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2013-01-24, 03:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
It is, in fact, almost exactly what happened with me (and, by extension, my group) after I read JaronK's tier system thread however many years ago. The main difference was that my party was smaller, and I didn't have access to the ToB, so I could only recommend that my fighter play a warblade (God bless Wizards for making that freely available), and I helped my monk friend build a Punch-barian.
It's almost like some people have actually found the tier system useful, or something.
This is the same argument that Gotterdammerung and Togo have been using in this thread, albeit stated much more succinctly, and my response is still the same: That is a problem with players, not the tier system.Last edited by Karnith; 2013-01-24 at 03:41 PM.
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2013-01-24, 03:42 PM (ISO 8601)
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2013-01-24, 03:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
But I didn't dismiss their character because based upon their class. I had a discussion with them. Knowing about the different tiers gave me a starting point when talking to players about their character concepts.
The point is, before I read JaronK's thread, I didn't understand why a party consisting of a Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, Cleric was so frustrating as a DM. I would spend hours trying to find appropriate encounters in which all the players had an opportunity to shine. In fact, IIRC the DMG states that this is the inherent challenge of a good DM. I read article after article about DMing and how to make it easier for me.
It wasn't until I read JaronK's article did I realize that the problem wasn't my lack of skills at creating challenging but fun encounters, but rather the inherent flaw of the system. With characters of similar ability level, the game flows much smoother. I never have to think whether a player can contribute as they all have lots of options before them.
By the way, they still think tiers among classes is BS, despite evidence to the contrary.78% of DM's started their first campaign in a tavern. If you're one of the 22% that didn't, copy and paste this into your signature.
Started at the home of one of the characters.
Check out my campaign at:
https://erramus.obsidianportal.com/
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2013-01-24, 03:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
Eh? XP costs are a joke, of course I always imposed them, and they never slowed anyone down seriously even in 3.0 when you didn't automatically catch up. Post IIRC Savage Species and in 3.5 of course the lower level character gets XP faster and XP is a river.
IIRC in 3.5 a single caster can take EVERY SINGLE GP worth of loot an entire party of 4 collects, use it all to craft, and he STILL never falls behind more than 1 level and regularly catches up all the way from level 1 to 20.
And material components and focuses are ALWAYS required, in every game I've played in or run of 3.x. Good thing component pouches exist.
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2013-01-24, 03:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
Last edited by Trasilor; 2013-01-24 at 04:00 PM.
78% of DM's started their first campaign in a tavern. If you're one of the 22% that didn't, copy and paste this into your signature.
Started at the home of one of the characters.
Check out my campaign at:
https://erramus.obsidianportal.com/
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2013-01-24, 04:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
This is getting spooky, because I used to beat myself up in the exact same way over my difficulties making encounters for my players. I (and, to be fair, my group) used to insist that we have a party with an arcane caster (usually a wizard or sorcerer), a divine caster (usually a cleric), a beat-stick (usually a fighter), and a skill-monkey (usually a rogue), and it was really such a relief to realize that the game could actually be more balanced using a different setup than the classic D&D party (i.e. through tier groupings).
Frankly, even if the DM makes you keep track of spell components without just using the standard "spell component pouches are fully stocked" rule, it's not like the wizard is suddenly less powerful. It just becomes a lot more annoying to play the game. I suppose it might make the party more balanced by encouraging the wizard to play a different class, but wizards would still have all of the silly options that they normally do. They'd just also require more book-keeping.Last edited by Karnith; 2013-01-24 at 04:17 PM.
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2013-01-24, 04:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
What they're doing is dismissing people's ideas or creations because of balance reasons. The tiers just show what the status of balance is of the classes before house rules... that's it. And you know what? Dismissing a player's idea because it won't fit in your game is perfectly acceptable.
If I want to run a gritty, realistic game, it's reasonable for me to say "no spellcasters in this game." If a player then says "I want to be a Wizard" it's okay for me to say that won't work. If I want to run a game that's all about arcane casters dealing with the persecution of arcane casters, and a player says "I want to be a ninja" it's okay for me to say either that they can't be a ninja, or that they have to make a ninja character concept using the Beguiler or similar. If I want to make a game where the players are of similar strength, it's perfectly reasonable for me to notice that my players are currently a Druid, Cleric, and Wizard, along with a guy who wants to be a Fighter using Oversized Two Weapon Fighting to wield a pair of bastard swords, it's okay for me to say "no, that won't fit."
