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25 Years Ago I Posted My Wish List For D&D. How’s it Going?

At Gen Con in 1999 Wizards of the Coast revealed plans for a third edition of Dungeons & Dragons, scheduled for release in 2000. The upcoming release would preserve the “essential look and feel” of D&D while introducing intuitive changes like a unified d20 mechanic where high rolls meant success. Free t-shirts teased the upcoming changes.

During that 1999 announcement, I thought back to 1989 and how AD&D’s second edition rules addressed few of the game’s weaknesses. I remembered the disappointment that I had felt. I wrote, “Second edition had some virtues: It consolidated and organized the rules; it featured leaner, more readable writing; and it dumped some of the clumsier bits like giving distances in inches and dividing rounds into segments. But mostly the second edition just repackaged the hodgepodge of rules accumulated since the first edition. Almost all the game’s inconsistencies and clunky bits remained.”

Since 1974, the roleplaying games that followed D&D featured countless innovations that improved play, so in 1989, D&D’s rules looked as dated as a Model T. The 1999 announcement previewed something different: a third edition that redesigned the game from its foundation. That promise fired my excitement. I posted a wish list of the changes to D&D that I hoped to see. Now 25 years later, how many of my wishes came true? My original post appears in italics.

1. Unify the game mechanics.

Want to find out if you hit? Roll high on a d20. Want to jump a chasm? Roll low. Want to use a skill? Roll high. Want to use a thief skill? Roll low on a percentile. Listening at a door? Who can remember? Look it up. The third edition fails if it fails to make sense of this.

Third edition delivered the mechanic where players add an ability modifier and other adjustments to a d20 roll, and then compare the result against an AC or difficulty class to determine success. This mechanic remains at the heart of the game and ranks as the single biggest refinement over the game’s 50-year history.

Wish granted.

2. Smooth the power curve for magic user advancement.

Playing a 1st-level mage means spending your adventure waiting for your big moment when you can cast your single, feeble spell. The situation improves little until level 5 or so. Some say that this balances the class against the extreme power of high-level spellcasters. I say it’s bad design. Low-level casters should have more than one spell. If this unbalances the class, then reduce the power of high-level casters.

While third edition kept low-level magic users in the game by granting them bonus spells based on intelligence, wizards still surged in power at higher levels, eventually overshadowing other characters. Fourth edition D&D solved the problem, matching the power of different classes by giving every class the same allotment of daily and encounter projects. The uniformity left some gamers unhappy, and that included the designers. “I’d never wanted to use the exact same power structure for the wizard as every other class,” said lead designer Rob Heinsoo, “But we ran out of time, and had to use smaller variations to express class differences than I had originally expected.”

Fifth edition reverted to a magic system that resembled the Vancian magic of older editions, but the game made three changes that check the power of high-level wizards and other spellcasters.

Many spells now require their caster to maintain concentration to keep their magic going. Critically, a spellcaster can only concentrate on one spell at a time. Now rather than layering haste, invisibility, fly, blur, resistance, and a few others, a caster must pick one.
Spells cast by higher-level casters no longer increase in power simply based on the caster’s level. Now, for example, to increase the damage of a fireball, a wizard needs to spend a higher-level spell slot.
Compared to earlier editions, spellcasters gain fewer spells per day, and much fewer high-level spells. In the third edition, a 20th-level wizard could cast four spells of every level including 8th and 9th level. In fifth edition, a 20th-level wizard gets 14 fewer spells per day, and only one 8th- and one 9th-level spell. Sure, the fifth-edition caster enjoys more flexibility, but far fewer slots.

The damaging cantrips introduced in fourth edition also let low-level wizards do something magical every turn, rather than spending most combats flinging darts like exactly zero magic users in our fantasy imagination.

Wish granted.

3. Drop THAC0.

To the folks boasting that they have no problem with THAC0: Don’t spend too much time lauding your math skills. We all can do the addition and subtraction in our heads, but the system remains a clumsy and counter-intuitive vestige of D&D’s wargame roots.

In drafts of the original D&D game, a 1st-level fighting man could figure the lowest d20 roll needed to hit by subtracting the target’s AC from 20. New fighters needed a 20 “to hit armor class zero,” and with each level they gained, their THAC0 improved by 1. The to-hit tables that reached print lacked the same simplicity, but descending armor classes remained. So when the second edition dropped “attack matrix” tables in favor of THAC0 numbers, the game returned to its roots. Still, THAC0 used negative numbers for especially tough ACs, made mental math more difficult, and forced a counter-intuitive concept on players.

Second-edition designer Steve Winter said, “There were all kinds of changes that we would have made if we had been given a free hand to make them—an awful lot of what ultimately happened in the third edition. We heard so many times, ‘Why did you keep armor classes going down instead of going up?’ People somehow thought that that idea had never occurred to us. We had tons of ideas that we would have loved to do, but we still had a fairly narrow mandate that whatever was in print should still be largely compatible with the second edition.”

Third edition dropped THAC0 and descending armor classes in favor of a target to-hit number and to-hit bonuses players added to their roll. Suddenly, the game became more consistent and intuitive.

Wish granted.

4. Give complete rules for magic schools and specialization.

The second edition mentions magic users who specialize, but the core rules fail to give rules for magical specialists other than the example of illusionists.

Third edition included rules for wizards specializing in each school of magic. The 2014 version of fifth edition built on the idea by giving specialists abilities specific to their school.

Wish granted.

5. Give rules for different clerics for different deities.

The second edition mentions variant priests for other deities, but the core rules fail to give rules for priests other than clerics. Why shouldn’t a priest of a god of the hunt use a bow? Why shouldn’t the priest of a thunder god be able to cast a lightning bolt? Why should the rules force the DM to answer these questions?

