voska66's page

The other way I've fixed rogues was just to combine them with the fighter and make it the "non-magic dude" class.

I toyed with the idea of getting rid the rogue class entirely and making it a fighter archetype.

So I swapped fighter feats for rogue talents. Talents are weaker than fighter bonus feats as you get 1 less and no retraining them out for free.

Weapon Training swapped for sneak attack. Sneak attack is better than Weapon Training but balance out with talent for feats.

Armor training for evasion, improved evasion and uncanny dodge and improved uncanny dodge. This seems to balance well.

Trap finding, trap spotting is swapped for bravery and restricted list of weapons proficiencies instead all martial.

6 additional skill and additional class skills in exchange for fighter only feats, heavy armor proficiency and medium armor proficiency.

The swap Fortitude as good save for Reflex as good save.

My base of operation was in the FR setting, I was playing an Inquisitor of Mask. I bought an old copper mine to use a base of operations for thieves guild expansion. A ran several bandits out of the mine. Then I offered protection for caravans traveling through the forest and employed profitable mercenary guild to keep it all looking on the up and up. As well I ran staged combats between my forces make it look like it wasn't extortion. Pretty much came off look more like the hero.

I used the iron mine a front. In the depths there were other creatures and I bought copper from them to make it look like the mine was actually producing copper. A large mine with all the bandits need to produce something to keep the nosy Paladin order out of it. Lots of adventure opportunities exploring the depths while securing the upper levels.

It might be interesting to develop a Semi-Gestalt, in which you pick one primary class, and every other, or every third level is a true 'gestalt' level up.

So normally a wizard who semi-gestalts as a fighter has his normal saves and HD progression, but every 3rd level he needs double the XP, but he gains a level in fighter as well, and for that level only uses the fighters HD, BAB, Fort progressions etc...

Why not do it like 2E D&D. You gestalt you class then any experience you gain is split between both classes. To get to level 2 you twice the experience. Then if someone chose a single class would level up that much faster. So you'd be tougher but always a level behind.

Gestalt are basically the power level of 1 1/2 characters (not 2 due to the action economy). I like playing as gestalt and running games where I allow them in my worlds. It's definitely something that takes some getting used to so that balance can be achieved. They will cut through normal epic encounters like a hot knife through butter (especially if you have smart players) so the CR's need to be adjusted accordingly.

This really depends on what class you put together for Gestalt. Class that don't synergize leave you choosing you actions using either one or the other features of the classes you chose. If you have synergy the class feature can stack allow you limited action to be that much better.

Fighter/Wizard doesn't synergize well at all. Fighter/Rogue does.

For me it's not about mastering my capabilities it's about the roleplaying. I find if I'm leveling up too fast it's because we in combat constantly leaving little time to roleplay ones character.

What's interesting is that people always say not to use a cavalier due to size concerns, but then the Large evolution is almost always recommended for Eidolons. You'd think that if Large is a concern in one case, it'd be a concern in the other.

Summoners don't ride their large edilons. A large creature moving though dungeon is one thing riding on top of that large creature in dungeon is another. As well if you come to area in the dungeon where the mount can fit you can't just dismiss it like the summoner can call it to you later.

How about a Ranger/Inquisitor. All Good saves with evasion and stalwart. The extra feats from combat style are nice. A TWF style with out the need for a high dex. FE + Judgement and Bane is nasty combo along with teamwork feats and solo tactics. This is what I'd play in Gestalt game.

No need for Cleric in this party. Between the bard and ranger you have healing covered. You can cover a few conditions, bards are good against fear. Ranger and Bards can delay poison effects. For the rest make use of potions for restoration and such.

I have no problem with 7s. The stat bonuses go -2 to +5 so I say let the players do what they want if you go with point build. If you don't like people dumping a stat then roll your stats.

I find with higher level play we have less combats and combats. If we do have combat it's epic in nature. At lower levels it was all about fighting the minions and getting to the BBEG and defeating what ever it was for the treasure. At higher level it just seemed kind of silly to have big huge encounter 5 or 6 times a day. So the games turned more into games of intrigue and politics. Bad guys weren't the types you just walked up to a killed, they tended to be the types that if you did that you accomplish nothing as another rises to take their place.

