I would much prefer the game went the other direction where systems were more generic and less dependent on specialization. In general keeping all the systems in place, but just make them XP costs instead of dedicated class level would offer more customization and modularity and with iconics you still have characters to serve as examples to make similar builds from.I would, too -- but then I'd be designing a classless system like GURPS. Which is running directly contrary to the goal of improving PF, a game founded on class identity (for better or for worse).
I also don't think GURPS is as good a game. Which is why I play Pathfinder.
What about this: abilities stack with character level, and some classes are only a few levels. Fighter is 5 levels, unchained rogue is 5 levels. Wizard is 20. I know this has been discussed to death, but it is much more honest.
That could work,.... but it also just makes C/MD that much more explicit. Why not instead try to brainstorm something you could put in the next fifteen levels of fighter-space?
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You don't have a real argument against Saitama.You can base your character around a great joke character.
Just don't get angry if it means I call your character a joke too.
Still waiting for a real explanation of why Saitama the character is not a good example of a non-wuxia high level martial at 20th level.
Heck even Metal Bat is a good example of that too.
Those characters are fantastic, just like Pathfinder casters are fantastic. Fantastic is not mundane and neither are those characters.
Who cares what the setting is. Metal Bat or Saitama make more sense in the world of Pathfinder than Valeros does.
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That could work,.... but it also just makes C/MD that much more explicit. Why not instead try to brainstorm something you could put in the next fifteen levels of fighter-space?
Why don't we do both?
Have all classes go over the top as they level, but specifically tell players at what level different classes go "action movie"/"sword and sorcery" and what level they go "anime"/"wuxia"/"celtic". And say
beyond x level if that tier of play doesn't fit with their groups setting when it comes to that y class, then you shouldn't continue to advance in that class and should instead multiclass or retrain to fit something that will remain correct in power level and not damage player immersion.
I will not this means that people who want to play level 20 non-over the top fighters will not be please, but that's because they're asking for something unrealistic if they want it balanced at the same time.
I ran the 100 meter in about 12-13 seconds in high school and wasn't really all that good compared to other sprinters.
That's about 180ish feat in about 6 seconds. It was in a straight line and turning was just about impossible, so that was the equivalent of the run action.
A pathfinder character needs a base speed of 45 to do 180 feat in a run action.
It's kind of funny really.
I ran the 100 meter in about 12-13 seconds.
That's about 180ish feat in about 6 seconds.
A pathfinder character needs a base speed of 45 to do 180 feat in a run action.
100 m/13 sec = 25 ft/sec = 151 ft./round, not 180. So you'd need a speed of 30 ft. and the Run feat, or a speed of 37.5 ft. without it.
Granted, I think the Run feat is incredibly stupid, and should be replaced with 1 rank in Athletics as a class skill.
Now that I'm home.
164 ft=50 meters
100 meters/12 seconds=50 meters/6 seconds
164ft/6 seconds=164 feet in a full round run action. 164/4=41 base land speed.
So according to pathfinder I have a base speed of 40. The same as a 3rd level Monk or first level Barbarian.
I am not a particularly fast man, or particularly strong. I am definitely not a level 20 fighter who can jog in full plate for 24 hours and not break a sweat.
How I am faster than that same level 20 fighter when he strips down to his skivvies is pretty alarming to me.
164/4=41 base land speed.
164/5 = 32.8 ft., close enough to 30. Like I said, the Run feat is absurd, but it's sort of expected by the system for anyone who runs track (even people like you and I who weren't superstars).
In other words, my problem is with the 5x speed being feat-locked, not with the movement speeds in the game. Granted, I walk at more like 4 mph, vs. the 3 mph the game assumes, but then again I walk faster than most people I know.
The run action is x4 movement speed, not x5.
I didn't train much as a track runner, I actually spent about 6 years in cross country. I would more likely have the Endurance feat, not the run feat. I did track events for fun, but I didn't train for them.
Unless the run feat takes like a month at most to attain, cause it took about 30 days to get proper sprint and start form.
Guys, I literally had this discussion in another thread. Please don't attract that crowd here, this thread has not had crazy talks about how Fleet is a good feat.
EDIT Insain, you were in that thread! What are you doing, man?
Ah shoot you're right!
