My ratings of each class are not based on the power level of the class, but how much I like the class design (which includes power level). Skald, for example, is both brokenly weak (prior to 12th level), brokenly powerful (past 12th level) and has badly designed class features, so it gets a D.
I submitted this review first on Reddit here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/comments/1qzvv9/advanced_class_guide _link_annnnnd_discuss/cdipr1u
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Arcanist: B. Essentially gives up school specialization (and the neat school powers) and full access to bloodlines to be a sorcerer can that swap out spells every day. They still have to find and pay for spells to go into the spellbook, which has always been a weakness for wizards (it gets very expensive at higher levels). Blood Focus is nice, though, since it's more or less a permanent +1 to your caster level and DC any time you need it. It could really use something to fill out all those blank levels.
Honesty? I can't think of many times when I'd want to swap out my sorcerer spells known during spell prep at the beginning of the day. But that's the only reason to play this class, and they won't have many options to swap to due to spellbook constraints.
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Bloodrager: A. I love barbarians, and this is a great, great alternative barbarian class. Losing rage powers (especially rage cycling rage powers) hurts, but getting things like always-on haste while raging makes up for losing always-on pounce while raging. There's a lot of synergy waiting to be explored with the Bloodrager. I'm looking to roll up a PFS character that uses Fey Rage and a keen rapier to confusion tank people. My PFS titan mauler could certainly benefit from a permanent +5' reach while raging, or a permanent enlarge person, etc., but he's probably better as he is now, which says a lot about the balance of this class. The main downside to this class is that you apparently need to be raging to cast a spell, even out of combat, which makes things kind of annoying (rage, cast fly, drop out of rage, wait two rounds for exhaustion to wear off, and then proceed). For this reason, they are more likely to run out of rage than normal barbarians.
Also: rage-cycling Destined bloodragers past 16th level will be pretty sick. Roll twice. Autoconfirm if either of them threatens.
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Brawler: A-: This fills a needed niche in the game, as too many unarmed strike fighters dip into monk to gain the necessary benefits they can't get anywhere else. While some people think it is superior to both the old Brawler fighter archetype and monk, there's still good reasons to play both of them. The old Brawler gets some nice anti-spellcasting options that stack with Spellbreaker and Disruptive, and monks get evasion, improved evasion, and nearly as many free feats - but the big advantage monks have is ki points. With Drunken Master giving you free temp ki points every encounter, you can essentially get an extra attack every round, which stacks with haste. And Qinggong monks are pretty uber as well.
Why an A-? They get slower progression on unarmed strike and ki strike at higher levels, but mostly it is because their signature ability, Martial Maneuvers, requires a move action to activate, which is too painful for most combats to waste. I'd much rather be able to full attack ki point stunning fist flurry my enemy to the face than spend a move action to gain Stunning Fist (which you can only use once per day per four levels, and whose DC will suck), and stunning fist punch them once.
This limitation goes away at 10th level, but they're still pretty limited on their uses per day (5). So if you call in all three feats as a full round action, you can't do that again in the rest of the adventuring day.
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Hunter: B. It can't decide if it wants to be a druid with no spells, or a ranger with missing BAB. Given than rangers can already take an archetype that gives them an animal companion, they seem to be trading off full BAB and favored enemy/terrain for the ability to occasionally boost their stats as a swift action, faster spellcasting, and have an improved flanking buddy.
While it's not actually bad, I can't think of a situation in which I'd choose to build one. If I was going to focus on spells/animal companion I'd just go druid, and if I wanted to go melee/animal companion I'd just go beastmaster ranger. It's better to be good at one thing than mediocre at a bunch of things.
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Investigator: A-: They lose three levels of sneak attack compared with a rogue, and don't get the bombs or mutagens of the alchemist, but gain the ability to be the ultimate skill monkey. Depending how you spend your talents, you can gain a permanent +1d8 to knowledge checks, UMD, charisma skills, Sense Motive, etc.
Being able to take 10 on any knowledge check (or take 20 for one inspiration point) and add a +1d8 bonus to it (for no inspiration points) is pretty damn good, especially when this can convert into +4 for the entire party to hit a creature for a round.
