Retiering the Classes: Adept, Aristocrat, Commoner, Expert, Magewright, Warrior

[eggynack]

In this thread we will consider that most maligned subset of classes, the NPCs. As one would expect, they are generally worse than PC classes, though not every NPC class is necessarily worse than every PC class. These classes force us to ask what value certain game objects have in isolation. What is broad skill use worth in a vacuum, or slow progression casting, or good BAB and weapon access? What can a class with basically nothing do?

Adept: Perhaps the best of the NPC classes, the adept has pretty slow casting, maxing out at 5th's off of a limited list. Said list is actually pretty good, but the utility is hindered somewhat by low spells/day.

Aristocrat: The aristocrat is the most strangely average of the NPCs. Decent skills and decent melee, at least by NPC standards, along with a pile of starting gold for whatever that's worth.

Commoner: You get nothing. I mean, you can take levels in survivor immediately, I guess, but that's not a factor we're considering, and you can take chicken infested, but that's liable to get categorized separately if we do it all. So, you get nothing.

Expert: With six skill points a level, and a weird ten skills of your choice skill list, the expert is the clear skill monkey of the group. Not precisely a great skill monkey, but a skill monkey nonetheless.

Magewright (ECS, 256): This is like an adept, but with a weird kinda spells known thing going on. The list is still decent, though your access to it even more stunted by that spells known thing.

Warrior: The warrior is the direct meleeist of the NPCs, with full BAB, all martial weapons, and all armor and shields. As is true of all NPC classes though, they're not especially good at it.

What are the tiers?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Threads

Tier System Home Base


The Fixed List Casters: Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, and Warmage


The Obvious Tier One Classes: Archivist, Artificer, Cleric, Druid, Sha'ir, and Wizard


The Mundane Beat Sticks (part one): Barbarian, Fighter, Samurai (CW), and Samurai (OA)


The Roguelikes: Ninja, Rogue, and Scout


The Pseudo-Druids: Spirit Shaman, Spontaneous Druid, Urban Druid, and Wild Shape Ranger


The Jacks of All Trades: Bard, Factotum, Jester, and Savant


The Tome of Battlers: Crusader, Swordsage, and Warblade


The NPCs: Adept, Aristocrat, Commoner, Expert, Magewright, and Warrior


The Vaguely Supernatural Melee Folk: Battle Dancer, Monk, Mountebank, and Soulknife


The Miscellaneous Full Casters: Death Master, Shaman, Shugenja, Sorcerer, and Wu Jen


The Wacky Magicists: Binder, Dragonfire Adept, Shadowcaster, Truenamer, and Warlock

The Rankings

Adept: Tier four

Aristocrat: Tier six

Commoner: Tier six

Expert: Tier five

Magewright: Tier five

Warrior: Tier six

And here's a link to the spreadsheet.

[GilesTheCleric]

Are we considering the religious/ Eberron variants of Adept here, or separately?

[eggynack]

Are we considering the religious/ Eberron variants of Adept here, or separately?

I suppose it'd depend on whether it's enough for a tier shift. Is the only variant the one with the extra domain, or are there others?

[Troacctid]

There are two ACFs for the Adept.

I think Adept is at the high end of T5. Probably a 4.75 or so. Same for Urban Adept. The class is not good, but it is certainly better than a decent number of T5s and worse than any class that I'd put in T4.

Adding the domain to either version bumps it up a little bit, but not all the way to 4.

Magewright is about the same as Adept, but a little worse. I'll give it a straight 5.

All the others are T6.