As gm I see the first +2 enhancement usually showing up around level 4 in APs. Level 8 is +4 and 12 +6. This is just what I've noticed in APs though. In home brew games it varies.

In my games I'm house ruling that Paladins can be any good and Anti Paladins any evil. Barbarians cover any chaotic and Monk cover any lawful. It just makes sense to me.

I get the exotic thing, but it basically is saying that it's impossible for USA to trade with Canada. It also says word for word "longer trade routes are harder to maintain," and yet the DCs are lower.

For castles: I thought of that too, but it bugs me that all the buildings that you can get have identical names in both sections making it quite obvious that they were intended to be the same thing, but the pricing is significantly different.

Canada and the US didn't trade very well in the past. Too many regulations, subsidize, tariffs and such. It took 100 years to settle that out to the trading system we have today.

Seems this could get rather expensive. To boost you HP 1 point cost you 3 days down time 10 X HD X #Days. At 2nd level assuming you rolled an average of 5 HP on fighter you have to spend 300 GP to max it out over 15 days.

300 GP doesn't sound like much but you total WBL is 1000 GP. Of that 1000 GP some possibly all of it can be things other than gold. Maybe you have 900 GP in potions and 100 GP. So you might not even have 300gp to train with. As well the 300 GP is base value and it can be 50% higher or lower at the GM's discretion. Is 5 hp at 2nd level worth that?

Then talk about time. Will the GM give you 15 days time assuming you find a trainer and location to train in. Will the GM allow you train yourself over 30 days.

A lot of "if" to train up 5 hit points and you might not be able to afford it in the first place as WBL is guideline and you could be under that amount at 2nd level.

When it comes to magic item creation I like to use it for adventure hooks by requiring special components that the party has to track down. Now of course this depends on the level of the character and the type of item. I'm not going to make they track down components for potion of enlarge when they are 10th level but I would when they are 3rd level. By 10 level it would assumed they have the connections to get components or would acquired them during adventuring. For more powerful items it requires more powerful components. This keeps the WBL in check pretty good from what I can tell in my games.

We used it a bit at first but now we don't use any 3rd edition stuff at all.

Under Natural Attacks
"You can make attacks with natural weapons in combination with attacks made with a melee weapon and unarmed strikes, so long as a different limb is used for each attack."

Under Flurry of Blows
Starting at 1st level, a monk can make a flurry of blows as a full-attack action. When doing so he may make one additional attack using any combination of unarmed strikes or attacks with a special monk weapon (kama, nunchaku, quarterstaff, sai, shuriken, and siangham) as if using the Two-Weapon Fighting feat (even if the monk does not meet the prerequisites for the feat).

Natural attack can be used in combination with unarmed strike or with melee weapons. Flurry of blows uses unarmed strikes and melee weapons. The action used doesn't matter as long as you are making more than one attack. Flurry of blows is two attacks or more it counts as attacks.

Now there could another reason why you can't, I don't know what it is but it's not because FOB is it's own Full Round Action.

Does anyone think story feats will get used? I'm a GM so I can't see using them much unless it was an NPC with the party.

I'm not sure player will go for them. They use precious feat that players probably won't want to use on these. Some of the benefits are nice but not in place of a feat the player needs. Maybe at higher levels they might be taken once you have the feats you want. Personally I'd like to see story feats at 1st level in the games I run. I think I might just allow players to take one, if they want a second (after the first is complete) they use feat.

I don't see issue with this feat. Sure it's good but you can't take it till level 16 as you need 16 BAB. So the save DC 26 at that level and most CR appropriate encounters will have 18+ on their fortitude save which could be even higher if they have specifics bonuses or immunities, like construct, oozes, plants, undead, and elementals for example. For the lower saves those encounters are considered to be easy so this feat should be very effective on CR 16 encounter. It will be less effect for CR 19.

