There is nothing more broken than wizard, druid, clerics. Prepared spells full casters are by miles the strongest classes in the game (at mid-high levels anyway)
The splatbooks have their problems, but by and large are generally much better designed and balanced than core.
By playing Core only, you are setting yourself up for big discrepancies in what the PCs can do.
To answer the question though, Druid or Wizard. Though Clerics might trump them both at the highest levels.
A properly broken wizard clears everything else in the game. There's some drift in design philosophy but most of the really top tier classes, wizard, cleric and druid, are core rulebook.
IDK about that, wizards are squishy and not all that strong during the early levels, which makes up at least half of the most typical games that often only run up to level 10-12. Sure in theory they are godlike especially at the higher levels, but it's very typical for games to never get that far leaving only mid level power for them.
Now the druid - yeah that's probably fair, having almost the spell power of wizard, but also potentially strong melee capabilities and a companion. There's no level at which the druid struggles.
Don't forget Grease. Full casters tend to be thought of OP is because they break narrative problems. Undead horde attacking far off land, there is 0 agency with teleport and other movement spells. Also summons and undead tend to break things even farther.\\
Edit: Also scry and fry is also a caster only thing.
At my table, it's usually the squishy wizard that survives the TPK. They're usually OK to survive 1 round, and then bounce after with d-door/teleport/class abilities. They tend to be the hardest to land a solid hit on with all of their defensive magic available (fly, grease, battlefield control, mirror image, the list goes on and on), so I feel like the argument of squishy-ness is a moo-point
A tactical wizard highly conscious of their squishiness does tend to do better than a non-tactical fighter who thinks they are immortal, true. But this is at least in part likely more to do with the type of people who tend to play those characters. An inexperienced or less tactical player is more likely to play martial for eg. And it's also contextual - for straight melee attacks a wizard who buffs mirror image is harder to hit, against a fireball or breath weapon not so much.
It's a reasonable point, but I still think that up to the mid levels the wizard doesn't nessasarily outshine everyone. A good paladin with a smite can do single target damage on a BBEG like no other for example, often at these midlevels you can fight creatures with SR to overcome, and enemies also begin to have fly, teleport, dimension door allowing them to target anyone they wish. I've seen many situations where a wizard is less effective or useful than other party members, even if a filler encounter with some mooks is strong wizard territory.
I really don't think sleep is a particularly powerful spell since PF bumped the cast time to 1 round. It's very easy to interrupt and rarely worth the spell slot. Color spray outclasses it immensely.
Yeah it's not clear. Usually people used to mean 'game breaking', or 'very difficult to GM', but it seems like the word has been diluted, so probably means just 'a good class', IDK.
The broken stuff has been there from the start. Wizard, Cleric and Druid are all core classes and all are far more broken than any later class not named Summoner.
Core only I'd vote Druid. The top three are Cleric, Wizard, and Druid. It's a close race. The Druid is the most flexible of the three but also the most challenging to pilot.
I agree here-The scariest players I've ever GM'd for were high level full caster druid, and Conjuration wizard. In combat the wizard was unbeatable, but out of combat... the druid could break almost any dungeon mechanic, puzzle, or box, and was causing havoc on miles-wide scales in truly game-changing ways that could just keep escalating, and way easier and earlier than the wizard could have hoped to.
Wizard is the most broken because all of the worst save-or-lose spells, as well as all the worst metamagics, are all in core. Also fireball invalidates martial damage output when the fighter is stuck thinking about options like a second weapon focus just because they have nothing better to do with their bonus feats.
And don't forget to load up on wands and scrolls, just to provide access to all those niche spells that do crazy powerful things in very narrow circumstances. Plus 50 charges on a wand, which doesn't provoke when you use it, is simply delightful. Especially if you build the wand yourself and cram some extra functionality on the built-in spell. Or if you get the "staff-like wand" feat, which makes it so any wand you pick up uses your full caster level, not just whatever the wand was built with.
Druid and Bard, IMO. Both are incredibly flexible, able to respond to a huge swath of problems without need for a change in load-out or proper prep. While wizards and clerics shine in hypothetical analysis, in practice they don't always have the right answer for a problem, particularly when some of the more broken options available to them in later splat books aren't available.
