Tiers in Practice - Careless GMs at fault?

[Maginomicon]

This might seem like a silly question, but can't "tiers" be made essentially-moot by a careful and knowledgeable GM during actual play?

For example, for all the talk about Wizard, Cleric, Druid, Archivist, Artificer, and Spell-to-Power Erudite being higher-tier than pretty-much everything out there... couldn't a careful GM keep a watchful eye on the "power creep" for classes like that? I'm not saying it'd be easy (by any stretch), but surely it's not impossible.

This occurs to me because I have this house rule about learning opportunities. It's important to note that I'm not suggesting that the following house rule is in any way a comprehensive tier fix. All I'm saying is that it's what inspired me to write this post.
Learning Opportunities for Spells and Powers

Wizards, Archivists, Erudites, and similar classes have an aspect of learning their spells and powers over time through scrolls or something similar. Generally, during a campaign try to give each of these characters access to learn one new appropriate spell or power per spell or power level they have access to in the interim before their next character level.

For example, at level 1, a Wizard has in their spellbook all wizard cantrips and the spells they gained for the level outright (three 1st-level spells plus bonus spells for a high Intelligence score which could be enhanced by the Spellcasting Prodigy feat). Unless that wizard took the Precocious Apprentice feat or has a similar effect, they only have access to 1st-level spells, and so some time before his next character level, try to give him free access to a scroll or spellbook containing a new 1st-level spell (that he then could add to his spell book). If such a spellcaster has the Precocious Apprentice feat, feel free to give him access to a 2nd-level spell as well. However, even if he is able to add the 2nd-level spell to his repertoire (through a spellbook), he can’t actually cast it until he gains the ability to cast 2nd-level spells normally as described in the Precocious Apprentice feat.

If such a character is starting the game at higher than their first character level, instead allow them to add appropriate spells or powers of each level they would normally have have had access to during their career before they joined the campaign.

To take the most generally-complicated possible example of this, a character starting with four levels in erudite should have accumulated new powers in the time between their 1st and 2nd erudite level, between their 2nd and 3rd erudite level, and between their 3rd and 4th erudite level as appropriate to the erudite class as described in the class description (obviously, each appropriate discipline power should be treated as a learning opportunity one power level higher than normal since an erudite’s maximum discipline power level is one level lower than other powers they may learn). If these erudite levels were not consecutive and/or their latest character levels, they still had access to those power levels in the intervening character levels, so each of those character levels should still give them access to new learning opportunities (unless they trigger the erudite class’s other-psionic-class exception).Conceivably, the same kind of practice could be applied to standard clerics and standard druids but in a different format.

To put it another way, assuming the GM has...
the personal fortitude to not let his players run amuck with the myriad potential options available to their class (that is, not saying "no you can't take that option", but instead saying "tell me what you're taking and why"),
the foresight to create memorable encounters that entail liberal application of situations the lower-tier classes are exclusively capable of (designed on a party-specific basis so that the wizard can't just say "welp I can do that too"),
sensible application of encouragements/rewards for teamwork and discouragements/penalties for "going cowboy", and
an understanding of and watchful eye on the differences in dynamic and power-creep-potential for "out-of-combat time" and "down time" compared to "in-combat time"......wouldn't a whole lot of this hubbub ultimately be a wash?

[Eldest]

Would you mind explaining how "let wizards learn new spells in downtime" is a house rule, for starters? I apologize if that seems blunt, but I fail to see how that is in any way not how the rules work already.
Secondly, name something that you believe a lower-tier class is exclusively good at, and I would bet you dollars to donuts that somebody will come along and tell you exactly how to do it. I fail to see how the other suggestions come up at all other than "be aware of your player's builds and shoot down horrible cheese", which you are likely a bad DM if you fail to do that and are not aiming for that level of game in the first place.
I'm sorry if this seems rude or convoluted, it's coming up on 3am local.

[eggynack]

It doesn't make sense to limit divine access to spells, given that they just know their list. What you're arguing isn't that careless DM's are at fault for the tier list causing problems. What you're arguing is that DM's who don't make a series of house rules hurting the power level of high tiered classes are at fault. The tier system isn't a wash at all, really, and it's certainly not made moot by the possibility of house rules. Let me ask you this: When you're making house rules and altering the game to lower the power level of some classes, how do you decide which classes to lower the power level of?

[olentu]

Leaving aside that this houserule is apparently missing some rather important parts for working in a sensible way and that fixing a problem is admission of the problem in the first place, I don't see how these suggestions fix monks being really rather bad, truenamers not working very well, the healer, etc.

[Frosty]

The tier system is there so you can *identify* which classes may become problematic in the first place.

[nyarlathotep]

The stated purpose of the tier system is to inform DMs so that they can better rebalance or tweak their games so that everyone can contribute and have fun. Hence why most postings of it come with a bunch of balancing house rule ideas at the end. Also to be frank you idea really doesn't help the problem it just means that player's aren't allowed to play the class that they thought they were going to play. It also doesn't help that most of the higher level spells simply give far more options no matter how story intensive their requirements are. Saying that to learn how to cast the fly spell the wizard needs to learn from the bird people in the cloudy mountains you've not only given him an option the fighter has no hope of gaining on his own (flight) but also given him more spotlight time with his little side quest. It'd be a lot more productive to start banning problematic spells outright and making new interesting options for lower tier classes (allowing them to use tome of battle).

There are almost zero things that low tier classes are exclusively better at than higher tier classes (select intimidation lockdown build for samurai, and specific trap disarming for rogues, and that's all I can think of). Also unless I am misunderstanding your point you seem to miss the point that out of combat challenges are the place where tiers are most apparent.

[Maginomicon]

Would you mind explaining how "let wizards learn new spells in downtime" is a house rule, for starters? I apologize if that seems blunt, but I fail to see how that is in any way not how the rules work already.
Secondly, name something that you believe a lower-tier class is exclusively good at, and I would bet you dollars to donuts that somebody will come along and tell you exactly how to do it. I fail to see how the other suggestions come up at all other than "be aware of your player's builds and shoot down horrible cheese", which you are likely a bad DM if you fail to do that and are not aiming for that level of game in the first place.
I'm sorry if this seems rude or convoluted, it's coming up on 3am local.First and foremost, understand that I was bringing that house rule up simply because that house rule is what got me thinking about the issue. I'm not necessarily saying it's a universal fix, it's just how I handle learning new spells/powers. What the house rule is really saying is "Try to grant and limit new spell/power learning opportunities to ones at your sole discretion (although players are welcome to make wish lists) and limit what happens in-between level-ups to roughly one new spell/power per spell/power level available per character level". Naturally, you'd also want to keep a close eye on what they learn at actual level-up. So far as spell research, there are, in fact, rules for handling libraries.

So far as "dollars to donuts" is concerned, that's why I said...

(designed on a party-specific basis so that the wizard can't just say "welp I can do that too")If you're carefully monitoring and controlling what options the party tries to make available to itself, things like "the fighter is made worthless by Wings of Flurry" become less of an issue (not a non-issue, just less of an issue).

It seems to me that people often forget how much having another person around can make all the difference in the world. You as GM can do things like design encounters around the idea that you simply need more people to accomplish what needs to be done.

It seems to me that people often forget that casters should not be constantly in "close" range of the enemy unless they have a deathwish. You can do things like design encounters where the battlefield is more than a "100 ft x 100 ft square featureless plain" and contains not just obstacles but hazards, movement-mode-limiters, bottlenecks, etc.

It seems to me that people often forget that casters usually require both hands free in order to cast a spell (one for the material/focus component, one for the somatic component). There's loads of things you can do to hamper that. Furthermore, it seems to me that people forget it takes time out of the action economy to do certain mundane things (such as one action to put something in your hand away on your person, and another action to pull something else out). Mundane stuff in the action economy is utterly rife with potential for slowing down how fast the spellcaster can act. Meanwhile the fighter (or any "lower tier" class really) that isn't so complicated is doing important stuff every round. Yes, with enough preparation and intel, the caster could be ready for anything, but then you're dealing with a situation that the players have specifically set up to give them an advantage. It doesn't have to be that way.

It seems to me that people often forget that a material component pouch, the various foci, spellbook(s), wand(s), scroll(s), and other non-worn objects are ultimately material possessions that have to be acquired and can be stolen. Stealing them doesn't have to be a "**** move" if you set up the hindrance right.

Basically, it occurs to me that many people seem to outright forget and ignore the intricacies that would make higher-tier classes slow and/or cumbersome if they were in the real world.


