Tiering the Pathfinder Classes - Medium, Adept, Vampire Hunter and Psychic

[pabelfly]

I'm interested in starting work on a tier list for Pathfinder, in the same way that we have a tier list for 3.5 (link) (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?600635-Why-each-class-is-in-its-tier-2019-update!). This link is a collection of discussions about the power and versatility of all the base classes of 3.5 DnD, and it’s quite a useful resource. I think Pathfinder could do with a similar resource as a point of information and discussion.

There has been an informal attempt to do a tier list for Pathfinder, which I've also used as part of the reference to this thread: (link) (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?649283-%85-And-What-Is-the-*Deal*-with-Pathfinder-Tiers). But this lacks discussion on the classes and a shared consensus on how scoring works, both of which are as important as the tier number itself.

The current, work-in-progress thread for Pathfinder Tiers version of this thread is here (link) (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?650140-Why-Each-Class-is-in-its-Tier-Pathfinder-Edition-(Work-in-Progress)). This thread has links to previous tiering threads and short summaries of thread discussions for those who missed them when they were posted. Contributions and votes for older threads are still welcome and your votes still count.

This time, we’ll tier Medium, Adept, Vampire Hunter and Psychic.

For reference, in the informal thread:
Medium is tiered between 3.2 and 3.4
Adept is tiered at 4
Vampire Hunter is tiered at 4
Psychic is tiered at 1.6 to 1.8

No, I didn't plan Psychic out properly.

So, the questions are: what should each of these be tiered at? And are there any notable archetypes for these classes that deserve separate tiering? I guess a discussion thread is the way to find out.





What are the tiers?

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

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

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

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

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

Tier three: Again, we gotta sacrifice something compared to tier two, here taking us to around the level of a Bard or Skald. 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 Fighter and Barbarian territory. Starting from that standard tier three position, the usual sweet spots here are very good at solving a few problems, or alright at solving many problems.

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

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

[pabelfly]

Unless I've missed any other classes, the last tiering thread next week will be Aristocrat, Commoner, Expert and Warrior. Let me know if any have been missed.

[Thunder999]

Psychic is an easy tier 2, the psychic list is somewhere between the sorcerer and oracles lists, the phrenic amps are decent abilities, though nothing particularly amazing. It's a little easier to shut down psychic casting, but not enough to really matter.
2.0

Two things stand out as maybe worth discussing:
Rebirth Discipline has a single off-list spell you pick each day, you choose/change the list you steal from when you level up. It's a decent bit of versatility, though a single spell probably isn't enough to change tiering.

Amnesisac Archetype is quite something. Each day half your spells known from your two highest spell levels are spells you used yesterday, half are special amnesia slots you try to fill with any spell of the appropriate level as a swift action 1/hour.
Sadly it's unreliable, you roll 1d100 or 1d100+1d10 in combat, 1-10 you waste a slot and aren't allowed to cast spells that round, 11-35 you waste the slot, but can cast other spells, 36-95 you get the spell you want and can cast it like any other for the rest of the day, 96+ either same as 36-95 or 1/day you get to cast a spell a level higher than you have access to.
So that's a 35% chance you just don't have a spell known for that slot today, 65% you get what you need on the fly and 5% you get to be the best caster in the game and use not just the perfect spell, but the perfect spell from a level noone else could cast.
Personally I think it looks too unreliable, but when it works it's better than paragon surge, arcanist, dreamed secrets etc. since this is something you do as a swift action mid-fight.


Medium is at minimum tier 4, you can just take champion every single day and build yourself a competent martial, you've got solid attack and damage bonuses, can move+full attack, and still get some spells, though at a reduced level.
The question is whether you can do better than that and whether the flexibility actually amounts to much since you generally have to invest your feats into a single playstyle.

The spell list is pretty good, plenty of discounted spells as we've come to expect by now. You've got yplenty of good stuff: Enlarge/Reduce Person, Protection from [alignment], Remove Fear (always good on a psychic caster), Comprehend Languages, Herman Potential (quite rare, 1 roll twice take the better +1 per 5 CL), Heighen Awareness, Long Arm, Tears to Wine, Blur, Haste (2nd level, enjoy your wands), Object Reading, Silent Image, Aid, Heroism, Mirror Image, Levitate, Invisibility, Locate Object, Nondetection, Rope Trick, Spider Climb, Speak with Dead, Tongues, Dimension Door (3rd), Fly, Greater invisibility (3rd, get your potions here), Paragon Surge, Sending, Break Enchantment, Death Ward, Freedom of Movement, Legend Lore, Lesser Planar Binding, Scrying, Plane Shift, Teleport, True Seeing. There's also an surprisingly great selection of save or suck/save or lose, Possession, Slow (2nd level), Command, Murderous Command, Ill Omen, Bestow Curse (2nd level), Hold Person, Instigate Psychic Duel (forget the rules, your allies just murder them while their mind is trapped), Suggestion, Hold Monster, Feeblemind, Baleful Shadow Transmutation (6th level so Heirophant/Archmage only, but hey, it can beat tarrasques)

Champion is the above mentioned solid martial that takes a CL penalty.

Guardian is bad defensive stuff that reduces your offense for little real benefit.

Archmage and Heirophant both turn it into a 6th level caster and poach a few Wizard/Cleric spells, archmage has some solid on-the-fly spell access, heirophant has healing stuff.
I could see a dedicated build hitting tier 3 easily enough with those two.

Marshal is a little meh, but does eventually get to hand out extra standard actions, which is obviously super strong if you've got caster party members, well worth the influence, the charisma skill buff might actually be worth using for social stuff on a champion or caster buld if you're confident in avoiding combat.

Trickster is mostly unimpressive skill stuff though gets a neat trick to steal spell effects.

Overall I think Medium is Tier 3 with Archmage or Heirophant and tier 4 with champion, with the other spirits being niche.

[Rynjin]

Medium: 3.3 seems about right. Weak T3. It has a lot of interesting tricks but even its strongest subclasses (Archmage and Hierophant) are a bit lackluster compared to other 6-casters.

I'd nominate Fiend Keeper as a stronger archetype though, and a full T3. While it does come with an inherent drawback (they can't benefit from Protection from Evil), for the cost of the Medium's four weakest class features (the ones dealing with Haunts) they get:

Contact Other Plane a number of times per day EQUAL TO THEIR LEVEL starting at level 3
Permanent decent flight
Darkvision if they don't have it
3 Natural Attacks
+1 Profane bonus to attack, damage, and AC
+1 to their Spirit bonus
Minor elemental resistances

All of which are available at reasonable levels no less.

Psychic: T2...it's a Sorcerer with arguably better Bloodlines and an arguably worse spell list.


Vampire Hunter: Much like Omdura, Tier = Not A Real Class

Adept: Eh, I don't care enough to tier NPC classes to be honest.

[Maat Mons]

I think I’ll rate Medium a 3.4. Every Medium has access to 2/3rds casting from the Wizard spell list, the Cleric spell list, and the Medium’s own spell list. It’s mostly not possible to access the Wizard and Cleric spell lists on the same day. I mean, it can be done, with Spirit Dancer. But that archetype introduces new limitations of its own.

A typical Medium will have one spell of each spell level from either the Wizard or Cleric spell list on any given day. I’d imagine most would walk around with an assortment of Wizard spells, and then switch to Cleric spells the day after some party member was inflicted with a condition that needed removal. The ability to pull out so many different spells during downtime is nice, but having only one spell of each level available during an adventuring day is limiting.