In the third edition, clerics chose two domains such as the air and war domains suitable for a god of thunder. Domains brought extra powers and domain spells like chain lightning. By fifth edition, cleric domains turned into full subclasses with accompanying abilities. Alas, gods of the hunt still lack support.

Wish granted.

6. Make spell statistics consistent.

Playing spells in AD&D either demands that you memorize the details of each spell or that you waste game time thumbing through the PHB. Why can’t most ranged spells have consistent ranges? Why can’t most area-of-effect spells affect the same area? Similar spells should be grouped and should share similar numbers for range, duration, area of effect and so on.

The fourth edition of D&D granted this wish, but I also learned that part of D&D’s charm came from spells like polymorph, phantasmal force, and wish that no cautious game designer would pen. Unlike earlier editions, fourth edition provided spells with effects that confined their effects to grid and to a tightly defined set of conditions. Often spells no longer worked outside of combat. Even fireballs became square.

These changes simplified the dungeon master’s role by eliminating judgment calls over debates like whether a wizard could toss an earthworm above their foes, polymorph it into a whale, and squash everyone flat. The fourth-edition designers aimed to make the dungeon master’s role easy—something a computer could handle. But this approach discouraged the sort of ingenious or outrageous actions that create unforgettable moments. D&D plays best when it exploits a dungeon master’s ability to handle spells, actions, and surprises that no computer game allows.

Although fifth edition returned to spells that demand a DM’s judgment, the spells feature more careful and uniform descriptions than in the game’s early editions. Credit this improvement to a card game.

When the designers of Magic: The Gathering faced the problem of bringing order to countless cards, they used templated text: they described similar game rules with consistent wording imposed by fill-in-the-blank templates. Today, the patterns of templated text appear throughout modern D&D’s rules.

Early in the development of third-edition D&D, Wizards of the Coast purchased TSR. Skaff Elias had served as a designer on several early Magic sets and ranked as Senior Vice President of Research and Development. Skaff felt that the upcoming D&D edition could fix “sloppiness in the rules” by using templated text. Skaff and Wizard’s CEO Peter Adkison told the D&D design team to switch the spell descriptions to templated text, but the team kept resisting his directives.

Eventually, the D&D team readied the release of a playtest document that still lacked templated text. They claimed rewriting all the spell descriptions according to formula would prove impossible because hundreds of spells would need templating in 48 hours to meet their delivery deadline. Nonetheless, Adkison and Skaff took the challenge themselves, working through the night to rewrite the spells and meet the deadline. Even after that heroic effort, the rules document that reached playtesters lacked the templated descriptions from the CEO and the Design VP. The design team had simply ignored their bosses’ hard work.

The failure infuriated Adkison. He lifted Jonathan Tweet to the head of the third-edition team. Designer Monte Cook remembers Adkison’s new directive: “If Jonathan says something it’s as though I said it.” Unlike the TSR veterans on the rest of the team, Tweet had started his career by designing the indie roleplaying game Ars Magica and the experimental Over the Edge. As a member of the D&D team, he convinced the team to adopt some of the more daring changes in the new edition.

7. Make spell power consistent.

Spells of the same level suffer from wildly different power in game play. This means that each spell level includes a few powerful spells that see constant play and many weaker spells that are forgotten. Worse, spells like stoneflesh pose game balance problems.

As long as D&D adds spells, the game will fall short of making their power consistent. The 2024 version of the fifth-edition rules makes changes to nearly 200 spells from 2014. Some changes affect power levels by changing their damage or healing dice, by adding concentration, or even by substituting a different spell for an old name. The changes bring the power level of spells closer to other spells at the same level. Still, silvery barbs remains unchanged even though players widely regard it as broken. And the completely rewritten conjure minor elementals spell joins the list of broken spells often nerfed by house rules.

8. Shorten one-minute rounds.

Who besides Gary Gygax accepted minute-long rounds as plausible? I recently reread the second edition’s rationalization of why someone can accomplish so little in a minute, but found the explanation as silly as ever. While the length of time simulated by a round makes little difference on actual play, I still prefer some sense underlying the mechanics.

Original D&D specified that a 10-minute turn consisted of 10 combat rounds, making rounds one minute long. Nonetheless, the D&D Basic Set (1977) specified 10-second combat rounds. Editor J. Eric Holmes based the set’s shorter round on house rules like Warlock and The Perrin Conventions common among his circle of California gamers. The West Coast community tended to rely on combat experience earned in fights staged by the Society for Creative Anachronism. To them—and to most gamers—10 seconds seemed like a reasonable time for an exchange of blows. Meanwhile, Gygax stood loyal to D&D’s wargaming roots and favored the 1-minute rounds that let D&D fights mix with Chainmail miniature battles where armies of combatants needed minutes to mount attacks. In the AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide, Gygax spends a quarter page defending 1-minute rounds against critics who argued that in a minute real archers could fire a dozen arrows and real fencers could score several hits. The second-edition Player’s Handbook dutifully spends four paragraphs justifying the 1-minute round by explaining how a character could easily need a full minute to drink a potion. So much for drinking a potion as a bonus action! When the third edition switched to 6-second rounds, few mourned the 1-minute round.

Wish granted.

9. Simplify experience.

Totaling experience shouldn’t require a spreadsheet. Why bother having exacting formulas for combat experience when non-combat experience remains largely up to the DM’s judgment? Newer games use extremely abstract experience systems because calculating experience adds no fun to a game.

