A New Tier Balancing System

[Blueiji]

The below is a link to a thread describing a sort of "tier system" for rating the general effectiveness and power of the various D&D 3.5 base classes.

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=1002.0

It's fairly well known and referenced on this website, but I included a link for those who hadn't seen it.

- - -

In that thread, the author, JaronK, describes a couple ways to balance the various tiers of classes against each other without actually changing the mechanics of those classes.

Some of these methods are:

- Alternate Ability Point System (the lower ranked classes get higher ability scores to compensate)

- Partial Gestalt (depending on your tier you get to gestalt with a NPC class, a full class, or not be able to gestalt at all)

- Mass Bannings (completely ban certain tiers)

- - -

I'm not a huge fan of the first or third options, one is rather clucky and kinda limiting (the mass bannings), while the other takes some playtime before it actually balances the game (the alternate point buy system).

This leaves only the partial gestalt system, which is interesting, but for newer players (the kind I'm DMing), it may seem unfair, or unnecessary. Plus it takes away a bit of player customization.

Like my players, I'm fairly new to the game (or, at least new to playing by the actual rules), but I think I've come up with a fourth system that allows a good degree of player customization but still effectively balances the tiers.

My concept is this:

- Each class has a point value equal to its tier (for example, Cleric is tier one, so its value is one point, while rogue is tier four, meaning its value is four points).

- Players design gestalt characters, however the total point value of the two classes must equal (or exceed, if a player wishes) a value of six.

Meaning that a Cleric/Fighter (1 + 5 = 6) is legal, however a Factotum/Artificer (3 + 1 = 4) is not. This also means that a character who exceeds six, such as a Scout/Barbarian (4 + 4 = 8), would also be legal.

You may notice that this system render tier six classes obselete, for even a tier one class does not need to pair with one to create a legal character. This is intentional, for I don't want any players to have to play as a tier six class. If you believe they are necessary however, you may change the required point total to seven.

- - -

Right then, that's about it. Please comment on this. If you think its a good fix that could be implemented to create a balance between the tiers, then I'd love to hear it. If you think its totally broken and doesn't work at all, I'd like to hear that too.

Thanks :smallbiggrin:

[Shadowknight12]

Meh. A cleric//fighter is still as gamebreaking as a cleric, only with a better BAB, better HD and free fighter feats, while a Fighter//Rogue (or even Warblade//Rogue) still doesn't hold a candle to it.

[Morph Bark]

Rather than a fourth system, this sounds like the second option, which was intended in this way, though not really expounded upon in the Tier thread.

[Nero24200]

The problem with a fast an easy fix like "let every Tier 4 or lower gestalt" is that it's just that....a quick and easy fix.

There will be oversights and problems if you do it that way. For example, gestalting a warblade and a swordsage simply gives you more maneuvers than normal....whilst gestalting a druid and a rogue gives a lot more. Suddenly the Druid can sneak attack with his animal companion flanking foes, gains an absurd amount of skill points and can dodge fireballs with ease.

The problem is that classes were not made with gestalting in mind - some provide better benifits for some classes but very little for others. This means that using them as a balancing factor won't work, in the same way that giving every class a free Metamagic Feat won't make everyone more equally powerful - because not everyone will be using the feat, and those that are may not use it to the same extent.

Ideally if you want all classes to play at a specific Tier the only option you really have are mass bannings/house rule certain classes to be weaker/stronger. It also depends on your group as well - if they aren't noticing the difference between a Tier 4 and Tier 1 PC then chances are changing the classes to suit the Tier's won't really yield much.

[Xuc Xac]

I would love to see the core classes (at least) redone to be all Tier 3. To me, Tier 3 seems powerful enough to be cool and fun (as long as there are no 1s and 2s around) without being so powerful that they have an automatic answer for everything. Instead of "arithmetic fighters, quadratic wizards", I'd like to see "geometric everybody".

Such a project is probably more effort than it's worth. It seems that the easy way would be to take the 4E path of "everyone does different flavors of the same thing", but I'd rather see actual variety

[Ashtagon]

So now everyone gets to play rocket tag?

[dsmiles]

Honestly, in play, the tiers don't really mean that much, unless you're in a high-op group. New players, unless they just take a build off the CharOp forums and put it in the game (or are just geniuses), will hardly notice the difference between a Tier 1 and a Tier 3 character.

I DM for a fairly low-op group, and even Monks, Fighters and Truenamers can make meaningful contributions during play. Even when I'm not DMing, and have gotten someone else to do it while I play, I don't break the game with a Tier 1 character. There's no reason to, it's not fun being the only one doing anything, while everyone else just sits and doesn't contribute. (Granted, I broke EtCR with a turning-focused Cleric, but I was challenged to build a character that could solo that campaign.) Sure, I can have an answer for every situation, but it doesn't mean I must have an answer for every situation.

[Tyndmyr]

Meh. A cleric//fighter is still as gamebreaking as a cleric, only with a better BAB, better HD and free fighter feats, while a Fighter//Rogue (or even Warblade//Rogue) still doesn't hold a candle to it.

This is where I'm at.

I'd probably gestalt with Truenamer, then proceed to win at everything.

dsmiles...that's also partially because Truenamers are not nearly as poor as they are made out to be. I estimate them at tier 3. Not gonna break the game, but quite usable, and they can help in different roles.

[Heatwizard]

This is where I'm at.

I'd probably gestalt with Truenamer, then proceed to win at everything.

dsmiles...that's also partially because Truenamers are not nearly as poor as they are made out to be. I estimate them at tier 3. Not gonna break the game, but quite usable, and they can help in different roles.

How do you figure? Warblades are combat kings, with a skill list that doesn't suck and a fool-proof nature that's hard to find elsewhere. Bards are great skillmonkeys that eat social situations for breakfast, have several nasty cards to play in a fight (go go Hideous Laughter), and get some utility spells to boot. Factotums are constructed out of options at a molecular level, and get to pull standard actions out of thin air.

Truenamers have to bend over backwards to reliably land their utterances, and their entire library of spells is plagued with aggressive mediocrity, except for No-XP-Gate as a capstone which is game-breaking. UMD is the only thing of interest on their skill list. The penalty for screwing up a Truenamer is complete irrelevance, and the reward for maximum op-fu is still not terribly exciting. It's the Fighter of casters. Even Gate at 20 (3 levels late) doesn't really help, since putting it to regular use is just going to make your DM start throwing books at you. They just don't stack up.

[dsmiles]

dsmiles...that's also partially because Truenamers are not nearly as poor as they are made out to be. I estimate them at tier 3. Not gonna break the game, but quite usable, and they can help in different roles.I'm fairly certain that a Truenamer optimized by someone who knows what their doing could make it to Tier 3, but a low-op or new player making a Truenamer? I doubt they'd actually be effective at that tier.

[Tyndmyr]

How do you figure? Warblades are combat kings, with a skill list that doesn't suck and a fool-proof nature that's hard to find elsewhere. Bards are great skillmonkeys that eat social situations for breakfast, have several nasty cards to play in a fight (go go Hideous Laughter), and get some utility spells to boot. Factotums are constructed out of options at a molecular level, and get to pull standard actions out of thin air.

Truenamers have to bend over backwards to reliably land their utterances, and their entire library of spells is plagued with aggressive mediocrity, except for No-XP-Gate as a capstone which is game-breaking. UMD is the only thing of interest on their skill list. The penalty for screwing up a Truenamer is complete irrelevance, and the reward for maximum op-fu is still not terribly exciting. It's the Fighter of casters. Even Gate at 20 (3 levels late) doesn't really help, since putting it to regular use is just going to make your DM start throwing books at you. They just don't stack up.

Truenamer is on par with a bard in flexibility. They have buffs, debuffs, crowd control, damage and healing. Also, they're semi-decent skill monkeys.

