Optimization Classes and Subclasses Tier List [Archive]

Talamare

2016-03-16, 05:21 AM

This is a comprehensive community tier list to rank the 5e Classes and Sub Classes. Let's begin this introduction by declaring that all classes are playable. The gap between ranks and classes are fairly close, however those on a higher tier may find that their work is a little easier, they have stronger options, or they have more options available. This Tier list is meant to be as objective as possible, but I won't deny that there might have been some minor subjectivity.

Tiers are pointless and don't help anything
This is just your opinion, and its wrong and you're wrong, and you're stupid!
You don't know what you're talking about!
Tier lists create toxic results, and destroy the sanctity and purity of choice
This thread is designed to discuss how each class should be rated on a Tier list, or if any changes should be made to the Tier list. This thread is NOT for posts intending to dismiss Tier lists as a whole. If you disagree Tier list should exist, I completely encourage you to create a new thread. However, I respectfully ask that you do not post it in this thread

This tier list is intended to include all options found in every DnD book.
This tier list does not include Unearthed Arcana.
This tier list currently includes the following books
Player's Handbook
Dungeon Master Guide
Sword Coast Adventure Guide

Bearbarian and Moon Druid

Bearbarian, or Totem Warrior Barbarian who chooses Bear as his level 3 Feature
This is probably the most subjective thing in this tier list, and maybe in the future I'll remove this but for now... This feature is by far one of the strongest features in the game. It comes early and provides you an absolutely insane amount of survivability to nearly all damage types. The fact it reduces damage by such incredible amounts also makes healing extremely effective on you. The Barbarian Chassis as a whole has solid DPR, so you won't fall behind despite being borderline unkillable. As well as Totem subclass has a some out of battle utility. You will have weakness to some control effects however.

Moon Druid
Not only are you a full caster with both solid support and damage spells, but you also gain the ability to transform into fairly powerful Beasts to make you quite proficient in melee combat. In general, your damage will be slightly below average optimized DPR. However due to the Beast Shape mechanics you're one of the more resilient tanks around. With each time you transform you gain a large wealth of additional hitpoints that monsters need to burn thru. The beasts also have a huge amount of utility and roleplay potential. Did I mention you're a full caster?

Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master

These 2 feats are ridiculous, an empty Chassis with Extra Attack can perform similar DPR by just having these. To the point that classes without inherent access to these often feel a little subpar in DPR meters.

A - Powerful class features, variety of powerful builds, able to be incredibly useful both in combat and out of it.
-Ancient Paladin, Cleric, Lore Bard, Wizard

B - Significant class features that define it against other options found for their class, very useful ability both in and out of combat
Eldritch Knight Fighter, Vengeance Paladin, Dragon Sorcerer

C - Very well balanced classes, viable in a variety of situation. C is considered the base line.
Valor Bard, Battlemaster Fighter, Devotion Paladin, Hunter Ranger, Totem Barbarian, Storm Sorcerers, Land Druid, Caster Warlock, Most Monk, Most Rogue

D - While able to perform similar to C rated classes, they usually have slightly weaker class features, or are balanced more aggressively against them.
Avatar Monk, Crown Paladin, Thief Rogue, Champion Fighter, Purple Dragon Fighter, Blade Warlock, Battlerager Barbarian, Wild Sorcerers

F - Mechanically difficult classes, while still able to perform. The main class feature is often more difficult to work with.
Beastmaster Ranger, Berserker Barbarian

TBD
TBD

A Rank
Ancient Paladin's Lv7 aura provides an extremely potent feature that places it above the other Paladins. Resistance to Magic damage is fairly rare, and not only does it provide this to himself, but also nearby allies. It's personal spell list also includes some incredibly useful spells such as Misty Step, Plant Growth, and Stoneskin providing mobility, control, and tanking.

Cleric Domain feature provides a vast variety of potential builds from Ace healer, to incredible controller, to great nuker, etc. The chassis provides excellent amount of options regardless of choice as a full caster.

Lore Bard is one of the most versatile choices in the game currently. They are capable at excelling at anything they set their minds to, from solid nuking, healing, combat, out of combat, etc. This is without mentioning that they are amazing awesome at skills as well.

Wizard has the largest option of spells, and they always have something up their sleeves. With a huge number of subclasses dedicated to nearly any idea, they are often only limited by imagination. Arcane Recovery provides them a wealth of spell slots per day giving them access to a massive variety of options.

B Rank
Eldritch Knight Fighter the Fighter Chassis is one of the better Martials in the game with a large amount of ASI, great burst, and a huge number of attacks. This great Chassis is now enhanced with some incredibly useful spells from Wizard. They can use these spells to acquire some amazing aoe abilities and defensive abilities. With the release of SCAG they acquired some incredible powerful cantrips.

Vengeance Paladin an offensive focus Paladin, who gains some incredibly useful abilities to enhance their dps such as Oath, Hunter's Mark, and Haste. As well as other incredibly useful control and mobility, such as Abjure, Hold Person/Monster, Misty Step/Dimension Door, and Banishment.

Dragon Sorcerer one of the easier Sorcerer to play with a lot of common and useful abilities that come on naturally, while also giving you the choice of focus. You can choose what element you want to focus on, you gain automatic survivability, and automatic damage increase to your focused element. Sorcerer is already considered the premier DPR Caster, and this just makes it easier.

C Rank
Valor Bard

Battlemaster Fighter you are given a large amount of battle options to enhance your battle gameplay, this makes it quite an entertaining option for people who enjoy having a large amount of options. It's like being a mini but limited Caster. While a few of the options are poor, majority of them are pretty entertaining. It's recommended that instead of looking at them as DPR increases, but more like control, mobility, and support options. As far as out of combat options you do get the ability the size up your enemies and an artisan tool.

Devotion Paladin have remarkable accuracy and gives immunity to an annoying condition, tho a few of their abilities are limited in who it can select. Considered a pretty balanced option between offense and defense.

Hunter Ranger are pretty well designed, they have great offensive mechanics, great defensive mechanics, and great out of combat mechanics. Simple enough to play, while still providing you a large amount of options due to being half casters. Considered by most to be really well balanced, and are inherently very versatile. You can never go wrong with a Hunter Ranger.

Totem Barbarian the Barbarian Chassis is an incredibly powerful front line powerhouse and Totem Barbarian provides several solid options to enhance the an already powerful class. You can focus on mobility with Eagle's ability to become more resilient to OAs while Bonus Action Dashing around the battle field, If you prefer keeping your Bonus Action, Elk provides a clean speed increase which stacks with Fast Movement for 55 ft Speed. Tiger on the other hand vastly increases your jump distance and heights, making large gaps a joke for you. Finally, in a party with a few other Melee characters, Wolf provides an insane amount of support by granting every Melee Attack Advantage. Each new subclass feature provides a wealth of potential options to make your character interesting in a variety of ways.

Storm Sorcerers while you're limited to Lightning and Thunder damage, but both elements are fairly solid. Well with the exception to the very few monsters who are immune to both. Some of the mechanics are incredibly entertaining, like controlling the weather, and you're such a natural at flight that you're just jumping all over the place.

Land Druid

Caster Warlock are a little unique in that they are less defined by subclass, and more defined on how they play. The two main types of play for Warlocks are Caster or Blade, by comparison. Caster is safer, provides simple to use high class ranged DPR. All Warlocks get a wealth of in and out of combat options. Including several subclasses that are roughly equal to each other in power and utility. So there are a lot of combination option for variety in creation. Altho, the primary gameplay for all types of Caster Warlocks is simplified to Eldritch Blast, with a sprinkle of Eldritch Blast, and for variety? Some more Eldritch Blast.

Most Monk, the Monk Chassis sacrifices DPR compared to other Martials in exchange for significant amount mobility and control. Ideal skirmishers designed to rapidly move around the battlefield as well as having a few significant alternate defensive options. Not enough to main Tank, but enough to keep you alive. Open Palm provides a large amount of control using Pushes and Knockdowns as well as boost to your daily survivability. Shadow provides shadow manipulation magic, and even more mobility; Giving you the feeling of being a Ninja. Long Death vastly increases your survivability as well as some control using Frighten. Sun Soul uses your mobility to its fullest forcing you to weave melee and ranged attacks each turn for maximum efficiency, as well as giving you access to a few solid aoe abilities.

Most Rogue

D Rank
Avatar Monk
Crown Paladin
Thief Rogue

Champion Fighter a great options for people who prefer simpler gameplay. Provides a solid DPR increase and since Fighters are inherently good. Rolling a lot of Criticals can be incredibly entertaining and you will usually be able to pull your weight in combat. Some people find the lack of options to be less entertaining, but overall a fairly solid subclass.

Purple Dragon Fighter ideal if you are interested in supporting without using magic. It makes you feel a little like Warlord from 4e, at lower levels you're able to provide a nice bump to a few of your allies red bar every fight. Later on, you're able to create some impressive Nova to your party. Not to mention you get some limited Expertise as out of combat options.

Blade Warlock
Battlerager Barbarian
Wild Sorcerers have some a ton of entertaining potential in their chassis, however due to some of how the mechanics works. Technically it doesn't do anything without your DM's input. Depending on how nice your DM is, it could be insanely entertaining or you will have nearly no subclass feature. It can easily be a B or C rank, depending on how nice your DM is.

F Rank
Beastmaster Ranger

Berserker Barbarian your main feature makes your DPR skyrocket, and Barbarians already have solid DPR. The problem with Frenzy is the fact it gives Exhaustion. Exhaustion is a brutal penalty that is difficult to get rid of. You can get rid of only one per long rest naturally, or someone can use a Lv5 spell slot and 100g to get rid of it. The problem is that the penalties to Exhaustion just keep stacking, at your 2nd stack you lose half your speed, by the 3rd you have disadvantage on attacks and saves. Anything after that you just keeps getting worse and worse, including death at 6.

Let me know your opinions! Should any subclass be separated, since I grouped fairly similar options? Did I forget an important subclass? Should anyone be rated higher/lower?

Lines

2016-03-16, 05:37 AM

Disclaimer to prevent the inevitable: This is clearly not the 3.5 tier list, which is pretty unnecessary in 5e. The bearbarian is SS here, while it would be tier 5 in 3.5 - this is a direct ranking of power.

Objections wise, I think it should be noted that battlemaster starts off very powerful and gradually becomes worse and worse, not sure how you'd average that but at 3-6 the battlemaster is amazing, it just becomes poor as hell by the mid teens. I also think life cleric's being overrated there, healing's a bad action in combat and if they're at 0 how much you're healing usually isn't important, only that you are healing. In its place I would suggest death cleric, who has great damage and healing thanks to the ability to use their channel divinity with vampiric touch - at level 6 you can touch twice in a row for 3d6+17 damage and heal half of that on top of very decent subclass abilities.

Giant2005

2016-03-16, 05:44 AM

Tiers are pointless and don't help anything
This is just your opinion, and its wrong and you're wrong, and you're stupid!
You don't know what you're talking about!
Tier lists create toxic results, and destroy the sanctity and purity of choice

So basically, if you have anything to say that isn't expressing agreement with your opinions, we should just stay out of the thread?
The whole reason forums exist is for the purposes of discussion. If your thread prohibits discussion, then it has no reason for being here.

Lines

2016-03-16, 05:50 AM

Citan

2016-03-16, 05:51 AM

Hi!

Well, I'm not sure we can categorize things without precisely setting criterias, but I'll try to give some feedback though.

SS Bearbarian: I don't see why. Sure, it takes a lot of heat damage-wise, and it can dish serious damage, but it still is slightly MAD (STR, DEX, CON) meaning that it will be more susceptible to many dangerous WIS spells. And hitting (grappling) is basically everything of your know-how. I'd put it A max.

S sharpshooter and GWM: simply false. It still requires a decent number of attacks or specific cantrip builds to outperform a normal martial such as Fighter. So you should be more specific, such as Sharpshooter Ranger, GWM Paladin and both Fighter.

Eldricht Knight: should be A imo: you already are a damage powerhouse (4-5 attacks per turn) and you get plenty of spells to help with offense/defense/mobility to help filling other roles.

Rogues: All should be at least B, maybe A, Arcane Trickster definitely A: the Expertise and Reliable talent enough means they can be excellent skillmonkeys, not as flexible as Bards obviously but as good as them in their proficiencies. Trickster gets the same edge as EK, because of useful spells and disadvantage against them.
These are the most obvious feedbacks, no time to make a deep analysis for now. :)

Giant2005

2016-03-16, 05:53 AM

the thread's for those who do want to use it

Used for what?

Flashy

2016-03-16, 05:53 AM

I think this is largely reasonable, but I'm not convinced that the healing role is really so much more significant that it makes the Life Cleric a cut above the other domains. Sure, healing is nice, but I just don't see that superior healing is so valuable that it makes the Life Cleric's excellent healing substantially more useful than the Knowledge Cleric's excellent divining, the Light Cleric's quality blasting, or the Arcana Cleric's access to wisdom keyed attack roll cantrips and 8th/9th level spells that aren't garbage.

Talamare

2016-03-16, 05:54 AM

Lines

2016-03-16, 06:03 AM

However the topic isn't "Are Tier lists good or bad", its "How do we Tier List 5e".

Oh, ok. First question, and you're the most ideally poised to answer it: What are we measuring? Are we measuring:

Pure combat ability? (which is the only category that puts bearbarian at SS, it is a combat monster that can't do anything else)

How the class is useful? (which will naturally go to the broadest classes like bard, who can at least contribute in every context)

Overall usefulness? (take how useful the class will be in each type of situation, multiply it by what percentage of challenges that situation makes up and then see which class has the highest total)

The first is the easiest to quantify, the second is often what's most important to players (many people would prefer their characters be of some help in most situations than be good in some and useless in others) and the third is pretty much what 3.5's tiers were measuring, though 5e classes would at broadest go from high tier 5 to low tier 2, except for a high level wizard/bard which is probably a solid tier 2.

Talamare

2016-03-16, 06:12 AM

Oh, ok. First question, and you're the most ideally poised to answer it: What are we measuring? Are we measuring:

Pure combat ability? (which is the only category that puts bearbarian at SS, it is a combat monster that can't do anything else)

How the class is useful? (which will naturally go to the broadest classes like bard, who can at least contribute in every context)

Overall usefulness? (take how useful the class will be in each type of situation, multiply it by what percentage of challenges that situation makes up and then see which class has the highest total)

Now that... is a damn good question! (series of questions?)

I think to start I'll be honest and admit not all classes are rated completely equally. Maybe like 90% fidelity. Tho I did try hard to remove a lot of personal bias. I 100% HATE Clerics, yet I do recognize their strength.

I do feel that it is a bit of overall usefulness with placing slightly increased pressure on combat proficiency. Maybe 60/40 or 65/35.
As you said Bearbarians are absolute demons of the battlefield, tho you also need to remember that later levels of Totem and Barbarian as a whole gets some out of combat features. Danger Sense, a few rituals, Lv6 feature. So they aren't 100% useless outside of combat.

Most of the A rankers are pretty good in both combat and out of combat.
As well as Full Casters are basically guaranteed to be good.

You also mentioned that this isn't 3.5 Tier List where A is playable and C is trash that should never be written.
It's closer to
A - Very Strong
B - Strong
C - Average
D - Below Average
F - Broken in a bad way

Lines

2016-03-16, 06:20 AM

Now that... is a damn good question! (series of questions?)
One question with three listed answers.

I think to start I'll be honest and admit not all classes are rated completely equally. Maybe like 90% fidelity. Tho I did try hard to remove a lot of personal bias. I 100% HATE Clerics, yet I do recognize their strength.

I do feel that it is a bit of overall usefulness with placing slightly increased pressure on combat proficiency. Maybe 60/40 or 65/35.
As you said Bearbarians are absolute demons of the battlefield, tho you also need to remember that later levels of Totem and Barbarian as a whole gets some out of combat features. Danger Sense, a few rituals, Lv6 feature. So they aren't 100% useless outside of combat.

Most of the A rankers are pretty good in both combat and out of combat.
As well as Full Casters are basically guaranteed to be good.

You also mentioned that this isn't 3.5 Tier List where A is playable and C is trash that should never be written.
It's closer to
A - Very Strong
B - Strong
C - Average
D - Below Average
F - Broken in a bad way
That's nice, man, but you still haven't answered what we're actually trying to measure here. Combat ability, number of situations which can be contributed to or overall usefulness?

Flashy

2016-03-16, 06:22 AM

Life Cleric is the epitome of the idea of Cleric in the minds of too many players, and I mention that straight healing is a TERRIBLE tactic. I only barely give Life Clerics the bump above the other Clerics.

That's honestly pretty fair. If we're treating the list as a "What is most effective while falling squarely into the generic interpretation of a class" you aren't really going to do better in Cleric than Life, though I think we're in agreement that it's not really more powerful or useful than the other high end domains.

Cleric actually nicely highlights both what 5e's subclass system got right and what it sometimes got wrong. About half the domains are tightly written sets of features that come together to turn the character into a distinct support caster with one particular very effective specialty, while the others are a sort of weird hodgepodge of abilities that don't really interact with each other or grant you any meaningful options beyond a mildly expanded spell list. You can still do things with the second set (and the chassis is pretty strong) but Nature and Trickery just don't quite have the verve of Knowledge, Life, or even Tempest Clerics.

Giant2005

2016-03-16, 06:28 AM

I'm unsure if you intentionally misundertood in an attempt to create controversy.

No, I'm not interested in controversy - I am interested in expressing my opinions of the subject matter, and I believed those qualifiers being designed to prevent such discussion. Although now I believe you didn't intend it that way, rather you intend to inspire more of a response rather than just those single lines. As in, you would like to hear the justifications behind why your opinion is wrong, rather than just hearing that you are wrong (or at least that is what I now think you mean, and the remainder of this post will reflect that belief).

Firstly, I think you may have put too much stock into the theory-craft behind the Bear Totem Barbarian. It is a useful subclass for the sake of boosting an individual's capabilities, but in actual play, and more importantly a team environment; it doesn't nearly perform at the level that you advertise it as. It doesn't even perform as well as some of the other Totem Barbarian options. Of the Barbarian choices, the Wofl Barbarian is easily the MVP on any team - giving your allies advantage on their attacks is far more valuable than being able to resist some relatively uncommon damage types. To rate the Bear Totem SS and the Wolf Totem a mere D, is really quite outlandish.

You have also vastly overrated the value of SS and GWM. Against stronger foes, they are a waste of a feat, due to those stronger foes having ACs high enough that using those abilities would lower your average DPR - against those foes, you would have been better off taking an ASI or even the Savage Attacker feat. It is however quite useful against mooks, most notably for GWM's extra attack upon killing one. However that usefulness against mooks doesn't even come close to justifying its rating considering you hate it rated above classes that could simply wipe out all of those mooks with a single Fireball. Killing all of the mooks with a single action will always be more valuable than someone that can simply perform marginally better against those same mooks than he would otherwise.

The Moon Druid rating is also a little questionable, but less so. The Moon Druid is justifiably awesome at each level prior to 5, and at level 20. For the rest of those levels it ranges from pretty average, to actually kind of sucky. Again, I think you have fallen into the trap of considering theory-crafting as an individual character, rather than actual results in game. In game, a mid level Moon Druid that actually uses Wildshape in combat simply isn't pulling his weight. His sub-par damage and lack of spellcasting in that form results in someone that is only one step above being a spectator in combat, while his allies do all of the actual work.

The Bladesinger rating also seems a little dodgy due to it performing not quite as well as a Fighter 1/Wizard X, but as it seems that you are primarily considering pure class characters, the rating probably is quite justified. However, the placement of the Abjuration Wizard seems less justified. There is nothing that makes the Abjuration Wizard excel above the others, and the likes of the Enchanter and even the Divination Wizard outperform it. The only Wizard that is noticeably lower in quality than the other varieties is the Transmuter.

The rest looks relatively okay (close enough that it isn't worth commenting on) except for maybe the placement of the Rangers. I don't really know how a Hunter can be on the same level as a Paladin of any variety, as the Paladin is literally better at everything: better offense, better defense, better spellcasting. They cannot possibly be on the same level.
Placing the Hunter above the Beastmaster seems equally dubious. The only advantage the Hunter has over the BM is its level 15 ability which does have some genuinely good options. However those late game defensive options don't really compensate for the lower DPR that the Hunter endures when compared to the Beastmaster. The difference in their offensive capabilities is not negligible, and it is not narrow enough for one great defensive power to make up the difference.

Now this part is probably what you wanted to repel with your preamble, but I have gone this far, so I will mention it anyway. The reason I (and certainly almost every single person who will ever read this thread) disagree with 1 or more of your placements, is the fact that 5e is so well balanced that such a tier system is impossible to agree upon. The differences in relative power is too small for any differences to have too much meaning on an objective basis, which means any attempts at ranking such things will always be due to entirely subjective opinions, because it needs to be. Subjective analysis is virtually the only way to separate such closely balanced classes.

