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I built several Exemplars to get a feel of the options and the experience of creating a character using it. Afterward, I ran a variety of combat encounters from the 10th level of Abomination Vaults. I was interested to see how satisfying the class felt in combat with the flow of swapping ikons.
SUMMARY
1) The class has amazing flavor and many interesting abilities. However, it lacked the breadth of tactical options I expected from this class's design.
2) Lack of medium armor proficiency, incompatibility with unarmed attacks, and weak feat choices at low levels were major limiting factors in character creation.
3) Almost all active feats are Transcend abilities, which compete with one another for usage. This made the class feel like it had less breadth of tactical options at higher levels compared to other martials.
4) Ikon swapping could be interesting at times, but I felt there's a dominant strategy in just swapping between weapon and worn ikons. Most body ikons did not feel useful in combat.
5) Damage feels low unless I'm scoring critical hits.
6) Struggles with constructs until level 7 when you can swap out spirit damage for something else.
7) Having only 2 + Religion trained skills does hurt.
CHARACTER CREATION
I built multiple exemplars based on several concepts I love. Out of them, I had two favorites:
1) katana-wielding storm-themed samurai kitsune using Gaze Sharp as Steel, Gleaming Blade, and Thousand-League Sandals
2) human dual-wielding air repeaters using Scar of the Survivor, Fated Shot, Victor's Wreath. This took advantage of Humble Strikes increasing the damage die of air repeaters from 1d4 to 1d6.
However, I ran into a few obstacles when making exemplars:
1) Absolutely no support for unarmed attacks. This surprised me, especially as many mystical characters in historic literature are unarmed fighters. Plus, the class features do not work with unarmed attacks. Humble Strikes only work with weapons. Weapon ikons have to be weapons, and other ikons have no options for enhancing unarmed attacks. So, even taking Martial Artist archetype is not an option here. It's also a missed chance for foxfires dealing spirit damage, which would have been super cool and flavorful.
2) Lack of medium armor proficiency. This outright punishes Strength builds. I see absolutely no mechanical reason for this, and I strongly disagree with the flavor reason why the class only has light armor. There are plenty of legendary heroes in mythology that wear significant amounts of armor. If low armor is so integral to the class, then maybe give them expert in unarmored defense?
3) Boring 1st level and 2nd level feats. Almost none of the low level feats are attractive. Claim Initiate Domain is the most interesting of the bunch. Sanctified Soul doesn't feel like a net-positive. Twin Stars is a feat tax for dual-wielding that also conflicts with Dual-Weapon Warrior because you don't get a 1st level feat. Vow of Mortal Defiance is cool but I personally despise the flavor. Leap the Falls is not worth a class feat; it's two level 1 skill feats that only work with body ikons, which are the worst ikons aside from the overpowered Scar of the Survivor. Abilities that disrupt healing feel too situational as a player option and horrible as an NPC option, making Thorns of Mortality feel lackluster.
4) Low skills. Might be justified because of the versatility and combat focus, but I'm really missing that one skill increase at level 1.
I ultimately chose the samurai kitsune for this playtest.
ANCESTRY Sylph Kitsune
BACKGROUND Martial Disciple
CLASS Exemplar
STR +5, DEX +4, CON +3, INT +0, WIS +0, CHA +3
CLASS FEATS
Claim Initiate Domain (Air)
Only the Worthy
Motionless Cutter
Dominion Signifier
Journey of the Sky Chariot
IKONS
Gaze Sharp as Steel
Gleaming Blade
Thousand League Sandals
EPITHETS
Brave
Whose Cry is Thunder
GAMEPLAY
I ran through several combats on the 10th floor of Abomination Vaults. Swapping between ikons proved a lot more fluid than I anticipated and was pretty fun. However, as a level 10 martial, I felt like I had less damage and fewer tactical options, despite the ikons having varied effects. Most active abilities in feats and other class features are Transcend abilities. This combined with Transcend forcing a swap creates a rather big problem where ikons and Transcend abilities were always competing with one another. Most of the class's damage rests in the weapon ikon, which makes the feel problem worse. Also, because most body ikons don't feel useful in combat, there's a dominant strategy where you're just swapping between weapon and worn ikons. On the other hand, the support auras are really strong, even though some of them will become less useful at later levels due to status bonuses not stacking.
