Maybe its because I started playing this game when dwarves and halflings were classes, though to be fair i started young and with old books rather then being a greybeard, but I've noticed something fundamentally different about the way I look at this game from what seems like lots of people.. I also like knowing the whys of how things were done as much as the whats were done.. So heres me sharing some of my perceptions and while I am judgmental I dont rank my judgement as better them someone else's for anyone but myself.
First off RPGs in general fall into two broad catagories of games which are the party game <D&D and its successors, Shadowrun, Leverage, ect.> and Character games <White Wolf games, Eden studios games, as well as most survival horror.>
The character game is all about me and my character.. I mean yeah these other guys are with me but they're just some other dudes i work with because of stuff.
The party game is going to get a bit more focus because thats what pathfinder is. In a party game you are a cog in a machine.. I understand that you want to be a special little snowflake and you can be so long as you function as a gear too. When your in this kind of a game.. You have a job and specialization is key.. Some redundancy and backup is nice but if its at the cost of your primary role you are 'failing' at doing things 'correctly' which is ultimately irrelevant since theres no right way to have fun but there are obvious intents in this sort of system and if you do not follow them you will have problems. Okay so now lets break down the party roles as they first appeared.
Fighter: Aka Captn platemail this was the guy who at low levels did the damages then at high levels kept the wizard from getting skooshed.
Thief: This is the only guy in the party that could regularly do stuff that didn't involve other people and things being hurt.. He climmed walls.. He was the only one who really had skills. Also when under optimum circumstances he could stab the crap out of someone
Cleric: He was a band aid wearing enough armor to help things not get skooshed. When a band aid was not needed he swung a hammer okayly.
Wizard: At low levels he maybe killed goblins and kobalds with magic missile and such and then got scary when lightning bolt and fireball happened because damage used to be kinda scary.
Any other classes really just did what the class they were based on did other then the bard which is what every ones girlfriend or semi interested fifth party member was. Also during this time people did stuff and rolled dice and made a lot more stuff up out of whole cloth because the rules were either very simple or completely missing <How long does it take to drown is a vat of yogurt ? The book doesn't say so i must be able to breathe it right ?>
Skipping some stuff and third ed happened, and this lead to some big big changes not all of witch were intentional due to mostly the following. Actual well baked in movement rules as it pertained to combat, weather it was intentional or not damage no longer being scary at high levels, and the whole Wealth by Level Magic item mart concept. Sacred cows were also looked at and they tried to make them useful rather then just a way to make it worth print space to have a ranger and a fighter. Now some of the new classes could jump roles around a little bit mostly due to design oversight because in a nutshell the more complex you make something the better it usually runs but also more spectacular it is when it breaks. Combat becomes the main problem resolution mostly because this part of the game has the most robust and thought out rules. Earlier editions nothing was well thought out so GMs pulled s~++ out of their corn holes and people complained less because the rules were much more.. Guideliney. If you dont believe that melee combat was the most important facet of 3.X in its design, or rather to its designers then please explain to me why strength used to be worth two other stats.. I mean one more hit and damage with pointy thing beats the pants off more spells per day. So well just ingore the fact I saw less then fifty strength based rolls from a pure spell caster in four years
Fighter: Now the point of this guy didnt change much.. but you couldnt just say I keep myself between them and the wizard because position mattered in the game.. This made the fighter have to find other ways to keep the wizard from getting skooshed. The fighter class had the feats to do this the paladin was so annoying he was some sort of mystic arrow magnet and the barbarian, ranger and druid all tried to get pounce and kill stuff dead.
Thief: Well now everyone gets skills so I'm not as cool but I'm the one who deals with traps.. until level five when they just dont scare us any more.. I must not be meant to be the skill guy any more because there are a bunch of d6s added to my damage so my purpose *must* be to figure out how to add them to every attack and whine when I cant because everyone knows I'm the hand to hand damage guy. He wasnt nor was he supposed to be but the inherent 3.X design flaws of level scaling did not help this guy though the old cross class skills being relevantly lower at least kept him feeling like he might do stuff maybe when the wizard didnt prep the spell that invalidated the skill that way. Rangers once they got the 6 skill points dipped a level of rogue for trapfinding and were just as useful in the thief role for everything that mattered because no one ever makes us pick a pocket for stuff.
Cleric: So.. to make up for wearing armor, the ability to heal, and having more then a 1/2 me level attack scheme I used to have spell slots that didnt hot 9th level.. now i do.. And domains.. and i still turn undead.. but thats lame so i get feats to let me do stuff that doesnt suck with channeling and in trade for being able to game my spell list into a monster I get.. people being mad I'm not willing to tank and band aid any more. Seems legit.
