Bellis Aleste's page

”Then what can we do?”” Bellis asked ”I’m not going to just stand here and let them die!”

Correction: the kids are with you. I'm bringing the Acolyte there to Zellara's.

Bellis leads the Acolyte through the streets of the city, noting the agitation in the air.

Still here, just letting you know

You do know I'm going for a healer already, though.

"Long story short," Bellis said somewhat breathlessly, "a criminal got some children sick in the old Fishery. We took care of him, but we need somebody to heal them if they're to survive the night!

Bellis fingered the bomb in her pocket again. "I'm going to get help for the kids." she said, re-mounting her pony. She looked Weyland in the eyes before closing hers. "Deal with Lamm as you feel is best." She wheeled about and rode out the room, keeping an eye on the waters.

"Let's tie this bastard up, call the authorities, and get back to Zellara's house." Bellis said. "I can ride to the Chapel and get a healer for the children."

Bellis sighed, both frustrated at her inability to take revenge for her parents, and relieved the opportunity was taken out of her hands. "I'll see if this bastard has anything" she says, searching through his pockets, "you guys look around the room."

With the fighting over, Bellis returns and looks over the man who caused so much pain to so many. With one foot, she kicks the crossbow out of his hand and glares down at him, gripping her sickle in one hand and her last bomb in the other, and giving serious thought to forcing them down his throat.

Better clarify how you're throwing that...

"Well that's finally ov-" Bellis blinked as she heard a splash.

"Oh for Desna's--" She drew her crossbow and galloped back across the dock.

As the reptile snaps at her, Bellis's mount rears up and tries to bring its hooves down on gobblegut's head.

Hoof Attack 1: 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (18) + 3 = 21
Hoof Attack 2: 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (6) + 3 = 9

Damage: 1d3 + 2 ⇒ (2) + 2 = 4

"Nicolai, what are you doing?" Bellis cried.

Bellis loads her crossbow and fires at the thrashing beast.

1d20 + 1 ⇒ (4) + 1 = 5

Yes, I am taking care not to catch you guys in the blast

"Here, eat this scaly!" Bellis said as she moved clear and hurled a bomb at the gator's tail.

1d20 + 3 ⇒ (16) + 3 = 19
damage(electrical): 1d6 + 3 ⇒ (5) + 3 = 8

Acrobatics: 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (19) + 3 = 22

Bellis' Pony deftly trots down the broken boardwalk, avoiding the hazards in her path. Bellis spares a smile for the agility shown by her mounts, then scowls as she sights Lamm. "You!" She draws one of her remaining bombs and readies for a fight.

I'll take the side, too. I need room for my pony

My condolences, man.

Well, I'm the only one who can squeeze through there easily, and that discounts the pony, so I vote B or C. D if anyone thinks of it

"I'll tell the others," Bellis said, directing her pony back, "You decide what to do with him."

Wheeling around, she moved back to the stairs. "Hey guys, I think we got a lead up here!"

"And don't try anything funny!" Bellis added.

Bellis hefts her crossbow and nods. "Go ahead."

As the others move into the next room, Bellis takes a look around.

Perception: 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (15) + 3 = 18

"Stay here until we get back." Bellis tells the children. "And if we don't return, get out of here. He won't have the men to find you again so easily." With a quick look down at the dead Half-Orc, she guides her machine up the stairs to join Weyland.

"That does not sound good!" Bellis said.

Bellis draws her crossbow and loads it, trying to decide on chasing the halfling or helping finish the half-orc and calming the children when the smell hits her. "Gah, how can you stand this smell?" she asks the children.

"Have another one, you bastard!" Bellis yells, quickly mixing another bomb and hurling it at the halfling.

1d20 + 3 ⇒ (14) + 3 = 17
damage: 1d6 + 3 ⇒ (4) + 3 = 7

As the door flies open, Bellis hurls a bomb at the sudden flash of light.
1d20 + 3 ⇒ (7) + 3 = 10
1d6 + 6 ⇒ (3) + 6 = 9

I'll hold it, then.

Bellis draws a bomb and slips her mount inside, keeping her eye on the door, waiting for it to open.

Held Action: whomever opens that gets a Spark Bomb in the face

"A fight's about to start" Bellis whispers back, drawing an extract vial and drinking it. "Get ready to go now!

