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So, like a lot of the non-subscribers I just got the Occult Adventures PDF, and was looking through the classes. And I got to wondering what is the Medium class actually good at? It seems incredibly versatile, being able to channel a new spirit everyday to change up it's focus, but without being able to change your stats everyday, you're either going to have to be mediocre at everything, or specialize in one spirit, and still be worse than the classes that your spirit emulates. As far as I can see, you play as either a bard with less class features. A warrior with unchained monks flurry and pseudo pounce, but without an actual full BAB for iterative attacks. A worse Stonelord Paladin. A worse Cleric. A cavalier who's a little better at boosting allies, while a lot worse at combat, or a worse rogue/slayer/vigilante/vivesectionist alchemist.
Outside of a few corner cases, like taking the trickster to gain max ranks in different skills on different days, getting answers from the dead, or fighting haunts, I can't see this class as being useful. I would think in a 3-4 PC party you're stuck being the missing role, except being worse at it than other classes, and in a 5-6 PC party you're stuck playing second fiddle to everyone else. I mean sure, you get to choose who you're playing second fiddle to, but it doesn't make that any more fun.
So I guess what I'm asking is, am I missing something here? Do people actually have a good plan for how to use the Medium class so that it's as strong as most other classes? Or is it just the swiss army knife class; does a lot of things, but none of them as good as a standalone tool?
I think the fighter spirit is really strong, especially if you take the feat to increase the bonus by one. At lv1 you have a +2 to attack and damage rolls, and at lv2 you're at +2 attack and +4 damage. At lv6 you have 2 attacks at full BAB, better than a martial with one at -5 and then you get your -5 at lv8. Plus your bonuses are scaling as you go too. Then you have some spells on top of that!
Also the Marshal looks cool to me. haven't read the caster versions enough to figure them out yet. And the defensive gets DR 1/- per 2 levels. I think they all have good options, plus some spell casting! That I feel is the real perk
Champion is just narsty. Free Exotic Weapons Proficiency every time you channel a Champion? YIKES! And Sudden Attack is pretty sick: a free additional Attack that stacks with Haste is like a mini Unchained Flurry, and the Seance Boon gives you basically a free Weapon Specialization for the day (+2 damage to all non-spell damage!? That's pretty nuts!)
Marshal lets you parse out Seance Boons to your Party without having to channel those Spirits. Again, VERY nice.
Trickster is pretty silly - every day, you can choose 3 skills you're not trained in, get bonuses to those skills AND you're considered to be trained in them. That's pretty dang useful both in and out of combat. And then there's the Mini-Sneak Attack you get as an Intermediate ability.
The Guardian is cute until you get the Intermediate ability, after which point it's just SICK (DR AND ER equal to an Invulnerable Rager!? YAS PLZ!)
The Archmage and Heirophant abilities are a little boring but cool - free Wizard/Sorc or Cleric/Oracle spells are always welcome.
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Go Dex + Cha as your prime stats w/Weapon Finesse and maybe Slashing Grace and you can easily alternate between most of those options on a daily basis, which is potentially very cool. Or do the same with Str + Cha and heavier armor.
The Champion in particular makes a very solid melee combatant due to Spirit Bonus.
At 8th level, you're talking +9/+9/+4 to hit with +5 damage from Class (+10/+10/+5 with +6 to damage if you've got Spirit Focus), and gives all his allies +2 damage as well. A Fighter at the same level is +9/+4 to hit with +3 damage from Class (including Weapon Specialization), while a Barbarian is +10/+5 for +2 damage from Class.
That's really nice, actually (and combined with a spell list having access to Haste and Mirror Image). The Barbarian and Fighter have compensations comparatively, but the Medium is very much on par. Guardian trades offense for defense, but is likewise pretty neat (Invulnerable Rager level DR).
Alternately, you're a pretty solid backup spellcaster as a Hierophant or Archmage (heck, from level 7 on, you can cast Haste as a 2nd level spell), and you can dabble in Trickster at need to fill in any skills the party lacks.