Let's justify each of these.

Skill monkeying: Int based class. Utterance available at first level gives +5 to ANY skill check. Gets four free Skill Focuses, and additional, bigger utterances later. Not the same kind of skill monkey as say, a rogue, but still a skill monkey.

Healing: Every single level of utterances in the main lexicon has at least one healing spell, via fast healing. FH is not the most rapid healing, but it works on literally everyone, including undead, tomb tainted soul, and warforged. If you focus on OOC healing, as you should, FH is fantastic. You also get ability damage/status effect removal, as all proper healers should.

Damage: Not fantastic, but we're at about warlock eldritch blast levels of damage. Also, the ability to just activate it again on round 2 as a standard action is pretty awesome. No way to hide from another round of pain. Can be pumped significantly if you want to play a blaster, but isn't required.

Buffs: Well...you start with Freedom of Movement available at level one. That's kind of awesome. That skill buff? It's not self only. If you have a dedicated skill monkey, you can make him more awesome. Granting concealment, extra attacks, these are also low level abilities. Higher up, and we're talking stuff like "ally cannot be attacked".

Debuffs: The hardest to stop dispel in the game. And by hardest, I mean that nothing anywhere stops it. You can, at low levels, flat out prevent movement. You can nauseate opponents, which is a horrific status effect. You can remove SR or strip etherealness even when such things are natural.

Battlefield Control: Solid Fog is available decently early, and is an old standby. Rock to Mud is also BC, as is Transform the Landscape. BTW, that latter one dispels other people's BC, so it's fantastic for gaining action economy vs another BCer. Wind storm is also fun.

And of course, there's the free Gates.

Additionally, the penalty for screwing a wizard up is complete irrelevance, but I've never actually seen a person roll up a wizard without int. Truenamer, same same.

Seriously, sometimes I think people don't play the class before bashing it.

[BlueEyes]

I talked with my DM a little about tiers and his idea is similar, but different. It's also just a quick fix and it's definitely not perfect, but...
Tier 1 = 5 points
Tier 2 = 4 points
Tier 3 = 3 points
Tier 4 = 2 points
Tier 5 = 1 point
Tier 6 = 1/2 point
You gestalt as many classes as you want, but you can't get more than 5 points.
Tier 1 and 2 are still kings, but a Wizard or Cleric can always be played as a Tier 3, meanwhile a lower tier needs work and system mastery to get as high as at least strong Tier 3.
I would make it so that tier 1 and 2 are 4 points and you can't get more than 4. Tier 6 would be banned.

[Tyndmyr]

I'm fairly certain that a Truenamer optimized by someone who knows what their doing could make it to Tier 3, but a low-op or new player making a Truenamer? I doubt they'd actually be effective at that tier.

A low op or new player will at least hopefully understand stats and skills at a basic level. If they don't do that...they'll screw up anything.

There's not enough Utterances to pick seriously wrong. I mean, if you really work at it, you can pick some less awesome ones, true...but it's like sorcerer, only with a much smaller pool of spells for the good stuff to hide in. A newbie is going to pick up the utterance list MUCH faster than the wizard/sorc list. And sorc is tier 2. This is not a serious problem.

Yes, you will want to boost truenaming. The class explicitly tells you this. It gives examples. It provides a skill booster in the class itself that you cannot avoid, and has another item fairly affordably in the same section of the same book as the class. Again, if you read over your stuff once, you can't miss it.

With that and core boosting. Not fancy core boosting, mind...we'll ignore UMDing stuff and the like(even though it's a class skill), you can easily get to auto-pass with any race that doesn't have an int penalty.

Rolling a truenamer without int and truenaming is like rolling a wizard without int or spellcraft/concentration. Yeah, you're gonna suck. You sort of ignored the basic requirement of the class.

[Larkas]

The proposed fix just wouldn't work. A Cleric//Fighter totals 6, as does a Swordsage//Warblade, but the former is much more effective than the latter.



Tier 1 = 5 points
Tier 2 = 4 points
Tier 3 = 3 points
Tier 4 = 2 points
Tier 5 = 1 point
Tier 6 = 1/2 point
You gestalt as many classes as you want, but you can't get more than 5 points.

Now this is a much more reasonable approach. You could even "soft ban" a tier completely, by setting lower totals, such as 4 for T2-T6 games or 3 for T3-T6. It also is more adaptable than the list of available gestalt combinations proposed by JaronK. If you want to allow T1 classes without buffing T2, just do as BlueEyes proposed and set the total to 4 points and both T1 and T2 values to 4. I'm just not sure if I'd like allowing tristalting and such. Also, I don't like the fraction, so I'd go with a slightly modified table. All in all, I'd use the following rules:


Tier 1 = 6 points
Tier 2 = 5 points
Tier 3 = 4 points
Tier 4 = 3 points
Tier 5 = 2 points
Tier 6 = 1 point
You may gestalt two classes, but you can't get more than X points.

This lowers the gestalt combination efficiency compared to BlueEyes' version a little bit, but that's not a bad thing: with a 6 points total, a Sorcerer would be allowed to gestalt merely with an Aristocrat (T6), versus an Expert (T5) in the original system (or, you know, this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=13313844&postcount=15)).

Anyways, just my 2cp :smallsmile:

[Tyndmyr]

I talked with my DM a little about tiers and his idea is similar, but different. It's also just a quick fix and it's definitely not perfect, but...
Tier 1 = 5 points
Tier 2 = 4 points
Tier 3 = 3 points
Tier 4 = 2 points
Tier 5 = 1 point
Tier 6 = 1/2 point
You gestalt as many classes as you want, but you can't get more than 5 points.
Tier 1 and 2 are still kings, but a Wizard or Cleric can always be played as a Tier 3, meanwhile a lower tier needs work and system mastery to get as high as at least strong Tier 3.
I would make it so that tier 1 and 2 are 4 points and you can't get more than 4. Tier 6 would be banned.

I admit I am a bit amused by the possible consequences of gestalting all manner of classes.

CW Samurai(for full BaB, large HD, good fort, other buffs)//Truenamer(Utterances, lulz)//CA NInja(skill points, ki, another will bonus)//Monk(saves, extra abilities)//Warmage is five points.

And holy god, would that build be crazy. We're looking at all good saves, D10s, full BaB, Magic weapons not tied to the usual WBL, great blasting and full casting, lethal melee damage, two types of bonuses to armor, great skills, basically all the proficiencies, and all manner of fun extra toys.

That's before non-class optimization, and he's gonna be amazing.

[BlueEyes]

I admit I am a bit amused by the possible consequences of gestalting all manner of classes.

CW Samurai(for full BaB, large HD, good fort, other buffs)//Truenamer(Utterances, lulz)//CA NInja(skill points, ki, another will bonus)//Monk(saves, extra abilities)//Warmage is five points.

And holy god, would that build be crazy. We're looking at all good saves, D10s, full BaB, Magic weapons not tied to the usual WBL, great blasting and full casting, lethal melee damage, two types of bonuses to armor, great skills, basically all the proficiencies, and all manner of fun extra toys.

That's before non-class optimization, and he's gonna be amazing.
Is it better than a Wizard?

[Tyndmyr]

Is it better than a Wizard?

I'm gonna go with yeah. A warmage is probably strictly better than a wizard who only takes blasty spells. Edge is minor, but the free metamagics is good, the "all spells known from char creation" allows some interesting TO-level tricks, you're going to have an amazing skill list, with massive bonuses to..essentially all of them.

Outhealing a wizard is trivial. Gestalting any two full-progression casters intelligently is going to mostly fix the lack of diversity compared to wizard.

The saves are going to crush a wizards, even if the wizard buffs heavily...and likewise, the wizard would need to buff heavily to keep up in hp. Slots are significantly more limited for the wizard than Warmage+Truenamer.

