are Tiers and Optimization relevant in PVE campaigns?

[foobar1969]

My group got an itch to do an adventure path under 3.5 rules. I was "removed from game" while 3E was current, so now I'm reading up on various boards, and the recurring topic I see is Tiers. Fighters suck, full casters rule. These discussions seem to focus on upper level (edit: ignore PVP remark) with unlimited preparation time to buy and/or craft specific items.

Does anyone actually play like that?

The last time I participated in a game where PCs shopped at Duke Samuel of Walton's Infinite Armory was my early teens in 1E. The groups I'm in also don't offer sabbatical weeks to cast 50 spells into a wand. You sit around idle that long, BBEG will conquer an entire country.

Under these constraints, does the power difference between casters and mundanes still exist? If you have to storm a fortress and you don't get to do it one room per day, the ability to say "I attack" a hundred times in a row seems pretty well optimized.

[AstralFire]

Level 20 Fighter versus Level 20 Wizard arenas fell out of vogue years and years ago; it's generally agreed that in an arena, whoever wins initiative wins.

The Tiers are, in fact, a guideline to DMs for controlling their campaign world - everyone should be within one tier of each other if they play at approximately equivalent levels of skill, and you can expect increasing ability to trivialize more common encounters as you go up the tiers.

And yes, the broad issues still occur. I personally don't think I could stand to play in the games that many of the current regulars do, and I intentionally engage a lower level of optimization - no crafting shenanigans, no wands of cure light wounds to be used with UMD, very few magic items. Nonetheless, it's still bloody obvious the difference in tiers for characters I build, and as a DM I outlaw most of the T1 and T5-6 classes (even - especially the ones from core) while instituting nerfs to many T2s.

[Elderand]

The tier system is not about PvP it's about PvE

[PraxisVetli]

Common misconception here is that tiers are about combat; they aren't.
Tiers are about Versatility, the ability "to solve any problem".
Blasting is fairly inefficient for a Mage, so its quite likely for a melee to bypass in damage output. However, the mage can trap, immobilize, or summon an army to fight, the BBEG as well.

[foobar1969]

Okay, ignore the bit about PVP. The rest of the question still remains.

If you're under any sort of clock where unlimited item selection and the one encounter workday are not allowed, how does this affect Tiers?

[eggynack]

The tier system, based on some discussions, may appear to be PvP based, but it is not. The tier system is a measurement of what percentage of encounters and challenges a class can contribute to, and PvP stats are nigh on irrelevant to that metric. Fighters are capable of attacking, often for quite a bit of damage, but that is all they can do. If an enemy is flying, or has some sort of miss chance, or tosses some battlefield control in the fighter's way, the fighter has approximately no native means to solve that problem. Wizards have the means to solve just about any problem, even based off of a default spell list.

While your fighter is fighting his way through room after room of encounters, the wizard uses scry and die tactics to kill the BBEG directly. But hell, maybe the boss has some way to stop teleportation. In that case, the wizard can tunnel through the walls. But maybe the walls are impossible to tunnel through, you say. In that case, maybe the wizard uses flight to skip over a decent number of issues, or otherwise render them impossibly easy to kill, and cuts the number of encounters in half. And on, and on, and on, and these are pretty standard and default tactics I'm using. Wizards force the DM to craft the campaign around them, and the campaign that is crafted is often impossibly difficult for fighters.

Edit: Also, I'm pretty sure that the tier system is based on a four encounter day, and normal item selection, so it wouldn't affect the tier system at all. The fact that wizards have access to perfect resting tricks is pretty great though.

[AstralFire]

Okay, ignore the bit about PVP. The rest of the question still remains.

If you're under any sort of clock where unlimited item selection and the one encounter workday are not allowed, how does this affect Tiers?

I edited my post while you were responding, I think. But let me reiterate: from personal experience, even with highly restricted magic item access and wide variance in encounters, the Tiers hold, by and large. There are some exceptions - T1-3 Psionics will do worse with many many encounters per day if they don't also have significant magic item access - but by and large, the difference is actually worsened.

[Elderand]

It doesn't really affect anything if the player know what they are doing.
The ability to keep going all day whitout rest or running out of ressources like a fighter is supposed to do is actually false.
Fighter do have a ressource, it's called HP.

Meanwhile a wizard of sufficiently high level who know what he is doing will be able to renew is ressource in a couple minutes with fast time plane abuse.

Tier 1 and 2 break the game easily and the higher level they get the worse it becomes.

[Morph Bark]

Okay, ignore the bit about PVP. The rest of the question still remains.

If you're under any sort of clock where unlimited item selection and the one encounter workday are not allowed, how does this affect Tiers?

