Why each class is in its tier: 2019 update!

[Troacctid]

We've come a long way since JaronK presented the original iteration of the tier rankings for classes in D&D 3.5, and our understanding of the system has advanced quite a bit in the intervening time. About a decade ago now, the Minmax forum community collected a series of discussions (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?269440-Why-Each-Class-Is-In-Its-Tier-(Rescued-from-MinMax)) to explain why each class was ranked the way it was. Well, it's 2019, and we've had a new set of discussions here at GiantITP. I think it's high time we got another summary, don't you?

This version of the tier list is derived from the Retiering the Classes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?568771-Retiering-the-Classes-A-new-home) project originally begun by eggynack and later completed by heavyfuel. The rankings are based on community voting.


Core assumptions of the tier list
Most of the following principles emerged organically through discussion as criteria for judging classes. If you disagree with these criteria, you'll probably disagree with a lot of the rankings, and that's to be expected! The important thing is understanding the underlying logic behind each class's ranking.

Rank the classes from strongest to weakest.
More powerful classes should be ranked above less powerful classes. This probably ought to go without saying, but JaronK's original list muddied the waters on this point, so I want to be crystal-clear that this is, ultimately, a straightforward ranking of power level.

Isolate the class as a variable.
The point of this list is to tier base classes. There are a lot of other factors that influence your character's power level besides your base class, such as feats, spell selection, magic items, prestige classes, and even the skill of the player. Our goal here is to control for those other factors as best we can, and just focus on how much power the base class itself contributes.

Multiclassing is out of scope.
When you combine multiple classes, you can often counteract a class's weaknesses. Alternatively, you might introduce exciting new weaknesses that make your character worth even less than the sum of its parts. It's great to talk about which combinations are good or bad, which classes are best at playing nice with others, and where the best break points are, but given the absolutely staggering volume of possible builds, this project will only address single-class characters: no multiclassing, no prestige classes. Consider this a self-imposed limitation for the sake of sanity.

If you do allow for multiclassing, as most DMs do, you should expect heavily frontloaded classes like the monk and barbarian to have much more upward mobility, and just about any class will be able to climb out of the low tiers via powerful standalone prestige classes like chameleon or ur-priest.

Classes with a strong consensus become benchmarks for their tiers.
We pretty much all agreed from the start on how certain classes ranked relative to one another. The core hierarchy of Wizard > Sorcerer > Bard > Rogue > Monk has been well established in the optimization community for many years now, and these and other widely accepted rankings have served as nucleation sites of sorts, anchoring their respective tiers.

Power is a range; we're looking for the mean.
Classes can vary a lot in power depending on how they're built, how they're played, what level range they're played in, and what sort of encounters they're up against. We aren't looking to capture just the highest peaks or the lowest nadirs of each class—what we want is a solid weighted average of where we think the class will probably land most of the time, with the understanding that there will be some variance.

The floor and ceiling matter.
If a class has a really high baseline level of competency that's hard to screw up, that's going to improve its weighted average compared to a class that can easily go horribly wrong if you don't know what you're doing. Similarly, if a class scales well with good optimization, that's going to affect its weighted average compared to a class that simply doesn't have much room to grow. So while we do try to focus mostly on the middle of the road, that doesn't mean the upper and lower bounds can't bend the curve.

Middle levels > low levels > high levels.
This list puts the most emphasis on the mid-level ranges, which for our purposes start somewhere around level 4 to 6 and run until somewhere in the level 12 to 16 range. Low levels are considered, but are given very little weight, and the highest levels (17–20) are almost entirely ignored. Why? Well, broadly speaking, because that tends to reflect the actual reality of most campaigns. It's rare for a campaign to last all the way to level 20, and when it does, it's rare to spend very much time at the top levels before it ends. On the other end of the spectrum, it is fairly common to start at low levels, but you usually grow out of them quickly, so you shouldn't spend much time there, either. And, on top of that, the swingy nature of the first few levels tends to flatten out power levels across the board, because anyone can die to an unlucky roll when no one in the party has more than 10 HP.

If your campaign ends early, you should expect the difference between tiers to become less pronounced overall. Classes with strong early games (e.g. warblade) will gain an advantage, while classes that need more time to really get started (e.g. shadowcaster) will probably struggle a little more. If your campaign starts at a high level, you should expect the reverse: the differences in tiers will be more pronounced, and the lategame classes (basically any of the quadratic casters) will be advantaged.

Power can be vertical or horizontal.
In char-op, we sometimes say that specialists have optimized their power vertically, becoming very good at their chosen specialties, while generalists have optimized their power horizontally, branching out into a broader base of multiple competencies. For the purposes of this tier list, neither of those strategies should be thought of as inherently better than the other. What we care about is how much overall power the class is giving you, regardless of whether that power is vertical or horizontal in nature.

Why? Well, for one thing, we often have a hard time agreeing on which strategy is better! But probably more importantly, your class is ultimately a framework that you build on top of with feats and magic items. A great deal of your character's breadth and depth will be determined by build choices beyond just your class, so if your class is over- or underspecialized on its own, you can almost always compensate for it with your other build choices.

Encounters are diverse...but combat encounters are most common.
Our expectation is that a typical campaign will include a wide variety of problems for parties to solve, and that those problems will mostly fall into the theaters of interaction, exploration, and combat. All three are important; however, the rules of D&D place the most emphasis on combat encounters. Most sessions include at least one fight scene, and the complex turn-based combat system means that those fight scenes take up much more session time than noncombat challenges that are often quickly resolved with a single skill check. Because combat is such a big part of D&D, being useless in combat is a much more impactful weakness than being useless outside of combat (although both are still weaknesses).

Combat encounters are also diverse.
"Combat" is not a monolith. Different enemies will have different strengths and weaknesses, and a class might be good at attacking some kinds of combat encounters but not others. The ability to pivot from one combat strategy to another depending on who you're fighting against is valuable, and gives you an advantage over classes that are "locked in" to a more limited set of options.


Okay. Without further ado, here are your updated tier listings!

The Tier List (with average rating) (rankings last updated 11 May 2023)

Tier 1 (S)

Druid: 1
Sha’ir: 1
Cleric: 1.05
Wizard: 1.09
Archivist: 1.13
Shaman: 1.12
Wu Jen: 1.17
Artificer: 1.28
Spontaneous Druid: 1.31
Urban Druid: 1.36
Death Master: 1.49

Tier 2 (A)

Generic Spellcaster: 1.66
Spontaneous Cleric: 1.74
Erudite: 1.78
Psion: 1.78
Sorcerer: 1.81
Evangelist: 1.88
Beguiler: 2
Mystic: 2
Dread Necromancer: 2.15
Warmage: 2.2
Ardent: 2.2
Favored Soul: 2.29
Spirit Shaman: 2.49
Mystic Ranger: 2.49

Tier 3 (B)

Wilder: 2.55
Shugenja: 2.84
Bard: 2.91
Trickster Spellthief: 2.95
Jester: 3.07
Totemist: 3.08
Swordsage: 3.12
Warlock: 3.20
Binder: 3.21
Crusader: 3.22
Warblade: 3.26
Dragonfire Adept: 3.28
Healer: 3.33
Psychic Warrior: 3.32
Duskblade: 3.34
Lurk: 3.4
Psychic Rogue: 3.4
Wild Shape Ranger: 3.47

Tier 4 (C)

Incarnate: 3.5
Factotum: 3.51
Wild Monk: 3.51
Rogue: 3.79
Shadowcaster: 3.82
Barbarian: 4
Generic Expert: 4
Generic Warrior: 4
Scout: 4.15
Spellthief: 4
Paladin: 4.19
Ranger: 4.28
Ninja: 4.33
Savant: 4.37
Fighter: 4.48
Marshal: 4.49

Tier 5 (D)

Adept: 4.54
Truenamer: 4.56
Sohei: 4.58
Hexblade: 4.65
Battle Dancer: 4.73
Divine Mind: 4.75
Monk: 4.78
Dragon Shaman: 4.81
Mountebank: 4.84
Samurai (OA): 4.85
Magewright: 4.94
Soulborn: 5.01
Knight: 5.02
Noble: 5.05
Swashbuckler: 5.07
Soulknife: 5.22
Samurai (CW): 5.26

Tier 6 (F)

Expert: 5.73
Aristocrat: 5.76
Warrior: 5.8
Commoner: 6


The original discussion threads are below:
Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, and Warmage (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?515849-Retiering-the-Classes-Beguiler-Dread-Necromancer-and-Warmage)
Archivist, Artificer, Cleric, Druid, Sha’ir, and Wizard (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?516137-Retiering-the-Classes-Archivist-Artificer-Cleric-Druid-Sha-ir-and-Wizard)
Barbarian, Fighter, Samurai (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?516602-Retiering-the-Classes-Barbarian-Fighter-Samurai-(CW)-and-Samurai-(OA))
Ninja, Rogue, Scout (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517091-Retiering-the-Classes-Ninja-Rogue-and-Scout)
Spirit Shaman, Spontaneous Druid, Urban Druid, and Wild Shape Ranger (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517370-Retiering-the-Classes-Spirit-Shaman-Spontaneous-Druid-Urban-Druid-and-WS-Ranger)
Bard, Factotum, Jester, and Savant (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517967-Retiering-the-Classes-Bard-Factotum-and-Jester)
Crusader, Swordsage, and Warblade (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?518495-Retiering-the-Classes-Crusader-Swordsage-and-Warblade)
Adept, Aristocrat, Commoner, Expert, Magewright, and Warrior (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?519155-Retiering-the-Classes-Adept-Aristocrat-Commoner-Expert-Magewright-and-Warrior)
Battle Dancer, Monk, Mountebank, and Soulknife (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?519701-Retiering-the-Classes-Battle-Dancer-Monk-Mountebank-and-Soulknife)
Death Master, Shaman, Shugenja, Sorcerer, and Wu Jen (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?520291-Retiering-the-Classes-Death-Master-Shugenja-Sorcerer-Wu-Jen)
Binder, Dragonfire Adept, Shadowcaster, Truenamer, and Warlock (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?520903-Retiering-the-Classes-Binder-Dragonfire-Adept-Shadowcaster-Truenamer-Warlock)
Duskblade, Hexblade, Paladin, Ranger, Sohei, and Spellthief (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?521476-Retiering-the-Classes-Duskblade-Hexblade-Paladin-Ranger-Sohei-Spellthief)
Evangelist, Favored Soul, Healer, Mystic, and Spontaneous Cleric (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?522562-Retiering-the-Classes-Evangelist-Favored-Soul-Healer-Mystic-Spontaneous-Cleric)
Divine Mind, Dragon Shaman, and Marshal (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?523449-Retiering-the-Classes-Divine-Mind-Dragon-Shaman-and-Marshal)
Divine Mind, Dragon Shaman, and Marshal (part 2) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?569997-Retiering-the-Classes-Divine-Mind-Dragon-Shaman-and-Marshal-(re-done))
Incarnate, Soulborn, and Totemist (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?568774-Retiering-the-Classes-Incarnate-Soulborn-Totemist)
Psion, Psychic Warrior, Soulknife, and Wilder (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?569280-The-Expanded-Psionics-Psion-Psychic-Warrior-Soulknife-Wilder)
Ardent, Erudite, Lurk, and Psychic Rogue (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?570457-Retiering-the-Classes-Ardent-Erudite-Lurk-Psychic-Rogue)
Knight, Noble, and Swashbuckler (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?570925-Retiering-the-Classes-Knight-Noble-Swashbuckler)
Mystic Ranger, Trickster Spellthief, and Wild Monk (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?571537-Retiering-the-Classes-Mystic-Ranger-Trickster-Wild-Monk)
Generic Expert, Generic Spellcaster, and Generic Warrior (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?572023-Retiering-the-Classes-Generic-Expert-Generic-Spellcaster-Generic-Warrior)

[Troacctid]

Tier 1 (S-Tier)

Druid
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?516137-Retiering-the-Classes-Archivist-Artificer-Cleric-Druid-Sha-ir-and-Wizard
Average rating: 1
The druid’s vote was unanimously S, for a lot of the same reasons as the cleric. Their spell list is amazing and they have access to the whole thing for free. However, on top of that, they also have really powerful class features in the animal companion and wild shape, giving them a ton of additional combat power and utility essentially free. One point that came up was that you could take away a druid’s spellcasting completely, and it would still manage to hit around B-tier from the companion and wild shape alone. Another point was that it’s really hard for a druid to not be overpowered, even at low optimization levels, because the baseline power level of the class features is so high.

Just about every variation of the druid belongs in this tier as well, even the ones that are a strict downgrade. Spontaneous druid is the only ACF that was tiered separately, and it's a lot worse, but it somehow still ended up in the top tier because druid is just that good.

Sha’ir
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?516137-Retiering-the-Classes-Archivist-Artificer-Cleric-Druid-Sha-ir-and-Wizard
Average rating: 1
Sha'ir has some weird mechanics, but ultimately it's just a Charisma wizard, except instead of learning new spells by spending time and money to scribe them into a spellbook, you learn spells by seeing them cast and saying, hey, what a neat spell, I can cast it now. Oh, and you have an expanded spell list that also includes divine spells, because why not. Once wizard was firmly established as a benchmark S, there was no real debate about sha’ir.

Cleric
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?516137-Retiering-the-Classes-Archivist-Artificer-Cleric-Druid-Sha-ir-and-Wizard
Average rating: 1.05
It was universally agreed that the cleric is top-tier, with every respondent ranking it as an S. With one of the most powerful spell lists in the game coupled with the ability to “know” every single spell on its list, the cleric has a ton of power and versatility before you even consider that it also has multiple domains on top of that, and a strong melee chassis on top of that. Tricks like Divine Metamagic can heap on even more power, but you don’t even need them; the class is a powerhouse in its own right simply by the virtue of its spellcasting. There was some discussion as to how much equity the cleric loses when played poorly (e.g. wasting actions on unnecessary healing or inefficient buff spells), but the consensus was that the worst case is actually still pretty damn good.

Wizard
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?516137-Retiering-the-Classes-Archivist-Artificer-Cleric-Druid-Sha-ir-and-Wizard
Average rating: 1.09
Wizards have the best spell list in the game. They share the list in question with sorcerers, but compared to sorcerers, their spell progression is faster, they have a ton more spells known (even if they do have to scribe 'em), and they get bonus feats. Since their casting is Int-based, they also have a natural advantage with skills. But mostly, the ranking here boils down to a good casting progression with lots of spells off a fantastic list. There were a few dissidents that argued wizards should be A-tier due to the difficulty of playing them and the unreliability of finding spells to scribe into your spellbook. But they were decisively overruled on the grounds that scrolls are actually pretty easy to find and the spell list is just that good. They take a little longer to get their feet under them than clerics or druids do, though, so be aware that in lower-level games, the wizard's stock will definitely fall a bit. (The same is true for some of the other similar classes.) This is a class that benefits a lot from our system of giving the a lot of weight to the mid-levels.

Shaman
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?520291-Retiering-the-Classes-Death-Master-Shugenja-Sorcerer-Wu-Jen
Average rating: 1.12
Like sha’ir, shaman is a spinoff class of comparable power to the original. In this case, it's kind of a cleric-druid-monk hybrid? But it has the cleric casting mechanic (including domains), a class spell list containing a wide selection of the most powerful core divine spells, an animal companion as a druid, a strong chassis, and a potpourri of other abilities on top of that. All in all, you have powerful combat ability with loads of utility and buffing and healing thrown in, and you can swap out your spells daily for anything you happen to need. Inarguably top-tier.

Archivist
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?516137-Retiering-the-Classes-Archivist-Artificer-Cleric-Druid-Sha-ir-and-Wizard
Average rating: 1.13
The archivist casts prepared divine spells off the cleric list, but doesn't automatically get access to the entire list—you need to scribe spells into a book, much like a wizard does. This would be a drawback, but the archivist has an advantage over the cleric in that if they find a divine scroll, they can scribe and learn it even if it's not on the cleric list—so they have access to druid spells too, for example. Also, they get more skills and some Knowledgey-type abilities. The general sentiment, I think, was that archivist is ultimately weaker than cleric because of the extra time, expense, and unreliability involved in its casting mechanic, with the off-list casting not really making up for it—but none of that is enough to bring the class down a tier. It’s a solid S that should have no trouble hanging with clerics and wizards.

Wu Jen
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?520291-Retiering-the-Classes-Death-Master-Shugenja-Sorcerer-Wu-Jen
Average rating: 1.17
Everyone agreed that wu jen is a weaker version of the wizard. The question was how much worse, exactly. Their list is ultimately quite good, with most of the best spells from the core wizard list, and they do have some decent class features backing it up, so S-tier won out over A-tier, with some stray A+ and S- votes straddling the fence.

Artificer
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?516137-Retiering-the-Classes-Archivist-Artificer-Cleric-Druid-Sha-ir-and-Wizard
Average rating: 1.18
Artificers have ridiculous crafting powers and a powerful suite of infusions. Not only can they craft just about anything (at a reduced price, and possibly with no xp cost), they can also create improvised wands on the fly of any 4th level or lower spell in the game—in as little as only a single round. This makes artificer one of the best utility casters in the game, but also one of the most challenging to play optimally, because you have functionally unlimited options at all times. Opponents of the S ranking contended that the class is campaign-dependent, and can easily become useless if the timeframe of the adventure doesn't allow for crafting breaks or if the treasure doesn't include any cash for crafting. The counterpoints were that the infusion list is bonkers good even if you never craft anything (this handbook (www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?427628-Disregard-Money-Acquire-Buff-Spells-Artificers-without-the-Artifice) was cited as an illustration), and if you're only getting randomized loot, being able to sell it to craft the items you actually want is an even bigger advantage than usual. The “I need three spreadsheets to keep track of everything” problem is real, but even detractors did not consider it significant enough to knock the class out of S-tier.

We didn't tier the psionic artificer variant separately, but there have been some questions about it. Replacing spells with powers is a major downgrade because it cuts down your pool of available spells by more than 50%. You can substitute powers for spells in crafting prerequisites if the power has an equivalent effect and the item doesn't actually cast the spell in question, which helps, but not every spell has an equivalent power, and you're still losing almost all of the incredible versatility offered by spell-storing item. Psionic artificer accordingly ranks significantly lower than the normal version, probably in A-tier somewhere.

Spontaneous Druid
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517370-Retiering-the-Classes-Spirit-Shaman-Spontaneous-Druid-Urban-Druid-and-WS-Ranger
Average rating: 1.31
While the spontaneous variant is definitely worse than the standard druid, there's certainly space to be worse than arguably the best class in the game and still be S-tier. In this case, unlike most spontaneous casters, you still have the good druid spell progression, rather than the delayed sorcerer spell progression, and you have the druid’s two flagship class features, animal companion and wild shape, completely untouched and just as powerful. So, yes, it's a bit of a nerf, but still top-tier.

Urban Druid
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517370-Retiering-the-Classes-Spirit-Shaman-Spontaneous-Druid-Urban-Druid-and-WS-Ranger
Average rating: 1.36
There was very little discussion of the urban druid in the original thread. Urban druid is essentially what you get if you take the druid, restrict it to core-only, and remove its spontaneous summoning ability. The spell list is about as good as the core druid list—possibly better, by eggynack’s reckoning here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21788758&postcount=90), which I'm inclined to agree with—and the animal companion and wild shape are left basically intact with a few changes that don't move the needle much power-wise. Urban shape is generally worse than wild shape, but I think there's a decent argument that the urban companion is better than a traditional animal companion, thanks to the ability to fully customize the feat selection of a vermin companion that gains an intelligence score, or to create whatever object you like in animated form as needed.

So the question with urban druid is fundamentally the same as the question with death master, wu jen, and jester: how much worse than a core casting class can you be without dropping a tier? The answer ends up being pretty much the same as for all the other weird variant druids (shapeshift, totem druid, druidic avenger, core-only druid, and so on): when your starting point is druid, you have to work really hard to fall out of S-tier.

Death Master
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?520291-Retiering-the-Classes-Death-Master-Shugenja-Sorcerer-Wu-Jen
Average rating: 1.49
There were three main schools of thought on the death master. First, that it's basically a core-only specialist wizard, and since the wizard is still an S under those conditions, the death master is too (see also wu jen). Second, that the death master spell list is worse enough to drop the class to A. Third, that we may as well split the difference and call it an S-/A+. I ended up being the tiebreaker vote to land the death master in S, so here's what I think. Even though the death master's spell list is mostly worse than the wizard's, there are a few bright spots that, in my opinion, do a lot to make up for it. First off, low levels are traditionally the wizard's weakest point, and death master shores up that weakness significantly with its undead minion (allowing it to play a lot like a druid in the first few levels) and its early access to animate dead as a level 2 (!) spell, which lets the undead minionmancy plan come online earlier than any other class. In addition, death masters gain the ability to rebuke undead, which is so-so on its own for a class that otherwise doesn't use Charisma much, but opens up some really cool optimization vectors that wizards don't normally have access to, thanks to all the splat support for alternative ways to spend rebukes. Sure, there are ways to get stuff like this on a wizard, but my point is that death master is one of those ways.

And, I mean, look at that spell list. You really aren't giving up that much compared to the core wizard list. It's a lot more than just necromancy. Yeah, you don't have splat support, but when so many of the best spells are in core, I don't think you'll ever be short on kickass spells to put in your slots.

[Troacctid]

Tier 2 (A-Tier)

Generic Spellcaster
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?572023-Retiering-the-Classes-Generic-Expert-Generic-Spellcaster-Generic-Warrior
Average rating: 1.66
We had a fairly low voter turnout for the generic classes, but there was at least some discussion. Heavyfuel called the class straight-up better than the sorcerer and spontaneous cleric and put it at S. Cosi argued that nothing the class gains compared to the sorcerer benchmark is significant enough to boost it to the top tier, and voted A. I contended that the bonus feats, list access, and customizable class skills and casting stat were absolutely significant advantages, but I thought the slower casting progression was too much of a drawback for it to make top-tier, so I voted A+ (which I stand by).

Spontaneous Cleric
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?522562-Retiering-the-Classes-Evangelist-Favored-Soul-Healer-Mystic-Spontaneous-Cleric
Average rating: 1.7
There's a whole mess of classes with spontaneous cleric casting: favored soul, evangelist, mystic, and spontaneous cleric. They all cluster around the same power level as the sorcerer—the spell list is a bit weaker, but each of the classes has its own perks to make up for it. In the case of the spontaneous cleric, those perks are a faster spell progression, plus all the class features of the standard cleric, including domains, turning, and access to alternative class features and stuff. This is clearly the best in the category, and so it accordingly ranks the highest of the four; however, it's still only in the A range due to its limited spells known—a drawback that feels much more restrictive for the spontaneous cleric than it does for the spontaneous druid. It was noted that if you take the reading of Book of Exalted Deeds's sanctified spell rules that grants spontaneous clerics full spontaneous access to every sanctified spell, there's probably a strong case for S, but most DMs would probably be justifiably uncomfortable with that interpretation, and it didn't end up getting a lot of weight.

Psion
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?569280-The-Expanded-Psionics-Psion-Psychic-Warrior-Soulknife-Wilder
Average rating: 1.78
Psion feels a lot like a spontaneous wizard, with Int-based casting, bonus feats, and school specialization. Limited powers known drawn from a weaker list relegate the psion to a lower ranking than the wizard, and knock it out of S; faster progression, bonus feats, and increased versatility put it above the sorcerer. That leaves it somewhere in between, in the higher reaches of A-tier.

The type of psion shouldn't matter much for tiering, since so many of the best powers are on the general psion/wilder list, and the discipline spells are pretty well balanced against each other for the most part, with the possible exception of the poor nomad, whose exclusive powers are almost all either redundant with or outclassed by powers that are available to all psions. The only psion subclass that was tiered separately was the erudite, and it ended up at the exact same ranking as the base psion anyway (see below).

Psionic Artificer
See the Artificer under Tier 1, above.

Erudite
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?570457-Retiering-the-Classes-Ardent-Erudite-Lurk-Psychic-Rogue
Average rating: 1.78
Discussion around the erudite centered on whether it was better or worse than the standard psion. "Worse" ended up being the consensus...mostly. (The standard deviation value here was pretty high.) Some choice quotes:

Erudite versatility is somewhat of an illusion. The fact of the matter is you're extremely limited in your unique powers per day, even if you do have the ability to change them each day. And while you can learn spells like a wizard, the psion list is significantly more limited than the wizard list. The end result is a class that compares more closely with the spirit shaman than anything else, IMO. Yeah, you can do a bunch of stuff, but you can do so few of them at the same time that in actual gameplay, your practical versatility ends up being significantly lower than your theoretical versatility.

[Erudites] don't actually know many more powers than the Psion does. You know more off the bat, because you get extra 1st level powers. But you get two extra powers known per level, and the Psion does at most levels. You end up like 5 or 6 powers known ahead at 20th level, which is not huge. And you can't naturally pick up discipline powers. So even if the UPPD aren't a huge deal, they're not buying you that much power.

Ah, but you say, you can learn new powers! Except to do that costs you XP. To permanently learn a new power, you have to pay 20 XP per Erudite level. If you're paying that kind of XP to pick up new powers, the Psion can probably afford to spend a similar amount of XP to psychic reformation himself into a new set of powers.
The spell-to-power variant pushes the rating up a bit, but ultimately not that much, because once you remove it from JaronK's original criteria of being able to break the game in a bunch of different ways (which, as a reminder, is not how things work here), you're basically just a glorified sorcerer. Actually, if we're being honest, what really boosted the rating this high was a few voters not reading the thread and assuming we were still working under JaronK's rules, so really, it should probably be lower.

Sorcerer
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?520291-Retiering-the-Classes-Death-Master-Shugenja-Sorcerer-Wu-Jen
Average rating: 1.82
Sorcerer was seen as something of a benchmark for the A tier by many voters. You've got the wizard spell list, and there are quite a lot of broken spells on that list. However, the designers were terrified of spontaneous casting and thwacked the sorcerer repeatedly with the nerf bat. With a delayed spell progression, limited spells known, and no real class features to speak of, the class is just weaker than the S-tier full casters. There's also a fairly substantial amount of variation here depending on optimization (poor spell selection can easily relegate you to being a worse version of a warmage for most of your career) and level (the higher level you are, the harder it is to not be ridiculously powerful, because sorcerer spells are busted). Arguments for why sorcerer should be ranked higher or lower seemed to revolve mainly around exactly how substantial that variation is and how much it should affect the weighted average power level. The consensus was ultimately unsurprising, and it landed where the conventional wisdom said it should. Spells are just too good—although as with most arcane casters, the rating comes with a caveat that the class may struggle at lower levels and/or lower optimization.

Evangelist
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?522562-Retiering-the-Classes-Evangelist-Favored-Soul-Healer-Mystic-Spontaneous-Cleric
Average rating: 1.88
It’s like the spontaneous cleric, except instead of turn undead, it gets additional domains at higher levels, and it uses a more sorcerer-like progression for spells known (including the delay). Alternatively, it’s like the favored soul, except with domains instead of extra spells known, and you don’t need Charisma. Either way, the class didn’t draw much discussion—there were a couple fractional votes, but nobody put them outside of A-tier.

Beguiler
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?515849-Retiering-the-Classes-Beguiler-Dread-Necromancer-and-Warmage
Average rating: 2
With a ton of known spells, a powerful and versatile spell list, and a heap of skills on top of it all, beguiler is one of the most powerful spontaneous spellcasters in the game, handily beating the vast majority of sorcerers at their own game (at least until fairly high levels). Like dread necromancer, it can be summed up as a sorcerer with a whole bunch of extra spells known, all of which are solid mid-op picks, and you also get other sweet abilities.

Really, though, zoom in on that spell list for a minute. There's a popular myth that beguilers are just a pile of mind-affecting spells. But while they do admittedly have a lot of mind-affecting spells, they also have all-stars like glitterdust, haste, (greater) dispel magic, solid fog, freedom of movement, and discount teleport shadow walk that are going to be fantastic regardless of whether or not the enemy has a brain. And it's important not to forget that when the enemy does have a brain, the beguiler's suite of enchantments includes some of the nastiest save-or-lose effects in the game, allowing her to trivialize fights against weak-willed bruisers—and then turn around and use those weak-willed bruisers as cannon fodder in the next fight. Meanwhile, when you're outside of combat, the beguiler is like if you gave full sorcerer casting to a bard—in other words, really, really good.

The beguiler's main strategic weakness is that it is very much a support class, and will often find itself relying heavily on teammates to actually close out fights against enemies who don't just fold to save-or-lose spells. Luckily, D&D is a team sport, so this isn't usually too big a deal. The biggest thing keeping it out of S-tier is the same as what keeps most other spontaneous casters out of S-tier: the delay in its spell progression. Being a level behind the top tier hurts. (The second-biggest thing is that strategic weakness I just mentioned.)

Mystic
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?522562-Retiering-the-Classes-Evangelist-Favored-Soul-Healer-Mystic-Spontaneous-Cleric
Average rating: 2
This is another class that didn’t draw much debate. It’s another spontaneous cleric variant, this time with just one domain, making it a middle ground between favored soul and evangelist, and earning it a similar ranking.

Dread Necromancer
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?515849-Retiering-the-Classes-Beguiler-Dread-Necromancer-and-Warmage
Average rating: 2.15
It’s like a sorcerer, except with a whole bunch of extra spells known, and you don’t get to pick the spells, but they’re all solid mid-op picks anyway, and also you get a bunch of other sweet class abilities. So essentially, you’re a beefed-up mid-op sorcerer with an undead theme and no cantrips. Debate centered mainly on the divisive issue of whether dread necromancers were better or worse than sorcerers overall.

Warmage
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?515849-Retiering-the-Classes-Beguiler-Dread-Necromancer-and-Warmage
Average rating: 2.2
Warmage is one of the best classes in the game for sheer damage output. With a wide selection of blasting and battlefield control spells, some free metamagic, a flat damage bonus to all spells, a generous supply of spells per day (with no need to prepare them in advance), and the ability to learn a small handful of sorcerer/wizard spells via advanced learning and/or eclectic learning, you have an incredibly potent combat toolbox at your fingertips. The class's main drawback is essentially overspecialization. When you're in a fight, warmages have tons of options and can adapt to almost any combat scenario. When you're not in a fight...well, you probably don't have much to do. It's almost the opposite problem of the bard, actually!

The upside of being specc’ed for combat is that combat is the biggest and most important part of most games, which means in practice, it's actually a really miniscule drawback. So the question was really A or B tier. Proponents of A argued that at higher optimization levels, the warmage will be expanding her spell list to include broken spells (including with the native advanced learning and eclectic learning abilities), thus keeping pace with the sorcerer; and at lower optimization levels, the warmage will often be flat-out better than a sorcerer, at least until very high levels. Furthermore, warmages are at their best in the level 6–12 range, which happens to be the range that should get the most weight in these rankings. And when you do a head-to-head comparison with some of the weaker As like spirit shaman and favored soul, it's not uncommon for warmage to come out ahead for the majority of levels, even if it’s clearly behind the beguiler and dread necromancer. Proponents of B argued that while the class is great at mid-levels, the spell list tapers off sharply at high levels, and furthermore, the heavy combat focus actually makes martial adepts like the warblade and crusader the closer comparison.

One thing even the B side agreed on was that warmage probably has more upward mobility than any other B-tier class, and can definitely break the barrier into A-tier in the hands of a skilled optimizer—whether by list expansion to improve versatility, or by vertical optimization for a mailman-style build. Conversely, in a lower-skill environment, the sheer brute force represented by a warmage's blasting abilities has the potential to overwhelm an inexperienced DM.

Ultimately, warmage lands around the lower half of A, largely because both its floor and ceiling are very high. At low optimization, it's incredibly easy to demolish combat encounters with big damage, and you'll almost always outperform a sorcerer; meanwhile, at high optimization, you're still a full spellcaster, and advanced/eclectic learning are natively available to get you the powerful high-level spells that aren't automatically on your list. (This contrasts against other combat classes that landed in B-tier instead, most of whom have a similarly high floor, but not nearly as high a ceiling.) When you get right down to it, the warmage is really good at what is probably the #1 most important thing in the game to be good at: winning fights.

Ardent
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?570457-Retiering-the-Classes-Ardent-Erudite-Lurk-Psychic-Rogue
Average rating: 2.2
The ardent has a much more restrictive method of selecting powers known than other psionic classes, with mantles limiting you to thematic choices only. It makes up for this by having a nice cleric-like chassis, giving it some modest fighting ability to fall back on, and by the fact that its mantles are mostly pretty decent actually. Overall, you’re not as good as the psion, since your power list is inevitably going to be worse, but you’ve still got full manifesting and plenty of good stuff going on. Also, the dominant ideal variant (web.archive.org/http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070629a) is broken AF, and really boosts the top end of the class.

Favored Soul
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?522562-Retiering-the-Classes-Evangelist-Favored-Soul-Healer-Mystic-Spont-Cleric
Average rating: 2.24
Pretty much everyone agreed that the cleric spell list is weaker than the sorcerer spell list, and that split casting stats are a meaningful drawback; however, the favored soul has extra known spells and a better chassis, so that helps close the gap, and the cleric list is still quite good. The consensus, I think, was that it’s one of the weaker A-tier casters, but still good enough to make it into A-tier on the strength of the cleric spell list.

Spirit Shaman
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517370-Retiering-the-Classes-Spirit-Shaman-Spontaneous-Druid-Urban-Druid-and-WS-Ranger
Average rating: 2.49
The spirit shaman is similar to the erudite in that while it theoretically has access to a lot of different spells, in practice, you have so few spells retrieved that you play more like a battle sorcerer with druid spells: slightly better chassis than a normal sorcerer, but your limited spells known are even more limited than usual. While you can change your loadout from day to day, you can’t realistically leverage that advantage outside of downtime because you just have so little wiggle room. On top of that, you have split casting stats, so you need both Wisdom and Charisma. At least you get the faster spell progression rather than the delayed one, which does help, and some of the class features are at least decent. This class earned a robust discussion in the thread, drawing comparisons to the warmage and the favored soul, and some in-depth analysis of possible loadouts. I think in the end, especially once warmage settled into an A ranking rather than B+, most people agreed it was reasonable for spirit shaman to score an A-.

Mystic Ranger
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?571537-Retiering-the-Classes-Mystic-Ranger-Trickster-Wild-Monk&p=23439210
Average rating: 2.49
Mystic ranger is a bit of a headscratcher because of its weird level curve. At low levels, it has casting kinda like a bard, but then it quickly shifts to a more sorcerer-like progression as it scales up to 5th level spells, and then after level 10, it kind of caps out, and the whole second half of the class chart is comparatively empty. And this whole time, it still has the normal ranger chassis of full BAB and 6 + Int skill points. So if you only look at the first 10 levels, it's better than a lot of A-tier classes, and arguably even competitive with S-tier classes in the best case, but if you look at levels 11–20, it falls off pretty hard. How do you average that out into a single rating?

Most people agreed that the first half of mystic ranger fell somewhere in the A range and the second half fell somewhere in the B range. The main question was how to average them out. By the end of the thread, the voting put it smack dab in the middle of the two tiers, and I exercised my prerogative as tiebreaker to land it at A- rather than B+. Why? Because levels 11–20 simply aren't weighted as highly in these rankings, and most campaigns are likely to spend the majority of their time in the level ranges where mystic rangers are very good.

[Troacctid]

Tier 3 (B-Tier)

Wilder
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?569280-The-Expanded-Psionics-Psion-Psychic-Warrior-Soulknife-Wilder&p=23373106
Average rating: 2.55
Even though you get 9th level powers, you get a very, very small number of them: only 11 powers known over 20 levels (or 15 with the educated wilder variant). There are some solid powers on the wilder list, but the class is very difficult to work with due to its harshly limited resources and tremendous room for error. In many ways, the closer comparison is warlock rather than psion—in fact, you have about as many powers known as the warlock has invocations. How does a wilder hold up level-by-level against a warlock, bard, or martial initiator? The answer is “Not especially well.” With optimization, you can maybe end up about even with them, but at lower levels of system mastery, you're lucky if you ever catch up.

All that said, full manifesting is still inherently powerful enough that nobody was seriously considering dropping wilder below a B. In fact, most voters thought it was one of the most powerful classes in B-tier, leading to its final rating of B+.

Shugenja
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?520291-Retiering-the-Classes-Death-Master-Shugenja-Sorcerer-Wu-Jen
Average rating: 2.84
It’s a full caster, but the list you’re casting from is quite bad, and you only have unfettered access to about 40% of the list on any given caster, with another 40% available on a delay and the final 20% being off-limits entirely. To make matters worse, half your spells known have to be from your chosen element, and you don’t get a lot of spells known. Complicating matters further is the fact that several of the better spells on the shugenja list are a level higher than they usually are. So even if you’re a fire shugenja, you aren’t getting fireball until level 8, and if you’re an earth or air shugenja, you can’t get it until level 11. With such scripted choices, shugenja ends up playing a lot like a bad version of a warmage, but with slightly higher skill points. Zaq sums it up:

And don't forget that at the level you get a new spell level (level level level level level), you don't get any non-Order spells that aren't your favored element. Shugenjas are already on the Sorcerer track for learning new spell levels (so one level behind the Wizard and other prepared casters), but then if you want any spells that aren't your favored element, you basically get them a minimum of two character levels behind a Wizard or Cleric. We make fun of Mystic Theurges and other PrCs that sacrifice caster levels because they don't get spells at the earliest possible levels, and we consider it a weakness when a Sorc or another spontaneous caster has to wait for an even character level to learn a new spell level.

I hope that your favored element is actually the one you want to specialize in and not just the one that doesn't ban the two elements you really care about (e.g., specializing in Water because you like Air and Earth versus because you actually like Water). Otherwise, you're way, way behind the curve when it comes to learning non-favored spells at appropriate levels. Oh, and if you want to pick two spells from a non-favored element, I hope you're prepared to wait five levels to learn your second one (taking the starting point from when you get any spells of level X, though I suppose four levels after you learn your first non-favored spell of level X). So if you want, say, both Silence (Air, spell level 2) and Glitterdust (Earth, spell level 2) on one Shugenja, you have to wait until ECL 5 (two full levels behind a Wizard) to get your first one and ECL 9 to get the second one. That's not exactly overwhelming versatility. In fact, that seems incredibly limiting to the point of being nearly useless when compared to the expected challenge progression of the game.
Soranar also did a side-by-side comparison of the shugenja and the bard that proved illuminating: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21894689&postcount=108

So, yeah, shugenja is a full caster, but it’s very weak for a full caster. Not quite as weak as shadowcaster, but definitely weaker than the A-tier standard. If spells as a mechanic weren't so overpowered in this edition, it might even have garnered a lower rating than this.


Bard
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517967-Retiering-the-Classes-Bard-Factotum-and-Jeste
Average rating: 2.91
The bard was seen by many as a benchmark for B-tier, much like the sorcerer was a benchmark for A-tier. There was a little bit of argument for it moving up a tier, but it never got any real traction. Bard is a class with a slower spellcasting progression than the sorcerer, but the spell list is still very strong, and to make up for lost casting, you get a bunch of skills (bards are some of the best skill-users in the game) and some actual class features which are not too shabby. All in all, bards completely dominate social situations, provide a strong support role in combat, and have loads of extra utility on top of that.


Trickster Spellthief
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?571537-Retiering-the-Classes-Mystic-Ranger-Trickster-Wild-Monk&p=23439210
Average rating: 2.95
The trickster variant of the spellthief loses some skills and doesn't improve sneak attack beyond 1d6. However, in exchange, you use the bard progression for casting and add all bard spells to your class spell list. That's a clear upgrade, and it basically makes the spellthief into a Bard, But Different. Since bard is in B-tier...


Jester
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517967-Retiering-the-Classes-Bard-Factotum-and-Jeste
Average rating: 3.07
Speaking of “Bard, But Different,” the jester! It's a weird, slightly worse bard variant with some odd dysfunctions, like missing class skills (Concentration?) and no ability to ignore the spell failure chance of the armor they're supposed to wear. But once you get past that, their spell list is very similar to the core bard list (see the side-by-side comparison here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21794377&postcount=2)), which makes the class pretty similar to a core-only bard. Is a core-only bard still good enough for a B? Consensus was yes.


Totemist
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?568774-Retiering-the-Classes-Incarnate-Soulborn-Totemist
Average rating: 3.07
It’s really similar to incarnate. Most people thought it was a little more powerful because while both classes come with strong utility options, the totemist has a better chassis, so it doesn’t have to spend some of its resources compensating for lower base stats. Furthermore, it was argued that its natural weapon strategy scales better with optimization and provides a more obvious direction to the class. The two are close in power level, and if incarnate is right on the edge between B- and C+, that puts totemist more firmly into the B range, along with most of the other gishy melee-types.


Swordsage
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?518495-Retiering-the-Classes-Crusader-Swordsage-and-Warblade
Average rating: 3.12
Swordsage gives you strong melee abilities combined with a healthy dose of skill points. Of the martial adept classes, it's definitely the one with the widest range of options, but also the most difficult one to work with. With warblade and crusader, you can throw darts at your maneuver list and still end up with a playable character; with swordsage, you probably have to be a bit more thoughtful than that. The upside is that you get access to the most martial disciplines to pick your maneuvers from, and you have a pretty good amount of maneuvers readied at a time and, as previously mentioned, lots of skill points.


Warlock
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?520903-Retiering-the-Classes-Binder-Dragonfire-Adept-Shadowcaster-Truenamer-Warlock
Average rating: 3.17
Warlocks have three main things going for them. The first is their eldritch blast, which provides a weak but reliable source of damage, and can be upgraded to hit multiple targets, apply debuffs, and things like that. This gives them a solid baseline “okay” combat ability. The second thing is their other invocations, which offer various kinds of other effects, from flight to invisibility to large skill bonuses to battlefield control. These compete with the upgrades to eldritch blast, but essentially give you a handful of tricks that you can do really well. And then thirdly, you have some abilities that make you really good with magic items, almost like a wannabe artificer.

There are some problems with the class. The most common criticism is always the low damage. It’s true that warlocks aren’t primary damage-dealers (despite having a laser blast as a flagship class feature), which can be disappointing, but it’s an at-will touch attack, so it hits very consistently, and if you take blast shape and eldritch essence invocations, you can boost the damage and add rider effects and all that, which makes it plenty respectable. On the other hand, if you don’t spend your invocations upgrading your eldritch blast, you’re getting a whole mess of defensive and/or utility invocations that’ll give you power in other areas. And because all your invocations are usable at will, you’re operating at full power all of the time. So at lower optimization levels, you can easily outperform the low-op rangers and barbarians of C-tier and compare well against the bards and duskblades of B-tier, while at higher optimization levels, you’re doing all that while also abusing Use Magic Device left and right. Ultimately, it’s a solid B.


Binder
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?520903-Retiering-the-Classes-Binder-Dragonfire-Adept-Shadowcaster-Truenamer-Warlock
Average rating: 3.21
Binder is a tough class to rank across 20 levels because it has some weird power spikes and plateaus in its progression, which can cause it to fluctuate from underpowered to MVP in the course of just a few levels; and because some of the best vestiges are from obscure sources, so how much weight should they really be given? Also, the class suffers from a lack of a clear focus, which can make it difficult to build for.

The biggest problem with the class is the limitations that come from having to bind just one vestige at the start of the day for a large portion of your career. Unlike the incarnate, who can pick and choose soulmelds to get the best ones for the situation and can swap them out for situational ones a few times a day, the binder is locked into all of a particular vestige’s abilities and nothing else, with no ability to mix and match. Functionally speaking, this makes you a lot less versatile in practice than you should be in theory. As Zaq put it: “I hope that there's enough useful bits in the one vestige you get to keep you interesting and useful for an entire day, because if you just wanted one trick to get past one set of challenges, well, here we are. Add in the fact that you do have to build the rest of your character (feats, skills, stats, sometimes items) to accommodate your favored vestiges, and you can often end up at a severe disadvantage if you end up stuck with a vestige that you don't usually like much.” This problem is ameliorated somewhat once you can bind multiple vestiges at once, but it's still a real problem.

