Classes We Have Used

Came across an interesting thread on EN World: Classes nobody wants to play.

The thread doesn't reveal a lot in general, except that different groups have different preferences and habits - though it's shocking to see multiple people claiming no one wants to play a wizard (or bard or druid.) But it got me thinking. We've had time to play a bunch of characters - 2 groups to 5th level, a couple others to 4th (or 3rd anyway) - even some one off groups to 2nd or 3rd - so we've got a decent sample size. And while we have our own idiosyncrasies in what we play, we've tried a pretty wide variety in 5E - so I thought I might see what I can learn from it.

(There is also this: we did this in ADD - made up tons of characters, played a fair number of them up; 3E we made up plenty of characters but didn't really play them. 4E - we might have made characters, but we ended up playing the same handful all the way through - none of us played more than 3 or 4 characters to any level (except David and Thomas, at the beginning.) Something about 5E - and those earlier editions - seems to make you want to make up characters, and play them...)

Anyway: a very unscientific survey of classes and what we've played.

• Barbarians
Inky
Magyar (goliath I played once...)
(Were there others? Was BPC a Barbarian?)
- I am actually rather surprised how few we've played. Though Inky tends to make a big impression, so it feels like we've done more. They feel very strong, at least at low levels - able to soak up damage like nobody's business. But for some reason, we haven't made a lot of them up. We never did, really - but given how tough they are at low levels, it's a bit surprising.

• Bards
Nancy
Chet
Dallas
Buster
- We have run out some of these. I have, and David. I like bards: I'll come back to them when I talk about other classes, I think - but they are extraordinarily versatile. They can mix it up (Nancy was the brawler in the sneak-into-the-village thing we played); they can cast, and cast either offensively or support; they heal - they boost the party. We haven't always gotten to play the full personality possibilities of them, but there is that as well. They are very good, and I think they make other classes seem redundant.

• Clerics:
Claire
(Misty)
Luth
Opus
Geldon
- This is interesting. we started out with clerics, the way we always do - but lately, we've kind of stopped using them. You have to have someone back there to heal - but having discovered the joys of druids and bards, we've tended to drop clerics for them. Claire and Luth are almost characters we’re stuck with - if I hadn’t been playing and running, I would have made Claire into Nancy, I think - and I noticed the last time David needed a healer he made a bard (Buster). Bards and druids are more fun. On the other hand, there is Geldon - who is a real, memorable character - almost unheard of with clerics. Oliver did it by virtue of always being there - and Eugene did some of it by being evil - and Geldon manages it, entirely by the way Ryan plays him. At this point, I would imagine unless someone had a strong character concept for a cleric, we would almost always go with bards or druids, or even a paladin or ranger, over a cleric...

• Druids:
Boedicca
Dzurkha (played with Wendell and Holmes)
- Playing 2 druids past 3rd level is 2 more druids than we have played, period, in 35 years. Once you saw Boedicca in action, why would you want to play a cleric again? I admit, I don't know how this is likely to work out once they start shape-shifting and all that - because I don't know how that works, yet. But odds are, it just makes them that much more interesting.

• Fighter:
Bono
Angus
Queequeg
Wendell & Holmes (All right - Carvallon and Arness, however they are spelled)
Tuffy
Ildebrun
- We have certainly taken to our fighters. We've played a mob of them. They are the staple, of course - but they are worth it in this version. And though a couple other fighter types have made an impression (Inky and Violet), we haven't done a lot of that - we've defaulted to fighter and not regretted it. Here's the real thing: for one of the default classes - all those fighters we have are as well distinguished from each other as any kind of class has been. Bono is a two handed tactician; Angus is a brute; Quequeg is an eldritch knight; Tuffy's a straightforward two handed champion - almost a 4E dual wielding ranger build; Ildebrun is a straightforward enough brawler, but with interesting racial abilities; and David's eladrin are a two weapon fighter and a two handed fighter. They are all distinct, in their personalities, as far as we've played them - but tactically, as well - which is what fighters do. It's the class that, so far, has produced the widest range of styles and flavors - that's a fascinating development in itself. We didn't do that with fighters in the past - we've always favored rangers and paladins, and let fighters be simple sword and board men - they got something right here.

• Monk:
Ichi
(Someone else might have made one up, though I don’t remember.)
- Another class we never played much in the past. Some experimenting in 5E, not much more. We haven't done much here - might depend a bit on how things start developing, or if someone else tries one too. Ichi is promising (especially when I start getting his kensei powers) - we'll see.

• Paladins:
Atilla (in two versions)
Edge (briefly)
- Another one we haven't done a lot with, though they are fine as a class. Attila got a lot more interesting when I remade him into a goliath - Edge didn't really get time to develop. They are all right, though they don't really feel like paladins until second level.

• Thieves:
Bill
- This is the strangest thing. I might be forgetting someone, but I think Bill is the only thief we have played so far. We leaned on thieves heavily in 4E - Perry was one of the major characters there (the definitive 4, really: Oliver, Hank and Perry, and Theresa - Vjarne, Fighting Eagle, etc., came and went too much to be definitive like that). We loaded up on thieves, especially hybrid thieves - Nancy, Dermind, one or two of Jim’s hybrids, all had some thief in them. But in 5E, we have not used them at all - other than Bill, who is definitely second fiddle to Inky. I don’t know if this is the kind of dungeon we’ve played - as accident of wanting to try out other classes - or something else. But it is notable.

• Rangers:
Violet
(and BPC maybe?)
- Violet is a fine character - 5E version of Theresa, basically, with most of the same virtues. But she's the only one we've played (I think) - odd. We loved rangers in 1E (Geronimo being, you know, The Man, after all) - I loved them in 4E, to distraction. So why aren't we playing them now? I can see some reasons: the big one is that the reason for playing a ranger has been usurped a bit by both fighters and bards. Bards get the finesse fighting and spell casting and do it better than rangers; fighters let you specialize in archery or two handed fighting, and you get all those neat options fighters give you. There’s not a lot of evidence that a ranger would be better than either of those. It's hard to give up the spells of a bard or the options of a fighter to play a ranger.

• Sorcerers:
- I don’t think we have played a single sorcerer yet - not for more than a one off here or there. They may come eventually - they are like they have always been - they should be all right. But so far - again, they are hard to justify against a bard. They get more offense in their spells - but bards cast the same way,they can heal, and they are much better fighters - why not play a bard? Bards have replaced a lot of classes.

• Warlocks:
- Another one we haven't used, or have used very sparingly. (I vaguely remember trying one - maybe...) They seem like a lot of work, and it's hard to justify picking them over the other spell caster options.

• Wizards
Milo
Alexis
Spencer
Fred
- Wizards are very solid in this version. You get all the spells (though you have to make choices - but you can change your choices). They can blast, buff, control - they are good at it. I'm not sure they are all that exciting - at low levels, as usual, they are kind of afterthoughts - but once you get second level spells - and especially third - they start to be indispensable. Less personality maybe than they could have - but they are just way more useful. For what they do, they are still better at it than Bards (which I would not say for any other spell casters except druids.)

So there it is: what we play and what we don't play. We play lots of fighters, in a lot of different styles - we use wizards like we always have - we have used bards regularly - we had clerics, but have shifted toward druids and bards lately - and we've had a handful of memorable rangers, barbarians and so on, but not a lot of those characters. We have avoided sorcerers and warlocks completely - and have almost shockingly not run thieves.