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I didn't have anything specific planned yet, so I'd love to hear your thoughts! I already posted on the subreddit, but I made another post right now to get a few extra responses before I close it all.
There's no GM class this time? Actually, you know - in this specific poll, there should be! I'll add that as an option
When you say "Please sort your party's characters" do you mean the group/party you play with or a hypothetical meta party? The one you play with. This poll is supposed to be based only on actual play experience.
Hello everyone! So 2 years ago I made a poll to analyze the power of all of the classes (Results can be found here). I asked people to rate their class from 1 to 10, and while the results were interesting, it wasn't easy to compare them to one another. So to make the polls slightly easier to draw conclusions from, I made a new poll! In this one I'd like you to take the character classes in your party, and sort them from most effective to least effective (considering overall performance, in and out of combat). I also added questions about people's ancestries and how fun their characters are, cuz why not. The poll can be found here. I've given everyone access to the results so you can view them WHILE THE POLL IS STILL LIVE. Here's the link. You can use the RESULTS tab to view the raw results and filter them as you like, and then use the GRAPHS tab to see graphs relating to your filtered results table. Please answer once per character you own, and don't skew the results on purpose. A link to the corresponding reddit post can be found here. Edit1: I added GM as an option so GMs can contribute
Okay so my players are constantly trying to shut their opponents up so they won't call for help or cast spells. In order to handle this and make gagging mechanically interesting, I tried making homebrew rules for that, but I'm really unsure whether these rules are too harsh on spellcasters, whether it's spellcasting monsters or spellcasting players being gagged by intelligent monsters: GAGGED - CONDITION Your mouth is blocked by another creature’s wrist, a piece of cloth or by some other means. Only creatures within 5 feet of you can hear your voice, and you can’t eat or drink anything – including elixirs and potions. If you attempt an action with the auditory trait while gagged, you must succeed at a DC 5 flat check or it is lost. Creatures with no mouth or multiple mouths are immune to this condition (At the DM’s discretion, one may gag all the creature’s mouths independently). GAG ◆ (Attack) - ATHLETICS SKILL ACTION Requirements: Your target is grappled or restrained. You have at least one free hand or you are currently using a hand to grapple/restrain your target. Your target isn’t more than one size larger than you. You attempt to gag a creature using your free hand or the hand you are currently using to grapple/restrain that creature. Attempt an Athletics check against their Fortitude DC. If you choose to use the hand you are currently using to grapple/restrain the creature, you take a -2 circumstance penalty to this check. Success Your target is gagged until the end of your next turn, until the target stops being grabbed/restrained or until you move away. If you used the hand you are currently using to grapple the creature, your Athletics DC versus your target’s attempts to Escape takes a -2 penalty for the same duration.
RESTRAINER (General, Skill) - ATHLETICS SKILL FEAT 7 Creatures grappled or gagged by you that attempt an action with the manipulate or auditory traits respectively, must succeed at a DC 9 flat check instead of a DC 5 flat check, or lose their action.
I still don't understand Illusory Creature. What actions can it take? Can it pretend to cast spells? Can it cast spells that affect itself, like invisibility? How about sanctuary? Can it use skills? Can it have reach? Can it make ranged attacks? etc... Some of those questions are more trivial than others, but the rules are VERY lacking.
Persona mask to max out performance. Hat of Disguise to, well, disguise. Unmemorable Mantle because fun. Diplomat's Badge until you can get a Messenger's Ring simply for the diplomacy bonus. Silvertongue Mutagen if you have a familiar (through some means) who can feed you the potion at the start of battle, and you don't mind spending tons on consumables.
As a Polymath Bard, you get it anyway. Other muses can only access this through the multifarious muse feat, which also has the benefits of giving you access to polymath class feats. The main ones I consider useful are probably the Esoteric Polymath skill feat and the polymath cap that lets you cast spells of all traditions. (The book feat is a nice versatility boost, or if you're an annoying munchkin like me, gives you easier access to spells you wanna cast during off time only, like glyphs of warding loaded with black tentacles on a bunch of boxes) As a maestro bard, you want your performance to be high anyway, and you're probably gonna buy items to boost your performance and get the virtuosic performer skill feat. So if you're planning on demoralizing, you're much better off using your performance. The interaction with scare to death is indeed annoying but it's only relevant at level 15. At that point though it does hurt, a lot. Other muses don't really have to invest in performance though, so it might not be worth it, unless you really want the Esoteric Polymath feat. Also I don't understand the whole fuss around Bon Mot - It has the linguistic trait, so you can't use it on a lot of enemies...
