How Can You Make All The Class From Tier 6 To Tier 2 Useful?

[Bartmanhomer]

Okay, with that team comp, and your cartoonish skew of how you view tiers, then you and the cleric should be completely demolishing every challenge and battle in literally seconds while the other 3 are busy playing poker.

Is that, in fact, what happens?

Well, we did have some trouble with the wolves and the wolves retreated. So my team have a lucky win on that note. The Cleric and I didn't actually dominated in battle.

[Buufreak]

Well, we did have some trouble with the wolves and the wolves retreated. So my team have a lucky win on that note. The Cleric and I didn't actually dominated in battle.

I'll take that as a no. So then my next question: if you are actively playing as a tier 1 class, and you aren't doing what some random people on the internet say a tier 1 class consistently does, why are you under the delusion that they do as prescribed? You have yourself experienced personal concrete evidence to the contrary, so as psyren asked, why is this thread even here?

[NigelWalmsley]

This seems like a lot of unnecessary hostility for someone who's trying to understand how to fix problems. If you don't think the exercise is valuable, don't participate in it. Running these super aggressive interrogation tactics just makes it seem like you're personally threatened by the idea imbalance might exist, which is a weird look.

[Buufreak]

Hi Nigel, you seem new here, let me explain a bit. Bart here comes up with asinine postulates almost daily, and sometimes has trouble understanding meaning. What you are seeing isn't an attempt at aggression or hostility, but instead being incredibly straight forward and thorough, because otherwise the point gets entirely missed.

[Bartmanhomer]

I'll take that as a no. So then my next question: if you are actively playing as a tier 1 class, and you aren't doing what some random people on the internet say a tier 1 class consistently does, why are you under the delusion that they do as prescribed? You have yourself experienced personal concrete evidence to the contrary, so as siren asked, why is this thread even here?

I just wanted The other tiers to be more useful just like Tier 1. That was basically it. Also I never even said how to play a tier 1 class. You completely misunderstand what I just said.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I just wanted The other tiers to be more useful just like Tier 1. That was basically it. Also I never even said how to play a tier 1 class. You completely misunderstand what I just said.

I'm not trying to come at you with any anger or remonstration here but that's just not a good goal to have.

If someone wants that kind of power and complexity they can already pick one of the six T1 classes or use optimization trickery to bring virtually any of the casters that get 9th level spells up to that same level.

Attempting to pull all of the other classes up to that level is actually taking away the option to play something simpler, nevermind something simple.

Even in your own game, you note that the problem that mixing high tier and low tier classes can cause hasn't cropped up. I'll take it a step further and say it probably won't. Not unless something in your group changes pretty significantly.

In american parlance we have an expression: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The idea is that you shouldn't waste time trying to address a problem that doesn't yet exist. I think it seriously applies here.

[Bartmanhomer]

I'm not trying to come at you with any anger or remonstration here but that's just not a good goal to have.

If someone wants that kind of power and complexity they can already pick one of the six T1 classes or use optimization trickery to bring virtually any of the casters that get 9th level spells up to that same level.

Attempting to pull all of the other classes up to that level is actually taking away the option to play something simpler, nevermind something simple.

Even in your own game, you note that the problem that mixing high tier and low tier classes can cause hasn't cropped up. I'll take it a step further and say it probably won't. Not unless something in your group changes pretty significantly.

In American parlance, we have an expression: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The idea is that you shouldn't waste time trying to address a problem that doesn't yet exist. I think it seriously applies here.

Ok, thank you for your input. I wasn't trying to make anybody angry about it. I just wanted all tiers to be equal. But I guess that ship has sailed already.

[NigelWalmsley]

Hi Nigel, you seem new here, let me explain a bit. Bart here comes up with asinine postulates almost daily, and sometimes has trouble understanding meaning. What you are seeing isn't an attempt at aggression or hostility, but instead being incredibly straight forward and thorough, because otherwise the point gets entirely missed.

