Tier list for PF classes, or summary of each?

Fishbone · Oct 3, 2011

A full spellcaster with access to things as powerful as Hexes at 18 out of 21? Absolutely, positively not. I also disagree vehemently with Summoner at 20.

But just the fact that this conversation even exists in Pathfinder shows how much of a step up it is from 3.0, and even 3.5 in my opinion.

StreamOfTheSky · Oct 3, 2011

Fishbone said:
A full spellcaster with access to things as powerful as Hexes at 18 out of 21? Absolutely, positively not. I also disagree vehemently with Summoner at 20.

But just the fact that this conversation even exists in Pathfinder shows how much of a step up it is from 3.0, and even 3.5 in my opinion.

...Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand that's about my limit for posts I can read extolling Pathfinder's superior balance and design qualities.

Pathfinder has neither going for it, and is horribly unbalanced. Yeah, you got some new faces at the top like the summoner, but in the end, it's still the full spellcasters at the top.

In 3E, it took a lot of obscure splat books to find a race that raised a mental stat without costing LA or racial HD. Grey Elf and Fire Elf for Int were the easiest to find, but at least were balanced with a painful con loss and the general suckiness that is the elven racial features. Charisma you had like...Spellscales? Some things out there, but not common. Wisdom? I think you actually had to go back to 3.0 and the horrifically unbalanced Savage Species to find something for that, the anthro animals. I don't know Tortles and Buomann I think had wisdom bonus... In Pathfinder, ANY caster can have a 20 in their casting stat, very easily!

Pathfinder also nerfed the combat maneuver feats by breaking them up into 2. You need THREE freaking feats just to push someone so your allies can AoO him now, something you could do with NO feats in 3E! The CMB system itself is borked, so many things add to CMD that in my experience, actually succeeding at combat maneuvers requires extremely high specialization just to get like a 60% success rate. Grapple was horrifically nerfed, it's a standard now, not an attack replacement, you need to waste an action and risk a failed roll each round to "maintain," and being grappled isn't nearly as much of a hindrance as it used to be. These are all very major areas of martial combat that PF outright nerfed the hell out of, to the detriment of noncasters. Caster feats weren't really hurt at all. Heck, they added some sweet new ones. Like that one I mentioned to speak in wildshape. Or a +1 level metamagic to bounce a failed targeted spell to a new target. Or the +2 level metamagic to just plain require 2 successful rolls instead of one.

PF did give more stuff to pad out the mid and higher levels for martial classes, yes. But they also completely demolished most of the benefit of multiclassing, and made prestige classes pretty clearly inferior to just sticking in the same class instead. Maybe those are good things, but my point is... noncasters were the ones who multiclassed like crazy in 3E, they were the ones who could afford to do so and got great benefits from doing so. Any gains the martial classes got in PF came at the expense of multiclassing be much less viable, so in the end, the power level hasn't really changed. It's just more newbie friendly and easy to obtain. Again, that's fine and all, but stop saying melee got buffed in PF. It did not.

Finally, everyone always complains about the system mastery and "trap" options of 3E. Would you believe that PF is actually worse in this regard? Because it is. 3E at least tried to make options that were balanced (but turned out to not be because the designer just wasn't very good at measuring balance) or at least useful to someone, somewhere. The much maligned Toughness feat was great for wizards in 1st level one shot games, which IME are not THAT uncommon. Pathfinder is not like that, though. They care more about "flavor" and "roleplaying" than how powerful or worthless some mechanic is. Let's start with the worst example in possibly all of tabletop gaming history -- the monk Vow of Poverty. The designers explicitly knew the rule they were writing sucked and that it was a ridiculous power down for anyone that took it. But wrote it the way they did anyway, because they were balancing it on "roleplaying" terms -- if you want to RP someone that gives up most material possessions, you SHOULD suffer...just close your eyes and ignore the cleric, druid, paladin, and other myriad examples we printed that make seemingly arbitrary self-restrictions and are repaid handsomely for them -- rather than being mechanically balanced. At least the 3E designers of VoP TRIED to make its benefits commensurate with what you were losing and simply failed to understand how great a loss magic items were. PF just didn't even care about thinking about that.
Look at all the archetypes that are just pathetic. The archetypes that make you give something up at one level, but not get the replacement benefit until several later -- or in some cases, vice versa. Look at the embarassing number of corrections they need to make with each released book, despite pending more time on development of said books than WotC and putting out much fewer of them. How can you honestly say PF is a better designed game?

