Tier System for Classes

[JaronK]

I'm going to hazard an opinon.  Out of all the tier 1 spellcasters, Druids have the weakest spell list.  The big powerhouse spells like shapechange and reverse gravity set them up for potential tier 1 greatness, but they really wouldn't be tier 1 unless they had great class abilities to back it up... and they do. 

This is true.  Their casting is still impressive, but it's less so than the other four.  It's the fact that they can then back it up with Wild Shape and Animal Companions and so forth that keeps them up there.  Now, a Wizard or Archivist going full out can blow the Druid away, but I didn't want to assume maximum optimization, so at various levels the Druid will be stronger.

Spirit Shamans have solid class abilities to be sure, but just not on par with the Druid because of the specialized nature of them, and they further have their spellcasting a bit more restricted than the Druid's.  I feel that makes them a solid Tier 2, although if you pressed me I'd say they were actually a little worse off than the Sorcerer.

I still haven't gone over the class enough to be sure, but I'm at least sure they're either Tier 2 or 3 at this point.

@Chris:

This system assumes, for the description of the Tiers, that the players are reasonably optimized.  That is to say, they're familiar with how the rules work and trying to make builds that accomplish what they want to do.  Someone who is playing as a Cleric 1/Sorcerer 1/Samurai 4 probably doesn't know what they want to accomplish with the build and is basically grabbing from any ability that sounds neat like a kid in a candy store... he will go down a few tiers.  It's possible if someone really optimizes like crazy to go up a Tier by the descriptions (Beguiler 14/Mindbender 1/Shadowcraft Mage 5 with all the trimmings is obviously Tier 2 or even Tier 1). 

However, when comparing members of a party to see who's in what tier and thus set party balance, you can just look at comparitive optimization levels.  If your party has a DMM Cleric, a charge based Barbarian, a Greenbound Summoning Druid, and a tripper Fighter, they're all going to be comparitively the same as far as optimization level, so that's Tier 1, Tier 4, Tier 1, and Tier 5.  If, on the other hand, one of them is much less optimized than the rest, then for comparison purposes it might change, even though the description on the Tier might still be accurate.  So if it's DMM Cleric, charger Barbarian, summoner Druid, and sword and board Fighter, then you have a Tier 1, Tier 4, Tier 1, Tier 6 for balancing purposes.  Meanwhile, if you've got a healbot Cleric, an archer Barbarian, a Druid that never Wild Shapes, and a tripper Fighter, then the average level of optimization of the group is quite low, so that tripper Fighter moves up a tier for Intra Party Balance... you've got a Tier 1, a Tier 4, a Tier 1, and a Tier 4. 

Without looking at a party, a trip Fighter and a sword and board Fighter are basically still Tier 5.  One is much weaker than the other of course.  In a party, you compare everyone's optimization level, and look at who's not matching the others.

So, for purposes of this system, if you've got players doing stuff like Cleric 1/Sorcerer 1/Samurai X, you have to see the optimization level of the rest of the party and decide how they're affected.

JaronK

However,

[Dannar]

A couple things before I really get started in on this;

1.)  This is my first post on this forii, I had linked here from wotc, and was intrigued enough to join the discussion, so If I say something that has already been noted here, I apologize, I didn't take the time to read 14 pages of posts.

2.)  I fundamentally disagree with some of the placements of the core classes, as I typically will go with the: Core Classes are generally stronger than non-core, unless it is broken, like an archivist...

I will completely and utterly agree with the fact that a campaign is very difficult to run as a DM if you have 1 or 2 players who are very good at making optimized characters, and you have 1 or 2 players who are playing half-plate bow using rangers, or spiked chain wielding monks.

I sometimes wince at some of the things I see... and I feel like I  must play something broken in order to maintain at least a semblence of ability to make it through a day of adventuring without at least one party member dying.

/Rant

For an example, my current campaign is 5 party members, between 11th and 13th level (including me).  A ranger, who is a bow user, but I don't even know if he took the bow weapon style.  A monk who wields a spike chain, and is built to trip, but has a strength of 12.  A rogue with 2 ranks in UMD/multiclassing into Shadowdancer, A cleric who is actually managing good party buffs spells, and decent melee capability.  And my own character, a well-optimized Warlock.  I clean house in combat.  while most of the other party members struggle to hit or do damage, whether it's not overcoming damage reduction, or bypassing it, or not being able to hit armor class, they fail.  The cleric helps them reach adequate levels with his buff spells.  I do fine on my own.  I chain acid blasts, I dimension door all over the place, I have dexterity coming out the wazoo...  I have to purposely play gimped characters from the get go so I don't break a campaign by playing... god forbid... a sorcerer...  Warlocks can break a campaign in my opinion...  Those vampires that were giving the rest of our party a ton of trouble... It took me 10 minutes to dismantle a freaking covenant... And my DM is just as good at optimizing as I am, except he suffers from either building to my level or dumbing down to the rest of the party.  Sometimes I feel like I just need to play whatever concept someone is trying to go for, just to show how it's really done.  I love to roleplay... but there is no fun in roleplaying if your character is getting slaughtered at every turn.  It gets old.  It was fun the first couple of times to play Kenny... but it doesn't last.... I'd rather be Riddick, Neo, John McClain, Gandalf, Dumbledore, Skywalker... etc...

