How much more powerful would you consider an eidolon when compared to an animal companion or special mount of the same hd/level. This is not counting prestige classes, just base level classes, so summoner/druid/paladin.
It's a bit more powerful then an animal companion, and more options. However the summoner himself is much weaker then the druid. So it evens out.
Significantly more powerful, but that is balanced out by the druid/paladin being significantly more powerful than the summoner. That way the (imno) the eidolon/summoner is equivalent to the druid/animal companion or the paladin/bond.
-- david
Papa.DRB
How much more powerful would you consider an eidolon when compared to an animal companion or special mount of the same hd/level. This is not counting prestige classes, just base level classes, so summoner/druid/paladin.
It is impossible to fairly compare an eidolon to an animal companion to a familiar without taking the character classes into account as well.
Taken as a set, I think the summoner and his eidolon is easily as powerful as a druid with an animal companion or a wizard with a familiar (but in slightly different ways).
I didn't say i wanted a fair comparison taking the classes into account, i said just the 'pets' I would say it's easy to consider one better than another on purely the stats and ability of the 'pet'. I'm trying to gauge how much better.
is a mount a 3, an animal companion a 5, and an eidolon a 9? Is it closer to 1, 2, 10, or 4, 5, 6?
I guess I'm looking for feedback more from dm's and game playtesters than players.
They are more powerful, but are glass canons for the most part. Mount and Companion are the same thing, one just 3 levels lower. The Eidolon HP are sightly better as is BAB do to outsider HD. Although At level 1 he just has about 7 HP.
As I said it's better, how much depends on what type of Companion vs what eidolon build. As it can vary greatly.
Eidolon is *way* better.
Secondly, it is way more flexible, and way more interesting.
The make up of an eidolon can be changed at every level, to reconfigure to whatever the party needs. The Eidolon can make an ok caster, a good thief, a great combatant.
Thing to consider is that the Eidolon is an obviously unnatural creature. Druids with a strict interpretation of how nature should be would reject outright 'alien' creatures such as non-Elemental Outsiders as foreign or harmful entities.
The average commoner is going to run screaming with a full steaming load in his pants the instant he catches sight of it unless the PC has gone out of his way to make the Eidolon look gentle or non-agressive, and even then in a world of giants, dragons and golemns, normal people will be less than relaxed around another monster, no matter how well 'controlled' it is.
A Dire Bear might scare the hell out of a Farmer, but at least he can understand that it is just an animal, albeit one that could tear apart a shed with frightening ease. You confront him with an Eidolon maximised for combat and he's just going to fall to pieces as there is no way the 'average, normal' person is going to understand how some 7 foot tall 4-armed thing with a glowing rune on it's forehead can be a normal part of the world.
Of course, in such a magical campaign, the farmer might just shrug, spit and say "I've seen bigger."
It really depends what defines better. I did alot of playtesting with the eidolon at all 3 stages of its development so far. The eidolon is without a doubt more versatile, it can literally be and do almost anything. If you attempt to build an eidolon that is LIKE an animal companion such as for instance a large snake, and then try to make an eidolon that matches it's abilities, it is only slightly better. If you compare raw damage dealing ability with a tricked out eidolon, the eidolon is dramatically better at higher levels because it has so many more attack options.
For instance when we compared them, a large cat animal companion designed for damage was able to keep pretty close to a 'dog' like eidolon that was built around pounce, because the eidolon was kept to a similar number of attacks.