Design pondering: Choice vs Power

[VladtheLad]

A lot of pathfinder/3.5 design paradim is about choice in character building. You can pick and choose your exact character build.
Another part of this design paradim or maybe more precicely gaming experience of 3rd edition is high powered pc's, at least at high levels. Both choice and the potential to achieve imense power are staples of 3rd edition.

For a few years now I have been of the opinion that this focus on customizability and choice have made pc's much weaker or at least less flexible and paradoxically with fewer options in and out of combat, than they would have been otherwise.
Because both the options and their combinations must be balanced with each other, you end up with much tighter limits to design. I truly believe for example that if from the creation of 3rd edition there were no feats or multiclassing the design space to give much more power and flexibility to the classes themselves would open up.
To go even further, just try and imagine if also wealth by level wasn't a factor and the power needed from it was contained in 2-4 different choices or even on the class itself. How much design space would be freed, to give pc's cool powers and options, without fear of them becoming overpowering in combination with sth else, if there was no or at least very little choice in picking magic items?
Now before people people blame me for saying " Just give only one class that can do everything" I am totally ok with having a bunch of classes and archetypes to choose from, pathfinder certainly has a good number of them. I am also ok with having a bunch of essentially wealth by level options to choose from.
Also there are certain things like archetypical restrictions in what a class can and cannot do, these are fine and should be followed or even enhanced.

I hope I managed to get my point across. Any thoughts?

[Jay R]

For a few years now I have been of the opinion that this focus on customizability and choice have made pc's much weaker or at least less flexible and paradoxically with fewer options in and out of combat, than they would have been otherwise.

There is some truth here. In original D&D, anybody could try to convince the king, or trip an opponent, and the DM would try to figure out if it would work. Once feats and skills for doing it exist, you need that feat or skill.

[Yogibear41]

Once feats and skills for doing it exist, you need that feat or skill.

Paraphrasing a bit here, but my DM has said a few times more or less, that he discovered players could not do a particular thing, because he found a feat that said players could do a thing, so clearly they can't do it without the feat.

[Arbane]

Paraphrasing a bit here, but my DM has said a few times more or less, that he discovered players could not do a particular thing, because he found a feat that said players could do a thing, so clearly they can't do it without the feat.

3rd Ed D&D has a serious problem with walling off everything even remotely interesting as feats (or spells, or magic items, or massive investment in skills).

I've heard this referred to as the 'Air-Breathing Mermaid Problem' - imagine someone had a mermaid character, it had problems operating on land but could breathe air because nothing said it couldn't.... until the Hypothetical Mermaid Sourcebook comes out and has a 'Breathe Air' feat in it.

[Fizban]

If you want PCs to be able to do things without being super specialized, all you have to do is. . . make the things do-able without being super specialized. It is the DM tuning the game with the assumption of X level of optimization which makes X level of optimization required. Nothing in the rules supports X level of optimization, it's all up to the group.

[Pleh]

I've often mitigated this problem by rephrasing it slightly.

A feat/skill/spell means you can AUTOMATICALLY do the thing it says (given whatever constraints of the feat/skill/spell). Sometimes (especially when it makes sense, expends an Action Point, or falls under "rule of cool") I'll allow an attempt without the feat/skill/spell and have them roll some kind of check. They may not get total success, but it reduces the hurdle of the pay to play wall without rendering the feat/skill/spell irrelevant.

Being able to imitate a class ability once isn't terribly game breaking. Being able to consistently rely on that ability is what you pay for in character creation.

It's like the difference between owning a home and renting. If you intend to be doing this all the time in your career, go ahead and invest in owning the class ability. If you only need a space for days to some few years, the inconvenience of not paying for full ownership gets balanced by the flexibility of being able to invest elsewhere.

[VladtheLad]

This is not exactly what I am talking about, though it does exist and is part of what I am talking about, its workable for example http://michaeliantorno.com/feat-taxes-in-pathfinder/#dw_accordions-3-nav_menu-dw-widget-1 and its not just about feats.

Essentially what I am saying is that balancing options between each other makes these options more limited and weaker, because they should work on all possible combinations.

Again lets say we have a class like the fighter or vigilante and they get no feats or talents or bonus feats. And lets say you are in a campaign where you get no magic items but benefits like those from a short of vow of poverty, though they could come from an artifact weapon and a magic armor you find. If the designer of those things wanted he could put much more powers, abilities and tactics in them than you would normally have without fear of unbalancing the game.

Imagine a 3rd edition where there were no feats or buying selling magic items but the classes and adventure awards were still made to face the same monsters and the same adventures.

Now it would be better if I had designed an example of what I am saying, but I am not sure how I would go about that.

[VladtheLad]

I've often mitigated this problem by rephrasing it slightly.

A feat/skill/spell means you can AUTOMATICALLY do the thing it says (given whatever constraints of the feat/skill/spell). Sometimes (especially when it makes sense, expends an Action Point, or falls under "rule of cool") I'll allow an attempt without the feat/skill/spell and have them roll some kind of check. They may not get total success, but it reduces the hurdle of the pay to play wall without rendering the feat/skill/spell irrelevant.