End Rant/   

Edit: also, lemme ask a question.  "Bite of the X" (SpC) shares with animal companions?, because if so, it breaks a lot of campaigns at 9th level..

I've only recently got into playing druids, out of trying to find something else to play other than generic mind-control wizard/enchanter (By far my all time favorite class)

Human Druid 12
Mounted Combat
Ride by Attack
Spirited Charge
Extend Spell
Track
Natural Spell (Which I rarely even use...)

Wake up in the morning and cast Superior Resistance, Greater Magic Fang (claws), Extended Spider climb (City of the Spider Queen).

First round of combat is Rapid cast (Circlet of Rapid Casting) Silvered Claws (or some other DR negating spell), and Bite of the werebear, both shared with animal companion, pounce/rake/grapple.  Second round is 8 attacks between myself and the animal companion with average attack bonus of 20, average damage of 20, overcoming damage most types of damage reduction.  And this was what I came up with when I was specifically trying to AVOID breaking the campaign with wildshape or fire seeds...

[JaronK]

That was a very hard to follow post.

It's hard to rate things for your situation though, because the optimization levels are so wildly different.  Usually, if you've got a Cleric and a Warlock in a party, it's the Cleric who can take apart Vampires without trouble... the Warlock is less suited to it.

But yes, Bite of the X I believe does get shared with your companion.

That said, your statement that core classes are stronger than non core unless broken sounds strange.  I mean really, the Warblade, Crusader, and Swordsage aren't broken, but they're clearly stronger than the Fighter, Barbarian, Paladin, and Monk.  Likewise, the Factotum is a lot stronger than the Rogue (though it's not as big as the Swordsage/Monk difference).  Certainly the core casters are stronger, because they get new spells with nearly every book and  thus are constantly gaining new options.  But the core melees?  Heck, WotC gave up on them and just replaced them.  So I can't agree with that.

Still, your situation is just too tough to gauge, since the party is all over the map.  I'd consider playing a DMM Cleric and using group buffs... that way you can make your party stronger without looking like you're the strong one.  Righteous Wrath of the Faithful and Recitation are awesome, for example, and I bet that Ranger would really appreciate a Greater Magic Weapon.

JaronK

[Dannar]

That was a very hard to follow post.

It's hard to rate things for your situation though, because the optimization levels are so wildly different.  Usually, if you've got a Cleric and a Warlock in a party, it's the Cleric who can take apart Vampires without trouble... the Warlock is less suited to it.

But yes, Bite of the X I believe does get shared with your companion.

That said, your statement that core classes are stronger than non core unless broken sounds strange.  I mean really, the Warblade, Crusader, and Swordsage aren't broken, but they're clearly stronger than the Fighter, Barbarian, Paladin, and Monk.  Likewise, the Factotum is a lot stronger than the Rogue (though it's not as big as the Swordsage/Monk difference).  Certainly the core casters are stronger, because they get new spells with nearly every book and  thus are constantly gaining new options.  But the core melees?  Heck, WotC gave up on them and just replaced them.  So I can't agree with that.

Still, your situation is just too tough to gauge, since the party is all over the map.  I'd consider playing a DMM Cleric and using group buffs... that way you can make your party stronger without looking like you're the strong one.  Righteous Wrath of the Faithful and Recitation are awesome, for example, and I bet that Ranger would really appreciate a Greater Magic Weapon.

JaronK

Yeah, sorry for the randomness of that post.  I was probably a little drunk from an Ebeneezer beer last night, and also probably really tired.

Maybe it's just that my only real experience is in my own group.  I did play a DMM Cleric for a while, and it really wrecked the campaign I was in, even with the rest of the party being cannon fodder.  Recitation + Prayer + Righteous Wrath + Mass Shield of Faith... etc... etc... etc...  That and I stacked 2 (3?) Levels of paladin to give myself the charisma boost to saves, and my own character was unstoppable...

