Tier System For Classes (Repost)

[Zarothar]

I really should, yeah.  I'm not at all familiar with the class anyway... I'm guessing it's about Tier 2 otherwise?  And for the record, I don't get mad at anyone for expressing an honest opinion and backing it up with some evidence.  "I think X class belongs in Y tier because of Z" is perfectly valid, whether I actually agree with it or not.

Glad to see my suggestion was implemented. Thanks!  

As for the non-Spell to Power ranking. Well, it depends, doesn't it?

There are two ways to look at it:

The Abusive Method: The RAI for the Unique Powers per Day is blatantly obvious, but there are various ways around that restrictive cap. One could simply exploit the fact that CPsi is absolute shit and pull "RAW is Godly" shenanigans. See, the Erudite entry had a small mistake in it... According to RAW, that unique powers/day number is actually your unique number of powers per level per day. This is obviously not the intent, as a level 20 Erudite would have something along the lines of 99 unique powers/day - it isn't even capable of manifesting that many powers without infinite pp abuse. Alternatively, I think I've heard someone mention other ways of skirting the Unique Powers per Day cap... Something about Linked Power? I dunno. Anyway, you're looking at Tier 1 or 2, depending on how you value the ability to spontaneously use just about every psionic power that you manage to learn (and how much all that wasted XP means to you - very game-dependent, I imagine, as XP is not always a river).

The Intended Method: At Level 20, an Erudite can manifest a grand total of 11 different powers. Honestly, that's a bit shit. Sure, you can know virtually any damn power you want, but you can only use a maximum of 11 different ones. In the meantime, you've probably wasted (dependent on game) a bunch of XP learning a massive repertoire of stuff that you can't actually use regularly. You're not... terrible, but you're probably inferior to a Psion. Tier 3, perhaps, hanging out with the Wilder.


I'm not really much of an optimisation expert, though, so I may be totally wrong. As far as I can see, though, the Erudite-as-intended is crap compared to a Psion with intelligent power selection. Heck, the Psion can have almost the same amount of powers known flexibility with the help of Psychic Reformation with less expenditure of XP...

Cue someone to prove me wrong.  

[JaronK]

It sounds like the Erudite without Spell to Power is just a lame Sorcerer.  Depending on how potent those 11 powers are though, that could still be Tier 2... or Tier 3.  I doubt it's bad enough to be Tier 4.  But again, Psionics is by no means my forte.

JaronK

[Anklebite]

the idea is to make two of the 11 powers/spells arcane fusion and the greater version of it, thus giving constant acess to all of the ones below 8th level- meaning that your other 9 powers are just eigth and ninth level powers, which is quite a good pool of them.

[lans]

It sounds like the Erudite without Spell to Power is just a lame Sorcerer.  Depending on how potent those 11 powers are though, that could still be Tier 2... or Tier 3.  I doubt it's bad enough to be Tier 4.  But again, Psionics is by no means my forte.

JaronK

But it doesn't prepare and can cast the first 11 powers it needs from its spells known, which gives it mad versitility. A wizard would have to spend a couple of feats*  to get that kind of versitility.

Spell mastery and another. Gets to leave intelligence mod spell slots unfilled to be used spontaneously. If they aren't spells that are spell mastered then they take a full round to cast instread of a standared action.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Q:  Why is my favorite class too low?  Whenever I've played it, it's totally been better than that.

A:  You're probably just really good at playing them.  You wouldn't have a favorite class you sucked at, right?  As such, whatever your favorite class is is going to seem stronger to you than to everyone else.  Plus, you've probably played your favorite class in a campaign that was pretty compatible with it (for example, a barbarian in a campaign with little socialization, or a rogue in a campaign with few undead), and some of the weak points didn't apply.  After all, choosing to play a rogue in the "attack of the endless hordes of killer zombies" adventure path would be pretty silly.

TL;DR: Feel free to talk about it, but take into account that your experience and experiences with your favorite class are better than average.

[sonofzeal]

Q:  Why is my favorite class too low?  Whenever I've played it, it's totally been better than that.

