The Fifth Edition of Dungeons & Dragons tried to avoid Game-Breakers by limiting the ability to combine certain powers together, but it still has some problems.
Races
- 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 Boring, but Practical. 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? They also count as elves, who have a bunch of really powerful and useful exclusive magic items and feats, and humans, who have some nice feats of their own. 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 reworked Bugbear from Monsters of the Multiverse might be the strongest martial race in the game, getting 5ft extra reach on all melee attacks and extra damage to every attack on creatures that didn't take their turns in combat yet. The former, when combined with Polearm Master and Sentinel feats grants unprecedented levels of battlefield control. The latter makes for easily the best ambusher in the game, especially on Gloom Stalker Rangers (who get a bonus to initiative + extra attacks and damage on their first turn) or Fighters with Action Surge and Alert feat. Or you can multiclass and have both.
Classes and Subclasses
- For the Barbarian class, The Totem Warrior, and specifically the Bear Totem, is unquestionably the most popular Primal Path for one big reason: resistance versus all damage except psychic. In other words, if no enemy on the field possesses an attack with a fairly uncommon damage type, that Bear Totem Barbarian enjoys effectively doubled HP when they Rage, rather than only versus weapon attacks. Also, as Barbarians have advantage on Dexterity saving throws against nasty damage spells like the dreaded Fireball, they can quite easily get a cumulative chance to halve received damage again. It's commonly thought that the mass infusions of spells and monsters that deal psychic damage in Xanathar's Guide to Everything and Mordekainen's Tome of Foes, respectively, are an attempt to "stealth nerf" it. Let's not forget that a Ring of Resistance can also fix that little psychic problem.
- 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 good at everything but the best at nothing, it's surprisingly easy to make a Bard that's 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, including powerful Paladin and Ranger-exclusive spells that they're only supposed to start dipping their toes into at the end of their progression, but the Bard has access to in half the levels. 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!
- Clerics get a few domains which are brokenly strong.
- Xanathar's Guide to Everything added the Grave Domain for Clerics, which is focused on manipulating life and death. Their Channel Divinity can be used for an ability called "Path to the Grave", which makes a creature vulnerable to all types of damage for one attack. Effectively, that means the next hit the creature takes will deal double damage. On top of that, there's No Saving Throw against Path to the Grave, there's no limits as to what kinds of creatures it can target, and it overrides resistance and immunity to damage types. Better yet, the Cleric learns it at 2nd level, meaning they get it very early in the adventure. With this one move, the Grave Cleric can help their allies cause absurd amounts of damage, and it's a Disc-One Nuke that remains a viable debuff all the way to the end of a campaign.
- The Peace Domain Cleric from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is a Badass Pacifist who can make everyone more badass. The Emboldening Bond feature lets anyone roll a d4 and add the number rolled to an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw once per turn, as long as any bonded creature is within 30 feet of another bonded creature. Your party members will be close enough to one another most of the time to use this buff. And when they are, the Protective Bond feature at Peace Cleric 6 lets anyone teleport next to an ally that's about to take damage and take the hit instead, allowing the Stone Walls to help the Squishy Wizards stay up. Peace Cleric 17 expands this range to 60 feet, and grants resistance to all damage taken by Protective Bond. The Balm of Peace is a Channel Divinity option that lets the Cleric move up to their speed while restoring 2d6 + the Cleric's Wisdom modifier of HP to any ally they walk past, which also doesn't provoke opportunity attacks. This lets the Peace Cleric not only escape danger, but heal their allies at the same time. The domain also automatically gets some useful spells, such as Beacon of Hope, Greater Restoration, and Aura of Purity (which gives advantage on saving throws against most status effects). A Peace Domain Cleric can buff the party, keep people alive, and heal effortlessly while making it easy to stay out of trouble themselves, making it a very versatile domain throughout the entire campaign.