Marshal is a little trickier to use properly and I'm not sure I've got my head wrapped around it yet, but given the usefulness of the rest, Medium is a very solid Class.
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I still don't see a Champion build being better than an Unchained Monk or Barbarian at low levels, or even a Ranger or Paladin at high levels. I went back and took a look at their spell list, and it's actually a lot better than first glimpse. But even with +2 to attack and +4 to damage you're still behind most classes since you can't take power attack til level 3. And sudden strike is nice, but it's only slightly better than just having full bab to begin with. After that and fleet charge you're no better than a pouncing barbarian, Unchained monk, mounted cavalier, or any full bab class that focuses on archery or pummeling style, in fact often worse because these classes have other class features that aren't just trying to get you back where you should be with a full BAB. The only thing that I can see taking a second and third look is the spell list, which is pretty nice, but then you also get d8 hit dice and 3/4 bab to qualify for feats, so I'm still pretty meh about it.
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Whenever they're cheerful - you hit them!
Always strike a happy medium!
Go to the corner and think about what you did.
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Make it a large for an extra $0.99?
and you know you have spells, while dealing tons of damage and wearing armor.
lv1 monk power attack 18str two handed
+4 1d10+9/+4 1d10+9
lv1 barb power attack 18str two handed raging
+6 2d6+12
lv1 champion 18str two handed Spirit Focus
+6 2d6+8
lv3 monk power attack 18str two handed
+6 1d10+9/+6 1d10+9/+6 1d10+9
lv3 barb power attack 18str two handed raging
+8 2d6+12
lv3 champion 18str two handed Spirit Focus power attack
+8 2d6+13
I really like the Champion, too: the Seance Boon gives all the party a +2 to Damage, and that's nothing to sneeze at (and it's untyped!). If you pick Spirit Dancer, you can give it to all nearby allies, so it gets very scary with an eventual summoner buddy around.
If I'm not mistaken, the Hyerophant allows you to Channel Negative energy even if you are Good! I know that a lot of people wanted to do it, and I think that it opens up all those juicy builds that use variant channel to give baddies all kind of nasty conditions.
By the way, is it just me or the influence penailities are vastly apart for severity? The Marshall is a nuisance at best (luckily, as the Marshal seems like the spirit that likes surging the most), but the Trickster is utterly backbreaking.
I still don't see a Champion build being better than an Unchained Monk or Barbarian at low levels, or even a Ranger or Paladin at high levels. I went back and took a look at their spell list, and it's actually a lot better than first glimpse. But even with +2 to attack and +4 to damage you're still behind most classes since you can't take power attack til level 3.
Retraining is a thing. You can get it at lv2, like every other d8 class. And unless you're using a 2-handed weapon, Power Attack is situational at best; get off the Power Attack bandwagon and realize that it's usefulness takes a substantial nosedive once you start using a weapon in one hand or Two-Handed Fighting.
And sudden strike is nice, but it's only slightly better than just having full bab to begin with.
Slightly better is still better. That's the very definition of the term.
After that and fleet charge you're no better than a pouncing barbarian, Unchained monk, mounted cavalier, or any full bab class that focuses on archery or pummeling style, in fact often worse because these classes have other class features that aren't just trying to get you back where you should be with a full BAB.
So you're completely missing the fact that you can use Spirit Surge to add 1d6, 1d8, or 1d10 to an Attack Roll AFTER you've rolled and it's shown to be too low, by taking 1 point of Burn? And that taking a Taboo lets you bypass the Burn twice a day?
Or that, as a Marshall, you can gain the bonus to Damage from the Champion AND use your Spirit Surge to affect not only your own Attack rolls, but also those of your allies?
The only thing that I can see taking a second and third look is the spell list, which is pretty nice, but then you also get d8 hit dice and 3/4 bab to qualify for feats, so I'm still pretty meh about it.
So, yeah, you get the d8 HD and 4th level spells, or you get the normal 6th level spells if you take Archmage/Heirophant; either way, you are far from being in a bad position. If you could be a d10/Full BAB character with 6th levels of spells, you'd be squarely in the Broken category.
