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Adventure: Hallow's Last Hope
DM: Mordulin
Party:
Byggvir (Half-elf NG Witch 1) (DM PC)
Beyla (Byggvir's Fox Familiar)
Argo (Human CN Battle Oracle 1) (socalgamer)
Viato (Elven CG Summoner 1) (Vigil)
Ignatius (Viato's Eidolon)
Summoner thoughts:
The summoner was great with a small party. Some fights were very close but the party managed to squeak by in the end with the aid of the summoner. My only problem with the class is the clutter effect from his massive number of summoned creatures. In the final fight of the adventure the Eidolon was thankfully absent as it had been reduced to negatives in a previous fight and the summoner dismissed him, hoping to summon him at full hp the next day. Still, he summoned three Celestial Riding Dogs on three consequative rounds against Greypelt (Worg Warrior 2). A CR 3 was taken out by smiting celestial puppies while the rest of the party struggled to hit (low rolls) a wounded wolf that was blocking their access to Greypelt. Except for the final encounter when the summoner unleashed all his remaining summons combat flowed like normal. Our summoner player had all his stats for his typical summon puppies and his eidolon with his character sheet so there was no book flipping which was nice. In the next playtest I am going to limit the spell-like summoning. (You cannot use this ability again until your previous summon(s) is dismissed or destroyed.)
Witch thoughts:
First, wow, bad luck meant this witch went down fast! 2 seperate encounters the witch wound up in the negatives in 1 round. He even had Toughness and a 14 Constitution so 11 hp! No slouch, just bad luck. Anyway he had a fox familiar. According to the Module Hallow's Last Hope, the firefoot fennec uses the same stats as a small dog so that's what we used for his familiar. As the DM and player I felt my familiar was too vulnerable. I would have felt safer if it had more hps. For my next playtest I may try it with the Familiar having the same hp as the Witch and see how that is balanced. There were some questions that arose from my playing the witch though that we weren't too sure on. For my Hex I chose Evil Eye, which is AWESOME, as it allowed the witch to do something magical without being too powerful. It felt more powerful than a cantrip but not as good as a 1st-level spell which I think is perfect for it since it can be used at will. However, can it be used against Mindless creatures? There was a cauldron construct in the adventure and with nothing else I could do I had the witch use Evil Eye on it. I figure since it didn't say in the description of Evil Eye that its mind-affecting it would work. It didn't really feel overpowered for me to give the construct a -2 to attacks for 8 rounds so I don't see a problem with allowing it to work on mindless creatures. Also, I was wondering if you could use Evil Eye multiple times on a target so it can eventually over 3 rounds have a -2 to attacks, AC and Saves or if you use it a second time it changes the thing penalized and resets the duration?
Overall the classes don't seem too bad at 1st-level. Next we plan to have Vigil DM us in Seven Swords of Sin and playtest 7th-8th level. Finally I will run us in Blood of Dragonscar to give us an idea of play at 15th level. I'm sure at least Vigil will post his thoughts on the summoner later.
My turn to chime in!
My initial idea was to play a summoner like a fighter/magic-user, so I went with an elf for the weapon proficiencies, took enlarge person and expedition retreat for my level one spells, and arcane strike for my feat. My Eidolon would be a flanking buddy/meat shield.
Things didn't exactly go according to plan.
While I could out-damage my eidolon with a single attack (especially enlarged), my eidolon had a much better attack bonus, and on a full attack would do better damage. My eidolon had more hp's, the same AC, better saves. Honestly, I felt like I was playing the eidolon with a pet spellcaster, when it should feel the other way around.
I love the evolution point system and don't want it to change. I just want more stuff for my summoner to do. Ah well, it's only first level. At higher levels, the eidolon's hit dice will fall behind and the summoner will have more spells. We'll see if I still feel the same way then.
Regarding the Summon Monster SLA: Since I wanted to get into melee and mix it up myself, early on I didn't bother with the ability. Once I gave up on hitting with my sword, I found the summon very useful. Since it was a standard action to summon (instead of one round), I could be more tactical and not fear being disrupted. The big thing for me was the duration. One minute per caster level (as opposed to one round per caster level) meant I was able to clutter the battlemap in the last encounter. I was summoning faster than Greypelt could destroy them, they were all smiting evil and thus not to be ignored, and I even got a crit with one of the puppies. Having summoned creatures doing around 20 points of damage each round is probably too good at first level. Much as I (as a player) would miss that kind of power, I agree with Mordulin that the summon monster SLA should be limited so you can't use it again until all of your current summoned monsters are gone. Or maybe summoning again automatically dismisses any current summoned monters.