Erm...straight fighter. Improved Unarmed Strike. Go to town.
Feeling experimental? Unarmed fighter archtype.
Weapon focus Unarmed Strike, Weapon Specialisation..unarmed Strike, Power Attack.
Too much math: Abadars feat that lets you take average damage each time you hit. Dont need to roll damage again. Cant remember the name.
Just to be clear, you are not asking for anything fun, just simple and good at hitting stuff.
I would look into Mutagenic Mauler. It is a brawler archetype that exchanges Martial Flexibility, a per day for so long thing, for a version of the Alchemists mutagen. Yes, it is a duration thing that alters your stats, but you can refresh this ability as much as you want, when you have an hour to spare. Also, you would only need one other sheet for you altered stats. I believe that while this may be more complicated then is ideal, it is the best way with out simply pretending that you do not have one or more class features.
A snakebite striker brawler maybe? Take two levels of that, four levels of unchained rogue to get Dex to unarmed strike damage. Nothing too complicated
To keep track of. You get two weapon fighting, unarmed strike, and sneak attack from brawler. Weapon finesse from rogue.
If you take improved feint you can bluff as part of your move action, which is the only semicomplicated thing about it. But you shouldn't need it to be effective
Just to be clear, you are not asking for anything fun, just simple and good at hitting stuff.Yes. I derive fun from the RP.
Making sure :) I would then stick with my previous advice. Sometimes for my group archetypes or feats/class options can bring along a lot of RP potential or flavour to a game, but we are very much into mechanics as well as RP.
I would recommend looking at the NPC gallery and at the Barbarian/Fighter npcs for fairly straight forward combat option feats (i.e. Improved Will, Power Attack, etc). These fit your description because for GMing when you throw 7 NPCs at the players you dont want to have 7 intricate builds, just straight forward ones.
You can build a Barbarian that uses unarmed strikes and is simple by picking static rage powers, the only calculation needed is rage which is doable before the game and then lasts for a long time.
I second straight fighter - but would recommend adding monk via Variant Multiclassing. Four of five features of the secondary class don't require tracking during the day, the fifth one (ki pool) is weaker than usual and its active powers are nice but not necessary.
What's "Good?" I personally define being useful in combat by the following 2 stipulations:
1. Being able to reliably hit opponents of my CR; I base "reliably" on an average roll of a "10" on the d20 so my bonus to hit added to that roll has to equal the average AC of a monster of my party's APL. For example: at CR 1 per the Beastiary the average AC is a 12; this means to be "reliable" I need a +2 at least.
2. When I hit being able to deal an avg damage equal to 1/4 the average HP of opponents of my CR; continuing the CR 1 example above, the average monster has 15 HP - 1/4 of that is roughly 4 HP. To be considered "reliable" I need to deal at least 4 HP/round.
So... a vanilla monk with a 14 Str has Improved Unarmed as a bonus feat (so... punching), a +2 to hit and deals 1d6 +2 damage (avg 5.5 damage) at level 1. This means he's "reliable" by my standards.
He's not amazing. He doesn't insta-hit every opponent and deal 2d6 +9 damage at level 1 like Joe Fighter can. But he's "reliable."
Does that meet your definition of "good?" If so, take a monk, give them either a Str 14 or a Dex 14 and Weapon Finesse, and you should be ok. If that doesn't do it for you, give us some benchmarks to hit.
The classic 'good at punching' classes are Brawler and both flavours of Monk.
I honestly think you can get away with unchained Monk as a 'simple' class to start off with. 1/day Stunning Fist at level 1, given the restrictions of 'must hit' and 'foe must fail save', seems to me more of a 'yay, bonus!' rather than something t obuild around at that point, and the other stuff you can do with it at later levels don't really beat out 'stun them'. By level 3 I'd imagine someone would be comfortable enough with the system to understand 'ki', in as much as it is 'extra attack'.
Brawlers can be fun too, and I think of Martial Flexibility as making things easier. 'Damn, I really need to know how to overrun this jerk. Hey, Improved Overrun! *ram*'
Synthesist summoner (preferably chained). It's the classic way to embarrass fighters by outdoing them while still looking good (high cha), and it comes with built in unarmed effectiveness. If your GM OKs using a quadrupedal base form take pounce and claws, maybe energy attacks and go to town on your enemies. Save your spells for after-battle healing and you'll still be good.
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Ah yes, synthesist summoner. In other words, the "I want my GM and everybody else at the table to hate me" class.
Synthesist is really only bad for breaking the point buy system. But it's also clearly not what the op wants.
Nope, I'm definitely thinking synthesist.
A fighter with the brawler archetype(not the class) is going to be pretty decent. Very nice bonus to damage for the Close Weapon Group at level three, with a small attack bonus too. Both scale.
Synthesist is really only bad for breaking the point buy system. But it's also clearly not what the op wants.
Why so? It's a very simple unarmed fighter with no relevant expendable resources, and requires little in the way of tactics. Charge-pounce-claw-claw-bite, with enough hp to survive any counterattacks.
MoMS 1 - TWF Ranger 19. :P
They really overnerfed MoMS, but it's still a decent 1 level dip... Barely... Horrible for single class characters, though.
Mutagenic Mauler and the Brawler Fighter Archetypes are my picks if you just want it as straightforward as possible. Probably the Mauler because it gets several needed feats by default. Toss on pummeling charge, power attack, Brawling Armor, and you'll be doing great damage and have pounce. If it's not too much of a complication, the Enforcer feat is basically a free shaken condition on anything vulnerable to non lethal damage.
Brawler fighter archetype with Advanced weapon training feat at level five, choosing "focused weapon"
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MoMS 1 - TWF Ranger 19. :P
They really overnerfed MoMS, but it's still a decent 1 level dip... Barely... Horrible for single class characters, though.
I still like 2...a second style to use Fuse style with...on top of Iron mountain monk Archetype can let you grab toughness if you don't like evasion. (I prefer toughness and good saves.)
But that is simple enough of a I just punch things and have some skills to use out of combat.
You want something simple I would recommend what was originally recommended the fighter.
However if you want to be stronger at punching with a little bit more complication? go brawler. Just completely ignore martial flexibility and knockout. They are just bonuses. Martial flexibility is a fantastic bonus but just that.
The only part where it gets complex is two weapon fighting, so you will need to know what your attack is for one attack and what it is for a full round.
I would recommend taking pummeling style it is simple to use, just skip the middle feat. it is not a pre-requisite for the last feat (for some reason), and as long as you can charge you get your full round and you apply dr only once (a huge advantage for someone twfing).
Synthesist is really only bad for breaking the point buy system. But it's also clearly not what the op wants.Why so? It's a very simple unarmed fighter with no relevant expendable resources, and requires little in the way of tactics. Charge-pounce-claw-claw-bite, with enough hp to survive any counterattacks.
Because he wasn't wanting a class that had resources to manage and synthesist has spells. Also he wanted punching, and while you could build a slam build that was punch like, that wasn't the kind of build that was being suggested.
Straight unchained monk strength guy.
MoMS 1 - TWF Ranger 19. :P
They really overnerfed MoMS, but it's still a decent 1 level dip... Barely... Horrible for single class characters, though.
Wish they had fixed the MoMS to be a better primary class in exchange for (mostly) killing it as a dip. Like, give them a +2 attack bonus for each different style active, to a maximum attack bonus equal to your Monk level. There, an on-flavor ability that allows the MoMS to have a relevant attack bonus throughout his career.
As for the OP, Unchained Monk is likely going to be the easiest Punchy Damage Guy to build/play. I think Brawler Fighter is better, though, especially if you're willing to cheat the system a bit and use a cestus.