- The Circle of the Moon Druid is the Disc-One Nuke class of this edition; this has everything to do with their Combat Wild Shape feature, which allows them to take the form of things like tigers and, worse, brown bears, at a mere 2nd level. What's worse is that, just like with Polymorph, they simply revert back to their old form, HP included, when their animal form gets killed off. And if that's not bad enough, they can use this feature twice per short rest. This makes Moon Druids among the most damaging and most damage-spongiest build for the first few levels, and that's even before considering the fact that they also get a full allotment of spells. Fortunately, the power of their forms taper off at around 5th level or so, and the designers at least had the mind to keep away Wild Spell... at least until 18th level. And then things get silly once again at the class's capstone when Wild Shape can be used infinitely, reducing HP damage to a complete joke for the class.
- The Rogue optional class feature "Steady Aim" from Tasha Cauldron of Everything. As a Bonus Action, the Rogue can sacrifice their movement for the turn to give their next attack Advantage. For melee Rogues, it's powerful but potentially risky since sacrificing your movement means you can't Bonus Action Disengage or use the Dodge action. On a ranged focus Rogue though, it practically has no downsides and is incredibly strong, since chances are a ranged focused Rogue will not want to be moving much anyway, so you can sacrifice moving to ensure Advantage on your next attack. This means it synergizes extremely well with the Sharpshooter Feat, which removes the long distance attacking Disadvantage, and increases the damage of the attackers next attack by ten in exchange for minus five to hit, but Steady Aim almost completely makes up for the minus to hit since you double the chances of the die rolling well, and later on minus five to hit isn't enough to prevent many attacks from hitting. To top it off, since Rogue's need an ally near their target or advantage to get sneak attack bonuses, this ensures the Rogue can get their sneak attack damage without any issue or need for an ally near the target.
- Hexblade Warlock is considered to be among the most broken subclasses released for this edition. Originally designed to silence complaints that the Pact of the Blade was too weak, it proceeded to take things way too far, to the point that it is hated by some for being so broken that it renders all other Warlock patrons obsolete, and a good number of Dungeon Masters outright ban it. Between the Hexblade Warlock's ability to learn Smite spells (only Paladin by default gets them), access to more weapons and armor options, and Hexblade's Curse, a Hexblade Warlock becomes basically the best Magic Knight, and can outperform other Charisma casters with ease, especially if they take a dip into Paladin or Sorcerer. Very few classes can match its performance, and among Warlock subclasses, it basically reigns supreme in terms of offensive Warlock subclasses. Part of this is because the Warlock's spell system means that they can get a lot of raw power from getting spells back on a short rest, making it possible for them to cheese most encounters. And that's not even getting into its multiclass potential; see above for how it resolves the Paladin's design issues. The Hexblade didn't just change everything for Warlock, it flipped the entire meta on its head.
- Certain multiclass combinations can get incredibly cheesy due to synergy between class features and abilities, with Charisma focused classes being notable for being some of the strongest options:
- Sorcerer/Paladins (or "Sorcadins" if you'd prefer) have the ability to use high-level Sorcerer spell slots as high-octane fuel for Paladin smites, allowing some truly insane levels of burst damage. A Paladin 6/Sorcerer 5 Sorcadin with 16 Strength and an ordinary longsword can cast Hold Person as a bonus action and wallop with two critical attacks expending two Level 4 Spell Slots to achieve full smite power. The result? Two all-but guaranteed hits together doing 24d8+3 damage. The GM can kiss his precious BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy) goodbye note . You could also Quicken Booming Blade or Green-Flame Blade (spells that become a weapon attack), getting a weapon attack with a mild magical effect as a bonus action then use your regular action for two more weapon attacks, any/all of which might be crits/smites. Not to mention you also have the full versatility that being a caster provides: Fireball, Hold Person, Mirror Image, Wall of Fire, Polymorph, Greater Invisibility...
- Warlock/Sorcerers are commonly called "Coffeelocks". You can use the Pact Magic feature to convert Warlock spell slots into Sorcerer Metamagic points, and then use Sorcerer Metamagic points to convert into Sorcerer spell slots. The trick here is that Warlocks recover spell slots on a short rest, while Sorcerers normally do on a long rest. In other words, you become The Sleepless and only need to take long rests to use Hit Dice and recuperate... although even that becomes irrelevant if you are a Divine Soul Sorcerer or Celestial Patron Warlock, as you get some healing spells.
