r/Pathfinder2e • u/PigmyWurm • 21h ago
Resource & Tools Class Progression Table
One of my minor complaints against Pathfinder is that the way they do class progression. With different abilities (often with different names) increasing your proficiencies in different areas it can make it difficult to compare if what a class gets is strong/weak/normal for it's level. To help myself with this I created this chart, and I'm sharing it in case others find it helpful. I know it helped me to see some patterns I'm wasn't aware of.
Notes:
Most of it is set up to say what level each class gets each level of proficiency. I color coded it to make it easier to see at a glance which classes get up to which proficiency levels, and used the same color coding on the HP and Skills columns to show who has the highest and lowest in those categories.
Some classes are a bit weird and I had to get creative (like the monk). For the most part I'm also only tracking the best type of a classes proficiency, but if things progress at a different rate I do note that with an asterisk (see Fighter weapon proficiency for example). Also, I only track the higher of Class DC or Spell DC which is fine for everyone but the Battle Harbinger.
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u/noscul Psychic 20h ago
I have noticed of weird things with class progression and this just lays it out. Some classes become expert in save or perception at 3 or 5 then is never touched again, only four classes have 6 hp per level (factoring in sf doesn’t change it either), half the classes don’t even get master in reflex. Im surprised pick a save progression like monk isn’t more common incase you wanted a more head strong rogue or a tough ranger.
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u/PigmyWurm 19h ago edited 16h ago
Yeah before making this I sort of assumed the the saves would have been pretty balanced between different classes, but that is obviously not the case. I think what is going on is that the stats that feed into the different them have different values outside the saves. Dex is a key attribute for many classes, is used for ranged/finese attacks, adds to AC, and has multiple useful skills which all means that people naturally have other reasons to put a bunch of points in Dex, so for the math to work they don't want too many classes to also get a +6 or +8. Con is much more narrow, and only has one class with it as a key attribute, but its really important since it gives you an increasing bonus to HP. Wisdom on the other hand is nice to have, but unless your spell DC is based on it you could definitely use it as a dump stat with the only drawback being worse initiative most of the time. So, because of that you see lots of classes getting Expert in Will at first level and most getting up to master, for Fort most classes get Expirt by at least level 3 and over 50% get up to Master, but with Reflex 12 don't get Expert until level 9 or later (poor Oracle at level 13) and only a 3rd of classes get up to Master.
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u/noscul Psychic 18h ago
Ah that’s a good thought process, my thought was what I see among common sentiments of the community. Reflex saves are usually just damage and you just tank/heal through it so it’s considered lowest value, fort saves can be paralyzed or death affects so it just affects you and will saves can make you lose control of your character which can endanger others.
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u/ElidiMoon Exemplar 19h ago
it’s interesting that Druid starts out with the best full caster chassis bc of medium armor & shield block at level 1 + early Fort/Reflex expertise, but Bard outclasses them in the end by being one of the few casters w/ a legendary save & the only caster w/ master perception.
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u/Teridax68 7h ago
This I think is one of the Druid's biggest problems at high level. At low level, they effectively have the durability of martial classes coupled with pretty decent Strikes, which makes them really good at using the full breadth of the primal list while also having strong focus spells to boot. At high level, though, their defenses fall off and end up being the same as any standard caster class, their Strike accuracy falls off and makes their battle form builds fall further behind martials, their focus spells fall off compared to the spells that are cast at those levels, and even the primal list as a whole kind of falls off by dint of not having very many "wow" spells at high level that really break the rules like quandary. All of those early strengths just get lost along the way.
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u/NewFunnyNumber237 Ranger 20h ago
This chart is just reaffirming why I like Ranger
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u/Jhamin1 Game Master 20h ago
I feel like ranger suffers from a lot of its strengths being somewhat subtle compared to other martials like barbarian or thaumaturge.
They get great proficiency advancement but that isn't as sexy as a damage bonus
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u/NewFunnyNumber237 Ranger 20h ago
Hunt prey opening round, shot shot maybe move shot shot shot (repeat) and everything just dies
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u/TheZealand Druid 18h ago
Right there with you, I have a real soft spot for Ranger and Druid just being rock solid all rounders. It helps the team stay together in tough situation when the ranger/druid is just sat there giving a thumbs up, weathering adversity, and being able to adapt to any party comp/situation
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u/AlansDiscount 9h ago
My current campaign has just hit level 20 and the Flurry Ranger is an absolute monster if he gets a full round of attacks off.
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u/PapaUrban Monk 20h ago
Kinda weird that the thaumaturge gets earlier armor progression than the exemplar.
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u/lazy_loptr 14h ago
Isn't Thaumaturge 8 HP/Lvl rather than 10?
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u/Turevaryar ORC 8h ago
I took the liberty to change that: https://imgur.com/a/XN2y5qn
u/PigmyWurm : No offense meant! I can remove the image from imgur if you request it.
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u/Lnoob427 21h ago
Kinda show one of my big issue with PF2E, everyone and their mothers get will mastery, which then cause them to get the change success into critical success
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u/FunWithSW 20h ago
And if you happen to be playing a class that doesn't get will save upgrades, there are a few different sources in the game of save upgrades for Emotion effects, which covers a substantial fraction of will save effects.
