Community Tiering for all 3.5 Base Classes

[GilesTheCleric]

a good argument

I don't disagree, but if we're going there, any caster class can have persistomancy with one feat further -- Planar Touchstone: Catalogues of Enlightenment [Necromancy or Sun Domain]. I argue in another thread that you could pick any domain with a pool, and it would still work.

So humans can have persistomancy starting at level 9 (PT:CoE, SM, Extend, Persist, DMM:P), or level 3 with two flaws.

Edit:

I don't care who your DM is, I don't see how Silent Image is a game-breaker even under the most generous interpretation possible.

I agree; the best uses I've thought of for Silent Image are as a Mirror Image (ie an extra life) or as a fake BFC (Wall of X, Obscuring Mist, etc). It's very versatile, but I agree, it's not quite game-breaking.

[eggynack]

I'd like to add one thing about the Death Master and Dread Necromancer. For the cost of only one more feat than the Cleric (Southern Magician), they can use Persistomancy.

I'm skeptical. It's a lot of feats, and you don't have nearly as many spells to work with as a cleric does. A quick look at your examples below bears out the notion that you're just not persisting stuff with sufficient quantity or quality to make it worth it. But I'll do it closer too.

Death Master:

Level 9: Shapechange, Foresight

Decent, I suppose. They're amazing spells, but the duration is already quite solid, especially at the levels you're casting shapechange, and said duration can be extended through other means. A greater metamagic rod of extend spell does this just fine, and isn't crazy expensive. 20 minutes/level, 17th level, you're getting like six hours of these spells out of one casting, and you might have multiple castings.

Level 8: Iron Body

This would be very good, except southern magician only gives seven or eight divine spells a day, ten max, and at least one of those, probably more, are specifically going to be persisted (or you're not getting much value). That means taking 50% ASF on most of your spells. That iron body is dismissable seems to be damning it with faint praise.

Level 7: Ethereal Jaunt

Pretty good, but you run into the problem that you don't necessarily want to be ethereal all the time. I'm not saying the capacity to persist ethereal jaunt doesn't have a bunch of strength to it, but it's situational strength, and situational is the last thing you want your only persistable 7th (especially one coming after a huge desert), to be.

Level 3: Arcane Sight, Meld into Stone

Arcane sight is decent. Not especially exciting, but decent. Meld into stone is okay, I guess. One thing consistent with a lot of these is that you're not having too much actual impact on challenges.

Level 2: Alter Self, False Life, See Invisibility

Alter self is probably the best spell listed so far, persist-wise. The duration was already pretty good, but not on this level, and the additional utility is super meaningful. Dunno that it's worth four feats though, and it feels a lot like you're spending four feats on this, given how unexciting the other options are. False life is hours/level, and it probably won't last that long, so it barely counts. See invisibility is a lot like arcane sight, but even less exciting premised on the longer duration and lower versatility.

Level 1:Comprehend Languages, Entropic Shield, Expeditious Retreat, Shield.

Comprehend languages has a lot of that usual issue of being overly passive and unexciting, but here it has the added bonus that you really don't need to cast it at the beginning of the day, because the situations where it comes up tend to be a lot lower stress. The last threee spells here, entropic shield, expeditious retreat, and shield, seem quite good. It's nice that some of the better things are front loaded.

So, it seems alright. Not convinced that what you're getting is worth four feats, especially when you consider that you need to be running some turning adders to have all of these up. Absolutely not convinced that this is a serious power adder to the death master.

Level 5: Fire in the Blood
Level 2: False Life

This is two spells. One of them is false life, which sucks. Fire in the blood is in no way super powerful, or even all that powerful. No way are these worth four feats. Not convinced they're worth one feat.

In practise, this means all-day Alter Self for the Death Master from level 3 on, and all-day Ethereal Jaunt, Iron Body and Shapechange a bit later. The poor Dread Necromancer does not get anything worth persistable

This alone does lift up the power ceiling for the Death Master. All-day Alter Self, Ethereal Jaunt and Shapechange do add to the possibilities of the Death Master starting at level 3.

Probably should have read this part before evaluating, but I suppose it's always worth doubly evaluating. It really seems like not enough. Shapechange is broken with or without persist. Ethereal jaunt is alright. And alter self is great, but not four feats great.

Now, if you put the usual stuff like Ocular Spell into the mix...this actually greatly increases the ceiling of those two classes, don't you people think?

Does it? Maybe the death master, but, from looking through the list for this thread a bunch, it feels like most of the spells are enemy targeted, occasionally battlefield targeted, and frequently minionmancy. There are a lot of spells that don't work with ocular/persist, in other words. I'd like to see what that expanded list looks like for both classes, but a completely arbitrary and off the top of my head estimate says that it's not upping the ceiling by that much.

