Now that the playtest forum is closed, I guess this is the appropriate place to post this.
During the playtest, my group kept giving negative reactions to the Summoner class. They just didn't like it. After mulling over their issues with the class, I realized that it really came down to the fluff text on what the Eidolon was. They had problems with the summoning and mutating (evolving?) of some amorphous outsider. So, I came up with a simple solution that seemed to appease them quite well.
The Eidolon is a pseudo-golem, not an outsider. It's more of a homunculus or Frankenstein's monster than a true construct. I still need to work out the implications and balance issues involved in this charge, but from a flavor perspective, my players love it.
With the CHA based casting, the Summoner is almost a Sorcerer with this flavoring. Instead of a familiar, or demon claws or whatever the other bloodlines would have given a Sorcerer, he gets the ability to have a super familiar (of sorts).
Thoughts? Help with balance issues and suggestions on how to handle an appropriate (type) change on the Eidolon would also be appreciated.
Just remember that being an outsider doesn't give the eidolon many perks, but being a construct comes with its own set of perks and headaches based on creature type. Also, how do you reconcile the large construct with the summoner's ability to summon things via his other class abilities, flavor-wise? He sounds like he built the eidolon, but otherwise summons minions?
@Lathiira: Conjuration spec'd semi-Sorc. And yeah, I know that turning its type into (Construct) opens up all sorts of issues, hence wanting a little help on that. I don't want to give it the immunities of being a construct. I just don't want the Eidolon to be some eldritch being from beyond the veil. If the Summoner is determining what the thing presents itself as, why not just say that he's making the thing?
I think you could also re-theme it as a manifestation of the hidden psyche of the caster. They aren't summoning an outsider but rather summoning a portion of the Id that the ego and super-ego can shape and command.
Thus you get a typically weak caster being able to summon some idealized dreamself (whether humanoid or animal or crazy amalgam).
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Otherplanar summoner - conjures up unformed 'stuff' from the CN (Limbo / Maelstrom), CE (Abyss) or CG (Elysium?) realms and infuses it with form, imposing his will on the quasi-sentient unformed stuff of other realities.
Spirit-summoner - conjures up necromantic 'ectoplasm' and forms it into a horrible monster from the underworld, made of mashed-up soulstuff. It lives to send more souls screaming to the underworld, held in check by it's summoner's compulsions.
Psyche-summoner - calls up a monster composed of tangible psychic energy from his own subconscious, a tulpa or 'thoughtform.' It sometimes reveals a bit too much of the summoner's inner mental landscape, desires, fears, etc., and he has recently learned to summon it up with its mouth stitched shut...
Dream-caller - taps into a 'dream dimension' to make manifest a composite nightmare creature disgorged from the Dreaming. Unlike Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers and Wizards, the Dream-Caller has a very real and thematic reason for needing to sleep for eight hours to recharge his creation! He has to make a journey deep into the darker recesses of the dreaming when he wants to reshape his creation, as well, which may take several nights of 'directed dreaming' through phantasmagorical landscapes as he shapes what actively does not want to be shaped.
Cobblepot the Flesh-Tinker - assembles a creation (My creation! It's alive! Alive! Mwahahaha!) from bits of this and that, stolen from monsters he faces. Repairs his creation in a similar fasion. When it is destroyed, he is assumed to have to rebuild it from the gory remains, from conjured stitching and tools of bone that appear at his mental command and vanish when he is done. This work occurs while others are sleeping, and on the nights he must repair his creation, he goes into a trance like zombie state, repairing his creation, but inexplicably not being fatigued the next morning. No mechanical changes, as he's assumed to be able to repair it from even scraps of tissue, magically forced to regenerate itself overnight.
Aluriyah of the Smokeless Fire - made a pact with her genie ex-lover, who sends her a servant of the smokeless fire to attend to her needs, thanks to her having outmaneuvered him in a game of chance. The servant is indeed made of smokeless fire, and she has learned to force it to manifest in various forms, it's 'true form' being formless elemental proto-substance, like the stuff from which genies make illusions and material goods and wishes.
