The Forge of Combat: Thoughts on victory and how the group a

For a while now there has been a debate on traditional roles and tasks that makes up a typical adventuring group. This has produced a lot of interesting talk and debate on the subject but nothing I’ve felt was a particularly satisfactory way of producing a well optimized party.
Often these roles or at least these philosophies lead to common optimization traps through misleading language.

However I have found that nearly all of these talks attempt to encompass too narrow focuses without truly considering in what it is the group is really trying to do. Consider for a moment what your ultimate goal in combat is;

”TO OVERCOME THE ENCOUNTER AS EFFICIENTLY AS POSSIBLE”

Taking this into this consideration we have to take a look at certain golden truths about Pathfinder combat before we can begin to parse out roles in order to consider what a practically optimized group would look like. To begin:

Spamming is usually the least consistent form of defeating encounters

When we speak of this truth we are referring to characters that are essentially one trick ponies such as dedicated two handed fighters, mounted combat characters, dedicated archers, generally characters that are built only to operate in a specific set of circumstances (i.e. adjacent to an opponent and full attacking) must have a means of setting up that circumstance consistently (like pounce for barbarians) or find a different method of accomplishing that goal (switch hitting rangers, gunslingers who carry melee weapons).

The same can be said for support roles as well. A dedicated healer does nothing to quickly end an encounter but may do more to prolong it and even drain further resources as others will be forced to use their own resources to accomplish aforementioned goal. Likewise other spellcaster’s who rely on using a single highly specialized spell will find themselves completely negated in a number of circumstances where that spell will ultimately prove useless or simply not as optimal as a different spell choice.

What this teaches us is that an effective party member must be able and willing to accomplish their assigned task in many different ways or else be able to take on a different task altogether when a situation presents itself to make that method unfeasible.

Initiative is (almost) everything

It is no secret for anyone to discover that having a high initiative is absolutely imperative. Going first allows a group to take advantage of an opponents flatfooted status to get into position as well as set the pace for the battle and immediately be on the offensive or in some cases have defensive abilities up for the inevitable reprisal. Of course having extremely high initiative is not as important as positioning nor is it as important as the appropriate use of it. A dedicated damage dealer who charges before the party wizard lays down battlefield control is actually only acting to make things more difficult for himself as he will be attacking an opponent who is not affected by that battlefield control.

Therefore high initiative is important when speaking as a group. The entire group wants high initiative to deal with the enemy but not when dealing with each other. What a group wants when dealing with one another is an established order of tasks in order to ensure that everyone is doing their job at the utmost best.

Positioning is everything

This is more or less a silent truth but the fact of the matter is nothing you do matters unless you are in an appropriate position to do your assigned task. A polearm wielding trip specialist can’t do his work forty feet from the enemy, a two weapon paladin cannot swing at a flying opponent, and archers cannot operate effectively in a dense forest. Ultimately more than initiative being in the right place at the right time is more important to the overall success of the group.

Part of individual optimization is about eliminating circumstances or creating new circumstances where your position matters very little or where you can reach the appropriate position faster. As an example the fly spell is not so important purely for numbers but for the positioning opportunities it provides. Wizards can more easily evade ground bound opponents while simultaneously making use of it to provide their group with an expanded range of positions to take from which they can accomplish their assigned tasks. It is no wonder then that knowing this truth that we can understand the importance of spells such as Grease, Create Pit, and Entangle that not only provide serious debuffs to an enemy but also compromise the enemies positioning (i.e. controlling the battlefield) and allow the group to take on superior positions of their own (like flanking, attacking from the high ground, etc.)

Pathfinder is a lot about resource management

Nearly every class has a resource that can be expended to fight at its best. Even rogues and fighters, the most resource efficient classes, can gain one or two abilities that are limited use and even when they do not they still count their total HP as a resource that can be expended. Simply put the harder fights tend to be the more resources a group will expend to overcome those encounters. Pathfinder is written under the expectation that a group will expend about 20% of its resources for an at CR encounter.

