Please help me prove the OP of wizard/cleric/druid to a friend

[sutasafaia]

I've been having a long standing debate with a friend about how stupidly powerful these classes can be, and how problematic they can be in a campaign when allowed to get out of control. Anyway, it's been months of on again off again debate and I won't bore you with mountains of details, but he is convinced that there is room in the party for everybody. The way our games tend to work, is we adventure for 4 minutes, casters blow all their spells, then we rest for 8 hours. Rinse and repeat, and he thinks nothing is wrong with this. I was trying to explain that this completely ruins any other classes chance to shine.

Anyway, it ended up becoming a debate where I told him a primary caster could easily out-rogue a rogue. I've seen the debate tons of times on forums, but have never seen any real builds. He's a bit stubborn so trying to explain things to him without solid up front evidence and builds will get me absolutely nowhere, so I've decided to request this from the forum.

Anything you want to dump is appreciated, but the goal here is to show up primary casters can out-do any other class at whatever it is they are supposed to be best at. The catch is, incredibly rare magic items and the like don't count since he doesn't consider them valid since they don't show up that often, same for +2 LA races, tons of multiclassing (since wizard 1 / rogue 19 is still basically rogue), stuff like that. But, he also likes to have high magic campaigns so he's kind of trying to have his cake and eat it too, but I'm willing to bet there are still countless ways for the primaries to outdo every other class in the game.

Please, help me prove him wrong. It's driving me crazy that he doesn't see how absurdly unbalanced the primary casting classes are.

[AvatarVecna]

First rule of playing 3.X D&D: Don't ruin the game for anybody else just to prove a point. Now, if we're ignoring step one, here's a decent method for pitting characters against each other without them directly fighting each other.

While the full casters can fill any role they want, they're not really at their best when building to wreck face at one specific role, but when they give themselves the versatility to fill any role well enough. Here's a good way to show off why casters are so ridiculous: build characters of at least 10th lvl or so, to give both classes enough time to really get into their groove; have your friend build their optimized rogue and you build your optimized caster (make sure both builds are kept secret from everyone except an agreed-upon arbiter, such as your normal DM. Have all your other friends you game with come up with scenarios that they consider fitting challenges, from combat to information gathering to infiltration...really go nuts. Once again, make sure that only the DM knows all the challenges. Now, put all the challenge suggestions into a hat or something and have the DM draw one randomly, then have both characters react to it as best they can, with all their resources available at the start of the scenario; have everybody talk things out, to figure out whose solution they think is the most efficient, or the most elegant, or the coolest, or whatever. Then pick another one, and talk it out. Do it again. Keep going until the point has been made.

You want a build that can out-rogue the rogue? Okay: make a Gnome Wizard 10/Shadowcraft Mage 5, with the Vulnerable and Frail flaws, as well as the gnome wizard racial ACF levels from Races Of Stone and the "Chains of Disbelief" and "Illusion Mastery" ACFs from Unearthed Arcana. Feats are as follows: Heighten Spell (ECL 1), Earth Sense (Flaw), Earth Spell (Flaw), Extend Spell (ECL 3), Arcane Thesis: Silent Image (ECL 6), Signature Spell: Silent Image (ECL 9), Silent Spell (ECL 12), Still Spell (ECL 15)

Okay, so fill up your prepared spells with useful utility spells that aren't Silent Image or any of the spells you can recreate with Silent Image from ScM 3. This gives you the freedom that comes with having a wide variety of utility spells available, while also letting you spontaneously convert any of those spells into an one-level-higher Heightened Extended Stilled Silenced Silent Image. For example, if you prepare Fly, but need to blast something, you can turn that into a Silent Image spell with Extend, Sill, Silent, and Heighten on it (the first three are free because Arcane Thesis, leaving all the rest of the spell level increases for Heighten Spell); once you do this, you can recreate any 3rd lvl spell of the appropriate schools with your Silent Image. Oh yeah, and your Silent Image spell isn't double duration, it's octuple duration, because both the Gnome Wizard ACF levels and Shadowcraft Mage do that. Oh yeah, and whatever slot you changed out to cast Silent Image in, it's (30+(level *10))% real even if they make their save against the illusion part.

[Pluto!]

The fact that you're tagging out for a third party to make this case for you implies that it's less clear-cut than you make it out. And specifically making a build to show him up similarly undermines your point.

Build a Wizard. Nothing special, a human generalist Wizard with your highest score in Intelligence and the others however is most pleasing to you. Spend your spell slots as normal, don't get anything too crazy or flagrant in terms of stepping on the Rogue's toes - some control spells, some summons, some damage spells, some utility spells, some enchantments, some buffs. Just be sure to get Alter Self and some form of teleport (even Benign Transposition is fine - remember you have a tiny bird/bat friend as part of the class). Maybe Knock and/or Charm, but don't overdo it.

Work together to make a Rogue-testing gauntlet that both the Rogue and your character will go through to test their skills. Let him go with his speciaized Rogue. Do the same with your unspecialized Wizard. Show him up like that, and you'll make your point.

[avr]

Look up the tier system for rating classes or the same game test. Either includes some solid reasoning as to why wizards are far more able than fighters or rogues, to say nothing of monks.

Running a game to prove the point is itself going crazy IMO. Time will teach him; showcases like this seldom convince anyone.

[sutasafaia]

Not trying to ruin the game or anything like that, I just know that other people are far better at this sort of thing than I am and he's incredibly hard to convince. I've used the tier system before, he thinks the tier system is BS. The problem is he basically thinks random people on the internet are going to be biased whiners with not enough facts and mostly just rhetoric. It isn't that I'm trying to stop him from playing X, it's that I'm trying to simply prove to him how powerful the primary casters are and how poorly the system is setup for them. It would never stop us from playing anything we wanted to play, hell I play Warlocks (and practically only Warlocks) because I love them, not because I have any illusions about them seriously competing with primary casters. I'm just trying to prove a point, is all, not take away anybody's fun. We aren't even in a campaign right now, this is just an old discussion we always seem to have and I lack the knowledge of the books to prove my point, even though I know people have proven it before and simply can't find enough info that he considers relevant.

[AvatarVecna]

You need arguments that will highlight the broken-ness of the system then? Okay, point out this:

At 5th level, a Wizard gains the ability to fly under their own power, steal enough time to cast two spells in one round, and fire off magic grenades; at 5th level, a Fighter gets more BAB, and a Rogue does slightly more SA damage.

At 7th level, a Wizard gains the ability to turn themselves into a variety of forms (including several with powerful combat, mobility, and utility capabilities), and can also mimic the effects of the One Ring Of Power or create an army of zombies; at 7th level, a Fighter gets more BAB, and a rogue does slightly more SA damage.

At 9th level, a Wizard gains the ability to subvert free will with a gesture, magically create a cloud of gaseous death that drains your life away (if it doesn't outright kill you), and instantly travel to anywhere within 900 miles without crossing the distance in between; at 9th level, a Fighter gets more BAB, and a Rogue does slightly more SA damage.

At 11th level, a Wizard gains the ability to see past any illusion, petrify an enemy into stone, or call down lightning that arcs from foe to foe. At 11th level, a Fighter gets more BAB, and a Rogue does slightly more SA damage.

At 13th level, a Wizard gains the ability to imprison a creature with magical force, weaponize magic rainbows, alter the weather to better suit their whims, or reverse gravity. At 13th level, a Fighter gets more BAB, and a Rogue does slightly more SA damage.

At 15th level, a Wizard gains the ability to bind demons, devils, and angels to their will (for a price), no-sell all attempts to influence their mind, or change anything into anything else. At 15th level, a Fighter gets more BAB, and a Rogue does slightly more SA damage.

At 17th level, a Wizard gains the ability to freeze time itself, grant their own wishes, seal souls away from the deities that would return them to life, or call down a swarm of exploding meteors. At 17th level, a Fighter gets more BAB, and a Rogue deals more SA damage.

Does a Rogue get slightly more than that at those various levels? Sure, but it's all namby-pamby martial stuff that's also rendered irrelevant by magic. Anything that can be done without magic can also be done with magic, and magic usually does it much better; furthermore, there's a lot of stuff that can be done with magic that cannot be done without magic.

[Beheld]

Step 1: Play a level 5 Cleric, Raising everything as Undead. Destroy the Campaign.

Step 2: Play a Wizard who is level 9, spend 6 days off Lesser Planar Binding minions, order them to serve you for the next CL days fighting in all your battles. Go adventuring with your minions. Go into battle with 20 Bearded Devil minions. Break the game. Repeat with Glabrezu's at level 11.

step 0: Don't break the campaign, don't try to prove they are OP, if you want to buff the fighter, prove they are UP. If you want to nerf the other players characters because you feel sad, don't be a ****.

[Jormengand]

Okay, tell your DM "You're a level 15 wizard. You're in a city which is about to be attacked by 1000 orcs in the next hour. What do you do?" If he doesn't know, suggest that he might Polymorph Any Object on himself to become a dragon and breathe fire on all the orcs. Suggest that he might stand on the walls throwing fireballs at them. Suggest summoning a celestial triceratops to trample all over them.

Now tell your DM "You're a level 15 cleric. You're in a city which is about to be attacked by 1000 orcs in the next hour. What do you do?" If he doesn't know, suggest that he might want to use fire storm to kill 120 of the orcs in one shot, or maybe just charge up to them and shout holy words at them until they die. You could put a symbol of insanity on a rubber bouncing ball and throw it into the middle of them. You could send a celestial triceratops to trample them. Or you could just sit inside the wall, throwing make wholes on it until they give up and go home.

Now tell your DM "You're a level 15 druid. You're in a city which is about to be attacked by 1000 orcs in the next hour. What do you do?" If he doesn't know, suggest dropping spike growths and spike stones on the orcs. Suggest a wall of fire which will kill about 180 orcs on cast and stop the rest in their tracks.

Ditto ditto psion ditto ditto psionic iron body to be immune to their attacks, energy wave fire to kill pretty much the whole lot of them, energy wall fire to off the rest.

Now your DM is a rogue. What does he do? Well, he can probably use the snipe option to off the orcs one at a time while remaining hidden, but that's a hard check to make against a thousand orcs. He can't do anything like what the druid, cleric, wizard or psion can.

What if he's a fighter? Well, his class helps him pick up, uh, EWP spiked chain, combat reflexes, improved trip, great cleave, knockdown blow, whirlwind attack. The fighter is actually looking pretty good here.

Barbarian? I got nothing. Run into combat with rage and a two-handed weapon and rack up a kill count before your low AC and the large number of orcs finally gets to you.

Monk? Your best bet is to run up to the orc leader and drop a quivering palm on him, and threaten to use it to kill him unless the orcs drop their weapons. Assuming you speak orc, because TotSaM comes online fourteen levels later than tongues, and only four levels before you can drop a single feat on the damn thing if you like. Anyway, yeah, not much here.

Now the fighter's looking fairly good here, so let's let our eight characters into the next scene: You're facing off, one on one, versus a powerful spellcaster. The good thing is, you've won initiative. What do you do?

If you're a wizard, you can run up and empowered enervation him to drop some of his best spells away, or run up and poke him with irresistible dance, which should give you long enough to keep flesh to stoning him until he fails a fort save.

If you're a cleric, throw up an antimagic field, then point and laugh at him before hitting him with a stick repeatedly.

If you're a druid, SNA VIII, then get a tojanda to ready an action to grapple him if he tries casting a spell or moving. Then beat the hell out of him.

If you're a psion, you just drop an energy wall around him to disrupt him from casting.

If you're a tripper fighter, you stand a chance, except that the wizard can just cast defensively if you haven't readied an action to mess with him if he tries, or shank you with a dagger if you have. Monk and rogue stand no chance. Barbarian might possibly be able to one-shot him.

Repeat this process with a variety of encounters, such as needing to find and make friends with a person hiding in a city (casters and rogue win) or needing to chase a fast-moving enemy in a rooftop escapade (casters and monk win).

In fact, he's going to have difficulty finding a situation that only non-casters win. Even a cleric with an antimagic field is possible to defeat with some clever maneuvering (mainly using fly and then dropping rocks on him with telekinesis). And of course, if he's having to use a cleric as an example, that only strengthens your point.



Alternatively, set it all as one challenge. You choose wizard, sorcerer, cleric, or druid. He chooses fighter, monk, barbarian or rogue. You have the following challenge:

1000 orcs are about to attack the city of whateversville. They will be here in an hour and you must defeat them personally. Then you must find the rogue Jon, who is in hiding, and gain his allegiance. Finally, you must send a message to Jane, who lives in a city three days' ride from here, and all of this within two hours. The message is only a few words but of vital importance.

You are a 15th-level character. How do you handle this?

Wizard or sorcerer: Summon Monster VIII to trample over the orcs then throw fireballs at any who survive. Scrying followed by greater teleport to find Jon, charm person to make him your friend, sending to Jane. Total time: about 71 minutes.

Cleric: Summon Monster VIII as above followed by flame strike, then scrying. Wind walk to travel to Jon, diplomacy from your class skill list to make him your friend, sending to Jane. Total time: about 72 minutes.

Druid: SNA VIII followed by flame strike, then scrying. Wind walk to travel to Jon, diplomacy from your class skill list to make him your friend, transport via plants to deliver message to Jane personally. Total time: about 80 minutes.

Bonus round: Psion: Energy wave, psionic greater teleport to Jon, Remote Viewing Jon, modify memory Jon to make him your friend, psionic greater teleport to deliver message to Jane personally. Total time: about 80 minutes.

Then smile sweetly, and ask how he managed it.

[Cosi]

Jormengand, that's a long and compelling proof that high level non-casters suck, but we already knew that. To prove that casters are OP you can't present a level appropriate encounter they win, because players are supposed to win level appropriate encounters. You need to present encounters above level appropriate they win. Preferably dramatically above. Trying to balance the game to failure is a vicious cycle that leads only to despair.

[Jormengand]

Jormengand, that's a long and compelling proof that high level non-casters suck, but we already knew that. To prove that casters are OP you can't present a level appropriate encounter they win, because players are supposed to win level appropriate encounters. You need to present encounters above level appropriate they win. Preferably dramatically above. Trying to balance the game to failure is a vicious cycle that leads only to despair.

Well, technically, they shouldn't be able to kill that many orcs, but fine, irresistible [insert kill spell here] on a CR 66 great wyrm prismatic dragon.

Also, we already knew that. We also knew that casters were stupidly powerful. Someone else didn't. What we know isn't really relevant.

