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As the title says, we're now near the end of book 3, we're currently doing
Party (free archetype rule) consists of:
- A Fighter/Beastmaster (we inherited a raptor from the Ranger who died). She's good at defense and has a solid damage output. Gets a bit tangled up in her action economy with Dueling Parry, attacking, and commanding the animal companion, but overall is a consistent character.
- A Wizard (she's new, don't recall her archetype). Has some niche spells, but overall is a great asset to the party. Focuses on Illusion spells, but packs a lot of other spells as well, so it's not a one-trick pony.
- An alchemy-focused Investigator. Does reasonable damage, but great staying power with all the potions he can whip up.
- Support Bard with Medic archetype (me). A pure Cleric would've been better, I know, but I like the buffs the Bard can hand out. Inspire Defense is my most-used composition. Mostly built around support, though I do have some damaging options.
Are we missing something in our party lineup? I feel like we're missing some consistent damage output. Our Fighter hits for around 20 damage each hit, but when an opponent has 300+ HP, that's still 6 rounds before one opponent drops (assuming two hits per round). I can add to that, but most of the time I'm too busy keeping everyone upright. And even then, a 10d6 blast is only a drop in the bucket compared to their HP. We're currently level 11 and recently fought 4 level 10 monsters, a severe encounter. The adventure said it shouldn't be too much of a problem, but we pretty much blew through all our high-level resources just to stay alive.
We're consistently flanking/making enemies flat-footed, we make them Frightened, and generally do our best to debuff enemies, so I don't feel like we're underoptimised or not being strategic enough, but the last few encounters have felt like a slog to me. Is this a common complaint? We're all pretty knowledgeable about PF2, though this is the first time any of us have hit level 10+, so maybe it just takes some getting used to.
Any advice is welcome. :)
Looks like you don't have enough damage to me. Investigator, wizard, and bard are all fairly weak damage dealers. You have one good, consistent damage dealer in the party. It's going to be a real slog.
A wizard to me seems more like a utility caster from what I've seen than a damage caster, though they can sometimes add good AoE damage. They don't have good focus abilities for damage or feats.
Bard as you stated is a support class.
An investigator is another utility class.
You could use one more focused damage dealer or the high level game is going to be a real slog.