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Pretty much.
They should have left the Eidolon alone. The real problem came from SM and their spell list.
The main problem with the synthesist is that it replaces your physical stats, like old school Druid shape shifting worked. This isn't so bad if you roll for stats, but if you use point buy, it can get ridiculous. Instead, the synthesist should have just gotten bonuses to his own stats based on his base form choice. Biped +4 str, quad +2 str and dex, serpent +4 dex. This would be similar to the bonus of a half power, but permanent, barbarian rage.
Edit: If I'm still not being clear, I think synthesist should be using something very similar to the current polymorph rules.
The point buy issue is pretty big for any point buy value.
15 buy:
7,7,7,14,14,18
25 buy:
7,7,7,16,16,18
I gave my thoughts on this in the thread when the book came out, so I'll just link them here. My opinion hasn't changed since then. I can deal with the changes, but I also think that it defined things that were better left undefined. You made a deal with an outsider. Why do we have to limit what kind?
Limited forms that come with inherent advancements are not an interesting change to the class, and slapping an alignment restriction on top of that is way too limiting. Sure, you can drop alignment, or ignore the restriction, but then you're having to adapt other parts of the game to fix something that worked fine before. Now you not only have to hope that your GM won't be terrified of a Summoner, you'll have to hope that s/he will let you hand-wave part of the new one. Your odds of being allowed to play your concept have just dropped precipitously.
I don't even especially feel that the limited forms are weaker in most cases. So if the problem was that the eidolon was too powerful, this wasn't really a fix for that. So I'm not entirely sure what purpose it serves.
The biggest problem I have is that what they rolled out as a purported fix was just a big disappointment compared to what it could have been.
At the risk of sounding b&~#!y, I think it has a lot to do with the fact PFS made it non-optional, and a lot of GM's have followed suit because it is a more balanced version of the class. However, that makes it a nerf, and many people vehemently hate nerfs to things they like.
*Shrug* If you're playing PFS I would have thought you'd already be used to their houserules popping up everywhere. If it's your GM who has made the decision talk with them about it like with any optional rule they implement that you dislike.
For those serious about ''creativity,'' the unchained summoner made things a little more difficult and it can be annoying. Now one must invest feats/races/bonuses/magic items into to eidolon to make it fit a creative theme.
To be fair, a lot of those "creative themes" made no real sense as outsiders. I mean, god, the amount of complaints that you cannot make dragons with unchained summoner actually confuse me.... eidolons are outsiders, not intended to be dragons.
1) Required in PFS.2) Really hoped for better.
3) Suspect strong feelings original summoner engendered unduly influenced the revision.
4) Summon monsters untouched, only eidolon.
1. Again, PFS is a heavily houseruled game, if you don't agree with their houserules don't play it.
2. And yet there is more hate for Unchained Summoner than Unchained Monk?
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1) Required in PFS.2) Really hoped for better.
3) Suspect strong feelings original summoner engendered unduly influenced the revision.
4) Summon monsters untouched, only eidolon.
1. Again, PFS is a heavily houseruled game, if you don't agree with their houserules don't play it.
2. And yet there is more hate for Unchained Summoner than Unchained Monk?
1) Work travel (months at times) make pfs the only game in towns for me.
2) Summoner is the only game in town for the Summoner type character. A monk type can choose between monk, unchained, and Brawler. An arcane caster can choose wizard, sorcerer or arcanist.
I could go on and someone could bring up animal companion classes, but you wouldn't marry your animal companion. I think possible dynamics like this make a big difference in the minds of summoner players.
Hope that was helpful.
1) Work travel (months at times) make pfs the only game in towns for me.2) Summoner is the only game in town for the Summoner type character. A monk type can choose between monk, unchained, and Brawler. An arcane caster can choose wizard, sorcerer or arcanist.
I could go on and someone could bring up animal companion classes, but you wouldn't marry your animal companion. I think possible dynamics like this make a big difference in the minds of summoner players.
Hope that was helpful.
1. *Shrug*
2. Arcanist, Druid, Hunter, Kineticist, Occultist, Sorcerer, Spiritualist, Wizard can all do the summoner type character. Also, marrying an eidolon is abit creepy, I mean, it's a gestalt of dead people who happened to have the same alignment crammed into one body.
