Forgive my somewhat befuddled post, its late after a tough game session but I needed to get this started and hope for some feedback before tomorrow evening.
My group and I have decided to step away from Exalted finally and get back to a less "flamboyant" game system. All of us are AD&D 3.5 vets but haven't touched the system in quite some time (9 years now). We've all decided to make use of all the following books Core/APG/ARG/UC/UM/UE. I resurrected a old campaign I had run long long ago in the FR which at the time we put it to rest, the party was 12th level. We took the characters at the time and "translated" them into PF using the above listed books.
Our party consists of a Gunslinger, a Oracle of Arcane Lore, Fire Sorcerer, a Cleric with healing domain, a Rogue TWF specialist and a human Fighter. We are using Archtypes as we felt it made the classes a lot less cookie cutter and all of the players have accessed various guides to optimize their characters but without going crazy about it. (basically all the chars bought the "essentials" for their purpose within the group). The problem we ran into is the Fighter, he is a 2H weapon AT and is pumping out incredible damage. He is utterly destroying everything he runs into while the rest of the party is good naturely joking that they've polymorphed into minor side kick status. At the end of the night the group also Feel PF is kind of broken but 2 of us wanted to crunch some numbers and see if we could get any insight.
The player of the 2H warrior created a spreadsheet and we started plugging a number of classes into the fields and we're not squeezing every ounce of performance out of the builds but were just trying to get a feel for the damage out put ranges. We ran about a dozen different variations but I'll spare you all the sordid details, we based it off the characters that were in play for the most part and erred on the conservative side of tactics and got a summary of these numbers.
Damage per Round totals
2H Fighter: 103
2 weapon Fighter: 52
Sorc: 40 (no meta magic use)
Rogue (sneak attack half the time) 34
GS: 32 (no grit powered attacks)
Monk 24 (no ki powered attacks)
I realize these numbers typically require a great deal more detail with relevant builds, like I said we stripped things down to bare essentials to get a feel for comparative damage output using the same basic considerations that the 2H fighter tends to use (i.e. things like a staple feat like PA) go to tactics without being munchkin performance hounds about it. We were also pretty beat by the time we made this thing and I'm sure we overlooked a few things, but the thing that we walked away from is that PF seems to either have a extremely heavy bias about Fighters (and utterly hates Monks) or the Archtype itself is somehow broke. Granted, classes bring more to the table besides damage, casters in particular have utility and so forth.
Again, my apologies for kind of babbling here but what I'm basically trying to ask is this: Does PF favor Fighters really that much across the board when it comes to DPS?
I might suggest the DPR olympics threads for a variety of build comparisons if you think that would help.
Otherwise: at low levels a 2HD fighter (or barb, or pally, etc etc) does sizable damage, more then other styles. They don't maintain tank grade AC however, and have to overcome the 'attacker at range' issue. They also can't hurt exotic things like swarms, etc. If all you are looking at is offense/damage, then yes, they will stand high.
Other folks will be along to toss more depth and detail your way shortly i am sure.
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How is the Gunslinger only doing 32 damage? That seems profoundly low. What's their standard weapon damage and number of attacks?
Other than that...two-handed weapon users do a bunch of damage. This is true. A properly made spellcaster still wipes the floor with them.
I suspect a lot of the problem lies in the fact that two-handed fighters are dead simple to optimize while a lot of the other things you list are trickier. Though, in fairness, Monks are actually and legitimately pretty weak sans archetypes.
Damage per Round totals
2H Fighter: 103
2 weapon Fighter: 52
Sorc: 40 (no meta magic use)
Rogue (sneak attack half the time) 34
GS: 32 (no grit powered attacks)
Monk 24 (no ki powered attacks)
2H Fighter seems about right. Rogue and Monk are considered weak. The 2W fighter and the Gunslinger seem way off.