Unlike the original D&D and AD&D rules, second edition avoids setting a standard experience point (XP) system for the game. Instead, the Dungeon Master’s Guide reads like a draft presenting two methods: Half the text suggests that DMs improvise awards based on how well players foster fun, show ingenuity, and achieve story goals. Half suggests DMs award XP for beating monsters. The book cautions against awarding XP for treasure. “Overuse of this option can increase the tendency to give out too much treasure.” In the end, the text offers little guidance. “The DM must learn everything he knows about experience points from running game sessions.” Obviously, when I griped about point totals that required a spreadsheet as if that were the only option, I forgot the current edition’s indecisive XP rules.

In practice, the best experience system matches the style of play that gamers want.

For games centered on looting dungeons, D&D’s original XP system worked brilliantly by rewarding players for claiming treasure and escaping the dungeon with as much as they could carry.

For games focused on stories that resemble an epic fantasy tale, awarding experience for overcoming obstacles works better. This builds on the essentials of storytelling where characters face obstacles to reach their goals. Most second-edition players chose to award XP for defeating monsters. This method based XP awards on the game’s most frequent and quantifiable obstacles, namely monsters, so the method avoided relying on arbitrary decisions. However, it fails to account for games without much combat or where smart players reach goals without a fight.

Fifth edition offers an XP system based on beating monsters while suggesting awards for overcoming non-combat challenges.

As a flexible alternative to grant XP for overcoming obstacles, DMs award XP to parties when the reach their goals—the Dungeon Master’s Guide calls these goals “milestones.” Many DMs skip the point totals by simply granting levels for meeting goals.

For gamers who stick to points, the totals still add up to thousands, high enough numbers to merit a spreadsheet. Those high numbers remain as a vestige of the original D&D game where one gold piece brought one experience point.

10. Publish fewer rule books.

All the optional rule books make the second edition too sprawling, too heavy, too expensive, and too intimidating. Plus, if you use all the options, then you hardly play the same game.

Ever since TSR Hobbies learned that D&D fans would buy books of campaign lore and character options, the D&D team faced a temptation to publish too many D&D books. As sales sagged in the second-edition era, TSR tried to bolster revenue with more and more books. When the third edition’s sales boomed, Wizards of the Coast tried to capitalize by publishing more books.

But even the most eager gamers can only spend or play so much, so inevitably those additional books meet indifferent players and languish on store shelves. Rows of D&D books in game stores tend to intimidate potential new players who wonder how much they need to buy to start playing and how much they need to master to join existing players. The editions of popular roleplaying games typically end with game store shelves glutted with product. By fourth edition, the D&D team knew this pattern, but they still published hardcovers almost monthly.

Fifth edition stands as the first to stick to a slower release schedule that may avoid the risk of overwhelming fans with products. Until 2018, Wizards of the Coast only published three books a year. Still, the number of D&D hardcovers released annually has climbed to four, then five. Even as a D&D enthusiast, I no longer find time to play or even read every release. Count the wish as granted, but perhaps only through 2021 when five books a year started reaching stores.

11. Make healing spells consistent with the hit point concept.

I can accept the rational behind the gain in hit points a character receives with each level: A 10th-level fighter cannot actually survive 10 times more injury than he could at 1st level. Instead, his combat skills enable him minimize the damage from a stab that once would have run him through, so instead of a fatal wound, the 10th-level fighter suffers a minor cut.

Fine. But why does a cure light wounds spell have a negligible effect on the 10th-level fighter when the same spell can bring a 1st-level fighter from death’s door to perfect health?

I admit this issue is more of a peeve than a serious problem with the system, but a bit of consistency would make the rationale for hit point advancement much easier to accept.

Fourth edition granted this wish. In the fourth edition, rested characters gained a limited number of healing surges, and then healing magic let characters trade surges for healing. Because the number of points healed by a surge grew with a character’s hit point total, magic like healing potions cured wounds in the same proportion at every level. Fourth edition’s treatment of hit points and healing ranks as one of the edition’s best innovations, but it needed the edition’s hit point math to work, so fifth edition returned a scheme where a 1st-level cure light spell offers minimal healing to a high-level character.

7 Discarded D&D Rules That Could Still Improve the Game

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Past editions of Dungeons & Dragons include many, many rules that fifth edition drops. No one misses racial level caps, any of the old grappling rules, or the unplayable AD&D initiative system. But old editions also included rules that improved the game, often in subtle ways. Some might have improved the fifth edition. Still, the D&D designers dropped each rule for a reason, but did they make the right choices?

1. Add the bloodied condition

Fourth edition included a bloodied condition triggered when creatures lost half their hit points. The designers likely dropped bloodied because it seemed to offer too little benefit to merit the weight of another condition. Besides, DMs hardly need a rule to describe the status. The Dungeon Master’s Guide explains, “You can describe a monster taken to half its hit points as bloodied, giving the players a sense of progress in a fight against a tough opponent, and helping them judge when to use their most powerful spells and abilities.”

But the bloodied condition added more than a sense of progress. The bloodied condition can trigger extra abilities that show a creature’s rage or desperation, adding a useful way to bring a second stage to boss battles. Just as a showdown settles into a familiar pattern, a bloodied monster could gain new powers, transforming to add new excitement. The bloodied trigger proved so irresistible that the D&D designers designed something similar when they gave some high-level monsters the mythic trait. “If you wish to increase a battle’s stakes, though, using a monster’s mythic trait results in some mid-battle twist that changes the way the monster behaves, restores its resources, or provides it with new actions to use.” The bloodied condition could enhance monsters of all levels.

2. Limit hit point increases after 10th level

By the time fifth edition D&D characters near level 10, few monsters inflict enough damage to seem threatening. Obviously, DMs can still create challenging encounters by adding more and more dangerous monsters, but that solution can prolong battles, turning exciting fights into grinds.