Also the inquisitor now has that ridiculously powerful summoning archetype.
Well you know OP , there is a reason at a table that i play and usually present most books so others know about them, they wont ever see the unchained book or any of its options unless , for a huge change , someone seeks it out.
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For me a big problem with the UnSummoner is that it was in theory going to fix "problems with the summoner" - and fixed some problems that a few people had, while completely ignoring frustrations other people, people who actually LIKED the APG summoner, had. The terrible evolution costs for garbage 1/day magical abilities (I mean holy cow I cast web at a -2 caster-level-for-my-character, and all the goblins beat the 11 dc reflex save! guess I used my 1/day ability! hope we don't have a second encounter today!!) are extremely frustrating. The fact that First Worlder trades a fair share of stuff for... basically very little, or the fact that at a very similar time, we got a second wild caller archetype, which just boggles my mind. The Pathfinder SRD takes like 30 seconds to get to - does nobody even glance at the classes they write for?
The whole thing feels a bunch of people who actively don't like summoners got their hands on it and decided to do some shoddy patching of stuff a vocal group with little understanding of the mechanics hated (like the eidolon), while leaving everything that the people who liked the class hated, AND also leaving the turn bloat that was the most widespread problem that everyone across all camps had in the first place. Sure people can be like "oh don't like it? Don't play it!" but this is the content that's PFS legal, this is the content that was released, and I think it's perfectly within reason to say "look while there were some neat ideas that could have been really cool, the entire thing was sloppy and bad." more importantly, this wasn't some supplementary manual? This was "the Unchained" book, and supposedly supposed to hold great things.
But no. Inside was only tears and sadness.
Yes I vastly prefer APG summoner, I would make certain offensive options more expensive evolution wise, and seriously buff the magical evolution options. Allow an option to start with a lot more int or charisma while lowering physical stats for the eidolon. Lastly, reduce the uses of the SM per day
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I went through this topic just to take notes of all those people who tought the Eidolon nerf wasn't necessary so I can from now on skip reading all their posts.
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1) Work travel (months at times) make pfs the only game in towns for me.2) Summoner is the only game in town for the Summoner type character. A monk type can choose between monk, unchained, and Brawler. An arcane caster can choose wizard, sorcerer or arcanist.
1) Without sounding callous, this is really nobody's problem but your own. Certainly ranting about it on a message board won't make additional gaming groups pop up in your area.
2) This is blatantly false. You can build a summoning-focused wizard, arcanist, sorcerer, cleric, alchemist, hell even bloodrager. There was a whole splat built around summoning for criminy.
Because you don't understand that the more powerful ability is the Summon Monster SLA? Cause that's the only way I can figure that you believe that the eidolon needed a general nerf, rather than minor tweaks. That really says more about you than it does the rest of them.
You mean the one that can be easily dispelled or dismissed, creates monsters that are generally weaker than the CR of anything you're fighting, can't even touch a guy with the right 1st-level protection spell up, can't be out at the same time as the eidolon without a specific archetype, and are primarily used as speed bumps or out-of-combat utility? That SLA?
No, it didn't need to be nerfed, because Summon Monster has been around since the game was CRB only yet only Summoners with their eidolons became a widespread problem.
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As to the rest, I'm going to guess you've never seen a summon focused Druid, or pre-errata Occultist Arcanist. Or even a Wizard with Academae Graduate. Summoning is incredibly powerful, and will ruin your life in short order if you're not careful.
You're quoting the wrong guy. I'm not the one who said Summoner is the only option for someone who wants to play a summoning character, Kerney was.
Why would I want to use my eidolon when I have the Summon Monster SLA? It seems fairly clear that you don't really grok just how good that ability is. If you're treating your summons like speed bumps or only out of combat utility, you're doing it wrong. They're so much more than that.
I know they're (very) useful. But they're much, much more easily countered than an Eidolon, and so they cause less problems at tables.
Master Summoner is banned because of the sheer mass of bodies it can clog a combat with, and you'll note that they are also the one archetype that gets to have summons and an eidolon out at the same time to boot.
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No, I quoted exactly who I meant to. You said that only the summoner, with its eidolon, made summoning a problem. I disagreed, being as summoning is an amazing ability set for a number of classes. Amazing enough that there are plenty of builds that do nothing but summon.
