Building a powerful Medium

[cavernshark]

I'm really trying hard to come up with a way that the Medium isn't a giant trap of a class. I really liked the idea of a character who was possessed by some sort of spirit, so I naturally gravitated to Medium and Spiritualist once I got the Occult Adventures book. I really didn't want to add to the usual glut of pets you see in PFS scenarios, so that pushed me towards the Medium. For clarification, I am looking at this as if the Medium caps at level 12, so that does change things a bit.

Let's look at the Medium without a spirit:
d8 HD
3/4 BAB
average (4+ skills) with a decent class list
simple weapons,
light armor,
medium armor.
knacks
4th level caster progression

So far it's a pretty vanilla start - there isn't much there that isn't in any other 3/4 BAB class. However, I really can't get over how limiting each of the spirits is given how little they actually grant you toward your chosen role. I'd understand this if you were meant to swap between them during the day, but you're pretty much locked in to one a day (the role-playing requirements of finding the right location aside). It's also mechanically infeasible to distribute your wealth across the different roles and pick up the gear you'd need to be effective in each, not to mention picking feats that are useful in more than one.

My impressions of each spirit are below:

Spoiler:

Archmage: Spirit boost to spell damage suggests you should be a blaster, but with only 6th level casting you're going to run out of spells incredibly fast. Don't count on falling back into melee when that happens though since you're rocking sweet penalties in melee, combat, and constitution. I can see taking one, maybe two of these taboos.

Champion: Probably one of the only ones that might be possible. The spirit bonus is strong and the penalties aren't crazy terrible (though unnecessarily losing CL is a bit of a string). The problem comes down to proficiencies. This is the only spirit that gets martial weapon proficiency, so if you ever plan to use a different spirit, this won't be the one to take. Worse, rather than give you combat feats up front, you get 1 (or 2 if you go relic channeler) exotic weapon proficiencies which you also can't build on or get feats for. I can see one, maybe two of these taboos if you can realistically expect not to lose your heirloom weapon.

Guardian: Suffers from a lot of the same problems as the Champion, namely I'm not going to invest in heavy armor and a shield that I can't use most of the time unless I only ever plan to use this spirit. The bonuses here are all defensive and up until level 12 only help you. Two taboos are reasonable, one seems like a good way to lose yourself to the spirit.

Hierophant: Another decent contender, but still tough. As with the archmage, you'll get some more spells and this time you can actually take some utility spells since you'll also have channel energy (with good synergy on your casting stat) and all the cure/inflict spells. Unfortunately, since you won't always have channel, you probably won't invest feats in making that any good either. The inability to do lethal damage is a bit of a downer, but I suppose there's room for Enforcer and Intimidate to try and influence your foes to convert to your spirit's religion (thus avoiding the Influence penalty hit to Cha checks). Two reasonable taboos, one that's a little tougher but not impossible.

Marshall: Some interesting potential, given the synergy with Cha and really getting the most out of taboos. I also like that you can boon from another spirit (grabbing Champion seems very viable). Better yet, you can be a reasonable team buffer if everyone in your party participates - as long as they let you be in charge. One of the taboos is reasonable, two are so so depending on the group or the mission.

Trickster: I don't have anything really good to say about this one.
Skills and SA with some pretty obnoxious taboos and a so so spirit boon and a great way to get yourself killed when a healer tries to help you and misses the touch attack.

What I end up with is that the only real synergy that might exist is between the Champion, Marshall, and Hierophant is focusing on Str, Cha, and Con. You'll need to invest in non-metal armor, probably wield a simple weapon like a longspear. You may or may not augment with an exotic weapon when you go Champion, but you won't invest any feats in it since you won't have access to it all the time. In most of those forms you'll end up with 1 or 2 taboos, giving you between 4-6 Spirit Surges a day, leaving a small buffer for when the party forces you to do something your spirit hates. If your team seems cooperative, you'll go Marshall and rock extra taboos for more spirit surges to dole out, using the Champions bonus to keep your melee up a bit. Otherwise you're going to go full beat stick in the Champion, or Hierophant if they need support.

All of these roles just end up feeling like some kind of weird bard/druid/barbarian hybrid that really just falls short of something workable. You end up jumping through so many hoops and almost compromising with yourself to even be the thing the spirit wants you to be. The only other way around this I can see is just picking a single spirit and sticking with it exclusively, which ultimately feels a little boring, self-defeating, and one-note.

