As listed in the title; Is there a Tier list for spells? I'm just curious, myself, and would love to see one made if possible.
Uh... it'd be a colossal pain to put together and not that valuable. Remember tiers are determined by versatility. Thus spells with multiple options like Summon Monster/Nature's Ally, Simulacrum, Planar Binding/Lesser/Greater, Gate, etc. would all be tier one. Many spells would actually default to tier 4 as they only do one thing and do it well, though there would also be a glut of useless spells that didn't even do one thing well choking up tier 5.
Honestly, the value of such a list vs. time invested makes this not really worth pursuing.
I get why you're asking - something the class guides often neglect is telling you which spells are good, and which spells are bad. Letting people figure that out for themselves is okay when it comes to the CRB, it's pretty obvious, but with the huge list of spells from various sources, finding the powerful ones take a lot of time, and it's not always obvious where you should look.
I didn't find Paragon Surge until after it was nerfed, for example.
A catalogue that tells you which spells are powerful, and where they can be found would be useful, in my opinion.
It doesn't really matter. The spell lists are loaded with options that are powerful and versatile. You pretty much could throw a dart at the wall, and still wind up with a useful set.I get why you're asking - something the class guides often neglect is telling you which spells are good, and which spells are bad. Letting people figure that out for themselves is okay when it comes to the CRB, it's pretty obvious, but with the huge list of spells from various sources, finding the powerful ones take a lot of time, and it's not always obvious where you should look.
I didn't find Paragon Surge until after it was nerfed, for example.
A catalogue that tells you which spells are powerful, and where they can be found would be useful, in my opinion.
Not quite sure what you're getting at here. Of course it matters.
Also, I think you must be being fascetious there. There's forty core 1st level sorcerer spells, for example, and a 1st level sorcerer only knows 2:
Namely, Endure Elements and Detect Undead.
Not all dart throws hit the center. The fact is there are a lot of GOOD choices... Magic Missle, Shield, Color Spray, Sleep, etc.. etc... And Endure Elements is precious gold if you're starting your first adventures in a place like the Spine of the World, or the northlands of Golarion.It doesn't really matter. The spell lists are loaded with options that are powerful and versatile. You pretty much could throw a dart at the wall, and still wind up with a useful set.I get why you're asking - something the class guides often neglect is telling you which spells are good, and which spells are bad. Letting people figure that out for themselves is okay when it comes to the CRB, it's pretty obvious, but with the huge list of spells from various sources, finding the powerful ones take a lot of time, and it's not always obvious where you should look.
I didn't find Paragon Surge until after it was nerfed, for example.
A catalogue that tells you which spells are powerful, and where they can be found would be useful, in my opinion.
Not quite sure what you're getting at here. Of course it matters.
Also, I think you must be being fascetious there. There's forty core 1st level sorcerer spells, for example, and a 1st level sorcerer only knows 2:
1d40
1d39Namely, Endure Elements and Detect Undead.
You're moving the target - your first post suggested that if you take random spells, you'd probably end up with a good selection. This is not so.
Most spells are pretty speciffic in their uses, and having one or two of the best is absolutely worthwhile. It's not like feats, where the majority of them are crap, even at what they're supposed to do, but most spells are usuful only within an extremely limited range of scenarios. Then there are the ones that are pretty much always useful (summon monster) and the ones that are useful in a limited scenario which you often encounter (e.g. 'things need killing'. Haste is a spell which is almost always good, for this reason)Sure, there are a lot of good choices on the spell list. This does not make having a directory of the best ones pointless, as they're hard to find without spending tonnes of time doing so.
There are good and bad spells, justo like good and bad feats, class features and everything else. At core, the design paradigm of DnD3e and its sucessors is the Ivory Tower Design. Which means there is a TON of options, some of them are universally good, others are situstionslly good, and some others are bad. Same goes with spells.
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I get why you're asking - something the class guides often neglect is telling you which spells are good, and which spells are bad. Letting people figure that out for themselves is okay when it comes to the CRB, it's pretty obvious, but with the huge list of spells from various sources, finding the powerful ones take a lot of time, and it's not always obvious where you should look.
I didn't find Paragon Surge until after it was nerfed, for example.
A catalogue that tells you which spells are powerful, and where they can be found would be useful, in my opinion.