Being able to imitate a class ability once isn't terribly game breaking. Being able to consistently rely on that ability is what you pay for in character creation.

It's like the difference between owning a home and renting. If you intend to be doing this all the time in your career, go ahead and invest in owning the class ability. If you only need a space for days to some few years, the inconvenience of not paying for full ownership gets balanced by the flexibility of being able to invest elsewhere.

That's neat, not exactly what I was thinking about but still useful for my games.

[Peat]

I've never heard anyone complaining they can't get enough power and flexibility out of a 3rd/3.5/PF character though. I have heard people complaining that the variance is too big between certain options but not that the power isn't there. The problem is that the power & flexibility is reserved, by and large, for spellcasters only. People complain about a lack of choice and power for martials, never for casters. I hate to take it there so early in the thread but I don't see what else to say.

And its not like the ability to wall choices off behind being Fighter 15 or whatever doesn't exist. They could have gone there if they wanted, and some designers have. Example - how Pounce goes from a 1st level available Barbarian dip in 3.5 to something you need 12 levels of Barb for in PF. Which also means some designers have cheerily left a lot of power lying around for dippers with zero ducks given. They've paid attention to it and made choices, and the choices have been by and large irrelevant because they've all been operating under the paradigm that power & flexibility is, by and large, for spellcasters only.

As such, I think this theory addresses something that isn't really an issue. The designers know how to wall off meaningful options to stop everyone from abusing them and have done so. The issue isn't their caution over too much choice, its their belief over the right power levels.

[Endarire]

Some of this comes down to certain options being especially famous. How many times have you heard about Divine Metamagic or the Incantatrix class compared to the Doomdreamer PrC? It's probably a high number.

Focusing on the famous options is often limiting due to thinking these builds are the standard, regardless of how true that sentiment is.

[VladtheLad]

I've never heard anyone complaining they can't get enough power and flexibility out of a 3rd/3.5/PF character though. I have heard people complaining that the variance is too big between certain options but not that the power isn't there. The problem is that the power & flexibility is reserved, by and large, for spellcasters only. People complain about a lack of choice and power for martials, never for casters. I hate to take it there so early in the thread but I don't see what else to say.

And its not like the ability to wall choices off behind being Fighter 15 or whatever doesn't exist. They could have gone there if they wanted, and some designers have. Example - how Pounce goes from a 1st level available Barbarian dip in 3.5 to something you need 12 levels of Barb for in PF. Which also means some designers have cheerily left a lot of power lying around for dippers with zero ducks given. They've paid attention to it and made choices, and the choices have been by and large irrelevant because they've all been operating under the paradigm that power & flexibility is, by and large, for spellcasters only.

As such, I think this theory addresses something that isn't really an issue. The designers know how to wall off meaningful options to stop everyone from abusing them and have done so. The issue isn't their caution over too much choice, its their belief over the right power levels.

But part of it is connected. The full casting classes main class feature has basically zero choice, at least when building your pc not when actually playing, you just take it and then run with it. I guess exceptions are Sorcerer where your choice of spells does matter and Wizard though then you can copy stuff from spell books so in the long term it doesn't matter that much.
In general I wouldn't mind for all classes to have more choice in actual play and less in building them.
Also the designers are constrained by the fact that they have to create building blocks and then see how all of these interact even if they are going for high power/flexibility.
Another problem is its much more daunting for newbies to create pc's, though if you go level by level it becomes much more easy.

All that said I accept that I could totally be off the mark here, but basically I was just thinking that a feature of 3.5 isn't just its choice in building your pc, but also the rest of the system and you could have the 3.5/Pathfinder experience without feats or magic items.

I think I need to give an example, lets say I give the fighter through alternate wealth by level insane mobility but no great archery ability. I don't need to worry if he will throw all his stuff in archery and then outmaneuver enemies and shoot from afar automatically winning against someone who doesn't have his mobility or long range ability.

[Arbane]

But part of it is connected. The full casting classes main class feature has basically zero choice, at least when building your pc not when actually playing, you just take it and then run with it.

Oh, no, you're stuck taking 'Do Anything' as a class feature.

[Cosi]

There is some truth here. In original D&D, anybody could try to convince the king, or trip an opponent, and the DM would try to figure out if it would work. Once feats and skills for doing it exist, you need that feat or skill.

Of course, there's a corresponding effect going in the other direction. By having an explicit ability that says "you can do X", you are freed from the burden of having to convince the DM that you can do X. I certainly think it's fair to say that D&D has often gone too far in the "make it a feat" direction, but it's not all downside there.


Essentially what I am saying is that balancing options between each other makes these options more limited and weaker, because they should work on all possible combinations..

I don't think the designers put enough effort into thinking about the effects of things on other things for this to be a problem.


Some of this comes down to certain options being especially famous. How many times have you heard about Divine Metamagic or the Incantatrix class compared to the Doomdreamer PrC? It's probably a high number.

