I have seen a poll for favorite class, but wanted to see if I could do top 3 as it’s too hard to pick just one if you have played multiple campaigns. (Thought multi choice only allowed me 2 choices, please limit choices to three for the poll)
My personal top 3 are:
Fighter: I have always gravitated towards the more martial classes, even in video games like Dark Souls. The idea of picking up a weapon and seeing whose skill is best just speaks to me more than the magic using classes. Also ,it just kind of suits me to be more on the front line in heavy armor protecting my friends who are in the back doing their thing with that ‘magic stuff’.
Rogue: Just the idea of being a sneaky, in the shadows type that can do lots of out of combat skills is really fun. They can do damage when needed, and sneak attack is pretty awesome and can turn the tide of a fight pretty quickly.
Cleric: Yes I know my top choice said less magic, but the idea of someone who gets there power to cast from their deity while still being able to be martially adept has grown on me. My favorite sub classes are War, Tempest, and Life. Gotta love the healing love you give your party and some pretty awesome spells that can buff your group.
I love that you can change up your style and play what you want, fill in a gaping hole for a party, or just get out of your comfort zone and play something completely opposite to what you rolled up last time.
Ranger: The flavour of the newer conclaves is what captured the magic of the Ranger for me. Protectors, hunters, and travellers. The perfect adventurer, usually with very easy reasons to be invested in an adventure. Money? Sure. Exploration? You bet. Extermination? Definitely. Protection? Could be. Rangers are natural leaders, and I tend to gravitate towards that role unless someone else wants to fill it.
Druid: The class is so deep, with so many different paths it can take depending on subclass choice. I've loved every Druid I've played, played with, and DMed for. I can also get behind the fish-out-of-water/different perspective the Druid brings to a non-nature based party.
Monk: The most exciting class in combat, for me. I love coming up with descriptions of the cool stunts a monk can perform, it seems to demand creativity and always encourages me to think outside of the box.
Since I DM, I don't play as much as run a campaign. That said, my two characters I have played are:
Wizard: I think this is a great change from the 3.5 wizard, especially considering that your cantrips never run out. 3.5 wizards had to carry around a light crossbow to remain active in the lower levels. Although most 5th-level Wizards love the fireball, I really think counterspell has done more for my party than the area effect spell.
Monk: Lots of options and abilities. I think you can also grab a level in something that allows you to hedge you ki points, especially early, when they are fleeting. Early monks, however, are very tanky which leads to staying power for a low-level party. As the fighter classes pass you by in the 5-7 level range, your added abilities keep you doing damage, while providing a certain amount of staying power (evasion, extra attack, stillness of mind, and the 6th-level archetype feature). My monk is currently 5th-level Way of the Four Elements/1st-level Cleric of War . The added 4 bonus attacks from War Priest allows me to marshal my ki. This has been a big boon in Out of the Abyss.
Monk and Warlock here. I like the scrappy, slightly offbeat and weird classes. Monk is the quintessential scrappy martial class, while Warlock is the quintessential offbeat and weird caster class. Perfection
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I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
I've only been playing 5e for a couple sessions now, but I'm no stranger to D&D. My experience in 5e is mainly building characters to see what I like/dislike.
Like the OP, I prefer playing martial characters. I'd rather have powers that are always available than spells that I have to decide on every day. The idea of commiting to certain spells forever in a spellbook always makes me self-doubt that I picked ones that I'll end up getting any use out of (aside from damage spells). So in order....
Rogue. He may be a little squishy, but his sneak attack makes him very useful in combat. Plus he's a skill monkey who can do a lot of things much better than anyone else, such as scouting, lock picking, trap spotting, etc. I feel very useful when I play a Rogue.
Cleric. I loved playing my Basic Edition (yes, from the 80s) old school Cleric, and I'm playing one now. I can tank with my heavy armor, I deal out good melee damage, and I'm built as a heavy healer. I also like that with each spell level, I gain access to all spells. So if I know ahead of time that "when tomorrow comes" in the game, there's a particular spell that would be helpful, I can choose to pray for that particular spell instead of one of my usual spells. And I'll grant you that it's very situational, but the ability to turn/destroy undead sure as hell beats dealing with them head on, and it makes me feel ultra-powerful when it happens.
