22 classes: What are the successful ones?

[Blue]

First, thanks for clarifying what "successful" means - I had opened this thread expecting things all over the place, but "do the best at meeting the intent of the class" is fairly unambiguous, and doesn't drag into "what's more powerful", it focuses on "where did mechanics do a good job of codifying the feel / intent". Because some of these are "more playable" (easier not to de-optimize), "more powerful", "more cherry-pickable", etc.

Focusing on "Crunch supports fluff", I'll rank them.

==Strong mechanical support for class feel
Beguiler - form and function work well. intent wants chr, gives social skills, and appropriate spells. mechanics delivers
Barbarian - rage, lots of HPs, simple options, big weapons.
Druid - druidic feel and abilities match up. Much better pairing on intent and mechanics then cleric.
Monk - monk feels very much like a D&D monk. Which is it's own thing, since a historic monk was something quite different.
Swashbuckler - good marriage between mechanics and movie swashbucklers. Not the best, btu that's because the mechanics were a bit weak so they couldn't support as well.
Paladin - code of conduct with mechanical support. heavily armored knight plus divine providence. Mechanics support intent.
Fighter - yeah, strong, lots of martial options. Lots of feats, which from a mechanics viewpoint made them very customizable to the fighter you want, so I guess that's a good marriage of intent and mechanics, even if one step removed.
Ranger - like monk, very good fit for a D&D ranger. If you want the arch-example to be Aragorn, you've got a good deal to allow that archetype.
Rogue - one of my favorite classes, but really making it a no-int needed skills monkey works from a balance perspective but misses out on a lot of common rogue archetypes.
Wizard - needs to be smart, is frail, casts spells, can have a familiar. Okay, not a bad fit. (And a dang powerful class at high levels.)

==Moderate mechanical support for class feel
Marshal - lots of boost to martial combat in it's area, though a bit awkward melding the workable mechanics and the special effect. Not a bad job.
Sorcerer - eh, it casts spells spontaneously through force of personality, and is bad at just about everything else. not a lot of mechanics to support the feel for the class. Not bad, just not overly generous.
Knight - meh. challenge mechanism didn't make them particularly feel knightly. Had a code of conduct with mechanical effects for failign liek the paladin which helped.
Scout - scouts are good at stealth and ambushing ... well, except that the mechanics force them to move around a lot. I understand where skirmish fits mechanically and how it encourages mobility, but going from that to some who is supposed to hear and see all, be a natural tracker, btu is supposed to disengage instead of getting into combat the fluff doesn't match. Reskin the class to something like "dervish" and then you get a blend of mechanics and intent.

==Weak mechanical support for class feel
Cleric - no one can argue not an effective class, but besides domains and choice of cure/inflict there's little mechanically linking them to their deities. It's not a fail, but it's not strong. (Unlike the class itself, which can be quite strong).
Favored Soul - even less then the cleric, and they all get wings. Huh? This is a mechanical line up for divine sorcerer, but little crunch/fluff line up.
Bard - the mechanical division between bardic music and bardic magic has never done a great job of making them feel like "our music is magic", even if I like playing the class.

==Skipped - sorry, never played with and don't remember enough about them.
Dragon Shaman
Duskblade
Hexblade
Warlock
Warmage

I have to say, you made me curious: what brings this question up? I found answering was pretty interesting to myself as a thought exercise.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Sorcerer - eh, it casts spells spontaneously through force of personality, and is bad at just about everything else. not a lot of mechanics to support the feel for the class. Not bad, just not overly generous.

Mechanically, the Sorcerer is basically as powerful as any other full caster in the game.

As for flavor...

It could be better, but IMHO, the Bloodline and Heritage feats add some nifty seasoning to the class*, as do the variants like the Battle Sorcerer and Stalwart Sorcerer.





* I wish the Bloodlines had been baked into the class from the get-go- something I believe Pathfinder does. Furthermore, i would have been even happier had Bloodlines & Heritage feats were unified into one standrd form & type, and that the opened up more feat options, like the Celestial, Draconic, and Infernal Heritage feats did.

 

[Teacher Man]

I am running a 3.5 mini tournament and the characters that made me want to create one myself were the barbarian and the scout. If I get a chance to create a new character I am totally going with the scout. Talk about stick and move. Give a scout some bow feats like rapid shot and a bit of room to move and it gets ugly really fast.

The barbarian has potential as well with rage abilities and things like cleave and greater cleave.

It's really about how you set them up and how much time you spend deciding on what you want your character to do. I think the problem is that people do not spend enough time thinking about what kind of character they want and the DM needs to give enough information about the campaign so the players can create the best fit.

I have a 5th level fighter than is kind of a jack of all trades and he is working out just fine. He can be a support fighter or a front line fighter. At some point I will specialize him more but he is just fine right now.

My 5th level druid is fairly weak right now because I didn't specialize him enough nor did I pick the right spells the first time, but he can be fixed.

Just my 2 copper pieces...

 

[Mordikenn]

...
Going down the list:

Barbarian (Tier 4)
Bard (Tier 3)
Beguiler (Tier 3)
Cleric (Tier 1)
Dragon Shaman (not noted, but usually regarded as Tier 4/5 IIRC)
Druid (Tier 1)
Duskblade (Tier 3/4)
Favored Soul (Tier 2)
Fighter (Tier 5. 4 with Zhentarium variant and/or dungeoncrasher variant up to level 6)
Hexblade (Tier 4/5)
Knight (Tier 5)
Marshal (Tier 4)
Monk (Tier 5)
Paladin (Tier 5)
Ranger (Tier 4)
Rogue (Tier 4)
Scout (Tier 4)
Sorcerer (Tier 2)
Swashbuckler (Tier 5)
Warlock (Tier 3/4)
Warmage (Tier 4)
Wizard (Tier 1)

...

Most of the list seems pretty accurate, though I'd probably rate druid as Tier 2 and Duskblade as 2-3... The only real problem with duskblade is that they run out of spells pretty fast. Their DPR is very high. As far as Dragon Shaman I'd probably put them with bard or slightly below, since in practice they're very similar.

 

[Jackinthegreen]

Most of the list seems pretty accurate, though I'd probably rate druid as Tier 2 and Duskblade as 2-3... The only real problem with duskblade is that they run out of spells pretty fast. Their DPR is very high. As far as Dragon Shaman I'd probably put them with bard or slightly below, since in practice they're very similar.

The bolded part blew me away a fair bit. Between the animal companion, spells, and wild shape, they are definitely powerful and extremely versatile.

Duskblade's problem is that damage can only take a class so far, thus they're 3 at best and not very far up in it. Thankfully they do have other utility options to round things out, but they aren't at all powerful compared to a Favored Soul or Sorcerer. The right barbarian build can literally do thousands of damage per round (and last I heard there was a 10k+ build), but such a build would only be T3/4 because killing stuff isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be given all the D&D possibilities. T2 is when reality warping comes into play after all.

Dragon Shamans might feel similar to a Bard, but in terms of actual mechanical power they're closer to Marshals which are a solid T4. Bards have a lot of splat support that can really enhance their music and spells, and without that might be placed as T3/4.