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I am making this thread as a place to post all of my playtesting. I am unsure if I should submit it all as one hunk later on, or if I should submit every time we run a session. So until then this feels like a good repository.
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Class: Thaumaturge/Acrobat Lvl 3 (Free Archetype Variant Ruleset)
Statline: 16/14/12/10/10/16
Implement: Chalice
Class Feats: Binding Oath, Esoteric Warden
Party: Giant Instinct Barbarian, Harm Cleric Warpriest, Nature Witch, and Diabolic Sorcerer
Enemy: Elite Calathgar
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Went kind of low on initiative which worked out well for me, the Barbarian raged and moved up after pulling out their weapon, so the enemy moved in and dealt a mighty crit on him. The Nature Witch rolled very well on a heal spell and brought him back to full, she also managed to get her hex off on it which was nice. The Warpriest used Magic Weapon on the Barbarian which was awesome.
My Thaum went now. Managed to pass my Find Flaw check, because two weaknesses tied I was told both. I chose to then use Esoteric Antithesis for Fire and pulled out my spear instead of my dagger. I also pulled out my Chalice. A dead turn, but you know wasn't bad.
Barbarian went and... wiffed three attacks in a row. It was tragic. The damage was real good too. Enemy went and did it's big AOE on the Barbarian and Cleric which both managed to fail. Witch and Sorcerer used heals to keep them up. Warpriest stepped up and did two harms which it passed saves for one. First damage on the board.
My Thaum went up and swung, and because of flanking I managed to hit. 1d6+3+4+(Weakness 5 fire) was a tasty 18 damage. Seeing as I was the first to do major damage to it I Sipped from my cup. Got some temp hp.
Barbarian went and hit for a whopping 26 damage after weakness, so the Enemy bit him, crit, then took a swing at me, it rolled a 30, but because I had Esoteric Warden that was not a crit! So because of class abilities I took essentially 3d4+3 damage instead of 6d4+12 damage. I was now down 12 damage from max. Barbarian got hit by the third attack due to Giant Instinct and went down. Sorcerer used a heal on them again, Cleric took some swings and missed so got a decent harm, and the Witch shot an arrow that missed.
Thaums turn again, manage to hit twice more due to flanking and put on another 32 damage. Then Gulped my cup to heal me back to only -3. Barbarian stood up, grabbed the Sword off the ground and hit for the last bit of health.
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First combat was fun. I can see how if I failed it would have sucked, but that is dice. I got lucky and the Barbarian was swinging bad, so I managed to put 50 points of damage on the board. The little ac was situational but helped, and burning an action for a bit of temp hp or a solid heal was nice.
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Thank you so much for getting in a playtest so quickly. That sounds like a lot of fun!
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Playtest Two
So, this time I am playing with a different character in the campaign that is also respeccing into a Thaum.. and this one had some troubles. Originally she was the witch in the post above, who specialized in some healing and shortbow. Because the above character chose Chalice already, we decided to go with Amulet as damage prevention can be just as good as healing if done right.
The bow ended up being a bigger issue. We thought about just eating the damage loss to keep using a bow, as we are pretty sure Implement's Empowerment doesn't work with 1+ weapons. Luckily the character is a Human so we ended up with proficiency in one Advanced Weapon. We chose the repeating crossbow.
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Class: Thaumaturge/Medic Lvl 3 (Free Archetype Variant Ruleset)
Statline: 10/16/10/14/12/16
Implement: Amulet
Class Feats: Familiar, Talisman Esoterica
Party: Bomber Alchemist, Swashbuckler, Heal Cleric
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Encounter 1: Four Cave Scorpions (Moderate Encounter)
So, this fight was interesting. Fight started and the Thaum actually went first. She pulled out her crossbow, rolled... and got a nat 1 on her Find Flaws. So she became flat footed, still she pulled out her crossbow, and shifted to hide behind someone beefier. Swash went, managed to tumble through a scorp getting Panache, and then hit it but didn't kill. Scorpions started to go and got a bit unlucky, except one tail hit on the Alchemist that did inflict the poison. Cleric spent the turn assisting with the poison.
Thaum got to go again, chose a different Scorpion and passed their check, they used Esoteric Antithesis and then pulled out their amulet and shot a bolt... which missed. Bad luck.
Nothing super special happened this round except that the targeted scorpion went after the healer, and using the amulet knocked the 4 damage they would have dealt down to 0, negating the poison save.
