Justpassingthrough's page

Dino the Eidolon is not the player. Its a class feature of the Summoner. Just like animal companions are a class features.

Spells are just a class feature for wizards, so that means that permanent flight should be available as a first-level spell.....

Oh wait

No, it shouldn't.

Claiming that it is "just a class feature so it should be equivalent to any other class feature" is ignoring that class features are not of equivalent power to each other, and can do very different things.

This is a terrible argument.

I honestly think Paizo should include an option that allows for more customization. An open ended option that may not be listed under the packages.

This would look like this.

Create-your-own
Choose a creature type from the list
Animal
Astral
Beast
Celestial
Construct
Dragon
Elemental
Ethereal
Fey
Fiend
Fungus
Humanoid
Monitor
Ooze
Plant
Spirit
Undead

Pick a damage type for your 1d8 damage (B/S/P/acid/electricity/fire/cold/sonic/negative)

Pick a damage type for your 1d4 damage(agile) (B/S/P/acid/electricity/fire/cold/sonic/negative)

Stats for the Eidolon are as follows, 18/16/14/12/10/8. Arrange them how you see fit.

Level 1 - Pick a single monster ability from this list (lists monster abilities for level 1's)

Level 5 - Pick a single monster ability from this list (lists monster abilities for level 5's)

Level 10 - Pick a single monster ability from this list (lists monster abilities for level 10's)

Level 15 - Pick a single monster ability from this list (lists monster abilities for level 15's)

Level 20 - Pick a single monster ability from this list (lists monster abilities for level 20's)

And change each package to follow that same level scheme.

I think this would be incredibly balanced and would get what I want while maintaining what you want.

Thoughts?

I actually really like this idea.

My only question would be this...would you get to choose your own school of magic and skill proficiencies as well?

Also I approve of the really hungry dragon :)

Verzen wrote:

Justpassingthrough wrote:

KrispyXIV wrote:

OrochiFuror wrote:

Synthesis should be more like a superior battle form that you can take when ever you want.

The danger here is that a Synthesist can have an extremely good Statline by dumping physical stats with essentially no drawbacks. Restrictions on actions taken serve as a balance to this - it needs to be hard to take advantage of being Perfect-Stats-Man, or you start to make everyone at the table feel bad because your attribute for everything is always +4 or better on everything you care about across multiple stats.

There is a very easy solution to this, allow the summoner to choose to keep their own stats when they go into synthesis mode, or use their eidolons stats. They cannot combine these approaches, but they can switch between them by resummoning there eidolon.

That takes care of the power problem and does so in a way that does not require reducing the synthesist to 2 actions (which would make the synthesist almost unplayable).

I 100% agree with this approach.

It's still really problematic when all you need to do is switch with 3 actions. Effectively on any task that isn't immediately required, you can still be best stat person. Randomly going to a library? Hold on 6 seconds while I switch. Climbing a ravine? One second while I switch. Identifying the possibly poisonous plants at the top? Hold on while I switch.

It is not problematic in the slightest, because this is exactly what a regular non-synthesist summoner can already do. A regular summoner has the exact same ability scores, skills, and proficiencies as this upgraded synthesist would have, just split between two bodies instead of using a switching mechanic. The two bodies thing is a downside in some cases, but it also enables the summoner to take full advantage of there action economy, which the synthesist loses out on.

OrochiFuror wrote:

Synthesis should be more like a superior battle form that you can take when ever you want.

The danger here is that a Synthesist can have an extremely good Statline by dumping physical stats with essentially no drawbacks. Restrictions on actions taken serve as a balance to this - it needs to be hard to take advantage of being Perfect-Stats-Man, or you start to make everyone at the table feel bad because your attribute for everything is always +4 or better on everything you care about across multiple stats.

There is a very easy solution to this, allow the summoner to choose to keep their own stats when they go into synthesis mode, or use their eidolons stats. They cannot combine these approaches, but they can switch between them by resummoning there eidolon.

That takes care of the power problem and does so in a way that does not require reducing the synthesist to 2 actions (which would make the synthesist almost unplayable).

Ssalarn wrote:

Just to name a few possible examples. Basically any time the eidolon has a sensory ability, movement mode, or other benefit that you lack but is pertinent to the environment and the party is in danger of ambush or hazard, there's some benefit to Synthesis. Riding the eidolon is cool, but it also pretty much guarantees that you'll be rolling twice and taking the worse result against any AoEs that get lobbed your way, and some aspects of relevant abilities, like Amphibious Form giving the ability to breathe or attack without penalty underwater, won't transfer to a rider.

Synthesis is a potentially useful utility Feat. Taken in isolation, it's not a bad one, since it just flatly adds an option. Having it is never worse than not having it, and often better.