[Dondasch]

Well, this should be fun. In no particular order:

Adept: Bad chassis, familiar and nerfed divine casting. Your class skills are adequate for a caster, but your skill points suck. The base familiar isn't going to amount for much, and you need an Arcane Spellcaster Level for the feats that give you good options. So if you're to get anywhere, the casting must carry the day. So let's take a look:
0th (level 1): These are largely the standard cleric fare. Ghost Sound stands out as the best option, though Create Water is a fun one. While 0th level spells are generally not huge, you at least get a few that can be useful.
1st (level 1): Now we're talking. Sleep and Cause Fear can both end low-level encounters, and Obscuring Mist is your BFC option. On the buff side of things, you get the Protection from [Alignment] series. For utility, you have Comprehend Languages and Endure Elements. At this point, you are reasonably competitive with full casters, having options for a variety of situations.
2nd (level 4): Your get these at the same time as the Sorcerer, but with fewer spells/day. That said, Web is a solid BFC option, Mirror Image is a good defensive option, and Invisibility is both a defense and utility. Bull's Strength and Cat's Grace are still good buffs at this point, and Resist Energy is useful if you expect a certain energy type.
3rd (level 8): At this point, your stunted progression is really hurting. Thankfully, Animate Dead doesn't care. Unfortunately, you don't get any good combat options here; Bestow Curse would be good if it wasn't touch-range. Deeper Darkness is okay. Your best spell here is Lightning Bolt, and you never even have to cast it. Because you get it as a divine spell, you can get into Hexer, which is a huge upgrade. Probably not that important for tiering because it's a 3.0 PrC, but still fantastic.
4th (level 12): Late Polymorph is still Polymorph. Stoneskin remains as a defensive buff against melee, and Minor Creation is another abusable spell.
5th (level 16): Other prepared casters are getting 9ths next level. This level, you're getting Heal, True Seeing, Major Creation, Raise Dead, Wall of Stone, and Commune. It still doesn't really compare, but those are all potentially worth casting.

Verdict: I'm going to say T4. The progression hurts a lot, but you get quite a few spells worth casting.

Commoner: You get better BAB than a War Hulk! You can be better with your unarmed strikes than a Monk! You can enter Survivor right off the bat! You can have better perception skills than most Fighters! If you're an Elan or Killoren, you can get infinite money from Profession! You can use Handle Animal for minionmancy! T6.

Aristocrat: You get barely anything worth mentioning, and not enough to count. Your best bet is being a face, but even then you're running on normal skill use with no boosters. Forgery is hugely underrated, but still not great. T6, you just don't have anything strong enough to be relevant.

Warrior: Full BAB and proficiencies are still not enough to make you good. At least the CW Samurai technically has class features. T5 ​T5.5, if only because you have rudimentary competency.

Expert: While you don't get any skill-boosting class features, you can probably be decent at something at least. You can also do things with UMD. T5, because you do get basic functionality in one or two areas.

[Malroth]

Commoner: tier 6 Literally the worst at everything by design minus a couple niche builds that would work just as well as almost anything else.

Aristocrat: Tier 5 Decent party face and can stab stuff the extra gold can be cheesed into achieving a modicum of compitence.

Expert: High Tier 5 Slightly worse skill monkey than Savant, Can occasionally Contribute if their skill lists are chosen well.

Adept: Tier 4 Has some of the stronger PHB spells in list and a Familiar who can scout.

Warrior: Tier 5 Pretty much identical to the Fighter. Stabbing things sometimes works.

Magewright: Low Tier 4 Has enough magic to Surpass a mundane at a single job, very good at making things.

[Jopustopin]

Commoner: 6.5 - Just to emphasize that, yes, in fact this is as low as you can get straight out of the box.

Warrior: 6 - Yes there is more than just one base class in tier 6. Here is another one.

Aristocrat: 5.9 - And another base class in tier 6. Being better than the commoner isn't saying much.

Expert: Tier 5.2 - Poor man's Factotum. There are a lot of shenanigans that one can pull with "any ten skills." But... let's be honest; they are shenanigans nothing more. It pains me to say that depending on party composition I might prefer an expert to a fighter. And that troubles me.

Magewright: Tier 4.8 I'm struggling to imagine this guy in play. But I think he'd be slightly worse than an Adept and slightly more useful than a fighter.

Adept: Tier 4.5 - I put this guy below the barbarian but above the fighter. Right in between the two (in my opinion).

[eggynack]

Commoner: 6.5 - Just to emphasize that, yes, in fact this is as low as you can get straight out of the box.

