Okay, for this 'testing' of the maerial presented both here and in your other books, our gaming group is running a World's Largest Dungeun campaign (we bought the book over a year ago and we started it, got somewhere in the 1st lvl area and now wer started again in the 4 or 5th lvl area).
Since our gaming group tends to have a lot of members who switch in or out we can't play the WLD as normal. The WLD is intended to be a one-way deal, no leaving or anything until you hit the exit at the end. Which won't really work with our group.
So we have a patron for the group who can teleport us in or out using some rather expensive and powerful magical talismans that allow for someone to negate the WLD's extradimensional and intradimensional travel inderdiction field (really, if you do stuff like summon a monster, it stays till it dies, teleporting, gating out etc. can't be done either).
So our overall gaming group and it's members include the following:
Aasimar Monk (Frank/K's monk)
level 5 (near 6 though)-Is really, really loving the class, the fighting styles are pretty awesome (and he picked the speed and con damage styles as part of his 1st 2 styles). Also, the fact that he only needs Con and Wis as prime stats actually allows the class to be played with a 28 point buy with effectiveness equal to my barbarian.
He has special abilties and can... go almost anywhere in combat, my own character can... can deal mad melee damage.
Side Note: I know you guys will eventually redo the pally in Tome of Virtue. The method in which you folded the monk's abilities away from dex and into wisdom really works well.
Our group came to the conclusion that folding a Paladins Wis for casting into cha for casting (since Cha is already an important enough stat; for lay on hands, their bonus to saves ability and skill checks). So, they'd have Str/Con/Cha are prime stats. Still not too good, but better than Str/Con/Cha/Wis.
Just as a start for how to rework the pally however.
Human Barbarian (Frank/K's Barb) Just turned
level 6-My character, I've given enough details in this thread already
[Edit I might as well summarise my char again]:
HP: 70, down to a max of -20;
DR 5/- While Raging
+14 to hit, +12 when not raging;
Fast Healing 5 (when not raging)
AC: 20-ish (meaning I can get hit a lot)

Feats: TWF, Combat School, Blitz & Great Fortitude:
-Blitz I use against things that aren't too much of a threat for my character, but against 'harder' targets I tend to not use it.
-Right now, my To-Hit is insane; +14/+14/+12/+12 (Main hand/Off hand/Main/Off) at level 6 so trading some out for Power-Attack is something that I should do more often (right now... I forget what my damage will be like as it is

[+6 BaB, +3 Str, +2 Rage, +2 Combat School, +1 Magical Weapon Enhancement]
-My damage is decent, and now has now spiked upwards since I've got an other rage dice and a second attack
Damage on 'main' hand: 2x [ 1d6 + 3d6 + 7 (+/-6)] Damage per attack: 4d6 + 7 = avg 19 (11-31) or 25 (17-37)
[1d6 weapon, 3d6 Rage Dice, +3 Str, +2 Rage, +2 Combat School; plus or not my BaB in damage provoking an AoO]
Damage on 'Off'hand: 2x [1d6 + 5 (+/- 6)] Damage per attack: 1d6 + 5 = avg 8 (6-11) or 14 (12-17)
[1d6 Weapon, +1 str, +2 Rage, +2 Combat School]
...I should really, really get a +1 wrathful healing vicious weapon; half of my damage as HP, and +2d6 damage and taking an extra +1d6 damage taken per hit. That won't be for a while though, getting a +4 weapon is going to cost.. 32,000 gp; and my current weapon is only worht 8,000 (+2); that means I need 24,000 gp in gems or something.
A boatload of rogues:
Bugbear Rogue
lvl 5-This char was made last week; ranged build, Sniper + Point Blank shot, pretty good scout/trapfinder
Also, the Bugbear race as a rogue is really quite good.
It's only delayed 1 level for SA progresion, but of my fvcking-god is it good. It can actually afford to have 16 con without really getting hurt anywhere else. So this rogue has almost double the HP of the other rogues.
At level .... 5, the bugbear was able to soak a CR 10 Red Dragon's full attack action for a round (was at 3 HP, and the dragon got no crits, but damn nearly anyone else would have gone down).
