So... martial melee types... high cha or wis, if any mental prowess at all, and tending towards the divine...
Wizard. Or possibly an archer build using wizard, Arcane Archer (no more than 4 levels) and/or Eldritch Knight.
Wait, I'm supposed to sell you on it...
Ok, well... wizards are a very strong class. They offer a ton of options for spellcasting and can do buffing, debuffing, battlefield control, save or lose/die, summoning, transportation, divining and scouting, and more. No matter what you do, you should be able to cover several such fields with your wizard. As a prepared caster, you can change your spells daily to adjust for what you expect to face. You are also well set up for out of combat, with item crafting, spells to help with social encounters, and more. As you grow more powerful, you can kick back in more and more posh luxury, from low levels where you have an unseen servant to carry your bags, to later on when you can create a palacial mansion with 12 course dinners and a veritable fleet of waitstaff to serve you, to near end game, where you can create your own freaking pocket plane and choose at what rate time itself flows there.
I highly recommend the class. :)
I also say Wizard and Sorcerer would be great choices given your more "martial" background. Since Stream has already laid out the case for wizard, I'll give one for Sorcerers.
Sorcerers are spontaneous spellcasters, offering you the ability to draw upon their full range of abilities in any situation. So long as you have one remaining spell slot, you still have every single spell you know at your disposal. This gives sorcerers considerably more staying power and endurance than wizards, performing better in unexpected scenarios and taking control of situations by raw power. A wizard may well have prepared dispel magic for the day, but did he prepare it five times? A Sorcerer never has to worry about predicting his needs; so long as he knows it he can cast it exactly as many times as it's needed. The tough part with sorcerers is their limited spells known list. Complement them with scrolls, wands, staffs, and other magical items to allow them to tackle a diverse range of situations.
Ill take you in a different direction.
You seem to like the strong well musculared types so here is the polar opposite.
Enter the Psion.
A Elan Psion is the ultimate mentalist. He can move objects with his mind, he doesnt take damage, instead depleting his mental energies, he has no need for food or water due to his mental fortitude. He can do wondrous things like manipulating things with thought alone or slaying with thought alone. He can slide along the ground driven by thought or you can erase your presence from the mind of a creature so completely so as they cannot even see you! You can seek out and hunt creatures while you sleep and you gain control over time itself as early as level 5, later being able to both hasten or even reverse time and distort space at your whim! If you want to be brutal to another foe try and wipe its past from existence or create a parasite from its brain that actively hinders it or why dont you just remove a portion of its brain! That final one is lethal btw. Speaking of lethality, why dont you just remove him from existence? He is invisible, comatose and unscryable until you deem fit. Or just call death itself and be done with it...
And that is just the basic Psion. Each Psion can choose a disipline with devistating abilities. The nomad can teleport the entire party hours into the future. A telepath can steal the minds of others while the shaper can create truly terrifying constructs from thin air.
The best thing about psionics? You can keep using your favorite powers the higher you go as you can augment most powers to truly terrifying abilities.
I've never played a wizard before a few months ago because all of the bookkeeping was a huge turn off for me. Well, I decided to expand my horizons and I'm really glad I did it. The bookkeeping IS annoying, but you really do start to feel like a god after a while. Why just today I pretty much ended combat with a carefully thought out chain lightning spell, as well as fireball and fog cloud.
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It's easier to break a sorcerer's build than a wizard's. Pick the wrong spells and you can be in some trouble. If you know the game, you'll be okay, though.
I'm usually always playing wizards over sorcerers since sorcerers get higher level spells later than wizards and wizards can add new spells to their spellbook anytime, but lately it's occurred to me that trying to build a sorcerer the same way you build a wizard isn't the right way to go about. Metamagic feats are much more useful for a sorcerer than a wizard, for example.
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A Sorcerer is rather easy to play (and roleplay). You select your spells according to your strategy/role in combat and then you cast them rather intuitively according to the circumstances.
I love the controller/debuffer type for a Sorcerer. Having your enemies fall, become blinded or stunned or some such is funny and efficient in combat, even though you are not dealing damage per se. And if they succeed at their saves, you just cast the same spell again. In the end they will all fall before the power of your magic.
May it's just me, but isn't barbarian another martial class?
How about the witch class?
I second Psionics. <3 Psionics.
That aside be an Inquisitor. Get skills, utility spells, and Bane :O
Inquisitors are fun. I built a two-hand melee one. You can roleplay them kind of like a paladin, but for any cause you want! >=D
Ya psionics are fun! Sadly I rairly get to play them. They seem to have even less love than 3PP material and are generally ignored if ever suggested :(
And I love psycic tattoos! if you ever get more than 10 on you at a time, they all go off in a cascade of eldritch fury >:D Since you can transfer tattoos from one person to another with a standard action, just put 10 weak healing tattoos on each of your teammates and give them a massive healing surge/buffing frenzy with a touch when you really need it. Man they are fun!
Aww yes. Barbarian is very fun class. Good benefits too. High HD and DR.
Dental? Not so much. Most Barbarian sharpen teeth and wear them down gnawing on enemy shields.
What is pamphlet?
The site is back up and working, you can just link to the comic now.
My favorite one, I think. :)
Still, Barbarian is blatantly not the polar opposite of what he's played so far, other than perhaps alignment-wise.
I've had a couple of alchemists in my games now, and I have to say I really like them. Now, they have been played by very smart players, and I think that is essential to the class. You have to be able to think on your toes with the alchemist, but if you can, it seems a very rewarding alternative.
Out of curiousity, what about an Alchemist makes it so you "have to think on your toes?" I never really got that feeling from the class.
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My first characters were all of the ones you've played, so I think we have similar taste.
My favorite character I've ever played was an alchemist however. He had a tumor cat familiar, as part of a failed experiment to make himself more dextrous. He was the rather insane inhabitant of a pirate zeppelin, who poisoned just about everything that was his (since he was immune anyway). Reason I played him was because I can't really role-play an "evil" pirate, so I gave a swing at an insane chaotic neutral character. Any problem he encountered was solved with bombs, invisibility or intimidation.
What made the character really interesting for me however was the "ews" I would get as I would "hinge" the tumor cat on and off my body, having it fetch things for me, and spitting out the odd mouse carcass when I had nothing else to say when interacting with NPCs. My advice is to pick a personality trait would want to play as, and build from that.
Diametrically opposed to the devout, rigid paladin/cleric/monk for me wasn't a wizard, but an insane old man. He may have not been my strongest character, but he was certainly the most dangerous.