Retiering the Classes: Home Base

[eggynack]

JaronK's tier system for classes (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5293.0) is pretty neat. Least I think so. A hierarchical arrangement of game objects is tricky to design in the best of times, but it's perhaps at its trickiest in a system as complex as 3.5, and cooperative for that matter. The original system has prevailed throughout the years, sticking around while more complex variations pop up and often fade away. It's a great thing, but also a somewhat problematic one, as various classes in the game were mistiered, or, if they're sufficiently obscure, they weren't tiered at all. Moreover, some of the underlying rules for tiers are a bit on the wonky side. Our goal here is to retier the classes over a long period of time, knocking them out approximately three at a time in a variety of subthreads, and create as perfect a tier list as is plausible. Our other goal is to discuss classes, cause doing that is neat.

This thread, then, has the basic purpose of discussing stuff like procedure, and what classes we should tier, along with any other essential functioning stuff. It will also be a nexus for all the child threads that are devoted to class sets, linking to them and having useful information and such. So, with that out of the way, let's get to the important stuff.


What are the tiers?

The simple answer here is that tier one is the best, the home of things on the approximate problem solving scale of wizards, and tier six is the worst, land of commoners. And problem solving capacity is what's being measured here. Considering the massive range of challenges a character is liable to be presented with across the levels, how much and how often does that character's class contribute to the defeat of those challenges? This value should be considered as a rough averaging across all levels, the center of the level range somewhat more than really low and really high level characters, and across all optimization levels (considering DM restrictiveness as a plausible downward acting factor on how optimized a character is), prioritizing moderate optimization somewhat more than low or high.

A big issue with the original tier system is that, if anything, it was too specific, generating inflexible definitions for allowance into a tier which did not cover the broad spectrum of ways a class can operate. When an increase in versatility would seem to represent a decrease in tier, because tier two is supposed to be low versatility, it's obvious that we've become mired in something that'd be pointless to anyone trying to glean information from the tier system. Thus, I will be uncharacteristically word light here. The original tier system's tier descriptions (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5293.0) are still good guidelines here, but they shouldn't be assumed to be the end all and be all for how classes get ranked.

Consistent throughout these tiers is the notion of problems and the solving thereof. For the purposes of this tier system, the problem space can be said to be inclusive of combat, social interaction, and exploration, with the heaviest emphasis placed on combat. A problem could theoretically fall outside of that space, but things inside that space are definitely problems. Another way to view the idea of problem solving is through the lens of the niche ranking system (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?314701-Person_Man-s-Niche-Ranking-System). A niche filled tends to imply the capacity to solve a type of problem, whether it's a status condition in the case of healing, or an enemy that just has too many hit points in the case of melee combat. It's not a perfect measure, both because some niches have a lot of overlap in the kinds of problems they can solve and because, again, the niches aren't necessarily all inclusive, but they can act as a good tool for class evaluation.

Tier one: Incredibly good at solving nearly all problems. This is the realm of clerics, druids, and wizards, classes that open up with strong combat spells backed up by utility, and then get massively stronger from there. If you're not keeping up with that core trio of tier one casters, then you probably don't belong here.

Tier two: We're just a step below tier one here, in the land of classes around the sorcerer level of power. Generally speaking, this means relaxing one of the two tier one assumptions, either getting us to very good at solving nearly all problems, or incredibly good at solving most problems. But, as will continue to be the case as these tiers go on, there aren't necessarily these two simple categories for this tier. You gotta lose something compared to the tier one casters, but what you lose doesn't have to be in some really specific proportions.

Tier three: Again, we gotta sacrifice something compared to tier two, here taking us to around the level of a swordsage. The usual outcome is that you are very good at solving a couple of problems and competent at solving a few more. Of course, there are other possibilities, for example that you might instead be competent at solving nearly all problems.

Tier four: Here we're in ranger/barbarian territory (though the ranger should be considered largely absent of ACF's and stuff to hit this tier, as will be talked about later). Starting from that standard tier three position, the usual sweet spots here are very good at solving a few problems, or alright at solving many problems.

Tier five: We're heading close to the dregs here. Tier five is the tier of monks, classes that are as bad as you can be without being an aristocrat or a commoner. Classes here are sometimes very good at solving nearly no problems, or alright at solving a few, or some other function thereof. It's weak, is the point.

Tier six: And here we have commoner tier. Or, the bottom is commoner. The top is approximately aristocrat. You don't necessarily have nothing in this tier, but you have close enough to it.


If you have any suggestions for modifications to this setup, go ahead, but I think the general format of, "Each tier is worse than the one above, and can be that in a large number of ways," is solid. It's a structure that can plausibly handle the addition of random new classes and systems without breaking down.


Important notes, procedural and otherwise

Tier Voting Procedure:The basic procedure here will be to vote on classes in the suitable thread. Threads will stay open for an indefinite quantity of time, though I could get bored in like a year and someone else could take up the thread altering game. I'll be checking and altering the numbers reasonably often to match changes in vote, and you can alter your vote whenever you want. I expect each thread to handle roughly three classes, though I could see some going up to five or six. We probably don't need to spend two entire threads covering classes that are obviously tier one, for example. Votes don't necessarily have to take on integer values, though I'm gonna say you should stick to rationals, cause supporting the alternative seems too hard and not worth it. I don't really have much I can do with, "Tier three sometimes, tier four other times," and, "High tier two," is just going to be a two, so make sure that whatever you do can be reasonably put into a fancy spreadsheet.

One really important thing here is that you can't just toss a vote out into the void with no information and then just leave. You need some solid justification for your vote, and preferably some interaction with the discussion. If you don't, it's not that big a deal, cause you can always add justification, but your vote may not be counted until then, and you'll be notified if you've been left out. Our goal here is accuracy in tiering, and if you think a class is tiered in a certain way premised on incorrect knowledge, then that should be plainly visible from what you're saying about the class. A few sentences is reasonable, a paragraph or two is quite good, and a few posts on the topic is great. Generally speaking, the more controversial a class is, the more explanation you're going to want to give, and the same is the case for individually weird votes. Just giving a wizard a 1 and saying, "Jeez, you called this a one explicitly in your initial post. How much detail do you really want me to give?" is likely sufficient. Doing the same about a class that's had ten pages of individual attention is probably not.

On ACF's, feats, items, dips, prestige classes, and so on:The default here will be to consider everything that isn't a class or prestige class, and nothing that is a class or prestige class. A general assumption is that the more obscure something is, the less likely it is to be on any particular character, and thus the less it should factor in. What matters most are things that a class has access to or makes good use of by dint of their class features. If a commoner can do it just as well, it's not a major class consideration. One major exception to this is individual game objects that merit a tier adjustment in and of themselves, and that largely lack for substitutes. The same may sometimes be the case for two object interactions, but that's more of an edge case and should be looked at on a case by case basis. When these things happen, we'll split off the ACF or feat (or item, but that's rarer) altered class and call it its own entry.

In all cases, use your best judgement and discretion. I think we'll get some good results here.


The Threads


The Fixed List Casters: Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, and Warmage (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?515849-Retiering-the-Classes-Beguiler-Dread-Necromancer-and-Warmage&p=21722395#post21722395)


The Obvious Tier One Classes: Archivist, Artificer, Cleric, Druid, Sha'ir, and Wizard (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?516137-Retiering-the-Classes-Archivist-Artificer-Cleric-Druid-Sha-ir-and-Wizard&p=21731809#post21731809)


The Mundane Beat Sticks (part one): Barbarian, Fighter, Samurai (CW), and Samurai (OA) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?516602-Retiering-the-Classes-Barbarian-Fighter-Samurai-(CW)-and-Samurai-(OA)&p=21747927#post21747927)


The Roguelikes: Ninja, Rogue, and Scout (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517091-Retiering-the-Classes-Ninja-Rogue-and-Scout)


The Pseudo-Druids: Spirit Shaman, Spontaneous Druid, Urban Druid, and Wild Shape Ranger (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517370-Retiering-the-Classes-Spirit-Shaman-Spontaneous-Druid-Urban-Druid-and-WS-Ranger&p=21774657#post21774657)


The Jacks of All Trades: Bard, Factotum, Jester, and Savant (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517967-Retiering-the-Classes-Bard-Factotum-and-Jester&p=21794327#post21794327)


The Tome of Battlers: Crusader, Swordsage, and Warblade (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?518495-Retiering-the-Classes-Crusader-Swordsage-and-Warblade&p=21815193#post21815193)


The NPCs: Adept, Aristocrat, Commoner, Expert, Magewright, and Warrior (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?519155-Retiering-the-Classes-Adept-Aristocrat-Commoner-Expert-Magewright-and-Warrior&p=21838412)


The Vaguely Supernatural Melee Folk: Battle Dancer, Monk, Mountebank, and Soulknife (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?519701-Retiering-the-Classes-Battle-Dancer-Monk-Mountebank-and-Soulknife)


The Miscellaneous Full Casters: Death Master, Shaman, Shugenja, Sorcerer, and Wu Jen (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?520291-Retiering-the-Classes-Death-Master-Shugenja-Sorcerer-Wu-Jen&p=21878654#post21878654)


The Wacky Magicists: Binder, Dragonfire Adept, Shadowcaster, Truenamer, and Warlock (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?520903-Retiering-the-Classes-Binder-Dragonfire-Adept-Shadowcaster-Truenamer-Warlock&p=21898782#post21898782)


The Slow Casting Melee Folk: Duskblade, Hexblade, Paladin, Ranger, Sohei, and Spellthief (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?521476-Retiering-the-Classes-Duskblade-Hexblade-Paladin-Ranger-Sohei-Spellthief)


The Pseudo-Clerics: Evangelist, Favored Soul, Healer, Mystic, and Spontaneous Cleric (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?522562-Retiering-the-Classes-Evangelist-Favored-Soul-Healer-Mystic-Spontaneous-Cleric&p=21942496#post21942496)


The Auraists: Divine Mind, Dragon Shaman, and Marshal (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?523449-Retiering-the-Classes-Divine-Mind-Dragon-Shaman-and-Marshal)


The Rankings
Beguiler: Tier two.

Dread necromancer: Tier two.

Warmage: Tier three.

Archivist: Tier one.

Artificer: Tier one.

Cleric: Tier one.

Druid: Tier one.

Sha'ir: Tier one.

Wizard: Tier one.

Barbarian: Tier four

Fighter: Tier four

CW Samurai: Tier five

OA Samurai: Tier five

Ninja: Tier four

Rogue: Tier four

Scout: Tier four

Spirit Shaman: Tier two

Spontaneous Druid: Tier one

Urban Druid: Tier two

Wild Shape Ranger: Tier three

Bard: Tier three

Factotum: Tier three

Jester: Tier three

Savant: Tier four

Crusader: Tier three

Swordsage: Tier three

Warblade: Tier three

Adept: Tier four

Aristocrat: Tier six

Commoner: Tier six

Expert: Tier five

Magewright: Tier five

Warrior: Tier six

Battle Dancer: Tier five

Monk: Tier five

Mountebank: Tier five

Soulknife: Tier five

Death Master: Tier two

Shaman: Tier one

Shugenja: Tier three

Sorcerer: Tier two

Wu Jen: Tier one

Binder: Tier three

Dragonfire Adept: Tier three

Shadowcaster: Tier four

Truenamer: Tier five

Warlock: Tier three

Duskblade: Tier three

Hexblade: Tier five

Paladin: Tier four

Ranger: Tier four

Sohei: Tier five

Spellthief: Tier four

Evangelist: Tier two

Favored Soul: Tier two

Healer: Tier three

Mystic: Tier two

Spontaneous Cleric: Tier two

Divine Mind: Tier five

Dragon Shaman: Tier five

Marshal: Tier five

And here's a link to the spreadsheet. (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hj9_9PQg6tXACUWZY_Egm2R9Gtvg9nXRTPfGYnAfh9w/edit)

[eggynack]

Here's a reserved post. Dunno if I'll even need it, but better safe than sorry. Posting away should be good now. I'll put up the fixed list casters thread in like an hour.

[Hurnn]

I like the tier descriptions mostly, except the language of tier 1 and 2. Tier one isn't Incredibly good at solving all problems to me. I think of tier 1 as: Solves every problem perfectly, and then does the extra credit questions at the end of the test. Tier 2 is solves some problems perfectly, and the rest really well.

[eggynack]

I like the tier descriptions mostly, except the language of tier 1 and 2. Tier one isn't Incredibly good at solving all problems to me. I think of tier 1 as: Solves every problem perfectly, and then does the extra credit questions at the end of the test. Tier 2 is solves some problems perfectly, and the rest really well.
Yeah, might be a bit hyperbolic. I might tone it down to, like, incredibly good at solving a ton of problems. I'm mostly trying to capture the essence of, "Top of the curve." I dunno if you're right on two. As I noted in my description, I view each step down the tier system as a sort of toning down of one factor or another. You can keep power or versatility, but you can't keep both at the exact levels you once had them. You can lose some of both too, but your "stats" will be lower than another tier two's "high stat". With that in mind, tier two doesn't necessarily solve some problems perfectly and the rest really well. Maybe one tier two solves a ton of problems very well, instead of a ton of problems incredibly well. Maybe another does as you said, and has a core competency that's excellent, and a surrounding region that's just great. Point being, I think that basically a single classification for tier one makes sense, but anything lower is going to be... complicated.

[AnachroNinja]

I'm on board, I like that problem solving is the prime criteria. I feel like it's worth noting that while we obviously do need to consider access to Items and feats, we should generally not put to much weight on things that are not relevant to the class itself. The classic example being candles of invocation. Whereas a ring of blink or weapon crystals is definitely a big factor for rogues and needs to be considered.

I'm not sure obscurity is really a good criteria though. For better or worse, everyone's got the internet now and as such, access to way more then just the books they physically own. I think a better process might be judging how obvious it is to use a feat or item. Any druid who sees a summoners totem is going to almost instantly see the advantages, but not every scout is going to immediately recognize the impact of chronocharms of the horizon Walker. That's honestly not the best example, because that one is pretty straightforward even if not as obvious as the totem, but it's what I could think of.

Anyway, just some thoughts. I'm on board for this.

[eggynack]

I'm on board, I like that problem solving is the prime criteria. I feel like it's worth noting that while we obviously do need to consider access to Items and feats, we should generally not put to much weight on things that are not relevant to the class itself. The classic example being candles of invocation. Whereas a ring of blink or weapon crystals is definitely a big factor for rogues and needs to be considered.
I already have that noted under the third procedural paragraph. Maybe I should clearly mark the stuff in that section better.


I'm not sure obscurity is really a good criteria though. For better or worse, everyone's got the internet now and as such, access to way more then just the books they physically own. I think a better process might be judging how obvious it is to use a feat or item. Any druid who sees a summoners totem is going to almost instantly see the advantages, but not every scout is going to immediately recognize the impact of chronocharms of the horizon Walker. That's honestly not the best example, because that one is pretty straightforward even if not as obvious as the totem, but it's what I could think of.
Maybe. I'm hesitant to fully drop obscurity as a factor. A lot of people talk about their core only games, or their game that has core as well as the PHB II, some completes, the magic item compendium, and some wacky setting specific book. Not all games use all books. I think the criteria you're talking about could fall roughly under "optimization".

[eggynack]

Just opened up the first tier voting thread. You can find it at the bottom of the first post, or you can find it here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?515849-Retiering-the-Classes-Beguiler-Dread-Necromancer-and-Warmage&p=21722395#post21722395).

[GilesTheCleric]

The descriptions for each tier confuse me (as a native english speaker). I can probably guess what you mean when you say "solves a lot" vs "solves many". But, the vague comparative quantities could perhaps be a bit more explicit in just how much they encompass, or could be better contrasted with each other. Thank you!

[eggynack]

The descriptions for each tier confuse me (as a native english speaker). I can probably guess what you mean when you say "solves a lot" vs "solves many". But, the vague comparative quantities could perhaps be a bit more explicit in just how much they encompass, or could be better contrasted with each other. Thank you!
I'm mostly just trying to indicate less. Fewer problems solved, less power applied to the problems in question. Conveying that is tricky without getting weirdly recursive (fewer problems than the tier above this solved, with roughly equal power, or vice versa). Any suggestions for how that should be constructed? I've been really iffy on the whole thing. The main guiding principle, I think, should just be that a lower tier is worse than a higher one. Obvious, perhaps, but the other stuff strikes me as weirdly distracting.

[GilesTheCleric]

I'm mostly just trying to indicate less. Fewer problems solved, less power applied to the problems in question. Conveying that is tricky without getting weirdly recursive (fewer problems than the tier above this solved, with roughly equal power, or vice versa). Any suggestions for how that should be constructed? I've been really iffy on the whole thing. The main guiding principle, I think, should just be that a lower tier is worse than a higher one. Obvious, perhaps, but the other stuff strikes me as weirdly distracting.

Comparatives are always tricky, but what about a sort of sliding scale of "none - few - many - most - all"? That's 5 different amounts, which probably roughly correspond to the tiers. For me, things like "lots" or "tonnes" connotes a limit of infinity with no real guidance on how practically large those amounts are (is "lots" equal to 20? 100? 10.000?). With the above terms, there's a limit of 100%, which I think makes mentally organizing them easier. How do you feel about this?

Edit: Sorry, but I want to clarify, since I'm getting a suspicion that we're looking at different things. I mean the comparatives used within each tier individually, not from one tier to another.

[eggynack]

Comparatives are always tricky, but what about a sort of sliding scale of "none - few - many - most - all"? That's 5 different amounts, which probably roughly correspond to the tiers.
Sounds solid, though I think I'ma replace all with nearly all.

Edit: Replaced none with nearly none, cause I think having none as a category winds up not telling you much. Might swap many with some too. Haven't swapped out the "very good"s. You think that should be changed too?

[Grod_The_Giant]

I feel like we might want to fiddle more with tier definitions and "what to consider" before we start really ranking them. Making definitions vaguer doesn't seem terribly likely to result in more productive discussion. In particular, it seems like we should settle some of the past debates about baseline optimization levels and transformative feats/ACFs...

(It also seems to me that the "Tier 3.5 problem" is still exists-- it doesn't exactly feel right to put both the Warblade and Barbarian in the same the same tier, but both are pretty mediocre at all noncombat things.)

[Gullintanni]

One of the nuances inherent to JaronK's tier list that I find causes a lot of problems for those who haven't spent a lot of time analyzing the Tier list is his take on optimization thresholds. JaronK's tier list assumes equivalent levels of optimization, and some would be quick to point out that some classes get a heck of a lot more mileage out of heavy optimization than others.

Compare Monks and Rangers, for example. Even with heavy Op, it's difficult to move a single classed monk out of Tier 5. Really the best you can hope for is low Tier 4. Rangers, on the other hand, through ACFs, can go from mid Tier 4 to high Tier 3, especially with Dragon Magazine content. So if the premise here is performing a full re-evaluation of all classes, it may be useful to assign optimization approximations. For example, one might rate Warblades as follows:

Base Tier: 3
Optimization Floor: Low Tier 3 (Warblades come with all the tools they need to perform as Tier 3 classes within their chassis, and even sub-optimal feat choice can't screw this up).
Optimization Ceiling: High Tier 3 (No combination of tricks that a Warblade brings to the table can really be considered encounter breaking.)

A Ranger might be assessed as follows:

Base Tier: 4
Optimization Floor: Tier 5 (Sub-optimal feat and skill choices can make it difficult for Rangers to contribute even within their assumed primary roles)
Optimization Ceiling: High Tier 3 (With options like Mystic Ranger and SotAO, Rangers can combine potent spellcasting abilities with their already strong martial chassis)

The parenthetical notes needn't be included in the final tier list, I've included them here in order to better explain the concept I'm putting forward. So...would a Base Tier//Optimization Threshold format be useful? I don't think it'd be a great deal more work, since the playground's basically done all the analysis, it's just a matter of gathering a consensus.

[rrwoods]

I like this!

The second half-ish of your opening post here is just a tad hard to parse. I find myself kind of mentally losing what I'm reading about. Something to help anchor/re-center/whatever might be helpful:

Basic Procedure: Vote on classes in the suitable thread. Threads will stay open for an indefinite quantity of time, though I could get bored in like a year and someone else could take up the thread altering game. I'll be checking and altering the numbers reasonably often to match changes in vote, and you can alter your vote whenever you want. I expect each thread to handle roughly three classes, though I could see some going up to five or six. We probably don't need to spend two entire threads covering classes that are obviously tier one, for example.

Explain Your Vote. One really important thing here is that you can't just toss a vote out into the void with no information and then just leave. You need some solid justification for your vote, and preferably some interaction with the discussion. If you don't, it's not that big a deal, cause you can always add justification, but your vote may not be counted until then, and you'll be notified if you've been left out. Our goal here is accuracy in tiering, and if you think a class is tiered in a certain way premised on incorrect knowledge, then that should be plainly visible from what you're saying about the class. A few sentences is reasonable, a paragraph or two is quite good, and a few posts on the topic is great. Generally speaking, the more controversial a class is, the more explanation you're going to want to give, and the same is the case for individually weird votes. Just giving a wizard a 1 and saying, "Jeez, you called this a one explicitly in your initial post. How much detail do you really want me to give?" is likely sufficient. Doing the same about a class that's had ten pages of individual attention is probably not.

On ACFs, feats, WBL, and Similar: The default will be to consider these somewhat. A general assumption is that the more obscure something is, the less likely it is to be on any particular character, and thus the less it should factor in. What matters most are things that a class has access to or makes good use of by dint of their class features. If a commoner can do it just as well, it's not a major class consideration. One major exception to this is individual game objects that merit a tier adjustment in and of themselves, and that largely lack for substitutes. The same may sometimes be the case for two object interactions, but that's more of an edge case and should be looked at on a case by case basis. When these things happen, we'll split off the ACF or feat (or item, but that's rarer) altered class and call it its own entry.

On Multiclassing/Prestige Classes: We're mostly not considering these. This is the tier system for classes, so considering classes separate from the one you're supposed to be considering is... bad. I think of this as kind of the inverse of the above situation. The default is to never consider these things, but if the class has a lot of substitutes, and you're not using it that extensively, then there may be situations where it makes sense to think about it. Dipping into one of like a dozen different classes to pick up a domain on the cheap is probably fine. If you're spending ten levels in sublime chord, then we're just not talking about a bard any more.

In all cases, use your best judgement and discretion. I think we'll get some good results here.

[Aimeryan]

EDIT: I have changed this post fairly drastically since it was first posted in order to update it.

Good work on the opening post - it hits the nail of every point that needed to be covered.

I want to look at how the tiers work, both for JaronK's tiering and for what I hope this Community tiering might go for. Rather than use words, since I think that has been done enough and still ends up being misunderstood, I went for something more visual. The bottom axis, which I forgot to label, is the problem space; the range of problems for which there are distinctly different solutions for. This is how JaronK's tiering works as I understand it:



https://s9.postimg.org/zfqn3amrf/Tier_1.png (https://postimg.org/image/zfqn3amrf/)
https://s9.postimg.org/mczlxrlx7/Tier_2.png (https://postimg.org/image/mczlxrlx7/)
https://s9.postimg.org/5qi1ooszf/Tier_3.png (https://postimg.org/image/5qi1ooszf/)
https://s9.postimg.org/grd6tpl8b/Tier_3_5.png (https://postimg.org/image/grd6tpl8b/)
https://s9.postimg.org/uz2vicxx7/Tier_4.png (https://postimg.org/image/uz2vicxx7/)
https://s9.postimg.org/916eokiwr/Tier_5.png (https://postimg.org/image/916eokiwr/)
https://s9.postimg.org/m6lwuocsb/Tier_6.png (https://postimg.org/image/m6lwuocsb/)


Tier 1
Tier 2
Tier 3 (upper)
Tier 3 (lower)/Tier 3.5
Tier 4
Tier 5
Tier 6


488 CP
326 CP
315 CP
210 CP
115 CP
70 CP
30 CP



There are two particular issues here though:


Tier 2 and upper Tier 3 are very similar; the only difference of note is that Tier 2 can break the game - except if that occurs then, well, your game is broken. It is something worth noting about a class but not worth tiering differently, especially because classes in Tier 3 are often as good as those in Tier 2. In fact, the only reason this exists is because of the barred entry being forced by requiring Tier 2 classes to break the game.
There is a "hidden" Tier 3.5, mostly consisting of gishes. It exists because the gap between upper Tier 3 and lower Tier 3 is so huge - although JaronK himself didn't use it. Without this tier those classes tend to get dumped in with those that are upper Tier 3 (and described by what described them), which is unfortunate because those classes should be in different tier to the gishes.



I propose something a little different:



https://s21.postimg.org/9vxlbfib7/Tier_1.png (https://postimg.org/image/9vxlbfib7/)
https://s21.postimg.org/tf78hwneb/Tier_2.png (https://postimg.org/image/tf78hwneb/)
https://s21.postimg.org/5e0cgg8kz/Tier_3_5.png (https://postimg.org/image/5e0cgg8kz/)
https://s21.postimg.org/n6lwobptf/Tier_4.png (https://postimg.org/image/n6lwobptf/)
https://s21.postimg.org/mjmzyssxf/Tier_5.png (https://postimg.org/image/mjmzyssxf/)
https://s21.postimg.org/ophatawdv/Tier_6.png (https://postimg.org/image/ophatawdv/)


Tier 1
Tier 2
Tier 3
Tier 4
Tier 5
Tier 6


425 CP
315 CP
210 CP
115 CP
70 CP
30 CP



Tier 1 is the same, just anything above strong has lost meaning to record or differentiate upon, so it isn't there. Tier 2 has similarly gone through the same process - now it is fine for those in the upper Tier 3 that would have been excluded by this. Tier 3 is now just what lower Tier 3 was, otherwise called Tier 3.5. Tier 4 and onwards are unchanged.

Mostly this would likely put Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, etc., in with Sorcerer and the other Tier 2s. Gamebreaking potential would be noted in the respective class notes, like any other particularity. Gishes can happily call Tier 3 home.


Here (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mI8BhtaWRUJihrN73b0m1UUWxu6bMTSgItE_U-j8jfs/edit?usp=sharing) is the spreadsheet I made to create these graphs (download/copy for own use). Umm, I couldn't figure out how to copy a graph, so I've just been changing the range of the one graph I have when I want to look another Tier (I didn't just create new ones because it was finicky to customise each axis and other things to how I desired).

The graphs use a 30 point range for the problem space with 15 values each can take (20 for JaronK's); this gives a total of 450 points possible (600 for JaronK's). I've included the total for each graph; CP stands for comparison points.

An important point to note is that the Tiers are not fixed to the state of those graphs; the states above are simply to demonstrate the tiers matching the regular classes put into them. Below I have posting some alternative states that a Tier could take, but these are again just a demonstration, not something that is fixed. The important point to take away is that from Tier to Tier you are losing or gaining that power/versatility interaction somewhere overall, as Eggynack mentioned. The comparison points should indicate this if the visual graphs do not.

Here are some alternative states (none for Tier 1 and Tier 6 for what I hope are obvious reasons):



https://s21.postimg.org/7fvrxl08j/Tier_2_Alt.png (https://postimg.org/image/7fvrxl08j/)
https://s21.postimg.org/c36vwgtwz/Tier_3_Alt.png (https://postimg.org/image/c36vwgtwz/)
https://s21.postimg.org/52iw3os4z/Tier_4_Alt.png (https://postimg.org/image/52iw3os4z/)
https://s21.postimg.org/4sbdkcdir/Tier_5_Alt.png (https://postimg.org/image/4sbdkcdir/)


Tier 2
Tier 3
Tier 4
Tier 5


315 CP
210 CP
115 CP
70 CP



Note that these particular alternate states for Tier 4 and Tier 5 would probably not exist in the JaronK tiering; Tier 4's lack of a single strong area would disqualify it, and Tier 5's lack of anything competent would just land it in Tier 6 regardless of how much noticeable areas such a class reached.

[Fizban]

I've always thought it funny how people would say that "tier 3 is the best," when they couldn't actually define what tier 3 is. While I think he's taken it a bit too far, eggynack has essentially hit it right on the nose: tier 3 is less than tier 2, that's pretty much it. Tier 1 is the best at everything, tier 2 is the best at one thing or good at a lot of things, and tier 3 is worse than tier 2. The only actually concrete definitions are 1 and 2, so anything more removed is just mincing words: tiers 4 and 5 are the same thing (dependent upon so many other build elements that the base class matters little, the best you can say is that tier 5 is classes that actively work against themselves), and tier 6 is just fancy way of saying NPC classes.

The main difference I seemed to be getting is that in some people's minds, tier 2 meant broken spells and cheese. Sorcerer was tier 2 because it could use Contingency and Arcane Fusion and Arcane Spellsurge and Time Stop, etc, while Beguiler is supposedly tier 3 because it doesn't have the cheese, even though it's essentially the best mind mage if cheese is barred or people just aren't doing ridiculous Contingency shenanigans and whatnot. For people that don't use any of that, Beguiler and Sorcerer are both obviously tier 2.

So my suggestion for definitions:
Tier 1: can be the best at anything (essentially limited to full casters with variable spell lists)
Tier 2: can be the best at one thing, or good at multiple things (essentially limited to full casters)
Tier 3: clearly worse than tier 2 but still clearly more capable than-
Tier 4: clearly lacking in power or options, usually due to lack of magic or supernatural abilities
Tier 5: classes that actively work against themselves or unduly restrict the player
"Tier 6": NPC classes that are already labeled as not for PC use

Tier 1 has your big 3, tier 2 has your sorcerers and beguilers, tier 3 has all those popular classes that aren't full casters, tier 4 is your barbarian/fighter, and tier 5 is your monk/samurai.

Then you have the high-op and cheese notes, which don't affect the tiering but are simply there so you know what major spikes the class has printed. The tier 1's could probably have this omitted for brevity, since they by definition have access to almost all of them, but this is where you put the notes for "beguiler lacks access to the same cheese a sorcerer can get, having only. . . "

Edit: to be clear, I don't much like the criteria of "problems solved," because the problems depend on the campaign and some specializations are just obviously better than others. Unless you nerf it into oblivion or run campaign focused on mindless foes, mind magic is always more capable of "solving problems" than blasting. That doesn't make beguiler a higher tier though, because an undead or dungeons+traps+constructs campaign is perfectly valid. It should be assumed that anything a PC is trying to do is of equal value to that of the other PCs, because the DM should be making sure they get equal spotlight.

[bekeleven]

I've always found the simplest explanation of tiers to be a grid:


Versatiliy
High
Low


High Power
1
2


Medium Power
3
4


Low Power
5
6



Even though it disagrees with JaronK's definitions, particularly at tiers 2, 4, and 5.

That said, I still think that one of the primary issues with community tiering efforts is that people play at different optimization levels, and the tiers change as you optimize (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?459141).

[OldTrees1]

Good work on the opening post - it hits the nail of every point that needed to be covered.

I want to look at how the tiers work, both for JaronK's tiering and for what I hope this Community tiering might go for. Rather than use words, since I think that has been done enough and still ends up being misunderstood, I went for something more visual. The bottom axis, which I forgot to label, is the problem space; the range of problems for which there are distinctly different solutions for. This is how JaronK's tiering works as I understand it:


Excellent analysis. I especially liked that you used graphs to accurately express the curves rather than just default to 1 or 2 variables.

