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Hello all, just did my own playtest with the summoner in the roles of both PC and NPC, and the results shocked me a bit.
The party itself was between levels 7-8, with a lv8 unarmored fighter (two levels of monk), a lv7 unarmed barbarian (two levels of monk...again...) a lv7 conjuration specialized wizard, a lv8 ranged combat specialized fighter, and a lv8 summoner using an eidolon based on wielding a weapon. The battles in question were between EL 9-12, as I felt like giving the party a bit of a trial by fire that night. The summoner itself was using the original summon monster summon ability with a limit of one creature allowed at a time.
In combat, the bipedal Eidolon (named Espada de Muerte) ended up being the biggest damaged dealer in the party by far, it's attacks almost always hitting, and it's saves being higher than the rest of the party, but it's AC seemed to be lacking greatly, despite taking the natural armor boosting evolution. We increased the size of the creature to large, but most creatures battling the group were tagging it pretty easily, so it ran through it's HP (and that of it's summoner, who started off the fight by casting invisibility on himself) quite quickly in a level appropriate encounter. Espada seemed to be a massive glass cannon, dealing huge amounts of damage (but not too much more than the fighter, who had much better AC) and taking hits very easily. For this reason, I might do my next playtest with this creature allowing it to wear armor, to see if the difference in AC and it's staying power changes too greatly.
As for an NPC, the opposed summoner (named Rose Heartcross) was allowed to max out her summons, as per the original ability of the class. The encounter (which included Rose with a lesser quicken metamagic rod) was quite close, with the PCs also easily tagging the beast AC (this eidolon was built off of multiple claw attacks rather than wielding a weapon) also quickly running through both sets of hit points. The summoner herself proved to be a large factor in the battle, controlling the board with Black Tentacles, Wall of Fire/Ice, and Glitterdust, hampering the party greatly as the summon creatures pinged away at the party with ranged attacks (the eight summoned creatures were Azala, Bralani).
Overall, I can agree that the summon ability was only helpful as a standard action, as when I tried to make it a round long action, the option was ignored by the player, who simply went to using buff spells. But with it as a standard action as well as the minute per level, even the restriction of one creature was acceptable. As for the eidolon AC, I agree that having given the creatures full plate would have made them nearly invincible at that level, but as they were, they were far too easy to hit.
But honestly, I just really had fun trying out this awesome class as both a PC and NPC, and I look forward to seeing the finished product!
For the most part, it was a slug fest in either situation,