Aasimar Rogue 1
lvl 5ranged build; going to focus more on ranged combat and wielding a wand
Aasimar Rogue 2 (also, brother of the character above):
Slightly more melee-ish (although, not really built for it IMO); this player is going to remake his character into something else. I reccomended barbarian, but Samurai is prolly better after re-reading the class a third time.
Nevermind, I'm telling him to look at the knight class.
If he picks up... Whirlwind, is... small character race, and rides a medium sized mount; he can declare enemies to be his designated foe, and since they can't probably hit him, he can move towards them and deal his level in d6's of damage each round. He should ride an intelligent flying carpet, or hovering metal disk. B/c that'd be cool.
A Human? or Halfling rogue?
lvl 4 or 5Melee TWF build; expert tactician is really nice on a rogue, especially one that can tumble past enemies and establish their onw flanking position; this char really helped us kill the Hellcat at lvl 4.
Clerics:
2, evil, undead controlling, clerics.
Sanc Tuary, cleric of Kamikaze, the Divine Wind
lvl 4[this guy was playing a Soulknife, but realized how sucky the class is]
I sort of tricked the player into having 1 persistant spell all day long at... level 1. But he thinks its great after I explained how this worked.
So we all benefit from Bless all day long; with 5 or 7 or more players it's quite a force multiplier.
And he gets to have us all sit down together once a day for him to have us be blessed and ask us to pull his finger.
He's got 2 "100-charge-equivalent" wands; one of CLW, one of Lesser Vigour; so infinite Fast Healing 1 and CLWs.
I helped him buy half of them, since I figure my barb needs two things; more ways to deal damage, and more ways to repair the damage that I take even without making any sort of stupid mistakes.
"The Necromancer" (don't know his character name, he only made his char recently, but I know that he wants to play a necro with an undead army)
lvl 4Straight evil cleric, he's gonna get himself a giant skeleton or something as his beat-stick; and Bone Armour, when we can figure out if it costs as much as breastplate or fullplate.
Side note:
So, Frank/K, is there anyway to gauge the prices for new armours introduced?
Bone armour specifically. If you don't know, don't worry, he probably won't buy bone armour until he has more ranks in Knowlege (Religion) anyway. Only if you have it jotted down somewhere.
Ogre Barbarian (Ogre 4/Barbarian 1)
So, we convinced a girl, who's never played any sort of RPG, into playing a big dumb ogre....I don't know if my own barbarian will be sad, now that he has competition in the melee damage department, or be happy that we've got the girls who usually watch us play actually playing. Happy wins though.
Besides, anything that the ogre beats up, I won't have to provoke AoOs from when I'm blitzing.
The ogre's first encounter was helping us fight the CR 10 red dragon. Not exactly a good way to start playing a game, but she enjoyed it well enough.
Also, a bunch of druids. 3 druids, all made pretty much independantly of each other.
1. Aasimar Old man druid
Middle aged druid (ready to turn old or whatever, whenever he needs more wisdom) with an ape pet.
He helped a lot when we were fighting the CR 7 red, patched a lot of people up with his wands and with himself and his ape dropped the cr 7 red's hp down to 3 for the soulknife to finish off.
2. Dwarf Shopkeeper Druid
An other druid, with really high HP; he also soaked a full attack action from a CR '10' red dragon. At level.... 5.
However, he was pushed up against a wall and wasn't able to retreat.

3. Might have an other druid?
I dunno, we might have an other druid, girls like to play waifish female druids with giant horsie pets?
Also, a human fighter 4 or 5; who as a player has aknowledged that he lacks the skill to play the fighter
(WHAT THE FVCK?! Frank/K, you guys are mean, you stripped the fighter of it's 'useless and dubiously easy to use' class status now! omfg!)
Who will remake as a samurai or barbarian. I should reccomend the knight to him too.
So...Party Composition
0-2 Samurai or knights
1 Monk (Aasimar)
2 Barbarians (Human, Ogre)
2 Clerics (Both are...yeah I think both are Aasimar for the wis and cha, if not, the one with persisant spells at lvl 1 is a human, for the feat)
2-3 Druids ( 1 Aasimar, 1 Dwarf, (Aasimar?))
3-4 Rogues (1-2 Aasimar or Teiflings?, 1 Human/Hafling, 1 Bugbear)
So, about 12 players, of which we have about 4-6 of at any one session (but having as many as 10 or 12 at a few sessions)
Yes.. that's a lot of fvcking aasimar (3 out of 12, and they outnumber everyone but the humans). Mostly for their Wis/Cha bonuses and no LA.
