I was wondering if you could all give me your thoughts and opinions on what the easiest build to play is?
Race
Class
Subclass
I would like them to be fun to play but I am getting really bored of all the compicated weird characters that I usually make and would like to make something easy to play that will fit into most games, but which is still fun.
I also want to start at level 1.
I don't have a game to play in right now as the people I was going to play with decided they didn't want me to play with them, so I want to make something I can play when I find a group that will let me join.
Any suggestions?
Thanks
XD
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A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
Level 1 fighter who has left their life in a quaint farming village behind to seek out fame, fortune, and adventure. They're pretty average in almost all ways, except for their ambition. They see greatness in their future if they just strive for it.
Barbarian is pretty straightforward, mainly count your rages per day, remember to rage and add your rage bonuses, as well as the extra bonuses you get from a subclass (which usually aren't too complicated). Then Hulk Smash.
I've yet to encounter a group that wouldn't be happy to add a cleric, though to get the best out of the class generally involves more options as well as learning all the many spells you can choose from. You also get your subclass and the extra options and complexity attached at first level so it's a bit more of a jump into the deep end, at least unless you're going for a super generic "healbot" character. That being said I've been playing a Life domain cleric from level 2-11 for just over a year now and love it, and she's a lot more than just a healer because pf the way I play her. Also when the fecal matter impacts the oscillatory ventilation device I have the option of reminding everybody that I am, in fact, a really capable healer by pausing my support casting and general ass kicking to use my healing focused abilities.
A straight Paladin is also pretty straightforward to play. Mostly they rely on uncomplicated spells and Divine Smite whenever they score a Crit. They don’t really need to worry about their Spellcasting Ability for the bulk of their spells, so you can focus on Strength and Constitution, which helps maintain Concentration on the spells they cast that need it.
I would recommend a Half-Orc or Legacy Orc. The Half-Orc will give you Relentless Endurance and Savage Attacks to make the Crits even more damaging. The Orc gives you Aggressive, Powerful Build, and a variety of Skills from which to choose. Leonin is also viable, as is the Legacy Goliath.
As for subclass, really any of them are pretty straightforward, but I’m a fan of either Vengeance or Devotion.
Barbarian is pretty straightforward, mainly count your rages per day, remember to rage and add your rage bonuses, as well as the extra bonuses you get from a subclass (which usually aren't too complicated). Then Hulk Smash.
Your answer made me think of a Goliath Barbarian who got abandoned by his family because he is the runt of the litter.
Nice straightforward backstory - pretty much grew up like every other Goliath except he was the smallest and weakest of five brothers, so when he was 16, his family abandoned him. He wandered around for a few years doing odd jobs for people to survive and eventually took up adventuring so that he could prove his strength and skill against dangerous beasties.
He misses his family and believes that if he can prove himself by fighting and defeating dangerous creatures and making a name for himself, then his family will take him back.
So not a complicated backstory or reason for being an adventurer.
Straight Totem Warrior Barbarian with the Bear Totem.
Does that sound too stupid?
It's what your response about a barbarian made me think of.
Hey, that sounds like a perfectly viable concept for a character. Especially for a first character you don't need to get fancy right from the start. You just need a starting point to tell that character's story, and you have that. The rest will come as you play that character in whatever situations your DM throws at you, and doing that is (in my humble opinion) the main point of playing D&D.
Not completely uncomplicated... you still need to keep track of Ki and you have a few spells that you need to know how they work, but Monk is unique in that, despite having a number of abilities that rely on the resource of Ki, as a Monk you get a bunch of abilities that are just "always on" and allow you to fulfill a bunch of tasks that other classes need to track equipment or manage spell slots to replicate.
Right off the bat... you have as much Ki as you have levels. No confusion about spells known versus spell slots available, no keeping track of your max spell level compared to your current character level, not even checking your Proficiency Bonus to see how many charges of a given ability you have... if you're level 5, you have 5 ki. If you're level 15, you have 15 ki. Nice and straightforward.
