Dungeons and Dragons Ramblings

I thought of making a more specific thread/topic, but I figured opening it up to general stuff may mean this thread gets more than 3 posts. Here's hoping.

Today's Topic: Fighter is a trap for new players

Everyone is told fighter is the best class for new players, but I wholeheartedly disagree, at least for 5e and here is why.

I. Fighters have way too many choices
Besides the three sub classes in the players handbook fighter let's you choose a fighting style that dictates your preferred weapon(s). On top of that you have to choose whether you want to use DEX or STR as a main stat. These two choices taken together require a solid understanding of the different weapon and armor types such as the terms reach, finesse, versatile, light, ammunition, etc. While rare your AC can change too depending on if you have your shield or not (in my last session one of the fighters left theirs in the tavern). Beyond that fighter has twice as many ability score improvements meaning you mean more frequently evaluating your ability scores and feats options.

Don't get me wrong, this is great for experience players as it gives them more customization options than any other martial class (and arguably any class at all), but it can be overwhelming for new players.


II. Fighter is actually fairly complex mechanically
As I said before fighter has to juggle a lot choices during character building and leveling. This requires a decent working knowledge of equipment, but that can be overcome with by consulting the handbook during character creation and leveling. The real problems arise in combat. Fighter is often recommended because the lack of spells simplifies things. However there are special rules that fighters need to know of during combat. Fighters have multiple choices competing for their bonus action and reactions. There is also commonly confusion about action surge giving an extra action vs an extra turn. On top of one subclass uses spells, and the other uses superiority dice and maneuvers which function similarly to spells. You could play a champion instead, but champion is really lacking in power compared to the other options.

Fighter sucks for two of the main pillars of the game

I love playing brutish characters but they are sorely lacking in the social interaction and exploring department. Nothing feels worse in D&D when you get stuck sitting there playing with your dice because your character has nothing meaningful to contribute. Barbs and fighters get he worst of this because they get few skill proficiency and they don't lend themselves to having high mental ability scores. At least paladins have high charisma. Similarly they don't really have any option for exploring.

Alternative Suggestions

The best 3 choices for new players in my opinion are rogue, monk, barbarian. All three of these classes are non casters (mostly). I'll give Warlock an honorary mention for people who want to use magic.

Rogue Rogues have a very well define archetype to guide character creation. You're going to have high dex, and your primary role in combat is to land sneak attacks as often as possible. Being able to dodge, dash, disengage as a bonus action is also great for a new player because it means a lot less of the GM having to say "no you can't do that" even if they player doesn't understand why they are able to do those things. To be fair that could make transitioning to other classes hard though. Another perk of playing rogue is that they get tons of skills to interact with the world such as thief tool proficiency and sneak for exploring and deception and persuasion for social interactions.

Monk My personal favorite recommendation. Starting off with the most important point, monks are bad-ass. Seriously what is better than going around unarmored and beating monsters down with the bare hands? Beyond that they are pretty straight forward to play, and most of their abilites are passive and can be handled by the character sheet or GM without involving the player. To illustrate, monks use unarmed attacks (mostly) this means no messing around with the equipment table. Monks have unarmored defense, so you don't have to look at that equipment table either. Write down your AC and adjust it with the relevant ability skill increases. Other abilities like deflect missiles and slow fall can be initiated by the GM since they don't consume resources and have a clear trigger. Monks do have other abilities but you only have a few less to chose from, most have the condition of "when you hit with an unarmed attack", they are always prepared/available if you have ki points left. This is simpler than fighter where you have fewer superiority dice/spell slots, and different abilities/spells can be used at different times. Also unlike fighter the simplest subclass (way of the open hand) is every bit as good if not better than the alternatives. Another factor that makes monk easier is that they don't benefit from feats as much as fighter, making ability score increases easier to deal with. On top of that monk has great exploration and role playing options. They have a high wisdom to contribute somewhat to social interactions. They have bonus movement speed to help with scouting, and they have great skills to choose from. Fighter might have access to insight and perception, but monks actually have the wisdom to make good use of them.

