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Continuing my playtest experience analisis level by level now in lvl 2.
Its still a speedrun playtest of Fall of Plaguestone because we already have all the things done and I want to test the Soldier too and because the soldier's playtest only goes up to level 5, we chose to play a low-level adventure.
I won't describe the full adventures here because its too much to be written and instead I will go directly to my impressions and observations.
This playtest will focus into exemplar only. For other classes I will post my impressions in their respective forums.
Party composition
A human Animist
A half-orc Exemplar
A half-elf Soldier (from SF2 Fieldtest)
A hobgoblin Alchemist
Build
After a TPK in the last lvl 1 boss I remade some parts of this exemplar. I noticed that life-stealing/recovery abilities maybe not enough to keep the exemplar live a stable in the frontline so I need to improve my AC and my survivability. So now the exemplar is an half-orc in order to get Orc Ferocity but this still problematic due the need to get Armor Proficiency feat to allow me to use heavy armors with Sentinel Dedication. I honestly expect that the designers consider to improve the armor proficiency to at last medium (but the ideal is to allow to use all armors in order to meet all build options). But for now my Orc Ferocity will have to wait until I get level 3 and retrain my ancestry feat.
Impressions
The main difference between level 1 and level 2 is obviously the HP. Now I have a better chance to not die before use my life-stealing/HP recovery Transcendence. That said Drink of my Foes and No Scar but This helps the survivability but not saves you to need some healing eventually specially if the enemies crits you so don't expect that this will make you to survive more than a Champion or a Monk using a shield but your damage output is better. I was considering to take a Figher/Barbarian or Mauler dedication to improve my damage output to improve my Drink of my Foes but in the end I get the safer option that was to get Sentinel Dedication.
The curious thing about all this is that none of the level 1 and 2 feats impressed me so I don't feel like as I was sacrificing anything to get the dedication except to get another archetype feat.
In general the experience was good. I done some good damage due the d12 str weapon and I only needed in battle healing once.
Once again Thousand-League Sandals showed to be the best Ikon to initiate every encounter. Its immanence is very good boost to all party initial position (also it improves the overall travel speed too) and its transcendence is so good thats I use it in the begging of all encounters. Unfortunately other allied character that get a better initiative cannot Delay the get benefit from it but even if your turn was before it it usually is useful to use other actions like stances and self buffing knowing that you will get a better positioning as a reaction. But after the initial round I never use it again in the same encounter.