Power's Tier List for Pathfinder

[Kaelik]

2) The reason they have to be compared to others is for a 'line' for the average ability to deal with various challenges. Otherwise, whats fast and whats slow? Rogue 1 will deal with the same issue as rogue 2 the same. But how does that compare to the others. Thats the point of the tiers.

a) No, it's challenges, not other characters. Unless you really are contending that writing the Lightning Warriors makes all other classes Tier 6?
b) The Rogue didn't get worse at anything he did relative to pretty much every other character. He's less better at a few minor things that no one really cared about anyway (skills) and he does slightly less damage against enemies with high flat footed non touch ACs (unless you have guns, then he does the same damage).

3) shit happens, things get nerfed. Theres other classes that got hit by Quick Draw nerf

I'm not sure what the point of this is? Do you have some sort of attachment to Pathfinder that somehow prevents you from admitting the obvious fact that Jason Bulman said it was impossible to make a ranged rogue that attacks flat footed touch AC and gets SA all the time, and then immediately after someone showed him how it works, he threw a fit and then Pathfinder coincidentally changed all the exact same things that he complained about when someone presented the build?

4a) Nothing should be on the same tier as commoner, but remember, tier 6 is the lowest rung. That's as low as you can go.

Yes, almost like people are just slapping rogue on the lowest tier without even reading the tier entries or thinking about the class at all.

4b) what tier do you think it belongs in?

Well I think that the tiers don't measure anything meaningful and aren't useful, but to the extent they purport to measure things, they have descriptions of what a class has to be like to end up in each tier.

So if I told you there was a class that does the most damage in the game, and can kill 90% of the monsters in one round if it gets a full attack from within 30ft, (Obviously some monsters can try to prevent this) which of these do you think that is:
"Capable of doing one thing quite well, but often useless when encounters require other areas of expertise"
"Capable of doing only one thing, and not necessarily all that well,"
"Not even capable of shining in their own area of expertise."

And there's your answer. (Except if you answer wrong.)

*** another note, some of the things you are saying, and they are written, sound angry to me. Don't get mad at us for helping you understand the ideas behind each class's ratings. Obviously, you aren't happy with where the rogue is... we'll hear your clean and reasonable arguments for changing things for the class.

No, you really won't. The defining characteristic of the Tiers is that anyone who makes a list will kill their own mother before admitting to making a mistake. I'm not angry, and you aren't helping to explain anything, because people have not presented a single cogent argument relating to the actual tier classifications, just "man rogues do some things better and some things worse, so they suck now!"

[zook1shoe]

That was easy, I guess I only need to ask based on the last half of your post....

If you think the whole tier system is broken.... why are you complaining that the rogue is where it is and for what reasons?

[Kaelik]

If you think the whole tier system is broken.... why are you complaining that the rogue is where it is and for what reasons?

Maybe for the reasons I stated in my last post... Nah... couldn't be that.

[Power]

Kaelik, moved the Rogue back up to Tier 5 for now. Now, Ring of Blinking beats the Eversmoking Bottle in that blindsight and the like do not constitute counters to it and that it does not require your entire team to invest in obtaining the appropriate feats/class features/items/etc to avoid being similarly crippled by the mist or smoke. The other reason why the Rogue and Expert moved down a tier is thanks to the new skill system. One of the distinguishing points of a Rogue's combat utility was in particular his ability to UMD magic items for desired effects. Pathfinder has trivialized the difficulty of obtaining UMD to the point where they not only doled it out to spellcasters wholesale but where traits (Dangerously Curious, Underlying Principles, Adopted->Bauble Fascination) and alternate racial traits (Fey Thoughts on almost all the Core races) will grant you UMD as a class skill and any class with a high charisma (like the Paladin, of all things) is now a deft hand at UMD even without making it a class skill and with the right trait (Pragmatic Activator or Clever Wordplay) you could even use UMD as an int-based skill instead. This diminishes a Rogue's niche in the sense not that someone can do the Rogue's job better but in the sense that everyone and their grandmother can do that as well as a Rogue or better and therefore it is no longer a perk of playing the Rogue.