None of that is the problem with Synthesis. The problem with Synthesis is that usually, absent weird environmental conditions your Eidolon is immune to, actually using it in combat is actively detrimental and bad. And people want to use it in combat, in fact, most people who want it want to use it exclusively, they never actually want to put out an Eidolon separate from themselves.

The particular fantasy archetype of wearing an Eidolon as a transformation or suit of power armor is almost completely separate from that of having a pet, and people who want one seldom want the other thematically. And the Feat doesn't actually make that a good, reasonable, or fun play style at all. It's frustrating and feels like a trap option because it doesn't actually enable the thematic thing it references from PF1 as a remotely viable option, but sort of looks like it does.

And, for many people, that's both frustrating and disappointing.

The only Summoner I ever played in PF1 was a Synthesist, specifically he was an Aasimar who 'assumed his full angelic glory' via his Synthesist ability to 'wear' his Eidolon. That character rarely used spells in combat (he used the Create Pit line occasionally, and...

Thank you Deadmanwalking, for perfectly summing up my own thoughts and feelings on the matter.

I do not want to play a person who is bonded to a dragon, or even someone who can summon and control dragons. I want to play the freaking dragon. And Paizo is so, so close to having this be something that can actually happen.

Sure eventually some third party company might come out with a way to do so, but there is no guarantee whatsoever that the way they do it will be even remotely balanced against anything Paizo has published. Pathfinder 2e is a much tighter system than pathfinder 1e, and relies on an entirely new series of mechanics and game systems that have never been seen before. Unlike the previous edition, where the game breaks down so much by high levels that allowing most third party content into a high-level game does not actually impact the nonexistent game balance in any meaningful way, pathfinder 2e is on a much tighter leash. Any deviation from that is likely to create something that is either worthless enough to never be played or absolutely overpowered compared to the rest of the table. And to be honest I do not trust many third-party companies to be able to walk that line, given that even Paizo, the systems creator, seems to have had difficulty walking it at some points.

So let's say that some other company does come up with a way to allow for monstrous pcs that are actually balanced and fun at the table. That is excellent...except for the fact that many tables will not allow any third party content simply on principal.

But Paizo, in creating the summoner and having synthesis be a feat, is very close to allowing me to officially play something like a dragon and have it be both balanced against other party members and accepted at the gaming table due to its origins. The only thing standing in the way of that is the fact that synthesis the feat does not actually allow for such a thing as Deadmanwalking pointed out above.

I absolutely agree that we should get something along the lines of synthesis/ normal summoner/ master summoner as options starting at level 1 in the final version. Class feats could then be tailored to the three paths, or open up extra evolution options.

I really want evolution options like poison, grab, constrict, rend, rake, and swallow to be added as evolution options. If I am going to be playing a monster a la synthesist, I want to be playing a MONSTER, one with access to all those neat special abilities.

I would be fine if summoners lost their spellcasting ability minus focus spells in exchange, but I really want to play as a giant beastie with access to all of my normal abilities to boot. I still stand by my idea of what a synthesist should look like though, loosing out on action economy is already enough of a penalty to justify having access to all of your abilities.

Leaving synthesists access to all of there normal abilities and proficiencies (if they are higher than the eidolons) will also help greatly when dealing with free archetype/ dual classing variants (or even just multiclassing normally). Nothing would feel worse than being locked out of not only your own class abilities but also the abilities of your entire other class as well.

This is ultimately why I believe synthesists should retain their abilities (with the exception of ability scores, where they have to choose either their eidolons or there own). It helps to future proof and past proof them for both existing and future archetypes and varients.

I see a simpler solution, just allow them access to all of there abilities, feats, and features while in synthesis mode (with the exception of tandem abilities), but have them use there eidolon's ability scores in place of their own.

Sure you can still cast spells and take other actions, but with your lower mental ability scores those spells are going to be pretty useless for affecting anything other than yourself and your allies.

This largely solves every issue that has been presented so far and is far from overpowering. Loosing out on tendem abilities looks like a serious nerf to the summoners capabilities, so a regular summoner is still better in almost every situation.

Honestly, the best solution I can see is to use the above changes, and then have a high-level feat which makes it so that you can choose to use your own ability scores or your eidolon's when you summon it. That way, you cannot be competent in melee and magic at the same time, but can still ultimately match the relative versatility of the base summoner and play as a monster to boot.

So while I really like what I see so far for the summoner, I see both issues and opportunities for the synthesist.

Right now synthesist just seems to be a strictly bad option, it removes pretty much all of your class features, and does not really give any noticeable benefit whatsoever. It is a cool feat, but there really does not seem to be much practical application to it (which is a shame, as being able to turn into or play as a dragon or other creature is extremely cool).

As synthesist is a first level feat, I can understand the severe restriction on it. However the lack of any future feat support for synthesist is something which I was disappointed by, as a synthesist, while not a subclass in and of itself, seems like it could benefit greatly from a feat chain that unlocks more and more abilities.

