What was the original intent of Life Link vs. Fused Link?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


So I was looking at the Summoner's Life Link ability.
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Life Link:
Starting at 1st level, a summoner forms a close bond with his eidolon. Whenever the eidolon takes enough damage to send it back to its home plane, the summoner can, as a free action, sacrifice any number of hit points. Each hit point sacrificed in this way prevents 1 point of damage done to the eidolon. This can prevent the eidolon from being sent back to its home plane.

And then I looked at the archetype Synthesist life link replacement

Fused Link:
Starting at 1st level, the synthesist forms a close bond with his eidolon. Whenever the temporary hit points from his eidolon would be reduced to 0, the summoner can, as a free action, sacrifice any number of his own hit points. Each hit point sacrificed this way prevents 1 point of damage done to the eidolon (thus preventing the loss of the summoner’s temporary hit points), preventing the eidolon from being sent back to its home plane.
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The similarity between these character features is very close, but the main difference is that Fused Link is a lot better than Life Link, because it can be activated before the Eidolon goes unconscious.

Did the developers mean for Life link to only be activated when the Eidolon is unconscious and bleeding to death? Or did the Developers mean for Life Link to work more like Fused Link?


I am just curious as to why if it was actually meant to work in the same way or if it was a mistake that got overlooked?


Unlike a normal summoner, a synthesist's eidolon is not a seperate creature and is essentially treated as an augment to the synthesist himself and as such has no -CON score to go to for the purposes of life link.


Wasn't the original intent for Life Link to prevent the eidolon from falling below zero (at which time it would return to its plane in the playtest version)? I think that's how it was in the playtest, anyway.

As it is now, I think most agree that its utterly useless.

Thanks for bringing this up! It's something that I've been wanting to discuss with my DM to houserule.

:)


It is a bit clunky, like much of the summoner class in that it might be better to have the eidolon take a single hit taking it down to -20 hitpoints instead of taking it down to -1 hitpoints. I have to wonder wether that was the intent, though I will play it RAW until judged otherwise.


The life link "class feature" as is written reminds me of the Roll with the blow class feature of the rogue which was just as useless.

Roll with the blow was something like "If the rogue takes enough damage in one hit to kill him, reduce that damage by half, this damage can still kill the rogue."

Pathfinder has since gotten rid of the Roll with the Blow ability.


Also, if you play with a mathematician things get really bad when the eidolon dies.

When the Eidolon dies it comes back with half of its pool of hit points.

Let's say that the eidolon has 30 hit points max, with a con score of 13.

When it comes back to life, most people would say that it comes back with half of its hit points, so 15.

But if you look at the HP pool it is 30+13, for total hit points before death, Total = 43. Half of 43 is 21.5 worst case scenario we round down to 21, now subtract the hit points for unconsciousness, namely 13. Now The Eidolon is alive and well with half of his pool of hit points 8 hit points.

I know it seems wrong, but to get absolutely technical it can be argued to be correct.


Nope.

Quote:
A summoner can summon his eidolon in a ritual that takes 1 minute to perform. When summoned in this way, the eidolon hit points are unchanged from the last time it was summoned. The only exception to this is if the eidolon was slain, in which case it returns with half its normal hit points.


Could someone explain to me how Life Link is useless? I don't get where you're coming from with that sentiment.

Liberty's Edge

I believe his point is that, as written, and with no other factors in play, all it does is prevent the eidolon from going below (-Con) hp.

If the damage is coming in small amounts (less than (Con) each time), then the eidolon will already be unconscious. Thus, the Summoner is bleeding hp, but the eidolon is still not contributing to the fight. Thus, using Life Link can be viewed as merely delaying the inevitable.

Life Link normally only keeps a conscious eidolon fighting, if the damage is greater than (Con), allowing the Summoner to absorb the damage. However, does the Summoner really want to be taking hits like that, given his d8 Hit Die and light armor?

Its usefulness is very much variable, dependent on whether the Eidolon has the Diehard feat. If that is the case, then it can continue to act in the negative hit points, and thus, sacrificing a few hp to keep it from going over (-Con) is much less of a gamble, since it can attempt to retreat to safety, drink its own cure potions, or just bash the enemy that was pestering it.

Liberty's Edge

Incidentally, since you're all deep in thought about Life Link, may I ask that you pass by THIS thread, which highlights what I think is a far more thorny issue with the ability as written?


Dangleberry Tagnut wrote:

I believe his point is that, as written, and with no other factors in play, all it does is prevent the eidolon from going below (-Con) hp.

If the damage is coming in small amounts (less than (Con) each time), then the eidolon will already be unconscious. Thus, the Summoner is bleeding hp, but the eidolon is still not contributing to the fight. Thus, using Life Link can be viewed as merely delaying the inevitable.

