Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[Roy]

It's common practice for him. If it supports his argument, it's on. If not, it's not. Even if it's the same exact thing. He's like the Monk defenders. Exactly like them. Has to make up contrived situations, massively nerf the enemies, and still only barely justifies his fail. Real opponents of course automatically annihilate him.

[Username17]

Several people say as much.

You know... I'm one of those people and I forget that people are on both boards like me and Robby.
I also was unaware that Jaronk did that as an M.O., but it does explain a lot. LOL desmondu warbats.

JaronK is of course most famous for his massive thought experiments into placing classes into tiers. While a kind of nifty idea, and a decent enough way to think about stuff, his particular tier assignments were basically insane. Apparently the criteria he used was to assign classes relative strength based on what bullshit he personally would let them get away with at 20th level.

So Factotums were rated very highly, because apparently he would let them use Rokugan-exclusive skills with Forgotten Realms-exclusive weapons from the back of MM2 templated warbeasts. But Rogues suck donkey dick, becuase he wouldn't let them use Use Magic Device to read scrolls of Planar Binding. It was a very surreal argument.

-Username17

[tzor]

He attempted to claim that a super genius Ice Devil (Int 22, Wis 22) who acts remotely intelligently, uses basic tactics, and knows at least a little about the party is +2 CR (originally he said +5, but he was smited so hard he changed to +2).

Did his super Genius Ice Devil also run around with an M16 of sharpness and call himself Hugo? Damn I almost miss Emil and his high level AD&D monk who managed to get the devils to turn him into an ice devil.

[RobbyPants]

And to think the system was immortalized in OOTS. As a general rule, I try to avoid all tier discussion there because it's the De Facto system at BG, and I'm not going to change anyone's mind.

Besides, I think if most people are pressed, they will admit that it's just an estimate, anyway, and that results can vary from table to table.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

My only real complaint with the tier system is that at one point I was tired (tiered?) of hearing about it. And that Jaron tended to be really vocal agains people that didn't agree with it.

[Kaelik]

JaronK is of course most famous for his massive thought experiments into placing classes into tiers. While a kind of nifty idea, and a decent enough way to think about stuff, his particular tier assignments were basically insane. Apparently the criteria he used was to assign classes relative strength based on what bullshit he personally would let them get away with at 20th level.

So Factotums were rated very highly, because apparently he would let them use Rokugan-exclusive skills with Forgotten Realms-exclusive weapons from the back of MM2 templated warbeasts. But Rogues suck donkey dick, becuase he wouldn't let them use Use Magic Device to read scrolls of Planar Binding. It was a very surreal argument.

-Username17

This X1000.

My dealings with JaronK came over disputing rogue vs Factotum shit. When finally it was presented into a "run this adventure, JaronK has a Factotum, I'll have a Rogue"

He threw a hissy fit and refused when he saw my character because:

1) I just used my item familiar to increase all my Iajitsu focus and get extra XP to craft. But you used Item Familiar to get extra Iajistu Focus and UMD, and used your craft XP to turn your familiar into an item that, because it has it's own actions, separate from yours, uses itself as a Wand of Grease to flat foot everyone so you always get SA.

(I had previously argued that he should not take item familiar because it's a dumbass feat that is exploitative. In response, he demanded that he be allowed to take it, and through a hissy fit that I used it better than him.)

2) I just used the warbeast template to make a mount. You used it to make a mount that does more damage than my whole character and grapples so that you can always get SA. Not fair!

(Again, I pointed out that warbeast is dumb, so he should just not use it, he insisted that he had to be allowed to have it, and that if he didn't, we were unfairly nerfing his Factotum. I responded by using Warbeast Template better than him, and making him look stupid, and he declared it an unfair use of Warbeast.)

Bottom line, Factotums are better than Rogues because if you get mad and throw a hissy fit whenever Rogues use the same things as Factotums better than them, and declare that they shouldn't be allowed to use them, the Factotum is still worse, but you get to pretend he's better by denying any tests.

[RobbyPants]

Wow, I just lost a lot of respect for him. I saw those threads explode a couple of years ago and my eyes just glazed over and I never read them.

[Slade]

Bottom line, Factotums are better than Rogues because if you get mad and throw a hissy fit whenever Rogues use the same things as Factotums better than them, and declare that they shouldn't be allowed to use them, the Factotum is still worse, but you get to pretend he's better by denying any tests.

