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CowardlyPaladin
2013-06-16, 08:44 AM
Let me be frank, I LOVE third party stuff. I love it because it is always trying out new things, I love it because it takes D20 in a new direction, and I love it because they have absolutely no conception of what balance is. Third Party stuff is full of innovative ideas and creativity, complete with awful spelling/grammar and absolutely no conception of how the system works. Since I am such a fan of third party books and have taken to collecting them (when they cost about 4$ locally this isn't as impressive as iit sounds) I am curious about balancing them. I have no eye for balance in the least, I can tell that the Monk and Fighter are useless but to my eye the Wizard and Rogue look about even, so I turn to you, people of the playground to help me.

Empedocles went through a Herculean effort to categorize every single third party class in existence, which is a monster of a task. You can find the complete list here, http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=13161141#post13161141. However in the almost 500 classes, it can be easy to get overwhelmed, and I am not entirely sure if every Tier is correct. So I decided to assist him by doing it book by book. I choose to start with the selection of more recognized classes, because they are more likely to be read and slightly less likely to be horribly balanced.....yeah.....I have faith. So this is divided into 3 sections, Dragon Magazine Classes, Pathfinder non Core Classes, and Arcana Evolved Class. I will include Empedocles estimate of there Tier, and a brief description of what they do. If it is legal to do so I will also link you to there description, however that might not be possible, apologies before hand.

What I am interested in is

1) What is its tier assuming it is held up against 3.5 typical classes?

2) Why is it at that tier?


3) Would you incorporate any of these classes in your game? Are they entirely worthless, good idea that has been done better, or a surprising gem of brilliance.

4) how do they work in there own setting. This one I care less about, but obviously the Iron heros classes are not going to stand up to Core, but how do they stand up to each other?

Thanks for all of your help.



What needs to be done

Iron Heroes

AN attempt to make a Conan style D20 system and fix melee classes.


Archer |Iron Heroes |4 |Melee |Ranged damage-dealer with tag-on effects, best at picking off immobile targets
Armiger |Iron Heroes |5 |Melee |Defensive melee, really swingy token mechanic, abilities stack poorly
Berserker |Iron Heroes |4 |Melee |Rager with a variety of rage powers fueled by enemies' attacks
Executioner |Iron Heroes |4 |Melee |Study enemies and gain debuffs against them; gain sneak attack and free tokens to start encounters. Good skills.
Harrier |Iron Heroes |5 |Skillmonkey |Mobile fighter with numeric attack and defense bonuses equal to squares of movement in a round. Gets Dervish dance ability really late.
Hunter |Iron Heroes |4 |Melee |Scouting and support character. Give allies numerical buffs and tokens (if their classes use them). Use combat maneuvers against multiple opponents. Good skills.
Man-at-Arms |Iron Heroes |4 |Melee |Fighter-type class with floating feats, good skills
Thief |Iron Heroes |4 |Skillmonkey |Elevated skill rank cap, sneak attack, various social skill tricks, ****loads of skill points.
Weapon Master |Iron Heroes |5 |Melee |Focus on one weapon's use. Easy to get weapon tokens, difficult to get enough of them to use class abilities. Generally a Warrior with really big numbers.
Arcanist |Iron Heroes |2 |Caster |Skill-based caster with severe limitations, nasty consequences for faiure or overzealousness, but still can access very powerful effects.



Legend of the Five Rings D20
What was not included in Oriental Adventures


Courtier Rokugan CS 5 Skillmonkey Built for Diplomancy w/ Built-in Leadership
Ninja Rokugan CS 5 Melee Sneak Attack fighter with numeric boosts (speed, init)
Inkyo Rokugan CS 6 Melee Monk, minus class abilities

Courtier is my favorite class by the way.

Dreamscarred Press



Devoted Psion DSP-SRD 2 Caster Psion ACF - Specialist
Enlightened Monk DSP-SRD 5 Melee Monk ACF; doesn't change much
Formbound Spiritist DSP-SRD 2 Caster Psionic Druid (Summoning Focus)
Formbound Surger DSP-SRD 2 Caster Psionic Druid (Animal Companion+Wild Surge)
Halo Knight DSP-SRD 5 Melee (Buffer) Kensai as a base class with minor numeric buffs
Marksman DSP-SRD 3 Gish (Archery) Psionic character with archery focus
Psychic Ranger DSP-SRD 3 Gish (Skills) Very low optimization floor
Society Mind DSP-SRD 2 Caster Primarily buff/debuffs
Thoughtsinger DSP-SRD 3 Buffer Psionic Bard
Worldthought Medic DSP-SRD 2 Caster Focused buffing
Augur DSP-SRD 3 Caster (NPC) Slow-progress manifesting


Demon Wars Campaign Setting
I can't believe again this exists, based on the slightly above decent still better than Drizzt Novels by RA Salvator, and there is a champaign setting absed on it

Abellican Brother: Tier 5: Monk reflavored to be more Europeon....still sucks

Gem Master: Tier 3, A person who casts from gem stones

Geme Sorcerer: Tier 3, Another person who casts from gem stones, relying upon the EVIL GEM STONES

King's Trooper: Tier 5....its a fighter....

Toul'alfar Woodsmen: A gish style class with a single weapon focus that really sounded cooler in the books



[/SPOILER]
Heroes of the Jade Oath

The Oriental Adventures of Arcana Evolved. I think I might be the only person in the entire world who actually bought this, so there is no tier selection because I have no talent for that sort of thing. Sadly I don't think it is legal to post the classes, but if it is please let me know


Demon Hunter: A Paladin/TOB like class which serves the Celestial Bureaucracy. Sort of a scholar/Exorcist mix. They fight all formes of creatures, with different types of subclasses for those who fight Undead, Outsiders, Fey ect, seems limited to mee, but what do I know about balance.

