Tier list for optimization floor?

[FinnDarkblade]

Has anyone ever put together an optimisation floor tier list?

I've played a fair bit of 3.5 and Pathfinder but generally speaking the people I know that I could actually play with in real life have never played any TTRPG, let alone D&D specifically. When I've tried to get people into D&D I have a feel for which classes are generally easier to play but I've never made a concerted effort to put together a list for what classes are the hardest to render unplayable.

For an example, while Sorcerer is generally agreed upon to be tier 2, a player with no idea what they're doing in spell selection can easily bring it as low as Tier 5. A Beguiler, while generally considered Tier 3, is much harder to screw up and so couldn't really drop below Tier 4(I think) even with a player who deasn't really know what they're doing.

Something like a Cleric on the other hand, while a new player can completely fumble spell selection and render themselves Tier 4 or maybe 5 for a day, they can also learn over time and can only permanently hurt themselves through poor selection of domains and feats. So while the optimization floor for Cleric is low, it's also quite forgiving for someone learning as they go.

[AvatarVecna]

Has anyone ever put together an optimisation floor tier list?

I've played a fair bit of 3.5 and Pathfinder but generally speaking the people I know that I could actually play with in real life have never played any TTRPG, let alone D&D specifically. When I've tried to get people into D&D I have a feel for which classes are generally easier to play but I've never made a concerted effort to put together a list for what classes are the hardest to render unplayable.

For an example, while Sorcerer is generally agreed upon to be tier 2, a player with no idea what they're doing in spell selection can easily bring it as low as Tier 5. A Beguiler, while generally considered Tier 3, is much harder to screw up and so couldn't really drop below Tier 4(I think) even with a player who deasn't really know what they're doing.

Something like a Cleric on the other hand, while a new player can completely fumble spell selection and render themselves Tier 4 or maybe 5 for a day, they can also learn over time and can only permanently hurt themselves through poor selection of domains and feats. So while the optimization floor for Cleric is low, it's also quite forgiving for someone learning as they go.

I can't speak for anybody else, but my long-term experience with new players is limited to one particular case - a player who was pushed into playing Cleric in a PF game, got severe choice paralysis at having to deal with the whole cleric list at once, and ended up being a ****ty fighter who occasionally healed people. We played that game every week for a year and a half, reaching lvl 8 in the process, and they hadn't really progressed beyond that.

[FinnDarkblade]

I can't speak for anybody else, but my long-term experience with new players is limited to one particular case - a player who was pushed into playing Cleric in a PF game, got severe choice paralysis at having to deal with the whole cleric list at once, and ended up being a ****ty fighter who occasionally healed people. We played that game every week for a year and a half, reaching lvl 8 in the process, and they hadn't really progressed beyond that.

That's kinda why I put Cleric as a separate thing after my example of a class with a wide range and one with a narrow range. It's one that does have a wide range but tends to be more forgiving but that forgiveness does depend on the player actively engaging with the mechanics of the game and learning to improve as they go.

Someone simply not utilizing the mechanics of their class can drag anything down to tier 5 but I think that has more to do with the player themselves than it does the optimization floor of the class. A Focused Specialist Illusion Wizard prestiging into Incantatrix and Shadowcraft Mage wouldn't be poorly optimized if their player refused to cast a single spell and just tried to hit things with a dagger, they're just poorly played. While that character would also probably be a horrible choice to throw someone with no experience into, I'm assuming when I write this that players will meaningfully engage with the abilities of their character.

[Kurald Galain]

For an example, while Sorcerer is generally agreed upon to be tier 2, a player with no idea what they're doing in spell selection can easily bring it as low as Tier 5. A Beguiler, while generally considered Tier 3, is much harder to screw up and so couldn't really drop below Tier 4(I think) even with a player who deasn't really know what they're doing.

Last time I had a beguiler in the group, he decided to engage a dragon in melee with a magic rapier he found, despite having neither the ability scores nor feats to support melee. Predictably, he missed, ate a full attack, and went splat. I don't think that was tier 4...

[FinnDarkblade]

Last time I had a beguiler in the group, he decided to engage a dragon in melee with a magic rapier he found, despite having neither the ability scores nor feats to support melee. Predictably, he missed, ate a full attack, and went splat. I don't think that was tier 4...

I guess the whole idea of something like this would have to start with some basic assumptions of player competence in utilizing class mechanics and maybe that's unrealistic.

On the other hand, I remember my first D&D 3.5 campaign and that assumption did hold true. None of us had ever played a TTRPG before but basic class ability utilization did happen. I was a Rogue so I snuck around, used skills, and only fought when I had the advantage. My girlfriend played a cleric so she healed, hit things with a mace, and buffed(she had some experience playing clerics in MMORPGs). My friend played a Wizard and was about as helpful as an unoptimized level 1 Wizard can be(he kept his squishy self away from enemies and cast magic missile). My cousin played a sword and board fighter so he hit things and stood in front of the Wizard.