Specifically, I am thinking of a series of feats that gradually gives you the ability to use your own actions and abilities while merged (and your own ability scores if they are higher than the edilons). You still would not be able to use tandom actions, which would place some balance restrictions on the abilities, and the potentially high feat cost for unlocking all of your abilities would also provide an opportunity cost.

I understand that synthesist was the stuff of gm nightmares in pathfinder 1e, but think the nerfs and lack of feat support may have been overkill. Do you have any plans for expanding on the synthesist, or is that a direction which Paizo is not really going to go in?

P.S the reason why i am asking this is mainly because I love the idea of playing a dragon :)

One of the biggest traps that Paizo might run into with any potential mythic/ epic system is one which they ran into in PF 1e, not enough future-proofing.

PF 1e mythic had numerous issues, but one of the most overlooked ones was that they simply did not cover nearly all of the existing bases, let along plan for any sort of eventual products. You can see this in the way that they had to create a patch to allow occult classes to interact with the system at all, as well as the numerous holes in the mythic system that caused many classes to slip through the cracks.

When Paizo makes mythic/ epic rules for pathfinder 2e, they will need to not only be a solid system which covers all of the existing basis, but also needs to have enough generalizability that they can be applied to future products that Paizo produces.

As a side note, I am very impressed by your analysis manbearscientist and agree wholeheartedly with your points. I actually hope that someone from Paizo reads your post, because I think that you have laid out most of the issues and options clearly and concisely.

Side note to Paizo, I know that mythic is probably a bit of a sore subject, because of the overall reaction that it received, but I urge you to give it another try. Despite how flawed the system was, there were a lot of very cool things you could do with the system, things which I feel were mostly lost under the torrent of broken options available. The opportunity to try again in a system which is already far more stable and balanced than pathfinder 1e ever was, and to make a mythic/epic system actually work in a game (as every single time a system like this has emerged it has always ended up as being a nearly unplayable mess) is worth giving mythic another shot.

I know that some people might think that a year into the game's release is far too early to start thinking about how ultra high-level gameplay will eventually work, but I believe that looking at such things now is enormously beneficial for the games future health. One really big underlying issue with most very high-level systems is that they were rarely conceived and thought about while the rest of the system was being created. High level gameplay always feels patchwork and an add on because it is a patchwork and an add on. While we cannot retroactively plan out mythic/epic for pathfinder 2e, starting early will ensure that the resulting system is as integrated with the rest of the system as possible, a necessity for this to work.

Out of the long history of fantastic and evocative 3rd party products created for the first edition of pathfinder, one of my favorites has to be In The Company of Dragons Expanded by Rite Publishing (with several other companies providing their own cool little sections to the book). For those of you who do not know, it was basically a mix of a campaign setting and a well-developed rules set for playing dragons. You could either go the path of the dragon exemplar (the racial class) or you could play as a member of a normal class but with an archetype that would (when combined with certain feats) largely give you the feeling and abilities of playing a dragon while still maintaining much of your class abilities.

While a fantastic product, In The Company Of Dragons also suffered from several issues rooted within the pathfinder 1e system itself. Chief amongst these was that the size penalties for getting larger would eventually outstrip the bonuses that were gain from your growth. Moreover, when playing a dragon with a focus on spellcasting ability, meant that at a certain point your dragon abilities stopped coming into play, as the extreme power of spells in pathfinder 1e warped the game around them.

Pathfinder 2e however, seems like it might actually be able to work with playable dragons. Size no longer matters for most purposes, meaning that changing size will not cause major disruptions in-game balance and rules interactions. The tighter math means that even spellcasters can occasionally get into melee against lower-level foes, which would allow even dragons with a focus on spellcasting to do dragon things. Size increases no longer boosting damage will also make things easier from a conversion and game balance standpoint.

What I am asking is this. Does anyone have any plans for making playable dragons in pathfinder 2e? I know that we are only a year into the game's release, and that Paizo is coming out with products at such a high rate that gambling with creating a product that they might soon invalidate is a real risk, but playable dragons seem like something that Paizo is unlikely to tackle. So I am wondering if anyone has considered attempting this for pathfinder 2e.

Hello everyone! This is my first ever post on these forums, and I am excited to get to share my thoughts and ideas with everyone here! With that out of the way, I will now get to my point.

Pathfinder 2e has done a lot of great things with monster design. Many creatures that were simplistic or boring are now far more interesting then they were in Pathfinder 1e. Almost every creature now has a unique ability or two that makes them stand out from one another. The numbers actually working in this edition, and the three action system, have opened up an enormous amount of potential design space for monsters, which the team at Paizo has used to great effect for most of their creations.

All of this just makes the current design behind Pathfinder 2e dragons all the more disappointing.