That, and the favored locations thing, of course.
Maybe DMs will allow you to bypass the Favored Locations if you have an item that's storing the Soul of whatever spirit you're channeling?
Like in Shaman King - how the Shamans all have items which hold the souls of their Spirits and walk around with them so they can fuse with them when needed.
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By the way, is it just me or the influence penailities are vastly apart for severity? The Marshall is a nuisance at best (luckily, as the Marshal seems like the spirit that likes surging the most), but the Trickster is utterly backbreaking.
Marshall isn't too bad if you're the party leader, if you aren't it actually sucks a lot.
As do most of the rest, actually.
I want to clarify something about spirit surge
After failing a d20 roll that was
modified by his spirit bonus...
So you know it's a miss before you even have to worry about deciding if you want to do it. It's even better than the investigator's inspiration which is done after the roll but before results.
@Deadmanwalking: I think Marshall is the less sucky because, like someone pointed out in the Occult Adventures page (I think it was Rinjin?), you have to be nominally in charge of the party: the face won't have problems convincing the now influenced medium that yes, he is the head of this merry band of adventurers, but that the party Cleric sage advices had always worked, and the face's honeyed words always swayed people.
Just because you're the party leader doesn't mean you can't defer to more qualified people, or that you have to make all of the decisions yourself: sure, you have probably to get considered a little more so to not upset the Marshal spirit, but it's on a whole different boat than DID YOU JUST INSPIRE COURAGE ME OH DON'T TRY TO TRICK ME I KNOW IT'S ALL AN ABOLETH CONSPIRACY AND THAT YOU ARE JUST TRYING TO CAPTURE ME ALIVE YOU DISGUISED SQUID-PERSON.
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@Deadmanwalking: I think Marshall is the less sucky because, like someone pointed out in the Occult Adventures page (I think it was Rinjin?), you have to be nominally in charge of the party: the face won't have problems convincing the now influenced medium that yes, he is the head of this merry band of adventurers, but that the party Cleric sage advices had always worked, and the face's honeyed words always swayed people.
Just because you're the party leader doesn't mean you can't defer to more qualified people, or that you have to make all of the decisions yourself: sure, you have probably to get considered a little more so to not upset the Marshal spirit, but it's on a whole different boat than DID YOU JUST INSPIRE COURAGE ME OH DON'T TRY TO TRICK ME I KNOW IT'S ALL AN ABOLETH CONSPIRACY AND THAT YOU ARE JUST TRYING TO CAPTURE ME ALIVE YOU DISGUISED SQUID-PERSON.
This assumes you can get the party to agree that you're in charge. If you can, you're absolutely right that it's a lesser penalty. If you can't, then you lose most of the bonuses your spirit gives you and get a penalty on top of it.
Trickster is bad, but at least you keep your own bonuses.
Another issue is that it's pretty easy for a Trickster (or any non-Marshall) to avoid getting the penalty, while a Marshall gets it just by using what is, for him, a basic class feature.
That, and the favored locations thing, of course.Maybe DMs will allow you to bypass the Favored Locations if you have an item that's storing the Soul of whatever spirit you're channeling?
Like in Shaman King - how the Shamans all have items which hold the souls of their Spirits and walk around with them so they can fuse with them when needed.
That's an archetype I think.
That's an archetype I think.That, and the favored locations thing, of course.Maybe DMs will allow you to bypass the Favored Locations if you have an item that's storing the Soul of whatever spirit you're channeling?
Like in Shaman King - how the Shamans all have items which hold the souls of their Spirits and walk around with them so they can fuse with them when needed.
Yes, the relic channeler. The drawback is that you can only channel one spirit of each type (the one associated with the relic); you can't change the taboo, bonus spells, feats, skills, etc. around each time. On the benefit side, you get two bonus spells of each spell level, two exotic weapon proficiencies, three bonus combat feats, and three skills; not one, one, two, two, and two.