The ceiling, and not the average power, since this is fairly hard optimisation. But do people think that having access to optimised persistomancy for almost the same price as a Cleric (and persistomancy was indeed evaluated when the Cleric was discussed, which is why I feel it is relevant to speak about persistomancy again) allows these two classes to have a power ceiling which reaches Tier 1?

Dread necromancer definitely seems to have approximately the same ceiling here. Maybe with list expansion? But it's so many steps, so many resources. Death master is more plausible, but what you have laid out definitely doesn't seem sufficient. It doesn't feel like you're getting that excess of value that you'd expect from something truly overpowered. It feels like you're getting a perfectly reasonable amount of value, and perfectly reasonable amounts of value do not tiers break.

[Troacctid]

Illumians can DMM with arcane spells anyway, so I don't see why you'd bother with Southern Magician nonsense.

[remetagross]

Ok, fair enough. So, that's a neat trick, but not an overpowering trick.

Though I'm not sure it's worth a tier change in and of itself; Death Masters actually ignore the ACF of Iron Body thanks to their special material component. The text says "ignore the spell failure chance for casting in armor" , but Iron Body says "just as if you were clad in full-plate armor". So no drawbacks here, I guess.

And sifting through the "range: touch" spells, which still qualify as ranged: fixed for Persist purposes, we have some more. In total I found:

Blur
Etherealness
Gaseous Form
Stoneskin
True Seeing

And two with a 10-ft, fixed range: Antimagic Field and Antilife Shell. The latter is, I guess, neat to persist? Especially combined with the fact that undeads can't hurt you either.

So, a bit more versatility. Agreed, I'm not sure it's completely out of league from the average power of what a price of four spellcasting-related feat should provide.

Ah, Troacctid, I didn't know that. Well, my whole point is moot, I guess.

[eggynack]

Though I'm not sure it's worth a tier change in and of itself; Death Masters actually ignore the ACF of Iron Body thanks to their special material component. The text says "ignore the spell failure chance for casting in armor" , but Iron Body says "just as if you were clad in full-plate armor". So no drawbacks here, I guess.

That's a thing of interest. Not sure how reliably one will have blood, but at the very least this'll make iron body really good when you do have said blood.

And sifting through the "range: touch" spells, which still qualify as ranged: fixed for Persist purposes, we have some more. In total I found:

Blur
Etherealness
Gaseous Form
Stoneskin
True Seeing

Touch range spells for persisting are a thing subject to intense debate, so they're probably not all that reliable for optimization purposes. As for specific spell assessment, gaseous form is pretty crappy long-term because you lose casting, stoneskin's combination of reasonable duration and dischargable nature means the additional utility is limited (similar to false life), etherealness loses quite a bit from, y'know, being a 9th, leaving blur and true seeing as what I'd consider the real standouts. And they do seem like real and meaningful additions, those two.

And two with a 10-ft, fixed range: Antimagic Field and Antilife Shell. The latter is, I guess, neat to persist? Especially combined with the fact that undeads can't hurt you either.

Yeah, shell is nice.

Edit:

Illumians can DMM with arcane spells anyway, so I don't see why you'd bother with Southern Magician nonsense.

That does seem quite a bit better. You're still taking about three feats (the third because of the racial choice), but two spells persisted a day looks like it matches up with a death master's array of persistable spells pretty well, so you're shaving off the feat for cheap.

[Gnaeus]

Crusader 34. Very hard to make useless. High optimization floor.
Death master no rank. Not super familiar with them and never watched one in play.
Divine Mind 45 I think. They look pretty solid, but again never seen one or made one.
Dragon Shaman 45. I think we underrank this class a touch. Sturdy. Passable backup healer. I'd usually rather have one than a knight or a fighter. Maybe should be 54 but easy to play and helpful in low tier parties.
DFA 3. Way to useful to be 4, not nearly versatile enough for 2.
Dread Necro. 2. The tiers don't measure potential, they measure versatility at equal optimization. A low op DN is measured against a low op sorcerer. A low op sorcerer did not pick his best spells. DN wins 1-20. A mid op sorcerer does have the most versatile sor/wiz spells. But the mid op DN has expanded his spell list and also has the most versatile sor/wiz spells on a better chassis. DN wins 1-20. High OP sorcerers have junk like loredrake, and win. So at most optimization levels DN wins, should be same tier as Sorcerer. If that's dubious, they're clearly better than favored soul at any op level.

[Zanos]

That's a thing of interest. Not sure how reliably one will have blood, but at the very least this'll make iron body really good when you do have said blood.

