Retiering the Classes: Bard, Factotum, Jester, and Savant

Also, c'mon. Glibness is a spell whose value ranges from "useful" to "overpowering" based on how the GM runs social stuff, but it's not going to make-or-break the Bard. I mean, hell, you've got Charm Monster and Lesser Geas at the same spell level; you got Suggestion one spell level earlier (and one level earlier via your music, potentially), and Dominate Person one level later. Not to mention a high Charisma, Diplomacy, and all the synergies. You've got lots of options for social command-and-control-- and even that is just one trick in your bag.

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Originally Posted by Grod_The_Giant

Also, c'mon. Glibness is a spell whose value ranges from "useful" to "overpowering" based on how the GM runs social stuff, but it's not going to make-or-break the Bard. I mean, hell, you've got Charm Monster and Lesser Geas at the same spell level; you got Suggestion one spell level earlier (and one level earlier via your music, potentially), and Dominate Person one level later. Not to mention a high Charisma, Diplomacy, and all the synergies. You've got lots of options for social command-and-control-- and even that is just one trick in your bag.

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Well right, but eggy wants to bypass all the saving throws and able to be compared to level appropriate challenges by making the bluff skill work like Dominate Monster No Save when you cast Glibness so that he can bypass the fact that all those about or less level appropriate spells are limited by targets and saves and usage limits and effects and immunities that negate or prevent them.

Diplomancy is much stronger ... but doesn't really work in combat (expect for something like Half-Elves) ... and doesn't work on PCs. Glibness is very nice and helpful in that it allows to pretty much ignore that +30 penalty that applies due to the two major sources of making bluffing harder to pull off (the bluff being somewhat too unbelievable ... and someone being at significant risk for believing that bluff when it might be a lie ... being summed up to a hard to deal with +30 modifier to the opposing sense motion check), so using it for that might in fact have been the intented use for Glibness. Bluffing most certainly is pretty strong (and the wording of "indicates that the target reacts as you wish, at least for a short time (usually 1 round or less) or believes something that you want it to believe" makes it even stronger), but the effect of bluff isn't permanent because what a creature believes might change at any time once it has a reason to sufficiently question that believe. To be fair, the use of bluff that's been suggested by eggy might actually work against mentaly slow creatures that don't think too deep about something and might also be helpful in "confusing" more intelligent and/or challenging foes long enough to hinder their actions or make them stop combat for long enough to use Diplomancy against them ... excellent bluffs have always been pretty effective, after all, especially when it comes to buying time.

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Originally Posted by ryu

Actually I was just going to use any number of spells that were useful, then proceed to demonstrate the ability to afford knowing literally everything used, and the divinations used to bring everything useful to where it's useful. You have the power to afford more spells than you'll ever care to know with a fraction of WBL. This is what it means to have the entire wizard list at your beck and call. You have the solution to all problems given any real amount of time or simple preparedness. Feats and magic items just make this more efficient, easy, and generally simple.

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Why did you decide not to? Too much of a tangent?

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Originally Posted by Beheld

Why did you decide not to? Too much of a tangent?

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Not worth bothering if you aren't insane enough to argue bards are rogue tier? Also Hollow Knight demanded my attention. Priorities.

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Originally Posted by ryu

Not worth bothering if you aren't insane enough to argue bards are rogue tier? Also Hollow Knight demanded my attention. Priorities.

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Argument had literally nothing to do with Rogues or Bards or Tiers and 100% to do with CR and Wizards. But sure, you were wrong and won't admit it okay.

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Originally Posted by Beheld

HMMMMM. Am I changing my mind from my previous argument that Bard is Tier 4? Or did you just refuse to read what I actually said over and over and repeatedly assign an opinion I did not state or hold to me. Probably that second one.

If a class had only bard spellcasting and nothing else, it would belong in Tier 4, the Bard has something else, and belongs in Tier 3, as I said, the Jester who has similar casting, but (the impression I get is) worse other features is on the bubble.

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It struck me as a somewhat ambiguous position, as it tends to be when you have a class right on the line, along with a probably. If you're that adamant on it, I should probably stick that down as a vote. This argument is probably pretty pointless if we all more or less agree. Maybe we should just start looking at the jester or something.

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Like I said, that's because I didn't think anyone was seriously going to contend that a level 1 Wizard is a really a level 4 character because Silent Image + Sleep + Alarm is what a level 4 character does.

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I don't think I've ever listed alarm. The third choice was generally charm person or grease. And, of course, in about 1/4 of these encounters, you have glitterdust too. I mean, yeah, on this allotment, silent image is clearly your only combat ready first level spell. With grease and/or charm person, maybe both if you ditch sleep (seems smart on a low spells known spontaneous caster), you have a decent variety of combat options.