And that's going to happen whether they've read the tier system or not. But without the tiers, they might not realize the problem until they're a few sessions in and they suddenly realize that the Monk is completely unable to contribute or that the Dragonwrought Kobold Sorcerer is completely overpowered compared to everyone else. And then the player really gets screwed, because he put all that work into his creation and he's now told it's bad and he's a munchkin/bad player for having made it.
Knowing how the balance starts out lets you head off such problems at the pass.
JaronK
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2013-01-24, 04:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
Karnith, I appreciate you feel strongly about this, but you're kinda crossing the line here from 'interested in the topic' to 'obssessively cateloguing Togo's posts'. I don't need a stalker.
I have endevoured to be fair, and emphasised what I like about it as far as I could. I also have a great deal of respect for JaronK and his work. That you have interpreted this to mean I'm somehow conflicted in my opinion I can only describe as unfortunate. I happy to discuss the Tier system further, but I'd rather not have an arguement about what my views actually are.
I don't like the Tier system. I don't find it useful, or of net benefit. I appreciate you do. I appreciate you feel that everyone should like it. I don't. Can we please just accept this and move on?
I don't ban anyone from looking at anything. I choose not to use the Tier system in my own games, and I recommend against using it other people's, because it does more harm that good. That's as far as it goes. While I try and encourage good practice, the idea that I can simply decide that my players or DM will conform to my ideas of good gaming is not just impractical, but also creepy and inappropriate.
Thereby dropping the homicide rate from anywhere between 5 times and 3000 times, depending on which data sources you use and which countries you compare. Sure, if everyone was both nice and careful, noone would get shot. So what?
And now we've moved from contradicting me about my own opinions to making statements about people you've never met.
Ah, before you decide that I DM in some twisted version of Gamer Hell, I should point out that I DM a lot at conventions and events, and I travel a fair bit. My examples are drawn from a number of distinct and non-overlapping groups that feature a few hundred people.
Lots of people I game understand the Tier system perfectly well. Of those some are happy to use it, and some are not.
Originally Posted by Hirax
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2013-01-24, 05:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
The Tier system is useful as a rough guide, but a skilled DM can try to modify encounters / treasure found to help the lower tier people become more useful.
The spontaneous caster / prepared caster debate depends heavily upon the amount of foreknowledge the prepared caster has. If you know you're going up against a black dragon at the bottom of a dungeon ... but don't know the dragon has been enchanted to have SR level 50 against mind altering spells... well, it can really ruin a Wizard's day to get to the BBEG and find out the spell he thought was going to win the battle just fizzled with no effect.
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2013-01-24, 05:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
Don't like it, don't use it, don't comment on it. It doesn't have to affect you in the slightest.
But that's not what you're doing. You're objecting to its existence, objecting to other people using it. It helps some groups. That's their business, and not yours. The fact that it does not help you is due entirely to your own preferences and the people that you personally happen to play with. Your experience is not applicable to all other, or even a majority of other, tables
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2013-01-24, 05:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
A thought occurs to me.
For those who say you dislike the Tier System, I have a question: Generally, do you think it's true that you could use more than one Class to represent a particular concept? To borrow the Miko example, if a player came to you with an idea to play a Samurai, would you have the Player choose from the OA or CW Samurai, or would you instead suggest methods that could fulfill that role without having the word "Samurai" in the title - for example, a Warblade?
I ask because it appears from here as if some folks are conflating the idea of concept with the idea of Class, then taking umbrage at the notion that certain concepts as expressed by their 3.5 Class don't fit well in certain parties, from a Tiers perspective. Note that I don't say they cannot be played in certain parties, but that they are a poor fit. Continuing the Miko example, a Player who wants to bring a "Samurai" into a group with a Spirit Shaman, a Wu Jen, and a Beguiler could well feel like the odd man out if actually playing a CW Samurai*, but would fit in pretty well if he instead built a Diamond Mind-focused Warblade and called himself a Samurai.
*Yes, I know about Shneekey's ToS Lockdown Samurai. That's a specific build, not a representative sample of the Class as a whole, and by his own admission, the build's best trick is entirely binary.
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2013-01-24, 05:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
78% of DM's started their first campaign in a tavern. If you're one of the 22% that didn't, copy and paste this into your signature.
Started at the home of one of the characters.