Extract: Targeted Bomb Admixture

Bellis nods and re-mounts her pony as quietly as possible

Stealth: 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (12) + 6 = 18

"C-children?" Bellis said, barely keeping herself quiet. "We should get them out of there!"

Perception: 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (18) + 3 = 21

"There are quite a few people sleeping," Bellis said quietly. "But not everyone. I see a candle-light moving around in the fore-room."

Moving over to join Samantha, she whispers. "I've had some experience with locks at the Golemworks, let me try."

Drawing her own toolset, she flips her pigtails back over her shoulders and starts to work.

Disable Device: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (14) + 7 = 21

Wow, that escalated quickly. Not much wind, but lots of water! We had to leave our house, but I don't think it will end up underwater yet.

"Hard to open boards quietly." Bellis said softly. "I'm for going through the back."

so far, so good.

Perception: 1d20 + 1 ⇒ (19) + 1 = 20 Well that was lucky! :)

Bellis peered at the boards over a window. "Yes, you can see out between those boards in the windows." Pointing over to one of the windows. "There's a light in that window too. Someone might be over there."

I'm in the path of the hurricane, so I could be out for a few days or more after tomorrow, depending on a bunch of factors.

Bellis shyly raised her hand, a catalyst vial threaded between three fingers. "I happen to dabble in Alchemy, too. Although I'm a lot more into construct mechanics."

Bellis walked over to Samantha. "Hey, we should probably get mov- wow, is that an Alchemy kit?"

Bellis nods. "I'm still in."

"Then..." Bellis said with a little trepidation, "I guess we should begin!"

After Zellara's revelation, Bellis stared at the floor for a long time. When she looked up, there were tears barely being held back in her eyes. "O-okay... I'll help too!

"So you want us to kill him?" Bellis asked, looking up at the older woman.

"So is this everybody?" Bellis asked, taking the cover off the basket and peering inside.

Bellis stared at the card in her hand. She looks upward and closes her eyes. Someone knew the identity of her parents' murderer, but why didn't they step forward before? It seemed she(or he) wanted to take care of it with her help, but was that something she wanted to do? Was it something she could do? She'd killed Golblins before while escorting the caravan and distracting constructs at the Golemworks, but she wasn't sure if she could fight and kill another person, even if they were murderers.

She decided to at least hear her out first.

----

Bellis blinked at the two humans in the house before her. "Hello there. Either of you give me this?" She said, holding up her card.

Me too!

1) 1d9 ⇒ 8

2) As listed on her character page, Bellis lives in Magnimar with five siblings(one a twin sister). She was here mostly on business at first, until it became personal.

Hello, everybody!

Still in!

Gortle is talking about the fact that no matter how good a community is and/or how true a person's comment might be some people will dislike it because it goes against what they think.

And what I'm talking about is that no matter how true a comment is, if it's off-topic, it not only doesn't belong there, but also damages the reputation of the community associated with the comment. Unsolicited advice is off-topic. There are options a community member can take to dilute or remove those comments.

Being different or raising an objection should be fine. Its not.

It's fine to be different or raise an objection. It's not fine to offer unsolicited advice. Ginny Di's issue stems from unsolicited advice. Regardless of which community you reside in, if you care about your community's public reputation, you should know your available tools and what you can do to protect your community's reputation.

There exist healthier online communities that do self-policing. Youtube has a report button for harassment that can be used to silently fight toxic posts. Healthy communities also have a tendency for their non-toxic members to be politely vocal enough to drown out the toxic voice.

Just adding my two cents in case you care about improving the PF community.

Highly recommend gunslinger or gunslinger archetype for sniper's reload, unless your other party members are somehow able to give you flat-footed enemies.

Don't skills scale at a faster rate than weapon accuracy? Monster saves (low save) and monster AC should be in the same ballpark regardless of level. If a character has trouble beating a boss monster's saves with skills, then the same character should have as much, if not more trouble bypassing a monster's AC with a weapon.

A battle oracle in their curse hits about as often as a barbarian, but instead of rage damage and resistances gets full spellcasting and fast healing. Seems about right as is.