Wizard: Well.. damage isnt scary any more but hey.. I have save or suck spells.. I dont need to hit things.. I dont really ever run a rick of getting hit thanks to the obviously thoroughly play tested efficacy of spells so.. Eh. Oh.. Also ? theres this sorcerer now so there will be huge flame wars over whose better.. And since moar spellz is moar powur I'm going to get bonus feats I'm barely use. I'll never use more then five or six of my highest level spells per day.. But if your smart and pick the right spells as you go up a sorcerer versatility vs throw another spell at it kind of breaks even.
Now there was an actual design philosophy of a party expending a specific percentage of their resources to overcome a threat depending on its CR and because this whole CR thing was now a thing DMs could afford get a bit lazier and just check a number and if it matched toss them at the party and have an idea of how it should be.. Then players decided that it was more fun to try and use as few resources as possible per encounter to show those pesky rules whose game it was. Twinking and minmaxing have always been a part of gaming and always will be. Also the internet was now a thing so people competed with charcter build to be the best forumers ever.. Mostly because they still get a little teary eyed and defensive when they see tape measures <The rerl reason for the emnity between table-toppers and wargamers is wargamers overcame this fear.>
Now we come to Pathfinder and while it is by far my favorite 3.X set of house rules and my favorite form of D&D because its still got the same chassis as what came before it and wants backwards compatibility some stuff cant change without changing the system. Were going to replase prestige class glut with core class and archetype glut and pretends it doesnt actually end up kind of being a wash for exploitative purposes. Were going to do a good job fixing a lot of problems but some of them now are just stuck in the system and cant be designed out.. Were also pretty sure everyone wants to be a badass special snowflake so were going to blur a lot of lines and give everyone more options so they can do whatever they want... Even though with how this system works specializing is better and the skill system still breaks down so the skill based classes have to pull as much weight as the combat classes in a fight or no one will like them.. but then the combat classes wont have the skills so we have to make them just better enough in a fight to be better but not to better even though it doesnt matter because 6th level spells and up wreck the game mechanically. It inherited most of these big problems. It tries to fix the ones it can and ignores the ones it cant.. It listens to its play group feedback sometimes maybe a bit to much.
Here's the core of it though. No ones game is the game. Everyone's mileage varies. What is broken at your game is underpowered in someone else's and one game cant please everyone. If your having huge problems with something have a mature conversation with your group and talk about the problems your having. Your rogue sucks ? His barbarian is out damaging your druid ? That wizard is better then this sorcerer ? Its gonna happen. No class is getting a major overhaul at this point from Paizo and spells and feats from any book on its second or later printing are probably well anchored to so you have to fix it yourself. Its okay.. I trust you with the power and responsibility both.
TL;DR Our views are shaped by our perceptions and experiences.. Things obvious to you are not to others and when it comes to gaming someone who disagrees with you is just different not wrong.
Your rogue sucks ? His barbarian is out damaging your druid ? That wizard is better then this sorcerer ? Its gonna happen. No class is getting a major overhaul at this point from Paizo and spells and feats from any book on its second or later printing are probably well anchored to so you have to fix it yourself. Its okay.. I trust you with the power and responsibility both.
I've noticed that some classes are just easier to build than others. I don't think any particular class is broken, but some are merely functional (fighter, rogue, monk) while others are strong.
I'm not too sure how D&D worked before 3.5, but I do know that now it is important to build characters that can play the whole game not just parts of it. The non-combat character gets a lot of grief since combat is where everyone has the highest chance of dying, but making a characters that only functions in combat is just as much of a mistake. I don't know too many people who want to spend HOURS each session doing nothing.
That's all solved though by simply striving to build your character with that in mind. Then you spend the rest of your time doing what you really want to do; have fun.
Your rogue sucks ? His barbarian is out damaging your druid ? That wizard is better then this sorcerer ? Its gonna happen. No class is getting a major overhaul at this point from Paizo and spells and feats from any book on its second or later printing are probably well anchored to so you have to fix it yourself. Its okay.. I trust you with the power and responsibility both.I've noticed that some classes are just easier to build than others. I don't think any particular class is broken, but some are merely functional (fighter, rogue, monk) while others are strong.
I'm not too sure how D&D worked before 3.5, but I do know that now it is important to build characters that can play the whole game not just parts of it. The non-combat character gets a lot of grief since combat is where everyone has the highest chance of dying, but making a characters that only functions in combat is just as much of a mistake. I don't know too many people who want to spend HOURS each session doing nothing.
That's all solved though by simply striving to build your character with that in mind. Then you spend the rest of your time doing what you really want to do; have fun.
