rob vaughn's page

Kajehase: I see in #72 that this is what she may do depending on how the adventure path goes, but it's not explicit that this is what she's done every time up to now. Is there another section in the adv path that makes you sure of that? I just don't see "Old Grandmother" wanting to go through the trouble of taking a lover and actually being pregnant and all that ... she's in the Crone stage of her life, would she willingly go back and relive the other stages?

I'm thinking I might make it a metaphorical daughterness involving possession and wacky rituals and the like. Unless there's clearer direction in the Irrisen book. Thanks all!

Hey there, running this adventure and my PCs are flirting with the idea of playing politics in Irrisen; one of them may have some Jadwiga blood.

Can anyone tell me if the rules for succession are clarified anywhere, like in the Irrisen book? The modules all say that Baba Yaga chooses one of her "daughters" to succeed her every 100 years ... are these literally her daughters, as in she takes a lover and produces an heir? If so, it should be pretty clear who the next queen will be, right? Or are we talking figurative, here, meaning that she just picks someone of her bloodline from among the Jadwiga and chooses her as the queen?

Haven't picked up my copy yet, but getting ready to kick off the campaign with the first volume.

For the sake of a certain PC's background hook, can anyone confirm that ...

Just be kind to your fellow gamers, and have stat blocks printed out for easy reference. Multiple stat blocks for your Eidolon for common buff spell combinations, and adjust any summoned creatures for summoning feats.

You’re going to have a lot to do. Anything to get through your turn as fast as possible will be appreciated.

Thanks for the feedback, all. I'll go ahead and make that summoner; as for getting through my turn quickly, I get pretty impatient when players take forever to do something during the game, so I always have my stuff calculated, figure out what I'll do on my turn instead of spacing out, etc. And I'll even roll my attack and damage dice AT THE SAME TIME! (crazy, I know).

Looking forward to getting back into a shared campaign.

If you spend a feat, it's permanent. If you ever reshape your eidolon to not have arms, or to focus in something else, you're still stuck with the feat. In addition, you have to use only that specific weapon. Conversely, with the evolution, you can drop it whenever you want to, and the eidolon can use most hand-me-downs from the fighters, or whatever good but otherwise useless weapon you happen to come across.

There's times that one will be better than the other - for optimization purposes, it's almost always better to spend the feat, and if you want to specialize in an exotic weapon you have to spend the feat anyway. But for an ongoing campaign, the more flexible option is probably the better one.

Thanks for the replies, folks. Bobson makes a very good point about the pros and cons; the feat being static vs. the evolution being variable is something I hadn't noticed. Seems almost arbitrary, but whatever ;).

I'm going to go exotic weapon prof or martial weapon prof to match the character's flavor (Shaonti), maybe taking totem spear. And heirloom as a trait, so the summoner can use it when the eidolon isn't around.

I know you're all sick of questions about this class. I've looked high and low for the answers, I promise. I'm just getting into PFS, and don't want to make a bad first impression by trying to get around the rules.

It seems like people are assuming that you can just use a biped eidolon's feat to give it exotic weapon proficiency in some horrid weapon, and ignore the weapon training evolution.

My feeling is that you could do that by the RAW, but the spirit of the rules (RAI?) suggests that the designers wanted you to have to spend 2-4 points of evolution to get a weapon in your eidolon's hands.

This is backed up by the eidolon models (from Ultimate Magic, I think). The angel, bodyguard, centaur, and drider all spent 4 evolution points on weapon training to get to martial; if they could've just spent 1 feat on their preferred martial weapon or, even better, an exotic weapon, that seems like it would have been more efficient.

Has there been a ruling one way or the other?

Thanks!

I am an old LG vet looking to dip back into organized play via Pathfinder, and I'm intrigued by the summoner class. I have no interest in making a pouncing/rending quadruped or a large/slamming/pushing biped. Just an old Shaonti spirit with a spear that follows my character around and natters at him and gets into fights.

However, a little board-browsing seems to show that eidolons are being pimped out to the extreme, and that new player with summoner is often seen as a cheese monkey / loose rules interpreter / no fun. I don't want to make a bad impression, nor do I want to bring in a character that I think is interesting, but that everyone else has seen a hundred times already.

So, some advice from you regular PFS players. Do you roll your eyes when a player brings a summoner to the table?

And on a side note, if not: the rules are ambiguous about how to set up a biped eidolon to use a weapon. It seems like the spirit of the rules is that you'd have to use the 2-point weapon training evolution; but by the letter of the rules, couldn't you just use the eidolon's bonus feat on simple, martial, or exotic weapon proficiency? Or is that just the kind of cheesy thinking that causes the aforementioned eye-rolling?

Thanks for any thoughts & comments!