That's true, but there are also a lot of options that are simply bad for no reason. Green Star Adept is a pretty cool PrC. You slowly turn into a jade statue by absorbing starmetal. Plenty of interesting stuff there, more if you tweaked the fluff. But the class is just crippled by the fact that you're expected to give up five caster levels for it. That's not a good deal on the face of it, and compared to other PrCs -- not even the Incantatrix, just ones in the same book like Mage of the Arcane Order -- it's just insulting. There would way more interesting options if half the PrCs in the game didn't randomly cripple you for no reason.

You can also see this to a lesser degree with things like the reduced spell progression for spontaneous casters. Sorcerers don't need to be half a level behind Wizards. But they are.


Oh, no, you're stuck taking 'Do Anything' as a class feature.

I think it's entirely reasonable to want to be able to specialize your Beguiler as a Mind Mage or a Shadow Mage or a Sneaky Mage at 1st level, and the game offers no tools to do that. It's not as big a problem as the gap between casters and non-casters, but it is a problem.

[Quertus]

Oh, no, you're stuck taking 'Do Anything' as a class feature.

Actually...

This one time, I was playing a Telepath named Raymond. He was great. Limited, but great. Then, as a reward, he got "do anything" powers. And suffered decision paralysis.

He willingly have up his powers to go back to being "just" a telepath.

"Do anything" isn't necessarily optimal.

[Pleh]

"Do anything" isn't necessarily optimal.

So far as Tiering goes, it basically is.

There isn't much of a way to tier things like fluff and character motive

[Quertus]

So far as Tiering goes, it basically is.

There isn't much of a way to tier things like fluff and character motive

This sounds like a flaw (one of many, so very many) in the tiering system.

[Arbane]

This sounds like a flaw (one of many, so very many) in the tiering system.

The tiers aren't about desirability, they're about capability.

[Quertus]

The tiers aren't about desirability, they're about capability.

Fair enough.

[Quertus]

So, regarding the OP... Does being given additional options reduce the viable design space? Hmmm...

No. Not exactly.

Let's say that the design space is the numbers 1-100. One system lets you pick one number, another lets you pick 3 numbers. And let's say that higher numbers are stronger. Only 1% of characters in the first system are optimal, only ~0.0001% of characters in the second system are optimal. So, sure, there are fewer possible chances of making the optimal character.

But, for characters that add up to 42? There's only one option in the first system. In the second system, there's... lots.

If I'm trying to make characters that are balanced with the party, and the party is sitting at 42, I've only got one choice to be at 42 for the first party, but lots of characters I could choose to play in the second system.

However, there are certainly issues. Has anyone played a half-orc Wizard / Effigy Master? Has anyone made a Cleric / Prestige Paladin with Vow of Poverty and max ranks in Diplomacy? A sneak attack duel-wielding half-ogre Rogue with rideby attack?

There's a lot of possible combinations, but not all are equally likely to see play. Even if they would be balanced.

EDIT: what it does mean is, if a given group can, say, accept characters within 10 points of each other, there's a much greater chance that random characters will be incompatible. But, if the GM says, "make characters totaling 50-60", either works fine.

[Particle_Man]

So far as Tiering goes, it basically is.

There isn't much of a way to tier things like fluff and character motive

I thought Tiers were more for DMs. If you don't want to have to deal with players that can do anything, ban Tiers 1 and 2. If you want to be able to throw various challenges at the party, ban Tiers 5 and 6.

I once took a Psion and only took the "shaper" powers. This wasn't a mechanical restriction, I just felt like it.

I did the same with a Sorceror that only took spells from the illusion school.

I also got a sorceror that I felt less like playing because the party got a surprise Mythic Upgrade, and I took the "cast anything" mythic power. It happens.

Sometimes players want to go for a theme, regardless of the extra power they would get by going "off theme".

[Crake]

There is some truth here. In original D&D, anybody could try to convince the king, or trip an opponent, and the DM would try to figure out if it would work. Once feats and skills for doing it exist, you need that feat or skill.

To be fair, most of the feats like improved trip and improved disarm etc all just make it EASIER to do those things, they aren't NECESSARY to do them.

[Nifft]

To be fair, most of the feats like improved trip and improved disarm etc all just make it EASIER to do those things, they aren't NECESSARY to do them.

I suspect Jay R is talking about garbage like Investigate (from the Eberron Campaign Setting).

[Pleh]

I thought Tiers were more for DMs. If you don't want to have to deal with players that can do anything, ban Tiers 1 and 2. If you want to be able to throw various challenges at the party, ban Tiers 5 and 6.

I once took a Psion and only took the "shaper" powers. This wasn't a mechanical restriction, I just felt like it.

I did the same with a Sorceror that only took spells from the illusion school.

I also got a sorceror that I felt less like playing because the party got a surprise Mythic Upgrade, and I took the "cast anything" mythic power. It happens.

Sometimes players want to go for a theme, regardless of the extra power they would get by going "off theme".