I feel the I must rate Medium somewhere in Tier 3 for all the problems it can solve by waiting a day and picking the rick Wizard/Cleric spell. But I feel that having only one spell known of each spell level means it will be necessary to wait a day to deal with a problem much more frequently than would be the case with any other class in Tier 3. So I’m putting it at the bottom of the Tier.

Medium: Tier 3.4

[Kurald Galain]

Medium: The class's shtick is taking a completely different role each day. But in practice, the class changes TOO MUCH when switching, and is not good enough at the role it takes. Since you generally take feats and items to support one particular role, you'll end up either ineffective in the other roles, or spreading yourself too thin trying to do too much. This is just not something parties want: most players I've seen end up stuck in the one role most fitting the party, and ignore the switching mechanic. All in all, as jacks-of-all-trades go, this class is a true "master of none": not actively bad, but easily overshadowed by everyone else. Tier 4.

Note that every medium except Relic Channeler requires a suitable location to switch roles, so at-need role switching is not even on the table. Kami Medium has limits to spellcasting and cannot take the archmage spirit. Medium of the Master cannot switch at all; that would be a tier drop if you value the role switching more than I do. Finally, the class's other unique ability is off-action party buffing via Marshall spirit; but this can be done with a two-level dip in Medium, then mainlining any other class.

Psychic: Here's a class that just nobody plays. The Paizo forum has a thread been rating the full casters in various areas, where after hundreds of posts the psychic remains unrated because nobody has seen one in play. It has flavor identical to a wizard, a pool mechanic that doesn't really add much, and a substantially shorter spell list. Since there's already an int-based sorcerer bloodline, it struggles to find a reason for why it exists in the first place. I'll list this as Tier 3 because compared to other spontaneous casters, there's clearly something wrong with it.

Adept: Why are we rating NPC classes? Tier 6 because this isn't meant for players; moving on.

Vampire Hunter: This is another one of those weird classes that's from one specific setting that nobody's heard of, and that I've never seen allowed in any other campaign because of its flavor. They get a number of rather pointless abilities that I assume are from that weird setting I haven't read (make the party travel overland faster! Track gaseous creatures! Treat iron spikes as wooden stakes!) but they also get a mix of inquisitor and hunter abilities, or weaker versions thereof. It probably makes tier four based on that, but I'd put it at the bottom, or Tier 4.5.

[pabelfly]

Adept: Why are we rating NPC classes? Tier 6 because this isn't meant for players; moving on.

The NPC classes were tiered back in 2019. JaronK even bought up stuff like Commoner and the other NPC classes back in 2012. If we're going to the effort to do all of this for Pathfinder, might as well do the NPC classes as well.

[Thunder999]

Honestly I think the NPC class ratings were mostly so people could point out that Adepts managed to do some things better than some actual 3.5 classes, because 3.5 had a lot more tier 5 and 6 garbage than pathfinder.

Adept is weird, core only it's a decent spell list held back by slow progression. Maybe 3.6?

Psychic is not tier 3, it's a very solid spontaneous caster.

Personally I don't value multiple contact other planes per day very highly, that's just a good way to trigger the crippling downsides. Just get someone to cast the infinitely superior commune. Some Familiars get it as an SLA.

[Wonton64]

The Vampire Hunter comes from a tie-in book for the Vampire Hunter D franchise (manga/anime/novels). It's tiering comes entirely from the campaign setting, I think. Their power and utility are going to increase proportionally to how many vampires you encounter.

[vasilidor]

Adept: 4.5
Medium: 3
Psychic: 2
Have not read vampire hunter, abstaining for now.

[Rynjin]

Personally I don't value multiple contact other planes per day very highly, that's just a good way to trigger the crippling downsides. Just get someone to cast the infinitely superior commune. Some Familiars get it as an SLA.

Well, for one thing, Commune isn't available until 9th level normally, instead of level 3. For another, Fiend Keepers get to completely dodge the usual drawbacks of Contact Other Plane in favor of their spirit just getting more Influence over them. Influence is minimally impactful right up until you lose control of your character for a bit, which is at 5 Influence.

So you get 4 failed saves before it's even an issue. That's, at worst, 3 uses of Contact Other Plane per day, for free, with no particular drawbacks.

[Kurald Galain]

The Vampire Hunter comes from a tie-in book for the Vampire Hunter D franchise
What happened to hunters A, B, and C, anyway?


Their power and utility are going to increase proportionally to how many vampires you encounter.Sure, but in most campaigns you will fight a vampire either once or never, making this not a very good niche to build a character on.

[Bucky]

How much do Vampire Hunters rely on many of their enemies being vampires?

At base, against generic monstrous enemies, they're full BAB martial weapon users with a lot of bonus combat feats, a Rage-like self buff in Vampiric Might, and Ranger-progression casting off the Inquisitor list. The Inquisitor list seems clearly worse level-by-level than the Paladin list, but it's hardly trash.

Their higher level combat abilities Quarry and Critical Reflexes are specific to undead, rather than to vampires in particular. These abilities encourage a crit-fishing style against undead.

[Rynjin]

Let me put it this way. Some people wanted to argue Ranger was T5, not T4, because they were mainly specialized in fighting one type of creature, chosen by the Ranger, even accounting for the ability to swap that to another option on a per-combat basis with Instant Enemy.

Vampire Hunter is in a similar boat in terms of being too focused, with none of the choice and flexibility.

[Wildstag]

Finally, we get to the Medium! One of the jankiest classes I've seen in a major D20 game!

I agree that it should be a low Tier 3, and 3.4 fits it well. Legendary Archmage really carries the tier though; getting to cast even a 9th-level Wizard spell is a major boon. Champion getting an extra full-attack attack that stacks with haste is just great. Plus getting Pounce is always good.

I'd also agree that Fiend Keeper should be tiered separately, and that it's generally better as a higher Tier 3.1, but I would point out that its usage is limited as it's the sort of class that can make your PC an NPC. Granted, it's really hard to get to that point, but still... Mostly, it just offers benefits at a low cost. With the Medium casting with Charisma, it shouldn't really be missing those charisma checks.

[Bucky]

I'm not going to rate Vampire Hunter, Medium or Psychic right now due to lack of experience.

Adept, on the other hand, generally belongs in Tier 5. They get spells, which can solve problems. But past level 6 or so, their slot progression falls so far behind even the gish classes that they don't usually have the good solutions. They also have very few spell slots for a prepared caster - one non-cantrip slot at level two, up to three slots at level six and six slots at level ten, plus their Wisdom bonus slots - so they can't afford to speculatively prepare much if any of the admittedly pretty good situational utility in their list. And their chassis is NPC tier with low HP, no armor or shields, no martial weapons and 2+Int skill points, so they don't have much to do once their slots are exhausted. They briefly peak back into relevance once or twice per day at level 12 when Polymorph becomes available as their top end option, since it's versatile enough to always prepare and powerful enough that being a bit behind the Sorcerers isn't a killer. And level 8+ evil Adepts can use Animate Dead during downtime to raise some combat surrogates.

So Adepts get to do Tier 3-4 things a couple of times per day across a small portion of their level range if they're well prepared, but don't contribute well or at all outside of that. I'll average their tier rating across their relatively strong and weak levels to produce a rough Tier 4.8.