With Unarmored Defense you don't need to worry about armor... no worrying about doffing or donning, no need to budget for a set of plate mail or choosing whether to take a -1 to AC to get armor that doesn't impose disadvantage on stealth... you've got a number and you only have to worry about it after an ASI. You don't even need a weapon, technically (although having one at early levels is a good idea). You don't even need to spend ki to get out bonus action attacks... the ki is just to get out 2 instead of one.
Deflect missiles always works, and lacking Ki just prevents you from using the caught missile as a weapon yourself. Slow Fall costs nothing. Evasion costs nothing. You run faster for free, and eventually you can run up walls and across water at the cost of nothing but your movement speed. You eventually get immunity to poison, the ability to functionally speak all languages or end the charmed/frightened condition on yourself... you don't even need to eat after a certain point. All without any resource cost or needing to track anything outside of your standard action economy.
The reason I said Shadow Monk specifically, despite it having a few more complications and features to track than say... a Champion Fighter, who's basically just a more Fighter-y Fighter, is because the specific features the Shadow Monk grants actually make the game substantially easier. Just getting access to Pass Without Trace is a huge boon that can completely trivialize any stealth sequence your party might need to get through. Do you, or any of your allies, lack Darkvision? You can drop 2 ki and just give it to them. On top of the spells you get access to, you can just straight up teleport as a bonus action, the only restriction being you need some shadows to do it from, but you can get basically a free version of Misty Step (one of the best spells in the game) and then you get Advantage on your next attack just for doing that. It's insane all the crazy shenanigans you can pull off as a Shadow Monk that would cost a spellcaster a dozen spell slots to replicate.
EDIT: I realized I didn't list a Race. Uh... let's go with Goblin. Being able to Hide and Disengage as a bonus action, regardless of class, is incredibly useful. Makes me a bit confused about why Goblin Rogues are so popular, since it's such a huge redundancy in abilities.
Not completely uncomplicated... you still need to keep track of Ki and you have a few spells that you need to know how they work, but Monk is unique in that, despite having a number of abilities that rely on the resource of Ki, as a Monk you get a bunch of abilities that are just "always on" and allow you to fulfill a bunch of tasks that other classes need to track equipment or manage spell slots to replicate.
Right off the bat... you have as much Ki as you have levels. No confusion about spells known versus spell slots available, no keeping track of your max spell level compared to your current character level, not even checking your Proficiency Bonus to see how many charges of a given ability you have... if you're level 5, you have 5 ki. If you're level 15, you have 15 ki. Nice and straightforward.
With Unarmored Defense you don't need to worry about armor... no worrying about doffing or donning, no need to budget for a set of plate mail or choosing whether to take a -1 to AC to get armor that doesn't impose disadvantage on stealth... you've got a number and you only have to worry about it after an ASI. You don't even need a weapon, technically (although having one at early levels is a good idea). You don't even need to spend ki to get out bonus action attacks... the ki is just to get out 2 instead of one.
Deflect missiles always works, and lacking Ki just prevents you from using the caught missile as a weapon yourself. Slow Fall costs nothing. Evasion costs nothing. You run faster for free, and eventually you can run up walls and across water at the cost of nothing but your movement speed. You eventually get immunity to poison, the ability to functionally speak all languages or end the charmed/frightened condition on yourself... you don't even need to eat after a certain point. All without any resource cost or needing to track anything outside of your standard action economy.
The reason I said Shadow Monk specifically, despite it having a few more complications and features to track than say... a Champion Fighter, who's basically just a more Fighter-y Fighter, is because the specific features the Shadow Monk grants actually make the game substantially easier. Just getting access to Pass Without Trace is a huge boon that can completely trivialize any stealth sequence your party might need to get through. Do you, or any of your allies, lack Darkvision? You can drop 2 ki and just give it to them. On top of the spells you get access to, you can just straight up teleport as a bonus action, the only restriction being you need some shadows to do it from, but you can get basically a free version of Misty Step (one of the best spells in the game) and then you get Advantage on your next attack just for doing that. It's insane all the crazy shenanigans you can pull off as a Shadow Monk that would cost a spellcaster a dozen spell slots to replicate.
EDIT: I realized I didn't list a Race. Uh... let's go with Goblin. Being able to Hide and Disengage as a bonus action, regardless of class, is incredibly useful. Makes me a bit confused about why Goblin Rogues are so popular, since it's such a huge redundancy in abilities.
