How would you balance a feat that let you release your eidolon? I was thinking that the eidolon would gain the native subtype and you would no longer have any control over it (but it starts with a friendly disposition), and you wouldn't be able to summon a new one for a week (or maybe a day but require an expensive ceremony). Any advice on tweaks or prerequisites?
(I mainly intend for this to used by the bad guys, but I thought it might be more interesting if it was just a general feat.)
If this is for the bad guys, take a look at the Unfettered Eidolon from Bestiary 3 -- you just need a weird magical accident to unfetter the eidolon. The summoner class description implies that this accident is usually fatal for the summoner -- there is no mention of any process for acquiring a new eidolon, implying that a normal summoner only ever has one eidolon. But there is no reason that you can't simply rule that the summoner survived the accident and somehow acquired a new eidolon.
If this arrangement is for the good guys, you would need your GM's cooperation to make this work, since you clearly want the summoner, the old eidolon, and the new eidolon to all work together in the same party. If you are building this arrangement from the start rather than changing an existing summoner, the broodmaster archetype could take care of it.
I would use the Leadership feat to turn the old eidolon into a cohort and build a new eidolon after a bit of down time (for the magical accident that unbinds the old eidolon and whatever process the summoner goes through to get a new one. Use the Extra Cohort feat if you ever want to repeat the process. Persuade your fellow players to take those feats if you want to repeat the process yet again.
The key point to this whole exercise is getting your GM's permission to turn unfettered eidolons into cohorts. Their ability to advance beyond the level limits of a normal eidolon is my primary misgiving with this scheme.
I'd be the GM for this game (which is currently only in the early planning stages). The point is to be able to make a mad-scientist-like BBEG running around leaving strange new creatures all over the place. I hadn't even thought about the Leadership feat (although that's basically why I'm asking). I figured it would be much more balanced in the long run to make it a viable general feat rather than just say the BBEG can do this with no explanation and no chance of the players learning how.
(Actually, I want to give this to a race of intelligent oozes that run around spawning new types of oozes for their own convenience. So I also need to make up an amorphous base form. I just think it's worth trying to make it into something the PCs could potentially learn.)
Anyway, Leadership is definitely something to think about balance-wise. Without that feat though, the old eidolon would not necessarily stay with the party. Like I said, the summoner relinquishes all control (but it is at least friendly to begin with). Is there any particularly eidolon forms that would be abusive to have as a cohort (considering it'd take 2 feats to get)?
Also, for long term considerations, I think that two released eidolons of the exact same form should be able to breed, but their children might be weaker than the basically Paragon parents. (Or would being able to do this be worth another feat? It's certainly a long-term option.)
Of course, this might all work better as a Summoner archetype.
I'm not quite sure whether to put this in it's own thread or to continue in this one, but I'll err on the side of not creating a lot of extra threads...
Anyway, rethinking this idea, it feels more like an archetype rather than a feat (or feat chain). So, how about this (naming and wording help appreciated).
BTW, is there precedent for simply stating that two archetypes are incompatible? Taking this and Synthesist doesn't make any sense, but this with Broodmaster or Evolutionist does, which means I can't easily overlap abilities to exclude Synthesist.
Most summoners summon otherworldly eidolons from distant planes. A Genesist can create a brand new, mortal creature.
Eidolon: When selecting a base form, the summoner must also select one of the following creature types: Aberration, Animal or Vermin. The eidolon summoned will be of this type rather than Outsider and must use the saves and hit die of that creature type. It also gains all other traits appropriate to that type. These creatures have 2 less evolution points than other eidolons.
The summoned eidolon still bears the glowing rune of its summoner, but it is not treated as a summoned creature. If the eidolon would be banished, instead the rune disappears and it loses all connection to the summoner and reverts to an INT appropriate for its creature type if that's lower than its current INT. Any abilities of the summoner that refer to an eidolon only function while the rune is present. (It remains friendly to the summoner and their allies, at least initially.)
The summoner can only perform the summoning ritual once per day.
The creatures created by the Genesist can breed if the summoner explicitly creates a male and female of a single species. Whether such creatures survive or thrive is up to the GM.
Extra types: At 10th level, add Magical Beast and Monstrous Humanoid to the list of creature types the Genesist can chose from. This replaces Aspect.
Dragon type: At 18th level, add Dragon to the list of creature types the Genesist can summon. This replaces Greater Aspect.
I am not sure I understand this proposed archetype correctly. By "banished" do you mean dismissed because it was "killed" or any time that the eidolon would be sent away? The latter case occurs any time that the summoner falls asleep, so in that case he would spawn a ridiculous number of eidolons. If you are limiting it to the case where the eidolon would be "killed", what condition would the eidolon be in in that case?
It might work better to have the summoner create a new eidolon and dismiss his old eidolon whenever he gains a level -- that would at least keep the number of released eidolons finite.
Yeah, dismissed means in any way. If it's dismissed by death, then the rune fades and you have a dead animal.
An elf Genesist could leave over 365,000 new animals running around. I'm not sure whether that's a lot or not considering it'd be over the course of 1000 years...
Actually reading some of the numbers for various species (300,000+ elephants in the wild, 1,000,000,000+ cows worldwide) and given that most of those creatures won't have a terribly long lifespan, and most won't successfully continue a new species, I'm not too worried about it from a strictly numerical point of view. (Allowing the rune to persist while the summoner sleeps would cut the number down by quite a bit though.)
From a mechanical point of view though, I'd be interested in how you might abuse this. I can imagine an unscrupulous Genesist (and you can't really count on players having scruples) filling cage after cage with beasts and then unleashing them on a town. I'd have to compare that to reading a bunch of scrolls of summon monster though. Duration vs preparation.