Instead I'ma come up with more characters that are fantastic and can be considered Martial from media.
You don't have a real argument against Saitama.You can base your character around a great joke character.
Just don't get angry if it means I call your character a joke too.Still waiting for a real explanation of why Saitama the character is not a good example of a non-wuxia high level martial at 20th level.
Heck even Metal Bat is a good example of that too.
Those characters are fantastic, just like Pathfinder casters are fantastic. Fantastic is not mundane and neither are those characters.
Who cares what the setting is. Metal Bat or Saitama make more sense in the world of Pathfinder than Valeros does.
ESPECIALLY Metal Bat, if we're counting the excellent "filler" chapters Murata gave him fighting Garou.
I think martials are in a relatively decent place now as far as number of abilities AVAILABLE (Cut/Smash From the Air and a bunch of the other Weapon Mastery Feats, Mythic abilities, and so on) it's just access to them takes A.) A s!@&load of investment Feat-wise, B.) Access to niche material, or C.) Both.
If a normal Fighter could have all the neat Weapon Mastery and Advanced Weapon Training stuff and access to things like Seven League Leap and Unstoppable without eating 10 Feats and requiring 5 Mythic Tiers, it would be at least on par with the 6 level casters in many ways IMO.
When's the last time Valeros tripped a collossal centipede?
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Never, centipedes have +400 vs trip due to all their extra legs.
Then toss on the size barrier...
You don't have a real argument against Saitama.You can base your character around a great joke character.
Just don't get angry if it means I call your character a joke too.Still waiting for a real explanation of why Saitama the character is not a good example of a non-wuxia high level martial at 20th level.
Heck even Metal Bat is a good example of that too.
Those characters are fantastic, just like Pathfinder casters are fantastic. Fantastic is not mundane and neither are those characters.
Who cares what the setting is. Metal Bat or Saitama make more sense in the world of Pathfinder than Valeros does.
Funny thing about Saitama is that in Pathfinder he would still be fairly weak. He works in the OPM universe because there every problem is solved by killing it; not the case in Golarion, and Saitama is pretty notably useless at anything that isn't punching.
I mean, unless he can like, destroy a pocket dimension by punching it hard enough. Can he do that? I feel like he could probably do that.
Well one thing that hasn't really occurred in the anime or Murata manga is that Saitama is also pretty resistant to just about anything.
Telekinesis has minimal effect on him for example and I imagine stuff like hypnosis wouldn't do much either.
Also I 100% believe that he could punch his way into or out of a pocket dimension if he had the inkling.
Also I wouldn't really call that weak. It doesn't matter if your enemy has 1000 tricks to use against you if none of those tricks can actually work.
Well one thing that hasn't really occurred in the anime or Murata manga is that Saitama is also pretty resistant to just about anything.
Telekinesis has minimal effect on him for example and I imagine stuff like hypnosis wouldn't do much either.
Also I 100% believe that he could punch his way into or out of a pocket dimension if he had the inkling.
Also I wouldn't really call that weak. It doesn't matter if your enemy has 1000 tricks to use against you if none of those tricks can actually work.
The original webtoon author has stated Saitama has half the force of the big bang in one fist, the rest in the other fist.
So at any moment, Saitama could get bored and start a new universe by punching his fist together.
In that universe, he is basically God, surpassed by only the author. He's also a mundane martial with exaggerated human ability. He doesn't need to fly, or shoot lasers, or teleport, or use mind control. He is just overwhelmingly strong.
It's an interesting philosophical question as to what could defeat Saitama. In theory, reality benders like the Death Note could kill him, but the Death Note couldn't kill Reapers and only ever killed regular humans. Most of the questions come down to which ability with an unspecified limit, hits it's limit first.