And none of those caused problems, which is what I said.
They're not that much more easily countered than an eidolon. Why? Because every resource you waste dispelling or banishing my summons is one you're not using to kill me. So go ahead. Dispel one of my summons. I have more summon spells than you have dispels, dismissals, and banishments. You will run out of ability to get rid of my summons before I even have to touch my spell slots to bring out more.
How is it a waste when you can stop a 9th-level summon with a 3rd-level dispel? And you still haven't responded to the fact that a 1st-level buff renders many summons useless.
To be fair, a lot of those "creative themes" made no real sense as outsiders. I mean, god, the amount of complaints that you cannot make dragons with unchained summoner actually confuse me.... eidolons are outsiders, not intended to be dragons.
This is actually the best articulation of problem I had with limiting it, but coming from the other side. I will try to be clear with what I mean, but I certainly won't be as succinct.
I personally don't see what's wrong with the fact that they made no sense as outsiders. In the text of the original Summoner, the true origin of the eidolon's being is not stated, which leaves it wide open to many story-based possibilities. It was just a separate being from the summoner, made of outsider stuff. It could be a being that the summoner made contact with and formed a pact with, or it could be a manifestation of the summoner's imagination, given form and individuality by his own will (or by accident). It could have been a golem made by magical technology, or a clockwork warhorse, or as a synthesist, a suit of magical steampunk armor, or a Guyver-like techno-organic battle-suit, or a Hulk-like alter-ego. Or as a Master Summoner a puppetmaster with his army of marionettes. You might have to get the GM to agree to hand-wave some flavor text, but all this was possible within the confines of the rules of the old Summoner.
However, the unSummoner decidedly and definitively is bonded with a particular kind of outsider, and other decisions you make limit what kind you have. The origin of the eidolon is pretty clear based on what sub-type you choose. This limits the kinds of characters you can create with the Summoner class, and the limitation does not seem to come with a serious power reduction.
Now, if the ENTIRE goal of the unSummoner was to exert some controls on PFS, then I guess it works. But the loss of so much creative freedom displeases me, and the prospect of having any future concept I have in a home game or PFS game funneled into one of these narrow paradigms is disheartening.
It's been my experience that summons (even spammed summons) aren't all that powerful in combat.
The biggest thing they do is block enemy movement and keep PCs from getting hit so much. Dozens of other spells do that too, and do it better.
Sure some summons can cast a few unusual spells, and all of them can offer minor bonuses through flanking and the like, but in general their combat stats just aren't up to par unless you put in some serious resource investment (usually in the form of feats, which summoners don't get many of).
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It's been my experience that summons (even spammed summons) aren't all that powerful in combat.
The biggest thing they do is block enemy movement and keep PCs from getting hit so much. Dozens of other spells do that too, and do it better.
Sure some summons can cast a few unusual spells, and all of them can offer minor bonuses through flanking and the like, but in general their combat stats just aren't up to par unless you put in some serious resource investment (usually in the form of feats, which summoners don't get many of).
Precisely this. Meanwhile the Eidolon is able to keep up with CR-appropriate foes right out of the box, and brings those other benefits to the table as well (blocking enemy movement through its size, flanking with the fighter/rogue etc.)
If an unSummoner still wants their pouncing Killipede they can still do it. There's just more of a tradeoff now. (Large instead of Huge, fewer skills etc.)
Still waiting for that much locked down and weakened Unchained Wizard.In the case of the wizard - it's not the class - it's the spell list. My theory is that the worst of them were accumulated over decades worth of Deus Ex Machina spells which were originally meant to be BBEG use only.
This. Wizard and to a slightly lesser extent clerics are not OP per se but because they get to use SOME overpowered spells that somehow failed to get ballanced through various editions.
The summoner is broken AS A CLASS, period.
Animal companions fall off very quickly. You have to really buff them for it to even stay competitive with a fighter. Druid spells are great but they aren't nearly as broken as arcane spells, which old summoner got all the good ones.
I'll put it this way. A generalist druid is about 90% effective at everything, while a summoner is playing two characters that are each 75% effective. Druid is always bringing the best 90% for the situation while the summoner is throwing it's two 75% at every situation. Unchained summoner tones it down to 50%.
