Howdy. I'm not a huge fan of what Unchained did with the eidolon, but I do like the idea of limiting spell lists. So if I just took the Unchained summoner, but left the eidolon intact, what would that mean for balance?
I've ben wondering about the same thing... I afsked James Jacobs if there was any update coming for the baseform list, but that was not the plan
Blump.
Honestly, I don't see why you shouldn't do that.
I think the main impetus for making the Unchained Summoner was the fact that it had teleport as a 4th-level spell, meaning you could craft wands of teleport for general shenanigans. Of course, it's entirely possible I'm wrong on that front.
The purpose as I understood it was that you had a 9-levels spellcaster pretending to be a 6-levels spellcaster.
At any rate, I'm all for letting the summoner use eidolons as they originally were designed, with the Unchained spell list.
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What I was working on as a fix for the unchained summoner (or a way to have spells at a lower level than other casters without it being broken) was using the unchained spell list, but at 4th level, and every 3 levels afterwards, a summoner can select a spell known that, if the Eidolon was included as a target of the spell, it can be cast with a spell slot 1 level lower than normal. Was also thinking of making a smaller list you can select from, but never got around to it because no ones playing a summoner in any of the games I'm in right now. But it does fix the crafting problems that early entry spells had before, and doesn't get the wizard's panties in a bunch for getting haste before he can, since you don't get any spells earlier than others, just when you do, you can cast them easier than some can.
As for the Eidolon, having Pounce move to 3 evolution points and a minimum level of 7 probably isn't a bad idea. Other than that I would say everything else should be fine as it was.
Yeah I would use the new evolution point values as well, but I like it.
My problem with the eidolon was always was not really addressed in the Unchaining. That problem is that eidolons are forced to be cookie-cutter natural attack beasts if they want to be effective.
For example, you can't make a unicorn that focuses only on it's horn attack, becoming stronger as it levels. Like a 2-handed fighter.
Even getting weapon proficiencies costs 4 (!) evolution points and is worse than the pounce monster.
It would make much more sense to have two pools of evolution points: Offense and Other. Each point in the Offense pool would be used to buy either a single natural attack, or to strengthen an existing attack. Ex, you might gain a scaling elemental damage for one point, or Powerful Charge, etc... You could also use an Offense point to gain a weapon attack.
The Offense pool would match the 'max attacks' column of the eidolon so would naturally scale correctly.
The Other pool would have all the quirky things like flight, natural armor, energy resistance, etc.
If you were feeling adventurous, you could add some spell casting to the Offense evolutions.
One day I will write this... :)