Now, all of us had some experience playing things like MMORPGs, Kotor, Fallout, etc, and so we had some basic knowledge of what it meant to play a certain type of character.

I think that might be my starting assumption in something like this: What is the optimization floor of a class for a person with basic knowledge of what it means to play a certain type of character.

[AvatarVecna]

That's kinda why I put Cleric as a separate thing after my example of a class with a wide range and one with a narrow range. It's one that does have a wide range but tends to be more forgiving but that forgiveness does depend on the player actively engaging with the mechanics of the game and learning to improve as they go.

Someone simply not utilizing the mechanics of their class can drag anything down to tier 5 but I think that has more to do with the player themselves than it does the optimization floor of the class. A Focused Specialist Illusion Wizard prestiging into Incantatrix and Shadowcraft Mage wouldn't be poorly optimized if their player refused to cast a single spell and just tried to hit things with a dagger, they're just poorly played. While that character would also probably be a horrible choice to throw someone with no experience into, I'm assuming when I write this that players will meaningfully engage with the abilities of their character.

This is more or less the point I was trying to make, albeit in a "this is why I don't think this kinda thread will work out the way you want it to" kinda way. It's not that he was refusing to use class features, it's that the vastness of what a cleric can be got boiled down to "worse fighter who heals sometimes". They would occasionally bust out a cool spell from the cleric list, but it was mostly healing and frontlining with very occasional weird utility - in other words, playing a cleric the way the designers intended/expected. From one perspective, this is what a cleric is supposed to be, and anything going beyond that is being a cheating optimizer. From another perspective, playing cleric that way is the player shooting themselves in the foot and is more a reflection of the player than the build or the class.

...and that's the problem. Player>Build>Class, always always always. The "optimization floor" for any class is always going to boil down to "how badly might this class be played by a real person who isn't actively trying to play badly, but just happens to be a bad player" (ie "how bad is still genuinely bad as opposed to deliberately bad"). And what you believe is "too bad to not be intentionally bad" is gonna be different from mine. My first character ever, I made an elf monk who often used a longbow and a spiked chain because I thought they were cool. I didn't realize I'd stumbled ass-backwards into somehow making a monk worse, because I was nine and had no idea what I was doing. My brother was playing a paladin like a knight in shining armor, complete with mounted focus, and super-high Int so he could have all the kinda skills a knight is supposed to have. We suffered trying to bring his horse everywhere, and had cross-class ranks in Speak Language so he'd be able to use Diplomacy more often. And despite all this, probably the best moment of my monk's career was running up through a tower full of low-level casters, ignoring all of them to get to the cult leader at the top, and wrestling them into submission halfway through their buff routine. What would've ended up being an absolutely horrendous fight for us turned into a cakewalk more or less by accident. Is "dual-wielding monk" the monk's optimization floor, or is it "wrestling casters into submission"? Certainly neither was a result of my knowledge of optimal chargen or optimal tactics, and yet...

...the closest you could get to a unified theory of optimization floors is "how WotC intended the class to be played". Anything beyond that in either direction is going to wind up being based on hearsay and circumstantial evidence, because "how badly might somebody play this class by accident" isn't nearly as clear-cut as you're assuming it'll be.

EDIT: That same campaign, because it was just me, my bro, and my dad, bro and I each took Leadership to have an extra body. He got a blaster sorcerer with some utility, I got a rogue/monk. The latter was useless against undead most of the campaign but demolished otherwise (just cuz SA was such useful damage), and the sorcerer was useful in most fights until he picked up Polymorph at lvl 8 and we looked through the MM for cool forms and...oh wow you could be a hydra! That's so awesome!

[Troacctid]

Here you go. (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?459141-Optimization-and-Tiers-The-Tier-System-Expanded)

[Gnaeus]

At a certain point I think it’s useless.

Anyone can play any class at tier 6. Anyone can play a cleric or wizard and not memorize spells and charge enemies naked. That says nothing about the classes, and doesn’t give useful information.

The relevant standard for low optimization should be a well meaning, reasonably intelligent player with low system mastery. Such a player may not be able to weigh the relative merits of flame arrow vs ray of exhaustion vs fireball vs haste. But they will know that being able to fly is a good thing. They may not know that you should Polymorph someone into a sun giant. But they will instantly realize from spell description that Polymorph is a versatile spell. Given the option, they will replace spells that don’t work with spells that work better. They won’t deep dive for options if there are sufficient in core, and if they do, they will glance at obvious sources (complete mage is obvious for a wizard. Drow of the Underdark isn’t).

They will take options that seem helpful. They may not know that 2 handed>sword and shield or two weapon fighting. And they may not know how horrific it is for a fighter to split between multiple fighting styles, and they certainly won’t be planning multiple feats ahead for a feat tree. But they will use magic weapons if they can. They will wear armor if they can. They will spend money on gear given the opportunity. And the gear they buy will be useful. But they won’t know they need the following 8 items to be effective, or that x is a less expensive way to do y.