The Rogue's status as a skill-monkey in general has also been undermined by the PF approach to skills.

[Kaelik]

Now, Ring of Blinking beats the Eversmoking Bottle in that blindsight and the like do not constitute counters to it

Except that True Seeing and See Invis are counters to blinking, and those are substantially more prevalent and easier to get than Blindsight "and the like" by which I mean, just blindsight, because there are no other extra sensory modes that prevent enemies from being flat-footed at all.

One of the distinguishing points of a Rogue's combat utility was in particular his ability to UMD magic items for desired effects.

See now this, is an actual explanation. I mean, it's weird, because the only combat utility provided by UMD is wands of Grave/Golem/Plantstrike which the Rogue gets natively, because everything else UMD does is decidedly out of combat or absurd TO nonsense, but this at least counts as an explanation.

Of course, I'm not sure how not being able to do out of combat things with UMD makes the rogue somehow not capable of doing huge amounts of damage well, since it wasn't contributing to his ability to do that before either. So definitely wrong, but at least an explanation.

[zook1shoe]

If you think the whole tier system is broken.... why are you complaining that the rogue is where it is and for what reasons?

Maybe for the reasons I stated in my last post... Nah... couldn't be that.

could you please be a little less aggressivly abrasive? We dont need another Soro on the boards.

[phaedrusxy]

If you think the whole tier system is broken.... why are you complaining that the rogue is where it is and for what reasons?

Maybe for the reasons I stated in my last post... Nah... couldn't be that.

could you please be a little less aggressivly abrasive? We dont need another Soro on the boards.

I guess you haven't met Kaelik before.

[zook1shoe]

Not that i know of.... i do remember Cyclone Joker, which Kaelik has some similarities to

[NumberKruncher]

After talking to two separate friends about how wonderful the gunslinger is, im surprised to see it so low. I guess it's because they're essentially a one trick pony, right?

[Kaelik]

After talking to two separate friends about how wonderful the gunslinger is, im surprised to see it so low. I guess it's because they're essentially a one trick pony, right?

Don't know anything about Gunslinger, but they have Bolt Ace Gunslinger (whatever that is) as Tier 4. And technically, according to the Tier system, if you have a class that does 999999999999 untyped damage with no touch attack and no save to anything with 6 miles bypassing line of effect and line of sight, you could still never get above Tier 4.

I suspect that in placing Bolt Ace Gunslinger, they just arbitrarily noticed that one specific whatever was better than the others, and then shunted Gunslinger down a Tier for no reason. Sort of like how Wizard (Conjurer) and Wizard (Generalist) and Wizard (Transmuter) and Wizard (Necromancer) and Wizard (Illusionist) and Wizard (Enchanter) are Tier 1, but Wizard is only Tier 2...

I sure hope Bolt Ace is a 3rd party source or something, because otherwise the distinction doesn't make much sense.

[Ice9]

I don't understand that one at all.  Bolt Ace is just Gunslinger but uses crossbows instead of guns.  From a quick read, it seems weaker than normal Gunslinger, since it has to spend Grit to do touch attacks.  Is this assuming some sort of spell-storing bolt antics?  Or is one of their deeds deceptively good?

Also, Gunslinger being below T4 to begin with is dumb.  By mid-level, Gunslinger reliably kills most things that aren't specifically made to counter them.  Far away?  Deeds for that.  Miss chance?  Deeds for that.  DR?  Feat for that.  High touch AC?  Good fucking luck, you're going against someone with full BAB + Dex primary + enhancement bonus; Monk, for example, is not nearly enough.

Even some of the specifically anti-gun spells/items are woefully insufficient - 3-4 more points of AC won't help when the Gunslinger would hit you on a -5.  And Bullet Magnets won't last a single round, even if you make them out of Adamantine.

So is the rating based on "with no items" or "not at all optimized" or something?  That doesn't seem very useful.


Edit: On further inspection, what is up with this whole list?  How is the Slayer's ability to "do a bunch of damage" and "be good at skills" a tier higher than the Rogue's ability to "do a bigger bunch of damage" and "be good at slightly more skills"?  Same deal with the Ninja. 

