So, I'm an old hat when it comes to optimization.
I was there when PunPun was born, when the only way to defeat him was to abort him by sacrificing an artificer to the gods.
I was there when people widely considered psionics to be overpowered in part due to a complete lack of understanding of the system. And then when people said that PunPun technically could not work. But no one cared because you can't hold a good Kobold God down.
So I'm used to my share of outlandish claims (I had a 7 page argument with someone who thought fighters were OP) and different versions of balanced versus OP.
But recently I've heard the implication, if not the outright claim that a Path of War character is equivalent to a gestalt character. And an optimized one is equivalent to a triple gestalt.
For those ignorant. Gestalt was a rule introduced in unearthed arcana that let you combine two classes. You simply took the best of the two classes, the abilities of both and ran with it.
So, say a Paladin/Oracle would have full BAB, full casting and all the paladin and oracle abilities.
It's a pretty popular variant for a number of reasons from allowing GM's to run smaller but balanced groups to giving characters a lot of flexibility for more individualistic games to simply wanting have a nice bonkers high level game.
So, I'm familiar enough with Path of War that I'm putting some stuff together. But maybe I'm simply biased in thinking that it can be quite nutty but nothing worse than what I can pull with, say, any full caster.
So, honest opinions, do you think Path of War classes are equivalent to the monsters in gestalt games, or even triple gestalt? And why do you think so?
There are Path of War maneuvers which allow a martial PC to do things that are powerful, yes. Some of the verge on too powerful, but given that the comparison to spells should be made, they're not broken.
I get the heart of the argument... someone's selling you that because they've got the hardiness of a martial class with the situation-changing ability of a spellcasting class, they're gestalt. Only... they're not. There's no baleful polymorph in Path of War. There's no destruction. There's good stuff, but nothing to compare to say... a fighter/wizard gestalt.
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Yeah, no. PoW classes are a bit stronger than current Paizo classes as far as damage is concerned at low levels, but balances out later on once BAB allows iterative attacks (but the PoW classes maintain mobility while the Paizo classes become reliant on 5ft steps and full attacking).
They have neat abilities, but most of what they do is roughly on-par with a well-build Barbarian to begin with: they'll run up to something, whack it with a maneuver and kill it. They have access to some neat abilities, generally involving status effects like stagger and shaken, but rarely get abilities that are as potent as Sleep or Color Spray.
The problem is mostly that people see that DSP isn't intent to leaving martial characters with no options beyond "I full attack" and think that's somehow okay. It's especially ridiculous when they'll go from claiming PoW is bad to talking about how the Wizard and/or Cleric are just fine.