The obvious fix to high-level creatures and their feeble damage is to make monsters’ attacks deal more damage. This adds challenge, but it makes concentration spells much weaker.

What if the solution doesn’t come from the monsters? What if characters at double-digit levels just have too many hit points? If high-level characters had fewer hit points, high-level monsters with their puny attacks would suddenly become a bit more threatening. Lower-level monsters could pose more of a threat to high-level heroes without becoming too dangerous to low-level characters. High-level PCs would still rip through weak foes, but the survivors could deal enough damage to seem dangerous rather than laughable.

Lower hit points at high levels would suit the reality that characters typically enter every fight at maximum health. In more battles, foes would seem like credible opponents.

Up to D&D’s third edition, when D&D characters reached level 9 or so, they started gaining hit points at a much slower rate. In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, fighters rising above 9th level gained 3 hit points per level with no bonus for constitution. Other classes gained even fewer points. Continuing to let characters gain a full hit die plus a constitution bonus at every level defies D&D’s origins.

In a fifth edition version of this rule, after level 10, barbarians that gain d12 hp per level would only gain 3 hp, d10 classes like fighter would gain 2 hp, d8 classes like cleric would gain 1 hp, and wizards would gain 0 hp. High-level wizards get plenty of goodies to make the difference.

Suppose Gary Gygax had hit points right all along. Would D&D play better if characters stopped gaining so many after level 9? For more, see Would Dungeons & Dragons Play Better If It Stayed Loyal to How Gary Gygax Awarded Hit Points?.

3. Award skills for high Intelligence

In modern D&D, Intelligence vies with Strength as the most common stat where players dump their characters’ lowest ability score. See Should PC Intelligence Matter? Of the classes in the Player’s Handbook , only wizard requires Intelligence, a prime requisite that rarely figures in saving throws. Unlike in earlier editions, high Intelligence no longer brings more skills or even languages, contributing to the attribute’s low value.

The D&D designers found good reasons to stop awarding smart characters more skills. Fifth edition awards skills based on background instead. This emphasizes the importance of a character’s history by pairing it with mechanical benefits. By ignoring Intelligence, the designers let every character gain enough skills to get ample mechanical benefits based on their history. Besides, if Intelligence led to even more skills, wizards would check almost every box and those brainiacs show off enough.

If the game awarded fewer skills based on background, class, and race, and awarded more skills based on Intelligence, then Intelligence would switch from an easy place to dump a score of 8 to a worthwhile choice.

4. Require some recovery period after dropping to 0 hp

In first edition, characters reduced to 0 hit points needed a week of rest. “The character cannot attack, defend, cast spells, use magic devices, carry burdens, run, study, research, or do anything else.”

All that rest seems too limiting for a heroic game, but fifth edition not only lacks any consequences for reaching death’s door, the game offers a sort of reward. Players intent on wringing every advantage from the rules will only heal characters when they drop to 0 hp, because damage below 0 heals for free. Imagine being injured but denied healing until you lie dying on the dungeon floor because the magic somehow works better that way. As an adventurer, I would find a less psycho group of comrades in arms.

The remedy ranks as one of fifth edition’s most popular house rules: Characters who fail a death save suffer a level of exhaustion.

By making characters who fail a death save suffer a level of exhaustion, the dying condition becomes something to be realistically feared rather than an inconvenience where players can exploit their metagame understanding of fifth edition’s lack of negative hit points.

Players gain an incentive to heal their allies before anyone drops to 0, losing the incentive to let party members drop and revive in a macabre dance.

5. Require magic ammunition to overcome resistance

When you blog about D&D long enough you gain a limited ability to see the future. So when I post, I can predict many of the comments. For example, if I gripe about an overpowered character feature, some readers will advise countering by giving foes the same capability. As if players would return for a campaign where every monster took the Sharpshooter feat.

If I gripe that the fifth edition rules make archers too effective, readers will remind me that historically, bows do beat swords. Weapons that let you poke holes from a distance always rule. For example, polearms also beat swords. Still, thanks to millennia of promotion by a ruling class of men on horses with swords, we romanticize swords and most D&D players favor them over polearms.

Like punching monks and loincloth-wearing barbarians, D&D gives swords and other melee weapons a boost to make fun but fanciful characters attractive options.

Still, the boost falls short. The rules make ranged weapons far better than swords, axes, and such. This imbalance weakens the game. Players choosing swords and spears for their characters must accept weaker characters. Also ranged combat usually proves less fun. Movement and terrain disappears. Instead, characters stand at the door and shoot, tallying damage until the battle ends. I could list more consequences, but I already did.

Fifth edition skips a few rules that made ranged attacks a bit less attractive in past editions.

Arrows shot into melee used to suffer a chance of hitting allies.
Ranged attacks used to lack a damage bonus based on Dexterity to match the damage bonus melee attacks gained from Strength.
To overcome resistance to magic weapons, attackers used to need magic ammunition rather than a magic bow.

The first rule deserves to stay on the scrap heap. Hitting allies hardly feels heroic and the risk creates bad feelings between archers and melee attackers. No one wants to shut down their ranger once the barbarian reaches melee.

As for the second rule, D&D’s math rests on damage bonuses based on Strength or Dexterity. Removing the Dexterity plus for ranged weapon damage would crack the game’s foundation.

The third rule boasts potential. In D&D, ranged martial attacks gain their biggest edge because no one bothers tracking arrows or crossbow bolts. Even if a DM required the chore, a 1 gp quiver of 20 arrows only weighs a pound, so players will argue they can easily carry 20 quivers totaling 400 arrows. Some gamers recommend using toothpicks to track arrows. That’s a lot of toothpicks. But what if only magic ammunition overcame resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks?

