Worst class in the entire game.

[navar100]

The soulknife's sword isn't even as strong as what you could buy at your level

NPC classes really can't be considered, they aren't meant to be in the same balance as the PC classes.

Just google DnD Class Tiers and look for the ones at Tier 5.

No, no, no! Being in Tier 5 does not make a class bad, terrible, sucky, or whatever negative connotation you want to give. The Tier System is not a value judgement on the worth of a class.

What is the "worst" class is highly subjective to the individual. Despite the bad-mouthing it gets around here, I know of players who like the monk very much and have no issues with it whatsoever. My issues with the class is it's too MAD and can't get a decent AC for a warrior-type. It must have bracers of armor. A class that must, must have a specific magic item I find to be a glaring weakness. However, I don't find it the subjectively worst class in the game.

A class that is probably objectively terrible is the Truenamer. Its own rules on how it works fails to work. The major offender is the x2 multiplier in determining the Truename DC. Get rid of that, and the class becomes playable. Otherwise, to make it work you must, must have specific feats and must, must have specific magic items. Deviate from that specific build, your character fails to work.

Another class that fares little better is Samurai from Complete Warrior. Samurai is the Fighter class with a specific feat selection already decided and written up as a class. They would have been better off using Oriental Adventure's Samurai and polish off any setting specific flavor text.

Though not terrible, another class poorly done is Hexblade. They were trying to do an arcane version of the Paladin mechanics - a warrior with a limited amount of magic that's arcane instead of divine. The problem is they were paranoid about combining warrior and spellcasting prowess. They were still suffering from overvaluing making a melee attack and undervaluing casting a spell, which is the cause of the power gap between Wizard and Fighter. Hexblade works, but its abilities don't have a "wow!" factor. They learned their lesson and made a better warrior-spellcasting class in the Duskblade.

[VeisuItaTyhjyys]

That is your class. That's what you sign up for when you become a death delver. Jumping off of a cliff, getting resurrected, and discussing it.

Honestly, this class sounds better than some lit classes I've been in.

Whoah!

Whoooooaah!

Zzzzzziiing!

[The Trickster]

No, no, no! Being in Tier 5 does not make a class bad, terrible, sucky, or whatever negative connotation you want to give. The Tier System is not a value judgement on the worth of a class.

What is the "worst" class is highly subjective to the individual. Despite the bad-mouthing it gets around here, I know of players who like the monk very much and have no issues with it whatsoever. My issues with the class is it's too MAD and can't get a decent AC for a warrior-type. It must have bracers of armor. A class that must, must have a specific magic item I find to be a glaring weakness. However, I don't find it the subjectively worst class in the game.

Someone have argued that T1 classes are the "worse" because they have game breaking powers, which makes playing one unfair. The only thing I would argue (with that argument in mind) is that choosing to play a not-broken druid/cleric/whatever is easy: Don't pick broken stuff. Making othet classrs not suck may require a little work. That, to me, makes a class "bad".

[JaronK]

Set the game in a massive kingdom where Heironeous is the patron deity. The Shining Blades are the FBI of the kingdom, they are the ultimate authority when it comes to enforcing the law. The kingdom is also under constant threat by a species of acid monsters which happen to be very weak to electrical attack and arcane spellcasting is considered a heresy.

There you go, a setting where the SBoH are useful.

Doesn't work. A Paladin of Heironeous could do it better (every aspect, including having electrical attacks on his blades since at that level you can just have a +1 Shocking weapon). There's no reason for the enforces to be SBoHs.

Seriously, try to make any build for any setting where you're better off with SBoH than with just more levels of whatever class you used to enter the class. Even the setting you just named (whether you enter as a Cleric or as a Paladin, just staying in that class would have been better).

JaronK

[A_S]

Actually, those aren't strictly better than Commoners, who get special flaws (such as Chicken Infested) that can be quite useful.

No, the worst class ever is the Shining Blade of Heironieous. That PrC has absolutely no point. I actually did a challenge once: make any build that involves that class at all that's in any way better than the same build where you replaced the SBoH levels with levels of any other class in the build. The only build that could do it used just one level and made use of the Paladin's dead level.

