I didn't ban the Master Summoner... but maybe I should have

[Otherwhere]

Well, thank you again, all, for the tips and suggeestions! I ran the session Saturday, and it was becoming clear that he planned on spamming his SM1 (with the bonus +1 creature due to Superior Summoning), and he kept getting max creatures. Fortunately, the addition of Fly checks, the agility of the goblins, plus my addition of the Goblin Vulture Pilot to the area, helped curb some of the OP nature of the eagles. (He kept rolling very badly for their attacks and Fly checks this last game - whew!)

Post game, with the group, I was honest with him and said I was going to have to either ban the MS or house-rule him to make him balanced. My friend totally understood now that he had the chance to see what bringing 8 creatures into play in 2 rounds did.

So, end result: I said he can keep the MS as long as he is limited to only 1 summoning active at a time, or to go standard Summoner (which amounts to almost the same thing). As Experiment 626 has pointed out, the MS can have both his eidolon and a summoned creature in play, plus they get more SLA summonings, so I think he is going to go that route.

Thank you, all!

[graystone]

Meager Rolmug wrote:

A druid would be a bit harder for the edilon to kill..but not much. Honestly have you played with players that know how to optimize a summoner and his edilon? They often have three attacks at first level! They usually add pounce or super grapple with reach before mid levels are even reached. The summoner himself can be a pretty good caster and his edilon is often a better fighter than a full blown fighter of the same level...that IS broken and better than a druid whose animal companion will NEVER be nearly as good the edilon and doesn't just dissappear when killed. The druid might have some extra flexibilty with shapechange and generally better personal defenses, but a summoner can pretty much do all his best stuff while invisible behind a wall of martials...a near insurmountable defense. And his edilon is nearly a match for the druid by himself.

I think the majority of players/GMs with extensive experience with both classes would agree that the summoner is more powerful than ANY of the original classes. Maybe you are just trying to justify wanting to play a summoner yourself perhaps? Go ahead...maybe you donot know how to optimize the class as well as the druids you have played, they probably had alot more experience with those well established classes than you do with your summoner. But given the same experience and resources the player playing a summoner will more often than not dominate battles playing with any group of classic classes.

I've played and played with a variety of druids and summoners. I've never seen the summoner overshadowing the druid. At best, the pet is slightly better in combat with pounce access at first but with it's limit to quads it's not as bad as it looks on paper. (you've got to throw a bunch of points at it to get unbalancing combos)

"They often have three attacks at first level!" Ok, so can druids.
"They usually add pounce or super grapple with reach before mid levels are even reached." 7th is 3 attacks, grab, pounce, rake, low-light vision, scent and reach for a druid. It's not hard to get 3 attacks, grab or trip at 1st. I'm thinking maybe you haven't seen many well made druids...

Does the summoner get some early access sometimes over the druid? sure
Are they more powerful? Not from anything I've seen. You seem to be highlighting the good points of summoners and ignoring the almost exact same kind of abilities the druid has.

"Maybe you are just trying to justify wanting to play a summoner yourself perhaps?" Maybe you're underestimating the druid and overestimating the summoner because you don't like them/don't want other to play them? We can both play this kind of game, but where does that get us? To be frank, I have NOTHING to prove to you or the others about the characters I want to play. I'm not Otherwhere's character.

[Meager Rolmug]

I admit the druid is one of the most powerful of the original classes and thus comes closest to the summoners power. Edilons are outsiders, way more intelligent, can be dissappeared and reappeared, and in general much more flexible in their build. That greater flexibility allows for greater optimization. Advantage summoner.

The summoners early access to spells largely eliminates the druids higher spell level advantage. While there isn't a druid ability that can keep up with the advantage spontaneous casting gives, though the druid comes close with being able to swap to summon nature's ally. The druid does have greater flexibilty with overall spell selection being wider, but this actually helping should be a rare occurrence in well run games. Advantage about even.

I am simply not that impressed with the rest of the druid's additional stuff like casting in medium armor, wild empathy, shape change, and such.

I will say that the difference in power is slight enough that the campaign setting or party make up could swing the advantage to the druid. And that the summoner's real OPness is at mostly lower levels. And may only be at lower levels when compared to a druid. But don't we generally spend more time playing low level PC's than high? I really don't see the need for allowing a big imbalance in party power for what may well turn out to be the majority of the campaign ACTUALLY played.

