D&D: The Five Best Melee Classes
Dungeons & Dragons is full of bruisers, brawlers, and fighters. But which classes are the best melee classes of D&D? Let’s find out.
Adventuring is a dangerous life. You’ll find yourself crawling through ruins, dodging deadly traps, and embroiled in life-or-death battles. When your back is against the wall, it pays to know your way around the best melee classes of D&D.
If you’re caught up in a melee, or want to do the best hand-to-hand stuff, we’ve got your best options.
Paladins and Sorcerers
Paladins are one of the best melee classes of D&D because they can do just about everything. They are powerful combatants who wear heavy armor and have access to divine magic. Paladins can protect their allies with powerful auras and smite their foes with their spells.
Sorcerers have loads of spell slots and can improve a Paladin’s meager assortment of spell slots, powering smite after smite after smite. If you want to anchor a melee, paladin is the way to go.
Any Fighters with Two Feats
Fighters are among the most consistent and reliable melee damage dealers in the game. They almost always have what they need to function at their best. Between rests, they can pump out astounding amounts of actions thanks to action surge.
But if you have a fighter with both Great Weapon Mastery and Polearm Mastery, you really open up a ton of options for dealing loads and loads of damage.
Any Barbarians
Barbarians are reliable and resilient. They’re one of the harder classes to kill because they can easily gain resistance to most types of damage. And they can dish out loads of damage with their bonus rage damage and reckless attack, which helps them fish for crits.
Especially at the lowest levels, Barbarians punch well above their considerable weight. Their resistance in a rage allows them to effectively double their hit point pool. And that certainly helps make them one of the best melee classes of D&D.
Circle of the Moon Druids
Do you want to be strong like bear? Cut out the middle adjective and just be a strong bear with “Moon Druid.”
You can shapeshift yourself into a bear with a huge pool of hit points and the ability to make multiple attacks starting at level 2. As you get up to higher levels, the Moon Druid keeps pace. If you want more variety in your beast actions, you can multiclass your druid to open up some tactical diversity.
Any Charisma Caster Hexblades
Finally, we come to the multiclassed Charisma combo: a Hexblade Warlock dip loaded with whatever Charisma caster class you want to play.
Pick up Paladin for all the reasons outlined above, or grab Sorcerer and the melee cantrips to become the ultimate gish. Whatever the case, with a Hexblade’s Charisma-based fighting, you’ll ensure that you’ve got magic and martial might, making you a magical melee master.
Which melee classes do you think are the best?