It doesn't make sense to limit divine access to spells, given that they just know their list. What you're arguing isn't that careless DM's are at fault for the tier list causing problems. What you're arguing is that DM's who don't make a series of house rules hurting the power level of high tiered classes are at fault. The tier system isn't a wash at all, really, and it's certainly not made moot by the possibility of house rules. Let me ask you this: When you're making house rules and altering the game to lower the power level of some classes, how do you decide which classes to lower the power level of?
It can make perfect sense in the right context. It doesn't have to be a "**** move" to limit a prepared-type divine caster's spell options if you set it up right. Maybe your patron deity/cause is upset with your recent actions and says "I am displeased with your recent behaviour. You can have the spell, but it has to fill two spell slots today." or other in-universe complications that are specifically within the context of the in-game narrative. Hell, if you set it up right, you can outright deny certain spells on given days for in-universe "non-****-move" reasons. For your other concerns, see the above paragraphs.

Leaving aside that this houserule is apparently missing some rather important parts for working in a sensible way and that fixing a problem is admission of the problem in the first place, I don't see how these suggestions fix monks being really rather bad, truenamers not working very well, the healer, etc.
Any mundane class (including the monk) doesn't suffer from practical-intricacy-baggage that non-mundane classes have. True, it's not a universal fix, but it sure helps. Truenamers also have less practical-intricacy-baggage than casters.

Furthermore, house rules that make a class actually function (such as would be necessary for the Truenamer) or viable (such as would be necessary for the Shadowcaster) simply aren't in the same scope as house rules that would "bring a class down a notch".

The tier system is there so you can *identify* which classes may become problematic in the first place.
True. However, most of the limited number of tier discussions I've been exposed to seem to forget the above-mentioned facets of those classes.

For example, item crafting in the "XP is a river" concept, while mechanically valid, can be carefully minimized simply by not letting the campaign slow down so much that it becomes a problem. For an extreme example, can you imagine item crafting being done in the Red Hand of Doom campaign? No, you can't, because that module is extremely fast-paced. I'm not saying you have to time-railroad the party, just make their time spent matter to the plot timeline. You can even go so far as to progressively hint that they should be wary of spending too much time on something minor because there may start to be plot-contingent consequences for that time spent.

The stated purpose of the tier system is to inform DMs so that they can better rebalance or tweak their games so that everyone can contribute and have fun. Hence why most postings of it come with a bunch of balancing house rule ideas at the end. Also to be frank you idea really doesn't help the problem it just means that player's aren't allowed to play the class that they thought they were going to play. It also doesn't help that most of the higher level spells simply give far more options no matter how story intensive their requirements are. Saying that to learn how to cast the fly spell the wizard needs to learn from the bird people in the cloudy mountains you've not only given him an option the fighter has no hope of gaining on his own (flight) but also given him more spotlight time with his little side quest. It'd be a lot more productive to start banning problematic spells outright and making new interesting options for lower tier classes (allowing them to use tome of battle).

There are almost zero things that low tier classes are exclusively better at than higher tier classes (select intimidation lockdown build for samurai, and specific trap disarming for rogues, and that's all I can think of). Also unless I am misunderstanding your point you seem to miss the point that out of combat challenges are the place where tiers are most apparent.
So far as the efficacy of the house rule I quoted, see the above statements in this post.

Many "problematic" spells can be altered to become an incantation or incantation-like. Often enough, the answer is to outright ban certain spells, and that's fine too.

So far as flight is concerned, think about how in videogames (like Super Metroid or Symphony of the Night), movement-mode options are often what defined progress potential, not damage or save-or-die effects. With that in mind, personally, I treat movement-mode spells, powers, and character options as highly-suspect.

Regarding "zero exclusives", see what I've said above about being less bogged-down by intricacies and the ability to be in more places at once. Summoning a creature to do that job doesn't necessarily work since the creature might not have the intelligence to pull of what you'd order it to do if it's more complicated than "flank that guy" or the manual dexterity (not dexterity score, I'm talking opposable thumbs) to do anything more complicated than "bash that door down". The differences between lower-tier classes determine how they go about accomplishing what they need to do, but those specifics don't necessarily make them better or worse at it.

To put it another way, the wizard isn't Batman. If Batman had to go through the time-consuming mundane intricacies involved in spellcasting every time he wanted to use something on his utility belt, he'd be shot before he could do even one-tenth of the things you ever see involving that utility belt.

[olentu]

Any mundane class (including the monk) doesn't suffer from practical-intricacy-baggage that non-mundane classes have. True, it's not a universal fix, but it sure helps. Truenamers also have less practical-intricacy-baggage than casters.

Furthermore, house rules that make a class actually function (such as would be necessary for the Truenamer) or viable (such as would be necessary for the Shadowcaster) simply aren't in the same scope as house rules that would "bring a class down a notch".

So this thread would be better titled "Houserules to nerf casters." That is basically what we have here if you are going to just ignore all parts of that tier ranking that doesn't have to do with casters.

Edit: To clarify I have nothing against a discussion of someone's houserules to nerf casters but I have had my fill of that for the moment. If that is all this is going to be I am probably going to leave and it would be nice to know before I get invested.

[eggynack]

I don't think you really answered the main question that a lot of us have. How, exactly, are you deciding which classes to apply these changes to? Why not give the monk poor BAB instead of average? Why not limit fighters to feats at every third level, and make the player come up with role playing reasons for all of them? Why not increase the spells known of sorcerers in order to let them keep up with the CW samurai? The answer, and this seems obvious enough to me, is the tier system. Using the tier system as a guide to alter the game's balance isn't a bug; it's a feature. If you don't know what's imbalanced about the game, how can you ever successfully balance it? I could do a long post talking about the flaws in your method of balance, but that would be utterly pointless. There are some decent ways to find balance in the game. The problem is, they largely rely on the tier system to work. You've essentially fallen into the Oberoni fallacy. Just because the rules can be changed, that doesn't mean that the problem doesn't exist.

Edit: Also, I said I wouldn't do this, but


To put it another way, the wizard isn't Batman. If Batman had to go through the time-consuming mundane intricacies involved in spellcasting every time he wanted to use something on his utility belt, he'd be shot before he could do even one-tenth of the things you ever see involving that utility belt.
You're totally right. If the game rules were completely different, then the tier system wouldn't be correct. Truly, we were all sheep before the false idol that is the tier system.

[Augmental]

Maybe your patron deity/cause is upset with your recent actions and says "I am displeased with your recent behaviour. You can have the spell, but it has to fill two spell slots today." or other in-universe complications that are specifically within the context of the in-game narrative.

The problem there is the cleric has to take actions that would displease his or her god first.

[Terazul]

First and foremost, understand that I was bringing that house rule up simply because that house rule is what got me thinking about the issue. I'm not necessarily saying it's a universal fix, it's just how I handle learning new spells/powers. What the house rule is really saying is "Try to grant and limit new spell/power learning opportunities to ones at your sole discretion (although players are welcome to make wish lists) and limit what happens in-between level-ups to roughly one new spell/power per spell/power level available per character level". Naturally, you'd also want to keep a close eye on what they learn at actual level-up. So far as spell research, there are, in fact, rules for handling libraries.
Does nothing about the powers/spells/etc they get naturally, which is all they need for the tiers to be distinct in play.



So far as "dollars to donuts" is concerned, that's why I said...
If you're carefully monitoring and controlling what options the party tries to make available to itself, things like "the fighter is made worthless by Wings of Flurry" become less of an issue (not a non-issue, just less of an issue).

It seems to me that people often forget how much having another person around can make all the difference in the world. You as GM can do things like design encounters around the idea that you simply need more people to accomplish what needs to be done.

It seems to me that people often forget that casters should not be constantly in "close" range of the enemy unless they have a deathwish. You can do things like design encounters where the battlefield is more than a "100 ft x 100 ft square featureless plain" and contains not just obstacles but hazards, movement-mode-limiters, bottlenecks, etc.
Hampers non-casters far more than casters, given casters tend to have, like, ranges and things on spells. Also more movement modes in general. Options.


It seems to me that people often forget that casters usually require both hands free in order to cast a spell (one for the material/focus component, one for the somatic component). There's loads of things you can do to hamper that. Furthermore, it seems to me that people forget it takes time out of the action economy to do certain mundane things (such as one action to put something in your hand away on your person, and another action to pull something else out). Mundane stuff in the action economy is utterly rife with potential for slowing down how fast the spellcaster can act. Meanwhile the fighter (or any "lower tier" class really) that isn't so complicated is doing important stuff every round. Yes, with enough preparation and intel, the caster could be ready for anything, but then you're dealing with a situation that the players have specifically set up to give them an advantage. It doesn't have to be that way.
Not all spells have foci. Even so, most casters don't have reasons to things in their hands anyway.



It seems to me that people often forget that a material component pouch, the various foci, spellbook(s), wand(s), scroll(s), and other non-worn objects are ultimately material possessions that have to be acquired and can be stolen. Stealing them doesn't have to be a "**** move" if you set up the hindrance right.
Uuuugh. Spellbooks are needed at like, the beginning of the day to prep spells. Harming a spellbook does nothing to inhibit a caster once you get into the fray with them. Also, some spellcasters don't have spellbooks. Even some wizards don't.



