(PF) Fixing Low Tier Classes

[Ailowynn]

First off, I am not entirely sure where this thread should be--here or Homebrew--so mods of course feel free to move it.

Now. On to business. I'm GMing a Pathfinder campaign, with a wide mix of characters and power levels:
(1) A veteran player with +18 in Knowledge (Breaking the Rules) who is playing a Sorcerer (not quite as nastily game breaking as a Wizard, but still...)
(2) Two brand new players playing a Ranger and a Goblin Ninja (doesn't feel to underpowered, especially with the +25 or so to Stealth).
(3) A veteran playing as a Dwarf Fighter
(4) A high powered Halfling Paladin
and
(5) A veteran player who nonetheless knows fairly little about the rules, let along breaking the game, who plays a Half Orc Barbarian (obviously dumped Cha...has 20 Str , 18 Con and 14 Dex).

So, my question is: how might I go about emplacing house rules to get these classes, or at least the players, to tier 3? I'm sure it's been done before (but not anyplace easily accessible to Google searches), and any tried and true tips would be appreciated. Also, info on exactly why each of the classes is in its tier so that I could come up with some of my own fixes would be appreciated.


TL;DR How have people gone about "fixing" Sorc, Ninja, Barbarian, Fighter, Ranger, and Paladin? And why is each in its respective tier?

[Waker]

Why do you feel the need to "fix" the classes? With the exception of the Sorcerer, the other characters are all fairly close together on the Tier Ranking, and the issue of the Ranking will only matter if you know there will be a big discrepancy between the play styles. I mean, if the Sorcerer went with a buff/CC route, that would actually fit just fine with the party.

[Psyren]

Gentleman's Agreement. Ask your Sorcerer player to either keep it toned down or play something else.

The only one I'd worry about is the Fighter as he may end up getting tired of "I charge, I full-attack." How high is the game going to go?

[StreamOfTheSky]

I don't feel like explaining why each is in its tier, you can read that up elsewhere....

For the Barbarian, an obvious first fix is to allow the barbarian to choose to continue raging if he goes unconscious, which paizo decided to place a feat tax to gain. As is, high level barbarians suddenly die rather easily. I would also change all rage bonuses to untyped from morale. It messes with spell buffs and actually conflicts with one of their own rage powers, Superstitious. On that note.... removing the penalty of superstitious and just effectively making it a saves buff for raging barbarians would be a simple buff, not sure how balanced it is (it makes human barbarian much better than other races, since they can boost the bonus further w/ favored class; though human sorc gets bonus spells known, so it certainly is still not as unbalanced as that). Also, since a Barbarian can just dip Oracle 1 and have fatigue immunity to "rage cycle" in and out to get multiple uses of 1/rage powers anyway, just plain giving them fatigue immunity at level 9 and declaring all 1/rage powers to now be 1/round would be reasonable.

Ninja....for starters, use the playtest version, not the final one. If you lack the pdf, I could send it to you. Main gist is that forgotten trick cost 1 less ki, all the tricks that cost ki gave 1 use per day free, and the capstone ability cost 1 less ki. Ninja is the most MAD class in the entire game, so giving them more ki ability uses helps make cha a bit less critical. I would also just straight up let them use dex for attack and damage w/ all melee weapons ninja is proficient with instead of str. Then at least the Ninja only needs Dex, Con, and Cha and non-negative Int and Wis. I would also give Ninja a 2nd good base save, as Reflex only is the worst possible set of saves you can get. I'd suggest good Will so Wis can be safely dumped slightly, but good Fort works, too.

Fighter actually does good damage in PF, the problem is, just as in 3E, he can't do anything else. Also, PF nerfed the combat feats. I would expand Fighter skill list and give him 4 + int skill points. I would merge all Improved and Greater combat maneuver feats into a single feat that gives +4 and the current "Improved" benefit (usually just that it doesn't provoke) and at "effective monk level 6" also gives you the "Greater" benefit. "Effective Monk level" would be levels in Monk + BAB from levels not in monk. Because monks having to wait longer for combat maneuver boons is flipping moronic. Finally, I would make Bravery into a bonus against all mind-affecting effects, not just fear.

Paladin is relatively solid, its main weakness in my experience is a complete inability to deal with large hordes of evil, all of his smiting and spells are single target. Perhaps add an option to Smite Evil so that instead of on one foe until it's dead, you can opt to get a single attack benefit from smite against one target you can see per Paladin level? You could also add Extra Smite as a feat if you want to help the Paladin out more. Eventually giving him SR of 12 + Paladin level vs. spells and spell-like abilities cast by evil creatures would be good, too.