[Cosi]

Well, technically, they shouldn't be able to kill that many orcs, but fine,

Yes they should. A CR 1/2 Orc is supposed to pose no challenge to a 15th level character.


irresistible [insert kill spell here] on a CR 66 great wyrm prismatic dragon.

A Great Wyrm Prismatic Dragon has SR 86. Irresistible Spell does not trump SR, just saves. Also, a 3.0 version of a 3rd party feat is about the worst proof you could possibly use to demonstrate that casters are OP (well, after claiming that beating level appropriate encounters makes them OP, but there you go).

[Jormengand]

Yes they should. A CR 1/2 Orc is supposed to pose no challenge to a 15th level character.

That's true of one CR 1/2 orc, but 1000 of them are a different matter. Table 3-1 suggests that just 10 orcs are an EL 7 encounter by themselves. Because "In general, you can treat a group of creatures as a single creature whose CR equals the group's EL", I look up what has 10 CR 7 encounters, and that's CR 14. I can't tell you for sure what 10 CR 14 encounters are, because it's not on the table, but I suspect it's 21, given the pattern on the table (10 times the creatures seems to be CR+7). So no, you shouldn't be able to take an army of orcs by yourself, even at level 20, because you're EL 20 and they're EL 21. You should, technically, just lose. An EL 15 caster wipes the floor with them in about one spell, maybe two or three, and then gets on with the rest of his day.

So maybe you'd better actually open your DMG before you make that kind of statement.

[Cosi]

For each monster defeated, determine that single monster's Challenge Rating.

Perhaps you should learn the difference between the phrases "in general" and "at all times."

[Jormengand]

Perhaps you should learn the difference between the phrases "in general" and "at all times."

Oh, cute, so the wizard gets no experience for the CR 21 encounter he just obliterated? What a pity. Uhm, how is that relevant to the fact that the statement "In general, you can treat a group of creatures as a single creature whose CR equals the group's EL" is actually in the section on determining EL, and the thing you just quoted is to do with experience, and therefore entirely irrelevant to this whole discussion?

[Beheld]

Oh, cute, so the wizard gets no experience for the CR 21 encounter he just obliterated? What a pity. Uhm, how is that relevant to the fact that the statement "In general, you can treat a group of creatures as a single creature whose CR equals the group's EL" is actually in the section on determining EL, and the thing you just quoted is to do with experience, and therefore entirely irrelevant to this whole discussion?

It's not a CR 21 encounter. If you truly believe in complete extrapolation, it's an EL 21 encounter.

CR is the monster, EL is the encounter. If your encounter has lots of monsters, the EL goes up, the CR does not.

But the DMG doesn't say that a pile of Orcs equals an EL 21 encounter. It says that 10-12 Orcs can be between EL 5 and EL 7, but then it stops talking about larger parties of orcs. It never anywhere says that 24 Orcs is an EL 9 encounter.

It does however say things like:


Encounters with more than a dozen creatures are difficult to judge. If you need thirteen or more creatures to provide enough XP for a standard encounter, then those individual monsters are probably so weak that they don’t make for a good encounter. That’s why Table 3–1 doesn’t have an entry larger than twelve for “Number of Creatures."

...

The table doesn’t support XP for monsters that individually are eight Challenge Ratings lower than the character’s level, since an encounter with
multiple weak creatures is hard to measure. See Assigning Ad Hoc XP Awards, page 39.

So in short, you are wrong, beating a pile of orcs does not give you XP, and is not an EL 21 encounter, and is definitely not CR 21.

And you probably shouldn't insult other people for not reading the DMG when the DMG almost explicitly says you are wrong.

[Jormengand]

It's not a CR 21 encounter. If you truly believe in complete extrapolation, it's an EL 21 encounter.

CR is the monster, EL is the encounter. If your encounter has lots of monsters, the EL goes up, the CR does not.
Yes, sorry, that's what I meant.



But the DMG doesn't say that a pile of Orcs equals an EL 21 encounter. It says that 10-12 Orcs can be between EL 5 and EL 7, but then it stops talking about larger parties of orcs. It never anywhere says that 24 Orcs is an EL 9 encounter.

This is true, but I'm trying to calculate what character level is best to throw a thousand orcs at, at least hypothetically.


It does however say things like:

I'm aware, I just have no better way of calculating the EL.


So in short, you are wrong, beating a pile of orcs does not give you XP
Oh, cute, so the wizard gets no experience

What gives?


And you probably shouldn't insult other people for not reading the DMG when the DMG explicitly says you are wrong.

No, the DMG is silent on what the EL of a thousand orcs is, but does provide a method by which you can estimate it. The encounter may not be a "Good encounter", whatever one of them is, but that doesn't make a difference to its EL. Two copies of That Damned Crab is a bad encounter, but that doesn't change its EL.

EDIT: If we allow for a little retconning and decide they're first-level orc fighters, then their EL is just under 21, from calculating using the double-to-add-2-EL rule, meaning that actually the EL should possibly be a bit lower. If we use the fives rather than sevens for 10 orcs, then you end up with a possibly more reasonable EL 19 for the 1000 warriors using the generally consider 10 orcs as one creature method.

[Beheld]

This is true, but I'm trying to calculate what character level is best to throw a thousand orcs at, at least hypothetically.

I'm aware, I just have no better way of calculating the EL.

And the game tells you "Don't do that, because it's a bad encounter, and it won't be a challenge anyone."

So when you say "This encounter that the DMG doesn't say has any specific EL, and does say shouldn't be used because it's a bad encounter, is beaten by a Wizard, therefore the Wizard is broken" you are saying pretty much nothing at all. The Wizards ability to beat a bad encounter is meaningless, because in actual games no one will ever be facing that encounter. People will be facing good encounters. If you can't prove that Wizards are OP against the encounters they would actually be facing, then you didn't prove anything.


What gives?

Follow the rules for XP?


No, the DMG is silent on what the EL of a thousand orcs is, but does provide a method by which you can estimate it. The encounter may not be a "Good encounter", whatever one of them is, but that doesn't make a difference to its EL. Two copies of That Damned Crab is a bad encounter, but that doesn't change its EL.

Two copies of That Damn Crab is actually pretty okay. The problem with it is that it's unstoppable at it's CR (I think it was rewritten in a book, but whatever). So two of them comes online an entire spell level later, when it's super low will save can be effectively used to prevent it from killing the party, and someone might just fly around pelting it to death.

[Jormengand]

People will be facing good encounters.

Yeah, good and bad are subjective. And the thing is, whether an encounter is "Good" or "Bad" (I actually think that "You're being invaded by orcs, what do you do" is more compelling than "You meet 1d3 dire camels in a swamp (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0564.html) who are technically EL=APL (or EL=APL+5, because someone thought that having 5% of encounters be one of those was a good idea)), a spellcaster will win more readily than a non-caster.


Follow the rules for XP?
Yeah, I am. Once more for those in the back:


the wizard gets no experience


Two copies of That Damn Crab is actually pretty okay. The problem with it is that it's unstoppable at it's CR (I think it was rewritten in a book, but whatever). So two of them comes online an entire spell level later, when it's super low will save can be effectively used to prevent it from killing the party, and someone might just fly around pelting it to death.

Fair enough.

[Beheld]

I don't understand the whole XP part of the conversation. Explain what your problem is. Explain what you think the rules are, and what you think is the problem with them. Because right now I have no idea what you are saying, and it basically comes off like:

"well I beat an encounter that the DMG specifically says not to give me XP under the normal rules for because it could be too easy, and I beat it super easy, so therefore I beat a Solar, give me XP." Which is... a weird thing to say.


Yeah, good and bad are subjective. And the thing is, whether an encounter is "Good" or "Bad" (I actually think that "You're being invaded by orcs, what do you do" is more compelling than "You meet 1d3 dire camels in a swamp (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0564.html) who are technically EL=APL (or EL=APL+5, because someone thought that having 5% of encounters be one of those was a good idea)), a spellcaster will win more readily than a non-caster.

No, good and bad (or at least, not good) are defined in the CR/EL system. The DMG specifically says "If you need thirteen or more creatures to provide enough XP for a standard encounter, then those individual monsters are probably so weak that they don’t make for a good encounter."

That means that your tribe of unleveled Orcs is in fact, not subjectively a bad encounter, but objectively a not good encounter according to the actual DMG rules.

So saying "Wizards are better against the subset of encounters that are explicitly defined as 'not good' under the rules, therefore they are OP!" is again, completely wrong.

[Jormengand]

probably

Yeah, that sure is a stone-cold definition of a bad encounter. My mistake.

Do I need that in blue? I feel I need that in blue.

Yeah, that sure is a stone-cold definition of a bad encounter. My mistake.


I don't understand the whole XP part of the conversation. Explain what your problem is. Explain what you think the rules are, and what you think is the problem with them. Because right now I have no idea what you are saying, and it basically comes off like:

"well I beat an encounter that the DMG specifically says not to give me XP under the normal rules for because it could be too easy, and I beat it super easy, so therefore I beat a Solar, give me XP." Which is... a weird thing to say.

Cosi brought up XP for no good reason, then I responded:


Oh, cute, so the wizard gets no experience for the CR 21 encounter he just obliterated? What a pity. Uhm, how is that relevant[...]? Then you laboured the point for several posts.

I'm not saying anything about how much XP should be awarded for this encounter.

[Beheld]

Yeah, that sure is a stone-cold definition of a bad encounter. My mistake.

Do I need that in blue? I feel I need that in blue.

Yeah, that sure is a stone-cold definition of a bad encounter. My mistake.

So allow me to summarize:

DMG: This encounter is probably so weak that it's a bad encounter.
You: But the Wizard beats it so easily!
DMG: Well I did tell you that it was probably too weak, so maybe that's why?
You: NOOOOOOO. You only said Probably! That means the encounter is strong enough, but the Wizard beat it because he's OP!
DMG: Well I guess if you choose to ignore the rules, I can't stop you, I'm just a book.

[Jormengand]

So allow me to summarize:

DMG: This encounter is probably so weak that it's a bad encounter.
You: But the Wizard beats it so easily!
DMG: Well I did tell you that it was probably too weak, so maybe that's why?
You: NOOOOOOO. You only said Probably! That means the encounter is strong enough, but the Wizard beat it because he's OP!
DMG: Well I guess if you choose to ignore the rules, I can't stop you, I'm just a book.

Let's have a look what the DMG actually says, shall we?

"Those individual monsters are probably so weak that they don't make for a good encounter."

Now, the DMG says that this is probably not a good encounter. I say it definitely is. Well, the DMG strongly implies, borderline states explicitly, that there are some encounters of that type that aren't bad encounters, and I think this is one of them. More to the point, whether it's "Good" or "Bad", it is an example of an encounter that the wizard can easily beat and the fighter can't. Now, I'm afraid the DMG is silent on what level of character finding Jon the rogue or delivering a message to Jane in two hours flat is, but I think they're also good tests of a character's ability.

Also, if that encounter is so horribly weak, how come it slaughters most 20th-level noncasters? Answer: it's not weak. The individual CR 1/2 orcs are. Which I believe brings us full circle.

[Tuvarkz]

Level 1: Color Spray
Level 3: Web
Just show how those spells are so brutally powerful at CCing enemies at low levels.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?172050-3-5-Average-Monster-Stats
Shows the average save will save of a CR 1 enemy is +1. Against a single cast of level 1 Colorspray of a +3 Int Wizard, they have a 40% chance of not be completely taken out of combat. Against a CR 4 encounter consisting of 3 CR 1 creatures, said cast of Colorspray will completely annihilate on average two of them, and the third one will get oneshotted by the fighter (or whatever the frontline attacker is) in most cases, leaving the other two to just be calmly disposed of since they can't fight back at all for a good while.
Web is a bit more complex, but low level enemies stuck in the middle of it are completely screwed.

[Beheld]

Let's have a look what the DMG actually says, shall we?

"Those individual monsters are probably so weak that they don't make for a good encounter."

Now, the DMG says that this is probably not a good encounter. I say it definitely is. Well, the DMG strongly implies, borderline states explicitly, that there are some encounters of that type that aren't bad encounters, and I think this is one of them. More to the point, whether it's "Good" or "Bad", it is an example of an encounter that the wizard can easily beat and the fighter can't.

So the DMG says it's probably a bad encounter, you say it's definitely a great encounter, but that it's bad.

You might be confused on what words mean.


Also, if that encounter is so horribly weak, how come it slaughters most 20th-level noncasters? Answer: it's not weak. The individual CR 1/2 orcs are. Which I believe brings us full circle.

It really doesn't. That's the kind of encounter that is super easy for everyone. You are off the RNG, you pull out a bow and kill 5 per round, you can move faster than them by a lot. Rogues can just disappear. It's a really easy encounter for anyone. Since they don't even come with bows and you are apparently in a city, you can totally just kill them all and they can maybe attack you one or two at a time. You probably have a miss chance to go with your RNG breaking AC, so you get hit by one out of every 40 attacks for a piddly damage amount and you get attacked by one or two a round.

[Bohandas]

Anyway, it ended up becoming a debate where I told him a primary caster could easily out-rogue a rogue. I've seen the debate tons of times on forums, but have never seen any real builds. He's a bit stubborn so trying to explain things to him without solid up front evidence and builds will get me absolutely nowhere, so I've decided to request this from the forum.

Please, help me prove him wrong. It's driving me crazy that he doesn't see how absurdly unbalanced the primary casting classes are.

Nightstalker's Transformation. It's a 5th level spell from Complete Adventurer. Basically the stealth equivalent of Tenser's transformation. Gain +4 Dex, +3 Luck bonus to AC, +5 Luck bonus on Reflex saves, +3d6 Sneak Attack damage, and Evasion.

[johnbragg]

Instead of arguing over whether or not defeating 1000 orcs proves caster supremacy, or going over the details of Same Game Tests again, I'd like to propose something else.

Which is a better BBEG, a 15th level Fighter or a 15th level Wizard? Which one is going to be more difficult for the party to thwart-their-evil-plan, adventure their way to, and defeat in a climactic battle?

(This also gets to the design history at the root of the problem. The rules for high level spells and high level casters are there to create BBEGs, not PCs. The players aren't supposed to be playing at this level, as far as the original design of 3E was concerned.)

[Cosi]

Instead of arguing over whether or not defeating 1000 orcs proves caster supremacy, or going over the details of Same Game Tests again, I'd like to propose something else.

Which is a better BBEG, a 15th level Fighter or a 15th level Wizard? Which one is going to be more difficult for the party to thwart-their-evil-plan, adventure their way to, and defeat in a climactic battle?

