deathmaster's page

People seem to be confusing some major points in the alignments. Friends are people you enjoy being around and spending time with, any alignment can have friends. Loyalty is part of law/chaos and thus chaotic friends are less likely to be loyal to their friends.

Stealing isnt covered under being "evil" and would be covered under the law/chaos end as well. Although stealing can be seen as "harming" someone, stealing used to also be used in the example of a lawful good character. Theft is a matter of not respecting the concept of possession/laws.

A chaotic good character wouldnt steal something if he thought it would hurt the person he was stealing from, but would steal to help someone.

The issue with evil characters in a party isnt so much as what they would do to the party, as the problems they would cause for the party from their actions.

Personally I think chaotic characters are as bad for a party as evil characters and a lawful evil character is better suited for an adventuring party than a chaotic good one. A lawful evil character playing his alignment wont betray the party, a chaotic good character would.

You made an eidolon that spent all 26 of its evolution points on maximum str?
Seems silly to me, but sure it works. I would skip the 8 str for 16 evolution points though, unless you are just trying to get the flat out strongest pet ever. It will be much more effective with those 16 points spent on things like extra attacks, grab, armor, flight and so on

I actually meant his post as where we heard first that the designers are going against common sense and exploiting a loophole. :)

I had read some of his early stuff where he was saying SLAs are not spells, but looks like they did a 180 and now SLAs are spells...

So to take this a step farther, if I have UMD and a scroll of magic missile that means I can qualify for Arcane Strike since I can cast an arcane spell?

All of which makes the RAW even sillier because by RAW a druid with an arcane SLA can get Arcane Strike and use their divine caster level for the damage bonus.

The developers assumed people would use some form of common sense when applying the rules.. unfortunately that does not appear to happen most of the time on the rules forum.

So casting burning hands is always going to be arcane, unless you're casting it with a divine spell slot.

Along the same lines, spells gained from a domain dont count for spell completion items as they arent on your spell list

An enhancement bonus is an enhancement bonus. A +1 weapon and a masterwork weapon both only provide a +1 enhancement bonus to hit, they dont stack and magic weapons arent listed as having a separate enhancement bonus from the masterwork bonus. You only have a +1 enhancement bonus, if you move it to AC you dont have it to attack

In my game I made it clear when my players found 4 mithril bars in an old dwarven keep that I will be using the kilobar-standard so that all bars weigh 1 kilo, or roughly 2 lbs. Mithril being lighter just made the bars double the size for the same weight. I then told them that 1 lb of mithril is worth 500 GP and that their 4 kgs or 8 lbs would be worth 4000 GP.

Your value of mithril doesnt make sense. 500GP/lb is the value of a finished item crafted from mithril, not the material cost. And as pointed out by another poster, if you treat mithril as 500GP/lb you have a huge market issue as people would buy mithril chain shirts, break them down and sell the mithril that was worth more than the finished shirt...

On the original topic, here is a link to a thread where two of the developers comment on vital strike:
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2juak?Charging-with-a-Vital-Strike#23

and one where Jason says it is probably too weak:
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2mh5h?Has-there-been-an-official-discussion-on- why#14

Seriously? Did you have to walk up hill both ways in the snow to the game too? I played AD&D, thats how I started, and there was certainly PLENTY of rollplay as opposed to roleplay. In fact, I think the modern era allows for a far greater depth of storytelling and character development, because characters last longer (anyone remember what a gygaxian dungeon was like? There were times we didnt bother coming up with names for new characters because they wouldnt last 20 minutes), and because the greater freedom of creation allows you to play the character you want to be instead of the character the dice force you to be.

Yeah I agree, the people I played 1st and 2nd edition with didnt bother coming up with character backgrounds, doing so is silly when you have no idea what your character is going to be until after you roll it up. And then when you started playing, why bother coming up with one when you are likely to be dead in a few sessions? (seriously people, did you read 1st and 2nd edition modules? If not go download a copy of the Temple of Elemental Evil or Tomb of Horrors).

3rd+ lets you make a character you want to play, and thus be able to build a background and theme for the character and has a much higher survivability than previous editions.

