Hello! I am still relatively new to anything pathfinder, having only played 2 campaigns, neither of which played past level 6, but from what Ive seen in play, and what Ive been told, spell casters are very powerful. I, however, am a stubborn man and have never been one for spell casting as a primary source of damage, no matter what the game.
If all you want is to deal damage, then it's very possible to optimize a martial to that extent. (Especially if you're willing consider partial casters like the Magus to be martials.)
Give us a level and character generation system (eg 20 point buy) and any other requirements (archery or melee?) we can give you a character who will do far more damage than a flaming sphere or a giant ape.
The thing that makes spell casters so powerful is that in addition to damage, they can also teleport and remove curses and knock out groups of enemies on a failed save and fly and turn invisible and buff allies and mind control people and so on. This makes them useful in all situations, not just when damage is required.
A true martial, like no magic whatsoever?
A Mutagen Warrior or Viking archetype Fighter using Gorum's Divine Fighting Technique.
The Ragelancepounce Barbarian.
Zen Archer Monk.
Gunslinger, maybe.
Martial focused casters?
Synthesis Summoner.
Wildshaping Druid.
Blood Conduit/Urban Bloodrager (Arcane Bloodline) VMC Magus.
Warpriest.
Inquisitor.
Eldritch Archer Magus.
Arcane Duelist Bard.
The big power gap is the ability for caster classes to emulate martial class abilities somewhat, or make them entirely unnecessary. Beyond that, casters can do things that aren't accessible to mundane classes. Certain spells like teleport, disintegrate, and raise dead, can end encounters or adventures in a way that you can't using impact trauma. If you want to make a character who fights using weapons, but has the utility of a caster, then you'd still want to start with a caster and work the combat stuff in as you go.
There are plenty of 6th level caster options that give you a decent mix of caster power and martial power such as the inquisitor, hunter, magus and occultist. There's also the old standby of the shifting focused druid. When it comes down to it, you could play a wizard who cast defensive spells and ran around with a falchion if you really wanted to.
The problem with martial classes versus magic classes is one of narrative control. A wizard can tell the DM that he's going to teleport to the Moon, or create a new demiplane, or stop time. A fighter who wants to get a captured enemy to join the party has to ask the DM if he can even attempt a Diplomacy check; a wizard can just cast Geas to do the same thing, no save.
You can build a martial character to slay enemies as well as any magic-user. Getting a sliver of that same narrative, out-of-combat power is far harder unless you have a very permissive DM.
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A wizard's summon should not be making you worthless. Something looks fishy there. A fighter should always out-DPS Summon Monster mooks. Archers and crit fishers can do a lot of damage per turn.
It all depends on how you're defining spellcaster and what your measuring stick is. A magus for example I would consider a spellcaster since, you know they cast spells. But the spells that a magus casts are different from the ones a cleric cast, which are different still then the ones an evoker casts. Sure there's some overlap but I think you'll find that you end up with a pretty short list of classes when you remove all the ones that cast spells.
In terms of dmg output to against a single target, archers are some of the best. Archer builds like warpriests and arcane archers are archers that cast spells. But they aren't summoning things or throwing around fireballs. They use their spells to enhance the accuracy and dmg of their bows. The traditional wizard actually isn't that great at doing damage to a single target. What they are great at is doing decent damage to lots of targets and/or controlling the battlefield such that the enemy never gets to deal damage in the first place.
It also depends on how optimized the characters in question are. A reasonably optimized non-caster can absolutely outshine an unoptimized/unprepared caster. This is especially true at low levels. Even at high levels it depends on what kind of enemies you're facing and how said characters are optimized. An Evoker focused on fire spells is going to have a bad time fighting golems and fire elementals, not to mention demons who not only are able to completely shrug off the evoker's spells but can cast spells themselves.
A vanilla fighter should usually out-DPS wizards on single-target attacks, unless it's one of those oddball monsters that have huge DR but some kind of magical vulnerability.
Summoning an ape is on the SM III list, and thus requires a sorcerer of lvl 6. The ape then needs to go into melee, has at best half of the fighter's HP, much lower AC, his two attacks are at half of the fighter's BAB (thus presumably at less than a third of his actual attack bonus), their damage is low...