Now unto your proposal:
At first I was mildly skeptical about removing game breaking abilities from the system. However, by narrowing the strengths you were considering, you were able to create a fairly smooth transition from your Tier 1 to Tier 6



https://s32.postimg.org/4d2vowl3l/Tier_1.png (https://postimg.org/image/4d2vowl3l/)
https://s32.postimg.org/coymq5ihd/Tier_6.png (https://postimg.org/image/coymq5ihd/)


Tier 1
Tier 6


The only place I can see you further improving is the Tier 3 state(old Tier 3.5).



https://s32.postimg.org/buc344amp/Tier_2.png (https://postimg.org/image/buc344amp/)
https://s32.postimg.org/s6m4tuoy9/Tier_3.png (https://postimg.org/image/s6m4tuoy9/)
https://s32.postimg.org/p11j3n6c1/Tier_4.png (https://postimg.org/image/p11j3n6c1/)


Tier 2
Tier 3
Tier 4


Personally I would have expected a state that is noticeable in all cases but only strong in a few cases and competent in a few more. I say this because Tier 2 is showing always noticeable & almost always competent in addition to being strong twice as often. If Tier 4 -> 3 was filling out the noticeable and increasing the competent, then Tier 3 -> 2 could be filling out the competent and increasing the strong.

[Aimeryan]

Argh, I spelt noticeable wrong! Eh, the word was due to be modernised, viva la revolution!

I did think about whether the new Tier 3 (old Tier 3.5) would be noticeable in all problem spaces, but I think just about all gishes do suffer from areas where they are just plain useless. I wanted the tiers to represent average fit for the classes assigned to them.

The same reason is why Tier 4 has one strong peak (that has some width to it, if minor, because of how just hitting things actually ends up being a pretty broad solution), and then not even reach noticeable anywhere else. That said, I am wondering if Rogue would fit the new Tier 3 or Tier 4, hmm.

Edit: I think Rogue fits the new Tier 3 fine, but the one state I posted may not look quite right for it. An alternative, but roughly equal in terms of area-under-the-line covered, Tier 3 state would look like this:

https://s9.postimg.org/vgtssh09n/Tier_3_Alt.png (https://postimg.org/image/vgtssh09n/)

That may be more what you were thinking of? It trades reaching strong in two places (with some width to each) for general competence and, with a little further optimisation, easy to reach being all-round noticeable. It is weaker than Tier 2, but stronger than Tier 4 (unless your campaign is just fight after fight).

You could, of course, have something in between the two Tier 3 states visualised; the states for any one Tier just need to be roughly similar in area - and even then you can have high/low in the Tier.

[eggynack]

I feel like we might want to fiddle more with tier definitions and "what to consider" before we start really ranking them. Making definitions vaguer doesn't seem terribly likely to result in more productive discussion.
I dunno if we're in the exact right vagueness spot, but I think this is a whole lot closer. All this specificity and definition focus takes us further from some essential truths of the tiers. Is tier two really this incredibly specific structure that has some game breaking power, but with only a percentage pulled off of a longer more versatile list? I'd say no. Tier two, in the simplest terms, means, "About as good as a sorcerer." No more, no less. Information beyond that should maybe guide us, but if the system does not fulfill the logical statement, "You are tier two iff you are about as good as a sorcerer," then the system has failed. It has, in fact, brought us further from truth. There's a lot of r


In particular, it seems like we should settle some of the past debates about baseline optimization levels and transformative feats/ACFs...
Do you think it should be different from how it is? I've generally thought that, say, wild shape ranger should be separately considered. My understanding is that that's a pretty unanimously fine with folk. And, if we're not cutting something off for separate consideration, then it makes a lot of sense to me to consider it as a more or less fringe element of the main class. As for baseline optimization, there's definitely room for debate, but I don't think my position, that even optimization levels a bunch of standard deviations off the center should be considered a little, is that incompatible with the position that we should only consider things maybe one or two standard deviations away. The whole idea is weirdly like an integral of that bell curve.


(It also seems to me that the "Tier 3.5 problem" is still exists-- it doesn't exactly feel right to put both the Warblade and Barbarian in the same the same tier, but both are pretty mediocre at all noncombat things.)
It might still be an issue, but it's not as much of one. My system operates on what is essentially a cross sectional power/versatility thing. Even a large versatility loss can generally be compensated for by a sufficiently large gain in power (though the gain might be massive), and vice versa. Maybe the warblade's cross section does merit a three, or maybe it doesn't, but if it doesn't then that might just be the nature of the class. The 3.5 thing is interesting, meanwhile. Should we really add a 7th tier for it? It seems kinda extreme.

One of the nuances inherent to JaronK's tier list that I find causes a lot of problems for those who haven't spent a lot of time analyzing the Tier list is his take on optimization thresholds. JaronK's tier list assumes equivalent levels of optimization, and some would be quick to point out that some classes get a heck of a lot more mileage out of heavy optimization than others.
Yeah, it's complicated. My thinking on the topic is weirdly calculus oriented.


The parenthetical notes needn't be included in the final tier list, I've included them here in order to better explain the concept I'm putting forward. So...would a Base Tier//Optimization Threshold format be useful? I don't think it'd be a great deal more work, since the playground's basically done all the analysis, it's just a matter of gathering a consensus.

I'd prefer not to, personally. It sounds like it'd be... complicated. Even a low/medium/high thing would roughly triple the effort, and it'd add a lot of talk about what qualifies in each section.


The second half-ish of your opening post here is just a tad hard to parse. I find myself kind of mentally losing what I'm reading about. Something to help anchor/re-center/whatever might be helpful.
Sounds solid. Prolly gonna do it up like that. I did notice that whole section kinda getting away from me. Wasn't sure precisely where I was going or when I was stopping when I started.



Good work on the opening post - it hits the nail of every point that needed to be covered.

I want to look at how the tiers work, both for JaronK's tiering and for what I hope this Community tiering might go for. Rather than use words, since I think that has been done enough and still ends up being misunderstood, I went for something more visual. The bottom axis, which I forgot to label, is the problem space; the range of problems for which there are distinctly different solutions for. This is how JaronK's tiering works as I understand it:
It's an interesting model. Pretty helpful way to think about the overall structure of tiers. The idea of ditching things above a certain power level is nifty. Still, I'm not entirely sure how big a fan I am of applying some universal graph to all classes of a particular tier. It's like, what if you have a kinda flat always competent graph? Not sure if that's what you were aiming for.


So my suggestion for definitions:
Tier 1: can be the best at anything (essentially limited to full casters with variable spell lists)
Tier 2: can be the best at one thing, or good at multiple things (essentially limited to full casters)
Tier 3: clearly worse than tier 2 but still clearly more capable than-
Tier 4: clearly lacking in power or options, usually due to lack of magic or supernatural abilities
Tier 5: classes that actively work against themselves or unduly restrict the player
"Tier 6": NPC classes that are already labeled as not for PC use
Interesting, though it might actually be vaguer than what I already have. It's clearly workable as a system. Maybe we should have a weird vote on how each tier should look, like that odd meta-thread was essentially suggesting.


Edit: to be clear, I don't much like the criteria of "problems solved," because the problems depend on the campaign and some specializations are just obviously better than others. Unless you nerf it into oblivion or run campaign focused on mindless foes, mind magic is always more capable of "solving problems" than blasting. That doesn't make beguiler a higher tier though, because an undead or dungeons+traps+constructs campaign is perfectly valid. It should be assumed that anything a PC is trying to do is of equal value to that of the other PCs, because the DM should be making sure they get equal spotlight.
I think it's a bit more expansive as a definition than you're giving it credit for. It's not about whether you can solve a particular problem completely, or how many problems you can solve, but, when considering the total scope of problems, what percent of "problem space" your class takes up. I might be obfuscating this more. But, for a simplified numerical example, if you can solve a particular problem with reasonable ease with the help of a roughly equally leveled party member, then we can call that 50% problem solving capability in that case, and if you can do it alone with reasonable ease, we can call that 100%. If you get all problems in the gaming universe at every level at 50%, then you should be tiered similarly to a class that's 100% on half and 0% on the other half. It's not exactly that, because I think we should expect each percent added to have somewhat lower marginal utility, but that's the overall idea. Problems do depend on campaign, so some classes will always be stronger, but that's gonna be a problem for literally any tier system. Someone's always gonna pick up a tier four rogue and fall behind a tier five fighter in the all undead campaign, y'know?



That said, I still think that one of the primary issues with community tiering efforts is that people play at different optimization levels, and the tiers change as you optimize (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?459141).
Yeah, that's always gonna be a problem. I think there's value in getting the generic variation right though. Then, when you try to work out the variations, you aren't quite so stymied by the weirdness of the base system.

Edit: Went with two headers instead of four. Looks pretty reasonable, I think.

[OldTrees1]

It's an interesting model. Pretty helpful way to think about the overall structure of tiers. The idea of ditching things above a certain power level is nifty. Still, I'm not entirely sure how big a fan I am of applying some universal graph to all classes of a particular tier. It's like, what if you have a kinda flat always competent graph? Not sure if that's what you were aiming for.

Their idea gets detailed further in our discussion. The graphs for Tier 3 & Tier 3 alt as well as their last paragraph in the quote below should answer your question.

Using such graphs is a powerful tool.


Argh, I spelt noticeable wrong! Eh, the word was due to be modernised, viva la revolution!

I did think about whether the new Tier 3 (old Tier 3.5) would be noticeable in all problem spaces, but I think just about all gishes do suffer from areas where they are just plain useless. I wanted the tiers to represent average fit for the classes assigned to them.

The same reason is why Tier 4 has one strong peak (that has some width to it, if minor, because of how just hitting things actually ends up being a pretty broad solution), and then not even reach noticeable anywhere else. That said, I am wondering if Rogue would fit the new Tier 3 or Tier 4, hmm.

Edit: I think Rogue fits the new Tier 3 fine, but the one state I posted may not look quite right for it. An alternative, but roughly equal in terms of area-under-the-line covered, Tier 3 state would look like this:

https://s9.postimg.org/vgtssh09n/Tier_3_Alt.png (https://postimg.org/image/vgtssh09n/)

That may be more what you were thinking of? It trades reaching strong in two places (with some width to each) for general competence and, with a little further optimisation, easy to reach being all-round noticeable. It is weaker than Tier 2, but stronger than Tier 4 (unless your campaign is just fight after fight).

You could, of course, have something in between the two Tier 3 states visualised; the states for any one Tier just need to be roughly similar in area - and even then you can have high/low in the Tier.



https://s32.postimg.org/s6m4tuoy9/Tier_3.png (https://postimg.org/image/s6m4tuoy9/)

https://s9.postimg.org/vgtssh09n/Tier_3_Alt.png (https://postimg.org/image/vgtssh09n/)


Tier 3

Tier 3 alt



I was thinking something between Tier 3 and Tier 3 alt. However your description of area under the curve made me realize that for a linear scale, the area under the curve is a good metric (although still best referenced via graphs). There still are qualitative differences between Tier 3 and Tier 3 alt but not large enough of differences for additional tiers.

You have my support!

[Fizban]

Interesting, though it might actually be vaguer than what I already have. It's clearly workable as a system. Maybe we should have a weird vote on how each tier should look, like that odd meta-thread was essentially suggesting.
Really? I felt like I was basically saying the same thing, just with the added caster/self-sabotaging notes.

I think it's a bit more expansive as a definition than you're giving it credit for. It's not about whether you can solve a particular problem completely, or how many problems you can solve, but, when considering the total scope of problems, what percent of "problem space" your class takes up. I might be obfuscating this more. But, for a simplified numerical example, if you can solve a particular problem with reasonable ease with the help of a roughly equally leveled party member, then we can call that 50% problem solving capability in that case, and if you can do it alone with reasonable ease, we can call that 100%. If you get all problems in the gaming universe at every level at 50%, then you should be tiered similarly to a class that's 100% on half and 0% on the other half. It's not exactly that, because I think we should expect each percent added to have somewhat lower marginal utility, but that's the overall idea. Problems do depend on campaign, so some classes will always be stronger, but that's gonna be a problem for literally any tier system. Someone's always gonna pick up a tier four rogue and fall behind a tier five fighter in the all undead campaign, y'know?
It basically works out to the same thing as build vs potential tricks, but from the other side, campaign vs potential threats. I just don't like phrasing it in terms of problem solving because then people focus on how their favorite option solves more problems because of some convoluted reason and then making up things like the "same game test" to "prove" the difference, when the game is actually up to the DM and players. Classes with more problem solving are what I'd call "clearly better" than those which lack it, no need try counting how many ways because down that path lies madness.

[danielxcutter]

So... if we go with the graphs, then is the total amount of power a class has proportionate to the area the graph covers?

[OldTrees1]

So... if we go with the graphs, then is the total amount of power a class has proportionate to the area the graph covers?

Yes. The larger the region the more power they have and different shapes of the region describe different ways the power is distributed.

The x axis is the problem possibility space (basically every possible situation they can be in).
The y value for a given x value is their strength at contributing in or otherwise handling that situation.
So the area under the curve (the shaded region) represents the sum of all these situations.

[eggynack]

Their idea gets detailed further in our discussion. The graphs for Tier 3 & Tier 3 alt as well as their last paragraph in the quote below should answer your question.

Using such graphs is a powerful tool.
Yeah, it's a useful thing, I think. A lot of my thinking on the tier system takes place in graphs. Theoretically, it actually winds up fitting onto a weird multi-dimensional graph that also covers stuff like optimization and level, with that problem space success area being the main thing calculated at the end. My thinking, the way I constructed things, is that you wouldn't simply have one, or two, or even a bunch of graphs associated with each tier. You'd have an infinity of them, all falling within certain area bounds. As long as there's the underlying premise that you can always modify the shape of the graph as long as you retain the same area, I think the whole thing works out really well. It's possible I'm going too far with that modifiable nature though.


Really? I felt like I was basically saying the same thing, just with the added caster/self-sabotaging notes.
Maybe. I've been a bit out of it on this thread, owing to distraction from the other one, mostly. I like tier one, and two is pretty good as well. Three is a bit bare bones, not really covering much of the actual possibility space we're working with, though that could be fine. Really not sure on four. Defining things by what they're not seems like it could cause problems. Especially when somewhat magical classes like the paladin, ranger, and adept are likely to wind up there, and when the monk, a notably supernatural class, is likely to get below there. Five seems pretty good. The notion of self sabotage is interesting. Definitely reflects the monk. A bit less sure whether it captures, say, a fighter. Six, I dunno if I like characterizing it as the NPC section. Yes, it has NPCs, and, if the CW samurai lands in five, only NPCs, but NPCs are going to show up outside of six. As we went over it last time, it almost seemed like six should be exclusively for commoners. It was that, aristocrats, and warriors, I think. And the latter two could maybe rise up if you squint.



It basically works out to the same thing as build vs potential tricks, but from the other side, campaign vs potential threats. I just don't like phrasing it in terms of problem solving because then people focus on how their favorite option solves more problems because of some convoluted reason and then making up things like the "same game test" to "prove" the difference, when the game is actually up to the DM and players. Classes with more problem solving are what I'd call "clearly better" than those which lack it, no need try counting how many ways because down that path lies madness.
So you're talking modes of interaction as a metric? Like, we take the niche system, normalize for the fact that the different niches aren't necessarily equivalently useful (though not that much, because we should expect the DM to sorta call upon various niches at various moments), fix the thing where sorcerers are ranked as though they can do everything at once, and grind that together into a tier system? Not necessarily exactly that, but is that the general criteria you're working with? It kinda makes sense. Little out there, but it could work.

[D.M.Hentchel]

Yes. The larger the region the more power they have and different shapes of the region describe different ways the power is distributed.

The x axis is the problem possibility space (basically every possible situation they can be in).
The y value for a given x value is their strength at contributing in or otherwise handling that situation.
So the area under the curve (the shaded region) represents the sum of all these situations.

Love this method; concise, visual, and easy to understand.

However I think it is ridiculous that we should factor in High and Low optimization.

Low Op games are a crazy place, the rules are regularly ignored, unspoken house-rules abound, encounters are weirdly designed, and characters often denied their abilities "because story". It's so hard to quantify these variables and if we are being honest how many Low Op groups are even going to see this.

High Op games suffer a similair problem in that the environment of the game is so wildly different that it's difficult to even distinguish classes and anyone in a high Op game is going to need a more complex understanding of the game than a tier list could ever offer.

On the other side though there are handbooks for every class, barring the extremely obscure ones, that a quick google leads you to.

I think that the tier list as a whole benefits from working under the idea that the character is making good decisions, not necessarily the best decision and certianly not just randomly.

Then we can still make note of how certian details effect high Op and low Op in our discussion without detracting from the tier list's primary use and debate.

[OldTrees1]

Love this method; concise, visual, and easy to understand.

Nice, another supporter.


However I think it is ridiculous that we should factor in High and Low optimization.

Low Op games are a crazy place, the rules are regularly ignored, unspoken house-rules abound, encounters are weirdly designed, and characters often denied their abilities "because story". It's so hard to quantify these variables and if we are being honest how many Low Op groups are even going to see this.

High Op games suffer a similar problem in that the environment of the game is so wildly different that it's difficult to even distinguish classes and anyone in a high Op game is going to need a more complex understanding of the game than a tier list could ever offer.

On the other side though there are handbooks for every class, barring the extremely obscure ones, that a quick google leads you to.

I think that the tier list as a whole benefits from working under the idea that the character is making good decisions, not necessarily the best decision and certainly not just randomly.

Then we can still make note of how certain details effect high Op and low Op in our discussion without detracting from the tier list's primary use and debate.

I see no problem with presuming they are picking good options rather than the best options or random options. Just make sure it is an equivalent optimization level.

[Fizban]

Maybe. I've been a bit out of it on this thread, owing to distraction from the other one, mostly. I like tier one, and two is pretty good as well. Three is a bit bare bones, not really covering much of the actual possibility space we're working with, though that could be fine. Really not sure on four. Defining things by what they're not seems like it could cause problems.
What's the difference between defining things by what they don't have, and what they do have? The only concrete definition anyone agrees on is the top, the first definition is "if you're not a wizard/cleric/druid you're probably not tier 1." It's much easier to work from the top down looking at what things can't do than it is to try to define how many things or how strong you need to be from the bottom up. Otherwise you'll just end up arguing endlessly about how many skills are worth what amount of spells and how much these class features are and on and on.

Especially when somewhat magical classes like the paladin, ranger, and adept are likely to wind up there, and when the monk, a notably supernatural class, is likely to get below there. Five seems pretty good. The notion of self sabotage is interesting. Definitely reflects the monk. A bit less sure whether it captures, say, a fighter.
When I say supernatural I mean heavily so, Incarnum, Binding, Invoking, etc. Monks are self-sabotaging (and barely supernatural at all), they go in 5 by default. Pal/Ranger go in 4, as does Fighter, as they are all clearly lacking in magic compared to 2/3 casters and at-will supernatural effects without heavy optimization.

Six, I dunno if I like characterizing it as the NPC section. Yes, it has NPCs, and, if the CW samurai lands in five, only NPCs, but NPCs are going to show up outside of six. As we went over it last time, it almost seemed like six should be exclusively for commoners. It was that, aristocrats, and warriors, I think. And the latter two could maybe rise up if you squint.
NPC classes aren't meant for PC use, so I don't see why they should even be rated myself. They are all deliberately inferior to PC classes and rating as if they're meant to be only muddies the waters. That's why "tier 6" is in quotes, because it's not actually a tier- it's a statement that NPC classes don't need to be tiered

My tier list makes little distinction between 3 and 4, because it's the bulk of the classes and the only distinction is up or down. 1 is clearly definable, 2 is clearly a step below that, but once you're more than one step removed from the starting position everyone's different step sizes start piling up. A firm bottom end is needed, so we define the bottom as self-sabotaging for a clear opposite end. Once you've sorted out the 1s, 2s, and self-sabotaging 5s, that leaves you with a pile to be split between 3s and 4s, which is a simple question of better/worse. Stuff that's clearly low-end (like Fighters and their lack of both magic and skills) goes to 4, stuff that's clearly high-end (stuff with lots of magic and skills like Bard) goes to 3, and work your way to the middle. The more stuff outside the class needed to match whatever is above it, the more likely it's a 4 than than a 3. This is where the meat of the arguing goes.

So basically I'm saying that there should only be two actual tiers of contention and trying to cram more in there is a fool's errand. Everything below tier 2 is so dependent on build and game state that trying to divide it into more than two groups isn't going to work, and doing so is misleading.

So you're talking modes of interaction as a metric?
I think you're reading a lot more into it than I am. All I'm saying is that trying to quantify the sum of all potential encounters/problems is the same as trying to do it for all potential builds, the same pointless logistical problem from a different angle. One man's edge case is another man's central proof of awesomeness. No math can be agreed upon or sufficient, down that path lies madness.

[Bucky]

I've always found the simplest explanation of tiers to be a grid:


Versatiliy
High
Low


High Power
1
2


Medium Power
3
4


Low Power
5
6



Even though it disagrees with JaronK's definitions, particularly at tiers 2, 4, and 5.


I explain it as three super-tiers - incompetent, competent and overpowered - each of which has generalist and specialist divisions. Generalists are ranked higher than specialists except in the incompetent range, where specialists have things they suck less at.

In practice, there's room for more divisions that don't correspond to numbered tiers; mid power hyper-generalists who can't competently solo most level-appropriate challenges but who can meaningfully contribute to any of them (e.g. dedicated group buff characters), multi-specialists in between tier 3 and 4 that do several things competently, and narrow tier 2 power spreads that lack competence in secondary areas vs. broad ones that could be in tier 3 even if they ignore their best tricks. And tier 0, for TO cheese that renders normal play irrelevant.

[eggynack]

Love this method; concise, visual, and easy to understand.

However I think it is ridiculous that we should factor in High and Low optimization.

Low Op games are a crazy place, the rules are regularly ignored, unspoken house-rules abound, encounters are weirdly designed, and characters often denied their abilities "because story". It's so hard to quantify these variables and if we are being honest how many Low Op groups are even going to see this.

High Op games suffer a similair problem in that the environment of the game is so wildly different that it's difficult to even distinguish classes and anyone in a high Op game is going to need a more complex understanding of the game than a tier list could ever offer.

On the other side though there are handbooks for every class, barring the extremely obscure ones, that a quick google leads you to.

I think that the tier list as a whole benefits from working under the idea that the character is making good decisions, not necessarily the best decision and certianly not just randomly.

Then we can still make note of how certian details effect high Op and low Op in our discussion without detracting from the tier list's primary use and debate.
I can see this as a position. My thinking is that there are two ways to consider optimization, with a small range and with a large range. Small range is what you're proposing. The bottom optimization sorcerer prepares some blasting and the occasional utility, and has decent charisma. The top optimization sorcerer


What's the difference between defining things by what they don't have, and what they do have? The only concrete definition anyone agrees on is the top, the first definition is "if you're not a wizard/cleric/druid you're probably not tier 1." It's much easier to work from the top down looking at what things can't do than it is to try to define how many things or how strong you need to be from the bottom up. Otherwise you'll just end up arguing endlessly about how many skills are worth what amount of spells and how much these class features are and on and on.
I think my problem might just be that the second part was a bit too specific. We could absolutely imagine a class with no magic whatsoever that lands above tier four. I was thinking of that tier in terms of a construct that'd disprove it, something that lacks that object but is still great, without considering the fact that we could construct an equally exacting definition in the other direction with equal inflexibility. Something like, at tier three, "Everything at and above this point has tons of magic."


When I say supernatural I mean heavily so, Incarnum, Binding, Invoking, etc. Monks are self-sabotaging (and barely supernatural at all), they go in 5 by default. Pal/Ranger go in 4, as does Fighter, as they are all clearly lacking in magic compared to 2/3 casters and at-will supernatural effects without heavy optimization.
I'm honestly not entirely sure what self-sabotaging means in this context. It might make sense when explained, but even if that's the case, the fact that it strikes me as this confusing in the moment means it probably shouldn't fit into a finalized tier system.

NPC classes aren't meant for PC use, so I don't see why they should even be rated myself. They are all deliberately inferior to PC classes and rating as if they're meant to be only muddies the waters. That's why "tier 6" is in quotes, because it's not actually a tier- it's a statement that NPC classes don't need to be tiered

They should be tiered cause they're surprisingly decent. An adept can plausibly fit into either a tier four or tier five game without too much issue. Also, I think people play them sometimes. If someone comes into an NPC class game with an adept, they should know to expect something maybe problematic. If anything, this information might be more important to log because it's assumed to be false, in a sense. People see NPC classes and assume crap. Breaking assumptions is a core goal of the tier system.


My tier list makes little distinction between 3 and 4, because it's the bulk of the classes and the only distinction is up or down. 1 is clearly definable, 2 is clearly a step below that, but once you're more than one step removed from the starting position everyone's different step sizes start piling up. A firm bottom end is needed, so we define the bottom as self-sabotaging for a clear opposite end. Once you've sorted out the 1s, 2s, and self-sabotaging 5s, that leaves you with a pile to be split between 3s and 4s, which is a simple question of better/worse. Stuff that's clearly low-end (like Fighters and their lack of both magic and skills) goes to 4, stuff that's clearly high-end (stuff with lots of magic and skills like Bard) goes to 3, and work your way to the middle. The more stuff outside the class needed to match whatever is above it, the more likely it's a 4 than than a 3. This is where the meat of the arguing goes.

So basically I'm saying that there should only be two actual tiers of contention and trying to cram more in there is a fool's errand. Everything below tier 2 is so dependent on build and game state that trying to divide it into more than two groups isn't going to work, and doing so is misleading.

You're correct that the gap between two and three is much larger than the ones that come later. I think it's possible to create some meaningful distinctions below that. Maybe. We've obviously had some trouble with it. Maybe there should just be three tiers or something. 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6. Wouldn't be crazy. I feel like we'd be losing something there though.


I think you're reading a lot more into it than I am. All I'm saying is that trying to quantify the sum of all potential encounters/problems is the same as trying to do it for all potential builds, the same pointless logistical problem from a different angle. One man's edge case is another man's central proof of awesomeness. No math can be agreed upon or sufficient, down that path lies madness.
I'm not exactly sure what your metric is then. Ya gotta have a metric of some kind.

[Fizban]

I'm honestly not entirely sure what self-sabotaging means in this context. It might make sense when explained, but even if that's the case, the fact that it strikes me as this confusing in the moment means it probably shouldn't fit into a finalized tier system.
Monks are really the only one that's self-sabotaging with their conflicts of melee attacks/terrible AC and move speed bonus/full attacks required, while Samurai are just unduly restricted with a specific feat progression for specific weapons and a code of conduct in exchange for. . . not being good enough to justify those restrictions. I prefer the phrases self-sabotaging or unduly restricted to something like "actively bad," because it gives you an idea of what sort of things make a class class actively bad. You mention that some of the NPC classes are playable, and that's because while they lack features they don't have contradictory features to hold them down either. If I had to tier them, I'd put Commoner, Expert, and Warrior at 5 because they remain deliberately worse than any PC version of the class, but Adept could make it to a low 4 by comparing itself to Pal/Ranger and saying that 5th level spells and full caster level are in fact higher than 4th/half so paying out the nose in BAB/armor/skills wasn't sabotage.

I feel like we'd be losing something there though.
Yeah, I get the feeling what people are wanting is to make more tiers and try to precisely place everything in them. Something I'd drop in and watch every so often, but not something I think will succeed or be that useful. I agree that a lot of JaronK's example tiers are wrong due to conflicting definitions, but my solution is to tweak those definitions as I've done so that there's only the one grey area between what I've left to 3 and 4. If a community guide ends up with a lot of that grey area having *'s everywhere based on this or that ACF or playstyle, that's fine since it's the kind of data you actually need rather than a number.

I'm not exactly sure what your metric is then. Ya gotta have a metric of some kind.
My metric is. . . all of them? You just eyeball it, look at what you can get out of a build without reaching too far. The closest thing to a precise metric I'd suggest is rating how many options you need and how far those books are away from the book with the original class in it. A Warmage with a feat from Complete Mage isn't reaching as far as one with a feat from Complete Divine, is reaching less far than a Wizard with a feat from Exemplars of Evil: the first two are slightly different optimization levels, while the third is much higher (because to hell with what char-op says, Exemplars of Evil is clearly meant for making bad guys, not PCs, it says "foes" right on the freaking cover). A combo that only uses PHB and Spell Compendium is reaching less far than one that needs spells and feats from four different splatbooks. A combo that relies on Planar Binding takes like a triple penalty for basically every single thing to do with it such that having Planar Binding is only proof of having Planar Binding.

When deciding what a "class" can do, you look at the builds that are relatively close by, sticking to feats from nearby sources or drawing maybe one or two from a far away source, and that's your middle ground. As for what "problems" they can solve, I wouldn't try to measure that: first compare competence at their main job, and then if one can also do a bunch of other things the other can't without losing at the main job, it's clearly better and that's enough to pick weather it goes high or low. Assume that whatever job the class is most suited for is their main job, be it a certain specialization of magic or skillmonkeying or brawling or whatever. This means its theoretically possible that some class could be the best at its role because it made up that role, but I don't think any printed classes are actually that novel when spells already do everything.

Establishing the "spheres" of source material for each class is yet another thing which would produce arguments, hence, eyeball. Races books are fairly close to any build but Races of the Dragon obviously favors Sorcerers. The divine/arcane books have a clear divide while intentionally cross-pollinating. Setting books clearly should not be mixing, but a bunch of stuff from one setting book obviously isn't a stretch. You just look at whatever build the opposition is saying makes X a benchmark, and the more stuff they have to list and source outside the class's source and the more weird the combination of sources sounds, the less likely it is to affect the tier of the class itself.

[eggynack]

No, I'm arguing the -GROSSLY INCORRECT- claims you've made about the original Tier System. I've not said word one about YOUR project, save that calling it a "re-tiering" of classes-when you in fact are completely throwing out the commonly recognized Tier System that resonates with most of us when we hear that term, and creating wholecloth a new system that doesn't even gauge the same thing as the old one-was confusing. Especially when there are other "Re-tiering" projects aimed at using the JaronK Tier system, either examining classes he left out, or applying the System to Pathfinder. So yes...calling your thread "re-tiering" is confusing. Perhaps "New Tier Ranking System:Beguiler, Dread Necro, Warmage".
I really don't think you're correct here, that what I'm doing is far off of the base system. My system is quite close to the original. It just resolves a lot of the stupid stuff we're arguing about right now. You can minimize this stuff I'm bringing up as much as you want, but it's an explicit part of the system. The definitions have places where they very much fail, and they have places where the introduction of certain classes causes contradiction between definite tier system stuff and said definitions. It's a problem. I am doing exactly what you say the tier system is attempting to do. Determining the power and versatility of various classes and putting that in a hierarchy.



One of those lines was ONE-FIFTH of the purpose of the Tier System, not the whole shebang.
What I'm saying actually fits the other purposes too. Lemme put this in the context of what you're saying about the sorcerer. We're supposed to evaluate the sorcerer as this murky potential object, considering greatly the fact that two different sorcerers can do incredibly different things. I've already claimed that this doesn't help with the first purpose, and I think it's a fair claim. I don't think it helps with the second purpose either, because knowledge of a vague sorcerer-space doesn't tell you anything at all about where a group stands power-wise. Doesn't really help with the third thing either.


And the "deeper down FAQ quote" is absolutely out of context, because you twisted what JaronK meant by that in order to attempt to "highlight" that his system claimed to do something that it explicitly said a number of times it was not attempting to do.
What context from that question and answer was I missing? Seems pretty straightforward to me. The question was, "What are you measuring?" and the answer was, "This is what we're measuring." We're talking about what exactly we're measuring. The text says we're measuring what I'm saying we're measuring right now. I think I've captured the context just fine.


I have proven on a number of points that YOU are incorrect on the original.

Which is because it doesn't do what you WANTED it to do.

Again, saying toasters suck because they don't make ice cream.
You haven't proved that at all. Because while you can absolutely find quotes that support your reading, I can absolutely find quotes that go against it. Because the tier system is weird. What the tier system is supposed to do is rank power, versatility, and, in general, problem solving ability. That's the explicit stated purpose, and it's what I'm prizing above all the other stuff. To eliminate the inherent contradictions, you've gotta get rid of either the specific definitions, which produce some areas that don't prize that power and versatility, or get rid of the purpose. I think the purpose is more important.



