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A friend and I have been discussing GMing techniques, optional rules, homebrew, the general benefits of various d20 seytems, etc., and something that comes up often is class balance. E.g., the oft-perceived caster-martial disparity, Sorcerers vs. Wizards, Fighters vs. Barbarians, etc. However, it is tough to outline where it exists, and exactly why.

I basically want to poll these forums to see if I can get some consensus as to where in Pathfinder imbalance is the most prevalent. I know that there is broad disagreement on this topic, so I am happy to just get opinions. Most useful to me would be opinions that pinpoint what levels imbalance becomes apparent, and why. Any perceived instances of one class (or individual option such as archetypes, feats, or class ability choices) broadly overshadowing another are interesting to me, especially where a specific combination of options is at play.

So, for example, I want to know at what level people usually think

* Casters overtake non-casters in general utility

* Fighters are overshadowed by other classes (Barbarians?) in damage and combat options

* Core Rogues/Monks appear to be ineffectual in combat (and to what extent Unchained fixes this)

* The differences between Sorcerer and Wizard become most noticeable

* Combat feat chains like Two-Weapon Fighting, Vital Strike, etc. become undesirable

* etc.

Of course, any disagreement as to whether any imbalances exist at all is welcome. I am not super interested in what people perceive the best 3rd party fixes to be, but I won't be unhappy with suggestions as long as they do not overtake my general purpose of identifying imbalances. Generally, I would be happy for folks to include or limit themselves to material that they feel most comfortable discussing, as long as they give some sort of description of the breadth of material they are discussing when giving their opinions.

Alright, so I'm building an arcane duelist bard for a Legacy of Fire campaign, and I'm trying to figure out the best general direction t go with him.

The Arcane Duelist archetype seems to favor a heavy melee type, and so that is what I am building. The stats (with a 15 point buy) I'm planning on are:

STR 13
DEX 15
CON 12
INT 12
WIS 8
CHA 16

+1 HP from favored class, skill points in Bluff, Climb, Intimidate, Knowledge (Local), Knowledge (Nature), Perform (Oratory), and UMD.

I'm thinking the traits will be +1 Fort Save and +1 Know (nat.)

And for the level one feat... this is where I have a whole bunch of dilemmas.

Now, I don't know whether I should go for more strength and try to power attack my way to victory, or go for a weapon finesse style.

I've decided I don't want to go for Agile weapons (too expensive), or Dervish Dancer (too limited). Part of this is that I want to be able to occasionally use a composite shortbow, and I'm thinking power attack is a desirable option at some point. As well, the eventual armor upgrades will make the high Dex focus less powerful, and I don't want to dump strength and be useless until 3rd level anyway.

If I were less feat starved, this would be easier, but as it is I'm not really sure where to go with this character. I could try to get Elven Curve Blade proficiency and Focus on Dex and Power Attacking, or I could take the ARG cat pouncing feats and focus on charging down enemy casters.

Or I could make my melee prowess incidental, and focus more on performance and take Lingering Performance or Extra Performance.

What do you all think is the best direction to go?

What if sundering spells was just a game mechanic? As in, no need to be AM BARBARIAN, part of the sunder mechanic simply includes sundering spells.

I haven't thought this out really, and I'm not sure how easy it would be to implement. Perhaps it would require a magic weapon, or a feat. I'm not sure. The bigger question is, would this make magic types unplayable? Or would spells simply become more balanced with the extraordinary? Is there a good way to implement this, or is it just a bad idea?

Just throwing out a random thought I had just now while reading the forums. Maybe you all can make something of it.

Anyone coming in here looking for a fully formed set of magic item house rules will be disappointed (at least for now) because what I am posting here is more of a nebulous idea that came to me as a solution that might just work. If something similar has been suggested before, I apologize, and ask that you point me in the direction.

So, the major issue people have with magic items is the dependence on them, the "christmas tree" effect so to speak. People feel that their character's ability should be only tangentially enhanced by his material goods, with their significant ability coming from the character's natural talents.

