The eidolon needs to be redone so that it and the summoner can use magic items instead of making them share the same slots. Maybe unchained will fix that.
That would be a strong boost. Exactly what the summoner needs.
If the unchained summoner does not resemble the better balanced spiritualist very much it is likely to get the same no discussion ban it has now.If they turn it into a sensible class they can take away the shared item slots, no problem.
Summoner casting vs. Sorcerer casting
...As you can see, the summoner is behind at levels 1-3 due to not having an encounter-ending save or lose to steel spotlight with. But at levels 4-10 he gets most of the top-rated spells and he gets them before the sorcerer. After level 10, the sorcerer pulls ahead again due to a bigger spell-list and fullcaster progression.
Overall, a nice list. Thanks for putting it together.
To be fair, you should be listing where the Summoner has a lower DC (from 1 to 3 lower) because the spell level is lower. It would also have helped to note where the Summoner gets stuff late, like Fly and Aqueous Orb.
I think one of the reasons I've never had any problems with the summoner is that I played one, and so I know all the details. And when I played it, I checked with my GM to ensure that THEY knew all the details.
There were still hiccups. I played with barding on my eidolon for a while before I found the line that prohibits armor. To be honest, that would have made a huge difference in my defenses at the earliest levels, and that's also when my eidolon was at its scariest.
This is the kind of "gotcha" stuff that's in the class. I think most tables miss things like this, and ban the class outright before discovering the limitations.
As for Summoner V. Sorcerer:
Does number of spells per day mean nothing to you people? The summoner is definitely starved for spell slots. The sorcerer just laughs and laughs...
The sorcerer pretty much needs to cast a spell every round to be effective. The summoner is going to be tearing face for quite a few of their actions. Lower spell slots are kinda irrelevant when you're nuking CR appropriate foes in 1 round with non-spell attacks.
Eidolons don't need armor or barding when they have mage armor as a 1st level spell. Their ACs are going to be among the highest of the party along with a S&B fighter and a defensive monk.
Leaving aside the comparison of direct damage to spell potential -- I have my doubts that the summoner's BAB can remain competitive with a martial class in that regard.
Mage armor is OK. It isn't enough of a solution, and it's a burden on the summoner's already limited spells known/per day. You can wand it and chew through charges. Either way is an unfortunate waste of limited resources, and that's just to bring you up to standard.
How are you looking at high ACs on eidolons without giving up considerable offensive evolutions?
I thought that TH rolls for eidolons weren't a problem, because the Strength scores it could attain subbed for it? And with natural attacks, you don't need BAB for multiple attacks.
==Aelryinth
Mage armor is OK. It isn't enough of a solution, and it's a burden on the summoner's already limited spells known/per day. You can wand it and chew through charges. Either way is an unfortunate waste of limited resources, and that's just to bring you up to standard.
How are you looking at high ACs on eidolons without giving up considerable offensive evolutions?
I don't have much of a vested interest in the conversation overall, but I disagree with you here.
1. Mage Armor is an hour per level buff; it is hardly a tax on resources, especially as it is a first level spell.
2. The main way of increasing Eidolon defenses is through the Improved Natural Armor evolution, which only costs 1 point per, a miniscule investment. Beyond that most offensive evolutions are dirt cheap as well barring the size increasing ones.
Probably assuming Mage Armor + Shield, which pretty much means no other 1st level spells.
Mage Armor is alright as a spell starting about 4th-6th level since the duration on a single casting is likely to last the whole adventuring day. Shield means you are casting every combat. The Summoner does not have enough spell slots to support that.
Oh, and you can't use a wand of Shield to give Shield to the Eidolon. There is an FAQ for that.
How does it compare to the Magus swift action spring loaded wrist sheath and then jump into combat? I've seen some Magus with sky high ACs.
My criticism of Mage Armor is that it is basically mandatory. My complaints stem from experience. At low levels, the hours duration can eat into combat prep rounds, but more importantly, it eats spells per day if you want more than one hour.
Celanian, as I mentioned I'm drawing from my own experience, which does not include the synthesist. I'm going to look over your statblock in detail in the hopes that I can learn something from it, but my initial reaction was that it wasn't anything too far ahead of the class for me to allow in my own campaign.
Strength compensates for to hit, perhaps, but eidolons are particularly vulnerable to Strength draining attacks, since they must pay a hefty tax to recover from them. A low-level summoner can easily be put out of commission for the remainder of an adventure by such things. And they're really common enough for a GM to employ them without being a jerk.
Guys, I don't claim to have all the answers here. I have some experience playing and GMing for summoners, that's all. I'm open to the possibility that I'm wrong, but from here it looks like a lot of people overreact to some misinterpreted or omitted rules for this class. Maybe that itself is a problem with the design.
It's not an unbalanced list. It's fine as is. It's nowhere near an issue as early access PrC cheese.???
I'm sorry if you got that jive from my post. I don't believe I stated that any spell other than the ones I quoted are "losers" and that casters who take them aren't "winners". I'm sorry that my terminology irked you. Please consider all instances of "winners" to be "highly effective full caster staples that are extremely good for their spell slot that many successful full casters happen to know and use frequently." I said that it doesn't get a lot of obscure spells because it's a class that came out later and it's spell list doesn't get updated frequently. That doesn't mean obscure spells are bad or that staple spells are the only spells that should be used.