I'm not even going to compare with the archer, who would be even better, but compare this big monkey to a level 6 fighter with 22 str (17 starting +2 human +1 level advancement + 2 belt of strength) and a +2 falchion.
Ape does +3/+2 to deal 1d6+2 damage
Fighter does +14/+9 (+6/+1 BAB + 6 str +2 enhancement -2 power attack +1 weapon training + 1 weapon focus) to deal 2d4+20 (+9 str +2 enhancement + 6 power attack +1 weapon training +2 weapon specialization), without even considering the good crit range on that weapon.
So your first attack has an attack bonus over 4x as high, your second attack also over 4x as high, and your damage output is on average almost 5x as high per hit.
How is that ape "clearing the field" and making you useless???
There are guides to optimizing fighters. If you want to hit stuff hard, it's a solid class. Barbarian can also work. Casters generally don't excel at dealing damage, though there's a few cheese builds that do it marvelously. The problem with martials isn't really their damage, that's often the only thing they have. It's that they don't have much else.
I've never regretted making a martial character, be it fighter, barbarian, or ranger. Different ways to deal lots of damage.
Also I forgot a few perks in my last post, I'll go add them now.
...I will say i dont believe my character (this playthrough I was the unchained monk) was as properly built as it shouldve been. I build a dex monk with no bonus strength, and so while I rarely got hit (no armor but 28 ac) I also didnt do as much damage. I was playing the role of a distraction for archers and the enemy frontline mostly.
Also Ive actually never played a fighter, due to their class seeming kinda bland compared to other martial classes, so if that affects the way I was playing that could be why.
I'm not very familiar with the monk, but my understanding is that they are relatively weak (though in our mythic campaign, the monk kicked ass). Their iconic ability is given the ridicule name of "flury of misses" at our table. I don't think that's entirely justified, but still...
Monks get a handful of special abilities, which in theory makes them versatile, but they are also pretty MAD, dependent on multiple abilities. Which in turn makes them not so good at not so much. Ability-boosting items' cost are pretty much exponential to the number of abilities they boost, so for a two-hander, just taking a full-plate and not needing a dex buff on your belt is a huge economic advantage. Also not needing much dex means that with point buy, you can just go directly to 18 str, before racial adjustment (which you will then certainly put in strength).
Fighters are not very versatile, though. Some players don't like "limiting" themselves to "I move and I hit" (honestly, I don't think there's any more decision-making in a chain lightning specialist who just spams the same spell every turn, at least with melee positioning is of critical importance). Our table homebrew rules grant fighters 2 more skill points per level, which helps a bit, but doesn't do a huge difference. Still, thanks to that, my fighter has often done various epic deeds. Thanks to the awesome strength bonus and it being a class skill, few will be as good at swim checks or climb checks, for example. Even with the armor check penalty of the full plate (which eventually wanes with armor training). Also, you get a ton of feats, which can help with versatility, as can the various archetypes. My current fighter has the High Defender archetype, for example, which grants me various out of turn actions, and makes my attacks of opportunities strength-based, useful for the bodyguard ability (to a certain extent). Various items can also help give options: my fighter threw grappling hooks to try to prevent attacking ships from breaking off, healed her buddy antipaladin when she was at 1hp from dying, cured con-draining poison, jumped on a kraken-like monster to save a fellow sailor, dived into the bay to recover the fallen enemy captain in order to then be able to interrogate him, etc. I also frequently switch up between fighting normally and defensively, and though I don't do so, I could do the same with using power attack or not. Eventually I might pick up combat maneuver feats.
I tend to find martials more engaging, because 1) you don't have to study a whole list of spells between each turn to decide what to do and 2) when your range is 5ft, you need to really consider well where you are going to place your dude. So while yes, usually most turns are spent just doing a full attack and a 5 foot step, I find it much more engaging than when I had my mythic cleric and the first rounds of battle were always the same dreadful chore (mythic prayer, mythic blessing of fervor...)
So yea, I'd encourage you to try a str-based martial build, whether it's fighter or barbarian. Not everyone loves playing martials, though, and maybe you'll realize it wasn't for you. But hitting like a truck is a lot of fun, as is tanking a ton of AoEs are hearing the rest of the party moan while you go "it's only a flesh wound!".
Dex-based melee martials tend to be underpowered, in my opinion. The monk's usually bad. The rogue's usually bad. I think the swashbuckler can be fine?