I like traits. They are way to do a lot minor things that feats don't do. I think they make character building more fun. They allow you to make a Character you normally couldn't with out them.

I hate random encounters. What hate about them as GM is rolling the percentage chance they occur each interval which sometime hourly, twice daily and so on. There is time and place for it but just out of the blue random is waste of my time. If there is 20% chance a guard is in the room then fine, not really random just the guard might be some where else. But you walking down the road and I'm rolling 5% chance of encounter every hour then I couldn't be bothered rolling. I'll just pick an encounter the fits if I need add a bit excitement between point A and point B.

I hate vancian spell casting. Still it works for D&D and Pathfinder.

I've played White Wolfs Mage the accession and awakening. Those spell systems were great.

Personally I've always like the ability to prepare spells like tool kit. You load up your tool kit and you don't lose your screw driver after using it once. You can use it until your arm tires out.

So you prepare a number of spells. You can one of the up to your limit or any combo of such. We used to run 2E D&D wizards like that. Doesn't so well in 3E and PF as you have sorcerers.

I very happy with Pathfinder. Sure I'll complain about the rogue, it needs fixing and I have fixed it in the my games with out a major rules change. Just modification to the class using existing rules base.

Mine says currently pending. I'm just itching to get the download going. Probably have to wait till Monday though.

A little off topic but related to the Dragon Disciple. This came up in one game where a player was a Bard level 7 who had taken the Eldrich Heritage feat Draconic. Then they decided to go Dragon Disciple at level 8. So the sorcerer level for blood line powers was 1 at level 9 but they had the claws bloodline power at level 7 due to the feat. The GM ruled at the time that the two stacked but could not exceed the characters total levels. So this character then counted a level 8 for the claws.

With that it appears you would get 2 level of bloodline for each level you take as a DD assuming you had the feat for the level of bloodline power.

It worked fine in the game. Just not sure if that's how it should work.

I don't think Paizo needs a 2.0 for Pathfinder any time soon. The rules base seems to work well to support their business model of fleshing out Glorion and creating Adventure paths. Then add in the modules and Pathfinder Society. With Mythic rules they can release more rules content. I think that if anything they should create other genres. A Sci Fi oriented game based of the D20 system would be good. Modern horror would be good. Steam Punk or Cyber punk as well. Lots of directions to go with rules sets once they get Pathfinder as far as it can go.

If I play a Full BAB class and I have the feat I use it almost all the time.

If I play a 3/4 BAB class I rarely even take Power Attack feat. Usually have other feats I want. 1/2 BAB classes I never take power attack.

Yea monks and rogues come to mind when i think of "useless stuff".

But then you look at stuff like the witch and it's just...eh.

Off the top of my head :

Cavalier - Mount limitations tend to not work well in dungeons

Inquisitor - melee teamwork feats for a ranged class with limited access to martial melee weapons

Oracle - Curses are xtremely unbalanced, haunted is the best, hands down, AND it gives you free spells with practically no drawback (how often do people drop stuff in combat? and how often does a spellcaster do it?)

Summoner - Too much focus on maxing out natural attacks on the Eidolon with large size, most other Eidolon paths are sub optimal

Then you have the alternate stuff like the Samurai...which just looks a gimped fighter to me.

Why would you consider the Inquisitor a ranged class? It gets a few ranged weapons as proficiencies. That's nice and all but I tend to find the Inquisitor is better as a melee class. You get all simple weapon and you deities favored weapon. Usually you focus of the favored weapon.

Never had any problems with it.

It seems kind of obvious to me, the players and dms I know.

I've never had problem with either but I play loose with the interpretation. I think I'd drive rules lawyer insane.

Sounds like you have the arcane spells covered with the Magus. You need a divine caster of some sort. A Ranger or Paladin is good for that. If you don't mind being a bit more of caster try the Inquisitor. They are excellent melee machines if you focus on Str. They can keep up with a fighter with buffs from spell, judgements and bane.