Barbarian
Barbarian is similar to fighter in a lot of ways and does share a lot of the pitfalls like generally low mental stats across the board. There are some key benefits though. They have less choices to make since their abilities focus on strength weapons and they don't have fighting styles to worry about. They also have less choices to make while leveling. The only real choice is choosing your totem spirit each level, but that only happens three times unlike the battle master and eldritch knight who has to choose their maneuvers and spells. The barbarians are also harder to take down than fighters thanks to their resistances when raging and bonus to dex saves, but this a pretty small win since dying as a fighter isn't exactly easy either.

Warlock
If your new player insists on using magic this is probably the way to go. You get a great cantrip out the gate which makes choosing spells for combat less important. All a warlock's spells are the same level and don't need prepared which simplifies spell casting quite a bit. Charisma as a spell casting ability is great for social interactions, and those who choose pact of the chain (or pact of the tomb with the book of ancient secrets invocation) have a great option for exploration. The otherworldly patrons are great role playing hooks and help with writing your backstory.

I agree with this point actually, I don't have too much to add except that was this a trap I fell into when I first started. The group I was with did an okay job of explaining it to me when I first started, but as the campaign continued on, I found myself getting overwhelmed with all the things the fighter had when I was told they were simple.

I find fighters are really awkward with their specialisations, because only one is really 'simple', and as a new player, you feel kind of forced into taking it over Eldrich Knight and Battlemaster, which again, isn't a very fun experience if you feel forced to take one specific thing, just so that you understand it. (Battlemaster STILL confuses me. Ugh.)

Fighters to me are... weird, they seem simple at first glance, but as you look at the levelling 'tree' for them, they start to get quite complex. I actually compare the fighter to the Paladin in a lot of ways when it comes to new players, just the paladin has a few more 'restrictions' when it comes to actually playing the character because of their codes/laws. (Although, that's just my personal opinion on that, I just felt they were quite similar in play, except Paladins have more supportive and focused skills.)

So yeah, in short, I do fully agree with this statement of Fighter being a trap. I know I didn't add much, but I really can't find anything to.

So what classes would you recommend to new players, and why?

I was saving this post as not to disrupt a potential response related to the last topic but seeing as it's been a week I have a new rambling.

Druid the one ability score wonder

So, in my most recent session we had a stand in DM because the usual guy couldn’t make it last minute. On top of that half the table from last week was missing and the same number of new people came in (not a great second session for a new group but I digress). Because of this the DM decided to focus on character creation and start at level 5. I’m thinking cool I had this idea for a dwarf monk I wanted to try. As I made clear in my prior post, monks are badass.
The DM decides we’re going to roll for stats instead of standard array or point buy. I’m thinking, “okay, maybe I’ll get lucky and get a 17 or 18 to make up for my lack of racial bonus to dex,” forgetting my terminal case of bad luck.

First roll is an 9, fine whatever everyone needs a dump stat and it’s only a minus 1. Second roll is a 16, awesome. My final set of ability scores were 16, 11, 10, 10, 9. Nothing terrible, but I only had one good stat to go with. In my eyes that ruled out any of the martial classes since you want high scores in at least 2 stats and most are feat hungry. This was a little heartbreaking for me because the spell lists for full casters are overwhelming for me, and I really like smashing things.

I didn’t want to be completely useless, especially not in combat because I’m not the best at roleplaying in character so no matter what my stats say I won’t be the party face (I’m pretty sure the one couple at my table has a theater/improv background, they have amazing voices and everything). After some thought I decided to go with a Druid.

In my opinion druid is the best class when you flub all but one of your dice rolls. When you are a primary caster one stat already stands out above the others, and the casting ability scores tend to be tied to useful skills. A similar case could be made for dexterity-based characters, but I refute that by saying that most dex are going to want a second decent stat for social interactions and are more likely to be in harms way (and thus want decent constitution) than a spell-based character.

This leaves a lot of competition so let’s narrow it down further. Bards, Clerics, Warlocks are perfectly valid as pure spell casters, but tempt you with multiple attacks and better weapon and armor proficiencies If arcane trickster and eldritch knight are 1/3 casters those classes are 1/3 brawlers. . Even if you go hexblade warlock and use your charisma modifier for weapon attacks you’d still appreciate constitution more than characters who stay as far away from the front line as possible.


