoid: Regardless of their race, Draconic Bloodline Sorcerers start out with scales covering parts of their body and eventually gain the ability to sprout a pair of draconic wings.
• Elemental Powers: While all magic classes can work as this, the Sorcerer is especially good at it thanks to their subclasses. Combined with the Elemental Caster feat and the right race, sorcerers make for the best elementalists in the game. The Draconic heritage is particularly adept, giving resistance and specialization to one of many different elements, and there are also Unearthed Arcana origins like Giant's Soul or Pyromancer.
• Flight: Several Sorcerous Origins gain the ability to fly at higher levels. Draconic and Divine Soul Sorcerers do it by sprouting wings, while Storm Sorcerers do it by controlling the wind.
• Glass Cannon: Even moreso than wizards: sorcerers get far fewer spells, but thanks to their Sorcery Points, they're capable of empowering their spells to incredibly destructive extents. That said, they still can't wear any real armor (resulting in low AC) and have low HP, so they're still pretty fragile.
• Good Wings, Evil Wings: A Divine Soul Sorcerer can eventually sprout a pair of wings, with an appearance based on the alignment of the source of their divine power; eagle wings for law or good, bat wings for chaos or evil, dragonfly wings for neutrality.
• Heroic Second Wind: High-level Divine Soul Sorcerers gain a once-a-day feature that restores half their HP if they drop below half HP, potentially saving the Sorcerer from death.
• In the Blood:
  • Most Sorcerers are the result of having magically gifted bloodlines that they inherit, giving them raw magical power without need for learning or training. Most of the subclasses focus around the connection a Sorcerer has to what caused it, such as Divine Soul having some form of divinity in their soul or blood.
  • Sorcerers who draw their power from a Draconic Bloodline have a dragon somewhere in their ancestry, or were raised by a dragon and given draconic magic of their own.
• Last Chance Hit Point: Shadow Magic Sorcerers have a feature that lets them remain conscious at one hit point after taking damage. They need to make a Charisma save to do it, and it doesn’t work against radiant damage or critical hits.
• Light 'em Up: High-level Lunar Sorcerers gain powers relating to light in their Full Moon phase. They can emanate a magical light that improves their allies' investigative and perceptive abilities, and can release a burst of moonlight that simultaneously blinds enemies and heals one ally.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: The Aberrant Mind origin leans pretty heavily in this direction, even granting the spells "Evard's black tentacles" and "Modify Memory" at 7th and 9th level, respectively.
• Mana Meter: In addition to spell slots, Sorcerers get a pool of "sorcery points" at 2nd level. They can spend these points to gain extra spell slots, apply Metamagic effects to their spells, and do various other things depending on their Sorcerous Origin.
• Mage Species: One of the Sorcerer's potential backgrounds is by inheriting their magic through their bloodline rather than through study like a Wizard or a pact with a magical entity like the Warlock. The natural talent they have serves as why they tend to be Unskilled, but Strong, as the idea is that the Sorcerer is naturally gifted and doesn't need to study magic like the other classes, so they are naturally powerful but lack the in-depth experience of studying it.
• Playing with Fire: The Pyromancer unearthed arcana sorcerous origin from Plane Shift: Kaladesh, which was inspired by Chandra Nalaar, was themed around firemagic. Even without it being officially published, making a pyromancer sorcerer is easy by taking the Draconic Heritage sorcerous origin and picking brass, gold or red dragon as your ancestor.
• Random Effect Spell: Their exclusive chaos bolt spell inflicts damage of a randomly determined type. It also has a random chance to jump from its initial target to a second one, and from there to a third target, and so on.
• The Red Mage: A Divine Soul sorcerer can learn spells from both the sorcerer and cleric spell lists.
• Reduced Mana Cost: 6th-level lunar sorcerers get a feature which reduces the sorcery point cost of applying metamagic effects to spells associated with the sorcerer's current lunar phase. This can reduce the cost to 0, letting you apply the cheaper metamagic options for free.
• Required Secondary Powers: All Shadow sorcerers can see in the dark, including the magical darkness created by their own spells.
• Shock and Awe: The Storm origin. Although their weather control makes them popular with seafarers, for better or for worse.
• The Social Expert: Potentially. Charisma is a sorcerer’s most important ability, and their class skills include Deception, Insight, Intimidation, and Persuasion. Draconic Sorcerers can double their proficiency bonus for these checks, but only when interacting with dragons.
• Squishy Wizard: Although far less squishy this time around. Their hit die is a d6 rather than a d4. Sorcerers with a Draconic Bloodline are even more durable, starting with one more hit point at 1st level and gaining one more hit point at each level as a sorcerer, and their base unarmored AC is 13 instead of 10.
• Stance System: Lunar sorcerers can cycle through three different lunar phases: Full Moon, New Moon, and Crescent Moon. Each phase provides different, mutually exclusive benefits.
• Summon Magic: All sorcerers can learn spells to summon various creatures, but a few Sorcerous Origins get unique summoning abilities:
  • 6th level Shadow sorcerers can conjure a ghostly hound to sic on their enemies.
  • 18th level Clockwork Soul sorcerers can summon a swarm of invulnerable modrons for healing and restorative purposes.
• Supernatural Fear Inducer: 18th-level Draconic Bloodline Sorcerers can spend 5 sorcery points to project an aura which charms or frightens all hostile creatures within a 60-foot radius.
• Talent vs. Training: Sorcerers represent the talent part of this trope, and are often contrasted with wizards, who represent the training part. Sorcerers have innate magic as a result of either magical ancestry or something unusual about the circumstance of their birth. Their spellcasting proficiency is based on their charisma, representing a style of spellcasting that essentially involves forcing magic to obey them by sheer force of personality.
• Touched by Vorlons: One of the examples for every sorcerer beyond it being Superpowerful Genetics or Randomly Gifted is to have had contact with a great source of power and gaining the gift of magic from it.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Most sorcerers lack the same magical training that wizards do since most of them instead are gifted with magical talent from when they were born. They know a limited number of spells, whereas a wizard can prepare any spell they are able to add to their spellbook, likewise, the only real Sorcerer-exclusive spell, Chaos Bolt, is completely random in its effects. What the sorcerer lacks in flexibility, they make up for in sheer strength, since they can use a special pool of points to overcharge their spells, adding bonuses to damage, duration, making it more difficult for the target to resists the effects, etc.
• Weak, but Skilled: The Wizard equivalent of a Sorcerer's metamagic is more powerful, but at a cost. The Evoker's Overchannel maximizes damage instead of increasing it slightly, but deals self-inflicted force damage if used more than once per long rest, only works on Evocation spells, and can't strengthen any level 6+ spell. Empowered Spell, by contrast, doesn't deal as much damage but never causes backlash and be used on any spell. In addition, the Sorcerer has Subtle Spell and Quickened Spell (can't be detected and uses a bonus action instead of an action, respectively), while the Wizard has no equivalent.
• Weaponized Teleportation: 18th level Aberrant Mind sorcerers can teleport to another spot within 120 feet once per long rest, triggering a damaging implosion centered on the spot they just vacated.
• Weather Manipulation: A storm Sorcerer can use Storm Guide to stop rainfall within a 20-foot radius around themselves, and choose the direction of the wind within a 100-ft sphere. Their Herald of the Storm ability also encourages to focus on spells that inflict thunder and lightning damage.
• Wild Magic: Sorcerers of the Wild Magic subclass are touched by raw chaotic magic. Whenever they cast a spell 1st level or above, they have the off-chance that they cast another random spell alongside the original spell.
• Winds of Destiny, Change!: Clockwork Soul sorcerers can manipulate probability in a way that ensures more average outcomes. They can use their reaction to nullify advantage or disadvantage on another creature's dice roll, and at 14th level they can enter a trance which prevents other creatures from gaining advantage on attack rolls against them and ensures that their own d20 rolls cannot be less than 10.
• Winged Humanoid: 14th level Dragon Sorcerers and Divine Soul Sorcerers can sprout a pair of wings from their back at will, draconic for Dragon Sorcerers and either feathered, bat-like, or dragonfly for Divine Souls.