Also, not convinced Investigator is T3; yes, it has extracts, but I've never seen a build that was very impressive for it.  And Unchained Monk is not T6, come on; it may be a Monk but it can deal damage moderately well, enough to hang out with Fighter and Vanilla Brawler at least.  And some of the Monk archetypes reach T4.

[Kaelik]

Also, Gunslinger being below T4 to begin with is dumb.  By mid-level, Gunslinger reliably kills most things that aren't specifically made to counter them.  Far away?  Deeds for that.  Miss chance?  Deeds for that.  DR?  Feat for that.  High touch AC?  Good fucking luck, you're going against someone with full BAB + Dex primary + enhancement bonus; Monk, for example, is not nearly enough.

Because what the Tiers purport to measure is absolute nonsense. As I said, if you instantly win every fight in the entire game in a single standard action from any range whether you are aware of enemies or not, whether they specifically design themselves to beat you or not, and whether there is a wall in the way or not, then you get Tier 4. If you are a level 10 character that casts 2nd level spells off "all lists" with a spells know limit of 2 per spell level you are Tier 3.

Because Tiers don't measure actual ability to deal with challenges, they measure number of things a member of that class could hypothetically do (even if no single character can do them).

Edit: On further inspection, what is up with this whole list?  How is the Slayer's ability to "do a bunch of damage" and "be good at skills" a tier higher than the Rogue's ability to "do a bigger bunch of damage" and "be good at slightly more skills"?  Same deal with the Ninja.

Because Tiers are based on the personal preferences of the people who make classes... Just ask the Factotum.

[Keldar]

Every class can play rocket tag, in which case who wins is just initiative.  Tiers are trying to be about versatility and the ability to break the game outside of the easily achieved damage spam.  They're a ballpark figure intended to help keep a party on a playing field level enough to make that part of a DM's job easier.  They have never been, and never will be an absolute.

You don't like them.  Noted.  No reason to keep arguing.  Weather anyone likes them is irrelevant.  They're all just opinion.  Man.

[Kaelik]

Every class can play rocket tag, in which case who wins is just initiative.  Tiers are trying to be about versatility and the ability to break the game outside of the easily achieved damage spam.  They're a ballpark figure intended to help keep a party on a playing field level enough to make that part of a DM's job easier.

Or alternatively, the class that wins is the one that has the ability to shoot Rockets through walls, X-Ray Vision, and an Anti-Rocket Shield.

Tiers are about measuring hypothetical nonsense versatility, it's like versatility, but your character isn't versatile, but the possibility that you could have made a completely different character with completely different abilities means you are special nonsense versatile, even though you still aren't.

Also, no, not every class can play Rocket Tag, half of Tier 2 and 3 can't play Rocket tag at all.

Saying "You can't let a Summoner and a Gunslinger play in the same party because the Summoner is too versatile!" is super unhelpful, since 1) There is no possible reason in the universe for versatility to actually mean you can't play the same game as another more or less versatile class. 2) The Summoner isn't very versatile, 3) the hypothetical kill everything in one round from any range regardless of concealment Gunslinger is way more powerful, so if you did let them play in the same game, it would be the Summoner that felt bad.

[Ice9]

Every class can play rocket tag, in which case who wins is just initiative.  Tiers are trying to be about versatility and the ability to break the game outside of the easily achieved damage spam.

That's what T1-T4 is about, but at T4 you've already hit "one trick pony" status.  The difference between T4/T5/T6 is merely how well the class does its one trick.  And Gunslinger does its one trick very well, therefore T4.

Whether that's a useful measurement is up for argument.  It is at least fairly easy to measure, compared to something like "expected performance against both tactical and strategic challenges over the course of a campaign", so I can see the appeal.

That said, I would argue that as far as the significant majority of games are concerned, "having good enough numbers in social skills" gives as much or more versatility/screen time/plot changing ability than having weak (anything less than Bard, amount or versatility wise) spellcasting, which most tier lists I've seen don't take into account. 

