It is entirely up to you.
You could decide that he has an outsider family that he lives with, and that he is doing random yard work or at his day job when you summon him. He is a sentient outsider, but since he is fused with you you are essentially sharing the same body. He might be able to hold a conversation with your character, talk about his children, wife (or husband, he is a progressive outsider) job, or whatever. Perhaps he tells you of indescribable things that your mind cannot comprehend.
DrManhattan-Watchmen
There's nothing in the synthesist's description that hints at the eidolon being independently sentient. On the contrary, since the eidolon has no independent mental scores, skills or feats of its own, that would seem to indicate that it is entirely non-sentient. A synthesist's eidolon is essentially just a suit of armor whipped up out of extra-planar matter at the summoner's whim.
That being said, you're free to come up with your own twist on it as long as your GM agrees. I'm playing a merged and unmerged synthesist as if they were two different people sharing one body; a sort of Jekyl & Hide scenario. They share the same mental array & skills to keep them rules-kosher, but I roleplay them as two distinct personalities. In my character's background, they actually used to be two people who were brought together out of necessity.
I wouldn't recommend what I did. I pretended to be a sorcerer and found a way to make myself scarce before conflicts and then summoned my Eidolon and came back like a superhero. Other players have an inherent urge to try to disrupt the secret identity status quo and start acting with mistrust despite being aided so it doesn't work out too well. I wanted to avoid being an eidolon 24/7 but it looks like that's what people are generally forced to do.
Other players have an inherent urge to try to disrupt the secret identity status quo and start acting with mistrust despite being aided so it doesn't work out too well.
Their reaction sounds reasonable to me. I'd get suspicious too if some strange super-dude kept popping up every single time me and my four buddies got into a scrape. Add to that this strange guy is always nearby to us no matter where our group happens to be, he's never spotted with anyone else and he always appears a moment after one buddy ducks out? Right...
It seems to me that expecting unscripted characters to react with the same plot-driven obliviousness of Lois Lane without their prior agreement is more your failing than theirs. You might as well don a pair of glasses and try to fool your real life buddies into thinking you're somebody else.
I rp'ed it like Jarvus from the Iron Man movies.
The 'voice' for the eidolon never interacted with anyone but the summoner, so it left it to me to user for hijinx or making my companions wonder if I was talking to voices in my head, or my summoned suit could actually talk.
Other players have an inherent urge to try to disrupt the secret identity status quo and start acting with mistrust despite being aided so it doesn't work out too well.Their reaction sounds reasonable to me. I'd get suspicious too if some strange super-dude kept popping up every single time me and my four buddies got into a scrape. Add to that this strange guy is always nearby to us no matter where our group happens to be, he's never spotted with anyone else and he always appears a moment after one buddy ducks out? Right...
It seems to me that expecting unscripted characters to react with the same plot-driven obliviousness of Lois Lane without their prior agreement is more your failing than theirs. You might as well don a pair of glasses and try to fool your real life buddies into thinking you're somebody else.
Actually they are acting more like Lois Lane if you count silver age comics.
Many plots involved Lois or Jimmy trying to find out Superman's secret identity in the most ridiculous and unfriendly ways, which isn't bad for me or my character but the entire plot gets derailed constantly with Lois Lane plots and not the actual plot if I try to maintain my secret identity. This is as opposed to piecing it together logically and calling me out on it.
There's nothing in the synthesist's description that hints at the eidolon being independently sentient. On the contrary, since the eidolon has no independent mental scores, skills or feats of its own, that would seem to indicate that it is entirely non-sentient. A synthesist's eidolon is essentially just a suit of armor whipped up out of extra-planar matter at the summoner's whim.
Eidolons: Outside the linear obedience and intelligence scale of sentient and nonsentient companions are eidolons: intelligent entities magically bound to you. Whether you wish to roleplay this relationship as friendly or coerced, the eidolon is inclined to obey you unless you give a command only to spite it. An eidolon would obey a cruel summoner's order to save a child from a burning building, knowing that at worst the fire damage would temporarily banish it, but it wouldn't stand in a bonfire just because the summoner said to. An eidolon is normally a player-controlled companion, but the GM can have the eidolon refuse extreme orders that would cause it to suffer needlessly.
