Back to Rogues and the Tier system.

[Roy]

This discussion was originally in the laugh cry or both thread, but was off topic. So I took initiative in continuing it here.

This is the response to Frank by Jaron, who wrote the tiers.

It's funny how many people want the Rogue to go up a level, yet Rogues are clearly not nearly as strong as Beguilers or Factotums.

I actually like how clear the skillmonkeys are in the placement. Experts are the lowest skillmonkeys... remember, they can UMD just as well as Rogues can, and can use Iajuitsu Focus to get up to 9d6 extra damage, just 1d6 shy of a Rogue. Plus they can use Autohypnosis. However, like Rogues they only really shine if they can make good use of UMD... not always the case in all games (not all games have magic marts). Plus with fewer skill points, they're clearly one step down. And of course other than Iajuitsu Focus they're not exactly spectacular in combat.

Next up is the Rogue. 8+Int skill points, UMD and Diplomacy access, sneak attack. Sneak attack is fun and all, but let's face it, an extra 35 damage at level 20 isn't exactly impressive, and there's an awful lot of foes who are either immune to such damage, hard to sneak attack, or who would simply squish the d6 HD light armour MAD class if the Rogue dared to actually attack. This gets more and more true at higher levels. And yes, you can in theory get items that let you sneak attack certain enemies... maybe. Whether you can use Swift Action spells out of wands as less than a standard action is still debatable (the Rules Compendium may have overridden the DMG rules, or it may have just restated one part and not the other. It's hardly clear). Whether the DM in your game will make such wands available in sufficient quantities is another issue. Whether you get to know your enemies in advance enough to know which wands to get is likewise a question. And whether, after all that, the vampire you just sneak attacked just turns around and squishes you is yet another issue to consider. In the end, Rogues are a nice solid skillmonkey class with some combat potencial, but hardly top material. And this is coming from someone who's first love was Rogues. Heck, in Everquest I played a Rogue. In Oblivion I was a sneaky stealthy archer. In Shadowrun I was a stealthy sniper. But I do know their weaknesses, and they certainly have them. Plus there's the whole "spells trump skills" issue. Nice Open Lock you have... but the door is Arcane Locked. That's okay, the Wizard has Knock.

The scout is somewhere near the Rogue, but I have less experience there, so I'll keep commentary to a minimum on that one.

So then we move up a Tier, to Beguilers and Factotums. Both have spell access... the Beguiler has 9th level spells off a more limited list (but look, Timestop! Mirror Image! Glitterdust!), and the Factotum has the ability to cast Polymorph and Alter Self as spell like abilities. Plus, the Factotum can rock the Iajuitsu Focus and other bizarre skills if he wants. I mean really, Rogues are fun, but they're very clearly not at this level... not by a long shot. Optimize a Beguiler and you get Beguiler 14/Mindbender 1/Shadowcraft Mage 5. Let's see the Rogue build that gets anywhere near this. Optimize a Factotum and you get, well, Factotum 20 with lots of Fonts of Inspiration using FAR too many standard actions per round.

And the top level skill monkeys? Cloistered Cleric and Artificer. Clearly on top.

So, I know a lot of people want Rogues to go up a Tier, but I really don't think it's justified. Do they really think Rogues and Scouts belong with Factotums and Beguilers? Really?

Now, there are other classes I'm thinking of moving. Psionic Warriors to Tier 3 (some very good arguements were made in that direction). Duskblades to Tier 4 (they're on the low edge of 3). Hexblades to Tier 5 (they're on the low edge of Tier 4, but I have a tough time putting a class with Alter Self and Diplomacy in Tier 5). But Rogues? I'm just not seeing it.

JaronK

I think the man has a point. But those here are more knowledgeable than myself for the most part.

[Username17]

I am straight up not going to dignify discussion of Factotums and their place in hierarchies with response. That's a stupid class and literally no one knows how it's supposed to work anyway because it's so badly written.

But regardless, he's going off on a tangent about Artificers and Beguilers which really doesn't make a lot of sense. Mostly because he seems to be making assumptions that are to my mind indefensible. Beguilers exist in a weird place: they don't have access to a lot of the Wizard brokety broken power loops (that many games don't allow people to use anyway), but other than that they are massively better than Wizards. Assuming that your DM isn't going to let you chain bind no matter what class you are, the Beguiler is straight up the most powerful class. He's just like a Wizard except that he gets to spontaneously cast from all the "good" spells. And he gets more skills, better hit points, and so on and so forth.

