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Unchained literally changed nothing. The APG eidolon has an alignment and has free will, it doesn't have to help it can refuse. All you guys have done is demonize a class in which ever single one of your problems happens with every other class. I just don't get why you guys feel it's so hard to gm the class. Well I'm done with this for awhile because all you guy are doing is saying "but it's so hard for me to be a jerk to a summoner for reason".''An eidolon has the same alignment as the summoner that calls it and can speak all of his languages.''
The vanilla eidolon has the same alignment as his summoner. If your alignment changes, so does his. An Eidolon will obey the summoner to the best of it's ability, except it will not follow suicidal commands like go stand in that fire.
Eidolons: Outside the linear obedience and intelligence scale of sentient and nonsentient companions are eidolons: intelligent entities magically bound to you. Whether you wish to roleplay this relationship as friendly or coerced, the eidolon is inclined to obey you unless you give a command only to spite it. An eidolon would obey a cruel summoner's order to save a child from a burning building, knowing that at worst the fire damage would temporarily banish it, but it wouldn't stand in a bonfire just because the summoner said to. An eidolon is normally a player-controlled companion, but the GM can have the eidolon refuse extreme orders that would cause it to suffer needlessly.
And I'm sorry you haven't been reading my posts. My posts have nothing to do with being a jerk to people. It has to do with an unbalanced, unrestricted class. It got fixed with unchained, thankfully.
I'm also sorry your ''But the druid can blah blah blah...'' argument gets killed by 1 chained shirt.
I know you're being facetious with the chain shirt stuff, but the examples you used are pretty far fetched. Aside from catching them asleep, most of the others won't work if the Druid is already wearing armor (and suggestion wouldn't work as putting on metal armor is obviously harmful to a Druid)
The larger point is this: yes there are ways to shut down a Druid, but you can do it to the summoner as well. Yeah, it's slightly easier to shut down the Druid due to class issues, but it's by no means hard to deal with a problem summoner (assuming the summoner is even a problem in the first place).
Druids got a huge nerf in that their wildshape armor no longer gives their AC bonus.Dominate Person, "teach me druidic." Now you're a commoner :P
Really, this is irrelevant. Again, building a super-druid (and definitely a "super-animal companion") is much, much harder than building a Super-Eidolon. Taking a machete to the EP goes a long way to resolving that.
I'm failing to see how this is any different than druids, who can have companions who can pounce or fly as well.And just like before I'm left asking - if druid companions are so awesome, why are the folks in here complaining so strenuously? Druids weren't nerfed, go play one. Your stance is self-defeating.
But I would love to hear which Druid companion you felt could outperform an Eidolon from the old Summoner.
Yeah, that was a terrible turn of events.
Yeah, that was a terrible turn of events.
Why is it terrible when one of the most powerful classes in the game gets a nerf on something broken?
Yeah, that was a terrible turn of events.Why is it terrible when one of the most powerful classes in the game gets a nerf on something broken?
For me, mostly because it seemed forced. It doesn't make any thematic sense to me for armor that melds with your form and is no longer physically present to somehow continue to impose penalties on you.
Based on the reaction I saw after the ruling was handed down, I was hardly alone in this opinion.
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Yeah, that was a terrible turn of events.Why is it terrible when one of the most powerful classes in the game gets a nerf on something broken?For me, mostly because it seemed forced. It doesn't make any thematic sense to me for armor that melds with your form and is no longer physically present to somehow continue to impose penalties on you.
Based on the reaction I saw after the ruling was handed down, I was hardly alone in this opinion.
*shrug*
While it seems as if the FAQ changed how many people played it - that's the way I'd always ruled it as it seemed the most logical given how the rules were written. I think it was mostly ruled the other way due to the 3.5 armor which did it that way as a +3 enchant.
Of course - that wasn't that great in 3.5 anyway, because nearly all druids all got monk robes to get their WIS to AC anyway. :P
I figured it just made your hide tough as armor, like the Nemean Lion.
My beef with unchained Summoner is twofold.
Firstly, it hosed a ton of creativity when it came to the eidolon.
I had a concept for a cavalier-esque summoner who would ride his magnificent steed: a beast with the head and forelimbs of a rooster, the body and hind limbs of a lion, and the tail of a peacock.
My friend had a summoner in one of our games who's eidolon was a sheep-beast with a telescoping neck.