[Chrononaut]

I dont' know if this is all the thought going into the realitive list, but I did have a thought on my way to and from the washroom about this.

"My Gun of Kill Everything should make my character higher than Tier 4! It does infinite damage to everything within 2 miles at will!"

T1: Wind Wall
KillGun: No it goes through that.
T1: Ok, Wall of Iron aligned so it's lengthwise between me and you.
KillGun: No, it goes through that too.
T1: Prismatic wall.
KillGun: Goes through those too.
T1: I'll go Incorporeal
Killgun: Its magical
T1: I'll Plane Shift to the shadow plane or something
Killgun: Its transdimensional
T1: Ok, Project Image
Killgun: Also, the bullets see through illusions
T1: Clone
Killgun: It uh, kills your clone when it hits you
T1: Familiar with revival scroll
Killgun: It kills your familiar too
T1: Astral Projection
Killgun: It kills you through that too! It's a goddamn sphere of annihilation on a stick okay!
T1: Scry and die you.
Killgun: While i'm using it I get complete immunity to magic that allows a saving throw or targets a single creature! Also I get a forbiddance effect around me!
T1: So you fire a 100% sure kill bullet that dispels or dissipates all magical effects, ignores all miss chances and completely undoes every defense against death a T1 caster might have that I've thought to name, and makes you always win initiative because otherwise I'll run.
Killgun: Yes!
T1: I'll use divination to find out when you're going to be within 2 miles of me.
Killgun: Aarrrgh!

So THAT ABILITY might be enough to move a KillGun up from tier 4 to tier 3? (And not the one the actual gunsligner has) 

Or is my little script totally off base?

[Kaelik]

So let's start with:

1) You are contending that 8th level Wizard spells with a Material Component, or literally dying and having someone else to revive you counts as somehow not losing. Those are losses. Clone mitigates losses (XP, but not even gold, because they still get all your items). Dying and being raised by someone else is losing and coming back without items and down a level. (Unless you mean literally the spell that you cast the round after death, in which case, yeah, if you are standing right next to the corpse, he can shoot your familiar too).

2) You are contending that because a 9th level Wizard spell allows you to sort of survive the effect but lose the fight (Astral Projection), that this means the class is somehow not as good as Tier 3 classes that could never even get access to that effect at all.

3) Scry and Die only matters if you have defenses or attacks superior to the person you are scrying and dieing. Usually you accomplish that by slapping on all the short term buffs, if he still kills you the second you appear next to him in a single round, even when you are buffed up, then yeah, that didn't accomplish much.

4) Your ability to spend several divination spells to run away from someone hardly counts as a win at all.

5) Most importantly of all: It's not a fucking PC vs PC war. If a PC can instantly win every fight he's ever involved in across the entire campaign, then it doesn't matter if hypothetically a wizard could hide from him forever, fuck it, a level 17 Wizard can hide from anyone forever, you just Cast Mindblank every day while sitting on your own demiplane. This is literally the reason that Wizards are actually fine to have in almost any party, because casting Stinking Cloud or Solid Fog or Phantasmal Killer doesn't instantly win every fight, it just allows you to contribute to almost every fight as much as you are supposed to, but uber chargers who do 500k damage per attack are not fine to play with, because even though every single enemy could open up with Kelgore's Grave Mist on the first round of every combat (until they start Polymorph Any Objecting into an undead), it still dictates that the character is either the MVP who instantly wins the fight, or a piece of shit who does nothing.

As your X damage bastard scales up into bypassing more and more defenses (attack from range, always hits, bypasses total concealment, bypasses total cover and therefore can hit you through walls, can locate you through walls, ect.) it just becomes more problematic for the actual game.

It's why you can theoretically play a game with an Incantatrix, but not with a Tainted Scholar. The game ceases to function as soon as you can cast spells with DC 9999999. Likewise, the game ceases to function when you can do 500000 damage from a mile away ignoring concealment and cover. Because even if a theoretical Wizard could cast Divinations to hide forever, they can do that to any PC, and the Demons and Devils and other enemies you actually fight in the actual game are all going to instantly die.