From what you describe, a Goblin Shadow Monk sounds way OP at low levels and just crazy at higher ones.
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A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
To offer an alternative to the myriad melee suggestions: Warlock, whichever subclass you want. Though, like most spellcasters, warlocks can be fairly complicated to play and build (mostly because of spell selection), they have a really low floor and can be played effectively with little to no effort. Eldritch Blast is a strong enough spell that you can just spam it in combat; Toss a few Hellish Rebukes every so often, and you have a caster class that remains incredibly linear in playstyle.
To offer an alternative to the myriad melee suggestions: Warlock, whichever subclass you want.
Well, fighter might be ranged; I'd recommend dex fighter over strength fighter because "this fight is at long range or challenging terrain and you'll be lucky to actually reach anyone before the fight ends" isn't terribly fun.
To offer an alternative to the myriad melee suggestions: Warlock, whichever subclass you want.
Well, fighter might be ranged; I'd recommend dex fighter over strength fighter because "this fight is at long range or challenging terrain and you'll be lucky to actually reach anyone before the fight ends" isn't terribly fun.
I should have been a bit more precise in my writing and wrote “martial” instead of melee.
That said, I agree dex Fighter with range is probably easier and more straightforward to play than strength fighter. I’d also agree that melee Fighter can be terribly boring if there’s terrain issues - though I think that’s more the fault of how low monster HP is as compared to PC damage output rather than the playstyle itself (I rather enjoy “how to close the gap” play, if the fights are long enough that it’s not ultimately irrelevant).
I don't think there's really any Monk class that comes off as particularly "OP"... the class is always held back a little bit because it's very hard to output damage as well as the other martial classes... but it does trivialize a lot of the little things that you don't think about until, for example... you find yourself playing a Barbarian fighting a bunch of enemies who are hiding out of range or if you're in an arena with a big pool of water you have to run around and potentially lose a turn and drop rage. Meanwhile the Monk is just casually running from one enemy to the next... and a Shadow Monk might just skip running entirely.
Sorcerer is pretty straightforward. Limited spell lists and no prepared casting means you basically just slot in spells a few at a time per level and, unless you're using Tasha's optional rules, you don't have to worry about revisiting those spell choices (and only have to do it one at a time if you do use the Tasha's rules).
It's really easy to pick thematic spells as a sorcerer as well, so if you're playing a Storm Sorcerer and find choosing spells daunting, you can just grab any that deal with wind, water, lightning, or thunder, and that narrows down the list nicely.
Sorcery points aren't that complex, and order features from the class/subclasses are similarly easy to parse, making the sorcerer a good, uncomplicated caster to play.
That said, I agree dex Fighter with range is probably easier and more straightforward to play than strength fighter. I’d also agree that melee Fighter can be terribly boring if there’s terrain issues - though I think that’s more the fault of how low monster HP is as compared to PC damage output rather than the playstyle itself (I rather enjoy “how to close the gap” play, if the fights are long enough that it’s not ultimately irrelevant).
Well, it's a combination of short fights and there not being enough damage difference between melee and ranged. If you typically spend 1/3 of a fight getting into range, you should do 50% higher damage; if it's half the fight, you should do 100% higher. The actual damage differential implies only 10-20% of the fight.
It seems as if different people have different ideas of what is "easy to play".
In the game the party will keep having problems they have to overcome, for example they might be approached by a group of bandits. One way of dealing with those bandits might be to fight them another might be to persuade them to let you pass. To fight them requires little thought of approach, can be done by (virtually) any character but carry an element of risk of death. Trying to persuade them requires a character that is skilled in such areas, a decent knowledge of how to use those skills. (For example casting charm person on the leader if successful is likely to have the leader say to the others to leave the party alone as one of them is an old friend of his). This can make the game "Easier" because their is less chance of the party dying but the player playing that character needs to choose spells and features that are most likely to be of use and know what to use when. Fom the OPs text I am assuming that when they refer to "easy" they mean something uncomplicated to play.
