What is balance in homebrew?

[Grizl' Bjorn]

At the moment I am homebrewing some classes. These classes aren't casters, (though they do have access to cantrips and spell like abilities.) They are much stronger than all core non-casters and they are weaker than all official full casters.

In your view does this make them balanced or unbalanced? My own view is that so long as a class is weaker than several core classes it can't be regarded as unbalanced. Others contend that non casters must be balanced against other non casters. What do you think, why? Does it vary depending on the edition?

[PapaQuackers]

Not quite how it works.

If it fills the same exact niche as one class, and is inherently stronger than that class just by pure numbers, it's over powered.

It doesn't matter if your melee fighter-esque class is still weaker than a wizard, as long as he's considerably stronger than a fighter. He's not competing with the wizard.

For example, if I made a class called "Even Bigger Fighter" and all of his abilities were beefed up fighter abilities, he'd be an unbalanced home brew.

TLDR; Homebrews are competing with official classes that fill the same niche, not just placing among every class that ever existed.

[JNAProductions]

What edition?

3E, go nuts. Balance is so far out of whack in official things, that you can make anything of any power level and it should be fine.

4E? I dunno.

5E? Balance isn't perfect, but it's pretty good. Casters and non casters are on even footing, at least in combat. Stick to that level.

[Xefas]

Balance in homebrew is exactly the same as balance in official material. Do the mechanics accurately resonate with the expectations given to the people playing the game?

3.5 had balance problems. If you ask a lot of people on this forum, they're going to say that it's because a wizard is better than a fighter at everything the fighter does, and does other things besides. But they're actually expressing a symptom and don't see the underlying problem. 3.5 D&D gave its players (here, I'm using "players" as meaning "anyone playing the game", including the DM) an expectation that the core classes would be equally capable of exerting agency over the kinds of situations that the game gave expectations would be common.

For example, the 3.5 Player's Handbook makes it clear that there will be combat against CR-appropriate opponents, there will be traveling, there will be social encounters, and so on. It gives the expectation that all core classes will be able to exert their agency to a similar degree, in aggregate, over the course of a campaign that involves these things.

It then broke those expectations by giving the fighter moderate usefulness in a small number of circumstances, while giving the wizard potent usefulness in nearly every circumstance.

Those broken expectations are imbalance. This isn't just a D&D thing, or a tabletop rpg thing, or a game thing - this is fundamental to human perception. A hunter gatherer squatting in a cave with a fresh kill thinks things are going great for them. If all they've ever known are hunting and gathering and other hunter-gatherers, things are balanced to them. Show them a modern first world person who can walk down to the corner store and buy food imported from all over the world, take it back home to their centrally heated and cooled house, and then contact an orbiting satellite to entertain them with cat videos while they eat - suddenly things are imbalanced.

It's all expectations.

If 3.5 D&D had come out and said, immediately, in its class chapter, in no uncertain terms, "The wizard was designed to be better at everything than the fighter. We specifically designed it to be more mechanically complex to reward players with greater system mastery. The fighter is meant to be objectively worse in nearly all circumstances." then this wouldn't seem imbalanced. Want proof? No one complains about the Commoner being weaker than the wizard. Why? The game specifically calls out that the Commoner is meant to be weaker than the other classes. They do exactly what I've just said, and therefore there is no problem. If the fighter was lumped with the NPC classes as being intentionally weaker, no one would bat an eye at its weakness.

Therefore, balance is all about managing expectations.

So, when you write your homebrew, regardless of system, regardless of what it is, all you need to do to make it balanced is to accurately explain what the homebrew is meant to do. Don't say it's X when it's actually Y, which means you do need enough system mastery to genuinely know, yourself, if it's X or Y, or if you just think it's X or Y. As long as you say it's X, and it's actually X, expectations have been managed, balance has been achieved.

[Roderick_BR]

I agree and disagree with Xefas.

I agree with most anything, except that balance should be based only on expectation.
Lemme explain: The commoner example is clear that it is just a form to quantitify an other wise not relevant mechanic, like, how tough or skilled a commoner is. It doesnt *need* to be a strong class. Compared to Specialists, Warriors, and Adepts, the commoner really has nothing, let alone compared to a PC class.