Viashimo · Oct 3, 2011

StreamOfTheSky said:
How can you honestly say PF is a better designed game?

'Cause it's more fun and easier to play than both 3.5 and 3.0.

TheAuldGrump · Oct 3, 2011

StreamOfTheSky said:
Rant.

Let us just say that not everyone agrees with you. :erm:

Some of us disagree quite a bit, actually.

The Auld Grump

Systole · Oct 4, 2011

StreamOfTheSky said:
...Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand that's about my limit for posts I can read extolling Pathfinder's superior balance and design qualities.

While I generally agree with you, on this we have to part ways. Yes, the classes are not balanced. Monks and rogues kinda suck; gunslingers are broken; Vow of Poverty is idiotic.

With that said, 3.x was bloated and unwieldy. And it had dozens of inferior publishers churning out hundreds of inferior (and wildly unbalanced) products. Pathfinder is superior, in a purely comparative sense. You may be disappointed that it's a &@*#ing far cry from perfect, but it's the best thing out there at the moment.

I speak from experience here. I've been playing D&D in since 1e, and I'm currently in a PF campaign with a 7th level rogue that I brought up from 1st. She's awful. Just ... bloody awful. But I'd still rather play her than anything from 3.5 or before. It's just better.

TheAuldGrump · Oct 4, 2011

Angrydad said:
I'm glad to see someone else who shares my opinions on the "overpoweredness of wizards/clerics/druids". Sure, if the DM gives you enough hints as to what you're facing and you have time to prep, the wizard is unstoppable. No DM should ever do that, however.

A side effect of the '15 minute adventuring day' - if the GM curbs that behavior then the wizard is a lot more balanced.

I only experienced the 15 MAD once, and I let the bad guys win - if the PCs are busy napping then the villains can (and did) steal a march on them.

The players were surprised that the bad guys didn't sit arond waiting for them, and that they were willing to attack the PCs while they were camped with their spells down.

The Auld Grump

Celtavian · Oct 4, 2011

aboyd said:
No, he's good. He can do things as a DM that I cannot, and I admire him for being more capable. But he also has a play style that rewards certain types of classes -- those that are more self-sufficient and self-contained. So I'm here to see if anyone can collaborate with me on what those classes might be in a Pathfinder game.

I feel as though I'm settling on the druid. He can have many critters which I will enjoy statting out over the course of months. He gets access to all his spells, without needing the DM to drop scrolls or spell books. He isn't as diverse as a wizard or cleric, but there are a lot of various things he can do. He will complement the party paladin, so that between us we probably won't need a cleric for healing.

My issue right now is that I don't know how to get the 3 feats I need at 1st level. I need scribe scroll, spell focus (conjuration), and augment summoning. Are there ways in Pathfinder to get more than 2 feats at 1st level?

I guess if I had to settle on only 2, I'd hold augment summoning for later. At low levels, there is a paucity of spells, so being able to scribe many backup scrolls would be paramount.

(Summoners & Sorcerers -- they cannot scribe just "any" scroll available to the class, right? They can only scribe scrolls of spells that they've learned. Yeah? Somewhat similarly, though not as limited, a wizard can only scribe scrolls of spells that are in his spell book. If he never added Knock to his spell book, then he can't scribe a scroll of it. Correct?)

If I choose a druid, what are some excellent choices for a deity? In particular, a deity that doesn't provide a prohibitive alignment restriction that would wall off a bunch of spells. Not interested in losing spells, if possible.

