Community Tiering for all 3.5 Base Classes

[Karl Aegis]

My opinion:

Tier systems assumes moderate optimization, so I don't think it's fine to assume that an expert has diplomacy, umd, autohipnosis, iajutsu focus and whatever else.
How are you going to motivate your build and to roleplay such a varied skill list? You're an expert, but what is exactly your field of expertise?

My field of expertise is being a badass adventurer who is cheaper to hire than a few wand charges would cost.

[Jormengand]

I'll bet that if you took a sample of four or five encounters, the Duskblade would be able to contribute effectively to more of them than the Adept pretty much every time.

We could certainly start with the three provided in the tier system itself - the dragon in a cave full of traps, the resistance movement whom you need to seek out, and the invading army you need to prepare a village for.

Adepts can certainly stave off the effects of any traps they get hit by more easily, such as by neutralising poison. When actually fighting the dragon, assuming the dragon actually, say, flies, the duskblade's going to have trouble getting into melee combat with it while the adept either throws lightning bolts at it until it goes away, or turns into another dragon.

Adepts have invisibility and see invisibility, command, comprehend languages and tongues, which are all going to be more useful in a social situation than, say, anything the duskblade can do.

Againt the army, the duskblade has few other options than to charge in and rack up a kill count. Meanwhile, the adept can be a dragon, get DR 10/adamantine, and rack up a bigger kill count. Alternatively, turn invisible, turn into something sneaky, and assassinate the enemy commanders. Or walls of stone everywhere and the odd commune to get vital information if you're high enough level.

[AvatarVecna]

That's mostly, but not entirely accurate. The UA Generic class "Uncanny Dodge" includes normal Uncanny Dodge and Improved Uncanny Dodge, and runs off of all class levels, not just the class you gained it from.
The lack of most of the Rogue 10+ special abilities* and the weaker sneak attack progression hurts, but I do not think it's enough to drop the Expert(Generic) out of T4 to T5, especially with the second good save.


Edit: Tiers 3 and 4 are a lot broader than the other Tiers.

Fixed 10 minutes before you posted.

Well, also because straight Bard is bad and most people apparently don't realize that flasks and Rings of Blink are things Rogues can use. For a more detailed discussion, take a look at this thread.

It's impressive the number of assumptions you're making about how the others characters were built. The Bard was me (Bard 4/War Weaver 5/Uncanny Trickster 1/Sublime Chord 1/Uncanny Trickster +2, for tons of casting and group buffing via War Weaver+Uncanny Trickster BS), and the Rogue was dual-wielding with a Ring Of Blinking and an item of Continuous Wraithstrike.

[javcs]

Fixed 10 minutes before you posted.

That'd what I get for checking the posts that happened while I was typing, I suppose.

[AvatarVecna]

That'd what I get for checking the posts that happened while I was typing, I suppose.

Don't mean to sound unappreciative, because I appreciate the error being pointed out; it makes things more accurate. Thanks for helping!

[flare'90]

Druid:1.They get the cleric chassis (d8 HD, good Fort/Will, 3/4 BAB) with more skill points (4+Int) and some ok skills (Spot/Listen, Diplomacy). Druids have three main class features, and honestly each one of them is really powerful. The least good (because I can't say worst by any mean) is the animal companion, a free warrior in it's own right with some additional utility (you can get an owl/hawk/eagle for scouting, a camel/horse for a mount or a wolf/riding dog for a more combat focused choice) and the possibility to change it as you progress. It also scales with level, gaining HD (and feats), armor, ability bonuses and a smattering of abilites. The second class feature is wildshape, which enables the druid to transform into a variable-sized animal (or a plant, or an elemental). There is a cap on how many HD tha animal can have based on the druid level and a limit on uses/day, but the sheer flexibility and power this one class feature gives the druid would be enough to put the druid in Tier 3 by itself, and it can be improved by feats. Just remember to check the errata/Rules Compendium, the wildshape rules can be confusing. The last and most important feature are the spells. The druid is primarily a spellcaster, after all, and spells are what make the druid Tier 1. The druid spall list is impressive, containing a good amount of buffs, debuffs, healing, blasting, BFC and utility. At high levels the spells begin to lose power when compared to the cleric or the wizard, but it's a small complaint (and they still get shapechange). To expand on flexibility, the druid also get to burn prepared spells to spontaneously cast summon nature's ally, so they have a decent solution to basically every combat encounter regardless of what their spell loadout is: a lot of situations can be solved by turning into a bear and summoning other bears. In addition, being a core class, the druid gets something from basically every book published; maybe more that others, since they usually get access to new wildshape forms. All considered, the druid is a textbook Tier 1 class for very solid reasons.

Duskblade (PH2):34. A fighter-lite chassis (d8 HD, good Fort/Will, full BAB) with 2+Int skill points and a somewhat lacking skill list (all Knowledges, not much else) and some spells would not normally make a class a gish. What makes a duskblade an effective melee fighter, the best single-class gish and gives them some versatility is the combination of spells and class features. Like the beguiler, the duskblade is an Int-based spontaneous arcane caster. They gets up to 21 spells (excluding cantrips) drawn from a very combat focused list (seriously, they get few buffs and even less utility spells) that stops at 5th level spells. The class features center around using those spells in melee, both directly and through weapons attack. The main class feature of the duskblade is called arcane channeling. It works by enabling the cast of a touch spell and it's delivery via a normal melee attack. This takes a standard action, but later on the duskblade gains the ability of doing it as a part of a full action. The other class features let the duskblade wear armor without suffering from arcane spell failure, enable a quicken spell effect a few times per day and gives bonuses to overcoming spell resistance against hit targets. In conclusion the duskblade is a very powerful class in combat, capable of substantial damage even with only standard actions, of tactical movement and also a bit of debuff. This comes at the cost of out of combat options, since the class gets basically only movement options (skills, tactical teleports, limited flight) and Knowledge skills. Even so they are reasonably effective in a wide variety of situations, and for this I think they deserve to be placed in Tier 3 (low Tier 3, or at least very high in Tier 4, it's debatable either way).