Not sure that I'ma support scores below six. Gets into a weird space, where we presumably have this space between zero and one too, which means that whole other talk about crazy stuff or something. I'll put it down at 6 for now.

[Jopustopin]

Not sure that I'ma support scores below six. Gets into a weird space, where we presumably have this space between zero and one too, which means that whole other talk about crazy stuff or something. I'll put it down at 6 for now.

Yeah I don't care lol. It's for emphasis.

[eggynack]

Yeah I don't care lol. It's for emphasis.

I figured. Just don't wanna put anyone's vote in different from how they said it without saying that.

[Zancloufer]

Hmm it's like the opposite of the Wizard/Cleric/Druid one!

Adept: Tier 4: Almost as good as Bard casting off a worst list and weaker chassis. Still a few options that if used right can make them okay. Also although not proficient with it they can wear armour without much fuss as they are divine spell casters.

Aristocrat: Tier 6: Forget Monks, here is "Mediocrity the class" in action. There is NO reason to take this class at all. It is literally a DM going "Here these NPCs are worse than you for some reason".

Commoner: Tier Chicken. No really the entire use of this class is cheesing infinite poultry. On the offhand your DM disproves of you taking leadership and having hundreds of commoners summoning infinite chickens they are Tier 6.

Expert: Tier 5: Mostly because the game is kinda stingy with skill/skill points and this class is good at it. They literally can select a battery of 6-10 skills and be really good at them. Find some shtick involving skill synergy and you have the discount skill monkey.

Warrior: Tier 6: Literally worse than the CW Samurai. Worse than any Full BaB class tbh. Makes the Aristocrat and Commoner look good.

[Bucky]

Logical deductions:
Expert - Tier 6 (follows from my T5 Savant vote)
Commoner - Tier 6 (follows from Expert T6)
Aristocrat - Tier 6 (they might poke into a higher tier at very low levels due to extra money, but the extra money doesn't scale. 3/4 Commoner and 1/4 Commoner w/Shotgun still averages to T6.)

New arguments:
Warrior - Tier 6 as a no-variant Fighter is T5 without heavily optimized feat selection and low T5 if they pick their bonus feats at random. But Warrior is worse than a Fighter who takes the worst possible bonus feats. It's a pretty good dip class for NPC monsters, since they get it at a CR discount, but we're talking about PCs here.

Synthesized:
[B]Adept - Tier 4[B] accepting Dondasch's analysis


Uncategorized for now:
Magewright

[Efrate]

Commoner T6. Bad. You can't do pretty much anything.
Aristocrat low T5. Bad, but in a highly social game you actual are playable and can contribute, if less than any other face class, but I think it is at least doable.
Expert: low T5. You can do some things. Not much short of UMD abuse but I think in the right situation you can contribute. Still, better than fighter a lot of time with decent skill choice. Says a lot about fighter. Or monk.
Magewright: T5. I hate this class mostly because the I dislike eberron in general and this class kind of does not fit within a standard DnD setting. Again it can contribute in the right situation, but most of your stuff involves crafting which is actually something to do almost entirely in downtime, but given a lot of downtime I can see it being useful.
Warrior: T5.5 I think you are worse than the other classes in tier 5, but still better than a commoner. You hold your own in a fight, and if you do not do much, well, neither does the fighter, and you have about the same amount of class features.
Adepts T4: Better than fighter, better than a lot of barbarians. At least equal to a rogue, possibly better in some situations. Definitely the best NPC class, and better than fighter, CW samurai, monk, savant, and I am sure some others by a fair margin.

[Dondasch]

Oh yeah, forgot about decimals.