The goal of the balanced and optimal group then is to meet or increase the efficiency of its resource use to this standard. Never expending more than what is required and making the best use of its abundant resources or making use of resource efficient actions in order to defeat an encounter.

To this end proactive abilities that reduce the difficulty of an encounter are typically the most resource efficient. As just two examples consider the difference between Slow and Cure Serious Wounds. Cure serious wounds is a reactive spell that ultimately negates at most two attacks for its level. Slow on the other hand can negate many many attacks over a number of rounds as staggered opponents will be foiled from getting into position and making full attacks time and time again.

Pathfinder combat favors offense over defense

Older players are well aware that combat in pathfinder can be quick and brutal depending on the difficulty of the encounter and the dice of the characters involved. Consider for a moment that every opponent everywhere has at least a 5% chance to hit you if they make an attack (barring miss chances). Consider further that as levels progress a character will take more and more of these chances as full attacks start to include iterative attacks and often mix in with natural attacks. Then consider that damage can easily outclass all but the strongest healing methods while still punching through damage reduction and you start to get a picture of why setting the pace of a battle suddenly becomes more important than having high passive defenses. Optimized parties want to be on the offensive as soon as possible and as hard as possible in order to ensure that battles end quickly before the tide can be turned upon them. An opponent on the defensive is at a terrible disadvantage until which time they can stem an opponent’s offense and be able to respond with an offense of their own.

Thus it becomes imperative to a group to be able to simultaneously place an opponent on the defensive, stifle any counter offensive, and then be able to launch its own offensive in order to ensure the accomplishment of the above goal. While sounding like a tall order it’s really something groups do all the time. A group that wins initiative and has great position immediately puts an opponent on the defensive. A group that lays down battlefield control or debuffs is usually stifling counter offensives as well. Lastly a groups damage dealers are launching the offensive. So in a sense most groups are understanding this truth already. Groups that rely heavily on reactive strategies and defensive tactics often find themselves in long drawn out wars of attrition that are highly inefficient and do little more than weaken a group’s chances of survival in a game where there is no point or period where a group might be called 100% safe.

Bearing these truths in mind we can now take a look at what a group specifically needs in order to be consistently successful at combat in pathfinder. A group needs to be able to consistently set an enemy up and dictate the pace of a battle while laying out enough relevant damage to end the fight quickly without draining too much of a group’s available resources. With this in mind some groups naturally gravitate towards a small number of tasks or, if you like, “roles” in which they work to turn an encounter into victory.

Typically these groups individual members specialize in one or two of these tasks selecting one of several different methods to accomplish what they want with their chosen race/class combination.
To illustrate how this works we have ourselves a useful metaphor in the Hammer, Anvil and Arm.

The hammer represents characters built to defeat the encounter by dealing damage or otherwise permanently removing an enemy as a threat. Hammers pound the encounter into something resembling victory.

The anvil represents characters built and specialized in holding the enemy down. That is reducing their capacity to fight against the hammers or otherwise defeat you. This is typically done through combat maneuvers, battlefield control spells, debuffs, or other similar methods to reduce an enemies capacity to do the same to the group.

The Arm represents the support center of the group. He allows the hammer to hit harder, the anvil to hold the enemy better and keeps them working before the enemy can break either. Through buffs, heals, or other forms of support an arm allows the rest of the group to perform better than normal and overcome encounters very quickly without an extra drain on resources.

Together this group acts to beat and pound the encounter into something resembling victory or otherwise overcoming the encounter.

Now what I would like to do is break down this metaphor further and explain what each role, the anvil, the arm, and the hammer, would look like in a well balanced party and talk about what is important for them to have in order to perform their proposed function.

Anvil

Anvils work to aggressively control the enemy and drop the overall difficulty of a fight in order to make the hammer and arm’s job easier.
An effective dedicated anvil needs to be able to do the following consistently:

1.	 The anvil needs to be able to effectively reduce or limit one or more aspects of an enemy encounter such as:

Mobility: The ability for an enemy to effectively move in an encounter and position themselves to deal damage.

