For all of you who want to play the edgy Paladin but aren’t ready to commit to something as dark as Conquest or Oathbreaker, Vengeance Paladin is the diet-edge for you. This Oath focuses on offense above all else, even forgoing a supportive aura at level 7 for the ability to case down enemies more effectively.

I absolutely love the Oath of the Watchers Paladin for a lot of reasons. We get a pretty good expanded spell list with Moonbeam, Counterspell, Banishment, and Hold Monster, our two channel divinity options are both amazing for the full 20 levels, and we get to boost our entire team’s initiative at 7th level.

I firmly believe that this is one of the most overrated subclasses in 5e, and the culprit is Aura of Warding. This feature gives you and those in your aura resistance to damage from spells. On paper this sounds amazing, but in practice it will so rarely come up.

Meet the Paladin that literally only uses violence as a last resort, sees the good in everyone, and has infinite patience. Aka, the exact opposite of your average D&D player. If somehow you are still interested, I think you’ll find a subclass that really rewards all that patience it asks of you.

The Oath of Glory is frequently seen as one of the weaker options for Paladins to take, and while I definitely wouldn’t rate it in the top tier, I still believe there is quite a bit of good to be found, especially if we build around the abilities we are given.

Oath of the Crown is easily overlooked for a number of reasons. Its appearance in the aforementioned book alone is enough for many players, but its actual features don’t scream amazing like some other Paladin Oaths do. However, to ignore this subclass is a grave mistake, as while tossing the SCAG into the trash is a good rule, this is the exception to that rule.

Devotion Paladins actually kinda rock. We get a huge buff to our accuracy if we can see combat coming or spare our first turn to set it up, we get the traditional turn undead channel divinity, straight up immunity to all charm effects to ourselves and those within 10ft of us at level 7, protection from a huge list of enemies at level 11

The Mercy Monk is the clear and obvious winner for best monk subclass, which isn’t saying very much. All Mercy had to do was have consistently good and useful features that didn’t eat up Ki points like they were candy, and it mostly accomplishes this task.

The Way of Shadow Monk is my pick for the second best monk subclass, though it’s a distant second place behind the Mercy Monk. Thankfully, this monk gets its best feature right at level 3, with the ability to cast Silence, Pass without Trace, Darkness, or Darkvision for 2 Ki points.

Sadly nerfed from it’s Unearthed Arcana version, the Way of the Ascendant Dragon is a monk that strangly specializes in area of effect damage, and performs at it exactly like you’d expect a monk to, poorly.

The Long Death monk is a subclass that looks really good on paper, and in truth has some pretty good abilities, it’s just a shame that they are stuck on such a lackluster class that has trouble taking advantage of them.

The Way of the Astral Self promises a very enticing idea: a monk that only needs Wisdom to function effectively. Sadly, it fails in this effort entirely.

The Drunken Master is about as good at fighting as a wasted alcoholic would realistically be. Every feature we get pushes us toward melee combat, which is exactly where a monk should never be with their D8 hit die and terrible AC, and provides us basically no defensive abilities to offset these disadvantages.

This subclass is irredeemable in every conceivable way and you would genuinely be better off playing a subclassless monk. If you insist that you simply must experience the worst that 5e has to offer, here are some feats or something I guess…

The War Domain is a strange case. It promotes weapon use above all else, but doesn’t really give all of the tools necessary for that playstyle. Our War Priest ability doesn’t even work with Booming Blade, as it requires the actual attack action. This leaves us with a cleric that seems to struggle at the one thing it tries to excel at, but that’s where you’d be wrong.

Of all the subclasses in this game, the Twilight domain is easily the one that needs feats to empower it the least. The channel divinity provided here basically makes your party unkillable for all but the hardest hitting encounters and makes encounter design incredibly difficult for your party.

Many have called the Trickery domain weak because of its lackluster abilities. I’m not here to dispute that these abilities are both situational and generally lacking, but I don’t believe for a second that this subclass is weak.

Tempest is my personal favorite domain because it focuses on one of my favorite things to do in 5e: pushing people around. We get an ability to push an enemy 10ft when we deal lightning damage to them at 6th level, and this is an incredible build around option.

The big points of power here are the emboldening bond, a feature that works like an improved Bless that also stacks with the actual Bless spell, a channel divinity that grants healing that makes the Life Cleric jealous, and the ability to grant a party-wide reaction to spread damage out evenly between players and keep enemies from using focus fire, forcing our opponents to play suboptimally.

The Order Cleric is one of the few domains that significantly changes the playstyle of the typical cleric, focusing quite a lot on buff spells for their party and granting them extra attacks when they do buff them. We also get a great control ability with our channel divinity, leaning this cleric is less of an offensive and more of a defensive and control style of play.