- The Hexblade Warlock / College of Sword Bard, or "Hexbard", which takes the raw power of the Hexblade Warlock, adds it to the Sword Bard's flourishes, and creates a powerful Magic Knight that can fight in melee range really well thanks to high AC and damage. By taking the first level of Hexblade Warlock, the Bard gets not only the Warlock's spell slots, but also Hexblade's Curse to deal extra damage and regain HP, and Hex Warrior to gain shields, which combined with the Sword Bard's blade flourishes, can make a really powerful melee duelist who can hold down an enemy in 1v1 combat really well, while using their spell slots to provide support over offensive spells. By the time the Bard gets to level 3, the Sword Bard becomes a pretty high AC melee warrior, who can stack several different ways of doing damage to their attacks, while having spell slots for support or other effects, which can become insanely strong when using something like Defensive Flourish to add their Bardic Inspiration damage to their AC, potentially making their AC as high as 30 with lucky rolls, half-plate armor, and the Shield spell. Oh, and since the Bard and Warlock are Charisma casters, there isn't any issues stat wise in terms of multiclassing.
- The Hexblade / Paladin, or "Hexadin" is notoriously broken. Paladins are - supposedly - balanced by their dependence on both Strength and Charisma, but even a single level of hexblade warlock gets rid of the strength dependence (beyond the 13 needed for multiclassing out of paladin). The hexadin gets to use its charisma modifier to attack instead, letting the character focus on increasing only one stat. This also boosts their Aura of Protection, making them (and members of the party who stick close to them) extremely unlikely to fail any saves. And as a cherry on top, they can now use their warlock spell slots to smite which are recovered on a short rest instead of a long rest.
- Quite a few Arcane Traditions for Wizard can get pretty ridiculous.
- Bladesinger Wizard doesn't look that broken at first, trading magical offense for melee offense and defense. However, its high native defenses and melee combat lets it abuse certain effects that most Wizards would overlook. Even as early as level 3, a Blur or Protection from Evil and Good spell can make you virtually unhittable. Greater Invisible and Fly can make you actually unhittable. Grabbing a form of Blindsight plus Fog Cloud screws over a surprisingly large number of monsters, since while many higher level monsters have ways to see through magical darkness and illusion, much fewer can see through the Boring, but Practical fog. And spells like Anti-Magic Field are just kind of okay in the hands of a Wizard, but a nightmare in the hands of a Bladesinger. A Bladesinger that has Anti-Magic Field up can completely dominate waves of spellcasting enemies, even heavy-hitters like the Lich.
- Chronurgy Wizard is widely considered to be the most over-tuned Arcane Tradition of all Wizard subclasses, for a class with a lot of already powerful subclasses, 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 Remote Bombs and nukes):
- Chronal Shift and Temporal Awareness are both super strong for 2nd-level subclass features; the former works like the Diviner's Portent feature (the brokenness of which is already detailed) while the latter allows you to add your Intelligence modifier to your initiative. However, these are small potatoes compared to the next two abilities.
- Arcane Abeyance is capable of letting you crush the action economy. It essentially allows you to toss the Concentration mechanic into the trash bin by becoming a walking free Ring of Spell Storing vendor thanks to the bead, letting you give anyone in the party the ability to, for a few examples, cast Find Familiar, free up your Concentration for another spell by giving it to a martial and letting them make the Concentration checks in your stead, or do other kinds of shenanigans allowed with a max limit of one 4th-level spell. What's more is that any stored spell gets a cast time of one action as well; you can instantly drop a Tiny Hut on enemies in the middle of a fight or cast an inverted Magic Circle — a spell that normally takes one minute to cast — to entrap the Big Bad inside and win, no saves allowed. Not to mention that you can use this feature once every short or long rest, allowing you to use it multiple times a day.