It reigns in casters a bit, especially prepared casters (all Tier 1s, essentially), but at higher levels they have enough spells per day to make that little of an issue.

Unlimited item selection can make Tier 4s play similar to Tier 3s, but otherwise it's largely equal across the board IF you disallow caster level-boosting items and Candles of Invocation and such items (but then it won't be unlimited item selection). The other major exception is classes of Tier 3 and below that have Use Magic Device as a class skill, as unlimited item selection is a huge boon to them.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Some people do play like that but this is irrelevant.

The tier listings (it's really not a system, per se) are built around a class's potential depth and breadth of capability.

Fighters rank so lowly because they have a very limited focus in their abilities and the power they can bring to bear in that limited focus is also fairly limited.

Conversely, wizards can apply their abilities across virtually all circumstances and can bring world shattering power to bear in almost any of those circumstances. Even if they don't have the necessary spells for a given situation, it's trivial for them to aquire them within a short period of time while the more martial classes are simply out of luck if they don't have the tools for the current situation.

[Urpriest]

Okay, ignore the bit about PVP. The rest of the question still remains.

If you're under any sort of clock where unlimited item selection and the one encounter workday are not allowed, how does this affect Tiers?

Item selection hurts mundanes more than casters, while time pressure hurts casters a little more than it hurts mundanes. The Tier system as a whole isn't affected, though. A caster who prepares from a list that spans every book WotC ever published will be more prepared than a caster whose spells known were chosen from every book every published, which will in turn be more prepared than a character with versatile abilities chosen from a few books, who will be more useful than a character that can only be built to do one useful thing, which will be more useful than a character that does one situational thing. That's all the tier system is.

[Red Fel]

The tier system is not about PvP it's about PvE

This, in a nutshell.

The Tiers have little to do with which class can beat other classes. That's mostly a player strength, not a class strength - a capable Monk-player could ruin a less-capable Wizard-player.

The purposes of the Tier system is primarily PvE, and can easily be expressed in terms of players and DMs.

Players: Tiers tell the players the relative abilities of classes. This allows players to play a class that is as versatile and flexible as they desire. If they want to play a Monk, they can, but familiarity with the Tier system will mean that they do so knowing that their abilities will be limited when compared with those of their partymembers. A player familiar with the Tier system has, in short, a reasonable expectation of what he can or cannot accomplish. In addition, the Tiers set a bar for what a player should aim for. For example, a player playing a T1 in a party of T3-T4s should find ways to restrain himself, lest he overshadow the group; a player playing a T4 in a party of T2s should expect to feel less valuable unless he is extremely creative. Players can seek to employ classes in a similar Tier range to better improve everyone's experience.

DMs: Tiers tell the DM the relative abilities of their players' classes. This allows the DM to tailor the campaign accordingly. For example, a DM in a campaign with many T1-T2 characters has to be extremely careful, as the characters' abilities can easily throw a DM's plans wildly off course; by contrast, a DM with many T3-T5 characters will know that his characters' abilities may be limited, and can tailor encounters accordingly. Further, the Tier system allows the DM to set guidelines as to what classes may or may not be played in his campaign. This allows a less experienced or more conservative DM to exclude characters whose versatility might crack his world wide open, or to exclude characters likely to be killed off very quickly in his merciless world.

With regard to the modified topic, removing Magic Mart and the 1-hour work day hurts lower Tiers far more than it hurts higher Tiers. A T4, for instance, is more likely to be highly dependent on particular gear and buffing spells from allies, if not his own spell list. A T1, by contrast, with the right preparation, can prepare spells that can eliminate most of the dungeon's obstacles in a single day. If he can't, he has ways to restore his spells in ways the writers likely did not fully contemplate.

Saying that a Fighter can keep swinging his sword ignores the fact that he can't do it alone; he needs the Cleric's buffs and Turn Undead, the Wizard's fireballs, maybe even the Paladin's precious smites.

[nedz]

There is another maxim which is relevant.

Player > Build > Class

This means that the player's ability is more important than the build they are using, which is in turn more important then the classes involved. The Tier system mainly focusses on the Class end of this scale and I have certainly seen Monks played better than some Wizards. For example a high level wizard who only ever casts Fireballs and Magic Missiles is probably less useful than a Monk who sneaks up on their enemy and routinely stuns them; but all the Wizard player would have to do is prepare a better selection of spells and they could make the Monk irrelevant.

[Prime32]

The tiers basically measure how close you are to this (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StoryBreakerPower).

[Seerow]

Okay, ignore the bit about PVP. The rest of the question still remains.

If you're under any sort of clock where unlimited item selection and the one encounter workday are not allowed, how does this affect Tiers?