Basically, it occurs to me that many people seem to outright forget and ignore the intricacies that would make higher-tier classes slow and/or cumbersome if they were in the real world.
Also not in the real word, there are in fact specific ways of overcoming said intricacies. Sleep? There's a bedroll for that.


Many "problematic" spells can be altered to become an incantation or incantation-like. Often enough, the answer is to outright ban certain spells, and that's fine too.
Yes, if you get rid of the things that demonstrate the difference in power between classes, the power disparity becomes slightly less apparent. Except not really. There's a few spells out there that are flat-out ridiculous, but most of them are just pretty iconic "I'm a wizard" things. Flight, teleportation, summoning. The banlist will get pretty large pretty quick if you try to get rid of every spell that does something a mundane character cannot.

Hint: There's alot.



Regarding "zero exclusives", see what I've said above about being less bogged-down by intricacies and the ability to be in more places at once. Summoning a creature to do that job doesn't necessarily work since the creature might not have the intelligence to pull of what you'd order it to do if it's more complicated than "flank that guy" or the manual dexterity (not dexterity score, I'm talking opposable thumbs) to do anything more complicated than "bash that door down". The differences between lower-tier classes determine how they go about accomplishing what they need to do, but those specifics don't necessarily make them better or worse at it.
If the task is "walk down that hallway and see what explodes" most creatures are capable of it. Heck, even on Summon Monster 1 you've got Celestial/Fiendish creatures which are minimum Int 3. They may not be able to do your taxes, but they have human level sentience/intelligence.


To put it another way, the wizard isn't Batman. If Batman had to go through the time-consuming mundane intricacies involved in spellcasting every time he wanted to use something on his utility belt, he'd be shot before he could do even one-tenth of the things you ever see involving that utility belt.
Yeah, if you add alot of bells and whistles and houserule things to make things more difficult for a wizard, they're more difficult. It still does absolutely nothing to change the fact that a wizard can create a portal to another dimension and a fighter can't. A cleric can summon a grand feast of food out of nowhere, a rogue can't. He still has more options, he still has more potential for what he can do. Which is all the tier list is pointing out anyway.

[Maginomicon]

So this thread would be better titled "Houserules to nerf casters." That is basically what we have here if you are going to just ignore all parts of that tier ranking that doesn't have to do with casters.

No, there's a million of those. This topic is about what a GM can do within the bounds of...
taking a moment to think about the mundane intricacies of these things,
being wary of letting the party have too much down time,
taking time to think about how the world would respond to the party's down time,
how enemies you run would react to various classes in-combat, and
other pure-reality-based concerns

...all of which are not a question of class-specific house rules, but a question of dynamic encounter and world behavior.

Besides, topic titles are hardly something worth nitpicking about.


I don't think you really answered the main question that a lot of us have. How, exactly, are you deciding which classes to apply these changes to? Why not give the monk poor BAB instead of average? Why not limit fighters to feats at every third level, and make the player come up with role playing reasons for all of them? Why not increase the spells known of sorcerers in order to let them keep up with the CW samurai? The answer, and this seems obvious enough to me, is the tier system. Using the tier system as a guide to alter the game's balance isn't a bug; it's a feature. If you don't know what's imbalanced about the game, how can you ever successfully balance it? I could do a long post talking about the flaws in your method of balance, but that would be utterly pointless. There are some decent ways to find balance in the game. The problem is, they largely rely on the tier system to work. You've essentially fallen into the Oberoni fallacy. Just because the rules can be changed, that doesn't mean that the problem doesn't exist.
You grossly misunderstand my point. I'm not necessarily saying that tiers are useless, just that careful application of sense to how the world and your encounters could interact and respond to to the various classes can immensely help mitigate the fun-killing differences between the tiers.

The point of this topic should be to bring up ways that a GM can use creative encounter generation, creative world building, and creative campaign structuring to help ensure that nobody unintentionally dwarfs anyone else's capabilities.

[olentu]

No, there's a million of those. This topic is about what a GM can do within the bounds of...
taking a moment to think about the mundane intricacies of these things,
being wary of letting the party have too much down time,
taking time to think about how the world would respond to the party's down time,
how enemies you run would react to various classes in-combat, and
other pure-reality-based concerns

...all of which are not a question of class-specific house rules, but a question of dynamic encounter and world behavior.

Besides, topic titles are hardly something worth nitpicking about.

The title example was merely my way of asking what you mean to discuss. I apologize if the roundabout manner caused any offense. And with your answer I believe I will depart. Farewell.

[Sith_Happens]

In that case the thread title and first paragraph or two are rather misleading.

EDIT: Ninja'd.

[eggynack]

I think that the first thing to understand is that this "Paying attention to the mundane intricacies of these things" thing is very much a house rule. Casting spells takes a standard action in total, and that includes everything. Moreover, there's really not much out of your list of stuff that could really stop a druid. Really, the fact of the matter is that short of only having characters within certain tier brackets in each game, there's not really an easy balance fix. Out of all of the character types in the game, casters are the ones that are the most adaptable. They take to the kind of complexity you're suggesting like a fish to water. You know where non-casters really thrive? 100 foot by 100 foot featureless plains that have enemies that lack a variety of options.

There are things you can do to push the classes closer together, but there's really nothing short of broad sweeping house rules that can get a fighter and a druid anywhere close to parity. There was another thread like this before, and that was basically the conclusion we came to. Wizards really are just that powerful. When it comes right down to it, if I'm given a choice between micromanaging every aspect of a game in order to get the low tier classes anywhere near the high tier classes, and just having a game that uses either high tier classes or low tier classes, I'm going to pick the game that only uses parts of the tier list every time. It's not lazy. It's simultaneously an easier solution, and a better solution. I don't know why you'd put more work into something when an option requiring less work has better results.

Edit: Also, sentences like, "...wouldn't a whole lot of this hubbub ultimately be a wash?" really indicate that you don't think the tier system is worthwhile. If you didn't mean that, that's fine, but your words were pretty unclear.

[Rhynn]

The tier system is there so you can *identify* which classes may become problematic in the first place.

Seriously this. They explicitly have nothing to do with DMs and specific campaigns, the tiers are entirely and only assessments of the classes themselves, compared to each other, out of context.

Of course you can "manage" them. I never gave or give a crap about tiers or bothered limiting or managing characters based on class. Class imbalance has only negatively affected one campaign I've run in 3.X since it came out and we started playing it in 2000, and that was the very first one (which had a 3.0 druid running roughshod all over it, up to past 20th-level; unlimited harm and shapechange destroyed everything, but the player knew how to use every single druid spell right; the other players had a paladin, a fighter, and a monk, of all things).

The tier system makes no judgments, either. It's just a mechanical evaluation.

[Maginomicon]

Does nothing about the powers/spells/etc they get naturally, which is all they need for the tiers to be distinct in play.Who said they automatically get free reign of what they pick up each level? A cautious GM should be wary of those as well at the time of level-up and is well within his rights to veto them.

Hampers non-casters far more than casters, given casters tend to have, like, ranges and things on spells. Also more movement modes in general. Options.Ah, then allow me to add "line-of-sight and line-of-effect"-blockers to that list... like a wall... or a roof... or some of the things I mentioned before like a bottleneck. To a caster, much like to a ranged mundane class, line-of-sight/effect means everything. There's a million in-universe things you can do to hamper line-of-sight and line-of-effect. Yes, the spellcaster could potentially bypass those things, but that assumes you give the players enough intel for them to be ready for that kind of thing, and -- again -- how much intel you give them is entirely within your discretion.

Not all spells have foci. Even so, most casters don't have reasons to things in their hands anyway.True, but you're thinking that everyone always has their default loadout (or lack thereof) equipped at all times. There's a million reasons a spellcaster might have one or both of his hands full when a battle happens to spring up. Interestingly, psionic characters automatically get around this problem.

Uuuugh. Spellbooks are needed at like, the beginning of the day to prep spells. Harming a spellbook does nothing to inhibit a caster once you get into the fray with them. Also, some spellcasters don't have spellbooks. Even some wizards don't.
Spellbooks were just one item on that list of examples.

Also not in the real word, there are in fact specific ways of overcoming said intricacies. Sleep? There's a bedroll for that.Which is a material item... and thus is essentially on a wish list... and thus entirely up to your discretion as GM on whether it's physically too rare to find in your campaign world where the party currently is... see the problem there?

Yes, if you get rid of the things that demonstrate the difference in power between classes, the power disparity becomes slightly less apparent. Except not really. There's a few spells out there that are flat-out ridiculous, but most of them are just pretty iconic "I'm a wizard" things. Flight, teleportation, summoning. The banlist will get pretty large pretty quick if you try to get rid of every spell that does something a mundane character cannot.