Delving into the realms of Alternate Class Features, it would be simple enough for the Summoner to have the ability to call up a creature with the Undead, Elemental, Construct, Fey or Plant type, instead, with some specific Evolutions appropriate to that type (ability drain, incorporealness, burn, whirlwind, drench, pollen cloud, thorny vines, etc.), but being restricted from calling up a 'normal' Eidolon. Some of these types have better lists of immunities, and so might end up starting at Size Small (Construct and Undead, for instance) and have to purchase Size Medium as an Evolution, making a 1st level Undead Summoner likely to have an Eidolon not much better than a 2 HD skeleton or zombie, while a 1st level Construct Summoner might have something along the lines of an Artificer's Homonculous (from Eberron), and not be able to afford a human-sized 'golem' right off the bat.
Flavor is the easiest tweak to make.
I'd be more concerned about the mechanics.
I am concerned about the mechanics. Mechanics are, however, somewher inextricable from fluff. If I decide that the Eidolon is a crafted creature and not some extraplanar being, but it still has the (outsider) type, then stuff won't make sense. "Wait! It's a golem! Why did banishment send it away?" I need to figure a balance point where the class has acceptable fluff (for my group at least) while not destroying the mechanical balance.
Starting it small sized and making them buy "medium" is a good start, or simply paring down the number of evolution points available for a (construct) over an (outsider).
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I am concerned about the mechanics. Mechanics are, however, somewher inextricable from fluff. If I decide that the Eidolon is a crafted creature and not some extraplanar being, but it still has the (outsider) type, then stuff won't make sense. "Wait! It's a golem! Why did banishment send it away?"
Off the top of my head;
Golems are animated / infused with elemental spirits (usually), or perhaps the souls of the dead or outsider spirits or whatever (in variations), which *can* be banished, perhaps, leaving the crafted creature an inert lump that loses functionality until it's 'animus' can be recalled. Perhaps the animus is able to shape a new 'corpus' or 'shell' from the surrounding matter (organic in the case of dead souls, rocks and metals and whatever in the case of the 'golem' option), allowing the Summoner to not have to haul his 'banished' golem's 5000 lb. carcass around until he can recall the animating spirit the next day.
Perhaps only a small piece of the clockwork contraption is necessary, and the rest of the 'machine' grows and self-assembles out of extraplanar gearworks from Mechanus or whatever. (Or, for a Frankenstein / corpsecrafted / plant-creature Eidolon, the head / heart / whatever is saved, and the process of calling the undead / fey / etc. spirit back the next day causes the part to regenerate the missing tissue in moments.)
Golems are animated / infused with elemental spirits (usually), or perhaps the souls of the dead or outsider spirits or whatever (in variations), which *can* be banished, perhaps, leaving the crafted creature an inert lump that loses functionality until it's 'animus' can be recalled. Perhaps the animus is able to shape a new 'corpus' or 'shell' from the surrounding matter (organic in the case of dead souls, rocks and metals and whatever in the case of the 'golem' option), allowing the Summoner to not have to haul his 'banished' golem's 5000 lb. carcass around until he can recall the animating spirit the next day.
This, I like. I will pass that along to the group.
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Golems are animated / infused with elemental spirits (usually), or perhaps the souls of the dead or outsider spirits or whatever (in variations), which *can* be banished, perhaps, leaving the crafted creature an inert lumpThis, I like. I will pass that along to the group.
Glad ya like it. The class has a ton of potential, even if the selection they made has some inherent limitations. I'd love to see some decent Alternate Class features for undead / construct / plant / elemental / etc. 'summoners,' since it would be fairly easy to do, rather than going through all the effort of making a new base class with only that singular difference.
If you don't like the flavor maybe ass some Black Pepper, a little garlic, and some Ginger
:)
LOL! As soon as I saw the thread title, I started thinking of this joke. You beat me to it!
I think you meant to say "add", however.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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And Set, this is why you're so cool.
