That only matters if those actions have much of a chance of success. Your summons are facing a very high miss rate at level 15+ while the sorcerers dazing chain lightning is hitting everything at the same level of potency. The summons offensive SLA's are pretty terrible and the rest don't do all that much. Have a look at the 7th and 8th level options:
Bone Devil: Wall of Ice, pretty much irrelevant when almost everything you meet teleports.
Vrock: Telekinesis, terrible low DC
Barbed Devil: Pretty much nothing
Hezrou: Blasphemy might clear out some low CR trash
Young Gold Dragon: Nothing
Monadic Deva: 1 Heal, not terrible but not great for an 8th level spell/effect
Lamassu: Some cures, greater invis. dimension door
Mostly the SLA's are pretty weak and wont have much impact on high level combat.
You're refusing to see the bigger picture here.
You reference spells they can cast. I'm also thinking about territory control, buffing potential, I'm thinking of swarms of lantern archons and crowding the field with a whole bunch of fiendish dire bears or working with the druid to produce a dozen or so collossal advanced brachiosaurus's to rip down the walls of jericho.
All this, with a character who has a plethora of battlefield control all by himsef and a really nice buffing potential.
Put this into the context of a group and things get even more interesting.
Put together the package itself is very very good.
The Dragons may start there but it is trivial for any of them to have Mage Armour and Shield so they get +8. The Nightcrawler is largely a non threat given the lack of flight. The Qlippoth has constant displacement and is highly likely to auto stun your summons even if they manage to hit. The shaggy demodand has a good chance to banish your summons with blasphemy. The Norn is a fairly weak CR18 opponent but DC29 weird is liable to kill most summons. They might have a chance against some of the rest but a lot of high level enemies are pretty much able to ignore them. NPC's with PC wealth will be even worse. The power of summoning drops significantly at higher levels against actually challenging fights. Sure they do fine against lower CR threats but who really cares about them?Bestiary 2: Ancient Cloud Dragon AC 36; Nightcrawler Nightshade AC 33; Thulgant Qlippoth AC 33; Purrodaemon AC 35
Bestiary 3: Ancient Sky Dragon AC 38; Cairn Linnorm AC 35; Shaggy Demodand AC 32; Norn AC 33; Simurgh AC 34; Thriae Queen AC 33; Thunder Behemoth AC 35; Water Yai AC 32.
So your answer is: "Okay, so I'm totally gonna ignore that my average AC number was artificially inflated, because I took the best monster in the Bestiaries for CR 18 in regards to AC and presented it as the medium, so I'll just repeat that summons suck, so I win"? Because, seriously lame. The average AC of monsters is way below what you are assuming.
And since I can summon different things which stay min/level and can buff off each other and myself (again, Lillend Azatas rock your boat until level 20 just by inspiring courage. Oh, and I can can cast Haste and Heroism on the summons and the actual party, too), they really are quite effective at killing stuff by themselves, healing up the wounded, flanking, buffing, debuffing and so on. It's too good for one character.
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The hate isn't due to being OP, so that's a side issue and compared to Wizards Summoners might not be that OP.
The hate is mostly due to being a HUGE spotlight & table-time hog and being super complicated and the build being wrong every freaken time.
The fact they are also quite powerful just makes those two things even worse, true.
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As a player of a summoner, I sideline the table-time and spotlight hogging by giving out my summoned monsters to my allies to control. So everyone gets a minion to control on their turn (thus everyone gets to share equal time and do the fun of rolling for minions).
the lantern archon thing is nothing unique to the summoner though, just fyi. Every arcane and divine class with summon monster can do it...(nearly all of them)
Your definition of cheesy is now every caster in the game nearly.
They don't all do it with standard actions and the amount of times a Summoner does it. It's not even close to the same level of frequency.
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To the OP: they don't. There is merely a subsection of the entire forum population who "hate" the summoner. Everyone else is carrying on with their games happily.
@Dudemeister - nice idea on handing out the mooks. Makes perfect sense for each creature to have its own controller, and thus point of view and range of options. I wiuld imagine this would make them even more effective and much less generic in their activity.
