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A group of misfits is collected to solve a series of murders that involve victims being burned severely, but then drowning in the bay of Featherfalls (homebrew). The city of Featherfalls gets the Rook's to put their best detective on it (Fighter) but forces them to look at the wrong suspect (Sorcerer). The Rook's are approached by an ex-OWL who believes something more is going on, as the most recent murder is likely connected to others in the area (Thaumaturge). Then a foreign PI hears about the strange circumstances of the murder and dreams about the victim (Psychic), so he pulls his partner along to solve one last case before she can go into retirement (Rogue).
This dream is what ultimately gives them the clue to search the decommissioned prison on the Eytasha Island in the bay called Cliff's Keep AKA 'The Sheer'.
The party consistency:
- Cathartic Caster Elemental Fire Sorcerer Tiefling (super flavorful btw, nice job Paizo on SoM!)
- Half-Elf Rogue Ruffian with Demoralize Focus
- Kitsun Guisarme Fighter
Shoony Chalice Thaumaturge with 5th level Implement being Weapon. Grabbed Drawing Circle and the ability to merge two deific symbols to cause repulsion. The character's flavor was on point, and there ability to work with the party was great for this scenario. Went Medicine Feats so they could function as primary healer.
INT Ancient Elf Distnat Grasp Psychic with the Investigator MCD. Grabbed Strain Mind and the ability to target from a separate square (Warp). Very interesting character themes going on, and more use of Mage Hand than I've ever seen in a game ever.
This encounter revolved around using any detect magic to find a particular item hidden in the room (the office of the warden of the old prison). Eventually, they found a strange-looking knife attached to the bottom of a drawer on the warden's desk. Once removed, the haunt ended, though the dagger still deals mental damage to creatures that attempt to identify it using magical means
The Psychic and the Thaumaturge split up from the other party members to investigate the showers, where of course they were ambushed by a Tendriculos. Psychic took considerable damage from an AoO but was healed up by the Thaumaturge after. They ultimately did not attempt to fight and fled into the hallway where the creature was too large to follow. The Sorcerer chucked a fireball into the room, which caused the creature to withdraw it's tentacles from the door, but only in wait until later.
The Rogue, Fighter, and Sorcerer sat down to play Rook's Corner, a version of blackjack in my homebrew except there is no dealer and one of your cards is dealt to you facedown and you cannot look. The players took mental damage if they did not follow the rules of the game (betting in the right order, hitting in the right order, etc.) Players ended up winning the first round, which granted them a dose of the drug called 'The Sap' which is common in the area. They also discovered clues in the Inventory logs of the Warden earlier that leads them to believe that there might be something amiss in the prison. Completing the game ends the haunt, no rolls needed.
This time they all had to actually fight the Tendriculos in order to progress in the prison. Overall, because they had a Fire Elemental Sorcerer, this encounter was sort of "in the bag" from the beginning even though it was a CL+2. That said there were notable moments:
- Thaumaturge was able to use Find Flaws and EA to get the Weakness 5 Fire on their attacks, which made them hit pretty dang hard even if only for two rounds.
- Psychic got off two amped Telekinetic Projectiles which did an impressive amount of damage on just a regular success. They did not miss this encounter, which probably contributed to them feeling good about the damage. They avoided using Rend due to the knowledge of the damage being resistant and went with their normal Marbles (which I had already previously ruled as Bludgeoning).
- Fighter did a lot of damage and was in the fray quickly.
- Sorcerer critically hit a Produce Flame due to the Rogues Demoralize. Nice moment for both of them. Persistent damage with the Thaumaturge attack killed the creature.
Psychic Observations
The use of marbles as Telekinetic Projectiles was fun. The psychic also used a light cast marble as essentially a floating torch they could move. Psychic was also able to dive and retrieve clues using Mage Hand from the ocean where the cliffs meet the water, to further their investigation. Psychic ultimately used Cantrips the entirety of their travels, but the amped cantrips were decently on par with others in the group.
Unleash Psyche never got used, which is both a good and a bad thing. With how infrequently combats go to 3 rounds, I think it might make more sense to be a triggerable state or even a Focus Spell or Stance of some kind. There's also the "how do I deal with this" of if an encounter "starts" but the PCs choose to prolong the engagement (running away in Part 1 Tendriculos) that they could realistically trigger this repeatedly from safety.
Something that's more limited in use but able to be turned on seems like a better way to approach Psyche Unleashed (though thematically, I do like that). Perhaps even triggering it under certain conditions (Will Save, mental damage, etc).
Thaumaturge Observations
One interesting thing is drinking from chalice does not have the manipulate trait, which means it did not trigger AoO. While that's probably fine considering it would have been devastating to use Chalice inside the Tendriculos reach, it was a bit weird that it didn't have that.
Both the player and I do not care at all for the mechanics around Find Flaws or that the Class is Charisma-based as a standard. The knowledge checks get extremely clunky out of combat and the fact that they lack Society means they can't really roll on any organizations that would be creepy or even specific humanoids that are associated with those types of things. I offered other roll options where it felt appropriate (mainly Occultism) but it felt really empty.
The entire class to both of us was screaming WISDOM, but then had this CHA Find Flaws stapled on top of it. One thing that was extremely frustrating was the player wanted to play a Dwarf, but without making drastic efforts to adjust the ability scores to get that much needed 18 in CHA, it just didn't work.
I really think the Class should just have an innate "Bardic Lore" for Monsters-only that uses a different ability other than CHA. The need to stack CHA for the Class is a self-created problem and it makes things really clunky.
I also think there's something "better" in terms of action rotations that can be done for their routine. It's extremely rigid in what you can and cannot do in a turn, to the point where we noticed it almost immediately after the limited amount of time we spent in combat.
Conclusions
Both classes are dripping with flavor. The Psychic IMO seems to need a lot less work than the Thaumaturge in terms of actual mechanics. Narrative-wise, both classes feel pretty solid, but then I had a creative player that really leaned into their Distant Grasp mechanics.
I think Psychic could almost be printed as is. Thaumaturge I would really like to see get some refinement on the mechanics and totally scrap the CHA dependency entirely.
This was two sessions, but probably my last playtest in the window. Been preparing for the birth of my child which will be before the Playtest even ends, so I was lucky to even get these sessions.
Happy Gaming!
Congrats on the child!
<3
I'm a big fan of wrapping the esoteric lore feature into find flaws. As a base class ability.
Then restricting it to any creature weakness or ecology ID.Then have it scale up to master or legendary eventually.
Yeah, it's like it was flirting with the idea, but the modifying of knowledge and the actual action should be separated into two distinct things.
It should be reasonable to have knowledge abilities outside the scope of using it for action economy purposes.
with that said, if they did go that route, I'd like to see the action economy altered a bit, because otherwise it would function too similarly to Hunt Prey IMO.
I know you can use Find Flaws outside of combat, but the ability and its description don't seem to play nice with that approach considering its action economy benefits and the tiers of success they are tied to.