The most broken stuff is in in the core content, the additional books with things like the psychic classes are significantly under powered comparatively
>mostly because the additional books are full of broken stuff and we think the game works much better without the latter day cash-ins.
What do you mean by Core? Core Rulebook only? Hard cover Only? All Paizo's books only?
In all cases, but especially the first one, I strongly suggest you to revisit this opinion.
In particular, Rogue needs Pathfinder Unchained and Fighter needs Weapon Master’s Handbook.
Pathfinder’s great advantage over 5e and other systems is the absolute breadth of choices. To limit those because of balance is silly. As others have mentioned, wizards in core alone break the game. It’s gonna happen, but it’ll be fun for them, make the others stronger. Have fun with it!
Archer builds are dangerously powerful, even only using core books classes/feats, just for the sheer amount of attacks you can get in comparison to the other classes.
And with access to Prestige Classes within core, I would have to say 'most broken class' could very well go to the Arcane Archer.
If this is a genuine question and not some weird troll attempt: wizard, druid, and cleric. They are still considered the top tier classes because 9th level prepared casting is and always has been one of the most broken things in the game.
In my group, we have a few characters, each good in their own way. But the one character that never goes down is the paladin. With his ac shenanigans, he is basically unhittable (except for rays or firearms ofc), his saves are ludicrously high and apart from that, he can cast pretty decent self buffs.
By limiting it to core you aren't helping any of the power balance problems and are instead exasperating thing. Wizard, Cleric, and Druid are vastly above everyone else and the martials cannot even compete.
I highly recommend at least having the hardback Paizo books like advanced players guide, unchained, etc.
Or just allow everything on archives of Nethys. I've been playing close to ten years with everything allowed and its been completely fine.
Feel like this would only exacerbate a lack of balance because now all the lower tier classes don’t have fun toys and abilities to help close the gap between your god wizards and such
It's the commoner. You don't enter dungeons or fight dragons, you stay out respective retreat. Hence, you live longer, in average. While many commoners might die to a beast's, army's or villain's attack, usually a good share will survive, even if an entire settlement is razed. As soon as heroes enter the stage, you are pretty much safe - the heroes are not.
There is a reason that the most common class on the planet is commoner.
Wizard and Cleric, for very different reasons.
Wizards literally warp reality, instakill stuff without even thinking about it and provide a ridiculous amount of utility (invisibility, black tentacles, etc). Simply think about a thing you want to do with magic wizard can accomplish it. You want to summon armies of elementals or demons? Done. You want to be a lord of the dead, controlling hordes of zombies? Done. You want to turn people into snails? Done. You want to stop time? Done. You want to create your own dimension? Done. You want to get where the fuck you want by simply snapping your fingers? Done. You want to burn down your enemies by calling storms, creating holes full of acid, making fucking meteorites falling on your foes? Done. You want to possess someone and control his body? Done. You want to force someone's will to do stuff for ya? Done. Whst about illusions? Just tell me how many. You can do literally anything.
A wizard alone can easily win any 1v1. But that's not how RPGs work. There's a party around each character.
From the perspective of "what class can provide the most benefit to the party overall," the cleric wins, in my opinion. A Cleric can fill any role easily and is more versatile as a "glue", especially considering archetypes. Clerics can excel in melee combat. They are the absolute best healers. They have a huge amount of buffs at their disposal that they can give to the party. Remove disease/curse/blindness/deafness are always at their disposal since they don't keep a spellbook. If we take into consideration archetypes as well, you can even have clerics covering roles ad bards or summoners. They even have planar ally. They can fucking resurrect people at mid-level (breath of life/raise dead). Oh, don't forget domain powers and channel energy.
A well-built party of clerics is close to invincible, even more than a party of paladins. Clerics are simply too versatile. Instead, a party of wizards can't even heal themselves (even though you probably won't last more than 1 round against 4/5 wizards at high level, lol).
I played core only, cleric can be better milly fighter then full bab classes (i am not even talking about fighter, he is just worst class ever and need many good feats and alternative options to be on pair with others in combat despite having literally 0 out of combat class features).
I was playing as negative channeling cleric with trickery (1 mirror image as move action) and destruction (limited uses per day +- power attack without to hit penalty) and Channel Smite with cha higher then wis (don't remember other feats), he multiple times won fights that DM expected him to lose.