Warlock

Warlock

"My patron informs me the soul-consumption clause is never exercised."

A wielder of magic that is derived from a bargain with an extraplanar entity that is almost, but not quite, powerful enough to be a god. Warlocks earned their magic from a Pact with an Otherworldly Patron, whether it be an Archfey, one of the Fiends, or a Great Old One, and they grow in power in exchange for fulfilling favors for this entity. Warlocks retain some proficiency with simple weapons and light armor.

At 1st level, Warlocks choose their Otherworldly Patron:

1. The Archfey (PHB), an inscrutable and sometimes whimsical lord or lady of the fey.
2. The Fiend (PHB), a demon lord or an archdevil.
3. The Great Old One (PHB), an eldritch horror.
4. The Undying (SCAG), a lich, vampire, mortal-ascended-to-godhood, or any other kind of immortal being that death has no sway over.
5. The Celestial (XGE), a powerful being of the Upper Planes.
6. The Hexblade (XGE), warlocks who have made a pact with an artifact-rank sentient magic weapon. Later modified so that they instead draw power from the force that powers weapons such as the Blackrazor.
7. The Fathomless, (TCE) a kraken, primordial water elemental, or other creature from the ocean's depths or the Elemental Plane of Water.
8. The Genie (TCE), a noble genie with power that rivals that of lesser deities.
9. The Undead (VRGR), a powerful entity that defies the natural cycle of life and death such as an undead pharoah, a dracolich, or demilich.