(This also gets to the design history at the root of the problem. The rules for high level spells and high level casters are there to create BBEGs, not PCs. The players aren't supposed to be playing at this level, as far as the original design of 3E was concerned.)

I don't think this proves the point OP is trying to make. Proving Casters > Mundanes to any degree and for any set of constraints doesn't make casters broken, it just makes them better than mundanes. I can prove pretty conclusively that a cheeseburger is better than a swift kick in the nuts, but that doesn't make cheeseburgers overpowered. What OP needs to do to prove "casters overpowered" rather than "casters > mundanes" is find some upper bound for a balanced character, then prove that casters are above that bound.

I also disagree with the idea that spells are written for BBEGs, not players, but that's a different discussion.

[GnomishPride]

Honestly?

Casters outshine mundanes in every way.

All you martial types, outdone by Polymorph
All you sneaky types, see Improved Invisibility
Just in case, Wish is the ultimate trump card.

A caster can do so much more than a mundane: flight, teleportation, summoning, battlefield control.

[Eisfalken]

I've been having a long standing debate with a friend about how stupidly powerful these classes can be, and how problematic they can be in a campaign when allowed to get out of control. Anyway, it's been months of on again off again debate and I won't bore you with mountains of details, but he is convinced that there is room in the party for everybody. The way our games tend to work, is we adventure for 4 minutes, casters blow all their spells, then we rest for 8 hours. Rinse and repeat, and he thinks nothing is wrong with this. I was trying to explain that this completely ruins any other classes chance to shine.

Bad DMing, full stop. Just go ahead and play a wizard or bard yourself, and do the same as they do. You won't be "convincing" him of anything; he's basically showing favortism to those players by allowing them to stop the adventure so they can't actually be weak anymore.

So you may as well abuse his terrible decisions for your own profit and feel significant again. If you want to play a fighting type, go ahead and make a gish; find out which books are legal, and we'll build it for you. You can do this even in core, though it's not as optimal.

[Occasional Sage]

If your friend is an experienced 3.X player, and the superior power and versatility of full casters are not obvious, I'd suggest that perhaps the optimization level of your table makes the imbalance a non-issue.

If nobody gets close to the ceiling, and everybody clears the floor, then perhaps everybody can just have fun without worrying about it? Don't push the tier issue until he can't figure out why he doesn't get to contribute; it takes a moderate amount of optimization skill difference to turn this into a problem.

[daremetoidareyo]

I've been having a long standing debate with a friend about how stupidly powerful these classes can be, and how problematic they can be in a campaign when allowed to get out of control. Anyway, it's been months of on again off again debate and I won't bore you with mountains of details, but he is convinced that there is room in the party for everybody. The way our games tend to work, is we adventure for 4 minutes, casters blow all their spells, then we rest for 8 hours. Rinse and repeat, and he thinks nothing is wrong with this. I was trying to explain that this completely ruins any other classes chance to shine.

Anyway, it ended up becoming a debate where I told him a primary caster could easily out-rogue a rogue. I've seen the debate tons of times on forums, but have never seen any real builds. He's a bit stubborn so trying to explain things to him without solid up front evidence and builds will get me absolutely nowhere, so I've decided to request this from the forum.

Anything you want to dump is appreciated, but the goal here is to show up primary casters can out-do any other class at whatever it is they are supposed to be best at. The catch is, incredibly rare magic items and the like don't count since he doesn't consider them valid since they don't show up that often, same for +2 LA races, tons of multiclassing (since wizard 1 / rogue 19 is still basically rogue), stuff like that. But, he also likes to have high magic campaigns so he's kind of trying to have his cake and eat it too, but I'm willing to bet there are still countless ways for the primaries to outdo every other class in the game.

Please, help me prove him wrong. It's driving me crazy that he doesn't see how absurdly unbalanced the primary casting classes are.

Tell your friend to post in this here forum.

The title of the thread should be "Mundanes are as good as casters."

He should make that post real aggressive. Post something like "casters can't compete with a rogue at what a rogue does." or "If you nerf polymorph, wizards can't beat a mundane."

Then, instruct your friend to try to win an argument on that thread. Any argument. It doesn't matter. Any argument. Caster apologists will not yield any point at all while mundane fans begin custom tailoring specific mundane dudes to kill the most paranoid wizards on the planet. And then someone gets mean, and nothing moves anywhere.

At the same time, make your own thread entitled something like "barbarians vs. fighters vs. monks vs. rogues." And you'll see a bunch of cordial sweethearts casually admitting things that are weak spots in the classes and how to compensate. A couple builds go around. Someone's suggestion is shown not to actually work. And then the post is done.

And what does all of this effort demonstrate to your friend?

That the internet is worthless.

C'mon, isn't there a cooler thing to be right about? Really, does this matter?

I mean, maybe the caster disparity thing doesn't matter much for your group. Just bear with me some more.

There is a disease that I've seen spread from brilliant gameologists to here at giantitp; I looked it up in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental illness in RolePlaying Gamers (DSM-RPG 3.5). The disease presents itself as a co-morbid set of symptoms that include, but are not limited to;

Tier balance dysphoria,
Hypofundria,
Auto-didactic euphoria

It all seems to stem from a particularly equine-necrotic form of JaronKancer, a nasty mental contagion seeded by the belief that versatility balance in the game can adequately find resolution through any means other than what is pejoratively entonated as "house-rules".

A certain priesthood of sicophants derives satisfaction by demonstrating their sheer mental superiority by lapping on heels of their god, Mighty "RAW", even deriving real feelings of hate and frustration at others who 1.) do not want to admit that the game is kinda crappily written, 2.) don't want to supplicate before the majesty of an internet jaggoff who realized tier balance problems before themselves. Especially not after taking that crappy tone. You can see this priesthood getting pretty snarky down in the gladiatorial arenas. Especially on any thread with a title with the word "caster" in it. Do not engage the priesthood directly, as you will be tried, RAWdog style, found guilty of house rule, and deemed unworthy of any guidance, and flung into the sea of text.

Other, lone-wolf actors afflicted with JaronKancer can be seen making bold moves through the forums. They know that they can use the internet to build a character that will crush the game. And they seek across the webs, looking for an edge to defeat their foes in real life. Their foes consist mostly of offline actors, into which the lonewolves are locked in a thrilling Xorvital of intra-peer competition compounded by intermittently lacking feelings of self-adequacy. The lonewolves discover the tier trail and the know low tiers mean more POWER. And with More POWER comes the ultimate Xorvital move; getting something called a tier -0 caster, which they will use TO REALLY SHOW THOSE GUYS! Symptoms of these lonewolves tend to include poor punctuation use, a hefty dose of not knowing much about the game, a certain je ne se quios that gives you an impression that they couldn't actually pull a tier 1 off without the guidance to do so, so helping them seems and feels wrong.

So, OP, the question comes down to this. Might you have the JaronKancer?

Cuz there is only one known
Homebrew.

The anti-coxidant properties of homebrew have been shown to:
show up chumps
Increase Expectation Anarchy
Boost Lagging DGAF levels to acceptable levels*
Sphinxtral relaxation


*Be careful to observe DGAF levels by surrounding yourself with semi-unregulated and honest criticism of peers

[AvatarVecna]

-pure awesomeness-

I wish this forum had a like button, and that my signature wasn't already full to bursting.

[sutasafaia]

Did not expect to see so many replies, thanks!

Also, PMdaremetoidareyo, I think you might be thinking we take this debate far more seriously than we do. We enjoy the argument, but he's also a lot better at the game than I am so I was coming here to find people who are also better at the game than I am, who can help at least give my argument some better sticking points. Doesn't help the guy is a lawyer (not a rules lawyer, although he totally is, but an actual lawyer) so he's far better at presenting an argument than I am. It isn't that he doesn't think casters are powerful, it's that he doesn't think casters can out-do every class at more or less everything. He mentioned something about a rogue throwing master (I forget the exact name of the PrC) being able to do ~40d6 at fairly low level, 6 or 8 I believe he said. I was trying to tell him it isn't just DPS that makes the casters so crazy, it's their near infinite tool belt.

But that aside, it's not like out debate has either of us angry or anything like that. I just don't know the rules as well as he does so I can't come up with arguments to fight him nearly as well. Neither of us are angry or strutting or trying to out-game the other. I just want him to realize that non-casters have virtually no place in a group of casters.

[daremetoidareyo]

Did not expect to see so many replies, thanks!

Also, PMdaremetoidareyo, I think you might be thinking we take this debate far more seriously than we do. We enjoy the argument, but he's also a lot better at the game than I am so I was coming here to find people who are also better at the game than I am, who can help at least give my argument some better sticking points. Doesn't help the guy is a lawyer (not a rules lawyer, although he totally is, but an actual lawyer) so he's far better at presenting an argument than I am. It isn't that he doesn't think casters are powerful, it's that he doesn't think casters can out-do every class at more or less everything. He mentioned something about a rogue throwing master (I forget the exact name of the PrC) being able to do ~40d6 at fairly low level, 6 or 8 I believe he said. I was trying to tell him it isn't just DPS that makes the casters so crazy, it's their near infinite tool belt.

But that aside, it's not like out debate has either of us angry or anything like that. I just don't know the rules as well as he does so I can't come up with arguments to fight him nearly as well. Neither of us are angry or strutting or trying to out-game the other.

It was all cheeky.

You must bow before RAW. If you houserule, the RAW will get you. Suffer not the depravations of terrible homebrew; admit casters are king and the RAW shall relent.


...and like 90% true.



I wish this forum had a like button, and that my signature wasn't already full to bursting.

Your appreciation is enough.

[johnbragg]

Did not expect to see so many replies, thanks!

Also, PMdaremetoidareyo, I think you might be thinking we take this debate far more seriously than we do. We enjoy the argument, but he's also a lot better at the game than I am so I was coming here to find people who are also better at the game than I am, who can help at least give my argument some better sticking points. Doesn't help the guy is a lawyer (not a rules lawyer, although he totally is, but an actual lawyer) so he's far better at presenting an argument than I am. It isn't that he doesn't think casters are powerful, it's that he doesn't think casters can out-do every class at more or less everything. He mentioned something about a rogue throwing master (I forget the exact name of the PrC) being able to do ~40d6 at fairly low level, 6 or 8 I believe he said. I was trying to tell him it isn't just DPS that makes the casters so crazy, it's their near infinite tool belt.

But that aside, it's not like out debate has either of us angry or anything like that. I just don't know the rules as well as he does so I can't come up with arguments to fight him nearly as well. Neither of us are angry or strutting or trying to out-game the other. I just want him to realize that non-casters have virtually no place in a group of casters.

For every OP mundane PrC, there is a ridiculously OP casting PrC and/or splatbook shenanigans. Sure, that munchkinized Rogue Throwing Master sounds impressive. Until someone counters with one of those cheesemonkey builds where a 6th or an 8th level caster (or 1st I'm told) is throwing around 9th level spells. And I don't think you HAVE to be a kobold to do it.

[AvatarVecna]

For every OP mundane PrC, there is a ridiculously OP casting PrC and/or splatbook shenanigans. Sure, that munchkinized Rogue Throwing Master sounds impressive. Until someone counters with one of those cheesemonkey builds where a 6th or an 8th level caster (or 1st I'm told) is throwing around 9th level spells. And I don't think you HAVE to be a kobold to do it.

Throwing builds can reach some ridiculous levels, but by level 8? And based on a rogue? Maybe if you're doing that weird dual-wielding throwing flasks of acid thing I've seen bandied about, but accomplishing it with weapons you don't need to rebuy every other round takes more time.

But even assuming that such a build could be pulled off by level 8, mages still have pretty competitive DPR at that level, even without resorting to "cheesemonkey" builds: polymorph (a common staple of the wizard's arsenal) into an 8-headed cyrohydra, and you're looking at 8d10+32 damage every round, with up to 24d6 extra cold damage per round if you get lucky on recharge rolls. On rounds with the breath weapons, it's better than that thrower (especially since the 24d6 is an AoE, and could therefore affect multiple foes); even when you don't, your 8d10+32 is still respectable damage. And that's just one particular use for one particular spell...a spell that has enough versatility to be a good part of any wizard's prepared spells. And that particular use of it gets more powerful when you level up, since you can take the form of a hydra with even more heads.

[Willie the Duck]

It isn't that he doesn't think casters are powerful, it's that he doesn't think casters can out-do every class at more or less everything. He mentioned something about a rogue throwing master (I forget the exact name of the PrC) being able to do ~40d6 at fairly low level, 6 or 8 I believe he said. I was trying to tell him it isn't just DPS that makes the casters so crazy, it's their near infinite tool belt.

Well, I don't think the primary argument is that a caster is better than every class at more or less everything. It is that they can be competitive in all arenas, especially Cleric/Druid/Wizard (with reasonable access to learn new spells) with a night's prep.

A throwing master can absolutely dish out huge amounts of damage--in very specific situations (getting the drop on people and then winning initiative, etc.). However, they are glass cannons, who can only fire in certain situations, are dependent on specific magic items or their caster support when things like needing to fly or scrying the place to infiltrate comes into play, dependent on the cleric or wands to heal themselves, etc.

In non-whiteboard situations, there are absolutely places where a dedicated trap disposal class, nature class, tanking class (although animal companions and summoned monsters take the edge off these the most), etc. can outshine the casters. It is the infinite toolbelt that is unfairly balanced towards the full casters.

[Psyren]

"Not your personal army" etc. If you must prove this in some sort of head-to-head matchup, try Pluto!'s suggestion, but I don't see the merits to victory here. If your GM thinks full casters are fine, all you have to do is agree, roll a full caster, and have fun with all your options.


*snip*

Winning crits me for over 9000. I die. :smallbiggrin:

[Jay R]

A. One thing worth remembering: the wizard gets that powerful at high levels. A first-level wizard cannot out-rogue a first-level rogue, or out-fight a first-level fighter.

B. "He's a bit stubborn so trying to explain things to him without solid up front evidence ... will get me absolutely nowhere" Good. That is an essential quality for clear thought.

C. If you can't produce a build that will prove your point, maybe your point isn't quite as absolute as you think it is.

D. There is nothing to be gained by convincing him unless he's not letting you play a caster.

Calm down; everything's good. People are allowed to disagree with you.

[Segev]

Honestly, if it's that important to both of you to prove a point, challenge him to play a non-caster that he will demonstrate is just as important and awesome as a caster in the next game you guys play. You will play a caster.