Do they? Oracles are Cha-key and have caster progression weapon proficiency which means they only match weapon proficiency with the barbarian at levels 1~4 and 11~12. They'll always be at least one point behind because of Cha-key vs Str-key attributes, and that also affects their weapon choices. If the oracle picks a Str-weapon, their attribute spread of Str-Cha means they sacrifice either Con / Dex / Wis, which affects their survivability. If they pick a Dex-weapon, they fight with a small weapon dice. And this isn't even accounting for weapon specialization differences or survivability differences due to 8hp vs 12hp per level or save progression differences.

Regarding battle oracle, I don't think there's a problem letting their bonuses being untyped. They won't reach any martial-tier power with those bonuses anyway, and their mystery bonus can't be stolen via archetyping.

I've played a level 7~8 construct summoner with ooze form + tandem strike + tandem movement. The build was a temporary placeholder until Guns & Gears became available so I could rebuild it as an inventor, so I played with a house-rule letting the summoner be Int-based instead of Cha. imo it was reasonably effective. Neither overpowered nor underpowered. Polymorphed flanking tandem strike hits hard, but is probably better with the primal spell list.

Imo as long as the creature's low save / weakness / resistance / immunities and level (for the purpose of determining incapacitation) are available after a recall knowledge, then even a normal roll without any rider effects are valuable to a party.

I understand the reasoning of the focus on medicine / diplomacy / intimidate. They're all good 3rd actions on a class that needs good 3rd actions, and visitation / intimidate / bon-mot / one for all doesn't have table variation whereas recall knowledge does.

That said, I personally really dislike these builds - in a four-man party where different PCs cover different attributes and skills, having the Int-key character cover Cha/Wis skills puts pressure on the rest of the party to cover society / arcana / occultism / crafting. Imo, if recall knowledge is so bad that you feel forced going to Cha, what the player should do is to talk to their GM to make sure the payoff of recall knowledge is fair and meaningful.

Synesthesia and flickmaces. The game's balanced really well, which makes these two stick out all the more.

If you can reload a reload 0 weapon without firing, then you can simply do it twice in one round, the first one to soak the interrupting critical hit, and the second before you fire your weapon.

If you can't reload a reload 0 weapon without firing, then it follows that you can't reload a repeating crossbow / air repeater pre-combat. To me, this seems too weird to be true.

Imo it's not really a big deal.
1) This is only a level 20 problem, as opposed to level 1~19
2) The reactions given by each of those feats are what those classes will typically use anyway. If hypothetically the swash or the gunslinger got the fighters version of the level 20 reaction feat, their routine will likely not change.

I guess there's a point to be made for champion dedication + champion reaction, but imo it's enough of a fringe case that deciding to keep the feats different in the name of flavor/differentiation is ok.

Opportune backstab doesn't really help for all three reaction feats because the additional reaction given is only available during the opponent's turn, not your ally's. Though I guess it could help if there are two fighters who both have the level 20 reaction feat and both have paladin reaction + opportune backstab.

A number of paizo adventure paths took the route of preparing a couple of skirmish encounters across various scenes throughout the battlefield / castle with some secondary objectives (destroy a siege engine within x rounds, prevent hostiles from attacking y creature, defeat all enemies within z rounds, etc). The result of the battle, or in your case, the number of remaining survivors, depended on how well the PCs succeeded in these secondary objectives.

This gets into advice / house rule territory, but regardless of what RAW interpretation these boards fixate on, what works best for your table might be different. Compared to a PC who gets a familiar without asking for one, a witch + familiar master PC probably spent their class feats on their familiar and wants their familiar to be useful. I'd try to work with the player to rule a more lax interpretation / add houserules like additional familiar abilities that specifically allow exploration activities, possibly some that cost more than 1 familiar ability. Or at the very least offer a free re-spec if they're disillusioned by stricter familiar-exploration RAW rulings.

This sounds like the perfect thread for greystone to go on a rant.

The rules are clear about the eidolon.

Act Together

Single ActiontoThree Actions
SummonerTandem
Source Secrets of Magic pg. 53
Frequency once per round
You and your eidolon act as one. Either you or your eidolon takes an action or activity using the same number of actions as Act Together, and the other takes a single action. For example, if you spent 2 actions to Act Together, you could cast burning hands (2 actions) and your eidolon could Strike (1 action), or your eidolon could use its Breath Weapon (2 actions) and you could Stride (1 action).

This lets you each use separate exploration activities like Avoid Notice as you travel.