[pabelfly]

How much do Vampire Hunters rely on many of their enemies being vampires?

At base, against generic monstrous enemies, they're full BAB martial weapon users with a lot of bonus combat feats, a Rage-like self buff in Vampiric Might, and Ranger-progression casting off the Inquisitor list. The Inquisitor list seems clearly worse level-by-level than the Paladin list, but it's hardly trash.

Don't forget they're WIS casters with a high Will save, so they're Will saves are going to be great. All of this feels like they're a T4 class to me.


Let me put it this way. Some people wanted to argue Ranger was T5, not T4, because they were mainly specialized in fighting one type of creature, chosen by the Ranger, even accounting for the ability to swap that to another option on a per-combat basis with Instant Enemy.

I feel like people not voting T4 for Ranger were hyperfocused on one class feature to the detriment of the whole class. Yeah, FE sucks, but everything else Ranger had going for it was pretty solid.

[Rynjin]

I'd also agree that Fiend Keeper should be tiered separately, and that it's generally better as a higher Tier 3.1, but I would point out that its usage is limited as it's the sort of class that can make your PC an NPC. Granted, it's really hard to get to that point, but still... Mostly, it just offers benefits at a low cost. With the Medium casting with Charisma, it shouldn't really be missing those charisma checks.

Influence actually NPC-ifies you by default, so this is a flaw shared by base Medium. And the usual Influence "spender" is a lot less useful than Contact Other Plane (being a narrow-focused, randomized bonus to a roll).

[Kurald Galain]

I'm not so impressed by the bonuses the Fiend Keeper gets. Like, it doesn't get permanent flight, but as a full-round action at level 7, it gets flight for one minute. And with a roughly 25% chance to fail. Flight is a great ability, but the Fly spell is on the medium's spell list already.

Contact Other Plane is definitely fun, but it's a spell that gives one-word answers that have a substantial chance of being wrong (like, at level 3 the answer is 30% likely to be false). Frankly it's baffling why this is considered a fifth-level spell normally. Definitely fun, definitely not powerful.

So for me, this is a well-designed archetype but not a tier change; I'll vote the same as for regular medium. By the way, from its flavor text this archetype is purely meant for gripplis, for some reason. Maybe there's some grippli lore here that I'm unaware of.

[Thunder999]

Fiend Keeper seems ok, better than I thought, but it's really not meaningfully higher tier, so I think it should just be the same tier as the rest of mesmerist.

So Vampire Hunter, defintiely seems closest to the ranger, specifically one with undead as favoured enemy: Full BAB, 4/9 casting, 6+int skills, Track. Weirdly it's only a d8 despite having full BAB, unique for pathfinder, though not ultimately important.
Frankly it's going to do worse at killing vampires than said ranger would.
4.4, it's a martial without any class features that make it particularly good at hitting things, let alone anything more than that.

Anyone got anything to say about adept?

[Bucky]

If you're comparing Vampire Hunter to Ranger, give it credit for an extra bonus feat.

[pabelfly]

Anyone got anything to say about adept?

I'm supposed to do the tier thread for Commoner, Aristocrat, Expert and Warrior, and given the lack of excitement I've had for Adept I don't see it getting much attention. But after that, we should be done, all I need to do is finish class writueps and maybe see if anyone missed the individual arcetypes that want separate tiering.

[Rynjin]

I'm not so impressed by the bonuses the Fiend Keeper gets. Like, it doesn't get permanent flight, but as a full-round action at level 7, it gets flight for one minute. And with a roughly 25% chance to fail. Flight is a great ability, but the Fly spell is on the medium's spell list already.

You know, I've been misreading this archetype this whole time, likely due to the formatting on the SRD. I thought Dark Power, Fiendish Form, etc. were features you just got as a scaling ability, but I see what you mean here. You can Contact OR choose one of the other abilities for an Influence. Though there is no chance to fail; you get the abilities whether you pass the check or not, failing the check just makes it cost Influence.

In that case, yeah, it's not worth the tier bump. But Contact Other Plane X/day is still hella dope.

[Giddonihah]

Medium range between tier 4 and tier 3, depending a lot on campaign structure and what archetype/spirits are used. They have excellent downtime ability in general, and are probably significantly better if the party is unstable and prone to losing and gaining members (Can often fill in for a role in a pinch).

The bit about channeling locations had a developer comment about being able to do stuff like going hunting in order to invoke Champion that helps it out a little if allowed to be used. (I find it gets handwaved a lot anyways)

Medium of the Master is Tier 4, getting stuck with Champion limits your flexibility, but you still have a good spell list and Champion is the best Combat Spirit anyways.
I think Voice of the Void is a pretty strong Marshal Archetype, when it comes to support I'd rate it similarly to Bard.
Spirit Eater is a freebie archetype (Trade flavor abilities that while good are rarely used for ghost touch which is situationally amazing), but it doesn't change the Medium's rating by itself.

I think a Spirit Dancer Medium is tier 2 or higher at very high levels, like 15+ (Freely switch between each spirit, can have multiple spirits up at once, has 9th lvl spell access in limited amounts, shapeshifting or a dont die button.).
At medium level ranges Spirit Dancers are a solid tier 3, I think a high t3 but needs good judgment so might in practice be a mid tier 3. (Buff slightly worse than a Bard, but it usually is a better combatant, has lots of out of battle utility thanks to three different spell lists it can access and channel healing)
Low lvls (lvl 1-3) spirit dancer is.. I dunno low Tier 4ish. Limited Spirit dance rounds and no real spell casting yet basically makes you a Barbarian that sucks at fighting when not raging.

Summary: Default (and most archetypes) Mediums 3.4, Stronger Archetypes like Voice of the Void or Fiend Keeper 3.2, Spirit Dancer 2.7 (I think Spirit Dancer is higher tier than Magus, but clearly below Sorc/Oracle)

[Bucky]

Re: Adept
It clearly doesn't belong with the other NPC classes because it has class features and they don't.


I'm supposed to do the tier thread for Commoner, Aristocrat, Expert and Warrior, and given the lack of excitement I've had for Adept I don't see it getting much attention. But after that, we should be done, all I need to do is finish class writueps and maybe see if anyone missed the individual arcetypes that want separate tiering.
I have been preparing for this thread. Expect a couple of walls of text.

[Gnaeus]

All the pf sites I see suggest adept has polymorph. Which is huge. Is it clear what thep are supposed to get?

I still lean towards T4. They get animate dead at same level as sorcerer. 32 (or level x4) hd of undead beats most beatsticks. Adding a familiar with some good archetype and the game's weakest half caster doesn't make them worse. They are, pretty strictly, worse than the 3.5 adept because of domain adept And polymorph nerf. But I can't imagine most fighters beating their level x4 in skeletons or zombies while someone is shooting scorching rays at them, and their utility spells only push them higher. They don't have nearly enough spells/day, but it's not like they can't be making their own wands at level 5.

[Bucky]

I took polymorph into account. Perhaps I underrated the familiar, though.

With regards to martial classes vs. Animate Dead, the trick to winning that matchup as a martial is to first circumvent the undead to gank the adept, then take advantage of the undeads' brainlessness to fight them from some position of advantage.

[Thunder999]

This is Pathfinder, Polymorph really isn't anything special, it's just your choice of Alter Self, Elemental Body I, or Beast Shape II on target touched.
There's some moderate utility in elemental body for flight/earth glide/swim speed, alter self is basically never going to be useful (elemental body can give the same stat boosts, it's far too short duration to be a disguise), beast shape 2 is decent in theory, but most characters would rather stick to a form which allows weapons, with the exception of a few characters who can provide their own polymorph effects, probably better ones than this.