So, what makes druid better than other pure caster characters? Even if you stay in the backlines there will be times you get hit by attacks and wish you had more hit points or a better AC. What makes druids stand out you can ignore all of your physical stats thanks to wild shape. Wild shape allows you to get a boatload of extra hit points and get up close and personal with the enemies, which as I said before, is something that I am particularly fond of. This was especially beneficial to me as I had terrible rolls for HP too, getting 3 ones in a row. While this next part is true of all pure casters to a degree, the druid spell list is absolutely amaze balls. What makes them really stand out is their ability to be great in melee combat without expelling spell slots frees up room for their excellent utility spells.

So here is a quick summary of how I built my character. I chose Wood Elf for the +1 Wisdom and +2 dex. I valued the initiative bonus over the extra health I could get since my go to strategy was to wild shape prior to taking damage. Getting perception for free is also nice. With my rolled stats, racial bonus, and the level four ability score increase I started with 9/12/12/10/18/10 (that’s str/dex/con/int/wis/cha respectively). I grabbed all the wisdom skills I could get (insight, perception, medicine, and survival). Then I took circle of the moon for improved wild shape. Using wild shape as a bonus action makes constitution matter even less, and mauling baddies as a bear is fun.



I’m not saying that Druids are the best or most OP class. All I’m saying is that if you only have one good ability score, druid is probably going to give you the most bang for your buck.

I do apologise for not responding, I was having issues with my internet provider. (They tried charging my old card instead of the updated details, it was a mess to sort out because they insisted they did it right.)

I'd personally recommend Monk's or even Warlocks are the most recommended for a new player. While I do like Barbarian as a class, I am a bit boring and dislike strength classes (But that's just a personal tidbit.)

I say Monk for practically all the reasons you listed.

However, when it comes to magic, I do prefer Warlock over other magic classes because of how versatile they can be with character creation and they are just a nice middle-ground of all magic classes in my opinion, they offer reasonable survivability and good damage. They aren't very limited in weapon choices if you don't want them to be and can just be great starters if you're interested in summoning styles as well (Depending on the path you go.)

Warlocks for me are just fun and versatile, they offer great options when coming up with stories, They aren't limited in weapons and they have all kinds of magic at their hands. I find they are a great way to introduce someone not only to magic, but also to combat as a whole as well as slightly more complex features. (This is all going by that they have someone responsible who is at hand to help explain certain features, which is how I think everyone should pick up DnD nowadays.) I know I didn't do a good job explaining, or even talking about it, but I hope I got my point across without going into too many details.

___

And I don't have much to add to the second rambling, Druids are generally good with just one good stat, but I feel they don't improve too much with extra good rolls. (When compared to other classes at least, but I don't have too much experience with Druids, funnily enough, they aren't used that much in my campaigns, so I haven't had too much reason to actually look in depth.)

I agree that Warlocks are the best beginner magic class. They are really forgiving in that you still have a great cantrip to fall back on if you burn through all your slots and you get your slots back on a short rest. The other thing that is nice about Warlocks is you don't need to worry too much about minmaxing since all your options are good. No one patron or pact stands out as outright superior to the others.

Do you think other classes stand out as being exceptional with just one stat?

I think druids benefit from good rolls just as much as other caters if you aren't going circle of the moon. The problem is that path of the moon is far superior to any of the other druid paths. I think Druid is the most poorly balanced class as far as its sub classes are concerned. This is really sad because the other circles are super interesting, especially the circle of the land and circle of the Sheppard. The first time I saw the Circle of the Sheppard artwork I fell in love.

There are other classes where one subclass falls behind the power curve, but with the editions from Xanathar's guide I think Druid is the only class that has one that stands above and beyond all others. Prior to Xanathar's guide I would have made a case for Barbarian and Ranger, but the new additions are both strong and interesting.

Circle of the Sheppard:

EDIT: I just found out that the Circle of the Sheppard Druid can choose the spirit totem every time it uses the ability, instead of choosing one when they reach that level. This makes it stronger and more flexible than I originally thought.

The thing I think makes Warlocks that much better and more forgiving than other caster classes is that you can go melee focused if you aren't too comfortable with being pure caster. (Something I often fall back on.)

I don't think there are any other classes that SHINE with just one good stat roll, however, Fighters and Barbarians can get by on one good roll and still do decent in my experience. (Saying Shine might be a bit of an overstatement, but it's the closest way to compare it to other classes.)

It's a bit harder for me to say much on the topics since I use a lot of homebrew classes as well, and a lot of the 'base' classes are often left behind in such games. I feel like a lot of classes suffer from how 'poorly balanced' the subclasses are, but it's hard for me to pin them down to individual classes/subclasses as stated before with my limited play with base classes.

