Introduction

As new source materials are released and those materials are explored, the state the character optimization “meta” changes over time. A basic understanding of the state of the meta will help you a great deal in inderstanding character optimization and articles written about character optimization, including my own.

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 the world 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, presenting changes in the character optimization meta.

Current State of the Meta

The current meta is defined by Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. In addition to new subclass options, feats, and spells, Tasha’s introduced a series of optional rules for customizing races and classes which dramatically altered the meta.

Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything also updates the Artificer class and several spells first introduced in the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide, including both Green-Flame Blade and Booming Blade, spells which had a massive impact on the character optimization meta.

The fact that these are optional rules is immensely frustrating because it means that character optimization efforts may now need to account for games which stick to published racial traits and for games which choose to embrace the rules presented in Tasha’s. It’s also unclear how future races will be designed since Tasha’s doesn’t include any new playable races.

While these rules are technically “optional”, I believe that it’s likely that groups will adopt the new rules as the new default. DnDBeyond lists the ability to replace ability score increases in entries for racial traits and makes no mention of the fact that the rule is optional. The official Adventurer’s League organized play group has already embraced the optional rules (check the Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Guidance document), and I suspect that many home play groups will do the same. Only time will tell.

Races

Tasha’s introduced two major changes to how races work.

First, all racial ability score increases are flexible: you can put them into any ability score, so long as you don’t increase the same ability score more than once. This break races out of the niches which they previously filled based on their ability scores, making your other racial traits a much more interesting factor since you can always get that crucial +1 to your class’s most important ability score.

Second, races can trade racial proficiencies for equivalent proficiencies or for less powerful ones. The allows races total flexibility for skill proficiencies, and dramatically improve flexibility for weapons and tools. Races which grant martial weapons proficiencies now essentially no longer need martial weapon proficiency from their class, and proficiency with martial weapons is a less significant advantage compared to classes limited to simple weapons.

The ability to rearrange ability score increases and racial skill proficiencies has created a sort of “base line” for races: +2/+1 increases, Darkvision, two skills, and one or two distinguishing racial traits. Numerous races fit that mold, including races like the Kenku, the Orc, and the Tabaxi.

Classes

The introduction of Optional Class Features offers a lot of room to improve upon the design of the core class features of every class except the Artificer. This did a lot to address pain points in several classes, but it’s not clear how these features will be handled by the community.

If you want to make use of optional class features, I encourage you to share my Practical Guide to Optional Class Features with your DM and your group.

Best Of

This section details some “best” options in major categories of character options.

Best Race

Competition is fierce, but there are some very clear standouts.

Variant Humans were previously the best race since day one. Access to a feat at level 1 and flexible ability increases defined the meta. Previously, any time you built a character you needed to ask yourself “how is this better than a variant human?”, and in a problematically large number of cases the answer was “it isn’t”, so you were choosing a less-optimal race because it was more fun than yet another variant human.

Thanks to Tasha’s, other races gained the ability to reassign their ability scores, and now its a competition between the benefits of one feat and one skill compared to whatever another race offers. The Custom Lineage offers access to a feat and a single +2 increase, further eating into the variant human’s standing as the best race, especially for classes like the Wizard where you only need on high ability score.

The Bugbear updated in Monsters of the Multiverse makes a strong showing in terms of damage output. Some builds can deal absolutely massive amounts of damage, often close to enough to kill CR-appropriate enemies in one turn at some points in the level progression.

For casters, the Fairy is arguably the strongest race. Flight and two good innate spells that can be re-cast with spell slots make the Fairy a powerful option for basically any spellcaster.

Best Class

Undecided, but I think it’s between the Artificer and the Bard. Either one is a welcome addition to literally any party, can thrive in the full spectrum of situations common to Dungeons and Dragons, and borrows many of the most important options from other classes.

Best Feat

Polearm Master or Crossbow Expert. They feature centrally in numerous high-powered builds across a broad range of classes.

Worst Of

This section details some “worst” options in each category.

Worst Race

Standard Human. Bland since the Player’s Handbook hit shelves, the Standard Human has remained uninteresting and borderline unplayable through the game’s history and shows no signs of changing.

Worst Class

Undecided. Previously held by the Ranger, the introduction of replacement features for the Ranger and improvements to the Beast Master subclass has shifted their place in the meta, as well as making the class much more satisfying to play.

The Monk is frequently cited as the current worst class. It certainly has some challenges like several poor subclass options, and it’s difficult to play effectively, but I’m not entirely convinced that it’s actually the worst class.

Worst Feat

Grappler. The feat was already bad, but errata issued early in 5e’s life removed a portion of the feat which referenced rules which didn’t make it into the final version of the game. That alone should indicate how little WotC put into this feat. Weirdly, it’s also the only feat in the SRD.