Such a rule makes sense; after all, the silver arrow hurts the werewolf, not the silver bow. Even if DMs give out more magic ammo, magic arrows merit counting. At low levels the lack of magic arrows would hardly matter, but as levels rose and more foes brought resistance, a demand for magic arrows would create interesting and realistic resource management choices.

6. Use healing surges or hit dice as a limit to healing

In early D&D editions, limited healing challenged players to carefully manage their hit points and healing spells. Except for days of bed rest, the game offered no easy substitutes for healing spells. Players faced thorny decisions over how to best use their healing resources. Should the party delve deeper into the dungeon toward greater rewards despite the risk of running low on hit points and healing?

Third edition erased that resource management strategy. Even 2nd-level characters could afford enough wands of cure light wounds to completely heal between fights without using a single spell. In modern D&D, inexpensive healing potions create the same effect.

The fourth edition designers aimed to return some of the old resource management strategy to the game. The edition added healing surges to limit the healing characters could use between encounters. Characters had a set number of healing surges. During a short rest, players could spend surges to restore lost hit points, so healing surges worked much like fifth edition’s hit dice. But healing surges also capped the magical healing available to characters. In battle, spells and healing magic like potions let characters trade surges for hit points without stopping to rest. Fourth edition’s treatment of hit points and healing ranks as one of the edition’s best innovations.

Without a limit like healing surges, fifth edition campaigns can’t recapture the slow loss of healing resources and the strategy that limit created.

For a house rule that turns hit dice into a resource more like healing surges, see D&D’s Designers Can’t Decide Whether Characters Must Rest for Hit Points and Healing, but You Can Choose.

7. Add the dazed condition

The stunned condition brings a harsh penalty. Stunned shuts down a player for a turn or more. A stunned monster can’t take actions, turning a potentially fun battle against a legendary evil into a quick beatdown of a helpless opponent. I’ll roll my damage in advance and go make a snack. The most common source of the stunned condition comes from the monk’s Stunning Strike ability, a power that can turn every boss into a piñata and that tempts DMs to “cheat.” Well-designed monks stun frequently enough to diminish the fun. Other players wind up beating helpless foes while the DM just counts damage and runs monsters with cartoon stars circling their heads.

A redesigned monk that remains fun to play calls for a condition that counts as half stunned, something like fourth edition’s dazed condition. Attacks against dazed creatures gained advantage. On a dazed creature’s turn, they could choose between moving, taking an action, or taking a bonus action. A more fun Stunning Strike ability could daze first and then stun if the dazed creature took a second strike. Such an adjustment would bring Stunning Strike down to the power of the monk’s other abilities that cost ki points. This lesser stunning strike would weaken the monk class, but a bigger allotment of ki points could make up for the change.

Of course, returning the dazed creatures could improve more than the monk. The dazed condition would add flexibility, allowing new character and monster abilities that just won’t work with a condition as punishing as stunned.

You Can Play These Supreme D&D Characters, But Should You?

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When I drafted my list of supreme character builds for Dungeons & Dragons, I originally included a section that asked, “You can play this, but should you?” The answer became this post, but why even ask?

In a comment, designer Teos “Alphastream” Abadia identified the supreme builds as enjoyable concepts, but “generally horrible at the table.” Although any character can fit the right game, some optimized builds reduce the fun at most tables. Teos writes, “For me, the biggest social contract item for players is to contain whatever optimization they cook up to reasonable and fun levels.”

D&D’s design aims to create a game where all a party’s characters get to contribute to the group’s success. When a single member of the group starts battles by one-shotting the monster with a huge burst of damage, or one character learns every skill to meet all challenges, then that character idles or overshadows the rest and makes the other players wonder why they showed up.

Most skilled

DM’s guild designer Andrew Bishkinskyi singles out one optimization to skip. “The most skilled character is made to do everything, and exists by design to exclude others from play, which I don’t want.”

Early editions of D&D embraced this kind of specialization. Thieves started as the only class with any capabilities resembling skills, but rated as nearly useless in a fight. Nowadays, D&D’s class designs aim give every class ways to contribute through all the game’s three pillars of exploration, combat, and roleplaying interaction.

Most damaging

Combat makes a big part of most D&D games, so characters optimized for extreme damage tend to prove troublesome. I’ve run public tables where newer players dealing single-digit damage would follow turns where optimized characters routinely dealt 50-some points. I saw the new folks trade discouraged looks as they realized their contributions hardly mattered. DM Thomas Christy has hosted as many online D&D games for strangers as anyone. He says, “I have actually had players complain in game and out about how it seemed like they did not need to be there.” In a Todd Talks episode, Jen Kretchmer tells about asking a player to rebuild a combat-optimized character. “The character was a nightmare of doing way more damage off the top, and no one else could get a hit in.” See Sharpshooters Are the Worst Thing in D&D.

D&D’s strongest high-damage builds make ranged attacks from a distance. Such builds can leave the rest of the party to bear the monsters’ attacks. Teos Abadia writes, “Even if we don’t have character deaths or a TPK, a ranged character can create a frustrating situation for the other characters, who find themselves relentlessly beaten up, constantly targeted by saving throws, and harried by environmental and terrain damage. Over the course of a campaign, this can be tough for the party. Players may not even realize the cause. They simply find play frustrating and feel picked on. If the ranged player keeps saying, ‘hey, I didn’t even take any damage—again!’ the rest of the party might start to realize why.”