Life Link normally only keeps a conscious eidolon fighting, if the damage is greater than (Con), allowing the Summoner to absorb the damage. However, does the Summoner really want to be taking hits like that, given his d8 Hit Die and light armor?

Its usefulness is very much variable, dependent on whether the Eidolon has the Diehard feat. If that is the case, then it can continue to act in the negative hit points, and thus, sacrificing a few hp to keep it from going over (-Con) is much less of a gamble, since it can attempt to retreat to safety, drink its own cure potions, or just bash the enemy that was pestering it.

Sometimes delaying the inevitable is plenty. If the Eidolon ends in negatives and is unconscious then it's likely that the enemies hitting it will move on to other targets that can still pose an active threat to them (unless they have it out for the eidolon at which point nothing would save it) leaving you able to heal it after battle or just distract whoever is attacking it.


Betatrack wrote:


Sometimes delaying the inevitable is plenty. If the Eidolon ends in negatives and is unconscious then it's likely that the enemies hitting it will move on to other targets that can still pose an active threat to them (unless they have it out for the eidolon at which point nothing would save it) leaving you able to heal it after battle or just distract whoever is attacking it.

I have yet to meet a DM who hasn't taken the opportunity to coup de grace a scrub/disposable character if given half a chance. The DM has used a coup de grace on my buddy's eidolon at least 2 times when it has fallen below 0.

When asked why the DM stated the following reasons:
1. It is a disposable character and you lose nothing by letting me kill him.

2. It is awesome to be able to coup de grace characters, even disposable ones.

3. It lets the party have a chance to take attacks of opportunity against the main bad guy, which is awesome.

4. It takes one of the biggest damage dealers out of combat for the day.

5. I know you won't use Life Link if I can deal more than 40 points of damage.

Had Life Link worked as intended, this wouldn't have even been an issue.

Essentially if the enemies pick new targets, that is because the DM is choosing not to metagame, or he is choosing to metagame. Depending on how you look at it.

Scarab Sages

Whether I use coup de grace as a GM is very much dependent on the enemies' intelligence and motivation.

Many will simply go for the next active opponent, in an attempt to reduce the number of attacks being brought against them. Some will attempt to carry off a downed PC as dinner, if they have a means of escape that they don't think can be followed.

If an intelligent enemy knows the PCs have lots of healing, especially ranged healing, they may prefer to risk an AoO, to make sure a downed foe stays down.


Mogart wrote:
Betatrack wrote:


Sometimes delaying the inevitable is plenty. If the Eidolon ends in negatives and is unconscious then it's likely that the enemies hitting it will move on to other targets that can still pose an active threat to them (unless they have it out for the eidolon at which point nothing would save it) leaving you able to heal it after battle or just distract whoever is attacking it.

I have yet to meet a DM who hasn't taken the opportunity to coup de grace a scrub/disposable character if given half a chance. The DM has used a coup de grace on my buddy's eidolon at least 2 times when it has fallen below 0.

When asked why the DM stated the following reasons:
1. It is a disposable character and you lose nothing by letting me kill him.

2. It is awesome to be able to coup de grace characters, even disposable ones.

3. It lets the party have a chance to take attacks of opportunity against the main bad guy, which is awesome.

4. It takes one of the biggest damage dealers out of combat for the day.

5. I know you won't use Life Link if I can deal more than 40 points of damage.

Had Life Link worked as intended, this wouldn't have even been an issue.

Essentially if the enemies pick new targets, that is because the DM is choosing not to metagame, or he is choosing to metagame. Depending on how you look at it.

The GM I play with has never coup de graced anything in games I've been in because (both out of game meta and in game) the enemies have better things to do with their actions than finish off an opponent who's already out of the fight. Even me and the other players never finish off downed enemies because we know they aren't going to be contributing to the combat anymore and we'll have ample time to finish them off afterwards.

And anyway those are great meta reasons to coup de grace an eidolon, but not so great in game, and I believe the GM shouldn't metagame any more than players should. Why would the enemy continue beating on an unconscious opponent instead of going after the other people attacking him (there are exceptions to that of course, but in general)? And the summoner does lose something if his eidolon is killed, he can't summon it again until the next day, leaving him with significantly less power than normal (obviously, this isn't a permanent loss and you'd expect it to happen occasionally, but that's not the same as losing nothing).


I would like to point out that Life Link and Fused Link function in exactly the same manner. Both allow you to sacrifice your own hit points when damage would un-summon the Eidolon. Remember, Synthesist Eidolons unsummon when the temporary hit points hit 0, which is the same as normal Eidolons hitting -Con.

The difference here isn't with the Life/Fused Link, but with the point where Eidolons unsummon from damage, and the intent there is explicit and clear in both cases. Normal Eidolons explicitly state that, unlike normal summoned creatures, they do not vanish until they hit -Con hit points; Fused Eidolons explicitly state that they vanish when the temporary hit points they grant have been reduced to 0.

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