Character classes you hate

[Marcus Kehoe]

I hate effect dealers, characters that spelling in damage over time like poisons, or slows, there boring.

 

[SuperSuperSuperGuy]

Two classes I don't like the concept of:
Monks. In most cases, they're low-range with a poor equipment loadout, usually limited to light armour, made up for by high power and/or high HP and natural defence growth. It's the range that REALLY gets me. You have to get REALLY close to do anything, and I don't like that.

Full-support mages, with no direct offensive capabilities. If you're going to have a character that can buff allies and debuff enemies, make sure he has a reliable method of attack to counterbalance it.

Three classes that I hate playing as:
The Medic/White Mage. Healing is a necessary part of battle; I just can't stand doing it myself.

The Tank. Way too passive for me. You usually just stand there, draw enemy attacks and take hits. I don't like that. I prefer the whole "they can't hit you if you kill them first" approach. Let someone else take the hits for me. If I'm going to play a high-defence class, then at least let me dole out damage like nobody's business with my standard attacks, or use SOME kind of support skills other than, like, Taunt.

Any mage with an awful melee attack. It doesn't have to be powerful, just effective for getting enemies the hell away from me without burning my mana. It's even better if it's a good attack by its own merits. It is for this reason that I tend to gravitate toward Spellblade-type characters, with a focus on magic.

 

[ZorroFonzarelli]

Monks, for the same reason you highlighted.

I run D&D games far more than I play them, and Monks thematically don't belong in a standard fantasy campaign setting. They just don't. They fit an Asian-style campaign, but that's it.

Throw in the fact that they are vastly overpowered, needing no gear, armor or weapons to be one-man wrecking crews, and they are horribly overbalanced.

If I had to pay for all the gear a normal fighter has to and some player writes up a Monk that can do everything with zero cost, you've got a broken game.

 

[Thanatos5150]

Mages. Just... generalist Mages.
Look, guys, I get it. We're geeks and we like the idea of the bookworm kicking seventeen different types of ass because he has MAGIC! But come on!
Magic is far too typically used as a panacea, with a liberal dose of Handwavium Maximus. And the generalist Mage? He can do that. And that. And that. They're boring, commonplace, Mary Sue/Marty Stu characters that fit into one of four broad archetypes:
Old Sage Wise Guy
Young Hot-Headed Prodigy Guy
Evil Drunk on Magical Power Guy (The "Slutty, Evil Sorceress" trope redirects here)
I Am A God Guy

There's no variation and no flavour. They're boring.

For the record: I love playing Rogues, but I don't play them as Chaotic Stupid - my Rogues are typically frontline fighters with a focus on mobility and creating a maximum amount of dead in a minimum amount of time. With stealth for positioning and ambushing.
The fact that one of my Rogues in a current tabletop game is nicknamed "Captain Jerkface" is irrelevant here.

 

[Invictusblade]

the worst ever class is the shepard from Ultima IV which has the lowest magic, weaponary and armour in that game.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

Summoning classes. Seems like you're just a middle man to the murder then. This is more with magic than some kind of connected to nature/friend of the animals kind of things. That seems like fighting with a friend rather than making a minion do your bidding.

I also don't particularly care for the tanking warrior archetype. I'd prefer it for tanks to be evasion based. The best way to take damage is to gain aggro and then not take damage at all. It's unfortunate that few games allow me to easily make a character like this.

As an aside, I tend to like either barbarian classes and their high risk, high reward gameplay or stealth based classes that let me create my evasion tank if possible.

 

[Eddie the head]

snip

I think we have reached the point where you are talking about soothing complacently different form me. I don't care about D&D charter classes, I was saying don't ascribe real world physics and fighting when you are arguing about I god damn game.

 

[Random Argument Man]

I never got into paladins which is bizarre. They can fight and heal themselves. It sounds like the best class evur on paper, but it always felt awkward playing one. It feels annoying to meet a paladin NPC too. They're often the "goody-goody kill every evil while there's a rock solo in the back" or "that douchebag that you meet at the gym who's always trying to prove to you that his biceps are bigger." In Dragon Age, I'm always told that mages are evil and templars are the best, but I always picked mages since templars are mostly pricks.

