Alzrius If your game is all about fun, and you don't care at all about being useful, then there is no reason for you to be trying to argue that Fighters are even "okay" or that casters aren't an Nth degree better than Fighters.
My game is about fun, but I actually think that characters can be useful outside of extremely narrow "specializations," which means there's every reason for me to argue that fighters are better than "okay" and that casters aren't N degrees better than fighters. You're the one saying otherwise.
While the tripping Fighter can definitely hit you, he'll be dealing so little damage that it isn't noticeable (assuming he hits, at all).
Again, easily disproven. A character with a trip weapon still deals its damage, and taking Improved Trip is hardly depriving the character of damage-output-focused feats to the point that his damage is negligible.
Likewise, summoned creatures very frequently replace/trump Fighters in my games. A Crocodile at level 3 can do so much more than your average Fighter that it makes him more or less useless, and this isn't even considering the calling spells.
On the other hand, your fighter can last for longer than 5 rounds, and will likely have a better AC than 15, and more than 22 hit points. Matching their damage output is easy, and you can grapple almost as good with the Improved Grapple feat. So no, your fighters aren't made useless by one summons. See my previous post for further reasons why this is so.
Fighters who remain at medium size are already reducing their own effectiveness intentionally - I wouldn't even bother reducing one.
You're again confusing not hyper-optimizing with "uselessness." There's a difference.
If you haven't seen the strength of a well placed Grease spell, I question how effective the casters in your groups have been.
Hm, well, everyone has had fun, character deaths have been relatively rare but not unknown, and they haven't felt the need to make their characters conform to CharOp standards. So they seem effective to me.
Are they just memorizing as many blasting spells as possible? Fighters don't have strong Balance checks (especially when wearing armor), and will more than likely be stuck standing still or falling prone - plus, they're flat-footed. Free ranged sneak attacks.
You seemed to have missed my previous post about all the different ways to avoid that spell to begin with, let alone its tiny area of effect (the idea that someone would just stand still in the 10-foot square and let the ranged attackers pick them off is an amusing one, though).
A Fighter without his weapon may as well try to tickle you to death - another place where Grease reigns as one of the best 1st level spells in the game - a perfect candidate for an Eternal Wand or three.
Or they can just do any one of a number of things, like draw another weapon (a free action while they move up and sunder your wand).
Likewise, if your casters haven't effectively ended a combat with a well placed level 1-3 spell, even up to ECL 10, I'm beginning to feel that your friends don't know how to choose their spell lists or just want to cast "pretty lights and fires".
Actually, it's more accurate to state that, if my casters haven't effective ended a combat with a well-placed level 1-3 spell, even up to CR 10, then they're playing the game as it was intended to be played, rather than trying to bend the system as far as they can to "win" every encounter. Which wouldn't really matter anyway since, as I've already explained, that will happen only as long as the GM lets it happen.
I've been playing for almost two decades now, and I certainly have enough gameplay and DM experience to realize that these aren't theoretical scenarios. A good caster can drastically outshine every other character at the table, in 99% of the scenarios you put them in, every day - even with requesting prepared spell lists and using every check in the book to try to minimize their strength.
These are, in fact, virtually all theoretical scenarios - answers that then have questions created to fit them - and the fact that some people actually let that shape how they play their game isn't surprising (see the last link I posted for more about that; that line of thinking has been around a long time). But again, that lasts only as long as the GM keeps things within those carefully constructed scenarios; they're otherwise very easy to break ("a FIFTH encounter in one day?! OH NOOOOSSS!").
Some casters do Fighter better than Fighters do, on top of being able to do anything else they care to do.
Until they can't use their spells (e.g.
anti-magic field,
silence, etc.) any longer, or any of a hundred other ways to break that paradigm wide open.
