What’s the BEST Commoner You Can Make in D&D 5e?

This is the sort of dumbass question I love to wrap my head around instead of interacting with my hobbies in an even remotely normal way.

Meet the Commoner. Has to be probably the saddest statblock you ever did see. Zeroes in every ability, no skills or proficiencies, a single weapon and its the worst one in the game… D&D 5e has a pretty sorry opinion on the most basic building block of any medieval setting. While there are plenty of things to say about the developers’ rather reductive attitude towards a group of historically quite hardy individuals (I bet in real life a medieval commoner could trounce me or most of you in a 1v1), today I’m more interested in discussing the thought experiment of trying to optimize this sorry excuse for a ‘build.’ Let’s say you wanted to bring a commoner to the table and play alongside typical player characters, could you hold your own? If you were given so little to work with, what could you really accomplish with this character?

Rules Of The Challenge

• My goal is to make the most combat-effective commoner I can muster in D&D 5e. I don’t want to define what precisely that means from the word go, as there’s a couple different directions I can take the premise and I just want to see how hypothetical commoner builds fare with each of them. I’ll be discussing options for, and then building, some level 1 commoners and then scaling them up to 5 just to see how they look when most of their core features are online.
• Since the Commoner is a monster statblock, I can only use rule adjustments that are legal for NPCs. No throwing a free level of Fighter in there, or homebrewing some alternate features or whatnot.
• Only basic gear/build considerations are allowed. Magic items would make this trivially easy (Elven Chain armor + any Artifact-rarity weapon would obviously make a mountain out of the humblest of molehills), and there are too many setting/campaign/splatbook-dependent mechanics that would essentially be free buffs if we somehow stacked them all onto one hypothetical character (for example, Rime of the Frostmaiden has a ‘Secrets’ mechanic where every PC gets a free buff from some mysterious event in their past. Any of these are straight upgrades to a vanilla character from base D&D, and that’s how pretty much all these exclusive mechanics would work, so we’re just omitting them for universality.)
• We’ll be sticking to 2014 5e and any expanded rules which were released for it, not the new 2024 ruleset. Many mechanics I’ll be abusing don’t exist in the new rules, plus I neither play nor am familiar with the new iteration so I’m sticking with what I know. (And if you choose to allow 2024 rules in your personal headcanon for this challenge, it’s not gonna make a huge difference anyway.)

The Three Main Considerations

Now, there’s a good chance many of you will be completely mystified right now as to what I’m even talking about regarding ‘building’ a commoner. I mean, the statblock’s right there, it doesn’t seem to come with customization options, what is aabicus talking about? Well, here’s where you find out!

The first opportunity for optimization is Race. Commoner is a ‘Race (Any)’ monster, meaning you get to inject a species into the statblock which can affect its statistics. Now, while some people might consider it valid to grab any ole player-focused race from the many, many commendable options in 5e, they are unfortunately superseded by a table on page 282 of the DMG called “NPC Features”, which is dedicated to adjusting monster statblocks if they need to be adapted into a different race. This is to avoid, for example, Merfolk guards not breathing water or aarakocra acolytes not being able to fly. It’s honestly a pretty extensive list, but because it was never updated with all the zany species added in the last decade of expansions, it’s all I have to work with as an official roster of NPC-valid racial abilities.

The second opportunity is Gear. Obviously there’s nothing stopping monsters from equipping whatever they feel like, and most of them are severely underequipped for game balance. Our club-wielding commoner is among the most egregious examples, so I know I’ll be speccing them out with some better bling before the end of this challenge.

The third and final is Sidekick levels. I encourage you to go read my entire dedicated article on this little-known but incredible mechanic, but in a nutshell, it’s a way to add stripped-down character classes to monster statblocks so they can level up alongside a party. Any monster statblock of CR½ or lower is eligible, good news for the CR0 Commoner!

With these three pieces to the puzzle, I’ve laid out what we have to work with, and will now delve deeper into the best options for each category, in a macro-to-micro order:

Considering Classes

There are three sidekick classes we can choose: Warrior, Expert, and Spellcaster. Expert can be forgotten immediately, it’s all about becoming a skill monkey but the commoner does not have the skills (indeed, any) to prioritize that role. I suppose if we want to get pedantic, the Expert’s ability to take the “Help” action as a bonus action would be incredibly useful as a force multiplier for the much-stronger PCs around them, and I think one could fairly argue that everything I theorycraft in this article will be inferior to an expert who Helps two different party members on his turn and never does anything else. Okay fine, you’re probably right, now go away.