Action Economy: The ability for an enemy to take actions such as a full attack, a move, etc. etc.

Numbers: Raw numbers such as attack bonuses, damage, saves, skills, etc.

2.	An anvil needs to go first in the initiative in order to set the pace of an encounter allowing the arms and hammers of the group to make wiser decisions about the expenditure of resources in the act of beating the encounter.

3.	An anvil needs to be able to effectively perform his task without interfering with the arm’s and hammer’s jobs.

To elaborate anvil’s need to be able to debuff their foes quickly, before the hammers wade in and before the arm’s work to support and especially before the enemy has had a chance to react. This ensures that your hammers have an easier time dealing damage and signals to your arms what form of support they will need to provide.

Spellcasting classes tend to be the best anvils purely because of the variety of the control they have at their disposal and the instantaneous effects they have on the battlefield. Pole arm wielding battlefield controllers, or other combat maneuver based classes can have similar roles and can more easily fall back onto a hammer role once the encounter is sufficiently handled to the point where the hammers can mop up.

Hammer

The hammer’s job is perhaps the most intuitive and easy for most players to pull off. Their job is to essentially finish the encounter. After the anvil has set the encounter and the arm has boosted the hammer (or occasionally the anvil) it’s the hammer’s job to render the encounter into XP and treasure to be shared by all.

A hammer needs to be able to do the following consistently:

1.	 Deal at least 1/3 to 2/3 of an encounter’s hp without the need of special circumstances such as critical hits in one round.

2.	Deal at least 2/3 to 4/5 of an encounter’s hp with the expenditure of personal resources or through special circumstances (flanking, critical hits etc.) in one round.

3.	Can deal at least two kinds of damage in order to bypass defenses (Damage reduction, resistances, certain AC modifiers).

4.	Is mobile enough with sufficient action economy in order to accomplish the above in one round or less.

Full base attack bonus classes do very well going towards being hammers. They tend towards efficient action economies and can easily trade hit bonuses and in some cases defense in order to do the maximum amount of damage with the slightest expenditure of resources.

Arm

The arm works to bring the anvil and the hammer together. It helps make both characters more efficient in whatever way possible.

Therefore an arm needs to be able to consistently do the following:

1.	Boost one of the following:
a.	Action Economy: Granting characters extra actions typically by expending one of your own.
b.	Mobility: Granting characters the ability to achieve superior positioning.
c.	Numbers: Boosting a characters raw numbers such as Attack, Damage, AC, saving throws etc.

2.	Be able to react quickly to changing combat situations and provide the best possible boosts to the right people at appropriate times.

¾ Bab spellcasters and full spellcasters often fall into the role of Arm. Arm’s have to be able to react to a variety of situations laying down buffs and support whenever called for in order to keep the pace up for the encounter. This can often be a difficult job as situations can change very drastically from turn to turn but given the games nature to favor proactivity over reactivity it is usually best for arms to go somewhere between the anvil and the hammer.

What this means for initiative

Essentially it means that in terms of group tasks and roles your group’s hammers need to have the highest initiatives they can muster going above and beyond normal means to ensure that not only are they above the enemies in initiative but also above all of the group as well. This prevents the group from having to delay actions to ensure the anvil gets his control off quickly and does not endanger the group into accidentally allowing the encounter to go first.

After the anvil’s should come the arms. Arms read the situation presented by the anvil and the encounter and decide on the appropriate action to best support the group whether that is giving a buff to the groups numbers or increasing their action economy to give them a greater advantage over the enemies reduced abilities. In a sense the arms choice of buff encourages the hammers to adopt the chosen strategy and operate from their.

Hammers ideally want to go when the arms and anvils have laid out the encounter and showed them how it is to be fought. If the anvil and arm are competent they should have laid out the encounter in a way that not only makes the fight easier but also takes advantage of the hammer’s capabilities. For example a druid laying out an entangle in such a way as it prevents charging is not doing the mounted cavalier any favors. Likewise a sorcerer casting haste with a bunch of hammers primarily using natural attacks is not really benefiting the group.

