Mounted Melee Summoner

[Balin]

I was thinking of adding a long term re-occurring villain into the mix, and was wondering if a mounted Summoner would work. The idea is that he would be mounted on the Eilodon, and use his 3/4 BAB to go into hand to hand, with either a morning star or a long spear with Mage Armor protecting him.

Before I do this, I wanted to know a few things. Has anyone tried this variant before, and was it effective?
Should I make him a gnome, so that he can be mounted right at 2nd level, or wait until higher levels when I can large size the Eilodon?

If I don't go small in size, the best visual I wanted was of a Tiefling, with hooves. Any suggestions on what Tiefling abilities would be the best? I liked the +2 Cha, and DR/Cold Iron.

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Lurk3r]

Going gnome provides you with a good option to boost his eidolon with the alternative favored class points. He'll also be small, so he can fit into tight hallways and such- the reason many people advocate small cavaliers.

However, you trade out some power by doing so, and both human and half elf have better alternate fav. class choices for the eidolon.

As far as the need to mount at 2nd, I would say it depends on the levels you're running with. If the game is 1st to 8th and you want your recurring baddie to return 5 times, you might need him mounted at 2nd. If it's 1st to 15th or he only needs to return 3 times or suchlike, just wait on showing him until he's ready.

A tiefling summoner on the back of a satyr-thing would look badass.

[OmegaZ]

Summoner in my Kingmaker game was a gnome on a dragon-like eidolon. Worked pretty well, just make sure you keep your Ride skill up and can get a saddle made.

[Balin]

Any suggestions on the character made up in terms of feats?

[BigNorseWolf]

Grab a level of fighter or blow the feat to become proficient with the lance. Get Mounted combat, ride by attack and spirted charge, then charge for 3x (1d6+strength+whatever) The 3/4 bab matters far less when you're only making one attack. If someone hits your edilion, use mounted combat to negate the hit.

What level do you want the summoner at?

[The_Minstrel_Wyrm]

Balin wrote:

Any suggestions on the character made up in terms of feats?

Hi Balin,

You might want to check out Open Design's "Summoner's Circle" PDF... it offers 30 new feats (mostly summoner centric, but some work for any spellcaster IIRC). It also offers 3 sample builds for different types of summoners... and a mounted melee guy is one of the build types shown.

It was 3.99 for it, but worth it I think.

~Dean

[Glutton]

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Grab a level of fighter or blow the feat to become proficient with the lance.

Just take the gnome alternate racial feature that lets you be proficient with anything you make and dump points in weapon smithing. As a bonus you can pick up craft magic arms and armor later

[Xykal]

This build looked pretty interesting to me. Stat priorities are CHA > STR > CON > DEX

Human Summoner with a 1 lvl dip in Fighter

LVL Class Feat
1 Sum 1 Mounted Combat, Ride by Attack
2 Ftr 1 Spirited Charge
3 Sum 2 Weapon Focus: lance
4 Sum 3
5 Sum 4 Dazzling Display

Makes you decent at lvl 1 and very deadly at lvl 2. WF + Dazzling Display give you something to do after you've buffed and charged. Take a full round action to demoralize all enemies within 30'. Your high charisma makes you great at this right off the bat. Personally I would take Spell Focus (conjuration) at 7th and Augment Summoning at 9th, but there's no reason you couldn't take Intimidating Prowess, Skill Focus (Intimidate), and / or Persuasive to make you really quite good at demoralizing your enemies.

[Cassandro Crumbrow]

think about giving the quadroped eidolon wep proficiency lance as well because with the pounce evolution and all the arms he can muster he can attack with all the lances he can hold for double damage each while you the rider gets triple damage while riding him into his charge

eidolon feats
lvl1 Power attack
lvl3 multi weapon fighting
lvl6 martial weapon proficiency lance

gnome feats
lvl1 mounted combat
lvl3 ride by attack
lvl6 spirited charge

and with the gnome alternate that Glutton mentioned you wont need the martial weapon proficiency for the lance that you have

[Cassandro Crumbrow]

Alternatively if you bring him in after lvl 10 you could give your summoner the mount evolution and have your eidolon be small and bipedal and just give hime something like bastard sword proficiency with the multi weapon fighting feat and have one main hand and about a dozen off hand attacks all at around +9 to hit and if it takes double slice too it gets full str bonus to all the hits

i say about and around because i dont have a book on me

think about it, by level ten the eidolon can have a ring of invisibility on and you have a surprise death field next to the summoners threatend squares and you dont have to spec the summoner out for anything accept not taking an off hand ring and buying a special saddle that will fit himself

also this would require a medium pc

[Xraal]

Cassandro Crumbrow wrote:

Alternatively if you bring him in after lvl 10 you could give your summoner the mount evolution and have your eidolon be small and bipedal and just give hime something like bastard sword proficiency with the multi weapon fighting feat and have one main hand and about a dozen off hand attacks all at around +9 to hit and if it takes double slice too it gets full str bonus to all the hits

i say about and around because i dont have a book on me

think about it, by level ten the eidolon can have a ring of invisibility on and you have a surprise death field next to the summoners threatend squares and you dont have to spec the summoner out for anything accept not taking an off hand ring and buying a special saddle that will fit himself

also this would require a medium pc

Unless the summoner is a multilegged "long" creature that can pass for a "Quadruped" he can't take Mount.

[thepuregamer]

well the summoner could have himself turned into a centaur by polymorph any object. It should reach the 9 points of similarity to be permanent.

Then you could have your eidolon mount you if you so desired.