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I finally got some free time with a friend to do the proper playtests of the necromancer and runesmith classes.
This playtest so far has only been for level one, using the fearsome plaguestone adventure and has focused on moderate and higher encounters.
I will not detail each encounter, nor each characteristic, I will only present the most important decisions we made regarding class options and our general impression of how it was to play.
As usual, I will make a post for each level, since the experience can change drastically from one level to another.
And OK, let's go to the party composition:
The necromancer gameplay was one of the best experiences I've had with casters in PF2e during this level. Create Thrall is a fantastic cantrip! The range is great, the fact that thralls can flank is very useful, and the fact that they hinder enemy movement when well placed is also very cool. This, together with the fact that you do it with just one action and still cause the same damage as you would with a shortbow, but with a higher hit rate (because you use your spell attack) make the experience of playing with the necromancer wonderful.
That said, on the other hand, the initial focus grave spells range from 'usually not worth it' to horrible!
Initially we tried to play using the Bone Spear, but the Bone Spear is very inefficient! If you use it after creating a thrall, you have to use it with MAP-5, if you try to use it in the following round, if the GM doesn't kill your thrall, MAP-10 makes the extra damage from Create Thrall useless! In practice, this means that there is little difference in DPR, and to top it all off, you get a better DPR using Electric Arc/Void Warp + Create Thrall, especially if you can attack 2 targets with EA. This also shows the second big problem with Bone Spear, which is friend fire! Normally you want to place the thrall flanking an ally or another thrall, but since Bone Spear is a 15-foot line, you can't do that! This is especially bad if you decide to try to use the focus spell in the following turn, which depending on how the characters move on the field may become unfeasible to use. In addition to the final straw, the 10-foot range, which is ridiculous! This spell needs to be greatly improved, it needs to become a reflex roll, honestly, I also think it needs to lose the line effect and become a target and gain a range of 30 feet.
So, seeing how bad it was to use Bone Spear, we replaced it with Life Tap. Also because there was a runesmith in the party, we thought that the Drained condition could be useful to reduce a target's Fortitude saves. That said, it still wasn't worth it. 2-actions + sacrificing a thrall + a focus point is simply too expensive for a spell that will cause Drained 1-3 depending on the target's Fortitude save. My friend and I often questioned whether it wouldn't have been better to simply cast a cantrip instead.
We didn't test Dead Weight because we simply didn't think the cost was worth it. We almost never need to immobilize a target, and once again, 2-actions + sacrificing a thrall + a focus point is simply too expensive for that.
The other thing that bothered me about the class was the lack of spell slots. It was a big deal when we got TPKed by Harold and we only had one use for Soothe. As amazing as Create Thrall is, it's still hard to justify that having only 2 spell slots is a fair price, adding to the fact that the initial focus spells are weak and that they're all a kind of worse overflow, where you need to have a thrall in order to use them, in addition to the focus point.
In conclusion, if we ignore the existence of the mediocre/bad focus spells and the fact that we barely have any spell slots, the experience was very good, especially the combination of EA + Create Thrall (which OK, I know this isn't natural for the class, but Electric Arc is so good that it's always worth using an ancestry feat to get it), where you create the thrall precisely by focusing on the creature that suffered the most damage, flanking it when possible with an ally or another thrall and causing extra damage is excellent!
Another interesting note that I need to point out is how well thralls work against different GMs who either focus or don't focus on them. My friend and I came to the conclusion that creatures with Int 0 or more would be able to understand what Thralls are and would focus on the PCs, while animals and other creatures with negative Int would consider them as easy targets. And in both situations the experience was great, when the enemies focused on the thralls it meant one less attack on the allies and a MAP-5, and when the enemy ignored them, in the end they ended up being creatures that flanked and hindered movement, it was simply good every time!
Probably because we considered that all initial focus spells were bad, we didn't have the bad experience that some reported here that the Necromancer only became good when it could create 2 or more thralls. Even just a single thrall was already quite useful in any encounter.
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I am surprised you didn't run into issues with a necromancer and alchemist in the same party like my table did. The necromancer could not focus the same foe as the alchemist with they wanted the thrall to survive to the next round. we also had to shuffle turn order almost every fight to make sure the party could benefit from flanking with the thralls before the splash damage removed them.
This spell needs to be greatly improved, it needs to become a reflex roll, honestly, I also think it needs to lose the line effect and become a target and gain a range of 30 feet.