If you, like everyone, enjoy dealing maximum damage, I recommend a character powered by the Great Weapon Master and Polearm Master feats. See How to Build a D&D Polearm Master That Might Be Better Than a Sharpshooter. If you favor a ranged attacker, the strongest builds combine Sharpshooter, Crossbow Expert, and an Extra Attack feature. In a typical game, pick two.

Biggest damage novas

A few D&D players welcome characters capable of starting a fight with a huge burst of damage for an unexpected reason: These gamers find D&D’s combat pillar tiresome. By bringing a fight to an immediate end, a nova just brings the session back to their fun. Perhaps these games need a better approach to combat, or even a switch to a different game.

In groups more interested in roleplaying and exploration, players might not mind letting an optimized character showboat during the battles. Or perhaps others in the group feel content in roles other than damage dealing. Perhaps the bard and wizard both enjoy their versatility, the druid likes turning into a bat and scouting, and nobody minds letting you finish encounters at the top of round 1.

But most gamers enjoy a mix of the D&D’s three pillars. For these players, characters designed to start fights with maximum damage prove problematic because when they work, no one else participates. “The issue is that even if those characters don’t completely trivialize an encounter, they can reduce the fun of other players by taking a disproportionate amount of the spotlight,” writes @UncannyPally.

You can’t blame the players aiming for these builds. The occasional nova can create memorable moments.

“It’s only fun the first few times a character charges in and essentially one-shots the boss before you get to do anything,” writes @pocketfell. “And of course, upping the hp of the monsters just means that when the mega-damage PC doesn’t get lucky, it’s a slog through four times the usual number of hp.”

I suspect that D&D class features that power damage spikes steer the game in the wrong direction. However, I respect D&D’s designers and they seem to welcome such features. For example, paladins can smite multiple times per turn. In more recent designs, rangers with the Gloom Stalker archetype begin fights with an extra attack plus extra damage. The grave domain cleric’s Path to the Grave feature sets up one shots by making creatures vulnerable to the next attack.

Surely, the designers defending such features would cite 2 points:

Players relish the occasional nova. They can feel like an exploit that breaks the game, delivering a quick win.
Some spells shut down an encounter as well as massive weapon damage. Fair’s fair.

I argue that encounter-breaking spells rate as problematic too, but D&D traditionally limits such spells to a few spellcasting classes, often at higher levels and only once per day.

Highest AC

I accept that as a DM controlling the monsters, I will almost always lose. A defeat for my team evil counts as a win for the table, so I welcome the loss. But I must confess something: For my fun, I like the monsters to get some licks in. Is that so wrong? Under suggestion and zone of truth, I suspect other DMs would echo the same admission. Some gamers even float the courageous suggestion that DMs deserve fun like the players.

A character with an untouchable AC doesn’t rob the spotlight from other players, but for DMs, such characters become tiresome. If you back up a maximum AC with, say, a class able to cast shield and block those rare hits, then your DM might not show disappointment when you miss game night.

To be fair, players who sell out for maximum defense wind up with few other strengths. These players enjoy their chance to shine at the end of every fight when they crow about not taking damage—again! I’ve learned to accept their source of bliss and welcome their characters. They may soak attacks, turning claw, claw, bite into useless flailing, but I can always add more attacks to go around.

Toughest

In theory, tough characters should trigger the same annoyance as untouchable characters, but the barbarians and Circle of the Moon druids actually suffer hits, so their durability feels different.

In tactically-minded parties, tough characters and characters with high AC fill a role by preventing monsters from reaching more fragile characters. If your group favors that play style, your DM surely dials up the opposition past very strong and also pairs smart foes with clever strategies. Optimized characters of all sorts often fit that style of play.

Fastest

Nobody minds a fast character. I love playing monks who speed around the battlefield stunning everything in their path. However, those stun attacks certainly bring less acclaim. See How to Build a D&D Monk So Good That DMs Want to Cheat.

Most healing

If you play the healer and miss game night, everyone feels disappointed. ’Nuff said.

Fast, Unkillable, Deadly: The 7 Supreme D&D Character Builds for One Thing

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Have you ever wanted to play a Dungeons & Dragons who boasted the highest armor class, the fastest speed, the deadliest attacks, or another extreme ability? This post shows the way to making the most amazing character at one of 7 things.

Fastest

For the fastest character, start as a monk. Your choice of race depends on what your campaign allows.

Wood elves gain the fastest walking speed.
Tabaxi from Volo’s Guide to Monsters make better 1-turn sprinters. Their Feline Agility trait doubles their speed for a turn, but they must spend a turn moving 0 to use it again.
Aarakocra, also from Volo’s Guide, gain a flying speed of 50 feet, which combines perfectly with the monk class. Not every campaign allows flying characters, especially to start.

Take 10 levels of monk for a 20-foot speed bonus. Then add 5 levels of barbarian for Fast Movement and another 10-foot bonus. Choose the Path of the Elk Totem Warrior from the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide to increase your walking speed by 15 feet while raging. Sadly for aarakocra, this bonus doesn’t improve your fly speed.

For even more speed, add two levels of fighter for the Action Surge.

Along the way, choose the Mobile feet to add another 10-foot speed bonus. Also consider the Magic Initiate feat to learn the longstrider spell, which adds another 10-foot speed bonus for an hour. Obviously, seek Boots of Speed, Potions of Speed, and friends able to enchant you with haste.

Even without the magic, this build yields a 70-foot base, doubled to 140 by feline agility. For maximum speed, choose a dash action, add a dash using the monk’s Step of the Wind ability, plus a dash using Action Surge to move 560 feet in 6 seconds. That amounts to 63 mph or 102 kph!

See How to Build a D&D Monk So Good That DMs Want to Cheat.