I am amending my Warrior vote to T5.5​

[Soranar]

Adept: Tier 4, the spellcasting is too limited to warrant more though it could certainly go up with the right PrC or feats

Aristocrat: Tier 6

Commoner: Tier 6

Expert: Tier 5 , vastly dependant on which skills you pick to be functional

Magewright: Tier 4.5 weaker than the adept

Warrior: Tier 6, lacks any class feature beyond his chassis

[eggynack]

Huh, I guess this is right at the edge of thread title length where part of it gets awkwardly cut off. Such is the risk to longer thread titles. Prolly worth it, though this supports my feeling that I shouldn't do these big style too often. Still not sure what to do with these adept variants. Interestingly, the fact that I care more about the decimal values now makes the idea of separately assessing things on the wire more interesting. If we do wind up looking at these, I'm thinking they'd pop up wherever I put the healer. Thinking further, no matter what we do with the classes, I don't think talking about them much now makes too much sense, simply because adepts don't have that many cool ways to optimize. If these things are tier altering on their own, then we must look at them separately, and if they don't, no combination is liable to do so. So, like, maybe we assess whether they're worth looking at once we have a tiering down, because if they wind up five, then these things are more worth assessing than if they're four.

Anyways, my tier rankings.

Adept: Tier four. You're certainly doing the casting itself in pretty mediocre fashion, but the list is sweet, and I think that's good enough. We have fighter at tier four now, which I agree with, and I think this matches up well enough to that. Obviously your endurance, especially at low levels, is kinda lacking, but you have a solid high level range compared to melee types, and the early stuff isn't that bad.

Aristocrat: Tier six. This one's actually pretty close. Decent skills, better combat than the expert, but I just don't think there's quite enough here. This is the edge, I think. Above this is tier five, but here there is tier six. Honestly, defining the edge is really weirdly opinion based. We have tier one reasonably mapped out through talk and such, but tier six is just kinda, "The ones that suck," and how much they suck has been ill defined. I suppose defining that ill defined thing is part of what we're doing though, y'know?

Commoner: Tier six. Seems straightforward. It's the worst.

Expert: Tier five. A choose your own skill list opens up a lot of cool stuff, and average BAB makes you at least halfway passable in combat. The expert is, I think, enough better than the aristocrat to justify the move.

Magewright: Tier five. Like the adept, but worse. The adept was pretty close to the line, in my opinion, and this crosses that line.

Warrior: Tier six. This seems a decent amount worse than the tier five melee options, like the baseline monk (don't want to assume that'll stay in its current tier), or the samurai (CW and OA alike). It's close though, I think.

[jywu98]

Everything except adept is t6, adept is t4. I don't understand why people overrate skillmonkeys that much. Once again UMD isn't a ****ing class feature, everyone can use it.

[Troacctid]

Huh, I guess this is right at the edge of thread title length where part of it gets awkwardly cut off. Such is the risk to longer thread titles. Prolly worth it, though this supports my feeling that I shouldn't do these big style too often.

Just drop the "and".

[eggynack]

Just drop the "and".

I guess. Can't say it don't hurt though.

[yellowrocket]

Everything except adept is t6, adept is t4. I don't understand why people overrate skillmonkeys that much. Once again UMD isn't a ****ing class feature, everyone can use it.

While not a class feature the difference between class skill and cross class skill is huge when it comes to that particular skill and the rate that you become competent at it.

[eggynack]

Everything except adept is t6, adept is t4. I don't understand why people overrate skillmonkeys that much. Once again UMD isn't a ****ing class feature, everyone can use it.

Pretty sure magewright isn't tier six. Does decent stuff.

[Hurnn]

Adept: T4.5

Bad chassis, and delayed casting, but an actually pretty decent list for core only. Unfortunately that is one of the problems they have no way to expand the list. A familiar will always be somewhat useful, and having all the knowledge skills doesn't suck. Oddly I think I would be tempted to keep my wisdom right at the minimum to get the bonus spell of each level and just worry about Int and Con.

Aristocrat: T5.75

These guys are the kings of average, average BAB, average skills per level (thought it is a not bad list), average HD. They do have some nice things all simple/martial all armor/shield, that nice skill list, and a good will save. I think they are at the line of T5 and T6. They are so close to crossing over I think like even a second good save would have maybe done it.

Commoner: T6

Really T6, so bad that if there was a 7 these guys would be alone in it.

