History GameBreaker / DungeonsAndDragonsFifthEdition

* Silvery Barbs. A First level spell from ''Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos'', which allows you to force any creature to reroll a succesfull roll and choose worse result. This thing has been banned on many tables within mere ''hours'' of the book's release and quickly became infamous. One of its most broken aspects is that it is cast as a reaction, meaning it is possible for a player to cast a spell with nasty effect, see the enemy make the saving throw and use Silvery Barbs to make them fail anyway. The way it is worded also pretty much turns a roll with an advantage into a roll with double disadvantage, as the spell doesn't care how many die were rolled to make the roll succesful. And this is ''after'' the spell was nerfed by errata; originally the same wording implied it can bypass legendary resistances and other abilities, allowing an enemy to succeed without rolling.

* The Sharpshooter feat is infamously broken, because it [[AllYourPowersCombined glues together all the most powerful elements of other combat feats into one package]] giving a LongRangeFighter virtually everything they might need except the ability to fire in melee without penalty. From Spell Sniper, it takes increased range (although doubling the range of a spell vs. removing disadvantage on long range shots for a ranged weapon actually mostly settles in favor of the bowman, with longbows in particular getting a ''massive'' 600 ft. range out of the deal) and the ability to ignore any cover short of total cover (read: completely surrounded by other material with no openings of any kind), so the only place safe from a Sharpshooter bowman's wrath is standing right next to them. From Great Weapon Master, it allows the user to take a five point penalty on their attack roles in exchange for a ten point bonus to their damage. Not only does the Archery fighting style (a flat +2 bonus on all ranged weapon attack rolls) readily offset this penalty, but between the ability to ignore cover, ambush from far enough away that many enemies can be easily ambushed, and other buffs from a SupportPartyMember, the attack penalty can quickly become meaningless while the incredible ten-point bonus on damage rolls (more than some weapons can get on their best day) makes any character built around it and archery an absolute terror in combat from far enough away that some monsters will struggle to even get into range before being obliterated. A Variant Human fighter can start with every tool they need to come online with this feat from level 1, and only becomes stronger as they get bigger, better bonuses and more and more attacks per round. And that's before factoring in the incredibly strong support for range weapons generally in 5e, from the powerful and "merely" uncommon Bracers of Archery to potentially getting ahold of guns or sci-fi weapons and erasing their very last disadvantage with the Gunner feat. [[BoringButPractical Or just taking Crossbow Expert and combining it with a hand crossbow]]; the two feats basically erase one anothers' weaknesses and Crossbow Expert even offers a free extra attack.

* The Sharpshooter feat is infamously broken, because it [[AllYourPowersCombined glues together all the most powerful elements of other combat feats into one package]] giving a LongRangeFighter virtually everything they might need except the ability to fire in melee without penalty. From Spell Sniper, it takes increased range (although doubling the range of a spell vs. removing disadvantage on long range shots for a ranged weapon actually mostly settles in favor of the bowman, with longbows in particular getting a ''massive'' 600 ft. range out of the deal) and the ability to ignore any cover short of total cover (read: completely surrounded by other material with no openings of any kind), so the only place safe from a Sharpshooter bowman's wrath is standing right next to them. From Great Weapon Master, it allows the user to take a five point penalty on their attack roles in exchange for a ten point bonus to their damage. Not only does the Archery fighting style (a flat +2 bonus on all ranged weapon attack rolls) readily offset this penalty, but between the ability to ignore cover, ambush from far enough away that many enemies can be easily ambushed, and other buffs from a SupportPartyMember, the attack penalty can quickly become meaningless while the incredible ten-point bonus on damage rolls (more than some weapons can get on their best day) makes any character built around it and archery an absolute terror in combat from far enough away that some monsters will struggle to even get into range before being obliterated. A Variant Human fighter can start with every tool they need to come online with this feat from level 1, and only becomes stronger as they get bigger, better bonuses and more and more attacks per round. And that's before factoring in the incredibly strong support for range weapons generally in 5e, from the powerful and "merely" uncommon Bracers of Archery to potentially getting ahold of guns or sci-fi weapons and erasing their very last disadvantage with the Gunner feat.

