My absolute favorite thing to do in 5e is when I can find a niche spell that’s perfect for a situation the party finds itself in.
This naturally draws itself to the prepared casters and especially the deep spell list and ritual casting of the wizard, but unfortunately wizard is also a generally good class which means there’s usually someone looking to use it in a party, and while doubling up can be fun sometimes I like to have other options.
I’d like to ideally make something strong without any glaring weaknesses: I don’t want to minmax utility off a cliff.
My front runner has been an arcana cleric, which enables Wish eventually and adds a handful of common wizard spells to its list, but I’m not sure the other features of arcana are all that great, and not getting heavy armor makes me a little leery of closing to melee for cleric staples like Spirit Guardians.
Any other cool setups that enable a lot of flexibility and utility?
Druids sound like what you’re looking for. Prepared casters, so they have the flexibility you mentioned, and their spell list is filled with exploration and problem-solving spells. They combine things like Charm Person with access to healing and some blaster spells, too. Not to mention the utility that comes with wild-shaping as the situation demands.
For subclasses, you really could pick anything except maybe Spores. Land expands your spell choices even more and regenerates some slots like a wizard, Moon focuses more on wild shapes, Shepherd adds summons into the mix, Dreams some healing and camping utility, Wildfire the usefulness of a familiar who can teleport itself and others, and Stars’ special wild shapes can help with maintaining concentration on a utility spell or having things to do in combat that don’t require you to dedicate spells prepared to combat much at all.
These are all excellent points.
I think druid suffers a little from being so concentration-dependent, but in a campaign with an appropriate number of encounters that’s not really a big deal, you just want to ride one or two concentration spells for most of an encounter. And even in a too-few-combat-encounters situation, druid isn’t bad, they just won’t be quite as overpowered as everyone else.
Stars has always been a front-runner for me: I don’t like that its special form conflicts with Wild Shape utility, but with only a short rest to recharge them it’s pretty easy to get back up and running if you need a scout form. And it gives you a lot of flexibility both in and out of combat.