I like that the spell is a line that can hit multiple foes, but boy does the spell chafe against a lot. The short range made it hard to use existing thralls and the short line made it hard to hit multiple foes. The MAP made it hard to use if you wanted to create thrall on the same turn, either before or after bone spear.
I really hoped the first level grave spells would be you bread and butter for the class, but they start so weak. I will say they scale well damage wise. Life tap felt better at higher levels when a crit means more than 3 damage and the more of the party could take advantage of a weakened fort save. Bone spear felt better with summoning more thralls, because you could keep one near you for when enemies got close, but it was still hard to hit multiple targets. the Damage scales closely to other spells that target AC.
Dead weight never felt worth it though.
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I am surprised you didn't run into issues with a necromancer and alchemist in the same party like my table did. The necromancer could not focus the same foe as the alchemist with they wanted the thrall to survive to the next round. we also had to shuffle turn order almost every fight to make sure the party could benefit from flanking with the thralls before the splash damage removed them.
Bomber Alchemist can choose to deal splash damage only to the target, so they have a built-in way to avoid hitting the thralls. That's probably why it didn't come up.
Bomber Alchemist can choose to deal splash damage only to the target, so they have a built-in way to avoid hitting the thralls. That's probably why it didn't come up.I am surprised you didn't run into issues with a necromancer and alchemist in the same party like my table did. The necromancer could not focus the same foe as the alchemist with they wanted the thrall to survive to the next round. we also had to shuffle turn order almost every fight to make sure the party could benefit from flanking with the thralls before the splash damage removed them.
Yeah, that would have made a difference. We had a chirurgeon and gave up on using them for the test pretty quick. The goal was to let the necromancer carry the weight of being THE caster, but still have plentiful healing.
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This spell needs to be greatly improved, it needs to become a reflex roll, honestly, I also think it needs to lose the line effect and become a target and gain a range of 30 feet.
I like that the spell is a line that can hit multiple foes, but boy does the spell chafe against a lot. The short range made it hard to use existing thralls and the short line made it hard to hit multiple foes. The MAP made it hard to use if you wanted to create thrall on the same turn, either before or after bone spear.
I really hoped the first level grave spells would be you bread and butter for the class, but they start so weak. I will say they scale well damage wise. Life tap felt better at higher levels when a crit means more than 3 damage and the more of the party could take advantage of a weakened fort save. Bone spear felt better with summoning more thralls, because you could keep one near you for when enemies got close, but it was still hard to hit multiple targets. the Damage scales closely to other spells that target AC.
Dead weight never felt worth it though.
My main problem with the line effect was how badly positioned the thrall becomes due the spell low range. The fact that I also cannot get flank benefit with a spell attack also bothers me but is secondary it's just one more thing that I dislike in this spell. My suggestion about change from line to target is because I doubt that designers will allow a 2d8 heightening spell to become AoE and reflex. Even if this spell in practice sacrifices a thrall and uses a focus point.
Also this remembers me. Is this right? A 1d8 spell with heigtened 2d8 every rank?
Yeah, that would have made a difference. We had a chirurgeon and gave up on using them for the test pretty quick. The goal was to let the necromancer carry the weight of being THE caster, but still have plentiful healing.Bomber Alchemist can choose to deal splash damage only to the target, so they have a built-in way to avoid hitting the thralls. That's probably why it didn't come up.I am surprised you didn't run into issues with a necromancer and alchemist in the same party like my table did. The necromancer could not focus the same foe as the alchemist with they wanted the thrall to survive to the next round. we also had to shuffle turn order almost every fight to make sure the party could benefit from flanking with the thralls before the splash damage removed them.
I don't use bombs with non-bomber alchemist due the friendly fire that the splash does. We can solve this with Backfire Mantles but it's a very bad band-aid that requires that you convince other players to buy an invested item (or buy for them) because you want to use a class thing that may hurt them.
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Bone Spear seems extremely awkward to use in practice unless you also get Reach of the Dead. And preferably wait to level 7 so you can use them together immediately.
Bone Spear's initial damage is also kind of bad. It's balanced as a potential area attack but the weird range/area combination makes it hard to hit two enemies and very unlikely to ever hit 3. When used against a single enemy, it's barely better than the damage of create thrall, but costs twice the actions, a focus point and a thrall. If you're hitting oy two foes anyway, you might as well just creat thrall twice (live with the MAP penalty on the second cast) and still have an action left - not to mention two thralls left for flanking.