Lasts one day, but specifically allows gentle repose to preserve blood, and a medium corpse contains 8 viable doses. Doubled for each size category over medium, halved for each below. So it should really be trivial to maintain a supply.

[rrwoods]

Dread Necro. 2. The tiers don't measure potential, they measure versatility at equal optimization. A low op DN is measured against a low op sorcerer. A low op sorcerer did not pick his best spells. DN wins 1-20. A mid op sorcerer does have the most versatile sor/wiz spells. But the mid op DN has expanded his spell list and also has the most versatile sor/wiz spells on a better chassis. DN wins 1-20. High OP sorcerers have junk like loredrake, and win. So at most optimization levels DN wins, should be same tier as Sorcerer. If that's dubious, they're clearly better than favored soul at any op level.

Preface: I agree with this statement if you replace "versatility" with "power". DN is a 2 in my mind for exactly this reason.

However, tier 2 is pretty explicitly not about versatility. It's about having abilities that are so powerful you can toss versatility to the curb and still trivialize encounters.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I don't care who your DM is, I don't see how Silent Image is a game-breaker even under the most generous interpretation possible.

Agreed; even if it is encounter-winning, it's encounter-winning in the best way possible-- turning clever ideas into successful actions, rather than just triggering an "I win" mechanic.

[D.M.Hentchel]

Crusader: 453
I'm really not convinced these guys can do anything other than damage and they seem to deal much less of that than the Barbarian. They can sometimes push enough healing to keep an ally up for an extra round. I hear there is some action economy breaking there, but I don't see it.

Death Master: 2
Others have argued better than I could about just how strong this small spell list is, but not many have mentioned just how strong the undead compainion is. Having a Wight that can make and control spawn is something that can quickly spiral out of control.

Divine Mind: skip

Dragon Shaman: 564
I love this class, the abilities are cool and the fluff is awesome, unfortunately the power simply is not there. Honestly with 2 skill points, mediocre auras, medium BaB, and a bad skill list Dragon Shaman struggles to compete with the Aristocrat's powerful class skills. Only the Touch of Vitality offers any real power. Meta-breath feats offer a fair amount power, which combined with an ACF from Dragon Magic means they are a cut above tier 6.

Dragonfire Adept: 453
Strange beast the DFA is, gains a huge amount of power and utility from a single feat (entangling exhalation). I think handbooks are well known enough that any mid-op game will be using it. Any low OP game the DFA dishes out nice amounts of damage.

Dread Necromancer: 2
More and more I think it is ridiculous that the beguiler slipped to tier 3. Both these classes are game-breaking in the mid levels and likely outshine the Ardent and Favored Soul.

[eggynack]

Lasts one day, but specifically allows gentle repose to preserve blood, and a medium corpse contains 8 viable doses. Doubled for each size category over medium, halved for each below. So it should really be trivial to maintain a supply.

My main problem was with preserving blood you're presumably getting encounter style (because commoner killing, while fitting for this evil class, can plausibly lead to conflict), but gentle repose seems more effective than I thought it was. It's not necessarily perfect though. Assuming an 15th level, and an intelligence of, say, 30, you're running 39 spells a day, leaving aside cantrips. If you're strictly relying on gentle repose, a single casting of that leaves you with 24 of those, and if we're doing this illumian style then there aren't any subtracted from southern magician. So, three castings per day if you're strictly relying on repose. Definitely doable, if a bit annoying. Of course, you can source some of that blood from more recent encounters, but it's definitely not perfectly reliable, and I'd think you'd want to keep up those 45 baseline vials anyway, on setting out for an adventure, because you're losing a semi-random quantity of vials from casting.

All this to say, maybe semi-trivial? You can obviously do it, and off of spells that you're not much using anyway (you have enough even if you're fully reposing, want to persist alter self, and want a couple of spare spells for some purpose), but it's not precisely costless.

Preface: I agree with this statement if you replace "versatility" with "power". DN is a 2 in my mind for exactly this reason.

However, tier 2 is pretty explicitly not about versatility. It's about having abilities that are so powerful you can toss versatility to the curb and still trivialize encounters.

I sometimes feel like power and versatility are just different names for the same thing. I mean, what we're really after here, if we're getting mathy, is some average percent effectiveness across a random yet roughly CR matching set of encounters. By that metric, the sorcerer can get like 100% against one encounter, by having just the right spell, and 80% against the other, because you're casting something strong with only decent fit, and the dread necromancer is getting 90% both times, because they're getting perfect fit with only reasonable power or something. Fit matters, especially when you're comparing two classes that are doing really powerful things already, and that comes from versatility. An even trade of versatility for power, then, would leave you with the same average but more variance, which is fine.