Now, comparing Fighters and Wizards, it is a huge design flaw, and everyone knows it. Players are supposed to gain an equal chance to be active in the game, but the devs didnt notice how much magic effects would stack in 3.5. Back in AD&D and original D&D, magic was not so versatile, and didnt allow so many variables to stack that way. Yes, wizards always had been powerful, but they didn't have the reach that 3.x has, and they had weaknesses that actually mattered, including needing more experience points to advance in level.

When 3e came out, they tried to lessen these weaknesses without noticing how the new system already favored them, and kept doing more and more "wizards can use this effect to get less vulnerable" and "fighters can use this effect, but only with this and this and that restrictions".
They just keep shoving more and more benefits on each caster class level, while leaving the other classes in a vaccuum of mediocrity.

Comparing it with a point buy system, lets say, GURPS. The fighter player receives 100 points to build his character, plus 50 for combat skills, since he's a tough warrior guy with mundane skills, but stronger than an average commoner.
Then the wizard is given only 75 points to build his more normal-ish character, then given another 100 points to spend only on magic powers.
Then after every session, the fighter is given another 50 points, and the wizard is given another 100 points. And it repeats every session. That's what leveling up is like in 3.x
Level by level, the fighter, supposedly a player character class, is giving less tools than the other playable class, and devs expect you to find it normal. Because you are told to expect wizards to be naturally stronger than fighters, even tough both players are playing the same game, earning the same reward in form of experience points, leveling up at the same time, but the caster one gains many more benefits everytime it happens.

IMO, a good form of balance is using the infamous Tier System as a loose guideline. T3 is usually a middle point, so compare to those classes. For example, for a combat oriented class, compare to how effective a barbarian or warblade are rather than a fighter. From there you can decide how more or less power you want invested in the class.

[Red Fel]

"A miserable pile of class features."

Castlevania reference aside, I don't measure balance in an absolute context. It has no meaning in a vacuum. Terms like "power" or "versatility" can be defined in a vacuum, but balance, by its definition, requires something against which to be balanced.

Or, in other words, is it balanced against what?

Basically, pick a default party in your setting or system. The term "default party" may vary based on a number of factors. For example, the default party in 3.5e is presumed to be Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard, although that has obvious flaws. However, in an Undead-heavy setting such as Ravenloft, that default may shift to Fighter, Paladin, Cleric, Wizard, or similar. It varies.

Point is, pick a default party. Then place your homebrew next to that. That's what your balance is weighing against. Next, answer a series of questions.
Can your class contribute meaningfully alongside these other classes? If the answer is no, stop; your class is unbalanced, in that it is too weak. Go back and fix it. If the answer is yes...
Does your class do all the same things as another class? If the answer is no, and your class does something mostly or entirely different, that's good; your class stands out. If the answer is yes:
Does your class outperform, underperform, or perform at the same level, as compared to that class? If it outperforms that class, you have a balance issue; if your homebrew class does what a normal class does, but better in every way, it's unbalanced, in that it is too powerful. If it underperforms, you have a balance issue; if it does what a normal class does, but worse in every way, it's unbalanced, in that it is too weak. If it performs at the same level, you have a redundancy issue; it's not a problem of balance, but you need to decide whether your homebrew - which is essentially a variant - needs to exist.
If you reach this point, your class isn't too weak, and it's different. The question then is: Does it outshine a "specialist" class in its area of specialization, or perform comparably or better than multiple classes in multiple areas? For example, does your homebrew melee better than a Barbarian? Can it get bonus feats like a Fighter and Sneak Attack like a Rogue and Wild Shape like a Druid? If it outperforms a class at that class' one thing, or it can meaningfully substitute for multiple classes at the same time, you have a balance issue; there is no need to take those classes if this class can do what they do, as well as they do or better, and then some.
You'll notice that some classes (e.g. 3.5's Wizard/Cleric/Druid) count as unbalanced under this test. That's probably fair; as has been mentioned, even first-party developers have balance issues. It makes it a bit hypocritical, at times, to expect that homebrew should be balanced when first-party material is not, but them's the breaks.

An alternative, though? Make your homebrew fun. If it's fun - fun for everyone at the table, not just the player using it - then it's good homebrew, balance be damned.

[JNAProductions]

An alternative, though? Make your homebrew fun. If it's fun - fun for everyone at the table, not just the player using it - then it's good homebrew, balance be damned.

Very good advice, this is.

[Morphic tide]

As has been stated by people far more skilled in game sense than I, the key to balance in homebrew is it's relation to first party elements. In 3.5, you have a handy sense of "anything goes," so any level of power between blatant "I win" and "literally useless" is fine for someone.