Haven't been "opposing" yours. Not one bit.
You are saying it's unrelated in some fashion. How can you say that without knowing about one of the two objects in the comparison?


This...this sentence right here...highlights that YOU do not understand the actual PURPOSE of the Original Tier system.
Yes, I very much do. It's written all over the thing. You just kinda tell me I'm wrong when I point those places out. Because, again, the system contradicts itself. Are we trying to fit classes to a broad notion of power and versatility, or are we trying to find classes that fit these precise definitions? Are we absenting ourselves of optimization, or considering equal optimization? Are we ignoring feats, or are we ignoring feats unless they're font of inspiration, because font of inspiration is super cool?

The tier system is great, but it has problems. Big heaping contradictory and paradoxical parts formed because we're closely analyzing a document that doesn't hold up super well to such analysis.


Get to your thing in a bit, Fizban.

[Bucky]

We'd better not be ignoring feats, because otherwise Fighter drops to tier 6 for no good reason.

However, we also shouldn't assume every character in a class has a specific feat unless the feat is mentioned in the class description itself OR the feat's in the same splat as the class OR we're assuming high op where all character-builders ought to know about the feat. We should assume rational feat selection - every character has feats that are useful to them, and at higher op levels anyone that bypasses a given feat spends it on something more important to their specific build.

Similarly, even if we don't assume specific equipment options we should at least grant that a fighter has some sort of weapon and armor, a high level fighter has a magic weapon, an archery ranger has an easily reloaded ranged weapon, a 13th level wizard has some scrolls and so forth.

[eggynack]

Added the spreadsheet to the opening post, as well as the first round of voting. It's not perfect, but I think it does the job well enough.

[Troacctid]

I see you forgot to enable link sharing for it.

[eggynack]

I see you forgot to enable link sharing for it.
Fixed. Thought that might happen automatically for sheets because everything besides the sheet itself was completely hidden behind that controls thingy.

Edit: Actually, kinda want some input on the next thread. My current plan is archivist, artificer, cleric, druid, wizard, and maybe StP erudite for a boring tier one adventure. The maybe at the end there is what's causing me problems. It might fall into the same group, but I could also stick it with some ACF group or something, especially cause it looks like the class is a variant on a variant.

Double-edit: The full version fits entirely within a thread title, so that factor alone doesn't automatically determine which one to go with. Long title though.

[Fizban]

The sorcerer can likely equal or better the warmage at combat while being much better out of combat. Putting the warmage in the same tier seems really wrong given that.
Not without significantly more optimization than the Warmage. This would be our fundamental disagreement then: I don't think demanding that tier 2 be able to do more than one thing is useful. Tier 1=do everything the best, tier 2=do one thing the best (or multiple things better than anyone who's not the best) is a clear, easy to understand distinction. Saying that a specialist who is at the top of the curve on their job is only tier 3 because they don't have the ability to "solve more problems," when a tier 2 can't actually match them in their field without specializing to the same amount, doesn't make sense. I think it's the same thing you said you're trying to avoid, forcing a stronger class into a lower tier because it doesn't suit the definition, making the definition the problem. Or to use the graph model: it doesn't matter if the Warmage has a bit less area under their graph if the main peak is high enough.

In order to say the Warmage is tier 3, you have to push a bunch of other things down further and increase the number of grey area tiers, making them less useful.

[eggynack]

I don't really think warmage is as strong as any class in tier two. Matching the warmage at blasting specifically as a sorcerer is hard, but if you vary your modes of approach somewhat, I don't think it's too difficult to match them in combat generally. Generally speaking, I think it would be very difficult to make a sorcerer that I'd consider better than a beguiler or warmage. I think it'd be pretty easy to make such a sorcerer to beat out a warmage. I mean, you're running with this one awesome thing definition, but doesn't the barbarian pretty much have that too? I wouldn't call them tier two, personally. I'm really not trying to squeeze classes into definitions here. My definition for tier two is mostly just, "You're worse than tier one," and my definition for tier three is mostly, "You're worse than tier two." I think warmage fits tier three by those definitions. The rest of my tier definitions is simply to clarify a reasonable notion of "better". Perhaps not a perfect notion of it, but it works to my mind.

Edit: To be clear, I don't think that warmage is necessarily stronger than, say, a bard. Bards have a really good list, and have some very strong combat abilities, with a bunch of non-combat besides.

[Troacctid]

Edit: Actually, kinda want some input on the next thread. My current plan is archivist, artificer, cleric, druid, wizard, and maybe StP erudite for a boring tier one adventure. The maybe at the end there is what's causing me problems. It might fall into the same group, but I could also stick it with some ACF group or something, especially cause it looks like the class is a variant on a variant.

Double-edit: The full version fits entirely within a thread title, so that factor alone doesn't automatically determine which one to go with. Long title though.
Nix the Erudite, we'll cover it with the Psion.

If the theme of the thread is supposed to be "Obvious uncontroversial T1 classes" then you forgot Sha'ir. But I don't know if that's going to be a very compelling theme.


Not without significantly more optimization than the Warmage. This would be our fundamental disagreement then: I don't think demanding that tier 2 be able to do more than one thing is useful. Tier 1=do everything the best, tier 2=do one thing the best (or multiple things better than anyone who's not the best) is a clear, easy to understand distinction. Saying that a specialist who is at the top of the curve on their job is only tier 3 because they don't have the ability to "solve more problems," when a tier 2 can't actually match them in their field without specializing to the same amount, doesn't make sense. I think it's the same thing you said you're trying to avoid, forcing a stronger class into a lower tier because it doesn't suit the definition, making the definition the problem. Or to use the graph model: it doesn't matter if the Warmage has a bit less area under their graph if the main peak is high enough.

In order to say the Warmage is tier 3, you have to push a bunch of other things down further and increase the number of grey area tiers, making them less useful.
I don't think of the Warmage as a top-of-the-curve damage-dealer. I think of it as more of a benchmark.


I don't really think warmage is as strong as any class in tier two. Matching the warmage at blasting specifically as a sorcerer is hard, but if you vary your modes of approach somewhat, I don't think it's too difficult to match them in combat generally. Generally speaking, I think it would be very difficult to make a sorcerer that I'd consider better than a beguiler or warmage. I think it'd be pretty easy to make such a sorcerer to beat out a warmage. I mean, you're running with this one awesome thing definition, but doesn't the barbarian pretty much have that too? I wouldn't call them tier two, personally. I'm really not trying to squeeze classes into definitions here. My definition for tier two is mostly just, "You're worse than tier one," and my definition for tier three is mostly, "You're worse than tier two." I think warmage fits tier three by those definitions. The rest of my tier definitions is simply to clarify a reasonable notion of "better". Perhaps not a perfect notion of it, but it works to my mind.

Edit: To be clear, I don't think that warmage is necessarily stronger than, say, a bard. Bards have a really good list, and have some very strong combat abilities, with a bunch of non-combat besides.
I agree with most of this, except that Warmages are way better at damage-dealing and at combat in general than Barbarians. Also, "combat" is not just one thing. It includes several different niches.

[eggynack]

Nix the Erudite, we'll cover it with the Psion.

If the theme of the thread is supposed to be "Obvious uncontroversial T1 classes" then you forgot Sha'ir. But I don't know if that's going to be a very compelling theme.
Yep, makes sense. Could maybe toss the wilder in that group as well, make it into a "pure psionics" deal. Or maybe just use standard erudite or something, for psions and their variants. Psionics ain't exactly my core knowledge area. I like the sha'ir idea too. It'd be nice to have at least a little stuff that's not completely obvious, if only due to obscurity.

[Troacctid]

Sha'ir is really obvious. It has full access to the Sor/Wiz list and learns spells like a Wizard, except with no gp or downtime cost. That's all you really need to know.

The real question is going to be which ACFs drop you a tier. Like, does the Spontaneous Druid really fall to T2, or are its other class features just that good?

[eggynack]

Sha'ir is really obvious. It has full access to the Sor/Wiz list and learns spells like a Wizard, except with no gp or downtime cost. That's all you really need to know.
Well, yeah. But it's kinda weird. It generated a bit of talk last time.


The real question is going to be which ACFs drop you a tier. Like, does the Spontaneous Druid really fall to T2, or are its other class features just that good?
Not even sure if that's a thing we're assessing. Negative ACFs, I mean. Could make sense, I suppose. Spontaneous druid probably does drop a tier, meanwhile. Spirit shaman is likely a better class, and I think that one drops a tier.

[Troacctid]

I don't think Spirit Shaman is better. Animal companion and wild shape are really good. Spirit Shaman also has less splat support and needs to deal with split casting stats, and it's pretty constrained on retrieved spells. I would absolutely rank Spontaneous Druid above it.

[eggynack]

I don't think Spirit Shaman is better. Animal companion and wild shape are really good. Spirit Shaman also has less splat support and needs to deal with split casting stats, and it's pretty constrained on retrieved spells. I would absolutely rank Spontaneous Druid above it.
Maybe. Druids do have some time to power conversion methods spell style though. Spontaneous druid seems very likely better if you're adding forms somehow. Less likely if you're just going with animals and plants. Might wind up adding this to the druid edition of the thread. Y'know, spirit shaman, urban druid, wild shape ranger, and spontaneous druid. If I toss wild shape ranger into a ranger variant edition, then I could get it to a 3/3 split, alternately. So many fancy organizations for this stuff.

[Fizban]

Cross post from the other thread:

If you're limiting each tier to only one of each role, and some roles don't even count for some tiers, then you're gonna need a lot more tiers. Both classes are effectively the best at blasting, close enough that the difference does not matter unless you demand separation for separation's sake.
and more:

That's because their tiers are wrong, and as we go I'm better pinning down why: I'm talking about comparing the classes to each other, and everyone else is talking about Potential Campaign ImpactTM. Being able to kill things isn't valued because it's just not flashy enough, even though it's the only challenge the rules explicitly and thoroughly endorse, and the more optimized the gamer the less they value it when they know all the other things they could try getting away with.

I don't care that mind control is OP because it can take over the government, or that undead have X different types of cheese, or basically anything about Planar Binding (no one cares about Planar Binding). All of those depend entirely on the campaign, and anyone who can understand the concept of mind control already knows that if you let someone run loose with it they can do more than a fireball. That doesn't need a tier, it's freaking obvious. What needs a tier is how effective each class is at doing mind control, the same as you need to know how effective each class it as doing damage or any other wheelhouse.

So, yeah, that's what it looks like. Why are we arguing about something so obvious as weather or not mind control has broader applications than blasting? Why are people so gung-ho about a tier system that's wasting its time telling people things they already know?
If you're going to de-value combat (read: direct damage) so much and put certain abilities on a pedestal, your tier list is essentially a niche ability ranking list, with bonuses or penalties based on how many niches you can do. I really don't see how saying "mind control and minionmancy are X tiers higher than raw damage" tells anyone anything, but that seems to be the desire.

It sounds like tier 1 is basically being walled off as mythically perfect at everything, and tier 2 is the next exclusive club that can only be allowed as few members as possible. I disagree with this, because while the tier 1s are the "best at everything," they aren't so far removed that a similarly competent specialist in one thing is two tiers weaker, no matter what that one thing is. Going from variable expert to single expert is one drop in tier.

How many tiers are usually in a system anyway? Can't say I'm familiar with too many, but I've never heard anyone say lower than 2 or 3 outside of DnD. I always got the impression that a tier was supposed to be a major step, and there's just no way you're going to convince me that a Warmage is a major step below Beguiler, Dread Necro, or Sorcerer in any way other than what they can try to get away with. If the tier system is actually ranking the game breaking potential of certain spells then that needs to be on the front of it, but I thought we were explicitly ignoring that. So what game breakers are we ignoring and what are we defining as "tier 2"?

[Gemini476]

How many tiers are usually in a system anyway? Can't say I'm familiar with too many, but I've never heard anyone say lower than 2 or 3 outside of DnD. I always got the impression that a tier was supposed to be a major step, and there's just no way you're going to convince me that a Warmage is a major step below Beguiler, Dread Necro, or Sorcerer in any way other than what they can try to get away with. If the tier system is actually ranking the game breaking potential of certain spells then that needs to be on the front of it, but I thought we were explicitly ignoring that. So what game breakers are we ignoring and what are we defining as "tier 2"?

D&D 3E is the main "Tier List" example for RPGs, I think, but I think that might mostly just be because it's a bit of a niche market and it's the big game in it.

Outside of TTRPGs, though? Googling around gets me a Street Fighter 5 tier list with 3 tiers+"God Tier", Super Smash Bros. Melee has nine tiers with SS/S/A/B/C/D/E/F/G (SS is Fox only, of course), I found an Overwatch tier list with six tiers... You'll mostly just find tier lists in competitive games or games that have a high incentive to use certain characters over others, though. That new Fire Emblem mobile game has a tier list, for example, but that's because you need to spend money to get the characters and people want to know when to stop their fifteen-minute reroll sessions.
Also, some of the fighting game tier lists are made from comparing matchups and win rates and stuff, which is a bit harder to do in D&D without some kind of Same Game Test thing. Which really only shows that you're better at that test, rather than anything else - fighting games only have one scenario you need to compare in, though, so they get away with it.


Really, sometimes I can't help but wonder if it would be enough to simply consolidate JaronK's tier list into three tiers - "Can contribute", "Cannot contribute", and something along the lines of "Can change the game around them." Or, to be reductive, "underpowered", "balanced", and "broken".

[Grod_The_Giant]

Really, sometimes I can't help but wonder if it would be enough to simply consolidate JaronK's tier list into three tiers - "Can contribute", "Cannot contribute", and something along the lines of "Can change the game around them." Or, to be reductive, "underpowered", "balanced", and "broken".
I do like "can change the game around them" as a descriptive line for T1/T2 classes. I think that's a good way of explaining the dividing line, so to speak, without using subjective language like "game-breaking." Why is the Wizard stronger than the Warmage? Because the Wizard has the ability to warp the entire campaign around themselves, using spells like Teleport, Scrying, Rope Trick, and more to alter fundamental aspects of the game.

Tier 1 would then be "can change the game to the one they want to play," Tier 2 would be "introduces a discrete set of significant changes to the game," while Tier 3 would be "can contribute effectively without changing the basic nature of the game." (And Tier 4 would be "sometimes struggles to contribute effectively," Tier 5 would be "always struggles to contribute effectively," and Tier 6 would be "not a real class.")

[bekeleven]

I think it's possible to create some meaningful distinctions below that. Maybe. We've obviously had some trouble with it. Maybe there should just be three tiers or something. 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6.
This is what my initial build of my tier system looked like, actually. I used the first tier for O(n) and the second tier for Θ(n). In other words, a Sorcerer might be 2-3: Occasionally gamebreaking, always useful. While a Psywar was 3-3 and a fighter was 4-5 or 4-6. Eventually I realized that what I was making was basically my grid from last page, since I was tracking two levels of power, and the versatility could be used to define whether the average-case power was the same as the upper-bound power.

[GilesTheCleric]

I do like "can change the game around them" as a descriptive line for T1/T2 classes. I think that's a good way of explaining the dividing line, so to speak, without using subjective language like "game-breaking." Why is the Wizard stronger than the Warmage? Because the Wizard has the ability to warp the entire campaign around themselves, using spells like Teleport, Scrying, Rope Trick, and more to alter fundamental aspects of the game.

Tier 1 would then be "can change the game to the one they want to play," Tier 2 would be "introduces a discrete set of significant changes to the game," while Tier 3 would be "can contribute effectively without changing the basic nature of the game." (And Tier 4 would be "sometimes struggles to contribute effectively," Tier 5 would be "always struggles to contribute effectively," and Tier 6 would be "not a real class.")

I support these definitions. I think that there needs to be some sort of middle ground in terms of "introduces changes to the game", though. Consider the Apostle of Peace, for example. It's not overly powerful, but it definitely warps a game around it.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I support these definitions. I think that there needs to be some sort of middle ground in terms of "introduces changes to the game", though. Consider the Apostle of Peace, for example. It's not overly powerful, but it definitely warps a game around it.
That's kind of semantic-y, though? But fine, how 'bout "forces the DM to change the nature of the game?"

[GilesTheCleric]

That's kind of semantic-y, though? But fine, how 'bout "forces the DM to change the nature of the game?"

Sorry! I didn't mean to be a stickler like that. I do prefer this wording, though.

[Calthropstu]

Keep in mind, there are methods for increasing and decreasing your "tier" based on abilities, magic items, feats, spell choices etc. For example, if a favored soul/oracle/sorcerer gains unfettered access to the psion ability psychic reformation where they can repick all their spells and abilities, they are instantly catapulted to T1. An unchained monk from pathfinder with some good feat choices and alternate path traits can easily jump into t3, and a druid which drops all of its spell casting (which there is a way to do that) easily drops down to a t2. Tiers are not exactly fixed, and you can play in ways that make these characters go up or down in tier.

[Gemini476]

You know what would be useful? Renaming the tiers so you don't get the constant confusion with JaronK's system.

This can be as simple as moving over to something like A+/A/B+/B/C/F (using JaronK's more strict "can break the game, can contribute, can't" definitions) or renaming the tiers entirely (e.g. "God Tier"/"Quality Tier"/"Peasant Tier"). Or you do something nutty like ranking them A/B/C in both power and versatility and thus ending up with stuff like an AA Wizard and AB Sorcerer and CC Samurai. Or something else, I dunno. I'm pretty sure that there's a ton of naming schemes that people have coined over the years.


Just, you know, as long as you don't get people getting confused about Tier 2 in eggynack's system not being the same as JaronK's Tier 2 (on account of the latter having an explicit "can break the game" barrier to entry). Because that's totally something that's already happened in the Beguiler/Dread Necromancer/Warmage thread.

[Cosi]

That's kind of semantic-y, though? But fine, how 'bout "forces the DM to change the nature of the game?"

Any definition based on "changing the game" needs to first explain what the base game is. If you're walking around with a party of a Fighter, a Scout, and a Healer, adding a Wizard changes the game. But if you're walking around with a party of a Beguiler, a Druid, and a Cleric, it doesn't (or at least does to a much smaller degree). Fundamentally, discussions like this always miss the first step of any discussion about balance, which is deciding on a balance point.

[Gemini476]

I support these definitions. I think that there needs to be some sort of middle ground in terms of "introduces changes to the game", though. Consider the Apostle of Peace, for example. It's not overly powerful, but it definitely warps a game around it.

I think there's a bit of a difference there - the Apostle of Peace needs the game to change around it for the class to function, but a Wizard needs the game to change around it for the game to function.

The Apostle of Peace doesn't have any inherent power to forcibly change the narrative - or, well, not beyond what it gets from its spellcasting. It needs a group and DM that is willing to play a more merciful game, but has issues with forcing the issue if the group or DM are non-cooperative.

The Wizard, meanwhile (and the Apostle of Peace's spell list - it gets Gate and other strong spells, after all), gets to grab the game by the jugular and force the DM to intervene in some fashion to let the game continue in a way that doesn't trivialize things utterly. Be it through banning spells or massively upping the ante with encoutners (the classic "make an encounter strong enough to challenge the Wizard and yet weak enough to not overpower the Fighter" issue).


It's a question of who has the power, basically. A Paladin is, fundamentally, at the mercy of the DM - falling is so abusable that it is literally a meme. The classic Eschew Material Components/Still Spell/Silent Spell Sorcerer, however? They control the metaphorical ball. Wizards have more control in some ways but give it up in others (a Fall-happy DM seems like the type to also be a "Burn the Spell Book"-happy DM), but ultimately they still get so much power that them "falling" is more explicitly a nuclear option than it is for a Paladin.


Basically, think of it like this: if DM interference is required for the class to work in a game, is that interference going to be positive or negative? Some classes require the DM to interfere in favor of them - others require the DM to interfere in opposition. That's the fundamental difference between the two types, I think.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Any definition based on "changing the game" needs to first explain what the base game is. If you're walking around with a party of a Fighter, a Scout, and a Healer, adding a Wizard changes the game. But if you're walking around with a party of a Beguiler, a Druid, and a Cleric, it doesn't (or at least does to a much smaller degree). Fundamentally, discussions like this always miss the first step of any discussion about balance, which is deciding on a balance point.
"Change the game" is at least better language than "break the game." It's much less dependant on the nature of the group, and doesn't carry the same negative connotation. And I think it's easier to see and agree on, because it's not about relative anything. It's more of an absolute, a PvE rather than PvP measure.

A T1/2 character has abilities that cannot be modeled by the base system of the game, essentially. Things that can't be replaced by sufficiently high numbers. Glitterdust isn't game-changing because it's just letting you win encounters. Animate Dead is game-changing because it's letting you project power in strategic ways.

[Aeson]

You know what would be useful? Renaming the tiers so you don't get the constant confusion with JaronK's system.

This can be as simple as moving over to something like A+/A/B+/B/C/F (using JaronK's more strict "can break the game, can contribute, can't" definitions) or renaming the tiers entirely (e.g. "God Tier"/"Quality Tier"/"Peasant Tier"). Or you do something nutty like ranking them A/B/C in both power and versatility and thus ending up with stuff like an AA Wizard and AB Sorcerer and CC Samurai. Or something else, I dunno. I'm pretty sure that there's a ton of naming schemes that people have coined over the years.


Just, you know, as long as you don't get people getting confused about Tier 2 in eggynack's system not being the same as JaronK's Tier 2 (on account of the latter having an explicit "can break the game" barrier to entry). Because that's totally something that's already happened in the Beguiler/Dread Necromancer/Warmage thread.
Or you could, you know, bother to make sure you know which system is in use before you throw in your two cents. Which shouldn't be very hard when the opening post of the discussion thread literally contains a breakdown of the system which is to be used for the discussion.

Additionally, renaming the tiers is not inherently any less confusing than keeping the tier names used by other tier system. "Dread Necromancers are Tier S and Warmages are Tier E" doesn't tell anyone anything about either class if they don't know what each tier in whatever system I'm using means and doesn't tell anyone anything about how the two classes compare to one another unless they know something about the order of the tiers in the system I'm using. "Dread Necromancers are Tier 2 and Warmages are Tier 3" does tell people something about how the two classes compare to one another even if they know nothing about the tier system that I'm using, because the "standard" tier order for the type of tier system being discussed in this thread is Tier 1 is "better" than Tier 2 which is "better" than Tier 3 which is "better" than Tier 4 and so on.


I do like "can change the game around them" as a descriptive line for T1/T2 classes. I think that's a good way of explaining the dividing line, so to speak, without using subjective language like "game-breaking." Why is the Wizard stronger than the Warmage? Because the Wizard has the ability to warp the entire campaign around themselves, using spells like Teleport, Scrying, Rope Trick, and more to alter fundamental aspects of the game.
A tier list of the type that eggynack is trying to make, at least if I'm understanding things correctly, is essentially asking the questions "How well can this class solve a given problem with the tools it has available?" and "For how many problems does the class have appropriate tools?" Ability to warp or change the game is not really relevant to these questions except inasmuch as it relates to the class's ability to change the problem to be something for which the class has an appropriate tool.


A T1/2 character has abilities that cannot be modeled by the base system of the game, essentially. Things that can't be replaced by sufficiently high numbers. Glitterdust isn't game-changing because it's just letting you win encounters. Animate Dead is game-changing because it's letting you project power in strategic ways.
The Diplomacy skill and the Leadership feat can get a character the same kinds of tools that Animate Dead can provide. Also, there's likely classes with access to Animate Dead or similar which are not T1/T2, for example Dread Necromancers in JaronK's tier system.

[eggynack]

Just put up the tier one casters thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?516137-Retiering-the-Classes-Archivist-Artificer-Cleric-Druid-Sha-ir-and-Wizard&p=21731809#post21731809). Not gonna be doing upkeep on the actual tier entries for a bit, but I'll probably be maintaining some updates in the spreadsheet. As I've noted, this one I'd expect to be low key. I'd be happy to see that expectation not be met though.

[dhasenan]

We'd better not be ignoring feats, because otherwise Fighter drops to tier 6 for no good reason.

It's about things that this class offers that aren't widely available, in other words. Bonus feats get included because the class specifically offers them to you. A widely known feat that's only available to members of this class might be counted too.


That's kind of semantic-y, though? But fine, how 'bout "forces the DM to change the nature of the game?"

Tier 1 and Tier 6 both require special caution on the DM's part. Tier 1 because you must anticipate that the players will use their myriad and powerful abilities to circumvent the plot, and tier 6 because you need to diverge significantly from standard adventures to come up with a plot that the players can meaningfully move through. In either case, though, the game can still largely be about murdering creatures in dank dungeons for lots of money.

A pacifist character requires special caution due to qualitative differences that are incompatible with standard adventures. It doesn't belong on the tier list. That said, Apostle of Peace is capable of fighting and destroying constructs and undead.

[Gandariel]

I have a comment about the whole retiering project.

It seems to me that you made it to improve the currently accepted one, since you don't like how the tiers were defined by JaronK.

You mention more than once the fact that you don't like Tier 2:
it is defined as strong like wizard,but less flexible, while t3 has the hyper versatile classes.
To you, this gives the impression that if a class has more versatility it goes DOWN in tiers.

(Correct? I took this from your posts)

BUT.

I think you fall into the problem of reverse causality.

JaronK didn't decide that tier 2 would exclusively be made of low versatility, high power classes.

It just so happened that when he decided to tier the classes, most of the classes that happened to fall there had these characteristics.

Want proof? Psion is t2, and he doesn't fit the description.

The tiers rated power and versatility. After compiling the tier list, most of the t2 classes just so happened to be X, and so the final description mentions X.

[eggynack]

It seems to me that you made it to improve the currently accepted one, since you don't like how the tiers were defined by JaronK.
That is one reason. I have a few others though.



I think you fall into the problem of reverse causality.

JaronK didn't decide that tier 2 would exclusively be made of low versatility, high power classes.

It just so happened that when he decided to tier the classes, most of the classes that happened to fall there had these characteristics.

Want proof? Psion is t2, and he doesn't fit the description.

The tiers rated power and versatility. After compiling the tier list, most of the t2 classes just so happened to be X, and so the final description mentions X.
Your opinion on the tier system, that these descriptions are ultimately descriptive rather than prescriptive, reflects my own. I agree that he likely put together a ranking, saw some commonalities to what fit into each ranking, and put up some fancy definitions to suit the things in those rankings. A core problem, however, is that while I can have this opinion, a lot of people take the tier definitions as gospel, using them to perfectly define what fits into each tier. They are frequently read as prescriptive rather than descriptive, and your evidence wouldn't be nearly sufficient to sway those people. The end result is that, whatever was intended, you get a lot of people looking to the definitions first rather than to what classes they consider more or less potent, and classes that fail to fit in only one definition land in a weird limbo.

So, for the most part, I got rid of the definitions. I have definitions listed, but they ain't worth crap. Practically all they say is, "This tier is, in terms of problem solving, better than the one below it, and worse than the one above it. Here's an example class." The best tiering takes place through comparison testing anyway. You need some benchmark classes to do it, but we have those benchmarks reasonably established. Now, when someone comes back to this system three years down the line, homebrewed class in hand, they won't look at these definitions and wonder whether they're descriptive or prescriptive. They won't care which it is, because the definitions won't tell them that much that they didn't already know. Because the definitions really aren't the point.

That's the hope, anyway. Some structure is fine, but I want someone to be able to come into this system with a really wacky new class that does nothing that's ever been seen before, and be able to place it without fighting against some narrow definitions.

[Gemini476]

Want proof? Psion is t2, and he doesn't fit the description.

The Psion kind of does, though? It's got 5/4/4/4/4/3/3/3/6 "spells" known. They're more versatile "spells" than what the Sorcerer gets, for the most part, and that is a lot of "spells", but it's also nowhere near what the typical Tier 1 suspects get. That being "all the spells", for most of them. The Psion is also locked into its selection from a level-to-level basis, much like the Sorcerer, but gets around it a bit by having somewhat more versatile powers. (It helps that they actually scale and that some, like Energy Ball or Astral Construct, aren't locked into being just one thing.)

A better argument is that the Erudite is Tier 2 on JaronK's list - it's basically the Psion with more day-to-day versatility, after all. Except it's hamstrung by actually being a Wilder who can change their piddling number of "spells" from day to day...
I would be interested in seeing the original argument for why the Spell to Power one is Tier 1 while the ordinary one isn't, to be honest. Is it just because psionics are less broken/supported than arcane spells?


But yeah, I agree with your overall sentiment that JaronK just sorted the classes into a few rough strata and then gave some rough descriptions for what the classes within had in common.

[eggynack]

For the record, I can cite posts that are explicitly like, "I consider class A better than class B, but because of the definitions I'm putting class A a tier below class B." It's problematic, and that's not even getting into the case of the spirit shaman which people have argued tier three for because it's not quite good enough for one and it doesn't fit the weird exact definition for two. Actually, have this weird urge to toss spirit shaman and truenamer into their own thread, along with maybe one other class that I'm forgetting (it could be mystic ranger, but I don't think that was it), as classes that are really hard to tier. Probably gonna stick to my current "druid variant" plan though. I feel like having all these classes whose primary comparison point is the druid in one thread would make conversation relatively easy, and concentrating together a bunch of classes that are really hard to talk about would make conversation relatively hard.

Separately, gotta say, I think things are going pretty well. I've liked some of the revised definition suggestions, though I'm not ready to move forward on that, at least not without some level of consensus preference. And honestly, what I have already grew on me a bit at some point. But we have that cool warmage for tier two discussion going on in the fixed list thread (which probably won't go anywhere, but it's cool), and the tier one thread has some sha'ir and artificer stuff, as expected, along with a less expected developing druid thing.

On future plans, I'm currently planning to run the next thread around the same distance from the tier one thread as that thread was from the fixed list thread. So, three or four days, maybe five. After that though, you folks should expect things to slow down some. I like the idea of those three child threads running in parallel, adding up to a total of four hanging out around the front page, especially because that's more reflective of how I expect things to look once we're hanging out in the middle of things. But with the tier one thread surprisingly active, creating a fourth child thread in roughly eight days would simultaneously make the front page too crowded with my tier stuff, and make participating in all these threads too time consuming and stressful. For me at least. I generally expect my own participation in a lot of these threads. Not so much the ones I'm less knowledgeable about, but even then I feel some responsibility.

Next thread, I'm thinking that we've gone a bit too deep on the full casters. So, let's angle for something more mundane. I'm thinking maybe barbarian, fighter, monk. Those are the three more punch oriented core classes, with the rogue probably slotting into something more skill monkey oriented. I could also do an eastern inspired monk, ninja, double samurai. Or even that precision damage skill monkey thing with rogue, scout, and maybe mountebank or something. I dunno. There's a lot of orientations on this. I'd rather not go with ToB yet. We're trying to hang out on the lower end of things without going into an NPC thread that'll happen later. If anyone's got any suggestions or preferences regarding the next thread, the you'll be able to submit those for the next few days. Or, y'know, for much longer than that, cause we're ridiculously far from done, but this one has a fancy mundane restriction associated, so it's more fun.

[Aimeryan]

It's about things that this class offers that aren't widely available, in other words. Bonus feats get included because the class specifically offers them to you. A widely known feat that's only available to members of this class might be counted too.

If you are suggesting that character feats and wealth by level be ignored then you end up in some very weird tiering. For example, the Barbarian; a strongly agreed upon Tier 4 because of his strength in combat (specifically, ubercharging) falls down to Tier 5 without any character feats or items - simple lack of flight does that.

What has to be acknowledged here is that pretty much any Barbarian not purposefully being awful is going to seek out a way to get flight in combat. There are many ways to do this, but none of them come from the Barbarian class itself. Some ways are through character feats, others via items. Grabbing flight is not in any form obscure, nor particularly out of a Barbarian character's means.