The biggest advantage of the class is that there are some nice vestiges. Naberius makes you the ultimate face; Malphas makes you the ultimate scout; Buer makes you an endless font of healing; Astaroth gives you impressive crafting abilities; Other Astaroth gives you blasting; and of course there's Zceryll, who is actually just broken. And that's just a smattering. There are definitely levels where the class kind of sucks, but there are also levels where it feels like you've cracked the game in half somehow. It's a weird dichotomy.

So where do we end up? Basically, it averages out to somewhere in the B range, but with high variance. Some had it low in the tier because of how clunky the class is at mid-levels; others had it higher because of Zceryll and other powerful vestiges.

Crusader
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?518495-Retiering-the-Classes-Crusader-Swordsage-and-Warblade
Average rating: 3.22
A powerhouse in melee, with some of the best tanking abilities in the game combined with a strong, reliable damage output. The crusader can take hits and dish them out in equal measure while also buffing and healing party members—and it does all this without any feat investment needed. The only way you're likely to do better than crusader (or its partner in crime, warblade) as a melee character is by playing a broken full caster as a gish, and even then, you still won't be outmeleeing the crusader until higher levels.

What holds it back from a higher tier ranking is the problem it shares with the warblade (and a couple other combat classes in this tier): what do you do when fighting isn't the answer? For crusaders, you have a few skills, so you can maybe contribute Diplomacy or Knowledge checks, and you have Mountain Hammer to smash things good—but not much else. You're not a one-trick pony like a lot of the C-tier classes often end up being; maneuvers give you a lot of tactical flexibility in combat, so if your main gameplan goes awry, you have plenty of recourse. But you lack the raw quadratic power of an A-tier class.

As with warblade, this is a class where it's very important to note that you come out of the gates strong. At very low levels, crusader is one of the most powerful classes in the game. You're one-shotting enemies while being nigh-unkillable yourself. It balances out at mid- to high-levels, though.


Warblade
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?518495-Retiering-the-Classes-Crusader-Swordsage-and-Warblade
Average rating: 3.26
Same story as crusader, basically. One of the best melee classes in the game, with enough power in its maneuvers to keep up with high-tier gishes in combat. It's hard to overstate just how good warblades are at their specialty. Not only do they wreck face, they also do so very consistently and with almost no optimization required whatsoever, giving them a very high floor. Furthermore, their power is concentrated and magnified at low levels, making them one of the best classes for the early game—but they also scale well into higher levels too, because why not?

Like crusader, the downside of all this is that you don't get many tools for non-combat encounters, and the things you're doing in combat are all powerful, but ultimately fair, even at high levels. In other words, swords are awesome, but if you want to be in the top tiers, you gotta have some sorcery. Warblade has no sorcery. It doesn't even have ranged attacks.

Great class, very strong in its niche, goes up in value in low-op and low-level games. It's a solid B.


Dragonfire Adept
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?520903-Retiering-the-Classes-Binder-Dragonfire-Adept-Shadowcaster-Truenamer-Warlock
Average rating: 3.28
It's just Warlock But Different. Dragonfire adept can be largely thought of as an alternative class feature for warlock that makes you a little worse at some things (Use Magic Device, breadth of invocation options) and a little better at other things (AoE damage and battlefield control) without having a substantial effect on the overall power level of the class. Some people argued that the DFA is better; others argued that the warlock is better. Either way, they're so close that to put them in different tiers would be unconscionable.

On its own merits, dragonfire adept is a fine class that is great at short-range AoE damage and control and also good-to-great at a small handful of other things. It scales well (no pun intended) into higher levels and reliably has useful things to do both in and out of combat. Notably, it has very little variance between builds; most DFAs are likely to be at least like 80% identical, just due to how few options exist for the class. The thing is, those few options are still good options, so you end up with a relatively high floor and a low ceiling, both compared to the warlock and just in general. Anyway, bottom line, it's a B.

Healer
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?522562-Retiering-the-Classes-Evangelist-Favored-Soul-Healer-Mystic-Spontaneous-Cleric
Average rating: 3.31
The healer's class spell list is pretty bad, but it is at least good for healing. If that were all that the class had going for it, there's a good chance it would have ended up in C-tier just as a result of being a one-trick pony whose trick is underwhelming. Two things help it out. The first is the expansion to its spell list in Book of Exalted Deeds (and to a lesser extent Champions of Valor). All sanctified spells are also healer spells. Once those two books are in the mix, it's a real shot in the arm for the healer's versatility, especially in the crucial mid-level range where healing spells are dropping off a bit in value but the companion hasn't really kicked in yet. And speaking of the companion…that's the second thing. Healers are kind of just durdling around doing their healer thing when all of a sudden, at level 12, a lammasu with access to all cleric spells of 4th level and lower just drops into their lap like “Oh, hey, wanna be buds?” And now they just have this extra cleric. And not only that, but on a daily basis, they can swap their lammasu cleric for a sphinx who can cast free symbol SLAs with an enhanced duration, or a water naga or couatl for sorcerer spells. It's a serious power spike. And then of course at level 17 they get gate, which is independently broken, but those top levels aren't weighted as highly for tiering.

The central debate for this class was how much to weigh the sanctified spells. They're on the healer list, but because they were added as “Sanctified” with like a side note saying “Oh btw healers have these too,” they're significantly more obscure than if they had just been listed as healer spells directly, and that means players are less likely to know about them. Additionally, while the companion is hella powerful, it also makes for a very spiky level progression, where there's this sudden sharp power differential between level 11 and level 12. Both of these factors make it difficult to assign a single tier to the class. The consensus seemed to be that with both sanctified spells and the companion, healer is definitely a B, and with neither of the two, it's definitely a C, and on balance, you're more likely to have them than not, which puts it in the B- range. Everyone agreed that JaronK’s original rating of D was way off.

It's worth noting that Spell Compendium suggests adding additional spells to the healer list, but is somewhat vague on which ones should be added. I don't think anyone took this into consideration in the discussion, but my personal opinion is that it likely wouldn't affect the tier rating either way.

Duskblade
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?521476-Retiering-the-Classes-Duskblade-Hexblade-Paladin-Ranger-Sohei-Spellthief
Average rating: 3.31
Zaq wrote a pretty good summary of this one.

This seems like a fairly easy T3. Low T3, mind you, but I think it's on par with the martial adepts. It's got more magic than the average non-caster, but it doesn't have the real gamebreaking power of a full caster. It's mostly good at hitting things, and like the martial adepts, it's got enough way of hitting things in new ways (or of augmenting ways to hit things) that it's got a leg up on the Barbarian and the Rogue (and it's difficult to make it entirely useless).

Duskblade spells aren't great at solving out-of-combat problems, and they don't have a native equivalent to Advanced Learning (though the old standby tricks of Arcane Disciple—WIS permitting—and similar list-expanders do work). That said, they get short-range teleportation, Dispel Magic (at a late level, but at least they have no baked-in penalty to CL), Disintegrate (aka Make Hole), Spider Climb, and See Invisibility, which is more than many non-casters can say. They also actually get a halfway decent number of spells per day, which is rarer than it has any right to be.

Duskblades also have a reasonably high optimization floor. As long as you take Shocking Grasp early on, you've got your combat capabilities more or less covered for the early levels, and it doesn't take much optimization to get in melee with something and cast a channeled touch spell at it. They're never going to rise above the level of extra-flashy beatstick, but they've got damage, minor utility, a decent bit of self-reliance (Swift Fly, f'rinstance), and enough variety to approach problems in more ways than the Scout can. Seems like a fairly textbook low T3.

There were a couple people who thought it should be a C because it mostly just does damage and not much else, but when you look more closely at the spell list, you can see that's not really true. There are some decent utility spells there, and even a build that only learns damaging spells is still going to end up with different kinds of damaging spells—scorching ray, for example, is a ranged option, and vampiric touch doubles as a defensive buff. Also, even though a lot of lower-tier classes fit the mold of “Hit with sword, deal damage,” there's no denying that duskblade does it way better than they do.


Psychic Warrior
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?569280-The-Expanded-Psionics-Psion-Psychic-Warrior-Soulknife-Wilder
Average rating: 3.32
Here we have a class that is clearly worse than martial adepts because it has to spend its very limited daily resources just to keep up with what the initiators can do at will. At the same time, it's also clearly better than the C-tier beatsticks like fighter and barbarian because it can do everything they can do while also having cool psychic powers to buff themselves with. That leaves it at either a B- or a C+. Now compare it with the totemist—they can both play very similarly in combat, but again, psychic warrior has to spend daily resources while the totemist has everything at will. On the other hand, psychic warrior has the potential to outscale the totemist at high levels with manifesting, especially with the ability to gain off-list powers with Expanded Knowledge. On the other other hand, psychic warriors are harder to build and pilot than comparable gishy classes like totemist and duskblade, and more MAD to boot, giving it a lower floor that drags down the average.

So where do we stand? Well, B-, apparently, but with some caveats. It's tricky to work with, and will very easily drop to a C in the hands of an inexperienced player; it really doesn't like having low stat rolls; and it might take a while before it gets enough psionics to reliably outperform a fighter of the same optimization level. And wow, I am not selling this class very well, am I?

In my opinion, it comes down to action economy. If you build a psychic warrior that makes effective use of powers known and actions in combat, I think you can prooobably land in B-tier. If you're not able to do that, and you end up spewing too many standard actions on short-duration self-buffs instead of attacking, you're doomed to C-tier, and you probably should have just played a regular fighter with a prestige class.


Lurk
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?570457-Retiering-the-Classes-Ardent-Erudite-Lurk-Psychic-Rogue
Average rating: 3.4
While the lurk is presented as a psionic version of a stealthy rogue-type character, mechanically, it’s actually much closer to a psionic version of a bard. It has a slower casting progression than the psion, but faster than a psychic rogue, with lots of mind-affecting and utility powers. Meanwhile, your chassis is similar to the psychic warrior’s, with martial weapon proficiency and medium BAB, but instead of bonus feats, you get a small amount of sneak attack, and instead of gishy self-buff powers, you get lurk augments. That would definitely be a downgrade in a vacuum, but you make up for it by having more options outside of combat.

So here we are, the middle ground between psychic warrior and psychic rogue. And just like both of them, you’re in C-tier.


Psychic Rogue
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?570457-Retiering-the-Classes-Ardent-Erudite-Lurk-Psychic-Rogue
Average rating: 3.4
The addition of psionic powers is a significant power boost for the rogue, and the cost is slightly lower skill points and slightly delayed sneak attack. Definitely a favorable trade, especially since the psychic rogue's power list is actually legit. So it's for sure better than the base rogue, but is it better enough to break the tier barrier? The short answer is yes, probably. The added versatility is a big deal and goes a long way towards addressing some of the traditional weaknesses of the rogue. You still have the trapfinding and sneak attack and all that, but then you just also have dimension door and freedom of movement and true seeing and scrying and telekinesis and stuff. Plus, a lot of your powers either greatly enhance your skills or replace them completely, with powers like knock, find traps, conceal thoughts, and chameleon, so there’s, like, synergy going there. It's like if a factotum were actually good at the traditional rogue stuff instead of getting constantly distracted by trying to imitate other classes.

Wild Shape Ranger
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517370-Retiering-the-Classes-Spirit-Shaman-Spontaneous-Druid-Urban-Druid-and-WS-Ranger
Average rating: 3.47
You get fast movement and wild shape (Medium and Small forms only). You give up your combat style. That's about it. Wild shape is great, so this is an overall buff to the ranger. Traditionally, it's been considered enough of a buff to boost you up a tier. We reexamined that common wisdom and decided that, yeah, it's a bit overrated, probably, but not an unreasonable assessment, especially if you optimize it with feats like Exalted Wild Shape or Aberration Wild Shape (both of which are really good). Even without that, there are a couple pretty solid Medium animals in non-core books that make good combat forms. I'd estimate this variant as roughly half a tier above the standard ranger, which, if the standard ranger is a benchmark C, leaves the wild shape ranger at either a B- or a C+.

A good rule of thumb is that if you optimize for wild shape with something like Aberrant Wild Shape, you'll probably land in B-tier, and if you just use wild shape to turn into Medium-size animals, you'll probably land in C-tier.

[Troacctid]

Tier 4 (C-Tier)

Incarnate
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?568774-Retiering-the-Classes-Incarnate-Soulborn-Totemist
Average rating: 3.5
The discussion for incarnate was tricky because not everyone really understood what the class is supposed to do. And to be fair, it is kinda all over the place. Here’s my summary of how to actually play an incarnate:

An incarnate can function as a melee brawler, a ranged support, a minion master, or a utility-focused skillmonkey.


Key soulmelds for melee include lightning gauntlets and astral vambraces.
Key soulmelds for ranged include dissolving spittle.
Key soulmelds for minion mastery include necrocarnum circlet and soulspark familiar.
Key soulmelds for skillmonkeying include lucky dice, mage's spectacles, theft gloves, silvertongue mask, and truthseeker goggles.
Supplementary soulmelds for defense include crystal helm, astral vambraces, lammasu mantle, planar chasuble, planar ward, strongheart vest, flame cincture, impulse boots, incarnate avatar (good), spellward shirt, and vitality belt.
Supplementary soulmelds for offense include armguards of disruption, bloodwar gauntlets, lucky dice, sighting gloves, bloodwar gauntlets, bluesteel bracers, incarnate weapon, incarnate avatar (law or evil), and necrocarnum shroud.
Supplementary soulmelds for mobility include acrobat boots, airstep sandals, and cerulean sandals.
Situational soulmelds include enigma helm, theft gloves, riding bracers, sailor's bracers, psion's eyes, mage's spectacles, pauldrons of health, apparition ribbon, planar chasuble, strongheart vest, flame cincture, truthseeker goggles, and silvertongue mask.

So basically, you can pick one role and fill it very well by using the key soulmelds for that role plus supplementary ones, or you can fill multiple roles by picking the key soulmelds for both, and every day you can change your loadout depending on what you think will be most useful to the party, including switching to situational picks when the adventure calls for it. This gives you a lot of day-to-day flexibility, as well as level-by-level flexibility—for example, you can use astral vambraces at low levels when the DR is at its most powerful, and then switch it out for vitality belt at higher levels, when the HP boost is more valuable. Additionally, once you hit level 5, you get the ability to swap out soulmelds in the middle of the day, which lets you pull a situational soulmeld out of your back pocket whenever it's needed.

At higher levels, the more powerful chakra binds can open up new and exciting options, like flight, at-will suggestion, at-will mindlink, 1/week gate, and so on—or they can simply turbocharge the options you already had, like with dissolving spittle or soulspark familiar. This ability to scale up to higher levels is another big advantage over nonmagical counterparts like rogue or fighter.
So, that’s the basics. Actually, the incarnate is not too bad at what it does, assuming you have some idea of what you’re doing. On the downside, with poor BAB, a d6 hit die, and only 2 + Int skill points, some of those soulmelds are going to be stuck just making up the lost ground from your weak base stats. The good news is that you’re typically relying mainly on touch attacks and minions, so you can easily get away with poor BAB.

Where does it land tier-wise? Well, there were two main schools of thought. Some people rated it pretty close to the binder and totemist, in the B- range, on account of having good stuff plus extra magic and whatever, and being better than psychic warrior, which was the lowest-ranked B at the time. Others contended that the power level of the incarnate's soulmelds is low enough to pull the class down to C+. I would personally call it a B-. Your soulmelds are very good at low levels while still scaling reasonably well into high levels, and you get enough of them at a time to do good work—plus, the ability to swap out soulmelds on the fly does wonders for your versatility. But the counterargument is that the confusing and often directionless nature of the class should be expected to drag down the weighted average because of how relatively difficult it is to build and play an incarnate; if you don't know what you're doing, there's a decent chance you'll end up not doing much of anything. And even if you are a skilled enough player to know what to do, the relatively flat power level of soulmelds means the ceiling for the class isn't that high, either.

Between the upsides and the downsides, the final tally put the incarnate at exactly smack dab in the middle of the two tiers, rounding down to a C+.


Factotum
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517967-Retiering-the-Classes-Bard-Factotum-and-Jeste
Average rating: 3.51
Factotum has almost the reverse problem of mystic ranger. It's pretty weak at low levels, but then later in its progression it gets 7th level spells off the sorcerer/wizard list. It also has a lot of the same problems as incarnate, where it dabbles in a little bit of everything and ends up being difficult to build and pilot because it's not obvious what you should be focusing on. Ultimately, I think the comparison that felt closest to most voters was with bard. Its skillmonkey abilities, combined with a vaguely bard-esque casting progression and some rudimentary weapon proficiencies, make it more like a weirder, less powerful bard than a rogue who sucks at sneak attacks and doesn't do anything in combat. Whether you thought it was a B- or C+ was mainly a function of just how big you felt the gap was between the factotum and the bard.

There are a lot of potential pitfalls with this class, though ("doesn't do anything in combat" being the biggest one; you can optimize for tripping with Brains over Brawn, or for nova with Font of Inspiration, but it takes some work). In the end, the factotum lands pretty close to halfway between the rogue and the bard, which feels very fitting to me.

Rogue
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517091-Retiering-the-Classes-Ninja-Rogue-and-Scout
Average rating: 3.79
Rogue is a benchmark C-tier. It's clearly worse than all the B's, clearly better than all the D's, performs well enough in and out of combat but has some glaring weaknesses that keep it from breaking the tier barrier. Sneak attack can make you a glass cannon, dealing lots of damage in melee without giving you a good way to survive the counterattack, but it’s a finicky ability that won’t always work, and when it doesn’t, you’re more like a glass slingshot: all the fragility with none of the deadliness. Meanwhile, skills are great, but they’re not revolutionary or anything. Anyway, like I said, benchmark for the tier.


Shadowcaster
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?520903-Retiering-the-Classes-Binder-Dragonfire-Adept-Shadowcaster-Truenamer-Warlock
Average rating: 3.82
A combination of restrictive limitations on mysteries known, harshly limited mysteries per day, and a dearth of actual good mysteries combined to make shadowcaster the lowest-ranked class with 9th level casting. The Path mechanic makes for really clunky builds where in order to get one good mystery, you have to learn two crappy ones. Shadowcasters also struggle a lot in the early game, especially before 7th level, when all their mysteries are limited to 1/day, and unlike other casters, they don't get bonus spells for high ability scores. Like, okay, once you get rolling? You're probably fine? Even with just 4th or 5th level mysteries, you can at least function okay, probably, and when you hit 7ths, that's when you’re really in business and can start being actively awesome. But getting there is rough. And I realize that's true of most arcane casters to some extent, but shadowcasters feel it even more, and what do they get in return? A weaker spell list, lower save DCs, fewer spells known, fewer spells per day, and a small handful of spells that have a minor advantage over the non-shadow counterpart. Oof.

If your campaign starts at high levels and allows the shadowcaster to skip past its early-game woes, you should expect it to go up a full tier.


Healer (without Exalted spells)
See the Healer entry under Tier 3.

Spellthief
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?521476-Retiering-the-Classes-Duskblade-Hexblade-Paladin-Ranger-Sohei-Spellthief
Average rating: 4
A rogue variant, this time losing some skills and some sneak attack dice to get spell-stealing and minor spellcasting. It’s a pretty fair trade, all things considered, and most likely a net positive for the spellthief—but if it is, it's by a small enough margin to at least be debatable, and not enough to go up a tier (at least not without the trickster variant, which is tiered separately). Unlike the factotum and psychic rogue, your spell progression is really, really slow, and your caster level is cut in half, so you don’t really have the magical oomph to break the tier barrier. And when you're not able to use your steal spells ability, it's easy to feel like you're just a rogue with less damage and fewer skills. Personally, I think I'm a little higher on spellthief than most, because it's just so dang common to fight spellcasters, and when you do, stealing their spells—especially their currently active buff spells—feels really good.


Divine Mind (Ectopic Ally)
See the Divine Mind entry under Tier 5.

Barbarian
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?516602-Retiering-the-Classes-Barbarian-Fighter-Samurai-(CW)-and-Samurai-(OA)
Average rating: 4
Barbarian was considered another benchmark C. It has a solid niche in Strength-based melee combat with rage as the baseline and some very good ACFs at higher optimization levels, but it’s extremely frontloaded and drops off quickly in the lategame. It also comes with a surprisingly okay skill list. Without any alternative class features, it loses a fair bit of power and probably drops to the lower border of the tier. For my part, I'm concerned that people may have overestimated the percentage of single-class barbarians taking those good ACFs, and I personally would have placed the class at C- because of it. If you're playing with core only, you should expect the barbarian to drop to a D.


Generic Expert
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?572023-Retiering-the-Classes-Generic-Expert-Generic-Spellcaster-Generic-Warrior
Average rating: 4
The generic expert is basically another rogue variant that doesn’t do much to break the mold. It’s maybe a little more powerful than the rogue due to its modularity (and getting 2d6 sneak attack immediately at level 1), but not by much.


Generic Warrior
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?572023-Retiering-the-Classes-Generic-Expert-Generic-Spellcaster-Generic-Warrior
Average rating: 4
The generic warrior is straight-up just a better version of the fighter. Nobody cares about tower shield proficiency anyway, and being able to choose any feats is a big advantage, particularly at later levels when the best fighter feats have dried up. Choosing your class skills is also a pretty big deal. So it's obviously better, but by how much? The consensus, I think, was “Better enough to be a clear C instead of a borderline C-,” or about half a tier better.


Scout
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517091-Retiering-the-Classes-Ninja-Rogue-and-Scout
Average rating: 4.15
It’s Rogue, But Different. It has some upsides and some downsides compared to rogue, but nothing that represents a radical change in power level either way, and so it gets the same tier rating.


Paladin
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?521476-Retiering-the-Classes-Duskblade-Hexblade-Paladin-Ranger-Sohei-Spellthief
Average rating: 4.19
It's funny, actually, near the start of the discussion thread I said I thought paladin is underrated, and then a bunch of people came along and just casually rated it higher than I did, lol. The discussion here centered mainly on ACFs and splat support, because the paladin has tons of really great stuff in books like Spell Compendium, Complete Champion, Champions of Valor, and even the good old Dungeon Master’s Guide, which expands the range of available special mounts. Most people thought that with all the supplemental sources taken into account, you could hit C or at least C- without too much trouble, but with only the PHB, you'd be relegated to D. However, because it wasn't a single variant providing the boost but rather a confluence of multiple feats, ACFs, and spell list expansions, we couldn't really tier it separately. So we had to decide how much to factor in those optimization vectors. I think the eventual rating of C was on the generous side, but still within the realm of reason. (Monk, incidentally, had a very similar discussion, but fell the other way.)

Just be aware that it's very easy—not psychic warrior levels of easy, but definitely easier than usual—for a low-op paladin to drop a tier. If your players are inexperienced at the game, expect paladin to fall to D-tier.


Ranger
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?521476-Retiering-the-Classes-Duskblade-Hexblade-Paladin-Ranger-Sohei-Spellthief
Average rating: 4.19
Along with rogue and barbarian, this was considered another benchmark for the tier. The mix of skill points, martial ability, and minor spellcasting gives the ranger a taste of everything without really excelling in any one area. Ranger spells are super slow, but they're actually not bad, even just in core. Meanwhile, as a core class, it has lots of splat support with ACFs and spells and stuff, raising its optimization ceiling. Of course, archery and dual wielding are both underpowered in this edition, which hurts, and like two bonus feats plus full BAB and a half-strength animal companion isn't exactly the strongest combat resume. Anyway, it ended up being fairly uncontroversial.


Ninja
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517091-Retiering-the-Classes-Ninja-Rogue-and-Scout
Average rating: 4.33
Another rogue variant that's a bit worse than the original, but still close enough to be in the same tier. Ninja gets fewer skill points than the rogue, and trades sneak attack for sudden strike, which is a strict downgrade. However, it also has supernatural ki abilities that allow it to turn invisible and stuff, so it's not just spewing away those advantages for no value (unlike certain classes I could name, cough mountebank cough). With limited ki points per day, it's not a great trade, but it's, like, fine or whatever, and the basic play patterns still hold.


Savant
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?517967-Retiering-the-Classes-Bard-Factotum-and-Jester
Average rating: 4.37
Yet another rogue variant. (Yeesh, how many of these are there? Spoiler alert, at least one more.) Or is it a factotum variant? Yes, factotum is probably the more apt comparison, with all skills as class skills and abilities that want you to be doing everything at once, but badly. You get like one or two dice of sneak attack, a couple bonus feats, a bardic knowledge ability, and a crappy spell progression for both arcane and divine spells. Unfortunately for the savant, it's much worse at factotuming than the factotum (primarily in the spellcasting department). The class tries to do a little of everything and ends up not doing much of anything. The biggest upside is that by sticking your fingers in a lot of pies, you can gain access to feats and prestige classes that interact with all those different subsystems—1d6 sneak attack is enough to take Craven, crappy arcane casting is enough to take Obtain Familiar, crappy utility casting in general lets you use wands without UMD, etc.

Votes were a mix of 4s and 5s, and the final verdict was a C-.


Wild Monk
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?571537-Retiering-the-Classes-Mystic-Ranger-Trickster-Wild-Monk
Average rating: 4.44
The addition of wild shape is a boon to the monk at high levels, but it takes a while to come online and be useful, especially with the delayed progression. Still, wild shape is a good ability, and one that most people thought was worthy of a tier boost, following the precedent of the wild shape ranger. In fact, it's arguably a bigger boost for the monk than it is for the ranger, since it goes such a long way toward alleviating the monk's usual problem of severe MADness. Just keep in mind that before level 6, this is actually a strict downgrade in power to an already anemic class. That alone was the basis for several lower-tier votes.

I think this is one of the best examples of a class's ranking being skewed by the format we're using. When you're looking strictly at a single-class build from 1–20 and emphasizing the level 6ish–12ish range in particular, trading in your low-level stuff for powerful wild shapes later on is a pretty good deal, and it's likely the wild monk comes out ahead of the regular monk on balance. However, for actual games, practical optimization is always going to prefer the traditional monk, because you'll just be prestiging out of it anyway, so you want the good stuff to be frontloaded.


Fighter
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?516602-Retiering-the-Classes-Barbarian-Fighter-Samurai-(CW)-and-Samurai-(OA)
Average rating: 4.48
Fighter is ultimately very close to barbarian in power level. The bonus feats match up well enough to barbarian class features, the overall gameplay of the two classes is pretty similar, they're both heavily frontloaded with relatively powerful features at level 1 and jack-all at higher levels, and they both scale well enough with optimization due to strong splat support through ACFs and the like (in the fighter’s case, the good ACFs include thug, dungeoncrasher, hit and run, Zhentarim substitution levels, and exoticist). What makes fighter weaker is mainly the lack of skills and the greater likelihood of falling into trap options. But once the barbarian was established as a benchmark for C, it only made sense that fighter would end up in the same tier—they're not that far apart, after all. Note though that a core-only fighter will almost always drop to D simply due to how few good bonus feats there are in the PHB.


Marshal
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?523449-Retiering-the-Classes-Divine-Mind-Dragon-Shaman-and-Marshal
Average rating: 4.49
Marshal has an aristocrat-like chassis with a bunch of auras that allow you to add your Charisma modifier as a bonus to...basically anything, for the whole party. This makes marshal an okay support class and a very good party face. Some people, myself included, argued that the sheer breadth of auras a single-class marshal gets has to be worth enough versatility for a C-. Others argued that the class is extremely passive and boring and doesn't really do enough—like, what even are you spending your actions on? The counterargument was that they can also apply their Charisma to their own attacks and combat maneuver checks as well as everyone else's. It ended up right at the line, which feels to me like a reasonable place for it. Also, Zaq voted F-tier for some reason, and I gotta say, I have no idea what he was thinking there, sorry Zaq, but that's clearly absurd and you should feel bad.

[Troacctid]

Tier 5 (D-Tier)

Adept
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?519155-Retiering-the-Classes-Adept-Aristocrat-Commoner-Expert-Magewright-and-Warrior
Average rating: 4.54
It's true that it has spells, but those spells are also kiiinda crappy, and it has so few spell slots that it's likely to run out of steam in the first encounter and be a glorified commoner for the rest of the day. Maybe it might be a C- on the strength of animate dead minionmancy, if you're being generous? But that seems questionable to me considering how late it comes online (and it's not exactly as if skeletons and zombies are combat powerhouses). You've got the shadowcaster problem of not enough spell slots, but unlike the shadowcaster, you never grow out of it and you have a delayed progression. I think it's a clear D alongside the magewright; the two are not too far from each other power-wise. Ultimately, adepts are just really bad at their jobs compared to PC classes, and should expect to lean very heavily on magic items in order to keep up.


Truenamer
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?520903-Retiering-the-Classes-Binder-Dragonfire-Adept-Shadowcaster-Truenamer-Warlock
Average rating: 4.56
Contrary to popular memes, the truenamer class is not completely dysfunctional as written. If you do the math, it's not that hard to pass your skill checks to use utterances a reasonable number of times per day (certainly more times per day than an adept can cast their spells)—you're just very dependent on the amulet of the silver tongue to function, and once you are functioning, the powers you have access to are unreliable and underwhelming. There's no way around it—utterances kinda suck. There are a few decent ones, but for the most part, you have some mediocre support spells with short durations and underpowered effects, and you have to dump build resources into optimizing your skill checks just to be able to cast them at all. If you build right, you can make it up to C-tier, but that's the best case.


Sohei
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?521476-Retiering-the-Classes-Duskblade-Hexblade-Paladin-Ranger-Sohei-Spellthief
Average rating: 4.58
It's a weird class that most people haven't played with much, so there wasn't a ton of discussion, but it mostly boiled down to a weird cross between barbarian, monk, and paladin, with no splat support or anything. Kind of hexblade-esque I guess? I pegged it at D, others disagreed, few people seemed to have strong feelings one way or the other.


Hexblade
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?521476-Retiering-the-Classes-Duskblade-Hexblade-Paladin-Ranger-Sohei-Spellthief
Average rating: 4.72
Like a paladin, but nerfed. No heavy armor, no special mount, no turning, no lay on hands, a divine grace equivalent that only works against spells, and a flagship ability that is somehow even less exciting than smite evil. The only reasonable trade is aura of courage for mettle, and even then, it’s not like it’s a slam-dunk or anything. In summary, it’s not a very good class. Paladin was already considered borderline by more than a few people, so a nerfed version of it is definitely going directly to D-tier, do not pass Go, do not collect 200 gp.


Monk
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?519701-Retiering-the-Classes-Battle-Dancer-Monk-Mountebank-and-Soulknife
Average rating: 4.7
Like barbarian, monk is a frontloaded class with some very good ACFs that allow it to scale reasonably well with optimization. Unlike barbarian, the fail-case scenario in low-op games is...very bad.

So, why is monk a bad class? I’d say that its failings are well-documented and I don’t want to rehash them, but considering that it’s literally the purpose of this thread, fine, let’s do some floccinaucinihilipilification. First off, unarmed strikes are glorified shortswords that deal crappy damage. Second, flurry of blows only works on a full attack and is generally unreliable. Thirdly, you’re meant to be a melee fighter, but your damage output sucks and you can’t tank worth beans either, so what are you even doing? Disabling enemies with Stunning Fist? Good luck with that—half the Monster Manual is immune to it, and the other half will probably just make the save. Grappling? Tripping? Maybe, except for our fourth problem: MADness. You need Dexterity and Wisdom because you won’t have any AC without them (and even with them, your AC is still worse than any schmoe in armor), but you also need Strength in order for your attacks to matter at all, since you don’t have any source of bonus damage, and 1d6+2 is not going to cut it in the big leagues. So your ability scores end up being split multiple ways just to almost keep pace with the other melee characters. Finally, to top it all off, your class features kinda suck. You get some bonus feats at the early levels, sure, but it drops off hard after that, so you struggle in the early game and then struggle in the midgame and eventually struggle even harder in the lategame. Yeah, you have good saves or whatever, but that doesn’t matter if you can’t do anything.

Okay, so we got that over with. Now, why D-tier? Well, an optimized monk can definitely push into C with good feat selection, intelligent use of skills, and abilities like invisible fist and shadow blend—but it’s also depressingly likely for an unoptimized monk to fall down to F, struggling to keep up with the NPC aristocrats and warriors due to poor build decisions and trap options. We expect the majority of monks to end up here instead, in the land of Classes Who Are Bad At Their Jobs.


Battle Dancer
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?519701-Retiering-the-Classes-Battle-Dancer-Monk-Mountebank-and-Soulknife
Average rating: 4.73
It’s like monk, except it has full BAB, but all the other class features are worse and there's no splat support for it. It takes a standard action to use your version of ki strike, FFS. Anyway, it's pretty bad.


Divine Mind
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?523449-Retiering-the-Classes-Divine-Mind-Dragon-Shaman-and-Marshal
Average rating: 4.75
This is a rare example of a class where we didn't split off a major variant to tier separately, but we probably should have. The variant in question is the Mind’s Eye variant with Hidden Talent and Ectopic Ally, granting manifesting at an earlier level and astral construct as a psi-like ability. The astral construct is always fully-augmented automatically, and can be augmented even more by spending multiple daily uses of the ability rather than one. It's a major boost in power and it's practically free; several voters, myself included, considered this variant to be an easy boost of at least half a tier or more. With Ectopic Ally, the divine mind is definitely a C.

What about without it? Well, then you're a lot like a psionic paladin, except weirder, and instead of splat support, you have better scaling, with eventual access to 5th and 6th level powers (at very high levels). The auras kinda suck, mainly because switching between them is such a pain, but they can at least cancel out your lack of full BAB, sort of, mostly. The real problem is you just don't do very much. Your manifesting comes at a -4 penalty and is too anemic to reliably augment your fighting in a meaningful way until very late in the game; your auras are too teeny-tiny to reliably augment your allies’ fighting until very late in the game; and your own fighting abilities are fairly barebones. Top it off with some MADness (you need physical stats for fighting, Wis for manifesting, and Cha for divine grace) and you have a class that probably lands somewhere in the D+ to D range, all things considered.


Mountebank
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?519701-Retiering-the-Classes-Battle-Dancer-Monk-Mountebank-and-Soulknife
Average rating: 4.84
Yet another rogue variant, except this one has no sneak attack and no spellcasting, except for alter self and a couple of high-level teleportation spells. But for the most part, if you imagine taking the rogue and removing almost every single class feature from it in exchange for alter self, you won't be far from the mark. Don't get me wrong, alter self is great, but it does not a class make. Even without losing skill points and splat support, it would be a highly questionable trade. With the other drawbacks, it just feels bad. Everyone agreed it belonged in D-tier, although there were some votes that put it in D+.

Samurai (OA)
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?516602-Retiering-the-Classes-Barbarian-Fighter-Samurai-(CW)-and-Samurai-(OA)
Average rating: 4.85
It’s like fighter, except with more skill points and you save money on weapons! ...But you get fewer feats, and you have to pick them from a smaller, crappier list. Some voters thought the upside made up for the downside, while others argued that it didn't. Of course, even some of the people who felt the two were about equal still thought the fighter was also a D. Anyway, when the votes were tallied, the Ds had it.


Dragon Shaman
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?523449-Retiering-the-Classes-Divine-Mind-Dragon-Shaman-and-Marshal
Average rating: 4.86
Dragon shaman is a frontloaded class with poor scaling. I mean...they grow scales, but they don’t...look, you know what I mean. It’s just disappointing. The energy shield, toughness, and vigor auras are all fantastic in the early levels, but they start to lose their luster once you level up a bit. What else do you have? Bonus feats, but they have to be Skill Focus. A breath weapon, but its damage is below par for the level you get it. A draconic adaptation ability, but it’s extremely niche. A lay on hands ability that’s better than the paladin’s, but is still just okay. Wings, but not until 19th level. An ACF that gives them a draconic invocation, but it’s only a single least invocation. An ostensibly melee-focused kit, but with only simple weapons and medium BAB. There isn’t really anything that the dragon shaman does well, only a few things that it can do kind of okay. It also doesn’t really offer a lot of avenues for optimization, so it has a low ceiling, even if its floor is higher than some of the other classes in this tier (you’re still constantly healing the party back to half health for free, after all).

There were a couple of stray C votes, but they were substantially outnumbered by the Ds.


Magewright
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?519155-Retiering-the-Classes-Adept-Aristocrat-Commoner-Expert-Magewright-and-Warrior
Average rating: 4.94
An NPC caster like adept, but somehow with even less relevance in combat. Casting as a mechanic is arguably good enough to keep it out of F-tier—arguably—but it's bad.


Swashbuckler
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?570925-Retiering-the-Classes-Knight-Noble-Swashbuckle
Average rating: 4.98
You get Weapon Finesse and Int to damage with finesse weapons, but you have no other Int synergy, so that's just a fancy way of saying you can be more MAD in order to deal less damage than if you had just used Strength in the first place. Best-case, it's a glorified Weapon Specialization. Your other class features are essentially Dodge and Mobility as bonus feats; a bonus to Reflex saves that's worse than if you just used the good progression in the first place; the ability to Jump and Tumble during a charge like literally every character already can because that's just how those skills work; and some so-so high-level abilities that come online way too late to be relevant. If you didn't at least get a couple extra skills, you would literally be worse than an NPC warrior with a greatsword. As is, you're like a gestalt of warrior and aristocrat with a couple of bad bonus feats. Is that enough to break out of F? I guess. Does the swashbuckler still rival the soulknife for the title of Worst Standard Class in D&D 3.5? Yes.


Soulborn
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?568774-Retiering-the-Classes-Incarnate-Soulborn-Totemist
Average rating: 5.05
This is a class that’s ostensibly supposed to be an incarnum fighter-paladin type. So where’s the incarnum? You get stiffed on soulmelds, essentia, and chakra binds with a painfully slow progression, preventing you from making good use of the system. As for your other class features, they’re kinda bland and low-impact. It all comes together to make soulborn into a much worse version of the paladin, and the class was voted unanimously into D-tier.


Noble
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?570925-Retiering-the-Classes-Knight-Noble-Swashbuckle
Average rating: 5.05
Noble is supposed to be to aristocrat what fighter is to warrior and rogue is to expert. Unfortunately, it does a pretty poor job of it. You can inspire your team, but on a 1-turn delay, and with fewer daily uses than a bard. You can call in favors from your house, but only if those favors are relatively inconsequential to the plot. And you get a bonus to aid another. At high levels, you can inspire greatness like a bard, but slightly worse. Medium BAB, two good saves, 4 + Int skill points (with decent class skills at least), martial weapons, light armor and shields (even aristocrats get heavy armor!), d8 hit die. That's it, that's the whole class. It's very bad.


Knight
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?570925-Retiering-the-Classes-Knight-Noble-Swashbuckle
Average rating: 5.09
You can see what this class is trying to do with its tanky, aggro-pulling mechanics, but it doesn’t really get there. The problem is there’s so many finicky restrictions that prevent any of your abilities from working reliably. Bulwark of Defense only works if the enemy is already in your threatened area when they start their turn. Test of Mettle has harsh targeting restrictions, can be negated with a Will save, and doesn’t allow your allies to help you with the enemies you just pulled to yourself. Vigilant Defender makes it harder for enemies to Tumble past you, but doesn’t prevent it completely. Shield Ally takes your immediate action and only works if you’re directly next to the ally you’re protecting. And on top of it all, your code of conduct has some seriously punitive rules in there—you don’t gain a bonus for flanking, and you can’t attack flat-footed enemies at all.

They’re little things, but they all add up to a class that just doesn’t quite live up to what it promises. And so it lands here in D, home of the classes that are Bad At Their Jobs.


Soulknife
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?519701-Retiering-the-Classes-Battle-Dancer-Monk-Mountebank-and-Soulknife
Average rating: 5.22
There was some pretty good discussion on this one, even though almost everyone agreed it was one of the worst classes in the game. Why is it so bad? Well, primarily because its main class feature is “saving some money on a weapon.” Not that there’s anything wrong with saving money, it’s just that the weapon you get out of it is kinda so-so, and your combat capabilities with it are similar to those of a rogue with no sneak attack. Or I suppose with psychic strike, it’s closer to a mountebank with Improved Feint? Either way, it’s not a favorable comparison, and 4 + Int skill points aren’t enough to save soulknife from a seat next to the rest of the lowest-ranking Ds.


Samurai (CW)
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?516602-Retiering-the-Classes-Barbarian-Fighter-Samurai-(CW)-and-Samurai-(OA)
Average rating: 5.27
It's like a fighter, except instead of bonus feats, you get a code of conduct and a crappy smite ability! The class features for the samurai are so bad that several people actually voted to put it in F with the NPC classes.

[Troacctid]

Tier 6 (F-Tier)

Expert
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?519155-Retiering-the-Classes-Adept-Aristocrat-Commoner-Expert-Magewright-and-Warrior
Average rating: 5.73
Like the other non-casting NPC classes, the expert is a clear F. It can pick any skills, but as nice as Use Magic Device is, it's far from sufficient to boost the expert into the realm of PC classes, especially since experts are almost completely useless in combat. After all, anyone can get the expert’s class skills with feats, but hardly anyone does, which should tell you something. Even the aristocrat has all the good class skills automatically while also having bonus gold and relevant combat proficiencies (at least for low levels), so there's a strong case to be made that expert isn't even the best skill monkey among the NPC classes. The only feather in your cap is that you can take Iaijutsu Focus to get some sneak attack-like ability, and that's pretty much the only reason why the expert ended up above the aristocrat in F-tier.


Aristocrat
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?519155-Retiering-the-Classes-Adept-Aristocrat-Commoner-Expert-Magewright-and-Warrior
Average rating: 5.76
The best of the non-casting NPC classes, IMO, because it's the most versatile, with a mix of both fighting ability and skills, as well as a high starting gp. There's even an ACF (dragonscale husk from Dragon Magic) that gives them energy resistance. Still clearly an F, of course.


Warrior
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?519155-Retiering-the-Classes-Adept-Aristocrat-Commoner-Expert-Magewright-and-Warrior
Average rating: 5.8
Full BAB and no class features make for a baseline F.


Commoner
Original thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?519155-Retiering-the-Classes-Adept-Aristocrat-Commoner-Expert-Magewright-and-Warrior
Average rating: 6
Hopefully not much explanation is needed as to why this is the worst class in the game, since it was deliberately designed for the express purpose of being the worst class in the game.

[Troacctid]

Bonus: Prestige Class Tiers

Normally, prestige classes are out of scope for this project because of the complexity of all the possible combinatorics. But there are some prestige class builds that are either very common or very scripted, enough so that we can treat the combo of a base class and a prestige class almost like a single class. Here are a few sample tier rankings for combos.

Tier 1 (S)
Druid/Planar Shepherd
Wizard/Red Wizard
Sha'ir 3/Cleric 1/Mystic Theurge

Tier 2 (A)
Bard/Sublime Chord

Tier 3 (B)
Cleric 3/Wizard 3/Mystic Theurge
Rogue/Chameleon
Warlock/Hellfire Warlock
Barbarian/Champion of Gwynharwyf
Monk/Fist of Zuoken

Tier 4 (C)
Warlock/Enlightened Spirit
Soulknife/Soulbow

Tier 5 (D)
Bard/Dawncaller

Druid/Planar Shepherd
Wizard/Red Wizard
I probably don't need to go into a lot of detail here. If a prestige class is all upside on a class that's already S-tier, you can expect it to still be S-tier.

Sha'ir 3/Cleric 1/Mystic Theurge
An earlier entry point into mystic theurge that leaves your primary caster dropping only a single level of casting as an opportunity cost is a good thing for mystic theurge's ranking. Losing 1 level of sha'ir casting in exchange for 11 levels of cleric casting (with cleric largely being a stand-in here for any high-tier casting class of your choice) is a very reasonable trade, and one that can usually be made without dropping a tier.

Bard/Sublime Chord
Bard is already a fairly high B-tier, and turbocharging the class's high-level spellcasting represents a large power boost for levels 11–20 that only costs you a few skill points. Even without considering how easily exploitable the sublime chord's standalone casting is in combination with other prestige classes, and even considering how late it comes online, I think it's not too controversial to say that it bumps bard up a full tier.

Cleric 3/Wizard 3/Mystic Theurge
There are obviously a lot of pairings you can do with mystic theurge, but the basic 3-and-3 entry with two S-tier casters is going to fall somewhere around this tier. At most points in your progression, the extra flexibility and staying power are not going to be worth being three levels behind in spell power, and being split between two primary casting stats will dilute your power even further. It's like the spell gap between wizards and sorcerers, but even more extreme. Luckily, it turns out spellcasting is still really strong in this edition, and you should still be able to hang with the bards, healers, and other B-tier casters.