Plus, this guy'll be a beast in melee. So, no weak point to shore up there.

See, the wizard *can* fix most any weak point with a few well chosen spells. To fix all of them all day long takes significant optimization and a goodly amount of spells. Not having the weak spot to begin with is better.

[BlueEyes]

Something is better than a Wizard? Blasphemy!

[Morph Bark]

Something is better than a Wizard? Blasphemy!

Consider the fact that he'll take Rainbow Servant in that part of his Gestalt Combo. Now he has all Cleric spells too. :smallamused:

EDIT: I would have picked a different skill class over Ninja though, as Ninja grants the same bonus to AC you get from the Monk. Plus, Truenamer doesn't actually have a Tier, so using it in there is a little unfair before the DM slaps a Tier on it.

[BlueEyes]

Consider the fact that he'll take Rainbow Servant in that part of his Gestalt Combo. Now he has all Cleric spells too. :smallamused:
Not exactly, because you gestalt base classes into a single class. It's not Monk//Ninja//Warmage//Truenamer. It's "Class X" that's basically a Monk//Ninja//Warmage//Truenamer. If you prestige you take either a level of "Class X" or a level of the prestige class.
At least that's how it's supposed to work.

[Tyndmyr]

Consider the fact that he'll take Rainbow Servant in that part of his Gestalt Combo. Now he has all Cleric spells too. :smallamused:

EDIT: I would have picked a different skill class over Ninja though, as Ninja grants the same bonus to AC you get from the Monk. Plus, Truenamer doesn't actually have a Tier, so using it in there is a little unfair before the DM slaps a Tier on it.

Ninja and monk bonus stacks, yes? Regardless, it's not that critical, I was mostly just stacking amusing bonuses together, there's a few ways to do it.

Hell, I was going to take a race that grants power points and magic training as a feat, Ur priest as a PrC, and get four nines(plus full truenaming). Cheese trumps tier.

Blue Eyes, that's not how PrCs work in combination with gestalt. PrCs replace one side of the gestalt. I mean, that's why we've got the SRD line "A gestalt character can’t combine two prestige classes at any level, although it’s okay to combine a prestige class and a regular class."

It does suggest the creation of particularly powerful additional PrCs that take up both sides as an option...but that's not required anywhere, and I can ignore it regardless if it's worse.

[eggs]

Gestalt is a very bad system for trying to balance classes.
Barbarian//Fighter isn't going to have any more versatility than the classes already have. What it does have are bigger numbers, which are actually a bit of a problem, because optimized Barbarians and Fighters are already pretty good at killing the things that they can hit. By gestalting them, the result is even better at steamrolling the obstacles it can engage; from a metagame perspective, that's a situation which will encourage the DM to introduce encounters which the Barbarian//Fighter can't engage so easily - and both classes are still too rigid to adapt easily to things like long-range attackers, battlefield controllers, invisible or misdirecting targets, weapon-immune enemies, magical debuffers or basically anything with an immediate action defense.

And more varied gestalts often fall into the same problems they do initially - a Fighter is only really good at trading hits with dumb brute monsters, and a Ninja only really has abilities related to sneaking around any other situation leaves both others twiddling their thumbs. A Fighter//Ninja might be able to be good at both trading hits with dumb brute monsters and sneaking around, but still the majority of other situations will leave it sitting around twiddling its thumbs.

So again, it's a situation where if you have a problem with a specific class or build, it's easier and more efficient to just fix that class or build than it is to make sweeping system alterations whose outcomes still require individual changes.

Not to mention the hassle of giving concrete implications to Tier placements (the first obstacle being a consensus regarding placement of all the individual classes).

[BlueEyes]

Blue Eyes, that's not how PrCs work in combination with gestalt. PrCs replace one side of the gestalt. I mean, that's why we've got the SRD line "A gestalt character can’t combine two prestige classes at any level, although it’s okay to combine a prestige class and a regular class."
... I know how gestalt works. I'm talking about how my DMs "fix" works.

[Tyndmyr]

... I know how gestalt works. I'm talking about how my DMs "fix" works.

That's not at all visible from what you posted earlier. If you say gestalt, people are going to assume you mean gestalt.

Also, that makes things worse. Now the Fighter//Barbarian only gets one PrC, so he's...not much better off than an entirely normal charger build.

My build will still pull off several 9s. I might have to sacrifice some truenaming and higher level monk abilities and shiz. Oh no. Getting 9s from ur priest only takes five levels, and the shenanigans used to get 9s out of Magical Training are going to be equally applicable to warmage, etc, etc.

So nah, it's still a terrible fix.

[BlueEyes]

That's not at all visible from what you posted earlier. If you say gestalt, people are going to assume you mean gestalt.
It's a quick and easy fix. If I would write it in more detail to consider any issues, it would cease to be quick and easy.

[Larkas]

snip

Not necessarily, you just have to find out how to gestalt constructively. Let's say I were balancing for a T3 game using my proposed version of BlueEyes' fix. It would be much more constructive to gestalt Fighter with Expert than with, say, Knight. If you're going for T1, the same could be said with Fighter//Factotum. After all, power comes from being able to solve, or at least contribute to, a lot of situations, not being a one-trick pony who can one-hit a Tarrasque but isn't of much use for anything else. 6+Int skill points/level plus any 10 class skills (UMD, Iaijutsu Focus and Autohypnosis, plus, uh, Listen, Search and Spot) will help the Fighter much more than being able to endure more suffering and rage (though you arguably have to get pounce, I'm sure you can get something with UMD -- or UPD, for that matter).

[Tyndmyr]

It's a quick and easy fix. If I would write it in more detail to consider any issues, it would cease to be quick and easy.

It may be quick and easy, but it's not a fix. In fact, it's the opposite of a fix. The greatest disparity in the game lies not in tiers, but between the novice player and the optimizing player. By increasing complexity in this way, you present something that the novice will likely not understand, certainly not well, and will either avoid or make poor use of.

On the other hand, the optimizing player will cackle with glee and turn out some unholy abomination that manages to replace an entire party and destroy the earth.

At least, that's what'll happen if they have no concept of playing nice with each other. But if they want to play nice, they can do that without even bothering with any of this.

[BlueEyes]

It may be quick and easy, but it's not a fix.
Maybe for you.
And as I said, it's quick and easy. We could go into much more detail and make a rule for every possible abuse, but really, who needs that? Larkas came up with his own version that maybe will work for him, so at least one good thing came out of it. That's good enough for me.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Maybe for you.
And as I said, it's quick and easy. We could go into much more detail and make a rule for every possible abuse, but really, who needs that? Larkas came up with his own version that maybe will work for him, so at least one good thing came out of it. That's good enough for me.

I don't see how it fixes anything. It relies on players being knowledgeable enough not to screw up the combination, and nice enough not to be overpowered. Which is also what fixes the basic system.

[Tyndmyr]

I don't see how it fixes anything. It relies on players being knowledgeable enough not to screw up the combination, and nice enough not to be overpowered. Which is also what fixes the basic system.

Precisely. If you want to play gestalt, go nuts, play gestalt. But the only time when this system will work is when there's no problem to fix. When there is a problem, it magnifies it.

[Morph Bark]

Ninja and monk bonus stacks, yes? Regardless, it's not that critical, I was mostly just stacking amusing bonuses together, there's a few ways to do it.

Hell, I was going to take a race that grants power points and magic training as a feat, Ur priest as a PrC, and get four nines(plus full truenaming). Cheese trumps tier.

IIRC, it is specifically stated in the Ninja AC bonus class feature that it doesn't stack with the Monk's. Granted though, it's not a great loss.

I agree that cheese trumps Tier though. I bet that if you'd start using the PrC Tiers in this as well you'd get an entirely different result.

[Tyndmyr]

IIRC, it is specifically stated in the Ninja AC bonus class feature that it doesn't stack with the Monk's. Granted though, it's not a great loss.