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I mean, if you are so committed I can do analysis of literally all the SRD CR 3-5 monsters and see how that goes.

Being pretty generous, I have Centuar, Large and Huge Animate Object, Ankeg, Juvenile Arrowhawk, Giant Eagle/Owl, Gargoyle, all 10 mephits, all 8 vermin, Ogre, all 3 Oozes, Pegasus, 3 Skeletons and 3 Zombies (as far as computing these, I usually just assign the ones that show up on d20 monster filter, since there are theoretically nearly as many of these as everything else combined, but people aren't going to use them to the exclusion) Ravid, and Spider Eater. Altogether, 39 of 153, or about 25%. Contributing equivalent to a 4th level character is 25% of 75% of encounters and (basically 100%) of 25% encounters, comes out to contributing at your level 43% of the time. That's not level appropriate, that's more than 50% of the time you aren't level appropriate. (This is, as I feel obligated to mention since you keep refusing to believe me when I say it, spellcasting alone.)

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I'm honestly not sure at all what is acting as input to your decision that a given creature is one you're contributing to, or where your lines are for meaningful contribution to a combat, or anything, really. You kinda just listed a bunch of numbers and a percentage.

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Under the metric of "at least 8 rounds of combat a day" and the Bard being able to cast Glitterdust in only one of those 8 rounds, it follows that in 7 of the rounds he is using First level spells. (Hence why I assume such a character, Bard casting only, would use Silent Image a great deal, since that would allow him to stretch his 3 first level spells across 6 combat rounds in the three encounters he has each day without glitterdust.)

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I tend to go more by what the character is doing in a combat rather than what a character is doing in a round. Glitterdust doesn't take up multiple bard-rounds, but it takes up multiple enemy-rounds. Your mode of analysis would really weirdly overcount effects like silent image, as you say, just because they eat more of the bard's attention.

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Remember when I said "not level appropriate" that doesn't mean literally useless, it just means that you aren't level appropriate, and aren't contributing your fair share to encounters when you are using first level spells as your only input to an EL 4 encounter. Like, 25% of encounters contributing at level and 75% not at level contribution.

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As I noted above, it's not clear what you mean by not level appropriate.

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Like I have said, bard casting. Not Bard.

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I think it's useful to consider the intersection of these abilities, even when looking at just casting. Like, we can ferret out the +1 granted by inspire courage itself, and say, "Nah, this effect isn't coming from spells," but we can still assume inspire courage exists as a thing the bard has such that the bard can cast inspirational boost. In this context, we would still attribute the second +1 to spells, rather than class features. It's a model that allows for analysis of all of the bard's spellcraft, and not just the stuff that works if cast by a commoner.

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Those are both absolutely bat**** crazy interpretations that no one would ever make if they weren't committed to trying to weasel bluff into the most powerful thing in the universe. You are only advocating them because you want to defend bluff as actually crazy good, and you are willing to stab sense to death in a dark alley to do it.

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The second definitely isn't. You've constructed a restriction that doesn't exist in the text at all. The first, I don't think is all that crazy, given a direct reading of the text, but I don't care to argue it anymore. I don't need the spell to be crazy good. I don't even really need the spell to be good, though it helps. I think the spell is good enough to contribute to a party in this level range, and higher level ranges too. It is, in fact, more than enough.

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1) If you claiming to be king without evidence is new evidence, then him saying you aren't is also new evidence. If you have to present evidence for your claims, then you are up **** creak without a paddle, because the Bard never has evidence for any of his claims ever.

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Yeah, but if he says it, and you say he's lying, and everyone believes you (it's well within the realm of possibility), then repeating it is not new evidence.

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2) You can say "that information is false for whatever reason" and every time, the king can respond with "except it's true for whatever reason" and you are still trapped in the same inescapable loop of never being able to meaningfully convince someone for more than one round when they are in the presence of new information.

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In this case, and the previous case, the king has no manner by which to get people to automatically believe him like you do with bluff. Also, convincing the king himself seems like it would be helpful here, cause then he wouldn't present counter-evidence at all.

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1) I literally can't tell the difference between what you are saying here, and someone complaining that it's unfair that the enemy Wizard had cast Detect Scrying and responded to their Scry spell. You are mad that people respond to the abilities that exist in their world by protecting themselves against them?

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Mostly that it seems weirdly esoteric, and easier than you're claiming to bypass. Spells are cool cause they just do exactly what they say they do. Detect scrying is like that.

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2) No you can't, because literally by their nature, the veracity of the deaf guy is beyond question, and any attempt to doubt him is too incredible to consider, that's the point of procedures.