[Bucky]

I'm not going to rate Vampire Hunter, Medium or Psychic right now due to lack of experience.

I'm going back on this for Vampire Hunter. I don't see any way it diverges by more than a quarter-tier from Ranger. It has some minor benefits like the ability to brew super holy water (hidden in the VH-exclusive Technique feats), a different spell list, specific antivampire abilities and the generally useful Vampiric Foci. It loses the animal companion, favored enemy (non-undead), and everything related to favored terrains. That seems like a downgrade, but within the tier. Given that I put Ranger in Tier 4, I'll rate Vampire Hunter Tier 4.3 with the caveat that it's less firm than most of my ratings.

[Gnaeus]

I took polymorph into account. Perhaps I underrated the familiar, though.

With regards to martial classes vs. Animate Dead, the trick to winning that matchup as a martial is to first circumvent the undead to gank the adept, then take advantage of the undeads' brainlessness to fight them from some position of advantage.

Cool. So since the martial 8s which can kill a caster with mirror image while he maintains distance on his undead horse alternating cure serious wounds web and scorching ray as needed while also eating attacks and AOOs from 5 blocking skeleton trolls is 0, and since the adept has utility on top of that, your post would put Adept in mid tier 3. Better at combat than low t3/high T4 combat specialists, but with way more utility.. Of course, pvp isn't necessary the best measure of combat strength, but since 30 HD of undead can also block, DPR and control better than 8 levels of characters, he wins there also.

[Bucky]

So since the martial 8s which can kill a caster with mirror image while he maintains distance on his undead horse alternating cure serious wounds web and scorching ray as needed while also eating attacks and AOOs from 5 blocking skeleton trolls is 0
I don't think this is nearly as one-sided as you present it.

The adept is a prepared caster with (counting Wisdom slots) three 2nd level slots and one 3rd level slot. Alternating isn't possible - after casting Mirror Image, the adept has the other spells you cited prepared once each. The undead by themselves are a tough but beatable encounter for a level 8 martial by just by CR, so the adept does need to make those slots count.

I unfortunately don't have any level 8 pure martial PC character sheets handy. The adept does pretty well against the level 8 sample NPCs, in part because the NPCs don't have the same standard of equipment as PCs and thus get severely hampered by the DR/bludgeoning on the skeletons.

[Thunder999]

I'll make a quick 8th level human fighter for comparison: 18/12/14/10/10/7 PB, 24/12/14/10/10/7 after levels, belt, and racial, +2 weapon, +2 fullplate, +1 ring of protection, +1 amulet of natural armour, +2 belt of strength, +3 cloak of resistance, that uses up most of WBL on Big 6 (lets assume that 1800 spare change is going to irrelevant consumables like out fo combat healing).
Weapon is theoretically quite important mostly for that DR, though it's hard to really say what it would be, Lucerne Hammer is 1d12 bludgeoning and has the honor of being the biggest damage dice on a martial reach weapon, everyone likes that 1-20 falchion, 19-20 reach bardiche etc.

You're looking at 11/6/5 fort/ref/will, pitiful 12 touch AC, 24 normal. +2 weapon training bonus, could have two advanced weapon trainings by trading out+feat.
Power attack, weapon focus. +17/+12 to hit, anywhere from 1d12+25 to 2d4+20 damage depending on weapon and therefore DR.

Could have Teleportation Master+Dimensional Agilty Assault and Dervish to just teleport pounce on the adept, could have taken significantly less relevant.

[Bucky]

I would add a masterwork, possibly composite longbow and 50 arrows as a standoff weapon. It's not often used but important for any martial who expects to ever fight solo.


I'll make a quick 8th level human fighter for comparison: 18/12/14/10/10/7 PB, 24/12/14/10/10/7 after levels, belt, and racial, +2 weapon, +2 fullplate, +1 ring of protection, +1 amulet of natural armour, +2 belt of strength, +3 cloak of resistance, that uses up most of WBL on Big 6 (lets assume that 1800 spare change is going to irrelevant consumables like out fo combat healing).
Weapon is theoretically quite important mostly for that DR, though it's hard to really say what it would be, Lucerne Hammer is 1d12 bludgeoning and has the honor of being the biggest damage dice on a martial reach weapon, everyone likes that 1-20 falchion, 19-20 reach bardiche etc.

You're looking at 11/6/5 fort/ref/will, pitiful 12 touch AC, 24 normal. +2 weapon training bonus, could have two advanced weapon trainings by trading out+feat.
Power attack, weapon focus. +17/+12 to hit, anywhere from 1d12+25 to 2d4+20 damage depending on weapon and therefore DR.
+12 to hit for 1d12+25 after DR will reliably one-shot the skeleton trolls (10% chance to miss and ~81% (neither the miss nor a confirmed crit) * 1/12 to hit for insufficient damage implies ≈83% chance). 2d4+20 will not reliably kill the troll.

The skeletons only hit on a 16+. That's an 18+ if the fighter fights defensively and accepts two-shotting the trolls.

It looks like the fighter will be fine vs. the trolls as long as he can position such that he's never taking full attacks from 4+ skeletons at once, which seems achievable in a lot of environments - a back to a wall will suffice at first, and the fighter is actively removing them - unless the fighter somehow gets surprised by the skeletons all popping up at once 60 feet away.

The scorching ray will hurt, if it connects. Unfortunately for the adept, he only has one casting. The adept probably wants to save this attack for the end, or whenever he can get a clean shot - he probably has about +6 to touch, which vs. 12 touch AC is 75% to hit per ray. This is much worse if the fighter has cover due to being behind a skeleton, so the adept needs to pick his moment. Optimally used, the spell has 75% hit rate with each of 2 rays, for about 20% of the fighter's HP each. The fighter can tank it but won't be happy if both rays connect (56%).

The web looks like a major problem for the fighter, but it's not as long as the fighter has a reach weapon. The adept can reasonably push the DC up as high as 19, which means the fighter's +6 bonus fails 60% of the time. However, the fighter's +15 CMB lets him free himself easily. A couple of skeletons may get a round of free attacks vs. the fighter's flat-footed AC. Afterwards, though, the webs act to keep the skeletons from surrounding the fighter. This is a net benefit (pun intended) to the fighter if the fighter has a reach weapon. However, the difficult terrain it creates may interfere with a nonreach weapon fighter's 5' steps.

So it turns out the fighter's best plan is to just ignore the adept, eat a ray or two, and quickly smash the skeletons. If the adept has any sense he'll cut and run once he's shot his one offensive spell and he's down to one troll skeleton or less. If not, even with the cure serious wounds, the mirror images and the damage the fighter has already taken, the fighter will probably win the ensuing shootout.

[pabelfly]

VOTE UPDATE

Psychic
Thunder999, Rynjin, Vasilidor – 2
Kurald Galain – 3

Average – 2.25



Medium
Thunder999, Vasilidor – 3
Rynjin – 3.3
Maat Mons, Wildstag, Giddonihah – 3.4
Kurald Galain – 4

Average – 3.36



Medium (Fiend Keeper)
Thunder999 - 3
Wildstag – 3.1
Kurald Galain - 4

Average – 3.37


Medium (Spirit Dancer)
Giddonihah – 2.7


Vampire Hunter
Thunder999 – 4
Bucky – 4.3
Kurald Galain - 4.5

Average – 4.27



Adept
Thunder999 – 3.6
Gnaeus - 4
Vasilidor – 4.5
Bucky – 4.8
Kurald Galain – 6

Average – 4.58

[Gnaeus]

I don't think this is nearly as one-sided as you present it.

