What is the playgrounds experiences of class power as optimization drops?

[Albions_Angel]

Hi all

So these forums run on the basic assumption that games run at a high level of optimization. In my experience, this is simply not true. Most games I have been in, powerful players live around tier 3, and even when they pick a tier 1 or 2 class, they usually end up playing a tier 4 or 5 character.

An example is my last parties barbarian/fighter. Because of book availability, we had no psionics, and were playing with Core, Complete, Races and variants from UA only. We had a druid in the party, and a rogue, and a cleric for relatively upper end characters (by tier) and a barbarian, monk and beguiler for lower tier chars. Because of the relatively low (compared to the playground, the players were still min/maxing their stats) optimization level, the best partymembers were actually the Barbarian/fighter, who could pounce, do 3 attacks with a spiked chain, and break 100+ damage at level 7, and the monk, who was built with tripping in mind and took the variant that swaps out flurry of blows for the follow up strike. Even the beguiler did better than the rogue at being a skill monkey.

Meanwhile, the druid hid behind her bear (refluffed wolf that just "grew larger" when it would have been swapped out), the cleric did more or less nothing useful, and the rogue... well, ok, the rogue player is an awful player always.

Now, dont get me wrong. The cleric and the druid are actually the most experienced players in the game, and I have seen some of their fully optimized level 20 builds and they can do what the playground expects. But without purposely picking the right spells, not picking bad ones mind you, just not picking the most broken ones, their usefulness dropped dramatically.

In another recent game, our wizard did ok, but without access to spell compendium, and with us spending most of our time below level 10, my duskblade and the battle sorcerer were just hands down better in every situation.

A final situation would be my level 12 grey elf CA ninja, who took over from the party rogue when she left, and ended up doing more reliable sneak attack than the aforementioned rogue, and a better scout than anyone else.

So, what have you guys seen in "low" optimization games? How much does wiz being tier 1 depend on things like spell compendium, or having access to a lot of down time to write scrolls? When does the tier system actually take effect (because frankly a fighter is very solidly tier 4 at level 1, maybe tier 3, depending on what feat he takes, while I would argue a wizard is certainly not tier 1 at level 1)? Do you not agree with me at all? What do you consider "broken" to mean (is broken always unplayable, like truenamer, or is broken only broken in high optimization games, like fighter)? What "broken" or "low tier" classes have surprised you when you have seen it played?

[Apricot]

When optimization drops, character potency quickly leans to favor the most imaginative and clever players who come up with interesting things to do. When characters are ridiculously strong and have clear "best options," decisionmaking becomes less critical. The best move is already there for you. But when optimization is low, there's far more wiggle room and the off-the-wall uses of traditionally weak mechanics offer far more oomph. Overall, I'd say that class power drops sharply in relevance.

[Albions_Angel]

Thats my experience and gut feeling too, Apricot.

A wizard in a high op game will always have a way of getting through the door. However in a low op game, he might not know open/close, knock, warp wood, or some other door opening/removing/bypassing spell. Instead, the rogue can pick it, the fighter can just bust it down, the bard can talk his way in, the ninja just waits, hidden, until it opens, then burns ki to slip in invisible, etc. But I was worried I was the only one here that thought like that, and that the games I have been in were actually a huge anomaly.

[nedz]

Well Player > Build > Class - as we all know.

There are also, at least, two games being played: the meta-game of building your character, and the actual game being played at the table.

Some classes have quite low floors: I have seen a high level Wizard who's spell choices only ever seemed to be Magic Missile or Fireball.

I've also seen quite powerful Monks: but they did have a Buffer-Cleric and a Buffer-Wizard helping them out (being MAD Monks buff up quite well) and there were still situations where they were helpless.

The thing with Tier 1 characters is that to realize their potential is a lot of work and most of that is at the table. Tier 2 characters are better if the player does their homework. If the player isn't prepared to invest the time and effort into this then the character will under perform. Lower tier character tend to be more of a turn up and go sort of thing.