A basic lvl 12 musketmaster gunslinger has 4 attacks, each doing 1d12 +8 dex + 8 deadly aim + 5 (PBS+training+magic); 4d12+84, and that's not even high optimization.
Feel free to post the builds if you want comments on them.
If you're 12th level, then the issue isn't that the Fighter's damage is too high, it's that everyone else is too low. If Fighters get a full attack they wreck things, but that involves them not having to move at all. That's not really unique to the Fighter though.
A couple of things:
1. Rogues have very variable damage; if they can't get sneak attack they don't do much, especially if a dual wielding dex based build is being used. Rogue is also considered to be about tied with Monk as the weakest class in the game.
2. Monk is a horrible core class, but can be decent with the right archetype and build. What do those two things look like on the character in question?
3. Damage spells really aren't that great and a caster usually has more effective ways to help win fights; the sorcerer's DPR is pretty much irrelevant as it's not really his area.
4. Gunslingers get to add dexterity to damage so I have no idea.
The gunslinger should do more damage and the full casters can force the universe to do what they want. If all they want is deal damage that's not the fighter's problem.
So in the end we have the rogue and the monk.
For the rogue just add more out of combat stuff or tell him to rebuild his pc as a urban ranger or the slayer from the advances class guide playtest document.
Monk sucks if they are no zen archer. If they are they will be the ones destroying every encounter.
In fact the fighter is one of the weakest classes because he is more or less useless out of combat and can't do much except damage in combat.
My group was having some trouble with my character, also a 2hd fighter-type (actually a crusader from TOB and he has since been retired for one more in line with the group), and one thing we have now realized is that at mid-levels, no matter how much damage a 2hd fighter does... multiple enemy spellcasters in a room are much much worse and usually end up having the fighter charmed/feared/at the bottom of a hungry pit.
This is really where those other classes get to shine. Let the rogue get his sneak on and suprise round cut an enemy bad up; have the enemy casters conjure all sorts of stuff in a tight group only to have the fire sorcerer drop a fireball on them; put them up against a dragon and see the gunslinger rip through all that wonderful Natural Armor.
In all of these situations, the fighter will be fairly hosed which gives the healbot cleric something to do as well.
Most damage doing caster classes need to focus on aoe attacks and leave single target spells to the fighters. Fighters will almost always outdo a sorcerer in 1v1 combat. Sorcerers will almost always outdo a fighter in 1v10 combat.
I agree with the rest of the thread that the gunslinger should be doing considerably more damage by level 12. The rogues damage is a little on the low end. The monk seems about right (they miss a lot due to the staggered bab and that their role and the fighters role are the same - single targets). The fighter seems a little bit on the high end (but I don't play fighters often due to them being a boring class for me, so I will defer to the rest of the thread for him/her).
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By 12th level a decently optimized pistol using gunslinger should be pumping out roughly 10 shots a round with a minimum of 12ish damage per hit and his hit odds should be considerably higher than 3 in 10. Frankly gunslingers are considered to be far more disruptive to the game because they trivialize high AC low touch AC, low hp/no DR encounters to a far larger degree than a 2 hand fighter does the fact that this one isn't means either some house rules or an exceptionally bad build at which point what can you expect?
10's a bit too many unless using double-barreled guns (which many GMs disallow...I sure do). But four or five would be expected, and should generally be hitting on a 2. And doing something like 25 damage a shot. And likely more like 35 per shot as a Pistolero with Signature Deed (Up Close and Deadly)
In short, something is seriously wrong with that Gunslinger build.
First off I'd like to extend a warm thank you to all the responses, I expected maybe one or two at the most. Again, thank you all very much.
My group and I are getting together again tonight, this time I get to play and to reiterate from earlier, we're rusty as hell towards D20 rules in general and PF has seen us crash learning for 2 weeks now, we're constantly updating our command of the rules. We got a understanding that says for the following month, we get to redraft characters as our knowledge of the systems refines itself. I'll get the easy stuff out of the way first.