To be clear, I really want to make this work - I just cannot for the life of me figure out something that might be fun to actually play to take advantage of the ability to entertain multiple roles. Am I missing something?

[Taliesin Hoyle]

It is rare to medium well.

[cavernshark]

Taliesin Hoyle wrote:

It is rare to medium well.

I suppose I deserved that.

[Bandw2]

honestly i've seen too many medium puns for the class not be worth it even with how much it sucks.

[nicholas storm]

The champion spirit is very strong. A human with racial heritage (halfling) to take the FCB of halfling can get + 5 hit/+11 damage with all weapons at level 12 (+5 hit and damage spirit bonus with spirit focus and +6 seance boon).

I was thinking of using the exotic proficiency to get shuriken proficiency.

[Wolfspirit]

Unfortunately, I can't help with the original question... I've read the Medium a couple of times and couldn't wrap my head around it.

However..

What do you call a Halfling Relic Channeler that's escaped from jail?:

A small Medium at large.

[chbgraphicarts]

The Medium is actually not that bad.

It's a little lackluster at being any one role, sure, but that's what you get when you're playing a Magical Substitute Teacher Class.

That being said, the Champion is really the one saving grace for the class while the other 5 Spirits are generally situationally-useful at best.

The Champion is actually quite strong, especially for a 3/4 BAB class, and looks like it'll be the default mode for most people.

I'd like to think the lukewarm reception of the Medium will serve as a cautionary tale to the Devs, however, and they'll rethink the direction they were taking with the Vigilante, considering that people are already saying the Vigilante and Medium are both trying to be too much at the same time, and the Vigilante is far WORSE than the Medium at that, since you're permanently stuck in just one mode with the Vigilante.

[TheNightmareOne]

Like any class, the point of playing a medium is to choose a specialty, not generalize. Bards choose melee or ranged to be their primary mode of combat, and choose how intensely they focus on spellcasting and skills. Mediums are little different. A medium is obliged to choose at character creation whether he will focus primarily on melee combat or ranged, and on spellcasting or no. It's implausible to expect the class to be able to generalize as broadly as it is capable: you would not expect a bard to be a primary caster AND a tank AND a ranged threat (although it is possible to build it as such), you build it to be a melee team buffer or a ranged enchanter or whatever.

If you mean to be a melee combatant, prioritize Strength and Dexterity and focus on the physical legends. Pick feats for combat. If you intend to cover spellcasting holes, stack your Charisma, choose Archmage and Heirophant legends, and stay away from melee. Choose two legends to use most of the time, count on the static bonuses they grant rather than spirit surging your way through every encounter (taboos only take effect if you want them to, and you only start incurring influence penalties at 3 influence or more) and otherwise "play by the rules."

*shrugs* Some of the legends are pretty weak, I'll grant, and you'll never have the potency of a full caster, but the trade is fair to my eye. Even if you focus on melee, with primarily combat feats, you can then switch to the heirophant legend whenever your group's got downtime and in need of a healer or trickster when they need a skillmonkey for a day. Even if you focus on casting, with feats and ability investment toward that end, you can pull a quick switch to champion to become a capable melee combatant for a day (armed with a reach weapon, ideally), or pick marshal to make the primary combatants better at their job.

Medium's greatest strength is the raw flexibility of their legends. Their spirit bonuses are broadly focused, and if they're careful they'll never trigger their influence penalty. That alone is an unexpectedly strong ability. And the seance boon they grant their comrades should not be underestimated- a medium in the same party as another caster can make a healer's job far easier or make a blaster caster more potent just by convincing them to talk to the spirits with them.

[cavernshark]

TheNightmareOne wrote:

Like any class, the point of playing a medium is to choose a specialty, not generalize. Bards choose melee or ranged to be their primary mode of combat, and choose how intensely they focus on spellcasting and skills. Mediums are little different. A medium is obliged to choose at character creation whether he will focus primarily on melee combat or ranged, and on spellcasting or no. It's implausible to expect the class to be able to generalize as broadly as it is capable: you would not expect a bard to be a primary caster AND a tank AND a ranged threat (although it is possible to build it as such), you build it to be a melee team buffer or a ranged enchanter or whatever.