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Please, explain to me why the Wizard can be better at Acrobatics with less opportunity cost than the Fighter when the Wizard is annulling most of the uses of Acrobatics with Spider Climb or Fly.Why? Because you are biased against wizards? It makes far more sense for a wizard to have a ton of skills than a fighter. Wizards deal in academia. Most people in academia have a far greater selection of skills than others in a profession that does not require much learning. I imagine a wizard would need mathematics, alchemy, chemistry, writing, literature, poetry, all the various knowledges, etc. That training requires a lot of skills. What is the fighter doing in his time? Drinking at the bar? Bards are meant to be dabblers, rogues only get a ton of skills because their class features were made into skills. No, a rogue stealthing should be found by Joe fighter because he has perception as a skill. The rogue should be able to pull off ninja like stealth. Rangers are in my mind much more like special forces. Trained in hit & run and guerilla tactics. It makes sense that they get perception due to ambushing prey and looking out for ambushes. Fighters should not get to ruin everyone one else's perk. Rogues should hands down beat fighters in stealth vs detection scenarios.yeah, that portion was a reply to Talek and Luna. No reason to give a Wizard tons of skill points. They are stressing their brains learning spells so they don't NEED to have skill points.
==Aelryinth
Easy. By using spider climb you learn how to use your body to climb more effectively. Its like assuming spider man does not have a good acrobatics or climb score because he has spider climb at will. He has a tremendous acrobatic ability precisely because he has spider climb at will.
Fighters get the incredible ability of their combat training increasing exponentially at each level. I work out five to seven days a week and have been doing so for the past four years. Each of my sessions is one to hour and a half hours long. I am no where near D&D/Pathfinder cheese of fighting ability. To get at fighting/monk ability you would have to put in about 8 to 12 hours of training a day, several days a week. That takes up as much time if not more than a wizard doing book training. Stop making martial feats and training seem like its no big deal. It is in fact a huge deal and very hard to get to the next level physically.
Stop making martial feats and training seem like its no big deal. It is in fact a huge deal and very hard to get to the next level physically.I find it hard to believe that sheer physical effort should be MORE restricted than the ability to reshuffle reality.
That probably stems from your unfounded* expectation that freddy fighter spending X amount of time learning how to punch something becomes as powerful as wally wizard spending X amount of time learning how to make reality their b****.
Mind you, this expectation is a natural follow on from expecting mundane and fantastic classes to be balanced. If you throw that assumption away, then the fantastic wizard being far better than the mundane fighter when both put equal amounts of effort in sounds pretty reasonable. Unfortunately, this doesn't make for a very good tactical combat heavy role playing game, so here we are.
*from a verisimilitude PoV, not a game design PoV
In any magical universe, accelerated physical training speed should be a given. Given how many hp you can heal a day back, recovery times, and so training times, would also be accelerated.
What I think is mindboggling is the idea that getting in shape really fast and to an incredible degree is nigh impossible, while levelling from 1 to 20 in a month is certainly possible.
Sure, physical training times take a while...for us. Now think how long it takes to become a world-class expert in a skill like, oh, quantum physics. DECADES for FIVE RANKS. You know, something about as hard as a 3rd level spell.
If mages can do it, fighters can do it on the other side. Eesh.
==Aelryinth
Fighters get the incredible ability of their combat training increasing exponentially at each level.
I don't think that fighters getting a +1 BAB, a +1 HD, and maybe two saving throw points, plus whatever feat sink they're currently working on (generally to get good with a sword or a bow, but not both), qualifies as "exponentially" increasing.
There is a reason people say that fighters are linear, and wizards are quadratic. Quadratic is the function that has the exponent. Every level where fighters get the "bonus" combat feat, a wizard is getting a whole new spell book.
So all we need to do is come up with bonus feats for level 10+ Fighters as powerful as level 5+ spells!
Also give them 2 feats per class level and ability to learn additional through spending money and time on training montage.
In practice I doubt anyone can identify ten feats that would be worth giving up a fifth level spell slot to obtain, let alone a ninth level one.
It's kinda telling that when I was trying to decide what feats might be worth giving up a fifth level spell, the only ones that sprang to mind were metamagic feats.
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In any magical universe, accelerated physical training speed should be a given. Given how many hp you can heal a day back, recovery times, and so training times, would also be accelerated.
What I think is mindboggling is the idea that getting in shape really fast and to an incredible degree is nigh impossible, while levelling from 1 to 20 in a month is certainly possible.
Sure, physical training times take a while...for us. Now think how long it takes to become a world-class expert in a skill like, oh, quantum physics. DECADES for FIVE RANKS. You know, something about as hard as a 3rd level spell.
If mages can do it, fighters can do it on the other side. Eesh.
