optimizationpathfinder-1e
In Pathfinder, there isn't much in the way of battlefield control like there is in 4e. How can a character be built focusing on things like forced movement, zones, or generally making the enemies be where I want them to be fighting who I want them to fight?
This question came out of How Can A Monk Control a Battlefield, as a hypothetical alternative to improving our monk. Therefore, I'm mostly focused on lower levels.
Both Pathfinder and 3.5 before it lack 4e’s emphasis on positioning in combat. There are very, very few abilities that push or pull enemies, and basically all “zones” are magical in nature (though they are frequently very potent).
Battlefield control is typically done best by Wizards and Druids. Clerics can be pretty good at it too, and have a more martial bent. For Pathfinder-specific classes, the Summoner can be quite solid at it as well. Witches tend to be more about debuffing, targeting foes directly, and the Magus is largely about direct-damage.
The only real mundane options are Tripping, and Grappling.
I’m ignoring Bull Rush (Barbarians are just so obviously better, plus it just doesn’t help much in 3.PF), Disarm (locked gauntlets shut that down too hard), and Sunder (hard to do, destroys potentially-valuable loot) as tactics that aren’t worth even considering.
Tripping was a fairly solid tactic in 3.5, though it still paled in comparison to what magic could do. Pathfinder nerfed it drastically, but it’s still just about the best option available to mundane characters.
The typical trip-lockdown build focuses on attacks of opportunity and reach. The idea is to stand in the enemies’ way, with too large a threatened area to go around, so that they have to take an Attack of Opportunity from you. You then Trip on the Attack of Opportunity, and success means you get another attack to try for some damage too. Getting up on their next turn provokes another Attack of Opportunity (you cannot trip them again, however), and burns a Move action, so they either have to stay put or use their Standard to move, leaving them no actions with which to do something. This is a pretty effective tactic, so long as you can actually bar their way and succeed on the trip check.
Because Attacks of Opportunity are so important, Combat Reflexes (and reasonable Dex) is a must. Because you need to use tripping a lot, you obviously need Improved Trip, which usually means Combat Expertise (and Int 13). In 3.5, that would be enough. In Pathfinder, you also need Greater Trip, and you’ll burn a ton of Attacks of Opportunity (i.e. you’ll need a lot more Dex) since Greater Trip’s attack requires an AoO unlike 3.5-Improved Trip’s completely-free attack.
Grappling relies on Improved Grapple (and thus requires Improved Unarmed Strike), which are easy for a Monk, but is impossible to use on creatures more than two size categories larger than you and spellcasters can easily avoid it once they have 4th-level spells thanks to freedom of movement and dimension door. As a tactic, at best it only stops one enemy, and a lot of monsters are just going to be much better at it than you are. And at high levels, any Combat Manuever is very difficult to use against anyone, due to how CMB and CMD are calculated in Pathfinder.
Another thing you’ll have to get used to, coming from 4e, is that neither 3.5 nor Pathfinder are at all balanced, and magic dominates everything. The Monk class, in particular, is very weak (see “Optimizing a D&D 3.5 Monk” and “Does Pathfinder significantly fix known problems with the Monk class?” for more details). That fact basically sets the tenor of this entire answer.
Particularly Pathfinder. Unfortunately, a lot of Pathfinder’s changes, relative to 3.5, are geared towards disincentivizing multiclassing. Paizo felt that 3.5 encouraged far too much multiclassing. In 3.5, you could do, say, Fighter 2/Barbarian 2/Ranger 2/Horizon Walker 6 (the so-called “Horizon Tripper” build), which is pretty solid at mostly-mundane battlefield control, but Paizo really disliked that kind of crazy mish-mash of classes. Thus, you are strongly encouraged by the rules of Pathfinder to stay in one class, and most prestige classes are fairly poor. Ultimately, though, it’s difficult, even in 3.5, to start a magic career late. Pathfinder heightened that.
Basically, to sum up, to get good battlefield control you need magic, but multiclassing into a magical class late tends to work poorly. The Monk class is very poor, though, so it may be for the best, particularly if there aren’t a lot of levels wasted in Monk.