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I don't really know why the veracity of some arbitrary deaf guy would be beyond question. Maybe he was replaced by a spy. Procedures are generally not infallible.

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3) Please stop talking about the spell level. Glibness is an ability you get at 7th level. If it was a 4th level spell it would be an ability you get at 11th level. I mean, you might as well be talking about how Dispel Magic is way too good as a First level spell. Spell level only meaningfully effects Globe of Invulnerability and saving throw, so aside from being negated by Globe of Invulnerability placed in the right locations, it's spell level is meaningless in evaluating it's power, the relevant consideration is what level you get the spell. If you got the spell at level 11, that would be as singularly impressive as most of the other bard spells, instead of approximately nearly as good as what level appropriate casters are getting (but way fewer times per day).

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I'm talking about spell level because you were kinda talking about spell level. You were asserting that spells below a certain spell level at certain levels were not level appropriate. I was countering that the underleveled nature of some spells means that a certain spell means that those spells remain level appropriate even if your general claim holds accurate (which it isn't, in my opinion).

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"I'm not sure why my boss would expect me to follow proper procedures." Yeah, that might be your problem.

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They wouldn't think they need to follow proper procedures because you're telling them they don't, and you're the boss who implemented them in the first place.

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But really, if your argument is "my credibility is never affected by the fact that I've been wrong 100 times in a row" then sure, Bluff is godmode, but since in fact, credibility is affected by constantly being wrong, papering over your failed lies with more lies is a non-effective strategy. Whether this is evaluated as a single mega lie or a series of minor lies to cover for each previous lie being figured out as false, either of those things scales into "too incredible to consider."

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But you've never been wrong yet. All your bluffs have succeeded, which means that, while they might have doubts aligned with some particular evidence, you have thus far been right every time leading up to that moment. Less, "Hah, you're wrong, what of this password?" more, "I totally agree up to this point, but now let's assess this password issue."

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Except that the encounters do in fact scale with potency. First level Barbarians don't lose AB or damage as you level, they just face enemies with more HP and AC. It's the same thing. As evidenced by the 25% contribution rate of Bard with 3 spells and 3 spells known going into 3 encounters.

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Spells don't always, or even necessarily usually, interact with enemies the way stabbing does. As you note, there's obvious and direct statistical increases on both sides, and so the value of the monster relative to the value of the barbarian stays relatively constant, though not fully constant for various reasons. Saving throws, occasionally touch AC, and a variety of defenses that any given monster may or may not have are the things we're assessing here, and the first isn't always present, the second tends to not be a big issue, and the third is heavily dependent on specific situation rather than strict level analysis. A first level enemy and a fourth level enemy will have pretty similar reactions to silent image most of the time. If they're humanoid, then charm person will work on them only a bit worse than a second level spell. If they're on the ground, then that aforementioned only slightly higher saving throw from a second level spell is still in play, and the effects that don't require a save continue to be in play. Magic tends to be rooted in differences in kind, rather than differences in quantity, especially at higher levels but also frequently at lower levels.

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Originally Posted by Beheld

Argument had literally nothing to do with Rogues or Bards or Tiers and 100% to do with CR and Wizards. But sure, you were wrong and won't admit it okay.

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Actually more like I put you on ignore a long time ago and thus only go through the mental effort to engage you in any way when you become a main contributer to conversation in threads I'm actually interested in. If we have the same vote anyway it's pointless and a waste of my valuable time.

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Originally Posted by ryu

Actually more like I put you on ignore a long time ago and thus only go through the mental effort to engage you in any way when you become a main contributer to conversation in threads I'm actually interested in. If we have the same vote anyway it's pointless and a waste of my valuable time.

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Fine, I vote Bard is Tier 4 and Rogue is Tier 3, now you can follow through on the challenge you yourself made about me being "objectively wrong" that has nothing to do with Bards or Rogues but that you are running away from because you realized you couldn't follow through on your own challenge.

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Originally Posted by Beheld

Fine, I vote Bard is Tier 4 and Rogue is Tier 3, now you can follow through on the challenge you yourself made about me being "objectively wrong" that has nothing to do with Bards or Rogues but that you are running away from because you realized you couldn't follow through on your own challenge.

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Yeah it doesn't work if everyone here knows you're just posturing. Come on. Get that grade school level mindgames we all learned to deal with a long time ago out of here.

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Originally Posted by Beheld

Fine, I vote Bard is Tier 4 and Rogue is Tier 3, now you can follow through on the challenge you yourself made about me being "objectively wrong" that has nothing to do with Bards or Rogues but that you are running away from because you realized you couldn't follow through on your own challenge.