Otherwise for full-on damage per turn, there's the archer route, but honestly at high levels, to me, that becomes much less interesting. You are basically a machine gun tower, who just needs to aim and kill. You won't need to position yourself to cover allies, you won't be switching up combat styles (ex: defensive), you won't need to move to aggro specific targets, you won't be near allies that might need force-feeding a potion, etc. You'll just be shooting every turn, and nothing else. At lower levels though the archer gets more tactical considerations, especially below level 6. More freedom to move, and indeed, greater need to move, as a lot of penalties need feats to negate that you don't all start with.
I love playing martial characters. Sure, they get outshined by dazing fireballs and often don't have near the social life of the Bard. You have to be smart with your traits and your skills, constantly have to work positioning strategy into your gameplay, and often need help overcoming certain obstacles/conditions. Makes life fun.
Adding a little magic adds a great deal of versatility to the character, but doesn't mean that you have to rely on it. The Inquisitor has spells, but Bane and Judgements are his real power. Bloodrager gets spells, and can contribute to battlefield control helpful to his own positioning strategy, but his real power is Bloodrage... which is the same as a Barbarian for the most part. A Warpriest can use spells, but it's power comes from the Sacred Weapon and Fervor.
Being a ranged martial is going to do even more damage, adding spells and abilities to increase this further makes a mostly martial character that will absolutely contest the pure spellcasters in damage output. A Zen Archer Monk, Fighter archer, certain Ranger archers, Eldritch Archer Magus, an Inquisitor archer, a Warpriest archer all can do massive damage without completely relying on spells (although the Magus does more than the others mentioned).
I mean, the basic problem is:
1) Magic is generally better than skills- who needs climb when you can fly?
2) Martial characters don't generally even get a lot of skills.
So what you are left with as a non-spellcaster in terms of what you can do better than spellcasters is: Ability to deal damage and play defense in combat. Which is all well and good, and the party probably wants something like that but you're never going to be as useful out of combat than the guy with a bunch of scrolls.
As for the Dimensional Savant feat tree... Eldritch Scoundrel Rogue, probably the easiest single class build, or the Monk (as you mentioned).
Eldritch Knight or Arcane Trickster for a multiclassing prestige class build.
I mean, the basic problem is:
1) Magic is generally better than skills- who needs climb when you can fly?
2) Martial characters don't generally even get a lot of skills.So what you are left with as a non-spellcaster in terms of what you can do better than spellcasters is: Ability to deal damage and play defense in combat. Which is all well and good, and the party probably wants something like that but you're never going to be as useful out of combat than the guy with a bunch of scrolls.
Point 1 is level dependant. At lower levels you dont have fly at all and when you do your precious spell lot is limited. The fighter can keep doing his thing forever. This is a GM thing though. If he allows rest all the time he is doing the martials a disfavor.
The second point is a serious design flaw. Wizards should mot be getting 5 or more times more skill points than fighters.
When I was playing my monk, although I never got the chance to use, let alone get the feat tree, I saw the dimensional door -> savant feat path, and that sounded like a very cool mechanic with which you could make a martial fighting set. Are there any other martial classes, besides the monk, that could effectively use that feat tree, and if so, is it even worth doing such a thing?
Any martial can, and yes, it can be very worth it. Look at Teleportation Mastery.
In addition to the obvious method of taking it directly, you can go Weapon Master Fighter 3 (or vanilla Fighter 4)/Brawler 1, take the Barroom Brawler and Combat Stamina feats. You can now use a swift action to Martial Flexibility into Teleportation Mastery (or any other Item Mastery feat) via the AWT feat, which is a valid selection because you qualify for it via Brawler and Fighter levels stacking for prereqs.
Congrats. You can now get a teleporting Pounce up to three times per day almost as soon as you can get your first iterative attack. I'd call that worth it.
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So the deal with pathfinder is that spellcasters have an easy low cap. Veterans warn new players to stay away from spellcasters, play a martial because they're easier to play/build. That may be true, but they require more system mastery to optimize. The difference between an ok martial and an optimized one can easily be a 6 higher attack bonus and 3 times the damage output. A spellcaster is all about the spells. Someone with a lot of system mastery can get a higher save DC, or deal more damage, but that's not what makes spellcasters the "god" class.
