We were:
Occultist 1: Melee Build
Occultist 1: Archer Build
Spiritualist 1: Fear Phantom
Druid 1: Noob (1st PFS Session)
This went pretty swimmingly, all things considered. Noob Druid had done a lot of homework and indicated that he'd played a few home games, so he didn't slow us down.
Phantom never solidified into a corporeal form once. The Phantom was, however, incredibly useful as a rogue stand-in: scouting ahead. The Phantom doesn't technically have a fly speed, so PC had her "five-foot step" down into pits and such incorporeally - not sure of the legality of this. Certainly incorporeal and climb checks is an odd grey area that could use some clarification.
Phantom kept my tank from getting gobbled by an ooze. BTW, here's my build:
Str 18
Dex 12
Con 13
Int 14
Wis 10
Cha 10
Resistance, Purify Food and Drink
Hold Portal, Enlarge Person
Combat Expertise, Improved Disarm
Ranseur 10
Heavy Flail 15
Greatsword 50
Scale Mail 50
Flail 8
Heavy Wooden Shield 7
Apparently everybody at the table was familiar with Harry Dresden but me. I latched onto the martial weapon proficiency of the class and built my character around expertly disarming people at reach.
This guy hits at a +4 melee without bonuses and disarms at a +8. His spells are Hold Portal and Enlarge Person. There was some discussion about whether or not the +2 Strength belt would work at first level. We ultimately decided it couldn't, so I put the points into getting Keen on my Greatsword instead. I have to say that if it's not available at low levels, the Belt feature loses a lot of its luster.
Character-wise, Oswald is a pretty vanilla Lawful Good fighter type who has a keen interest in history and spooky Occult stuff, as well as machines (knowledge ranks in Engineering, History, Religion). Kind of a noble Ghostbuster. Next time I plan on giving one of my weapons the Ghost Touch quality. Real shocked at the way Spiritualist PC RP'd his character.
Phantom was skinned as Spiritualist's dead wife and had no face, held up a drama symbol happy/sad mask for mood. Very fun roleplay, especially for the Occult playtest. In combat, Spiritualist only used Summon Monster, always Bloody Skeletons. Thematically appropriate.
Spoilers for Boss Battle:
We took down the Minotaur without too much trouble. My first round was spent Enlarging. Round two I traded Keen Bonus on my greatsword for Quicksteps as a swift action (extra 30' of movement) and then charged the Minotaur and deaxed him immediately thanks to a fairly high roll, Ranseur disarm bonus, feat bonus, bard bonus, charge bonus (ended up being a 30). Bloody skeleton and archer softened him up, large Ranseur finished him off. Done in three rounds!
Occultist is a fun class to play; martial weapon proficiency goes a long way to making this a fun alternative to magus, and pretty customizable. Spiritualist has some great roleplay potential; can't really say that I've seen a Phantom in combat yet because he kept it incorporeal the entire time. Playing another session with my Psychic Lobster seems like a chore, but I can happily envision playing Oswald up to tenth level.
Note: an incorporeal sneak companion is the death knell for rogues. Most of what the Phantom did in our session was traditional rogue stuff, but fearlessly and with darkvision.
Hallo, Spiritualist player here.
OP summed things up nicely. Figured I'd chime in with some further data on my Spiritualist:
First off, as noted above, the Spiritualist is an amazingly flavorful class and the Phantoms provide an excellent opportunity for role-play, with a little more of an enforced theme than the very generic Eidolon base forms.
Mechanically, as discussed in the Spiritualist thread, this is a very nerfed Summoner with a few interesting tricks up its sleeve. The Spiritualist himself cannot do overmuch at first level; nor can a Phantom in Ectoplasmic form. I judged that my Phantom would've been destroyed quickly had I ever manifested it as Ectoplasmic, with 6 HP, 15 AC, and an impressive to-hit of +2.
That said, the Phantom is an impossibly good scout at low levels, even with the range limitation (which is no barrier at all for checking out the next room). It is very strange that it cannot fly until later levels, leading to some oddness as the OP mentioned. It has absolutely no fear as very few if any low-level creatures or traps can touch an incorporeal creature.
I actually saw the visible manifestation of the incorporeal Phantom as a plus, as very stupid or mindless creatures will waste some time attempting to swipe at the Phantom before realizing this is fruitless.