People that dont at least make a half-ass effort to optimize their character just kind of piss me off. Adventuring parties arent forced together, they arent childhood friends going out adventuring. They are people that are putting themselves in life and death situations where they have to rely on those with them to stay alive. Why the hell do you think your party would take along Daisy the 5 con, 10 str, 20 int fighter that put all her level up feats into skill focus and her combat feats into things that dont help her fight, wears leather armor and fights with a dagger because she is pretending to be a rogue since that was her "cool character idea"?

Its great that people that play horrible characters think they are "role-playing" but this is a role-playing game, and the rest of the party is role-playing adventurers, which is a job that demands a minimum level of competency to succeed at.

Basic way to make a character:
1. think of the basic concept of what you want to play, keeping in mind that you are playing an adventurer, so playing Timmy the blind, mentality handicap, quadriplegic with a big heart might not be the best idea.
2. create the basics of that concept and take the minimum required items to be that concept.
3. finish off with abilities that allow you to function in the world and as an adventurer, adjusting step 2 if needed.
4. flesh out the character background based around what you ended up with.

This works out well for pretty much everyone as the power gamers are at least power-gaming around a concept and should come up with a background to match what they made, and the "role-players" have a playable character instead of a horrible useless waste of space that would never be taken on adventures.. and normal players are already pretty much following these steps with or without knowing it anyways.

That doesn't make too much sense. It says choose one Nat attack form. Claws is a Nat attack form. It doesn't matter that the eidolon has four claws on him. It applies to all of them.

The final sentence uses singular instead of plural, the first part using less common meanings of 'form' can be singular and thus match the final sentence.

The elemental attack evolution gives d6 damage to all attacks for only 2 points, so adding one damage step to one type of attack isnt really overpowered, but the wording on it is messed up. I used it as going to all attacks of a given type, such as claw. It can be really overpowered when doing that though as when you stack enough size increases it does more than a d6 per attack and thus is more than the elemental attack for less points.

I am anticipating that every weapon you use will count as one attack for your max attacks (so he'd only have 4 left, which he would use for his claws because they can trigger rend). For a cheesier combination of manufactured weapons and natural weapons see my post in the DPR olympics thread.

Depending on how you read it I guess, the rules flat out say weapon attacks dont count, and also says if you are at the max you cant buy more attacks... Where do you count the weapon into that limit then? When you buy the arms? The arms can hold two weapons, so wouldnt that count as two attacks then? It just doesnt work if you try to count weapons that it may or may not have, as that would limit the ability to even buy the arms to begin with as you potentially have 7 attack with that build and thus could not have bought the last evolution that allowed for more attacks.

It works on "one natural attack form"

So then you have to ask what the designer ment by the word 'form' and if it means all attacks with the same name, then why doesnt it continue the same wording for the last sentence?

2d6 goes to 2d8 ...

see bestiary page 315 for an example of the pathfinder progression, or page 114 from the PHB3.5

Improved natural weapon applies to a set of claws, I believe. It would be really weird if one claw did 1d6 damage and the other only did 1d4.

Remember that the reach evolution more clearly words that it is only one attack. Is it wierd that one attack is longer than the other? Remember that these are fantasical creatures, not your normal run of the mill animals. Also even in real life, take a look at a lobster, they have one claw that is stronger and larger than the other, thus would do more damage than the other one.

Lets compare a level 10 eidolon to a level 10 animal companion charging an AC24 target. The former buffed with enlarge person, greater magic fang and greater evolution surge and the latter with greater magic fang and animal growth. I'm going to assume that every manufactured weapon counts will end up counting as a single natural attack after they errata it. So I'll stick with a single two handed weapon (and of course ignore the insane TWF manufactured/natural weapon rule from the core rulebooks and use the bestiary rules instead).

Lets compare a level 10 eidolon to a level 10 animal companion charging an AC24 target. The former buffed with enlarge person, greater magic fang and greater evolution surge and the latter with greater magic fang and animal growth. I'm going to assume that every manufactured weapon counts will end up counting as a single natural attack after they errata it. So I'll stick with a single two handed weapon (and of course ignore the insane TWF manufactured/natural weapon rule from the core rulebooks and use the bestiary rules instead).

I didnt check your math, but a couple of things I had a question about. Why do you have the weapon training evolution? The two points you spent on it would give you proficiency in a simple weapon.. the only weapon being used is a martial weapon which has a feat to cover its use listed.

as I said, I didnt double check your math... but your format for the math is really odd. If I am reading it correctly you are impling that rend can hit more than once per turn, where by the wording it cant.