So multiclassing into Cleric now is not a great idea. It can work OK if you have only a few (say, 3 at the most) Monk levels, but literally every Monk level you have detracts from your overall power as a Cleric.
Instead, using just the Cleric class to make a “monkish” character tends to work much better than actually using the Monk class. Just take Improved Unarmed Strike, and go to town. The Monk’s Belt item can get you Wis to AC, too.
A mix is best done with only a single level of Monk; this grants you a couple of feats, Wis to AC without/before you can afford a Monk’s Belt, and some may feel better about calling themselves a “monk” if the Monk class is to be found on their character sheet. Ultimately, I’d strongly suggest not doing so. In 3.5, the Sacred Fist prestige class from Complete Divine makes a single level of Monk (for early Stunning Fist) a much more valuable option, but Pathfinder doesn’t have that.
Finally, note that Cleric, in particular, makes an excellent single-level dip for almost anyone. This costs more in Pathfinder than it did in 3.5, and 3.5 also had some notable options (Cloistered Cleric, divine feats, devotion feats especially Travel Devotion) that made it better. Still, you can get a lot of stuff from a single level by picking your Domains right, and the Channeling feature is often used as a requirement for things; some of those may be useful. So anyone could consider a level in Cleric. But so far as I know it does not directly help battlefield control.
Both of these classes are much better at the best form of mundane battlefield control, trip-lockdown, than is the Monk, as I’ll get to in a minute. Unfortunately, switching here is awkward; most of the reasons that Fighters or Barbarians are better come from more efficient use of ability scores, but you can only take advantage of that as a Monk/Fighter or Monk/Barbarian if you ignore some or all of your Monk features, which then begs the question of why you have them in the first place. Barbarian has the added problem of alignment conflict; you can change alignment, but it may be difficult to do so naturally and fluidly within the narrative.
Still, if she has no more than 4 Monk levels, she could benefit from these classes simply because they have full BAB. That means she only lost one BAB from taking Monk, and that will help with some of the problems she could face.
I’m not going into more detail because then this would turn into an answer about Fighter or Barbarian, not the Monk.
Nothing about “having levels in the Monk class” makes her particularly good at doing this. She has some ability at Combat Maneuvers, and Tripping is a fairly good way to achieve battlefield control,1 but the myriad problems of the Monk class itself prevent her from doing so as effectively as, say, a Barbarian or Fighter.
Alternatively, she could try Grappling. Monks do have some things that improve Grappling, at least so long as she takes the correct archetype, but Grappling itself is not a great tactic.
First, she is not good at handling the attention she would draw to herself as a battlefield controller. Battlefield control is a major problem for the enemy, and something they want to get rid of. When battlefield control is coming from a Barbarian or Fighter, that represents a somewhat difficult-to-remove threat. Those classes have lots of HP and high AC; she does not. Magic makes them suffer, and her high saves and touch AC provide some protection from that, but not enough.2 Meanwhile physical bruisers will force her to retreat, or die, quickly, while they’ll have a hard time contending with a Barbarian or Fighter.
The reasons for this are simple: she has a d8 HD, and cannot wear armor. She gets Wis to AC, but considering your typical heavy armor is giving between +6 and +9 AC before magic even enters into the equation, that’s a lot of Wisdom she’d need to keep up. Realistically, it’ll take both Dex and Wis, which is extremely expensive. Meanwhile, if she does have a lot of Wisdom (or a decent chunk of both Dex and Wis), then her Constitution suffers – and then her HP is looking very, very low compared to the d10 or d12 HD of Fighters and Barbarians, who, let’s not forget, also have good Constitution most of the time because they don’t need more than a little Dex, and don’t need Wis for much of anything.