3rd-level Warlocks can receive one of four Boons from their Patron: a familiar from the Pact of the Chain, a pact weapon from the Pact of the Blade, a Book of Shadows from the Pact of the Tome, or an amulet or trinket from the Pact of the Talisman.

---

• Angels, Devils and Squid: The Celestial, Fiend, and Great Old One patrons, respectively.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Even the eviler patrons can be justified in having a good-aligned warlock with a little creative backstory writing. A fiendish warlock, for example, might've bought their powers from Mammon, Archdevil of greed, with ordinary everyday money.
• Bargain with Heaven: If the pact is with a Celestial then the warlock finds themselves doing good on behalf of an angel, kirin, unicorn, or other powerful good being. The flavor text also speaks of a longing for their patron's home plane that some of these warlocks feel.
• Beam Spam: Their Eldritch Blast cantrip will be upgraded to shoot multiple beams as the character's level increases.
• Beneath Notice: Great Old Ones often do not notice or care about the Warlocks feeding off their power.
• Born Lucky: Warlocks who make a pact with a Fiend can ask them to alter fate to the warlock's favor.
• Claimed by the Supernatural: Warlocks often have a Binding Mark representing their pact. Examples include a vestigial tail, an unnaturally coloured tongue and an eye similar to that of their patron.
• Combat Medic: Warlocks who make a pact with a Celestial get limited access to healing magic.
• Combat Tentacles:
  • Warlocks get exclusive access to the spell Arms of Hadar, which causes eldritch tentacles to erupt from them and batter everything within a 10-foot radius.
  • Fathomless warlocks can summon a single eldritch tentacle for up to a minute at a time, which they can use for both offensive and defensive purposes. They also automatically learn Evard's black tentacles at level 10, and can cast a version of Bigby's hand which looks like a tentacle.
• Curse: The Hex spell curses its target to take extra damage from the Warlock’s attacks. Hexblades can lay a Hexblade’s Curse which gives them various advantages over the cursed creature, and can curse the soul of a creature they kill to become a temporary undead servant.
• Critical Hit Class: The Hexblade has an increased critical hit chance on enemies afflicted with their curse.
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • While tales abound of warlocks making pacts with the Fiends, there are warlocks who stumble upon a fey lord/lady by accident, read a Tome of Eldritch Lore from a Great Old One, or gain the favor of one of the Undying.
  • Further elaborated upon in a Xanathar's Guide video, where one of the designers points out that the Warlock could very well screw over the Fiend in question with some sneaky language slipped into the pact.
• Deal with the Devil: The core of the Warlock class is this, though some work differently than others.
  • Pacts made with Fiends play the trope as straight as possible. Pacts with Archfey or Great Old Ones are more ambiguous. Pacts with Undying vary from pretty close to the Fiend side of the spectrum to less ambiguous, in a positive way, than Archfey, depending on the Undying in question.
  • The Celestial pact, fully inverts this into a Bargain with Heaven due to making a Pact with the (good) beings of the Upper Planes.
  • Very ambiguous with the Hexblade. The final version is effectively a Shadowfell pact: Hexblade Pact Warlocks draw power from the source that powers sentient magical weapons such as the Blackrazor. No one knows what this is. It could be non-sentient. Since the first of these weapons was created by her, it could be the Raven Queen herself.
• Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: While not stated in the books, developers have suggested that a warlock's relationship with their patron may very well have been this; They stole powers from a mindless Old One, or managed to outsmart a Higher Being it made a deal with.
• Dragged Off to Hell: Fiend-pact warlocks get a once-per-day ability called 'Hurl Through Hell', which temporarily warps the target through the nightmarish landscape of the lower planes.
• Familiar: The pact of the chain warlock is granted the Find Familiar spell, and has more control over their familiar than other classes, allowing it to take on additional forms and make attacks.
• The Fair Folk: The Archfey patron is a powerful faerie of some sort such as Titania, Oberon or even a hag.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: More than most classes, Warlocks don't have a ton going for them at lower levels, with a small number of spells for a spellcasting class and weird restrictions on how they can use their magic. However, as they start accruing invocations and gaining more pact features a suitably specced Warlock can be a fearsome force on the battlefield and off, and they're the only class that regains spells on a short rest.
• Genie in a Bottle: Inverted by the Genie patron, a genie who resents mortals constantly trying to bind their kind into service and takes amusement in the idea of turning mortals into their servants instead. One of the boons they grant their warlocks is a hollow vessel (which can be an oil lamp or bottle), containing an extradimensional space that the warlock can hide inside of for a set number of hours per day.
• Immortality Begins at Twenty: Tenth level Undying Warlocks gain the Undying Nature feat, which is very robust: they can hold their breath indefinitely, don't require food, water, or sleep, their aging has been slowed to a 10-to-1 ratio just like druids, and they are immune to magical aging.
  • The Undead Warlock gets a similar feature at 6th Level, no longer needing to eat, sleep or breathe, and is implied that the patron is granting them the benefits of an undead creature.
