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Well this weekend I finally had a chance to test the Summoner and witch. It seems fair to point out that the testing of the witch was mostly an accident, as one of my regular players got sick and a friend of mine who was just hanguing out with us (never played D20 before) decided he wanted to play the game. So I helped him make a witch.
The summoner was to be the second encounter in a changed version of Michael kortes´ the Pact Stone Pyramid. The setting of the encounter was a 40 by 50 room (20ft ceiling) with a statue like eidolon sitting in the middle with it´s face covered by a black veil. The Summoner awaited invisible at one of the room´s corners.
The Summoner was a lvl 9 outsider (just for flavor, no outsider abilities really) whose only propouse was to test how smart any intruders were, for this he formulated a ridedle, and once 4 wrong answers were given the summoner activated his wand of darkness and the eidolon came into action.
The Party.
- Half Elf Witch (fortune, misfortune, evil eye and cackle hexes)
- Half Elf Sorcerer/Fighter
- Thiefling Abyssal Sorcerer
- Human Warlock (homebrewed fey pact warlock, basically a gish)
- Human Rogue
- Human Ranger (archer)
The Eidolon
Tomb Guardian Eidolon
Bypedal Eidolon
N Large outsider
Init +6; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +9
Defense
AC 22, touch 12, flat-footed 20 (+2 dex, +10 natural armor)
hp 84 (8d10+40)
Fort +11, Ref +4, Will +7
Offense
Speed 30 ft. (flight)
Melee: bite +17 (2d6+12 plus poison), 2 claws +16/+16 (d4+8)
Special attacks: Trip, Poison (DC
Statistics
Str 27, Dex 14, Con 20, Int 7, Wis 10, Cha 11
Base Atk +8; CMB +18; CMD 29
Feats (4)
Improved Initiative
Weapon Focus Bite
Combat Reflexes
Ability Focus (poison)
Evolutions (13)
Claws (free)
Limbs (free)
Legs (free)
Reach (1)
Flight (2)
Ability Increase (2)
Bite (1)
Large (3)
Trip (1)
Poison (2)
Improved Damage (1)
The Combat. (i have a terrible memory, so i will try to be as specific as psible with this one)
When the darkness was dropped chaos ensued among the party´s ranks. There was a lot of shouting to either fall back into the previous corridor or stay and fight.
Those who tried to fall back into the corridor seemed safe untl the summoner dropped black tentacles into it making it extremly hard.
The Warlock. His job was made easy after almost being dropped by an Attack of Op to use his dust of disapperance, after that he mostly moved blindly around the battlefield dispelling the darkness and tentacles whenever possible.
The witch. Even for a player with no experience whatsoever the witch performed greatly. During a turn with the lights on he glitterdusted the eidolon evenning the playfield. The followed with crushing dispair while the darkness wa sin place. He gave fortune to the archer and cackled every round to give him a better chance to avoiudnt eh miss chance.
The Fighter. Charged blindly into melee with the eiolon and dealt it a whooping 50dmg with a crit, just to be dropped on the eidolon´s turn.
The Sorcerer. He had darkvision so he dedicated himself to give ppl commands every turn. His scorching rays every turn dealt the most damage to the eidolon and eventually dropped him. After it was down his deep slumbers were vital to dealing with the multiple summons that were thrown at them by the still invisible summoner.
The Rogue. His job was mostly getting people out of the dark room following the directions of the sorcerer, and giving them potions to keep them alive.
The Ranger. Most of his attacks missed due to the darkness miss chance, however he dealt some solid damage after he eidolon was gone and the summoner´s invisibility was voraciously dispelled. He was the one that dropped the summoner on the last round.
The Summoner. His roll was to toy with the Pc´s. He dropped darkness every time it was dispelled and let the eidolon o most of the work. When the party finally started working together (after the initial confusion) and timing their attacks better they managed to drop the eidolon in 2 turns. Seeing this he limited himself to dropping babbaus and tentacles when necessary. At one point it seemed the party was gonna end when 3 babbaus and an ankylosaurus were swarming the battlefield. However deep slumber hit all of them leaving the summoner helpless. He was hit by slumber twoce and made his save by 1 every time (pretty funny). But after his invisiblity was gone and the tentacles were dispelled a ranger´s full attack took him down for good.
It is worth noting that after a certain point I stopped using his summons as a standart action and ut them back to full round to avoid a TPK. Since it seemed like having a babbau appear out of nowhere in front of you every round and full attack you was huting them badly (and this was kidn of a test also).
The Eidolon. He was hitting hard and all over the place untill the glitterdust hit him. His multiple attacks of op a turn made him a massive annoyance (didn´t know at that point reach didn´t come with size for eidolons), specially with the added trip and poison. However the crushing diapair followed by glitterdust boned him badly.
Conclusions.
All and all it was a very very fun encounter, even thou the players felt they ere going to die at any given moment. The feeling in the end for them was that it felt like a boss fight and not the second encounter of a given module.
I tried to do this testing as close as possible to how it would be impemented into gameplay, and not just a summoner vs party kind of thing. And it would seem that the encounter (calculated as a CR 9 instead of 8 mostly because of the summoner being invisible to begin with) took almost their entyre resources for the day, which leads me to think that the summoner is a little bit on the strong side. And leads me to agree with those who say that toning either the SLA summoning or the eidlon (but not both) is the right ourse of action.
Personally I love the eidolo mechanic, and would like for the SLAs to be the ones to take the nerf, making them either one at a time or full round action to use them should be enought (but both would be unnecesary)
I hope this helps at least a bit.
Key question: What level is the party?
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Personally I love the eidolo mechanic, and would like for the SLAs to be the ones to take the nerf, making them either one at a time or full round action to use them should be enought (but both would be unnecesary)
Funny you should mention that. Jason already toned down the summons for playtesting. See the sticky up top.
The SLA's take a full round, the duration is 1 round/lvl, and only one can be active at a time. That combined with the fact that, as you noted, you didn't pay for the reach it had made this encounter rather more difficult for the party than it should have been.
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I am guilty of beinc rusious and did use the summoner as originally written despite knowing th changes. My conclution then is that as an encounter it was only slightly above the curve (and basically because of the darkness trick). Which leads me to think that fully nerfing the summon monster SLA might bee too much. Giving back the standart action (but not the other 2 things) summoning would be just right.