Regarding the OP, we used to have the familiar feed elixirs, but that was before the dev clarification that familiars can't activate items. In our current game, the witch generally used the familiar for final sacrifice.

Regarding scouting, though my PCs haven't ever attempted to scout with the familiar, I see no RAW reason to stop them. Familiars are quite obviously intelligent from their capabilities as a familiar as well as various lost omens familiar depictions. They act as they please after 1 minute of issuing no commands, and I assume this is the default state of most out-of-combat familiars and companions. Tasking the familiar to scout is open-ended enough that it's more of a general request than a specific command, so abiding by such a request similarly goes in line with the familiar acting as it pleases. Further assuming that familiars are helpful to their owner, I see no reason why a familiar wouldn't scout if asked. Though I suppose it's not a RAW given that a familiar is helpful, I think it falls under common sense that they are.

I don't think a scouting familiar is stealing anyone's role. Most PCs don't scout with stealth anyway because there's a lot of risk involved by splitting the party + the chance of getting caught. From my experience, stealth based PCs are usually utilizing stealth for an hidden + initiative boost for encounter mode. A scouting familiar's closest roll overlap is prying eyes, not a stealth PC.

Also I don't think a scouting familiar unfairly takes up screen time. Without specific familiar abilities, the familiar's owner doesn't have a way to see through the familiar's eyes. In game, if a familiar owner sends their familiar to scout, the "screen" stays with the PCs. The GM just decides if / when the familiar returns and what information the familiar brings back - there's no need to roll dice or simulate the scouting or choose an exploration strategy. On the other hand, if the familiar owner has a way of seeing through the familiar AND issuing commands from a distance (e.g. Familiar's Eyes / Familiar's Face), then the "screen time" spent is no different than any other case of divination such as prying eyes, which is to say, such screen time can be spent scouting anyway even without a familiar.

For instance Kovlar, a level 5 settlement has a unique entry that says

"City of Artisans Items of up to 8th level can be found in Kovlar, and armor and weapons of up to 12th level."

Afaik, for the AP in which Kovlar makes an appearance, the PCs enter the city around mid-level 12, which is about one and a half-levels after +2 armor potency runes should normally become available (level 11). Investing in crafting would grant the party access to +2 armor without toughing it out for a few levels.

Also regarding the AP featuring Hermea, the PCs enter that city at level 18, which is a whole level after apex items normally become available (level 17), so this phenomena happens at least twice.

Edit: maybe level 19 for Hermea, so actually two levels late.

Inventor feat.

Also some APs don't provide level appropriate settlements at key levels for potency rune upgrades, so getting them "easily" mid-adventure is imo questionable.

In our VTT game we played out the hazard through theatre of the mind. Once we passed the hazard, the GM moved our tokens to the exit.

Teleport / burrow next to the repairers and attack them instead, or throw out a bunch of AoE or ranged attacks. Having legendary repair means you're facing level 13+ opponents, and those tend to have more tools at their disposal than a bunch of brutes who can't walk past a body-blocked corridor.

Edit: alternatively, don't engage the PCs in a 10ft corridor.

If you're asking from a game-balance point of view of repairing construct companions, I don't think it's a big issue. Legendary crafting healing via repair heals a lot more than other one-action heals (50 ~ 70 depending on if you have the crafter's eyepiece), but you need adjacency and it's limited to your construct companion, which is kind of a low-priority target anyway.

If hypothetically we get an ancestry that can be repaired, then we might start having balance issues.

Edit: actually 50~70 per action isn't that far off from a level 9 / level 10 heal, which many animal companion classes can get via heal animal, and heal animal is range 30.

A 'stable surface' isn't a core-rulebook defined keyword or a listed category. It's technically up to GM discretion, but I expect most tables (mine included) wouldn't bother with the minutiae of specifying which floor is or isn't a stable surface. I can see some GMs saying certain floors requiring acrobatics checks to stay upright would not count as a stable surface, but in practice I think many tables would forget / omit this detail.

Agreed about incapacitation. I remember all mooks pretty much instantly vaporized when the rogue in our Age of Ashes campaign got master strike.

Also feat-based craft checks like Tamper, Reverse Engineer for Disable Device / Pick Lock, Helpful Tinker to grant offensive boosts, and replacing AC with crafting or literally any skill with crafting with the level 16 feats.