I'm reading the Life Bond ability, where if the Summoner takes lethal damage, it can be transferred to the eidolon point-for-point.

However, as soon as the Summoner hits -1, the eidolon goes away due to the summoner being unconscious.

I can't discern the "window" where this ability ever comes into play.

Is the summoner required to take Die Hard for this class ability to function?

There is no listed range on the ability, is there anything somewhere that says an ability like this doesnt work across planes? Otherwise it just hits the eidolon back on its home plane.

No, it never says how to handle ability score increases anywhere else in the book. Apparently you don't have the PDF version of the book. It's easy to see what's missing when you can search a PDF. Also as I mentioned the 3.5 Player's Handbook had all the creation and levelling rules very nicely detailed in steps, while in Pathfinder they are condensed and spread around. For example, the +1 to hp or skill rank as you level your main class is not detailed in the same place where the other level increase details are.

Permanent Bonuses: Ability bonuses with a duration

this text gives you everything you need to know that something that changes your ability scores lets you recalculate everything.

I am sorry if you dont like the fact that not everything on a subject is in a single spot in the book, but this way helps save space. They didnt reprint everything in every applicable space, you have to read and remember bits and peices of everything.

Sorry, got confused here. The wrong mentions are to "prohibited schools" instead of to "opposed schools" which is the correct Pathfinder term.

yeah, but it is clear from reading the section they are talking about the same thing when using the term prohibited or opposed.

The text above the table about perception is speaking of DC, and yes they had a single error of -40 instead of +40, but that is an obvious error at least.

I would much rather have their staff working on a FAQ than fixing minor obvious errors in the book. If there is an error that isnt obvious that makes people think things dont work they way they were intended, then it should be fixed. The errors you have pointed out arent ones that really need fixed, except for the part about how many points you get from the ability score increase as people that didnt play 3.5 might not know its just one point to one stat.

Eidolon is Quadruped with Large, Claws, Energy Attack (Claws), Lunge, Increased Armor.

large is 3 evo points, claws another 1, energy attacks is 2, increase armor 1. By lunge did you mean reach? its a 1 point evo that effects 1 attack. If you did mean reach that leaves just 1 evo point left, and he would have three feats.

Right now, the Eidolon has more HP than anyone else (by almost 15) and, with the Claws (now a primary attack), it has 4 attacks per turn at 12/12/12/7 with more damage than anyone else.

The base HP for level 6 for the Eidolon is 33, base con and the con gain from large gives it anothre 18 points for a total of 51, if the ability increase was placed in con that would give it another 6 for a total of 57.. so assuming he has the 57, and you say he has 15 more than the next highest that would mean the next person only has 42 HP at level 6... so I just have to ask, why the hell are the people in your party taking 10 or less con? A cavalier with 10 con has 40 HP, if he is planing on being a front line fighter he should really have at least a 14 con thus giving him 52 HP, so only 5 less than the Eidolon that puts it stat gain into con.

The summoner just sits back and shoots arrows. Pretty much, the Eidolon can take on almost any CR 6 encounter they meet by himself! He has more attacks for more damage than the Cav or Inq, moves at speed 40, has a rediculous number of HP, and a huge CMB...

The Eidolon would be hitting for d8+7+d6 and 2xd6+7+d6. Note that level 6 is a bad level for cavaliers as they are 1 level off their good pets becoming large. But the character itself should have a +1 weapon, +2 str belt giving him a str of at least 20 and thus should be hitting for weapon damage +8 with a two handed weapon.. so lets say a greatsword would be doing 2d6+8 and against his challenge target would be 4d6+8. Since we have a limited selection of mounts, lets just take the horse. It will do d4+5 and 2xd6+2.

So for a sample CR 6 encounter, lets use 2 dire boars. They have an AC of 15, and lets say they moved in so all partys get a full attack. The Eidolon does an average of 41.2 damage, the Cav does 36.3 and the horse does 11.125. Since we have no idea on the stats on the summoner I cant even bring him into this, but the Eidolon does 41.2 compared to the combined 47.425 of the Cav. If the Cav was one level higher he could have a much better pet and thus would be doing better.

