Implementation of the Medium class from Occult Adventures

I'm building a medium character, and I'm a little confused by its implementation in Hero Lab. I've searched and can't find a discussion about it, so if this has been discussed before, please point me to the correct thread.

The implementation of the medium class seems to suggest that a medium will always channel the same type of spirit. But, as I understand it, a medium can channel all 6 types of legendary spirit but only one at a time (until she gains the trance of three).

Therefore, shouldn't the channeled spirit be more properly listed as a selection box, rather than as the "add more channeled spirits" which suggests you get a single, one-off choice that then needs to be deleted each time you change your spirit.

Similarly, should spell choice options made when channeling the Archmage or the Hierophant, therefore, not just be grayed out when channeling a different spirit, rather than also being flagged up as illegal options in red? I understand that different spell choices can be made each time the spirit is channeled (unless you're a relic channeler), but surely that shouldn't render the existing choices illegal?

What am I missing? In case it's material to the solution, I'm creating a medium with the relic channeler archetype.

Thanks in advance for any help,
Al

Edit: Additionally, the choice of seance boon when channeling the Marshall, and the choice of Exotic Weapon Proficiency when channeling the Champion, are lost when switching between spirits. Again, while I understand that different choices can be made each time, existing choices should be defaulted back to, as most characters are going to choose the same boons each time. For example, characters will likely already be carrying the exotic weapons they wish to become proficient with, when channeling the Champion, and will usually default back to those. As the implementation stands, it seems that you need to rebuild your character each time your channel a different spirit (which may occur several times in a single game session), if you want to avoid red flags all over options that should simply be grayed out.

I'm really amazed there hasn't been any discussion on this. I made my first medium today and it's a trainwreck. I can't imagine using Hero Lab with much efficiency for this character at the table when I have to rebuild 1/3 of the character each time a new spirit is channeled. The layout for this character class is very poor.

That looks like it seriously needs to be submitted as a bug report. I suspect that the Occult classes are new enough that there haven't been a lot of actual players for some of them.

I submitted a bug report for it back when I posted this thread. The response I got was "Thank you for your suggestion. We'll keep this in mind for future improvements."

So, either LW still doesn't understand the class or don't feel it's an important enough element of the game to have fixed by now.

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your feedback here. The problem with the Medium is that it's an incredibly flexible class, and so it'd need a lot of special handling to all work more smoothly in Hero Lab.

Based on what I know of the class, it seems like we'd need to do something like the following:

1) Allow you to add your full "repertoire" of spirits to HL - for a normal Medium, that would mean up to the 6 "default" spirits, but there are other spirits detailed in other books

2) Allow you to "configure" each spirit appropriately - for example the bonus feat that you get from the Champion, the bonus seance boon skill from the Trickster, the spells you get from Hierophant, etc

3) Choose which spirit is active at any one time - the abilities from that spirit would be available, but everything added by other spirits would be "turned off". Also, if you had chosen a spirit with a different kind of spellcasting, the basic Medium spellcasting would need to be turned off.

Is that correct? Is there something simpler we could do that could make things better?

I don't know about what might be simpler, but the idea of activating a type of channeled spirit and then having its selected or previously selected bonuses added into the existing "base medium" details would align with other such class based decision making. I would look at Ultimate Intrigue's vigilante class for a little inspiration - they have a social identity and a "combat" identity and they can be swapped out in play easily. Of course, the medium calls for many additional options to be called on, but the thing a player would surely need most is for the previous selections to be retained and inactive when the spirit departs.

Test the results of a mid-teens level medium channeling a Heirophant spirit. Then change the spirit choice to Archmage and look at what happens to the validation. Utter chaos.

Colen said:

1) Allow you to add your full "repertoire" of spirits to HL - for a normal Medium, that would mean up to the 6 "default" spirits, but there are other spirits detailed in other books

Click to expand...

