You know, for all this talk of super-optimization with the cleric archers and the what not, I've never really played a game where it's been terribly apparent Mage> Fighter.
I will describe for you a 3.0 Ravenloft campaign I played in. The game went from...I believe it was from 4 to 11. In that time, it became increasingly clear that the fighters simply didn't exist. At all. I helped create the characters through the method of asking them "What do you want your character to do?" and then walking them through how to make their character good at whatever they chose. Characters:
1. Cleric. The GM allowed me to use Spikes, so I just played a Spikes-using cleric instead of going all-out on Cleric archer. I used various buffs to improve myself(The GM was OK with Persistent spell), but usually spent a half dozen or more slots on the other PCs. The character's name was Saeval.
2. A human archer named Skitts. He was a Fighter/Order of the Bow Initiate.
3. Human Paladin/Templar. His name was Thayer. He used a sword and shield, never summoned a horse. He never summoned the horse for flavor reasons, not mechanical reasons(Horses in Ravenloft are evil).
4. Evil human wizard.
5. K'Thunk, Half-Orc Rogue 1/Bard/Deepwood Sniper. He started out casting spells, but quickly stopped casting anything but buffs. He multiclassed into Deepwood Sniper the moment he fufilled the prereqs(I believe that's what the Rogue level was for)
6. Craal, Human Ranger/Fighter/Devoted Defender. I helped him create his character and advance it.
7. Half-Elf Rogue named Pai. Used dual daggers and sneak attack.
8. For the final couple of sessions before the game disintegrated, we had a wizard who I helped pick out spells. He fully understood why save or dies kicked all sorts of ass, among other things.
We were usually down at leastone character and Craal didn't last long. Regardless, I can extract many lessons frmo this group.
1. Bards > Fighters. Really. Initially, K'Thunk felt weak because the groupthink was that all NPCs had great saves(They didn't, they were just lucky in the first few combats) and so spells that forced Saves were weak. And then K'Thunk noticed I was using GMW on myself and other PCs, sometimes including K'Thunk. So he started casting it on his bow and arrows. Keep in mind this is 3.0 rules where that stacked. Even with me spending slots buffing up other PCs(Particularly Skitts) in order to hold myself back and improve them, he ridiculously outclassed them with JUST GMW.
2. If the Paladin and the human fighter were fighting a guy, they'd identical. The Fighter sometimes got cleaves, the paladin sometimes smited, but most of the time it was just "I roll attack". I convinced the fighter to take up a PrC by pointing out he hadn't done anything but stand there and roll attacks for several combats. He took DD so he could protect the fragile Rogue. I like how that worked out.
3. Clerics > All. I had incredible saves due to PrC's and spells. This was kind of a big deal. Ravenloft forced a lot of 'horror' checks and such, most of which were based on Willpower. I got a LOT of mileage out of sometimes being the only PC who wasn't running away from the BBEG in fear. Incidentally, the Paladin's Fear abilities and saves actually mattered in Ravenloft. I, like, NOTICED them! Part of that was because I was casting Eagle's Splendor on him every morning, but the other part was him being very good about reminding us of the bonus he gave.
4. Wizards depend on competant play. The player of the Wizard had gambled this would be a very short game and blew over 90% of his startign wealth on 2nd level spells. He shot himself in the foot when the game then lasted a lot longer. He never really used his spells to their maximum capacity, vastly preferring to just cast attack spells. He tried to betray the group and failed(we didn't realize it at the time). We later killed him when it become obvious he was trying to screw us.
5. Rogues > Fighters, most of the time. Rogues are actually pretty good for new players. They quickly pick up what flanking is and why they should love it. They eventually understand the other ways, but they usually fall back to flanking for Sneak Attack even when other ways are available. They also like feeling really useful, such as when they say "Ok! I'll disarm the trap!" The're also not overloaded with abilities. While I did have to remind him about Evasion once, he remembered it after that because the idea that he could sort of 'dodge magic' really appealed to him. Unfortunately, this was RAVENLOFT. Most of our opposition was undead. This put a crimp in the rogue's style.
But most damningly was that we killed a 20th level fighter at level 10 with...5 PCs I believe. Maybe 6. No shenanigans on our part, just us killing him in a straight-up fight. The 20th level fighter was a mounted combat character that wielded a magic scythe. The PCs were trapped in a pocket plane. If you ran more than...200 feet in any direction, you just looped back to the other side. The GM's plan was for him to run around doing a full attack every round and just killing people. So my PC walked up to him, successfully survived one full attack, and then the wizard cast a spell on the horse to freeze it. Hold Monster, I believe. So I CDG'd his horse and cut the fighter's balls off in the process. He killed my char on his next action, but the rest of the PCs caught on that he was gimped and spread out, flinging arrows and spells at him from every angle. It took a little while, but he was eventually dropped.