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Honestly not sure whether to count weird spite votes. I'ma stick them in the sheet for now, particularly cause they don't make much of a difference to the result, but if our goal here is accurate tiering, and it is, then votes designed as a weird challenge to other users seem counterproductive. Like, do you actually think these things are the case, that bard is tier four and that rogue is tier three? I'd have to assume not, which means it was a vote explicitly in bad faith. So, don't be surprised if I ditch both votes (though I suppose I'd get rid of the votes entirely for the moment rather than switch the bard to its original tier three vote).

Edit: Yeah, decided to delete them, basically immediately. I can't in good conscience endorse this kinda weird, "Vote with an explicit non-tiering motive," thing. The actual numbers we have, not just the resulting tier, are important to me. It's not right to poison that with spite.

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Originally Posted by ryu

Yeah it doesn't work if everyone here knows you're just posturing. Come on. Get that grade school level mindgames we all learned to deal with a long time ago out of here.

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The point is not to trick you, the point is to demonstrate that you are lying to back out of the challenge you proposed, because you looked at the list, and realized you lost.

Actually I've already achieved my objective, because it's rare in internet debate to actually change the mind of someone blatantly opposed to you. Funny thing about that is that it wasn't the objective. The objective was to get you to throw away the last of your credibility on a shortsighted spite play just like I thought you would. Now they aren't even paying attention to your votes, and while I gave you the conversational rope to metaphorically hang yourself, I certainly never once suggested I'd alter my vote to something I didn't believe just to spite someone. So go on, think that you won. Your opinion was never even on the list of priorities.

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Originally Posted by ryu

Actually I've already achieved my objective, because it's rare in internet debate to actually change the mind of someone blatantly opposed to you. Funny thing about that is that it wasn't the objective. The objective was to get you to throw away the last of your credibility on a shortsighted spite play just like I thought you would. Now they aren't even paying attention to your votes, and while I gave you the conversational rope to metaphorically hang yourself, I certainly never once suggested I'd alter my vote to something I didn't believe just to spite someone. So go on, think that you won. Your opinion was never even on the list of priorities.

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So your saying that you made you challenge in bad faith with no intention of ever following through because you knew you couldn't back it up, and you therefore claim the moral high ground because the votes I never made aren't getting counted?

Nah. I would've been prepared to. It's not hard to do. The only stipulations were no minion-mancy and no feats. Minionmancy is less than half the scary broken spells that exist at any given level. It's only bad faith if under no scenario are you prepared to follow through.

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Originally Posted by ryu

Now they aren't even paying attention to your votes.

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I wouldn't necessarily rule anything out. If Beheld makes some votes that seem to be made in good faith, those'll get counted unless things change pretty radically. This particular case was a bridge too far regarding this vote pair, because we can look upon the votes and say that they don't even accurately reflect the opinions of the user making them, but I'd assume that most votes Beheld would make wouldn't be in the context of a weird spite conflict, y'know? I can't disregard people's votes just cause I might disagree with them. At that point, I might as well be setting myself up as this weird arbiter of whether someone is credible as a voter, ultimately allowing my bias to hurt how closely we're modelling the thread to the opinions of the forum. Wouldn't be any better than Jormengand was when they effectively banned me and maybe also banned Beheld (they indicated that they did, but responded to him later, so I dunno) from the thread, which was a big reason I started this one, because the personal opinions of a user shouldn't be a weird voting gate. Big reason I didn't count this one was because there's essentially an explicit claim that the vote is going against Beheld's actual opinions.

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Originally Posted by Beheld

and you therefore claim the moral high ground because the votes I never made aren't getting counted?

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I mean, I would assume your bard 4 rogue 3 vote was meant to be counted. Such is the nature of votes. You definitely made that vote, at the very least. Maybe you didn't intend to make the tier three bard vote. I took it as implied, because I tend to, as a general rule, take absolute statements of a tiering as a vote. I think that's how people intend them, and I like to count things that are intended as votes. If ya want me to add back in the bard for tier three vote, I very likely would. Not cause it matches up with my opinion, but because it seems to match up to your opinion. I ended up not including the three as opposed to the switching to the old vote option primarily out of respect for your seeming desire to at least not vote the bard tier four. Not gonna force folks to contribute, y'know?

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Originally Posted by ryu

Nah. I would've been prepared to. It's not hard to do. The only stipulations were no minion-mancy and no feats. Minionmancy is less than half the scary broken spells that exist at any given level. It's only bad faith if under no scenario are you prepared to follow through.