The adept is a prepared caster with (counting Wisdom slots) three 2nd level slots and one 3rd level slot. Alternating isn't possible - after casting Mirror Image, the adept has the other spells you cited prepared once each. The undead by themselves are a tough but beatable encounter for a level 8 martial by just by CR, so the adept does need to make those slots count.

I unfortunately don't have any level 8 pure martial PC character sheets handy. The adept does pretty well against the level 8 sample NPCs, in part because the NPCs don't have the same standard of equipment as PCs and thus get severely hampered by the DR/bludgeoning on the skeletons.

The adept is a prepared caster with full caster level. Take craft wands at 5 assuming there is no other caster in the party with it, he has those other spells 51 times each. So he spent about 15k between wands and skeletons, and still has half his WBL left.



It looks like the fighter will be fine vs. the trolls as long as he can position such that he's never taking full attacks from 4+ skeletons at once, which seems achievable in a lot of environments - a back to a wall will suffice at first, and the fighter is actively removing them - unless the fighter somehow gets surprised by the skeletons all popping up at once 60 feet away.

Or unless the Adept bothered to equip his skeletons, which, since they cost him 150 gp each, he did. So they have at least longspears and leather armor. And they can all trivially reach the fighter for +9 2d6+7. Since they have much better init, they all move to 20, attack, and attack again every time he moves to kill one.


The scorching ray will hurt, if it connects. Fortunately for the adept, he has 51 castings. The adept probably wants to use this all the time against an opponent which will double his WBL - he probably has about +6 to touch, which vs. 12 touch AC is 75% to hit per ray. This is much worse if the fighter has cover due to being behind a skeleton, so the adept needs to pick his moment. Optimally used, the spell has 75% hit rate with each of 2 rays, for about 20% of the fighter's HP each. The fighter can tank it but won't be happy if both rays connect (56%).



The web looks like a major problem for the fighter, but it's not as long as the fighter has a reach weapon. The adept can reasonably push the DC up as high as 19, which means the fighter's +6 bonus fails 60% of the time. However, the fighter's +15 CMB lets him free himself easily. A couple of skeletons may get a round of free attacks vs. the fighter's flat-footed AC. Afterwards, though, the webs act to keep the skeletons from surrounding the fighter. This is a net benefit (pun intended) to the fighter if the fighter has a reach weapon. However, the difficult terrain it creates may interfere with a nonreach weapon fighter's 5' steps.

So it turns out the fighter's best plan is to just ignore the adept, eat a ray or 6, and quickly smash the skeletons. If the adept has any sense he'll cut and run once he's shot his 51 offensive spells and he's down to one troll skeleton or less. If not, even with the cure serious wounds, the mirror images and the damage the fighter has already taken, the fighter will never win the ensuing shootout.

[Rynjin]

The adept is a prepared caster with full caster level. Take craft wands at 5 assuming there is no other caster in the party with it, he has those other spells 51 times each. So he spent about 15k between wands and skeletons, and still has half his WBL left.


The Fighter isn't an NPC class, so he gets twice the wealth by level of the Adept.

You don't want to take this fight in that direction LMAO.

[Bucky]

A PC adept gets the same WBL as a PC fighter, and this tier list is for PCs. As an NPC, the adept would be +1 class level at the same CR, but with -2 to his top 4 stats. Also, so little wealth that if the skeletons could have basic equipment, the wand would be missing or severely downgraded.

In any event, if the adept's prepared for the specific fighter and the environment, he won't just have the one scorching ray - he can prepare a second instead of the web, and put a lightning bolt in the third level slot. The fighter still probably survives the barrage by itself, but has little room to take hits from the large skeletons.

With a wand on the adept, the fighter usually dies simply because he didn't bring his own horse and is instead stomping around on foot with heavy armor and a melee weapon - a weakness of this particular fighter's specialized style but not of fighters in general. However, the adept needs to be very careful not to let the fighter charge - a CL 8 scorching ray only has a 45' range, within the fighter's 40' charge distance plus 5-10' reach.

Vs. the skeletons, I wouldn't assume the fighter loses initiative. I almost always find it worthwhile to spend one of the fighter bonus feats on improved initiative by level 8, meaning the skeletons are at +2 relative initiative. The spears mean the skeletons have less trouble positioning to hit the fighter, and get better standard action attacks and AoO opportunities, but lose their multiple natural weapons on the full attack. The armor's a straight upgrade. Overall, I think the fighter still wins this handily without the mounted adept's (literal) fire support, but he can expect to come out of it pretty banged up.

However, you've mostly made your point. The undead aren't competitive combatants by themselves, but the adept can use his undead HD budget to pick up varied combat capability that complements his limited casting. I'm upgrading Adept in general to tier 4, but not all adepts can animate dead in bulk so Adept (good alignment) is Tier 4.8 as before.

[Rynjin]

Why would we assume the Adept is prepared perfectly for the Fighter, but not vice versa?

See this is the issue with trying to bring WBLmancy into tiering arguments. The Fighter can just as easily buy a Wand of Fireball and wipe the Adept. Or just have ANY magic item with an Evocation spell attached to it and cast Lightning Bolt multiple times. (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/item-mastery-feats/energy-mastery-item-mastery/)

[Bucky]

Why would we assume the Adept is prepared perfectly for the Fighter, but not vice versa?

In short, I'm not, but it's reasonable to assume the adept uses part of his WBL on something to cover one of his class's general weaknesses (few spell slots and half BAB means limited contribution to extended fights) in a broadly applicable way (an attack wand of some sort) even if it's not this specific way (a CL7 or CL8 wand of scorching ray).

[Gnaeus]

However, you've mostly made your point. The undead aren't competitive combatants by themselves, but the adept can use his undead HD budget to pick up varied combat capability that complements his limited casting. I'm upgrading Adept in general to tier 4, but not all adepts can animate dead in bulk so Adept (good alignment) is Tier 4.8 as before.

Thats pretty fair actually. The good aligned adept is much worse. If we want a separate listing for (adept (good)) I would agree it is 4.8. Without the 2 golden bullets of polymorph and animate dead, its a bad blaster/bad healer with some utility.


Why would we assume the Adept is prepared perfectly for the Fighter, but not vice versa?

See this is the issue with trying to bring WBLmancy into tiering arguments. The Fighter can just as easily buy a Wand of Fireball and wipe the Adept. Or just have ANY magic item with an Evocation spell attached to it and cast Lightning Bolt multiple times. (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/item-mastery-feats/energy-mastery-item-mastery/)

The fighter was already at WBL. The adept only used half of his, on what is essentially his basic adventuring gear. What would be more fair for a tiering discussion would be if they had only gear they can make or find. Which means the adept is equipped exactly the same, as he has stuff a normal adept can make. And the fighter can spend multiple feats crafting badly, or take his chances. Was that 2 sets of chain mail +2, a dagger +1 and a shortbow +1? Too bad. The adept is much much better in "no magic mart land" than the fighter. And by even more in a typical party setup where his crafting is contributing to other PCs.