What makes people say magic is king is because magic can send you across the world in the blink of an eye, bring people back from the dead, and generally bypass obstacles. Magic can overcome challenges that would otherwise require extreme levels of skill and luck. The spellcaster's greatest effect spells are non-combat ones, their power is altering the game narrative, and none of that relies on anything but picking the right spells.
However, as an old experienced player playing with other old experienced players, it is never God Wizard that the people complain about. It's always Martial Mcpounceface killing the boss before they even get a turn.
Hello! I am still relatively new to anything pathfinder, having only played 2 campaigns, neither of which played past level 6, but from what Ive seen in play, and what Ive been told, spell casters are very powerful. I, however, am a stubborn man and have never been one for spell casting as a primary source of damage, no matter what the game. So Im wondering is there a way to create a martial character that can rival the output of a caster in any sense? Or if I cant, what can I do to get close in power?
Well good news! If you're defining power as single target damage output you've already won as a martial character.
If you're defining power any other way...you've lost. And there's no way not to lose. The closest methods of getting those power levels are spell like abilities or supernatural abilities or other things that are all magic, even if they're not strictly spells.
If "not spells" are okay, then kineticist is going to be your best bet. Though I suspect what you really want is non-magical means of replicating magic. In which case, you're pretty much SOL.
One thing that might be affecting this is the level of play you're reaching. Martial characters become the obvious best single target damage dealers at higher levels, but there are so many other things that caster can do that are much better than dealing damage. If you can play in a campaign that goes up to level 12, you will really see where the disparity comes into play.
If you think flaming sphere's 3d6 points of fire damage at level 6 is a peak of power, well I'm a bit confused. You're martial character is probably dealing 1d10 weapon damage + strength + power attack, as a baseline, possibly twice per turn. The average of 3d6 is 10.5 damage. Power attack on a two handed weapon at level 6 is +6 on its own. Add strength and weapon damage you're doing better, potentially twice a round. You shouldn't have any trouble keeping on top in terms of damage.
Generally, spell casters are considered powerful due to their ability to utterly cripple targets, rather than their ability to simply fry the target into a pile of ashes. The way everyone on this board will tell you to optimize a fireball build is to find various ways to get the fireball to debuff a crowd of enemies.
There are pure martial builds that can be great for crippling... but these are often specialized in nature, and rarely provide the sheer options of a spell list. Still... you can make things that will let you feel good with enemies kneeling at your feet.
Example: The Eldritch Guardian archetype for fighters gives your fighter a familiar that shares in all of your feats. You can use this for getting bonuses from teamwork feats without involving other players in your build. And you can ABUSE this to do things like stacking on status conditions via dirty trick builds, eventually allowing you to do a single tag team strike in order to remove all ability for the enemy to attack or cast most spells (the nauseated condition is rather good).
While this relies on getting your maneuvers off... it feels good to zoom around the battlefield, shutting down enemy after enemy turn after turn. Damage doesn't really matter much once the enemies are helpless and unable to resist (although I can also use that familiar and teamwork feats to do a pseudo pounce, so damage is't that bad either).
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Your best options are probably going to be ranged combatants, otherwise you are useless against flying opponents.
Gunslinger is IMHO probably the best option...they target touch AC most of the time, so almost always hit, and they deal a good level of damage.
Next up would probably be Zen Archer Monk, you fire a bow like a machine gun, and use clustered shots to combine the damage so DR only applies once.
Kineticist is another solid option...a bit more complicated, and they are technically using a type of magic...but it is not spells, and at higher levels they can hit like a truck all day long.
If you want a martial char that has similar power to a 9th lvl caster, I'd recommend going 1fighter/5wizard/EldritchKnight10 or a Goliath Druid who focuses on Wild Shape (and casting spells while Wild Shaped).
But if you're talking about 0 magic whatsoever, I'd recommend Master of Many Styles Monk, Gunslinger focused on Rifles and hauls around a Double Hackbut, or a Dirty Tricks-focused Brawler.
I won’t lie, doing damage with spell casters is actually not very straight forward and easy, they can blow things away with it if you try hard enough but it definitely isn’t the source of the caster/martial disparity.
To be honest it kinda sounds like you fell into some pitfalls making your unchained monk and that’s where your damage problems come from.
My question would be, what else would you you like your characters to do besides damage. And go from there.