If you mean to be a melee combatant, prioritize Strength and Dexterity and focus on the physical legends. Pick feats for combat. If you intend to cover spellcasting holes, stack your Charisma, choose Archmage and Heirophant legends, and stay away from melee. Choose two legends to use most of the time, count on the static bonuses they grant rather than spirit surging your way through every encounter (taboos only take effect if you want them to, and you only start incurring influence penalties at 3 influence or more) and otherwise "play by the rules."

*shrugs* Some of the legends are pretty weak, I'll grant, and you'll never have the potency of a full caster, but the trade is fair to my eye. Even if you focus on melee, with primarily combat feats, you can then switch to the heirophant legend whenever your group's got downtime and in need of a healer or trickster when they need a skillmonkey for a day. Even if you focus on casting, with feats and ability investment toward that end, you can pull a quick switch to champion to become a capable melee combatant for a day (armed with a reach weapon, ideally), or pick marshal to make the primary combatants better at their job.

Medium's greatest strength is the raw flexibility of their legends. Their spirit bonuses are broadly focused, and if they're careful they'll never trigger their...

I see where you're coming from, but if the most reasonable way to play a medium is to pick a spirit and focus on it then wouldn't it have made more sense for the Medium to pick a single base spirit to specialize in and then gain additional spirits as they level (not unlike the Shaman)?

Don't get me wrong, I definitely see the strength in the static bonuses, especially if your party participates in the seance. The issue I have is that with the exception of the Champion and Marshall, I can't really see the bonus affecting more than one person on a given day and when it does it means you're hitting a redundancy. To use your example, if I've got a healer running around, turning myself into a healer and giving that other healer a boost now means we have two full healers. If the party needed a healer, then my boost isn't helping anyone but me most of the time.

The only other way I could see any of this making sense (short of specializing in a single spirit and devoting all your feats to making it strong -- like being a channel focused hierophant healer) was if you could swap in other spirits temporarily during the adventure day in a reasonable amount of time.

[Terminalmancer]

In Society play or with a very small party, I think you pick Charisma and one physical stat, probably dex, and play the "let's fill in the holes" game. Go ranged or maybe two-weapon fighting with the Champion spirit as your default, but you can go Trickster early on if the party is missing certain skills. After a few levels, I think the spellcasting becomes viable as well, particularly when you can gain influence to cast any spell on the list.

I don't think the medium specializes well, but Champion seems to be the way to go if you have a stable party and really want to be good at one particular thing only.

[TheNightmareOne]

cavernshark wrote:

I see where you're coming from, but if the most reasonable way to play a medium is to pick a spirit and focus on it then wouldn't it have made more sense for the Medium to pick a single base spirit to specialize in and then gain additional spirits as they level (not unlike the Shaman)?

You'd have to ask the developers what their intent was. As-is, all I can offer is advice.

cavernshark wrote:

Don't get me wrong, I definitely see the strength in the static bonuses, especially if your party participates in the seance. The issue I have is that with the exception of the Champion and Marshall, I can't really see the bonus affecting more than one person on a given day and when it does it means you're hitting a redundancy. To use your example, if I've got a healer running around, turning myself into a healer and giving that other healer a boost now means we have two full healers. If the party needed a healer, then my boost isn't helping anyone but me most of the time.

So leave the healing to the healer, choose heirophant anyway, and pick utility or cleric blasting spells for divine surge. I see your point (and indeed, two blaster casters in a party would be quite redundant) but the ability to choose new spells for Archmage Arcana and Divine Surge every day cannot be underestimated, so the flexibility might be worth it even if it means only one person in the group is benefiting from the seance boon. If anything, the underwhelming one is Guardian. +1 CMD isn't exactly the stuff of legend, although the other abilities are a little better.

cavernshark wrote:

The only other way I could see any of this making sense (short of specializing in a single spirit and devoting all your feats to making it strong -- like being a channel focused hierophant healer) was if you could swap in other spirits temporarily during the adventure day in a reasonable amount of time.

Perhaps that's a nice idea for an archetype? Not sure what they'd sacrifice though. I like the medium as-is; makes it a challenge to play it well.

