Wild magic sorcerer, its a class who's defining feature is whacky funny quirky fluff effects! I know its still a full caster and people will say beast master ranger is worse or something but just from a "what does this sub class add in terms of mechanics and gameplay to my base class" the wild magic sorcerer is a straight F, the mechanics are irregular, slow the game down, most of the time have little impact out of "how bizzare!!" and sometimes have penalties (who doesn't love the self drop fireball!) and oh so rarely give an actual meaningful impact.
It's quirky and zainy but I dunno.. you could do that anyway without the sub class.. Like for instance look at the changing your spells effects thing from tashas you could make your own table to roll on that gives you 100 animals and when you cast an offensive spell it has some characteristic of that rolled animal. Cast fireball and roll cow!! A flame charges from your hand looking like a bull reaching your designated point before exploding it lets out a deafening moo!! Wow how WiLd AnD cHaOtIc! There just as effective as most the crap on the table but now you can play a sub with real effects :)
Look at the wild magic barbarian I don't see any you swing your axe and Whoop you get feathers on your arms isn't that wHacKy? HaHaHa.. than you sneeze! omg! haaaa so good.. (really hate the class can't you tell?)
I'm gonna go with Arcane Archer for my pick. Look it may not really be the worst overall, but to me it's such a failed premise.
Even if you're wanting to play an archer character, Battlemaster beats it in almost every circumstance, with the few exceptions basically requiring either you having cursed dice to make curved shot a regular necessity, or the DM building the encounter to make you useful "Oh look, these weak enemies have all gotten themselves into a very convenient line".
I just feel like the "arcane archer" a cool name that is famous enough I even knew of it before coming to play D&D should be a class people who want to play archers should want to play, not a 2 shot chump that isn't as good as a classic archer trick of "shoot something out of the hand" as another class is.
FWiW, I love my Wild Magic Sorcerer/Feylock PC...its my favorite character ive ever made. It helps to have a DM with a creative outlook on the possible effects. I can see the dislike of Wild Magic from a desire for control, but it opens up a LOT of potential roleplay, both in how the magic interacts with the Party and how it changes my PC...
I don't think people's issues are about control or lack of roleplay. It's that there's a 12% chance that you do something actively detrimental to your teammates. All it takes is one party-centered Fireball or Confusion at the wrong moment to kill the whole party. That might feel like a fitting demise for the wild magic sorcerer, but the other players are just going to feel like they all died for your character concept. It just doesn't sit well with most people.
I'm seeing a lot of dismissal of monks as a whole. If you think monk is designed poorly, you probably haven't played with one. When you take the time to do the math, Martial Arts stacks up just fine against the melee damage of other classes. I do wish they had a bit more to do outside of combat, especially at lower levels. But I feel that way about fighters and barbarians too.
I would have to say its the battlerager barbarian for sure. Your whole subclass revolves around wearing armor which defeats the purpose of several of the abilities of the base class as well as doing incredibly minor additional damage.
I'm seeing a lot of dismissal of monks as a whole. If you think monk is designed poorly, you probably haven't played with one. When you take the time to do the math, Martial Arts stacks up just fine against the melee damage of other classes. I do wish they had a bit more to do outside of combat, especially at lower levels. But I feel that way about fighters and barbarians too.
I think the problem might have to do with what tier of play you look at. In tier 1, a two weapon battle master has similar damage, better control, and better durability than a monk. Fighters remain ahead on raw damage output indefinitely, but the monk pulls ahead on control once they have stunning strike, and cumulative defensive abilities (deflect missiles, evasion, stillness of mind, purity of body, diamond soul, empty body) probably evens out the lower hit dice and no second wind by level ten or so.
FWiW, I love my Wild Magic Sorcerer/Feylock PC...its my favorite character ive ever made. It helps to have a DM with a creative outlook on the possible effects. I can see the dislike of Wild Magic from a desire for control, but it opens up a LOT of potential roleplay, both in how the magic interacts with the Party and how it changes my PC...
I don't think people's issues are about control or lack of roleplay. It's that there's a 12% chance that you do something actively detrimental to your teammates. All it takes is one party-centered Fireball or Confusion at the wrong moment to kill the whole party. That might feel like a fitting demise for the wild magic sorcerer, but the other players are just going to feel like they all died for your character concept. It just doesn't sit well with most people.