She also suffers since no Monk weapon is particularly good at trip-lockdown. The gold standard here is the Guisarme, since it has Reach and Trip, which Monks don’t have proficiency in, and none of the Monk weapons have that combination of Reach and Trip unless she expends Exotic Weapon Proficiency in the Kusari-Gama or Double-chained Kama. But she’ll probably have to do that, because she really does need Reach to do trip-lockdown. In fact, she needs Reach and then she also needs to figure out a way to get size increases, if she can (Pathfinder makes this quite difficult compared to 3.5, sadly).
The alternative, Grapple, is better, but not great. Grapple doesn’t often get to use Reach, so she won’t be worse off in that regard, and Unarmed Strike’s damage is used for Grappling no matter what she does. Unfortunately, Grappling is just a weaker tactic all around.
Furthermore, her class features do not help her overly much with trip-lockdown-style battlefield control. Because of everyone else’s speed limits, it’s rare that she’ll need to actually use her Fast Movement to reposition. Abundant step is nice, but extremely limited. Since she desperately needs Reach, you aren’t using her Unarmed Strike damage. And so on and so forth.
Monk class features do improve Grappling. It’s just not a very good tactic.
Monks in Pathfinder still have medium BAB. While they do get to treat their BAB as full for the purposes of Flurry of Blows and Combat Maneuvers, they don’t get to do so for the purposes of feat requirements, most notably the BAB +6 requirement of Greater Trip. This is a very serious problem that will plague the Monk for her entire career.
There are a number of feats, Monk-specific or at least that a Monk can easily qualify for, that help out. mxyzplk lists several, for example, and there are more. These can definitely help. The problem is, and the reason I don’t list them out, is simply because they don’t do enough, or put another way, you don’t get enough feats. Feats are an extremely valuable resource, and you only get a limited number of them. Burning multiple feats to try to fix the various problems is playing a game of catch-up that you’ll never win.
It’s probably worth doing if you’re sticking it out as a Monk, but ultimately it’s not enough to make my advice anything other than “minimize the amount of Monk in your game.”
As already pointed out, she has small HD and a strong need for Wisdom that other classes lack. She needs at least 13 Int for Combat Expertise, so you cannot get extra ability points by dumping that. Tripping relies on Strength, but she can’t ignore Dex either because her Wis isn’t actually going to make up for your lack of armor. As a result, her Trip checks are lower, her HP is dramatically less, and her armored AC is very poor. This makes her very bad at controlling the battlefield and protecting, well, anything. It actually is a major reason why the Monk class is one of the weakest in 3.PF.
This affects Grappling as much as it does Trip. She’ll possibly dump Dex since you lose it while Grappling anyway, and she doesn’t need Combat Expertise so she doesn’t need so much Int, but that still leaves a very difficult split between Str, Con, and Wis. Compared to a Barbarian who can use just Str and Con, and gets bonuses to those, and has much larger HD to begin with... that doesn’t work out very well.
1 For a mundane character, anyway. Compared to the magical battlefield control that’s available, it’s pretty pathetic.
2 Note that smart spellcasters can do things that entirely ignore your saves or touch AC. Even if it’s just summoning up something bigger or nastier, or casting spells on themselves or their allies to make them bigger and nastier.
A casual google search uncovered several discussions about this, the most relevant apparently being this build. I am copying it here, with explanations.
Paizo BLASTER CASTER build:
Goal: Pile on the hurty-hurt with direct damage spells. You don't need battlefield control if the enemy is dead.
Level 1: Take Sorceror: Crossblooded Orc/Draconic, Human, take Varisian Tattoo, take Trait: magical Lineage (pick spell), Reactionary (+2 Init)
Then take Wizard/Evoker -Admixture Specialist for your remaining levels. Why Admixture? Because you can change the element of any of your blasting spells on the fly to get around elemental resistances/immunities.
If you want to superspecialize outside of Evoker, take Sin Magic, lose two schools (Conjuration/Abjuration), gain yet another spell slot per level of raw power.
Key Feats: Intensify Spell, Empower Spell, Quicken Spell, Spell Perfection, Spell Penetration, Spell Specialization, Greater Spell Specialization.