As well as a lot of rogues, but we'll need them for trap finding; and WLD is full of nothing if not traps.
Wait... I think the rogues may be Tieflings. bleh, whatever, I don't have the character sheets, the DM does.
So, our encounters to date:
We did a bunch of pre-campaign fights to test the new classes and our group as a whole with tactics and ideas.
Our group tends to have a "everyone gets out alive" mindset; that we sometimes apply to non-PCs. Sometimes we even extend our help to former enemies or simply try to co-opt them into working for us.
#1 CR '7' Copper Dragon
In Ysgard we fought a CR 7 Copper dragon with 6 PCs at lvl 4 (my barb, monk, old-man druid, fighter, one of the rogues, the soulknife).
It sort of lost initiative and we dropped it in one round; round 1 for damage as everyone charged or ran and surrounded it, then it tried to fly upwards and it provoked AoOs.
#2 CR '7' Red Dragon
Still in Ysgard, we fought a CR '7' red dragon with the same above group.
That was so bloody hard, almost everyone died, but we killed it since the soulknife was able to get in one last hit in when the dragon was at 3 hp.
#3 Our Patron's 'Test'
Preamble: Our groups patron is this epic level wizard who hires, or rather kidnaps adventurers into doing things for him; search and explore dungeouns, aquire items etc. etc.
Each PC faced a single animal of their own CR. (pretty much a test of each PC vs a challenge of their own CR)
The rogues almost invariabely died or ran away. They got ported out upon near-death.
The fighter killed his, the Dwarf Druid was able to wild empathy his.
Sanctuary faced a wyrmling blue dragon, that ran away.
The Necromancer cleric faced 2 Redcaps, and while he killed one, the other one finished him off.
I faced a Huge Crocodile, and while I was taking piles of hits, I killed it before it killed me. Blitz can be useful, but also dangerous.
Adventure #1 Clear an Abbeys mausoleom of a traitorous member and his summoned minions.
Complete the D&D Games Day adventure (meant for 6 ECL 4 PCs, which is why we made lvl 4 PCs, to do this adventure).
Most of this was pretty easy, the early rooms were a cakewalk, while the wizard and his magma hurler were nearly soloed by my character.
I think I 'losered' the magma hurler, bringing it to 1-5 HP; while the wizard died after he provoked an AoO as he tried to run through my spiked chain's reach. I must've broken his leg or something.
The hellcat at the end was a challenge, since we couldn't hit it easily and damaging it took a while to do.
Eventually our monk was able to deal enough Con damage that it got desperate and grappled my Barb (good thing I have armour spikes/razors) while three rogues got in sneak attacks.
The lackey we faced by exiting the 'wrong' door was no problem either. He gave up when confronted by 6 adventurers who had just killed his master, summoned minions and were leaving without even a scratch on them.
Adventure #2 Explore an abandoned dungeoun.
No big deal, all empty, no traps.
So the monk gets bored and runs up ahead and finds a pair of woodling monitor lizards (MM3) and seeks to engage them, but they run off.
So he sets off after them, and the rest of the group goes after him. Bad idea. B/c, you see, he's got this ability that he can move through enemy squares without provoke AoOs, and it also gives him Concealment. Now, no one else in the group can do anything like that.
Also, no one in the party can jump so high that they could take falling damage. The monk can. So, that means he can not only walk through most enemies, he can also leap over them if he so chooses.
The room around which a hallway went around that he went into was empty, and everything was good. My barbarian, one of the rogues and the dwarf druid had entered the room; the fighter was on his way up one of th hallways that ran alongside this room, as was the cleric Sanc Tuary.
Until the monk decided to leave and set off the rooms trap.
So, we're facing off against 2 woodling monitor lizards (who can entangle, summon monsters and a do a bunch of other stuff) and one Wood Woad (also, MM3) per PC. So of course things go from easy to difficult faster than you can say "roll for initiative."
So, to make a long story short, in a pair or trio of rounds we were in the following states:
Monk - Tanking 3 Wood Woads, and using Subtle Cut + Figthing Style to deal Speed Damage to the Wood Woads.