I had a player who started taking levels in Summoner, after 6 levels of Bard, because he wanted to summon ponies and whales and drop them on enemies. Once I told him that wasn't possible according to the rules, he has pretty much given up on the character. Even though I offered him the option of expending more of his daily uses of summon monster I to use a higher level summoning, EG: expend 3 daily uses of summon monster I to do one summon monster III, he still wants to trash it in favor of rolling up a Magus/Ninja so he can throw a bunch of shuriken with one of them imbued with a spell. Even after I pointed out the uselessness of shuriken and that what he wanted to do was rather pointless, he still wants to do it. Summoners can be made right. I have a Summoner in mind patterned after the old Zenki anime. It takes work, but all the classes do.
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Summoners can be made right. I have a Summoner in mind patterned after the old Zenki anime. It takes work, but all the classes do.
I think your opinion is just about the opposite of most people's concerning the Summoner; the issue a lot of people seem to have is not that the Summoner takes a lot of work to be good, but that it doesn't. It's incredibly easy to make a super badass Eidolon for instance.
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Okay, so this came up on page 1, but I have to add;
Anyone complaining that the Summoner steals their narrative concept from the conjurer wizard, has got it ass-backward.
The concept of a person with a bonded ally has existed throughout all of human history and mythology, in a form that far more closely matches the Summoner than the Conjurer.
Every tribe and civilisation in history has had a tradition of 'special' members, watched over by guardian angels, in touch with the spirit world, susceptible to possession, bonded with the guardians of the forest, etc
And the vast majority of magical practitioners throughout human mythology have manifested their powers spontaneously. 'Magick' is something inborn, from being the seventh son of a seventh son, born under a bad sign, being chosen at birth by the fae, etc, and has either been watched closely for evidence, or it has erupted forth at puberty, or in response to a threatening situation (a big factor in tales of poltergeists).
The concept of a conjurer (or any wizard) as an utterly mundane person, whose powers come from book-learning, is a relatively recent invention, and I would suggest that throughout the history of D&D, many of those players who have chosen to play the spellbook owning 'magic-user' were doing so as the best option from a lack of options, and the image in their head was that of a spontaneous caster.
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I've yet to see that complaint made in any meaningful number. You're just putting up a strawman to knock it down and dismiss more meaningful mechanic complaints.
Really?
It's all over the first page (posts 5, 6, 8, 11, 24, 27).
People disliking the Summoner, because they see it as an unnecessary class, because 'the Conjurer already fills that role'. Or mentioning that they have seen others use this as the reason.
I specifically said I was responding to the first page; if those flavour objections died down after page 1, then so be it.
There's still a lot of people out there, who give that as one of their main reasons, and not all of them post here.
I made no mention of the mechanics.
If someone has issues with the mechanics, then they're free to discuss them. I'm not shutting that discussion down.
I had issue with the mechanics, myself. The reason the Life Link ability was changed from a free action, to a non-action, was partly due to me bugging the developers about it, here and off-site.
And even after they agreed with me, I continued to bug the developers to make it an official errata, rather than an easily-overlooked FAQ.
Okay, so this came up on page 1, but I have to add;
Anyone complaining that the Summoner steals their narrative concept from the conjurer wizard, has got it ass-backward.
The concept of a person with a bonded ally has existed throughout all of human history and mythology, in a form that far more closely matches the Summoner than the Conjurer.
Every tribe and civilisation in history has had a tradition of 'special' members, watched over by guardian angels, in touch with the spirit world, susceptible to possession, bonded with the guardians of the forest, etc
And the vast majority of magical practitioners throughout human mythology have manifested their powers spontaneously. 'Magick' is something inborn, from being the seventh son of a seventh son, born under a bad sign, being chosen at birth by the fae, etc, and has either been watched closely for evidence, or it has erupted forth at puberty, or in response to a threatening situation (a big factor in tales of poltergeists).
The concept of a conjurer (or any wizard) as an utterly mundane person, whose powers come from book-learning, is a relatively recent invention, and I would suggest that throughout the history of D&D, many of those players who have chosen to play the spellbook owning 'magic-user' were doing so as the best option from a lack of options, and the image in their head was that of a spontaneous caster.
