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Will post more tomorrow after I've had time to sleep (and run a kingmaker campaign session!). Long story short:
- PFS-legal Aasimar Hunter, leveled up to 10. Won't mention him much.
- Level 10 Tengu Spiritualist with an Anger phantom and a... what did my wife choose? Looks like a three-point double-edged sword. Reach, 1d10 piercing damage. The character made use of lots of cleave.
- Level 10 Medium, built as an Archer. Using strength spirit Big Sky primarily. Very conventional.
- Level 10 Medium, built as a Skill Monkey, high int, and ended up as an archer because why not?! Actually is channeling The Cricket as primary (to get the Treasure at the End ability) and The Hidden Truth as secondary. Archery build got to Focused shot with the 9th level feat, so the build here is to run around in circles and then shoot something for a bunch of damage.
The skill monkey easily acrobatics-ed the ladder and a rope solved the slime problem.
The Cube itself only lasted two attacks.
The Lab
Fort saves were an issue for all three occult class characters, perhaps expectedly, with the first encounter. DC 22 Fort Save or Be Stunned would have required a 14 from the Spiritualist, a 15 from the Phantom, a 17 from the archer medium, and an 18 from the skill monkey. With a 20-point buy, Con was something they did not have a ton of and the mediums in particular had little hope of acting. The Spiritualist and the phantom both rolled poorly, and were stunned. Hunter and animal companion made this encounter survivable, and even easy, by easily passing their rolls with a 12 and an 11. Encounter lasted two rounds.
Tearing Down the Barricade
Not having a single damaging spell, I almost gave up the playtest on reaching seeing the Reclaimer swarm. Thankfully it was size Tiny creatures, and not smaller. The close quarters made the archers and reach weapon useful and all four characters contributed.
Overcoming DR was an issue. Big Sky's ability is sadly limited to melee attacks and so it wasn't helping the archers, who did not know at this point to use their blunt arrows. The phantom couldn't get within slam distance before the swarm went down.
Recycling Room with Claws
After seeing the damned animal companion spend his entire level 10 playtesting career squeezed in one way or another, we went into a larger room and were promptly attacked by another Reclaimer. The Anger spirit attacked it and everyone kind of figured out that blunt damage was the way to go. Good for the archers, bad for the melee characters.
The Spiritualist and the Phantom were doing significantly less damage per round than the Hunter and his Big Cat at this point, although the Spiritualist did have Haste, and both were contributing and decent to play. The Spiritualist disabled most of the robotic arms with reach.
Recycling Room with Slime
This looked a lot scarier than it already was. The Spiritualist and his Phantom took the long way around. The hunter and the animal companion each got a good lick in and flanked with each other and the Spiritualist when he arrived turn 2. The two Mediums did a fair amount of damage. ACs were reasonably high enough to avoid taking hits for the mediums and the Hunter/AC--28-30 or so. The Spiritualist and his phantom were at the 23 range and were taking some damage.
After ridding the pond of the ooze, the Phantom was a good choice to search the muck, as it was less embarrassing than having one of the humans strip naked.
Automaton Barracks
Skill monkey won initiative and cast Haste. Really, none of the other spells were used at all except for this one. With this party rolling through most of the encounters, the more limited buffs like Expeditious Retreat or Longstrider did not make a ton of sense to use.
The archer got in several full attacks; the hunter and AC charged frequently; the skill monkey literally ran around in circles until she'd moved 80 feet, and then made a Focused Shot with an additional +4 to hit and +8 damage from Cricket. It felt a little forced and not very thematic, but this is a dungeon crawl and the inspiration for that spirit ability did not, most likely, come from an archer. She was contributing some in any event.
The Phantom and its Spiritualist hit when attacking, but the usual limitations of melee meant that they were not dealing as much damage. The hunter faced a similar problem but massive teamwork feats meant that he was at least contributing to his cat's damage potential.
The skill monkey had made some very tough knowledge arcana checks (being a class skill and all) but flubbed a number of knowledge skills she was not trained in prior to this encounter. She was unable to identify several magic items because she did not have Detect Magic available as a cantrip or knack due to the 4th-level spellcasting progression. In this room, even though she had a trait invested in making Disable Device a class skill, she was unable to disable the magical trap because she was not a rogue or archaeologist or whatever. Still, she was able to escape artist past the electricity. Everyone else had to depend on the Hunter's resist elements and hope for the best.
At this point, we weren't done with the level, but the GM decided that the other enemies were not going to be challenging enough for the party and it was 2 AM.
Even so, the skill monkey Medium had a 25 Knowledge Arcana bonus to apply to a DC 23 check, which would have cut the time down in the final room to 5 rounds instead of 10. So that's good to know.
I'm exhausted now, but I'll post builds later tomorrow. All the classes were generally able to contribute. Spellcasting was largely defined by Haste and Detect Magic, which proved limiting for the Mediums who do not get level 0 spells and thus cannot perform some relatively basic magical functions.
The Spiritualist seemed to play almost exactly like an underpowered (less overpowered?) Summoner and I perhaps was not familiar enough with the class to take advantage of some of its stranger abilities. Still, they did not seem like options that would have made him (or his phantom) contribute more materially to the group in this limited playtest.
The archer medium was a bit one-dimensional, but effective in combat.
The skill monkey contributed in combat and out of it. I'm happy I was able to find a build that made her able to contribute in more than one area, but I'm not sure how many players would jump through the hoops it took to get her there, and I'm not sure how many GMs would allow running in circles inside a dungeon to build up a damage bonus. She was still missing useful class abilities (class skills, disable magical traps, higher skill points per level) that would have helped her more fully fill that particular role. Depending on running in circles for damage meant that she didn't benefit from the intermediate The Hidden Truth boon that would have granted her 3 more points in her knowledge skills, which would have made a difference with some of the very low rolls she flubbed. It also meant she wasn't using her "primary" spirit as her technically primary spirit, which is more than a bit counterintuitive.
Neither medium needed to trance. Both mediums would have seriously benefited from Big Sky's spirit power to bypass DR, but it only applies to melee attacks, not ranged. The seance bonuses did not come up. They were probably not quite as effective as a decent bard with a similar build; the bards would have skills almost equivalent to the Skill Monkey but damage equal to the dedicated Archer-medium, plus a full 6 levels of spellcasting and bardic abilities (or Archaeologist's Luck). It's still a tough comparison and the mediums don't really come out on top. They don't necessarily need to, but that's still the comparison they're closest to with the current playtest rules and a non-melee build. I understand melee medium builds do behave very differently.