Most skilled

For the most-skilled character, start as a half-elf rogue. This gains you 4 rogue skills, plus 2 skills from being a half-elf and 2 more from your background. Don’t pick proficiency in Nature or Survival. You gain those skills when you select the Scout archetype at level 3.

Remain a rogue until level 4 when you can choose the Skilled feat for 4 more skills.

For level 5, multiclass into bard for another skill. At level 7, select the College of Lore for 3 more skills. Then at level 8, elect the Prodigy feat for that last untrained skill plus Expertise in a choice of skill. Expertise doubles your proficiency bonus for that skill.

At level 8, your character boasts proficiency in every skill in the game.

Most damaging

The highest, most consistent damage output comes from characters who combine the Sharpshooter and Crossbow expert feats with a hand crossbow.

Start as a human with the Sharpshooter feat. Your class can either be fighter or ranger. Either way, select the Archery fighting style to gain +2 on your ranged attacks.

For a fighter, choose either the Battle Master or the Samurai archetype from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. As a ranger, choose the Gloom Stalker archetype, also from Xanathar.

At level 4, take the Crossbow Expert feat to gain the ability to make extra attacks with a hand crossbow as a bonus action.

For more, see How to Build a Sharpshooter Who Wins D&D.

Highest AC

The simplest route to a maximum AC uses heavy armor. Select a paladin or fighter and then select the Defense fighting style. Equip plate mail and shield for AC 21. Then seek magic that improves AC. If you find +3 plate, +3 shield, plus a Cloak of Protection, a Ring of Protection, and an Ioun Stone of Protection for your three attunement slots, your AC reaches 30. If you attune a Staff of Power instead, you reach AC 31, the highest permanent level you can achieve. Plus, the munchkins make you their king or queen. Also your absurdly indulgent dungeon master wants to date you. If you learn the shield spell, then you can vault your AC 36 for a turn.

Someone in half plate with a 16 Dexterity and the Medium Armor Master feat can reach the same ACs.

A barbarian with just a shield can reach a 24 AC without any magic, but that requires a 20 Dexterity and the 24 Constitution attainable by the class at level 20.

Toughest

For the toughest character, start as a hill dwarf for a +1 hp bonus per level. Select the Barbarian class. At 3rd level, pick the Path of the Bear Totem Warrior to gain resistance to all damage but psychic while raging. At fourth level, take the Toughness feat for 2 more hp per level, and then use your ability score increases to maximize Constitution.

Biggest damage nova

When characters unload all their abilities to deal maximum damage in a single turn, they go nova. You could just level a Wizard up to level 17 and cast meteor swarm on a hoard of foes, but true nova builds aim for focused damage more than once a day. Thanks to the Divine Smite ability, paladins bring big nova potential, but the class lacks enough spells slots to fuel maximum damage. For the biggest numbers, combine 2 levels of paladin with either sorcerer or warlock.

For a sorcerer combination, your dream turn starts when you cast a quickened hold monster on your foe, and the hit with green flame blade plus a smite that spends your highest-level spell slot. On a paralyzed enemy, you automatically score a critical hit and double all your damage dice. (If you don’t paralyze your target, booming blade makes a better cantrip combination.)

While sorcerers bring more spell slots, the warlock combination boasts better synergy. Start by creating a paladin with maximum charisma and the 13 strength required for multiclassing. After reaching 2nd level as a paladin, multiclass to a warlock and choose the Hexblade pact. At warlock level 3, choose the Pack of the Blade boon, and then at level 5, choose the Thirsting Blade invocation for multiple attacks. Your dream turn starts when you lay a Hexblade’s Curse on your foe for a damage bonus, and then strike twice, scoring critical hits on a roll of 19 or 20. Back each hit with a smite. After a short rest, you can reload slots to repeat the combination.

An all-in nova build adds 2 levels of fighter for an Action Surge, another swing or two, and as many smites as you have spell slots to fuel.

See D&D’s Best Multiclass Combinations With Paladin.

Most healing

Update: Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything enables a new build to take the best healer crown.

The older best-healer build combined of life domain cleric with enough bard levels to gain the paladin spell aura of vitality via the bard’s Magical Secrets feature. Tasha’s Cauldron paves a short cut by simply adding aura of vitality to the cleric’s spell list. Forget multiclassing; just play a life cleric. For each of the 10 rounds of aura of vitality’s 1 minute duration, you can use a bonus action to heal 2d6 hit points. The cleric’s Disciple of Life feature boosts that to 2d6+5 hp.

Now, to claim the crown as best healer in D&D, take the Metamagic Adept feat, also in Tasha’s Cauldron. “You learn two Metamagic options of your choice from the sorcerer class.” Select the Extended Spell option. “When you cast a spell that has a duration of 1 minute or longer, you can spend 1 sorcery point to double its duration, to a maximum duration of 24 hours.” When you cast aura of vitality, spend 1 of your 2 sorcery points to double the duration and the healing. One third-level spell heals an average of 240 hp. At just level 5, you can perform the trick twice. Remember when folks fretted about pairing the life domain with goodberry for 40 points of healing?

For the easy path to a character who vies for the best healing, play a cleric and choose the Life domain. Done. By the time you reach 17th level, nothing else comes close. But hardly anyone plays at tier 4. In tiers 2 and 3, you can become the best healer as a bard with just a one level dip into cleric.

Start 1st level as a human Life domain cleric. Choose the Healer feat, which lets you spend one use of a healer’s kit to restore 1d6 + 4 hit points, plus additional hit points equal to the creature’s maximum number of hit dice. A creature can only regain hit points this way once between each rest, but this still counts as the cheapest healing in the game. See The Two D&D Feats Everyone Loves (For Someone Else’s Character).