TL;DR: The problem isn't that a super death class that instantly wins all fights ever should be ranked higher than Tier 4, it's that the Tier system alleges to help DMs figure out who should or shouldn't be in a party together. But Rogue/Wizard is a great party because both make the other one better and happy, and Hypothetical SuperMega Gunslinger shouldn't be prevented from playing games with Wizards because he will feel bad, if anything, the Wizard will feel bad, and meanwhile putting him in a group with fucking Rangers and Paladins and Barbarians and Adepts is going to make them feel like shit.

TL;DR the TL;DR: The tiers don't actually measure anything useful, and this is an example of why.

[Chrononaut]

So let's start with:

1) You are contending that 8th level Wizard spells with a Material Component, or literally dying and having someone else to revive you counts as somehow not losing. Those are losses. Clone mitigates losses (XP, but not even gold, because they still get all your items). Dying and being raised by someone else is losing and coming back without items and down a level. (Unless you mean literally the spell that you cast the round after death, in which case, yeah, if you are standing right next to the corpse, he can shoot your familiar too).

Oh, is this argument predicated on using items and feats exclusively? I'm sorry, I was given to understand it was a matter of class features. In which case yes, a well optimized gunslinger enjoying the benefits of her higher BAB and ranged feats will certainly triumph over a caster with a bunch of feats that work on class features he's not permitted to use.

2) You are contending that because a 9th level Wizard spell allows you to sort of survive the effect but lose the fight (Astral Projection), that this means the class is somehow not as good as Tier 3 classes that could never even get access to that effect at all.

Actually this is the loss of maybe some of a day's spell slots for the T1. The Tier 4 loses their character in the event of the opposite occuring. Which is actually part of my argument that a T1 could, if they were allowed to use their class features, mitigate penalties for defeat to almost trivialize them whereas a T4 cannot.

3) Scry and Die only matters if you have defenses or attacks superior to the person you are scrying and dieing. Usually you accomplish that by slapping on all the short term buffs, if he still kills you the second you appear next to him in a single round, even when you are buffed up, then yeah, that didn't accomplish much.

Scry and die could potentially include Time stop + Greater Teleport + <whatever dumb summoning combo you want> + Greater Teleport again. Time Stop is a buff that, as written, results in no harm being done to the caster while it remains up that your T4 doesn't get. Deal with it.

4) Your ability to spend several divination spells to run away from someone hardly counts as a win at all.

"1. Sun Tzu said: The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy."

5) Most importantly of all: It's not a fucking PC vs PC war. If a PC can instantly win every fight he's ever involved in across the entire campaign, then it doesn't matter if hypothetically a wizard could hide from him forever, fuck it, a level 17 Wizard can hide from anyone forever, you just Cast Mindblank every day while sitting on your own demiplane. This is literally the reason that Wizards are actually fine to have in almost any party, because casting Stinking Cloud or Solid Fog or Phantasmal Killer doesn't instantly win every fight, it just allows you to contribute to almost every fight as much as you are supposed to, but uber chargers who do 500k damage per attack are not fine to play with, because even though every single enemy could open up with Kelgore's Grave Mist on the first round of every combat (until they start Polymorph Any Objecting into an undead), it still dictates that the character is either the MVP who instantly wins the fight, or a piece of shit who does nothing.

Firstly, anything a T1-2 can do, a monster that casts as a T1-2 can do too (dragons {who may be evil}, some angels, off the top of my head).

Secondly, many campaigns involve conflict against NPCs built in accordance to similar principles as PCs which may become antagonistic. Consequently a DM should know how to tune an antagonistic wizard/dark priest/sorceress (a classic fantasy trope) so as not to accidentally pancake the PCs... or produce a challenge so depressingly trivial the PCs wonder why the commoners that hired them didn't just do it themselves.

As your X damage bastard scales up into bypassing more and more defenses (attack from range, always hits, bypasses total concealment, bypasses total cover and therefore can hit you through walls, can locate you through walls, ect.) it just becomes more problematic for the actual game.