End result: Crossblooded sorc orc/dragon bloodline 1, Wiz/19, Admixture Evocation specialist. Note: Can use Sin Magic for more slots. Sorcerer level allows use of spell devices from denied schools (Conj/Abjuration). Magical Lineage Trait allows Intensify for free on chosen spell. Spell Perfection allows free Quicken at higher levels.
Play Hints:
Take Burning Hands or Magic Missile as a Specialized Spell early. Burning Hands will deal more damage, Magic Missile has better long-term utility and keeps you out of danger. Every other level, you can change your specialized spell.
Add Greater Spell Specialization at level 7 or 9. Why? You can then memorize utility spells, and trash them for your blaster spell.
Change your specialized spell up to Scorching Ray or Fireball when you can, depending on campaign, typically at 5 or 7.
At level 12 or higher, change it to Fire Snake. Use Admixture specializing to change the element on the fly.
Use Fire Snake until higher levels. Why? High damage base and level 5 spell still leaves room for metamagic, esp Quicken.
Mechanics behind Choices: Orc blooded, Draconic: +1 to all damage spells, +1 to element of choice, retasked by Admixture = +2 dmg/die on blasting spells.
Feats
Intensify Spell: Increases caster level damage cap +5 to apply to a specific spell. Burning hands goes up to 10d4+20. Magic Missile goes to 7d4+14. Fireball to 15d6+30, Fire Snake to 20d6+40.
Empower Spell: Increase dmg by 50%.
Quicken Spell: Hit enemy with two spells/rd.
Spell Specialization: +2 to caster level with a specific spell. Helps bring the damage earlier and faster.
Varisian Tattoo: +1 to Caster level with a specific school (Evo). This buys off your sorc level.
Greater Spell Specialization: Sacrifice spells to power your chosen blaster spell. Means you can memorize utility spells freely.
Spell Perfection: Doubles fixed feat bonuses, apply one metamagic for free. An Empowered/Intensified spell with Magical Lineage is still its original spell slot. SPell Penetration doubles to +4. Varisian Tattoo to +2. Spell Specialization to +4. Effectively, you've got +10 on Spell Resistance rolls, and are casting 'Your spell' at 5 levels higher then your own.
Top End Damage: 30d6 +60 from Fire Snake, empowered, Intensified, average 165 dmg, save 1/2, level 5 slot. Quicken for another hit, 5th level slot, 20d6 + 40dmg, avg 165. = 330 blasting dmg in one round, save for 1/2. If you've a Rod of Maximize, you can lift this to 215 base damage.
Base level 5 spell slot is 20d6+40 dmg, 165 dmg.
By Level
At level 1, your Burning Hands should be 2d4+4 (avg 9)
At level 2, its unchanged.
At level 3, Spell Specialization kicks in. 5d4+10 (22.5). This tops it unless you Intensify it.
At 4th, 6d4+12 (27), Intensified BH.
At 5th, Intensified BH, 7d4+14 (31.5).
At 6th, you can shift Spec to Scorching Ray. 2x 4d6+8 (44). Your Fireball is 5d6+10 as well, or 7d6+14 if specced.
At 7th, 6d6+12 fireball, or 8d6+18 if spec. An Empowered, Intensified Burning Hands, if still the spec spell, is 13.5d4+27 (about 60).
8th - Empowered Scorching Ray, 2 x 6d6+12. E/I BH is 15d6+30 (74, max)
9th - Intensified, Specialized Fireball is 11d6+22 (51).
10th - Firesnake. E/Spec Fireball is 15d6+30 (74). Emp Scorching Rays are 3 x 6d6+12, or 18d6+36 (99 dmg). You can now Quicken a Burning Hands or Magic Missile as kicker damage in a round, although you've few slots.
12th - E/I/Spec Fireball is 21d6+42 (115) damage. You can now Quicken a 12d6+24 Scorching Ray.