Barbarian (me) - 'playing dead' after tanking 2-4 crocodiles, 2 wood woads and the pair of monitor lizards.
Fighter & Cleric - Barely hanging in there thanks to being flanked, but also flanking a wood woad with Sanc Tuary; gets KO'd next round after killing the one wood woad with Sanc; who then taps him with a wand of Lesser Vigour to keep death at bay while he goes and tanks the wood woad that's left.
Druid - Dead pet (after a series of it taking damage and then getting healed, back and forth...) and lowish on HP.
Rogue - KO'd for quite a while, but made his stabilization roll (10% chance, that's damned slim, but he got a 7 on a D100)
So, we're all hurting pretty badly. I think the main reason we were able to get back out of this situation was that I had hit lvl 5 and had my Fast healing 5 when no raging.
So, I go from -9 to -4 in one round, -4 to 1 hp in an other and in my next round I get 5 more HP, jump up and attack both of the monitor lizards, killing them both. This makes the 4 crocs that they summoned vanish, and now the Druid isn't harrasd from both sides by Wood Woads and Crocodiles; although he has lost his companion.
After that the monk walks away from the Wood Woads he was tanking and him and my barb kill an other wood woad that's guarding the 'room's exit and then proceeds to help the druid (who then goes and summons a dire wolf).
I on the other hand leave the monk/druid/dire wolf and unconcious rogue to deal with the Wood Woads by them and I go help the cleric kil his remaining Wood Woad.
So, we all actually survived that fight, but it was freaking slow and hard.
Now, that we've got some testing of the game and the group has tried their PCs a bit, we've moved back into the WLD.
Adventure #3+ The WLD itself....
[1st session: Bugbear, My barb, Sanctuary the Cleric, Monk, Dwarf Druid]
We spent our 1st session inside deling with traps; lots of them, and while we were able to puzzle them out, we didn't get to fight anyhting however.
Which was boring, so we askd our DM if he could run an encounter for us.
And he gave us a CR 10 red dragon in a pretty small room (50 by 50 foot room. or 10 x 10 squares). Rather, the dragon showed up in the lsat room we were in.
The druid cast mass resist energy and we all sort of went after the thing.
The monk ran around to flank it, my barb and the ogre attacked it's other side; the cleric went behind us, the druid and his new wolf went to the left and the bugbear went to the right corner of the room to shoot the dragon.
The order and how people died:
Druid's wolf (AoO's & actual attacks)
Monk (Full attack action)
The ogre (got KO'd, not actualy killed, the cleric tossed it a lesser vigour)
The Druid (trapped against a wall and then full attacked)
My Barb (I was low on HP, had turned my rage off for fast healing and got blasted with fire and failed my save)
My Barb took a bunch of hits right away, since he was hitting reliabley he was a larger threat.
Who knew that a +13 to hit at lvl 5 would be so scary.
I didn't actually die at that point though; I did take about 35-odd damage out of 55 hp in one round; I would have taken 40+ if I didn't have my DR 4/- though.
We tried to have the ogre grapple with the dragon, but dragons cheat, so that wasn't possible.
Eventually, the DM decided that we had effectively fought a CR 8 dragon (and, for all the damage that we had taken it to just about under half it's max HP, so if it was a CR 8 we would have 'won' at that point).
So, those that died, got ported back to a safe spot, so no death on their part. And we got triple standard treasure for a CR 8 encounter, fun times.
Anyway, the classes are pretty decent; we just need to start incorporating The Edge rules into our games now.
Also, I think that for the dragon fight, we should have used every PC, might have given us a better chance if we had more rogues to plink away at its HP even if it's via using str bows and the PBS abilitiy to add your BAB to damage, a second druid and cleric wouldn't have hurt; nor would an other actual fighter for more melee and tankage.
Would have been crowded though and the dragon would have used its breath weapon sooner as well I'm betting.
In any case, I'm finding that TWF is good for single enemy fights, while something like Whirlwind or Hordebreaker is probably better for dealing with mobs of enemies.
Doesn't matter though, since I'm taking Great Fortitude this level. The +3 to all saves while raging, the much larger leeway point for auto-dying and +1 HP/level will all be handy.
Seriously, has anyone ever seen a melee build that takes great fortitude? I think only if you use these supplements will people actually make effective choices that are actually flavorful as well.