Its not only flight, either. Here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?187851-3-5-Lists-of-Necessary-Magic-Items) is a thread that describes the oft-necessities of a mundane character to remain relevant, that anyone who has played the game once will be aware of (if perhaps not in such an organised fashion!).

To put it another way, would you call Barbarian Tier 4 if that Barbarian had no character feats and no items? If not, then either call Barbarian Tier 5 or acknowledge that character feats and items are important, necessary even, to consider.

[eggynack]

If you are suggesting that character feats and wealth by level be ignored then you end up in some very weird tiering. For example, the Barbarian; a strongly agreed upon Tier 4 because of his strength in combat (specifically, ubercharging) falls down to Tier 5 without any character feats or items - simple lack of flight does that.

What has to be acknowledged here is that pretty much any Barbarian not purposefully being awful is going to seek out a way to get flight in combat. There are many ways to do this, but none of them come from the Barbarian class itself. Some ways are through character feats, others via items. Grabbing flight is not in any form obscure, nor particularly out of a Barbarian character's means.

Its not only flight, either. Here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?187851-3-5-Lists-of-Necessary-Magic-Items) is a thread that describes the oft-necessities of a mundane character to remain relevant, that anyone who has played the game once will be aware of (if perhaps not in such an organised fashion!).

To put it another way, would you call Barbarian Tier 4 if that Barbarian had no character feats and no items? If not, then either call Barbarian Tier 5 or acknowledge that character feats and items are important, necessary even, to consider.
An issue with this argument is that most low tier classes get pretty similar marginal value from feats and items. The barbarian can't deal with fliers all that well in this environment, sure, but neither can a fighter, or a monk, or a rogue, or a paladin. A rising tide raises all ships, and a lowering tide does the inverse, and the end result could easily be that a barbarian in an environment without items and feats is still tier four, because the barbarian gets hamstrung, but so does just about everyone else. What you should really do is neither fully count nor discount the value of items and feats. Generally speaking, you count feats if and only if those feats offer a marginal advantage over the classes you're comparing this class to. If we compare the barbarian to a low tier class with native flight ability, say the mountebank, then we might start considering the value of flight items, because they offer greater marginal advantage to the fighter. Similarly, a feat that requires rage is obviously of greater advantage to a barbarian than it is to those classes that just can't take it, but so is a feat like shock trooper that requires charging.

[Gemini476]

One extreme example for the whole "no items" argument: the Truenamer. Without access to magic items to boost its skill check, it just kind of... doesn't work. It falls straight down into the Tier 6 hole, being a more knowledgable Commoner who can help with clearing out low-CR mooks. (Very low CR. We're talking half your level or so.)
With just the Greater Amulet of the Silver Tongue (that's the name, right?) you rocket up into the illustrious heights of maybe Tier 4. With all the bells and whistles in place to be able to reliably hit the +20DC Quicken, you're firmly in the Tier 4 camp and brushing up against the Warlock.
And then at level 20 you ascend into Tier 0 with at-will (Sp) Gate, but that's such a ridiculous outlier that it shouldn't really be taken into account for any tier list that isn't primarily concerned with level 20.


Also, eggynack, I think you might be thinking of the Shadowcaster when you're asking about which class fits in the Spirit Shaman/Truenamer Tier-jumping group? It's got some serious issues with getting way stronger at certain level breakpoints, specifically level 7 and 13. Level 6 to 7 being "can cast each of your 2 1st/2 2nd/2 3rd mysteries once" to "can cast all of those twice and also a fourth-level one once", and level 13 repeating the process again for 4th-6th-level mysteries.
At level one it's very much the stereotypical Wizard who has a single spell they can cast during the day, and that very suddenly changes at level 7.

Although it could also just be the Mystic Ranger, who rules the roost with full BAB+full spellcasting at level 1-10 and then just stops advancing in spellcasting for level 11-20.

[eggynack]

Also, eggynack, I think you might be thinking of the Shadowcaster when you're asking about which class fits in the Spirit Shaman/Truenamer Tier-jumping group? It's got some serious issues with getting way stronger at certain level breakpoints, specifically level 7 and 13. Level 6 to 7 being "can cast each of your 2 1st/2 2nd/2 3rd mysteries once" to "can cast all of those twice and also a fourth-level one once", and level 13 repeating the process again for 4th-6th-level mysteries.
At level one it's very much the stereotypical Wizard who has a single spell they can cast during the day, and that very suddenly changes at level 7.
Doesn't sound quite right for some reason. I dunno. Abundantly possible I just always had the two classes in mind.

[Aimeryan]

An issue with this argument is that most low tier classes get pretty similar marginal value from feats and items.

Of course, for certain items and feats, however, this does not change the need for them. We have to expect that such item/feats will be in play, because otherwise these low tier classes become incompetent all round. The issue is that this conversation then plays out if we say that is fine but otherwise don't take into account feats/items:

You: "OK, so we are tiering Barbarian; it is strong in combat but does not have much else."
Me: "Hmm, but is it even that? What about flying enemies?"
You: "Well, of course the Barbarian will have some way of having flight."
Me: "Ah, yeah, that makes sense. Hmm, what about being able to Charm someone?"
You: "They don't have any way of doing that."
Me: "Well, what about items or feats?"
You: "We don't count those."

The real solution is not to ignore them and go "la la la" when someone brings them up, the solution is to remember that there are limits in the form of one feat every three levels and wealth by level. We may, for example, say that the Barbarian can not afford an item to Charm with because they don't have enough resources to do so while still getting those things that a necessary - at least not until the later levels (at which point averaging across levels means they don't increase in tier).

The difference is that not all classes have similar resources to "spend" after the necessities have been acquired - we shouldn't ignore that difference in resources.

[OldTrees1]

The real solution is not to ignore them and go "la la la" when someone brings them up, the solution is to remember that there are limits in the form of one feat every three levels and wealth by level. We may, for example, say that the Barbarian can not afford an item to Charm with because they don't have enough resources to do so while still getting those things that a necessary - at least not until the later levels (at which point averaging across levels means they don't increase in tier).

The difference is that not all classes have similar resources to "spend" after the necessities have been acquired - we shouldn't ignore that difference in resources.

Agreed. Something related is evident in the case of the Fighter:
The Fighter gets 7 HD feats (same as all martial characters) but also gets 11 Fighter feats. Lots of martial characters spend some/most of their HD feats on combat feats, the Fighter can take some/most of those with their bonus feats and thus leave some/most of their 7 HD feats open for non combat utility.

All those martial characters get HD feats, but the Fighter can use them better as a result of being a Fighter.

[eggynack]

Of course, for certain items and feats, however, this does not change the need for them. We have to expect that such item/feats will be in play, because otherwise these low tier classes become incompetent all round. The issue is that this conversation then plays out if we say that is fine but otherwise don't take into account feats/items:

You: "OK, so we are tiering Barbarian; it is strong in combat but does not have much else."
Me: "Hmm, but is it even that? What about flying enemies?"
You: "Well, of course the Barbarian will have some way of having flight."
Me: "Ah, yeah, that makes sense. Hmm, what about being able to Charm someone?"
You: "They don't have any way of doing that."
Me: "Well, what about items or feats?"
You: "We don't count those."

The real solution is not to ignore them and go "la la la" when someone brings them up, the solution is to remember that there are limits in the form of one feat every three levels and wealth by level. We may, for example, say that the Barbarian can not afford an item to Charm with because they don't have enough resources to do so while still getting those things that a necessary - at least not until the later levels (at which point averaging across levels means they don't increase in tier).

The difference is that not all classes have similar resources to "spend" after the necessities have been acquired - we shouldn't ignore that difference in resources.
All this does though is make everyone go from incompetent to less incompetent, more or less uniformly. The tier system is like 95% comparison testing, and the remaining 5% should probably be turned into more comparison testing. If you want to imagine all these classes with flight items, I guess that's fine, but I don't think it's going to impact the tiers much, if at all. I guess I technically have these definitions that are reliant on meeting these capability thresholds, but the thresholds are more defined by the classes in the tiers than the classes in the tiers are defined by the thresholds.


Agreed. Something related is evident in the case of the Fighter:
The Fighter gets 7 HD feats (same as all martial characters) but also gets 11 Fighter feats. Lots of martial characters spend some/most of their HD feats on combat feats, the Fighter can take some/most of those with their bonus feats and thus leave some/most of their 7 HD feats open for non combat utility.

All those martial characters get HD feats, but the Fighter can use them better as a result of being a Fighter.
This is what I'm saying though. If you're saying that fighters can use these normal feats better than whatever class you're comparing the fighter to, then these feats are meeting the sole criteria for inclusion into consideration, that the value of the feats is greater when you're a fighter. You might have to spend some time proving that the marginal utility of the feats isn't actually reduced by the fact that you already have a ton of feats, but either way we're hanging out in standard discussion space. My objection is to things that are roughly identical on different classes.

[OldTrees1]

This is what I'm saying though. If you're saying that fighters can use these normal feats better than whatever class you're comparing the fighter to, then these feats are meeting the sole criteria for inclusion into consideration, that the value of the feats is greater when you're a fighter. You might have to spend some time proving that the marginal utility of the feats isn't actually reduced by the fact that you already have a ton of feats, but either way we're hanging out in standard discussion space. My objection is to things that are roughly identical on different classes.

Continuing the Fighter example (although saving the majority for the Fighter thread):
1)Most martial characters(besides Fighter) spend a good chunk of their HD feats on feats with the [Fighter] tag. Let's call it 3-5 feats just so that I don't have to say "a good chunk" each time.
2)A Fighter can take those same 3-5 feats with their Fighter Bonus Feats class feature.
3)This means that Fighters have 3-5 extra/unused HD feat slots.
4)Quick summary, while your bog standard martial character might have 2-4 non [Fighter] feats, a Fighter will have 7 non [Fighter] feats as an indirect result of their bonus feat class feature.
5)[Fighter] feats tend to be limited to combat utility* so being able to have more non [Fighter] feats implies more feats that are not limited to combat utility.
6)In other words Fighter gains roughly an addition (in comparison to other martials) 3-5 out of combat non [Fighter] feats as an indirect result of their Fighter class features.
7)So how much out of combat competency can 3-5 feats grant?


*although a recent thread did discover Blindsight, Fast Healing, & Ignoring Hardness

[Aimeryan]

EDIT: I updated the original post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21723491&postcount=15), so this post is now mostly just a duplicate and thus I have removed it.

[GilesTheCleric]

-snip-

How functional do you think these graphs would be if we plugged in Person_Man's niches? The only problem I see right away is that there's a minimum score (4) rather than an X/ not applicable/ null entry.

[Aimeryan]

How functional do you think these graphs would be if we plugged in Person_Man's niches? The only problem I see right away is that there's a minimum score (4) rather than an X/ not applicable/ null entry.

There shouldn't be a minimum score - the latter tiers have lots of 0s for parts of the problem space, and some 1s, 2s, 3s, etc.

As for the question, it shouldn't be problematic to change the number of problem spaces to the number of niches and input the values from 1 to 4. The graph would be spiky, though. Increasing the input value range from 1 to 10 would help.

One of my issues with Person_Man's system was that being very good at something and being able to merely do it was a difference of a point - Barbarian does really badly in that system compared to Monk, even though Barbarian's combat ability should be worth way more that the small difference with Monk's.

That said, I do like the idea of P_M's Niche system a lot - I just think the niches and the input values could do with a fair amount of improvement.

[bekeleven]

So, to sum up, you don't think that the ability to break the game should be part of the tiering discussion at all.

[Aimeryan]

So, to sum up, you don't think that the ability to break the game should be part of the tiering discussion at all.

It should be noted in class notes. I definitely do not think it should be a limiting factor to tiering.

[OldTrees1]

How functional do you think these graphs would be if we plugged in Person_Man's niches? The only problem I see right away is that there's a minimum score (4) rather than an X/ not applicable/ null entry.

Since Aimeryan covered the height, I will cover the width:

The niche system is focused on abilities rather than problems, so there will be some areas in the problem space where multiple niches overlap and perhaps some gaps where the niches did not cover. Additionally I do not believe the niches are all equally represented in the problem space.

However the concept behind the niche system can be converted to this graph form. Focusing on the problem space rather than the abilities results in the discrete bars->continuous curve shift. From there you just get the vertical scaling correct and you have an area under the curve graph.


So, to sum up, you don't think that the ability to break the game should be part of the tiering discussion at all.

Don't forget the graphs! Seriously, most tier discussions use a rather overly simplistic model for versatility. Those graphs are quite an intuitive way to communicate a more accurate model in an easier to understand form.

[bekeleven]

Don't forget the graphs! Seriously, most tier discussions use a rather overly simplistic model for versatility. Those graphs are quite an intuitive way to communicate a more accurate model in an easier to understand form.
His graphs of "my tiering" vs "JaronK's tiering" was literally the same, except that one was missing the "gamebreaking" tier.

[OldTrees1]

His graphs of "my tiering" vs "JaronK's tiering" was literally the same, except that one was missing the "gamebreaking" tier.

Which one is more prone to misunderstanding, the graphs or JaronK's prescriptive/descriptive definitions? I am talking about a clarity of communication point in a field that has suffered from an excess of misunderstanding and oversimplification.

[Lans]

In JKs original thread he suggested using gestalt and other things to balance low tier classes vs higher tier classes. Should we look into these at the end?

[Troacctid]

In JKs original thread he suggested using gestalt and other things to balance low tier classes vs higher tier classes. Should we look into these at the end?
No, I've tried that, it sucked.

[weckar]

We probably don't need to spend two entire threads covering classes that are obviously tier one, for example. Do you not think this kind of mentality ("obviously") could introduce some serious bias if you're trying to critically rethink this?

[eggynack]

Do you not think this kind of mentality ("obviously") could introduce some serious bias if you're trying to critically rethink this?
Theoretically, I guess. I didn't really go into the tier one thread expecting anyone to critically rethink anything. They're the classes perhaps the most cemented in position, apart from maybe the commoner. Toss out a thread asking whether the wizard is tier one, and I'd expect you'd get answers similar to what we did get. A million yeps, and a rare dissenting opinion. I partially intended it as a palate cleanser after the expected critical rethinking of the fixed list casters thread. Mighta been overly presumptuous to throw the artificer on the pile, but after expecting maybe a bit of heat in the community tiering thread, it just kinda got a lot of tier ones. Realistically, how many people would you expect to put the wizard somewhere that isn't tier one? Whatever that number is, I'd think it'd fall well within the bounds of community agreement where I'd call the result obvious.

Honestly, I was expecting the thread to get really little response. That it's gone the direction it has really surprised me.

[Jopustopin]

In any tier there are going to be classes that are at the top of that tier and at the bottom of that tier. There will always be some debate whether the bottom of tier 1 actually belongs in tier 2. But anyone who questions the validity of whether the wizard belongs in tier 1 (not talking placement within tier 1, just that it's somewhere in there) is probably someone who, if left to their own devices, would create a tier system completely outside the mainstream opinion.

[eggynack]

In any tier there are going to be classes that are at the top of that tier and at the bottom of that tier. There will always be some debate whether the bottom of tier 1 actually belongs in tier 2. But anyone who questions the validity of whether the wizard belongs in tier 1 (not talking placement within tier 1, just that it's somewhere in there) is probably someone who, if left to their own devices, would create a tier system completely outside the mainstream opinion.
Pretty much. A lot of these threads are inevitably going to be creating the obvious framework for the evaluation of some non-obvious classes. Favored souls and sorcerers are pretty obvious. Dread necromancers, maybe less obvious, but the implicit or explicit placement of the tier two classes from before makes the position easier to evaluate. There's also a strong element here that some classes absolutely positively need to be "fixed". It's a weird reality, but there has to be some first class, probably a first class for each tier, maybe a couple of first classes for each tier (less so for smaller tiers, but even tier six benefits from having commoner at the bottom, maybe aristocrat at the top, though the latter's position may wind up debatable), to compare against. We have to be able to say something like, "Sorcerer is tier two with very little debate available," in order that the system as a whole might be constructed around that. Given how strongly this system is emphasizing beginning from the top and stripping away capability as you go down, we're inevitably going to need a lot of the top to be rooted in place. It might seem counter-intuitive for this to be the case for a thread that's ostensibly voting based, but I think there's an essential truth to it.

[Fizban]

I think most people have a reasonable idea of what a problem is. Some kinda conflict or issue that you resolve through your various capabilities.
Problem does not mean anything, if the DM thinks of DnD as a combat game and presents only combat problems, none of your non-combat stuff has any affect on tiers of classes in that game. All you've given is that the wizard "strong combat spells backed up by utility," with no indication of what utility is or why its so important except that the wizard has it and that makes it better than you.

I didn't respond to like one post, which I kinda dropped the notion of responding to after you starting saying that your issues were more tied to all this other stuff in this thread.
Which also happened to be the post where I suggested a definition for optimization levels and said that "problems" solved wasn't important. A post that you said you'd get back to, and then dropped for arguing in the class threads, when it's a root problem that needs to be addressed in the main thread. And I'm pretty sure I never said any of my issues where more tied to the class threads, I've said in several places that we disagreed on the tier definition and my entire point for the last several posts has been that they aren't good enough right now.

People seem to be doing pretty well in working on the definitions, and figuring out what a problem is. The issue of what game states are like in a general sense is inevitably central to any tier system. No definition is ever going to solve that. The original system certainly didn't.
Right, so, like I said, you refuse to actually write considerations for what problems and optimization are into the system and are instead leaving it up to the voters, so the numbers are all based on the unstated assumptions of the majority. We see cracks, other people don't care, so you're not fixing them. And it is something that requires rapid decisions, since you're claiming our input might be incorporated later while running multiple votes using rules that do not include that input.

We've literally already changed the tiering of three separate classes from the original system. You seem to be oddly defining a willingness to change things as a willingness to change things the specific way you want them to change.
Have we? I can't say I ever actually paid much attention to what JaronK gave them, I'm more familiar with what people have been arguing since, and seeing the oft-argued Beguiler and Dread Necro land on the higher of the two they've competed for isn't a significant change. Warmage or Wizard landing in tier 2 would be, and sure enough the moment it's suggested everyone, including the thread leader, shouts it down, while claiming that we're wrong because of assumptions that aren't actually part of the tier definitions.


I've responded to the vast majority of your comments in what I consider a rather reasonable way, and a bunch of other people have as well. Even though I fully disagree with your reading of the tier system and at least a few of your tierings, your vote has counted just as much as anyone else's. What, do I have to respond to literally every comment you make? Do I have to automatically agree with everything you say in order to qualify as hearing you? Your expectations of me and this thread, threads in general really, are thoroughly unrealistic. I do my best to respond to people, and give positions as fair a shake as is possible, but I'm not perfect.
And you know perfectly well that just like Whose Line, the votes don't matter. We're not voting because we expect to the voted tier to radically change, what kind of idiot would actually expect that? We're using our votes to point out problems in the system, which you have taken no action to address. Do you have to agree with me about what the tiers should be? No. When multiple people have pointed out problems in your lack of defined assumptions allowing perfectly reasonable votes that everyone vehemently disagrees with? Yes, that requires action. I only checked on Jor's thread a coupld times, but wasn't that the whole freaking point, that people disagreed with his tiers and he refused to update them based on input from the dissent, so you made this series?

I think people have a reasonable idea of what non-combat is. Social situations, information gathering, really anything that isn't directly combat oriented on the niche ranking system for classes. Sorcerer isn't just getting a pass. They're genuinely capable of some solid out of combat stuff.
I've responded to some of the input and thought some of it was solid. Just not necessarily sure if I want to port in big graphs yet, or precisely how I'd want to frame it.
The graphs will remain useless without an actual idea of what non-combat is. You realize there are tables that don't run Diplomacy RAW, that don't require piles of skills or magic to perform "non-combat" activities, where those abilities do not merit a tier increase, right? Until you state your assumptions nothing means anything. Leaving it vague until discussion highlights what is necessary is valid, we've started highlighting it.

Maybe, or maybe not. Definitions proved super problematic for the original system.
Because the lack of them is working out so well here. And once again, Troacctid literally already gave you something more specific that won't get in the way: you could say combat, exploration, and social interaction. What you seem to be afraid of is a list like: combat, ranged combat, exploration, traps, social interaction, information gathering, alternate social interaction, minionmancy, cake baking, and combat, and having some list of criteria that will allow a class (Factotum say) to check off so many boxes it gets rated higher than it should be if someone else doesn't have that exact spread of problems. But by refusing to define those problems you're just as wrong. Something as thin as combat, exploration, social, gives you three exceptionally broad categories to rate things on. You can punt the Warmage for only having Intimidate and thus being terrible a social problems, in games that require class features to solve social problems. You can say the Beguiler isn't better than Sorcerer because their combat abilities work on restricted targets. You can actually justify your tiering by taking the justifications you keep using and making the definitions reflect them.

The tier system was, if anything, less defined in this way, demanding that a class be able to do a... thing. What's a thing? Is being a crappy commoner a thing? Cause the commoner does that quite well. I don't think most people here are struggling with the question of what a problem is. Chasm between you and a castle? That's a problem. A crafty spy is the only one that knows details of where an artifact you're seeking is hidden? That's a problem. You need to schmooze your way into the good graces of royalty in order to refine their political system? That's a problem. Problems are necessarily broad. It's a broad game.
And what is so superior about yours? It demands that a class be able to do multiple. . . things. Sorry, solve multiple "problems." What is a problem? Is weaving a basket a problem? Cause the commoner does that quite well. Who knows, just as long as it's "better" than another class, based on unknown DM assumptions and optimization that is equal without any idea what equal means.

What you're most likely trying to get at is that you think I'm being deliberately obtuse. That's the response you get when deliberately vague rules are used as justification, someone comes along and exploits the vagueness in a way you don't like. That means you update the rules so people can't be quite so obtuse.

Edit:
Yes, they do. You should probably watch the video.
I didn't feel like watching it, but I checked the intro and did indeed get the joke. I'd be more amused if his comparison was anywhere near true, since comparing the tier definitions used here to the scientific method is the joke. Measuring from an unstated position with unstated units based on a vague hypothesis, and he's saying that means anyone who disagrees with him is the one who's blind to the truth. Yes, truly a cutting insult. The whole point of science is that anyone following the same steps will get the same result. I can follow your steps and get a different result. Fix your steps.

[eggynack]

Problem does not mean anything, if the DM thinks of DnD as a combat game and presents only combat problems, none of your non-combat stuff has any affect on tiers of classes in that game. All you've given is that the wizard "strong combat spells backed up by utility," with no indication of what utility is or why its so important except that the wizard has it and that makes it better than you.
A DM might indeed stick largely to combat. Another might do the exact opposite, emphasizing social non-combat situations. Both of these campaigns present problems. We consider both sets of problems, as well as a mass of others. Sometimes a class will do worse than other times based on the specific problems presented in a campaign. It's an inevitable thing, and is compensated for by the fact that sometimes that class will do better than normal.



Which also happened to be the post where I suggested a definition for optimization levels and said that "problems" solved wasn't important. A post that you said you'd get back to, and then dropped for arguing in the class threads, when it's a root problem that needs to be addressed in the main thread. And I'm pretty sure I never said any of my issues where more tied to the class threads, I've said in several places that we disagreed on the tier definition and my entire point for the last several posts has been that they aren't good enough right now.
I said I'd get back to it, and then you were all like, "This over here is the main problem with how you're doing things." So I responded to that.


Have we? I can't say I ever actually paid much attention to what JaronK gave them, I'm more familiar with what people have been arguing since, and seeing the oft-argued Beguiler and Dread Necro land on the higher of the two they've competed for isn't a significant change.
The beguiler was sufficiently considered tier three that it still went that way the last time a vote occurred. What, do you expect a tier list derived from the community to not be heavily informed by the feelings of that community? Not much of anything you can do to change that.


Warmage or Wizard landing in tier 2 would be, and sure enough the moment it's suggested everyone, including the thread leader, shouts it down, while claiming that we're wrong because of assumptions that aren't actually part of the tier definitions.
I'm not yelling you down. I'm just, y'know, disagreeing. I can do that. You have as much time as you want to get them to agree.


I only checked on Jor's thread a coupld times, but wasn't that the whole freaking point, that people disagreed with his tiers and he refused to update them based on input from the dissent, so you made this series?
I made this series for a number of reasons, none especially connected to the issues you're bringing up. First, they were strictly demanding things take place within a single week, never changing the tiers after that week even if every original voter ultimately changes their mind. Second, that they had ACFs as never considered, even if said ACFs weren't going to get separately tiered. Third, they were allowing in votes with zero necessary justification, meaning that we could never know if someone actually had a valid reason for their vote and what that reasoning was. And, finally, they were getting weirdly dictatorial, demanding that no one question their procedure, eventually to the point of sticking dissenters on their ignore list (including me). And, trust me on this, I was being significantly more polite than you are currently (not saying you should stop or whatever, just giving an impression on how weird the clamping down was getting, which you can check out personally if you feel the need to verify that).

My initial plan was just to make basically the same thing as the old thread, except with those three changes, and with me somewhat more accepting of input at the helm (a thing easily achievable by something as simple as giving any reason whatsoever for my decision making, as I'm doing right now). Then I accepted in some suggestions from people in the thread. I broke down the giant mega-thread into a bunch of shorter ones that aren't alphabetically determined, I got rid of the definitions that were leading people astray all the frigging time, to the point where they were insisting that a worse class deserved a better tier (worse in their opinion, not mine), I clarified an idea that was way more unclear in the original tier system, this simultaneous notion of fixed optimization, no optimization, and only potential, and I created a better and more comprehensive definition of what is and isn't allowed than JaronK's, "You can't use feats or items, except for font of inspiration cause it's cool, and also natural spell and a bunch of others that I think are obvious," and just generally cleaned up a lot of weird inconsistencies present in the original.

And, for all your talk of how unclear and nebulous things are, I think it's all been working like gangbusters. The occasional person might take issue with something, but way fewer, in my opinion, than were running into problems before. Go through the original thread and it's like a laundry list of misconceptions of how to tier, like the idea that we should consider things only at level 20, or that we should heavily consider the fact that two different sorcerers can have two completely different lists or that this undefined notion of gamebreakers should heavily inform how things place. If my only problem is that you think problem should be better defined, then we're running things with a tiny fraction of the original's problems.


Because the lack of them is working out so well here.
As noted above, kinda yeah. I mean, one of the biggest problems you can point to is that you have a problem with it, rather than any sort of larger effect. Aside from that it's like one other person.


And once again, Troacctid literally already gave you something more specific that won't get in the way: you could say combat, exploration, and social interaction. What you seem to be afraid of is a list like: combat, ranged combat, exploration, traps, social interaction, information gathering, alternate social interaction, minionmancy, cake baking, and combat, and having some list of criteria that will allow a class (Factotum say) to check off so many boxes it gets rated higher than it should be if someone else doesn't have that exact spread of problems. But by refusing to define those problems you're just as wrong. Something as thin as combat, exploration, social, gives you three exceptionally broad categories to rate things on. You can punt the Warmage for only having Intimidate and thus being terrible a social problems, in games that require class features to solve social problems. You can say the Beguiler isn't better than Sorcerer because their combat abilities work on restricted targets. You can actually justify your tiering by taking the justifications you keep using and making the definitions reflect them.
I guess I could include a note of that form. Maybe with a link to the niche ranking system too. My big problem with such an approach isn't precisely with specificity, but rather the possibility that something could be excluded. It might be fine though if I include a note that the lists aren't strictly exclusive. After all, your primary issue with my definition of problem is that it isn't sufficiently inclusive. As in, you can get away with defining problem as only including combat, so stating that problem means combat, social situations, and then it becomes amorphous past that point is a strict improvement.



And what is so superior about yours? It demands that a class be able to do multiple. . . things. Sorry, solve multiple "problems." What is a problem? Is weaving a basket a problem? Cause the commoner does that quite well. Who knows, just as long as it's "better" than another class, based on unknown DM assumptions and optimization that is equal without any idea what equal means.
It's not especially superior. It's just not inferior, and, from my experience discussing the tier system, few if any have taken issue with that part of it. They've had problems with a ton of different things, but I can't recall that one showing up. These problems I've seen heavily informed what I was trying to solve.


What you're most likely trying to get at is that you think I'm being deliberately obtuse. That's the response you get when deliberately vague rules are used as justification, someone comes along and exploits the vagueness in a way you don't like. That means you update the rules so people can't be quite so obtuse.
I don't think you're being deliberately obtuse. I just think specific definitions

I didn't feel like watching it, but I checked the intro and did indeed get the joke. I'd be more amused if his comparison was anywhere near true, since comparing the tier definitions used here to the scientific method is the joke. Measuring from an unstated position with unstated units based on a vague hypothesis, and he's saying that means anyone who disagrees with him is the one who's blind to the truth. Yes, truly a cutting insult. The whole point of science is that anyone following the same steps will get the same result. I can follow your steps and get a different result. Fix your steps.
Wasn't saying the response was perfection itself. Just that it was self-consistent.

[Lans]

I was thinking over the Niche Ranking System, their should be a way to turn that into a tier system. I would invert the rankings so higher is better, let their be a versatility score that is the total of the highest rankings a specific build can pull off, then work on the definitions a little bit- Say Melee 4 is killing a tough monster of equal CR in 2 rounds, melee 3 is killing a tough monster of -2 CR in 3 rounds type of deal.

Or healer 4 is negating multiple rounds of damage from an equal cr opponent, and 1 is just saving some money on consumables. 0 would be that class not contributing at all.

[eggynack]

I was thinking over the Niche Ranking System, their should be a way to turn that into a tier system. I would invert the rankings so higher is better, let their be a versatility score that is the total of the highest rankings a specific build can pull off, then work on the definitions a little bit- Say Melee 4 is killing a tough monster of equal CR in 2 rounds, melee 3 is killing a tough monster of -2 CR in 3 rounds type of deal.
Yeah, I've thought about that before. It's pretty tricky though, especially because you'd probably want to weight certain niches more heavily.

Also, I included the note. Things cool now? Or, y'know, relatively cool. I'm aware you still take issue with the question of optimization level.

[Troacctid]

Yeah, Wizards are deeefinitely better than any of the classes that I'd consider to be in Tier 2, and honestly I don't think it's that close. Psion would be close if it had a spell list as good as Wizard, but it doesn't so it isn't. And Death Master isn't far off from Wizard, but it's still very clear who's the better class, and frankly I'd probably put Death Master in Tier 1 anyway. I mean, maybe you could make a case for Spontaneous Druid, but eh.

But yeah, just because Wizard is worse than Cleric and Druid doesn't mean it's not a clear T1.


I made this series for a number of reasons, none especially connected to the issues you're bringing up. First, he was strictly demanding things take place within a single week, never changing the tiers after that week even if every original voter ultimately changes their mind. Second, that he had ACFs as never considered, even if said ACFs weren't going to get separately tiered. Third, he was allowing in votes with zero necessary justification, meaning that we could never know if someone actually had a valid reason for their vote and what that reasoning was. And, finally, he was getting weirdly dictatorial, demanding that no one question his procedure, eventually to the point of sticking dissenters on their ignore list (including me). And, trust me on this, I was being significantly more polite than you are currently (not saying you should stop or whatever, just giving an impression on how weird the clamping down was getting, which you can check out personally if you feel the need to verify that).
Got your pronouns mixed up there, I see.

[Lans]

Yeah, I've thought about that before. It's pretty tricky though, especially because you'd probably want to weight certain niches more heavily.

As we are working up from 0 in my idea make some things on a 4-6 point scale with things like melee, summonig or game breakers and others like scouting and trapfinding on a 2 point scale.


Also, I included the note. Things cool now? Or, y'know, relatively cool. I'm aware you still take issue with the question of optimization level.

[eggynack]

Got your pronouns mixed up there, I see.
Yep. Managed to keep it straight for like 50 pages of thread, fell down on the closing stretch.