In terms of actual balance, t6 and t5 don't bare mentioning for stuff to homebrew. They are non-functional at the best of times. T6 is utterly worthless, being home to the Commoner, and t5 is for classes that are barely usable at all and usually worthless in their specialty.

T4 is working specialists, who are barely usable outside their specialty and sometimes only work in one or two things, or have minor competence in many things that make them rarely be entirely useless, but not really worth using there. One-trick classes with no versatility and overspread skillmonkeys go here.

T3 is semi-generalist classes, able to do most things to moderate competence or a few things very well. Tome of Battle classes go here because they universally have non-combat proficiency of one sort or another. It's populated by a lot of specialized casters, because it turns out that being soul-deep in Necromancy or mind-screwing lets you solve a lot of problems.

Meanwhile, as my sig suggests, t2 lets you do anything, but not everything, very well, or do basically everything decently. Having Sorcerer on your class sheet says only that you have Arcane Magic with the Sorcerer progression. It says nothing about what you can actually do, that's decided by your Spells Known. The alternate is a slightly up-gunned Factotum that does basically literally everything to a level of competence expected of more focused t4 classes, all at once and in one build.

T1 requires being deliberately broken. You have to be able to, at least hypothetically, solve literally all problems with one build. You see Wizards and Artificers here because of that "hypothetically," they can solve more problems with one build than Sorcerer, but they have a limited "toolbox" for each day and a limit to the size of it. Clerics and Druids, though, are here because they have every tool their classes get from spells to pick from each day.

Ideally, a homebrew should fall neatly into one category without much complaint about it, when you talk 3.5 balance.

[GalacticAxekick]

Classes might accomplish different things and be useful in different situations (a Fighter on the front lines, trading blows vs a Wizard in the rear, manipulating the battlefield), or they might approach the same situation in different ways (a Fighter's technical skill vs a Barbarian's fitness and willpower on the front lines). But overall, if they are balanced, they should be contributing equally to the party's success in and out of combat.

If your homebrew does the same thing as another class, but better, it is unbalanced, because it will contribute more to the party's success than other party members. If your homebrew does the same thing as another class but worse, it's unbalanced for the opposite reason.

If your homebrew does something different from all existing classes, you'll need to check how valuable that contribution is and whether or not it's more or less valuable than the contributions of existing classes.

[Grod_The_Giant]

"Balance" is relative, and depends heavily on table culture. Your newly-created options should be roughly comparable to ones that are commonly used in your group. If that means healbot Clerics and sword-and-board Fighters, then that's the level you should shoot for; if your groups is all about full casters and 4d contingency-chess, then your new stuff had better be useful for a god-Wizard.

Red Fel's advice about comparing your stuff to a self-selected "default party" is excellent. Pick the classes you want it to co-exist alongside and see how it stacks up.

For very low-op, you might look at a sword-and-board Fighter, a Monk, a Cleric-who-only-casts-Cure-spells and an Adept.
For low-op, you might look at a Barbarian, a Rogue, a a Warlock and a single-book Healer.
For mid-op, you might look at a Warblade, a Factotum, a Dread Necromancer, and a Favored Soul (sans game-breaking spells)
For high-op, you're probably looking at a Druid, an Artificer, a Wizard, and a Cleric.


EDIT: Thus, "does the same thing as an existing class but better" isn't always a good measure, at least in a game as inbalanced as 3.5 (which is what it sounds like you're working on?). "Does the same thing as a Soulknife but better" is almost certainly a good thing; Soulknives are one of the weakest classes in the game, and damn straight you should be better than them. "Does the same thing as a Druid but better," on the other hand, almost certainly means you screwed up; Druids are not just crazy-strong but are crazy-strong even with low op.