Expert (Core, NPC):65. They get a weak chassis (d6 HD, good Will, 3/4 BAB) and a lot of skill points (6+Int). The distinction of the class is that they choose 10 skills to become their class skills, but that's it. That's the extent of what the class offers, but since it's built to the "generic NPC skill guy" standard for DM use this is usually enough. From a player prospective the class is really lacklustre. By chosing the right skills (say, UMD, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Move Silently, Hide, oddball skills like Autohypnosis, Iaijutsu Focus, Lucid Dreaming,...) it can be made effective into a (small) niche, but even then a proper PC class (rogue, factotum, beguiler, scout, artificer,...) can do better. Tier 6 is right I feel, but Tier 5 (barely) might be appropriate.

Expert (UA):5. Compared to the NPC Expert, this one is flat-out better. Slightly better chassis (d6 HD, two good saves, 3/4 BAB), 12 skills to chose for class skills and some actual class features. Pity that those class features are bonus feats, but they can chose any feat as a bonus (no, they do not ignore the prerequisistes) and they get a small list of exclusive bonus feats that mimic class features. They at least can try to mimic a rogue (except that the rogue is still better, but it's worth a shot) and fullfill some kind of niche. Tier 5 is just about right.

Factotum (Dgs):3. A middle of the road chassis (d8 HD, good Ref, 3/4 BAB) and the best skill access in the game (6+Int, all skills as class skills). What makes this class the best skill user in the game and a valuable all-arounder is the class features. Their first class feature is inspiration, which is a point reserve that recharges per encounter and is used to fuel their other features. There is a feat (Font of Inspiration) that increases the number of Inspiration points they get, but it's by no mean necessary to play a successful factotum; it also need to be taken more than once to be really effective. The other basic class features enable the factotum to add his level to skill checks (1/day/skill) and his Int mod to hit, damage or save by using an Inspiration point. The other class feature only make them more versatile: they can cast a small amount of arcane spells (they cap at one 7th level spell and more of lower level) per day, they get to add their Int mod to Str/Dex checks and skills, they get Int to AC (uses 1 Inspiration/round, free from level 16) they get to burn Inspiration for sneak attack damage (1d6 for 1 Inspsiration, ask your DM if it stacks with itself or not. I have seen it both stacking and not), they get a small amount of healing (they can also turn undeads), they can get extra standard actions (at 3 Inpiration points per action, mind), they can ignore spell resistance/damage reduction (2 Inspiration/use), they can cheat death (once per day, 4 uses of Inspiration, only works on hp damage) and they get to replicate class features (they chose 3 each day, 4 Inspiration for each use, 1 use/day/ability, only abilities avable at 15th level or earlier and only Ex abilbites. If there's no tag on the feature you want, as usual, ask your DM. The book needed more editing, can you tell?). All this features, coupled with the ufettered access to skills, elevate the factotum to Tier 3 by dint of the sheer versatility they offer.

Favoured Soul (CD):2. The divine counterpart of the sorcerer (alternatively, the spontaneous version of the cleric), the divine mind has the monk chassis (d8 HD, all good saves, 3/4 BAB) with less skills (2+Int) and a minimal skill list (why they don't get Knowledge (religion) but K(arcana)?). As chosen of a deity, they get weapon focus (and proficiency) and later specialization on the deity's weapon, energy resistance 10 to up to 3 types, wings (at level 17? At least it's good maneuverability) and damage resistance (10/silver or 10/cold iron). ok, basically what the class is about is spells, the class features are window dressing. The favored soul gets divine spells from the cleric list. They cast spells with Charisma, but they use Wisdom for the save DC. The cleric list is a very good list, but a lot of the most useful spells are also mostly situational, so the favored soul is kinda held back in that regard. Even then they get more spells know than the sorcerer, so this fact helps them a bit. Considered these limitations, and the lack of turn undead and domains, the favored souls falls into Tier 2: they have the raw power of the cleric, since that comes from their spells and the favored soul can access those same spells, but they lack the ease of respeccing that a cleric (and prepared casters in general) enjoys.

[Troacctid]

We could certainly start with the three provided in the tier system itself - the dragon in a cave full of traps, the resistance movement whom you need to seek out, and the invading army you need to prepare a village for.

Adepts can certainly stave off the effects of any traps they get hit by more easily, such as by neutralising poison. When actually fighting the dragon, assuming the dragon actually, say, flies, the duskblade's going to have trouble getting into melee combat with it while the adept either throws lightning bolts at it until it goes away, or turns into another dragon.

Adepts have invisibility and see invisibility, command, comprehend languages and tongues, which are all going to be more useful in a social situation than, say, anything the duskblade can do.

Againt the army, the duskblade has few other options than to charge in and rack up a kill count. Meanwhile, the adept can be a dragon, get DR 10/adamantine, and rack up a bigger kill count. Alternatively, turn invisible, turn into something sneaky, and assassinate the enemy commanders. Or walls of stone everywhere and the odd commune to get vital information if you're high enough level.

The Adept is going to be out of spell slots halfway through the first encounter. There's no way they'll be able to take on the other two.