Hrm... I thought that's what they meant by "lack of control," but whatever. Still, in my experience, most groups are actually cool with Wild Magic sorcerers, so I wouldn't say "doesn't sit well with most people." It sucks with a fireball drops, and kills the group, but I've personally found that most everyone else I've dealt with is fine with just about every other result, even the bad ones.
The fireball sucks, but one out of a bunch is pretty decent odds that I think most are comfy with it, imho, to last until the point the group can survive if it does happen.
I think parties that have a problem with being blown up by a wild sorcerer wouldn't let someone play one in the first place. The wild magic sorcerer would be a lot more acceptable if you removed its friendly fire effects (7-8, 13-14, 19-20, 73-74, 83-84, 95-96).
Four Elements may not be the worst (but very close) but it is the most disappointing to me. I wanted it to be a cool Avatar like elemental bender subclass, but it falls WAY short of that.
The problem with the wild mage is not necessarily the few times that you accidentally fireball yourself and the rest of the party, it's that more than half the time your primary subclass ability either does nothing or debuffs you. It'd be like if a fighter subclass had a 5% chance of inflicting disadvantage on its own attacks each round.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Rolling on the Wild Magic table isn't the primary subclass ability. Its Tides of Chaos. You cast spells so you can trigger the Table and refresh your Tides ability and spam it. Its why the Feywild Shard is so, so good for Wild Magic users. You effectively have control over when Tides is refreshed.
Rolling on the Wild Magic table isn't the primary subclass ability.
Rolling on the Wild Magic table is the main thing that will be obvious at the table. Tides of Chaos is basically equivalent to "Wild Magic is a Flaw that you gain Inspiration from".
Rolling on the Wild Magic table isn't the primary subclass ability. Its Tides of Chaos. You cast spells so you can trigger the Table and refresh your Tides ability and spam it. Its why the Feywild Shard is so, so good for Wild Magic users. You effectively have control over when Tides is refreshed.
Feywild Shard refreshing tides of chaos is up to the hands of the DM
"Any time before you regain the use of this feature, the DM can have you roll on the Wild Magic Surge table immediately after you cast a sorcerer spell of 1st level or higher. You then regain the use of this feature."
It doesn't say anytime there is a roll on the Wild Magic Surge table you get it back (as in if you roll a 1 when casting a spell) just that the DM CAN have you roll on the chart directly after you've used Tides.
Feywild Shard:
When you use a Metamagic option on a spell while you are holding or wearing the shard, you can roll on the Wild Magic Surge table in the Player's Handbook. If the result is a spell, it is too wild to be affected by your Metamagic, and if it normally requires concentration, it doesn't require concentration in this case; the spell lasts for its full duration.
Again says nothing about you getting Tides back for using it. Some DMs might allow it anytime you roll on the Surge table and many other DMs may only allow Tides to come back when they specifically ask you to roll on the chart after using it. Which honestly is RAW
I'm gonna go with Arcane Archer for my pick. Look it may not really be the worst overall, but to me it's such a failed premise.
Even if you're wanting to play an archer character, Battlemaster beats it in almost every circumstance, with the few exceptions basically requiring either you having cursed dice to make curved shot a regular necessity, or the DM building the encounter to make you useful "Oh look, these weak enemies have all gotten themselves into a very convenient line".
I just feel like the "arcane archer" a cool name that is famous enough I even knew of it before coming to play D&D should be a class people who want to play archers should want to play, not a 2 shot chump that isn't as good as a classic archer trick of "shoot something out of the hand" as another class is.
I think this is my pick as well. Tasha's helped the Four Elements monk (with ki empowered strikes helping to add more damage per round) and Ranger (with new abilities and a rework of part of Beast Master). Tasha's also gave the Battlemaster more maneuvers making them even more powerful compared to the Arcane Archer. I feel like if the magic shot options just had a number of uses that scale with proficiency bonus per short rest, it might not be a perfect fix but it would be easily managable and go a long way. I also wish that the magic shot options had something extra for critical hits, like, "if the attack made was a critical hit, the target creature has disadvantage on its saving throw against X magic effect" or something like that.
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Technically, the relevant text is that stunning strike applies on hitting with a "melee weapon attack" which all unarmed strikes count as. They are not melee weapons, but they do make melee weapon attacks.