[juton]

Yeah, sorry for the randomness of that post.  I was probably a little drunk from an Ebeneezer beer last night, and also probably really tired.

Maybe it's just that my only real experience is in my own group.  I did play a DMM Cleric for a while, and it really wrecked the campaign I was in, even with the rest of the party being cannon fodder.  Recitation + Prayer + Righteous Wrath + Mass Shield of Faith... etc... etc... etc...  That and I stacked 2 (3?) Levels of paladin to give myself the charisma boost to saves, and my own character was unstoppable...

The Tier system assumes an even level of optimization, powerful classes played poorly aren't powerful. One thing I find helps is to match the right character to the right player and talk of character selections at the start of a campaign to make sure you have all your bases covered. All that's player optimization not character optimization though.

[JaronK]

Indeed, I can't account for optimization or player skill, so the system assumes even skill and optimization.  Your group clearly doesn't have that, so you'd have to compensate, most likely by playing lower tier classes yourself (or playing powerful classes and using their power to make the other guys in your party strong!).

It sounds like you've got an issue where if you play strong, you blow away the party, and if you play weak, you die.  Perhaps playing one of the weaker tier skill monkeys would work?  You could use stealth to survive, that way, without turning everyone else into gods.

JaronK

[Dannar]

Indeed, I can't account for optimization or player skill, so the system assumes even skill and optimization.  Your group clearly doesn't have that, so you'd have to compensate, most likely by playing lower tier classes yourself (or playing powerful classes and using their power to make the other guys in your party strong!).

It sounds like you've got an issue where if you play strong, you blow away the party, and if you play weak, you die.  Perhaps playing one of the weaker tier skill monkeys would work?  You could use stealth to survive, that way, without turning everyone else into gods.

JaronK

You know... come to think of it, I have had a tendency to favor Intelligence over wisdom/charisma in more recent non-divine spellcasting builds simply for the extra skill points that I can dump into Tumble/Move Silently/Hide, Listen/Spot.  I generally despise playing a weak character since I believe the idea is that an Adventurer past about 2nd level is supposed to be some heroic/evil character who is maybe not well known, but certainly has the stories and adventures to prove his worth, and should not be a pushover to the most basic of creatures.

An amusing point of reference from a recent game (still playing the warlock).

In Combat, we were fighting a Drow Fighter Wielding a wounding dire flail that had poison applied to it, an advanced displacer beast, A drow vampire, and a Vampire Drider.  We had some extra beef that day (a paladin in the party that day, who rarely shows up to game... -_-), to account for the increased CR of the encounter.  Paladin bites it almost immediately from the Dire Flail wielding Drow Fighter.  I blow him up in two turns (with some added help from the monk, amazingly). 

Our ranger starts shooting at the Vampire Drider, which works wonderfully, since his bow is neither magical, nor are his arrows silvered, so he does exactly no damage to it with every hit.  The rogue moves to flank the displacer beast, but gets destroyed by 3 hits, chooses to stay in combat, and get's eviscerated the next turn. 

In the meantime, the Vampire Drider is baring down on us from behind, so what does our ranger do?  run away, leaving me to tank the Vampire Drider, while I finish off the displacer beast, (thank god for deathward...).  in the last 8 rounds, the battle boils down to me standing toe-to-toe with the Vampire Drider, and the Drow Vampire, the cleric standing behind me blowing through healing spells each round, since none of them has any abilities or attacks that will even come close to overcoming their damage reduction. 

What's worse is that I almost killed our monk and ranger dispelling domination off of them three times... (stupid voracious dispelling...).  The cleric was useful enough in providing healing spells, the monk had almost no use other than being a Githyanki with a retarded AC, the rogue might as well have just sat out the battle as well as our ranger... 

That right there was when I really considered letting my warlock die so I could play a Wizard(Necromancer/Evoker) or the Druid described in the above post (modified to be more apt to summoning big bad beasties...)

x_x...

[Defiant]

Could you please help me out with something?

I'd like to know a good way to bring Cleric down to Tier 2. I'm going to start a campaign, and I plan for it to go for a long time (starting low). I would like at least some sort of good balance. As such, I will be disallowing Wizards and Druids, and warning that classes such as Fighter and Monk are unlikely to be picked. However, I'd still like a Cleric in the group.

I was thinking of removing their heavy and medium armour proficiency and martial weapons proficiency. Perhaps even applying a penalty of 2 to CON if Cleric (justified as "a life of piety and prayer leaves one's endurance and constitution lacking"). Could you help me out?