Edit: To clarify, when I say poorly balanced, I mean that some are just too strong in terms of straight damage out put, or offer way too much utility that it actively hinders your party if you don't go with that choice.

I disagree with going melee/magic hybrid being forgiving. My take is that to be a successful hybrid you have to take the approach of weapon specialist who uses magic to augment their attacks (like a paladin or a hex blade warlock). Going the route of caster who falls back on melee in a pinch is generally detrimental. It spreads your ability scores thin, especially if you are using the standard array or point by (rolling generally leads to higher numbers on average). Most full caster classes lack the proper hit die and armor proficiency for the benefits of close combat to outweigh the risks, and the payoff for being mediocre at melee is not worth giving up the benefits another subclass would offer you. Eldritch blast with the agonizing blast evocation is equivalent to a weapon attack and reaches 4 attacks per turn at level 17. This is why the college of lore is my go to pick for bards.

A GM who is forgiving with combat encounter difficulty might make this unimportant though.

The only way I would say a melee warlock competes on the same level as one that focuses on casting is if you go all in and play a hex blade. Being able to substitute charisma for strength and getting proficiency with medium armor and shields is a huge boon. It plays a lot like a paladin. This is especially powerful if your DM says your mystic arcanum spells can be expended for Eldritch Smite (RAW says they can't).

Since you brought it up, let's talk homebrew. I personally think that homebrew should be heavily restricted and preferably limited to flavor and aesthetic changes. I get that D&D is a cooperative game rather than a competitive one, but I think balance is important so everyone gets to feel important and accomplished. I remember when I was playing a barbarian to be the designated meat shield while still doing decent damage. I was totally fine with being out damaged by the rogue and not really contributing much outside of combat besides comedic value. MY problem was when I a home brew character came along that did everything my character did but better and without expending resources. RAW may not be perfectly balanced and there can be a trade off between role playing and optimization but it is limited in how out of hand things can get. You could argue that a good DM will keep things balanced and fair, or that not all home brew breaks the game, but I'd rather just avoid the risk of it cropping up all together.

The DM of current campaign made a house rule that drives me crazy. Although I haven't said anything about it since I"m a new player, he is the DM, and he's been playing longer than I've been alive. He doesn't consider "fire and forget" magic realistic so he doesn't require spells to be prepared, just that you expel the appropriate slots. This is a HUGE buff to wizards, clerics, and druids (especially the later two who get a massive spell list to choose from since they don't have any rules on spells known), and is a slap in the face to sorcerers, bards, and warlocks as that is what gives them a leg up as a class. Not only is it imbalanced, but I disagree with his interpretation of the realism bit as well. I am perfectly content with how the PHB addresses it in the wizard section. Spells are complicated. It's like preparing speeches. Some people can do it off the cuff, but most people need to make notes and prep before hand. The repetition argument is addressed too through the class feature of spell mastery.

To add to this he decided wizards aren't godly enough (probably because of how much the prior rule breaks clerics and druids) he ruled that the wizards gets to add a spell known for their intelligence modifier at level up on top of their normal two. So the level 3 wizard knows 22 spells (counting cantrips) that don't need to be prepared.

Another point against homebrew is that it complicates things for the GM requiring them to have more to balance for and reference against. This is especially true if multiple players are making their own home brewed characters. This is why the official rules recommend limiting players the PHB plus one other reference. This is also effects the balance piece because the more stuff that is going on the more potential for synergy exploits. Official sources are designed with one another in mind and are play tested. A non roleplaying game example that illustrates this phenomena is trading card games where cards suddenly become way stronger than intended when mixed with newer cards. This is why MTG has seasons and Yugioh has a constantly updated ban list.

I also think that homebrew can get too out of hand and break the immersion/seriousness of the campaign. That may be fine depending on your table, but it's not my kind of tone.

I guess it just depends on how you go about it in the end with the Warlock, since I found it quite easy to use a Melee focused one, but struggled when it came to using a caster focused one. (Maybe I'm just wired differently in that respect.) I'm not saying it's forgiving to go hyrbid, I'm just saying that it might be a bit more forgiving to people who are trying to branch into magic but aren't prepared to go full mage. I like Warlocks as an introduction since they can fall back on Melee and still be a relatively good contribution to the team. (Unless they go full Fighter on you in which case, give up now.)