My guess is the caviler in your party isnt as optimized for combat, that combined with the fact at level 6 the summoner just got a huge boost in power from being able to have a large pet and the caviler is a level off of that same boost, it isnt really a fair comparison.

Eidolons get very broken as they gain levels just due to the system mechanics of natural attacks compared to weapon attacks, and the fact the Eidolon can have lots of attacks. Jason has already acknowledged this issue.

If the summoner just goes for raw combat they are very overpowred, but I think the intent was for the eidolon to have some non-combat stuff as well, like flight, resistances, scent

Serpentine base

10 Base
+2 base armor
+16 nat. armor (chart)
+8 imp. nat armor evo (4 pts)
+3 base dex
+2 dex(ability bump)
+4 dex(ability increase evo) (8 pts)
-1 dex
+2 nat. armor Large (3 pts)
-1 dex
+3 nat armor Huge (4 pts)
+4 dex(chart)
52 AC (19 points)

+5 shield of faith spell-like ability (1)
+5 barkskin spell-like ability (2) (need Quickened SLA feat)
+4 shield cast by summoner
+4 mage armor cast by summoner (quickened)

70 AC by round 2 for part of a CR 19 encounter, compared to a great wyrm gold (CR 23) with a 42 plus spells, that he has to cast himself, taking him until round 3 to start, and still only achieving a 55, as they have no access to barkskin, if i'm not mistaken.

You missed buying arms and adding a shield on, as well as the improved natural armor feat.

Thank you for the Break down, you have proven the natural Armor evo is broken, but what part of the Armor Evolution was broken. OR letting it wear armor untrained, or after taking the apporperate feats?

because adding 14 armor on top of the evolutions is stupid, but it would cap the max dex down to 4 from mithril full plate, meaning the above example's AC would only go up by 7, and would free up points to be spent on more offensive related evolutions.

+5 shield of faith spell-like ability (1)

+5 barkskin spell-like ability (2) (need Quickened SLA feat)

two problems here. You did not explain how you got two spell like abilities, since you can only take the evolution to get one once. And if these were refering to the spell like ability evolution, neither barkskin nor shield of faith are on the sorcerer/wizard spell list.

Missing rules:

The rules do not discuss how to handle "ability score increase" - the exact amount increased, or how it's handled, is not mentioned.
The 3.5 Player's Handbook had a very detailed step-by-step section on how to create a character and how to level it. Here, the sections are condensed and do not contain all the necessary information.

The only part I can find that is missing is where it says you only get one point to add to a stat, but that might have been stated somewhere else in the book. All the other rules are present.

Some remnants of 3.5 rules:

"Opposed school" is mentioned several times, although it's a concept from 3.5 which doesn't exist in Pathfinder anymore.
"Skill points" are mentioned several times, although the Pathfinder term is "skill ranks".

From page 79:

Wrong modifiers:

The footnotes for the Perception table in the skill chapter confuse between bonuses & penalties. It's really embarrassing, as if the writer didn’t know what DCs were and how they differ from die rolls; check it out.
The table about DCs to detect invisible creatures...

The modifiers are correct on the chart, but the explanation is wrong as the writer mixed up terms.

deathmaster wrote:

I am only counting its AC to be 20, and the DPR from a firegiant to a 20 AC is only 67.32, not sure where you were getting 83.49 to a 21 AC. But regardless, that 67.32 means on average that character would be dead in one round of attacks.

10 +2 dex +6 breasplate +3 magic on breastplate +1 ring +1 amulet -2 stance = 21

Fire giants have and use Power Attack.

I missed the RoP, and was not aware the beastiary didnt include power attack in the stat block. That is just annoying for having to calculate out the stats of everything with power attack yourself :P

The AC is 21. That's unacceptable unless you're one-rounding things, and that build isn't, even if it were legal. Any character who can't survive a single full attack from a benchmark brute has no business going into melee at all.

I am only counting its AC to be 20, and the DPR from a firegiant to a 20 AC is only 67.32, not sure where you were getting 83.49 to a 21 AC. But regardless, that 67.32 means on average that character would be dead in one round of attacks.

It doesn't really seem a fair criticism that something is "too much of a glass cannon" in a DPR contest. If it takes Improved Natural Armor for that spare feat it has 22 AC and ~ 76 HP on average. Everything I included seems to be legitimate according to the rules as written. If I've missed something that contradicts this feel free to point it out.

