Animal Companions suck a lot of resources to stay competitive and clog up your frontlines where well-built melee toons outshine them by midgame. I use one, but no more.
If your best argument for Fighters being good is that the Fighter gets his own share of loot to spend on staying relevant, you're really not making a good argument for Fighters. May as well give the Fighter's share of loot to the animal companion. Problem solved.
If the animal companion is getting outperformed, you're probably not buffing and gearing it properly. Stick some armor on it, buff its attack and natural armor (magic fang & barkskin & magic vestment too if your party has it), give it magic items to boost physical stats, and give it haste in combat, maybe throw on some Bard buffs, and it will do large amounts of damage per turn while the Fighter You can also make companions that can soak up damage and have high armor. If you're going to have a Fighter you'd be better off with another Druid, Sylvan Sorcerer, Cleric, Sacred Huntmaster Inquisitor, or even just a Ranger. Throw a Boon Companion feat on top and the level penalty vanishes. Clerics and Inquisitors can also cast Divine Favor on their animal companions and Sylvan Sorcerers can cast Transformation and shapeshifting spells on them.
Summons also clog up the battlefield and do little damage of their own. They're a useful strategic option against mobs that aren't easily tanked on high difficulties. Otherwise they take up slots that often have better uses.
IIRC the game nerfs the better summon options and maybe you don't have celestial summons go on smiting sprees to inflict their hit dice in bonus damage on every attack, but it's easy to throw a Bard into the mix for Inspire Courage and maybe throw a Good Hope on top. Summons usually crush encounters, done right.
Most of your foes in the game are not people so are not easily controlled, and the most challenging foes who are are not readily mind-controlled by a Bard on high difficulties do to high Will saves.
Spell Focus, Greater Spell Focus, make your enemies shaken (can be automatic with Dirge of Doom), and it's like you got +4 to your spell DC.
Dominate spells are full round actions which are not trivial to pull off under duress.
And Bards are mages who can wear armor, put on shields, and have high dexterity scores. And that's not counting the fact that a Bard can cast Greater Invisibility at the same level it can cast Dominate Person. Not to mention they have spells like Blur, Displacement, and Mirror Image.
The only spell a Magus has that a Fighter doesn't is Mirror Image and there are ways for a Fighter to make up for that. In either case your best action economy is attacking and it takes a Magus all their spells to compete with what a Fighter brings naturally. Obv late game Sword Saint does busted things
Blur, displacement. It also gets shit like Web, Glitterdust, Slow, and Stinking Cloud if you just want to disable enemies into the ground. And it has buffs like Haste and Greater Invisibility because fuck you. And that's outside the fact that Spell Combat and spellstrike mean that you can just mash shocking grasp for more damage each round. But the AI is shit at managing this kind of thing so I'm not surprised the Magus feels underwhelming.
Fast Bombs is interesting in that it is OP for that fight but also quickly runs through your resources. On a meta-KM level I just stick to slow bombs so I can use them strategically each fight to minimize rest.
Yeah you can do that too, but brutalizing bosses is a very easy use of Alchemists. Owing to what are either bugs or deliberate design choices, fast bombs are not treated as a regular full attack, but in PnP you can just throw Two-weapon Fighting and Rapid Shot on top for ridiculous damage.
As for Divinations, are you another butthurt PnPer who doesn't even like the PnP?
That's a whole different level.
I was talking about Paizo being fail at design and you responded, so you started a PnP conversation. But sure, we can make it about the computer game.
Also, Amiri's damage is neat but that's a lucky crit (incidentally, sneak attack does not multiply on a crit in PnP) and it's easier to just have an Alchemist nuke it. It's also easier to just have a Vivisectionist for your damage dealer because the best martial damage dealers also tend to be spellcasters in that funny Pathfinder way.