Just Dropping in because I have info that feels relevant, I made a poll a while back and asked people to rate the power of the classes they played from 1 to 10. These were the results (I will list the average score each class got followed by how many players reported playing these classes) - and remember this is pre-APG: 1. Fighter - 8.3 (40)
Obviously take this with a grain of salt because asking people to rank classes from 1 to 10 isn't the best way to measure effectiveness. I think my biggest surprise was Druid ranking so low, as I consider Bard and Druid to be at the very least the most well designed casters - I think any good party needs a bard because they fill the "utility caster" role and have the most benefits beyond that (compared to an arcane sorcerer/witch or a wizard) - AMAZING buffing cantrips, more than serviceable spell list, and they can act as the face of the party. Druids on the other hand aren't as needed but they are very good "combat casters" and their subclasses and feats offer a lot of incredible options. I'd gladly play in a 4 man party whose casters are a bard and a druid, and I think that's one of the best 2 caster combos.
I'd like my weapon to be a d10 or even d12 so it has a chance of actually doing more than casting a cantrip. I think you'll that at higher levels most attacks deal more damage than a cantrip: At level 10 for example, the best single target damage cantrip - telekinetic projectile - deals 5d6+5 damage, which is 22.5 on average. Assuming you have at least 18 STR by that point, your weapon should deal +4 from STR, 1d6=3.5 from any damaging property rune which leaves us with 15 damage to take care of. Another damaging property rune would take this down to 11.5. Any d10 or d12 weapon would get close to that with a striking rune. Gorilla stance deals 2d8=9 but also has +3 bonus from intimidation when you use gorilla pound (which is one of the best actions an intimidation gish could ask for, IMO). And we didn't even consider any other feat that increases damage. If hobgoblin was allowed you'd basically also get 2d4=5 extra mental damage when you pound enemies. Sneak attacker in another build would also get another 1d6=3.5 damage. And so on... Basically, cantrips are very inefficient. They barely deal damage and cost 2 actions to cast.
Not sure this is the best build (I haven't run the numbers yet) but the synergy here is at the very least interesting: Class: Bard (Maestro) Ancestry: Human with Versatile Heritage. Take Adopted Ancestry, Hobgoblin. Background: Warrior Starting Stats: 18 CHA, 16 STR, 12 CON, 12 WIS, 10 DEX, 10 INT Later focus on boosting CHA, STR, CON, WIS Feats (Class feats unless otherwise noted): Lv1: (Ancestry) Remorseless Lash Lv2: Martial Artist Dedication Lv4: Gorilla Stance (Only stance that lets you use armor) Lv5: (Ancestry) Agonizing Rebuke Lv6: Inspire Defense (Way too good to pass up) Lv8: Gorilla Pound Lv9: (Ancestry) Multitalented - Champion (Paladin) Lv10: Champion's Reaction Lv12: ? Lv14: Diverse Armor Expert (I guess if we're taking champion we might as well pick up expert heavy armor) For skill feats, take all of the best demoralize related feats. The rest is up to you. Basically you'd wanna start most fights with Gorilla Stance + Haste on yourself (Yeah sadly this is not very action economy efficient), and next turn you'd like to find room for a Lingering Inspire Defense, but from that point you're gonna Stride, Pounce, Cast a Spell each turn. You also have the best reaction in the game. The core of this build also works with sorcerer, I just really like bards (And lingering composition + Inspire Defense are really good, especially for a gish type character spending time in melee)
Okay wow this thread turned a little toxic. So some meta-conclusions I have are: 1. The 1-10 scale was broad and undefined. Maybe a better way to analyze power (not sure about enjoyment) would be to ask people to rate the relative power of their entire party (something like, take the classes of characters in your party and organize them by general effectiveness and usefulness) 2. Publishing the results beforehand has it's drawbacks. It seems like some people didn't respond the same way they would have without seeing the results. I like how some people enjoyed analyzing the results as they were being published, but maybe (??) it wasn't worth it. 3. If you look at some results, it seems like some people either had a lot of experience with a lot of classes or they just responded many times for no reason (We have a streak of responses going over all of the classes, in alphabetical order, without mentioning ancestry, in the scope of 3 minutes? come on...). Maybe I should limit the results to 1 per person (I wanted people who played multiple characters to be able to answer multiple times, but I guess this isn't necessary for a poll about relative power). In any case, I hope this poll made people more aware of some trends (Maybe wizards aren't as useless as the poll suggests, but it seems like the people are generally not satisfied with the wizard). I won't close the poll for now, but I'm thinking of making a new one that lets people rank relative class power and keep the results hidden until the end. I'd be happy to hear people's opinions on such a thing. I might not do that anyway because the general trends of power are probably obvious to the community by now. Maybe. Not sure...