• Implacable Man: One of their invocations, Relentless Hex, allows the Warlock to teleport up to 30 feet towards an enemy that they have cast Hex on or cursed with features such as the Hexblade's Curse or the Sign of Ill Omen, getting in closer for a melee attack.
• Ironic Name: The literal etymology of the word "warlock" translates to "oathbreaker." In DnD, maintaining one's pact is crucial to the class' power.
• Jack of All Trades: Warlocks are, like Bards, one of the most flexible classes you can play due to the combination of choosing a Patron and the Pact you made with it. As there are ten official Patron options, and three/four official Pacts, this means a player can create unique playstyles for their Warlock, to the point that you could in theory have a party of just Warlocks, and each one will have different strengths to offer. At the same time, Warlocks are limited in what they can do compared to other more dedicated role classes and are at times going to be overpowered by other classes.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: Warlocks who make a pact with a Great Old One can use their mind to Mind Rape creatures. Even the spell list gets in on it, giving the Warlock access to spells that can alter or read minds and 'Evard's black tentacles'. The Fathomless patron can also give a very Lovecraftian flavour, associated as it is with unthinkable sea monsters. It, too, grants access to Evard's black tentacles, as well as a few other tentacle-based abilities.
• Magic Knight: Hexblades get proficiency with medium armor and martial weapons on top of the magical powers that all warlocks possess. They can also use Charisma in place of Strength and Dexterity for the purpose of making attack and damage rolls with certain weapons. Combine this with the Pact of the Blade and an eldritch invocation that lets Blade pact warlocks make multiple weapon attacks per turn, and you have a spellcaster that can fight just as well as the more martial classes.
• Magikarp Power:
  • Eldritch Blast is a definite case since at the start it is essentially just a slightly stronger Magic Missile dart that you actually have to aim to cast. Take invocations such as Eldritch Spear or Agonizing Blast, and level up accordingly, and Eldritch Blast can have as much utility and damaging potential as Scorching Ray, and can be cast at will to boot.
  • Warlocks on a whole start off very weak, with limited options for what to do, and don't get to really define how they want to play until a few more levels in. Furthermore, because of their flexible nature, they are likely to be useless early on. Once they start leveling up, and get access to their Pact, they quickly begin to catch up to the other classes, and as their Patron and Pact give them new abilities alongside their invocations, they become strong and reliable. By later levels, Warlocks are among the most dangerous classes to face because they gain so much power despite their weaker start.
• Master of Disguise: A Warlock with the Mask of Many Faces invocation can cast Disguise Self at will, allowing them to modify most aspects of their appearance through illusion magic. Master of Myriad Forms lets them do the same thing with transmutation via the Alter Self spell; this makes the disguise harder to see through, but it requires concentration and doesn't affect the caster's clothes.
• Mechanically Unusual Class:
  • The Warlock's spellcasting comes from the "Pact Magic" and "Mystic Arcanum" class features that function differently to the spellcasting feature granted to every other caster class. Instead of having a large number of spell slots of various levels that refresh on a long rest, they have a small number of slots that refresh on a short rest and are always of the highest level of warlock spell they can cast (capped at 5th level), representing the fact that the Warlock isn't as naturally gifted with magic as other casters and has less control of their powers.
  • One way of looking at it is that the Warlock's magic, unlike the other classes', is still operating on the 4E system: Cantrips like Eldritch Blast are your At-Will powers, your spell slots are your Encounter Powers, and the Mystic Arcanums are your Daily Powers; there's even good in-universe lore that would explain this^note The in-universe logic behind the massively different power system in the 4E rules was the death of the goddess of magic, which altered all the rules of Magic - similarly, her resurrection was the basis for the shift to 5E, which is mechanically closer to the 3.5 rules. However, it was always an in-universe fact that Warlocks (who weren't introduced in their current form until 4E) weren't affected by this change due to the source of their magic not coming from the same sources as Wizards or Sorcerers. Hence, their magic still operates on 4E rules in 5E.
• Mind Control: Warlocks with a Great Old One patron can magically charm an incapacitated humanoid into becoming their loyal thrall at 14th level. They need to touch the humanoid in order to enthrall them, and they can only have one thrall at a time.
• Minmaxer's Delight: The Eldritch Blast Cantrip, memetically so. Eldritch Blast is to Warlocks what Magic Missile was to Wizards in older editions. Eldritch Blast is a damaging cantrip that 1) has the highest possible range (120ft), 2) deals a full 1d10 damage, 3) deals Force damage, which works against all but a single creature in the Monster Manual, and 4) gains additional attacks as you level up instead of stacking adidional damage on a single attack, meaning that at least one beam will usually hit. Several of the class's features are even designed purely to buff this single spell. It's so synonymous with the class that many Warlock players deliberately avoid this cantrip just to force themselves to explore other available builds.