==Aelryinth
If that were the case then why have the warrior NPC class? Shouldn't all basic fighting classes be named fighter? If it is that easy to gain physical fitness and training shouldn't the average farmer be superhuman stat wise? If after all one of the big tropes in D&D is the farmer going on an adventure and picking up combat training. Then no, a fighter is not doing anything mind-boggling according to you.
You are saying that maintaining a strength in 18 to 20 range and constitution or dexterity in that range is no big deal? You are kidding yourself. Intelligence is inborn. After awhile, humans adapt and someone figures out how to do something. We are using the internet after all. I know a lot more people that are pretty smart, some of which use these message boards. I doubt that the majority of them maintain physical abilities to match their intellect.|
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Fighters get the incredible ability of their combat training increasing exponentially at each level.I don't think that fighters getting a +1 BAB, a +1 HD, and maybe two saving throw points, plus whatever feat sink they're currently working on (generally to get good with a sword or a bow, but not both), qualifies as "exponentially" increasing.
There is a reason people say that fighters are linear, and wizards are quadratic. Quadratic is the function that has the exponent. Every level where fighters get the "bonus" combat feat, a wizard is getting a whole new spell book.
Then why are you playing a fighter? I know people who are pretty good archers who would get smoked in a sword fight. I also know others who are pretty good fencers but would not last long in a boxing match. Maybe by throwing out weapon proficiencies WOTC/Pathfinder did more harm than good because now people don't think weapon training is special. Go box or take martial arts for real. You will appreciate that +1BAB, the feat and hit die that you get when leveling a fighter. Especially when you can take mega damage and still hit as hard as you could at the start of the fight. I can assure you that does not happen in real life.
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Then why are you playing a fighter? I know people who are pretty good archers who would get smoked in a sword fight. I also know others who are pretty good fencers but would not last long in a boxing match. Maybe by throwing out weapon proficiencies WOTC/Pathfinder did more harm than good because now people don't think weapon training is special. Go box or take martial arts for real. You will appreciate that +1BAB, the feat and hit die that you get when leveling a fighter. Especially when you can take mega damage and still hit as hard as you could at the start of the fight. I can assure you that does not happen in real life.Fighters get the incredible ability of their combat training increasing exponentially at each level.I don't think that fighters getting a +1 BAB, a +1 HD, and maybe two saving throw points, plus whatever feat sink they're currently working on (generally to get good with a sword or a bow, but not both), qualifies as "exponentially" increasing.
There is a reason people say that fighters are linear, and wizards are quadratic. Quadratic is the function that has the exponent. Every level where fighters get the "bonus" combat feat, a wizard is getting a whole new spell book.
It isn't special though. Especially when it is rooted in our world's physics which doesn't exceed level 6 at best. This is compounded by the fact that the level 9 guy over there can literally transform themselves, play 20 questions with universe, create undead horrors, tell gravity to go sit in the corner, summon celestial (or infernal) superbeings and that's just before lunch. So no... being good with a weapon doesn't really cut it at those levels.
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I ran the 100 meter in about 12-13 seconds in high school and wasn't really all that good compared to other sprinters.
That's about 180ish feat in about 6 seconds. It was in a straight line and turning was just about impossible, so that was the equivalent of the run action.
A pathfinder character needs a base speed of 45 to do 180 feat in a run action.
It's kind of funny really.
Not really when you consider the fact that the pathfinder character can do that all day long while you couldn't keep up the same speed for more than a few sprints. Oh yeah and the pathfinder fighter is doing that in enough gear that approximates 70# while you are in shorts, t-shirt and running shoes. Try hitting that time with 70# of gear that is more than likely not evenly distributed on your body and get back to me on your time.
