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A support character inDungeons & Dragonshelps keep their fellow adventurers alive and active.
Often, newer players fixate on how much damage their character can deal.
Veteran TTRPG gamers know the value of support classes.
Arcane Power by William O’Connor
A support character can greatly contribute to a fight, session, or campaign.
What Are Support Characters?
When players hear “support,” they generally think ofhealing.
Art via Wizard of the Coast
D&D’schallenge rating systemis designed totest players' skills and knowledge.
It also presupposes that adventuring parties are relatively optimized in terms of composition.
Thebest partiesfeaturediverse character classeswith various abilities, features, and proficiencies.
Art via Wizard of the Coast
D&D is a fairly open-ended system.
Creative players will find ways to support and help their allies in ways the game’s designers never considered.
That said, some classes are more suited to support than others.
Cleric Of The Forge via Wizards Of The Coast
However, having acharacterin the party who cankeep other players aliveisinvaluable.
Clerics,Bards,Artificers,Druids,Rangers, andPaladinscan accesshealing spells.
Theeffectivenessof these spellsrangesfromtouchto60 feet.
Warlock Tiefling via Wizards of the Coast
As a rule, the shorter-range healing spells are more powerful, and the longer ones are slightly weaker.
Characters with a familiar cancast touch healing spellsthroughthatfamiliar, as long as it’s within 100 feet.
Arguably,Clericsand Paladins make the best healing characters in D&D.
The Bard and the Beholder By Zozanna Wuzyk
Instead, controller characters useabilitiesthatmake fighting difficult foryourenemiesand easier for you.
With the rightspellsin their book,Wizardsmight be thestrongest controlclass in D&D.
Bard and Cleric spells likeBanecanprevent damageby forcing up to three enemies to perform a Charisma check.
Concept Art from Keys From the Golden Vault via Wizards of the Coast
Those who fail suffer a 1d4 penalty to attack rolls and saving throws.
TheBlessspell (available to Clerics and Paladins) is almost an inversion of Bane.
you’re free to cast Bless on up to three characters within your range.
Whenever any of these characters make an attack roll or saving throw, they canadd 1d4 bonusto the roll.
Typically, a utility character is not as adept at combat as the rest of the party.
However, their usefulness outside combat makes utility characters worth the trade-off.
Rangersmake idealutilitycharacters forwilderness-heavy campaigns.
Their abilities, like Natural Explorer and Primeval Awareness make short work of exploration difficulties.
Utility characters can come from a wide pool of classes.
The Player’s Handbook includes tool kits that open up all kinds of utility roleplaying potential.