• Morph Weapon: Warlocks who take the Pact of the Blade as their Pact Boon can shape their pact-weapon into whatever facet they wish, on the fly. They avoid the normal drawback of this kind of weapon in that the weapon's innate magic grants Possession Implies Mastery — but only for that weapon. The only other drawback is that the pact-weapon is restricted to being just melee weapons. However, the Improved Pact Weapon invocation can remove that drawback entirely (though it does not include ammunition for its ranged weapons).
• Necessary Drawback: Warlocks are the only class in Fifth Edition to get their spell slots back on short rests, while all other classes capable of magic gain them back on a long rest. To offset this, Warlocks have a somewhat smaller spell list than Sorcerers or Wizards, they only have one set of spell slots (which caps out at four), and their spells always cast at the highest spell level (which caps out at 5th). Due to how powerful and flexible they are, the result is that Warlocks have to be just as cautious with spellcasting since while they can take a short rest to recover their spells, they may not be able to do so after combat.
• Nonindicative Name: Hexblade Warlocks don't necessarily have to be Magic Knights; they could use the dark energy of the Shadowfell to power their magic without touching a weapon. They do get a couple of abilities that would be useful for a gish, and bonus armor and weapon proficiencies.
• Our Genies Are Different: Genies also happen to be elementals in this context, so warlocks get their choice of water, fire, air or earth themed spells and abilities on top of magic more traditionally associated to djinn like procuring food and other objects from thin air. Funnily enough, genie warlocks don't get the ability to make wishes right away: they get such features at rather high levels, gaining "Lesser Wish" at 14 (which lets them replicate any 6th level or lower spell), and Wish as an option for Mystic Arcanum at 17.
• Out-Gambitted: Beguiling Defenses, the 10th level feature for the Pact of the Archfey, just oozes this trope. First, it makes you immune to being charmed. Second, when a creature is trying to charm you, you can use your reaction to turn the charm back onto the creature.
• Playing with Fire: The Fiend, the Celestial and the efreeti Genie all specialize in dealing fire damage.
• Power Copying: Warlocks with the Pact of the Tome can take an invocation that allows them to learn any ritual spell, from any class list, that they can find in a spellbook or scroll.
• Powers via Weapon: The Hexblade patron is some sort of sentient magical weapon that grants those warlocks their powers.
• Psychic Block Defense: 10th-level Great Old One warlocks get a Thought Shield which prevents other creatures from reading their mind without their consent. It also makes the warlock resistant to psychic damage, and inflicts psychic damage on any creature which tries to attack them mentally.
• Signature Move: You will almost never see a warlock without Eldritch Blast and the Agonizing Blast invocation, which lets them reach a damage output close or even superior to that of a dedicated fighter without even having to use any limited-use spells, to the point that detractors of the class often mockingly say that eldritch blasting is all a warlock is really good for. Hex is also a popular choice, it's available quite early, can last a long time, and has a great synergy with Eldritch Blast by adding an additional 1d6 damage every time one of the beams connects, which can be up to 4 times at higher levels.
• Spell Blade: The Hexblade gets access to the Elemental Weapon spell and four of the Paladin's Smite spells, all of which let them imbue their weapons with various forms of magical energy to inflict extra damage.
• Spell Book: The Pact of the Tome provides a warlock with a grimoire that grants them with three additional cantrips that can be cast as long as they have the book on their person, giving them as many cantrips at 3rd level as a 20th level wizard. The Book of Ancient Secrets invocation adds two ritual spells from any spell list to the book, and allows the warlock to transcribe any other rituals they come across.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation: The default form of the Blade boon; a warlock's pact-weapon is literally shaped from their will, so it only exists as long as the warlock consciously wills it to do so.
• Summon to Hand: A Warlock with the Blade boon can choose to forfeit their default pact-weapon and magically attune themselves to an existing magical weapon instead. As part of the bond, they can do this, and in fact it gets stored in Hammerspace when they don't need it.
• Supernatural Fear Inducer: Warlock's sworn to The Undead patron can inflict fear on enemies they damage while in their Form of Dread.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The Undead to the Undying. While never stated to be an outright replacement, the Undead warlock is thematically similar to the Undying, with the difference between the two patrons being poorly defined. Given that the powerful Undead was introduced later, it can easily be seen as a substitute for the generally underpowered Undying.
• Telepathy: Warlocks who make a pact with a Great Old One can telepathically speak to nearby creatures. 14th level ones can Mind Control a humanoid into becoming their thrall, and can communicate with said thrall from anywhere on the same plane of existence.
• Touched by Vorlons: Warlocks gain their magic from a pact with an otherwordly being, making a deal with them in order to receive the touch such as it where.
• Weapon Wields You: Xanathar's Guide to Everything states that some patrons see their warlocks as slaves or tools and expect immediate action against their enemies. Thus, it's possible that a Hexblade patron sees its clients as mobile platforms for itself.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: A crafty Warlock can do a surprising amount with just Eldritch Blast, to the point that there are Eldritch Invocations dedicated to buffing it.