I recommend looking up Treantmonk's Guide to Being Batman (aka the "batman wizard" or "how to be God"). It is not honestly all that obnoxious a build, since it actively helps the rest of the party to shine, but if your friend is paying attention, he'll notice that your PC is always effectively contributing, often in crucial ways, while his occasionally has things he can't help significantly with, or is dependent on yours to be able to contribute meaningfully.

[Red Fel]

First off, the thing to remember is that the Tiers - which are floating in the background of this thread - deal with versatility, not power. For something to be a Tier 1, it means that it can perform multiple roles, frequently better than classes designed to do them. It does not mean, for instance, that a Tier 1 class can automatically out-DPS another class, or will always break the game; it simply refers to options.


A. One thing worth remembering: the wizard gets that powerful at high levels. A first-level wizard cannot out-rogue a first-level rogue, or out-fight a first-level fighter.

True in large part. The Wizard will have more tools, even at low levels, while the Fighter is limited to "I hit it with my sword," and the Rogue to "I maneuver for flanking/sneak attack." The Wizard still has a number of spells, even at low levels, which can trivialize encounters. However, the Wizard will not yet be able to out-stealth the Rogue, or turn into a big beefy beatstick. Yet.


B. "He's a bit stubborn so trying to explain things to him without solid up front evidence ... will get me absolutely nowhere" Good. That is an essential quality for clear thought.

This is a fair point. But it's important that the latter part (the need for solid up-front evidence, a valuable quality) should not blind us to the former part (a bit stubborn, which is an obstacle); his stubbornness may well turn this into a playground game of cops and robbers. ("I shot you!" "Nuh-uh, I have a bullet-proof vest!" "Well, I shot you with lasers!") It is entirely possible that he simply doesn't want to be disproven, in which case even a well-rounded argument won't make things better.


C. If you can't produce a build that will prove your point, maybe your point isn't quite as absolute as you think it is.

Quite agreed.


D. There is nothing to be gained by convincing him unless he's not letting you play a caster.

To expand on this, there may be nothing to be gained even if he's not letting you play a caster. It may be that, even if you win the battle, you lose the war; he may nonetheless bar casters simply because.

Others have mentioned it, and I will too - some fights aren't worthwhile, and some aren't guaranteed to get you what you want if you win. There have been plenty of threads in this vein - "Help me show somebody that this class is OP/ better than that class/ totally crap/ broken in some way." And although I have seen many such threads, I have seen very few where the OP comes back and says, "Thanks, everyone. I made my case and now so-and-so agrees with me and sees things my way." Perhaps this is because the OP sees no need to give us the update, or perhaps he's unsuccessful; I don't know.

What I do know is that proving to somebody that they've been wrong doesn't necessarily win you friends, or bonus points, nor does it always get you what you want. People don't like being proven wrong. They also don't like feeling like you've gone over their heads, or embarrassed them in front of others. I'm not saying that's what you're doing, OP, but someone could easily feel that way.

Point is, your absolute best case scenario is that you make your case, the other guy agrees with it, and everyone sees things your way, and nothing bad comes of it. I don't see that as the most probable scenario. And frankly, basically every other probability involves one of those things failing - people still don't believe your argument, which leaves you frustrated; people believe your argument, but refuse to budge on their positions, which leaves you frustrated; people don't believe your argument, and are now angry that you pushed them. And so forth.

I don't see this ending on a high note.

[Droopy McCool]

Oh my God just reread this thread and caught this:


I can prove pretty conclusively that a cheeseburger is better than a swift kick in the nuts, but that doesn't make cheeseburgers overpowered.

HA! HAHA! Sat here cracking up for so long.

Just because I'm putting this thread back on top to say that piece, I'll add this - People make up their minds and will not be swayed. It might be that they can't stand to be wrong (whether they realize they are or not) or actually believe the ludicrousness that is their reasoning, but they'll stick to their guns until the day they hit -10 HP.

McCool

[Endarire]

Having spent far more time in theoretical arguments over class/build power than actually playing the game, I've come to this conclusion having recently played a buncha time in a Core-ish environment:

-All characters have their place. Practice and theory are different to a large extent.

-My friend and I were glad we played a Wizard and a Cleric. Web, grease, glitterdust, and cloudkill were very effective at crowd control from my Wizard. My friend's Cleric did the gish thing of Longspear + Power Attack + Cleave. Enlarge person (from Strength domain) and righteous might stack. We laughed maniacally once we saw the results.

-We briefly had a Human Fighter in our group. He was a level 10, straight-classed fighter, focused on Bastard Sword and board wielding. Various goodies (including a +4 Holy sword) made him accurate and moderately damaging. Even his Great Cleave was put to good use when he downed a demon boss and about 4 weak minions due to Great Cleave. My Cleric friend was jealous, because she was persuaded to take Forge Ring at 12 instead of Great Cleave.

-Overall, I was confident that our party could have done just fine without any primary casters from levels 1-7ish when we were faced with reasonable numbers of melee foes. Once we hit level 7-8, we started facing hordes of enemies. That's where web and glitterdust went from being moderately useful to must-have,, especially with the Cleric casting freedom of movement on us for web immunity.

-Surprisingly, cloudkill was useful - against minions. Did you know that trolls have exactly 6HD and can fail Fortitude saves versus instant death?

-Also surprisingly, fireball and flame strike and other area damaging effects were useful. We encountered a lot of minions, and sometimes enemies summoned small hordes right on top of us. We ate a few self-centered fireballs and flame strikes (especially with resist fire as a pre-buff or a ring of fire resistance) to avoid taking further damage against these creatures. Finally switching tactics from pure support to flaming death (even doing about half our main foes' health and greatly weakening or killing minions) was so satisfying.

-Early in the campaign, trying to do things the 'traditional way' (with a support Sorcerer, a summoner Druid, a melee Rogue, and a buffer/healer Cleric) without lots of physical damage was actually a tremendous hamper. After those characters died, we had to redo our party. Our party would have worked better if we just front-loaded melee DPS and switched characters later (around level 6) or focused on characters who were adaptable enough in that campaign to handle things at low, mid, and high levels.

-Finally, who does your concern tremedously bother? You can be argumentatively right in a group of people who generally don't care. Yes, I know that a Fighter is generally weaker than a Cleric, but sometimes Great Cleave is more useful (and more fun to use/watch) than another high-level spell.

[dextercorvia]

A. One thing worth remembering: the wizard gets that powerful at high levels. A first-level wizard cannot out-rogue a first-level rogue, or out-fight a first-level fighter.

I have to disagree with you here. I few years back we ran a same game test -- two barbarians and a wizard at 1st level faced off against an unoptimized level 3 fighter/cleric/rogue/wizard party. Our characters were built only with the OGL material found on d20srd. The wizard won his first two battles without taking a single scratch. Since I built the wizard, I remember this fairly well. He opened with Color Spray, but followed it up with Enlarge Person and a Longspear to keep them down. Having an Animal Companion which was the equivalent of a 1st level Fighter didn't hurt.

The barbarians fared well, but less well than the Wizard. Each of them lost at least one of their best of three matches, IIRC.

[Kelb_Panthera]

-snip-

furthermore, there's a lot of stuff that can be done with magic that cannot be done without magic.

I'm with you right up until that last sentence. There's very little a caster can do that non-casters can't. The latter will certainly have a greater degree of difficulty in the doing of most things that aren't "kill that thing over there," but, with few exceptions, it -can- be done.

To the OP;

Give up. Trying to prove caster supremacy, no matter its factual accuracy, isn't going to make anyone happier unless the DM is screwing over the party in a fundamental way that's rooted in a poor understanding of the game's balance (or lack thereof). Unless you're pathologically perturbed by this particular issue, just let it go and enjoy the game.

[ryu]

I'm with you right up until that last sentence. There's very little a caster can do that non-casters can't. The latter will certainly have a greater degree of difficulty in the doing of most things that aren't "kill that thing over there," but, with few exceptions, it -can- be done.



Bring back the dead. Travel to another plane on your own power with ability to come back as you please (to prevent dying counting). Travel across an ocean efficiently without being assisted by a ship or any magic items. Defeat an equal level caster that has nothing but his daily allotment of spells and isn't deliberately holding back in the fairest setting a neutral third party can come up with. I can go on, but the point is simple. Perform even one of those without the aid of any magic items.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Bring back the dead. Travel to another plane on your own power with ability to come back as you please (to prevent dying counting). Travel across an ocean efficiently without being assisted by a ship or any magic items. Defeat an equal level caster that has nothing but his daily allotment of spells and isn't deliberately holding back in the fairest setting a neutral third party can come up with. I can go on, but the point is simple. Perform even one of those without the aid of any magic items.

The highlighted is a flawed assumption. Everyone gets magic items and part of playing a non-caster is knowing how to leverage your weath to maximum effect since you have no magic of your own.

Bringing back the dead is something I readily concede. The only option a non-caster has here is to acquire a philosopher's stone which, given that it's a minor artifact, will likely be exceptionally difficult.

Travelling to another plane can be accomplished with a passage weapon (OA), one of the class features of the divine champion PrC (MotP), or any of a number of naturally occuring points of passage (MotP, Planar Handbook, and a couple eberron sources). The at will portion is the casters' ease of access that I already granted was a thing.

Crossing an ocean is trivial for a skilled flyer with a solid con score, any aquatic or amphibious race, and anyone wiling to drop the cash on a flying item or a vehicle.

Pretending that non-casters don't use items is just as dumb as demanding a caster perform these tasks without spells. It does't prove anything when you show that a sufficient handicap prevents success. If a caster doesn't know the spells for these tasks or they're off-liist for him, they'll have to take recourse to these methods too. Pretending they don't exist is nonsense.

[ryu]

The highlighted is a flawed assumption. Everyone gets magic items and part of playing a non-caster is knowing how to leverage your weath to maximum effect since you have no magic of your own.

Bringing back the dead is something I readily concede. The only option a non-caster has here is to acquire a philosopher's stone which, given that it's a minor artifact, will likely be exceptionally difficult.

Travelling to another plane can be accomplished with a passage weapon (OA), one of the class features of the divine champion PrC (MotP), or any of a number of naturally occuring points of passage (MotP, Planar Handbook, and a couple eberron sources). The at will portion is the casters' ease of access that I already granted was a thing.

Crossing an ocean is trivial for a skilled flyer with a solid con score, any aquatic or amphibious race, and anyone wiling to drop the cash on a flying item or a vehicle.

Pretending that non-casters don't use items is just as dumb as demanding a caster perform these tasks without spells. It does't prove anything when you show that a sufficient handicap prevents success. If a caster doesn't know the spells for these tasks or they're off-liist for him, they'll have to take recourse to these methods too. Pretending they don't exist is nonsense.

You want to know why I specifically exclude magic items from such examples? Given access to them literally anyone can pretend to be a wizard. Even a straight classed fighter can spend ranks on use magic device. They're an awful choice for it, but they CAN. I asked for the mundane solution, not the wizard wearing armor solution. Similarly I'd point out that the only limitation placed on the mundane side was applied equally to the caster side. A caster can accomplish all of those things within the day and without so much as a single gold spent. I'd be happy to demonstrate.

[tsj]

If every one of the 1000 orcs are a level 20 fighter then any tier 1 at level 15 will still beat them and manage to do all the other stuff as well within 80 minutes
while fighter, rogue, barbarian etc would all be killed after the first few orcs.

I think this will be true for any d20, 3.0, 3.5 & pathfinder.

All classes below tier 2 would might be better off being made in to some kind of specializations for tier 1's

Or

All classes above tier 3 should be nerfed hard

[ryu]

If every one of the 1000 orcs are a level 20 fighter then any tier 1 at level 15 will still beat them and manage to do all the other stuff as well within 80 minutes
while fighter, rogue, barbarian etc would all be killed after the first few orcs.

I think this will be true for any d20, 3.0, 3.5 & pathfinder.

All classes below tier 2 would might be better off being made in to some kind of specializations for tier 1's

Or

All classes above tier 3 should be nerfed hard

I'd go even further and buff the tier 2 into something approaching tier 1 and buff tier 3 into something approaching tier 2. Stuff from below tier 3 just stops existing.

[Kelb_Panthera]

You want to know why I specifically exclude magic items from such examples? Given access to them literally anyone can pretend to be a wizard. Even a straight classed fighter can spend ranks on use magic device. They're an awful choice for it, but they CAN. I asked for the mundane solution, not the wizard wearing armor solution. Similarly I'd point out that the only limitation placed on the mundane side was applied equally to the caster side. A caster can accomplish all of those things within the day and without so much as a single gold spent. I'd be happy to demonstrate.

Raising the dead; raise dead.

Planar travel; plane-shift, shadow walk, secret chest, ethereal jaunt, precipitate planar breach, etc

Long-distance travel; overland flight, teleport, shadow walk (again), wind walk, etc

It's trivial to do these things with spells. I recognize that.

That doesn't change the fact that they -can- be done without them. Oerth is a world that is -ridiculously- oversaturated with magic and adventurers procure obscene amounts of wealth. You can change these base assumptions that are written right into the core rules if you want but then we're playiing ryu's D&D-esque TTRPG instead of D&D 3.5.

PC's are going to have gp to spend on this stuff and there -are- mundane ways to accomplish most tasks albeit with much less ease and much slower than the magic item or spell options.

Outside of raising the dead and reversing specific spell effects, what can a caster do that a non-caster absolutely cannot? Because that's what I'm arguing against, not that the casters can't do most things faster and easier but that there's "a lot of stuff that can be done with magic that cannot be done without magic." I can think of myriad things that magic can make faster and easier but I can't think of many things, at all, that can only be done with magic.

[ryu]

Raising the dead; raise dead.

Planar travel; plane-shift, shadow walk, secret chest, ethereal jaunt, precipitate planar breach, etc

Long-distance travel; overland flight, teleport, shadow walk (again), wind walk, etc

It's trivial to do these things with spells. I recognize that.

That doesn't change the fact that they -can- be done without them. Oerth is a world that is -ridiculously- oversaturated with magic and adventurers procure obscene amounts of wealth. You can change these base assumptions that are written right into the core rules if you want but then we're playiing ryu's D&D-esque TTRPG instead of D&D 3.5.

PC's are going to have gp to spend on this stuff and there -are- mundane ways to accomplish most tasks albeit with much less ease and much slower than the magic item or spell options.

Outside of raising the dead and reversing specific spell effects, what can a caster do that a non-caster absolutely cannot? Because that's what I'm arguing against, not that the casters can't do most things faster and easier but that there's "a lot of stuff that can be done with magic that cannot be done without magic." I can think of myriad things that magic can make faster and easier but I can't think of many things, at all, that can only be done with magic.

