I wanna talk about martial characters, I wanna talk about feats, I wanna talk about class features, and I wanna talk about how they currently relate to each other.
First, a detailed observation:
(medium BAB) Barbarian: this class is focused on having consistent, reliable damage, and isn't worried about relying on crits to land attacks with the d20 rolls. It hurts at later levels when AC scales bounded to the fighters and such, so it shines early on. The Titan Mauler stands out and needs to be seen for what it really is: the old Power Attack remastered. Sluggish means you'll always be taking a -1 to attacks, but it doubles your conditional bonus from rage, ergo you are trading attack/crit chance for consistent damage. Keep a note of this.
(Godly BAB) Fighter: this class is focused on having the most options in combat. Unfortunately not all those options are equal and they've decided a lot of feat chains for you. Dual-Handed Strike is obviously meant to be used in conjunction with Dueling Parry, but the game decides you have to have Dueling Parry first. That's before we get to the math issues with damage. Fighters are all about extra dice and crit chances. Single weapon builds go Power Attack and rely on extra dice combined with crit chance (the most optimal builds being based on Feint+crit with sword for flat-footed conditions). Double Slice means you roll twice as many dice if you have the 3rd level item Doubling rings (which showed up and proved their dominance in the game in my playtest). Fighters are all about that potential, by having slightly higher crit chance than everyone else and employing the most dice of anyone at the table.
(full BAB) Monk: there's a lot going on with this class, but it has the most potential if built correctly. It maximizes on movement speed and jumping all over the action economy. I don't think this class is meant to attack more than twice a turn, because of the way MAP applies to their attack boni. Forcing two attacks at the bottom seems harsh, and they seem to be designed with the assumption that you're gonna wanna spend an action every turn to do something else like activate a style. I wish monks had more to do with said actions other than wiff two d20s at the bottom. This is the class designed to throw around d20s looking for hits. Also getting expert handwraps doesn't improve your attack bonus until you get a potency rune putting them at a disadvantage over martials, and the need for bracers of armor makes them horrid defensively, which seems to imply that defensive styles like crane are wastes of time when the class needs to keep distance to stay alive because they don;t have reliable defenses anymore. Mobile combatants.
(full BAB) Paladins: there's at least two threads about this class's problems. It has less reliable class features that don't function as intended. Retributive Strike is at best situational, and Blade of Justice is a wasted action when you could Feint (good idea with a CHA based class) and it's better for you anyway. I have hope though, because I found the antipaladin in the Doomsday Dawn book, and their Vengeful Strike is pretty awesome. It triggers when you get attacked, making it an aggressive defense style. I wouldn't mind the paladin keeping it's build the way it is around retributive strike if these abiltiies were combined and could trigger when an enemy attacks you or an ally, as long as the enemy is in reach and the ally's position doesn't matter. That would create the defensive wall style builds that legitimately deters aggression by the enemy. It also makes me think of knights in epic sword duels, which I think is an effective image for the class (and it could apply to any aligned knight hehe).
(full BAB) Rangers: I have some trouble understanding this class tbh. Hunt target seems to want you to go all out on a single target and cut through them, one would think by having Double Slice bring your secondary attacks up to be able to land crits, dipping into the fighter's niche. Crossbows are... meh. Action Taxes ruin combat styles, so I doubt we will see a lot of crossbow builds. The snares I didn't even both to learn all of because they didn't seem useful with respect to the rest of the options, but a lot of the other options felt lacking too. The abilities it gets just don;t seem to work together very well. I also think it should get spell points like the paladin and get the cool ranger exclusive stuff, as well as maybe some healing. I'd like to see a druid/ranger version of Channel/Lay on Hands respectively. Healing seems to be very important this edition. I also think Hunt Target should get scrapped because it isn't serving its purpose with respect to the rest of the game's math.
(medium BAB) Rogue: I f&!*ing love the new rogue, but I think it needs more. Sneak attack being scaled down is a good thing, because it can double on a crit now. With the new dice system being paramount over all other modifiers, this seems to really favor the rogue. Honestly, I want to see them bring the swashbuckler and duelist niche into the rogue and give it better defensive abilities, Nimble Dodge just isn't very good. It's already the DEX class, so incorporating the dueling stuff on this seems natural and then it covers the need for a duelist later. It also already has the debilitating strike stuff baked in, meaning it has it's own special thing it does in martial debuffing. I want this to be full BAB, and for there to be enhancement to Feint. Trading an action to guarantee a single good sneak attack/precise strike seems like a really interesting and viable style and since the rogue seems to already play this way, why not incorporate it fully, don;t be tied down to old traditions.
So mechancially speaking the different styles of melee combat in this game are:
- trade small attack bonus for higher flat numbers and more consistent damage, but virtually no chance to crit
- focus on adding in the most dice possible to bring your average damage up as high as you can and focus on landing critical hits to further improve your damage probability
- use high speed to move to a safe distance after making multiple attacks to make up for poor defenses
- reactively attack to dissuade further agression
- focus on triggering conditions to apply debuffs with moderate damage boosts that scale lower than other classes
In PF1, these styles all existed more or less around your feat choices rather than class choice. There were builds that focused on crit fishing, power attack for consistent damage, two-weapon fighting for rolling a bunch of attacks to fish for hits, and spring attack for hit and run tactics.
I'm not 100% opposed to each class having their own niche in combat, but after seeing them in action, they definitely deserve more oomph in some places. Theorycrafting for another post.
EDIT: another thing that's really weird is the barbarian's sudden charge isn't as restrictive as the fighter's because it lacks the [open] trait.
I think [open] and [press] feats might work, but not in their current forms, and letting other classes use them better is spitting in the face of fighters.
What do you mean by "BAB"?
The new equivalence/analogues to the old base attack system of 3.x/PF1.
It determines their baked in attack bonus from their class.