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If you want to get the best of your spells, there are a few tricks.
- Summon Monster SLA doesn't require speech. Between that and your Eidolon, you have enough to contribute to a party.
- Rod of Metamagic (Silence) helps. Thanks to Summoner's discounted spell levels, the Lesser version will cover a ton of really useful spells. And since they're fairly cheap in the long run, carrying a few of them shouldn't be too much of an issue.
- Taking the Magical Lineage trait for your favorite 6th level spell reduces the metamagic cost by one, meaning you can cast it silently if you have the Silent Spell feat.
- When in doubt, build martial. The Combat Reflexes feat with 14 dexterity and a Longspear will give you more than enough to do between turns spent summoning if you build for it. Alternatively, races with free weapon proficiency (Tengu and Half Orcs come to mind) give you a decent alternative to building for reach-based zone control.
- And last but not least, wands for your regularly used buff spells. They don't require verbal components, if I recall correctly.
Take an oracle dip. The deaf curse lets you apply the silent spell metamagic to your spells without increasing spell level or casting time (because otherwise, the curse would impose a terrible failure chance on all your spells)
Unless that only applies to oracle spells. I haven't seen anything that says that, and the language of the curse is open enough to apply to multiclassing...I will leave this issue to more experienced forum members.
Anyway, besides the fact that it delays your summoner stuff a level, it pretty much changes nothing about the play style you wanted. Note- PFS has established the practice of letting you read lips for languages you know if you have a rank in linguistics. Not a fully established rule in the system, but it is a common law practice basically.
If you want to get the best of your spells, there are a few tricks.
- Summon Monster SLA doesn't require speech. Between that and your Eidolon, you have enough to contribute to a party.
This works, but remember you can't have your Eidolon out at the same time. If your Eidolon is mostly there as a communicator, you could always go master summoner and make the Eidolon a skill-monkey whilst you use summon monsters in combat.
- Rod of Metamagic (Silence) helps. Thanks to Summoner's discounted spell levels, the Lesser version will cover a ton of really useful spells. And since they're fairly cheap in the long run, carrying a few of them shouldn't be too much of an issue.
Certainly works, but doesn't really help you in early levels.
- Taking the Magical Lineage trait for your favorite 6th level spell reduces the metamagic cost by one, meaning you can cast it silently if you have the Silent Spell feat.
Probably better off using magical lineage to cover a 1st level spell so he can cast something right out of the gate. By the time he has 6th level spells (if the campaign even goes that far), he will have access to silent metamagic rods.
- And last but not least, wands for your regularly used buff spells. They don't require verbal components, if I recall correctly.
Unfortunately, wands do require a verbal component:
"Spell Trigger: Spell trigger activation is similar to spell completion, but it's even simpler. No gestures or spell finishing is needed, just a special knowledge of spellcasting that an appropriate character would know, and a single word that must be spoken."
You could probably get by ok by taking magical lineage for a 1st level spell and silent metamagic at level 1. This makes you a one-trick pony to begin with but, especially if you go master summoner and spend most rounds summoning in combat, you'll do just fine.
I would ask your GM how optimised he is expecting your characters to be. The penalty you are taking for being a mute spellcaster is huge and may make you feel useless if the rest of the party are optimised high tier. Conversely if you are playing with newer players and weaker classes, it might balance the scales somewhat.
Another possibility is to ask if your GM can make a homebrew rule for you. One idea might be for your Eidolon to complete the verbal components of your spell for you: simply rule that the Eidolon must be within 5ft when you cast a spell, and then as an immediate action it can complete the verbal component. This way you gain no special advantage in a field of silence or similar that free silent spells would afford you.
The only problem I have with taking that Oracle dip for Deaf is that I think a mute and deaf character would be way too much of a liability for the team.
My intention was to use my Eidolon for communication with the party when I needed to talk. Otherwise the character would remain as in a support role, with the Eidolon doing most of the heavy lifting.
But I didn't realize that a regular metamagic rod of silent spell would apply to sixth level spells, meaning that I could cast anything on my spell list when I could afford one (or a dozen).
Since nonoracle levels count for 1/2, the penalties for being death is merely -2 to initiative, and -1 to perception (although you might miss the big obvious BOOM when a creature knocks something over around the corner, for example- but hey, eidolon can deal with that and clue you in).
Again, you can lip read with 1 rank linguistics (and you generally want at least a few ranks linguistics anyway, since it helps with summons; elemental languages like the ones for earth and air can be great for scouting with your minute/level SLAs). So overall, with the free constant silent spell and maybe improved initiative, you can cover the problems with being deaf.