I would define uncomplicated as having few options and decisions to make, all characters have some degress of resource management, for example a barbarian is limited to the number of times they can rage use it to little and you are making yourself less powerful, use it too much and you don't have it when you really need it. Spell casters not only have ot manage the resource of their spell slots but also know the available spells well enough to choose approriate ones for their character and the party needs and (for some classes) what they expect to encounter that day.
The most uncomplicated class and subclass by far is champion fighter, the fighter has a couple of resources to manage, for example you can only action surge once per short or long rest but they are fairly uncomplicated one. The champion subclass features are "always on" just remember a 19 or a 20 is a critical hit, mark your character sheet with the bones to ability checks you get from remarkable athlete and so on. In combat your main choices will be which enemy to attack and where to move your character. Ranged and Melee are equally viable, it can be "not fun" to play a character with no ranged attacks against an enemy that can not be reached but a decent DM will make this a rare occurance and will hopefully let you at least get some javelin attacks off. If everyone in a party is ranged it can be very difficult for the more fragile members of the party to survive (if the fighter gets into melee rage of the enemy if they want ot attack the wizard they either have to make a ranged attack at disadvantage or risk an opportunity attack to move to move away from the fighter.
The champion fighter gets little love on the forums, it is probably the weakest fighter sub class but the fighter class features are very solid so while not the strongest character you are still pretty useful in combat, but most of the dislike is because it IS uncomplicated, in combat you attack with your weapon each turn (twice when you reach level 5 and 3 times when you reach level 11) and do little else out of combat you are unlikely to be the best in the party to talk to people, investigate things etc so your role out of combat may be quite limited as well.
Race doesn't make a huge different for complexity mechanically variant humans and custom linege get a feat which can be fun but us another choice and depending on what feat you take might add to your decisions in game. The DM might make some races more complex to play than others, for example in a world where nearly everyone you meet will expect a goblin ot immediately attack them playing a goblin has certain challenges but you will need ot discuss that with the DM.
What is fun to play is up to you, many people will find champion fighter not fun to play because it is uncomplicated and very quickly gets boring.
As fighters do not choose their suclass to level 3 one option is to play a fighter and after you have played a couple of levels you will have a better idea as to whether you want the simplicity of champion or something with a bit more variety (I would recommend Samurai and Battle Master, or Arcane Archer, mounted combat can be confusing if you went cavalier, Eldritch knoight means you start dabbling with spells and handling an echo effectively is quite complicated, you could go purple dragon but it is a weak subcass and has a terrible reputation)
The other class which is not very complicated is barbarian. If you went that way I would suggest beast, totem warrior or Zealot all of which are comparable to Samurai, battle master and Arcane Archer in complexity.
Personally, the most fun and least complicated has been, by far, my Bear Totem Barbarian. Now my guy is a Halfling, due to letting a group member pick our race for fun at the beginning of the campaign, so his stats aren't optimized (though the new PC choices all would be, so ignore that bit) but he's ultra simple to play in combat, Rage, Attack (reckless if needed/wanted) continue to attack until enemies are all dead. Can grapple if needed, as well, with high Strength (and advantage from Raging) and outside combat is an able climber, decent stealth from high Dex for the unarmored defense.
Super simple, needs little special gear to be a worthwhile party member and is open to any kind of RP fun you want. Not much chance you're going to be the party face or investigation expert, but you could be an Urchin who knows how to pick locks too lol. I like playing him on nights when I am tired from a long week's work. No complex shenanigans to deal with in combat so I'm not a liability if my mind wanders a bit, a few physical roles in non-combat I get called for, makes for a relaxing session usually.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
My advice is one that you enjoy playing. It’s much easier to learn how to play a character that you love playing than it is to play one that is boring to you.
HI,
I was wondering if you could all give me your thoughts and opinions on what the easiest build to play is?
I would like them to be fun to play but I am getting really bored of all the compicated weird characters that I usually make and would like to make something easy to play that will fit into most games, but which is still fun.
I also want to start at level 1.
I don't have a game to play in right now as the people I was going to play with decided they didn't want me to play with them, so I want to make something I can play when I find a group that will let me join.
Any suggestions?