Artificers are on completely the other end of the field. They can use literally any game breaking trick (and even have their own Skill Dance for infinite caster levels out of staves), but other than that they suck. In fact, at low levels Artificers can't really manage to pull off any cheese whether the DM will ultimately allow it or not, and they really stink up the place with their intense crapiness. A first level Artificer is a drain on party resources and honestly little better than an aristocrat. I get better casting out of a Ranger, because at least a first level Ranger can automatically activate a Wand of CLW.

So by putting crap like the Artificer at the top, he's as much as saying that he expects players to be allowed to use stuff like The Shadow Over the Sun; Chain Binding, and More Wishes. Furthermore, he's pretty much penciling in that he only cares about levels 8-20, and maybe only 12-20. I find that mystifying.

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Simply put, his apparent criteria are bad selection criteria, and don't give meaningful results. A half-way competently played Beguiler will be the star of any show that he is in, from 1st level straight through to 20th, so any tier system that doesn't put the Beguiler at the top is completely out of touch with the way the game is played. An artificer is black hole that the party has to pump resources into for frankly little return for 5-10 levels before he does anything halfway good, so no matter what infinite power engine you happen to notice that an artificer can produce should still never get him into the big boys league. Honestly, pulling even one trick of Real Ultimate Power is pretty much just like any other, so having access to five or twenty of them in-class is no better or different than having just one. So on the world shattering front the artificer is in no better shape than a Dread Necromancer, and he's a lot less survivable and interesting in the meantime.

A Wizard can contribute from 1st level to 20th. He can beat challenges of his level a substantial amount of the time, he can advance the plot, and he can do stuff. By mid-level he can break time and space unless the DM puts a stop on him. That makes the Wizard totally hardcore.

A Rogue can contribute from 1st level to 20th. He can beat challenges of his level a substantial amount of the time, he can advance the plot, and he can do stuff. He never really gets the chance to threaten to destroy the world like the Wizard does, but he's still totally hard core and he can play in the same game as the admittedly more powerful Wizard.

An Artificer can destroy the world eventually if the DM lets him, but he can't contribute from 1st to 20th level. That means that he isn't totally hard core even though he can eventually make scrolls of greater planar binding and make staves of wishes and such.

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JaronK is seemingly judging classes by the worthless criteria of who wins the near-epic slap fight rather than who gets the most high-fives during a long running campaign starting at 1st level. The answer to that is merely "whoever can get the DM to rubber stamp one of the many known and named power loops and break the game." It's not even an interesting discussion at that point. Many of the game-breakers are done entirely with purchasable equipment, meaning that from that standpoint all classes are on essentially equal footing.

From the more rational viewpoint, Beguilers are at the top, with Wizards, Clerics, and Druids close enough on their heels to make no odds. A scant few classes like Rogues, Sorcerers, and Dread Necromancers are largely weaker but still able to keep up to the point that who gets the MVP on the team will often come down to player skill rather than class dominance. Most of the rest of the classes have straight expiration dates: levels of play where they simply can't contribute something level appropriate to the team. Mostly this comes in the form of Fighters or Bards who come in at first level slaughtering goblins with the best of them and gradually fall behind until they wake up one day and realize that they are less important to the team than the Cohort of one of the other players; but in the weird case of the Artificer they live in backwards time where it is the lower levels where they are a drain on party resources and at higher levels they are wading in just as if they were a real spellcaster.

-Username17

[Roy]

I'm not qualified enough to speak too much on this, so I'm just going to hit a few things.

First, what is Shadow Over the Sun?

Jaron seems to be going for anything with a game breaking trick is Tier 1 or 2 depending on spells known vs preparing whatever you need either day. Tier 3 and below contains all the sane ones which range from great to crap. Also the Artificer bit seems to just be saying they're better skill monkeys. *shrugs*

Next, Artificers. Yeah, they aren't doing any game breakers at level 1. Who is, other than Pun-Pun? But they can at least get stuff like Bane: Whatever you're fighting for +2/+2d6 which is a save or die, minus the save part. There's also UMD and stuff. Not so great, but not so bad either. The Wizard is about the same once he casts his 2 Color Sprays. At level 3 he's able to give anyone a 3d8+15 heal as a Swift or non action twice, all for the cost of a single CLW potion. And it goes up from there. It does take them until level 5 to really get going though due to the uses of certain third level infusions.

[Kaelik]

I have a few things to say:

1) I disagree with you Frank about the Beguiler. Sure he has some sweet awesome spells that he casts spontaneously from, but versitality matters for more then just spontaneous casting, A wizard get's a lot of things that he can do that Beguilers never ever can. And that includes dealing with high level intelligent undead, and constructs. Those are fights that Beguilers seriously have to sit out sometimes. And that sucks.

