rant: i don't understand tiers

[nihil8r]

so i'm trying to get my pathfinder game ready to play. i want to make sure the players' party is balanced and everyone has a cool character. i also want to make sure that the weak classes from 3.5 really are improved for pathfinder.

but one thing i don't quite get is this whole tier nonsense. sure, a wizard is way better than a fighter past the beginning levels. and so is a cleric. i get that. however, what i don't get is the concept (perhaps a concept made up by me) that non-spellcasting classes are no good.

if tier 1 classes are so good, then why doesn't everyone just play a wizard? right? well, in my mind, the party of 4 wizards going up against a fighter, a rogue, a wizard, and a cleric is going to lose every time. any all-magic party is going to lose to a balanced party every time. right?

so am i just crazy or is this whole tier thing just way too ... dismissive? ie paladins suck because they are tier 592, and they are tier 592 because they are only good at one thing. well if that one thing happens to be killing the bad guy in the face then how is that somehow bad? it's not the paladin's job to buff himself or dispel himself. it's the spellcaster's job to buff and dispel. it's the paladin's job to have huge defensive bonuses while doing constant damage. again, how is this bad?

i feel like this whole tier thing is like a bunch of very small schoolchildren talking about how important various members of a football team are. for example, our fictitious children might imagine that the quarterback is tier 1 because he throws the ball for touchdowns and touchdowns are the only thing that matters. linebackers, on the other hand, are tier 593 (behind paladins!) because they don't really seem to do anything aside from push the other guy and fall down a lot. clearly, linebackers are useless and stupid. but what our schoolchildren fail to realize is that the linebacker's job is to push the other guys so that the quarterback CAN throw the ball. the other team is trying to punch the quarterback in the face and take the ball away from him and get a touchdown of their own, and it is the linebackers job to prevent that from happening, just as it is the paladin (or whomever's) job to hit stuff with pointed sticks while the "tier 1" class casts magic missile at the endzone.

of course d&d isn't football, and class imbalance is a VERY serious concern. i just feel morally outraged for some reason at this tier system. i'd prefer things simply being called balanced, overpowered or underpowered :(

[profitofrage]

im going to leave the forums for exactly 5 minutes and return so that I miss the huge bombshell thats about to collide with this thread.

Suffice to say that you should read this
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boa...p?topic=5256.0

edit: wow really? 5 minutes and nothing? I thought this was the sort of thread that would blow up :P
EDIT2:
Fine ill explain it then.
Basically the idea is that lower tiers such as the paladin...CANT do there job properly. i.e A wizard can actually do everything they do BETTER.
It is hrd to see it at first..but at high optimisation and EXTREMLY CLEVER use..a wizard can end up doing pretty much godlike things...where as a paladin loses his powers if he kills that goblin child with a wrongly timed cleave.

the Fighter is a good example. the Cleric can do everything the fighter can..and more. Thus..any party with a fighter in it rather then a cleric holding that spot..is weaker.
Your example of a party of 5 wizards never beating a balanced party? wrong....actually very wrong. Those 5 wizards would first kill the other parties casters...as there the threats. Then they would easily gimp and smoosh the other characters given a fair amount of optimisation and high effieciency play.

EDIT3:
Lol AH theres the postplosion i was expecting.

[druid91]

Ok...


A paladin can kill the bad guy in the face.

A druid can kill an entire nation of bad guys.

Warriors are no slouches. They can kill you six ways to sunday in 6 seconds.

But spellcasters? They are armageddon walking, nations rise and fall by the patronage of high level casters.

If your paladin is doing anything by those levels, either you build a very good paladin, or they are holding back.

[Kurald Galain]

class imbalance is a VERY serious concern.

In practice, it is much less of a concern than the forums make it out to be.

[Reficule]

First off, the tier system is NOT, I repeat NOT. as in NOT about who would win if the two classes were placed into an arena right in front of each other. Tiers refer to a character's ability to solve problems This requires two things, Power and Versatility. Thats what the tiers measure, and thats whats important in a D&D game.

Fighters and paladins can only do one thing, and not particularly impressively either, a wizard can do anything in half a dozen different ways.

