Retiering the Classes: Spirit Shaman, Spontaneous Druid, Urban Druid, and WS Ranger

[eggynack]

The thread we've all (meaning me) been waiting for. What happens when you take the awesome tier one druid, in all of its spellcasting and class feature based might, and take a pile of stuff away? What happens when you consider wild shape in isolation from spells, or spells absent wild shape (or the animal companion)? What if you gave them spontaneous casting and kept everything else the same? How about seemingly keeping the major things around, but changing them drastically enough that they lose a lot of what made them powerful? The druid, up high on the tier one mountain, cares little for the analysis of these features because the overall setup is so good, but these lesser classes allow for that sort of study, and thus grant us insight into how these abilities truly operate.

Spirit Shaman (CD, 14): This class loses everything except for the essential notion of prepared casting off of this huge list, and even that has been modified into this strange form which heavily limits the number of different spells of each spell level you can bring to bear on a daily basis. The spirit shaman has always been one of the great questions of tier system classic, because the definitions and constructs at work there strangely implied that the class is either tier one or tier three, with no in-between. It is one of my hopes for this retiering project that this issue will leave this thread a resolved one.

Spontaneous Druid (UA): Ditch the prepared nature of the casting and keep everything else the same, and you have the spontaneous druid. This one, in a sense, asks the reverse of the spirit shaman question, because where that class kept the prepared casting and lost everything else, this class loses the prepared casting and keeps everything else. How much can those class features compensate for the loss of versatility? That is the core question at hand here.

Urban Druid (DC, 57): The urban druid keeps everything, the prepared casting, the form changing, the companion, the spontaneous conversion, but it makes those things worse. A lot worse. The spell, form, and companion lists are all much shorter and weaker, and where you once converted to the highly potent and versatile SNA line, now you get repair spells. The comparisons to the druid are inevitable and obvious, but oddly enough, this class may get the least utility out of these four from those comparisons.

Wild Shape Ranger (UA): While arguably, this class is less a play on the druid than a play on the ranger, I think this class gains much from the druid comparison. Wild shape, even in this weakened form with limited spell support, is your primary utility in this class. The feature is clearly not entirely in isolation, but it's still largely isolated, asking us to question what this form changing utility is truly worth at the end of the day.

What are the tiers?

The simple answer here is that tier one is the best, the home of things on the approximate problem solving scale of wizards, and tier six is the worst, land of commoners. And problem solving capacity is what's being measured here. Considering the massive range of challenges a character is liable to be presented with across the levels, how much and how often does that character's class contribute to the defeat of those challenges? This value should be considered as a rough averaging across all levels, the center of the level range somewhat more than really low and really high level characters, and across all optimization levels (considering DM restrictiveness as a plausible downward acting factor on how optimized a character is), prioritizing moderate optimization somewhat more than low or high.

A big issue with the original tier system is that, if anything, it was too specific, generating inflexible definitions for allowance into a tier which did not cover the broad spectrum of ways a class can operate. When an increase in versatility would seem to represent a decrease in tier, because tier two is supposed to be low versatility, it's obvious that we've become mired in something that'd be pointless to anyone trying to glean information from the tier system. Thus, I will be uncharacteristically word light here. The original tier system's tier descriptions are still good guidelines here, but they shouldn't be assumed to be the end all and be all for how classes get ranked.

Consistent throughout these tiers is the notion of problems and the solving thereof. For the purposes of this tier system, the problem space can be said to be inclusive of combat, social interaction, and exploration, with the heaviest emphasis placed on combat. A problem could theoretically fall outside of that space, but things inside that space are definitely problems. Another way to view the idea of problem solving is through the lens of the niche ranking system. A niche filled tends to imply the capacity to solve a type of problem, whether it's a status condition in the case of healing, or an enemy that just has too many hit points in the case of melee combat. It's not a perfect measure, both because some niches have a lot of overlap in the kinds of problems they can solve and because, again, the niches aren't necessarily all inclusive, but they can act as a good tool for class evaluation.

Tier one: Incredibly good at solving nearly all problems. This is the realm of clerics, druids, and wizards, classes that open up with strong combat spells backed up by utility, and then get massively stronger from there. If you're not keeping up with that core trio of tier one casters, then you probably don't belong here.

Tier two: We're just a step below tier one here, in the land of classes around the sorcerer level of power. Generally speaking, this means relaxing one of the two tier one assumptions, either getting us to very good at solving nearly all problems, or incredibly good at solving most problems. But, as will continue to be the case as these tiers go on, there aren't necessarily these two simple categories for this tier. You gotta lose something compared to the tier one casters, but what you lose doesn't have to be in some really specific proportions.

Tier three: Again, we gotta sacrifice something compared to tier two, here taking us to around the level of a swordsage. The usual outcome is that you are very good at solving a couple of problems and competent at solving a few more. Of course, there are other possibilities, for example that you might instead be competent at solving nearly all problems.

Tier four: Here we're in ranger/barbarian territory (though the ranger should be considered largely absent of ACF's and stuff to hit this tier, as will be talked about later). Starting from that standard tier three position, the usual sweet spots here are very good at solving a few problems, or alright at solving many problems.

Tier five: We're heading close to the dregs here. Tier five is the tier of monks, classes that are as bad as you can be without being an aristocrat or a commoner. Classes here are sometimes very good at solving nearly no problems, or alright at solving a few, or some other function thereof. It's weak, is the point.

Tier six: And here we have commoner tier. Or, the bottom is commoner. The top is approximately aristocrat. You don't necessarily have nothing in this tier, but you have close enough to it.