That’s the lowest level that is worth evaluating. Not “what if the wizard casts no spells”. Not “what if he takes magic aura 5 times”. Not “what if the wizard charges all his enemies with a club”. Only “what if the player never played this edition, has limited exposure to RPGs, has skimmed relevant sections of the PHB and looked a little more at stuff that sounded good, hasn’t read a guide, and is basically trying to play class like common media examples”

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

You're talking about a tier system for classes where characters are built with zero system mastery, and any synergy or optimal choices apart from what you're told by the class description (i.e. which ability scores should be high) are either painfully obvious or purely coincidental?

Tier 1 would be the ToB classes, the fixed-list spellcasters, Rogue, Monk, Barbarian, Ranger, and any classes with few to no choices apart from race, feats, and skill ranks. If everyone is bad, the class itself being bad isn't as relatively bad as it would be otherwise.

Tier 2 would be any prepared caster who knows their entire class spell list, so Cleric and Druid and a few others, and also Spirit Shaman. Because starting spell selection may suck, but a player can learn what works and what doesn't and adjust accordingly as the game progresses.

Tier 3 would be classes with more choices, but not necessarily permanent choices, like Wizard (assuming loot has a decent volume of scrolls) and other prepared casters who learn their spells, maybe Artificer, etc. These characters can also adjust as they learn what works and what doesn't, but don't have the flexibility of a class that knows its whole spell list.

Tier 4 is classes that do have permanent choices, like Sorcerer, Fighter, Psion, Wilder, etc. Once you make a bad choice you're stuck with it, for the most part.

Tier 5 is classes that are still worthless for a bad party, like Commoner.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Something to keep in mind is that "optimization floor" isn't actually a single value. There's a pretty big difference between a class being simple to build (which includes learning subsystems, making level-up choices, number of rules subsystems you need to know, and familiarizing yourself with all your selectable abilities) and being simple to play (which includes number of decisions per round, breadth of options, how well you can use the abilities you have available, and choosing/preparing selectable abilities during a game). 3e has all four possibilities:

The warblade is simple to build and to play: you can pick maneuvers essentially at random and still be pretty effective, and anyone who's played card games can figure out expending and regaining maneuvers.
The beguiler is simple to build but complicated to play: you make barely any build decisions at all, but placing BFC spells, tracking conditions and durations for debuffs, being creative with illusions, managing mind-controlled minions, and the like can be fairly complex.
The binder is simple to play but complicated to build: figuring out what vestiges play nicely with each other and what feats to take can be daunting when it's not even immediately obvious what the binder's defined role is or how it's supposed to play, but once you've figured that out the actual act of binding a vestige, tracking every-5-round cooldowns, and such is fairly manageable and straightforward.
The bard is complicated to build and to play: you have lots of ways to build your bard based on what aspect you want to focus on (music, spells, skills, combat, some hybrid of those four), and the bard's jack-of-all-trades nature means you need to be pretty good with melee, skills, and casting (where other classes usually care about just one or two of those) and you hit lots of rules subsystems during play (conditions, illusions, etc. like the beguiler, plus dealing with Bardic Music and spells known).
So you can't necessarily talk about, for instance, "the fixed-list casters" or "classes that know everything on their list" or the like as a unified group, because subtle class-distinguishing differences can be pretty significant. For the fixed-list casters, yes, the Beguiler, Dread Necro, and Warmage are all pretty trivial to "build" (the only real choice being their Advanced Learning options), but the Warmage a very straightforward and intuitive blaster type that new players can handle easily, the Beguiler is a more complex controller type that requires some reading and tactics before new players can get good use out of it, and the Dread Necro sends you barreling down the rabbit hole of undead minionmancy while being a gish lite, having a familiar, and tracking auras/per-day abilities/situational bonuses/etc., which all combine to make it a potentially overwhelming class for newbies.

Another example is Incarnate vs. Totemist. Both use the same subsystem and require the same amount of reading to grok, both have access to their whole list of soulmelds so there's no 'meld selection necessary while building one, and both get similar class features to add chakra binds, improve essentia capacity, and the like, so on the difficulty-to-build scale they're roughly the same. However, the Totemist is basically "Natural Weapons: The Class," which is quite straightforward to play and that synergizes with the obvious new player strategy of "get all the attacks!", whereas the Incarnate is a random grab-bag of abilities that made even experienced players go "...but what does it do?" before the old Incarnum by the Numbers thread showed its skillmonkey and gish potential, and to a newbie it looks like it's supposed to be played like a cleric (poor BAB with good Fort and Will, various energy damage 'melds with a few healing melds, alignment-based buffs, etc.) which can send them thinking in the wrong direction.