The major problem is that it seems there is a dependence on magic items for many classes, especially classes which rely on martial weapons for damage. Maybe Fighters need powerful magic weapons to get past DR and deal acceptable damage, or perhaps the Rogue needs a Cloak of Resistance to have any sort of acceptable saving throws. Without these items, many characters would be underwhelming and unable to compete with monsters of the appropriate CR.

So if the problem is the reliance (across classes), on magic items, why not tie the bonuses that magic items grant to the character's advancement and not to the item? That is, something akin to the character level feats, but on a separate track, with separate bonuses. I'll call them, uh... Character Boons, or just boons for short.

The basic idea is that, in a world with these house rules, many-but not all-of the magic items that the standard Pathfinder world possesses are missing. Magic Weapons, Rods, and Pearls of Power are a rarity, if they even exist.

In order to account for this, as characters levels up, they gain Character Boons. These boons are much like feats, in that they are gained by every character as they level up, at the same point in time in each character's level progression. Instead of feats however, characters use these boons to attain abilities which directly replace those lost by the absence of magic items. For example, perhaps the most common boon would be a +1 to both attack and damage rolls, to replace the loss of common magic weapons. Or maybe a boon could be an extra spell slot, to replace Pearls of Power. Any number of magic items that may be seen as necessary or even just universally suggested as useful to the play of a character could be selected as boons instead.

So envision a level 10 fighter. Instead of his +2 longsword, Belt of Giant's Strength +2, and +1 full plate, he has boons: +1 Weapon (longsword)*, +1 Strength*, +1 Armor (full plate). Well, in addition to his non-magical longsword and his full plate.

The idea is that both characters would be mechanically the same, but are built for different styles of world.

Now, obviously magic enchantments aren't all equal in power, which is why they aren't all equal in price. So this is where boons would need to make a second distinction from feats. Instead of being purchased equally, as feats are, one would instead purchase these boons with some sort of point system. For now I'll call them boon points.

Boon points would be gained equally by each character as they progress, much like feats. They would be used to purchase boons, very similarly to how gold would. Instead of being material, though, they would simply be an abstract game concept whose only real interaction would be with boons.

The question arises how many boon points certain magic items should cost, and the simple answer is that it would be based on the gold price of the magic item. Perhaps the numbers could be somewhat simplified, so that one only needs tens of boon points rather than thousands in order to purchase an item. This solution helps answer the problem on how to allocate boon points by level. The obvious answer is to base it on the wealth by level charts, reducing them in an analogous way to the prices of each boon.

Now there is also a problem that certain magic items don't seem like they should be replicable by an increase in abilities. For example, a Fighter who gets so good at combat that he can cause his sword to deal fire damage seems somewhat strange, at least in some contexts. For this purpose, I would say that enchantments and items such as this should be left as items, if possibly rarer. The goal, remember, is to abolish the dependence on items, not abolish all magical items whatsoever. Thus, flaming swords, ghost touch arrows, and many wondrous items could be left untouched by this system. This would of course mean that some sort of wealth by level should be retained, though for the sake of these world it could be restricted by availability rather than by literal gold amounts (in items) owned by each character.

Item creation would be somewhat more difficult to convert, though it has always been something of a monster in my opinion. I'm not sure what to say about it yet, but as you can see the idea is still prenatal.

What say you forums? Is my idea worth following through with? Is it old hack? Is it just such a bad idea that you need to post about it? Do you want to help me?

Now I know a lot of you will look at that title and go "there is no best class, everyone is good at something". This thread is not for that sort of discussion, at least not directly.

What I want to know is this: what class do people think is the most fun, well designed, and balanced in the context of a average pathfinder game? More importantly, why?