Fighter. Again, going back to my Basic Edition experience, I loved being the Dwarf "class" (in Basic, there was no choice of demi-human race with class, if you were a Dwarf then your skills were pure Fighter combined with the natural abilities of being a Dwarf). Looking at Fighter in 5e, I like that there are so many styles to choose from, and that you can choose multiple styles as you progress. I generally like to be right up there in melee, so Fighter looks like it would be another fun choice for me.
I started playing in 3.5, but switched to 4e after only about a year. So the majority of my play experience is 4e/5e.
In 4e, my favorite class was the Ranger. Especially an elf, with the 4e Raven Queen connection. I really enjoyed 4e's take.
In 5e, I find that my absolute favorite class is a Fighter Battlemaster. It's just a lot of fun and I like the idea of doing all these maneuvers without having to tie it to magic or something supernatural. You're just good at what you do. And I definitely pick human whenever I do this.
Those are super standard fare, but that doesn't bother me. They were just fun. It's hard to come up with a third favorite though, because outside of those two it's more that there's a character concept that has me really intrigued at this or that point in time, and so it shifts quite a bit. Right now I'm interested in the idea of a human character with the Investigator background, on a martial class but more dedicated to mental stats. I've explored that with a fighter, a paladin of the crown, and most recently an inquisitive rogue, which I feel captures that concept the best.
Really surprising that so far most classes are in a pretty close race. I would have thought 1-2 classes would have a comfortable lead. Keep the votes and comments coming. I have enjoyed reading why people play certain classes.
Wizard: I never played a caster in 5e before this year. I tended towards martial classes like barbarian and fighter. But after flinging myself headfirst into wizard, I can never go back. I love wizards so much. They are so incredibly versatile. The only downside is that my PC almost died multiple times because of her low HP, but I could easily solve that by having spells like Shield, Counterspell, and Mirror Image prepared. (And then after she got Song of Defense from Bladesinging, she could just absorb damage anyway) I've tried to play other casters since (playing a warlock in another campaign right now) and they just feel constricting without the sheer amount of spells wizards can learn/how many spell slots they get everyday.
Rogue: Again, like wizard, rogue was a class I never had much interest in until I tried one for a oneshot, and now I'm obsessed. I want to multiclass everything in rogue now. The first two levels are all you need for taking a Cunning Action and then using Sneak Attack. And then Expertise and having four skill proficiencies right off the bat from class alone? Rogues really give players the sense that they are playing a really awesome character from the very beginning. I love them. Currently toying with the concept of a 3 Rogue/? Sorc just because starting off Rogue for the armor proficiencies and then dipping into Swashbuckler for the charisma bonus would give Sorc a nice boost.
Paladin- I love playing tanky characters particularly those that have some extra flair to them, smiting just feels so darn good!
Barbarian- again fits my preference for tank types and there's something very satisfying about just smashing the hell out of everything while bare chested
Warlock- I like them as a mulit-class dip a great deal as you get so many goodies for just a level or two, plus the whole devoted to a dark power things really speaks to me, played an affliction warlock for about a decade on WoW so I have a soft spot for locks.
Warlock - I actually played a character solely as Warlock instead of multiclassing like some people have. I found it to be much more fun and tricky with the minimal spell slots, but it also made leveling a lot more in-depth. I could adapt so much so I never felt constrained by the smaller number of spell slots. Mind you, this was level 1 to 6, so they came pretty quickly.
Bard - I found this version of Bard much more fun than Pathfinder's version which I found lackluster in performance. I especially like it because of the colleges made for such a wide variety of choices, I just made a person and went crazy...crazy with fun!
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Long time gamer getting more and more passionate for D&D. Taco.
