I'm trying to develop a PC for a friend's tabletop game; a dryad PC who's bonded tree is a treant. This is a bit weird but, if you'll humor me, I'll try to make this make sense.
The notion I have is to use a female half-elf summoner synthesist in the role of the dryad and have her eidolon counterpart be the treant. That is to say that the dryad would appear, act and be a veritable dryad, but she would be using a RAW half-elf's racial makeup to keep the character viable as a PC. In the same vein, her treant counterpart would appear, act and in all ways that matter be a treant, but would be stated from a synthesist's eidolon.
I'd be playing the un-melded dryad and her synthesist-melded treant form as two distinct entities; only one of which could be active at a time. So as not to have the treant simply disappear into the either when un-melded, I'm hoping to have my GM allow the eidolon to remain corporeal even when he's dismissed or "killed"; albeit as an otherwise normal rooted tree stuck in the spot he was where he should have disappeared.
So the dryad would remain a dryad until the moment when she steps into her tree and she herself goes dormant, at which point the treant (i.e. melded-synthesist) awakens and is free to move and act. So when one of the pair is active, the other is automatically asleep. If the melded eidolon were to be killed, the treant would go dormant and immediately root to the spot and the dryad would be forcefully ejected. The dryad is the soft social of the duo, while the treant is the muscle. Make sense?
I'm going to be playing this from level 1 onwards. What I'd like would be some feedback on this concept, as well as roleplaying ideas, suggestions for which base form and evolutions would help make the eidolon as much like a treant as possible. Likewise anything that'd make the half-elf as much like a dryad as possible would be helpful. Thanks!
Thanks for the response guys!
Just think it would be a lot more convenient to have them be a regular summoner/eidolon team.
I hear what you're saying and I am considering going regular summoner. I just think that a regular summoner would be more complicated, rather than less, seeing as how I'd have to run two characters at a time instead of just one. The campaign will be fairly heavy on the RP side and I'd like to develop the personality of each half of the duo through roleplay. In my experience, a PC's familiar/animal companion/cohort is usually glossed over roleplaying-wise during game play due to the player's focus being on her PC; reducing the companion to being a mere passive/mute sidekick.
It seems like you want to make this half-elf as much like a dryad as possible, but dryads can't animate trees and they are tied to a particular location anyway.
All true but in myth, if a dryad's tree were felled, she could bond with a new tree. I imagine this is what happened in this character's background, though she instead bonded herself to a treant. Being bonded with a treant is what allows her to be mobile and to adventure in a party.
Unfortunetely, you cannot aquire plant traits as a synthesist summoner, so you will never emulate good enough a treant IMO.
The Plant Type is fairly simple; the only thing that sets them apart is their immunity to mind-affecting effects, paralysis, poison, polymorph, sleep effects, and stunning as well as their inability to sleep. I probably can't manage most of those, but none of it seems all that crucial in the portrayal of a plant.
There is an elf druid archetype that lets you take a treant animal companion and you can also eventually wildshape in a trent, that is the closest you can be in your concept IMO.
I looked at the Treesinger archetype. I love the concept but, being an animal companion, the "treant" is stuck with 2 Int. I couldn't really do much roleplaying with an inexplicably lobotomized treant companion.
If your Gm is open to houserules, you could make an evolution similar to undead appearance but covering plant traits.
I was hoping such an evolution might exist in some 3rd party source but, if not, I suppose I could make one up and propose it to my GM.