# Forum > Gaming > Roleplaying Games > D&D 3e/3.5e/d20 >  Tiering the Pathfinder Classes - Medium, Adept, Vampire Hunter and Psychic

## pabelfly

I'm interested in starting work on a tier list for Pathfinder, in the same way that we have a tier list for 3.5 (link). This link is a collection of discussions about the power and versatility of all the base classes of 3.5 DnD, and its quite a useful resource. I think Pathfinder could do with a similar resource as a point of information and discussion.

There has been an informal attempt to do a tier list for Pathfinder, which I've also used as part of the reference to this thread: (link). But this lacks discussion on the classes and a shared consensus on how scoring works, both of which are as important as the tier number itself.

The current, work-in-progress thread for Pathfinder Tiers version of this thread is here (link). This thread has links to previous tiering threads and short summaries of thread discussions for those who missed them when they were posted. Contributions and votes for older threads are still welcome and your votes still count.

This time, well tier Medium, Adept, Vampire Hunter and Psychic.

For reference, in the informal thread:
*Medium* is tiered between *3.2 and 3.4* 
*Adept* is tiered at *4* 
*Vampire Hunter* is tiered at *4* 
*Psychic* is tiered at *1.6 to 1.8* 

No, I didn't plan Psychic out properly.

So, the questions are: what should each of these be tiered at? And are there any notable archetypes for these classes that deserve separate tiering? I guess a discussion thread is the way to find out.




*What are the tiers?*

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. And problem solving capacity is what's being measured here. 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.

A 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. 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. Thus, I will be uncharacteristically word light here. 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.

Consistent throughout these tiers is the notion of problems and the solving thereof. 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. A problem could theoretically fall outside of that space, but things inside that space are definitely problems. Another way to view the idea of problem solving is through the lens of the niche ranking system. 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. 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.

*Tier one:* Incredibly good at solving nearly all problems. This is the realm of clerics, druids, and wizards, classes that open up with strong combat spells backed up by utility, and then get massively stronger from there. If you're not keeping up with that core trio of tier one casters, then you probably don't belong here.

*Tier two:* We're just a step below tier one here, in the land of classes around the sorcerer level of power. Generally speaking, this means relaxing one of the two tier one assumptions, either getting us to very good at solving nearly all problems, or incredibly good at solving most problems. But, as will continue to be the case as these tiers go on, there aren't necessarily these two simple categories for this tier. You gotta lose something compared to the tier one casters, but what you lose doesn't have to be in some really specific proportions.

*Tier three:* Again, we gotta sacrifice something compared to tier two, here taking us to around the level of a Bard or Skald. The usual outcome is that you are very good at solving a couple of problems and competent at solving a few more. Of course, there are other possibilities, for example that you might instead be competent at solving nearly all problems.

*Tier four:* Here we're in Fighter and Barbarian territory. Starting from that standard tier three position, the usual sweet spots here are very good at solving a few problems, or alright at solving many problems.

*Tier five:* We're heading close to the dregs here. Tier five is the tier of chained Monk, classes that are as bad as you can be without being an aristocrat or a commoner. Classes here are sometimes very good at solving nearly no problems, or alright at solving a few, or some other function thereof. It's weak, is the point.

*Tier six:* And here we have commoner tier. Or, the bottom is commoner. The top is approximately aristocrat. You don't necessarily have nothing in this tier, but you have close enough to it.

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## pabelfly

Unless I've missed any other classes, the last tiering thread next week will be Aristocrat, Commoner, Expert and Warrior. Let me know if any have been missed.

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## Thunder999

Psychic is an easy tier 2, the psychic list is somewhere between the sorcerer and oracles lists, the phrenic amps are decent abilities, though nothing particularly amazing. It's a little easier to shut down psychic casting, but not enough to really matter. 
2.0

Two things stand out as maybe worth discussing:  
Rebirth Discipline has a single off-list spell you pick each day, you choose/change the list you steal from when you level up. It's a decent bit of versatility, though a single spell probably isn't enough to change tiering.   

Amnesisac Archetype is quite something. Each day half your spells known from your two highest spell levels are spells you used yesterday, half are special amnesia slots you try to fill with any spell of the appropriate level as a swift action 1/hour.  
Sadly it's unreliable, you roll 1d100 or 1d100+1d10 in combat, 1-10 you waste a slot and aren't allowed to cast spells that round, 11-35 you waste the slot, but can cast other spells, 36-95 you get the spell you want and can cast it like any other for the rest of the day, 96+ either same as 36-95 or 1/day you get to cast a spell a level higher than you have access to.  
So that's a 35% chance you just don't have a spell known for that slot today, 65% you get what you need on the fly and 5% you get to be the best caster in the game and use not just the perfect spell, but the perfect spell from a level noone else could cast.   
Personally I think it looks too unreliable, but when it works it's better than paragon surge, arcanist, dreamed secrets etc. since this is something you do as a swift action mid-fight.