Until recently the wizards power, ind d&d was also often somthing inborn even if it also requiered books.
I love summoners. They are my favorite class in pathfinder, for the creative freedom you get with the eidolon. I also like having minions.
If your summoner, conjurer, druid or whatever player is wasting play time flipping through books trying to find the best summon, you are handling it wrong. If you know a PC is going to summon monsters, create undead or animate objects, have them prepare for it. A copy of the relevant bestiary pages or printout of SRD pages they need is a good start. A selection of preconstructed animated constructs etc. It is the player's responsibility to know what he is going to do. If they are seriously going to pop open a bestiary and read every available summon's entry, give players a time limit to decide what their actions will be (this doesn't include resolving it, such as rolling the dice for it or even looking up the exact rules for the action, but only the decision on what the action is).
I made a wild shape sheet for my druid player, on which he can note down the relevant changes to his stats for his most common wild shapes.
As far as power issues with summoners go: outright banning something is the last thing i want to do, so I give players guidelines, if those don't work i put down hard rules. Like designating certain eidolon evolutions as combat evolutions (for example natural weapons, natural armor, STR, DEX, CON increase, reach, energy attacks, weapon proficiencies, large/huge, even arms) and only allowing the player to use a certain percentage of their pool on those. The rest must then be used on stuff that doesnt directly influence combat power, like senses, skill- and movement evolutions, etc.
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Until recently the wizards power, ind d&d was also often somthing inborn even if it also requiered books.
Oh, I agree there are a number of ways to visualise every class, especially one that doesn't exist in reality, and is trying to emulate the works of many fantasy authors, or drawing on multiple cultural myth-cycles.
I have trouble imagining a savage orc witch doctor as an Albert Dumbledore librarian, so I've always reskinned their 'spellbook' to be cave paintings, knotted dreamcatchers, visions from psychotropic fungi, or mandalas formed from carefully-placed mosaics.Or I could simply rebuild them as sorcerers.
A lot of the clashes in playstyle come from players and GM having different goals with what they're trying to build, using the limited tools available.
A player trying to build Elric (a learned wizard) is going to have expectations that clash with a player who's trying to recreate a 10th-generation scion of Amber (bloodline wizard), and they're both going to clash with a GM pitting them against a Lovecraftian cult leader (pact-bound wizard).
Until 3.0, these would all be lumped into the same class, at least in the core game. Unless there was an archetype available in the 2nd Edition Wizard's Handbook (which I didn't own), the closest I'm aware of coming close to the 'bonded caster' concept would be the Sha'ir, from the Al-Qadim setting.
What this meant, is that once more options became available, many of the PCs and NPCs previously built as wizards had better options available, for modelling their core concept.
When my local players decided they were going to make the move from 2E to 3E, I modified existing 1E/2E adventures, changing a lot of the NPC wizards to sorcerers, if it didn't make sense for them to be literate or highly educated, or if their tactics involved spamming the same spell over and over.
Some illusionists, enchanters, and multiclassed M-U/Thieves were better described as 3.0 bards.
With the release of Ultimate Magic, many existing Eldritch Knights ought to be replaced with a Magus. With the release of the APG, many of the Clerics from older material probably ought to be replaced with Oracles, some Wizards with Witches, and some Conjurers with Summoners.
And that's why the Summoner doesn't tread on the Conjurer's toes; because those PCs and NPCs being built as Summoners were never really Conjurers to begin with. They were always Summoners, we just didn't have the mechanics or vocabulary to describe them before.
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I think you've already seen some of the hate in this very thread :)
My explanation is that no matter what your hot-button issue is, the summoner is almost sure to touch on it at some point.
Do you dislike:
- Characters who take more time per turn than others (with equally good players)?
- Save-or-suck spells?
- Superpowerful melee?
- Builds that can't be easily understood by anyone at the table?
- Overlap of class abilities with existing classes?
- Increased chance of honest mistakes resulting in overpowering builds?
- Dump stats?People can (and do) argue about whether any or all of those items are true but if you have something that you think is "not how the game should be played" you are going to find something to point at in the summoner class as an example.
You can add: the eidolon being on par or better than most characters at almost any skill you want from level 4 onward when you need it, thank to evolution surge and the Skilled evolution.