As stated earlier, it really wasnt meant to be a DPR contest, but more to see what damage the classes do when built in a playable fashion that you would be really playing in a game.

As I wrote it, given that it'd hit on everything but a 1 using power attack, average damage for 1 claw attack is 28.35, making this Eidolon have:

283.5 DPR.

Not exactly. The average damage of 2d6+20 is 27, so with a 95% chance to hit means not counting crits the damage would be 25.65. Since 10% of the hits would be crits doing double damage, they are increasing the damage by 10%, giving us 28.215

Even in the weakest version you presented it still has it beating anything else so far by a fair margin. And again, this still isn't including the summoner himself.

The thing is that no GM in their right mind would allow an Eidleon close to that. That is way too many arms, you took more arms than a marilith.

I'm curious if giving up the claws, taking the enhanced ability evolution and extra limbs and picking a weapon feat would yield higher damage.

with 8 arms using +1 bastard swords you would be looking at 164.1 DPR. the -4 tohit from multiweapon fighting and the fact that most are only getting half str hurts a lot.

lowering str by one, taking dex to 15, adding two weapon fighting and double slice though jumps the damage up to 187.2.

Weapons just arent really feasible due to the cost involved of trying to keep up multiple magic weapons.

It starts with Limbs (arms), Limbs (legs), and claws. I guess this one has to be really clever to use all of its attack, but as far as I can tell there's nothing wrong with putting claw attacks on its legs.

The only thing wrong with it would be the GM saying no as if you look at the beastiary, with a few minor exceptions bipeds dont attack with their feet. The ones that do that I found arent really bipeds, and their feet attacks are called "talons"

Amulet of Mighty Fists +3
Pale Blue Ioun Stone (+2 str)

They might not be able to use Ioun stones, there is a set list of what they can use. Not sure if Jason intends for them to use slotless items. Note that potions are specifically referenced.

10x claw: +26 (19-20 x2) 2d6 + 14

power attack 10x claw: +23 (19-20 x2) 2d6 + 20

I am taking off 2 of the claws and +2 from heroism for this as well as only counting a +2 amulet as you built a little too much of a glass cannon. This is only coming to a +19 to hit and doing +19 damage. This gives you 183.04. If you take away the Ioun stone it drops to 165.

You also made an AC 21 melee character with much less HP than the other melee characters. A fire giant kills him stone dead in one full attack. (83.49 average DPR to your face.) That's not playable.

I am only counting 20 AC.

so even more dead :)

Well we always had magic-users get extra spells due to high intelligence just as clerics did for high wisdom.

So in earlier posts you try to claim others are wrong for using "non-core" stuff, and then admit you never used it...

and btw, I suggest you re-read the 3.5 magic item rules as it was very core to have infinite use items.

also the idea of stuff outside of the SRD being optional is the same as everything in the SRD being optional. A GM does not have to allow anything he/she doesnt want into the game. The fact is the complete mage was a D&D book, made by the game creators for use in the game. It was an add on to the game, not an optional rule.

Wasnt Skip Williams the one that answered a question about polymorph back in 3.5 days that he used it to turn into high con creatures for the extra HP?

The problem with allowing a system that lets a character run around without armor having anywhere close to the same AC as someone in armor is that the person in armor had to invest cash into getting and advancing the armor. Since the 3.5 system is pretty much an item based system, doing stuff without items as well as someone with items is kind of a no no.

and besides, you can already do this with the Glamered enhancement on armor. A loincloth is a normal set of clothing, right? :)

minis handbook had 'bonded summoner', but that specifically summoned an elemental, if I remember right.

yup, they replaced their familiar with an elemental pet. Started at medium and got one size bigger every other level. They only got half spell casting progression so each level their pet didnt get bigger they got +1 level of spellcaster. They got damage resistance against their elemental type and gained elemental immunities over the levels so at 10th in the class they had all of elemental immunities and were immune to the damage type of their element.

The class has the summoner issue of how to handle a huge pet. I took earth when I played one so my pet could just earthglide through most places.