Well, theoretically. I mean, I've seen and heard of various caster builds that totally ignore all of that.
One of our players in our last game had an arcanist (black blade)/fighter/eldritch knight, and he just teleported around doing massive shocking grasp sword crits. I wouldn't say he made my paladin feel weak, but I also wouldn't say it felt like he was sacrificing much to get all these spells.
Optimized toppling evocation builds don't really feel like they've got much weakness, either.
Wizards and sorcerers used to have 1/3 of a barbarian's HP, now they have 1/2 of it. But they'll be avoiding melee anyways, and they are the ones with all of the abilities to negate attacks (fickle winds, resist energy, dimension door, counterspell, etc.). A ranger who finds themselves surrounded by enemies is often in a lot more trouble than the wizard. AC often isn't all that different between the wizard and the less tanky martials, with stuff like Mage's Armor or bracers of armor, Shield, good dex, etc., many protective spells also offering other advantages like applying to touch AC to blocking particular spells (magic missile).
BAB is lower, sure, but their spells that use it usually target touch, which tends to not really scale at all with CR, so arguably their chance to hit increases through time.
I'm not sure how many tables throw 6 serious encounters per day. And I doubt the casters would be the first to fall. The front-line martials typically absorb the blunt of the fights, so once the casters run out of magic, the front-line martials lose their support and tend to fall. I also disagree with your analysis that good casters hold back punches. While I won't say they should burn through all of their best spells at every single opportunity, the best way to conserve resources is to quickly win. Few things aren't fixed by simply delivering truck loads of damage at the highest possible velocity.
If I caster said "oh, I'll just use a lower level spell to deal less damage", and he does 1/2 the damage he otherwise would have, then maybe one of those enemies is surviving 2x as long. And what's he doing during that time? Dealing 2x the damage on the martials. And what's going to be needed after? 2x the healing. The wizard holding back just transferred the spell investment to the cleric. So when the last fight occurs, "yay!", the wizard gets to send out his nukes on the big bad evil guy, while the martials die because the cleric is out of healing spell to save them.
Also, a lot of martials don't use shields. A lot of martial classes can't even use heavy armor. Some not even medium armor.
Again, theoretically, I agree with you, that the design idea behind it all is that there's a trade-off, with casters being more squishy and limited per day and have more of a crawl at lower levels, but in practice, with proper optimization, I don't think that's true (anymore). Mind you, PF is starting to feel bloated like 3.5 was. If we had more time/will to master a new system, we might have switched to 5e, but I think we'll be sticking to this for a very long time still.
I will point out though that the GM has a huge role to play in character disparity. There's not much he can do to help a bad build or a guy that just rolls 1s all the time, but otherwise, a GM has all the tools he needs to make sure different people get to shine.
The most important thing is to realize that all classes have both strong points and weak points. Understanding what class’s strong and weak points are is the most important aspect of building a decent character. Trying to compete against a class’s strong point where you are weak is never going to work. What you want to do is to focus on where you are strong, but also shore up glaring weaknesses.
As a marital you need to make sure you can dish out damage. Your monk was DEX based which means unless you have some way to get DEX to damage your damage is going to be low. Generally speaking there are two main philosophies on martial damage. The first is slow and steady the second is going nova. Slow and steady is when you have bonuses to hit and damage that are almost always available. Going nova is where your normal damage is ok, but under certain conditions it goes through the roof. A fighter specializing as an archer is a good example of the first strategy. As long as he has his bow his damage output is going to be good. A paladin’s smite evil, or a ranger’s favored enemy are examples of going nova.
Next become very familiar with all your class abilities. Too many players neglect the lesser aspects of their characters and complain that their characters are useless. I had a player whose paladin often forgot to memorize spells, and even when he memorized them almost never cast them. This same player completely forgot about his divine bond (weapon), but b#~$~ed and complained when fighting trolls that he had no way to deal fire damage. He was so focused on smite evil that he ignored almost all the other abilities of the character. If you want to come even close to matching a caster you need to be playing your character to his fullest potential.
One area where a lot of martials have an advantage is in defenses. Rangers for example have evasion and two good saves. Paladins are about the toughest class to take down in the game. Most full casters don’t have much in the way of defenses. This is particularly true of arcane casters. While this may not bring down the enemy faster it does give you a major advantage in survivability.