Seriously, there's just no point to this class at all.

JaronK

I realize this was, like, two pages ago, but...

Commoner 1/Survivor 5/Ur-Priest 6/Shining Blade of Heironeous 8

BAM! It's absolutely terrible, but I'm pretty sure it can't be improved by taking more levels in its other classes...

I dunno why that post read like a challenge to me.

*edit* Oh, hey, it's topical again!

[Thebar99]

It's mostly due to things like DM screw (Nothing is immune to that) or people overestimating things.

Like melee SA range (not 30 feet, try 5)? Like the shadows you're not hiding in? LLV, hard counter? Like your damage? Considering you need a double hit and at least average damage for any chance at the dog, much less its handler? If you even get that far you've now blown your load in the dog and made it mad. Good job.

Auto detect abilities aren't even your biggest concern getting to try at all is.

[NotScaryBats]

I have played a Healer in a game before, and that class is extremely boring and binary to play as.

Everything you get from the class is reactionary (cure hp damage, remove conditions, no buffing). You don't get to wear medium+ armor, despite your divine casting because "Her ethos requires a certain vulnerability that allows her to more fully empathize with those in their care. A healer who uses prohibited armor is unable to cast healer spells or use any of her supernatural or spell-like class features while doing so and for 24 hours after the armor is taken off."

So, you can enjoy your simple weapons and attack, or wait around for an opportunity to heal someone. If you're in melee, you are a really easy target, and will have to use your healing on yourself. Yay.

Maybe not the worst class ever, but it has been pretty boring in my exp

[Turalisj]

Like melee SA range (not 30 feet, try 5)? Like the shadows you're not hiding in? LLV, hard counter? Like your damage? Considering you need a double hit and at least average damage for any chance at the dog, much less its handler? If you even get that far you've now blown your load in the dog and made it mad. Good job.

Auto detect abilities aren't even your biggest concern getting to try at all is.

I... what? Just. What? Are you even being serious now?

Sure, rogues suck compared to casters. EVERYONE sucks compared to casters. Auto-detecting abilities are easy to defeat- Darkstalker. Take it at first level, now blindsense, blindsight, scent, et al are useless against you.

[nobodez]

I have played a Healer in a game before, and that class is extremely boring and binary to play as.

Everything you get from the class is reactionary (cure hp damage, remove conditions, no buffing). You don't get to wear medium+ armor, despite your divine casting because "Her ethos requires a certain vulnerability that allows her to more fully empathize with those in their care. A healer who uses prohibited armor is unable to cast healer spells or use any of her supernatural or spell-like class features while doing so and for 24 hours after the armor is taken off."

So, you can enjoy your simple weapons and attack, or wait around for an opportunity to heal someone. If you're in melee, you are a really easy target, and will have to use your healing on yourself. Yay.

Maybe not the worst class ever, but it has been pretty boring in my exp

In late Living Greyhawk I played a Healer (realize that LG gave Healers the vigor spells as well as a few others from CD and SpC), and I was fraking awesome. Maxed charisma and used Augmented Healing (or whatever it is, it's been a few years since I played v.3.5) and even my 0-level spells healed the party up to nearly full (so it was at first and second level, so what, those are the levels where healing is important). Combined with the vigor spells, and it didn't matter that I only had simple weapons and stupid armor, people made sure I was alie because I kept them alive.

As for the earlier discussion about fighters and their mounts, well, I am reminded again about LG, and about how it was a joke that mounted fighters (if they weren't rocking dire bats) were riding "Buffet Nineteen" or some such. Heck, for the first few levels I spent my wealth on MW studded leather barding and riding dogs. Make sure you teach them the "combat riding" suite, and they make excellent extra fighters. Made the rogues happy and the DMs mad.

[Preaplanes]

I'm casting my vote for the Truenamer. Sheesh, class doesn't even function properly.

[Pickford]

I made a commoner build that is explicitly better at disarming than a monk at every level. I know it's just disarm...but still, it's better at it than the monk is.

Is this sarcasm? I don't understand what you're talking about.