But "how do I change the balance of classes" isn't an "asinine postulate". It's an entirely reasonable question. It doesn't have to be ruining his game for the exercise to be worthwhile. Understanding the flaws of the classes and how to fix those flaws deepens our understanding of the game.

[Melcar]

Play low levels?

An option to balance things somewhat is tiered gestalt.

For example,

Tier 1s can't gestalt
Tier 2 can gestalt with Tier 5 or higher
Tier 3 can gestalt with Tier 4 or higher
Tier 6 should really be NPCs only or I guess deliberately low power campaigns as they don't have any interesting abilities

Also, use these tiers

This helps with the combat part, but out of combat usefulness past low levels is pretty hard to balance as prepared full casters are way better at that

Why not have it be:
Tier 1s can't gestalt
Tier 2 can gestalt with Tier 5 or higher or can tristalt with tier 6
Tier 3 can gestalt with Tier 4 or higher or can Tristalt with tier 5 and higher.
Tier 4 can gestalt with Tier 3 or higher or can Tristalt with tier 4 and higher or can quatrostalt with tier 5 and higher
Tier 5 can gestalt with Tier 2 or higher or can Tristalt with tier 3 and higher or can quatrostalt with tier 4 and higher
Tier 6 can tristalt with tier 2 and higher or can quatrostalt with tier 3 and higher or can quitstalt with tier 4 or higher or sextstalt with tier 5 or more

Wouldn't that be more fun? It would add something extra for sure, and people don't have become very high level before having fun!

[Bartmanhomer]

Why not have it be:
Tier 1s can't gestalt
Tier 2 can gestalt with Tier 5 or higher or can tristalt with tier 6
Tier 3 can gestalt with Tier 4 or higher or can Tristalt with tier 5 and higher.
Tier 4 can gestalt with Tier 3 or higher or can Tristalt with tier 4 and higher or can quatrostalt with tier 5 and higher
Tier 5 can gestalt with Tier 2 or higher or can Tristalt with tier 3 and higher or can quatrostalt with tier 4 and higher
Tier 6 can tristalt with tier 2 and higher or can quatrostalt with tier 3 and higher or can quitstalt with tier 4 or higher or sextstalt with tier 5 or more

Wouldn't that be more fun? It would add something extra for sure, and people don't have become very high level before having fun!

Why Tier 1 classes can't gestalt? Where did you hear that?

[Buddy76]

Ok, thank you for your input. I wasn't trying to make anybody angry about it. I just wanted all tiers to be equal. But I guess that ship has sailed already.

Bart, what people are saying is that's not a good idea, specially if you want all classes to operate at tier 1 levels of power and flexibility. Let's look at the definition of a tier one class from the most recent tier list (I think this definition was written by eggynack):

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.

Now, classes at this tier can present two problems (Some tier 2 classes can also run into both of these, by the way):

1- They can break the game, even if the player playing them is a good sport and not activelly trying to do so. Seriously, challenging a smart wizard player once their character is past ,say, level 14 or 15 can be really hard for the DM.

2- On the other hand, tier 1 classes are defined by having an absurd amount of good options for dealing with things and thus may require lots of bookdiving, bookeeping and forethought to be played to their fullest potential. There's an user here in this forum (forgot their handle) with a quote at their signature that says something like (and I'm paraphrasing here): "playing a wizard the way giantitp says it should be played requires a time and effort investment equivalent to a university minor". Not everyone wants to (or has time to) play at this level of complexity.

So if you're trying to make the other classes fit the tier 1 definition, you'll probably need to dump a bunch of spells or powers or whatever in the laps of players that may not want that kind of complexity or playstyle while also increasing the chance of someone accidentally breaking the game.

Tiers 2 and 3 have lots of powerful and useful classes (I don't know who said they were usuless or poorly designed) tier 4 classes are mostly perfectly playable and even powerful with the right tricks. Even tier 5's can work, though it might take some effort.