[JNAProductions]

Funnily enough, I think this guy is a 5E brewer, so all this 3.X advice is (mostly) irrelevant. :P

[noob]

Funnily enough, I think this guy is a 5E brewer, so all this 3.X advice is (mostly) irrelevant. :P

Still wizards got to do a whole lot more things than a fighter or a barbarian in 5E and they still have cool tricks that make them way superior to the others.
Like go get some undeads and control them with bonus actions and have a simulacrum of yourself that also controls undead and then with you and 4-5 skeletons you go and still have a lot of nice spells to avoid battles or make battles happen on your own terms.(also use polymorph any object to spam the creation of creatures(one every two days or so) who are CR9 and starts friendly with you(for example start making a town of those))

[JNAProductions]

Still wizards got to do a whole lot more things than a fighter or a barbarian in 5E and they still have cool tricks that make them way superior to the others.
Like go get some undeads and control them with bonus actions and have a simulacrum of yourself that also controls undead and then with you and 4-5 skeletons you go and still have a lot of nice spells to avoid battles or make battles happen on your own terms.(also use polymorph any object to spam the creation of creatures(one every two days or so) who are CR9 and starts friendly with you(for example start making a town of those))

Outside abusing the rules (True Polymorphing Clay Golem minions, for instance) Wizards are very comparable to Fighters, at least in combat. out of combat, the balance definitely shifts away form Fighters, but in combat, both sides can contribute equally, if you follow the 6-8 recommended encounters per day.

[Grizl' Bjorn]

I am primarily a 5E homebrewer but I find the thoughtfulness and precision everyone is bringing to this conversation really interesting and great to read through.

There's a definitely a debate to be had about whether or not there are still 'tiers' in 5E. My personal experience has been that casters are still more powerful than fighters- by quite a bit. Whether or not that's an artifact of a 1-2 encounter adventure day is proabbly up for debate. Personally I feel that the sheer versatility of a wizard played well, especially by the kind of player who can adroitly manipulate situations, means that a well played wizard can be worth as much as 2 or 3 fighters. But I have a lot of respect for JNAProductions, so I don't really know.

[JNAProductions]

I guess you could say this-a Wizard is more important than a Fighter in 5E.

Wizards can do things Fighters CANNOT DO AT ALL, whereas Fighters do better things that Wizards can do.

So if given the choice between a party of 4 Fighters or 4 Wizards, I'd probably choose the 4 Fighters, but that's just because I'm not a huge caster fan. Out of the two, the Wizards are much more capable of handling a wider variety of challenges.

That being said, both of those parties are going to be worse than your stereotypical Fighter Rogue Wizard Cleric party, since they have a solid frontliner to take hits, get in the way, and deal damage, a solid skirmisher in the Rogue, and two good casters with greater variety than the all arcane Wizard party.

[Grod_The_Giant]

5e's balance is (irritatingly) tightly bound up with the 6-8-encounters-with-two-short-rests-day paradigm. Using a different number of rests (short or long) during that one "adventuring day" will inevitably change things. More long rests? Long-rest classes like Wizards and Paladins get a lot stronger, especially compared to largely rest-independent classes like Fighters and Rogues. Fewer short rests? Short-rest classes like Monks and Warlocks suffer. So... yeah. If you have one one or two encounters per day, the Wizard is going to shine a lot more than the Fighter regardless of anything else.

So for 5e homebrewing, I'd find a class with similar resource/rest parameters as your homebrew one to compare to.

[Morphic tide]

5e's balance is (irritatingly) tightly bound up with the 6-8-encounters-with-two-short-rests-day paradigm. Using a different number of rests (short or long) during that one "adventuring day" will inevitably change things. More long rests? Long-rest classes like Wizards and Paladins get a lot stronger, especially compared to largely rest-independent classes like Fighters and Rogues. Fewer short rests? Short-rest classes like Monks and Warlocks suffer. So... yeah. If you have one one or two encounters per day, the Wizard is going to shine a lot more than the Fighter regardless of anything else.

So for 5e homebrewing, I'd find a class with similar resource/rest parameters as your homebrew one to compare to.

I'd tried getting a thread for actually listing the DPR for classes and subclasses without the messy math and optimization chops of multiclassing and feats involved. It kinda died from people considering it useless for not including feats and multiclassing, even though that turns it into a massive pile of optimization assumptions. As well as the parameters I gave being largely useless, even though maximum burst damage is rather important to "feeling" balanced and constant damage potential is vital for attrition campaigns that screw with 5e's balancing assumptions for rests and encounters.

I started it specifically so that I could math out a casting subsystem to be less damaging than a Rogue that gets off a Sneak Attack every round because of the fact that casting is more versatile than straight damage.

[Cosi]

Don't ever balance anything to JaronK's tiers. They don't describe any desirable traits for a class to have. Important balance questions to keep in mind when designing a class are:

1. How does the class perform against level appropriate opposition? Ideally, you should be using something like the Same Game Test to get a feel for whether the class can meaningfully contribute to encounters at all levels.
2. Does the class have something to do in a variety of situations, both inside and outside combat? It is theoretically possible to balance characters by having them be extremely powerful in some portions of the game, but nearly useless in others. In practice, this does not work and you should not do it.