I like house rules and Homebrews because they add more variety to the game, however, I do agree that some of them can get out of hand and having too many makes it way too difficult on the GM. This is why I will speak to them about it beforehand if it's okay, and I will even have them double check the Homebrew I'm looking at using. (One time I was intending to use a Templar Homebrew from Dragon Age, but then I was told the campaign was almost entirely mage focused... That was a no-go haha.)

House rules however, I think should be agreed on by everyone, It's fine to have a few that you always use as long as they don't break the game like that, since I do find that quite game breaking where Wizards etc can just fire spells off like they were nothing.

Examples of a house rule I often use that we don't find game breaking is:
If someone fails a roll for Charisma while in a town etc, then someone else can roll initiative and then Charisma to see if they cut into the conversation to save it, but it's limited to just one person attempting.

Sure, in certain situations, it could cause an issue, but this is where the GM can put their foot down on it and say this is a single attempt conversation.

Homebrew admittedly can get pretty... crazy lets say, I often steer away from these types of Homebrew (Stuff like gunslingers etc) and try to keep it at least focused on the style of campaign we're doing. I like homebrew for variety, but I dislike game breaking Homebrew. I can respect that some people just dislike it as a whole, or how it takes away from the original experience, but sometimes, I just get tired of the same set classes.

TLDR: Homebrew is fine if properly balanced and thought out, house rules should be agreed on as a whole or at least suggested and see if the group agree on them. GM has final say on Homebrew. That GM of yours loves making certain classes god tier.

I see where you're coming from. Paladin is my go to melee to magic transition class. They are more explicitly melee focused than Warlocks. I see where paladins aren't for everyone though. Preparing spells makes them complicated mechanically (compared to Warlocks), and their oaths make them more restrictive for role playing. My favorite things about Paladins is that they get to roll ALL THE D8s.

I think there is enough content in the cannon books to allow for lots of experimentation and variety. Honestly I think there are too many races. I do like variant races giving more flexibility to ability score bonuses though. That may just be because I reaally want to play a Path of Vengence Tiefling Paladin though (int and cha are a terrible ability score increase combination). I think keeping things fresh and new is more dependent on characterization and backstory than adding tons of new mechanics through classes and races.

It's the if properly balanced and thought out caveat that bothers me. I'd rather not leave it up to chance. I think we have different perspectives because of the settings we play in. It sounds like you have a consistent group of friends that know each other well and run session zero at the start of a new campaign . I go to an open table once a week. We are starting to get a group of core players but it is a very fluid group. It's basically an adventurer league set up without all the official rule and guidelines set by Wizards of the Cost. The adventurer league near me was full. It was also way out of the way, but that's irrelevent since my current group is just as far. I'm hoping to find an open table in my area that is compatible with my schedule soon.

My DM does something similar with checks, but he requires you to intervene before hand by using the help action for them to roll with advantage. Your rule adds some realism, but I worry that it allows for exploitation by taking place after the roll. This is kind of akin to requiring guidance to be used in advance. I guess the initiative roll takes care of that though. If the DM wants they could even call for a perception or insight check to see if you realize whats going on before it's too late to really ramp up the difficulty.

My GM like making rogues OP too. He plays really lose with stealth. Rogues can hide without cover, even in combat.....maybe he just hates fighters. Although, to be fair he did say I can double the +10 from great weapon master on crits which is a huge freebie. It is a group aimed at beginners and the combat is really toned down so it hasn't really effected me too much. So far we've had a long rest after every combat encounter...literally. I have lots of feelings of "this is bullshit" but my character doesn't really have to struggle at all so it's not as upsetting. I'm also really good at optimizing my character so if there is a difficulty spike I should be fine.

On that note, Cavalier from Xanathar's guide is freaking amazeballs. I was debating going champion (because of the aforementioned ruling on critical hits and great weapon master) or battle master at level three and then I took a closer look at cavalier. The skills with that archetype make sentinel and pole arm master obsolete. That means I can pick up great weapon master, and max my primary and secondary stat by 12th level without missing out on those gems.