A specialized character willing to spend feats will be ahead of the eidolon, but a PC can't take feats for all the possible skills.
- * -
A full spellcaster can be more powerful (maybe, I doubt it as the summoner has a very good spell list and can enhance it with the spells of the summoned creatures), but the full spellcaster has his weaknesses.
A summoner practically has no weaknesses. With a few levels under his belt he can run most adventures alone as he has all the needed tools to cover the role of all other classes. That give him a higher annoying factor than any other class.
Edit: the summoner probably isn't stronger than a wizard in a one to one, win or die, duel whit said wizard.
It is on par or stronger than a wizard in everyday playing, where you have different foes, aren't guaranteed to be able to discover in advance what is your adversary and tailor your spell to it and so on.
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and a Summoner can't even Wild Shape into a fire elemental when he's been grappled.
He can "only" switch paces with his combat pet. Or call it at his side.
Maker's Call (Su): At 6th level, as a standard action, a summoner can call his eidolon to his side. This functions as dimension door, using the summoner's caster level. When used, the eidolon appears adjacent to the summoner (or as close as possible if all adjacent spaces are occupied). If the eidolon is out of range, the ability is wasted. The summoner can use this ability once per day at 6th level, plus one additional time per day for every four levels beyond 6th.
Transposition (Su): At 8th level, a summoner can use his maker's call ability to swap locations with his eidolon. If it is larger than him, he can appear in any square occupied by the eidolon. The eidolon must occupy the square that was occupied by the summoner if able, or as close as possible if it is not able.
I would prefer him using wild shape than that if I was the guy grappling the summoner.
Until recently the wizards power, ind d&d was also often somthing inborn even if it also requiered books.Oh, I agree there are a number of ways to visualise every class, especially one that doesn't exist in reality, and is trying to emulate the works of many fantasy authors, or drawing on multiple cultural myth-cycles.
I have trouble imagining a savage orc witch doctor as an Albert Dumbledore librarian, so I've always reskinned their 'spellbook' to be cave paintings, knotted dreamcatchers, visions from psychotropic fungi, or mandalas formed from carefully-placed mosaics.
Or I could simply rebuild them as sorcerers.A lot of the clashes in playstyle come from players and GM having different goals with what they're trying to build, using the limited tools available.
A player trying to build Elric (a learned wizard) is going to have expectations that clash with a player who's trying to recreate a 10th-generation scion of Amber (bloodline wizard), and they're both going to clash with a GM pitting them against a Lovecraftian cult leader (pact-bound wizard).
Until 3.0, these would all be lumped into the same class, at least in the core game. Unless there was an archetype available in the 2nd Edition Wizard's Handbook (which I didn't own), the closest I'm aware of coming close to the 'bonded caster' concept would be the Sha'ir, from the Al-Qadim setting.What this meant, is that once more options became available, many of the PCs and NPCs previously built as wizards had better options available, for modelling their core concept.
When my local players decided they were going to make the move from 2E to 3E, I modified existing 1E/2E adventures, changing a lot of the NPC wizards to sorcerers, if it didn't make sense for them to be literate or highly educated, or if their tactics involved spamming the same spell over and over.
Some illusionists, enchanters, and multiclassed M-U/Thieves were better described as 3.0 bards.With the release of Ultimate Magic, many existing...
i see your point and have always loved the ide of the summoner but i think the summoner as he is now is a bit too close to a full melee character with a great almost full caster familiar.
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A minion maker or shapeshifter really should have a laptop or tablet with d20pfsrd.com bookmarked.
I play a shapeshifter minion maker and do just that. :P
As a player of a summoner, I sideline the table-time and spotlight hogging by giving out my summoned monsters to my allies to control. So everyone gets a minion to control on their turn (thus everyone gets to share equal time and do the fun of rolling for minions).
I'd really hate doing that.
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I admit, I would not want to be GMing a PFS slot, and find one of the players dropping the news that he was playing a Summoner, with only five minutes before the start of the session.
Even less, if they say "My friend built this character for me, last night!".