If the task is "walk down that hallway and see what explodes" most creatures are capable of it. Heck, even on Summon Monster 1 you've got Celestial/Fiendish creatures which are minimum Int 3. They may not be able to do your taxes, but they have human level sentience/intelligence.See the section in my previous post regarding summoned creatures. Furthermore, you as GM can always design encounters that aren't as simplistic as "see what explodes".

Yeah, if you add alot of bells and whistles and houserule things to make things more difficult for a wizard, they're more difficult. It still does absolutely nothing to change the fact that a wizard can create a portal to another dimension and a fighter can't. A cleric can summon a grand feast of food out of nowhere, a rogue can't. He still has more options, he still has more potential for what he can do. Which is all the tier list is pointing out anyway.All of these examples rely on down time. Even assuming you don't make something powerful an incantation, many of the things the higher tiers can do is dependent on player wish lists, and you don't have to allow those wishes to come true any more than you have to allow a wish spell to do what the character intended.

[ahenobarbi]

This might seem like a silly question, but can't "tiers" be made essentially-moot by a careful and knowledgeable GM during actual play?

Yes you can balance them. The problem arises if for example straight out of PhB monk player joins...

[eggynack]

Just tossing this out there again, but seriously druids. They're basically impossible to stop with stuff like what you've mentioned. They don't even draw their spells from a god, so there's no reason to fiat their casting away. They're basically the go-to class when you're in a campaign where the DM has decided to make up a whole bunch of arbitrary restrictions on casting.

[Terazul]

Who said they automatically get free reign of what they pick up each level? A cautious GM should be wary of those as well at the time of level-up and is well within his rights to veto them.

"If I don't let them choose what class features they get, then the class features aren't a problem."


Ah, then allow me to add "line-of-sight and line-of-effect"-blockers to that list... like a wall... or a roof... or some of the things I mentioned before like a bottleneck. To a caster, much like to a ranged mundane class, line-of-sight/effect means everything. There's a million in-universe things you can do to hamper line-of-sight and line-of-effect. Yes, the spellcaster could potentially bypass those things, but that assumes you give the players enough intel for them to be ready for that kind of thing, and -- again -- how much intel you give them is entirely within your discretion.
Or they could fly. Flying's a thing. Also, if your casters don't have line of sight or effect, neither do any of the mundane characters. Guess everyone suffers.


True, but you're thinking that everyone always has their default loadout (or lack thereof) equipped at all times. There's a million reasons a spellcaster might have one or both of his hands full when a battle happens to spring up. Interestingly, psionic characters automatically get around this problem.
Then they can drop their gin and tonic and deal with the problem, unless things suddenly become glued to people's hands, now.



Spellbooks were just one item on that list of examples.
Which is a material item... and thus is essentially on a wish list...
No, It's pretty clearly stated on the class feature list. And affects one class on the tier list.


...and thus entirely up to your discretion as GM on whether it's physically too rare to find in your campaign world where the party currently is... see the problem there?
Oh look, more house rules! Still only affecting one class.



See the section in my previous post regarding summoned creatures. Furthermore, you as GM can always design encounters that aren't as simplistic as "see what explodes".
Then they won't summon a creature for it? Of course if you change the challenge, then the appropriate tool changes. And your previous post still has yet to deal with my previous post, in which I point out most things you summon are in fact, intelligent enough to follow orders. Heck, you get into Planar Allys, they'll be more intelligent than you.



All of these examples rely on down time.
No, they don't.


Even assuming you don't make something powerful an incantation, many of the things the higher tiers can do is dependent on player wish lists, and you don't have to allow those wishes to come true any more than you have to allow a wish spell to do what the character intended.
Yeah, I think we're done here.

[Maginomicon]

I think that the first thing to understand is that this "Paying attention to the mundane intricacies of these things" thing is very much a house rule.No. Encounter generation and sensible treatment of how stuff would go down if the encounter were happen in reality is not on the level of a house rule. It's on the level of requiring the GM to be realistic and creative in their world and encounter design.

Moreover, there's really not much out of your list of stuff that could really stop a druid.If you're referring to the wild shape and animal companion features, my opposable thumbs would like to have a word with you. Good luck opening doors when you have paws. (no, just because your cat seems to be able to open doors doesn't mean you can as a wolf)

Really, the fact of the matter is that short of only having characters within certain tier brackets in each game, there's not really an easy balance fix. Out of all of the character types in the game, casters are the ones that are the most adaptable. They take to the kind of complexity you're suggesting like a fish to water. You know where non-casters really thrive? 100 foot by 100 foot featureless plains that have enemies that lack a variety of options.Not so. They thrive "best" when they can take advantage of a bottleneck, just like any action hero or real world soldier. Coincidentally, this kind of situation is a caster's worst nightmare since they usually don't have line-of-sight or line-of-effect in those situations.

[Amphetryon]

Adding houserules can change the balance point of the Tiers. This is not news. "Doesn't use your houserules" =/= "careless GM."

[eggynack]

opposable thumbs would like to have a word with you. Good luck opening doors when you have paws. (no, just because your cat seems to be able to open doors doesn't mean you can as a wolf)
Actually, I was just referring to druids in the general sense. They automatically get every spell on their list just by existing, so the DM can't limit their access to spells outside of broad book restrictions (basically, as long as the core rule books exist, the druid is fine). Most of their spells don't have any material components, so any weird house rule you may have involving that disappears. In a similar vein, there's no convenient divine focus or material component pouch or spell book to target that'll take away the druid's casting. He's completely capable of casting all of his spells after being naked and itemless in the woods for a week, unlike the wizard. He doesn't derive his spells from a god, so weird restrictions based upon the theoretical capriciousness of gods don't apply. Wild shape (I'm pretty sure that your allies can open doors for you. Also, when you get big enough forms, doors become less and less of a restriction) means that limits on items are generally not that problematic for a druid. Once again, they're pretty comfortable just hanging out naked. Thus, campaigns without a friendly magic mart are just fine. If there's a situation that favors melee over magic for some reason that I can't even begin to comprehend, then they have a faithful animal companion, and all of their spell slots can be converted into beat sticks. I think that's about all I've got just off the top of my head, but if you came up with more things that could be used to hurt wizards then it'd fill out the list some more.

Also, when I mentioned the "mundane intricacies" thing, I was specifically and only referring to the idea that a spell would take more than a standard action to cast. If the wizard is dual wielding daggers, sure, but that's not really a common situation.

Edit: Missed one. Games with low point buy (though I don't know how that would balance the game at all) are fine for druids because they only need to put points into two stats. This is compared to three for wizards, and about as many as you can get for clerics.

Double edit: Just thought up another one. One somewhat misguided thing that DM's try to do to balance out casting and non-casting is the use of anti-magic fields. I don't want to get into why they're misguided, cause there was a whole thread about that. It's irrelevant to the point anyway. So, if the DM lays down an anti-magic field, then the druid is apparently pretty screwed (Although he's really not, even in terms of casting). However, the druid has an animal companion. While a wizard would be theoretically stymied by an AMF, the druid has an animal companion who is often on par with the fighter, even though he rarely uses magic items.Thus, this method of hurting casters is even more ineffectual against a druid.

[Maginomicon]

"If I don't let them choose what class features they get, then the class features aren't a problem."Spells are not a class feature issue, they're a spell issue. If a GM wants to veto learning a spell, that's not a class feature he's vetoing, but a spell. There's a difference.

Or they could fly. Flying's a thing. Also, if your casters don't have line of sight or effect, neither do any of the mundane characters. Guess everyone suffers.See what I said before about movement-modes. Plus, the kind of line-of-sight and line-of-effect that matters to casters doesn't matter to a melee mundane class since they get up in your face.

Then they can drop their gin and tonic and deal with the problem, unless things suddenly become glued to people's hands, now.Since you bring it up, arguably, dropping what you have in-hand is a free action on your initiative (Rules Compendium page 7), not before. Even so, odds are you'll want to take a turn to get to a safe distance before you start casting spells.

Besides, if you're talking about gin and tonic, odds are he's sitting or lying down, so standing up isn't a free action anyway.

No, It's pretty clearly stated on the class feature list. And affects one class on the tier list.Either you misunderstood, or you're deliberately twisting my words there. Regarding wish lists, I was referring to the bedroll (Heward's Fortifying Bedroll, if I'm not mistaken?).


Oh look, more house rules! Still only affecting one class.Unless you're still thinking I was referring to the spellbook, I was referring to the idea of...
<Player> I wanna buy a Heward's Fortifying Bedroll.
<GM> Okay, lessee here... okay that's a bit expensive... the shopkeepers here in town don't seem to have one in stock. They might be able to order out for though. It'll take at least a week to get here.
<Player> Nevermind.