The Threads

Tier System Home Base


The Fixed List Casters: Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, and Warmage


The Obvious Tier One Classes: Archivist, Artificer, Cleric, Druid, Sha'ir, and Wizard


The Mundane Beat Sticks (part one): Barbarian, Fighter, Samurai (CW), and Samurai (OA)


The Roguelikes: Ninja, Rogue, and Scout


The Pseudo-Druids: Spirit Shaman, Spontaneous Druid, Urban Druid, and Wild Shape Ranger


The Jacks of All Trades: Bard, Factotum, Jester, and Savant


The Tome of Battlers: Crusader, Swordsage, and Warblade


The NPCs: Adept, Aristocrat, Commoner, Expert, Magewright, and Warrior


The Vaguely Supernatural Melee Folk: Battle Dancer, Monk, Mountebank, and Soulknife


The Miscellaneous Full Casters: Death Master, Shaman, Shugenja, Sorcerer, and Wu Jen


The Wacky Magicists: Binder, Dragonfire Adept, Shadowcaster, Truenamer, and Warlock

The Rankings

Spirit Shaman: Tier two

Spontaneous Druid: Tier one

Urban Druid: Tier two

Wild Shape Ranger: Tier three

And here's a link to the spreadsheet.

[Troacctid]

Spontaneous Druid > Urban Druid > Spirit Shaman > >>> Wild Shape Ranger.

Spontaneous Druid is better than every T2 class, so I believe you could very reasonably put it in T1 depending on where you draw the line. Put me down as 1.5 1 for it.

Urban Druid has a relatively crappy spell list and essentially loses spontaneous casting. But it still has some good spells at each level, and good skills, and animal companion and wild shape are still great. It is significantly worse than Spontaneous Druid, though. I would much rather have spontaneous casting off a powerful list than prepared casting off a weak list. I mean, sanctified spells help, I guess, but still. Urban Druid is enough of a downgrade for Tier 2 IMO. EDIT: I've changed my mind—putting it in T1 for the same reason as death master.

Spirit Shaman is on par with T2 classes. It gets the good spell progression, yes, but it has so few spells known—even fewer than a Sorcerer, if I'm remembering correctly? While it can change its loadout from day to day, in practice I don't think the class feels any more versatile than a Sorcerer or Favored Soul, aside from the faster progression. It's just better in downtime. Tier 2.

Wild Shape Ranger is overrated. I think it only makes T3 with form-adding shenanigans. Obviously it is an upgrade over the basic Ranger, and it scales better with optimization, but I think it will still be T4 most of the time. I'll say 3.75 as a compromise.

[remetagross]

Beware, for the Spontaneous Druid you wrote " this class loses the prepared casting and loses everything else." instead of " this class loses the prepared casting and retains everything else."

[eggynack]

Spirit Shaman: 2. The overall situation here means losing a whole hell of a lot of capability compared to a druid. You still have long-term power building tools, but that was never the core of the druid's power, really. A good example of this is flight. The druid list allows for some flight, but you're not getting anything close to the overland flight but better that was possible through wild shape. The same goes for other movement modes. The lack of buff targets through wild shape, the animal companion, and spontaneous summoning hurts some of your spells a lot, and enhance wild shape is a classic that's now obviously missing. Moreover, the spell retrieval system makes some spells a good deal worse by its very nature. For example a druid that recently gained access to third level spells can plausibly allocate some of those spells to long term buffs, like heart of water, because they still have space for active spells of that level, and situational spells, like wind wall, for both that reason and the fact that those spells can be spontaneously converted. A spirit shaman has only one third level spell retrieved until 8th, and only two until 11th. A druid essentially opens with two spells, and gets a third right after, plus the capacity to turn all those spells into dire wolves as needed. Huge difference.

And that's not even touching on more baseline and obvious things. These features, the animal companion, wild shape, and spontaneous conversion, are good, in and of themselves, not even considering how they augment casting. The overall impact is a really big downgrade to the druid, on multiple axes, enough to represent a tier reduction in my opinion. I think you're about as good as any tier two class, and worse than any tier one class.

Spontaneous Druid: 2. This one is kinda close. It could plausibly swing closer to one. But prepared casting has a lot of uses, especially when you can pull from the entire list. You definitely lose less utility here than a wizard compared to a sorcerer, because you have fewer off-time spells, but utility is absolutely being lost, and while you're likely better than a spirit shaman, you're still worse than just about any tier one. This might just be the line between the tiers. But I'll open with it here.

Urban Druid: 2. This list gets some real gems on it, but it's seriously limited, and the loss of a lot of the power in your other class features is huge. The urban druid is a big downgrade on the core druid, and a humongous downgrade on the non-core druid. We're doing a good amount worse than tier one classes here.

Wild Shape Ranger: 3. Without any optimization, this is at least tier four, maybe high four or low three. With optimization, so much opens up to you. Dragon wild shape is the clear amazing standout, exalted is great, and aberration is alright, but a lot worse than on a druid without some extra optimization of the ability (assume supernatural ability is way more of a thing here). Proportional might even open up as a meaningful option when you're necessarily limited to small and medium otherwise. I think that the average of these situations, the solidly powerful low end that opens up a bunch of interesting combat stuff along with powerful movement modes, and the very powerful high end with spontaneous earthquakes and such, gets this to tier three.

[Dondasch]

All right, Spirit Shaman time. Of the classes here, it's the only one I'm really familiar with, so I'll limit myself to it.