Warrior is, on its head, the most powerful of the three subclasses for one reason: the lvl1 Martial Role feature which grants +2 to all attack rolls. This is an incredible buff to hitting anything thanks to how 5e calculates bounded accuracy, and I no-lie would happily dip one level of Warrior on most PC martial classes for that feature alone. In addition, Warrior gains access to all martial weapons and armor, meaning our commoner could wield a Greatsword to deal 2d6 damage/attack while hitting at probably +5 (+2 for proficiency, +2 from Martial Role, +1 from taking a race that raises Strength to 12.) That’s actually the baseline for both damage and accuracy for a lvl1 character, this isn’t a bad build as far as this challenge goes. Its main problem is that it will fall off hard as the player characters level up, as it’s really not gonna get much more than this from levels 2-5. I won’t pretend it’s not a strong contender for the title, but I also want to look at the other class too.

On its head, Spellcaster looks like an absolutely awful choice. It doesn’t get +2 to its primary combat role like Warrior does, and Commoner doesn’t have the mental ability scores to properly cast anything using Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma. The only reason I’m still intrigued is because spells are some of the most versatile and flexible character options in the system, and they come with lots of ways to work around their downsides and shine in unexpected situations. Considering many spells don’t use the character’s spellcasting ability, I’m wondering if there’s a workable build in there that prioritizes these spells to carve out its own niche.

Considering Races

So the first big hurdle we’re gonna be dealing with is that having zeros in every ability sucks. Everything in D&D scales off these attributes, we need to pump these numbers if we can. This means the races that grant +2 ability score buffs are very attractive for purposes of this challenge. This goes triply so for Constitution, since we currently have four (only 4!) hitpoints which is about as strong as a LaCroix on the survivability spectrum of D&D combat. The first option that leaps out at me is Dwarf, getting +2 Con and +2 Str or Wis, the latter choice providing options for either Warrior or Spellcaster builds. Aaracokra doesn’t get Con, but +2 Dex will increase AC and +2 Wis with a flight speed could work well for a Spellcaster build that hangs back and specializes in ranged damage. Lizardfolk is another incredible option, granting +2 Str, +3 AC, and a swim speed. That AC is worth its weight in gold, I would love to grab one of those if I could.

Which is why in my opinion, the most attractive race of anything in the table is Troglodyte. +2 Str, +2 Con, +1 AC, Darkvision, and two unique racials that grant very cool buffs. ‘Chameleon Skin’ grants advantage on Stealth checks (very nice), and Stench can poison targets who start their turn within 5 feet of the character. This would be huge for melee survivability, as disadvantage on enemy attack rolls can help offset our terrible AC. Now, there are big downsides to consider for Trogdolyte as well; -4 Int and -4 Cha will very firmly plant us in the “no spells that use your spellcasting ability” camp, and Sunlight Sensitivity will mean this character can only really be effective at night. So hopefully the campaign is prepared to build itself around this restriction (perhaps being set in the Underdark?) But I think both of these drawbacks can be worked around, and the unique upsides of the race are worth taking the hits.

Commoner Test 1: Whiff the Magic Troglodyte

Whiff isn’t your ordinary troglodyte, he grew up in a small medieval village whose inhabitants were genetically born without a sense of smell. Thanks to their unusually openminded attitude towards a troglodyte in their midst, Whiff made a name for himself as an assistant to the local hedge wizard, and as a fearless defender of his neighbors whenever monsters dared to rear their noses in his midst.

Whiff is choosing Spellcaster (Mage) for his class, despite his abysmal Intelligence, because we’re going to only choose spells that buff his survivability, as he is not prepared to do anything in combat by default. For the same reason, we’ll be taking false life as our only 1st level spell, as that will give us 5-8 bonus hitpoints, well within acceptable range for a typical 1st level character. As the spell lasts an hour, and we have two slots, that should hopefully be enough to last for a typical adventuring session for a standard campaign. For gear, Whiff wears studded leather generously donated by the local blacksmith, as well as a greatclub for its d8 damage die. (As a commoner, he wants to stay true to his club-wielding roots.)