Also, I'm still open to hearing what other classes are self-contained & interesting long term. Is there a reason why not to choose the druid long term? (Exception: I already know that the cleric fits all my criteria and is even better than the druid, and thus should be what I select; however, I just played a cleric for 5 years, so I've lost interest and need to look at other classes).

Thanks everyone. I'll try to give some more XP now. Much appreciated.

I don't really care for druids much. They don't do anything particularly well: damage dealing, heaing, casting versatility.

I like the ranger for versatility. You have a lot of skills. You get some nifty spells to make you a very good damage dealer. You're great with stealth. Good hit points. Good saves. Evastion. Hide in Plain Sight. Fairly decent spell list. Remember Rangers caster level is 3 levels less now, not half. And you can get an animal companion or Hunter's Bond for your group. Which can be pretty nice. When our ranger uses Hunter's Bond to give us an untyped bonus on to hit and damage, it helps a lot.

The reason I can't give you much more information on particulars is because there is too much diversity in Pathfinder. In 3.x I could tell you such and such class sucks or is boring. Can't do that any longer. Each class has some really fun combinations that are a blast to play.

No matter what class you take, you'll have some versatility. You'll have some power. There is no real class that has to stand there doing nothing save for perhaps the rogue. The rogue class is weak and has problems given how much other classes can do.

Go to the Pathfinder PRD and read over some of the crazy stuff each class can do. Play with feat combinations. Think about what you want to do.

If you try to focus too much on versatility thinking it's like 3.x and you'll be able to do a little bit of everything well, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Physical damage dealers are untouchable by other classes, including the druid, for what they do. You can't summon a creature or transform into one that can touch their damage unless you're playing with people that cannot build an even halfway decent character.

If you don't mind sitting there wondering why you're doing 1d6+7 damage in bear form while Mr. Barbarian just made a full move followed by a full attack for 2d6+25+ per hit and is attacking back each time the creature attacks him for more damage, then enjoy the druid. If you mind sitting there wondering why everyone around you is becoming a sickening freak of a character, while your stagnate then choose something else.

I don't know how much I can emphasize to you how different Pathfinder is. I have run multiple campaigns. One up to lvl 20, one to lvl 14, one to lvl 5, one to lvl 10 with many, many different characters. It's a very different game with so many options that listing them as tiers in one thread is impossible.

You need to put in your due diligence checking spell lists, character abilities, and the like to find out what would be fun and interesting.

Celtavian · Oct 4, 2011

StreamOfTheSky said:
...Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand that's about my limit for posts I can read extolling Pathfinder's superior balance and design qualities.

Pathfinder has neither going for it, and is horribly unbalanced. Yeah, you got some new faces at the top like the summoner, but in the end, it's still the full spellcasters at the top.

In 3E, it took a lot of obscure splat books to find a race that raised a mental stat without costing LA or racial HD. Grey Elf and Fire Elf for Int were the easiest to find, but at least were balanced with a painful con loss and the general suckiness that is the elven racial features. Charisma you had like...Spellscales? Some things out there, but not common. Wisdom? I think you actually had to go back to 3.0 and the horrifically unbalanced Savage Species to find something for that, the anthro animals. I don't know Tortles and Buomann I think had wisdom bonus... In Pathfinder, ANY caster can have a 20 in their casting stat, very easily!

Pathfinder also nerfed the combat maneuver feats by breaking them up into 2. You need THREE freaking feats just to push someone so your allies can AoO him now, something you could do with NO feats in 3E! The CMB system itself is borked, so many things add to CMD that in my experience, actually succeeding at combat maneuvers requires extremely high specialization just to get like a 60% success rate. Grapple was horrifically nerfed, it's a standard now, not an attack replacement, you need to waste an action and risk a failed roll each round to "maintain," and being grappled isn't nearly as much of a hindrance as it used to be. These are all very major areas of martial combat that PF outright nerfed the hell out of, to the detriment of noncasters. Caster feats weren't really hurt at all. Heck, they added some sweet new ones. Like that one I mentioned to speak in wildshape. Or a +1 level metamagic to bounce a failed targeted spell to a new target. Or the +2 level metamagic to just plain require 2 successful rolls instead of one.