Fair enough. I admit, I don't often use the ninja(or indeed, any of the oriental classes).


I agree that cheese trumps Tier though. I bet that if you'd start using the PrC Tiers in this as well you'd get an entirely different result.

Depends. I'd probably go trawling through the Iron Chef entries for wild combos. I could probably cobble something horrific together through all the crazy interactions from low tiered PrCs.

In general, tristalt+ = frigging crazy stuff happens, and only fairly intense optimizers are even going to bother trying to really understand it. The failure rate of these games seems remarkably high(go look through tristalt games here...they don't often make it out of char creation), and the optimizers have some true madness going on.

[Empedocles]

I talked with my DM a little about tiers and his idea is similar, but different. It's also just a quick fix and it's definitely not perfect, but...
Tier 1 = 5 points
Tier 2 = 4 points
Tier 3 = 3 points
Tier 4 = 2 points
Tier 5 = 1 point
Tier 6 = 1/2 point
You gestalt as many classes as you want, but you can't get more than 5 points.
Tier 1 and 2 are still kings, but a Wizard or Cleric can always be played as a Tier 3, meanwhile a lower tier needs work and system mastery to get as high as at least strong Tier 3.
I would make it so that tier 1 and 2 are 4 points and you can't get more than 4. Tier 6 would be banned.

So my sorcerer now has D10 HD, good BAB, and fighter bonus feats? Wonderful.

I think something more along the lines of...

Tier 1's and 2's cannot gestalt.
A tier 3 may gestalt with a tier 6.
A tier 4 may gestalt with a tier 5.
And vice versa.

That's just off the top of my head here though. There's quite a lot of cheese involved though.

[eepop]

Honestly, in play, the tiers don't really mean that much, unless you're in a high-op group. New players, unless they just take a build off the CharOp forums and put it in the game (or are just geniuses), will hardly notice the difference between a Tier 1 and a Tier 3 character.


I'm happy for you if that is true at your table, but it is not a universal truth.

For our first 3.5 game, I randomly rolled race and class and got a gnome druid. I did nothing but play him as I thought was roleplay appropriate, I didn't even know that the idea of character optimization existed. I had brew potion, point blank shot, and farshot. And I got natural spell because I thought it would be cool to be able to cast as an animal, not because it would be powerful, but because it would be cool.

The mere presence of my character did unhealthy things to that game, with no ill intentions on my part at all. Eventually, around level 12, the DM and I had a talk and we found some ways to reign the character in (kill off my pet, and have my character be too emotionally hurt over it to call another as a start). And I was still often walking on eggshells to not outshine the other players. I had to consciously optimize in the direction of making my allies better whenever possible so that I didn't outshine them.

Did the game survive? Yes. Was it at all a healthy way for the game to go? No, not really. I shouldn't have to watch every step I take just because I literally rolled the OP class. There were several occasions where I had to do something explicitly against my rp character in favor of the health of the game, and that makes me sad.

[ThiagoMartell]

I don't think you even need a 'fix' with new players. If a problem arises, deal with that specific problem. Otherwise, you're throwing rulings, alternate lists, banlists and stuff at people who just want to play and might be just fine with the way things are.

[willpell]

One thing I wondered about was just giving high-tier classes a Level Adjustment. Wizards are weak at low levels and godlike at high levels; just give them fewer high levels, while pushing their WBL up at the low end so they can at least afford a few wands and rings to protect themselves until they learn 3rd-level spells.

[Tyndmyr]

That sounds like essentially bringing back class-specific xp charts.

Which could work, yeah, but I'm not sure how multiclassing would mix with that.

[willpell]

Good point, it'd be difficult to figure out how such a rule interacts with the difference between an Arcane Archer (six levels of Fighter and one level of Wizard) and an Eldritch Knight (five levels of Wizard and one level of Fighter).

[Gnorman]

Given the potential and power of even 1st level spells, I don't know that I'd call wizards "weak" at low levels.

Regardless, separate XP charts is a Bad Idea - it introduces unnecessary complexity and mucks about pretty seriously with multiclassing, as mentioned.

I am in favor of the "redesign all classes to be around Tier 3" argument. Wait, what did I just say about "unnecessary complexity?" Damn.

Seriously, if you're willing to put in the work, it's effective. Limit casters to the fixed-list spontaneous variety, eliminate spells that make entire class features (and sometimes entire classes) obsolete, and give non-magic classes Nice Things (Nice Things is a registered trademark of Gnorman Enterprises).

[willpell]

First-level spells are not necessarily weak, but keep in mind that a first-level caster has about three of those spells per day, and they all last 1 round or 1 minute or at most 1 hour.

What sort of "nice things" could you give a Fighter 9 to make him competitive with a Wizard 9? I'd really like to know how you'd offer a guy with a sword something that compares to 5th level spells while not making him seem utterly unlike a guy with a sword. Soulmelds and pact binding and stuff may offer the options the fighter lacks, but they aren't "fightery" things; they're weird extra bits of fluff that dilute the essence of traditional fantasy, and while that can be a good thing if you want originality, it isn't if you're trying to recapture a classic feel.

[Man on Fire]

Remove NPC classes because they're moronic idea. Take all thier 6-4 classes and upgrade them to be tier 3. Take all tier 2 and 1 classes and nerf them to be tier 3. That's what should be done. I'm not sure how exactly, yet, but I bet it's possible.

[willpell]

I like the idea of NPC classes, but I don't like that they're weaker than PC classes. What I want is for them to be equally effective on a theoretical basis, but more boring, optomized toward staying home and living an ordinary life, instead of being a monster-slaying grave-robbing hobo with the GDP of a small nation strapped to his back. For example my fixed Commoner, the Citizen, gets a pretty impressive bonus to his attack and/or damage rolls...but only while he's in his own house, or at higher levels his workplace, his friends's and relatives' houses, his entire home city, and by level 20 anywhere within civilization. Never in a dungeon or the wilderness; there he'd be helpless, so he never goes there. But if the entire campaign took place in a city, a Citizen of level X would be at least as good as a Fighter of level X, perhaps better, because he's fighting to defend his home and can't afford to fail.

[Ashtagon]

I like the idea of NPC classes, but I don't like that they're weaker than PC classes. What I want is for them to be equally effective on a theoretical basis, but more boring, optomized toward staying home and living an ordinary life, instead of being a monster-slaying grave-robbing hobo with the GDP of a small nation strapped to his back. For example my fixed Commoner, the Citizen, gets a pretty impressive bonus to his attack and/or damage rolls...but only while he's in his own house, or at higher levels his workplace, his friends's and relatives' houses, his entire home city, and by level 20 anywhere within civilization. Never in a dungeon or the wilderness; there he'd be helpless, so he never goes there. But if the entire campaign took place in a city, a Citizen of level X would be at least as good as a Fighter of level X, perhaps better, because he's fighting to defend his home and can't afford to fail.

I'd be very interested in seeing these fixes.

[willpell]

Glad to hear it. Unfortunately none of them are even close to done.

[eggs]

What sort of "nice things" could you give a Fighter 9 to make him competitive with a Wizard 9? I'd really like to know how you'd offer a guy with a sword something that compares to 5th level spells while not making him seem utterly unlike a guy with a sword.
Wizard is a difficult balance point that nobody would probably want. The proposed T3ish Wizard (which would probably look more like the Bardic Sage, Beguiler or this (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=4ouhhp0gv16bfiegv9qbhh5gu5&topic=2410)) would be less difficult.

Conceptually, the guy with a sword isn't impossible to fit into a higher-powered game. One of the biggest problems with most "guy with a sword" characters is that their abilities are often limited to that sword; fixing that part is easy, and it doesn't muck about the flavor at all (they could have unique abilities relating to social skills, tracking, perception, smashing things, etc.).