Enlightened Scholar: A confusian style Chi master who wants to learn everything in the world. A monk/Wizard/Skill monky combo

Kensai: We've all seen it before.

Kusa: A ninja variant with ALOT more abilities and a more Chinese flavor

Jade Monk: A slightly less terrible monk who draw on Charka

Totem Warrior: A spirit Warrior who draws from various animals. Melee fighter

Xia: A Paladin of there Ancestors




Done so far

Arcana Evolved

This is a different version of 3.75. I don't think these can be legally presented, but if I am wrong please let me know.


Akashic: Tier 4, A rogue like class that basically gets a massive amount of skill points. Like a hilarious amount. Fluff wise, they basically are able to tap into the collective subconscious of the world to draw upon different abilities.

Champion: Tier 5: A Paladin Variant who dedicate themselves to a special ideal, which can be something like Nature or Freedom. Personally in my games I have them tied to the Magic the Gathering Color system

GreenBound: Tier 2: A caster class that can draw both Arcane and Divine. Like with all Arcana Evolved Casters, they have alot more flexibility in there spells with things like Spell Templates and increased/decreased spell level, but limited spells. Most healing focused. Fluff wise are bit like caster Jedi, drawing from the collective life force

Magister: Tier 1, a Wizard with far more flexibility

Mage Blade: Tier 3: A typical Gish, whose only distinguishing feature is that there physical weapon has alot of small special abilities, like them being able to summon it at will

Oathsworn: Tier 5: A monk stand in, who aren't much better, they can use special rituals to increase there abilities, or take Oaths to gain special powers, like giving up drink for increased strenght ect.

Ritual Warrior: Tier 4 A master of Ritual magic, sort of like TOB before TOB, can perform elaborate rituals before battle to increase there powers.

Runethane: Tier 2: A rune focused caster class who focus mostly upon runic traps.

Unfettered: Tier 5: A swashbuckler wanna be, though it reminds me more of a Drizzt/Xena/Entari sort of feel. Basically your light infantry fighter, there main thing is that they can block really well.

Warmain: Tier 6: A replacement fighter I hear, I don't really know the difference

Witch: Tier 3: A caster who can draw upon the forces of nature. Extremely customizable, and a little Gishy. They can specalized like wizards into Iron Withc, Mind Witch, Sea Witch, Wind Witch, Winter Witch and Wood Witch, and can use there magic either with Words, Songs, Spirit, Storm, Fire, or Blade.



Arcana Evolved Explanations


Akashic: Tier 4. The damage output isn't great (but no one's is in melee compared to 3.5 due to how Power Attack works), but they have All The Skills. They also have memory-based buffs and information gathering. Just a bit down from the Factotum, really.
Champion: Tier 4 or 5. On par approximately with the Paladin. Limited by the fact that many of their cool powers are once-daily effects.
Greenbond: Tier 2. Full caster with somewhat limited spell selection, but access to all plant/positive energy spells is nothing to sneeze at. Also keep in mind that they can get access to various collections of complex spells with feats.
Mage Blade: Tier 3. Sort of a proto-Duskblade. Being a spellsword isn't as clean as with the Duskblade, but they've got some exclusive spells that allow for interesting effects. Plus their casting goes up to 7th at 20th level, so their spells are relevant without being crazy at the same time.
Magister: Tier 1. Some of the really crazy spells got moved into exotic. That said, with automatic complex access, full casting, feats that can grant access to handfuls of exotics at once, and the ability to swap around your list at an hour's notice, a magister would not be out of place with the god-casters of standard 3.x.
Oathsworn: Tier 5. Pretty much a monk with more text, enough so that even the fan community claimed that its 15th-level ability was "Eschew Sucking". (It's actually Refuse Spells, a copy/paste of the monk's SR.) They also get some combat rites (like the Ritual Warrior), but it's always too little at the levels they get them to make up for the class's flaws.
Ritual Warrior: Tier 4. The first incarnation of the concept that became ToB (ToB itself was the third incarnation, after this and Iron Heroes), this class is dragged down by the fact that its primary class feature (combat rites) consists of a bunch of daily-limited powers.
Runethane: Tier 1 or 2. Like the Mageblade, they have bardic casting (up to 7th at 20th). If you're familiar with all of the shenanigans a Zceryll-bound Binder can pull off, the Runethane will be very familiar. Except they don't just summon, but they can also pull out weird sorts of traps. They've also got access to spells with the runic descriptor; one of these is Explosive Runes. Another is Empower Rune, which can make your runes nastier so long as they're active. Finally, they get free access to the utterly broken runic spell template. (It makes saves against your spells key off Intelligence instead of other ability scores.)
Totem Speaker: Tier 3. Found in Transendence, this is some mishmash of bard-casting and 3.x's Totemist. Like the Akashic, it can get All The Skills, since its skill points key off Wisdom (its casting stat) instead of Intelligence.
Totem Warrior: Tier 3 or 4. Something of a nonmagical Ranger with benefits that key off your totem animal, plus an animal companion that scales nearly as well as a druid's. Each companion animal also eventually becomes size Large (or greater), so you can have fun using it as a mount.
Unfettered: Tier 4. A cross between a Fighter and a Rogue, with reduced sneak attack damage but full BAB and the capacity to dodge just about everything. Dual-wielding is also relatively decent here and easy for them to use well.
Warmain: Tier 4 or 5. Basically the Fighter but tankier. Their numbers can be bigger (except for Power Attack), but they generally come later than they should. They also get combat rites, but they have the slowest progression of any class that uses them - too little, too late.
Witch: Tier 3. They're the last of the bardic-casting classes, but also get full access to certain spells and special abilities based on some theme. They also have The Sight, which among other things has the bizarre capacity to give you someone else's classes and level as in-character knowledge.





