My gaming group that I GM are playing the Serpent's Skull Adventure. They are in the middle of book 4: Vaults of Madness, but it has been apparent many of the players are growing bored.
As stated in the description, one of my players is Summoner. The player is an Engineer. He sees everything as numbers, and knows almost every rule by memory. I have banned the use of Dire Tigers on his summon monster list. I have forced him to redesign his character once the UNCHAINED summoner was released. But nothing slows him down.
Being able to summon d4+ monsters like hound archons, and bralani azata as a standard action is insane. I can't deal with them and I haven't even started with the eidolon. In fact despite the fact that the eidolon is huge and grapples every boss creature I throw at the party, I would take the eidolon over the summons any day.
Party is wounded? we could ask the druid or warpriest to... nope Bralani Azata x2 with cure serious.
Bard, warpriest and druid about to melee with the large demon? Why bother, Summoner just summoned 3 celestial wooly rhinos with smite.
My bard spends most of the time on Instagram because the summoner's turns take so long to get through she has grown bored. She wants to participate but has mention to me, "What's the point?". My druid has opted out of fights and just sits out of reach casing down a bolt of lighting from time to time. And the wizard has taken to his levitate spell and just floats up and watches because why waste his spells with a trivial fight that the summoner with beat for them.
It's hard because my summoner player LOVES playing pathfinder. He often tells me it is the highlight of his week. It fills me with joy to hear that, but the rest of my party suffers. I have mentioned how overpowered he is, but he doesn't see it that way. In last nights session the wizard turned to him and ask OOC "Have you considered doing this campaign by yourself?". I am torn.
How should I deal with this? Should I:
1. remove the Summon Monster spell-like ability and just turn it into Spontaneous Casting of Summon Monster, much like the druids Nature's Ally.
2. force the player to retire his summoner and make a new character.
3. ask the player (again) to tone it down a bit with what he can do?
4. just leave it be and continue to raise the CR of all my encounters to "try" to accommodate his power.
or is there a 5th option that I am not seeing?