Tiers aren't for anyone exclusively. It's a way of describing how the classes interact. DMs can use this to restrict class access to modulate pc capacity, or players can use it to do the same thing autonomously. Most good players aren't wanting to leave their friends in the dust or keep holding them up and a class tier system can help them pick class options that will keep them in the desired power level.

[Cosi]

If you don't want to have to deal with players that can do anything, ban Tiers 1 and 2.

I understand what you were trying to say, but man is it easy to read this in an entirely different way. One that I happen to think is way more accurate, actually.


a class tier system can help them pick class options that will keep them in the desired power level.

Except it's generally totally trivial to play "high tier" classes in a "low tier" game. Part of the power of the Wizard is how you can play it at any particular level of competence, including ones much lower than it's theoretical ceiling. If people aren't trying to unbalance the game, and they know enough about the game to know it exists, the tier system is almost entirely useless.

[Quertus]

I understand what you were trying to say, but man is it easy to read this in an entirely different way. One that I happen to think is way more accurate, actually.

Hahaha, true that.


Except it's generally totally trivial to play "high tier" classes in a "low tier" game. Part of the power of the Wizard is how you can play it at any particular level of competence, including ones much lower than it's theoretical ceiling. If people aren't trying to unbalance the game, and they know enough about the game to know it exists, the tier system is almost entirely useless.

Quertus, my signature tactically inept academia mage, for whom this account named, has no idea what you're talking about. But he'll keep hiding behind the party Fighter and MVP Monk until he figures it out.

[Pleh]

If people aren't trying to unbalance the game, and they know enough about the game to know it exists, the tier system is almost entirely useless.

I disagree.

If people aren't trying to unbalance the game, and they know enough about the game to know it exists, the tier system is already being fully utilized.

[Quertus]

I disagree.

If people aren't trying to unbalance the game, and they know enough about the game to know it exists, the tier system is already being fully utilized.

... ?

OK, if people know about the system to be able to intentionally attempt to not imbalance the game, but are unaware of the tier system, that I understand.

Now, let's add in knowledge of the existence of the tier system. In what way does that knowledge of its existence make it fully utilized?

[Cosi]

I disagree.

If people aren't trying to unbalance the game, and they know enough about the game to know it exists, the tier system is already being fully utilized.

"Have competent players who aren't trying to break the game" is entirely independent of the Tier System.

Consider two parties.

The first is a Cleric, a Sorcerer, a Warblade, and a Rogue. In this party, everyone is trying to make characters at the same level of power that don't tread on each other's toes.

The second is a Dread Necromancer, a Warmage, a Warblade, and a Factotum. In this party, one player is trying to make a character that is dramatically more powerful than the others.

Which of these parties will observe a smaller imbalance? Which of these parties has a smaller Tier disparity? Given the answers to those questions, what exactly is the utility of the Tiers, if they're less effective than good-faith efforts not to break the game?

[Pleh]

... ?

OK, if people know about the system to be able to intentionally attempt not imbalance the game, but are unaware of the tier system, that I understand.

Now, let's add in knowledge of the existence of the tier system. In what way does that knowledge of its existence make it fully utilized?

In its application.

If the knowledge of class power disparity is being used to prevent inter party power disparity, then the tier system has done its job.

[BassoonHero]

"Have competent players who aren't trying to break the game" is entirely independent of the Tier System.
I think that what Pleh is getting at is that the tier system is just an easy-to-understand summary of class imbalances that already exist. Competent players have to address these imbalances when creating their characters. In doing so, they are using the underlying information that is summarized by the tier system even if they don't refer to or even know about the tiers themselves.

[Cosi]

If the knowledge of class power disparity is being used to prevent inter party power disparity, then the tier system has done its job.

So if you completely ignore the things the tier system actually says -- that classes in the same tier have better relative balance -- and instead focus on the thing it doesn't purport to do -- building high tier classes in non broken ways -- that's the tier system working? No way. If that's the tier system working, "the tier system working" just means "having a game that isn't broken" and all you've done is define terms in a way that makes it impossible for you to lose the argument.


In doing so, they are using the underlying information that is summarized by the tier system even if they don't refer to or even know about the tiers themselves.

Oh that's just brilliant! Because the tier system talks about imbalance, anything involving imbalance is actually using the tier system. So if I buff some classes that I think suck, that's actually an application of the tier system, even if I've never heard of it or explicitly reject it as a metric for discussing imbalance. It doesn't matter if the tiers are accurate or useful, just the fact that it is possible to not break the game means it's doing it's job even if you follow a completely different avenue from the one it suggests to reach that point.

This, incidentally, is another problem I have with the tiers. "Tier System" appears to mean "whatever I personally want it to right now so that 'follow the tier system' is the answer to this balance problem". If ignoring the tiers is "following the tier system", the idea of "following the tier system" is an entirely meaningless one.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I do think the tier system has "created awareness", to use that vague term, of the power disparities between classes.

