Starting to share my feedback notes for the Risks and Rewards playtest with the Slayer class. I'll split my post into sections, spoiler them, and add a TL;DR just so it's all a bit easier to navigate.
Methods:
Here are the methods I've used for my playtest:
* I ran my playtests across a series of encounters from levels 1 to 20, with more of a focus on lower-level play. Unlike normally with my playtests, I also included scenarios from previous playtests to test the class's exploration mechanics.
* I ran my Slayer with a variety of party compositions, often a damage-dealing martial class and a couple of spellcasters.
* I generally tested the Slayer using melee builds, prioritizing Strength, and ranged builds, prioritizing Dexterity, with boosts to the usual Constitution and Wisdom. I tried both builds with boosts to Intelligence, and for melee builds sometimes boosted Dexterity more instead when I wasn't using Warded Mail.
* I experimented with a variety of signature tools, including different weapons to work with certain feats.
TL;DR I ran the Slayer through a series of playtest encounters at all levels, using a variety of builds and party compositions. Due to the Slayer's exploration-specific mechanics, I also included more fleshed-out scenarios and exploration.
Quarry Hunting:
There's a lot to cover in the Slayer's mechanics, and their loop of hunting their quarry I think merits its own section:
* When reading the class, I initially fear they'd be deprived of trophies due to their quarry's level restrictions. In practice, encounters that only featured enemies of a lower level than the Slayer were not all that common, so this wasn't as big a problem as I expected. I did, however, find the level restriction unnecessary in those circumstances, as it still deprived the Slayer of a lot of their mechanics.
* More problematic, however, was the need for the Slayer to know of their quarry ahead of time, which in many cases was not inherently possible by default and made Mark Quarry outright impossible to use, depriving the Slayer of a major part of their gameplay. Survey Wildlife quickly became very important in helping solve this issue, to the point where I feel that ought to have been made part of the Mark Quarry activity by default.
* Trophies felt extremely underbaked to me. I'll talk more about this further down, but keeping track of trophies required a fair amount of bookkeeping, all just to turn a few knobs on your signature tools in excessively constrained ways. I was personally really looking forward to an official monster parts system, and this feels far too limited to be fit for purpose.
* Reinforce Arsenal felt wildly situational. Even in the playtest scenarios I ran, Reinforcing with a trophy from one encounter did not guarantee an advantage against the next, and otherwise only being able to Reinforce once a day severely limited the Slayer's ability to adapt to future enemies. I'm not sure why this activity was kept so limited in this way. This also ended up making trophies feel a lot less valuable than they were supposed to, to the point where after Reinforcing my Arsenal with my initial trophy I often abandoned that part of the class.
* On the Hunt, while interesting in concept, felt quite janky to use: in particular, it didn't feel very effective against a higher-level quarry, because they were less likely to get critically hit. If there were no valid enemies to mark as quarry, that also ended up reducing its triggers, such that I eventually found it optimal to mark one of my own allies as my quarry, particularly as relentless actions aren't limited to the Slayer's quarry. That I could do this at all, let alone derive the most utility out of doing so, felt wildly inappropriate.
* When On the Hunt did trigger, however, getting quickened genuinely did feel like a rush, to the point where it felt more like adrenaline than the Daredevil class's own mechanic. When the Slayer's action economy opened up like this, the class felt at its most unique and effective in my opinion. I also liked how this made encounters with lower-level enemies markedly different from encounters against single targets, as the Slayer often ended up getting constantly quickened just from fodder enemies dying.
* I did not, however, enjoy having to keep spending my reaction to quicken my character, and the Slayer ended up feeling like one of the least reactive classes in the game as a result when On the Hunt kept triggering, which feels like the opposite of what ought to be. I feel On the Hunt would work a lot better as a free action instead.
TL;DR Marking Quarry and claiming trophies were mechanics that to me presented a lot of complexity for ultimately little in the way of agency, depth, or even functionality. Marking enemies as quarry is unreliable, Reinforcing with fresh trophies does not guarantee improved chances against upcoming encounters, and On the Hunt isn't at its best when marking higher-level enemies, such that I ended up ditching trophy-hunting entirely and marking an ally as quarry to proc On the Hunt as reliably as possible. This really messed with the vibe of the Slayer, in my opinion, and feels like a waste of a monster parts system that I think could benefit characters way beyond just this class.