Overall, I agree that the initial focus spells are just not good enough early on to carry the class through the earliest levels. You're mostly just limited to create thrall plus cantrip and a singular slot per day.
Also this remembers me. Is this right? A 1d8 spell with heigtened 2d8 every rank?
Yeah that's right. It does 1 fewer die than blazing bolt, but d8s instead of d6s. Almost all the grave spells have a very closely comparable spell, but the grave spell is always harder to use. Usually some combination of shorter range, smaller area, or more actions. You get to cast about 3 max rank spells most fights using focus points, but they are harder to get the most out of.
I think this is why dead weight looks so bad. The class gives up a lot of spell slots for these focus spells and dead weight looks like it would be an average focus spell on a cleric.
And preferably wait to level 7 so you can use them together immediately.
The class does feel a lot better once you hit level 7. I think too many grave spells need that extra thrall to feel worth it. Having to spend 4+ actions across multiple turns makes the class feel very slow.
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Now we tested some level 2 encounters of plaguestone adventure. Basically some fights vs alchemical modified plants, animals, some orcs and a bloody slime.
As level 2 feat we choose to get Muscle Barrier and now we finally got a really interesting focus spell.
Muscle Barrier basically improved the frontliners HP by 50% (and it will improve more as longe the spell will heighten). Initially we had a doubt between it and Necrotic Bomb but due the high risk o friendly fire of Necrotic Bomb and that we don't like the idea to sacrifice a thrall attack in order to keep a safe distance to use Necrotic Bomb, probably this will be solved after level 7 when we get another thrall but now we preferred to take Muscle Barrier instead.
Muscle Barrier is cleary the first necromancer's focus spell that worth. Get 10 Temp PV per spell rank to an ally that's in 15ft range from a thrall in a 60ft range from the necromancer works way more better than Bone Spear in most every aspect and doesn't looks like weak like the others initial necromancer's focus spell looks. This also helped to diminish the press over the necromancer as a healer once that in we could save some Soothes due the good tmp hp.
The rest don't changed too much from level 1. We still only prepared Soothe into the only 2 spellslots that necromancer have in this level and of course the usage of this new focus spell diminished the party initial DPR a bit but worth.
I also think necrotic bomb can feel bad when you first get access. The single d12 is quite swingy.
Did the new focus spell make you feel more proactive in the fight or did it make the necromancer feel more passive?
More proactive. When the initiative roll was good for her our necromancer character Delay her turn until one melee ally get closer to an enemy (or an enemy get closer) and then back to the game to create a thrall attacking one enemy closer to the ally and then sacrificing it to give this ally 10 tmp HP. When they initiative was lower and allies was attacked first we had the option to choose between giv tmp HP or Soothe, but we choose to use tmp HP and then Soothe later if was needed.
We basically made this to both magus and runesmith using the 2 focus points that her had. Only after this she switch to cantrip+thrall. In the last fight where the Blood Ooze done some strong damages is was when she was more reactive acting more like a healer with Soothe.
Now in the final part of the Plaguestone adventure, which is level 3, the necromancer proved to be extremely solid with support using Muscle Barrier to give 20 HP to the frontline members, while the Thrall's damage from only increasing every 2 ranks here would have been almost negligible, if it weren't for the fact that they were very keen on killing orcs with Orc Ferocity.
And the fact is that having +20 HP helped a lot with the problem of having few spell slots (given the fact that we basically only use them for Soothe) and saving scrolls. In addition to this extremely solid support part, sometimes the necromancer still helped a little with EA + Thrall, but now with enemies with much more HP she didn't prove to be as efficient as she was at level 1, and even at level 2, but it wasn't something to be despised either.
The general feeling is that the Muscle Barrier is the necromancer's Timber Sentinel, with the advantage that it doesn't affect allies' mobility, but with the disadvantage that it requires a thrall and 2-actions and a focus point. In the end, this cost simply seemed fair during the game, the thrall basically only served to give 1d6 and be sacrificed in the first 2 rounds, but the HP temp was well worth it!
I think the necromancer is mostly playable, as is. I just wish they would add heal/void spalls somehow. Some type of domain so they are not adding them to the whole spell list of occult. Or take the fluff out about picking void/heal when casting a spell.
Now moving the playtest to the end of the first AoA book to be able to test the 4th level.