[Gemini476]

A "proper" way to make a tier list would probably be to roughly rank all the classes in order of "power" (or whatever metric you want to use) and then, well, checking where there's a significant power gap between two classes. That's your tier boundary right there. (I personally suspect that you'd end up with very different tiers than the current systems - there's a clear power gap between the Fighter and Samurai, for instance, but there's also a huge one between the Samurai and Aristocrat.)

That way you get natural tiers, rather than the somewhat artificial ones we currently have.

It's just that all that sounds like a very gruelling progress and a pain to do. I'm also not entirely sure how you'd even go about making such a list, really - just add classes to the list one-by-one and try to compare them to all the ones currently on the list?

Not to mention how controversial something like, say, Druid vs. Wizard vs. Cleric would be.

[Calthropstu]

Yeah, Wizards are deeefinitely better than any of the classes that I'd consider to be in Tier 2, and honestly I don't think it's that close. Psion would be close if it had a spell list as good as Wizard, but it doesn't so it isn't. And Death Master isn't far off from Wizard, but it's still very clear who's the better class, and frankly I'd probably put Death Master in Tier 1 anyway. I mean, maybe you could make a case for Spontaneous Druid, but eh.

But yeah, just because Wizard is worse than Cleric and Druid doesn't mean it's not a clear T1.


Got your pronouns mixed up there, I see.

Wizard is not worse than cleric or wizard. Their spell selection is easily number one. Druids spell selection is easily bottom of the t1 barrel. I'd rank wizards/sorcerers(w/ psychic reformation abuse) as the top class, then clerics, with druids a distant third.

[Troacctid]

Wizards become overpowered at like level 7 and are actively underpowered in the 1–3 range. Druids are overpowered from level 1 and never stop being overpowered. Druid is the clear winner overall.

[ryu]

Wizards become overpowered at like level 7 and are actively underpowered in the 1–3 range. Druids are overpowered from level 1 and never stop being overpowered. Druid is the clear winner overall.

Except a wizard who knows he's going to be playing low levels is actually one of the most threatening things at those levels of all core classes second only to druid. Focused specialist, abrupt jaunter, hummingbird, and brutally effective battlefield control. Yeah, it's not druid, but discounting that for a moment what the hell is anyone else doing at this level that's better?

[Fizban]

I said I'd get back to it, and then you were all like, "This over here is the main problem with how you're doing things." So I responded to that.
Not sure which thread you're referring to. My next post after that in this thread was basically the next step I perceived in the argument, based on what you were saying in the other thread, which in no way removed any of what I'd said in the previous post.

I made this series for a number of reasons, none especially connected to the issues you're bringing up.
Fair enough then.

And, for all your talk of how unclear and nebulous things are, I think it's all been working like gangbusters. The occasional person might take issue with something, but way fewer, in my opinion, than were running into problems before. . .If my only problem is that you think problem should be better defined, then we're running things with a tiny fraction of the original's problems.
Better then, but still a problem. Without any sort of definition there's no fulcrum by which to attempt to convince anyone of anything. You still get people voting with nothing but how "obvious" it is that something is better and dismissing anyone who disagrees, which if anything I'd say is worse than votes without comment.

As noted above, kinda yeah. I mean, one of the biggest problems you can point to is that you have a problem with it, rather than any sort of larger effect. Aside from that it's like one other person.
And while we would have been ignored in Jor's thread, we remain effectively ignored here, able to rile up pages of argument which don't seem to merit change, or at least didn't until now.

After all, your primary issue with my definition of problem is that it isn't sufficiently inclusive. As in, you can get away with defining problem as only including combat, so stating that problem means combat, social situations, and then it becomes amorphous past that point is a strict improvement.
In the sense that it's what's driving me nuts. I still don't think it's the best system, but with the added section some previous arguments are at least now properly defensible.

They've had problems with a ton of different things, but I can't recall that one showing up. These problems I've seen heavily informed what I was trying to solve.
I'm not sure with what you mean by the latter, but if we've found a new problem then that's progress. Well I actually consider it the oldest of problems, but trying to get anyone to admit that is worse than pulling teeth, see present.

Just that it was self-consistent.
I have always liked the self-consistent with myself angle, but more is needed to lend credibility to a system meant to inform others, even if only as an exercise.

Pulled from the wizard thread side:

It was a comment on the size of tiers, not individual evaluation.
Yup, and Moprhic thinks the tiers should be more narrow, and I think they should be more wide, but since we're being told it's more narrow I'm protesting by supporting the side that's not narrow enough until such time as it's actually made clear (1/3 of the way there)

There isn't really a bar. That's the point of the whole multiple fixed optimization points thing. You're standing over there suggesting that most games with wizards don't feature said wizards buying any scrolls or adding spells in any way, despite the fact that the designers themselves assumed that not to be the case all over the place. This as a typical game state seems radically off the mark as a result.
And you're standing over there suggesting that most games with wizards features said wizards buying all sorts of scrolls or adding spells, despite the fact that the designers themselves assumed that not to be the case all over the place. Where? Well, there's the language that doesn't guarantee magic item sales, or spell copying rights, the entirely random nature of found treasure (20-30% scroll chance, which is then only 70% arcane and rolls randomly off PHB only spells) and any module where a town has a shopping description more limited than "whatever you want," which is plenty. Thus your typical game state seems radically off the mark as a result. (Yes I see those statblocks in Enemies and Allies with extra spells in them, which tell us only about character creation and don't invalidate the DMs that think spell acquisition rules are meant as as a sign of limits to build upon rather than allowing easy access).

The "bar" is that you are making assumptions about what the average table does. I've never seen anyone actually present data on what the average table does. You're saying that any op below a certain point has a low enough share that it doesn't actually affect the tiers, and that point is based on your thinking that average optimization levels are significantly higher. Do I disagree? With no data my only response can be to make those assumptions plain because to claim that the truth is anything else would be a lie.

They have something to do with each other. The people who playtested the game generally optimized really badly. If people at this low optimization level were doing a thing, and doing it with high consistency, and if that thing is, y'know, good, then we can expect that thing to show up at higher optimization levels too, and thus most optimization levels. Basically, what I'm saying is, if your party's druid is doing better than scimitars, then we can expect the wizard to do equal to or better than some scrolls.
No, optimization levels have nothing to do with DM leniency, which is what you're relying on when you say that the Wizard can improve their power level beyond their initial picks. Weather or not the Druid player bothered to playtest their class tells us nothing about

I did not mean favorably. Wizards can be just reasonable at some optimization levels as long as the comparison is favorable at a sufficient majority of optimization levels.
And your assumption of what the majority of optimization levels is, is your bias. You can't even claim all optimization levels are equal, because you refuse to define them. All you can say is that you think most tables are more optimized, and I say that instead of making that assumption invisibly you should make it openly.

I disagree. Both that I'm biased in a way that's pushing wizards upwards, and that I should define things heavily. If you think wizards are tier two, that's fine. Vote that way, and then attempt to convince people of that. That's really all anyone can do. It's why we're here.
The "hiding behind the voting system" fallacy. You've made a thread, effectively appointing yourself leader, and leaders can't just ignore their minority constituents. You've finally incorporated some explanation of what problems are (progress!), now all we need is an explanation of optimization levels and what band gets the majority of weight, and what the standard level of DM leniency is.

DM leniency ties into a lot of rules where the DM has the final say, such as buying stuff, but also applies to all sorts of sketchy rulings. The desire to avoid cataloging a list of house rules for the tiers is understandable, but there are already plenty of people who are using one their heads-even if "high op" allows more sketchy rulings, the middle must have some sort of definition. Equivalent optimization is much more interesting, but first requires people to admit that a lot of their "obvious" choices are optimization.


A "proper" way to make a tier list would probably be to roughly rank all the classes in order of "power" (or whatever metric you want to use) and then, well, checking where there's a significant power gap between two classes. That's your tier boundary right there. (I personally suspect that you'd end up with very different tiers than the current systems - there's a clear power gap between the Fighter and Samurai, for instance, but there's also a huge one between the Samurai and Aristocrat.)

That way you get natural tiers, rather than the somewhat artificial ones we currently have.

It's just that all that sounds like a very gruelling progress and a pain to do. I'm also not entirely sure how you'd even go about making such a list, really - just add classes to the list one-by-one and try to compare them to all the ones currently on the list?

Not to mention how controversial something like, say, Druid vs. Wizard vs. Cleric would be.
Funny thing is, I kinda feel like that's part of what the existing "systems" (or rather the people ranking the classes) have always done. A group of similar classes is compared, ranked in order, and then a tier gap is given where there isn't actually that much of a practical power difference, because someone's game assumptions makes a tier gap where someone else's doesn't. Which is why I don't want definitions based on people's gut idea of what's better.

[Calthropstu]

Wizards become overpowered at like level 7 and are actively underpowered in the 1–3 range. Druids are overpowered from level 1 and never stop being overpowered. Druid is the clear winner overall.

Both the cleric and the wizard overtake them around level 11. In fact, at upper levels, I'd argue even most t2 classes overtake them. The druid 9th level spells are... severely underwhelming. By level 20, druids are so far outclassed by clerics and wizards it's not even funny. Wildshape is overtaken by polymorph spells, and shapechange makes it look like a puppy. Animate dead and planar binding both overwhelm the druids summoning abilities, and the damage spells available to a druid are extremely sub-par compared to wizard equivalents. Wizards can output more damage, more utility, more powerful creatures... in short, druids can do everything a wizard can do but worse after lvl 11.

[Fizban]

and shapechange makes it look like a puppy.
Psst- Druids can cast Shapechange.

Later levels are even more dependent on gear than early, and considering I'm arguing about magic item availability right now, I'd have to say that the higher level you get the more valuable not needing to buy spells becomes.

[ryu]

Psst- Druids can cast Shapechange.

Later levels are even more dependent on gear than early, and considering I'm arguing about magic item availability right now, I'd have to say that the higher level you get the more valuable not needing to buy spells becomes.

Considering you're arguing about item availability poorly enough that no one who's still posting agrees with you I'd say the issue is rather moot.

[Gnaeus]

Of course, for certain items and feats, however, this does not change the need for them. We have to expect that such item/feats will be in play, because otherwise these low tier classes become incompetent all round. The issue is that this conversation then plays out if we say that is fine but otherwise don't take into account feats/items:

You: "OK, so we are tiering Barbarian; it is strong in combat but does not have much else."
Me: "Hmm, but is it even that? What about flying enemies?"
You: "Well, of course the Barbarian will have some way of having flight."
Me: "Ah, yeah, that makes sense. Hmm, what about being able to Charm someone?"
You: "They don't have any way of doing that."
Me: "Well, what about items or feats?"
You: "We don't count those."

The real solution is not to ignore them and go "la la la" when someone brings them up, the solution is to remember that there are limits in the form of one feat every three levels and wealth by level. We may, for example, say that the Barbarian can not afford an item to Charm with because they don't have enough resources to do so while still getting those things that a necessary - at least not until the later levels (at which point averaging across levels means they don't increase in tier).

The difference is that not all classes have similar resources to "spend" after the necessities have been acquired - we shouldn't ignore that difference in resources.

I basically agree with this. As I have said in other threads...
1. can the class do its job in a low WBL/random/semi-random gear environment? If not, that's a big hit.
2. Can the class make specific gear it needs
3. Can the class make in play design choices to adapt to gear it gets (like if a wizard finds a flight item, he learns slow instead of fly, but if a fighter finds a magic dagger he won't likely retrain to TWF).
4. Does the class have abilities (UMD focus, familiar, spell slots to convert, etc) that make magic items in their hands more useful than they would be in the hands of a commoner.

The more holes a class needs specific item drops to cover, the worse, in general, the class is.

[Fizban]

Considering you're arguing about item availability poorly enough that no one who's still posting agrees with you I'd say the issue is rather moot.
Lol, and then Morphic and Gemini and even Cosi show up with with posts in varying levels of agreement.


Speaking of Morphic, a quote of his tier definitions including multiple levels of optimization:

The tier system is about the versatility of a class at all levels of optimization. Wizards only equal Druids and Clerics at higher optimization. The floor should be relevant to tiering, because of the fact that the definition of tier is supposed to be the power of the class at all levels of optimizing.

If a class can be reduced to t3 levels of versatility and power with little to no way of recovering without large costs of irreplaceable resources and this situation can come about simply by a casual player not trying to optimize, the class really, really should not be t1. It should be t2.

If the low to mid optimized form of the class is t3 and the upper-mid to high optimized form of the class is t1, then the class ought to be t2 because it's about that strong and versatile for the average game.

If a class requires deliberate effort and actively trying to cripple it to go below t3 capacity, is t2 in most casual gameplay and can reach t1 with little effort, then it deserves to be t1. Healbot cleric is a play style failure, not a build failure like Mailman Wizard. Healbot cleric can instantly go t2 with nothing but a swap of spell choice with little system knowledge beyond "clerics are good for things that aren't healing." Mailman Wizard has to figure out what spells are actually good, get the scrolls, spend time adding the spells to their spellbook and then prepare those spells as the situation desires.

Healbot cleric only needs to decide to do something other than healing to ascend to t3, or even t2. Mailman Wizard has to get at least half a dozen scrolls, with extremely specific picks of particularly good spells that are normally found in use as actively optimized choices to get the number that low, in order to get to t3 in practice, with t2 being particularly optimal picks for that half-dozen scrolls.

This is arguing that Wizard needs to be t2 because it has so many ways to screw up and there's so many choices you have to make to get it to t1. Even being t2 requires some significant optimizing, the sort you usually won't see used in low-op games.

In comparison, Artificers, Sha'ir, Druids and Clerics just get what they want from their spell lists. Sha'ir have a delay to them, but still, these four can't be screwed up beyond recovering to t2 unless you dig deep into negative or blind moron optimization, or the DM pulls fluff-based cripples on you like declaring an alignment shift for a Cleric or Druid to make them lose their powers.

[ryu]

Cute. There's less than five of you in total. If you were even approaching something resembling parity of numbers with the consensus you might have had a point.

[Troacctid]

Both the cleric and the wizard overtake them around level 11. In fact, at upper levels, I'd argue even most t2 classes overtake them. The druid 9th level spells are... severely underwhelming. By level 20, druids are so far outclassed by clerics and wizards it's not even funny. Wildshape is overtaken by polymorph spells, and shapechange makes it look like a puppy. Animate dead and planar binding both overwhelm the druids summoning abilities, and the damage spells available to a druid are extremely sub-par compared to wizard equivalents. Wizards can output more damage, more utility, more powerful creatures... in short, druids can do everything a wizard can do but worse after lvl 11.
I know the Wizard overtakes the Druid at higher levels. But the Druid is still grotesquely overpowered at those levels anyway, so who cares? It's stronger to be overpowered for 100% of the game than to be underpowered for 20%, balanced for 30%, and slightly more overpowered for the remaining 50%.

[Cosi]

Wizards become overpowered at like level 7 and are actively underpowered in the 1–3 range. Druids are overpowered from level 1 and never stop being overpowered. Druid is the clear winner overall.

Wizards are definitely not underpowered at 1 - 3. color spray, sleep, glitterdust, and web are all the best things you can be doing at their levels.


Lol, and then Morphic and Gemini and even Cosi show up with with posts in varying levels of agreement.

My objections to WBL stuff have nothing to do with the Wizard.

I think the Archivist sucks because you're paying for what the Cleric gets for free, and the advantages you can reasonably be expected to have aren't enough to catch up for that.

I think the Artificer sucks because it is super hard to play and if you do play it effectively it's just WBLmancy: The Class, which is not unique to the class at all.


Cute. There's less than five of you in total. If you were even approaching something resembling parity of numbers with the consensus you might have had a point.

argument ad populum is a bad argument. Also it's kind of a pointless argument to make in this case. You're not going to persuade anyone with "more people think Wizards are Tier One", and the voting is democratic, so if more people really do believe that, you win anyway.

[ryu]

Wizards are definitely not underpowered at 1 - 3. color spray, sleep, glitterdust, and web are all the best things you can be doing at their levels.



My objections to WBL stuff have nothing to do with the Wizard.

I think the Archivist sucks because you're paying for what the Cleric gets for free, and the advantages you can reasonably be expected to have aren't enough to catch up for that.

I think the Artificer sucks because it is super hard to play and if you do play it effectively it's just WBLmancy: The Class, which is not unique to the class at all.



argument ad populum is a bad argument. Also it's kind of a pointless argument to make in this case. You're not going to persuade anyone with "more people think Wizards are Tier One", and the voting is democratic, so if more people really do believe that, you win anyway.

Argument implies an attempt to change the other person's mind rather than pointing out that their entire quest to achieve a voting majority is simply mathematically unlikely to succeed.

[Troacctid]

Wizards are definitely not underpowered at 1 - 3. color spray, sleep, glitterdust, and web are all the best things you can be doing at their levels.
Color Spray and Sleep are about as good as Attack With Greatsword, except they can only be used a couple times a day and come attached to a squishy d4 body with no AC that dies in two attacks.

Glitterdust and Web are fine.

[ryu]

Color Spray and Sleep are about as good as Attack With Greatsword, except they can only be used a couple times a day and come attached to a squishy d4 body with no AC that dies in two attacks.

Glitterdust and Web are fine.

I mean does a single attack with greatsword at level one have any chance at all of literally ending all threat in an encounter with more than one enemy, much less an actually pretty high one? No? I thought not.

[Fizban]

My objections to WBL stuff have nothing to do with the Wizard.

I think the Archivist sucks because you're paying for what the Cleric gets for free, and the advantages you can reasonably be expected to have aren't enough to catch up for that.
Indeed, but you did agree that a character gaining only a few random scrolls outside their level up picks was a thing that exists. A lesser agreement, but when someone who usually disagrees with me completely is making an argument on the same line, I take it as a good sign.


Argument implies an attempt to change the other person's mind rather than pointing out that their entire quest to achieve a voting majority is simply mathematically unlikely to succeed.
It's a good thing I already went over how protest votes and decisions by leadership are an important part of the process, which have already had effects without a voting majority.


And OldTrees1, on WBL affecting tiers:

Quick question:

Can a couple people quickly summarize the general consensus on the amount of WBL we are counting as part of the Artificer & Wizard for the purposes of tiering those classes? I know eggynack's de jure position on it but there is often a disconnect between de jure and de facto.

I ask because the precedent set here will be brought up in later threads.

[Troacctid]

I mean does a single attack with greatsword at level one have any chance at all of literally ending all threat in an encounter with more than one enemy, much less an actually pretty high one? No? I thought not.
If the enemies are clustered together enough to fit in a Color Spray, sure. Cleave is a thing.

[GilesTheCleric]

Sorry not to quote directly, but I think we already have a basis for what minimum/ average optimisation we should consider. WotC (and Paizo) both publish adventures. If we assume that the majority (85%+?) of groups complete adventures without wiping, then we know that the majority of tables optimise enough to beat those adventures. I have hearsay that the PF Society adventures are completely wrecked by someone who has optimised (by GitP's standards), so perhaps that gives us the perspective we need.

[ryu]

If the enemies are clustered together enough to fit in a Color Spray, sure. Cleave is a thing.

Neat. Tell me does cleave have an upwards of 70% chance of ending the encounter on the spot when you attempt to cast it? Assume three human or humanoid melee enemies in a room.

[Bucky]

Except a wizard who knows he's going to be playing low levels is actually one of the most threatening things at those levels of all core classes second only to druid. Focused specialist, abrupt jaunter, hummingbird, and brutally effective battlefield control. Yeah, it's not druid, but discounting that for a moment what the hell is anyone else doing at this level that's better?

Barbarian wins initiative, rages, charges and one-shots you on a 3+ with no save possible. Then kills your buddy with cleave damage.

Barbarians act as Tier 2 at very low levels because there are few defenses against normal attacks.

[ryu]

Barbarian wins initiative, rages, charges and one-shots you on a 3+ with no save possible. Then kills your buddy with cleave damage.

Barbarians act as Tier 2 at very low levels because there are few defenses against normal attacks.

Abrupt jaunt you can't kill me no matter what you roll. Also hummingbird familiar and a likely higher dex stat means that, no, you probably aren't winning initiative either. Keep in mind that both of those are literally things I listed as the low level focused wizard.

[Cosi]

If the enemies are clustered together enough to fit in a Color Spray, sure. Cleave is a thing.

If you are a Human and/or a Fighter. Cleave requires Power Attack, and you only get one feat at first level.

[Troacctid]

Neat. Tell me does cleave have an upwards of 70% chance of ending the encounter on the spot when you attempt to cast it? Assume three human or humanoid melee enemies in a room.
Roughly 50% to kill a single goblin or kobold at their 15 AC, and if that hits, another ~50% to kill a second one, assuming you don't use any daily resources to boost your odds. Color Spray can get a higher success rate (about 93% to take down at least one and 55% to take down both), but not without expending daily resources. And Sleep has a lower success rate than Cleave overall, although it can hit all three at once. This is of course under ideal conditions, against enemies with relatively high AC and negative Will saves.

[Fizban]

Sorry not to quote directly, but I think we already have a basis for what minimum/ average optimisation we should consider. WotC (and Paizo) both publish adventures. If we assume that the majority (85%+?) of groups complete adventures without wiping, then we know that the majority of tables optimise enough to beat those adventures. I have hearsay that the PF Society adventures are completely wrecked by someone who has optimised (by GitP's standards), so perhaps that gives us the perspective we need.
PF Society is indeed just about the only data source we have, but as it's composed of people who joined a greater society of roleplayers at minimum it's a rather tainted sample. Also Pathfinder, which is not 3.5, and is generally higher power in almost every respect at low-mid op from what I've both read myself and heard.

That said, what data do you intend to take from it? You'd still need the character data, which would then need to be distilled into some sort of optimization metric. Or place the adventures as the standard example of problems to solve, which I expect would short at least one person's favorite thing. I wouldn't want to actually use WotC adventures as an official standard of anything (just examples), and considering the thread I mentioned where people reported exceptionally lethal goblins I doubt Paizo makes them all the same either.

[ryu]

I was assuming flaws Cosi.

Also where are you getting those low odds for the color spray finish? Casting stat of 20, mind.

[Cosi]

I was assuming flaws Cosi.

The point isn't that you can't do it, it's that if you compare like to like (no frills core Wizard to no frills core Barbarian), the Barbarian probably doesn't have Cleave. If you can take other stuff, the Wizard could just be a Gnome who gets 0th level silent image or something and be even better.

[Aimeryan]

I was thinking over the Niche Ranking System, their should be a way to turn that into a tier system. I would invert the rankings so higher is better, let their be a versatility score that is the total of the highest rankings a specific build can pull off, then work on the definitions a little bit- Say Melee 4 is killing a tough monster of equal CR in 2 rounds, melee 3 is killing a tough monster of -2 CR in 3 rounds type of deal.

Or healer 4 is negating multiple rounds of damage from an equal cr opponent, and 1 is just saving some money on consumables. 0 would be that class not contributing at all.

I do think the Niche Ranking System is the closest to ideal, but I don't think it needs to end up being a tiering system per say. In fact, I would a tiering system is a downgrade on a niche system since a tiering system is essentially condensing everything together and giving a rough estimate of how that class/character will perform in an average campaign, where as a niche system tells you specifically what they are good at and thus you can actually get an idea of how they will perform in wildly different campaigns.

With that said, I do think that Person_Man's implementation is quite rough; the values of any one particular niche do not show enough granularity, and the niches are not equal in usefulness to be fine with contributing to the total value equally - there could probably be more niches as well. Further improvement would also come from dividing into level ranges, although I understand that he may have wanted to keep it simple.

Back to being on topic, I think personally I will value the class notes and the discussions more than the resultant tiering, simply because they are more useful than a single number. Still, I agree with the premise that Eggynack and others have championed of removing the prescriptions to the tiers that result in weird tier assignations; instead, just using a power-versatility comparison to tier by. It is useful for balancing.

I do have a few qualms; should Bard and Duskblade (or any of the other gishes) be in the same tier? I would say no, but then either one goes up or one goes down (or many, in the case of the gishes). If you remove the gamebreaking prescription, can Bard fit in Tier 2? If not, and given that the gishes should not exist in Tier 4, do you create a Tier 3.5? If you remove all the gishes to Tier 3.5, remove the Beguiler and Dread Necromancer to Tier 2, what is left in Tier 3? Bard.

I think with my graphs I have shown that Bard could potentially be in Tier 2 with the gamebreaking prescription removed. Maybe I am overestimating the abilities of a Bard? They can be strong in a few things (Interaction, for the most part), and competent in most everything else. They would fit the alt state I listed for Tier 2, as I see it.

[Troacctid]

Adventures can be pretty different depending on who is writing them and what kind of runtime they're expected to have. I've noticed there are a lot of modules with looong dungeon crawls that can really strain a spellcaster's resources. On the other hand, the Adventurers League modules I've been running the past few weeks are designed to be done in about 2 to 4 hours; as such, they rarely have more than three combat encounters, so 3.5e spellcasters would basically never exhaust their spell slots ever. (Luckily 5e casters have fewer slots.)


I was assuming flaws Cosi.

Also where are you getting those low odds for the color spray finish? Casting stat of 20, mind.
18 in the primary stat for both characters. Pretty standard.

[Bucky]

I'm starting to think we should have split the tier 1 round into full list known vs. spells acquirable.

[GilesTheCleric]

I wouldn't want to actually use WotC adventures as an official standard of anything (just examples), and considering the thread I mentioned where people reported exceptionally lethal goblins I doubt Paizo makes them all the same either.

Well, we'll have to keep looking for some other practical metric, then. Surveying and analysing a large dataset of players/ tables just isn't on the table, since we don't have the means to do so.

I think that either looking at adventures, looking at monsters, looking at the DMG guidelines, or possibly looking at playtest characters are the only real options available if you want something physical you can point to and say "this specific thing is my basis for minimum optimisation".

[ryu]

Adventures can be pretty different depending on who is writing them and what kind of runtime they're expected to have. I've noticed there are a lot of modules with looong dungeon crawls that can really strain a spellcaster's resources. On the other hand, the Adventurers League modules I've been running the past few weeks are designed to be done in about 2 to 4 hours; as such, they rarely have more than three combat encounters, so 3.5e spellcasters would basically never exhaust their spell slots ever. (Luckily 5e casters have fewer slots.)


18 in the primary stat for both characters. Pretty standard.

Nah man, nah. 18 from point buy on a proper gray elf. Why would a caster ever start with less than 20 in their main stat if they didn't have to?

Cosi: Are you familiar with the concept of letting your opponent have things you view as unimportant such that if they quibble later you can point it out? Standard debate tactic.

[Calthropstu]

Nah man, nah. 18 from point buy on a proper gray elf. Why would a caster ever start with less than 20 in their main stat if they didn't have to?

Cosi: Are you familiar with the concept of letting your opponent have things you view as unimportant such that if they quibble later you can point it out? Standard debate tactic.

Exactly why I abhor the point buy system.

[Bucky]

Moving this from the T1 casters thread:

I suppose a better standard for the floor is "what's the worst character that someone might build if they need a tier list to tell them how good the class is, assuming that once the character is built they seek advice from an expert on how to play it?"

How much optimization are we assuming at build-time, and how much tactical skill at play-time?

How heavily do we weight various portions of the skill/optimization spectrum?

[Cosi]

Cosi: Are you familiar with the concept of letting your opponent have things you view as unimportant such that if they quibble later you can point it out? Standard debate tactic.

Sure. But I think Barbarian with Flaws v Wizard with Abrupt Jaunt is a weird place to start from.

[ryu]

Moving this from the T1 casters thread:


How much optimization are we assuming at build-time, and how much tactical skill at play-time?

How heavily do we weight various portions of the skill/optimization spectrum?

Well consider that we are far past the point of the game's main run cycle, and that in consequence most of the people left are likely hardly ''casual noobs.'' Are they all heavy optimization forumites? No. They probably do have a pretty reasonable degree of competence, and experience though.

Cosi: Yeah, but notice I haven't used flaws yet. I also haven't disallowed the opponent from using ACFs or for that matter locked them to barbarian. The only limitation/goal on them is solving an encounter in a single turn with a broadsword with comparable likelihood of success.

[Troacctid]

Nah man, nah. 18 from point buy on a proper gray elf. Why would a caster ever start with less than 20 in their main stat if they didn't have to?
You could make the Wizard a high elf and the weapon-user an orc if you like. That gives you 96% to drop at least one enemy with Color Spray and 64% to drop two. Then the orc has 60% to drop one enemy and 36% to drop two.

[ryu]

You could make the Wizard a high elf and the weapon-user an orc if you like. That gives you 96% to drop at least one enemy with Color Spray and 64% to drop two. Then the orc has 60% to drop one enemy and 36% to drop two.

And the comparison gets worse for you because as pointed previously you've been allowed flaws to even get your cleave, and thus I can an equivalent number of feats to buff save DC or add nasty bonus effects that always go off.

[Troacctid]

And the comparison gets worse for you because as pointed previously you've been allowed flaws to even get your cleave, and thus I can an equivalent number of feats to buff save DC or add nasty bonus effects that always go off.
I mean, in this comparison, you presumably have your first level as a Fighter, although you could make it Warblade if you really want it to be lopsided.

[ryu]

I mean, in this comparison, you presumably have your first level as a Fighter, although you could make it Warblade if you really want it to be lopsided.

I thought you said you were barbarian? What? Dude. Level 1.

[Fizban]

Well, we'll have to keep looking for some other practical metric, then. Surveying and analysing a large dataset of players/ tables just isn't on the table, since we don't have the means to do so.

I think that either looking at adventures, looking at monsters, looking at the DMG guidelines, or possibly looking at playtest characters are the only real options available if you want something physical you can point to and say "this specific thing is my basis for minimum optimisation".
To be clear, I think my metric for equivalent optimization can be made fairly practical. While on the DM's side, I think a few simple prescriptions such as "not deliberately screwing the PCs for not having something" would do the job.

[Troacctid]

I thought you said you were barbarian? What? Dude. Level 1.
When did I say that?

I mean you could always be both at once by going Warblade if you want. Steel Wind is a better Cleave and Punishing Stance is basically at-will Rage.

[GilesTheCleric]

To be clear, I think my metric for equivalent optimization can be made fairly practical. While on the DM's side, I think a few simple prescriptions such as "not deliberately screwing the PCs for not having something" would do the job.

To be clear, do you mean taking a straight average of the ceiling and floor of each class?

[ryu]

When did I say that?

I mean you could always be both at once by going Warblade if you want. Steel Wind is a better Cleave and Punishing Stance is basically at-will Rage.

Oh wait. That was bucky. So long as we can agree that level one barbarians aren't tier 2? I mean the disparity smaller, but no they're not.

[Troacctid]

Oh wait. That was bucky. So long as we can agree that level one barbarians aren't tier 2? I mean the disparity smaller, but no they're not.
I mean, we could make 30 different tier systems each covering a different level range, but that seems a bit excessive. My point was that Wizards have challenges at low levels where Druids do not, and at later levels, they're both overpowered enough that it doesn't matter that the Wizard is somewhat more overpowered.

[ryu]

I mean, we could make 30 different tier systems each covering a different level range, but that seems a bit excessive. My point was that Wizards have challenges at low levels where Druids do not, and at later levels, they're both overpowered enough that it doesn't matter that the Wizard is somewhat more overpowered.

I was pointing out that a well built wizard who knows he's starting from one is perfectly capable of soloing level appropriate party encounters with very little chance of dying, unless we're talking outliers like the crab.

[Gnaeus]

Voting Q. Can we say votes don't count if the posters account hasn't been active for more than a few days or minimum number of posts? I'm starting to imagine 200 spam sorcerer accounts saying Sorcerer is T1 or 0

[Fizban]

To be clear, do you mean taking a straight average of the ceiling and floor of each class?
That average would only prove where you put the break points. My equivalent optimization was back on page 2: the more stuff and the further away that stuff is from the source of the class, the more optimized the build is, then establish what your idea of standard optimization is for the center and shade it with the rest if you must. I'd also want to account for spell selection in there, even from the same book. Could extend that to more choices. The obvious starting point is counting up from the class as written, but people hate that since their minimum optimization levels are always dozens of elements.