Advanced Player's Manual

Eldritch Weaver: Tier 2, Some kind of alternate wizard I never got the hand of

Evangelist: Tier 3, A Cleric/Bard combo

Scout: Tier 4: The D&D scout class with alter self

Spell Master: Tier 1: A skill based caster

Thanemage: Tier 4: Your basic Gish

Warpriest: Tier 3: A weaker cleric

Psychic: Tier 4: Psion using an alternate system. Personally I think it is more Tier 3




Advanced Player's Manual Explanations



Now, I won't pretend that the tiers were perfect. With over 400 classes to go through, I often just skimmed over them to find a class they were similar to. That being said, the Advanced Player's Manual was one of the earlier classes I did (before realizing the obscene number of rulebooks I had to go through) so it has a lot more thorough work on it.

The Scout and Thanemage are very similar to the rogue/scout and paladin, respectively. Similar enough that I think you can safely put them in identical tiers.

The Spell Master has a huge repertoire of magic available to him - close in both magnitude and versatility to the wizard - making him an obvious tier 1. The Eldritch Weaver was a lot trickier. He has a pretty large array of options theoretically available to him, but he's forced to specialize his magic, which adds up to lots of power, little versatility: tier 2.

The warpriest was a class that didn't receive much attention from me, because frankly it seemed sort of half-assed, but it has a medium amount of magic with decent versatility, so I think it's a tier 3, like the beguiler or dread necromancer. It's possible that it has a few gamebreaking options via it's spell list, but I haven't looked through it too carefully.

Last but not least, the psychic was a class that impressed me a lot. It uses psychic abilities that are dependent on a single skill. This left a lot of room for customization. It's possible, really, that the psychic is a tier 3. Skills are easy to optimize, and that allows you to run all your abilities off of a single optimized skill. However, I think that the number of abilities that you can actually receive puts this at tier 4, comparable to the warlock. Not a "bad" tier 4, really.



Dragon Magazine Classes

I have not read any of these so I am going off other people's word here. I don't know where to find them, nor am I sure if it is legal, but if it is, please provide

{table=head] CLASS |NUMBER |TIER |ROLE |NOTES
Mystic Ranger|336|3|Gish|A ranger with spellcasting from level 1. Can be combined with Sword of the Arcane Order for Tier 1 goodness up to level 10.
Bodyguard|310|5|Melee|A fighter who can select some special abilities instead of feats that make him more of a defensive character.
Commander|310|5|Melee|A fighter who can swap bonus feats for minor support abilities.
Corsair|310|5|Melee|A fighter who exchanges bonus feats for aquatically oriented abilities.
Exoticist|310|5|Melee|A fighter who has some unique abilities and gains proficiency with 4 exotic weapons at 1st level.
Fencer|310|5|Melee|A fighter with swashbuckling abilities, but who is limited to light armor.
Horseman|310|5|Melee|The fighter as a cavalryman.
Kensai|310|5|Melee|A fighter who can use a nerfed flurry of blows with a specific weapon.
Knight|310|5|Melee|Charging as a class.
Pugilist|310|5|Melee|A variant fighter based on unarmed combat.
Shield Bearer|310|5|Melee|Uses a shield, and is a fighter. That's all.
Survivalist|310|5|Melee|A fighter who tries to use ranger feats.
Targetteer|310|5|Ranged|A fighter with bonus feats and special abilities geared towards ranged combat.
Anarch|310|5|Melee|A paladin who hits objects instead of people and turns constructs.
Avenger|310|4|Melee|A paladin with a much-improved spell list.
Sentinel|310|4|Melee|A paladin who dispels evil. Pretty much identical to the original.
Incarnate|310|4|Melee|A paladin with an elemental theme.
Enforcer|310|4|Melee|A paladin that gains enchantment abilities.
Anti-Paladin|312|4|Melee|Blackguard as a base class.
Despot|312|4|Melee|Evil paladin who "oppresses" people.
Corruptor|312|4|Melee|An evil paladin themed around infiltration and, well, corruption.
Deathwalker|312|1|Caster|An alternate necromancer who gains an undead companion and some undead themed powers.
Fleshcrafter|312|1|Caster|An alternate necromancer who seeks to create artificial life.
Soul Reaper|312|1|Caster|A wizard plus the grim reaper.
Harbinger|337|3|Caster|A bard with bardic music that debuffs instead of buffs.
Rage Cleric|333|1|Caster|A cleric who trades turning and domains for the ability to rage.
Defiler|315|1|Caster|Technically an alternate magic system but easily usable as a class. It allows a caster to draw power upon his surroundings.
Totem Druid|335|1|Caster|A druid that can wild shape from level 1 and gets more uses of it as he progresses but is limited to a single form (his totem. Also the type of animal he has as a companion).
Chaos Monk|335|5|Melee|A monk with a potentially stronger, but much more random, flurry of blows attack.
Sidhe Scholar|339|1|Caster|A druid based more on casting and less on melee.
Wild Defender|324|3|Gish|A ranger with spellcasting from level 1 and a smiting ability.
Wild Monk|324|4|Melee|A monk that gains the ability to wild shape
Filidh|324|1|Caster|A shaman flavored wizard variant with bardic knowledge and a bonus to divination magic.
Implacable|330|4|Melee|A barbarian who's rage grants damage reduction. Built more around the idea of an unstoppable berserker who just seems to ignore wounds.
Angakok|344|1|Caster|A druid themed wizard with an expanded spell list and some class features.[/table]



Pathfinder
You can find all of the classes on there SRD here
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes



