Pathfinder Class COMPLEXITY Tier List

howdy my name is nonat and today i'm making an interesting video that i will admit i didn't think of myself this was made up by my stream chat or comments one of the two that i think is a really interesting idea a lot of people always ask oh what class should i play to fulfill this power fantasy or this character idea but a lot of people also ask which class is this difficult or this complex and how much do i get out of it well today i'm making a tier list question mark tier graph i don't know what i'd call it i'm making a video about each class in the game and their level of complexity versus what you get out of it i was gonna do a normal like f through s tier list but i felt like that didn't give enough information so today we're using this brand new difficulty versus what you get out of it graph list also this is the second video ever being edited by my brand new editor ray say hi ray don't actually use your voice no one wants to hear you talk just like put a text on the screen saying hi or something i'm probably going to be very mean to you welcome to your job so unfortunately i had to put this entire jank list together awkwardly in so we're not going to be going in any specific order we're going to be going in the order of which my photo editor has put the layers on top of each other so with no further ado starting with which because you know when you're talking about classes and pathfinder you always start with which let's get started as you can see farther to the left is easier to play farther to the right is harder to play higher up is more the better results you get out of the class and lower is the less results you get out of the class so vertically is going to be a bit more like power and flavor oriented left to right is just the sheer complexity of the class and starting with the witch i'm going to put them a little bit farther to the right than the middle but also a little bit lower so we're gonna start right in this lower right quadrant because the witch is kind of just a wizard with extra steps or a cleric with extra steps or a druid with extra steps all just given a really cute magical pet they don't really do much that the other classes can't already do their focus spells aren't inherently that much better than a wizard or a druid's focus spells sure they get cackle so they can free sustain and that's something that gets them a little bit of results but overall unless your character fantasy is to draw your power specifically from a familiar that is keeping an eye on you from a greater power patron you're better off playing any of the other spellcasting classes it's cool that witches can pick their own tradition but it doesn't add that much to their gameplay the thamaturge speaking from experience starting out the thaumaturge is hard to play especially trying to memorize everything that its exploit vulnerability does gets a little bit confusing i've been playing one for about four or five sessions now and i still need to double check exactly how much damage my exploit weakness personal antithesis does and stuff like that so i'm gonna put them probably about halfway on hard to play but their results are incredible even if you're not focusing on decent damage numbers which they can pull out some great ones the flavor is awesome the way that their personal antithesis works means you pull out some random piece of junk that causes a weakness to your target and this lets you role play in combat so well we were fighting a a kelpie so just a seaweed fae monster and i didn't have anything super effective against it but i i got a personal antithesis so i reached into my pouch pulled out a fistful of salt and punched it with that because the salt would dry out the seaweed you just get to get super creative with inflicting weaknesses on things and i love it the swashbuckler is so easy to play with just speaking of power some of the highest results in the game and i've seen this in action in my latest campaign my friend is playing a braggart swashbuckler and they have a very simple pattern of mechanics they intimidate to gain panache and they finisher now the target's immune to intimidate so they tumble through finisher end of turn tumble through finisher oh they failed their tumble through good thing they have three actions so they can just tumble again before finishing the swashbuckler is so easy they do so much bonus damage with their finishers if you've got them flat footed and they can land these hits easy at level one he's been critting for 20 to 30 damage consistently it's awesome the summoner the poor summoner probably one of if not the hardest to play class in the game with so little result to show for it you have to manage two characters on the battlefield while balancing only three actions between them sharing hit points as well as being able to both be affected by certain effects also sharing a multiple attack penalty it's all just against the summoner's favor a lot of summoners i've seen have ended up functioning basically like wizards casting electric arc every turn and then sometimes they get to attack with their idol on couple this with their super limited four spell slots per day and i'm not saying summoners can't work wonders they can do some great stuff but on average the work you put in does not reflect the output you get from the class sorcerer on the other hand super super easy to play i'd say about as much as swashbuckler i'd say they get almost as much a swashbuckler just gonna hide behind swashbuckler there uh they're so easy to play you pick a tradition you pick like four spells cool you have three spell slots a day you can cast any of those four spells up to three times a day total you just mix and match them you're not stuck in to any prepared spells the sorcerer i would argue is the easiest spell caster in the game to play simply because of how not punishing they are the spell castings of the sorcerer is so fluid so variable once you get signature spells you're even easier and better off to get some of the most powerful focus spells in the game and their meta magic feats are awesome and make them super customizable without making them super confusing sorcerer is probably the highest result versus low complexity for a spell caster in the entire game the rogue i'm gonna put a little bit harder to play than a swashbuckler with a little bit lower