The last thing to consider is that you are part of a team. In the end it does not really matter who kills the enemy as long as he is dead. Protecting the wizard while he gets off the spell that ends the combat is just as important as casting the spell.
Agreed, for the most part.
I think that the "nova" abilities are overrated, though. Smite evil isn't really the paladin's best ability. It's nice, but it also means that the character doesn't have weapon training/weapon focus/weapon specialization/greater everything. And as the paladin is MAD, he probably won't have the strength score the fighter has. So typically, him going "nova" on the evil dragon just means that he's finally dealing about the same damage as the fighter is (on his first hit). Paladins are a great class, though, just nuancing the "nova" part. And same with ranger, when it comes to damage, fighting his favored enemy just means that he's up to par with the fighter, not that he's excelling at it. But the paladin gets a ton of perks, and the ranger gets... a few.
Thematically, you'd expect those to get burst damage to be able to do more damage when given conditions apply, but the way those classes are made, to me, it always felt like they get a bunch of other abilities, and so they were balanced that they need special conditions just to do decent damage. They have a bunch of handy abilities, but when it comes to brawling, they couldn't afford to just put 18+2 in str and 16 in con while dumping the rest, as the fighter could. A few of them (Warpriest, rogue, magus) even have a lower BAB. Some of them (rogue, magus, swashbuckler, barbarian) have restrictions on what armor they can wear.
"Slow and steady" offers awesome damage, and "nova" offers bad/awesome damage. So, imo, if your priority is dealing damage, you are better off with the fighter. If you want more special abilities, there's lots of classes and archetypes to pick from, but remember you are sacrificing a lot for them. Fighters got little love in 3.5. In PF, especially with advanced armor/weapon training, that's a whole other story. Full plates now offer +11 armor bonus instead of +8, and fighters can actually move full speed in them. You can also get flat bonuses for having one with advanced armor training. And then whether you are two-handing with a falchion or sword and boarding with a scimitar/shield, you've got options, and you can avoid a lot of hits, and you can also absorb a lot of hits, all while hitting like a truck pretty consistently.
Sure, the idea of +10d6 sneak attack damage per hit looks like. But I regretted every rogue I've made, be it in 3.5 or PF. And when I look at the other players at the table making their fancy schmancy martials, I'm not really jealous. They can do tricks my fighter can't, but my fighter is a hulk and gets to shine plenty.
Many dex-based options are traps. Classes and archetypes that are so focused on defense that forget to give you a reason to stay alive. And often, they aren't even good at that, because they'll ask you to max dex (and a bunch of other abilities, usually at least one mental ability, plus no negative str, plus decent con), and they'll also forbid you from wearing armor and shields, which in the end makes you much easier to hit than the two-handed fighter that dumped dex and wield no shield.
I was playing a unchained monk that campaign, and a dex monk at that (i didnt realize how important strength was so i had the base level 10) so my damage was unarmed strikes (dealing a d8) and getting a small +4 for damage dealt due to an agile enchantment. I didnt have power attack. Thats IF i hit.
That is unfortunate. You built one of the few things that just doesn't really work well at low levels. Dex based builds take a while to get off the ground, for pay off later on. It's more challenging on monks.
Surprisingly the best monks tend to have a moderate amount of both strength and dex, at least for early levels.
There are martial builds that can perform very poorly, it's unfortunate that you stumbled upon one of those.
Most people when they're starting out will start with a two-handed weapon user with power attack and will have a very different experience.
Which isn't to say that you can't make a very effective monk, but you have to build differently than what you did.
The casters shouldn't be the first to fall if we're talking about a typical group, but the martial classes will have 90% of their resources left while the casters will have burned through their consumable abilities.
BTW: Healers are generally casters too. Its possible to make a non-casting healing build, but most parties go with spells + channel. That is just as consumable as a wizard's spells.
And you're ignoring the part where I talked about assessing opponents and reacting appropriately. If you run into every encounter as a caster thinking you need to end the fight now, you'll waste that fireball against a bunch of goblins that are more than likely going to annoy the party and require a few cure light wounds if they manage to hit the martials.
And later on when you run into the shadows lurking...
There's obviously going to be table variation, but in our games, we don't waste time with encounters that are so easy they pose no threat to the party. I think I was the GM at our table that inflicted the most attrition, but even then, kept risk all the time.