Warlock: I'm not anymore, but from around age 12 until well into college I was into witchcraft. My favorite character is a pact of the tome really heavy caster and witchy type of warlock (as opposed to one that gets into melee combat like a pact of the blade or hexblade). While it doesn't have the utility of a Wizard's plethora of spells, I really like the aesthetic, because it's really what got me into practicing witchcraft back in my younger years in the first place. While I'm atheist now I still collect Tarot cards and still have my old "Book of Shadows" and some of my other paraphernalia from the witchy days. This is what my current character is and I've even used my past knowledge to create a Book of Shadows with my D&D spells in it, and written my own incantations for the spells that require a verbal component, as well as the hand gestures for those that require them.
Monk: I haven't played a Monk yet, but I've seen one played well, and I've seen one played poorly. I've created a Monk character that I hope to play in whatever campaign comes after the one I am currently in, and I have a lot of great ideas for it. I really like some of the cool things Monks can do, like snatching arrows out of the air and sending them back at people, and also the whole mechanic of using key points. I'm leaning towards Drunken Master as the tradition but haven't fully decided yet (and don't want to until I know the setting).
Wizard: I haven't played a Wizard yet, but it is one I really want to try. I've been watching Critical Role (finally caught up on season 2, yay!) and seeing the wizard in that game do some really interesting stuff, and collect new spells, it's really made me want to play a Wizard.
Best spell list, skill monkey CC casting party face - super fun to RP, thieves are also fun to RP and there's a lot of different subclass styles to play and be tactical with.
Druid: This is the diverse, be-anything-you-want, whatever the situation calls for class. Front lines combat in wild shape, hugely damaging spell lists and support and primary party healer. The do all, be all class as far as I'm concerned. I enjoy most classes, but absolutely love playing Druids. The vast majority of the time, I am the group's primary healer, and the rest of the time I am the MVP of combat. There aren't many other classes that can do both with such balance of skills. Save Clerics, but they still have a hard time getting to the frontlines of combat in most situations. Not to mention wild shape can give you up to 127 bonus temp HP if you go Circle of the Moon. With that, you can basically absorb enough damage that would otherwise outright kill most of your other party members before taking serious injury in natural form. Though, I can say from experience...wildshape does tend to pull the focus of most enemies to yourself, but it gives the serious heavy hitters like paladins and barbarians room to get hits in and advantage to rogues to perform sneak attacks.
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I have seen a poll for favorite class, but wanted to see if I could do top 3 as it’s too hard to pick just one if you have played multiple campaigns. (Thought multi choice only allowed me 2 choices, please limit choices to three for the poll)
My personal top 3 are:
Fighter: I have always gravitated towards the more martial classes, even in video games like Dark Souls. The idea of picking up a weapon and seeing whose skill is best just speaks to me more than the magic using classes. Also ,it just kind of suits me to be more on the front line in heavy armor protecting my friends who are in the back doing their thing with that ‘magic stuff’.
Rogue: Just the idea of being a sneaky, in the shadows type that can do lots of out of combat skills is really fun. They can do damage when needed, and sneak attack is pretty awesome and can turn the tide of a fight pretty quickly.
Cleric: Yes I know my top choice said less magic, but the idea of someone who gets there power to cast from their deity while still being able to be martially adept has grown on me. My favorite sub classes are War, Tempest, and Life. Gotta love the healing love you give your party and some pretty awesome spells that can buff your group.
I love that you can change up your style and play what you want, fill in a gaping hole for a party, or just get out of your comfort zone and play something completely opposite to what you rolled up last time.
Sooo, what are your three favorite?
Paladin: I like to play a character with strong convictions, and being a tanky support character is my personal favorite.
Warlock: Picking invocations is super fun, and I like the flavor of the class.
Cleric: Divine power is fun, and again I like being a support as much as I can.
Jazz Jungle Japes is Best Jungle Japes
Ranger: The flavour of the newer conclaves is what captured the magic of the Ranger for me. Protectors, hunters, and travellers. The perfect adventurer, usually with very easy reasons to be invested in an adventure. Money? Sure. Exploration? You bet. Extermination? Definitely. Protection? Could be. Rangers are natural leaders, and I tend to gravitate towards that role unless someone else wants to fill it.