So, yes, I agree they work for sure, but for different reasoning
Edit: I also dont see the relevance of the comment which necro'd this thread. Why bring up stunning strike (a general class feature) in a thread about subclass comparison?
All the other subclasses mentioned here are underpowered compared to other subclasses. However, the battlerager goes further than that by tying your subclasses abilities to wearing bad equipment and granting you features that you can often easily get elsewhere.
You have to be wearing spiked armor and raging in order to get your 3rd level feature. All this third level feature does is let you do a 1d4 damage (+ strength modifier) attack as a bonus action. Which the polearm master feat already lets you do.
When you make a grapple attack it also lets you do 3 damage on a success. But this damage doesn't scale.
At 6th level when raging and after using reckless attack you get temporary hitpoints equal to your constitution modifier. This might have been good when it came out in 2015 but it's been overshadowed by a lot of temporary hitpoint boosting abilities since. They also go away when your rage ends.
At 10th level you can dash as a bonus action when you are raging. But that runs into conflict with the use of your 3rd level bonus action attack.
Finally, at 14th level, a creature that hits you with a melee attack within 5 feet, while you are wearing spike armor, and raging, and are not incapacitated, takes 3 piercing damage. Which for the monsters by that point is nothing.
You have to choose to wear armor that might not even be as good as your unarmored defence in order to use most of these abilities too.
The path of the berserker, by comparison, at least gets some decent features at level 6 and 14.
So, I don't think this is the worst subclass in the game, but I want to talk about Assassin because it feels like such a trap of a Subclass. The 3rd level features are all pretty good... Assassinate is kind of tricky to work with... the idea of an auto-critical against a surprised enemy is great if you're sneaking ahead on your own and need to eliminate a lone guard or something, but once you're traveling with a group all it takes is one person in the party to roll low on a Stealth check to just turn that ability off... and that's assuming that you know enemies are near by, have the opportunity to sneak up on them, and they aren't already alert for any other reason. Still, even if you rarely get your auto-critical, advantage out the gate in a weapon attack is very helpful.
Then you get to the Assassin's 9th and 13th level abilities, and they just suck. You can spend 7 days and 25 gp to set up a false idenity? Or you could just use the disguise kit proficiency you already had and take expertise in deception... boom, you just saved yourself 25 bucks and a week of your time. The 13th level Impostor ability is just a worse version of the Actor feat. In a game with a heavy, heavy focus on espionage these abilities could be useful, but for 99% of any game you play you'll only get to use these abilities if your DM really goes out of their way to set you up for them like you're playing tee-ball.
The 17th level ability is potentially pretty cool, but again, it relies entirely on being able to surprise your targets. Maybe it's just the groups I play with and the actual-play shows I watch, but it's incredibly rare for PCs to manage to Surprise their enemies on a consistent basis.
On the plus side, you're still a Rogue, which is one of the classes in the game where, even if you somehow didn't get any subclass features, would still stack up pretty well against most other classes. Assassin just rubs me the wrong way because it's not simply bad mechanically, but bad in a weird, complicated way that isn't obvious at first and which a lot of players are drawn to simply because of the name of the subclass.
I can't decide if the Berserker or the Purple Dragon Banneret is my pick. I don't understand the need for exhaustion just to get one extra attack. A high level psi warrior fighter gets five attacks using their telekinesis and they don't get exhausted from using their abilities. The Purple Dragon Banneret doesn't make any sense. Sure sharing fighter special abilities is cool but why not double the number of each one? Get the Sentinal feat and Mobile Feats for free?
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Wild magic sorcerer, its a class who's defining feature is whacky funny quirky fluff effects! I know its still a full caster and people will say beast master ranger is worse or something but just from a "what does this sub class add in terms of mechanics and gameplay to my base class" the wild magic sorcerer is a straight F, the mechanics are irregular, slow the game down, most of the time have little impact out of "how bizzare!!" and sometimes have penalties (who doesn't love the self drop fireball!) and oh so rarely give an actual meaningful impact.