I'll also point out that I'm using trolls as "common vanilla beatstick". I think I have encountered trolls in most games I have been in, they are one of the default skeletons, and in an emergency they are common enough that he could probably get his party to kill some trolls. So I don't think it gets much worse than that. But it can certainly be BETTER. He could be riding a zombie dragon with fly 200 and using some combination of trippers, grapplers and large weapon users.

[Rynjin]

"No magic mart" is not a basic system assumption for Pathfinder (unsure if it is for 3.5, is that the source of confusion?), and assuming infinite pre-"battle" crafting is extremely silly for what is essentially a PvP fight as well.

It's not really relevant to tiering in any case, and the Fighter genuinely has similar in-class problem solving ability to even this theoretical NPC class character with PC wealth optimized with a very specific build. The big sticking point for me is that NPC classes are not assumed to be choosable by PCs in Pathfinder, so the NPC would not get PC wealth...because it's not an NPC.

There are special fiat abilities like Exceptional Resources sometimes given to NPCs to boost them to PC wealth, but you're making a hell of a lot of assumptions at this point about GM houserules to make your theoretical Adept build work.

One of the "class drawbacks" of the Adept is having half PC wealth. That's part of why they suck.

[Gnaeus]

"No magic mart" is not a basic system assumption for Pathfinder (unsure if it is for 3.5, is that the source of confusion?), and assuming infinite pre-"battle" crafting is extremely silly for what is essentially a PvP fight as well..

There is no confusion, you are just wrong about what tiers mean (again). Tiering isn't about basic system assumption. It is about play conditions at common tables. And Below WBL or you can't choose your WBL is a common play condition at many tables. Classes that can't compete in those conditions get marked down, because they fail in those games. Or to look at it a different way, the fact that low tier classes can't compete in low magic mart environments should be an indication to DMs not to introduce those environments in games with low tier PCs. In any event, tiering has always assumed that if your class needs specific gear you can't make, you are lower tier for it.



One of the "class drawbacks" of the Adept is having half PC wealth. That's part of why they suck.

There is nothing preventing PC Adepts or NPC fighter. Adepts don't suck or get half wealth because they are an npc class. They are an npc class because there is no good reason to play an adept when you could play a magus. But if your DM says "In this game, only Tier 4-5 classes, Adept is one you can play, which is pretty solid at T4, and would get T4 wealth if played by a player.

[Rynjin]

At my table, Fighters get 9s. Fighters are T1.

This is roughly as valid of an assumption, to me, as your last statement there.

Houserules don't factor into tiering.

[Gnaeus]

At my table, Fighters get 9s. Fighters are T1.

This is roughly as valid of an assumption, to me, as your last statement there.

Houserules don't factor into tiering.

1. I didn't mention a houserule. I am literally in a Paizo AP right now where the PCs can't sell the loot they are getting, and they can buy anything on the chart for the town they are in, which is a pretty short list. Or, of course, make things.
2. Houserules absolutely factor into tiering, if they are common. For example, we aren't really tiering Medium as if they had cast lesser planar binding 50 times. Thats a houserule. If we said "Medium beats most T1s and 2s because they can't planar bind as well" that would be ignoring common play. Raw, your occultist can come with 50 outsiders. Good luck getting that at a table. In that case, the outlier, which would weigh in less, would be the RAW table with unrestricted planar binding, and the range of houseruled tables with rules ranging from "Not more than one" to "just keep it reasonable" to "You can't get them for free" to "They will generally seek revenge" are more important. We aren't tiering down monk because they aren't proficient with unarmed strikes, because thats not RAW that is commonly used, even though I see it made as an argument on boards. No one says Marshal is T1 because RAW diplomacy. At best we give it an upwards nudge because there is some table somewhere where they can auto succeed making people into fanatic followers. Thats called a houserule.

Tiers can be reasonably described as "if you sit down at a random table, how likely and how often and how hard is your character going to be jacked up by circumstances?" Fighter gets jacked by no magic mart. Fighter and Adept both get jacked by "you got thrown into a dungeon and lost all your gear" although Adept will likely be able to recover faster after receiving loot. Wizard may be jacked if the DM doesn't give them opportunities to buy spells, but are probably T1 anyway. Paladin may be jacked if the DM likes enforcing paladin code. But they may be improved in some kind of "alignments are only a vague concept" game. Rogue was ranked down in 3.5 specifically, in the original tier discussions, because there are lots of monsters they can't sneak attack, and the various wands and weapon crystals that bypass that aren't things the Rogue can reasonably guarantee that he has. Specifically because he can't craft or guarantee WBL or a magic mart

[Bucky]

We aren't tiering down monk because they aren't proficient with unarmed strikes, because thats not RAW that is commonly used, even though I see it made as an argument on boards.

TBF "this class needs to take a specific, otherwise dead feat as its first level general feat just to function correctly" isn't the sort of problem that costs classes a tier.



I'll also point out that I'm using trolls as "common vanilla beatstick". I think I have encountered trolls in most games I have been in, they are one of the default skeletons, and in an emergency they are common enough that he could probably get his party to kill some trolls.

Yeah, I got that. The fighter is tier 4 rather than tier 5 largely because a variety of fighter builds can generally out-beatstick their CR in common vanilla beatsticks regardless of the specific composition of the encounter.

[Gnaeus]

TBF "this class needs to take a specific, otherwise dead feat as its first level general feat just to function correctly" isn't the sort of problem that costs classes a tier.

Not tier 5 classes. It may be an issue if monk is, as in fact they are in 3.5, borderline T4/5. That discussion basically boils down to "Do you fight better than/worse than Fighter". But my point was that no one is seriously trying to pretend that they aren't, because hardly any tables do that.



Yeah, I got that. The fighter is tier 4 rather than tier 5 largely because a variety of fighter builds can generally out-beatstick their CR in common vanilla beatsticks regardless of the specific composition of the encounter.

I should probably also mention that if the adept likes a pet for his level, he will make it a bloody skeleton rather than a skeleton. That costs twice as much to make, but the same amount to control. And it functionally makes the skeleton immortal unless enemies are using positive energy damage. So they can die every day, even every couple of hours. That becomes quite handy for the adept, both because he lacks a good innate method for healing them, and because it means they are basically expendable as long as you aren't fighting good clerics. But in an adventuring situation, his team likely all fast healing HD/2/round.

[Rynjin]

1. I didn't mention a houserule. I am literally in a Paizo AP right now where the PCs can't sell the loot they are getting, and they can buy anything on the chart for the town they are in, which is a pretty short list. Or, of course, make things.

Even in Paizo APs, the scenario of "the party is never near a major population center capable of buying and selling goods" is a relative rarity.


2. Houserules absolutely factor into tiering, if they are common.

They really, really shouldn't be. The Elephant in the Room set of houserules are some of the most common out there. We gonna go back and re-tier classes because Bonus Feats are less valuable now? Give Fighter a minor bump because most tables houserule them to have 4+Int skills?


We aren't tiering down monk because they aren't proficient with unarmed strikes, because thats not RAW that is commonly used, even though I see it made as an argument on boards.

It also wouldn't tier down the Monk in any case, because it doesn't really affect them. Everything you would expect to be limited due to requiring proficiency (like being able to take Weapon Focus) has a specific exception for unarmed strikes.