Frankly limiting magic item selectability screws mundanes more than mages unless you specifically tailor loot to boost the mundanes.

A limited clock can hurt low level spell casters, but if that's a frequent issues, there are work arounds that let casters continue to shine even in those situations. And of course if you have a limited clock in a campaign where there are not casters, mundanes get hit much harder by it (lesser access to healing/status restoration, MUCH slower travel, etc)

[SiuiS]

My group got an itch to do an adventure path under 3.5 rules. I was "removed from game" while 3E was current, so now I'm reading up on various boards, and the recurring topic I see is Tiers. Fighters suck, full casters rule. These discussions seem to focus on upper level (edit: ignore PVP remark) with unlimited preparation time to buy and/or craft specific items.

Does anyone actually play like that?

The last time I participated in a game where PCs shopped at Duke Samuel of Walton's Infinite Armory was my early teens in 1E. The groups I'm in also don't offer sabbatical weeks to cast 50 spells into a wand. You sit around idle that long, BBEG will conquer an entire country.

Under these constraints, does the power difference between casters and mundanes still exist? If you have to storm a fortress and you don't get to do it one room per day, the ability to say "I attack" a hundred times in a row seems pretty well optimized.

After level 6, optimization does begin to matter when some party members routinely show up other party members. This is as true if you have a low OP fighter and a mid/high OP Druid, is it is if you have a power attack/great cleave two handed fighter and a sword-n-board fighter and only fight enemies with very high HP totals, or have a fighter and a rogue but every enemy is immune to sneak attack.

That's... It. I've played with low-OP monks, fighters and psychic warriors, and it was just as fun and engaging as when I play the multiverse conquering god-sorcerer of Arcadia. The only time it's not fun is when I'm playing a tricked out fighter, OP'd to the nines, and my buddy though fireball was totally the coolest spell so that's all his wizard knows.

The fact that my fighter outshone his wizard should tell you all you need to know :smallsmile:

[Yora]

Does anyone actually play like that?
Generally not. But there isn't much to talk about the mechanics and pros and cons of laid back adventuring with friends.

[Eldan]

To expand a bit:

There are many things that a PC of a certain level is just expected to be able to do. Mundanes often can't do them without items, while a sorcerer can do them with nothing but a component pouch.

Look at flying. There's three ways to get it. Play a flying race (which costs you levels), get a buff spell from a caster or get a flight item. The same goes for magic weapons, resistances and immunities to various attack forms, teleportation, planar travel, special attacks against monsters that are difficult to take down with straight HP damage and a hundred other things.

With few or no magic items, a level 20 fighter can talk up to things and hit them with his sword, if they stand on the ground and are corporeal or shoot them with his bow if he has one. If he needs to travel somewhere, he can buy a horse, book a ship or walk. If he needs to make friends, he can roll his cross-class diplomacy. If he needs to find a person, you better hope his intelligence was decent enough to also buy cross-class gather information.

A level 20 wizard with only his spellbook and components? Fight things in 30 different ways, including scry-and-die, summoned monsters and other ways of not even having to be where the fight happens. He can travel casually to another continent or plane by teleport in seconds. He can charm and dominate. He can scry and divine.

That's what the tier system measures. How many problem solving tools does your class give you. Low tier classes can get access to a lot of them with magic items. Casters get better with magic items, since they can save their spells for other things, but they don't need them the way other classes do.

Of course, it never says that this will happen. It's a potential, things to look out for. In actual play, the caster will spread his spells around to the group, everyone will contribute smart ideas on how a problem could be solved and the DM can steer things a bit. And players don't generally come up with all the ideas a theoretical optimizer could.

[Tysis]

My group got an itch to do an adventure path under 3.5 rules. I was "removed from game" while 3E was current, so now I'm reading up on various boards, and the recurring topic I see is Tiers. Fighters suck, full casters rule. These discussions seem to focus on upper level (edit: ignore PVP remark) with unlimited preparation time to buy and/or craft specific items.

Does anyone actually play like that?

I like playing high op tier 1 characters with my current group of friends. I'm currently playing a dmm cleric in a group with a dungeoncrasher fighter, a mid op rogue, a mid op scout, and a low op druid using the shapeshifting variant from PHBII. That doesn't mean I go codzilla every fight, I mostly just buff, help flank for the rogue and heal between fight(usually with persisted mass lesser vigor). For me knowing that I can go codzilla if the s*** hits the fan and my party members are about to start dropping like flies is comforting.


The last time I participated in a game where PCs shopped at Duke Samuel of Walton's Infinite Armory was my early teens in 1E. The groups I'm in also don't offer sabbatical weeks to cast 50 spells into a wand. You sit around idle that long, BBEG will conquer an entire country.