Being able to retroactively add to a saving throw when you really need it is a very powerful ability, and they get it for free. Sure, it costs 2 inspiration points (or 1 with the appropriate talent), but when you just failed a Finger of Death save by 1 point, it's worth the two inspiration points.
Since they don't get half sneak attack, but just 3 levels delayed sneak attack, their power level in combat ramps up pretty nicely over time.
While both sides of the class have their combat abilities clipped, being able to draw on both alchemist discoveries, rogue talents, and all the new options makes this a pretty interesting class. I wish the Hunter was more like this.
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Shaman: D Interesting mix of both prepared and spontaneous spellcasting. Much more interesting than the Arcanist. Unfortunately, the spontaneous part has a very restricted spell list - just two choices per spell level, and you have very limited freedom in picking. If you want enlarge person and color spray available at 1st level, then you're stuck with fog cloud and hypnotism at second, whether you want them or not. And your hexes will be limited by your spell selection (or vice versa, if you're building yourself around a certain hex).
A lot of the hexes don't make any sense, since they just took revelations and rewrote them as hexes. (How is gaining weapon specialization and greater weapon focus a hex?) This destroys rules synergy with existing source material - you can't take Extra Revelations to gain Nature's Whispers, for example. But you can take Extra Hex, which sort of breaks the class since it gets hexes/revelations at half the rate of either Oracle or Witch.
Since they don't share a hex list with the Witches, it's almost like the Shaman is just a wisdom Oracle, with a variant revelations list. But they're hexes. Or Spirit abilities. Not revelations.
I can see this being pretty complex to play in practice due to the Wandering Spirit feature. Having to go through the entire class description at the start of every day to cherry pick the best special abilities, hexes and spell lists seems like it could eat up a lot of table time. I like the flexibility it gives, but it seems like it could be awkward in practice.
Overall, I can see it being very powerful. I gave it a D for class design and awkwardness, not because it will suck to play. Doing things like opening up Nature's Whispers (already the most powerful Oracle Revelation) to Wisdom based people on top of Charisma based people will allow all sorts of powergamish builds to be built. But it's a very weirdly worded, awkwardly constructed class as it is right now.
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Skald: D Continuing their tradition of naming these classes after already existing archetypes in the game, just to confuse everyone, the Skald is very similar to the bardbarian I play right now in PFS. Who is a Skald. But not this Skald. A different Skald.
Barbarians that lose BAB, the ability to rage, and to use martial weapons? Pfft.
Bards that get half the daily music per day? And no bardic music than a half-strength rage ability that only a couple party members will use? That will cripple spellcasters in the party if they accept it? Double pfft.
+2 strength is +1 to hit and damage (for only strength based attackers). Inspire Courage? Hey. +1 to hit and damage. But it works with rogues, spellcasters, and even yourself. (Raging song doesn't affect the Skald!) Inspire Courage progresses faster than raging song, as well, and doesn't hurt your armor class.
Skalds can stack their rage powers from other sources, but can only rage if they have the ability to rage outside of Skald. But since they can't take Barbarian levels, this makes it fundamentally broken (and not in the good way) as a class.
There's a single good reason to have a Skald in your party: At 12th level, they can grant the entire party the ability to Pounce. This is enormous. Assuming you have a bunch of melee fighters, this drastically alters the balance of power in Pathfinder, allowing Team Good to alpha strike down an entire combat in the first round if done right.
Spell Kenning, their other signature ability, is sort of whatever. Great, they can spend two 3rd level spell slots to Fireball someone. They can do this for the first time at 8th level, and they can do it once per day. Yippee. They can cast Heal once per day at 17th level. /shrug. It'd be better if they just left it as a limited number of times per day ability.
Again, giving it a bad rating due to poor class design more than anything else. Party-wide pounce is plenty powerful, though not being able to do it yourself kind of really sucks.
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Slayer: C Two levels delayed sneak attack and SA per 3 levels, but full BAB and martial weapon proficiency. Loss of favored enemy, but gained favored target which is more general purpose but consumes a move action to activate (prior to 10th level) and only functions on a single target at first.