He is saying at his game, you have to PB or don't play. At my game you can create YOUR character however you like, it's YOURS. So which style is open to all players. I don't understand how ppl talk about fairness, but worry about other people so much. Why is it right to tell other ppl how to play, but not right to let ppl play how they want?

I'm an architect, I'm opening my own firm in the next 5 years, if I succeed I will do much better than most ppl, but if I fail I'll lose, my savings, if I get sued and go bankrupt I'll loose my house, my retirement, just about everything, but it's not fair that if I succeed I would have more than others? People wonder what's wrong with our generation, it's that we can't even play a fake game w/o concerning ourselves with what other ppl have and what they're allowed to do.

This isn't really about what is fair. It's about a game designed to support a 15-25 pt buy. If you roll stat above or below what that pb can purchase then you force the GM to adjust the game to suit those stats. That is more work for the GM. Then if you end up with mix of high and low it make the job even worse the GM. You want to challege the party but you don't want to kill the low stat characters. If the GM isn't up the job of dealing with random stats it make for a poor game experience.

We do mostly rolling and I'm the GM. I prefer point buy but my players hate it. I'm not sure what the player like about rolling. As GM I let the roll and balance stats to keep them in the same ball park to make my life easier. This tends to lead to higher stats and I just slide the scale up to keep the challenge in place. So things are balanced and they really are no more powerful. Only thing I can think of is it allow for some different builds.

Basically I just adjust stats from +2 to +12 depending on how high the player stats are. So the heroic array becomes 17, 16, 15, 14, 12, and 10 if the stats get really high. For above average stats I might just boost the 15 to 17. This also applies monster too. It seem to work well enough. I've had some games where the equivalent pt buy is closer to 60 (multiple 18s) using 2D6+6 re-roll 1s for the rolling method. The players suggested it and I went with it for that game and we got the character to level 14. The players liked it because they could build things they couldn't with lower point buy. Stuff like TWF Inquistors with high strength.

I prefer point buy. The main reason is I can make character anytime, no need to wait for GM to witness my rolls as well I can take the character to another GMs game and I don't have to explain that I rolled these awesome stats with the other GM watching. Nothing worse than rolling great stats and not being allowed to play it.

Next is I'm normally the GM, stats that rolled tend vary too much. Either really high or really low or mix in between. This means more work for me as GM and really I don't have all that much time to modify adventures published or self created. So point buy is standard that works really well. Players tend to not like it but it's more a matter of the point buy amount. I let my players run game in God mode from time to and let them make 50 pt buy character or I let them all roll a set of stats and the highest one is the stat array everyone uses, this has come up with normal and super powered characters. But in the end if I want to run balanced game that is normal pt buy, I find 15 too low though. I go 20 or 25 as I find 15 punishes the MAD classes too much. 20 I find works best.

I think you are trying too hard to defend the point buy system, how much 'control' does a player not have with those stats and how many options does he lose?

the point is to have the decent stats you need to be an effective character, and still have positive modifiers leftover, sorry if you disagree.

When I play, and when I GM, my players rarely want negative stats, but if one of them wanted to play a 'flawed' character I would not be opposed to it. But mandating a flaw to be effective is not flavorful, It gets annoying when you are playing a 15 point buy and my paladin cannot afford enough ranks to be a decent party face or take feats that require an INT of 13 because I really needed a +2 to my CHA.

Higher point buys naturally are easier to play and less constrictive, but lower point buys that are set as standard in the CRB make it impossible to spread your stats out and have anything more than a +1 or +2 in you most important stats.

I have no issues with Point Buy. It works out much like an array.

Having a character with +1 or +2 stat bonus isn't a bad thing. It plays a lot better actually. When you go higher point buy you have to boost the monsters equally so having +3 and +4 isn't any better when all our the encounters now get +2 on everything. All that has happened is thing have scaled up. A +3 is equivalent to the +1 and the +4 is equivalent to the +2. Nothing changes for the player but the GM has more work to do.

No one has yet to answer the initial question. Why is it that people seem to be under the impression that stacking identical templates is both RAW and RAI?

