Summoner in S&S


Skull & Shackles


During my first day on the ship, after waking up and being assigned a job, I was told to kill rats. I went below deck and summoned my eidolon. My DM declared that my eidolon didn't appear. I then tried to summon a dire rat. Again, my spell failed. Are summoners useless in Skull and Shackles?

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

That's not written into the AP, that's all your GM.

Scarab Sages

If only there had been someone at the table you could have asked instead of having to resort to internet message boards. Alas, I suppose it will remain a mystery.


Your GM is doing something to you that is outside the normal rules. There isn't any reason you shouldn't be able to summon your eidolon or a summoned creature. There are two possibilities:

1) He's doing something clever, such as the ship's mage using magic in some way to prevent summoning from occurring on the ship, and you'll be able to use it when you get off the ship. This is a way to give you an additional challenge, make you hate the brutal ship's officers even more, and keep you from, say, evolving your eidolon to have a swim speed and being able to carry you, then you just jump off the ship and get carried to shore.

(In this AP, a lot of the first book basically assumes that you don't have the ability to get off the ship on your own, i.e. no sustained flight at first level, and no permanent swim speed at first level. If a GM chooses to allow Strix, Gathlains, Gillmen, Undines, etc. then she will need to come up with a rationalization for why they don't just say, "Seeya! Wouldn't want to be ya!" the first chance they get.)

2) Your GM hates summoners but didn't feel like just telling you, so he's passive-aggressively nerfing you in the hopes that you'll get the hint and reroll a different class.


Chunk O'Beef wrote:
During my first day on the ship, after waking up and being assigned a job, I was told to kill rats. I went below deck and summoned my eidolon. My DM declared that my eidolon didn't appear. I then tried to summon a dire rat. Again, my spell failed. Are summoners useless in Skull and Shackles?

We had a Master Summoner in our SnS campaign who summoned only elemental creatures (except at first when he limited himself to things you'd see at sea/on a ship like sea shrikes and dire rats). He was a boon to the party and a lot of fun to GM - so no, summoners are most definitely not useless. I second all of Baha-Who's comments and tend to suspect the latter over the former.


I would suggest giving the GM the benefit of the doubt, actually.

Talk to him privately. My suggested script is: "I've realized that you're probably doing something to give my character an additional challenge to overcome, and giving an in-game-world justification for why I don't just cause my eidolon to grow flippers, jump on its back, and leave. My only concerns are to make sure that's indeed what's going on here, and to get a bit of guidance from you about how to begin facing this challenge. I've heard that some people really don't like Summoners, and think it's overpowered. Are you having any concerns along those lines?"

Assuming he says that summoners aren't the problem: "Alright, thanks for relieving my worries. Should I start making Spellcraft or Knowledge(arcana) checks, or try to investigate through diplomacy or something?"

If he says summoners are indeed the problem, but he didn't want to take back his previous approval of your character: "I understand that you didn't want to take back what you already agreed to let me do, and I want to make sure both you and I have fun. I can either rebuild my character or work with you to find a way to houserule the summoner into a level of power you're comfortable with."

Suggested rebuilds include a summoning-focused sorceror or wizard. Suggested houserules include changing spells like Haste and Teleport back to the normal spell levels.

If he insists that summoners aren't the problem, but refuses to let you try to figure out the in-game issue, and keeps adding handicaps to your character that none of the other PCs have to deal with, ask to rebuild anyway: "I know you said that you don't care about summoners, but I'm just not feeling this character. What kind of character would you recommend I play that you wouldn't feel needs to have restrictions like this placed on him?"

If he refuses to allow that, explain that the restrictions on your character, and no others, make you feel singled out, which is preventing you from having fun. If he doesn't care about that, leave. You're better off finding a different game, or having no game to play, than continue playing one where the GM doesn't at least consider making changes when he's informed that one of his players isn't having fun.


I'm running S+S for my group at the moment but I cant help thinking how much fun I'd be having if my evolutionist summoner were on board...

Extra hand on deck without the needed food ration... we're a couple of singers so entertaining the crew would be right up our alley.

Then it ocurred to me...

A whole ship full of summoners... would be.... totally bad ass...

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder Adventure Path / Skull & Shackles / Summoner in S&S All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Skull & Shackles