So, first thing to look at is the casting. You're casting off the Druid list, using a mix of prepared/spontaneous mechanics. You also have two casting stats: Cha for saves, Wis for everything else. Now, the Druid list is a pretty solid list with a lot of splatbook support, but you do lose one of the draws of Druid casting: the ability to trade spells for bears on a whim. You also have a paltry number of spells known/day, never going above 3/level. Another loss is the various wild shape/animal companion related spells, which are useless to you. That said, you're effectively a prepared caster using a list that's a blend of Cleric and Sor/Wiz-- you still have quite a few good options.
Next, class features. You lack wild shape and animal companion, two major components of Druid's power. In return, you gain a smattering of stuff related to spirits (incorporeal undead, elementals, fey, and some irrelevant things). Chastise Spirits is pretty good-- it's a blast that has respectable damage, uses, and save, as well as ignoring incorporeal miss chance. It's situational, but being able to nuke shadows and such from level 2 on is really handy. Blessing of the Spirits, and its upgrade, Warding of the Spirits are really good, giving you pretty much permanent immunity to mind control and summoned beatsticks. Spirit Form lets you go incorporeal for 1 minute, which is useful both for defensive purposes and mobility. Recall Spirit is a free Revivify 1/week, good for emergencies. The rest of it is either not that great or comes too late to really be useful.
Overall, while you do lose out on both the power and on-the-spot versatility of wild shape and spontaneous summoning (though you can spend a feat for that one), you still have most of the power of the Druid spell list, and some useful class features of your own. The losses are enough to knock the Spirit Shaman down, but it still has a great deal of power and versatility on its side.

Spirit Shaman: Tier 2

[StreamOfTheSky]

Spirit Shaman: High tier 2. I keep meaning to play one b/c it's one of the few classes i haven't, but its anemic spells "known" on a given day (caps at 3 for each spell level, I think) is just too off-putting. The fact that it's halfway between prepared and spontaneous alone puts it into high tier 2, but I'd play a Sorc over this class any day...

Urban Druid: I'm going to call this tier 2 as well. May be prepared casting, but...gosh darn it, the spell list does actually matter a lot, and this class's is so nerfed it doesn't feel right putting it with the other prepared casters.

Spontaneous Druid: Low tier 2. Besides their casting, which is off a worse list than Sorc/Wiz or Cleric, a druid's strengths are being a big stupid fighter, having a big stupid fighter as a friend, and summoning in big stupid fighters. In other words...all that really matters is the casting. You're now a Sorcerer with a worse spell list and not nearly as much splat love for expanding your spells known or getting broken spells unique to your class.

Wild Shape Ranger: Without multiclassing (what a silly constraint for a 3E non-caster (ok, barely a caster) to have), this is low tier 4, and I'm not sure if it's actually any better than vanilla ranger. You'll have some more scouting/utility, but medium animal forms will not be competitive with manufactured arms, especially w/o druid casting to buff those natural attacks. If this tier system exists in reality, the only "Wild Shape Rangers" that exist are level 5 or lower characters. Everyone else is a "Wild Shape Ranger / Master of Many Forms," and are solidly into tier 3 territory. They can take very strong combat forms and eventually gain a whole library of qualities and immunities. WS Ranger / MoMF is one of my personal all time favorite builds. Closest you can get to a pure shapechanging badass w/o any other baggage. (The less-known WS Monk / MoMF is almost as good)

[eggynack]

If we're talking a higher optimization environment here, then, as I noted, there are some really strong things you can do with wild shape that don't require a bunch of levels in a prestige class. Dragon wild shape likely the first among them. The size thing is obviously not an issue, and a lot of those dragons bring their own wacky utility to the table. Yes, the forms are super useful as a base for spell casting, but they have a bunch of intrinsic value. I think that any analysis of the wild shape ranger that could be using master of many forms would be using dragon wild shape first, and I think dragon ranger is definitely tier three.

Edit: I'm think that spontaneous druids do all that piles of fighters thing too. And, y'know, whatever other crazy stuff you want to do through wild shape, the companion, and SNA.

[Efrate]

Spirit Shaman: Tier 2. The druid list is really solid, and if you lose a lot of the buff specifics to animal companions and the like, its not as important, your core is still reasonable. You are not a level behind on casting like most spontaneous casters, this is good. You have average BaB, average HD, average skills from a decent if not spectacular list, good saves in the two most important saves. You don't get to dump everything but wisdom, and you are MAD. You need a bit of physical stats, at least Con, plus Wis and Cha. You have more spells per day casting, but less potential different spells known. The good news is, tomorrow you can have a whole new set of spells. The bad news is if you do not need a spell today, you cannot do anything with it. You lose your free BSF replacement, and your BSF upgrade with wildshape. You trade versatility in spells known for spell power in casts per day, something I am not a huge fan of, but you can get stuff to replace that. Free mind blank for you and your party if they stay close as of level 4/7 is amazing. Debuffing spirits is great, as is just having a nuke for enemies that can be hard to deal with. I think its better than beguiler since fewer things can just ignore most of your abilities, you lose in skills but gain in spells, and spells > skills. You have solutions for most problems with a bit of prep, and nothing just shuts you down short of AMF. Its no sorcerer, nor druid, but it does have a lot going for it.

Spontaneous Druid: Tier 2 I really do not like the class. But they get all the druid stuff, just casting a level behind as sorcerer with SNA on the correct spell levels right? I'd say low tier 2. Druid list is good but I think I might be hard pressed to find a limited amount of spells on it that I really liked. Druid list is the weakest list of the 3 core lists, but you still get animal companion, and wildshape. Its just if you take your normal buffs for those, you have no other spells, which severely limits you. You have a way to recover, and being a bear with a bear, or better yet being a bear riding a bigger bear, who then summons bears, is still pretty nice. As great as wild shape is, the spell list limit hurts you more than most other spontaneous casters. But enough bears I am pretty sure solves a lot of problems. I think this requires a LOT more planning, but I haven't played one.