[Never7ever]

Pretty sure you're looking for spirit dancer.

Issue with spirit dancer is that it straight up doesn't work on certain skills. (Ah i'll switch to trickster to gain bonuses to diplomacy! oh wait a check takes how long? Well guess i'll run out of rounds before that...)

But it can obtain a reasonable pool of spirit dancer rounds by about level 5, allowing it to do things like, channel champion during a fight, switch to heriophant afterwards to heal, then switch to archmage to quickly cast a spell that is needed, etc etc.

The major issue is probably that you can commit feats to gaining more rounds of spirit dancing i guess.

[Markov Spiked Chain]

I think the big issue here is that the two casting spirits are noticeably underpowered. Bardic casting without only one spell known of your highest level and not much to compensate. They're giving up a great group buff for boons that: a) don't fill a good role (spell DPS and in combat healing,) and b) don't help most other party members. So I think you mostly have to write these two off for any sort of day-to-day adventuring unless you're really hard up for mediocre in combat healing. Hierophant is handy for clearing conditions during downtime.

Trickster is situational, but works fine for "we need skill X." I just used it last night at the end of a PFS session to nab the Heal skill and help someone with a disease. Unfortunately, the boon doesn't quite work (if only it was 1 skill rank instead of a +1) and so isn't great for the group. I don't think I'd ever choose to use the sneak attack stuff over Champion for combat stuff, unless I really thought we needed Disable Device or some other skill for the adventure we were heading into.

So you're down to 3 for day-to-day adventuring:

Champion is great as a melee combatant: Full BAB equivalent, significant damage buff (+4 at 4th,) surge to hit a couple more times a day, and a group buff that a lot of people will get good mileage out of. The martial/exotic weapon proficiency can be hard to take advantage of without investing heavily in two weapons. I was planning on just weak channeling for two more surges until 6th. By then, you can buy a Bladed Belt or something similar to give you a flexible weapon type.

Marshal looks fun. Martial, 3/4BaB with +2 damage isn't horrible. d6+(1-6) surges will mean a lot of misses hitting and failed saves succeeding across the party. I think you channel away the lvl 6 power until it's a move action. Then you're giving everyone +3/+3 (or +4/+4) for a move action, which is pretty solid. If you've got a lot of melee damage dealers and things look crowded, Marshal seems like a fine choice.

I'm not sure about Guardian. Heavy Armor proficiency is sketchy without buying a second set of (expensive) armor, shield proficiency is trivial to overcome with MW, and their boon sucks. But that AC buff and DR definitely do what it says on the tin and make you hard to kill. I think you're usually picking Champion unless your group is all casters. You could definitely build around this with something like Bodyguard, if you want to be a tank.

[Markov Spiked Chain]

TheTerminalOne, you're still only giving one person a buff from your boon, instead of the whole party like Marshal or Champion.

All in all, I really wish they'd playtested this, it doesn't quite hold together. I also really wish there was more feat support. One feat doesn't cut it. Something like Spirit Talker where you can switch your spirit for an hour would be awesome.

I'm also pretty grumpy at the way the seance locations got written, particularly for Kami Medium. Having unreliable class features when you're supposed to be a flexible class is dumb.

[Yebng]

I'm currently playing a Half-Orc Reanimated Medium/Bloodrager, obviously focusing on the champion build and I really like it. I'm confused by one thing however, the influence penalty to caster level, does that effect all spellcasting classes or just his caster level as a medium?

[Ventnor]

I think that if you want to play a casting-focused Medium, then Heighten Spell is going to be a pretty important feat for you to get.

[TheNightmareOne]

Yebng: Proooooobably all caster levels. Given that the benefits are so all-encompassing, it makes logical sense for the penalties to be as well.

[Typelouder]

Can you offset the penalty to CL by taking Magical Knack?
EDIT: Just saw that you cant benefit from caster level increase.

[chbgraphicarts]

Markov Spiked Chain wrote:

All in all, I really wish they'd playtested this, it doesn't quite hold together. I also really wish there was more feat support. One feat doesn't cut it. Something like Spirit Talker where you can switch your spirit for an hour would be awesome.

It at least holds together better than the original Medium. The planned 52-54 Spirits was... gargantuan, to say the least, and created a gigantic class that turned people off by its shear size.