Another friend had an eidolon that was blatantly stolen from Naruto's Gara and was a constantly morphing pile of sand.
What outsider race would ANY of these even be close to?
Secondly, they listed outsider types, but not NEARLY the whole spectrum.
Seriously, we got Div but not Kyton? Demodand, Oni, Asura, Aeon? if I want to make a Nidalese Summoner, you can bet that my eidolon is gonna be bound in chains. And you can bet I'm going to be crying internally as it's a devil because that's as close as I can get....
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I actually think one of the problems with the Unsummoner is that it came after the original.
If the Unsummoner was the first one, and the thematic elements were tied in, I think I'd like it a lot more. Maybe not as much as the regular one, but the UCsummoner would get a lot more love from me.
But then the unchaining just chained up the concepts. It put a hard limit on what you can do. While it was described that a lot of the ideas had people could be done with preexisting forms, perhaps having your giant robot tied to inevitable keeps it from having some abilities you really want it to have, or some of the inevitable's abilities just don't jive with your concept.
It's the restriction of freedom above all else that make the Unsummoner feel so subdued, the forced alignment restrictions that weren't there originally and feel entirely arbitrary because of that.
The unsummoner isn't bad per se, it's just a much chained down package from something that was truly unfettered before, and that's causing a lot of strife.
I actually think one of the problems with the Unsummoner is that it came after the original.
If the Unsummoner was the first one, and the thematic elements were tied in, I think I'd like it a lot more. Maybe not as much as the regular one, but the UCsummoner would get a lot more love from me.
But then the unchaining just chained up the concepts. It put a hard limit on what you can do. While it was described that a lot of the ideas had people could be done with preexisting forms, perhaps having your giant robot tied to inevitable keeps it from having some abilities you really want it to have, or some of the inevitable's abilities just don't jive with your concept.
It's the restriction of freedom above all else that make the Unsummoner feel so subdued, the forced alignment restrictions that weren't there originally and feel entirely arbitrary because of that.
The unsummoner isn't bad per se, it's just a much chained down package from something that was truly unfettered before, and that's causing a lot of strife.
I couldn't agree more.
Druids got a huge nerf in that their wildshape armor no longer gives their AC bonus.That was the case in 3.5 too, it's just that in 3.5 they had a cheaper way around it (wildling clasps, as opposed to the +3 Wild enchantment.)
You are mistaken. Wild Armor in 3.5 does give you the full AC bonus and none of the penalties. You are thinking of Beastskin which is a +2 Armor enchantment from 3.5 that does what Wild does in PF now.
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You are mistaken. Wild Armor in 3.5 does give you the full AC bonus and none of the penalties. You are thinking of Beastskin which is a +2 Armor enchantment from 3.5 that does what Wild does in PF now.Druids got a huge nerf in that their wildshape armor no longer gives their AC bonus.That was the case in 3.5 too, it's just that in 3.5 they had a cheaper way around it (wildling clasps, as opposed to the +3 Wild enchantment.)
Yes - but no one actually used it in 3.5 anyway. They all just got Monk Robes to get their Wis+1 to AC & bracers instead. :P
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I'd have to agree with some of this. If the unchained came first, there wouldn't be such upset and outcry. I've said before, people feel better when they are getting an exception than being restricted. Unfortunately the nerf was needed.I actually think one of the problems with the Unsummoner is that it came after the original.
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The unsummoner isn't bad per se, it's just a much chained down package from something that was truly unfettered before, and that's causing a lot of strife.
I can admit the original summoner had me a bit drunk on power, and if you know me, I like being power drunk. If you don't...hi, my name is Ehn, and I like being power drunk.
As was stated earlier in the thread, the most dangerous thing about the summoner is that it has a very high power floor compared with other classes, and that's the issue here. A summoner starts off at around a 4, and can go all the way up to about 8-9 with the right tricks, and most of the time, those tricks don't involve the eidolon.