And in terms of combat fixes, a good deal can be accomplished by acknowledging what the biggest problems are, and just addressing them in ways befitting a Guy With A Sword. Battlefield obstacles are particularly limiting for this archetype? Cut through them with your sword! This archetype tends to have poor defenses against spell effects? Cut through them with your sword! This archetype is particularly vulnerable to debuffs, due to combat's underlying mechanics? That's more where grit comes in... the grit of someone who cuts things up with swords! :smalltongue:

Then the class just needs to be able to reliably deal with opponents at a given level; that basically boils down to attacking different defenses. Maybe a Guy With A Sword can target mental defenses by yelling at things or throwing taunts; maybe it can attack mobility with its wounds; maybe it can target senses by whacking at the relevant organs with its sword or fighting dirty somehow; maybe it can target groups by hurling large objects or charging in a line; maybe it can just slash objects in half. This is where things get fun; it's what most ToB maneuvers do, but various Eldritch Essences, etc. could also be used for inspiration.

And whatever's left can be outsourced beyond the character, but left as a part of the class - eg. because flight is a necessity, and a flying warrior is a bit out of place for the archetype, a Guy With A Sword class could have something like a built-in flying mount or a built-in magical weapon with flight effects.

So I don't think it's particularly difficult or that it works against the spirit of the archetype to build a Guy With A Sword class that can contribute alongside a caster at high levels (though the strongest casters would still have to be reined in for a better parity).

[Man on Fire]

Guy with a Sword i just need to be given quadratic progression, just like the casters have now. So in more balanced system when, say, Level 15 Wizard can kill 100 Kobolds with a fireball in one round, Level 15 Fighter can kill 100 kobolds with his sword in one round, because he has bigger BAB than anybody else and knows so many battle tricks he is a war machine.

tl;dr: In Current D&D wizards are this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvpsbgPkVkQ&feature=fvst) while fighters are this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TA-QJ2d3kk), in more balanced game wizards are the same and fighters are this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qacgb2b8LVU)

[BlueEyes]

in more balanced game wizards are the same and fighters are this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qacgb2b8LVU)
:smallconfused:
Fighters already are this.

[Man on Fire]

:smallconfused:
Fighters already are this.

That's just an example of Guts, from his early days, before he moved to murder demons like they were nothing. My point is that more balanced game would make fights more like him - one man armies.

[Hiro Protagonest]

That's just an example of Guts, from his early days, before he moved to murder demons like they were nothing. My point is that more balanced game would make fights more like him - one man armies.

So... that's what a level 5-7 fighter should be like? Come on, the Spartans are what I consider that level, and while they're famous for their stand against the Persians, they still needed a strong phalanx formation to defend themselves effectively, and have favorable conditions (I doubt they would've been so good when surrounded).

[Man on Fire]

So... that's what a level 5-7 fighter should be like?

Give me some challenges for levels 5-7, typical things party ecounters at that level, how tier 3 deals with them and why they're better at it than fighter.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Give me some challenges for levels 5-7, typical things party ecounters at that level, how tier 3 deals with them and why they're better at it than fighter.

Dragonne: dragonne flies in, uses his roar ability to try and make the fighter exhausted, then charges to use Pounce, or swoops in with a Flyby Attack. Now, if it were a warblade, the warblade could use Moment of Perfect Mind to get a better shot at beating the save DC, and maneuvers/stances help in general (Flyby Attack? Leaping Dragon Stance. Steely Strike or Emerald Razor for better chance to hit or Power Attack for more).

For a more wartime encounter, like the one Guts faced...

Four level 1 warriors, one level 3 barbarian: Fighter just slices into them. If he has Cleave, he can get through two of the warriors at once. If the warblade has either Steel Wind or Mithral Tornado, he can get at least that many. Warblade also has stuff like Wall of Blades. The difference isn't very noticeable here, this is the area where the fighter excels.

But let's say the enemy has a wizard...

Level 4 wizard guarded by two level 1 warriors: Wizard uses Grease or Web. Warblade has balance as a class skill, and a higher reflex save even without maneuvers.

That video was an example of Guts as rather "low-level" as defined by that particular campaign. As such, Guts is better defined using the ruleset of Exalted (or, for a system with better and simpler mechanics, Qwixalted (http://aakin.net/qwixalted/doku.php)), as either an Enlightened Mortal with Even Blade Style Charms, or an Essence 2 Dawn Caste Solar.

[satorian]

Eh, you have that much of a problem with balance in your game? Take some cues from 2e, which was much more balanced than 3e and much more mundane is mundane, magic is magic than 4e. What cues?

1) reintroduce casting time for spells
2) drop concentration completely as a skill, or raise the DCs much higher, say by 10.

With these simple fixes, spells would still be awesome, but they would fail a lot more, making fighters much more useful, and archers much, much more useful.

Other things I've used that made things a little better:

Use 40+ point buy and double skill points for all classes. Yes, double. Only MAD classes, which are not tier 1-2, desperately need more point buy. A wizard with good strength is flavor. A fighter with good INT is Roy. A monk with good everything is moderately useful. Also, extra skill points end up helping melee much more than magic, especially with skill tricks. More skills, as I've seen it, also make for more fleshed out characters, as players actually have enough points for profession: cosmetology.

[Malachei]

Regarding the OP:

I am convinced a game that really needs the "tier system" to succeed is something I would not want to play in. It would need a DM that is unable to handle balance issues with his tools, players that either don't understand their character's abilities or don't care about the fun the other player is missing out. I don't think that many accidents happen and if they do, a competent DM will quickly be able to clean up the mess together with cooperative players.

The "tier system's" main author has explicitly stated he's banning wizards from his games, which I find a very valuable information to judge where the "tier systems" aims at and whether it is biased or not.

Yes, it does contain disclaimers, but to me, it is still a very basic labeling exercise that delivers little additional insight but results in a lot of discussions (except now the players don't argue on the actual abilities, but on start on the tiers).

Now that they've discussed the system over several threads with 50+ pages each, we have the wizard miniature in drawer 1, together with the cleric miniature and we even know that drawer 5 is for the fighter miniature, together with the ninja miniature. The truenamer miniature has to sit on the table because it does not fit into a drawer. We find that the system suggests not to take miniatures from drawers more than two levels apart. Finally, if you do want to take from all the drawers, you can do so by crippling/penalizing the miniatures you take from the top drawer.

[Tyndmyr]

Give me some challenges for levels 5-7, typical things party ecounters at that level, how tier 3 deals with them and why they're better at it than fighter.

Note that the fighter is not expected to solo these challenges...they're expected to contribute to them. Matching them up against them solo is not really fair.

And frankly, level 5-7 is pretty balanced. A wizard and a fighter cooperate pretty well at these levels, with both having a well defined area of expertise.

[Lans]

Take all thier 6-4 classes and upgrade them to be tier 3. Take all tier 2 and 1 classes and nerf them to be tier 3. That's what should be done. I'm not sure how exactly, yet, but I bet it's possible.

You don't even have to start at that point, knocking tiers 1 and 2 down to low tier 2 and upping the lower ones to a high tier 4 is a very good start.

[BlueEyes]

I am convinced a game that really needs the "tier system" to succeed is something I would not want to play in. It would need a DM that is unable to handle balance issues with his tools, players that either don't understand their character's abilities or don't care about the fun the other player is missing out. I don't think that many accidents happen and if they do, a competent DM will quickly be able to clean up the mess together with cooperative players.
Yes. Because why should you use a tool when you can figure all that by yourself and make hundreds of mistakes in the meantime?
I assume that when you want to build a house, you don't use a guide, but build it from scratch, without any tools or help. That's definitely practical and safe. Doesn't matter that it can fall down on your head anytime. You made it yourself without any biased guides, right?