[OldTrees1]

Different classes have different ceilings and floors. Other posters will go more in depth so I will skip past it.


Also both power and versatility are each multidimensional. Decreased optimization can be focused on aspect or spread out across the different aspects.

For Fighters their versatility can be simplified to a 2 dimensional chart: What options they have as a function of what situation they are in. Adding more/subtracting some versatility could either increase/decrease the number of options in existing non 0 categories or it could increase/decrease the number of non 0 categories.

For example:
Knockback adds another option to some of the situations the Fighter already had options but does not allow the Fighter to handle new situations.
Flight on the other hand now allows the Fighter to handle some new situations (any that required aerial combat to participate) but does not really add to situations the Fighter could already handle.

So when optimization drops it might create situations that the Fighter is unable to participate, or it might just remove one of the various valid options the Fighter had available.


Now I can identify 4 types of optimization drops. (you might be able to spot a 5th)
1) Intentional weakening.
This is where the options are still available to the player, but the player decided not to include them in their build in order to bring down their power level to match the group. This hits power almost exclusively with no or negligible impact on versatility. Furthermore the power decrease tends to be spread out in order to lower everything to a certain power level.

2) Bans
This is where a specific option is made unavailable to the player. Usually this is to decrease power but sometimes it is also to hit versatility. In both cases it is localized. The power decrease only hits the area banned and the versatility decrease(if there is one) only hits the area with the ban.

3) Reduced Sources
Reduced sources is when the numbers of options are reduced in an arbitrary manner(like reducing the number of available books). This hits different classes differently. The power level of material in different books tends to be relatively constant so power is not terribly effected. Casters tend to have redundant material printed frequently and in decent variety, as such caster versatility is mostly unaffected (see Bans). Non casters on the other hand tend to have their material clumped by kind, as such non caster versatility tends to decrease. Since most non caster versatility is more like Knockback than like Flight, reduced sources tend to affect non casters mostly in the options per situation but there can be notable cases where the number of situations they can participate in decreases.

4) System mastery
Reduced sources affects the options available in an arbitrary manner. Reduced system mastery affects the options known about. This does not seem much of a difference, however the more obscure options tend to be qualitatively different from the more common ones. So usually decreased system mastery translates to decreased versatility in a manner contrary to the common knowledge about the class. Thus system mastery tends to add options to existing situations for casters while adding new situations for non casters. A decrease in system mastery would be the reverse (decrease in options to existing circumstances for casters and increased cases of uselessness for non casters).

[Darth Ultron]

So, what have you guys seen in "low" optimization games? How much does wiz being tier 1 depend on things like spell compendium, or having access to a lot of down time to write scrolls? When does the tier system actually take effect (because frankly a fighter is very solidly tier 4 at level 1, maybe tier 3, depending on what feat he takes, while I would argue a wizard is certainly not tier 1 at level 1)? Do you not agree with me at all? What do you consider "broken" to mean (is broken always unplayable, like truenamer, or is broken only broken in high optimization games, like fighter)? What "broken" or "low tier" classes have surprised you when you have seen it played?

I rarely play with ''high optimizer like you see on the boards''. I can spot them fairly quickly by the things they say and words they use and simply choose to not game with them. So I mostly game with low op or no op players that just want to have normal fun.

There are plenty of players that don't need or want to play at the high optimization craziness.

And a couple of simple house rules like divine watchdog intervention and spell availability can cut clerics and wizards down to like tier 5.

[Seward]

This is a complicated question. My own experience is that the players with the most system mastery often take paths that aren't normally considered optimal (for example, my single-target-blaster oriented wizard that plays like an archer with awesome out of combat utility) both as an intellectual challenge and to show the scope of the game. Hell I know a guy who is trying to make a Pathfinder Society legal character using only a single "dip" into 11 different full BAB classes, just to see how it turns out. Because I know he's a great player, I know he'll be an asset at any table.

