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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. Damage output is an important metric and helps keep your party in the fight, but it’s not everything.
Veteran TTRPG gamers know the value of support classes. D&D is a social game, and being the kind of character the others depend on feels validating. A support character can greatly contribute to a fight, session, or campaign. There are myriad ways to support your fellow adventurers, so let’s check out what a support character is in D&D.
What Are Support Characters?
When players hear “support,” they generally think ofhealing. Healing is integral to keeping your party in the fight but is not the only component.Support characterscan alsobuff allies,debuff enemies,control movement, andform protective elements.
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.
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. The discussion is not exhaustive, but it should give you some idea of each class’s best support potential.
Healer Support Characters
D&D is designed such that evendedicatedhealerscan’t heal all damagedone to the party in level-appropriate encounters.Minimizing damagethroughtactics,armour,buffs, anddebuffsis alwaysnecessaryas a party. However, having acharacterin the party who cankeep other players aliveisinvaluable.
Clerics,Bards,Artificers,Druids,Rangers, andPaladinscan accesshealing spells. Theeffectivenessof these spellsrangesfromtouchto60 feet. 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.
Controller Support Characters
Controllersupport characters attempt toforce enemiestowastetheirresourcesandalterthebattlefieldin favour of the party.Wizards,Sorcerers,Warlocks,Druids,Monks,Fighter Battle MastersandBardscan all make goodcontrollers.
Controller characters are distinct from buff and debuff characters because they don’t generally apply penalties and bonuses to rolls. Instead, controller characters useabilitiesthatmake fighting difficult foryourenemiesand easier for you.
Abilities like theMonk’s Stunning Strikesincapacitate enemies, negating their damage potential and increasing damage taken.Fighter Battle Mastersmaneuversare an excellent way tocontrol the battlefieldand put your enemies on the back foot.
Spells like Dominate Person, Dominate Monster, Hold Person, Hold Monster, Charm Person, and Command also help you control any situation. With the rightspellsin their book,Wizardsmight be thestrongest controlclass in D&D.
Buff And Debuff Support Characters
Buffs increasethepowerof yourallies’spells and abilities, anddebuffs limitthe effectiveness of yourenemies'.Bards,Druids,Clerics, andPaladinsmake goodbuffanddebuff characters.
Bard and Cleric spells likeBanecanprevent damageby forcing up to three enemies to perform a Charisma check. 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 can 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.
Utility Support Characters
Utility characters(sometimes called “skill monkeys”) help the partyconserveandrepair resources,gather intelligence, andnavigate dangerous locations. 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.
A utility characteropens locks,disarms traps,hagglesfor better prices, andrepairsorimproves equipment.RoguesandBardsmake natural utility characters, with the Bard’sJack of All Tradesfeat particularly useful.
However, manyclassesareversatileenough to make excellentutility characters.Wizard spellslike Enlarge/Reduce, Invisibility, Knock, Counterspell, and Hastecanallhelpthepartyin non-damage-dealing ways.
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.
