Druids are even better than element/animal types. You can have melee druids with herbalism, caster druids with animal companions, hybrid druids with domains. Druids deal physical damage, cast spells to bypass problems, have meat shields with their animal companions/summoned animals. Only problem is not having full access to some of the more specific cleric/paladin spells that heal statuses and removing traps the normal (non "throw a Nature's Ally 1 at it") way. They even have a Cha based caster that can be the party face with one of the druid archetypes.
Bards are another good choice, strong melee combatants with tons of alternate archetypes to deal with most situations (including traps) but in exchange are worse at using spells to bypass obstacles/deal damage, and have even fewer good healing options than the Druids.
Sorcerer.
You can go brute melee (e.g. Orc bloodline, STR), sneaky rogue (e.g. Shadow bloodline, DEX), divine support (e.g. Empyreal bloodline, WIS), arcane utility (e.g. Sage bloodline, INT), psionic control (e.g. psychic bloodline, CHA).
Without multiclassing, probably either bard, druid, inquisitor, investigator, or occultist are good choices.
Bards with at least one arrowsong minstrel and at least one archetype that can disarm magical traps work well.
Druids would have the highest level spells, along with animal companions and/or domains for more breadth. Spontaneous summon nature's ally can help deal with traps.
Inquisitors can easily fill most roles and are quite powerful in combat.
Investigators are even better than bards for skills and can also pick up (psychic) spellcasting with psychic detective. They're no slouches in combat either.
Occultists with two PCs taking Trappings of the Warrior (Abjuration/buckler, Transmutation/bow for one and Abjuration/shield, Transmutation/falcata for the other) are a bit more limited on spellcasting, but get a lot of other powers and (as Int-based casters) skills.
Alternately, a party of all vigilantes may be closest to a "traditional" party of mixed classes, by nature of how different the avenger, stalker, and vigilante archetypes are.
An all-Bard group seems pretty strong.
Half-Orc Archaeologist with Fate's Favored trait and a big honking greataxe for melee damage. Can also do trap disabling.
Arrowsong Minstrel has a vanilla performance and has ranged options.
Chronicler of Worlds is INT-based and can smash all the Knowledges.
Studious Librarian can cast spells off of scrolls without spending the scrolls. Useful to get access to rarer spells or spells that use rare spell components. Also stacks with Chronicler of Worlds. But anyone with a decent UMD will probably also replace this archetype.
Thundercaller can do pretty good damage and crowd control.
And one more (or two, if you double-dip Chronicler/Studious Librarian) to balance things out.
I think their biggest hurdle is in-combat healing and status removal for when crap hits the fan. They'll be great at crowd control and social skills, and have a good spread of all the other necessary skills.
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Skalds. Hands down, Skalds. Yes, this is my final answer.
The sheer AMOUNT of class features that they can access and use in conjunction with each other is ... well, the limit approach infinity (well, no, but kind of yes).
How about clerics? They can all take different domains for different powers and domain spells. Healing and condition removal would be no sweat. They don't have to worry about spell failure and can be fairly decent martials if you build them right. Though lack of bonus feats or other similar features might be a drawback.
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Wizards are the most powerful class because they often end up being a force multiplier. This works best when there are other classes to boost. Generally speaking a wizard is not going to boost another wizard that much. So the party of all wizards is going to be as effective as you would think it is.
A party of clerics would be ok, but for the most part they are going to have access to the same spells and abilities. Even with different domains and using archetypes most of the characters will be fairly similar. Clerics don’t have many class features so there is less to trade out. While this may make for a good party on paper it seems to me it would be a little boring.
Druids on the other hand have lots of class features and an incredibly diverse spell list. This means you can build characters that are different enough that it is still interesting. They are still prepared divine casters so there can be some overlap in spells. Basically it is going to depend on what the individual character memorizes.
A group of inquisitors would be a good choice. Since they are spontaneous casters each caster can have its own niche. They also have a ton of class features so can have more that can be traded away to make each character unique. Inquisitions often give more diverse powers than domains so that help. With two good saves and decent armor and weapons they can all be decent combatants. Bane also means no matter what you are fighting against you are going to be dealing significant damage.