---

So I'd say that to make a useful tiers-by-optimization-floor list, you'd either have to have two separate lists ranking build and play differently (probably the superior option, since I've noticed that new players tend to fall into "Gimme the books, I wanna figure this out myself!" and "I have no idea what's going on, tell me what I should be making!" camps so having granular listings of build vs. play difficulty would be very helpful), or you'd have to try to take both into account together for tiers such that it looks something like...
Tier 1: Simple to build, simple to play (ToB classes, Barbarian, Warmage, etc.): you can drop a total newbie in with these classes and they'll be halfway decent if they pick obvious build options and use obvious tactics.
Tier 2: Simple to build, harder to play (Beguiler, Cleric, Binder, etc.): they might flounder a bit at first with these classes, but they have time to learn their abilities as they go and none of their build choices will come back to bite them later.
Tier 3: Harder to build, simple to play (Fighter, Sorcerer, Monk, etc.): new players have to get things right upfront lest they screw themselves over down the line, but if handed a pregen character of these classes or given some basic build guidance, they can make it work pretty easily.
Tier 4: Harder to build, harder to play (Dread Necro, Druid, Wildshape Ranger, etc.): these classes involve a bunch of moving parts (multiple resources, lots of selectable abilities, multiple characters/minions to control, etc.) so newbies may be able to focus on a single narrow aspect to make a basic scimitar-chucking druid or negative-energy-touching dread necro, but figuring out how to actually use the class beyond that while juggling all the different parts can be quite tricky.
Tier 5: Opaque to build and play (Incarnate, Shadowcaster, Truenamer, etc.): these classes give little to no guidance as to how they're "supposed to be" built or played, even if given good advice it can be hard for new players to figure out how to act on that, and if they run into troubles in play it can be frustratingly difficult for new players to figure out what they're doing wrong.

[FinnDarkblade]

Something to keep in mind is that "optimization floor" isn't actually a single value. There's a pretty big difference between a class being simple to build (which includes learning subsystems, making level-up choices, number of rules subsystems you need to know, and familiarizing yourself with all your selectable abilities) and being simple to play (which includes number of decisions per round, breadth of options, how well you can use the abilities you have available, and choosing/preparing selectable abilities during a game). 3e has all four possibilities:

The warblade is simple to build and to play: you can pick maneuvers essentially at random and still be pretty effective, and anyone who's played card games can figure out expending and regaining maneuvers.
The beguiler is simple to build but complicated to play: you make barely any build decisions at all, but placing BFC spells, tracking conditions and durations for debuffs, being creative with illusions, managing mind-controlled minions, and the like can be fairly complex.
The binder is simple to play but complicated to build: figuring out what vestiges play nicely with each other and what feats to take can be daunting when it's not even immediately obvious what the binder's defined role is or how it's supposed to play, but once you've figured that out the actual act of binding a vestige, tracking every-5-round cooldowns, and such is fairly manageable and straightforward.
The bard is complicated to build and to play: you have lots of ways to build your bard based on what aspect you want to focus on (music, spells, skills, combat, some hybrid of those four), and the bard's jack-of-all-trades nature means you need to be pretty good with melee, skills, and casting (where other classes usually care about just one or two of those) and you hit lots of rules subsystems during play (conditions, illusions, etc. like the beguiler, plus dealing with Bardic Music and spells known).
So you can't necessarily talk about, for instance, "the fixed-list casters" or "classes that know everything on their list" or the like as a unified group, because subtle class-distinguishing differences can be pretty significant. For the fixed-list casters, yes, the Beguiler, Dread Necro, and Warmage are all pretty trivial to "build" (the only real choice being their Advanced Learning options), but the Warmage a very straightforward and intuitive blaster type that new players can handle easily, the Beguiler is a more complex controller type that requires some reading and tactics before new players can get good use out of it, and the Dread Necro sends you barreling down the rabbit hole of undead minionmancy while being a gish lite, having a familiar, and tracking auras/per-day abilities/situational bonuses/etc., which all combine to make it a potentially overwhelming class for newbies.

Another example is Incarnate vs. Totemist. Both use the same subsystem and require the same amount of reading to grok, both have access to their whole list of soulmelds so there's no 'meld selection necessary while building one, and both get similar class features to add chakra binds, improve essentia capacity, and the like, so on the difficulty-to-build scale they're roughly the same. However, the Totemist is basically "Natural Weapons: The Class," which is quite straightforward to play and that synergizes with the obvious new player strategy of "get all the attacks!", whereas the Incarnate is a random grab-bag of abilities that made even experienced players go "...but what does it do?" before the old Incarnum by the Numbers thread showed its skillmonkey and gish potential, and to a newbie it looks like it's supposed to be played like a cleric (poor BAB with good Fort and Will, various energy damage 'melds with a few healing melds, alignment-based buffs, etc.) which can send them thinking in the wrong direction.

