| NutiketAiel |
I tried the Summoner out last night with a few friends, at various levels against various foes and as part of a few different party make ups.
First off, I agree that the Eidolon is better off not being able to wear armor. Allowing it to wear armor in addition to its natural armor bonuses results in rediculously high armor classes, to the point that it was outshining the Fighter and the Paladin in some cases.
As for the other change to the Summon Monster Spell-like Ability, we found that the original wording was better, for the most part. Allowing the summon spells to go off as a standard action made a big difference in allowing the Summoner to matter more in the combat, instead of just being an appendage to the Eidolon. The min/level duration was probably the most important feature to keep, because it allowed the summoner to use his summons to make up for the lack of versatility in his spell list, enabling him to use summoned monsters in a wide variety of non-combat situations. As for the limitation of only one spell active at a time... the Summoner rarely ended up summoning more than one time in a combat, so the point was largely moot, though combined with the min/level it did lead to abuse in one particular scenario (a huge wolf pack was summoned and used to completely rout an entire village of NPCs- they were pretty much all 1st level commoners, but you get the idea).
I would be OK with the limit of one summoning spell-like ability active at any given time, but the standard action summoning and the min/level duration are essential to the concept as I see it and to giving the Summoner a degree of out-of-combat versatility.