[Karl Aegis]

The Adept is going to be out of spell slots halfway through the first encounter. There's no way they'll be able to take on the other two.

Good thing they get a dragon zombie at the end of the first encounter, then. Should be able to muscle their way through the other two.

[Jormengand]

The Adept is going to be out of spell slots halfway through the first encounter. There's no way they'll be able to take on the other two.

Not if they're trying to solo three party-based level-appropriate encounters by themself, no.

[Troacctid]

Not if they're trying to solo three party-based level-appropriate encounters by themself, no.

You can do it in a group and you'll still run out of spells at the same time.

Good thing they get a dragon zombie at the end of the first encounter, then. Should be able to muscle their way through the other two.

Jormengand's Adept prepared lightning bolts in those slots.

[neriractor]

The people yelling are the ones complaining about the argument, not the ones having it.

Of course, I wasn't calling for prolonged engagement. I was just saying that If you can't find it in you to look through the thread for a sentence that supports your position, you are not putting enough thought into the exercise for your opinion to deserve serious consideration.

I don´t remember who was it that counted all people in favor of the beguiler going for tier 2 became higher that the tier 3 vote. I´m bringing this up because I am not entirely sure if he counted only the posts with at least a few lines worth of text, my own entry for that round was lacking of even one sentence (this one will do the same infact) but supports your position, if discounting all the people that didn´t place a sentence kept the beguiler at tier 3 (I´m fairly sure it would take them to tier 2 but I won´t go searching for it) would you still push this change to the assumed vote requirements?

Druid: 1
Duskblade: 3/4
NPC Expert: 6/x/5
UA Expert: 5/x/4
Factotum: 3/x/4
Favored Soul: 2/X

[Jormengand]

You can do it in a group and you'll still run out of spells at the same time.


Jormengand's Adept prepared lightning bolts in those slots.

Mate, I have more spell slots than there are rounds of combat in the average adventuring day. I think I'll be fine.

Wait, I'm confused, I thought adepts with a decent wisdom got 5 third-level spells per day. Where are you getting that I'm having to prepare lightning bolt in all of them, especially when I also have the general insanity afforded by polymorph?

In any case, at least it's better than flat-out not being able to contribute to most encounters.

[GilesTheCleric]

posts with at least a few lines worth of text, my own entry for that round was lacking of even one sentence (this one will do the same infact)

Why are you intentionally not sharing your reasoning?

[neriractor]

Why are you intentionally not sharing your reasoning?

a bit busy, and these are not the most contested of classes, so is more of the effort outweighing the relevance of an argument, is kind of moot, seeing as I already spent some time answering to you

edit:... and by coming back to fix a minor redundancy on the text, for good measure.

[Troacctid]

Mate, I have more spell slots than there are rounds of combat in the average adventuring day. I think I'll be fine.

Wait, I'm confused, I thought adepts with a decent wisdom got 5 third-level spells per day. Where are you getting that I'm having to prepare lightning bolt in all of them, especially when I also have the general insanity afforded by polymorph?

At level, like, 9 or 10? No, you don't? You have like three. That'll get you two Lightning Bolts and a Tongues.

In any case, at least it's better than flat-out not being able to contribute to most encounters.

If you run out of gas a third of the way through the adventure, how are you contributing for the other two-thirds?

[Jormengand]

If you run out of gas a third of the way through the adventure, how are you contributing for the other two-thirds?

Res...ting? It's not common that you're called upon to stop an army, find a revolution and kill a dragon in his lair full of traps all in one day, right?

Also I love how your argument has been entirely centred on "The adept can't do all this in one day!" and not "The duskblade is actually capable of, like, any of this!"

[AnachroNinja]

Much as I hate agreeing with Jormengand, I do think Duskblades being in tier 3 is a travesty. It baffles me that people keep actually pointing out their complete lack of non combat options in their post, and then still judging them tier 3 somehow. They certainly do have a greater ability to apply their combat strength to given encounters, but they can't do anything else.

[Jormengand]

Much as I hate agreeing with Jormengand

Can we not have this kind of open aggression? Please? This is what AvatarVecna was talking about with people not wanting to stick around to explain their votes because the discussion was becoming inherently toxic.

[eggynack]

Firstly, I'd like to point out that nobody has any right complaining that they didn't know about the potential issues with a democratic voting system (namely, that the curve can get skewed by a bunch of people making less-than-fully informed votes), considering that this is a problem with democracy that's been known to be a problem since the times of Socrates. That you got this far in life without ever being exposed to the possibility that a system that gives everybody a vote can give results based on a stupid majority isn't really the OP's problem. Your privilege of being so consistently in the majority is a blessing, but that bubble's gotta pop sometime.

I honestly just didn't think about the issues overmuch. I dunno if I thought people would discuss things more, because this is a forum, or wouldn't apparently rely so much on past tiering. People fired out tiers into the void, leaving immediately afterwards, and perhaps I didn't expect that to be the way things would operate. I'm not sure, because, again, I didn't think of it much. I suppose part of that is because, even as things so often come out poorly, I somehow keep returning to the idea that the things'll will work out. Not sure why, but it's the case, because I still for some reason think I'll be able to convince enough people to get healer into tier three or four. Perhaps it's not the delusion of democracy so much as the delusion we must all carry with us to argue on the internet.

Either way, just because the system had clear initial flaws that we didn't try to change until things went wrong, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to correct those flaws. Is it the OP's problem that we didn't consider these things earlier? I suppose not. Is it their problem that there do exist the flaws we're claiming, ones that could be partially fixed through easy means? If they want their tier system to have any value, I'd say yes.

