So playing summoner, which is my favorite class now btw, I discovered a method of kicking ass that...well makes me feel a little bit dirty for using it, to the point that i told my DM that it was perfectly fine to ban me doing it or house rule against it, but she didnt and here I am addressing the problem once and for all (hopefully).
When a summoner enters battle he or she will usually have its eidolon out,
say it reaches the summoners initiative and he send his quadruped eidolon out to pounce with around 4 attacks, thats cool, then the summoner takes his action and summons X creatures to then take THEIR full attacks on the target, rinse and repeat with summons (I prefer celestial lions for weight of attacks OR Celestial rhinos that take a charge instead of a full attack)
So is this a valid tactic? it seems cheesy as hell to me, a simple fix would be that the summoner always acts first, is that already a rule? can some one verify for me this tactic, Thanks.
I thought the base summoner had to had to have one or the other out. IIRC it takes a standard action to dismiss the eidolon, so he won't have an action left to summon any monsters.
The eidolon remains until dismissed by the summoner (a standard action).
Yeah I was correct. If the eidolon is out the summons can't be there in the same round.
As previous comment says, summoner can not use eidolon and Summon Monster Sp.
You could cast from your spell list to have both which I don't feel is overpowered since the summoned creature is probably not going to be that effective. Better to cast a buff or offensive spell in my opinion.
Also I'm of the opinion that your eidolon would have its own initiative and does not always act immediately on your turn.
Contributor; Developer, Super Genius Games
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Further the rules on spell-like abilities state they are standard actions "unless noted otherwise in the ability or spell description."
Summon monster has a casting time of 1 round, so if you dismiss your eidolon on round 1, you spend all of round 2 summoning, and the monsters appear just before your turn on round 3. The things you want to kill have lots of time to react, and there's no real way to make a one-two punch of eidolon attack/summoned monster attacks.
So i figured that if you summon a creature it just automatically unsummoned your eidolon, are you saying that it is required to dismiss your eidolon to use your summon monster, cause i knew they both couldnt be out at the same time, just not that you had to actively dismiss one first. and is that the same for using the summon monster SLA all previously summoned creatures from your SLA must be dead or actively dismissed before you can use your SLA again?
Yes so i read the book and you may have a point behind the Eidolon needing to be dismissed, but not the Summon monsters so the tactic still works for back to back summon monsters
if you are using your summon monster spell like ability clearly it wont work. if you selected summon monster as a spell known it still wont work because summon monster spells have a 1 round casting time. so if you start casting when your eidolon attacks your summon wont enter combat until your second round. but i have seen nothing that would disallow you to keep your eidolon out while you cast summon monster the spell.
I think you misunderstand cause it seems it would work, turn 1 summoner uses summon monster SLA to summon 1d3 celestial eagles next to the opponent, then each eagle takes a full attack, turn 2 assuming they all lived the round they each take a full attack before the summoner acts because its never stated who goes first, just that they act on the same turn, then as a standard action the summoner uses his summon monster SLA
to summon 1d3 celestial eagles, that then by the rules of the spell now take their turn to each make full attacks.
at this point we assume the summoner does not have an eidolon out. as both cant be out at the same time
I think people are getting from what I posted that I can have both my eidolon out and my summon monster SLA out at the same time, I know you cant do that, what im propossing is rapidly swapping them, but Wraith gave a good reason as to why i cant do that, but now im addressing just rapidly swapping out summon monster SLA
I am confused..
How about you break it down into steps and rounds showing the exactly what you mean.
Round1
standard
move
round 2
full for summons:
standard for summoner
full for new summons.
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If you are saying the new and old summons getting full round attacks is the issue then no matter what order the summoner acts in that will still happen.
The summon monster SLA's dont have to be swapped out. You just keep spamming summons. It can be an issue of the summoner novas, but that might be a bad idea, if he needs them later.
Addressing the OP and some of the followup: I'm pretty sure you need to spend the standard action to dismiss your Eidolon before using the summon monster SLA. The SLA has no note of getting rid of the Eidolon when you use it, and has a note that it can't be used when your Eidolon is out.
It does have a note of removing previous summons when you use it though, and replacing them with the new ones. So yes, you can summon on 1 round, let them attack, and then if they are still alive and kicking next round, you can let the attack once again, before summoning a new batch. Even if your initiative were technically slightly ahead of them, you could delay just a moment to push it down past them.
The drawback obviously would be the fact that you're burning through uses of a minutes/level ability every round, but I guess it does sound like a pretty effective way to nova like there's no tomorrow (or perhaps, like today will end soon).
That would be my interpretation anyway.
Also @ Owen: The Summoner's SLA does indeed note otherwise on the casting time. It's a standard action.
Darkwolf gets what I mean, that tactic just seems cheesy, effective and fun but cheesy. like Darkwolf said though, it burns through summon monster uses per day, i suppose its super effective mainly cause my summoner is running through the king maker adventure path and a lot of the time you only face 1 or 2 encounters per day due to all the traveling.
Kingmaker allows for novas due to the one encounter a day issue. If I run it again I would try to find a way to eliminate that.
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awwww your no fun ^_^, no i'm definetly on the same page with ya, this is the first game our DM has DM'd hence why i suggested house ruling againt my summon novas, well thanks for the help all, you did manage to teach me about the eidolon dismissal rule and i can rest easy knowing im not cheating while steam rolling over every encounter...until she gets mad and starts actively trying to kill us...
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If the summoner novae (?) are killing the fun, then opt not to do them. If doesn't take a house rule. You can police yourself. If they aren't killing the fun there is no issue.
This. You already seem concerned that summons novas are unbalancing and maybe spoiling the fun, you're probably right. Without knowing the other players it's hard to say, but few people will enjoy not getting to do much in combat as swarms of summons kill everything. If the other players are fine with it then cool, although it does seem a little unfair against a new GM who might not be sure what to do about it or even if they should do anything.
Personally I wouldn't use the strategy at all, stick with one summon and let the others shine and get a chance to show what they can do, if things should get so rough it's looking bad and the others can't cope, sure, step in and save the day with spam summoning, I suspect everyone would welcome you keeping their characters alive and you get to show off your powers.
There's also the fact it's simply good tactics to save back some powers, if the GM grows smart and starts throwing multiple fights a day at you you're left with much less to respond than usual.
What you're proposing seems like it might be viable as a way to get two sets of sull attacks per round from the Summon Monster SLA (though not the eidolon for reasons noted above). The Master Summoner archetype would be much better at this since it is allowed to use the ability multiple times concurrently without dismissing the creatures summoned by previous uses. It also gets more uses per day of the ability.
At higher levels you might find yourself feeling less overpowered as your summons begin to encounter more DR they can't overcome (that's when the Alchemist with Fast Bombs takes over as the "going nova" specialist)