---

So I'd say that to make a useful tiers-by-optimization-floor list, you'd either have to have two separate lists ranking build and play differently (probably the superior option, since I've noticed that new players tend to fall into "Gimme the books, I wanna figure this out myself!" and "I have no idea what's going on, tell me what I should be making!" camps so having granular listings of build vs. play difficulty would be very helpful), or you'd have to try to take both into account together for tiers such that it looks something like...
Tier 1: Simple to build, simple to play (ToB classes, Barbarian, Warmage, etc.): you can drop a total newbie in with these classes and they'll be halfway decent if they pick obvious build options and use obvious tactics.
Tier 2: Simple to build, harder to play (Beguiler, Cleric, Binder, etc.): they might flounder a bit at first with these classes, but they have time to learn their abilities as they go and none of their build choices will come back to bite them later.
Tier 3: Harder to build, simple to play (Fighter, Sorcerer, Monk, etc.): new players have to get things right upfront lest they screw themselves over down the line, but if handed a pregen character of these classes or given some basic build guidance, they can make it work pretty easily.
Tier 4: Harder to build, harder to play (Dread Necro, Druid, Wildshape Ranger, etc.): these classes involve a bunch of moving parts (multiple resources, lots of selectable abilities, multiple characters/minions to control, etc.) so newbies may be able to focus on a single narrow aspect to make a basic scimitar-chucking druid or negative-energy-touching dread necro, but figuring out how to actually use the class beyond that while juggling all the different parts can be quite tricky.
Tier 5: Opaque to build and play (Incarnate, Shadowcaster, Truenamer, etc.): these classes give little to no guidance as to how they're "supposed to be" built or played, even if given good advice it can be hard for new players to figure out how to act on that, and if they run into troubles in play it can be frustratingly difficult for new players to figure out what they're doing wrong.

This is great! I really agree with the idea of needing 2 axes in order to fully encompass what it means to be an easy class to use. I might start putting something like this together to show players just getting into it. I wonder if an actual XY graph might be useful.

[Lans]

Tier 4 is classes that do have permanent choices, like Sorcerer, Fighter, Psion, Wilder, etc. Once you make a bad choice you're stuck with it, for the most part.


The big difference between the Fighter and a caster, even one a small selection like the Wilder is that the Fighter has trap options like TWF or Weapon Focus that drag you down a bad road, and even if he starts on a good path like with Combat Expertise, he needs to keep going down that path to be effective. As opposed to the Wilder who really only needs to get 1 good choice, and there is nothing about Cat Fall that is going to lead you to chose another bad option.

The exception is ShadowCaster

[PairO'Dice Lost]

This is great! I really agree with the idea of needing 2 axes in order to fully encompass what it means to be an easy class to use. I might start putting something like this together to show players just getting into it. I wonder if an actual XY graph might be useful.

A graph would be useful if you don't want to stick to discrete tiers but want to rank things more comparatively. "We'll peg Class X as the best example of tier 3 for play difficulty, then Class Y is also tier 3 but less so than Class X so we'll say X is high 3 and Y is low 3, Class Z is obviously Tier 4, Class W is hard to pin down so we'll say it's somewhere between 3 and 4," and so on and so forth.

That can definitely be helpful if you find yourself unable to define tiers in such a way as to easily and sharply divide groups of classes, but a continual axis loses some of the explanatory power, since you go from "Classes in these tiers are hard to build, so if you want to play one you can ask me for a pregen" to "Well, classes in this general range are on the harder side, so if you want to play one you'll want to talk to me about stuff."

[Sian]

So I'd say that to make a useful tiers-by-optimization-floor list, you'd either have to have two separate lists ranking build and play differently (probably the superior option, since I've noticed that new players tend to fall into "Gimme the books, I wanna figure this out myself!" and "I have no idea what's going on, tell me what I should be making!" camps so having granular listings of build vs. play difficulty would be very helpful), or you'd have to try to take both into account together for tiers such that it looks something like...
Tier 1: Simple to build, simple to play (ToB classes, Barbarian, Warmage, etc.): you can drop a total newbie in with these classes and they'll be halfway decent if they pick obvious build options and use obvious tactics.
Tier 2: Simple to build, harder to play (Beguiler, Cleric, Binder, etc.): they might flounder a bit at first with these classes, but they have time to learn their abilities as they go and none of their build choices will come back to bite them later.
Tier 3: Harder to build, simple to play (Fighter, Sorcerer, Monk, etc.): new players have to get things right upfront lest they screw themselves over down the line, but if handed a pregen character of these classes or given some basic build guidance, they can make it work pretty easily.
Tier 4: Harder to build, harder to play (Dread Necro, Druid, Wildshape Ranger, etc.): these classes involve a bunch of moving parts (multiple resources, lots of selectable abilities, multiple characters/minions to control, etc.) so newbies may be able to focus on a single narrow aspect to make a basic scimitar-chucking druid or negative-energy-touching dread necro, but figuring out how to actually use the class beyond that while juggling all the different parts can be quite tricky.
Tier 5: Opaque to build and play (Incarnate, Shadowcaster, Truenamer, etc.): these classes give little to no guidance as to how they're "supposed to be" built or played, even if given good advice it can be hard for new players to figure out how to act on that, and if they run into troubles in play it can be frustratingly difficult for new players to figure out what they're doing wrong.