Even in 3.5 that was a personal preference and not something entirely required by the rules. An equivalent CR encounter was supposed to eat roughly 1/8th of your parties resources.. Which means 4 equal CR encounters should mean everyone is at 1/2 on the spells <including wands potions ect> they have and hit points left. Since damage and spells are rarely spread out so evenly that sort of situation usually means one PC dies.. For some reason however 3.X was much more vocally anti PC death as a playgroup then any other I have ever seen.
You're not doing nothing in combat though.. You're failing in combat <as character not a player> Which if your not a front line fighting class its something you should fail at because its not what you're supposed to do, and that is completely different from doing nothing. Just like the fighter and wizard are <supposed to at any rate> fail at pick pocketing, dealing with traps, and general sneaky stuff. This is a game where you don't get to be good at everything and if a person can only enjoy him or herself while 'winning' and needs to be in the spotlight all the time then I cant scrounge up any empathy or sympathy for them. I feel the same way about groups that get upset when they cant slaughter something of 2 to 4 CR without difficulty. Everyone has their own windows to be awesome. If there is so much combat in a game that non combat focused classes never get their chance then that's a problem with that table and it needs to be brought up with them. Some character cannot and should not be expected to 'play all aspects of the game' though today that's seems to mean stuff I roll in combat and stuff I roll out of combat so arguebly that might not be as hard to do. Characters are supposed to die, fighters cant do as well naked, Paladins have to take the chance they'll slip up and lose their PTB granted talents, rogues only get gobs of extra six sided dice under optimal conditions, not everything is the rangers favored enemy and a wizard in an anti magic zone is going to have a bad day. These are all good things.
Every class is a combat class. As an adventurer you are expected to participate in combat.
Additionally every class is also role playing class. As an adventurer you are expected to participate in out of combat situations.
To achieve that some classes require a conscious build choice (fighter/rogue). But it is easily doable. The fact that some players choose not to make competent characters is why some classes are viewed as weak instead of specialize.
You don't have to be good at everything to be competent both in and out of combat.
Now classes being useless either in combat or out combat is very different than having sub-optimal situations. That's never a good thing.
Every class is a combat class. As an adventurer you are expected to participate in combat.
Additionally every class is also role playing class. As an adventurer you are expected to participate in out of combat situations.
To achieve that some classes require a conscious build choice (fighter/rogue). But it is easily doable. The fact that some players choose not to make competent characters is why some classes are viewed as weak instead of specialize.
You don't have to be good at everything to be competent both in and out of combat.
Now classes being useless either in combat or out combat is very different than having sub-optimal situations. That's never a good thing.
And if you want to play it this way your more then welcome to try to make the attempt but the rules only support this in a vague way mostly because cross class skills are no longer a thing, but there's nothing in the game that has to be done that way. Its okay to be bad in combat.. the only thing forcing you to be good in combat and out of combat is your own need to be good at everything. Just because pathfinder makes it easier then other editions doesn't mean you have to any more then you have to steal money left on a table or you have to accept a promotion that pays better but gives you more responsibility. The framework of the game is still the same and so long as you don't drift to far below the 1/8 of your resources for an equal CR creature you don't *need* to do better. When i play a fighter I accept that at information gathering, matters of etiquette, esoteric knowledge, and woodsman ship i just don't do so good. When I play a rogue I accept that if I want to deal big damage with sneak attack i have to jump through hoops like I'm supposed to and when I'm a wizard i accept that if i get whomped before I can spell myself safe then that's how it is. I don't need to 'win' Pathfinder just like I didn't need to 'win' any other RPG I ever played. They're group efforts both in and out of character. I'm never going to care much what people who feel differently think mostly because i cant respect the mindset that leads to it. The rogue doesn't need to be better at combat to matter the stuff that the rogue is supposed to excel at needs to be threatening enough that a rogue is worth having. As it stands currently that's not so much the case. That's to bad and not how it stands at my table because we've changed stuff to fix that. We also nerf a lot of the things that let high level spellcasters solo encounters.
Theres a reason I prefer my adventuring party games to character driven games such as White Wolf.
Every class should strive to have something to do meaningfully in combat. Every class should strive to have something to do meaningfully out of combat. A Class that manages to do both of these is seen as a great success, balanced, and a great contribution to the team. They're also FUN.
Being a combat monster but sitting at the table twiddling your thumbs when not in combat isn't fun.
Being completely ineffectual in combat but having a nice set of roleplaying/out of combat skills is also not very fun.
I hold the Inquisitor to be one of the best designed classes made by Paizo. It's a solid combatant and has enough skills to dally about when it likes to. The Alchemist is a close second for me.