{table=head] CLASS |Source |TIER |ROLE |NOTES
Druid|Core|1|Caster|A nature based spellcaster who shapeshifts.
Wizard|Core|1|Caster|The archetypical spellcaster, who prepares his magic via spellbooks.
Cleric|Core|1|Caster|A spellcaster who draws his power from the gods and can still engage in melee.
Sorcerer|Core|2|Caster|A spellcaster who draws his magic from his bloodline.
Summoner|Advanced Player's Guide|3|Caster|A spellcaster with limited casting but the ability to create an "eidolon" that does his bidding.
Oracle|Advanced Player's Guide|2|Caster|A divine spellcaster with spell "mysteries" and no specific god.
Inquisitor|Advanced Player's Guide|3|Gish|A divine gish class, conceptually similar to a gritty paladin.
Magus|Ultimate Magic|3|Gish|An archetypical, effective but bland gish class.
Witch|Advanced Player's Guide|3|Caster|A spellcaster who hexes enemies and has an animal companion. Like an evil wizard+a druid/3.
Alchemist|Advanced Player's Guide|3|Buffer|The best class ever made, in my humble opinion. It uses more powerful versions of potions (extracts), can do Jeckyll and Hide style stuff, and throws bombs.
Bard|Core|3|Caster|A jack-of-all-trades style spellcaster who has a banjo.
Fighter|Core|4|Melee|The archetypical warrior.
Barbarian|Core|4|Melee|A fighter who gets mad.
Paladin|Core|4|Melee|A divine warrior who smites the bad guys.
Ranger|Core|4|Melee|A nature oriented warrior.
Rogue|Core|4|Skillmonkey|A sneaky little thief.
Cavalier|Advanced Player's Guide|5|Melee|A paladin minus the divine stuff. Probably should've been called the knight.
Gunslinger|Ultimate Combat|5|Ranged|A fighter with guns.
Monk|Core|5|Melee|A fighter who punches people instead of chopping them up.
Ninja|Ultimate Combat|5|Melee|A sneaky warrior.
Samurai|Ultimate Combat|5|Melee|A fighter with an oriental theme.[/table]

Corrections
Witch is Tier 2, maybe Tier 1
Ninja is Tier 4
Alchemist might be tier 4 i'm not sure
Summoner is Tier 2



The Quintessential Series

A combination of the Quintessential Series by Moongoose Publishing, along with a few other details

Has its own wiki thank god


The Samurai
http://www.purpleduckgames.com/qsam
Basically a TOB Samurai, which is really what the Samurai should have always been


The Chaos Mage
http://grandwiki.wikidot.com/qcmg
OH GOD MY EYES
I think its a Tier 2 not sure though

The Witch
http://www.purpleduckgames.com/qwth
We seriously need to have people stop making Witch Classes

The Shaman
http://grandwiki.wikidot.com/edsh1
I bet we can figure it out

Dark Weaver
http://grandwiki.wikidot.com/eadm2
A drow divine politician

Explanations for the Quintessential

The samurai doesn't look to impressive. Fighter with a few extra abilities. Tier 5.

Chaos mage is a class I have some experience with. So, so high tier 1. However, it is actually quite playable, as the magic quite literally destroys the caster. This doesnt make him less powerful in theory, but it does limit the amount the player will be willing to exploit the potential power at his disposal.

Witch is tier 1...wildshaping and level 9 spells. Same with the shaman. 9th level spells is a recipe for POWER.

The Dark Weaver has 9th level spells, but levels 7-9 are all extremely restricted. This probably puts him at a tier 2: up to 6th level spells means easy tier 3, the extra power but lack of versatility puts him at tier 2

WildPyre
2013-06-16, 08:51 AM
PF Summoner is tier 3? I'll have to remember that when I'm told my summoners are OP.

Rhynn
2013-06-16, 08:58 AM
PF Summoner is tier 3? I'll have to remember that when I'm told my summoners are OP.

Non-sequitur. Tiers have nothing to do with a particular character/build being (or not being) OP in a particular context. The tiers have a pretty specific meaning.

WildPyre
2013-06-16, 09:08 AM
That's... not quite true. I realize tiers have a specific meaning. The tiers are about what a class can and can not do and how well they do it.

Seeing as how people are always telling me summoners are OP in general, I wouldn't call it a non sequitur.

Though considering the was the description of tiers and power are written tier three would be the highest you could put them considering the limited casting.

CowardlyPaladin
2013-06-16, 01:07 PM
It also depends on what your group is made up of, if you put a Summoner next to a non caster group it is going to look pretty OP, or if you play a generally lower Tier game. I've also heard people tell me that it is Tier 2, so if you disagree please let me know. The point of this thread is to try to establish what tiers everything is.

Eric Tolle
2013-06-16, 01:26 PM
Summoners are obviously Tier 2, given the combination of better spellcasting and a very flexible eidolin.

Rogues are Tier 5 at best, given the changes to skills, Trapfinding, and sneak attacks. With their ki abilities Ninjas manage to get up to Tier 4.

CowardlyPaladin
2013-06-16, 01:58 PM
Summoners are obviously Tier 2, given the combination of better spellcasting and a very flexible eidolin.

Rogues are Tier 5 at best, given the changes to skills, Trapfinding, and sneak attacks. With their ki abilities Ninjas manage to get up to Tier 4.

Wait Pathfinder Rogues are worse than 3.5 rogues? ouch. At least Ninjas got a step up

Mr.Bookworm
2013-06-16, 02:03 PM
You're missing all of the base classes from the Dragon Magazine Compendium, which are the Battle Dancer (a slightly better Monk with some dance-themed abilities), the Death Master (an Orcus-serving necromantic Wizard), the Jester (the Bard, but with comedy), the Mountebank (a trickster with links to the infernal planes), the Savant (a poor man's Factotum), the Sha'ir (a ridiculously powerful genie-based arcane/divine spellcaster), and the Urban Druid (the Druid, but with more concrete).