Lines

2016-03-16, 06:43 AM

That's honestly pretty fair. If we're treating the list as a "What is most effective while falling squarely into the generic interpretation of a class" you aren't really going to do better in Cleric than Life, though I think we're in agreement that it's not really more powerful or useful than the other high end domains.

Cleric actually nicely highlights both what 5e's subclass system got right and what it sometimes got wrong. About half the domains are tightly written sets of features that come together to turn the character into a distinct support caster with one particular very effective specialty, while the others are a sort of weird hodgepodge of abilities that don't really interact with each other or grant you any meaningful options beyond a mildly expanded spell list. You can still do things with the second set (and the chassis is pretty strong) but Nature and Trickery just don't quite have the verve of Knowledge, Life, or even Tempest Clerics.

The tier list isn't measuring 'how well does peoples perception of x does x class fit?'. Healing is inefficient and people whose perception of clerics is as healers are stupid, and you're absolutely right about clerics. A huge problem is that domains like war push them towards melee damage when they aren't very good at it, they have only one attack and +1d8 at 8 and +2d8 at 14. A wizard gets that much damage just from using booming blade. Regarding not being very good at melee: 1d8+(1d8 at 5, 11, 17)+wis cantrips do more damage than 1d8+(1d8 at 11, 14)+str melee attacks once you hit 5, they mean you don't have to use/level a tertiary stat and don't require you to be in melee range.

Cleric wise I'd say:
Good: Death (channel divinity makes melee actually rewarding, rest of the features fit together well), arcane (wizard cantrips plus great spells at high levels when cleric spells are pretty crap), tempest (melee is useless, but good spells, maximise damage, free 10 foot push and late flight are all useful), light (good nuking spells, potent spellcasting, channel divinity is a good nuke that doesn't need a spell slot), knowledge (domain spells are crap, everything else is good except knowledge of ages which is amazing)
Decent: War (heavy armour and +10 to allied attacks is ok, rest is pretty crap), life (spells are all things you had already, melee is crap, extra healing isn't great but it makes something you sometimes have to do more efficient, effectively freeing up spell slots)
Grab bag of abilities that don't do much: Trickster (abilities are way too minor for an entire subclass, spell list is good but not enough to drag it out of the gutter), nature (heavy armour is neat, spells and abilities are pretty garbage, melee is useless, dampen elements is the only redeeming aspect but not enough to pull it out of the gutter)

Tarvil

2016-03-16, 06:44 AM

IIn my opinion, tierlist is much simpler.

T1: Any Wizard, Lore Bard, Moon Druid - Utility powerhouses, fits every team. Moon Druid is kinda weak at mid Tiers, but broken early and late game is worth it.
T2: Every other class except...
T3: Elemental Monk, Beastmaster Ranger, Berserker - Because of some dissonance in mechanic. For example, Ranger have to use whole action to command his pet, Berserker can get amazing DPR boost, but at great price, rest of his skills is mediocre at best and extra attacks takes valuable bonus action. Elemental monk eats too much resource for unimpressive "spells", etc.

For me, all classes are quite balanced. T3 could get little love in Errata to be great.

Lines

2016-03-16, 06:49 AM

The Bladesinger rating also seems a little dodgy due to it performing not quite as well as a Fighter 1/Wizard X, but as it seems that you are primarily considering pure class characters, the rating probably is quite justified. However, the placement of the Abjuration Wizard seems less justified. There is nothing that makes the Abjuration Wizard excel above the others, and the likes of the Enchanter and even the Divination Wizard outperform it. The only Wizard that is noticeably lower in quality than the other varieties is the Transmuter.

Most of what you said makes sense, but this doesn't. Arcane ward is great and even without being a shyalaman and grabbing the snorfbubblin magic feat it can be recharged slowly by ritualling alarm, plus if you actually do go svirpneblie it ensures a full ward at the start of every fight), the counterspell ability is amazingly useful and resistance+half damage from all magic is great, plus it combos really well with the standard fighter 1/wizard x.

Giant2005

2016-03-16, 07:10 AM

Most of what you said makes sense, but this doesn't. Arcane ward is great and even without being a shyalaman and grabbing the snorfbubblin magic feat it can be recharged slowly by ritualling alarm, plus if you actually do go svirpneblie it ensures a full ward at the start of every fight), the counterspell ability is amazingly useful and resistance+half damage from all magic is great, plus it combos really well with the standard fighter 1/wizard x.

I'm not saying Abjuration sucks - its abilities are great, but they aren't any greater than those of most of the other schools. Arcane Ward provides a sizable HP boost that will bring the Wizard's relative total to around the same as a d10 HP class. Although those extra hit points don't receive the benefits of damage resistance or immunity, so in some cases they can be considered worse. However, they can also be considered far superior due to synergies with Armor of Agathys.
It is an undeniably great ability and even more-so when cheesed by multiclassing with Warlock, but it seems to me that this tier list assumes no multiclassing (which is why I let the Bladesinger thing slide). Without cheesing, at level 20 it is comparable to what a level 2 Warlock can pull off with a relatively undesirable Invocation (Fiendish Vigor). With a 6 encounter day, Fiendish Vigor would bring 48 hit points to the table, which is pretty much what a level 20 Wizard would get from Arcane Ward (40 from levels, 5 from Intmod and 3 from recharging). The Wizard may get more than that from recharging, but this is a comparison of a level 20 character and a level 2 one and the Warlock even has a higher base hit die to work with in the first place.

The Improved Counterspell is also a great ability, but it is also pretty situational. It isn't often that one faces a spellcaster, and it is even less common for that spellcaster to be casting a spell that is worth counterspelling at all. My most recent character is a Wizard and he always keeps Counterspell prepared for when it is needed, but he hasn't needed to use it yet. I have considered counterspelling the attacks of enemy Wizards, but ultimately I decided that my spell slots were far too scarce to throw away casually, and I'd get more use out of using them to pull off a spell myself rather than prevent the spell of my enemy (although I do have the benefit of a DM that tells me what spells the enemy is casting - not everyone would have that same benefit).

Spell Resistance is also awesome and there is nothing situational about it. Everyone would kill for that ability.

I could go through all of the other schools and explain why I think they are comparable, but frankly that is much more effort than I am willing to go to. I will say this though, the fact that one of Abjuration's abilities is kind of crappy in comparison (the level 6 ability that I didn't bother mentioning), is one of the major reasons why I don't consider Abjuration superior. Take the Enchantment school for example: although none of its abilities are probably as good as the likes of Spell Resistance, each and every one of them are fairly exceptional in their own right. 4 great abilities is at least equal to 3 great abilities and 1 crappy one, even if 1 or more of those 3 great abilities are marginally better than each of Enchantment's 4.

The bottom line is that Abjuration is great, it just isn't any greater than the other schools with the exception of Transmutation. Transmutation doesn't really have a lot in the way of redeeming qualities and should be considered beneath the rest.

Flashy

2016-03-16, 07:13 AM

Nature (heavy armour is neat, spells and abilities are pretty garbage, melee is useless, dampen elements is the only redeeming aspect but not enough to pull it out of the gutter)

You know, Nature would actually be pretty easy to fix. Switch it to potent cantrip, give it a channel divinity that's more than just a ribbon, and grant it the Arcana 17 feature with the Druid spell list and it's basically pretty functional.

Lines

2016-03-16, 07:19 AM

You know, Nature would actually be pretty easy to fix. Switch it to potent cantrip, give it a channel divinity that's more than just a ribbon, and grant it the Arcana 17 feature with the Druid spell list and it's basically pretty functional.

Yeah, sounds about right. Would an animal summoning channel divinity work? Something like the shadow sorcerer level 6 feature, possibly weakened?

PeteNutButter

2016-03-16, 07:32 AM

At what level are we considering the classes? High level is always caster or bust. At low level weapons rule the battlefield.

I'd argue that more games are played at low to mid level pushing weapon based builds higher on the power curve. Depending on your group(s) and how many games you play regularly, for every wizard you play to high level you'll probably play 10 that don't get past level 1. Groups and games break up, low level wizards die etc.

With that in mind gish builds seem like the highest in streamlined power. Paladorcs and fighters/wizards etc can do the melee thing early and still cast so they aren't behind late game. Combining at least a decent amount of defense with ability to smack things w a stick and later cast the goodies is the way to go.

Pure clerics, druids, and bards can do this well also. Blade locks kind of fall short and don't get the "blade" until level 3.

With that in mind I would actually rate clerics and druids over wizards. *GASP* Probably not bards because their spell list lacks the raw power of the wizards.

Gtdead

2016-03-16, 07:34 AM

I think that the only way to make a legit tier list in 5e is to have very specific criteria. The most game breaking abilities are those that break the action economy, like having an undead army, but even that can be countered by the DM easily.

Lines

2016-03-16, 07:44 AM

Alchemy

2016-03-16, 07:53 AM

SS - Bearbarian and Moon Druid

Not only rated S, but Double S. These 2 subclasses are so ridicoulously gone on the power rankings that its a joke. Including them in any game trivializes the efforts of basically everyone else.

I've seen talk of this kind about these subclasses before and I don't find it convincing. The Bear Barbarian gets the near universal damage resistance when raging, and the tanking at level 14 (although that doesn't apply to anything immune to fear which is quite a lot of creatures at higher levels). For that, it sacrifices the potentially doubled damage output of the Berserker Barbarian, who can reliably get a 3rd and pretty reliably get a 4th attack per round, massively underrated in my view especially when you consider that the reaction attack can potentially save your rage state when you've been unable to reach an enemy in your own turn.

Moon Druid...what about it? I don't want to make assumptions so if you could explain a little bit why you've put Moon Druid up there that'd be great.

S - Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master

Wait, those aren't classes! It honestly doesn't matter, you could be an empty shell with only your offensive stat, extra attack, and vastly outperform other classes with one of these 2.

The -5/+10 is really not all that amazing when you run the numbers, especially at low and mid level. Claims of non specialists with these feats 'vastly' outperforming other classes are 'vastly' overstated, unless you'd like to run some numbers past us. It may seem like I keep throwing the ball into your court here, but you're the one making the list so I think it's reasonable to expect you to evidence your claims.

A - Ancient Paladin, Abjuration Wizard, Life Cleric, Lore Bard, Bladesinger Wizard

Starting off with Paladin, able to make your key frontliners absolutely immune to majority of what could really hurt them. Massive bonuses to all saves as well as straight resistance to all magic damage. A subclass that is walking the fine line of being OP. Abjuration Wizard provides Wizard with a pretty huge amount of free HP every fight while Bladesingers are able to get some shocking levels of AC in a bounded system. Finally Life Cleric is a dominant healbot (assuming shenanigan mc's are ignored), altho healing is probably the worst tactic in the game. It is still sometimes important to have someone who can redbar efficiently. Lore Bard is still everyone's favorite skill monkey with some incredibly potential builds with their ability to steal spells early.

OK let's unpick this a little bit - 'able to make your key frontliners absolutely immune to majority of what could really hurt them. Massive bonuses to all saves as well as straight resistance to all magic damage.' So I assume you're referring to Aura of Warding, which is the only thing Ancients get that other Paladins don't which is relevant to what you're saying. I have no idea where absolute immunity to anything (let alone the majority of harmful stuff) is coming from, here. Massive bonuses to all saves....yes like all other Paladins, although if you're assuming a 20 Charisma that's a very focussed support Paladin whose DPR will have to be sacrificed to some extent. What's the absolute immunity about?

Now probably my biggest question about this whole list - What do you mean by saying that healing is probably the worst tactic in the game?

B - Most other Clerics, EK Fighter, Vengeance Paladin, Dragon Sorcerer, Every Other Wizard

Most of the other Cleric domains are fairly good and fill certain class building niches while maintaining the solid spell list potential of the Cleric. EK Fighter coming out slightly ahead of his 2 brothers with release of SCAG one of the better tank options in the game due to Wizard spells supporting the amazing Fighter chassis. Vengeance Paladins proves to be fairly solid DPR increase to the best chassis in the game. Sorcerer metamagic, mainly quicken to be honest, provides a wealth of powerful features but Dragon in particular gets consistent customizable bonuses. Wizard as expected tho dominates the full caster board as they are able to get a full collection of spells, and pump out an insane amount of them due to Arcane Recovery.

Dragon Sorcerer is by far the premier damage dealing build in the game. Here are some back of the envelope numbers on single round spike damage and 10 round max damage for a selection of classes without multiclassing, assuming level 20, single targets, no misses and average damage for the sake of ease, otherwise you need to factor in AC/save bonuses of critters and it becomes a nightmare. Assuming use of greatsword for melee damage, see note on Warlock regarding Polearm Master/TWF

(Max Damage in 1 Round/Max Damage over 10 rounds)

Sorceror (422/1,280)*
V. Paladin (137/662)
Fiendish Patron Warlock (133/835) - Using True Poly as a Pit Fiend plus Hurl Through Hell, which creeps Warlock above Bard, Wizard and Druid using True Poly/Shapechange. Ancient White Dragon provides better AoE. You can get competitive ranged and melee DPR out of a STR20/CHA20 Blade Pact Warlock with Lifedrinker, Thirsting Blade and Agonizing Blast, especially if you go Polearm Master/TWF, which 2 Attack per round characters benefit from much more than Fighters, who only get a whisper of extra total damage compared to a greatsword after spending bonus and/or reaction attacks, which they can get with the greatsword from things like Sentinel and GWF.
Champ Fighter (111/670)*
Thief Rogue (38/423) This should be higher, as you could get an acid vial in there every round with your Cunning Action, or with Assassin making certain assumptions, but bottom line is Rogues aren't competitive in pure DPR.
Hunter Ranger (56/560) Obviously underperforms when no potential for multiple targets.

*An additional advantage for these classes is number of attack rolls per round, which translates to making them superior buff targets for effects which improve damage per hit and for Magic Weapon damage bonuses.

Happy to take you through these numbers, but on the face of it the only ranking system that makes sense for pure combat is Dragon Sorceror/Everyone else.

F - Beastmaster Ranger, Frenzy Barbarian

Both fairly broken options that should probably be avoided. Beastmaster either needs a ton of work or needs to be exploited in very specific ways. Frenzy Barbarian don't even get any worthwhile features until 14, to make it worse its main interesting feature is brutally, PAINFULLY punishing. Ironically, if Bearbarian had this penalty they might have been not been completely broken. Likely still overpowered tho.

See above re; Frenzy Barbarian, it's actually the best melee damage output build and gets charm/fear immunity thrown in, and the Exhaustion is really only bad after three rages, and Greater Restoration can fix that.

Gtdead

2016-03-16, 07:55 AM

AoE fights, Notoriety, hallow grounds, whatever. It may be strong but it doesn't defy the dm's will in any shape or form. If the DM wants to give you a hard time he can do it.

Citan

2016-03-16, 08:01 AM

You know, Nature would actually be pretty easy to fix. Switch it to potent cantrip, give it a channel divinity that's more than just a ribbon, and grant it the Arcana 17 feature with the Druid spell list and it's basically pretty functional.
Woah, didn't see this post.

Cleric wise I'd say:
Good: Death (channel divinity makes melee actually rewarding, rest of the features fit together well), arcane (wizard cantrips plus great spells at high levels when cleric spells are pretty crap), tempest (melee is useless, but good spells, maximise damage, free 10 foot push and late flight are all useful), light (good nuking spells, potent spellcasting, channel divinity is a good nuke that doesn't need a spell slot), knowledge (domain spells are crap, everything else is good except knowledge of ages which is amazing)
Decent: War (heavy armour and +10 to allied attacks is ok, rest is pretty crap), life (spells are all things you had already, melee is crap, extra healing isn't great but it makes something you sometimes have to do more efficient, effectively freeing up spell slots)
Grab bag of abilities that don't do much: Trickster (abilities are way too minor for an entire subclass, spell list is good but not enough to drag it out of the gutter), nature (heavy armour is neat, spells and abilities are pretty garbage, melee is useless, dampen elements is the only redeeming aspect but not enough to pull it out of the gutter)

Well... Are you serious?
You must not have even tried to think about playing one, yes?

1. Druid cantrips
- Shillelagh means you can safely focus on maxing WIS (and CON) while having a good melee attack until your usual cantrips get better.
- Produce Flame is subpar in terms of damage/range compared to firebolt, but it's a utility (light) and ranged attack mixed together, which is great for a Cleric (since only Cleric offense is Sacred Flame, DEX save).
- Thorn Whip can be great on a Cleric which usually fulfills a support role: you can deal damage while pulling an enemy out of melee (= disengaging an ally) or close one enemy next to another to improve an ally's AOE effective range.
So any of those three is a good addition to Cleric cantrips.
Also, it can stack with Spiritual Weapon or Spirit Guardians, another reason you would want to go to melee.

2. Proficiencies
Heavy armor is another reason you can safely keep STR and DEX to a low level (although you'd lose movement with too low a STR), and does great for survivability at all levels.
Additional skill is more to the taste of oneself, and its usefulness really depends on how you play and how the DM rules.

3. Domain abilities
Halving the damage sustained by an ally is no small feat, especially at a 30 feet range. It's also a proper use of reaction for someone who won't be always close enough in melee to get opportunity attacks.

As for Divine Strike, it's "nice no more" as is. If your DM considers it makes your weapon magic for the strike, it's much better.

Finally the Channel Divinity: at low levels, it can already reverse a fight depending on army composition by stopping harmful actions from wolves, spiders, bears etc. When you get 17th level feature, it's similar to a Conjure Animals (bonus action, but no concentration).

4. Spells
I understand that you don't like the spells, as they are less straigthforward to use or more situationals than a plain ol' Fireball. They are not useles though.
Speak with Animals is the most situational, but can be cast as a ritual (so no slot) and is great for scouting or gathering info.
Spike Growth is concentration, so competes with Spiritual Weapon, but can make a pretty decent "wall" since it's both difficult terrain AND damaging. Also, you can combine it with Thorn Whip to add insult to injury.
Plant Growth is non concentration, so it's great to shape a fight or facilitate a runaway. You can also use it out of combat to gain great benefits (help a village's agriculture in exchange for lodging/money/weapons/info/whatever).
Wind Wall: well its uses are pretty straightforward. :)
Insect Plague: a bit underwhelming in damage but the range compensates a bit. Good to create a panic or soften the enemy before engaging.

I agree on other spells that they really require a specific environment/setting to have a chance to shine though (especially Grasping Wine when you already have other good bonus action spells, Tree Stride which requires a forest and target only self, Dominate Beast because depends on DM...).

TL;DR: Nature is never a bad choice per se for any Cleric, on the contrary it's a solid choice for every Cleric. Its main problem is that some of its features are really reliant on environment. But the majority of its features stay useful in any situation.
So, depending on the campaign and DM, it can become outstanding or "good enough".
Also, since it tip-toes hard on Ranger and Druid roles, it's best to avoid it if there is at least one of them in the party, unless specific build in mind.

I could say the same about Trickster: I wonder if you really play with your teammates, because its a great domain for team support.

Alchemy

2016-03-16, 08:01 AM

people whose perception of clerics is as healers are stupid

Have you ever actually played D&D in a group?

Shaofoo

2016-03-16, 08:03 AM

I dunno about your analysis on Frenzy Barbarian

I mean you are going to ignore immunity to fear and charm at level 6? I think that is a huge thing that you can't be CCed so easily and in fact if you are able to rage then you can also ignore the conditions is huge. Also Frenzy isn't as bad as you think it is, you aren't supposed to use it always and even at a level of exhaustion your ability checks are the only thing that suffers, and Barbarians can have advantage on all Strength checks and even later on you can replace your checks with your strength score as well.

Should it be high, no. Quite frankly I can't defend intimidaing Presence since trying to make it worthwhile makes you MAD and has the if the target makes it then you can't use it for 24 hours on that guy. It should've been either a bonus action or on attack on a nearby target (heck make it on attack while frenzied even).

I don't care that it should be changed to the bottom of the barrel but I do find it to be a disservice to disregard immunity to fear and charm, at the least that should be mentioned. Intimidating presence is trash and Frenzy does invite people to punish themselves which is why I don't care that Frenzy is higher than bottom tier since something has to be bottom so might as well be that.

I also don't think that both bottom tier classes should be avoided, if you know how to pace you can Frenzy without much ill effect and I've seen supposed cases where people play Beastmaster Rangers as written and have fun as well. It might not be the best but I don't think either is unusable as written.

KorvinStarmast

2016-03-16, 08:19 AM

Have you ever actually played D&D in a group? I am interested to see the answer to that.

Lines

2016-03-16, 08:39 AM

{scrubbed}

Fwiffo86

2016-03-16, 08:39 AM

OFF TOPIC - by request of OP

Why is a tier list necessary? That is my big question.

Aside from that, number crunching on paper in my experience is not a conclusive representation of what happens in game. Often the division is so large as to cause players to express disbelief and lose faith in the narrative and power of their character. While I can somewhat understand the community's desire to classify, codify, and rank, I cannot find a purpose to it. Each character is different, they all have strengths, and weaknesses built in. That is why everything is built on a balance of multiple characters, not a single one.

