So, I have been trying to reexamine my Pathfinder preconceptions lately and one I do have is that for any martial the Big Six is required, not simply nice.
Definition
Martial: Any PC which does primarily HP damage or attacks against AC/CMD without using spells as their primary attack form.
Examples:
Magus with shocking grasp via spell combat/spell strike = Martial due to still being in melee and attacking AC/HP.
Sorcerer attacking with a scorching ray = Not Martial due to spells being the primary attack form.
Archer Bard/Cleric with self buffs such as Inspire Courage = Martial due to still attacking AC/HP and not using spells as their primary attack form.
I am going to try and deconstruct this and see if this assumption is correct or simply another faulty preconception of mine.
Level 1: There is obviously no difference between as no-one can afford the big six yet.
Level 3: WBL is 3,000 gp.
- Weapon: Master work ~325 gp
- Armor: +1 armor average about 1,300 gp
- Amulet of Natural Armor: Not yet
- Ring of Protection: Not Yet
- Belt/headband: Not Yet
- Cloak of Resistance: +1 1,000 gp
So you are losing 1 AC, and 1 to saves at level three. Not so bad but I think this is an artifact of the limited WBL.
Level 5: WBL is 10,500 gp.
- Weapon: +1 ~2,325 gp
- Armor: +2 armor average about 4,300 gp
- Amulet of Natural Armor: Not yet
- Ring of Protection: +1 2,000
- Belt/headband: Not Yet
- Cloak of Resistance: +1 1,000 gp
So you are losing 3 AC, 1 to saves, 1 to hit and 1 to damage at level five. This is more substantial than level three but sufficient optimization and smart play could overcome anything except something like incorporeals where non-magic weapons cannot hurt them.
Level 7: WBL is 23,500 gp.
- Weapon: +2 ~8,325 gp
- Armor: +2 armor average about 4,300 gp
- Amulet of Natural Armor: +1 2,000
- Ring of Protection: +1 2,000
- Belt/headband: Not Yet
- Cloak of Resistance: +2 4,000 gp
So you are losing 4 AC, 2 to saves, 2 to hit and 2 to damage at level seven. Less than I thought but the AC is becoming something that would be noticeable, the to hit and saves are still something some builds could possibly live without except in the cases of DR/Magic or incorporeals.
Level 9: WBL is 46,000 gp.
- Weapon: +3 ~18,325 gp
- Armor: Mithral +2 armor average about 6,800 gp
- Amulet of Natural Armor: +1 2,000
- Ring of Protection: +1 2,000
- Belt/headband: +2 4,000
- Cloak of Resistance: +2 4,000 gp
- Jingasa: 5,000
So you are losing 5-6 AC, 2-3 to saves, 3-4 to hit and 3-5 to damage at level nine, along with losing the ability to auto deny a crit and bypass DR/Magic, or Cold Iron or Silver. I think at this point it would be very noticeable if a martial did not possess the big six.
Level 11: WBL is 82,000 gp.
- Weapon: +3 ~18,325 gp
- Armor: Mithral +3 armor average about 11,800 gp
- Amulet of Natural Armor: +2 8,000
- Ring of Protection: +2 8,000
- Belt/headband: +2 4,000
- Cloak of Resistance: +4 16,000 gp
- Jingasa: 5,000
- Dusky Rose Prism: 5,000 gp
So you are losing 9-10 AC, 4-5 to saves, 3-4 to hit and 3-5 to damage at level nine, along with losing the ability to auto deny a crit and bypass DR/Magic, or Cold Iron or Silver. Without the Big Six here your defenses become much weaker.
Past Level 11 it will just get more egregious.
Now I did not account for the fact that between 7-9 a martial should have in class or develop a way to deal with flying foes, such as being ranged focused, having winged boots, a helm of the valkyrie, or access in some way to flight/airwalk.
So I would say that the big six start becoming more and more mandatory the higher you go starting at ~7th.
:-) Like I said just trying to challenge my preconceptions.
I ran the napkin math to see if it was true, and so that if anyone had any non-anecdotal data that said otherwise they could perhaps provide it.
It is obvious that losing a bunch of pluses, without exchanging them for anything, is going to result in a worse character.
The less obvious question is if you didn't go for the 'big six' and bought other things, could you still be competitive. My gut feeling is not really, but it would be interesting to see people give that a shot.
The "problem" with the analysis is that you would still be gaining wealth in some form or the other. Even if you weren't aiming at getting all of the big 6 items, you would be obtaining some of them through loot drops, along with other non-big six items that will be providing some other bonuses.
The problem is that the other items you might use that wealth for are not terribly useful, especially when it comes to your defenses.