My feeling on the wording of tier two is that it's more descriptive than prescriptive. All these classes that were considered tier two just happened to feel lower versatility with equal power. I don't think we can fully preclude the at least theoretical notion of a high versatility yet somewhat lower power class landing in tier two. Like, imagine some class casting spontaneously off of, say, the wizard, cleric, and druid lists, all at once. Now imagine we subtract enough caster levels that the imaginary class is demonstrably weaker than anything in tier one. I don't think we should shunt this to tier three just because it's extremely versatile.

Cause, the reality is, these fixed list casters, especially the beguiler, are both. They do some really powerful things, but a lot of the edge they have over the sorcerer is from the fact that they have an overwhelming number of sometimes weaker spells. I think my favorite example of this is 4th level spells, comparing sorcerer to dread necromancer. The dread necromancer is getting some really great spells here. Animate dead comes online, which is really important, and stuff like black tentacles and dispel magic is great. But I don't think there's a single spell there that's individually better than polymorph. It's just such a powerful spell, but, at the same time, it's the only spell they're getting for a bit. I think dread necromancer wins here, and wins easily, and a lot of that victory is because of versatility, rather than power.

[Aimeryan]

I sometimes feel like power and versatility are just different names for the same thing. I mean, what we're really after here, if we're getting mathy, is some average percent effectiveness across a random yet roughly CR matching set of encounters. By that metric, the sorcerer can get like 100% against one encounter, by having just the right spell, and 80% against the other, because you're casting something strong with only decent fit, and the dread necromancer is getting 90% both times, because they're getting perfect fit with only reasonable power or something. Fit matters, especially when you're comparing two classes that are doing really powerful things already, and that comes from versatility. An even trade of versatility for power, then, would leave you with the same average but more variance, which is fine.

It depends on what you mean by "power" and what you mean by "versatility". For example, if you use power to mean the maximum potential at doing one specific thing then this is quite different to versatility. If you mean power to mean the overall effectiveness then versatility has a huge part to play there and great power would almost certainly also mean great versatility.

[eggynack]

It depends on what you mean by "power" and what you mean by "versatility". For example, if you use power to mean the maximum potential at doing one specific thing then this is quite different to versatility. If you mean power to mean the overall effectiveness then versatility has a huge part to play there and great power would almost certainly also mean great versatility.

They're not the same thing, certainly, but this generally assumed massive divide rings false to me. After all, power so often represents versatility as well, as a sufficiently powerful ability is liable to be applicable to a wider variety of situations than a less powerful one (for example, a weak summoning doesn't really represent an impact on combat, so it's not all that applicable to those situations, while one improved by strict statistical power will apply to those situations), and versatility so often represents power, because an ability is going to be stronger if it's a good fit for its situation. They're like two sides of the same coin. We can talk about versatility and power as separate entities, and have that mean something, but to talk of one as the key to some levels of power, and the other as key to other levels of power, strikes me as somewhat false.

The only way I can really see extra power working where versatility does not, or vice versa, is when you hit a serious decline in marginal utility. At some point, a barbarian doesn't need anymore damage, and at some point, that ridiculous spontaneous caster is going to stop caring about big swaths of their super-list. But that's a thing applicable to individual cases, not the game as a whole. We can just evaluate these fixed list casters for what they are, for what they can do, not taking much note of whether they got there by way of versatility, power, or some arbitrary linear combination of the two.

In a way, this matters a lot more to individual characters than it does to our assessment of classes. Returning to the barbarian, we can just take the ability, "Can deal a whole hell of a lot of damage in these ways," and apply some marker to it designating how much we value that, given the context of the rest of the class. Where this is more important is when figuring out what things you want to add to a character. If you think a particular barbarian, given the campaign in question, has reached the satiation point for power associated with charging damage, then you shouldn't add another charge multiplier where you might otherwise. Similarly, the more spells you add to a dread necromancer, the less valuable more spells become.

If you want to be accurate you need to supply different statistics. There is a reason why mathematicians use the mode, mean, median, standard deviation, etc. when comparing things; only supplying one statistic can be very misleading.

Perhaps. I don't think this statistic is necessarily all that important though. Niches and power at various optimization levels are more valuable though, in my opinion, but those are already things.

The problem with JaronK's tier system is that it tries to wrap things up too nice and simple to truly be accurate - I do not contest that it did catch on, though.

I don't think it's all that inaccurate. Some of the particular ratings are a bit off, but it seems to have value as a metric. Nothing's gonna tell you everything.

[Aimeryan]

I don't think it's all that inaccurate. Some of the particular ratings are a bit off, but it seems to have value as a metric. Nothing's gonna tell you everything.

I actually took that out before you posted, but since you seemed to have grabbed on to it before I managed to do so I guess I'll answer.

