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Resources for this Discussion:
Champions of Purity: The Summon Good Monster Feat, found on the inside back cover. In short summary, it allows you to summon Foo Lions via Summon Monster IV and grants Diehard to the following monsters on the newly expanded list: Celestial Dire Wolf, Celestial Giant Eagle, Celestial Pegasus, Faerie Dragon, Foo Lion, Hound Archon, Pixie.
With all this laid out, I wanted to put a question to the community: Is the Foo Lion too strong a summon for its level? Does it obsolete the other melee-oriented summons available to Summon Monster IV? I'm worried that this might be the case. If it is so, is this a problem?
Compare it to the regular Lion. The Foo's defenses are flat-out equal or better in every way. They're of equal Speed, equal Size, and AC. Yet the Foo version has notably more HP (plus Diehard, which may or may not matter depending on how your GM interprets RAW), better saves, and several immunities the Lion won't get. Adding the Celestial template to the regular Lion helps a little on the defensive end, admittedly. However, the Foo Lion is definitely the better fighter; it posts higher attack bonuses and does more damage, unless Smite Evil is relevant (and while it often will be, it won't always be so). Add in an impressive Reach on the Foo version, and it seems that this is the superior summon in most cases. The regular/Celestial Lion is slightly better in regard to Combat Maneuvers, but I'm not sure this overrides the extra HP, attack bonuses, and Reach. Excepting corner cases, Foo Lion appears to obsolete Lion in this list.
I find similar results looking at the Foo Lion when comparing it to the Bison (admittedly they serve somewhat different combat roles), Dire Ape, Dire Boar, Medium Earth Elemental, Brown Bear, and arguably the Hound Archon (though the Hound has other benefits that keep it relevant).
Are we looking at a single summon that obsoletes several others on the core Summon Monster IV list? This is something I'd definitely like a lot of input on, as I'm concerned that using it on my PCs may be unfair to other players and inconsiderate to the GM; I don't want to bring in something obviously overpowered.
Meh. It's double-feat-tax, more if you take the feat that lets one summon same aura alignment critters. Clerics, conjurers, etc. need toys too!
Several of the customized summon lists provide options that are vastly superior to some of the existing ones. One of the customized lists even moves a creature from SM4 to SM2 :)
As Turin says, the option you refer to even requires a feat, so it should provide a strong benefit.
I'm not sure I see the problem. I'd sorta expect that if someone spends a feat to improve summoning, it will improve summoning. The question for me is, what about the other spell levels? Do they get anything nice?
V and VI by extension reap the benefit (V to summon 1d3 foo dogs of doom; VI for 1d4+1 foo dogs of doom). summon nature's ally got a raft of spiffy feats to play with in the Ultimate books as I recall.
Lol, oh paizo. I find it hilarious that this creature is meant to be CR 4. C'mon, that is a 5 or 6.
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Huh. These are surprising (and interesting) responses. To give a bit of context, I'm looking at this within the scope of a Celestial bloodline Sorcerer that does a lot of summoning (and flat-out refuses to summon Evil-aligned creatures unless forced to or there is genuinely, 100% no other way to resolve the situation)... so the expanded summoning list that this feat offered was very appealing.
While most of the other expanded Summon Monster lists in this context did not obsolete existing Core summons, the Foo Lion appeared to and I was kind of worried that it might upset GMs (Potentially overpowered?) and/or other players (would these Foo Lions be a little too good, such that they outshine the other players' melee-oriented characters instead of the summons being well-appreciated flanking partners as they usually are?).
The responses so far suggest people might not be all that upset though, and this is encouraging.
Zog: Absolutely. A quick list below. All creatures listed gain Diehard feat if they didn't already have it.
Summon Monster I arguably gets nothing (it depends on how you play Diehard on Summons, as SM1's only expansion is granting Diehard to 6 of the 8 Core summons).
Summon Monster II gets the Faun, Grig (no Fiddle ability but still very useful) and Pseudodragon. Celestial Octopus and Celestial Wolf gain Diehard.
SM3 gets Blink Dogs (which admittedly suck, since Summons can't use Teleport effects), Foo Dogs (situational upgrade to the Hyena, I suppose. Not amazing, but it has value in some corner cases), Lyrakien Azata, and Silvanshee Agathion. Also adds Diehard to Celestial Shark and Lantern Archon.
SM4 adds Celestial Giant Eagle, Celestial Pegasus, Faerie Dragon, Foo Lion, and Pixie. Adds Diehard to Celestial Dire Wolf and Hound Archon.
SM5 adds Djinni, Unicorn, Vulpinal Agathion. Adds Diehard to Bralani Azata, Celestial Orca (or else the Orca is a wholly new option. Either way, it's in there).
SM6 adds or improves (via adding Diehard) Celestial Giant Octopus, Kirin, Legion Archon, Lillend Azata, Wood Giant.
Summons 7-9 get some nice stuff too, but I have no expectation of ever getting to use those.
It is at any rate a really fun feat with a lot of flavor.
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What, a greatsword at Str 19, with Power Attack? That's 2d6+12 damage, with the [good] type.
Add to that 51hp with DR 10/evil, Aura of Menace, Magic Circle against Evil... it's quite durable.
The Foo Lion is somewhat better than the Celestial Lion, but not more than reasonable for the price of a feat; compare to what Augment Summons does.
The thing I'm puzzled about though is the reach - why does the Foo Lion have 10ft reach? Neither a normal lion nor the Foo template grants that additional reach.
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The celestial lion doesn't have the [good] type, and it's smite is NOT paladin smite, so doesn't penetrate all damage reduction. The smite doesn't do anything to non-evil either, and is useful against only one enemy, while the rake attacks are harder to use when not charging.
Also, the archon has a bite attack and can default to slam attacks in case of a grapple.
In my experience though, it's the archon's high staying power that's been most important. We keep fighting a bunch of pretty nasty corrupted earth elementals that pretty constantly hit, but the archon's DR means that it just keeps going and going. The archon hits hard enough to keep their attention and we really need it to tank because we don't want to get grapple-level drained.