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Foreword: This article assumes your character is a Wizard or Sorcerer willing to meet the pre-reqs below. I assume Summoners can do most of the same tricks and likely do them better, but I'm writing this from the perspective of the older classes instead. Other classes may benefit as well.
Pre-requisites: Summon Monster II spell, Summon Good Monster feat. Augment Summoning is strongly advised and I will assume your character has it when I use any specific numbers.
Pseudodragons are not a standard summoning option, and at first they don't seem like an effective one when compared to heavy-hitting peers such as the Small Earth Elemental or other fliers such as Small Air and Small Lightning Elemental. Yet a closer look reveals several advantages, ones that reward clever players. Most valuable around levels 3 to 6, it nonetheless maintains some uses up to a few levels beyond that. Its ability to Fly while delivering Sleep Poison is an impressive threat, one that most opponents will go out of their way to attack if they're aware of this factor. If they aren't, a single lucky sting could put them to Sleep. You'll learn about both its combat uses and more subtle benefits here.
Pseudodragon Stats on Paizo.com PRD
Where my numbers disagree with the PRD, Augment Summoning is usually why.
Combat
At a glance:
Tiny Dragon (tail has 1 square of Reach)
AC 16
HP 19
SR 12
Immune Paralysis, Sleep
Diehard Feat added via Summon Good Monster is backed by a Constitution score of 17.
Melee: Sting +6 (1d3+0 plus Sleep Poison, DC 16, 5 ft-Reach), Bite +6 (1d2+0, no Reach!)
Speed 15 ft. ground movement, 60 ft. flight (Good maneuverability, Fly skill is +15).
Low-Light Vision, Darkvision 60 ft., Blindsense 60 ft.
Languages are Draconic and Telepathy 60 Feet.
Str 11, Dex 15, Con 17, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 10
Align Neutral Good
So we have a fairly mobile flier that does very low damage per hit, but has impressive durability for a CR 1 creature. The Bite isn't much use due to its lack of reach, but the tail's Sting is excellent. 1D3 damage is negligible, but Sleep can shut down an opponent in one hit; this requires a little luck yet is plausible. So, what can he do for you? Broadly, four things.
Hunting arcanists and other low Fortitude targets: Most arcane classes have a low Fort save, and fixing it requires significant resources. This means if you've identified such an opponent, you can tell the Pseudodragon to specifically go after them. It's Int 10 and most readings of Telepathy allow it to overcome language barriers, so the Pseudodragon will understand what you want. It will fly over there, deliver a Sleep-poison Sting, and that will usually be the end of the matter. Even if the spellcaster does make their Fort save, the Pseudodragon will be sticking around for a few more rounds and will simply keep trying. In other words, the mage now has a huge problem right in their face and must do something about it. Regardless of whether the mage falls asleep, calls for help from the front lines to protect it, or fights the Pseudodragon itself, you have relieved a lot of pressure on the party!
Flanking: Since the tail threatens out to 5 feet, the Pseudodragon can fly behind enemies and provide flanking to one of your allies. If it puts higher-AC, higher-Fortitude front line enemies to sleep then that's a fantastic bonus that lets your front-line allies move on to the next target all that much sooner, but granting +2 to hit for an ally is nice on its own.
Tanking: I'm absolutely serious. Sleep Stings are a huge threat to enemies; if they're aware of the possibility then they will react to it. This means they'll try to hit the Pseudodragon. While AC 16 isn't exceptional, having 19 HP plus Diehard with Con 17 is. Some summoning characters can even add Damage Reduction to them, making this even more effective. Toss a Pseudodragon at something it has an even halfway realistic chance of hitting and causing to fail the DC 16 Fortitude save, and most foes will give it very focused attention.
Spotter: They have Blindsense out to 60 feet. This isn't as good as Blindsight, but it's still enough for them to know what square an invisible foe is in. The Pseudodragon can then either swoop in and try to hit them (though Concealment will still apply), or fly above the target. If your character tells it to point at the invisible enemy's location, the Pseudodragon could then just tip its tail in the right spot. This will let martial characters take a swing at the correct square (Concealment, again, will still be in effect) while spellcasters and those willing to use splash weapons can just rain artillery on the location; so long as the Pseudodragon is flying high enough it won't be affected by the barrage.