Dragon is attacking? Wizard doesnt bother with combat, he casts charm monster to make the dragon friendly instead of killing it. The town now has a powerful ally. Dragon makes his save? Ok, Forcecage. The dragon is now trapped for at least a day while you have the time to do whatever the hell you want. A melee has only one option, and that option is almost never the best thing you can do. Especially when a wizard can summon an army of Solars to crush anything

PS: Tiers exist so the entire party can have a similar tier to prevent conflict in the group when one player is more useful than the other. Just cause wizards are tier one doesnt mean you cant play other classes, just dont have a wizard and a fighter in the same group.

[Draconi Redfir]

Like the guy in that one video i can't remember said, "teirs are for *not allowed to say*

Forget the whole teir nonsense, it's not how the classes are made its how you play them. Wanna be a monk? a a monk. wanna be a knight? be a kight.

forget the whole teir nonsense a just play what you wanna play.


And if you support said teir nonsense, i will bonk you on the head with a wiimote!

[Qaera]

Magic is always more flexible than whacking with a stick. Tiers aren't about killing, they are about versatility. In your example, the group of wizards could probably do better at the jobs of the other team and still have better versatility.
That said, tiers are a third party understanding of class mechanics, and you don't have to even think about them if you don't want to.

[Morph Bark]

if tier 1 classes are so good, then why doesn't everyone just play a wizard? right? well, in my mind, the party of 4 wizards going up against a fighter, a rogue, a wizard, and a cleric is going to lose every time. any all-magic party is going to lose to a balanced party every time. right?

Playing the same thing over and over is boring. An all-magic party can steamroll a balanced party, but not if they are unoptimized.

Take care with the term "balanced" there though, as a balanced party Tier-wise would be closer to factotum, crusader, dread necromancer and binder or something of the sort. You mean to refer to a balanced party as one with all the roles filled. However, a wizard with well-picked spells could fill the roles of the fighter and rogue pretty easily. It is for this reason it is Tier 1.


Let me say the most important thing though that will get repeated here a lot: the Tier system was not made to say "this class is bad" or such things. It is to show the versatility of classes.

From your post it is clear your idea of spellcasters aren't as filling the roles of the fighter or rogue or pull out overpowered stuff like Polymorph or Gate or summon tons of creatures and break the action economy.


One important bit of your post I find ironic is this:

i'd prefer things simply being called balanced, overpowered or underpowered

Simply replace "Tier 1" "overpowered", "Tier 3" with "balanced", "Tier 5" and "Tier 6" with "underpowered" and decide for yourself if you think Tier 2 and Tier 4 are balanced or over/underpowered. Voila, now you got a Tier system in your own words, which is actually nothing better than what you started out with.

The point is, magic is just damn versatile and powerful and those classes that don't have access to it therefore fall behind unless the casters they adventure with or fight against aren't optimized.

[Seerow]

If your paladin is doing anything by those levels, either you build a very good paladin, or they are holding back.

It's largely this.



But the biggest thing to remember is the tiers are separated based on the options you have available, not just raw power. An ubercharger who deals thousands of damage per round is still tier 4 at best, because charging is all that character can do. Meanwhile a Warblade with a tenth of that damage potential makes tier 3 because he has more options available to him. Sorcerer makes tier 2 because his options have a greater variety, and he has more of them. Wizard makes tier 1 cause he has the same options as the sorcerer but he can completely rearrange those options each day to fit the situation, so not only does he have all the most powerful options, he has effectively no limit on which options he has.

[tyckspoon]

To run with the football analogy:

Sure, the quarterback throws, the offensive line blocks for him, and the receivers get outside and downfield so the quarterback has somewhere to throw to. In that situation, every part of the group is doing something vital.

But.. say the quarterback is not restricted to just throwing and trying not to get hit. Maybe he can make his offensive line twice as big so nobody on the other team has any chance of getting by them. Maybe he can generate a repulsive field around himself so he can just carry the ball downfield alone and nobody can tackle him. Maybe he can put the entire defending team to sleep or root them in place. Maybe he can create a wall blocking off half the pitch and have his entire team focus on getting through just half the opposing team. Maybe he just throws the ball up and makes it stick in the air until a receiver is free, and then the ball guides itself into the receiver's hands. Maybe he can create his own receiver wherever he wants it to be.