Rogue/Chameleon
Chameleon is a highly effective standalone class that you can usually expect to perform to the standards of high B-tier. The accelerated casting with access to all divine spell lists and any arcane spell you can find a hardcopy of, plus the floating bonus feat (which is particularly effective with item creation feats, or any other feat whose benefits persist after you've moved on from it), and the eventual abilities to boost your ability scores and choose two focuses at once—all of it is independently powerful enough that it honestly doesn't matter much what class you use to qualify, especially with our system that places so much of the emphasis on the mid-levels. Rogue is a logical choice because it has both of the required skills as class skills and it breaks well at level 5, but even an NPC class can probably expect to make it to at least a B- ranking, so long as you enter the prestige class on time.

Warlock/Hellfire Warlock
Hellfire warlock provides a hefty boost to the warlock's offensive abilities, and represents an easy upgrade to the class, but not one that substantially impacts its tiering, except perhaps to move it from the lower half of the tier into the upper half.

Barbarian/Champion of Gwynharwyf
Monk/Fist of Zuoken
A lot of the low-tier warrior classes are dragged down by how frontloaded they are. When you get a lot of good abilities at low levels and then your progression flattens out like a deflated balloon after that, it's not good for your 1–20 average. Champion of Gwynharwyf and Fist of Zuoken are quintessential examples of prestige classes that effectively cover this weakness and give their associated class more powerful abilities later on to help them keep up in the lategame. There are a lot of other classes that can accomplish a similar effect for a wider range of low-tier classes—war mind, trapsmith, chameleon, etc.—but these two in particular are easy to grade because of how specific their entry requirements are.

Warlock/Enlightened Spirit
While the alternate set of invocations granted by enlightened spirit would mostly be fine and reasonable if taken by a normal warlock, its fatal flaw is failing to advance caster level, which leaves you high and dry against spell resistance and makes any invocation that scales by CL (such as transform magic) into a joke. It also hurts that some of the invocations it grants are ones you definitely would not take normally, like spirit armor and holy blast. All in all, it probably drops the combo something like half a tier into the upper ranks of C-tier.

Soulknife/Soulbow
The soulknife is a very low starting point, and the soulbow is a pretty big improvement. It advances all of the base soulknife's class features, but better, with bonus feats every other level, better enhancements, more tactical flexibility (via better ranged options), and, if you read the fine print, even improved BAB? That last bit might actually just be a typo (CPsi has a lot of typos), but either way, this is what the soulknife needs to keep up with C-tier warriors like the fighter and ranger and just generally be...not completely unplayable, which is all you can really ask for with the soulknife, right?

Bard/Dawncaller
Bard is a solid enough base that it's hard to bring it down too much without giving away almost everything. Unfortunately, that's pretty much what dawncaller does, throwing away everything except inspire courage progression in order to get full BAB. Losing your class skills and your spellcasting progression is a nasty blow to the class, and the general trajectory of it is the exact opposite of what you want: a bard/dawncaller is a squishy spellcaster class in the early game and a poorly-scaling warrior class in the late game. It's the worst of both worlds. Normally, retaining the 6 + Int skill points would probably still leave the combo at least on par with a ranger-type; however, dawncaller also chops all of the bard's best class skills off its list, leaving Balance, Jump, and Climb in their place. All told, this leaves it closer to the mountebank or battle dancer in power level.

[Troacctid]

Reserved just in case.

[Troacctid]

Right, that's it. There's your tiers. What do you think? Anything in the wrong place? Let us know!

[pabelfly]

Great list and really well-organized too. Good work.

[Karl Aegis]

You seem to have forgotten to mention problem-solving capacity in most as your write-ups. "...problem solving capacity is what's being measured here." seems to imply that problem solving capacity should be at least mentioned in at least a few of these. Is there any particular reason problem solving capacity was omitted?

[Troacctid]

You seem to have forgotten to mention problem-solving capacity in most as your write-ups. "...problem solving capacity is what's being measured here." seems to imply that problem solving capacity should be at least mentioned in at least a few of these. Is there any particular reason problem solving capacity was omitted?
I'm not sure what you mean.

[Gnaeus]

The fact that the dread necro's casting is being compared to the sorcerer on the basis that its restricted spell list contains "solid mid-op picks" is problematic, because the sorcerer's curve is much wider. Seems like weasel wording to avoid the fact that dread necro's casting is much worse than a sorcerer's and has a much lower ceiling.


The problem with all the fixed list casters, as you can read ad nauseum in the tiering threads, is that we have to compare mid op sorcs with mid op dns and beguiler and high ops to high ops. By the time you get sorcerers approaching the top of their power the fixed list casters can use one of several methods to expand their lists to do most of the same tricks. Spell list to spell list the Sorcerer is better. But the sorcerer using high op tricks gets compared with a DN which has acquired extra spells.

Also, you are comparing over the entire level range. Some of the most powerful sorc tricks are very high level and the fixed list casters have an advantage at low levels.

[Mike Miller]

"

Also voting sorcerer: 2 because sorcerer should remain the exemplar of T2.

While I understand your feeling on the matter, that isn't exactly an argument for why sorcerer should score 2. I could say "fighter is 4 because it fights." Ok, great. That isn't an argument though, it is just a statement that is generally true.
Sorcerer is typically regarded as the prototype for tier 2 or the ruler to measure other possible tier 2 entries. However, it could be supported more with the fact that arcane casting via the sorcerer spell list is quite capable. The downsides being the obvious limit on spells known and lack of both class features and splat support (compared to its rival, the wizard). So, I agree with you, but I just want to hear more about why you think it should be tier 2. I may have rambled a lot in making my point.

[Troacctid]

"Flexibility" in the OG tier definitions is clearly alluding to spells known/limited spell list vs an open spell list. That could be clarified, but overall I find these new descriptions...not very informative, to the point where you might as well abandon tiers and rank them from 0 to 5.
It's just a straightforward ranking of power level.


The fact that the dread necro's casting is being compared to the sorcerer on the basis that its restricted spell list contains "solid mid-op picks" is problematic, because the sorcerer's curve is much wider. Seems like weasel wording to avoid the fact that dread necro's casting is much worse than a sorcerer's and has a much lower ceiling.
I mean, what would a sorcerer list look like that's better than the dread necro list? It seems like you have to work pretty hard to pull it off.

[Karl Aegis]

I'm not sure what you mean.

Problem solving capacity was omitted. Problem solving capacity is what's being measured here. That is line 2 of "What are the tiers?"

[Elves]

It's just a straightforward ranking of power level.

In that case maybe the word tier should be omitted. Might also be more straightforward if rankings are inverted to be 0 to 5 with 5=t1.



I mean, what would a sorcerer list look like that's better than the dread necro list? It seems like you have to work pretty hard to pull it off.

Dread necro's only native 8ths are create greater undead, horrid wilting, inflict critical wounds and symbol of death. Their only 9ths are energy drain, mass harm, imprison soul, plague of undead, and wail of the banshee. Limiting their spells known to those would be severely suboptimal for a sorcerer, not even "solid mid-op", though the create undead spells are obviously better for DN.

[AnimeTheCat]

I still think knight is punchy enough to be T4, right around fighter. At it's core, you can even disregard the test of mettle and just be a mounted charger that uses the basic fighting challenges for scaling will saves, attack, and damage (not good, but its there). Dump Dex, dont go first in combat, ride a pegasus/gryphon/hippogryph and spirited charge the crap out of bad guys. Load up on strength and con (d12 HD helps) and keep your charisma like... 12... the passive bonuses are good for survivability against single target foes, fighting challenge is a single target buff. Pick the biggest nasty and charge it. Repeat till combat ends. You're doing exactly what the fighter and barbarian are, why is it so much lower? It isn't bad at it's job any more than fighter and barbarian are bad at theirs.

Edit: also, that freaking capstone. That is the capstone literally every martial character wants. The capstone of "oh, you reduced my hit points to -11... I dont care." That is what barbarian wet dreams are made of! Take your diehard into the corner and cry with it because this is a flex on DEATH!

Edit 2: AND you cover one of the early weaknesses of the stereotypical martial character, you get GOOD will save progression. All the stuff that normally threatens fighters and barbarians, sleep, color spray, etc, are less threatening to an early knight, and the fighting challenge only improves that.

[heavyfuel]

Amazing post, Troacctid!

Will definitely express some opinions later :smallamused:

[Anthrowhale]

Reading through.

It seems odd to have Wu Jen only 0.01 below Wizard. The list seems more notably weaker than that. Yes, this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=24163855&postcount=22) is fun although I'm unclear how much it should be taken into account.
I'm skeptical that there should be such a large gap between Spontaneous Druid and Spontaneous Cleric. To me, they both seem generally worse than the non-spontaneous version and generally better than a Sorcerer.
Spellthief seems a bit underrated to me, particularly compared to a rogue. In a party with cooperating spellcasters (which is reasonably common) they can be a force multiplier for unloading spells. Similarly, they are a great buffing target. Overall, it's easy to see them functioning at a T3 level as a member of a group since they synergize so well.
It's somewhat tempting to extend this exercise to Blackguard and Maho-Tsukai, both of which can trade in levels or spellcasting to effectively become a base class.

[heavyfuel]

Reading through.

It seems odd to have Wu Jen only 0.01 below Wizard. The list seems more notably weaker than that. Yes, this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=24163855&postcount=22) is fun although I'm unclear how much it should be taken into account.
I'm skeptical that there should be such a large gap between Spontaneous Druid and Spontaneous Cleric. To me, they both seem generally worse than the non-spontaneous version and generally better than a Sorcerer.


@Wizard x Wu Jen

This is because of how the voting worked. Very few people voted classes as "Tier 1.3" or some other non-natural number. So both classes got a bunch of "Tier 1" votes, and Wu Jen got a few "Tier 2" votes more than the Wizard. So despite it having a weaker spell list, it's still a clear Tier 1 class, and was voted as such.

@Spont Cleric x Spont Druid

Druid's wildshape was one the biggest reasons for this discrepancy. It's a ridiculously strong class feature, especially when taking into account things like Aberation Wild Shape. Personally, I'd also say that the Druid's spell list has fewer strong spells, but these spells are stronger than the Cleric's strongest spells (as in, the druid has a few five stars spells, and a bunch of three stars, while the cleric has mostly four stars spells). So picking spells known for a druid is easier than picking them for a cleric. The regular cleric loses one of its biggest appeals, which is knowing every spell.

[Gnaeus]

Dread necro's only native 8ths are create greater undead, horrid wilting, inflict critical wounds and symbol of death. Their only 9ths are energy drain, mass harm, imprison soul, plague of undead, and wail of the banshee. Limiting their spells known to those would be severely suboptimal for a sorcerer, not even "solid mid-op", though the create undead spells are obviously better for DN.

True, but at level 10 when we get 5th level spells Lesser Planar Binding is probably the highest op trick a sorcerer gets. Assuming that he is willing to use his only spell known on a spell with a 10 minute casting time. DN gets LPB, magic jar, greater dispel magic, slay living, cloudkill and more, before expanding his list. It’s not all about high level play.

[Anthrowhale]

@Wizard x Wu Jen

This is because of how the voting worked.

That makes sense, even though the outcome is a bit odd.



@Spont Cleric x Spont Druid

Druid's wildshape was one the biggest reasons for this discrepancy. It's a ridiculously strong class feature, especially when taking into account things like Aberation Wild Shape. Personally, I'd also say that the Druid's spell list has fewer strong spells, but these spells are stronger than the Cleric's strongest spells (as in, the druid has a few five stars spells, and a bunch of three stars, while the cleric has mostly four stars spells). So picking spells known for a druid is easier than picking them for a cleric. The regular cleric loses one of its biggest appeals, which is knowing every spell.

I'm still not convinced. Clerics get access to the Transformation domain which is at least comparable to wildshape.

The only way I can make sense of this is by looking at the floor.

[heavyfuel]

I'm still not convinced. Clerics get access to the Transformation domain which is at least comparable to wildshape.

The only way I can make sense of this is by looking at the floor.

Transformation domain isn't even close to what can be accomplished with Wild Shape.

On its basest level of OP, WS gives you access to pretty much every movement speed all day long (12hrs/day at lv 6, 21hrs at lv 7). You also get to ignore your physical ability scores.

Then you get to the crazy stuff. I'm definitely not the best person to tell you about them, though. Eggynack is. The druid's encyclopaedia guide Eggy wrote has some really nasty tricks you can pull with WS.

[StevenC21]

I hope this doesn't devolve into another argument about the Wizard being T2.

That was entertaining but ultimately unhelpful, in my opinion.

If anyone would like to discuss that, I believe the best idea would be to open a new thread about it. I would be willing to if there is still interest.

[Troacctid]

In that case maybe the word tier should be omitted. Might also be more straightforward if rankings are inverted to be 0 to 5 with 5=t1.

I'm not saying it's bad, just different and that should be evinced.
Clearly I should have also included a summary of this argument from the original thread too. :smalltongue:

I don't want to rehash this argument, so if you take issue with the basic definitions, read the old threads and come back with a quote from there to reply to.


Dread necro's only native 8ths are create greater undead, horrid wilting, inflict critical wounds and symbol of death. Their only 9ths are energy drain, mass harm, imprison soul, plague of undead, and wail of the banshee. Limiting their spells known to those would be severely suboptimal for a sorcerer, not even "solid mid-op", though the create undead spells are obviously better for DN.
If dread necromancer is better than sorcerer for the first 15 levels and then the sorcerer overtakes it, that's not really a pro-sorcerer argument, is it?

[MinimanMidget]

Having just built an Incarnate for Iron Chef E6, I gotta say, I was kinda blown away by how flexible they really are. I've skimmed through MoI before, of course, but I never really put together that they can essentia-lly change their build completely every day, and to a lesser extent every round.

I'd want to play one properly before submitting a vote, but I suspect they're Tier 3 worthy, if only on the basis of sheer versatility. It looks to me like they have kind of the same relationship with the rogue as the spells prepared/spells known thing - "I can do anything you can do, but you have to decide what you're doing on a permanent basis, where I can wake up in the morning and be a completely different character".

Oof, that got lengthy.

[Zombulian]

Hm, I thought I had voted in the Incarnum thread, but maybe I decided not to because the common ratings of Totemist 3, Incarnate 4, Soulborn 5 were what I agreed with and I didn't have much else to say about them.
I would like to add now that I'd change my vote for Incarnate to 3, as I've been working with them more as of late and appreciating what they have to offer a bit more.

[Lans]

Having just built an Incarnate for Iron Chef E6, I gotta say, I was kinda blown away by how flexible they really are. I've skimmed through MoI before, of course, but I never really put together that they can essentia-lly change their build completely every day, and to a lesser extent every round.

I'd want to play one properly before submitting a vote, but I suspect they're Tier 3 worthy, if only on the basis of sheer versatility. It looks to me like they have kind of the same relationship with the rogue as the spells prepared/spells known thing - "I can do anything you can do, but you have to decide what you're doing on a permanent basis, where I can wake up in the morning and be a completely different character".

Oof, that got lengthy.

I think they are a hair shy of tier 3, like +2 skill points and a medium BAB shy of it.

[Troacctid]

I still think knight is punchy enough to be T4, right around fighter.
Just to be clear, the spreadsheet shows you previously voted it at 4.8; is this a change?


I think they are a hair shy of tier 3, like +2 skill points and a medium BAB shy of it.
BAB is overrated. You're making touch attacks anyway.

[AnimeTheCat]

Just to be clear, the spreadsheet shows you previously voted it at 4.8; is this a change?

Actually yeah. I had the chance to play one for a brief period, and I basically ignored the knight's challenges except for fighting challenges. If I were to reevaluate it, I would say t4 just to balance the points, but specific placement I think it lives at 4.48 just like fighter because it is no less effective than fighter, in some ways more, in other ways less.

[Anthrowhale]

Transformation domain isn't even close to what can be accomplished with Wild Shape.

On its basest level of OP, WS gives you access to pretty much every movement speed all day long (12hrs/day at lv 6, 21hrs at lv 7). You also get to ignore your physical ability scores.

Then you get to the crazy stuff. I'm definitely not the best person to tell you about them, though. Eggynack is. The druid's encyclopaedia guide Eggy wrote has some really nasty tricks you can pull with WS.

There's certainly an advantage to having everything enumerated in one place, but I think you'll find that the Transformation domain kicks in pretty hard if you research a bit.

Transformation domain gives you Alter Self at level 3. Alter Self gives you fly/swim/burrow (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?444064-3-5-Forms-for-Alter-Self) as well as natural armor up to +8 and claw/claw/bite w/multiattack. Clerics of course can get it 24/7 at level 3 via DMM[Persist] which has many other applications as well. Here's a tradeoff table:


Alter Self Wildshape
+L3 -L6 (to cast spells)
+keep gear -lose gear
-keep physical +new physical stats
-no Ex attacks +gain Ex attacks
+no familiarity -requires familiarity

Both have:
+effectively all day (via DMM persist or just hours available)
-requires feat to use fully (Natural spell, or a partial share of DMM[Persist])
+good utility
+good combat

At level 9 the cleric then gets Polymorph which is generally far more adaptable than Wild Shape. And a level 15, there is Polymorph Any Object which is broken-good. At level 17 the Transformation cleric gets Shapechange. It's not until level 18 that the spontaneous druid also gets Shapechange.

Overall, the spontaneous druid has some advantage L6-L8, while the transformation cleric has an edge L3-L5 and L9-L17.

[eggynack]

I'm not super familiar with the full range on polymorph, but wild shape's access to extraordinary special qualities is a pretty big deal. Not sure how much more potent and adaptable polymorph is as a result.

[Anthrowhale]

I'm not super familiar with the full range on polymorph, but wild shape's access to extraordinary special qualities is a pretty big deal. Not sure how much more potent and adaptable polymorph is as a result.

Access to Ex special qualities is great.

Polymorph gives you access to a wider range of forms and it allows to manipulate your type which has many beneficial effects.

[eggynack]

Access to Ex special qualities is great.

Polymorph gives you access to a wider range of forms and it allows to manipulate your type which has many beneficial effects.
I'm just kinda skeptical that polymorph covers all the ground of the special qualities of all aberration forms. It's a lot of ground.

[Mordante]

Interesting, but what is actually the point of this? Are there people that will not play a fighter because is it tier 4?

[Quentinas]

No the point of the tier list is to help balance in the groups because when you have in a 5 people group a soulborn, a scout, a duskblade,a sorcerer and a cleric it will not so fun for the first (even if he optimize like the hell) the second will have his niche but the other will be better, the third maybe will do more damage than the other, while the first two will be the main people of the party.

One could easily play a tier 4 group. One figther, one scout, one shadowcaster and one incarnate, they would have their role (if they do a good teamwork especially for the incarnate) and it can work better for all the player (as a game ) where all of them are essential to the party while in the first the cleric and the sorcerer would have the upper hand in many situations

[zfs]

I'm not sure Sohei got a fair shake. No one ever answered if the 3.5 Update should be considered - it was official (Dragon Mag), and considering the 3.0 version gives a Bonus Feat that no longer exists, I think it's fair to assess the updated version. It's not a massive upgrade, but it is an upgrade - there are no downside outside of potentially losing Iajutsu Focus as a class skill. (The update actually doesn't change the class skills, but since Iajutsu Focus isn't a 3.5 skill, I would think it's plausible to remove it as a class skill). Sohei also got very few votes, ended up at 4.5, and then Kurald broke the tier and voted it into the Tier 5 stratum.

Also, I think some people might have thought their spell list is worse than it actually is, because the-site-we-can't-mention-by-name doesn't actually have the full list of spells. It's still pretty anemic, but it has some winners on it - Prayer, Protection from Chaos, Divine Power, Freedom of Movement, Death Ward, Shield of Faith, Resist Energy, Bull's Strength - it's small but not worthless. Also, as a prepared caster, they do have native access to Sanctified Spells, which gives you some things that are hard to come by in Tier 4 or 5, like flight (100 ft with good movement - only 1 round/level, and it comes online at Level 11, but that's better than never getting it).

I think it's clearly better than most comparable Tier 5 classes and I think it slots nicely into the low-middle of Tier 4 - it's worse than Ranger, but probably as good as or better than fighter. I'd vote it at 4.2.

Edit: Should also mention that since they get Lesser Restoration, they can cure their own sacrifice damage from using Sanctified Spells. (Unless there's a clause somewhere that sacrifice damage has to heal naturally, but I don't believe there is)

[Efrate]

I am reaassesing marshall. I do not know if I voted in it's place but the auras make it into a potentially superior fighter and it makes a pretty nice face. HD and BaB are average, but you get simple and martial weapons, all armor and shields. Grant move action gives the party sans yourself pseudo pounce a few times a day, plus bonus on charge damage. Also they have all knowledge (i think looking at the wotc web article i do not own the miniatures handbook) and a way to pump that so they can toake knowledge devotions as well. It a worse spellless bard but I think it's better than a fighter.

I would put it at Tier 4 above fighter.

[Asmotherion]

Sorcerer -> Low T1


Explaination: Choosing the right spells (Calling Creatures/polymorphing/Shapechange etc) the Sorcerer can have a vast amound of versatility without sacrificing any Power. in a scenario were Dragon Magazine is an allowed source the item "knowstone" functions for a Sorcerer as a Scroll does for a Wizard. Runestaves can also give access to multiple other spells. Finally the prestige class "Mage of the Arcane Order" can give a Sorcerer the same versatility as a Wizard. Finally some spells give a great bonus to the Sorcerer over the Wizard (Arcane Spellsurge) wile others exclusive to the Sorcerer can give amazing combos between spells (Arcane Fussion and it's Greater Version).

Because some optimisation (not to mention Dragon Magazine) is required to that end (as opposed to regular progression) i can see why it's considered T2. i don't want to oppen an old can of worms by this post either. Just wanted to share my oppinion that a well built Sorcerer deserves Tier 1.

[Troacctid]

There's certainly an advantage to having everything enumerated in one place, but I think you'll find that the Transformation domain kicks in pretty hard if you research a bit.

Transformation domain gives you Alter Self at level 3. Alter Self gives you fly/swim/burrow (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?444064-3-5-Forms-for-Alter-Self) as well as natural armor up to +8 and claw/claw/bite w/multiattack. Clerics of course can get it 24/7 at level 3 via DMM[Persist] which has many other applications as well. Here's a tradeoff table:


Alter Self Wildshape
+L3 -L6 (to cast spells)
+keep gear -lose gear
-keep physical +new physical stats
-no Ex attacks +gain Ex attacks
+no familiarity -requires familiarity

Both have:
+effectively all day (via DMM persist or just hours available)
-requires feat to use fully (Natural spell, or a partial share of DMM[Persist])
+good utility
+good combat

At level 9 the cleric then gets Polymorph which is generally far more adaptable than Wild Shape. And a level 15, there is Polymorph Any Object which is broken-good. At level 17 the Transformation cleric gets Shapechange. It's not until level 18 that the spontaneous druid also gets Shapechange.

Overall, the spontaneous druid has some advantage L6-L8, while the transformation cleric has an edge L3-L5 and L9-L17.
Transformation domain cleric is pretty specific and even somewhat obscure. What percentage of spontaneous clerics are going to choose it? Of that percentage, how many also take DMM: Persist and don't have better spells to use with it? Because every spontaneous druid starts with wild shape as a baseline. If we assume power level is ranked based on a weighted average of what we expect lots of different builds to look like—and it is—I'd bet that the Transformation domain's impact on its respective class is much lower than wild shape's. Plus, druid also gets the animal companion, which is another powerhouse class feature.


Sorcerer -> Low T1


Explaination: Choosing the right spells (Calling Creatures/polymorphing/Shapechange etc) the Sorcerer can have a vast amound of versatility without sacrificing any Power. in a scenario were Dragon Magazine is an allowed source the item "knowstone" functions for a Sorcerer as a Scroll does for a Wizard. Runestaves can also give access to multiple other spells. Finally the prestige class "Mage of the Arcane Order" can give a Sorcerer the same versatility as a Wizard. Finally some spells give a great bonus to the Sorcerer over the Wizard (Arcane Spellsurge) wile others exclusive to the Sorcerer can give amazing combos between spells (Arcane Fussion and it's Greater Version).

Because some optimisation (not to mention Dragon Magazine) is required to that end (as opposed to regular progression) i can see why it's considered T2. i don't want to oppen an old can of worms by this post either. Just wanted to share my oppinion that a well built Sorcerer deserves Tier 1.
"Low T1" isn't a numerical value. 1.5? 1.4? I can put you down as a 1, but if you want "low" then I need a decimal.

I must also remind you that prestige classes have no bearing on these rankings, so MotAO is irrelevant; proceed accordingly.

[Luccan]

Interesting, but what is actually the point of this? Are there people that will not play a fighter because is it tier 4?

Yes, but there are also people who wouldn't play fighter because it's obviously weaker and more limited in its scope of abilities than many other classes whether the tier system existed or not.

The tier system was created to give DMs a rough idea of how well PCs of different classes could accomplish tasks (particularly relative to each other). T1 can handle pretty much any theoretical task and at high levels of optimization can do many of them with ease. Meanwhile, a T4 or 5 is likely to run into trouble outside a specific niche and sometimes even inside its own. Tiering can also serve as means to alert your players, if they're familiar with the tier system, how well they should optimize. If you say you're going to run a T1 game, for instance, they know they either need to break out High Op tricks for T2 and T3 classes or play a T1 class competently. OTOH, if you say you're going for a T4 balance point, they know that if they want to play a higher tier class they might have to make some choices that would normally be considered a little to very suboptimal.

Conventional wisdom seems to be you can play mostly fine within two tiers of whatever the stated balance point is. You can certainly play a class down more than that, but you really can't play up past a certain point.

[LordCharlemagne]

Copy and pasted from the unofficial discord server upon request.

My opinion about the tierlist stuff
Ardent- It's odd to see the write-up not mention the ACF's found in Mind's eye. Probably not enough to boost it a tier, but it a source of a major powershift for the class, even if you get rid of the whole, "Just add powers to your mantle" one.

Factotum- The only reason the Factotum is even arguably tier 3 is because of Arcane Dilettante. Brains over Brawns is probably the golden class feature of the class seeing as it is a bonus to a hard to get set of skills. If you'd remove Arcane Dilettante from the class, you'd end up with a worst rogue. And Arcane Dilettante doesn't scale particularly well. Factotum is dip for some builds or a class to enter Chameleon with.

Psychic warrior- Yeah. Very poor job selling it. I think it is actually better than the martial adepts at higher levels, but Martial adepts simply have an amazing floor to stand on so I can see them beating the psychic warrior out.

Incarnate- I feel is is Tier 3. On the lower end for sure, but fixing the chassis isn't that hard if you know what your doing. Slightly hard to rate though by itself seeing as unless you are starting at high levels, most Incarnates are going to have a dip or two to round themselves out better at mid levels.

Adept- This is one of the classes where I think just straight level 20 build rating falls apart, because I don't think anybody who is going to play this class is going to play it without being a hexer, because otherwise, why would you play it? I understand that if you add in prestige classes to the mix and semblance of rating would fall apart, but you can't talk about this class in PC play without actually doing so.

Marshal- Tier 4. People seem to have a serious misunderstanding of this class. People often compare it to the bard (which is fair in a certain regard), but Inspire courage isn't really what the Marshal does. The Marshal can boost damage and accuracy a bit, but that isn't the only thing a marshal does. Marshals are much more notable for boosting skills & ability checks.
(Although in the right party master of tactics does let you rack up some serious bonus damage). Nearly every party would actually love to have the marshal, and the class isn't really ability score dependent (It just requires you to have a 16 Cha, albeit more is better). The Marshal has the unfortunate position of being functional but boring.

Expert- Tier 6. I love skills, but they don't make a good class. It had a place as a dip for skills in early 3.5 and maybe some strange Core + 1 book builds in modern days, but skills don't make a class not tier 6.

[Troacctid]

Yes, but there are also people who wouldn't play fighter because it's obviously weaker and more limited in its scope of abilities than many other classes whether the tier system existed or not.

The tier system was created to give DMs a rough idea of how well PCs of different classes could accomplish tasks (particularly relative to each other). T1 can handle pretty much any theoretical task and at high levels of optimization can do many of them with ease. Meanwhile, a T4 or 5 is likely to run into trouble outside a specific niche and sometimes even inside its own. Tiering can also serve as means to alert your players, if they're familiar with the tier system, how well they should optimize. If you say you're going to run a T1 game, for instance, they know they either need to break out High Op tricks for T2 and T3 classes or play a T1 class competently. OTOH, if you say you're going for a T4 balance point, they know that if they want to play a higher tier class they might have to make some choices that would normally be considered a little to very suboptimal.

Conventional wisdom seems to be you can play mostly fine within two tiers of whatever the stated balance point is. You can certainly play a class down more than that, but you really can't play up past a certain point.
Also, who doesn't like ranking things?


Ardent- It's odd to see the write-up not mention the ACF's found in Mind's eye. Probably not enough to boost it a tier, but it a source of a major powershift for the class, even if you get rid of the whole, "Just add powers to your mantle" one.
That's true. The free metapsionics are super busted once you hit that level.


Factotum- The only reason the Factotum is even arguably tier 3 is because of Arcane Dilettante. Brains over Brawns is probably the golden class feature of the class seeing as it is a bonus to a hard to get set of skills. If you'd remove Arcane Dilettante from the class, you'd end up with a worst rogue. And Arcane Dilettante doesn't scale particularly well. Factotum is dip for some builds or a class to enter Chameleon with.
I don't think factotum is a particularly good or even logical entry for chameleon. I mean, you only need the one class skill.

[Lleban]

Urban Druid --> T1


While the loss of spontaneous summoning sucks, I don't think its enough to push the Urban druid out of T1, especially if the spell list is a bit more versatile.

[weckar]

I'd love to see curves of the vote spread for each class. I imagine some are much sharper spikes than others...

[DEMON]

I don't think I have voted for Incarnate and would like to cast my vote for T3.5. If, per chance, I did already vote for that class with a different score, I would like to change it to 3.5.

[Anthrowhale]

I'm just kinda skeptical that polymorph covers all the ground of the special qualities of all aberration forms. It's a lot of ground.

Going through your guide, you call out:
L8: Nilshai: Extra standard action/round --- excellent combat form for dispensing spells.
L8: Dharculus: Ethereal plane based --- excellent stealth.
L9: Will'O Wisp: Immunity to Magic, Natural Invisibility --- excellent immunities.

Polymorph grants Thoon Elder Brain Dual actions, 12-headed hydra attacks, Wartroll's dazing blow, or the plant type's basket of immunities. Polymorph Any Object broadens the set of forms substantially at level 15.

And, when Shapechange hits it obsoletes everything else.

Overall, I'd give an edge to Enhanced Aberration Wildshape although it's fairly close.


Transformation domain cleric is pretty specific and even somewhat obscure. What percentage of spontaneous clerics are going to choose it? Of that percentage, how many also take DMM: Persist and don't have better spells to use with it? Because every spontaneous druid starts with wild shape as a baseline. If we assume power level is ranked based on a weighted average of what we expect lots of different builds to look like—and it is—I'd bet that the Transformation domain's impact on its respective class is much lower than wild shape's. Plus, druid also gets the animal companion, which is another powerhouse class feature.

To the extent that Eggynack's guide has made Druid's more powerful by making many obscure things well known, that seems reasonable. I haven't seen a similar treatment for clerics yet. When/if someone does that, maybe usage patterns shift.

The transformation domain however is notably only an example. There's also things like Initiate of Mystra, demonic domain, spell domain, mother cyst, travel devotion, and more general persistomancy which are also generally on the table, with several of these combinable.

[Troacctid]

To the extent that Eggynack's guide has made Druid's more powerful by making many obscure things well known, that seems reasonable. I haven't seen a similar treatment for clerics yet. When/if someone does that, maybe usage patterns shift.
Wild shape and animal companion are hardly obscure. They're core class features that pack a ton of power on their own, even without any real optimization.

[Troacctid]

I'll vote expert: 5.75 to help heal your frustration.

Also voting sorcerer: 2 because sorcerer should remain the exemplar of T2.

Hm, I thought I had voted in the Incarnum thread, but maybe I decided not to because the common ratings of Totemist 3, Incarnate 4, Soulborn 5 were what I agreed with and I didn't have much else to say about them.
I would like to add now that I'd change my vote for Incarnate to 3, as I've been working with them more as of late and appreciating what they have to offer a bit more.

Actually yeah. I had the chance to play one for a brief period, and I basically ignored the knight's challenges except for fighting challenges. If I were to reevaluate it, I would say t4 just to balance the points, but specific placement I think it lives at 4.48 just like fighter because it is no less effective than fighter, in some ways more, in other ways less.

I think [Sohei is] clearly better than most comparable Tier 5 classes and I think it slots nicely into the low-middle of Tier 4 - it's worse than Ranger, but probably as good as or better than fighter. I'd vote it at 4.2.

I am reaassesing marshall. I do not know if I voted in it's place but the auras make it into a potentially superior fighter and it makes a pretty nice face. HD and BaB are average, but you get simple and martial weapons, all armor and shields. Grant move action gives the party sans yourself pseudo pounce a few times a day, plus bonus on charge damage. Also they have all knowledge (i think looking at the wotc web article i do not own the miniatures handbook) and a way to pump that so they can toake knowledge devotions as well. It a worse spellless bard but I think it's better than a fighter.

I would put it at Tier 4 above fighter.

Incarnate- I feel is is Tier 3. On the lower end for sure, but fixing the chassis isn't that hard if you know what your doing. Slightly hard to rate though by itself seeing as unless you are starting at high levels, most Incarnates are going to have a dip or two to round themselves out better at mid levels.

[...]

Marshal- Tier 4. People seem to have a serious misunderstanding of this class. People often compare it to the bard (which is fair in a certain regard), but Inspire courage isn't really what the Marshal does. The Marshal can boost damage and accuracy a bit, but that isn't the only thing a marshal does. Marshals are much more notable for boosting skills & ability checks.
(Although in the right party master of tactics does let you rack up some serious bonus damage). Nearly every party would actually love to have the marshal, and the class isn't really ability score dependent (It just requires you to have a 16 Cha, albeit more is better). The Marshal has the unfortunate position of being functional but boring.

Expert- Tier 6. I love skills, but they don't make a good class. It had a place as a dip for skills in early 3.5 and maybe some strange Core + 1 book builds in modern days, but skills don't make a class not tier 6.

Urban Druid --> T1


While the loss of spontaneous summoning sucks, I don't think its enough to push the Urban druid out of T1, especially if the spell list is a bit more versatile.

I don't think I have voted for Incarnate and would like to cast my vote for T3.5. If, per chance, I did already vote for that class with a different score, I would like to change it to 3.5.

Sorcerer -> Low T1
All of these votes have been tallied and added to the spreadsheet. Marshal is inching closer to the line, but nothing has shifted as of yet.

I'm curious if we can get a little more discussion about urban druid. The more I look at it, the more I think it's a solid T1. I think if nothing else, it's at least clearly better than the wu jen.

[Luccan]

Adept is interesting. I think it ranks over Magewright for 1. Having actual support 2. Getting access to its full list 3. Even if it didn't, its spell list is generally more relevant. It's probably ranked too highly relative to other T4 classes, but part of the problem is how low ranked Paladins, Rangers, and even Fighters are. Fighters are less that half a tier from Monk. That said, the only T5 class I think actually has a chance of surpassing it "easily" is a Truenamer that can actually get consistent access to its abilities. I'd rate Adept 4.5 if I haven't already. I think it sits right at the border of T4.

I think the same holds true for the Expert. Is the Expert good? No. Does it hang around the same area as the CW Samurai thanks to its custom skill list? I think so. I'm actually comfortable with it sitting about where it is now.

[Hish]

This looks like a good project. Everything is about where I'd expect it.

I think this shows that tiers are still a useful description of classes. Even though there aren't prescriptive traits in the tier descriptions anymore, the classes in a tier still have generally have traits in common.

I have a few votes to submit, but I want to read the discussions before I make them official.

EDIT: Okay, I've read the discussions, and all of my votes have changed by a little.

Adept: T4.75. Adepts are severely anemic with spell slots. They get a good list, but the list is too small to really be powerful, and on top of that they're prepared casters. By the time they get good spells and enough slots to use them reliably, the spells are no longer worthwhile. That being said, they are better than most T5, with its samurais and monks and truenamers. So I'm voting on the high end of tier 5.

Expert: T6. Expert is the only really sucky class that does skills well. This makes it hard to compare, but there is no niche protection in the tier system. Expert is worse than CW Samurai, between chassis and actually having some class features (I can count a whole 3 real class features on the Samurai, plus a few bonus feats). It's comparable to Aristocrat, which I rank as a definite T6. Compared to Aristocrat, Expert gains 2 skill points and a class skill or two in exchange for martial weapon proficiencies and a HD size. It's probably better than Aristocrat, but it's close.

I really like incarnum as a system, and I want Incarnate to be good, but whenever I look at it it seems to lack something to be actually good at. That being said, I lack the practical build experience to differentiate between T4 and T3. I did build a Necropolitan Incarnate/Necrocarnate as an NPC once, but it was more a puzzle excounter than anything.

[Anthrowhale]

Wild shape and animal companion are hardly obscure. They're core class features that pack a ton of power on their own, even without any real optimization.

Eggynack is pointing at Aberration Wildshape (LoM), Enhance Wild Shape (SC), Nilshai (UE), and Dharculus (PH) which are perhaps comparable to Transformation Domain (RoE) and DMM(CD) [Persist(CA)] in obscurity.

Just sticking with core, on the Cleric vs. Druid question, I'm not sure. Perhaps I need to play through with a druid (which I haven't).

[Lans]

BAB is overrated. You're making touch attacks anyway.

If your making touch attacks aren't you being severly hampered by energy resistance and immunities in addition to dealing anemic damage from level 4 on?

[Troacctid]

I really like incarnum as a system, and I want Incarnate to be good, but whenever I look at it it seems to lack something to be actually good at. That being said, I lack the practical build experience to differentiate between T4 and T3. I did build a Necropolitan Incarnate/Necrocarnate as an NPC once, but it was more a puzzle excounter than anything.
Generally either you're going to pick one of melee, ranged, minions, or fifth-wheel support and be good at that one thing, or you're going to pick two of them and be slightly less good at both; and you can respec on a day-to-day basis as the situation demands.


If your making touch attacks aren't you being severly hampered by energy resistance and immunities in addition to dealing anemic damage from level 4 on?
Meh, Lightning Gauntlets and Dissolving Spittle use two of the least resisted energy types, so it's not nearly as glaring a weakness as, say, sneak attack being useless every third encounter. And you can also have minions with your necrocarnum zombie and/or soulspark familiar, neither of which cares about your BAB at all. Or, if you're going the UMD route, you might have wands to fall back on when your primary attack is ineffective. Or heck, maybe you're using weapons after all and you still don't care about BAB because you can just use one or more of your soulmelds to boost your attack and make up for it—with Incarnate Weapon, for example, you only have +1 BAB at 3rd level, but you're swinging a +3 weapon where the martial character is lucky to have a masterwork one, and you still have two other soulmelds and a crown bind. I call that a net win.

[Sutr]

The problem with incarnate, 3.75 for my vote by the way, is that you lose the versatility you had in the beginning at higher levels. Its great from levels 1-6, but after that you start getting more and more wealth and its hard to stay flexible with that wealth. The more Soulmelds you have the harder it is to change which melds you have shaped without affecting your primary thing. The more you work with the party the more they expect you to have a certain role.

This is way worse when you try to use the avatars, besides good, as they almost require a certain weapon enhancement at later levels. Now if you read a guide and took a level of any skill user, or tomb of battle, or totemist first it is a system that multiclasses superbly well.


I'm torn on the monk... I see the tier 5 as outside the internet monks, but mostly play online where monk doesn't get played with restricted books. So most of the monks I see are invisible fist with the level 7 stealth ability baked in, they tend towards 3 or not being played at all.

[weckar]

Looking at the list as it currently stands... It's almost weird, really, how if you don't have spell (powers, maneuvers) of some sort, you are at best T4. I think the Binder and Totemist are the only exceptions?

[pabelfly]

Looking at the list as it currently stands... It's almost weird, really, how if you don't have spell (powers, maneuvers) of some sort, you are at best T4. I think the Binder and Totemist are the only exceptions?

Binder and Totemist still have scaling abilities, even if they aren't directly called spells, powers or maneuvers.

[Mordante]

Yes, but there are also people who wouldn't play fighter because it's obviously weaker and more limited in its scope of abilities than many other classes whether the tier system existed or not.

The tier system was created to give DMs a rough idea of how well PCs of different classes could accomplish tasks (particularly relative to each other). T1 can handle pretty much any theoretical task and at high levels of optimization can do many of them with ease. Meanwhile, a T4 or 5 is likely to run into trouble outside a specific niche and sometimes even inside its own. Tiering can also serve as means to alert your players, if they're familiar with the tier system, how well they should optimize. If you say you're going to run a T1 game, for instance, they know they either need to break out High Op tricks for T2 and T3 classes or play a T1 class competently. OTOH, if you say you're going for a T4 balance point, they know that if they want to play a higher tier class they might have to make some choices that would normally be considered a little to very suboptimal.

Conventional wisdom seems to be you can play mostly fine within two tiers of whatever the stated balance point is. You can certainly play a class down more than that, but you really can't play up past a certain point.

I don't think I would join a game where the DM expects the characters to be optimized or of a certain tier. By far most people I play with never go online to read up on the game. Nor do they own any books. A GM should adjust the game in such a way everyone has fun. Regardless who has the strongest character.

[eggynack]

Going through your guide, you call out:
L8: Nilshai: Extra standard action/round --- excellent combat form for dispensing spells.
L8: Dharculus: Ethereal plane based --- excellent stealth.
L9: Will'O Wisp: Immunity to Magic, Natural Invisibility --- excellent immunities.

Polymorph grants Thoon Elder Brain Dual actions, 12-headed hydra attacks, Wartroll's dazing blow, or the plant type's basket of immunities. Polymorph Any Object broadens the set of forms substantially at level 15.

And, when Shapechange hits it obsoletes everything else.

Overall, I'd give an edge to Enhanced Aberration Wildshape although it's fairly close.
Druid also gets thoon elder brain. Also probably plant immunities? A number of plant forms list the traits as extraordinary special qualities, depending on the book. MM II ones do so, for example. Hydra and wartroll are alright, but I'm inclined to think that boosting casting is the superior approach. Wild shape also gets a bunch of other stuff as well. Wacky vision modes, weird immunities, zombie creation for some reason, other even weirder forms of minion generation (including the ridiculous deepspawn whose capacity to create NPCs you've eaten I'm revising to blue), regen/fast healing, and a bunch of other stuff too.

[Luccan]

Looking at the list as it currently stands... It's almost weird, really, how if you don't have spell (powers, maneuvers) of some sort, you are at best T4. I think the Binder and Totemist are the only exceptions?

It's not that weird. Non-magical abilities get the short end of the stick in 3.5. And some classes with magic don't get enough to rise above T4.

[rrwoods]

Hey this is super awesome, thanks to all the organizers over the years for holding these discussions and to Troacctid for pulling the info together here!

Suggestion: Put “NPC” in front of the NPC classes to further distinguish them from the Generic counterparts.

[rrwoods]

A GM should adjust the game in such a way everyone has fun. Regardless who has the strongest character.

And the tier list, by giving the DM a rough overview of how powerful the base classes are relative to one another, is a tool the DM can use to assess what types of challenges are appropriate for the party the players have assembled.

[Luccan]

I don't think I would join a game where the DM expects the characters to be optimized or of a certain tier. By far most people I play with never go online to read up on the game. Nor do they own any books. A GM should adjust the game in such a way everyone has fun. Regardless who has the strongest character.

You should play how you want. Though, if you've never had a problem with class disparity that just means your players are probably making suboptimal choices all the time and playing down the tiers incidentally rather than purposefully. Which is fine. The purpose of Tiering is to provide for a multitude of power levels consciously, from "we all need to rely on each other to defeat this dragon" to "the four of us should go fight the lords of the Nine Hells".