So the lesson is: higher tier doesn't mean better designed or more fun to play. If no one you play with has an issue with that and you try to make every class operate at tier 1 levels you might have to do a bunch of homebrew work that end up solving no problems while potentially creating a bunch of new ones.

Why not have it be:
Tier 1s can't gestalt
Tier 2 can gestalt with Tier 5 or higher or can tristalt with tier 6
Tier 3 can gestalt with Tier 4 or higher or can Tristalt with tier 5 and higher.
Tier 4 can gestalt with Tier 3 or higher or can Tristalt with tier 4 and higher or can quatrostalt with tier 5 and higher
Tier 5 can gestalt with Tier 2 or higher or can Tristalt with tier 3 and higher or can quatrostalt with tier 4 and higher
Tier 6 can tristalt with tier 2 and higher or can quatrostalt with tier 3 and higher or can quitstalt with tier 4 or higher or sextstalt with tier 5 or more

Wouldn't that be more fun? It would add something extra for sure, and people don't have become very high level before having fun!

That's not an official rule. Melcar and radthemad4 are proposing the gestalting of lower tier classes as a way of resolving power imbalances. If you're dead set on rebalancing the game, this might be a good solution.

[ShurikVch]

"Useful" is a broad term, though. Outside of Commoner (chicken-infested aside), pretty much any class can be built to be "useful."

From the "Flaws for Commoners", there is also Weresheep: it turns Commoner not just into the best tank in the game, but in a sense, into the only tank - since it generating no-save-no-immunity aggro while giving the Commoner DR/silver and Dex/Con/AC bump...

[Bartmanhomer]

Bart, what people are saying is that's not a good idea, specially if you want all classes to operate at tier 1 levels of power and flexibility. Let's look at the definition of a tier one class from the most recent tier list (I think this definition was written by eggynack):



Now, classes at this tier can present two problems (Some tier 2 classes can also run into both of these, by the way):

1- They can break the game, even if the player playing them is a good sport and not activelly trying to do so. Seriously, challenging a smart wizard player once their character is past ,say, level 14 or 15 can be really hard for the DM.

2- On the other hand, tier 1 classes are defined by having an absurd amount of good options for dealing with things and thus may require lots of bookdiving, bookeeping and forethought to be played to their fullest potential. There's an user here in this forum (forgot their handle) with a quote at their signature that says something like (and I'm paraphrasing here): "playing a wizard the way giantitp says it should be played requires a time and effort investment equivalent to a university minor". Not everyone wants to (or has time to) play at this level of complexity.

So if you're trying to make the other classes fit the tier 1 definition, you'll probably need to dump a bunch of spells or powers or whatever in the laps of players that may not want that kind of complexity or playstyle while also increasing the chance of someone accidentally breaking the game.

I'm sorry. I didn't know that my idea was that bad. I just thought that all the other tiers should equal the same as Tier 1 would be a great idea. But now I know it isn't.

[NigelWalmsley]

Let's look at the definition of a tier one class from the most recent tier list (I think this definition was written by eggynack):

Actually, let's not. Because as I've said, that definition isn't especially useful if your goal is to balance the game, instead of to understand how the game is imbalanced. It basically amounts to "the character is not useless in any situation" (which is unambiguously good) and "the character is better than classes that aren't in T1" (which is no longer relevant). So it sounds to me like "T1" is exactly where you want characters to be.

1- They can break the game, even if the player playing them is a good sport and not activelly trying to do so. Seriously, challenging a smart wizard player once their character is past ,say, level 14 or 15 can be really hard for the DM.

The game-breaking powers of these classes are overstated, or the result of an extremely small subset of spells that no one is actually defending. Without access to Planar Binding and company, T1 casters are quite manageable, and no one here thinks unrestricted, RAW Planar Binding is a good idea.

2- On the other hand, tier 1 classes are defined by having an absurd amount of good options for dealing with things and thus may require lots of bookdiving, bookeeping and forethought to be played to their fullest potential.

This is what I was getting at when I said that trying to use the tiers as a guideline for balancing isn't helpful. Yes, the existing T1 classes behave that way. But you don't have to behave that way to be able to keep up with them.