- Then there is Convergent Future. What if, for the measly cost of one level of Exhaustion (which isn't a big deal to Wizards anyway, and even then, can be taken in your stead by a simulacrum), you can overrule the Dungeon Master in any situation that requires a roll? For just one example, if your DM rules that lifting and throwing a boulder bigger than a three-story house is a DC 60 Strength check, your puny Wizard with 8 Strength could theoretically lift the big rock and lob it, like they're some kind of Dragon Ball character, in defiance of all sense and logic just by using this feature. With a more sane DM who rules that some tasks are simply impossible to achieve, having the ability to point to any enemy and say "you fail
" with nothing it can do — unless it uses up a Legendary Resistance — is no less broken.
- Divination Wizard has access to Portent, which lets them roll d20 twice at the end of their long rest and keep the result, then substitute them for any roll they wish. Ideally, high rolls go to allies while low rolls go to enemies. They are well capable of turning a successful saving throw into a Nat 1 or a missing attack into a Critical Hit. Even a two level dip in a Divination Wizard can be game-breaking on some builds, especially when combined with the Lucky feat or Halfling Luck.
- Evocation Wizard lets you use spells in ways they were never intended by protecting your friends (and most DMs will let you protect yourself as well) from area of effects. Awesome, but Impractical battlefield nukers like Dawn and Whirlwind can safely clear entire rooms of enemies. But what really pushes this subclass over the top is Overchannel — they get to maximize the damage roll on a 5th-level or lower spell once per day. Additional uses quickly cause escalating, unavoidable backlash damage that can instantly kill you. In theory. There are way to cheat the system, either by embracing your Glass Cannon status and accepting multiple revivals, creating clones with Astral Projection or Simulacrum, or abusing effects that set your damage received to near-zero.
- Illusionist Wizard gets two of the most powerful abilities in 5th Edition: Malleable Illusions, which lets them change the parameters of otherwise fixed illusion spells on the fly, and Illusory Reality, which lets them make certain aspects of an illusion real. Malleable Illusions isn't that busted when you first get it, but it's here for two reasons: Mirage Arcana, which in itself is already a game-breaker since it allows you to reshape vast swaths of the battlefield, and Creation. When cast out of a higher-level spell slot, Creation allows you to create a repairable and reusable barrier out of a single spell slot that lasts for the entire day depending on material without concentration. Considering how Wall of Force is considered one of the best spells in the game, a better version of Wall of Force is just out of control. Illusory Reality's brokenness speaks for itself.
- The Order of Scribes is a ridiculously powerful subclass, which at times even borders on Master of All, 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. Their 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.
Spells
There are still a number of cheese-tastic 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 Big Bad wet their pants.- In general, spells that require ability checks to negate are much preferable to those that require of saving throws. This is because it's significantly easier to hand out ability check penalties/disadvantage than for saving throw. But the big reason is that a lot of monsters, especially higher-level ones, depend more on their saving throw proficiency than their stats for protection.
- The power of a Warlock's Eldritch Blast is 1d10 of force damage that scales up with character level, not Warlock level. It's a cantrip which is unlocked at level 1 for Warlocks, meaning that every character benefits from being a Warlock for a single level.
- Wish has no repercussions so long as it's used only to copy the effects of another spell of 8th level or lower, or 6th-level or lower spells if copying ones outside of the caster's spell list. As a bonus, Wish ignores the casting times and other components of said spells, including costly materials.
- Simulacrum copies all features from the creature they clone, including spells. They're fragile, can't heal, and can't restore their spells, but this is still essentially an automated set of spell-scroll and a concentration-spell sink any way you look at it. And this doesn't even mitigate recharging any other limited-use abilities (i.e. Fighter's Action Surge).
- Where this reaches true stupidity is when you combine both spells above. Normally, a caster is restricted to only a single active Simulacrum of their own at a time. But you can easily circumvent that by having the clone use the Simulacrum spell themselves. Or better, have it Wish its own Simulacrum of the caster for a minuscule percentage of the casting time and none of the other resources. And then the clone of the clone does the same. Cue instant Clone Army.
- 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 particularly powerful "save-or-suck" that can take enemies out of combat for a minute at a time, breaking encounters down into manageable chunks.