I've been playing my Summoner as a little halfling guy who kept trying to be a Sorcerer, and never quite getting the hang of it, until his family was brutally murdered. Now they "return to life" as ectoplasmic creatures. As his career with the Pathfinder Society has progressed, his "wife" and "son" and "family dog" have gotten stranger and stranger. His wife now appears to be a 10-foot-tall lobster-headed humanoid with a deep blue chitinous shell, beetle wings, and pincers, whom he calls Buttercup.
Best tabletop discussion so far:
Player Who Hasn't Been Paying Attention - Uh oh! Is that another bad guy on that rooftop?
My character, livid - I've already told you! That's my wife.
(awkward silence)
Other Player - To be fair, that doesn't really answer the question.
I think you and your players are misunderstanding the flavor of the Eidolon. It is NOT amorphous. It's actually already pretty much what you want it to be. The physical form of the Eidolon is just a shell created by the summoning ritual, which is animated and inhabited by a fraction of some undefined Outsider's spirit. The Outsider itself is never summoned. You never see its form, and its form and powers are completely unaffected by being used as an Eidolon. The Eidolon is conceptually almost identical to a Golem, except that it's living and it's powered by outsiders, not elementals.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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And Set, your "otherplanar summoner" and "psyche-summoner" concepts get around one of the big issues I have with a major aspect of contemporary D&D gameplay.
I don't want to derail this thread, and I imagine that it would, if left free to run. But by making the Eidolon an aspect of the PC's will or psyche, you make sure that it's the player who runs the Eidolon character.
Some gaming groups allow players to run their own NPC cohorts, intelligent familiars, and animal companions. In other groups, the DM runs all the NPCs. (That's what the "N" stands for.) "Old school D&D", informed by the 1st Edition AD&D DMG, is pretty unambiguous: NPC henchmen have their own agendas and it's a rare player who can keep the henchman's interests separate from the PCs, so that job falls to the DM.
The 3rd Edition rules are silent as to which is more appropriate. Everybody at Paizo plays in a style that allows players to see their character's cohort's full stats, and allows them to play the cohort as an uncomplaining minion, doing whatever the PC asks. So, by setting the Eidolon up as a slave to the Summoner's will, rather than an NPC aspect of an Outsider with its own agenda, Jason is tacitly assuming a style of game play where players control their character's NPCs. Designing the Eidolon so that it is a puppet resolves the issue.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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For most gamers in my sphere, even an oldster like me who quite happily left the 1st Edition mindset behind long ago... it was never an issue to start with.
Hey, let's start this as its own thread.
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And Set, your "otherplanar summoner" and "psyche-summoner" concepts get around one of the big issues I have with a major aspect of contemporary D&D gameplay.
I don't want to derail this thread, and I imagine that it would, if left free to run. But by making the Eidolon an aspect of the PC's will or psyche, you make sure that it's the player who runs the Eidolon character.
It may be the controllers psyche made manifest, but we can see from sources as classic as Forbidden Planet with it's 'monsters of the ID,' to the modern X-Factor comic, where Madrox's 'dupes' begin to express less-than-savory aspects of his personality, the Eidolon-as-Tulpa concept doesn't necessarily mean that the Eidolon is going to be a slave. It could easily represent aspects of the summoner's personality that he has no other way of expressing, being rude, crude, irascible, etc. or even manifest behaviors that he finds embarassing, such as revealing secret fears to all and sundry, or flirting with people that he claims to find uninteresting.
As long as neither DM nor player goes too far out of line (the DM making the player feel like his Eidolon is a curse, not a blessing, the player treating the thing like a disposable 'thing'), it should have a lot of interesting wiggle room in the middle.
It's really the first base class that gives a character a serious role-playing opportunity, even in a party of one, since Druid Companions are pretty dim bulbs, and even a Wizard's Familiar has it's own inequalities banging around.