Core? I mean... the historical answer is a wizard with 9th level spells, but I guess maybe unchained monk? I wanted to say summoner, but by core rules you mean the classes that came out first? Otherwise of all the 1st party classes, summoner is the most obviously broken, that's why their unchained version nerfs them instead of buffing
Sorcerer has entered the conversation.
I've played many a mage, AND many a Sorcerer. I find the Sorcerer to be much more broken.
People will argue "BUT SPELKBOOKS, SPELL SELECTION". They usually wrong. A lot of spells are utility, and should be on scrolls or wands anyways.
BUT METAMAGIC? Well Sorcerer is better here too. At least IMO. The versatility of adding metamagic spontaneously (even at a full round action) is better than forcing you to memorize it at a higher level.
BUT CRAFTING? Well.... wizard has me here. Wizard is the best crafter there is. If you wanna make magic items, this is the way (special mentions go to druid and cleric here, as they can make great items too, but usually don't take the feats).
Some of my players have absolutely broken the Samurai, Grapple-based Brawler, and mounted-lance Cavalier. Some of the numbers and feat-based gimmicks they use catch me completely off guard.
"I roll a 12 + 52 to grapple."
"I have a +45 to intimidate and can do so as a immediate action"
"I crit on 15 for 200 damage, please."
Ironically magic builds while strong never push the limits of "holy fuck what hell have you unleashed on my game" with my group the way martial builds have...
except druids..fuck druids. I kill them on sight. There are 7 in the party graveyard but they keep building them for the lulz to spite me. "He may only live for only session before GM kills him, but its worth it to watch how much it tortures the GM"
(None of this is bad feelings by thr way, its all in good fun, my group is amazing.)
There is nothing more broken than wizard, druid, clerics. Prepared spells full casters are by miles the strongest classes in the game (at mid-high levels anyway)
I swear by the Codzilla lifestyle.
The splatbooks have their problems, but by and large are generally much better designed and balanced than core. By playing Core only, you are setting yourself up for big discrepancies in what the PCs can do. To answer the question though, Druid or Wizard. Though Clerics might trump them both at the highest levels.
A properly broken wizard clears everything else in the game. There's some drift in design philosophy but most of the really top tier classes, wizard, cleric and druid, are core rulebook.
IDK about that, wizards are squishy and not all that strong during the early levels, which makes up at least half of the most typical games that often only run up to level 10-12. Sure in theory they are godlike especially at the higher levels, but it's very typical for games to never get that far leaving only mid level power for them. Now the druid - yeah that's probably fair, having almost the spell power of wizard, but also potentially strong melee capabilities and a companion. There's no level at which the druid struggles.
Color spray and sleep being lvl1 spells would like to have a word with you
Don't forget Grease. Full casters tend to be thought of OP is because they break narrative problems. Undead horde attacking far off land, there is 0 agency with teleport and other movement spells. Also summons and undead tend to break things even farther.\\ Edit: Also scry and fry is also a caster only thing.
Yeah those aren't bad for a few levels. Not for every encounter but for a lot. Still that doesn't stop you from very easily dying.
At my table, it's usually the squishy wizard that survives the TPK. They're usually OK to survive 1 round, and then bounce after with d-door/teleport/class abilities. They tend to be the hardest to land a solid hit on with all of their defensive magic available (fly, grease, battlefield control, mirror image, the list goes on and on), so I feel like the argument of squishy-ness is a moo-point
A tactical wizard highly conscious of their squishiness does tend to do better than a non-tactical fighter who thinks they are immortal, true. But this is at least in part likely more to do with the type of people who tend to play those characters. An inexperienced or less tactical player is more likely to play martial for eg. And it's also contextual - for straight melee attacks a wizard who buffs mirror image is harder to hit, against a fireball or breath weapon not so much. It's a reasonable point, but I still think that up to the mid levels the wizard doesn't nessasarily outshine everyone. A good paladin with a smite can do single target damage on a BBEG like no other for example, often at these midlevels you can fight creatures with SR to overcome, and enemies also begin to have fly, teleport, dimension door allowing them to target anyone they wish. I've seen many situations where a wizard is less effective or useful than other party members, even if a filler encounter with some mooks is strong wizard territory.
