The Summoner's Handbook

[Kazejin]

Cheapy wrote:

Personally, I find the Evolutionist abilities to be far superior than the base ones.

Evolve Base Form alone is awesome.

Evolve base form is okay. I personally don't see the need to have to switch base forms much (if at all); but I guess if you intentionally built yourself around the idea of being able to change eidolon forms every so often, then it can be useful... like, maybe you want a pouncer at lvX then go reach biped after reaching lvY or something... but I'd rather just build that way to begin with and save myself the trouble. That's just my personal taste though, as I can see it being useful... just unnecessary.

As for the Mutate Eidolon ability... 24-hours of uninterrupted concentration is a looooong time. I don't see it happening too often in any well-paced campaign; as even one stray encounter or unforeseen mishap will ruin your attempt. I guess it can be nice to have that flexibility when you need it, but I think its too much of a stretch to think you'd have an entire 24-hours to blow, unless you have a really generous GM. I guess if you can predict exactly what you'd need your eidolon to become for a certain adventure, at least a full day before starting said adventure, and your current one would either be too useless or too ineffective... then I guess that's the functional moment. But even that seems a little too iffy to me; seems like just making competent evolution decisions the first time would work just fine, and using Evolution Surge spells to compensate for the smaller oversights or shift in demands.

All that said though, I guess the abilities the Evolutionist gives up aren't necessarily godsends either so... salt to taste, I guess.

[Cheapy]

Rent a room at an inn for a day?

Use Create Demiplane, work there?

[Kazejin]

Cheapy wrote:

Rent a room at an inn for a day?

Use Create Demiplane, work there?

The point I wanted to get across is that, in order for the ability to be functional, you must have the base assumption that spending 24 hours is doable in the first place. That's a powerful assumption. Even if you can't be interrupted per se, I've seen a lot of campaigns where blowing a full day of activity would hurt more than help.

But even if you do have the full day to blow, the only reason for it to actually be necessary is if your eidolon is just so horrendously unprepared for the next activity it needs to perform. Which is easily negated by just making good decisions in the first place... Not to mention, the necessity of such an ability also hinges on whether or not someone else in the party can already fill the role that you are trying to force your eidolon into. If they can, then you're really just wasting a day that you may not even have. And minor niche tactics are rarely worth 24-hours of concentration beforehand.

Oh, and you still need to actually rest after those 24 uninterrupted hours are completed. It's certainly a cool ability, but I'm not seeing much practicality. Just seems like a lot of wasted adventuring time to me. But like I said, everyone has different gameplay experiences.

[Morien]

Pardon me if this has been asked before, but

Can a Eildon read tomes that increase stats?

[lastblacknight]

I can't see why they couldn't read a book. They start with an INT of 7 and only an INT of 3 is required to read a language.

(Some forms might need some help turning the pages though - no thumbs).

[The black raven]

Cheapy wrote:

nategar05 wrote:

45ur4 wrote:

What about the Evolutionist, anyone played it?

Master Summoner and Synthesist from my experience are always the primary choice for the players, thus making the basic Summoner class a little bit obsolete. Do you think also that the evolutionist renders even more obsolete the Standard Summoner?

I haven't used this archetype, but the free Transmogrify 1/day alone looks like it'd be worth considering. There could also be value in the other abilities, but you do give up some really good abilities to get it.

Personally, I find the Evolutionist abilities to be far superior than the base ones.

Evolve Base Form alone is awesome.

As an aside, Master Summoner and Evolutionist are compatible archetypes : your character can take them both (and I think mine will)

[TarkXT]

lastblacknight wrote:

I can't see why they couldn't read a book. They start with an INT of 7 and only an INT of 3 is required to read a language.

(Some forms might need some help turning the pages though - no thumbs).

I see no reason why this can't be done. If the gm gets twitchy you can just give the eidolon a point of linguistics and then point out how the int 5 fighter somehow reads just fine.

[Darkwolf117]

Linguistics shouldn't even be necessary. It is specifically mentioned that they know all languages their summoner does.

Summoner wrote:

An eidolon has the same alignment as the summoner that calls it and can speak all of his languages.

I suppose one could argue that doesn't mean they can necessarily read the languages, if they really wanted to argue about it, but...

[TarkXT]

Darkwolf117 wrote:

Linguistics shouldn't even be necessary. It is specifically mentioned that they know all languages their summoner does.

Summoner wrote:

An eidolon has the same alignment as the summoner that calls it and can speak all of his languages.

I suppose one could argue that doesn't mean they can necessarily read the languages, if they really wanted to argue about it, but...

But nothing if you want to pass it through that GM. And some won't allow it anyway as "Cheesy".

[Darkwolf117]

Fair enough. At that point though, I think the GM is taking their interpretation pretty far. Linguistics will likely not save you there, either :P

[Wiggz]

The black raven wrote:

Cheapy wrote:

nategar05 wrote:

45ur4 wrote:

What about the Evolutionist, anyone played it?

Master Summoner and Synthesist from my experience are always the primary choice for the players, thus making the basic Summoner class a little bit obsolete. Do you think also that the evolutionist renders even more obsolete the Standard Summoner?

I haven't used this archetype, but the free Transmogrify 1/day alone looks like it'd be worth considering. There could also be value in the other abilities, but you do give up some really good abilities to get it.

Personally, I find the Evolutionist abilities to be far superior than the base ones.

Evolve Base Form alone is awesome.

As an aside, Master Summoner and Evolutionist are compatible archetypes : your character can take them both (and I think mine will)

Verrrrrry nice. Not sure how I missed that one. Still think Wild Caller and Master Summoner should be compatible...

[Bobo D]

i apologize if this has already been said but isn't the best build to go for pounce grab rake?
(put everything else into claw attacks and str/size)
You have grab on lets say 4 claws:
hit 1: grab: rake twice: free action to end grapple
hit 2: grab: rake twice: (keep in mind that we have triggered rend three times now) release grapple
Rinse. Repeat

Also, what happens with multiple of the rake/rend evolutions?
And would rend trigger in all combinations of tow with multiple claw attacks?
meaning that you hit 4 times and:
1&2, 1&3, 1&4 2&3, 2&4. 3&4
for a total of 6 rends?
Edit: i apologize in advance for thread necromancy