Medium is at minimum tier 4, you can just take champion every single day and build yourself a competent martial, you've got solid attack and damage bonuses, can move+full attack, and still get some spells, though at a reduced level.  
The question is whether you can do better than that and whether the flexibility actually amounts to much since you generally have to invest your feats into a single playstyle.

The spell list is pretty good, plenty of discounted spells as we've come to expect by now. You've got yplenty of good stuff: Enlarge/Reduce Person, Protection from [alignment], Remove Fear (always good on a psychic caster), Comprehend Languages, Herman Potential (quite rare, 1 roll twice take the better +1 per 5 CL), Heighen Awareness, Long Arm, Tears to Wine,  Blur, Haste (2nd level, enjoy your wands), Object Reading, Silent Image, Aid, Heroism, Mirror Image, Levitate, Invisibility, Locate Object, Nondetection, Rope Trick, Spider Climb, Speak with Dead, Tongues, Dimension Door (3rd), Fly, Greater invisibility (3rd, get your potions here), Paragon Surge, Sending, Break Enchantment, Death Ward, Freedom of Movement, Legend Lore, Lesser Planar Binding, Scrying, Plane Shift, Teleport, True Seeing. There's also an surprisingly great selection of save or suck/save or lose, Possession, Slow (2nd level), Command, Murderous Command, Ill Omen, Bestow Curse (2nd level), Hold Person, Instigate Psychic Duel (forget the rules, your allies just murder them while their mind is trapped), Suggestion, Hold Monster, Feeblemind, Baleful Shadow Transmutation (6th level so Heirophant/Archmage only, but hey, it can beat tarrasques)

Champion is the above mentioned solid martial that takes a CL penalty.  

Guardian is bad defensive stuff that reduces your offense for little real benefit.   

Archmage and Heirophant both turn it into a 6th level caster and poach a few Wizard/Cleric spells, archmage has some solid on-the-fly spell access, heirophant has healing stuff.   
I could see a dedicated build hitting tier 3 easily enough with those two.  

Marshal is a little meh, but does eventually get to hand out extra standard actions, which is obviously super strong if you've got caster party members, well worth the influence, the charisma skill buff might actually be worth using for social stuff on a champion or caster buld if you're confident in avoiding combat.  

Trickster is mostly unimpressive skill stuff though gets a neat trick to steal spell effects.  

Overall I think Medium is Tier 3 with Archmage or Heirophant and tier 4 with champion, with the other spirits being niche.

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## Rynjin

Medium: 3.3 seems about right. Weak T3. It has a lot of interesting tricks but even its strongest subclasses (Archmage and Hierophant) are a bit lackluster compared to other 6-casters.

I'd nominate Fiend Keeper as a stronger archetype though, and a full T3. While it does come with an inherent drawback (they can't benefit from Protection from Evil), for the cost of the Medium's four weakest class features (the ones dealing with Haunts) they get:

Contact Other Plane a number of times per day EQUAL TO THEIR LEVEL starting at level 3
Permanent decent flight
Darkvision if they don't have it
3 Natural Attacks
+1 Profane bonus to attack, damage, and AC
+1 to their Spirit bonus
Minor elemental resistances

All of which are available at reasonable levels no less.

Psychic: T2...it's a Sorcerer with arguably better Bloodlines and an arguably worse spell list.


Vampire Hunter: Much like Omdura, Tier = Not A Real Class

Adept: Eh, I don't care enough to tier NPC classes to be honest.

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## Maat Mons

I think Ill rate Medium a 3.4.  Every Medium has access to 2/3rds casting from the Wizard spell list, the Cleric spell list, and the Mediums own spell list.  Its _mostly_ not possible to access the Wizard and Cleric spell lists on the same day.   I mean, it can be done, with Spirit Dancer.  But that archetype introduces new limitations of its own.  

A typical Medium will have one spell of each spell level from either the Wizard or Cleric spell list on any given day.  Id imagine most would walk around with an assortment of Wizard spells, and then switch to Cleric spells the day after some party member was inflicted with a condition that needed removal.  The ability to pull out so many different spells during downtime is nice, but having only one spell of each level available during an adventuring day is limiting.  