My experience is that players with low system mastery will make a hash of even very basic characters. They won't remember to power attack or rage, they won't understand how to use Grit or Panache and god help them if the are playing any kind of "prepared spells" class (normally considered tier 1, but option paralysis and lack of understanding of even the most basic tactics and teamwork mean their actions don't do much in combat once they've exhausted a few basic options, such as "cast blessing of fervor first" or "evil eye hex for -2 saves".

Finally, I find that most of what makes tier 1 a tier 1 class just doesn't come up in a lot of settings. I play a lot of Organized Play (Living Greyhawk back in the day, Pathfinder Society now). Those games have a lot more reactive stuff - the entire adventure starts and finishes on the same day when your character didn't know he was going to do anything but chill at the tavern that day and while stuff like teleport is handy if you pick up mummy rot in the bottom of some forgotten tomb and need a cure in a major city, it isn't normally how you get to the adventure, and you rarely have the kind of hook you need for scry/fry tactics. Plus the campaign pretty much ends most of its play by level 12, which leaves out L7-9 shenanigans, bans crafting and permanency entirely to avoid character wealth discrepancies and makes consumables cheap and easy so your martial types have spell support via potions/scrolls/wands even when they are at a party without, say, a primary arcane caster. Attacks on hard targets are fairly common, so buffs that last over 10 minutes are pretty worthwhile, but you can't count on having them for every encounter.

This is going to lead to a different "I contribute strongly in every game" character design than my first 3.0 campaign, where the GM set it in late Roman tech in a Britain analogue after the Legions went home to fight civil wars (no heavy armor, no major cities - gear was VERY hard to find) and favored long, time critical adventures set far from anywhere (so my crafting gnome wizard had only two sessions of crafting in the entire game and her spellbook above level 2 was level-up spells only until she could teleport to civilization and trade with legionaries). Everybody was vastly below wealth by level and in self-defense we started doing 10 minute adventuring days (buff up with 1 minute spells to make up for lack of gear, and have a great escape plan to evade pursuit, sleep, lather rinse repeat, varying time of day and attack to keep the enemy guessing).

I find that for low system mastery characters, helping them with a build or spell selection that gives them simple but useful options to choose from, no more than about 5-6, applicable to most combats, makes them useful if not amazing contributors. The high system mastery folks, by contrast, will figure out how to contribute no matter what goofy character they're playing or what roleplay restrictions they put on their tactics, gear or build choices.

There's also the concept of a "professional adventurer" that sometimes is played against and sometimes played up. The professional has the golfbag of weapons to beat any DR, has basic consumables (eg, at low levels antitoxin, clw wand, a few lesser restoration scrolls, splash weapons, potion of fly etc) to allow unprepared party members fix him up between combat or to deal with edge conditions (like a sudden underwater fight or flying opponents). Some people enjoy playing against type ("I'm a scholar!" is popular in Pathfinder Society) and will rely on their native class abilities rather than gear to cope with any situation that comes up. Again, if you're good at the game, you can get away with this pretty easily. If your system mastery is low and you're imitating somebody skilled playing this kind of character you can get into a lot of trouble. So one thing we do to help out other players in Pathfinder Society is when the situation comes up and you share something you bought for your own use with a teammate, you encourage them to go buy some for "next time". I have characters that only learn to carry, say, antitoxin, after getting poisoned. I have others that spend the majority of their gold from the first adventure plugging all of those "professional" gaps. Characters supposed to be good at something unusual have unusual gear. (my ex-smuggler has swim fins, because she is a great swimmer even without a swim speed and used to smuggle stuff underwater into sewers. With longstrider running and fins on, she can manage 20'/move action in water, half that if stealthing)