[JaronK]

Clerics don't have martial proficiency to start with, and Cloistered Clerics (who have 1/2 BAB and light armor only) are just as strong.  It's the spells that are the issue, not the base chasis.  In the end, it's the spells you have to hit.

Favored Souls can replace Clerics nicely, and drops them down to Tier 2 easily.  They'll fill the same role without being quite so over the top.

Removing Turn Undead, or at least Divine Metamagic... that helps a good bit most of the time.

Slowing their spell progression often does it.  Consider making them gain a new spell level every three levels instead of every two, maxing out at 7th level spells.  That would help too.  Also consider making them have to learn their spells like Wizards do, or even restricting their spells known.

Otherwise, you have to dig in there and actually fix all the broken spells, which is not easy at all.  Good luck.

JaronK

[Defiant]

Actually, that's a great idea - the wizard spell selection!

I just hope it doesn't nerf them too bad (though I do have 3 tiers leeway, so it's good either way).

Thanks. And a great guide, by the way. Two thumbs up! (the closest smiley I could find to the thumbs up is the one flipping the bird, so I'll pass)

[Lycanthromancer]

I'd suggest getting rid of the cleric's ability to spontaneously cast cure and inflict spells, and get rid of wands of those self-same spells.

Make them healbots, like they're supposed to be.

[juton]

I'd suggest getting rid of the cleric's ability to spontaneously cast cure and inflict spells, and get rid of wands of those self-same spells.

Make them healbots, like they're supposed to be.

As someone who's played their fair share of healers, that's a bad idea. A Cleric would have too choose between two crappy options. Option 1 is to prepare a boat load of cures for the party, which means he doesn't get any spells to let him stand out so he's always relegated to the background. Not fun. Option 2 is to prepare a few cure spells and gamble that your buffs make up for it, in every case I've seen the rest of the party resents the Cleric for not doing their job.

Slowing spell progression works, so does getting rid of Divine Metamagic. Clerics still get to shine occasionally, but are not dominating every encounter.

[Kaelik]

I'd suggest getting rid of the cleric's ability to spontaneously cast cure and inflict spells, and get rid of wands of those self-same spells.

Make them healbots, like they're supposed to be.

I would just build my standard DMM Persist Cleric, and inform everyone that I am playing a Fighter/Marshal Hybrid who does shoots arrows and provides minor buffs to teammates.

You can't make me stand around and do nothing.

EDIT: Also, Persist Vigorous Circle as below.

[JaronK]

Healbots are boring as all heck, and if you remove the defaulting to cure option they're just going to start using DMM:Persistant Lesser Vigor or Vigorous Circle.

Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, mind you.  When players know exactly the amount of healing they'll get in advance, they often play smarter.  But really, no one likes sitting around spamming Cure... or at least very few people do.  But really, Cure spells are never the correct move anyway.  Vigor spells heal more, buffs are better in combat, and so on.

JaronK

[Dannar]

Healbots are boring as all heck, and if you remove the defaulting to cure option they're just going to start using DMM:Persistant Lesser Vigor or Vigorous Circle.

Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, mind you.  When players know exactly the amount of healing they'll get in advance, they often play smarter.  But really, no one likes sitting around spamming Cure... or at least very few people do.  But really, Cure spells are never the correct move anyway.  Vigor spells heal more, buffs are better in combat, and so on.

JaronK

I did have one cleric that concentrated on healing people.  He took zen archery, and used blunted arrows that would deal 1d3 subdual damage, but infused them with cure spells, and would just peg his own party members with cure mod/serious/critical wounds arrows :-D.  That was the most fun I'd ever had playing a healer cleric.

[RobbyPants]

A little thread necromancy here...

I'm not that familiar with bards.  Is a core-only bard tier 3, or does it require a fair amount of splat books?  If so, what is it that brings it up to tier 3?

[Tshern]

Bardic knack, Words of creation and Dragonfire inspiration at least.

[RobbyPants]

Thanks.

Do you know what books those are in?  I've heard references to the Dragonfire feats...

[Tshern]

Bardic knack is, IIRC, from PHB II. Words of creation is in BoED. Dragonfire inspiration is in Dragon Magic.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Now, where would the Eidolon and the Eidoloncer slot in? (Ghostwalk base classes)

Good question!  I've barely looked them over.  Not ready to put them in yet.

JaronK

Eidoloncer is great for gestalt, since it's a base class that advances other classes' casting.  Including, potentially, prestige classes.

Prc/Eidoloncer progression is a pretty cool guy.  Eh lets you double PrC in gestalt, and doesn't afraid of anything.