That's just it though. The claim you're arguing against didn't say casters and non-casters did it? It said magic and not magic. In order to argue the falsity of that claim you must complete the tasks without magic of any sort. Take all the gold you want. You just don't get anything magic at all.

[Kelb_Panthera]

That's just it though. The claim you're arguing against didn't say casters and non-casters did it? It said magic and not magic. In order to argue the falsity of that claim you must complete the tasks without magic of any sort. Take all the gold you want. You just don't get anything magic at all.

Raisinig dead: null. Can't be done without magic.

Planar travel: natural points of access exist. Walk.

Long-distance travel: walk, fly, swim, cimb, or ride there.

My point remains. On the other side, this argument is usually the caster vs non-caster options and, as I already described, there are even more magical non-caster options that cover just about everything.

Incidentally
Given access to them literally anyone can pretend to be a wizard. This is also nonsense. Everyone can access magic but covering the breadth and depth of a full caster's spells known is completely beyond the reach of WBL at any level. The only thing that can come close is an artificer because of just how efficiently he can wield his money compared to every other class. Everything else trails so far behind that it's absurd to even suggest this. Hyperbole is hyperbolic.

[AvatarVecna]

A couple points about the magic item argument:

1) Magic items existing is a guarantee of the base system, but not necessarily the ones you want; the low odds of finding the exact gear you wanted in a dungeon (or random marketplace) are only considered a guarantee by the optimization community for the sake of simplicity, but it ignores the rules that existing regarding the rarity of magic items. Under the games existing rules, the Fighter has to either track down an existing magic item matching what he wants using only his wits and connection, and convince the owner to part with their incredibly valuable and incredibly useful item...or track down a mage to custom-make it for him. Wizards, meanwhile, can take both of those options as well...but they have magic allowing them to more easily locate existing objects, more easily traverse the distance in a timely fashion, and more easily coerce the owner into parting with it; they could go to another mage and get it custom-made, if one does not exist...or, since they're a wizard, they could just make the thing themselves. Also, as was touched upon, magic items are only available because of mages.

2) Magic items are easier to lose access to than spells. Magic items can be damaged and potentially destroyed by AoEs, can be stolen by a rogue with good enough stealth to beat the Fighter's perception, they're suppressed by Antimagic Fields, they can be targeted by various Dispel spells, and they can get completely gimped by an unexpected Disjunction. Of the lot of those methods, the only one that is pretty dependable against spells is the Antimagic Field, and that's rarely large enough that the mage can't get out of it, should they find themselves within it...and even if they can't, there's the infamous Shrunken Tin Foil Hat trick to get you out of it. Spells can be stolen by spellthieves, too, but the wizard has access to better senses than the fighter via magic, and spellthieves are rare anyway.

3) Even taking all of that into account, magic items won't put the Fighter or other mundanes on the Wizard's level unless the Wizard doesn't get magic items. A Fighter 20 could use all their vast treasures to become as capable a caster as a no-items 20th lvl Wizard (probably not, I admit I haven't run the numbers, but let's pretend), getting tons of spells multiple times a day across the spectrum of effects; meanwhile, the Wizard 20 is, even without magic items, capable of that very same magic...which means he can spend his gold improving on it. Of course, the idea of using purely gold to become as good at magic as the wizard is ludicrous; there's simply too much

Magic items are harder to get if you're a mundane (unless the DM is waiving the "locate and obtain" side-quest to be nice). Magic items are harder to get the way you want them if you're a mundane (unless the DM is ignoring the random generation rules and the magic item availability rules to be nice). Magic items are harder to make if you're a mundane (unless the DM is ignoring item creation pre-reqs to be nice). And even if your DM has a magic Walmart in every small hamlet, which is filled with every variation of every possible magic item your characters could ever want at their usual price, and which is willing to accept any method of payment from gold pieces to art pieces...at the end of the day, one player is attaching all those purchases to a full caster, and the other is not.

And even that ignores that my comment was about what could be done without magic, not just done by non-casters.

[tsj]

Ryu: yearh I guess that there are enough home brewed classes and class fixes that it is possible to get most classes to tier 1 or 2 territory

Also..... regarding good or bad encounters...

Good, bad.... I'm the guy with the spells!

[ryu]

A couple points about the magic item argument:

1) Magic items existing is a guarantee of the base system, but not necessarily the ones you want; the low odds of finding the exact gear you wanted in a dungeon (or random marketplace) are only considered a guarantee by the optimization community for the sake of simplicity, but it ignores the rules that existing regarding the rarity of magic items. Under the games existing rules, the Fighter has to either track down an existing magic item matching what he wants using only his wits and connection, and convince the owner to part with their incredibly valuable and incredibly useful item...or track down a mage to custom-make it for him. Wizards, meanwhile, can take both of those options as well...but they have magic allowing them to more easily locate existing objects, more easily traverse the distance in a timely fashion, and more easily coerce the owner into parting with it; they could go to another mage and get it custom-made, if one does not exist...or, since they're a wizard, they could just make the thing themselves. Also, as was touched upon, magic items are only available because of mages.

2) Magic items are easier to lose access to than spells. Magic items can be damaged and potentially destroyed by AoEs, can be stolen by a rogue with good enough stealth to beat the Fighter's perception, they're suppressed by Antimagic Fields, they can be targeted by various Dispel spells, and they can get completely gimped by an unexpected Disjunction. Of the lot of those methods, the only one that is pretty dependable against spells is the Antimagic Field, and that's rarely large enough that the mage can't get out of it, should they find themselves within it...and even if they can't, there's the infamous Shrunken Tin Foil Hat trick to get you out of it. Spells can be stolen by spellthieves, too, but the wizard has access to better senses than the fighter via magic, and spellthieves are rare anyway.

3) Even taking all of that into account, magic items won't put the Fighter or other mundanes on the Wizard's level unless the Wizard doesn't get magic items. A Fighter 20 could use all their vast treasures to become as capable a caster as a no-items 20th lvl Wizard (probably not, I admit I haven't run the numbers, but let's pretend), getting tons of spells multiple times a day across the spectrum of effects; meanwhile, the Wizard 20 is, even without magic items, capable of that very same magic...which means he can spend his gold improving on it. Of course, the idea of using purely gold to become as good at magic as the wizard is ludicrous; there's simply too much

Magic items are harder to get if you're a mundane (unless the DM is waiving the "locate and obtain" side-quest to be nice). Magic items are harder to get the way you want them if you're a mundane (unless the DM is ignoring the random generation rules and the magic item availability rules to be nice). Magic items are harder to make if you're a mundane (unless the DM is ignoring item creation pre-reqs to be nice). And even if your DM has a magic Walmart in every small hamlet, which is filled with every variation of every possible magic item your characters could ever want at their usual price, and which is willing to accept any method of payment from gold pieces to art pieces...at the end of the day, one player is attaching all those purchases to a full caster, and the other is not.

And even that ignores that my comment was about what could be done without magic, not just done by non-casters.

Do note that I said pretend to be a wizard rather than actually be a wizard. The word pretend has a much stronger meaning than simply emulating a wizard well. It carries a note of disdain for the mimicry itself as though it was similar to children with foam swords pretending to be swordsmen. I didn't use that word carelessly. I quite intentionally picked a word that suited my exact sentiment towards the concept and its effectiveness.

[Kelb_Panthera]

1) Magic items existing is a guarantee of the base system, but not necessarily the ones you want; the low odds of finding the exact gear you wanted in a dungeon (or random marketplace) are only considered a guarantee by the optimization community for the sake of simplicity, but it ignores the rules that existing regarding the rarity of magic items. Under the games existing rules, the Fighter has to either track down an existing magic item matching what he wants using only his wits and connection, and convince the owner to part with their incredibly valuable and incredibly useful item...or track down a mage to custom-make it for him. Wizards, meanwhile, can take both of those options as well...but they have magic allowing them to more easily locate existing objects, more easily traverse the distance in a timely fashion, and more easily coerce the owner into parting with it; they could go to another mage and get it custom-made, if one does not exist...or, since they're a wizard, they could just make the thing themselves. Also, as was touched upon, magic items are only available because of mages.

Getting the items is as trivial as their existence in the system's base assumptions. It is generally assumed that you can get any item you have the gold to purchase as long as it's inside the GP limit for the settement in which the party is doing their shopping. The sidequest is for particularly unusual or custom items or items outside the settlement's limits if the DM is feeling generous.

This isn't just a matter of optimizers assuming these things for simplicity's sake. They are the base assumpions of the core rules. This tends to get overlooked quite frequently, probably because it's the single most commonly disregarded piece of the core rules after multiclass XP penalties and encumberance.

[Beheld]

1) Magic items existing is a guarantee of the base system, but not necessarily the ones you want; the low odds of finding the exact gear you wanted in a dungeon (or random marketplace) are only considered a guarantee by the optimization community for the sake of simplicity, but it ignores the rules that existing regarding the rarity of magic items. Under the games existing rules, the Fighter has to either track down an existing magic item matching what he wants using only his wits and connection, and convince the owner to part with their incredibly valuable and incredibly useful item...or track down a mage to custom-make it for him.

Actually, under the rules, the Fighter has to:

1) Be in a city with a high enough gold limit.
2) Say he wants the item.
3) Have the right amount of gold.

The rules have explicit statements about the rarity of all items, and those statements amount to "Items aren't rare at all in cities that are big enough to have them."

[Albions_Angel]

I have no more advice on the position stated in the title than others have given you. But I will give you a warning.

If you try and do a thing where he plays a fighter and you a wizard, be very, very careful you dont screw up your spell selection. And beware the fact that tier system relies on ALL splat books, online content and magazines. Does that mean a core wizard isnt tier 1? No, they still are. But the really broken spells are in Spell Compendium.

I have seen people pit a fighter and a wizard against a one off campaign to proved exactly this point. The wizard picked just the wrong spells, blew through them too quickly and then died horribly in an accidental encounter. The fighter just kept fighting. Just trucked along. When the wiz died, he was stuck behind a couple of traps, but he was alive. They were level 10, where, by all accounts, the wiz should have outclassed the fighter.

Why did this happen? Because both were trying to prove a point only really evident in high optimization games but neither knew how to optimize. Also, if there is no downtime, Wizards begin to suffer. A lot of their versatility relies on them being able to use their scroll scribe feat. So in this one off show up and play game, he was stuck. No scrolls, no researched spells, no additional spells in his book. Prepared the wrong things. The fighter had a magic sword, magic armor, and some feats. You cant really screw that up too bad. It might not be powerful, but it WILL work every time it should.

So tread with care. Maybe you can best him in a battle of wits. But dont go into a fight you cant win, even if someone else could win it in your stead.

[Beheld]

But the really broken spells are in Spell Compendium.

Yeah the spell Compendium is filled with Broken spells like... Wall of Smoke, Shadow Spray, Bands of Steel, Burning Blood, Illusory Feast, Fleshshiver, Avasculate, Black Fire, and Sphere of Ultimate Destruction.

Meanwhile Core is filled with completely unbroken kind of underpowered spells like Charm Monster, Alter Self, Command Undead, Polymorph, Animate Dead, Lesser Planar Binding, Dominate Person, Magic Jar, Planar Binding, Banishment, Greater Planar Binding, Trap The Soul, Polymorph Any Object, Shades, Shapechange, Dominate Monster, and Wish.

[Sayt]

If every one of the 1000 orcs are a level 20 fighter then any tier 1 at level 15 will still beat them and manage to do all the other stuff as well within 80 minutes
while fighter, rogue, barbarian etc would all be killed after the first few orcs.

I think this will be true for any d20, 3.0, 3.5 & pathfinder.

All classes below tier 2 would might be better off being made in to some kind of specializations for tier 1's

Or

All classes above tier 3 should be nerfed hard

Respectfully, I don't think I agree with this in regards to Pathfinder. (Assuming you're not being hyperbolic). While a lot of the powerful spells are core in both 3.5 and pathfinder, 3,5 publish many more powerful and useful spells in subsequent Books (Like Ice Assassin, Nerveskitter, and the Celerity Line, no Craft Contingent Spell), whereas pathfinder, barring a few outliers (coughcoughbloodmoneycough) Pathfinder's spells have had a lower power level, in my opinion.

Compounding this, much of the egregious nonsense in 3.5 was done away with in pathfinder. (No more Solar Chains, no more wishing for magic items) Furthermore, Pathfinder is slowly chipping away at the absolute defenses: Cyclonic Arrows will go right through a Windwall, and a Tetori can shut down freedom of movement.

If, say, 10 of those level 20 fighters is specced for archery and have Master Craftsman and have their very own Cyclonic Bows out of their NPC wealth, the only real options I can forsee for them is to Teleport out, which doth not save the town.

And even then, it gets harder if we give the fighters, say, a few levels in Horizon Walker, and use the 3+Wis/day D.Door to Dimensional Dervish to traverse physical obstacles that can't be shot through, while full attacking. (Zen Archers can do the same, but Fighters were stipulated)

Which isn't too say that the 9th spell level casters aren't impressively, hugely powerful in pathfinder. They are, but I think there are cracks starting to appear in their invulnerability.

[Cosi]

Respectfully, I don't think I agree with this in regards to Pathfinder. (Assuming you're not being hyperbolic). While a lot of the powerful spells are core in both 3.5 and pathfinder, 3,5 publish many more powerful and useful spells in subsequent Books (Like Ice Assassin, Nerveskitter, and the Celerity Line, no Craft Contingent Spell), whereas pathfinder, barring a few outliers (coughcoughbloodmoneycough) Pathfinder's spells have had a lower power level, in my opinion.

The power of backwards compatibility means all those spells are still legal in PF. If a PF Wizard wants to create an ice assassin, he still can. It's even easier because PF dropped XP costs.

[Psyren]

They're compatible, but they must be approved by the GM on a case by case basis. The player can't simply expect Frostburn to be fair game in every PF campaign simply because it won't take much effort to convert.



Compounding this, much of the egregious nonsense in 3.5 was done away with in pathfinder. (No more Solar Chains, no more wishing for magic items) Furthermore, Pathfinder is slowly chipping away at the absolute defenses: Cyclonic Arrows will go right through a Windwall, and a Tetori can shut down freedom of movement.

Also, Forcecage isn't auto-win against martials (it can be broken through now), Mindblank no longer screws over an entire school of magic (and a big chunk of another school), martials can craft their gear without attending Hogwarts first etc.