* The Sharpshooter feat is an infamously broken Feat, because it is a case of a seemingly AwesomeButImpractical tradeoff being a non-issue and going into being broken. In addition to removing the long range disadvantage part of ranged weapons, and ignoring half and three-quarters cover, it allows the user to take a minus 5 penalty to their attack in exchange for plus 10 to the damage. The reason it is considered so busted is because, for what is meant to be a tradeoff, the plus 10 damage is absurdly good when weighed against the penalty to attacking, because it is really easy to stack effects that give increased hit chance, such as a +1 weapon, high stats, the Archery fighting style, etc, making the penalty non-existent. Even if a player doesn't go out of their way to build around it, simply leveling up gradually increases a characters Proficiency Bonus, meaning after a certain point, the raw numerical bonus to attack, without investment, offsets the penalty to hit, while the damage dealt will always remain, and increase, as a character gets stronger and new equipment. Once that point is reached, the sheer damage one can do is insane. Even without the massive damage buff, the fact that a Variant Human can fire off their longbow ''accurately'' from ''600 feet away'' without caring one whit about enemy cover from '''''level 1''''' means that any reasonably large map is suddenly just a murder nest for an archer with Sharpshooter to play in. Even getting it at level 4 with other races will still have a massive, profound effect on the rest of the game. Sharpshooter is so good, that it is sometimes outright banned from being used.

* The half-elf is the strongest race in the entire game since the first ''Player's Handbook'', and no one else since has really come close, even if their advantages lean heavily towards BoringButPractical. They get more stat points than everyone else with immense freedom in how to allocate half of them, they actually get more skills than the Variant human, and on top of that they get a bunch of their elf ancestors' powers. Imagine a Variant Human who could take a feat that offers them +2 Charisma, Fey Ancestry (a couple of neat cornercase immunities), the elven language, an extra skill, and Darkvision. Whether or not it's the ''best'' possible feat for a given build, would that not be, by some measure, the most powerful feat in the entire game? Later sourcebooks offered them even more versatility, trading away their skills for a variety of benefits taken from the elf subraces, most of which admittedly weren't actually better than two skills, but ''still''. There's absolutely no class in the game a half-elf is bad at, and they get almost unmatched results from concentrating heavily on classes and skills they're good at without having to sacrifice versatility.

* The half-elf is the strongest race in the entire game since the first ''Player's Handbook'', and no one else since has really come close, even if their advantages lean heavily towards BoringButPractical. They get more stat points than everyone else with immense freedom in how to allocate half of them, they actually get more skills than the Variant human, and on top of that they get a bunch of their elf ancestors' powers. Imagine a Variant Human who could take a feat that offers them +2 Charisma, Fey Ancestry (a couple of neat cornercase immunities), the elven language, an extra skill, and Darkvision. Whether or not it's the ''best'' possible feat for a given build, would that not be, by some measure, the most powerful feat in the entire game? Later sourcebooks offered them even more versatility, trading away their skills for a variety of benefits taken from the elf subclasses, most of which admittedly weren't actually better than two skills, but ''still''. There's absolutely no class in the game a half-elf is bad at, and they get almost unmatched results from concentrating heavily on classes and skills they're good at without having to sacrifice versatility.

* The half-elf is the strongest race in the entire game since the first ''Player's Handbook'', and no one else since has really come close, even if their advantages lean heavily towards BoringButPractical. They get more stat points than everyone else with immense freedom in how to allocate half of them, they actually get more skills than the Variant human, and on top of that they get a bunch of their elf ancestors' powers. Imagine a Variant Human who could take a feat that offers them +2 Charisma, Fey Ancestry (a couple of neat cornercase immunities), the elven language, an extra skill, and Darkvision. Whether or not it's the ''best'' possible feat for a given build, would that not be, by some measure, the most powerful feat in the entire game? There's absolutely no class in the game a half-elf is bad at, and they get almost unmatched results from concentrating heavily on classes they're good at.

* The half-elf is the strongest race in the entire game since the first ''Player's Handbook'', and no one else since has really come close, even if their advantages lean heavily towards BoringButPractical. They get more stat points than everyone else with immense freedom in how to allocate half of them, they actually get more skills than the Variant human, and on top of that they get a bunch of their elf ancestors' powers. Imagine a Variant Human who could take a feat that offers them +2 Charisma, Fey Ancestry (a couple of neat cornercase immunities), the elven language, an extra skill, and Darkvision. Whether or not it's the ''best'' possible feat for a given build, would that not be, by some measure, the most powerful feat in the entire game? There's absolutely nothing a half-elf is bad at, and they get almost unmatched results from concentrating heavily on what they're good at.