Caution on Sleep: Most GMs play this as Sleep, not Unconscious. This means they'll probably allow subsequent damage to wake the Sleeping target up or otherwise be roused. Allies should be advised of this, so they can either Coup de Grace said foes or otherwise secure them.
Unfortunately, as you get into higher level adventuring you will find the Pseudodragon struggles to keep up. After a while, +6 or +8 (when flanking) won't be enough to hit targets reliably and DC 16 Fortitude saves (or 14 without Augment Summoning) are easily met. It has been my experience that Pseudodragons fight very well at levels 3 to 4, decently at 5 to 6, and are best left only for very ideal targets at levels 7 to 8. Still, this gives you three to four levels of adventuring where they are very useful... and by the time they become obsolete, Summon Monster III or IV will be available to give you adequate replacements.
Weaknesses:
While impressive, Pseudodragons have some flaws. Among them...
Inclement Weather: If the weather is too harsh, these Tiny Dragons may not be able to fly around well. +15 Fly checks are great in most circumstances, but tossing them into tornados and hurricanes might not work out so well.
Sleep-immune foes: There's no point sending them after elves and other such creatures. Those foes ignore the Pseudodragon's only meaningful combat gimmick, and with that removed you're doing a mere 1d3 damage per hit; even summoned Eagles or a Magic Missile casting will outdo that, and using a Level 1 spell slot to boot.
High AC, high Fortitude: While +6 is reasonably accurate at lower levels, foes with excellent armor and/or Fort saves (usually if they have one, they have both) are far less concerned about a Sleep Poison Sting than 'squishies' are. Pick your fights carefully. That said, if there's even a small chance of them failing the Fort save then this can be worth trying if the Pseudodragon is already on the board and has nothing else worth doing; few enemies will risk even a 10 or 15% chance of being dropped in one hit and will either focus on the Pseudodragon or at least not hand it Attacks of Opportunity.
Out of Combat
Pseudodragons have several fun uses when not fighting... though you may be limited by how long the Summon spell lasts. Since they have Intelligence 10, Wisdom 12, and a language, they understand commands as well as most people do (or perhaps even slightly better than people). This also means they have enough mental presence to do other things unrequested if it's in line with the summoner's goals or the creature's Neutral Good alignment. Among the more useful or fun tricks are...
Scout: Flight plus a +19 Stealth (+23 in Forests) makes them fairly well suited to this. Tell them to fly ahead, quickly check out what can be seen, then come back and report before the Summon ends. Their Perception is only +6, but their various Senses can help a little with this.
Retrieving Small Objects: If Mage Hand just won't do, a Pseudodragon might suffice. They can carry about 19 pounds (Strength 11 means 38 pounds carrying capacity Light Load, halved for being Tiny equals 19) in flight, presuming their claws, teeth, and tail can wrap around it well enough to get a decent grip. While GMs may impose limits on this, in general it's possible for them to retrieve weapons, chairs, books, holy symbols, spell component pouches, and so on. Note they are not good at combat maneuvers, so this is best done for unattended or recently dropped objects.
Voices in Your Head: Either by using their excellent Stealth or someone providing a Vanish or Invisibility spell for them, Pseudodragons can get within 60 feet of a target, stay out of sight, and begin saying things right into their mind via Telepathy. It takes a generous GM for this to work, but you could do things like instruct the Pseudodragon to pretend it is actually a long-range magical message. A guard mentally hearing something like “This is an urgent message from the captain, urgent enough he had me use magic to contact you. Get back to headquarters right now,” or similar commands might be willing to abandon their post. So long as they can't see any obviously nearby creatures causing this, they'll probably be at a loss to explain how else they're hearing this voice in their mind.
...Or if you just want to be hilarious, have the Pseudodragon telepathically broadcast rambling nonsense and make the recipient think they're going crazy!
Activating small switches/etc.: While their body shape isn't ideal for this, it's plausible for a Pseudodragon to operate switches and similar devices. GMs may not allow some uses of this, but it's worth asking them if they think it's plausible before you bring this summon in.