[Bucky]

They really, really shouldn't be. The Elephant in the Room set of houserules are some of the most common out there. We gonna go back and re-tier classes because Bonus Feats are less valuable now? Give Fighter a minor bump because most tables houserule them to have 4+Int skills?

For several of the previously rated classes, I've called out a trick or problem and then mentioned that my tier rating wouldn't take it into account because it'd almost always get houseruled. For example:

most wild talents are spell-like, which means self-inflicting nonlethal damage while casting them forces a Concentration check... Fortunately, every GM I've played allows the kineticist to ignore this interaction, but for most purposes the internal buffer can work around the problem.

In contrast, I have a mostly complete homebrew "unchained expert" class sitting around. It's mostly a list of what I think the expert would need to actually be a competent skill class, starting with Skill Focus bonus feats and scaling up from there. However, as much as I'd use the homebrew in my own games, for tiering purposes it mostly serves to point out what the basic expert doesn't have.

[Gnaeus]

They really, really shouldn't be. The Elephant in the Room set of houserules are some of the most common out there. We gonna go back and re-tier classes because Bonus Feats are less valuable now? Give Fighter a minor bump because most tables houserule them to have 4+Int skills?


They really, really should be. Unless you want to go back and rank medium above hunter. Because every class with RAW planar binding is definitionally above every class without it. It doesn't really matter what class features you have or how good a pet you have, nothing equals 50 obedient free fighter/casters.

But yes, if Elephant is common at tables, and it actually changes how classes rank, those classes should be boosted proportionally to how common it is. I can't immediately think of any classes that would be changed by elephant. But if it makes fighter enough worse in enough tables fighter should be tiered down. Because fighter is worse in a common play environment. (Assuming that is in fact your argument. I'm not saying elephant makes fighter worse. I think it probably helps all the martials. Although I've actually seen a couple of different sets of Elephant houserules, so we may not even be talking about exactly the same thing).

I don't think I would agree fighter should be bumped because the class is given extra stuff for not being good enough, because thats circular. If fighter is T4 because some people give it extra skill points and I see that fighter is T4 and I don't boost it because it is T4, the tier isn't doing its job in showing which classes need help. Again, the point of tiering is "how does this work at an average table?" "Do I need to make it better/worse"? You houserule classes up BECAUSE they need boosts. You want the tiers to show how the class works at a table, so you know you need to give it more skills or maybe drop favorable loot or design encounters to play to their strengths or whatever.

[Rynjin]

My issue with this is that a large part of the reason why classes like Kineticist are so frequently houseruled is because everyone recognizes that they are weak, in part due to ad hoc tiering opinions whenever the classes come up.

If you're rating them by their post-houserule-buff state, you in part obviate the reason why they were houserule-buffed in the first place.

[Gnaeus]

My issue with this is that a large part of the reason why classes like Kineticist are so frequently houseruled is because everyone recognizes that they are weak, in part due to ad hoc tiering opinions whenever the classes come up.

If you're rating them by their post-houserule-buff state, you in part obviate the reason why they were houserule-buffed in the first place.

Yes, we said the same thing there. It doesn't make sense to use class buffs in tiering to determine whether classes need to be buffed. That is circular and confusing. It does, OTOH, absolutely make sense to look at how classes perform in common play environments, like NOT having unlimited planar binding, or different common wealth by level assumptions, or how they perform in a sandbox versus a railroad. That is neither circular nor confusing. Or at least, not as likely to be confusing as rating Medium as T2 on the basis that everything with RAW Planar Binding is better than anything without it, and then have people wondering why the medium is underperforming in a common play environment which DOESN'T include an arbitrary number of free minions.

To put it another way, if something is a common enough issue that a session 0 question would reasonably be needed to define it for a class ranking, it should be weighted. If you are entering a new 3.5 group and you are thinking about playing a caster, "How does your group handle Planar Binding" would absolutely be a question you would want to know. Or "would this group have access to time for crafting?" or "Do you enforce WBL and how?" Maybe even "Does your setting have dinosaurs/are they common?" Those are play environment questions that should alter tiering based on what is common. I don't usually have to ask the DM how a +3 sword works or whether wall of stone is legal.

[Bucky]

FWIW I think the Kineticist burn-concentration interaction in particular gets universally houseruled because it's counterintuitive and self-defeating, not because Kineticists need help in general. The houserule stuck even at that table with the overpowered aerokinneticist, and if a hypothetical sorcerer bloodline took burn to power spontaneous metamagic I'd expect the houserule to waive that concentration check as well at almost every table.

Not that I think the Adept class's tier rating is particularly reliant on houserules, anyway. By strict and explicit RAW any NPC can have PC wealth at the cost of not getting a -1 (NPC wealth) or -2 CR (no equipment at all) discount relative to their character level.

[Rynjin]

Yes, we said the same thing there. It doesn't make sense to use class buffs in tiering to determine whether classes need to be buffed. That is circular and confusing. It does, OTOH, absolutely make sense to look at how classes perform in common play environments, like NOT having unlimited planar binding, or different common wealth by level assumptions, or how they perform in a sandbox versus a railroad. That is neither circular nor confusing. Or at least, not as likely to be confusing as rating Medium as T2 on the basis that everything with RAW Planar Binding is better than anything without it, and then have people wondering why the medium is underperforming in a common play environment which DOESN'T include an arbitrary number of free minions.

Yeah, we were posting at the same time it looks like, I meant that as a reply to Bucky.

I feel like once we're using the same logic to arrive at polar opposite conclusions, it's best to agree to disagree?

[Kurald Galain]

The Elephant in the Room set of houserules are some of the most common out there. We gonna go back and re-tier classes because Bonus Feats are less valuable now? Give Fighter a minor bump because most tables houserule them to have 4+Int skills?

This really begs the question: how exactly do you know that these are so common as houserules? Really, how would you? I'm assuming they're common in your area but in my area they are literally unheard of.

The only realistic baseline I can think of here is the Pathfinder Society organized play program, which is very common and explicitly forbids this kind of houserules.

[Rynjin]

This really begs the question: how exactly do you know that these are so common as houserules? Really, how would you? I'm assuming they're common in your area but in my area they are literally unheard of.

Because tens of thousands (conservatively) of unique downloads is a pretty good metric. Do you have any counter-numbers for houserules that have wider adoption?


The only realistic baseline I can think of here is the Pathfinder Society organized play program, which is very common and explicitly forbids this kind of houserules.

Yes? We're arguing against the same thing lol.

[AvatarVecna]

Adept T5. It's like a paladin who gave up chassis, all class features, and half their spell list for the ability to cast orisons and 5th lvl spells. But casting is still pretty freaking useful.

Also, this is a weird point to bring up, but if it matters...Adepts don't get at-will cantrips.

[pabelfly]

Also, this is a weird point to bring up, but if it matters...Adepts don't get at-will cantrips.

That's because only PCs can handle the power of at-will spells like Prestidigitation.

[Bucky]

Adept T5. It's like a paladin who gave up chassis, all class features, and half their spell list for the ability to cast orisons and 5th lvl spells.

And a familiar instead of a mount, and +3 to caster level.

[Wildstag]

I'm not so impressed by the bonuses the Fiend Keeper gets. Like, it doesn't get permanent flight, but as a full-round action at level 7, it gets flight for one minute. And with a roughly 25% chance to fail. Flight is a great ability, but the Fly spell is on the medium's spell list already.

