Not quite.
Look, I can't speak to anyone's individual experiences. If you say you tried to run a campaign with Wizards and Fighters and it didn't work...so be it. Nonsi256 just gave us anecodote of his Tier 3 Beguiler being so dominant over a Tier 1 Cleric, he got kicked out of the group. We have no way of knowing that the skill level or effort is of the various participents given the classes. And there in lies the first and ultimate problem with the Tier System: are the assumptions valid?
The Tier system assumes that the classes are being compared with the same amount of optimization and player skill. To say that someone "beat" a T1 cleric with a T3 beguiler says nothing about their relative tiers; rather, the Tier system says that (A) if the player of the T1 class had the same skill and had optimized his character to the same degree as the player of the T3 class, the T1 character would have more versatility and problem-solving capability, and (B) if the player of the T3 character were instead playing a T1 class with similar optimization level, he would have more versatility and problem-solving capability.
The Tiers are not about who can beat whom in a fight; it's widely acknowledged that the T4 and T5 martial types do the most direct damage and have the highest DPS-to-effort-required ratio of all the classes. The Tiers are about what putting X amount of effort into a class and Y amount of player skill will do--the Tome of Battle classes are T3 where the fighter and co. are lower T4 and T5 because you can take whatever trick a fighter or barbarian does ("mounted charger" or "chain tripper" or "tank" or whatever) and be able to do essentially the same build, perhaps with slightly less power due to lack of focus,
and also do other things. Likewise, nonsi's well-played beguiler is an example of an optimized T3 class being played with a lot of skill vs. a not-so-optimized T1 class being played with less skill...but had his character been a focused enchanter instead of a beguiler, he could do everything the beguiler could do
and other things to support the role such as summoning more minions or debuffing enemies or the like
In any analysis, the analyzer makes assumptions. The validity of the analysis is based on applicability/accuracy of the assumptions made. Let me ask a couple of questions that speak to this:
1) Do D&D campaigns really work they way JaronK assumes in his examples?
Yes, in my experience they do, though granted my experience is not universal. In one of my current campaigns, I have a party of 13th level PCs consisting of a kineticist blaster (fire-focused), a mystic theurge necromancer (cleric/dread necro with early entry), a crusader charger (mounted on a nightmare), an arcane archer (mystic ranger base with Sword of the Arcane Order), and a bard (Dragonfire Inspiration-focused). There are two T2s in the party and two T3s, but it is the T3s who are more valuable.
Why is that? Is it because the Tier system is bogus? No, it's because the kineticist can chuck several dozen d6s of damage per round, but never bothers to determine whether enemies are resistant to fire. It's because the necromancer has several hydras, dire animals, and other heavy hitters in his undead army, but always just sends them in to gang up on one target and beat them up without doing anything vaguely tactical. It's because the arcane archer fires more
solid fog arrows than
fireball arrows, and has enough different types of arrows to pick the right ones for the job. It's because the crusader uses his mount's high speed and
etherealness to surprise foes and get to where he's needed on the battlefield to defend people instead of just hitting people over and over. It's because the bard's player is the tactician of the group and is usually the one to come up with the best plans, and knows where a single
suggestion can turn the tide of battle.
When the necromancer's player was absent one session and he asked the bard's player to handle his character while the bard was off doing something else IC, the party was able to wreck an enemy organization that had given them a lot of trouble before. The necromancer's spell selection hadn't changed, and the undead army's composition hadn't changed, the bard's player was simply able to play up that character to its full tactical and strategic potential.
There are a truck load of problems with many of the assumptions made in the Tier System ranking. Perhaps the biggest is the conflation of a "optimized" build with the notion that you can optimize to outperform all classes simultaenously (which isn't optimizing), and that you can maintain that level of robustness (which outpeforms every other lower Tier class) throughout an entire campaign.
Again, the Tier system isn't saying "T1 classes always automatically make all other classes inferior," it's saying "If you give someone who plays fighters really well a buff-focused DMM
ersist cleric or a wild shape-focused druid, he'll do just as well at fighting things and will have the versatility to do other things as well." The Tiers are not defined on the
necessity of outperforming lower-Tier classes, merely on their
ability to do so--if the wizard in your game
wants to fill a certain role, he can do it, whether the role is blaster or tank or summoner or party face or whatever else, but it is not required that he do so.
A big problem, imo, is how JaronK approaches Wizards. The Wizard or Cleric, in the context of an actual game...cannot bring the full power of every knowable spell to every encounter. Jaronk ignores this because he talks about potential. But that potential is meaningless if it is illusory. The player character does not know how many times he'll need Fireball versus Haste versus Water Breathing and it's not like he can cast ten of each at 10th level.
Yes, a Wizard can go home and study Rock to Mud and bring down a castle wall. Gee, do you think the guy who built the castle wall never contemplated such a contigency? Do you think the guy who kindnaps the King's daughter never considered what a 10th level Wizard might do to find him? Jaronk acts like the world of D&D never met a 15th level Spellcaster with Genesis or Contact Other Plane before.
This objection is brought up quite frequently, and I am forced to disagree with it yet again. Several things put the wizard at the top of the Tier list:
1) Divinations. Even if your DM frowns on spamming
contact other plane or using
commune for binary search, a simple
divination asking "Am I likely to face undead or constructs today?" or "Does [name of BBEG] have any protections against teleportation in his stronghold?" or similar can help tailor your spell list to fit what you will encounter.