14th level - A Specialized Firesnake now exceeds/equals an intensified Fireball. Fireball caps at 22.5d6+ 45 (123~) damage. An Empowered Firesnake is 24d6+48 (132) damage. You can now Quicken a 10d6+20 Fireball. Intensified, Empowered Scorching Ray tops out at 24d6+48 (132 dmg)
15th level - Spell Perfection. You can now add a Meta for Free. This will be Quicken or Empower. Intensified might be free if Magical Lineage applies to it. Caster level buffs for spec spell exceed +5, so top out at 20d6 dmg at 15th level. You will miss Spell Resistance rolls against CR appropriate enemies on a 1. Assuming Firesnake, you can now cast a Quickened Intensified Firesnake for 20d6+40 (110) damage out of a 5th level slot, and an Empowered Firesnake out of the same slot for 30d6+60 (165) damage. Using a 7th level slot, you can Empower both.
16th+ - Damage remains the same, higher level spell slots are open for use of other Metas or control spells.
Conceivably you could use Disintegrate to get a higher damage total, but the delay isn't worth it, and you'd lose the Varisian tattoo bonus.
If your DM allows you Twin Spell from 3.5, you can very, very easily clock in at 495 raw dmg/round. IF he allows Arcane Thesis, god help your enemies.
Best Answer
Spells, Psionics, and Magic Crap
In 3.PF, magic is the undisputed king of battlefield control and debuffs. From the old classics (the Wall line of spells, Grease, etc) to spells like solid fog, resilient sphere, and forcecage, spellcasters of most stripes excel at locking down sections of the battlefield and defining the engagement on their terms. Mass debuffs like sound burst or color spray can take groups of enemies out of the fight temporarily or permanently.
Forced movement is more rare and the only examples I can really think of are all from 3.5, not Pathfinder (though your DM might allow you to port them - check the Spell Compendium). Hindering movement, on the other hand, is everywhere. Look at spells like slow or transmute rock to mud, and mass lockdowns like black tentacles.
And the non-magical stuff...
Is sadly, for the most part, garbage. Attacks of opportunity, trips, and bull rushes are 100% of the control options available to non-casting characters and their utility is sadly limited. Attacks of opportunity don't do enough to discourage creatures to stay out of your space; trips require large amounts of investment and taper off rapidly due to the average size of monstrous enemies increasing rapidly. Bull rushes are less useful than trips to begin with and suffer from the same flaw of enemy scaling, with the added pain that you're giving up damage to do them. Avoid it if you can, but if someone's really dedicated they can pick up a reach weapon, some method of boosting their size, and Combat Reflexes to get the start of a melee 'control' build. Just understand that it's not really going to happen in a game that emphasizes non-humanoid enemies.
Aggro
3.PF has no aggro mechanic, and the one feat to that effect (Antagonize) is aggressively and insultingly poor and should not be considered for control use under any circumstances. However, you can approach this problem from the other side through the use of spells like charm monster, suggestion, dominate person, and the like - they convert a monster into an ally for a nice length of time, making it fight for you rather than against you. You can also attempt to make a given target more attractive by having that person attack a monster's weaknesses - for example, a fire elemental may preferentially assault someone doing cold damage (against which it is weak). However, this approach has no hard mechanical backing and is dependent on DM interpretation.
Low-Level Specific Tricks
Having just read that your question is interested in some low-level options, here's a few to help you through levels 1-5 or so.
Items - Tanglefoot bags and nets are the big famous low-level options that can lock down individual opponents. If your DM lets you port in 3.5 content, check out marbles too for a hilarious way to deny sections of the battlefield to your enemies on the cheap. Melee characters interested in control will want to look into a weapon that grants them reach.
Spells - Color Spray, Grease, Cause Fear, Daze, Sleep, and Charm Person are control staples in first level spells. Look for spells that can lock down or get rid of large groups of enemies at once (see Sound Burst), or that can impede mobility (like Entangle).
Feats - Welcome to the only time period in which Attacks of Opportunity are a threat all on their own. Check out Combat Reflexes as a feat, and consider investing in tripping if the game is going to stay low-level, though this is the most feat-intensive option (requiring Combat Expertise, Combat Reflexes, and Improved Trip at a bare minimum).