Contact Other Plane is definitely fun, but it's a spell that gives one-word answers that have a substantial chance of being wrong (like, at level 3 the answer is 30% likely to be false). Frankly it's baffling why this is considered a fifth-level spell normally. Definitely fun, definitely not powerful.

So for me, this is a well-designed archetype but not a tier change; I'll vote the same as for regular medium. By the way, from its flavor text this archetype is purely meant for gripplis, for some reason. Maybe there's some grippli lore here that I'm unaware of.

The Fly spell is on the medium's spell list, but it's also generally a 4th level caster, so it doesn't get flight until level 10, and if you're using Fly, you're probably only using one other spell that day. Given the number of other Pathfinder abilities that default to just "a number of minutes per day equal to your class level, but can be spread out in one minute increments", this isn't bad.

As for the grippli theming, there isn't authorial intent provided (https://paizo.com/products/btpy9oo8/discuss&page=18?Pathfinder-Player-Companion-Blood-of-the-Beast#873) but one of the writers for the Player Companion, the one who wrote the Catfolk, Kitsune, Nagaji, and Vanara sections states that generally unless there is a line in the mechanical text for the character option that explicitly states it's only usable by that one race, it's usable by all races. Going by that statement, the grippli shouldn't be the only race able to take Fiend Keeper. I've mentioned elsewhere but the Fortune Finder is the same; it's not restricted to Vanara by the word of the writer, but AoNPRD makes a few assumptions at times...

[Kurald Galain]

The Fly spell is on the medium's spell list, but it's also generally a 4th level caster,
The general vibe in this thread is that the best way to play a medium is the archmage spirit, so it's easy to get fly at level 7 instead of 10.


As for the grippli theming,
Note that I wrote that by its flavor it is meant for gripplis, not that this is a RAW restriction.

[pabelfly]

Going to slowly plug away at the class writeups:

Psychic

Psychic ends up in Tier 2 along with the other spontaneous ninth-level casters, Sorcerer and Oracle. The Psychic’s spell list is not as deep as the other two, even with Psychic Disciplines to help improve the spell list, working similarly to a Sorcerer’s bloodlines or an Oracle’s Mysteries. Unique to the class are Psychic Amplifications, which are a nice, if not spectacular way to boost yourself or your allies, and psi-tech discoveries that you can take in place of feats. If you want to be an INT-based spontaneous caster, it's probably worth checking to see if you can get the same spells from a Sage Bloodline Sorcerer. Overall, it’s a low Tier 2 class.

[Kurald Galain]

PsychicI'd add that if you want an int-based spontaneous caster, the Sage Bloodline Sorcerer is arguably a better pick. Overall, I'd say that sorc bloodlines (and for that matter wizard schools) are stronger than either psychic disciplines or oracle mysteries.

[pabelfly]

I'd add that if you want an int-based spontaneous caster, the Sage Bloodline Sorcerer is arguably a better pick. Overall, I'd say that sorc bloodlines (and for that matter wizard schools) are stronger than either psychic disciplines or oracle mysteries.

Added, thanks.

Next one done, Vampire Hunter:



Vampire Hunter

The Vampire Hunter class comes from the Vampire Hunter D universe, but was made into a campaign setting published by Paizo and gets to be tiered. So, what can you expect if this class somehow caught your eye? Vampire Hunters are fairly similar to Rangers: both have full BAB, 6 + INT skill points, fourth-level spellcasting (Inquisitor instead of Ranger), some bonus feats to improve martial combat ability, and trades the flexibility of Ranger’s Favored Enemy choice to focus specifically on hunting Vampires. Specific to the class are some flavourful vampire hunter-specific skills and self-buffs including a Vampire Hunter-flavored Rage ability. With your casting keyed off Wisdom and with high base Will saves, your Will save will be pretty decent. If, for some crazy reason, you’re not in a setting specifically focused around hunting vampires, you’ll do alright, although it’s definitely a lower-end T4 class.

[pabelfly]

Adepts

Adepts have fifth-level spellcasting from a very tightly-controlled spell list, and no other class features or abilities. Having to deal with prepared spellcasting on top of all of that just feels unfair, but at least with such a small spell list you won't have many problems working out how you'll fill your spell slots. Overall, a high T5 class.

[pabelfly]

I'm looking at Medium to write up the class summary, and I have questions. Mediums seem to have fourth-level casting, unless it picks Archmage, if I understand it correctly. So... what's the spell list of the Medium like? And are there any other ways to get sixth-level casting on it?

[Maat Mons]

Other than Archmage, Hierophant is another way of getting 6th level spells. Note that Archmage gives access to the Wizard spell list, and Hierophant gives access to the Cleric spell list.


Haste, Dimension Door, Greater Invisibility, True Seeing, and Plane Shift are some notable discounted spells the Medium gets.

[pabelfly]

Other than Archmage, Hierophant is another way of getting 6th level spells. Note that Archmage gives access to the Wizard spell list, and Hierophant gives access to the Cleric spell list.


Haste, Dimension Door, Greater Invisibility, True Seeing, and Plane Shift are some notable discounted spells the Medium gets.

That was pretty helpful, thanks.



Medium class writeup, suggestions welcome:

Medium has the gimmick of switching between different spirits with some prep time, and these spirits offer different bonuses to your character. The most notable options are Archmage and Heirophant, which offer 6th-level arcane and divine casting respectively, although there are other options. While switching spirits seems interesting, the reality is that you’re selecting feats and buying gear to fit a specific build, and suddenly changing roles means you’re not going to do that new role well. Besides that, the standard Medium spell list, while only reaching 4ths and not being as expansive as other lists, has some useful discounted spells on there, and you do have some flavourful class features that might have some niche use. All up, a low T3 character.

[northernbard80]

I never understood the vampire hunter as being a playable character class.

It's really not suited for a typical dungeon crawl, megadungeon, goblin killing expedition, etc. The vampire hunter is more of a one-of-a-kind; it's not good for most campaigns but in a horror campaign (such as Ravenloft), it would be of use to a player or a whole party.

[Bucky]

Adepts have fifth-level spellcasting from a very tightly-controlled spell list, and no other class features or abilities. Having to deal with prepared spellcasting on top of all of that just feels unfair, but at least with such a small spell list you won't have many problems working out how you'll fill your spell slots.

...except when you're on at of the levels where you only have one highest-level slot open. Slot hunger is a major problem for Adepts at all levels, even moreso because they have all the noncasting resources of a 3.5 sorcerer, and should be mentioned in the writeup. An Adept would plausibly gain a tier if they scaled up to 6 class slots per spell level rather than 2 or 3.

[pabelfly]

...except when you're on at of the levels where you only have one highest-level slot open. Slot hunger is a major problem for Adepts at all levels, even moreso because they have all the noncasting resources of a 3.5 sorcerer, and should be mentioned in the writeup. An Adept would plausibly gain a tier if they scaled up to 6 class slots per spell level rather than 2 or 3.

Not sure a comparison to Sorcerer from 3.5 is helpful, but the real lack of spell slots should be mentioned, so thanks. Let's see if this is better:


Adepts have fifth-level spellcasting from a very tightly-controlled spell list, and do not get any other class features or abilities. They also have very few spell slots for a dedicated caster - you can easily have just one or two of your highest-level spell slots to use each day. Lastly, Adepts are prepared spellcasters, but with how few spells and spell slots you have to work with, choosing your spell loadout shouldn't be a huge problem. All up, this is a high T5 class.