If the enemies are so weak that it's wasteful to use good spells on them, then, largely, that encounter is a waste of every player's time. At least, that's the dominant philosophy at our table. I'll agree that if your table runs things differently, and likes to spam low-challenge encounters to gaud your players into wasting resources, that's another story. Doesn't sound very fun to me, though. I'd rather just dump some traps that take little time to resolve. That's not to say we've never had very easy encounters, but those were rare and due to miscalculations on the GM's part, not a regular thing.
You are right that healers are mostly casters, but typically, clerics aren't the ones shooting toppling quickened fireballs on people.
Fighters don't really have resources, though. There's only HP, which at my table at least, we reset to max between every fight, be it thanks to the cleric, or someone with a wand of CLW. Because the impact between being lowered to 1 HP and to -1 HP is huge, nobody really wants to take the risk of "if I had just used one more CLW charge things would have went differently". There are consumables, sure, but our martials don't use many, because unless they get to pre-buff, sacrificing an action for a potion (which are low-level spells with low CL) is rarely worth it. If the party *can't* bring the fighter back to full HP, then they are already in serious trouble.
As for taking out an orcish fort, that... really depends on the game, the party, the GM. We've done a few assaults on orcish forts in the game I ran, and a few fort infiltration in games I and some of my friends ran. A fort can mean quite a lot of things depending on the setting. A 50 man camp with wooden palisades? A 4000 man embattlement with high walls and a motte? And what's the objective? Infiltration? Sabotage? Assassination? Conquest? Total annihilation? Where's this fort located? In an open field? On a mountain side? Deep in enemy territory? At rear frontier?
I dunno, castle sieges are typically an army thing to do, not a party thing to do. Unless it's a small outpost, in which case, it probably doesn't have a huge number of layers of defenses. Patrols, watchmen, walls, cover, and soldiers. If it's something bigger, with many layers of walls, and a courtyard and all... I'm not sure what's the rush? Real sieges took a very long time. Charging head first at a castle with hundreds of concealed defenders is asking for trouble, unless you are really high level, 1/20 attacks are guaranteed to hit. Also, placing your lvl 6 martial against 500 lvl 1 warriors entrenched behind murder-holes is probably not the best way to make him shine, either. And the deadliness of this, too, will vary per GM and his setting. In mine, if you attack an orcish frontier outpost, odds are it'll have a few dozen lvl 1 commoners, a few dozen lvl 1 warriors, and a handful of dudes with 1-3 levels in PC classes. I run a low powered setting. In my friend's, we'd probably expect all the orcish militiamen to have at least 6 levels in a PC class. Not at all the same threat level.
I'm sure a GM could design a quest to siege an orc fort that would require careful use of resources, but that would probably need strong arbitrary incentives to dissuade the players from using blitz tactics. For example "you need to free the captives today, because the prince is among them and they'll all be sacrificed at sunset!" It's a completely valid plot device, too. But if the mission is simply "go take out that fort", I have a hard time really imagining why the party would hold punches in fights.
Also, the thing about patrols, is that you generally want to kill them even faster, because otherwise they'll escape and report in on your presence.
That is, if you get that far. If you have to take out the Orc Fortress, but your wizard announces he's out of buffs after you killed off a patrol, the guards at a gate and cleared the courtyard so you can reach the actual fort...are you seriously going to call it a night before you start doing any real damage? Any caster needs to pace himself to match what they expect to face.
If you have a high-ish level wizard with you, you don't need fight the patrol, or the guards at the gate, or the soldiers in the courtyard. You can use spells (teleportation, invisibility, tunneling, flying) to go directly into the fort.
That is the full caster's power, more than anything else.
I'm not very familiar with the monk, but my understanding is that they are relatively weak (...) Their iconic ability is given the ridicule name of "flury of misses" at our table.
That's core Monk, unchained Monk is significantly stronger. Indeed, they're one of the strongest non-casters in the game. That doesn't mean you can't build them wrong, of course.
Fighters are not very versatile, though.
Not necessarily - at least, not with Advanced Weapon Training.
However, as an old experienced player playing with other old experienced players, it is never God Wizard that the people complain about.
Well, the term is not about power level, but about a playstyle - one that's deliberately about not visibly dominating encounters.