While some people have compared the incorporeal Phantom to a glorified Mage Hand, a key thing to note is that the Phantom can actually interact with magical objects. This is very useful as it is immune to many of the obvious "MacGuffin perched on top of a hideously trapped altar"-style traps, but can still retrieve said magical MacGuffin.
I can't imagine ever keeping the Phantom contained inside the Spiritualist's psyche, as the two Skill Focus feats pale in comparison to the utility of the Phantom as a separate creature. If adventuring in an area populated predominantly with undead it might be worth keeping the Phantom internalized for the bonuses vs. mind-affecting effects.
Hmm, let's see, what else... the Spiritualist is a WIS-based caster, which meant exceptional Perception. I was easily able to maximize Wisdom while still having average STR, CON, INT, and a bit of extra DEX for initiative and AC. The spell list is very, VERY limited, and while my plan of summoning Bloody Skeletons worked out just fine and was very cool for low levels, this would peter out rapidly at higher levels as summons only advance to Summon Monster VI.
A quick note on a nifty trick for the Phantom: I built my Phantom with Antagonize as its feat. As the Phantom is all but immune to damage at low levels, this allows it to with fairly good odds completely take an enemy out of a fight for a single turn. While the majority of opponents in the scenario were immune for one reason or another, this was very effective on the boss and distracted its attention from a crucial NPC; while giving a round for the Spiritualist to set up with Summon Monster (and the Occultist above with Enlarge Person).
Baron Quintus Darlington, Human N Dark Archivist
STR: 10
DEX: 14
CON: 12
INT: 10
WIS: 20
CHA: 7
Traits: Reactionary, Master of Pentacles (+2 CL summon spell, 1/day)
Feats: SF: Conjuration, Augment Summoning
Spells Known:
Expeditious Retreat
Summon Monster I (Note: as a worshipper of Urgathoa, Quintus adds 'Bloody Human Skeleton' as an option to his Summon Monster I list)
Baroness Karissa Darlington, Phantom (Fear)
Standard Phantom ability scores, Stealthy as a bonus feat, combat bonus "Horrifying Strike" completely ignored
Feats: Antagonize
Skills: Diplomacy +7, Perception +4, Intimidate +7, Stealth +8
Notes: Karissa serves entirely as a distraction in combat, using Antagonize (Intimidate) to force an opponent to waste time on her for the crucial first round, then scolding opponents using Antagonize (Diplomacy), or Intimidate (Demoralize) to render foes shaken.
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I am the other Occultist Player that was playing it as an Party Face and side archer.
Overall I think the Occultist Class is a cool concept, it gives a good amount of customization. however it falls behind in power after level 7 when other classes starts getting more stuff, but the Occultist is barely able to manage its key resources: "mental power point"
Just through confirmation my character had no trouble since it was quite optimized for level one:
April Female Human CN
Str 13
Dex 16
Con 8
Int 20
Wis 7
cha 7
FEATS: Point blank shot, precise shot
Mental Power: level + int + 3 = 9
Implements:
Necromancy - soulbond puppet (1pt)
Transmutation - Legacy Weapon (8pt)
After casting Magic weapon and using Transmutation's base mental power
I was at +5 to hit and doing 1d8+1d6(acid)+1(str)+2(magic) points of damage.
This is obviously good at level one. However if we bring the build to level 7 the character stops to function as well since we simply will not have enough mental focuses to distribute but also use them.
For example
We probably have a +2 int headband at level 7. so our intelligence would be +6. meaning we will have 7(level)+6(int)+3 mental points = giving us 16.
following the same build, we need to have 4 points in our puppet so that we will have a improved familiar(spending a feat)
we then allocate 6 points into our bow, to give it +2 equivalent bonus: Holy preferred.
We can then pick up Divination Implement and put 4 points into Third Eye(SU), this will give us both constant Darkvision and See Invisibility; which is very important on an archer.
This leaves us with only 2 points to spend. without losing any of our existing bonuses. Even in Pathfinder Society, where there's usually 3 combats a day. 2 uses of "ALL" our class abilities is just not enough.
wohh. wohh. wohh... Sir, just because the Druid was first time playing.
does not mean he is a noob, in fact he was quite good. He prepared good spells, he had good stats, and he had a clear build and know what hes character was going to be like at level 7.
I was the archer player.
As I indicated, the Druid player did just fine. "Noob" was meant only to indicate his relative lack of experience, not any pejorative connotation.