[Malachei]

Yes. Because why should you use a tool when you can figure all that by yourself and make hundreds of mistakes in the meantime?
I assume that when you want to build a house, you don't use a guide, but build it from scratch, without any tools or help. That's definitely practical and safe. Doesn't matter that it can fall down on your head anytime. You made it yourself without any biased guides, right?

Your choice of where on the following milestones the "tier system" is for your game:


http://www.jimcode.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/project_management.png


For me, it's probably picture 5.

[BlueEyes]

I don't get it.

[eggs]

Yes. Because why should you use a tool when you can figure all that by yourself and make hundreds of mistakes in the meantime?
Is the assumption here that a Fighter/Rogue/Wizard/Cleric party is a mistake that needs to be averted?

I don't believe that's a premise that the majority of 3e players would agree with.

[Amphetryon]

I like the idea of NPC classes, but I don't like that they're weaker than PC classes. What I want is for them to be equally effective on a theoretical basis, but more boring, optomized toward staying home and living an ordinary life, instead of being a monster-slaying grave-robbing hobo with the GDP of a small nation strapped to his back. For example my fixed Commoner, the Citizen, gets a pretty impressive bonus to his attack and/or damage rolls...but only while he's in his own house, or at higher levels his workplace, his friends's and relatives' houses, his entire home city, and by level 20 anywhere within civilization. Never in a dungeon or the wilderness; there he'd be helpless, so he never goes there. But if the entire campaign took place in a city, a Citizen of level X would be at least as good as a Fighter of level X, perhaps better, because he's fighting to defend his home and can't afford to fail.
Acorn of Far Travel (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20040710a) makes that limitation trivial to overcome.

[Menteith]

Your choice of where on the following milestones the "tier system" is for your game:


http://www.jimcode.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/project_management.png


For me, it's probably picture 5.

When I introduce a new player to D&D, I'll briefly explain that certain classes have the potential to be much more powerful that other classes. If they still have questions, I'll answer them as best as I can. I've found that the information that JaronK posted is accurate, and useful for me to describe what a given class can be capable of. I'm fine with letting any class go in a campaign, but I'm much more careful about watching players with high tier classes. Apparently I'm doing it wrong?

[BlueEyes]

Is the assumption here that a Fighter/Rogue/Wizard/Cleric party is a mistake that needs to be averted?
Did I say that?

[Gnorman]

First-level spells are not necessarily weak, but keep in mind that a first-level caster has about three of those spells per day, and they all last 1 round or 1 minute or at most 1 hour.

What sort of "nice things" could you give a Fighter 9 to make him competitive with a Wizard 9? I'd really like to know how you'd offer a guy with a sword something that compares to 5th level spells while not making him seem utterly unlike a guy with a sword. Soulmelds and pact binding and stuff may offer the options the fighter lacks, but they aren't "fightery" things; they're weird extra bits of fluff that dilute the essence of traditional fantasy, and while that can be a good thing if you want originality, it isn't if you're trying to recapture a classic feel.

If you consider the number of encounters per day the average party deals with, three 1st-level spells is all you need. Between grease, sleep, and color spray, they're able to effectively end or trivialize encounters. Plus, decently optimized wizards are able to get four or five 1st level spells per day, even at 1st level (20 INT isn't hard to get, and what wizard would pass up Focused Specialist?), thereby extending their range.

Part of making the fighter (or almost any other class, really) competitive with the wizard will inevitably be reducing the power of the wizard. Spontaneous fixed-list casters are a much easier balance point to rally around. I've had (what I consider to be) a decent amount of success balancing mundanes and casters up to level 6 - beyond that, admittedly, I do not have as much experience, but the things that fighters are lacking in comparison are meaningful options (i.e., doing something more than full attack/five foot step), ways to use the action economy (how many fighters use swift actions?), non-item-dependent mobility (including the ability to avoid or overpower obstacles and battlefield control). I don't think it would be too much of a leap to imagine a fighter being able to do some of these things - realism is already stretched thin in D&D as it is, so I don't hold it to too strict of a standard.


Is the assumption here that a Fighter/Rogue/Wizard/Cleric party is a mistake that needs to be averted?

It is a mistake, in that the last two can outperform, outshine, and often completely make obsolete the other two. Until you fix that, yes, the Core Four is a lumbering ineffective dinosaur, and the essential conflict between the haves and have-nots will come up time after time.

[Malachei]

Is the assumption here that a Fighter/Rogue/Wizard/Cleric party is a mistake that needs to be averted?

I don't believe that's a premise that the majority of 3e players would agree with.

Exactly.

It is the iconic D&D party. It is not a dinosaur, but the traditional of the game.

All of the situations I've seen in >25 years of gaming fall in one of these two scenarios:

(A) The party has cooperative players and a competent DM. They deal with balance issues in-game. This can include banning a specific spell, but not a class, because "it's tier 1". The DM handles most of this via adventure / encounter design.

(B) The party has another, underlying problem that comes to the surface disguised as a balance issue. The party fights over who has a bigger share of the game pie. The DM attempts to ensure the fickle balance by limiting player choices and banning classes.

Each and every game style is fine, as long as everybody has fun. Personally, I tend to have more fun in scenario (A).

I'm not arguing there is no (C) Scenario, I'm just saying that I've not seen working parties unable to resolve balance issues.

Of those that I witnessed, the parties that argued about balance usually had other problems, including the (sometimes missing) team spirit at the table.

[eggs]

Did I say that?
I honestly don't know. That's why that sentence ended in a question-squiggle. Vague and hyperbolic rhetoric can be tricky that way.

[ThiagoMartell]

It is a mistake, in that the last two can outperform, outshine, and often completely make obsolete the other two. Until you fix that, yes, the Core Four is a lumbering ineffective dinosaur, and the essential conflict between the haves and have-nots will come up time after time.
:smallconfused:
I believe the Justice League and the Avengers are also lumbering ineffective dinosaurs, because Superman/Martian Manhunter and Thor/Hulk outperform everyone else.
Sarcasm aside, I disagree completely. It is not a mistake until the Cleric or Wizard actually outperforms everyone. It's a possible balance problem, but it doesn't always come up. For most games, the iconic party works just fine.

[Amphetryon]

For most games, the iconic party works just fine.You've compiled the statistics to confirm this, or is it an assumption based on your personal experience? I've no doubt that it CAN work, given the right group, but I'm curious as to the authoritative nature of this blanket statement covering a majority of, e.g. "most", games.

[BlueEyes]

You've compiled the statistics to confirm this, or is it an assumption based on your personal experience? I've no doubt that it CAN work, given the right group, but I'm curious as to the authoritative nature of this blanket statement covering a majority of, e.g. "most", games.
If it weren't "most" then don't you think there would probably be much more threads whining about the Wizard/Cleric/Druid outshining the OPs Fighter/Paladin/Rogue?
I know that not all players frequent internet RPG boards, but there still should be some indication that it's not "most".

[Amphetryon]

If it weren't "most" then don't you think there would probably be much more threads whining about the Wizard/Cleric/Druid outshining the OPs Fighter/Paladin/Rogue?
I know that not all players frequent internet RPG boards, but there still should be some indication that it's not "most".

That implies that "most" D&D players have an account here or elsewhere (meaning another RPG board at least partially dedicated to D&D), and use them for the purpose of vetting rules and complaining about X outshining Y. I'd be surprised to find that's actually the case, though, again, I'd be interested in seeing the study confirming or denying it.

