**WARNING: Spoilers contained below. I will not be taking the effort to conceal anything via spoiler tag**
Taea, the Transmutation Occultist
Character sheet
DISCLAIMER: I only had a couple hours from the time I found that this playtest had started to the start of the game, so the possibility of errors of play exist here as I basically had two hours to learn the class and roll up the character.
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The party consisted of (from what I can tell) a cavalier, warpriest, mesmeric, one other unknown, and myself. It was a Tier 1-2 game.
After getting our briefing and doing introductions, we proceeded towards our investigations into the forest. Before long, we came to the lumberer's camp and found it to be under siege by diseased wolves. Unfortunately for the sake of the playtest, (but fortunately for us) the fight was over fairly quickly between the charging mounted cavalier and the warpriest pressing forward to hold the front line. I stayed back while one of my allies cast Enlarge Person on me. This fight was pretty much over by the time the spell resolved and I could move. Silly me realized that I could've used a swift action to use Sudden Speed to get into the fight and contribute after it was over. I chalk it up to still learning how to play this class.
After discovering that these creatures burst with some sort of infectious disease, inoculating two of our own, we befriend a lumberjack named Vanick who explains to us what had happened recently to lead the camp to become infected. He explained of a grove that he found that had druids cultivating it. He offered to take us there in exchange for taking him to see an herbalist at Falcon's Hollow. The party agreed and we were off.
When we finally arrived, our party attempted to parlay with the cultivators in hopes of coming to an amicable resolution. Instead, they took out slings and began pelting us with rocks. Initiative. (We temporarily lost our cavalier presumably to connectivity issues just before this fight and did not rejoin until afterwards.) Our party began to return fire with ranged attacks. I had cast my own Enlarge Person and used Sudden Speed to drastically close the gap all the way to the back of the map. Eventhough I'm wearing medium armor, a movement speed 50 is remarkably handy. Unfortunately I contracted the disease moving through the flower patch because of my increased size. Still, my increased threatened range stopped a cultist or two from using anymore ranged attacks, which allowed the rest of the party to quickly close the gap. The remaining cultists were quickly subdued by the rest of the party.
We kept one alive for interrogation and learned that Falcon's Hollow was going to be targeted tonight. Our group made haste for the town but got distracted in the herbalist's shop, getting wrapped up in finding a cure instead of focusing on securing the safety of the town. Our combined efforts to assist Laurel in finding a cure proved successful. However, the villians of Urgathoa were already spreading the disease in town. Our party sprang into action once more, again, I used Sudden Speed to double move around the cart and next to a cultist, all while helping scare off some kids whom the cultists were trying to infect by giving them the deadly flowers. The cavalier and warpriest quickly closed the gap with me while the rest of the party provided ranged support in the form of artillery fire. Again, we interrogated one of them and learned that they had a map of a grove that pointed to where we needed to go. Eventhough it was now very late in the evening, we decided to press on before the cultists could escape.
We arrived at approximately 3am with time to prepare to crash the cultists party. For better or worse, I won initiative for the round and boldly charged ahead again using Sudden Speed, intending to draw agro. My plan worked too well as one of the cultists scored a critial to my face with a dagger, maximizing the damage output to 12 points, just enough to drop me in my diseased state to -1. Our warpriest quickly caught up however and graciously provided me with a cure spell that brought me up to 9hp. The cavalier was busy running down any cultists bold enough to fight while the mesmeric and archer (class unknown) provided artillery fire, which saved me from a cultist intent on finishing me off. My trouble wasn't over as a plague zombie moved next to me on its turn. I went total defense but it didn't save me from still being hit for 7 more damage. My allies made that zombie go pop and I got slimed but was already diseased. After some jockeying for position, we finally cornered the head priestess and was able to subdue her, thus recovering the basin for the Society and provided the cure to all the inflicted fey.
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I built my Occultist to be somewhat effective as a low-level tank, which for the most part worked. In retrospect, taking an Abjuration implement over a second Transmutation implement for Warding Shield would've been a noteworthy investment. Overall, I felt effective for what I was trying to do at 1st level, which was to be an imposing presence on the battlefield.
I was actually in this game as a Terrakineticist, level 1. Tsriel's summary is pretty spot on; I'll add for my own part that, starting with a 16 DEX and no Precise Shot, I had to roll very high to hit anything (fortunately I did, saving Taea from a coup de grace on the part of that dagger wielding cultist). I'll likely rebuild to swap Toughness for Precise Shot in my next game.
As the author of this scenario some 5 years ago, seeing it recapped in this manner, for this purpose, made me ever so happy. Please play your characters through other scenarios I wrote. I want to read how psychic magic works in those, too!
If you're willing to run some online, I'd be more than happy to continue playtesting this Occultist. ~_^
I was actually in this game as a Terrakineticist, level 1. Tsriel's summary is pretty spot on; I'll add for my own part that, starting with a 16 DEX and no Precise Shot, I had to roll very high to hit anything (fortunately I did, saving Taea from a coup de grace on the part of that dagger wielding cultist). I'll likely rebuild to swap Toughness for Precise Shot in my next game.
And a timely save it was! I just hope we didn't annoy the GM of that game too much for suddenly springing these playtest classes onto the table that he had no idea about.
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I'll likely rebuild to swap Toughness for Precise Shot in my next game.
I don't think you can as precise shot states:
You can shoot or throw ranged weapons at an opponent engaged in melee without taking the standard –4 penalty on your attack roll.
And kineticists strike is not a weapon
edit: it was explained i the other thread that you actually can