Urban Druid: Tier 2: You got spells back compared to spontaneous? But you got a much worse wild shape, and bears solve a lot of problems that spiders don't. Being mindless is more of a liability for your summons...maybe? I dunno, gentlemen prefer bears. No SNA unless you prep it is kind of bad, but hey spider and bears might be the next superhero duo. The rest of your druid abilities are slightly worse or almost as useless, but the wild shape nerf hurts less than the spell list nerf I think. Animal growth doesn't effect vermin so that is an issue, but you still have all the spells so I think it comes in just ahead of spontaneous druid, for full list access. Still, bears > spiders.

Wild Shape Ranger: Tier 4 You lose most the great wildshape forms, you lose your no prereq combat style feats which introduces MAD, your do not have the buffs to make yourself into a true monster since your spell list works best with your combat styles, not with baby bear. Your forms seem more or less worse than just a few ranks into your perception based skills, because they lack a lot of the combat prowess or backup a druid has. And a wolf riding a wolf is much less cool than a bear riding a bear. Judging as Wild Shape Ranger 20 its not that good. You can scout a bit as a small something maybe, then be an even more ineffective combatant than your normal ranger buddy who at least has spell support for his combat styles (mostly archery). I think you can eke out enough to not slip into tier 5 with fighter, you still have spells, but I'd put you very low tier 4. I think the situations where you go for dragon wild shape and other goodies and gets you into t3 are significantly less than the situation where you are just a baby bear or a wolf and start sucking at most everything. The floor is in the sublevel of a basement somewhere, and thats a lot of cieling that needs to be made up to get to ground level.

Edit: HTML mixup

[StreamOfTheSky]

Dragon Wildshape isn't really that strong for when you get it (level 12), being capped at medium. Mostly useful for non-core dragons that get weird breath weapons that do something other than just damage, though core metallics have some options. Not sure what you mean by spellcasting, but I've never agreed w/ the notion that polymorphing into a creature gives you its spellcasting abilities, if that's what you mean. And medium dragons don't get much sorcerer progression anyway.

Now, Aberration Wild Shape, Frozen Wild Shape (ie, Cryohydra Wild Shape, though I guess you do need to unlock huge size forms), and Exalted Wild Shape (blink dog)...those are tasty and could be major for a WS Ranger w/o MoMF. What an odd game that bans MoMF but allows those feats, though.

[eggynack]

Dragon Wildshape isn't really that strong for when you get it (level 12), being capped at medium. Mostly useful for non-core dragons that get weird breath weapons that do something other than just damage, though core metallics have some options. Not sure what you mean by spellcasting, but I've never agreed w/ the notion that polymorphing into a creature gives you its spellcasting abilities, if that's what you mean. And medium dragons don't get much sorcerer progression anyway.

The level requirement is problematic. However, you can do a lot that isn't breath weapons. I have a whole list in my handbook. It's a set of creatures that offers everything from small earthquakes to freedom of movement to useful vision modes (including true seeing) to high quality stealth, and a pile of other things. What I meant by spells was that druids get a bunch of utility out of dragon forms by having spells natively and using them in these kinda defensively oriented forms. Rangers get more utility out of just getting these abilities, rather than by using these abilities to construct a mobile spell slinging platform. You definitely don't get spells from dragon wild shape.

Now, Aberration Wild Shape, Frozen Wild Shape (ie, Cryohydra Wild Shape, though I guess you do need to unlock huge size forms), and Exalted Wild Shape (blink dog)...those are tasty and could be major for a WS Ranger w/o MoMF.

Not precisely sure what you're doing with aberration wild shape. I've never really thought about what it does absent enhance wild shape and/or bigger forms. There could be something there though. Assume supernatural obviously changes this particular game. Frozen has the issue you've already cited. Not precisely sure what the efficient way around that is. Exalted is indeed great.

What an odd game that bans MoMF but allows those feats, though.

It's not about how allowed things are. Prestige class consideration in a base class tier system is always kinda wonky. At this point, we're presumably only investing half of these levels in ranger. To what extent is this truly a ranger? Or a wild shape ranger, I suppose. It's a tricky issue.

[StreamOfTheSky]

It's not about how allowed things are. Prestige class consideration in a base class tier system is always kinda wonky. At this point, we're presumably only investing half of these levels in ranger. To what extent is this truly a ranger? Or a wild shape ranger, I suppose. It's a tricky issue.

It's still basically an extension of the WS Ranger's main class feature. Literally everyone who goes into WS Ranger takes it unless they can't for some reason. It's folly to ask about how strong WS Ranger is while ignoring its existence. It's just so tied to the class, you can't just look at the base class in a vacuum. Scout without Swift Hunter (and thus at least a 1 level Ranger dip) is a similar case. It's a game-changer, and so critical as to be mandatory.
Another example might be specialist wizards and the master specialist PrC...if it's available there's no reason to not go into it. Though w/ wizards, there's so many broken PrC options they probably won't be a master specialist for many levels, either.

[Troacctid]

I'm actually changing my vote on Spontaneous Druid to a 1. I think spontaneous casting is criminally underrated. In this case, you actually have a lot of effective spells known off a very powerful list, you don't have a gimped progression like T2 spontaneous casters typically do, you have savagely good class features, and overall you're actually pretty close to the full power of a normal Druid. Yes, obviously you're still worse, but there is a lot of room to be worse than the #1 most powerful class in the game while still being top-tier, and I don't think you're as worse as a lot of people assume.

[eggynack]

It's still basically an extension of the WS Ranger's main class feature. Literally everyone who goes into WS Ranger takes it unless they can't for some reason. It's folly to ask about how strong WS Ranger is while ignoring its existence. It's just so tied to the class, you can't just look at the base class in a vacuum. Scout without Swift Hunter (and thus at least a 1 level Ranger dip) is a similar case. It's a game-changer, and so critical as to be mandatory.

