Introduction
As new source materials are released and those materials are explored, the state of the character optimization “meta” changes over time. A basic understanding of the state of the meta will help you a great deal in understanding character optimization and articles written about character optimization, including ours.
This article will be updated as the meta evolves over time and when new material is released.
This article describes the 2024 DnD 5e rules. For the 2014 rules, see our article on the 2014 meta.
Table of Contents
What is the Meta?
The “meta” is the current state of affairs in the game with all of the given materials available today. In a practical sense, it’s the state of character optimization with all of the official published character options available.
When a new source book is published, the meta changes. New options and rules changes can change the relative usefulness of pre-existing options. For example: new feats like Prodigy and Skill Expert made multiclassing into Rogue to get Expertise less appealing in the 2014 rules, presenting changes in the character optimization meta.
Current State of the Meta
Classes
Many classes saw significant improvements in the 2024 rules. The Monk, previously frustrating and weak, is now considerably more appealing. It’s arguably one of the strongest martial classes, especially with the ability to do things like run enemies hundred of feet out of combat and to restrain enemies in rope in a single round.
The Ranger, the other poorly-rated class from the 2014 rules, has gotten some improvements, but has also regressed in a key way: their over-dependence on Hunter’s Mark for both class and subclass features means that there is really only one way to play a Ranger. That’s likely fine for now, but will constrain the design of future Ranger subclasses in a way that may leave the Ranger to fall behind other classes over time. If nothing else, folks are going to get sick of casting Hunter’s Mark.
Backgrounds
Currently the limited number of published Backgrounds and Origin Feats creates a very narrow pool of options for any single build, which means that optimized builds generally only have one or two options per class, and they’re frequently a weird combination with your class.
Species
With the rework of Species and Backgrounds in the 2024 rules, Species can be a much less impactful part of your build. While some species still offer build-defining options like spellcasting, most Species will work at least passably well for any class. Humans, in particular, no longer sit at the top of the scale now that everyone gets an Origin Feat at level 1.
Martial vs. Caster Disparity
The new Weapon Mastery system was intended to narrow the gap between spellcasters and martial characters, as well as making martial characters more mechanically satisfying to play. The attempt was noble, but changes to spells have handily erased that progress.
The most powerful spells from the 2014 rules have not been nerfed. In fact, Spirit Guardians even got a buff since you can now walk it onto enemies to immediately cause damage. To make matters worse, several new or rewritten spells now work much like Spirit Guardians does, allowing spellcasters to become a walking blender and tear through crowds of enemies for easy damage.
The ability to get Shillelagh using any ability score means that even gish builds can be SAD (Single Ability Dependent), making those builds easier to manage than comparable martial builds. Compare the Eldritch Knight Fighter to the Paladin. The Eldritch Knight can build around Intelligence entirely, while the Paladin needs to split resources between Strength/Dexterity and Charisma.
Additionally, there’s the new Conjure Minor Elementals, which is so horrifyingly powerful that we might as well use it as a goal post for optimized builds focused entirely on damage output.
Healing in Combat
The 2024 rules fully double the healing dice for Cure Wounds, Healing Word, and the mass versions of both. The hope was to combat the horrible feeling of spending a turn to heal 1d8+3 damage only to see an enemy deal 1d8+3 damage the very next turn. These improvements put healing in a slightly better position at low levels, but didn’t solve the fundamental issues around healing in combat.
With rare exceptions, healing in combat remains an attrition fight in a game where the players’ resources must last a whole day, while enemies only need to last about 3 rounds. On top of that, enemy damage values scale at the same rate as the healing provided by even the upgraded spells. A Brown Bear at CR 1 does 13 average damage in one turn, and Healing Word will heal an average of 8 damage. A Giant Ape at CR 7 does 44 average damage, while Healing Word cast at 4th level (the best slot a 7th-level caster will have) only heals an average of 28 damage. While this means the percentage of the damage healed remains roughly the same, the value of a higher-level spell slot should be substantially more impactful than just undoing ~60% of a single enemy’s turn.
Forced Movement
The abundance of options for forced movement has a much more significant impact on the game’s meta than I think the DnD design team anticipated. Simple options like Weapon Mastery (Push) are available right from level 1, the Grappler feat makes it easy to drag creatures about, and numerous class and subclass features offer even more options.