If nothing else, surely it would break the "no stacking from the same source" general rule. What's more, with all the abuses and imbalances it opens up, it should be obvious that it isn't RAI.

Templates are used by the GM not players. If GM wants to stack templates they are free to do so. After all a template is just a quick modification to a creature to increase or lower the CR in some instances. As well it can be used to change a creature. Stacking some templates makes no sense, you be better off modifiying via advancement rules. But you can add the Giant template a couple time to take small create to large size. Nothing wrong with that and you just increase the CR by 2 for two templates and then use your judgement as GM to see if they CR is correct. You might need to increase a bit or lower it by one depending on the creature the template was applied to.

You can also just design your own monster based off another from scratch using the advancement rules. I just stacking two templates is much easier.

Reminds me of how how fighter too out a wizard in one of our games. The big bad guy wizard calls up Balor, before the Balor even gets an Action the fight one shots its and it explodes next the wizard. The wizard failed it's save and dies. It was rather funny and lucky critical. The fighter lived through it but my bard died in explosion as well along with Cleric and our wizard. Only the fighter left standing.

In the Games I run Human is by far the most common. The biggest reason is the variation in Humans in Glorian, you all kind of different Humans. And Elf is pretty much just an Elf but Human can be Ulfen, Cheliaxian, Taladan and so on which ads a lot of flavor to humans.

you dont nerf him, you play his weaknesses more.

ranged characters are very very weak. obscuring mist is a first level spell that will take him out of the fight for a few rounds. ray of enfeeblement will also hurt his dps by making his composite bow less effective. create pit will hurt him due to fighters having a low reflex and force him to climb out and keep fighting wasting a round or 2 of his dps. they have MANY ways to stop a ranged character from owning everything with arrows, and doing so wont ruin his fun. it will force him to start countering the things that he never knew were a bane to his archer.

in conclusion just play smart as a gm and you can , when you find it appropriate, stop his dps and force him to spend time countering your counter measures. so dont think "hes to powerful for my npcs", think about how your npcs would fight a group like this.

Actually it's really hard to stop an archer. Especially a fighter or Ranger that archery focused or the Zen Archer.

Reflex save are easily made as ranged uses dex and usually they have a high dex. Granted a figher has poor reflex save but a high dex this usually isn't a problem. There are feats to get around most other situations as well as magic items to cover the rest. I've created bad guy archers in my games, usualy means a player two is going to die. I actually avoid doing that now.

I completely agree with you, the problem in its essence is that the rogue/ninja are sub optimal choices for just about anything. There are many classes that fill the role and flavor of them, and have even more features and options to give them even more roles and flavor.

I'm not saying you can't have FUN with a rogue or ninja, just that you can have MORE fun with something else. My wife's old flip phone still makes calls and can take pictures and play PAC-man, it has utility and specific functions that make it viable in its role as a cell phone. My iPhone does all of that and SO MUCH MORE. I have more fun with my iPhone than she does with her old flip. Rogues are flip phones, ninjas have more bells and whistles, but the are still old flip phones. They both need major overhauls and upgrades to be contenders in a iPhone/ droid/ blackberry dominated market.

The rogue doesn't need a complete redesign. It suffers from one major problem. An average rogue can't hit. By average I mean a 15 pt buy rogue who isn't min maxing. If you do that you hit level 12 and find you have fair chance to miss on your primary attack, the iterative attacks are pretty guaranteed misses.

I mean when you have to optimize to the max to make class viable then the class is not functional. The rogue has this problem as does the Ninja.

I've seen retreat a lot, especially in my King Maker game I ran. As GM I don't always have the enemy chase the players. Sometimes it happens but it's not all that common.