I'm personally of the opinion that Beguiler's gamebreaking nature can vary a lot depending on what skills/feats/PrCs they take, but my vote could easily have gone 2/X/3 instead of 3/X/2, because it's a class that hovers on the border to me. Whether it's declared T2 or T3, I'd be sure to inform DMs that it's a class that can straddle the border hard depending on the specific build and playstyle being used...and that's what I'm going to do here, instead of whining about how democracy works.

Okay then, as I keep saying, if you think beguilers are tier three, maybe justify that. Name the level range(s) where you think that sorcerers have the advantage, and name the spells that you think the sorcerer is taking to get an advantage at those levels. Ignore in this consideration any skill, feat, or especially prestige class use. We might end up considering some factors that give beguilers more of an advantage, but I think it's valuable in this particular case to ask what the comparison looks like when the sorcerer is doing things really well and the beguiler is being aggressively standard. An important reality that I think exists in this comparison is that, as useful as build optimization is to beguilers, it is absolutely fundamental to sorcerers and favored souls. If we assume low optimization, as you're kinda implying? The beguiler utterly wipes the floor with the sorcerer through the power of a pre-defined list.

Also, we never really talked about this, but what tier three comes close? Which of them can stand up to spontaneous casting off of a strong list with sorcerer-speed progression, or even exist in the same ballpark? For even more information supporting the claim of beguilers in tier two, consider my post here and Cosi's post here comparing beguilers to a good favored soul list. I think that the analysis shows that the classes are at least pretty close together.

Given the nature of this thread, and how difficult things would be to keep track of, my only possible suggestion for a way that the OP could've improved accuracy and discourse was to leave discussion open a bit longer on each round;

I dunno why my suggestion, of making the specific vote results public and having the people within the discussion track the changing results, wouldn't improve accuracy.

I don't know how this would've changed various tiers, but I can only assume it would've at least resulted in a lot less whining. I've been avoiding this thread because I don't wanna get drawn into the endless pointless discussions people have been having about thread procedure and a round that's now multiple rounds in the past, but I think the better solution would just be to cast my vote with a bit of explanation and just avoid the old discussions.

The procedure stuff is as boring to me as it is to you. I don't know why the discussion of beguilers would be pointless though. Again, we actually changed enough minds to make a difference to how the class should be tiered, and I think also convinced people coming into the thread late who had been on the opposing side before. I think you might want to actually look at the beguiler discussion we were having. It was surprisingly reasonable. We could have such a discussion at this moment, as I implied above.

Is this going to get a Why Each Class is in its Tier companion piece? If so, I call dips on Beguiler.

That'd be neat, though it'd be pretty odd to write up detailed beguiler information in support of tier three. Either way, I'd figure it'd work more like the original one, where multiple good information sources are included where available. It'd be like, "Beguiler deserves tier three because it's incredibly difficult, bordering on impossible, to construct a sorcerer spell list that beats them across the majority of levels."

It is insane to call a class dependent on a feat from a setting specific web enhancement hard to screw up. 99% of people building Factotums have no idea Font of Inspiration even exists. Also, by RAW the one good trick they have (extra actions) doesn't work, and they don't need Font of Inspiration by RAW because they gain (rather than reset) inspiration by starting encounters with rodents or allies.

Honestly, the Factotum is a tire fire of a class that doesn't do anything worth having. You gain a lot of abilities way after anyone cares, and your big trick is a non-functional mess that gives you more actions you can't do anything with. It's good as the second half of a Tome of Battle (or arguably caster) Gestalt, but in standard D&D it's garbage.

I don't think factotums require FoI to hit tier three. Spells are a big part of it, because so much great wizard stuff happens between adventures, but they get a whole lot of other useful abilities too, even among the ones in the first five or so levels.

Because "trolling" is now defined as "casting your vote and leaving rather than staying to have a nerve-wracking argument with *******s who yell at everybody". Has it occurred to you that some people might not have the passion for argument that you have? That they came into this thread to add their opinion to the list of opinions, rather than campaign to others about how their opinion is the only correct opinion?

I don't think it's trolling, but it is problematic. I don't even know why these people thought these things, and the people who did say why they thought these things were so frequently blatantly wrong, reliant on 9th's, or on the notion that the sorcerer's ability to cover separate specializations across separate characters is meaningful, or on the idea that beguilers are nothing but one powerful trick that can be countered easily. A "3" on its own could mean that you've carefully considered the beguiler and think that it lands in that tier, or it could mean that you're assuming sight unseen that the beguiler is nothing but mind affecting will saves. We don't know, and can't know. You say above that a democratic system is going to be inevitably flawed, and you're probably right, but we here in this forum have at least one advantage over the system in its normal form, and it's that we can see how and why people are voting, and maybe convince them otherwise if their reasoning is poor (or have the same applied to us). To give no explanation is to throw that utility away.

As for the claim that these conversations were nerve wracking or yelly, I don't agree. Again, our beguiler discussion was perfectly reasonable and calm, to my mind. Things just keep getting tense because stuff is said that's from completely outside the context of the tier discussion. Stuff like Jormengand saying that we want beguilers to be moved based purely on personal preference, and that all of our dense and interesting discussion amounts to nothing more than whining, and then yelling louder and louder about their thread procedure, or Zanos claiming that there's a whole bunch of attacking going on.

[Troacctid]

Res...ting? It's not common that you're called upon to stop an army, find a revolution and kill a dragon in his lair full of traps all in one day, right?

In a typical adventuring day, I'd expect to face roughly five encounters, with a mix of combat, exploration, and interaction. That's pretty demanding with an Adept's limited spell slots.

Let's look at some actual scenarios I've run in the past couple weeks (all from premade adventures).