A rough guesstimate from me would be that the Battle Dancer is tier 4/5, the Death Master is tier 2, the Jester is tier 3/4, the Mountebank is tier 4/5, the Savant is probably tier 5, the Sha'ir is definitely tier 1, and the Urban Druid is still tier 1 (but not as powerful as the regular Druid).

CowardlyPaladin
2013-06-16, 03:24 PM
You're missing all of the base classes from the Dragon Magazine Compendium, which are the Battle Dancer (a slightly better Monk with some dance-themed abilities), the Death Master (an Orcus-serving necromantic Wizard), the Jester (the Bard, but with comedy), the Mountebank (a trickster with links to the infernal planes), the Savant (a poor man's Factotum), the Sha'ir (a ridiculously powerful genie-based arcane/divine spellcaster), and the Urban Druid (the Druid, but with more concrete).

A rough guesstimate from me would be that the Battle Dancer is tier 4/5, the Death Master is tier 2, the Jester is tier 3/4, the Mountebank is tier 4/5, the Savant is probably tier 5, the Sha'ir is definitely tier 1, and the Urban Druid is still tier 1 (but not as powerful as the regular Druid).

I didn't include them because they have been made "offical" now and this is for third party, but what i've heard is

Mountebank: Tier 3

Savant: Tier 4, a bit like the Akashic from Arcana Evolvered

Jester: Tier 4

Battle Dancer: Alot like a Hexblade and not having any social skills for a charisma based character is dumb

Death Master: Tier 3, basically a Dread Necro

SHa'ir: Tier 1, maybe Tier 2, there inability to get spells quickly is made up for ther access to alot of spells

Urban Druid: Tier 2 or Tier 3


Could somebody please give me a handle on the Arcana Evolved/Jade Oath classes? There is literally nothing out there that gives me a sense of there power level

NoldorForce
2013-06-16, 04:56 PM
Could somebody please give me a handle on the Arcana Evolved/Jade Oath classes? There is literally nothing out there that gives me a sense of there power level Akashic: Tier 4. The damage output isn't great (but no one's is in melee compared to 3.5 due to how Power Attack works), but they have All The Skills. They also have memory-based buffs and information gathering. Just a bit down from the Factotum, really.
Champion: Tier 4 or 5. On par approximately with the Paladin. Limited by the fact that many of their cool powers are once-daily effects.
Greenbond: Tier 2. Full caster with somewhat limited spell selection, but access to all plant/positive energy spells is nothing to sneeze at. Also keep in mind that they can get access to various collections of complex spells with feats.
Mage Blade: Tier 3. Sort of a proto-Duskblade. Being a spellsword isn't as clean as with the Duskblade, but they've got some exclusive spells that allow for interesting effects. Plus their casting goes up to 7th at 20th level, so their spells are relevant without being crazy at the same time.
Magister: Tier 1. Some of the really crazy spells got moved into exotic. That said, with automatic complex access, full casting, feats that can grant access to handfuls of exotics at once, and the ability to swap around your list at an hour's notice, a magister would not be out of place with the god-casters of standard 3.x.
Oathsworn: Tier 5. Pretty much a monk with more text, enough so that even the fan community claimed that its 15th-level ability was "Eschew Sucking". (It's actually Refuse Spells, a copy/paste of the monk's SR.) They also get some combat rites (like the Ritual Warrior), but it's always too little at the levels they get them to make up for the class's flaws.
Ritual Warrior: Tier 4. The first incarnation of the concept that became ToB (ToB itself was the third incarnation, after this and Iron Heroes), this class is dragged down by the fact that its primary class feature (combat rites) consists of a bunch of daily-limited powers.
Runethane: Tier 1 or 2. Like the Mageblade, they have bardic casting (up to 7th at 20th). If you're familiar with all of the shenanigans a Zceryll-bound Binder can pull off, the Runethane will be very familiar. Except they don't just summon, but they can also pull out weird sorts of traps. They've also got access to spells with the runic descriptor; one of these is Explosive Runes. Another is Empower Rune, which can make your runes nastier so long as they're active. Finally, they get free access to the utterly broken runic spell template. (It makes saves against your spells key off Intelligence instead of other ability scores.)
Totem Speaker: Tier 3. Found in Transendence, this is some mishmash of bard-casting and 3.x's Totemist. Like the Akashic, it can get All The Skills, since its skill points key off Wisdom (its casting stat) instead of Intelligence.
Totem Warrior: Tier 3 or 4. Something of a nonmagical Ranger with benefits that key off your totem animal, plus an animal companion that scales nearly as well as a druid's. Each companion animal also eventually becomes size Large (or greater), so you can have fun using it as a mount.
Unfettered: Tier 4. A cross between a Fighter and a Rogue, with reduced sneak attack damage but full BAB and the capacity to dodge just about everything. Dual-wielding is also relatively decent here and easy for them to use well.
Warmain: Tier 4 or 5. Basically the Fighter but tankier. Their numbers can be bigger (except for Power Attack), but they generally come later than they should. They also get combat rites, but they have the slowest progression of any class that uses them - too little, too late.
Witch: Tier 3. They're the last of the bardic-casting classes, but also get full access to certain spells and special abilities based on some theme. They also have The Sight, which among other things has the bizarre capacity to give you someone else's classes and level as in-character knowledge.

The various non-casting classes could all easily be improved by making various abilities encounter-limited rather than daily-limited, but unfortunately Monte hadn't quite made that conceptual leap when designing this stuff. (He also didn't like the power level of ToB's encounter balance, which is rich coming from a guy who tended to write casters as Never Not Awesome.) It'd also help if some of them didn't require full-round or standard actions.

