5 MORE Underrated Subclasses In D&D

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Published 2024-04-25
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In a game with almost 100 subclasses, some are gonna get overlooked. Let's talk about the unsung badasses of dungeons and dragons!

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All Comments (21)
  • @DnDShorts
    🥳Free Epic Tarrasque Mini! than.gs/u/1660763 🔥Subscribe for monthly epic mini drops! Get 50% off with code DNDSHORTS50 ✨I'll be doing painting sessions and hang outs on discord if you want to join i
  • The drunken master monk is easily the most misunderstood class, flavor-wise. They're not actually drunk, the whole premise is that they appear drunk to disorient their allies while being fully aware and in control. It's a class about deception, clever moves, and full mastery of the body. That's why they get proficiency in performance, it's all about performing as though one is drunk without actually being drunk
  • @jondawson7911
    Fun fact, Swarmkeeper plus Open Hand Monk, you can push people 30 feet away by putting together their third level class features. You can only use the Open Hand's one with Flurry of Blows but the Swarmkeeper only needs an attack. So, Spike Growth, Flurry of Blows and watch the poor sod you pushed basically get skinned alive.
  • @FlanMcBean
    Played in a Wild West themed campaign a while back as a Swarmkeeper. The swarm took the form of a cloud of dust constantly swirling around his legs like he had just walked into town, and when he fired his rifle it'd trail behind his bullets like tracer rounds. Easily the coolest character I've made, unfortunately he also had the worst luck I've ever had on a character lmao.
  • Small Houserule recommendation. It's something we use at my table. You can drink a potion as a bonus action BUT if you use your action, you get the full benefit of the potion without having to roll. This has the effect of making certain types of potions better while making it more worthwhile to use your action for others, especially if you have to administer a potion to someone else (I.E: Healing Potions). This also comes with the small added benefit of speeding up the pace of combat.
  • @Kazanimation
    I played an Alchemist Artificer with a single Life Cleric dip and my healing and support options were insane. My 1st level Healing Words at level 6 were 1d4+Int+Int+3 for 1d4+13 on a bonus action. Mass Healing words got ridiculous. One of the best support characters I've ever seen or played.
  • @Not_importantx5
    The only thing I love more than a notification of a new DNDShorts video is the clap at the start
  • I had a colosseum style tournament arc for my party, where they fought NPCs and took bets on how far each would make it. Everyone, including the Alchemist Artificer, bet that he wouldn't make to round 2. He proceeded to win the tournament because no one could keep up with just how many buffs he put on himself.
  • @10TARDIS
    Timestamps: 00:06 - War Domain Wizard 02:51 - Swarmkeeper Ranger 05:08 - Son of a Lich Minis (Sponsor) 06:34 - Order Domain Cleric 09:18 - Drunken Master Monk 11:52 - Alchemist Artificer Edit: thanks to @bskec2177, the sourcebooks for these subclasses are in the replies to this comment.
  • @Arctic7985
    War Wizard is so underrated. It basically has everything you could want as a wizard. Initiative so you can open up with a big control spell, and then buffs to your saves, ac, and concentration when you concentrate on that big control. Extremely underrated.
  • @Krwzprtt
    Love me some Alchemist appreciation :) also yeah Drunken Master is great. Although I should mention it's not fighting drunk, it's fighting as if you were to have impredictible mouvements. Which also means you can easily reflavor the class as the "idiot master" or the "dancing the macarena master" and the core idea still works.
  • @parkerjones6071
    “ you are the tankiest wizard not called evocation” evocation is elemental damaging stuff. Abjuration is the tanky one with the ward.
  • @Leif47
    Thank you for giving the Alchemist Artificer some love, even though it is debatably the weakest of the Artificer subclasses it is a lot of fun and a good support character imo. Getting a +10 bonus to your Cure Wounds, Healing Word and Mass Healing Word at max INT is nothing to scoff at as well as the bonus to acid, poison, fire, and necrotic damage. One thing that was not mentioned is that at level 9 they can also cast Lesser Restoration for free INT mod times per long rest so you always have that in your back pocket. And getting Greater Restoration and Heal at level 15 essentially makes them a two-third's caster since they get a 6th level spell. Take 5 levels of Wizard so you can throw fireballs or 5 levels of Eldritch Knight Fighter for Action Surge, some defensive spells, and Extra Attack and then you'll be cooking with gas!
  • @xyryyn
    You left off the part of Order Cleric where you can cast all your Enchantment spells as bonus actions, which is awesome.
  • @tk_drowsy
    I took the “potion as a bonus action” an extra step for my homebrew since no one has healing by having them consume the potion from a soda hat as a free action, but would take a bonus action to refill both bottles. Works well so far.
  • @kaiyamazaki1684
    Hot tip for War Magic Wizard, take the Alert Feat. With 20 Intelligence, you'll likely be rolling a minimum of +10 initiative rolls every combat. As a Wizard, getting your Concentration Spells up before the enemy can even move usually benefits the entire party. Not to mention, immunity to the surprise condition will never not be nice.
  • @GamerGuy-sh7zv
    Fun tip for alchemist artificer, tables who don't use the "Down a potion as a bonus action" rule, you can grab the homunculus servant as one of your infusions, and ask your DM if IT can administer a potion as its action. If they allow it, you can give the servant a potion before any combat starts then when you need to distribute it, use your bonus action to command the servant to administer the potion. I play that class and subclass and I've learned something about the Artificer, you build stuff! get creative with what you make and if its detailed, your DM might just let you! My current servant is a bat that has a small storage tank inside of it which holds one of my experimental Elixir's inside of it. So, when combat starts and it gets to my turn, I can buff my Comrades with my normal spells and have the bat administer another buff that I predetermined earlier that day. I think Artificer is about getting creative and finding work arounds to rules so long as the DM agrees.
  • @TheMASTERCHS
    I'm DMing a game and my players were in a combat in a town and a mage was preforming a summoning ritual on top of the highest point of a building. The Swarmkeeper ignored all other enemies to make sure they could shoot the mage with their longbow and use the move feature. It worked and threw the mage off the building, made them take massive fall damage, and broke their concentration of the summoning. I was so proud TwT
  • @ala5530
    I was going to contest the Bonus Action potion part, based on how much you'd need to drink, but I just looked it up- standard D&D potions in 5e are by the vial. Each vial (per the PHB) can contain 4 US fl.oz., which for those using the Imperial system is around 1/5th of a pint (1/4 of a US pint), or a smidge under 120ml for anyone who grew up using metric. For those who still need to visualise this- it's somewhere between a double and a triple shot of spirits (depending on what size measure your local bar is pouring). Given that each round is ~6 seconds in length, a bonus action should be something you can do in less than half that time. If it takes you more than a couple of seconds to down that much fluid, then either you have a tiny mouth and incredibly strong gag reflex, or you're being bottlenecked (literally) by the mouth of the vial. Now, the only problem I have is faffing around with corks/waxed stoppers will take longer than seems right for a bonus action. Of course, if you're playing an Artificer, there's no reason they can't invent some form of quick-release top for vials and bottles (say... the medieval fantasy version of a pop-top, ringpull or sta-tab), so go for it...
  • @Dickythemainman
    Because you can use spell slots without casting a spell (like a smite), the Alchemist is another good option for multiclassing with Barbarian, as it still allows you to use while raging, and flavorful as a kind of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde type character