[Bucky]

I have to disagree with you here. I few years back we ran a same game test -- two barbarians and a wizard at 1st level faced off against an unoptimized level 3 fighter/cleric/rogue/wizard party. Our characters were built only with the OGL material found on d20srd. The wizard won his first two battles without taking a single scratch. Since I built the wizard, I remember this fairly well. He opened with Color Spray, but followed it up with Enlarge Person and a Longspear to keep them down. Having an Animal Companion which was the equivalent of a 1st level Fighter didn't hurt.

The barbarians fared well, but less well than the Wizard. Each of them lost at least one of their best of three matches, IIRC.


That set of tests did demonstrate that barbarian is Tier 2 at very low levels; a single level 1 character taking out two CR3 enemies in the opening round, repeatedly across several trials, is kinda gamebreaking, even if it's not a CR-bending Animal Companion ability.

It's also worth noting that building a wizard for high tier level 1 performance is very different from building a level 1 wizard to keep past level 10.

[Beheld]

Respectfully, I don't think I agree with this in regards to Pathfinder. (Assuming you're not being hyperbolic). While a lot of the powerful spells are core in both 3.5 and pathfinder, 3,5 publish many more powerful and useful spells in subsequent Books (Like Ice Assassin, Nerveskitter, and the Celerity Line, no Craft Contingent Spell), whereas pathfinder, barring a few outliers (coughcoughbloodmoneycough) Pathfinder's spells have had a lower power level, in my opinion.

Compounding this, much of the egregious nonsense in 3.5 was done away with in pathfinder. (No more Solar Chains, no more wishing for magic items) Furthermore, Pathfinder is slowly chipping away at the absolute defenses: Cyclonic Arrows will go right through a Windwall, and a Tetori can shut down freedom of movement.

If, say, 10 of those level 20 fighters is specced for archery and have Master Craftsman and have their very own Cyclonic Bows out of their NPC wealth, the only real options I can forsee for them is to Teleport out, which doth not save the town.

And even then, it gets harder if we give the fighters, say, a few levels in Horizon Walker, and use the 3+Wis/day D.Door to Dimensional Dervish to traverse physical obstacles that can't be shot through, while full attacking. (Zen Archers can do the same, but Fighters were stipulated)

Which isn't too say that the 9th spell level casters aren't impressively, hugely powerful in pathfinder. They are, but I think there are cracks starting to appear in their invulnerability.

Well that's a fine thing to say, but I notice that in Pathfinder my level 15 Wizard can still Greater Planar Bind 150 or more Planetars, Immolation Devils, or Vavakia.

Sooo... Yeah whatever, I'll take my chances with my 150 Earthquakes from long range, followed by 300 ranged touch attacks for total of 300d4 negative levels in the first round, and then approximately 165 Nalfeshnees can take their actions, and then I can take my action, and we can go from there.


That set of tests did demonstrate that barbarian is Tier 2 at very low levels; a single level 1 character taking out two CR3 enemies in the opening round, repeatedly across several trials, is kinda gamebreaking, even if it's not a CR-bending Animal Companion ability.

It's also worth noting that building a wizard for high tier level 1 performance is very different from building a level 1 wizard to keep past level 10.

Actually, if you could prove that a level 1 Barbarian can take out 100 CR 20 monsters in the opening round, always and forever, with no chance of failure, you would prove that he was Tier 4, because the Tier system is nonsense.

"Tier 4: Capable of doing one thing quite well, but often useless when encounters require other areas of expertise"

"Tier 2: Has as much raw power as the Tier 1 classes, but can't pull off nearly as many tricks, and while the class itself is capable of anything, no one build can actually do nearly as much as the Tier 1 classes."

So doing 1 thing well (infinity untyped damage to infinite opponents within line of sight) is still Tier 4.

[Sayt]

Well that's a fine thing to say, but I notice that in Pathfinder my level 15 Wizard can still Greater Planar Bind 50 or more Planetars, Immolation Devils, and Vavakia.

Sooo... Yeah whatever, I'll take my chances with my 100 ranged touch attacks for total of 100d4 negative levels in the first round, and then approximately 55 Nalfeshnees can take their actions, and then I can take my action, and we can go from there.

Y'know, it feels a little like I pointed out that modern battle tanks are vulnerable to shoulder mounted ATGMs in urban warfare situations, and you've come back by reminding me that Nuclear arsenals exist. Not a perfect example, of course.

Yeah, you can spam bound creatures, if you want to. But binding isn't just "Cast the spell, free minion". The Outsider gets a Will save. It gets SR versus the spell. It can check charisma against the magic circle. It can refuse service if it does well on a separate opposed charisma check. It can subvert orders. All of that takes time, both in game and at the table.

And personally I'd avoid trying to manage the (potentially conflicting) agendas of 50 incredibly intelligent Outsiders held in line by coercion.

But as a sidenote, responding with "I bind an arbitrary number of outsiders" isn't actually an original or interesting TO response to a solution, when I was talking about holes starting to appear in the practical, everyday defensive spells that were pervious Auto-nope buttons.


They're compatible, but they must be approved by the GM on a case by case basis. The player can't simply expect Frostburn to be fair game in every PF campaign simply because it won't take much effort to convert.
Y'know, I don't always agree with you 100%, but I'm always pleased to see you in a thread :smallsmile:

[eggynack]

Actually, if you could prove that a level 1 Barbarian can take out 100 CR 20 monsters in the opening round, always and forever, with no chance of failure, you would prove that he was Tier 4, because the Tier system is nonsense.

I don't think that shows the tier system is nonsense. Rather, it shows that the game is more complex than just the amount of enemies you can kill. However, I think at that level of enemy killing, you can plausibly move up the chain to tier three or two, maybe even one, at least in some sense. After all, there are few challenges that the ability to deal all the damage to everything cannot solve. The approaching army is the trivial case, destroyed by direct application. A more diplomacy oriented mission can be solved by the fact that you can threaten to kill anyone who doesn't agree with you, and back the claim up through demonstrations of power. Teleportation can be done by leveling the same claim at a wizard. And, if you can't just kill a wizard through stuff like celerity and mirror image, well, that kinda shows why the tier system is as it is. I mean, failing against those specific defenses that early isn't the strict reasoning, cause a first level wizard would also fail to either threaten the wizard or teleport, but you get the general idea.

Anyway, my usual proof that the game is imbalanced comes from druid/monk comparisons. Basically, you run the comparison at level one, and show that a riding dog is close to even with a monk. Not perfectly even, if the monk is optimized, but close. Then you add on the druid's body, and the druid's spells, and it's not even close, especially when you compare against non-arena challenges. The end result is that it's proved that a druid is better than a monk at first, which is a pretty clear cut thing. You can also do this with fighters, though the comparison is less clear. Then, you show that, in general, druids become more powerful relative to the monk as level goes up, rather than less. Again, not a hard thing to show. Then, because druids start better and become even better than that, there is a clear imbalance demonstrated.

[Beheld]

I don't think that shows the tier system is nonsense. Rather, it shows that the game is more complex than just the amount of enemies you can kill. However, I think at that level of enemy killing, you can plausibly move up the chain to tier three or two, maybe even one, at least in some sense.

In the sense that "what the tier system actually says it measures is pretty much worthless, so let's measure something else instead" sure.

[eggynack]

In the sense that "what the tier system actually says it measures is pretty much worthless, so let's measure something else instead" sure.
No, not really. The tier system says that it measures your ability to solve or contribute to various challenges put in front of you. That's what, "Capable of nearly anything," really means. It doesn't really matter whether you can accomplish your goals in this wide variety of ways or in this one specific way, at least up to the point where your one specific way becomes blocked off by various defenses. In this way, the tier system measures neither power nor versatility. To quote the text itself, " It's ranking the ability of a class to achieve what you want in any given situation."

However, the fact of the matter is that this theoretical ultra-barbarian doesn't exist. You can't really solve your teleportation problem by threatening a high level wizard with instant death, because the claim isn't backed in the same way. This is why the system has been taken by some to angle more towards versatility, because that's how the game's balance actually operates. If there were a thing you could do so well in that fashion that it would represent a move up in tiers past four or so, then the tier system would include that information, but there doesn't happen to be anything in the game that operates in that way. The tier system was meant to measure the game as it is, not the game as it could theoretically be. That the tier system manages to, in spite of that, accurately measure the power level of the ultra-barbarian, is a credit to its flexibility and accuracy.

[johnbragg]

No, not really. The tier system says that it measures your ability to solve or contribute to various challenges put in front of you. That's what, "Capable of nearly anything," really means. It doesn't really matter whether you can accomplish your goals in this wide variety of ways or in this one specific way, at least up to the point where your one specific way becomes blocked off by various defenses. In this way, the tier system measures neither power nor versatility. To quote the text itself, " It's ranking the ability of a class to achieve what you want in any given situation."

However, the fact of the matter is that this theoretical ultra-barbarian doesn't exist. You can't really solve your teleportation problem by threatening a high level wizard with instant death, because the claim isn't backed in the same way. This is why the system has been taken by some to angle more towards versatility, because that's how the game's balance actually operates. If there were a thing you could do so well in that fashion that it would represent a move up in tiers past four or so, then the tier system would include that information, but there doesn't happen to be anything in the game that operates in that way. The tier system was meant to measure the game as it is, not the game as it could theoretically be. That the tier system manages to, in spite of that, accurately measure the power level of the ultra-barbarian, is a credit to its flexibility and accuracy.

The point about the Tier system is valid. Take the Ultrakiller class, class ability to kill anything superdead with no defense 10 times per day.

The party is in a partially flooded dungeon, infested with leeches and underwater half-zombies (half-zombies as in from-the-waist-up, not hybrids), with some stirges flying around, plus that monster with the attack that causes fatigue and then exhaustion. There is a prisoner in the dungeon, in sorry shape--1 or 2 hp, all sorts of ability-damaged.

Ultrakiller not the best class to get the prisoner out of the dungeon, is it? That's the point of JAronK's Tier system.

[Beheld]

That the tier system manages to, in spite of that, accurately measure the power level of the ultra-barbarian, is a credit to its flexibility and accuracy.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Yeah, sure it is.

[eggynack]

The point about the Tier system is valid. Take the Ultrakiller class, class ability to kill anything superdead with no defense 10 times per day.

The party is in a partially flooded dungeon, infested with leeches and underwater half-zombies (half-zombies as in from-the-waist-up, not hybrids), with some stirges flying around, plus that monster with the attack that causes fatigue and then exhaustion. There is a prisoner in the dungeon, in sorry shape--1 or 2 hp, all sorts of ability-damaged.

Ultrakiller not the best class to get the prisoner out of the dungeon, is it? That's the point of JAronK's Tier system.
If it's just one enemy, then no, but this being is presumably capable of killing everything, rather than just anything. So, all the leeches and zombies and stirges and the monster that causes fatigue are killed before they can even do anything, and then you explode the dungeon because that is presumably a thing. Of course, if you put any stipulations on the ultra-barbarian's power, like that it doesn't work on objects, or that it has to see things (which I think was a stipulation), or that it needs to kill things one at a time, or that it needs to wait for its turn to kill things, then those stipulations reduce its tier. I think you have a few of those stipulations intrinsic to your claim, particularly the one about quantity, and in that case you are indeed correct. In any case though, even with some stipulations, I'd expect a perfect attack of that kind to warrant tier three. Lots of problems cannot be solved by an imperfect attack that can be solved by a perfect one.


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Yeah, sure it is.
Well, you could always say why it's not. It seems to me that two things are true. First, the ultra-barbarian should not be accounted for in the tier system. After all, the tier system of classes is supposed to measure things that are classes, or at least existing game objects, and it does neither. Second, the ultra-barbarian does manage to slot about where you'd expect into the tier system, because its power can be used in a number of ways. Those two things, in concert, seem to speak to a level of tier system power that a user of it wouldn't necessarily have to expect of it.

[Beheld]

Well, you could always say why it's not.

Yeah, because everything I've ever said about that in related threads doesn't exist. Because now we are in a different thread where someone brought up the useless worthless tier system because they lack any ability to talk about D&D without talking about a tier system that either doesn't claim any of the things they claim it does or doesn't claim anything useful.


It seems to me that two things are true. First, the ultra-barbarian should not be accounted for in the tier system. After all, the tier system of classes is supposed to measure things that are classes, or at least existing game objects, and it does neither. Second, the ultra-barbarian does manage to slot about where you'd expect into the tier system, because its power can be used in a number of ways. Those two things, in concert, seem to speak to a level of tier system power that a user of it wouldn't necessarily have to expect of it.

Except for how you are completely wrong in every way, this is correct.

[eggynack]

Yeah, because everything I've ever said about that in related threads doesn't exist. Because now we are in a different thread where someone brought up the useless worthless tier system because they lack any ability to talk about D&D without talking about a tier system that doesn't claim any of the things they claim it does.
I'm not going to read through every past thread you've been in for proof against my claim in this one. If you think I've made an error in my claims about the tier system, then go ahead and point it out. Cause that quote from the tier system was, y'know, a quote directly from the tier system, which means that my claim that it says that thing is going to be accurate.




Except for how you are completely wrong in every way, this is correct.
Well, now you're just being silly. Accept I'm right or prove I'm wrong.

[Beheld]

I'm not going to read through every past thread you've been in for proof against my claim in this one.

...

Well, now you're just being silly. Accept I'm right or prove I'm wrong.

So you refuse to read things because that's work, but I have to do work and derail this thread or else you are correct... Sure...

So let's start with the most wrong thing you said. You claimed that the Barbarian can threaten to kill Wizards, and therefore he can cast all Wizard spells, now ignoring for the moment that the Wizard can just choose to cast Teleport and not take the Barbarian, and then be totally safe from killing, thus making the Barbarian totally incapable of using his threat to kill to cast Teleport:

Expert uses Diplomacy skill to convince Wizard to cast spells for him, he is now Tier 1! Oh wait, that's not how being able to do things works at all. The Expert doesn't get credit for the ability to cast Wizard spells because he has the Diplomacy skill, so why on earth would the Barbarian get credit for an (apparently arbitrarily large) bonus to intimidate for the same thing?

[eggynack]

So you refuse to read things because that's work, but I have to do work and derail this thread or else you are correct... Sure...
Reading through over 1,000 posts to figure out your exact stance on this issue? Yes, that is too much work. I mean, if you really wanted to, you could always link to the post that you think best represents your point. As for derailing, I think that if there was derailing, it started earlier when you and others claimed these huge flaws in the tier system.