My answer: Swanmay. You get to turn into a swan. Kind of awful.

The Emissary of Barachiel may be worse though, the big class feature is changing peoples alignments.

[Larkas]

Just dropped in to say this: you CAN'T apply Warbeast to a Warhorse or a Warpony or whatever. It is specifically called out in the template.

[Cirrylius]

I cannot be the only one who laughed at this for a solid 5 minutes (or longer)

At first I was all like LOL.

...but then I continued to LOL.

[TuggyNE]

Just dropped in to say this: you CAN'T apply Warbeast to a Warhorse or a Warpony or whatever. It is specifically called out in the template.

Thank you, I thought I'd heard that before, but couldn't be sure. (And I didn't want to assert something by common sense that might, after all, not actually be RAW.)

Anyway, that's probably enough of that little digression; Fighter is certainly not the worst class, in any case. (It's merely somewhat lousy.)

[KillingAScarab]

Oh yes. That Thing.

I remember reading about That Thing. I have rarely been as sad and amused at the same time

Ah, it's reputation precedes it. Unless you mean you're one of the seemingly rare people who got to look at the class itself? I can't say I have seen much else written about it.

I'll post a link in this thread when I'm finished attempting to fix the Mountebank, if anyone is interested.

I would be interested to see what you come up with. I would try to fix shadowsworn, but I need a better grasp of 3.5 class homebrewing.

[Emperor Tippy]

Truenamer isn't mechanically the weakest (free gate precludes that even if it requires twenty Truenamer levels to get said ability) but it is probably the worst class in the game.

[Sheogoroth]

Mariner from Dragonlance is the worst PC class.
You get an extremely minor bonus to balance and sailing checks every few levels and a d4 sneak attack that increases much slower than that of a rogue. They also get limited BAB and pitiful saves.

They updated it in errata giving it bonus feats and full BAB, but it's still pretty bad.

[JaronK]

I realize this was, like, two pages ago, but...

Commoner 1/Survivor 5/Ur-Priest 6/Shining Blade of Heironeous 8

BAM! It's absolutely terrible, but I'm pretty sure it can't be improved by taking more levels in its other classes...

I dunno why that post read like a challenge to me.

*edit* Oh, hey, it's topical again!

Points for creativity, but Ur Priests must be Evil and can't worship a living god, and Shining Blades must be Lawful Good and worship Heironeous. Otherwise that might almost work!

JaronK

[Bakeru]

Points for creativity, but Ur Priests must be Evil and can't worship a living god, and Shining Blades must be Lawful Good and worship Heironeous. Otherwise that might almost work!

JaronK

Obviously, the character had a change of heart, became good and started worshiping Heironeous! Which makes taking more levels in Ur-Priest not only bad, but impossible.

[Turalisj]

Points for creativity, but Ur Priests must be Evil and can't worship a living god, and Shining Blades must be Lawful Good and worship Heironeous. Otherwise that might almost work!

JaronK

Do you have to be evil even after you've multiclassed out? Because if not.....

[JaronK]

Do you have to be evil even after you've multiclassed out? Because if not.....

As usual for PrCs, if you did this you would lose the Ur Priest casting due to no longer qualifying for the PrC. This would now make you FAR weaker. The build would thus be far better replacing the Shining Blade levels with more Ur Priest and Commoner... or just a bunch of Commoner levels.

JaronK

[Bakeru]

As usual for PrCs, if you did this you would lose the Ur Priest casting due to no longer qualifying for the PrC. This would now make you FAR weaker. The build would thus be far better replacing the Shining Blade levels with more Ur Priest and Commoner... or just a bunch of Commoner levels.

JaronK

Obviously, the character first became good, thus loosing his Ur-Priest access and making the class useless.
Contrived role-play reasoning ftw!
My mistake, SBoH needs divine spellcasting. So, you can't jump from Ur-Priest to SBoH at all - you're either evil and can't become a SBoH, or you're good and can't cast divine spells as an Ur-Priest.

[GoatBoy]

The worst class in the game is the one you're playing when you get a run of bad luck.

