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Lets pretend you could make a familiar using the eidolon rules. Or for that matter, an animal companion.
Any ideas on what hurdles might come up, or how many EPs you should assign to keep it on par with familiars or on par with animal companions?
Lets throw improved familiars in the mix as well, for good measure.
Well you could make some sort of wizard archetype which, I dunno, gets rid of your bonus feats but allows you to evolve/make you familiars better or something. That might be fun, and it sound cool to me. Sure you'd need to limit EP's, but you will most likely have to limit what evolutions your familiar can get, maybe caping how many EP's you can spend on an evolution, or maybe limit which evolutions, or both!
As for animal companions, this one might be more tough. This would be a druid archetype. You would get rid of the spontaneous casting probably and some other things. You would have to limit which kinds of evolutions it can take, so limiting it to the "animal" ones (bite, burrow, poison, keen scent, and other things that animals and even magical beasts can do), but not allow it to take things like Undead Appearance and Incorporeal Form, those kinda "unnatural" things.
But I would like to know why you're into eidolons all of a sudden.
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Honestly, it's the whole "Build Whatever You Want" nature of it. It's made the summoner my favorite class since it came out.
As a result, I just see tons of potential in it, and I keep thinking of other ways it could be used.
I thought of the animal companions and familiars because they're similar in concept to the eidolon (as baked-in cohorts) but completely different in execution. Using eidolon build rules could allow for animal companions or familiars that are on par with the existing options, but that haven't been designed yet. You want a dragon companion for some kind of dragon druid thing, or a dragon cavalier? build it. You a demon hound for an evil ranger? Go nuts.
Archetypes that give you more points and allow you to build companions stronger than the one that normally come with the class would also be doable, but not necessarily the only option.
Ideally, the animal companion/familiar options wouldn't be summoned, but would be permanent, as well. It would just give you the means to include unusual familiars/companions.
I'm also interested in the idea of a non-caster with an Eidolon / build your own companion of sorts.
The post about playing an Eidolon, well, that was my thoughts for a "Play your own monster" type thing.
But when I say Eidolon, I don't really care for or care about the trappings of being an outsider and whatnot. Ideally, I could build an eidolon of other creature types, so as to make dragons, and magical beasts and whatnot. The important part is: "Point Buy build your own cohort", "point buy build your own monster character class" or what have you.
I wouldn't mind seeing some manner of breath of fire thing, either, wherein you are playing as one of a variety of classes (with a fairly minor archetype) that allows you to completely turn into your custom beast. You'd lose access to all of your class abilities when transformed, have a completely different set of abilities and skills, and would take on the eidolon's abilities instead, though you'd either keep your HP or the damage would carry over. Depending on how it's done it could be of equivalent power (hence not keeping your other abilities).
So my Fighter could turn into some manner of dragon (Or Ogre-Mage, or spell-casting demon or angel, and then turn back later.
Perhaps an alternate approach to lycanthropy.
As mentioned in the thread about playing an eidolon, the mutationist has potential. Several custom built forms for a shapechanger class seems really cool.
Seems you and I like the summoner for the same reasons Darkholme. I have a similar question, don't know if its been answered elsewhere as I haven't looked (if it has point me in its direction).
How much points would you give to each level of a Summon Monster/Animal type spell that summoned an eidolon?
I'm thinking you would need a focus of some sort that held the details of what the monster looks like (and can do). So you cant just summon the perfect monster whenever, as this would make it more flexible than a summon monster spell of the same level. So you would have to make the eidolon weaker (less points to spend) than the monsters summoned by the same level of summon monster spell.
Well, what if you couldn't choose what evolutions it had? The eidolon grows with the summoner, not by you choosing how it grows in the split second that you summon it. I imagine the GM would decide or you get to roll some dice to determine which evolutions it has. Hell, maybe it wouldn't even have evolution points.
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DragGon7601:
I was thinking that you would get whatever number of points would result in you being able to build the pre-existing animal companions, perhaps with some options so you could take the Eidolon building rules and use them to build Animals, Magical Beasts, and Dragons as well as outsiders.
The idea should be that you get something the same power as the actual animal companions, but instead of choosing from a big list, you can build whatever you can afford to build.
Idea, a wizard archetype - Blobomancer.
He won't get any new spells or abilities... nor will his familiar get most of their basic abilities when he levels up...
The idea - wizards familiar is an amorphous alchemical/arcane blob, that follows same rules as an eidolon, only it lacks a base-form and has no start evolutions, just darkvision 60, land speed of 20 and ability to stick to things. It is always tiny, but can take evolutions to get bigger. Starts with 6 evolution points. It gets 1 evolution point for every few levels, and same as with a summoner, the wizard can redistribute those points every time he levels up. Also might get a levle 3 or 4 spell/ritual that allows to reshape the glob and maybe some evolutionary summoner spells.
In the end we have a slightly less versatile wizards with a few less personal kicks... but who has a very versatile blob-familiar.
It should be more powerful, after all, even though it is tiny at start, it gets access to most evolutions and will have more hit points.
What are it's starting scores?
It has no base form, so no ability scores?
I believe something along the lines of Str 6, Dex 16, Con 12, Int 7, Wis 10, Cha 10. Not to mention it's bonuses to armor due to being tiny.