It may have been more useful and wide-reaching for effects if the Spirits were pared down to 15 Spirits covering 2 Stats each, rather than just 1. Those options, though, may come later - Horror Adventures, with its emphasis on things like the Undead, may be the place where we get a whole new set of Spirits that make the Medium a powerhouse of usefulness.

---

But, you're right - it isn't as nice and cohesive a Class as most.

The Medium, as-is, has a bit of the "all abilities aiming everywhere, mostly at fluff" dilemma that the Monk knows all too well. And as a whole, that leaves the Medium with not many perennially-useful bits, even WITH Spirits active.

The Unchained Rogue has abilities going all over, as well, but they're at least generally useful - trap detection & removal; protection against flat-footed & sneak attack effects; extra bonuses against Surprise attacks and vs Traps; Dex to attack and damage; unique tricks with skills.

Unfortunately, most of the Medium's abilities are far-more situational: detection & removal of Haunts is just-as or more pick-and-choose applicable in a campaign than the Rogue's Trapfinding; Location Channel is kinda like Speak with Dead, but again is sorta up to DM discretion and situational even then.

Contact Other Plane and Astral Projection are REALLY nice abilities, but unfortunately may come on-line far too late.

If a Medium kept the Haunt-based effect, expanded to 15 Spirits, had Lesser Astral Projection for minutes/level earlier (at like lv5), and had a Channel-like ability to combat Undead other than his Spirits, then I think it would have proven a significantly-more-useful class.

Maybe there'll be a big Archetype in Horror Adventures that does exactly that, and it'll be the Invulnerable Rager for the Medium, but we'll have to wait and see.

[Markov Spiked Chain]

I can imagine the 50+ spirit version being even more troubled, yeah. Too bad they didn't figure that out before sending it for playtest.

I'm okay with the hodgepodge of other class abilities like Channel Haunt, but the core abilities (Spirit abilities, boons, bonus, surge, and seance) should make sense and make for an interesting, balance build that bring something to the table.

I can't imagine anyone ever even made a level 10 Archmage or Heirophant focused Medium and said "I do X better than <similar class>" or "I bring this cool thing to the table." I feel like one session of playing a level 10 Medium (or getting some playtest feedback) would have helped a lot here. At least a Medium other than Champion. I don't think an archetype can fix this without whole hog re-writes of some of the spirits. Maybe if they're very focused and stack with each other to basically re-write the class?

[Bloodrealm]

Markov Spiked Chain wrote:

I can imagine the 50+ spirit version being even more troubled, yeah. Too bad they didn't figure that out before sending it for playtest.

I'm okay with the hodgepodge of other class abilities like Channel Haunt, but the core abilities (Spirit abilities, boons, bonus, surge, and seance) should make sense and make for an interesting, balance build that bring something to the table.

I can't imagine anyone ever even made a level 10 Archmage or Heirophant focused Medium and said "I do X better than <similar class>" or "I bring this cool thing to the table." I feel like one session of playing a level 10 Medium (or getting some playtest feedback) would have helped a lot here. At least a Medium other than Champion. I don't think an archetype can fix this without whole hog re-writes of some of the spirits. Maybe if they're very focused and stack with each other to basically re-write the class?

There can be additional spirits written for the class as pseudo-archetype options that you can mix and match as long as they don't both replace the same spirit. For example, one that gives you some Kineticist abilities or Magus abilities (like Spell Combat and/or Spellstrike) that replaces the Archmage spirit (either one could be the go-to choice for the combat-focused Medium when he wants magic or wants to take advantage of an elemental vulnerability common to the area). You could have your different spirits be able to draw on what you specialize in in different ways (for example, the aforementioned martial-focused Medium could replace the Hierophant with a spirit more Paladin- or Inquisitor-inspired than Cleric-inspired). They could even write different spirits themed off of different monsters (an Aboleth spirit focusing on mind-affecting effects and especially charming/domination, a Cyclops spirit focusing on divination effects possibly akin to the Sensate Fighter, etc.) or different energy types or elements (Fire, Cold, Electricity, Acid, Sonic, Force, Positive, and Negative?).

[Natan Linggod 327]

If you can't handle a mere 50 spirits, how do you handle the number of spells wizards, druids and clerics get?