[Buddy76]

Actually, let's not. Because as I've said, that definition isn't especially useful if your goal is to balance the game, instead of to understand how the game is imbalanced. It basically amounts to "the character is not useless in any situation" (which is unambiguously good) and "the character is better than classes that aren't in T1" (which is no longer relevant). So it sounds to me like "T1" is exactly where you want characters to be.



The game-breaking powers of these classes are overstated, or the result of an extremely small subset of spells that no one is actually defending. Without access to Planar Binding and company, T1 casters are quite manageable, and no one here thinks unrestricted, RAW Planar Binding is a good idea.



This is what I was getting at when I said that trying to use the tiers as a guideline for balancing isn't helpful. Yes, the existing T1 classes behave that way. But you don't have to behave that way to be able to keep up with them.

I'm not trying to balance the game. At this point I'm trying to understand what Bart wanted to acomplish when he named the thread " How Can You Make All The Class From Tier 6 To Tier 2 Useful?". I'm using this forum's latest definitions of tiers to try and make sense of it. If your point is "tiers are usueless when balacing the game" you can make that point to Bartman. If you want to change the definitions of tiers or abolish it completely you can make a thread for that. I was using tiers beacause that's the milieu he chose for his balancing efforts (I think).

[Gnaeus]

The game-breaking powers of these classes are overstated, or the result of an extremely small subset of spells that no one is actually defending. Without access to Planar Binding and company, T1 casters are quite manageable, and no one here thinks unrestricted, RAW Planar Binding is a good idea.
.

That’s not entirely true. Or it is, but with a definitional problem. Let’s start with the assumption that planar binding is nerfed. And that everything most of us think of as TO like wish loops is just off the table. No selling walls of salt. No adventuring by astral projection.

So, what is game breaking? Does making the party monk or swashbuckler or samurai look like a worthless exp sink count? Because the T1s can do that pretty trivially. Is Animate Dead gamebreaking? Summon Monster? Dominate? Is taking 5 turns to the fighters 1 gamebreaking? I hardly need planar binding for that.

Or how about narrative breaking.
What if DM say “the scouts have reported that the orc army is on the move. You have 2 weeks to do these side quests to generate enough goodwill to spark intervention from the dwarf king before they get through the mountains and devastate city-ville.”
And Druid answers “LOL. I’m gonna wait for them to get halfway in and then fly as a bird into the middle of their army about 900 feet up and then summon perpetual blizzards over their entire army until they starve, freeze, surrender or retreat.”

DM “the murderer must still be in this room”
Player: “sweet. Y’all search for clues if you want. I’m just gonna cast commune.”

There are lots of situations where tier 1-3 solutions are leagues above tier 3-6 solutions (and yes I put 3 in both. There are lower tier ways to access higher tier powers). Is that game breaking? I guess that depends on how open you are to sandbox solutions and how much you REALLY want the PCs to wander the dungeon you set up to find the mcguffin.

[NigelWalmsley]

I'm not trying to balance the game. At this point I'm trying to understand what Bart wanted to acomplish when he named the thread " How Can You Make All The Class From Tier 6 To Tier 2 Useful?".

That seemed pretty clear to me. He wanted to know how to make one collection of classes (the low tier ones) competitive with another (the high tier ones). That he used the tiers to classify them doesn't mean that's the tool he wants to use to accomplish the task.

So, what is game breaking? Does making the party monk or swashbuckler or samurai look like a worthless exp sink count?

Game breaking is stuff that causes the game to break, not stuff that makes one character more effective than another. Planar Binding allows you to have an arbitrarily large army. SLA Wish allows you to have as much power as you can describe in terms of a magic item. One class being better than another is a different problem. There are a lot of potential balance points where the game can work. You could have people be about as good as the Fighter. You could have people be about as good as the Warblade. You could have people be about as good as the Wizard. I happen to favor the last one, but I can understand people favoring one of the others (or a different one I didn't name). But none of those balance points are game breaking just because they happen to be above one or more of the others.