My personal opinion can do nothing but tarnish my theoretical objectivity in any ranking system. As an example, I find utility vastly superior to one trick ponies, despite how powerful that one trick is (incidentally - magic is considered a one trick pony for this statement). So any character with more options (spells, combat tricks, social maneuvers, etc) is far more powerful in my games than bob who bashes the demon to death in one round.

I am in no way saying the tier list isn't a tool, or that it isn't useful to some. I just can't find any reason for it.

Lines

2016-03-16, 08:42 AM

MrStabby

2016-03-16, 08:59 AM

So I have DMed quite a bit between levels 6 and 12 and my impressions at this range are:

1) Cleric. All are good but life has the edge. Any attempt to wear down party hitpoints through easier encounters is a waste of time. Channel Divinity is a great feature for either healing or trivialising undead themed encounters. Spirit guardians remains relevant throughout the game, not just as damage but for slowing down enemies. Heavy armour helps what would otherwise be weak concentration saves. This is all backed up by some fantastic utility spells. it may just be me, but high wisdom saves seem to mean that the cleric is very tough to take out of the fight unless you are specifically designing your encounter to do so. Divination spells can be a challenge to DM with but mainly it is their balance between offensive and defensive capabilities and having a strong role vs every combat that makes them so superb.

I also think the hate for the trickery domain is undeserved but it benefits more than most from multiclassing, so it is possible that is not considered.

2) Monk. Open hand is best. Simply put stunning strike can trivialise any encounter with only a small number of enemies. Taking 1/2 of the enemies and stopping them doing something then on top of that giving everyone advantage against them? Solid armour class, impossible to pin down and again good wisdom saves make monks a constant theme in the encounters that are easy. Possibly elemental monk might be lower as you could accidentally use Ki on something other than stunning strike. Against a homogeneous army of tough monster type things the class is less exciting where the ability to pick out and incapacitate targets is less important - but I find this type of encounter is pretty rare.

3) Wizard. Divination and Abjuration have been best. The wizards weakness is defence - too easy to lose concentration spells, not a great AC and few HP. Abjuration does a lot to offset this weakness so it is probably in first place. Divination has portent and spell recovery. Arcane eye revealing so many dangers the party might face in a dungeon is a good deal for a 4th level spell slot - when it brings back a 3rd level slot it gets pretty ridiculous. Portent on the other hand is a little like the monk stunnng strike and can so often force a failed save from a monster. This is open to abuse in more sandboxy type games where the players have a lot of control over what to fight - "ok so I have a "1" for my portent today, I think we should go and kill that red dragon now".

4) Paladin/Barbarian/Polearm Fighter/Sorcerer
Lots of damage. The prospect of missed attacks, some form of resistance or other way nova rounds may fail makes these guys a lot weaker. Often it uses up some very limited resources. Some encounters they will trounce but they don't have something exceptional for all of them. The paladin is maybe at the top of this tier as as auras, channel divinity and lay on hands offers depth the fighter doesn't have. The sorcerer seems to be at its best with a mix of damage and non damage spells (and at its most fun as well).

5) Bard/Warlock/Druid
Bard is a solid class and it can have some great spells. It is a very solid all-rounder but it has enough weaknesses or even just areas where it isn't the dominant character that it is falling behind the cleric a little at these levels. Lore bard can be one of the best counterspellers in the game, which in certain campaigns could raise it a tier.

Warlock does solid, reliable damage like the fighter or barbarian but not so much. It cant match the peak damage of the sorcerer and all the best spells it could get are 1 per day and need an invocation. The warlock is also unable to pull out the stops like a sorc and burn resources when the encounter needs it. More spells on a short rest and some spells at will don't really compensate for this loss of flexibility. Any other caster played wisely after about level 7 or so will almost always have some resources left to spend towards the end of the day.

Moon druid is OP at levels 2 to 4, I won't argue against that. At the mid levels though it is just a really tough caster and the druid spells, whilst good, rarely resolve harder encounters by themselves. Summoned animals can be awesomely powerful in some encounters but I find the number of these where the druid doesnt make a concentration save or the creatures don't fail their saves to be sufficiently small that they seem pretty balanced (using a high Con beast to hide in to preserve concentration works, but then the druid isn't casing any more spells). Land druids are a bit more of an issue as they don't tend to run out of spells so easily and they can have access to some pretty awesome domain spells.

6) Rogue/Other fighters/Hunter Ranger

The rogue is solid at early levels but quickly its unique abilities become overshadowed by spells. Divination supplants scouting, invisibility doesnt replace stealth but makes it less important, and knock opens doors for you. In combat they can hold their own in damage terms, but raw damage rarely breaks encounters by itself. Even so their damage is eclipsed by barbarians and fighters. Arcane tricksters have a few more tools at their disposal and could possibly be placed higher but even so I don't find they are the ones that make encounters easy.

The hunter ranger is a superb archer. I find that with most of my encounters being indoors range is limited and often there is no target outside of cover. Warlocks can do much of what these guys do in terms of damage and also have more non damaged based abilities.

Other fighters. This is a very difficult one to place, especially without addressing multiclassing. The fighter chassis has a great amount of versatility and a lot of things will perform very differently but i have found that the class doenst go much beyond damage+hitpoints as the champion (although sometimes it is a LOT of damage to be fair). The BM abilities are great and the short rest recharge is good but sometimes it is a bit situational ("I try and disarm the reef shark!"). I have only DMed for a couple of fighters like this and these both over just a couple of sessions. The EK underperfoms the others on average but it can always pop out an unexpected spell to save against with disadvantage which can turn a lot of combats (also in some places if they can block a doorway or otherwise strategically position themselves they can be hard to shift. Even their typically poor wisdom saves are able to be offset due to large numbers of ASIs.

7) Beastmaster ranger
No one in my group has wanted to play one so I haven't seen one in action but I am happy to agree with the consensus that they are poor (not unworkable, but pretty unexciting). What role do they fill that another class couldn't do better?

Alchemy

2016-03-16, 09:16 AM

Yes, and I'm sick of people expecting me to heal instead of taking an action that will end the fighter sooner. Healing is the most boring thing you can possibly do, at least a basic attack is uncertain - use up a spell slot, heal the person, your action's done. A robot could do it. It's something I've been pondering on for a while, actually - 4e solved it by having heals be part of other actions and having direct healing abilities be a minor (bonus) action, which had the problem of healing being something that didn't really require you to change how you were acting at all which made it factored into the baseline.

I think I'll make a thread on this shortly - healing is innately boring, requiring no real skill, a battlemaster that uses his maneuvers well and locks down a scary foe feels accomplished and skilled, a cleric who says 'I guess I use my turn healing again' merely gets bored. Healing word's a bit better in that it allows you to do other stuff as well as heal, but it slides closer to the 4e paradigm of healing just sort of happening while you fight - I want a solution that actually rewards problem solving and tactics.

So rather than accept the overwhelmingly common idiom of the Cleric for what it is, you've decided that everybody else's expectations of the class make them stupid, because you find healing boring. Have you ever had it suggested to you that you might not want to play a cleric? I find arcane magic boring, and I hate the way my group always expects my wizard to be casting spells, instead of running around shooting his crossbow which is far more fun. They're just stupid, obviously.

All of that aside, neither you nor the OP has presented any argument against healing on the grounds of ineffectiveness other than repeated assertion. Indeed, your admission that you find healing boring suggests that you might be inclined to construct an argument against the efficacy of healing even where one doesn't exist, but I'm still open to hearing one. There being a relatively low level of randomness in how healing works is the opposite of something that makes it a bad tactic, since reliability is a good thing.

CantigThimble

2016-03-16, 09:20 AM

Yes, and I'm sick of people expecting me to heal instead of taking an action that will end the fighter sooner. Healing is the most boring thing you can possibly do, at least a basic attack is uncertain - use up a spell slot, heal the person, your action's done. A robot could do it. It's something I've been pondering on for a while, actually - 4e solved it by having heals be part of other actions and having direct healing abilities be a minor (bonus) action, which had the problem of healing being something that didn't really require you to change how you were acting at all which made it factored into the baseline.

I think I'll make a thread on this shortly - healing is innately boring, requiring no real skill, a battlemaster that uses his maneuvers well and locks down a scary foe feels accomplished and skilled, a cleric who says 'I guess I use my turn healing again' merely gets bored. Healing word's a bit better in that it allows you to do other stuff as well as heal, but it slides closer to the 4e paradigm of healing just sort of happening while you fight - I want a solution that actually rewards problem solving and tactics.

In my opinion the real skill of playing a cleric is figuring out how to do as much of your healing with prayer of healing as possible. That means almost never spending spell slots healing mid-combat. Kill first, heal later. But your spell slots are also really valuable and need to be conserved. You can never be without a spell slot for revivify, prayer of healing and healing word or your party might be utterly screwed. Spiritual weapon is great for ending fights faster, but unless its going to save your party upwards of 30-40 points of damage then it's better to not use it and then prayer of healing later. And even then it's debatable. The only time I would ever cast cure wounds in combat is if it is desperately imperative that person not go down even for a second. For example the entire party is in danger of going down to one round of enemy attacks, or my target is concentrating on an important spell.

As a cleric I typically spend most of my time casting sacred flame and making sure my 20AC butt is in the correct position to deflect enemy damage and/or trigger sneak attack. I only cast spells in extreme circumstances.

Edit: Lines is right (at least to some extent). Casting cure wounds in combat is really really inefficient. It is much better to prevent your party from taking damage to begin with whenever possible and then prayer of healing.

Citan

2016-03-16, 09:28 AM

Healing is the most boring thing you can possibly do, at least a basic attack is uncertain - use up a spell slot, heal the person, your action's done. A robot could do it.
I think I'll make a thread on this shortly - healing is innately boring, requiring no real skill, a battlemaster that uses his maneuvers well and locks down a scary foe feels accomplished and skilled, a cleric who says 'I guess I use my turn healing again' merely gets bored.
Bite me.
Oookay?
1. 5e brings many spells to the Cleric so he can heal with either an action or a bonus action and still contribute something to the fight in any given turn (considering many concentration spells gives you a bonus action): if only, Spiritual Weapon and Spirit Guardians, or fixed area such as Insect Plague, when you have to use your action to heal. Otherwise, with Healing Word, you still have your whole action free.
Same for most classes getting healing features, they will always have something else available in the turn to do.

2. Sorry to be blunt but, the second sentence is one of the most thoughtless ones I ever read. Especially because healing takes up previous resources, it requires skill to decide when and how to prefer it to an attack or spell. And the fact that it's certain to success is not a flaw but a big benefit.
Sometimes a Cleric will be much more clever to heal an ally than to try an offense, because his strike will be shallow (or enabling an offense would put him at too much risk) whereas his pal will have greater chance of success or make a much greater impact. For example, a half-dead Paladin, next in turn, that could slay a dangerous foe with a Smite but would have to go past several opportunity attacks that could finish him off as is. Or just reviving someone to get him a chance to run away on his turn, because you know that otherwise he'll get surrounded and will have no way to escape death (unless you know you have a fair chance to win the fight within the minute in which case it's obviously best to Revivify after).

You could also read the topics popping up regularly where people discuss in which cases you have to make an exception to the classic rule "during a fight, use only Healing Word and only on people with 2 failed death throws" (which is indeed the basic tactic).

Telling that "healing requires no skill" is as void as telling "buffing requires no skill". Both are a kind of indirect offense, and both need to choose carefully when and who to apply it on.

The only time I would ever cast cure wounds in combat is if it is desperately imperative that person not go down even for a second. For example the entire party is in danger of going down to one round of enemy attacks, or my target is concentrating on an important spell.

As a cleric I typically spend most of my time casting sacred flame and making sure my 20AC butt is in the correct position to deflect enemy damage and/or trigger sneak attack. I only cast spells in extreme circumstances.

Well, I'd say casting Sanctuary would be much better to fulfill this objective when your ally is "preparing" a spell. Of course if you were talking about keeping concentration on something while going on the offense, not much choice... Although it would prevent potential concentration break on a hit, just auto-break if fall unconscious, right?

Also agreed on the second paragraph, this should be the mundane turn in most occasions. :)

Lines

2016-03-16, 09:29 AM

So rather than accept the overwhelmingly common idiom of the Cleric for what it is, you've decided that everybody else's expectations of the class make them stupid, because you find healing boring. Have you ever had it suggested to you that you might not want to play a cleric? I find arcane magic boring, and I hate the way my group always expects my wizard to be casting spells, instead of running around shooting his crossbow which is far more fun. They're just stupid, obviously.
That isn't what a cleric is. A cleric has a few healing spells and one subclass dedicated to healing, with a very small percentage of both spells and subclasses are dedicated to healing. A cleric is not a healbot and if it ever was it hasn't been for a very long time.

All of that aside, neither you nor the OP has presented any argument against healing on the grounds of ineffectiveness other than repeated assertion. Indeed, your admission that you find healing boring suggests that you might be inclined to construct an argument against the efficacy of healing even where one doesn't exist, but I'm still open to hearing one. There being a relatively low level of randomness in how healing works is the opposite of something that makes it a bad tactic, since reliability is a good thing.
Easily done. Healing in combat is a really bad use of your time. It is incredibly inefficient (1d4/level+mod for healing word, 1d8+mod for cure wounds) and tends to be binary, if you aren't bringing somebody up from 0 you're not improving your groups efficiency at all, and on top of that because of how inefficient it is the spell slots and action taken to heal someone ensures the party will take more damage because you didn't use that time to kill or disable a foe, thus preventing them from doing damage. The maths of combat in D&D work so that preventing the damage from happening in the first place is almost always a better use of time than healing the damage once it has taken place.

In my opinion the real skill of playing a cleric is figuring out how to do as much of your healing with prayer of healing as possible. That means almost never spending spell slots healing mid-combat. Kill first, heal later. But your spell slots are also really valuable and need to be conserved. You can never be without a spell slot for revivify, prayer of healing and healing word or your party might be utterly screwed. Spiritual weapon is great for ending fights faster, but unless its going to save your party upwards of 30-40 points of damage then it's better to not use it and then prayer of healing later. And even then it's debatable. The only time I would ever cast cure wounds in combat is if it is desperately imperative that person not go down even for a second. For example the entire party is in danger of going down to one round of enemy attacks, or my target is concentrating on an important spell.

As a cleric I typically spend most of my time casting sacred flame and making sure my 20AC butt is in the correct position to deflect enemy damage and/or trigger sneak attack. I only cast spells in extreme circumstances.
So what I'm hearing is healing in combat is bad unless the person would die otherwise (which is the truth) and that spending all your spell slots on nothing (which is what that is, you're not making any decisions just using up what's unique about your character to keep your party topped up) is somehow fun?

Lines

2016-03-16, 09:34 AM

Oookay?
1. 5e brings many spells to the Cleric so he can heal with either an action or a bonus action and still contribute something to the fight in any given turn (considering many concentration spells gives you a bonus action): if only, Spiritual Weapon and Spirit Guardians, or fixed area such as Insect Plague, when you have to use your action to heal. Otherwise, with Healing Word, you still have your whole action free.
Same for most classes getting healing features, they will always have something else available in the turn to do.
I've already said that healing word's better because at least you can do other stuff. It's still dull, requiring pretty much no decision making - compare healing in an MMO, where at least you have something interesting to do. I don't think that's the answer either, the mechanics wouldn't port well, but healing doesn't require anywhere near the level of tactics damaging does and it's boring as crap.

2. Sorry to be blunt but, the second sentence is one of the most thoughtless ones I ever read. Especially because healing takes up previous resources, it requires skill to decide when and how to prefer it to an attack or spell. And the fact that it's certain to success is not a flaw but a big benefit.
Sometimes a Cleric will be much more clever to heal an ally than to try an offense, because his strike will be shallow (or enabling an offense would put him at too much risk) whereas his pal will have greater chance of success or make a much greater impact. For example, a half-dead Paladin, next in turn, that could slay a dangerous foe with a Smite but would have to go past several opportunity attacks that could finish him off as is. Or just reviving someone to get him a chance to run away on his turn, because you know that otherwise he'll get surrounded and will have no way to escape death (unless you know you have a fair chance to win the fight within the minute in which case it's obviously best to Revivify after).

You could also read the topics popping up regularly where people discuss in which cases you have to make an exception to the classic rule "during a fight, use only Healing Word and only on people with 2 failed death throws" (which is indeed the basic tactic).

Telling that "healing requires no skill" is as void as telling "buffing requires no skill". Both are a kind of indirect offense, and both need to choose carefully when and who to apply it on.

Buffing at least involves interesting decision making, do you cast bless to let them hit harder and try to end the fight faster or spiritual guardians to keep them away? But yeah, buffing's next to healing in terms of blowing your spell slots to improve your party but not being interesting. Bless is actually a great example - mathematically it's often your only use for concentration, but it's dull as hell.

CantigThimble

2016-03-16, 09:43 AM

So what I'm hearing is healing in combat is bad unless the person would die otherwise (which is the truth) and that spending all your spell slots on nothing (which is what that is, you're not making any decisions just using up what's unique about your character to keep your party topped up) is somehow fun?

...There are better and worse ways and situations to heal. You have to use your judgement to determine the correct way in which to heal given the situation. Making those decisions is the source of strategic fun.

Just like there are better and worse ways and situations in which to deal damage. You have to determine the correct way in which to deal damage given the situation.

Clerics are more strategically interesting than other classes in my opinion because they need to balance both options. A lot of other classes have only damage, or a separate resource that powers the healing they have. If you are so obsessed with using damage spells that you forget you have healing that might be more valuable then you are missing out on some fun and interesting strategic decision making.

Fwiffo86

2016-03-16, 10:10 AM

Easily done. Healing in combat is a really bad use of your time. It is incredibly inefficient (1d4/level+mod for healing word, 1d8+mod for cure wounds) and tends to be binary, if you aren't bringing somebody up from 0 you're not improving your groups efficiency at all, and on top of that because of how inefficient it is the spell slots and action taken to heal someone ensures the party will take more damage because you didn't use that time to kill or disable a foe, thus preventing them from doing damage. The maths of combat in D&D work so that preventing the damage from happening in the first place is almost always a better use of time than healing the damage once it has taken place.

It could be stated that the job of the other party members falls into this category and is not the overriding mission statement of the cleric.

BladeWing81

2016-03-16, 10:13 AM

In the firsts replies to the thread the death cleric is mentioned but there is no death cleric in the PH nor in the SCAG books, is this a homebrew or are we talking 3.5 of some other edition I haven't played?

Shaofoo

2016-03-16, 10:14 AM

I think I'll make a thread on this shortly - healing is innately boring, requiring no real skill, a battlemaster that uses his maneuvers well and locks down a scary foe feels accomplished and skilled, a cleric who says 'I guess I use my turn healing again' merely gets bored. Healing word's a bit better in that it allows you to do other stuff as well as heal, but it slides closer to the 4e paradigm of healing just sort of happening while you fight - I want a solution that actually rewards problem solving and tactics.

Bite me.

Speak for yourself, I actually like to heal in D&D and would always try to do so if I can.

And healing does require skill since heals are limited, you can't just heal always especially in a long brawl. I'll even take the Medicine skill so I can discern everyone's condition at a glance (if somehow telling our HP is not allowed due to the characters not having telepathic knowledge of the other's status at will). And I am not sure why can't you solve problems with healing, even outside of combat you could still heal others around you as well, healing need not be limited to combat.

If you don't like healing then you don't have to do it. In fact you can create a Cleric in 5e with zero healing ability. it just seems you are taking personal preference as an objective point.

Giant2005

2016-03-16, 10:15 AM

KorvinStarmast

2016-03-16, 10:31 AM

Yes, and I'm sick of people expecting me to heal instead of taking an action that will end the fighter sooner.
I'd like to introduce you to Healing Word, a bonus action first level spell. We discovered that if one of the PC's dropped, that healing word basically popped them up again in the middle of the fight and you'd usually get at least one action out of them before they dropped again. (Sometimes more, depending on where in the fight you were).

In the same turn, you still have an action (sacred flame or attack or something else, with me it tended to be SF or an attack, though a few times I tried shove as the barb was behind me in initiative and a successful knock prone made the barb tear things up ... ) would usually further the fight.

Where I agree with you is that it is a spell resource and thus to be used when needed ... you can't spam healing with an adventure day with multiple encounters.

Getting the caster up off the floor so she can cast another spell is very handy.

Bite me. Quelle suprise

Sir_Leorik

2016-03-16, 10:35 AM

Now probably my biggest question about this whole list - What do you mean by saying that healing is probably the worst tactic in the game?

I second this. Why is healing a bad tactic?

Lines

2016-03-16, 10:36 AM

{scrubbed}

Lines

2016-03-16, 10:39 AM

I second this. Why is healing a bad tactic?