I don't think JaronK's system is that inaccurate, either - at least not in the terms of being wrong. I do, however, think it is not as informative as I would like. To a new player the tiers, and even the "why XYZ class belongs in this tier" threads, do not give enough information on what a class is good at and what it is bad at. The tier system JaronK posted probably is not intended to do that, but it does mean you have to do a lot of "scouting" to find out the strengths and weaknesses of any particular class. That said, I do think there is at least one case where it is wrong and has led myself personally to wrong presumption of ability.

When I first started playing D&D 3.5e I joined a session already in progress (my friends helpfully started on a weekend I couldn't make!). The level 3 party consisted of a Bard, a Paladin, a Sorcerer, and a Rogue. The party was just about to enter a dungeon. I had no idea what the classes did (that's probably not quite true; I was not unfamiliar with generic class types in fantasy - I played a variety of MMOs), so the DM showed me JaronK's tier list. I picked Psychic Warrior; it was described as Tier 3:

"Capable of doing one thing quite well, while still being useful when that one thing is inappropriate, or capable of doing all things, but not as well as classes that specialize in that area. Occasionally has a mechanical ability that can solve an encounter, but this is relatively rare and easy to deal with. Can be game breaking only with specific intent to do so. Challenging such a character takes some thought from the DM, but isn't too difficult. Will outshine any Tier 5s in the party much of the time."

I thought that sounded perfect; I know that I was likely to put more time and effort into this than my fellow friends, so I didn't want to be too strong, but I didn't want to be weak either. I thought it sounded better than Tier 4 because I didn't want to be in situations where I thought I was useless and might as well go put on a cup of tea (I'm British!). The tier description just sounded great.

I loved combat initially - I was strong and I had powers to mean I could seemingly do something else other than just attack. I was a little concerned that I seemed to not be able to do much in the dungeon other than combat - indeed, the Rogue seemed to be doing everything of that nature, other than detect magic stuff that the Sorcerer was doing. The Bard had skill points to do stuff, although he was being played by one of my... very casual friends. Anyway, then we finished the dungeon.

Heading back to town the campaign then went quite social-orientated. Except, my character seemed to lack any such abilities. I had no skills that seemed to help, and my powers only seemed to affect me - and not in any way that would let me do the stuff that would have helped. The Rogue had stuff to do. The Sorcerer had stuff to do. The Bard... well. The Paladin was the Party Face, so had stuff to do. I felt useless.

Before the next session I checked the "why each class is in its tier" thread. I noticed lots of talking about combat and how the class had stuff that helped, but it seemed to forget about non-combat stuff altogether. I was stumped as to why it was Tier 3 when Tier 3 said this:

"Capable of doing one thing quite well, while still being useful when that one thing is inappropriate"

I didn't feel that was the case at all. I still don't. If the tier list had explained that the Psychic Warrior has very little to no out of combat utility (later on they do get teleport and fly for themselves if you take the Freedom mantle, which is... helpful) then I would not have picked it. Or, you know, actually follow the tier description. Knowing what I know now, JaronK didn't actually put Psychic Warrior in Tier 3 - some other people suggested it was that tier to him after relating the power to some of the other Tier 4 stuff - unfortunately, power in combat alone doesn't mean it is "still being useful when that one thing is inappropriate".

Maybe this thread will vote it up as Tier 4.

[GilesTheCleric]

Heading back to town the campaign then went quite social-orientated.

This is a good point, and it's definitely something that some guide somewhere should state about classes. But, as with Person Man's niche system, there's a whole lot of ways to play the game, so it's tricky to classify all of them. D&D is primarily a combat-based game, so it makes sense to assume that combat will be if not a majority, then at least a substantial portion of gameplay.

Any campaign that leans heavily in one direction or another (social, puzzles, exploration, RP, comedy, economics, dating-sim, etc) is going to upend the current tier system. Even one that's 100% combat won't accurately reflect the tier system, though it might not be as inaccurate as it would be for other types of games.

The tier system as I understand it is a tool for facilitating dialogue between players and GMs, and I think in that respect, it's not bad -- as long as you grasp some of the assumptions made. It could definitely be clearer about its assumptions, to avoid the problems it created for your game.

[Troacctid]

There are three pillars of the game: combat, exploration, and interaction. It's usually safe to assume that any campaign is likely to include some amount of all three.