But in practice nothing really significant changed in the playtest impressions of this level. We just chose Bony Barrage as the 4th level feat because it seemed like the most interesting option, especially after the necromancer was able to place more than one thrall at a time. However, in the few uses we made of the ability without the risk of friend fire, it still seemed weak for a focus spell that uses so many resources (1d10 per rank is very weak in practice for a spell that uses thralls and focus points), but at least it served to increase the size of the pool.
In other words, in the end the very solid gameplay of giving HP temp continued to be the main strategy, with the necromancer occasionally healing someone or using a cantrip.
I have gotten the vibe that I'd mostly take feats to acquire Focus Points w/o having much use for the abilities, and then Retrain unused ones once I had more than enough to fill my pool & better casting options. That's bad. At 4th level, that feat is about all you get since not much scales up.
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Most of the damaging focus spells compare more favorably to other damaging occult options than to damaging primal or arcane options.
Muscle Barrier is definitely bonkers, though—no comparison to anything needed. Incredible healing spell.
Yes, we skipped level 5! I simply lost the material I had ready for this level! :P
The playtest for this 6th level was basically a fight against a Bida assisted by a hazard (red dragon pillar). In this level we took Reclaim Power because this path of support for the necromancer has proven to be very interesting, but we didn't have the opportunity to test it in this fight since the necromancer didn't suffer significant damage. But we were also very tempted to take Bone Burst since it has a huge potential for use, much greater than that of AoO/RS due to the ability to trigger from any thrall.
In this fight against Bida we once again insisted on trying to use Bone Barrage, but it really wasn't worth it! The damage is very low (3d10) for all the necessary cost, even in a situation where we didn't need Muscle Barrier it still seemed like a waste of focus points and thralls.
The thralls' damage now being 2 dice was also an interesting thing, as it complemented the necromancer's damage well.
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We finally reached the much talked about level 7 with the necromancer, where it can now create 2 thralls at a time. And... nothing really significant changed with this in our playtest.
OK, the fact that we basically faced several enemies with AoE, be it breath or magic, did not favor the existence of thralls. However, I admit that they had an interesting extra use, which was to draw the attention of the hazard that attacked the enemies closest to it. But other than that, it was not a significant enough difference to change the gameplay, as many people here on the forum argued. Maybe later on with abilities that use multiple thralls, but for now it was just OK, now we created one more thrall and that's it.
Otherwise, the necromancer continued to be an excellent support, with Muscle Barrier still being its great highlight.
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Correct me if I am wrong, but my main take away from your impressions is that the class struggles to interact directly with foes. Other than the thrall attack when summoned your damage came from a cantrip that the class does not have access to, you didn't seem to use any offence. The damaging focus spells seemed too costly in actions. I have had a similar experience at my table.
I think my table did try to focus more on the damage side than you did. That part to me did start to feel better around level 7. At this point the damages are closer to spells on the arcane and primal list. Necro bomb is 1.5 average damage less than fireball, and Bone spear is 3.5 avg dmg over blazing bolt. Bone barrage is worse at 11.5 avg dmg behind breathe fire, but has a larger area and a way to avoid and even buff allies. Even with all that, it never felt like we were able to make the most of the spells though. Usually due to some combination of short ranges, lack of precision in casting, and the extra action cost.
The Thralls did do fantastic in some complex hazards that targeted at random each round. They did poorly if the hazard used AoEs though.
Correct me if I am wrong, but my main take away from your impressions is that the class struggles to interact directly with foes. Other than the thrall attack when summoned your damage came from a cantrip that the class does not have access to, you didn't seem to use any offence. The damaging focus spells seemed too costly in actions. I have had a similar experience at my table.
You aren´t wrong. That's exactly it!
Initially we tried to do something more offensive with the Bone Spear. But we immediately realized that it wasn't worth it, it was too expensive, complicated to use and still affected the MAP.
Then we tried Bone Barrage. But it was just too weak. Before we could spawn 2 thralls at a time it had a really tough interaction with friendly fire. After we started sacrificing 2 thralls it just seemed too weak for what it cost!
Muscle Barrier was what saved the grave spells, but it reversed the situation. It was so good that we started to feel sorry for spending focus points on anything else!