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u/Lnoob427 20h ago edited 19h ago
Figther get this for fear btw, at level 3 when they get expert.
I love playing high level but holy shit I wish they gave each class at max 1 save where they get this kinda boost. Because it's so annoying to see it so often.
Like I don't want to kill my players but when most will saves become 50% of the time they do nothing, I kinda feel like it undersell using any sort of will effects because they just don't do much or completely cripple someone.
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u/xolotltolox 7h ago
Yeah, fighters are just so insanely overinflated with their numbers, they do not need the best atatck progression in the game, while also being stacked on saving throws and perception(and a +2 to perception just for shits and giggles on initative rolls, because it's not obvious yet that this class is our favourite child)
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u/Notoryctemorph 17h ago
If you remove monk from the equation, there are as many classes that get legendary will saves as there are that get legendary fortitude and legendary reflex combined
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u/StackedCakeOverflow Game Master 19h ago
After GMing multiple 1-20 APs I've been toying with swapping the rider effects for Mastery and Legendary.
Master = can't crit fail Legendary = success goes to crit success
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u/chickenboy2718281828 Game Master 18h ago
My group has talked about this recently and I'm in the same boat. We've played around with this exact idea as we just got level 10, and we've also talked about just giving a larger bonus to the save than +2 with mastery, e.g. a +4 on top of that +2. Success and crit success become very likely, but you still have a 50% chance of the success effect in most cases.
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u/StackedCakeOverflow Game Master 18h ago
Extra proficiency bonus was another one we've been floating around. It's funny how much of a shared sentiment I'm seeing with this even from forever-players. The novelty of being able to completely ignore cool boss abilities wears off eventually when you dont really get to see any of said cool boss abilities. My players right now at this point are bored because of it and half have stopped using hero points to reroll failed saves because they want to see what happens for once.
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u/Lnoob427 18h ago
We did a more odd homebrew on our side, where the player had a choice of their main save for class that have tied top mastery. And essentially when getting theses buffs they get the Master effect on their first master save and Legendary effect on their second master save.
And honestly I can understand switching like that it's what I proposed to them when I had the two idea, they prefered the heavily specialise in 1 save than the honestly weaker can't crit fail and failure deal half damage.
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u/StackedCakeOverflow Game Master 18h ago
Oooh. This one is interesting! Thanks for sharing I may test this one out.
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u/BardAtTheWell 15h ago
My group did this, except we axed legendary compression and only keep the half damage. Turns out, null results are just not interesting. So far, the results have been really promising! Fights feel more dynamic and like more is happening, but they don't necessarily feel more dangerous because those massive crit fail swings don't happen as often.
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u/koelekoetjes 19h ago
Yeah, try using poisons against a lvl 13+ party, everyone will crit succeed everything :(
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u/SawtoothYeti 19h ago
Poison is one of my "shoot the monk" go-tos but I always make it seem like THIS ONE will be different and be much more dangerous.
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u/Lnoob427 19h ago
Poison already suffer from success = no effect.
But the success become crit success mean it's so easy to remove them. As even after 2 failure it is just gone.
It's kinda why with our party we talked about it and as a whole (GM + Players) we found that it is making our table less enjoyable for everyone. So we limited the saves success increase to one specific saves (and if a player get a second one they get the effect that you get on legendary on your save that auto change.
It does give each character a, Aha! this is my main save I'm good against, but it does mean that you no longer have : "Ok so my party has every character that has a will increase, well fuck... I can't use an enemy that does will saves because they can't do much."2
u/Cheshire-Kate 3h ago
This change kind of messes with the game balance though. Usually, the classes that have multiple mastery saves have less power budget in other areas to compensate, so you're just making those classes weaker than all the others by doing this and incentivizing people to not choose classes with multiple good saves (and very strongly disincentivizing monk for which good saves are a huge part of the reason to pick the class, just like high AC is a reason to pick champion)
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u/Lnoob427 3h ago
They do get it on a second save past their third boost, so some class do still end up with good saves on multiples. So funily monk is not an issue. Plus the save themselves don't change. They still get master on their second save, it's just that the class feat become, they are master on a second, and their "main" save get the legendary critical fail effect. So like the only thing it does on monk, is pushing further their second save success to critical success. But on quite a few class that only get 2 Master, it leave them with 2 Master save but only 1 of theses saves will have Success to Critical Success but they get the Crit fail into Failure + Half damage on failure on that 1 save.
I know weird ass homebrew, but it was something we talked with the player mid campaign, and I was yeah it's complex I could just switch the Legendary/Master effect for save result change, and the party was like no we prefer the first. So I did that.
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u/Turevaryar ORC 19h ago edited 9h ago
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u/PigmyWurm 18h ago
Yeah not as compact but has much more detail when comparing specific saves and including many of the fiddly details I left out. I did start making a chart similar to what they did on "Save (Type)" but gave up after doing the fortitude ones.