[ryu]

Voting Q. Can we say votes don't count if the posters account hasn't been active for more than a few days or minimum number of posts? I'm starting to imagine 200 spam sorcerer accounts saying Sorcerer is T1 or 0

I second this motion from the ocean. Good, common sense rule.

[Cosi]

Voting Q. Can we say votes don't count if the posters account hasn't been active for more than a few days or minimum number of posts? I'm starting to imagine 200 spam sorcerer accounts saying Sorcerer is T1 or 0

Discounting votes from banned posters is probably better. I wouldn't want to screw over some new user who joined because they though Wizards being crap or Sorcerers being boss was underrepresented. Also, if it's who we think, the posts will be deleted (and I don't think he's smart enough to try anyway).

[Gnaeus]

Discounting votes from banned posters is probably better. I wouldn't want to screw over some new user who joined because they though Wizards being crap or Sorcerers being boss was underrepresented. Also, if it's who we think, the posts will be deleted (and I don't think he's smart enough to try anyway).

But if one hypothetically made accounts just to vote for a certain class, and didn't use them again, it would be hard to identify them as being from a certain banned poster. I have difficulty imagining a new user who popped in, voted on a tiering thread, and didn't stick around for anything else. It's kinda obscure.

[lylsyly]

I would have to say that they would probably give themselves away, being too ***-headed to abandon the same old rhetoric ;)

[Gnaeus]

I would have to say that they would probably give themselves away, being too ***-headed to abandon the same old rhetoric ;)
You may be right. My inability to understand the behavior makes it hard to predict. But I still think a rule about minimum activity would make the results harder to screw with.

[Cosi]

But if one hypothetically made accounts just to vote for a certain class, and didn't use them again, it would be hard to identify them as being from a certain banned poster. I have difficulty imagining a new user who popped in, voted on a tiering thread, and didn't stick around for anything else. It's kinda obscure.

I guess, but the idea of someone spamming temporary accounts to skew voting seems pretty unlikely too. Also, the only person who seems likely to do it is very unlikely to pull it off without getting their posts wiped.

[ryu]

I would have to say that they would probably give themselves away, being too ***-headed to abandon the same old rhetoric ;)

I mean do you really wanna chance it? Besides I think if you really wanna give new posters the benefit of the doubt you can just go to the profiles and see if they have literally any other activity. A huge number of new posters posting exactly one and only one thing of the same content near each other is sketchy.

[Bucky]

Oh wait. That was bucky. So long as we can agree that level one barbarians aren't tier 2? I mean the disparity smaller, but no they're not.

I would prefer to save the bulk of discussion for the actual barbarian thread. But I'd also like to point out that a claim that barbarians are tier 2 at level 1 does not rule out that wizards and druids are tier 1 at the same level.

[ryu]

I would prefer to save the bulk of discussion for the actual barbarian thread. But I'd also like to point out that a claim that barbarians are tier 2 at level 1 does not rule out that wizards and druids are tier 1 at the same level.

Oh I know. If you actually had claimed such we would've had a much more severe argument. As it stands I think you still underestimate the gap pretty vastly.

[eggynack]

Not sure which thread you're referring to. My next post after that in this thread was basically the next step I perceived in the argument, based on what you were saying in the other thread, which in no way removed any of what I'd said in the previous post.
I dunno. You had kinda similar scales of arguments going on in both threads. This is one of the big faults of this multiple thread model, I think. The part where conversations sometimes run off track in one thread in a way where they should be in another thread was an earlier and somewhat obvious issue. That the three (and eventually more) threads can sometimes act as a weird mega-thread that's difficult to follow is a more complex and non-obvious issue.



Better then, but still a problem. Without any sort of definition there's no fulcrum by which to attempt to convince anyone of anything. You still get people voting with nothing but how "obvious" it is that something is better and dismissing anyone who disagrees, which if anything I'd say is worse than votes without comment.
I'm not really dismissing people I disagree with. They say it's better, and then attempt to convince people it's better. The, "Wizards only have four spells at each spell level," argument was apparently not sufficiently convincing. Didn't particularly convince me.


And while we would have been ignored in Jor's thread, we remain effectively ignored here, able to rile up pages of argument which don't seem to merit change, or at least didn't until now.
I'm not necessarily going to agree with every change you suggest. That doesn't mean I'm ignoring you. Again, I've discussed a lot of what you've brought up. It's very possible I've ignored you the least of just about any person.


In the sense that it's what's driving me nuts. I still don't think it's the best system, but with the added section some previous arguments are at least now properly defensible.
Works for me, I guess. Ain't gonna satisfy everyone completely.


I'm not sure with what you mean by the latter, but if we've found a new problem then that's progress. Well I actually consider it the oldest of problems, but trying to get anyone to admit that is worse than pulling teeth, see present.

What I meant was that people run into major snags a lot, and fixing the snags I've seen was a big goal.



Yup, and Moprhic thinks the tiers should be more narrow, and I think they should be more wide, but since we're being told it's more narrow I'm protesting by supporting the side that's not narrow enough until such time as it's actually made clear (1/3 of the way there)
I'm not sure if the tier width is an actual issue though. In a reality where you and I perfectly agreed about how good every class was, your note that the tier width is wrong would be really straightforward. You and I would see identical current widths, and I could adjust or not adjust them on that basis. In this reality though, the issue could be that the tiers are wrongly sized, or it could just be that you're mistaken about where a class lands, tier-wise, or perhaps that I am. You might say, for the sake of example, that warmages are so clearly better than any tier three class while still landing lower than tier two that it demands that the tiers be changed to suit that. However, if I don't think warmages land that high, then clearly that argument will ring fundamentally untrue to me. It's a weird situation.


And you're standing over there suggesting that most games with wizards features said wizards buying all sorts of scrolls or adding spells, despite the fact that the designers themselves assumed that not to be the case all over the place. Where? Well, there's the language that doesn't guarantee magic item sales, or spell copying rights, the entirely random nature of found treasure (20-30% scroll chance, which is then only 70% arcane and rolls randomly off PHB only spells) and any module where a town has a shopping description more limited than "whatever you want," which is plenty. Thus your typical game state seems radically off the mark as a result. (Yes I see those statblocks in Enemies and Allies with extra spells in them, which tell us only about character creation and don't invalidate the DMs that think spell acquisition rules are meant as as a sign of limits to build upon rather than allowing easy access).

I wasn't suggesting that wizards necessarily have access to any spell they want. Simply that wizards are assumed to have access to significantly more than four spells of each spell level. Maybe that fifth spell is fireball, or maybe it's black tentacles, and the specifics of this fifth spell is an important thing to analyze, but the fifth spell exists, as does, likely, the sixth, and so on. Larger cities likely offer a wide selection of spells, smaller ones have more narrow and lower level offerings, and treasure spells are more or less random. But the spells exist, and the wizard can have them.


The "bar" is that you are making assumptions about what the average table does. I've never seen anyone actually present data on what the average table does. You're saying that any op below a certain point has a low enough share that it doesn't actually affect the tiers, and that point is based on your thinking that average optimization levels are significantly higher. Do I disagree? With no data my only response can be to make those assumptions plain because to claim that the truth is anything else would be a lie.


No, optimization levels have nothing to do with DM leniency, which is what you're relying on when you say that the Wizard can improve their power level beyond their initial picks. Weather or not the Druid player bothered to playtest their class tells us nothing about
They have something to do with each other. The overall combining theme is that this is ultimately how crappy or how good the designers thought the classes were, inclusive of both optimization level and leniency as factors. They thought the druid would go all in on scimitars, existing at that general level of goodness, and that the wizard would pick up some extra spells, existing at that general level of goodness.


And your assumption of what the majority of optimization levels is, is your bias. You can't even claim all optimization levels are equal, because you refuse to define them. All you can say is that you think most tables are more optimized, and I say that instead of making that assumption invisibly you should make it openly.
The whole idea here is that we talk about multiple separate optimization levels. We talk about low scale situations, where the wizard is operating on few and mediocre spells, and moderate scale situations, where the wizard is optimizing their spell selection reasonably, and high scale situations, where crazy stuff happens. We definitely don't just talk about some perfect center point that I determine, and neither do we hang out near entirely at the bottom of the curve.


The "hiding behind the voting system" fallacy. You've made a thread, effectively appointing yourself leader, and leaders can't just ignore their minority constituents. You've finally incorporated some explanation of what problems are (progress!), now all we need is an explanation of optimization levels and what band gets the majority of weight, and what the standard level of DM leniency is.
This is, again, the opposite of ignoring you. If you want some explanation of optimization levels, come up with one, post it, and then I'll either be like, "Nah, this has these issues over here, falling into the reasons I didn't want to lay out this explanation in the first place," or, "Wow, yeah, that makes sense and doesn't overly confine the operation of the system. I'll include it right away," or, third option, I'll wait a bit to see if people who aren't me seem to like it. And, in the first and third scenario, you can always revise stuff and argue your position and such.



I do have a few qualms; should Bard and Duskblade (or any of the other gishes) be in the same tier? I would say no, but then either one goes up or one goes down (or many, in the case of the gishes). If you remove the gamebreaking prescription, can Bard fit in Tier 2? If not, and given that the gishes should not exist in Tier 4, do you create a Tier 3.5? If you remove all the gishes to Tier 3.5, remove the Beguiler and Dread Necromancer to Tier 2, what is left in Tier 3? Bard.
I think the more combat oriented classes have a better shot at three than they did under the old system. You don't have to be quite so great at everything as you used to. Like, warmage is currently reading as a three premised largely on native combat ability combined with largely optimization driven non-combat. You could get a similar read on the duskblade, I think.


I think with my graphs I have shown that Bard could potentially be in Tier 2 with the gamebreaking prescription removed. Maybe I am overestimating the abilities of a Bard? They can be strong in a few things (Interaction, for the most part), and competent in most everything else. They would fit the alt state I listed for Tier 2, as I see it.
That sounds like overestimating to me. Bards have good casting, but it's not on the same level as any of the classes I'd call tier two. It's significantly slower and significantly narrower. Even without game breaking, bards are inevitably falling below the line of, "Practically optimized spells known on a full caster."



How much optimization are we assuming at build-time, and how much tactical skill at play-time?

How heavily do we weight various portions of the skill/optimization spectrum?
My thinking is that build-time and play-time are kinda similar, except with the stipulation that the tactical skill stuff allows for a ton more iteration. If a class builds easy but is hard to play, then the class plays badly at the start and then gets better over time. If a class builds hard but is easy to play, then the class mostly just plays badly. Y'know, in a power level sense. Build decisions are just play decisions that you make once a level instead of once a day or once a round. The shorter the time between attempts, the harder the task at hand can be before being problematic.

Voting Q. Can we say votes don't count if the posters account hasn't been active for more than a few days or minimum number of posts? I'm starting to imagine 200 spam sorcerer accounts saying Sorcerer is T1 or 0
Current plan is no. My baseline provision is whether the claim is justified. If someone just tosses out a bunch of votes, then that won't count. If they just repeat the same thing over and over again, then obviously we can point at that and be like, "Hey, this is probably the same person, let's talk about not counting them more than once, or even once necessarily." If a person creates multiple accounts, and posts a differently styled and differently justified argument that the sorcerer is tier one, such that we can't detect it's the same person, jeez, I dunno. I guess we're screwed? Seems like a long shot though. Do we really expect this spammer to be so skilled so as to be undetectable? That's such a sophisticated hack of such an unimportant system. At some level of dedication, we might have to just give the system to this golden god of sock puppeting. We can reevaluate this stuff if/when something like that is apparently happening. Is it happening? I haven't gone through the tier one thread yet.

[GilesTheCleric]

That average would only prove where you put the break points. My equivalent optimization was back on page 2: the more stuff and the further away that stuff is from the source of the class, the more optimized the build is, then establish what your idea of standard optimization is for the center and shade it with the rest if you must. I'd also want to account for spell selection in there, even from the same book. Could extend that to more choices. The obvious starting point is counting up from the class as written, but people hate that since their minimum optimization levels are always dozens of elements.

Ah, okay. Maybe I was thinking of a different poster, then. What you describe is the same approach I'm using (and I think that most people are?) so I'm not sure if we're disagreeing here. I guess we could differentiate between source access and leverage, in which the build made with higher system mastery gets more out of the selfsame sources, but it seems to me like there's at least a baseline where we could agree that any given player is going to at least attempt to make something functional, if not powerful.

[EldritchWeaver]

Reading the arguments against and for rating wizard as tier 2 cast some doubt if the averaging approach actually works. There is literally a definition missing which provides both the range of builds and their actual ratio of use at real tables. Which means that depending on how common someone views certain builds are being used, the actual result is different.

Actually, the missing definition isn't quite correct. eggynack said that enough tier 1 builds are used to drown out the rest. So let's see what kind of assumptions need to be true, that this is actually correct. It has been stated in this thread (or the other one) that wizards are hard to optimize and that an actual build can be placed at any tier from 1 to 5. That implies to me that the possible build space is quite homogeneous. When drawing builds randomly, you get from each tier roughly the same amount. The average would be then 5*0.2 + 4*0.2 + 3*0.2 + 2*0.2 + 1*0.2 = 3.

So obviously some optimization bias is required. Let's half the rate of the lower tiers then: 5*0.1 + 4*0.1 + 3*0.1 + 2*0.1 + 1*0.6 = 2.1. That provides a jump by one tier, but clearly isn't enough. Considering that 60% of tables would play high-op, it makes sense to also assume that the lower tiers are less likely to occur than the other high tiers. 5*0.01 + 4*0.04 + 3*0.10 + 2*0.25 + 1*0.6 = 1.61. Still not enough to place the wizard into tier 1. Let's try it once more: 5*0.01 + 4*0.02 + 3*0.05 + 2*0.30 + 1*0.62 = 1.5.

So that's the curve (or better) which needs to be reflected by reality to get according to eggynack's the wizard into tier 1. So how likely is it that 2/3 of the game tables employ tier 1 wizard builds? I don't know, I only have anecdotic evidence that in a number of disparate groups I've never seen such build. Nor can I remember that scrolls dropped as part of the loot. They might have been there, but then must have been effectively unimportant enough to leave no memory of them. I don't think that eggynack can provide better data, which means that all averaging is based on assumptions no one can prove to be correct. So doing so is useless as anyone can just change the weights around to get the result they want.

It also reduces the amount of information one can glean from the tier list as a GM. Imagine two classes, A and B, being placed in tier 3. A has both optimization floor and ceiling at 3, but B ranges from 5 to 1. Now a GM decides he doesn't want in his campaign any class which isn't rated as tier 3 for balance reasons. Then depending on optimization only, the player of A outshines the player of B or vice versa. Would the GM think of this cause or rather complain about the tier list being incorrect? So my vote goes for defining various optimization levels, which explicitly state what you can expect there, and then rate the classes inside this environment.

This sidesteps the issues how likely it is if a certain class can access scrolls from some other class lists. Also it provides a way to stick a class in the correct tier for that optimization level. After all various arguments have been made that classes move between tiers if certain expectations aren't met, like not spending appropriate WBL on the big 6 magic items.

[OldTrees1]

This sidesteps the issues how likely it is if a certain class can access scrolls from some other class lists. Also it provides a way to stick a class in the correct tier for that optimization level. After all various arguments have been made that classes move between tiers if certain expectations aren't met, like not spending appropriate WBL on the big 6 magic items.

Reminder: The author of the article (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20070302a) was surprised players were limiting themselves to those 6 items. It is not a game expectation that players would limit themselves to those items. In fact it is quite the contrary. The developers expected player to buy other items & took efforts to further motivate players to buy items beyond the big 6 once they noticed the hesitancy.

[EldritchWeaver]

Reminder: The author of the article (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20070302a) was surprised players were limiting themselves to those 6 items. It is not a game expectation that players would limit themselves to those items. In fact it is quite the contrary. The developers expected player to buy other items & took efforts to further motivate players to buy items beyond the big 6 once they noticed the hesitancy.

So we should ignore the way how people play the game because the designers told us to do so?

[ryu]

So we should ignore the way how people play the game because the designers told us to do so?

It's the established baseline of how many items you're expected to have, and the only thing of authority short of actually surveying tables.

[OldTrees1]

So we should ignore the way how people play the game because the designers told us to do so?

Depends on what you are measuring.

Generally the tier system ignores people playing down(The Fireball Wizard or the 3 Wisdom Druid do not drop the tier of those classes).

However the game's expectations can help us calibrate our own expectations.

Mostly I was just saying "do not presume class X will be outfitted with only the big 6 because not even the designers nor the game presume that".

[GilesTheCleric]

It's the established baseline of how many items you're expected to have, and the only thing of authority short of actually surveying tables.

There's also some suggested item progressions in PHB2 that show the same thing.

[EldritchWeaver]

Depends on what you are measuring.

Generally the tier system ignores people playing down(The Fireball Wizard or the 3 Wisdom Druid do not drop the tier of those classes).

However the game's expectations can help us calibrate our own expectations.

At what point would the way the game is actually played override the game designers' expectations? I can understand the reasoning of your point of view, but if the tier system doesn't reflect the reality then its usefulness decreases.


Mostly I was just saying "do not presume class X will be outfitted with only the big 6 because not even the designers nor the game presume that".

If you define several optimization levels, you can have one where the big 6 are used and one where they aren't.

[OldTrees1]

There's also some suggested item progressions in PHB2 that show the same thing.

Interestingly, the article that was being talked about said it is expected that PCs would have items beyond the big 6 (the designers even tried to emphasize that more with MiC when designing MiC).


At what point would the way the game is actually played override the game designers' expectations? I can understand the reasoning of your point of view, but if the tier system doesn't reflect the reality then its usefulness decreases.



If you define several optimization levels, you can have one where the big 6 are used and one where they aren't.

Consider the competence the game expects as a floor for considering the game. When actual play is above exception in a game we usually call that skill. When actual play is below expectations, we usually call that "still learning how to play".

Fair point about optimization levels. I just wanted to point out that the game expects you to have items beyond those and was designed with that expectation in mind.

[GilesTheCleric]

Interestingly, the article that was being talked about said it is expected that PCs would have items beyond the big 6 (the designers even tried to emphasize that more with MiC when designing MiC).

PHB2 was published before MIC. I think the expected item progression might have left some wealth open for other items, but I'm AFB so I can't check.

[OldTrees1]

PHB2 was published before MIC. I think the expected item progression might have left some wealth open for other items, but I'm AFB so I can't check.

Sorry. I was going based off the tone I was getting from your post(I though my earlier post was being interpreted as its direct opposite within 3 posts later). I now think I misread the tone.

The Equipment per level kits in PHB II are for NPCs, and spend all their money (as you would do for NPCs) towards stat increases, dust of disappearance, winged boots, boots of teleportation, cape of the mountebank

[ryu]

At what point would the way the game is actually played override the game designers' expectations? I can understand the reasoning of your point of view, but if the tier system doesn't reflect the reality then its usefulness decreases.



If you define several optimization levels, you can have one where the big 6 are used and one where they aren't.

Simple the way the game is actually played is a nebulous concept that you'd have to show being disproportionately stingy before such could override anything much less the swaths upon swaths of content dedicated to showing that, yes, magic items exist, they are traded in this volume in communities of this size, there are this many wizards, cleric priests and so in that same community, and that you dear PCs are expected to have such and such amount of gold to trade with.

[GilesTheCleric]

Sorry. I was going based off the tone I was getting from your post(I though my earlier post was being interpreted as its direct opposite within 3 posts later). I now think I misread the tone.

The Equipment per level kits in PHB II are for NPCs, and spend all their money (as you would do for NPCs) towards stat increases, dust of disappearance, winged boots, boots of teleportation, cape of the mountebank

Sorry, too. I didn't mean to come off as rude or retaliatory. It's tricky to do tone over text.

[eggynack]

Just posted the results for the tier one thread. As before, voting and discussion are still open. I'll probably go back into the fixed list casters thread at some point to include any information I don't have yet. I should have up the next thread, which is still mundane inclined but a bit undefined in terms of which specific mundanes I'm working with, tomorrow. I'm defining mundane, very specifically for the purposes of this query, as excluding anything with any casting, as well as stuff on the level of ToB. ToB's getting its own thing. I think it'll be nice getting a break from all these casterly shenanigans. The timing on this seems solid, meanwhile. The fixed list caster thread seems dead, and the tier one caster thread is dying down from its previous craziness, so we should have like 1.5-2 effective threads. Oh, and cause I haven't mentioned it here, I'm gonna swap out wizard in the tier one description with cleric and druid. It was a possibility before any of those shenanigans, and after them it seems like a good idea.

Edit: Couldn't bring myself to ditch wizard completely. I'm just gonna include all three.

[eggynack]

I've added the new thread here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?516602-Retiering-the-Classes-Barbarian-Fighter-Samurai-(CW)-and-Samurai-(OA)&p=21747927#post21747927). For those sick of casters all the time forever, this should be a relief. For those that want to talk nothing but casters all the time forever, worry not, for there shall be more casters coming in the future.

On a more procedural note, I've decided to remove the tier count from the starting posts. It was a serious hassle to maintain, and was causing me to update the spreadsheet less frequently. I added the information to the spreadsheet though, so you can still know how far we are from shifting a class' tier position on a consistent basis. We did lose the rare fractional data in the count, but that value is still present on the sheet, and factors into mean and median calculations as is usual.

[Aimeryan]

Tier three: The archetypal tier three is the bard, though that class is generally considered near the top of that range. Again, we gotta sacrifice something compared to tier two, and the usual sacrifice is that you get to very good at solving a lot of problems, though, as with tier two, there's a ton of possible arrangements. You might get to incredibly good at solving some problems, or alright at solving all problems, or, really, any of a rough infinity of possible iterations.


I would like to request a change in this description. I am aware the descriptions are not meant to be prescriptive, however, they will be seen that way by some.

The issue here is that I do not feel Bard is archetypal at all - the vast amount of Tier 3 will (if it follows form previous tiering) be saturated with gishes, all of which are of far less power than the Bard. Noticeably, the Beguiler and Dread Necromancer have already move on up to Tier 2, so you have Bard, Jester, and gishes in Tier 3. You have highlighted that the Bard is actually top of the range (I would even argue its something like Tier 2.5, but eh), but you have still listed it as the archetype. The archetypal class of Tier 3 should be Warblade or Psychic Warrior or Crusader, or any other gish, really.

This then forms the "usual sacrifice is..." part, which then follows as being poorly descriptive of the gish classes. The gish classes are very good at solving a couple of problems and competent at solving a few more. They are not very good at solving a lot of problems, not competent at solving all problems, not incredibly good at solving some problems. The last is perhaps the closest, if you dropped the incredible and the changed the some to a few.

I think we are close to getting this right and the gishes could then be called Tier 3 instead of Tier 3.5, but the description of Tier 3 needs to be brought down a few notches. It should not be a description that just matches the Bard. As an aside, if this description was changed the graphs I created could be very easily listed along side your Tiers as a visual reference (and I give permission to do so):



https://s21.postimg.org/9vxlbfib7/Tier_1.png (https://postimg.org/image/9vxlbfib7/)
https://s21.postimg.org/tf78hwneb/Tier_2.png (https://postimg.org/image/tf78hwneb/)
https://s21.postimg.org/5e0cgg8kz/Tier_3_5.png (https://postimg.org/image/5e0cgg8kz/)
https://s21.postimg.org/n6lwobptf/Tier_4.png (https://postimg.org/image/n6lwobptf/)
https://s21.postimg.org/mjmzyssxf/Tier_5.png (https://postimg.org/image/mjmzyssxf/)
https://s21.postimg.org/ophatawdv/Tier_6.png (https://postimg.org/image/ophatawdv/)


Tier 1
Tier 2
Tier 3
Tier 4
Tier 5
Tier 6


425 CP
315 CP
210 CP
115 CP
70 CP
30 CP



Sheet located here (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mI8BhtaWRUJihrN73b0m1UUWxu6bMTSgItE_U-j8jfs/edit?usp=sharing)

[eggynack]

You may be correct. My thinking, though, is that tier three will wind up somewhat more defined by the act of constructing it. The psychic warrior, for example could go either way, and premised on that we'd wind up with a stronger idea of where the next class will go. The big issue you identified is a notable one though, that it somewhat assumes homogeneous capability in all areas of expertise, which doesn't even hold true for the bard. I decided to go with bard, not strictly because it was representative, but because it's one of the few classes that's broadly agreed to fall there. Crusader, incarnate, psychic warrior, factotum, duskblade, all of these are highly controversial. Ostensibly, one of the core goals of this thread series is to resolve said controversies, but I don't think I should unilaterally determine that a particular class that hasn't been broadly agreed upon falls one way or the other. If I were to say, "Psychic warrior is the baseline tier three," then that would resolve a lot of the issue you're citing, which would be great, but it might not fall there.

Still, going in a weird reverse fashion, which would mean picking out some maybe tier three classes, voting on them, and then using that to construct a definition, might be really weird. I expect the thread after next to be about some of those, and the extent to which the definitions should determine that voting, versus the extent to which voting should determine the definitions, is tricky. It might be worth getting some variety of consensus as to what constitutes a tier three, or at least picking a class that isn't the bard.

[Aimeryan]

I think I understand where you are coming from; the tiers should be rough orderings of ability rather than restricted by the definitions of what is there. I would be fine with just removing the archetype and usual performance paragraphs altogether - at least until the classes have all been tiered.

If the descriptions remain, you need a tier that is suitably described for the gishes (which is a substantial category), one way or the other.

Edit: Looking at Tier 4's description, it might be too strong, which is causing further problems:


Tier four: Here we're in ranger/barbarian territory (though the ranger should be considered largely absent of ACF's and stuff to hit this tier, as will be talked about later). Starting from that usual tier three position of very good at solving a lot of problems, the usual sweet spots here are very good at solving a few problems, or alright at solving many problems.

My understanding of Tier 4 is that they are very good at solving one or maybe two problems, and that is it. A "few" may be too many. I do not mean this in a prescriptive sense, but merely in what usually goes into Tier 4. Barbarian, which you listed as an archetype, is not "very good at solving a few problems"; its very good at solving one problem, possibly two.

It still wouldn't really fit the gishes, although it is closer than Tier 3's; while "very good at solving a few problems" may be acceptable (I would prefer "couple"), it would leave out being competent in a few more. In either case, the issue is that the gishes should not be in the same tier as the Barbarian, but based on the descriptions Tier 4 is actually the closest for both, with Tier 3 being way too much for either. The whole Tier 3.5 is coming back, even though it would only leave Tier 3 for the Bard (and perhaps Jester).

Why not just weaken Tier 3's description so it can suitably fit more than just the Bard?

[Fizban]

Ah, okay. Maybe I was thinking of a different poster, then. What you describe is the same approach I'm using (and I think that most people are?) so I'm not sure if we're disagreeing here. I guess we could differentiate between source access and leverage, in which the build made with higher system mastery gets more out of the selfsame sources, but it seems to me like there's at least a baseline where we could agree that any given player is going to at least attempt to make something functional, if not powerful.
The disagreement is that I'm demanding we state what the standard is, not the baseline. Even if we all agree that an "unoptimized" wizard is a tier 3 blaster, that doesn't matter because "unoptimized" builds apparently only count for taking the edge off of the optimized builds. If the majority of builds are supposed to be "mid-op," that needs to be defined.

I think making two new axis would probably be going too far, but it is clear that for some people "mid-op" is taking all the right spells*, buying a significant percentage of the right items, and taking some percentage of the right feats, from some acceptable number of books. What percentage? How many sources? People are using the "average" excuse to jump around all over the place without actually admitting what they think the middle should be, and as always I think it's because they're afraid to look at it because they know it's a heck of a lot more than "baseline" sounds like.

*And it's always all the right spells. Never a situation where the Wizard and Sorcerer both lack the right spell, which as long as the DM hasn't screwed them, will favor the Sorcerer's ability to pick his closest spell and hammer till it fits or cobble something together out of what he does have on the spot. Because yes, if the Sorcerer has absolutely nothing useful, that's a DM screw.

In fact, I explicitly noted an emphasis on mid-op in the OP: "and across all optimization levels, prioritizing moderate optimization somewhat more than low or high." Huzzah for my occasional specificity of definition.
This would be relevant, if there was any definition of what mid-op means. Because as I keep saying, I think all your (optimizing forumites') ideas of what "mid-op" is are tainted by the fact that you've been optimizing for years and do not reflect the natural flow of new and casual players.

Also from the wizard thread:

Unless you want to stipulate that being worse on half the levels is enough to constitute a tier drop in its own, but I would expect "worse on all the levels" to be a requirement for that.
I think this is relevant. Being worse part of the time is definitively worse, but not an obvious tier gap in itself. If you're not worse all the time, then putting something a tier down for being worse part of the time means you've drawn a line about how much of a gap there is between tiers.

[Hurnn]

Just throwing this out there.

I have been thinking about it lately and maybe T1 and T2 are silly the divide between is pretty minimal in some cases, almost all actually. Really whats the difference between effectively unlimited power and unlimited power?

The truth of the matter is that under the current tiers you have 3 and 4 with a vast difference in power between them and even with in their own respective tiers. Would it possibly make more sense to combine 1 and 2 into a new T1, bump the high end T3 into a new T2, roll the low end T3 and high end T4 into a new T3, and then the middle and bottom of T4 stay where they are?

[Gemini476]

Just throwing this out there.

I have been thinking about it lately and maybe T1 and T2 are silly the divide between is pretty minimal in some cases, almost all actually. Really whats the difference between effectively unlimited power and unlimited power?

The truth of the matter is that under the current tiers you have 3 and 4 with a vast difference in power between them and even with in their own respective tiers. Would it possibly make more sense to combine 1 and 2 into a new T1, bump the high end T3 into a new T2, roll the low end T3 and high end T4 into a new T3, and then the middle and bottom of T4 stay where they are?

There's something to be said for a high-op tier list, which is pretty much what you're proposing. That could be pretty interesting, actually - comparing all the classes at their best, with the A-Game Paladin and Uberchargers and Wildshape Mystic Rangers and high-op minionmancy Commoner and all that stuff.
(Similarly, you could probably try for some kind of low-op tier list where you're just ranking the Enemies & Allies iconics. Rather than going theoretical, rank actual builds.)


But in any campaign where the TO stays Theoretical, there's still a clear and significant power gap between the capabilities of Tier 1 and Tier 2 classes and thus they should probably be separated into their own tiers. Effectively unlimited power is still different from actual unlimited power - the character with nigh-infinite money is still poorer than the one with actually infinite money.

Like, if you wanted to you could just combine everything into a single tier with the assumption that optimization is so varied that individual builds could wind up pretty much anywhere. It wouldn't be very useful, but you could do it.

(I do support some kind of Tier 3.5, though.)

[weckar]

As far as I know, there is no 'unlimited' power in 3.5 in the strictest sense. Quite the opposite: most abilities are defined by their limits. Whether it is the size of the spellbook, spells per day or a spell even existing for your purpose at all; Wizards even at their best are hardly unlimited.

EDIT: Before you counter the "existing spells" argument with spell research - anything requiring DM permission is not worth tiering because all bets are off.

[Gemini476]

As far as I know, there is no 'unlimited' power in 3.5 in the strictest sense. Quite the opposite: most abilities are defined by their limits. Whether it is the size of the spellbook, spells per day or a spell even existing for your purpose at all; Wizards even at their best are hardly unlimited.

EDIT: Before you counter the "existing spells" argument with spell research - anything requiring DM permission is not worth tiering because all bets are off.