However, if you don't know about the difference in power level and versatility between a fighter and a cleric, then you can run into situations where you can't GM correct to make the fighter feel useful because the cleric can summon angels and rain down holy fire, while the fighter still needs to take a full round to get to the enemy. Make it easy for the fighter to take care of and the cleric needs to spend even fewer resources dealing with it just as fast. Not to mention the fighter can't do much outside combat, while many other classes have skills or abilities that let them surpass the fighter easily in that regard. If your players aren't making spell or tactical choices that create this problem, that's fine. But if they do it can be very difficult to near impossible to challenge all players in a way that feels fun for everyone. Hence the Tier list can be useful to ensure everyone has some idea of how much is too much for one character to be able to do on their own.

[Rhyltran]

However, if you don't know about the difference in power level and versatility between a fighter and a cleric, then you can run into situations where you can't GM correct to make the fighter feel useful because the cleric can summon angels and rain down holy fire, while the fighter still needs to take a full round to get to the enemy. Make it easy for the fighter to take care of and the cleric needs to spend even fewer resources dealing with it just as fast. Not to mention the fighter can't do much outside combat, while many other classes have skills or abilities that let them surpass the fighter easily in that regard. If your players aren't making spell or tactical choices that create this problem, that's fine. But if they do it can be very difficult to near impossible to challenge all players in a way that feels fun for everyone. Hence the Tier list can be useful to ensure everyone has some idea of how much is too much for one character to be able to do on their own.

Your points of the fighter is spot on but is also why I never understood how there's some people who believe the Fighter is Tier 4 vs a Monk being Tier 5. A monk is so much easier to build than a fighter and doesn't need obscure resources to be powerful. Out of the gate the monk is going to end his career with 2d10 attacks. Improved Natural attack turns that into 4d8. That's not an obscure feat by any means. Monks have good saves, decent AC, and while they have lower BAB it isn't even close to insurmountable with even the simplest bit of optimization. Between feats like carmendine, kung fu genius, and others you can easily make them less MAD. Superior unarmed strikes can get them higher damage earlier in the campaign and on top of that they have very useful feats from tumble, to move silently, and hide. Combined with their higher movement speed they easily become fast moving scouts. Throw dark stalker into the feat pile for maximum result. Again, none of this is hard to build. We're literally talking the simplest optimization. I have always felt that while base monk isn't a "Good" class that it's weird that people think it's below Fighter while constantly talking about how Fighters have no roles outside combat.

A monk can at least be a scout, physical attacker, and even somewhat of a disabler if needed to be. I'd personally rather have a monk in the party over a Fighter tbh. Usually when people defend Fighter they use Prestige classes and ACF which the Tier System doesn't typically take into account. If you did take it into account Monk has Wild Shape Monk, Rage Monk, Invisible Fist, and more. Not trying to pick an argument with you I quoted you merely because your thoughts on Fighter are the same as mine but it leaves me scratching my head why people think the Monk is lower. Easier to build, easier ways to increase damage potential, more roles outside combat, and more skill points. The only thing Fighter has is intimidate. Monk has spot, listen, hide, move silently, sense motive, and diplomacy for useful out of combat skills.

[Lans]

Meh, Lightning Gauntlets and Dissolving Spittle use two of the least resisted energy types, so it's not nearly as glaring a weakness as, say, sneak attack being useless every third encounter. And you can also have minions with your necrocarnum zombie and/or soulspark familiar, neither of which cares about your BAB at all. Or, if you're going the UMD route, you might have wands to fall back on when your primary attack is ineffective. Or heck, maybe you're using weapons after all and you still don't care about BAB because you can just use one or more of your soulmelds to boost your attack and make up for it—with Incarnate Weapon, for example, you only have +1 BAB at 3rd level, but you're swinging a +3 weapon where the martial character is lucky to have a masterwork one, and you still have two other soulmelds and a crown bind. I call that a net win.

I have no problem with the Incarnate at low levels, but once you start getting further out it drops off. Look at level 6, where your now behind on an extra attack. Ill go over things more when I have more time

[Troacctid]

The problem with incarnate, 3.75 for my vote by the way, is that you lose the versatility you had in the beginning at higher levels. Its great from levels 1-6, but after that you start getting more and more wealth and its hard to stay flexible with that wealth. The more Soulmelds you have the harder it is to change which melds you have shaped without affecting your primary thing. The more you work with the party the more they expect you to have a certain role.

This is way worse when you try to use the avatars, besides good, as they almost require a certain weapon enhancement at later levels.

I have no problem with the Incarnate at low levels, but once you start getting further out it drops off. Look at level 6, where your now behind on an extra attack. Ill go over things more when I have more time
At higher levels, you get the ability to swap out soulmelds in the middle of the day, which is a big deal, and you also just have more soulmelds at a time, so you can do more things at once or do your main thing better. So I definitely disagree. You're also unlocking new high-level abilities via chakra binds; at 9th level, for example, some good ones include telepathy, mind-reading, flight, and, if you take a feat for an off-list meld, the ability to become ethereal at will.

[Mordante]

You should play how you want. Though, if you've never had a problem with class disparity that just means your players are probably making suboptimal choices all the time and playing down the tiers incidentally rather than purposefully. Which is fine. The purpose of Tiering is to provide for a multitude of power levels consciously, from "we all need to rely on each other to defeat this dragon" to "the four of us should go fight the lords of the Nine Hells".

However, if you don't know about the difference in power level and versatility between a fighter and a cleric, then you can run into situations where you can't GM correct to make the fighter feel useful because the cleric can summon angels and rain down holy fire, while the fighter still needs to take a full round to get to the enemy. Make it easy for the fighter to take care of and the cleric needs to spend even fewer resources dealing with it just as fast. Not to mention the fighter can't do much outside combat, while many other classes have skills or abilities that let them surpass the fighter easily in that regard. If your players aren't making spell or tactical choices that create this problem, that's fine. But if they do it can be very difficult to near impossible to challenge all players in a way that feels fun for everyone. Hence the Tier list can be useful to ensure everyone has some idea of how much is too much for one character to be able to do on their own.

It could because the groups I play with are special. I don’t know. But we can have an entire 3 hour session without or very little dice rolling.

I DM a party now. My first time DMing. Yesterday’s we had our first combat since about at least half a year. The cleric/palordin not really sure was tanking and self healing while the Duskblade, Shadow dancer and alchemist were doing the damage. The Illusionist was hiding. She had no offensive spells ready. The enemy was not susceptible to mind tricks.

Most problems are solved by group discussions and not much by dice rolling.

[Gnaeus]

It could because the groups I play with are special. I don’t know. But we can have an entire 3 hour session without or very little dice rolling.

I DM a party now. My first time DMing. Yesterday’s we had our first combat since about at least half a year. The cleric/palordin not really sure was tanking and self healing while the Duskblade, Shadow dancer and alchemist were doing the damage. The Illusionist was hiding. She had no offensive spells ready. The enemy was not susceptible to mind tricks.

Most problems are solved by group discussions and not much by dice rolling.

1. D&D is a system that really lends itself to combat in a lot of ways. When we talk about power we are assuming regular combat, because that’s what virtually every published adventure, and novel assume, and if we weren’t we would all be playing FATE. The tier system assumes a generally normal play environment. The farther you get from that the more off it will be.

2. If you are in a group that never fights, the power imbalance is even greater. Duskblade is really bad outside combat. An illusionist could absolutely be a power player in a no combat game, as the only one in the party who can access a lot of game changing powers. The fact that he has played 6 months without combat, and therefore carries non-combat spells, shouldn’t surprise anyone. What the Tiers express is that if you quit and I took over and started running 5 combats a day, a tier 1 caster like an illusionist can go from zero to hero in 9 hours, maybe a bit more if he needs to buy some spells.

[Efrate]

A monk is a lot harder to build than a fighter. You have 3/4 bab, and are super MAD, d8 HD and no armor. If you swap wis to not you get a few more skills, but still need 3 other stats, and you know dump wis and cha which hurts your face potential. You need damage or you are not a contributing member, so you need strength. You are frontline with no armor so you need dex, and con because you will be taking quite a few more hits. You can scout with your speed and dex, but if you dump wis because you go int, then your perception skills suffer.

A fighter picks a weapon and power attack and just goes. He has good ac and hp, and can at least afford to spend the feats making a combat maneuver style worthwhile though getting 13 int for combat expertise hurts a bit. If nothing else his move attack turn is just better than yours. He will hit more often and harder and be able to take a hit in return. A fighter can be built just like the npcs in the dmg with weapon focus and spec lines and outdamage a similarly built monk. Acfs make each a good deal better but you need to dive pretty deep to get a monk up and running.

How many different sources you tap for carmandine monk, alternate bonus feats, imp natural attack, etc? A fighter is a lot easier and though it does not do it's job very well it does it better than a monk, just with phb, and maybe 1 more book.

[Chaos Jackal]

Your points of the fighter is spot on but is also why I never understood how there's some people who believe the Fighter is Tier 4 vs a Monk being Tier 5. A monk is so much easier to build than a fighter and doesn't need obscure resources to be powerful. Out of the gate the monk is going to end his career with 2d10 attacks. Improved Natural attack turns that into 4d8. That's not an obscure feat by any means. Monks have good saves, decent AC, and while they have lower BAB it isn't even close to insurmountable with even the simplest bit of optimization. Between feats like carmendine, kung fu genius, and others you can easily make them less MAD. Superior unarmed strikes can get them higher damage earlier in the campaign and on top of that they have very useful feats from tumble, to move silently, and hide. Combined with their higher movement speed they easily become fast moving scouts. Throw dark stalker into the feat pile for maximum result. Again, none of this is hard to build. We're literally talking the simplest optimization. I have always felt that while base monk isn't a "Good" class that it's weird that people think it's below Fighter while constantly talking about how Fighters have no roles outside combat.

A monk can at least be a scout, physical attacker, and even somewhat of a disabler if needed to be. I'd personally rather have a monk in the party over a Fighter tbh. Usually when people defend Fighter they use Prestige classes and ACF which the Tier System doesn't typically take into account. If you did take it into account Monk has Wild Shape Monk, Rage Monk, Invisible Fist, and more. Not trying to pick an argument with you I quoted you merely because your thoughts on Fighter are the same as mine but it leaves me scratching my head why people think the Monk is lower. Easier to build, easier ways to increase damage potential, more roles outside combat, and more skill points. The only thing Fighter has is intimidate. Monk has spot, listen, hide, move silently, sense motive, and diplomacy for useful out of combat skills.

It's not like fighters are harder to build than monks. Pick ACFs like Dungeoncrasher or Zhentarim, or, even outside of ACFs, stuff like the maneuver feat chains. You have enough stuff from easily accessible sources to build an one (or two) trick pony, pretty much what every fighter ends up being, without much chance of error. Hell, I don't have much experience with 3.5 but in my very first game (core only), where I did play a fighter, I went straight tripper plus the usual WF and WS and whatnot, without really knowing much about the game.

Monks, on the other hand, gain fewer feats (of which they have to spend at least a few not on improving unarmed strikes, basically their core gameplay, but on actually making them functional first), don't have as obvious tricks as fighters when building, and the stuff they're supposed to do is severely crippled by their lack of everything, really. Good saves, AC from two sources, good skills, 2d10 damage, but so MAD they can't really take advantage of these, because you can't utilize that skill list if you don't have Int, you can't gain much of an AC if you don't drop your damage for more Dex and Wis (and your AC will typically still compare very unfavorably to magic armor), your 2d10s (which take an eternity to scale there) won't matter because you can't take a full attack and when you do you'll miss like half the attacks because your BAB is lacking and you couldn't decide how to distribute your stats, you can't scout because you have a d8 HD, you couldn't afford Con and you either don't have enough ranks on Hide/Move Silently, or you don't have enough on Spot/Listen, and you can't easily specialize because you never seem to have enough feats available.

Anecdotal evidence does not a statement make, but just as a personal example, the only monks I've ever seen who were half-functional were NPC bosses (my DM loves monks) who managed to be something of a threat by being 4 levels stronger with their stats buffed to extremes (talking minimum 16 on Int and Cha, the rest between 18 and 24 without items), and who still were more of an issue because they were placed at the end of adventuring days (so resources and hp pools are running low) and bad rolls (sometimes the d20 needs to remember it's not a d6) rather than their six-attack routines of which on average less than half could go through the defenses of a lv8 party.

In a way, monks being easy to build is more about them having a ton of issues regardless of optimization, meaning that even if you mess up and someone else doesn't, ultimately the difference won't be very noticeable.

It's often said that feats are no replacement for class features, and that throwing feats at something won't kill it, but imagine for a second that each monk feature was available as a feat. Would you pick any of them on a fighter? Spell Resistance maybe? What else? Evasion? Anything else? No? Because I really wouldn't touch anything else with a 15-ft spiked chain.

On a different matter, I'd like to vote 5.7 for Expert. Yeah, they're probably better than aristocrats. Which means nothing really, because everyone agrees aristocrats suck. Skills are OK, but they won't do much by themselves, even if the skill in question is Iaijutsu Focus.

[Gnaeus]

I think the implied statement was that fighters are easier to build TO BE EFFECTIVE than monks. Not that it’s difficult to make a monk character sheet, it requires comparatively more work to make a monk combat viable, and combat is about all monks do well.

It’s also T5 because, in the same sense, it’s pretty easy to make high tier characters who are better at monking than monks are.

[Rhyltran]

It's not like fighters are harder to build than monks. Pick ACFs like Dungeoncrasher or Zhentarim, or, even outside of ACFs, stuff like the maneuver feat chains. You have enough stuff from easily accessible sources to build an one (or two) trick pony, pretty much what every fighter ends up being, without much chance of error. Hell, I don't have much experience with 3.5 but in my very first game (core only), where I did play a fighter, I went straight tripper plus the usual WF and WS and whatnot, without really knowing much about the game.

Monks, on the other hand, gain fewer feats, don't have as obvious tricks as fighters when building, and the stuff they're supposed to do are severely crippled by their lack of everything, really. Good saves, AC from two sources, good skills, 2d10 damage, but so MAD they can't really take advantage of these, because you can't utilize that skill list if you don't have Int, you can't gain much of an AC if you don't drop your damage for more Dex and Wis (and your AC will typically still compare very unfavorably to magic armor), your 2d10s won't matter because you can't take a full attack and when you do you'll miss like half the attacks because your BAB is lacking and you couldn't decide how to distribute your stats, you can't scout because you have a d8 HD, you couldn't afford Con and you either don't have enough ranks on Hide/Move Silently, or you don't have enough on Spot/Listen.

Oh sure Zhentarim and Dungeon Crasher are great but my point still stands that monk ACF like Wild Shape, invisible Fist, etc are more than adequate. If you take Kung fu Genius you can easily have the skill points needed to have enough in move silently/hide to be more than adequate with spot/listen. Having enough accuracy to hit is easily achieved within the reals of WBL. Again that 2d10 becomes 4d8 with just the addition of improved natural attack. I was merely pointing out some of the bare bones optimization. As for flurry of blows? You can trade it away for additional features, take travel devotion, or get pounce through any other means. The fact is a monk out of the box with just a smidgen of optimization is still going to be able to "Do decent damage", "Combat Maneuvers" and "have roles outside doing damage." The fighter out of the box is going to have "Do damage." and maybe "combat maneuvers" Note that travel devotion works more often for the monk due to much faster movement speed given that the monk is going to have a 90 speed by the end of the game.

A monk can be a tripper, a damage dealer, and scout quite easily and again.. with very little optimization. You get 4 skill points per level. Kung Fu Genius/Carmendine means you can put those points in int rather than relying on wisdom. Higher than average Int means you can also have a decent Spot, Listen, Hide, Move Silently, Sense Motive, and tumble if you were so inclined. Don't forget if you stick to straight monk you'll eventually lose your flurry of blows penalty entirely. There's plenty of means to increase your attack so "Accuracy" is never really a problem.

I mean, I'd rather not build up an entire character as an example. I disagree that having d8 hit dice makes the monk a poor scout by that same logic a rogue is a poor scout as well. They have d6 hit dice. As a monk you can dunk charisma. Dex isn't too important and doesn't have to be too high. Wisdom isn't that important especially if you get kung fu genius/carmendine. You can ignore wisdom for the most part and focus on intelligence. This means more skills which means more things to do outside of combat. You can pump strength to get the most out of strength. Take a race that gives you bonus str, dex, con, or int and you're golden.

Once again, I am not seeing how they are behind the fighter which is where this comparison is geared towards. Now for both Fighter and Monk if we add in ACF I could make an argument for them being up there in tier 4 possibly even Tier 3. Wild Shape Monk is already listed as tier 3. An invisible fist chaos monk and you improve many of the monk's short comings with their class features. Someone in this thread, other than me, already pointed out that most Monks even with some knowledge of the internet are unlikely to be "Monks right out of the book" and will likely have additional ACF. Fighter included.


I think the implied statement was that fighters are easier to build TO BE EFFECTIVE than monks..

Disagree with that statement as well. Carmendine, Improved Natural Attack, travel devotion and the rest of the feats can be random. Again, not high levels of optimization here. Three feats that greatly improve the monk's versatility and damage potential. Start with 18-20 Strength depending on race and have far more skill points in more useful skills than said fighter. You can build classes to out monk a monk. This is true. You can also easily build classes that can outfighter a fighter.

I would argue this is just as easy.

[AnimeTheCat]

It’s also T5 because, in the same sense, it’s pretty easy to make high tier characters who are better at monking than monks are.

I think a good starting point to fix this is to give monks light armor proficiency and let them keep wis to AC, and give them a way to make their martial arts more effective, like something that encompasses all the maneuvers and stances of the martial arts. That would be a good start to raising the floor of the monk. /s

[Rhyltran]

I think a good starting point to fix this is to give monks light armor proficiency and let them keep wis to AC, and give them a way to make their martial arts more effective, like something that encompasses all the maneuvers and stances of the martial arts. That would be a good start to raising the floor of the monk. /s


Honestly the best way to fix monk is just port the pathfinder version over to 3.5

[Efrate]

Unchained monk is great. I rate them very highly. Native access to pounce if at limited range to start, full BaB, d10 hd, some great ki powers and style strikes. It does what it says. You want to be the kung fu guy who goes ham on people? All day as a unchained monk. You have a bunch of debuffs as well you can use as needed.

[Rhyltran]

Unchained monk is great. I rate them very highly. Native access to pounce if at limited range to start, full BaB, d10 hd, some great ki powers and style strikes. It does what it says. You want to be the kung fu guy who goes ham on people? All day as a unchained monk. You have a bunch of debuffs as well you can use as needed.

Yup exactly. :P Sohei for Tier 4 imo. Incarnate 3.5 and Urban Druid 1. I don't think I've voted in those categories yet.

[Cygnia]

I'm just happy to see Healers get a little bit more love.

Do agree with Marshals being T4. I'm playing one now and I'm enjoying her a lot.

[AnimeTheCat]

Honestly the best way to fix monk is just port the pathfinder version over to 3.5

It was a sarcastic plug at people who say, "you wanna play a monk, play an unarmed swordsage" in pretty much every monk thread. I used the "/s" but i think that may mean something different here as opposed to reddit.

[Sutr]

One of the things I'm wondering about is if we were to revote assuming that the minimum op was that you read a guide and traded out bad class features and took the dead levels. I doubt some classes would change, but this has some bearing on the monk debate going on above. Basically if every class got a matrix monk writeup, http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=11530, what would the tier be. Also assuming that sources were open.

Troacctid, I'm aware of what can be done with incarnate binds. It drops off and has a big gap from 7-11 without gaining an attack and not being able to invest another point of essentia.

[Anthrowhale]

Druid also gets thoon elder brain. Also probably plant immunities? A number of plant forms list the traits as extraordinary special qualities, depending on the book. MM II ones do so, for example. Hydra and wartroll are alright, but I'm inclined to think that boosting casting is the superior approach. Wild shape also gets a bunch of other stuff as well. Wacky vision modes, weird immunities, zombie creation for some reason, other even weirder forms of minion generation (including the ridiculous deepspawn whose capacity to create NPCs you've eaten I'm revising to blue), regen/fast healing, and a bunch of other stuff too.

Clerics are pretty good at picking up immunities through other means, so I'm less concerned about that. The wacky vision modes are interesting but also more necessary for Druids---Clerics tend to have more divinations, again partially remedying this. Zombies and low level NPCs are a fun concept as fodder, but I'm not sure how much they really matter in practice.

War Troll is pretty good in combination with a standard cleric buffing routines. You get to keep your equipment, which matters increasingly with level. High strength + high natural armor + high con + energy immunity spell + high wisdom + dazing blow means you can tank away. You can also access outsider forms via Holy Transformation + Polymorph, for things like the Kelvezu (Dex 31, Sneak Attack+8d6, Poison that works with weapons, natural armor+15, fly 60'(good)) or Horned Devil.

Overall, enhanced aberation wildshape still seems marginally better to me, with significant caveats.

We also haven't really discussed the strengths of a Cleric. A Druid is hard-pressed to match the sheer lethality of Sense Weakness + Surge of Fortune + a Vorpal weapon---that flat out kills a Great Wyrm Prismatic Dragon and it comes online at level 12 when you can afford the weapon. Similarly, a cleric can use Surge of Fortune + Divine Insight + Guidance of the Avatar to make any skill check of 55 or less. Surge of Fortune also applies to spell penetration so you can plow through enemy spell resistance when needed.

[Lans]

At higher levels, you get the ability to swap out soulmelds in the middle of the day, which is a big deal, and you also just have more soulmelds at a time, so you can do more things at once or do your main thing better. So I definitely disagree. You're also unlocking new high-level abilities via chakra binds; at 9th level, for example, some good ones include telepathy, mind-reading, flight, and, if you take a feat for an off-list meld, the ability to become ethereal at will.

From what I 've seens they need to be pretty focused to be effective at doing a main role about as well as a T5 character. Due to equipment, feat and stat choices. If it needs to do stealth it will be like 5 points less than a stealthy characters skill check. With melee, and ranged combat being in the same boat.


Do you think its solidly tier 3 or lower tier 3? Because if you are on the lower tier 3 I don't think its worth arguing the difference between my just under low tier 3

[Lucas Yew]

Huh, nice to see a proper community-effort 3.Xe class tier sorting...

[pabelfly]

Going to put in a vote that I think a Truenamer is a Tier 4 class, rather than a Tier 5. They have a few areas that they excel at, even at low optimization:
- being the party knowledge bank
- dealing consistent (albeit weak) damage against enemies, regardless of enemy type, immunities, and/or spell resistance
- buffing allies
- debuffing enemies (many of their utterances have no saves)

Seems to me to fit the Tier 4 definition of being "very good at solving a few problems".

[Dimers]

From what I 've seen they need to be pretty focused to be effective at doing a main role about as well as a T5 character. Due to equipment, feat and stat choices. If it needs to do stealth it will be like 5 points less than a stealthy characters skill check. With melee, and ranged combat being in the same boat.

That hasn't been my experience. I've seen incarnates mostly ahead of a T5 in the T5's specialty area, plus a couple little side dishes at a time. With stealth, for example, the incarnate can have a couple points' better checks than a rogue while still having a touch-attack weapon or a special movement mode.

But I haven't seen any evidence that they break out of T4. They can do a lot of things kinda okay or one thing fairly well once you factor in static choices like feats, skill ranks/tricks, and equipment. Switching melds in the middle of the day is good for flexibility, but you can't change your static choices too, so what you're flexing tends to be small. Moreso because you can't alter chakra binds and your binds (and therefore melds) are effectively restricted by magic item choices.

Say you're 6th level, you encounter a social situation, and you think you're done with combat for the day. So you reshape your dissolving spittle into a silvertongue mask. Awesome, now you can invest three essentia to get +8 to two social skills, which may or may not complement what you've put into in Charisma and skill ranks. Even without much investment, that's as good a skill check as a dedicated T4 or T5 would get. But you can't bind the silvertongue mask to use its Suggestion effect, your Intimidate and Sense Motive don't change, you can't use Diplomacy faster than normal, and if things do go south then you've lost a major weapon. (Plus, people may react poorly to you spending six seconds moving blue stuff around your body before you start talking, but whatever.) Overall problem-solving ability: still notably less than a bard.

[AnimeTheCat]

From what I 've seens they need to be pretty focused to be effective at doing a main role about as well as a T5 character. Due to equipment, feat and stat choices. If it needs to do stealth it will be like 5 points less than a stealthy characters skill check. With melee, and ranged combat being in the same boat.


Do you think its solidly tier 3 or lower tier 3? Because if you are on the lower tier 3 I don't think its worth arguing the difference between my just under low tier 3

I don't think that Equipment, feat selection, or stat choice need to be focused at all really. Rather, they need to be focused, but not on doing a specific task (like power attack>improved bull rush>etc... or clerics pushing for DMM early). What Incarnate feat selection should focus on is maximizing their essentia pool, capacity, and their soulmeld versatility. My go-to picks for feats don't even leave the Magic of Incarnum book for Incarnates. Expanded Soulmeld Capacity (multiple times even), Cobalt Charge (useful if I decide to be Melee, gives me more essentia if I don't), Midnight Dodge (useful for melee, gives me essentia if I'm not), Split Chakra (solves the magic item/soulmeld bind issue, only a problem starting at mid-levels), Shape Soulmeld (to get off-list soulmelds), and Bonus Essentia. This lets you be the pinch hitter all the time, keep as many soulmelds maxed as possible, and lets you be good a many things at once rather than having to single something out. If you really want to you can pick up Point Blank Shot and Precise shot if you plan to do ranged combat, but it's really not necessary because once you can bind Sighting Gloves, you get it for free.

Stat choices are easy, follow the normal guidelines for picking stats. You feel like you want to do ranged, pick a high Con (because it's your "casting stat") and pick a good Dex, don't slip in to negatives elsewhere (or do... it doesn't really matter). Melee, high con, good strength/dex. That's about it. You don't "need" high int, you're not going to rely on skill ranks. You don't need a high wisdom, though just like with any character it helps with saves (you do get a good will save). If you want to focus on debuffing with your soulmeld's abilities (it is a thing you can do), then get that high wisdom and be more like a spellcaster, it's really not a big deal.

Equipment is also pretty easy because you are equipment. DM no dropping the items you want and you need some miss chance - Fellmist robe (added benefit, when paired with Shape Soulmeld: Kruthik Claws you have poor man's HIPS because you're always under concealment and you can heavily bolster your Hide skill). Use that same combination (fellmist robe/kruthik claws) and you can regularly target and enemy's Flat Footed AC. Facing enemies with big crit ranges, shape Adamant Pauldrons before anybody can get the Fortification armor enchantment and laugh when the rogue wasn't able to sneak attack you (bonus here, this can make you all but invincible at low levels with the DR from invested essentia. With your high Con score, you're probably a pretty tank character. Even at mid levels, DR is still sough after and what's the likelihood that you're being targeted by good/evil/lawful/chaotic attacks/damage?). Say you're done with the dungeon and you want to do some stuff in town, don't worry you can always shape Silvertongue Mask (throat) and Truthseeker Goggles (brow) and be appropriately "facey" for any social encounter. The best news with all of this is that you can do multiples of it at the same time without hindering yourself too heavily (if at all), and you can refine it as you adventure. You get plenty of soulmelds and you don't need all of them to be dedicated to any one schtick. Shape something for combat (probably Dissolving spittle or lightning gauntlets, but possibly Incarnate weapon if you want), shape something for non-combat (whatever role you fill; face, trapper, scout, etc), and then cover your weaknesses as best you can from there.

No, you can't do it all, but this isn't a case for Tier 1, this is a case for Tier 3 ( very good at solving a couple of problems and competent at solving a few more). I don't see how this isn't T3 when you look at that definition and then at the bredth of soulmelds available to the Incarnate. You can be a ranged damage dealer, a face, a scout with only 3 of your soulmelds, so from 4 and beyond you can just keep adding things that you can do. You will be very good at solving a couple of problems (let's say traps and dealing damage) and competent at solving a few more (whatever else you want to shape for the day, or in later levels even if you didn't shape it at the beginning of the day). I don't think that the Incarnate is a versatile as a bard, but it certainly isn't far behind it. The bard has control and party support ahead of the Incarnate, but the Incarnate has damage and day-to-day versatility head and shoulders above the bard which I think puts it, at the very lease, on par with the Totemist, if not possibly ahead. The class fits very solidly in the definition of "very good at solving a couple of problems and competent at solving a few more". It fits so well, I think it could easily be the poster child of that definition. I stand by my original ranking for it.


That hasn't been my experience. I've seen incarnates mostly ahead of a T5 in the T5's specialty area, plus a couple little side dishes at a time. With stealth, for example, the incarnate can have a couple points' better checks than a rogue while still having a touch-attack weapon or a special movement mode.

But I haven't seen any evidence that they break out of T4. They can do a lot of things kinda okay or one thing fairly well once you factor in static choices like feats, skill ranks/tricks, and equipment. Switching melds in the middle of the day is good for flexibility, but you can't change your static choices too, so what you're flexing tends to be small. Moreso because you can't alter chakra binds and your binds (and therefore melds) are effectively restricted by magic item choices.

Say you're 6th level, you encounter a social situation, and you think you're done with combat for the day. So you reshape your dissolving spittle into a silvertongue mask. Awesome, now you can invest three essentia to get +8 to two social skills, which may or may not complement what you've put into in Charisma and skill ranks. Even without much investment, that's as good a skill check as a dedicated T4 or T5 would get. But you can't bind the silvertongue mask to use its Suggestion effect, your Intimidate and Sense Motive don't change, you can't use Diplomacy faster than normal, and if things do go south then you've lost a major weapon. (Plus, people may react poorly to you spending six seconds moving blue stuff around your body before you start talking, but whatever.) Overall problem-solving ability: still notably less than a bard.

How does a Totemist break out of Tier 4 then? Totemists get fewer bonuses and have lower versatility outside of combat, not to mention less essentia and lower essentia capacity (except the totem bind). They are only able to rebind the totem soulmeld, not reshape any soulmeld, and that's a big blow to versatility. Besides that, you don't need to factor in any feats, skill ranks/trick, or equipment to have a generally effective Incarnate. They stand quite well in nearly every situation (with even just a cursory level of preparation) and can handle nearly any challenge sent their way (again with just the slightest bit of prep work that I would expect of any player). On top of being able to do that without feats or skill ranks, they have the oh s*** button of reshaping a soulmeld. Also, binds aren't restricted by magic item choices because the feat Split Chakra exists and you can take it as many times as you need (because you don't need other feats to be competent at any challenge).

That level 6 Incarnate shouldn't be reshaping their throat soulmeld if that is their primary means of damage, they should be unshaping their feet, shoulders, hands, brow, arms, etc soulmeld and reshaping their brow soulmeld if they want to get those benefits. It's no fault of the class if the player chooses to leave themselves unprepared for an ambush, that was a poor tactical choice. Besides, at level 6 you've got 4 soulmelds, so what are your other soulmelds? were you not able to shape it at the start of the day? There's also been some discussion about what happens when a character with a Meldshaping Class takes the Shape Soulmeld feat. It's not spelled out anywhere, and a particularly restrictive reading would indicate that a non-meldshaper can never shape the soulmeld they've acquired (unless they later gain a meldshaping class level) while a relatively permissive reading would indicated that a character with a meldshaper class level would be able to shape that specific soulmeld in addition to the soulmelds they get by way of class levels. Ultimately, that's neither here nor there because it only has a limited impact on the discussion. With 4 soulmelds, you should be prepared for combat as well as at least 2 other tasks (if you get shape soulmeld with a permissive reading that's a third task). The Incarnate's Rapid Meldshaping ability is much less of deliberate thing, and more of an oh s*** button. If you're settling in for social encounters, there's a pretty good chance you'll be able to postpone them to the next day when you can shape silvertongue mask, truthseeker goggles, and Planar Ward, plus most likely lightning gauntlets for some combat ability, or whatever and if you get in an oh s*** situation us your first full-round action to get dissolving spittle or lightning gauntlets (or just use a crossbow for that encoutner). You'll be invincible to mind control, you'll have top marks in all of the social skills and you've still got that additional soulmeld that you can pick for whatever.

[Anthrowhale]

I'd also like to discuss the spellthief a bit as it looks underrated.

1) Even though the spells are limited, the spell list (any s/w abjuration, divination, enchantment, illusion, or transmutation) is quite good. They also have full caster level via master spellthief unlike the other L4 casters (i.e. Ranger, Paladin).

2) In a party with other cooperating spellcasters, they can get out the most important second spell that party spellcasters wish they could cast that round. The best second spell is pretty good---that's something like a free metamagic Quicken Spell or Twin Spell (or better) for the party most rounds of combat. It's even better in some ways since the "second spell" might go off before the spellcaster even has a chance to act when the Spellthief's initiative wins.

3) In a party with other cooperating spellcasters, they are a universal familiar since they can easily benefit from every personal range spell. There are many great personal range spells. This is something like a ring of spell storing (which is incredibly expensive), except that it's easier to use in combat and not nerfed to minimum caster level. This enables new (or at least otherwise difficult) combos. For example, a spellthief can easily combine Improvisation, Divine Insight, and Guidance of the Avatar, Surge of Fortune and solid native skills to make DC 90 skill checks. Or consider Hunter's Eye + (lesser) infernal/holy transformation + Polymorph[Kelvezu] + Spellthief sneak attack + Craven for 21d6+20 (~=93.5) sneak attack damage salted with persistent grave/golem/vine strike, divine power, persistent wraithstrike, or Righteous Might+Heroics[Adaptable Flanker] to make this hit reliably.

Tier 4 seems appropriate for the spellthief in isolation. In a cooperating party with tier 1/tier 2 spellcasters it seems quite capable of contributing in nearly every situation. My impression is that people discount (2) and (3) because it's borrowed power, but that seems disingenous from the viewpoint of either planning party challenges are choosing party composition. A pure spellthief in a party of pure T1 casters can be quite a bit of fun and effectively contribute as a full member. In this situation, the 'tier' of a spellthief is perhaps a half tier less than the maximum tier in a cooperating party with a minimum of tier 4.

[zfs]

Yup exactly. :P Sohei for Tier 4 imo. Incarnate 3.5 and Urban Druid 1. I don't think I've voted in those categories yet.

Hooray, my Sohei evangelism was not for naught.

[Buufreak]

I too am having trouble understanding how totemist is the highest melder. I'm currently building and playing one, and besides tearing things apart and being good at a bunch of physical skills, I'm not really seeing it. Yes, it picks up a handful of special attacks (lines, gaze, I think even poison breath) but is that enough to go from 4 -> 3?

[Lans]

I too am having trouble understanding how totemist is the highest melder. I'm currently building and playing one, and besides tearing things apart and being good at a bunch of physical skills, I'm not really seeing it. Yes, it picks up a handful of special attacks (lines, gaze, I think even poison breath) but is that enough to go from 4 -> 3?


Let's look at the definitions of tiers



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

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

I think the totemist can do stealth and combat problems very well, and be okay in other areas.

Incarnates I think are the epitome of alright at solving many problems for the most of their career,

[AnimeTheCat]

Let's look at the definitions of tiers




I think the totemist can do stealth and combat problems very well, and be okay in other areas.

Incarnates I think are the epitome of alright at solving many problems for the most of their career,

But Incarnates can literally have the answer to every single problem throught their whole career, and if they don't immediately they have a hot-swap answer or they can have the answer in 8 hours. Doesn't that fit the "Of course, there are other possibilities, for example that you might instead be competent at solving nearly all problems." part of the description of T3? Further, incarnates can do any one task they designate very well, and have the ability to flex to other categories on the fly depending on the situation. That fits the first part of the definition of T3. I'm just not seeing how they aren't in the same tier.

[Dimers]

How does a Totemist break out of Tier 4 then?

They don't. I'd call a totemist T4, solves one kind of problem pretty well and a couple others okay ... but that wasn't what I was addressing when I wrote about the incarnate, so I didn't mention it. *shrug*


binds aren't restricted by magic item choices because the feat Split Chakra exists and you can take it as many times as you need (because you don't need other feats to be competent at any challenge).

*cough* *cough* Ahrm. Gosh. That's an interesting claim.

[AnimeTheCat]

They don't. I'd call a totemist T4, solves one kind of problem pretty well and a couple others okay ... but that wasn't what I was addressing when I wrote about the incarnate, so I didn't mention it. *shrug*



*cough* *cough* Ahrm. Gosh. That's an interesting claim.

what's an interesting claim? the fact that you don't need feats to be competent at challenges or that the Split Chakra feat exists and allows you to share a magic item and a soulmeld bind in the same slot? One I can see you disagreeing with, the other is pretty obviously true and not even particularly interesting. What situations require feats for competence for the Incarnate? Here are some of the ones that don't:

- protection from charms, compulsions, Divinations, and posession
- social interaction
- combat (ranged or melee)
- healing allies (by way of two soulmelds: Lifebond Vestments and Mage's Spectacles)
- Trap detection and removal

That's just off the top of my head. What are you getting at?

[eggynack]

Clerics are pretty good at picking up immunities through other means, so I'm less concerned about that.
Perhaps, though weird stuff like illusion immunity is pretty nifty. Dragons are really more the immunity piles though.


Zombies and low level NPCs are a fun concept as fodder, but I'm not sure how much they really matter in practice.
There's gotta be something you can do with a bunch of CR 6 NPCs of your choice. Not, like, a ton, but it's certainly neat. I was going to mention the great old master neogi, who, at a modest level 15, can create an arbitrarily large number of 1 HD neogi spawn, 2d4 a round, but I think polymorph grants that. I suspect I'm just arbitrarily biased in favor of the generation of terrible minions. I spent so much of my research time thinking that druids have basically no minion options, so wacky nonsense like forever unicorns or miles wide plant network or fey ring options that aren't siabrie became beautiful things. It's nice that I also found some actually really powerful stuff, but I'll always have a place in my heart for infinite tiny bugs.



War Troll is pretty good in combination with a standard cleric buffing routines. You get to keep your equipment, which matters increasingly with level. High strength + high natural armor + high con + energy immunity spell + high wisdom + dazing blow means you can tank away. You can also access outsider forms via Holy Transformation + Polymorph, for things like the Kelvezu (Dex 31, Sneak Attack+8d6, Poison that works with weapons, natural armor+15, fly 60'(good)) or Horned Devil.

Overall, enhanced aberation wildshape still seems marginally better to me, with significant caveats.
That stuff is quite strong, but it seems relatively unversatile when compared with what direct casting grants access to. It's like, you could hit someone incredibly hard and maybe stunlock them, or you could just will-o-wisp about, near impossible to hit with anything, tossing out blizzards, hurricanes, and earthquakes. Also, as you noted, thoon elder brain is pretty great at combat, so it's not like druids are lacking for that element. Druids are actually kinda better at braining, cause you can pick up fast healing 10. Also fear and acid immunity? I think you get those. I forgot to list it.

[Troacctid]

Let's take a side-by-side comparison of the incarnate and the warlock, for illustrative purposes. We'll look at some mid-levels, since that's where we had the most skepticism of incarnate performance.

At level 7, the warlock has three least invocations and one lesser invocation, plus eldritch blast 4d6, detect magic, and the ability to take 10 on UMD. A typical invocation selection might be an eldritch essence like frightful blast or sickening blast, a utility invocation like call of the beast or baleful utterance, a defensive invocation like darkness or entropic warding, and one of the good lesser invocations, let's say fell flight. She can fly around shooting lasers as touch attacks with a minor debuff attached while having a 20% miss chance on defense. Out of combat, she can still fly, she can detect magic, and she has whatever her utility invocation is. She can also use wands and stuff.

At level 7, the incarnate can shape 5 soulmelds and bind 2 of them, with each one having a capacity of 3 (and possibly one having 4, assuming she took the feat, which most incarnates probably will). One of those soulmelds should be a primary attack form, either Dissolving Spittle or Lightning Gauntlets. That's a match for the warlock's damage, so, cool. If we want to lean into offense, we can add Lucky Dice and Incarnate Avatar (evil) to bring the damage up from 4d6 to 4d6+7, or 4d6+11 with incarnum radiance active. Since we're evil, we also get to use another of our soulmelds to create a necrocarnum zombie with up to 7 HD, like the sample girallon necrocarnum zombie, which has five natural attacks, dealing an average of 50 damage if all of them hit (and we can share our incarnum radiance with it to add another +4 to damage on every attack). Let's bind our Lucky Dice to our hands; now our whole party, girallon included, gets +1 to attack and damage and all skill checks. This still leaves us with one more soulmeld, so how about either Mage's Spectacles, Vitality Belt, or Airstep Sandals, dealer's choice. Not too shabby. Partway through the day, we have the option of switching out one of our melds for...whatever. Any of the situational ones I listed in my quick summary.

That's not too bad a comparison, right?

At level 9, the warlock has an extra d6 of blast damage and has picked up another lesser invocation, which might be something like flee the scene or charm or walk unseen. Meanwhile, the incarnate now has lesser chakras. So that's cool. There are some good ones there. Maybe get some mind-reading action going, or set up a telepathic link with your party, or take Shape Soulmeld (Phase Cloak) to become immune to doors, whatever. With more essentia, it's easier to keep all your receptacles happy and full, and an extra use of incarnum radiance is nice for when you're on the melee plan. The girallon can now be upgraded to...something with more HD, or whatever, I don't know.

[Sutr]

what's an interesting claim? the fact that you don't need feats to be competent at challenges or that the Split Chakra feat exists and allows you to share a magic item and a soulmeld bind in the same slot?


I didn't want to get back in this but split chakra is a bad feat.

1: its choose a chakra; not like expanded soulmeld capacity, if the magic item you liked becomes outdated same with the soulmeld on that chakra.
2: its outclassed by an item for 10k you can expand the soulmeld the soulmeld capacity. If we read the magic item compendium we can add this to whatever item we want for 15k.

I'd like to also agree with warlock being a 3.5 and move my incarnate vote to equal with that. Lots of options easier to switch out less in combat oomph and D&D is still mostly combat.

[Anthrowhale]

There's gotta be something you can do with a bunch of CR 6 NPCs of your choice. Not, like, a ton, but it's certainly neat.

It is neat, and I'm sure there are niche uses.


or you could just will-o-wisp about, near impossible to hit with anything, tossing out blizzards, hurricanes, and earthquakes.

The Transformation Cleric version of this is something like Polymorph[Shimemerling]. Fine size means that you have +16 to hide and concealment is common, while Invisibility is essentially +20 to hide +concealment. Of if your domain is Spell (which is great on a spontaneous cleric) and you take Alternate Source Spell, then you can just DMM[Persist] Alternate Source Greater Invisibility. Or you could do both. On the immunity to magic side, combining a Karma Bead, Ankh of Ascension, DMM[Persist], and Skin of the Steel Dragon gives you all day SR level+18 which is functionally close to magic immunity. Clerics also have a few disaster spells although Druids have a clear edge until Erupt comes online.


Also, as you noted, thoon elder brain is pretty great at combat, so it's not like druids are lacking for that element. Druids are actually kinda better at braining, cause you can pick up fast healing 10. Also fear and acid immunity? I think you get those. I forgot to list it.
The War Troll seems a bit better to me personally. With just a bit of buffing, you are pretty much sure to achieve daze lock. Partly this is also my interpretation of 'mental action', which would require silent/still spell. Partly, keeping all your equipment is again great. As far as fast healing goes, DMM[persistent] mass lesser vigor is smaller quantity-wise, but it's still plenty to autoheal between battles and quite adequate for a functioning beating dispensary if you have AC No. Mithril Full Plate + War Troll + Magic Vestment + Large Animated Shield = AC 46, and there's plenty that can be done to improve that further.

[AnimeTheCat]

I didn't want to get back in this but split chakra is a bad feat.

1: its choose a chakra; not like expanded soulmeld capacity, if the magic item you liked becomes outdated same with the soulmeld on that chakra.
2: its outclassed by an item for 10k you can expand the soulmeld the soulmeld capacity. If we read the magic item compendium we can add this to whatever item we want for 15k.

I'd like to also agree with warlock being a 3.5 and move my incarnate vote to equal with that. Lots of options easier to switch out less in combat oomph and D&D is still mostly combat.