But yes, Beguilers are super sweet the rest of the time, even if they can't be as cool as a Wizard.

2) JaronK is smoking the crack. I don't care that a Shadowcraft mage can use every single spell for Echoed Miracles and basically do whatever the hell he wants. Or that a Factotum could maybe take 34 consecutive standard actions, or just enough to Sneak attack someone for 100d6 damage.

I care that they can both be awesome, and so can the Rogue.

3) JaronK is still smoking the crack. So Beguilers take Shadowcraft Mage but Rogue aren't smart enough to figure out how to get multiple attacks? Really? Yeah, allow me to stab you in the face, 14 times. Because if we are seriously talking about level 20 characters, then that's the minimum number of Sneak attacks.

Or you could just be a Rogue with Otherwordly, get PaOed into an Arrow Demon and have it last all day, and then go to town with you two +1 Splitting Bows while Blinking and hasted. And their you go, ignoring all damage that is not SA, that's still 160d6 in a round. In other words, a lot more then 35 damage.

[Koumei]

I count 10 sneak attacks (4 from the full BAB gained from a spell, 4 from perfect TWF, 1 from rapidshot or whatever it is and 1 from Haste. What am I missing?)

Anyway, that's completely irrelevant. Rogues are almost as good as the big boys - they're just "expert" classes, where you need to know how things work (or just be shown and remember the tricks) to do well. And sometimes you need to argue with a DM, pointing out that what you're doing is not only legal, it's also less broken than what other people are bringing to the table straight from the books.

And I've never cared about Artificers, really. Simply because they outright suck early on, and after that their measure of power is more or less limited only by "What the DM lets you get away with". Which is a shitty balance measure.

As for Beguilers, most of the "immune to Beguilers" critters are high level. By then, it doesn't matter because you're a Beguiler/Rainbow Servant, so with your full caster progression*, you're whipping out Heal spells to explode the undead, and making deals with Outsiders to help you.

So they do get to enjoy the number 1 seat, providing crazy bullshit isn't being allowed. Even ruling that PrCl out, they still have options most of the time, such as constructs unable to interact with (and disbelieve) illusions of lava pits.

*text trumps table. Booyah.

[Voss]

I have a few things to say:

1) I disagree with you Frank about the Beguiler. Sure he has some sweet awesome spells that he casts spontaneously from, but versitality matters for more then just spontaneous casting, A wizard get's a lot of things that he can do that Beguilers never ever can. And that includes dealing with high level intelligent undead, and constructs. Those are fights that Beguilers seriously have to sit out sometimes.

They do not. They have at least a dozen or more spells that undead are not immune to. Largely magic immune constructs like golems are a little trickier, however both are such obvious relative weaknesses that they can go into avoidance, buff party or UMD mode. A wand or two of 'Blow the Fuck Out of Golems' isn't a major investment and the unless you've got a rather randomly focused campaign or a DM who actively hates the beguiler that you can pretty much count on it lasting for the length of the campaign, simply because the damn things are relatively rare.

And for the things that a wizard can do that the beguiler just can't, I suggest advanced learning: [greater] Shadow Conjuration/Evocation, and UMD plus the wands and scrolls of choice.

Unlike the sorcerer, they don't have to choose between versatility and spontaneous casting. They get both, all the time. Things that are immune to mind-affecting spells can be an annoyance, but mostly they're simply a challenge to your creativity. Or, if that fails, your magic item budget.

[Surgo]

Haven't seen you in a while, Voss. Good to have you back.

[K]

Beguilers have among the most forgiving of known spell acquisition methods since you merely need to put the spell on your list to cast it.

So, you can take feats like Arcane Disciple and get nine known spells from a domain (though they can only be cast once a day and you need Wis, so there is some investment in boosting items/spells).

Old tricks like taking PrCs that add spells known are also good since you aren't taking this class to 20 (the designers want a Beguiler to get into melee and Bluff people, but that is retarded). Heck, become a Mage of the Arcane Order and you suddenly get enough Wizard spells to deal with the odd Construct or Vermin that pops up. Carry around a Ring of Theurgy and cast MoAO spells into that and you have three extra spells known to boot for cheap.

People want Beguilers to follow their "class role" of rogue skill monkey who fights in melee and sometimes casts spells, but they are quite powerful if you ditch that and go for the power in their spellcasting. Since skills become far less useful at high level, you basically only need to keep your Disable Device up (if that, since high level Beguilers can drop spells and destroy traps better than Rogues with a minimal investment).