Thanks
XD
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
Level 1 fighter who has left their life in a quaint farming village behind to seek out fame, fortune, and adventure. They're pretty average in almost all ways, except for their ambition. They see greatness in their future if they just strive for it.
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Barbarian is pretty straightforward, mainly count your rages per day, remember to rage and add your rage bonuses, as well as the extra bonuses you get from a subclass (which usually aren't too complicated). Then Hulk Smash.
I've yet to encounter a group that wouldn't be happy to add a cleric, though to get the best out of the class generally involves more options as well as learning all the many spells you can choose from. You also get your subclass and the extra options and complexity attached at first level so it's a bit more of a jump into the deep end, at least unless you're going for a super generic "healbot" character. That being said I've been playing a Life domain cleric from level 2-11 for just over a year now and love it, and she's a lot more than just a healer because pf the way I play her. Also when the fecal matter impacts the oscillatory ventilation device I have the option of reminding everybody that I am, in fact, a really capable healer by pausing my support casting and general ass kicking to use my healing focused abilities.
A straight Paladin is also pretty straightforward to play. Mostly they rely on uncomplicated spells and Divine Smite whenever they score a Crit. They don’t really need to worry about their Spellcasting Ability for the bulk of their spells, so you can focus on Strength and Constitution, which helps maintain Concentration on the spells they cast that need it.
I would recommend a Half-Orc or Legacy Orc. The Half-Orc will give you Relentless Endurance and Savage Attacks to make the Crits even more damaging. The Orc gives you Aggressive, Powerful Build, and a variety of Skills from which to choose. Leonin is also viable, as is the Legacy Goliath.
As for subclass, really any of them are pretty straightforward, but I’m a fan of either Vengeance or Devotion.
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Your answer made me think of a Goliath Barbarian who got abandoned by his family because he is the runt of the litter.
Nice straightforward backstory - pretty much grew up like every other Goliath except he was the smallest and weakest of five brothers, so when he was 16, his family abandoned him. He wandered around for a few years doing odd jobs for people to survive and eventually took up adventuring so that he could prove his strength and skill against dangerous beasties.
He misses his family and believes that if he can prove himself by fighting and defeating dangerous creatures and making a name for himself, then his family will take him back.
So not a complicated backstory or reason for being an adventurer.
Straight Totem Warrior Barbarian with the Bear Totem.
Does that sound too stupid?
It's what your response about a barbarian made me think of.
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
That doesn’t sound stupid at all, I love a three-sentence backstory.
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Hey, that sounds like a perfectly viable concept for a character. Especially for a first character you don't need to get fancy right from the start. You just need a starting point to tell that character's story, and you have that. The rest will come as you play that character in whatever situations your DM throws at you, and doing that is (in my humble opinion) the main point of playing D&D.
Hear me out on this... Way of Shadow Monk.
Not completely uncomplicated... you still need to keep track of Ki and you have a few spells that you need to know how they work, but Monk is unique in that, despite having a number of abilities that rely on the resource of Ki, as a Monk you get a bunch of abilities that are just "always on" and allow you to fulfill a bunch of tasks that other classes need to track equipment or manage spell slots to replicate.
Right off the bat... you have as much Ki as you have levels. No confusion about spells known versus spell slots available, no keeping track of your max spell level compared to your current character level, not even checking your Proficiency Bonus to see how many charges of a given ability you have... if you're level 5, you have 5 ki. If you're level 15, you have 15 ki. Nice and straightforward.
With Unarmored Defense you don't need to worry about armor... no worrying about doffing or donning, no need to budget for a set of plate mail or choosing whether to take a -1 to AC to get armor that doesn't impose disadvantage on stealth... you've got a number and you only have to worry about it after an ASI. You don't even need a weapon, technically (although having one at early levels is a good idea). You don't even need to spend ki to get out bonus action attacks... the ki is just to get out 2 instead of one.
Deflect missiles always works, and lacking Ki just prevents you from using the caught missile as a weapon yourself. Slow Fall costs nothing. Evasion costs nothing. You run faster for free, and eventually you can run up walls and across water at the cost of nothing but your movement speed. You eventually get immunity to poison, the ability to functionally speak all languages or end the charmed/frightened condition on yourself... you don't even need to eat after a certain point. All without any resource cost or needing to track anything outside of your standard action economy.