Core Class:
With Mark Quarry and trophies covered, onto the core class:
* It's been said countless times already, but I think it bears repeating that this Slayer is extremely similar in theme to the Ranger, with a few bits borrowed from the Thaumaturge. I have played Rangers with near-identical flavor to that of the core Slayer class, and similar mechanics to boot when opting into the Monster Hunter feat line. I'm disappointed in seeing an upcoming class be so similar to one we have already, especially one so starved of fresh options as the Ranger, when Pathfinder 2e's class roster is already quite crowded and there are still plenty of totally fresh concepts yet to be delivered, including highly-demanded classes like the Shifter.
* Despite being called the Slayer, the class's damage felt on the lower end of the scale for martial classes, making them far from the best at slaying enemies. Instead, the class had a mix of different kinds of mostly selfish utility and plenty of sources of added survivability, so outside of one extreme outlier feat that I'll detail below, the class felt more like a utility-oriented off-tank than a proper damage dealer.
* Monster Lore, while helpful in identifying enemy weaknesses in combat as a universal Lore skill, felt excessively limited in a few key respects: not being able to use the skill on humanoids meant my Slayer was particularly inept against famously monstrous creatures such as giants, hags, and yetis. As mentioned above, I relied on Survey Wildlife to pre-identify quarry that I could mark, and Monster Lore doesn't inherently work with the RK action used for that activity.
* Signature tools, much like monster trophies, feel extremely underbaked, and above all rigid and weak. Their functions are fairly narrow in scope for what I expected to be a versatile toolset, and the ways in which they can be adjusted by Reinforcing are extremely prescriptive, which made them feel far less interesting to use than the Thaumaturge implements they seem based on.
* Bloodseeking Blade's ability to ignore resistance was useful, though mainly at higher levels when those situations occurred more often, rather than at the very early levels where it started appearing. Beyond that, its bonus damage on the first Strike did not feel significant enough to make the class a proper damage-dealer at early levels, despite this being ostensibly the premier damage-dealing tool, and Honed Strike, while situationally useful against concealment, felt often too costly to be used consistently in melee without being quickened from On the Hunt.
* As with Bloodseeking Blade, Chymist Vial's Cat Potion Chymist's Eye felt more useful at higher levels when dealing with invisibility, other means of obfuscation, and a greater range of special senses than at low level. Ignition Vial did feel good to use, however, and sometimes even felt like a better way to pump out damage in melee than with the Bloodseeking Blade in melee. Its frequency limitation, however, is a severe drawback at early levels, to the point where it feels you have no tools to work with at all after using the action.
* Consecrated Panoply is, in my opinion, awfully implemented. I initially saw this as my way of building Buffy the Vampire Slayer with her stakes, but the inability to etch runes onto the tools' spikes until 7th level causes them to fall severely behind regular weapons at levels 2-6. Even after that, they still remain inferior, because they can't be etched with property runes. I do not understand why this tool was implemented in this way when the thrower's bandolier exists, and the bonus to saving throws was in my experience generally too situational to justify using the tool.
* Warded Mail surprisingly felt like the most effective tool at early levels, despite also feeling like the least thematically appropriate as a defensive tool. The Shelter action providing a circumstance bonus to AC while leaving your hands free to use two-handed weapons meant my Slayer felt like they had the best of both worlds when using this tool, even without a quarry to resist physical damage against.
* Fated Foe feels like a band-aid to the Slayer's otherwise extreme rigidity when it comes to Reinforcing their Arsenal and the unreliability of Marking their Quarry. I honestly feel this ability could be a lot better if it just cut to the chase and let the Slayer adjust their arsenal on the fly in combat at will, though its anti-death effect was useful in and of itself.
TL;DR The Slayer's arsenal feels rather inflexible and diluted, with benefits that don't always feel useful for their level. As seems to be a running theme with this class (and also the Daredevil), many of the Slayer's features feel arbitrarily limited in ways that really damage their functionality, such as Monster Lore not applying to humanoids and the Consecrated Panoply tool making it impossible to etch property runes onto its spikes, nor even fundamental runes until level 7. Were it not for On the Hunt's quickening shaking things up, I felt like I would've had more options, and more consistent ones too, as an Outwit Ranger, whose theme is extremely similar to that of the Slayer. Strangely, the Slayer doesn't feel very damage-oriented, so much as focused on survivability and situational, self-beneficial utility.
Feats:
Covering the highlights of the class's feats:
* Arm Bloodburst Phial is a major outlier. I am putting this at the top, because the sheer amount of damage this thing deals, which is nearly all persistent to boot, is such a tremendous damage spike on a class with otherwise mediocre damage output that it does not feel appropriate. I do very much like this feat, though, and feel it would be appropriate if its damage were no longer persistent or if its persistent damage were reduced.