While playing my bonded summoner I had the funniest thing that ever happened to me in a game happen as well. I had a huge earth elemental get hit by a cocktrice and rolled on a 1 on the save, and thus turned to stone ;) We all found it highly amuzing to have a huge stone earth elemental :P

Funnily enough, the +6 was a type-O on the GEAR for Chris Cuisinart, but his STR (and the spreadsheet) is calculated only with a +4 Belt, which IS 16k gold. Curvy Camila does have a +6 belt, and she's paying the big bucks for it, which she can afford because she doesn't need DEX for 2WF nor a Double Weapon.

Problem though is you only paid for a +2 weapon, not a +3 for her. a +3 weapon is 18300+ the base weapon (18000 for magic and 300 for masterwork) So either the belt or the weapon needs to drop down

For the purposes of this thread, Rend (and all variations) benefits from Power Attack.

If someone really wants to argue about this, I suggest some other thread.

Rules forum had a reply

Rend adds damage to an attack; it's not an attack in and of itself. Just as power attack won't increase sneak attack damage or constrict damage, it won't increase rend damage (although it DOES increase the damage inflicted by the attacks that are necessary to trigger rend in the first place). Rake attacks ARE attacks, so power attack applies there.

Rend kills enough PCs anyway. There's no need to increase its damage, for the same reason there's no reason to tie a machine gun onto a nuclear bomb!

Ok, so posting while half asleep we all know is bad.. and writing formulas while half asleep is bad as well. I was doing hit chance wrong, I was just dividing attack bonus by AC needed... so now I redid it using 1-((AC-attbonus-1)*0.05)

See previous post for stats, and I had a couple typos in the crunchy bits spoiler, but attacks are:
4 claws +21 (2d6+12+d6)
2 wings +18 (d6+7+d6)

power attacks:
4 claws +18 (2d6+18+d6)
2 wings +15 (d6+10+d6)

with correct hit chance, average damage on claws are 20.25 and the crit damage brings it to 21.96 each. (math for crit is average damage without the lightning, 19, times hit chance, 90%) times crit chance, 10%)
Wings are 10.89 (only 5% crit chance counted in)

with power attack the claws damage is 23.25 with crit counted in. Wings are 10.61

So total damage is only 109.63 normal and 114.21 power attacking.

Damage for the summoner himself is down to 19.86

so total for both working together is 134.07

If the summoner does a Haste instead of attacking though, the damage for that round is: 146.98 :)

If anyone would like to see an optimal Eidolon let me know and I will take the time to build one made for doing raw damage.

*Edit: I know this isnt playtest data, but should this be mentioned in the Summoner play test board showing the raw numbers? I think this is kind of broken*

**second edit: for those concerned about the +3 amulet of mighty fist, the damage with a +2 is 106.24 for the Eidolon and summoner is still 19.86 for a total of 126.1 for the two working together and 137.46 if the summoner cast haste instead of attacking.**

I don't like these changes and I am a big fan of changing BUT keeping the summoner. The first change limits player imagination in my opinion - may be some player wants their character to have made a divine or infernal deal that allows them, as the Summoner class, to summon a "knightly" eidolon clad in heavy armor. Taking away this option seems to be filtering PC's towards every creature being some sort of Cuthulu like monster rather than somehing... kind of cool in a story way. I mean I completely understand the "why's" given the insane AC these guys can get quick but I still don't like limiting the eidolon in this way. Perhaps the better thing to do would be to declare a type of eidolon at 1st level and that type of eidolon gets access to only a certain part of the evolutions.

The Eidolon can look however the summoner wants it to. If he wants it to look like something wearing full plate, he can. It doesnt have to be wearing real armor, its body can look like its wearing armor.

I don't like the change in the duration or casting time of the SLA - that's the class's thing.

The Eidolon is its thing, the SLA was just its little extra bonus for being a caster class.

And I'm 100% certain that it does. Calling Rend "not a source of melee damage" is ... dubious, at best. There is no specific game definition for 'melee damage', so we refer to a common-sense definition: "damage dealt as the result of a melee attack or attacks". Rend clearly, both conceptually and mechanically, is melee damage resulting from two melee attacks. The fact that it automatically hits if its trigger condition is met doesn't make it "not melee damage".