A:  You're probably just really good at playing them.  You wouldn't have a favorite class you sucked at, right?  As such, whatever your favorite class is is going to seem stronger to you than to everyone else.  Plus, you've probably played your favorite class in a campaign that was pretty compatible with it (for example, a barbarian in a campaign with little socialization, or a rogue in a campaign with few undead), and some of the weak points didn't apply.  After all, choosing to play a rogue in the "attack of the endless hordes of killer zombies" adventure path would be pretty silly.

TL;DR: Feel free to talk about it, but take into account that your experience and experiences with your favorite class are better than average.

You seem to be arguing that contextual advantages/disadvantages should be a facet in the rating system, that the inability of Rogues to do much against undead should weigh against them.  I actually took the opposite approach to my PrC Tier system, assuming that if you're playing the class at all then it's in a context that suits it, and to see how well the class plays to its own strengths rather than what it can't do.  You likely wouldn't play a Spymaster in a dungeoncrawl, and you wouldn't likely play a Beastlord in a high court political intrigue game.  And if they don't come up in those contexts, then they can't perform badly, y'know?  Or, to phrase it otherwise - people will only be looking at options that suit the context in the first place, so we should judge things by how well they do when the context suits them.

Not a complaint, just an interesting difference in approach.

[Soda]

You likely wouldn't play a Spymaster in a dungeoncrawl, and you wouldn't likely play a Beastlord in a high court political intrigue game.  And if they don't come up in those contexts, then they can't perform badly, y'know?

Part of reason for the tiers is that while a spymaster wouldn't do great in a dungeoncrawl and a beastlord wouldn't do great in a political game, a wizard/cleric could do great in a dungeoncrawl today, and then do great in a political game tomorrow, and then go seafaring the next day, and then empire building the next. They're high tier because they can respond effectively to a wide range of situations, while lower tier classes can only act in their specific niche, if that.

[sonofzeal]

Part of reason for the tiers is that while a spymaster wouldn't do great in a dungeoncrawl and a beastlord wouldn't do great in a political game, a wizard/cleric could do great in a dungeoncrawl today, and then do great in a political game tomorrow, and then go seafaring the next day, and then empire building the next. They're high tier because they can respond effectively to a wide range of situations, while lower tier classes can only act in their specific niche, if that.

Well yes, but how often are those four activities juxtaposed like that?  In most campaigns, you generally know which of the four you're likely to be doing, and which aren't likely.  Obviously there's some variety and some drift over time, but there's usually room to play to your strengths.

This isn't to discount Wizard flexibility!  Even if you know you're doing a dungeoncrawl, a Fighter may excel in one sections where he has straight corridors to ubercharge down, and fail in others with ghosts or awkward terrain.  A Wizard can adjust as he goes, preparing ice when he knows fire's ahead and fire when ice is ahead.  The Fighter's trapped, the Wizard can adapt, and that goes within any setting.  You don't need to be switching settings every five minutes for flexibility to be a good thing.

[Anklebite]

a campain can include many things.

like a campain where you first go through a dungeon, return an item at the end to a king, do some political intruge, fight a battle or three, lead a political convoy through enemy territory, take over an enemy from the inside, and then rebuild it in your empire's image.

[JaronK]

I was specifically considering Rogues and undead when I made this, because it came up so much for me (or in games I was in).

Consider the following.  Imagine if you will that the DM has a story in mind for how his campaign will go.  Imagine this story as a road meandering through the country side.  A railroading DM might have a very narrow road, while a sandbox DM might have a very wide road, but basically the DM has a story that he intends his players to travel along.  It goes from story element A to story element B.  Some DMs build this road right before the gaming session, others build the entire road months in advance, but suffice to say there's a road of story that they intend the party to follow (though the party may wander back and forth across the road).

For the middle tier classes (T3s), the DM can pretty much stick with the road they wanted.  The PCs are unlikely to go too far off the road, as they don't have abilities that really send them flying off in other directions, but they can have fun whereever the road takes them, as their classes are flexible enough for that.