[ThiagoMartell]

You've compiled the statistics to confirm this, or is it an assumption based on your personal experience? I've no doubt that it CAN work, given the right group, but I'm curious as to the authoritative nature of this blanket statement covering a majority of, e.g. "most", games.
Most in my experience, of course. It's impossible to compile statiscs of all D&D 3.5 games ever played.
However, I worked for the brazilian version of Dragon Magazine for a while and during Encontro Internacional de RPG (Brazil's number 1 RPG event) in 2006 (was it 2006? I think so) we checked which party was the most common. We always ran numbers on how much each game was played, but since this was the only time I was in charge of that, I checked the party composition on all D&D 3.5 tables. I don't remember the exact numbers, but more than 60% of it was Fighter-Rogue-Wizard-Cleric. That only means that party composition was very common in that specific event, though.
It being so iconic and such, however, I think it's quite reasonable to guess most people run those parties and most people have no balance problems with them. Sincerely, when was the last time you saw an iconic party being mentioned as part of a balance problem in these forums? Because outside of theorycraft, I never had.
People who play iconic parties don't tend to run into balance problems. That's the conclusion I came to due to my personal experience. Of course, you're free to disagree.

[BlueEyes]

That implies that "most" D&D players have an account here or elsewhere (meaning another RPG board at least partially dedicated to D&D), and use them for the purpose of vetting rules and complaining about X outshining Y.
I did say that I know that there's many people who don't go onto RPG boards. But even only with those who do post, I see whining rarely enough to be of the opinion that most people don't have problems, whether it's truth or just blissful ignorance.
BTW, the iconic party isn't just Fighter/Rogue/Wizard/Cleric. It's Fighter (Beatstick)/Rogue (skillmonkey)/Wizard (blaster)/Cleric (healbot). If played that way, there's less chance that the group will have any problems.

[Shotaro]

I think the level of optimisation required to make the tier system truly meaningful cannot be overstated.

In my game I've given the players the Elite Array (15,14,13,12,10,8) to distribute how they choose and in all honesty I've found the game to be pretty balanced so far. They are still low level and the party is huge (8-10 players) but it's worked really effectively so far. At level 2 they were able to take on a CR5 encounter, but were it not for bad dice rolls (I made the ghasts make INT checks to see if they could ignore the party - who had walled themselves off accidentally with fire - and just eat the Rogue or if they needed to attack immediately to guarantee a meal. If I rolled ones they would charge the party even if it meant running through fire. I rolled two ones) They would have lost a party member.

They've only managed a handful of encounters without someone going unconcious but only one party member has died (he committed assisted suicide because he was screwed either way)

I also nerfed higher level spells giving some of the more powerful spells requirements to meet in place of paying XP. They're in the spoiler below if anyone is curious.

Material components to be used instead of XP costs: (Copy pasted from http://www.d20source.com/2006/06/spell-xp-cost-variant)
• Atonement: Incense prepared from the golden firs of Arborea, worth 5,000 gp
• Awaken: Aromatic spirits painstakingly prepared from the rare silver moonflower, worth 2,500 gp
• Commune: A small piece of spiritstone from the deity’s plane, worth 1,000 gp
• Gate: A fist-sized piece of spiritstone from the outsider’s plane, worth 10,000 gp
• Limited Wish: The skull of a long-dead forgotten archmage, worth at least 3,000 gp
• Miracle: A drop of your deity’s blood, given willingly, worth 50,000 gp*
• Permanency: Ancient Suloise magical tomes each worth 5,000 gp, one tome per caster level above 8th
• Planar Ally: Willingly given blood (or equivalent) from a reasonably powerful outsider of the appropriate plane, worth 2,500 gp
• Planar Ally, Greater: Willingly given blood (or equivalent) from a very powerful outsider of the appropriate worth 5,000 gp
• Planar Ally, Lesser: Willingly given blood (or equivalent) from a moderately powerful outsider of the appropriate plane, worth 1,000 gp
• Restoration, Greater: The universal panacea, a healing potion worth 5,000 gp
• Simulacrum: An amount of the mythical Ice That Never Melts, worth 1,000 gp per HD (minimum 10,000 gp)
• Vision: Four strips of ivory made from the tusks of the legendary rare dragon elephant, worth 1,000 gp in total
• Wish: A major artefact worth at least 50,000 gp (the artefact is returned to its creator upon casting)*
* As an alternative to the hard-to-get material components for miracle and wish, the following can be substituted. Firstly, the caster can sacrifice his own life, after which he refuses to be raised. Secondly, the caster of a powerful miracle may sacrifice a cleric of a good aligned deity – only evil deities accept this. Finally, the caster of either spell may sunder a favoured weapon of their deity or a magical staff that is unique in nature, that is worth at least 50,000 gp, and that they have been using as their primary weapon or staff for at least four levels prior. The material components themselves are open to discussion however the alternative item must be of similar value and rarity.

[Menteith]

I've run into a few issues, but nothing that couldn't be worked through. People very rarely run a Wizard in our group just because the lower power options (Beguiler, Dread Necro, Bard/Sublime Chord, Warmage) are fine for the characters that most casters want to play. We did have an issue with a Druid once, but they ended up retroactively taking Druidic Avenger and retraining Greenbound Summoning, and it all worked out.

[satorian]

I think the level of optimisation required to make the tier system truly meaningful cannot be overstated.

In my game I've given the players the Elite Array (15,14,13,12,10,8) to distribute how they choose and in all honesty I've found the game to be pretty balanced so far.

While I think the first statement above is true to an extent, low ability scores actually hurt the "low tier" characters more than the high. Lows need more good ability scores to excel, while highs tend to need only 1 or maybe 2. With such a massive party, you may not notice the problem, especially if you see CR5 as a huge challenge for 8-10 lv2 characters. (hint: it isn't) Still, your elite array will likely do more harm than good.

[Shotaro]

While I think the first statement above is true to an extent, low ability scores actually hurt the "low tier" characters more than the high. Lows need more good ability scores to excel, while highs tend to need only 1 or maybe 2. With such a massive party, you may not notice the problem, especially if you see CR5 as a huge challenge for 8-10 lv2 characters. (hint: it isn't) Still, your elite array will likely do more harm than good.

I see it as a challenge, that if they are smart they'll find easy, if hey don't they'll get knocked about quite badly. In my experience it is probably about right, though some of the save DCs from two CR3 enemies are possibly a little high - IIRC the encounter ranks as challenging and should be about as hard as 45% of the encounters they have but I rank two enemies as a harder fight than taking on one CR 5, which with a party that size they'll steamroller.

I agree to an extent, MAD classes get hurt badly by the array and their inherent weaknesses are far more evident than with point buy, however the better players in the group have viewed that as a challenge to keep up. The party has 1 sorcerer, 1 Cleric, 2 fighters, a ranger, 2 rogues, a bard, a barbarian and a monk, the guy playing the monk has done admirably so far, but he is built to be a nuisance more than anything else, tripping and disarming when he can to put the opponents at a disadvantage rather than trying to do direct damage. Aside fro the party size we're pretty much playing the game as it was designed and in all honesty, so far it's holding up balance-wise far better than any other campaign I've played.

[Larkas]

Most in my experience, of course. It's impossible to compile statiscs of all D&D 3.5 games ever played.
However, I worked for the brazilian version of Dragon Magazine for a while and during Encontro Internacional de RPG (Brazil's number 1 RPG event) in 2006 (was it 2006? I think so) we checked which party was the most common. We always ran numbers on how much each game was played, but since this was the only time I was in charge of that, I checked the party composition on all D&D 3.5 tables. I don't remember the exact numbers, but more than 60% of it was Fighter-Rogue-Wizard-Cleric. That only means that party composition was very common in that specific event, though.
It being so iconic and such, however, I think it's quite reasonable to guess most people run those parties and most people have no balance problems with them. Sincerely, when was the last time you saw an iconic party being mentioned as part of a balance problem in these forums? Because outside of theorycraft, I never had.
People who play iconic parties don't tend to run into balance problems. That's the conclusion I came to due to my personal experience. Of course, you're free to disagree.

I went to some EIRPGs too, and to be honest, you're about right. I'd guess another 10% of the time a Paladin would replace the Fighter or the Rogue, but that's pretty much it.