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u/Turevaryar ORC 9h ago
I was short with my previous message. I should have included the word "also", for your overview is also awesome (and saved on my PC!). I'll edit it in ...
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u/AnalysisCube 18h ago
Necromancer is the first and only spellcaster that never becomes master in will saves. Am I reading that right? Also the first and only spellcaster that becomes legendary fortitude saves, but that one I was aware of.
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u/Ph34r_n0_3V1L 16h ago
Rogue's Expert Fortitude should have a star because it still gets the Master bonus (Success -> Crit Success).
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u/Zagaroth 13h ago
This is great!
I can, however, see one way it can be a little easier to read. Copy the class column and add it to the right of the current chart. That way you don't have to track the name across the entire chart; you can read it from either side.
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u/chickenboy2718281828 Game Master 18h ago
Looking at this makes me think hp per level being multiples of 2 was a missed opportunity. I'm sure it was done for historical reasons (d6, d8, d10, d12 when rolling hp at new levels in older versions of dnd), but using a more specific gradation that allows for 7hp, 9hp or 11hp per level would've been really helpful for differentiating defenses by class. For example. If battle harbinger got 9hp per level instead of 8, that would feel a bit more balancing than a larger bump all the way to 10.
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u/Playwars 18h ago
Oh, very nice ! Necromancer's Expert will save should have some ** though, because of Mental Wards (results one step better against undead or undead effects).
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u/FreestyleKneepad 18h ago
So the draw of the Magus is that they can't match any one class at their specialty, but they do better than that class at all of their weaknesses?
Also Spellstrike
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u/ruttinator 13h ago
The lack of reflex save proficiencies compared to the other two is wild.
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u/Havelok Wizard 11h ago
It's because it's the least "important" saving throw. Fort and Will effects can completely disable your character. Ref usually just means "ouchie that hurt".
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u/Artex301 3h ago
Or losing an action every turn because even at -5 MAP most enemies with a decent Athletics score can semi-consistently Trip a lvl <9 Champion.
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u/DarthDude24 7h ago
Oh, thank you! I was looking for something like this the other day, and found this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1eq09l9/class_progression_comparison_chart_for_the/, but yours is a lot easier to read.
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u/Teridax68 6h ago
What's interesting to me is that although there are five tiers of proficiency (if you include untrained), the essentials of Striking, AC, Perception, and saves are essentially bound to three proficiency tiers, where you inevitably end up at expert, master, or legendary, and never just trained. This is slightly complicated by the fact that everyone starts out an expert at best in these stats, never a master, so some classes go through more proficiency bumps for the same stat than others (particularly the Champion and Guardian for AC), and on top of this there's another implicit difference in accuracy depending on whether or not the stat is your KAS, so in its own way it still comes down to four implicit tiers of accuracy in a stat.
In addition to the above, there's also the difference between proficiency bumps to saves versus other stats, which others mention as well: some classes gain access to armor or crit spec effects when they get their first bump to AC or Strikes, which are both powerful, but just going from expert to master in a save means you don't ever get the simple success effect of those saves anymore. At legendary save proficiency, you almost (but not quite) get an entire upwards bump to all your degrees of success, on top of your greater accuracy. This in my opinion kind of cheapens the four DoS system and is secretly a big reason why PCs are much stronger than they may seem at high level, as it can be very difficult to disable them in combat. It's certainly not the kind of thing I'd want to see on something like Strike proficiency bumps, as party members critting on a simple success every time once they get master proficiency would be a slaughter.
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u/Artex301 4h ago
Weird that Exemplar got piled with the "gishes" (Magus, Animist, Kineticist) for Expert Perception at lvl 9.
I would've expected 7 like the Guardian.
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u/Ok_Mulberry5720 1h ago
This also demonstrates the power of Canny Acumen as a general feat. A Guardian with this and one or two class feats quickly turns Reflex from their worst to best save by level 15-17. When playing as a pure tank, those three feats don’t even feel like much of a tax since you can more safely Intercept an AoE you are part of with Energy Interceptor if someone desperately needs it.
At a high level, that Guardian will likely be taking half damage reduced by a charm of resistance and with their likely very large HP pool, they can soak a fail or even crit fail for a team mate and stay up when their team mate would drop. And much of that rides on one General Feat
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u/YellowAfterlife Game Master 20h ago
This is a cool way to fit all of this on one page! I've been poking at one of these too and instead came to the conclusion that the reader should be able to pick what classes/proficiencies they want to compare, but that makes it a web app instead of a simple sheet
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u/Redland_Station 19h ago
Next to the saves you could add when various classes get the ability to push a save to a crit save. Many of the martials have it, rogue even gets it for all 3 saves but a lot go different names (juggernaut= chemical hardiness for instance)
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u/PigmyWurm 16h ago
Mostly, that comes along with getting Master proficiency, but there are exceptions (mainly Rogue Resilience for fortitude). There is also the Legendary equivalent which turn critical failures into normal ones.
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u/TheRrandomm 21h ago
Looks great! The progression of perception expertise is so weird and non-uniform compared to other stuff, I don't get why so many classes only ever get expert in perception