Warmaster: A (near) t2 mundane class attempt (PEACH)

[Morphic tide]

This is actually making a separate thread to draw attention to the class. I first posted literally all of this in another thread. Keep in mind that there will probably be more posts here eventually, as I'm going to get in the habit of trying to make threads for the draft versions of various stuff I want to continue working on over time in my miscellaneous stuff thread. So, comment, make suggestions for things to change or add or have as AFCs and so on. Link to said miscellaneous stuff thread is in my Homebrewer's sig, linked in my normal sig.

First, how I think of the tiers:

t1: Can do everything well with the right build. Fill every role a party could ever need. Basically classes that only need non-t1 classes as meat shields early on, if that.
t2: Can do everything well, but not all in one build. A party of one of these classes works because they can do everything the party could need, but have to specialize in it.
t3: Can do several things well, but are unable to do some things at all. You make a strong party out of several of these classes, because there's a class for everything here.
t4: Can only do one thing well, and may be only barely acceptable at that one thing. You can make a party out of these, but they aren't going to be a strong party.
t5: Can't really do anything well, either because they simply have nothing they can do adequately or because they have mechanics issues. If you make a party of these, you will have issues.
t6: Can't do anything worth mentioning. If you make a class that ends up here, you somehow made Commoner a valid party member. Don't even try to make a party of these.

Now, for the class:

The Warmaster
Skilled in the arts of combat, politics and medicine, the Warmaster is often able to shift the tides of wars and change the course of history. These men and women are able to lead both armies and nations if they desire, or slay grand beasts they drive to cower in fear.

Role: The Warmaster focuses on intimidation and medical care, and through these, diplomacy and improvement of their own capabilities and those they lead.

GAME RULE INFORMATION
Warmasters have the following game statistics.
Abilities: Strength, Constitution, Charisma and Intelligence are the primary ability scores of the common Warmaster. Strength and Constitution are needed to fight in close quarters, while many of the Warmaster's abilities require Charisma and Intelligence to use fully.
Alignment: Any alignment, although Lawful Warmasters are somewhat more common, as the common goals of Warmasters tend towards enforcing strict rules. Good Warmasters are similarly rarer, as many of the skills of the Warmaster focus on things often found in cruel persons.
Hit Die: d10

Class Skills
The Warmaster's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Knowledge(all, taken separately) (Int), Climb (Str), Swim (Str), Jump (Str), Spot (Wis), Listen (Wis), Survival (Wis), Heal (Wis), Intimidate (Cha), Diplomacy (Cha) and Sense Motive (Cha)

Skill Points at First Level: (5 + Int modifier) x 4
Skill Points at Each Additional Level:5 + Int modifier

Warmaster


Level
Base Attack Bonus
Fort Save
Ref Save
Will Save
Special


1st

+1

+2

+0

+2
Intimidating Blows, Skilled Care, Martial Expertise


2nd

+2

+3

+0

+3



3rd

+3

+4

+1

+3
Bonus Feat


4th

+4

+4

+1

+4



5th

+5

+4

+1

+4
Convince With Fear, Personal Regimen


6th

+6/+1

+5

+2

+5



7th

+7/+2

+5

+2

+5
Bonus Feat


8th

+8/+3

+6

+2

+6



9th

+9/+4

+6

+3

+6
Drive the Masses, Oversee Caretaking


10th

+10/+5

+7

+3

+7



11th

+11/+6/+1

+7

+3

+7
Bonus Feat


12th

+12/+7/+2

+8

+4

+8



13th

+13/+8/+3

+8

+4

+8
Inspire With Fear, Exercise Instruction


14th

+14/+9/+4

+9

+4

+9



15th

+15/+10/+5

+9

+5

+9
Bonus Feat


16th

+16/+11/+6/+1

+10

+5

+10



17th

+17/+12/+7/+2

+10

+5

+10
Strain Your Skill, Cure Curse


18th

+18/+13/+8/+3

+11

+6

+11



19th

+19/+14/+9/+4

+11

+6

+11
Bonus Feat


20th

+20/+15/+10/+5

+12

+6

+12
Perfection of Fear, Instruct Heroism



Class Features
All of the following are class features of the Warmaster.

Weapon and Armor Proficiencies: Warmasters are proficient with all weapons and armor.