Balance needs to be tested and it needs to be robust. If your class is only balanced for a four encounter workday with two combat encounters, a social encounter, and a trap-based encounter, it is not really balanced. The actual balance point is sort of secondary, as long as you hit it. You can write classes that play nice with the Fighter. You can write classes that play nice with the Wizard. As long as you don't do one while aiming for the other, either is defensible.

The other big thing to think about is complexity. Some people want classes that are very involved. Some people want classes that are very simple. Neither is wrong per se, but you should avoid situations where you give a class simple non-combat abilities but complex combat ones as that's unlikely to work out well.


If 3.5 D&D had come out and said, immediately, in its class chapter, in no uncertain terms, "The wizard was designed to be better at everything than the fighter. We specifically designed it to be more mechanically complex to reward players with greater system mastery. The fighter is meant to be objectively worse in nearly all circumstances." then this wouldn't seem imbalanced. Want proof? No one complains about the Commoner being weaker than the wizard. Why? The game specifically calls out that the Commoner is meant to be weaker than the other classes. They do exactly what I've just said, and therefore there is no problem. If the fighter was lumped with the NPC classes as being intentionally weaker, no one would bat an eye at its weakness.

You're conflating two things. Yes, if the Fighter was explicitly an NPC class, no one would care that it sucked. But if the Fighter was a PC class people would still legitimately complain about balance even if it was made clear that it sucking was intentional. If someone punches you in the face out of nowhere, you will be both pissed off and surprised. If someone says "I'm going to punch you in the face" and then does so, you won't be surprised but you'll still be pissed off.


For high-op, you're probably looking at a Druid, an Artificer, a Wizard, and a Cleric.

Don't balance things to the Artificer. The Artificer is a terrible class that people get excited about because it can do every broken trick any class can do. But it sucks when it's not pulling broken tricks (while also being horrifyingly tedious to run). Instead, something like a Psionic full caster of some sort or an optimized fixed list caster or an Archivist.

[noob]

The artificer means that if there is a gentleman agreement the team will be sure to have its wbl.(not more since the artificer will thanks to the agreement supply exactly the right amount of resources and not less since the artificer with barely anything and one or two weeks of autocraft with a dedicated wight will produce the right amount of equipment) without having to strain verisimilitude(like having the rats you fight have golden plate armour so that you have the right wbl)

[Morphic tide]

Don't ever balance anything to JaronK's tiers.
You said this.


You can write classes that play nice with the Fighter. You can write classes that play nice with the Wizard. As long as you don't do one while aiming for the other, either is defensible.
And followed it up with basically a textbook definition of balancing a class around tiers. JaronK's tiers don't have all the relevant information, yes. But they make a good core of guidelines for finding a balance point.

The tier list was made to organize classes in a form akin to "what party won't a fighter be outshined in?" JaronK's was corrupted by optimization and being too dependent on multiple situation versatility. At the end of the day, a Fighter is the scariest melee class in the game for combat. Ubercharger builds need those bonus feats. It gets t5 because it has basically nothing outside combat. Sure, it has an abysmal floor, but all the t1 classes except Druid have a lower one. Druid's floor is higher than Fighter because of Animal Companion and Wildshape making absolutely worthless builds a functional impossibility.


Don't balance things to the Artificer. The Artificer is a terrible class that people get excited about because it can do every broken trick any class can do. But it sucks when it's not pulling broken tricks (while also being horrifyingly tedious to run).
Which is why I argued for making it t2, rather than t1, in the recent project of redefining tiers. It needs optimization chops to work out well, and needs unholy amounts of time to work at all. And for Wizard to indisputably surpass Sorcerer takes more optimization chops than a Schodinger Sorcerer, wielder of "pick your chunk of the class list for the day." The main thing that makes PF Archanist be considered objectively better than Wizard, only even better because there's no spell book involved. Admittedly, it involves high cheese, but at-will Psychic Reformation is easier to get than the pile of overkill that optimized Wizards need to be indisputably better than Sorcerers. Because Sorcerers have their whole load of spells available without preparation.