Likely he didn't consider the ramifications of allowing that stuff. He made a mistake, but I agree he shouldn't throw a hissy fit.

He should have just agreed that allowing warbeast/etc was silly and you two should ignore those.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Bottom line, Factotums are better than Rogues because if you get mad and throw a hissy fit whenever Rogues use the same things as Factotums better than them, and declare that they shouldn't be allowed to use them, the Factotum is still worse, but you get to pretend he's better by denying any tests.

Likely he didn't consider the ramifications of allowing that stuff. He made a mistake, but I agree he shouldn't throw a hissy fit.

He should have just agreed that allowing warbeast/etc was silly and you two should ignore those.

The point is that JaronK will keep shifting goalposts until the distorted problem space forces him to be right.

[Juton]

The point I think is that there is no universal delineation between what it TO and what is not TO. I've had a DM who allowed the most abusive interpretations of Contact Other Plane yet banned the combination of active shield defense and Robilar's Gambit. Some people will let a Wizard create his own alternate time demiplane but will ban the monk taking leadership. Without some common standard you are always going to get these arguments about Party A calling Party B a munchkin.

As an aside, this is going to be an unpopular thing to say, but nobody here should judge JaronK by what people you have gotten into flame wars with him have to say about him. The 'responsible' thing would be to read his posts and decide for your self, but JaronK just isn't important enough to justify that expenditure of energy.

[fectin]

So, wasn't the tier paradigm basically good? I don't understand why folks were opposed to it earlier. Not that I'm prepared to defend it; I just don't get the main criticism.

[Juton]

So, wasn't the tier paradigm basically good? I don't understand why folks were opposed to it earlier. Not that I'm prepared to defend it; I just don't get the main criticism.

The Tier system is really abstract. It doesn't take into consideration of optimization or player skill, to be fair Jaron notes this in the preamble. Lets take the Druid for example, the Druid is a 'Tier 1' class, meaning it should be able to handle most level appropriate challenges and has the option to actively 'break the game'. Three people could show up to the game with Druids, one optimizes well but can't think under pressure so his Druid doesn't live up to its potential, maybe it's only 'Tier 2' - Strong but inflexible. One player is new so hasn't mastered much, his Druid is 'Tier 4' - Adequate. The last player optimizes very well and works well under pressure, his Druid has a bunch of feats from 3 different settings and he's multi-classed with Planar Shepherd, he is 'Tier 1'.

Now despite the group taken measures to make sure the party is balanced against itself, using the Tier sytem is supposed to help in that, we have an unbalanced party, the Tier system hasn't provided balance.

[Slade]

So, wasn't the tier paradigm basically good? I don't understand why folks were opposed to it earlier. Not that I'm prepared to defend it; I just don't get the main criticism.

The Tier system is really abstract. It doesn't take into consideration of optimization or player skill, to be fair Jaron notes this in the preamble. Lets take the Druid for example, the Druid is a 'Tier 1' class, meaning it should be able to handle most level appropriate challenges and has the option to actively 'break the game'. Three people could show up to the game with Druids, one optimizes well but can't think under pressure so his Druid doesn't live up to its potential, maybe it's only 'Tier 2' - Strong but inflexible. One player is new so hasn't mastered much, his Druid is 'Tier 4' - Adequate. The last player optimizes very well and works well under pressure, his Druid has a bunch of feats from 3 different settings and he's multi-classed with Planar Shepherd, he is 'Tier 1'.

Now despite the group taken measures to make sure the party is balanced against itself, using the Tier sytem is supposed to help in that, we have an unbalanced party, the Tier system hasn't provided balance.

But the Tier system is about potential. What you could be with that class. It even says in the Tier Thread players will change what level you are at.
A fighter will never be Tier 1, but he can be higher on the tier list with the right player.

[Juton]

But the Tier system is about potential. What you could be with that class. It even says in the Tier Thread players will change what level you are at.A fighter will never be Tier 1, but he can be higher on the tier list with the right player.

Potential is a hard thing to measure, especially across a large player base. A Wizard can be anywhere from Tier 1 too Tier 6 depending on player skill. A Fighter is supposed to be Tier 5, but even a merely decent allocation of its feats and it's WBL puts it into Tier 4, if you go full bore with the splat books you can bump it up to somewhere in Tier 3 probably. I don't know enough about the dirty tricks of optimization to say whether you can get it any higher than that.