When that kind of thing can happen, the quarterback goes from being just an important part of the team to being the *only* important part of the team- the tricks he chooses to use that day determine how the ball gets scored and who gets to take a part in it. Some of those plans leave a role for the linemen and the receivers, but they're only there because the quarterback decided that today, they get to do something. That's the kind of thing the tiers measure. They're not meant as value judgements on the classes (well, mostly- Tier 6 is pretty much in 'can't mechanically do anything, why bother' range), but they do help to assess if your parties are liable to have intra-character balance problems.

[Yora]

This is a superhero parody, but a perfect case study about the problem with tiers.

This would be a Tier 1 character with his Tier 4 ally. The one character has a lot of interesting abilities, but they are all useless because the other one can do everything faster and easier.

The last scene even shows how a high tier character can support low tier characters to make them more effective, but it would still be more effective to do it by himself.

[Talya]

This is a superhero parody, but a perfect case study about the problem with tiers.

This would be a Tier 1 character with his Tier 4 ally. The one character has a lot of interesting abilities, but they are all useless because the other one can do everything faster and easier.

The last scene even shows how a high tier character can support low tier characters to make them more effective, but it would still be more effective to do it by himself.

That was awesome.

[oxybe]

when all you have is a hammer, all you can do is treat every problem as a nail.

which is why martial types, like fighters and barbarians are lower tier then casters.

think of it as building a house. the caster has a wide array of tools at his disposal. he's got limited space in his truck, so he can't just up and bring them all on site, so he has to pick and choose... but if he knows what needs to be done that day, the can pick the right tools for the job, otherwise he brings several multi-use tools he can adapt to different tasks instead of the specific use ones... it's a wee bit slower, but he can get the various jobs done.

the non-casters have a limited toolset. a hammer, some nails, maybe a saw and some measuring tape. they're aces at what they do, hammer stuff in, but ask them to do plumbing, electrical wiring, tiling, etc... and they're flummoxed. you can't just grab a hammer and hope the wiring somehow does itself and the new window gets weatherproofed.

what's worse is even if the two were to work on a project together, if it's going slow the caster can still grab his cell phone and call up a few apprentices to grab their hammers and come on down to the site: they might not be as effective individually as mr.non-caster (who's honed his hammering to an art form), but together they can still manage to do the same job he does (hammer in nails) while the caster focuses on other tasks.

this is the power difference of tiers: the ability to handle and adapt to a wide array of situations. yes the wizard and fighter can work together, but given the option would you chose caster+non-caster or caster x2?

[Lord_Gareth]

To run with the football analogy:

Sure, the quarterback throws, the offensive line blocks for him, and the receivers get outside and downfield so the quarterback has somewhere to throw to. In that situation, every part of the group is doing something vital.

But.. say the quarterback is not restricted to just throwing and trying not to get hit. Maybe he can make his offensive line twice as big so nobody on the other team has any chance of getting by them. Maybe he can generate a repulsive field around himself so he can just carry the ball downfield alone and nobody can tackle him. Maybe he can put the entire defending team to sleep or root them in place. Maybe he can create a wall blocking off half the pitch and have his entire team focus on getting through just half the opposing team. Maybe he just throws the ball up and makes it stick in the air until a receiver is free, and then the ball guides itself into the receiver's hands. Maybe he can create his own receiver wherever he wants it to be.

When that kind of thing can happen, the quarterback goes from being just an important part of the team to being the *only* important part of the team- the tricks he chooses to use that day determine how the ball gets scored and who gets to take a part in it. Some of those plans leave a role for the linemen and the receivers, but they're only there because the quarterback decided that today, they get to do something. That's the kind of thing the tiers measure. They're not meant as value judgements on the classes (well, mostly- Tier 6 is pretty much in 'can't mechanically do anything, why bother' range), but they do help to assess if your parties are liable to have intra-character balance problems.