The reason I said Shadow Monk specifically, despite it having a few more complications and features to track than say... a Champion Fighter, who's basically just a more Fighter-y Fighter, is because the specific features the Shadow Monk grants actually make the game substantially easier. Just getting access to Pass Without Trace is a huge boon that can completely trivialize any stealth sequence your party might need to get through. Do you, or any of your allies, lack Darkvision? You can drop 2 ki and just give it to them. On top of the spells you get access to, you can just straight up teleport as a bonus action, the only restriction being you need some shadows to do it from, but you can get basically a free version of Misty Step (one of the best spells in the game) and then you get Advantage on your next attack just for doing that. It's insane all the crazy shenanigans you can pull off as a Shadow Monk that would cost a spellcaster a dozen spell slots to replicate.
EDIT: I realized I didn't list a Race. Uh... let's go with Goblin. Being able to Hide and Disengage as a bonus action, regardless of class, is incredibly useful. Makes me a bit confused about why Goblin Rogues are so popular, since it's such a huge redundancy in abilities.
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All depends on how you define fun. All the martial classes are pretty straightforward.
From what you describe, a Goblin Shadow Monk sounds way OP at low levels and just crazy at higher ones.
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
A Half-Orc Wolf Totem Barbarian is both simple and fun for you and your allies.
To offer an alternative to the myriad melee suggestions: Warlock, whichever subclass you want. Though, like most spellcasters, warlocks can be fairly complicated to play and build (mostly because of spell selection), they have a really low floor and can be played effectively with little to no effort. Eldritch Blast is a strong enough spell that you can just spam it in combat; Toss a few Hellish Rebukes every so often, and you have a caster class that remains incredibly linear in playstyle.
Well, fighter might be ranged; I'd recommend dex fighter over strength fighter because "this fight is at long range or challenging terrain and you'll be lucky to actually reach anyone before the fight ends" isn't terribly fun.
I should have been a bit more precise in my writing and wrote “martial” instead of melee.
That said, I agree dex Fighter with range is probably easier and more straightforward to play than strength fighter. I’d also agree that melee Fighter can be terribly boring if there’s terrain issues - though I think that’s more the fault of how low monster HP is as compared to PC damage output rather than the playstyle itself (I rather enjoy “how to close the gap” play, if the fights are long enough that it’s not ultimately irrelevant).
I don't think there's really any Monk class that comes off as particularly "OP"... the class is always held back a little bit because it's very hard to output damage as well as the other martial classes... but it does trivialize a lot of the little things that you don't think about until, for example... you find yourself playing a Barbarian fighting a bunch of enemies who are hiding out of range or if you're in an arena with a big pool of water you have to run around and potentially lose a turn and drop rage. Meanwhile the Monk is just casually running from one enemy to the next... and a Shadow Monk might just skip running entirely.
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Sorcerer is pretty straightforward. Limited spell lists and no prepared casting means you basically just slot in spells a few at a time per level and, unless you're using Tasha's optional rules, you don't have to worry about revisiting those spell choices (and only have to do it one at a time if you do use the Tasha's rules).
It's really easy to pick thematic spells as a sorcerer as well, so if you're playing a Storm Sorcerer and find choosing spells daunting, you can just grab any that deal with wind, water, lightning, or thunder, and that narrows down the list nicely.
Sorcery points aren't that complex, and order features from the class/subclasses are similarly easy to parse, making the sorcerer a good, uncomplicated caster to play.
Well, it's a combination of short fights and there not being enough damage difference between melee and ranged. If you typically spend 1/3 of a fight getting into range, you should do 50% higher damage; if it's half the fight, you should do 100% higher. The actual damage differential implies only 10-20% of the fight.
It seems as if different people have different ideas of what is "easy to play".