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Scenario A: You present challenge. It is accepted. Monsters are presented. You back out because you know you can't do it, but make up some dumb lie about how now that the person who said in his first post that the Bard is probably Tier 3 is Tier 3, the challenge designed to prove your claim about Wizards is no longer relevant because you personally don't like the poster in question.

Scenario B: You present challenge. It is accepted. Monsters are presented. All 5 monsters are mindless zombies. You say "Silent Image x5" and win the challenge.

Your actions in Scenario A are not in good faith just because Scenario B could have existed but didn't.

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Originally Posted by Beheld

Scenario A: You present challenge. It is accepted. Monsters are presented. You back out because you know you can't do it, but make up some dumb lie about how now that the person who said in his first post that the Bard is probably Tier 3 is Tier 3, the challenge designed to prove your claim about Wizards is no longer relevant because you personally don't like the poster in question.

Scenario B: You present challenge. It is accepted. Monsters are presented. All 5 monsters are mindless zombies. You say "Silent Image x5" and win the challenge.

Your actions in Scenario A are not in good faith just because Scenario B could have existed but didn't.

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That's an interesting moral stance. I think you'll find the common parlance on such is that the faith of an offer or action is based entirely on preparedness to perform, as opposed to expectation. Car dealerships generally expect you to try to haggle the price of your purchase. That doesn't mean they aren't prepared to honor any deal they give you. This is why claims of bad faith are hard. It's a VERY specific accusation. I thought, correctly, that you were the type of person who'd cut off his metaphorical nose to spite his face. Banking entirely on that and having no list of safe encounter lines of spells would've been bad faith. I didn't do that though.

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Originally Posted by ryu

The objective was to get you to throw away the last of your credibility on a shortsighted spite play just like I thought you would.

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Funny thing, I still count Beheld as more credible than you.

I would further move that "spite" votes ought to be counted. After all, if someone's making an argument just to spite a particular position, doesn't that make the position valid? There's obviously some sort of dispute, which is the whole point of the voting. Ryu, who's idea of a "normal" game state has been shown to be woefully abnormal, has just openly admitted attempting to manipulate another poster specifically to get the judge to disqualify their position, which is the actual spite here. Does that not make it obvious this position is significant and ought be counted? If Beheld had presented it independently it would have been, but disqualifying the vote just because ryu kicked up a fuss is rather poor on multiple levels.

Or is any dissent now invalid as long as ryu surrounds it with his own garbage? Because that's gonna require throwing out a lot of votes.

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Originally Posted by Fizban

Funny thing, I still count Beheld as more credible than you.

I would further move that "spite" votes ought to be counted. After all, if someone's making an argument just to spite a particular position, doesn't that make the position valid? There's obviously some sort of dispute, which is the whole point of the voting. Ryu, who's idea of a "normal" game state has been shown to be woefully abnormal, has just openly admitted attempting to manipulate another poster specifically to get the judge to disqualify their position, which is the actual spite here. Does that not make it obvious this position is significant and ought be counted? If Beheld had presented it independently it would have been, but disqualifying the vote just because ryu kicked up a fuss is rather poor on multiple levels.

Or is any dissent now invalid as long as ryu surrounds it with his own garbage? Because that's gonna require throwing out a lot of votes.

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Ah but see that's just it. Eggy didn't throw it out because of anything I said. He threw because it was explicitly cast as a vote cast not in the opinion of the poster. He even offered to reinstate the original vote if the poster desired which I see as quite generous.

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Originally Posted by Fizban

Funny thing, I still count Beheld as more credible than you.

I would further move that "spite" votes ought to be counted. After all, if someone's making an argument just to spite a particular position, doesn't that make the position valid? There's obviously some sort of dispute, which is the whole point of the voting. Ryu, who's idea of a "normal" game state has been shown to be woefully abnormal, has just openly admitted attempting to manipulate another poster specifically to get the judge to disqualify their position, which is the actual spite here. Does that not make it obvious this position is significant and ought be counted? If Beheld had presented it independently it would have been, but disqualifying the vote just because ryu kicked up a fuss is rather poor on multiple levels.

Or is any dissent now invalid as long as ryu surrounds it with his own garbage? Because that's gonna require throwing out a lot of votes.

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This tiering system does not have the goal of fulfilling any arbitrary goal a person has. In the arguments, you can have whatever wacky spite goals you want, I guess, but the vote is meant to be a representation of what tier you think the class should have. Nothing more, nothing less. If your justification for a vote is something like, "I think this class is tier one, but all the people saying it's tier one are jerks, so I'm gonna vote tier three to screw with them," that person is not voting in accordance with the core goal of this thread. They're voting in accordance with some weird other goal, explicitly acting in contravention of this thread's intent to measure how forumites feel about the class. I don't give a crap about how forumites feel about each other. Why would I? So I can say afterwards, "Yeah, we were trying to get an accurate reflection of, first, how playgrounders think classes should be tiered, and, second, what random issues they had with each other at that moment in time,"? No, cause that's ridiculous.