Spoiler

Show

1. Your party has been tasked with rescuing some dwarven allies who have been trapped in the mountains by ogres and are under siege at some ancient ruins. You need to get there quickly (before the ogres' hill giant buddies show up), rescue the dwarves, and hopefully retrieve a valuable but heavy artifact from the site as well. On the way there, you have to cross some dangerous river rapids and are ambushed by a level-appropriate monster. Once you arrive, you need to get through the ogre camp and make it to the ruins. At that point there's another combat encounter as some of the ogres attack the dwarves guarding the walls. Then you need to safely extract the dwarves and the artifact. You are 6th level.

2. Your party is exploring a dungeon in a race to discover the ancient lore hidden there before others can. You encounter four traps of various kinds, two level-appropriate combats, an NPC ghost with useful information, and you finish with a boss fight against a souped-up golem with various extra immunities and stuff. The temperature is 0 degrees Fahrenheit and cold dangers are in effect. You are 8th level.

3. Your party is on an urgent diplomatic mission to forge an alliance with a local giant warlord before your faction's enemies can do the same. On the way there, you are waylaid by bandits, and discover a shortcut through the Feywild, where a fairy forces you to solve a short series of puzzles in order to continue. When you arrive at the warlord's camp, he offers to treat with you if you compete with his champion in a series of drinking contests and feats of strength. Afterwards, he agrees to sign your treaty if, by morning, you can bring him the heads of some of the mischievous fey that have been bothering him. You are 4th level.

4. Your party has been tasked with defeating a 12th level Vampire Wizard who dwells in a tower full of his many servants, who are mostly undead, constructs, and beasts that he has forced into his thrall. His chambers are dimensionally locked and can only be entered with the correct key, which can be found in pieces in various locations in the tower. Some of his slaves have escaped into the caverns below the tower and may be persuaded to help you. The vampire is constantly scrying on the various rooms in the tower and could be watching you at any time. You are 10th level.

Also I love how your argument has been entirely centred on "The adept can't do all this in one day!" and not "The duskblade is actually capable of, like, any of this!"

The Duskblade can contribute very well to combat encounters all of the time and medium well to exploration encounters some of the time, but it has trouble contributing to interaction encounters. It's weaker than the Crusader, stronger than the Barbarian, and roughly tied with the Psychic Warrior. This puts it in a contentious zone near the border of T3 and T4. I'd say you could go either way depending on where you think the cutoff is.

The Adept can contribute somewhat to combat encounters some of the time, somewhat to exploration encounters some of the time, and poorly to interaction encounters some of the time. It doesn't do anything reliably or with any particular skill.

[Cosi]

It's impressive the number of assumptions you're making about how the others characters were built. The Bard was me (Bard 4/War Weaver 5/Uncanny Trickster 1/Sublime Chord 1/Uncanny Trickster +2, for tons of casting and group buffing via War Weaver+Uncanny Trickster BS), and the Rogue was dual-wielding with a Ring Of Blinking and an item of Continuous Wraithstrike.

So what was the Factotum doing with his worse casting than the Sublime Chord and worse damage than the Rogue to get people to care? I'm just having difficulty seeing the abilities the Factotum gets translate into anything good.

I don´t remember who was it that counted all people in favor of the beguiler going for tier 2 became higher that the tier 3 vote. I´m bringing this up because I am not entirely sure if he counted only the posts with at least a few lines worth of text, my own entry for that round was lacking of even one sentence (this one will do the same infact) but supports your position, if discounting all the people that didn´t place a sentence kept the beguiler at tier 3 (I´m fairly sure it would take them to tier 2 but I won´t go searching for it) would you still push this change to the assumed vote requirements?

Sure, though you'd obvious have to give people a change to re-vote (or at least provide explanation) if you were to add such a standard.

Name the level range(s) where you think that sorcerers have the advantage, and name the spells that you think the sorcerer is taking to get an advantage at those levels.

Sort of related to this, I really think there should be at least two distinct level ranges ranked. Low level and high level games do not have the same balance concerns, and simplifying things ends up being unhelpful. If it ends up being that the Beguiler is clearly better at less than 10th level, and clearly worse at higher, it seems that ranking them as nominally equal is really strange.

That'd be neat, though it'd be pretty odd to write up detailed beguiler information in support of tier three. Either way, I'd figure it'd work more like the original one, where multiple good information sources are included where available. It'd be like, "Beguiler deserves tier three because it's incredibly difficult, bordering on impossible, to construct a sorcerer spell list that beats them across the majority of levels."

I mean, you need to write something if the tier system is going to be useful. Just saying "Beguiler 3" is not remotely helpful for people who want to use the tiers for anything.

I don't think factotums require FoI to hit tier three. Spells are a big part of it, because so much great wizard stuff happens between adventures, but they get a whole lot of other useful abilities too, even among the ones in the first five or so levels.

Those spells are super unimpressive though. At 13th level, your highest level spell is 5th, which is what your cohort's cohort could cast, and you get one a day. You can do stuff with that, but what is impressive enough for a 13th level party to care? And what are you doing in combat?

Actually, my objection to the Factotum being in Tier Three basically comes down to the Beguiler being there. Like what in the hell is your Factotum throwing down to make him remotely comparable to the Beguiler?

[Cosi]

If people want to test the Adept and Duskblade against a bunch of encounters, why not just use the Same Game Test, a list of encounters designed to test the power of characters? It's slanted towards combat, but you could totally add "travel somewhere hard to get" or "convince a dude to let you access his library" or something if you're worried about it.