The group felt the 2H Ftr was game breaking, while I didn't. I was taken aback to be sure, but like some have said, he's a hammer waiting for a nail to present itself. I'm of the opinion that we are both doing some things wrong from a rules perspective and not playing to the classes strengths, the Fighter because his mechanics are relatively simple, is easy to digest and impliment. Thus playing him at optimal performance is easy because its so straight forward.
I'm also fairly certain we used the rules regarding the Monk correctly, he was playing without any Archtypes but we found he had a number of difficulties with the MAD and damage windows. Its a big change for us because he played the same style of character in Exalted where he was the equal of the swordmaster. I confess, a number of the design elements of the class aren't as obvious to me such as making him a 3/4 BAB class seems inconsistent when compared to Paladins/Rangers; about on par with the diversity of abilities, have spells that are similar to Ki powers and yet they are full BAB. I'll be the first to admit I'm still a noob with the rules, but I'm glad I'm not the only one going WTF when I look at the Monk vs other martials. Seeing several replies stating that Monks are indeed weak makes me wonder what the justification was on the part of the designers and why it hasn't been attended to. Perhaps balance lays in using the Archtypes?
RE: Gunslingers. I think we screwed up the mechanics. The player has 2 single barrel pistols with alchemical paper cartridges and rapid reload and made extensive use of the Gunslinger guide found at Giant in the Playground. But we got confused how to use the number of attacks/reloading/free action sequence. My initial interpetation was if you get 3 attacks, have a single barrel gun, and can reload as a free action, then you can shoot-reload-shoot-reload-shoot as a full round action. But some discussion about this suggested that even with a free action one can't get off all 3 attacks since a full round attack cannot be interrupted with any other kind of action, Free or Swift. My initial take was that its the same thing as a archer drawing a arrow from a quiver but then we couldn't find anything that suggested one could reload inbetween shots and that unless one had a revolver or a double barrel pistol, one was limited to one shot a round. At the end of the night we came to the conclusion either we were doing something wrong or the supremacy of the fighter was being highlighted further.
RE: Spellcasters I've read Treantmonk's guide and others to what full casters are better off doing, I agree that blasting is a less effective use of magic than other kinds of spells, but we had concerns because in order to use maximize on a 3rd level spell the Sorc is tapping his 6th level slots, burning through them pretty quickly and still not doing as much damage as the 2H user especially as there is a save involved that can reduce the damage to half which the Fighter didn't contend with. Sure he has to hit his target, but his attack bonuses were high enough that it was a minor concern. Of much greater concern to him was movement.
In closing, most of the stuff I figure is us learning things that will reveal itself to us after more use of the rules, but our biggest issue was the Gunslinger vs Fighter damage, how free actions interact with full round actions and the significant gap that seemed to suggest a unusually skewed preference towards fighters by the game designers. Again I appreciate all the feedback given so far and humbly thank any who continue to add to this in advance.
Rogue and monks: yup, they have it rough. Still that damage is very low. Try dropping tmastery wfing, rogues really cannot afford more penalties to hit. Monks are best as Zen archers, they wreck encounters. I've seen some other monk builds really shine as well but they usually require multi classing and/or a high degree of system mastery.
Sorcerer: forget damage spells, drop stinking cloud and black tentacles. They can do great damage if they spec for it, but it takes a pretty high degree of optimization.
Gunslinger: he should way out damage the fighter at this level. My level 5 gunslinger does an average of about 15 points higher than that already, and he's not even that optimized. Something is wrong there.
seems like you have a lot of players going for builds that take incredible system mastery (outside the fighter and the gunslinger) so that is likely causing some issues. Maybe ley the players keep rebuilying for the next few games until they find something that works. Coming in at level 12 from 9 year break it's hard to readjust.
My apologies for the follow up post, but it occurred to me put up the Fighter's stats so that at least his abilities aren't flapping in the winds of vagueness.