This opinion completely discounts the AC which unless copious amounts of loot are passed out or the Fighter is an Archer, just isnt true. Any given AC being competent? Sure some take work. The ones I listed? Not really.. as they often get pounce or One big attack or some ability rider. The Pets naturally get Str/Dex bumps and can benefit from cheap Magic items while being buffed for anything else. This is on top of the Druid.
A attack Routine of Claw Claw Claw Claw Bite all at Full Str + Riders generally will be about the same or more than a Fighter until around 12th level or so when the Fighter starts getting better equipment and has More HD to balance out the buffs.
In my experience the pet alone is never as good as a fighter of comparable level despite pounce (and I expect a sufficiently high level fighter to have access to flight via items). The fighter loses at being better at fighting with the druid only if you buff the pet and then wildshape the druid, then yes, druid is better at fighting than the fighter (and that's because the fighter is currently Pathfinder's red headed stepchild class).
The summoner eidolon ALONE can be stronger than a fighter of comparable level can be, and this without buffs or putting the arcane caster summoner into the mix...
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A lot of people (myself included) couldn't give an Azata's scaled derrier about its ever-so-slightly reduced combat effectiveness; the eidolon is still a powerhouse and can easily push fighters into the mud and laugh at them.The biggest issue to me is the thematic and alignment restrictions of the eidolon. Yeah dragon outsider doesn't strictly make sense, though one could excuse as "outsider that looks and acts like dragon", on that same not Protean or Archon dragon make even less sense since those describe very specific beings.
And alignment restrictions are almost entirely a universal no-no, I probably don't have to explain this one.
Tough, plenty of other folks like alignment restrictions. But the Fun Police won't show up and kick your door down for getting rid of them, or even for using the old summoner, so just stick with that one.
And I don't give an Azata's scaled derriere that the Eidolon can still be built strong. I do care that the UnSummoner isn't throwing out level 4 haste, level 13 simulacrum etc anymore, while also having a powerhouse eidolon.
Still waiting for that much locked down and weakened Unchained Wizard.In the case of the wizard - it's not the class - it's the spell list. My theory is that the worst of them were accumulated over decades worth of Deus Ex Machina spells which were originally meant to be BBEG use only.This. Wizard and to a slightly lesser extent clerics are not OP per se but because they get to use SOME overpowered spells that somehow failed to get ballanced through various editions.
The summoner is broken AS A CLASS, period.The summoner is as much of a problem as any other T2 caster, the only difference is that its impact is more immediately obvious. The wizard's spell list is as much a part of the wizard as the eidolon is to the summoner, so saying the Wizard isn't overpowered in and of itself is a bit silly.
Unlike the wizard, however, you can actually limit a summoner's power without making it a logistical nightmare or cutting your player off at the knees. The Wizard is so absolutely stupid in so many ways that it's easier and overall better just to say "no T1 casters" and call it a day.
Nope. First "T1 casters" is as subjective as a definition as allignment is, probably much more so.
Second, spells are actually easier to adjust individually than a whole class is. Have a problem with how enervation works? You can change it quite easily (start with giving it a save and make it touch instead of ranged touch...). Want to adjust the summoner? You need to rework the whole class and the spell list. Sorta what happened with unchained (and it didn't go so well after all).As someone else mentioned there's a reason A LOT of GMs banned the summoner a long time BEFORE the unsummoner change to PFS. The clas was and is a mess, and it causes problems for other player and the GM at the table, far more than a wizard does. And yes, a wizard can be as disruptive unless you have adjusted the most blatantly broken spells, but that generally happens at high level play, not right off the bat...
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Want to adjust the summoner? You need to rework the whole class and the spell list.
It could have been as simple as changing the level of a handful of spells and increasing the cost of a handful of evolutions.
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An eidolon beats the fighter in terms of combat options I guess (flight, pounce, etc.), but I've never seen them beat them in straight up numbers.
If an eidolon beat an appropriately leveled fighter (who wasn't totally gimped by a bad build) then it's either because (1) the eidolon possessed some ability that the fighter couldn't cope with, such as flight against a melee-focused fighter; or (2) because he had the magical might of a summoner backing him up.
An eidolon alone should lose against the fighter more often then not. He just doesn't have the numbers to compete. What he has, are specialized abilities and a spellcaster.