But what really makes a party of inquisitors interesting is teamwork feats. Think about it they all get teamwork feats and can change them multiple times per day. This can lead to some very interesting situations. Once they have gotten high enough level to get multiple teamwork feats it can get really absurd. For example if they all have paired opportunist, outflank and improved outflank. They will get a huge number of attacks. If they all take combat reflexes it can get truly ridiculous.
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oracles have always seemed pretty lacklustre to me personally when compared to other classes.
I’ll definitely agree that other classes can be individually better, but when you are talking about a whole party, all the deficiencies are covered somewhere. And all of whom are 9-level divine casters.
Healer - Pei Zin Practitioner Life mysterySkills - Seeker with Lore mystery
Buff (and Tiger Companion) - Ocean’s Echo with Lunar mystery
Fighting - Battle mystery
5th - Wild card, whatever you think you need.
I’d put bard or inquisitor at the top of my list as well. I was just surprised no one had mentioned the diversity of oracles.
Arcane trickster....
The best/most fun to roleplay would be an entire party illiterate Barbarians (True Primitive archetype for everyone).
Me no know your words. Me angry at yo0UR WORDS!!!
It would be so terrible and ridiculous. All you out there theorycrafting... we all know Bards/Magus/Skalds/Warpriests, Clerics/Druids/Shamans/Oracles, and other such great all-around classes can pull this off with ease and flavor to spare.
The 3/4 BAB, 6th level casting classes are STACKED with fun features and archetypes... enough to easily make a mockery of any "all the same" guidelines. The 3/4 BAB full casters are obviously cheating, if that is the way the table swings, I am sad.
Let's do Rangers. Or Monks. Or Rogues.
Can we VMC...? Even better, make it so we MUST.
The challenge goes from level 1 to 20 and a party of all wizards shouldn't be able to make it past level 1, so they must be the weakest. My gut feeling out of the core classes, is Cleric or Bard. Clerics are a good mix of martial skill for liw level survivability and powerful spell casting for later level effectiveness + healing and bards were designed as the all-rounder class.
If nothing else, a party of five wizards seems more likely to be smart enough (and willing) to run away.
Some monsters will chase you down......
A full group of Wizards would be pretty powerful. At low levels, they would have to rely heavily on summons, but high level, they would be unstoppable.
Druid > Cleric > Oracle , I would say.
Boring or fun is no good argument when you look at best performance.
5 unchained Rogues playing the ninja troupe, they all take stealth synergy at level 1 and play hit and run tactics. Healing isn't a problem because most things die in surprise round or bleed out wondering why the shadows are so bitey and if they do occasionally get hit, UMD and wands are cheap enough.
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5 quintuplet wizards, who all look the same, simultaneously casting Mirror Image. xD
A group of 5 Vigilantes is absurdly versatile, since each archetype is basically "different class- vigilante edition" and you can even get full BAB.
5 Occultists could probably manage much the same, with full BAB available through trappings of the warrior, silksworns getting so much casting, and with everyone in the party good at UMD.
Is there a 9th level spells vigilante? I was looking through the archetypes, but I only saw 6th level caster types.
There's not, but 9 level spellcasting isn't really necessary for anything except "having 'I win' buttons at high levels."
5 vigilantes could be fun. The class always gets to be great at skills so you can cover a wide variety of options. Lots of spell access. Full BAB combatant through avenger.
I like 5 Occultists, too. Trappings of the Warrior turns you into a full BAB martial... who still gets 6th level spellcasting. Silksworn can do some pretty serious casting despite only being 6th level casters. You can fill out the middle with other specializations of occultist and have a pretty strong party overall.
Oddly enough, despite "pretend to be another class all day" being literally their core feature and despite having five major options baked into the class, 5 mediums don't sound like they'd be very good.