res no you know what i'll give them just about as high results as a swashbuckler just not always in combat because as a rogue even if you don't spec for intelligence you're going to be trained in at least half the skills in the game and if you do spec for intelligence for something like a mastermind subclass you can be trained in every single skill in the game at level one not counting lures the rogue is not that hard to play in all honesty i'll i'll actually move it down a little bit it's not that hard to play because all you do is get flat-footed and stab make the enemy flat-footed and sneak attack that is your basic combat strategy but the rogue is not a combat focused class the real nuance comes with how you use your skills how you balance those skills and how you are just good at everything except combat the druid is almost right down the middle because of how flexible the druid is and how many different builds there are the druid will be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it do you just want to be an elementalist and throw fireballs and lightning bolts cool you can absolutely do that do you want a wild shape taking specific feats and spells to unlock specific forms to use in specific situations to use specific types of damage you can absolutely go that complicated as well and for that i'm going to put the druid straight in the middle just because it can be easy and it can be hard i think most druids do get good results i'm gonna put them right about there on the list most druids get good results i don't think they get swashbuckler or even thaumaturge level results most of the time but they still get good results for the effort you put in and of course as you put in more effort those results only go higher the psychic i actually do i want to put psychic all the way up here on complex i'm going to put psychic right around thomaters which makes sense because they're from the same book they are complicated to learn which i'm going to take into account here but they're not complicated to play when deciding and making your psychic character there's a lot of reading because every subclass not only grants you three unique cantrips but also changes the effects of two existing cantrips which means you need to know what those cantrips do and then understand the changed effect as well as the amped up effect if you choose to use a focus spell otherwise they're just a spell caster but they make cantrips more complicated i do think you get really good results out of it i think the thaumaturge is a little stronger but the psychic does get good results with their amped up cantrips again just your subclass doubling the range of telekinetic projectile that's already amazing results and it only gets better from there the oracle we're just gonna we're just gonna slide the oracle right over here just like off the grid it's very low results but the oracle if the psychics reading of the cantrips puts it that high on hard to play reading and understanding all of the oracle mysteries their associated curses their associated focus spells all of that just pushes it nearly off the chart and unfortunately the results you get from an oracle usually aren't that great there's some powerful ones life oracles are the best healers in the entire system strictly mechanically speaking but things like the ancestral oracle and the battle oracle just struggle the battle oracle for example needs to cast two focus spells just to get their curse high enough to get them a bonus to attack roles that puts them on par with other martial classes but it also comes with a penalty to armor class there's nothing the oracle can do better than another class that doesn't come with a heavy penalty again life oracle is like the one thing they can be the best at otherwise they're incredibly flavorful and you do get some of that flavor from the curses and whatnot but they are so difficult to play the monk on the other hand i'm gonna put about that seems about right they're not hard to play you pick a stance at the start of combat you enter that stance you're probably gonna flurry of blows somebody and that's about it as you level up you might get some key spells and some alternate abilities with your stance but for the most part especially in the low one to eight level campaigns it's gonna be a lot of punching people maybe kicking depending on your stance you can make a more complicated monk especially if you make a key focused monk or a monastic weaponry focused monk there's a lot more depth there so it's similar to the druid but i would say most monks are easy to play and you get really decent damage results because especially if you have um agile fists you're probably you're somewhat likely to hit twice per turn and if you have a decent strength modifier you're adding you know plus three plus four monks can do a ton of damage very simply and i love that you want to talk about a ton of damage let's talk the magus personally i want to put the magus like here you get really high results it's not easy to play but it's not hard especially once you've picked your subclass which is just what weapon type do you want to use oh you want to use bow and arrow use the bow and arrow subclass you want to use great sores use indomitable iron i think is what it's called and then use cantrips in your spell strike sure there's a little bit of action management of spending a focus point to get your spell strike back or just spending an action to get it back and whatnot it's more complicated than something like a monk or a rogue but the damage you get out of it is incredible what i'm actually gonna do to lower it a little bit just what's overlapping with druid a little bit is the risk versus reward with that in mind i think i'm going to put magus dead center i think i'm going to put magus dead center if you miss your spell strike you are a full round behind everybody else because you need to get your spell strike back you might have wasted a spell slot you did nothing that last turn it is rough for a magus to miss their spell strike which i think right in the middle works at the end of the day they're just a wizard who can hit stuff that have less spell slots and they're also some of the highest damage in the game and if they miss some of the lowest damage in the game they are the most volatile class in pathfinder 2e and i think putting them right in the middle makes