DnD 2024 Classes are the mechanical heart of characters in Dungeons and Dragons. While your race and background carry equal weight in who your character is, your class defines what your character does. Understanding how to build and play a class effectively is the most important part of building an effective DnD character.
Listed below are Handbooks on each of the classes present in the 2024 DnD 5e rules, exploring the nuances and tricks to get the most out of each. To that end we not only go over the features and options of each class, but put those ideas into practice with subclass handbooks and example builds.
We try to keep multiclassing to a minimum in class-specific and subclass-specific guides, but, if those advanced options interest you, don’t miss the Practical Guide to Multiclassing and our Build Guide Showcase, both of which go into multiclassing.
These articles are for the 2024 DnD 5e rules. For the 2014 rules, see our 2014 Classes page.
Table of Contents
Choosing a Class
Choosing your character’s class is arguably the most important decision when building a new character, as it determines their biggest capabilities and their role within the party.
DnD 5e is resilient enough as a system that a party doesn’t need to adhere to
the classic Cleric/Fighter/Rogue/Wizard party makeup, though covering all of
those core capabilities can make your party more successful. For a quick,
capable party, ensure that someone in the party is filling each of those four
roles.Cleric Equivalent Fighter Equivalent Rogue Equivalent Wizard Equivalent Bard Artificer Artificer Bard Cleric Barbarian Bard Sorcerer Druid Fighter Monk Warlock Sorcerer (Divine Soul) Paladin Ranger Wizard Warlock (Celestial) Rogue
If your character’s build won’t neatly fit into those boxes, it may be helpful to consider party roles in more depth. Specific roles can be split between the party, and so long as every role is represented, your party has everything that it needs to succeed regardless of specific classes.
DnD 2024 Classes
Artificer
The Artificer has not made its way into the 2024 DnD rules. See our coverage for the 2014 rules.
Barbarian
With a huge pile of hit points, access to damage resistance to common damage types, and a high risk, high reward play style, the Barbarian is a capable melee warrior that’s a ton of fun to play. Rage allows the Barbarian to be exceptionally durable during a few fights per day, allowing you to act aggressively while shrugging off blows that would quickly drop other characters.
- 2024 Barbarian Class Guide
- 2024 Barbarian Subclasses Guide
- Path of the Berserker Barbarian Subclass Guide (Coming soon!)
- Path of the World Tree Barbarian Subclass Guide
Bard
A jack of all trades with skills and magic to overcome many challenges, the Bard falls somewhere between the Rogue’s capability with skills and the Sorcerer’s capabilities with magic. If you want to do a little bit of everything, the Bard is a great choice. With more skills than most characters, Expertise, and full spellcasting, you can build a Bard to fill nearly any roll in your party.
Cleric
While novice players overlook the Cleric for fear of becoming a “healbot”, the Cleric is a much more interesting class than that. Diverse, powerful, and backed up by an amazing spell list, Clerics can fill a variety of roles in the party and support many play styles. They do still have the best healing options in the game, but most Clerics spend more time smashing through fights with Spirit Guardians than they do spamming Cure Wounds.
Druid
Divine spellcasters with a close bond to nature, Druids are primarily spellcasters and thrive when controlling their environment with area control spells. They match the Cleric’s healing capabilities, but present a very different playstyle otherwise. Among their most iconic options is Wild Shape, allowing you to temporarily adopt the form of an animal.
Fighter
Diverse, capable, and effective, the Fighter is the master of arms and armor. Fighters have many excellent tactical options, get more Weapon Mastery slots than any class, and get more Ability Score Increases than any other class, allowing them to further customize by collecting feats. Because their complexity grows slowly as you level and you can add complexity as desired by adding feats, the Fighter is both an easy class to play and an exciting class to optimize.
Monk
The iconic unarmed combatant, Monks are capable of many superhuman physical feats without the use of spells. They’re a comlex class to build and play successfully, but their niche between the Fighter and the Rogue can make them a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the mechanical requirements of the class mean that monk builds are extremely homogenous and there is very little room to deviate without feeling like your character is underperforming the rest of your party.
Paladin
Warriors powered by their commitent to a cause, the Paladin is nearly always a heavily-armored melee character, equally capable of smiting their enemies and healing their allies. Their dependence on Charisma also makes them capable in social situations where similar classes like the Barbarian and the Fighter often struggle. Because the Paladin’s capabilities touch on so many mechanics, Paladins are very mechanically satisfying to play and can be a great way to quickly master 5e’s mechanics.
Ranger
Capable explorers and warriors, the Ranger falls somewhere between the Fighter’s martial capabilities, the Rogue’s skills, and the Druid’s spellcasting. Despite a few mechanical frustrations relating to their Hunter’s Mark spell, the Ranger has a lot of to offer.
Rogue
More than just the orphaned thief stereotype, Rogues are cunning, highly-skilled characters capable of solving many problems and filling many roles within a party. The Rogue’s signature combat ability is Sneak Attack, which encourages you to use positioning, stealth, and clever tactics to deliver powerful single hits which can eventually add powerful crowd control effects with the Cunning Strike feature.
Sorcerer
Spellcasters that draw power from an innate source of magic. The Sorcerer’s Metamagic feature allows them to customize those spells to suit the needs of their situation.
Warlock
Warlocks draw their power from a pact made with a powerful entity of some kind. Mechanically, the Warlock is delightfully weird compared to other options, offering a huge number of customization points and entirely unique spellcasting resource that makes them feel and play very differently from other spellcasters. Building around Eldritch Blast has been simple and effective since the Player’s Handbook released in 2014, but that is certainly not the only way to build an effective warlock.