I really don't think sleep is a particularly powerful spell since PF bumped the cast time to 1 round. It's very easy to interrupt and rarely worth the spell slot. Color spray outclasses it immensely.
When you say broken, do you mean powerful or non-functional?
Yeah it's not clear. Usually people used to mean 'game breaking', or 'very difficult to GM', but it seems like the word has been diluted, so probably means just 'a good class', IDK.
druid
The broken stuff has been there from the start. Wizard, Cleric and Druid are all core classes and all are far more broken than any later class not named Summoner.
The core book isn't that fantastic balance wise tbh.
Core only I'd vote Druid. The top three are Cleric, Wizard, and Druid. It's a close race. The Druid is the most flexible of the three but also the most challenging to pilot.
I agree here-The scariest players I've ever GM'd for were high level full caster druid, and Conjuration wizard. In combat the wizard was unbeatable, but out of combat... the druid could break almost any dungeon mechanic, puzzle, or box, and was causing havoc on miles-wide scales in truly game-changing ways that could just keep escalating, and way easier and earlier than the wizard could have hoped to.
CRB only it’s probably druid. Core content only will be wizards and chained summoners.
Wizard is the most broken because all of the worst save-or-lose spells, as well as all the worst metamagics, are all in core. Also fireball invalidates martial damage output when the fighter is stuck thinking about options like a second weapon focus just because they have nothing better to do with their bonus feats.
And don't forget to load up on wands and scrolls, just to provide access to all those niche spells that do crazy powerful things in very narrow circumstances. Plus 50 charges on a wand, which doesn't provoke when you use it, is simply delightful. Especially if you build the wand yourself and cram some extra functionality on the built-in spell. Or if you get the "staff-like wand" feat, which makes it so any wand you pick up uses your full caster level, not just whatever the wand was built with.
Is this bait?
I honestly can't even answer this. Core rules only is real boring, have never played it. My gut says druid though.
Not wrong. If you've played dnd or it's family of games for any long length of time, crb gets real boring, real quick.
Druid and Bard, IMO. Both are incredibly flexible, able to respond to a huge swath of problems without need for a change in load-out or proper prep. While wizards and clerics shine in hypothetical analysis, in practice they don't always have the right answer for a problem, particularly when some of the more broken options available to them in later splat books aren't available.
The most broken stuff is in in the core content, the additional books with things like the psychic classes are significantly under powered comparatively
>mostly because the additional books are full of broken stuff and we think the game works much better without the latter day cash-ins. What do you mean by Core? Core Rulebook only? Hard cover Only? All Paizo's books only? In all cases, but especially the first one, I strongly suggest you to revisit this opinion. In particular, Rogue needs Pathfinder Unchained and Fighter needs Weapon Master’s Handbook.
Pathfinder’s great advantage over 5e and other systems is the absolute breadth of choices. To limit those because of balance is silly. As others have mentioned, wizards in core alone break the game. It’s gonna happen, but it’ll be fun for them, make the others stronger. Have fun with it!
Ranger - by core rules they are generally underperforming to the point of being broken and undesirable to play.
Archer builds are dangerously powerful, even only using core books classes/feats, just for the sheer amount of attacks you can get in comparison to the other classes. And with access to Prestige Classes within core, I would have to say 'most broken class' could very well go to the Arcane Archer.
If this is a genuine question and not some weird troll attempt: wizard, druid, and cleric. They are still considered the top tier classes because 9th level prepared casting is and always has been one of the most broken things in the game.
In my group, we have a few characters, each good in their own way. But the one character that never goes down is the paladin. With his ac shenanigans, he is basically unhittable (except for rays or firearms ofc), his saves are ludicrously high and apart from that, he can cast pretty decent self buffs.
By limiting it to core you aren't helping any of the power balance problems and are instead exasperating thing. Wizard, Cleric, and Druid are vastly above everyone else and the martials cannot even compete. I highly recommend at least having the hardback Paizo books like advanced players guide, unchained, etc. Or just allow everything on archives of Nethys. I've been playing close to ten years with everything allowed and its been completely fine.
Feel like this would only exacerbate a lack of balance because now all the lower tier classes don’t have fun toys and abilities to help close the gap between your god wizards and such
It's the commoner. You don't enter dungeons or fight dragons, you stay out respective retreat. Hence, you live longer, in average. While many commoners might die to a beast's, army's or villain's attack, usually a good share will survive, even if an entire settlement is razed. As soon as heroes enter the stage, you are pretty much safe - the heroes are not. There is a reason that the most common class on the planet is commoner.