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@chb - Retraining is a thing, but it's a waste of resources and time if that matters to the campaign, and some GMs don't allow it. Also Power Attack is almost always worth it for a strength build, even with TWFing, not that a medium has enough feats to effectively use TWF until very high level. Also with 3/4 BAB they'll gain less benefit from the feat. When I was saying that Sudden Strike was only slightly better that full BAB, what I meant was that one of their class abilities was just barely pushing it above the base chassis of a lot of classes. It is better than that, but doesn't come close to the new monks flurry of blows. I'll admit that spirit surge is pretty good, but a fairly limited resource, and the only ways to increase it are to trade away better abilities, to gain taboos, which similar to drawbacks, either don't affect you at all or are horribly inconvenient (which is a mechanic I hate), or to perform a 10 minute ceremony to remove 1 influence, which is in all ways worse than just being able to handle 1 more influence before losing control. The marshals ability to hand it off to allies is cool, but once again limited resource.
Really the only thing I'm seeing that would make me consider using the champion medium is the best spell list out of all of the 4 level casters.
But they get so few castings you're basically looking at you heroism or mirror image being a once a day sort of thing.
And to be fair, the more I look at it, I'm seeing less of a gap between full bab classes and the champion. I'm currently trying to build a natural weapon champion medium, hoping it's what changes my mind on it being a weaker melee class.
Medium's got a lot going for it. Comparing it to a Barbarian or other full-BAB class is like comparing an Arcane Duelist Bard to those same classes. They're trying to do different things. If you instead frame it as, "Well, can the Barbarian also cast teleport or breath of life when it's needed?" I think what Medium is trying to do becomes more apparent. You build a Medium to be the 4th or 5th member of the party, not the Wizard, not the Barbarian, not the Druid, but a little bit of all of them depending on what's needed. On top of that they get a (sometimes) better version of the Investigator's Inspiration. Inspiration is awesome. Ghosts can get all up inside this vessel if I never fail a roll again.
Honestly, I think the only thing that makes building a Medium hard is the whole favored locations thing. Personally, I'll probably rule that the Medium can't share seance bonuses with the party unless they're in a favored location, but otherwise can channel that spirit for themselves without any issues. Or maybe take on an extra point of influence or getting a less powerful spirit or something. I'm not too keen on the idea of limiting a player's basic mechanical choices just because the campaign I planned out doesn't have battlefields or training grounds or a wide variety of altars to choose from.
I've been messing around more with the Occultist (which I love; it's basically Artificer), but Medium seems like it'll play out really well in campaigns that have downtime between encounters; city campaigns especially, where finding one of the locations is just a matter of going down the street if you play it RAW. Playing one of these in Curse of the Crimson Throne would be awesome...
It's also kind of hard to theorycraft the class because so much of what it does is dependent on the situation. If you look at the raw stats of the character it might seem underwhelming, until you realize that the campaign might have a whole session that's all fighting bandits (which a Champion spirit would tackle), then the next session has the party spying on an evil duke who may have hired the bandits (Trickster time), and then the next day confronting the duke or convincing the king that the jerkwad's been all nefarious (Marshall's like "wuuuuuut"). The Medium won't be better than the Barbarian, or the Investigator, or the Bard, but they can be competent at all three while still having the capability to be a full caster all of a sudden if they need.
That said, I do wish that the Medium could play around more with multiple spirits earlier. I hate it when the cool stuff is gated after level 12, since most play time in APs is before that threshold. I also have to say that you probably wouldn't want to play one in a group that loves to min-max, since you'll be playing with builds that usually have their fingers in a couple pies at a time and won't feel as useful.
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I have to agree that it would be nice to get access to multiple spirits earlier on. One of the reasons I think that the class has to perform well in all the roles is that it can't just switch up when it needs to. Outside of games where the players are in control of the narrative, I don't think being able to switch back and forth is definitely going to be helpful. If you have to react to things, you might not be able to take the hour to perform the seance to tap into whatever spirit would be best for the situation. So I feel that player will basically need to decide what 1-2 spirits they're going to channel most of the time, while using the others when needed or when able. So if you're going to be spending 90% of your adventuring career with one spirit, it better be as good as playing another class, or close enough that the added versatility is a decent trade off.