After level 1, switch to only taking bard levels. At bard level 3, choose the College of Lore, and then at level 6 choose the paladin spell aura of vitality for your Magical Secrets feature. For each of the 10 rounds of aura of vitality’s 1 minute duration, you can use a bonus action to heal 2d6 hit points. The cleric’s Disciple of Life feature boosts that to 2d6+5 hp. One third-level spell heals an average of 120 hp. You will have 3 third-level spell slots.

Plus, the bard spell list includes most of the cleric’s best remedies, including the restoration and resurrection spells. You can raise dead through song!

D&D’s Designers Can’t Decide Whether Characters Must Rest for Hit Points and Healing, but You Can Choose

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In the original Dungeons & Dragons game, ordinary monster attacks inflicted just 1d6 damage. Yet characters still died, frequently. Clerics gained far fewer spells and much less healing than today, so most damage took a trip out of the dungeon to heal. Heroes mounted dungeon expeditions, fought as many battles as they dared, and then hoped their mapper could lead them to safety and healing.

To threaten full-strength characters in a climactic fight, monsters needed unique attacks that did massive damage, like a dragon’s breath weapon, or save-or-die effects like a beholder’s eye rays.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons granted clerics more healing spells, so characters entered more fights at full hit points, but damage still taxed resources that only a rest could regain. If the cleric squandered spells on something other than cures, the party hollered.

Third edition changed that equation. Without anyone ever needing to rest for spells or healing, characters could regain all their hit points after every fight.

A 2nd-level character who had gained the 900gp of treasure recommended in the Dungeon Master’s Guide could buy a 50-charge Wand of Cure Light Wounds for 750gp. At 2nd level, the party might share the cost. In just a few levels, characters gained enough gold to make buying in bulk a minor expense. Of course, dungeon masters could limit the purchase, but by 5th level, PCs stopped needing a magic shop. A cleric could take the Craft Wands feat and make wands at half price.

Third edition’s Living Greyhawk organized-play campaign enabled PCs to craft and purchase healing wands. Most characters bought Wands of Cure Light Wounds and loaned them to the party cleric for healing between battles.

In a standard third-edition campaign, savvy characters stopped needing rest to recover hit points.

Third edition’s designers probably overlooked how the low cost of healing wands would erase D&D’s 25-year-old limits on hit points and healing. The fourth-edition designers noticed. Their edition kept magic healing available for purchase, but also limited healing between rests. Rested characters gained a limited number of healing surges, and then healing magic let characters trade surges for healing. For example, healing potions just let characters spend a surge in the heat of battle. Fourth edition’s treatment of hit points and healing ranks as one of the edition’s best innovations.

At a glance, fifth edition seemed to keep D&D’s tradition of limiting hit points and healing between rests. This presumed limit made the introduction of the spell Healing Spirit seem like a game breaker. With a mere 2nd-level spell, everyone in the party could regain 10d6 hit points in just 1 minute. Casting at higher levels increases the healing, so a 3rd-level spirit could restore 20d6 to every PC in the party.

Blogger Merric Blackman summarized the concerns, “One of the major objections to the healing spirit spell is that it turns all the assumptions of hit point recovery in 5E on their head; suddenly we’re in a 3E-style game of ‘hit point loss isn’t important’ rather than the 5E-style of ‘hit point lost drains resources.’”

While Healing Spirit outshines other out-of-combat healing spells so much that druids need sunscreen, the spell doesn’t shatter any standing limits on healing. When the Player’s Handbook offered healing potions for sale for 50gp, the fifth-edition rules freed characters of any need to rest for healing or hit points. Unlike in early D&D, characters can buy potions. Unlike in fourth edition, potions work without a limit imposed by healing surges. Characters who gain a typical amount of treasure can easily afford all the potions they need. Most PCs gain tons of gold and have nowhere else to spend it.

Savvy characters can recover hit points without ever resting.

Dungeon masters who want to capture D&D’s original limits on hit points and healing between rests need to limit both healing potions and Healing Spirit. Such limits restore hit points and healing as a resource to manage through an adventuring day.

If you want to keep healing potions readily available for 50gp each, I suggest adopting a version of the fourth-edition limit: Drinking a potion lets characters spend a Hit Die for healing as if they had rested. To avoid doses that just heal a point or two, make potions heal an extra 1d4 hit points per Hit Die spent. Stronger potions spend more Hit Dice. With this house rule, make stronger healing potions for sale at higher prices. Although these potions spend hit dice, they still bring the advantage of granting healing in the heat of battle.

Potion of Healing
Potion, rarity varies

When you drink this potion, you spend hit dice up to the maximum listed on the Potions of Healing table. For each Hit Die spent in this way, the player rolls the die plus an extra 1d4, and then adds the character’s Constitution modifier to the rolls. The character regains hit points equal to the total.

Whatever its potency, the potion’s red liquid glimmers when agitated.

Potions of Healing

Potion of …	Cost	Spend up to …
Healing	50gp	1 Hit Die
Healing Moderate Wounds	300gp	2 Hit Dice
Healing Serious Wounds	750gp	3 Hit Dice
Healing Critical Wounds	1400gp	4 Hit Dice

Potions of Greater Healing, Superior Healing, and Supreme Healing can remain unchanged as long as they keep their rarity and only appear in treasure. These potions bring the precious advantage of healing without costing Hit Dice.

James Haeck listed a couple of house rules for limited Healing Spirit. For instance, designer Jeremy Crawford suggests having the spell end once it restores hit points a number of times equal to twice the caster’s spellcasting ability modifier.

Of course, none of these house rules apply to organized play. Authors who write adventures for the Adventurers League should expect characters to enter every fight at full health and to never run short of healing between battles.

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