Then again, most of the classes do get a regular supply of bonus feats, helping to augment certain class features or to mitigate the effective length of feat chains. One thing that is actually nice for melee characters in AE is a feat in the core book called Speed Burst, which several times per day you can use to get an extra move action. It makes full attacks/maneuvering a lot easier and I recommended it to the melee players in a short campaign I'd ran a while ago.

CowardlyPaladin
2013-06-17, 11:09 AM
Akashic: Tier 4. The damage output isn't great (but no one's is in melee compared to 3.5 due to how Power Attack works), but they have All The Skills. They also have memory-based buffs and information gathering. Just a bit down from the Factotum, really.
Champion: Tier 4 or 5. On par approximately with the Paladin. Limited by the fact that many of their cool powers are once-daily effects.
Greenbond: Tier 2. Full caster with somewhat limited spell selection, but access to all plant/positive energy spells is nothing to sneeze at. Also keep in mind that they can get access to various collections of complex spells with feats.
Mage Blade: Tier 3. Sort of a proto-Duskblade. Being a spellsword isn't as clean as with the Duskblade, but they've got some exclusive spells that allow for interesting effects. Plus their casting goes up to 7th at 20th level, so their spells are relevant without being crazy at the same time.
Magister: Tier 1. Some of the really crazy spells got moved into exotic. That said, with automatic complex access, full casting, feats that can grant access to handfuls of exotics at once, and the ability to swap around your list at an hour's notice, a magister would not be out of place with the god-casters of standard 3.x.
Oathsworn: Tier 5. Pretty much a monk with more text, enough so that even the fan community claimed that its 15th-level ability was "Eschew Sucking". (It's actually Refuse Spells, a copy/paste of the monk's SR.) They also get some combat rites (like the Ritual Warrior), but it's always too little at the levels they get them to make up for the class's flaws.
Ritual Warrior: Tier 4. The first incarnation of the concept that became ToB (ToB itself was the third incarnation, after this and Iron Heroes), this class is dragged down by the fact that its primary class feature (combat rites) consists of a bunch of daily-limited powers.
Runethane: Tier 1 or 2. Like the Mageblade, they have bardic casting (up to 7th at 20th). If you're familiar with all of the shenanigans a Zceryll-bound Binder can pull off, the Runethane will be very familiar. Except they don't just summon, but they can also pull out weird sorts of traps. They've also got access to spells with the runic descriptor; one of these is Explosive Runes. Another is Empower Rune, which can make your runes nastier so long as they're active. Finally, they get free access to the utterly broken runic spell template. (It makes saves against your spells key off Intelligence instead of other ability scores.)
Totem Speaker: Tier 3. Found in Transendence, this is some mishmash of bard-casting and 3.x's Totemist. Like the Akashic, it can get All The Skills, since its skill points key off Wisdom (its casting stat) instead of Intelligence.
Totem Warrior: Tier 3 or 4. Something of a nonmagical Ranger with benefits that key off your totem animal, plus an animal companion that scales nearly as well as a druid's. Each companion animal also eventually becomes size Large (or greater), so you can have fun using it as a mount.
Unfettered: Tier 4. A cross between a Fighter and a Rogue, with reduced sneak attack damage but full BAB and the capacity to dodge just about everything. Dual-wielding is also relatively decent here and easy for them to use well.
Warmain: Tier 4 or 5. Basically the Fighter but tankier. Their numbers can be bigger (except for Power Attack), but they generally come later than they should. They also get combat rites, but they have the slowest progression of any class that uses them - too little, too late.
Witch: Tier 3. They're the last of the bardic-casting classes, but also get full access to certain spells and special abilities based on some theme. They also have The Sight, which among other things has the bizarre capacity to give you someone else's classes and level as in-character knowledge.

THanks alot, that is perfect. Its interesting to me how many character themes started in Arcana Evolved and emerged later, Akashic-Savant-Factorium for example.



The various non-casting classes could all easily be improved by making various abilities encounter-limited rather than daily-limited, but unfortunately Monte hadn't quite made that conceptual leap when designing this stuff. (He also didn't like the power level of ToB's encounter balance, which is rich coming from a guy who tended to write casters as Never Not Awesome.) It'd also help if some of them didn't require full-round or standard actions.

Then again, most of the classes do get a regular supply of bonus feats, helping to augment certain class features or to mitigate the effective length of feat chains. One thing that is actually nice for melee characters in AE is a feat in the core book called Speed Burst, which several times per day you can use to get an extra move action. It makes full attacks/maneuvering a lot easier and I recommended it to the melee players in a short campaign I'd ran a while ago.

The evolution of Melee classes is an intresting thread all to itself.

Ok, so that is Arcana Evolved done, and we have a general understanding of Pathfinder/Dragon, and I doubt anybody has read Hero's of the Jade oath. Should I put the next third party book up here or start a new thread, i was thinking the Advanced Players Handbook and some of its ilk

genderlich
2013-06-17, 12:19 PM
There is no way Witches are tier 3. Top of 2 at worst, and I'd say bottom of 1. They're preparation-based full casters, and hexes are pretty great, even if they're not quite as good as Wizards. I'd also put Ninja in tier 4 (ki abilities go a long way), and Alchemist in tier 4 as well (bombs are meh at higher levels, self-buffing is okay but limited). Summoner in tier 2 as has been said.

CowardlyPaladin
2013-06-17, 12:36 PM
There is no way Witches are tier 3. Top of 2 at worst, and I'd say bottom of 1. They're preparation-based full casters, and hexes are pretty great, even if they're not quite as good as Wizards. I'd also put Ninja in tier 4 (ki abilities go a long way), and Alchemist in tier 4 as well (bombs are meh at higher levels, self-buffing is okay but limited). Summoner in tier 2 as has been said.