I'm going to have to disagree with the consensus here. While rogues and ninjas may not have the best attack bonus, It's pretty easy to apply sneak damage, and the damage builds up quick. All you have to do is feint them (preferably with improved two-weapon feint), which isn't that hard to do. Combine the two weapon fighting with a speed weapon, and you got 7 sneak attacks per round, which is on average over 200 damage from sneak alone. And it's even better (and easier) as a ninja, as they can be invisible, which applies your sneak, and use nonlethal unarmed, which does 2d8 (I think, don't remember off the top of my head), because of the unarmed mastery, per attack, plus it can be increased from the nonlethal sneak feats, to the point where it can basically one-turn kill anything (especially if you work as a team, and get an attack or CMB buff from a caster). Granted, that's not going to happen every time (wouldn't be fun if it did anyway), but you can't just dismiss that as weak.

7 Attacks looks good on paper but in the game form experience as GM the rogue usually lands 2 maybe 4 of those attacks. I usually as GM throw in some encounters where the rogue can land all his attacks to be nice, usually designing an encounter with many lower CR monsters. But typically the caster of the group just takes the encounter out before the rogue gets a chance to perform.

On paper the ninja looks better than rogue. In reality the ninja is no more powerful than the rogue. I've seen the ninja in games. They are different but no better. They suffer from the same problems rogues have and that is they work great in lower level games and can't hit at the higher levels.

FallofCamelot wrote:

deuxhero wrote:

Poorly designed, but saved by the sheer power of spells.

Er... no.

Of all the APG classes they are the best designed. They are thematic and consistent with a bunch of cool options and several ways they can be played.

I'd love to hear your justification for calling them poorly designed.

The biggest two are that

1: They seem to be designed as archers by the proficiencies, but make really bad ones (no support in class abilities. At the time of publication, there were no teamwork feats that benefited archery)

2: Judgement scales badly: +1 and another +1 every X levels is really bland and not very useful due to the slow speed of growth. An ability like this should be boosted by an ability score, benefit the entire party, be at will instead of X per day, flat out scale better or some combination of those (At least it isn't a standard action).

The design is also pretty 3.5 and feels weird with PF conventions: Judgement is a x/day with scaling number of uses ability, while PF made all of these into rounds based on class level and an ability score that can be divided in any pattern desired. There are also no customizable options not shared by other classes (deity/domain, spells known and, if neutral, profane/sacred)

Their remaining class abilities run the gambit from good (Bane) to "duplicates a low level spell" (almost everything else)

Magus is better than 3.5's multiple attempts at such a class, actually letting you BLEND the two styles instead of use them consecutively. It has multiple viable options, works well with additional material that isn't necessarily made to compliment it and has unique abilities that scale well.

Alchemist is also versatile, relatively original (and yet is still a classic fantasy archetype), very unique in mechanics and work well without even touching its "spells"

Summoner, while poorly balanced, is an interesting concept and, again, has many options that make no two summoners alike.

What makes you think the Inquisitor is Archery oriented at all. I took one look at that class and thought melee oriented. It really has little in the way of ranged benefits.

I found in playing an Inquisitor that judgement are quite good and work very well. At low level they are bland and weak but once you get second and 3rd judgement you can mix and match combos of judgements.

Teamwork feats with solo tactics is great, as is bane. Stalwart is very nice. The other class features are useful too. Sure some can be done with a spell but if you don't need to use a spell then that's better to for me as Inquisitor with a low number of known spells being spontaneous caster.

I think the Inquisitor is one of the better designed classes.

It's been a while but the Serpents Skull AP doesn't have much in the way of Undead. It's not focused on Undead but undead are present in some encounters.

I'd buy this as well!

If the wizard and sorceror could cast healing spells your incentive to play a full progression divine spell casting class goes out the door. The fact that the wizard and sorcerer are already Gods without healing doesn't mean that they should be given healing to. It is literally all about game balance to me. You give a wizard the ability to heal, he doesn't even need a party anymore, not that he need one that much before.

I'd say the incentive to play a Cleric would increase if wizards and sorcerers could cast healing magics. You play a cleric and there are expectations that you play it a certain way and if you don't others get upset with you. I hate burning my Divine Power spell to cast Cure Critical Wounds. By being the healing class there are expectations that you will be healing. Having healing with other classes has helped with this. Allowing the wizard and sorcerer to cast healing spells would just make the Cleric a more attactive class as the burden of healing is spread around.