I don't disagree with your two points, and I did know that it's pick one and you're stuck. But the option still remains which decisively means that, even with bad DM influence not including the 15k enchantment, you can still use you enigma helm and your headband of wisdom at the same time, or more likely, your constitution belt and your belt slot chakra. I also think warlock definitely falls in to the good at one thing, ok in many, while incarnate is potentially ok at nearly every task.

[Buufreak]

I don't disagree with your two points, and I did know that it's pick one and you're stuck. But the option still remains which decisively means that, even with bad DM influence not including the 15k enchantment, you can still use you enigma helm and your headband of wisdom at the same time, or more likely, your constitution belt and your belt slot chakra. I also think warlock definitely falls in to the good at one thing, ok in many, while incarnate is potentially ok at nearly every task.

*Stength belt, or Constitution *neck. Not really sure which you were going for. And sure, for that niche case you might have something. But overall it isn't that great.

As for what is being said about incarnate and warlock, I'm really not sure if the argument is currently one of equivalence or for one's superiority.

[AnimeTheCat]

*Stength belt, or Constitution *neck. Not really sure which you were going for. And sure, for that niche case you might have something. But overall it isn't that great.

As for what is being said about incarnate and warlock, I'm really not sure if the argument is currently one of equivalence or for one's superiority.

Equivalence, not superiority. Warlocks are pretty universally seen as T3 while incarnate was, for whatever reason, rated T4. I think they're equal but different.

edit: I was going for the con bonus because it most directly helps meldshapers. I've been playing pathfinder lately and they did the wonderful thing of making all the physical stats a belt slot that could combine them, and all the mental ones a headband that could combine them. I think neck slot is the throat chakra, so that one is definitely going to come up if you're relying on dissolving spittle for your damage.

[Karl Aegis]

I too am having trouble understanding how totemist is the highest melder. I'm currently building and playing one, and besides tearing things apart and being good at a bunch of physical skills, I'm not really seeing it. Yes, it picks up a handful of special attacks (lines, gaze, I think even poison breath) but is that enough to go from 4 -> 3?

It looks like the totemist gets a higher point buy because while the incarnate could invest in intelligence for more skill points or more constitution to offset the hit dice difference, it doesn't because it doesn't need to. Totemist gets a higher strength, dexterity, intelligence and constitution because it needs those stats. So, basically, totemist gets to run 32 point buy while the incarnate gets to run 6. That's the impression I'm getting from the posts.

[Dimers]

As for what is being said about incarnate and warlock, I'm really not sure if the argument is currently one of equivalence or for one's superiority.

I think Troacctid's rundown was an exploration rather than an argument toward either side. Me, I think the two classes are on approximately equal footing, but I'd rank them both in T4 instead of either in T3. Schroedinger's Warlock is better than Schroedinger's Incarnate but actual builds come out about even.

[javcs]

Warlock is firmly T4. Nowhere near the bottom, but not close to the top of T4 either.


There are some really nice invocations out there. Unfortunately, you only get 12 of them without blowing all your feats on getting new invocations. And even then, you don't get that many extra invocations - maximum of 5.
And Imbue Item is nifty, but you still need the crafting feats to use it.


Warlock is pretty mediocre at best until Epic levels and you get the Epic Warlock feats and enough bonus feats to spend on getting more invocations known.

[Troacctid]

Warlocks are definitely T3—they're just head and shoulders above any of the T4 classes. Even a low-op warlock will comfortably outperform a rogue, shadowcaster, ranger, adept, etc. and it's not especially close. Meanwhile, put them against T3 classes like duskblade, binder, totemist, dragonfire adept, and wild shape ranger, and you have a reasonable contest. It's true that you don't get a lot of invocations, but the wilder doesn't get a lot of powers either, and most people were still willing to put it in T3. And warlock invocations are good.

[Lans]

Let's take a side-by-side comparison of the incarnate and the warlock, for illustrative purposes. We'll look at some mid-levels, since that's where we had the most skepticism of incarnate performance.

At level 7, the warlock has three least invocations and one lesser invocation, plus eldritch blast 4d6, detect magic, and the ability to take 10 on UMD. A typical invocation selection might be an eldritch essence like frightful blast or sickening blast, a utility invocation like call of the beast or baleful utterance, a defensive invocation like darkness or entropic warding, and one of the good lesser invocations, let's say fell flight. She can fly around shooting lasers as touch attacks with a minor debuff attached while having a 20% miss chance on defense. Out of combat, she can still fly, she can detect magic, and she has whatever her utility invocation is. She can also use wands and stuff.

At level 7, the incarnate can shape 5 soulmelds and bind 2 of them, with each one having a capacity of 3 (and possibly one having 4, assuming she took the feat, which most incarnates probably will). One of those soulmelds should be a primary attack form, either Dissolving Spittle or Lightning Gauntlets. That's a match for the warlock's damage, so, cool. If we want to lean into offense, we can add Lucky Dice and Incarnate Avatar (evil) to bring the damage up from 4d6 to 4d6+7, or 4d6+11 with incarnum radiance active. Since we're evil, we also get to use another of our soulmelds to create a necrocarnum zombie with up to 7 HD, like the sample girallon necrocarnum zombie, which has five natural attacks, dealing an average of 50 damage if all of them hit (and we can share our incarnum radiance with it to add another +4 to damage on every attack). Let's bind our Lucky Dice to our hands; now our whole party, girallon included, gets +1 to attack and damage and all skill checks. This still leaves us with one more soulmeld, so how about either Mage's Spectacles, Vitality Belt, or Airstep Sandals, dealer's choice. Not too shabby. Partway through the day, we have the option of switching out one of our melds for...whatever. Any of the situational ones I listed in my quick summary.

That's not too bad a comparison, right?

At level 9, the warlock has an extra d6 of blast damage and has picked up another lesser invocation, which might be something like flee the scene or charm or walk unseen. Meanwhile, the incarnate now has lesser chakras. So that's cool. There are some good ones there. Maybe get some mind-reading action going, or set up a telepathic link with your party, or take Shape Soulmeld (Phase Cloak) to become immune to doors, whatever. With more essentia, it's easier to keep all your receptacles happy and full, and an extra use of incarnum radiance is nice for when you're on the melee plan. The girallon can now be upgraded to...something with more HD, or whatever, I don't know.


I put the warlock at high T4, and yes they are very close, at level 7. Your incarnate has been pigeonholed into melee touch attacks using 3 of its melds to that effect. The Warlock can use Hideous Blow to be about equal to the damage with Lightning Gauntlets, Lucky Dice and Incarnate Avatar. He takes The Dead Walk to match the Necrocarnum Zombie. Mages Spectacles puts him on par with the warlocks UMD, Vitality Belt eats into its offense if you put more than a point into it, and Air step sandals less good than spider climb barring a floating platform.


By level 9 the warlock can retrain one of its invocations for Eldricth Glaive doubling its damage, if you take a feat for shape soulmeld then the warlock can take empower or maximize spell and actually be able to do some good damage.

Which soulmeld lets you read minds? I found a gnome substitution level, but I don't think your talking about that



Warlocks are definitely T3—they're just head and shoulders above any of the T4 classes. Even a low-op warlock will comfortably outperform a rogue, shadowcaster, ranger, adept, etc. and it's not especially close. Meanwhile, put them against T3 classes like duskblade, binder, totemist, dragonfire adept, and wild shape ranger, and you have a reasonable contest. It's true that you don't get a lot of invocations, but the wilder doesn't get a lot of powers either, and most people were still willing to put it in T3. And warlock invocations are good.

Could you go over this a little? I can see this being the case, I think they are higher in tier 4. The wilder doesn't get a lot of powers, but its damaging power is on par off the bat and it gets access to things like plane shift

[Troacctid]

Which soulmeld lets you read minds? I found a gnome substitution level, but I don't think your talking about that
Charming Veil.


Could you go over this a little? I can see this being the case, I think they are higher in tier 4. The wilder doesn't get a lot of powers, but its damaging power is on par off the bat and it gets access to things like plane shift
It's pretty much covered in the OP and in the original thread around this page (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=21908389&postcount=157). But if you have any specific concerns I'm happy to answer them as the reigning warlock expert.

[Lans]

But Incarnates can literally have the answer to every single problem throught their whole career, and if they don't immediately they have a hot-swap answer or they can have the answer in 8 hours. Doesn't that fit the "Of course, there are other possibilities, for example that you might instead be competent at solving nearly all problems." part of the description of T3? Further, incarnates can do any one task they designate very well, and have the ability to flex to other categories on the fly depending on the situation. That fits the first part of the definition of T3. I'm just not seeing how they aren't in the same tier.

It might, but I don't know if they hit the competent mark in things that matter. 5d6+1 acid damage as a 30-60 foot ranged touch attack at level 6 isn't hitting that mark.

[Troacctid]

It might, but I don't know if they hit the competent mark in things that matter. 5d6+1 acid damage as a 30-60 foot ranged touch attack at level 6 isn't hitting that mark.
It's certainly better than what the rogue, scout, or ninja is doing, and I think most people would at least consider them competent in that regard.

[Lans]

It's certainly better than what the rogue, scout, or ninja is doing, and I think most people would at least consider them competent in that regard.

I would argue that they need the ability to make extra attacks before they reach the point of competence.

[Shocksrivers]

I am a little late to the party, but wanted to thank Troacctid for this amazing overview!

[Sutr]

Well so far since this seems to be an update, so I'll vote alot. Keeping track of my vote and new votes: incarnate warlock 3.5, warmage, dragonfire adept, crusader, warblade, swordsage 3, psychic warrior, mystic ranger 2 prestige classes exist. Soulborn, samurai, expert 5.5, they are truly horrible.

Wizard, cleric, druid, shaman, archivist 1

All of those just confirm where things are, and are things I've played. Anyone want to talk about binder 3-7 with me, and how at 8 it literally more than doubles in power gaining tenebrous and a second vestige. Cause its literally tier 5 during those levels, and I have a hatred of a bunch of one shots at 6th level trying to make it work.

I'll start the artificer war as well nothing the artificer gets allows it to break wealth by level, and we can't assume action points to reduce infusion time to use.

[Troacctid]

I would argue that they need the ability to make extra attacks before they reach the point of competence.
1. Why?
2. Incarnates can make extra attacks via minions.


Well so far since this seems to be an update, so I'll vote alot. Keeping track of my vote and new votes: incarnate warlock 3.5, warmage, dragonfire adept, crusader, warblade, swordsage 3, psychic warrior, mystic ranger 2 prestige classes exist. Soulborn, samurai, expert 5.5, they are truly horrible.

Wizard, cleric, druid, shaman, archivist 1

All of those just confirm where things are, and are things I've played. Anyone want to talk about binder 3-7 with me, and how at 8 it literally more than doubles in power gaining tenebrous and a second vestige. Cause its literally tier 5 during those levels, and I have a hatred of a bunch of one shots at 6th level trying to make it work.

I'll start the artificer war as well nothing the artificer gets allows it to break wealth by level, and we can't assume action points to reduce infusion time to use.
In point of fact prestige classes do not exist. These rankings consider base classes only, so do adjust accordingly.

Psychic warrior at 2? That's going to need some explanation. Above initiators and warmages? How? I'm curious about your differential between warlock and DFA as well, given how close the two are in power.

[LordCharlemagne]

Reading eggynack's definitions of the new tiers puts the Incarnate in tier 3 because of its immense versatility for little investment, meaning you can be built to solve a couple problems really well and when needed, change your soulmelds around to be able to handle any problems that arise.

It's interesting that the Totemist is currently tier 3 and the Incarnate is currently tier 4, despite the Incarnate having an easier time with the whole versatility aspect (part of the power & versatility aspect that is measured by the tier list) with their larger universal soulmeld capacity, rapid meldshaping, and larger and more diverse soulmeld list.

The totemist just happens to have an easier time converting their soulmelds to combat potential than the Incarnate does and is an easier character concept to pitch.

There's really no justifiable way that the Incarnate and the Totemist can be in separate tiers. Saying one is tier x and the other is tier y is focusing too much on the ease of building when fundamentally they are going to have very similar load outs (1 or 2 core combat melds + some boosting melds the build wants + versatility melds when permissible).

[Sutr]

In point of fact prestige classes do not exist. These rankings consider base classes only, so do adjust accordingly.

Psychic warrior at 2? That's going to need some explanation. Above initiators and warmages? How? I'm curious about your differential between warlock and DFA as well, given how close the two are in power.

Made a mistake in typing on the psychic warrior that should be 3. I do apologize.

I still find the fact that mystic ranger is better than tier 2 for ten levels, the ones most likely to be played, and falling to tier three by level 20 as tier two. The ranger spell list is quite good.

Dragonfire adept gets 4 less invocations than a warlock, and 5 base attack, the defensive abilities are a wash as a warlock will still need to invest more to get crafting. It also has more bad invocations than good easier to mess up.

The DFA gets 5 more breath effects, hits an area and still has an effect if its saved against on its most important slow. Due to its design the DFA cares even less about charisma or dex, then a warlock and some of its invocations are actually better, humanoid shape. We round this out with 1 hit point per level, 2 skill points per level, more diverse skill list. All in all I see enough for a half tier difference.

[Lans]

1. Why?
2. Incarnates can make extra attacks via minions.

.

I'm going with a d6 a level for baseline competence, a lot of debate has gone on in these forms about how evocation is terrible school of magic, and that people shouldn't use DD spells unless they get metamagiced up in damage

I think competence in skills needs full ranks in things like stealth and senses.

[Troacctid]

Dragonfire adept gets 4 less invocations than a warlock, and 5 base attack, the defensive abilities are a wash as a warlock will still need to invest more to get crafting. It also has more bad invocations than good easier to mess up.

The DFA gets 5 more breath effects, hits an area and still has an effect if its saved against on its most important slow. Due to its design the DFA cares even less about charisma or dex, then a warlock and some of its invocations are actually better, humanoid shape. We round this out with 1 hit point per level, 2 skill points per level, more diverse skill list. All in all I see enough for a half tier difference.
Detect magic is effectively an additional invocation for the warlock, and while the shapeshifting and ice fog invocations are good, the warlock list is better overall. While the laser doesn't deal damage on a miss unless you take a blast shape, it's also more likely to hit vs. touch. The magic item abilities make up for the skill points. It's a wash.


I'm going with a d6 a level for baseline competence, a lot of debate has gone on in these forms about how evocation is terrible school of magic, and that people shouldn't use DD spells unless they get metamagiced up in damage

I think competence in skills needs full ranks in things like stealth and senses.
Evocation is not a terrible school of magic. It's one of the most efficient damage delivery systems in the game. And being a touch attack meaningfully increases effective DPR—5d6 vs. touch is likely to be better than 6d6 vs. normal AC. Also, 1d6 per level is a baseline for strikers, not supports. Bards aren't doing that much, clerics probably aren't doing that much, etc.

And other skills matter too—do social skills not count? Knowledges? There are multiple skill-related niches. Incarnates do have perception soulmelds, btw.

[Bucky]

Question for the bench:

You're playing a party of a Druid, Wizard, Cleric and Shaman. The DM has you choose a local NPC, built and optimized to PC standards, to round out the party because the module's meant for 6 players. The available NPCs are a Marshal, a Spellthief and a Fighter. Which do you take with you? Does it depend on the party level?

[Rhyltran]

Question for the bench:

You're playing a party of a Druid, Wizard, Cleric and Shaman. The DM has you choose a local NPC, built and optimized to PC standards, to round out the party because the module's meant for 6 players. The available NPCs are a Marshal, a Spellthief and a Fighter. Which do you take with you? Does it depend on the party level?

I personally think the wizard, cleric, druid, and shaman will do fine but I would go with spell thief. Doesn't really matter.

[Cygnia]

Question for the bench:

You're playing a party of a Druid, Wizard, Cleric and Shaman. The DM has you choose a local NPC, built and optimized to PC standards, to round out the party because the module's meant for 6 players. The available NPCs are a Marshal, a Spellthief and a Fighter. Which do you take with you? Does it depend on the party level?


How are the PCs specc'ed?

[zfs]

It's certainly better than what the rogue, scout, or ninja is doing, and I think most people would at least consider them competent in that regard.

Scout gets Improved Skirmish at that level, which means they're only a bit behind when they can trigger it - likely 1d8 + 4d6 + whatever you're getting from Str or weapon enhancements. Having to hit regular AC and relying on precision damage means it will have lower DPR, but they also likely have Rapid Shot, so whenever you can pull that off (probably one fight a day with Travel Devotion), you should pull ahead a bit (except against precision immune enemies, of course). Then in two levels you get your first iterative - again, full attack with rapid shot means your expected # of hits will be lower, but the potential is there for 3d8 + 12d6.

[Troacctid]

Question for the bench:

You're playing a party of a Druid, Wizard, Cleric and Shaman. The DM has you choose a local NPC, built and optimized to PC standards, to round out the party because the module's meant for 6 players. The available NPCs are a Marshal, a Spellthief and a Fighter. Which do you take with you? Does it depend on the party level?
Spellthief, not close, because the other two are just not as interesting to play. It's also more powerful, of course.

[AnimeTheCat]

Scout gets Improved Skirmish at that level, which means they're only a bit behind when they can trigger it - likely 1d8 + 4d6 + whatever you're getting from Str or weapon enhancements. Having to hit regular AC and relying on precision damage means it will have lower DPR, but they also likely have Rapid Shot, so whenever you can pull that off (probably one fight a day with Travel Devotion), you should pull ahead a bit (except against precision immune enemies, of course). Then in two levels you get your first iterative - again, full attack with rapid shot means your expected # of hits will be lower, but the potential is there for 3d8 + 12d6.

Where are you getting the d8 from? Scouts dont get longbow proficiency, so you would have to use a feat or play a race that gets it. Or you're melee and you're using a heavy mace or something, but talking about rapid shot leads me to believe you're not talking melee. It's negligible damage difference, but it is there.

[zfs]

Where are you getting the d8 from? Scouts dont get longbow proficiency, so you would have to use a feat or play a race that gets it. Or you're melee and you're using a heavy mace or something, but talking about rapid shot leads me to believe you're not talking melee. It's negligible damage difference, but it is there.

Whoops - yeah, when I personally played a Scout I was a Raptoran so I used a footbow. So it's an even closer comparison - 5d6 + probably 1 or 2 if you're using a composite shortbow.

[Efrate]

I am having a hard time with binder. I want it to be 3 and it does get there, but like there are a few levels before you get your second bind that are pretty awful. I am not sure if that drops it enough to get a 4. 3.75 for now.

[Lans]

I am having a hard time with binder. I want it to be 3 and it does get there, but like there are a few levels before you get your second bind that are pretty awful. I am not sure if that drops it enough to get a 4. 3.75 for now.

Honestly I think their is a scaling issue with some classes where the tier that they are in changes. Truenamer becomes a hard 2 when it hits level 20, Shadow caster starts at a low 5 and probably hits a low 3 by the time it hits 20.



Evocation is not a terrible school of magic. It's one of the most efficient damage delivery systems in the game. And being a touch attack meaningfully increases effective DPR—5d6 vs. touch is likely to be better than 6d6 vs. normal AC. Also, 1d6 per level is a baseline for strikers, not supports. Bards aren't doing that much, clerics probably aren't doing that much, etc.

And other skills matter too—do social skills not count? Knowledges? There are multiple skill-related niches. Incarnates do have perception soulmelds, btw.

I consider that as the baseline for just being competent in that area. Past the lower levels I don't think the Incarnate fits the -very good at solving a couple of problems and competent at solving a few more - and I think it falls a hair short on the -competent at solving nearly all problems- Not having a competence in combat is a really big sticking point for me. It doesn't deal damage, I don't think it has any good debuffs, it doesn't have the skills to be a scout.

[Sutr]

Detect magic is effectively an additional invocation for the warlock, and while the shapeshifting and ice fog invocations are good, the warlock list is better overall. While the laser doesn't deal damage on a miss unless you take a blast shape, it's also more likely to hit vs. touch. The magic item abilities make up for the skill points. It's a wash.




Its a wash for you, I remain thoroughly unconvinced that their is no difference. Which is why I like this thread I can still vote.

On the binder I think some classes could just use an asterisk to denote abrupt changes. There are enough of them shadowcaster, mystic ranger, healer binder all fit the bill.

[pabelfly]

On the binder I think some classes could just use an asterisk to denote abrupt changes. There are enough of them shadowcaster, mystic ranger, healer binder all fit the bill.

I think this is better mentioned in individual class writeups. Tiers are only a general starting point, after all.

[Sutr]

I think this is better mentioned in individual class writeups. Tiers are only a general starting point, after all.

Maybe, so I've seen quite a few games use JaronK's suggestion for partial gestalt. This is more accurate in my opinion than his, but if we were to use that suggestion to help balance. It could be helpful to have a quick, hey, if your campaign goes from 3-7 maybe binder can gestalt its kinda lame at those levels, or mystic ranger really shouldn't be able to.

[LordCharlemagne]

I consider that as the baseline for just being competent in that area. Past the lower levels I don't think the Incarnate fits the -very good at solving a couple of problems and competent at solving a few more - and I think it falls a hair short on the -competent at solving nearly all problems- Not having a competence in combat is a really big sticking point for me. It doesn't deal damage, I don't think it has any good debuffs, it doesn't have the skills to be a scout.


The Incarnate not having enough skills to function as a scout or as an any other role which can be performed by skills shows a serious lack of understanding about the Incarnate. If there is one thing the incarnate is not missing, it is skills. The Incarnate has enough skill boosters built into the class to be only shortly behind dedicated skill monkey at higher character levels in their bonus, and that is assuming the Incarnate doesn't CC any skills, which Incarnates can do if they so choose. All of this is without getting into the bonuses or abilities the Incarnate can get from binding their soulmelds to a chakra. And this is all doable without investing any of your permanent resources into these. (Albeit, move silently is one of the few melds Incarnate has to pick up with a feat from off of the totemist list, such as through worg pelt or Kruthick claws if they want to boost it really high).

Also, the Incarnate can deal solid damage. At low levels, binds are powerful attacks or you can get a souped up weapon off of incarnate weapon easily that puts you ahead of the curve at lower levels (And this requires no feats or ability scores to really do). Starting at mid levels and at high levels, unless you are super focused LN or NE Incarnate, your damage will fall behind others. However, by this time, you'll have build be operational and will be doing whatever you want it to do. You'll have a character build and be able to swap stuff around to fill niches or have special abilites that can be useful in any given meeting.

Sure, any role will a tier 4 or 5 class can fill will probably be able to do it better than the incarnate, but while that class will have to invest it skills and feats to do it and will have class features that aid with it, the Incarnate can just casually fill it by changing their melds and binds. The ability to be competent at something for near 0 investment is something no tier 4 or 5 class can really match.

[Troacctid]

Maybe, so I've seen quite a few games use JaronK's suggestion for partial gestalt. This is more accurate in my opinion than his, but if we were to use that suggestion to help balance. It could be helpful to have a quick, hey, if your campaign goes from 3-7 maybe binder can gestalt its kinda lame at those levels, or mystic ranger really shouldn't be able to.
That's the whole point of the explanations: to show why classes are ranked how they're ranked and promote a more nuanced understanding of inter-class balance.


Sure, any role will a tier 4 or 5 class can fill will probably be able to do it better than the incarnate, but while that class will have to invest it skills and feats to do it and will have class features that aid with it, the Incarnate can just casually fill it by changing their melds and binds. The ability to be competent at something for near 0 investment is something no tier 4 or 5 class can really match.
In the original incarnate thread, didn't we have this same argument? Someone was saying that the incarnate does crappy damage compared to a rogue because the rogue just needs to buy like a 12th level item and take specific feats to optimize thrown weapons and use consumables in every encounter, and then pow, look at these numbers, your incarnate who has spent zero build resources can't compete with this.

[Bucky]

How are the PCs specc'ed?
Let's handwave the issue and say the DM lets you all rebuild after choosing the NPC companion.


Spellthief, not close, because the other two are just not as interesting to play. It's also more powerful, of course.

The point of making the character an NPC in that question was to factor away the "interesting to play" aspect; here, any time spent managing the NPC is time not spent playing your own character.


The meta-question is, of course, "which currently-T4 and T5 classes can actually pull weight as the fifth wheel of a T1 party, and does that imply they should be tiered higher?"

[Efrate]

No because while spellthief is an action multiplier for a caster party if They work together, on its own it's significantly less impressive. T1s do not need help. Looking around t3 it gets more interesting

[Gnaeus]

I’m a little bit afraid that the voting system, as it continues, is introducing a bit of systemic bias in the form of pushing borderline classes up a tier.

I’m not sure how to solve but just to clarify what I mean. Classes are tiered based on equivalent optimization. So, let’s say that my favorite class is monk, or truenamer, or knight, or marshall. Their playstyle complements mine and I know all the tricks. And legitimately, because as JaronK always said varying optimization can easily shift a tier. So anyway I know all the cool things my favorite class can do, so probably when I play that class it is a tier higher than when I play another class of that tier. Because I’ve playtested it and read guides and searched for tricks and now I see the way I play that class as representative. But I’m not necessarily fairly grading it compared to other classes of that tier or the next tier up or down that aren’t my favorite class.

In general voting that should more or less cancel out. Many of us voted on most classes. Or at least most classes with which we are reasonably well acquainted (like, personally I didn’t vote on incarna classes because no one ever played them in a game I was in, but I probably voted on most or all others). So assuming (which isn’t probably true) a more or less equal favored class distribution you will, (maybe) get every class ranked a bit above where it should be but comparatively the numbers should be relevant.

So then once you’ve posted everything, the only new votes are likely to be outliers. No one is going to come in and say “yes I agree knight is tier 5. Add my vote.” But if knight is my favorite class I may well see post, get offended, and jump in with a vote for Knight as T4. Especially with the border cases I would predict slow walks toward higher tiers. Just something to watch for and factor in when we compare what the results mean.

[pabelfly]

Maybe, so I've seen quite a few games use JaronK's suggestion for partial gestalt. This is more accurate in my opinion than his, but if we were to use that suggestion to help balance. It could be helpful to have a quick, hey, if your campaign goes from 3-7 maybe binder can gestalt its kinda lame at those levels, or mystic ranger really shouldn't be able to.

Tiers are the broadest of generalizations. A DM should be looking at the individual character design and optimization in much more detail than what such a broad overview of the entire 3.5 system can allow.

[Lans]

The Incarnate not having enough skills to function as a scout or as an any other role which can be performed by skills shows a serious lack of understanding about the Incarnate. If there is one thing the incarnate is not missing, it is skills. The Incarnate has enough skill boosters built into the class to be only shortly behind dedicated skill monkey at higher character levels in their bonus, and that is assuming the Incarnate doesn't CC any skills, which Incarnates can do if they so choose. All of this is without getting into the bonuses or abilities the Incarnate can get from binding their soulmelds to a chakra. And this is all doable without investing any of your permanent resources into these. (Albeit, move silently is one of the few melds Incarnate has to pick up with a feat from off of the totemist list, such as through worg pelt or Kruthick claws if they want to boost it really high).
In order to be an effective scout you need hide, move silently, search, spot, listen, and disable device. At level 6 you have 4 soulmelds, and 6 points of essentia. You can get 1 above or below what a stealth character would have from its skills, depending on whether your meld starts with +2 or 4, but you only have 6 essentia so you can only max 2 of them, 3 if you choose an incarnum race and grab bonus essentia. You fall behind every level you go up till hit 12 where your behind 3-5 points or


Also, the Incarnate can deal solid damage. At low levels, binds are powerful attacks or you can get a souped up weapon off of incarnate weapon easily that puts you ahead of the curve at lower levels (And this requires no feats or ability scores to really do). Starting at mid levels and at high levels, unless you are super focused LN or NE Incarnate, your damage will fall behind others. However, by this time, you'll have build be operational and will be doing whatever you want it to do. You'll have a character build and be able to swap stuff around to fill niches or have special abilites that can be useful in any given meeting.

Incarnates are fine at low levels, but as they level up they fall behind.

[Troacctid]

In order to be an effective scout you need hide, move silently, search, spot, listen, and disable device.
Since when are Search and Disable Device needed for scouting? Those are trapfinding skills. That's not the same thing.

The Niche Ranking System includes six skill-based niches: Trapfinder, Thief, Scout, Sage, Party Face, and Curiosity. Incarnates have soulmelds that help with four of the six.

[Gnaeus]

Since when are Search and Disable Device needed for scouting? Those are trapfinding skills. That's not the same thing.

If you are sneaking down the hall, and you miss the alarm trap, your scouting was a failure and your move silently was worthless. And of course if the trap kills you you just die.

[Troacctid]

What if there are guards at the gate demanding ID? Are Bluff, Disguise, and Forgery scouting skills too? And you might have to sneak past guard dogs, so maybe we better add Handle Animal while we're at it. And Open Lock, of course, because you can't scout past a locked door. Oh, and Spellcraft, because knowing about magical threats is important too. Add all Knowledges in order to identify any monsters you spot, maybe some Appraise to tell if the treasure is valuable...etc. Pretty soon you need every skill to be a scout.

[zfs]

I’m a little bit afraid that the voting system, as it continues, is introducing a bit of systemic bias in the form of pushing borderline classes up a tier.

I’m not sure how to solve but just to clarify what I mean. Classes are tiered based on equivalent optimization. So, let’s say that my favorite class is monk, or truenamer, or knight, or marshall. Their playstyle complements mine and I know all the tricks. And legitimately, because as JaronK always said varying optimization can easily shift a tier. So anyway I know all the cool things my favorite class can do, so probably when I play that class it is a tier higher than when I play another class of that tier. Because I’ve playtested it and read guides and searched for tricks and now I see the way I play that class as representative. But I’m not necessarily fairly grading it compared to other classes of that tier or the next tier up or down that aren’t my favorite class.

In general voting that should more or less cancel out. Many of us voted on most classes. Or at least most classes with which we are reasonably well acquainted (like, personally I didn’t vote on incarna classes because no one ever played them in a game I was in, but I probably voted on most or all others). So assuming (which isn’t probably true) a more or less equal favored class distribution you will, (maybe) get every class ranked a bit above where it should be but comparatively the numbers should be relevant.

So then once you’ve posted everything, the only new votes are likely to be outliers. No one is going to come in and say “yes I agree knight is tier 5. Add my vote.” But if knight is my favorite class I may well see post, get offended, and jump in with a vote for Knight as T4. Especially with the border cases I would predict slow walks toward higher tiers. Just something to watch for and factor in when we compare what the results mean.

But as a counterpoint, the classes at the margins are the ones where new votes are more important - I missed voting on Druid and Cleric, but does it help the system to add another Tier 1 vote to both? Meanwhile, lots of those classes that most people don't care about got very few votes. Sohei had 5 votes before I contributed mine - is 5 votes really enough to say its a community consensus?

[Gnaeus]

What if there are guards at the gate demanding ID? Are Bluff, Disguise, and Forgery scouting skills too? And you might have to sneak past guard dogs, so maybe we better add Handle Animal while we're at it. And Open Lock, of course, because you can't scout past a locked door. Oh, and Spellcraft, because knowing about magical threats is important too. Add all Knowledges in order to identify any monsters you spot, maybe some Appraise to tell if the treasure is valuable...etc. Pretty soon you need every skill to be a scout.

Yeah, some of those ARE important. But falling into traps both jeopardize your mission and your life. Disable might not be necessary but search/trap finding are musts if you want to be a decent scout. You can scout until you reach the locked door. You can’t scout until you reach the trap you can’t detect. But yes, all that is why, for example, PF skill consolidation helps rogues be better scouts.

[Gnaeus]

But as a counterpoint, the classes at the margins are the ones where new votes are more important - I missed voting on Druid and Cleric, but does it help the system to add another Tier 1 vote to both? Meanwhile, lots of those classes that most people don't care about got very few votes. Sohei had 5 votes before I contributed mine - is 5 votes really enough to say its a community consensus?

It might be a consensus of people who are familiar with Sohei. I agree 5 votes doesn’t seem like a very solid rating but that’s a different problem. But the point is that I think you will get skewed results if the only people voting are those who disagree with placement.

[zfs]

It might be a consensus of people who are familiar with Sohei. I agree 5 votes doesn’t seem like a very solid rating but that’s a different problem. But the point is that I think you will get skewed results if the only people voting are those who disagree with placement.

Sure, but if people disagree with the tier creep they can vote to counter it. I'll put it this way - I'd rather have Sohei at Tier 5 with 20 votes than Tier 4 with 7 votes.

[LordCharlemagne]

In order to be an effective scout you need hide, move silently, search, spot, listen, and disable device. At level 6 you have 4 soulmelds, and 6 points of essentia. You can get 1 above or below what a stealth character would have from its skills, depending on whether your meld starts with +2 or 4, but you only have 6 essentia so you can only max 2 of them, 3 if you choose an incarnum race and grab bonus essentia. You fall behind every level you go up till hit 12 where your behind 3-5 points or


Incarnates are fine at low levels, but as they level up they fall behind.

If you need 6 skills maxed out to be an effective scout, then all of the familiars or animal companion guides that say X is a good familiar/animal companion for scouting must be lying through their teeth. Disable device on a scout? Disabling a trap takes 2d4 rounds. I don't know about you, but remaining in place for 2d4 rounds while sneaking around where traps would be probably means your going to fail at the whole not getting caught thing (and let's not even talk about heavily trapped areas where there is more than one trap). Not to mention that if your DM throws magic traps at you, unless you have trapfinding (which Incarnates can pick up through a chakra bind if one so chooses), you're just outta luck, on finding them & disabling them. Also, being behind only 1 skill point for over 10 levels is pretty fine for 0 investment. If you really want to fill the role to the maximum, you can also sink skill points into it. Incarnates are pretty fine with CC skills.

And one can argue search isn't necessary for a scout, seeing as there is the whole full-round action to search a 5 foot square, which means to scout with the skill will take actual minutes to do it. Granted, I've never seen a DM be this strict with the Search skill, but if your goal as a scout is to go in and gather information, if you have to spend several minutes bumming around searching every nook and cranny, then as a whole stealth isn't really necessary to explore in the situation.

But in serious, according to that logic, you need 6 skills as class skills (+being maxed out) + a specific class feature found on less than a dozen classes to be an effective party scout.


Also, can you give examples of the Incarnate falling behind? I'm interesting to see how, as you've stated several times it to be true but haven't actually stated how.

Also, seeing as we've been talking about the incarnate number wise, there is a saved thread on ENWorld "Incarnate by the numbers" that breaks down the Incarnate by the numbers. (I tried to link it, but the forum had a hissy fit).

[Gnaeus]

If you need 6 skills maxed out to be an effective scout, then all of the familiars or animal companion guides that say X is a good familiar/animal companion for scouting must be lying through their teeth. Disable device on a scout? Disabling a trap takes 2d4 rounds. I don't know about you, but remaining in place for 2d4 rounds while sneaking around where traps would be probably means your going to fail at the whole not getting caught thing (and let's not even talk about heavily trapped areas where there is more than one trap). Not to mention that if your DM throws magic traps at you, unless you have trapfinding (which Incarnates can pick up through a chakra bind if one so chooses), you're just outta luck, on finding them & disabling them..

Again, disabling is less important than spotting. But yes, I’ll agree that trapfinding is very important to a good scout.

The reason Familiars make good scouts is that most traps won’t get set off by a tiny creature, especially a flier, and if the enemy finds a rat or a bat in most environments it doesn’t give away your party.

[Sutr]

Tiers are the broadest of generalizations. A DM should be looking at the individual character design and optimization in much more detail than what such a broad overview of the entire 3.5 system can allow.

When used that way they become more of a scaffolding for the conversation about power levels. Its no big deal, I'll probably just copy the original post and add some asterisks if I decide to run that game. Also reverse the numbers for ease of reference.



I’m a little bit afraid that the voting system, as it continues, is introducing a bit of systemic bias in the form of pushing borderline classes up a tier.


I’m not sure how to solve but just to clarify what I mean. Classes are tiered based on equivalent optimization. So, let’s say that my favorite class is monk, or truenamer, or knight, or marshall. Their playstyle complements mine and I know all the tricks. And legitimately, because as JaronK always said varying optimization can easily shift a tier. So anyway I know all the cool things my favorite class can do, so probably when I play that class it is a tier higher than when I play another class of that tier. Because I’ve playtested it and read guides and searched for tricks and now I see the way I play that class as representative. But I’m not necessarily fairly grading it compared to other classes of that tier or the next tier up or down that aren’t my favorite class.
In general voting that should more or less cancel out. Many of us voted on most classes. Or at least most classes with which we are reasonably well acquainted (like, personally I didn’t vote on incarna classes because no one ever played them in a game I was in, but I probably voted on most or all others). So assuming (which isn’t probably true) a more or less equal favored class distribution you will, (maybe) get every class ranked a bit above where it should be but comparatively the numbers should be relevant.

So then once you’ve posted everything, the only new votes are likely to be outliers. No one is going to come in and say “yes I agree knight is tier 5. Add my vote.” But if knight is my favorite class I may well see post, get offended, and jump in with a vote for Knight as T4. Especially with the border cases I would predict slow walks toward higher tiers. Just something to watch for and factor in when we compare what the results mean.

Other problems also exist people could have bias based on JaronK's system. Wouldn't people also occasionally vote against classes that they specifically hate. I mean specifically, I'm not voting samurai and soulborn as tier 6. I want too but they aren't quite as bad as warrior/commoner.

Possible solutions
1: Everyone required to vote on everything (has scores of its own problems)
2: Requiring at least one vote at each tier.
3. Minimum number of votes.

Not seriously suggesting this it would be a lot of work to go back to, and very weird to add in.

[pabelfly]

When used that way they become more of a scaffolding for the conversation about power levels. Its no big deal, I'll probably just copy the original post and add some asterisks if I decide to run that game. Also reverse the numbers for ease of reference.

Hmm... how would you like to see the tier system used?

[Sutr]

Its kinda got a life of its own at this point, how I want it used isn't really important. I just thought denoting it with an asterisk would help new people finding this thread that some classes jump more.

[Anthrowhale]

I recalled another reason why Spontaneous Cleric is so much fun---it's the cleric level 2 spell 'Substitute Domain'. For a spontaneous cleric, this allows you to swap out your spells known on the fly for other domains of a chosen deity. So a Spontaneous Cleric of Pelor (a baseline choice) would have an effective spells known of:

1 Bless, Color Spray, Cure Light Wounds, Disrupt Undead, Divine Favor, Endure Elements, Enlarge Person, Goodberry, Hypnotism, Nimbus of Light, Protection from Evil, +5 chosen
2 Aid, Bless Weapon, Bull's Strength, Cure Moderate Wounds, Deific Vengeance, Eagle's Splendor, Enthrall, Heat Metal, Hypnotic Pattern, Status, Substitute Domain, +4 chosen
3 Create Food and Water, Cure Serious Wounds, Heroism, Magic Circle against Evil, Magic Vestment, Prayer, Recitation, Searing Light, +4 chosen
4 Castigate, Cure Critical Wounds, Discern Lies, Divine Power, Fire Shield, Holy Smite, Imbue with Spell Ability, Spell Immunity, Tongues, Widened Faerie Fire, +4 chosen
5 Dance of the Unicorn, Dispel Evil, Flame Strike, Greater Command, Holy Sword, Mass Cure Light Wounds, Mass Reduce Person, Rainbow Pattern, Rary's Telepathic Bond, Righteous Might, +4 chosen
6 Bolt of Glory, Blade Barrier, Fires of Purity, Fire Seeds, Forbiddance, Geas/Quest, Heal, Heroes' Feast, Rainbow, Stoneskin, +3 chosen
7 Bigby's Grasping Hand, Greater Heroism, Holy Word, Prismatic Spray, Refuge, Regenerate, Repulsion, Righteous Wrath of the Faithful, Sunbeam, +3 chosen
8 Bigby's Clenched Fist, Demand, Crown of Glory, Greater Spell Immunity, Holy Aura, Mass Cure Critical Wounds, Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion, Scintillating Pattern, Sunburst, +3 chosen
9 Bigby's Crushing Hand, Gate, Greater Visage of the Deity, Mass Charm Monster, Mass Heal, Storm of Vengeance, Summon Monster IX (Good only), Prismatic Sphere, Prismatic Wall, +3 chosen

...so long as you can accept the cost of casting Substitute Domain. The bulk of spells shouldn't impress to much, but there are several spells in there that you suddenly don't otherwise need to spend spells known on.

[Dimers]

...so long as you can accept the cost of casting Substitute Domain. The bulk of spells shouldn't impress to much, but there are several spells in there that you suddenly don't otherwise need to spend spells known on.

Funny, I was just discovering that trick myself today. Substitute Domain is quite nice for flexibility, no question, but the 10 minute casting time is a meaningful limitation. You can prep for tomorrow but not for the fight in the next room. I guess it gets a lot better with Scribe Scroll or the like.

Also, it feels cheesy, but that's completely subjective. :smallamused:

[Anthrowhale]

Funny, I was just discovering that trick myself today. Substitute Domain is quite nice for flexibility, no question, but the 10 minute casting time is a meaningful limitation. You can prep for tomorrow but not for the fight in the next room. I guess it gets a lot better with Scribe Scroll or the like.

Also, it feels cheesy, but that's completely subjective. :smallamused:

For wizards, leaving some slots open for mid-day memorization is considered a good tactic. This is a bit faster but it requires expending a level 2 spell.

The scroll version is something like Rary's Arcane Conversion, except as a level 2 spell (instead of level 6) with a scroll expenditure and a domain constraint.

It's not outlandish, although it's clearly powerful in the "nearly required" sense that Natural Spell is. However, it's probably not required as the _first_ chosen 2nd level spell---you might consider delaying a level or two until the opportunity cost of using level 2 spells is not to high (and stock up on scrolls in compensation).

I looked through the original thread---it seems Substitute Domain was not mentioned.

In addition to enhancing Spontaneous Cleric and Evangelist, this also essentially removes the many-domains advantage of the Evangelist relative to the Spontaneous Cleric. The Evangelist gets roughly an extra spell/day while the Spontaneous Cleric gets Turn Undead, the ability to cast domain spells a level earlier, and heavy armor proficiency.

[Lans]

If you need 6 skills maxed out to be an effective scout, then all of the familiars or animal companion guides that say X is a good familiar/animal companion for scouting must be lying through their teeth.

ACs are a renewable resource. Familiars more expendable, and even then I would not send them out unless its off a beguiler.



Disable device on a scout? Disabling a trap takes 2d4 rounds. I don't know about you, but remaining in place for 2d4 rounds while sneaking around where traps would be probably means your going to fail at the whole not getting caught thing (and let's not even talk about heavily trapped areas where there is more than one trap). Not to mention that if your DM throws magic traps at you, unless you have trapfinding (which Incarnates can pick up through a chakra bind if one so chooses), you're just outta luck, on finding them & disabling them. Also, being behind only 1 skill point for over 10 levels is pretty fine for 0 investment. If you really want to fill the role to the maximum, you can also sink skill points into it. Incarnates are pretty fine with CC skills.

How about at level 7 explain your 0 investment incarnate scout layout. I've already stated why I don't think it does it as well as people think. Maybe you can move me from my .25 BAB and 2 skills/level short of tier 3 stance.


And one can argue search isn't necessary for a scout, seeing as there is the whole full-round action to search a 5 foot square, which means to scout with the skill will take actual minutes to do it. Granted, I've never seen a DM be this strict with the Search skill, but if your goal as a scout is to go in and gather information, if you have to spend several minutes bumming around searching every nook and cranny, then as a whole stealth isn't really necessary to explore in the situation.

I'm assuming at the very least a search and listen on any door or window that the scout may go through.



But in serious, according to that logic, you need 6 skills as class skills (+being maxed out) + a specific class feature found on less than a dozen classes to be an effective party scout.
Yes, there is a reason all the scouty classes get a bunch of skill points, and most get trapfinding.


Also, can you give examples of the Incarnate falling behind? I'm interesting to see how, as you've stated several times it to be true but haven't actually stated how.

Also, seeing as we've been talking about the incarnate number wise, there is a saved thread on ENWorld "Incarnate by the numbers" that breaks down the Incarnate by the numbers. (I tried to link it, but the forum had a hissy fit).
I already stated how they fall behind in damage and oppositional skills,

[Troacctid]

How about at level 7 explain your 0 investment incarnate scout layout. I've already stated why I don't think it does it as well as people think. Maybe you can move me from my .25 BAB and 2 skills/level short of tier 3 stance.
Mage's Spectacles, do it with UMD. 🤷

If that's not your cup of tea, then Cerulean Sandals to blip through walls + Soulspark Familiar to actually do the seeing and hearing.