the most sense investigator is a lot harder to play than the rogue for i think slightly worse results there devise a stratagem i literally spent like 12 seconds trying to think of that uh devise a stratagem for the investigator is a lot more complicated than sneak attack you know rogues just need them to be flat-footed investigator needs to spend an action to roll a d20 ahead of time and then if they want to hit the target they have to use the result on that d20 but if they do they get to add their intelligence modifier plus 1d6 damage to the attack roll it's a lot more but it's also somewhat more reliable you know if you roll a 5 on that d20 you know i shouldn't attack this turn sure you had to use an action to do so but it lets them analyze combat and be more reactionary whereas a rogue or a swashbuckler are much more proactive and while this is a more complicated combat style they are much more you know you get results from that they don't quite get the high result of the rogue's insane skill proficiencies but they're very very close they have more specific proficiencies i believe like the swashbuckler but they don't get quite as many as the rogue investigator's still great i pooped on it a lot when it first came out and called it like overly complicated and game breaking in weird ways but i've come around to it and i really like the investigator as a class the inventor similar to the druid it can be really easy to play if you just pick a weapon invention and give it reach or versatile or it can be really hard to play if you pick a construct companion giving it a specific ability to do this thing alongside all the overdrive uh the overdrive mechanic existing is gonna keep it on this side of the board i think you do get decent results especially with overdrive letting you add half or your entire intelligence mod to damage that's a lot that you can get out of it it's almost like a rage bonus similar to a barbarian so i'm going to put inventor right about here i think vomiturage has a better deal thamaturg basically just has a better overdrive but inventor does have a lot more unique abilities with their overdrive uh i don't remember what the trait is uh but where they make their invention basically explode to do something super cool i don't think they're as strong as the thaumaturge i do think they're simpler than the thaumaturge and that looks like a good spot for them the gunslinger really decent results uh gunslinger i'm gonna put probably right let's put them like right next to monk they don't have the the same level of constant reliability as a monk and their damage if you're using a firearm and you just don't crit is going to be very low even a sniper if you don't crit is only 1d8 damage but if you crit suddenly that's become 3d 12 because of fatal the the gunslinger is an all or nothing class similar to the magus and similar to spell strike you know they need to spend an action to reload if you're using a big weapon you might need to spend an action to stabilize it but it's not hard you have a gun and you shoot people the fighter what are you oh no that was ranger oh this is ranger this is druid might be the ranger is gonna go right about here let's go over here this is getting this is getting really claustrophobic but i think this is a good example i think this is good to show off the system though is that a lot of these classes aren't that complicated to play and you get a ton out of them uh the ranger is gonna be really really close and similar to the swashbuckler similar to how the swashbuckler just needs a tumble through finisher tumble through finisher the ranger just marks prey and goes to town if you're flurry you're attacking with minus two multiple attack penalties if you're proficient but a precision you might have an animal companion at which point you're both hitting for an extra one d eight damage per turn if you're critting that's doubling you're chunking for some of the highest base damage in the game it's nuts the ranger and the swashbuckler honestly do not play that dissimilar the swashbuckler just gets a little bit more damage from their feature but the rangers feature doesn't have a skill check attached to it as they grow up they have a lot of cool options i love that melee rangers and ranged rangers and even magical rangers are all viable now and i think you just get such insane results that rangers are some of the best martial classes in the game the wizard obviously spell casting is going to be inherently complicated i'm going to put them at a little bit lower than the sorcerer with a little bit uh i'll put them right about here uh i don't think they get quite as many choices as a druid but i do think the arcane spell list is just inherently stronger at least from a purely mechanical combat perspective the primal spellist for druids has a lot more role play opportunities especially with some of their fancy things involving nature itself but if you're just looking for explosions and lightning bolts and shields and darkness and stuff like that the arcane spelus is gonna have everything you could need for every different uh part of combat the reason they're so much higher in complexity than a sorcerer is because they're a prepared spellcaster which is inherently harder to play because you need to think about the day ahead before choosing which spells to prepare and even how many of each spell to prepare if you have four spell slots if you want to cast magic missile twice in that day you need to fill two of those four slots with magic missile the champion so easy to play does not get anywhere near the results of the fighter at least just numerically speaking but they are so simple you pick up some heavy armor you pick up a shield and a one-handed weapon you walk in and you start taking hits you know what i am gonna put them higher not for their damage or anything but for their ability to take hits for their allies especially at low levels when a lot of things will one shot an ally the champion can usually take two sometimes three hits without going down the hit point difference and then especially the armor class difference whereas a a wizard with tw with 14 dexterity might have a 15 16 armor class a champion with a raised shield probably has 20 as well as possibly twice as many hit points so while they don't do a lot actively they can reactively and also passively do a ton for the