Ranger....let him pick a "pair" of favored enemies instead of one each time, maybe? Like, instead of Undead +4 / Evil Outsiders +2, it could be Undead and Dragons +4 / Evil Outsiders and Magical Beasts +2. One thing you should definitely do is give him animal companion exactly as the druid class feature. No -3 level penalty, and no being restricted to a small list.

As for nerfing Sorceror...do not allow him to play Human or at least ban their favored class option. Also ban the Paragon Surge spell, it is horrifically broken. Not sure what to do beyond that, but definitely do those 2 things.

[TopCheese]

Gentleman's Agreement. Ask your Sorcerer player to either keep it toned down or play something else.

The only one I'd worry about is the Fighter as he may end up getting tired of "I charge, I full-attack." How high is the game going to go?

+1

Of course if they say "No" then just tell them that rocks do sometime fall and some traps may or may not be 2nd edition lethal.

:smallbiggrin:

[PEACH]

Unless they are significantly high level, tier balance isn't super relevant. Even if they are, "veteran" doesn't necessarily mean they're good at optimizing. If you happen to have their builds, it would let us get a better idea of what's going on with the game, but if they've already made their characters it's probably a lot easier to judge from there and maybe make minor tweaks to class balance instead of attempting to use sweeping fixes that won't matter if your players can abide by a gentlemen's agreement.

[Paulcynic]

StreamOfTheSky's suggests are valid, but I would go with Waker's. The tier system merely shows the relative utility and effectiveness disparity between classes. Since the Sorc is the only one that stands well above the rest, him being a T2 might cause some issues, But Not Till the Later Levels :P

Its not till you start seeing Quickened spells, and the game-breaking spells at 7th, 8th, and 9th, not till then will the other players begin to complain. And so I wouldn't do anything at all, the group looks great :)

However, if you feel that the group is generally Underpowered for what you plan on putting them through, then I'd suggest letting them Gestalt with another T6 up to T3 class. Problem solved with very little GM fiat.

[Coidzor]

There's a rebalanced compendium or two that people did up on the old Brilliant Gameologists forums for 3.5, most of the names involved were respectable sorts so it may serve as a good source of inspiration if you can dig up a link or anyone has one handy. I'm not sure if any of it got ported to the minmaxboards successor site or not.

[SinsI]

What levels are they going to be? Depending on the answer, you might want to fix the sorcerer instead of the fighters, so that his adventuring days are longer than 5 minutes...

[Hiro Protagonest]

Unless they are significantly high level, tier balance isn't super relevant. Even if they are, "veteran" doesn't necessarily mean they're good at optimizing. If you happen to have their builds, it would let us get a better idea of what's going on with the game, but if they've already made their characters it's probably a lot easier to judge from there and maybe make minor tweaks to class balance instead of attempting to use sweeping fixes that won't matter if your players can abide by a gentlemen's agreement.


Its not till you start seeing Quickened spells, and the game-breaking spells at 7th, 8th, and 9th, not till then will the other players begin to complain. And so I wouldn't do anything at all, the group looks great :)

6th level is the tipping point, not 12th. It can be unbalanced from level 1 depending on how many splatbooks that cater to casters are used. Hell, it can be at level 1 in core-only (although that requires Druid). But 6th is the level where casters are displaying their ability to fly under their own power, as well as using some other tricks (like Haste, Slow, and Wild Shape).

[JeminiZero]

If homebrew is in, Pyromancer once posted this guide (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=249624), which you might want to implement.

[DrDeth]

First off, I am not entirely sure where this thread should be--here or Homebrew--so mods of course feel free to move it.

Now. On to business. I'm GMing a Pathfinder campaign, with a wide mix of characters and power levels:
(1) A veteran player with +18 in Knowledge (Breaking the Rules) who is playing a Sorcerer (not quite as nastily game breaking as a Wizard, but still...)
(2) Two brand new players playing a Ranger and a Goblin Ninja (doesn't feel to underpowered, especially with the +25 or so to Stealth).
(3) A veteran playing as a Dwarf Fighter
(4) A high powered Halfling Paladin
and
(5) A veteran player who nonetheless knows fairly little about the rules, let along breaking the game, who plays a Half Orc Barbarian (obviously dumped Cha...has 20 Str , 18 Con and 14 Dex).



1. "Hey Bob, you're our most experienced player, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't play a full spell caster, unless it's a support healer/buffer. In fact, i'd really appreciate you running one of those, I think you could do a fantastic job of it."