For simplicity sake, I'd swap around tier 2 and tier 3, it's much more palatable to get a pre-genned or someone to hold hands with doing the building process, than it is to have someone co-driving while playing, which can easily end up feeling like someone else is actually the one playing the character.

[Aotrs Commander]

Just point out that even druid can be played incompetantly, and not even by a newbie.

My mate, who has been playing for as long as I have (though admittedly never as regularly) played a druid for the first time when I ran the 3.5 version of Lost Caverns of Tsjocanth - admittedly starting a one-shot party at level 10 or 11, I think. (Boy, was that ever a mistake; the only positive thing I can say about that game was it killed time.)

We had to remind him halfway through about spells, because he had forgotten that druids were casters.

Just let that sink in for a moment.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

For simplicity sake, I'd swap around tier 2 and tier 3, it's much more palatable to get a pre-genned or someone to hold hands with doing the building process, than it is to have someone co-driving while playing, which can easily end up feeling like someone else is actually the one playing the character.

My group doesn't do any sort of co-PCing for new players, aside from the usual kinds of tips and reminders we'd give veterans as well, so I had Tier 2 where it was under the assumption that ordering by build difficulty and separating the "let the player build their own character" tiers from the "the player will probably need a pregen" tiers would be a nice clear-cut divide. If certain players would prefer some hand-holding, swapping tiers around could make sense, or you can just note that 2, 4, and 5 are going to need hand-holding and 1 and 3 won't.

[GrayDeath]

Hmmm, I kind of agree that there is a possibility to tier the Optimization floor, but aside from 3 tiers for

Fixed List Casters, Initiators, Barbarians (as good for everyone as for anybody, barring extreme stuff)

Druid/Clerics (at elast once you remember they have access to everything, you can do everything^^).

and

The Rest (the number of times I saw Sorcerers who couldnt decide what spell tot ake, then whined about not having the right spell afterwards (because they took another Blasting Spell, sigh^^).


will likely flounder due to people having far too different interüretations of even the more clearly defined optimization Methods.

[Unavenger]

The thing is, mind you, that - having played with newbies learning their first character - the blaster sorcerer who relies on dealing leveld6 points of damage to each enemy in a reasonable area is still better than the barbarian who doesn't know how to ubercharge properly or the fighter who's trying to TWF for no good reason like a chump. The druid who forgets that he can cast spells is still two big stupid fighters instead of one. The healbot cleric is still the only person in this goddamn party keeping anyone alive over here. I'm not entirely convinced that much changes in terms of order - the entire tome of magic takes a dive while the entire tome of battle has a climb, as the notoriously difficult-to-play truenamer and less-notoriously difficult-to-play binder and shadowcaster get stuck with a useless spirit for days at a time, take weaksauce mysteries, or fail every truespeak check they ever come across, while the three ToB classes carry on like it's just any other day, but I don't think much else changes. Fixed-list casters will, much like prepared casters, still probably end up relying on the same two spells per spell level in every situation...

The real winner, I think, is the duskblade. Any fool can load up a weapon of choice with shocking grasp and go to town on their monster of choice. Then again, perhaps the soulknife wins even more just by everything else universally being dragged a little closer to its level of suck...

[Kurald Galain]

The real winner, I think, is the duskblade.
Unlikely. The duskblade's spell list, short though it is, has quite a lot of dud or crap spells on it. It's a typical "hard to build, easy to play" class.

[Troacctid]

Unlikely. The duskblade's spell list, short though it is, has quite a lot of dud or crap spells on it. It's a typical "hard to build, easy to play" class.
Yeah, but you don't NEED all of your spells known to kick butt. Just some good touch spells—and they're the most obvious ones.

[Albions_Angel]

I have tried to build something like this before. Tier lists for different levels of optimisation. The endevour always fails due to too many variables. Perhaps you will be more fruitful though.

The thing I eventually came to realise is that the tiers dont mean much in real game terms for 90% of games and 90% of classes. Casual players, new players, players trying wacky builds, none of it matters.

With a few exceptions, pretty much all the classes are viable for SOME sort of game at SOME level of optimisation. I have seen raw monks and TWF fighters and their players have never been unhappy. I have seen wizards with blasting only spells and no real metamagic. I have seen strength domain clerics. I have seen (and been in) a party of just gish characters (I was a duskblade wielding a guisarme, we had a battle sorc with a spiked chain, there was a beguiler with a focus on spear attacks, and a cleric with a glaive, human only party - actually, this ended up as our highest damaging and most survivable party ever...).