Druid: The class is so deep, with so many different paths it can take depending on subclass choice. I've loved every Druid I've played, played with, and DMed for. I can also get behind the fish-out-of-water/different perspective the Druid brings to a non-nature based party.
Monk: The most exciting class in combat, for me. I love coming up with descriptions of the cool stunts a monk can perform, it seems to demand creativity and always encourages me to think outside of the box.
Since I DM, I don't play as much as run a campaign. That said, my two characters I have played are:
Wizard: I think this is a great change from the 3.5 wizard, especially considering that your cantrips never run out. 3.5 wizards had to carry around a light crossbow to remain active in the lower levels. Although most 5th-level Wizards love the fireball, I really think counterspell has done more for my party than the area effect spell.
Monk: Lots of options and abilities. I think you can also grab a level in something that allows you to hedge you ki points, especially early, when they are fleeting. Early monks, however, are very tanky which leads to staying power for a low-level party. As the fighter classes pass you by in the 5-7 level range, your added abilities keep you doing damage, while providing a certain amount of staying power (evasion, extra attack, stillness of mind, and the 6th-level archetype feature). My monk is currently 5th-level Way of the Four Elements/1st-level Cleric of War . The added 4 bonus attacks from War Priest allows me to marshal my ki. This has been a big boon in Out of the Abyss.
Monk and Warlock here. I like the scrappy, slightly offbeat and weird classes. Monk is the quintessential scrappy martial class, while Warlock is the quintessential offbeat and weird caster class. Perfection
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
Cleric: As "PalladiumTurtle" said, I also like a character with strong convictions.
I've only been playing 5e for a couple sessions now, but I'm no stranger to D&D. My experience in 5e is mainly building characters to see what I like/dislike.
Like the OP, I prefer playing martial characters. I'd rather have powers that are always available than spells that I have to decide on every day. The idea of commiting to certain spells forever in a spellbook always makes me self-doubt that I picked ones that I'll end up getting any use out of (aside from damage spells). So in order....
Bard and warlock are my two top picks, no matter the game, followed by paladins and shapeshiftery types (usually druids).
I started playing in 3.5, but switched to 4e after only about a year. So the majority of my play experience is 4e/5e.
In 4e, my favorite class was the Ranger. Especially an elf, with the 4e Raven Queen connection. I really enjoyed 4e's take.
In 5e, I find that my absolute favorite class is a Fighter Battlemaster. It's just a lot of fun and I like the idea of doing all these maneuvers without having to tie it to magic or something supernatural. You're just good at what you do. And I definitely pick human whenever I do this.
Those are super standard fare, but that doesn't bother me. They were just fun. It's hard to come up with a third favorite though, because outside of those two it's more that there's a character concept that has me really intrigued at this or that point in time, and so it shifts quite a bit. Right now I'm interested in the idea of a human character with the Investigator background, on a martial class but more dedicated to mental stats. I've explored that with a fighter, a paladin of the crown, and most recently an inquisitive rogue, which I feel captures that concept the best.
Really surprising that so far most classes are in a pretty close race. I would have thought 1-2 classes would have a comfortable lead. Keep the votes and comments coming. I have enjoyed reading why people play certain classes.
Wizard: I never played a caster in 5e before this year. I tended towards martial classes like barbarian and fighter. But after flinging myself headfirst into wizard, I can never go back. I love wizards so much. They are so incredibly versatile. The only downside is that my PC almost died multiple times because of her low HP, but I could easily solve that by having spells like Shield, Counterspell, and Mirror Image prepared. (And then after she got Song of Defense from Bladesinging, she could just absorb damage anyway) I've tried to play other casters since (playing a warlock in another campaign right now) and they just feel constricting without the sheer amount of spells wizards can learn/how many spell slots they get everyday.
Rogue: Again, like wizard, rogue was a class I never had much interest in until I tried one for a oneshot, and now I'm obsessed. I want to multiclass everything in rogue now. The first two levels are all you need for taking a Cunning Action and then using Sneak Attack. And then Expertise and having four skill proficiencies right off the bat from class alone? Rogues really give players the sense that they are playing a really awesome character from the very beginning. I love them. Currently toying with the concept of a 3 Rogue/? Sorc just because starting off Rogue for the armor proficiencies and then dipping into Swashbuckler for the charisma bonus would give Sorc a nice boost.