I think my table did try to focus more on the damage side than you did. That part to me did start to feel better around level 7. At this point the damages are closer to spells on the arcane and primal list. Necro bomb is 1.5 average damage less than fireball, and Bone spear is 3.5 avg dmg over blazing bolt. Bone barrage is worse at 11.5 avg dmg behind breathe fire, but has a larger area and a way to avoid and even buff allies. Even with all that, it never felt like we were able to make the most of the spells though. Usually due to some combination of short ranges, lack of precision in casting, and the extra action cost.
The Thralls did do fantastic in some complex hazards that targeted at random each round. They did poorly if the hazard used AoEs though.
Yes, and the reason for this is that in practice grave spells give the player the feeling of using a 3-action spell. Even though they have a better AoE or even a little more damage than the focus spells of other classes, the fact that you need the thralls practically kills any other use of your third action. You can't walk, you can't draw items like potions or scrolls, or do anything other than Create Thrall in a favorable position to use the Grave Spell, if possible that allows them to still attack an enemy and then be able to use your offensive Grave Spell. You don't try to save it for the next round because the battlefield can change, your thralls can be killed, your enemies can die and you need new targets, or you can even suffer a debuff that requires the use of some unforeseen action. That's why these spells give the bad feeling of being very expensive and complex to use.
In comparison to that, you have Muscle Barrier, which gives roughly half of an ally's total HP as temporary HP, and you get any thrall that is even remotely close to that ally for that, and if you can't do it on a certain turn due to lack of actions, you feel like you can leave it alone without regretting missing the opportunity, because unless your ally is on the verge of death, you can simply leave it for when it's more convenient.
It's that thing, we never regret casting Muscle Barrier, but we regret casting or not casting any other offensive grave spell.
The general feeling we had talking afterwards is that perhaps it would have simply been better if we had done a MC with psychic and taken the extra focus points through AMPs or even cantrips and eventually used the AMPs without having to sacrifice the thralls, thus allowing a better use of the action economy and keeping the thralls for other uses like flanking, hindering the opponents' movement or even using feats like Reclaim Power and Bone Burst that simply proved to be very good.
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This also shows the second big problem with Bone Spear, which is friend fire! Normally you want to place the thrall flanking an ally or another thrall, but since Bone Spear is a 15-foot line, you can't do that! This is especially bad if you decide to try to use the focus spell in the following turn, which depending on how the characters move on the field may become unfeasible to use.
Erh, yes you can.
These are all valid 15-foot line spells:
⬜ Empty space
⬛ Area of line
⚫ Thrall
⭕ Flanking ally
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It even works when flanking large targets.
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You're not limited to perfectly diagonal or orthogonal lines.
This was our final playtest, with a larger number of encounters. Since we are at the end of the playtest period, we decided to stop here and also give a general impression of the class.
In this 9th level (we skipped the 8th due to my mistake), instead of taking a level 8 feat, we took Bone Burst because it simply seemed to have the potential to be very good. And how good it was!
In this level, we had a good number of indoor encounters with little space to move. And it was impressive how the thralls hindered movement and general positioning. As a player, we noticed that in small rooms it was even a bit too much of a hindrance, as we ended up surrounding the enemies in such a way, especially when we didn't use Grave Spells that it was sometimes difficult even for allies to position themselves. Fortunately, since we had taken Reclaim Power a few levels ago, this didn't become a problem, as sacrificing up to 5 thralls to recover HP, conditions and a focus point and open the path at the same time was simply fantastic. If it weren't for that, the thralls would end up getting in the way of the necromancer herself due to lack of space to place more thralls to attack the targets.
As a GM, it was a terror. The NPCs and monsters simply got trapped and flanked all the time. Killing thralls to make space was simple, but extremely penalizing for the MAP, and using Tumble Through was simpler, but it triggered the Bone Burst! It was terrifying! In the end, we simply gave up on moving the NPCs and monsters and tried to focus on the Necromancer, but killing the Necromancer who was buffed by the alchemist with Drakeheart Mutagen and Mistform Elixir, cast Muscle Barrier and healed himself with Reclaim Power and was also protected by the champion was basically a waste of time!
At this level, I was able to understand what they said about how the necromancer's gameplay changes when you start creating multiple thralls. But what makes the biggest difference isn't even creating a lot of thralls, it's Reclaim Power and Bone Burst, which simply make this thrall army extremely useful.
