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This is just a quick question, well three. I am sure it has been answered elsewhere.
I have seen people talk about Tier 1 classes, tier 2 classes, tier 3 classes etc.
I assume this is a way of ranking the classes.
How are they being ranked? By power? By versatility?
I suppose the other half of my question is which classes fall in what tiers? Thank you
Oh and I almost forgot where did this “gear score” like concept of tiers come from?
Thanks
I think the Tier thing came from WoTC's message board - specifically the optimization board.
The classes were ranked by versatility and power and tended to focus on higher level ability.
I don't think anyone ever agreed on how many tiers or what exactly what each one meant but in general Tier 1 was good at every role, Tier 2 was good at most roles. Tier 3 could do one thing well, and Tier 4 was lousy at everything.
Tier 1 were full casters - wizard, cleric, druid, and sometimes the sorcerer. The Archivist was placed here as well.
In pathfinder, I don't think the tiers are such a big deal. Between spell and class feature nerfs, and boosting melee capabilities, the classes are much more on par with each other then they were in 3.5.
We played through AoW in 3.5 and by the end the rogue and fighter were nothing more then cheerleaders for the wizard and cleric. We haven't seen that so far in Pathfinder.
actually it came from the BG boards, where a lot of the WoTC optimizers went after the big shakeup. You'll only see the terminology used by people who hold optimization as a creedo, and assume the entire game is going to be played by their rules.
I wouldn't worry about such things. In any game where people play tiers, the DM is letting them get away with abusing the system, without turning around and using the same abuse on them, or taking advantage of their single-mindedness. There's also this incredible bias of it being totally okay to nerf the fighter and rogue into uselessness into a combat, but do the same thing to a spellcaster, and they whine discrimination.
Never agreed with the Tiers.
==Aelryinth
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I think the Tier thing came from WoTC's message board - specifically the optimization board.
The classes were ranked by versatility and power and tended to focus on higher level ability.
I don't think anyone ever agreed on how many tiers or what exactly what each one meant but in general Tier 1 was good at every role, Tier 2 was good at most roles. Tier 3 could do one thing well, and Tier 4 was lousy at everything.
Tier 1 were full casters - wizard, cleric, druid, and sometimes the sorcerer. The Archivist was placed here as well.
In pathfinder, I don't think the tiers are such a big deal. Between spell and class feature nerfs, and boosting melee capabilities, the classes are much more on par with each other then they were in 3.5.
We played through AoW in 3.5 and by the end the rogue and fighter were nothing more then cheerleaders for the wizard and cleric. We haven't seen that so far in Pathfinder.
Agreed, all our Melee classes are still tearing it up at high levels in Pathfinder, while our rogue in the 3.5 high level has had to get DM help to stay competitive other than finding traps.
The term might have been adopted from fighting games. In a fighter if a character was easy to use and had high priority on his moves he was a high tier character. Of course their tier ranking system was slightly different, S tier was the best fallowed by A, B, C, D & F.
It's been a long time since I've played street fighter or any other fighting game. I was involved in some competitions, never won one, but it dose have a similar logic to it.
No, no, tiers for classes here is used by BG guys specifically referring to JaronK's post on their boards (and then cross-posed to WoTC) breaking classes down into Tiers of usefulness.
==Aelryinth
Here's the thread:
Link
actually it came from the BG boards, where a lot of the WoTC optimizers went after the big shakeup. You'll only see the terminology used by people who hold optimization as a creedo, and assume the entire game is going to be played by their rules.
I wouldn't worry about such things. In any game where people play tiers, the DM is letting them get away with abusing the system, without turning around and using the same abuse on them, or taking advantage of their single-mindedness. There's also this incredible bias of it being totally okay to nerf the fighter and rogue into uselessness into a combat, but do the same thing to a spellcaster, and they whine discrimination.
Never agreed with the Tiers.
==Aelryinth
YOu got the first part right, but the rest are more or less the opposite.
The tier system assumes three things.
1) You're playing by the DMG guidelines and you have little if not zero houserules.
2) The players themselves are roughly equal and know the game fairly well
3) You are interested in either a) gauging the vague ability of individual characters and how to best challenge them or b) wish to make houserules to help your players but don't know where to start.
If anything, the purpose of the tier system is to see that spellcasters need to be nerfed somehow, and that martial classes need to be brought up - not the other way around. And if anything the purpose is to find dirty tricks and which classes are basically Cheese Elementals and how to best deal with them.