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Define needed....
Compare your AC, CMB and Saves to a range of appropriate challenges and see if the character can hit/resist those creatures some/all the time. Take into account feats, class abilities and mundane equipment. IMHO stacking the big six results in ACs/saves that are out of reach for most CR appropriate enemies.
As the GM sets the difficulty of encounters whether a particular set of equipment is 'needed' is entirely subjective to the difficulty of the campaign. It is also subjective to how the group likes to play. Some groups may want more challenging combats than others.
We operate a 'loot is doled out by the GM' policy with a random selection up for sale. We regularly play to high level 15+ across both paizo APs / homebrew / 3rd party (slumbering tsar, razor coast).
The big six may exist amongst the party as a whole, but not all on one individual. Magic weapon and magic armour are to be expected. Everything else needs to be shared out.
In my opinion it is preferable to give players items that give them more options rather than stackable static bonus to existing abilities. Particularly when they create auto-win saves or to hit rolls and unbeatable ACs or spell DCs
As the GM sets the difficulty of encounters whether a particular set of equipment is 'needed' is entirely subjective to the difficulty of the campaign. It is also subjective to how the group likes to play. Some groups may want more challenging combats than others.
This is true, but CR (while not perfect anyway) is designed with characters having certain equipment in mind. The same is true for published adventures.
The more one deviates from the base assumptions, the more work it is for a GM to hit the desired level of difficulty.
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wait
so if I do not buy things
my character will be worse than if I do buy things
Good point Dave but I'm not sure that core assumption is that all martial characters have the big six. Two or Three of those items may remain balanced but in my opinion stacking all of them causes a problem.
Stacking a +4 stat item item onto an already high stat and a cloak of resistance and feats easily results in save bonuses that only fails even difficult checks on 1s without going into special abilities like divine grace etc.
i think "needed" should probably be replaced with "optimal" or "desirable".
It also depends on the party as a whole. For instance, you don't have to have the belt and ring and amulet to be effective, but if your other party member is optimized to the hilt, either the fights will be too easy or you will have trouble hitting b/c the optimizer has left you so far behind.
This happened to me in my current campaign, where I explicitly told my DM I was attempting to avoid picking the big 6 for more interesting and flavorful choices. Unfortunately the Swashbuckler just pumped everything she had into Dex and to Hit, so despite being a well designed character, either the monster died way too fast or I couldn't hit, since my attacks were made at -5 compared to the super optimized PC.
I have always been interested to know what are reasonable ranges for saving throws, ACs, DCs and to hits at each level. We know what these are for monster and NPCs but we also know these are well, well, well below what PCs in a group of even average optimisation possess.
For instance it would be useful to know if say at level 5
<20 AC is underpowered
20 - 25 is standard
>25 is optimised.
Obviously characters expected to fight at range may get away with less AC and those going toe to toe might need the top end.
I'm also not saying that playing outside the standard range is bad, just different.
Is there value in thrashing this out?
Another thing to consider is that many spells make several of these items unnecessary by the mid game anyway.
Barkskin far outpaces the amulet as a level 2 spell, magic vestments makes powering up your armor relatively unnecessary, greater magic weapon will keep your sword powered up, and Magic circle against alignment is equivalent to a ring +2 and a cloak + 2 as long as you have the right alignment. And all of these are accessible by level 5.
So while the big six are great core things to invest in, spending your entire wealth by level on them is certainly overkill in a balanced party.
You can get away with not having some or all of these, but you need to figure out how you intend to compensate for the missing ability. Three of these items boost AC (4, if you include a dex belt). AC is potentially very strong, but there are a number of ways you can render it semi-irrelevant. You can do a gazillion points of damage per round and have a lot of HP and damage reduction as an invulnerable rager barbarian, and just race opponent's HP to 0. You can do an enlarge person reach trip build and just never allow most opponents to close to melee. You can do a shadowdancer hide in plain sight build or a sniper build that relies opponents not knowing where to attack you. You can UMD a wand of greater invisibility and rely on miss chance. You can fill in for those items with long lasting buffs, if you're either the correct type of caster or have a willing one on the team. There are more strategies that can work; while not all of these will be equally effective as armor all the time, they can each be better in their own way as well.
You need a +1 weapon or equivalent in order to hurt incorporeal creatures, and cloak of resistance is both extremely cost effective and harder to replicate with spells, which makes them more required. You can skip the belt if you can get Bull's Strength or equivalent to replicate the effect, but otherwise it is again probably too cost effective to easily ignore.
I have always been interested to know what are reasonable ranges for saving throws, ACs, DCs and to hits at each level. We know what these are for monster and NPCs but we also know these are well, well, well below what PCs in a group of even average optimisation possess.