Reacting is a lot worse than preventing in the first place. Typically you can prevent more damage by damaging or controlling enemies than you would heal, on top of damaging or controlling enemies also contributing to ending the fight.

Sir_Leorik

2016-03-16, 10:50 AM

Reacting is a lot worse than preventing in the first place. Typically you can prevent more damage by damaging or controlling enemies than you would heal, on top of damaging or controlling enemies also contributing to ending the fight.

But that doesn't make healing worthless as a tactic. Even as a last resort, a PC that's failed two death saves can use a level 1 Healing Word.

Shaofoo

2016-03-16, 10:52 AM

Reacting is a lot worse than preventing in the first place. Typically you can prevent more damage by damaging or controlling enemies than you would heal, on top of damaging or controlling enemies also contributing to ending the fight.

Not all fights are able to be controlled or involve enemies that you can actually damage or fight. Sometimes traps are mixed in and you can't do anything about it and you take damage. Damage and effects might be resisted or saved against and thus your plan will be moot. Plus the out of fight contributions to healing are, dare I say, much more robust than most other spells that are not pure utility. also heals are a sure thing, every other effect can be negated as I said earlier.

Sure not getting hurt is good but you can't just say you will not get hurt forever, if you don't want to heal then don't heal but saying that it is ineffective is not being realistic especially when you start to talk like if you are basically in a no damage run in D&D and your group so far only needed to rest to recover spell slots and nothing else, heck you probably dumped Constitution cause any added HP is a waste.

Gwendol

2016-03-16, 10:54 AM

Reacting is a lot worse than preventing in the first place. Typically you can prevent more damage by damaging or controlling enemies than you would heal, on top of damaging or controlling enemies also contributing to ending the fight.

Theorycrafting. The point is that healing has a very predictable outcome, while controlling is typically less so. Sometimes healing can save the day and sometimes it is a waste, pretty much like most other tactic.

MrStabby

2016-03-16, 10:55 AM

Alchemy

2016-03-16, 11:00 AM

That isn't what a cleric is. A cleric has a few healing spells and one subclass dedicated to healing, with a very small percentage of both spells and subclasses are dedicated to healing. A cleric is not a healbot and if it ever was it hasn't been for a very long time.

You're the only one in this conversation using the word 'healbot', a Cleric is a healer, not a healbot, like a Fighter is a frontline warrior, not an attackbot and a Ranger is an archer/tracker, not an arrowbot and a Wizard is a spellcaster, not a spellbot. If you think of things in those terms it's no wonder you have an unsatisfying experience at the table. I play a Life Cleric at the moment and I get immense satisfaction out of my healing and my party is a lot better off for it.

Easily done. Healing in combat is a really bad use of your time. It is incredibly inefficient (1d4/level+mod for healing word, 1d8+mod for cure wounds) and tends to be binary, if you aren't bringing somebody up from 0 you're not improving your groups efficiency at all, and on top of that because of how inefficient it is the spell slots and action taken to heal someone ensures the party will take more damage because you didn't use that time to kill or disable a foe, thus preventing them from doing damage. The maths of combat in D&D work so that preventing the damage from happening in the first place is almost always a better use of time than healing the damage once it has taken place.

The first and most important false dichotomy you're creating here is between healing and healing in combat. We're talking about healing. A cleric is a healer, a life cleric is an incredibly effective healer, but that doesn't mean the healing all has to take place in combat. So when you say healing is ineffective, what you actually mean to say is healing in combat is ineffective. Nobody can touch the Life Cleric for out of combat healing, and out of combat healing is crucial in any game where you may have more than one encounter per day. A Life Cleric massively increases the resilience of the party over the course of the adventuring day.

Moving on to actually healing in combat, you're flat out wrong that it's ineffective and a poor use of time, in anything other than the kind of sterile and pretty shallow theory box that you're obviously running these calculations in. If you accept that out of combat healing is an important function and that the Life Cleric does it well, that settles the question of whether there is a place for the Life Cleric at all in the party, all that remains to be assessed is how, given his spells and abilities, the Life Cleric ought to behave in combat.

Given that you have a Life Cleric in this scenario, what are your options? Taking my character, Klux, as an example of a pure healing build (Human Life Cleric, took the Healer feat, always has healing word and prayer of healing memorized, currently level 3) He can attempt to attack with his mace, attack with sacred flame, use his Preserve Life channel divinity feature or cast a 1st or 2nd level spell. This is a 3rd level party.

I tend to favour Bless over Spiritual Weapon as it's a 1st level slot and I think my Paladin, Wizard and Ranger get more out of the +d4 to hit than the +5 to hit 1d8+3 damage Spiritual Weapon which ties up my bonus action for the combat, so that's my go-to concentration spell. That leaves me 3 x 1st and 2 x 2nd level spell slots.

Now I happen to play to try to keep my whole party fully healthy for as long as possible without eating into my spell slots, but that's a roleplaying choice so we'll shelve it here and try to figure out what's optimal.

My order of priorities for action would be as follows;

1. Someone is unconscious = I use the first aid option from the Healer feat as my action to heal them 1d6+7 hit points. If necessary, I will then drop a healing word on them to bring them up to safely above the damage which our enemies are dishing out on average, this is situational, 8-13 is usually enough to absorb one attack at level 3 so I'd tend to leave it. If it's a big boss fight and I expect to be able to long rest after it, I might be more liberal with how topped up I try to keep people, especially if the enemy is capable of big spike damage. If I have already used this option on that character since last rest, I'll use Preserve Life, which currently dishes out 15 HP. There may be a small amount of wastage here, the Paladin and Ranger have 28HP max so it's only 1 for them, a bit more for the wizard. If I can't first aid and I can't Preserve life (both short rest recovery resources) I'll drop a healing word on them and use my main action to sacred flame/mace attack. Healing word gives 1d4+7 (8-11). I never use Cure Wounds in combat, I agree with most that it's too action inefficient, especially for a Life Cleric who gets the majority of his healing from the class feature. If I have no first level spell slots, I'll consider dropping a Prayer of Healing if there is a lot of damage floating around in the party, otherwise I'll stabilize and bring back to 1 HP with a healing kit (which I can do ad infinitum unless I run out of kits, which are Klux's version of arrows for an archer and a totally crucial resource to keep on hand).

2. 1 is not true, Someone is diseased, blinded, deafened, paralyzed or poisoned = I cast Lesser Restoration on them, assuming I have a 2nd level slot.

3. 1-2 is not true, Someone is close to 0 hit points. This is where the fun happens. For me, deciding if I need to drop a healing word or prayer of healing mid-combat is an extremely important tactical decision, I'll weigh up the context of the fight (dungeon trawl, random scrap in a city, wilderness encounter, lair fight) and my expected need of healing resources for the day, plus the threat level we're facing (especially the spike damage capacity of the creatures) and finally the individual and aggregate damage which is knocking about in my party. Sometimes I'll heal, sometimes I won't. I follow the same order of use as for when someone is unconscious - first aid, preserve life if not wasteful, healing word, prayer of healing. The main thing I'm trying to work out is 'what's the likelihood that x party member will drop before my next initiative, can I prevent that from happening?'

4. 1-3 is not true. I will almost always sacred flame or mace attack, very rarely if we are facing something particularly threatening I will consider a guiding bolt. Obviously I'll Turn Undead if applicable. Outside of that, there are very few spells which I think give more bang for buck than healing word or prayer of healing (aside from my concentration spell). In reality, since I explained my roleplaying choice, I sometimes actually hold my action to use my first aid with the trigger being 'myself or an ally within reach are wounded' which makes me basically a static healing pillar until my next initiative count, without spending any spell slots. I love doing this, but there's probably an argument to say that it isn't optimal, it's more about the fact that Klux's role and attitude lend him toward being a combat medic first and foremost.

And that's pretty much it.

All of the above is contingent upon a couple of very simple basic understandings about combat. 1 - A single downed party member can quickly escalate into total party wipe due to the lowered party effectiveness/synergies/number of party targets for enemies to focus on. 2 - The main role of a Cleric is non-combat functionality (out of combat healing, buffing, utility spells). Once you have a Cleric, nothing he can do in combat with his actions is more effective than what a conscious Fighter, Paladin, Sorcerer, Warlock, Rogue, Barbarian, Wizard, Ranger, Druid, Bard or Monk can do, so it's optimal to use his action to bring any of the above back into the fight, fully active less only half their movement. Those classes are all more combat focussed than a Cleric can ever be, barring specific, circumstantial use of certain spells (which I would obviously do if the situation called for it, but it never has so far). 3 - Once you accept the logic of 2, you realise that the same holds true for spending your action to prevent a character from dropping (and missing an initiative count) as for returning them to the fight, ergo the Cleric is optimal when healing up beyond the point of single hit death, although probably not beyond that. This is also sometimes contingent upon party initiative order, which is another factor when deciding to heal (I'm less likely to preventative heal a character who acts after me but before all of the enemy).

Summary - The Life Cleric is optimized for healing, and if he does it intelligently it's not only more effective than alternative actions in combat, it's incredibly fun and rewarding.

Nobody has ever referred to Klux as 'healbot', but I have heard 'saviour' and 'best cleric ever' and 'super-medic'. My companions are at least as appreciative of my timely healing as they are of one another's spectacular finishing attacks. You find healing boring, that's basically all there is to it, it's not ineffective and thinking of Clerics as healers is not stupid, although I'll grant you that thinking of them as healbots is. Thinking of any character as an anything 'bot' is stupid.

MrStabby

2016-03-16, 11:21 AM

I tend to favour Bless over Spiritual Weapon as it's a 1st level slot and I think my Paladin, Wizard and Ranger get more out of the +d4 to hit than the +5 to hit 1d8+3 damage Spiritual Weapon which ties up my bonus action for the combat, so that's my go-to concentration spell. That leaves me 3 x 1st and 2 x 2nd level spell slots.

For clarity, spiritual weapon isn't a concentration spell.

EvilAnagram

2016-03-16, 11:22 AM

I mean, 5e tier lists in general are pointless, reductive wastes of time that poison discussion and mislead newer players into thinking that perfectly valid options should be avoided, but this one is especially hyperbolic.

I mean, leaving aside the fact that the power differences between a Wizard and a Beast Master are minor, and a well-played Beast Master is better than a poorly played Wizard, you want to claim that a Bearbarian is broken on the same level as a Moon Druid?

You're saying that damage resistance (that's easily bypassed by several casting classes) is so broken that the Bearbarian completely overshadows every other class? Casters no longer matter because he takes slightly longer to drop? A Paladin with higher damage output doesn't matter because every once in a while he needs an action to heal? This is just silliness piled on top of the regular reductive poisonthat the tier paradigm normally provides.

Finieous

2016-03-16, 11:24 AM

Basically you are using a limited resource to undo less than the enemy did to you with an unlimited resource most of the time.

Sometimes it has value - brining a player into the fight or fighting against sharks for example and some spells might be worth it (life cleric paladin or life cleric bard for example with aura of vitality) but generally you are better off buffing/debuffing or controlling or hurting the enemy.

Some of it is also level dependant.
At low levels you might be looking at d10 for a cantrip with a 60% chance of a hit - average of 3 damage per round or an attack at about 5 damage per round. Healing for 10-11 points of damage looks pretty ok whilst spells last.

By level 5 you are looking at doing (more than) twice the damage per character at will but your low level heals do pretty much the same. The cost you are paying becomes less about the spell slot and more about the action/bonus action you use and could have used for something else.

Gets better at higher levels, mostly because of the "mass" cures. At 5th level, the (non-Life) cleric can cure up to ~36 hp with a 3rd level slot and a bonus action. No chance of missing or being negated by save. At 9th level, you're up to 108 hp with a 5th-level slot and an action (probably while you're concentrating on bless or spirit guardians and attacking with spiritual weapon). At 17, you can drop a mass heal for up to 700. :smallbiggrin:

With single-target heals, a non-Life cleric really can't outheal damage, and shouldn't try. The mass heals start to change that equation and become very efficient, especially in conjunction with the cleric's buffs and damage-over-time spells.

Alchemy

2016-03-16, 11:24 AM

For clarity, spiritual weapon isn't a concentration spell.

That doesn't really bear on anything I said, but thanks.

Citan

2016-03-16, 11:29 AM

Basically you are using a limited resource to undo less than the enemy did to you with an unlimited resource most of the time.

Sometimes it has value - brining a player into the fight or fighting against sharks for example and some spells might be worth it (life cleric paladin or life cleric bard for example with aura of vitality) but generally you are better off buffing/debuffing or controlling or hurting the enemy.

Except that it's wrong, its only theorycrafting in a bubble. Confer my previous example or the following: if you know that you can 1) try a spell to disable (kill or whatever) a dangerous foe with shallow or at least unknown chance of success or 2) "revive" your Paladin pal whose turn is between yours and your enemy and has a much stronger chance to hit, with sure kill on hit by using a smite if necessary...
Which choice is the best, I wonder... XD

Healing or not depends on many factors: the global fight situation, the turn order, your current resources, your priorities, your chances of succeeding at this or that action etc...

That's why telling that "healing does not require skill" is stupid. It does not require "skill" as is "put points into that stat to ensure success", but it does require the player to be smart and aware.

Belac93

2016-03-16, 11:33 AM

I dunno about your analysis on Frenzy Barbarian.

I agree with this. Frenzy barbarians may be worse than bearbarians, but they are really fun. Going into a frenzy is kinda like an action surge every turn at lower levels. Not quite as good, but still awesome.

CantigThimble

2016-03-16, 11:36 AM

Except that it's wrong, its only theorycrafting in a bubble. Confer my previous example or the following: if you know that you can 1) try a spell to disable (kill or whatever) a dangerous foe with shallow or at least unknown chance of success or 2) "revive" your Paladin pal whose turn is between yours and your enemy and has a much stronger chance to hit, with sure kill on hit by using a smite if necessary...
Which choice is the best, I wonder... XD

This was one of the exact scenarios he described where healing was better than offense: Bringing someone into the fight.

MrStabby

2016-03-16, 11:54 AM

This was one of the exact scenarios he described where healing was better than offense: Bringing someone into the fight.

I am not going to jump down anyone's throat on this. I know English isn't everyone's first language.

I think my post on the them of it being a generally bad idea but here are some exceptions got misinterpreted along the way to become "It is Never Ever a good idea to heal in combat and you won't be able to give any anecdotes or contrive examples where this is untrue".

Sure nine turns out of ten in combat you don't want to heal someone - that is saying it is not often a good idea rather than it never being a good idea. And always, always it depends on what else you able to do that the action must compete with.

Jormengand

2016-03-16, 11:57 AM

My order of priorities for action would be as follows;

Aren't you literally proving the point that it's so simple that even a robot can do it?

Gtdead

2016-03-16, 12:20 PM

Being optimized for healing in a game that healing is more of a utility rather than a combat feature is pointless in my opinion. Cleric can do a ton of stuff, control, nova dpr, tanking, assisting high dpr classes.

Healing is just a tool that counters bad dice reactively. There is nothing more to it than that. It's no better than portent or cutting words, it's just safer and more consistent. It's always a better idea to use an ability that ends the encounter faster than anything else. If the cleric is forced to heal too often, then there is something wrong with the party.

Citan

2016-03-16, 12:30 PM

This was one of the exact scenarios he described where healing was better than offense: Bringing someone into the fight.
You're right on this one, I wanted to make the most simple example to stress the point. But it's not the only case, confer my previous example where healing "a priori" can also be an efficient tactic.

On a side note, the lengthy post of Alchemy (which I 95% agree with) made me realize that Healer feat can be worth the investment when you need to heal but want to keep your bonus action for whatever reason, notably to cast a spell. So thanks to him! ;)
My only note would concern Cure Wounds: for a pure class it's indeed a last resort and a sign that something is going wrong. :)
For many multiclass builds though, it becomes more interesting or, let's say, more usable. (@EnderDwarf if you read this post, this spell could be a nice candidate for your series of "Optimize the underrated", and I'd be glad to provide some wild ideas if needed ;)).

Being optimized for healing in a game that healing is more of a utility rather than a combat feature is pointless in my opinion. Cleric can do a ton of stuff, control, burst dpr, tanking, assisting high dpr classes.

Healing is just a tool that counters bad dice reactively. There is nothing more to it than that. It's no better than portent or cutting words, it's just safer and more consistent. It's always a better idea to use an ability that ends the encounter faster than anything else. If the cleric is forced to heal too often, then there is something wrong with the party.
I think we pretty much all agree on the bolded part.
What made some of us (me included xd) jump though is that some people don't seem to understand or willing to admit that there are many cases where healing actually IS the best "ability that ends the encounter faster". :)

GraakosGraakos

2016-03-16, 12:37 PM

Okay. I have a lot of thoughts on this list, some good, some bad.

First; You have a combat focused Barbarian build as the SS tier along with a full caster. What utility does it bring besides being able to take hits? Wolverine is not the most powerful Xman (Xmen?) and that's because if you do things to lock it down (lair actions, stuns, terrain, spells that incapacitate without saves, or that target weak saves) they have no recourse. Resistance to damage doesn't do anything if you reverse gravity, time stop, or Jump across a canyon away. It is, however, extremely good at low to mid levels, and comes online SO fast that I'd say it's A tier. Barbearian can't scry and fry, scout the entire dungeon with Arcane Eye, teleport your whole party to the plane of healing and hot babes (of both genders; don't discriminate now) or teleport your enemies to the plane of spoiled ranch dressing and itching sweaters. They also can't summon an angel to do everything for you, or Forcecage the BBEG and tell stand up jokes to fill the rest if the encounter runtime.

So why are they rated higher than people that can? Want to take less damage? Absorb Elements and Shield. Want to do lots of damage? Maximized Scorching Ray/Delayed Blast Fireball/Disintegrate/??? Both available to full casters IN ADDITION to their subclass stuff. Having a melee combat focused dude as THE BEST CLASS in the game is, and I'm sorry to be inflammatory but I can't think of another way to say it, laughable.

Second; Moon Druids are really amazing early game and at 20, but having played one and played alongside one, levels 8-16 or so are pretty rough and they turn into a not as good fighter/frontliner. Especially since their AC gets ripped to shreds by lots of critters. But, I'd say they're still S tier since they're a full caster at the end of the day.

I'm abandoning numbering.

I personally think that Paladin has the most interesting and fun chassis in the game, but that's mostly because I love playing them. I think Ancients>Vengeance>Crown>Devotion, but YMMV.

I think this tier list is based on a lot of theoryland play and not a lot of playtesting. For instance, Bladesinger has awesome AC and can mix it up in Melee okay, BUT the first non AC damage is going to really hurt. Also, every turn you're attacking (which is what most people who take the subclass are trying to make the wizard chassis do) is a turn you aren't Wishing, Fireballing, Reversing Gravity, Earthquaking, etc. On a gish tierlist? Bladesinger is up there. On a class tierlist, Divination is higher IMO, since you can guarantee's land what you need to and save your own skin.

The problem is that in play, things that look awesome on paper can be seriously lackluster. I come back to the Bladesinger because I think it represents this problem well. On paper, really stupid AC is awesome. In practice, Bladesinger have like 4 HP and fall over a lot because their chassis isn't built for frontlining, which is what people who pick it are trying to make the wizard.

Now I get that you can just Bladesing when you're caught out in combat, and that's true. You can play it as a straight wizard and then have ridiculous AC every now and again. That's the smart way to play it. But look at what you're giving up. Stronger minions or an arcane ward or Portent or Illusory Reality etc. So is it the best wizard? I'd say no, but that's just imo, not like, empirical fact.

You have to think of how people are actually going to play these subclasses and not what they appear to be able to do. The Moon Druid is going to solve all of his problems by turning into a cave bear. That is not really helpful in a lot of situations, but he's a full caster with options, so S tier.

The barbearian, however, is going to solve all his problems by smacking it. If that doesn't work his plan looks like this: attack-> yell at it-> ??? -> profit. So he's B to low A because when he can't do his one thing, he's SOL. His ritual stuff helps, but he still can't stand alongside full casters, especially since they're easier to survive the low levels with in 5e compared to 3.x.

You have GWM and SS as a tier on their own, and you say they allow whoever holds them to outperform every other build without them.

In what? Combat? Because a fighter with GWM and his 4 attacks is extremely potent, yeah, but so's a Wizard with Disintegrate or a sorcerer with maximized Scorching Ray/Quickened whatever. And the casters don't have to sacrifice accuracy to do it.

In social problems/skill checks/ explorations, those feats are worse than useless, since you could have gotten an ASI and been better at skills in general.

Now, I'm not downplaying their power, I feel. A fighter/paladin/ranger/rogue/gish with SS/GWM is better in combat than without. They have the option to deal more damage to people they believe they can reliably hit. But to say they are better in a build with virtually nothing else than most of the other classes in the games is, I have to think, a gambit at shock value rather than a serious attempt at categorizing character options.