And
Eidolon: Compared to an animal companion or cohort, an eidolon is a unique type of companion—it is intelligent and loyal to you, and you have absolute power over whether it is present in the material world or banished to its home plane. You literally have the power to reshape the eidolon's body using the transmogrify spell, and though technically the eidolon can resist this—the Saving Throw is "Will negates (harmless)"—it is assumed that the eidolon complies with what you want. After all, the eidolon can't actually be killed while summoned; at worst, it might experience pain before damage sends it back to its home plane. This means the eidolon is usually willing to take great risks to help you. If swimming through acid was the only way to save you, it would do so, knowing that it won't die and will recover. The eidolon is a subservient creature whose very nature depends upon your will, so you decide what feats, skill points, ability score increases, and evolutions the eidolon gains as it advances.
Indeed, and by indeed I mean, not so much.
Eidolons are intelligent, have a will to do their own thing, can actually resist the summoner casting spells on them, and so forth. The Synth just merges with the Eidolon to gain its physical statistics while being able to use his own mind. Think of the Eidolon's mind as being a whispering voice in the back, but that cannot see or hear the physical world (thereby being unable to make extra "free" knowledge or other checks--though the idea of it being able to look through the merged form's eyes as if it was a monitor is a pretty cool idea!--[/URL="http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/druid/animal-companions"]LINKTIFIED![/URL] Just search for "Eidolon"
Indeed, and by indeed I mean, not so much. Eidolons are intelligent, have a will to do their own thing
That's entirely true for conventional eidolons but synthesist eidolons work differently.
Think of the Eidolon's mind as being a whispering voice in the back, but that cannot see or hear the physical world (thereby being unable to make extra "free" knowledge or other checks
It's great if you and your GM want to play it that way; sounds very cool for some character concepts. But there's nothing in the synthesist description that hints at the summoner being able to communicate with his eidolon, even on an empathic level, and I wouldn't assume that it'd be the case by default.
If he's only ever summoned his eidolon while melding, I wonder if a summoner would even conceive of his eidolon as being some alien entity. It would be like a Soulknife assuming that his mind blade has a secret life of its own when he's not manifesting it.
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That is one of the things that is cool about the synthesist/summoner and makes me not toss it out for it's issues. Your character can be anything from Finn wearing a Jake suit to Ironman to Venom. It is only limited by your creativity.
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There's nothing in the synthesist's description that hints at the eidolon being independently sentient. On the contrary, since the eidolon has no independent mental scores, skills or feats of its own, that would seem to indicate that it is entirely non-sentient. A synthesist's eidolon is essentially just a suit of armor whipped up out of extra-planar matter at the summoner's whim.-Snide remark and a few unrelated quotes in an attempt to support it.-
Unfortunately all that you quoted and linked was completely irrelevant to the topic at hand and the post you replied to in particular.
The Synthesist Eidolon has no skills of it's own, no feats of it's own and does nothing on it's own without the Summoner's say so. No where does it state it can do anything to resist or even speak to the Summoner. Even at higher levels when the Summoner can split from the Eidolon for a certain number of rounds, the Eidolon gains no skills or feats. By it's descriptions the Synth's Eidolon is little more than an extra planar golem.
There is even distinct, different wording in the descriptions:
Eidolon: A summoner begins play with the ability to summon to his side a powerful outsider called an eidolon.
Fused Eidolon: A synthesist summons the essence of a powerful outsider to meld with his own being.
While a standard Eidolon is an independent, thinking creature, there is evidence to suggest that the Synthesist Eidolon is little more than a shell of animated, extra planar stuff.
That said, and more importantly, back to the OP; Play it how you want, it is a class that gives immense creative license to do whatever you want... from being an extra planar "Iron Man" to being a version of the Guyver. The description states that the Summoner speaks through the Eidolon, but there is nothing saying you can't have it be your own personal Jiminy Cricket.
