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.
- Being useful and having fun are often two different things. In core, Bards and Fighters are fun, doesn't make them useful.
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.
- Damage dealing feats are late-chain feats. Removing their reach weapon and reducing their ability to trip prevents them from dealing significant damage, that is if you actually manage to get near enough to trip anything in the first place.
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.
What combat doesn't end in under five rounds? Also, I said -replaced-, not -useless-. They're unnecessary, because they've been replaced by a spell.
You're again confusing not hyper-optimizing with "uselessness." There's a difference.
In that quote, I said "effective". You don't need to hyper-optimize a caster to make it oodles more useful than a Fighter, but you do need to optimize a Fighter to hold his weight in a group after about level 6.
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).
If you can't make the Balance check, you can't move inside of a Grease spell. If you fail your check by 5 or more, you fall prone. With their heavy armor, few skill points, and Balance not on their class list anyway, they'll have a very difficult time making that check.
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).
Assuming they can even make it to the caster.
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.
There isn't any bending involved. Playing strictly by the book is all that is necessary.
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!").
Casters are more able to deal with surprise scenarios than Fighters, too. A Fighter who loses 80% of his resources is down to 20% HP and almost out of consumables. A caster teleports home and rests for a night in his safe, warm bed.
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.
Casters generally have great Will saves, making Silence ineffective in targeting them.
Also, I like that you're trying to counter casters with casters, because that is the only effective way to do it.