** The Order of Scribes is a ridiculously powerful subclass, which at times even borders on MasterOfAll, that obsoletes out basically every core wizard subclass and most of the others too. Right off the bat, it lets players copy spells into their spellbooks ridiculously quickly, an incredible advantage in campaigns where wizards can access such things, swap around all spells' damage types for free (while dependent on spell levels, this still makes it trivially easy to turn all damage nigh-irresistible with even modest building for it), and cast any ritual spell using only its normal casting time rather than taking ten minutes (wizards don't have to prepare their ritual spells in advance). That's all when you take it at level ''2''! (''And'' a downgrade from the playtest version which also got every school specialist wizards' discount on their schools' magic ''at the same time''.) Next tier, they unlock Awakened Mind, one of the most ridiculously powerful familiars in the game, manifesting an intangible, invincible spellbook they freely share senses with at all times and can cast spells from, which can freely pass through anything but objects and is only destroyed when it passes more than 300 ft. from them, someone knocks ''them'' out, casts ''dispel magic'' on it, or destroys their spellbook. This means a Scribes wizard can spend entire ''combats'' in the relative safety of other dungeon rooms, arcing powerful encounter-warping spells out of something many enemies can't even touch! Master Scrivener and One With the Word are less obviously, hideously broken than these low level features, but they still mean that an Order of Scribes wizard basically has access to every spell in their easily-swollen book of 2nd level or lower, with boosted potency, enjoys halved normal costs for scroll creation, and a powerful "panic button" whose consequences are heavily randomized, and therefore potentially quite mild. Its only major weakness, needing to use their spellbook as a spellcasting focus for most of their abilities to work, is heavily downplayed by the unspoken gentleman's agreement most tables have that deliberately destroying a wizard's spellbook is actually a rather harsh and degenerate measure to take.

* Someone in the design team for ''5E'' seems to really love Bards, because the Bard is ridiculously powerful in ''Fifth Edition''. Ostensibly a class that's [[JackOfAllTrades good at everything but the best at nothing]], it's surprisingly easy to make a Bard that's [[MasterOfAll just plain good at everything]]. Firstly, Jack of All Trades now gives half your proficiency bonus to skills you don't have, effectively meaning that there will almost never be a situation where the Bard cannot solve it with the direct approach. It even gives this bonus to things you normally can't get proficiency bonuses for, like initiative. And you get Jack of All Trades automatically at Bard 2. Secondly, the Bard's spell progression is on par with a Wizard, a class that's dedicated to magic, thanks to Magical Secrets; while a Bard's spell list is fine in and of itself, this class feature lets them take spells from other classes' spell lists. The College of Lore even grants additional sets of Magical Secrets, with many considering the Lore Bard to be one of the best casters in the game. This even lets you pick spells from levels that the character would normally need a class feature in order to reach (such as 9th-level Warlock spells). And that's not even getting into shenanigans with Bard multiclassing into other Charisma-based classes! What should be the most all-around class in the game thus ends up being a specialist in almost every field except physical combat, and even that can be negated with the right cantrips. [=CoDzilla=] may be dead, but now there's Bardzilla!