What this means for positioning

Positioning is dependent on the group more than anything but there are some basic guidelines that should be followed under this group model.

First Hammer’s need to start combat in a position where they can deal damage right away. Full attacks are preferable but a little damage is preferable to none.

Second arms need to be in a position to support as much of the group as they can with their abilities. For some classes this means they need to be standing around 30 to 60 feet away from the farthest party member though some abilities may require even closer quarters than that.

Finally anvils need to be in a position where they can immediately begin controlling the enemy without wasted action economy. If this means sacrificing defense in initial rounds than this can often be worth it since the arm or sometimes the actions of the hammer can prevent an encounter from retaliating against a failed attempt or bad defense.

What this means for the 4 man group

This group make up may lead people to believe that a group only needs to be 3 people to cover all the necessary tasks a group needs to complete for an efficiently defeated encounter. In truth all this means is that 3 optimized people is the minimum amount of people needed to make such a group work. 4 or even 5 people allows much better breathing space in terms of optimization and roles and allows individual characters to split the responsibilities among themselves. Essentially this means classes can very easily switch roles depending on changing situations in order to take advantage of differing combat environments. Later I’ll show this in action when I put up an example group.

What this means for classes who can’t meet all the requirements.

What this means for classes who cannot meet all the requirements for the specific role a player wants to take is that they must learn to diversify their character to take on secondary or simply another primary role depending on the changing situation. Such an example might be the cleric whose primary role is the arm. Such a cleric can find themselves in a situation where resource preservation and ending the encounter quickly will be preferable to using another spell (i.e. another resource). This cleric would then take on the role of a secondary hammer doling out damage as the situation warrants utilizing the buffs he has already cast in order to increase his efficiency in that role. He may never match the group’s primary hammer’s damage but in providing extra damage rather than a wasteful buff he helped end the encounter more efficiently in a way his class is capable of.

Likewise a character such as a wizard may find themselves in a situation where their control will do more to hinder or will do nothing relevant to the encounter to make much difference. In this situation the wizard can easily switch into an arm role and provide buffs in place of control in order to help compensate for the inefficient control he is providing.

Otherwise a character who cannot meet the requirements nor be able to segue easily into a secondary task must compensate for this lack of capability in one or more areas by being exceptional in another. For example Magus’s are often expected to take on the hammer role. However on paper magus’s do not perform this role very well having to expend more than a couple of finite resources each combat in order to bring them on par with full bab classes like barbarian’s or fighters.

Therefore a magus will often make up for this lack of resource efficiency by “novaing” or bringing to bear as much damage as possible in a round in order to go above and beyond expectations effectively sparing resources from other characters by ending an encounter as quickly as possible allowing more resources efficient characters to stretch even farther into the adventuring day at the cost of later capability.

Another way some classes can compensate for lacking abilities in their chosen area of expertise is by sacrificing one or more aspects of their class to efficiently fulfill that role. Usually this is a secondary class aspect such as Channel Energy or skill points. This also applies when grabbing archetypes since they are usually chosen to exemplify one or more aspects of a class at the expense of another.

What this means for defense.

It means that defenses are not the responsibility of the individual but rather the responsibility of the group as a whole. Positioning and efficient control count as the first and best line of defense against most encounters. Personal defenses like resistances, saves, armor class and so forth are certainly considerations but do not function well considering the games lean towards offense. However personal defenses should not be ignore when building a character to do any of the listed tasks. By having a good personal defense you help the group conserve resources that would otherwise spent on your protection.

All this really means is, in the end it is best to work for superior positioning as a form of defense rather than dedicating the majority of a character to passive defenses such as AC or active situational defenses such as Crane Style. While these builds can stand on their own merit when it comes to resource conservation defenses still do not work towards the overall goal of defeating the encounter.

How this model identifies unbalanced groups

Groups without Hammers: Groups without hammers are exceedingly rare due to the ease of which many classes naturally fulfill that task. However this is usually noted by extended battles with supposedly easy encounters where more than a normal amount of resources are expended to control the enemy and buff the group sufficiently to quickly end an encounter without taking too much damage.