Double groan, because you know it's likely to be built wrong, and they probably don't know how it's supposed to work, and you're going to have to be the bad guy, telling them that.
But a big reason for that is Paizo's reluctance to write effective errata, preferring to rely on the fanbase somehow magically knowing there's an FAQ post buried in the forums.
Funny how so much drama centers around the spotlight.
Have you ever been to a theater performance where the spotlight avoided the Drama? The spotlight points at the drama, that is why it is there!
I've noticed a pattern over the last year or so of a general apparent consensus that summoners are the worst class ever( not in terms of power) with a few people going so far as to assert that anyone who would ever want to play a summoner should be permanently banned from the table because they're such a horrible person (etc). Among other nastier things.
Interestingly I haven't actually noticed this sentiment being repeated on other pathfinder websites other than Paizo.com, so I was wondering if anyone had any insight as to why the class is so universally reviled.
I think it's hated because it slows the game down. You end up with too much stuff being summoned and turns go by very slowly as the Summoner moves all his parts.
Then there are the Edilons which seem to be broken more than animal companions. If the edilon is out performing everything then question come up and the rule book is out. Next the player is then justifying via the rules how his edilon is doing what ever it was doing and in the end 9 times out of 10 an error is found. This really slows things down.
I've got a crazy idea, if you want to make your players hate the summoner even more, have them fight a whole guild of summoners.
Ha... ha... ha.
Be sure to get a bit drunk before-hand so you aren't sent insane with all the numbers and tracking the summons.
Already did that; Age of Worms, 'The Champions Belt'.
Changed one of the lacklustre teams for four pygmies from the Isle of Dread, all brothers, with synergistic spells known.
The PCs did get to see them compete in the early rounds, but had no idea what they were (making it 'foreign magic' allowed for that).It was a tough battle, but no-one died (neither side wanted to kill the other, just progress through the competition), and the summoners gave aid to the PCs later, to investigate the BBEG.
It did take 5 weeks to run though...
the lantern archon thing is nothing unique to the summoner though, just fyi. Every arcane and divine class with summon monster can do it...(nearly all of them)
Your definition of cheesy is now every caster in the game nearly.
Every FULL caster is cheesy. Players of such characters either nerf themselves to stay relevant to the rest of the team, or lack the insight to make the optimised choices in the first place.
Summoners do it by accident.
Yes, but the spotlight should focus on the drama, but the drama shouldn't focus on the spotlight.
If the drama in the game is about discussions at the Kings count and avoiding traps as one goes to bed. The rogue would be the spotlight hugger. If the drama is around battles and that kind of stuff then that is where the drama and the spotlight will be. But the drama and the spotlight goes hand in hand leave out one and the other is gone as well.
If the drama in the game is about discussions at the Kings count and avoiding traps as one goes to bed. The rogue would be the spotlight hugger. If the drama is around battles and that kind of stuff then that is where the drama and the spotlight will be. But the drama and the spotlight goes hand in hand leave out one and the other is gone as well.Actually the spotlight in the Kings court scenario is much more likely to be taken by the sorcerer, the oracle, the summoner or the student of philosophy wizard. All of them blow the rogue out of the water in social skills and it is not hard to avoid traps with spells. Rogues can make OK face characters but they sacrifice a lot in other areas to do it. Casters with Int or Cha as their primary stat get to be amazing faces as a byproduct of things they were already doing.
Yes i know the rogue is not optimal but it worked in my particular argument, sort of.
:)Also i havent played in your Kings court but diplomacy would is only a little part of the Throne room power game when i GM. Perception, sense motive, knowledge( local and nobility), intimidate, bluff and sligth of hand are all relevant. And others could be used as well:)
Edit: to remove nonsense and ad meaning:)
Edit2 and go look at the summoner i put in your build thread.
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Eidolon's are too strong for a companion even when the player gets all the rules right. They're about as strong as a beast totem barb which is already the best melee outside of an actively smiting paladin. The difference being they always have a guaranteed buffer/healer/support(effectively filling the role of two classes). SLA's are poorly balanced and allow for overpowered bestiary feats unintended for players.