At level 1 the wizard group could designate one of them to equip hide armor (+5 AC, 15 gold) and a heavy wooden shield (+2 more, 7 gold). Total defense makes another +4. With a Dex of 14 he makes it to AC 23. Nonproficiency penalties are not really a handicap for this guy. Maybe give him a club and hide his pointy hat, so enemies are fooled into believing this is actually a melee guy. Keeping up the ruse for a round or two might be enough for the other 4 to win the battle. Preferably choose someone with a Str higher than 7 - else you will have to downgrade the equipment somewhat.
I've only looked at kineticists out of the occult classes. Going through the other 5 is going to give me a headache. Is it mediums or spiritualists that are supposed to kind of suck?
Spiritualists are worse than Summoners in terms of combat acumen (they make up for it in other ways, but are more utility focused). The Medium kind of doesn't work, though if you just spend 100% of your time in fighter mode the numbers aren't bad. The Kineticist has a lot optimization ceiling, but a very high floor and is thus polarizing. The Occultist is a straight up strong and versatile class. The psychic is another 9 level caster.
The Kineticist is such that "unless you make deliberately poor choices, you will be fairly good at your schtick" which makes people think it's very strong contrasted to low optimization characters. The Kineticist is also such that no matter how good your choices are, you're still just going to be "good at what you do" which makes the class seem weak contrasted with very high optimization characters.
The Mesmerist is kind of an anti-bard, and I've never really seen a great one in practice. I'm not saying it can't happen, but your best tricks are "reducing people's will saves" and "using mind affecting on anything."
The medium kind of doesn't work in the sense of "today I'm a Champion, tomorrow I'm a Hierophant, yesterday I was a Trickster" doesn't really work (like the champion gets martial and some exotic weapon proficiency, everybody else gets simple- what weapon do you buy?) If you decide to focus on one of the aspects, you can be pretty good at it (especially the Champion) but you're very feat poor. There's also the thing with "is your GM going to let you channel the spirit you want?" (Probably yes, but you never know) that's a trouble spot.
I'll throw on Inquisitor. They have a lot of skills, they have divine spell casting with a lot of utility and healing/remove spells, and class features that make them formidable in martial pursuits.
They've also got that summoning archetype that's pretty good. And with 5 Inquisitors with teamwork feats there's bound to be some wild shenanigans they can pull off.
Hm. What about hunters? They're spontaneous casters, so if everyone takes different spells, they can cover a lot. The spell list is a combination of the druid and ranger lists, so a decent amount of options there.
Different animal companions for different purposes like melee or scouting. Get at least one that flies and one that's big enough to ride.
Bonus teamwork feats every 3 levels. All teamwork feats are auto-shared with the companions. As long as at least a couple of players take the free Outflank at level 2, you can grab a few AoOs with the ones in melee. And co-ordinate a few of the other teamwork feats and you can get a pretty good thing going.
Investigators are even better than bards for skills and can also pick up (psychic) spellcasting with psychic detective. They're no slouches in combat either.
They can also get Bard casting with Questioner and Inquisitor casting with Jinyiwei.
Is it mediums or spiritualists that are supposed to kind of suck?
None of them really suck, tbh.
The kineticist is a little awkward because of the way its math and burn mechanics work.
Mediums don't fulfill their own brief very well, but can still be really solid (particularly if you go all in on Champion).
Spiritualists don't compare well to Summoners, but... very few things do, Summoners are a mess.
If Rorek will forgive me a tangent, same premise, but with a 3 person crew.
I don't think the answer really changes much. The reason stacking five skalds or occultists or vigilantes or oracles or druids works is the same reason it'd work with just three. In that respect I think Loken's assertion is kind of off base, especially with 5 somehow being a particularly weird number.
I think the only thing that changes with the 5 vs. 3 comparison is "some classes can fulfill a bunch of different roles on one character a lot better than others."
Like you can build a single occultist in a way that they're a DPR face who manages UMD and all the knowledge checks. If you're making a party of clerics, it's going to be tricky to cover all the bases (you're going to need to use spells judiciously.)
Vigilantes :P