So for our Emerald Spire group (which is, ironically enough, playing superheroes) I decided to take a break from playing Power Fist (a.k.a. Carl Lucas) to give the Vigilante a try (with my GM's okay naturally). I did a Warlock this last session, and am going to have the character shuffle around for our next session to be a stalker instead. So here is a quick rundown of my warlock build, and my thoughts from having given him a play through:
Stats (including Gear): Str 10, dex 22, con 14, int 14, wis 10, cha 14; hp 75, Ac 26; Talents: Concealed casting, Arcane training II, III, Mystic Bolt (Electricity); Mystic Bolt: +12 to hit, 1d6 +10 damage, x2 crit. While I was originally going to do a mostly casterless build, I wanted flight to complete my theme (loosely based off of shazam/captain marvel), so I went casting. Had I gone non-casting focused, I would have taken tattoo chamber, educated defense, and elemental battle armor instead.
Our group (normally consisting of a brawler/inquisitor, brawler/investigator, and a fighter (archer archetype)) made our way back down into the emerald spire to continue clearing out the fire level, where our first combat was a pair of Magma dragons. one of the dragons had moved down to engage our group with his breath weapon, while the other was fighting our tanky investigator (based on batman) who had leapt across some lava and moved to the higher part of the cavern we found ourselves in. On my first action, I hit with both of my mystic bolts (one of which was a crit), dealing mid 40's in damage. Off to a good start. Our archer finished the dragon while we made our way across the secured rope over the lava to help batman engage the second dragon. On my next turn I cast fly on myself and moved up, grabbing our newest member (a character based on deathstroke) and on my next round delivered him into the flank on the dragon (which like most things our group made short work of). After dealing with an interesting "wall", we proceeded down to the next level. On the way down, we encountered some of our reoccurring villains, most of whom got away, but we did manage to catch one of them. We then hit the floor with the cultist of the king in yellow. First up, clockwork soldiers. Even without precise shot, I almost never missed a single shot (I believe I only missed one in that fight, and it was for the most part the theme of the evening). Dispatching the robots, we turned our attention to figuring out what was going on in this area.
Our next fight was with a pair of weird statue creatures, who had gaze attacks and SR. After watching one of my party members get stunned, I decided to close my eyes and make melee attacks with my mystic bolts. The combination of miss chance and SR meant that I was only hitting with 50% of my attacks. Even then, I managed to tank one solo....right up to the moment at which I died (since I was losing 7 points of ac, it made them really able to hit me. I did actually die, but then a quick use of first aid gloves got me back on my feet.
Our next fight was the boss room, and that's where things got...interesting. Having gathered that she was a caster and using gloves of recon. to look in and get a description on her (she was described as being wrapped in bandages), we sent in batman with silence cast on him. This ended up being crucial, as she was indeed a heavy caster. In addition to hitting her with a disrupt undead (take that mummy!) I also managed to hit her with pretty much every mystic bolt I threw at her, several with cover and firing into combat. that was pretty much where our session ended.
Assessment: Mystic bolt is rock solid. It has the potential to do more damage than kinetic blast or any of the arcanist's elemental attacks. I didn't hit anything with resistance to electricity during our stint (which would have relegated me to throwing alchemical items).
Concealed casting worked really well to prevent my allies (with the exception of batman) from knowing I was a caster.
I look forward to seeing how my stalker pans out...