Intimidating Blows: At level 1, a Warmaster may take a -2 penalty on an attack to make an Intimidation check against the target of the attack. (Do note that this lets you do 4 Intimidate checks as part of a full attack once you hit level 16)

Skilled Care: At level 1, a Warmaster may make a DC 13 Heal check taking 2 minutes to heal a creature's HP by the amount the check was succeeded by. In addition, they may substitute their Intelligence modifier for their Wisdom modifier for Heal checks (Short enough to have it be worth using, long enough that it's only advantage over magical healing is no use restrictions. And the Int to Heal is MAD mitigation)

Martial Expertise: A Warmaster counts their Warmaster level as Fighter levels for the purposes of feats.

Bonus Feats: Warmaster bonus feats have no restrictions on use. (This is made to be borderline t2, it needs all the versatility it can get.)

Convince With Fear: At level 5, a Warmaster gains a bonus on Diplomacy and Sense Motive checks equal to 1/2 there Intimidate bonus. (Do note that this means all those Intimidate pumping tricks count half for Diplomacy and Sense Motive. So you can be a horrifying fearmonger able to make Dragons run away from you and be able to talk the same dragon into being your friend. Potentially at the same time...)

Personal Regimen: At level 5, a Warmaster gains a total bonus to physical ability scores (Strength, Constitution and Dexterity) equal to their Intelligence modifier. The total bonus may be divided between the ability scores and cannot exceed 1/2 your Warmaster level for any one ability score. (Basically, if you have a +3 Intelligence modifier, you get to divide a +3 between your physical ability scores, but no single score can get a bonus higher than 1/2 your Warmaster level. This is to help counter MAD, which would otherwise bog down the class)

Drive the Masses: At level 9, a Warmaster may take a -2 penalty to an Intimidate check to have that single check apply to all enemies in 20 ft. Each additional -2 penalty increases the range by 10 ft.

Oversee Caretaking: At level 9, a Warmaster may have their class features and feats apply to up to 1/2 their Warmaster level other creatures for the purposes of making Heal checks, and those creatures gain a bonus to their Heal checks equal to 1/2 the Warmaster's Heal skill ranks and Int modifier. (Intent is to have them able to let other use Int-to-Heal and the actually-heal-with-Heal-during-adventures things, as well as whatever other effects the Warmaster has on Heal. Oh, and the pumped Heal makes a team of Warmasters with varied focus on their stuff can buff eachother's heal checks into the skyline)

Inspire With Fear: At level 13, whenever a Warmaster succeeds an Intimidate check they used Drive the Masses on, they may have allies in range of Drive the Masses gain a +2 Moral bonus to AC, Will saves and Strength lasting 1 minute per Warmaster level. By taking a -2 penalty on an Intimidate check, the bonus increases by 1. (This is to give buff ability. Rather late, but it's there and can make a Warmaster screw with the balance of armies when they are buffed in Intimidate sufficiently)

Exercise Instruction: At level 13, a Warmaster can spend 4 hours to have a single creature gain the effects of the Intensive Training feat for a number of weeks equal to 1/2 their Warmaster level, using the Warmaster's Intelligence modifier in place of the target creature's. (Yes, there will be added feats to give similar effects to Warmaster abilities to other creatures. They shall appear in this post)

Strain your Skill: At level 17, a Warmaster may use Heroics, as the spell, as an (Ex) ability a number of times per day equal to their Intelligence modifier. (This is level 17. Things do not need to make sense much at all, so having spells as (Ex) abilities is fair game)

Cure Curse: At level 17, a Warmaster may use their Heal skill to remove magical effects from creatures. As a Heal check taking 10 minutes with a DC of 15 + the effect's source's CL or HD, whichever is lower, they may remove negative levels or the effects of one non-Extraordinary ability. (Yes, being able to remove buffs is intended. And it applies to any effect from an ability that is not Extraordinary. If you can chain them down long enough, you can strip a caster of any buff they have, making them open to more conventional killing)

Perfection of Fear: At level 20, a Warmaster may apply Fear effects to creatures that would normally be immune to them, including Mindless creatures. In addition, they may take a -2 on an Intimidate check to have a success apply a -1 moral penalty to Charisma, Intelligence, Wisdom, Strength, Dexterity, all saves and BAB while applying a bonus equal to the penalty to all allies affected by Inspire With Fear for this check. Each additional -1 to the check taken increases the penalty by 1. (Yes, that is a BAB penalty and bonus. It does, in fact, remove and grant iteratives. This is capstone stuff, and if you build around the Intimidate stuff, you can pull off multiple extra iteratives and a godlike army screw. Let the Wizard fight Gods one on one, you will fight nations and armies with a warband of peasants)

