D&D 5E Poll for PC's with 4 or more levels in a class.

[Hussar]

Technically, 4e & 5e both use the term 'tier to refer to a range of levels. But the class tier concept was a 3.5 fan ranking of classes, primarily by versatility. Prepped casters able to change their focus on a daily basis were Tier 1, spontaneous casters, with a fixed list if known spells but flexibility in which ones to cast repeatedly were a hotly contested second. Fighters, able to customize their 'build' with a bonus feat every-other level, were Tier 5. 4e put most classes on AEDU, giving them rough parity in versatility, and, until Essentials all classes were compressed into what, in 3.5, would have been a single Tier.
5e returned to more traditional class designs, though with some interesting differences, significantly, all casting is now spontaneous, so prepped casters are more versatile than ever, and 'Tier 2' casters further behind them...
...Fighter's non-casting sub-classes, OTOH, well, they do produce some very competitive DPR, as you pointed out. Which -being good at one thing- puts them solidly in Tier 4.
FWIW.
Nothing about Tier rankings stops an enthusiastic player from having fun with the concept he genuinely wants to RP, and sufficient system mastery can make use if a lower tier class to create quite potent builds. I played a fighter-based, non-casting build for years under 3.x, myself, it remains a favorite character.

But, you're ignoring a big elephant in the room (heh) in that analysis [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]. The spell lists in 5e are VERY truncated. To the point of being absolutely emaciated compared to 3e. Even core 3e had FAR more spells available, particularly for clerics and druids, than 5e does.

I mean, in 3.5, a cleric, if nothing else, had Summon Monster at 1st level (plus the entire suite of summon monster spells). And, going up the levels, clerics got AOE damaging spells. like, say, Searing Light at 3rd. A 5e cleric has pretty much no AOE direct damage spells until 5th level with Flame Strike (to be fair, they might get some from their domain, but, that's not guaranteed). They do get some damage spells, but, not too bloody many. The cleric list is about 1/2 the options that a 3e cleric got. Same for all the caster classes.

And that's not including supplements. Now you've literally got thousands of spells for any of the caster classes.

If you took 3.5e clerics and wizards and restricted them to 5e spell lists, suddenly those 3.5e tiers would be a LOT closer together.

 

[Imaro]

But, you're ignoring a big elephant in the room (heh) in that analysis [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]. The spell lists in 5e are VERY truncated. To the point of being absolutely emaciated compared to 3e. Even core 3e had FAR more spells available, particularly for clerics and druids, than 5e does.

I mean, in 3.5, a cleric, if nothing else, had Summon Monster at 1st level (plus the entire suite of summon monster spells). And, going up the levels, clerics got AOE damaging spells. like, say, Searing Light at 3rd. A 5e cleric has pretty much no AOE direct damage spells until 5th level with Flame Strike (to be fair, they might get some from their domain, but, that's not guaranteed). They do get some damage spells, but, not too bloody many. The cleric list is about 1/2 the options that a 3e cleric got. Same for all the caster classes.

And that's not including supplements. Now you've literally got thousands of spells for any of the caster classes.

If you took 3.5e clerics and wizards and restricted them to 5e spell lists, suddenly those 3.5e tiers would be a LOT closer together.

Not only this but a big part of the dominance of casters in the 3.x era was due to the ability to combine certain spells like flight and invisibility... again something that has been greatly restricted in 5e.

 

[Parmandur]

Technically, 4e & 5e both use the term 'tier to refer to a range of levels. But the class tier concept was a 3.5 fan ranking of classes, primarily by versatility. Prepped casters able to change their focus on a daily basis were Tier 1, spontaneous casters, with a fixed list if known spells but flexibility in which ones to cast repeatedly were a hotly contested second. Fighters, able to customize their 'build' with a bonus feat every-other level, were Tier 5. 4e put most classes on AEDU, giving them rough parity in versatility, and, until Essentials all classes were compressed into what, in 3.5, would have been a single Tier.
5e returned to more traditional class designs, though with some interesting differences, significantly, all casting is now spontaneous, so prepped casters are more versatile than ever, and 'Tier 2' casters further behind them...
...Fighter's non-casting sub-classes, OTOH, well, they do produce some very competitive DPR, as you pointed out. Which -being good at one thing- puts them solidly in Tier 4.
FWIW.
Nothing about Tier rankings stops an enthusiastic player from having fun with the concept he genuinely wants to RP, and sufficient system mastery can make use if a lower tier class to create quite potent builds. I played a fighter-based, non-casting build for years under 3.x, myself, it remains a favorite character.

But being hard to hit (seriously, hard to hit) and good at DPR is the whole of the combat pillar: right skills, ability rolls and some RP, the Fighter is as good as any at exploration and social, too.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It would take a pretty special subclass and a specific build for me to go past 4 levels of Fighter, but with how feats work, I usually end up with 4 levels of any class I take 3 levels of.

 

[Tony Vargas]

But, you're ignoring a big elephant in the room (heh) in that analysis [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]. The spell lists in 5e are VERY truncated. Even core 3e had FAR more spells available, particularly for clerics and druids, than 5e does.