[Lans]

Mage's Spectacles, do it with UMD. 🤷



I'm not the biggest fan of relying on UMD to do things, and using it for scouting is off enough that I'm even less of a fan of it.


If that's not your cup of tea, then Cerulean Sandals to blip through walls + Soulspark Familiar to actually do the seeing and hearing.

That might work, tell me more.

[Buufreak]

I'm not the biggest fan of relying on UMD to do things, and using it for scouting is off enough that I'm even less of a fan of it.


Just because you aren't a fan of an option doesn't negate the fact that it is viable. UMD is what makes many classes even remotely competent.

[Gnaeus]

Just because you aren't a fan of an option doesn't negate the fact that it is viable. UMD is what makes many classes even remotely competent.

That’s a good way of saying many classes aren’t even remotely competent. Reliance on specific gear you can’t make is a hallmark of low tier classes. It requires player skill, resources, and a non guaranteed play environment.

[Buufreak]

That’s a good way of saying many classes aren’t even remotely competent. Reliance on specific gear you can’t make is a hallmark of low tier classes. It requires player skill, resources, and a non guaranteed play environment.

The same could be said about all game mechanics. The dm could rule that the table didn't rp enough and no one gets experience. The dm can also rule with that silly finding treasure rule and bump the party straight to 20 for finding the world's biggest dragon hoard. The entire game is based on ifs, the point of tiers is seeing who can consistently be the most competent, regardless of situation. UMD, by itself, helps to increase competence. Having a built-into-class means of spontaneously or daily boost UMD by about a dozen points helps to increase competence.

[LordCharlemagne]

I was avoiding bringing up UMD because any build can go down the UMD use/abuse path if they really want to. The Incarnate is one of the classes that have an easier time doing so and can pull it off earlier than most (which absolutely counts for something), but I wasn't personally going to be going down the math of that because it's just a deep rabbit hole.


ACs are a renewable resource. Familiars more expendable, and even then I would not send them out unless its off a beguiler.

Are you saying soulmelds aren't? That's actually what they are. You use up some of your resources you can recover to gain a set of abilities. You can then invest Essentia into or out of them with a swift action for greater or different bonuses.


Maybe you can move me from my .25 BAB and 2 skills/level short of tier 3 stance.

Well, first, Warmage, Shugenja, Warlock, Binder, Dragonfire Adept, Healer, Duskblade, & Psychic warrior all either have have 1/2 BAB or 2 skill points per level, so that's kind of an arbitrary benchmark to hold tier 3 classes to.

Unless you're saying that the class is tier 4 because it falls just short of tier 3 by .25 BAB and 2 skills/level, where in that case, what? You can straight up buy 3/4 BAB with the skillful weapon enhancement (a +2 weapon enhancement so the it costs a starting value of ~18,000 to start with a +1 Skillful weapon). It ain't cheap but it ain't end-game weapon material, and only some LN and NE incarnate builds really want it (CN bow users would, but we don't touch Incarnate bow users without multi-classing).

And let's not discuss the fact that BAB is an overrated number that people screw themselves trying to get when in reality it is a small bonus that only really matters at 6th & 8th level to get the one extra attack that has a serious impact on total power.

Also, skills are nice and all, but holding a class down a tier because it would really like slightly more, especially for a class that has a really dumb amount of skill manipulation abilities already, is just strange.


How about at level 7 explain your 0 investment incarnate scout layout. I've already stated why I don't think it does it as well as people think.

I'm busy today, but I'll see what I can throw together tomorrow when I have more time. I will admit that Scout is probably the only skill role that the incarnate cannot do with 0 investment, primarily because the hide & move silently soulmelds are on the totemist list (AFB, but Worg pelt and Kruthik claws are the ones I'm talking about). Would you want me to invest a feat to pick up one of those soulmelds to stick with the scouting role, switch to a different skill role, or stick to this specific skill role for 0 long term investment? I'm down to try whichever one.

[Troacctid]

That might work, tell me more.
That's it, that's the whole plan. If you're really hung up on it, any character can take the Bind Vestige feat chain or put on a third eye.

[Gnaeus]

The same could be said about all game mechanics. The dm could rule that the table didn't rp enough and no one gets experience. The dm can also rule with that silly finding treasure rule and bump the party straight to 20 for finding the world's biggest dragon hoard. The entire game is based on ifs, the point of tiers is seeing who can consistently be the most competent, regardless of situation. UMD, by itself, helps to increase competence. Having a built-into-class means of spontaneously or daily boost UMD by about a dozen points helps to increase competence.

The DM could. But crazy extreme examples, like crazy extreme builds, aren’t relevant to class comparisons. Normal play environments are. Some games have magic mart. Some don’t. Some games have something in between, like rolling to see if specific gear is available. Some games are on deserted pirate islands or involve characters losing gear. Would you rather I cite published games or games I’ve been in because I can easily do either.

Is a character with UMD better than one that isn’t? Yes! Even in a random drop game being able to use items is better than not. Maybe better by more because that funky wand you’d rather have sold might be your best solution to an otherwise easy problem like invisible badguys or flying enemies.. Does a low WBL or restricted magic mart game punish low tier characters disproportionately? Absolutely! It’s one of the best reasons not to do that. But for really truly I swear because I was there one of the main arguments about why rogue is T4 when JaronK was doing this a decade ago is that rogues can’t guarantee their class powers working against common foes without cheap items like wand chambers, level 1 swift action wands and weapon crystals.

[Lans]

Are you saying soulmelds aren't? That's actually what they are. You use up some of your resources you can recover to gain a set of abilities. You can then invest Essentia into or out of them with a swift action for greater or different bonuses.

If an Animal companion is detected and killed its a 1 day no cost replacement, if the incarnate gets detected and killed its game over. Or at least a lost level till true res becomes available.




Well, first, Warmage, Shugenja, Warlock, Binder, Dragonfire Adept, Healer, Duskblade, & Psychic warrior all either have have 1/2 BAB or 2 skill points per level, so that's kind of an arbitrary benchmark to hold tier 3 classes to.

Unless you're saying that the class is tier 4 because it falls just short of tier 3 by .25 BAB and 2 skills/level, where in that case, what? You can straight up buy 3/4 BAB with the skillful weapon enhancement (a +2 weapon enhancement so the it costs a starting value of ~18,000 to start with a +1 Skillful weapon). It ain't cheap but it ain't end-game weapon material, and only some LN and NE incarnate builds really want it (CN bow users would, but we don't touch Incarnate bow users without multi-classing). Yes, but while your spending that much money on shoring up your weakness another character could be spending that money on other things or becoming better at hitting things. It also assumes you have access to that item.


And let's not discuss the fact that BAB is an overrated number that people screw themselves trying to get when in reality it is a small bonus that only really matters at 6th & 8th level to get the one extra attack that has a serious impact on total power. If the incarnate had a bunch of natural attacks, or something like the manticore belt, or a flurry type ability, it would be less of an issue. Or if it got a more damage or riders on its damage abilities.



Also, skills are nice and all, but holding a class down a tier because it would really like slightly more, especially for a class that has a really dumb amount of skill manipulation abilities already, is just strange. Well, I put a bar which its not reaching with its skill manipulation abilities. So it could reach tier 3 if those were better.


I think its really close to tier 3, it getting bonus feats like a wizard, a little more essentia and 1 more capacity to essentia, or a little bit better soulmelds could also put it over.



I'm busy today, but I'll see what I can throw together tomorrow when I have more time. I will admit that Scout is probably the only skill role that the incarnate cannot do with 0 investment, primarily because the hide & move silently soulmelds are on the totemist list (AFB, but Worg pelt and Kruthik claws are the ones I'm talking about). Would you want me to invest a feat to pick up one of those soulmelds to stick with the scouting role, switch to a different skill role, or stick to this specific skill role for 0 long term investment? I'm down to try whichever one.

Try to do the scouting role with out being pigeon holed into it. Does that sound reasonable?

[AnimeTheCat]

If an Animal companion is detected and killed its a 1 day no cost replacement, if the incarnate gets detected and killed its game over. Or at least a lost level till true res becomes available.
The animal comp a union is distinctly lacking in the communication and reasoning department. Animal companions, as far as I know, never possess trapfinding or trap sense, so they're far from effective scouts, not to mention if the animal companion doesn't belong in the place it's scouting that's still suspicious (wolves dont typically delve in to caves alone, riding dogs aren't typically found in the wild, fleshrakers are pack animal endogenous to jungles... you get my point hopefully). Further, an incarnate is a PC, so usually more intelligent than an animal of above average intelligence for an animal (but still just an animal) and thusly should be more aware of situations and more able of withdrawing in an intelligent manner. Animal companions and familiars are not acceptable, nor are they competent, scouts.


Yes, but while your spending that much money on shoring up your weakness another character could be spending that money on other things or becoming better at hitting things. It also assumes you have access to that item.

Just like any class depends on any item, except incarnates really don't even need the item because they usually target a lower (on average) AC than most higher BSB classes which more than compensates. Additionally, when they don't, I cant think of a situation where other soulmelds wouldn't be used as an equalizer (+1 or more incarnate weapon, bloodwar gauntlets, bluesteel bracers... there are a lot of melee attack boosters). You prioritize what you're going to do, only incsrnstes can change what they do from day to day, and that's not something other T4 classes can do, that is something T1 classes can do though.


If the incarnate had a bunch of natural attacks, or something like the manticore belt, or a flurry type ability, it would be less of an issue. Or if it got a more damage or riders on its damage abilities.
they don't need that though. Bards are a quintessential T3, they dont put up 1d6/level damage. By your benchmark of damage bards should be T4 or lower. Damage is not everything and the damage Incarnates put up makes them plenty competent to meaningfully contribute in nearly every situation if given even a cursory level of preparation.


Well, I put a bar which its not reaching with its skill manipulation abilities. So it could reach tier 3 if those were better.
You put a bar that many T3 and T4 classes can't achieve. Dedicated scout's do, but no one else can. I dont feel that "equivalent to a dedicated member of that specific role" defines "competent", especially since one of the definitions of competent is "acceptable and satisfactory, though not outstanding." Competence is more akin to being able to do some task with relative reliability, which an incarnate can do with nearly every role.


I think its really close to tier 3, it getting bonus feats like a wizard, a little more essentia and 1 more capacity to essentia, or a little bit better soulmelds could also put it over.

you can pick up feats with your character level feats that increase your capacity on one soulmeld for the day and you can grab the feat that gives you an additional soulmeld. On the topic of the Shape Soulmeld feat, it was discussed in another thread (not the original tier thread, but a build help one) about how the Shape Soulmeld fest interacts with Meldshaper classes. For instance, does the fest grant a meldshaper what is essentially an additional soulmeld shaped for the day, but that can only be used for that specific soulmeld selected by the feat? That's how it works for non meldshapers, so why would it work differently for meldshapers. Regardless, it takes one feat to be a competent scout:


Try to do the scouting role with out being pigeon holed into it. Does that sound reasonable?

level 7... 5 soulmelds, 2 binds, crown, feet, hands chakras open. Just with some cursory optimization, i.e. picking obviously good choices from the book the class is in, race: azurin, bonus feat:shape soulmeld(Worg Pelt), other feats: irrelevant, skill investments: irrelevant (though knowledge skills are quite nice), soulmelds shaped (3+worg pelt): truthseeker goggles (brow), dissolving spittle (throat), fellmist robe (soul), worg pelt (feet), soulmelds bound (2): (hands) theft gloves, (crown) soulspark familiar. That solidly covers scouting, damage, and rudementary survival (the ability to hide in your own fellmist robe), on top of providing an additional scout at the same opportunity cost as an animal companion, except it's better in a few ways since it has a higher Int and innate flight (perfect maneuverability). With you attacking with a full power dissolving spittle and with soulspark familiar fully charged for attack and damage, you'll get off 3d6 acid and 1d6+5 soul blast. 4d6+5 damage with literally no feat investment is only 1d6 behind a medium rogue with no feat investment and 20 strength sneak attacking with a short sword (1d6 sword +4d6 sneak attack + 5 strength), or probably about equal to a more reasonable rogue (shortsword with 12-14 strength). You're hitting comparable numbers to a rogue on your skills (maxed melds gets you 8 or 10+attribute, so max ranks at 7 is 10, you're either equal to or 2 behind). That's plenty competent, but bonus points, it didn't cost you permanent build resources (save one very useful feat that is helpful beyond just scouting) and you're not pigeons in to it because the next day you can shape a whole new set of melds without missing a beat. If you so desired, you could invest more heavily into your dissolving spittle damage, though I really don't think that's necessary personally. Most T1 classes aren't dropping 1d6/level, and many T2 aren't by proxy of that. I know druids and clerics aren't except at the highest levels of optimization, so neither are favored souls, spontaneous clerics, urban druids, spontaneous druids, spirit shamans, etc. Heck, even wizards aren't really either, though that's more to do with their actions being more bound to debilitating the enemy. I think you can see my point. Can they out power the big dogs, no. Do they bring more to the table than a T4 class, yes in nearly every situation only lagging behind ever so slightly in raw numbers, but excelling ever so far ahead in versatility.

[Lans]

The animal comp a union is distinctly lacking in the communication and reasoning department. Animal companions, as far as I know, never possess trapfinding or trap sense, so they're far from effective scouts, not to mention if the animal companion doesn't belong in the place it's scouting that's still suspicious (wolves dont typically delve in to caves alone, riding dogs aren't typically found in the wild, fleshrakers are pack animal endogenous to jungles... you get my point hopefully). Further, an incarnate is a PC, so usually more intelligent than an animal of above average intelligence for an animal (but still just an animal) and thusly should be more aware of situations and more able of withdrawing in an intelligent manner. Animal companions and familiars are not acceptable, nor are they competent, scouts.

I don't care either way about the animal companion, but I don't think the druid is going to have a fleshraker doing scouting.




Just like any class depends on any item, except incarnates really don't even need the item because they usually target a lower (on average) AC than most higher BSB classes which more than compensates. Additionally, when they don't, I cant think of a situation where other soulmelds wouldn't be used as an equalizer (+1 or more incarnate weapon, bloodwar gauntlets, bluesteel bracers... there are a lot of melee attack boosters). You prioritize what you're going to do, only incsrnstes can change what they do from day to day, and that's not something other T4 classes can do, that is something T1 classes can do though.


It's a matter of needing general items vs specific item from a specific book, as well as opportunity cost of the money and not using incarnate weapon.


they don't need that though. Bards are a quintessential T3, they dont put up 1d6/level damage. By your benchmark of damage bards should be T4 or lower. Damage is not everything and the damage Incarnates put up makes them plenty competent to meaningfully contribute in nearly every situation if given even a cursory level of preparation.


By the definition of T3 is
very good at solving a couple of problems and competent at solving a few more. Of course, there are other possibilities, for example that you might instead be competent at solving nearly all problems.


I don't think it reaches very good at anything, so it needs to be competent at nearly all problems. Which it is not by my definition of competent. Whether Bards hit either benchmark or not relevent to the incarnate's standing.



You put a bar that many T3 and T4 classes can't achieve. Dedicated scout's do, but no one else can. I dont feel that "equivalent to a dedicated member of that specific role" defines "competent", especially since one of the definitions of competent is "acceptable and satisfactory, though not outstanding." Competence is more akin to being able to do some task with relative reliability, which an incarnate can do with nearly every role.

I think most classes don't need to because they fit the first definition of tier 3, and I don't know exactly what is meant by 'competent at solving nearly all problems' but that leaves room for missing out on solving at least 1 problem.

A dedicated scout is going to have a higher skill than just its ranks.



you can pick up feats with your character level feats that increase your capacity on one soulmeld for the day and you can grab the feat that gives you an additional soulmeld. On the topic of the Shape Soulmeld feat, it was discussed in another thread (not the original tier thread, but a build help one) about how the Shape Soulmeld fest interacts with Meldshaper classes. For instance, does the fest grant a meldshaper what is essentially an additional soulmeld shaped for the day, but that can only be used for that specific soulmeld selected by the feat? That's how it works for non meldshapers, so why would it work differently for meldshapers. Regardless, it takes one feat to be a competent scout:
Yes, I am obviously aware of those. Still think it falls short. If it expanded all your melds it might do it, or it could show a deficiency in essentia.




*Snip* Ill need to look over this later to see if its not missing a skill, or coming up short on essentia.

Edit- It looks like you don't have spot or listen, so I'll assume your using the soulspark familiar to cover that aspect? It comes up a little bit short on what I would want in that aspect, but I think you can aid other on those. Or 2 rolls vs 1. Your damage should be a d6 higher. I think if fellmist robe is giving you cover to hide in then its gong to be a little noticeable. SSF can't scout like an AC due to its tether to you.

Overall its pretty good, but it doesn't get any better till level 12, but I'm convinced to put it in to tier 3.5. It's not hitting Tier 3 past level 7, but it's extremely high tier 3 for the first few levels.

[AnimeTheCat]

I don't think it reaches very good at anything, so it needs to be competent at nearly all problems. Which it is not by my definition of competent. Whether Bards hit either benchmark or not relevent to the incarnate's standing.

On mobile, so I'll probably respond more at length later, but this bolded part. What you're saying is definitely not true. A bard is a great comparison to make for the incarnate. It does not excel at anything in particular, but can be reasonably competent at nearly all things, much like the claim of the incarnate. My thoughts are if the incarnate can hit that same level of general competence as the bard, then they should be in the same general power level as each other. So, from my point of view using the bard as a reference point and a point of comparison is in fact very much relevant.

[Troacctid]

I don't think it reaches very good at anything, so it needs to be competent at nearly all problems. Which it is not by my definition of competent. Whether Bards hit either benchmark or not relevent to the incarnate's standing.
Reminder though that that's descriptive, not prescriptive. Simply being better than every T4 class, or at least one T3 class, is sufficient for a T3 ranking.

[Buufreak]

Reminder though that that's descriptive, not prescriptive. Simply being better than every T4 class, or at least one T3 class, is sufficient for a T3 ranking.

Is it? I've seen plenty of rating systems where being at the top of your class doesn't necessity belonging in the next higher class. I also don't believe that last clause is in the tier definitions, old or new.

[remetagross]

I’m a little bit afraid that the voting system, as it continues, is introducing a bit of systemic bias in the form of pushing borderline classes up a tier.

I’m not sure how to solve but just to clarify what I mean. Classes are tiered based on equivalent optimization. So, let’s say that my favorite class is monk, or truenamer, or knight, or marshall. Their playstyle complements mine and I know all the tricks. And legitimately, because as JaronK always said varying optimization can easily shift a tier. So anyway I know all the cool things my favorite class can do, so probably when I play that class it is a tier higher than when I play another class of that tier. Because I’ve playtested it and read guides and searched for tricks and now I see the way I play that class as representative. But I’m not necessarily fairly grading it compared to other classes of that tier or the next tier up or down that aren’t my favorite class.

In general voting that should more or less cancel out. Many of us voted on most classes. Or at least most classes with which we are reasonably well acquainted (like, personally I didn’t vote on incarna classes because no one ever played them in a game I was in, but I probably voted on most or all others). So assuming (which isn’t probably true) a more or less equal favored class distribution you will, (maybe) get every class ranked a bit above where it should be but comparatively the numbers should be relevant.

So then once you’ve posted everything, the only new votes are likely to be outliers. No one is going to come in and say “yes I agree knight is tier 5. Add my vote.” But if knight is my favorite class I may well see post, get offended, and jump in with a vote for Knight as T4. Especially with the border cases I would predict slow walks toward higher tiers. Just something to watch for and factor in when we compare what the results mean.

I agree with this too. For example, Troacctid, you definitely know how to pull off a Warlock that ends up Tier 3, but doesn't the Warlock have quite a low power floor due to the easy-to-fall-in trap of picking crappy Invocations? I've never played a Warlock, so I can't say for sure, but my gut feeling is that a Warlock screwed by an unaware player is going to end up worse than, say, a Warblade screwed by an unaware player. So far Warlock is ranked slightly below the means for Tier 3, which seems quite OK to my gut assessment, but if Warlock-proficient people come in and start voting en masse for Warlock as Tier 3, that might shift its ranking upwards in a way that is biased towards a higher optimization level that what is the case for other classes.

[Gauntlet]

Comparing Incarnate to the Bard, then:

Stealth

Incarnate can get to +8-10 on stealth skills at level 6 via soulmeld, but only if they spent a feat on getting access to a meld from the Totemist list. This +10 number doesn't increase further till 11, though, and they're stuck with cross class skill ranks.

Bards have Hide, and Move Silently in-class and the skill points to fuel them. They have easy access to Invisibility and Silence, and later on get Clairaudience/Clairvoyance and Scrying.

Bard wins

Perception/Trapfinding

Incarnate's Keeneye Lenses and Truthseeker Goggles cover scouting stuff, and can get Trapfinding if required, through Theft Gloves.

Bards need to jump through hoops to get access to much trapfinding at all. In fact, I think the most direct way of getting trapfinding is by taking Shape Soulmeld and Open Least Chakra, although they probably don't have the feats unless nobody else in the party is suited to it. They also have Listen but not Spot in-class, and are unlikely to have a good Wisdom modifier.

Incarnate wins

Combat
Incarnate can deal 5d6 as a ranged touch attack or on a melee strike at level 6, which doesn't increase till 6d6 at level 11. If you're investing resources in it, you can double Acidic Spittle values with Share Soulmeld, but this often requires dipping.

Bard has a baseline of Inspire Courage +1, +2 at 8th, and doesn't reach +3 until 14th, which is underwhelming. This scales with party size, summons and similar effects, and has a lot of resources available for improving it - with a modicum of investment (masterwork instrument, badge of valor, inspirational boost) it reaches much more relevant values, and there's the option of going further with Dragonfire Inspiration, Song of the Heart and Words of Creation.

In terms of contribution to overall damage output, Incarnate is probably slightly ahead as a baseline, but Bard scales far better with system mastery and with resource investment.

Draw

Social

Incarnates can get +8-10 from soulmelds with little effort, and they get at-will Suggestion at level 14. With some cross-class skill ranks, they're probably looking at approximately +15 to a social skill they're focusing on by level 6, up to around +20 by level 11.

Bards have all the social skills on their class list, their primary attribute is Charisma, and they have a huge array of social spells on their list along with a variety of universal skill-boosting stuff. They hit similar values of around +15 at level 6 without major investment, but scale up more quickly than the Incarnate and can supplement with both spell options and bardic music, including Glibness.

Bard wins

Durability

Incarnates have Constitution as their primary attribute, a d6 hit die, medium armor proficiency, and can gain another +4-6 AC from soulmelds along with some save bonuses, and good Fort and Will saves. They also have access to Spellward Shirt and can actually get legitimiately useful amounts of SR out of it - 21 at 6th, up to 25 at 11th.

Bards lose some HP each hit die from not prioritising Con, and probably 5-8 AC from lack of medium armor and soulmelds, before spells. Base saves are also slightly lower (probably lower ability modifiers, but they keep two good saves and Savage Bard has the same Fort/Will). In exchange, Bards get the Cure spell line (and Healing Hymn), and can supplement personal resilience with effects like Mirror Image and Instant of Power.

Draw

Utility

Incarnates have some other out of combat skills they can use - short range flight or teleportation, access to Use Magic Device, Detect Magic, minor minionmancy with Soulspark Familiar, and some on-demand immunities including disease and mind control. They have a reasonable selection of options for avoiding getting shut down by the enemy, but in terms of proactive options for resolving non-violent encounters and problems their only real options are skill checks.

Bards have a spell list with encounter ending powers on it of many forms, from Alter Self to Dispel Magic to Remove Curse to Silent Image. Even disregarding spellcasting, Bardic Knowledge brings a lot of utility, and noncombat skills are also something a Bard excels at.

Bard wins



Overall, it looks to me like in terms of ability to be a 'jack of all trades', an Incarnate is able to mundanely contribute to most tasks, but has nowhere near the encounter-ending ability that a Bard has. A bard only needs to know Improvisation to be able to exceed the Incarnate's ability on most skill related challenges (when combined with their skill points) and then has a whole spell list full of ways to supernaturally bypass challenging tasks in addition to that. IMO there is a reasonable subset of problems which an Incarnate is not really capable of solving - mostly, those that are magic related. As far as skill checks go, while an Incarnate's ability to do most skills at ~+10 is nice, hiring two first level experts (4 ranks, skill focus, aid another) gets you a +9 (or more) modifier in whatever it is you need if that's required - replicating the effects of a spell list is far more difficult and costs a lot more money.

[HouseRules]

Since the range of votes is from 1.000 to 6.000, then we have 6-1 = 5, and 6 categories, so each category should be 5/6, not 4 categories with an arbitrary width of 1 and the top and bottom categories with a width of 1/2.

Tier 1 Upper Bound 1.000 Lower Bound 1.834
Tier 2 Upper Bound 1.833 Lower Bound 2.667
Tier 3 Upper Bound 2.666 Lower Bound 3.500
Tier 4 Upper Bound 3.499 Lower Bound 4.334
Tier 5 Upper Bound 4.333 Lower Bound 5.167
Tier 6 Upper Bound 5.166 Lower Bound 6.000

Each tier has the same width in possible range.
This is more meaningful than arbitrary X.5 system.

[Luccan]

Is it? I've seen plenty of rating systems where being at the top of your class doesn't necessity belonging in the next higher class. I also don't believe that last clause is in the tier definitions, old or new.

Well, it's either that a class that is better than another T3 class is at least T3 or that T3 class should be T4. Surely that's sound. Yeah, being at the top of T4 doesn't make you T3, but if we agree it's better than a class we also agree is T3... Which we don't necessarily, but I don't think the idea in itself is flawed.

[LordCharlemagne]

Well, AnimeTheCat beat me to the punch about dotting out a scout, so props to them. If you want spot and you're not worried about lack of concealment, you can swap out fellmist robes for Keeneye lenses for spot. If you truly want to, you can also take shape soulmeld(dissolving spittle) to branch your attack meld off of your class, but that's a stretch and I wouldn't suggest it.

About the skillful weapon enhancement, I only brought that up because you can just buy BAB. And Incarnates don't need it if they don't want to (dissolving spittle or lightening gauntlets can have you covered). I was just bringing it up because complaining about BAB mattering for a classes tier is an outdated thought. BAB is nice and helpful at some levels, but the obsession over it really needs to die. Incarnates are by far super chill with their gear. They're not gear independent like tier 1 & 2's are, but they are by far able to work with less optimal gear then any of the other tier 4 classes (besides maybe shadowcasters, but that class just has a leveling issue at the levels that matter the most that holds it back).

Also, on the Incarnate vs Bard comparison, the Bard definitely beats out the Incarnate, no competition. However, in the quick comparison above, the Incarnate is capable of being in a draw with the bard. I think that speak favorably of the Incarnate, that it can do of equal measure or be a bit behind the bard, a core class book that has support across nearly every book in 3.5 in some way, while the Incarnate has its own book it was introduced in later on, some dragonmagic stuff, and one or two web articles.

And talking about the floor of the Incarnate is strange. The class's floor isn't great, but in a practical sense, nobody who isn't going to optimize it isn't going to play an Incarnate. It's not a core or complete book class, it's in a niche book that a large amount of people will simply say they have no idea about how it works. The only people who are going to play incarnate are going to be the people who have actively decided they want to try their hand at that awkward 3.5 class. Not saying this should factor into its tier, but you can't really talk about the Joe Schmoe's incarnate because they're simply isn't one.


hiring two first level experts (4 ranks, skill focus, aid another) gets you a +9 (or more) modifier in whatever it is you need if that's required - replicating the effects of a spell list is far more difficult and costs a lot more money.

I just want to point out that using a class independent trick that is easily performed is by no means a good way to devalue the class, seeing as they can do it to. Also, some skills you can't practically hire experts for.

I do agree that Bard > Incarnate. Incarnate are definitely on the worse side tier 3 in my opinion, but I don't feel that you can have the Incarnate and the Totemist in different tiers because when you get down to it, they are quite similar.


I’m a little bit afraid that the voting system, as it continues, is introducing a bit of systemic bias in the form of pushing borderline classes up a tier.

This voting system most definitely has systemic bias in it. People tend to vote for the classes that they know, and if you know a class, you are probably going to vote higher or lower than what it truly is because of it. Not to mention that there are outside forces at work too. I only voted because Troacctid asked me too when I posted my opinions in the Mike Miller's discord (I don't like forums). If our opinions on some of the subject really differed, I may not have been asked. And we can't tell what is going on with other people that may bias them, because TTRPG's are a highly personalized thing. Each group has their own subculture and although there is cross spread, it's slow.
The question is that is there a better way to create a tier list that has involvement from the community and not just the opinion of one individual, like what we had with the old one.

[Buufreak]

Well, it's either that a class that is better than another T3 class is at least T3 or that T3 class should be T4. Surely that's sound. Yeah, being at the top of T4 doesn't make you T3, but if we agree it's better than a class we also agree is T3... Which we don't necessarily, but I don't think the idea in itself is flawed.

Right, being better than another 3 makes sense to be a 3, but only if it is completely quantified and not just in a single category of gameplay. What I'm saying is your middle point: being king of the 4s doesn't make you a 3. Same goes for any and every other tier.

[AnimeTheCat]

Comparing Incarnate to the Bard, then:

Stealth

Incarnate can get to +8-10 on stealth skills at level 6 via soulmeld, but only if they spent a feat on getting access to a meld from the Totemist list. This +10 number doesn't increase further till 11, though, and they're stuck with cross class skill ranks.

Bards have Hide, and Move Silently in-class and the skill points to fuel them. They have easy access to Invisibility and Silence, and later on get Clairaudience/Clairvoyance and Scrying.

Bard wins
Ok, so this bard has now spent 1 skill point per level on hide and move silently, as well as two/three/four spells known on invisibility, silence, and scrying, so at the comparison level of 6, you've spent 1/3 of your class granted skill points, and all but one of your spells known for this particular niche, potentially locking yourself out of suggestion, shatter, alter self, blur, calm emotions, detect thoughts, cure moderate wounds, heroism, hold person, glitterdust, minor image, mirror image, and tongues except in the form of magic items which is another build resource you'll have to expend for those. Ok, sure, bard can win this one. I'll give that. But they're losing so much in opportunity cost that it's pretty ridiculous.

As for getting the feat from the totemist list, this is still superior to literally any other class taking the feat as Incarnates have the essentia to back up the choice to take those feats, as well as the binds to support it as well. Taking the shape soulmeld feat for pretty much any worthwhile soulmeld is never a bad idea. further, there is still only a single feat permanently invested on behalf of the Incarnate compared to a very substantial investment on the part of the bard.


Perception/Trapfinding

Incarnate's Keeneye Lenses and Truthseeker Goggles cover scouting stuff, and can get Trapfinding if required, through Theft Gloves.

Bards need to jump through hoops to get access to much trapfinding at all. In fact, I think the most direct way of getting trapfinding is by taking Shape Soulmeld and Open Least Chakra, although they probably don't have the feats unless nobody else in the party is suited to it. They also have Listen but not Spot in-class, and are unlikely to have a good Wisdom modifier.

Incarnate wins
no comment on this except I don't think both keeneye and truthseeker can be taken at once, and I personally find search more important than spot when scouting ahead, though that can be taken from both directions. Either way, if the bard does decide to invest in these skills for some reason, that's another skill point per skill per level, so now you're potentially at either all of your skill points spoken for (disable device, search, listen, open lock...) so now you're down to bonus skill points from race or int which is likely, but is no longer a benefit of the class but a benefit of optimization choices. The incarnate, on the other hand, has no permanent investment other than the first feat in the first part of the comparison. This is a stronger win than you're letting on in my opinion.


Combat
Incarnate can deal 5d6 as a ranged touch attack or on a melee strike at level 6, which doesn't increase till 6d6 at level 11. If you're investing resources in it, you can double Acidic Spittle values with Share Soulmeld, but this often requires dipping.

Bard has a baseline of Inspire Courage +1, +2 at 8th, and doesn't reach +3 until 14th, which is underwhelming. This scales with party size, summons and similar effects, and has a lot of resources available for improving it - with a modicum of investment (masterwork instrument, badge of valor, inspirational boost) it reaches much more relevant values, and there's the option of going further with Dragonfire Inspiration, Song of the Heart and Words of Creation.

In terms of contribution to overall damage output, Incarnate is probably slightly ahead as a baseline, but Bard scales far better with system mastery and with resource investment.

Draw
Sorry, but "I make my allies deal +1/+2/+3 damage" is not the same as contributing to the combat. But let's investigate. With no feat investment at level 6, an incarnate can deal 3d6 damage per round simply by shaping either lightning gauntlets or dissolving spittle (max essentia by level 2, incarnate expanded essentia capacity +1). Those are against touch AC, so BAB isn't particularly an issue there. Then, as stated before, you can shape a soulspark familiar giving an additional 1d6+2+X (X=3 at this point because X is the number of essentia invested) and it has an effective range of 15 feet (10 feet for how far away the familiar can be, 5 feet for attack range) so there's 4d6+5 probable damage with no permanent investment using only class options (and not even particularly powerful ones). So, that's an average of 19 damage per round assuming 100% accuracy across 2 attacks (so unlikely, but not impossible considering the AC targeted and the attack bonus granted to the familiar).

Bard. You're getting some weapon damage and, if melee, strength bonus. Oh, and your +1 from inspire courage. Now you're on to investing permanent resources. Masterwork or better weapon/instrument, specific magic item, specific feat, alternate class features, and even with all of that, you're still doing what, +3 damage? +1d6? I'm not familiar with a lot of bard optimization, but it sounds to me like you're building very specifically and expending a lot of resources for that.

In terms of ending the combat sooner, how exactly is the bard equalizing the utter lack of damage output? I don't see this as a draw except when you factor in the rest of the party's contributions, which isn't a bonus to the bard it's more of a negative. The bard needs lots of others to maximize their contribution while the Incarnate doesn't. That doesn't mean the Bard isn't contributing, just that the incarnate is contributing more without investing any permanent resources.


Social

Incarnates can get +8-10 from soulmelds with little effort, and they get at-will Suggestion at level 14. With some cross-class skill ranks, they're probably looking at approximately +15 to a social skill they're focusing on by level 6, up to around +20 by level 11.

Bards have all the social skills on their class list, their primary attribute is Charisma, and they have a huge array of social spells on their list along with a variety of universal skill-boosting stuff. They hit similar values of around +15 at level 6 without major investment, but scale up more quickly than the Incarnate and can supplement with both spell options and bardic music, including Glibness.

Bard wins
Yes, bards are the socialites of the D&D world. They have Gather information, diplomacy, bluff, sense motive, all on their class list. So there go 4 more skill points per level (now at or possibly over the number granted by the class, relegating you to either high int and race choices or you've already used some of them) and you're locked in to those. Plus, "without major investment" is still investment of permanent resources that you must do and an incarnate does not. This incarnate has used one feat, that's all. keep that in mind. I don't know what "non-major investment" you're talking about, but I'm guissing it's skill points, magic items, and spells. You only have one level 2 spells left to pick, you don't have level 3 spells yet (and I can think of better bard spells than glibness to take), so you've got your level 1 and 0 spells to use. What do you pick up? charm person? that's 1/4 of your level 1 spells known and the DC is pretty easy to beat without investment (or is just useless because of spells, immunities, or not effecting the right creature type).

+8-+10 with no other investment, plus any charisma modifier... That's solid enough for most social encounters, especially since social encounters rarely have life or limb on the line. But sure, bards are better at the thing bards are geared towards, though it does cost them permanent build resources to do so.


Durability

Incarnates have Constitution as their primary attribute, a d6 hit die, medium armor proficiency, and can gain another +4-6 AC from soulmelds along with some save bonuses, and good Fort and Will saves. They also have access to Spellward Shirt and can actually get legitimiately useful amounts of SR out of it - 21 at 6th, up to 25 at 11th.

Bards lose some HP each hit die from not prioritising Con, and probably 5-8 AC from lack of medium armor and soulmelds, before spells. Base saves are also slightly lower (probably lower ability modifiers, but they keep two good saves and Savage Bard has the same Fort/Will). In exchange, Bards get the Cure spell line (and Healing Hymn), and can supplement personal resilience with effects like Mirror Image and Instant of Power.

Draw
So, you're going to use the savage bard ACF? well, now you can't take or use items of comprehend languages without it being a wondrous item, and you're illiterate and without read magic, so you can't use scrolls unless you invest 2 more skill points (you're starting to run low on skill points), and you've lost out on 2 skills that are more widely useful than survival (speak language is especially useful on a social bard). So, you've made your social schtick more difficult, increased the number of resources you need to use, and restricted your spells (removing some common and useful ones) to... give yourself good fort saves. That seems worthwhile i guess. But yes, build resources some more. You either need to spend money on cure wands or take the spell as a spell known. You can't supplement personal resilience with mirror image, you already took silence and invisibility so you can stealth better. That is, unless you want to give one of those up in order to moderately improve your survival. You're far more squishy with far fewer options available to you, and all of your options cost you permanent build resources. I can see maybe a stretch for a draw, but at the same time... I'm really not seeing a draw here. An incarnate is definitely more durable than a bard.


Utility

Incarnates have some other out of combat skills they can use - short range flight or teleportation, access to Use Magic Device, Detect Magic, minor minionmancy with Soulspark Familiar, and some on-demand immunities including disease and mind control. They have a reasonable selection of options for avoiding getting shut down by the enemy, but in terms of proactive options for resolving non-violent encounters and problems their only real options are skill checks.

Bards have a spell list with encounter ending powers on it of many forms, from Alter Self to Dispel Magic to Remove Curse to Silent Image. Even disregarding spellcasting, Bardic Knowledge brings a lot of utility, and noncombat skills are also something a Bard excels at.

Bard wins
No to alter self, you've used those spells known for silence, invisibility, or mirror image. That is, of course, unless you're spending more WBL for a wand of that too. You've spent a lot of money on a lot of magic items. Silent image is far from an encounter ender. Encounter preventer, maybe. Ender... how... Dispel magic doesn't come online until level 7, and even then you only get 2 3rd level spells with 0 castings per day innately. Otherwise, if you don't take the spell that's just more magic items you need to do what you claim bards are super good at. Bardic Knowledge is good stuff, to be sure. But, if you want the +2 synergy bonus, you'll be investing even more skill points (which you're running low on) in to knowledge. On top of that, Incarnates get knowledge skills too. I even think investing in them is probably the best thing incarnates can do with their class granted skill points because of how useful they are in general (and can't easily be covered with soulmelds like Spellcraft can). But... you've invested in hide, move silently, diplomacy, bluff, sense motive, (literacy I assume), knowledge (history)... you're over class granted skill points. If you throw in listen and cross class search.. you're pretty deep in the intelligence and race choice hole. What noncombat skills are you adding to that growing list of skill investments.

dispel magic just a magic item away, just like it is for the bard (unless you're using up more spells known). In fact, anything the bard can do by virtue of spells, an incarnate can feasibly do, and without permanent investment aside from money. But let's set that aside. What in the Bard's arsenal can be changed on the fly? What if you're party isn't dungeon delving or social encountering that day, but is rather just fighting? Incarnates can throw all of the skill choices above to the wind and focus entirely on combat damage and effectiveness. The next day, focus entirely on something new. Going on a ship? let me shape sailor's bracers and assist with sailing. Bard, did you invest in profession sailor? no... well, sing your song of encouragement and make me better at what I'm already competent doing. Oh, I know, maybe you can help calm the animals on board down. Wait... you don't have handle animal? Ok, well the incarnate has it so that's ok. Just keep singing your song. Quick, we're fighting undead. Bard use your magics to distract them! wait... you mean your spells don't effect mindless creatures and don't effect undead... uhm... ok it's a good thing I have armguards of disruption today, quick sing that song that makes me better at what I'm already competent at.

I don't think the day-to-day utility of the incarnate is being given a fair evaluation in your comparison. If anything, this is a draw or perhaps leaning towards the incarnate since very few resources have been expended to reach this point.


Overall, it looks to me like in terms of ability to be a 'jack of all trades', an Incarnate is able to mundanely contribute to most tasks, but has nowhere near the encounter-ending ability that a Bard has. A bard only needs to know Improvisation to be able to exceed the Incarnate's ability on most skill related challenges (when combined with their skill points) and then has a whole spell list full of ways to supernaturally bypass challenging tasks in addition to that. IMO there is a reasonable subset of problems which an Incarnate is not really capable of solving - mostly, those that are magic related. As far as skill checks go, while an Incarnate's ability to do most skills at ~+10 is nice, hiring two first level experts (4 ranks, skill focus, aid another) gets you a +9 (or more) modifier in whatever it is you need if that's required - replicating the effects of a spell list is far more difficult and costs a lot more money.

The thing is, how is a bard being an encounter ender when they're built the way you described building them, and if they're not, you're clearly sinking in a lot of money to replicate your own spell list. The magical subset of problems that an incarnate "can't solve" can only be solved if that particular bard has the particular spell on their particular spell's known list. Otherwise they need a magic item just like the Incarnate, so that's hardly a fair assessment of a bard's magical problem solving ability. Maybe one specific bard can solve that one specific problem, but can they solve all the others? unlikely. The thing is, the incarnate is able to do the things those two experts can do, then the next day do something different, and again the next day. And, the incarnate will be more likely to survive, not to mention this is not taking binds in to account. At high levels, incarnates get gate 1/week, something a bard never gets. That alone gives an incarnate high level punching power that bards never get. at every level of play, the incarnate can find some way to contribute something even if it has no feat or skills invested in doing anything at all. That can't be said for the bard because once a bard is locked in to something, they're locked in to it. I'm not talking about making bad feat and skill choices with an incarnate, I'm talking about literally not making ANY choices for those things and only shifting soulmeds and essentia. Sure, with no feats you lose hide/move silently. But as you already pointed out, invisibility and silence are spells and you know what an incarnate gets? UMD that can be throttled pretty well as a soulmeld. again, this is if you literally DON'T PICK FEATS, you can still contribute. That optimization floor is substantial and should absolutely be accounted for during tier assignment.

[Gauntlet]

The thing is, the Bard can choose to invest resources in any of stealth/social/combat/utility and utterly outclass the Incarnate in that department. But they don't have to.

Both the Bard and the Incarnate need to invest only a small number of resources to be reasonably good at stealth. For the incarnate, it's a feat. For the Bard, it's maybe a sixth of your base skill points (before int or race), and taking spells like Invisibility or Alter Self and Improvisation which are good choices in many other situations too. That leaves them even at early levels. Spending a spell known on Invis isn't exactly a waste even if you never need to infiltrate somewhere. Spells known are also a lot easier to get with money than feats are.

Then the Bard gets to add on top of that the fact that they have the option - if they want to - of being actually very good at stealth, by investing a whole 2 skill points per level in it and maybe one additional spell known.
Later on the Bard pulls far ahead, whether in skill points, the scaling of existing options, and the ability to bypass the problem entirely regardless of skill checks with magic.

So an incarnate can reasonably do 20 damage if all their attacks hit. A Bard who's considered combat only minimally - a single level 1 spell known and less than 25% of their WBL - gives themselves and their allies +4 to hit and damage, which is more impactful than the Incarnate in most parties, especially given that people at this point have iteratives, offhand attacks, and summoned allies. If they've actually invested relevant resources - like Song of the Heart or Dragonfire Inspiration - they can be giving the team +6 or more, or +6d6 on every attack. The reason I marked combat as draw is that Bard's baseline is maybe slightly behind Incarnate, but it scales far better with optimization and with allies. If you're considering solo encounters (why? D&D is not intended to be a solo game), I'm pretty sure a Hold Person into a CdG is better than anything an Incarnate does, if you're optimizing for solo play.

Durability - Incarnates have more raw numbers, yes. But Bards have far more ways of obviating the possibility of attacks at all, and improve the durability of the whole party rather than just themselves. At 6, an Incarnate has around 48 HP to the Bard's 30 or so, and a bit more AC, but a Bard can cast Invisibility. This only gets more skewed as levels increase because other than by being a big ball of hitpoints the Incarnate doesn't really get many ways to not get beaten up by the monster of the week, where the Bard gets more and more of them.