The abundance and accessibility of these options puts players at a massive advantage over enemies which can’t attack at range, which includes huge portions of the Monster Manual. Using forced movement to put enemies out of reach means that melee enemies may be unable to participate in combat because they don’t have enough movement to get back into melee before being batted away again.
This also makes area damage effects, even those with small areas, considerably more dangerous. In a party with a Fighter using a warhammer, that Fighter could push enemies into small groups for the party’s spellcaster to attack with small AOEs like Acid Splash, Shatter, and Moonbeam, making those spells multiplicatively more effective.
And that doesn’t touch the issue of Spike Growth, which was already a problem in the 2014 rules. In 2024, it’s outright game-breaking.
Damage Types
Creatures no longer have resistance to non-magical bludgeoning/piercing/slashing damage, which was common in the 2014 rules but only served to punish martial characters for participating in games with few magic weapons available.
With the removal of that resistance, many related class/subclass features changed. The Monk’s Ki-Empowered Strikes (now just “Empowered Strikes”) previously made the Monk’s Unarmed Strikes magical. Now, it allows you to choose to deal Force damage instead of your normal damage type.
Force, Necrotic, Psychic, Radiant, and Thunder are all frequently used to get around resistances to more common damage types like Cold and Fire. Class/subclass features which allow players to change damage types, such as the Great Old One Warlock’s Psychic Spells, exist specifically for that purpose.
I’m still digging through the Monster Manual, but I suspect that higher-CR monsters will also lean into these damage types, making resistance to them valuable at high levels despite being rarely useful at low levels.
Best Of
Do not mistake “best of” for “most fun.” This is an article about optimizing characters, not about buildin engaging characters that are run to play.
Best Background: Scribe
Exceptionally versatile, a huge number of classes and builds work well with the Scribe Background. Skilled isn’t a combat feat, but it can expand your character’s capabilities significantly in a game where most characters only get 4 skills at level 1.
Best Species: Bugbear
Surprise Attack remains an absurdly powerful outlier. While our 2014 Bugbear-y Me in Damage build is a little less impressive in the world of Conjure Minor Elementals, +2d6 damage per attack is still an insane damage boost which works with all of the same tactics that abuse Conjure Minor Elementals.
Flying races also remain very powerful simply because flight is so powerful.
Best Origin Feat: Musician
Heroic Inspiration for 2 to 6 creatures in the party. The ability to reroll an important save or a high-value attack is massively impactful and benefits the entire party in a way that no other Origin Feat does.
Magic Initiate is also a big contender here. Shillelagh and True Strike using any mental ability offer fantastic options for a powerful build, but they aren’t the sort of force multiplier offered by Musician.
Best General Feat: Undecided
While there are several notably powerful General Feats, there isn’t one that clearly stands above the others.
Best Epic Boon: Boon of Fate
Adding or subtracting 2d4 from a save, including another creature’s, is crazy. Everyone in the party can take it to make save-or-suck spells considerably more reliable. It works on literally any character, and can be used offensively or defensively. Sure, it only works once per Short or Long Rest, but an average of +/- 5 on a D20 Test is massive. You have a 25% chance on any given roll that Boon of Fate could change the outcome.
Best Multiclass Dip
Either Cleric, Paladin, or Fighter. Cleric can get you heavy armor, plus powerful level 1 cleric spells. Fighter can get you Con saves, heavy armor, and Weapon Mastery. Paladin strikes a nice balance between the two.
Worst Of
Do not mistake “worst of” for “least fun.” This is an article about optimizing characters, not about buildin engaging characters that are run to play.
Worst Background: Artisan
A very narrow set of builds can benefit from the ability scores, Persuasion is utterly useless to characters who would consider this, and it’s saddled with the Crafter feat.
Worst Species: Halfling
Halflings are only appealing because of Lucky. Lucky is great, but it is not enough to make them an effective species choice. Naturally Stealthy is a fine feature for Rogues, but only for Rogues, which pigeon-holes the Halfling into exactly one class.
I think they should have kept the Stout Halfling’s resistance to Poison Damage.
Worst Origin Feat: Crafter
The 2024 crafting rules as a whole are disappointing, but Crafter is just pitiful. The 20% discount on nonmagical items is nice, but gold still has very little value in the 2024 rules, so it will stop mattering once everyone can afford to buy full plate.
Worst General Feat: Martial Weapon Training
They went from 4 weapons to every martial weapon, and this feat is still bad. Any character that would benefit significantly from access to Martial weapons already gets them, and the gap between Simple and Martial weapons is miniscule unless you also have Weapon Mastery.