Instruct Heroism: At level 20, a Warmaster may spend 4 hours to grant a single creature the effects of a Fighter bonus feat they qualify for, 30 HP, a +6 Competence bonus to Con saves, a +4 Competence bonus to attack rolls, Ref and Will saves, and skill checks, immunity to fear effects and a +1 Cometence bonus to BAB, Intimidate and Ride for a number of weeks equal to 1/2 the Warmaster's level. (Heroics, CL 20 Greater Heroism and a virtual level of Fighter as if it were their first level of Fighter. This is capstone stuff, you use this to make a random commoner into a useful soldier for basic tasks)

---Feats---

Here lies partial and weaker versions of some Warmaster abilities as feats. Also some Warmaster boosting feats to cover for mechanics weaknesses without frontloading even more in the class.

Intensive Training [General]
Requirements: Int 12, BAB +2
Benefit: You gain a bonus to one physical ability score (Strength, Constitution or Dexterity) of your choice equal to your Int modifier, with a maximum of 1/3 your hit dice. To retain the benefits of this feat, you must spend 2 hours per day doing nothing but exercise.
Special: This feat may be taken multiple times, increasing the amount of time spent exercising by 1 hour each time. A fighter may select Intensive Training as one of his fighter bonus feats. (Well, it gives Fighters something useful for making them not need to use Int as a dump stat... Also lets them use the Wizard's hand-me-down Int bonus items...)

Drive to Panic [General]
Requirements: Intimidate 3 ranks
Benefit: When you succeed an Intimidate check against a Shaken creature, that creature becomes Panicked.
Special: Making an Intimidate check against a creature affected by a Fear effect suffers a -2 penalty. A repurchase of this feat removes this penalty and makes a Shaken creature Frightened instead.

Guide Caretaking [General]
Requirements: Heal 3 ranks
Benefit: You may add 1/2 your Heal modifier to the Heal check of another.
Special: A repurchase of this feat allows you to apply the effects of any other feats you have that affect your Heal skill to the Heal check of another. (I like repurchases, okay? It saves bookspace and naming)

Martial Enlightenment [General]
Requirements: Monk or Fighter level 1
Benefit: You Fighter level count as Monk levels for the purposes of feats and your Monk level count as Fighter levels for the purposes of feats. (Badly needed potential Unarmed bonuses on Monk, and more options for Fighters. Still need any class features involved in the feats, but you can get the feats)

[JoshuaZ]

This seems to me to be solidly T3. Exactly why do you think this is close to T2?

[Ziegander]

I don't even think I see a T3 class. The OP seems to be relying solely on the fact that people are going to abuse social skills to create a hybrid Diplo-Intimidimancer. It can heal and it can scare things. It's not particularly good at fighting, and it can't at all do non-skill utility like summoning, teleportation, condition removal, ability score healing, divination, etc, etc, ad nauseum, nor is it at all capable of non-fear crowd control or any sort of battlefield manipulation.

I'm assuming the idea is that the five bonus feats can be taken with literally no regard to prerequisites. That's not precisely what is said, but that's the only way I could even think to bring this to T2, and still, I've been too long away from 3e now to think of anything you could really do with 5 fully unrestricted bonus feats. By level 11 you might be able to backdoor yourself some limited spellcasting, and by 20th, maybe you can pull Epic Spell shenanigans, but, I don't know, for an attempt at T2 mundane, I feel like you can do better than this.

Why so many dead levels in the progression? By 5th level you have two dead levels, very little going for you in martial combat besides weapons and hit points and it's not as though you have any real powerful class features. If your starting ability scores were, say, Str 14, Dex 13, Con 11, Int 16, Wis 10, Cha 10, then at 5th you could have Str 16, Dex 14, and Con 12 (due to Personal Regimen) which is neat I guess, but you're still just mediocre at combat at best, mediocre at intimidating and negotiating, and decent at healing your party post-combat. You've got one free feat which could be... I dunno, what's the best feat you could take if you ignored all prerequisites?