Don't know what kind of guides you're reading, I grade spells in all of mine. It's also a pain, which is why a lot of people don't do it. As you said, there's a ton of spells, and giving a review on them in a lot of cases involves eyeballing them and assuming since there's no reason anyone should expect a guide writer to try out every spell, and some are just so bad/good that it's obvious.
A tier list for spells though as stated is just impractical for any guide writer, as the amount of spells is intense and there's a TON of garbage to sift through.
Sure, but something like the "list of spells that fvcking kills people" would be good, and less extensive than a spell-by-spell grade.
I mean, much like there's no reason to grade Alertness in a class guide, there shouldn't be a reason to grade Marid's Mastery (for instance).
But telling people that there's this thing called Paragon Surge, and it's amazing, well, I could see the usefulness of that.
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It's good to have a list of spells that are really good, spells that are bad but trick you because they look really good, and some guidelines on how to evaluate how good spells are (because new spells come in all the time).
Also, you don't need The Best spells, you need spells that are good enough that you'll be effective. You can pick precisely The Best spells but you'll be a bit cliched. In PFS you can normally get by with "Good" spells that fit your character's theme rather than "The Best" that have nothing to do with theme.
So relax, take a deep breath, and have fun :)
Also, clerics, shamans and druids can play around and experiment with it.
Wizards and paragon surge oracles & sorcerers too, to a much lesser degree.
The "best spells" should not be used, really. Things like simulacrum, planar binding, gate, etc, break the game and should be plot devices, imho.
There is at this time not a formal spell tier list, but the easiest way to figure out what spells are good and which are not is the usability test:
If a spell is useful, but not well suited to memorize every day, create a scroll or wand of it.
If a spell is useful, and seems to be useful quite often during an adventuring day, memorize it.
If it does not fit in either a scroll (because you don't want to spend gold to make it a scroll) or your daily spells, then it is probably bad and you should not use it.
This can change as well based on specific campaigns (Detect Undead is much better with a Undead heavy campaign obviously) but the general rules still apply
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Wands are good for spells you want to spam.
If it's a spell you need only in niche cases, but when you do, you need it right away (and not in 15-30 minutes), get a scroll. Buying the scroll for such spells is more worth it if you're a spontaneous caster with a limited spell selection.
...It's really kind of funny, too, because I just created an oracle for PFS, a controller/buffer type, and I had to choose my first two first level spells. I wanted stuff where my super-high initiative would be valuable. I'm looking more for buff-the-party instead of buff-me spells. Bless was the obvious choice. Go first, cast bless, everyone gets bonus. And then... what? Obscuring Mist, maybe? But I've done that a lot and I plan to advance on combat, myself. I wanted something that targeted bad guys. I eventually went with Cause Fear. I figured even though it can't affect all enemies (undead in particular), it still has an effect on a failed save.
There's a short topic in Gamer Talk where a person asked about good spells for a Wizard. When I contributed, I asked for explanations, as just saying "Oh, take this spell," is somewhat unhelpful.
Right over here: Spells Every Wizard Should Have
Hopefully that'll give some good advice.
I get why you're asking - something the class guides often neglect is telling you which spells are good, and which spells are bad. Letting people figure that out for themselves is okay when it comes to the CRB, it's pretty obvious, but with the huge list of spells from various sources, finding the powerful ones take a lot of time, and it's not always obvious where you should look.
I didn't find Paragon Surge until after it was nerfed, for example.
A catalogue that tells you which spells are powerful, and where they can be found would be useful, in my opinion.
Don't know what kind of guides you're reading, I grade spells in all of mine. It's also a pain, which is why a lot of people don't do it. As you said, there's a ton of spells, and giving a review on them in a lot of cases involves eyeballing them and assuming since there's no reason anyone should expect a guide writer to try out every spell, and some are just so bad/good that it's obvious.
A tier list for spells though as stated is just impractical for any guide writer, as the amount of spells is intense and there's a TON of garbage to sift through.
You're not the only one who does this. And..well, honestly, spells are situational at times. That's why versatility in spell is so key. Grease is WONDERFUL ... as long as you're not trying to go ghostbusting.
What I usually worry about most, especially when I look over prepared spellcasting classes, is 'what spells should I bring with THIS day?'. I'd love to try a 'God Wizard' type, but what spell spread should that be--three Grease, two Grease and one Magic Missile, or just spam Summon Monster 1 until the rest of the party throws soda cans at me?