So let's start with the most wrong thing you said. You claimed that the Barbarian can threaten to kill Wizards, and therefore he can cast all Wizard spells, now ignoring for the moment that the Wizard can just choose to cast Teleport and not take the Barbarian, and then be totally safe from killing, thus making the Barbarian totally incapable of using his threat to kill to cast Teleport:
This really touches on a crucial flaw with the formulation of your claim. Particularly, how is the barbarian killing all of these enemies? Is it an immediate action that takes place off-turn? Can it work through walls? How does it work on invisible foes? Because certain formulations don't allow the wizard to teleport, and some do. And, more importantly, certain formulations expose areas where this ultra-barbarian is really going to fall flat.


Expert uses Diplomacy skill to convince Wizard to cast spells for him, he is now Tier 1! Oh wait, that's not how being able to do things works at all. The Expert doesn't get credit for the ability to cast Wizard spells because he has the Diplomacy skill, so why on earth would the Barbarian get credit for an (apparently arbitrarily large) bonus to intimidate for the same thing?
The difference, to my mind, is that the barbarian's threat is presumably a perfect one. There's no way around death, so his demands at any given step of his search will be met. However, if I'm wrong, then that speaks to a big gap in this barbarian's skill set. And, in fact, a number of gaps. Can this barbarian do anything besides kill an army? Can he broker piece between feuding lands, or deal with a stealthy assassin, or face threats off-plane? If not, then I don't see why you think he should get a much higher tier. Maybe a higher one, around three, to reflect his ability in a few areas, but he certainly can't handle all challenges.

However, I think there is room for a higher tier earlier on. A wizard at first can't necessarily do all that stuff either, despite the fact that they'll be quite capable of doing so later. The wizard will be able to solve a bunch of problems that the barbarian can't, like identifying a magic object for example, but that's mostly made up for by a lack of capacity in the other direction. Moreover, while this barbarian capacity is actually true in an ordinary game, I think that the barbarian's defenseless attack gives it more challenge solving ability at higher levels, and keeps it more competitive. Maybe they won't be able to handle negotiations like a wizard, but the wizard won't be able to fight a dragon like the barbarian, and those are both challenges that the tier system puts forth. The difference between this hypothetical and the reality is that the moderate level wizard happens to be great at all the stuff the standard barbarian is capable of, like dragon fighting and army rending.

[daremetoidareyo]

So you refuse to read things because that's work, but I have to do work and derail this thread or else you are correct... Sure...

So let's start with the most wrong thing you said. You claimed that the Barbarian can threaten to kill Wizards, and therefore he can cast all Wizard spells, now ignoring for the moment that the Wizard can just choose to cast Teleport and not take the Barbarian, and then be totally safe from killing, thus making the Barbarian totally incapable of using his threat to kill to cast Teleport:

Expert uses Diplomacy skill to convince Wizard to cast spells for him, he is now Tier 1! Oh wait, that's not how being able to do things works at all. The Expert doesn't get credit for the ability to cast Wizard spells because he has the Diplomacy skill, so why on earth would the Barbarian get credit for an (apparently arbitrarily large) bonus to intimidate for the same thing?

Need a specific wizard build if we're going to be having an any mundane vs. any caster contest. You know the rules. We can skip two pages of text if we get rid of a schroedinger's wizard situation. Might want to agree to standard WBL level as well. How many non-barbarian levels can the barbarian build multi-class into?

And...waves flag

[eggynack]

Need a specific wizard build if we're going to be having an any mundane vs. any caster contest. You know the rules. We can skip two pages of text if we get rid of a schroedinger's wizard situation. Might want to agree to standard WBL level as well. How many non-barbarian levels can the barbarian build multi-class into?

And...waves flag
Don't see much point in doing some crazy arena fight, or even necessarily a contest. The way I see it, it works something like this. The ultra-barbarian has some arbitrary and currently unclear amount of power. Using that power, that barbarian is capable of doing certain things to a certain extent, and is incapable of doing other things to any extent, and is kinda capable of doing some things to some extent. Then, you add up all those capabilities, and you rank that sum up against all the other theoretical sums, and where the barbarian lies is its tier. If that tier is closer to one, then clearly the type of army killing power was of the broad sort, and if it's not, then clearly it's relatively narrow.

The point I'm trying to make is that the tier system measures what it's trying to measure, with allowances for some edge cases where it's difficult to get perfect measurements, and further allowance for some assumptions of the state of the game. If a given hypothetical class seems to rank higher or lower than you'd hypothetically expect it to, then that either means that your ranking is wrong or that your expectations are wrong. It's physically impossible for the tier system itself to be wrong because the tier system never laid claim to a ranking of this hypothetical class. Our imagined ranking never existed, and so any imagined discrepancy never existed. Real discrepancies can and do exist, especially when you alter the premises some to allow different books and different optimization levels, but this is not a real discrepancy, and it is not a real problem with the tier system.

[AvatarVecna]

Need a specific wizard build if we're going to be having an any mundane vs. any caster contest. You know the rules. We can skip two pages of text if we get rid of a schroedinger's wizard situation. Might want to agree to standard WBL level as well. How many non-barbarian levels can the barbarian build multi-class into?

And...waves flag

Well, my first post in this thread (which was the first response, in fact) provided a specific wizard build; while I admit I didn't select his specific spells, I gave the suggestion to fill his prepared spells with utility stuff, and then has the option of spontaneously converting any of those into a Heightened Extended Silenced Stilled Silent Image, which can serve as Silent Image, or various blasting/creation/summoning spells.

...should I come up with another one, maybe? Or should I specify all his prepared spells?

[Bucky]

Need a specific wizard build if we're going to be having an any mundane vs. any caster contest. You know the rules. We can skip two pages of text if we get rid of a schroedinger's wizard situation. Might want to agree to standard WBL level as well. How many non-barbarian levels can the barbarian build multi-class into?

And...waves flag

I came with the claim that barbarian is tier 2 at very low levels. Let me make that more specific.

First - very low levels means effective character level 1 or 2.

Secondly, the definition of tier 2 - A single classed barbarian can be built to solo most level appropriate encounters, even ones that are meant to challenge a party (e.g. CR 2 for a level 1 Barbarian). Also, a single barbarian build should be able to solo several different types of encounters, or contribute in some areas outside of their specialty.

[Beheld]

Reading through over 1,000 posts to figure out your exact stance on this issue? Yes, that is too much work.

You participated in half those threads.


As for derailing, I think that if there was derailing, it started earlier when you and others claimed these huge flaws in the tier system.

I'm not "blaming" you for derailing, I'm saying that your arbitrary command that if I don't derail this thread further you "win" the argument and the Tier system is the perfect exalted godlike never to be questioned masterful only method of talking about D&D is wrong.

I would also counter that the "original derail" occurred when someone made the insanely wrong mega false claim that the Tier system was useful for anything at all.


If not, then I don't see why you think he should get a much higher tier.

I don't recall claiming that the Barbarian deserved a higher Tier, in fact, I was specifically contradicting someone who claimed it was a higher Tier.


The point I'm trying to make is that the tier system measures what it's trying to measure, with allowances for some edge cases where it's difficult to get perfect measurements, and further allowance for some assumptions of the state of the game. If a given hypothetical class seems to rank higher or lower than you'd hypothetically expect it to, then that either means that your ranking is wrong or that your expectations are wrong. It's physically impossible for the tier system itself to be wrong because the tier system never laid claim to a ranking of this hypothetical class.

Except that the entire point is that what the Tier system actually claims to measure is literally worthless.

(Also the Tier system doesn't accurately measure it, but that's a really small problem next to the fact that what it claims to measure is pointless).


Secondly, the definition of tier 2 - A single classed barbarian can be built to solo most level appropriate encounters, even ones that are meant to challenge a party (e.g. CR 2). Also, a single barbarian build should be able to solo several different types of encounters, or contribute in some areas outside of their specialty.

And this is my entire point. That's not the definition of Tier 2, that was never claimed as part of the definition of Tier 2, and has nothing to do with either the provided definitions, or the classes classified as Tier 2.

[Sayt]

D'you think that your respective, abject failures to convince each other in the past would maybe signal that having this argument isn't actually a constructive use of either of your time?

[eggynack]

You participated in half those threads.
Yeah, but I have even more posts to read through, and I don't remember the specific stance of everyone I argue with offhand.



I don't recall claiming that the Barbarian deserved a higher Tier, in fact, I was specifically contradicting someone who claimed it was a higher Tier.
Yes, but your argument seemed to be that the fact that it wouldn't get a higher tier is a flaw of the tier system.


Except that the entire point is that what the Tier system actually claims to measure is literally worthless.
Well, there's the thing to talk about. Why is it worthless to measure the amount of challenges a class would be able to meaningfully contribute to, and the extent of that contribution.



And this is my entire point. That's not the definition of Tier 2, that was never claimed as part of the definition of Tier 2, and has nothing to do with either the provided definitions, or the classes classified as Tier 2.
It has something to do with the definition of tier 2, but not everything. High CR monster stacks constitute some percentage of the variety of challenges that a class could be presented with, and it therefore is a factor in tier. It's just not the entirety of the definition, and neither do I think it should be.

Edit:
D'you think that your respective, abject failures to convince each other in the past would maybe signal that having this argument isn't actually a constructive use of either of your time?
I actually didn't remember that Beheld had this particular stance, because it usually takes me a few discussions to memorize a particular person's stance on a particular issue. Thus, I'm not sure of the extent to which this discussion is constructive.

[Beheld]

Yes, but your argument seemed to be that the fact that it wouldn't get a higher tier is a flaw of the tier system.

Yes, because what the Tier system actually measures is worthless, but at least one specific thing you might want one kind of Tier system to inform you about is "Hey, this level 1 character will completely break the entire game and will never stop breaking the game, so much that taking Leadership and having this guy as a follower might result in him outshining you, a level 17 character, at level 1."


Well, there's the thing to talk about. Why is it worthless to measure the amount of challenges a class would be able to meaningfully contribute to, and the extent of that contribution.

Because that isn't what the Tier system claims to measure or actually measures.

[eggynack]

Yes, because what the Tier system actually measures is worthless, but at least one specific thing you might want one kind of Tier system to inform you about is "Hey, this level 1 character will completely break the entire game and will never stop breaking the game, so much that taking Leadership and having this guy as a follower might result in him outshining you, a level 17 character, at level 1."
If such a character existed in this form, then yes, knowing about them would be nice. But they don't exist, so the tier system doesn't have to tell us about them. And, again, we can look to the stated challenges listed for determining tier to figure out how high this army killer should be. The three stated scenarios of the tier system, ones which aren't even claimed to fully encapsulate the system but which should suffice, are a black dragon in a trap filled cave, earning the trust of someone in a slave resistance, and preparing for a fight against an army. The ultra-barbarian would be great at fighting the dragon, variable at beating the traps (depending on how we define his ability set), probably pretty bad at gaining trust (though probably good at directly acting as a resistance force), and amazing at beating the army single handed. I don't know how all of that should be tabulated up, but you'd likely wind up above tier four, and maybe even above tier three. Certain levels of power start acting like versatility in some situations.




Because that isn't what the Tier system claims to measure or actually measures.
Whether it actually measures this is a more open question. However, the tier system absolutely does claim to measure that sort of thing. To directly quote the tier system, the question asked when determining tier is, " How much does this class enable you to achieve what you want in a given situation?" I don't see much difference between that and what I claimed.

[Beheld]

And, again, we can look to the stated challenges listed for determining tier to figure out how high this army killer should be. The three stated scenarios of the tier system, ones which aren't even claimed to fully encapsulate the system but which should suffice, are a black dragon in a trap filled cave, earning the trust of someone in a slave resistance, and preparing for a fight against an army. The ultra-barbarian would be great at fighting the dragon, variable at beating the traps (depending on how we define his ability set), probably pretty bad at gaining trust (though probably good at directly acting as a resistance force), and amazing at beating the army single handed. I don't know how all of that should be tabulated up, but you'd likely wind up above tier four, and maybe even above tier three. Certain levels of power start acting like versatility in some situations.

Except that you are totally wrong. Because according to the actual Tier system doing infinity well at dragon and army killing is still doing one thing well, and doesn't make you somehow any higher than Tier 4, you keep claiming that somehow being really really really really good at one thing, so much better than what everyone else is that it's absurd, somehow counts for more than just being "pretty good" at two things but there is no evidence of that. Beating up Dragons, no matter how infinity well you do it, is never going to add up to more than "doing four things okay" under the Tier system. That is how it is specifically defined.


Whether it actually measures this is a more open question. However, the tier system absolutely does claim to measure that sort of thing. To directly quote the tier system, the question asked when determining tier is, " How much does this class enable you to achieve what you want in a given situation?" I don't see much difference between that and what I claimed.

Because 1) It doesn't claim to rank classes on that. 2) It doesn't rank classes based on that. 3) Any time you point out a that the Tier system doesn't accurately measure that, someone will immediately tell you that's not what the Tier system measures, and if you say that in the right time or place, chances are very good that person might be named JaronK.

More directly, that statement is also worthless and has nothing to do with what you were talking or what Bucky was saying because it has no place in it for level appropriate considerations. If what you want to do is kill the Balor, then nothing at all should measure your ability to do that at level 1, because by definition succeeding means your class (or some part of it) is terrible and needs to be banned. On the other hand, if you are a level 10 Bard... just go commit Sepuku and roll a real class, because outside of Diplomacy cheese, you don't actually beat level appropriate challenges, or contribute enough for anyone to care that you are even there. But apparently because Bards want very badly to do low level things, they magically count as high tier.

[eggynack]

Except that you are totally wrong. Because according to the actual Tier system doing infinity well at dragon and army killing is still doing one thing well, and doesn't make you somehow any higher than Tier 4, you keep claiming that somehow being really really really really good at one thing, so much better than what everyone else is that it's absurd, somehow counts for more than just being "pretty good" at two things but there is no evidence of that. Beating up Dragons, no matter how infinity well you do it, is never going to add up to more than "doing four things okay" under the Tier system. That is how it is specifically defined.
Well, a core problem is that there doesn't currently exist a being with enough power to justify a rank of that fashion, at least not on the basis of pure class rather than non-class cheese. There doesn't often exist a "perfect" solution. See, part of the definition of tier 3 is, "still being useful when that one thing is inappropriate,", and to a certain extent, perfect performance in one area can mean imperfect solutions to problems in other areas.