Compared to many other monsters, I find Pathfinder 2e's dragons to be almost identical to there 5e counterparts, being largely just bags of hit points and damage. Many dragon types do have an interesting reaction ability, but other than that, they don't have much going on with them.

Just compare dragons with the linnorms in both Bestiaries. Linnorms have riders on several of there attacks (poison and grab) and have breath weapons that not only do damage but also have other effects (causing a status condition, leaving a damaging cloud, or sometimes both). Tarn and tor linnorms also have powerful single-action abilities that they can and probably will use, giving them a way to still threaten opponents even if they only have a single action to spare due to control effects or using their breath weapon.

Additionally, there are some notable oddities in the actual design of many dragons. The range of a dragon's frightful presence never changes regardless of its size, level, or age. Some of the existing dragons have attacks that they will likely never use. Any dragon with four different strikes (cloud, gold, magma, and red to name a few) will almost never make a tail strike, there bite is more damaging, and they do not make a tail strike when they frenzy. The only time they will ever make a tail strike is if an opponent happens to be exactly 5 feet out of bite distance, and they only have a single action left. Draconic momentum just feels conceptually off to me, as a dragon could land in the middle of a village, attack some random commoner, and because the strike is almost certainly a crit recharge its breath weapon for some reason. I could go on, but I think I have said enough to make my point.

So I am going to try and make dragons more interesting. Here is what I have as a draft for a more interesting and dangerous dragon, using an adult white dragon as the baseline.

Adult White Dragon (Creature 10)

Common CE Large Dragon (Cold)

Perception +22; darkvision, scent (precise) 100 feet, snow vision

Languages Common, Draconic

Skills Acrobatics +17, Arcana +16, Athletics +23, Intimidation +20, Stealth +18

Str +7, Dex +2, Con +5, Int +2, Wis +4, Cha +2

Snow Vision Snow doesn’t impair a white dragons vision; it ignores concealment from snowfall.

AC 30; Fort +22, Ref +19, Will +17; +1 status to all saves vs. magic

HP 260; Immunities cold; Weaknesses fire 10

Dragon Chill (arcane, aura, cold, evocation); 5 feet, 2d6 cold damage (DC 27 basic Reflex save)

Frightful Presence (aura, emotion, fear, mental) 100 feet, DC 27

Freezing Blood [reaction] (arcane, cold); Trigger An adjacent creature deals piercing or slashing damage to the dragon. Effect The dragon’s blood sprays on the creature, dealing 2d6 cold damage. A creature that takes cold damage in this way is slowed 1 for 1 round.

Speed 30 feet, fly 120 feet, swim 30 feet, ice climb 30 feet

Melee [one action] jaws +23 (deadly 2d6 cold, magical, reach 10 feet), Damage 2d10+15 piercing plus Improved Grab

Melee [one action] claw +23 (agile, deadly 2d6 cold, magical), Damage 2d10+11 slashing plus Improved Knockdown

Melee [one action] tail +23 (deadly 2d6 cold, magical, reach 15 feet), Damage 2d10+15 bludgeoning plus Improved Push 15 feet

Draconic Frenzy [one action] The dragon makes two Strikes in any order.

Constrict [one action] 2d10+5 bludgeoning, DC 29

Breath Weapon [one action/two actions/three actions] The dragon breathes a cloud of frost that deals 5d6/10d6/15d6 cold damage in a 100-foot line/50-foot cone/25 foot emanation (DC 29 basic Reflex save). A creature that fails its saving throw is immobilized by the ice for 1 round. The damage and shape of the dragons Breath Weapon corresponds with the number of actions the dragon uses. The dragon can’t use Breath Weapon again for 1d4 rounds.

Ground Slam [one action] The dragon slams into the ground. It can do this if it’s on the ground or Flying within 10 feet of the ground. Each creature on the ground within 10 feet must succeed at a DC 29 Reflex save or fall prone and take 3d6 bludgeoning damage. The dragon can then Step

Shape Ice [one action] (arcane, transmutation, water) The dragon reshapes a cube of ice or snow it touches, up to 10 feet across. Any creature standing atop the ice must succeed at a DC 27 Reflex save or Acrobatics check. On a failure, the creature falls prone atop the ice; on a critical failure, it falls off the ice entirely and is also prone.

Draconic Momentum A white dragon can move through the spaces of creatures smaller than it. When a white dragon moves, it pulls any creatures it has grabbed along with it.

Ice Climb A white dragon can climb on ice as though it had the listed climb speed. It ignores difficult terrain and greater difficult terrain from ice and snow and doesn’t risk falling when crossing the ice.

Arcane Innate Spells DC 27, attack +19; 2nd obscuring mist (at will); 1st gust of wind (at will)

Any thoughts? Comments? I would love some feedback on this, as well as your own ideas as to how to make dragons more interesting.