This vote is not being discounted because of anything Ryu said. It's being discounted exactly because of what Beheld said. If he instead had posted something like, "Y'know, I was pretty convinced of tier three, but all of these arguments in favor of tier three have really shown me the flaws in that position, so I'm changing my vote to four," I would have counted that in a heartbeat. You can argue that Beheld's intention could have been the same behind each post, but I'm inevitably limited to the information before me. And, while you might not agree with Ryu or how he tiers, I don't think there's any doubt that his votes thus far have been completely consistent with how he views the game, and premised entirely on his feelings about the tiers rather than on some wacky feud.

And, again, I'm not disqualifying Beheld. I'm pretty unlikely to count any bard for tier four argument from him at this point, but if he wants to toss out anything else outside the norm, and justify that with his personal opinions on the game, then that'll be counted whether or not I consider those opinions particularly valid. I'm not even really disqualifying Beheld's position on bards. To all appearances, he put forth this bard vote specifically and only because he wanted Ryu to continue with this weird off-topic wizard thing, so while I am absolutely disqualifying that position, his actual apparent opinion, that bards are tier three (stated a couple of times in this thread), would be respected if he wants it to be. Only reason I wouldn't respect a future Beheld post giving a real justification for bards in tier four is because I think that that particular well is poisoned.

And yet, when I openly admitted I was downshifting from my normal position in voting wizard at tier 2, it was counted. See what we have here is me voting based on a lower op than I would actually desire to play, (Ryu) voting based on a higher op that nobody actually thinks is normal, and Beheld casting a vote which is. . . ? There is no defined game state for these tiers, and a game state can be set in which bard is tier 4 and rogue is tier 3. Is it a "normal" game? Because your game state isn't normal, my game state isn't even normal by my own standards, why should Beheld be penalized for casting a vote that doesn't match his own views?

Because (Ryu) and eggy argued with him a bunch and his first official voting interaction was in that context.

Which is why I say to eggy, that labeling these as spite votes and then deliberately discarding them is bs. The moment you consider them potential votes you give up the authority to ignore them, period. If you wanted to ignore Beheld for not being a regular voter or casting a vote out of context, you shouldn't have considered it in the first place. Allowing some posters to push agendas that clearly don't match your own and then refusing another just because they didn't submit it properly is bogus. Because make no mistake, there are plenty of votes being cast in these threads that ignore the principles in the mission statement.

Edit: so the only qualification for voting is "convince eggy you're voting for what you believe in." Because to be clear on that last claim, we have people voting in all sorts of ways based on ACFs and dips and wildly divergent op levels and level ranges that I don't think can really be called moderate. That's been obvious from the get go, and they've all been counted, and it's been fairly obvious that's your metric even though it wasn't quite outright stated, but "vote for what you believe in" does not move towards the goal of accurate tiers. It moves towards the popularity contest where a bunch of inaccurate but popular claims are still accepted.

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Originally Posted by eggynack

Maybe you didn't intend to make the tier three bard vote. I took it as implied, because I tend to, as a general rule, take absolute statements of a tiering as a vote. I think that's how people intend them, and I like to count things that are intended as votes.

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A brief statement on not voting in tier threads: I am sure this is the reason I don't vote, and I suspect it is the reason Cosi I doesn't vote. Voting in tier threads is meaningless. In a Jaronk or jormuneg (phone can't go find spelling) thread the entire definition of the tiers is meaningless gobblygook designed to prevent real analysis. In eggy's tier definitions tiers are rated based on "situations" that someone can handle. I think those situations are better called encounters, and that further, we should acknowledge that contributing to nonlevelappropriate encounters above the rate of a character of that level is worth approximately nothing. Presumably failing against lower level challenges is bad.

So from that, it follows that what we are really measuring is contribution to level appropriate encounters. Now what people vote based on their own ignorance without having a method of testing their assumptions is then merely an incorrect estimate. Better then to present an actual argument about level appropriate results based on actual effects than to just have another evidenceless assertion based on the fact that they heard it once, like ryu's complete inability to back up his claim and challenge.

The new consensus is just going to be a new thing people believe without evidence because they heard it once, but be unable to back up when it comes down to it.