[eggynack]

The psychic warrior certainly isn't as strong out of combat as it is in it, but it looks like there are some non-combat oriented things you can on the list, having autohypnosis on the skill list is always pretty decent, and access to feats like psicrystal affinity has some real value to it. You can pull off some detection, movement, defenses that aren't just high AC or HP, and even some weird utility. Big problem is that that out of combat utility generally comes at the cost of likely better combat utility. The main issue I think you're identifying is that the original tier system kinda identified combat as several tricks, instead of just one (as far as I can tell). So, like, if you're a barbarian, and your only thing is pouncing in, then your trick will be ineffective in some quantity of combat encounters. Terrain and enemy movement modes and so forth. If you're a psychic warrior, then, as you yourself identified, you have more options when your charging plan stops working. Which, in a sense, can be read as satisfying the definition of the tier.

It's not a perfect situation, certainly. The niche system helps with it, including explanations helps a bunch too (and it might be worth having a separate thread after this that acts in parallel to the "Why each class is in its tier" thread), but you're usually getting some serious data loss by not just being a weird transcript of the entire game. I think the number, more than being somewhat accurate, is also valuable, but one of the big flaws of the tier system is that it explained itself somewhat imprecisely. In particular, it didn't have a crazy detailed list of its assumptions, alongside the exact statistic it was measuring. Really, the system probably should have said something like the following right out front:

This tier system is a weighted averaging of a character's contribution level as applies to any arbitrary encounter or challenge. Following are the major assumptions of the system:
1. Mid-level play is the most common, followed by low-level, so the levels are weighted by a slanted bell curve, with the left side of the curve skewed higher than the right.
2. The same commonality can be reasonably applied to optimization level. Most games are roughly mid-op, followed by low-op, followed by high-op, especially among people looking at D&D information online, so the same sort of bell curve should be applied here to the various optimization levels.
3. Most of the mechanical weight of this gaming system is on combat rather than non-combat, so this tier system assumes that encounters/challenges are going to be roughly 75% combat, 25% non-combat.
4. Sources outside of class are available to the classes, but availability is limited by optimization level. Low-op scenarios are going to make use of few or no feats, items, ACF's, and so forth, on the assumption that any such game objects used will be limited in tier impact, and higher optimization scenarios increase use of things, as well as use of a variety of sources for those things, commensurately.
5. An exception to the above is prestige classes. In particular, past a certain amount of use of a particular prestige class, it is assumed that you aren't fully using your base class anymore, and that you are instead, to some extent, the prestige class instead. Therefore, in considering arbitrary builds, you can not make use of more than half of the levels of any particular prestige class.

Some of the assumptions can obviously be changed and/or added, but these are the kindsa things that should be obvious to anyone reading. It's kinda like the game itself, y'know? It'd be a lot more fine that the game is imbalanced if said game were just a lot more transparent about it.

[Karl Aegis]

Druid : 1
The do everything class. D8 hit dice, two good saves, good enough skill list and skill points (may need to devote all skill points to Knowlege (nature), Concentration and Spellcraft).
Animal Companion with 2 hit dice is probably as good as a tier 5-6 character at level one even without items or buffs. Some of them get Listen/Spot, tracking and tripping. Can also be buffed.
Wild Shape lets you become an animal. Choose wisely. One with high mobility and/or good racial bonus to skills are always helpful. Even better if you can tack on good detection abilities. May become crazy if using the right feats and spells. May become bear just for coolness factor.
Spells: Spells let you do anything barring stopping time. You get timeless body for that. Lack of true game breakers early in the game made up for by the sheer variety of things you can do to your opponents and allies. If you actually need/want some localized time shenanigans, stay calm and breathe. You still have snake's swiftness and can summon a pile of crocodiles if you need more time to think. If you still need more time to think fly away and come back tomorrow with the right set of shenanigans. It helps that every splatbook gives the druid something they can use, even if those options aren't the absolute best.
Special Mention goes to Nature Sense. Other classes needed something like this. Some classes wanted something like this. Druids get this just to laugh at other classes.

Duskblade (PH2) : 34
Solid Int-based chassis with a decent amount of skills and spellcasting based off Int. 2 good saves, and a decent d8 hit dice.
Offensively, can target Fort, Reflex and Will saves, AC and touch AC, dealing hit point damage, causing fatigue/exhaustion, giving a strength penalty, paralysis, unconscious/blinded/stunned, fear, idiocy, negative levels, etc.
Defensively, nothing really special. Obscuring Mist, Deflect, Swift Invisibilty, Cat's Grace, other meh options. Can wear armor.
Misc. things, Darkvision, See Invisibility, Jump, Swift Fly, Spider Climb, Dimension Hop/Door
If all you choose to do with this class is target AC, deal hit point damage, you will be an effective combatant. If you choose to branch out, you will probably have enough options to be able to target AC, deal hit point damage when the time comes. In fact, you probably won't even need to target AC, deal hit point damage if you choose not to (although that is a waste of a perfectly good class feature that you may not want to be using all the time with a d8 hit dice).