It's quirky and zainy but I dunno.. you could do that anyway without the sub class.. Like for instance look at the changing your spells effects thing from tashas you could make your own table to roll on that gives you 100 animals and when you cast an offensive spell it has some characteristic of that rolled animal. Cast fireball and roll cow!! A flame charges from your hand looking like a bull reaching your designated point before exploding it lets out a deafening moo!! Wow how WiLd AnD cHaOtIc! There just as effective as most the crap on the table but now you can play a sub with real effects :)
Look at the wild magic barbarian I don't see any you swing your axe and Whoop you get feathers on your arms isn't that wHacKy? HaHaHa.. than you sneeze! omg! haaaa so good.. (really hate the class can't you tell?)
It would have to be the sub-class (idk any)
I'm gonna go with Arcane Archer for my pick.
Look it may not really be the worst overall, but to me it's such a failed premise.
Even if you're wanting to play an archer character, Battlemaster beats it in almost every circumstance, with the few exceptions basically requiring either you having cursed dice to make curved shot a regular necessity, or the DM building the encounter to make you useful "Oh look, these weak enemies have all gotten themselves into a very convenient line".
I just feel like the "arcane archer" a cool name that is famous enough I even knew of it before coming to play D&D should be a class people who want to play archers should want to play, not a 2 shot chump that isn't as good as a classic archer trick of "shoot something out of the hand" as another class is.
I don't think people's issues are about control or lack of roleplay. It's that there's a 12% chance that you do something actively detrimental to your teammates. All it takes is one party-centered Fireball or Confusion at the wrong moment to kill the whole party. That might feel like a fitting demise for the wild magic sorcerer, but the other players are just going to feel like they all died for your character concept. It just doesn't sit well with most people.
I'm seeing a lot of dismissal of monks as a whole. If you think monk is designed poorly, you probably haven't played with one. When you take the time to do the math, Martial Arts stacks up just fine against the melee damage of other classes. I do wish they had a bit more to do outside of combat, especially at lower levels. But I feel that way about fighters and barbarians too.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I would have to say its the battlerager barbarian for sure. Your whole subclass revolves around wearing armor which defeats the purpose of several of the abilities of the base class as well as doing incredibly minor additional damage.
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I think the problem might have to do with what tier of play you look at. In tier 1, a two weapon battle master has similar damage, better control, and better durability than a monk. Fighters remain ahead on raw damage output indefinitely, but the monk pulls ahead on control once they have stunning strike, and cumulative defensive abilities (deflect missiles, evasion, stillness of mind, purity of body, diamond soul, empty body) probably evens out the lower hit dice and no second wind by level ten or so.
Hrm... I thought that's what they meant by "lack of control," but whatever. Still, in my experience, most groups are actually cool with Wild Magic sorcerers, so I wouldn't say "doesn't sit well with most people." It sucks with a fireball drops, and kills the group, but I've personally found that most everyone else I've dealt with is fine with just about every other result, even the bad ones.
The fireball sucks, but one out of a bunch is pretty decent odds that I think most are comfy with it, imho, to last until the point the group can survive if it does happen.
I think parties that have a problem with being blown up by a wild sorcerer wouldn't let someone play one in the first place. The wild magic sorcerer would be a lot more acceptable if you removed its friendly fire effects (7-8, 13-14, 19-20, 73-74, 83-84, 95-96).
Four Elements may not be the worst (but very close) but it is the most disappointing to me. I wanted it to be a cool Avatar like elemental bender subclass, but it falls WAY short of that.
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The problem with the wild mage is not necessarily the few times that you accidentally fireball yourself and the rest of the party, it's that more than half the time your primary subclass ability either does nothing or debuffs you. It'd be like if a fighter subclass had a 5% chance of inflicting disadvantage on its own attacks each round.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Rolling on the Wild Magic table isn't the primary subclass ability. Its Tides of Chaos. You cast spells so you can trigger the Table and refresh your Tides ability and spam it. Its why the Feywild Shard is so, so good for Wild Magic users. You effectively have control over when Tides is refreshed.
Rolling on the Wild Magic table is the main thing that will be obvious at the table. Tides of Chaos is basically equivalent to "Wild Magic is a Flaw that you gain Inspiration from".
Feywild Shard refreshing tides of chaos is up to the hands of the DM
"Any time before you regain the use of this feature, the DM can have you roll on the Wild Magic Surge table immediately after you cast a sorcerer spell of 1st level or higher. You then regain the use of this feature."