So, say for example that our intrepid ultra-barbarian is tasked with eliminating slavery from a region by making contact with a rebelling force, and then coordinating with them to reach the goal. The ultra-barbarian would be really really bad at solving the problem that way, and would seemingly be ranked down in that fashion. However, infinite ability to beat stuff up means that the ultra-barbarian can personally take down all the slavers in the region in a way that the normal barbarian would be unable to. In this fashion, the ultra-barbarian can, in a sense, act as an expert at diplomacy by side-stepping the need for diplomacy entirely.



Because 1) It doesn't claim to rank classes on that.
I'm not sure how to take that, given that that was a direct quote of how he ranks his classes. Wait, I do know how to take it. I shall take it as wrong.

2) It doesn't rank classes based on that.
I don't really think this is true either, but arguing it is, again, non-trivial.



3) Any time you point out a that the Tier system doesn't accurately measure that, someone will immediately tell you that's not what the Tier system measures, and if you say that in the right time or place, chances are very good that person might be named JaronK.
Well then, that person, JaronK or not, is wrong. Because the tier system says what the tier system says. People who claim that the tier system is a measure of versatility rather than power are mistaken. The tier system is explicitly about problem solving ability, independent of the way you get to that point.



More directly, that statement is also worthless and has nothing to do with what you were talking or what Bucky was saying because it has no place in it for level appropriate considerations. If what you want to do is kill the Balor, then nothing at all should measure your ability to do that at level 1, because by definition succeeding means your class (or some part of it) is terrible and needs to be banned. On the other hand, if you are a level 10 Bard... just go commit Sepuku and roll a real class, because outside of Diplomacy cheese, you don't actually beat level appropriate challenges, or contribute enough for anyone to care that you are even there. But apparently because Bards want very badly to do low level things, they magically count as high tier.
Your assessment of bards seems way far off the mark. their casting ability is quite great, enough to help with a wide variety of problems, and that's backed up by a number of solid class features. They're tier 3 for a reason, and that reason is because they deserve to be there, whether you're in core or outside of it.

[Beheld]

I don't really think this is true either, but arguing it is, again, non-trivial.

Actually, it's super trivial, the simplest solution goes like this: The Beguiler exists, The Favored Soul exists. Wait a minute, one of these is garbage and the other is awesome, but the Tier system clearly doesn't know which.

More involved arguments amount to something like "Wow, this [Bard, Factotum, Binder, Artificer] sure is a worthless party member. I sure wish he played something else, like a Rogue/Barbarian/Warmage/Spellthief."


Well then, that person, JaronK or not, is wrong. Because the tier system says what the tier system says. People who claim that the tier system is a measure of versatility rather than power are mistaken. The tier system is explicitly about problem solving ability, independent of the way you get to that point.

You can find a sentence in the Tier system that defines the Tier system to be measuring ****ing anything at all. Saying A and ~A doesn't mean you are always right, it means you are always wrong, and also a deceptive ****. The Tier system makes multiple contradictory claims about what it balances so that you can always point to it as being the only relevant system, and so that you can always defend all its many flaws as being totally not flaws because it claims to measure something else.

I mean, I can directly quote a sentence where JaronK says that the Tier system measures all levels, but "emphasizes" levels 5-15. So is the Tier system flawed because it is 100% horse**** wrong about levels 1-5, or does it just not measure them? And then does it matter that it's also 100% horse**** wrong from levels 5-7, but differently?

But while it's definitely not flawed from being wrong, it's still the case that if anyone wants to play e6 you personally will jump in and tell them they must respect the Tier system as their one and only god.

Also that it measures ability to beat level appropariate challenges, even though it never says that anywhere and JaronK specifically in justifying every decisions refers to classes abilities to beat totally not level appropriate at all challenges.

(IE, Beguilers are Tier 3 because they can't beat monsters way the **** higher than their CR, Bards are Tier 3 because they can totally contribute in all sorts of level 5 situations at level 10.)


Your assessment of bards seems way far off the mark. their casting ability is quite great, enough to help with a wide variety of problems, and that's backed up by a number of solid class features. They're tier 3 for a reason, and that reason is because they deserve to be there, whether you're in core or outside of it.

Yeah... No. The reason is because the Tier system measures something meaningless (How many things do you gots?) instead of something meaningful (Hey are those things you got relevant to level appropriate challenges? No... Oh, well ****.)

[Arbane]

D'you think that your respective, abject failures to convince each other in the past would maybe signal that having this argument isn't actually a constructive use of either of your time?

There can be only one.

[eggynack]

Actually, it's super trivial, the simplest solution goes like this: The Beguiler exists, The Favored Soul exists. Wait a minute, one of these is garbage and the other is awesome, but the Tier system clearly doesn't know which.
Gotta say, assuming you're claiming the favored soul as garbage, I don't have sufficient cleric list knowledge to support a claim against. Other people would likely be able to, and I suspect that the class is worthy of the tier, but such is the way that ones opinions cannot always be perfectly founded. Still, in other cases, I'd be more able to support the tier listing. For example, I'd be quite able to support this claim relative to bards.


More involved arguments amount to something like "Wow, this [Bard, Factotum, Binder, Artificer] sure is a worthless party member. I sure wish he played something else, like a Rogue/Barbarian/Warmage/Spellthief."
Sure, you can say that, I guess, but you don't really have detailed support for your claim. You'd need pretty comprehensive same game test usage for a lot of the class power relationships you'd want to argue, and there's need to be a lot of discussion behind specific details. It's a really complex and lengthy thing to prove.



You can find a sentence in the Tier system that defines the Tier system to be measuring ****ing anything at all. Saying A and ~A doesn't mean you are always right, it means you are always wrong, and also a deceptive ****. The Tier system makes multiple contradictory claims about what it balances so that you can always point to it as being the only relevant system, and so that you can always defend all its many flaws as being totally not flaws because it claims to measure something else.
Well then, this is easy. Point to a place in the tier system that directly contradicts what I've claimed, in a way where the two ways of thinking about the system are mutually exclusive. Otherwise, you lack a contradiction.

I mean, I can directly quote a sentence where JaronK says that the Tier system measures all levels, but "emphasizes" levels 5-15. So is the Tier system flawed because it is 100% horse**** wrong about levels 1-5, or does it just not measure them? And then does it matter that it's also 100% horse**** wrong from levels 5-7, but differently?

That's not a contradiction in terms. It just means that the system puts more credit to things that occur in that level range. Like, if you're the best at a given thing at level 6, it means more than being the best at that thing at level 3. Whether you agree with that type of scale is irrelevant compared to the fact that it is perfectly consistent.


But while it's definitely not flawed from being wrong, it's still the case that if anyone wants to play e6 you personally will jump in and tell them they must respect the Tier system as their one and only god.
Not really. The tier system is definitely a presence at that level range, but it's


Also that it measures ability to beat level appropariate challenges, even though it never says that anywhere and JaronK specifically in justifying every decisions refers to classes abilities to beat totally not level appropriate at all challenges.
I don't think I said level appropriate. And the challenges he lists aren't really level specific. He has, in the past, noted that there are a number of possible ways to construct the army challenge that reflect the group's level. Like, I think that some casters pop up as division leaders at some point, and some sort of flying force pops up at another point. Don't recall the specifics, but there's definitely scaling to it.

(IE, Beguilers are Tier 3 because they can't beat monsters way the **** higher than their CR, Bards are Tier 3 because they can totally contribute in all sorts of level 5 situations at level 10.)
That really doesn't seem like an accurate reading of anything involved. You're just projecting your own feelings about bards onto the tier system's feelings about bards. Presumably, if JaronK felt that bards are as bad as you seem to, he would have ranked them lower.



Yeah... No. The reason is because the Tier system measures something meaningless (How many things do you gots?) instead of something meaningful (Hey are those things you got relevant to level appropriate challenges? No... Oh, well ****.)
But the thing is, one informs the other. The number of things you got informs the variety of challenges you can help with, and the power of those things informs the degree to which you can help. It's not like he just blanket considers all things equal. If he did, healer would be way higher tier.

[tsj]

So PC classes should be PF classes and the game should be E6 to ensure that all classes are equal?

There must be a way to have all classes be equal across 20 levels...

Even if PF is more balanced than 3x, it still can't change the fact that fighters, rogues and a lot if other classes are outshined and obsoleted by classes like
wizard et al

That being said, it seems that for a tier 1 game, it works quite well to gestalt tier 1 classes with lower tiers such as

Cleric//fighter
Druid//ranger
Wizard//rogue
Druid//barbarian
Wizard//fighter
Cleric//healer
Cleric//paladin
Druid//ninja
Wizard//warmage
Wizard//warlock
Cleric//warlock
Druid//beast master
Etc..

That at least ensures that everyone is tier 1

[ryu]

So PC classes should be PF classes and the game should be E6 to ensure that all classes are equal?

There must be a way to have all classes be equal across 20 levels...

Even if PF is more balanced than 3x, it still can't change the fact that fighters, rogues and a lot if other classes are outshined and obsoleted by classes like
wizard et al

That being said, it seems that for a tier 1 game, it works quite well to gestalt tier 1 classes with lower tiers such as

Cleric//fighter
Druid//ranger
Wizard//rogue
Druid//barbarian
Wizard//fighter
Cleric//healer
Cleric//paladin
Druid//ninja
Wizard//warmage
Wizard//warlock
Cleric//warlock
Druid//beast master
Etc..

That at least ensures that everyone is tier 1

Pretty close but I would keep in mind the tier of your secondary class in gestalt does not in-itself usually have much effect on your overall power assuming your primary is a tier 1. The primary question are what, if any, extra actions are granted by your secondary class, and what sorts of constantly active benefits come from secondary class. For example Factotum is one of the tastiest wizard secondary gestalts because it grants free actions and has an entire pile of int synergy. Warblade has similar int synergy, higher stat additions to things like BAB saves and hit dice, free proficiencies if you care, and some minor versatility buff if you have worthwhile niches covered by initiating.

For this reason gestalt is where you can see a lot of use for lower tier classes, and higher LA races used if the cost of LA is allowed to be taken by one side of the gestalt.

[tsj]

Pretty close but I would keep in mind the tier of your secondary class in gestalt does not in-itself usually have much effect on your overall power assuming your primary is a tier 1. The primary question are what, if any, extra actions are granted by your secondary class, and what sorts of constantly active benefits come from secondary class. For example Factotum is one of the tastiest wizard secondary gestalts because it grants free actions and has an entire pile of int synergy. Warblade has similar int synergy, higher stat additions to things like BAB saves and hit dice, free proficiencies if you care, and some minor versatility buff if you have worthwhile niches covered by initiating.

For this reason gestalt is where you can see a lot of use for lower tier classes, and higher LA races used if the cost of LA is allowed to be taken by one side of the gestalt.

I think to avoid making tier 1 classes even more powerfull,
it would be prudent to ensure that the gestalt build is tier 1 and
a lower tier class that does not add something significant to the tier 1 class.

But yes, as you also pointed out, this method allows the lower tier classes to be useful.

Tier 2 classes could also be gestalted with lower tier classes IF the classes have a high synergy and
possibly can raise the tier 2 class to tier 1.


I wonder if all archetypes can be covered currently by tier 3 classes?

[ryu]

I think to avoid making tier 1 classes even more powerfull,
it would be prudent to ensure that the gestalt build is tier 1 and
a lower tier class that does not add something significant to the tier 1 class.

But yes, as you also pointed out, this method allows the lower tier classes to be useful.

Tier 2 classes could also be gestalted with lower tier classes IF the classes have a high synergy and
possibly can raise the tier 2 class to tier 1.


I wonder if all archetypes can be covered currently by tier 3 classes?

So basically no gestalts that allow additional actions from secondary class, or which grant constantly effective synergy?

Keep in mind most of that is actually somewhat minor compared to the base power of T1. I mean warblade is mostly going to be about added durability, and easier touch attack spell use for wizards. I mean... You could use them to cover other stuff I guess but proficiencies aren't that crazy and outside of a few niche maneuvers you'll likely care more about spells for actions at any given level.

Alternatively just pick a high LA choice with a pile of bonus INT and some nice immunities. The reason to do this is that since classes stack by picking whichever of the two is better than the other within a progression rather than adding their similar progressions, it's going to be a much more realistic choice than usual to spend your secondary side on something that isn't class progression.

Why is this beneficial to the game in general? You'll get people playing funny looking humans less often and start getting actually diverse race and template setups. It also wouldn't effect absolute power much if at all.

[tsj]

So basically no gestalts that allow additional actions from secondary class, or which grant constantly effective synergy?

Keep in mind most of that is actually somewhat minor compared to the base power of T1. I mean warblade is mostly going to be about added durability, and easier touch attack spell use for wizards. I mean... You could use them to cover other stuff I guess but proficiencies aren't that crazy and outside of a few niche maneuvers you'll likely care more about spells for actions at any given level.

Alternatively just pick a high LA choice with a pile of bonus INT and some nice immunities. The reason to do this is that since classes stack by picking whichever of the two is better than the other within a progression rather than adding their similar progressions, it's going to be a much more realistic choice than usual to spend your secondary side on something that isn't class progression.

Why is this beneficial to the game in general? You'll get people playing funny looking humans less often and start getting actually diverse race and template setups. It also wouldn't effect absolute power much if at all.

I guess that if the other class does not raise the powerlevel of the tier 1 class in any significant way then it could still be "balanced" (in a game where all players are tier 1),

problems would occur if the other class can somehow create a synergy that makes the tier 1 class significantly more powerfull.

[ryu]

I guess that if the other class does not raise the powerlevel of the tier 1 class in any significant way then it could still be "balanced" (in a game where all players are tier 1),

problems would occur if the other class can somehow create a synergy that makes the tier 1 class significantly more powerfull.

Define significant. I was talking mostly minor things like better saves, bigger hit dice, proficiencies, a few class skills, and a few highly niche options for maneuvers that might be better uses of an action than a spell at the same level in some situations. That last one is mostly a matter of gold not spent learning spells within a specific niche or stuff which makes use of swifts/immediates before you have spells to do that.

Compare that minor amount of overall power to what spells just are. It's comparing neat little knickknacks to the power to literally do anything. Any given player is likely to think the stuff they get from their secondary is neat, but it's doubtful to be the cornerstone of power in any build. Even an optimal choice like wizard//factotum is just gaining a slightly better access to mid level action economy in ways similar to what a normal wizard of similar level could accomplish. He'd have to spend a few cross class skill ranks and enough money for a wand, but he'd still be getting an extra spell per turn.

[tsj]

ryu: Hm, yes you might be right.