** The Order of Scribes is a ridiculously powerful MasterOfAll that obsoletes out basically every core wizard subclass and most of the others too. Right off the bat, it lets players copy spells into their spellbooks ridiculously quickly, an incredible advantage in campaigns where wizards can access such things, swap around all spells' damage types for free (while dependent on spell levels, this still makes it trivially easy to turn all damage nigh-irresistible with even modest building for it), and cast any ritual spell using only its normal casting time rather than taking ten minutes (wizards don't have to prepare their ritual spells in advance). That's all when you take it at level ''2''! (''And'' a downgrade from the playtest version which also got every school specialist wizards' discount on their schools' magic ''at the same time''.) Next tier, they unlock Awakened Mind, one of the most ridiculously powerful familiars in the game, manifesting an intangible, invincible spellbook they freely share senses with at all times and can cast spells from, which can freely pass through anything but objects and is only destroyed when it passes more than 300 ft. from them, someone knocks ''them'' out, casts ''dispel magic'' on it, or destroys their spellbook. This means a Scribes wizard can spend entire ''combats'' in the relative safety of other dungeon rooms, arcing powerful encounter-warping spells out of something many enemies can't even touch! Master Scrivener and One With the Word are less obviously, hideously broken than these low level features, but they still mean that an Order of Scribes wizard basically has access to every spell in their easily-swollen book of 2nd level or lower, with boosted potency, enjoys halved normal costs for scroll creation, and a powerful "panic button" whose consequences are heavily randomized, and therefore potentially quite mild. Its only major weakness, needing to used their spellbook as a spellcasting focus for most of their abilities to work, is heavily downplayed by the unspoken gentleman's agreement most tables have that destroying a wizard's spellbook is actually a rather harsh and degenerate measure to take.

There are still a number of cheesetastic spells, or combinations thereof. Even if they're all relegated to the later parts of the game, learning them is enough to make the campaign's BigBad wet their pants.

* Polymorph is still a very problematic spell in this edition. Forms are now much stronger, since the recipient can assume a form whose CR (or Challenge Rating; a number roughly estimating how well it would challenge a party of a given character level) equals to their own ''level!'' Of course, it's a concentration spell, only allows for the shapes of beasts (none of which have a CR greater than 8), and the subject replaces all of their other features for the duration, but its still quite a buff. Even ignoring that function, the spell is effectively a "save-or-die" when used offensively, so long as you find other ways to kill the target without HP damage, and a powerful "save-or-suck" that can take enemies out of combats for a minute at a time, breaking encounters down into manageable chunks.

** The Order of Scribes is a ridiculously powerful MasterOfAll that obsoletes out basically every core wizard subclass and most of the others too. Right off the bat, it lets players copy spells into their spellbooks ridiculously quickly, an incredible advantage in campaigns where wizards can access such things, swap around all spells' damage types for free (while dependent on spell levels, this still makes it trivially easy to turn all damage nigh-irresistible with even modest building for it), and cast any ritual spell using only its normal casting time rather than taking ten minutes (wizards don't have to prepare their ritual spells in advance). That's all when you take it at level ''2''! (''And'' a downgrade from the playtest version which also got every school specialist wizards' discount on their schools' magic ''at the same time''.) Next tier, they unlock Awakened Mind, one of the most ridiculously powerful familiars in the game, manifesting an intangible, invincible spellbook they freely share senses with at all times and can cast spells from, which can freely pass through anything but objects and is only destroyed when it passes more than 300 ft. from them, someone knocks ''them'' out, casts ''dispel magic'' on it, or destroys their spellbook. This means a Scribes wizard can spend entire ''combats'' in the relative safety of other dungeon rooms, arcing powerful encounter-warping spells out of something many enemies can't even touch! Master Scrivener and One With the Word are less obviously, hideously broken than these low level features, but they still mean that an Order of Scribes wizard basically has access to every spell in their easily-swollen book of 2nd level or lower, with boosted potency, enjoys halved normal costs for scroll creation, and a powerful "panic button" whose consequences are heavily randomized, and therefore potentially quite mild.

* Polymorph is still a very problematic spell in this edition. Forms are now much stronger, since the recipient can assume a form whose CR (or Challenge Rating; a number roughly estimating how well it would challenge a party of a given character level) equals to their own ''level!'' Of course, it's a concentration spell, only allows for the shapes of beasts (none of which have a CR greater than 8), and the subject replaces all of their other features for the duration, but its still quite a buff. Even ignoring that function, the spell is effectively a "save-or-die" when used offensively, so long as you find other ways to kill the target without HP damage.

** Chronurgy Wizard is widely considered to be the most over-tuned Arcane Tradition for a class with a lot of powerful subclasses already, and a strong contender along with Peace Domain Clerics and Hexblade Warlocks as the most overpowered subclass in the entire game. The reasons for this are fourfold (with ''Momentary Stasis'' being on the lower end of utility, but that's like comparing a land mine to [[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild Remote Bombs]] and nukes):