The best class is whatever the other person is playing.

[Larkas]

Substitute Ur-Priest for Apostle of Peace or Divine Crusader, then? I don't remember if they have class abilities, though.

[Thebar99]

I... what? Just. What? Are you even being serious now?

Sure, rogues suck compared to casters. EVERYONE sucks compared to casters. Auto-detecting abilities are easy to defeat- Darkstalker. Take it at first level, now blindsense, blindsight, scent, et al are useless against you.

This is a prime example of what I mean.

So let's review. You are a low level Rogue. You're literally incapable of hitting anything as you can't possibly take Finesse until 3. You now no longer have TWF and its resulting second attack because you've taken this other thing instead that lets you attempt sneaking 10% of the time instead of 0.01%.

Meaning even if you somehow, miraculously sneak up on the dog you never, ever kill it.

Which is even worse than getting within 30 or 15 feet (neither of which are melee range, then getting detected before actually launching your two attacks which would both miss anyways) which is the absolute best case scenario otherwise. And that's the problem. Your absolute best case scenarios are average at best and usually just bad. It isn't just because stealth rules are terrible either.

[Bakeru]

This is a prime example of what I mean.

So let's review. You are a low level Rogue. You're literally incapable of hitting anything as you can't possibly take Finesse until 3. You now no longer have TWF and its resulting second attack because you've taken this other thing instead that lets you attempt sneaking 10% of the time instead of 0.01%.

Meaning even if you somehow, miraculously sneak up on the dog you never, ever kill it.

Which is even worse than getting within 30 or 15 feet (neither of which are melee range, then getting detected before actually launching your two attacks which would both miss anyways) which is the absolute best case scenario otherwise. And that's the problem. Your absolute best case scenarios are average at best and usually just bad. It isn't just because stealth rules are terrible either.

That's why low-level rogues use shortbows. 1d6 regular damage (+1d6 sneak attack, because you don't have to be melee, only within 30 ft.), using dex instead of str on attack rolls.

Dogs have a flat-fooded SC of 12, and if you don't have at least 16 dex, you don't deserve to be a rogue, so you're probably going to hit that. 1d6+1d6 happens to average out at 6, which is exactly the HP a dog has.

Also, with 16 dex and 4 ranks in hide and move silently, you have at least +7 on move silently and hide. Add in circumstance modifiers (distance, mostly: You're about 30ft away when you make your last check, and the dog gets -1 per 10 ft, so it's effectively another +3 for you), and you have a good chance of sneaking up on the dog with its +5 on listen and spot.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Doesn't work. A Paladin of Heironeous could do it better (every aspect, including having electrical attacks on his blades since at that level you can just have a +1 Shocking weapon). There's no reason for the enforces to be SBoHs.

Seriously, try to make any build for any setting where you're better off with SBoH than with just more levels of whatever class you used to enter the class. Even the setting you just named (whether you enter as a Cleric or as a Paladin, just staying in that class would have been better).

JaronK

I assumed his acid monsters had weapon destroying abilities, making the SBoH's imbue ability better than carrying a shocking weapon. Cleric/Paladin is still better with Weapon of the Diety which gives them a shocking weapon on command. As a spell it can be made a swift action trivially an ability that SBoH never gets.

[ArcturusV]

I actually don't use Shortbows on my Rogues (Heresy, I know!). I use thrown weapons instead. So you still do it with two weapons. So my Javelin Chuck for example would be 1d6+1d6+1d6+1d6. For an average damage of 14 + Strength Mod Doubled.

Which is enough to drop the dog, or most any opponent I'm facing at level 1. If need be I take out my dagger and stab them in the throat (for another 1d4+1d6+Strength Mod) while they are bleeding out, just to make certain that they actually stay dead.

