Tokageko |
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On Saturday I ran an adventure for the purpose of playtesting the Psychic and Thaumaturge. The other two characters were a dragon Summoner and a Rogue. The adventure in question was home-brewed. The party were PFS members exploring an Ancient Osiriani tomb.
There were four encounters.
Low Threat: 4 Elite Stone Golems
Lots of fun. The Rogue took out one of the golems in a single round. The Summoners dragon proved very defective as a combatant. The Thaumaturge was great in this fight, especially having two attacks of opportunity each round and being able to create a custom weakness. The Psychic suffered the normal problems of spellcaster in a fight with a golem. Telekinetic projectile wasn't as effective as desired, and he ended up using his pistol (because guns and gear just came out and why not have a Psychic with a pistol?), even though it didn't end up beating the golem's resistance 10 to physical damage.
Moderate Threat: 2 Nemhaiths
Again, not much of a problem for the Rogue or the Summoner. The Thaumaturge had invested in a Ghost Touch weapon rune, so it was basically a normal fight for him and went fine. The Psychic managed to do a good amount of force damage with a spell that I can't remember the name of. Again though, dealing with damage resistance was a problem for the Psychic.
Moderate Threat: 4 Hamatulas & 1 CR15 Quintessivore Bone Oracle
The Rogue and Thaumaturge stream rolled the quintessivore. It was just no match in melee against the combo of Trip (provided by the Rogue's dog companion), Attack of Opportunity from the Thaumaturge, and Opportune Backstab. It's just as well that no one's soul got eaten. I *am* friends with these people after all. The Summoner mostly stayed behind his dragon. The Psychic managed a few good hits with Telekinetic Projectile, including one hit that pushed a Hamatula back the length of the battlefield.
Severe Threat: 1 CR 17 Mummy Pharaoh & 1 CR 15 Cynosphinx (converted from 1e and scaled up)
This fight could have been much more devastating than it was, if the mummy had taken advantage of the PCs' paralysis to hurt them instead of trying to convince them he was a god and get them to bow to him voluntarily. Two of them still had to pay tribute because of an Overwhelming Presence spell, but the Thaumaturge and Psychic both got critical successes. Again, the Rogue and Summoner were effective - specifically against the sphinx. The Psychic was actually able to use Unleash Psyche during this encounter and used it to some effect. The Thaumaturge did great amounts of damage to the mummy by taking advantage of his weakness 17 to Fire. It was a tough fight, and the Thaumaturge got reduced to 0 hit points once. The dragon/Summoner nearly got there as well.
Takeaways:
The Thaumaturge performed really well, and the player was happy.
After the adventure, the Psychic's player revealed that he was having resource management issues as early as the golem encounter. The number of spell slots was not sufficient and the amped cantrips didn't make up for that. Unleash Psyche was lackluster. Despite being 15th level, he had very few class feats from the Psychic list. Most of them were from an archetype because player didn't like most of them. I think that's a scathing indictment.