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Oh man, I can't wait! This is going to be so cool! And I absolutely love the concept art, it's really cool to see it taking a unique direction compared to Pathfinder. Great work!
I just realized how long it's been since this thread saw activity, and it's too late to edit my post. Sorry! That's what I get for not actually catching all the way up.
Alright, I'm planning to playtest a level 8 medium soon, but I have tried out a first-level one in PFS. I've started reading this thread, but I'm not caught up so please pardon any repetition. Callum Todd the Kitsune didn't know what he was getting into, but he did try. For the first session (with an 18 CHA because I'm in the habit of maxing out any class's casting/ability-determining stat), he picked The Liar, The Demon's Lantern, The Rabbit Prince, and The Twins. That was a mistake, since I was looking mainly at the stats I wanted to focus on--I had envisioned him being able to switch between a dex-based fighter and a face sort of character. At level one, neither of these was possible. The scenario was The Overflow Archive. He spent the session following behind the group, failing to make any charisma-based checks because he only had 5 skill points and trying to cover my bases left Bluff the only charisma check. He had The Liar seanced, but in practice it gave him no benefit at all. He did trance Demon's Lantern during combat, though, and managed to blow up a wisp--he just moved it back and forth in and out of a crocodile's space to taunt it, and the croc finally bit. That was really satisfying! I was excited! But in practical terms, I spent 3 rounds to deal 1d6 damage (one full round to trance, one standard to summon a wisp, and then two turns' worth of move actions to tempt the croc into attacking). After that, Callum had no choice but to stand back and miss with his crossbow a lot. He had no other class abilities, very very few skills (and all ones that others in the group could do better), and a very short list of weapons, none of which gave him more bang for his buck than the crossbow. He did get to help solve to riddle at the end (to the great indignity of his fellow kitsune), but that had nothing to with the character at all. Second session, the next night because we have a friend learning to DM and she wants to run as many modules as possible, was The Confirmation. Since he's still level one, I switched Callum's chosen spirits beforehand to see if I could get a more useful combo. This time he chose The Rabbit Prince, Demon's Lantern again, The Bear, and The Cricket. The Rabbit Prince was his seance this time for the sake of coordinating with any of his others for Trance, so his skill versatility dropped even farther without the Charisma bonus. The Confirmation is pretty straightforward, so we're mostly talking combat. The Rabbit Prince's free Weapon Finesse let him use a rapier with the same skill as the crossbow, which is handy for melee needs but he probably would have been better off just avoiding melee. He still has no spells, and he's guarding his once a day trance jealously since it's only one a day. As it happened, we killed the minotaur at the end before he ever got to us it. My impressions: I had fun RPing the character concept. Like, probably too much fun. Callum bought himself a spellbook right off the bat and used it as a dream journal/spirit journal/wizard-fake-out (my sorcerer has gotten out of more scrapes than I'd care to admit by pretending to be a wizard and letting enemies 'disarm' him of his spellbook). He was vague and smelled like weird incense and if I'd had skill points to spare I would have given him Profession: Fortune Teller. Especially with The Liar's influence the first time, he was a blast from a character point of view. Mechanically, though, he really fell flat. I felt like a cleric whose god was mad at him. He couldn't do any substantial damage with a weapon because of the short list, he couldn't cast any spells, and since Charisma doesn't impact his one good save they were all equally low and he failed the only save he did attempt. I do think that the addition of more spirits will open up more options, but as everyone whose posts I've read so far points out, right now a strength build is the most viable one and that's not even close to what I wanted to play with a supposedly versatile class. I've seen a lot of really good suggestions on ways the mechanics could be streamlined, but I'm only on page 10 of reading the thread so I'm not sure what the most recent ones are. My first instinct is to agree that the class needs either more BAB or spells from first. I like the suggestion of a very short list of inherent medium spells available regardless of seance, that would give you a little bit more to fall back on. I think that influence limits trance usage without necessitating a daily limit, and that trances take too long--at will as a move action sounds better to me, since you still can't go beyond your influence levels from day to day. Maybe the influence cap could go up as you level--it's 4 at 1st, then increases by one at 4th level and every three levels after that, for instance. That would represent the Medium's ability to control his powers or coordinate with his spirit friends, depending on the flavor you want, and would reward staying in the class instead of dipping. I also saw a suggestion early in the thread for simplifying the spirits by dividing them up into three or four tiers of power, and giving each spirit one ability with power appropriate to its tier. I think that's cool, but I imagine it's a bit late to make drastic changes like that. I look forward to seeing the final version! I'll report back after I playtest the higher level version of Callum, so stayed tuned for more of his luckless ventures! |