Parties tend to normalise at a level where everyone can have fun, and everyone works well together. The options might be sub optimal, but a DM will tweak things, and players will help each other out. Could a wizard end every encounter in 1 turn? Sure. Do they? Hardly ever.

If you want to make this list, and you want it to be useful, dont let it descend into theoretical "single person parties". Trust your gut. If you think a class is low tier because you have never seen your players play it well, then its low tier for your table.

Alternatively, rather than build the list to guide players to "easy" or "safe" classes, give little buffs to weaker classes and let people play what they want, as badly or as well as they want, offering advice where appropriate - this is what I am doing, giving a few extra spells here, more skill points there, sometimes a bit of a class rework so it self synergises a little better.

Either way, good luck to you, and remember the aim of this is for everyone to have fun. The best class is the one you are playing right now. The worst class is the one the "experienced players" at the table tell you not to play...

[Quertus]

As I've long said, the tier list is garbage. A tier list for the optimization floor? It will at least be less garbage, and possibly even useful (as opposed to the tier list, which is actively detrimental to many's understanding).

But this notion of "x to build, Y to play"? That's definitely valuable. Or would be, if we could agree on it.

But both have potential issues. So let's see what my senile mind can come up with and remember.

"X to build, Y to play"? Or optimization floor?

So, it's really easy to build a level N Fighter: put highest stat in Strength, pick weapon with biggest numbers, realize I can wear armor, split money between giving biggest "plus" I can afford to offense and defense, roll some d10s for HP, done. In play, I just declare, "I stick the pointy end in the other man/thing".

Whereas a Cleric? All the same things, except you also care about Wisdom, and have to record a bunch of spells. And pick domains. And understand how turning works. And control pools. And Save DCs. And casting defensively. And… it's a lot more to learn to build or play the character.

Contrary to popular opinion, you don't lose the game at character creation by picking "Fighter". You do, however, lose the game at character creation by…
Prioritizing power, choosing Fighter (or most any "locked in choices" class), and building them wrong;
Prioritizing versatility, and choosing "Fighter" (or most any limited dimensions class) short of crazy shenanigans;
Prioritizing "forgiving for noobs", and choosing a Sorcerer (or any other class with no armor or HP, and "pick right or you're boned" choices central to its design);
Prioritizing "jumping right in", and picking a Cleric;
Prioritizing "character that works", and picking True Namer;
Prioritizing sanity, and choosing to engage the grappling rules.

As you can hopefully see, there are an awful lot of potential dimensions to failure.

But here's the thing: that poorly built Fighter? It's entirely possible that even that power-hungry player could have great fun with that character if everything else - PCs and adventure - is equally poorly built / played. So, failing at character creation is even more complicated, as it can depend on the rest of the table, too.

Let's start with that for now.

[NigelWalmsley]

The problem is defining what you mean by "optimization floor". Is the "optimization floor" for a Beguiler that you put a moderately high stat into Intelligence, then take a bunch of random feat, or that you put a 6 into Intelligence? Because the power level of those two characters is radically different. Do we count tactical decisions in play? Because there's no class that is going to do anything particularly useful when played in a suicidal way.

I think the question you actually want to ask isn't "how effective is this class at the optimization floor" but "how much optimization does this class need to be effective". That avoids all the arguments about whether or not a 3 Charisma Sorcerer who takes exclusively the worst spells on his list and immediately PrCs into something that doesn't advance casting. And I think that is a broadly pretty useful thing, though I suspect it's less different from typical rankings than some people would imagine. The Beguiler and the Wizard might swap places, but the Wizard is still going to be better than the Fighter.


Unlikely. The duskblade's spell list, short though it is, has quite a lot of dud or crap spells on it. It's a typical "hard to build, easy to play" class.

But the question is how likely someone is to take the crappy spells. If you look at the Sorcerer, it's true that someone could exclusively pick up things like Arcane Lock or Tiny Hut that don't do a whole lot while ignoring the combat spells that are the reason the Sorcerer is good, but I've never seen someone who would actually do that. In practice, even an unoptimized Sorcerer is, at worst, picking spells at the level of the Warmage/Beguiler/Dread Necromancer. The Duskblade is in a fairly similar boat.

That said, it's still not the winner (unless you mean "gains the most"), because the Dread Necromancer and Beguiler don't have to pick spells at all, and get more and better spells.


So I'd say that to make a useful tiers-by-optimization-floor list, you'd either have to have two separate lists ranking build and play differently (probably the superior option, since I've noticed that new players tend to fall into "Gimme the books, I wanna figure this out myself!" and "I have no idea what's going on, tell me what I should be making!" camps so having granular listings of build vs. play difficulty would be very helpful), or you'd have to try to take both into account together for tiers such that it looks something like...