Which is enough to cause problems with class balance, since that is often enough the case.
Nope. First "T1 casters" is as subjective as a definition as allignment is, probably much more so.
Second, spells are actually easier to adjust individually than a whole class is. Have a problem with how enervation works? You can change it quite easily (start with giving it a save and make it touch instead of ranged touch...). Want to adjust the summoner? You need to rework the whole class and the spell list. Sorta what happened with unchained (and it didn't go so well after all).
As someone else mentioned there's a reason A LOT of GMs banned the summoner a long time BEFORE the unsummoner change to PFS. The clas was and is a mess, and it causes problems for other player and the GM at the table, far more than a wizard does. And yes, a wizard can be as disruptive unless you have adjusted...That's simply untrue. T2 caster can do anything, T1 caster can do everything. I mean sure, all you have to do to fix the summoner is adjust a couple of evolution costs, introduce logical limits on things like the number of arms you can have, and slightly revise the action economy, but that's a lot of work than say... the wizard's entire spell list.
If you honestly think the wizard isn't more potentially disruptive than the Summoner then there isn't much to argue about here. It's more than just a "couple" of broken spells that need "tweaks". Multiple save-or-die spells, save-or-suck spells, some that don't allow saves period, spells that obviate class features and overall entire classes, spells that remove the need for skill checks, battlefield control, mind control, mind reading, divination, amazing buffs, amazing debuffs, the ability to grant wishes, the ability to raise the dead, dispelling, lichdom, immortality, inter-dimensional travel, teleportation, half-price magical items, metamagic, flight, the list goes on and on.
Again: T1 and T2 casters are a subjective classification some people use and some others don't even know it exists. If you ever played D&D you know about alignment. There's no T1 - T2 official caster classification, and different people have different ideas about what is T1 and T2 (just in this thread we have people debating if druids should be considered T1 or T2 for example).
That said, yes, in PF the wizard is the most powerful class of all, and that's because every spell that gets added to its list is a potential bump in power. But if you check the whole of the arcane spell list you'll discover the actual game crashers are not that many and above all they are not that difficult to adjust. I gave you one common example above, I can do more. Let's take wish for example, the most powerful spell the wizard has at its disposal. It requires a 25k gp diamond to be cast. Players who want to bypass this restriction in my experience as a GM, usually do 3 things. (1) Cast a first wish that gives them an inordinate amount of 25k gp diamonds. (2)Try to get the DM allow them to create a sort of "demiplane of diamonds".(3) Summon a powerful extraplanar being and try to force it to grant wishes. Know what happens if you, as a GM tell them they can't do any of those things? All of a sudden wish sheanigans become much less problematic and game breaking. And note this is basically done without even having a need to houserule anything (because wish as written is quite vague and requires GM interpretation for what is possible and what is not). So keeping wizards in check is basically a matter of keeping their spells in check. They should contribute meaningfully but not so much more than anyone else. Sure, it takes work but it can be done, and without fundamentally changing the wizard as a class.
Then there's the summoner, a class with several problems. The eidolon, whose power is really ridicolous for a pet, the spell list, incredibly good for a caster with spells theorically capped at 6th lvl, and above all the mechanics of summoning, making the class able to solo enconters from early levels AND clogging down games to the point that people start disliking the summoner's player for choosing such a time consuming class (when you need 5 minutes to explain and execute whatever you want to do while everyone else needs a 5th of that time, you can see you have a problem at your table) and not only because they don't get to do much besides trying to find space near the summons.
These problems were so real that the devs even tried to solve them by adjusting the class. You know what? They mostly failed (again, take the hint from this thread and several others on a similar vein that pop up on the boards from time to time). And that alone tells you how easy it is to change a whole class.
To be clear, I'm NOT claiming that the summoner is more powerful than a wizard but just that I found it infinitely easier to keep a wizard in line than a summoner, to the point I will gladly have a wizard at my table but I ban summoners beforehand.
Your first 2 wish shenanigans are news to me, but Planar Binding Efretti for wishes (the third) is perfectly legal. Better still however, is making a Simulacrum of the Efretti and forcing your "totally-under-your-control-no-free-will-of-its-own" Snow Cone Efretti to grant you limitless wishes...absolutely free.