If the party was say a barbarian, cleric, gunslinger and magus...well a summoner would fit in "power wise" rather well. But if it is rogue, bard, fighter, and wizard....yeah those players are gonna get REALLY bored with their bit parts in battle.

At the core of this is the fact that those players that play the already OPed classes are often the ones most concerned and best at optimizing a class. I suppose this has colored my experience to a rather large degree. But from what others have said it is not a rare experience in the least.

[sunshadow21]

The difficulty with the summoner versus druid or wizard argument is that the summoner peaks almost immediately and never really has a down level, where the other original classes have very noticeable ups and downs. The summoner never reaches the same heights as either the druid or the wizard, but also never suffers similar downturns. Over the course of a campaign, the summoner will be at or perhaps even a bit under the overall power of a druid or wizard, but at the very early levels where most people get first impressions, it can definitely seem far more powerful when in reality it just reaches it's potential sooner than most classes before leveling off.

The key to managing the summoner is not to get caught up in what they can do at 1st or 2nd level, but what they are doing at 5-8th level, where most of the original classes really come into their own. These are common levels to see by mid campaign, and generally the summoner's early advantage will barely be seen at these levels. Even at the early levels, a few basic house rules, like limiting the number of active summons, and a variety of enemy tactics and terrain go a long way to reducing the problems they can cause at the table. They do require a bit of preparation and understanding to run effectively, both for the player and the DM, but it's not that much more than preparing for a druid or a wizard; it's just a bit different, which is where most people get caught off guard.

[DM Under The Bridge]

LazarX wrote:

Rastrum wrote:

Isn't master summoner explicitly called out as being mostly for solo adventures, and being DM discretion to allow otherwise?

Don't know about that, but I do recall that even James Jacobs bans the summoner almost entirely from his home games. The Master and the Synthesist are banned from PFS play.

That is hilarious.

[strayshift]

Symar wrote:

Other than a whole pile of bonus Summon Monster uses how is this any worse than a Wizard doing the same thing?

d8 hit points, light armour, spontaneous casting, some great spells before everyone else (e.g. haste @ 4th level, Black Tentacles @ 7th), masses of summon spells as a standard action (e.g. a 1st level summoner with 20 charisma has 3 summoner spells plus 8! Summon Monster 1's = that's THE EQUIVALENT OF 11 SPELLS at 1st level) PLUS the small matter of an Eidolon.

Stupidly, stupidly overpowered, and that's the standard summoner nevermind the Master Summoner.

[DM Under The Bridge]

It is so. I laughed while reading the summoner back when it was released. Trying to wrap my head around how it could possibly be balanced (and how I was going to balance it). Fellow DM busts in "can you believe this?". We stand around baffled, then shake our heads, then chuckle, and finally settled on never allowing it in our pf games.

[Helikon]

Actually the summoner is a perfectly fine class.
It has a nice gimmick but either I summon once or I cast a spell. I can not flood the battlefield like a sorcerer, because he has more spells he can nova, I can cast 8 times a summon monster, but if I cast a new one the old is gone. And the summoner is limited to buffs and a few control spells. No mass confusion, no necromancy and as soon as the opponent has magic protection against xyz, your prime abilities are negated. ONE level one spell and you can ignore a THIRD of his class abilities.
Then do not forget summoning IS good, but if you really play by the rules.... you can´t really control half of them and you need a language to speak with the others.

[Sissyl]

I checked out the languages needed to talk to the various summoned creatures. Turns out, it was pretty simple: You need the elemental languages (of course), celestial to talk to a large variety of creatures not including the celestials who all have true speech, abyssal to talk to the greater demons who do not speak common. Infernal gives you only the hell hounds, and sylvan gives you only the blink dogs. So, for six languages, you can talk to almost all the creatures. This was done before the Summon Neutral/Evil Monster feats and the rings of summoning affinity, so there's that, but it's still interesting how few languages you need.

[Tacticslion]

Still, that's six languages. Unlike the cleric or wizard, you don't get access to special bonus languages, so, unless you're a human or half-human (or a race that automatically comes with one of them), you're going to be plunking down six skill points into linguistics, which is not entirely insignificant at lower levels. Extremely high intelligence characters will not need to allocate some, but summoner is a high-cha guy, not a high-int guy. It's a minor tax, but there nonetheless.

[Sissyl]

Oh, and how often do you use water elementals?