Compared to other classes, that's a CRAZY high floor. For reference, I'll give the floors to ceilings on a 1-10 scale for the core classes. As expected, this is just my opinion, feel free to give your own on the subject:
Barbarian: 2 to 5
Bard: 2 to 6
Clerics: 2 to 9
Druid: 3 to 9
Fighter: 1 to 4
Monk: 1 to 4
Paladin: 2 to 5
Ranger: 2 to 5
Rogue: 1 to 3
Sorcerer: 2 to 9
Wizard: 1 to 10
From this, the druid is the one with the highest floor due to animal companion/9th level spells/wild shape. That's a great package, and really any one of those things could be incredibly useful for a class. The thing is that the eidolon alone is probably a 3, so the combination of the two pushes it up to 4, and really I don't think enough people make their summoner combat ready, although that's going off on a tangent. The eidolon is easy to optimize for combat, just throw more limbs and attacks on it and it's good to go, no system mastery needed, which is what puts it at 3 compared to any other combat class, which are quite easy to screw up without system mastery.
Due to this high floor, the class appears to be broken when placed next to a lot of PFS players playing closer to the floor of their class. Really the floor is probably the most balanced point, but some of use like raising the roof, so to speak. What this means is that the 4 of the summoner gets put up against the 1 of the fighter, and that makes the fighter look like trash. So do its class abilities, but again I digress.
If the idea of a high floor is broken, then yes, the old summoner was broken. I don't think it is, but again, classes are judged more by their floors than by their ceilings, because a lot of people are playing at the floor, so any high floor stands out. This is also why some people don't see any issue with martial caster disparity, since everyone is playing near their floor with blaster wizards and healbot clerics, which (when unoptimized) are closer to the floor of the class than the ceilings.
This means that the best fighter is equal to about the worst summoner/eidolon duo, which is another reason for concern that makes the class look broken, although people judging balance by the fighter aren't using the best metric, regardless of how often it's used.
Did the Unsummoner fix these problems? I would say it brought the eidolon itself down to a 2 from a 3, and thus the summoner class as a whole down to a 3. It didn't alter the ceiling that much (which is made most obvious by Master Summoner and things like that), which annoys some people who are playing closer to the ceiling.
The spell list alterations were probably a good thing, although haste as a 2nd level spell was my drug, so that's a shot. The changed spell list mostly helped to bring the class as a whole down to a 3 for its floor, so I guess it did what it set out to do if that was the case, but from a design standpoint, it feels so heavy handed and awkward that rehauling things in a different way feels as though it would have been better.
Yes - but no one actually used it in 3.5 anyway. They all just got Monk Robes to get their Wis+1 to AC & bracers instead. :PYou are mistaken. Wild Armor in 3.5 does give you the full AC bonus and none of the penalties. You are thinking of Beastskin which is a +2 Armor enchantment from 3.5 that does what Wild does in PF now.Druids got a huge nerf in that their wildshape armor no longer gives their AC bonus.That was the case in 3.5 too, it's just that in 3.5 they had a cheaper way around it (wildling clasps, as opposed to the +3 Wild enchantment.)
Incorrect. You stacked both. Since Wild Armor merged with you, you were no longer wearing armor and thus qualified for Monk's Belt. Bracers of Armor would be a poor choice considering they would give less armor bonus then Wild armor and were unable to carry additional magic enhancements. Remember +5 Wild Dragonhide Fullplate is +13 AC while Bracers is only +8.
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@N. Jolly
Yep, that's about the best worded post I've seen on this thread [mine included]. Bravo.
My only disagreement would be having a high floor makes the class broken, not just look broken. When you consider a large amount of the campaigns [Pfs especially] are spent in the earlier levels [1-10] having a 4 from the get go is a broken class.
I'll concede that point, it's more of a personal difference on my end anyways. A high floor can be disruptive, at least in the concern of people playing at their floors.
A note that the difference between floors and ceilings is directly related to levels. I could probably do a floor/ceiling comparison of different groups of levels (1-5, 5-15, 15-20), but I feel like my point is made. In the fact that the summoner's 4 disrupts the fun of the fighter who's probably playing closer to 1-2 (especially in PFS), it's a problem. The eidolon itself being a 3 is really the issue here, and the new one being about a 2 helps ease that, at least in a party where the fighter is okay with the other martials being better than them.
The reason I'd say the new one is a 2 is because of the forced evos that draw points away from raw damage. Again, this isn't a bad thing, and the original probably could have had more balance if there were different categories for POWER and UTILITY evos with limits for each, but that's hindsight. It does give me an idea for a write up for a class I have planned myself, but I'll leave that go for now.
Also for fun...