Why are you measuring two uncorrelated things on one list? I understand that's a tradition from JaronK's tier list, which presents the cartesian cross of power and versatility as if it were a single list, but it was dumb when he did it and it would be dumb to do it now. If you have two things, make two lists. You can imagine someone wanting a class that is complicated to build but simple to play (making a character for a friend whose new to the game), or simple to build but complicated to play (someone who likes the tactical minigame but not the character building one). Declaring that one of those is "more simple" than the other doesn't do anything useful. That said, you have correctly identified the traits we ought to be measuring.

[Bucky]

If you want the optimization floor, MAD becomes a positive feature. Casters can dump their casting stats. Mundanes can dump their physical stats. But any class with no good dump stat will get some benefit from their point buy.

Narrow choice suddenly becomes good. Fighters get exotic weapon proficiency with weapons that aren't particularly useful, or that are unobtainable, but Rangers are forced to take feats that might actually be relevant.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

The problem is defining what you mean by "optimization floor". Is the "optimization floor" for a Beguiler that you put a moderately high stat into Intelligence, then take a bunch of random feat, or that you put a 6 into Intelligence? Because the power level of those two characters is radically different. Do we count tactical decisions in play? Because there's no class that is going to do anything particularly useful when played in a suicidal way.

I'd say the "floor" would be defined by someone who assumes the designers are infallible and just do what the book says; anything that goes counter to that strays into deliberate pessimization territory. The entry for Beguiler, for instance, says:


Beguilers have quick wits, deft hands, and compelling personalities. You need a high Intelligence to get the most from your spells and skills. A high Charisma helps you be more convincing in your deceptions, while a high Dexterity helps you with the sneaky tasks you are likely to pursue. Don’t neglect Constitution; although you have the same Hit Die as a rogue, your Constitution score influences your ability to cast defensively and thus how well you can use your surprise casting class feature.

Someone who has never played before can look at that and decide to put high scores in Int, then Cha and Dex, and a moderate score in Con. Even if they then choose race, feats, and skills entirely at random, they have a fixed spell list and a high enough Int to use it and there's really only so much shooting themselves in the foot that they can do from there.


Why are you measuring two uncorrelated things on one list? I understand that's a tradition from JaronK's tier list, which presents the cartesian cross of power and versatility as if it were a single list, but it was dumb when he did it and it would be dumb to do it now. If you have two things, make two lists.

As I said right in the bit you quoted, I agree that having two separate lists is better, the single-axis list is just one possible attempt at combining the two. And in a later post I also said that granular axes are better if you're ranking classes comparatively instead of sticking them in buckets.

Don't knock the single-list approach too much, though; players coming from fighting games and such are going to hear "tier list" and expect something like that, and familiarity and approachability count for a lot when the whole point is to make something for new players, so there is a valid use case for that.

[malloc]

-snip-

You think Beguiler is easier to play than Sorcerer?

Every newbie spellcaster takes fireball or lightning bolt. Sometimes both. With that spell, they're probably never going below t3.

If we're doing lowest common denominator player, the easiest thing is damage. Beguiler has next to no damage, and most of their spells require you to think--even if only a little bit--about how you want to use them. That means that new players? Gonna be using the good ol' crossbow every now and again as beguiler, when they don't know what to do. The sorcerer? Out of ideas? Fireball. Burning hands. Casting something that allows them to roll d6's and contribute.



Full casters will still be at the top, because they have spells that literally tell the players how to use them. "This does damage. This stops time. This heals your friends". Unoptimized casters will have higher damage output than unoptimized martials. It's pretty hard to mess up magic missile.

Next comes any martial who takes power attack. Self-explanatory. Then half casters and thf, then basically everyone else (twf, s&b, bow, etc). Rogues are likely to perform above average for martials, because sneak attack is literally free damage.

The problem with tiers of play for stuff like this is that by the book, most of these characters are basically in the same "chunk" of a tier. You'll basically have full casters as tier 3 and everything else as tier 4.

[Thunder999]

Part of what makes beguiler good is that it doesn't have all the trap options. The sorcerer player is going to be trying to magic missile things, the beguiler player is going to be pretty much forced into sleep or colour spray. When they hit 2nd level glitterdust is one of the only offensive options a beguiler has, so they'll likely end up using it.

[rrwoods]

Barring explicit retraining, a bad build can’t really be changed. It can be extended with better choices in the future but those choices will still be made on top of the previous poor ones.

However, the way a player plays the game at the table can improve (whatever we mean by “improve”, which is different at different tables and in different campaigns).

Thus, from my perspective, the most useful “one-axis” version of this list would assume mid-high at-the-table competency and low build power, to allow the player to grow into knowing how to play their class. Classes with very few build choices and reasonable power level (beguiler) would rank high, and those with many build choices that have trap options (sorcerer) would rank low.