I think most people play a tier 4 wizard on an ad-hoc basis: a certain spell does extremely well (e.g. shivering touch one-shots a dragon), and it is labeled "too good--emergency use only". After a while, you have a list of what is "too good", and you can give that list to a new wizard player. But you can't take a new class for a new table, apply that same list, and decide to hold back some spells. The list of "too good" things isn't generalized enough.

The tier system provides a framework within which players (including DMs) can compare the classes at a more abstract level. Having a vague sense of where everything is at, tier-wise, is helpful when communicating about power levels, such as when you're joining a new table. It's not a natural law, it's a classification tool, which is, essentially, a communication tool.

[Cosi]

But that's exactly backwards. The balance problem isn't with the Wizard in general -- see the Warmage which casts only Wizard spells and is if anything underpowered on its own -- it's with particular problem spells. If you wanted to create something that does what the tiers are nominally intended to do, it would look like a more comprehensive and better explained version of this list of Genuinely Broken Things (http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=1156). Why would you tell a DM that the problem was the Wizard, which provides zero or negative information, instead of telling them that the problem was shivering touch? shivering touch isn't only broken on the Wizard, it's also broken on Clerics and Dread Necromancers who grab it with Advanced Learning and Warmages who take it with Eclectic Learning and Rogues who UMD wands of it and so on.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Why would you tell a DM that the problem was the Wizard [...]
Because in a party of tier 4 mundanes, the wizard sticks out. I could tell the DM that the problem is with those who cannot cast shivering touch, but then I would expect the majority to conform to the wizard.

There is a problem with the wizard relative to some other classes because it gets cheap access to shivering touch, as opposed to (moderately) expensive access by lower-tier casting classes, UMD users, and magic item users, and when shivering touch is nerfed, another two hundred spells need nerfing. Or you can play the wizard as designed, and group up with a cleric and a psion. That is exactly what the tier system is about: some classes don't have problems when combined with such-and-such classes, and some do. The list of "broken things" isn't constant across all tiers.

If you wanted, you could compile a list of "broken things" for each tier. That would be pretty useful.

[Cosi]

Because in a party of tier 4 mundanes, the wizard sticks out. I could tell the DM that the problem is with those who cannot cast shivering touch, but then I would expect the majority to conform to the wizard.

If the Wizard is sticking out, you don't need the Tiers to tell you the Wizard will stick out -- you can see him doing it. Also, see the question I asked Pleh.


when shivering touch is nerfed, another two hundred spells need nerfing

That number is much higher than the actual figure. Particularly if you don't count greater and lesser versions of a spell as separate. Seriously, how many broken spells can you name? Twenty? Thirty? And how many of those wouldn't be covered by simple rules like "no minionmancy" or "no extra actions" that reduce the complexity of such a list dramatically?

[ExLibrisMortis]

If the Wizard is sticking out, you don't need the Tiers to tell you the Wizard will stick out -- you can see him doing it.
Individual cases can be compared, and will show trends. The wizard will stick out in certain groups more than in others. That's how theorycrafting works. We're trying to go beyond individual cases.

[Cosi]

Individual cases can be compared, and will show trends. The wizard will stick out in certain groups more than in others. That's how theorycrafting works. We're trying to go beyond individual cases.

That's not actually a justification for this particular kind of theorycrafting being useful. The Tiers are built on dubious assumptions, don't address the real issues, and are less useful than simply encouraging people not to break the game. I understand the benefit of theorycrafting, but there's little to commend this particular instance of it.

[ExLibrisMortis]

That's not actually a justification for this particular kind of theorycrafting being useful. The Tiers are built on dubious assumptions, don't address the real issues, and are less useful than simply encouraging people not to break the game. I understand the benefit of theorycrafting, but there's little to commend this particular instance of it.
Tiers are not a solution to game-breaking characters. Tiers are a description of game-breaking characters. They're useful in communicating about power differences. They are not and have never been intended to perform the function of an encouragement not to break the game, nor address any issue beyond "we're talking about weak and strong classes, how about we systematize that".

[Cosi]

Tiers are not a solution to game-breaking characters. Tiers are a description of game-breaking characters. They're useful in communicating about power differences.

No, they're not. They muddy the waters of what "broken" means by equivocating "Wizard" with "cheese". The Tiers provide negative information about what breaks the game. planar binding cheese breaks the game exactly as much in the hands of a Dread Necromancer as it does in the hands of a Wizard, and once the game is broken it doesn't become any less broken if you couldn't break it other ways. The idea that there is any meaningful difference between "can break the game one way" and "can break the game ten ways" is nonsensical.


They are not and have never been intended to perform the function of an encouragement not to break the game, nor address any issue beyond "we're talking about weak and strong classes, how about we systematize that".

Yes, and we all know that has been completely effective at causing them to not be used that way. Wait, no, opposite. They have been used that way nearly constantly, and have not been used to systematize the relative strength of classes for analytic purposes.