2) Leaving slots open. If you run into something you can't beat immediately with any of your spells you don't need to go home and rest for 9 hours, giving your enemies time to regroup and rest, if you've left slots open in the morning; you can be ready with the right spells for the situation in 15 minutes. Alacritous Cogitation, Uncanny Forethought,
Rary's spell engine, and other feats and spells can let you cast the right spells right out of your spellbook in a matter of rounds instead of minutes.
3) Items. Wizards get Scribe Scroll for free; good wizards take those spells that are only useful every so often and keep a scroll of them around for when they're useful.
Pearls of power let them take that single
haste they prepared and turn it into two or three. Wands can handle a lot of common utility spells, freeing up the wizard to prepare more combat-relevant spells--or vice versa, letting a utility wizard prep out-of-combat spells in his slots and rely on wands of combat spells.
Even by level 7 or so, "But the wizard might not have a spell relevant to the situation at hand!" isn't a good objection. Yes, if the wizard needs to have one specific spell a half-dozen times in quick succession, he isn't likely to be prepared for that specific eventuality, but as long as the wizard has something vaguely relevant he'll be fine.
The perception of balance is contextual. Tier system tries to present perceived balance as an absolute. He claims one of his goals is to prevent pre-emptive nerfing of Classes...and yet he's advocating the exact same thing. He's trying to convince you that you need to nerf Tier 1's to play with Tier 5's or you'll be in over your head as a DM. Nonsense. If you don't know what you're doing as a DM...you're going to be in over your head no matter what classes you have. You may think you're going to "balance" the game by having a mage battle...only to find the Monk with Improved Grapple and 8 ranks in Tumble and the Run feat has moved 5 times his move rate in one round, grappled your caster, and pretty much ended the threat in two rounds.
Any class can derail an encounter if you don't consider the full range of that class' abilities. The fact is that most DM's are less familiar with designing encounters to contend with powerful casters because most DM's have less experience with it period. We've all DM'd Fighers and Barbarians. We've all DM'd people who love to play martial classes. A much smaller subest of people like playing spell casters (statment made by Monte Cook and impetus for why they improved spell casters in 3e to begin with). As a result, DM's have less experience with the available spells and the consequences of those spells. The world of D&D has dealt with spell casters for over 1000 years even if you, as a DM, haven't.
What Jaronk and I 100% agree on is that if you grant any Class unfettered access to Spells, you're going to have a harder time managing the game. It doesn't matter if access to those spells is through a Class ability, items, or cohorts/companions. That doesn't mean Classes who can access Spells are broken. Manage the Spells and you fix all the Classes that have access to those Spells.
This I agree with entirely: the Tier system is a warning for DMs more than it is an absolute standard of balance. I can handle a party of T1s and T5s just fine, but less experienced DMs might not be able to--that doesn't mean that said DM needs to implement blanket nerfs, it means he needs to ask his caster players to tone it down a bit and work with him until he gets a handle on things, or read up on the spells to get an idea of what they can do, or the like.
Kahn_bloodbane is correct. Balance has no meaning in an RPG. The game cannot be balanced because you are comparing things which have contextual purpose/effectiveness. You can't balance context. You can't "balance" the Track Feat with the Extend Spell Feat, there is no scientific way to do it. The best you can do is create some perception of fairness...and fairness isn't balance. Fairness is subjectve.
Once again, this is a common statement which I strongly disagree with. There is very much a notion of balance in an RPG. You can compare two games and say that one is "more balanced" than the other, or that they are about as balanced as each other. You can judge the relative power of different options, from the superficial level of "If a 3rd-level spell deals 10d6 at max level, a 2nd-level spell shouldn't deal 15d6 at max level, so that 2nd-level spell is too strong" to the more nuanced level of "This campaign will feature a disproportionately high number of undead and constructs, so Sneak Attack will be less powerful without options like weapon crystals or ACFs to somewhat compensate."
What an RPG cannot have is
perfect balance, that's self-evident...but that doesn't mean you can't strive for balance. You can't scientifically determine whether
charm person will be balanced with high Diplomacy ranks, taking mind-affecting immunity and other factors into account, but you
can determine that it's not fun for the enchanter to render the rogue's Diplomacy ranks irrelevant or for the rogue to render the enchanter's spells irrelevant and that changing the binary
charm spells and the too-easily-abused Diplomacy system for balance purposes is a good idea. You can't feasibly generate every possible cleric and fighter build and compare their combat stats and other merits, but you
can look at their general capabilities, note that the cleric can easily duplicate the fighter's abilities with a handful of spells, and remove those spells for balance reasons.
But, the way to "balance" things, IMHO, is to nerf casting not improve melee classes. Through casting times and nerfing Concentration.
The way to balance things is to nerf casters
and buff melee classes. The martial classes need more variety in their abilities, to let them keep up with Team Monster and give them more and more interesting options, and the casting classes need their broken tricks toned down or removed. No single option will do the trick. Power the martial types up to caster levels and you get Frank and K's Tome series, which many people dislike; tone down the casters to martial levels and you get 4e, which as many and more people dislike. Though it isn't always the case, in this situation the answer does indeed lie somewhere in the middle.