Of course, if you must pay for Wishes, then there is legitimately a spell that allows you to pay in your blood. Blood Money may require some STR damage, but with the amount of spells a wizard has at his disposal to boost his STR, it's not entirely difficult to use it to get free wishes.
Inovking Rule 0 is certainly one way to stop such abuse, but that is the way these spells work in RAW, and that is why the wizard is so powerful in RAW.
But I get what you mean. To keep a wizard in check, he just has to be restricted form choosing X spell, and can instead choose Y spell with little consequence. To keep a Summoner in check, you basically have to restrict half of his class.
Summon Monster is already one of the most optimal things to do in the game. It gives you meatshields, damage, and even spells you otherwise might not have access to as well as a host of monster special abilities you can tailor to the situation at hand. No other spell in the game has that kind of versatility. For a low OP group, it's entirely possible that the Summoner will completely dominate the game simply by using what is available to him.
That doesn't even take into account the Eidolon, which can be mixed and matched with little to no consequence for poor decisions (not that this is a bad thing, Fighters and other PCs should have an easier time of retraining IMHO, but w/e). Honestly, I would get rid of the Eidolon altogether and focus the class entirely on the Summon Monster ability. Maybe give them teamwork feats, or the ability to summon more monsters (maybe with a hit to duration if needed). Heck, extra monsters to summon would be great, like summoning and controlling swarms, maybe even Undead or Constructs. Some buffs wouldn't hurt either, you know. Turn them into a 9th level spellcaster, or get rid of spells entirely and rely on SLAs I don't care, but I would definitely like it if the Summoner focused primarily on summoning. I think a permanent pet sort of detracts from that.
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Of course, if you must pay for Wishes, then there is legitimately a spell that allows you to pay in your blood. Blood Money may require some STR damage, but with the amount of spells a wizard has at his disposal to boost his STR, it's not entirely difficult to use it to get free wishes.
While I agree that it's RAW - Blood Money is exactly the sort of spell I meant up-thread. It was originally created as a super spell for a boss of Rise of the Runelords and not actually intended for player use at all. (yay unintended consequences) While not as blatant as many other spells' power - it's the basis for many of the stupidly OP wizard combos.
I think one thing that would help balance wizards is if they got rid of the free spells in their book as they level - or perhaps have them spelled out in each specialty so they don't get to pick. That would allow GMs to restrict their use without houseruling.
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Personally.... i hate the class... it lost a lot, gained nothing, amd has forced RP tied to it (has Paizo not learned that Alignment restrictions are NEVER popular?).
If you don't like what you mistakenly call "forced RP," then you don't really like the D&D class system - it's integral to the game (as are alignment restrictions where appropriate). All these classes are based on archetypes from myth and legend, and the mechanics are just a secondary vehicle for bringing them to life. This is and always has been the bedrock way of thinking in D&D, which is why I hate the "cruch/fluff" belief system so much. You're talking about a completely different game when you think like that. That's fine if that's what you want to play, but it's not D&D. If you want to play D&D/Pathfinder, you have to understand that, since it is a game of the mind, there is indeed a right way and a wrong way to think about it or else you're not playing the same game as the rest of us.
My opinion of the Unchained Summoner, for what it's worth: I specifically like the fact that you're now consorting with a specific actual outsider rather than some kind of nonsensical Frankenmonster, but I don't like how they hobbled the spell list. Bards get higher-level spells early to compensate partially for their stunted spellcasting, it only stands to reason that Summoners should.
Your first 2 wish shenanigans are news to me, but Planar Binding Efretti for wishes (the third) is perfectly legal. Better still however, is making a Simulacrum of the Efretti and forcing your "totally-under-your-control-no-free-will-of-its-own" Snow Cone Efretti to grant you limitless wishes...absolutely free.
Of course, if you must pay for Wishes, then there is legitimately a spell that allows you to pay in your blood. Blood Money may require some STR damage, but with the amount of spells a wizard has at his disposal to boost his STR, it's not entirely difficult to use it to get free wishes.
Inovking Rule 0 is certainly one way to stop such abuse, but that is the way these spells work in RAW, and that is why the wizard is so powerful in RAW.
But I get what you mean. To keep a wizard in check, he just has to be restricted form choosing X spell, and can instead choose Y spell with little consequence. To keep a Summoner in check, you basically have to restrict half of his class.