Rend is expressively "additional damage", so it in of itself is not a melee damage roll, it is extra damage being added to another damage roll. Do you add power attack's damage bonus to the extra damage from a flaming weapon? Or the extra damage from sneak attack?

deathmaster wrote:

stuff

The DPR formula for figuring damage that is not multiplied on a critical is h(d+s)+(tchd)

h= chance to hit expressed as %
d= average damage per hit
s= damage not multiplied on a crit
t= chance to threaten expressed as %
c= threat multiplier (x2=1, x3=2, etc etc)

Using this formula, I calculate the Eidolon's DPR as 122.18, while I figured the summoner's as 19.86 (don't know why we got a different figure there) for a total DPR of 142.04

When you do tchd

The summoner's math I did was:
((15/24)*19 + (10/24)*19)*1.1
11.875+7.9166666=19.7916666
10% of all hits will be crits for double damage, so this raises overall damage by 10% giving us 21.7708333333

The correct formula I think would be t(c-1)hd, because you need to take into account that you already counted the damage from the base hit you just need to add in the extra damage.

so just to play around I started leveling my summoner build to level 10 and it looks like summoners kind of break the damage charts. Ignoring the summoner himself and just looking at at the Eidolon itself.

Please note that I did not use the formula in the original post for damage calculations as it would have counted the crit damage as double what it should. If I had used those calculations the numbers would be higher.

DPR per claw is 21.44 a (+1 bonus to hit takes it to 22.37) normal and 23.35 (+1 24.54) with power attack. Wing buffets are 10.91 (+1 11.5) normal and 11.08 (+1 11.79) with power attack.

So on a full attack action the average damage is 107.58 (+1 112.48) normal and 115.56 (+1 121.74) with power attack.

Please take note that this is not even a fully optimized Eidolon, this is just the one I was planing on playing in a game. After looking at these numbers I think that might be a bad idea now.

Edit: Here is the Eidolons pet summoner:

The Summoner's DPR is 13.06 with the first attack and 8.71 with the second for a total of 21.77.

The summoner would be spending the first round of every fight casting haste on his party and Eidolon though, thus causing much more damage.

Please don't take off the multiple monster summons. What's the point of a SUMMONER class if a Druid or Sorcerer can summon way more than you can?

This has been addressed multiple times, the only limit is on the spell like ability, summoners can cast as many summon spells as they wants. The point in the summoner isnt to cast tons of summon monster spells to piss off everyone at the table because you just made combat take 4 hours per round, its to have a powerful summoned ally to kick ass with.

I'm with Kurukami and Evil Lincoln on this one - it is too easy to make magic items RAW. A level X character is likely going to have an X+3 Spellcraft check, so they only need a +1 bonus to meet the DC of any check at their caster level by simply rolling a 1. (Natural 1's don't autofail skill checks.) This doesn't include the Intelligence bonus that a Wizard is going to have, though Clerics and Sorcerers may not. Since most people are just going to take 10, that means they are automatically going to hit a DC of 13+X+Int, or 8+Int higher than needed for their caster level - enough to skip one or two prerequisites and STILL not even risk a cursed item.

remember that the rules these are based on (D&D 3.5) there was no roll, everything was automatic. At least now there is a restriction, if you want to make something too big you either cant, or you make a roll and risk losing everything.

I missed that. That makes claws much much better, given that spending one point on it gives you two primary attacks.

I would hope your GM would say no to buying claw attacks for the back legs, it ranks up there with a biped buying claws for their feet.

Could someone sum your previous discussion? It got confusing. Can you use reduce person to shrink your Eidolon or no?

Yeah, that was a little confusing. Yes, a summoner can shrink and grow his pet with reduce and enlarge person even though the pet is an outsider. If you plan on getting a large or huge one it means reduce person is pretty much a mandatory spell

Share Spells (Ex): The summoner may cast a spell with a target of “You” on his eidolon (as a spell with a range of touch) instead of on himself. A summoner may cast spells on his eidolon even if the spells normally do not affect creatures of the eidolon’s type (outsider). Spells cast in this way must come from the summoner spell list. This ability does not allow the eidolon to share abilities that are not spells, even if they function like spells.

I beleive the bolded sections say I am correct.

ok.... so lets say that the second sentence isnt listing what else you can do with the ability and is instead just going on to continue a special part of the first sentence for some reason... take a look at the spell list, there are no spells with a target of "you" that can not be cast on an outsider.

Yeah this is a case of not reading the rulebook...

The real question should be is when do you need to make the roll as opposed to just taking a 10 on it?