[Just a Guess]

Tacticslion wrote:

Still, that's six languages. Unlike the cleric or wizard, you don't get access to special bonus languages, so, unless you're a human or half-human (or a race that automatically comes with one of them), you're going to be plunking down six skill points into linguistics, which is not entirely insignificant at lower levels. Extremely high intelligence characters will not need to allocate some, but summoner is a high-cha guy, not a high-int guy. It's a minor tax, but there nonetheless.

Or you're a gnome (great class for a summoner) and take the gift of tongues alternate raical trait:

Gift of tongues wrote:

Gift of Tongues Gnomes love languages and learning about those they meet. Gnomes with this racial trait gain a +1 bonus on Bluff and Diplomacy checks, and they learn one additional language every time they put a rank in the Linguistics skill. This racial trait replaces defensive training and hatred.

[Tacticslion]

Also true!

Sissyl wrote:

Oh, and how often do you use water elementals?

Whenever I need something done in the water requiring opposable thumbs (and don't play in a game with access to... "AP 38" it seems). Or something done stealthily. Or to put out fires.

More often than most, I'd wager. It's very useful in our games.

And without that, it's still five skill points - i.e. five levels of not something else.

You could, of course, whittle away the skill tax. There are many, many ways around it. That doesn't make it not a skill tax, it makes it an avoidable skill tax.

Given that the summoner actually has Linguistics as a class skill, it seems quite likely that the class is meant to be played with it in-play.

Regardless of that, the enforcement of languages is not exactly something that seems common at most tables, except when it comes to mechanical power or when it comes to a single player who makes their character a linguist, forcing the rest of the table to suffer through "not knowing" anything (in-character, at least) for the purpose of the linguist guy feeling relevant. (I was that linguist guy, by the way. It sucked. I: repeated the computer GM; that was my job.)

Basically, in many games it can be ignored, or bypassed. In others it cannot. It comes down to playstyle. Intent seems to be that it's a thing. And, considering the variety of creatures that can be summoned, you are absolutely correct that six doesn't seem to be that many. But really, it's all about character build. Either I have a summoner with moderate intelligence (14 nets me a +2, i.e. "probably celestial and abyssal" followed by "elemental languages 1-4 at each level thereof (or, if you don't care, not aquan, I guess, 'cause there's not much in-water stuff here)". Thus, the opportunity cost of a 14 INT and three levels' worth of skill points nets me all I could need (presuming a lack of interest in aquan), but it's still something that requires investment.

[Helikon]

And I have been playing an Arcanist(Occultist) in PFS and an Summoner at the table. The Arcanist is head over tails more powerful, and I have never had more than 3 summon monster spell casts per day. Havin 8 or 9 or 20 is irrelevant if you most of the times need just one or two! At higher levels this can be more interesting, granted if you use the SLA, and it allows great flexibility.
I have seen good summoners and bad summoners. Bad summoners let their eidolon do their thing and twiddle their thumps if their stick doesn´t work, good summoners take care that the group wins by buffing and doing some minor CC. Why... because they are always do something decent... and second making a team win and having fun together beats singlehandly wasting encounters.

[Christopher Dudley]

I love the summoner. Even the Master Summoner and Synthesist. I think every class should be the Summoner. Or a subclass of Summoner. Maybe the fighter and the rogue could be an archetype of summoner, because people say they need a little help. In fact, I think they should change the name of the game from Pathfinder to Summonerfinder.

[LazarX]

ElterAgo wrote:

LazarX wrote:

Rastrum wrote:

Isn't master summoner explicitly called out as being mostly for solo adventures, and being DM discretion to allow otherwise?

Don't know about that, but I do recall that even James Jacobs bans the summoner almost entirely from his home games. The Master and the Synthesist are banned from PFS play.

Most people that I know and PFS ban it due to the way it bogs down the game rather than the actual power level.

That by itself is a good enough reason.

[Raymond Lambert]

If it makes you feel any better, I have played many regular summoners but except at early levels, my Eidolon almost never died so I just stick with it. When I did need to use SM 1 or 2, u went with the dog instead. Now that.I am DMing another simmononer and who is level 3 when we began and 4 the last few games, I have semi regularly killed his Eidolon and have like you witnessed how good the eagles can sometimes be. To my surprise! Before this thread, I realised he should.be required to make hover checks but have found this thread helpful with new ideas to take into consideration.