Nod, 5e casters are arguably less overwhelming broken than they were in 3.x (like, hey, your air conditioner may be broken, but your house is still way cooler than the surface of the sun, so don't complain!), and some spells have been 'nerfed' (and a couple boosted), and Concentration, though restricted to just a few spells, is no longer readily optimized to be a forgone conclusion (except, maybe, for bladesingers), and a few classic broken combos are even shut down by the 5e version of concentration locking them out from eachother. Sure, there's all kinds of details that are different.
But, unless there's a few overwhelmingly broken spells crowding out all others, the versatility of prepped casters is still a very meaningful advantage over that of known-spell casters, and, with both casting spontaneously, the gap between the two is arguably larger than ever. And, inevitably, the versatility of both sorts of full casters is far beyond that of classes that are customizeable only at chargen & level-up (and only at some levels!).

A 5e cleric has pretty much no AOE direct damage spells until 5th level with Flame Strike (to be fair, they might get some from their domain, but, that's not guaranteed). They do get some damage spells, but, not too bloody many.

It might drive your domain choice if that was something you really wanted. :shrug: Since spells are cast spontaneously and scale with slots you don't need more than one scaling spell of a given sort to be able to go all-in on whatever that is...
...so clerics get scaling healing at 1st, but scaling AoE damage at 5th, while wizards get the AoE earlier and never heal, it's merely differentiating those classes, healing & buffing and AoE damage are both potent contributions to the combat pillar, nor are they the only ways Tier 1 classes can contribute optimally in combat...

And that's not including supplements. Now you've literally got thousands of spells for any of the caster classes.
If you took 3.5e clerics and wizards and restricted them to 5e spell lists, suddenly those 3.5e tiers would be a LOT closer together.

Thousands of spells beyond what you can learn or prep is not that big a deal, it's just more system mastery investment required to sift through them and pick out the optimal spells & combos. Tier 1 vs 2 was valid whether you were playing Core only or anything-goes - there's plenty of variety even in core spell lists to deal with all three pillars in every edition (except 4e on a technicality, I suppose I should note: notionally, Rituals were not spells, 'spells' being narrowly defined as arcane powers, not an important distinction buy anytime you say 'every' or 'all' in one of these discussions....).

 

[TiwazTyrsfist]

I've got a Lvl 7 Tiefling Circle of the Moon Druid, and a lvl 4 Goliath Diviner Wizard.

Diviner turned out to be really fun, What with the roll 2d20 after a short rest and sub them for other rolls as you want to. VERY useful.

I've got a Lizardfolk Tempest Cleric prepped for adventurers league at a convention coming up.

 

[Hussar]

Meh, the difference between the "tiers" in 5e are small enough that it seems to be a fairly nitpicky point to say that tiers exist.

Sure, cantrips scale, but, so what? Whoopee, my Sacred Flame is doing 2d8 damage. At that same time, the fighter types are getting two attacks per round with stat bonuses. I'm pretty sure that the fighter is out damaging me by quite a lot at that point.

 

[Parmandur]

Meh, the difference between the "tiers" in 5e are small enough that it seems to be a fairly nitpicky point to say that tiers exist.

Sure, cantrips scale, but, so what? Whoopee, my Sacred Flame is doing 2d8 damage. At that same time, the fighter types are getting two attacks per round with stat bonuses. I'm pretty sure that the fighter is out damaging me by quite a lot at that point.

Most of my spellcasting characters in 5E end up Looking in the Avengers: theoretically super powerful, but somehow end up getting knocked unconscious after things don't write go their way.

Sure, different classes play differently, but that's part of the fun: everybody contributes, but in different modes. There are not "tiers" to speak of.

 

[Hussar]

Most of my spellcasting characters in 5E end up Looking in the Avengers: theoretically super powerful, but somehow end up getting knocked unconscious after things don't write go their way.

Sure, different classes play differently, but that's part of the fun: everybody contributes, but in different modes. There are not "tiers" to speak of.

Oh, for sure. My Forge Priest is not going to win any combat awards. Ever. But, he's sure as heck contributing in other ways.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Meh, the difference between the "tiers" in 5e are small enough that it seems to be a fairly nitpicky point to say that tiers exist.

Using 3.x/PF as a touchstone for imbalance and the gulfs among classes does make almost anything else look trivial.
And 5e did not go all the way back to that Tier 1 vs Tier 6 chasm.
Tier 1 vs Tier 4, at worst.

Sure, cantrips scale, but, so what?

I don't recall mentioning cantrips, but, since you bring it up, yes, 5e casters have a higher base-line DPR when hypothetically tapped out of slots, giving them more flexibility to expend slots when optimal, since they needn't worry quite as much about being unable to continue contributing once they're gone. And, it means that in the balance-over-the-day paradigm, the gap between the casters' at-will DPR and the non-casters' is a bit narrower, so there'd need to be that many more rounds of cantripping to 'even out' rounds of spellcasting - thus that longer-than-ever 6-8 encounter/'day' guideline.
FWIW.