Level 3, Arcanist, Brawler, Warpriest and Slayer

They're off to free the lord of a town which has been taken over by the lackies of the Dark Lord Devilheart. On the way they stop at the inn, and in the middle of the night, two soldiers of Devilheart come to extort money from the innkeeper. The PCs rush down, the Slayer, who is playing as a bit of a skill-monkey, fails his stealth to sneak up on them during the extorting, but is disguised as a limping old man and they don't take him seriously until he brings up a bastard sword and nat-20's his intimidate check causing one to dive under a table. They fight, and the Brawler and Slayer quickly murder the two thugs.

They go into the village, and actually mostly skip over it which surprised me. Soon arriving at the fort, they see that it has a moat and drawbridge up. The Slayer jumps the moat from an angle no one was looking, stealths and climbs his way up the wall, waits for an opportunity, and does a whole ton of sneaky stuff to open the drawbridge from the other side, including spending his hero point to pull off a stealth kill on the guard near the lock. This was a very enjoyable part for him, but some lackluster GMing on my part caused confusion, so it took too long and others were left out for it, but overall a cool scene.

We then hit the main meat of the session, a fight against five guards (Human Fighter 1/Warrior 1, 19 AC, +6 to-hit for 1d8+3 with Longswords) in the entry hallway. The Slayer wasn't optimized for combat, and fought off one of these on a stairwell. The brawler, warpriest, and arcanist took the other four. The brawler eat some terrible luck, and the arcanist shot a lot of magic missiles, (and a Color Spray requiring the Warpriest to hero point into a reroll). The warpriest smacked some stuff with his hammer, and did a little bit less damage than the arcanist, fair bit more behind if you count the enemy who fell the colour spray and CDG from the arcanist. They won, with one guard fleeing on 1 hit point to warn the rest of the bad guys. The warpriest channeled a bit and they searched the area, finding a note to be sent to Devilheart about what had been going on, and warning of a strong guard in the dungeon where the lord was. Low on spells and channels, the group retreated, making sure to break the drawbridge's locking mechanism so it'd stay open on the way out.

We ended here

Brawler liked the class, despite the bad luck: "Versatile as hell (Even though I didn't get to use most of it) while still having a weakness (Will saves), being able to swap maneuver feats mid-combat is by far the best thing about it. Plus it's an option for a non-lawful monk that isn't the martial artist." Had a lot of fun, I'm not interested in punching people, but this seems to do it right for those who do.

Arcanist also had a good time: "I enjoyed it, I like the feel of the casting for the Arcanist, but I definitely look forward to the changes you mentioned - Choosing what to prepare, but then casting from those options in any combo feels really good" The changes I mentioned were those announced on this board. Definitely seems it was useful to be able to swap everything into Magic Missiles since it fit this combat.

Slayer played at 18 int after racial +2, so much more skill-monkey than I imagined the class, but perhaps enjoyed things the most. Good to see the class versatile enough that it worked: "As for the Slayer, I liked it for the most part. Really liked being able to use Martial weapons as a rogue-ish character, but it feels like it needs a little more Rogue and a little less Ranger, the sneak attack stuff feels shoehorned in. Absolutely adore the idea of the Favored Target."

Warpriest was recruited and made their character last minute, they were able to enjoy the game decently due to players being cool people to game with, but felt the class was lacking, " Warpriest, IMO, is not a class I look forward to having. Cleric already does everything it does, and mainly better. I'd recommend either upping the HD or the BaB to compensate. " ""I'm not ever gonna cast 9th level, but I can't get fighter feats either" "the class has NO SKILL points" "You essentially ditch out a huge wad of spellcasting for minimal gains." "I might not be an optmized with it." It felt like all the options, HD, BaB, Casting Progression, skill points, class features like channeling, were just a step below what he was satisfied with. Talking to him, we agreed it felt like a hamstrung Inquisitor (same BaB, same HD, same spell progression with same casting stat, same saves, Inquisitor has 4 more skill points per level, Inquisitor uses Wis for class features while Warpriest wants Cha for channels, making it more MAD, and between Bane and Judgement the Inquisitor seems on par with Warpriest at hitting things. We couldn't find what the Warpriest did notably better or differently.)