Expert: 532
The go-to class for city guards. A spear, some leather armor and a decent amount of peacekeeping skills are all you need. Falls behind Warrior in hit points and chance to hit just a little, but probably won't make much of a difference. Good will save, too. Less likely to fall to a random enchantment, but more likely to be disabled by poison.
If going full ham with iajutsu focus, lucid dreaming, use magic device, etc. will probably break the game, but the chances of going full ham with this class is close to zero. Can't actually make the magic devices to use, but might convince DM to let them "find" everything they need.

Expert (UA) : 45
TWO good saves and a single MARTIAL weapon. You can equip your city guards with halberds and studded leather now!
Can pick up real class features now, but none of the really good ones. Sneak attack dice limited. Going full ham probably not allowed in "Generic Games" ie no Lucid Dreaming or Iajutsu Focus. In reality probably not that good.

Factotum (Dgs) :432
The Big Daddy of Skill Users. Int-based class with all skills and casting. Sorcerer/Wizard spells are good to pick up. Extra actions are good, if expensive. Will probably drop a tier if sufficient items are not available.
D8 Hit Dice, only good Reflex Save and no evasion means will be very squishy and prone to mind control. May not have enough inspiration available when needed. Potential to be game-breaking if allowed every item they ever want and have access to every skill like Lucid Dreaming or Iajutsu Focus.

Favoured Soul (CDv) : 24
The cleric list is really good. All good saves are really good. Random class features that aren't domains are meh. No access to initiate feats, domains and sanctified spells really hurt the class. Having a bunch of really good spells every day is nice, but lacks the ability to choose spells you really only need once or twice a day. Or once a week. Or once in a lifetime (looking at you Helping Hand). Can still turn downtime into power, but there are actual costs in this class. Still, can target whatever defenses it wants to, can make allies strong enough and can smash... not Tokyo, but maybe like a bathhouse in Tokyo or something. Maybe not "deal hit point damage, guess you shouldn't have been near me", but still plenty of things to win.

[Troacctid]

We're not at the next round of voting yet. I will say though that Expert is not T5. It's at about the same power level as Aristocrat, so unless you think Aristocrat is also T5, then you have to put Expert at T6. And if you're putting Aristocrat at T5, I don't know why we even have a sixth tier in the first place, since it's apparently literally just for Commoner?

Duskblade is an edge case, but if you think Crusader is T4 because it can't do enough outside of combat, then you pretty much have to put Duskblade in T4 for the same reason.

[eggynack]

We're not at the next round of voting yet. I will say though that Expert is not T5. It's at about the same power level as Aristocrat, so unless you think Aristocrat is also T5, then you have to put Expert at T6. And if you're putting Aristocrat at T5, I don't know why we even have a sixth tier in the first place, since it's apparently literally just for Commoner?

I don't think expert and aristocrat are of the same power level. Some skills are really strong, and the ability to fit them all on one class has real utility to it. Karl had some of the hits listed, and there're a bunch of others.

[Troacctid]

Aristocrats have most of the strongest skills, and they can actually do stuff in combat as well, which is not at all true of Experts, who have poor BAB, poor hit dice, no weapon or armor proficiencies to speak of, and no class abilities that allow them to contribute to a combat scenario in any way.

[eggynack]

Aristocrats have most of the strongest skills, and they can actually do stuff in combat as well, which is not at all true of Experts, who have poor BAB, poor hit dice, no weapon or armor proficiencies to speak of, and no class abilities that allow them to contribute to a combat scenario in any way.

Experts have medium BAB, and are only one step off HD-wise. Meanwhile, they get UMD, which is really strong, iajatsu focus, which helps with the combat thing, autohypnosis, which always has some value to it, and that's on top of whatever you want the aristocrat to be doing (diplomacy, intimidate, spot, listen, or whatever), and you can also use stealth skills, if you want to go in that direction. More skill points helps with this stuff. It's always been somewhat open to debate how much we should value UMD in particular, but it's definitely more of a marginal value add on the expert, with its relative lack of stuff to do, as compared to the rogue, so it could be worth that shift from six to five. It's definitely not the only advantage though.

[Jopustopin]

I wrote a Dragon Shaman handbook. Honestly the big problem with a class like Dragon Shaman when trying to fit him in to the tier system is that you realize how much room exists between Tier 4 and Tier 5. It's not really true for tier 3 - say someone wanted to play a Crusader or a warblade or a swordsage or a duskblade. It probably wouldn't matter that much. In a casual game you won't even notice the difference between tier 1 and tier 2.