Maybe there could be a level 2 "Oath against Life" or something where an evil champion devotes themselves to promoting undeath as an additional tenant, and gains negative healing in addition to whatever else the feat would otherwise grant.

I skimmed the guide. I think you should mention battle-form polymorph spells. All of them synergize really well with the summoner:
Summoners (not the eidolon) have low AC, few spell slots, low weapon proficiency but high HP.
Polymorph spells increase AC, attack accuracy, damage but keep the caster's HP, and a polymorph spell provides benefit throughout the battle so it works well for classes with only a small number of spell slots. It also doesn't rely on the caster's spell DC, which is a plus for the summoner who has a low spell DC.
It also has a lot of synergy with tandem strike (kind of required for summoners using battle forms spells seeing MAP is shared), and for battle forms that can't speak, you share a telepathic connection with an eidolon that CAN speak, so your communication ability isn't inhibited at all.

Don't talk about GM burdens. PF2 is the easiest game to GM by far.

PF1 was a huge burden on the GM. The worst I've ever played. Same with 3rd edition. If you wanted to play 3rd edition or PF1, your GM burden was worse than any other edition of D&D ever made. Hours of preparation to run the game at higher level. That was just to make enemies that could challenge a party.

There isn't even an argument that the GM burden in PF2 is the lowest of any game save perhaps 5E. GMing PF2 is the easiest it's ever been to GM. Adjusting a monster level here or there is nothing compared to what I had to do in PF1 and 3E to make the game remotely challenging.

Just adding my two cents - PF1e GM prep felt terrible for me. I GM'd Carrion Crown, Reign of Winter, and Strange Aeons in that order. During Reign of Winter, I tried my best to modify every encounter to be fun and challenging for my table that consisted of PCs with wildly different power levels. I did this because PF1e allows so many different fun creative character build options that I wanted to give my players freedom to enjoy all of these options. However, the resulting power level imbalance was so bad, prep became so time consuming that I called to abandon the campaign during book 5.

Come Strange Aeons, I tried a different approach. I gave my players infinite freedom in character creation - they could bring level 20 quadruple-classed homebrew lich-vampire-werewolves in book 1 and I wouldn't care. The single caveat being that the burden of balancing encounters was entirely on the players - if the campaign felt too easy or too hard, it's on the players to re-balance their own characters. This let me focus my GM prep on other parts like plot and integration of PC backstories, but it also felt pretty bad to GM, because I was nonverbally socially pressuring each player about the encounter balance all the way through. We finished the whole adventure. It was fun. It worked. Maybe there existed a better alternative, but this was the one I chose.

Now I'm GMing / playing PF2e and my god, it is so, so, so much better. My players can powergame (or not) to their heart's content and I don't have to change anything besides personalizing AP details to fit my party.

No on both. Core rulebook, page 279:

Effects based on a weapon’s number of damage dice include only the weapon’s damage die plus any extra dice from a striking rune. They don’t count extra dice from abilities, critical specialization effects, property runes, weapon traits, or the like.

Actually, I stated that the GM can use PC options for NPCs against the PCs as a means of providing a challenging encounter. But go ahead and keep using a strawman to justify your ridicule instead of actually engaging in what has been said like other more constructive posters have.

It is factually correct that if the GM uses NPCs with kip up, then the value of Iron Command goes down relative to other champion reactions.

How common this is depends on the table and GM. I can imagine that there exists a table where Iron Command is really bad because of kip up NPCs. That said, if the end goal is to "provide a challenging encounter" and the GM decides that kip up is the method used to counter Iron Command and thus make a challenging encounter, I'd think the same GM could probably make a similar challenging encounter against other champion reactions using abilities other than kip up.

I'm confused. Is Darksol's argument "Iron Command is bad because the GM's infinite power allows the GM to craft a specific Iron Command counter"?

On the one hand we have a creature not harmed ( probably didn't even realize what happened ), and on the other harm we have a harmed creature, who's been offering a healing potion.

Potion usage assumes the divine lance'd NPC doesn't straight up die from the attack - NPCs don't follow the dying rules.

If you shape the object large but lego-like, you might be able to connect multiple objects created from multiple castings of creation together to make something bigger than a 5ft cube. If it's made of a heavy material, you could probably block a narrow corridor.

Similarly, you could shape the object kind of 'C' shaped on two separate ends and create it between a narrow doorway as kind of a clamped-super-barricade.

