I would just like to state, for the record, that I'm not a rabid fan of the Tier system or anything of the sort; I have my issues with the placement of some classes and with the system as a whole just as others do. I've merely seen many people misinterpret and/or slander it (not that anyone here is doing any slandering) since it was originally posted on the pre-Gleemax WotC boards and I try to defend it from misunderstanding where I can.
He says that..but it's little more than proof by assertion. I'm referring to the assertion that the rankings hold true as long as they have the same skill/optimization. JaronK makes a flawed induction. There's a very simple way to illustrate this. If you sit a carrot at the game table and alternatively give it a fully optimized (whatever that means) Wizard and a fully optimized Fighter, which Class will prove more useful?
Low optimization and skill is going to squash any true "power/versatility" curve down to a flat line. Jaronk fails to consider this. Now, does JaronK provide us with a skill+optimization matrix versus class? No. There is no metric for determing the comparative skill/optimzation, or lack thereof, in the people in your group and matching that up with how much of a difference it will mean between Tier 1 and Tier 6.
T1 ≥ T6 holds true both when a competent player plays either class (T1 > T6) and when a carrot plays either class (T1 = T6). If you choose tactics and abilities purely randomly, a ranking of Tiers won't help a DM determine how to best challenge your party...but I would hope "The Tier system is valid when not DMing a party of vegetables" would not have to be a stated assumption.
It doesn't do that at all. JaronK never mentions what amount of skill or optimization we are talking about. He makes a blanket statement and then adds in a few caveats that are completely underemphaised. Kind of like the fine print on the bottom of a pack of cigarettes compared to the entire add: all the cool people smoke, but these things could kill you.
How much better is Nonsi than his friends? How much more optimization has he put in? Can you provide me with a metric that allows me to compare them? How familiar is the DM with Beguiler class to begin with? There is a underlying point being made here at it's crucial to a later point: these things are immeasurable from any quantitative standpoint...but yet JaronK says we can quantize the classes. Do you see the inherent problem? You respond to this notion...so we'll come back to it.
Granted that they are not numerically quantifiable, perhaps, but I'd argue that they're not immeasurable. If you look at two parties containing wizards, one of which has a pure blaster and one of which has a buffer and support caster with the rest of the party being of identical composition, and see that the latter has a higher success rate, you don't need to know about the exact numerical superiority of
fireball's damage output vs.
haste's damage output to see that the latter is helping more.
Likewise, we don't need to know that nonsi has put in 34.7 hours of work building his character while the cleric's player has only put in 14.2 hours; we can look at the amount of time nonsi spends on D&D forums, compare the feat and item choices for both characters, etc., and make a
qualitative judgment of their relative skill and optimization levels. As well, the beguiler's tricks are the same as a wizard's tricks, excepting a handful of class features. If the DM is familiar with an enchanter wizard's tricks, he need only read a few paragraphs of text to become familiar with the beguiler's capabilities, and if he
isn't then the beguiler and wizard are equally unknown.
Your anecdote underscores my point. The assumptions of the Tier system aren't valid for your campaign, nor were they valid for Nonsi's. Neither of you have PC's with equal skill/opt across classes. Now let me ask you...how many times have you as aDM'd ever had equal skill and optimization across all the classes?
On the contrary, they were quite valid. Assumption 1: Given the same player skill, a T[X] class is more versatile and has more potential than a T[X+1] class; when a T2 class was played by the same player as the T3 class, the player accomplished more, and more varied, things with the T1 class. Assumption 2: Things are easier on the DM when the party is composed of classes 0 to 1 Tier apart; the party was cohesive and relatively balanced on the whole.
The Tier system measures a class's worth to a party in general, not its worth when played alongside other characters of equal optimization by players of equal skill. A buff-focused T1 class can be a benefit to both a conjurer/CoDzilla/CoDzilla/artificer party and a warmage/healer/monk/expert party, and a fighter who sinks all of his bonus feats into Weapon Focus can be drain on the resources of both parties. While I personally believe that I as a DM should oversee character creation to ensure that everyone is at roughly the same balance points--helping the novice players pick choices that are both fun and powerful and reminding the experienced players not to try to steal the spotlight--that isn't really what the Tier system aims to measure.