Groups without Anvils: Groups without anvils typically end up having an overabundance of hammers with one or two members playing the part of arms. These groups typically have fast, furious fights where the group takes a lot of damage. In these situations the arms often take on a reactive role providing healing and buffs as able while the hammers frantically try to end the encounter quickly. Depending on the nature of the hammers this often drains the arms very quickly of resources or forces the hammers into more and more defensive roles draining overall resources more as the group is not ending encounters efficiently enough.

Groups without Arms Perhaps the most forgiving of the three major imbalances. These groups usually spend more resources than necessary to finish an encounter. When they don’t they exist on a razor’s edge where an enemies passed save or a characters failed save can mean the difference between failure and victory. This is much worse in groups that lack the means to magically heal themselves and are thus forced into shorter adventuring days or burning wealth on tons of cure light wound wands.

Groups with an insufficiency in one of the three tasks.
Groups with an insufficiency usually show one of more symptoms of one of the above sorts of groups. In those cases the characters are assumed to be built competently and played well. However some cases are more difficult to diagnose than others. In some groups it has been poor optimization choice (the ranged rogue being a sole source of damage as an example). In other’s it’s been poor tactical decisions (hammers beating the anvils in initiative constantly and rushing in before proper control/buffs can be applied). For some groups it’s simply a blatant lack of cohesion.
These sorts of problems can only be talked through both in and out of characters. It makes sense for an adventuring group accustomed to dealing with constant danger to work out how to handle those dangers and make sure every party member is clear on what their main goals in combat should be in any given situation.

What an ideally balanced group looks like

So right now I want to provide an example of the group model I’ve described making use of the metaphor I’ve provided. Keep in mind this is merely an example and individual group needs may call for different sorts of characters to maintain the necessary balance. This group is meant to handle a variety of situations for a given level and helps illustrate how group balance is achievable. These are not super optimized characters and certain options I picked merely because they were interesting or fun sounding.

First up is the Wizard

Buffs Mcgreasy
Female Elf Wizard 4, Level 4, Init +14, HP 20/20, Speed
AC 13, Touch 13, Flat-footed 10, Fort +3, Ref +5, Will +5, Base Attack Bonus 2
(+3 Dex)
Abilities Str 10, Dex 16, Con 11, Int 21, Wis 10, Cha 7
Condition None
Spellbook:
0: All
1: Grease, Enlarge Person, Summon Monster 1, Shield, Mage Armor, Magic Missile, Snapdragon Fireworks, Unseen Servant, Dancing Lantern, Expeditious Excavation
2: Pyrotechnics, Glitterdust, Mirror Image, Web, Summon Monster 2, Fog Cloud

Primary Role: Anvil
Secondary Role: Arm

As the groups main anvil Buffs McGreasy here wants to go first thus much of her resources are dedicated to ensure that nothing short of a great roll by his opponents and a poor roll by herself will allow them to get the initiative on her.

Like most GOD wizards her primary goal is to control the enemy through a series of good battlefield control spells. Glitterdust will be her spell of choice in most situations that aren’t too close ranged since it effectively destroys an enemies effectiveness in ranged combat.
However if, for example, ranged combat is not a viable option than Buffs can make use of grease to knock enemies prone or slow down advances so her groups superior reach can more easily come into play or she can resort to buffs from her class abilities to increase the effectiveness of the group as a whole.

After our wizard we have the groups cleric.

Tusky McDancey
F NG Half Orc Evangelist 4, Level 4, Init +4, HP 29/29, Speed
AC 16, Touch 11, Flat-footed 15, Fort +7, Ref +3, Will +7, Base Attack Bonus 3
Reach +1 Glaive +8 (1d10+7, x3)
+1 Glaive (P.Attack) +7 (1d10+10, )
(+5 Armor, +1 Dex)
Abilities Str 18, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 7, Wis 15, Cha 13
Condition None

Primary Role: Arm
Secondary Role: Hammer

Tusky here is the groups cleric. Her evangelist archetype gives her bardic performance giving her an excellent buff ability right off the bat. Stacked with bless she gives an easy +2 to attack rolls and +1 to damage rolls that will stack with everything else the party has. If this is not enough she can also use her luck domain power to give rerolls to her groups hammers providing even better buff potential.