If you make a 5ft-cube's volume of folded paper or carpet or curtain, then you could unfold it afterward to get the surface area of something much bigger than a 5ft-cube. You could hang such a curtain in some room to block line of sight and make potential hiding spots.

I'd call anyone who can teach or has taught a new player the ropes a veteran. From the perspective of a new player, the teacher probably qualifies as a veteran.

Seems more or less the same as before.

Also the newer proposed rules are different than before as far as raw numbers are concerned. The first houserule increased level by 2 but the second houserule increases stats by 2. If you're familiar with the monster creation chart, it's pretty obvious that every two levels, all non-health / damage monster stats increase by 3, so already the new houserules are 1 point below the old houserules.

The reaction bit I'm unsure of though. It really depends on the monster being summoned. Do you know which magic tradition is going to be used?

The explained reason is that in PF1e, summons were so strong they outshone martials. In the current edition, people say "summoned creatures are so weak that you might as well not bother with them."
I believe there's a gray area in between that a houserule can aim to put summon power level that can please all players at a specific table.

1: Double Slice (Retrain to Sudden Charge at 5, retrain back at 19 if you care by then)
2: Dueling Parry
4: Champion Dedication (Paladin) -> Healing Touch (for the focus point)
6: Champion Reaction
8: Dueling Riposte
(9): Knockdown
10: Combat Reflexes
12: Dueling Dance
14: Improved Dueling Riposte
(15): Improved Knockdown
16: Determination / Stance Savant / Blind-Fight
18: Savage Critical
20: Boundless Reprisals

2: Champion Dedication
4: Deity's Domain -> Agile feet / Unimpeded Stride / Athletic Rush (Probably Athletic Rush for Knockdown synergy)
6: Ranged Reprisal
8: Champion's Resiliency -> Retrain to Beastmaster Dedication at 10
10: Mature Companion (for the free flanking, extra minion team health, and occasional strike)
12: Incredible Companion
14: Specialized Companion
16: Familiar Master for manual dexterity + independent to use mistform elixirs for basically free at this level OR if the GM doesn't allow it, Champion's Resiliency
18: Divine Ally (blade)
20: Radiant Blade Spirit

FA gives:
A better stride (focus spell)
Ranged reprisal
An automatic companion
An automatic familiar OR 24 more health
A free weapon rune that stacks

EDIT: optionally, at higher levels, you can pick Advanced Domain for Traveler's Transit to fly, seeing that the original build has no answer to flying enemies.

There exist a number of class feats in this game that directly increase your stats or grant more actions. Dangerous sorcery, spell penetration, champion's reaction, resiliency feats, save feats, fighter/monk action economy feats, and independent animal companion/familiar feats all directly increase power. These additional feats won't be enough to push a PF2e character to PF1e optimized character power levels, but they can amount to a significant enough increase the party's overall power level such that a GM might decide to similarly increase the level of the opposition.

I don't think the answer to a player dissatisfied with summoning is to tell them "Don't summon." After all, this is the houserules subforum, so finding a houserule solution that satisfies all players should be the answer.

It's true that PF2e summons are not the powerhouses that existed in PF1e. For optimization, learning which summons are useable is an exhausting labor that players might not do. I think by adding straightforward power, you're headed in the right direction. In case you're unsure of the effects of the above feats, I can do a breakdown of what you might expect to see.

We can assume the summon always gets flanking since the summoner gets to choose where it appears. The below calculations assume flat-footed AC on the target using the monster creation chart as reference. We can assume "High" for accuracy, damage, and AC, and assume "Moderate" for health pool.

A level 4 summoner summons a level 2 minion. They're fighting a level 4 monster:
Offense: +11 vs AC 19 for 9 damage against a health pool of 60. Hits on 8, crits on 18
Defense: +14 vs AC 18 for 14 damage against a health pool of 30. Hits on 4, crits on 14

A level 5 summoner summons a level 3 minion. They're fighting a level 5 monster:
Offense: +12 vs AC 20 for 12 damage against a health pool of 75. Hits on 8, crits on 18
Defense: +15 vs AC 19 for 16 damage against a health pool of 45. Hits on 4, crits on 14