Yet, JaronK is advocating the nerfing of Wizards compared to Monks...right out of the box. Jaronk suggests you should ...at the very moment you roll the character...give classes different point-buy totals based on their Tier ranking. Yes....yes...it's all in the context of equal skill. Okay...so what happens when the skill levels/effort put into a build are different? How does one modify the point-buy? Not too clear on that point is he?
Not precisely, but he does goes over the top in suggesting that very thing. He says the rankings are valid no matter what equal level of skill/optimzation you have. He only offers ONE set of Tier rankings.m He suggests you nerf from day one. He suggests you don't even allow Tier 1's to play with Tier 5's. The vast majority of his discussion in his thread is about defending his Tier system, not pointing out where it's wrong or that it is being missued.
This point I agree with completely. I disagree with arbitrary nerfing or banning of classes, and don't ban anything at all in my games, just remind players that anything they do the NPCs can do as well and leave avoidance of broken options to their own judgment. A helpful guide for DMs that warns them about problematic classes is one thing, a blunt suggestion to remove said classes altogether is another entirely. While I support the concept of the Tier system in general I do not endorse or at all like the discussion surrounding it of "T1/T5 classes are evil, don't let people play them!" and similar. Working with players, nerfing and buffing
as appropriate, and other tactics are preferable to heavy-handed bans.
And performing those roles comes at an opportuinty costs. So under Jaron's logic. The average person playing a Wizard can out "role" the Fighter (who is played by an average person as well) at his job--killing and tanking--and do all of the tasks that are required of him as a Wizard...all from levels 6-15? Are you going to support that as a truth?
Sadly, it can be the case with the appropriate spell selections. One doesn't need a gish PrC to buff up, wade into battle, and waste the competition rather effectively. Focus on touch spells, use the
bite of X and [Polymorph] spells...there are several options. Heck, casting a bunch of
heroics spells and then a
Tenser's transformation is a straightforward (albeit not-at-all-recommended) method for a wizard to be a fighter for all intents and purposes.
Note that the wizard can't necessarily be a fighter and perform all of his wizardly duties at the same time, but that's the power of the T1 classes: they can be a normal wizard/cleric/druid/etc. then wake up one morning, decide to become a fighter, and then do that, without permanently affecting their abilities.
The problem is all of JaronK's "proofs" are based on power/gaming. They aren't based on equal levels of skill. They are based on a Wizard having a high degree of skill.
And it never occured to BBEG that some spell caster might be trying to find out that exact thing? I mean this is my point. Spell casters with access to all the spells in the book have been around for 1000 years in any D&D campaign. I swear its like an 11th level Wizard is Cortes discovering the Aztecs.
1) If the BBEG is a caster, yes, there are easy and plentiful countermeasures to a caster's direct divinations, but that means that you can't have a BBEG who isn't a caster and has no access to casters.
2) What sort of protections are there against
commune and
contact other plane?
Mind blank definitely protects against direct divinations, but whether it can protect against indirect divinations like the above is debatable--and even if it can, there's a several-level window where the divinations are available but the countermeasures aren't.
The fact that you have to specifically protect against enemy divinations is exactly the sort of thing the Tier system is meant to warn DMs about
This seems a common response when people are confronted by the spell limitations of Wizards. JaronK specifically states that using items doesn't make that class better...because all classes can use items. Its irrelevant if the Wizard can make the scroll as a Class ability because a) He can't do that at the start of combat; 2) Any class can either buy or have an item with any particular spell custom made e.g. Boots of Free Movement, Potion of Mind Blank. Is there any restriction on what can be made in to a potion? A Masterworks potion belt lets you drink potions as a free action. So if Wizard can do it with a scroll made before the adventure...a Fighter can do it with a potion.
There's a reason the artificer is a higher Tier than a UMD rogue: he uses items better than other classes. UMD is disregarded because anyone can use it with enough skill ranks, but other class features are not.
Pearls of power only work for spellcasters; wizards gain scroll scribing and the ability to use spell trigger items for free; non-personal spells can't be put into potions; and so forth. The reason scrolls are a factor for a wizard and not for, say, a UMD rogue is that if a wizard gets a scroll it can become a permanent part of his power once scribed into his spellbook. Faced with a need to teleport across a continent, a rogue needs one
scroll of teleport per trip, which may not be available to buy; faced with the same, a wizard needs a single
scroll of teleport, which he can craft as long as he has access to that spell in any form regardless of the market, and then he's good to go.