[Cosi]

And followed it up with basically a textbook definition of balancing a class around tiers. JaronK's tiers don't have all the relevant information, yes. But they make a good core of guidelines for finding a balance point.

I said don't balance to JaronK's Tiers. I didn't say "don't balance classes to classes at similar power levels". JaronK's Tiers are hot garbage from the perspective of designing new content, because the entire top of the system is defined by "being able to break the game". For a project that seeks to describe an existing system, that's an understandable (if not really good) aspect to consider. But you should never be designing something that tries to break the game.

[GnomeWorks]

JaronK's crap is just that: crap.

The same game test (http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/Dungeons_and_Dragons_Wiki:The_Same_Game_Test?usesk in=oasis) is one of the best balance tools I've found.

[Jormengand]

The same game test literally asks, and answers, the same question as the tier list in the same way, namely "How likely is it, given a random encounter, that the class in question has a level-appropriate response to it". The difference is that the SGT assumes for some insane reason that you're soloing an encounter, which is in some cases wildly EL-inappropriate ("An arbitrarily high number of CR 4 traps" is not EL 5 - sqrt(2) CR 4 traps, or two CR 3 traps, or one CR 5 trap, or four CR 1 traps is EL 5), and the tier system takes into account the question of "What if I have a level-inappropriate response to the situation, which is still a response to the situation but doesn't allow me to handle it alone?"

Either way, it's no real surprise that they come up with essentially similar answers, so it doesn't really matter which you use for balancing. If you want to make a character which can travel with a fighter, wizard, cleric and rogue without straying too far from the average, a) good luck and b) they should probably be able to solo 70-80% of the SGT stuff and c) they should probably be high tier 3.

[Cosi]

The same game test literally asks, and answers, the same question as the tier list in the same way, namely "How likely is it, given a random encounter, that the class in question has a level-appropriate response to it".

That's not really relevant. Both "5" and "4" are answers to the question "what is 2 + 2?", but that doesn't make them equally correct. Similarly, the Same Game Test is better at assessing the capabilities of characters than the Tier System is, and it contains more useful benchmarks.


The difference is that the SGT assumes for some insane reason that you're soloing an encounter,

The rules imply that such a challenge should produce results consistent with the claims of the SGT, and group tests would be incredibly noisy. The desired case is a Wizard, a Fighter, a Cleric, and a Rogue all batting at CR 10 at 10th level. How can you tell if you have that or a CR 14 Wizard and CR 0 other characters, or a CR 12 Wizard, a CR 10 Cleric, a CR 8 Fighter and Rogue, or any other combination of characters that makes the math work right from a group test? What mechanism do you have for getting useful empirical data other than solo tests?


which is in some cases wildly EL-inappropriate ("An arbitrarily high number of CR 4 traps" is not EL 5 - sqrt(2) CR 4 traps, or two CR 3 traps, or one CR 5 trap, or four CR 1 traps is EL 5)

First, you're mis-representing the situation. If you beat a CR 3 encounter today and a CR 3 encounter tomorrow, you have not beaten an EL 5 encounter.

Second, that's a problem with the specific examples Frank wrote up, not the testing framework. The SGT is just "run characters through a battery of expected encounters to see if they perform as expected". Saying "such and such encounter is a bad encounter" (i.e. Traps, Succubus high rolling) or "such and such type of encounter isn't represented" (i.e. group challenges, endurance challenges) is not an argument against the framework as a whole.


and the tier system takes into account the question of "What if I have a level-inappropriate response to the situation, which is still a response to the situation but doesn't allow me to handle it alone?"

If you look at examples of people running SGTs for various characters, "partial victory" or "likely defeat" are categories they use. If your ability isn't sufficient to get you that far, it is probably not an ability we should care about. What the Tier System accomplishes is allowing special pleading because it never requires that characters be put to the test. We are free to dream up situations where the Truenamer's moderately large bonus to knowledge checks a few times a day or the Factotum's cohort-tier spellcasting is something we care about, despite the fact that any real test would make it eminently clear they are not.


Either way, it's no real surprise that they come up with essentially similar answers, so it doesn't really matter which you use for balancing.