Check out my campaign at:
https://erramus.obsidianportal.com/
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2013-01-24, 05:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
Amphetryon, I noticed that in newer groups people treat classes as a job title. There are no doctors, chemists, repairmen, or mercenaries. Everyone is a wizard, fighter, bard, druid, etc... and NPCs identify characters on site as whatever class they are.
I find that new players are often the most reluctant to divorce a character concept from its title. A monk NEEDS to be the monk class for them. It cannot be an unarmed swordsage or any variant.
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2013-01-24, 05:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
(Since you've asked me to stop arguing about your take on the tier system, I am only going to address this part of your post.)
Sorry for sounding creepy; I only made that part of the post to say "I just realized that we actually agree on this in a lot of ways, even if I didn't see it at first."
It is, however, a lot harder to balance encounters in that way when the people in your party have wildly different capabilities than when they are roughly capable of contributing the same amount. I know that I, personally, lacked (and probably still lack, though I've been lucky enough not to have to need to in recent memory) the skill to create well-balanced encounters for imbalanced parties.
It is an unfortunate(?) feature of the system that the classes most able to exploit foreknowledge are also the classes with the greatest ability to gain said knowledge (through divinations, Knowledge checks, and so on).Last edited by Karnith; 2013-01-24 at 05:30 PM.
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2013-01-24, 05:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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2013-01-24, 05:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
I think that how the players are introduced to the system is also important; the players I know who don't own the books and play off of the SRD had a much easier time thinking of the classes as metagame constructs compared to those who actually bought the books and read all of the fluff.
Last edited by Karnith; 2013-01-24 at 05:38 PM.
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2013-01-24, 05:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
Yes.
But I still get pissed off if somebody tries to get me not to play a paladin because my buddies are playing a Cleric and a Wizard.
And no, that doesn't specifically relate to the descriptive aspect of the tier system, but it ignores the other 50% of the OP, which encourages DMs to pressure their groups to normalize the power of their groups' classes, instead of just saying "hey guys, don't play like *****."
Plus the rhetoric of the OP portrays tiers 1, 2, 5 and 6 as problems with terms like "breaking the campaign," "campaign smasher" and "worthless". Whether or not Jaron later said the tier system isn't a love song to the cluster of classes he calls T3, his language says differently. And the rhetorical encouragement of T3-only games really grates me the wrong way, because whether or not a Binder, Beguiler, Crusader or Factotum fill the roles of a Cleric, Sorcerer, Paladin or Rogue at a more controlled optimization level, the T3s are excruciatingly boring to build in comparison.
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2013-01-24, 05:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
Could you clarify your "yes" please? There's an either-or question in the example, so "yes" could be read as ambiguous.
The fact that in JaronK's experience and opinion Tier 3 has the fewest possibilities of problems arising =/= best Tier. It means that, for most campaigns in his experience, that may be the case. He also goes to lengths to specify times when that is not the case in his experience.
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2013-01-24, 05:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
I actually said I like to play Tier 3 and DM for Tier 4, but that the game my players liked the most was Tier 6. And I mentioned that many folks like other play styles. Evidently that makes it a love song to Tier 3. Not sure why.
The game I'm currently in, by the way, has two Tier 1s, an optimized Tier 3, and a heavily optimized Tier 4. It's a lot of fun.
JaronK
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2013-01-24, 05:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
You don't need to consciously work at being powerful to overshadow other party members. I ought to know, because my players have done so accidentally before. All it takes is for the guy playing the rogue to realize that his main shtick is done about as well by the wizard who knows Knock, Invisibility, and a Summon Monster spell, or for the fighter to be built less effectively than the animal companions a druid gets (and when traps like Toughness or Weapon Focus exist, that isn't very hard!), or for the monk to try to do anything (I kid, I kid). Telling people to not play like jerks doesn't solve a lot of the problems that D&D 3.5 has (though it certainly can solve some), and many of those party-balance problems can in fact be solved by playing characters of a similar tier.
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2013-01-24, 06:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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2013-01-24, 06:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
I was mentioning 2 very easy buffs...Produce Flame adds another 1d6 + 5 per touch attack (I would think only claw attacks -- but could in theory also include rake) so there is another at least 2d6+10.