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Originally Posted by Fizban

And yet, when I openly admitted I was downshifting from my normal position in voting wizard at tier 2, it was counted. See what we have here is me voting based on a lower op than I would actually desire to play, (Ryu) voting based on a higher op that nobody actually thinks is normal, and Beheld casting a vote which is. . . ? There is no defined game state for these tiers, and a game state can be set in which bard is tier 4 and rogue is tier 3. Is it a "normal" game? Because your game state isn't normal, my game state isn't even normal by my own standards, why should Beheld be penalized for casting a vote that doesn't match his own views?

Because (Ryu) and eggy argued with him a bunch and his first official voting interaction was in that context.

Which is why I say to eggy, that labeling these as spite votes and then deliberately discarding them is bs. The moment you consider them potential votes you give up the authority to ignore them, period. If you wanted to ignore Beheld for not being a regular voter or casting a vote out of context, you shouldn't have considered it in the first place. Allowing some posters to push agendas that clearly don't match your own and then refusing another just because they didn't submit it properly is bogus. Because make no mistake, there are plenty of votes being cast in these threads that ignore the principles in the mission statement.

Edit: so the only qualification for voting is "convince eggy you're voting for what you believe in." Because to be clear on that last claim, we have people voting in all sorts of ways based on ACFs and dips and wildly divergent op levels and level ranges that I don't think can really be called moderate. That's been obvious from the get go, and they've all been counted, and it's been fairly obvious that's your metric even though it wasn't quite outright stated, but "vote for what you believe in" does not move towards the goal of accurate tiers. It moves towards the popularity contest where a bunch of inaccurate but popular claims are still accepted.

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It doesn't matter what's viewed as normal. Only, and I do mean ONLY, that your opinion actually matches your vote that matters. Well... at least not explicitly contradicting each other. Further, no, the entirety of my votes, including tier 3 across the board for everything in this thread's roster except for savant which I've never seen used, are based entirely on how the game is actually played at my table with the given limitations against multiclassing and PRCs eggy has adopted. I'm willing to use the age old debate tactic of getting the person on the other side to say something untenable to lower their aggregate credibility. I'm not willing to flout the rules of the actual thread.

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Originally Posted by ryu

I'm willing to use the age old debate tactic of getting the person on the other side to say something untenable to lower their aggregate credibility.

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"Something untenable" here being attempting to get you to back up your own claim.

I agree you have definitely demonstrated that you backing up your claim is untenable.

I question however if outside your own head that when you presented a challenge and I followed through, and then you backed out after you looked at the monsters and couldn't come up with spells that met your criteria, that perhaps that might have effected your credibility.

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Originally Posted by Fizban

And yet, when I openly admitted I was downshifting from my normal position in voting wizard at tier 2, it was counted.

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Well, yeah. Because I thought that was an accurate representation of what you thought the wizard's tier should be. This still reflects your views on the wizard given what you perceived as the premises of this thread. I thought, anyway.

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There is no defined game state for these tiers, and a game state can be set in which bard is tier 4 and rogue is tier 3. Is it a "normal" game? Because your game state isn't normal, my game state isn't even normal by my own standards, why should Beheld be penalized for casting a vote that doesn't match his own views?

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Why shouldn't he be penalized for casting a vote for a tier that he explicitly doesn't agree with? This isn't a vote reflecting a play style different from Beheld's usual style that required some mental stretching to get into, thus causing the vote swap. It's a vote made because he was mad at Ryu.

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Which is why I say to eggy, that labeling these as spite votes and then deliberately discarding them is bs. The moment you consider them potential votes you give up the authority to ignore them, period.

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He pretty explicitly said that he was voting this way to goad Ryu into participation in this challenge. It reflected no goal with any connection to the tier system as it exists.

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If you wanted to ignore Beheld for not being a regular voter or casting a vote out of context, you shouldn't have considered it in the first place.

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Non-regular voters can absolutely vote. Beheld can vote for stuff right now if he wants. Not sure what you mean by casting a vote out of context. Is that specifically referring to the way he, again, voted with a weird agenda? I considered including that for a few minutes, because I really don't like throwing away votes, and then I recognized that doing so would be a betrayal of the very fundamental principle of the thread, which is something I thought might happen when I made the post. Am I not allowed some time to consider, the capacity to reconsider?

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Allowing some posters to push agendas that clearly don't match your own and then refusing another just because they didn't submit it properly is bogus.

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I can't stop people from pushing agendas. But you can't push agendas with votes. At least not when I'm made aware of it. Does this incentivize being more sneaky about actual agendas? Sure, but not much we can do about that. Honestly, this wasn't something I'd ever expected to come up. It'd be kinda hard to push this strange person manipulation agenda with a completely standard bard for tier four vote though. Kinda hard to push any agenda beyond, y'know, moving the tier of a class in a desired direction.

