Tier one: Incredibly good at solving nearly all problems. It's not a perfect measure, both because some niches have a lot of overlap in the kinds of problems they can solve and because, again, the niches aren't necessarily all inclusive, but they can act as a good tool for class evaluation. A niche filled tends to imply the capacity to solve a type of problem, whether it's a status condition in the case of healing, or an enemy that just has too many hit points in the case of melee combat. Another way to view the idea of problem solving is through the lens of the niche ranking system. A problem could theoretically fall outside of that space, but things inside that space are definitely problems. For the purposes of this tier system, the problem space can be said to be inclusive of combat, social interaction, and exploration, with the heaviest emphasis placed on combat. The original tier system's tier descriptions are still good guidelines here, but they shouldn't be assumed to be the end all and be all for how classes get ranked.Ĭonsistent throughout these tiers is the notion of problems and the solving thereof. Thus, I will be uncharacteristically word light here. When an increase in versatility would seem to represent a decrease in tier, because tier two is supposed to be low versatility, it's obvious that we've become mired in something that'd be pointless to anyone trying to glean information from the tier system. Considering the massive range of challenges a character is liable to be presented with across the levels, how much and how often does that character's class contribute to the defeat of those challenges? This value should be considered as a rough averaging across all levels, the center of the level range somewhat more than really low and really high level characters, and across all optimization levels (considering DM restrictiveness as a plausible downward acting factor on how optimized a character is), prioritizing moderate optimization somewhat more than low or high.Ī big issue with the original tier system is that, if anything, it was too specific, generating inflexible definitions for allowance into a tier which did not cover the broad spectrum of ways a class can operate. And problem solving capacity is what's being measured here. The simple answer here is that tier one is the best, the home of things on the approximate problem solving scale of wizards, and tier six is the worst, land of commoners. The warblade's recovery mechanic is perhaps the most straightforwardly powerful, allowing you to recover and hit enemies at the same time, and do so while choosing the maneuvers in question. Like the fighter, the warblade is largely oriented around the goal of hitting enemies with a sword in a variety of creative ways, and like the fighter, it does so through fully mundane means. Warblade (ToB, 20): If your aim is stabbing folks, this is the way to go. The recovery mechanic is the worst of the three though, which is a bit of a downside for the class in a combat context. It's also the most supernatural of the three, making it somewhat modeled after the monk. Swordsage (ToB, 15): This is the ToB class most oriented around non-combat stuff, with an above average number of utility maneuvers running around. The random maneuver recovery mechanic is a weird one, but it's also quite powerful, lacking in the action costs that the other two have. The critical question of these classes, especially the crusader and warblade, is how far you can get by hitting enemies in the face with a sword.Ĭrusader (ToB, 8): Between its healing and tanking capabilities, this class is most common in form to the paladin, especially given the light alignment restriction. There's a heavy emphasis on straightforward combat here, if more varied than is typical, but the classes have varying degrees of out of combat utility too. Masters of the sublime way, these highly controversial classes from tome of battle bring some more complex tactics into standard melee.
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