[eggynack]

Sort of related to this, I really think there should be at least two distinct level ranges ranked. Low level and high level games do not have the same balance concerns, and simplifying things ends up being unhelpful. If it ends up being that the Beguiler is clearly better at less than 10th level, and clearly worse at higher, it seems that ranking them as nominally equal is really strange.

Makes some sense. There's inevitably going to be a ton of possible axes you can apply to the linear tier system.

Those spells are super unimpressive though. At 13th level, your highest level spell is 5th, which is what your cohort's cohort could cast, and you get one a day. You can do stuff with that, but what is impressive enough for a 13th level party to care? And what are you doing in combat?

Out of combat, in core, you get lesser planar binding, major creation, teleport, wall of stone, contact other plane, dominate person, sending, persistent image, magic jar, fabricate, overland flight, and permanency. All of these things would be relevant to a 13th level party if they're not getting something from a higher tier. Also, a bunch of lower level spells retain their potency as you increase in level. You're not losing access to animate dead or scrying at 13, and those spells are nice late. In an adventuring context, you're not able to just have the 5th's you want, but you're doing too poorly. Some of the non-combat spells I listed are also kinda combat spells, and the minion and information stuff can plausibly carry power over into adventuring.

Putting together a straight up list is obviously pretty trivial here, given how little you have to work with. Let's say black tentacles, solid fog, polymorph, and maybe SM IV as fourth level spells, because I think IV is one of the better ones. For the fifth, I'd guess either magic jar or teleport. You can change it up a bit, but I think you're clearly doing relevant things here. You're not casting all day though, so some of your in-combat capacity is most likely coming from stabbing stuff, with the spells coming into play when you go against something more powerful. Though, actually, I do have about four more directly acting spells listed, and you're expected to enter around four encounters a day, so you're not that inconsistent. Either way, I'd put the more out of combat stuff as significantly more important than the combat stuff to the factotum's power. Their casting mechanic, with a huge list you can't pull much off of at a time, is ideal for that.

Actually, my objection to the Factotum being in Tier Three basically comes down to the Beguiler being there. Like what in the hell is your Factotum throwing down to make him remotely comparable to the Beguiler?

Again, I don't think this is a reasonable line of reasoning. I, honestly and truly, think beguilers are tier two. Factotums are absolutely worse than beguilers, but that just means factotums aren't tier two, which I agree with. The reality is, nothing that is currently in tier three is liable to stay in tier three if beguiler is the level of competence those classes have to reach.

[Cosi]

Again, I don't think this is a reasonable line of reasoning. I, honestly and truly, think beguilers are tier two. Factotums are absolutely worse than beguilers, but that just means factotums aren't tier two, which I agree with. The reality is, nothing that is currently in tier three is liable to stay in tier three if beguiler is the level of competence those classes have to reach.

I'm ignoring the rest because I think this is the core of my issue.

I agree with you, the Beguiler belongs with the Sorcerer rather than the Factotum. But there are people (e.g. Jormengand) who are voting Tier Three for both. I think that's basically insane. A Beguiler is going to walk all over any Factotum, and easily. What is the thought process that says "these are equivalent"?

[AvatarVecna]

I honestly just didn't think about the issues overmuch. I dunno if I thought people would discuss things more, because this is a forum, or wouldn't apparently rely so much on past tiering. People fired out tiers into the void, leaving immediately afterwards, and perhaps I didn't expect that to be the way things would operate. I'm not sure, because, again, I didn't think of it much. I suppose part of that is because, even as things so often come out poorly, I somehow keep returning to the idea that the things'll will work out. Not sure why, but it's the case, because I still for some reason think I'll be able to convince enough people to get healer into tier three or four. Perhaps it's not the delusion of democracy so much as the delusion we must all carry with us to argue on the internet.

Either way, just because the system had clear initial flaws that we didn't try to change until things went wrong, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to correct those flaws. Is it the OP's problem that we didn't consider these things earlier? I suppose not. Is it their problem that there do exist the flaws we're claiming, ones that could be partially fixed through easy means? If they want their tier system to have any value, I'd say yes.

This was a high-procedure thread from the beginning; issues with the procedure needed to be brought up then, not halfway through. If you think you can do a better job, and you think the OP isn't willing to change theirs, make your own thread.

Okay then, as I keep saying, if you think beguilers are tier three, maybe justify that. Name the level range(s) where you think that sorcerers have the advantage, and name the spells that you think the sorcerer is taking to get an advantage at those levels.

I'm gonna stop you right there, because it shows that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the tier system as it exists. How you could possibly have gotten this far in these kinds of discussions with such an idea, I don't know, but I'm gonna say this nice and clear:

TIER 2 IS NOT, BY DEFINITION, BETTER THAN TIER 3.

Because you seem to have this weird idea that T2 is better than T3, statements like "Beguiler can't be T3 because it's better than Sorcerer, and Sorcerer is T2 and T3 is worse than T2" might make sense to you, but they don't actually fall in line with the definitions of the tier system.

Spoiler: Warning: Contains Sarcasm

Show

You want me to justify Beguiler not being T2? Okay, let's read the T2 definition:

Tier 2: Has as much raw power as the Tier 1 classes, but can't pull off nearly as many tricks, and while the class itself is capable of anything, no one build can actually do nearly as much as the Tier 1 classes. Still potentially campaign smashers by using the right abilities, but at the same time are more predictable and can't always have the right tool for the job. If the Tier 1 classes are countries with 10,000 nuclear weapons in their arsenal, these guys are countries with 10 nukes. Still dangerous and easily world shattering, but not in quite so many ways. Note that the Tier 2 classes are often less flexible than Tier 3 classes... it's just that their incredible potential power overwhelms their lack in flexibility.