I would say that a good assumption is that the numbers on Bestiary monster CR table should be about 50% effective. Meaning that a 11 on the dice is going to succeed.
Monster AC
So for a CR 10 monster AC is 24. So the "assumption" is that a roll of 11 will hit, meaning the attack bonus is about +14. So for a Fighter that is easy. +10 BAB +4 STR(likely higher). But for a Rogue, BAB +7, even with +6 Dex (not beyond the realm for lvl 10) will still need another +1 to hit on an 11(likely from weapon).
So, melee focused should hit on first attack, but the second attack needs help. Same Fighter above is now at +9 to hit, -3 for power attack, so +6. He needs to find an additional +7 to have 50% hit chance. But he also has WF and Weapon Training 2, so that is +3 to hit, and weapon is a +2. This totals to about +11, meaning he hits on 13 or better. Not bad on second attack. Since it is more likely this Fighter has a 22 Str at this point, he might still be hitting 50% on second attack even with Power Attack.
The Rogue on the other hand is in trouble. His second is at only +8. Adding +2 for weapon brings it up to +10, still needs a roll of 14 to hit. Even with flanking, bonus is only +12.
You would expect a well built Fighter to hit most of the time for CR appropriate monster, while a Optimized Rogue will hit almost every time with his first attack, but will lag behind on the second.
Monster to-hit
For a CR 10 monster, expected "high attack" (i.e. melee type monster) is +18. So using the same assumption for players, monster should hit on 11 or higher, meaning PC AC should be about 29 for high and 24 for low.
Our Fighter has a Dex of 13 and Fullplate armor, setting him a base AC of 20. So he needs another +4 vs low but +9 to hit his high "target" AC. Now with a WBL at 62k, I would assume he has a +2 on his armor (4k gp), putting him at 22. Now grab a +1 heavy shield, bumping you up another +3. This will still leave the Fighter's AC at 25, above target for low, 4 behind vs high. It's not unreasonable for this Fighter to have +1 RoP and AoNA, but I doubt he would invest 16k (25% of WBL) in AC, when it would be better used on his weapon, or boots of speed etc. But he's also a Fighter, so he probably more on the "Race to hp 0" as GM 7thGate suggested.
How about a more Defensive built class. Say Cleric. Our Cleric only has 12 Dex, and has a +2 Breastplate and +1 shield, placing him at AC 22. He needs to also find 2 and 7 AC, respectively. Slapping Magic Vestment on his shield ups it to +4 total AC. Still behind. Throw on Shield of Faith, adding +3 deflection and now AC is up to 26, or Magic Circle at up to 27. With a very little WBL investment(about 6k) we are now only 2 AC behind target for high attacks. So Fighter might "need" big 6 for AC, but Cleric probably doesn't.
Monster DCs
Now saves. CR 10 should have a DC between 19 and 13. So an 11 on the die means between +8 and +2 for a save. At 10th level, your good save is at +7 and bad at +3, meaning you only need 1 more for a good save.
Our example Fighter will probably have +1 to Con (if not higher) so he will be ok even on a high DC for 50% success on Fort saves. But what if he has to make a will save? Now he needs to find another +5 to be in 50% territory. Now maybe he invested some points in Wis, so his will is +4. He needs that +2 CoR just to get close, plus he will probably need to invest in Iron Will to get up to 50% target. Resistance bonuses are cheap, but other bonuses to saves are rare.
Monster Saves
Good save for CR 10 monster is +13, bad is +9. Much higher than the expected same numbers for a PC. So our Cleric probably has an 18 or 20 Wis w/o items. Meaning his 5th level DCs are 19-20. This means on a bad save the monster has to roll an 11-12 to succeed, so just a hair below target already, but on a good save he only needs a 6-7. So to hit the 50% success rate even vs a good save the Cleric probably needs a Wis of 28+, very unlikely at level 10, but bumping that up by 1 or 2 with spell focus/greater can help, meaning a target Wis of 24, very attainable with Headband at level 10.
Conclusion
Unless you have a class features that bump up that specific area (Cleric spells for AC, Fighter to hit), or you are very well optimized, you will need the Big 6 to hit 50% success rate for CR appropriate creatures according to Bestiary
I think you have missed out feats, traits, and class abilities beyond BAB in your calculations.
I think also a single CR10 encounter is often made up of multiple CR 6,7 and 8 creatures. Even if it is one CR10 creature getting to do 1 or 2 things with a 50% chance is not really challenging.
I aim for a specialist of an appropriate level be successful 2/3 of the time - whatever that may be. Less if it's specialist v opposing specialist.