I don't disagree that it's probably incredibly common. Still, I think there's value in just looking at the class for what it is. Later, if we want, we can look at MoMF, in some kinda revision of the PrC system, especially cause this is one of those cases where the prestige class is the primary source of power. It'll get a two or three or whatever. For now, I think a class whose primary thing is just small and medium animals, with some weird modifications premised on not-PrC things, is worth looking at. Maybe it'll get a three, confirming what the original tier system said, or maybe it'll get a four, like it looks like it's angling for now, and render the notion of separate consideration for this ACF a bit pointless. Either way, I think we'll get some cool information.

[eggynack]

I'm actually changing my vote on Spontaneous Druid to a 1. I think spontaneous casting is criminally underrated. In this case, you actually have a lot of effective spells known off a very powerful list, you don't have a gimped progression like T2 spontaneous casters typically do, you have savagely good class features, and overall you're actually pretty close to the full power of a normal Druid. Yes, obviously you're still worse, but there is a lot of room to be worse than the #1 most powerful class in the game while still being top-tier, and I don't think you're as worse as a lot of people assume.

It's an interesting position, certainly. In core, I have the feeling that spontaneous druids are really really similar to normal druids. The core druid list has a number of spell levels where you just want to be laying down the same spell over and over again, fewer options with significant out of combat impact than the wizard or cleric (especially when you consider that something like control winds, which does have out-of-combat impact, is something the spontaneous druid would take anyway), and fewer long duration buffs that you'd want to trade out active spells for later, and which you're using once a day. The spells are there, certainly. Scrying, spellstaff, healing, stone shape/wall of stone, and a number of others, along with stuff like greater magic fang for that buff role. It's different, and the spontaneous druid strikes me as somewhat worse (especially because spontaneous conversion lets them have access to the repeated casting of something broadly efficient mechanic that tends to give spontaneity an advantage), but it's not that much worse.

The non-core situation is worse. Not crazy worse, maybe not worse enough to drop the class a tier, but possibly worse enough to do that. It's an environment with more of those out of combat effects, especially in the area of minionmancy, an environment where some spell levels (third especially) can become near entirely devoted to buff routines later on, a plan the spontaneous druid can't make use of nearly as well, and an environment where sanctified and corrupt spells are a thing, one more relevant to druids than to most prepared casters (why would the wizard or cleric care about animate with the spirit?). I might be applying too high a standard of optimization here, thinking of all these cool and sometimes obscure things a druid can do that a spontaneous druid cannot, failing to recognize that a spontaneous druid can still know enhance wild shape, blizzard, and fey ring, and kick a ton of ass in that level range among others. Even out of core, it strikes me as a list more amenable to spontaneous casting than the wizard/sorcerer list, especially when you consider all that the druid's class features bring to the table.

One makes sense, is what I'm generally getting at. I don't think I'm there yet though. The spontaneous druid and spirit shaman alike strike me as weirdly hanging out on the edge between one and two. I feel like I might swap to 1.5 at some point, but one is tricky when I don't think they win against tier one classes. Two is admittedly tricky as well. I don't know if the class loses to any tier two classes. I feel sometimes, especially now that we have two completely separate 4.5's, like we're going to weirdly wind up with like eleven tiers, six normal and five as the in-between spaces which demarcate where the line is between one tier and another. It's something like what I was getting at awhile back with the fighter, noting that classes which fall near the middle can represent the line. But we're at this strange space right now where the relevant classes might fall smack dab perfect on the relevant lines.

[Troacctid]

When you're that close to a core-only Druid in power level, you should be just a straight Tier 1, since the core-only Druid is easily Tier 1 even in a non-core game.

Spontaneous Cleric is the one that's more on the line IMO.

[Dondasch]

One makes sense, is what I'm generally getting at. I don't think I'm there yet though. The spontaneous druid and spirit shaman alike strike me as weirdly hanging out on the edge between one and two. I feel like I might swap to 1.5 at some point, but one is tricky when I don't think they win against tier one classes. Two is admittedly tricky as well. I don't know if the class loses to any tier two classes.

On spontaneous Druid:
Well, if a core-only spontaneous Druid is T1 (Incredibly good at solving nearly all problems), adding more material doesn't decrease their problem-solving ability. So if they're T1 in core, then they are T1 overall.
I think comparing these classes to Druid might actually be unfair to them. It's hard to look good when compared to all the things a Druid can do.

On the edge:
The main reason I think Spirit Shaman drops to tier 2 is that the Druid spell list requires more knowledge to use well. For the Cleric and Sor/Wiz lists, it's fairly easy to point out incredibly good spells, but the Druid list doesn't have many of those. Instead, it has a wide variety of solidly useful spells for a multitude of problems. Druids have SNA and wild shape to bail them out if they don't have that knowledge, but the Spirit Shaman is more dependent on optimization. And, since we're considering a range of optimizations, the lower end drags it down a bit.
That might also be why it was hard to tier under JaronK's system. People were looking for ways it could snap campaigns over its knee, instead of at its ability to have a solution for nearly anything a GM can throw at you.

[eggynack]

When you're that close to a core-only Druid in power level, you should be just a straight Tier 1, since the core-only Druid is easily Tier 1 even in a non-core game.

Might be the case. It's kinda like the death master argument that was happening/will happen, except here things seem generally superior in terms of baseline power and utility gained from book quantity expansion. Yeah, I think I'ma go with that, on the basis that the non-core spontaneous druid is quite possibly superior to the core normal druid.