Necromancers are also awkward to play as, but never I didn't mind them much.

 

[Creator002]

I'm talking more about the flavour of these classes than their actual mechanics, by the way. I imagine a lot of people don't like fighters or anything because they dont like the typical playstyle, that being 'go up to thing and whack it until it stops moving' but I find nothing wrong with the concept of a fighter.

I dont't really dislike any classes, but this is pretty much me. I like playing a class/character that uses ranged attacks (bows/magic/snipers) rather than melee.

Captcha: "Hello, Newman". Well, hello, Jerry.

 

[Ventilator89]

Rangers + Druids - I deeply love, love, LOVE the idea of a person deep in the magics of nature, firing a bow and arrow (if a ranger), and simply doing shape changing and all that stuff (if a Druid). But I can't stand the way it's done. Frankly, they just make it so dull. And the shades of green they usually use don't help either. They just can't make it interesting.

Fighter - what everyone has said above. Boring.

Bard - also love the idea, but not done properly. As well, I'm not a support kind of person, I would rather be in the midst of battle, clashing against my fellow enemy's, not singing a song =[


Pure Mage - I actually hate pure Mage. I like having both weapons and magic, not just magic. This is the same for fighter too.

 

[MammothBlade]

I pretty much hate anything with simple gameplay - the old cliches of pure healers, warriors, paladins. I find them all rather dull if all you're doing is button mashing and healing, maybe unleashing a few aggro abilities, or casting heals and buffs, respectively. They all get rather dull and boresome. I like it when gameplay gets more complex.

Now, Dragon Age does that pretty smoothly, the classes are well thought out. You can get killed very quickly if you don't use your head and pause to make tactical decisions, or even have an inappropriate character build. It makes class development a careful art. There is some room for improvement, but it's rather interesting. It makes the use of abilities the key to victory. Yet it has to rely on a restrictive, slow levelling system to make sense.

Any class can be fun and skillful if designed right.

 

[Skoosh]

I dislike playing any class that isn't specialized. Red-mage and such. I almost never choose a class that doesn't excel in at least 1 thing, doesn't matter if it's a jrpg, shooter, or D&D. I want the all-out offensive magic or all-out tank or whatever. The rest of the party can make up for other aspects, that's why there's a party. I like characters that are the best at what they do, so the all-around, jack-of-all-trades classes just feel useless. They can't sufficiently fill any need on their own in most cases, and it's just boring.

Monks. Every game they are put in they nearly ruin it with their ridiculously stupid gameplay! MOP Kung fu panda monks HOW ORIGINAL! taking out that human in full plate armor with a sword and shield with a stick and a straw hat in no armor? Pffft. Warcraft has become a pixar cartoon.

Oh yes, it was a much more serious game back when I could play my pink-haired gnome riding a robotic bird without running into a panda monk... Also I think Kung-fu Panda was Dreamworks, not Pixar. Not that it matters, haha. Yeah, unoriginal, but so are half the race/class combinations people choose.

 

[DoomyMcDoom]

Healing classes, mainly because in any game where I have to keep others alive, I almost always end up not healing good enough and letting people die... I can play any other playstyle or class available, not such a fan of pure mages because of how squishy they tend to be, but I still prefer them over healers.

capcha:"too late" yes I was too late on that healing spell, sorry that you died and all.

 

[Violator[xL]]

I hate the upper classes.

I don't really hate any class really. I tend to play less archer/ranger type classes, because boring. In roleplaying, I'd have a hard time playing a paladin tot the full extent. Love playing Chaotic Neutral/Lawful Evil ish, and those are a far cry from a paladin's rigid view on the world.

 

[Wilbot666]

Great thread, very well thought out in my opinion.