Veterans warn new players to stay away from spellcasters, play a martial because they're easier to play/build.
Well, I've spoken out against that before.
Well with any class you can just copy a pre-made build found on internet. A wizard seems a bit much for a newbie, a lot of frequent important choices. A blaster sorcerer following a pre-made build guide is much simpler to play imo.
Honestly, with the advice given thusfar, if you can't put a decent character together, you are truly lost...
Martials are easy, REALLY easy, especially when you're ranged/archer type easy.
The entire understanding of the imbalance is what is important.
As a Strength based Fighter, one trait and one feat, allows you to jump 30' taking 10 on the jump. You can carry the Rogue AND the Wizard in every swim/climb check. You are a monster, on purpose.
Item Mystery feats make up for a whole bunch. If your spellcasting characters are selfish.
So much of what you think of a martial character is dependent on what your spellcasting characters want to prepare for casting.
Play as a team, your martials build specifically towards the gaps in your spells. You use Haste for most CR-equal encounters... saving your juice for the scary encounters.
It's not hard to play as a team.
Swing a sword and be as good as caster? Grab Combat Expertise, Improved/Greater Dirty Trick (gives you multiple debuffs), and Master Craftsman with Craft Magic Arms and Armor to make your own magic weapons.
Another import difference between most martials and casters is the fact it is easier to cripple a martial with a poor choice in character creation.
Casters primary class ability is their spells. Prepared casters have to choose what spells to memorize every day. That means that their effectiveness can vary greatly depending on their spell choices. But it also means that each day you can pretty much reconfigure your character by altering your spell selection. Divine prepared casters have the advantage of knowing their entire spell list. Arcane casters have are limited to the spells they know, but that is usually a pretty good amount of spells. Also many spells have different options that can be chosen when the spell is cast. This gives the caster incredible versatility and allows them to adjust to the circumstance. As long as they survive the day they can alter their spell selection so they are not permanently crippled by a poor choice.
Spontaneous casters don’t have the ability to completely alter their character the way the prepared caster does. But they still have greater flexibility than most martials. Each spell slot can be used to cast any spell that you know of appropriate level. So if you are facing a incorporeal creature you cast magic missile instead of shocking grasp. They can also use wands, scrolls and staves to further expand their choices. Because they have can choose which spell to cast as needed they still have a lot of options on what they are going to do.
Compare this to a marital class. One of the most important aspects of a marital is their feats. While casters get feats they are less reliant on them. A fighter’s major class feature is feats and all martials rely on them to some extent. The problem is that once a feat is chosen you are pretty much stuck with it. This means a poor choice of feats can permanently cripple your martial. A caster who chose a bad spell can still use his spell slot to caster other spells, but a martial who chose a poor feat wasted an important resource. While retraining rules do allow feats to be altered they take time and resources and are not always available.
What this means is that when building a marital character you need to be very careful and plan out everything in advance. You need to consider what works and what doesn’t before making the choice. Because of feat chains you often have to take useless feats to gain what you really want. To build a marital character that can compare to a caster means you cannot make mistakes in character creation. It also often means that your build does not come online immediately. Most martial builds don’t become truly effective until around 5th to 8th level.
Any fighter can pick up power attack and toughness at first level. ;)
The easiest class to hand a complete newbie, in my experience, is the Druid.
There are different kinds of easy. A Druid is easy in the sense that it's likely to be effective, even in the hands of an novice. It's not easy in the sense of simple. Wild-shaping and running summoned monsters and animal companions means you're playing with all the usual rules for grabbing and AoOs, plus a whole bunch of other rules. You get to choose from hundreds of spells, but this means you have to choose from hundreds of spells...
Any fighter can pick up power attack and toughness at first level. ;)
Actually martials are generally more powerful than casters at first level. Around third level that changes.
Toughness is only good as a fighter’s first bonus feat. If you take it you will probably end up retraining it as soon as you can.
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Take to your DM about using the Spheres system, Spheres of Power and Spheres of Might, which there is actually a wiki page for. There is no better way I'm seen when it comes to having martial classes balance out power-wise with caster.
Not only because it lowers the ceiling for casters, while keeping a great level of versatility and allowing for a huge number of character concepts, but increases the ceiling for martial characters. More so, allows for more kinetic and interesting combat, not requiring simply a full attack each round.