Gtdead

2016-03-16, 12:42 PM

What made some of us (me included xd) jump though is that some people don't seem to understand or willing to admit that there are many cases where healing IS actually the best "ability that ends the encounter faster". :)

Agreed, my experience is that at lower levels, healing tends to be powerful. But it doesn't scale that well at higher levels while the party starts getting the dice defying abilities and superior buffs/features. So by lvl 7 I doubt that it ends any encounter faster ;p

Alchemy

2016-03-16, 01:03 PM

Aren't you literally proving the point that it's so simple that even a robot can do it?

That's what you took away from reading that post?

I wasn't trying to prove or disprove that a 'robot' (you mean computer, I assume) couldn't perform the functions of a given role adequately. If you think about it for even a moment, you'll realise that in fact it would be pretty straightforward to write a programme which encompassed every RAW permutation possible and produce the optimal action. That's a) nothing to do with the point I was making and b) totally irrelivent anyway since you can say the same of almost any tabletop or board game which humans play. I could do the same thing for determining what combat actions to take as a fighter. There's plenty of working out and imperfect information in the brief priority sequence I laid out for most humans to have fun with, certainly for me. If you'd like to present one for literally any other class at 3rd level which you think demonstrates how relatively simple my Life Cleric build is to run, be my guest.

The combat system of D&D is so simple a computer could do it better than a person. That's just a meaningless statement though. Chess is so simple a computer can do it better than a person. If you haven't got anything but snarkiness to bring to the table, consider holding your tongue.

Grod_The_Giant

2016-03-16, 01:49 PM

I definitely agree with those who're saying that you don't value utility and options enough. You also should define your terms a little better-- the 3.5 tier system was useful because it was descriptive more than a ranking of which class was "best"-- a T1 class had certain traits which were different than a T3 which were different than a T4. With that said, I'd suggest ranking classes in two ways: Power (A-C) and Options (1-3) (or Combat and Utility, if you'd prefer). Something like a Wizard or Lore Bard would come in at the top of the Options scale, with a wider variety of abilities than just about anyone else, while things like the Paladin and Dragon Sorcerers coming in at the top of the Power scale. You might even add a third category for Endurance, but that's probably complicating things too much.

Within the scale, the first tier would be those who perform above average in that category, the second tier would be those who are about average, and the third tier would be those who are lacking. For a quick example-- and I hardly claim to be an expert on class balance in this edition, so I might be wrong, you might populate the scale like so:

Power
A-- Dragon Sorcerer. According to Alchemy's math, they're miles ahead on direct damage, have decent defenses and enough options not to be one-trick ponies)
B-- Land Druid. You're not setting any records, but you're not really losing, either.
C-- Beastmaster Ranger. You have problems.

Options
1-- Wizard. You have more spells known from a bigger and broader spell list than anyone else, and phenomenal ritual access to go along with that.
2-- Ranger. Solid skills and some spells for utility.
3-- Berserker Barbarian. You can hit dudes. You can hit dudes real good.

I'd say the most useful way to present the data would be a quick list-- A1s, A2s, A3s, etc, followed by a class-by-class breakdown (with an overall score and a separate score for each subclass) explaining why. Something like:

Barbarian-- B3
Barbarians are fierce melee combatants, but not much else. They can easily be resistant to just about any damage they come across, and they can hit hard and often. On the other hand, they have the smallest number of proficiencies in the game and get little to nothing in the way of class features to make up for that.

Berserker Barbarian (B3). More attacks means more violence, although things like Polearm Master and Great Weapons Master offer similar benefits to Frenzy without the cost. You pay for it with less defense and even less utility than the Totem Barbarian.
Totem Barbarian (A2). You start off with two highly useful rituals, and things only get better from there. Totem Spirit and Totemic Attunement offer fantastic combat buffs, and Aspect of the Beast gives you some fun abilities that thankfully aren't limited to use while raging. Spirit Walker is a third excellent information-gathering ritual to complete the set.
Battlerager Barbarian (SCAG) (C3). Pretty much gives you nothing useful. Battlerager Armor is pretty much flat-out inferior to Polearm Master in terms of extra attacks, and if you want the grappling bonus (which is crap) you still pretty much need Grappler and Tavern Master to make it work. Reckless Abandon and Spiked Retribution are too small to notice at the levels you get them (or at all, really), and Battlerager Charge is a watered-down version of the Rogue ability eight levels later. Even if you want to play a Mad Max extra, just be a Berserker and weld a bunch of spikes to your breastplate.

Biggstick

2016-03-16, 03:00 PM

Grod_The_Giant

2016-03-16, 04:46 PM

This is actually a pretty incredible way that someone could rank all the classes. It hits on plenty of the points that people want as well as gives reasoning behind each choice. My only request would be adding a god tier of sorts. Wizards, Druids, and Bards of certain archetypes are certainly on a godly level for some of those ranking types that other classes couldn't match. My suggestion would be:

S tier - 1 Tier (Godly)
A tier - 2 Tier (Good)
B tier - 3 Tier (Middle of the Road)
C tier - 4 Tier (Below Average)

Wouldn't really need to go below C tier imo, with B tier being normal or average.
Sure, that seems workable. I guess a third (fourth?) measure might be mobility-- how much a good build can affect things, the old floor/ceiling bit.

Biggstick

2016-03-16, 05:13 PM

Sure, that seems workable. I guess a third (fourth?) measure might be mobility-- how much a good build can affect things, the old floor/ceiling bit.

I like the durability or endurance measure that you brought up as well. I'm not completely sold on a mobility measure as you could put most classes on a mount to solve something like that. I do like the good build idea as a final tier, but I'm thinking more along the lines of dip values into each class. Dipping 1-6 levels and the value each one provides.

Tons of work would be involved to create a dip value chart, but it would be extremely useful in determining class strengths.

Grod_The_Giant

2016-03-16, 05:18 PM

I like the durability or endurance measure that you brought up as well. I'm not completely sold on a mobility measure as you could put most classes on a mount to solve something like that. I do like the good build idea as a final tier, but I'm thinking more along the lines of dip values into each class. Dipping 1-6 levels and the value each one provides.

Tons of work would be involved to create a dip value chart, but it would be extremely useful in determining class strengths.
By mobility I meant tier mobility-- the ability to improve things with the right feat(s) or dip(s). I don't know if a "dip value chart" is the right approach, but it could certainly make an interesting handbook.

Giant2005

2016-03-16, 05:19 PM

You'd need to compare each class multiple times at differing levels too, as what is true for a class at level 3 isn't true for a class at level 20.
Judging things linearly might seem like the best idea but I think separating levels at key moments is more valid. Something like the following is best:
Levels 1-4
Levels 5-10
Levels 11-16
Levels 17-19
Level 20

Thanks to GWM and SS (and a few other abilities that give attack roll bonuses), you will also want to divide offense into two categories - one for low AC mooks, and one for high AC threats.

GraakosGraakos

2016-03-16, 05:42 PM

snip snip good rating thing

This is an awesome idea. It also brings up another point. In 3.5, the tier system was more dependent on whether your character had options or if they only did one thing, even if they did it extremely well.

Quantifying the best class hands down is nigh impossible. It's too subjective and situation dependent.

joaber

2016-03-16, 06:03 PM

Agree with giant2005

bearbarian isn't that great at low lvls since you only can rage 2 times day.

BM is the best fighter at lvl 3, at lvl 5, EK is the worst, and only start of being usefull at lvl 7 thanks to SCAG cantrips.

war cleric is the best in lvl 1, is one of worsts later. And life one is most useful multiclassing.

ancient pali is the worst until lvl 7.

bladesinger isn't that great at high lvls, when wizards can avoid most of damage with the right party and bring better options to that party.

Flashy

2016-03-16, 06:22 PM

What made some of us (me included xd) jump though is that some people don't seem to understand or willing to admit that there are many cases where healing actually IS the best "ability that ends the encounter faster". :)

Agreed! My argument is generally that the Cleric domains don't really fall into easy categories of good and bad, they break down into "tightly written" and "not so tightly written," with the defining factor being how well the various abilities unite as a power package. Life, Knowledge, Light, Arcana, Tempest, Death are all strongly written, with a clear design specialty that the mechanics facilitate.

Trickery and Nature are perfectly flavorful and aren't really less powerful than the others in actual play, but they seem to have been written in an attempt to match abilities to a fluff concept rather than to define a specialist role that matched the fluff concept. Nature's channel divinity doesn't really have anything to do with the 6th level feature, the spell list, or the any particular character role. It would have been so easy to make Nature about summoning, damage mitigation buffs, or battlefield control, but instead the domain got a light smattering of abilities that sort of toy with each of those options don't really define any particular specialty. My original point way back on page one was just that Nature and Trickery sort of reflect the way 5e sometimes loses focus on the subclass system. You wind up with a few cases where there are options that are honestly fine, but they don't seem to have been designed with quite the same ethos as the other subclasses.

Vogonjeltz

2016-03-16, 07:49 PM

So basically, if you have anything to say that isn't expressing agreement with your opinions, we should just stay out of the thread?
The whole reason forums exist is for the purposes of discussion. If your thread prohibits discussion, then it has no reason for being here.

Indeed, it is discounting the possibility that the premise of the question itself is fatally flawed, by assuming without evidence that there are even "tiers".

He's saying that the thread has a specific purpose, and that saying that purpose is irrelevant isn't welcome. It's like having a discussion thread on the champion and adding a disclaimer that people like me aren't allowed to swoop in explaining why the champion is crap and shouldn't be used - the thread's for those who do want to use it, so my explanation would be uncalled for.

That said if the OP doesn't object and you do want to discuss it that sounds fun, just put said discussion in spoilers or add a disclaimer saying OFF TOPIC: at the start or something.

I wouldn't dismiss your opinion out of hand, and it would be most welcome if you demonstrated a solid line of reasoning for why you believed the Champion is "crap and shouldn't be used".

I'm wary of flaws associated with ranking that you yourself have brought up:

What criteria are we actually ranking them on? What are the metrics associated with those criteria? Are they little more than popularity contests? When viewing a particular class/subclasses abilities, what is being taken into account? Does the ranking hinge upon a radical interpretation of a particular sentence or ability that (if discussed on its own) would be dismissed as abusrdity? We can't know that if we don't know that actual reasons behind the claims.

I've seen the Beastmaster and Berserker routinely relegated to the back of the pack in many lists, yet they are mathematically better than most all the other classes in terms of damage output. If we're not measuring damage output and ranking them in order, what is the actual concrete criteria being used?

There's also the concern about group consensus and rejection of outliers that results from having a codified list in this fashion. Once a popular ranking has been established, it becomes accepted truth, regardless of how inadequate the ranking or analysis done actually was. Newcomers are essentially told to accept that is the truth, even when the original criteria was too vague to actually support the results, leading to prejudicial opinions accepted as fact.

The bottom line is that Abjuration is great, it just isn't any greater than the other schools with the exception of Transmutation. Transmutation doesn't really have a lot in the way of redeeming qualities and should be considered beneath the rest.

I tend to disagree, the Transmuter abilities look quite powerful:

Level 2: Rip off artist
Level 6: Battle Mage (Prof in Con saving throws = prof in Concentration)
Level 10: Minor in Druid
Level 14: Pocket Cleric

Abjuration is all well and good, but 2/4 abilities only come into play by taking damage. The 14th level ability is at least useful against spells in general, not just the damage dealing ones. Overall a Wizard probably gets more value out of Transmutation.

Dragon Sorcerer is by far the premier damage dealing build in the game. Here are some back of the envelope numbers on single round spike damage and 10 round max damage for a selection of classes without multiclassing, assuming level 20, single targets, no misses and average damage for the sake of ease, otherwise you need to factor in AC/save bonuses of critters and it becomes a nightmare. Assuming use of greatsword for melee damage, see note on Warlock regarding Polearm Master/TWF

(Max Damage in 1 Round/Max Damage over 10 rounds)

Sorceror (422/1,280)*

Can you provide the actual abilities used to get those numbers? I'm not seeing it off the cuff. Also, Wild Magic would have a higher cap because of Spell Bombardment and Wild Magic Surge wouldn't it? (extra damage die, the potential to deal an additional 4d10 to 3 targets (so, +4d10 vs one target)

Reacting is a lot worse than preventing in the first place. Typically you can prevent more damage by damaging or controlling enemies than you would heal, on top of damaging or controlling enemies also contributing to ending the fight.

I don't disagree with your assessment in general.

However, I think having access to healing spells is probably crucial in a few circumstances: Preventing the death of an NPC; Getting a player back into the fight; Keeping a character up who has better offense and would lose a turn if they get dropped after your turn.

i.e.

You - Init 20
NPC Enemy - Init 19
Damage Dealer PC - Init 18

If the other pc gets dropped on init 19, they lose a turn before you can get them back on their feet, which is a net damage loss vs you healing them so that they don't get dropped between now and your next turn.

So, sometimes it's important to have healing. That doesn't mean you should always be using spell slots for healing, I wouldn't use them unless it's important (i.e. One of those scenarios I mentioned or something like them) and I definitely wouldn't use them as a substitute for one of the other healing resources in the game (i.e. Hit Dice, Healing Kits). Given that spell slots require a long rest, the party should always opt to take a short rest instead of burning spells to heal someone.

So, some proposed criteria for ranking:

Combat: Damage Per Round (Sustained, Burst), Efficiency of action (How many actions?), Status Effect Imposition Capabilities, Protection Capabilities, Ranged capabilities, Melee capabilities, Combination Moves? Do they have synergy with other classes? Which ones? Are their abilities all day? Limited Use? Short or Long Rest?

Exploration: What class abilities do they have that aid in this? How often can they be used? Is it situational? How big a deal is it to not have the ability vs have it? (i.e. Is death a possible outcome?)

Social: See Exploration in general, but do they have abilities that can resolve quandaries in new or interesting ways?

Roughly sketched, I'd order them this way (with the cautionary note that I tend to value, and thus weight, all day abilities higher than I would single-use abilities (i.e. Long rest replenishing ones):

Class ability breakdown (bearing in mind this provides no nuance at all or explanation at all)
Combat: Fighter, Barbarian, Rogue, Paladin, Ranger, Monk, Warlock, Sorcerer, Druid, Bard, Wizard, Cleric

Exploration: Ranger, Rogue, Bard, Barbarian, Monk, Fighter, Druid, Cleric, Wizard, Warlock, Paladin, Sorcerer

Social: Bard, Paladin, Sorcerer, Warlock, Rogue, Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, Monk, Ranger, Druid, Barbarian

wunderkid

2016-03-16, 09:20 PM

I feel like the bard sits comfortably nearer the top of the tier list if not strumming wonderwall at the precipice.

It brings far too much to the table, not only does it enjoy the benefits of being a full caster who can pinch spells from other classes, it also has immense out of combat prowess between expertise and Jack of all trades you will consistently out perform most other classes (bar rogues) at skill based checks. And when you hit peerless skill you're just the most smooth talking guy around.

Bardic inspiration / cutting words gives you good action economy. But you can always take feats/spells to make up for that.

The bard spell list is pretty groovy on its own. Adding to it gets rid of your short commings and gives you some sweet tricks.

Basically there isn't a lot that the lore bard can't do as well as any other class. He may trail slightly behind in damage but more than makes up for that with utility.

It makes a great chassis for multi classing too. Want to feel more like a fighter? A dip into paladin then valour bard will give you some impressive smites.or fighter to pick up the action surge for other crazies.

Wanting to feel like a ranged mage? Well dipping warlock gives you the almighty eldrich blast. And if you still wanted to wade into melee then armor of aga will bring the pain when cast with a high level slot.

Or just be the all round support bunny throwing heals where needed, holding enemies in place while your team beat them down. They may get the high numbers but you know your sweet tunes are the reason for it.

Basically to sum it all up to me what makes a good character is one who when the gm throws any scenario at you, you can go 'yep I got this'. Theres nothing worse than feeling useless in a situation. So in my humble opinion the best 'tier' of class is the one who will succeed in more areas than any other. They may not rock the best damage. Or have the best features or spells. But they will be able to reliably handle whatever comes their way.

If your gm is a combat nut and your sessions involve combat after combat then the bard stops being so awesome but if you have a mixture of combat and non-combat then hands down the bard is the man (or woman) with the tools for the job.

Talamare

2016-03-17, 02:34 AM

2 Major things I would be really interested in doing would be to give Wizard's and Cleric's their own tier list
The fact that they each have so many choices, while their choices often having much less significant on individual gameplay.

Before I give my opinion on rough powerlevel of each subclass class option, I was curious about other people's.

For this case let's keep the rankings simple at 3 options
A - Optimal, broad features that affect common gameplay
B - Useful, specific features that affect narrow or uncommon gameplay
C - Average, features affect extremely rare gameplay, features are restrictive or minimally useful

Gwendol

2016-03-17, 05:20 AM

Lines

2016-03-17, 05:52 AM

I still fail to see the usefulness of a tier list, and specifically for 5e, what does indeed constitute a tier. The examples given by the OP are hyperbolic and not even close to my experience of the game.

The usefulness of a tier list is so the DM knows what they will need to account for. If they have a bad guy who lives in a cove reachable through water under a desert island on the other side of the world and his players are barbarians and monks, he isn't going to need to worry about the bad guy's lair until the characters have sailed over there and are trying to work out a way not to drown on the way in. If his players are clerics and wizards, he's got to have the base set out because they can scry, breathe underwater and teleport and so could appear at the base at any time.

wunderkid

2016-03-17, 05:59 AM

In any system which uses mathematics and probability to determine an outcome there will be some builds which will be 'better' than others.

What a tier list does is looks at what the maths says is the best.

It does not take into account your personal opinion on what is fun, or how you chose to play things, simply what gives you the highest probability of success (which unlike in 3.5 is usually only a tiny difference between an optimised character and a fluffy one).

Anyone who says a tier list doesn't exist for 5e is wrong. 5e is not a perfect system therefore there must exist a tier system.

However the beautiful thing about 5e is that the tier system does not matter.

Thanks to bounded accuracy and the developers making a nicely balanced game the top 'tier' optimised character will only perform better 5-10% of the time over the fluffy counterpart. Much more of 5e comes down to RNGesus. Which allows you to play whatever you like and still make a valuable contribution.

For me 90% of the characters enjoyment comes down to how I chose to play whatever concept it is I'm playing. However this is impossible to quantify. The maths however and what combinations get good numbers is fun to work out. Understanding you're likelihood of sucess for a given situation to me personally is fun, I play a lot of 40k and being able to quickly calculate probability helps but as any gamer will tell you at the end of the day the dice gods decide.

Tldr: the tier list exists. It doesn't impact the game in any meaningful way. It's a fun thought exercise to see what tweaky combinations exist.

Lines

2016-03-17, 06:14 AM

Gwendol

2016-03-17, 10:29 AM

That's not what a D&D tier list is. They don't measure direct power.

Nah, it's really just a glorified popularity contest, passed off as objectively "true".
There are of course ways to sort and order classes and other character options based on a number of metrics. The tier definition is however still very subjective. Even for 3.X versions.

Lines

2016-03-17, 10:36 AM

Nah, it's really just a glorified popularity contest, passed off as objectively "true".
There are of course ways to sort and order classes and other character options based on a number of metrics. The tier definition is however still very subjective. Even for 3.X versions.

I wouldn't assume the 3.5 tier list is perfect, I am aware he wasn't incredibly familiar with some classes, but I can't think of anything more than half a tier away from where it's supposed to be. Aside from the ways in which pretty much everything except for pure maths is subjective, is there anything you'd say the tier system and its contents doesn't get right?

As a side note, the tier definition can't be subjective. It's not an opinion, it's a way of ranking things, if someone says they're ranking vases by how pretty they look which vase is prettiest will be subjective, but the fact that they're ranking vases by prettiness isn't subjective, it's simply not something to which the word can apply.

Grod_The_Giant

2016-03-17, 11:05 AM

I agree that 5e tiers are a lot less extreme than 3e's were, but they certainly still exist. I'd say classes fall between T4 and... honestly a low-ish T1; I don't think there are spells on the same level of abusiveness as 3.5's but you've certainly still got good divination, save-or-lose spells (which quite possibly will target even weaker saves than before), summoning/minionmancy, shapeshifting that I think in some ways is better than in 3.5 (you replace all your stats, meaning the fighter doesn't even get the benefits of higher BAB and HP), plenty of utility, potentially campaign-breaking stuff like Teleport and Scrying, and just...ten times more options than anyone without magic. They're hardly up to TO levels of forum theorycrafting, I don't think, but they look pretty dang good from a PO standpoint.

As a side note, the tier definition can't be subjective. It's not an opinion, it's a way of ranking things, if someone says they're ranking vases by how pretty they look which vase is prettiest will be subjective, but the fact that they're ranking vases by prettiness isn't subjective, it's simply not something to which the word can apply.
That's pedantic doofery. That they came up with a list may be objectively true, but that doesn't change the fact that the list was generated by subjective opinion.