Str: 22/26 (belt of +4 Str)
Con 18
Dex 14
10's rest of the way
Feats: Armor Prof (Hvy/Med/Lght)::Cleave::Combat Reflexes::Furious Focus::Great Cleave::Gtr Wpn Focus (Grtswrd)::Grt Wpn Spec (Grtswrd):: Hammer the Gap :: Improved Crit (Grtswrd):: Improved Sunder:: Martial Wpn Prof (all)::Power Attack -4/+8:: Wpn Focus/Spec (Grtswrd).
He has a +3 Greatsword and +3 Mithril plate.
(I should add we use Hero Lab to create the characters and to confirm we're compliant with the rules).
His attack numbers with the Gsword are +29/+24/+19 doing 2d6+23 with a crit range of 17-20.
Special Abilities of note were Backswing, Piledriver, and Overhand Chop; all of which the player made pretty good use of.
As long as a gunslinger gets his load down to a free action he can reload like an archer, but he needs a free hand to do so. So two handing pistols is not really viable without a lot of trickery, there are a lot of gunslinger builds with alchemist levels to get a third arm which can debatably be used to reload - I would not allow it since they cannot wield weapons. I would say your gunslinger would be better off as a musket master its simpler and should be very effective. Two handing is not really well supported because the firearms simulated in normal play are not six shooters but one shot deals.
He could use quickdraw and a whole mess of guns, but its much simpler to have one gun he can actually reload.
Assuming equivalent abilities to the fighter above a musket master gunslinger should be doing 4 or 5, with haste, attacks which all target touch AC and will almost always hit.
1d12 +8 dex +1 musket training +1 pbs +8 deadly aim + 3 magic = 1d12+21 x 4 = 4d12+84
Of course it should really be 5 attacks, and the weapon would preferably be +1 Holy, or better distance holy. So a typical build might do 5d12+10d6+95 for an average of 167 damage assuming all shots hit.
as others have stated, the 2hand fighter looks about right.
gunslingers damage should triple with allowing him to iterate properly (making him very competitive with the fighter).
the rogue will stay useless unless/until he really masters getting full attacks from flanking.
the sorcerer shouldn't generally use blasting spells in 1 on 1... his damage should be calculated for when he blasts whole crowds (which will catch him up to the fighter quick), against single opponents bust out a control spell that targets what you would guess to be a weak save.
the monk will, sadly, always struggle to keep up on damage... flurrying as often as possible should help but its going to be an uphill battle (especially since the point buy probably didn't allow him much Str).
the 2WF fighter is going to be very reliant on full attacks also... there are probably some things in his build that can be tightened up too though- if you post that i'm sure you'd get some specific advice.
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... we're rusty as hell towards D20 rules in general and PF has seen us crash learning for 2 weeks now, we're constantly updating our command of the rules.
I'd recommend starting at level 6 or lower to help learn all the rules before jumping up to 12. At 12 builds are getting fairly complex as characters can have a decent amount of feat chains finished. From the damage levels posted, I'm assuming not many of them have any special builds or tricks in mind when they made their characters. Time and experience and reading some guides and books will bring the others up to at LEAST the level of the fighter.
The group felt the 2H Ftr was game breaking, while I didn't.
That amount of damage isn't gamebreaking. I've seen higher damage from level 9 characters. Your fighter has a fairly straightforward build and he hit a lot of the good feats for 2-handers and a decent archetype. It's more that the rest of your party is sub-optimized.
Re: Monk ... I confess, a number of the design elements of the class aren't as obvious to me such as making him a 3/4 BAB class seems inconsistent when compared to Paladins/Rangers.
But, when the monk flurries, his BAB is his monk level, not his actual BAB. Check that you're calculating flurry with the correct bonus.
In any case, monk is a very hard class to work with in it's base archetype due to MAD. Not my favorite class, but it has it's advantages; super high saves, evasion, and still mind for example.RE: Gunslingers.