Expert: T5

10 class skills of your choice and 6 per level makes a passable skill monkey, Average BAB means you are at least not awful at combat.

Magewright: T5

Worse adept.

Warrior: T6

Good BAB, Fort, and all/all proficiency does not even a decent NPC class make. These guys make aristocrats look good.

[Hurnn]

Everything except adept is t6, adept is t4. I don't understand why people overrate skillmonkeys that much. Once again UMD isn't a ****ing class feature, everyone can use it.

It's not just UMD. For an expert it's the 10 best skills in the game, and they can be pretty good at them. They still aren't bad in combat either.

[weckar]

Adept: T4

Aristocrat: T6

Commoner: T6

Expert: T5

Magewright (ECS, 256): T5

Warrior: T6

[Zancloufer]

Everything except adept is t6, adept is t4. I don't understand why people overrate skillmonkeys that much. Once again UMD isn't a ****ing class feature, everyone can use it.

Actually it is a trained skill that is cross-class for the majority of classes. Also it has some pretty high DCs (20-40 on average) you cannot take 10 on it or use aid another. It is one of the most powerful skills and probably the hardest to get bonuses to.

Also the Expert is more UMD + 9 other skills. The point of the expert is that it can do 2-10 skills based things REALLY well. They can be alright at solving a few problems, or massing skills they can spec to be a 1-2 trick skill pony. They will be VERY GOOD at that skill trick though which puts them into a decently high tier 5.

[Bucky]

Experts don't have anything besides skill ranks to help them use their skills. No interaction between skills and class features. No special take 10s. Not even Skill Focus as a bonus feat. I guess they get more synergy bonuses than most other classes?

[Zancloufer]

Experts don't have anything besides skill ranks to help them use their skills. No interaction between skills and class features. No special take 10s. Not even Skill Focus as a bonus feat. I guess they get more synergy bonuses than most other classes?

Well they can select any 10 skills to be considered "class skills" which gives them a degree of flexibility in choosing what they are good at. Only the Factotum has a larger skill list (literally all of them) and only Rouges/Factotums have more skill points.

It's not that good (hence tier 5) but still better than most NPCs classes as they are arguable only completely eclipsed by Bard, Factotum and Rouge.

[Troacctid]

One of the problems with Expert is that being the second-best at a lot of the best skills is often as good as not having that skill at all. Diplomacy? No point bothering if there's a Bard in the party with a higher score, guess you're just using aid another. UMD? Might as well just hand that scroll to the party Wizard who doesn't even need a check. Etc. And without any class features to enhance their skills, Experts are often just not that good at the thing they're supposed to be good at.

[Bucky]

I've got a homebrew somewhere that tries to bring Expert up to T4. Starting with Skill Focus as a bonus feat at level 1 and building into all the things I mentioned that vanilla Experts don't have.

The bonus Skill Focuses (they eventually get three) and take 10s (2 skills) would be the minimum sufficient to put them into T5 by my reckoning. Maybe you can trim a Skill Focus from that.

Actually putting them into T4 required a scaling lvl/2 bonus to the skills they can take 10 on, an Aid Another aura, time reductions on certain skill checks and capping off with the ability to use their signature skills normally while disabled by Daze or several other conditions.

[eggynack]

One of the problems with Expert is that being the second-best at a lot of the best skills is often as good as not having that skill at all. Diplomacy? No point bothering if there's a Bard in the party with a higher score, guess you're just using aid another. UMD? Might as well just hand that scroll to the party Wizard who doesn't even need a check. Etc. And without any class features to enhance their skills, Experts are often just not that good at the thing they're supposed to be good at.

Perhaps, but it's always possible that characters are being built in a slightly collaborative manner to reduce skill crossover. I also don't really buy the UMD argument here, at least not in a combat context. Out of combat, sure, other sources of magic reduce the value of your crap-magic, but in combat the wizard's gonna just be casting their own spells. Not really sure I'd count getting overshadowed by a wizard a significant issue either.