* On the flipside, shoutout to Shifting Combination, as well as Shifting Hunt, for bringing a bit of Bloodborne's trick weapon flavor into the Slayer. I can't say the feat is necessarily very strong, as combination weapons aren't amazing, and the three combination weapons with an agile configurations either have a d4 damage die or are advanced, but it felt really flavorful.
* In general, while I do think all of these feats could have been just as appropriate on the Ranger, I like that effort was made here to emulate mechanics from hunters in other games and fiction, particularly Witcher's Geralt and Bloodborne's hunters with the emphasis on blood, tools, and concoctions. All of these will make it easier to implement a darker kind of hunter that we haven't really seen yet in Pathfinder.
* I honestly question the necessity of the relentless trait, because only a minority of the Slayer's actions lack this trait and, in my opinion and from what little experimentation I've done, they would be completely unproblematic if they had it. Simply letting the Slayer use On the Hunt's quickened action for any Slayer action, without the need for a specific trait, feels like it would be simpler and just as balanced.
* Along with the above, I'm a big fan of the Slayer's spellcasting feat line, and find that being able to use it with On the Hunt has made for some very fun turns where I got to cast two spells at once. I would have appreciated an 18th-level feat that gave the Slayer a 7th-rank spell (and an 8th-rank spell at level 20) while increasing their innate spellcasting proficiency to master, but otherwise I feel their ability to double-cast better even than spellcasters is counterbalanced by their much weaker spell proficiency and restricted spell output. This was a bit of unique gameplay I really enjoyed on the Slayer.
* Crossbow Slayer letting you use your weapon's range increment for the thrown trait of your spikes means you're still adding your Strength to the damage roll while effectively firing a spike with a crossbow, which to me didn't make much sense in-fiction.
* Not specifically a criticism, but the Slayer's feats offering all of these different tools that could be individually reinforced felt like such a better model for their tools than the signature tools in their main features, and I found it much more interesting to customize my Slayer in a more fine-grained manner like this. I genuinely feel this could have been the way to implement all of their tools, to be honest.
TL;DR The Slayer's feats were by far my favorite part of the class. I enjoyed their Witcher/Bloodborne flavor immensely, liked picking individual tools that I could reinforce, and found their relentless spellcasting to offer fun gameplay I hadn't experienced in quite the same way before. Arm Bloodburst Phial I think is way too strong as currently written, and the relentless trait itself feels somewhat redundant when most of the Slayer's actions are relentless, but I otherwise really enjoyed the utility offered by these feats.
The concluding TL;DR to all the above is that I find the Slayer to be generally messy, weak, and excessively limited in many ways. Although I enjoyed many of the class's feats, I found their core features to largely be inferior derivatives of mechanics I'd already seen on existing classes, and a waste of a monster parts system. Despite my distaste for the Slayer's thematic adjacency to the Ranger, I don't think the class is unsalvageable, though I do feel they need thorough rewrites to their core features in the same way as the playtest Guardian.
As I've been playtesting the Slayer, I compiled a wishlist of general changes I'd like to see in the class. Unlike previous class playtests where I properly implemented and trialled adjustments, the following is a more broad-lines set of recommendations, which you can read if interested:
Recommendations:
Here's a few recommendations on my part based on my playtesting experience with the Slayer:
* Bake Survey Wildlife into Mark Quarry, so that the Slayer can find out which monster they're facing ahead of time, and let the Slayer use Monster Lore for its Recall Knowledge check.
* Remove Mark Quarry's level limitation. Any non-trivial monster I think ought to be viable quarry.
* Add some means of marking a monster as quarry during a fight as a core feature. It doesn't have to be as efficient as the Ranger's Hunt Prey, it just has to offer a fallback option if the Slayer didn't have the time or opportunity to Mark Quarry.
* Specify that you can only mark an enemy as your quarry. The Slayer should not in my opinion be able to mark an ally as their quarry.
* Allow Reinforce Arsenal to be used anytime as a 10-minute exploration activity, even when not having claimed a trophy.
* Make On the Hunt a free action rather than a reaction.
* Ditch the relentless trait, and allow the Slayer to use On the Hunt's quickened action with any slayer action (including Interacting to reload for Crossbow Slayer, Casting a Spell for Slayer's Tricks, and so on).
* Allow Monster Lore to work on all creatures, not just non-humanoids.
* Honestly, please just ditch signature tools, and instead implement them as 1st-level feats that offer secondary tools to be reinforced, with the Slayer being able to choose one of these tools as a free feat at 1st level. Alternatively, make signature tools significantly stronger and less limited in function if they're going to stay.