But in the same vein there is a huge difference between a fighter and a dragon shaman. I'd much, much, much rather someone play a dragon shaman than (I think) all the tier 5 classes and at least one of the tier 4 classes (Marshal).

I'd almost wish we could extend the tier system by one tier... is seven too many? I vote for ten tiers.

[Muggins]

I wrote a Dragon Shaman handbook. Honestly the big problem with a class like Dragon Shaman when trying to fit him in to the tier system is that you realize how much room exists between Tier 4 and Tier 5. It's not really true for tier 3 - say someone wanted to play a Crusader or a warblade or a swordsage or a duskblade. It probably wouldn't matter that much. In a casual game you won't even notice the difference between tier 1 and tier 2.

But in the same vein there is a huge difference between a fighter and a dragon shaman. I'd much, much, much rather someone play a dragon shaman than (I think) all the tier 5 classes and at least one of the tier 4 classes (Marshal).

I'd almost wish we could extend the tier system by one tier... is seven too many? I vote for ten tiers.

Well, to be frank, I'm not sure the marshal is really a Tier 4 class either. Its capabilities are honestly pretty slim.

As for the Dragon Shaman being in Tier 4 or 5, I think it's important to remind everyone that the Tier System has high and low rankings. You can be in the same tier as another class while also being significantly worse or better than other classes in that tier, just not enough to make the distinction between "does its thing well" and "doesn't do its thing well" which marks the divide between Tiers like 4 and 5.

[Lans]

I kind of want to put dragon shaman in tier 4 on the strength of commune with dragon spirit, but it comes to late. If the dragon shaman got a little bit more, 4 skill points a level, more auras, if he choose between chromatic and metallic instead of an individual dragon. Some thing! I could put him in tier 4, but as it stands he just doesn't have enough.



Edit- I am really on the fence with the crusader,. He gets a number of abilities, but with how he gets his maneuvers leaves a lot to be desired.

I am going to put it at a high tier 4. I will love to hear arguments for 3.


Crusader 4,5,3

[Hurnn]

Experts have medium BAB, and are only one step off HD-wise. Meanwhile, they get UMD, which is really strong, iajatsu focus, which helps with the combat thing, autohypnosis, which always has some value to it, and that's on top of whatever you want the aristocrat to be doing (diplomacy, intimidate, spot, listen, or whatever), and you can also use stealth skills, if you want to go in that direction. More skill points helps with this stuff. It's always been somewhat open to debate how much we should value UMD in particular, but it's definitely more of a marginal value add on the expert, with its relative lack of stuff to do, as compared to the rogue, so it could be worth that shift from six to five. It's definitely not the only advantage though.

Eggy is right, and if I recall correctly before factotum expert was considered a pretty decent dip in some builds.

[Jormengand]

Round's over, let's commence to the voting on:

Druid
Duskblade (PH2)
Expert
Expert (UA)
Factotum (Dgs)
Favoured Soul (CDv)

Tiers from the last round will be counted up later today. To be clear, I will be counting Karl Aegis' votes from above but please do try not to vote on a round until I actually start it, even if the previous one has had a week.

[GrayDeath]

Druid Tier 1, no question
Duskblade (PH2) puh, honestly no personal experience. From its makeup as a Gish-Supporter-Caster it seems very much like a definite Tier 3 to me.
Expert T65
Expert (UA) T56
Factotum (Dgs) Ah, my lovely Factotum. Tier 3, its almost the definition of "Jack of all Trads" after all. Note to Self, play another one soonish. ^^
Favoured Soul (CDv) Well, here we go. I do expect a lot of discussion here, and I for one am going to say that the FS (naked so to speak) is closer to T3. Why? Because it only has very limited casting from the (smaller) Cleric List, loses Domains that might have helped with its lack of breadth, and doesnt get much in return. Yes it has some (late coming) above average Class Features additionally to being a Divine Sorcerer, and all good saves, but thats not enough to make more than a true One Trick Campaign Breaker OR good at one thing and passable at a few others.
So while it could be rated T2 (low), I am staying with my above rating.

[GilesTheCleric]

Because it only has very limited casting from the (smaller) Cleric List

There's roughly 1242 spells on the Cleric list, or 1086 if you don't count dragmag.

[Lans]

Druid Tier 1
Duskblade (PH2) Tier 3 If resiste energy, dispel magic and dimension door with combat prowess is tier 3.
Expert 5 Iajutsu focus, autohypnosis, UMD social skills. Seems like they can do the non combat stuff pretty good.
Expert (UA) 4/5 As above with bonus feats
Factotum (Dgs) I feel this is a weak tier 3. Mainly due to spells.


Favoured Soul (CDv) What are the broken cleric spells? Like on par with shrink item, explosive runes, alterself?