I feel the I must rate Medium somewhere in Tier 3 for all the problems it can solve by waiting a day and picking the rick Wizard/Cleric spell.  But I feel that having only one spell known of each spell level means it will be necessary to wait a day to deal with a problem much more frequently than would be the case with any other class in Tier 3.  So Im putting it at the bottom of the Tier.  

Medium: Tier 3.4

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## Kurald Galain

*Medium:* The class's shtick is taking a completely different role each day. But in practice, the class changes TOO MUCH when switching, and is not good enough at the role it takes. Since you generally take feats and items to support one particular role, you'll end up either ineffective in the other roles, or spreading yourself too thin trying to do too much. This is just not something parties want: most players I've seen end up stuck in the one role most fitting the party, and ignore the switching mechanic. All in all, as jacks-of-all-trades go, this class is a true "master of none": not actively bad, but easily overshadowed by everyone else. *Tier 4*.

Note that *every medium except Relic Channeler requires a suitable location to switch roles,* so at-need role switching is not even on the table. Kami Medium has limits to spellcasting and cannot take the archmage spirit. Medium of the Master cannot switch at all; that would be a tier drop if you value the role switching more than I do. Finally, the class's other unique ability is off-action party buffing via Marshall spirit; but this can be done with a two-level dip in Medium, then mainlining any other class.

*Psychic:* Here's a class that just nobody plays. The Paizo forum has a thread been rating the full casters in various areas, where after hundreds of posts the psychic remains unrated because _nobody_ has seen one in play. It has flavor identical to a wizard, a pool mechanic that doesn't really add much, and a substantially shorter spell list. Since there's already an int-based sorcerer bloodline, it struggles to find a reason for why it exists in the first place. I'll list this as *Tier 3* because compared to other spontaneous casters, there's clearly something wrong with it.

*Adept:* Why are we rating NPC classes? Tier 6 because this isn't meant for players; moving on.

*Vampire Hunter:* This is another one of those weird classes that's from one specific setting that nobody's heard of, and that I've never seen allowed in any other campaign because of its flavor. They get a number of rather pointless abilities that I assume are from that weird setting I haven't read (make the party travel overland faster! Track gaseous creatures! Treat iron spikes as wooden stakes!) but they also get a mix of inquisitor and hunter abilities, or weaker versions thereof. It probably makes tier four based on that, but I'd put it at the bottom, or *Tier 4.5*.

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## pabelfly

> *Adept:* Why are we rating NPC classes? Tier 6 because this isn't meant for players; moving on.


The NPC classes were tiered back in 2019. JaronK even bought up stuff like Commoner and the other NPC classes back in 2012. If we're going to the effort to do all of this for Pathfinder, might as well do the NPC classes as well.

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## Thunder999

Honestly I think the NPC class ratings were mostly so people could point out that Adepts managed to do some things better than some actual 3.5 classes, because 3.5 had a lot more tier 5 and 6 garbage than pathfinder.

Adept is weird, core only it's a decent spell list held back by slow progression.  Maybe 3.6?

Psychic is not tier 3, it's a very solid spontaneous caster.

Personally I don't value multiple contact other planes per day very highly, that's just a good way to trigger the crippling downsides. Just get someone to cast the infinitely superior commune. Some Familiars get it as an SLA.

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## Wonton64

The Vampire Hunter comes from a tie-in book for the Vampire Hunter D franchise (manga/anime/novels). It's tiering comes entirely from the campaign setting, I think. Their power and utility are going to increase proportionally to how many vampires you encounter.

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## vasilidor

Adept: 4.5
Medium: 3
Psychic: 2
Have not read vampire hunter, abstaining for now.

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## Rynjin

> Personally I don't value multiple contact other planes per day very highly, that's just a good way to trigger the crippling downsides. Just get someone to cast the infinitely superior commune. Some Familiars get it as an SLA.


Well, for one thing, Commune isn't available until 9th level normally, instead of level 3. For another, Fiend Keepers get to completely dodge the usual drawbacks of Contact Other Plane in favor of their spirit just getting more Influence over them. Influence is minimally impactful right up until you lose control of your character for a bit, which is at 5 Influence.

So you get 4 failed saves before it's even an issue. That's, at worst, 3 uses of Contact Other Plane per day, for free, with no particular drawbacks.

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## Kurald Galain

> The Vampire Hunter comes from a tie-in book for the Vampire Hunter D franchise


What happened to hunters A, B, and C, anyway?




> Their power and utility are going to increase proportionally to how many vampires you encounter.


Sure, but in most campaigns you will fight a vampire either once or never, making this not a very good niche to build a character on.