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It isn't special though. Especially when it is rooted in our world's physics which doesn't exceed level 6 at best. This is compounded by the fact that the level 9 guy over there can literally transform themselves, play 20 questions with universe, create undead horrors, tell gravity to go sit in the corner, summon celestial (or infernal) superbeings and that's just before lunch. So no... being good with a weapon doesn't really cut it at those levels.Then why are you playing a fighter? I know people who are pretty good archers who would get smoked in a sword fight. I also know others who are pretty good fencers but would not last long in a boxing match. Maybe by throwing out weapon proficiencies WOTC/Pathfinder did more harm than good because now people don't think weapon training is special. Go box or take martial arts for real. You will appreciate that +1BAB, the feat and hit die that you get when leveling a fighter. Especially when you can take mega damage and still hit as hard as you could at the start of the fight. I can assure you that does not happen in real life.Fighters get the incredible ability of their combat training increasing exponentially at each level.I don't think that fighters getting a +1 BAB, a +1 HD, and maybe two saving throw points, plus whatever feat sink they're currently working on (generally to get good with a sword or a bow, but not both), qualifies as "exponentially" increasing.
There is a reason people say that fighters are linear, and wizards are quadratic. Quadratic is the function that has the exponent. Every level where fighters get the "bonus" combat feat, a wizard is getting a whole new spell book.
Really? That fact that your fighter can stand toe to toe with celestial/infernal superbeings is not amazing? That is the stuff of legend. Why is creating undead horrors so special? The fighter can fight all day and night, gets an unbelievable armor class. Has enough health to survive things that would kill a pack of elephants and can master enough weapons that anything is deadly in his hands. Fighters are awesome. In my current game with have three of them, one wizard, one sorcerer, a druid, a bard and a cleric. None of the fighters feel overshadowed by the casters. Stop complaining about how the grass is greener on the other side and look at the amazing grass you got in your own yard. You get a feat every single level. You can do truly amazing things that other characters cannot do.
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In practice I doubt anyone can identify ten feats that would be worth giving up a fifth level spell slot to obtain, let alone a ninth level one.It's kinda telling that when I was trying to decide what feats might be worth giving up a fifth level spell, the only ones that sprang to mind were metamagic feats.
You are comparing an apple to an orange. Feats are not meant to be a one on one equal to a 5th level spell. If you really want to make that comparison look to mythic power attack. That is one cheese feat. If you crit fish with it you get the damage from it doubled before the crit modifier. My barbarian crit fishes with his falchion. I hit with a power attack thanks to mythic surge which negates the attack penalty. It was 96 points of damage from the power attack alone. It was complete cheese. No 5th level spell is worth that mega damage.
Besides, 5th level spells are not supposed to be used at will. They are meant to be an expendable resource. If you want to have a fighter with resource management you should have been playing D&D 4E.
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Feats are not meant to be on par with spells. WOTC tried that approach with 4E powers. That test crashed & burned.Every level where fighters get the "bonus" combat feat, a wizard is getting a whole new spell book.
So all we need to do is come up with bonus feats for level 10+ Fighters as powerful as level 5+ spells!
(And for my next trick after that, I'll unscramble an egg.)
This is a logical fallacy actually. Just because there was a system that was balanced and failed does not mean all balanced systems will fail. 4E also massively outsold Pathfinder pretty much right up until they started trying to restructure their production schedule and policies. 4E's issues had much more to do with unrealistic sales projections and an unsustainable business model forced because of Hasbro being a bad fit for such a niche market than it did with their extremely generic mechanics. And just to be clear, you can have balanced mechanics without using a generic cookie-cutter structure.
We are playing Pathfinder which is in the 3E mold of gaming.
Fighters are not weaksauce characters. Sure you can come up with white room scenarios where the fighter loses to the wizard. I can come up with a white room scenario where class X beats class y every single time. It does not mean the game is broken. The only thing that needs to be fixed is spell saves. Other than that the game is fine.
Actually, white room scenarios are what favor the Fighter. It's when you actually start introducing all the variables that exist in a real game that the Fighter falls apart. His only niche is combat, and he actually isn't even very good at that in the latter half of the game because of his inability to deal with the challenges that higher level adventuring brings.
Essentially, rather than the Fighter being representative of a fantasy soldier, replete with all the skills and versatility that were required of soldiers even in medieval times, he's a roided out bodybuilder, and shares much of the same issues. Sure, he's objectively physically stonger than some of his peers, but God help him if the challenge requires him to scratch his own back.
Also, the "exercise and pursuit of physical prowess is really hard in the real world" has exactly nothing to do with Pathfinder. Golarion is a world where a guy literally used the pursuit of personal perfection through exercise and meditation to become a god. Your personal experiences as a hobbyist in the realm of exercise and the arts martial should absolutely not be informing what a high level fantasy character in such a world is capable of achieving.