- True Polymorph, on the other hand, is almost as silly as Polymorph Any Object was in 3.5 edition, possibly more so in some ways. This time, it doesn't even check for creature type, size, material, or any of that jazz. The only limits this time are with the new form's CR, which has to be equal or less than the level or CR of the target, and that permanency requires concentrating on the spell for the full duration. Like Polymorph, the new form's features replace all of your other features (yes, even spells), but even that's still no excuse to put Pit Fiends and Ancient Copper Dragons in the player's hands, nor the ability to transform the Tarrasque into an apple.
- Fireball is a downplayed example. The designers have gone on record admitting that it's above the power curve for a 3rd-level spell, but this was intentional. It's not really bad enough to break the game though, but is still likely to cause Complacent Gaming Syndrome. It's a meme that any class with access to Fireball will take it, though the usefulness of Fireball drops off after a while, making it more of an intentional Disc-One Nuke.
- The Ranger spell Swift Quiver normally gives a Ranger the ability to shoot twice from a weapon that uses a quiver as a bonus action, but can only be cast as a Level 5 Ranger spell. Since Rangers are a half-caster class, they don't get Level 5 spells until the very late levels. A bard, however, can snaffle the spell with Magical Secrets — and since a Bard is a full-caster, they get it seven levels earlier than the class the spell is actually meant for.
- The Druid spell Summon Woodland Creatures can be fairly broken in classic interpretation. It allows the Druid to summon a number of forest creatures with a fairly low CR limit, which seems OK.. except that one of those possible creatures is Pixies. Pixies are fairly low-level fey with only 1 HP each that could blow away in a stiff breeze, and you get 8 of them... but each of them comes with their own loadout of 1/day spells including Polymorph and Improved Invisibility, so 8 Pixies can polymorph your entire party into T. rexes. Was later fixed by errata stating that the GM, not the player, should choose which specific woodland creatures appear — but this only moves the responsibility onto the GM to determine the usefulness of the spell.
- Conjure Animals is like a Disc-One Nuke that extends almost to the penultimate dungeon; you can use the spell to summon Giant Spiders for multiple target restraining, wolves or velociraptors for damage, apes for an artillery line, and so forth. And thanks to the lower numbers of 5th Edition, by the time this spell loses some of its bite, you have more than enough spell slots to abuse it.
- Somewhere in power between Conjure Animals and Conjure Woodland Creatures is the spell released in Tasha's Guide to Everything, Summon Undead Spirit. It lasts a very long time, does not require action babysitting if you give a general enough command, and despite being relatively fragile has (depending on form) built-in protection in the form of phasing through walls, flight, and ranged attacks. Necromancer Wizards in particular can do huge damage with this spell because this is the only summoning spell that is a Necromancy spell.
- Putrid Form can apply the Poisoned condition at the start of an adjacent enemy's turn for no reactions. They also get an attack that applies the Poisoned condition on a failed saving throw. However, if the enemy is already poisoned they become paralyzed. They can do up to four attacks! Only downside is the fragility of the summon.
- Skeletal Form makes ranged attacks. These do quite a bit of damage and keeps your summon out of danger to squeeze more use out of it.
- Ghostly Form has attacks that cause frightened on a failed saving throw. They also fly and phase through objects. while they can't end their turn in an object, they can protect themselves by going through a door, the ceiling, the wall to an adjacent room, etc.
- Spirit Shroud is bonkers for more daring spellcasters. The spell adds 1d8 damage at base, with an additional +1d8 for every two levels. It cuts the speed of nearby monsters by 10 feet and prevents them from regenerating hit points. Acceptable, but where this spell really shines is someone who can make a lot of attack rolls. As this spell, unlike most damage bonuses, works with any attack roll, not just weapon attack rolls. The aforementioned Evoker can even Overchannel this spell to add 16 extra damage on every attack roll made within 10 feet of the Evoker. You can even take the Crossbow Expert or Gunner feat to remove the one downside of this tactic for a high-defense caster, making ranged attack rolls with disadvantage. To put things in perspective, an Evocation Wizard with an Overchanneled Spirit shroud can do 6d6+52 damage with a Scorching Ray out of a second-level spell slot. Out of a fifth-level spell slot, that becomes 12d6+100 damage.