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## Bucky

How much do Vampire Hunters rely on many of their enemies being vampires?

At base, against generic monstrous enemies, they're full BAB martial weapon users with a lot of bonus combat feats, a Rage-like self buff in Vampiric Might, and Ranger-progression casting off the Inquisitor list. The Inquisitor list seems clearly worse level-by-level than the Paladin list, but it's hardly trash.

Their higher level combat abilities Quarry and Critical Reflexes are specific to undead, rather than to vampires in particular. These abilities encourage a crit-fishing style against undead.

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## Rynjin

Let me put it this way. Some people wanted to argue Ranger was T5, not T4, because they were mainly specialized in fighting one type of creature, _chosen by the Ranger_, even accounting for the ability to swap that to another option on a per-combat basis with Instant Enemy.

Vampire Hunter is in a similar boat in terms of being too focused, with none of the choice and flexibility.

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## Wildstag

Finally, we get to the Medium! One of the jankiest classes I've seen in a major D20 game!

I agree that it should be a low Tier 3, and *3.4* fits it well. Legendary Archmage really carries the tier though; getting to cast even a 9th-level Wizard spell is a major boon. Champion getting an extra full-attack attack that stacks with _haste_ is just great. Plus getting Pounce is always good.

I'd also agree that Fiend Keeper should be tiered separately, and that it's generally better as a higher *Tier 3.1*, but I would point out that its usage is limited as it's the sort of class that can make your PC an NPC. Granted, it's _really hard_ to get to that point, but still... Mostly, it just offers benefits at a low cost. With the Medium casting with Charisma, it shouldn't really be missing those charisma checks.

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## Bucky

I'm not going to rate Vampire Hunter, Medium or Psychic right now due to lack of experience.

Adept, on the other hand, generally belongs in Tier 5. They get spells, which can solve problems. But past level 6 or so, their slot progression falls so far behind even the gish classes that they don't usually have the _good_ solutions. They also have very few spell slots for a prepared caster - one non-cantrip slot at level two, up to three slots at level six and six slots at level ten, plus their Wisdom bonus slots - so they can't afford to speculatively prepare much if any of the admittedly pretty good situational utility in their list. And their chassis is NPC tier with low HP, no armor or shields, no martial weapons and 2+Int skill points, so they don't have much to do once their slots are exhausted. They briefly peak back into relevance once or twice per day at level 12 when Polymorph becomes available as their top end option, since it's versatile enough to always prepare and powerful enough that being a bit behind the Sorcerers isn't a killer.  And level 8+ evil Adepts can use Animate Dead during downtime to raise some combat surrogates.

So Adepts get to do Tier 3-4 things a couple of times per day across a small portion of their level range if they're well prepared, but don't contribute well or at all outside of that. I'll average their tier rating across their relatively strong and weak levels to produce a rough *Tier 4.8*.

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## pabelfly

> How much do Vampire Hunters rely on many of their enemies being vampires?
> 
> At base, against generic monstrous enemies, they're full BAB martial weapon users with a lot of bonus combat feats, a Rage-like self buff in Vampiric Might, and Ranger-progression casting off the Inquisitor list. The Inquisitor list seems clearly worse level-by-level than the Paladin list, but it's hardly trash.


Don't forget they're WIS casters with a high Will save, so they're Will saves are going to be great. All of this feels like they're a T4 class to me.




> Let me put it this way. Some people wanted to argue Ranger was T5, not T4, because they were mainly specialized in fighting one type of creature, _chosen by the Ranger_, even accounting for the ability to swap that to another option on a per-combat basis with Instant Enemy.


I feel like people not voting T4 for Ranger were hyperfocused on one class feature to the detriment of the whole class. Yeah, FE sucks, but everything else Ranger had going for it was pretty solid.

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## Rynjin

> I'd also agree that Fiend Keeper should be tiered separately, and that it's generally better as a higher *Tier 3.1*, but I would point out that its usage is limited as it's the sort of class that can make your PC an NPC. Granted, it's _really hard_ to get to that point, but still... Mostly, it just offers benefits at a low cost. With the Medium casting with Charisma, it shouldn't really be missing those charisma checks.


Influence actually NPC-ifies you by default, so this is a flaw shared by base Medium. And the usual Influence "spender" is a lot less useful than Contact Other Plane (being a narrow-focused, randomized bonus to a roll).

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## Kurald Galain

I'm not so impressed by the bonuses the Fiend Keeper gets. Like, it doesn't get permanent flight, but as a _full-round action_ at level 7, it gets flight for _one minute_. And with a roughly 25% chance to fail. Flight is a great ability, but the Fly spell is on the medium's spell list already.

