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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Eldritch_Lord" data-source="post: 5662889" data-attributes="member: 52073">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.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. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> 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.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.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. 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.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 aboutThere'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.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.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.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.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.</blockquote>

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