Good Alignment, Intelligent: Pseudodragons have a conscience and will either act on their own or report back if they find something they think the PCs should care about. While an Elemental might simply carry out the plan given to it, their Intelligence 4 and Neutral alignment mean they're not likely to care about anything outside your exact orders. Intelligence 10 and a Good alignment means the Pseudodragon will probably come back and notify its summoner about the crying child in the next room (or even just ask the child to follow it back to the party, perhaps), or that the summoner's orders are risky (“If I steal the key from the next room, the dozen guards are going to notice and follow me right back to you; are you sure you want me to do that?”).
Thanks to Telepathy, if the summoner is relatively nearby then they can even give such updates silently (and thus not raise any alarms).
Skills: They only post a +5 on Diplomacy, but they can indeed try it. If nothing else, some GMs might let them Aid Another someone else on such checks. Sense Motive +6 and Survival +6 may also have occasional uses.
Appearance: Pseudodragons, in their official art, do not appear particularly threatening (some might even say they're “cute” or “adorable”). NPC reactions may vary, especially depending on your GM, but at the very least they're not as alarming as summoning living flame (Fire Elementals), various demons and devils, and so on. If a bystander spots a Pseudodragon and isn't able to conclusively identify what it is, there's still some chance they won't panic like they would upon meeting some of the other summoning options.
Conclusion
While they're never going to win the DPR Olympics (You're better off with a Small Earth Elemental if raw damage is what you need), Pseudodragons are an excellent choice for those willing to make the investment of a spell (Summon Monster II) plus one to two feats (Summon Good Monster and optionally Augment Summoning). They're useful combatants against softer foes for several levels, and may retain some value in certain non-combat situations even after you gain Summon Monster III or above.
Creative use of their high speed, poison sting, telepathy, human-like intellect, senses, and other advantages will pay off, and it is for these reasons that I feel the Pseudodragon is worth considering whenever your character uses Summon Monster II with the appropriate feat(s).
Awesome post. I've been off of the boards for quite some time, but this is the kind of stuff I like to see. I'm all for creative uses of game mechanics that are not all about DPR and every once in a while I check back looking for this kind of insight, which I likely would not have caught on my own.
I guess what I'm really saying is *BUMP* because other people will want to read this sort of thing. If you have any other summoning spotlights please post them.
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Thank you! More like this? I'll certainly consider it!
My fondness for Pseudodragons was more incidental than anything I planned. Had a PFS session a while back where the 'boss' was extremely annoying, melee-oriented allies couldn't get to him, and none of the ground-based Summons were going to be useful for the same reason. I did not think an Air Elemental or Lightning Elemental would be able to take him down in a direct brawl, either.
Seeing no other useful options, I said "Screw it. A small chance is better than no chance" and tossed out a Pseudodragon. It flew up to the boss, and I was annoyed to discover said boss was tossing +11s out on its Fortitude Save... in other words, only failing on a roll of a 4 or less. Not great odds.
He passed every save, but he deemed a 20% chance of automatic loss on every hit to be a far bigger threat to his survival than anything else the party had to offer and began pounding on the Pseudodragon for the next 3 rounds. This was enough time for the party to reorganize, get the situation under control, and get ready for a final push with some extra equipment to help deal with his favorable terrain. The Pseudodragon turned the fight around despite failing every Sleep poison attempt. That's how threatening it is once the enemy knows what's up.
When they actually succeed at what they set out to do, the Pseudodragon goes from "interesting pressure option" to "extremely effective." Spotting, shutting down 'glass cannon' targets, trolling with telepathy... they're pretty versatile little critters and I'm really glad I gave them a chance.
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You can do it as early as level 3 if you're set on specializing in summoning. A Human Wizard can do it by Spell Focus Conjuration (which I don't think of as a 'feat tax' at all; Conjuration has some really good spells outside Summoning and you should probably consider using them) as level 1 base feat, Augment Summoning as level 1 human bonus, and then Summon Good Monster as level 3 base feat. Admittedly non-Humans are at a bit of a downside here, but this is true of a lot of 'extreme focus' ideas. Even in their case they'll get a few levels of use out of the Pseudodragon, and their feat investment doesn't vanish; when the Pseudodragon becomes obsolete for them, Summon Monster III will have replaced it with Lantern Archons, Lyrakien Azatas, Silvanshee Agathions, and a few other comparable options. None of them fill the Pseudodragon's exact role, but they don't need to.