Something's not right here. Gunslingers should be doing a LOT more damage than that.
RE: Spellcasters
There's a trait to help with metamagic by lowering it's level increase. I think it's magical lineage? I forget the name. If all your sorcerer wants to do is blast, it's a good choice for their staple blast. Also, metamagic rods will cost a lot, but be great for conserving their higher level spell slots. You don't HAVE to be a treantmonk style caster.
They can also buff their damage in other ways. Dominate person on a troll or other giant type works fine, and then you can equip them with the parties spare loot and magic weapons.
Re: Rogue. I have never seen a reliable rogue damage build. Look into Ninja instead if you want reliable sneak attack damage via the invisible blade ninja trick. Even then, it's not perfect and no sneak attack = pathetic damage.
You are allowed to use a free or swift action while performing a full round action and in most cases you can take a 5-foot step.
"Full-Round Action: A full-round action consumes all your effort during a round. The only movement you can take during a full-round action is a 5-foot step before, during, or after the action. You can also perform free actions and swift actions (see below). See Table: Actions in Combat for a list of full-round actions.
Some full-round actions do not allow you to take a 5-foot step.
Some full-round actions can be taken as standard actions, but only in situations when you are limited to performing only a standard action during your round. The descriptions of specific actions detail which actions allow this option."
The sorcerer is low too. An optimized build should be throwing down intensified, persistent, dazing fireballs with DC's in the mid 20's and 80ish damage.
Even a poorly built sorcerer who is "focusing" on EVO should be dropping dazing fireballs with a low 20's DC for 45ish damage.
With the 'troublesome' classes people keep on focusing on, I think it is likely due to a focus on a dex melee build, isn't it?
While I am not saying they aren't viable.... dex builds tend to be hard to pull off without a fairly advanced understanding of optimization. In the end, with a decent point buy/non crummy rolls situation, you are better off focusing on strength for things like TWF (you only need a 16 and your 4th level ability score adjustment to get all the good feats).
Otherwise, you either have to really stack static bonuses (which again, takes optimization), or you rely on specific and expensive items (I am going to bet the monk needs an agile amulet of mighty fists, right?) which they cannot always have access to.
Now, some build advice (which might be already to take): for monks, it is generally a good idea to take the sohei archetype, since it is the easiest to work with. It allows you to flurry in light armor (even mithral breastplate if they take the armor expert trait..or medium armor proficiency...but that is kind of 'meh'), and as such you do not need the crazy high dex/wis builds that can't hurt much (you might still want some wisdom..but not more than say an inquisitor in the same position). They also gain weapon training, which helps with their accuracy and damage outside and inside of flurry. And while that weapon training has a lot of focus on spears, bows, and daggers, it also can work on the 'monk' weapon group, which includes unarmed strikes. And with the possibility of gloves of dueling and brawling armor, you can easily make a decent build with them without specializing in weird maneuvers or grappling.
For the two weapon fighter: double weapons are fantastic if you can swing a strength build. These weapons can be used both as a light and onehanded weapon for TWF, but they can also be treated as a two handed weapon. That provides the opportunity to get 1.5x str and power attack damage on the turns you have to move.
Outside of that, you could check out Bladestorm: A fighter's guide to TWF. This suggests two main ways to routinely get off full attacks routinely. One is the false pounce, which can come from a couple of fighter archetypes. But in the interest of improving the whole party's performance, a lockdown build might be better. Using something like the brawler's "No Escape" or the pin down feat along side Stand still, you can pull off a maneuver through AoOs that stops enemy movements. That guarantees more full attacks for the fighter, as well as anyone flanking with them (ie-the rogue).
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Damage per Round totals
2H Fighter: 103
2 weapon Fighter: 52
Sorc: 40 (no meta magic use)
Rogue (sneak attack half the time) 34
GS: 32 (no grit powered attacks)
Monk 24 (no ki powered attacks)
The fighter looks to be about where he should be.