[ExLibrisMortis]

They muddy the waters of what "broken" means by equivocating "Wizard" with "cheese".
That's not the tiers themselves. That's people taking a theory and understanding it incompletely. That happens when you create a theory. It has happened to you, too, given your arguments against the system. At this point, I think your contribution to misunderstandings about tiers is greater than JaronK's.

[Cosi]

That's not the tiers themselves. That's people taking a theory and understanding it incompletely. That happens when you create a theory. It has happened to you, too, given your arguments against the system. At this point, I think your contribution to misunderstandings about tiers is greater than JaronK's.

Yeah, if the creator of the system has contributed to misunderstandings about it, I don't understand how anyone can credibly claim that the system is worth anyone's time.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Yeah, if the creator of the system has contributed to misunderstandings about it, I don't understand how anyone can credibly claim that the system is worth anyone's time.
As the creator, he didn't have years of discussion about the tier system to take advantage of. His initial write-up wasn't perfect, and would've confused some people. Nevertheless, the system proved worth using, and subsequent discussion has improved it. Your discussion, on the other hand, mainly consists of straw-man attacks, like the quote, and probably the three or four posts before that.

[Cosi]

I think it's clear at this point that your understanding of the Tier System has basically co-defined it with "not breaking the game" and you are unwilling to consider that there might be superior options for that. You're not even engaging with criticism -- e.g. why is the tier system useful if class is a weak predictor of the things it nominal talks about. I think this conversation is over, but you're welcome to continue to insinuate that judging the tier system by how it is used rather than by a rubric where it is always and axiomatically correct is unfair.

[Quertus]

In its application.

If the knowledge of class power disparity is being used to prevent inter party power disparity, then the tier system has done its job.

As far as I can tell, the tier system is only an obfuscation, a detriment, when the problem is that the party Wizard is underperforming compared to the party Monk, or the übercharger is out-performing the other Fighters, let alone the Sorcerer. (Welcome to my world.)

If someone has a concept of game balance, knowledge of the tier system... does what for that scenario? I'm still coming up blank.

If someone has ignorance of game balance, the tier system can... what? Give them a vocabulary? A (false) sense of security believing that they understand the issue? A starting point, which they can use (and hopefully abandon?) on their way to learning about game balance?

Knowledge of the tier system... can be used to wisely choose to play a tier 1 character, whose capabilities are readily customizable to match the party, or to try a challenge, and attempt to match an unknown balance point with a less adaptable chassis. OK, I can see that, but... "this is how adaptable this chassis is to fit multiple play levels / play styles / balance points" is not what I hear people saying when they talk about the tier system. And the tier system certainly doesn't tell you how to reach that balance point.

If, however, the group is smart enough to aim for a known balance point (whether with explicit sample characters, or implicit through previous parties with the same group), it's really easy to build someone "roughly equal to these guys" if you understand game balance. And that's true no matter which tier you're starting off with - assuming you apply enough cheese, for high performance requirements out of comparitively weak chassis, that is. Otherwise, certain chassis are not playable at certain balance points at certain levels - whether or not you're using the tier system.

[Quertus]

I do think the tier system has "created awareness", to use that vague term, of the power disparities between classes.

The tier system provides a framework within which players (including DMs) can compare the classes at a more abstract level. Having a vague sense of where everything is at, tier-wise, is helpful when communicating about power levels, such as when you're joining a new table. It's not a natural law, it's a classification tool, which is, essentially, a communication tool.

Raises awareness? Mass murders in schools raise awareness of children's vulnerabilities, but I hardly think that makes them laudable. I've had too many discussions with idiots who cannot see past a simple system (like tables of scenarios, alignments and responses, where if your character didn't choose the response in their table, you weren't role-playing correctly) to credit raising awareness in such a fashion (ie, with a seemingly broken, detrimental system) as a good thing.

And, when the Wizard is underperforming the Monk, the tier system is in the way of good communication and useful solutions, is it not?


That's not actually a justification for this particular kind of theorycrafting being useful. The Tiers are built on dubious assumptions, don't address the real issues, and are less useful than simply encouraging people not to break the game.

Strongly agree with most of this. To what dubious assumptions are you referring?


Tiers are not a solution to game-breaking characters. Tiers are a description of game-breaking characters. They're useful in communicating about power differences. They are not and have never been intended to perform the function of an encouragement not to break the game, nor address any issue beyond "we're talking about weak and strong classes, how about we systematize that".

Um, this sounds like a good argument for why the tier system is a detriment to communication. Or do you not believe that the correct problem to solve is game-braking characters, and identifying and remedying actual power disparity between actual characters at actual tables?


No, they're not. They muddy the waters of what "broken" means by equivocating "Wizard" with "cheese". The Tiers provide negative information about what breaks the game. planar binding cheese breaks the game exactly as much in the hands of a Dread Necromancer as it does in the hands of a Wizard, and once the game is broken it doesn't become any less broken if you couldn't break it other ways. The idea that there is any meaningful difference between "can break the game one way" and "can break the game ten ways" is nonsensical.