This is the best analogy I've seen on this thread so far.

[Ozymandias]

Tiers are descriptive, not proscriptive. The system does not say or imply "you should play X" or "you should not play X."

[nihil8r]

wow! thanks for the great replies everyone. i think i was just looking at the situation too narrowly. :)

[Esser-Z]

Tiers are descriptive, not proscriptive. The system does not say or imply "you should play X" or "you should not play X."

This, exactly. Some things are more effective/powerful/descriptor of choice than others. A tier system describes that. Nothing says you have to use the "best" option.

Also, tyckspoon's post was excellent.

[Lord_Gareth]

wow! thanks for the great replies everyone. i think i was just looking at the situation too narrowly. :)

Wait....did...someone on the internet just have their mind changed by calm, rational explanation?

Dear gods, the end is here. RUN FOR THE HILLS EVERYONE, RATIONAL DEBATE JUST FUNCTIONED ON THE INTERNET! THE HORSEMEN RIDE FORTH TO SLAUGHTER ALL!

But seriously dude, glad we could help.

[Knaight]

Tiers are descriptive, not proscriptive. The system does not say or imply "you should play X" or "you should not play X."

It does highlight the potential problems involved if X and Z are there at the same time, which seems a useful service. As such it is certainly much more useful than "Balanced, Overpowered, Underpowered", if simply because one can decide to apply those terms -or not, depending on play style- then push them around.

[Yuki Akuma]

The tier system is designed so DMs can work together with their players to iron out wrinkles in the party dynamic. They can see that one player wants to be a Wizard (Tier 1), while another wants to be a Barbarian (Tier 4) and a third wants to be a Fighter (Tier 5).

The DM can then work to make sure the Tier 1 character doesn't completely overshadow the other two - by either suggesting other, similar classes with a higher tier (say, Warblade, Tier 3) to the melee types, or a similar class with a lower tier (say, Wu Jen, Tier 2-3) to the Wizard.

Or you can just ignore it and fix problems as they occur, if they ever do.

[Esser-Z]

...Well paint me orange and call me Megatron, rational debate just worked on the Internet.

[Leon]

Spoiler

Show

so i'm trying to get my pathfinder game ready to play. i want to make sure the players' party is balanced and everyone has a cool character. i also want to make sure that the weak classes from 3.5 really are improved for pathfinder.

but one thing i don't quite get is this whole tier nonsense. sure, a wizard is way better than a fighter past the beginning levels. and so is a cleric. i get that. however, what i don't get is the concept (perhaps a concept made up by me) that non-spellcasting classes are no good.

if tier 1 classes are so good, then why doesn't everyone just play a wizard? right? well, in my mind, the party of 4 wizards going up against a fighter, a rogue, a wizard, and a cleric is going to lose every time. any all-magic party is going to lose to a balanced party every time. right?

so am i just crazy or is this whole tier thing just way too ... dismissive? ie paladins suck because they are tier 592, and they are tier 592 because they are only good at one thing. well if that one thing happens to be killing the bad guy in the face then how is that somehow bad? it's not the paladin's job to buff himself or dispel himself. it's the spellcaster's job to buff and dispel. it's the paladin's job to have huge defensive bonuses while doing constant damage. again, how is this bad?

i feel like this whole tier thing is like a bunch of very small schoolchildren talking about how important various members of a football team are. for example, our fictitious children might imagine that the quarterback is tier 1 because he throws the ball for touchdowns and touchdowns are the only thing that matters. linebackers, on the other hand, are tier 593 (behind paladins!) because they don't really seem to do anything aside from push the other guy and fall down a lot. clearly, linebackers are useless and stupid. but what our schoolchildren fail to realize is that the linebacker's job is to push the other guys so that the quarterback CAN throw the ball. the other team is trying to punch the quarterback in the face and take the ball away from him and get a touchdown of their own, and it is the linebackers job to prevent that from happening, just as it is the paladin (or whomever's) job to hit stuff with pointed sticks while the "tier 1" class casts magic missile at the endzone.

of course d&d isn't football, and class imbalance is a VERY serious concern. i just feel morally outraged for some reason at this tier system. i'd prefer things simply being called balanced, overpowered or underpowered :(

Yep, its over-hyped hogwash. Way way over-hyped Homebrew that many seem to have become fixated on as being the way to handle things.