And Druid answers “LOL. I’m gonna wait for them to get halfway in and then fly as a bird into the middle of their army about 900 feet up and then summon perpetual blizzards over their entire army until they starve, freeze, surrender or retreat.”

I don't think that's narrative-breaking, I think that's a player easily defeating a challenge because it wasn't actually challenging for them. And that's not unique to casters either. If the DM said to a 15th level party "your quest is to go kill a CR 1/3 goblin", no one would be surprised that they didn't have much trouble with it. To put that in concrete terms for your example, if the Orcs don't have casters of their own to correct the weather, flying auxiliaries to attack the Druid, or units tough enough to survive in blizzard conditions, they deserve to get trounced by a Druid who is (assuming we're talking about Control Weather) at least 13th level.

There are lots of situations where tier 1-3 solutions are leagues above tier 3-6 solutions

I don't think that's quite correct. It's true that the Wizard has better tools for solving problems than the Fighter does, but that's because he gets new solutions to problems from leveling up in a way the Fighter doesn't. Consider your example again. At 1st level, the T1 party and the T5 party solve it about the same way. Maybe someone throws out a Detect or something. At 10th level, the T1 party busts out Commune, and the T5 party does ... probably the exact thing they did at 1st level. It seems to me that the way the T1 party worked is broadly superior to the way the T5 party did. "Whodunnit" mysteries aren't, and shouldn't be, enough to challenge high level parties. Just as combat encounters are more complicated at that point, non-combat ones should be too. The players should have to deal with (for example) competing interests, weird standards of proof, or time constraints.

[radthemad4]

All the Sorcerer really needs is to get enough spells known that it doesn't cripple its combat effectiveness picking up utility spells (and to get the same spell progression as Wizard, because the status quo is dumb). The fix you linked might be good enough, TBH. One interesting possibility would be to make Dragonpacts better. The basic idea of getting a pile of linked utility spells works, it's just the the spells you actually get are largely bad to mediocre.

Could also make Bloodline feats grant more and better spells with some utilitiy options. More PrCs that grant a bunch of spells known (like Sand Shaper, but without the progression loss and with better spells) would also be neat (maybe make them grant more spells known with additional levels so it's not just 'dip a bunch of these to get all the spells'). And yes, spontaneous full casters getting shafted by a level should not be a thing, and they should just new spell levels at odd levels.

The first thing I'd do there is make Esoteric Learning the default (probably without the level penalty) and give the classes baseline access to more non-core spells in their specialties (also fix the progression here too). I might let the Beguiler pick up Shadowcaster Mysteries just to avoid writing a fix for that. That's probably enough for the Beguiler and Dread Necromancer, though since Planar Binding is not a thing that should be allowed to exist, the Dread Necromancer might deserve something in compensation.

Agreed.

The Warmage needs more, but I'm not sure exactly what. I'm fond of the idea of combining it with the Duskblade. For utility, your options are essentially infinite. It turns out most magic is pretty good for war. You could give them divinations to monitor troop movements, walls to build fortifications, summoning spells to get reinforcements, the sky's the limit. Hell, you could rename the Wizard to Warmage and that would be close to 100% on theme.

I kinda like this one, but it might be somewhat OP. Combining Duskblade and Warmage feels a bit strange as gishing and blasting seem to be warrant different feats and builds, but maybe some bonus feats or class features or something could alleviate that.

My thoughts are something like this:

-Tome of Battle classes use something like the Age of Warriors project. More maneuvers (both overall and per character), better high level maneuvers, utility options.

Age of Warriors project? Utility maneuvers seem a bit uncommon, even amongst 3rd party material or homebrew (at least on a skim, though I did find some for stealth and/or mobility), but more stuff could definitely be written up. I'd like to see a stance or something that grants a burrow speed for instance.

-Most non-Tome of Battle martial classes should just be Tome of Battle ACFs. The Swashbucker does not have enough going on to be a full class without a total rework.