Brave Epithet ended up not being particularly useful. Most of the body ikons are extremely situational. If I want mobility, I'm better off using Thousand-League Sandals. So Brave never saw any use. There was a combat where I got lucky with lots of crits, which made Whose Cry is Thunder's Immanence incredibly awesome. That was the one time Epithets actually ended up being fun. I never got to use Judgment from Clear Skies. As cool as it looks, it did not feel worth using. The range is too low and my character primarily uses Strength, not Dexterity, which would have make the ranged Strike not particularly great.
Were I to make another exemplar, I would either focus on stacking immanence effects or support auras with maybe one go-to Transcend ability.
There were two combats of particular interest.
The spirit damage was very helpful against a combat of specters, and it was pretty fun to try to end each turn with Gaze Sharp as Steel active to protect myself from the ranged attacks.
On the flip side, I struggled against a stone golem, which is immune to spirit damage and has resistance 10 physical. I had to change my strategy to kite the construct with Thousand-League Sandals and use Gleaming Blade's Mirrored Spirit Strike to try to penetrate through its resistance.
However, I realized after the fight that I made a mistake: Mirrored Spirit Strike changes the weapon damage to spirit damage. So, I would have been completely useless against this monster. My only choice would be to stick with Thousand-League Sandals to help my allies kite it, and even that wouldn't work if I ran this encounter as written in the adventure path (the golem is supposed to be in a tiny room).
Then later, I realized I forgot that Whose Cry is Thunder can change spirit damage to electricity damage. So, I guess Mirrored Spirit Strike would have helped after all!
Warning: There's minor spoilers for Abomination Vaults.
One thing to keep in mind is that the Exemplar is also intended to be a decent buffer for his party. So he isn't going to shine in a 1 on 1 encounter (which is what I THINK you did)
I did not strictly do one-on-one encounters, but I admit I undervalued the buffing auras. I did start every fight by Transcending with Thousand-League Sandals, even though I did not have any allies or need the speed buff. Giving all allies a Stride as a reaction is crazy good. The worn ikons easily have the best Transcend abilities, which ran counter to my initial assumptions about the class.
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Yeah, in a combat last night I used Skybearer's Belt's Transcend to move our Thaumaturge into position before her turn and it single-handedly changed the fight. It was pretty awesome.
I built several Exemplars to get a feel of the options and the experience of creating a character using it. Afterward, I ran a variety of combat encounters from the 10th level of Abomination Vaults. I was interested to see how satisfying the class felt in combat with the flow of swapping ikons.
SUMMARY
1) The class has amazing flavor and many interesting abilities. However, it lacked the breadth of tactical options I expected from this class's design.
2) Lack of medium armor proficiency, incompatibility with unarmed attacks, and weak feat choices at low levels were major limiting factors in character creation.
3) Almost all active feats are Transcend abilities, which compete with one another for usage. This made the class feel like it had less breadth of tactical options at higher levels compared to other martials.
4) Ikon swapping could be interesting at times, but I felt there's a dominant strategy in just swapping between weapon and worn ikons. Most body ikons did not feel useful in combat.
5) Damage feels low unless I'm scoring critical hits.
6) Struggles with constructs until level 7 when you can swap out spirit damage for something else.
7) Having only 2 + Religion trained skills does hurt.
** spoiler omitted **...
My gameplay impression was very close to you the main difference is that I was using Scar of the Survivor as my Body Ikon and this makes it more useful than my Worn Ikon (Thousand-League Sandals) in battle.
I also missed the lack of armor because my build is too focused into Str and I wanted to get a good Con too so I was forced to use my general feats to improve my armor proficiency and to take Sentinel Dedication to improve it to Heavy.
But this wasn't to problematic but in a bad way. As you said the class feats (not only the lvl 1-2 that's boring but many higher level option don't have any synergy between then and between many selected Ikons) doesn't impress or doesn't integrate well with other features/feats whats make too much free space to use with archetypes.
About the skills one thing I notice is that you receive your 4th skill with your Root Epithet that's whats probably explain why the class get a lower number of skills. It's not the best way to deal with it because its only available later and the skill choice is locked into the Root Epithet but its still there.