Wizard

Wizard

What do you mean by, my hat isn't pointy enough?

Scholarly and intelligent, Wizards spend years pouring over entire libraries of magical tomes and arcane lore to gather their spells. Wizards can use almost reality-warping power to see into the future, teleport, turn the slain into zombies, summon creatures from other planes of existence, control the minds of the living, and throw explosive fire, shards of ice, and bolts of lightning.

At 2nd level, Wizards may choose one of the following arcane traditions

1. School of Abjuration (PHB), magic that blocks, banishes, or protects.
2. School of Conjuration (PHB), magic that produces objects and creatures out of thin air.
3. School of Divination (PHB), magic that grants the wizard a clearer understanding of the past, present, and future.
4. School of Enchantment (PHB), magic that entrances and beguiles others.
5. School of Evocation (PHB), magic that creates powerful elemental effects, such as fireballs and great storms.
6. School of Illusion (PHB), magic that dazzles the senses and befuddles the mind.
7. School of Necromancy (PHB), magic that gives one control over the forces of life and death.
8. School of Transmutation (PHB), magic that can modify energy and matter.
9. Bladesinging (SCAG/TCE), a magic tradition that can be channeled into devastating melee attacks and cunning defense.
10. War Magic (XGE), a tradition combining principles of abjuration and evocation, focusing on both defense and offense in combat.
11. Chronurgy Magic (EGW), wizards who specialise in manipulating time.
12. Graviturgy Magic (EGW), wizards who specialise in manipulating gravity.
13. Order of Scribes (TCE), wizards who magically awaken their spellbook, turning it into a trusted companion.