Could this be handled with the minions/companions/eidolons capability?
Create multiple minions (one or more predefined configurations for each spirit), then allow the hero to choose which minion is "active".
It is worth noting that the same spirit might be set up in different configurations: such as oceanic or siege or dungeon, depending on what the shaman is going to be doing that day.

This general facility would also be useful for a summoner, so that he could have several different eidolons which he could switch between each time he levels up.

MadTruman said:

I would look at Ultimate Intrigue's vigilante class for a little inspiration - they have a social identity and a "combat" identity and they can be swapped out in play easily. Of course, the medium calls for many additional options to be called on, but the thing a player would surely need most is for the previous selections to be retained and inactive when the spirit departs.

Click to expand...

The Vigilante is a *significantly* simpler class than the Medium, unfortunately - with the Vigilante, there are a fixed 2 (maybe more in unusual situations, but for most characters it's 2) options to switch between, and you can't change them between uses.

For the Medium, you have 6 options, potentially more if you have access to additional ones from Horror Realms, each of which can have its own sub-options. There's no way we can fit all of those on a single screen, so that means we have to add new tabs for them. That means every Medium gets an additional 6 tabs, which is a lot of space used up. That's not even considering what Farling suggested, which is saving different "configurations" of each one - that would use even more space.

Colen said:

The Vigilante is a *significantly* simpler class than the Medium, unfortunately - with the Vigilante, there are a fixed 2 (maybe more in unusual situations, but for most characters it's 2) options to switch between, and you can't change them between uses.

For the Medium, you have 6 options, potentially more if you have access to additional ones from Horror Realms, each of which can have its own sub-options. There's no way we can fit all of those on a single screen, so that means we have to add new tabs for them. That means every Medium gets an additional 6 tabs, which is a lot of space used up. That's not even considering what Farling suggested, which is saving different "configurations" of each one - that would use even more space.

Click to expand...

You're not wrong, certainly. The bottom line for me is that if you make a medium with Hero Lab and print it out, it's a very poor representation of what the character is and what it can do. I'd tolerate extra tabs. I've made gestalt characters and it definitely adds some tabs. (Heck, some feats add tabs all by themselves.) I'd recommend a series of checkboxes to indicate which spirits will be used, because not many PCs are going to channel Champions *and* Butchers. If Butcher isn't checked, it would never take up real estate.

And keep in mind that, while previously selected options for a spirit should be remembered and re-enabled when switching back to it, for much of the game, there will only be one channeled spirit at a time* and so perhaps this suggests a simpler way of managing screen real estate.

* I haven't looked back at the class since around the time I posted this thread so my recollection may be shaky.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. Part of the problem is that we need to support people who are new to Hero Lab (and potentially Pathfinder) as well as power users for a class like this - whatever solution we find needs to work well for both groups, and not be (for example) great for power users but inaccessible for "newbies".

We're going full steam ahead on the Villain Codex and other data entry tasks right now, but once we have those finished we'll revisit this and see if there's a better solution we can find.

I'm not sure what "power user" is in this context. I'm guessing the Hero Lab layout would scare many "newbies" off of the class. I definitely hope you circle back. My friend playing a medium will find ways to soldier on!

Ha! And so we come full circle because it was while designing a medium for Villain Codex that I first came across the problem with the implementation that led to this thread!

Kind of an ugly approach, but you could make a Medium up to whatever point you choose the variable option that changes based on your spirit or whatever.

Then create as many copies as spirits you channel.
And make each relevant option.

Save them into a portfolio.
Then import to the party portfolio, whichever version you're currently using.

Just come across this "feature" myself... trying to do a Relic Channeler and only need a dip for it (only taking 1-2 levels)

I think I will have to make 6 characters also but the admin on that is insane as I will have to update every sheet with the Arrowsong Bard every time I level (PS I think AS-Bard needs fixing too?)

Why can't you add all 6 spirits in the background; then on a separate page, do like you do for 10th level Evangelist PrC "this isn't even my final form": activate the bonuses with a check box?