Regarding optimization floor, you're right that the Incarnate can contribute to most scenarios and not be completely worthless. But at the same time, their ceiling is just so low. Pretty much every class in tier 3 or above has ways of breaking the game wide open that don't require you to wait until absurdly high levels for your 1/week Gate to get there. Bards can obliterate social encounters, negate the need to make skill checks entirely, and bend reality to their will in a variety of ways. Even the lower end of T3 has stuff that does similar things - PsyRogues and Lurks gets Hustle to break the action economy and other similarly game-bending powers, while bringing a chassis that still has respectable numbers. An Incarnate has good numbers but just doesn't do anything to move beyond that - linear, head-on interaction with the game is in the tier 4 realm in my opinion.

[AnimeTheCat]

To outclass the incarnate, the bard HAS to choose to invest permanent resources in to that designated role. Regardless of the role. As for the improvisation spell, at level 20 you're getting +10 2 times per casting. That's what the level 7 incarnate is getting all day every check. So, comparing same level, you NEED skill investment to match the incarnate with 1 feat choice in that niche. Also, if you expand your spell list with magic items, then why can't the incarnate do the same? Now the incarnate has a wand of improvisation on top of skill checks. So unless you bard can literally do all of those things, can you really say it's doing all of those things better than the incarnate? I admit any one bard designated to do a specific task can do it better than the incarnate (with only 1 feat selected) can, but can that very same bard do all of the other things just as well as the bard? Does it matter if you beat the diplomacy DC by 2 or 20? No, because it's a flat DC. Does every bard grant +6d6 fire damage to allies, or just some? Because every incarnate can deal the damage presented in my earlier post, and with investment they can deal more.

The reason I considered solo is because this is a discussion of the classes alone, not parties. The same bard that took invisible, alter self, and improvisation can't also take hold person. They don't have enough spells known unless they dip further in to WBL.

So, with regards to durability, do ability damage reduction, energy resistance, immunity to mind effecting, concealment, ranged damage reduction, damage reduction, short distance teleportation, and spell resistance not count? Incarnates have more than just HP as defenses, and those can be changed day to day.

But in your last paragraph you said it yourself, "the Incarnate can contribute to most scenarios and not be completely worthless." That's literally the second definition of the tier. Competence isn't being the best, it's being able to do it, though not outstanding.

[Troacctid]

Is it? I've seen plenty of rating systems where being at the top of your class doesn't necessity belonging in the next higher class. I also don't believe that last clause is in the tier definitions, old or new.
Yes, it is. It's a straightforward ranking of power.


I agree with this too. For example, Troacctid, you definitely know how to pull off a Warlock that ends up Tier 3, but doesn't the Warlock have quite a low power floor due to the easy-to-fall-in trap of picking crappy Invocations? I've never played a Warlock, so I can't say for sure, but my gut feeling is that a Warlock screwed by an unaware player is going to end up worse than, say, a Warblade screwed by an unaware player. So far Warlock is ranked slightly below the means for Tier 3, which seems quite OK to my gut assessment, but if Warlock-proficient people come in and start voting en masse for Warlock as Tier 3, that might shift its ranking upwards in a way that is biased towards a higher optimization level that what is the case for other classes.
You might be surprised. Remember, if you're screwing up a warlock, you're also likely to screw up whatever other class you might be playing instead, and warlock is much more forgiving in that department than T4 classes are. I always point to the suggested builds in PH2 as examples—even at barebones optimization levels, the warlock in there is a competent support blaster, while the sample builds for rogues, rangers, barbarians, and fighters...uh...struggle.


Combat
Incarnate can deal 5d6 as a ranged touch attack or on a melee strike at level 6, which doesn't increase till 6d6 at level 11. If you're investing resources in it, you can double Acidic Spittle values with Share Soulmeld, but this often requires dipping.

Bard has a baseline of Inspire Courage +1, +2 at 8th, and doesn't reach +3 until 14th, which is underwhelming. This scales with party size, summons and similar effects, and has a lot of resources available for improving it - with a modicum of investment (masterwork instrument, badge of valor, inspirational boost) it reaches much more relevant values, and there's the option of going further with Dragonfire Inspiration, Song of the Heart and Words of Creation.

In terms of contribution to overall damage output, Incarnate is probably slightly ahead as a baseline, but Bard scales far better with system mastery and with resource investment.

Draw
Incarnate also has access to inspire courage +1, and as a swift action. Just saying.


Social

Incarnates can get +8-10 from soulmelds with little effort, and they get at-will Suggestion at level 14. With some cross-class skill ranks, they're probably looking at approximately +15 to a social skill they're focusing on by level 6, up to around +20 by level 11.

Bards have all the social skills on their class list, their primary attribute is Charisma, and they have a huge array of social spells on their list along with a variety of universal skill-boosting stuff. They hit similar values of around +15 at level 6 without major investment, but scale up more quickly than the Incarnate and can supplement with both spell options and bardic music, including Glibness.

Bard wins
In fairness, the number of classes that can outperform bards in this niche might be literally zero. They can out-face anyone, up to and including T1 casters.


Durability

Incarnates have Constitution as their primary attribute, a d6 hit die, medium armor proficiency, and can gain another +4-6 AC from soulmelds along with some save bonuses, and good Fort and Will saves. They also have access to Spellward Shirt and can actually get legitimiately useful amounts of SR out of it - 21 at 6th, up to 25 at 11th.

Bards lose some HP each hit die from not prioritising Con, and probably 5-8 AC from lack of medium armor and soulmelds, before spells. Base saves are also slightly lower (probably lower ability modifiers, but they keep two good saves and Savage Bard has the same Fort/Will). In exchange, Bards get the Cure spell line (and Healing Hymn), and can supplement personal resilience with effects like Mirror Image and Instant of Power.

Draw
Really, you mention Spellward Shirt but not Vitality Belt or Astral Vambraces? Incarnates can just decide to have bigger hit dice whenever they want. They can also get energy resistance as well as immunity to compulsions, ability damage, and negative levels. That's on top of evil incarnates getting zombie meatshields. Incarnates are very good at being tanky. Your defense strategy as a bard is casting mirror image as a standard action and calling it good?

[Gauntlet]

Improvisation gives bonuses 4 times per casting.

You need skill investment to be good at things, yes - but you get skills. You get enough skills and spells to be relevant and useful at pretty much every role in a party. Improvisation gives you four bonuses, not two.

And every incarnate can do the things you mentioned, but not every day. You have to pick which soulmelds you shape each day, too - and even if you get to reshape a couple, and you have several, you still can't change your chakras or your expanded soulmeld capacity choice.

The bard interacts with magic items more positively than the Incarnate. Yes, you can get UMD, but you need to shape it every day if you want to invest into items, which is a non insignifiant cost. It also permanently eats your Brow chakra. Bards don't have to roll for their stuff, but more importantly they can use items in ways an Incarnate can't, because they benefit from items like Runestaffs which actually require you to be a spellcaster in the first place. Their spell list is also very good and well supported in supplements.

This is a discussion of the classes alone, but it's also a discussion of how they fit into the D&D game. The standard premise of the D&D game is that you are a member of a party of characters, not that you're a solo character.

Incarnate defenses still amount to numbers most of the time. They have a solid amount of SR, which is handy, and they can resist everything somewhat, but they are still restricted to mitigating enemy action rather than ignoring it, which is just categorically weaker in 3.5.

'Not completely worthless' doesn't mean 'Average'.

[zfs]

When the tiers "settle," somebody has to end up as the tallest midget. There will be a class that is at the top of Tier 4, and maybe most of us think it's better than every other Tier 4 class, but not enough people thought it was better than any Tier 3 classes.

[Buufreak]

Yes, it is. It's a straightforward ranking of power.


Would you be kind enough to cite that? I just reread the definitions, as well as the over arching purpose and explanation of the tiers, and I didn't find anything that says being the top of class in a tier group necessitates being in the next higher tier. Because, let's be honest, that thought pattern is cyclical and backward, don't you think? If something is at the top of its class, which justifies moving up, then it is now at the bottom of the next. Meanwhile, what was once second dog is now the top, which means it then, too, gets to move up. See the problem?

[AnimeTheCat]

Improvisation gives bonuses 4 times per casting.

You need skill investment to be good at things, yes - but you get skills. You get enough skills and spells to be relevant and useful at pretty much every role in a party. Improvisation gives you four bonuses, not two.
I did bad math. If x=caster level 2x does not equal 2(.5×). It does, in fact, equal 4(.5×). Whoops lol, so still a spell every 4 skill checks is distinctly less good than +8 or +10 without any investment on a wide range of skills.


And every incarnate can do the things you mentioned, but not every day. You have to pick which soulmelds you shape each day, too - and even if you get to reshape a couple, and you have several, you still can't change your chakras or your expanded soulmeld capacity choice.
Sure, not every day, but the next day it can. And you're unlikely to pick soulmelds that cover things already covered by other party members which leads in to the next couple of points.


The bard interacts with magic items more positively than the Incarnate. Yes, you can get UMD, but you need to shape it every day if you want to invest into items, which is a non insignifiant cost. It also permanently eats your Brow chakra. Bards don't have to roll for their stuff, but more importantly they can use items in ways an Incarnate can't, because they benefit from items like Runestaffs which actually require you to be a spellcaster in the first place. Their spell list is also very good and well supported in supplements.

This is a discussion of the classes alone, but it's also a discussion of how they fit into the D&D game. The standard premise of the D&D game is that you are a member of a party of characters, not that you're a solo character.
You're right, bards do interact (marginally) better with magic items, but to do all the things they do NEED them. An incarnate needs 8 hours to completely change gears. Also, you're also right, this isn't a single player game. In the party, the incarnate can flex to fit any missing role with above average proficiency, yet still maintain that flexibility from day to day.


Incarnate defenses still amount to numbers most of the time. They have a solid amount of SR, which is handy, and they can resist everything somewhat, but they are still restricted to mitigating enemy action rather than ignoring it, which is just categorically weaker in 3.5.
Uhm... miss chance 24/7 is categorically in the "ignoring" damage camp as is DR and SR. Though, in what way does th eff bard ignore damage? Is it another permanent spell know choice or is it perhaps a magic item that an incarnate can use too?



'Not completely worthless' doesn't mean 'Average'.

Being slightly worse than a character dedicating lots of resources when you've invested little or none is not what I would call below average. Additional optimization can be done and the blank slate incarnate has the build resources to do so. I've been using an incarnate with only one feat selected as my subject of comparison. No skill points invested, no wealth spent, etc. Day to day resources are renewable, just like for wizards, druids, and clerics. Not arguing incarnates are T1, because that's a no beainer (of course they are, this T3 discussing is laughable... just kidding, hope that read as sarcastic).

[Troacctid]

Would you be kind enough to cite that? I just reread the definitions, as well as the over arching purpose and explanation of the tiers, and I didn't find anything that says being the top of class in a tier group necessitates being in the next higher tier. Because, let's be honest, that thought pattern is cyclical and backward, don't you think? If something is at the top of its class, which justifies moving up, then it is now at the bottom of the next. Meanwhile, what was once second dog is now the top, which means it then, too, gets to move up. See the problem?
The point is a class only needs to be as good as or better than the classes below it, and as bad as or worse than the classes below it. "It's better than every single T4 class" is a perfectly good reason to put a class in T3. "It's worse than every single T3 class" is also a perfectly good reason to put a class in T4. When both statements are true, that's where we get our borderline cases.

[Soranar]

Though I already voted in the original threads, there's 2 classes I'd like to argue about again: the Urban Druid and the Wilder

First, I did the urban druid hanbook which you can find here

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?506218-The-Urban-Druid-Handbook

and I'd like to point out a few things about it

The Urban Druid's spell list is truly excellent (even without sanctified spells) and should warrant a tier 1 status right off the bat IMO

Just compare the Death Master's list to the Urban Druid's, the Urban Druid has something better to cast at just any level
Now add the wildshape features and the fact that you can cast in some armors
On top of it you get a fairly powerful pet

As for the wilder, the issue is not so much the class features, honestly wilder class features are rather terrible except for the d6 hitpoint, x4 skillpoints and CHA based manifesting.

No the ability comes from the powers

Since powers augment super well, you have far more versatility with a single power than any vancian caster has with a low level spell

astral construct is essentially summon monster 1-9 in 1 spell
dominate and or Charm person is similarly versatile (you can augment it to affect a specific type of creature while boosting it's DC while a spell needs to be the adequate spell for every situation)
And a single blasting power can cover all your blasting needs
Finally the dispel power covers all your counterspelling requirements and metamorphosis covers all your other basics

Is your power list limited? Absolutely
Are your powers awesome anyway? Absolutely

If you compare a sorcerer to a wilder
Same casting stat
Better hitpoints
Better skillpoints
Less powers that do more
Ability to cast in armor with shield
Better BAB
Better combat abilities


Now compare the spellcasting:

Delayed spellcasting is not much of an issue due to augmentable powers, your best powers are mostly lower level anyway

Good lower level spells in the vancian system largely become irrelevant at some point. Some spells will maintain a niche status of usefulness but, once they're at that point, magic items often replace them altogether. So while the sorcerer looks more versatile on paper, he's actually not as good in reality

Good Psionic powers, on the other hand, are always relevant. Astral construct is just as useful at the earlier levels than it is at later levels. Metamorphosis, Charm and Dominate remains useful throughout the game too.

Finally being able to break the manifester level early is extremely useful with certain powers: Charm is an ok power at 1 PP
but once you reach 5 PP you can make it last 1 day per caster level.

So a level 3 wilder can augment it to 5 (using a surge) and Charm a character for 3 days and, due to the increased PP the DC of the power goes up by 2.

Try to do something like that with a sorcerer.

Sure, you might get unlucky on your surge but you're probably outside combat anyway so it doesn't matter. Any NPC you encounter by level 3 becomes a potential permanent ally that you only need to brainwash every 3 days.

In the same vein, your astral constructs are both stronger and more durable than any similar summon monster spell cast by a sorcerer.

Can a wilder break the game? Definitely
Does a wilder have multiple ways to break the game? Defintely

The only true advantage a sorcerer has over a wilder is that he has more splat support but, unlike a wilder that uses expanded knowledge, he has no core way to cherry pick the best spells or powers from other classes.

Finally that 3/4 BAB and d6 hitpoint seems irrelevant until you start using metamorphosis

So, all in all, a wilder is

a thing (that could be a bear) through metamorphosis
that summons a thing (again, you could shape it like a bear) through astral construct
while riding a thing (psicrystals can get insane through metamorphosis)
after sending another thing (whatever you charmed or dominated) ahead

I don't see how that's tier 3

[HouseRules]

The Urban Druid's spell list is truly excellent (even without sanctified spells) and should warrant a tier 1 status right off the bat IMO

...

So, all in all, a wilder is

a thing (that could be a bear) through metamorphosis
that summons a thing (again, you could shape it like a bear) through astral construct
while riding a thing (psicrystals can get insane through metamorphosis)
after sending another thing (whatever you charmed or dominated) ahead

I don't see how that's tier 3

If you look at my boundaries using 5/6 steps instead of 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 4.5, and 5.5 as boundaries, but 1.83, 2.66, 3.5, 4.33, and 5.16 as the boundaries instead, then ...
Urban Druid is the weakest Tier 1.
Wilder is the weakest Tier 2.

Tier 1

Cleric: 1
Druid: 1
Sha’ir: 1
Shaman: 1.03
Archivist: 1.06
Wizard: 1.11
Artificer: 1.18
Wu Jen: 1.19
Spontaneous Druid: 1.31
Death Master: 1.55
Generic Spellcaster: 1.66
Spontaneous Cleric: 1.74
Erudite: 1.78
Psion: 1.78
Sorcerer: 1.8
Urban Druid: 1.83

Tier 2

Spirit Shaman: 1.87
Evangelist: 1.88
Mystic: 2
Ardent: 2.2
Dread Necromancer: 2.2
Beguiler: 2.22
Favored Soul: 2.24
Mystic Ranger: 2.51
Wilder: 2.63

Tier 3

Shugenja: 2.83
Bard: 2.92
Trickster Spellthief: 2.95
Jester: 3.07
Totemist: 3.08
Swordsage: 3.09
Warlock: 3.16
Crusader: 3.17
Binder: 3.18
Psychic Warrior: 3.19
Warmage: 3.2
Warblade: 3.26
Dragonfire Adept: 3.28
Healer: 3.31
Wild Shape Ranger: 3.31
Duskblade: 3.34
Factotum: 3.36
Lurk: 3.4
Psychic Rogue: 3.4

Tier 4

Wild Monk: 3.51
Incarnate: 3.58
Shadowcaster: 3.82
Rogue: 3.85
Barbarian: 4
Generic Expert: 4
Generic Warrior: 4
Scout: 4.08
Adept: 4.13
Spellthief: 4.13
Paladin: 4.18
Ranger: 4.19

Tier 5

Ninja: 4.36
Savant: 4.37
Fighter: 4.48
Marshal: 4.52
Sohei: 4.53
Truenamer: 4.59
Hexblade: 4.69
Monk: 4.7
Battle Dancer: 4.73
Divine Mind: 4.75
Mountebank: 4.84
Samurai: 4.85
Dragon Shaman: 4.86
Magewright: 4.94
Swashbuckler: 4.98
Knight: 5.02
Soulborn: 5.05
Noble: 5.05

Tier 6

Soulknife: 5.22
Samurai: 5.27
Expert: 5.34
Aristocrat: 5.76
Warrior: 5.8
Commoner: 6

[StevenC21]

I would like to vote the Shaman as T2, Wizard as T1, and the Wilder T2.

[Troacctid]

[Wilder stuff]
Sorcerers have a better spell list and like 4x as many spells known. Heck, you just rattled off a bunch of powers that aren't even on the wilder's list!

I'll issue the wilder fans here the same challenge I gave in the original thread: show me the set of wilder powers that can outperform a warmage, bard, or warlock, given similar feat selection and itemization.

[Bucky]

Did I not vote on NPC Expert? Put me down as Tier 6. They don't have skill-boosting class features, or class features that give new uses for skills. Even Soulborn get access to several skill-boosting melds and Dragon Shamans get built-in Skill Focus. While Experts have the flexibility to choose skill combinations that aren't usually in-class together, there are a bunch of skills where they simply get shown up by various Tier 5s.

[javcs]

I'm not a big wilder expert, but I'll point out that Bend Reality, Reality Revision, and Psychic Reformation are all wilder powers.
That means they get native access to Wish equivalent powers and the kinds of shenanigans that can spawn, especially since Erudite spell to power is a thing.
They also get native access to the ability to rewrite most of their character sheet every day, if they really want or need to. Multiple times in the same day even, though I'd say that somebody actually using PsyRef on themselves multiple times in the same day tends to suggest that something is going rather poorly.


That's enough, IMO, to get them into T2, and arguably there's a case for lower T1.

They can actually pull off being a Schrodinger's type build with only their native access and without needing to do anything special or questionable or cheesy. It's a touch heavy on XP, perhaps, but entirely doable.

[Troacctid]

Warmages get limited wish too.

Piggy Knowles covered psychic reformation pretty well in the original thread so here's a quote.

I don’t disagree, but they also feel it eating up their fourth level power known slot in a way that psions really do not. It’s a bug, not a feature.

EDIT: Just wanted to expand on what I mean by this. A wilder absolutely appreciates having access to PsyRef because of their limited powers known, but they also hate it at the same time. Realistically, you're talking about levels 6, 7, 8 and 9 where your most powerful option is going to be a single third level power. PsyRef means you can change what that third level power is (at the cost of some XP, which can drag out these levels even further), but doesn't actually get around this issue. That's a really significant chunk of time. Based on my own experiences, in actual real-life playing time, that probably means 10-15 sessions and a time investment of several months. It may not look like that big of a deal written out on a build table, but dead zones like that suck in real life play, to the point where in all likelihood if I were playing one I'd probably rather just take something else as a power known and pray I can get my hands on an item of PsyRef down the road.

I know that tiering doesn't take into consideration how annoying something like this is in an actual game, but I'm just pointing out that PsyRef has some real drawbacks for a wilder in practice, whereas a psion basically never minds having its presence on their powers known list.

[Lans]

Well, AnimeTheCat beat me to the punch about dotting out a scout, so props to them. If you want spot and you're not worried about lack of concealment, you can swap out fellmist robes for Keeneye lenses for spot. If you truly want to, you can also take shape soulmeld(dissolving spittle) to branch your attack meld off of your class, but that's a stretch and I wouldn't suggest it.
That would be better, but its still short listen, but having the soulspark compensates for this, but it has issues with needing to move away and come back, and then communicating with you.


About the skillful weapon enhancement, I only brought that up because you can just buy BAB. And Incarnates don't need it if they don't want to (dissolving spittle or lightening gauntlets can have you covered). I was just bringing it up because complaining about BAB mattering for a classes tier is an outdated thought. BAB is nice and helpful at some levels, but the obsession over it really needs to die. Incarnates are by far super chill with their gear. They're not gear independent like tier 1 & 2's are, but they are by far able to work with less optimal gear then any of the other tier 4 classes (besides maybe shadowcasters, but that class just has a leveling issue at the levels that matter the most that holds it back).
They can buy it if it's available and if they have the money for it. The incarnum progression is scaled a bit off, and it dips off after level 7 or so. It having medium BAB and an extra 2 skill points a level could cover the gap by getting it an extra attack at level 8 and giving it enough skills to drop a couple points in relevent skills.

The belt/boots that gave haste as a free action would have the same effect as the skillful weapon and is in core and is more in the price range.



I do agree that Bard > Incarnate. Incarnate are definitely on the worse side tier 3 in my opinion, but I don't feel that you can have the Incarnate and the Totemist in different tiers because when you get down to it, they are quite similar.

They could be about the same and still be in different tiers. If Incarnate is top of tier 4, the totemist could be bottom of 3 or vice/versa






On mobile, so I'll probably respond more at length later, but this bolded part. What you're saying is definitely not true. A bard is a great comparison to make for the incarnate. It does not excel at anything in particular, but can be reasonably competent at nearly all things, much like the claim of the incarnate. My thoughts are if the incarnate can hit that same level of general competence as the bard, then they should be in the same general power level as each other. So, from my point of view using the bard as a reference point and a point of comparison is in fact very much relevant. The bard is pretty good at mindaffecting effects with its bardic music. It can also be very good at buffing.



Did I not vote on NPC Expert? Put me down as Tier 6. They don't have skill-boosting class features, or class features that give new uses for skills. Even Soulborn get access to several skill-boosting melds and Dragon Shamans get built-in Skill Focus. While Experts have the flexibility to choose skill combinations that aren't usually in-class together, there are a bunch of skills where they simply get shown up by various Tier 5s.

Dragon Shamans and soulborns have 2 skill points a level and doesn't have the skill list to do any role and its skill focus/soulmelds aren't going to change that.

One of the definitions for tier 5 is
Classes here are sometimes very good at solving nearly no problems, or alright at solving a few, or some other function thereof This describes expert to a T. It can be alright at social and scouting with hide, move silently, search, spot,listen for scouting and diplomacy and sense motive . I t could also just take a bunch of obscure skills like decipher script and forgery. The bar for tier 5 is pretty low.

[Dimers]

So, all in all, a wilder is

a thing (that could be a bear) through metamorphosis
that summons a thing (again, you could shape it like a bear) through astral construct
while riding a thing (psicrystals can get insane through metamorphosis)
after sending another thing (whatever you charmed or dominated) ahead

I don't see how that's tier 3

Metamorphosis and astral construct are not in-class. A lot of the good stuff isn't. Wilder's class features do improve some uses of stuff from outside the class, so there's that ... but you can't even take a single instance of Expanded Knowledge until level 6! (At 3rd level, you don't have 2nd-level powers yet, so you can't learn a 1st-level.)

The wilder can, with careful and non-class power selection, address a lot of problems, starting around level 6-8. Address, not solve -- an astral construct doesn't wipe a fight by itself, a strong dispel will help your friends but not end a problem by itself, an attempt at charming someone could backfire when they make their save and even charmed people aren't an answer to all problems, it's possible to run out of power points, your defenses are far from stellar ... By the late game wilder's had the chance to pick up enough non-class powers that it can contribute well in most situations. But not in the sweet spot, and very not at low levels.

@javcs, having to spend XP to perform up to par hides the weakness but doesn't erase it. And a wilder with bend reality is a wilder without mind blank or greater teleport or whatever else fits their build/character. It's horrible how few powers you can get without cheese or burning XP.

[javcs]

The tiers aren't about any one specific build.

They're more about the averaged net potential of possible builds for an equally applied degree of moderate practical OP fu. Over a full 20 levels.


The tiers are not strictly linear. Nor does the bottom of one automatically map to where the top of the next, or vice versa. And higher levels of optimization in specific builds can move that build into being comparable to lower optimization builds in the next tier up.


--

Sure, needing to spend XP on rewriting your character sheet is worse than just needing to prepare a different set of spells.
On the other hand, it is, objectively speaking, not all that much XP per instance of rewriting your sheet, and XP is a river, so they say. And, realistically speaking, you aren't going to be redoing everything very often, and will usually only need to change out one or two powers known at any given time.

In addition, the built in ability to do that as often as you're willing to spend XP is vastly superior to the inability to do so.


And, sure, an item would probably be cheaper in the long run, but if you've got a long enough stretch of downtime, you can PsyRef yourself into a crafter, and make yourself an item of it - and how far back you can go isn't locked by manifester level, but by how much XP you're willing to spend, and going back 20 levels is only 1000 XP split between manifester and subject, so you can future proof it without much difficulty - and then when downtime is over, you can PsyRef yourself back to an adventuring or other version of your sheet.



Wilder absolutely has a crappy floor. On the other hand, they have a respectably high ceiling, and the native ability to rebuild and go from the bottom of their potential to near the top of it - with just one power that's on their class list. That's not some insignificant detail to ignore. It takes no real skill at optimization or splat diving. It's just there.
The psion/wilder list is pretty decent.

At any given time, the wilder is lower T2, but has the potential to be flexible in ways that T2s normally aren't and T1s naturally are.



The wilder is a bit of a screwy edge case.



But can you really justify native access to Reality Revision and PsyRef as T3 or worse? No need for ACFs, PRCs, splat-searching, or any kind of list expansion, just default access.

[remetagross]

Sorcerers have a better spell list and like 4x as many spells known. Heck, you just rattled off a bunch of powers that aren't even on the wilder's list!

I'll issue the wilder fans here the same challenge I gave in the original thread: show me the set of wilder powers that can outperform a warmage, bard, or warlock, given similar feat selection and itemization.

You'll maybe remember I'd provided such a power list, back in the old thread. Gimme a minute and I'll paste it here.

EDIT: actually there were a crapton of power sets that were offered for that purpose. What they were doing, however, was to be able not to outperform a given warmage, bard or warlock but to be on par with said three classes all at the same time. Saying that a given class manages to more or less replicates three Tier 3 classes at the same time amounts to arguing for a degree of versatility on par with what Tier 2 (or at least, high Tier 3) can perform.

We had:


1 - Because after it becomes so much worse than not using it, you can just opt to not use it. The major bonus which was supposed to be what you get as compensation for having so few powers becomes a liability which you simply ignore.


2 - Okay. Trivial build: Wilder 5 / Thrallherd 10 then into some other PrC for the last 5. Get mindlink via Hidden Talent.


I think a full-on Wilder 20 can beat Warmage / Warblade / Bard by cherry-picking powers using feats... let me try:

Level 1: Hidden Talent (Psi Minor Creation)
- Crystal Shard

Level 2:
- Vigor

Level 3: Psicrystal Affinity

Level 4:
- Share Pain

Level 6: Expanded Knowledge (Astral Construct)
- Time Hop

Level 8:
- Psi Dimension Door

Level 9: Expanded Knowledge (Psi Suggestion)

Level 10:
- Psi Plane Shift

Level 12: Expanded Knowledge (Metamorphosis)
- Psi Disintegrate

You're behind what any competent Psion could have done, but I think you're ahead of most T3 classes, including the three listed. You've got a very solid tanking combo, plus you're well set up to exploit sharing a power with your pet rock (hello metamorphosis).

That's all from core. If we extend the build higher, I'd probably want to look at non-core power lists.



Uh. That's actually a rather interesting challenge. I have no idea whether this can be pulled off, but let's see.
For one, Wilders gain 11 powers of the course of 20 levels (not 9) because they gain another one at level 2 and yet another one at level 20.

So...skimming the New, No-Nonsense Guide to Psions and looking at the purple powers...
Level 1: Entangling Ectoplasm, I guess? It remains useful for a long, long time.
Level 2: We have to pick another 1st level power. Maybe there we can mention Psionic Grease?
Level 4: Energy Stun takes great advantage of Wild Surge, and provides with a debuff in addition to damage.
Level 6: Dispel Psionics. Thanks to Wild Surge this will quickly reach the cap of dispelling bonus, so you'll be ahead of the expected caster level on opponent spells. Or maybe Time Hop for utility?
Level 8: Psionic Divination is an all-in-one divination power. Or Psionic Dimension Door?
Level 10: I guess Ectoplasmic Shambler provides with battlefield control.
Level 12: Psionic Disintegrate takes well advantage of Wild Surge, and can be used for a modicum of utility in addition to damage.
Level 14: Nothing seems too great here. Maybe Eyes of the Basilisk or Decerebrate for the save or dies, or Personal Mind Blank.
Level 16: I believe Bend Reality does not cost too much exp at that level and provides with a lot of utility.
Level 18: Dunno. Stygian Conflagration for debuff?
Level 20: That's when I'd take Reality Revision.

So, how does that look? I'd say the raw damage can beat the Warblade, what with Psionic Disintegrate. There's a modicum of BFC, maybe not at the level of a Warmage though. Psionics is ill-suited to buffing allies, so there's no rivalling that part of the Bard, but this power list contains a number of debuffs. Plus Psionic Divination and/or Psionic Dimension Door that can either account for the Bard's intel gathering ability or for those White Raven maneuvers that allow the team to reposition.


With the Educated Wilder it becomes better, though. The Expanded Knowledge you get can grant you Discipline-exclusive powers. How about:
Level 5: Astral Construct. It pairs really well with Wild Surge. Or Psionic Minor Creation, or Charm Person.
Level 9: Hustle, Ectoplasmic Cocoon, False Sensory Input?
Level 13: Schism, or maybe Psionic Dominate. There's also Metamorphosis.
Level 17: Fission, Mass Ectoplasmic Cocoon.

I do feel going from 11 to 15 powers known is a significant improvement in the Wilder's power...

In addition to that, Wilders have 4 skill points/level, are Cha-bases and have all the social skills, so maybe they can afford not to take Psionic Charm Person or Psionic Dominate and Diplomance their way through social encounters.




That was out the top of my head, but sure, I'll try.

Lv1- Psionic Grease / Entangling Ectoplasm
Lv1- Energy Ray
Lv2- Control Sound
Lv3- Telekinetic Force/Touchsight
Lv4- Psychic Reformation
Lv5- Incarnate/Major Creation
Lv6- Temporal Accelaration
Lv7- Mind Blank, Personal
Lv8- Bend Reality/Teleport, Psionic Greater
Lv9- Reality Revision
Lv9- Stygian Conflagration

Expanded Knowledge lv6 - Astral Construct
Expanded Knowledge lv9 - Concealing Amorpha, Greater
Expanded Knowledge lv12 - Metamorphosis / Schism
Expanded Knowledge lv15 - Dominate, Psionic / Clairtangent Hand / Second Chance
Expanded Knowledge lv18 - Astral Seed / Fate of One / Fission / Fusion

Looking at my own list, which is not at all perfect, I'd say the Wilder is a Tier 4.5 until and including level 5. At level 6, they rocket jump their way into Tier 2.5 and stay there until level 20. And that's for standard Wilder. Educated Wilder makes them significantly better.

Now of course it's more like these power lists allow (arguably) the Wilder to hold his own against a Warblade, a Bard and a Warmage at the same time, not really being just as effective as them all. It's still quite an accomplishment. A Psion (inarguably Tier 2) could do much the same, burning extra powers on Charm Person to make up for the lack of social skills, but still coming out on top. So the Wilder is weaker than the Psion, but by how much?

Now, trying to build a Wilder that outright outperforms either a Warlock, a Warmage or a Bard at equal optimization levels...hmm. First, I think there's no way the Wilder is ever going to beat the Bard as far as party buffing goes. Psionics plain suck for that purpose. But beating the Bard at all the other things it excels at? Namely, information retrieval, being a face? I guess that can be done. Pick Psionic Charm Person, and you'v got Persisted Charm Person, Charm Monster all rolled up in one. Also pick Psionic Dominate when the time comes for it through Expanded Knowledge. Psionic Divination and Object Reading cover a lot as far as intel gathering is concerned (you can pick Metafaculty through Expanded Knowledge for the ultimate info gathering power at high levels). Wilders have the same social skills as Bards.
Beating a Warlock at his schtick...well I guess it depends on which Invocations the Warlock picks. Given Wild Surge, the fact they're pretty SAD and their huge pool of power points, Wilders can usually use their powers quite carefree, so I'd surmise they can to an extent replicate the at-will asset the Warlocks have...and then maybe for each Invocation, there's a power to match it?
When it comes to Warmages...Wilders are able to pick whatever energy type they choose when they manifest a direct damage power, which is a huge compression tool that somewhat offsets the sheer number of spells of various elements the Warmages get. Wild Surge once again allows them to break ahead when it comes to dice, as they can break the "1d6/character level" cap. A Wilder could pick Psionic Grease, Energy Stun, Psionic Disintegrate, Ectoplasmic Wall, Control Sound, Telekinetic Force, Energy Wave...

Tell you what, my gut feeling is that the Wilder can not come head and shoulders above any of these three when trying to replicate what they can do (except maybe the Warlock), but can definitely be just as good. At the end of the day, I'm advocation for high Tier 3, rather than Tier 2, but definitely higher than, say, a Binder.


By the late game wilder's had the chance to pick up enough non-class powers that it can contribute well in most situations. But not in the sweet spot, and very not at low levels.


Actually, I kind of disagree here. See, I'm in an ongoing PF campaign where I play a Dreamscarred Press Wilder (just reached level 6), and I've specifically picked all the options and archetypes and stuff to make it match the 3.5 Educated Wilder as much as possible (thanks to Educated ACF, the 3.5 Wilder ends up with roughly the same amount of feats the PF Wilder does). My Wilder is actually extremely powerful at what she does, and I'm refraining myself a little from going all out so as not to overshadow the Monk, Paladin, Rogue and Bloodrager in the party. It all boils down to two reasons.

1. I've picked Obtain Psycristal as a feat, and that nets me a ton of scouting abilities, quite better than what the Rogue can do actually. That's because contrary to Familiars, Psicrystals can have a real, detailed, spoken telepathic conversation with their master, not a mere empathic link. I'm actually refraining from having it pop everywhere and anywhere. That's something any Psionic class can boast, not only the Wilder, sure, but it seems to me a big share of Wilders across all optimization levels will pick that feat. Optimizers because it's so powerful, non-optimizers because it allows them to match the fluff of the Familiar-owning Sorcerer.

2. I've picked Energy Stun as my 2nd-level power known. Thanks to Wild Surge, at level 5 I could pump it to ML 7, augmenting by 4 power points. That meant it dealt 1+4 = 5d6 points of elemental damage (of any type I wanted) to two ennemies per turn (given the 5ft-radius effect), prompting a (Fort of Ref depending on the chosen element) save DC of 20 (10+2 (2nd level power) +1 (Cloak of Charisma) + 4 (Starting Cha 18) +1 (Lesser Aasimar) +2 (augmented by 2 points 2 times)) for half damage, and then again a Will save DC of 20 vs stun. Picking Electricity as the damage type, the saves are increased by 2. Meaning the monsters have to make a Ref save DC 22, and then a Will save DC 22. At level 5, extremely few monsters can pull of such a high save DC. This power was so devastating I was afraid the DM would nerf it. And I had enough power points to cast it at max ML about 8 times a day. I didn't need it though, because Stunned monsters were dispatched by my teammates. And it's a regular Wilder power, not one I got through Expanded Knowledge or anything.

Bonus. In addition, Wilders are Cha-based, have a lot of skill points with nothing much to do with them, and all the social skills. Meaning my Wilder is the party face with maxed out Diplomacy, Intimidate, Sense Motive and Gather Information, more or less by default. Once again, I'd assume a wide range of Wilders out there would invest their skill points in such a manner, even the subpar, non-optimized ones, given there's not much else a Wilder can use their skill points for.

So my character is very good at social interaction, combat, and exploration. And it's not yet the uber-duper optimized character. My other powers are Vigor and Entangling Ectoplasm, but they actually could be quite anything else, including crappy useless choices, because Wild Surge-boosted Energy Stun alone is enough to do the job. All in all, my Wilder could still be the MVP of the party with all but crappy, useless choices apart from that 1 feat and that 1 power. Remove one, the other still allows the Wilder to be very competent at either Scouting and Social, or Combat and Social. Meaning it actually amounts to quite a broad range of optimization level, it's not confined to super-optimized Wilders.

Automatically being an awesome face actually raises the floor of Wilders quite a little, as well as the happenstance of picking at least 1 good power in the whole lot, given how much miileage one can get out of 1good psionic power.

All of that is only true for level range 1-5, though, I have no experience at higher levels so I couldn't tell. But as far as low levels are concerned, I feel like my Wilder, and by extent a quite broad range of Wilders out there, can contribute to the party in a way that's certainly at least as varied or at least as effective as a Sorcerer. All in all my take is that Wilder certainly is one of the best Tier 3 out there, or maybe one of the worst Tier 2.

I had voted for Wilder 2.5, and I stand by that assessment. I'm quite pleased with the Wilder actually standing at the top of Tier 3.

[Dimers]

Actually, I kind of disagree here. See, I'm in an ongoing PF campaign where I play a Dreamscarred Press Wilder (just reached level 6), and I've specifically picked all the options and archetypes and stuff to make it match the 3.5 Educated Wilder as much as possible (thanks to Educated ACF, the 3.5 Wilder ends up with roughly the same amount of feats the PF Wilder does). My Wilder is actually extremely powerful at what she does, and I'm refraining myself a little from going all out so as not to overshadow the Monk, Paladin, Rogue and Bloodrager in the party.

I respect practice over theory, so I appreciate that. But:


I had voted for Wilder 2.5, and I stand by that assessment. I'm quite pleased with the Wilder actually standing at the top of Tier 3.

That's how I would've voted, anyway, based on averaging it out over the whole levels-1-to-20 range. It's got potentially better tools than most Tier 3s but clear weak points compared to most Tier 2s.

[Thunder999]

Not to sound stupid, but could someone explain why the beguiler's lack of 5th+ level spells that do anything to enemies who are immune to mind affecting doesn't hold it back from reaching tier 2? Particularly in regards to the common claim that it's better than an equal leveled sorcerer, who is just as capable of using thinks like runestaves and UMD, and indeed might well be better at it given that UMD keys off of charisma and isn't needed for anything on the sorcerer spell list. Can you really expand your spell list adequately without PrCs?

[Gnaeus]

Not to sound stupid, but could someone explain why the beguiler's lack of 5th+ level spells that do anything to enemies who are immune to mind affecting doesn't hold it back from reaching tier 2? Particularly in regards to the common claim that it's better than an equal leveled sorcerer, who is just as capable of using thinks like runestaves and UMD, and indeed might well be better at it given that UMD keys off of charisma and isn't needed for anything on the sorcerer spell list. Can you really expand your spell list adequately without PrCs?

1. Sorcerer doesn’t get UMD in class, and is really starved for skill points in general. Especially for knowledges if it wants to use powerhouse abilities like polymorph or planar binding. Beguiler has it in class and points to spend on it. The heavy UMD advantage lies with beguiler.

2. Beguiler has access to spells like shadow evocation, shadow conjuration and ice assassin via advanced learning which work fine against mind immune.

3. List enhancing methods like arcane disciple work better for beguiler than sorcerer.

4. Immune to mind affecting doesn’t make you immune to illusions. Or to dominated minions. Or even glibness.

5. Beguiler is a fully functional skill monkey on top of being a darn good caster. It’s likely to outperform a sorcerer at information gathering, hiding, trapfinding, knowledges, and social encounters, even with the Sorcerers charisma bonus. As an Int caster it probably has more skill points than any other class except factotum.

6. Beguiler is at its greatest advantage versus sorcerer in the levels that commonly see play. Sorcerer has its advantage in levels that don’t.

And for what it’s worth it has a better variety of list expanding classes and the free feats and extra skills often make qualifying for prcs easier.

[Troacctid]

Beguilers get dominate person at 5th level, so they can just dominate one dude, haste him up, and have him deal with the mindless dudes for them. What spells are the sorcerers taking that are better than dominate person anyway? Overland flight? Teleport? Those don't deal with mindless enemies any better. Shadow evocation? Beguilers can get it too at level 11. Wall of force? It's not that much better than solid fog. Arcane fusion? Now you're relying on your lower-level spells against them just like the beguiler is.

[Anthrowhale]

For the Sorcerer, there are personal attack (Polymorph, Shapechange), bypass (dimension door, greater teleport, etc...), and more robust/earlier minions (Planar Binding, Necrotic Domination/Tumor).

For the Beguiler, there is Song of the Dead, which allows it to directly affect a big class of otherwise immune to mind-affecting.

[Lans]

One issue with dominate person is that magic circle hedges your control out

[Karl Aegis]

Beguilers get dominate person at 5th level, so they can just dominate one dude, haste him up, and have him deal with the mindless dudes for them. What spells are the sorcerers taking that are better than dominate person anyway? Overland flight? Teleport? Those don't deal with mindless enemies any better. Shadow evocation? Beguilers can get it too at level 11. Wall of force? It's not that much better than solid fog. Arcane fusion? Now you're relying on your lower-level spells against them just like the beguiler is.

You mean like a bard? Except bard gets Dragonfire Inspiration and can join in the melee with Snowflake Wardance and Swift Invisibility.

[Tindragon]

Didn't see it anywhere in the 1st page, or am I blind?

Where is Factotum in all this?

[AnimeTheCat]

Didn't see it anywhere in the 1st page, or am I blind?

Where is Factotum in all this?

Tier 3. Scored 3.36.

[Gnaeus]

You mean like a bard? Except bard gets Dragonfire Inspiration and can join in the melee with Snowflake Wardance and Swift Invisibility.

A little like a bard. Except a bard 10 has a total of 6 spells known between levels 3-5, and can cast 3-5 of them a day. A beguiler has a total of 42 spells known (before doing anything to enhance his list, because DFI and wardance from the bard means I’m rocking domains or other list tricks) between 3 and 5. And can cast 15-18 per day. The bard could very well take haste, slow, glibness, dispel magic, greater invisibility and dominate person. That’s not a bad mix of offense, defense, crowd control and utility. The beguiler gets all those +36 more and can cast 3 times more often.

And while the bard (unlike the sorcerer) is probably a little better on his UMD check than is beguiler, beguiler has the high level slots to use on things like runestaves.

[Karl Aegis]

A little like a bard. Except a bard 10 has a total of 6 spells known between levels 3-5, and can cast 3-5 of them a day. A beguiler has a total of 42 spells known (before doing anything to enhance his list, because DFI and wardance from the bard means I’m rocking domains or other list tricks) between 3 and 5. And can cast 15-18 per day. The bard could very well take haste, slow, glibness, dispel magic, greater invisibility and dominate person. That’s not a bad mix of offense, defense, crowd control and utility. The beguiler gets all those +36 more and can cast 3 times more often.

And while the bard (unlike the sorcerer) is probably a little better on his UMD check than is beguiler, beguiler has the high level slots to use on things like runestaves.

I mean, I'd probably have most of those spells on items or just not use them because of limited actions in a day and save my spells per day for spells that actually scale with caster level. What are you spending your feats on if "list tricks" aren't on the table or if a runestaff costs your character too much wealth to obtain?

[Troacctid]

I'd rate Adept 4.5 if I haven't already.

Adept: T4.75. Adepts are severely anemic with spell slots. They get a good list, but the list is too small to really be powerful, and on top of that they're prepared casters. By the time they get good spells and enough slots to use them reliably, the spells are no longer worthwhile. That being said, they are better than most T5, with its samurais and monks and truenamers. So I'm voting on the high end of tier 5.