Wizards also cast Bull's Strength on me -- more damage...
as for other effects -- Barkskin potion +5 we got from a high lvl Druid help bring the AC to acceptable levels and Resist Energy for app energy resistance and Boom - Druid kicks some tail :)
The fighter is a new player so his fighter is not optimized and to be honest I've not played with lots of people that try to optimize (only one guy in my current group is a regular optimizer). That said I am kind of new too (new old as I used to play back in the 1st edition days only started back up a couple of years ago).
So my point still remains (I understand you were also making an example of how someone can optimize a fighter).
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2013-01-24, 06:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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2013-01-24, 07:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
Originally Posted by karnith
I think we do agree in many ways. I don't object to the the Tier system itself so much as the effects I see it having on people. Everyone has their own experiences, and if all of ours were the same, I'd honestly be quite surprised.
What, I can't comment unless I'm a fan?
No, I'm really not. I just don't use it myself or recommend to others.
I note however, that you appear to be levelling similar accusations against other people who also disagree with you. I think I understand what you're getting at, that people who enjoy the system should enjoy it, and those who don't, don't need to use it. I'd certainly agree with that approach, and although that's not exactly what you said I hope it's an acceptable summary of what you mean.
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2013-01-24, 07:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
I read a basic summary of some very detailed guide which cites quotations from several experts. Since I only read the summary I miss out on a lot of detail. Now at a later point I attempt to quote one of the experts based on the limited amount I glanced over.
Does this make me an idiot when I turn out to be wrong?
Or should I have just read more of the source material, instead of arguing over a limited understanding of the concepts involved?
I'm willing to guess that more of us aren't Brain Surgeons/Rocket Scientists/Theoretical Physicists, than are. And that as a result, our understanding of anything involved in those fields are limited. Non of this makes any of us stupid, so I will not be apologizing for calling you an "idiot" or otherwise insulting you, because I haven't done either of those.
You obviously did feel insulted though, otherwise you wouldn't have pointed out my statements as such, so I am sorry for giving you that impression and causing whatever offense caused that feeling. Thanks for not jumping on me for my misuse of "analysis" where I should've been using "analytical" though. It's embarrassing how I've only just realised that's the word I should've been using all along.
This was supposed to be a short post in response to yours.
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2013-01-24, 07:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
And your point is basically incorrect. A druid being played at a "bears are pretty cool. Maybe I should become one of those" optimization level will have similar punching ability to a fighter with a similar optimization level. You don't have to seek out obscure munchkiny monsters in books lost in the ruins of dead civilizations. You just have to pick normal stuff that's freely available through the srd. Standard animal companion choices make fighter feel similarly bad. The point, is that it's really hard sometimes not to make warrior players feel bad while playing a druid. Obviously this isn't even taking into account the spell list, which while not as versatile without splat books, is perfectly insanely powerful in core.
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2013-01-24, 07:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
Yes, absolutely. I generally go for the concept first, and then look for features to support the concept from spells, feats and prestige classes. Once I've got an idea of what suit from there, I look at class and race, and see what fits. In the last character I created I got as far as equipping the character before finally deciding on a base class. I often use a broad mix of classes and prestige classes to represent an idea. I don't often play a single classed character unless I'm a primarily a spellcaster.
I do see a lot of players with the class as role mindset. It's much easier to work out how to play a single class as a role if you're new to the system. I'm not sure how much it relates to Tiers though.
I enjoy playing T3-4 characters, but I usually get there by taking a T4-T5 chassis and optimising upwards. I also downwards optimise higher Tier characters - I had a fun wizard with an absurdly low wisdom who many of his feats class levels and spells on boosting his familiar.
How about the opposite of your idea? Is there a common thread amongst those who don't find the Tiers useful that they tend to make sufficient changes to a character to move it up or down a Tier, thus making the Tier system a realatively poor predictor of how their characters turn out in practice?
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2013-01-24, 08:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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2013-01-24, 08:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
Then what are you posting in this thread for?
Your every post has been asserting the negative qualities of the tier system. You seem determined to convince everyone that it is bad, wrong, and ruins the game. Else why are you even here? Why did you even click on the link?
There are many threads here I don't care for in the slightest. That I think are a bad idea to even attempt to do. I don't go into them and tell the people who are attempting them that they're wrong for even trying.
And yet that is what you have done. You have gone into the thread for a project you are already familiar with and already know you do not like. You have entered this thread, and posted assertion after assertion of the negative effects of the project.
What purpose did you have?
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2013-01-24, 08:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Tier System for Classes (Rescued from MinMax)
Originally Posted by Togo