Then they won't summon a creature for it? Of course if you change the challenge, then the appropriate tool changes. And your previous post still has yet to deal with my previous post, in which I point out most things you summon are in fact, intelligent enough to follow orders. Heck, you get into Planar Allys, they'll be more intelligent than you.
Intelligence isn't everything, there's also the matter of opposable thumbs.

Planar Ally probably should be an incantation to be honest (if not outright banned), which, I might add, is not a class feature issue (and thus a class balance issue), it's a spell issue.

No, they don't.
I was referring to your examples of "portal to another dimension" and "summon a grand feast of food out of nowhere". Those rely on down time. I guess I would have been better to have said "both of those".


Yeah, I think we're done here.

...

Okay, now I'm sure you're just being spiteful. So you know, I'm not going to reply to any more of your replies to this thread.

[Kaeso]

On top of the issues that were already stated, your "solution" does nothing to rob the clerics or druids of their advantage. They have access to all the spells on their list and can cherrypick whatever they think they'll need. Hell, there's even a spell that allows the clerics to switch out their domains for a week. Combine this with the divine mage ACF which allows you to make a custom domain out of a few wizard spells and you're done.

This does not eliminate the tier problem, it merely reduces half of tier one to high tier 2.

[Maginomicon]

Adding houserules can change the balance point of the Tiers. This is not news.
This is my entire point! Thank you! That said, many things relevant here aren't really "house rules", but just the way the GM designs encounters, campaigns, and worlds. This thread was supposed to be about those aspects, but so far no one seems to have even touched that concept.

[Maginomicon]

On top of the issues that were already stated, your "solution" does nothing to rob the clerics or druids of their advantage. They have access to all the spells on their list and can cherrypick whatever they think they'll need. Hell, there's even a spell that allows the clerics to switch out their domains for a week. Combine this with the divine mage ACF which allows you to make a custom domain out of a few wizard spells and you're done.

This does not eliminate the tier problem, it merely reduces half of tier one to high tier 2.The house rule I quoted in the OP was just what got me thinking about the subject. It was not intended to be a tier fix. It was just what inspired writing this thread.

Screw it, I'm going to make a minor edit to the OP to make this clear.

[Amphetryon]

This is my entire point! Thank you! That said, many things relevant here aren't really "house rules", but just the way the GM designs encounters, campaigns, and worlds. This thread was supposed to be about those aspects, but so far no one seems to have even touched that concept.

Because you presented it as a) news and b) a series of houserules (including limiting a Wizard's access to his/her own SPELLBOOK!) that only hurt one Class, not the entirety of "Tiers in practice."

People who pick up a book titled "Dracula" can get attitudinal when they start reading and find that it's "Twilight" instead.

[Augmental]

Unless you're still thinking I was referring to the spellbook, I was referring to the idea of...
<Player> I wanna buy a Heward's Fortifying Bedroll.
<GM> Okay, lessee here... okay that's a bit expensive... the shopkeepers here in town don't seem to have one in stock. They might be able to order out for though. It'll take at least a week to get here.
<Player> Nevermind.

You could say the same thing about magic swords, armor, and other magic items which the fighters are more reliant on then tier one casters.

[eggynack]

You could say the same thing about magic swords, armor, and other magic items which the fighters are more reliant on then tier one casters.
Basically this. A game with limited access to magic items is highly imbalanced in favor of druids. In core, they lose next to nothing. Out of core, they don't care because they have access to tons of insane out of core druid stuff.

[Muggins]

Okay, now I'm sure you're just being spiteful. So you know, I'm not going to reply to any more of your replies to this thread.
If you're going to ignore him, then I'll go out on a limb and defend his statement.

I believe Terazul's comment was towards the implication that you deliberately twist Wishes. Barring Rule 0*, the DM has no right to twist their players' Wishes unless those Wishes exceed the capabilities of the spell. Go all monkey's paw on them if they Wish for Divine Rank 20, but perverting their Wish to raise another character from the dead is no way to run a game.

*Yes, Rule 0. The DM has the right to institute house rules and vetos, and that's perfectly fine. It doesn't mean their players have to like them, especially if they had no chance to give feedback on those houserules.

This is my entire point! Thank you! That said, many things relevant here aren't really "house rules", but just the way the GM designs encounters, campaigns, and worlds. This thread was supposed to be about those aspects, but so far no one seems to have even touched that concept.
You're correct in believing that a DM can make design choices, house rules and veto statements to balance their game and provide a fun experience for their players.

Most of the responses here have given feedback, like your players might give if they decide that everything they try to do is going to be blocked. It's like railroading, except you're also applying it to their items, spells, feats and other character details. There's nothing wrong with that as long as you do it right.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

You are going at this backwards.

You can't brute-force a Tier 1 class to be unable to duplicate anything any other class can do, often at the same time without restricting material and/or sources. There's just too many ways to get what you want.

Hell, by level 14, as a Warlock, I could BE a magic-mart, and make 99% of all magic items, with the margin that I am unable to make being entirely irrelevant. That would, by the way, include making a scroll for any spell in the game.

There are other ways to access magic-marts, some of them come online much sooner. Not roleplay, but mechanical 'you have access to a magic mart' abilities that cannot be changed without either banning the source material or making DM Fiat houserules that directly contradict the rules that D&D normally goes by.

To address your bullet points in order:


the personal fortitude to not let his players run amuck with the myriad potential options available to their class (that is, not saying "no you can't take that option", but instead saying "tell me what you're taking and why"), This should be par for course for any GM. Most of the 'game breaking' builds are Theoretical Optimization which is, by definition, not intended to be used in a real game.

Any GM who doesn't ask his players these questions about their characters is just begging to have problems, and not anything related to a possibly abusive character either.


the foresight to create memorable encounters that entail liberal application of situations the lower-tier classes are exclusively capable of (designed on a party-specific basis so that the wizard can't just say "welp I can do that too"),Barring eliminating a good chunk of their spell list, that is flat out impossible. Part of the whole reason Tier 1 classes ARE Tier 1 is BECAUSE lower tier classes don't HAVE anything they are exclusively capable of doing. They might choose to not bother with those spells, since they can be covered elsewhere, and a smart caster would do so, however unless you GM Fiat 'NO, you cannot take those spells', any caster can make any non-caster obsolete in any metric you care to deliver. Even metrics such as 'in an AMF' can be obviated (Cheater of Mystara, Twice Betrayer of Shar, Mailman...), it just takes more optimization to do.


sensible application of encouragements/rewards for teamwork and discouragements/penalties for "going cowboy", andHard to do without either railroading or by being a jerk. And really, unless the discouragements/penalties are managed in an out-of-game context, they're obsolete anyways. By level 9, a decently built wizard can at least evade if not outright eliminate any threat. Ever. Yes, even that one. I've done it before. Granted, some of the tricks I use are a bit cheesy (using WBL to obtain a Scroll of Genesis, failing that getting a Wish through one of a dozen means available to a 9th level Wizard to wish for one, which is WELL within the 25k GP limitations... Lesser Planar Binding to get a couple of minions to Planar Shift to the new Demiplane, and a Nightmare for Astral Projection...), but it CAN be done.


an understanding of and watchful eye on the differences in dynamic and power-creep-potential for "out-of-combat time" and "down time" compared to "in-combat time"...Here's the problem with that... you have no way of enforcing it. Rope Trick comes online by level 3, or by level 1 with early access cheese. You can't force a reduction in out of combat time without removing that and MMM from the equation. Even then, once the party can beg, borrow, steal, craft, or otherwise obtain a Scroll of Genesis and Planar Shift (or, to a lesser extent, obtaining a fortified stronghold and having Teleport) you cannot effectively put a time limit on them.

What you do is establish a Gentleman's Agreement. 'None of these, none of these, definitely none of these, and most certainly not that. So let's keep it clean and have some fun.'

Also, telling a player who is being a party-pooper that he either needs to tone it down or he's going to need to find a different group to play with.

[PersonMan]

See what I said before about movement-modes. Plus, the kind of line-of-sight and line-of-effect that matters to casters doesn't matter to a melee mundane class since they get up in your face.

Um, no, they really do matter.

No Line of Sight? How are you going to 'get up in the face' of something you can't even see? You possibly don't even know it's there.

No Line of Effect? Good luck using ranged attacks (which some mundane characters are built around using). Also, quite a few LoE-blockers are things like Wall of Force, which also block Line of Mundane Characters' Options i.e. "run up and hit it".

[Maginomicon]

Um, no, they really do matter.

No Line of Sight? How are you going to 'get up in the face' of something you can't even see? You possibly don't even know it's there.

