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Hey folks,
Since the playtest area is closed at this point, and I only finished playing the campaign last week, I thought I would provide my findings here.
Overall thoughts:
- Even from the limited playtest material, the Thaumaturge felt great to play and was a lot of fun. There was never a situation where I felt like I couldn't bring something to the group.
- As a single target damage dealer, the Thaumaturge was a great addition to the party setup. I think having a martial that's all about single target, and what's more, seriously hurts those single targets specifically, helps shift encounter focus a great deal. My group fell into a natural rhythm where the casters, who are more AoE focused by nature, would work on clearing a path for me to get to the boss/biggest enemy, with the rogue coming up behind me.
- My primary Implement was a weapon. For this I used a bog standard 1d8 longsword. The weapon implement is incredibly strong, stronger than I expected at first blush. All 3 tiers where amazing and in conjunction they all worked great.
- Being the "main" front liner wasn't as bad as expected. My Full implement load out ended up being Weapon, Amulet and Chalice. Originally I used the Lantern instead of Chalice, but my let me swap it out after I ended up hardly using it in the first 10 sessions. A reaction from the Amulet (or two) to mitigate from damage, and an action on your turn to Sip ends up shielding you from a lot of hits.
At 20th, My Thaumaturge was able to mitigate 48 damage per turn between the two. I advanced the Chalice to adept at 18th but kept the amulet at initial, as I felt that was good enough.
My party didn't actually have a proper healer, but between Drinking from the chalice and our Rogue with Battle Medicine, I was able to stay the front liner.
- Draw Circle and, more importantly, Quick Draw were amazing at early levels and kept being useful all the way to end-game. Being charisma base, being able to Bon Mot someone in a circle to keep them there just felt fun.
- We played with Free Archetypes. I sent these on Pathfinder agent, Scrollmaster and Bard MC. Between these, Pocket Library, Unified Theory, Cognitive Crossover and my various lore skills (I took Additional lore 5 times), making a Recall Knowledge check on Find Flaws stayed pretty breezy all the way to end game.
There is a bit of a disconnect when it came to non-combat Recall Knowledge checks, wherein, on paper I was build as a language guy, but with an Int of 12 from 1-19 and most of my bonuses only working in combat, it felt weird not to be able to fill that role as well. Lots of aid actions though!
- My character evolved in play due to my high Charisma making me an effective party face. I started out thinking I was going to be Geralt of Rivia, but ended up being closer to Giles from Buffy (not a bad thing mind you).
- Action economy was actually fine. Most of the things I see commonly noted in the playtest forum were, while at times annoying, fairly easy to work around and remain cohesive. Hand management and effective use of actions are things that once you solve them (around level 5 for me), you almost never worry about them again.
I did enjoy getting an action back with Unlimited Esoterica at 19th, but by that point it came too late and my play style was already locked in for it to make a real difference.
So, all in all, I thought it was great and hope its core remains mostly the same for release!
Interesting, I haven’t really been able to sink my teeth into what was written in the playtest, but this makes me interested to dig deeper. Thank you for sharing!