party that's the hardest part of playing a champion is realizing exactly how you're helping it's like that one big quote from futurama the what is it cut this part out right oh my god when you do things right people won't be sure you've done anything at all this goes out to every champion including you andrew if you're watching who just attacked missed attacked missed and raised shield if you took a hit that turn and it missed you or you used your reaction to reduce some damage to the rogue you helped so much more than you know the bard honestly bard gets really good results i'm gonna put it about here northeast of gunslinger because obviously it's a spellcaster it's inherently complicated but it's also spontaneous so similar to the sorcerer you just get to prepare whatever spells you want or not even prepare you just have whatever spells you want you can cast them as long as you have spell slots and inspire courage is honestly pretty simple to manage sure you have to position yourself within 60 feet of your party members but there's enough there to play with with things like lingering composition and whatnot but it's a fun class it's simple and you can feel good about giving your allies a bunch of buffs the barbarian barbarian is similar to fighter i'm gonna put it right about here uh it's a little it's honestly like a fighter you just have to rage first uh i don't think it gets quite as reliable results as the swashbuckler i think their precise strike and finisher is a little bit better than rage but barbarians still get incredible results you rage and you hit stuff it's not complicated sometimes you might get some new abilities like dragon breath if you're draconic but otherwise pretty simple fun stuff i just realized this was the cleric and this was the wizard uh cleric amazing results again i'm gonna put them right up here right above wizard cause i think cleric and wizard are about equal in difficulty just because of again it's a prepared spell caster that comes with complexity but the fact that you just get free heal spells based on your charisma modifier and those heal spells are so powerful in pathfinder 2e it makes you so you are just the single most powerful healing machine in the game sans maybe the life oracle so the ability at level one where people will have between about i think eight to sixteen hit points and you heal for one d8 plus eight on a two action heel you could fully heal any level one character in the game it's just so powerful and finally the alchemist incredibly hard to play and i won't play favorites i don't think you get quite as much out of an alchemist i don't think they're useless no class on this list is useless but i do believe you need to put in a lot of work as an alchemist to stay on par with everybody now you can do a lot of different things and that is a big aspect to playing an alchemist you can be a buffer you can be a damage dealer you can take advantage of elemental weaknesses you can poison things you can do everything regardless of your subclass your subclass just gives you bonuses to specific types of items whereas the alchemists themselves can do everything regardless as long as they have the recipe uh they have to do a lot to stay on par but their options are super wide and open-ended fascinating graph here now that we're done i didn't expect it to look like this honestly i don't know what i thought it would look like i expected something to be in the easy to play low results but honestly so many classes are just so good in pathfinder i think this should be a testament to how well balanced this system is the fact that all but five classes are above average for me at least in the results you get out of them makes this feel incredibly balanced i think summoner and especially oracle could use some buffs but even which alchemist and magus they're not weak classes they're just a little bit more complex and they just don't do enough different to be considered super special and you know like fighter and ranger and swashbuckler they're all really easy to hit high numbers with and of course like all the prepared casters are just right down the middle because honestly it just makes sense prepared casting doesn't change from one class to another they're all pretty much equally complex with different spell lists and they're listed basically by power of the spell list except the cleric who just gets a bunch of free heals per day which is nuts again getting five extra spell slots at level one just for healing is unmatched if you can manage to have an 18 charisma i guess four typically still have a 16 if you want but there we go there's my list let me know do you agree do you disagree tell me in the comments below what class do you think is the most complex versus the least complex what do you think is the the most results the most bang for your buck class compared to their complexity i want to hear from you i also want to give a huge shout out a to my new editor ray thank you so much for coming on the team we're happy to have you uh comments leave really nice comments about rey to boost their their their ego and their self-esteem i'm sure it would be really nice to be welcoming as a community because lord knows i'm going to be obscenely cruel and mean to them in 90 of these videos they have to edit shout out also to my patrons for supporting the channel and helping me keep the lights on i hope you all have been enjoying these videos lately i'll be getting to the psychic guide soon i believe if this comes out this week it'll be next week luckily i'm not dating this so if rey takes a while editing this this week still means this week fun thank you so much for watching i hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day and until next time known at once

Channel: Nonat1s

Views: 86,782

Keywords: Pathfinder, Pathfinder 2e, Pathfinder Second Edition, Advanced Player's Guide, Pathfinder 2e APG, Nonat1s, Pathfinder 2e Nonat1s, Pathfinder 2e Level 1, Pathfinder 2e new features, Pathfinder 2e New Ancestries, Pathfinder 2e Gamemastery Guide, pathfinder tier list, dnd tier list, pathfinder class tier list, pathfinder class complexity tier list, pathfinder 2e tier list, pathfinder 2e class tier list, pathfinder 2e best class, pathfinder 2e easiest class, pathfinder 2e vs dnd 5e

Id: EqyJHxXXoyQ

Length: 25min 31sec (1531 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 22 2022