Expert: T6. Expert is the only really sucky class that does skills well. This makes it hard to compare, but there is no niche protection in the tier system. Expert is worse than CW Samurai, between chassis and actually having some class features (I can count a whole 3 real class features on the Samurai, plus a few bonus feats). It's comparable to Aristocrat, which I rank as a definite T6. Compared to Aristocrat, Expert gains 2 skill points and a class skill or two in exchange for martial weapon proficiencies and a HD size. It's probably better than Aristocrat, but it's close.

On a different matter, I'd like to vote 5.7 for Expert.

Yup exactly. :P Sohei for Tier 4 imo. Incarnate 3.5 and Urban Druid 1. I don't think I've voted in those categories yet.

Do agree with Marshals being T4. I'm playing one now and I'm enjoying her a lot.

Tier 4 seems appropriate for the spellthief in isolation.

I'd like to also agree with warlock being a 3.5 and move my incarnate vote to equal with that. Lots of options easier to switch out less in combat oomph and D&D is still mostly combat.

Warlock is firmly T4. Nowhere near the bottom, but not close to the top of T4 either.

Well so far since this seems to be an update, so I'll vote alot. Keeping track of my vote and new votes: incarnate warlock 3.5, warmage, dragonfire adept, crusader, warblade, swordsage 3, psychic warrior, mystic ranger 2 prestige classes exist. Soulborn, samurai, expert 5.5, they are truly horrible.

Wizard, cleric, druid, shaman, archivist 1

Made a mistake in typing on the psychic warrior that should be 3. I do apologize.

I still find the fact that mystic ranger is better than tier 2 for ten levels, the ones most likely to be played, and falling to tier three by level 20 as tier two. The ranger spell list is quite good.

I am having a hard time with binder. I want it to be 3 and it does get there, but like there are a few levels before you get your second bind that are pretty awful. I am not sure if that drops it enough to get a 4. 3.75 for now.

The Urban Druid's spell list is truly excellent (even without sanctified spells) and should warrant a tier 1 status right off the bat IMO

I would like to vote the Shaman as T2, Wizard as T1, and the Wilder T2.

Did I not vote on NPC Expert? Put me down as Tier 6.

I'm not a big wilder expert, but I'll point out that Bend Reality, Reality Revision, and Psychic Reformation are all wilder powers.
That means they get native access to Wish equivalent powers and the kinds of shenanigans that can spawn, especially since Erudite spell to power is a thing.
They also get native access to the ability to rewrite most of their character sheet every day, if they really want or need to. Multiple times in the same day even, though I'd say that somebody actually using PsyRef on themselves multiple times in the same day tends to suggest that something is going rather poorly.

That's enough, IMO, to get them into T2, and arguably there's a case for lower T1.
All these votes have been recorded. Marshal and sohei have now moved up into T4, and mystic ranger has moved up into T2.

[remetagross]

All these votes have been recorded. Marshal and sohei have now moved up into T4, and mystic ranger has moved up into T2.

Here is some signifcant change! I'm glad for the poor Sohei: not that I have the first clue as to how this class behaves in play, but it warms my heart to see some others do, and give it a tad more attention than what it got back in the original thread. Seems a fairer deal to them for me.

[pabelfly]

Troacctid, did you miss my vote for Truenamer to be Tier 4?

[Gnaeus]

I mean, I'd probably have most of those spells on items or just not use them because of limited actions in a day and save my spells per day for spells that actually scale with caster level. What are you spending your feats on if "list tricks" aren't on the table or if a runestaff costs your character too much wealth to obtain?

What are you spending yours on if DFI and Wardance aren’t? I’ve seen a lot more games allow CDiv than Dragon Magic and Frostburn. But otherwise many of the same feats you would get for any caster/skill monkey. Darkstalker. Acquire familiar/improved familiar. Crafting feats. Metamagic reducers. Prerequisites for PRC access. Leadership if allowed. Bloodline feats. Accelerate metamagic. I’m not worried about finding good feats to fill my slots

So you are getting haste and greater invisibility on items eh? Cool, cool. I assume you aren’t getting slow or dominate on items, since they’re save dependent. Since you are assuming magic mart (Not a good assumption), I guess I’ll just get items of polymorph and shivering touch for the same cost. Or my raiment of the 4 for fireball, magic missile and teleport. The more effort you put into copying stuff I do for free the more effort I can put into developing powers that aren’t on either list.

[zfs]

I'm glad to see Sohei in Tier 4 - especially since it's probably exactly where I'd put it if I could finagle these rankings manually (the tiniest hair's breadth ahead of Fighter). Though as I said before, more than anything, what I wanted was for Sohei to just get more discussion, because it got such a cursory glance on first pass, and one of its best shticks (Sanctified Spells) wasn't even touched upon. If more discussion leads it back to Tier 5, I won't begrudge that, because I'll feel that it did at least get a fair shake.

[remetagross]

I'm glad to see Sohei in Tier 4 - especially since it's probably exactly where I'd put it if I could finagle these rankings manually (the tiniest hair's breadth ahead of Fighter). Though as I said before, more than anything, what I wanted was for Sohei to just get more discussion, because it got such a cursory glance on first pass, and one of its best shticks (Sanctified Spells) wasn't even touched upon. If more discussion leads it back to Tier 5, I won't begrudge that, because I'll feel that it did at least get a fair shake.

You said the Site-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named actually does not display the whole array of spells the Sohei is able to cast. Where would be an exhaustive source of these spells?

[Troacctid]

Troacctid, did you miss my vote for Truenamer to be Tier 4?
Probably. Was it in bold?


I'm glad to see Sohei in Tier 4 - especially since it's probably exactly where I'd put it if I could finagle these rankings manually (the tiniest hair's breadth ahead of Fighter). Though as I said before, more than anything, what I wanted was for Sohei to just get more discussion, because it got such a cursory glance on first pass, and one of its best shticks (Sanctified Spells) wasn't even touched upon. If more discussion leads it back to Tier 5, I won't begrudge that, because I'll feel that it did at least get a fair shake.
I personally am not impressed by its casting. I think it's closer to hexblade or divine mind than paladin or barbarian.


You said the Site-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named actually does not display the whole array of spells the Sohei is able to cast. Where would be an exhaustive source of these spells?
Oriental Adventures.

[zfs]

You said the Site-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named actually does not display the whole array of spells the Sohei is able to cast. Where would be an exhaustive source of these spells?

Is realmshelps kosher? If so, this link has the full list. (https://www.realmshelps.net/magic/OAspellbooks/sohei)


I personally am not impressed by its casting. I think it's closer to hexblade or divine mind than paladin or barbarian.

Well, per the rankings, that's about where it stands right now - it's further from Barbarian than it is from Divine Mind. The Hexblade's spell list is definitely better - even taking into account the limited spells known, their available spells on any given day will be superior. Sanctified spells bridge that gap a bit, but probably not quite enough. But Hexblade vs. Sohei is an interesting comparison. The 3.5 errata Ki Frenzy progression probably makes them a slightly better melee combatant out of the tin, even with the Hexblade having full BAB. Both get Mettle. Both gets some mostly dinky bonus feats. Sohei has two good saves, while Hexblade gets Cha to their saves. Sohei gets that very nice immunity to stunning (and sleep, for what it's worth) at Level 5. They're equally MAD and both are d10 hit die. They're actually pretty even when it comes to who has better gish spells. Hexblade has the better defensive and utility spells, but through Sanctified the Sohei gets the Luminous Armor line and some other nifty toys. I haven't rated Hexblade - I'll have to consider whether I would rank it equal to the Sohei or a tad lower.

Edit: I think the only Sanctified spells that really need to be called out as contributing to a higher ranking are the Luminous Armor spells, Celestial Aspect, Vision of Punishment (limited to evil, but a Level 1 spell that can inflict nausea is very nice), plus Telepathy Tap and Celestial Fortress for some cool utility tricks. A few others might deserve a bit of notice - Animate With The Spirit is sort of nifty.

[remetagross]

Is realmshelps kosher? If so, this link has the full list. (https://www.realmshelps.net/magic/OAspellbooks/sohei)


Thanks. The list is indeed super small though with good stuff in it. It's not too much of a problem given the low number of spell slots Soheis get, so you'll end up filling them with the same few good spells each and every time anyway.

[pabelfly]

Probably. Was it in bold?

It wasn't in the list of the other score additionsyou added before, no.

[Karl Aegis]

What are you spending yours on if DFI and Wardance aren’t? I’ve seen a lot more games allow CDiv than Dragon Magic and Frostburn. But otherwise many of the same feats you would get for any caster/skill monkey. Darkstalker. Acquire familiar/improved familiar. Crafting feats. Metamagic reducers. Prerequisites for PRC access. Leadership if allowed. Bloodline feats. Accelerate metamagic. I’m not worried about finding good feats to fill my slots

So you are getting haste and greater invisibility on items eh? Cool, cool. I assume you aren’t getting slow or dominate on items, since they’re save dependent. Since you are assuming magic mart (Not a good assumption), I guess I’ll just get items of polymorph and shivering touch for the same cost. Or my raiment of the 4 for fireball, magic missile and teleport. The more effort you put into copying stuff I do for free the more effort I can put into developing powers that aren’t on either list.

You probably should have boots of speed and/or dust of disappearance if you are trying to be a dedicated melee character. I wouldn't recommend getting an actual fourth level spell in your fourth level spells known when you can get fifth or sixth level spells like Dominate Person, Legend Lore or Thunder Field. Use items for things you won't need that often like a 10 charge wand of glibness, magic savant or tongues or a full wand for a caster level 2 wand (chamber) of swift invisibility or cure light wounds.

I personally don't mind a Song of the White Raven / Leap Attack build, but bards have real feat support outside of core. Not just copying class features from other classes, but things like Versatile Performer, Captivating Melody, Melodic Casting, Extra Music and a few multiclass feats.

[Luccan]

Ok, someone mentioned more discussion on the sohei and since it just jumped up a tier I'll bite. Is anything other than sanctified spells giving it that T4 spot? Because it's still a martial class without full BAB, a less supported version of rage, and spells that it can't use in that rage. The spell list without Sanctified Spells is also not exactly great. I recall the paladin discussion noting that without support it would have easily fallen a tier; sohei has no such support, beyond Sanctified Spells. Are those really so good and so common that it moves the class out of T5 all on their own?

[Lans]

It can make an extra attack at level 1 while in its rage. that makes up for its BA. Course that doesn't scale,

[Gnaeus]

You probably should have boots of speed and/or dust of disappearance if you are trying to be a dedicated melee character. I wouldn't recommend getting an actual fourth level spell in your fourth level spells known when you can get fifth or sixth level spells like Dominate Person, Legend Lore or Thunder Field. Use items for things you won't need that often like a 10 charge wand of glibness, magic savant or tongues or a full wand for a caster level 2 wand (chamber) of swift invisibility or cure light wounds.

The early access spells thing is really convenient for your chameleon friend. Not so much a + in a bard versus beguiler debate. Your early access to dominate means we get it at the same time and I can cast it 4 times as often with a higher save DC. And I get 6th level spells before you get 5ths. Again, you get a 5th level spell to compare with my 4 5ths and 6 4ths. And I get a full range of options to use my slots on.

The boots of speed are good for you because your battle plan appears to be gishing. My battle plan is to be a high tier caster and haste my dominated minions, the party fighters, summons etc. But I’m still happy for you to use boots and for me to get a wand of shivering touch. Dust of Disappearance is 3500 per use. Please duplicate my 4th level spells with a 3500/use item. I can buy a new wand every adventure just on what you are spending duplicating my spells. I can actually buy an 8th level scroll for every use of dust. You get a wand of glibness. I’ll get a wand of alter self. You are literally spending money to duplicate my primary spells then more money to deal with all the corner case spells I get for free as a full caster, then pretending I won’t spend money to get sorcerer or cleric wands, because I already have glibness/see invisible/tongues/clairvoyance etc on tap.


I personally don't mind a Song of the White Raven / Leap Attack build, but bards have real feat support outside of core .

Clearly. Your default average op bard seems to use a dozen obscure sourcebooks. I beat it with core + C Div.

.
Not just copying class features from other classes, but things like Versatile Performer, Captivating Melody, Melodic Casting, Extra Music and a few multiclass feats.

You are copying your own class features (and mine) with items. I am using the best class feature in the game... full 9th casting, to do the same things every other full caster does. I also have some handy class features you lack, like trapfinding, which let me do the party skillmonkey job better than a bard can. So that’s somewhere else you will need to play catch-up with feats or money.

[zfs]

Ok, someone mentioned more discussion on the sohei and since it just jumped up a tier I'll bite. Is anything other than sanctified spells giving it that T4 spot? Because it's still a martial class without full BAB, a less supported version of rage, and spells that it can't use in that rage. The spell list without Sanctified Spells is also not exactly great. I recall the paladin discussion noting that without support it would have easily fallen a tier; sohei has no such support, beyond Sanctified Spells. Are those really so good and so common that it moves the class out of T5 all on their own?

It's mostly the Sanctified Spells. They arguably get Iaijutsu Focus, but I'm not a huge fan of that skill anyway, and they can't combine it with Ki Frenzy. It does at least give them a damage boost when they run out of Frenzies for the day. Without Sanctified Spells, they're not making their way out of Tier 5. So yeah, it depends on how much you value those. I think they're quite good. When Sohei was in Tier 5, they were one of two classes that could pick up Sanctified Spells. The other is Magewright. So Sanctified Spells with nothing else obviously aren't a consensus Tier 4. But Sohei does have other things, whereas Magewright has an awful chassis and no class features besides their spells. The extra spell level isn't helping them much with the Sanctified list because the Level 5 Sanctified Spells are pretty weak (it's just Inquisition and Sicken Evil, IIRC).

[Luccan]

It's mostly the Sanctified Spells. They arguably get Iaijutsu Focus, but I'm not a huge fan of that skill anyway, and they can't combine it with Ki Frenzy. It does at least give them a damage boost when they run out of Frenzies for the day. Without Sanctified Spells, they're not making their way out of Tier 5. So yeah, it depends on how much you value those. I think they're quite good. When Sohei was in Tier 5, they were one of two classes that could pick up Sanctified Spells. The other is Magewright. So Sanctified Spells with nothing else obviously aren't a consensus Tier 4. But Sohei does have other things, whereas Magewright has an awful chassis and no class features besides their spells. The extra spell level isn't helping them much with the Sanctified list because the Level 5 Sanctified Spells are pretty weak (it's just Inquisition and Sicken Evil, IIRC).

The spells are better than just not having them and being stuck with only the class features, but I think if Sanctified Spells are the only thing pushing the class up a tier then Sohei is T5. Generally, notable leaps in power and versatility from one trick don't move a class completely up a tier or if it does it's measured separately. Obviously Sanctified Spells aren't really an ACF, so measuring it separately doesn't make much sense.

Looking at Sanctified Spells, the favorites would seem to be Luminous Armor (including Greater), Celestial Aspect, and Sunmantle. But you won't be casting those every day, at least early on, since you'll need to cast Lesser Restoration at least once every few days to offset the ability damage. And the ability damage also effects your ability to do the whole "hitting people until they die" thing. You have some ability to offset that, but I don't think you really get the ability to ignore it until too late into your career.

I'm not gonna vote on it just yet, I'd like to continue discussing.

[Troacctid]

Also, of all the classes that get sanctified spells, sohei is the worst at using them. Vision of punishment is fine, but the Strength damage is actually a meaningful drawback for you, and your save DC for it is gonna be only like 13; it's not much better than bless. Luminous armor is not even good; not only will you not have enough CL for it to last all day until like level 16, you also have actual armor proficiency, so you can just wear full plate. Celestial aspect is fine, but getting flight for 5 minutes a day at level 12 is not exactly revolutionary, nor is it much of a power jump compared to the other 3rd level spells on your list. At the same level, hexblades have stinking cloud, invisibility sphere, and charm monster, and they can have two or three of them prepared at the same time.

Bottom line, even with sanctified spells, it's still a worse spell list than the T5 hexblade, and unlike the hexblade, you can't cast your spells spontaneously. You have better armor, but worse BAB, and only slightly better class features. I stand by the 5 that I originally gave it.

Also, I don't know why it's debatable that they get Iaijutsu Focus; doesn't the book clearly say they do? I mean, they can't use it in a ki frenzy, and Cha is a dump stat, but they definitely get it.

[zfs]

Also, of all the classes that get sanctified spells, sohei is the worst at using them. Vision of punishment is fine, but the Strength damage is actually a meaningful drawback for you, and your save DC for it is gonna be only like 13; it's not much better than bless. Luminous armor is not even good; not only will you not have enough CL for it to last all day until like level 16, you also have actual armor proficiency, so you can just wear full plate. Celestial aspect is fine, but getting flight for 5 minutes a day at level 12 is not exactly revolutionary, nor is it much of a power jump compared to the other 3rd level spells on your list. At the same level, hexblades have stinking cloud, invisibility sphere, and charm monster, and they can have two or three of them prepared at the same time.

Bottom line, even with sanctified spells, it's still a worse spell list than the T5 hexblade, and unlike the hexblade, you can't cast your spells spontaneously. You have better armor, but worse BAB, and only slightly better class features. I stand by the 5 that I originally gave it.

Also, I don't know why it's debatable that they get Iaijutsu Focus; doesn't the book clearly say they do? I mean, they can't use it in a ki frenzy, and Cha is a dump stat, but they definitely get it.

They could wear actual full-plate, but then their max Dex bonus is 1. Since their Dex should be decent and Frenzy boosts Dex, it's a waste not to benefit from it. Plus you get the additional -4 that melee attackers take on attacks against you. By the time they get Greater Luminous Armor, their CL is either going to be 7 or 11, so it should last most of the adventuring day. The 1d2 from Vision of Punishment definitely hurts (since unlike the longer lasting spells, you're going to likely take that hit during battle), but nausea is still relevant at higher levels (the DC being low obviously stays a problem), and it being a swift action spell is a plus since it's a low duration spell. I disagree about flight not being noticeably better than their class list at Level 3 - Greater Magic Weapon is going to be what you'd otherwise prepare most of the time. I think flight trumps that because they have other gishy spells but no other movement related spells.

The book clearly says they get Iaijutsu focus, but I consider the 3.5 update canon since it was in Dragon magazine. That update does not change their class skills - however, since Iaijutsu Focus is a 3.0 skill, I'm not sure if it's fair to have the 3.5 Update port it over. But strict RAW would say that yes, they still have it, since nothing in the update specifically overrides their class skill list from OA. I'm not a huge fan of IF for the reasons you listed - they can't stack it with Frenzy and Cha is a dump stat.


The spells are better than just not having them and being stuck with only the class features, but I think if Sanctified Spells are the only thing pushing the class up a tier then Sohei is T5. Generally, notable leaps in power and versatility from one trick don't move a class completely up a tier or if it does it's measured separately. Obviously Sanctified Spells aren't really an ACF, so measuring it separately doesn't make much sense.

Looking at Sanctified Spells, the favorites would seem to be Luminous Armor (including Greater), Celestial Aspect, and Sunmantle. But you won't be casting those every day, at least early on, since you'll need to cast Lesser Restoration at least once every few days to offset the ability damage. And the ability damage also effects your ability to do the whole "hitting people until they die" thing. You have some ability to offset that, but I don't think you really get the ability to ignore it until too late into your career.

I'm not gonna vote on it just yet, I'd like to continue discussing.

I'd add Vision of Punishment to that - it has issues as Troacctid mentioned, but nausea is one of the best debuffs in the game. Celestial Fortress is nifty - you're rarely going to use one of your precious Level 4 slots on it, though. They get some funky utility stuff that's likely never going to come up, but does give them some options that are harder to find in the lower tiers. Want a lantern archon for some reason? You can nab one if you've got an hour to spare. Heck, you can get a zombie for about an hour and a half a day if there's a corpse handy.

Taking strength damage isn't a good thing for a primary melee attacker, that's definitely true. Lesser Restoration allows them to negate that a bit, but your spells slots are valuable and you probably can't afford to ever prepare more than one copy of Lesser Restoration. When I played a Sohei, I prioritized Wis over Con because those bonus spells are just so valuable for something with spell limited spell slots.

Edit: I think that Hexblade vs. Sohei is very close. And I think the rankings still show that - Sohei is basically the bottom of T4 right now and Hexblade is almost the Top of T5. I never voted on Hexblade, and once I do, I might even give it the same 4.2 that I gave the Sohei.

[Luccan]

Also, of all the classes that get sanctified spells, sohei is the worst at using them. Vision of punishment is fine, but the Strength damage is actually a meaningful drawback for you, and your save DC for it is gonna be only like 13; it's not much better than bless. Luminous armor is not even good; not only will you not have enough CL for it to last all day until like level 16, you also have actual armor proficiency, so you can just wear full plate. Celestial aspect is fine, but getting flight for 5 minutes a day at level 12 is not exactly revolutionary, nor is it much of a power jump compared to the other 3rd level spells on your list. At the same level, hexblades have stinking cloud, invisibility sphere, and charm monster, and they can have two or three of them prepared at the same time.

Bottom line, even with sanctified spells, it's still a worse spell list than the T5 hexblade, and unlike the hexblade, you can't cast your spells spontaneously. You have better armor, but worse BAB, and only slightly better class features. I stand by the 5 that I originally gave it.

Also, I don't know why it's debatable that they get Iaijutsu Focus; doesn't the book clearly say they do? I mean, they can't use it in a ki frenzy, and Cha is a dump stat, but they definitely get it.

I figured the Iaijutsu Focus thing was because it's a 3.0 skill, but given it was never given an updated version yeah it seems obvious they get it. Not that you get a lot of opportunities to use it.

Your best options throughout the day seem to be Iaijutsu Focus (if your skill points and initiative are high enough) round one, then ki frenzy, repeat each encounter until out of ki frenzy, then slightly buff yourself as you can for the rest of the day. Your spells per day are limited and you don't really start getting utility spells until level 8, though that second bit is probably in your favor since you are so limited in daily spells.

[zfs]

I figured the Iaijutsu Focus thing was because it's a 3.0 skill, but given it was never given an updated version yeah it seems obvious they get it. Not that you get a lot of opportunities to use it.

Your best options throughout the day seem to be Iaijutsu Focus (if your skill points and initiative are high enough) round one, then ki frenzy, repeat each encounter until out of ki frenzy, then slightly buff yourself as you can for the rest of the day. Your spells per day are limited and you don't really start getting utility spells until level 8, though that second bit is probably in your favor since you are so limited in daily spells.

As I posted above, they got a 3.5 Update in Dragon Mag. It mostly just gives their Frenzy an actual progression (you get +4/+4, 20 ft speed increase and -1 on flurry at Level 11, no longer fatigued at 17, +6/+6, 30ft speed increase and no penalty on flurries at 20). Also gives them their DR a tad faster and caps out at 5 instead of 4. It doesn't modify their class skill list, so yeah, by RAW they still have it. I'm just not sure all DMs would let that fly.

They're not very good at actually using IF, but since they have one of the worst class skill lists in the game, it makes sense to at least max it out.

[Luccan]

As I posted above, they got a 3.5 Update in Dragon Mag. It mostly just gives their Frenzy an actual progression (you get +4/+4, 20 ft speed increase and -1 on flurry at Level 11, no longer fatigued at 17, +6/+6, 30ft speed increase and no penalty on flurries at 20). Also gives them their DR a tad faster and caps out at 5 instead of 4. It doesn't modify their class skill list, so yeah, by RAW they still have it. I'm just not sure all DMs would let that fly.

I meant the skill specifically, I'm familiar with the OA update. Seems we agree that even if they do get IF it isn't much use to a rage class that wants to dump Charisma.

You still aren't getting the Sanctified Spells you want to use until at least level 8, almost halfway through your career (and around the point many games stop). You can't get your best use out of them until 6-8 levels later, either. They have their uses at lower levels, but it isn't like they replace your actual spell list, which is itself underwhelming.

[zfs]

I meant the skill specifically, I'm familiar with the OA update. Seems we agree that even if they do get IF it isn't much use to a rage class that wants to dump Charisma.

You still aren't getting the Sanctified Spells you want to use until at least level 8, almost halfway through your career (and around the point many games stop). You can't get your best use out of them until 6-8 levels later, either. They have their uses at lower levels, but it isn't like they replace your actual spell list, which is itself underwhelming.

I'm not quite as down on their class spell list as most people are. Yeah, it's really small, but most of the useful spells are at least helping you in your main niche. Your primary thing is going to be doing melee damage and having above average defenses - most of the spells you'd ever prepare either help your melee capability or improve your defenses.

[Luccan]

I'm not quite as down on their class spell list as most people are. Yeah, it's really small, but most of the useful spells are at least helping you in your main niche. Your primary thing is going to be doing melee damage and having above average defenses - most of the spells you'd ever prepare either help your melee capability or improve your defenses.

They're definitely relevant to your class (although I think it's silly they only get Protection from Chaos), they just aren't impressive. It's less the quantity than the quality. It's just a worse Paladin list.

Sohei is definitely not in a higher tier than Hexblade just for having better armor and a third of them at most having access to Sanctified Spells. If it's decided Hexblade is T4, then I'll have nothing further to say, but people seemed resistant to that idea before.

[Karl Aegis]

The early access spells thing is really convenient for your chameleon friend. Not so much a + in a bard versus beguiler debate. Your early access to dominate means we get it at the same time and I can cast it 4 times as often with a higher save DC. And I get 6th level spells before you get 5ths. Again, you get a 5th level spell to compare with my 4 5ths and 6 4ths. And I get a full range of options to use my slots on.

The boots of speed are good for you because your battle plan appears to be gishing. My battle plan is to be a high tier caster and haste my dominated minions, the party fighters, summons etc. But I’m still happy for you to use boots and for me to get a wand of shivering touch. Dust of Disappearance is 3500 per use. Please duplicate my 4th level spells with a 3500/use item. I can buy a new wand every adventure just on what you are spending duplicating my spells. I can actually buy an 8th level scroll for every use of dust. You get a wand of glibness. I’ll get a wand of alter self. You are literally spending money to duplicate my primary spells then more money to deal with all the corner case spells I get for free as a full caster, then pretending I won’t spend money to get sorcerer or cleric wands, because I already have glibness/see invisible/tongues/clairvoyance etc on tap.



Clearly. Your default average op bard seems to use a dozen obscure sourcebooks. I beat it with core + C Div.

.

You are copying your own class features (and mine) with items. I am using the best class feature in the game... full 9th casting, to do the same things every other full caster does. I also have some handy class features you lack, like trapfinding, which let me do the party skillmonkey job better than a bard can. So that’s somewhere else you will need to play catch-up with feats or money.

Right back at you.

[Sutr]

So the generic warrior seems to be a fighter with some good variant feats, the ability to take all non-fighter feats and better class skills.

The generic expert seems not so good to me, it can replicate a worse rogue, with admittedly better class skills, but less skill points. Its first 4 levels rock but then it starts getting a bonus feat after every 4 levels according to the SRD. In the other thread they had the fewest votes and not much discussion does anyone think the generic expert is actually good? I think it might be a 5 would rather feat rogue.

Not a vote but trying to generate a discussion.

[Troacctid]

I think it's close enough to rogue that it keeps pace even in the levels where it's behind, and there's a solid chunk of levels where I would say it's significantly ahead.

[Sutr]

I think it's close enough to rogue that it keeps pace even in the levels where it's behind, and there's a solid chunk of levels where I would say it's significantly ahead.

Sorry to assume we are talking about sneak attack but listing it anyway is this significantly ahead?
Ahead 1,2,8,16
Even 3,4,9,10,17,18
Behind 5,6,7,11,12,13,14,15,19,20

Level 15 should be ahead but while it qualifies for greater sneak attack it doesn't have a generic feat to take it.

To do this we need to take sneak attack at level one where the rogue got trapfinding for free, so we probably take that at 2, then at 4 we either get evasion or uncanny dodge, it will take us to 12 to get the other one where the rogue evasion and a rogue special ability and has a faster progression of the ability at this point then the bonus feats the expert gets. I'm open to other ways to use those feats in a better way though.

In exchange for these levels generic expert has better saves (in an optimized environment I assume it will be fort will), better class skills, but less skill points and proficiencies. I think you are correct that its not enough to make it tier 5, but maybe not 4.


On the warrior getting 6 skills of choice just seems a huge boost, along with choose your own feats with the option to take sneak attack. It might miss some fighter only feats and fighter ACFs but probably not by much, and I think something good can be done with it.

[Anthrowhale]

The generic classes seem best when they aren't used to simply replicate existing classes. For example, the expert might take Sneak attack+9d6, Trapfinding, Smite Evil, and (Improved) Two-Weapon Fighting as class features. Use normal feat slots to augment with Craven, Darkstalker, Precise strike, Power Attack, Exalted Strike, Devoted Inquisitor, and Greater Two-Weapon Fighting. Then add Iajutsu Focus, Hide, Move Silently, Spot, Listen, Tumble, Search, Disable Device, UMD as class skills.

The net effect is a killer scout/striker. You can sneak up on most things and have options to hit high AC opponents(Precise Strike), Low AC opponents extra hard (power attack), surprised opponents (Iajutsu Focus), and evil opponents (Smite Evil, Sacred Strike) including action denial (Devoted Inquisitor), up to 7 attacks/round. A rogue is not quite as good since they don't get as many relevant class features.

[zfs]

They're definitely relevant to your class (although I think it's silly they only get Protection from Chaos), they just aren't impressive. It's less the quantity than the quality. It's just a worse Paladin list.

Sohei is definitely not in a higher tier than Hexblade just for having better armor and a third of them at most having access to Sanctified Spells. If it's decided Hexblade is T4, then I'll have nothing further to say, but people seemed resistant to that idea before.

Yeah it's a shame they don't get Protection from Evil - they can get Magic Circle Against Evil form Celestial Fortress, but that has limited utility since it's anchored on a 20x20 structure. Sohei is an odd case where, when tiering it, I think you need to account for Sanctified Spells - like you said, they're not an ACF, so most builds could have them - but in practice, not every Sohei is going to want to play Exalted.

I agree that Sohei and Hexblade should almost certainly be in the same tier. I'll look through the original Hexblade voting and see what the objections to it being T4 were.

Unlike Sanctified Spells, I'm not sure Corrupt Spells really do much to boost the Hexblade. Lahm's Finger Darts can be nasty if you have a way to heal ability damage - but the surefire way there is a Binder dip, and that falls outside the tiering exercise. Actually, there's no mechanical penalty specified for wielding a weapon with less than your full five fingers, is there?

[Luccan]

Yeah it's a shame they don't get Protection from Evil - they can get Magic Circle Against Evil form Celestial Fortress, but that has limited utility since it's anchored on a 20x20 structure. Sohei is an odd case where, when tiering it, I think you need to account for Sanctified Spells - like you said, they're not an ACF, so most builds could have them - but in practice, not every Sohei is going to want to play Exalted.

I agree that Sohei and Hexblade should almost certainly be in the same tier. I'll look through the original Hexblade voting and see what the objections to it being T4 were.

Unlike Sanctified Spells, I'm not sure Corrupt Spells really do much to boost the Hexblade. Lahm's Finger Darts can be nasty if you have a way to heal ability damage - but the surefire way there is a Binder dip, and that falls outside the tiering exercise. Actually, there's no mechanical penalty specified for wielding a weapon with less than your full five fingers, is there?

I don't think Hexblades need Corrupt spells to be as good or better than Sohei, though. Their native list has a decent mix of buffs, debuffs, and utility. And it feels a lot less like their spells and class abilities are trying to make up for their weaknesses instead of giving more options and focusing in on what they're good at.

The spell says a hand with one or no fingers is useless, but otherwise no there isn't a penalty for missing fingers afaik.

[zfs]

I don't think Hexblades need Corrupt spells to be as good or better than Sohei, though. Their native list has a decent mix of buffs, debuffs, and utility. And it feels a lot less like their spells and class abilities are trying to make up for their weaknesses instead of giving more options and focusing in on what they're good at.

The spell says a hand with one or no fingers is useless, but otherwise no there isn't a penalty for missing fingers afaik.

Their list is great for debuffing (to the point I'd say their primary niche is debuffer, not melee damage), pretty good for utility, but I'm not as sold on the gish spells it gets - until you get level 4 spells, because then you get polymorph. I would think until then Sohei is keeping pretty even in melee damage output, since Ki Frenzy to some extent makes up for the levels when you have one less iterative.

I like the idea of wielding a two-handed weapon with only two fingers on each hand and taking no penalty for it.

[Troacctid]

I don't think sanctified spells affect the sohei's tier. Its progression is too slow, it has too few spells per day, and they're not enough better than its normal spells. With healers, it makes a more substantial difference because you're a full caster and your default list is all healing, all the time, so sanctified spells are more timely and more impactful. With soheis, it's barely a blip.

Hexblades are worse than paladins. I think we can all agree on that, right? Paladins were considered borderline by a lot of people, and if it's close for paladin, hexblade doesn't stand a chance. Also, hexblade is just kinda bad? It has bad class features and doesn't really have what it needs to be good at its job. Its spellcasting is too slow and nerfed to meaningfully prop it up, and unlike rangers with their skills and animal friends or paladins with their special mounts, hexblades don't have anything else going on to make up for it. (Curses definitely don't count.)

[Luccan]

I don't think sanctified spells affect the sohei's tier. Its progression is too slow, it has too few spells per day, and they're not enough better than its normal spells. With healers, it makes a more substantial difference because you're a full caster and your default list is all healing, all the time, so sanctified spells are more timely and more impactful. With soheis, it's barely a blip.

Hexblades are worse than paladins. I think we can all agree on that, right? Paladins were considered borderline by a lot of people, and if it's close for paladin, hexblade doesn't stand a chance. Also, hexblade is just kinda bad? It has bad class features and doesn't really have what it needs to be good at its job. Its spellcasting is too slow and nerfed to meaningfully prop it up, and unlike rangers with their skills and animal friends or paladins with their special mounts, hexblades don't have anything else going on to make up for it. (Curses definitely don't count.)

I'd be comfortable with both Sohei and Hexblade in upper Tier 5, but right now they're split. That's my main issue.

Hexblades do get familiars and unlike Wizards and Sorcerers they can really benefit from Improved Familiar since their HP is significantly higher. Choosing one with a debuff (there are a few options) can help in the Hexblade's niche.

[zfs]

Hexblades are worse than paladins. I think we can all agree on that, right? Paladins were considered borderline by a lot of people, and if it's close for paladin, hexblade doesn't stand a chance.

Sure, but Paladin isn't the bottom of Tier 4. With the current system that allows fractional votes, there's room to be worse than the Paladin and still a T4 by assent.

[Hish]

Hexblade and Sohei are close enough to be the same tier, and that tier is T5.

Sanctified/corrupt spells aren't enough to raise the tier, at least not with that few slots and the cut CL. Look at Luminous Armor. The Sohei can't cast it at all until 8th level, and can't keep it up all day until level 10, assuming Wis investment and an 8 hour adventuring day. Greater luminous armor doesn't come online until level 14, and doesn't last all day until 16th.

The base spell lists are pretty good, but again, the lack of slots, CL, and splat support really cuts down on their usefulness.

Sohei doesn't really have actual features.
Ki Frenzy makes up for the lost iterative, but the lost attack bonus and the penalty for flurry really hurt your to hit. AND you don't get enough uses for the day until level 11, so you're just outa luck. The rest of the class features are purely defensive.

[Lans]

The Sohei's spell list is terrible, the ranger has like 8 spells from the srd at 1st level that are useful outside of the fringiest of fringes, and the sohei has like 8 total

[zfs]

Hexblade and Sohei are close enough to be the same tier, and that tier is T5.

Sanctified/corrupt spells aren't enough to raise the tier, at least not with that few slots and the cut CL. Look at Luminous Armor. The Sohei can't cast it at all until 8th level, and can't keep it up all day until level 10, assuming Wis investment and an 8 hour adventuring day. Greater luminous armor doesn't come online until level 14, and doesn't last all day until 16th.

The base spell lists are pretty good, but again, the lack of slots, CL, and splat support really cuts down on their usefulness.

Sohei doesn't really have actual features.
Ki Frenzy makes up for the lost iterative, but the lost attack bonus and the penalty for flurry really hurt your to hit. AND you don't get enough uses for the day until level 11, so you're just outa luck. The rest of the class features are purely defensive.

The frenzy penalty hurts, though for half of your career it's only a -1. The reason I like Luminous Armor in the first place is because it actually lets you benefit from the two features of Ki Frenzy that most Sohei's wouldn't get much use out of, the Dex bonus and the movement increase. If you're going to build heavily around using Sanctified Spells, it's probably worth taking Practiced Spellcaster as your 9th level feat. Having to spend cross class ranks on Spellcraft isn't a huge deal because Sohei has a pathetic class skill list - Iaijutsu Focus and Concentration would be the only ones worth putting ranks in. So at least you can have Luminous Armor up for a full 8 hour adventuring day.


The Sohei's spell list is terrible, the ranger has like 8 spells from the srd at 1st level that are useful outside of the fringiest of fringes, and the sohei has like 8 total

I'd argue it's closer to 12 than 8, but you're usually going to be preparing the same handful of spells. Sanctified Spells are the thing which give them a bit of breadth. So often classes get consigned to lower tiers because there are portions of the game that they just have no in-class way to meaningfully interact with. If people think that for the Sohei it's too little too late, I think that's fair. But I don't agree that it doesn't merit any consideration when it comes to potentially affecting tier placement. Flight, minion creation (Animate with the Spirit and Create Lantern Archon to a much much lesser extent), a save or suck, extremely limited divination (Path of the Exalted), creating a defensive encampment, unerring force damage, spying on telepathy...most of T5 just can't interact with the game in these ways at all. If it is T5, I think it's probably the top of the tier.

Some of their spells really shift in usefulness as you level. Weapon Bless is potentially usable as soon as you get it, but you're never going to prepare it at higher levels. Attraction, on the other hand, probably maxes out in usefulness around the 9-11 range, where it acts as a nice force multiplier for a party that has a blender or two. Vision of Punishment probably isn't worth preparing at low levels because you're only getting a one round duration and you won't want your only spell of the day to be something that can be saved against - at the middle levels, especially with Practiced Spellcaster, it's finally got a duration that can effectively take on enemy out of a battle.

[illyahr]

I would like to note that the shugenja gets an expanded spell list from the Rokugan Campaign Setting and Magic of Rokugan books. With the influx of an additional 100-200 spells, the versatility of the class expands greatly.

Second note: It also adds several clan techniques for OA samurai to use their bonus feats for, such as The Pincer Hold, The Tail Strikes which allows you to automatically threaten a critical on a hit after a feint.

[Sutr]

I know those are third party, and since this thread doesn't have Rokugan Ninja or Courtier on the list going to assume that it doesn't factor 3.0 third party publishers. Those feats include some really nice things for samurai though and I think the spells were pretty good.

[Luccan]

I would like to note that the shugenja gets an expanded spell list from the Rokugan Campaign Setting and Magic of Rokugan books. With the influx of an additional 100-200 spells, the versatility of the class expands greatly.

Second note: It also adds several clan techniques for OA samurai to use their bonus feats for, such as The Pincer Hold, The Tail Strikes which allows you to automatically threaten a critical on a hit after a feint.

Every d20 Rokugan product that isn't OA is third-party and thus falls outside the consideration of the tier list. Though if you started a different thread you might get some input on whether or not it would move Shugenjas and OA Samurai.

[Luccan]

Having spent some time looking at Sohei's spell list with Exalted spells, I think it might scrape the edge of T4, but I just don't think it's enough to escape T5, especially since it relies so heavily on that one source to do so. For now, that's my vote.

[Troacctid]

And it's back in T5 once more! That didn't last too long.

[illyahr]

I know those are third party, and since this thread doesn't have Rokugan Ninja or Courtier on the list going to assume that it doesn't factor 3.0 third party publishers. Those feats include some really nice things for samurai though and I think the spells were pretty good.

The third edition OA is the WotC version of L5R, used with permission from AEG. AEG saw it and asked to create a series of books with it. They are, in effect, extensions of Oriental Adventures made by the people who WotC made OA from. Weird legal loopholes, go!


Having spent some time looking at Sohei's spell list with Exalted spells, I think it might scrape the edge of T4, but I just don't think it's enough to escape T5, especially since it relies so heavily on that one source to do so. For now, that's my vote.

Is that with the 3.5 conversion or without? They got a lot better when they were converted to 3.5 in Dragon Magazine

[Luccan]

The third edition OA is the WotC version of L5R, used with permission from AEG. AEG saw it and asked to create a series of books with it. They are, in effect, extensions of Oriental Adventures made by the people who WotC made OA from. Weird legal loopholes, go!



Is that with the 3.5 conversion or without? They got a lot better when they were converted to 3.5 in Dragon Magazine

Whatever the case, further L5R products aren't first party and material that isn't first party tends to be left out of the tier considerations (the closest exceptions being the Dragon Compendium classes and the OA update to 3.5 from Dragon Magazine).

I am thinking of the 3.5 conversion with my vote. I'm even throwing in Exalted spells for good measure, even though probably a third or less sohei could actually use it.

Sohei did get better. Relative to their most similar classes, though, it isn't a big shift. They're still dependent on a lot of limited per day features that aren't particularly impressive and these abilities are backing up a lackluster chassis. You basically have some of the benefits of a single classed Barbarian, Paladin, or Monk, but weaker. Sohei is a victim of being too weak initially and not important enough to properly update. It's obviously lacking compared to the prime 1/3 casters Paladin and Ranger in casting. It can't benefit from almost anything that buffs Rage like a Barbarian. And like a Monk their BAB holds them back from being a true beatstick, plus they don't even get Flurry of Blows whenever they want, it's tied to their worse-Rage.

[illyahr]

Whatever the case, further L5R products aren't first party and material that isn't first party tends to be left out of the tier considerations (the closest exceptions being the Dragon Compendium classes and the OA update to 3.5 from Dragon Magazine).

It's a shame, too. Some of that stuff is really good.


I am thinking of the 3.5 conversion with my vote. I'm even throwing in Exalted spells for good measure, even though probably a third or less sohei could actually use it.

Sohei did get better. Relative to their most similar classes, though, it isn't a big shift. They're still dependent on a lot of limited per day features that aren't particularly impressive and these abilities are backing up a lackluster chassis. You basically have some of the benefits of a single classed Barbarian, Paladin, or Monk, but weaker. Sohei is a victim of being too weak initially and not important enough to properly update. It's obviously lacking compared to the prime 1/3 casters Paladin and Ranger in casting. It can't benefit from almost anything that buffs Rage like a Barbarian. And like a Monk their BAB holds them back from being a true beatstick, plus they don't even get Flurry of Blows whenever they want, it's tied to their worse-Rage.

Fair. It's been a while since I looked at it.

[Luccan]

It's a shame, too. Some of that stuff is really good.



Fair. It's been a while since I looked at it.

Some of it is good, but choosing to include 3rd party material is too broad and any limitations on that would be extremely arbitrary. Even more than banning 3rd party material outright is, since at the very least there's a good chance a first party product will be allowed at any theoretical table. And most classes' tier placements aren't effected by the banning of one or two books (and those that are have been discussed extensively at this point).

I really do like sohei, if I'm honest. If only for the sheer strangeness of its existence as said Barb/Pally/Monk. It's got a lot wrong with it that Hexblade has: special abilities and casting spells in armor were way overvalued in 3.0/early 3.5. If Cleric and Druid weren't legacy classes, I think they would've been hit pretty bad by this too, if I'm honest. I can easily see the "introduced in 3e" Cleric being basically a slightly improved Adept.

[ShuckedAeons]

I think an honorable mention should be made for the feat Mind Cleave (CP page 56) and its ilk for increasing the power of the Soul Knife.

It increases the uses of Psychic Strike by a small margin in my play experience, but those saved actions are precious. Possibly I felt like it was better than it actually was. I don’t think it deserves anything but tier 5, but there wasn’t much discussion on the topic.

As a side note: the mind blade is often called inferior to the Soulbound Weapon ACF for the Psychic Warrior, but I feel like that’s a bit disingenuous as well. I feel this way because the mind blade is always free, while the Psychic Warrior will always need to spend power points to summon his weapon, which he doesn’t have a ton of until later levels.
(Even though soulbound weapon is much more flexible in practice)