I'm not gonna close the poll, but I've been following the results so far, and here's my take on the current (252 responses, 247 of which are core classes) state. I'm gonna round some numbers though: Fighter - 8.2 Power, 8.9 Enjoyment. Clear winner in terms of power, and has been at the top for most of the poll. I'd be surprised if further results didn't keep the status quo. Bard - 7.8 Power, 8.8 Enjoyment. Making up 5.3% (13/247) of the core-class characters, this is the least popular class that but also the most powerful caster by far. Could it be bard-players bias? Or is bard simply very effective? Don't know. Barbarian - 7.6 Power, 8.9 Enjoyment. The most enjoyed martial. Champion - 7.4 Power, 8.5 Enjoyment. If we call all classes mentioned so far the "top tier" classes, this would be the least powerful and least enjoyable of them. So far I'd say fighter deserves it's own tier, but bard, barb and champ are all probably on the same tier in terms of power. I might be biased though, because my party has all 3 (me playing as the bard) and it does seem like we're the most valuable assets to the team. In addition, martials getting the highest ranks is quite refreshing. Even though I usually play a caster, it always seemed logical to me that martials should generally have more combat prowess over casters due to how narrowly focused they are. And in any case, this is at the very least a good indicator that casters are no longer OP. But we all probably knew that already ;) And now we have a streak of classes really close to each other in terms of power: Monk - 7.1 Power, 8.7 Enjoyment
What's interesting to me about this list is that these are all of the "niche" classes. While fighter, barb and champ are martials that focus on very "raw and basic" abilities (precision, damage and AC respectively), and bard... is special somehow (also increases precision with inspire courage I guess), these classes have more specific niches - Monk is quick and has a bunch of cool combat maneuvers to use
So it seems like the power of these classes isn't as easily measured as the others. So that makes me wonder whether this result reflects a design problem or a perception problem. And yet they all managed to get very close to one another, so this is probably a good thing! Sorcerer - 6.5 Power, 8.0 Enjoyment
This one kinda hurts, mainly for the wizard. It seems like the extra slots the full casters get are not perceived as particularly powerful. There are multiple ways to explain this -
In any case, at least they don't have it the worst: Alchemist - 3.6 Power, 5.7 Enjoyment. Welp, I honestly wasn't following the online discussions about Alchemist much, because I honestly don't care much for this class, but this reflects the general vibe I got. People are very unsatisfied with Alchemist.
I'm not quite sure how to actually make a filter view that shows breakdowns by class. Its helpful to know that I can, I just don't know how to actually do that. Go to the Responses tab and select all of the columns of the responses table (or at least, the one you want to filter by. selecting all just makes it easy to filter by any criteria you want later) Then, under the top bar of menus at the top, there's a bar that's mostly empty and includes a printer icon and an icon that sort of looks like a wine glass (or filter if you prefer ;) ). Click it and it'll open a drop down menu. Select "Create temporary filter" or something like that. After you did that you'll be able to filter results by specific criteria on the values of the columns using drop down menus you can open by clicking the title of each column. Whenever you filter results that way, you can go back to the "Graphs" tab to see graphs related to your filtered results. Halflings and bards could use more data if anyone knows players that have played as those As a gnome bard, I definitely agree with half of that sentence.
Lol, it wasn't completely trivial to set up the live updating results. I honestly thought it was obvious the poll is still going. My bad!
Welp. I actually didn't expect to get enough responses to even make any significant statements - as you said, 9 responses per class aren't merely enough, and I can't say anything about ancestry+class combos. If enough data will be gathered, I won't mind publishing results myself :)
I probably can't stop people from making those kind of mistakes, but you're right - I can certainly try.
Yup, I posted it on reddit first. I don't really hang around these forums a lot, so I didn't think about posting here straight away. But in total the poll was up for about 5-6 hours at the time of posting this, and has 120 responses so far. If anyone has ideas on how to make the sample size greater, I'd be happy to hear them!
Except for the poor alchemist :( But generally, yeah!
You can view them easily by using the Google Spreadsheet filter feature. I have made the graphs specifically to support filtering - Just go to the Responses tab and filter by Class, and you'd get a graph of the enjoyment/power levels of that class. I might consider doing some analysis myself but not soon. I published this hoping people would analyze/discuss the results on their own accord :)
Hello fellow players, I was wondering what's the current meta of classes and ancestries in the game, so I created a google form: Here's a link to the results spreadsheet: You can filter the results in the "Responses" tab and then view the relevant graphs in the "Graphs" tab. This was also posted on the unofficial pathfinder 2e subreddit (reddit post) |