Also strongly agree with this, albeit from a different perspective. The tier system, as I read it, combines and conflates power, versatility, and broken in ways that, IMO, cause the tier system to be a distraction, a detriment to talking about the actual issues in the game.


Yes, and we all know that has been completely effective at causing them to not be used that way. Wait, no, opposite. They have been used that way nearly constantly, and have not been used to systematize the relative strength of classes for analytic purposes.

So, what do you think would be a worthy goal?


Yeah, if the creator of the system has contributed to misunderstandings about it, I don't understand how anyone can credibly claim that the system is worth anyone's time.

That's hardly fair. I mean, it is fair to say that, if that was the intent, then the creator certainly didn't help. But I've created plenty of great things that my explanation didn't help, and it took someone else explaining it for the beauty of the idea to shine through and be accepted.

In other words, don't knock the idea just because the speaker can't communicate - judge the idea on its own merits.


As the creator, he didn't have years of discussion about the tier system to take advantage of. His initial write-up wasn't perfect, and would've confused some people. Nevertheless, the system proved worth using, and subsequent discussion has improved it. Your discussion, on the other hand, mainly consists of straw-man attacks, like the quote, and probably the three or four posts before that.

Um, it did? It has?

By all means, explain how the tier system is worth using, what value it has. Also, in what way has it improved?

[Pleh]

As far as I can tell, the tier system is only an obfuscation, a detriment, when the problem is that the party Wizard is underperforming compared to the party Monk, or the übercharger is out-performing the other Fighters, let alone the Sorcerer. (Welcome to my world.)

When the Wizard is underperforming, the Tier system actually answers WHY, in a broad sense. Wizards are top tier because they can bend the whole system over their knee with the right spell selection.

Ergo, the tiers would be telling that group that the wizards are only unoptimized, not underpowered, which tells them the solution to their problem is to upgrade the Wizard's spellbook.

If the Fighter were the one having trouble keeping up, the answer would instead be, "yeah, that's just the limits of how far that class can really go."

That is exactly what the Tier system is made to communicate. Not sure what the problem is.


If someone has ignorance of game balance, the tier system can... what? Give them a vocabulary? A (false) sense of security believing that they understand the issue? A starting point, which they can use (and hopefully abandon?) on their way to learning about game balance?

It's not as badly wrong as you suggest, it's merely got some sizable error bars. Getting a poorly drawn map of the continents of the world isn't useful for charting a course, but it is useful for communicating the need to chart a course to someone who doesn't understand the challenges of 3.5's game balance.

The rulebooks really emphasize how the various classes ought to have approximately the same power floor and ceiling. The Tier Model corrects this in a very generalized way. It's not very accurate because it's trying to encompass too many data points to be accurate. It's capturing a big picture, not a nuanced mechanical structure.

The sense of understanding the game balance through Tiers isn't FALSE. It's INCOMPLETE. Classical Mechanics isn't truly FALSE, it's INACCURATE, but it's still a GOOD APPROXIMATION out to a certain degree.


but... "this is how adaptable this chassis is to fit multiple play levels / play styles / balance points" is not what I hear people saying when they talk about the tier system. And the tier system certainly doesn't tell you how to reach that balance point.

No, that's generally not the purpose of the tier model, though. The information about how to tune a Class to meet a certain power level is what Handbooks are for.

And it'd be great if Handbooks are all we needed, but the Tier Model helps the uneducated understand how direly the game balance can rock the boat before much of the content to Handbooks will have context. Handbooks tend to guide players to moderate to high levels of optimization, and if the player using them isn't familiar with how much one class can out optimize another, the Handbooks will cause more problems for the group than they'll solve.


If, however, the group is smart enough to aim for a known balance point (whether with explicit sample characters, or implicit through previous parties with the same group), it's really easy to build someone "roughly equal to these guys" if you understand game balance. And that's true no matter which tier you're starting off with - assuming you apply enough cheese, for high performance requirements out of comparitively weak chassis, that is. Otherwise, certain chassis are not playable at certain balance points at certain levels - whether or not you're using the tier system.

Well, of course the Tier system doesn't CHANGE the game balance. It DESCRIBES it. The Tier model is meant to inform players about WHY some classes are not playable at certain balance points at certain levels: because some classes can do ANYTHING and some classes struggle to do their specialty.

The Tier system isn't about USING it in the game. The Tier system is a map helping you prepare your game to prevent meta problems with balance before they begin.

The most common advice I've seen about EMPLOYING Tiers is "DM shouldn't allow a party comprised of classes that are more than 1 or 2 Tiers separate, as even Optimizers with Cheese often can't overcome that level of power disparity."

Then people ask, "why does a Wizard always outshine a Monk?" And the answer is, "buff spells are better than everything a Monk gets, blast spells are probably better (for range), and that doesn't touch summons that are better martials than the Monk or powerful spells that trivialize encounters."

The Tiers are just a sign post by the side of the road saying, "Be Warned of Game Imbalance Ahead."