So thanks for not buying into something I didnt say?
The only thing I've been trying to communicate is that the spells the Summoner does get are incredibly powerful full caster staples.
It doesn't get them all. It gets enough that it's clearly unbalanced for a 6th level caster.
OK, this line explains a lot.
Took a closer look at Cel's statblock.
No change in opinion from me. It's good, but it's also pretty obviously optimized. If this were the only guy in the group that looked like this, it would be cause for concern, but that can happen with any combination of classes really. It's more about player temperament.
I think the synthesist and the master summoner are probably rightly banned in PFS, where every instance would look just like this. But I have no need to ban it at my table.
If one of my regular players showed up with this statblock, we'd need to have a talk. And if after that talk, I felt that this was sincerely the character that he wanted, I'd let him roll it. I can handle it.
Basically, if you can run the game for a wizard pulling out all the stops, you can run the game for this statblock quite easily. Making sure that it doesn't overshadow everyone else is your JOB. You can make that job easier with a ban hammer if need be. I just don't personally feel the need.
And before anyone cries "fallacy" on that last statement, think it through.
Mage armor is OK.In Conjunction with bark skin it's AC is exceptionally.
Now we're getting into pre-combat prep, or lost combat rounds.
This kind of thing holds very little import for me in practice.
I think we can all make something scary if we get to cast all our spells first.
The sample synth may be optimized, but it's done by picking the most obvious choices. It's something that someone with very little game mastery could do easily.
Right. Optimization doesn't bother me at all, although I dislike it when people put stats over concept in actual play.
Rather, I'm saying this build is not totally off the map when compared to other intense statblocks.
Is this scary enough that most people would ban it outright? It still has all the achilles heels that any summoner does.
I suppose the brood master with 10 eidolons are the the stronger summoner then.Tell that to solo BBEGsMost people I know think the base summoner is stronger than the synthesis. Action economy FTW.←←This is why.Action economy is not always king.
Hmm what if you were high level and worked on optimizing UMD with each baby Eidolon? Skilled is a 1 point evolution after all... I'm wondering if it could actually be workable now.
So Wand Key Ring to help with the UMD checks and have each baby focus only on one particular spell? 3k each, so only 24,000 to kit out your max size 8 small eidolon brood (or am I reading it wrong and you can have more than that?).
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(re: Wish costing 10,000gp)
To be fair, 10,000 GP isn't that much by 19-20th levels.
At level 20 your WBL is 880,000. It may be a dip in the bucket at that point if used sparingly, but if we're talking about it in the context of "10+ Gates per day? I'm f@@@ing awesome just like all the other full casters!" you're going to find yourself to be a broke ass 20th level character rather quickly as your full potential is going to cost you 100,000+ gold per day.
As with all consumable costs, this limitation factor has a highly variable effect, from table to table, depending how the GM interprets the intent of Wealth By Level.
If the GM's interpretation is "I gave you the right amount, if you blew it, then that's your tough s*++.", then consumable costs, spell material costs, Arcanist item draining, etc have their intended effect of removing funds from the game, and limiting overuse.
The players have to make informed decisions on resource management.
If the GM treats WBL as a target amount of portable PC wealth, that he should be maintaining, then you will have problems. In this scenario, the GM believes (or has been persuaded by the players) that any deviation below this target is a sign of a bad/strict/stingy GM, and that treasure hoards should be regularly inflated to bring PCs' wealth back to its 'proper' value, regardless of PC expenditure.
Under that model, any and all temporary monetary costs become irrelevant, as the service becomes essentially free of charge.
Why save up for four belts of +2 Strength, when you can fire off four charges from a wand of bull strength before every fight, get +4 Strength, and be given an extra 360gp than what was written, to 'compensate for your loss'?
Why save up for a +2 sword, when you can use an oil of +5 magic weapon, rampage through the encounters, and have the corpses pockets mysteriously fill with gems equal to the cost of that +5 oil?
You may ask "Who would ever run WBL like that?".
In which case, I'll direct you to the Arcanist playtest discussion, and every thread wherein a player complains that his PC is underperforming, reveals his gear is worth less than WBL, and the horde turns on the GM for not giving out freebies to top it up.
OK, this line explains a lot.
Mind sharing your glorious insights?
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The sorcerer pretty much needs to cast a spell every round to be effective.
That is not true. A sorcerer can drop one or two spells, putting the fight in the party's favor, then save the other spells while the party cleans up.
When I play casters I don't "need" to cast spells every round to make sure the party does well.
If you're only sending shadows or monsters of that nature vs the party, then the synth is not much better than anyone else. If you have some traditional encounters such as ogres or hill giants, then the synth will stomp all over those encounters.
If I were playing, I wouldn't mind being able to destroy 4 out of 5 encounters and have the 5th one be somewhat challenging. The dedicated martial might object when his contributions are trivialized by me.
Poison and Level Drain are big ones too.
And outsider-thwarting spells.