Once she has provided all the buffing necessary and combat gets too close for one of her hammers to operate effectively she can easily take the buffs granted and start swinging her big glaive around for very respectable damage and even provides a respectable screen with her reach weapon and combat reflexes that would allow her ranged hammers a bit more breathing room to work. Overall Tusky is very versatile and while being a hammer is a second job she can still perform it quite well in later rounds.

Next we have the groups bard.

Indianna Bardo
m NG Human Archaeologist Bard 4, Level 4, Init +3, HP 25/25, Speed
AC 18, Touch 13, Flat-footed 15, Fort +3, Ref +8, Will +6, Base Attack Bonus 3
+1 Short Bow +7 (1d6+2, )
Masterwork Whip +7 (1d3+2, )
(+5 Armor, +3 Dex)
Abilities Str 12, Dex 16, Con 12, Int 12, Wis 12, Cha 16
Condition None

Primary Role: Hammer
Secondary Role: Anvil

Indiana Bardo here is a very respectable ranged combatant. Easily pulling solid damage from round one and doing even more with the inclusion of Allegro and Arcane strike Indiana is excellent at dropping big damage down range.

Unfortunately he is not as competent at melee as Tusky and Grumpy so when combat gets too close he falls back to a controlling role using grease, glitterdust and combat maneuvers with his whip to befuddle and control encounters while Tusky and Grumpy work on the encounter with their polearms. It’s notable that even though Indiana is a bard his Archaeologist archetype changes his inspire courage so that his Archaeologists luck ability actually stacks with the clerics inspire courage. This is particularly notable since it allows the bard to get a greater benefit from the buffs being thrown around than what would normally be available.
Last but not least we have Grumpy McShootsfaces the dwarven ranger.

Grumpy McShootsfaces
M N Dwarf Ranger 4, Level 4, Init +3, HP 38/38, Speed
AC 19, Touch 12, Flat-footed 17, Fort +8, Ref +7, Will +3, Base Attack Bonus 4
Mw. Composite Longbow +7 (1d8+4, )
Mw. Comp. Long Bow (RS) +5/+5 (1d8+4, )
+1 Dwarven Longhammer +9 (2d6+7, x3)
+1 Breastplate (+7 Armor, +2 Dex)
Abilities Str 18, Dex 14, Con 16, Int 10, Wis 13, Cha 5
Condition None
Primary Role: Hammer

Grumpy McShootsfaces here is the groups dedicated hammer. His one and only concern in combat is to deal as much damage as possible in as short amount of time as possible. He accomplishes this by being a competent archer and a great melee specialist allowing him to full attack as soon as it comes to his initiative. By waiting for his cleric and wizard to go he effectively boosts his own chances of doing a lot more damage to easily hit opponents. With his animal companion to add even more damage Grumpy easily out DPR’s much of his group most of the time and many encounters at this level will be ended before too many resources are exhausted. I left favored enemy and favored terrains blank as these tend to be campaign dependent choices made by individual players. Since this group is meant to operate in nearly every campaign I can think of things like miscellaneous gear and choices like that I’ve left blank.

Some things that are worth noting about this group is that it does not ignore other aspects of the game. It still has very solid passive defenses with the groups dedicated hammer by far being the toughest cookie to crack ensuring that it will take quite a bit of effort to stop him from ending encounters. Likewise the group is still solid in the face and utility skills department. In terms of healing you have three characters who can cast healing spells and two of them even carry cure wands for out of combat healing.

Overall the group is meant to be solid and work cohesively under the model I have described. It’s easy to see a group of players coming together to make these characters (the prototypical elven wizard, the half orc “cheerleader” fun character, the Indiana jones inspired character, and the somewhat optimized dwarven ranger). Only one of the party members is completely married to his role (and even out of combat still has a number of things he can do) There is no singular build or ability that ties this group together. It is just a simple straightforward strategy that works.