Whiff’s playstyle revolves entirely around the cantrip booming blade, which helpfully uses Strength for its attack roll instead of Intelligence.  On his turn, he charges the nearest creature and whacks it with his greatclub for a respectable +3 to hit and d8+1 damage on hit. On the opponent’s turn, they are forced to roll a DC12 Con save against his stench cloud, potentially giving them disadvantage on any retaliatory strikes, and are now faced with a dilemma; do they remain within the poison cloud, or move out and proc the extra d8 damage from Booming Blade? This interaction is where Whiff gets the barest of combos to create a halfway-decent DPS dent in a party’s damage output, and the other good news is his second cantrip can be basically anything you like. Prestidigitation, mage hand, message, and mending are classics for filling the basic wizardly role, but consider also mind sliver for a dedicated ranged attack that has a chance of debuffing a victim’s saving throws, making them more likely to succumb to Whiff’s poison cloud. (As for his other spells, find familiar could let him see through his owl’s eyes to bypass his own sunlight sensitivity, shield or silvery barbs could increase his survivability, and perhaps darkness might be nice for another means to protect himself from crippling sunlight. But they aren’t super relevant for his core combat style, which is the math I want to focus on.)

One nice thing about Whiff’s build is that most of his level-up features will scale up as he grows higher in level. His ASI at level 4 can go into Strength to increase his accuracy, and booming blade naturally deals an extra d8 at level 5. By this point he’ll have 20HP (plus 10-13 extra from false life), +4 to hit, and deals 2d8+2 damage (with potential for an extra d8 if the target moves out of his poison cloud). So, with all that, how did he turn out?

Conclusion on Whiff

As his name suggests, I’m unfortunately not sure this idea really panned out. I love the wackiness of his build, but having less than +5 accuracy is a huge liability in 5e, bounded accuracy makes that a far more painful penalty than you may expect. AC12 isn’t bad for a wizard, but it probably isn’t high enough to keep him alive while charging into melee, and Stench is gonna lose potency rapidly as his party fights stronger monsters in later tiers. Several elements like false life and booming blade performed admirably to patch holes in Commoner’s biggest deficiencies, but overall I doubt Whiff is gonna see the end of the campaign. So let’s keep things a little simpler and try again…

Commoner Test 2: Snuff the More Typical Trogdolyte

Whiff actually wasn’t the only trogdolyte in town; his sister Snuff enjoyed a similar upbringing, but chose to devote herself fully to the art of warfare without hiding behind silly magic tricks.

As a Warrior, Snuff enjoys several massive boons right out the gate. She can equip heavy armor, which bypasses her terrible Dex-based AC, and she can carry the strongest weapons in the game to massively boost her DPS. (Though I’m probably gonna stick to one-handed with a shield, because she cannot afford to get hit under any circumstance.) She also requires a lot less mental energy to balance as she levels up, as her build basically does nothing special beyond probably choosing to ASI her Con at level 4 (rather than the usual Str) just to put some more meat on her brittle commoner bones.

At level 1, Snuff is hitting at +5 (perfect) for d8+1 damage (bit low) and hiding behind 20AC (Wow!) At level 5, none of these have changed but her health is now 24, which is still hideously low for a martial but I think that AC is gonna keep her around. Several Warrior-granted abilities (Second Wind, Dex save proficiency) will further aid her survivability, and at this point I think the only GM leniency needed is to break the wealth-by-level curve and give her better armor than she should have at any given level, as she absolutely 100% needs it or she’s gonna go down every single fight.

Conclusion on Snuff

Snuff feels about as close to playable as I think a Commoner can get in the system. She’s clearly a tank, but she’ll succeed at tanking to a degree a typical commoner can only dream of, even in sunlight where only her DPS will suffer. Stench will still fall off in effectiveness at higher levels, and honestly it might be worth just going Dwarf for the same +2 Str and +2 Con without the additional abilities (Dwarf could even apply basic poison to her weapons to deal a bit more damage, relying on her Dwarven Resilience to avoid self-damage, oh god I’m this close to speccing another commoner). Either way this build is a lot more simplistic and boring to play than Whiff, but I think it will be effective at what it set out to do.

Commoner Test 3: A Ranged Build

For one final test, I wanted to explore a Commoner who didn’t rely on melee, who instead hung back and took potshots while somebody else pulled aggro. It seems an obvious solution to the character’s diminutive HP value, after all. I pondered for some time on whether a spellcaster build could work, but none of the NPC raceblocks grant both Spellcasting and +2 to a casting stat, both of which are needed to combo with Warrior to get the mandatory +5 to hit, leaving archers/arbalists our only option for a ranged build.