Playing around with a natural attack champion build I've actually put together some decent numbers for accuracy and damage with few feats so you can still take stuff like toughness and heavy armor proficiency. It's not full BAB type numbers, but it's pretty darn close considering the seance boon will be adding a not insignificant amount of damage from other characters attacks. I'm still kind of iffy about trickster, guardian and marshall, but am starting to think that archmage and hierophant have the best spell list out of any of the 6 level casters, even if I'm not crazy about their other abilities.
I'm still curious on how other people plan on building their mediums. And if anyone's found a use for them that can't be filled by any other class. Also I'm not crazy about the spirits favored locations and am curious how people are going to run this in their home games.
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I'm still curious on how other people plan on building their mediums. And if anyone's found a use for them that can't be filled by any other class. Also I'm not crazy about the spirits favored locations and am curious how people are going to run this in their home games.
Well, in addition to the generic places, the rules do note that each spirit has a specific place they're associated with. I'd definitely let a player make some sort of Knowledge roll (Local or History, probably) to know where such a location might be in their vicinity for the spirit type they want.
Assuming I don't ignore it entirely, of course.
Why don't you just bond with spirits in a natural environment? The locations listed are just part of the potential locations. A desert might have a legend of a monk who survived in it for years eating only once a year, by talking in the spirit of that legend you gain the benefits of the Guardian.
The Medium is good as being versatile. Sure, you can pick the same Spirit every day over and over, but if you know IN ADVANCE what problems you're gonna face, you can pick another spirit to fulfill the needs.
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Hmm... a trait that gave you a "favoured legend" you can can use without being in a favoured location might be decent and mitigate some dangers.
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Even a feat that lets you call back the legend you used the day before without finding an apt location would be cool.
Generally, anything Medium related would be welcome: it's true that its just a few pages long, but the Medium got only 1 feat. :/
I think that it'll end up playing similarly to a Shaman, though I do agree that the lack of on-the-spot versatility is kind of a bummer. Whereas the Shaman is locked in on a spirit to begin with, those Wandering Spirits come into play early enough that the Shaman has them more than he doesn't over the course of a career. Would've been nice to have a super quick spirit swap from low level that just incurred a big influence hit. Something like a one minute channel with four influence and no seance, but that would've been ok if you desperately needed a Hierophant or something.
Just being able to do that would make the class a helluva lot stronger, but would definitely bring Influence into the equation more for certain spirits. I might just adopt that along with different location rules. I already let Shaman characters do a Wandering Spirit later in the day, if they don't have one active already, by spending 15 minutes communing.
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I think the Champion is probably the easiest thing to build around for the medium since it gives you some pretty hefty to-hit and damage bonuses. Could make two-weapon fighting a viable option, could work okay with archery. I'm thinking switch-hitter, most likely. For the versatility! Not having a stable weapon proficiency kind of sucks, though, for a build. Make sure you have decent strength for all of the stuff you'll be carrying around.
I love the flavor of the archmage in particular, but the challenge I've got with it is that as the spells it grants are arcane and not psychic, you still have to deal with ASF chance on armor. I think high dex will offset that but I'm totally going to be carrying around a list of spells with no somatic components when I play my medium. You're not going to want to be running around casting Mage Armor on yourself from a spell slot, so if you plan on going caster-heavy you may want to invest in UMD. The class is built to make pretty good use of it!
For PFS I think the medium could work very well; figure out what the holes in the party are and then try to fill one of them. You won't do as good a job as a dedicated character, particularly a caster, but you've got a really good chance of always being useful!
I don't think a medium will make as much sense in a stable adventuring party unless said adventuring party is small, like 4 people.