Lines

2016-03-17, 11:15 AM

That's pedantic doofery. That they came up with a list may be objectively true, but that doesn't change the fact that the list was generated by subjective opinion.
Yes, the contents are of course going to be subjective, though in 3.5's case each class's position on the list are pretty widely agreed on. He said the tier definitions were subjective, which by definition they can't be since that's literally not a category subjectivity or objectivity can apply to.

Gwendol

2016-03-17, 11:48 AM

Yes, the contents are of course going to be subjective, though in 3.5's case each class's position on the list are pretty widely agreed on. He said the tier definitions were subjective, which by definition they can't be since that's literally not a category subjectivity or objectivity can apply to.

No, I'm saying that the application of the tier definition is subjective, which leads to endless (and pointless) arguments. In 3.X the extremes of the tier list are fairly obvious, but I don't believe especially the T3-T4 divide is well defined. Furthermore, since the tiers list classes, and characters are typically multiclass, the usefulness of the list is diluted. In addition to this, the lists generally assume "equal optimization" (whatever that actually is), but generally disregard height of optimization ceiling, which further makes the tiering an exercise of futility.

Now, this thread is about tiering in 5e, where we know the classes actually work pretty much as intended and where all classes are expected to "pull their weight" and be able to contribute meaningfully across the typical adventuring day. In this context, please remind me what it is we are supposed to be tiering again?

Lines

2016-03-17, 12:03 PM

No, I'm saying that the application of the tier definition is subjective, which leads to endless (and pointless) arguments. In 3.X the extremes of the tier list are fairly obvious, but I don't believe especially the T3-T4 divide is well defined.
Same as the differences between T1-2 and T5-6. Tier 3 is doing lots of things well or able to contribute in some things and being great in others, while tier 4 is being good at a few things and poor in most others or being moderately capable in most things.

Furthermore, since the tiers list classes, and characters are typically multiclass, the usefulness of the list is diluted. In addition to this, the lists generally assume "equal optimization" (whatever that actually is), but generally disregard height of optimization ceiling, which further makes the tiering an exercise of futility.
Not quite. Characters don't tend to multiclass above a certain point, because most classes above low tier 4 are based around useful concepts which diluting through multiclass tends to be a bad idea. It's only classes at that point or below that tend to multiclass, and that tends to be with other classes of a similar tier. Prestige classing is a different deal, but that's why they added a tier system for prestige classes =P. Optimization ceiling wise, the classes tend to assume a moderate amount of optimization because high optimization breaks anything in 3.5.

Now, this thread is about tiering in 5e, where we know the classes actually work pretty much as intended and where all classes are expected to "pull their weight" and be able to contribute meaningfully across the typical adventuring day. In this context, please remind me what it is we are supposed to be tiering again?
I'd assume same thing as 3.5, which means everything would fall within tiers 2 to 4.

Talamare

2016-03-17, 01:30 PM

Nah, it's really just a glorified popularity contest, passed off as objectively "true".

Take it to the other thread

Yeah, I'm actually pretty annoyed about that thread.

I apologize on the long silence, got unexpectedly swarmed at irl work.

A ranks should have an incredible ability that is significantly more powerful than others while also being fairly versatile both in and out of combat
B ranks are still very versatile and useful both in and out of combat, tho often have a powerful defining feature that sets it above the other options for their class
C ranks are the standard, acceptably balanced
D ranks are still good, but either are balanced below the other options or have to do significantly more work to accomplish that task
F rank is pretty limited, it implies that the class main feature is broken. Which is why only BM and Frenzy were here initially.

That was roughly the initial thoughts behind the placement, and it's a measure of overall usefulness with increased weight towards combat.

Gwendol

2016-03-17, 02:21 PM

Same as the differences between T1-2 and T5-6. Tier 3 is doing lots of things well or able to contribute in some things and being great in others, while tier 4 is being good at a few things and poor in most others or being moderately capable in most things.

I'd assume same thing as 3.5, which means everything would fall within tier 2 to 4.

Again, you are listing the definition. I'm saying that the application of the definition is subjective, and that the distinction between the middle tiers, based on how the classes are actually grouped, is not well defined.

What tier 2 classes do you find in 5e?

TrollCapAmerica

2016-03-17, 02:41 PM

You arent going to have a good list until you truly define all the things a class can DO.Not like every class abilities in a list but the actual useful things you can pull off in a game that contribute meaningfully to a game. Ive actually been writing up a piece on that and I did pretty good with a couple of them like Barbarians Warlock and Monk were easy but things like Bard and Sorceror have so many variables it almost impossible to peg down

Example

Things Barbarians do well

1] Laugh at damage and crush things with Reckless attack/GWM [PAM optional] hitting all the time and doing constant damage with a resource in rage that they doesn't require much thought on using or saving and is still good without it

2] ShieldBarian that instantly knocks things on their butts with S&B style while doing moderate damage having great AC and likely laughing at damage and helping the other melee guys whallop things easier. Wolf totem function as well as Bear here but could be mixed either way

3] Mage killing thanks to high movement Mage killing feats and Eagle Totem.Very niche but a larger party probably wont miss much

Things Warlocks do well

1] Eldritch Blast turrets

2] Auto scaling mid level spells that can always be useful like Invisibility Fly Hold Person etc.

3] If you have a Rod of the Pact Keeper pushing your save DCs above the curve you use Save or Lose spells that end a fight better than just about anyone. It combines with 2 and getting spells back on short rests

Now Bards and Sorcerors with a limited spell choice rather than having the whole list class features with more variety ["So I can steal ANY spell?"Really anything?] or classes with huge numbers of archtypes [Wziards and Clerics] are a heck of a lot harder to define like that. I would like to try if I had the time but I dont even have regular internet ATM and thats pretty frustrating

Grod_The_Giant

2016-03-17, 03:28 PM

TrollCapAmerica

2016-03-17, 03:37 PM

Which is kind of an important point, no? That things like the Barbarian and Monk have easily-defined roles, that things like Bard and Sorcerer can be built to do just about anything, and that things like Wizards can have radically different specialties on different days?

Funny part is id find Wizards easier to define since you can just look at an entire spell list and say "BAM your a Wizard Harry go nuts". Its just a matter of listing the best Wizard tricks and saying how the archetypes affect the spell list. The Necro will use Animate Dead armies even if anyone could cast it the Diviner will us save or lose spells just better than everyone else

Something like a Sorceror will specialize in a very specific thing from a very big list of possible options and wont do much else AND has metamagic that stretches a spells uses. A Bard is lego character that can just attach anything else he wants to himself and Lore Bard gets to do it at as low as 5th lv.

Basically I picked a hell of a day to quit Mountain dew

Isk

2016-03-17, 05:51 PM

After looking at your list I have a couple of questions concerning what does the most damage, I'm surprised someone said sorcerer.

For example a level 5 hunter ranger with the polearm master feat, the colossus slayer subtype, using a polearm against an opponent who isn't at full hps does :
(d10+d8+str bonus) + (d10+d8+str bonus) + (d4+d8+str bonus)

If the ranger has 18 str, the expected value per round is:
15+15+11 or 41 dpr if you hit with every attack, that's at level 5

A warlock with two eldrich blasts at level 5 does 19 damage and I thought that was pretty high.

Is there something I'm missing about some of these other classes that makes them damage powerhouses?

EvilAnagram

2016-03-17, 06:05 PM

Rangers and Warlocks

Rangers only get Colossus Slayer once per turn, but they also get Hunter's Mark damage.

Talamare

2016-03-17, 11:36 PM

In the progress of overhauling the opening thread.

I am clearing up the language utilized, adding clarity to the ranks, and giving each individual rating an explanation as to WHY it was rated that way.
This will probably take a little extra time to complete, and I would appreciate any assistance as usual.

As I mentioned before, I would love to hear how people rate the Wizard and Cleric subclasses

djreynolds

2016-03-18, 02:23 AM

The survivor ability of the champion, is really good. I have survived many days with just that feature. It is really powerful. And that second fighting style can really expand your battle capabilities. Archery style is +2, effectively giving a strength based fighter with a 14 in dex, and 18. You have 7 feats. I don't if I could give the class a D, a C is fairer because of his versatility and no need for rests. You can use both GWM and SS effectively, even with a strength build. A barbarian's rage is 1 minute, 10 rounds and is recovered on a long rest. The champion really doesn't need a rest, and that's big deal in campaigns with limited rests.

Alchemy

2016-03-18, 04:42 AM

Can you provide the actual abilities used to get those numbers? I'm not seeing it off the cuff. Also, Wild Magic would have a higher cap because of Spell Bombardment and Wild Magic Surge wouldn't it? (extra damage die, the potential to deal an additional 4d10 to 3 targets (so, +4d10 vs one target)

Sure thing. I assume a primary stat of 20 for all classes, and as I said I assume no misses for all classes. Wild Magic Surge doesn't really provide a measurable increase in damage output, Spell Bombardment does but (like pretty much every other class feature in the game) it pales in comparison to Elemental Affinity. The huge damage output of the Dragon Sorcerer comes from four basic things: Elemental Affinity class feature, Elemental Adept Feat, Scorching Ray and Time Stop.

Elemental Adept changes the average damage on a fire d6 from 3.5 to 3.666, which adds up when you're dealing with the kind of numbers of dice we're dealing with. Plus of course ignoring resistance, which leaves a small handful of fire immune creatures in the MM that the Sorcerer needs to use Elemental Adept-ed Acid spells on (no creature in the MM is immune to both fire and acid).

Scorching Ray/Elemental Adept synergize in a way which I feel sure was overlooked in development. The spell scales up in level not with additional dice, like most spells, but with additional rays (attacks) which means that as a 9th level slot, you're making 10 attack rolls, and adding your Elemental Adept Charisma modifier 10 times, for a total of 20d6+50 or 123.3 damage. This reduces by 2d6+5 or 12.333 per level of slot below 9.

Now you never get to cast it with a 9th level slot because you use Time Stop to get 1d4+1 rounds of action.

For the 1 round spike damage, a 20th level Sorcerer casts Time Stop, average of 3.5 rounds of action (I used 3 for my calculation) during which you cast an 8th, 7th and 7th level Scorching ray, Quickened to allow 3 castings of Fire Bolt as well. That works out at the damage I listed for 1 round. Over 10 rounds if you burn all your Sorcery Points on Quicken and highest available slots on Scorching Ray you get the figure I arrived at.

You could increase the 1 round damage even further now that I think about it, with Empowered Spell on your Scorching rays giving 5 rerolls, but I can't be bothered to do the math on that, I can't remember how you average rerolls. In fact rerolling 4d10 on the Fire Bolts is probably a more efficient use of those points than rerolling 5d6 on the Scorching Rays. You could do both, of course. You could also Twinned Spell the Firebolts obviously, but the calculations were all based on single target.

Edit: You would actually Quickened Spell the Time Stop now that I look at it, so that's 4 castings of Fire Bolt not 3, so you can throw another 27.4 damage onto that one round spike.

CantigThimble

2016-03-18, 04:50 AM

From the errata:
Elemental Affinity (p. 102). The damage
bonus applies to one damage roll of a
spell, not multiple rolls.

You get your cha modifier on one ray no matter how many the spell produces.

Alchemy

2016-03-18, 05:01 AM

From the errata:
Elemental Affinity (p. 102). The damage
bonus applies to one damage roll of a
spell, not multiple rolls.

You get your cha modifier on one ray no matter how many the spell produces.

I guess I was right in that it was overlooked in development, then. I suppose I should start using the Errata.

Off the top of my head that trims 125 off the 1 rounds spike damage for 422, plus the 27 noted above still leaves 324 one round damage, which blows all the other classes I listed out of the water. Without the Elemental Affinity exploit, there are probably more efficient spells to use, too.

Obviously the majority of that comes from Time Stop, so I should redo the list including Bard and Wizard I guess, which I didn't include in the first place because of the exploit potential of Elemental Affinity making it pointless on the face of it.

If anyone has any suggestions about 1 round/10 round damage alternatives I'd like to hear them, but I can't see a better combination than Time Stop/Spell Spam, which puts Wizard, Sorcerer and Bard right up there, Sorcerer still at the top because of Quickened Spell.

These are pure damage output calculations of course, you can't factor save vs SSDC or (taken out) spells into the mix, but only Spellcasters have those so....at higher levels non spellcasters can't compete on anything but an obscenely long adventuring day? And then it'd only be fighters left, since Paladins, Rangers and Barbarians also rely on limited resource abilities for a lot of their damage.

But yeah, can anyone beat 324 in a round given my parameters? (20 primary stat, level 20, no magic items, one target, no misses/no passed Spell Saves)

Edit: I did factor in average critical damage increase for weapon using classes, and I gave the melee classes their GWF bonus, but I didn't factor in Sharpshooter/GWM, which when assuming hits would make a huge difference. Would be interesting to compare figures including those bonuses, but then like I said it's all about AC. Without magic/advantage you've only got +11 to hit, and AC tops out at 25 for the Terrasque. Anything over 20 is rare though, but even AC 20 with a - 5 to hit leaves you at just over 50% hits without advantage. I think in the main it evens out enough to assume hits for all, compared to dealing with the nightmare of factoring hit rate in, even when you assume a static AC.

Like I said though, the comparative usefulness of pure damage output rankings is pretty low when you start considering non HP based offense like Power Word: Kill. But for what it's worth, I'm still waiting to see anything beat a Time Stopping Quickening Sorceror, and I'd still take the guaranteed extra Elemental Affinity damage over the highly random Wild Magic Surge and moderate average increase of Spell Bombardment.

MrStabby

2016-03-18, 05:40 AM

Time stop ends if you target another creature. This means whilst you can do massive damage with time stop, you can only do so to yourself.

You can use something like delayed blast fireball and timestop though.

BladeWing81

2016-03-18, 09:05 AM

wunderkid

2016-03-18, 09:39 AM

My comparative damage comes from a gish build.
Horc
Fighter (ek) 11, paladin 2, rogue (assassin) 3, caster (sorc) 4

Makes you and 8th level caster which gives you 2 4th, 3 3rd, 3 2nd.

Gwm. Polearm master

Out of stealth into attack action (3 attacks), action surge (3attacks), polearm master (1attack). All crits.

Damage looks like this:
D12+5 weapon (polearm)
Which becomes 3D12 +5 on a crit (26 ave)
6 attacks gives us 156
And 3d4 +5 for the polearm adding 14
Total 170

Smite is
5d8 twice for our 4th level slots (10d8 on a crit) so across the two attacks that use your 4th slot that is 20d8 averages at 90 damage

The 3 slots of your 4d8 smiting (again it's 8d8 thanks to the crit) so a total of 24d8 there 108 average.

Then 2 more smites on your last two attacks for 3d8 (6d8 totalling 12d8 and an average of 54 damage)

This brings out total to 170+90+108+54= 422 damage in one round.

If you gwm each attack that's +70

492 final damage.
All attacks are made with advantage too.

You could get even more milage out of this by dropping your polearm after the 6 attacks, drawing a rapier, using a quickened green flame blade or booming blade to use sneak attack dice and the booming/gfb dice.

This will add on:
3d8 +2 (dex will be a dumped stat) (15.5)
4d6 sneak attack damage. (14)
6d8 booming 27 damage. If they then move the second booming will be 8d8 - 36 (note I'm not sure if the second part of booming would crit or not)

But a total there of 56.5 damage - 92.5 if booming procs and works how I think it does. Vs the 14 you get from polearm master.

Gives us a final damage of 570.5 in a single round and assuming they move to proc the booming.

Yes this is a nova that blows almost all of your resources in a single turn. But not much will be left standing after this turn.

EvilAnagram

2016-03-18, 10:11 AM

snip

You can't sneak attack with a polearm. It has to be a finesse weapon.

wunderkid

2016-03-18, 11:16 AM

Yes which is why you drop your polearm which is free. Use your object interaction to draw the rapier which is finesse and use that with quicken booming blade to proc the sneak attack.

Fwiffo86

2016-03-18, 12:59 PM

You can't sneak attack with a polearm. It has to be a finesse weapon.

You could get even more milage out of this by dropping your polearm after the 6 attacks, drawing a rapier, using a quickened green flame blade or booming blade to use sneak attack dice and the booming/gfb dice.

Alchemy

2016-03-18, 03:45 PM

you will also want to divide offense into two categories - one for low AC mooks, and one for high AC threats.

I'm not sure about that. There are 'mooks with high AC and powerful threats with low AC. AC is really rigid across power levels in 5e, which I think is one of the best innovations in the game; it means that wearing armour always feels like it does something, and you feel like you know the difference between fighting a big monster with high hit points from its mass but a low AC, and naturally or artificially armoured targets.

Alchemy

2016-03-18, 03:50 PM

Healing is just a tool that counters bad dice reactively.

Yes, it's 'just' that. Again, have you ever actually played d&d? You know, in a game, the d20 doesn't always come up 10.5, and you're generally aiming to not die more than you're aiming to achieve maximum efficiency in a theorycrafting bubble.

Put it this way, I'm yet to have a party member lambast my healing optimization on the basis that it reduces the parties' dpr, because in real games with an actual party you don't tend to have conversations like that. More like 'oh you're playing a cleric? Awesome, be nice to have some healing'

Alchemy

2016-03-18, 04:06 PM

snip

I was excluding multiclass builds because this is a classes tier list. Aside from that, it's asking a lot to assume the ability to come out of stealth straight into your attacks when the other builds don't get any situational advantages, I think. Also, I think you miss out on a lot by multiclassing so heavily, that's another reason I stuck with single classes, can you imagine playing that build in a party of level 20 characters? They'd be flying around, True Polymorphing into dragons, requesting miracles, turning invisible and you'd be standing there 'can we make it so I can come out of stealth and do my thing in this combat please guys?'

I don't even allow multiclassing in the game I DM, it just encourages cheesy play. Maybe I'm biased, but I think there's a difference between optimizing your character to squeeze DPR out of his class and building a character from the ground up around DPR. That said, it's definitely a lot of damage, no question about that. Can you work out the 10 round damage on that build?

EDIT: Sorry, I had to go check that build! You know you can't do all that smiting, right?

P.85 Divine Smite; Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one paladin spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target.

Vogonjeltz

2016-03-18, 04:47 PM

Barbarian-- B3
Barbarians are fierce melee combatants, but not much else. They can easily be resistant to just about any damage they come across, and they can hit hard and often. On the other hand, they have the smallest number of proficiencies in the game and get little to nothing in the way of class features to make up for that.
•Berserker Barbarian (B3). More attacks means more violence, although things like Polearm Master and Great Weapons Master offer similar benefits to Frenzy without the cost. You pay for it with less defense and even less utility than the Totem Barbarian.
•Totem Barbarian (A2). You start off with two highly useful rituals, and things only get better from there. Totem Spirit and Totemic Attunement offer fantastic combat buffs, and Aspect of the Beast gives you some fun abilities that thankfully aren't limited to use while raging. Spirit Walker is a third excellent information-gathering ritual to complete the set.
•Battlerager Barbarian (SCAG) (C3). Pretty much gives you nothing useful. Battlerager Armor is pretty much flat-out inferior to Polearm Master in terms of extra attacks, and if you want the grappling bonus (which is crap) you still pretty much need Grappler and Tavern Master to make it work. Reckless Abandon and Spiked Retribution are too small to notice at the levels you get them (or at all, really), and Battlerager Charge is a watered-down version of the Rogue ability eight levels later. Even if you want to play a Mad Max extra, just be a Berserker and weld a bunch of spikes to your breastplate.

I'd like to point out that Frenzy doesn't cost you an ASI, it comes online earlier than the first ASI, and it provides a 2nd two-handed weapon attack before level 5 on every single turn.

A frenzy attack with a 2h weapon is better than the 1d4+str of polearm mastery, even moreso when you consider that the main attacks are 1d10 instead of 1d12 or 2d6. In other words, the polearm mastery player will lag behind by 4 damage on that extra attack and 1 or 1.5 damage on the normal attacks.

Berserker has an extremely powerful default offense for those levels

2 Major things I would be really interested in doing would be to give Wizard's and Cleric's their own tier list
The fact that they each have so many choices, while their choices often having much less significant on individual gameplay.

Before I give my opinion on rough powerlevel of each subclass class option, I was curious about other people's.

For this case let's keep the rankings simple at 3 options
A - Optimal, broad features that affect common gameplay
B - Useful, specific features that affect narrow or uncommon gameplay
C - Average, features affect extremely rare gameplay, features are restrictive or minimally useful

If you're going to break it down by subclass, you might as well just use the individual names for clarity: Abjurer, Conjuror, Diviner, Enchanter, Evoker, Illusionist, Necromancer, Transmuter, Bladesinger. For clerics simply the domain name would suffice.

How I'd rank them against each other depends entirely on the criteria being employed; what question is it that we are asking?

For the three rankings you listed I have some concerns:

What does "optimal" mean in this context? Optimal for what? How are you defining broad as opposed to narrow? Can you give a specific example? What is common gameplay?

