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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6286147" data-attributes="member: 4937">While there would be less pushback in buffing non-casters up to tier 2 or tier 1, in practice that creates more problems than it solves.  You then have to buff the monsters to catch up, and at some point math breaks down and creates a more deginerate game rather than less.  High level 3.X is already more than deginerate enough without pushing it to greater problems.By commonly accepted measurements, such as the 'Brilliant Gameologist' tier system Wizards, Clerics, and Druids are 'Tier 1'.  By contrast the fighter is like tier 5.   What would be ideal IMO is if the all the classes were about tier 3 and we could back off some of the CR creep where the monsters of a given CR are inflating in power that is seen in 3.5.  To do that we have to both buff the non-casters so that the they move up a tier and tone down the casters so that they back off at least a tier.   You can see that in my design.  The changes to cleric back them down from tier 1 to tier 2.  Replacing Druid with Shaman replaces a tier 1 with a tier 2 class.  Where it gets complicated and the reason most solutions fail is that they focus only on changing the structure of the class.  You can't move fighter up a tier merely by playing with its class mechanics.  You also have to change the world that it lives in.  That means changing how feat trees work so that feats at the end of trees tend to scale, or if they have high prerequisites that they are truly powerful.   It means concieving fighter feats as not merely addressing more and more damage (until you break them with the ability to one shot things), which was never the fighters problem in the first place, but as answers to real problems like forcecage, DR, compulsions and mind-effecting spells generally, invisible creatures, being grappled by collosal creatures, and so forth.  You don't need to have every fighter have an answer for everything (that would be tier 1), but you need to expect every fighter to have answers to many common problems while providing fighters enough feat slots that every answer they decide to take isn't a tax that keeps them from developing their schtick.  And it means giving skills real power as active enhancers of class abilities.  And it means toning down spells that have no answers except other spells.  It means solving the problem that the fighter is only powerful as a target of a spellcasters buffs and without those protections is helpless.  You end up with From the opposite direction, it means fixing spellcasters by fixing spells across the board and not letting additional problem spells into the game.High level that also means changes in how you treat monsters with more than 20 HD, and in general how you scale up monsters at all.  You are aiming to restore the 1e pattern that the higher level you are the more likely you are to pass a save, because the expected consequences of failure are higher instead of the 3e pattern of the higher level you are the more likely you are to fail a save and the greater the consequences of failure.</blockquote>

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