It's why you can theoretically play a game with an Incantatrix, but not with a Tainted Scholar. The game ceases to function as soon as you can cast spells with DC 9999999. Likewise, the game ceases to function when you can do 500000 damage from a mile away ignoring concealment and cover. Because even if a theoretical Wizard could cast Divinations to hide forever, they can do that to any PC, and the Demons and Devils and other enemies you actually fight in the actual game are all going to instantly die.

TL;DR: The problem isn't that a super death class that instantly wins all fights ever should be ranked higher than Tier 4, it's that the Tier system alleges to help DMs figure out who should or shouldn't be in a party together. But Rogue/Wizard is a great party because both make the other one better and happy, and Hypothetical SuperMega Gunslinger shouldn't be prevented from playing games with Wizards because he will feel bad, if anything, the Wizard will feel bad, and meanwhile putting him in a group with fucking Rangers and Paladins and Barbarians and Adepts is going to make them feel like shit.

TL;DR the TL;DR: The tiers don't actually measure anything useful, and this is an example of why.

Anyways you can scream about how useless the tier system is until you're blue in the face, but the fact of the matter is that you're quite possibly the only person doing so, most people on this site attest to its usefulness as a guideline (I mean, it's a stickied topic, and it has weathered every single attempted refutation of it prior to this), and those that find fault with it largely do so in a matter of degree rather than conception.

But I mean, the fact that you've convinced no one in this topic yet just shows you've either not elucidated your argument very effectively, or else your argument is not a silver bullet in the Tier System.

Since you're arguing from a stance of the Tier System having already been refuted in your mind, you might not be properly explaining the logic chain that led you to that conclusion in a convincing way. Alternatively, if this is your first exposure to it and you find that it does not actually match your own personal experience, it is possible that you've simply not encountered circumstances that clearly and unambiguously demonstrate the relative differences in power of the classes in each tier, in which case you're special pleading.

[Kaelik]

Oh, is this argument predicated on using items and feats exclusively? I'm sorry, I was given to understand it was a matter of class features. In which case yes, a well optimized gunslinger enjoying the benefits of her higher BAB and ranged feats will certainly triumph over a caster with a bunch of feats that work on class features he's not permitted to use.

Here, let me explain how this works in terms you still won't understand:

Level) Result:
1) Wizard dies and loses.
2) Wizard dies and loses.
3) Wizard dies and loses.
4) Wizard dies and loses.
5) Wizard dies and loses.
6) Wizard dies and loses.
7) Wizard dies and loses.
8) Wizard dies and loses.
9) Wizard dies and loses.
10) Wizard dies and loses.
11) Wizard dies and loses.
12) Wizard dies and loses.
13) Wizard dies and loses.
14) Wizard dies and loses.
15) Wizard loses the fight, Hypothetical Tier 4 accomplishes his goals, Wizard loses 1000gp and every single item he has on him.
16) Wizard loses the fight, Hypothetical Tier 4 accomplishes his goals, Wizard loses 1000gp and every single item he has on him.
17) Wizard's Astral Projection dies, Hypothetical Tier 4 accomplishes his goals.
18) Wizard's Astral Projection dies, Hypothetical Tier 4 accomplishes his goals.
19) Wizard's Astral Projection dies, Hypothetical Tier 4 accomplishes his goals.
20) Wizard's Astral Projection dies, Hypothetical Tier 4 accomplishes his goals.

If your strategy relies on an 8th or 9th level spell, it is not impressive. Because it does nothing at all for the entire playable part of the game.

Scry and die could potentially include Time stop + Greater Teleport + <whatever dumb summoning combo you want> + Greater Teleport again. Time Stop is a buff that, as written, results in no harm being done to the caster while it remains up that your T4 doesn't get. Deal with it.

Oh look, another strategy that relies on a 9th level spell to waste a bunch of resources and do nothing to the Hypothetical Tier 4....

Firstly, anything a T1-2 can do, a monster that casts as a T1-2 can do too (dragons {who may be evil}, some angels, off the top of my head).

Except for you know, the thing where they can't. For example, the lowest CR dragon even capable of casting Clone at all is CR 21. Timestop is CR 24-25. Oh noes, the Epic CRed Dragon that I can kill in one round can come back to life far away without a bunch of gold and items as long as they wasted one of their two spells known on Clone... I totally care.