Good party balance should come from a group of people working together no matter what Class they are playing or the perceived weaknesses of various classes to achieve the goals that adventuring brings - You as a DM should be hopefully creating challenges that the whole group can have options to shine and also to maybe not do as well at - its not easy always but its doable.

A lot of the balance may well be theoretical, some may be actual - what works in one group very good may not sit with how others play

Monks get a hard ride here, but Ive seen quite a few played and have played a couple and have had no problems with them or what they do, people i have talked to don't seem to have issue with them aside from the threads crop up here frequently.

I find a Better ranking for all classes works more on what line is and its not a power based ranking - just a indication of where it should be in a battle line and what role it can achieve from there.

Of course its by no means fixed: a Cleric which I'd typically think of as second line can step up with some spell augmentations and become a 1st line combatant - but shouldn't do so at the cost of not helping the group as a whole unless its great support abilities are not needed at the time.

[Morph Bark]

To run with the football analogy:

Sure, the quarterback throws, the offensive line blocks for him, and the receivers get outside and downfield so the quarterback has somewhere to throw to. In that situation, every part of the group is doing something vital.

But.. say the quarterback is not restricted to just throwing and trying not to get hit. Maybe he can make his offensive line twice as big so nobody on the other team has any chance of getting by them. Maybe he can generate a repulsive field around himself so he can just carry the ball downfield alone and nobody can tackle him. Maybe he can put the entire defending team to sleep or root them in place. Maybe he can create a wall blocking off half the pitch and have his entire team focus on getting through just half the opposing team. Maybe he just throws the ball up and makes it stick in the air until a receiver is free, and then the ball guides itself into the receiver's hands. Maybe he can create his own receiver wherever he wants it to be.

When that kind of thing can happen, the quarterback goes from being just an important part of the team to being the *only* important part of the team- the tricks he chooses to use that day determine how the ball gets scored and who gets to take a part in it. Some of those plans leave a role for the linemen and the receivers, but they're only there because the quarterback decided that today, they get to do something. That's the kind of thing the tiers measure. They're not meant as value judgements on the classes (well, mostly- Tier 6 is pretty much in 'can't mechanically do anything, why bother' range), but they do help to assess if your parties are liable to have intra-character balance problems.

Taking nihil8r's pass and running with it. Well done on that analogy.

I have to say that while reading over that I thought "it's almost like the spellcasters are playing a different game entirely", which made me wonder if DnD in general can be compared to American football, what classes are actually playing soccer, or baseball?

[Skaven]

This is a superhero parody, but a perfect case study about the problem with tiers.

This would be a Tier 1 character with his Tier 4 ally. The one character has a lot of interesting abilities, but they are all useless because the other one can do everything faster and easier.

The last scene even shows how a high tier character can support low tier characters to make them more effective, but it would still be more effective to do it by himself.

Heh, the comments even show this isn't the first time this has come up.

rofl.. this is like D&D.

Angel Summoner is a wizard, BMX bandit is a fighter.

Fighter: I can go over and hit them with my sword.

Wizard: or I could stop time, summon an army of monsters to take them all down, fry the rest with lightning and you can all watch.
Ratonga 6 months ago 27

I think the real lesson of this video to D&D players is that if you can solve any imaginable crisis using your own godlike powers, it's pretty silly to form a crimefighting duo, or play in a party of adventurers. A group of BMX Bandits would be a bit too weak to handle challenges, but a group of Angel Summoners would only lead to piercing boredom. The ideal is somewhere in between.
Silfir 3 months ago 7

It fits. As has already been said tiers don't represent what should be played, they're just guidelines as to raw power and versatility. Additionally tiers are flexible: a well played Paladin might be higher shown as on the tier chart, while a poorly played wizard/specialist wizard might be tier 2.