- Ray of Enfeeblement defines Simple, yet Awesome. For the low, low cost of a 2nd-level slot and an attack roll, you can cut an opponent's strength-based damage in HALF for at least a round. This works even on creatures who have Legendary Resistance. And as it's not a status effect or d20 penalty, there's no standardized defense against it.
- The spell Healing Spirit, added in the Xanathar's Guide to Everything supplement, creates a spirit on a single square that heals anyone passing through that square for a variable number of HP every round. This doesn't sound that powerful, but an organized party can conga line back and forth through the spirit's square every round it's active, making it heal the entire party. And since movement can now be broken up into multiple segments, this means that a PC could step on the square, heal, and go right back to whatever it was that they were doing. Combine it with the cleric/bard multiclass trick to add a static level bonus to healing spells, then add Beacon of Hope to recover the maximum amount of HP possible from any healing spell, and this one square can recover more health than spells more than ten levels higher. The designers have argued that this is not actually a game breaker, since the worst that can be done by powerful out-of-combat healing is to ensure the party starts every encounter fresh, which does not necessarily affect the play of the game that much.
- Speaking of Beacon of Hope, said spell is absolutely bonkers for being a mere 3rd spell. It allows the caster to give any number of creatures within 30 feet advantage on Wisdom saving throws, advantage on death saves, and regains max HP when rolling. Not only is getting advantage on two different saves really strong, but getting all HP restored maxed out dice wise is insanely strong, because it means any healing done to a person under said spell is always topped. So watch as something like Mass Healing Word goes from a seemingly weak 1d4, to always doing 4 before modifiers are included, or Cure Wounds restores the flat 8 before modifiers. Upcasting spells like Healing Word or Cure Wounds while using Beacon of Hope can be insanely powerful, and that doesn't even account for the wording leaving it open for interpretation that any healing works, meaning potions or other effects would do the max die possible. The only true downside is that the spell is an Action and Concentration, but its incredibly strong for such a fairly low level spell. Oh, and with the right subclass, the power it provides can be even more nuts; Life Domain Cleric's for example can add a 2 plus the spells level to any healing spell they make, meaning with Beacon of Hope, you can ensure something as simple as Healing Word does, at minimum, 7 HP before any modifiers are added, which gets even better as more spells appear or are upcasted.
- Pass Without Trace grants the entire party a whopping +10 bonus to all stealth rolls, which is high enough that the players can easily surprise almost every monster they come across even with disadvantage from armor and without any other investment in stealth. In the early part of the game when the spell first becomes available, it will actually be impossible not to surprise most enemies. Since the spell lasts for an hour, this can easily be carried through multiple encounters as long as the caster maintains concentration.
- Silvery Barbs. A First level spell from Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos, which allows you to force any creature to reroll a successful 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 successful. 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. It's particularly nasty on classes with easy means of refueling their low-level spell slots, like the Sorcerer, and utterly evil in the hands of the Aberrant Mind Sorcerer, who can grab it as a Psionic Spell and, from 6th level onwards, cast it for the very fair and balanced cost of one sorcery point with no components, meaning that it can't be detected or counterspelled.
Feats
- The feat Metamagic Adept gives any character two Metamagic effects of their choice and two sorcery points to cast them with. This causes a lot of problems when characters who were never expected to get Metamagic without a 3-level penalty has it.
- Even on Sorcerers, Metamagic Adept is near-mandatory. One feat to double the number of Metamagic known AND get those Sorcery points two levels early?
- If you want to recharge your Sorcery Points, you just need two levels of Sorcerer rather than three. This makes it much easier for the other spellcasters to have Metamagic while not sacrificing too many levels.
- Elemental Spell is just kind of okay in the hands of the base sorcerer, but it becomes a nightmare in the hands of someone with just two levels of Tempest or Zeal cleric. Yes, I would like to maximize the damage dice on my Fireballs and Meteor Swarms and Scorching Rays, please.