And guys, when there was an enemy caster, the necromancer was extremely mean with Bone Burst. Unfortunately (or fortunately, since it's a basic reflex save that basically always does some damage), it has no chance of interrupting actions, but in many situations the necromancer almost always had a thrall near someone who was moving or performing a handling action. It might not be very strong, but it was super fun, and if combined with the damage and a spell and Create Thrall, it ended up being a good DPR.
Playing with and mastering against a necromancer was a lot of fun. At low levels, even with few thralls, they were still useful to help flank and complement the damage without having to resort to a weapon. At slightly higher levels, it was very good because the thralls did several things at the same time: they hindered the movement of enemies, helped the necromancer heal and gain an extra focus point, flanked practically everyone, had a Grave Spell that was often better than healing, and also had some useful spells and scrolls when needed, although few in my opinion.
The bad thing about the class was what I and many other people had already pointed out before. Most Grave Spells are very expensive in their total set because they force the use of 3-actions, sacrifice thralls that could be very useful and still spend a focus point, for a spell that had a slightly better AoE or a minimally higher damage than a normal focus spell that many other casters have access to. I understand that the designer's idea was probably that since the Create Thrall action also causes damage, the focus spell shouldn't be much superior, but in practice, the feeling that you need to do all of this together, in the ideal situation of positionality and economy of actions, made it seem like Grave Spell still seems weak in relation to the cost. Probably if they added more powerful and versatile focus spells, like Muscle Barrier proved to be, it would improve this aspect a lot.
The other criticism that also remained until the end was that there was no justification for having one less spell slot, especially in a prepared class that needs to learn extra common spells on the side to increase its repertoire. Maybe if there was another feat that further improves Consume Thrall (in addition to what Reclaim Power already does) and also recovers a spell slot of any level or recasts a spell (and it wasn't limited to once per day), then we could have a good justification for this reduction.
This also shows the second big problem with Bone Spear, which is friend fire! Normally you want to place the thrall flanking an ally or another thrall, but since Bone Spear is a 15-foot line, you can't do that! This is especially bad if you decide to try to use the focus spell in the following turn, which depending on how the characters move on the field may become unfeasible to use.Erh, yes you can.
These are all valid 15-foot line spells:
⬜ Empty space
⬛ Area of line
⚫ Thrall
⭕ Flanking ally⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
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⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜It even works when flanking large targets.
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But to do this this thrall cannot attack when created with Create Thrall. This limits and restricts the Bone Spear effectiveness specially before the level 7, basically turning it into a 3-action spell. The other very bad point is the MAP that's reduce it's effectiveness with Create Thrall a lot.
In practice the experience was bad. The positioning was only one of the bad things of this spell.
When I considered that Friend Fire was a problem I considered this too. That due the Friend Fire I had to sacrifice my Create Thrall attack completely and can't do it flanking too.
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I was merely pointing out that you can effectively use a 15-foot line even when an ally is helping to flank. You can simply place the line at a shallow angle so that it doesn't hit your flanking buddy.
All of your other points about bone spear (which I did not address) are spot on.
I understood you point. I was just explaining that I generalized when I talk about friend fire. I know that I could prevent a friend fire simply putting the thrall in a different position (including not only not forcing the line to not pass through an ally I could simply put thrall in the "same side" of an ally also allowing to do a Create Thrall melee attack too without hit an ally like show bellow) but the fact that I have to consider my ally positioning already creates a friend fire problem and limitation that prevents another thrall capacities like to flank to diminish the target AC (I still could do this sacrificing another thrall puting it in the line of effect in the oposite side of the enemy, but this increases even more the already high cost of the spell).
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Told ya necromancer was all about bone burst :D
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As a GM, it was a terror. The NPCs and monsters simply got trapped and flanked all the time. Killing thralls to make space was simple, but extremely penalizing for the MAP, and using Tumble Through was simpler, but it triggered the Bone Burst! It was terrifying! In the end, we simply gave up on moving the NPCs and monsters and tried to focus on the Necromancer, but killing the Necromancer who was buffed by the alchemist with Drakeheart Mutagen and Mistform Elixir, cast Muscle Barrier and healed himself with Reclaim Power and was also protected by the champion was basically a waste of time!
Yeah that's exactly the kind of game play I've been afraid of the whole time. That sounds utterly miserable to have happen over and over again over the course of an entire campaign.
I know players don't generally care how it feels on the GM side of the table to be dealing with this stuff, but ugh... "In the end, we simply gave up on moving the NPCs and monsters" is removing all the dynamism from the battlefield and making every fight a slog.