What the tier thing does is provide a baseline. You hear someone say "I want to make an archivist" and you can glance in and see "Archivists can have incredible campaign altering abilities" and decide to keep an eye on him. You hear someone say "I want to make a soulknife" and you can glance in and see "Soulknives are weaker then NPC classes" and start thinking on how to better help his character, potentially through houserules.
It also lets you gauge threats better. If you have a group of players who are all tier 4 and 5 classes, then you can more easily choose problems, combats, encounters, skill checks, etc, that are challenging but no TPK guranteed. That same encounter would be laughably easy to a group of all tier 1 classes - which is why again, you look at the group and think "Ok, it's a spirit shaman, a factotum, a beguiler, and a gish - I'm going to need to bring out the big guns for this group." Or, alternately, "I have a fighter, a soulknife, a warlock, and a healer; I better go easy on them, this could get bad fast."
Ninety nine percent of problems with the tier system comes from people who don't understand it. Now, hopefully, I've helped you understand it :)
Oh yes, and classes are not ranked on combat power, which is another big misconception. They're ranked by their ability to conquer encounters - encounters being more then just a fight. One example was to give a set of three full "quests" with all the problems that would involve it. So, one quest is to kill a dragon atop an icy mountain. How would the class get the information, climb the mountain, deal with getting into the cave, and then challenge and defeat the dragon? The lowest of tiers wouldn't be able to do any of the above, the lower ones would maybe be able to do one or two but not the rest at all (or they'd be vaguely bad at all of them), the middle 3 tier would either be rather decent at all of them or decent enough at a few and really good at the rest, and tier 1 could easily do the whole thing in their sleep.
That why full casters make all of tier 1 - because for just about everything that can come up in an encounter, they have a spell or ability to handle it. It's also why fighters are rated so low - even the super pimped out awesome uberchargers who do stupid damage and one-hit everything...can't actually REACH the dragon or learn about it in the first place.
Stuff.
But what can you do if you have an archivist and a soulknife in the same team ? How can you challenge the archivist without making the soulknife look useless ? This is the problem with mixed tiers parties.
Stuff.But what can you do if you have an archivist and a soulknife in the same team ? How can you challenge the archivist without making the soulknife look useless ? This is the problem with mixed tiers parties.
Indeed it is, which is why having the DM understand tiers is useful. Of course, ProfessorCirno already answered your question:
You hear someone say "I want to make an archivist" and you can glance in and see "Archivists can have incredible campaign altering abilities" and decide to keep an eye on him. You hear someone say "I want to make a soulknife" and you can glance in and see "Soulknives are weaker then NPC classes" and start thinking on how to better help his character, potentially through houserules.
Stuff.But what can you do if you have an archivist and a soulknife in the same team ? How can you challenge the archivist without making the soulknife look useless ? This is the problem with mixed tiers parties.
It is a problem assuming the players are equal which is not often true. A good player can hold his own with a lesser class.
But what can you do if you have an archivist and a soulknife in the same team ? How can you challenge the archivist without making the soulknife look useless ? This is the problem with mixed tiers parties.
Ideally you address this as early as character creation.
I'm running a game right now where the character creation process was informed by my understanding of tiers and where each of the classes my players chose fall. As a result (to give one easy example), the sorcerer and oracle are built off of X point buy, whereas the monk and rogue have attributes that aren't overpowering but if costed out would be around 1.5X-2X point buy.
It's somewhat important to note that the player DOES matter. I'm in a game with an archivist now and he hardly rules the world with his almight tier 1 class. A wizard who does nothing but cast fireball isn't going to break your campaign ;p.
That said, it's far easier to accidentally be worse then you "could" be then it is to purposefully be better. In other words, without DM help, it's a lot easier to go down tiers then it is to rise up them. A wizard can plummet himself to the lowest of tiers depending on what spells he chooses and how he acts. A soulknife isn't going to hit tier 2 or 1, period.
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That said, it's far easier to accidentally be worse then you "could" be then it is to purposefully be better. In other words, without DM help, it's a lot easier to go down tiers then it is to rise up them. A wizard can plummet himself to the lowest of tiers depending on what spells he chooses and how he acts. A soulknife isn't going to hit tier 2 or 1, period.
..so, really, the most important thing is:
It would seem that a good DM caters for the player and the player's, understanding of the class.