Neither overpowered or underpowered, simply well tailored to play like a character is supposed to in a pathfinder game. I understand that the answer to this question may vary between players and contexts, but I am asking this question as if, perhaps, you could envision a game with minimal contextual influence. That is, what you think the average game should be, or probably includes, regardless of each playing group's differences. I understand that this may be a very difficult task, as the group is nearly inseparable from the game, but I ask that you try your best.

I want opinions on the answer to this question because I have been attempting to tweak the character classes with my own set of house rules. Unfortunately, there isn't an obvious baseline class to balance all of the others against. One could say, bring everything up to the level of the most powerful class, but I don't want to necessarily do that. The bestiaries and adventure paths are built assuming average characters, and I want to figure out what classes are best for accomplishing characters which are well balanced against the rest of the game. I'm running off the mindset that minimalism is a good approach, and I would rather use mostly existing content.

For this end, I ask when people post their opinions, that they include how the class does at multiple levels, and exactly which class features they think accomplish what could be called "good design".

PS: I know this topic has a house rule sort of tint to it, but I believe this is a much more general question that doesn't have to relate to house rules.

Yes, I realize that this has been discussed before, but the replies in the previous thread about this subject do not denote very good understanding of the argument, IMO. Here is the previous thread for reference: Please read my post before saying my argument is redundant.

I know that under no circumstances may you use Vital Strike when your character is charging. But a mounted rider does not technically charge when his mount charges. I will quote a few rules from the core here.

1: "If you don’t dismount, you must
make a DC 20 Ride check each round as a move action
to control such a mount. If you succeed, you can perform
a standard action after the move action. If you fail, the
move action becomes a full-round action, and you can’t do
anything else until your next turn."

2: "Your mount acts on your initiative count as you direct it.
You move at its speed, but the mount uses its action to move."

3: "If your mount moves more than 5 feet, you
can only make a single melee attack. Essentially, you have to
wait until the mount gets to your enemy before attacking, so
you can’t make a full attack. Even at your mount’s full speed,
you don’t take any penalty on melee attacks while mounted.
If your mount charges, you also take the AC penalty
associated with a charge. If you make an attack at the end of
the charge, you receive the bonus gained from the charge.
When charging on horseback, you deal double damage with
a lance (see Charge)."

Reading these rules, it appears that when a mounted rider makes an attack at the end of a charge, he is using the "attack action" standard action. In fact, in many circumstances it appears the rider is limited to a standard action, since he is using his move action to control his mount (of course certain class features such as the cavalier's make the ride check unnecessary).

So I would like to be told in what way the attack that a mounted combatant makes at the end of his mount's charge is anything other than a standard action to attack (meaning the attack action).

If you cannot, then I believe that validates the idea that vital strike may be used with a mounted charge, and in turn makes the questions of the original thread pertinent again.

As far as I can tell, the rogue talent "Ninja Trick" is different from the ninja trick "Rogue Talent" in that "Ninja Trick" does not restrict you from the tricks you can choose; where as "Rogue Talent" does not let you duplicate a ninja trick, "Ninja Trick" has no such clause.

So am I correct in saying that a rogue can use this to get Combat Trick twice without having to be a Swashbuckler, and a Swashbuckler could in fact choose Combat Trick three times this way?

Here is the text for "Ninja Trick" by the way:

And "Rogue Talent" for comparison:

I'm not saying hilariously broken, or hilariously good even. I just mean plain funny.

A while ago a friend of mine decided he wanted to make a half orc archer with 20 str and the gate crasher alternate racial trait, and it was just humorous planning out how eventually he would be sundering weapons, armor, and whatever else by firing arrows at them STRONGLY.

Unfortunately it was never seen to fruition for the campaign was short lived and he's busy with medical school now.

I'm thinking I want to revive the character concept (hilariously STRONG archer) for PFS, and I was trying to figure out exactly how to go about it. I want to be able to shoot an arrow and destroy magic armor with it. I also want to (whenever it happens to reach level 11 (IE years from now)) shoot arrows that knock foes 20-30 feet with the bull rush trick shot.

