Balancing Casters by Buffing Martials

[Lans]

A Tier 1 without the broken stuff is a Tier 3. This is where a wizard ends up with less horizontal (Beguiler, Dread Necromancer) or vertical (Bard) power ends up. Similarly, a Wild Shape Ranger is a good approximation of a Tier 3 Druid (the cleric doesn't have such an equivalent).
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It depends on what you mean by broken, Tier 1/2 classes have plenty of abilities that I don't think are broken, but are still unbalanced, like the wing spells for sorcerers or narratively powerful like teleport.

That said, it seems clear that even casters without cheese aren't Tier Three, or at least have abilities that no Tier Three character has (making "Tier Three" a bad descriptor for the desired balance point). Of the character classes listed in the Tier System, the only ones that have teleport or plane shift are Tier Two or higher. Now, yes, maybe that's because there's some other variable those things correlated with in the sample data. In fact, that is probably true. But that variable is what the Tier System was measuring!

That depends on what tier list you use, Shugenjas get teleport and domain adepts can get the travel domain. Warmages ecletic ACF can let it grab teleport or planeshift with its advanced learning and then there is the nonclass options like arcane domain and fiendish heritage feats or just using magic items. Now obviously it is much narrower and/or coming at a higher cost for them than that of a tier 1/2.