I liked the playtest Medium. Was so much like the old Binder that I loved playing back in 3.5.

The new Medium is alright, except for the favoured location rubbish, and I'll enjoy playing it.

[Woodoodoo]

So I was going to make a champion kami medium. But I guess that is impossible because I would have to find a STORM every day!
Also could the kami medium theoretically fly on his shikigami?

[Casual Viking]

Ventnor wrote:

I think that if you want to play a casting-focused Medium, then Heighten Spell is going to be a pretty important feat for you to get.

Why is that?

[Deighton Thrane]

I have to say I didn't think much of the class til I built a natural weapon medium using the champion legend that has 5 primary natural attacks, possibly 2 secondary natural attacks if you plan it right, the ability to cast (haste as a second level spell) in full plate, and can forgo an attack to move and full attack. At level 11 DPR of 92.9 vs CR appropriate AC, plus everyone who participates in the morning seance gets a +2 to damage rolls.

That's not too bad, plus you still get some pretty awesome spells like the previously mentioned 2nd level Haste. I don't think I'd build around adventuring with any other spirit, and the favored locations really needs to be fixed, or elaborated on for things like PFS, but it doesn't look like a bad class to me anymore. It just doesn't seem to live up to the promise of being able to take on many roles and be good at them all though.

[Ventnor]

Casual Viking wrote:

Ventnor wrote:

I think that if you want to play a casting-focused Medium, then Heighten Spell is going to be a pretty important feat for you to get.

Why is that?

Two reasons:

1.) It allows you to use your save-or-suck spells with higher DCs.

2.) You normally would only have 1 spell you could cast with your 5th and 6th level slots.

I suppose grabbing some other kinds of metamagic would also work, but Heighten just stood out to me because of reason 1, mainly.

[Casual Viking]

You can always just cast your lower-level spells from the higher spell slots. You lose a point or two of DC, but you retain your move action and you haven't set a feat on fire. Actual useful metamagic feats are a better investment.

[Ventnor]

Casual Viking wrote:

You can always just cast your lower-level spells from the higher spell slots. You lose a point or two of DC, but you retain your move action and you haven't set a feat on fire. Actual useful metamagic feats are a better investment.

Can you do that? I thought that you could only cast spells with slots the same level as the spell you are casting.

[Wolfspirit]

Deighton Thrane wrote:

I have to say I didn't think much of the class til I built a natural weapon medium using the champion legend that has 5 primary natural attacks, possibly 2 secondary natural attacks if you plan it right, the ability to cast (haste as a second level spell) in full plate, and can forgo an attack to move and full attack. At level 11 DPR of 92.9 vs CR appropriate AC, plus everyone who participates in the morning seance gets a +2 to damage rolls.

Where are you getting 5 natural attacks from? 3 from racial (Tengu?) and two from others?

[Exguardi]

The Medium seems to be unplayable except in certain campaign situations due to the location clause. I "get" the flavor behind it, but I think its an unnecessarily harsh restriction on the class's abilities. I feel that the mechanism would have been more interesting if it functioned more like the 3.5 Binder, where only certain powerful but niche spirits needed a very specific location to bind them in.

And even then you could still use a feat to bypass said location clause.

Instead, if the Medium could, say, gain an errata granting the explicit ability to spend an hour to create a makeshift shrine for the Hierophant or construct a training dummy for a Champion spirit, etc etc, that would address the issue for me. Less extreme than having to find a library or a battleground.

It seems that if I wanted to play it in PFS or a non-suitable campaign setting, I'd have to take Relic Channeler every time to ensure access to my spirits.

Alternatively I would say at least the Champion can be bound in "places of violence", so at least after the first day of adventuring you're guaranteed to be able to bind a spirit!

[Markov Spiked Chain]

Yeah, the spirit location issues are also a huge drawback, especially for the Kami Medium (STORMS? WTF!)

I started a thread over here specifically to discuss this issue for PFS (where table variation and GM discretion is the biggest problem.) But I don't think it survived the Gencon weekend return.