There is a difference between being not-good and useless. It is unacceptable to build a useless character. Even a rogue is not excused at being useless whenever they can't flank in combat. There are a plethora of builds that prevent that. Not investing into that is about as ridiculous as a fighter without power attack or a druid without natural spell.
Being "bad" at combat is doing like 1 sneak attack at level 20 (although with opportunist you should be doing at least 2). Being useless at combat is doing 1d6+5 damage at lvl 20. You can be bad, it's useless I have a problem with and no one should settle for that.
Now out of combat uselessness is harder to measure. A fighter with 7 wis, 7 int, and 7 cha could still be perfectly functional out of combat if the player is creative and good at roleplaying. But considering how effortless it is to have 10-ish cha and 'intimidating prowess' the fighter has no excuse for not having some sort of mechanic social skill that they can use.
I'm not advocating that characters should be good at everything, but all characters should be able to participate both in and out of combat. It's a disservice to yourself and the group to build otherwise.
Every class should strive to have something to do meaningfully in combat. Every class should strive to have something to do meaningfully out of combat. A Class that manages to do both of these is seen as a great success, balanced, and a great contribution to the team. They're also FUN.
Being a combat monster but sitting at the table twiddling your thumbs when not in combat isn't fun.
Being completely ineffectual in combat but having a nice set of roleplaying/out of combat skills is also not very fun.
I hold the Inquisitor to be one of the best designed classes made by Paizo. It's a solid combatant and has enough skills to dally about when it likes to. The Alchemist is a close second for me.
So basically you don't have fun when you're not winning and in the spotlight.. Seems self centered to me but hey your having fun. Congratulations. I on the other hand do not function that way.. Go me too. Just like when I'm reading a book or watching a movie I don't have to be the star of or even in the scene at all to have fun.
Now out of combat uselessness is harder to measure. A fighter with 7 wis, 7 int, and 7 cha could still be perfectly functional out of combat if the player is creative and good at roleplaying. But considering how effortless it is to have 10-ish cha and 'intimidating prowess' the fighter has no excuse for not having some sort of mechanic social skill that they can use.
I'm not advocating that characters should be good at everything, but all characters should be able to participate both in and out of combat. It's a disservice to yourself and the group to build otherwise.
If the player is good at roleplaying there's no way that idiotic imperceptive lout should be good at anything that isn't beating something with a stick or using his body with the vague exception of intimidation but this games skill system handles problems like that with the grace of a flung brick. Um.. Yeah actually there is.. One the player simply doesn't want to play an intimidating, diplomatic, or deceitful character and saying that he has to or in fact that any other persons character has to do anything is rude at best and the don't be a jerk rule of these boards prevents me from expressing my actual feelings towards that. Another reason is in your adventuring party are a sorcerer and a bard who have both dedicated a goodly portion of their skill sets to social skills and you thus have no reason to waste your skill ranks simple to make aid another checks when you could take swim or ride or craft or even profession brick layer. I disagree with you strongly and i think that stepping on the role of another class is just as much as a disservice to your party. Like i said in my very first pose its a fundamentally different mindset and even if I had the ability to see things your way in more then the vaguest of terms I don't have the inclination to do so.. The have my cake and eat it too <What a stupid metaphor> mindset that I perceive to be driving that style of play honestly bothers me. You don't want to play like I do that's fine.. I could care less but people don't have to play like you either.
For the record I optimize the hell out of my characters.. I pour over the books crunch numbers and playtest a build a few times at home before I ever take it to a game.. But I have fun build testing, tweaking, and CharOping. Will I make a rogue that can't handle combat ? No.. Of course not.. I actually like combat rogues and in fact combat is often my preferred part of the game but to insist that anyone else has to do that ? No. If someone wants to play a rogue that refuses to lift a weapon or for some reason his perception of his characters Lawful Good alignment prevents him from using his sneak attack or even anything but dealing subdual damage I'm cool with that.
So basically you don't have fun when you're not winning and in the spotlight.. Seems self centered to me but hey your having fun. Congratulations. I on the other hand do not function that way.. Go me too. Just like when I'm reading a book or watching a movie I don't have to be the star of or even in the scene at all to have fun.Every class should strive to have something to do meaningfully in combat. Every class should strive to have something to do meaningfully out of combat. A Class that manages to do both of these is seen as a great success, balanced, and a great contribution to the team. They're also FUN.
Being a combat monster but sitting at the table twiddling your thumbs when not in combat isn't fun.
Being completely ineffectual in combat but having a nice set of roleplaying/out of combat skills is also not very fun.
