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D&D 5e ban-a-thon continued
8. Bard
So...I thought this next one was going to be tough. Turns out...not really.
So I mean, we're definitely starting to feel a lack of party diversity. Stuff like AoE damage, kinda hard to come by. Stuff like the shield spell, kinda hard to come by. Stuff like Counterspell, kinda hard to come by.
But Bard has this ability called Magical Secrets, where they get to pick spells from any spell list, and that just plugs a lot of holes.
This on top of being just generally a solid class--full caster with decent spells. Bardic Inspiration being generally better than the Artificer Flash of Genius. Being good at skill checks. They're also the last remaining class that wants high charisma, whereas Druid, whom I assume is one of the major points of competition here, is not the last remaining class that wants high WIS.
I think there's a good case to be made that if magical secrets didn't exist, Druid would look like the stronger class--better base spell list, and they come with medium armor and shield proficiency (with the asterix of "won't wear metal armour").
But I think banning Bard next just more significantly limits what parties can do. Like for example, let's say the party has a barbarian. Someone needs to be able to make the Barbarian fly in case you fight a flying enemy. Druids...well no subclass gets the fly spell, but maybe you could cast conjure animals and get giant owls or giant bats and mount them, and then hope that the giant owls don't lose their 19 HP (by the way, Druids don't learn Feather Fall). Artificers could cast fly, but at much higher levels, and they would have trouble upcasting it if multiple party members needed to fly. Although they can just spend an infusion on Boots of Flying at level 10. Bards? No questions asked, Lore Bard can just learn Fly from magical secrets at level 6 if that's a concern.
Now that we're down to like...6 classes and the potential for party diversity is dwindling, the number of holes Bard can fill just seems like a bit too much to leave them unbanned.
9. Druid
Once we ban Bard, it's going to be Druid next, right? You want party diversity, this means you want a full caster. Druid is the last option for a full caster. If all the other martials were banned, we would ban the last martial here probably.
I guess the one point of comparison would be Artificer, who can definitely lean more into the full caster role by infusing items like Pipes of Haunting. But like...nah, it's not the same. Druid gets Revivify and Dispel Magic at level 5. Druids make better use of ritual casting than artificers. Druids can take something like Moonbeam, upcast it like a full caster, and then every martial who can grapple or push can shove enemies into it for extra damage (enemies taking damage both when they enter and when they start their turn in it). There's still multiple sources of Pass Without Trace even this deep into bans, but Druid is a pretty good way to get PWT. Druids get polymorph at a level when it's relevant (like conjure animals it doesn't scale up in hit rate, but it's great at level 7). Druids get Wall of Stone.
10. Artificer
OK, I'll admit I'm not sure what's next. Intuitively, on the same "party diversity" line as Druid, it feels like kicking out the last half-caster in Artificer should be a real kick to party diversity. But...is it that bad though? Rogues have Arcane Trickster, which...while Arcane Trickster gains spells slower than artificer, it does pick from a bigger spell list. There's a few Monks that can cast spells.
Mmm...no, it probably is still Artificer. Basically the only healing outside of Mercy Monk. Has Revivify, yeah level 9 is late for revivify, but Mercy Monk doesn't get a similar feature till like level 17 or so. Flash of Genius is good. Has some ritual casting, even if it doesn't mean as much due to being a half-caster. In a party full of martial characters, Spell Storing Item is great cause it lets party members who don't have a use for their concentration concentrate on something.
Artificers can also adapt on a long rest. Swap out infusions. Swap out spells.
Yeah, they're still not a full caster, but they bring enough more from the spellcasting side of things compared to something like an Arcane Trickster that they're probably still the ban.
11. Monk
So...both rogues and monks can heal, Rogue, you pick Thief Rogue, and you pick the healer feat, and now as a bonus action you can use an item (healing kit) to restore a bit of health to people. But...a creature can be healed in this way only once per short rest, so it's not actually great healing. In fact...ehh...you kinda want your bonus action for steady aim or rogue damage won't be great. So Monk is quite a bit better at covering the healing angle.