The rest of combat went smoothly, lasting three more rounds. The Thaum managed to get two attacks in that landed doing 12 damage on one hit, and 10 on another. The Amulet came into play once more on that combat which reduced 7 damage down to 2. She did Find Flaw a second enemy, but that enemy died before she could interact with it beyond that.
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Encounter 2 - Brood Leech Swarm
This was a doozy, the encounter actually went super fast, but it was a brutal one. The monster attacked while half the party was in the water, luckily the Thaum was still above water and within 30'. Alchemist won initiative and threw an alchemist fire, we didn't quite know how the rules worked for this, so we ruled that it was like Piercing. It could work, but half range. The damage was miniscule due to Fire Res 5 underwater essentially negating the weakness to Area.
The swarm then went and it... it just wrecked the party. Both Alchemist and Swash Critically failed their saving throws. Swash went next, but 10' penalty to speed in the water hurt a lot, and they tried to escape, they failed three swim checks and sunk, and took 11 damage from the bleed.
The Thaum went up next and decided to use Find Flaws, they failed so they found out that the swarm was weak to Area Attacks and to Acid, used a new action to use Esoteric Antithesis they chose Area because in a previous session we fought a bat swarm that was weak to area and it felt the safer choice, and finally pulled out their Repeating Crossbow. The flavor was the bolts they were using were set to shatter into lots of pieces on impact.
Cleric's turn and they had to move closer to heal the Swash. Alchemist went and only did 1 splash damage on a missed throw, critically failed their swim check and took 3 damage from the bleed.
Swash's turn they managed to actually pass a swim check, but due to the status penalty on speed moved 5'. They did however pass their fort save to reduce it to stage 1. They took another 10 damage.
Finally it was time for Thaum to go, and this was looking messy, so they popped their Potency Talisman and spent three actions firing. The first was a hit for 14 damage (Splash and Piercing Negate each other so essentially swinging for 2d6+4 damage), second hit was a critical hit for a stunning 18 damage. The third attack was a miss.
Luckily the cleric was now close enough to move in and use Haunting Hymm which did just enough to put it down.
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Thoughts Positive: I do like the good amount of damage the Amulet can help reduce, and the Thaum can actually do some real good ranged damage. 2e from what I can see doesn't have a ton of ways to add static damage to ranged attacks and this really worked well.
Negative Thoughts: It was very prohibitive using ranged at all with any of the buffs. It looks like you need either thrown weapons or a repeating crossbow to use ranged without juggling your implement. I also found the Amulet a bit cumbersome as you need to have your target studied for it to do anything.
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Ok, new session. Here we go.
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Class: Thaumaturge/Acrobat Lvl 3 (Free Archetype Variant Ruleset)
Statline: 16/14/12/10/10/16
Implement: Chalice
Class Feats: Binding Oath, Esoteric Warden
Party: Thaum, Swashbuckler, Druid, Ranger
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Enemies:
3 Custom Difficulty level 2 Monsters using standard guidelines. 30' of movement, strategy was to move in, attack, move away. Had 3 Resistance to Piercing and Slashing, and Weakness 5 to force. These were based on gargoyles but foxes and weaker.
1 Custom Difficulty level 3 Monster using standard guidelines. Could inflict one persistent bleed on claw attack, could knockdown on beak. No Resistances or Immunities. This was a Giant Turkey and very scary. Based on "Terror bird"
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Did very well against the smaller fast enemies. We had about three rounds of combat before the level 3 Monster showed up. I identified one, passed my check, and connected a lodestone to the bottom of my spear to try to attune it to the concept of "Gravity and Force". I didn't feel too limited as I was doing solid damage, and my chalice gave me a nice little 3hp buffer each turn.
When the boss showed up I failed my check, so I had to spend another action to use EA. I was then unable to heal the Druid who was hurt as I couldn't get in range.
My Spear attuned to the concept of "Snake" did do a solid chunk of damage when thrown though. From there I whiffed every attack, but not by an amount that would have been changed by better stats or chasis.
I was able to go up to a fallen ally and heal them for 9 which helped save their life. Though thinking about it. I am unsure if you can actually do that.
Neither of my Class Feats came up this session
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Thoughts Positive: It is fun being able to be trained in all knowledge skills even if you are not as good for general knowledge as a dedicated person. The damage was insane, and it was very fun finding thematic weaknesses. The temp hp made me feel safe and the healing was nice.
Thoughts Negative: It is hard to come up with thematic custom weaknesses on an enemy that shows up right behind you in initiative, and online I was worried I was slowing things down.
Thoughts Neutral: Action economy is tight sometimes. But when it isn't the payoff is pretty good so I think it balances well.