In the game the party will keep having problems they have to overcome, for example they might be approached by a group of bandits. One way of dealing with those bandits might be to fight them another might be to persuade them to let you pass. To fight them requires little thought of approach, can be done by (virtually) any character but carry an element of risk of death. Trying to persuade them requires a character that is skilled in such areas, a decent knowledge of how to use those skills. (For example casting charm person on the leader if successful is likely to have the leader say to the others to leave the party alone as one of them is an old friend of his). This can make the game "Easier" because their is less chance of the party dying but the player playing that character needs to choose spells and features that are most likely to be of use and know what to use when. Fom the OPs text I am assuming that when they refer to "easy" they mean something uncomplicated to play.
I would define uncomplicated as having few options and decisions to make, all characters have some degress of resource management, for example a barbarian is limited to the number of times they can rage use it to little and you are making yourself less powerful, use it too much and you don't have it when you really need it. Spell casters not only have ot manage the resource of their spell slots but also know the available spells well enough to choose approriate ones for their character and the party needs and (for some classes) what they expect to encounter that day.
The most uncomplicated class and subclass by far is champion fighter, the fighter has a couple of resources to manage, for example you can only action surge once per short or long rest but they are fairly uncomplicated one. The champion subclass features are "always on" just remember a 19 or a 20 is a critical hit, mark your character sheet with the bones to ability checks you get from remarkable athlete and so on. In combat your main choices will be which enemy to attack and where to move your character. Ranged and Melee are equally viable, it can be "not fun" to play a character with no ranged attacks against an enemy that can not be reached but a decent DM will make this a rare occurance and will hopefully let you at least get some javelin attacks off. If everyone in a party is ranged it can be very difficult for the more fragile members of the party to survive (if the fighter gets into melee rage of the enemy if they want ot attack the wizard they either have to make a ranged attack at disadvantage or risk an opportunity attack to move to move away from the fighter.
The champion fighter gets little love on the forums, it is probably the weakest fighter sub class but the fighter class features are very solid so while not the strongest character you are still pretty useful in combat, but most of the dislike is because it IS uncomplicated, in combat you attack with your weapon each turn (twice when you reach level 5 and 3 times when you reach level 11) and do little else out of combat you are unlikely to be the best in the party to talk to people, investigate things etc so your role out of combat may be quite limited as well.
Race doesn't make a huge different for complexity mechanically variant humans and custom linege get a feat which can be fun but us another choice and depending on what feat you take might add to your decisions in game. The DM might make some races more complex to play than others, for example in a world where nearly everyone you meet will expect a goblin ot immediately attack them playing a goblin has certain challenges but you will need ot discuss that with the DM.
What is fun to play is up to you, many people will find champion fighter not fun to play because it is uncomplicated and very quickly gets boring.
As fighters do not choose their suclass to level 3 one option is to play a fighter and after you have played a couple of levels you will have a better idea as to whether you want the simplicity of champion or something with a bit more variety (I would recommend Samurai and Battle Master, or Arcane Archer, mounted combat can be confusing if you went cavalier, Eldritch knoight means you start dabbling with spells and handling an echo effectively is quite complicated, you could go purple dragon but it is a weak subcass and has a terrible reputation)
The other class which is not very complicated is barbarian. If you went that way I would suggest beast, totem warrior or Zealot all of which are comparable to Samurai, battle master and Arcane Archer in complexity.
Personally, the most fun and least complicated has been, by far, my Bear Totem Barbarian. Now my guy is a Halfling, due to letting a group member pick our race for fun at the beginning of the campaign, so his stats aren't optimized (though the new PC choices all would be, so ignore that bit) but he's ultra simple to play in combat, Rage, Attack (reckless if needed/wanted) continue to attack until enemies are all dead. Can grapple if needed, as well, with high Strength (and advantage from Raging) and outside combat is an able climber, decent stealth from high Dex for the unarmored defense.
Super simple, needs little special gear to be a worthwhile party member and is open to any kind of RP fun you want. Not much chance you're going to be the party face or investigation expert, but you could be an Urchin who knows how to pick locks too lol. I like playing him on nights when I am tired from a long week's work. No complex shenanigans to deal with in combat so I'm not a liability if my mind wanders a bit, a few physical roles in non-combat I get called for, makes for a relaxing session usually.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
My advice is one that you enjoy playing. It’s much easier to learn how to play a character that you love playing than it is to play one that is boring to you.
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