IN CONCLUSION

Ultimately a lot of the information provided here will not produce any amazing epiphanies or sudden realizations about the nature of group cohesiveness and balance. Primarily because a lot of this knowledge has been gathered over a period of time from reading and rereading various guides, topics, debates, actual play experience and the testimonies of others that illustrate what works and what doesn’t. Simply put this model for group balance only includes what is known to work and nothing more. While a group’s actual needs in order to accomplish these tasks may differ this is fundamentally what is known to work. We know that putting out a lot of damage is important. We know that controlling the enemy and the battlefield is important and we know that providing the necessary support to keep this cycle going is important. Therefore a group needs to be able to do those three things. Many groups naturally gravitate towards this model without even realizing it. Saying something as simple as “we could really use a full caster” or “we could really use a cleric” says volumes about how a group or individual feels about group balance. The only real challenge in these cases is not only ensuring the the individuals are competent but also ensuring that the group is cohesive enough to play off of one another’s strengths and be a benefit to one another rather than a detriment.

A BRIEF FAQ:

Why the metaphor?
Ease of understanding. You can easily call them Controllers, Strikers, Leaders for all I care. The end result is still the same.

What did you use to build your example group?
20pt. buy. Standard wealth for level. Core races only.

Hey I have a 4th role/task/thing you missed and its called ______
Chances are you are describing an out of combat role or a combat role that is simply unnecessary. The model does not describe how you are doing it as much as what you are doing. And it usually falls under one of those three categories.

If a class cannot fulfill all of the requirements of a character dedicated to the task does that make it a bad class for that role?

No, it simply means a player will have to identify the insufficiencies and either work around them or otherwise be able to take on a secondary role when circumstances prevent them from performing their assigned task well. Some classes that are deemed bad to disappointing by players are usually because of the difficulty in making those classes fit well into a single task as well as other classes under a similar theme.

Hey the truths you illustrated are complete bunk because in my games (insert houserule/cornercase/oddgmstyle/headless clown here)

That's nice. If those truths don't apply to you then chances are you are doing something different than what pathfinder widely calls for. Nothing wrong with that but it doesn't make them less true for the overall game as written and typically played.

Hey my two handed fighter took Cornugon Smash. Does that make him an anvil because he debuffs people everytime he swings?

No. It makes him an incidental anvil. That is to say that in the course of doing his task he also happens to be acting in the capacity of another. You notice that some classes (like maguses and alchemists especially) do well in doing simultaneous tasks like this. Generally speaking while doing multiple roles at the same time is great and very action efficient it's still a good idea not to invest too much into this idea.


USEFUL LINKS:

The following are a number of links that make for useful reading when thinking about this model and how it might fit for your group.

Treantmonk’s Wizard Guide:  If you pay attention to how he explains things you’ll notice how he follows a very similar pattern to the model I presented.

A very good post by Mysterious Stranger: A very good post about basic party needs that classes need to fulfill.  You can be surprised by how much you can go without.

A Witch’s Guide to Shutting Down Enemies:  A solid guide for anyone who wants to build an anvil.  There is a lot of talk about initiative and initial rounds of combat which are the most important things for an anvil to consider.

BARBARIAN AM SMASH: A Practical Guide to Smashing Faces: Probably the single best hammer class in the game this entertaining guide describes a very solid method of playing a hammer that’s good in a large variety of situations.

Is Improved Initiative worth it for a smash your face type?:  The short answer is yes.  The long answer is contained within this thread.

DPR Olympics: A good topic to read for people interested in making solid hammers.  Lots of classes presented here and plenty to learn from.  You will almost never want nor need to go to the extremes presented in this thread but the subject matter is sound nonetheless.

Fueling the Forge: A continuation of this written a while back that discusses the stages of combat and the various factors that opposing groups attempt to get advantage in to defeat the opposition.  It focuses on the tactical rather than strategic side of combat.