I thought Relic Channeler would be a good way to handle this in PFS. But when you sit down to make one, Relic Channeler gives up a *lot* of your flexibility. Heirophant is no backup condition removal, because you only get two spells per level. Trickster isn't "we need Profession(Chandler) for a week", it's more like 3 skill points a level you can't use unless you give up your other powers. Etc. Champion's not too rough, and Marshal doesn't get hurt. But most of the versatility that was supposed to be the class's hallmark is gone.

[Chess Pwn]

Mark I believe commented that those locations are just options and that all spirits can be found all over, or something like that.

[Markov Spiked Chain]

I've been thinking about this the last couple of day in the context of the Storyteller Archetype. My initial reaction was that it's horrible. Give up Spirit Bonus and Shared Seance for bardic music? When you're thinking about Champion spirit, that's a horrible tradeoff. Marshal and Guardian less so, but still not worth it. Marshal in particular hurts because the Intermediate power is unusable and you can't "weak channel" it away.

But with Archmage, it compares fairly well to Bard. Similar casting (although you lose bard early access spells and heals), fewer skills and skill buffs (although you cand go Trickster to get some skills back,) similar scaling. You get some flexibility, can add a d6 to 2 saves/attacks/skill checks a day and a spell damage buff. Hierophant similarly comes out pretty solid, especially after channel at 6th.

Basically, some Spirits are built around their Bonus and Seance Boons, and some could care less. Its seems out of whack that a Heirophant can drop their Bonus (Wis checks and Will saves) without noticing, while a Champion would be crippled Marshal without Shared Seance loses a lot (at least at lower levels) while a Heirophant wouldn't notice at all.

[Markov Spiked Chain]

ChessPwn, I think you mean this response?

That basically just says the locations are examples, and the GM can allow other locations that match their theme. It's still completely GMs discretion which class abilities you're allowed to use.

Kami Medium Champion spirit is really the poster child here, with only one narrow example that's not even a location ("in the midst of storms".) It's a potentially very cool build that no-one will risk playing without special discussions with their GM (and thus not in PFS at all.)

[Deighton Thrane]

Wolfspirit wrote:

Deighton Thrane wrote:

I have to say I didn't think much of the class til I built a natural weapon medium using the champion legend that has 5 primary natural attacks, possibly 2 secondary natural attacks if you plan it right, the ability to cast (haste as a second level spell) in full plate, and can forgo an attack to move and full attack. At level 11 DPR of 92.9 vs CR appropriate AC, plus everyone who participates in the morning seance gets a +2 to damage rolls.

Where are you getting 5 natural attacks from? 3 from racial (Tengu?) and two from others?

I went tiefling for a strength build with claws, though it wouldn't be hard to make a dex based medium with tengus, catfolk or ratfolk, or strength or dex for changelings, or any character willing to take 2 levels of ranger.

So a tiefling with the claws alternate racial ability channeling the Champion spirit. The level 11 build has 2 claws (racial), 1 claw (Sudden Attack), Bite (Ring of Rat Fangs), Gore (Helm of the Mammoth Lords), 2 hooves (monstrous extremities). Getting the hooves usually requires that you channel the archmage the day before adventuring, but if you can do so, cast the spell twice before you go to sleep with a lesser rod of extend, then after waking up and performing your seance, you still have ~7 hours of secondary natural attacks.

It's an item heavy build, but all of them are affordable at mid level. Also it doesn't do great against DR, but there's plenty of room to budget for special material weapons to 2 hand when need arises.

[Shiniryuu]

Just to point something out:

cavernshark wrote:

What I end up with is that the only real synergy that might exist is between the Champion, Marshall, and Hierophant is focusing on Str, Cha, and Con. You'll need to invest in non-metal armor, probably wield a simple weapon like a longspear. You may or may not augment with an exotic weapon when you go Champion, but you won't invest any feats in it since you won't have access to it all the time. In most of those forms you'll end up with 1 or 2 taboos, giving you between 4-6 Spirit Surges a day, leaving a small buffer for when the party forces you to do something your spirit hates. If your team seems cooperative, you'll go Marshall and rock extra taboos for more spirit surges to dole out, using the Champions bonus to keep your melee up a bit. Otherwise you're going to go full beat stick in the Champion, or Hierophant if they need support.

At most, a medium will have one taboo.

