As the title says, this topic is about the dwarven Excavator. I’d like to solicit opinions and views on the class. I’ll start with my own thoughts, based on several years of running an all-or-mostly-dwarf campaign.
The class does not seem to be a popular one. There was one that was hired a few years back, for purposes of land surveying, apart from him the only time I’ve seen the class is when I’ve almost forced one of them as a henchman on the party. No player has ever expressed a wish to get one as a henchman specifically, and definitely not to play the class. I’ve asked about this matter and it seems that it’s considered lackluster.
I think I tend to agree. The general concept is very nice, a dwarven miner. The execution is not perfect, however. The class has no thief skills and is not very good in combat. It cannot cast spells. It has d6 hit dice. It can chuck oil with the best of them, but that’s a somewhat limited thing to do. As there’s no specific xp track for them / a miner would not gain xp from mining, their existence is not perfectly sensible worldbuildingly.
The powers it gains are nice, yes, but so very narrow in scope. The class, in general, seems like it occupies a super-narrow place, making it something that’s not the first pick for playing as. Unless you’re super-into domain level mining you’re kinda sitting there, waiting on the chance to chuck an oil every now and then.
How I would alter him, I think, is shifting to a F 2 HD 1 T 1 chassis. Get fighter damage / cleaves, spend 1 power for adding damage and cleaves to oil, make him have a wider useability. Broad weapons, 2 times 5 choices and just put in a selection of bludgeons and axes to continue their list. Allow being an ok-to-good fighter, lesser than a vaultguard with the d6 HD, but more widely useful. Maybe drop the engineering at 7th, that’s a bit late to be honest, and put in something else. Manual of Arms is a perpetual favorite of mine, allow them to form units to defend the mine tunnels. Loose ones chucking oil, maybe. Now, he makes a bit more sense, too, I think. If you advance by fighting subterranean things as a miner, you’d become a warrior type.