Imbue Arrow says nothing about casting the spell on the arrow. So the limitation of Prismatic Wall still apply. Drop the arrow on space that is occupied and the spell is disrupted.

"Imbue Arrow (Sp): At 2nd level, an arcane archer gains the ability to place an area spell upon an arrow. When the arrow is fired, the spell's area is centered where the arrow lands, even if the spell could normally be centered only on the caster. This ability allows the archer to use the bow's range rather than the spell's range. A spell cast in this way uses its standard casting time and the arcane archer can fire the arrow as part of the casting. The arrow must be fired during the round that the casting is completed or the spell is wasted. If the arrow misses, the spell is wasted."

You cast the spell normally but use the range of the bow instead of the range of the spell. This really just means short range or centered on the caster spells can be cast at further distance. So in the case of Prismatic wall it would be the bows range instead of 65 feet a CL of 16 when you get access to this spell.

Also just to point out the EK is Full BAB the DD is 3/4 BAB so not the same BAB. Technically the DD is better with +4 strength. You get +2 to hit and damage. Going EK you would get +1 to hit and +2 Damage (+1 BAB and weapon specialization). The BAB would be better if it got you to 16 BAB for the extra attack though.

I play this as Assimar, no negative stat.

S: 10
D: 13
C: 12
I: 10
W: 15
C: 15

I'd boost Wisdom with my stat boost. I'd probably look to acquire book to raise my Chr to 16. This would be playable character and would keep up with the rest even if they 18s. My spell selection would avoid save based spell by focusing on healing, utility and buffs. I'd avoid melee combat and use a ranged weapon.

I wasn't sure about Inquisitor at first. So I gave on a try in Forgotten Realms game. I played a Inquisitor of Mask and had a blast with the rogues. We had a straight rogue and fighter/rogue as well as a Evoker Wizard Specialist. I end up filling the role of healer using Cure Light Wounds wands as I didn't have any cure spells known.

I found the Inquisitor to be very good in melee with buffing spells, Judgement and Bane they were a killing machine. In the game I had rod of less quicken to get my buffs on in 1 round as I moved activating Judgment then attacking the next round activating Bane. Then there is solo tactic and team work feats. I had the rogues picking up outflank and precise strike to work with me.

Outside of combat I found the 6 skill point per level and large list of class skills very useful. Then add the class features of stern gaze, discern lies, monster lore, and detect alignment made me very useful along some utility spells.

Defense they are great too with Stalwart and two good saves and you Wisdom is you casting stat.

Flavor wise I was thieve guild enforcer on the religious side hunting those who worshiped Cyric. It made for some interesting games.

20th level Fighter vs 20th level NPC Wizard (Average CR 19 Encounter) I find the fighter wins more often than not.

All the fighter needs to beat the wizard is a caster cohort and the fighter has enough feats to pick leadership with every build other martials may pick this too but they don't need to as much. Also I find after spending about 400,000 gp I have most everything I need as fighter so I can top up my cohort with the rest. So fighter with his 17th level caster is buffing/debuffing and controlling the battle field making for a bad day for the enemy wizard. The enemy Wizard may be higher level the cohort wizard but the cohort has 4 times the wealth.

Now Player vs Player the wizard wins most of the time due to more optimization. NPC are not optimized. If you do optimize the NPC I think the CR should go up by 1. The main reason is if I optimize a wizard I optimize them for 1 fight. I don't have to worry about the next encounter like a player does with an optimized character so mine is much more powerful in the GM chair.

The fighter from what I see use a lot of skill out of combat. They are not the skill monkey but they use Aid another with skills. So the sorcerer might be the Diplomacy face with Diplomacy of 15 the fighter with diplomacy of 3 aids the sorcerer. Then the role playing occurs the rolls are made the results are given.

I've seen fighter hang with rogues. The fighter climbs the wall and lower rope and they allow the rogue with lower climb skill to get up easier. They fighter with a little stealth hangs back to support the rogue. In this case the fighter is in lighter armor.