So I'm considering playing a Medium in an upcoming AP. I have an interesting concept, personality and everything all ready to go. But my only worry is that a character with as much potential diversity of mechanical play as the Medium class will end up getting pigeonholed into a specific role instead of having the opportunity to be the jack-of-all trades that she seems to be designed to be.
So I hope to hear other people's experiences with this class in AP play as well as recommendations on avoiding being pigeonholed into filling a single role (which among my mates would probably be healer).
Thanks in advance.
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That is the significant downside of the medium as a class I think. Everyone else who would be feeling the pressure to provide a healer for the group sees someone playing a class that CAN potentially heal and runs off to play a magus or something.
I can give a few points of advice though.
The first is that you might want to stress that you are not the best healer the game can provide (by a longshot). Maybe with some creative building but...
I would also suggest roleplaying your different spirits and playing up your taboos pretty hard. The key here would be to make the hierophant a spirit who is abrasive and has a painful taboo like being as 'virtuous as a paladin'.
Also remember that although the game has a lot of combat there will be certain days when the group is just 'traveling' or 'gathering information around town' or interacting with NPCs in general.
These are all good times to break out the Trickster or the Marshal.
My final suggestion would be to make your class a mystery and not tell the group what you're playing. Of course that's easier said than done.
That is some good advice. I think I should also ultimately learn to be a wee bit selfish and just stick to whichever spirit I want to explore as opposed to what the party may be in need of the most.
For what it's worth, I played a medium through Serpent's Skull without focusing on a particular class. I tried to use all the spirits relatively evenly, though I did end up using the archmage and champion a bit more than the others. Like you, I wanted to use the class to its fullest and not just take up one role.
My GM created distinct personalities for all my spirits. (I was the relic channeler archetype, so I was always channeling the same ones. I'd look into it if you want the spirits to be more than one-shot characters; it's a near archetype.) I talked about them to the rest of my party like they were my friends--so you could also use that strategy to avoid being pigeonholed. After all, you don't want to play favorites among your friends, do you? :-)
You might also want to mention OOC to the rest of the party that you're really interested in exploring the class's different options and don't want to be stuck in a specific role all the time. Might help adjust their expectations.