"can't pull off nearly as many tricks"
"can't always have the right tool for the job"
"less flexible than T3 classes"
"incredible power overwhelms their lack in flexibility"

Well I don't know about you, but that all just screams "Beguiler" to me!

Wait, that doesn't sound like beguilers at all...

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.

Now that sounds like Beguilers! Always useful, has a specialty but can definitely contribute when that specialty isn't relevant, can be game-breaking but isn't automatically, can be countered and challenged, almost universally superior to all T5 classes! That sounds much more like a Beguiler, as opposed to that "gamebreaking hyperspecialist" T2.

To be less sarcastic about it, T2 is, generally speaking, defined by the ability to specialize to a gamebreaking degree in any field of their choice. If you took 100 randomly-generated Beguilers and stuck them in a line, they'd all be basically the same, and will all be basically constantly useful. If you took 100 randomly-generated Sorcerers or Favored Souls, you'd end up with a wild rainbow of sucky characters. If you limited both classes to only the actually good/useful options, you'd end up with a line of 100 Beguilers that looked an awful lot like the first line, and was still awesome, and you'd also have a line of 100 Sorcerers and 100 Favored Souls that were each a massively focused specialist, compared to the versatile semi-specialist beguiler.

Over the course of 20 levels, a Sorcerer chooses 43 of their 43 spells known for themselves. Over the course of 20 levels, a Favored Soul chooses 60 of their 60 spells known for themselves. Over the course of 20 levels, a Beguilers choose 5 of their 116 spells known for themselves. Beguiler is better than either IMO, but the tiers as they're defined aren't about what's better. Now, I think that's a serious flaw with how the tier system is set up, but this thread, as mentioned in the OP, isn't about discussing the validity of the tier system, only where classes fall inside of it.

Now, many you think the Beguiler has enough gamebreaking capabilities to be above T3, and maybe you're right...but if they do, they're still not T2, because they have too much versatility. T3 is power and versatility without tons of gamebreaking opportunities baked in, T2 is gamebreaking opportunies in any direction but you have to pick one, T1 is gamebreaking opportunities in every direction and you can have whichever ones you want. Because of how versatile Beguiler is, it's not competing to break into T2, it's competing to break into T1, bypassing T2 entirely.

I also don't think the "but if Beguiler is T3, that makes a lot of other classes not T3 because they're not as awesome as Beguiler" argument is very relevant. The first class to be placed into a tier does not set the bar for competency, that's what we have the definitions for. A class does not have to be Beguiler Level Awesome to be powerful and versatile enough to be T3, Bard and Factotum are both good examples of T3 even though they're not Beguiler Level Awesome.

I dunno why my suggestion, of making the specific vote results public and having the people within the discussion track the changing results, wouldn't improve accuracy.

The only problem I have with it as an idea is that it stinks of "I could do this better than OP" implications. As previously stated, if you think you can do it better, make a new thread where discussion and votes remain open; if you don't feel like putting in that much effort and would prefer to backseat-administrate, don't be surprised when you're dismissed out of hand.

That'd be neat, though it'd be pretty odd to write up detailed beguiler information in support of tier three. Either way, I'd figure it'd work more like the original one, where multiple good information sources are included where available. It'd be like, "Beguiler deserves tier three because it's incredibly difficult, bordering on impossible, to construct a sorcerer spell list that beats them across the majority of levels."

I have a feeling his write-up would be less about the class itself and more about the meta (something like "Beguiler was put in T3 because a bunch of clueless plebs jumped into the thread and spouted mindless drivel before vanishing, and then the OP refused to disqualify their votes for the sake of staying true to perfect democracy"). But who knows? Maybe they'll prove me wrong and write up a description of why Beguiler is in T3 in a neutral manner.

I don't think it's trolling, but it is problematic. I don't even know why these people thought these things, and the people who did say why they thought these things were so frequently blatantly wrong, reliant on 9th's, or on the notion that the sorcerer's ability to cover separate specializations across separate characters is meaningful, or on the idea that beguilers are nothing but one powerful trick that can be countered easily. A "3" on its own could mean that you've carefully considered the beguiler and think that it lands in that tier, or it could mean that you're assuming sight unseen that the beguiler is nothing but mind affecting will saves. We don't know, and can't know. You say above that a democratic system is going to be inevitably flawed, and you're probably right, but we here in this forum have at least one advantage over the system in its normal form, and it's that we can see how and why people are voting, and maybe convince them otherwise if their reasoning is poor (or have the same applied to us). To give no explanation is to throw that utility away.

And yet that's the flaw we're going to have if we do things democratically. The decision voters can make to make an uninformed vote is an unfortunate side effect of democratic voting, but getting rid of that issue makes the vote undemocratic, or at least not perfectly democratic.

[neriractor]

Sure, though you'd obvious have to give people a change to re-vote (or at least provide explanation) if you were to add such a standard.

fair enough, thanks for answering.

[Cosi]

This was a high-procedure thread from the beginning; issues with the procedure needed to be brought up then, not halfway through. If you think you can do a better job, and you think the OP isn't willing to change theirs, make your own thread.

This is also a thread with an explicit goal (create a tier list reflecting community consensus). The procedure isn't doing that, so OP needs to either change procedure, or admit that the goal is actually something else.

To be less sarcastic about it, T2 is, generally speaking, defined by the ability to specialize to a gamebreaking degree in any field of their choice.

Why does anyone at all care about that? Players aren't picking their class because of how much it breaks the game, and DMs aren't getting anything out of a generic "breaks the game" tag because it doesn't tell them what abilities they need to worry about.

