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I'm going for wax works activation by three attacks from half-orc bite and the two claws from the bear. Seancing Bear and the beating (evil) allows me to trance into wax works (evil) for the ability. Though you do need to wait until level 5 and it is a bit of a set up.

The trance daily limit is put in place because each spirit you have has its own separate influence limit. Otherwise you would essentially have 3 trances each day per spirit you know.

Ran the first two levels of emerald spire on Saturday with my half-orc Bear/Beating medium. Again, my build ended up being very similar to Serisans, though I grabbed the Iron Hide feat instead of power attack and my stats are 16/14/14/12/8/14 (I'm just lazy about typing the whole sheet up). I was playing with a dwarf brawler, bard, sorcerer, barbarian, and bloodrager/ alchemist for level 2.

The first level was pretty standard run up, swing, and kill goblins. Expecting that the enemies would be pretty low health, I didn't think the Beating's séance bonus would be of much use. The triple natural attacks from the Bear (claw, claw, orc bite) was semi useful, but the cramped layout of the dungeon made using the reach of the long spear more effective for getting in range. I didn't trance at all because there was no room to get large and the beating is not better than my claws.

The second level was more interesting as the multiple attacks came up more often allowing me to do some decent damage. Spiders climbing up walls/ deep inside pits made the long spear an MVP on this floor as well. The group séance bonus on breaking objects was surprisingly very useful as we had to break out of webs that the spiders shot at us. I also took liberty on leaving my mark in the dungeon by breaking down every door we came across. The larger layout of this floor opened up the possibility of trancing bear to grow large, but the benefits did not seem worth the loss of a whole round.

Overall, I enjoyed being the high AC (20) multiple natural attack medium, though trancing never felt like a good option in the middle of combat throughout the two levels. At second level I picked up The Vision thinking that an out of combat spirit would be more useful for a trance, but the moment never really presented itself. Without ever trancing, again the influence mechanic never really came into play. Third level is pretty underwhelming as I never tranced at all during these scenarios, so we'll see if an additional trance per day is helpful. Now that I have the group séance bonus and enemies will have enough health to live through multiple hits, the option to use the Bear or Beating everyday is an interesting decision. I'm still just waiting for 5th level when I can have some unique options and abilities available to me.

Last weekend I played a level 1 half-orc medium with a build almost exactly the same as Serisan's in his post, but I had Int: 12, Wis: 8, and Cha: 14 and one level lower. I kept The Beating up the whole day with the ability to trance The Bear.

The rest of the party was all level one Pal, water Kineticist, Sorc, and Fighter.

First fight was against 3 dire rats and pretty much one great axe swing brought down a rat while the other two were dispatched by the rest of the party. The rats didn't have enough health for the beating's damage bonus to matter.

Second mission had us delivering medicine to the orphanage. High charisma and trained bluff let me talk our way into checking out the house and then another bluff kept the head mistress from raising concern over what we were doing.

Third mission was the puzzle room which didn't really use anyone's abilities.

Fourth mission had us tasked with taking out a devil in a chelaxian woman's house. We had time before opening the door to allow me to trance into The Bear, so I had my double claw bite combo ready. The DR on the demon would have made Big Sky useful to trance into if I started off in The Bear. That said, I hit with two claws and bite allowing me to get the +2 damage from The Beating on the successive hits. It would have been much more damage if not for the DR, but the bonus damage from The Beating is pretty much the same as the DR reduction that Big Sky would have offered. This fight was also over in one round as we all connected with our attacks.

Final fight was in a tight alley and I've heard this can be a potential TPK. The enemy barbarian started it off by knocking our fighter unconscious. Our kineticist slicked the barb's weapon causing him to drop it. The enemy caster went next and color sprayed our party as well as the enemy barb. The only ones affected were the barb and our paladin taking them out of the fight. The rest of the fight was me poking over the fighter's body with my long spear while the kineticist blasted from behind. The enemy cleric started channeling and brought everyone low. Our sorc climbed up the roof to color spray them promptly ending the fight. I didn't really do much this fight besides act as a wall for the kineticist and sorc.

Overall thoughts

I felt like I was a capable mêlée figther mostly due to the orc's great axe proficiency, and the extra natural attack from the bite is a nice combo with the Bear's claws. I could only really see trancing when we had time to prepare for a fight as a full round action to grow claws didn't seem to be that big of an improvement over my normal great axe + bite. The séance bonus from the beating was only really relevant with my claws as the great axe killed things in one shot at this level. I really like this class for PFS as I can discuss with the party beforehand whether the flanking bonus from the beating would be better than the ability to go large in relation to the rest of the party's capabilities.

In regards to the concerns of capabilities and options in combat, I felt it was the exact same as my level two paladin. Trance 1x/day is equivalent to smite once a day, though less powerful. Otherwise its just swinging weapons all day like most other mêlée characters would at this level.

Building the character didn't seem too difficult as most of the spirits did not seem very useful especially for a level 1 character. This narrowed the list down to basically strength or dex with three spirits each to choose from. I wish I had access to the medium related feats as I couldn't get weapon focus or power attack without a BAB at level 1.

The influence limit was a non issue as I was mainly planning to grow the claws from The Bear and thus never worried about going over 1 influence with a single spirit. I do wish the trance started out as a standard action, so I could at least get in position to full attack the following turn. These early fights are over too quickly to lose a whole round. More trancing per day would allow me to think about taking more utility spirits which would make it more interesting.

I plan on taking this character through the Emerald Spire, so I should be able to level it up to the more interesting stage where I can dual vessel. Really looking forward to Waxworks with The Bear using my three natural attacks to trigger the Wax Dip.

Let me start off with saying that I really love the concept of the medium and its truly unique class mechanic. I enjoy the higher level of complexity and customizability that this class affords. I have been reading all the posts here and mulling over my thoughts on the class.

Overall design and power level

I think this class gets a great deal of sticker shock due to the influence mechanic and the number of spirits which leads to misinformed opinions about the class overall. A number of posts want to pigeonhole this class into a mêlée only class and make unfair comparisons to pure mêlée classes such as barbarian and fighter. A level one barbarian is one of the most powerful (if not the best) classes at that stage and using that as the bar of competency for every new classes which can go into mêlée is not an appropriate design goal.

From the role description: "Mediums are flexible and versatile, filling whatever role the party needs at the moment by channeling the right spirit." In plain print it outlines that the design goal of this class is to be versatile and function as a switch hitter. At this moment, I don't think that the class truly accomplishes that goal too well with the current mechanics and spirits available with this playtest especially at early levels. Though based on this design goal, you need to give up something for this intended flexibility to balance with other classes where all the class features are tailored for a particular role. As such, I don't think a switch hitter medium should be as powerful as say a fighter or paladin in mêlée.

The versatility notion is put at odds when you consider spirit selection focused solely on one role thereby giving up your flexibility and switch hitter capabilities. To me this seems to be the decision of focusing on an ability stat or an alignment when choosing which spirits to know. Until you get Dual Vessel, this versatility vs specialization holds up due to the trancing restrictions, but after you have two spirits seanced your options greatly open up even if you are specialized in a single stat. Whether or not this versatility is on par with like a paladin's/ranger's spells, is the question to be considered when asking for better saves, HD, or BAB.

I actually think the most fair comparison for this class is the Hunter. Both classes have d8 HD, 3/4 BAB, and the Animal Focus ability is similar to trancing to get the spirit/séance bonus. I think the Medium is getting the short end of the stick as it gets 2 less skill ranks, worse saves, no animal companion , and delayed / drastically limited spell casting. I feel like the Medium could at least use the Hunter class as a template for the core of the class.