More thoughts:
As a.master Summoner, You know he will be summoning monsters(my player prefers his Eidolon 75% of the time in contrast, I prefer the Eidolon 100% PF the time). Knowing those summoned monsters will have smite, you might want to consider that undead, dragons and outsiders are less of a challenge when you redesign characters. I will consider that when I redesign encounters.

I said it many tines in many threads but it deserves repeating. You have to redesign encounters unless you are running for 4 players with 15 point buy and they play mediocre characters. Or unless you want the.PCs to curb stomp everything super fast to move the pace along quickly.

You might want to offer an trade between multiple creatures summoned or one with more powerful stats. For example, if he rolls for three eagles, offer him the chance to trade out the three eagles for one powerfully one. Something like +2 on att/damage/savez/AC. If he would get 2 eagles, he can add +1 to 2 of those 4 improvements.

Remember, in the PF edition, alignment templates do NOT automatically raise int to 3 and grant an alignment language(as it did in earlier D20 editions). Celestrial eagles do not have a language and do not automatically fight in the best tactics a player would want them to. The other monsters who do have a language take that ability to better order it around as a strength (or balance) compare to another creature with many more attacks, better modifiers, ect.

I still need to look it up but the post about failing to hover may require the
Creatue to move and provoke or more of of the threatening squars could be a big deal. We both need to go read that. Even circling around may prove bard as turns take.up.movement and sharp turns like (90 degrees?) take a fly check themselves.

If you want to limit to one summon at a time, consider also allowi.g 2 summons if the Eidolon is not present. Maybe the extra can only be a single buffed one like suggested above.

I think summoning into flank positions is ok but if the enemy is so far away that they have to fly their, I don't think they would fly the long way around out of attack of opportunity reach and/or into flanking. They are animal int, not smart people. You may want to lookinto the animal archive boom to get a better sense of hiw such creTurex would fight. I will read mine toight!

I commend you on looking for ways to make this work instead of just banning it without much thought.

[strayshift]

strayshift wrote:

Symar wrote:

Other than a whole pile of bonus Summon Monster uses how is this any worse than a Wizard doing the same thing?

d8 hit points, light armour, spontaneous casting, some great spells before everyone else (e.g. haste @ 4th level, Black Tentacles @ 7th), masses of summon spells as a standard action (e.g. a 1st level summoner with 20 charisma has 3 summoner spells plus 8! Summon Monster 1's = that's THE EQUIVALENT OF 11 SPELLS at 1st level) PLUS the small matter of an Eidolon. Stupidly, stupidly overpowered, and that's the standard summoner nevermind the Master Summoner.

Oh and I forgot to add 2/3rds BAB progression. Also the counter-argument citing the Arcanist just proves how broken that is as well, not how weak the standard Summoner is compared to a Wizard .

[Helikon]

Sorry, but for what is a 2/3 BAB progression good? People whine that the rogues 2/3 BAB does not cut it, and if the summoner had a lot of ray attack spells that would really mean a thing, but the summoner is the chap standing back as extra HP for his eidolon. Apart from some flanking buddy build, but that one has even less spells, because he needs strength dex and con.
Again to ability to cast 8 SM1 if they replace each other is not overpowered. It sounds OP but it isn´t! Who has played in a game where the summoner cycles regulary through half of his SLAs. I am curious.
I admit that summoned monster bloat the turn, but that is not the summoners fault, SM and SNA are spells since 2nd edition, maybe first. And did bloat the turn then too.
Play one before you whine! And play him with a decent Gamemaster who knows the limitations and you will find it is nice but thats it.

[DM Under The Bridge]

If you want to see how to balance a summoner, check the bonded summoner for 3.5.

Cool, you get this awesome elemental, and you can still summon, aaaand your spell progressions is slowed - because that is the balance for having this absolutely fantastic elemental buddy always helping you out that continues to get better and better and grow as you level!

[strayshift]

The original question was 'what does the Summoner have over the wizard?' I listed what the Summoner has over the Wizard.

The Summoner is tougher than a wizard, has more 'spells' than a wizard (and gets some great ones earlier than anyone else), is better in a fight than a wizard (if they have to) AND they have an Eidolon (who an be good in a fight) at any time they wish.

[wraithstrike]

Meager Rolmug wrote:

People are posting that other casters are just as powerful or even more so...REALLY?? I don't see how. All of the classes they say this about have to prepare their spells, this is a MAJOR drawback unless your GM is allowing his players to prep perfect spells for most battles AND allowing them to rest whenever they complain they need to. Not only does the summoner save up his spells for major battles by contributing to the little ones mostly with his edilon(which if built well is better than most other melee classes), he also gets many spells at a lower spell level slot. These early spells are almost exclusively buffs and conjurations where the save DC doesn't matter!!

