So we did the PFS scenario Sewer Dragons of Absalom at 4th level. We did this Sunday so the round 2 playtest document wasn't out yet. I intend to do a second round with the new playtest and at 10th level this coming sunday and will post those results at that time.
I'm goin to post each of the classes in three parts, first a look at the builds my players went with, then their impressions/concerns, then mine
Arcanist:
Build:All the INT, moderate CHA, focused on debuffing/control with 1 slot devoted to magic missile.
Player Impressions: It was fun, new spell mechanic would be awesome in a traditional game, somewhat lost in a pickup that only covered 2 days.
My impression: Mostly the same as the player, between the good choice of spells and exploits he always had something to do, and used control spells to effectively solo a tough fight.
Investigator:
Build: All the INT, moderate CHA, str & con 8, dex 13. NOT A COMBAT CHARACTER. Twinked for not spending inspiration.
Player Impression: Quite fun, at low-mid levels poison use was great for being relevant in combat. Intelligence is of overwhelming importance,more so than for an int-caster. There aren't many useful feats to take.
My impression: At every single non-combat encounter this character was Boss. rocked everything, and rarely had to spend inspiration. Sneak attack was useful when it was available, but not something that was a huge boost. Even so mostly useless in combat.
Skald:
Build: High STR, moderate DEX&CHA, used a longsword 1 or 2 handed depending on if they needed to cast. (player didn't have much time so asked my to build character for her so I have a few more notes than normal)
Player Impressions: Was a lot of fun to play but the aspects of the class don't seem to synergize well. Being the heavy hitter was fun. Would rather play a Barbarian with a decent CHA.
My Impressions: At first I thought it was a great class, but then it was pointed out that everything it did well could also be done (possibly Better) by a straight bard. Rage power selection was very limited with no actions (fixed by update), weapon selection limited (fixed by update). In our group no one had ever played a strength based bard before and I think that is where a lot of the stuff I like is from, not the class itself.
Warpriest:
I did not gather much useful info on him othr than the fact that he was melee based and had medium armor for a move speed of 20' unfortunately the encounters worked out such that he only got 2 attacks the entire adventure and missed one of them.
Player Impression: Combat feats without a BAB suck.
Slayer:
I didn't have time to go over this character sheet before game, so I really have no clue what the player was doing/going for. I think he was supposed to be based off of throwing weapons, but 60 feet away was "too far away to be effective" and 40 feet was "well I might as well close to melee for sneak attack" which dealt a total of 2d6+2(after favored target). Player was annoyed that his class couldn't get poison use (fixed by update) and 4 skill points(fixed).
Hunter:
Once again I didn't get much useful info out of this one mostly due to hilariously bad luck (more natural 1s than the entire rest of the table put together (enemies included),likewise critical hits scored against him/pet.
Overall, 3 of the players felt like they learned something about the new classes and 3 of them were frustrated, but not usually by the class itself. Hopefully the 10th level game will be a bit more even-keeled and help get some Idea of where the classes stand.
(side note: the Warpriest was actually in heavy armor - he spent one of his surplus feats on Fleet.)
I was the Hunter in this game. Aside from the aforementioned awful luck I was fairly happy with the class. I've posted some thoughts in the new Hunter thread here but at this level I only had one teamwork feat anyway so it didn't really matter. I wasn't high enough level for my animal companion to have a strength bonus, so it wasn't very useful. The intended purpose of using it as a tank due to a high AC (Stegosaurus) was foiled by awful luck. I was largely irrelevant as I spend most of my time healing critical hit damage off of my animal companion and only ever actually made it to melee combat once.
So basically, my experience was mediocre but for expected reasons and circumstances outside the control of class design. Hunter works as intended except for the problems with teamwork feats that I went into in the other thread.
The two major problems I noticed have already been fixed by the revised playtest rules. Specifically, I often wanted a different Animal Focus than my animal companion, and the weird weapon and armor proficiencies shoehorned me into limited build options.