Summon Monster is already one of the most optimal things to do in the game. It gives you meatshields, damage, and even spells you otherwise might not have access to as well as a host of monster special abilities you can tailor to the situation at hand. No other spell in the game has that kind of versatility. For a low OP group, it's entirely possible that the Summoner will completely dominate the game simply by using what is available to him.
That doesn't even take into account the Eidolon, which can be mixed and matched with little to no consequence for poor decisions (not that this is a bad thing, Fighters and other PCs should have an easier time of retraining IMHO, but w/e). Honestly, I would get rid of the Eidolon altogether and focus the class entirely on the Summon Monster ability. Maybe give them teamwork feats, or the ability to summon more monsters (maybe with a hit to duration if needed). Heck, extra monsters to summon would be great, like summoning and controlling swarms, maybe even Undead or Constructs....
Well, as you say, by RAW. Forcing an Efreeti to grant you wishes or just creating its simulacra won't give you wishes in my games. Or, more accurately, I might allow for you to coerce the Efreeti, but you better be ready for the very real consequences that will follow (basically a way to get more story material but if a player wishes to abuse this in order to get more wishes he'd better be ready for some big trouble).
As for Blood Money, I agree it's an OP spell and it would be better if it were never made accessible to PCs, but in the case of wishes your caster takes 50 points of str dmg, even by buffing str getting to 50 isn't exactly easy for a wizard who could very well have dumped the stat althogheter.|
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Bards get higher-level spells early to compensate partially for their stunted spellcasting, it only stands to reason that Summoners should.
Very few spells do bards get before wiz/sorc. And they aren't bread & butter wizard/sorc spells. Really - the few spells that bards get before wizards feel more like spells which are intended for bards to begin with - and they allowed wizards to learn them too at a higher spell level. (the only ones I can think of are all sound based - and very bad for anyone but a caster bard)
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Bards get higher-level spells early to compensate partially for their stunted spellcasting, it only stands to reason that Summoners should.Very few do bards get before wiz/sorc. And they aren't bread & butter wizard/sorc spells. Really - the few spells that bards get before wizards feel more like spells which are intended for bards to begin with - and they allowed wizards to learn them too at a higher spell level. (the only ones I can think of are all sound based - and very bad for anyone but a caster bard)
Wouldnt that by extension apply to Summoners. How the hell can you say something like the Dominate line or Heroism, Good hope yadda yadda are fine on the bard but haste is not on the summoner.. a class about either bringing in hordes of extraplanar creatures or focusing on one particular pact.. or Both? You cannot say Heroism isnt Bread and Butter.
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Wouldnt that by extension apply to Summoners. How the hell can you say something like the Dominate line or Heroism, Good hope yadda yadda are fine on the bard but haste is not on the summoner.. a class about either bringing in hordes of extraplanar creatures or focusing on one particular pact.. or Both? You cannot say Heroism isnt Bread and Butter.
Heroism is bread & butter for bards - especially combat bards since they have mid CHA and other things to do in combat but cast spells. It's mediocre for wizard/sorcerers until they get high enough level that 3rd level spells aren't a significant resource. I don't think I've ever seen one cast it before level 9-10.
Haste is a bread & butter spell for wiz/sorc as soon as they can cast it.
And - while mechanically Haste is great in combo with summons - from a fluff-magic standpoint they have little to do with one-another. Haste is a Transmutation spell - not Conjuration.
It could have been a golem made by magical technology
Inevitable.
clockwork warhorse
This actually highlights my only issue with unchained summoner, they limited the body types to a ridiculous degree. This should be fine to do as a quadreped inevitable, but no.... all inevitables have to be bipeds (despite the fact one of the major inevitables are quadrepeds and one has no legs at all).
synthesist, a suit of magical steampunk armor
Inevitable.
Guyver-like techno-organic battle-suit
Inevitable.
Hulk-like alter-ego
Any work for this. -.-
Master Summoner a puppetmaster with his army of marionettes.
Inevitable.
You might have to get the GM to agree to hand-wave some flavor text, but all this was possible within the confines of the rules of the old Summoner.
... and all of it aside from the friggin robohorse is possible within the confines of the rules of the unchained summoner... So...