I don't particularly like the chassis of the summoner itself D8 hit dice 3/4th's bab simple weapon and light armor proficiency, pseudo ninth level casting at least for conjuration spells which is one of the most powerful schools. You can make a competent(not good) power attack flank buddy or archer with the summoner which only further enhances their action economy dominance.
I'm personally willing allow the class, on the condition that everyone else is well optimized, but it's still very rare for a mechanically sound summoner build to get out-shined. I'm willing to acknowledge that druids and animal bloodline sorcs could theoretically exhibit similar problems. In my experience though I've always had less trouble with them. Mostly due to the fact that if a summoner runs into any mechanical problems there is usually a evolution that will solve the issue, also haste at 4th level...
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As a player of a summoner, I sideline the table-time and spotlight hogging by giving out my summoned monsters to my allies to control. So everyone gets a minion to control on their turn (thus everyone gets to share equal time and do the fun of rolling for minions).I'd really hate doing that.
Which part? Giving control of summons to allies or controlling a summon as an ally?
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Already did that; Age of Worms, 'The Champions Belt'.
It did take 5 weeks to run though...
If you add in the backstage plotting, yes.
The Fisthammers making an alliance with you, helping you explore, then getting killed for it, and their corpses stolen.And the pygmy team making their own separate deal with you, to fight a non-lethal contest, and the winner take [redacted]'s head after the Final.
I wonder if the phanaton burglar and the golden tamarind survived Mordenkainen's scorched earth solution...
But that says more about our group's inability to schedule more than a few hours every week, than it does the complexity of the scenario, and the tendency for some to waste session time gassing, instead of getting the table prepped and ready to roll.
If people could also avoid getting divorced, and shagging each others girlfriends, that'd be great, too. It isn't just the Summoner, who creates and hogs needless drama. As in most cases, it's a player issue.
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I love the summoner class and I have to say that many people start at the completly wrong perspective. Pathfinder is a game. A cooperative game. This means you do it right if all have fun. That doesn´t work all the time, of course, but the idea is not soloing the fun, but sharing it.
Can the summoner do many things by himself? OF COURSE!
Can others? Paladins, Bards, Full casters. OF COURSE!
Yes the eidolon is powerful. It is because the summoner is a supporter.
Nobody stops the summoner to first buff the fighter/paladin/ barbarian.
Share the fun and all will love the summoner.
I remember my party got kittens when my summoner got haste at level 4.
My Paladin and my battle cleric loved me and our sorcerer twice cause he could run double as fast and still cast spells (He is a chicken).
When we got swarmed I used many weak things to act as meatshields and also gave flanking.
My simple solution is play as a teamplayer as a summoner and you will be loved. Be a prick and your are hated.
Come prepared (Monster stats are already printed) and last but not least.
Paizo does not punish you for flavor.
There is no need to optimize the hell out of your character!
Already did that; Age of Worms, 'The Champions Belt'.It did take 5 weeks to run though...If you add in the backstage plotting, yes.
I thought the battle itself was a 5 week thing. Maybe it just felt like it! :-)
But that says more about our group's inability to schedule more than a few hours every week, than it does the complexity of the scenario, and the tendency for some to waste session time gassing, instead of getting the table prepped and ready to roll.
If people could also avoid getting divorced, and shagging each others girlfriends, that'd be great, too. It isn't just the Summoner, who creates and hogs needless drama. As in most cases, it's a player issue.
True, but that's getting a little OT for this thread - my own situation was pretty crappy for most of 2011.
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True, but that's getting a little OT for this thread - my own situation was pretty crappy for most of 2011.
That's why I didn't call you out.
Sorry if you think I've been venting recently.I know you have family carer issues, as do I, and I'll defend your (and my) right to be delayed.
It's the others, who have far less reason for being disorganised, that grind my gears.
Waiting till I've got the dice in my hand, and ready to begin the cliffhanger combat, to ask me a rules question that I could have answered any time in the intervening week?
Not knowing any of the variables or bonus types, of spells being cast?
You can get the CRB/APG/UM spell cards pdfs, or the augmented summon statblocks for the price of a pint. There's no excuse for being less prepared with one PC, than the GM who is juggling a dozen.
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Yes, but the spotlight should focus on the drama, but the drama shouldn't focus on the spotlight.