2. "Oh, look what's in this hoard! Why by some strange chance it is cool stuff for a ranger and a ninja! " One of which is a wand of CLW!

3. "And something almost as cool for a dwarf fighter!"

4. A Phylactery of Faithfulness will be useful, cool, and keep him in line. I suggest you suggest the Hospitaler archetype here.

5. "I forgot one other house rule, you don't get any points for dumping stats. You can take a stat below 10 if you like, but this gains you back no points".

Other than the last, this requires no rule tweaking, and is entirely in line with DM prerogative. Keep the newbies one level above WBL, the veterans one level below. Do NOT let player #1 get 5 minute adventuring days if you do let him run a sorc. Have some days with 5, even more encounters, some of which are rather low level, esp the early encounters. This kind of player can't resist going Nova. Let him wipe out the rats.

[akahdrin]

Every tiered class can play together. It all falls onto the players in the group to balance it out. If the wizard decides to end the adventure, that's on him. If you have a swift hunter that deals 900 damage a round, that's on him. If people powergame, that's on them.

You will never fix poor classes into being as good as wizards, clerics, druids, etc. But you can have them play together by encouraging the casters to support the other people instead of overshadowing them to the point of having it be a joke to play. I've seen other people fall asleep at the table because it was so boring watching the wizard and cleric have a show on their own while 3 others couldn't even attempt to get in the spot light.

Talk to your players, have them play as a team and try to role play instead of trying to defeat the DM at every possible moment. I'm not saying make weak characters that do nothing or that you shouldn't make your characters competent in combat, but know how to share and get others involved and your games will be 1000x more fun. Let that halfling spell thief who you think is normally bad, do something interesting. Try using your disables as a caster to set up kills for your melees instead of using save or be screwed spells.

When I play a wiz, I tend to cast my grease, web, holds, bigsby hand lines, and use my probably bad wisdom to have some funny comments as I'm quite smart, but not very wise in comparison. I use my druid to set up flanking opportunities with my team via my pet, try to buff the team so they feel better, etc. Just by playing the class, you already know you won, but try to let other people feel awesome so they can tell you later on in a few years, remember when we ran into that place and you made me all huge and I killed a whole room of orcs? And you're like yea dude, that was awesome. Just because you can turn into anything, do anything, go anywhere, and trivialize everything, doesn't mean you should. Play to have fun. If you think making awesome classes weaker or making low tiered classes tier 1s, then the game will just get redundant as you don't want a party of tier 1s...they would never lose.

[Ailowynn]

I tried to post this earlier, but I guess it didn't go through:

I should have made it more clear: the campaign already started, and is going to start back up soon for story arc 2. So honestly, while these have all been good suggestions, it's a bit too late for me to suggest archetypes or play styles. I definitely would have, but the campaign started a year or so ago and I wasn't on these forums then, and hadn't even heard of the tier system (*gasp!*), so I basically assumed that it would be pretty balanced, but I was wrong. I've helped out the newbies by suggesting some feats and by handing out a couple of items, but even so...

It's hard to balance it all out at this point. The only one that I CAN fix up is the Barbarian, because he's just joining the group now.

[Gnaeus]

(1) A veteran player with +18 in Knowledge (Breaking the Rules) who is playing a Sorcerer (not quite as nastily game breaking as a Wizard, but still...)

If the veteran player found the Human favored class bonus where he gets extra spells known, he is as nastily game breaking as a wizard. He isn't technically tier 1, because he can't know all the spells on his list. But he knows enough of them that the difference may not be significant. Pathfinder sorcerer is much stronger than 3.5 sorcerer.

[Khantin]

If the veteran player found the Human favored class bonus where he gets extra spells known, he is as nastily game breaking as a wizard. He isn't technically tier 1, because he can't know all the spells on his list. But he knows enough of them that the difference may not be significant. Pathfinder sorcerer is much stronger than 3.5 sorcerer.

Or if he is a half elf and the spell paragon surge is allowed, then he is flat out tier 1.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I tried to post this earlier, but I guess it didn't go through:

I should have made it more clear: the campaign already started, and is going to start back up soon for story arc 2. So honestly, while these have all been good suggestions, it's a bit too late for me to suggest archetypes or play styles. I definitely would have, but the campaign started a year or so ago and I wasn't on these forums then, and hadn't even heard of the tier system (*gasp!*), so I basically assumed that it would be pretty balanced, but I was wrong. I've helped out the newbies by suggesting some feats and by handing out a couple of items, but even so...