Total reworks might be worth doing or smuggling from existing homebrew though. I like ToB, but it shouldn't be compulsory to play a martial.

-Partial casters get bumped up to Bard progression and use Recharge Magic.
-The casters-but-not (e.g. Binder, Incarnate) get 6/9 casting (not Recharge) off of a curated list that covers their weaknesses.

I've thought about writing it up, but I'm too damn lazy.

Sounds good. 6 casting should be written so the spells are actually appropriate for the levels they're gotten at and not just stuff the Wizard, Cleric and Druid were doing several levels ago though.

Why not have it be:
Tier 1s can't gestalt
Tier 2 can gestalt with Tier 5 or higher or can tristalt with tier 6
Tier 3 can gestalt with Tier 4 or higher or can Tristalt with tier 5 and higher.
Tier 4 can gestalt with Tier 3 or higher or can Tristalt with tier 4 and higher or can quatrostalt with tier 5 and higher
Tier 5 can gestalt with Tier 2 or higher or can Tristalt with tier 3 and higher or can quatrostalt with tier 4 and higher
Tier 6 can tristalt with tier 2 and higher or can quatrostalt with tier 3 and higher or can quitstalt with tier 4 or higher or sextstalt with tier 5 or more

Wouldn't that be more fun? It would add something extra for sure, and people don't have become very high level before having fun!

Tier 6 classes feel rather empty to me, but sure. I guess they can get full BAB and/or some extra skill points and class skills. Two classes already feels like a lot to me, but I'm more worried about chargen/levelling up complexity than actual balance if doing more. Personally three classes per level seems about the max I'd be comfortable with, but since it's optional, people can choose to not do that.

I'm sorry. I didn't know that my idea was that bad. I just thought that all the other tiers should equal the same as Tier 1 would be a great idea. But now I know it isn't.

Your idea definitely isn't bad. A lot of folks have fun games with players using characters from different tiers and honestly at low levels it's not even a big deal. If your group is okay with it, it might not even be problem at high levels.

However, bringing more classes to Tier 1 is a perfectly okay thing to want to do if you feel like you would enjoy a Tier 1 party more.

You should have a multi post instead of a double post.

Sure. Deleted the second post and added it to this one instead

[Bartmanhomer]

Your idea definitely isn't bad. A lot of folks have fun games with players using characters from different tiers and honestly, at low levels, it's not even a big deal. If your group is okay with it, it might not even be a problem at high levels.

However, bringing more classes to Tier 1 is a perfectly okay thing to want to do.

You should have a multi post instead of a double post. Just saying. Anyway I'm glad that you think that my idea was good.

[NigelWalmsley]

I kinda like this one, but it might be somewhat OP. Combining Duskblade and Warmage feels a bit strange as gishing and blasting seem to be warrant different feats and builds, but maybe some bonus feats or class features or something could alleviate that.

I would probably make the Duskblade hybrid one option of a couple. I like it because the overlap is pretty strong, and it's a good way to boost the "use damaging spells" niche of the Warmage. The fact that the builds would be different is a good thing I think, good classes can be built multiple ways. Let some people build Warmage gishes, some people build artillery Warmages, and some people build support Warmages with utility and buffs.

I expect the variant you linked is overkill, but there are good ideas there.

Age of Warriors project?

Something on the homebrew forms here. I've only skimmed it, but it looks interesting. It's supposed to be a ToB tune-up.

Total reworks might be worth doing or smuggling from existing homebrew though. I like ToB, but it shouldn't be compulsory to play a martial.

Sure. The reason I like ToB is that it's a lot easier, and I think in practice versatile enough to satisfy most people.

However, bringing more classes to Tier 1 is a perfectly okay thing to want to do if you feel like you would enjoy a Tier 1 party more.

Absolutely. Even if you don't do it, it's good to have an accurate understanding of what the differences are and why they exist. That helps avoid making silly claims or unhealthy changes.