On the plus side, this refocus opens up some nifty racial options, and I’m most interested in aarakocra. Not only would the flight grant a party role even outside combat, it’s the single best way to avoid getting swamped by enemies and maintain distance during a chaotic melee. That +2 to Dex will help with both accuracy and AC, and it all rounds together to a nice little build, if once again rather simplistic. One wrinkle in our self-imposed ruleset does rear its head at this point: nothing in the aaracokra’s monster statblock nor the NPC Features table mentions the medium/heavy armor restrictions on flight. Strictly speaking, I can deck this foo out in full plate without violating the rules, but I’m gonna stick to the same light armor restriction as player characters since we’ve already examined plate mail with Snuff.

Ultimately, this character has 13AC (average for a ranged character) and hits with +5 (perfect) for d10+1 damage (slightly below average). I threw basic poison in there to mitigate the reduced damage somewhat, but that’s gonna fall off hard as characters level up. (As will the heavy crossbow once the character unlocks Extra Attack at level 5. Since crossbows prevent Extra Attack from proccing, this character will need to downgrade to a Longbow at that point for a very small DPS reduction.) For one final boon, not caring about HP means this character can apply their 4th level ASI to Dex, increasing accuracy to +6 and longbow damage to d8+2, but is that enough for tier 2 play?

Conclusion on Test 3

It’s not bad, but I would probably still go with the melee tank over this ranged plinker. I’m falling asleep just thinking of playing this dude, and the team role isn’t nearly as useful as a guy with AC20 wading into battle soaking up hits. I think this build might be more mechanically rounded because its low HP isn’t quite so crippling, but I can’t in good faith call it the “best” commoner build when it doesn’t really bring anything exceptional to the table.

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And overall, I think that’s as close as we’re gonna get. I’m not sure we really reached a perfect answer, but it’s something. There’s only so much you can do when working with the absolute bottom-barrel statblock in D&D, so I think I’m happy with finding a potential niche for a commoner to fill, albeit a pretty narrow one but still one that could hold its own in a party nonetheless.

Edit: Yeah, I’m doing an edit before the article’s even live. I was just about to publish, when I checked the NPC Features list again and saw a concept I had to try out:

Commoner Test 4: Smoky the Grimlock

Grimlock has several nice racials on its list, the big one being 30ft of blindsight, and that’s what we’re building a playstyle around. Smoke grenades are a type of basic equipment, so I’m picturing a character who drops one of these on the first turn of combat and stays within its 20-foot field to grant himself advantage on any attack rolls while also imposing disadvantage on blinded enemies. Even better, +2 Str means Warriors could hit with their benchmark +5 accuracy, and most of the same mechanics as Snuff/Cognac would work equally well, so to avoid rehashing the Plate Mail Tank a third time I’m actually gonna explore the concept of an Expert Helper commoner, see if it’s really as good as I hypothesized earlier in the article.

On the first turn of combat, Smoky would throw or drop a smoke grenade. On his next turn, he’d move into the smoke cloud and then treat it like his domain, debuffing nearby enemies with blindness/Help actions and possibly spreading its radius with additional smoke grenades. He can negate the blindness penalty for up to 2 allies caught in the radius with Help actions, and he’s immune to attacks of opportunity (and only targetable at disadvantage) when within his smokescreen. If he ever does need to start swinging his spear, he’ll roll at +3 with advantage and hit for a decent d8+1. And the best part is, we’re not really using anything else in his kit, I could choose whatever five skills and two tools I want to fulfill some noncombat/roleplaying party functions. I’m actually rather surprised how playable this sounds while not feeling like a stripped-down PC class to boot.

One final note regarding his shield. Experts are not proficient in shields, but nothing is stopping a character from wielding a shield without proficiency beyond the many check penalties for doing so. I imagine he would carry the shield until wanting to roll dice, whereupon he’d doff it as an action, do the thing, then use a later action to don the shield again. Note that neither the Help action nor throwing a smoke grenade requires a check, he can still do his main playstyle even with a shield in his hand. It might work, it might not, I could always abandon the notion if it proved too cumbersome in practice.

Conclusion on Smoky

Smoky feels very high-risk high-reward, but he’s also probably my favorite concept in the article. Playing nothing like a typical player character, he exemplifies the teamwork-focused aspect of D&D while mitigating many of the drawbacks to his chosen combat style. He certainly has weaknesses (windy days, enemies with blindsight, chase scenes), and his reliance on disadvantage means he can still easily fail if the dicerolls don’t go his way, but no D&D character is supposed to have the solution to every situation, and I’d honestly be very interested in trying Smoky at a real table to see if his concept works even remotely in execution as it seems to on paper.