No Line of Effect? Good luck using ranged attacks (which some mundane characters are built around using). Also, quite a few LoE-blockers are things like Wall of Force, which also block Line of Mundane Characters' Options i.e. "run up and hit it".
That's why I specified "melee". In melee, even if you can't see them, they provoke an AoO by moving through your space (unless you do something that removes the AoO, such as a tumbling). Thus as a melee mundane you're great as a mobile wall of "try to get past me" at a choke point.

This is a nitpick really, since what I was ultimately referring to is that while a summoned dextrous intelligent creature or a planar ally or whatever the caster can pull out can technically do everything the fighter can, the fighter can get it done sooner by just going over there and doing it. It isn't really a question of whether the caster can do everything the fighter can (they can... given enough prep time); it's more a question of whether they can do it right this very second when we need it as we've got a very able-bodied fighter right now that can do the job.

[Augmental]

That's why I specified "melee". In melee, even if you can't see them, they provoke an AoO by moving through your space (unless you do something that removes the AoO, such as a tumbling). Thus as a melee mundane you're great as a mobile wall of "try to get past me" at a choke point.

Unless they can fly or teleport past you.


This is a nitpick really, since what I was ultimately referring to is that while a summoned dextrous intelligent creature or a planar ally or whatever the caster can pull out can technically do everything the fighter can, the fighter can get it done sooner by just going over there and doing it. It isn't really a question of whether the caster can do everything the fighter can (they can... given enough prep time); it's more a question of whether they can do it right this very second when we need it as we've got a very able-bodied fighter right now that can do the job.

Or be a druid and be two fighters.

[The Boz]

So basically, the OP said "if you don't use these fifty seven strange houserules that I made up on the spot, you are bad"?
Yeah, no.

[PersonMan]

That's why I specified "melee". In melee, even if you can't see them, they provoke an AoO by moving through your space (unless you do something that removes the AoO, such as a tumbling). Thus as a melee mundane you're great as a mobile wall of "try to get past me" at a choke point.

Would you, if a player argued that he should be alerted when enemies he isn't aware of if they provoked an attack of opportunity so that he can take it, say "no, that makes no sense in-world"? You sound like the type to see that as metagaming and not allow it.


This is a nitpick really, since what I was ultimately referring to [...] .

No, it's not. You didn't say "casters have LoS/LoE issues with summoning", you said that mundanes don't really care about LoS/LoE in the same sense. They do, though - they are utterly reliant on it, at least in LoE's case.

[Maginomicon]

Unless they can fly or teleport past you.If they can fly or teleport, a wall of force (which is what my quote was in response to) isn't going to help either.


Or be a druid and be two fighters.Which again requires prep time, which without that prep time (for turning into wild shape, for buffs on yourself and/or your animal companion, etc.) it's still faster to simply ask the fighter to walk over there and be a fighter.

If there's one thing pure mundanes are good at exclusively, it's that they have zero lag before they can begin to accomplish goals that inherently-require being there in-person, and once "there" they can bring all of their relevant abilities to bear with no resource costs other than time. The caster (even the druid) has some lag time to do this. Summoning a creature directly at the location you need will technically work, but then you've spent spell slots (and thus, valuable resources) accomplishing something that could happened for essentially free (for you) if you had just asked the fighter to walk over there and do it.

[Rhynn]

Which again requires prep time, which without that prep time (for turning into wild shape, for buffs on yourself and/or your animal companion, etc.) it's still faster to simply ask the fighter to walk over there and be a fighter.

At 1st level, a riding dog needs no prep time to be a fighter.

At most other levels, various bears, tigers, etc. need no prep time to do the fighter's job (tanking/blocking).

Wild shape lasts 1 hour/druid level. Why does that require prep time?

[Maginomicon]

Would you, if a player argued that he should be alerted when enemies he isn't aware of if they provoked an attack of opportunity so that he can take it, say "no, that makes no sense in-world"? You sound like the type to see that as metagaming and not allow it. If there's no reasonable way they could hide the act from you (such as when attempting to tumble through your square, or casting a spell with a verbal component while in a square you would threaten), then it's most certainly not out of character knowledge because there's no way you could have missed their attempt. You may not be able to see them, but they should still provoke an AoO if you know for certain where they are (if tumbling, they're attempting to move into your square) so at worst they have total concealment from you. Then again, I think there may have been something in RAW about not being able to make an AoO against a creature you can't see (not sure).


you said that mundanes don't really care about LoS/LoE in the same sense.Sorry, I meant exclusively that if they're right next to you and know you're there, there's no distance between you and them in which line-of-effect to matter. As for line-of-sight, see the above.

[Maginomicon]

At 1st level, a riding dog needs no prep time to be a fighter.

Wild shape lasts 1 hour/druid level. Why does that require prep time?The answer to both of your concerns is "Pre-battle buffs."

[Amphetryon]

The answer to both of your concerns is "Pre-battle buffs."

How is "having an Animal Companion" a "pre-battle buff?"

How is Wild Shape - a Standard Action - a "pre-battle buff?"

From the SRD: "Changing form (to animal or back) is a standard action and doesn’t provoke an attack of opportunity."

[PersonMan]

The answer to both of your concerns is "Pre-battle buffs."

Somehow, a 'lag-time' of 1 action per day doesn't seem especially big.

Especially if Mr. Full Plate needs 4 minutes to get into his armor.

So, who has more lag time? The DMM-Persist cleric who needs 8 rounds to buff himself per day, or the one who needs 40 (actually, 80 if he really has full plate, counting the other character's time use) to don his armor?

[Augmental]

If they can fly or teleport, a wall of force (which is what my quote was in response to) isn't going to help either.

But wizards can get past a wall of force.

[Rhynn]

The answer to both of your concerns is "Pre-battle buffs."

Can you explain? I don't understand what you're saying.

There's no "pre-battle buffs" involved in having a riding dog animal companion at 1st level. You just have a fighter as a class feature.

And wild shape isn't exactly a "pre-battle buff"; after getting up in the morning of an adventuring day and preparing your spells, you wildshape. Then you stay in wildshape, except when you need to change shape.

And "pre-battle buffs" is something that the fighters, etc., need. Greater magic weapon (so they don't spend all their wealth on the plusses of their weapon), haste, etc., etc. Self-buffing and animal-companion buffing aren't the only kind of buffing.

It's a wash. The druid has an animal companion. The fighter and the animal companion could both benefit from buffs.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Rule -1:
"The player has the right to know all of the GM's houserules in advance so that if he doesn't find them fun or fair, he can choose not to play in the GM's campaign. The GM better not make changes 'as they come up' because then he's changing whether the player likes the game or not - and he has no right to do that after the player joins and devotes his time to a game."


So, if I start playing a wizard because I think a flying guy that throws fireballs is cool or a guy that stops time and chains a half-dozen spells to slay the Balor instantly is awesome, the GM better not tell me I cannot choose Fly or Time Stop after I had several sessions in his game and it's time to pick new spells for leveling-up. If the GM wanted to ban Fly or Time Stop, then he ought to have done so before I made a character - so I could play in another game that didn't ban them.

If the GM wants to retain balance, then he'd better give more stuff to the guys falling behind rather than take my own stuff.

[Gwendol]

That's why I specified "melee". In melee, even if you can't see them, they provoke an AoO by moving through your space (unless you do something that removes the AoO, such as a tumbling). Thus as a melee mundane you're great as a mobile wall of "try to get past me" at a choke point.
.

You don't get an AoO against an enemy you can't see. Where did you get that from?

[TuggyNE]

Since you bring it up, arguably, dropping what you have in-hand is a free action on your initiative (Rules Compendium page 7), not before. Even so, odds are you'll want to take a turn to get to a safe distance before you start casting spells.

When else would you be casting stuff? On someone else's turn? Oh right, immediate action spells, and do those generally have somatic components?

Also, you seem to be laboring under the misconception that casters are inherently and inevitably squishy; this is not necessarily the case, since a good Wizard, Cleric, or Druid can stuff tons of buffs on and become nigh-immune to most forms of assault.


Unless you're still thinking I was referring to the spellbook, I was referring to the idea of...
<Player> I wanna buy a Heward's Fortifying Bedroll.
<GM> Okay, lessee here... okay that's a bit expensive... the shopkeepers here in town don't seem to have one in stock. They might be able to order out for though. It'll take at least a week to get here.
<Player> Nevermind.

That actually seems like player impatience. Who can't manage to wait a week, ever?


I was referring to your examples of "portal to another dimension" and "summon a grand feast of food out of nowhere". Those rely on down time. I guess I would have been better to have said "both of those".

Neither gate nor hero's feast is more than 10 minutes of casting time.


Okay, now I'm sure you're just being spiteful. So you know, I'm not going to reply to any more of your replies to this thread.

Ah yes, that'll teach him. :smallamused: :smallyuk:

[Rhynn]

You don't get an AoO against an enemy you can't see. Where did you get that from?

