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While punch for punch (excuse the pun) the Monk may seem superior in terms of raw damage output and potentially survivability (I haven't crunched the numbers myself), the niche of the Brawler is its sheer versatility that it gets from being able to juggle feats around.

If a Monk is attacked by flying foes, it has no class skills to help it out; a Brawler can use its class skill to get Death From Below, or Wingclipper etc.
A Monk in magical darkness has no class skills to help itself out; a Brawler can use its class skill to get the Blindfight feat tree
A powerful wizard attacks, you get Spellbreaker, Disruptive etc.
Know that an enemy is weak to cold/fire? Time for elemental fist and Marid/Efreeti Style!
Fighting a giant? Earth Child Style!

These are just situations I'm pulling off the top of my head - the list goes on. Now, of course, a Monk could choose to take these feats as part of its feats every odd level, but my point is that suddenly all of those feats that seem incredibly situational and so few people take them are suddenly available to create an immensely specialised character to neutralise or counter the challenge they face.

Playing a Brawler effectively does require very good knowledge of all of the combat feats available, but experienced players would be able to create incredibly powerful combinations to overcome most obstacles that a more well-rounded character would struggle with.

Just my two cents, feel free to disagree!

...the Titan Mauler barbarian archetype was supposed to allow you to wield progressively larger weapons, but due to rules snafu it doesn't work that way. The writer of the archetype has proposed a straightforward correction on the message boards here and clarifies how he intended the archetype to funciton. So as written it doesn't accomplish what your player wants, but the archetype is supposed to.

With a small amount of research, I found this:

... I'd probably leave the Jotungrip ability as is, since that ability is really more about using a regular TH weapon in one hand than using overly large weapons. However, the Massive Weapons ability is the one I'd probably change, to read like this:

Massive Weapons (Ex): At 3rd level, a titan mauler becomes skilled in the use of massive weapons looted from her titanic foes. At 3rd level, she can wield melee or thrown weapons sized for creatures one size category larger than her own size, with a -2 penalty on attack rolls. Such weapons are always considered two-handed weapons.

For every 3 levels beyond 3rd, a titan mauler may choose to increase the size of weapons she can effectively wield by one additional size category, with an additional -2 cumulative penalty to attack rolls. Alternatively, she may choose to reduce her attack roll penalty when using oversized weapons by 1. This choice must be made every 3 levels when the ability is gained and cannot be changed. This ability replaces trap sense.

I appreciate everyone's help, but this has pretty much solved what I was after; my player wanted to wield ridiculously large weapons, so although this Titan Mauler edit isn't official, it's the closest thing to what my player is after, and as long as my players are happy that makes me a happy GM. I mean, if casters can stop time and bring people back from the dead why can't martials fight with big swords?!

As it happens, I do agree that players shouldn't be allowed to cherry pick things from Fiendish Heritage, but it seems like that's the only legal way to wield a Large Greatsword; is there another way? If not, would just a houseruled feat to allow a player to use Large weapons without penalty be balanced, or could that be abused too much?

Apologies for confusing Precise Strike & Vital Strike; their similar namings confused me! *turns red with embarrassment* I shall edit accordingly.

So I have a player who is trying to get a Monster Hunter-esque character, built around using a Large Greatsword to the biggest effect possible, to do single attacks doing ridiculous amounts of damage.

So, he's a Tiefling with 'Fiendish Heritage' #16 to get over not being able to wield such a weapon (as it would become 3-handed).

"You have oversized limbs, allowing you to use Large weapons without penalty"

So I agreed that that combination would work, as for a feat I thought there wasn't much benefit, but it made his character more unique. So after that his weapon deals 3d6 damage; not particularly game breaking to be honest.

He's taken Ranger, as the survival elements of the character match Monster Hunter quite nicely, and the 'Two Handed Weapon' abilities from the APG. It also let him cast the spell 'Lead Blade'; now his sword does 4d6 damage.

He finally earned enough money (lv8) to commission a Large Impact Greatsword

"An impact weapon delivers a potent kinetic jolt when it strikes, dealing damage as if the weapon were one size category larger"

At level 8, even doing 6d6+modifier damage isn't particularly massive, but he enjoys rolling a handful of dice, so I rolled with it (excuse the pun!).

So now he's asking me if the Vital Strike feat chain would combine with it.

"When you use the attack action, you can make one attack at your highest base attack bonus that deals additional damage. Roll the weapon's damage dice for the attack twice and add the results together before adding bonuses from Strength, weapon abilities (such as flaming), precision based damage, and other damage bonuses. These extra weapon damage dice are not multiplied on a critical hit, but are added to the total."

It would appear that, as the Impact weapon is technically a weapon ability, that wouldn't work, but the player argues that the ability doesn't work like 'flaming' does, so shouldn't be included in that. While I would agree that, technically, Lead Blades isn't a 'damage bonus' per se, I'm slightly concerned that the player rolling 12d6+modifier could break most encounters. Obviously it's my call at the end of the day, but I just want to ask a few things:

While I don't expect someone to give me a list of all the encounters in this module, could someone who has read the module (or played it) tell me how many encounters can be done using current Pathfinder pawns? I have all of the current sets and will be buying the future ones, but I don't own any models and don't like proxies, as I feel is goes against the immersion that I try to create for my players.
Therefore, my purchase of this product hinges on whether or not the monsters and NPCs can be represented easily by the pawn sets released (or to be released soon).
Thanks in advance,
LeSpriter

So will these animal companions feature on the pawn set for this book? Wishful thinking, I know, but pawns for the animal companions would be super duper useful!