And high DR, if the eidolon is based on many attacks.
I dunno, what I'm saying is that they have big obstacles that aren't necessarily visible on the statblock, and so people get spooked.
Every class is vulnerable, but many recover from it naturally.
Eidolons don't. This can make a huge difference even in mid-level play. In fact, the whole lack of natural healing thing is one of the biggest drains on resources I've seen.
Even best-case, it ensures that the summoner's small number of spells per day are not enough to make the summoner self-sufficient. A ton of slots need to remain earmarked for eidolon repairs if you're not on a 15 minute day. Even if you are, actually, the eidolon still won't heal on its own!
I'm not claiming that this is a great equalizer or anything -- it's just that the actual drawbacks of eidolons are often overlooked in these discussions. My experience of actually playing one in a campaign (level 7 now I think) has opened my eyes to a lot of things that aren't really called out anywhere. It's still a very powerful class, but it has its fair share of gotchas that nobody else has to deal with.
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Given the choice of 4 sorcerers or 4 summoners I'd pick 4 summoners every time.
My pack of 4 sorcerers will beat your pack of 4 summoners. The sorc/wiz list is that much better.
Given the choice of 4 sorcerers or 4 summoners I'd pick 4 summoners every time.
As the opponent?
Assuming prepared casters on my side and I knew something of what I would be facing I would rather face the Summoners.
It shouldn't be too difficult to figure out what type of Eidolons they have, which would tell me what saving throws to target. If I could get better intel such as what evolutions it would help. The tricky thing would likely be figuring out the alignment of the summoners. The eidolons always have the same alignment as the summoners.
The exact strategy would depend on levels involved. At mid-levels it would likely involve Circle of Protection to keep any summons out, Slow to cancel the likely haste, and some spells targeting the Eidolon's weak save. Might even spend on acquiring the Devolution spell since that would likely come in handy.
It would really depend on how much I knew about the four Summoners. It should be easier to find out about them than a group of Sorcerers.
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I, too, disagree. The summoners would roflstomp at pretty much any level.
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My money is on the summoners from 1-20 on the average.
Now you can build some crazy sorcerers, but that doesn't change the fact that a summoner more straightforwardly dominates the game.
Heck all summoners basically describes the Fate/zero stories.
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My money is on the summoners from 1-20 on the average.
Now you can build some crazy sorcerers, but that doesn't change the fact that a summoner more straightforwardly dominates the game.
Heck all summoners basically describes the Fate/zero stories.
Sorcerers would start winning around level 5 once they can stockpile Explosive Runes in their down time. This is will get once worse once they graduate into some the better Dazing spell options. And animate dead. And some solid divinations. And magic jar. And the good transmutation spells. And of course a Razmiran Priest Sorcerer will completely roll on the Summoner from 9-20 no questions asked.
Though you are correct that the Sorcerer requires more system mastery then the Summoner.
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Either the Sorcerers manage to luck out and one-shot all the summoners or the Summoners win handily.
My money is on the summoners from 1-20 on the average.
Now you can build some crazy sorcerers, but that doesn't change the fact that a summoner more straightforwardly dominates the game.
Heck all summoners basically describes the Fate/zero stories.
Sorcerers would start winning around level 5 once they can stockpile Explosive Runes in their down time. This is will get once worse once they graduate into some the better Dazing spell options. And animate dead. And some solid divinations. And magic jar. And the good transmutation spells. And of course a Razmiran Priest Sorcerer will completely roll on the Summoner from 9-20 no questions asked.
Though you are correct that the Sorcerer requires more system mastery then the Summoner.
Dunno man, you drop em down in a hole and the summoned monsters flood in!
Explosive Runes is a lousy tactic at level 5. It'll get the sorcs killed casually if they ever tried it. Not to mention that sorcs don't get it until level 6.
If I were to do an arena fight with summoners, I'd probably have 3 master summoners and 1 synthesist. If I wanted a 4 person adventuring group, probably 1 master summoner, 1 regular summoner, and 2 synthesists.
The Sorcerers would probably win initiative and then win the fight thanks to Dazing Spell. Actually this is *definitely* what would happen past level 6*. The advantage to being a Sorcerer is that you can get initiative boosting divinations.
*I've had Wizards on the brain.
My money is on the summoners from 1-20 on the average.
Now you can build some crazy sorcerers, but that doesn't change the fact that a summoner more straightforwardly dominates the game.
Heck all summoners basically describes the Fate/zero stories.
Sorcerers would start winning around level 5 once they can stockpile Explosive Runes in their down time. This is will get once worse once they graduate into some the better Dazing spell options. And animate dead. And some solid divinations. And magic jar. And the good transmutation spells. And of course a Razmiran Priest Sorcerer will completely roll on the Summoner from 9-20 no questions asked.
Though you are correct that the Sorcerer requires more system mastery then the Summoner.
Ah you are thinking a RAW comparison (which no one can play RAW which makes the comparison less valuable).
The issues crop up when you assume a GM. Then what they sorcerer can do devolves into a Fuzzier set than what the Summoner can do. (see Fuzzy set theory if you want to do calculations based on uncertain values)