A Wizard learning all the spells costs... less than half WBL, I think? You'll fill something like seven Boccob's Blessed Books, though. I did the math on it in 2015, I think, but I can't find the sum so it's bugging me.

A Blessed Book is 12.5gp/page, so combined with the 50gp/level cost of copying from other wizards that's 65.5gp/level/spell. (A Wizard automatically knows all 0th-level, so we can ignore the peculiarities there.)
Or 56.25gp+½xp if you're crafting the books. (Plus thirteen days per book.)
Copying the spells into the book takes a day, though, so you'll be playing an old wizard.

Lesseee....
Looking at that spell encyclopedia someone made, there are...
221 1st-level spells
305 2nd-level spells
300 3rd-level spells
257 4th-level spells
232 5th-level spells
167 6th-level spells
123 7th-level spells
102 8th-level spells
99 9th-level spells

Subtracting ten first-level spells for a starting 20 int, four each from level 2-8, and eight from level 9 (all bonus spells),

211*1=211
301*2=602
296*3=888
253*4=1008
228*5=1140
163*6=978
119*7=833
98*8=784
91*9=819

So a total of 1760 spells and 7263 spell levels - a Blessed Book for those 263 spell levels costs 12,500gp while scribing would cost 26,300, so let's go with eight books, and in total it's...
tl;dr: it costs 484,150gp to learn and scribe every single spell if you get them from other Wizards at 50gp/level (perfectly affordable, though), but if you get them from scrolls you'll have to add 1,398,375gp to that for 1,882,525gp total. (It's kind of cost-prohibitive.)

[ryu]

A Wizard learning all the spells costs... less than half WBL, I think? You'll fill something like seven Boccob's Blessed Books, though. I did the math on it in 2015, I think, but I can't find the sum so it's bugging me.

A Blessed Book is 12.5gp/page, so combined with the 50gp/level cost of copying from other wizards that's 65.5gp/level/spell. (A Wizard automatically knows all 0th-level, so we can ignore the peculiarities there.)
Or 56.25gp+½xp if you're crafting the books. (Plus thirteen days per book.)
Copying the spells into the book takes a day, though, so you'll be playing an old wizard.

Lesseee....
Looking at that spell encyclopedia someone made, there are...
221 1st-level spells
305 2nd-level spells
300 3rd-level spells
257 4th-level spells
232 5th-level spells
167 6th-level spells
123 7th-level spells
102 8th-level spells
99 9th-level spells

Subtracting ten first-level spells for a starting 20 int, four each from level 2-8, and eight from level 9 (all bonus spells),

211*1=211
301*2=602
296*3=888
253*4=1008
228*5=1140
163*6=978
119*7=833
98*8=784
91*9=819

So a total of 1760 spells and 7263 spell levels - a Blessed Book for those 263 spell levels costs 12,500gp while scribing would cost 26,300, so let's go with eight books, and in total it's...
tl;dr: it costs 484,150gp to learn and scribe every single spell if you get them from other Wizards at 50gp/level (perfectly affordable, though), but if you get them from scrolls you'll have to add 1,398,375gp to that for 1,882,525gp total. (It's kind of cost-prohibitive.)

But on the other hand you can save large amounts of money even in the scrolls only envrionment by taking numerous options for free spells, and just not picking up spells you straight up never intend to use.

[eggynack]

My understanding of Tier 4 is that they are very good at solving one or maybe two problems, and that is it. A "few" may be too many. I do not mean this in a prescriptive sense, but merely in what usually goes into Tier 4. Barbarian, which you listed as an archetype, is not "very good at solving a few problems"; its very good at solving one problem, possibly two.

It still wouldn't really fit the gishes, although it is closer than Tier 3's; while "very good at solving a few problems" may be acceptable (I would prefer "couple"), it would leave out being competent in a few more. In either case, the issue is that the gishes should not be in the same tier as the Barbarian, but based on the descriptions Tier 4 is actually the closest for both, with Tier 3 being way too much for either. The whole Tier 3.5 is coming back, even though it would only leave Tier 3 for the Bard (and perhaps Jester).

Why not just weaken Tier 3's description so it can suitably fit more than just the Bard?
You got any suggestions for these two definitions? They probably are indeed a bit off, but the specific ultimate structure is always tricky.

[Fizban]

Notes from latest sor/wiz post:

*Relevant passages on DMG 12 (Knowing the PCs), 45 (Encounters that make use of PC abilities), 46 (Preempting the character's abilities), as well as 35 (Handling Divinations)

Also, DMG support for more than one type of encounter: 45 (Different sorts of encounters), and warnings about encounters that don't consider the PCs on 48 (Tailored or status quo). And throw in the DMG's own words on balance, 13 (Keeping game balance).

Different encounters on 45 could have actually prevented me from arguing the combat-only DM if anyone had bothered looking it up, but the 45, 46, and 48 also make it clear that if you're building encounters the PCs can't solve it's your job to tell them that beforehand. The point being that this nebulous DM who's status-quo encounters make the sorcerer definitively worse than a wizard would be but also just lets the game be easier whenever someone uses divinations is actually going against the DMG, which says that a status-quo only game requires forewarning and adventures should be built in a way that divinations are essentially already accounted for.

The whole "problem solving" approach of tiering can actually be read as going against the DMG, even with categories based on types of encounters, since it says the PCs should be able to handle what they face. I maintain that rankings based on specialization/party role are more accurate since it's the usurpation of other characters which is the actual problem, now with footnotes!

Failing that, ya'll need to decide on your initial conditions and synchronize your optimization levels.

Oh, also:

Just throwing this out there.

I have been thinking about it lately and maybe T1 and T2 are silly the divide between is pretty minimal in some cases, almost all actually. Really whats the difference between effectively unlimited power and unlimited power?

The truth of the matter is that under the current tiers you have 3 and 4 with a vast difference in power between them and even with in their own respective tiers. Would it possibly make more sense to combine 1 and 2 into a new T1, bump the high end T3 into a new T2, roll the low end T3 and high end T4 into a new T3, and then the middle and bottom of T4 stay where they are?
Other people are responding to this as if he's calling for high-op tiers, but I'm reading it the opposite way as agreeing with me: lowering your optimization/player skill expectations does the same exact thing. T1 isn't much better than T2 without optimization until player skill goes up, while differences between the other classes become more obvious the lower the optimization. It actually makes the people shouting "it's obvious" more correct, since at low op/skill what's actually obvious in the class is what matters.

[Gemini476]

But on the other hand you can save large amounts of money even in the scrolls only envrionment by taking numerous options for free spells, and just not picking up spells you straight up never intend to use.

Well, yes. I doubt you even need half those spells, and could probably get away with a tenth (if even that). Collegiate wizard is a good start, although you could also cheapen it a bunch just by being a specialist and thus cutting two to three schools (in additon to getting bonus spells).

It's mostly just a thought experiment to show that yes, you can get every single Wizard spell on a Wizard for just 84,150gp more than the price of enchanting a full set of +10 shield, armor and weapon. (You can cut out a few more thousand if the armor and weapon are fancy.)

A Wizard can have the equivalent of a Cleric's spell access if they want to, it's just that it's so prohibitively expensive (i.e. slightly more expensive than being a martial character) that there's not much point to it. Especially because you don't actually need all those spells to begin with.


Incidentally, since I forgot to include it in the last post: scribing all those spells "just" takes five years. You don't need to be that old a wizard, but it likely isn't happening in the high-velocity campaigns that seem to be common.

[ryu]

Well, yes. I doubt you even need half those spells, and could probably get away with a tenth (if even that). Collegiate wizard is a good start, although you could also cheapen it a bunch just by being a specialist and thus cutting two to three schools (in additon to getting bonus spells).

It's mostly just a thought experiment to show that yes, you can get every single Wizard spell on a Wizard for just 84,150gp more than the price of enchanting a full set of +10 shield, armor and weapon. (You can cut out a few more thousand if the armor and weapon are fancy.)

A Wizard can have the equivalent of a Cleric's spell access if they want to, it's just that it's so prohibitively expensive (i.e. slightly more expensive than being a martial character) that there's not much point to it. Especially because you don't actually need all those spells to begin with.


Incidentally, since I forgot to include it in the last post: scribing all those spells "just" takes five years. You don't need to be that old a wizard, but it likely isn't happening in the high-velocity campaigns that seem to be common.

I mean.... We literally have ways of making time past a certain. Hell at high high level we have ways of traveling through time such that even if we let whatever doomsday thing happen, if we're still alive on some other plane or similar we can make it didn't happen.

[weckar]

Here's the thing: at that point you are no longer playing the game. Not really. We need to make a division between the power available to a class and the power a player would reasonably (want to) use. For some classes the former falls short of the latter and it matters. If the latter falls short of the former nobody notices.

[ryu]

Here's the thing: at that point you are no longer playing the game. Not really. We need to make a division between the power available to a class and the power a player would reasonably (want to) use. For some classes the former falls short of the latter and it matters. If the latter falls short of the former nobody notices.

I mean I just think it's important to point out that stuff like this is why we say the ceiling is so much higher. Wizard is so strong it has individual spells, not combos INDIVIDUAL SPELLS, so strong by their very nature that many of you aren't willing to consider them even being cast a single time. This is kinda part of the reason it's silly not to put wizard in tier 1. The other part being that it can get not one or two of these but as many of them as you please.

[Fizban]

I mean I just think it's important to point out that stuff like this is why we say the ceiling is so much higher. Wizard is so strong it has individual spells, not combos INDIVIDUAL SPELLS, so strong by their very nature that many of you aren't willing to consider them even being cast a single time. This is kinda part of the reason it's silly not to put wizard in tier 1. The other part being that it can get not one or two of these but as many of them as you please.
Which is more silly: rating the class within certain limits, or rating the combination of every idiotic thing someone with WotC on their paycheck ever printed and wrote "wizard" over?

[ryu]

Which is more silly: rating the class within certain limits, or rating the combination of every idiotic thing someone with WotC on their paycheck ever printed and wrote "wizard" over?

The former is sillier, because if you want to start comparing the classes and their various advantages and disadvantages, it's best to be thorough. For reasons we've gone over extensively, sorcerers are just worse wizards.

[Cosi]

The former is sillier, because if you want to start comparing the classes and their various advantages and disadvantages, it's best to be thorough. For reasons we've gone over extensively, sorcerers are just worse wizards.

Some form of the former is the only way to get coherent ratings. Just being allowed to buy items from the DMG is sufficient to break the entire game if you don't put some kind of limit on how much optimization is allowed. I think the Wizard still obviously wins on the "fair" side of that limit (for example, Spontaneous Divination + Versatile Spellcaster is cheesy, but definitely fair), but you do need to have some limit to power. Otherwise you get stupid rankings where the Wizard is Tier One because they can cast planar binding to break the game, while the Expert is Tier Five because they have to use their WBL to buy a scroll of planar binding to break the game, despite the fact that both classes have the same net effect (the game is broken).

[ryu]

Some form of the former is the only way to get coherent ratings. Just being allowed to buy items from the DMG is sufficient to break the entire game if you don't put some kind of limit on how much optimization is allowed. I think the Wizard still obviously wins on the "fair" side of that limit (for example, Spontaneous Divination + Versatile Spellcaster is cheesy, but definitely fair), but you do need to have some limit to power. Otherwise you get stupid rankings where the Wizard is Tier One because they can cast planar binding to break the game, while the Expert is Tier Five because they have to use their WBL to buy a scroll of planar binding to break the game, despite the fact that both classes have the same net effect (the game is broken).

Fairness has nothing whatsoever to do with the rating. Only exclusivity of the tricks involved. WBL does exist, but it is a finite resource, in that there are literally rules for random encounters showing up to take your loot if you get sedentary. Yeah you can use it. For a little while. Without extensive class features to use it BETTER you'll just run low on consumeables relative to your encounters, and likely die on the spot.

[Fizban]

Finally. Then as I have previously said (not surprised if it got lost), you should make note of the lack of definition and how the voters are effectively voting to determine those definitions, explicitly. And before you say "duh, that's obvious," not it's not. You present a series of definitions, vague but a guide of some sort, which are incomplete. Stating that the votes are based on personal definitions closes the loop. Without it the implication is that these are definitions to be matched, and the voting is to determine how precisely each class matches them, not to finish defining them by induction.

The way to improve it is to finish defining the parameters which influence the tiers, or make it explicit that the remainder is to be determined by induction by the reader based on what tier numbers are eventually assigned/reading the discussions. Pointing out all the flaws and telling you to incorporate your responses is the solution, you just seem to be mad at me for not converting your arguments into loose definitions.

But since you intend the voting to do that, you don't even need to add more definitions, as long as you make that clear instead.
Considering how on this very page people are arguing about what goes into a rating and weather or not it's fair, and all previous claims of "what we're tiering," yeah, I don't think it's all that clear what we're voting on.

[GilesTheCleric]

May I please request some additions to the description in the OP?

First, one on setting. I'd like a note about what we're assuming. Perhaps a "generic" setting in which all classes area treated roughly equally, such as Greyhawk? Eg. Gods exist and grant spells, there's cities and civilisations in which to purchase things, the tech level is the same as the PHB, there's no funky physics that make gravity weird, no continent-wide stretches of dead magic zones -- basically all classes are allowed to use their class features and other assumptions the game grants, like WBL, feats, leveling, food and drink, etc. I don't think we're assuming an "extreme" setting like Dark Sun, Sandstorm, or Ghostwalk to a very high degree, if at all.

Second, you've noted before that this is a bit of a weighted average of lots of possible combinations of builds for each class. Maybe I've missed that bit, so if it's not there, could it be included? To me it's a really good way of thinking about about how a class ends up where it does.

Third, one on GM. I think itP we assume that our "generic GM" allows all RAW (perhaps with exceptions for things in the dysfunctional handbook/ threads?), and that makes sense for universal discussion. Should we have some sort of factoring of restrictive vs permissive GMs in our evaluations? For example, a GM that doesn't allow for players to purchase whatever they like under the wealth limits for settlements? And, should we assume that GMs are following closely to prefab adventures in the majority of cases, and rolling for random loot? Should these assumptions be weighted the same way we do the builds for each class? That makes sense to me, but we could also just set a single GM behaviour as our assumed default.

Edit: Fourth, that this is an evaluation of a class distinct from a party, in which there's no need to attempt to avoid stepping on the toes of the other party members, but also no assumption that there will be other members (except that you may have a number of other warm bodies with you) who can buff or otherwise help.

[Troacctid]

First, one on setting. I'd like a note about what we're assuming. Perhaps a "generic" setting in which all classes area treated roughly equally, such as Greyhawk? Eg. Gods exist and grant spells, there's cities and civilisations in which to purchase things, the tech level is the same as the PHB, there's no funky physics that make gravity weird, no continent-wide stretches of dead magic zones -- basically all classes are allowed to use their class features and other assumptions the game grants, like WBL, feats, leveling, food and drink, etc. I don't think we're assuming an "extreme" setting like Dark Sun, Sandstorm, or Ghostwalk to a very high degree, if at all.

[...]

Third, one on GM. I think itP we assume that our "generic GM" allows all RAW (perhaps with exceptions for things in the dysfunctional handbook/ threads?), and that makes sense for universal discussion. Should we have some sort of factoring of restrictive vs permissive GMs in our evaluations? For example, a GM that doesn't allow for players to purchase whatever they like under the wealth limits for settlements? And, should we assume that GMs are following closely to prefab adventures in the majority of cases, and rolling for random loot? Should these assumptions be weighted the same way we do the builds for each class? That makes sense to me, but we could also just set a single GM behaviour as our assumed default.
I'm not gonna comment on the others, but I disagree that we would need to bake these into the system. It should go without saying that nonstandard conditions may result in weirdness.

[EldritchWeaver]

I'm not gonna comment on the others, but I disagree that we would need to bake these into the system. It should go without saying that nonstandard conditions may result in weirdness.

So the system should implicitly make use of settings with standard conditions? After all, you disregard nonstandard conditions.

[eggynack]

First, one on setting. I'd like a note about what we're assuming. Perhaps a "generic" setting in which all classes area treated roughly equally, such as Greyhawk? Eg. Gods exist and grant spells, there's cities and civilisations in which to purchase things, the tech level is the same as the PHB, there's no funky physics that make gravity weird, no continent-wide stretches of dead magic zones -- basically all classes are allowed to use their class features and other assumptions the game grants, like WBL, feats, leveling, food and drink, etc. I don't think we're assuming an "extreme" setting like Dark Sun, Sandstorm, or Ghostwalk to a very high degree, if at all.
Maybe. I think it's fair to assume that the setting doesn't screw with your core competency, that things are somewhat normal. An interesting factor, though, is how to involve setting specific books. I think sandstorm is relatively setting neutral, in that you can use the mechanics in any setting, while other books are explicitly tied to one setting or another. Such books usually get pretty high obscurity ratings (or, perhaps not precisely high obscurity such as low allowance), but they should factor in to some extent. There might be a contradiction between those two positions, and both seem valid. It might make sense to consider aberrant settings existent but infrequent.


Second, you've noted before that this is a bit of a weighted average of lots of possible combinations of builds for each class. Maybe I've missed that bit, so if it's not there, could it be included? To me it's a really good way of thinking about about how a class ends up where it does.
Isn't this kinda what I have opening the "What are the tiers" section?


Third, one on GM. I think itP we assume that our "generic GM" allows all RAW (perhaps with exceptions for things in the dysfunctional handbook/ threads?), and that makes sense for universal discussion. Should we have some sort of factoring of restrictive vs permissive GMs in our evaluations? For example, a GM that doesn't allow for players to purchase whatever they like under the wealth limits for settlements? And, should we assume that GMs are following closely to prefab adventures in the majority of cases, and rolling for random loot? Should these assumptions be weighted the same way we do the builds for each class? That makes sense to me, but we could also just set a single GM behaviour as our assumed default.
One thing I find problematic about such a construct is that it's hard to determine what's allowed or not allowed by any particular DM on the spectrum. With high optimization versus low optimization, the higher optimization character is clearly looking to things that are better, and there's a clean and even weighting however you think the distribution looks. Similarly, for obscurity, it's not trivial but you can make a pretty good guess about whether a book is more or less distant from core+the class' book. For restrictive versus permissive though, I have no idea. We can say a restrictive DM might close off stuff that is too crazy or powerful, but that's already kinda factored into optimization levels. For things beyond that, we could assume that a restrictive DM restricts wealth in one of the ways you indicate, or in one of the other ways, or that they don't care about wealth but instead are restrictive about ACFs. Predicting and making assumptions about this stuff could get tricky. A single DM behavior might make sense as a result, but that approach is really restrictive.

My feeling is that it shouldn't be included, because a lot of the value you'd get is indeed covered by the optimization thing. The higher optimization you are, the more likely you are to have a particular good item, whether the underlying reason for that higher optimization is personal capability or a more or less restrictive DM. Maybe it should be included in that specific sense. Like, my already existent note about optimization would include a bit more text clarifying that you can get to a lower optimization position without necessarily being a less capable player. Or maybe that's already implied. The optimization level of a character does tend to point more towards end result than the steps required to get you to that point.



Edit: Fourth, that this is an evaluation of a class distinct from a party, in which there's no need to attempt to avoid stepping on the toes of the other party members, but also no assumption that there will be other members (except that you may have a number of other warm bodies with you) who can buff or otherwise help.
This is an interesting one. I think it makes some sense. This kinda thing does frequently come up in class power level discussions. A particular class might get greater value from another character's buff than another, but the difference between buffing a barbarian and buffing a warrior isn't crazy.

[GilesTheCleric]

I'm not gonna comment on the others, but I disagree that we would need to bake these into the system. It should go without saying that nonstandard conditions may result in weirdness.

I mean, I agree, but it seems like some people have different ideas of nonstandard.

[eggynack]

So the system should implicitly make use of settings with standard conditions? After all, you disregard nonstandard conditions.
Ostensibly, as I have it now, nonstandard conditions wouldn't necessarily be considered non-existent. They'd mostly be considered, well, nonstandard. Aberrant, infrequently occurring, less impactful than something more generic, and/or limited as a consideration because various settings help or hurt different classes. I think a really important question of this change is whether it'd make a difference. I don't think anyone's assuming that we're primarily considering dark sun games, even if that's theoretically part of the tier tapestry. Does there exist a class where someone would claim one tier absent information, but they'd seriously adjust that after seeing we're assuming a generic setting, because they thought a specific setting factored in heavily? Or, going the other way, would someone in a game filled with tons of dead magic zones assume that their game is primarily what's being considered and feel really mislead? There seems like a strong chance that, while such a stated assumption could have logic to it, it'd also be generally unimpactful from either end, and would have the aforementioned issue with setting specific books.

[Troacctid]

This is an interesting one. I think it makes some sense. This kinda thing does frequently come up in class power level discussions. A particular class might get greater value from another character's buff than another, but the difference between buffing a barbarian and buffing a warrior isn't crazy.
In my experience, it definitely matters a lot with skills, and it's one of the reasons why the Expert ranks so low (T6). There is very little value in being the second-best member of the team at Diplomacy, for example, because whoever's better than you is just going to be doing all the rolling, and you might as well not have the skill at all. And Use Magic Device is great, except that it becomes mostly useless if there is a Wizard in the party who can just use that wand or scroll for you without a check. Expert is essentially doomed to be the second-best at everything, and in many cases that is as good as not having the thing at all.

It is different for combat, because if you can at least be effective in combat, you are contributing to action economy, which is always relevant. Of course, Experts are completely useless in combat, so in most games they'll probably end up being worse than an Aristocrat.

[eggynack]

In my experience, it definitely matters a lot with skills, and it's one of the reasons why the Expert ranks so low (T6). There is very little value in being the second-best member of the team at Diplomacy, for example, because whoever's better than you is just going to be doing all the rolling, and you might as well not have the skill at all. And Use Magic Device is great, except that it becomes mostly useless if there is a Wizard in the party who can just use that wand or scroll for you without a check. Expert is essentially doomed to be the second-best at everything, and in many cases that is as good as not having the thing at all.

It is different for combat, because if you can at least be effective in combat, you are contributing to action economy, which is always relevant. Of course, Experts are completely useless in combat, so in most games they'll probably end up being worse than an Aristocrat.
Hadn't considered the inverse situation of being outmoded rather than helped. If that's a concern with power level, it's not necessarily something we should be getting rid of. The inverse situation might also not be that important, as the marginal value of a given buff isn't that much higher for one beatstick than for another.

[Fizban]

May I please request some additions to the description in the OP?
Thank you Giles, I think you're the first person to have actually done what I asked like that, though I'm not surprised at the response.


I don't really see the point in continuing this argument, which is rather a rarity for me. If you have anything you think should be added, which, jeez, if your vision is only a few sentences then it can't be that difficult, then you can suggest it and I'll assess it.
No. You're the one in charge, you're the one who's being so particular about your phrasing that you expect a tiny change to be a disaster, it's your job to make this clear not mine to write it for you.

I mean, jeez, we're on page 12 talking about whether classes that were never going to get voted anywhere besides tier one should be voted tier one.
Careful, you're starting to sound like ryu. Though I expect it'd be harder to bait you into saying minorities don't matter because you can simply crush them.

You can stop arguing any time you want as long as you're willing to let the other guy have the last word, but if you want me to stop arguing you'll have to make me (or make your own argument look so bad I think it speaks for itself). The easiest way is to write the one least committal sentence you need to patch your tier definitions, which you've already used yourself and quoted my response to ("it's why we're voting" you said), implying you already know what you should do. If we're voting on the parts that aren't clear, then say so.

Because you've argued with pretty much everything I've said, I don't see why you'd expect me to write up a direct proposal knowing you'll just tell me it's wrong for being too specific by your weird aversion to defining things. Every line I've suggested so far has either been flat rejected or ignored. Giles just started enumerating the things that need to be defined, and you blew him off the same way. You seem to want me to write the sentence "Anything not accounted for in the above is left to the voter's mind and is effectively what you're voting on," but I'm sure you'll say that's too specific in some mysterious way on its own even though what it actually needs is a list of things not being accounted for and left to voting.

[GilesTheCleric]

The higher optimization you are, the more likely you are to have a particular good item, whether the underlying reason for that higher optimization is personal capability or a more or less restrictive DM.

If we are tying GM into optimisation in that way rather than assuming a default GM, maybe that's worth mentioning? Like I said before, these boards have a tendency to genericise the GM, so it could be worth pointing out.

[eggynack]

Giles just started enumerating the things that need to be defined, and you blew him off the same way. You seem to want me to write the sentence "Anything not accounted for in the above is left to the voter's mind and is effectively what you're voting on," but I'm sure you'll say that's too specific in some mysterious way on its own even though what it actually needs is a list of things not being accounted for and left to voting.
Actually, I started out liking the setting and distinct character notes, and was planning on including them in some form once some details of the plan were hammered out. Troacctid's comments, to the first mainly that people are going to assume that anyway (along with some other factors including the extent issue of setting specific books), and to the second that the primary impact of such a thing is actually something we should be considering somewhat, convinced me otherwise. I could maybe be convinced otherwise otherwise, but this is where I am right now on the point. Right now, below this, I'm reconsidering the GM thing, primarily because I think there will be low impact. And it's not because of some me versus the forum mentality, where I'm "giving up" on some element of my system. It's because it seems like a good idea, given a cost/benefit analysis. Simple as that, really. I've also been thinking of linking the graphs somewhere, though I'm still thinking of how to frame them and where to put them. I'm a bit less interested in them as an altered tiering model, even though I kinda like ditching the upper end somewhat (though not entirely), and more interested in them as a visualization tool.


If we are tying GM into optimisation in that way rather than assuming a default GM, maybe that's worth mentioning? Like I said before, these boards have a tendency to genericise the GM, so it could be worth pointing out.
Yeah, should be a relatively minor fix.

Edit: Looks nice, I think. Super tiny parenthetical note, but I think it captures some of what you're going for here.

[GilesTheCleric]

Actually, I started out liking the setting and distinct character notes, and was planning on including them in some form once some details of the plan were hammered out. Troacctid's comments, to the first mainly that people are going to assume that anyway (along with some other factors including the extent issue of setting specific books), and to the second that the primary impact of such a thing is actually something we should be considering somewhat, convinced me otherwise. I could maybe be convinced otherwise otherwise, but this is where I am right now on the point. Right now, below this, I'm reconsidering the GM thing, primarily because I think there will be low impact. And it's not because of some me versus the forum mentality, where I'm "giving up" on some element of my system. It's because it seems like a good idea, given a cost/benefit analysis.

I also mostly agreed with the counterpoints to the suggestions, since I thought those points were good as well. I could try to keep convincing you if you like, but I don't think there's many strong arguments I could make aside from philosophical ones. It seems like the problem we were trying to solve was folks making claims based on different grounds, and it's nice when in a discussion everyone has the same grounds. That's about all I've got left in support. If you want to keep arguing for them, Fizban, you should. You've probably got some clever arguments of which I haven't thought.


Yeah, should be a relatively minor fix.

Edit: Looks nice, I think. Super tiny parenthetical note, but I think it captures some of what you're going for here.

Thank you!

Edit: before I keep forgetting -- I left a note on the spreadsheet, but I don't think google keeps a log of the chat. Could you please split the window both vertically and horizontally to keep the headers? Or if that's not possible, perhaps duplicate the headers at the bottom of the data? It saves some awkward scrolling and using my finger to keep track of things.

[eggynack]

Edit: before I keep forgetting -- I left a note on the spreadsheet, but I don't think google keeps a log of the chat. Could you please split the window both vertically and horizontally to keep the headers? Or if that's not possible, perhaps duplicate the headers at the bottom of the data? It saves some awkward scrolling and using my finger to keep track of things.
Done. Thought I'd have to add extra header rows and columns as the thing grew. Been awhile since I've done excel. Apparently possible directly in sheets, weirdly hidden away under view.

Seemingly can't freeze bottom rows. Not sure if that's actually a thing I'd wanna do, but kinda annoying that I can't.

[ryu]

Done. Thought I'd have to add extra header rows and columns as the thing grew. Been awhile since I've done excel. Apparently possible directly in sheets, weirdly hidden away under view.

Seemingly can't freeze bottom rows. Not sure if that's actually a thing I'd wanna do, but kinda annoying that I can't.

I mean I'm pretty sure you can freeze any row manually, but there isn't a command to make sure the bottom row is frozen in that pretty much the entire point of is to be for calculated stats based on previous rows. Unless you have no specifically calculated bottom row and it's just your last normal entry.

[eggynack]

I mean I'm pretty sure you can freeze any row manually, but there isn't a command to make sure the bottom row is frozen in that pretty much the entire point of is to be for calculated stats based on previous rows. Unless you have no specifically calculated bottom row and it's just your last normal entry.
I know you can do that elsewhere. But the way I went about this was freeze, and the options thereabouts are to freeze one row (which freezes the top row no matter what you do), or freeze any number of rows (which freezes any quantity from top to bottom). The functionality I'm theoretically but not really seeking would be to create a window where the top is always visible at the top, the bottom is always visible at the bottom, and the rest of the information hangs out between those two frozen sections. Pretty sure that's possible in excel. Not so sure it's a thing here.

[ryu]

I know you can do that elsewhere. But the way I went about this was freeze, and the options thereabouts are to freeze one row (which freezes the top row no matter what you do), or freeze any number of rows (which freezes any quantity from top to bottom). The functionality I'm theoretically but not really seeking would be to create a window where the top is always visible at the top, the bottom is always visible at the bottom, and the rest of the information hangs out between those two frozen sections. Pretty sure that's possible in excel. Not so sure it's a thing here.

Okay have you seen the placeholders for rows and columns? Shift click both to the left of top and bottom row to highlight top and bottom row, and I think the manual freeze is accessible from the right click menu from there.

[eggynack]

Okay have you seen the placeholders for rows and columns? Shift click both to the left of top and bottom row to highlight top and bottom row, and I think the manual freeze is accessible from the right click menu from there.
Pretty sure said manual freeze option isn't present, unless I'm missing something critical. Sheets might just be a kinda weird spreadsheet program.

[ryu]

Pretty sure said manual freeze option isn't present, unless I'm missing something critical. Sheets might just be a kinda weird spreadsheet program.

Have you tried right clicking on one of the row placeholders in question after highlighting both? I remember actually achieving this in a basic tutorial class a long time ago, and while my method may not be exact, I doubt I'm far off. Either way I know it's possible in excel so if that doesn't work just google it.

[eggynack]

Have you tried right clicking on one of the row placeholders in question after highlighting both? I remember actually achieving this in a basic tutorial class a long time ago, and while my method may not be exact, I doubt I'm far off. Either way I know it's possible in excel so if that doesn't work just google it.
I think it's actually really easy in excel. My vague initial google searching indicated first that nothing even close to this functionality exists unless you import, and second that, no, wait, you can do it in this really specific way. A bit of further searching indicates that some people seem to think you can do it through the view tab, specifically the freeze option there, but indications are that said option just isn't present. You can highlight whatever you want and your maximum customization is just telling it to freeze up to that point. Just found a thing that seems to confirm this here (https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/Twu4-seuoGk). Not a big deal, cause locking in the data tabulation stuff such that it's always visible isn't necessarily all that desired, but weird that it's not a thing that seems possible.

[ryu]

I think it's actually really easy in excel. My vague initial google searching indicated first that nothing even close to this functionality exists unless you import, and second that, no, wait, you can do it in this really specific way. A bit of further searching indicates that some people seem to think you can do it through the view tab, specifically the freeze option there, but indications are that said option just isn't present. You can highlight whatever you want and your maximum customization is just telling it to freeze up to that point. Just found a thing that seems to confirm this here (https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/Twu4-seuoGk). Not a big deal, cause locking in the data tabulation stuff such that it's always visible isn't necessarily all that desired, but weird that it's not a thing that seems possible.

I guess we'll just have to except that excel has the edge here. Ah Microsoft. Can't make a popular new OS after 7 to save your life, or a competent online computer game platform for that matter, but you at least understand the things people want in their data utility programs.

