D&D 2024 Class Guides

Find the right D&D 2024 class

The 2024 Player's Handbook offers twelve core classes. Eberron: Forge of the Artificer adds Artificer. Start with the kind of turn you want to take at the table: standing in the front line, solving problems with skills, protecting allies, or shaping a fight with magic. Then open the guide for that class and its supporting build guides.

How to use this hub

Each entry below points to its full class guide and dedicated feat guide. Caster entries also link their class-specific spell guide where the library has one. Those linked guides own detailed progression, subclass, and option discussion. This hub keeps the class index focused on routing readers to the choices that fit their table.

Hot Take: Pick the class whose ordinary turn sounds fun before you look for a supposed best class. A character you enjoy playing between lucky critical hits is the one that lasts through a campaign.

Compare class play patterns

Start by deciding what you want to contribute when the group reaches a difficult scene. A party can contain more than one front-line character or more than one spellcaster, so treat these as play patterns rather than jobs that only one player may hold. The Player's Handbook groups its twelve classes around the capabilities below; Artificer joins them as the additional class from Eberron: Forge of the Artificer.

After choosing two or three likely classes, read their opening sections and class-feature milestones. The best tiebreaker is usually the resource or routine you want to manage: Rage, Bardic Inspiration, Channel Divinity, Wild Shape, weapon choices, Focus Points, spell preparation, or another core loop. The linked guides explain those choices without asking this hub to duplicate them.

D&D 2024 class guides

Artificer

Artificer is the additional class option in Eberron: Forge of the Artificer. Its primary ability is Intelligence, and it combines spellcasting with tools and magical inventions. Choose it when you want to solve problems through prepared equipment and adaptable magical work rather than through a single combat routine.

Artificer Guide | Best Artificer Feats | Artificer Spells

Barbarian

Choose Barbarian when you want to Rage and wade into hand-to-hand combat. The class suits a player who enjoys holding dangerous space, surviving the response, and choosing a primal path that changes how that pressure looks at the table.

Barbarian Guide | Best Barbarian Feats

Bard

Choose Bard when performance, broad skills, and spells that inspire or heal allies sound like a satisfying turn. It is a strong fit for someone who wants to react to changing scenes and give other characters room to succeed rather than deliver a single repeated attack.

Bard Guide | Best Bard Feats | Bard Spells

Cleric

Choose Cleric when invoking divine magic to heal, bolster, and smite fits the character you want to play. Its domains give the class different emphases, so decide whether the draw is healing, warding light, mischief, or martial leadership before treating every Cleric as the same kind of support character.

Cleric Guide | Best Cleric Feats | Cleric Spells

Druid

Choose Druid when nature magic, healing, shape-shifting, and elemental control are all part of the appeal. The class is for players who like to meet a problem through the natural world, whether that means the environment, an animal form, stars, or weather.

Druid Guide | Best Druid Feats | Druid Spells

Fighter

Choose Fighter when mastering weapons and armor is the part of D&D you most want to explore. Its subclasses point toward maneuvers, peak martial prowess, combat magic, or psionic augmentation, so begin with the kind of weapon specialist you want to become rather than looking for a universal best weapon.

Fighter Guide | Best Fighter Feats

Monk

Choose Monk when darting into and out of melee while striking fast and hard sounds better than holding one spot in armor. Its Warrior paths let that mobile core lean toward healing, shadows, elemental power, or unarmed combat technique.

Monk Guide | Best Monk Feats

Paladin

Choose Paladin when you want to smite foes and shield allies with divine and martial might. An oath should be more than a source of features: pick one whose promise gives you a useful answer to how the character behaves when a difficult choice reaches the table.

Paladin Guide | Best Paladin Feats | Paladin Spells

Ranger

Choose Ranger when you want martial prowess, nature magic, and survival skills in the same character. The class can focus on a primal beast, fey magic, hunting in darkness, or versatile protection of the natural world, which makes it a good choice when exploration is part of the campaign's actual play.

Ranger Guide | Best Ranger Feats | Ranger Spells

Rogue

Choose Rogue when launching decisive Sneak Attacks while avoiding harm through stealth is more appealing than standing in a fair fight. Its paths reward players who enjoy infiltration, ambushes, treasure hunting, magical trickery, or psionic blades, and who will look for openings in the fiction.

Rogue Guide | Best Rogue Feats

Sorcerer

Choose Sorcerer when magic innate to the character's own being is more compelling than a studied spellbook or a patron's bargain. The available origins frame that power as strange psionics, cosmic order, draconic magic, or chaos, so choose the source that gives you the strongest image of how the character's magic appears.

Sorcerer Guide | Best Sorcerer Feats | Sorcerer Spells

Warlock

Choose Warlock when occult knowledge and a pact with a powerful patron offer both a magic style and a story relationship you want to explore. An Archfey, Celestial, Fiend, or Great Old One patron changes the character's source of power, but the important table question is how visible you want that pact to be in the campaign.

Warlock Guide | Best Warlock Feats | Warlock Spells

Wizard

Choose Wizard when studying arcane magic and building a spellbook for many purposes sounds rewarding. The core schools point toward protecting allies, uncovering secrets, explosive effects, or deception, and the class rewards a player who enjoys preparing for the problems the party expects to face.

Wizard Guide | Best Wizard Feats | Wizard Spells

Continue your build

After choosing a class, use its class guide before treating a feat or spell as automatic. The D&D 2024 feat guides collect broader feat decisions, and the D&D 2024 spell guides collect the class spell references available in this library.

The class guides identify which subclasses come from the Player's Handbook and the approved expansion books. Check the source note in the individual guide before assuming an expansion option fits every campaign.