[Morphic tide]

This seems to me to be solidly T3. Exactly why do you think this is close to T2?
Explained by my reasoning of the Tiers at the top of the post. The Tiers are about flexibility/variety of problems solved, not power, and that small list at the top of the post is how I categorize them. This class is built to have effects that let it do some of everything with little overall specialization. With the right specializing, it can do well in almost anything, but not amazingly like properly optimized casters tend to get away with. Healing is strictly out of combat use and not a mainly usable thing. Magic items, as always, take care of supernatural things, including Flight.

The things this class can do fairly well off it's normal stuff (Feats, WBL, class skills and class features)
Damage, because it can grab Fighter feats and can debuff on every attack. Works best as Ubercharger, because it has a tendency to send enemies running away.
Save or suck, because even just Panicked is a fairly strong suck. Fear-effect reliance makes it fall off at higher levels and not really work at all in some campaigns.
Healing, while not on the level of magical healing, is still notable. Unlimited use is important for some campaigns, and being entirely mundane makes it good in others.
Diplomacy, because Intimidate stacking counts half for it, uses the same ability score, and you likely have enough left over for noticeable Diplomacy stacking. No Bluff...
Large scale fights, because of the rather large range on the save-or-suck and buffs. Like I mentioned in one of the capstones, let the Wizard fight Gods, this fights armies.


It can't match a full caster at any of those, but casters have limited spells without high cheese getting involved. This class keep going for as long as is needed, as long as it survives. And with the combat capabilities it has against non-fearless foes, it is able to take quite a bit. Would you like to see an Epic progression? I could get some of that insanity involved, like making an extension of the capstone that allows mass Fanatic conversion for gathering armies rapidly.

[Morphic tide]

*snip*

The goal is not to be powerful, but to be versatile. The way it works as a hybrid Diplomacy and Intimidate character makes it useful in most situations. It is not made to equal casters, it is made to be able to handle some of any type of situation. Blind spots are intended. This is made to need optimizing to take off like crazy, optimizing that I'm not aware of the existence of.

As for dead levels, I wanted to have it look more clear and less cluttered. I could have everything set to a feature every two levels, but then I'd need to do some shuffling and reworking to keep the more powerful tools as a thing that costs a lot to dip into for casters.

Edit: To fit with the sort of thing you are looking at, I'd need to make either a highly exaggerated strength monster that acts like someone tried to wank Barbarian into t1 and fell short or I'd have to go for a mundane in name only class, with lots of alchemy type stuff and Construct creation.

This is, as the name of the class suggests, focused mostly on screwing with the balance of armies, in which it fills in everything outside of altering the battlefield itself to some degree. It does not intend to challenge caster dominance as much as it intends to do the one thing casters have to bypass, rather than face head on: Actual warfare. A caster has only so many spell slots, and many of the tricks they use to counter eachother have lesser, but still very threatening, versions available within reasonable military budgets. Even with bypassing, if we accept some of the worse cheese as a thing that exists, we can reasonably assume major military forces have workarounds to anything up to level 13 casters because level 13s are the sort of thing you can expect as elites in warfare.

[Ziegander]

The tiers are specifically about power and versatility, though, despite their creator claiming they are only about versatility.

Tier 4 can only do one thing well, while Tier 5 can't do anything passably well, and Tier 6 is actively bad at everything. That's disparity in power and versatility. Tier 3 then is capable of doing anything well, while Tier 2 is capable of doing anything amazingly well (though not all things at once), and Tier 1 is capable of breaking the game in virtually any manner you can think of. Again, power and versatility.

The only gaps in the tier system that do not come with a jump up in power are Tier 4 to Tier 3 and Tier 2 to Tier 1. Tier 5 is more powerful than Tier 6. Tiers 4 and 3 are more powerful (and more versatile) than Tier 5. Tier 2 is more powerful by far than Tiers 4 or 3, and Tier 1 is more versatile than every other tier.

So, if you're versatile, but not powerful, to reach Tier 2, you'd need to at least have Tier 4 power level with incredible breadth of versatility, which this class does not have, or you need to have a few tricks that are just heads and shoulders more powerful than anything any Tier 4 or Tier 3 class can hope to compete with.

The one trick this class relies on is Intimidate, but to actually be T2 level good at it you need custom +30 skill bonus items and a bunch of other wealth by level shenanigans, and really, once you've done that, the class is only marginally better than any Tier 6 class at it, because even a Commoner, given PC wealth, can buy items that allow mass intimidation checks and move action, even swift action intimidate checks. *shrug*

Also, I need to double check this, but I'm pretty sure Intimidate, the skill anyway, doesn't allow you to stack fear effects beyond Shaken. I don't think you can make creatures Frightened or Panicked with the Intimidate skill.