I find in general, compared to Board theorycraft, the ability to do raw damage is underrated in theory. In practice, killing your enemies quickly requires the least system mastery and is useful in nearly every adventure. Being good at everything else but incapable of dealing meaningful damage is fine and even excellent if you are a skilled player of medic/support or battlefield control/debuff characters and somebody else DOES deal meaningful damage. But I never get into the kind of trouble with my offense-oriented characters or my tiny halfling tank that I get into with my support characters when I have the player with the strongest melee keep fleeing a battlefield for "roleplay" reasons after I've carefully kept everybody alive and moved the fight to a confined area against an invisible flying wizard. We cornered the damn guy, even got an invisibility purge up finally and couldn't kill or capture him because half our offense ran away for no mechanical reason and refused to come back. It only wasn't a TPK because we did show we had some teeth and the wizard fled because he didn't know that all that healing I did had tapped me out of not just my party healing stuff but also pretty much all of my other options, burning spell slots and x/day abilities like water. (this was a level 8-9 adventure with only two people level 8-9, me and the guy who fled, leaving several level 5-6 characters to try to take down a level 12ish, fully buffed wizard).

If you are half the offense for the party, you have a responsibility to stay in the fight unless mechanically prevented. If half the offense can't fight for any reason, it is the job of the support character to get them back into the fight. Nothing makes you immune to this problem in organized play, that's part of the fun. But I feel bad as a player if I'm the guy with most of the offense, maybe the only character fully "in tier" and I get myself taken out of the fight due to bad planning or bad luck. It's not really avoidable though - if your party lack a competent support person to deal with battlefield control or remove serious debuffs sometimes you're going to roll a string of bad saves and things are going to suck. That's when everybody else at the table needs to step things up a notch and all you can do as a player is encourage them to keep trying and not give up.

Basically, if the offense is on low system mastery characters, it is a hell of a lot harder to support them. If it's on high system mastery characters, the lack of support will certainly cramp their game and make things more dangerous, but a lot of the time they'll either win anyway by brute power, pulling out expensive "nova" options or will have some tricky way to avoid actually dying until the other players start contributing. For this reason, I tend to play my support characters when I'm fresh and sharp, and focus more on my thuggish characters when I'm likely to be tired or distracted (like the last day of a convention).

[Denomar]

I tend to agree that the tier system doesn't usually reflect what actually happens at a table.

In theory the wizard is the best prepared best character who is best at everything ever.

In REALITY the wizard stresses out over when to cast his spells for fear of wasting them and feels grouchy when he Doesn't know that one spell that would have obviously solved whatever problem the party is currently in. I am currently playing an Arcanist in a live sit down version of Kingmaker and I've got a list right now of spells that I know...and spells that I seem to need to learn, I'll let you guess which list is longer. Playing by the rules its actually pretty difficult to get all the spells that the tier system just assumes that you have access too. Both in terms of the costs to acquire and learn the spells, and the in game time. Any heavily constrained or railroaded adventure (like many of the adventure paths from paizo) make it that much more difficult to go "ok, I go to study for the next month at the Lyceum of the Arcane Order"

The Fighter on the other hand is perfectly happy to walk up and pummel a monster because that is what the player obviously finds FUN.

I feel like the tier system is more reflective of a theoretical ceiling of breadth of effectiveness. A player playing a Cleric who takes the time to figure out all the best spells to make themselves a killing machine and also keep enough spell slots to troubleshoot will probably be more effective than the fighter woud since the fighter can't cast remove curse or whatever.

The player playing a cleric who prepares the same spells every day and primarily sits in the back casting cure spells or repetitive channel energy uses technically won't.

I know a guy who had the opportunity to play a wizard using pathfinder's mythic rules set. Wild Arcana literally lets you cast any spell that you could (even if you don't know it). The character didn't even make it to the table because the player didn't want to have to know every spell (as in, know what all those spells do) and worried that he'd spend so much time searching through sourcebooks for that one perfect spell that the game would grind to a halt.

In my actual table top experience. No One optimizes as hard as the game could be.