I have a feeling his write-up would be less about the class itself and more about the meta (something like "Beguiler was put in T3 because a bunch of clueless plebs jumped into the thread and spouted mindless drivel before vanishing, and then the OP refused to disqualify their votes for the sake of staying true to perfect democracy"). But who knows? Maybe they'll prove me wrong and write up a description of why Beguiler is in T3 in a neutral manner.

There is a lot of projection coming from the pro-never-changing-anything-ever people.

Anyway, a description of the Beguiler:

The Beguiler has a very potent set of non-combat abilities. Between a solid skill list (and a focus on INT for more skill points), a laundry list of utility spells, and spontaneous casting, the Beguiler has solutions for the vast majority of non-combat situations, particularly those focused on stealth or social interaction.

In combat, most people assume that the Beguiler's focus on Mind Effecting spells leaves them weak to creatures such as undead and constructions. However, this is largely not the case. At low levels, most creatures natively immune to the Beguiler's spells are mindless, and can be boxed and defeated with silent image. By mid levels, the Beguiler can use charm monster, dominate person, and Diplomacy to accumulate groups of minions with which to defeat enemies immune to his typical tactics. dispel magic can be used to strip away spell based defenses, and haste, slow, or Illusions provide support options against enemies.

Of course, any assessment of the Beguiler would be remiss to ignore the possibility of expanding its spell list. Advanced Learning provides access to options such as power word pain or greater shadow conjuration, and the Beguiler's unique spell acquisition mechanics make Prestige Domains uniquely effective. What's more, Use Magic Device with Knowstones, Runestaves, or Eternal Wands can provide access to utility spells from other spell lists.

Overall, the Beguiler has a strong set of class options and the ability to effortlessly expand their list to acquire new capabilities.

[Troacctid]

You want me to justify Beguiler not being T2? Okay, let's read the T2 definition:



"can't pull off nearly as many tricks"
"can't always have the right tool for the job"
"less flexible than T3 classes"
"incredible power overwhelms their lack in flexibility"

Are you insinuating that flexible classes can't be T2? As in, if Sorcerers were more flexible—like, if you gave them the skills of a Rogue—it would drop them a tier?

[AvatarVecna]

Why does anyone at all care about that? Players aren't picking their class because of how much it breaks the game, and DMs aren't getting anything out of a generic "breaks the game" tag because it doesn't tell them what abilities they need to worry about.

I guess if you ignore the definitions of the tiers, then yeah Beguiler is T2. My apologies for thinking that the tier definitions established in the original post were going to set the metric people use to decide what tier the class falls into.

There is a lot of projection coming from the pro-never-changing-anything-ever people.

It's good to know that you know where I stand on every single class ever, and know that all I'm going to vote is exactly where the class fell originally without putting any thought into it at all (that's why I haven't voted differently from the original tier list in any way, and why I haven't been including any reasoning in any of my vote-posts, and why I haven't been joining in any of the debates, after all, because I'm a stupid ****ing moron who doesn't bother thinking for himself).

Fact is, the tier system as a whole needs to be overhauled, but that's not what this thread is about (that's what the thread you made elsewhere is about); this thread is about using the tier system as it currently exists, not as we wish it existed - and the way it exists, the Beguiler is either universally gamebreaking enough to be T1, or it's T3; it's far too versatile to be T2 whether you're UMDing runestaves or not. That fact that Beguiler is too good to be grouped with other T3s doesn't make it T2, no matter how much people whine about it.

Are you insinuating that flexible classes can't be T2? As in, if Sorcerers were more flexible—like, if you gave them the skills of a Rogue—it would drop them a tier?

I'm saying that the definition of the tier, as it currently is, is classes that are flexible in that they choose which area of the game they want to be gamebreakingly specialized in. Now, T2 characters can be built in ways that make them T4 or T5 (or even T6 if you're awful) builds, by choosing crap spells. Sorcerer has access to too many gamebreaking abilities to be T3. If it gained enough flexibility that it no longer qualified for T2, it would go up a tier, not down. Nice strawmanning, though.

I'll say again: the fact that the tier system sucks and is poorly defined doesn't change the FACT that Beguiler is too versatile to meet the T2 definition. This thread is not about debating whether the tier definitions are fair, it's about debating where the classes fall within the system. If you think Beguiler is too good for T3 on the grounds that it's got the gamebreaking potential and versatility to break into the upper tiers, show that they can be T1 (broken hyper-specialist in every role), or show that they can by T2.

Or you can start your own thread where the first step of redoing the tier system is actually redoing the tier system, rather than reassigning classes under terrible definitions. Cosi gets credit for starting a thread that actually looks to create a better defined system.

[Troacctid]

I'm saying that the definition of the tier, as it currently is, is classes that are flexible in that they choose which area of the game they want to be gamebreakingly specialized in. Now, T2 characters can be built in ways that make them T4 or T5 (or even T6 if you're awful) builds, by choosing crap spells. Sorcerer has access to too many gamebreaking abilities to be T3. If it gained enough flexibility that it no longer qualified for T2, it would go up a tier, not down. Nice strawmanning, though.

I'll say again: the fact that the tier system sucks and is poorly defined doesn't change the FACT that Beguiler is too versatile to meet the T2 definition. This thread is not about debating whether the tier definitions are fair, it's about debating where the classes fall within the system. If you think Beguiler is too good for T3 on the grounds that it's got the gamebreaking potential and versatility to break into the upper tiers, show that they can be T1 (broken hyper-specialist in every role), or show that they can by T2.

Didn't you vote Death Master as T2? How many choices do they have for their gamebreaking specialization?