Contact Other Plane is definitely _fun_, but it's a spell that gives one-word answers that have a substantial chance of being wrong (like, at level 3 the answer is 30% likely to be false). Frankly it's baffling why this is considered a fifth-level spell normally. Definitely fun, definitely not powerful.

So for me, this is a well-designed archetype but not a tier change; I'll vote the same as for regular medium. By the way, from its flavor text this archetype is purely meant for gripplis, for some reason. Maybe there's some grippli lore here that I'm unaware of.

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## Thunder999

Fiend Keeper seems ok, better than I thought, but it's really not meaningfully higher tier, so I think it should just be the same tier as the rest of mesmerist.

So Vampire Hunter, defintiely seems closest to the ranger, specifically one with undead as favoured enemy: Full BAB, 4/9 casting, 6+int skills, Track.  Weirdly it's only a d8 despite having full BAB, unique for pathfinder, though not ultimately important.    
Frankly it's going to do worse at killing vampires than said ranger would.   
4.4, it's a martial without any class features that make it particularly good at hitting things, let alone anything more than that.   

Anyone got anything to say about adept?

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## Bucky

If you're comparing Vampire Hunter to Ranger, give it credit for an extra bonus feat.

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## pabelfly

> Anyone got anything to say about adept?


I'm supposed to do the tier thread for Commoner, Aristocrat, Expert and Warrior, and given the lack of excitement I've had for Adept I don't see it getting much attention. But after that, we should be done, all I need to do is finish class writueps and maybe see if anyone missed the individual arcetypes that want separate tiering.

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## Rynjin

> I'm not so impressed by the bonuses the Fiend Keeper gets. Like, it doesn't get permanent flight, but as a _full-round action_ at level 7, it gets flight for _one minute_. And with a roughly 25% chance to fail. Flight is a great ability, but the Fly spell is on the medium's spell list already.


You know, I've been misreading this archetype this whole time, likely due to the formatting on the SRD. I thought Dark Power, Fiendish Form, etc. were features you just got as a scaling ability, but I see what you mean here. You can Contact OR choose one of the other abilities for an Influence. Though there is no chance to fail; you get the abilities whether you pass the check or not, failing the check just makes it cost Influence.

In that case, yeah, it's not worth the tier bump. But Contact Other Plane X/day is still hella dope.

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## Giddonihah

Medium range between tier 4 and tier 3, depending a lot on campaign structure and what archetype/spirits are used. They have excellent downtime ability in general, and are probably significantly better if the party is unstable and prone to losing and gaining members (Can often fill in for a role in a pinch). 

The bit about channeling locations had a developer comment about being able to do stuff like going hunting in order to invoke Champion that helps it out a little if allowed to be used. (I find it gets handwaved a lot anyways)

Medium of the Master is Tier 4, getting stuck with Champion limits your flexibility, but you still have a good spell list and Champion is the best Combat Spirit anyways. 
I think Voice of the Void is a pretty strong Marshal Archetype, when it comes to support I'd rate it similarly to Bard. 
Spirit Eater is a freebie archetype (Trade flavor abilities that while good are rarely used for ghost touch which is situationally amazing), but it doesn't change the Medium's rating by itself. 

I think a Spirit Dancer Medium is tier 2 or higher at very high levels, like 15+ (Freely switch between each spirit, can have multiple spirits up at once, has 9th lvl spell access in limited amounts, shapeshifting or a dont die button.). 
At medium level ranges Spirit Dancers are a solid tier 3, I think a high t3 but needs good judgment so might in practice be a mid tier 3. (Buff slightly worse than a Bard, but it usually is a better combatant, has lots of out of battle utility thanks to three different spell lists it can access and channel healing)
Low lvls (lvl 1-3) spirit dancer is.. I dunno low Tier 4ish. Limited Spirit dance rounds and no real spell casting yet basically makes you a Barbarian that sucks at fighting when not raging.

Summary: Default (and most archetypes) Mediums 3.4, Stronger Archetypes like Voice of the Void or Fiend Keeper 3.2, Spirit Dancer 2.7 (I think Spirit Dancer is higher tier than Magus, but clearly below Sorc/Oracle)

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## Bucky

> I'm supposed to do the tier thread for Commoner, Aristocrat, Expert and Warrior, and given the lack of excitement I've had for Adept I don't see it getting much attention. But after that, we should be done, all I need to do is finish class writueps and maybe see if anyone missed the individual arcetypes that want separate tiering.


I have been preparing for this thread. Expect a couple of walls of text.

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