Unless I missed something it looks like you can just take a 10 on the spellcraft check and thus always succeed on anything you have any real sort of a chance to make.

The scroll and wands are actually considered to be cast by the creator of the scroll. That is why the DC, caster level checks and so on go by the caster abilities of the person that created the scroll.

That is incorrect, the caster level is set when the item is created and can be any level up to the creator's level with a minimum of the level needed to cast the spell. If the spell was considered cast by the creator they would be unusable.

The reduce person spell may have been overlooked by me, but I did not see it on the summoner's spell list. If it's on the spell list the problem is solved.

It is on the list along with enlarge person, so the summon can shrink the pet when needed or make it even bigger!

Edit: If they are not on the summoner's spell list they have to have a target of "you", and reduce person does not have a target of "you"

Read what share spell does again, there are two parts of it. One is that you can cast personal spells on it and the other is that you can cast spells on it that dont normally effect its type.

It seems like nobody wants to answer this question. There was a wand thread a month or so ago, and the OP's questions were answered, but mine was the final post in the thread asking questions about wands. It finally slipped into the Archive recently. That said, I'll repeat the question:

The wand just lets you cast the spell, every part of the spell remains the same (except the fixed caster level). So if the spell requires an attack, it still requires an attack.

Kolokotroni wrote:

meaning a 1 or 2 encounter day instead of 4.

But is there anything WRONG with 1-2/Day? Newp :p

For class balance sake there is something very wrong with 1-2 encounters per day, it makes magic using classes far stronger than they should be. If a magic class gets to blow its whole wad in 1-2 fights instead of having to space them out over 4-5 fights.

Also, while I am aware of squeezing rules, the problem comes when combat starts. Suddenly, the party is without their heavy hitter.

So I am confused here. You are saying there were so many spaces the players had to go into that were so small that medium creatures had to squeeze that the large creature had to be shrunk for that the summoner ran out of spells?

But you can't use armor spikes as an off-hand weapon when wielding two weapons.

Where are you seeing a rule that stops them from working when wielding two weapons?

There is a rule that prevents you from making two offhand attacks, but that doesnt stop you from holding two weapons.

Xum wrote:

Well mate, I think it's pretty clear. 2-handed means using 2 hands, if u only have 2 hands then u can't use an offhand weapon. Since armor spikes are treated as such, you cannot use them. That's as clear as day to me.

+1

So you think armor spikes take a hand, despite their description? The rules for the item are what they state. A twohanded weapon is not an offhand weapon, if it was it would really suck.

The same character with TWF and armor spikes sees his average damage increase by 4.5, but since he's hitting with 10% less frequency on both attacks his average effective damage is 11.7 + 4.05 for 15.75 pts of damage, which makes the feat worth a whopping 2.75 pts of additional damage, hardly game breaking.

Your math isnt right, a -2 tohit isnt a -10% to your damage, its more than 10%. For example if you needed a 6 to hit you have a 75% chance to hit and a minus 2 takes you to a %65% chance to hit. So in your example of doing 13 damage and 4.5 damage, when you take into account the hit chance you end up with an average damage of 9.75 per round. Now your dual wielding goes to 8.45 and 2.95, so a net gain of 1.65 damage per round.

So with power attack you do an average of 10.4 damage, so 1 less damage than dual wielding with the armor spikes. The problem comes down to the feats and class features though, since the armor spike is going to have a lower tohit damage and less damage bonus than the greatsword the damage bonus from it isnt that great considering it only kicks in on full attacks.

I havent run the numbers, but I am pretty sure you do less damage in the long run trying to dual wield a greatsword and spiked armor instead of two of the same weapon.

Note that said monk could flurry with the quarterstaff(efectively TWFing) and use his elbows or whatever but he would apply 1X STR mod to all attacks, not 1.5X.

Are you refering to a monk using Two Weapon Fighting, or Flurry of Blows? Flurry has a special clause in it that all attacks get 1xstr, and even goes out of its say to specify that it applies even if the weapon is held in two hands.

Please note that a monk using the Two Weapon Fighting feats is not the same as a monk using Flurry of Blows. Also note that a monk can not use their unarmed strikes for off-hand attacks when using Two Weapon Fighting feats as the rules say "There is no such thing as an off-hand attack for a monk striking unarmed."