So you're saying there's usefulness in a non-caster who can do something in quick succession half a dozen times?
Absolutely. The fact that the wizard
can memorize nothing but
knock and
shatter and
disintegrate to be able to open locks and disable traps better than the rogue doesn't mean that any wizard with two brain cells to rub together
should do so.
I'm not sure what's vaguely relevant to Water Breathing...but now you're in the middle of a wholly subjective judgment call and I won't try and try to argue yea or nay.
My point is that you're assuming the wizard must have prepared the exact spell
water breathing; if the obstacle is "be able to breath underwater" the wizard can cast
water breathing, or can
alter self/
polymorph into a form with the ability to breathe water (or one that doesn't need to breathe), or buff his Con to let him hold his breath longer, or conjure up materials and then
fabricate an item to let him breathe water, and so forth.
So now were getting to the heart of the matter...or rather the best part. People talk about balance, but that's not what balance is. Balance is not subjective. Balance is by its very definition an objective weighing of two things with a common metric.
[...]
It's literally not possible to balance things that do not have a similar metric.
[...]
Not only can you not achieve balance, you can't even measure it.
[...]
A budget sheet is balanced regardless of context. Why? Because the things being balanced share the same metric: money. RPG's cannot be broken down into empirical values. Hence they cannot be balanced and you cannot change the balance because such a thing does not exist.
[...]
Now you are talking about perceptions of fairness and fun. Balance =/= Fun. Purpose is closer to fun than balance.
I disagree with the notion that one cannot balance RPG classes due to lack of a metric. The metric(s) exist and can be balanced to.
From a mathematical perspective, you can seriously sit down and look at the math of your system to determine the exact expected hit percentage for each class, exact damage potential, exact expected success rate on skill checks, etc. It's not hard, conceptually speaking, to do this and come up with a rigorously balanced game.
From a design perspective, you can seriously tell GMs that X% of encounters should be noncombat encounters using roughly Y skill checks or Z item charges or whatever, and determine how much each class should contribute under those conditions and balance those numbers appropriately.
From a conceptual perspective, you can seriously declare that combat will take up X% of the game, and balance Class A to contribute 40% of the time in combat and 60% of the time out of combat and Class B to do the reverse and have those classes be weighted equally in the purely numerical, purely objective Class Effectiveness Index or whatever that you created.
The problem with this idea, and the reason I said that a certain degree of balance is possible but perfect balance is not, is twofold: First, one must make certain assumptions to do this testing. You cannot balance weights until you decide upon the gram and the Newton; you cannot balance games until you decide upon the basic concepts and mechanics of your game. The standard to which one balances is entirely arbitrary (a gram could easily have been defined in another way), and most games are designed with badly-chosen (or completely undetermined) arbitrary balance points that don't necessarily align to the way the game will be played--witness the relative party effectiveness of a blaster/healbot/tank/sneak party played AD&D-style in 3e vs. a debuffer/buffer/controller/DPSer party played "new-school" style.
Second, the fact that balance
can be achieved doesn't mean it
will be. No designer will sit down and try to apply numerical values to nonnumerical quantities because someone somewhere will disagree, and if those someones are your player base or your bosses you're in trouble. Taking most open-ended abilities out doesn't work; observe 4e. Making assumptions about playstyle doesn't work; observe 3e. Leaving everything to the DM doesn't work; observe AD&D.
So while you are correct in saying that achieving objective, perfect balance in any sense in any modern RPG is impossible, I object to the notion that one cannot possibly have a scale of "less balanced" to "more balanced" by which to judge games, based on weighting different aspects of gameplay and adjusting outputs to suit the desired baseline.
What if I told you that the way to improve things is to make martial classes needed (and not in a trivial way) and effective at higher levels? Isn't that what we are really talking about? Do we really care what "balance" means as long as the Fighter class is important to party success at a high level?
The problem is purpose....not balance.
I would respond that both nerfing casters and buffing noncasters is exactly how one should go about making classes nontrivially needed and effective at high levels. As long as a caster can replace a noncaster class, the noncasters will not be needed; as long as a noncaster will need outside assistance in the form of party help or items to be baseline effective, noncasters will not be effective.