The location stuff is the biggest worry for me but I think my plan is to talk to the GM ahead of time about it, and every morning say something to the effect of "I would like to look around to see if I can find a good spot to channel an X spirit." Might get GM brownie points for setting up morning encounters, if the scenario has them. I hope the mediums don't spend too much time being temporarily ex-mediums in combat, though. Wizards and clerics and such aren't usually harassed while preparing. I guess we'll see how it goes!
Bear in mind that the Relic Channeler gets past this problem VERY easily. Your seance is focusing on a relic you possess for each spirit. Maybe you have a shield for Guardian, a falcata for Champion, a holy symbol for Hierophant, etc. Things you would literally be carrying and would probably want to have for those different legends.
Reading through Relic Channeler, I think that'd be the default Medium for me, and I'd almost treat the basic Medium as the alternate.
Carrying around your personal Spirits and using their effects is more akin to a Sorcerer having their Bloodline, an Oracle having their Curse and Mysteries, etc.
I'm not going to say it's "better" than the base Medium, but it's far-and-away more user-friendly than the basic Medium.
The base Medium requires a bit too much RPing and DM Fiat to be applicable, and if your DM doesn't feel like playing along, you may be SOL - carrying around a relic of a very-specific Spirit with its own set taboo, etc. just makes life SO much easier for everyone involved.
The trouble with the Relic Channeler is that it kills one of the few things the Medium has going for it: versatility over days. I don't care if I get 2 spells/level from Archmage or 3 skills from Trickster, the big advantage of the normal Medium is that Tuesday I can cure disease and Thursday I can remove curse without losing slots on circumstantial stuff like that, or do Disguise instead of Craft (turnips) one day for the same reason. Removing that is a huge hit. Not to mention the cost if you ever lose your relics, tons of time and easily more than WBL at many levels (turns out the "replace a familiar" mechanic isn't a great choice when you've got 6 of them).
I strongly suspect "Favored Location" is going to be ignored on a level unseen since Demihuman Level Limits. Some might do it outright while others will creatively interpret the rules so can channel the legend of "Steve the Archmage, who happened to sit on that rock over there" but it will happen. It is just unplayable otherwise in most campaigns that leaves a city or location chock full of "appropriate legends." As far as I can tell the Spirit Dancer already ignores it without saying so, because there is no way you can do a seance in a place that works for all six spirits.
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Yeah, the spirit dancer looked like a good option, but it's rounds/day does mean at low level you pretty much want to save your spirit abilities for combat. An extra spirit dance, or lingering performance type of feat would help out a lot for the low levels.
Relic Channeler does seem like the official PFS medium unless they release some clarification on spirit locations or seances.
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Or take heavy armor proficiency and just have a wasted feat when you take guardian. Personally I think the best use of the mediums versatility isn't in switching adventuring roles, you probably want to focus in one spirit, then use the other in downtime. Scribe Scroll is a great feat for them cause not only can they choose new spells to scribe everyday, but they also have the haste as a second level spell that a lot of people freaked out about when they gave it to the summoner. Actually mediums are pretty good at crafting period, being able to access wizard/sorcerer, cleric, and their own incredible spell list. The only downside is not having 7-9th level spells until the archmage capstone.
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If you've got a very specific build in mind for your medium, I agree, relic channeler is probably the answer. I feel like it kind of wrecks the huge advantage of the medium, though, by limiting the class's absolute flexibility.
Sure, some days I might want to know Magic Missile and other days I might want to know Ear-Piercing Scream. But I think the fun of the class is that one night, deep in a dungeon, the party needs Floating Disc and even the wizard never learned that one. So you rest, and the next morning, you channel Archmage, and...
Also, I love Haunt Channeler. (I was even asking for it in the playtest!) So I'm a little loathe to trade that one out for something more optimal, even though Haunt Channeler's mostly going to be fluff.
I think the crafting idea is genius.
I can see the Medium being a very strong class to choose for PFS. That's the game type where you're most likely going to find gaping holes in your party makeup for the Medium to fill on a scenario-by-scenario basis.