So only in an abstract sense a Wizard is Tier 1, the Fighter Tier 5. The Tiers provide a bit of an upper bound (+1/+2 Tiers) but no lower bound. So it breaks down anytime you actually have to play with other humans of differing skill. I think the only real use of the Tier system is class design (maybe?) by measuring the abilities you are giving to a class.

Actually the most valuable thing I've seen it done is provide a jumping on point for discussing issues of game balance and kind of explaining why some classes suck and some seem so much more powerful. That's enough to make me thankful it was written.

[Username17]

So, wasn't the tier paradigm basically good? I don't understand why folks were opposed to it earlier. Not that I'm prepared to defend it; I just don't get the main criticism.

The tier paradigm is basically useless because it doesn't have any consistent baselines and makes no recommendations for playing the game that are in any way meaningful or helpful. So let's say you have a player who wants to play a Wizard. The tier system says this is very high tier. But why is it high tier? It's high tier because there is a bunch of crazy crap that JaronK will allow in games of course, but what if the player wants to shoot fireballs at things? Even if he wants to do something awesome instead of that, what should you actually challenge the player with? The tiers don't come with any encounter guidelines, so it's a waste of time.

An actually coherent discussion of the concept is handled on the D&D Wiki as Balance Points. This is distinct from Tiers in that it actually acknowledges the fact that classes don't always perform up to expectations and discusses how the different balance points affect play and appropriate challenges. It's basically meaningless to say that "character A is of a class that has more potential power than character B". It is very useful to say "character A is playing a class which with clever play is capable of taking out challenges substantially above his level once he gets past level 6."

-Username17

[Slade]

Which came first: discussion of Tiers or Balance points? If tiers came first than you would at least admit he laid the ground work for discussion how classes compare (even if he didn't mean to do only that).

If Tiers came second or same time, did he create it based on that or both randomly had a similar idea?

BTW, why is a blaster wizard only Fighter level, not Rogue level? Would the other spells/tricks raise his capabilities even he regularly blasted?

[Juton]

Which came first: discussion of Tiers or Balance points? If tiers came first than you would at least admit he laid the ground work for discussion how classes compare (even if he didn't mean to do only that).

If Tiers came second or same time, did he create it based on that or both randomly had a similar idea?

BTW, why is a blaster wizard only Fighter level, not Rogue level? Would the other spells/tricks raise his capabilities even he regularly blasted?

The idea of 'Tiers' predates JaronK's posts on the subject, for a long time fighting game aficionados have sorted characters into Tiers. It's a bit better applied in that context because the upper bound of player performance is limited by reaction time, and players sometimes have a ranking. Since you can get two players with comparable skill things like character or style choice can make a very evident difference.

[Username17]

That and the statement "It is equally valid to balance the Fighter up to the Cleric's level as it is to balance the Cleric down to the Fighter's. Or you could balance the Fighter up to the Rogue and the Cleric down to the Rogue." was a statement I made on the WotC board in what, 2001? It might have been as far back as 2000. The idea that different characters have different levels of power, and that there is no objective criteria for determining which levels are too strong and which are too weak is super old.

JaronK's only real contribution to the idea was to shout so loud that people gave up even trying to have a reasonable conversation about where those different balance points were on boards he frequents and... no... I think that was pretty much it. Various people have actually done stuff with this idea. Fuck, K and I presented alternate versions of the Fighter, Barbarian, and even Monk that can play in the same sandbox that a Wizard is in. What has JaronK produced other than fifty page tirades justifying his placement of classes in various tiers based on bizarre hypotheticals like your DM giving you access to scrolls written by the Rokugan-exclusive Shugenja so that your does-not-exist-in-Rokugan Archivist can have a badass personal spell list?

As far as I know, he hasn't produced any alternate versions of classes or character options that shift characters from one tier to another. Nor has he produced any coherent writings about designing adventures for parties composed of characters from various tiers. It's just weird musings about power levels for Theoretical Optimization for use in 20th level character-on-character arena fighting. And he doesn't even win those arena battles when other people are allowed access to the same bullshit he demands.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

Bottom line, Factotums are better than Rogues because if you get mad and throw a hissy fit whenever Rogues use the same things as Factotums better than them, and declare that they shouldn't be allowed to use them, the Factotum is still worse, but you get to pretend he's better by denying any tests.