Yes it does. There are dramatic differences between the SGT and the Tier System. For one thing, the SGT makes much stronger claims about what level of balance is correct. JaronK went out of his way to explain that you were free to play at whichever Tier you liked most and none was "correct" by RAW. Conversely, the entire purpose of the SGT is to test whether characters reach the level of power RAW indicates they deserve. Of course, there's also the aforementioned "breaking the game" issue that makes the top of the Tier System terrible, and various implications from the clusters JaronK created. That's not to say JaronK necessarily believes those things, but the Tier System was designed to describe how a system functions, not how it should function.


b) they should probably be able to solo 70-80% of the SGT stuff

That is substantially better than reasonably optimized Wizards or Clerics do. Batting 50% on the SGT without excessive optimization shows that you have a balanced character, and that is dramatically more than most classes manage.


c) they should probably be high tier 3.

Why though? Literally none of those classes are Tier Three. Incidentally, this is another problem with the Tiers. People say that Tier Three is good, but I think that's mostly because it has a diverse array of classes (e.g. Binders play very differently from Swordsages) and (somewhat cynically) those classes don't have much strategic agency. A good class should (IMO) look like a Beguiler or Wizard.

[Jormengand]

That's not really relevant. Both "5" and "4" are answers to the question "what is 2 + 2?", but that doesn't make them equally correct. Similarly, the Same Game Test is better at assessing the capabilities of characters than the Tier System is, and it contains more useful benchmarks.
That's why I said it asks and answers it in the same way.


The rules imply that such a challenge should produce results consistent with the claims of the SGT, and group tests would be incredibly noisy. The desired case is a Wizard, a Fighter, a Cleric, and a Rogue all batting at CR 10 at 10th level. How can you tell if you have that or a CR 14 Wizard and CR 0 other characters, or a CR 12 Wizard, a CR 10 Cleric, a CR 8 Fighter and Rogue, or any other combination of characters that makes the math work right from a group test? What mechanism do you have for getting useful empirical data other than solo tests?

You don't actually have to run a full test. The tier system considers what abilities you have that buff groups. Suppose that there were a class, for example, that had a bunch of other-only buffs (say one which got special benefits when Aiding Another). The SGT would totally fail to represent those abilities.

Say that there were a class that was capable of giving themself or an ally a +5 bonus to all skills for five rounds, and say that it was called the "Truenamer". That would be a lot more useful against high-level skill challenges with a rogue in the party, and a lot less useful against low-level skill challenges without (for example, if there's a DC 10 trap, a 4th-level rogue with int 14 can manage that on a 1 without the truenamer's help, so the truenamer provides no help to the rogue, but the truenamer provides a lot of help to himself with a single cross-class skill rank by uttering on himself. Conversely, with a DC 25 trap, the rogue can manage on a 16 without the truenamer's help and an 11 with it, so the truenamer is very helpful to the rogue, but the truenamer himself can't actually solve the encounter without help, only contribute to it).


First, you're mis-representing the situation. If you beat a CR 3 encounter today and a CR 3 encounter tomorrow, you have not beaten an EL 5 encounter.

Second, that's a problem with the specific examples Frank wrote up, not the testing framework. The SGT is just "run characters through a battery of expected encounters to see if they perform as expected". Saying "such and such encounter is a bad encounter" (i.e. Traps, Succubus high rolling) or "such and such type of encounter isn't represented" (i.e. group challenges, endurance challenges) is not an argument against the framework as a whole.

If you're resting between disarming traps on the same door, that's a problem.

Sure, it's not an argument against the framework, but it shows that perhaps less thought was put into it than might have been, and serves as advice against using the actual SGTs represented in that list.


If you look at examples of people running SGTs for various characters, "partial victory" or "likely defeat" are categories they use. If your ability isn't sufficient to get you that far, it is probably not an ability we should care about. What the Tier System accomplishes is allowing special pleading because it never requires that characters be put to the test.

See buffing others above. Sometimes, characters co-operating can achieve something which neither of them could even partially have achieved alone.


We are free to dream up situations where the Truenamer's moderately large bonus to knowledge checks a few times a day or the Factotum's cohort-tier spellcasting is something we care about, despite the fact that any real test would make it eminently clear they are not.

You couldn't resist, could you?


Yes it does. There are dramatic differences between the SGT and the Tier System. For one thing, the SGT makes much stronger claims about what level of balance is correct. JaronK went out of his way to explain that you were free to play at whichever Tier you liked most and none was "correct" by RAW. Conversely, the entire purpose of the SGT is to test whether characters reach the level of power RAW indicates they deserve. Of course, there's also the aforementioned "breaking the game" issue that makes the top of the Tier System terrible, and various implications from the clusters JaronK created. That's not to say JaronK necessarily believes those things, but the Tier System was designed to describe how a system functions, not how it should function.
I don't think that claiming one specific level of balance to be "Correct" is necessarily an indication of value. Would the Tier system have been better in your eyes if it had said "T3 or bust"?