Really? That fact that your fighter can stand toe to toe with celestial/infernal superbeings is not amazing? That is the stuff of legend. Why is creating undead horrors so special? The fighter can fight all day and night, gets an unbelievable armor class. Has enough health to survive things that would kill a pack of elephants and can master enough weapons that anything is deadly in his hands. Fighters are awesome. In my current game with have three of them, one wizard, one sorcerer, a druid, a bard and a cleric. None of the fighters feel overshadowed by the casters. Stop complaining about how the grass is greener on the other side and look at the amazing grass you got in your own yard. You get a feat every single level. You can do truly amazing things that other characters cannot do.
It isn't special though. Especially when it is rooted in our world's physics which doesn't exceed level 6 at best. This is compounded by the fact that the level 9 guy over there can literally transform themselves, play 20 questions with universe, create undead horrors, tell gravity to go sit in the corner, summon celestial (or infernal) superbeings and that's just before lunch. So no... being good with a weapon doesn't really cut it at those levels.
But...those aren't particularly true statements
1) The fighter can't fight all day and night, because he runs out of health. His AC also isn't exceptional as it's just heavy armor. You could likely get the same AC stacking dex bonuses on an alchemist, except his is touch vs flat footed. % miss chance abilities also make casters much harder to hit (mirror image, blur, greater invisibility).
2) The fighter is actually the worst off of anyone without his favored weapon. 3 examples: Slayer, Paladin, Magus. Each of these can augment whatever weapon their holding with their special ability (studied target, divine bond, arcana) to get the same benefit they always do. The fighter actually loses his benefit wielding anything outside his weapon training group. This is exacerbated when you have things like weapon focus / specialization only applying to a single weapon, meaning the fighter falls further behind when not wielding his one chosen weapon.
Every time I look at the fighter, I like the flavor of being a weapon master, but the rules just don't support it, and make the fighter sacrifice everything else (saves, skills, utility) because they're given feats in place of class features.
Actually interesting thought on point 2: What if weapon focus / specialization were taken for weapon groups rather than weapons? Then, what if on top of that, fighters applied weapon focus / specialization to every weapon they have Weapon Training with? It would at least feel more like you have someone who's a master of all weapons with such a system, but doesn't give you any higher numbers than you already get.
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Ooh, or maybe there should be a daily limit on how many times a single line of argument can be repeated! That way people won't be able to repeat the same fallacies "all day."
....and then, when the same discredited-yet-bizarrely-resliliant arguments keep coming up every day and are just as annoying as before, maybe then you'd start to realize that daily limits aren't a particularly helpful balancing factor.
Guys, Talek just said Mythic Power Attack with a 25% chance roll and using a scarce resource proves feats are more powerful than spells - which is just ignoring reality entirely, particularly when Mythic spellcasting is ridiculously slanted in the caster's favor. Not only is Power Attack the single most important feat for all fighting builds because it is more inline with an appropriate power level a feat should have, but an Archmage basically makes having martial classes unneeded. They cast any spell from their spell list at inflated DCs as the introductory power.
And I'm not going to touch the martial-arts-hobbyist-thinks-he's-a-fighter thing.
Hey, Hierophants are no slouches either.
Mythic Holy Word is just *kisses fingers* mwah.
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Really? That fact that your fighter can stand toe to toe with celestial/infernal superbeings is not amazing? That is the stuff of legend. Why is creating undead horrors so special? The fighter can fight all day and night, gets an unbelievable armor class. Has enough health to survive things that would kill a pack of elephants and can master enough weapons that anything is deadly in his hands. Fighters are awesome. In my current game with have three of them, one wizard, one sorcerer, a druid, a bard and a cleric. None of the fighters feel overshadowed by the casters. Stop complaining about how the grass is greener on the other side and look at the amazing grass you got in your own yard. You get a feat every single level. You can do truly amazing things that other characters cannot do.