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Because make no mistake, there are plenty of votes being cast in these threads that ignore the principles in the mission statement.

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Yeah, probably. As long as they're honestly meant as far as I'm aware though, they're at least focusing on the core mission statement, to accurately tier. Or apparently focusing on it.

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Edit: so the only qualification for voting is "convince eggy you're voting for what you believe in." Because to be clear on that last claim, we have people voting in all sorts of ways based on ACFs and dips and wildly divergent op levels and level ranges that I don't think can really be called moderate. That's been obvious from the get go, and they've all been counted, and it's been fairly obvious that's your metric even though it wasn't quite outright stated, but "vote for what you believe in" does not move towards the goal of accurate tiers. It moves towards the popularity contest where a bunch of inaccurate but popular claims are still accepted.

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Yes, that is more or less the only baseline qualification. If you say you have a particular explicit vote, and then give some reason for that vote that is non-trivial and/or participate in the thread some, then I'm so far 100% likely to include that vote, as far as I can recall.There were some votes I was going to ditch for lack of any justification, but then the user justified some, so I kept them in. If you want to appeal any particular vote because their explicitly stated premises fail to match up with what we're doing (an assessment only at level 20, or one heavily reliant on prestige classes, for example), then I might well remove that vote.

However, weird optimization levels or ACF use are unlikely to be the premise for that removal, so appealing a vote like that would be kinda pointless. Dips are currently not allowed, so I'm at least likely to remove those votes going forward if a particular case is brought to my attention and not sufficiently refuted by the voter. I'm wary of removing votes on that basis retroactively though, so bringing up votes from before pretty late in the fighter thread aren't that likely to get me to wipe the vote. In those cases, you might do better bringing the issue up to the voter in question, get them to make a vote more aligned with what they think in this new context.

I don't think we're necessarily going to get perfectly accurate here, in any case. Voting has flaws. I think we're reasonably close to it though. We've had a ton of detailed discussion. A system where I discount votes that lack "proper" justification sounds good in theory, but that's a surefire path to just turning my personal tier views into a new tier system by discounting anyone that disagrees with me as not really being based on the nature of the system, because if it were based on the nature of the system then they'd agree with my clearly superior opinion. Really not what I'm interested in here. I like that I have your votes included, even the ones I disagree with. It's valuable to me. A system where I turn aside anything I consider wildly divergent might well not include that data.

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Originally Posted by Beheld

"Something untenable" here being attempting to get you to back up your own claim.

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Attempting to get him to back up his claim is theoretically fine, though it might make more sense in the wizard thread. Trying to get him to back up his claim by using my voting data as a weapon is not fine. I value that data. You were very much willing to hurt something I value in pursuit of your goals.

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Originally Posted by Beheld

"Something untenable" here being attempting to get you to back up your own claim.

I agree you have definitely demonstrated that you backing up your claim is untenable.

I question however if outside your own head that when you presented a challenge and I followed through, and then you backed out after you looked at the monsters and couldn't come up with spells that met your criteria, that perhaps that might have effected your credibility.

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Interesting hypothetical. Guess we'll never know what would've happened in that situation because you didn't follow through, and with access to WBL, ACFs, race choices, and literally any spells available at the level natively that don't summon or create minions the challenge is easy.

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Originally Posted by ryu

The entirety of my votes, including tier 3 across the board for everything in this thread's roster except for savant which I've never seen used.

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That a new vote? Don't seem to have it included yet. Either way they're included now.

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Originally Posted by ryu

Interesting hypothetical. Guess we'll never know what would've happened in that situation because you didn't follow through, and with access to WBL, ACFs, race choices, and literally any spells available at the level natively that don't summon or create minions the challenge is easy.

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Except that literally is the situation, because that is explicitly what happened in this thread. I get it, the challenge is so easy that you refuse to do it but it is just so easy. It would only take you 30 seconds, but you are willing to spend hours of your time refusing to do it. But its totally easy.

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Originally Posted by eggynack

That a new vote? Don't seem to have it included yet. Either way they're included now.

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Totally is. Technically three if you count classes separate. Mostly based on those three classes meeting the criteria of being pretty obvious better than rogue, but pretty well below sorcerer. It's a pretty simple system I use. For any given class not likely in tiers one or six just compare the class to be evaluated to the poster child of those tiers adjacent to the proposed possible vote. Keep doing that until you find a tier the class matches. Tiers one and six are even simpler because you've half the work. For those wondering the poster children are commoner without chicken superpowers, fighter, rogue, bard, sorcerer, and wizard. Why get specific with commoner? Because the build excluded is the only not tier 6 build by the methodology we're using, and it's an anomaly at tier 3.