---

• Badass Bookworm: Unlike other classes, who gain magic through more powerful entities or are naturally magical through their ancestry, Wizards gain access to magic through research and learning.
• Barrier Warrior: Wizards have a variety of defensive spells that allow them to protect them and their allies. Particularly so with Abjuration Wizards, which specialize in these defensive abilities.
• Black and Nerdy: The sample wizard is a black human.
• Black Mage: Wizards have a very wide repertoire of spells but they can almost never cast healing magic. The School of Evocation in particular leans heavily into this role.
• Boring, but Practical: Many of the Order of Scribes' features are somewhat bland but undeniably useful, such as a magic quill that lets you copy spells into your spellbook in a fraction of the normal time, and an awakened spellbook that lets you alter the damage types of your spells and can be quickly replaced—along with all its spells—if lost or destroyed at no cost.
  • The Awakened Spellbook subclass feature that allows you to change the damage type of your spells is a huge boon, practically ensuring you always deal normal or double damage with every spell as long as you know a good number of spells and the elemental weaknesses for monsters and enemies. Do you want a Magic Missile that deals Psychic damage? How about a Stinking Cloud that deals Bludgeoning damage (via Erupting Earth)? Having Chromatic Orb, a 1st level spell with a possible eight damage types in your spellbook gives other useful spells incredible power and versatility, with Glyph of Warding, Fireball and Spiritual Weapon being the top candidates.
• Combat Tentacles: The wizard is the only class with unrestricted access to Evard's black tentacles, a spell which summons numerous tentacles at a point of the wizard's choice to batter and ensnare anything within their reach. Other classes can only get the spell through specific subclasses.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Not as much so as their past counterparts, due to a combination of how spells were streamlined and the overall power levels were reduced for Fifth Edition. Based solely on leveling, pure 20th level Wizards know 5 cantrips and have 44 spells in their spellbook. Wizards can still shop around for spells to transcribe and still have the largest spell selection of the arcane spellcaster classes.
  • Have an extra spell slot at the end of the day? Use Contingency and release it when you need it. A wizard can be ready for surprise attacks with spells like stone-skin, teleport away at critical health, or whatever else the wizard can think up.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique:
  • Just like sorcerers, wizards can also cast the 'wish' spell, and suffer the same drawbacks.
  • On a lesser note, 14th level Evocation Wizards can Overchannel any 5th level or lower spell. Attempting to do this repeatedly causes them to take necrotic damage, with the effect increasing each time.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Not all necromancers are Evil, but the forces they command are usually taboo.
• Delayed Explosion:
  • The wizard-exclusive spell Otiluke's freezing sphere creates what is essentially a magical ice grenade. If the wizard does not launch the grenade immediately, they can carry it around for up to a minute before it explodes.
  • When a 10th level Chronurgy wizard casts a spell of 4th level or lower, they can delay the spell's execution for up to 1 hour by converting the spell into a bead. Anyone holding the bead can then unleash the spell at their leisure.
• The Determinator: The Order of Scribes' capstone feature lets them sacrifice their manifested Awakened Spellbook and a certain number of spells to stave off damage once per long rest. The drawback, however, is being unable to cast those spells again, even via spell scrolls. Although the severity differed between the UA and official versions: the UA version lost the spells permanently and required 'wish' to restore each spell individually, while the official version has the spells just be inaccessible for 1-6 long rests.
• Familiar: All wizards can take the find familiar spell, but the Order of Scribes gets a unique spin on this concept. They bring their own spellbooks to life, and at 6th level they can manifest the spellbook's consciousness as an ethereal being which can assist them in various ways.
• Fragile Speedster: Bladesingers when the bladesong is active. The bladesong gives them a speed boost, proficiency in acrobatics, the ability to add their Intelligence modifier to their weapon attacks and AC (which, when combined with the Shield and Mage Armor spells, can make the bladesinger ridiculously hard to hit), and the ability to reduce the damage they take when they do get hit. They also get an extra weapon attack at Level 6. But they are still wizards. They still have the lowest hit dice in the game, they can't wear medium or heavy armor, and they generally don't have a lot of muscle.
• Friendly Fireproof: An Evocation wizard can sculpt their spells to exclude their allies from the spell's area-of-effect.
• Gravity Master: The Graviturgy Magic tradition from Explorer's Guide to Wildemount grants the wizard the ability to learn special gravity-themed spells, as well as abilities that let them move their allies and enemies around the battlefield as they see fit.
• Hijacking Cthulhu: High level necromancers get the ability to control undead creatures. All undead. Vampires and Liches are not immune (although they are resistant due to their intelligence and have legendary resistances).
• Hypnotic Eyes: Enchanters get this as a feature known as Hypnotic Gaze, letting them Charm creatures that can see them just by locking eyes.
• Life Drain: Necromancers recover some hit points whenever they kill a creature with a spell, as long as that creature isn’t a construct or an undead.
• Magic Knight: The Bladesinger tradition, which grants proficiency in both light armor and a single type of one-handed melee weapon. It's not quite as good at it as its 4th edition counterpart, the Swordmage, because it's still a Squishy Wizard and it lacks the abundance of close-to-mid-ranged spells that swordmages had.
• Magic Music: Bladesingers get the bladesong, as well as proficiency in the performance skill.
• Master of Illusion: The School of Illusion.
• Military Mage: The School of War Magic blend Abjuration's focus on defense with Evocation's focus on damage-dealing, resulting in a wizard who's adept at battlefield combat.
• The Minion Master: The statistical bonuses granted by Conjurers and Necromancers to their summoned creatures are flat, with no limit on how many creatures may benefit from them and affecting all creatures equally. As such, it may be more effective for them to summon a horde of weaker creatures than a single strong creature.
• Necromancer: 5th edition is the first edition where wizardly necromancers really shone. They gained the innate ability to command "wild" undead, a feature normally exclusive to clerics, and their Animate Dead spell is more potent than normal.
• Not the Intended Use: Ironically, Necromancers can function as a party's dedicated healer. The Life Transference and Wither and Bloom spells, the only healing spells on the Wizard's spell list, are both considered Necromancy spells, and the Necromancer has a variety of life-draining options (such as Vampiric Touch, Enervation, and Soul Trap, all of which can stack with the Grim Harvest class feature if the wizard kills an enemy with them) to keep themselves healthy after dishing out the powerful Cast from Hit Points heal of Life Transference.