What about "useful"? Are you saying you think some features aren't useful? What are you calling a specific feature? How is this distinct? What's narrow or uncommon?

What metric are you using to define the average? Also, How can average be the lowest ranking? The very meaning of the term is that which is in the center of rankings. What is extremely rare gameplay? What features are restrictive? (Don't all features, by definition, increase possibilities making them non-restrictive?) What do you mean by minimally useful, is this just a restatement of 'extremely rare gameplay'?

What a tier list does is looks at what the maths says is the best.

No tier list I've ever seen does this.

Sure thing. I assume a primary stat of 20 for all classes, and as I said I assume no misses for all classes. Wild Magic Surge doesn't really provide a measurable increase in damage output, Spell Bombardment does but (like pretty much every other class feature in the game) it pales in comparison to Elemental Affinity. The huge damage output of the Dragon Sorcerer comes from four basic things: Elemental Affinity class feature, Elemental Adept Feat, Scorching Ray and Time Stop.

Ah, thank you for elaborating, I wasn't taking into account any feats which could improve the damage output.

wunderkid

2016-03-18, 05:09 PM

Alchemy

2016-03-18, 05:14 PM

well you have seen it, every tier list will have looked at DPR and % success of dealing with a situation. thats the maths. if a class has a higher DPR and higher % of success at dealing with situations that is what will set it a tier higher. thats why in 3.5 full casters were top tier because they could effectively deal with any situation and rock amazing DPR.

that said in 5e this isnt an issue so much due to the fact there is bounded accuracy the dice roll factors into things a lot more than an 'optimised' build can.

in response to the gish build i posted thats against a bbeg, the rest of the day you're still rocking around with 3 attacks per turn so your DPR wont suffer greatly from other members of the group, and you dont need stealth, you can do slightly lesser damage off a quickened hold person, or just have days where you dont full nova and save your spell slots for your god given natural 20 crits to tag your smites onto. its certainly not a boring build at any level of the game, i will work out the 10 round damage in a bit. but generally im not a fan of that much gishing, usually you dont gain much from it, that build just makes use of several good crack points for one big nova, it loses a lot more elsewhere, its viable and if you play right fun, but its not one i plan on rocking.

Edited my post as you were posting;

Sorry, I had to go check that build! You know you can't do all that smiting, right?

P.85 Divine Smite; Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one paladin spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target

Talamare

2016-03-18, 05:16 PM

Edited my post as you were posting;

Sorry, I had to go check that build! You know you can't do all that smiting, right?

P.85 Divine Smite; Starting at 2nd level, when you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can expend one paladin spell slot to deal radiant damage to the target

That's been errata'd

Grod_The_Giant

2016-03-18, 05:19 PM

well you have seen it, every tier list will have looked at DPR and % success of dealing with a situation. thats the math.
I disagree. The 3.5 list didn't; I've honestly only really seen obsession with DPR math on this subforum.

[QUOTE] thats why in 3.5 full casters were top tier because they could effectively deal with any situation and rock amazing DPR.
DPR had nothing to do with it; mundane charger builds could general out-damage casters with ease. 3.5 casters not just had effective tools for all situations, they had tools to completly bypass situations, tools that were more powerful than anyone else had. Not only could they break encounters, they had things like divinations, teleportation, and minionmancy that meant the entire campaign had to warp around them.

Talamare

2016-03-18, 05:52 PM

If you're going to break it down by subclass, you might as well just use the individual names for clarity: Abjurer, Conjuror, Diviner, Enchanter, Evoker, Illusionist, Necromancer, Transmuter, Bladesinger. For clerics simply the domain name would suffice.

How I'd rank them against each other depends entirely on the criteria being employed; what question is it that we are asking?

For the three rankings you listed I have some concerns:

What does "optimal" mean in this context? Optimal for what? How are you defining broad as opposed to narrow? Can you give a specific example? What is common gameplay?

What about "useful"? Are you saying you think some features aren't useful? What are you calling a specific feature? How is this distinct? What's narrow or uncommon?

What metric are you using to define the average? Also, How can average be the lowest ranking? The very meaning of the term is that which is in the center of rankings. What is extremely rare gameplay? What features are restrictive? (Don't all features, by definition, increase possibilities making them non-restrictive?) What do you mean by minimally useful, is this just a restatement of 'extremely rare gameplay'?

No tier list I've ever seen does this.

Ah, thank you for elaborating, I wasn't taking into account any feats which could improve the damage output.

Thanks for listing the subclasses, It saves me the work ^^
I feel when we begin getting more opinions on the subject to better focus the ranking and how we view the rankings. I understand this is kinda of a weak answer.

An example of common gameplay is Abjuration's Ward, Hp is a central and integral part of the game. It's ability to keep you alive, which is often a Wizard weakness makes it an extremely potent option. The feature also works against both attack and spell damage; making it fairly universal form of protection, and it's always online; meaning regardless if you get CC'd or don't have all your actions, you're protected. Eventually your ward can be used to protect others and its eventually capped off with Advantage on ALL Saving Throws, and Resistance to ALL spell damage. Definitely an A rank School

Illusion school starts off by giving you a cantrip, then it disputably enhance your Illusions in a way that you've probably been doing subconsciously anyways. Eventually they also get a similar feature, but costs your Reaction and only works against Attacks. Your Illusion final capstone is awesome, making you feel like Green Lantern. Tho you have to consider, yea I could use an illusion to create that bridge as explained, but could a normal wizard just use a slightly different spell and accomplish the same thing? Potentially a B rank School, but most likely a C rank.

So while at the moment, the definition of the rankings are potentially a little vague. You have to consider as well that we are still a bit in the infancy stages. After a framework is established, we can fine tune the arguments and decision.

Oh, and why is C just Baseline? Because Schools and Domains are basically sprinkles on ice cream, you're enhancing something that is already amazing. None of the schools are actively harmful. (Actually, I haven't fully read them all yet, so if there is one that is, I wouldn't mind ranking it lower than a C.)

wunderkid

2016-03-18, 05:57 PM

exactly because they can straight up solve a situation their chance of succeeding at those encounters becomes 100%. that makes them a high tier because there are no longer any degrees of failure for those problems.

D&D is essentially a binary game, roleplaying aside, there are really only two outcomes to any given situation, you succeed, or you fail. there is a little grey area but mostly its succeed or fail. the class that succeeds more often than the ones who fail is the one who is the higher tier. that in essence is what the tier list is for. it shows which class have the highest chance of succeeding where others fail. Its impossible to encompass every situation, which is the beauty of D&D and also why tier lists are so difficult to math out. but the math is there, just because you dont recognize it as math doesn't mean it isnt in the background. as ive said the beauty of 5e is that because of bounded accuracy those degrees of success are much closer together for all classes now, which means no class stands out as being able to succeed at almost every encounter, while others only manage at punching things hard. there is still a slight degree of variation because D&D is an asymetrical game and therefore impossible to balance perfectly.

and yeah as mentioned the 'paladin spell slot' for smiting doesnt exist because the second you multiclass there is no such thing as a paladin spell slot as they all become generic xD fortunately as mentioned it was errated so it isnt an issue :)

Ruslan

2016-03-18, 06:15 PM

I disagree with the low ranking of the Berserker Barbarian. When theorycrafting on the basis of a six-encounter day (as recommended), the drawback of Exhaustion is indeed severe, but my practical experience (both playing and DMing extensively) shows that 2-3 combats per day are far more likely than 6. Also, every 3-4 days there is usually an adventure-end-downtime, allowing the barbarian to get rid of all exhaustion levels.

- The penalty of one exhaustion level is acceptable, unless you want to grapple or shove people (and even then, it's offset by the Rage's Advantage).
- The penalty of the second exhaustion level is also partially offset by the 5th level ability. So you'll move 30/2+10 = 20' per round. Still good enough for most skirmishes.
- The penalty of a 3rd exhaustion level can be partially offset by Reckless Attack (if you have the hitpoints to survive the counterattack)

In summary, as I have noticed in practical play, exhaustion is not the spooky boogeyman it's made to be.

wunderkid

2016-03-18, 06:31 PM

the problem is regardless of how play works at your table you should have 6-8 encounters a day. even if those days are split over multiple sessions or multiple in game days (so not giving them a full nights rest). For example if you only ever had one encounter per day then all casters who dont have short resets or nova based classes become substantially more powerful. (and that gish build I posted would have an absolute field day with only a couple of encounters a day xD)

But yes if youre not having many encounters then the frenzy barb is more powerful, i still think the drawbacks for exhaustion dont outweigh the benefits, having to offset the penalty by raging for a grapple which will in turn give you that second level of exhaustion is not good, grappling is a very overlooked mechanic. Losing movement even if offset by other features still hurts unless youre fighting in boxes. and after youve hit that third level then suddenly using your rage feature becomes an incredibly dangerous proposition.

I am also not sure what kind of spells can force exhaustion but it makes anything like that incredibly powerful at shutting you down.

Ruslan

2016-03-18, 06:40 PM

krugaan

2016-03-18, 06:48 PM

I don't know who is it that person who should have 6-8 encounters per day. I have been playing various editions of D&D since the 1980s, and 5e since the playtest, and I have never seen an adventuring day of 8 encounters. 6 encounters, very rarely. 3 encounters, more often.

Didn't the designers state that? I'm fairly certain Crawford said it somewhere but I can't for the life of me remember where.

In any case, it's quite an important balance issue.

Ruslan

2016-03-18, 06:53 PM

:smallconfused: I guess I've been doing it wrong. I see I suck as a theorycrafter. Back to playing, I guess. :smallwink:

krugaan

2016-03-18, 07:00 PM

:smallconfused: I guess I've been doing it wrong. I see I suck as a theorycrafter. Back to playing, I guess. :smallwink:

Why do some people take everything so personally? Jesus.

Encounter numbers per short / long rest matter in terms of balance is a totally valid topic when discussing it. If you'd like I can explain why, but I get the feeling you already know.

Ruslan

2016-03-18, 07:04 PM

krugaan

2016-03-18, 07:05 PM

I know everything that was regurgitated on this forum in more than 10 theory threads, yes.

What I don't know is a single person who ever played D&D like this:

Player A: let's rest here.
Player B: no way! We haven't had our 6-8 encounters yet! It's a balance issue!

Fine, go back to playing. I should take my own advice.

The intention is to get an unbiased a tier list as possible, right? Therefore balance concerns according to the constraints of the designers are important because, well, RAW is important. While some, maybe even most tables aren't run that way, class balance IS designed that way, and that is why "well, everyone really gets 1 encounter / day" is not really relevant.

Well, it shouldn't be, anyway.

edit: recanted the snark.

Vogonjeltz

2016-03-18, 07:08 PM

well you have seen it, every tier list will have looked at DPR and % success of dealing with a situation. thats the maths. if a class has a higher DPR and higher % of success at dealing with situations that is what will set it a tier higher. thats why in 3.5 full casters were top tier because they could effectively deal with any situation and rock amazing DPR.

that said in 5e this isnt an issue so much due to the fact there is bounded accuracy the dice roll factors into things a lot more than an 'optimised' build can.

in response to the gish build i posted thats against a bbeg, the rest of the day you're still rocking around with 3 attacks per turn so your DPR wont suffer greatly from other members of the group, and you dont need stealth, you can do slightly lesser damage off a quickened hold person, or just have days where you dont full nova and save your spell slots for your god given natural 20 crits to tag your smites onto. its certainly not a boring build at any level of the game, i will work out the 10 round damage in a bit. but generally im not a fan of that much gishing, usually you dont gain much from it, that build just makes use of several good crack points for one big nova, it loses a lot more elsewhere, its viable and if you play right fun, but its not one i plan on rocking.

As a point of fact, neither you nor I can possibly know what a particular list maker "will have" done, those a future events.

Secondly, as I said, no tier list I've ever seen has actually used math as a metric in determining ranking. Instead they offer up fuzzy platitudes like "optimized" or "average" or "many options", none of which are conveying any real meaning.

And casters had atrocious dpr in 3.5, what they did have was powerful high level spells that could kill, cripple, or trap an opponent such that victory was considered inevitable. Their damage was terrible, but their utility was quite high (schroedingers wizard of course played a massive role in making for lopsided listing as well).

Ruslan

2016-03-18, 07:10 PM

Encounter numbers per short / long rest matter in terms of balance is a totally valid topic when discussing it.No, they don't, because no one actually observes them outside of theory, and any discussion assuming a value which is never enforced and cannot be enforced, and in practice, varies greatly from its assumed value, is all but hollow.

Vogonjeltz

2016-03-18, 07:16 PM

No, they don't, because no one actually observes them outside of theory, and any discussion assuming a value which is never enforced and cannot be enforced, and in practice, varies greatly from its assumed value, is all but hollow.

Anyone playing a module is using them in practice. So it's only in theory for the homespun campaigns.

If the DM wants to go easy on the players that's all them, but the standard is what it is.

Ruslan

2016-03-18, 07:26 PM

the standard is what it is.And that standard is meaningless, because in practice (even in modules) players and DM control the rest rate. Jeremy Crawford tossing the number of 6-8 encounters per day has no more influence on anything than me saying "all cars of all makes should drive 35 miles per gallon".

But if you'd like to pretend it means anything, by all means keep doing so.

krugaan

2016-03-18, 07:34 PM

because in practice (even in modules) players and DM control the rest rate.

Players and DM don't design classes.

Edit: well, they do, but not the accepted ones, obviously.

wunderkid

2016-03-18, 07:36 PM

no the player never decides on the rate of rests, if they do then the GM needs to reign control. it takes nothing more than a sprite flicking the group in the nads, or an urgent summons, or urgent message, or any other fantastical or mundane method of interrupting their long rest. Put bluntly the life of an adventurer is larger than life, thats why they find epic loot and fight mighty dragons, sway kings and kingdoms and cast down evil. Sorry but a full nights kip was never part of that job arrangement its your job as the GM to make sure their life is always interesting and that the universe doesnt pause because the players want a nap time.

Im almost positive its in the GMs guide for 6-8 encounters per long rest will find it shortly. that is the official balancing metric they have decided to allow long and short rest classes to keep even with each other. if you want to ignore that and house rule 3 encounters per day then you are the one adjusting that it becomes a house rule and therefore completely irrelevant for any tier discussion (and not to mention unbalancing the classes).

Vogonjeltz

2016-03-18, 07:42 PM

And that standard is meaningless, because in practice (even in modules) players and DM control the rest rate. Jeremy Crawford tossing the number of 6-8 encounters per day has no more influence on anything than me saying "all cars of all makes should drive 35 miles per gallon".

But if you'd like to pretend it means anything, by all means keep doing so.

Incorrect, long rests always are once per 24 hours, minimum, and the modules follow the random encounter per hour rules. Players can always choose to short rest, but if they do so too often they won't be able to travel as far, they risk a combat encounter anyway, and for the more time sensitive main stories they legitimately risk losing because they wasted too much time.

I agree with you that the DM can coddle their players and allow them to rest while not using the encounter rules at all, but I said as much in the very post you quoted.

mgshamster

2016-03-18, 07:50 PM

wunderkid

2016-03-18, 07:56 PM

"a long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking,eating or standing watch for no more than 2 hours, If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity 0 at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells or similar adventuring activity - the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it" and "a character cant benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period"

nowhere does it say it is part of a 24 hour day that I can see, unless youre looking at rules elsewhere. it only says you cant benefit from it more than once in a 24 hour period. if youre running a game where youre not getting the 6-8 encounters per 'day' in then throw in some rest interruption that way youre still following the rules and not causing any imbalacing. At the end of the day the power is in the hands of the GM, its their job to make sure the resting system which is intrinsic to 5e is followed.

and its page 84 of the DMG. 6-8 encounters and 2 short rests.

Talamare

2016-03-18, 08:01 PM

An important aspect of story telling is adding urgency to a story. Something that became a little lost when MMOs came out.

If you're told a Dragon is heading to destroy a City, or a Cult is about to enact its final plan, or a demon gate is about to be opened. Then it becomes, even if we are hurt, bruised, and tired; we need to press on, with whatever ounce we have left or the thousands, maybe millions will suffer.

If your DM gives you a story without urgency then it deflates the importance.

Also, I believe it's 6~8 challenges per days. They don't inherently need to be combats. I personally tend towards 3~5 combats, and 2~3 skills. Averaging out to about 5~8 challenges per day. Note, I personally have no issue with hurting people during skill challenges.

Secondly, as I said, no tier list I've ever seen has actually used math as a metric in determining ranking. Instead they offer up fuzzy platitudes like "optimized" or "average" or "many options", none of which are conveying any real meaning.
Because Math doesn't always reflect gameplay, and because the math becomes exceeding complex when accounting for the numerous of potential builds in a party.

A Wizard using Hold Person repeatedly is technically dealing 0 DPR per turn, yet he is by far the most useful member of the team by successfully dishing those out.
Then we need to consider, Is DPR even the thing we should be measuring in regards to tier lists? I mean, there is nothing wrong with having a Highest DPR tier list, but that is really only interesting to read if you want to play a DPR.
A high DPR Rogue and That 0 DPR Hold Person Wizard, technically because of the Wizard's Hold Person, the Rogues DPR has more or less just doubled. Is that still the Rogue's DPR? Should we count it for the Wizard instead?

I love math, and using it. However, math needs context.

krugaan

2016-03-18, 08:07 PM

I love math, and using it. However, math needs context.

Hah, NERD!

/simpsons

Grod_The_Giant

2016-03-18, 08:35 PM

krugaan

2016-03-18, 08:39 PM

Grod_The_Giant

2016-03-18, 08:45 PM

That does seem dungeony, but the universe is in constant peril and only you, the adventurer, and your gallant comrades can save it.

In 6-8 bite size chunks per day.
I can write damn exciting, stressed-for-time, the-universe-hanging-in-the-balance adventures without having to stop and fight a half dozen times a day. Hell, that many fight basically forces you to include lots of meaningless filler encounters, which goes against the whole pressed-for-time bit.

krugaan

2016-03-18, 08:48 PM

I can write damn exciting, stressed-for-time, the-universe-hanging-in-the-balance adventures without having to stop and fight a half dozen times a day. Hell, that many fight basically forces you to include lots of meaningless filler encounters, which goes against the whole pressed-for-time bit.

its supposed to be 6-8 *medium* encounters a day. You can easily change the actual number by making some hard or deadly instead.

Encounters can also be social situations, too, I think. Anything that could conceivably drain resources, like spells, luck rolls...

mgshamster

2016-03-18, 08:49 PM

Personally, I hate the stress put on the DM by expected encounters per day. 5e improves matters with the extended rest rules, but geez... 6-8 encounters (typically meaning combat, or at least time-consuming action sequences) a day is a frankly absurd number for anything but the most cliche'd dungeon crawl. Good luck trying to fit in story and RP and stuff between that. I much prefer things like Fate and Mutants and Masterminds where there's no such assumption. I understand the resource management is a thing, but... ouch. They set the bar crazy high.

Well, there's a few ways to get around it. If you don't have any short rest mechanic based characters in your group, you can pretty much ignore it.

You can use gritty realism and make short rests 8 hours and long rest a week (or just 8 hours in a peaceful setting, like a non-threatening town or a home base).

You can use the 6-8 encounters specifically for dungeon crawls or timed based adventures, and the rest of the time ignore it - such as during travel or when they're investigating something.

You can use the 6-8 some of the time at any time - but often enough so you don't get your long rest mechanic character doing a 15 minute adventuring day. Psychologically, as long as your players think they're going to face several more encounters in a day, they won't go nova all the time.

You can ignore it completely and alter the short rest mechanic classes, such as monk and warlock, by turning them in to long rest mechanic classes. I haven't analyzed the monk yet, but for the warlock just triple their spells and it'll work just fine. Alternatively, just ban short rest mechanic classes from your games.

The primary issue is that if your players start to expect fewer encounters per day, they're more likely to use up all their resources. But if they don't have enough short rests between those encounters, then your long rest mechanic characters will feel much more powerful than the other classes, which could reduce the enjoyment of those other classes. However, if you and your players don't care about that, then just ignore the 6-8 guideline and continue to enjoy the game the way your table plays it.

krugaan

2016-03-18, 08:54 PM

Well, there's a few ways to get around it. If you don't have any short rest mechanic based characters in your group, you can pretty much ignore it.

You can use gritty realism and make short rests 8 hours and long rest a week (or just 8 hours in a peaceful setting, like a non-threatening town or a home base).

You can use the 6-8 encounters specifically for dungeon crawls or timed based adventures, and the rest of the time ignore it - such as during travel or when they're investigating something.

You can use the 6-8 some of the time at any time - but often enough so you don't get your long rest mechanic character doing a 15 minute adventuring day. Psychologically, as long as your players think they're going to face several more encounters in a day, they won't go nova all the time.

You can ignore it completely and alter the short rest mechanic classes, such as monk and warlock, by turning them in to long rest mechanic classes. I haven't analyzed the monk yet, but for the warlock just triple their spells and it'll work just fine. Alternatively, just ban short rest mechanic classes from your games.