A level 6 summoner summons a level 3 minion. They're fighting a level 6 monster:
Offense: +12 vs AC 22 for 12 damage against a health pool of 95. Hits on 10, crits on 20
Defense: +17 vs AC 19 for 18 damage against a health pool of 45. Hits on 2, crits on 12

Once the caster hits level 8, their summons become 2 levels higher, and that effectively simulates their summon spell levels being 1 higher.
A similar breakdown as follows:

A level 8 summoner summons a level 5 minion. They're fighting a level 8 monster:
Offense: +15 vs AC 25 for 16 damage against a health pool of 135. Hits on 10, crits on 20
Defense: +20 vs AC 22 for 22 damage against a health pool of 75. Hits on 2, crits on 12

A level 9 summoner summons a level 7 minion. They're fighting a level 9 monster:
Offense: +18 vs AC 26 for 20 damage against a health pool of 155. Hits on 8, crits on 18
Defense: +21 vs AC 25 for 24 damage against a health pool of 115. Hits on 4, crits on 14

A level 10 summoner summons a level 7 minion. They're fighting a level 10 monster:
Offense: +18 vs AC 28 for 20 damage against a health pool of 175. Hits on 10, crits on 20
Defense: +23 vs AC 25 for 26 damage against a health pool of 115. Hits on 2, crits on 12

Jumping a bit, we'll take a look at levels 15~17:
A level 15 summoner summons a level 13 minion. They're fighting a level 15 monster:
Offense: +27 vs AC 35 for 32 damage against a health pool of 235. Hits on 8, crits on 18
Defense: +30 vs AC 34 for 36 damage against a health pool of 275. Hits on 4, crits on 14

A level 16 summoner summons a level 13 minion. They're fighting a level 16 monster:
Offense: +27 vs AC 37 for 32 damage against a health pool of 235. Hits on 10, crits on 20
Defense: +32 vs AC 34 for 37 damage against a health pool of 295. Hits on 2, crits on 12

A level 17 summoner summons a level 15 minion. They're fighting a level 17 monster:
Offense: +30 vs AC 38 for 36 damage against a health pool of 275. Hits on 8, crits on 18
Defense: +33 vs AC 37 for 38 damage against a health pool of 315. Hits on 4, crits on 14

A few words of warning regarding the math: I assumed flanking because it's very easy to get with summons, but depending on your party composition and tactic level, your party might also be benefitting from party-wide buffs like inspire courage or enemy debuffs like frightened, which might skew the math. I don't know how your group plays, so I assumed only flat-footed. Feel free to adjust the math to fit your expectations.

From looking at the above, my straightforward opinion is that summons will do reasonable damage over time. It's definitely not weak any more.
However, from the defense side, summons are very very strong, especially at later levels. Take the level 17 summoner case, the monster can swing twice, get lucky and crit twice, and the summon will still have about 130 health left. If you GM late game with these rules, you might consider having the enemy monster ignore the summons and attack players instead.

Obviously, the above is not a complete picture of what your table might look like with these houserules. A lot of monsters have special abilities on top of their strike damage. Many can automatically grab or trip, for example. My impression of the above is that the summons will have competent offense, extreme defense, and high flexibility regarding special abilities and debuffs. Definitely strong and worth casting at the highest spell slot.

Yeah no, I genuinely believe Bard is too good and it causes problems for the game - no other class has a standard routine so strong that it's hard to justify doing literally anything else. It's not often that you get so many complaints about a class so strong being boring as you get with the Bard.

I kind-of agree. I wouldn't mind bard nerfs, but I'd rather see synesthesia nerfed instead.

Except if a Bard doesn't want to be someone that Intimidates or if they want to be good at other Skills that are not Intimidate (limited to 3 legendary skills)

Your point was that bards don't have the versatility of witches with evil eye sustain + some other hex. "The bard happens to not choose the option that matches / exceeds the witch" isn't a counterargument against the bard's versatility:

Sustaining Evil Eye and then casting Elemental Betrayal or Life Boost on turn two is a level of versatility the Bard does not have.

Ah so now it's a Visual trait ability, which means it requires line of sight.

which is easily met for a vast majority of situations. If you don't have line of sight against the enemy, witch hexes will also fail often.

Ah so now we're making assumptions about how easily parties can take down enemies?

It's only "20% more often" at certain intervals with maxed Skill increases.