Edit: This and the current wild shape ranger rating bring up an interesting problem, which is that the basis for moving ACFs out of the main class is that the ACF shifts the class' tier either up or down. In these cases, I added the classes with the expectation that the druid would go down a tier and the ranger would go up a tier. But, while it's nowhere near definite, it's very possible at this moment that the classes will remain in their base tiers. My thinking is that while this ostensibly goes against the thread procedure by keeping things out of a given class that should technically be considered within the context of the class, it's worthwhile to have this information as an object unto itself. It's useful to sometimes say, "This here doesn't change anything, in spite of the fact that you might have expected it to change something." Generally speaking, I tend to think power reducing ACFs shouldn't be considered within the class anyway, at least not with a bunch of focus, because ACFs are a higher op construct here and it'd be used in a lower op context, in a sense, so spontaneous druid wouldn't be a factor either way, but power increasing ones still likely should be. It's entirely possible, then, that the tiering here will be a four, which would mean it should be included in the ranger, which could in turn plausibly, though not likely (ACFs obviously aren't an assumed feature of base classes like they are of these separate variant classes), push the ranger to tier three. That would probably necessitate a note of some kind. It'd be weird.

It's a kinda interesting unstated premise we've been working off of, separately, that the wild shape ranger isn't using ACFs besides wild shape ranger. I think that makes sense, and I don't know that we should stop doing that, but it's a strange thing. We're also not talking about, for example, SotAO. Maybe some of this stuff should enter the conversation, besides the obvious wild shape optimization stuff.

[Troacctid]

I would probably compare the Spirit Shaman to a Favored Soul, actually. Sure, you can change your spell loadout each day, but how many different loadouts are you realistically going to have? Favored Soul has two or three times as many spells known of each level as the Spirit Shaman has spells retrieved, so you can just have your top 3 loadouts all at once, all the time, and you don't need to retrieve metamagic versions separately.

Spirit Shaman is still better overall IMO because it doesn't have the delayed progression (which is a big drawback). But I think it's the closest comparison.

[Zancloufer]

So looking at these there are all pretty close in power, though being fairly Different.

1) Urban Druid: This one is fun. First it is much like the druid. With a nerfed companion, neutered wild shape, MUCH worse spell list, Cha based casting, and lost their ability to turn any spell into "Summon Bear Hoard". Also they have much worse proficiency: Only light armour and isn't allowed to wear armour that GRANTS MORE THAN 4 AC?! Okay now we are getting silly. I haven't looked too much into them though so I would give them a tentative tier 2 on the grounds of being a bad druid is still a decent class.

2) Spontaneous Druid: They actually get delayed a spell level (like Sorcerers and their ilk) and most likely eat that meta-magic nerf. Not to mention their number of spells known is terrible, capping at 3 until they know spells a good 3-4 spell levels higher. Also unlike Sorceres and Favoured Souls they cannot cast more spells per day than a regular druid. I suppose if you don't mind being a spell level behind and only knowing 1-3 of the most current spells they are, okay. Tier 2 as their class features are solid and they still have access to full Druid list, if they choose right ones.

3) Spirit Shaman: If they knew one more spell per level and didn't get literally the worst meta-magic mechanics possible I would say a solid tier 1. Their abilities range from generally useful to niche but powerful. Combined with the ability to change their spells known everyday they are almost a prepared caster. Tier 2.

4) Wild Shape Ranger: Okay you loose three feats but gain access to wild shape and +10ft movement speed. No Tiny/Huge/Plant forms at the higher levels, but access to Wild Shape opens up many feat options. Also I feel like the bonus feats where almost trap options in that they pen your build in (still need multiple OTHER feats to make them work) and it's not like either option was super good. Tier 3 as I feel that Wild Shape is much superior to three per-dertermined feats that merely help ease the feat tax on sup-par combat styles.

[Gnaeus]

I would probably compare the Spirit Shaman to a Favored Soul, actually. Sure, you can change your spell loadout each day, but how many different loadouts are you realistically going to have? Favored Soul has two or three times as many spells known of each level as the Spirit Shaman has spells retrieved, so you can just have your top 3 loadouts all at once, all the time, and you don't need to retrieve metamagic versions separately.

Spirit Shaman is still better overall IMO because it doesn't have the delayed progression (which is a big drawback). But I think it's the closest comparison.

I compared my Spirit Shaman with Favored Soul all the time. The comparison invariably went "I wish I was playing a Favored Soul instead of Spirit Shaman"

[Beheld]

True story, reading this thread on mobile is hard, because for some reason the mobile site shows old avatars, and everyone in this thread has the same cloak and dagger guy as their avatar.

[eggynack]

I would probably compare the Spirit Shaman to a Favored Soul, actually. Sure, you can change your spell loadout each day, but how many different loadouts are you realistically going to have? Favored Soul has two or three times as many spells known of each level as the Spirit Shaman has spells retrieved, so you can just have your top 3 loadouts all at once, all the time, and you don't need to retrieve metamagic versions separately.

Spirit Shaman is still better overall IMO because it doesn't have the delayed progression (which is a big drawback). But I think it's the closest comparison.

That the spirit shaman has some access to that long term power gain stuff is pretty nice, even if druids aren't as good at it as other tier ones. Might have to go back and look at that favored soul list at some point. The comparison does seem like a rather fair one though.

1) Urban Druid: This one is fun. First it is much like the druid. With a nerfed companion, neutered wild shape, MUCH worse spell list, Cha based casting, and lost their ability to turn any spell into "Summon Bear Hoard". Also they have much worse proficiency: Only light armour and isn't allowed to wear armour that GRANTS MORE THAN 4 AC?! Okay now we are getting silly. I haven't looked too much into them though so I would give them a tentative tier 2 on the grounds of being a bad druid is still a decent class.

The class isn't great, but you get one or more spells at each level that are sufficiently top notch that I think the sorcerer comparison isn't a bad one. The comparison to core druid minus class features might not be too bad either, actually. First and second are maybe the worst, with charm person at first and rope trick and maybe suggestion at second, with knock as support. Not that far back from a core druid, honestly, cause second level core druid spells are kinda meh, and you still get a riding dog. Third gets glibness, shrink item, speak with dead, stinking cloud, and tongues, which is a really good setup. Dispel, FoM, minor creation, and some divinations show up at fourth. Fifth has control winds, major creation, transmute rock to mud/mud to rock, and wall of stone, with control winds still the big standout on either list.

