Finally got around to running a playtest game, using an extremely altered and truncated version of Feast of Ravenmoor to ensure we could get in a decent number of encounters in three hours. Overall, it was a wilderness adventure, partially set in a small town. A bard NPC accompanied the party for half the encounters to provide support, but was killed about midway. We had a 1v1 brawl between a monk and the brawler, a chase scene between the slayer and a goblin rogue, a homebrewed baby black dragon (CR 5-ish) skill challenges in the form of festival/gambling games, a grand melee involving a bunch of human experts led by a 5th-level cleric, and a manticore to top it all off.
Player Profiles
Brawler: Experienced video gamer, relatively new to tabletop in general and Pathfinder in particular. Enthusiastic about the brawler as a concept.
Slayer: Veteran 3.5 and Pathfinder player, been playing PF since Alpha playtest. Historically plays a lot of rangers.
Arcanist: Same gaming experience as the slayer. Rules lawyer and fellow theorycrafter. He played the arcanist at my suggestion, but required no further encouragement as his curiosity was piqued.
Overall DM Impressions: As a DM, I noticed that the PCs were able to make short work of characters like the experts and monk against whom they were easily able to perform combat maneuvers, set up flanks for the slayer's sneak attacks, and/or outright ruin with color spray. Larger creatures like the baby black dragon (which I homebrewed as Large) and the manticore proved to be the most difficult as setting up tactical advantage (higher ground, flanking, tripping, etc.) became problematic. The party also neglected to buy cure potions, so the bard NPC's spell slots were taxed heavily while she was alive.
The Brawler's Impressions: The brawler's player was overall very pleased with the class's performance. He didn't feel like Handle Animal belonged on the skill list, but otherwise felt that the class's accuracy, defenses, and most importantly flavor were right on the money. His major complaint was with the martial maneuvers ability, since he felt, as a novice player he felt that the ability asked too much of someone not familiar with all the available feats. He would have preferred a small list of bonuses to attack, CMB/D, AC, etc. that he could choose from depending on the situation.
The Slayer's Impressions: The player found the slayer to have too few skill ranks to fully realize his vision for the character and expressed that the favored target ability felt somewhat lackluster. While he had few qualms about the move action expenditure (as he was switch-hitting between two-handed greatsword and composite longbow) and did not yet need to worry about missing out on iterative attacks, he felt that the pay off wasn't big enough. Though he acknowledged the versatility of favored target, he wished the bonus were +2 as +1 just didn't feel sufficient.
He also wondered why Knowledge (nature) was not a class skill.
The Arcanist's Impressions: During character creation, the player faced a dilemma in which exploits to pick as they all looked so good. He lamented not having more points in his reservoir at one point, but realized it would have been too powerful if he did. Overall, he said it played similar to the wizard and felt that Scribe Scroll would be an almost essential feat to maximize the usefulness of having a spellbook over the course of a long game.
Hopefully, next week I will run an urban session with the same characters at level 5.
If the brawler's player was more experienced, do you think he would still like something like the Inquisitor's judgments? If you played a second session, do you think a list of good standby feats would have helped him out?
Has the slayer player played a Guide Ranger? That's the closest there is to a slayer, and they get the +2 with Guide's Focus, but it's only a few times per day. How many skills do you think he felt he needed?
That's enough probing questions for now, so I won't ask about the Arcanist :)
If the brawler's player was more experienced, do you think he would still like something like the Inquisitor's judgments? If you played a second session, do you think a list of good standby feats would have helped him out?
Has the slayer player played a Guide Ranger? That's the closest there is to a slayer, and they get the +2 with Guide's Focus, but it's only a few times per day. How many skills do you think he felt he needed?
That's enough probing questions for now, so I won't ask about the Arcanist :)
I did indeed speak with the brawler's player about that very issue and I said I'd throw a short list together. We hadn't drawn the parallel to the inquisitor's judgements, but I would imagine that that's the closest thing we had in mind when we discussed the matter.
As for the slayer, he hadn't played the Guide archetype, but was in a game with someone who had. I asked the slayer's player to review the Ranger's Focus ability and he said he's torn.
I'm really hoping to do a 5th level session with these PCs, so we'll see how that goes...