The problem with this is, that if the party is ignoring a large part of the book, they are doing it wrong.
So I fail to see what you can gain from this, as I see it you have two possible outcomes:
A) Dealing with killing monsters through HP before they kill your tank is possible.
B) Dealing with killing monsters through HP before they kill your tank is impossible.
Either way you have not proven that it wouldn't be better to cast a spell to help your "tank".
So I fail to see the reason for doing this.
On this board you'll hear things like 'the only viable meleers in Core are the Cleric, Druid and Gish'. What I wanted to do was quantify if melee with any of those characters at all was viable. At level 10 I think the Druid is the only character that can come close to doing 40ish damage in melee (Wildshaped with their Animal Companion) even then it is not a guarantee. That means, in core you absolutely can not rely solely on melee, you can't rely on ranged weaponry, spell casting becomes essential for your group to function. Clerics are viable in melee with something like a Storm Giant only if they Blind or Paralyze it first, which is news to me, I always assumed that a properly buffed Cleric, with party support you take out anything without casting any spells on it.
I also wanted to create a sample metric to answer the question: is my build good enough? Currently their is only one way to test to see if your build can function at level: the same game test. This test pits your character against equal CR challenges, a build works if it can win about 50% of the challenges. I think that test is unduly harsh to melee classes, because I've seen high level melee groups deal with encounters quite easily with little or no magical support. While it suffers from a paucity of depth a little rubric like I've made up I think can show if you character can pull his weight in combat, before actually going into combat.
Good points.
Ok what I think you really need to optimise in this case is Armour Class IMO, it doesn't matter if you rarely hit the monster or if you deal little damage to it, if it cannot hit you, it cannot defeat you. Here is a build I used that held up indefinately against a Charnel hound before I knew much about Optimization.
Bear in mind, this was back in the days were I thought everything was about the hit point game, so it is focused around AC and DR.
Paladin 4/ Fighter 1/ Anointed Knight 1/ Knight Protector 7
Str 21 Dex 13 Con 18 Int 12 Wis 13 Cha 18
Equipment: Adamantine +3, Invulnerability Full plate, +1 Holy, Bane Evil Outsiders Long Sword, Tower Shield +3, Ring of Protection +2 x2 (this was back when we thought Deflection boni stacked), Dusty Rose Ioun Stone (+1 AC),
Feats (and special abilities):
Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave, Supreme Cleave, Mounted Combat, Ancestral Relic, Unbroken Flesh (DR 3/-), Weapon Focus (longsword), Improved resillience (+1 to DR)
All in all he had an AC of 34, and a DR of 7/- and 5/Magic, and 131 Hp, the Charnel hound could only hit him on 17+, and it would only deal an average of 2d8+7 damage, which he would be able to heal with his lay on hands.
Now I was probably pretty lucky, since the charnel hound could have switched to using less power attack, but then it probably wouldn't deal enough damage. Needless to say, after the hound had eaten our sorcerer (who was a blaster that cared little for defense, yes we were that new), our cleric had fled, and our fighter was eaten. I took it down through wailing at it for 10 or so rounds.
