Bombdude's page

1. Shrink Down and Miniaturize

Summoners can choose to start with either a Medium or Small Eidolon. Shrink Down lets the summoner change their Eidolon to small size. If you selected a Small Eidolon you just get a dead feat that does nothing*. I feel like its follow up feat Miniaturize should have an additional line of text saying "if your Eidolon is already Small, you do not need the prerequisite feat." It's a very feat-heavy class and the opportunity cost is a bit absurd just for a gimmick feat like Miniaturize to cost the summoner a dead feat to pick up.

2. Ostentatious Arrival

This feat makes it so summoned minions and your Eidolon cause a splash of AoE when appearing. But the Eidolon can only manifest next to you, so you end up getting hurt by your own companion! It should probably include an option/upgrade to Manifest Eidolon that lets you manifest your Eidolon at a further distance than normal, or give you immunity to the AoE. The fact that the feat even mentions it works with your Eidolon feels like a pointless inclusion.

3. Link Focus / Link Wellspring

As of the remaster, recharging Focus Spell points is very simple to do, and these feats are out of date. They should probably just increase your Focus cap to 4, or let you recharge in combat for a free action. Anything to modernize them!

4. Eidolon Items

There an entire section in the Eidolon rules about how Eidolon can equip items with the Eidolon tag... but there's only TWO items with that tag! There should really be a slew of these items added to Pathfinder in the future. Maybe items that let Eidolons access Fighter-like maneuvers, martial feats like Whirling Throw, or more things like the Stampede Medallion that give them a daily single-use spell. Anything really! It's unexplored territory!

5. Evolution Surge

This one's a bit spicy, but I think Evolution Surge should be 1 action, not 2. The ability is akin to a Monk or Fighter Stance, granting your Eidolon a bonus for 1 minute but it costs so many actions that it's hard to justify using. Many of the options are super weak, like the Imprecise sense or Amphibious options. Giving up casting a buff or a powerful AoE spell just to give your little buddy gills is a big ask for little reward. And the more powerful options like the enlarge+mount evolution effect are kind of a joke compared to similar abilities from other classes. Like Kaiju stance which (for a single action) enlarges a monk, gives them a big big damage boost, and reach VS the eidolon which is using two whole actions to get reach. The Enlarge spell is a better use of your resources especially at later levels.

The enlarge+mount evolution option is cute but hard to do anything with. It'd feel better to be able to 1 action Enlarge Eidolon, 1 action mount + 2 action act together, VS the current pattern of: 1 action enlarge, 1 action to mount, and then you have 1 awkward action left which isn't enough to run in and hit something. Even choosing not to mount still leaves you with an awkward amount of actions (not enough to cast a spell) and is a big momentum loss if you chose to do this over just buffing the Eidolon with a 2 action buff spell (Heroism, Envenom Companion, Haste, or even the normal Enlarge spell which provides a dpr boost and can hit all your allies when heightened, etc)

I would be happy keeping it at 2 actions if the options were a little stronger, like providing AC, Save, damage boosts, or gave the Eidolon a free Boost Eidolon packaged in for 1 turn. But it doesn't feel quite right as it is.

There was an errata that changed ancestry flying feats to no longer work with effects that boost your ground speed. It feels weird though that a spell that creates a tailwind, that is a term that specifically is used to talk about winds that boost the speed of aircrafts irl, doesn’t work when a flying ancestry tries to fly.

Is there a chance this could be tweaked so a heightened version of tailwind works on flying PCs?

IMO because it said "Your last action was 'to' Raise a Shield" not "your last action was 'Raise a Shield' the specific ability". It just wants your shield to be up before you use it. The 'to' is generally used elsewhere as a signifier for a generic, not specific, action

It's written in all caps. "Raise your Shield". That's very clearly referring to the ability. You don't just randomly capitalize a string of words unless referencing a known skill.

Full text:
You Raise your Shield, causing ephemeral spirit shields to float within your champion's aura. the shields last until the start of your next turn or until you're no longer raising your shield, whichever comes first. While one of your allies is in your champion's aura, the shields grant them a +1 status bonus to AC, and each time an enemy makes an attack against the ally, the enemy takes 1d4 spirit damage (even if it misses). the benefit applies only while an ally is in your aura, ending for any ally that leaves and applying to any that enters later. As normal, you don't count as your own ally and therefore don't get the benefits of the spirit shields yourself.

Unless Paizo randomly made a mistake and capitalized Raise your Shield and no other phrase in this description, it's referring to the ability.