EDIT: SRD quote, "Even if the initial check succeeds, the other character can be intimidated only so far, and a retry doesn’t help."

[Morphic tide]

The tiers are specifically about power and versatility, though, despite their creator claiming they are only about versatility.

Tier 4 can only do one thing well, while Tier 5 can't do anything passably well, and Tier 6 is actively bad at everything. That's disparity in power and versatility. Tier 3 then is capable of doing anything well, while Tier 2 is capable of doing anything amazingly well (though not all things at once), and Tier 1 is capable of breaking the game in virtually any manner you can think of. Again, power and versatility.

The only gaps in the tier system that do not come with a jump up in power are Tier 4 to Tier 3 and Tier 2 to Tier 1. Tier 5 is more powerful than Tier 6. Tiers 4 and 3 are more powerful (and more versatile) than Tier 5. Tier 2 is more powerful by far than Tiers 4 or 3, and Tier 1 is more versatile than every other tier.

So, if you're versatile, but not powerful, to reach Tier 2, you'd need to at least have Tier 4 power level with incredible breadth of versatility, which this class does not have, or you need to have a few tricks that are just heads and shoulders more powerful than anything any Tier 4 or Tier 3 class can hope to compete with.

The one trick this class relies on is Intimidate, but to actually be T2 level good at it you need custom +30 skill bonus items and a bunch of other wealth by level shenanigans, and really, once you've done that, the class is only marginally better than any Tier 6 class at it, because even a Commoner, given PC wealth, can buy items that allow mass intimidation checks and move action, even swift action intimidate checks. *shrug*

Also, I need to double check this, but I'm pretty sure Intimidate, the skill anyway, doesn't allow you to stack fear effects beyond Shaken. I don't think you can make creatures Frightened or Panicked with the Intimidate skill.

EDIT: SRD quote, "Even if the initial check succeeds, the other character can be intimidated only so far, and a retry doesn’t help."

Counter examples: Fighter, who can only fight well, is t3. Sorcerer, a class unable to do everything in one build awesomely without PRC stacking and some fairly high optimization, is t2.

I also point at the tier sense I went with at the top of the first post.

Edit: Also, the class has tricks tied to Intimidate that make it do stuff Commoners can't have. And, once I found out about the lack of Intimidate stacking, I put in a feat at the bottom of the post for making it stack anyway. Also one for having Fighters and Monks act as each other for feats. Which, by RAW, includes scaling...

[JoshuaZ]

I don't even think I see a T3 class. The OP seems to be relying solely on the fact that people are going to abuse social skills to create a hybrid Diplo-Intimidimancer. It can heal and it can scare things. It's not particularly good at fighting, and it can't at all do non-skill utility like summoning, teleportation, condition removal, ability score healing, divination, etc, etc, ad nauseum, nor is it at all capable of non-fear crowd control or any sort of battlefield manipulation.

Good points (as well as your other comments). In my first read, for some reason I thought it got more bonus feats than it did but even increasing that number might not move it to T3.

[JoshuaZ]

Counter examples: Fighter, who can only fight well, is t3. Sorcerer, a class unable to do everything in one build awesomely without PRC stacking and some fairly high optimization, is t2.


In the standard tier list, the Fighter is T5 (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5293.0). Some variants of it get up to T4. No version of the fighter is T3. The claim about the sorcerer is wrong: the sorcerer gets to be T2 precisely because without much PrC stacking, it can break the game in one or two ways chosen from any of the ways that a T1 class (the wizard) can do, but fixed for a specific build. See for example, why each class is in its tier (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?269440-Why-Each-Class-Is-In-Its-Tier-(Rescued-from-MinMax)). It appears that you insisting on using your own notions of the tier system rather than the standard notions. This is unproductive for communicating, and doesn't help in a conversation where one is trying to understand what tier something is in.

[Morphic tide]

In the standard tier list, the Fighter is T5 (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5293.0). Some variants of it get up to T4. No version of the fighter is T3. The claim about the sorcerer is wrong: the sorcerer gets to be T2 precisely because without much PrC stacking, it can break the game in one or two ways chosen from any of the ways that a T1 class (the wizard) can do, but fixed for a specific build. See for example, why each class is in its tier (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?269440-Why-Each-Class-Is-In-Its-Tier-(Rescued-from-MinMax)). It appears that you insisting on using your own notions of the tier system rather than the standard notions. This is unproductive for communicating, and doesn't help in a conversation where one is trying to understand what tier something is in.