PF did give more stuff to pad out the mid and higher levels for martial classes, yes. But they also completely demolished most of the benefit of multiclassing, and made prestige classes pretty clearly inferior to just sticking in the same class instead. Maybe those are good things, but my point is... noncasters were the ones who multiclassed like crazy in 3E, they were the ones who could afford to do so and got great benefits from doing so. Any gains the martial classes got in PF came at the expense of multiclassing be much less viable, so in the end, the power level hasn't really changed. It's just more newbie friendly and easy to obtain. Again, that's fine and all, but stop saying melee got buffed in PF. It did not.

Finally, everyone always complains about the system mastery and "trap" options of 3E. Would you believe that PF is actually worse in this regard? Because it is. 3E at least tried to make options that were balanced (but turned out to not be because the designer just wasn't very good at measuring balance) or at least useful to someone, somewhere. The much maligned Toughness feat was great for wizards in 1st level one shot games, which IME are not THAT uncommon. Pathfinder is not like that, though. They care more about "flavor" and "roleplaying" than how powerful or worthless some mechanic is. Let's start with the worst example in possibly all of tabletop gaming history -- the monk Vow of Poverty. The designers explicitly knew the rule they were writing sucked and that it was a ridiculous power down for anyone that took it. But wrote it the way they did anyway, because they were balancing it on "roleplaying" terms -- if you want to RP someone that gives up most material possessions, you SHOULD suffer...just close your eyes and ignore the cleric, druid, paladin, and other myriad examples we printed that make seemingly arbitrary self-restrictions and are repaid handsomely for them -- rather than being mechanically balanced. At least the 3E designers of VoP TRIED to make its benefits commensurate with what you were losing and simply failed to understand how great a loss magic items were. PF just didn't even care about thinking about that.
Look at all the archetypes that are just pathetic. The archetypes that make you give something up at one level, but not get the replacement benefit until several later -- or in some cases, vice versa. Look at the embarassing number of corrections they need to make with each released book, despite pending more time on development of said books than WotC and putting out much fewer of them. How can you honestly say PF is a better designed game?

Pathfinder is much better designed. I like DMing it and playing it better than I liked 3.x. I can't even take you seriously. You don't sound like you know what you're talking about at all.

What you sound like reading through your post is a power gamer that had some of his options and toys taken away, so he's railing against the replacement game that took them away. Yet there are still plenty of cheesy combos you power gamer types are coming up with. I guess you must have missed those on the Pathfinder boards.

Whining about Vow of Poverty when there are so many other options forthe monk now that make it better makes you sound ridiculous. I hated the design of the old Vow of Poverty. It was a Vow with no real drawbacks in a party environment. It was basically a "Here you go. Here's something much better for a monk than he will most likely ever get with magic items."

Grapple is still extremely dangerous, especially to spell casters. Adding an extra feat for Combat Maneuvers isn't a big deal when they give you three more feats isn't a huge cost. It takes generally two feats and possibly a pre-req to get combat maneuver feats. A lot of classes get more bonus feats anyhow, which you seem to be discouting and a ton more abilities.

The lack of Prcs isn't significant when playing a base class is worthwhile. Prcs were never meant to replace base classes. Yet that is all they did in 3.x. No one played a straight class all the way up when PrCs were available. Now they are an alternative like they always should have been.

And once again the idea that a party is a battle royale rather than a team game. The cry of spell casters are at the top. They don't fight. Physical damage dealers crush face and have more options. So what if a prepared high level caster can kill a fighter. The fighter is still a highly effective class that is fun to play that can do way more than they used to be able to do.

Totally different game. Sounds to me like you haven't built many effective characters and are still in the 3.x mindset. Glad I'm not. I and my players are doing all kinds of fun things with the Pathfinder system and enjoy it a great deal more than the 3.x system.