I hold the Inquisitor to be one of the best designed classes made by Paizo. It's a solid combatant and has enough skills to dally about when it likes to. The Alchemist is a close second for me.
There's a significant difference between wanting to be meaningful both in and out of combat, and wanting to be "in the spotlight" all the time.
Now out of combat uselessness is harder to measure. A fighter with 7 wis, 7 int, and 7 cha could still be perfectly functional out of combat if the player is creative and good at roleplaying. But considering how effortless it is to have 10-ish cha and 'intimidating prowess' the fighter has no excuse for not having some sort of mechanic social skill that they can use.
I'm not advocating that characters should be good at everything, but all characters should be able to participate both in and out of combat. It's a disservice to yourself and the group to build otherwise.
If the player is good at roleplaying there's no way that idiotic imperceptive lout should be good at anything that isn't beating something with a stick or using his body with the vague exception of intimidation but this games skill system handles problems like that with the grace of a flung brick. Um.. Yeah actually there is.. One the player simply doesn't want to play an intimidating, diplomatic, or deceitful character and saying that he has to or in fact that any other persons character has to do anything is rude at best and the don't be a jerk rule of these boards prevents me from expressing my actual feelings towards that. Another reason is in your adventuring party are a sorcerer and a bard who have both dedicated a goodly portion of their skill sets to social skills and you thus have no reason to waste your skill ranks simple to make aid another checks when you could take swim or ride or craft or even profession brick layer. I disagree with you strongly and i think that stepping on the role of another class is just as much as a disservice to your party. Like i said in my very first pose its a fundamentally different mindset and even if I had the ability to see things your way in more then the vaguest of terms I don't have the inclination to do so.. The have my cake and eat it too <What a stupid metaphor> mindset that I perceive to be driving that style of play honestly bothers me. You don't want to play like I do that's fine.. I could care less but people don't have to play like you either.
For the record I optimize the hell out of my characters.. I pour over the books crunch numbers and playtest a build a few times at home before I ever take it to a game.. But I have fun build testing, tweaking, and CharOping. Will I make a rogue that can't handle combat ? No.. Of course not.. I actually like combat rogues and in fact combat is often my preferred part of the game but to insist that anyone else has to do that ? No. If someone wants to play a rogue that refuses to lift a weapon or for some reason his perception of his characters Lawful Good alignment prevents him from using his sneak attack or even anything but dealing subdual damage I'm cool with that.
The problem with this argument is that if it was the player's choice not to be good in out of combat situations, or not to be good in combat, that's one thing. But if the system rules make it so that in order to fill your role, you have to give up adequacy at everything that's not your role, that's the fault of the system. It's not wanting to "have my cake and eat it too" as you put it, to have a fighter who can fill the role of a fighter without having to sit on the sidelines during skill-based challenges. Or having a rogue who can be skillful, but also doesn't fall flat in combat.
I don't think anyone's asking for a Fighter to be just as good a skill monkey as a Rogue, or a Rogue be as Combat-focused as a fighter, or anything like that, but it's simply the matter of not being a nonentity (or worse, a liability) in any area.
Personally, I think the best way to go about it would be to pull a 5e, and make sure everyone has a reasonable baseline in out of combat utility, independent of class, the way they have Backgrounds, which provide a good deal of skill proficiencies which don't depend on what class you take. From there, some classes side more towards skill stuff, like the Rogue, and some side more towards Combat, like the Fighter, but all have at least some combat capability guaranteed, and due to the presence of backgrounds, all have some non-combat capability.
I've learned from over 30 years of playing RPG's that you get what you give in the game. Each player brings their take of what they want from playing. I've gamed with guys that loved the role-playing and were horrible in combat. Conversely there were others that built combat monsters and spent the remainder of the sessions twiddling their thumbs.
Me, I found the best play was to "try" and be effective in either situation. I might not find my place in the spotlight but I can help others' shine.
An example would be from the last sessions I played in with my regular group, two of the fellows I've been gaming with off and on since middle school umpteen years ago. Our usual DM swapped places with another player to indulge in being a meat puppet. He worked up a solid healer-buffer cleric that wasn't even a second-rate combatant. He knew it and so did we. During a grueling battle he stepped up behind one player and dropped a buff that lead to creaming a baddie. Then, as we were bleeding like a rushing river, pointed out to the enemies and said, "this is not for you... or you... or you." He dropped and Selected Channel, healed us up and we laughed our asses off. He held the spotlight for that moment and we loved it.
For us it's about party dynamics. We build toons that work well on their own, with a group, and play as a team to reach a common goal. We might not always succeed but we have FUN and enjoy the hell out of each session.