Worst Epic Boon: Boon of Spell Recall
Unreliable and frustrating. You’ll recover an average of less than 1 spell slot of each spell level from 1 to 4, assuming 3 spell slots.
Assorted Broken Things
There are a few things in the 2024 rules that are so exceptionally broken that some tables may prefer to simply omit them to avoid the game becoming unplayably easy.
Bastions
Our article on Bastions digs into a lot of the fun things that you can do with Bastions, but the ability to craft Uncommon magic items is, without questions, absurdly powerful. The abundance of useful Uncommon magic items, many of which don’t require attunement, presents a massive balance problem. A clever player could churn out Wands of Missiles and make level 7 Magic Missile their go-to attack option in place of weapons or cantrips, and that’s among the least interesting options.
The only limitations are the level 9 requirement and your DM deciding to use the Bastions sytem, which is explicitly an optional rule, but it was also one of the big selling points of the 2024 DMG.
Chains and Rope
The ability to bind creatures in chains or ropes is comically easy. A level 1 Monk can do this on their own in a single turn, making their target Restrained and then costing them attacks or actions to escape. While this tactic doesn’t affect especially large creatures, the fact that it works so well on most of the Monster Manual makes it a huge problem.
Conjure Minor Elementals
People immediately noticed that combining Conjure Minor Elementals and Scorching Ray allowed Wizards to deal so much damage so quickly that they could solo encounters with no further effort. The damage also grows exponentially as the Wizard can cast higher-level versions of both spells, so as soon as the combination comes online it becomes the defining offensive tactic of the entire game.
This issue also existed with Spirit Shroud in the 2014 rules, but it was nowhere near as powerful. Conjure Minor Elementals scales fully 4 times as fast as Spirit Shroud does, it has a 10-minute duration instead of 1 minute, and it has a 15-foot range instead of 10. We used Spirit Shroud in our Bugbear-y Me in Damage article, and could comfortable solo CR 20 creatures in one turn by level 16. That’s too powerful for all but the most heavily-optimized games, and Conjure Minor Elementals is massively more powerful than that.
Enspelled Items
Enspelled Items, new in the 2024 rules, hold a single spell, have a maximum of 6 charges, and can cast their contained spell by spending a charge. Uncommon rarity covers both cantrips and level 1 spells, including powerful options like Absorb Elements and Shield, giving players a deep well of low-level magic at little cost.
These items do need to be equipped to function, so they can’t just sit in player’s pockets, but up to 6 charges per day of spells like Shield is still going to be massively impactful. These items also require Attunement, but players can simply reattune to a different Enspelled Item once their charges run low.
I suspect that long-running buffs like Mage Armor, Longstrider, and Darkvision will also be popular options. Martial characters may enjoy cantips like Blade Ward and Resistance if they can cast them before walking into an encounter. Cure Wounds may also be helpful for stretching limited healing resources. Many characters will enjoy Hex or Hunter’s Mark, both of which have extremely long durations and can be reassigned to new targets after they’re case. Armor of Agathys, False Life, Disguise Self.
Cases like incredibly numerous, and requiring the player to pick up a staff to cast the spell is not nearly as limiting as the designers may have hoped. If you as a DM include these in your game, pick the spells ahead of time rather than letting players decide. Pick things that are appealing, but which won’t cause problems.
Enchantment spells, which notably include Silvery Barbs, only work with Enspelled Staffs. That’s more odd than a balance issue.
Speed Debuffs
Most things in the game have 30 ft. speed. A weapon with the Slow Weapon Mastery, Ray of Frost, and the 10-foot speed debuff from Slasher can immobilize most creatures in the game. Even if you don’t immobilize them, two speed debuffs can make an enemy so slow that the party can calmly walk out of their reach, making melee-focused enemies essentially harmless.
Suggestion
The suggested course of action has almost not restrictions except hit point damage. The amount of absolute havoc that you can cause with this spell not only makes the game hard to play, it breaks any sense of plausibility in your setting. Anyone who can cast Suggestion has a good chance to tear down society.
Spike Growth
The spell itself isn’t the problem; the problem is the abundance of forced movement effects. The “cheese grater” tactic was already very powerful in the 2014 rules, but now there are so many options to force movement that any party can turn Spike Growth into a win condition.