It doesn't say anytime there is a roll on the Wild Magic Surge table you get it back (as in if you roll a 1 when casting a spell) just that the DM CAN have you roll on the chart directly after you've used Tides.
Feywild Shard:
When you use a Metamagic option on a spell while you are holding or wearing the shard, you can roll on the Wild Magic Surge table in the Player's Handbook. If the result is a spell, it is too wild to be affected by your Metamagic, and if it normally requires concentration, it doesn't require concentration in this case; the spell lasts for its full duration.
Again says nothing about you getting Tides back for using it. Some DMs might allow it anytime you roll on the Surge table and many other DMs may only allow Tides to come back when they specifically ask you to roll on the chart after using it. Which honestly is RAW
I think this is my pick as well. Tasha's helped the Four Elements monk (with ki empowered strikes helping to add more damage per round) and Ranger (with new abilities and a rework of part of Beast Master). Tasha's also gave the Battlemaster more maneuvers making them even more powerful compared to the Arcane Archer. I feel like if the magic shot options just had a number of uses that scale with proficiency bonus per short rest, it might not be a perfect fix but it would be easily managable and go a long way. I also wish that the magic shot options had something extra for critical hits, like, "if the attack made was a critical hit, the target creature has disadvantage on its saving throw against X magic effect" or something like that.
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Stunning strike is the worst ability in D&D because it specifies a weapon attack. Monks nearly always use their fists.
Unarmed strikes count as a monk weapon.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Technically, the relevant text is that stunning strike applies on hitting with a "melee weapon attack" which all unarmed strikes count as. They are not melee weapons, but they do make melee weapon attacks.
So, yes, I agree they work for sure, but for different reasoning
Edit: I also dont see the relevance of the comment which necro'd this thread. Why bring up stunning strike (a general class feature) in a thread about subclass comparison?
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It's the battlerager barbarian.
All the other subclasses mentioned here are underpowered compared to other subclasses. However, the battlerager goes further than that by tying your subclasses abilities to wearing bad equipment and granting you features that you can often easily get elsewhere.
You have to choose to wear armor that might not even be as good as your unarmored defence in order to use most of these abilities too.
The path of the berserker, by comparison, at least gets some decent features at level 6 and 14.
So, I don't think this is the worst subclass in the game, but I want to talk about Assassin because it feels like such a trap of a Subclass. The 3rd level features are all pretty good... Assassinate is kind of tricky to work with... the idea of an auto-critical against a surprised enemy is great if you're sneaking ahead on your own and need to eliminate a lone guard or something, but once you're traveling with a group all it takes is one person in the party to roll low on a Stealth check to just turn that ability off... and that's assuming that you know enemies are near by, have the opportunity to sneak up on them, and they aren't already alert for any other reason. Still, even if you rarely get your auto-critical, advantage out the gate in a weapon attack is very helpful.
Then you get to the Assassin's 9th and 13th level abilities, and they just suck. You can spend 7 days and 25 gp to set up a false idenity? Or you could just use the disguise kit proficiency you already had and take expertise in deception... boom, you just saved yourself 25 bucks and a week of your time. The 13th level Impostor ability is just a worse version of the Actor feat. In a game with a heavy, heavy focus on espionage these abilities could be useful, but for 99% of any game you play you'll only get to use these abilities if your DM really goes out of their way to set you up for them like you're playing tee-ball.
The 17th level ability is potentially pretty cool, but again, it relies entirely on being able to surprise your targets. Maybe it's just the groups I play with and the actual-play shows I watch, but it's incredibly rare for PCs to manage to Surprise their enemies on a consistent basis.
On the plus side, you're still a Rogue, which is one of the classes in the game where, even if you somehow didn't get any subclass features, would still stack up pretty well against most other classes. Assassin just rubs me the wrong way because it's not simply bad mechanically, but bad in a weird, complicated way that isn't obvious at first and which a lot of players are drawn to simply because of the name of the subclass.
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I can't decide if the Berserker or the Purple Dragon Banneret is my pick. I don't understand the need for exhaustion just to get one extra attack. A high level psi warrior fighter gets five attacks using their telekinesis and they don't get exhausted from using their abilities. The Purple Dragon Banneret doesn't make any sense. Sure sharing fighter special abilities is cool but why not double the number of each one? Get the Sentinal feat and Mobile Feats for free?