Likely he didn't consider the ramifications of allowing that stuff. He made a mistake, but I agree he shouldn't throw a hissy fit.

He should have just agreed that allowing warbeast/etc was silly and you two should ignore those.

Except, that when I specifically offered, "Hey we can just drop those things." His response was basically, "How about you drop them because what you are doing is unfair, but I keep them." JaronK is nothing if not a hypocrit.

[Surgo]

Link to the new wiki's article on it: click. The old wiki kind of looks like ass at this point (thanks Wikia!).

[fectin]

So it was essentially string theory: fairly cool, but basically without impacts or implications?

I only read the original post a couple months ago (terribly delinquent, I know), but it basically made sense. I get that he never went anywhere with it, but JaronK being totally crazy seems like wierd reason to discount it.

Balance points seems fundamentally the same. Essentially, you're naming each point for a class, instead of giving it its own name and sort of averaging several classes. Why is the BP system better, aside from having things actually based on it? (That's a real reason, but isn't inherent).

[Juton]

The main problem I have with balance points is that it tests a character in isolation, when the vast majority of D&D games require people to work in groups. I also don't think balance points would work to balance a campaign either, a player can sandbag a strong character fairly easily, and a character who is apparently too strong being run by a weak player could be acceptable.

The closest thing I've seen to a factor that can balance characters in a campaign is a good DM, but they don't catch anything and even doing their best casters tend to come out way more powerful then non-casters.

[K]

The main problem I have with balance points is that it tests a character in isolation, when the vast majority of D&D games require people to work in groups.

I've never bought that argument. I mean, a party of weak characters is not going to be able to beat level-appropriate challenges even if they are covering each others' weaknesses.

Even worse is the party of weak and strong characters. They can beat challenges, but the weak characters get constantly reminded that they aren't very good. Some players don't notice that, but most will.

I also don't think balance points would work to balance a campaign either, a player can sandbag a strong character fairly easily, and a character who is apparently too strong being run by a weak player could be acceptable.

The closest thing I've seen to a factor that can balance characters in a campaign is a good DM, but they don't catch anything and even doing their best casters tend to come out way more powerful then non-casters.

Well, DM correction is always a problem-solver, but only if you recognize what the problem is. I mean, the mandatory artifact sword needs to be handed to the fighter around level 10, but if you think the fighter is as good as the Wizard you aren't going to realize that.

[Spike]

Was there a discussion area on the ordering of the balance points? Most of it seems pretty self evident, but not everything.

At the risk of sounding like a dunce, my experience with rogues on both sides of the screen is that they generally come across as inferior, frequently lower than the Fighter. Having seen exactly one person play a warlock I can't get why they are so low on the chart (with the monk). They even share the ability to UMD... which I'm guessing is the big 'winner' for the Rogue?

[Aharon]

For sake of completeness, here's the Test of Spite Tier System. It shifts the focus from classes to builds. This is useful for PvP and if a bunch of players who are fairly well-versed in optimization want to find a common ground to play.

Here's the ToS Tier System as I remember it:

Tier -2: Pun Pun

Tier -1: An unbeatable build.

Tier 0: An effectively unbeatable build, though it can actually be beaten by the higher Tiers.

Tier .5: A build that can probably only be beaten if you have specifically prepared for it. Example: Sofawall's Cube build.

Tier 1: A build that has many effective tricks, insanely high defenses, and can end most encounters in a round. Example: A very effectively played Batman wizard.

Tier 2: Multiple great tricks and great defenses. Where I usually build for. Example: A CoDzilla or a Warmarked.

Tier 3: A build that either has one great trick or a lot of moderately good ones, while still having stellar defenses. Example: A well made Warblade, a good tripper, or a buff focused Sorcerer.

Tier 4: A build that, while still having a trick or two, has fallen very short on the defensive side of the line or has great defenses without being able to defeat an opponent on its own very easily. Example: A Charging Fighter or a VoP Monkadin.

Tier 5: A build that, while attempting to be optimized, still has neither good defenses nor a worthwile trick. Example: A typical fighter.

Tier 6: A build that *twitch* chooses feats for flavor reasons *twitch*