Which tends to work best when the drama is scripted and directed. RPG is a strange beast when compared to theatre on the stage.
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A house rule at my table is for any summon monster you plan to use (regardless of class or means of summon) in the game; out of character you must already have a copy of it’s stats ready. (IE your OWN bestiary, preprinting it out, etc) My current group currently has a summoner in it but he is a blood god disciple arch type and can’t spam summon monster. It works.
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Being prepared with your own statblocks for summoned creatures, and having them be pre-adjusted for Augment Summoning, Starlight Summons, etc, is something that should be impressed on all players. It's not a problem that's peculiar to the Summoner.
No, you can't borrow my Bestiary, I'm using it.
Even if I'm not using it this very minute, doesn't mean I won't be in a few rounds.
Even if I won't be using it this encounter, what happens when you or another PC summons a different, second creature? Two players wrestling over a book means losing your place, and torn pages. No thanks.
Even if no-one else will be using it, I don't want your pizza and cheesypuff fingers all over my book.
A lot of people have said the problem of lacking statblocks is greater when it's a Summoner PC, because they summon more often.
Certainly, if you have a player who fails to prepare, and then summons frequently, the results will be worse.
But one would think that any player wanting to play a Summoner would have the common sense to carry out those preparations.
Surely the time sink would be more likely, from a player whose PC only summons infrequently, since it isn't considered an important aspect of their modus operandi?
But one would think that any player wanting to play a Summoner would have the common sense to carry out those preparations?
You would think so, but sadly that's often not the case in my experience... not dealing with summons, as the only summoners I've seen played have been done by experienced/considerate players, but spells.
I'm having flashbacks now to the people who play casters and refuse to write down the general details of what their g*%*@!n spells do. Ever session this one guy who was playing a Bard would try to use the cantrip Lullaby to put enemies to sleep in combat. And then we'd explain the spell does not do that. And then he would try it again. And again. And he would never use Inspire Courage on our mostly melee party. I don't know why this sticks with me, but the unreasonable anger it inspired in me lasts.
Another guy playing a blaster... each time we ask for his DCs he has to stop and stumble and we have to ask his casting stat, do you have these feat, what about that item, and oh my god just write it next to the spell. Move over I'll do it for you! Just don't waste 5 minutes on this ever again!
I feel a little bit better now.
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But one would think that any player wanting to play a Summoner would have the common sense to carry out those preparations?
You would think so, but sadly that's often not the case in my experience... not dealing with summons, as the only summoners I've seen played have been done by experienced/considerate players, but spells.
I'm having flashbacks now to the people who play casters and refuse to write down the general details of what their g#&*$%n spells do. Ever session this one guy who was playing a Bard would try to use the cantrip Lullaby to put enemies to sleep in combat. And then we'd explain the spell does not do that. And then he would try it again. And again. And he would never use Inspire Courage on our mostly melee party. I don't know why this sticks with me, but the unreasonable anger it inspired in me lasts.
Another guy playing a blaster... each time we ask for his DCs he has to stop and stumble and we have to ask his casting stat, do you have these feat, what about that item, and oh my god just write it next to the spell. Move over I'll do it for you! Just don't waste 5 minutes on this ever again!
I feel a little bit better now.
This is an issue?
My personal Character sheets have every single Spell, class ability, skill, etc... written out in their entirety (with book and page citation noted should the GM ask) just so I do not have to constantly flip through the books.
To beat a dead horse -
Personally, I love the Summoner class, and find it on par with the Witch class for "new" Shenanigans. It does require a well-prepared player (or GM for NPC Summoners).
Why the hate? It is powerful, and requires that the person running a Summoner is experienced enough to handle action economy efficiency (fancy way of saying, has their stuff together and can zip through their turn quickly) AND isn't a jerk and hogs the spotlight in any conflict.
Another problem is the Eidolon is static. If PCs are made by a point buy system, a high point buy campaign may make the Eidolon obsolete past 10th level. On a low point-buy campaign, the Eidolon overshadows Martial PCs. It's kind of a jerk move to play a mage that has a built in cohort that overshadows a martial PC (Acceptable if said party is short of Martial PCs).