Breaking the game in one or two ways =/= being amazing at everything. Point me to a build of single class Sorcerer that is great at everything. Damage, healing, crowd control, buffs and save-or-suck. And I can quite clearly remember seeing a tier list that had optimized Fighter at t3, specifically mentioning that unoptimized Fighter was t4. That, Sorcerers being t2, and a few other things led me to the conclusion of the tier setup I was thinking with. Looking at that explanation of the tiers, I can see it as this:

t1: Able to do absolutely everything you could ever need in a party, invalidates all but the strongest t3s.
t2: Able to do anything, but not all at once. Mostly invalidates t3s and lower.
t3: Able to do a few things well, but able to do something significant outside of those things.
t4: Able to do one thing well, but basically entirely useless outside of that.
t5: Able to do one thing badly, is entirely useless outside of that one thing.
t6: Able to do nothing with any meaningful capacity, no redeeming points.

By this simplified setup, this class is still in a weird border area. It's not entirely useless in any general type of situation(outside of intended Fear-immune enemy problem), actually useful in quite a few, but not great at anything in particular. I rather specifically set this up under the thinking that Fighter was t3 when optimized.

[JoshuaZ]

Breaking the game in one or two ways =/= being amazing at everything. Point me to a build of single class Sorcerer that is great at everything. Damage, healing, crowd control, buffs and save-or-suck. And I can quite clearly remember seeing a tier list that had optimized Fighter at t3, specifically mentioning that unoptimized Fighter was t4.

If so, this is some tier list that isn't at all using the terminology in a standard way. A major part of the standard tier system is that it measures things assuming roughly the same level of optimization for all classes.



t1: Able to do absolutely everything you could ever need in a party, invalidates all but the strongest t3s.
t2: Able to do anything, but not all at once. Mostly invalidates t3s and lower.
t3: Able to do a few things well, but able to do something significant outside of those things.
t4: Able to do one thing well, but basically entirely useless outside of that.
t5: Able to do one thing badly, is entirely useless outside of that one thing.
t6: Able to do nothing with any meaningful capacity, no redeeming points.

This is not a standard summary of the Tier list and I strongly suggest rereading JaronK's original comments on the list (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5293.0)
Note for example, that your statement that T2 "Mostly invalidates t3s and lower" is essentially contradicted where JaronK notes "Tier 2 classes are often less flexible than Tier 3 classes... it's just that their incredible potential power overwhelms their lack in flexibility. " Thus for example, a sorcerer is T2 but most sorcerer builds cannot handle healing while many T3s and T4s can do it somewhat, so saying a sorcerer invalidates them seems off.



By this simplified setup, this class is still in a weird border area. It's not useless in any general type of situation, actually useful in quite a few, but not great at anything in particular. I rather specifically set this up under the thinking that Fighter was t3 when optimized.

If we don't talk about the Tier system at all, and instead compare this to the fighter, then it is true that this class is probably more useful in more situations than a fighter. But that's a statement independent of the Tier system.

[Morphic tide]

If so, this is some tier list that isn't at all using the terminology in a standard way. A major part of the standard tier system is that it measures things assuming roughly the same level of optimization for all classes.



This is not a standard summary of the Tier list and I strongly suggest rereading JaronK's original comments on the list (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5293.0)
Note for example, that your statement that T2 "Mostly invalidates t3s and lower" is essentially contradicted where JaronK notes "Tier 2 classes are often less flexible than Tier 3 classes... it's just that their incredible potential power overwhelms their lack in flexibility. " Thus for example, a sorcerer is T2 but most sorcerer builds cannot handle healing while many T3s and T4s can do it somewhat, so saying a sorcerer invalidates them seems off.



If we don't talk about the Tier system at all, and instead compare this to the fighter, then it is true that this class is probably more useful in more situations than a fighter. But that's a statement independent of the Tier system.

The tier system is meant to be about versatility and that is how I will stick with it. If the t2 classes are specifically inflexible but powerful, then that invalidates the point of the tier system being about versatility. And it's true that t2s mostly invalidate t3s, because similarly optimized t2s include Sorcerer and the non-Erudite Psion being compared to Rangers and Psychic Rogues.