The others should be doing about 100 DPR at 12th level with decent builds. The issue is not an overpowered fighter. The issue is everyone else is under powered for their level.
(Min/max builds for all of the classes listed can break 100 DPR by 10th level)
For the Monk, accept the Qinggong archetype as the base monk. It combines with every other archetype because it can replace abilities rather than must and gives the monk a number of strong spell-like abilities to spend ki on that are much better than the regular monk.
It won't bring you up to speed with the real strong classes but it at least makes you somewhat competitive.
This is actually our experience also. A THW fighter, (we are playing @ 13th) consistently does the most damage. Mind you, our Spellcasters do quite a bit of buffing, which helps him.
Note we are not concerned with this, as DPR is about ALL he can do. The Player prefers it that way, since he just wants to do combat. But the rest of us excel at Diplomacy, other skill checks, puzzle solving, etc,
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An example of an unarmed monk, no archetypes, that deals decent damage.
Male Human (Tian-La) Monk 10
LG Medium humanoid (human)
Init +4; Senses Perception +16
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Defense
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AC 22, touch 21, flat-footed 19 (+1 armor, +2 Dex, +1 deflection, +1 dodge, +1 insight, +5 untyped)
hp 82 (10d8+29)
Fort +13, Ref +11, Will +12; +2 bonus vs. sleep, paralysis, and stunning
Defensive Abilities evasion, improved evasion; Immune disease
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Offense
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Speed 60 ft.
Melee unarmed strike +16/+11 (1d10+18/19-20+1d6 acid+2 flurry)
Special Attacks flurry of blows, ki strike, cold iron/silver, ki strike, lawful, ki strike, magic, stunning fist (10/day, DC 18)
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Statistics
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Str 24, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 9, Wis 16, Cha 7
Base Atk +7; CMB +15 (+17 grapple); CMD 35 (37 vs. grapple)
Feats Combat Reflexes, Desperate Battler, Dodge, Dragon Ferocity, Dragon Style, Great Fortitude, Improved Critical (unarmed strike), Improved Grapple, Improved Unarmed Strike, Power Attack, Stunning Fist, Weapon Focus (unarmed strike)
Traits quain martial artist, reactionary
Skills Acrobatics +15 (+27 jump, +25 to jump), Climb +14, Intimidate +11, Perception +16, Sense Motive +8, Sleight of Hand +3, Stealth +8, Swim +11
Languages Common, Hon-La, Tien
SQ ac bonus, fast movement, high jump, ki defense, ki pool, maneuver training, monk vows (vow of silence, vow of truth), purity of body, slow fall, stunning fist (stun), unarmed strike, wholeness of body
Combat Gear deliquescent gloves, jingasa of the fortunate soldier, oil of bless weapon, potion of mage armor (2); Other Gear +1 bracers of armor, +2 amulet of mighty fists, belt of giant strength +4, cloak of resistance +2, headband of inspired wisdom +2, ioun stone (dusty rose prism), ring of protection +1, bandolier, 1,049 gp, 5 sp
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Special Abilities
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AC Bonus +5 The Monk adds his Wisdom bonus to AC and CMD, more at higher levels.
Combat Reflexes (3 AoO/round) Can make extra attacks of opportunity/rd, and even when flat-footed.
Deliquescent gloves +1d6 acid dam to touch/weapon att. Natural/unarmed att is immune to ooze acid & doesn't split.
Desperate Battler Gain +1 morale bonus on melee attack and damage when alone
Dragon Ferocity +3, 1d4+7 rds Gain bonus on unarmed attacks, and you can cause opponents to be shaken
Dragon Style +2 vs sleep, paralysis, and stun, first unarmed strike in a rd deals 1.5x Str, and can ignore difficult terrain/allies when charging.
Evasion (Ex) If you succeed at a Reflex save for half damage, you take none instead.