I have seen concepts of Iron Man like Eidolons, ones very similar to the "Shard Plate" from the "Way of Kings", even a "Swamp Thing" like shambling mound creature that the summoner "mutated" into. The archetype really lets you go nuts, especially since it has to be for a home game.
Follow the most important rule... have fun!
I think everyone who is saying basically role-play it as creatively as you would like sums up my take on it.
In my Council of Thieves game, the Synthesist summoner had an Erinyes soul bound to her own. The mixture of the two personalities ended up with them both influencing each others personality at times, which made for really fun sessions. Generally the dominant personality in the picture was the one that was currently being expressed while in Devil form, Schala was in control, while in human form Annwyn was the boss and the other was relegated to being the voice inside the other ones head.
Have fun with it, and give your GM a heads up on how you plan to play your character just to make sure you don't end up on his/her toes.
This thread is very interesting to me. I have had all sorts of ideas on personalities for standard eidolons, but until I saw this thread it never occurred to me to give the eidolon of a synthesist any sort of personality. The trick would seem to be how to steer a middle path between the eidolon coming across as a mental disorder (which unnecessarily weakens the summoner) or serving as a guide to the summoner (which undeservedly strengthens the summoner unless the guidance is being received through spells or other special abilities that the character actually has).
A character I have for backup (first on the list too) is going to play the eidolon's sentience as a sort of urge and voice in his head that pushes him to be more barbaric and animalistic. He'd refer to the eidolon as a separate entity, but to his party members it would look like he's talking to himself (or his organic beast battle armor.)
Example:
*Circles a pleasant dryad that had sent the party on a mission with the slow, intimidating grace of a predator, all the while eyeing her before abruptly shaking his head as if suddenly waking from a trance.* "No. No, I don't think she's meant for us Graven," Looks to the dryad after easing his posture. "My apologies."
I could also see a character that sees everything that's going on, but can't seem to stop the eidolon from doing brutal things. A pacifist, non-violent type forced to do extremely violent things while the eidolon is fused with him. Slowly, he'd give up the fight without enjoying it.
In both cases, I guess I tend to lean towards my eidolons being sort of spirits that have attached themselves to weaker people in order to be free from whatever was holding them back in their planes. Maybe they were just bored there, maybe they're on the run from other beings there, maybe it's just easier to do what they want in this plane or maybe they want to friendship where in their world they can't find any.
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Ok, this is how I'm going to do it:
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Maxima (Max) is a teen girl who had always been a little odd and felt she didn't belong. She would rather take a book than to start up conversations, and this would eventually lead her to seek more and more advanced texts, until she joined an Arcane Academy and started studying the Outer Planes.
During one of Max's first experiments on a Arcane Academy, she accidentally summoned the essence of an Eidolon. This Thing, seemed to resonate with her own soul, almost as if she had found the missing piece... that reason she always felt out of place. She allowed it to "return" to her.
She named this Eidolon Charlie because it seemed more male than female. Charlie takes the physical form of a draconic creature with four arms. For all his power and scary appearance, he seems also interested on fine dining. He has an habit of interrupting conversations (his own voice through her mouth), wondering out loud how would certain creatures taste. "Chicken? Beef?".
Charlie can hear and see what Max sees and vice versa. They will both be able to talk through the other. Charlie is always in control of Charlie, but that's fine with him.
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Charlie and Max are technically a reincarnation of a previous character from another game. The original character (a Dragon Blood Sorcerer from 3.5) always had this goal of reaching a Demigod status (or the closest thing) but we never managed to finish that campaign. I assume he did.
My explanation is that during the process of "coming back" there was a problem because he was too powerful and his soul splintered. His human essence and his draconic prowess. After all these years before they made contact, the draconic soul part conforming Charlie actually developed sentience on his own and retained some of the personality of the original but not his memories. Gaining evolution points each level would be like little pieces of soul they are obtaining back to become whole again, although they don't realize that. At least not now.
gundammmmm a-haaaa