[Togo]

I don't think the proposed solution really works.

Tiers are based on flexibility, not mechancial advantage. The Wizard is good because he can produce an effect that other people aren't built to counter, not because he has large bonuses on his dice rolls.

Adding additional features to lower tier characters makes a certain amount of sense, but it ignores why the lower tier classes are lower tier - because all they give are bonuses. You can do some interesting things with Gesalt classes, but by limiting the Gesalt to lower tiers, you tend to end up with characters that have mechancial advantage in a larger variety of ways, which doesn't really touch the advantage of Tier 1 characters.

Similarly, bigger stats for low tier characters means that classes which benefit from bigger numbers get them, but unless you put some breaks on the Tier 1 and tier 2 ability to produce effects that ignore the opponent's capabilities, there will still be a possible imbalance.

My favoured tactic invovles a fairly large banlist, tailored towards the campaign I'm running, and strongly encouraging players to build their characters in a way that doesn't duplicate or replace other people's abilities. Then it's just a question of making sure players share the spotlight, and get a chance to shine.

[LordBlades]

It is the iconic D&D party. It is not a dinosaur, but the traditional of the game.



The fact that it's traditional has absolutely no impact on how mechanically sound the concept is(history is full of traditional concepts that failed because they were no longer mechanically sound).

While the traditional party may work in many games, it also has all the prerequisites to cause serious issues. If all the characters are played by people with roughly the same level of optimization knowledge and with everyone trying to be good at what their characters are supposed to be good at, the fighter and rogue will be left in the dust, and they might be even dragging the party down as opposed to up.

IMO, for this 'dinosaur' to work, you need at least one of the following:

-the wizard and cleric need to moderate themselves, either willingly, or simply by not being aware of good options. From my experience, quite a few cleric and wizard players are content playing healbot and blaster respectively, and don't really seek other options.

-the figher and rogue player need to have no problem with the fact that they might be contributing less overall, and that some contributions are either because the wizard/cleric allowed them 'screen time' despite having a better/faster solution or because the wizard/cleric enabled them to do that stuff in the first place.

[Amphetryon]

The fact that it's traditional has absolutely no impact on how mechanically sound the concept is(history is full of traditional concepts that failed because they were no longer mechanically sound).

While the traditional party may work in many games, it also has all the prerequisites to cause serious issues. If all the characters are played by people with roughly the same level of optimization knowledge and with everyone trying to be good at what their characters are supposed to be good at, the fighter and rogue will be left in the dust, and they might be even dragging the party down as opposed to up.

IMO, for this 'dinosaur' to work, you need at least one of the following:

-the wizard and cleric need to moderate themselves, either willingly, or simply by not being aware of good options. From my experience, quite a few cleric and wizard players are content playing healbot and blaster respectively, and don't really seek other options.

-the figher and rogue player need to have no problem with the fact that they might be contributing less overall, and that some contributions are either because the wizard/cleric allowed them 'screen time' despite having a better/faster solution or because the wizard/cleric enabled them to do that stuff in the first place.
I agree with this, primarily because what worked in Red Box Set D&D or other editions won't work in the same way in 3.5, or in 4th, or in the upcoming 5e D&D. The reason for this is simple: They're different games, sharing several iconic monsters and the D&D logo. Arguing that Fighter/Magic-User/Cleric/Thief works equally well in all editions is akin to arguing that a bicycle is an appropriate vehicle for all races.

[Malachei]

They're different games, sharing several iconic monsters and the D&D logo. Arguing that Fighter/Magic-User/Cleric/Thief works equally well in all editions is akin to arguing that a bicycle is an appropriate vehicle for all races.

No. Bicycles and races is an inappropriate comparison.

Saying the iconic D&D party is not relevant to the current edition of the game is like saying the past has no significance to the present and future
and history will teach us nothing.

[Axier]

One of the things I liked about d20 Modern is that spellcasters where PRCs, and pretty much everyone was balanced UNTILL they moved on with more experience in their life. Plus, because most spells topped off at 6th level, a lot of the game breaking material was never experienced. Sure, there are plenty of <6th level spells that are seriously heavy, but it's less. You could just adapt something like D20 Modern (Past) to your D&D campagin.

It also allows the DM to more closely controll the way someone becomes a say, Sorceress. Having her joining some "cult-esque" group to tap into her latent powers, but brings her into the fold of a group with enough power to likely take her down if she "went rogue".

We could just turn most spellcasters into a prestege class, and maybe make more base classes more like Warlock/DFA, who are limited because they have less training.

An idea I had was to make a "Sorcerer" which played more like a 'Lock, but without the Eldrich Laser, and had some more Incantations. I just flat out prefer the Incantation system over the current Spellcasting system though.

[Menteith]

Saying the iconic D&D party is not relevant to the current edition of the game is like saying the past has no significance to the present and future
and history will teach us nothing.

You're going to need to run that by me again. Because I don't see anything terrible fundamental or inherent about the classic icons of older D&D editions, and I'm not saying anything like what you're claiming. The iconic D&D party isn't relevant (for my group) to the current edition of the game, and we really don't conform to the roles that were important to previous editions.

[Lans]

I don't think the proposed solution really works.

Tiers are based on flexibility, not mechancial advantage. The Wizard is good because he can produce an effect that other people aren't built to counter, not because he has large bonuses on his dice rolls.


This isn't completely true, the difference between 4 and 5 is pretty much just bigger numbers, and depending on class bigger numbers can bump it to tier 3, like in the case of the incarnate and warlock

[Tyndmyr]

One of the things I liked about d20 Modern is that spellcasters where PRCs, and pretty much everyone was balanced UNTILL they moved on with more experience in their life. Plus, because most spells topped off at 6th level, a lot of the game breaking material was never experienced. Sure, there are plenty of <6th level spells that are seriously heavy, but it's less. You could just adapt something like D20 Modern (Past) to your D&D campagin.

Nothing about D20 modern is balanced. Being a 4 level x/2 level caster sucked compared to a 6 level x.

[eggs]

I agree with this, primarily because what worked in Red Box Set D&D or other editions won't work in the same way in 3.5, or in 4th, or in the upcoming 5e D&D. The reason for this is simple: They're different games, sharing several iconic monsters and the D&D logo. Arguing that Fighter/Magic-User/Cleric/Thief works equally well in all editions is akin to arguing that a bicycle is an appropriate vehicle for all races.
The argument I meant to make is that the Fighter/Cleric/Wizard/Rogue party (or other arrangement of similarly imbalanced core classes) is the system's default. If playing this standard game defaulted to frustrating or unfun situations, it doesn't seem reasonable that casual players (read: players who don't get worked up enough over the game to go online to nitpick, balance and compare notes over the game) would continue using the system - especially when its currently-maintained alternative is specifically designed to address those issues. Consequently, I don't believe that the Fighter/Cleric/Wizard/Rogue party (or similar) is something that most 3e grognards would consider an inherent mistake.

My personal experience is that outside the online community, class imbalance is much less of an issue; system mastery and the intentions of players tend to overshadow class details enough that the latter's effects are relatively minor overall. In those groups, actually implementing the tier system (basically read "sweeping bans," as the other suggested implementations come with their own deep flaws) would mean presenting an array of contentious limitations to only partially address a minor problem (eg. whether the resident optimizer makes the rest of the party irrelevant via metamagic abuse or charge/intimidate).

[Ashtagon]

Nothing about D20 modern is balanced. Being a 4 level x/2 level caster sucked compared to a 6 level x.

d20 Modern isn't not balanced against D&D. They're two different games — of course they aren't balanced against each other. But in d20m, there are no full casters from level one, so complaining that a d20m caster isn't competitive against a wizard 6 is an unfair complaint, since wizard 6 simply doesn't exist in the game.