| Walter Roberts |
I laughed out loud when I read your original post Otherwhere as I have had a similar experience with the MS. I was dubious of the Summoner, but I decided to give it a try when one of my players wanted to run one. He chose Master Summoner and he also chose Eagles as his creature du jour. At first, they were incredibly powerful, but I'm running Reign of Winter and even at level 1 there are a lot of DR creatures. As the challenges get tougher, his powers have come more into line, but with those elementals now (the party is Level 5), he still gets bang for his buck. My favorite is when he summoned a bunch of snakes to take out a war party that had been sent to track the party down. His eidolon is also pretty nifty as he took Bleeding attack as an evolution. For the record, the rest of the party consists of: A human paladin of Abadar, a human star-souled sorcerer (about to take levels as an evangelist of Nethys), a gnome druid, and a half-elf rogue/wizard (on track to become an arcane trickster). Reign of Winter is a pretty tough adventure path, so overall the MS hasn't been too OP, and I'm lucky that my MS player self-regulates; but still with my experiences, I am never allowing a Summoner in one of my games again.