Rogue does have some issues though. My big one being "Does not do what it says on the Tin". Trapper/Face+Stealth+DPS. The Face thing is easy enough that anyone who invests even moderately in it with whatever leftover they have in their builds can excel at it. The trap DCs are kinda set to the point where they're a pain in the ass at low level, then so trivial it doesn't matter so much at high levels, anyone could do it other than needing your "Trapfinding" ability to locate magical traps... except Detect Magic... Stealth is... okay. But usually foiled by the fact that you're stuck with decidedly non-stealthy people, and is far more vulnerable to DM Fiat Powers in my experience than anything else. Yes, even Illusions. And the DPS role only applies to them at very few points, mostly low levels. Eventually everyone else passes them up and does so without pesky requirements like Flanking or Flat-Footed.

But I wouldn't consider it the worst. Though something I would consider the worst would definitely have to have that "Does not do what is says on the Tin" issue. Thus why Monk is up there for me. Just nothing about it works the way the class is supposed to ideally work as.

Some of the Undead Monster Classes in Libris Mortis might count. While it does at least do what it says in regards to "Lets you play an undead that would have LA from level 1"... just... Ug. Missing hitdice. No feats (Only gain limited "Racial Bonus" sort of feats you'd get from the Template). Very limited skill points. Trapped progressing as that until you finish. Having more levels you have to take than the LA of what you are so that you're ultimately weaker than you would have otherwise been.

Ghoul... +4 LA (+2 for the Template in Libris Mortis though). But 8 level Monster Progression. So a template Ghoul would have the same number of Hitdice at level 8 (Or more if you used the template in Libris Mortis), but have class features, will have +2 feats (+3 for the Libris Mortis Template), will have all the powers of the Monster Class Progression, and still can level up more before hitting Epic than the Monster Class. AND because they got more feats (And more Skills), will qualify for PrCs you might want to take about a good 4 levels faster.

[Turalisj]

This is a prime example of what I mean.

So let's review. You are a low level Rogue. You're literally incapable of hitting anything as you can't possibly take Finesse until 3. You now no longer have TWF and its resulting second attack because you've taken this other thing instead that lets you attempt sneaking 10% of the time instead of 0.01%.

Meaning even if you somehow, miraculously sneak up on the dog you never, ever kill it.

Which is even worse than getting within 30 or 15 feet (neither of which are melee range, then getting detected before actually launching your two attacks which would both miss anyways) which is the absolute best case scenario otherwise. And that's the problem. Your absolute best case scenarios are average at best and usually just bad. It isn't just because stealth rules are terrible either.

I'm just going to assume you've never actually played a rogue, or you had a horribad DM when you did, and move on.

[Thebar99]

That's why low-level rogues use shortbows. 1d6 regular damage (+1d6 sneak attack, because you don't have to be melee, only within 30 ft.), using dex instead of str on attack rolls.

Nope again. He said 2d6 twice. In order to attack twice that means TWF... which he can only do in melee, and only if he doesn't take Darkstalker. If he only attacks once, he never OHKOs.

Remember, we are discussing a guard dog here.

The following is not a guard dog:

"The statistics presented here describe a fairly small dog of about 20 to 50 pounds in weight."

The following is a guard dog:

"This category includes working breeds such as collies, huskies, and St. Bernards."

Note that 13 HP is never OHKOed by 12 damage, you need 2 attacks (that won't hit, lol -2 to hit vs 19 AC) for any chance at all.

One attack at +3 that will never OHKO isn't really an improvement though.

You can see how bad Rogues are by seeing how their supporters ignore the rules and subconsciously nerf their foes to be as bad as they are. Because illustrating how Rogues struggle to take out a guard chihuahua makes your point I guess?

Let's flip this around. Take a Commoner. Have them use 50-95% of their wealth on combat gear. You won't get a good combatant, but they will hit on something other than a 20, they will kill stuff in under 2 minutes.

Commoners have no combat ability whatsoever. They are not supposed to be good at anything except dying horribly and opening the odd Karrnath Fried Chicken store. And yet, despite that they are still able to do better at combat than a PC class - a class that is actually supposed to be good, does at lockpicking - a thing they are actually supposed to be good at. The Commoner is also likely a better combatant than the Rogue is a stealther... which is to say still bad, but fails less often.

A Commoner plays against type better than a Rogue plays for type.

If that isn't a sign it's the worst class in the entire game, I dunno what is.