Initial Hypothesis: An unconscious Eidolon is a liability to a summoner. Based on that statement the summoner Life Link ability is worthless.
Eidolon: ... Eidolons are treated as summoned creatures, except that they are not sent back to their home plane until reduced to a number of negative hit points equal to or greater than their Constitution score. ...
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. The eidolon does not heal naturally. The eidolon remains until dismissed by the summoner (a standard action). ...
Life Link (Su): 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.
Summon Monster I (Sp): Starting at 1st level, a summoner can cast summon monster I as a spell-like ability a number of times per day equal to 3 + his Charisma modifier. Drawing upon this ability uses up the same power as the summoner uses to call his eidolon. As a result, he can only use this ability when his eidolon is not summoned. ...
Detailed Analysis:
Just like any other unconscious creature an unconscious Eidolon cannot do much. No huge revelations there. The problem is that even though the Eidolon is not of any use in this state he is still summoned which means the summoner cannot use any of his "Summon Monster" spell-like abilities. Which, from my viewpoint, is one of the Summoner's strongest abilities when the Eidolon is not summoned. Based on this it seems like the best course of action is to dismiss the Eidolon (assuming no one is going to heal it in the next round or two). The problem with that is if you dismiss the Eidolon with negative hit points he comes back with negative hit points. You would actually be better of killing the Eidolon so that it comes back with half hit points next time you summon it. Something just seems inherently wrong when the best course of action is to slit your own Eidolon's throat.
The summoner ability "Life Link" feels like it was created to handle this but, as written, generally does not handle this and in fact in most cases makes the situation worse. The only time it can be used is if the Eidolon takes enough damage to be sent back to its home plane and this only happens if the Eidolon takes damage that would put it to greater than negative constitution score. In my experience its a fairly rare experience for someone to be taken from positive HP's to below their constitution (otherwise known as Death) in one round. In that somewhat rare cases Life Link is useful. But for a majority of the cases a creature drops below negative constitution after they are already unconscious, either from additional damage being applied or by failing stabilization checks. In either case Life Link would only bring the Eidolon back to an unconscious state which, as hypothesized above, is not a good state for the Eidolon to be in.
Questions:
1) Am I missing something here? I've played D&D for 30 years but this is the first time I have played a summoner. Am I misinterpreting the rules? Am I making an incorrect hypothesis?
2) Am I misinterpreting how Life Link works? Did I miss a ruling on Life Link that would make it more effective? I did a fairly extensive search through the Paizo site. I found one forum post, from the beta test days, asking basically the same question about Life Link but that one never really got a full answer.
Am I misinterpreting the rules?
It doesn't seem so.
Am I making an incorrect hypothesis?
What is 'best' is subjective, so there's no real correct answer to that. While you may feel it's useless, others might not.
Did I miss a ruling on Life Link that would make it more effective?
There's a FAQ on life-link which removes the action requirement, making the ability actually useable in most situations. But whether or not you want to use the ability will vary by situation and player.
Sometimes it might be a good idea to let the Eidolon go back or dismiss it, other times it may be beneficial to keep it around so that it's not unavailable until the next day. The ability gives you an option, it's up to you if you want to use that option or not.
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Lifelink is specifically for preventing your Eidolon being dismissed due to death, not for returning it to positive HP.
If you wish to get your Eidolon up and about again, one of your options is the Life Conduit line of spells.
Re-summoning the unconscious Eidolon at negative HP is not an issue as it's a minute-long ritual you're using out of combat and you have time to use Infernal Healing or Rejuvenate Eidolon or have a party member heal it with a wand of CLW or other healing spell.
It makes diehard a much more interesting feat for eidolons than it generally is though.
Yea, this is exactly what I did with my summoner to resolve the issues with life-link.
As you get to higher levels, the chances of dropping from conscious to dead (unsummoned in the case of an eidolon) increase. That's because damage per hit scales up a lot faster than the Con score.
Basically, the harder the thing attacking the eidolon hits, the more likely it is that it will bypass unconscious and go straight to unsummoned, which means Life Link becomes more valuable at higher levels. But Diehard is a good option; so is dismissing the eidolon; in this case, you can resummon the eidolon immediately after combat, though it will require healing (which you presumably have time for). But if you unsummon it by doing more damage, you can't bring it back until the next day.
Also of note, Fast Healing can bring an eidolon from unconscious back to battle capacity if it doesn't immediately go poof.
That said, Seraphimpunk's probably got the right idea to really make them work together most suitably.
Also @ anon fem: Dismissing it is a standard action, which, if your eidolon just got knocked out, may be a turn you don't want to spend doing anything other than contributing to the battle. Hence, why it can actually be more useful to see the eidolon go from conscious to dead in one shot.
It occurs to me that until this thread I've just been taking my player at his word that Rejuvenate Eidolon and the like is the only way to heal the guy.
Looked back at the Eidolon page, and no mention of this.
Guess I never checked on that bit because I didn't think he'd give himself such a liability voluntarily.
It occurs to me that until this thread I've just been taking my player at his word that Rejuvenate Eidolon and the like is the only way to heal the guy.
Is he a Synthesist?
No, he's just a standard Summoner.
I just don't see anywhere on the Summoner page that says that.
Maybe he confused himself. Can't believe I never caught that until now, it's been like 8 sessions.
I think his other GM might have had that rule too, he was playing a Summoner there as well.
I've let him know that's not how I'm running it from now on unless (again) I've missed something that confirms it.
I have sen that error many times on these message boards. I think the cause is that people see the Rejuvenate Eidolon spells, correctly realize that they are more specialized versions of the Cure Wounds spells, but mistake the nature of the specialization -- it is a restriction (this spell heals only the caster's eidolon) and not a needed enhancement (since any general healing spell would heal an eidolon as well).
Yeah, that's the GM I meant. I'm "that" Umbrage ("Hairy Buddha" you called me, among other things.)
Aaaah, I didn't even make the connection.
You may be happy to know that Sun Xiao isn't nearly as...eccentric as Rusigari for the week after next.
He'll be your scouting buddy, most likely. Not nearly as good of stealth (+13 at most I believe) but his Perception's at +20 and he can take (read: dodge) some hits so you don't have to.
Thank you everyone for the responses. Definitely brought up some points that I had not considered.
@Maezer - Had not considered Diehard as an option. I will look at in more detail.
@Sammy T - I had not seen the Life-Conduit spells before. They bring up some interesting possibilities. Though with the limited number of spells that a Summoner may know and cast I would initially be predisposed to not using them. Maybe once i get higher level and have more spells to use (4th level right now).
@PhelanArcetus - You bring up a good point about dismissing the Eidolon and bringing him back after the combat when you have the time to heal him properly. I had initially dismissed this idea as it takes a standard action to do and in the middle of combat I generally have other things to do. But the fact that I can summon him back after combat (as opposed to having to wait for the next day if i let him die) makes it a very compelling option.
@Seraphimpunk - Your idea makes most sense to me. That's actually how I was initially playing it. Read through the "Life Link" rule and got it in my head that it was designed to keep the Eidolon up and running at the expense of damaging the Summoner. Wasn't until last session that I reread the rules and realized I was doing it wrong. Which is when I came hear to see if I was missing something :)