My least favourite class, at least when it comes to D&D v3.5 would probably be the Warlock. Kind of boring and doesn't do very much that other classes can't do better. I much prefer my current Half-Orc Cleric of Erythnul who I purposely infected with Dire Wereboar Lycanthropy at lvl 11.

 

[Zeckt]

Archers/hunters/rangers/bow wielding annoying Legolasses. (ha, lasses) When I imagine a ranger, I imagine Aragorn. Stalking the wilderness, aim, shoot, kill. Survival within an unforgiving natural environment, learning it like the back of their hand out of necessity and will. Not taming tigers and bears because they oh so cute and then doing backflips as you fart out magical arrows and make every fletcher in the land wallow in their misery.

"Pirates" or swashbucklers. Just rubs me the wrong way. Can't place why exactly.

Druids. Especially god damn druids. The way I imagined druids were true mysterious guardians of the natural order. Unfortunately, every other roleplayer I've met didn't see eye to eye with me. Thus this definition was thus soon changed to "cocky-urban-smartass-cunts-that-also-turn-into-cats".

Monks. Every game they are put in they nearly ruin it with their ridiculously stupid gameplay! MOP Kung fu panda monks HOW ORIGINAL! taking out that human in full plate armor with a sword and shield with a stick and a straw hat in no armor? Pffft. Warcraft has become a pixar cartoon.

Warcraft's nowhere near the true awesomeness, wit and parody that was Kung Fu Panda. Also, your realism fails to apply when said human, much like his other 50 human buddies are built so well you could grind cheese on dem abz, with beards so mighty the Norsemen of old wallow in their jealousy. Whilst throwing holy hammer swirls around. Or charging at 200 miles per hour. Or moving around in said plate/robe completely unimpeded by its weight or design stupidity. I wonder when people will finally understand the fallacy of these kinds of complaints. :|

I would like to see what your monk could do against somebody who trained all their life in full plate mail on a mailed horse with a lance coming at them at full charge adept at killing unarmored infantry. Oh thats right, he would DIE

 

[maninahat]

I don't dislike any class in particular, but they all have their cliches. I tend to dislike assassins, because people always cast them as awesome, death dealing, trench-coating badasses. But every class has their own cliche. Big muscular barbarian? Do-gooder Paladins in shiny armour? Slight, tall rangers? It applies to races too.

My one piece of advice is that if you make a viking dwarf with an axe, or a haughty elf with a bow, just stop right there. Just stop and rethink how boring you're being.

I don't know. There is the opposite problem of people trying to be as "unique" as possible, only to realize that despite being having some fancy exotic class or race, they still have absolutely no personality.

I would rather go for the time tested cliches if they're not done in a way that's too annoying.
Already done (maybe even to death), doesn't necessarily mean it will be bad. At least it would rather be better than "My epic sorcerer-monk half demon half orc who uses katanas".

You're probably right. It's easy to see how someone could make and ostentatious Mary Sue. The best way to make an unusual, interesting character isn't to tack on as many distinguishing features as possible. Just taking a typical class and doing one thing differently with them, should be enough to make a stand out character - like a Dwarf who's a thief, a scrawny Barbarian, or a blue collar elf.

 

[dumbseizure]

For me it's the generic "warrior" style classes I don't like.

Oh, you beat things by literally beating them? Generally into a small, pulp like substance? Good for you Captain Thick-head Mc-beaty man.

I love things like Thieves, assassins and (from Gw2) Elementalists (but only dual daggers).

I like classes with a lot of mobility and dueling ability.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

Mages can get boring. Just throw fireball here, zap random maggot A and freeze random maggot C.

Also just straight up fighters can be boring.

I guess I just like anything in between.

 

[prowll]

Snip

I would like to see what your monk could do against somebody who trained all their life in full plate mail on a mailed horse with a lance coming at them at full charge adept at killing unarmored infantry. Oh thats right, he would DIE[/quote]

You are aware this is pretty much the start of every martial art ever? People downtrodden and having to rise up against soldiers far better equipped?

Also knights were adept at killing other knights, on horseback, and slow. Nobody expects the little old guy with a staff to be a threat....