That is substantially better than reasonably optimized Wizards or Clerics do. Batting 50% on the SGT without excessive optimization shows that you have a balanced character, and that is dramatically more than most classes manage.
"It states that a character of any given level should have, on average, a 50% chance to win an encounter against a creature with a CR equal to the character's level or a group of creatures in a single encounter whose EL equals the character's level. On this wiki we have assigned this level of aptitude to the Rogue balance level. Characters who perform noticeably better than 50% on an SGT, especially at later levels, are generally considered to fall into our Wizard balance level."

But don't worry, I didn't expect you to believe what you were actually saying.


Why though? Literally none of those classes are Tier Three.
Well, no, that's because averages (at least, mean averages) can be different numbers than any of the numbers that you tried to take the average of.


Incidentally, this is another problem with the Tiers. People say that Tier Three is good, but I think that's mostly because it has a diverse array of classes (e.g. Binders play very differently from Swordsages) and (somewhat cynically) those classes don't have much strategic agency. A good class should (IMO) look like a Beguiler or Wizard.

The main reason that T3 is considered good is because it allows you to be in the spotlight when your schtick comes up, and to contribute even when it doesn't come up. If you're not making plays, you're not having fun, and everyone deserves some spotlight time. Tier 3 means that the party as a whole should always have a level-appropriate response to the encounter, with a character specialised for that encounter taking the lead and characters with different specialities providing support.

Tier 3 characters also have plenty of strategic agency, but just less game-breakingly powerful agency. Often, T3 classes have more viable options than higher-tier classes because the more powerful T1-2 options overshadow the less-powerful ones to the point where only the best ones are worth using. For example, some high-level powers are just strictly better (or practically strictly better) than augmented versions of low-level ones, leaving the psion with few powers that he actually regularly uses.

[Cosi]

You don't actually have to run a full test. The tier system considers what abilities you have that buff groups. Suppose that there were a class, for example, that had a bunch of other-only buffs (say one which got special benefits when Aiding Another). The SGT would totally fail to represent those abilities.

But what is your alternative for getting data? Yes, I can imagine cases the SGT covers poorly. Do you have a better testing framework? I'll take "slightly flawed empirical approach" over "pure theorycraft" any day of the week.


See buffing others above. Sometimes, characters co-operating can achieve something which neither of them could even partially have achieved alone.

Well, yes, two CR 10 creatures are more powerful than one. If you really feel it's important, you can run group tests. But that comes at the cost of getting much noisier data for anyone who isn't a buff-bot.


"It states that a character of any given level should have, on average, a 50% chance to win an encounter against a creature with a CR equal to the character's level or a group of creatures in a single encounter whose EL equals the character's level. On this wiki we have assigned this level of aptitude to the Rogue balance level. Characters who perform noticeably better than 50% on an SGT, especially at later levels, are generally considered to fall into our Wizard balance level."

That's why I said "reasonably optimized". Yes, you can break the game with a high level Wizard. But most Wizards don't do that. A Wizard that is not abusing planar binding or polymorph bats somewhere around 50% to 60%.


The main reason that T3 is considered good is because it allows you to be in the spotlight when your schtick comes up, and to contribute even when it doesn't come up.

That's just how having abilities works. Clerics and Wizards play quite differently, and a party with a Cleric and a Wizard in it will exhibit this behavior. Beguiler, Cleric, Druid, and Wizard is a balanced party where everyone has reasonably distinct niches. The idea that characters have to suck to be distinct is entirely a result of people not understanding how to scale adventures to high level.


Tier 3 characters also have plenty of strategic agency, but just less game-breakingly powerful agency.

If teleport is "game breakingly powerful" you don't understand the point of agency.


Often, T3 classes have more viable options than higher-tier classes because the more powerful T1-2 options overshadow the less-powerful ones to the point where only the best ones are worth using.

Not really. The reason casters tend to use a narrower range of abilities is because picking between a thousand different spells pushes you towards chunking in a way picking between seven different maneuvers doesn't. Also, most of the best casters prepare spells, and are therefore forced to be more conservative in their selections (the limits put on the Sorcerer's spells known have a similar effect).