The Tier system is a guide to HOW to aim for a certain balance point. If players know how to aim for balance without looking at the Tiers, cool story bro, but that doesn't mean the tiers aren't useful to someone who lacks that kind of intuition.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I think it's clear at this point that your understanding of the Tier System has basically co-defined it with "not breaking the game"
Nothing I've said even suggests that. I'm not even sure what it means. You're building another strawman, because you've decided that the tier system is "wrong".


Now, if your argument is indeed that class is not an entirely accurate predictor for character power, then sure, we are in agreement. It is a compromise between accuracy and detail. We can rate each character build, each spell, each monster individually on a tier system, but that's a lot of work. We're looking for indicators that are reasonably stable and accurate, but most importantly, not an encyclopedia longer than the game rules themselves. For a single-classed build, character class is the best single indicator of character power.

To make the tier system, you necessarily make assumptions about the kind of optimization that each class "needs" (~tends towards). For example, we assume that an optimized sorcerer will look at spell list expanders, whereas optimized wizards will look at spontaneity. We assume both will look at metamagic, and we assume that neither a will look at optimization improving Trapfinding. We assume that sorcerers won't all be running hiveminds, and wizards won't all be running free planar bindings; nor will either run only a crossbow with true strike. These assumptions are largely implicit and somewhat subjective, based on what the class is natively good at, but they are not arbitrary.

Base classes are not the only things that might be rated on the tier system. For example, sorcadins might deserve a ranking. However, there are a lot of multiclass builds, and we don't want to discuss a few thousand possibilities. To limit the number of items to consider, we only consider single-class characters of "typical" optimization at "typical" levels (e.g. 5-13). We hope that the rankings for base classes are useful guidelines when ranking specific (multiclass) builds. For example, an observation might be that "tier X + tier Y = tier max(X, Y)", and indeed sorcadins are typically t2 at higher levels. Again, these assumptions are subjective, but they were made for a reason.

Given each base class and its typical optimization at the more important levels, you can compile a tier ranking. Reducing a class to one number is a great simplification, but given the level of abstraction, it is pretty meaningful, as long as you keep the assumptions in mind.

Starting out with the existing rankings, it is now easier to rank new items that you might be interested in, and communicate about them with other people ("With this homebrew, I'm shooting for a t2 meldshaper. Did it work?"). The tier system is about putting a series of dots on the map, useful for navigation, not about drawing every footpath and hillside. And it absolutely is not a travel guide, recommending routes or destinations.


If you want to improve on the tier system, your choice of power indicators is probably the first thing to talk about, because it has to be a subset of all distinguishing features a character can have. It can be something as simple as "level" (the game assumes this is a good indicator, and to some extent, it is), or "total of base attack, all saves, and all ability score modifiers" (seems rather useless, considering the wizard's power versus its chassis and SADness), or it can be race, or it can be class, or it can be something else.

The tier system uses class. It has been suggested that there are better single tier indicators. The big one is spellcasting: more casting almost invariably means more power. However, there are significant exceptions both ways (warmage, healer, crusader, binder), and choosing a game structure as indicator makes is easy to fabricate an even stronger counterexample (homebrew at-will wish is not spellcasting, but it's tier 1), making it less useful in ranking new material.

It has also been suggested that multiple power indicators should be used. That gives you something like the niche ranking system, which is very nice, and incidentally seems to agree with the tier system on most items.

There are lots of options, but the game is structured heavily around classes, and to replace "class" as the first and most informative indicator of character power, you need to demonstrate that your new finding really is that much better.

[Quertus]

When the Wizard is underperforming, the Tier system actually answers WHY, in a broad sense. Wizards are top tier because they can bend the whole system over their knee with the right spell selection.

Ergo, the tiers would be telling that group that the wizards are only unoptimized, not underpowered, which tells them the solution to their problem is to upgrade the Wizard's spellbook.

The Tier system is a guide to HOW to aim for a certain balance point. If players know how to aim for balance without looking at the Tiers, cool story bro, but that doesn't mean the tiers aren't useful to someone who lacks that kind of intuition.

OK, there a lot more I should respond to in this post, but let's start with these.

Not unexpectedly, your conclusions starting with the tier system are false. Quertus, my signature tactically inept academia mage, for whom this account is named, does not underperform by virtue of needing a spellbook upgrade. His diverse array of custom spells contains vastly more "tier 1 diversity" than that of any Wizard limited to only using published materials. And the underperforming Green Bound Summoner, who (I am guessing) knows all his spells automatically? His issue is that of player > character. In addition to the usual problems, he also needed a build that matched his preferred play style in order to perform adequately. And those are just 2 examples.

The tier system is good at blinding people to looking at the actual problems, and their actual causes.

I'm still missing how it is that the tier system is a guide to help one who lacks the concept aim for balance - perhaps because I, personally, do have a concept of balance. So, can you explain to me how the tier system can be a boon to the unenlightened? Because, many words later, I'm only seeing the flaws, the downsides. What is the beauty that you see in the tier system?

EDIT: oh, and, open to anyone, I've forgotten - is all this talk of tiers actually relevant to this thread, or just an extended aside?