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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Eldritch_Lord" data-source="post: 5661006" data-attributes="member: 52073">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 likeYes, 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. 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<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" />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. 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.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.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.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.</blockquote>

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