As you get to the weaker tiers, the classes start being unable to follow the road, meaning the DM has to alter their road for the PCs.  For example, I had a DM a while back complain to me that he hated DMing for Fighters, because sometimes his idea for the campaign that day was about intrigue or stealth or something, and he didn't want a fight... but he had to put in some combat, because if he didn't the Fighter player wouldn't have any fun and would have to stay at home in camp, as he would just be a liability otherwise.  And so the adventure for that day included the whole party sneaking into a hostile town disguised and gathering information, while a random monster attacked the camp that the Fighter guarded.  A similar situation happened to me when I was setting up places to go in a more sandboxy campaign... I set up four options.  One was mercenary work, one was hunting down an evil necromancer, one was tomb raiding, and one was spying against evil dwarfs.  I set this up without knowing what PCs were going to show up.  When they did, I realized two of them used sneak attack as a primary attack... and thus they refused to go after the necromancer or the tombs.  The result of stuff like this is that the DM has to move their road to play to the PCs strengths a lot more, even if the story in their head really doesn't fit with that.

As you get to the stronger tiers, PCs start to be able to jump right off the road.  You wanted to do a ship based adventure as they cross the sea, but the Wizard decided the 20gp price for a ticket on a boat was too high and just teleported the group to the other continent.  You wanted a low magic campaign and the Sorcerer just used Planar Binding to get a Midguard Dwarf, offering the pay the dwarf for custom magic items.  You wanted a horror campaign and put the party in a haunted castle, and the Wizard just cast Plane Shift because the party wanted to go to the City of Brass and hang out there.  At this point the PCs don't need a road... they can go whereever they want.  Now you have to build walls around your road if you want them to follow it at all (usually in the form of house rules, nerfs, and gentleman's agreements to stop teleporting everywhere and ganking every dragon in existance with Shivering Touch after researching their locations with Divine Insight and Lore of the Gods... yeah).  Or you, as a DM, learn to adapt REALLY fast to the player's actions.  But that's very hard.

So that's actually part of the system as written.  How much do you need to change your campaign plot line to let your PCs participate at all, and how much do you need to fortify your plot line against PCs just leaving it and going somewhere completely unexpected?  As a DM, I feel you need to know what you're going to have to look out for, and how the classes you're allowing can force changes in your game.  Part of this system is to allow you to see that in advance, as a lot of people will get blindsided by what some classes can do.  Heck, a recent addition to our gaming group decided to make a game world where magic was failing and magic items were becoming unreliable... he never expected us to use Planar Binding to make a non magical Soarwood Zepplin (thanks, Djinns!) and sail around as steampunk skypirates in response!  But that was the effect of just one Wizard in the party... one super genius with a lot of (admittedly fading) power in his hands.

JaronK

[Midnight_v]

Jaronk... you're getting much better at these descriptions.    Awesome.

[bogsnes]

Was just wondering, what tier would the Cat Burglar made by bhu on these boards (and on gleemax) be?

It is looking around tier 4 to me, possibly a small bit weaker than the rogue because of his inability to get high damage...

[Growin]

I know very few people will be able to answer this question but here it goes.  What Tier is the base class nightstalker?  It's found on page 153 in Races of Ansalon.  Anyone have good suggestions for tier placement?

[bogsnes]

I am not very good at determining tiers, but at first sight it looks like about weak tier 3 to strong tier 4...

[RobbyPants]

Now, I've noticed the bard is in tier 3, although my understanding is a lot of this comes from splatbook support.  What tier would you consider a Core-only bard?  What about Core + Complete Adventurer?

[Anklebite]

bards still excell at social situations, while retaining some versatility in other aspects.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Now, I've noticed the bard is in tier 3, although my understanding is a lot of this comes from splatbook support.  What tier would you consider a Core-only bard?  What about Core + Complete Adventurer?

They're pretty versatile, and they do get some good spells like irresistible dance.  Without splatbooks, your only melee options really appreciate the buffs.

[awaken DM golem]

... What tier would you consider a Core-only ...

You know what, that's a really good question. By itself.
Core and no splats, gets more than enough info to deal with.
Still have infinite loops, still have T_G's breaking the core (after a week or so).

So, Core Only.
What do you think ??

[ninjarabbit]

Core-only bard: solid Tier 4

Becomes the typcial jack-of-all-trades master-of-none for the most part

[JaronK]

Yeah, Bard in core only drops a tier easily.  The good bard stuff is generally found outside core... while a core bard is awesome in specific circumstances (when there's a ton of allies to buff, in social settings), they have the same problems Rogues do.  Too many situations where they just can't contribute enough (and since small party combat is one of the situations where core Bards are actually rather weak, and is also one of the most common situations for most parties, that really hurts).

JaronK