It isn't special though. Especially when it is rooted in our world's physics which doesn't exceed level 6 at best. This is compounded by the fact that the level 9 guy over there can literally transform themselves, play 20 questions with universe, create undead horrors, tell gravity to go sit in the corner, summon celestial (or infernal) superbeings and that's just before lunch. So no... being good with a weapon doesn't really cut it at those levels.But...those aren't particularly true statements
1) The fighter can't fight all day and night, because he runs out of health. His AC also isn't exceptional as it's just heavy armor. You could likely get the same AC stacking dex bonuses on an alchemist, except his is touch vs flat footed. % miss chance abilities also make casters much harder to hit (mirror image, blur, greater invisibility).
2) The fighter is actually the worst off of anyone without his favored weapon. 3 examples: Slayer, Paladin, Magus. Each of these can augment whatever weapon their holding with their special ability (studied target, divine bond, arcana) to get the same benefit they always do. The fighter actually loses his benefit wielding anything...
1) The fighter can fight all day and night as long as he has at least one hit point. His ability to attack and defend himself is not impaired by hit point loss until he reaches zero. Contrast that to fighting in real life where your ability to fight effectively is greatly impaired by both the duration of the fight and any damage you take during said fight.
2) Not really. It depends upon your feat build. Paladin smite does nothing if it hits the wrong target. I am not familiar with the slayer as I have not played one. The magus is suboptimal when confronted with creatures that have high SR, in a antimagic field or creatures immune to spells on her list. I can create a white room scenario where any character is suboptimal. Besides most people on the boards say that weapon spec and greater weapon spec are trap feats anyways. A fighter with a dagger and power attack can hit for damage just like a fighter with a longsword and power attack. If you feel that the weapon focus and weapon spec feats leave you too vulnerable, don't take them. If you are going to make the preposterous statement that you can't find a single weapon from five weapon groups that are very broad to get your bonus than I cannot help you.
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Guys, Talek just said Mythic Power Attack with a 25% chance roll and using a scarce resource proves feats are more powerful than spells - which is just ignoring reality entirely, particularly when Mythic spellcasting is ridiculously slanted in the caster's favor. Not only is Power Attack the single most important feat for all fighting builds because it is more inline with an appropriate power level a feat should have, but an Archmage basically makes having martial classes unneeded. They cast any spell from their spell list at inflated DCs as the introductory power.
And I'm not going to touch the martial-arts-hobbyist-thinks-he's-a-fighter thing.
Wow, just wow. You must not play mythic much. What happens when your archmage runs into the mythic rakhahsha or iron golem. Mythic spellcasting allows the mages to keep up with the martials on a damage per round basis. Utility powers are utility powers. Again, if playing martials is so bad then why complain about them? For my sorcerer to duplicate what mythic power attack does damage wise I have to burn high level spell slots and use mythic power. The martial character does not have to burn mythic power to make mythic power attack work. It is way overpowered as a feat, especially when you take high crit weapons like falchions or scimitars. Trying playing mythic characters a few sessions before making comments.
Correcting a few mistakes/missed information.
4 weapon groups at most (5/9/13/17), and at the most played levels (1-10), it's only two.
For edification on the Slayer, Studied Target scales at a similar rate as weapon training, but you get it starting at 1st level. It gives +1 hit/damage at 1st (plus some useful skill bonuses), and scales at 5/10/15/20. It takes a Move action to activate at 1st-6th, but becomes a Swift at 7th, and lasts indefinitely.
It is, in all regards, better than Weapon Training just in and of itself (higher bonuses and available from 1st), with only very, very tiny action economy issues holding it back.
Slayer also gets some nifty tricks, and nearly as many Feats as the Fighter across the most played levels (again, 1-10). Though it IME suffers from many of the same problems (Why would I play this to 20th?) at about that point, or a bit before.
I'm unclear what the comment about Mythic Rakshasas and Iron Golems is for, since neither have anything that particularly hinders spellcasters. Mythic Rakshasas have some bonuses versus martials (a pretty hefty DR that is hard to bypass and a solid AC), but Mythic Iron Golems aren't a standard monster as far as I can tell, so would just be an Iron Golem with Mythic Tiers (and all the same weaknesses as standard ones).
You are (hopefully) not going to find people willing to argue your other points, for simple fact that they've been brought up and shot down over and over again literally hundreds of times...and that just in the past couple of years. Reading old threads and self-inserting your username into the people who make the same arguments as you would be an edifying experience.
So let's just stick to facts, from here on.