Is this stated as an exception somewhere? Checking "Attacks of Opportunity" and "Blinded," I just find...


Threatened Squares: You threaten all squares into which you can make a melee attack, even when it is not your action. Generally, that means everything in all squares adjacent to your space (including diagonally). An enemy that takes certain actions while in a threatened square provokes an attack of opportunity from you. If you’re unarmed, you don’t normally threaten any squares and thus can’t make attacks of opportunity.

Blinded: The character cannot see. He takes a –2 penalty to Armor Class, loses his Dexterity bonus to AC (if any), moves at half speed, and takes a –4 penalty on Search checks and on most Strength- and Dexterity-based skill checks. All checks and activities that rely on vision (such as reading and Spot checks) automatically fail. All opponents are considered to have total concealment (50% miss chance) to the blinded character. Characters who remain blinded for a long time grow accustomed to these drawbacks and can overcome some of them.

It's obviously weird and I'd certainly rule that you can't AoO something you can't see (or at least hear and thus locate, although even if you don't pinpoint them with Listen I might allow an AoO into a random square, hitting anything or anyone there provided the attack roll hits and miss chance fails). But I'd love to see the rule if there is one, out of curiosity.

[eggynack]

Also, you seem to be laboring under the misconception that casters are inherently and inevitably squishy; this is not necessarily the case, since a good Wizard, Cleric, or Druid can stuff tons of buffs on and become nigh-immune to most forms of assault.


Just wanted to toss this out there, but clerics and druids aren't really that squishy at all. Without even a single buff or wildshape, the druid has a d8 hit die, can wear armor, and likely put lots of points into constitution. The average druid likely has more HP than a monk, and it's suitably trivial to do more than double that by just putting your animal companion in front of you, and have him melee first. Riding dogs are super un-squishy after all. Clerics don't have an animal companion, and they don't put points into con as well as druids do, but they have the same hit die as druids, and they get access to heavy armor, same as the fighter. They also both have average BAB, same as a monk or rogue, and they both have two good saves. Ultimately, even before spells, clerics and druids have a remarkably good chassis, even though their casting can often break games in half.

Edit: Also, even without casting, wizards have access to abrupt jaunt. That ability is crazy powerful defensively.

[RFLS]

Which is a material item... and thus is essentially on a wish list... and thus entirely up to your discretion as GM on whether physically too [B]rare to find in your campaign world where the party currently is... see the problem there?

Okay, I can't believe no one else pointed this out. You limit bedrolls? "Yeah, we've got a dozen masterwork swords. No bedrolls, though. We hate a good night's sleep around here."

[White_Drake]

Spellbooks were just one item on that list of examples.
Which is a material item... and thus is essentially on a wish list... and thus entirely up to your discretion as GM on whether it's physically too rare to find in your campaign world where the party currently is... see the problem there?

Just going to say that limiting what items a character can buy is a houserule, unless you propose that DMs restrict the size of the cities within their mutiverse to something with a suitably low GP limit--the mechanic that actually governs whether something is available.
On a minor related note, you consider 3,000 GP "expensive"? That's less than half of what a +2 weapon costs.

[Spuddles]

First and foremost, understand that I was bringing that house rule up simply because that house rule is what got me thinking about the issue. I'm not necessarily saying it's a universal fix, it's just how I handle learning new spells/powers. What the house rule is really saying is "Try to grant and limit new spell/power learning opportunities to ones at your sole discretion (although players are welcome to make wish lists) and limit what happens in-between level-ups to roughly one new spell/power per spell/power level available per character level". Naturally, you'd also want to keep a close eye on what they learn at actual level-up. So far as spell research, there are, in fact, rules for handling libraries.

So far as "dollars to donuts" is concerned, that's why I said...
If you're carefully monitoring and controlling what options the party tries to make available to itself, things like "the fighter is made worthless by Wings of Flurry" become less of an issue (not a non-issue, just less of an issue).

It seems to me that people often forget how much having another person around can make all the difference in the world. You as GM can do things like design encounters around the idea that you simply need more people to accomplish what needs to be done.

It seems to me that people often forget that casters should not be constantly in "close" range of the enemy unless they have a deathwish. You can do things like design encounters where the battlefield is more than a "100 ft x 100 ft square featureless plain" and contains not just obstacles but hazards, movement-mode-limiters, bottlenecks, etc.

It seems to me that people often forget that casters usually require both hands free in order to cast a spell (one for the material/focus component, one for the somatic component). There's loads of things you can do to hamper that. Furthermore, it seems to me that people forget it takes time out of the action economy to do certain mundane things (such as one action to put something in your hand away on your person, and another action to pull something else out). Mundane stuff in the action economy is utterly rife with potential for slowing down how fast the spellcaster can act. Meanwhile the fighter (or any "lower tier" class really) that isn't so complicated is doing important stuff every round. Yes, with enough preparation and intel, the caster could be ready for anything, but then you're dealing with a situation that the players have specifically set up to give them an advantage. It doesn't have to be that way.

It seems to me that people often forget that a material component pouch, the various foci, spellbook(s), wand(s), scroll(s), and other non-worn objects are ultimately material possessions that have to be acquired and can be stolen. Stealing them doesn't have to be a "**** move" if you set up the hindrance right.

Basically, it occurs to me that many people seem to outright forget and ignore the intricacies that would make higher-tier classes slow and/or cumbersome if they were in the real world.


It can make perfect sense in the right context. It doesn't have to be a "**** move" to limit a prepared-type divine caster's spell options if you set it up right. Maybe your patron deity/cause is upset with your recent actions and says "I am displeased with your recent behaviour. You can have the spell, but it has to fill two spell slots today." or other in-universe complications that are specifically within the context of the in-game narrative. Hell, if you set it up right, you can outright deny certain spells on given days for in-universe "non-****-move" reasons. For your other concerns, see the above paragraphs.

Any mundane class (including the monk) doesn't suffer from practical-intricacy-baggage that non-mundane classes have. True, it's not a universal fix, but it sure helps. Truenamers also have less practical-intricacy-baggage than casters.

Furthermore, house rules that make a class actually function (such as would be necessary for the Truenamer) or viable (such as would be necessary for the Shadowcaster) simply aren't in the same scope as house rules that would "bring a class down a notch".

True. However, most of the limited number of tier discussions I've been exposed to seem to forget the above-mentioned facets of those classes.

For example, item crafting in the "XP is a river" concept, while mechanically valid, can be carefully minimized simply by not letting the campaign slow down so much that it becomes a problem. For an extreme example, can you imagine item crafting being done in the Red Hand of Doom campaign? No, you can't, because that module is extremely fast-paced. I'm not saying you have to time-railroad the party, just make their time spent matter to the plot timeline. You can even go so far as to progressively hint that they should be wary of spending too much time on something minor because there may start to be plot-contingent consequences for that time spent.

So far as the efficacy of the house rule I quoted, see the above statements in this post.

Many "problematic" spells can be altered to become an incantation or incantation-like. Often enough, the answer is to outright ban certain spells, and that's fine too.

So far as flight is concerned, think about how in videogames (like Super Metroid or Symphony of the Night), movement-mode options are often what defined progress potential, not damage or save-or-die effects. With that in mind, personally, I treat movement-mode spells, powers, and character options as highly-suspect.

Regarding "zero exclusives", see what I've said above about being less bogged-down by intricacies and the ability to be in more places at once. Summoning a creature to do that job doesn't necessarily work since the creature might not have the intelligence to pull of what you'd order it to do if it's more complicated than "flank that guy" or the manual dexterity (not dexterity score, I'm talking opposable thumbs) to do anything more complicated than "bash that door down". The differences between lower-tier classes determine how they go about accomplishing what they need to do, but those specifics don't necessarily make them better or worse at it.

To put it another way, the wizard isn't Batman. If Batman had to go through the time-consuming mundane intricacies involved in spellcasting every time he wanted to use something on his utility belt, he'd be shot before he could do even one-tenth of the things you ever see involving that utility belt.

The problem, though, is that casters have items, feats, alternate class features, dirty tricks and prestige classes to overcome every single one of these things, in a way that only tome of battle mundanes can dream about.

Crafting time is a non-issue with pocket factories. EZbake wizards get like 10 free spells a level, can spontaneously cast int mod+3 of them a day, don't have a spellbook, and spontaneously cast any divination spell they know. You can throw versatile spellcaster in there, just in case. Those are a couple examples of how the rules provide casters work arounds to some problems. Casters have work arounds to almost evey problem, unfortunately.

Rather than trying to come up with trite, punitive in game solutions (stealing a spellbook but not the fighter's weapon; withholding problematic spells from clerics without much reason; ignoring rulings that you only need one hand free to cast spells), you should be reviewing the system and telling your players upfront that teleport requires a ritual to cast, simulacrum and divine metamagic are banned, web requires a grapple check to get out of, not a str check, etc.

