ShikiSeiren's page

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No, the DM is not using those. He is doing 10 vs 4 with the enemy level at party -1, because the difficulty rating as written makes absolutely 0 sense

The difficult ratings are by the far the best in the entire industry. I say this as someone who has GMed PF2 continuously since playtest (hundred+ sessions over the past few years), virtually every single time I've made an encounter the encounter building tools have accurately depicted the difficulty of the encounter.

The difficulty rating is horrible. I've been running a few games, one was literally a single player campaign (player + 1 npc). I just wanted to see what would happen if I threw 5 goblin warriors and 1 goblin commander at them when both player and NPC were level 1. An encounter this so called "best in the industry" system calls "impossible"... They lost 4 HP. FOUR. In total! I reran this encounter 4 times to see if it was just the dice, but no. Worst that happened is that the player character dropped to 6 HP once. Unless the balance between enemy types shifts wildly within the same level range, this is NOT indicative of the RAW encounter calculations being any competent.

so.... what the difference between 5 enemies dogpiling on the summoner than say, 5 people dogpiling on the rogue?

One difference, as BACE said, is that there is two bodies possibly near two different groups of enemies. Another is that the rogue is likely hidden before attacking, potentially already taking out an enemy. A third is that the rogue "can move like he wants", if you will, while the Eidolon positioning itself in a way that will make it harder to dogpile on might often expose the summoner to it. (Not to mention the rogue will, in the example above, probably sneak behind one of the ranged if able, and not be where the middle of the melee is, while and Eidolon cannot do any of that). Yet another is that a rogue is a more survivable than the Eidolon is (until you get Transpose, I suppose). And, as in my example, ranged are likely to target key positions, such as a cleric or caster, rather than a rogue. And while PF2e does not have the same heavy "Firing into melee" penalty as other systems, a +1 cirucmstance AC to their target (very likely to happen if melees dogpile the rogue) for the rogue being screened will make intelligent ranged fire on something they are a lot more likely to hit. Like, as stated, the caster with the poor AC that is also visibly buffing a melee "threat".

ShikiSeiren wrote:

I think a big problem they have is that they made summoner and magus gimped casters... When casters were ALREADY rather heavily nerfed in the first place in the transition from 1e to 2e, which I somehow think they did not take into account.

Not strictly true though more true for summoner than Magus. Eidolon and Magus are martial classes with some caster light options. Issue is those options are weak on a bare martial chassis. So they are weak.

Hm... true. I've looked more into Summoner as I was really looking forward to it, but the little I've seen of Magus makes it look like a Channel Smite Warpriest is a better gish than it is X) But I'm probably wrong on that front.

Summoner though... I can't help but feel like it is put together worse than the ( 3rd party) Convoker in the "Faithful Few" supplemental book from SamuraiSheepdog. Eh. Guess I'll hope for changes. And that some things are simply not in the playtest, like an undead eidolon.

ShikiSeiren wrote:

Party of 4 vs party of 10. If summoner, 5 vs. 10. Let there be 3 ranged enemies (because people all say their DM's use rather few of those...) and the enemies have a modicum of intelligence.

I'm sorry, but if your GM is using encounter scaling rules as listed in the Core Rulebook, which is presumeably what we're using for balance here, then this example is citing, at absolute worst, an encounter with 10 creatures that are all at Character Level -3. Even with mooks this weak, this is still described as a fight that should be incredibly dangerous to any party despite probably evaporating in the presencevof a single fireball. I don't know if we should be balancing the Summoner against hypothetical edge-case danger scenarios that only occur in a badly balanced party anyways.

No, the DM is not using those. He is doing 10 vs 4 with the enemy level at party -1, because the difficulty rating as written makes absolutely 0 sense. And from what I've seen, if your DM sends you enemy numbers equal to your own, then he is in the minority. But sure, let's do that : 5 enemies vs 4 party + 1 eidolon.

2 ranged target the obvious caster, and depending on their knowledge about summoners, the 3 melees slam the eidolon. Dead summoner.

Even if only one melee slams the eidolon and 2 another melee, that is still 3 attacks against the summoner's HP.

I think a big problem they have is that they made summoner and magus gimped casters... When casters were ALREADY rather heavily nerfed in the first place in the transition from 1e to 2e, which I somehow think they did not take into account.