* I honestly would be fine if monster trophies lost their details, and Reinforce Arsenal simply let the Slayer spend a trophy to reconfigure one of their tools in whichever way they liked from a list of available options. This I think would go a long way towards making the class more adaptable to upcoming threats, while also reducing bookkeeping, and I think a proper monster parts system would be better-served by something more fleshed-out and independent of the Slayer class.
* The Slayer I think could easily do with more baseline power. I'm not sure which specific form this ought to take, but off the top of my head, bonus class feats to pick up more tools, making On the Hunt's quickening an always-on effect, or giving the class an execution ability that'd let them reliably slay their quarry once the latter is below a certain amount of HP could all go a long way towards making the class feel both better to play and more distinct from the classes it currently emulates a bit too closely.
TL;DR In my opinion, there are a lot of limitations to the Slayer's mechanics that would be far better off being removed, and I'd like the class's core loop of Marking and Reinforcing to be made a lot more consistent. In addition to this, there's a lot of room to buff the class in my opinion, as well as streamline several of its core features. Ideally, whichever buffs the class receives ought to double down on the things that make it different from the Ranger or Thaumaturge, such as by giving the class more tool feats, making their quickening always-on, or giving them a quarry-specific execution ability to make them much better at actually slaying their targets.
Maybe they should get rid of Monster Lore and Tip of the Tongue and replace them with Survey Wildlife, automatically scaling survival and allow survival to be used to RK on monsters.
Maybe they should get rid of Monster Lore and Tip of the Tongue and replace them with Survey Wildlife, automatically scaling survival and allow survival to be used to RK on monsters.
I definitely feel Survey Wildlife ought to be core to the class given how useful I've found it in identifying creatures ahead of time. I'm more torn on the suggestion to make Survival the class's universal Lore because while it'd certainly fit nicely into Survey Wildlife, I quite like how the class currently leans into Intelligence as a fourth stat, and find that appropriate for the Slayer's Witcher-y fantasy.
I definitely feel Survey Wildlife ought to be core to the class given how useful I've found it in identifying creatures ahead of time. I'm more torn on the suggestion to make Survival the class's universal Lore because while it'd certainly fit nicely into Survey Wildlife, I quite like how the class currently leans into Intelligence as a fourth stat, and find that appropriate for the Slayer's Witcher-y fantasy.
I also totally agree with this. Lol.
The only issue I have with the slayer's use of ability scores so far is, they have no use for charisma and I'd expect a lot of slayers would want to focus on intimidation. It's just not in their budget though unless they dump strength or a more vital score like dexterity and hope bulwark armor will suffice.
As someone that has superficial knowledge about the Witcher series (I read the first two books and played a bit of the games), witchers don't really strike me as the studious kind, more like people that have lived centuries and acquire the knowledge to defeat monsters from experience.
To me that's totally Wisdom, not Intelligence.
It would also be a situation similar to the bard, which takes an otherwise underpowered skill (Performance in the case of bards, Survival in the case of slayers) and make it really good for that class alone. But anyways, I expressed before that I would prefer if the class didn't have a RK skill or lore at all but instead had another way to RK about foes that was a bit more interesting personally. I feel universal RK skills are becoming a bit boring at this point.
But anyways, I expressed before that I would prefer if the class didn't have a RK skill or lore at all but instead had another way to RK about foes that was a bit more interesting personally. I feel universal RK skills are becoming a bit boring at this point.
Same, to be honest. I wrote some homebrew that I might detail in a separate thread someday, but universal Lores to me feel like a band-aid in a game that needs certain characters to be able to find out about a monster's weaknesses and defenses to work decently (namely, casters), but lacks a consistent statistic for this. Without universal Lore, those characters have to invest a ton of increases into a whole bunch of skills, all to frequently still fail their checks against uncommon or rarer monsters. Ideally, it'd be nice to have a universal, Intelligence-based stat to gain useful combat information (and specifically combat information), one that everyone would become at least trained to an expert in, but that's unlikely to happen in 2e, so universal Lores it is unfortunately.
While making Survival a good skill and letting the Slayer RK with Wisdom would certainly benefit the class and open up Charisma builds, the risk I see is that it could also easily swing the pendulum the other way and make Intelligence no longer valuable on the class at all. There's one Crafting feat, and that's pretty much it. It would also perpetuate the running problem this game has of giving the best RK capabilities to classes that don't use Intelligence, as happens already with the Thaumaturge's Esoteric Lore and the Bard's RK feats and focus spells. Although Charisma for Intimidation would make some kind of sense on the class (and also make it easier to emulate Buffy Summers, a Slayer who's definitely much more about personality than brainpower), I personally have a preference for letting Intelligence do what it's meant to on the class, even if it comes at the cost of alternative paths.