If the bbeg is high enough level to conquer a nation with spells then the players are likely high enough level they can plane shift to another plane with different time traits to prepare/plan.

If the bbeg is planning on using an army of mooks, you probably have a fighter with supreme cleave that is crying tears of joy while the party sends the bard to do their shopping.


Under these constraints, does the power difference between casters and mundanes still exist? If you have to storm a fortress and you don't get to do it one room per day, the ability to say "I attack" a hundred times in a row seems pretty well optimized.

Casters can go more than one room per day, I mean they wont be shooting fireballs everywhere but hey why burn down the castle you're about to own. A wizard can just hire some people and cast haste and mass bull's strength and just watch his minions storm the castle

[JaronK]

My group got an itch to do an adventure path under 3.5 rules. I was "removed from game" while 3E was current, so now I'm reading up on various boards, and the recurring topic I see is Tiers. Fighters suck, full casters rule. These discussions seem to focus on upper level (edit: ignore PVP remark) with unlimited preparation time to buy and/or craft specific items.

Let's be clear about a few things.

1) The Tier System was in part an argument AGAINST the idea that Fighters suck and Wizards rule. Instead, it was showing that Fighters and Wizards are playing two different games... Fighters play a game where the DM makes sure you have challenges you can actually deal with (i.e. making sure there's at least one combat per session where the Fighter gets to hit stuff), while Wizards play a game where the DM puts a world in front of you and lets you wreck havoc on it (i.e. "Okay, so I'm going to use Wall of Stone + Unseen Crafter to build a castle and block the pass in response to that enemy army. Then let's Plane Shift to the Abyss... I want to fight some demons!). It's not about sucking vs ruling, it's an acknowledgment (and warning) of the difference so that DMs (and players) can properly prepare if they have such a tier difference in their party and compensate accordingly.

2) It's not about PvP. Never was. Note how if you read the initial Tier post, the examples of scenarios given include raiding a dragon's lair, saving a town from an invading orc army, and making contact with a resistance leader in an evil city. These are gaming scenarios. PvP is irrelevant to the tier system, except in that sometimes PCs fight NPC versions of PC classes.

Of course, when comparing classes a natural instinct for some people is to figure out how well they'd fight each other, but for tier purposes this is only relevant in showing how the class deals with one particular sort of challenge (fighting an equal leveled PC class enemy of that particular class that the DM is playing really smart).

3) The level band measured is level 6-15, primarily. 1-5 is considered, but is less important because the balance issues are lesser at those levels.

4) There is no assumption of prep time. Rather, it's assumed you're in a campaign. Some campaigns are lightning fast, others have months of downtime. Your ability to capitalize on that downtime (by doing things like building castles for fun) is factored in, but hardly the only factor.


The last time I participated in a game where PCs shopped at Duke Samuel of Walton's Infinite Armory was my early teens in 1E. The groups I'm in also don't offer sabbatical weeks to cast 50 spells into a wand. You sit around idle that long, BBEG will conquer an entire country.

Lack of access to a magic mart makes people who can quickly craft new items much better.


Under these constraints, does the power difference between casters and mundanes still exist? If you have to storm a fortress and you don't get to do it one room per day, the ability to say "I attack" a hundred times in a row seems pretty well optimized.

Saying "I attack" over and over means you run out of hit points eventually. That's part of why Crusaders, Binders, and similar are higher up than Fighters... they don't need to run out of hitpoints. You know what else lets you storm the fortress? Animate Dead minions (Zombie Hydras! Skeletal Dire Tigers! Skeletal Dire Bears! Oh My!) backed by auto healing Necrosis Carnexes, all available from a 3rd level Cleric spell or 4th level Wizard spell. Cast it once, and you've got a minion that might be better at attack attack attack than a Fighter for as long as the creature can stay alive (or, well, undead). DMM:Persistent spell Clerics with Lesser Mass Vigor and Divine Power can smash through a castle or dungeon without stopping far better than Fighters can. This is why when a DM is running a campaign with Fighters in it they need camp and rest points added in to keep them alive, but with a serious Tier 1 group they have to focus on challenging them.

Notice how the advice in the tier post is all towards fixing balance problems in the party so that everyone has fun together as they go forward. It's not a lot of fun to be a low optimization Fighter in a group where the Cleric 6 has a pair of 10 headed Zombie Hydras that do more damage and soak more punishment than you do. A good party usually feels like a group of protagonists in the story... not one protagonist and some red shirts. The tier system is about anticipating these problems before they start so that doesn't happen, and so that Fighters can NOT suck and Wizards can NOT rule.

JaronK