Sixth level spells have anti-life shell, greater dispel, find the path, spellstaff, and maybe flesh to stone. Seventh is perhaps disintegrate, heal, and true seeing. Then eighth is perhaps the best point of comparison, with polymorph any object better than just about anything at that level on just about any list. And, finally, 9th has shapechange, so it's fine. Add on the fact that you can toss on sanctified and corrupt spells by leaving the book, and you have what seems to me a really good setup.

The obvious downside is twofold, coming from the general lack of splatbook support, and the lack of those great class features. But the list seems good. Definitely good enough for a non-tentative tier two, in my opinion.

[Gnaeus]

Spontaneous Druid T2. Near the top of T2. Its got a T3 class, a T5 class, and a T2 class added together. Nothing bad there.

Urban Druid T2. Clearly worse than Druid, but a prepared full list caster.

WS Ranger T3 bottom. Solid combatant. Should be useful most all the time once WS really comes on line. Only real drawback is low level play. Needs some feat picks to really be good, but worst case it's a solid chassis with some spellcasting and great utility.

Spirit Shaman T3. I cannot say how much I hated playing this class. Unless you know EXACTLY what you are going to be fighting, you don't have enough spells retrieved to make your spell preparation actually useful, because you almost need to prepare general purpose spells to avoid being useless. Their metamagic use makes this WORSE. Also, Druid has a T1 list, but pretending that SS can really use it is a LIE. Druid list is full of solid combat buffs, but the bite of the Weretiger that turns the wild shaped Druid into a monster turns the SS into a chump. It's got some great long term buffs that SS doesn't want to retrieve because that ties up it's only high level spell for the day. It's got some good buffs that work on animals, now useless. And some amazing tricks like enhance WS that do nothing for SS. And a bunch of situational spells against creature types that the SS can't use because again you are locking in all your top level spells to crush any plants you meet, or protect from undead, or whatever, but against anything else you're gimped. I'd put it below Warmage. Maybe below healer with exalted spells. I'd rather have either one of those in my group. It's way easier to give a Warmage a little out of combat utility than it is to make SS good at combat and anything else. Beguiler and Dread Necro? Totally different weight class. This thing isn't even at the top of T3.

[Troacctid]

Also they have much worse proficiency: Only light armour and isn't allowed to wear armour that GRANTS MORE THAN 4 AC?! Okay now we are getting silly.

Actually, fun fact, the armor restrictions were left out of the Urban Druid's class description. So while there is a penalty for wearing prohibited armor, there aren't actually any armors that are prohibited to the class. You're not proficient with most armor, but other than that, you can wear what you like.

2) Spontaneous Druid: They actually get delayed a spell level (like Sorcerers and their ilk)

No, they do not. You are mistaken.

I compared my Spirit Shaman with Favored Soul all the time. The comparison invariably went "I wish I was playing a Favored Soul instead of Spirit Shaman"

Touché.

[Zancloufer]

Actually, fun fact, the armor restrictions were left out of the Urban Druid's class description. So while there is a penalty for wearing prohibited armor, there aren't actually any armors that are prohibited to the class. You're not proficient with most armor, but other than that, you can wear what you like.

Well, except that whole "If you wear a prohibited armour you can't druid for 24 hours" thing.

No, they do not. You are mistaken.

They gain 0 level 2 spells known at level 3. They Gain 0 level 3 known spells at level 5 etc.

I do admit I forgot about the free SNA they gain, but that will pretty much be the only spells you know at first. It is more notable as a cleric where you get both your domain spells, which you have some control over CHOOSING. Still having your spell list flexibility neutered does hurt a lot, especially as a Druid can simply prepare a different spell know in each of their spell slots and still have more flexibility and comparable staying power to their spontaneous cousins.

[Troacctid]

Well, except that whole "If you wear a prohibited armour you can't druid for 24 hours" thing.

Yes, but since the class does not actually prohibit any types of armor, it doesn't matter.

They gain 0 level 2 spells known at level 3. They Gain 0 level 3 known spells at level 5 etc.

Nope, they get SNA at every level and they get their spell slots right on time.

[Zancloufer]

Yes, but since the class does not actually prohibit any types of armor, it doesn't matter.

Umm, well:

They find armor to be distasteful and rude, and although they are proficient with padded, leather, and studded leather armor, they prefer to wear armor only when adventuring. The DM may allow urban druids to wear other forms of light armor that provide less than a +4 armor bonus as well. Urban druids are proficient with bucklers but no other shields. An urban druid who wears prohibited armor or carries a prohibited shield is unable to cast urban druid spells or use any of her supernatural class abilities while doing so and for 24 hours hereafter.

I suppose it doesn't say that medium/heavy armour or armour that grants more than +4 armour bonus is prohibited. Technically. Although it did just list what they are proficient and are allowed to wear and then goes and says anything they are prohibited from wearing shuts the entire class down if they wear any of it.

It's like 200% super shifty RAW interpretation, like Swordsages getting x6 skill points at level 1 or Iron Heart Surging the Sun out of existence with a race that has light blindness/sensitivity.

Nope, they get SNA at every level and they get their spell slots right on time.

Errr;

I do admit I forgot about the free SNA they gain, but that will pretty much be the only spells you know at first.

[Dondasch]

And the debate begins.

Spirit Shaman T3. I cannot say how much I hated playing this class. Unless you know EXACTLY what you are going to be fighting, you don't have enough spells retrieved to make your spell preparation actually useful, because you almost need to prepare general purpose spells to avoid being useless.