[EldritchWeaver]

Could you please delete the sheet-devoted posts? Also such a discussion is better done via PMs.

[eggynack]

Could you please delete the sheet-devoted posts? Also such a discussion is better done via PMs.
Not even really sure it's all that off topic. This thread is all about procedure, and spreadsheets, and a bunch of other fiddly little things associated with the maintenance and use of this thread. I don't really see much value add in deleting any comment that isn't super on topic.

[remetagross]

Eggynack, have you changed the definition of Tier 1 back? If I remember correctly at some point it mentioned Clerics and Druids before mentioning Wizards as the archetypal classes of that tier, following the discussion with Fizban and Morphic Tide.

On an unrelated note, what will the next batch be? Skillmonkeys? That's the last archetypal role we have not had so far :smallsmile:

[eggynack]

Eggynack, have you changed the definition of Tier 1 back? If I remember correctly at some point it mentioned Clerics and Druids before mentioning Wizards as the archetypal classes of that tier, following the discussion with Fizban and Morphic Tide.
Weird. I changed over to the cleric, druid, wizard definition in all the other threads, but I guess I missed the home base one.



On an unrelated note, what will the next batch be? Skillmonkeys? That's the last archetypal role we have not had so far :smallsmile:
Maybe. Been wanting to talk spirit shamans for months, so that's likely coming in the next couple of threads, but I could see something roguish showing up. That'd probably be rogue, scout, and ninja or something. You got a preferred list on that one? Scout makes some sense cause it has the 8+ thing, and ninja makes sense because it has the stealthy precision damage thing, but I could also plausibly move the factotum over there, or use a bunch of other combinations.

[ryu]

Weird. I changed over to the cleric, druid, wizard definition in all the other threads, but I guess I missed the home base one.


Maybe. Been wanting to talk spirit shamans for months, so that's likely coming in the next couple of threads, but I could see something roguish showing up. That'd probably be rogue, scout, and ninja or something. You got a preferred list on that one? Scout makes some sense cause it has the 8+ thing, and ninja makes sense because it has the stealthy precision damage thing, but I could also plausibly move the factotum over there, or use a bunch of other combinations.

I'd put factotum in it. I mean people DO generally use them as pretty much literally the rogue's more competent big brother.

[eggynack]

I'd put factotum in it. I mean people DO generally use them as pretty much literally the rogue's more competent big brother.
Yeah, it definitely makes sense. Gotta figure out a different third for bard+jester then. There's no law saying the minimum must be three, and jesters would make for plausibly engaging discussion (how much worse than a tier three can you be before you can't be a tier three anymore?), but three seems solid. Maybe there's a bard variant that's bad enough that it probably hits tier four.

[lylsyly]

@Eggynack;

Put a empty row between the users names and the maen, median, what not ..

then click on view = split

what is does is actually create a separate window, as long as the cursor is in the top window it will only scroll the top window.

:smallbiggrin:

[ryu]

Yeah, it definitely makes sense. Gotta figure out a different third for bard+jester then. There's no law saying the minimum must be three, and jesters would make for plausibly engaging discussion (how much worse than a tier three can you be before you can't be a tier three anymore?), but three seems solid. Maybe there's a bard variant that's bad enough that it probably hits tier four.

Maybe throw warlock at that one since it's sometimes debated it straddles 3 and 4?

[GilesTheCleric]

There might be a fair amount of debate about Factotum, so maybe it's best in a thread without too many other classes. Jormengand's thread just included some additional roguelikes please don't laugh iirc the Spellthief and... Something Spellthief.

[ryu]

There might be a fair amount of debate about Factotum, so maybe it's best in a thread without too many other classes. Jormengand's thread just included some additional roguelikes please don't laugh iirc the Spellthief and... Something Spellthief.

I'm sorry but I have to. The pun fits too well especially with how reliant classes like that tend to be on items.

[eggynack]

@Eggynack;

Put a empty row between the users names and the maen, median, what not ..

then click on view = split

what is does is actually create a separate window, as long as the cursor is in the top window it will only scroll the top window.

:smallbiggrin:
I don't think split is even an option under view. I'm tellin' ya, this program is weirdly restrictive. Honestly, the thing I actually want to do that I haven't figured out yet is getting all the names to consistently alphabetize as I insert them without also alphabetizing the mean and such. Actually, I don't think it lets you have things alphabetize automatically at all. You seem to need to apply repeated sorts no matter what.

Maybe throw warlock at that one since it's sometimes debated it straddles 3 and 4?
I could buy that. It feels like it lands in around the general scale of magic I'd expect, with a solid variety of things to do. Not sure what the title for that group is.

Edit: I am decently likely to call that skill monkey group roguelikes now. This is a thing that amuses me.

[Troacctid]

If you want to do a Rogues' Gallery next, you could start with a Complete Adventurer round with Ninja, Scout, and Spellthief. And Jester, Savant, and Mountebank could be a Dragon Compendium round.


Honestly, the thing I actually want to do that I haven't figured out yet is getting all the names to consistently alphabetize as I insert them without also alphabetizing the mean and such. Actually, I don't think it lets you have things alphabetize automatically at all. You seem to need to apply repeated sorts no matter what.
Highlight the area you want to be alphabetized, then go to Data > Sort Range by Column A. Make sure to select all the data in the other columns as well. And you will have to re-do it when you add more names though.

Edit: You may be able to do it automatically with the SORT (https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093150?hl=en) function, but I've never used it so I don't know how it works exactly.

Also, you have my votes in the wrong row, I should be up one.

[Gnaeus]

Hey Eggynack, I'm enjoying what you are doing and how you are doing it. Would it hurt your feelings if I started some parallel threads with the same format but PF? Like a Derivative T1 thread but with witch instead of archivist and Artificer, discussing how different Druid is in PF, that sort of thing? Not sure I would, but considering it.

[eggynack]

If you want to do a Rogues' Gallery next, you could start with a Complete Adventurer round with Ninja, Scout, and Spellthief. And Jester, Savant, and Mountebank could be a Dragon Compendium round.
I think my general tendency for book rounds is to do them mostly when there's a thematic or mechanical link between the classes. So, ToB would be a definitely, MoI would be very likely though soulborn could get shifted by dint of its particularly lackluster attachment to the mechanics, and ToM is a maybe.


Highlight the area you want to be alphabetized, then go to Data > Sort Range by Column A. Make sure to select all the data in the other columns as well. And you will have to re-do it when you add more names though.
Yeah, that's what I've been doing.

Edit: You may be able to do it automatically with the SORT (https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093150?hl=en) function, but I've never used it so I don't know how it works exactly.
Interesting. Worth a shot.


Also, you have my votes in the wrong row, I should be up one.
You sure I don't just have you down wrong for specifically fighter, because I put you down as 4 on the premise that we'd be unlikely to cover thug separately (especially now when we're unlikely to cover dungeoncrasher), and then didn't update you later when you stated an explicit 5 vote? I also did a lot of undos, so it could be changed now.

Hey Eggynack, I'm enjoying what you are doing and how you are doing it. Would it hurt your feelings if I started some parallel threads with the same format but PF? Like a Derivative T1 thread but with witch instead of archivist and Artificer, discussing how different Druid is in PF, that sort of thing? Not sure I would, but considering it.
Nah, that sounds reasonable. It's not a thing I'm liable to cover, cause it's so far outside my region of knowledge. What I have here isn't all that linked to me beyond the opening post and maintenance/moderation.

[OldTrees1]

Hey Eggynack, I'm enjoying what you are doing and how you are doing it. Would it hurt your feelings if I started some parallel threads with the same format but PF? Like a Derivative T1 thread but with witch instead of archivist and Artificer, discussing how different Druid is in PF, that sort of thing? Not sure I would, but considering it.

We already have 2 of these series going on. It might be wise/respectful to ration how much of the front page gets spammed by these threads. Eggynack is doing a good job so far of keeping it down to 4(the original thread + 3 of Eggynack's 4 threads).

[Gnaeus]

We already have 2 of these series going on. It might be wise/respectful to ration how much of the front page gets spammed by these threads. Eggynack is doing a good job so far of keeping it down to 4(the original thread + 3 of Eggynack's 4 threads).

I think I'd want to run them shortly after the parallel thread dies down, because if I did them months later, everyone would be fired up to have the same argument again. Like, I wouldn't mind a discussion of why Sorcerer>wizard because of bonus feats, or more spells known, or because now they can craft items effectively, but not just a straight up rehashing of the same fight we just had.

[GilesTheCleric]

I think I'd want to run them shortly after the parallel thread dies down, because if I did them months later, everyone would be fired up to have the same argument again. Like, I wouldn't mind a discussion of why Sorcerer>wizard because of bonus feats, or more spells known, or because now they can craft items effectively, but not just a straight up rehashing of the same fight we just had.

I think you might get the same arguments anyway. It seems to me that there's a decent number of folks that only interact with the Pf threads, and another group that only interacts with 3e threads. Yes, there's people that participate in both, but it means there's a high probability that it'll come up.

[Gnaeus]

I think you might get the same arguments anyway. It seems to me that there's a decent number of folks that only interact with the Pf threads, and another group that only interacts with 3e threads. Yes, there's people that participate in both, but it means there's a high probability that it'll come up.

You're certainly right, but I'd like to TRY to stay focused on the differences.

[Aimeryan]

You got any suggestions for these two definitions? They probably are indeed a bit off, but the specific ultimate structure is always tricky.

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I would preferably drop the "usual structure is..." sentences and instead just use the graphs, since I feel they are not as defining/restricting as words can be when used to describe a tier. Change the Tier 3 archetype to one of the Tier 3.5 gish classes. Maybe something like this:


Tier three: The archetypal tier three is the Swordsage. Again, we gotta sacrifice something compared to tier two; a possible graph state for Tier 3 might look like:



https://s21.postimg.org/5e0cgg8kz/Tier_3_5.png (https://postimg.org/image/5e0cgg8kz/)


Tier 3


210 CP






Of course, that is just what I would do. If you wish to keep the sentence descriptions (in addition to the graphs) then maybe this:


Tier three: The archetypal tier three is the Swordsage. Again, we gotta sacrifice something compared to tier two; the usual situation is that you are very good at solving a couple of problems and competent at solving a few more. Of course, there are other possibilities; for example, you might instead just be competent at solving nearly all problems. A graph state for Tier 3 might look something like:



https://s21.postimg.org/5e0cgg8kz/Tier_3_5.png (https://postimg.org/image/5e0cgg8kz/)


Tier 3


210 CP





Edit: If you want to use the Tier 1 and Tier 2 graphs I posted with the Gamebreaking values left in (i.e., not capped at Strong) feel free to do so, although it might be wise to leave a disclaimer saying that Gamebreaking is not required to reach the those tiers if you do. I updated my very first post on page 1, so feel free to pull all the graphs from there.

[Troacctid]

You sure I don't just have you down wrong for specifically fighter, because I put you down as 4 on the premise that we'd be unlikely to cover thug separately (especially now when we're unlikely to cover dungeoncrasher), and then didn't update you later when you stated an explicit 5 vote? I also did a lot of undos, so it could be changed now.
It's fixed now.

[eggynack]

Snip
My thinking is getting the definition pretty close to your second one, particularly using swordsage cause that seems like a really good pick as the archetypal 3, and then having some kinda paragraph underneath the system introducing and linking the graphs. I'ma try editing it into that form, see how it looks.


It's fixed now.
Cool beans. That was a weirdly stressful couple of minutes back there, trying to figure out where the different data would be coming from and wondering whether everything else got screwed up.

Edit: Yeah, I think that looks cool.

[Calthropstu]

I spit upon your tiers and break the game with all classes.

Behold, my lvl 20 commoner with an item that lets him cast shapechange once per day granting him infinite wishes for 3 hours.

If you can't achieve godhood with infinite wishes in 3 hours, well you may as well hang up your D&D cloak and go play candy crush or something.

[Coretron03]

I spit upon your tiers and break the game with all classes.

Behold, my lvl 20 commoner with an item that lets him cast shapechange once per day granting him infinite wishes for 3 hours.

If you can't achieve godhood with infinite wishes in 3 hours, well you may as well hang up your D&D cloak and go play candy crush or something.

I'm assuming you read literally nothing about these threads. I am curious if you still believe fighters and casters are equal though.

[Calthropstu]

I'm assuming you read literally nothing about these threads. I am curious if you still believe fighters and casters are equal though.

Actually, I did read a fair portion. And I have argued about the tier system from day one. I put no stock in it.
Fighters DO have to work quite a bit harder to get to the same level that casters enjoy, but they CAN get there with good item support. Since any class can initiate actions to gain infinite money by gaining specific items, in theory any person with access to a few specific items, can generate infinite wealth and thus obtain every spell in the game via item creation cheese.

In short, the more optimized the game becomes, the more the tiers begin to coalesce into one giant mesh of T1's.

But, take away item support and gm tolerance for cheese, no the fighter and wizard are not on equal footing.

[eggynack]

Actually, I did read a fair portion. And I have argued about the tier system from day one. I put no stock in it.
Fighters DO have to work quite a bit harder to get to the same level that casters enjoy, but they CAN get there with good item support. Since any class can initiate actions to gain infinite money by gaining specific items, in theory any person with access to a few specific items, can generate infinite wealth and thus obtain every spell in the game via item creation cheese.

In short, the more optimized the game becomes, the more the tiers begin to coalesce into one giant mesh of T1's.

But, take away item support and gm tolerance for cheese, no the fighter and wizard are not on equal footing.
The vast majority of the area of our consideration takes place in the not ridiculous item cheese zone. Infinite loops are really really far off to the right side, and play play at the highest character levels is considered but not as heavily as more moderate character levels, where things are less singularity oriented. I think our analysis thus far, and our general guiding assumptions, have worked pretty well, and haven't fallen all that close to your cited issues.

[Coretron03]

Actually, I did read a fair portion. And I have argued about the tier system from day one. I put no stock in it.
Fighters DO have to work quite a bit harder to get to the same level that casters enjoy, but they CAN get there with good item support. Since any class can initiate actions to gain infinite money by gaining specific items, in theory any person with access to a few specific items, can generate infinite wealth and thus obtain every spell in the game via item creation cheese.

In short, the more optimized the game becomes, the more the tiers begin to coalesce into one giant mesh of T1's.

But, take away item support and gm tolerance for cheese, no the fighter and wizard are not on equal footing.

Thats fair, everyone can do wish loops and get infinite wealth but you generally have to ignore those kind of things because the game doesn't function if you use them (Unless your tippy level or equal I think) because then your class doesn't matter at all which isn't very useful in "rating classes" discussion. Wealth by level is very powerful and important to the game (level 20 no wealth fighter? good luck) and can be abused easily. The tiers were more for the versatility of the classes themselves, not infinite loops anyone can do. I'm not very food at explaining it though, so I might let someone else.

[Calthropstu]

The vast majority of the area of our consideration takes place in the not ridiculous item cheese zone. Infinite loops are really really far off to the right side, and play play at the highest character levels is considered but not as heavily as more moderate character levels, where things are less singularity oriented. I think our analysis thus far, and our general guiding assumptions, have worked pretty well, and haven't fallen all that close to your cited issues.

Which is fair. Most play falls into the realm of "GM says no to cheese." I have made it no secret that I personally don't allow cheese when I GM. And in my group, our casters are definitely not anywhere near optimized. The most optimized character in our party is played by another frequenter of these forums (though he won't say who he is) and he is playing a ranger in my campaign, and a kinetecist in our other game. He's able to pop out as much damage, in both cases, as the rest of the party combined in a single round with some decent setup. The characters playing T1s and T2s are thoroughly unoptimized (Ok, my psion is a LITTLE optimized but highly specified into a particular area of expertise) and don't do anywhere near the amount of damage.

If we go by what we have personally seen and done, and what is actually played at the various tables we frequent the answer will be much more varied than the tier system you guys are hoisting seems to indicate. I have watched an extremely optimized healer turn the tide of an entire battle by himself using nothing but healing spells and abilities. I've watched a dwarf fighter ride a rhinoceros into battle, toppling an entire fortress almost single handedly. (He DID get a windwalk and protection from arrows cast on his rhino from the party druid and wizard.) I have seen all t2/t1 parties get slaughtered where groups of t3s and t4s won the day.

So my experience refutes the tier system, and thus I must refute it... because the tier system simply does not match my experience.

[GilesTheCleric]

So my experience refutes the tier system, and thus I must refute it... because the tier system simply does not match my experience.

Okay, so how do you propose we change our assumptions to better represent what you see as more probable in play? Or, perhaps Eggynack's tier system does account for it, in that it's an averaging of builds, and you just need to place the weight closer to the lower-op end of the spectrum for it to be true to your experience? Also, please don't forget that we're not rating players here.

[Calthropstu]

Okay, so how do you propose we change our assumptions to better represent what you see as more probable in play? Or, perhaps Eggynack's tier system does account for it, in that it's an averaging of builds, and you just need to place the weight closer to the lower-op end of the spectrum for it to be true to your experience? Also, please don't forget that we're not rating players here.

Averaging builds means we take high op and useless builds. Which skews things considerably, because for every possible OP wizard build, I can build 5 useless wizard builds. The t1 chart, in particular, I disagree with... because I have never seen a wizard, cleric or druid build that was good at everything. No matter who the builder was, they always had several shortcomings... even those who made their characters as powerful as they possibly could.

The shortcomings of the wizard is his spell book. His most powerful tool is also his greatest weakness. For one, it's incredibly expensive. In order to "do everything" a wizard has to spend exorbitant amounts of money... money most GMs simply don't give out. A cleric is pretty much at the mercy of the GM. If a GM says "your god says no" you pretty much have to say "yes sir." The artificer, I honestly don't see as a tier one at all due to the extreme amount of game time they require. And the Druid, who everyone here seems to worship as the T1 of all T1s is pretty much outclassed in everything they can do by other classes. And since they have to heavily invest in one area or other in order to be good, it means they are just a weaker version of something with a few decent fallbacks.

I just don't see it. I do not see T1s as so far outclassing the T2s and T3s. The charts that have been drawn up seem to worship the T1s and... I simply just don't see it happening in any normal game.

[Lans]

I think my general tendency for book rounds is to do them mostly when there's a thematic or mechanical link between the classes. So, ToB would be a definitely, MoI would be very likely though soulborn could get shifted by dint of its particularly lackluster attachment to the mechanics, and ToM is a maybe.


I think putting the soulborn in with the paladin, divine mind and/or sohei would be appropriate.

[GilesTheCleric]

Averaging builds means we take high op and useless builds. Which skews things considerably, because for every possible OP wizard build, I can build 5 useless wizard builds. The t1 chart, in particular, I disagree with... because I have never seen a wizard, cleric or druid build that was good at everything. No matter who the builder was, they always had several shortcomings... even those who made their characters as powerful as they possibly could.

The shortcomings of the wizard is his spell book. His most powerful tool is also his greatest weakness. For one, it's incredibly expensive. In order to "do everything" a wizard has to spend exorbitant amounts of money... money most GMs simply don't give out. A cleric is pretty much at the mercy of the GM. If a GM says "your god says no" you pretty much have to say "yes sir." The artificer, I honestly don't see as a tier one at all due to the extreme amount of game time they require. And the Druid, who everyone here seems to worship as the T1 of all T1s is pretty much outclassed in everything they can do by other classes. And since they have to heavily invest in one area or other in order to be good, it means they are just a weaker version of something with a few decent fallbacks.

I just don't see it. I do not see T1s as so far outclassing the T2s and T3s. The charts that have been drawn up seem to worship the T1s and... I simply just don't see it happening in any normal game.

Holy cow, I'm getting some intense deja vu here. Did we already do this in Jomengand's thread?

I do agree with you, when these classes aren't allowed to use their class features (Wizard's spellbook, Cleric's spells), they're pretty useless.

[Calthropstu]

Holy cow, I'm getting some intense deja vu here. Did we already do this in Jomengand's thread?

I do agree with you, when these classes aren't allowed to use their class features (Wizard's spellbook, Cleric's spells), they're pretty useless.

It's not just not being allowed to use their class features...

In the case of the wizard, spell books are actually quite rare. First you have to either buy the scroll or pay a wizard to let you study from his spell book. It gets VERY expensive. And getting another wizard to give you 9th level spells? I liken it to a 3rd world nation coming to Russia or the US for nuclear technology. Or at the very least chemical warheads.
Most of you seem to be under the impression that writing 7th level spells+ into your spell book is a matter of walking into town and paying a wizard to teach it to you. It's that whole "adventuring mart" mentality.

But we're talking spells that can be used for massive devastation, supreme form manipulation, plane altering, nigh invincibility granting spells that can turn a war into a slaughter. Who in their right mind is going to give it to just anyone? There are GOOD arguments against wizards simply getting all the spells they want simply because they have gold and can pay. Even in most evil organizations, high level spells are guarded very carefully... trusted to only a very select few. And even then, many spells are never given out. Classic example is the cult of the dragon in faerun. Their wizards are constantly vying for position. Even within the organization, do you honestly see the grand wizard giving his 9th level spells to anyone else?

The Red Wizards MIGHT do something like that, it's arguable. However, I think they only give out scrolls to a certain level. And in a metropolis, the highest spell level you can purchase is 8th... so where do 9th level scrolls come from?
So for wizards, them "not having access to their class feature" actually... makes perfect sense.

As for Clerics, part of their class feature is "carry out the will of their god." So a god of say death and decay deciding not to grant his cleric a healing spell to heal his party members would make perfect sense. Especially if said party members had done something that went against that god's tenets such as saving a village from certain doom that other agents of his had enacted. Or a good god refusing to allow the use of a healing spell on the group's antipaladin. Or a lawful god refusing the use of spells to break the law.

[Troacctid]

It's not just not being allowed to use their class features...

In the case of the wizard, spell books are actually quite rare. First you have to either buy the scroll or pay a wizard to let you study from his spell book. It gets VERY expensive. And getting another wizard to give you 9th level spells? I liken it to a 3rd world nation coming to Russia or the US for nuclear technology. Or at the very least chemical warheads.
Most of you seem to be under the impression that writing 7th level spells+ into your spell book is a matter of walking into town and paying a wizard to teach it to you. It's that whole "adventuring mart" mentality.

But we're talking spells that can be used for massive devastation, supreme form manipulation, plane altering, nigh invincibility granting spells that can turn a war into a slaughter. Who in their right mind is going to give it to just anyone? There are GOOD arguments against wizards simply getting all the spells they want simply because they have gold and can pay. Even in most evil organizations, high level spells are guarded very carefully... trusted to only a very select few. And even then, many spells are never given out. Classic example is the cult of the dragon in faerun. Their wizards are constantly vying for position. Even within the organization, do you honestly see the grand wizard giving his 9th level spells to anyone else?

The Red Wizards MIGHT do something like that, it's arguable. However, I think they only give out scrolls to a certain level. And in a metropolis, the highest spell level you can purchase is 8th... so where do 9th level scrolls come from?
So for wizards, them "not having access to their class feature" actually... makes perfect sense.
And that's clearly not an issue for lower-level spells, which make up the vast majority of spells you will want to scribe, since there are more of them that you want and you have access to them for a longer period of time.

Anyway, in scroll/spellbook-poor environments, you can still spend downtime to just research the spells yourself.

If you could never under any circumstances scribe new spells into your book, ever, then Wizard would probably be T2. But that is not a reasonable assumption, since the rules are quite clear that that should not be the case.

[Lans]

If you could never under any circumstances scribe new spells into your book, ever, then Wizard would probably be T2. But that is not a reasonable assumption, since the rules are quite clear that that should not be the case.

What would be the dividing line between T1-2? If a wizard couldn't get scrolls, but had collegiate wizard and that elf racial substitution that gave more spells known, would he be T1? T2? T1.345?

[Calthropstu]

And that's clearly not an issue for lower-level spells, which make up the vast majority of spells you will want to scribe, since there are more of them that you want and you have access to them for a longer period of time.

Anyway, in scroll/spellbook-poor environments, you can still spend downtime to just research the spells yourself.

If you could never under any circumstances scribe new spells into your book, ever, then Wizard would probably be T2. But that is not a reasonable assumption, since the rules are quite clear that that should not be the case.

I'd argue t3 max under those conditions, but that's not what I am saying. I am not arguing that wizards and clerics et al are not T1. I am arguing that every t1 class comes with restrictions that t2 classes simply DON'T HAVE. What restriction does a psion, sorcerer, wilder, Oracle/Favored Soul etc have? They simply pick their spells and can cast them. They don't have to search, they don't have to research, they don't have to spend down time getting their power ready, they can't have their spell book stolen or destroyed, they don't have to answer to a god or have their powers taken away...

My argument is that T2 is simply NOT AS FAR BEHIND as you guys seem to imply with these charts, and all this talk of how wizards/clerics/druids etc are so much better than everyone else. They aren't, and I have stated my reasons why: they are completely and utterly at the GM's mercy. And most games seem to have a sense of approaching doom about them... there IS a story to tell after all. It's not like the BBEG is going to sit around waiting for you to finish crafting and researching.

[remetagross]

Well, they do have to pick their spells, and that is a heavy limitation. Besides, my gaming experience contradicts yours: in my games, I have seen Sorcerers spam Magic Missiles and Wizards singlehandedly wall off an encounter. Therefore, which of our experiences wins?

[Troacctid]

What would be the dividing line between T1-2? If a wizard couldn't get scrolls, but had collegiate wizard and that elf racial substitution that gave more spells known, would he be T1? T2? T1.345?
I mean, she might still be T1 with no scribing, but she's now in the ever-precarious "Worse than all the T1s, better than all the T2s" position that can get you bumped in one direction or the other depending on where the boundaries are set.

Luckily for the Wizard, that is not how the class operates according to the rules, so we don't need to worry about it.

[Coretron03]

I'd argue t3 max under those conditions, but that's not what I am saying. I am not arguing that wizards and clerics et al are not T1. I am arguing that every t1 class comes with restrictions that t2 classes simply DON'T HAVE. What restriction does a psion, sorcerer, wilder, Oracle/Favored Soul etc have? They simply pick their spells and can cast them. They don't have to search, they don't have to research, they don't have to spend down time getting their power ready, they can't have their spell book stolen or destroyed, they don't have to answer to a god or have their powers taken away...

My argument is that T2 is simply NOT AS FAR BEHIND as you guys seem to imply with these charts, and all this talk of how wizards/clerics/druids etc are so much better than everyone else. They aren't, and I have stated my reasons why: they are completely and utterly at the GM's mercy. And most games seem to have a sense of approaching doom about them... there IS a story to tell after all. It's not like the BBEG is going to sit around waiting for you to finish crafting and researching.
Wizards get free spells every level to though, 2 to be prescise. I very much doubt a wizard with 4 spells/ level is going to be beat a tier 3 class in most ways assuming equal optmization. Druids and clerics are not however are not restricted in their spell choices as they get their whole list, making your point moot. If there is a story to tell your starting level matters. If your playing a level 1-20 campaign without any downtime at at a wizard might not be the best choice. Buying spells at higher levels with divination available shouldn't be that hard as you could ask where the closest place you can get [insert wanted spell] and teleport there. Anyway, Your point of a clerics limit being "your god doesn't like that so you can't " shouldn't really be a huge issue, not enough to warrant a drop in tier. A cleric can be tier 1 following their gods whims just fine thankyou unless tour god hates you being effective in combat and out of it. Druids? I'm gonna leave that to eggynack because I feel he might know a thing or two about druids.

Clerics and druids can't have their spell book stolen too for reasons that should be obvious.

Hell, I'm not even a very good optmizer (in terms of playground standards) and I could write you a core wizard spell list using just the free spells thats good enough for your average wizard. to mop up most lower tiers. Beating a sorcerer might be more difficult but thats only because restrictions are placed on the wizard that the core rules don't have.

[lylsyly]

I don't think split is even an option under view. I'm tellin' ya, this program is weirdly restrictive. Honestly, the thing I actually want to do that I haven't figured out yet is getting all the names to consistently alphabetize as I insert them without also alphabetizing the mean and such. Actually, I don't think it lets you have things alphabetize automatically at all. You seem to need to apply repeated sorts no matter what.

What version are you using? I use 2013 and if you highlight the row then click on the view tab (on the spreadsheet itself) you will see an icon called split just to the right of middle. Works fine for me, :shrug: just trying to help :smallsmile:.

ION: As far as I know, there is no way to get Excel to automatically alphabetize.

[eggynack]

And the Druid, who everyone here seems to worship as the T1 of all T1s is pretty much outclassed in everything they can do by other classes. And since they have to heavily invest in one area or other in order to be good, it means they are just a weaker version of something with a few decent fallbacks.
I'm actually not even sure what this heavy single area investment thing means. Druids definitely get a lot out of their feats, but, built correctly, they're not really feat starved. You can easily be great at wild shape, summoning, and casting simultaneously.


As for Clerics, part of their class feature is "carry out the will of their god." So a god of say death and decay deciding not to grant his cleric a healing spell to heal his party members would make perfect sense.
This is not apparently a facet of the cleric in any sort of clear mechanical sense. It seems a lot like a house rule. A reasonable one, perhaps, but the evaluation of the game-balance utility of various house rules is one of the points of the tier system.

What version are you using? I use 2013 and if you highlight the row then click on the view tab (on the spreadsheet itself) you will see an icon called split just to the right of middle. Works fine for me, :shrug: just trying to help :smallsmile:.

Dunno. Probably a recent one. Pretty clearly not there. This is being done specifically in sheets itself, if that wasn't clear, rather than through excel followed by an import.

[lylsyly]

Dunno. Probably a recent one. Pretty clearly not there. This is being done specifically in sheets itself, if that wasn't clear, rather than through excel followed by an import.

Yep, that'll do it. Oh well ...

[Esprit15]

Maybe I just missed the post explaining it, but looking at the graphs, I can't figure out what is actually being measured. I understand what the intent is, and what the visual is supposed to convey, but the source of the numbers looks arbitrary. What does any one section on a chart mean?

[OldTrees1]

Maybe I just missed the post explaining it, but looking at the graphs, I can't figure out what is actually being measured. I understand what the intent is, and what the visual is supposed to convey, but the source of the numbers looks arbitrary. What does any one section on a chart mean?

Each x value is a different problem in the problem space.
The height of the curve for a given x value is how well the class helps the character solve that problem.
The y categories are: 0, Noticeable, Competent, Strong, & Gamebreaking.

How I read those categories:
0: The class provides no help to the character.
Noticeable: The class provides enough help that you might be considered to aid in the attempt.
Competent: The class provides enough help that you can do your share of the problem.
Strong: The class provides enough help that you can solve the problem yourself.
Gamebreaking: The class provides so much help with regards to that problem that the DM can only include the problem if they plan around/negate your ability. Essentially you broke the problem and the DM would have to patch it if they want to include it.

The example curves include intermediate values because we can always zoom in on a region and add finer scaling.

[Troacctid]

I don't like the graphs.

[eggynack]

I don't like the graphs.
These graphs in particular, or this general concept of graphing out tiers? Cause I kinda like the idea of conveying this notion of integral based tiering in an easier to parse way, but I'm not necessarily married to anything I got.

Also, gonna make the new thread now. I'ma put the link to it here, or in my next post if I get a response before I'm done.

Edit: Decided to change it from ninja to factotum at the last minute. Factotum felt wrong here for some reason, probably because of the casting capacity but also partially because it's just a different conversation from these skillful precision damagers that hang out in the 4-5 range rather than the 3-4 range. I'ma toss factotum in with the bard as I was saying before. Sorry if anyone's disappointed by that. I know I was kinda interested in doing the factotum thing, but ya can't sacrifice thematic cohesion for speedy argument joy.

Anyway here's the thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517091-Retiering-the-Classes-Ninja-Rogue-and-Scout&p=21765312#post21765312).