It would be easy enough to describe a Summoner as a weak-willed young fool who summons up his Eidolon as a sort of imaginary friend who beats up people who were mean to him, at first. As he grows older, his 'imaginary friend' might begin to whisper things to him, unpleasant things, not as a result of some fiendish influence (although he might sell himself on such a notion), but because the Eidolon is reflecting his own deep feelings of insecurity and powerlessness, as a need to lash out on those who made him feel that way. He justifies his own pettiness and vindictiveness by claiming that the 'demon' has been whispering to him, and that it's not his fault...
Turning that on it's head, a mercenary soul who thinks of himself as bitter and abandoned might regard his Eidolon as an 'angel' come to save him and show him a better path. He's so 'damaged' by life that he's not fully capable of recognizing his own potential for redemption and turning his life around, and so he externalizes his rise out of whatever existential ennui or despair or grief had gripped him with 'heavenly guidance' from the 'angel' who comes to give him counsel (and smite the wicked!).
Love your idea of the Halfling who is convinced that his Eidolon is the spirit of his family, unable to accept their deaths, and clinging to this increasingly inhuman-looking Eidolon rather than 'let them go.' Another oldie, but a goodie, with movies like Metropolis showing individuals who refuse to let go to a loved one, and create something else that is *wildly* disimilar and thinking of it as a continuation of their loved one. Great stuff!
Ever played Geneforge? ;)
The summoner isn't a magician or a wizard, but a scientist - someone who has begun mastering life itself. Not one lead by intelligence, however, but by creativity and inspiration. The eidolon is crafted, yes, but it's not a construct. It's an outsider that was somehow brought into being, and then given - constantly - new form. As the summoner goes, he learns more intricacies of shaping the eidolon, and indeed of forming life itself. In fact, while has magical talent of his own, his ability to shape and carve life into new substances and creatures lets him do it completely outside of his spellcasting.
I'm playing a Summoner right now in a homebrew/Castle Whiterock game. Unfortunately we got started too late to contribute anything to the APG playtest, but our first session was a lot of fun, and the second is coming up this week. Anyhow, I thought of a lot of roleplaying ideas for my Summoner.
I have a mageknight mini called "tattooed man". He has a bunch of blue ink tattoos, and one of a Chinese dragon (sculpted in transluscent blue plastic) seems to be coming off his skin. I thought it might be cool if his summoning consists of making his tattoos "come to life". While this sounded cool I wasn't sure hwo I wanted to RP him. I also want to make custom minis for the eidolon and some of the summoned monsters, and I'm not sure if I'd be able to find a good material for transluscent blue tattoo monsters. I still think the idea is cool though.
I also thought of having a psychedelic kind of Tommy Chong PC with an eidolon that talked like Cheech. The idea would be that Chong is hallucinating the monsters but his hallucinations are so powerful and infused with magic that they become quasi-real(kind of like Shadow Conjuration).
While both of those ideas would probably be more entertaining in some ways what I ended up going with is just a weird Asian themed mage (think Akiro from the Conan movies) who lives in a yurt and tends to summon things with vaguely human faces which look a little like his. I haven't really decided if this is because he's summoning up some aspect of his inner self (or possible selves from alternate realities?) or just because I'd like to summon 3 bouncing green heads like the ones in Spirited Away at some point. The eidolon is likely to grow into an acid spitting giant centipede with a human head, but I guess it is basically still an outsider.
I'm sure other players could come up with more and better ideas on how to style the summoner. I don't think most of these ideas would need to have any effect at all on game mechanics though. I suppose if you really wanted to go with sort of a Dr. Frankenstein and decided that it really mattered that the eidolon should be a construct, undead, plant, etc instead of an outsider the DM could balance out the change pretty easily. The real problem is probably the summon monster spell-like ability. It might be easy to depict early summons as little robot-like things the summoner hauls around with him, but sooner or later this might become impractical.
What might interest me might be some kind of Summoner/Alchemist combination or PrC, kind of a Mad Scientist who creates life in a lab and also throws smoking vials of acid and worse substances at people. using alchemical reagents to grow vermin to dangerous sizes or employing quasi-scientific equipment to summon creatures from beyond which exist not in the spaces we know but between them might impart some of the same flavor without as many mechanical changes. I don't know...just some ideas...