I'd like to point out that if simply preparing general purpose spells is enough to prevent you from being useless (and it is), you are therefore useful, and exact knowledge is just making you more useful.

Their metamagic use makes this WORSE.

Spirit Shaman's metamagic is effectively the same as a standard prepared caster's, albeit translated into the spell retrieval system.

Also, Druid has a T1 list, but pretending that SS can really use it is a LIE. Druid list is full of solid combat buffs, but the bite of the Weretiger that turns the wild shaped Druid into a monster turns the SS into a chump. It's got some great long term buffs that SS doesn't want to retrieve because that ties up it's only high level spell for the day. It's got some good buffs that work on animals, now useless. And some amazing tricks like enhance WS that do nothing for SS. And a bunch of situational spells against creature types that the SS can't use because again you are locking in all your top level spells to crush any plants you meet, or protect from undead, or whatever, but against anything else you're gimped.

Since I don't want a half dozen quotes for this:
If this list is "full of solid combat buffs", then surely at least some of them are still relevant to the Spirit Shaman? I admit I usually don't enter melee as a caster, so my knowledge here is limited.
For the great long term buffs, just prepare the good ones from lower levels, or dedicate your highest level spell to getting a great buff on 2-4 characters. You have enough lower level slots to pick up the slack.
You do lose the animal companion/wild shape buffs, but I've always found that the real power of those spells was rooted in the class features, not the spells. It's not a downfall of Spirit Shaman's casting; it's a lack of certain (overpowered) class features.
Situational spells are situational, yes, but they also tend to be lower level than more general spells with equal effects, leaving your higher level slots free. I find that situational spells are poor choices in general; Druids can prepare them safely because for them, those spells are also bears. If, however, you really like those situational spells, take the Spontaneous Summoning feat from the same book as the Spirit Shaman to effectively get an extra spell retrieved of each level, allowing you to chuck bears at problems too.

I'd put it below Warmage. Maybe below healer with exalted spells. I'd rather have either one of those in my group. It's way easier to give a Warmage a little out of combat utility than it is to make SS good at combat and anything else. Beguiler and Dread Necro? Totally different weight class. This thing isn't even at the top of T3.

The Spirit Shaman is definitely better than the Warmage and Healer, barring high-powered options (mainly Rainbow Servant 10). It requires more thinking and spell knowledge, but it starts with access to a variety of spells for solving different problem.
As for Beguiler and Dread Necromancer, I'd argue that it's more a question of where the floor is. The Beguiler and Dread Necromancer have effectively had the big choices made for you already, so they're hard to screw up. The Spirit Shaman is dependent on the choices you make, so it's easier to have a sucky Spirit Shaman than a sucky Beguiler (but the same is true of Wizard and Beguiler). The Druid list also lacks the plot-derailing abilities that Beguiler and Dread Necromancer lists can give you, but this tier list is generally ignoring game-breaking abilities to the best of my knowledge, because, well, the game is broken once they start getting used. What matters is that the list has strong answers to a variety of situations, and the Spirit Shaman can pick and choose from all of them with a day to prepare.


One final thing to remember is that Spirit Shaman, not having the gimped spontaneous progression, has a legitimate advantage in spells/day. You get 2-3 casts of your highest level spell, 4-5 of the second highest, and 5-6 of everything else, ignoring bonus spells from a high Wisdom.

[eggynack]

And the debate begins.

Well, thank Pelor for that. Was getting worried this thread would never get off the ground, after expecting it would be pretty high activity due to how controversial the spirit shaman and kinda the wild shape ranger are, and that urban druid is a relative unknown. I thought the spontaneous druid one or two question could get interesting too. But then it largely failed to materialize. Real flaw to the child thread method is that it leaves the voting quantity down to the fickle whims of the community.

Anyways, on combat buffs, my feelings are, first, that they're kinda a lost cause, and, second, that it probably doesn't matter that much. Losing the bite spells kinda sucks, as does losing animal growth, but the druid list has a buncha spells on it. There's usually something really sweet at each level that the spirit shaman doesn't lose value on.

[Fizban]

Without reading the thread:

Spirit Shaman: Tier 2. Their spells retrieved are so limited that even sorcerer spells known start to look good, but still enough to have one trick. A variable specialist that is definitively weaker than Druid and Cleric with it's own unique backup abilities in place of the usual.

Spontaneous Druid: Tier 1. Yeah, I'm gonna do it. They keep all their animal companion, wild shape, and spontaneous summon nature's ally (as a known spell in the text rather than a separate feature), and those are the abilities that cement the druid as un-screw-upable. A poorly chosen spell list, like the rest of a poorly built character, is still mostly overwritten by wild shaping and summoning your way out of it until you can fix some spells. In practical use a spontaneous druid who majorly screws up is still far and above a wizard who majorly screws up, and not dying when you majorly screw up is the real game. When decently built, a spontaneous druid still gets all the specialties they can milk out of those three features on top of however many they can milk out of their spells known, which is enough to overshadow any tier 2 without significant investment/optimization. Normal druid for high tier 1, spontaneous druid for low tier 1.

Urban Druid: abstain. It looks like a lot of fiddly stuff I don't care to properly investigate when there are already more lightweight versions of urban/vermin X.

Wild Shape Ranger: Tier 3. Partial casting with supernatural ability support is obviously not low end and remains obviously not as strong at actual full spellcasting.

Edit: huh, apparently spont druid for tier 1 isn't all that controversial, but then it doesn't come with the implied "above t2 wizard" that comes from taking mine collectively. Also didn't mention the spirit shaman's garbage split ability casting, which definitely drags them down to low 2, but with a changeable top level spell I don't think quite down to 3.