[eggynack]

Rather than trying to come up with trite, punitive in game solutions (stealing a spellbook but not the fighter's weapon; withholding problematic spells from clerics without much reason; ignoring rulings that you only need one hand free to cast spells), you should be reviewing the system and telling your players upfront that teleport requires a ritual to cast, simulacrum and divine metamagic are banned, web requires a grapple check to get out of, not a str check, etc.
Either that, or you can just tell your players not to play wizards. It's just a conversation, it's not going to bite. If they want to play wizards, then you can just tell them they can't play fighters. Warblades don't get left behind by full casters nearly as much as the tier 5's do. House ruling and banning things on an individual basis just feels like so much work for so little gain. You can narrow the tier margins as much or as little as you want, dependent on how much imbalance you're comfortable having in your game. A purely tier 3 game is perfectly viable, as is a game that has classes from tiers from 1 to 3.

[JadePhoenix]

This might seem like a silly question, but can't "tiers" be made essentially-moot by a careful and knowledgeable GM during actual play?

Isn't that the whole point of tiers? :smallconfused:

[Barsoom]

the foresight to create memorable encounters that entail liberal application of situations the lower-tier classes are exclusively capable of [handling] There's your problem right there. The low-tiers do not have situations that they are exclusively capable of handling. That's why they are the low tiers.

[JadePhoenix]

There's your problem right there. The low-tiers do not have situations that they are exclusively capable of handling. That's why they are the low tiers.

Oh, c'mon. All he meant is that low tier characters in a party have their strengths and that in a party, sometimes a high tier character won't be doing everything (specially since they are rarely played to their full potential).

[Amphetryon]

Either that, or you can just tell your players not to play wizards. It's just a conversation, it's not going to bite. If they want to play wizards, then you can just tell them they can't play fighters. Warblades don't get left behind by full casters nearly as much as the tier 5's do. House ruling and banning things on an individual basis just feels like so much work for so little gain. You can narrow the tier margins as much or as little as you want, dependent on how much imbalance you're comfortable having in your game. A purely tier 3 game is perfectly viable, as is a game that has classes from tiers from 1 to 3.

Or even, you know, just point out the pitfalls inherent in one Player's choice to be wildly outside the range of the other PCs' tiers.

"So, Robin, you want to play a Gnome Druid with a Riding Dog?"

'Yep.'

"You know that Chris, Pat, and Terry are making a Paladin, a Warmage, and a Fighter, right? You're. . . potentially going to look like a bully in their playground."

'Yeah, I know. It's what I want to play, though.'

"Not a Wildshape Ranger?"

'Nope.'

"Okay. Then I'm going to ask you to think carefully about your actions in-game, so you don't step on another PC's toes or make them feel like your caddy. If they start to feel like there's an issue, we'll have to have another talk about how we're going to fix that. Clear?"

'Got it.'

If you have a conversation like the above with your out-of-tier Player, you've set the expectations clearly. If the Player can't abide by them, this may not be the game s/he's looking for.

[TuggyNE]

Is this stated as an exception somewhere? Checking "Attacks of Opportunity" and "Blinded," I just find...



It's obviously weird and I'd certainly rule that you can't AoO something you can't see (or at least hear and thus locate, although even if you don't pinpoint them with Listen I might allow an AoO into a random square, hitting anything or anyone there provided the attack roll hits and miss chance fails). But I'd love to see the rule if there is one, out of curiosity.

It's under the rules for concealment:
You can’t execute an attack of opportunity against an opponent with total concealment, even if you know what square or squares the opponent occupies.

[Spuddles]

Either that, or you can just tell your players not to play wizards. It's just a conversation, it's not going to bite. If they want to play wizards, then you can just tell them they can't play fighters. Warblades don't get left behind by full casters nearly as much as the tier 5's do. House ruling and banning things on an individual basis just feels like so much work for so little gain. You can narrow the tier margins as much or as little as you want, dependent on how much imbalance you're comfortable having in your game. A purely tier 3 game is perfectly viable, as is a game that has classes from tiers from 1 to 3.

What about sorcerers, or warsnakes, or magically trained beguilers?

Wizard is an absolutely terrible class (unless you really dig wizard ACFs) because the best part- wizard spells- are fairly easy to get without ever taking a level in wizard.

I mean, the T5 Healer can be optimized to function as a T1 class soley via spell list expansion. It also gets gate. Dread Neceo gets planar binding.

The problem inherent to 3e aren't the class chassis so much as it is the spell system, and with sufficient source material/system mastery, any caster can get access to virtually any spell.

[Curmudgeon]

It's obviously weird and I'd certainly rule that you can't AoO something you can't see (or at least hear and thus locate, although even if you don't pinpoint them with Listen I might allow an AoO into a random square, hitting anything or anyone there provided the attack roll hits and miss chance fails). But I'd love to see the rule if there is one, out of curiosity. Page 152 of Player's Handbook:
You can’t execute an attack of opportunity against an opponent with total concealment, even if you know what square or squares the opponent occupies. No special ruling is required. If you can't see them, you don't get any AoOs against them.

[eggynack]

What about sorcerers, or warsnakes, or magically trained beguilers?

Wizard is an absolutely terrible class (unless you really dig wizard ACFs) because the best part- wizard spells- are fairly easy to get without ever taking a level in wizard.

I mean, the T5 Healer can be optimized to function as a T1 class soley via spell list expansion. It also gets gate. Dread Neceo gets planar binding.

The problem inherent to 3e aren't the class chassis so much as it is the spell system, and with sufficient source material/system mastery, any caster can get access to virtually any spell.
I disagree in a general sense. First of all, sorcerers would also be banned in a low tier game. My preferred ranges are tiers three to five, or tiers three to one. You can just not allow prestige classes within certain regions of the tier list for prestige classes. That list isn't nearly as developed as the tier list though.

Look, I'm not going to create a specific ban list for all conceivable situations. The fact of the matter is, that having a game with a healer, rogue, fighter, and warmage, or a game with a wizard, cleric, sorcerer, and druid, is far preferable to a game with a wizard, a druid, a fighter, and a warlock. There are always going to be little pockets of high power, but they can't be nearly as difficult to regulate if you block off certain tier ranges. The idea at the core of it all, is that you figure out what power range you want your game to have, and then coordinate the party's choices to suit that power range. Wizards aren't the problem, and neither are fighters. The problem is wizards and fighters in the same party.

[killem2]

Isn't that the whole point of tiers? :smallconfused:

I have to be careful how I word this, because I could get banned for talking ill of the tier system.


I think the point of the tier system is so poor planning Dungeon Masters and Game Masters CAN manage their games and gamers.

[eggynack]

I have to be careful how I word this, because I could get banned for talking ill of the tier system.


I think the point of the tier system is so poor planning Dungeon Masters and Game Masters CAN manage their games and gamers.
I don't see how using the tier system is indicative of poor planning on a DM's part. Presumably he considered the possibility of game imbalance, searched for a way to balance the game on the internet, found the tier system, and decided to implement it within the game in a manner of his choosing. That doesn't sound like poor planning to me at all.

Possibly more importantly, you're wrong about the point of the tier system. The point of the tier system, and it's right there on the page, is to tell people how versatile and powerful the classes are. The specifics of how it's organized are a bit more complicated than that, but that's a whole other discussion. That's it. There's no deeper purpose intrinsic to the system that involves a specific manner to balance games. We can use it to balance games, if we want them to be balanced, or we can use it to imbalance games, or tell us how balanced a given game will be, or choose encounters of the right power level of the party. The single and only point of the tier system is to tell you information about the game. It's up to everyone on an individual level how to use that information. You can ignore it, or use it, or consider it, and the tier system will remain the same. Such is its nature.

[Sith_Happens]

I have to be careful how I word this, because I could get banned for talking ill of the tier system.

That is highly unlikely.


I think the point of the tier system is so poor planning Dungeon Masters and Game Masters CAN manage their games and gamers.

Exactly this. Well, it also helps GMs who are good at planning, by telling them important things they should be planning for.

[nyarlathotep]

I have to be careful how I word this, because I could get banned for talking ill of the tier system.


I think the point of the tier system is so poor planning Dungeon Masters and Game Masters CAN manage their games and gamers.

Recognizing inherent flaws in rules systems is poor planning. That's why taking away void grenades from every random joe was bad for Warhammer.

[TuggyNE]

I have to be careful how I word this, because I could get banned for talking ill of the tier system.

What? No. You can get banned for being a jerk while talking ill of something. Or just being a jerk. (But it does take a fair few instances of such.)

For a more precise idea, check the Board/Site Issues for elucidation. :smallwink:

[Rhynn]

It's under the rules for concealment:

Well, that makes sense... :smallredface: