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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kaisoku" data-source="post: 5272692" data-attributes="member: 58447">I've playtested the Beta versions of the Alchemist, Oracle and Witch classes, and my brother has been DMing a game with one player using the Inquisitor, and another using the Summoner.I've used the Alchemist and Witch as NPCs so far, and they've been incredibly fun to run. The new tactics used when setting up the encounters were a nice change, and I could easily see myself picking either of them as a player.___________Here's my thoughts (mostly based on Beta info/testing)...AlchemistThe new casting method and abilities (bombs and mutagens) really make this worthy of being a new base class. It felt completely different from playing any other spellcaster, or any other half-caster (such as the Bard).Theoretically, there's some potential for nova with the bombs, but overall it doesn't seem to wreck combat in application (and believe me, I'm a powergamer DM, so I tried).What really make me happy is that this seems ready made for making an Artificer variant, with small enough changes to call it an archetype. I've got that in my list of "things to do", right next to my Assassin rewrite and Brawler (fighter archetype).CavalierThis class always seemed a bit mish-mash in it's abilities. It seems like he's supposed to be the secular paladin with his Order/edicts, but then something of a commander with his tactical feats and ally boosting, and then there's the mounted combat focus.I'd rather they had gone more focused and dropped the mount aspect and went full "Commander/Order" with the class, and perhaps had the mount as an option in one of the Order choices. Mounted combat has always been a bit hard to pull off (relying on a pet you can't buff yourself for your combat prowess, or just fitting into some regions like indoors or underground).I really think there's place for a base class that can fulfill the General/Tactician/Morale type of concept without having to resort to magical abilities (like the Bard), and would liked to have seen this class be the one.InquisitorI really like the "monster hunter" idea behind this class, and despite the Ranger's ability to fulfill that role a bit, this class really hits home the "Assassin for God" feeling.My brother has been running a game with one player using this class, and it has had some great roleplaying ramifications that the Paladin, Cleric or Ranger would not have really filled.The mechanic for scaling bonus over rounds was quite clunky, and I'm glad it was simplified in the final print, although I kinda wished they had some new mechanic for the Judgments that was a little more unique (without the clunk).OracleThe perfect replacement for the Favored Soul. This class is very versatile in building different concepts (elemental, nature, death, battle -oriented ideas). As a 3/4 BAB, they can be built like a battle cleric, especially with a number of the curse and mystery choices.The only problem I ran into was that the curses were extremely varied in how badly they affected your character. In particular, the vision and hearing curses far, far hamper the general roleplaying of your character compared to the others. With the vision curse, my player had to spend nearly the entire game trying to ignore the metagame knowledge from the descriptions I was giving, because most of the time he simply couldn't see what I had to describe to the other players.It was neat for a little while, but by the 10th session of tailoring descriptions we were all tired of the process and the player eventually changed characters when it was story appropriate by 5th or 6th level.The hearing curse appears to be even worse (from others accounts on the Paizo boards), and really could stand to use some additional sidebar rules for lip reading and linguistic skill stuff for sign language, etc.If I were to have a player wanting these particular curses, I'd probably tone them back to no longer be "all or nothing" and instead just have severe penalties (so a vision curse oracle can watch a sunset, but not read a sign outside his vision range).SummonerMy thoughts on the summoner can be found in <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/pathfinder-rpg-discussion/287552-apg-summoner-still-worth-taking.html#post5272582" target="_blank">the other thread</a>.A quick rundown: I like the idea, but feel the body types/mode of travel and size/utility options should be tweaked (and have done so from player requests during playtesting), and feel that the Eidolon doesn't hurt the game by being out 100% of the time, nor should have the magic item restrictions. Something else should have been toned back instead.Overall though, I really like the mechanic and have ideas of expanding on it already (multiple eidolons and shapeshifter class ideas).WitchOh, the witch... what an amazingly fun class to play. As a DM, I loved the flavor of the Coven and Hexes, and the tactics that it allowed to bring out.As a player, it's possibly the class to make a Mystic Theurge concept from, with an amazing spell list that covers so many bases.I can see an Archetype of a "Magus" that replaces just the Hexes and possibly opening up an alternative familiar (like the psion's crystal or possibly a divine focus item) to make a pure divine/arcane caster.In play, between the buff spells and hexes, I was able to make a very wide-spread range of builds (a healer/buffer build, an arcane-ish debuffer/utility build, etc).With the final print, it seems they fixed most of the squiggly rules that were problems in the Beta, so I'm very satisfied with this class.ArchetypesBeyond what these options actually already give, I really like that this is an avenue that Pathfinder is going to go with instead of just Base and Prestige classes.The original 3.0 DMG actually had a section that specifically called out swapping class abilities as a preferred method, with Prestige Classes being more campaign-specific in their application.I'm really, really hoping that Paizo is going to continue with this idea for future releases.While I can't actually comment on the mechanics of the individual archetypes themselves (I don't actually have the book/pdf myself), I've had the chance to look over some specific ones, and a quick rundown through the main list.I'm somewhat disappointed that there isn't a true "non-mystical unarmed combat" archetype floating around (with all the great ideas for monks and fighters, neither one picked this up, although Empty Hand monk comes close). Doesn't stop me from tooling around my own ideas for a Fighter archetype of my own (Brawler), though.___________I'm fairly impressed with the classes they presented in the books, with only a few minor clunky bits that I had hoped would be hammered out.However, what I lost in "out-of-the-box" functionality on those missing bits, it has more than made up with giving me new ideas as foundations to build upon with my own stuff (and hopefully future products from Paizo and 3rd parties).I'm going to go now and start putting together my Artificer and Shifter ideas...</blockquote>

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