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Playtested a level 2 PFS "legal" party in Level 2 of the Emerald Spire today. I like building different characters so I tried making mediums that didn't use The Bear. My wife built a Spiritualist with a Spirit. The party was:
- 1 medium, archer spec. Point-blank shot. 18 dex, 14 charisma, 14 strength, not much else. Channeled spirit during seance was Big Sky.
- 1 medium, skill-monkey. Elf with breadth of experience. 18 int, 14 charisma, 12s in dex and con. Channeled spirit during seance was The Hidden Knowledge.
- 1 aasimar hunter I've previously played in PFS, celestial animal companion (big cat), melee build with greatsword. I won't talk much about him.
- 1 spiritualist with an Anger phantom. My wife threw her together and realized she wanted a rebuild but we didn't have time to both rebuild her and play, so she was really... suboptimal?
Some notes:
- The seance abilities were funny--I am not expecting these to generally be very useful, but I used them all the freaking time in this particular dungeon, at least The Hidden Knowledge's.
- The trance was completely useless for these characters. It really did not contribute in any meaningful way.
- The role-playing was okay. I love the flavor of the classes but that's probably better given as direct feedback on the class threads. It did not improve the in-party RP much although it was a nice nudge in a spot or two.
- The skill monkey medium worked okay as a knowledge monkey, but only as a result of Breadth of Experience. She was not as effective as a bard of the same level at knowing stuff. She would have been dreadful if it hadn't have been for Breadth of Experience due to the whole "untrained knowledge" problem.
- The skill monkey medium was dreadful at everything except being a skill monkey, in part because the 4 skill points/level meant that I wanted to give her higher intelligence than a comparable bard or rogue. Spending the feat to let her use knowledge untrained was critical--I don't think the concept works without it.
- The skill monkey medium desperately needed some spellcasting. I just don't think you can make this build work as a PC, sadly. It might make a great NPC concept if you don't care about filling any role except for possessing knowledge skills.
- The archer medium was a passable archer because of stats and his one character feat. The spirit added 1 to hit and 1 to damage; it's better than nothing, but it wasn't enough to make up for not getting much out of his class. Being able to switch arrows made the lesser spirit power from Big Sky go unused.
- The archer medium did, however, severely miss not having a bonus feat of some sort. Not having precise shot meant that his shots were all generally at at least a -4 penalty, sometimes -8 from cover.
- The medium armor was surprisingly nice.
- The low BAB hampered to-hit some, but really limited early feat selection--we couldn't do Deadly Aim or Power Attack until level 3 with these folks, which hampered damage output. The archer guy was about as good as a bard with a bow, only he couldn't do anything else useful.
- The hunter and his animal companion were the most effective characters. The medium's spirit came in second.
- The medium was mis-built, so take this with a grain of salt, but the spirit was more useful than the hunter's animal companion due to d8 damage. The medium's weapon proficiency was really confusing--both all light weapons AND a kukri? I should probably check the spiritualist forum to see if that was supposed to be simple weapons. She was pretty useless though; curing light wounds a few times and waving ineffectually at things with her scythe.
- A lot of saves were failed by the mediums.
Overall Feedback
- I feel like the medium works best as an NPC class right now. The mediums contributed in slightly below-average ways in the roles they were built for and could not contribute meaningfully in other ways.
- The medium class possesses, as written, maybe a couple "good" spirits to build around and all of the other options are trap options, resulting in characters that have a very hard time contributing. The non-strength spirits lay useful foundations for other abilities, it seems like, but they are abilities that the medium class itself does not possess.
The knowledge spirits seem like they should always let you use knowledge skills untrained, but you don't get to that point until later. The strength spirits didn't really seem to provide much beyond what membership in a melee class would provide, but the strength medium was missing out on the other abilities or bonus feats that a comparable class could provide. There just weren't that many things to do with them, not at level 2.
- The spiritualist may or may not be similar to a hunter or a summoner. I cannot adequately rate it with a mis-built character, sorry!
- Seance abilities seem tailor-made for dungeon crawling. I'm not sure how great they are in other contexts.
- The poor skill-monkey medium got to -10 HP on at least three occasions, but that's not necessarily tied to the class itself. Still, she didn't take damage all that well.
- I might play a spiritualist. I will probably not be playing any mediums with the class as written.
edit: spelling, also noting that the spiritualist had an anger phantom.
How did the dice rolls pan out? You mention a lot of failed saves, but was this due to the dice or due to the save structure for the Medium? Same question across the board, really. You mention a lot of ineffective attempts to attack, but it's not clear that this was necessarily due to 1 missing BAB vs poor rolls or situational mods, like cover/firing into melee.
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The skill monkey had a +3 attack bonus with a mw shortbow, +1 attack bonus melee. Very low mods were an issue because resources were spent on being better at skills. (stat allocation to intelligence, feat to skills, spirit to skills.)
The archer build would have liked precise shot, which would have helped with a lot of situational mods. Its attack/damage was +8/1d8+4 after spirit bonus and point blank, which is comparable to, say, an archer bard. Not ranger or fighter or paladin, but okay. He just didn't have anything to do besides shoot at +0 through allies into melee.
Like I said about the spiritualist, she was mis-built.
It's hard to tell with saves, especially at level 2, which is why I didn't go into more detail on it. The rolls were especially average, with lots of numbers in the 8 to 12 range. A couple would have gone the other way with a few extra points but they were reflex and will, not fort which seems to be where the debate was.