Nobody questions that if a fighter gets in the face of a completely unprepared wizard, the wizard is in serious trouble. Close quarter fighting is their forte.

Its all to do with preparation, player skill and tactics.

Additionally.. while the forums might all be up on what's best, the majority players here play just to have fun and play the character we want to play.

Despite being the worst min/maxer in my group (and I don't cheese/max, I just take viable options, but i'm known as my party min-maxer), i've happily sat down building a horribly unoptimised character. ( Kobold (no rotd cheese), level 10 sorcerer (enchantment focus) level 10 rogue.) Purely because its fun to be the underdog. And when that underdog comes through in a pinch (landing a hld person spell on the bbeg when all hope seemed lost) the victory is all the sweeter and you remember the characters for a lot longer.

[Coidzor]

of course d&d isn't football, and class imbalance is a VERY serious concern. i just feel morally outraged for some reason at this tier system.

Well, there's your problem. You're bringing morality into this and thinking that the tier system is some kind of moral impetus when it is not, nor is it making any kind of moral judgment.

Yep, its over-hyped hogwash. Way way over-hyped Homebrew that many seem to have become fixated on as being the way to handle things.

What are you talking about? The Tier system is not homebrew. It contains some suggestions about potential houserules at the end, but that's not really the tier system so much as suggestions about ways to deal with things if one is running into issues or wants to try things out.

[The Glyphstone]

This is a superhero parody, but a perfect case study about the problem with tiers.

This would be a Tier 1 character with his Tier 4 ally. The one character has a lot of interesting abilities, but they are all useless because the other one can do everything faster and easier.

The last scene even shows how a high tier character can support low tier characters to make them more effective, but it would still be more effective to do it by himself.

I don't even have to click the link to know it'll be Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit. Love that clip soooo much.

[Z3ro]

a well played Paladin might be higher shown as on the tier chart, while a poorly played wizard/specialist wizard might be tier 2.

I agree with most of the rest of your post, but I had to laugh at this. A poorly played wizard can easily be a tier 5; imagine a blaster wizard with suboptimal blasting spells prepared. He can only do one thing, and not even that very well.

[The Glyphstone]

I agree with most of the rest of your post, but I had to laugh at this. A poorly played wizard can easily be a tier 5; imagine a blaster wizard with suboptimal blasting spells prepared. He can only do one thing, and not even that very well.

The thing is, that wizard, even if he prepares all bad spells, can still prepare a completely different set of spells the next day. Playing a class badly can only influence its tier so much - a Druid who straps on Steel Full Plate, a Steel Tower Shield, and punches people without IUS in melee isn't a Tier 6, he's just being played by a total moron.

[mootoall]

In the same boat, Glyphstone. Of course, figuring it out isn't exactly brain surgery

[Z3ro]

The thing is, that wizard, even if he prepares all bad spells, can still prepare a completely different set of spells the next day. Playing a class badly can only influence its tier so much - a Druid who straps on Steel Full Plate, a Steel Tower Shield, and punches people without IUS in melee isn't a Tier 6, he's just being played by a total moron.

The ability to change up abilities certainly plays a big part in tier ranking, I'm not denying that. It's just that so many people equate tier to total power and go from there.

In the example of a poorly played wizard dropping to tier 2; using your example, that wizard's still tier 1. He can never not be tier 1, as he could always change up his tactics. On the absolute scale, the tiers are fixed and immovable.

In my opinion, many people use tiers as a dynamic ranking that can move based on how things are built and played. In my example of the blaster wizard, imagine all he has in his spellbook are blasting spells. He has no gold to buy scrolls, and doesn't know where to go to buy scrolls even if he did. Every feat and item he has is dedicated to blasting. Is he still tier 1? I would argue no; that doesn't make all wizards drop tiers, just that one.

I can see the potential counterargument; but Z3ro, doesn't that mean that all classes are only as good as their players? Yes, it does! That's what people seem to forget, roleplaying involves skill just like anything else. I've seen more poorly played druids than I can count, as a result of bad players. Doesn't mean the druid is a bad class, just means they were bad players.

So I guess it just depends on your view of what the tier system is for.