The wizard is said to be more powerful, the most often...HOGWASH! most people spend more time playing low level PC's than very high level(where it MIGHT be true). The summoner's edilon could EASILY kill a wizard of the same level unless that wizard gets VERY lucky up until about mid levels. Yes, a well built wizard can be tremendous at high levels. But he can also be worthless at times when his available spells aren't useful, this pretty much NEVER happens to a well built summoner of ANY level. He can most always summon at least something moderately useful and buff the heck out of that AND the rest of the party.
I've played on many tables with pretty much all the prepared casters AND with summoners. They are indeed quite overpowered, as are quite a few of the newer classes compared to the standard ones. Although excellent GMing can help ease the pain felt by the other players at the table, it will be as difficult....as say trying to keep your 11 year old son feeling like he's not left out when playing with adults in a pickup basketball game. It is one of PF biggest problems, and was completely avoidable IMO. It seems obvious they did this to get people to buy more books containing ever more powerful options. While a decent short term marketing strategy, it may well be the main reason people will move on to other more balanced RPG's.

Someone has not seen a well played wizard before. The eidolon can be banished, and then the summoner killed before he uses the spell that can summon the eidolon again. If he does bring it back, then protection from ___ may mean the eidolon can't do much unless it is TN. In that case send it away again.

If your grou['s casters are worthless as a normal thing other than some GM's antimagic area they are not played our built well.

A caster does not need the "perfect" spell. He only needs one that is good enough to bypass ____.

[Helikon]

The summoner is tougher as the wizard, has 3 more ac Chainshirt vs hakamaki, has way less spells than a wizard (At least if I read the spellists correctly), has some early entry spells, but misses almost 4 schools completly, is better in a fight than a wizard, but thats comparing a 12 to a 14 year old, has less spells to cast if the eidolon is out and if it is gone his other ability is negated by the wizard casting a level 1 spell.
The Wizard usually has either a higher Iniative, if he is clever, has more feats, higher DC´s, more skillpoints and way more options.
Heck a feysorcerer can at level one say Compolsion spell DC 20 save or sux. That is OP

[Experiment 626]

sunshadow21 wrote:

The difficulty with the summoner versus druid or wizard argument is that the summoner peaks almost immediately and never really has a down level, where the other original classes have very noticeable ups and downs. The summoner never reaches the same heights as either the druid or the wizard, but also never suffers similar downturns. Over the course of a campaign, the summoner will be at or perhaps even a bit under the overall power of a druid or wizard, but at the very early levels where most people get first impressions, it can definitely seem far more powerful when in reality it just reaches it's potential sooner than most classes before leveling off.

The key to managing the summoner is not to get caught up in what they can do at 1st or 2nd level, but what they are doing at 5-8th level, where most of the original classes really come into their own. These are common levels to see by mid campaign, and generally the summoner's early advantage will barely be seen at these levels. Even at the early levels, a few basic house rules, like limiting the number of active summons, and a variety of enemy tactics and terrain go a long way to reducing the problems they can cause at the table. They do require a bit of preparation and understanding to run effectively, both for the player and the DM, but it's not that much more than preparing for a druid or a wizard; it's just a bit different, which is where most people get caught off guard.

This is it, in a nutshell.

I think the sweet spots for a Master Summoner are from levels 3-5.

At 3rd you can spam eagles or bring elementals for utility.
At 4th you make a beeline for the Haste spell. This might be a welcome relief for the GM, as your first round action as a summoner might be "I cast haste!" instead of "I summon X!"

At 5th you get more utility critters and can spam elementals. You can also bring forth more eagles, but I'd question the value of that except in very limited circumstances.

5th level, as mentioned above, everyone else is coming online and the wizard's going to start using his larger bag of tricks to Batman his way out of most out of combat problems (Assuming the Alchemist hasn't beaten him to it!) that hang the summoner up - summons can have some good utility value, but they're a lot more limited. His 1/2 strength eidolon should probably be configured to be a scout/wand user by that point, adding to the utility role. The skilled evolutions can grant a lot of perception and stealth bonuses, and Lesser Evolution Surge can handle a lot of contingencies.