I went this "get all those feats by level 3" route with a Sorcerer, then picked up Summon Monster II at class level 4. It has paid off very well; Pseudodragons have at worst forced a boss to massively change their plans and timing, preventing at least one PC death. More successful uses included chasing down a fleeing invisible target that had a mission-critical item in their possession, shutting down a pair of archers and their bodyguard followed by moving to flank the front-line foes for the remaining summon duration, offering spotting data, and short-range scouting. Not all in the same summon casting or same adventure, but across several. Pseudodragons can work very well if you're willing to invest in them.
Was this optimal? Probably not. Was it an extreme design focus that wasn't going to seriously pay off before level 4 or 6? Sure. Did it work? Yeah. Did I have fun with it? Absolutely!
Now, it's true that some of what I mentioned works better if you brought them along as a Familiar or used a class that grants notably longer summon duration. Nonetheless, they can be done by a summoned (of normal duration) version to varying degrees. If you need them to scout something out only one or two rooms away, they move at Fly 60; that's fast enough to quickly poke around, come back, and give a brief summary of their findings before they vanish. It's long enough for them to be an 'artillery spotter' for about half the fight (presuming your fight lasts 7 rounds, which is a very broad but not unreasonable guess). If you know where their target is, the 'telepathy trolling' works too.
It's a tight fit time-wise so you have to know exactly what you want them to accomplish, but that's okay. I've pulled most of those uses off in real play, or had situations where they obviously would have worked but the party ended up pursuing other solutions instead.
If this thread is straying into Pseudodragon Familiar territory...
I think they're a great option that doesn't seem to get enough props on these boards,
even though great mobility, always on blindsense, telepathy, immunity, and ability with manipulating objects and using wands/scrolls (although PFS inexplicably doesn't allow pseudodragons to activate magical objects, while faery dragons can) along with their REACH sleep poison that scales with the caster's level makes for a very strong familiar.
At least on the boards here the sentiment I see seems to rate the Faery Dragon's invisbility higher than the Pseudodragon's blindsense, but I see it as the exact opposite: it's easy enough to cast Invisibility when needed, but having blindsense active 24/7 isn't so easy to get, and it means you're never unprepared to notice invisible/stealthing enemies. It's not real blindsight, but knowing the presence of, and square, of an invisible/stealthing creature is a huge advantage: if you're immediately alerted, all characters can immediately act appropriately, casting Glitterdust/See Invis/Invis Purge as neeeded, or just directing AoE spells in that area, or just casting buffs on allies and acting defensively, or melee allies just going to town on the indicated square maybe with Blind-Fight. Awareness is a huge advantage in making the most of action economy.
The other thing about faery dragons that seems popular on the boards vs. pseudodragons is their sorceror casting, and indeed that is a great feature, no need for UMD for wands for one. But IMHO, that casting does NOT scale with the caster's own level, because nothing about pseudodragons' description indicates that the 'casting as 3rd level sorceror' is associated with or scales with HD. Of course, the breath weapon and Greater Invis SLA's caster level are things that do scale with level, which puts them on par with other Improved Familiars (they're certainly not a bad choice).
Pseudodragons' reach is very useful, especially for delivering touch spells. Besides the 'offensive' touch spells, it's great for beneficial spells for allies, both single allies/single touches, and being able to fit as many allies at once into your reach when 'touching 6 willing creatures as a full-round action'. One trick I like is using the pseudodragon to deliver the touches for Dimension Door. The familiar also can count as 'you' for targetting purposes, so you yourself don't need to go along with the DD ride either. That means you the caster don't need to move into/out of dangerous areas in order to pull it off, and thus can 'rescue' allies from dangerous spots, or 'deliver' them to go toe-to-toe with melee baddies without worry for your own skin.
Great post!
Master Summoners can get the combo at level 2, before they are actually able to summon pseudodragons.
Another fantastic summon at this level, and one that compliment the pseudodragon perfectly, is the faun. With a Hideous Laughter at DC 16 that targets will save, you can hurt those BSF. They can also flank, and provide weak archery support, plus they speak common.