StreamOfTheSky · Oct 4, 2011

Celtavian said:
I hated the design of the old Vow of Poverty. It was a Vow with no real drawbacks in a party environment. It was basically a "Here you go. Here's something much better for a monk than he will most likely ever get with magic items."

Monks are one of the most item dependent classes in the game and VoP was a horrific trap option for them, more so than almost any other class. And you're thinking of PF VoP for the no real drawbacks in a party environment. Because in 3E, you had your share donated to charity. In PF, you just don't get your share, which means more loot for everyone else. THAT is the scenario PF VoP was "balanced" around. Being the party gimp.

Celtavian said:
Grapple is still extremely dangerous, especially to spell casters. Adding an extra feat for Combat Maneuvers isn't a big deal when they give you three more feats isn't a huge cost. It takes generally two feats and possibly a pre-req to get combat maneuver feats. A lot of classes get more bonus feats anyhow, which you seem to be discouting and a ton more abilities.

Grapple is no more dangerous to casters than 3E, the only exception is the ludicrously high concentration check DC you have for being grappled, which is poorly balanced in the exact opposite direction... You can still freedom of movement your way to immunity. On the other hand, grapple is a lot less dangerous for actually killing people, you can only make one grapple check per round now. Heck, in 3E you could easily get someone pinned in the same round you initiated the grapple.
Yes, everyone does get more feats in PF. Keyword everyone. But it takes more feats to do the same things you could do in 3E for melee classes. Caster feats weren't divvied up like that. Ergo, casters effectively netted more feats than melee classes, who sort of ending up tredding water. Do you understand?

Celtavian said:
The lack of Prcs isn't significant when playing a base class is worthwhile. Prcs were never meant to replace base classes. Yet that is all they did in 3.x. No one played a straight class all the way up when PrCs were available. Now they are an alternative like they always should have been.

And what I said in my post wasn't that this change was a bad thing (I actually went out of my way to state that wasn't what I was saying...). My point was that taking away cherry picking, dipping, and prestige classing in return for better base classes is the same end result, power-wise. In sum total, it was not a power boost for martial classes compared to 3E, you just don't have to jump through hoops anymore. Which is awesome. But it didn't actually strengthen martial characters much, which is what everyone claims.

Celtavian said:
And once again the idea that a party is a battle royale rather than a team game. The cry of spell casters are at the top. They don't fight. Physical damage dealers crush face and have more options. So what if a prepared high level caster can kill a fighter. The fighter is still a highly effective class that is fun to play that can do way more than they used to be able to do.

Like what? They got a few new skills like dungeoneering and survival... Still only 2 + int points and a dearth of social skills. All the Fighter's changes in PF just gave him bigger numbers in combat, which as I said long ago in my Fighter houserules thread (link in sig) is the one thing fighters did NOT need. Yeah, you can roleplay things without skill checks. You can do that in 3E as well.

[sblock]

Celtavian said:
Pathfinder is much better designed. I like DMing it and playing it better than I liked 3.x. I can't even take you seriously. You don't sound like you know what you're talking about at all.

What you sound like reading through your post is a power gamer that had some of his options and toys taken away, so he's railing against the replacement game that took them away. Yet there are still plenty of cheesy combos you power gamer types are coming up with. I guess you must have missed those on the Pathfinder boards.

Whining about Vow of Poverty when there are so many other options forthe monk now that make it better makes you sound ridiculous.

Totally different game. Sounds to me like you haven't built many effective characters and are still in the 3.x mindset. Glad I'm not. I and my players are doing all kinds of fun things with the Pathfinder system and enjoy it a great deal more than the 3.x system.

[/sblock]

Of course, with all those personal attacks, you do a far better job of discrediting your arguments than my responses ever could.

Systole · Oct 4, 2011

Celtavian said:
You don't sound like you know what you're talking about at all.

In this, you are badly mistaken.

SotS may be highly opinionated, and he may be ranting a bit here, and I might even disagree with him completely on this ... but he knows PF backwards and forwards. For confirmation, you might want to check out pretty much any of the threads he started.