Lol when I first read this I thought you were refering to the Arcana Evolved witch, looks like people need more diverse names.

Ok, I changed Ninja and Summoner, I split the difference with Pathfinder Witch and made her tier 2. I"m not sure about Alchemist, doesn't there crafting powers count for something?

CowardlyPaladin
2013-06-18, 02:02 PM
Added Advanced player's guide

Empedocles
2013-06-20, 01:29 PM
Hello all! I'm the aforementioned Empedocles who made the original list of classes.


PF Summoner is tier 3? I'll have to remember that when I'm told my summoners are OP.

They're pretty borderline 2-3.


You're missing all of the base classes from the Dragon Magazine Compendium, which are the Battle Dancer (a slightly better Monk with some dance-themed abilities), the Death Master (an Orcus-serving necromantic Wizard), the Jester (the Bard, but with comedy), the Mountebank (a trickster with links to the infernal planes), the Savant (a poor man's Factotum), the Sha'ir (a ridiculously powerful genie-based arcane/divine spellcaster), and the Urban Druid (the Druid, but with more concrete).

A rough guesstimate from me would be that the Battle Dancer is tier 4/5, the Death Master is tier 2, the Jester is tier 3/4, the Mountebank is tier 4/5, the Savant is probably tier 5, the Sha'ir is definitely tier 1, and the Urban Druid is still tier 1 (but not as powerful as the regular Druid).

I give Savant a low 4, but maybe I'm being generous. I played one once and he felt a lot more diverse than a tier 5 would be.

They're in the original post.


There is no way Witches are tier 3. Top of 2 at worst, and I'd say bottom of 1. They're preparation-based full casters, and hexes are pretty great, even if they're not quite as good as Wizards. I'd also put Ninja in tier 4 (ki abilities go a long way), and Alchemist in tier 4 as well (bombs are meh at higher levels, self-buffing is okay but limited). Summoner in tier 2 as has been said.

Oops, that's probably correct about witches.

I disagree on alchemists - they remain diverse enough for a solid tier 3. Summoner...ehhhhh I'm not convinced they're tier 2, with a spell list like their's, but I'll read back over them.

CowardlyPaladin
2013-06-20, 04:16 PM
Could you offer your thoughts on the Advanced Player's Manual

Empedocles
2013-06-20, 08:19 PM
Ok, so copy pasted from the OP, my original tiers were as follows:

Eldritch Weaver: Tier 2, Some kind of alternate wizard I never got the hand of

Evangelist: Tier 3, A Cleric/Bard combo

Scout: Tier 4: The D&D scout class with alter self

Spell Master: Tier 1: A skill based caster

Thanemage: Tier 4: Your basic Gish

Warpriest: Tier 3: A weaker cleric

Psychic: Tier 4: Psion using an alternate system


Now, I won't pretend that the tiers were perfect. With over 400 classes to go through, I often just skimmed over them to find a class they were similar to. That being said, the Advanced Player's Manual was one of the earlier classes I did (before realizing the obscene number of rulebooks I had to go through) so it has a lot more thorough work on it.

The Scout and Thanemage are very similar to the rogue/scout and paladin, respectively. Similar enough that I think you can safely put them in identical tiers.

The Spell Master has a huge repertoire of magic available to him - close in both magnitude and versatility to the wizard - making him an obvious tier 1. The Eldritch Weaver was a lot trickier. He has a pretty large array of options theoretically available to him, but he's forced to specialize his magic, which adds up to lots of power, little versatility: tier 2.

The warpriest was a class that didn't receive much attention from me, because frankly it seemed sort of half-assed, but it has a medium amount of magic with decent versatility, so I think it's a tier 3, like the beguiler or dread necromancer. It's possible that it has a few gamebreaking options via it's spell list, but I haven't looked through it too carefully.

Last but not least, the psychic was a class that impressed me a lot. It uses psychic abilities that are dependent on a single skill. This left a lot of room for customization. It's possible, really, that the psychic is a tier 3. Skills are easy to optimize, and that allows you to run all your abilities off of a single optimized skill. However, I think that the number of abilities that you can actually receive puts this at tier 4, comparable to the warlock. Not a "bad" tier 4, really.

CowardlyPaladin
2013-06-20, 11:35 PM
Put up the Quintessential series, and I will put up more when I can get my hands on more books

Empedocles
2013-06-21, 12:29 PM
Ok, my thoughts on these quintessential classes...

The samurai doesn't look to impressive. Fighter with a few extra abilities. Tier 5.

Chaos mage is a class I have some experience with. So, so high tier 1. However, it is actually quite playable, as the magic quite literally destroys the caster. This doesnt make him less powerful in theory, but it does limit the amount the player will be willing to exploit the potential power at his disposal.

Witch is tier 1...wildshaping and level 9 spells. Same with the shaman. 9th level spells is a recipe for POWER.

The Dark Weaver has 9th level spells, but levels 7-9 are all extremely restricted. This probably puts him at a tier 2: up to 6th level spells means easy tier 3, the extra power but lack of versatility puts him at tier 2.

Empedocles
2013-06-22, 11:51 AM
Also, you might want to change the slightly misleading title, and move this to the 3.5 sub-forum.

icefractal
2013-06-22, 03:03 PM
Actually, I would move the PF Gunslinger up to tier 4. I had the same reaction when I read it - "Hmm, a Fighter that uses extra-expensive weaponry. Sounds terrible." However, I've been in three games with Gunslingers now, and in all cases, they were pretty damn effective - certainly as much so or more than a Barbarian.