It is quite likely that our different playgroups is a big factor in it, I do have a regular group and we try to meet up at least once a month, and at most twice a month due to everyone's work schedules and the wife being free at the same time is pretty difficult to organise. Adding onto that Warlock and Paladin thing, I do agree as a whole the Paladin might be slightly more... 'friendly' in terms of actually surviving and making use of Melee focused spells and the like, however, I find the roleplaying side of them quite limited as opposed to Warlocks which is why I recommend the Warlock over them for someone wanting to start transitioning, but not losing the option of Melee combat. (And the whole preparing spells thing. )

The way we do it is at the beginning of the play session/campaign, we will sit there and discuss what the campaign, and the DM will look at homebrew classes we've used in the past (Since we've only ever used 3 or so.) and will rule out ones they don't want taking part in this campaign, and we'll also set up house rules for that session. Some will be as simple as, if someone doesn't turn up for one session, we say their character went off to do something important, but still gains the XP of the group to represent they still did something during that time.

And yeah,I can see that caveat bothering a lot of people, and it does take a lot of searching to find classes like that, since a lot of people go to either extreme of making them so lore focused on what it's based on, it's abilities are near useless or they make them so strong they can solo campaigns. It can be hard work, but sometimes it's just nice to play a new class like that, but, it's not for everyone and it's a lot of extra work just for a bit more variety.

I don't feel like there's too many races, but maybe that's because I rarely stray away from Aasimar and Elf, so I haven't really seen the full catalogue of them so to speak, I'll have to have another look through and see what happens.

I dislike house rules that make certain classes so much stronger, it bugs me when people do that... But I suppose, the same can be said for including Homebrew classes to a certain extent. The system we use for the conversational points hasn't been abused/broken yet, but honestly, half the time the conversations are a fighter trying to headbutt the NPC, while someone else quickly intervenes and tries to talk it down... Yeah, we have some interesting moments. We do have the other checks as well sometimes, it just depends on if the conversation is vital to the campaign or something if we actually decide to add that in. It's been a pretty good system for us, but I guess it's because we've used it for years so we've settled into it.


I haven't actually looked at Cavalier, I'll have to look into it, but I'm not really a fighter player, I pretty much exclusively stick to Warlock/Archer Rogue because I like being boring like that.

There are 36 races across the official 5e books. 9 in the players handbook, 3 in Elemental Evil, 12 in Volo's guide, 4 in the Guide to Eberron, 5 in the guide to Ravnica, and 3 more spread across three other books. Add subraces on top of this and things get really crazy.

Okay, I've been proven wrong, there are plenty of races, wow... That just shows how uneducated I really am in this matter, I will have to look into them. Variety is the spice of life and that.

Edit: On a slightly different note from discussing classes and the game-play itself, have you ever had a horrible DM/GM who purposely tries to make you fail as soon as possible just so he doesn't have to continue with that group.

A personal experience I've had with this is someone picked a class the DM didn't like, and just let us get to level three before throwing us against a chaos dragon (With no option to run away and the stats weren't modified for us), and this just drains every ounce of fun out of the game because it's just an uphill battle and then there's suddenly a drop that you can't safely traverse.

I just wanted to bring it up and see if anyone else had experiences like this, or I just got really unlucky during one of my sessions a few years back when I didn't have a regular group like I do now. I know this isn't a big addition or a great conversation starter for this, as I said I'm curious.

That was a fun little chain but it's kind of dead now, so new topic. This one is mostly laying down the ground work for my race analysis but it may spur some good conversations in its own right.

Does Intelligence Suck? A tier list of ability scores.

To start off, despite the click bait title I don't believe any skills are objectively terrible, but they're definitely not equal either. Because of this, and the fact that their are only six scores to rank I'm only going to make a list of tiers A-C. I could do S-B, but S tier is bullshit. I'm going to be evaluating skills based on:

How many classes use the skill as a primary/secondary stat
The skills tied to the stat
How important the saving throws of the stat are
any special bonuses the stat provides
How many classes use the skill as a dump stat


A Tier
Dexterity- Can anyone disagree with Dexterity being a god stat? It is the primary stat for rogues, rangers, monks, and some fighters and paladins (although dex based paladins don't sit right with me). If dex isn't your characters main stat is probably your second or third priority. It provides bonus to AC for light and medium armor. Even heavy armor users will want at least some dex for the initiative boost. It is one of the most common saving throw often reducing the damage from powerful AoE or breaking free from grapples and other movement restrictions. It's not just a defensive stat though, it boosts both ranged and finesse weapon damage and accuracy. The only thing slowing dex down is that there are no two handed finesse weapons and they don't work with most barbarian abilities. The skills are amazing too, especially for exploration or setting up advantage in combat.

Consititution- Not just for warriors. Constitution is the second most important stat for most characters, and no one rates it worse than third as far as optimal builds go. I've seen lower but only for flavor reasons. Everyone wants more hit points, even if you are a rogue (there is saying for rogues our table, "Con doesn't matter until it matters a lot"). The saving throws for constitution are numerous and include important things like resisting poison and necrotic damage, but perhaps most importantly Con is the stat for concentration saves. This is huge for magic users. War Caster eases the importance of Constitution by providing advantage, and tough can replace the equivalent of 4 points of constitution for those who don't rely on concentration checks, but even with those feats constitution is still pretty darn important. I rated it lower than dex since it it very rare to see constiution as the highest ability score a character has.

B Tier

Charisma- I almost put charisma in A tier, but I like the 2-2-2 distribution and it's not quite as essential as the A tier ability scores. I've seen people run with charisma as their dump stat and as long as you have one person with a good charisma in your party you'll be fine. That being said having high charisma a is pretty awesome. It is the primary stat for three of the caster classes, and the secondary/tertiary stat for paladins. Sorcerer and Warlock are great options for multi classing which helps add to the value of charisma. It also governs all the face skills except for insight, allowing you to dominate social interactions. There aren't a ton of charisma saving throws, but the spells that target charisma can have some pretty big implications (like banishment).

Wisdom- While I originally put Charisma way above wisdom the more I thought about it the closer I considered them, almost to the point of flipping their positions. All characters want at least some wisdom as perception is the most used skill in many campaigns and wisdom (apparently) governs more saving throws than any other stat. Perception is also one of the skills that benefits most from multiple characters having it, especially if your DM does group checks. Insight and survival stand out as some other good skills. Wisdom is also the main stat for both clerics and druids, two incredibly strong and flexible classes.

C Tier

Intelligence-I really wanted to put intelligence last, or rather I really hate putting strength last. Unfortunately intelligence has more merits than strength in D&D. While it is the primary stat for only a single class, the sub classes of Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster want a health dose of intelligence as well. The skills are numerous and generally nice to have, even if they do generally require an appropriate background in addition to skill proficiency to use. Sometimes I question the usefulness of the skills as well. Int rolls come up all the time at my table, but usually it uncovers stuff that was obvious, or interesting but not super helpful. Intelligence falls behind the other mental abilities because it's simply not as versatile. It's probably also the second most common dump stat. No one wants a low wisdom score and rarely will I see someone chose to dump charisma over intelligence. I think intelligence could use a bit of a boost. Perhaps offering additional languages or tool proficiency would be nice. I think additional skill proficiency would be too much though.

Strength- Strength is basically just a worse version of dex, much to my dismay. While heavy armor requires strength, heavy armor isn't really that much better than medium armor in terms of AC in addition to being accessible to less classes and providing disadvantage to stealth checks. What really hurts strength is the existence of finesse weapons making dex a viable alternative for everyone but barbarians. The lack of skills and saving throws hurts too. Especially since dex can be used to escape grapples and acrobatics shares a lot of space with athletics. The lack of benefits for strength outside of weapon damage and accuracy makes it the most common dump stat in my experience. The main saving grace of strength is two-handed weapons and supporting feats like great weapon master and pole-arm master. Of course dex has feats of it's own to keep up like dual wielder, defensive duelist, sharpshooter, and crossbow expert. I'm not sure how to redeem strength. Having finesse weapons use half your strength and half your dex could be an option. It makes casters like bards worse with weapons since they need more stats to run them but I feel like mixing weapons and magic should stretch your skill points thin. This makes finesse weapons inferior to pure strength weapons and especially inferior to ranged weapons. You could require ranged weapons to require strength too. The bonus dex provides to initiative and the greater importance of dex saving throws will still allow dex to compete with strength for dominance. I'd prefer something that would buff strength rather than nerf dexterity though. Another problem with my reccomended approach is that even though builds could afford to run strenth, dex, and constitution; requiring a third stat for combat optimization reduces the ability of players to use mental stats for customizing the flavor of their characters.