• Philosopher's Stone: A Transmutation specialist can create a generic 'transmuter's stone' which stores transmutation magic in it. Three functions of the stone that a 14th level transmuter can perform are Panacea (remove all curses/poisons/diseases and heal all health), Restore Life (a 'raise dead' spell), and Restore Youth (reduce a willing creature's apparent age from 13-30 years).
• Power at a Price: High level Order of Scribes wizards who are about to take damage can No-Sell it by dismissing their spellbook's mind. Doing this makes one or more spells vanish from the pages of their spellbook, leaving the wizard unable to cast those spells until they reappear. It can take a long time for these spells to come back, and while they're gone the wizard cannot cast them at all, not even through scrolls or by using another wizard's spellbook.
• Reality Warper: When Wizards get really high level they start getting really powerful.
  • A conjuration specialist could twist their surroundings however they want.
  • A minor version of this is the School of Divination's Level 2 Ability, Portent: after a long rest, the player rolls two d20s and writes down the numbers. At any point, they can spend one of those numbers and replace any attack roll, ability check, or saving throw roll with that number.
  • 17th level School of Illusion Wizards gain the ability to make an object from their illusion reality for one minute. For all intents and purposes, this allows them to warp reality to a limited extent by just willing things into existence. While limited to nonmagical, nonanimate objects and being unable to harm others, there's no other limitations. They can create anything ranging from tools to entire bridges and small fortresses with a single illusion spell. And there's no limitation on how many times they can do this.
• Seers: The School of Divination.
• Signature Move: Wizards who reach 20th level can choose two 3rd-level spells they know as their signature spells. They always have these spells prepared, and can cast them at their base level without using a spell slot once per rest.
• The Smart Guy: The only base class in the game that has intelligence as their primary stat before the Artificer came along. They study spellbooks and conduct experiments to gain their magical ability, and their likely high INT mod means they are the most likely to succeed with Arcana, History, Religion etc. skill checks.
• Spell Book: Now only required to memorize 1st to 9th level spells. Level 0 spells, or cantrips, have been changed so that they're at-will and can be cast an unlimited number of times. Every day the wizard has to review this book to prepare their spells. If they lose it then they have to start over with a new one.
• Squishy Wizard:
  • Although not quite as squishy as previous editions, wizards are still the squishiest class in the game. While they use a d6 to roll their health instead of a d4, the d6 is the lowest possible hit die and they are unique in that their class gets zero defensive abilities and features as they level, something that's very important in a system where you can only focus on one buff spell at a time, and it's probably 'haste' on the fighter.
  • The School of Abjuration offsets this issue, with their Arcane Ward and Spell Resistance features. The Arcane Ward creates a Deflector Shield around the Wizard using the runoff energy of the Abjuration spells they cast, effectively functioning as an ablative layer of hit points which regenerates some Hit Points afterwards whenever the Wizard casts another Abjuration spell. Spell Resistance gives the Wizard additional defense against all spells and spell damage.
  • The Bladesinger tradition makes them slightly less squishy due to gaining proficiency in light armor and the bonuses gained while their Bladesong is active.
  • While the War Magic tradition doesn't give them any armor proficiency, their 'arcane deflection' feature lets them use their reaction to give themselves either a +2 bonus to their Armor Class when they're attacked or a +4 bonus to their Saving Throw if they failed one, at the expense of being unable to cast anything more powerful than a cantrip until their next turn. Their 'durable magic' feature gives them a +2 to their AC and all saving throws while sustaining a concentration spell.
• Summon Magic: While all wizards can learn spells to summon various creatures to aid them, Conjuration and Necromancy wizards are the best at it.
  • Conjurers can swap places with allies (including their summons) at 6th level, can't have their concentration broken from damage on Conjuration spells (including their summons) at 10th, and grant 30 temporary hit points to creatures summoned by Conjuration spells at 14th.
  • At 6th level, any undead created by a Necromancer's Necromancy spells, be it risen or summoned, has their max hit points increased by the Wizard's level, and adds the Wizard's proficiency bonus to their weapon damage rolls.
• Super Mode: The Bladesinger's Bladesong, described as a secret elven magic that graces the user with supernatural speed, agility, and focus. In game terms, it boosts their AC, walking speed, ease of maintaining concentration for spells, and advantage to acrobatics for one minute per use. At higher levels, Bladesong also grants additional damage to melee weapon attacks, and allow the Bladesinger to sacrifice spell slots to reduce damage from an oncoming attack. The catch being they can only activate this twice before needing a short or long rest to use it again and that these are the bulk of the Bladesinger's additional abilities. Although Tasha's did change the number of uses to be equal to their proficiency modifier, but now only between long rests, which at low levels is actually a nerf.
• Talent vs. Training: Wizards represent the training side of this trope, and are often contrasted with sorcerers, who represent talent. Becoming a wizard generally requires years of study and a Spell Book to store their magical knowledge, and their proficiency at casting is based on their intelligence, representing a style of spellcasting that relies on understanding the Vancian rules of magic.
• Teleport Spam: Completely possible with Conjurer Wizards if given the right spells, such as using Far Step to constantly proc Benign Transposition.
• Time Master: The Chronurgy Magic tradition from Explorer's Guide to Wildemount grants the wizard access to spells and abilities themed around time manipulation.
• Utility Party Member: While perfectly capable as walking artillery pieces, the party Wizard's true value can be found in being an invaluable skill monkey and font of knowledge with their vast spell selection and generally high intelligence scores. Need to get past some sentries? Invisibility. Locked door? Knock. Need to pass through a solid stone wall? Erm, Passwall. Need a little scout or infiltrator? Tiny Servant or Find Familiar or Arcane Eye. Need a secure area to plan an attack or a heist away from prying eyes and divination magics? We have an app for that. There really is a spell for any situation. Who needs Rogues anyway?
• Weak, but Skilled: Wizards lack the same raw magical power that their Sorcerer counterparts have, in most cases starting off weak and needing time to grow in power, and are incredibly weak usually in terms of their stats. However, the sheer versatility a Wizard can have, combined with the fact they have the largest pool of magical abilities and spells, means that while they may be weak, they have more to offer in areas that the other magical classes lack. Not to mention their School of Magic allows them to use incredibly unique abilities that only they can wield, meaning a Wizard might not outright be strong, but they are incredibly diverse and potent in what they can do.

---