Secondly, many campaigns involve conflict against NPCs built in accordance to similar principles as PCs which may become antagonistic. Consequently a DM should know how to tune an antagonistic wizard/dark priest/sorceress (a classic fantasy trope) so as not to accidentally pancake the PCs... or produce a challenge so depressingly trivial the PCs wonder why the commoners that hired them didn't just do it themselves.

And the Tier system doesn't do... literally any of that.

But I mean, the fact that you've convinced no one in this topic yet just shows you've either not elucidated your argument very effectively, or else your argument is not a silver bullet in the Tier System.

Uh... You are clearly delusional. I mean, yeah, it is almost certainly true that I didn't convince the two people who posted similar criticisms to mine in this thread, since they almost certainly had those opinions prior to this thread, but to claim that my failure to convince people is proof of the worth of the Tier system is really odd when two people have already expressed very similar criticism to mine in this thread.

Perhaps "most people attest to it's usefulness" because they were told it is useful and then harassed when they don't use it, and the ubiquity people refusing to talk about classes without phrasing it in tier terms has pushed it into the cultural perspective. Almost certainly you are overblowing it's worth because you happen to post on a forum that likes it, and are ignorant of forums that don't use it, or even think it's a fucking joke. I mean, you don't have to know about every D&D forum, but maybe you should consider the possibility that you don't know everything about what everyone else believes before you start relying on arguments from popularity.

Also, yeah... I would love to see an actual example of anyone ever using it as a resource that didn't cause me to laugh my fucking ass off at the stupidity of the person using it, like those people who allow uberchargers because "Tier 4" but ban all Wizards and Clerics, because evil bad Tier 1 can't play in the same game.

Or people who think Bards are useful for anything ever without stacking music from 18 sources to compensate for the fact that a Core Bard is literally garbage that you want to get the hell out of your party.

it is possible that you've simply not encountered circumstances that clearly and unambiguously demonstrate the relative differences in power of the classes in each tier, in which case you're special pleading.

Look kid, I know you want to feel special, but you could try reading what I've already said and then thinking, and you might learn a few things. The tier system does nothing to elucidate any differences in the first place. Hell there aren't any differences. A commoner can just buy a candle of invocation and wish for items that allow him to deal with all possible challenges all on his own. Anyone can do that.

It's special pleading to claim that you demand that some classes be allowed to do broken things, but not other classes. That's special pleading. Once you admit that every class in the game is capable of being literally so broken that the game is unplayable, and that every class is capable of being played at non broken levels, there are all sorts of interesting things you can say about classes.

You could talk about which classes are the easiest to build to a specific power level, you could talk about which classes are the easiest to play at a specific power, you could talk about which classes when built and played under some basic assumptions are the strongest or weakest.

The Tier system does none of those things.

But here, let's have a quick poll:

Fellow forum goers, Raise your hand if you think all classes that lose to a Wizard in an arbitrary 1v1 duel at level 17 (that the Hypothetical Tier 4 doesn't even lose) makes a class Tier 4...

Oh wait.

Raise your hand if you think that the Tiers measure a classes ability to 1v1 a Wizard... Oh wait.

Raise your hand if you think that Astral Projection is proof that the Bard and Warblade are better than the Gunslinger... Oh wait.

[Chrononaut]

All right, leaving aside that other debate since it was a mostly jocular thought exercise, let's simplify the matter, since nothing I've said has moved your position one iota, and nothing you've said has done anything to move mine.

Under what circumstances would you consider this tier list acceptable?

Actually, if I understand you right under your invectives, you think the tier list is not only useless, but so wrong as to be dangerous to uninformed players who read it. Is that correct?

If the answer is 'at no point in any conceivable scenario would I accept this', then there's no point in me (or anyone else here) trying to convince you otherwise and the forum should drop this argument.

I personally don't agree with your opinion, but if the consensus of other forumgoers is that JaronK is blowing it out his ass, we should probably unsticky the topic, at the very least.