Why wouldnt you Why wouldnt you give* items to your Eidolon? (*by give i mean invest in a weapon/armor to benefit both of you)

As for the rest, it still takes 2 enemies targeting you and your eidolon. If you substitute the summoner for literally anything else, there will still be 2 enemies that will attack 1 player.

To put it simply:

Let's say you're a party of 4 vs 5 enemies. If you are a summoner that's 5 targets for 5 enemies, if they *perfectly* distribute the attacks (like... never) that means that there will be 1 on you and 1 on your Eidolon.

If you were a rogue instead, that's still 5 enemies for 4 targets, so 2 enemies will target one of you.

Because... Any melee investments benefit the summoner zero, any investments in casting benefit the eidolon zero. Or close to zero. The only thing really benefitting you both is bracers of armor and the like, because, guess what, you only get unarmored. Even boosting your ability scores only really helps one of the two unless that boost is CON (or DEX, I guess).

From what I've seen the consensus is that "more lowerlvl enemies" is preferable over "a few strong enemies" so the example should be...

Party of 4 vs party of 10. If summoner, 5 vs. 10. Let there be 3 ranged enemies (because people all say their DM's use rather few of those...) and the enemies have a modicum of intelligence.

Now, the Eidolon is at the front, the summoner is at the back. The summoner casts Boost Eidolon, massively visible to anyone due to the glowing sigil on them and their partner. Bandit Leader screams "Caster!", all ranged fire on the Summoner... while any engaged with the Eidolon beat on it instead. You get hit by 5 out of 10 enemies, while a normal caster would eat the 3 ranged , but melee strikes would get tanked by the actual melees and go against their HP.

(Not to mention the Eidolon does not get AoO which makes it an absolute failure as a "meat shield" in case enemies decide to just rush the summoner)

Currently the only thing you'd take summoner for instead of, say, a warpriest (which gets armor, depending on deity good weapons+true strike, full caster spell slots + a lot of extra ones to heal or harm (or both with versatile font) , or a fighter that just hires a low level NPC mage that will STILL be better at casting than Summoner is, is that at 16th level you can have an Eidolon and two summons out, for a total of 4 extra actions. (Act together is one extra, the freely sustained summon is 2 extra, sustaining the second normally is essentially one extra.) Technically that can be 5 extra actions if using Tandem Move, which sounds really, really good... Until you realize that the summoner has no way to buff their summons' (or Eidoilon's for that matter) Attack Rolls. The bit of extra damage is nice and all, but I think "Boost Eidolon" should work like this instead:

On cast : +2 to attack rolls. When heightened to 3rd, additionally +2 to damage. When heightened to 5th, +2 to AC. If heightened to 7th, double the previous boni.

(values would need adjustment obviously.)

Martialmasters wrote:

they dont even need that is the thing, thats just worst case.

all you need is one on you and one on your summon and you are being attacked twice as often as anyone else.

if 2 are on your eidolon and 1 on you

aoe need not apply even.

Do monsters in your game usually split up and evenly distribute themselves attacking characters? That doesn't sound like normal (or sound!) tactics. Any character can be ganged up upon, of course.

Do monsters in your game usually ignore the Ranger's bear rampaging in their face, or the ranger spicking them with arrows? That doesn't sound like normal (or sound!) tactics to me. Not to mention the Summoner is a caster, which means that any halfway intelligent enemy would try to get to them, and ranged enemies will try to take them out unless you have a juicier target, like a cloistered cleric. While melee enemies will strike at the Eidolon if it attacks them (obviously).

The summoner hanging back doing nothing makes the slightly better action economy not matter, and you might as well just play a Fighter which does the Eidolon's job better.

Synthesis makes any advantage of the action economy go away and loses you your spellcasting and Eidolon's buffs, so you might as well play a fighter.

And "Oh but I'll have spells out of combat!" Sure. But... You might as well play a fighter and have an npc buddy with terrible spellcasting.

Most of the summoner right now seems to be "This is for flavour but has actual demerits compared to most other classes "

Hell, unless my math is off the high level Eidolons won't even have a better to-hit than regular summons (unless you waste invested items for boosts to hit that your summoner needs... Never.)

And we all know how likely summons are hitting enemies at levels higher than 5. Speaking of that, no ability to boost a summon's attack rolls, only damage, and the free sustain is... At level 16.