Fast Movement (+30') The Monk adds 10 or more feet to his base speed.
Flurry of Blows +8/+8/+8/+3/+3 (Ex) Make Flurry of Blows attack as a full rd action.
High Jump (+10/+30 with Ki point) (Ex) +10 to Acrobatics checks made to jump.
Immunity to Disease You are immune to diseases.
Improved Evasion (Ex) If you succeed at a Reflex save for half damage, you take none instead. If you fail you take half damage.
Improved Grapple You don't provoke attacks of opportunity when grappling a foe.
Improved Unarmed Strike Unarmed strikes don't cause attacks of opportunity, and can be lethal.
Jingasa of the fortunate soldier (1/day) Activate to negate a critical hit or sneak attack as an immediate action.
Ki Defense (Su) A monk can spend 1 point from his ki pool to give himself a +4 dodge bonus to AC for 1 round.
Ki Pool (Su) You have a ki pool equal to 1/2 your monk level + your Wisdom modifier.
Ki Strike, Cold Iron/Silver (Su) If you have ki remaining, unarmed strikes count as cold iron and silver to overcome DR.
Ki Strike, Lawful (Su) If you have ki remaining, unarmed strikes count as lawful to overcome DR.
Ki Strike, Magic (Su) If you have ki remaining, unarmed strikes count as magic to overcome DR.
Maneuver Training (Ex) CMB = other BABs + Monk level
Power Attack -2/+4 You can subtract from your attack roll to add to your damage.
Purity of Body (Ex) At 5th level, a monk gains immunity to all diseases, including supernatural and magical diseases.
Slow Fall 50' (Ex) Treat a fall as shorter than normal if within arm's reach of a wall.
Stunning Fist (10/day) (DC 18) You can stun an opponent with an unarmed attack.
Stunning Fist (Stun, Fatigue, Sicken) (Ex) At 1st level, the monk gains Stunning Fist as a bonus feat, even if he does not meet the prerequisites. At 4th level, and every 4 levels thereafter, the monk gains the ability to apply a new condition to the target of his Stunning Fist. This conditio
Unarmed Strike (1d10) The Monk does lethal damage with his unarmed strikes.
Vow of Silence (+1 Ki) The monk must speak no words and attempt to be quiet in his actions. Accidental noises and the sounds of battle (such as the sound of a fist or weapon striking an opponent) do not affect his vow, though most monks with this vow choose their weapons a
Vow of Truth (+2 Ki) The monk is not allowed to deliberately speak any lies, including bluffing, stating half-truths with the intent to deceive, exaggerating, telling white lies, and so on. This applies to all forms of communication. If presented with circumstances where
Wholeness of Body (10 Hp/use) (Su) Use 2 ki to heal own wounds as a standard action.
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APL+1
3((27*.65)+(23.5*.65*.1))+2((27*.4)+(23.5*.4*.1)
=
80.9925
APL
3((27*.7)+(23.5*.7>.1)+2((27*.45)+(23.5*.45*.1)
=
88.05
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At level 10, he's not far below your groups 12th level fighter.
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Update:
I printed up this thread, called up my group and got everyone to show up a couple of hours early. We got to our gamer cave and I read this post outloud to everyone and we fired up HL and took a second look at the guides that were being used. The spreadsheet was likewise reloaded.
First after all the numbers were crunched, the group agreed with the general posts of this thread and my hunch that the 2H fighter isn't broken, he was just being played right. I also lost my turn to play tonight as we wanted to test what our revised attempts would yield (sad face).
2nd we looked at the Gunslinger. The first thing we cleared up was the reloading rules, which we also applied to other areas where questions about Free actions arose. Then we went through the computations a 2nd time. The PC is a Pistolero, but he wasn't staying close to the fray, he was shooting from further away. And he wasn't using several feats properly. (I won't go into detail, I'm sure you can guess at what they were). End result was, his damage output suddenly jumped right on par with the 2H fighter and if he used his grit, it went higher. The GS player was downright giddy.