Mainly though, breaking things is the important part. Archer half orc (gatecrasher alt trait) with both sunder feats (RAW does improved sunder prevent AoOs on sunder trick shots?), is about as far as I've got planned out, along with all of the obvious ranged attacking feats.

I guess the question is, what else could make this work? I realize I need the most magical composite bow possible with adamantine arrows for special occasions (is there a less costly way to ignore hardness?) What else?

My girlfriend and I have been looking to play Pathfinder Society campaigns at our local game store, and also at Dragon*Con in Atlanta, and I was looking for advice for our prospective characters. Since Society play only goes up to twelve, character planning is a little congested and I feel making the characters she and I want will require at least a little planning.

She wants to play a Half-Elf Alchemist that eventually takes a few levels in Rogue. I've been trying to help her out in planning what would be the most mutually useful tools to make taking those Rogue levels worthwhile for her Alchemist.

As far as I can tell, poisons seem to be the way to go, since the rules, strangely enough, do actually allow alchemical item creation. I'm sort of curious as to how that actually works in society play, but considering it is legal I imagine it is not entirely stifled. Poisons aren't the only alchemical items that she is planning on eventually making, but advice would be helpful on what actually would be the most useful things to try to make. Flash Powder looks like a great choice, but most other things in the Core and APG books seem pretty situational. Cool alchemical items from other Society legal books would be nice.

She wants to keep bombs (so no Vivisectionist probably). It's unfortunate that you can't sneak attack with a bomb, but I imagine it's not all that bad. It seems there is a time for bombs and a time for sneak attacks and both of those attacks are different enough so as to not outclass each other. It is our hope that the added variety doesn't nullify the usefulness of either (especially with the poisons on the sneak attacks). We have been looking at what would be good for her and a lot of the ones that look really nice are either banned (simulacrum) or mid-level (blinding bombs, bottled ooze). Regardless, sticky poison is the one extremely obvious choice. I've told her to consider the extra arms also, though she is unsure of them flavor wise. Maybe they'll grow on her. *heh*

We also don't want to entirely skimp on the purely Alchemist stuff. She wants the Rogue levels to be an additional thing, not the culmination of her character. We're not sure when she should begin taking levels in rogue, or how many. To be honest, we're still not exactly sure what kind of Rogue she wants to become, but I'm pretty sure she just wants to eventually be sneaking around and stabbing things in the kidney in addition to the cool Alchemist stuff.

As far as Extracts go, all we really know we need is invisibility as early as possible, and the general combat magic. Mutagens seem like they should be easy to incorporate into the rogue like also.

The feats we've been looking at are Master Alchemist (because if she's going to be making stuff, she's going to be good at it) and the TWF tree. I figure TWF is the best choice of combat style here, to get the most poison off in one go, as well as to perhaps occasionally have a bomb in one hand and a short sword in the other. I'm not sure of what else though.

We realize her character concept isn't super optimal, but that isn't really the point. She wants it to work and to be a good combination of skills with nice versatility.

I haven't put as much thought into my character. I know I want some sort of worshiper of Zon Kuthon running around with a spiked chain and utilizing darkness like some sort of lame gothy superhero. I want the spiked chain part to be pretty integral (I know this is the silly wannabe munchkin's weapon of choice, but I just think it's cool okay?).

I've considered both Cleric and Inquisitor, and both have their cool points. I like Inquisitor because it seems like a class more inclined to physical combat. Honestly though, I can't help looking at the Night Subdomain ability (invisible in dim light except vs. darkvision) and the darkness alternate channeling ability to lower the light level in the surrounding area by one step (so I'm guessing usually dim or darker) to basically channel invisibility, like a bad ass. I almost want to take Shadowdancer for a few levels so I can get some silly abilities out of that, but I'm not sure about it.

I don't even know what race, but Dwarf, Human, and Half-Orc all look good.

Any help is greatly appreciated!