* They do significant, Barbarian-level damage.
* They do it against touch AC (with full BAB), and at range.
* They have tricks to ignore concealment and distance.
* They have a trick to not provoke AoOs in melee.
* When you make 8+ attacks a round, crit-fishing (with a x4) is pretty effective, so high DR doesn't stop them either.
* As good at skills as the Barbarian; Dex (and Cha, for Mysterious Stranger) are better skill bases than Str.

Now it's definitely true that a Gunslinger with a poor choice of gun / tricks / feats will be pretty pathetic, but that's true for the Wizard as well.

CowardlyPaladin
2013-07-01, 11:12 PM
Updated it to include new classes. How would I move this to the 3.5 subforum?

MirddinEmris
2013-08-26, 01:37 AM
I think that every Iron Heroes class (except Arcanist) should be 1 tier higher. How any of this classes can be tier 5 when they are better than fighter in any way? They have got useful abilities and class features, and also some numbers on their side. And if we are taking Iron Heroes feats into the account, they really are become better (those feats chains are really powerful and allows many interesting combinations).

So, they are about 3-4 tier, from my experience they can hold their position when compared to ToB martial adepts (though due to non-magical nature of this alternative player's handbook they can't get flight, freedom of movement, etc.)

Haarkla
2013-08-26, 10:32 AM
It also depends on what your group is made up of, if you put a Summoner next to a non caster group it is going to look pretty OP, or if you play a generally lower Tier game. I've also heard people tell me that it is Tier 2, so if you disagree please let me know. The point of this thread is to try to establish what tiers everything is.

Summoner is ridiculously overpowered, tier 1 at least.

A level 1 summoner, with CHA 16 can cast 8 1st level spells per day, compared to 4 for a sorcerer, has a d8 hit dice, moderate BAB, can cast in light armour and has an animal companion that cannot die.

I would never allow one into a game.

Craft (Cheese)
2013-08-26, 10:56 AM
Summoner is ridiculously overpowered, tier 1 at least.

A level 1 summoner, with CHA 16 can cast 8 1st level spells per day, compared to 4 for a sorcerer, has a d8 hit dice, moderate BAB, can cast in light armour and has an animal companion that cannot die.

I would never allow one into a game.

Summoners are powerful, but they aren't even Tier 2. Their spellcasting is good but pretty much strictly worse to what a Sorcerer/Wizard gets access to, and while the Eidolon is very powerful it's only good for damage and minor utility. Their Summon Monster SLA is nice but little more than a backup for when their Eidolon bites it.

Arbane
2013-08-26, 04:21 PM
Summoners are powerful, but they aren't even Tier 2. Their spellcasting is good but pretty much strictly worse to what a Sorcerer/Wizard gets access to, and while the Eidolon is very powerful it's only good for damage and minor utility. Their Summon Monster SLA is nice but little more than a backup for when their Eidolon bites it.

I've seen a pretty good case made that Summoners become a bit stronger if you reverse that - use Summon Monster as your primary attack power, and use the Eidolon as an unkillable scout/skillmonkey.

Given the sheer flexibility of Summon Monster, I'd argue they make Tier 2.

CowardlyPaladin
2013-08-26, 05:43 PM
I think a summoner is Tier 2 because despite how powerful they are, they don't have much in terms of versatility. Anyways, does anybody have a favorite third book in terms of what to suggest

Grinner
2013-08-26, 06:21 PM
I think a summoner is Tier 2 because despite how powerful they are, they don't have much in terms of versatility. Anyways, does anybody have a favorite third book in terms of what to suggest

Here's a whole wiki's worth (http://www.purpleduckgames.com/main).

Craft (Cheese)
2013-08-26, 08:06 PM
I've seen a pretty good case made that Summoners become a bit stronger if you reverse that - use Summon Monster as your primary attack power, and use the Eidolon as an unkillable scout/skillmonkey.

Given the sheer flexibility of Summon Monster, I'd argue they make Tier 2.

I don't buy it. One, many of the useful utility summons from 3.5 were gutted out of the pathfinder summon lists (unless you allow houseruled custom summon lists), and the few useful ones that remain are left only on the very high level lists. You might as well argue the Healer is Tier 1 because they can eventually use Gate and split the game in half.

StreamOfTheSky
2013-08-26, 08:48 PM
Summon Monster in PF seems to access higher CR monsters at higher levels, while the levels 1-3 are weaker. In any case, the big gain in PF was how much smite evil got buffed. That makes those celestial tiger squads super scary.

Summoner is high tier 2. It's limited in what it can do, but it has so much raw power. The spell list is incredible, and he even gets some great spells earlier than wizards do (like haste at 4th class level), and the reductions means more of them are open to be buffed with cheap lesser metamagic rods. The eidolon is a straight up tier 3 in its own right, with massive melee power (pounce and 3 attacks right from level 1!) and tons of versatility between flight, being able to chain combat maneuvers off their attacks while still doing damage, +8 on skills if needed, and so on. Together, they break the action economy, out-acting most other classes 2-1 all day long.

PF Rogue is probably tier 5, maybe very low tier 4. It *is* worse than 3E rogue, he lost basically all of his useful toys and the class skills change, infinite cast detect magic (magical traps), and weakening of trapfinding (only need it to disable magical traps now, anything else including finding magic traps can be done w/o it) means they lost ALL of their niche protection. The other half of the problem is that most other classes got buffed. Most of the other melee classes (except monk, poor monks...) got combat buffs; bard became the true skill monkey of PF (they're the ultimate pokedex, versatile performance = "I haz moar skillz then you, rogue!", and Jack of All Trades is better than anything Rogue gets for skill class features), and the monsters are deadlier while tumbling is now suicidal and ranged SA near impossible.

PF Monk is even deeper into tier 6, if that's even possible.


Battle Dancer from Dragon Compendium is tier 5 at best, it's every bit as flawed as 3E Monk.