The primary issue is that if your players start to expect fewer encounters per day, they're more likely to use up all their resources. But if they don't have enough short rests between those encounters, then your long rest mechanic characters will feel much more powerful than the other classes, which could reduce the enjoyment of those other classes. However, if you and your players don't care about that, then just ignore the 6-8 guideline and continue to enjoy the game the way your table plays it.

I'd think a single climactic end of world boss battle everyday would get just as boring as 6-8 relatively easy encounters a day.

You've saved that day!... until tomorrow.

Grod_The_Giant

2016-03-18, 09:02 PM

I'd think a single climactic end of world boss battle everyday would get just as boring as 6-8 relatively easy encounters a day.

You've saved that day!... until tomorrow.
Not every fight has to be a climactic boss battle, but they all have to be meaningful. A random encounter is never meaningful; fighting four different little bands of kobolds as you advance through their lair isn't meaningful, it's repetitive. You want fights to be dramatic points, not fights for the sake of fighting.

EDIT: For example, the last adventure I ran had three fights. People were being abducted by what they thought were harpies; on reaching the harpy's nest the PCs discovered they were actually being abducted by some mad wizard fleshcrafter dude. So there was one fight against his flying golems at the nest, one fight with a the discarded remains of the people he'd experimented on in his lair, and the dude himself. I could have put in a fight or two in the woods on the way, a guardian at the door of his lair, some traps, more experimental monsters... but I didn't. That would have been redundant, just time-wasting to pad out the encounter.

krugaan

2016-03-18, 09:04 PM

Not every fight has to be a climactic boss battle, but they all have to be meaningful. A random encounter is never meaningful; fighting four different little bands of kobolds as you advance through their lair isn't meaningful, it's repetitive. You want fights to be dramatic points, not fights for the sake of fighting.

I dunno, I think all player enjoy some meaningless hack and slash now and again. Besides ... how do they know it's not meaningful somehow?

I mean, unless you blatantly say "random encounter to drain your resources time!"

edit: I guess what I mean to say is, you have to have a variety of encounters - hack and slash, dramatic important plot encounter, social encounter, etc.

Gwendol

2016-03-19, 02:48 PM

Encounters don't have to be fights. Can be traps, puzzles, obstacles, a social encounter, etc.

Grod_The_Giant

2016-03-19, 02:57 PM

Encounters don't have to be fights. Can be traps, puzzles, obstacles, a social encounter, etc.
Let's take a look, yes?

Traps--The only way to really do traps right is to set them up as either part of a fight or a fight-against-the-trap kind of thing; otherwise it's just people standing around while the Rogue makes skill checks/getting hit in the face and watching the cleric waste spells healing them back up. All objections to "too many combat encounters" still apply, though it's a bit of variety. (Also hard to logically fit into many adventures).
Puzzles-- Rarely require much in the way of resource expenditure; maybe a spell or two, but probably not much more.
Obstacles-- Ditto.
Social Encounters-- Ditto.

And more than that, most resources are combat-based. The Barbarian is probably never going to Rage outside a fight; the Fighter's not going to Action Surge or Second Wind, the Monk isn't going to spend Ki, and even the casters probably won't use that many spells. Noncombat stuff tends to be mostly skill checks. So if the expectation is that 6-8 fights will leave you properly drained, substituting noncombat stuff is going to lead to a very different rate of resource use.

Vogonjeltz

2016-03-19, 03:07 PM

I can write damn exciting, stressed-for-time, the-universe-hanging-in-the-balance adventures without having to stop and fight a half dozen times a day. Hell, that many fight basically forces you to include lots of meaningless filler encounters, which goes against the whole pressed-for-time bit.

Take hoard of the dragon queen for example, the first night is a stress filled race to save townspeople and accomplish various quests by those in charge.

Or lost mines of phandelver, there are easily 8+ encounters within the first day of adventure before you arrive at the town.

Citan

2016-03-19, 04:10 PM

While I don't try to be vexing on purpose, I can't help myself but say there are some terrifying people here...

D&D is essentially a binary game, roleplaying aside, there are really only two outcomes to any given situation, you succeed, or you fail. there is a little grey area but mostly its succeed or fail. the class that succeeds more often than the ones who fail is the one who is the higher tier. that in essence is what the tier list is for. it shows which class have the highest chance of succeeding where others fail.
Mate, I can understand that you love the mathematics because of the false sense of understanding and controlling the environment it can give you.
But pushing your own vision as hard as this on a ROLEPLAYING game just for your personal satisfaction... No thanks.
1. "There are really only two outcomes to any given situation".
I'm frankly amazed someone that apparently DM on a regular basis would say this. It must be boring for players as well as for you.
Just take a stupidly simple info gathering challenge. A player tries to persuade a NPC but fails his contest by a margin. Why would the outcome be necessarily "you fail >> next NPC"? You could provide partial information, or make a counter-challenge etc...
Same with fights: the two outcomes are not either "you win" or "you lose", and baselining a campaign like this is basically siphoning away the intrisic interest of playing a roleplaying game, instead of just playing a videogame.

2. It's not because a class has theorically the means to overcome any challenge that it will provide it in practice.
Take the Wizard, which should be easily in "top tier" if we go with your reasoning. After all, he can learn most spells, including the most broken, right?
Well, a Wizard player, who should have potentially a perfect spell to answer a particular situation, would still need to have learnt and prepared it. Otherwise, he's as useless as the next one.
Furthermore, considering classes as a tier implies that you consider their potentiality "in a bubble", as if they were solo characters.
Which in turn leads to overlooking some features that could nevertheless be great in a team setup.

Let's take a look, yes?

Traps--The only way to really do traps right is to set them up as either part of a fight or a fight-against-the-trap kind of thing; otherwise it's just people standing around while the Rogue makes skill checks/getting hit in the face and watching the cleric waste spells healing them back up. All objections to "too many combat encounters" still apply, though it's a bit of variety. (Also hard to logically fit into many adventures).
Puzzles-- Rarely require much in the way of resource expenditure; maybe a spell or two, but probably not much more.
Obstacles-- Ditto.
Social Encounters-- Ditto.

And more than that, most resources are combat-based. The Barbarian is probably never going to Rage outside a fight; the Fighter's not going to Action Surge or Second Wind, the Monk isn't going to spend Ki, and even the casters probably won't use that many spells. Noncombat stuff tends to be mostly skill checks. So if the expectation is that 6-8 fights will leave you properly drained, substituting noncombat stuff is going to lead to a very different rate of resource use.
Strongly disagree. Again, this is just self-limitation you apply on you as a player or DM.
Social encounters or puzzle could very well require several resource consumption, be it spells or class features such as Diviner, Luck or Bardic Inspiration. For example, instead of just convincing a faction leader to just let you continue your route onwards, try a much harder risk/reward action by try to persuade him to rally you.

To rebound on your Barbarian Rage example, why wouldn't he? This could be used as a way to intimidate a bunch of NPC altogether, maybe thus preventing a fight, or to win a bar contest with a local thug (arm wrestling, barehanded boxing) that may in turn give you valuable information...

Sheesh... I'm really sad when I read such things...

wunderkid

2016-03-19, 08:16 PM

Mate, I can understand that you love the mathematics because of the false sense of understanding and controlling the environment it can give you.
But pushing your own vision as hard as this on a ROLEPLAYING game just for your personal satisfaction... No thanks.
1. "There are really only two outcomes to any given situation".
I'm frankly amazed someone that apparently DM on a regular basis would say this. It must be boring for players as well as for you.
Just take a stupidly simple info gathering challenge. A player tries to persuade a NPC but fails his contest by a margin. Why would the outcome be necessarily "you fail >> next NPC"? You could provide partial information, or make a counter-challenge etc...
Same with fights: the two outcomes are not either "you win" or "you lose", and baselining a campaign like this is basically siphoning away the intrisic interest of playing a roleplaying game, instead of just playing a videogame.

2. It's not because a class has theorically the means to overcome any challenge that it will provide it in practice.
Take the Wizard, which should be easily in "top tier" if we go with your reasoning. After all, he can learn most spells, including the most broken, right?
Well, a Wizard player, who should have potentially a perfect spell to answer a particular situation, would still need to have learnt and prepared it. Otherwise, he's as useless as the next one.
Furthermore, considering classes as a tier implies that you consider their potentiality "in a bubble", as if they were solo characters.
Which in turn leads to overlooking some features that could nevertheless be great in a team setup.

1. So basically what you're saying is if your player fails at something you'll give him a cookie and say he did good and let him succeed? I'm sorry but you have a target number and you get less you've unequivocally failed. The degree of failure is always up to the GM. Fail by 15+ and the guy may turn hostile, or tell friends not to talk to you, fail by <5 and he may point you in the direction of someone else but won't tell you what you need to know because you failed, all of your examples are examples of failure, because your aim is: get X information, you fail, you don't get X information. You may get other tidbits, partial information but not enough but you've failed, you didn't get the information you were after so It's still completely binary even in your example. Either pass. Or fail. The degree of failure and success is down to the gm to interpret and make fun for the players, reward them for good rolls, punish them for bad, make it tense for close calls but saying I'm a bad GM because I don't break the rules and give players free passes on failures sounds more like a fault in your gming. It's perfectly acceptable for the players to attempt the challenge from a different angle too. Using bribery, intimidation. But why coddle them when they fail? Let them as players look for ways to beat encounters their own way using the rules.

Same with fights. You either win the fight or lose it. You may win by a hair, or lose by a mile, or talk the opponent down thereby winning the encounter. But it's still win or lose. There is in rare instances a grey area in between. But generally speaking you have a goal. If it's kill this guy. Then you fail unless you kill him. If it's get to the top of the tower you win by either fighting your way to the top or finding another way around it. Still a win-lose situation. The other alternative is your goal changes. This gives you a new win-lose paradigm.

And I'd also like to point out that failure doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing, there are situations where failing can lead to a win down the line.

And I'd also like to point out I said that roleplaying aside. It's impossible to capture player themselves and its a huge vital part of the game but it can't be caught. Only the maths that governs their character. You can be against the math all you like but that doesn't change the fact that's exactly how this game works. Its a D20 each face represents a 5% better probability of success or failure. If their role playing is good then you reduce the target number. If it's bad you increase it. But it still comes down to the maths of the roll if they succeed or fail. Assuming you come to a situation where rolling isnt necessary that's because your chance of success or failure at the roll is 100%. For example stabbing someone and then in the next breath asking for a discount on their vases. I don't care how good at talking you are there's no point in rolling that because the target number is too high.

But the point is the role playing facilitates the maths and the maths facilitates the role playing. One can't exist without the other but they both exist and are both important.

There's no false sense of control either As I also said due to bounded accuracy success and failure comes a lot more down to the dice in 5e which is why any tier list is harder to define. But any +1 you get basically translates to a +5% chance of succeeding where you would have otherwise failed.

2. The wizard can have X spells prepared. Assuming Y spells known for the day are what they consider necessary combat spells then the remaining Z spells are used to solve encounters. So therefore the more Z spells he has prepared the higher % chance is that an encounter will occur that a Z spell will overcome. A wizard who chooses to only prepare Y spells for the day has an almost 0% chance of having a spell that can overcome a non-combat encounter.

But the fact the wizard has these options and you can try to predict these outcomes. Or unless there's any urgency go to sleep and auto win it the next day is what would make them a higher tier. But again in 5e this doesn't exist to anywhere near the degree it used to due to the devs doing a good job balancing the game, but in 3.5 you could quite easily cheese your way out of most encounters with a caster.

pwykersotz

2016-03-19, 08:52 PM

Let's take a look, yes?

Traps--The only way to really do traps right is to set them up as either part of a fight or a fight-against-the-trap kind of thing; otherwise it's just people standing around while the Rogue makes skill checks/getting hit in the face and watching the cleric waste spells healing them back up. All objections to "too many combat encounters" still apply, though it's a bit of variety. (Also hard to logically fit into many adventures).
Puzzles-- Rarely require much in the way of resource expenditure; maybe a spell or two, but probably not much more.
Obstacles-- Ditto.
Social Encounters-- Ditto.

And more than that, most resources are combat-based. The Barbarian is probably never going to Rage outside a fight; the Fighter's not going to Action Surge or Second Wind, the Monk isn't going to spend Ki, and even the casters probably won't use that many spells. Noncombat stuff tends to be mostly skill checks. So if the expectation is that 6-8 fights will leave you properly drained, substituting noncombat stuff is going to lead to a very different rate of resource use.

You're thinking of zap-traps. Like that poison needle tied to a pressure plate or a door that shocks you. Those have their place, but are mostly boring, do some damage or don't, and then they're done.

Good traps are often obvious and let players strategize about how to bypass them. I had a 100 foot deep pit for a room in my last game, with unlocked doors mounted into the walls at three places. The walls were smooth stone and would have required a DC 20 climb check to scale. They could have flown across and used the Wizard's spell slot, or they could have had an acrobatic person scale and tie off a rope on the other side. But then there was this stale smell rising every couple rounds. A Purple Worm was deep below, and would emerge and swallow anything that lingered for three rounds. They didn't know this, but there were enough clues that they pieced together the danger and decided how to tackle it. They felt smart, used a few resources, and mostly got past it (the cleric got eaten, and that led to other shenanigans that I won't go into).

There's lots of ways to telegraph traps without making them irrelevant, and watching your players scheme to bypass them is a ton of fun. Especially when they win. Or lose, if you're a little sadistic.

Grod_The_Giant

2016-03-19, 09:45 PM

You're thinking of zap-traps. Like that poison needle tied to a pressure plate or a door that shocks you. Those have their place, but are mostly boring, do some damage or don't, and then they're done.

Good traps are often obvious and let players strategize about how to bypass them. I had a 100 foot deep pit for a room in my last game, with unlocked doors mounted into the walls at three places. The walls were smooth stone and would have required a DC 20 climb check to scale. They could have flown across and used the Wizard's spell slot, or they could have had an acrobatic person scale and tie off a rope on the other side. But then there was this stale smell rising every couple rounds. A Purple Worm was deep below, and would emerge and swallow anything that lingered for three rounds. They didn't know this, but there were enough clues that they pieced together the danger and decided how to tackle it. They felt smart, used a few resources, and mostly got past it (the cleric got eaten, and that led to other shenanigans that I won't go into).

There's lots of ways to telegraph traps without making them irrelevant, and watching your players scheme to bypass them is a ton of fun. Especially when they win. Or lose, if you're a little sadistic.
:smallsigh: I'm aware of the proper ways to use traps-- the sort of bypass-the-obviously-trapped room like you described, the traps mixed into the combat encounter, the traps AS an encounter where there's constant danger everyone has to be running around trying to prevent. That's not my point. Look at the scenario you described-- it's cool, it's challenging, it's creative, it requires resources... but it also requires table-time and does little to build the story. It's dungeon-crawl thinking-- the party starts HERE, they need to go through these six challenge rooms to get the McGruffin THERE. What if I don't want that? What if I want adventures that can actually be finished in a single two or three hour sitting? Not every day of adventuring is an Arkham City style never-ending day of chaos.

But that's just quibbling, really. The point isn't so much that it is or isn't possible to make players expend resources; the point is that games designed around attrition impose a hard artificial limit on the GM-- doubly so when it's a game like D&D where some classes are made to be slow-and-steady while others are meant to have nova capability while others have a mix of the two to balance. It's not really a 5e specific gripe; in some ways 5e is better than others, given the options for adjusting rest length. In other ways, it's worse-- fights are faster, but they seem to have compensated by cramming more into the balancing assumption. And if you don't follow their guidelines carefully, your job gets way harder as you have to deal with the Paladin burst-Smiting everything to death while the Rogue just makes the same Sneak Attacks he always does. It's just bad game design. A good DM can still run a fun game, but that's always true.

mgshamster

2016-03-19, 09:58 PM

1. So basically what you're saying is if your player fails at something you'll give him a cookie and say he did good and let him succeed? I'm sorry but you have a target number and you get less you've unequivocally failed. The degree of failure is always up to the GM. Fail by 15+ and the guy may turn hostile, or tell friends not to talk to you, fail by <5 and he may point you in the direction of someone else but won't tell you what you need to know because you failed, all of your examples are examples of failure, because your aim is: get X information, you fail, you don't get X information. You may get other tidbits, partial information but not enough but you've failed, you didn't get the information you were after so It's still completely binary even in your example. Either pass. Or fail. The degree of failure and success is down to the gm to interpret and make fun for the players, reward them for good rolls, punish them for bad, make it tense for close calls but saying I'm a bad GM because I don't break the rules and give players free passes on failures sounds more like a fault in your gming. It's perfectly acceptable for the players to attempt the challenge from a different angle too. Using bribery, intimidation. But why coddle them when they fail? Let them as players look for ways to beat encounters their own way using the rules.

The DMG says to allow for partial success if they fail by 1 or 2. You can also have degree of failure. DMG page 272.

So he isn't breaking the rules either; he's just choosing to follow the rules according to the DMG, whereas you are choosing to ignore that rule. Given that 5e is all about GM customization, both are valid choices.

The big lesson here, regardless of which choice you make, is that you need to get off your high horse pretending that your better than someone else for following an arbitrary rule in a game of imagination.

pwykersotz

2016-03-19, 11:23 PM

:smallsigh: I'm aware of the proper ways to use traps-- the sort of bypass-the-obviously-trapped room like you described, the traps mixed into the combat encounter, the traps AS an encounter where there's constant danger everyone has to be running around trying to prevent. That's not my point. Look at the scenario you described-- it's cool, it's challenging, it's creative, it requires resources... but it also requires table-time and does little to build the story. It's dungeon-crawl thinking-- the party starts HERE, they need to go through these six challenge rooms to get the McGruffin THERE. What if I don't want that? What if I want adventures that can actually be finished in a single two or three hour sitting? Not every day of adventuring is an Arkham City style never-ending day of chaos.

But that's just quibbling, really. The point isn't so much that it is or isn't possible to make players expend resources; the point is that games designed around attrition impose a hard artificial limit on the GM-- doubly so when it's a game like D&D where some classes are made to be slow-and-steady while others are meant to have nova capability while others have a mix of the two to balance. It's not really a 5e specific gripe; in some ways 5e is better than others, given the options for adjusting rest length. In other ways, it's worse-- fights are faster, but they seem to have compensated by cramming more into the balancing assumption. And if you don't follow their guidelines carefully, your job gets way harder as you have to deal with the Paladin burst-Smiting everything to death while the Rogue just makes the same Sneak Attacks he always does. It's just bad game design. A good DM can still run a fun game, but that's always true.

Apologies, I didn't mean to annoy you.

I suppose that's the tradeoff you make to not have 4e's "same-y" feel with regards to using powers. It's a fair criticism, though my table loves dungeon crawls so it's not really one I think about much.

Grod_The_Giant

2016-03-19, 11:53 PM

Apologies, I didn't mean to annoy you.

I suppose that's the tradeoff you make to not have 4e's "same-y" feel with regards to using powers. It's a fair criticism, though my table loves dungeon crawls so it's not really one I think about much.
It's alright.

I don't think there has to be a dichotomy between "matching recovery methods" and "identical powers," though. 4e's issue wasn't so much in the at-will/encounter/daily structure, it was that just about every power was "do damage, possibly with a condition/forced movement," along with a dearth of good utility/mobility stuff. If the powers were more interesting I think it could work. You can also have recovery methods that match on time but still feel different-- for example,

Barbarian: Recover one maneuver when you damage a foe, and all maneuvers if you kill a foe of at least CR=level-1 or take damage equal to at least half your health in a single round.
Fighter: Recover two maneuvers when you make an attack of opportunity, and all maneuvers if you also take the dodge action.
Rogue: At the start of every turn, recover one random maneuver; you may also lose a second random readied maneuver to recover a second random maneuver. (These random maneuvers represent fleeting moments of opportunity during the battle) You recover all maneuvers whenever striking a foe while hidden.
Wizard: Recover one spell as a move action so long as you're holding your spellbook, and all spells by taking a full-round action to study your spellbook. Both require both hands to be free, provoke attacks of opportunity, and prevent you from making attacks of opportunity that round. You gain advantage on Arcana and Counterspell checks for one round after recovering spells.
Sorcerer: Whenever you cast a spell, recover lower-level spells whose combined level equals the level of the spell you just cast. Recover all spells by taking a full-round action to channel your magic, a process which deals 1d6 [element] damage per four sorcerer levels to all adjacent creatures and grants you [element] resistance until the start of your next turn, where [element] is determined by your draconic heritage.

Without anything else, we establish that the fighter is a much more cautious and technical fighter than the barbarian, who just wants to be in the thick of things. The rogue, meanwhile, is an opportunist, striking from the shadows and using whatever transitory openings he spots. The wizard constantly has his book in hand, while the sorcerer simply glories in using his magic. (These probably aren't very balanced, but it's also 1am and I'm throwing these out without much thought)