Okay so I have always loved summoners, but I can never bring myself to play them because of how they slow down the game, and can make you a tad too versatile. Well I am running a solo campaign with a friend. We are alternating, I am running some weird lovecraftian pathfinder, and he is running an underwater campaign. Now I know solo campaign seem lame to a lot of people but we are on a boat for months at a time and so don't have the option of playing the hobby we love with other too often.
Knowing he is heavy handed on the fighting, and that it will just be me I have decided to focus on summoning for once. However I do have a few questions.
1. I understand that summoner is really, really strong but this is a completely underwater campaign. Is it better to be a summoner, or a Druid. Druids can wildshape, and call nature ally, but it seems like a lot of their spells are going to be difficult to use underwater, and I really want my summons to fight for me. Any advice on which of these is going to be better (or if you have another class in mind you think would be good please tell me.
2. How feasible is it to have all of combat done by my summons? I really like the image of sitting back occassionaly casting spells while my potential army does the dirty work.
3. Is this a bad idea? Why I love the premise I dont know how helpful and fun it will be to only summon creatures of the sea.
Thanks for reading.
Merfolk make great summoners when you do not have to work around their movement speed. They have 3 stat bonuses, and no penalties (even if you are not looking for high dex/con, you can use less points in point buy to boost up other stats). They also have +2 natural armor, which is fairly good for defense.
I might still look to have the eidolon be larger with the mount evo though. Just in case the campaign ever ends up going in that direction.
Here are a nice set of example stats (assuming 20 pt buy; most likely, you will have a much better point buy):
STR: 16 DEX: 14 CON: 14 INT: 12 WIS: 9 CHA: 16
I suggest the high STR because this is a solo campaign- being able to go in there and smack some heads seems like a good option to have.
I am a bit waffling on whether the summoner is actually better than druid in this case though- at least when it comes to using summoning spells. I am not an expert on whether Summon Monster has a lot of things that work well underwater.
Also, druid has access to cure spells (which simplifies wand use for healing). Summoner has a better spell list overall though.
Well my problem is that I have really, really taken a shine to Shark Shaman, but it seems really weak mechanically. I want a shark companion and while it is a subpar route in general the summoners pet can become a magnitude of 40000 times stronger than the animal companion of the Druid. All of this is still in conflict with my desire to play a minionmancer