It's hard to balance it all out at this point. The only one that I CAN fix up is the Barbarian, because he's just joining the group now.

So it's an ongoing game, then? Have you had any problems so far? If not, then don't worry about it and keep doing what you're doing. If so, then knowing the problems will give us more to go on in suggesting solutions.

[Ailowynn]

So it's an ongoing game, then? Have you had any problems so far? If not, then don't worry about it and keep doing what you're doing. If so, then knowing the problems will give us more to go on in suggesting solutions.

The Sorcerer kills everything immediatly. The fighter and ranger can't dish out enough damage and the fighter naturally has very few skills outside of combat. The Paladin seems fine. The ninja has an occasional awesome moment, but mostly deals about as much damage as the ranger and fighter. That means three members of the party being constantly overshadowed, not to mention that their only options are full attack, full attack, and sneak attack respectively. Plus, the ranger and ninja especially have a hard time getting through DR.

In short: Sorc wins everything. Paladin dishes out some damage but mostly NEVER DIES. EVER. (Really high AC, saves, and hp). And the rest are built largely around damage dealing and aren't dealing damage.

[ngilop]

i think sobmeody stated it ealry about a gentleman's agreemnt.

just get your sorcer to get battle feild control spells instead of nukes, besdies untill he gets meta magic reducers ( if he does at all this is) he will find that his dmg is going to fall behind a charging fighter.

[Grim Reader]

I would see if I could steer or bribe the Sorcerer in the direction of the War Weaver class.

[Sacrieur]

A utility sorcerer is going to be a bigger headache for you than your blaster sorcerer. But the tradeoff is that the paladin/fighter/etc. are going to feel like they're good for something.

How did he manage to pull of a high hp and AC? Sorcerers can't wear armor without an arcane spell failure chance, and they only have a d6 HD. Con typically isn't a dump stat, but isn't usually above 14. There are spells that do it, but those cost time during battle and use up spells per day.

[Waker]

Take a look at your players feats and equipment to see if they are usual suboptimal choices. If their feats are poorly picked, allow retraining. If it's a matter or gear, give them some better stuff in the upcoming fights.
What kind of damaging spells does the Sorcerer favor? AoE or single target? If they favor one over the other, consider having him face the opposite type threat. If he likes big flashy AoE, consolidate a few high hp targets. If he goes for single target damaging spells, occasionally use horde tactics.
In either case, also consider increasing the amount of encounters in the day. Many times the issue with a spellcaster dominating a battle can be traced to the "one fight a day" habit that many DMs follow. Don't allow him to unload all of his spells in one encounter and then take a nap. Unless he has access to Rope Trick or some teleportation spells, have the enemies harry the party during downtime.

[Ailowynn]

How did he manage to pull of a high hp and AC? Sorcerers can't wear armor without an arcane spell failure chance, and they only have a d6 HD. Con typically isn't a dump stat, but isn't usually above 14. There are spells that do it, but those cost time during battle and use up spells per day.

Sorry, the Paladin has all that not the sorc

[eastmabl]

Have you tried a variation on the encounters you're giving? If I'm correct that your sorceror and paladin are both very good at one thing, by making some encounters not be readily applicable to that one thing, you give them a gentle hint that they need to be more well rounded.

Otherwise, if all you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like nails.

[demigodus]

Does the sorcerer use metamagic to kill everything? Or does he use no-metamagic spells to just blow everything up?

If he just blows everything up, the problem isn't with the sorcerer sadly. Focusing on going "pew pew" without using metamagic is about as weak as you can play a sorcerer without actively looking for ways to depower yourself (like only taking spells from a school that half the creatures are immune to: say, enchantment).

At that point the problem is the rest of the party's damage output. If they focus on damage, you need to find ways to help them up their damage outpost.

As for people who are saying to get the sorc player to play a buffer/healer, the problem is that those roles can be very boring. I play them a lot, and unless you are in the mood for it, it isn't very rewarding. Since you are actively putting in effort so that others can take the glory better. And the rest of the group can't even accuse him of being selfish cause none of them have taken the role either.

The best bet would be to get him to play some other role that frequently comes up, where he gets to shine in exchange for losing combat powers. For example you could convince him to be the party face/negotiator by letting him use enchantment spells. Which, of course runs into problems if you aren't okay with plot critical NPCs with a lot of swag getting dominated, their brains looted for more information then you were ready to give, and then either disposed, or brainwashed to forget it all. So yeah, that could break the campaign in its own way...