- Extend Spell is enough of a reason to grab this feat on its own. If your spells last for two hours instead of for one hour, effects like Summon Undead Spirit can be feasibly kept running all day. But if your spell lasts for 8 hours, like with Aid or Death Ward or Foresight (all game-changing spells worthy of a spell slot), you can Extend it, take a long rest, then get back your spell slots while having the spell running at least at its normal duration!
- If your character has a reliable action they like to do that's not a spell, such as Channel Divinity, Quicken Spell acts as a cut-rate Action Surge. Full-rate if you have a way to recharge your Sorcery Points somehow.
- Subtle Spell is just a great metamagic feat to have in general. It completely shuts out Counterspell, lets you cast through spells like Silence and Dark Star, and even lets you get away with spellcasting that would normally have social consequences, such as casting Suggestion on the king.
- The same book also introduced Metamagic Shards magical items. Whenever you use a metamagic effect while attuned to this item, you apply an additional effect as well. Some of these additional effects include teleporting 30 feet (fun with Reaction spells!), frightening the enemy, 3d6 extra damage, and applying disadvantage to enemy saving throws and attack rolls. Subtle Spell works on literally every spell in the game and Empower Spell can stack with any damaging spell for a double-tap.
- The Sharpshooter feat is infamously broken, because it glues together all the most powerful elements of other combat feats into one package giving a Long-Range Fighter 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, fire from far enough away that many enemies can be easily ambushed, and other buffs from a Support Party Member, 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. Or just taking Crossbow Expert and combining it with a hand crossbow; the two feats basically erase one anothers' and the hand crossbow's weaknesses and Crossbow Expert even offers a free extra attack.
- Polearm Master gives two benefits and both are extremely strong, making it a staple of many melee builds. The first is the ability to execute an extra attack with a glaive, halberd, quarterstaff, or spear as a bonus action, the damage die is only a d4, but you get to add your Strength modifier (making it usually better than dual-wielding, at least without the appropriate fighting style) and any other source of damage you may have - Great Weapon Master users and Hexblade warlocks alike love this. In addition, enemies that enter the reach of the user's weapon (which, for most qualifying weapons, is 10 feet) immediately provoke an opportunity attack. If you pair this with the Sentinel feat, said attack will immobilize the creature for the turn, and unless its attacks have a reach of at least 10 feet, it won't be able to reach you, essentially wasting its turn. The result is a feat that is suited for tanks and damage dealers alike.
- Of all the feats in 5e, the one most commonly cited as the strongest (and often banned from tables because of it) is the humble "Lucky". 3 times a day, you get to roll an extra d20 on a roll and take the highest result. At first glance this might not sound too bad, as it's just another way to get advantage. However, unlike most forms of gaining advantage this doesn't have any specific requirements or rolls that it works on, it can be applied at any time. That would make it very good by itself, but what really makes it a gamebreaker is that it actually doesn't apply advantage. The rules simply say that it lets you roll an extra d20 and take the result, but it doesn't say you gain advantage, you just recreate the effects of it. Why is this such an important distinction? Because advantage doesn't stack, you either have it or you don't. Meaning that lucky can actually stack with advantage and let you roll 3d20 and take the higher result, with Elven Accuracy this can get as high as 4d20. Yet as impressive as that sounds, it's not even the most broken way to exploit the feat... because due to the way lucky works, it can also be applied to disadvantage turning it into triple advantage (You roll 2d20 for disadvantage, but apply one of your lucky rolls to it and pick from the 3 dice). The feat is especially handy in the extremely common case something terrible happens on a natural one roll, meaning the player never has to fear that rule. Even better, the feat naturally works in tandem with the School of Divination Wizard, another game breaker, to ensure that you have uncanny control of your rolls up to six times a day. The fundamental math of encounters and the typical structure of encounters outside of dungeons makes it entirely possible the player can go months in reality without ever having a combat roll they make that doesn't involve controlling the dice.