Occult Adventures wrote:

Taboo (Ex): At 2nd level, during his daily seance, a medium can accept a taboo in order to appease his spirit. Each spirit lists example taboos, and the GM may allow additional taboos as well. Accepting a taboo allows the medium to use his spirit surge ability twice without incurring influence. The medium can select only a single taboo. The medium is not magically prevented from breaking his taboo...

[Meraki]

I've been playing a medium for awhile now (she's currently 14th level) and I've been enjoying the class quite a bit. It's got some really interesting flavor and some neat tricks to it. I haven't focused on any one spirit; I've been using most of them relatively equally (although the guardian hasn't seen TOO much use as of yet).

The medium seems to me to be a sort of jack-of-all trades class. You're not going to be a better blaster than the wizard, but the perk is in the versatility. Know that your party is going to be fighting undead one day? Channel the hierophant. If you're trying to sneak in somewhere? Trickster. And especially at higher levels, some of the spirit bonuses you can are pretty nice. The Legendary Influence and Spirit Focus feats are good additions as well. It's not the MOST powerful class, but it's certainly not a bad one.

I agree that the location requirements could be onerous if your GM isn't willing to be flexible on it. (I went with relic channeler so that's not an issue for me.) The other thing I wish is that they gave you more influence points to work with. At early levels, you can really only spend one point before you start taking penalities, before things like propitiation come into play. Though the taboos do help.

[David knott 242]

Another way that you can escape the favored location requirements is by going with the Spirit Dancer archetype. You are more flexible than a standard or Relic Channeler Medium but you have less stamina (as your ability to use any spirit related powers requires you to use up rounds of "Spirit Dance") and have to be more careful about incurring influence (as each point of influence is worth four rounds of "Spirit Dance").

[Firebug]

Since this was already resurrected from the dead anyway...

Deighton Thrane wrote:

So a tiefling with the claws alternate racial ability channeling the Champion spirit. The level 11 build has 2 claws (racial), 1 claw (Sudden Attack), Bite (Ring of Rat Fangs), Gore (Helm of the Mammoth Lords), 2 hooves (monstrous extremities). Getting the hooves usually requires that you channel the archmage the day before adventuring, but if you can do so, cast the spell twice before you go to sleep with a lesser rod of extend, then after waking up and performing your seance, you still have ~7 hours of secondary natural attacks.

Monstrous Extremities doesn't work the way you think it does.

Monstrous Extremities wrote:

Monstrous Extremities: School transmutation (polymorph);Level bloodrager 3, cleric 3, sorcerer/wizard 3, witch 4

Transmutation(Polymorph) wrote:

While under the effects of a polymorph spell, you lose all extraordinary and supernatural abilities that depend on your original form (such as keen senses, scent, and darkvision), as well as any natural attacks and movement types possessed by your original form. You also lose any class features that depend upon form, but those that allow you to add features (such as sorcerers that can grow claws) still function.

Not only does this turn off your claws from Tiefling, but also your darkvision and energy resistance.

Monstrous Extremities should not have been a polymorph spell.

Transmutation(Polymorph) wrote:

Each polymorph spell allows you to assume the form of a creature of a specific type, granting you a number of bonuses to your ability scores and a bonus to your natural armor.

Because there is no creature specified in Monstrous Extremities... do you even have a move speed anymore? Hands to wear the ring? Head to wear the helm? You may just end up with 3 hoof attacks and no primaries.

[Zedorland]

I have found the spirit dancer to be very flexible, and with spirit focus and the new spirit bonus improving medium armour from armour master handbook, you can get the spirit bonuses very high up there.

I have a halfling medium, weapon finesse and the champion spirit give me plenty to attack and damage, and the halfling fcb increases damage as well.

With the spirit dancer, ic an prebuff at the start of the day with some long duration buffs, extended through rod of lesser extend, then armor up and roll out with the champion for substantial accuracy, damage and fort save improvements. the class has a good will save base, which is great, and the dex based build makes up for the reflex save.

Then in skills, i can pop a round as the archmage or thief for knowledge (i flavor it as "asking the spirits"). Oh, and if i want to play more support, using the level 2 haste with the archmage from level 7 is great.

Overall, i think the spirit dancer is the strongest style of medium, but it can be heinously complex to run, as you have to make all decisions for all 6 spirits at the start of the day. Great fun and great flavor, one of my favorite 3/4 BAB combat builds.