While they get a ton of talents, the list of talents available for Slayers is a pretty weak and abbreviated list of rogue talents, with only a couple mediocre new options for their ranger half. It's no Investigator.
Sneak attack is listed twice.
It is very MAD - all stats are used for this class. Why intelligence based saves? It doesn't make sense.
All his high level abilities are very weak. Where the Bloodrager is getting permanent Haste, the Slayer is getting the high level ranger abilities. But not the good ones, like evasion and improved evasion (though evasion is available by spending a talent), but the crappy ones like Swift Tracker.
Favored Target overall is pretty crappy prior to 10th level - spending a move action per target is horrible in action economy. When it becomes a swift action, it's suddenly useful. An untyped +3/+3 bonus is pretty massive for a full BAB class. But that is a lot of dead levels, and there's just nothing else going for it.
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Swashbuckler: A This is what the Slayer should look like. +5/+5 to all attacks and full BAB, but without the action ineconomy and paperwork to track your targets.
Panache is a great mechanic, and allows swishies a ton of interesting options in combat. Save them for parries? Spend them on ripostes? Extra damage? I really like it.
Deeds don't provide a "monetary" bonus, and some of the panache abilities are unclear (swift feint, pommel strike) how they work. Can they substitute for an attack? They're terrible otherwise.
Targeted Strike: Head is too powerful, really. Torso needs to say if it does damage normally.
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**Warpriest: B** A fighter that loses BAB to gain a medium spell progression, or a cleric that loses spells and turning to gain bonus feats. A 1 level dip in it might be very popular, as it grants two minor blessings + two free feats + spellcasting. I recommend instead granting proficiency for free at 1st level, and weapon focus at 2nd.
Sacred Weapon (and armor) is a nice ability, on par with a paladin's bonded weapon, but it's a swift action, which makes it much better. (Action economy!) It makes up for the loss of BAB in to-hit rolls, though obviously they still fall behind in bonus attacks.
Most of the minor blessings seem pretty weak. Why would a 3rd level Warpriest ever waste a standard action to give an ally +1 to damage rolls? If it was a minor action, maybe it would be too good... so move action? I could see that making more sense. This applies to Air, Artifice, Chaos/Good/Evil/Law, Fire/Water/Earth/Air/Weather, Death, Destruction, War, and all similar abilities. Charm/Glory and Darkness are worth spending standard actions on, and several domains (Strength, Liberation, Healing, Community, Luck) can do it as swift actions already. Many major blessings (such as Earth, Community, Artifice, Sun) need the same treatment - it's just plain terrible for a 10th level spellcaster to waste a standard action giving an ally one point of DR (that doesn't scale up with level), and you can't even do it to yourself.
Repose looks like (RAI) it is supposed to be able to combo with itself to put people to sleep, but the duration on the stagger will be over by the time you can do it a second time.
The Battle Companion abilities should be clarified to one companion out *period*, total, not one per use of the ability. I could see a Warpriest going into a final encounter casting Summon Monster IX 13 times and just overrunning the final fight. 13 Astral Devas = 169d6 damage per round - save for half! - in blade barriers, and 13 Heal spells sitting in your pocket.
Repose, Madness, Luck, Liberation, Magic, Plant (if Name(minor) does actually root them in place) are really good.
Protection is weak - it is terrible in combat to waste a standard action to boost your resistance or armor bonus to where it should be anyway. Both abilities should be swift or move actions.
Overall, I'm sort of indecisive about it. A straight class Cleric (or Cleric with a dip in fighter or barbarian) just seems to be the better option for all builds I can think of. While there *should* be something neat I could make out of the blessing mechanic, other than summoning 13 Astral Devas (which shouldn't be allowed), I'm coming up blank. Most of them just duplicate domain powers anyway, and the extra feats just aren't worth losing spellcasting over.
I mean, this is kind of ironic since I always complain about how feat-starved clerics are when I build a battle cleric, but I really would generally prefer to have the ability to cast high level spells over some extra fighter feats.