I am. My original point was that evil eye is better than intimidate ONLY if the party has trouble killing things, because then the duration of evil eye trumps the success rate of intimidate. Also, after the intimidator gets their first +1 item bonus to skills (as early as level 3~4), the 20% success rate / 20% critical rate continues all the way up to level 20, so "at certain intervals" is kind of an under-sell.

Not really. They don't spend any additional resources to get Evil Eye. It comes default with the Patron.

Spending Class Feats/Skill Feats/Skill Increases is spending things all Classes get for certain abilities.

We're now comparing Evil Eye Witch to Bard with Intimidating Glare + Maxed Intimidate.

That's not really a "fair" comparison since the Witch is now down several resource investments compared to the Bard.

The bard spends zero class feats, one skill choice and one skill feat. The witch lives with 2 less health and lower saves, a worse cantrip, and a class feat (basic lesson). If you can make the witch perform better than the above with a skill choice and a single skill feat, I'd love to see it.

I mean Demoralize is language-dependent, auditory, and lasts 1 round, and requires continuous investment from the Bard to maintain DC parity.

1) Intimidate has enough use outside of combat for the investment to be justified.

Sustaining Evil Eye and then casting Elemental Betrayal or Life Boost on turn two is a level of versatility the Bard does not have.

Bards can just do inspire courage + intimidate. Intimidate is better than evil eye in a majority of scenarios assuming you have a competent party that focus fires.

Imo the biggest problem with evil eye is that it's best used in an uncoordinated, unoptimized party that has trouble doing damage. Otherwise, intimidate is generally better.

A coordinated party with martials who don't skimp on damage can down at-level or +1 level monsters in 1~2 rounds of focus fire, so the only benefit of evil eye (the duration) doesn't really matter. For level +2 / +3 lieutenant and boss-type monsters, evil eye (and similarly all spells) generally fail to connect, so you want to pick options with an effect on a save.

Once an intimidator gets their first +1 item bonus to intimidate, the success rate of intimidate is at least 20% more accurate compared to will save spells. Against an at-level or low-level monster with bad will saves, it's also 20% more likely to critical.

Agreed with Squiggit. I'm watching an evil eye witch in my Extinction's Curse campaign and it seems a bit less effective compared to the sorcerer with intimidate.

Does it have an easy grip? If yes, you don't need the crowbar. If no, then you need a crowbar.

When Forcing Open an object that doesn't have an easy grip, a crowbar makes it easier to gain the necessary leverage. Without a crowbar, prying something open takes a –2 item penalty to the Athletics check to Force Open (similar to using a shoddy item).

At my home tables, I'd not require the crowbar at all, seeing it only costs 5sp which means I'd assume all characters with athletics would have one by profession. If a player wanted to describe a force-open without a crowbar, I'd let them, seeing the cost of the crowbar is low and rule of cool and all.

If I wore infrared goggles or sharper glasses, I'm reasonably certain my ability to see through lies would not be impacted at all. But then again, that's just the point of view of realism, which I'm somewhat certain this thread is not about.

Basically every PF1e party in existence relied on wands of CLW. That wand was so necessary that imo it warped my vision of the Golarion setting.

I much prefer PF2e healing where the source of healing has different flavors depending on the character's life choices.

In the context of playing pathfinder 2e APs, I find evil eye underwhelming.

I played age of ashes with a charisma focused druid who used both fear spell and intimidate. Right now, I'm GMing extinction's curse (wrapping up book 1 right now) and one player is a witch with evil eye.

Full disclosure, my table is pretty tactics savvy and combats don't last very long.

Both the fear spells and evil eye don't land particularly often. Usually the monster saves, which means the fear spell gets partial effect and the evil eye is usually a wasted action.

Intimidate, on the other hand, lands often. Mathematically this makes sense because intimidate is about 4+ points of accuracy higher than spell DCs across most levels.

The hypothetical long duration of evil eye would be good if the enemy survived 4+ rounds, but most at-level or level-1 creatures live for maybe 1~2 rounds under debuff-stacking and focus fire. In my tables, a high-accuracy intimidate seems to perform much better than a long duration evil eye.

Just adding my anecdotal experience - at my table playing PF2e APs, Assurance(Athletics) has seen somewhat regular use and success on tripping foes. It doesn't seem bad to me at all. The ability to trade a third max MAP action for a guaranteed trip on select recurring enemies is a feat worth taking.