Pass Without Trace...obviously monk can cover that with Shadow Monk. Rogue could also cover it by picking Arcane Trickster and being an Earth Genasi. Earth Genasi learn pass without trace and can cast once without spell slots and later through their spell slots. But...honestly being locked into Earth Genasi is kind-of pretty bad for Rogues who lean pretty hard towards picking elf for Elven Accuracy.
What about Barbarian? Well...Barbarians definitely add to parties like these, Barbarians hit harder, they can take more hits, they can grapple better, but do risk struggling with flying enemies cause Monk and Rogue are really not well equipped to make them fly. (Although technically both of them can--Arcane Trickster and Four Elements Monk can both cast fly).
So...what are Barbarian's options in that regard? Giants Barbarian is decent at throwing weapons, and Beast Barb can jump pretty high or walk on walls and upside down on ceilings (just not both at the same time). I think you'd probably want to stick to those subclasses cause you're not getting help in terms of getting airborne, but those do happen to be two of the better barbarian subclasses anyway so you won't be too sad with those picks.
So...maybe it is Barbarian just because Barbarian is more different than the other two.
The one thing I will note is that it's not necessarily bad having an all ranged party. Classic kiting strats are good in any movement based game. (The one caveat being you do need to be able to switch to melee in case an enemy gets on top of you--but every remaining build can do that).
Although...classic kiting strats do call for pretty specifically monks and not rogues. Rogues if they want to use steady aim will not be kiting. Unless there's a melee barbarian next to their target, then they can kite while still using sneak attack although with less damage due to not having advantage, but...regardless in that scenario they don't get the benefits of doing a full party kiting strat cause the barbarian is still gonna get hit.
I dunno, maybe Rogue and Monk have so much overlap that I ought to pick Barb, but I feel like Monk is just looking all around good here. Better at healing, better at using pass without trace without sacrificing too much of their build, better at kiting, ranged damage monk builds are keeping close enough to ranged damage rogues without sacrificing movement. Monks also offer some funny strats like running up walls and across water and stunning enemies, which won't come up all the time, but are kind of great when they do.
12. Barbarian
If it comes down to two classes in a ban-a-thon and one of them is rogue, I suspect letting the rogue slip through is the correct choice.
Yeah, maybe Rogues are abstractly "more flexible" cause of stuff like arcane trickster. But if a party of 4-5 mono-classed rogues ever come across a situation where they can't sneak attack, like maybe there's an enemy they just have disadvantage to attack for some reason like an invisible enemy, or maybe they all got hit by the dragon's frightful presence and the dragon is now flying, the whole party is going to deal their non-sneak attack damage and that's just a disaster. It's a disaster because the whole party implodes at the same time. One or two party members being ineffective in a fight is often fine in D&D, but the whole party being ultra ineffective? That just sounds like a TPK waiting to happen.
Yeah, in a party full of barbarians you probably do want to build some Barbarians with DEX and use a bow. But like...you know what? That's not that bad. Ancestral Guardian barb with a bow is honestly not awful for the same reason Echo Knight+Ancestral Guardian barb is really good. Same idea where an enemy loses basically all their offence if they can't hit you thanks to being a ranged Ancestral Guardian; just you know...with way less damage cause you're a barb with a bow. Zealot barbarian with a bow gets to deal their divine fury damage while raging, and...as a result actually keeps up just fine with a ranged level 11 monk or rogue. Path of the Giant Barb's elemental cleaver similarly just works on a weapon, so they can get their fire bow or ice bow or whatever and also keep up reasonably well on damage.
Obviously don't make a fully ranged barbarian party, that would be silly. But the point is that Barbs can diversify a bit better than rogues can--every rogue struggles at the same time if sneak attack is turned off for some reason
13. Rogue
To be clear, I don't think rogue is "bad", any more than in the FFT ban-a-thon Samurai often got banned very late, and I don't think Samurai is "bad".
Ban-a-thons just kind of get weird towards the end, and yeah, full rogue-parties just have a massive Achilles heel of if for some reason sneak attack can't be activated, the party is screwed.
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