[Kaelik]

*Whoops, double.*

[Kaelik]

1) Maybe it's just how I play Wizards, but Beguilers get none of the good all day buff spells, and even with things like Arcane Disciple/ Advanced Learning Shadow Conjuration/ Rainbow Servant, ect, they still are missing half the good spells of any level (or they have them but without all the things that make them actually good, Shadow conjurations that all SR).

I'm not saying that Beguilers can't do anything against undead, just that throwing down Solid Fog or Illusions is okayish, but doesn't actually help you kill anything, so if for some reason you can't walk past something, you aren't really doing anything much to help.

2) Well JaronK was talking about a melee Rogue getting squished, so I was operating under the assumption of a Barbarian 1/Rogue 19 with 4 BAB/4 Offhand/1 Haste/1 Frenzy/

Then it comes down to having one of the following:

Several spells that give you additional natural weapon attacks
Polymorph, for the same thing
Being a Thrikeen with a few fewer Rogue levels
Or taking Perfect Multi Weapon Fighting instead at level 10, and being Polymorphed.

I think the specific number 14 was a Thrikeen who didn't have Divine Power and I had forgot about Frenzy.

Yeah, you can have 10 touch attacks and be just fine. I'm just saying the point is, if SA comes out to 35 damage, you suck.

Hell, I can do 35 Str damage to some punk with a fortification buckler using SA (okay 36 it works in evens but still) at level 20.

[Roy]

How do they get through Fortification again? *scribbles down some notes*

Someone also told me they can get PTWF at level 10... how the fuck did I miss that?

[Maxus]

How do they get through Fortification again? *scribbles down some notes*

Someone also told me they can get PTWF at level 10... how the fuck did I miss that?

I don't know about the Fortification, buuuut...

You know those Special Abilities they get?

Well, the whoever wrote language which says they can choose a bonus feat, somehow forgot to say Rogues have to meet the requirements of the feat.

So you could have a Rogue running around with Gape of the Serpent. Or anything else that suits you.

[Roy]

Yeah, I already know how. I mentioned it as an example of how this discussion is showing me things I missed.

[Voss]

Haven't seen you in a while, Voss. Good to have you back.

Back at grad school with limited net access from home. Its more productive for me, but it cuts into things like this.

@Kaelik- They get slow. Thats a major help against non-spellcasting undead. Both on the offensive and defensive. There are a few other things along those lines.

[shirak]

How do they get through Fortification again?

Several ways. The easiest is using a Wand of Wraithstrike which makes your attacks touch for a round. It's a Swift spell so you just cast it every round

[ubernoob]

How do they get through Fortification again?

Several ways. The easiest is using a Wand of Wraithstrike which makes your attacks touch for a round. It's a Swift spell so you just cast it every round

How does that ignore a magical effect from the armor/shield?

[Kaelik]

1) Yeah they get Slow, and Solig Fog, and ect. My point is that they have like maybe one option for dealing with things that a Wizard has more and better options for. An I personally play more around level 10-15, so Slow doesn't cut it when the Wizard is using Disintegrate or Wall of Water on the vampires.

2) I'm not bypassing Fortification to do SA damage, I'm using the feats, Savvy Rogue, and the Special Ability that does Str damage on an SA. Savvy Rogue modifies your Str damage so that it works even on creatures immune to SA. Not very helpful against Undead, Golems, Oozes, but it does a world of good against Fortification NPCs, and Elementals.

So between a Wand Chamber with Plant Strike, Grave Strike, Golem Strike, and the Savvy Rogue feat, your sneak attack makes tremendous progress towards taking out every opponent in the game with the exception of Oozes, who we have established, don't count.

So bottom line, you kill or unconscious everything you face that isn't an Ooze.

[ubernoob]

2) I'm not bypassing Fortification to do SA damage, I'm using the feats, Savvy Rogue, and the Special Ability that does Str damage on an SA. Savvy Rogue modifies your Str damage so that it works even on creatures immune to SA. Not very helpful against Undead, Golems, Oozes, but it does a world of good against Fortification NPCs, and Elementals.

Savvy rogue. Forgot that one. Thanks.

[Roy]

That leaves elementals (though deathstrike bracers get them all).

Where is Savvy Rogue from?

[Kaelik]

That leaves elementals (though deathstrike bracers get them all).

Where is Savvy Rogue from?

Savvy Rogue is complete champion, but it doesn't leave elementals, because elementals are not immune to ability damage, so you can Crippling strike that Earth Elemental down to nothing.

[Username17]

1) Yeah they get Slow, and Solig Fog, and ect. My point is that they have like maybe one option for dealing with things that a Wizard has more and better options for. An I personally play more around level 10-15, so Slow doesn't cut it when the Wizard is using Disintegrate or Wall of Water on the vampires.