Paladin- I love playing tanky characters particularly those that have some extra flair to them, smiting just feels so darn good!
Barbarian- again fits my preference for tank types and there's something very satisfying about just smashing the hell out of everything while bare chested
Warlock- I like them as a mulit-class dip a great deal as you get so many goodies for just a level or two, plus the whole devoted to a dark power things really speaks to me, played an affliction warlock for about a decade on WoW so I have a soft spot for locks.
Warlock - I actually played a character solely as Warlock instead of multiclassing like some people have. I found it to be much more fun and tricky with the minimal spell slots, but it also made leveling a lot more in-depth. I could adapt so much so I never felt constrained by the smaller number of spell slots. Mind you, this was level 1 to 6, so they came pretty quickly.
Bard - I found this version of Bard much more fun than Pathfinder's version which I found lackluster in performance. I especially like it because of the colleges made for such a wide variety of choices, I just made a person and went crazy...crazy with fun!
Long time gamer getting more and more passionate for D&D. Taco.
Paladin, Bard, Warlock. Charisma for the win.
Cleric and Wizard for their versatility. Bard is cool too but don’t really have the short rest / known spell size thing going on.
Warlock: I'm not anymore, but from around age 12 until well into college I was into witchcraft. My favorite character is a pact of the tome really heavy caster and witchy type of warlock (as opposed to one that gets into melee combat like a pact of the blade or hexblade). While it doesn't have the utility of a Wizard's plethora of spells, I really like the aesthetic, because it's really what got me into practicing witchcraft back in my younger years in the first place. While I'm atheist now I still collect Tarot cards and still have my old "Book of Shadows" and some of my other paraphernalia from the witchy days. This is what my current character is and I've even used my past knowledge to create a Book of Shadows with my D&D spells in it, and written my own incantations for the spells that require a verbal component, as well as the hand gestures for those that require them.
Monk: I haven't played a Monk yet, but I've seen one played well, and I've seen one played poorly. I've created a Monk character that I hope to play in whatever campaign comes after the one I am currently in, and I have a lot of great ideas for it. I really like some of the cool things Monks can do, like snatching arrows out of the air and sending them back at people, and also the whole mechanic of using key points. I'm leaning towards Drunken Master as the tradition but haven't fully decided yet (and don't want to until I know the setting).
Wizard: I haven't played a Wizard yet, but it is one I really want to try. I've been watching Critical Role (finally caught up on season 2, yay!) and seeing the wizard in that game do some really interesting stuff, and collect new spells, it's really made me want to play a Wizard.
Wiz / Bard / Thief
Best spell list, skill monkey CC casting party face - super fun to RP, thieves are also fun to RP and there's a lot of different subclass styles to play and be tactical with.
I only voted for Druid, because it's the only class I played so far.
Two classes I want to play in the future are Rogue and Sorcerer.
I only put forth one vote.
Druid: This is the diverse, be-anything-you-want, whatever the situation calls for class. Front lines combat in wild shape, hugely damaging spell lists and support and primary party healer. The do all, be all class as far as I'm concerned. I enjoy most classes, but absolutely love playing Druids. The vast majority of the time, I am the group's primary healer, and the rest of the time I am the MVP of combat. There aren't many other classes that can do both with such balance of skills. Save Clerics, but they still have a hard time getting to the frontlines of combat in most situations. Not to mention wild shape can give you up to 127 bonus temp HP if you go Circle of the Moon. With that, you can basically absorb enough damage that would otherwise outright kill most of your other party members before taking serious injury in natural form. Though, I can say from experience...wildshape does tend to pull the focus of most enemies to yourself, but it gives the serious heavy hitters like paladins and barbarians room to get hits in and advantage to rogues to perform sneak attacks.
Wizard/Artificer/Paladin
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.