Next up was the Sorcerer. His big gripe was that he was using up his 3 6th level spell slots to buff his 3rd level spells and they still weren't amounting to as much as he felt they should given that the martials have infinite refresh on their attacks (the cleaving that was going on was pretty impressive). So the very first thing I did was suggest he change out his magic item buy and get a maximize rod. 3 charges of the rod applied to his level 3 spells put out the same damage without burning his 6th level spells. Next up it was discovered he didn't have Empower, which made those lower level spells more use friendly as well as a couple of the higher level ones. We did a few other tweaks here and there, nothing major, but it left him with a lot more to do than before and his damage numbers were a lot more satisfying. Part of it was also realizing he'd have a select few go-to blast spells, and then the rest was about utility, that made a nice difference too. (he figured he needed at least 3 different energy types which we cleared up as well, his spell selection improved noticeably from that as well).
Our Rogue: He dropped the 2 weapon fighting and class entirely, and went Ninja instead. We also changed his race to Catfolk and went with Cat Burglar. His damage got better and his versatility got significantly better, he always had something to do and though he wasn't a DPR monster, he was a lot happier for the shift. We tinkered briefly with recasting his Rogue as a Knife Fighter using a single blade, that too worked out way better than 2 weapon fighting, but the Catfolk Ninja really grabbed his imagination and with lessons learned from before, his damage is respectable and the comedy relief his new character inspired in him was well worth it(though I worry he's abusing the poison a little, time will tell on that).
Our Monk: He was the hardest to configure and took the longest. We redrafted himself as a Quingong Monk using Dragon Style. His damage jumped up a good bit, though he was still a good 36 pts behind the Gunslinger and Fighter, he was luke warm at best regarding the gap. After some soul searching on the matter, we decided that his normal character type is less supported in PF than it was with what we were used to. We discussed other archtypes and in the end his feeling was that it takes a heck of a lot of effort to make a Monk able to boot head, and then when all is said and done you're still trailing far behind the other guys. He acknowledges that its got great saves and mobility, but he brought up a pretty good point, that if he's away from the rest of the group with all that great mobility, its a false positive. And he detests playing ranged characters so a Zen Archer wasn't going to happen.
So we took out one of the NPCs I was going to introduce to the group as a hireling, which was a Battle Oracle. This is where we all pooled our heads to help him out with the build and spell selection, made use of the guide, and got him finalized. He's playing a naginata weilding character who got a good assortment of the 2H weapon feats and we made him a Hork which was this asian flavored half-oni wandering mystic warrior. He utterly fell in love with the character and funeral services were held for the Monk class at our table.
We decided to play late tonight, I threw some fluff combats at the players to basically give them some experience using their new builds, first one was a tad clunky, 2nd one was smoother, 3rd one everyone knew pretty much how to run their character to fairly solid effect. We also updated our spreadsheet to take into account common class practices, which did a good bit to help with the learning curve to make sure everyone was using their assets properly. I.E. we had the numbers to shoot for, if you were falling short of that something isn't being done right. By the 3rd combat though we're by no means masters of PF, but we're not as incompetent anymore.
Finally, I mentioned to the group that while I was happy to run them at this level and deal with whatever pitfalls our collective ignorance could cause, that there were a couple of posts that suggested we start at a lower level. The guy who was going to GM his game tonight who put his game on hold was also going to reboot a old campaign with higher level characters. After some discussion, I convinced them that this should be a low level game and to start off with level 3 instead of level 13. We also decided to play classes different from what's in my game though I don't think the Monk will make the cut there either. This way we get to learn the game at either end of the spectrum and will hopefully lead us to a brand new campaign after a couple of months with a much more solid understanding of the system.
I'd like to thank everyone for their input, it was extremely helpful and appreciated. Cheers =)