I'm going to contest that, and quite stridently.

Wizards are a great class, no doubt about it. Even if your DM doesn't allow you to pull world crushing Planar Binding Cheez, you can still collect an awesome array of beat down effects to drop at a moment's notice to bring victory against virtually any opponent. But that doesn't mean that in any particular circumstance you actually have any particular spell. You still have to learn the damn things, and you still have to prepare them ahead of time. A 12th level Wizard gets 4 6th level spells known for free and he can prepare 4 6th level spells in a day. And while that puts him head and shoulders above a Sorcerer, who only knows one 6th level spell and can cast it 4 times, it's still a profound and notable limitation. When you go into an adventure you will have four 6th level spells prepared, and a lot of them will be awesome, and I am willing to bet actual money that none of them are going to be frickin disintegrate, because your spell slots are valuable and there's shit like acid fog to have.

Now the Beguiler does get mightily hosed on his 6th level spell list. Frankly, every single thing on it is crap except mass suggestion and some largely interchangeable illusion spells. Greater Dispelling and overwhelm have uses from time to time, but you're certainly damn glad that you didn't have to set aside daily or known spell slots in order to have access to them. But the thing is that you're a 12th level Beguiler. You can add additional spells to your spell-list in any of a hundred thousand ways. And as soon as you do that, you can cast them spontaneously. That means that when a Beguiler walks in at 12th level, he actually has 4 or more decent 6th level spells to choose from - and some marginal crap that he probably won't use. And that means that he's still standing in better than the Wizard, even when his spell list stops giving him good stuff.

And yeah, until that point, the Beguiler is crawling with crazy crap that he can do to any kind of enemy. Phantom Battle isn't great, but it does hose intelligent undead fairly well. And the important thing is that it doesn't cost you anything to be able to cast it if for whatever reason you want to.

At low levels the Beguiler has more better spells than you do and he can cast them all spontaneously. At high level his inherent spell list s full of bullshit, but by the time you add enough spells to the list it's actually still better than any actual list of prepared spells that a real wizard will actually have.

-Username17

[Caedrus]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

I just can't lend much of any credence to a tier discussion that doesn't outline some sensible criteria for defining its tiers. Last I checked, Jaron's list didn't have that.

Honestly, in half the cases, other build choices are going to have at least as much impact than your class choice (the exception being a few classes that pretty much hand you most of your kit premade, a la the Beguiler), and if you're looking at the "max potential of a class choice assuming the best possible options," then you're actually just looking at tons of game-breaking options no one wants to play with anyways which will just end your game because the rest of the players will walk away, or the DM will grow a brain and tell you that you can't pull that crap. And that's not a useful tier system for anyone to use. Like, at all.

In short, I just think Jaron's entire premise is bullshit. His tiering criteria is bullshit, and the purpose of the tiering itself is bullshit too, if I remember correctly (I'm thinking way back to when he first posted this on the WotC boards). IIRC, his claim was that his tier system would "help you decide which classes are at an appropriate power level for your game." That's bullshit, I can play a waste of space wizard and I can play a broken-ass bard with more or less equal ease. There is a big difference between a sublime chord / war weaver buffer with 9th level spells and a Song of the White Raven TWF blender with 9th level maneuvers, not to mention a straight bard (and as you'll note in Jaron's comments about shadowcraft mages, he *is* considering prestige classes and multiclasses in his analysis, which makes it even more preposterous), and whether or not that bard has access to inspire optimization or not, or whether he decides he likes using Fascinate or just lets his perform skill slide, or whatever. Likewise, there's a big difference between a core wizard that focuses on direct damage evocation without metamagic and an unseen seer, or a core wizard that uses battlefield control, or whatever. They're completely different entities with completely different levels of impact on the game that play in completely different ways, even though they stem from the same base class. It would be absurd to ban the wizard because he's "top tier," you just want to get rid of the absurd IWIN tactics (which tend to be perpetuated by a few specific effects). I don't actually see how his tier system is supposed to help anyone in any way. Can someone point that out to me?

[Leress]

That leaves elementals (though deathstrike bracers get them all).

Where is Savvy Rogue from?

Savvy Rogue is complete champion, but it doesn't leave elementals, because elementals are not immune to ability damage, so you can Crippling strike that Earth Elemental down to nothing.

Actually Savvy Rogue is from Complete Scoundrel.

[Kaelik]

Yeah, sorry, Scoundrel, that's what I meant, I was distracted by something else.

[shirak]

How does that ignore a magical effect from the armor/shield?

Will you believe that I read the Fortification question as "How do I get my attack to be touch? Sorry about that, folks.