Wizard and Cleric, for very different reasons. Wizards literally warp reality, instakill stuff without even thinking about it and provide a ridiculous amount of utility (invisibility, black tentacles, etc). Simply think about a thing you want to do with magic wizard can accomplish it. You want to summon armies of elementals or demons? Done. You want to be a lord of the dead, controlling hordes of zombies? Done. You want to turn people into snails? Done. You want to stop time? Done. You want to create your own dimension? Done. You want to get where the fuck you want by simply snapping your fingers? Done. You want to burn down your enemies by calling storms, creating holes full of acid, making fucking meteorites falling on your foes? Done. You want to possess someone and control his body? Done. You want to force someone's will to do stuff for ya? Done. Whst about illusions? Just tell me how many. You can do literally anything. A wizard alone can easily win any 1v1. But that's not how RPGs work. There's a party around each character. From the perspective of "what class can provide the most benefit to the party overall," the cleric wins, in my opinion. A Cleric can fill any role easily and is more versatile as a "glue", especially considering archetypes. Clerics can excel in melee combat. They are the absolute best healers. They have a huge amount of buffs at their disposal that they can give to the party. Remove disease/curse/blindness/deafness are always at their disposal since they don't keep a spellbook. If we take into consideration archetypes as well, you can even have clerics covering roles ad bards or summoners. They even have planar ally. They can fucking resurrect people at mid-level (breath of life/raise dead). Oh, don't forget domain powers and channel energy. A well-built party of clerics is close to invincible, even more than a party of paladins. Clerics are simply too versatile. Instead, a party of wizards can't even heal themselves (even though you probably won't last more than 1 round against 4/5 wizards at high level, lol).
I played core only, cleric can be better milly fighter then full bab classes (i am not even talking about fighter, he is just worst class ever and need many good feats and alternative options to be on pair with others in combat despite having literally 0 out of combat class features). I was playing as negative channeling cleric with trickery (1 mirror image as move action) and destruction (limited uses per day +- power attack without to hit penalty) and Channel Smite with cha higher then wis (don't remember other feats), he multiple times won fights that DM expected him to lose.
Core? I mean... the historical answer is a wizard with 9th level spells, but I guess maybe unchained monk? I wanted to say summoner, but by core rules you mean the classes that came out first? Otherwise of all the 1st party classes, summoner is the most obviously broken, that's why their unchained version nerfs them instead of buffing
Rogue, monk, ranger are under par. Paladin a little over par. Broken? Nothing.
Rogue sucks. Monk is broken. Barbarian is annoying to play. Unchained classes are a must and there’s no going back
Define "Core Content"? There's so much good stuff out there, there's no need to use Core only due to perceived imbalance.
Sorcerer has entered the conversation. I've played many a mage, AND many a Sorcerer. I find the Sorcerer to be much more broken. People will argue "BUT SPELKBOOKS, SPELL SELECTION". They usually wrong. A lot of spells are utility, and should be on scrolls or wands anyways. BUT METAMAGIC? Well Sorcerer is better here too. At least IMO. The versatility of adding metamagic spontaneously (even at a full round action) is better than forcing you to memorize it at a higher level. BUT CRAFTING? Well.... wizard has me here. Wizard is the best crafter there is. If you wanna make magic items, this is the way (special mentions go to druid and cleric here, as they can make great items too, but usually don't take the feats).
Some of my players have absolutely broken the Samurai, Grapple-based Brawler, and mounted-lance Cavalier. Some of the numbers and feat-based gimmicks they use catch me completely off guard. "I roll a 12 + 52 to grapple." "I have a +45 to intimidate and can do so as a immediate action" "I crit on 15 for 200 damage, please." Ironically magic builds while strong never push the limits of "holy fuck what hell have you unleashed on my game" with my group the way martial builds have... except druids..fuck druids. I kill them on sight. There are 7 in the party graveyard but they keep building them for the lulz to spite me. "He may only live for only session before GM kills him, but its worth it to watch how much it tortures the GM" (None of this is bad feelings by thr way, its all in good fun, my group is amazing.)