Alchemist: (high)2-6
Cavalier: 2-4
Gunslinger: 2-4
Inquisitor: (high)2-6
Magus: (low)2-6
Oracle: 2-9
Summoner: 4-8
Unbarbarian: 2-4
Unmonk: 1-4
Unrogue: 1-4
Unsummoner: 3-8
Witch: 2-8
I might make a thread for this later, I just enjoy quantifying this sort of thing.
I think monk has a higher ceeling than you give him credit for. Also, you got Sorcer an Wizard swapped. It so easy to permanently f@+* up your sorc, while the wizard can always adjust in course.
I think monk has a higher ceeling than you give him credit for. Also, you got Sorcer an Wizard swapped. It so easy to permanently f+** up your sorc, while the wizard can always adjust in course.
Step 1. Grab summon monster spells.
Step 2. Grab augment summoning.
That alone brings the sorcerer to 5. Wizards would need to prep the right amount of summons. Sorcerers could just pick random spells after summon monster.
I would know, I played this sorceress. By level 20 I had 26 cha (with gear) and skill focus 3 times. I still rocked house. Most combats, I only ever used one summon and it was still enough to make the martials jelly.
Feedback is data. Feedback generally comes from experiences. The more experiences, the louder the feedback. Companies don't listen to the one angry, yelling nerd. They listen to to the many, many, many upset customers. If a couple hundred/thousand/large number of customers are saying something needs attention, there might just be fire under that smoke.
Actually most business decisions are based on the loudest negative feedback not data. In fact even in the face of hard data most people will still hold the false opinion, in most cases hold it even more passionately.
That must be why they've done so much to address the C/M disparity, after years of complaints.
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That must be why they've done so much to address the C/M disparity, after years of complaints.
Looks at this post.... Looks at book unchained summoner was from....
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That must be why they've done so much to address the C/M disparity, after years of complaints.
Address it how exactly? By making spells worse than swinging a pointy stick around?
They released all kinds of tools to make martials better and casters worse, it's your job to use them if you feel the problem is so pronounced.
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Casters worse and martials better. Are you kidding. 3.5 and then PF made casters a hell of a lot better than a fighter. The fact that with the right choice of Eidolon it's usually better than a Fighter a table. The only way casters are worse if they are played by a novice with no system mastery at the table. Or by some huge amounts of luck you catch one unprepared out in the open. M
The Unchained Fighter was a step in the right direction which we only received because of 5E. Up until then according to some of the devs nothing was wrong with fighters. PF has its flaws but casters both divine and arcane being useless is not one of them IMO. Either those at tables you played have been downplaying casters it don't know how to play them. Forget Summoner. A high level Conjurer summoning Elementsls can sit back and simply watch his Huge to Elder Elementsls make short work of most opposition.
N. Jolly seems to have a pretty good idea of what's going on.
I figured it just made your hide tough as armor, like the Nemean Lion.You're amazingly selective in your application of logic. :)
Tough doesn't necessarily mean stiff or cumbersome. In all the portrayals of the Nemean Lion, he never appeared to be any slower than any other lion, but man could his skin turn a sword!
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Casters worse and martials better. Are you kidding. 3.5 and then PF made casters a hell of a lot better than a fighter. The fact that with the right choice of Eidolon it's usually better than a Fighter a table. The only way casters are worse if they are played by a novice with no system mastery at the table. Or by some huge amounts of luck you catch one unprepared out in the open. M
The Unchained Fighter was a step in the right direction which we only received because of 5E. Up until then according to some of the devs nothing was wrong with fighters. PF has its flaws but casters both divine and arcane being useless is not one of them IMO. Either those at tables you played have been downplaying casters it don't know how to play them. Forget Summoner. A high level Conjurer summoning Elementsls can sit back and simply watch his Huge to Elder Elementsls make short work of most opposition.
What the heck is an "Unchained Fighter?" Do you mean Stamina? Because that's a whole subsystem, and every martial class can benefit from it.
Also, what? Elder Elementals are SM8 - you're not getting them below 15 at the earliest. They're also CR11. What exactly are they "making short work of" at that level?
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Yes the stamina Fightef which I think is better.
I take you never played with someone who took a Conjurer. Even without augment summoning larger sized elementals while easier to hit at higher levels have more ho and take s lot more damage. Instead of summoning a huge one. I summon a large version instead. The potential to have 1-3 large each 68 hp. Can put a decent dent in any opposition that the ask can throw at the party. My point still stands. Casters have many advantages a few flaws. Being less powerful than martials not by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe during 1e or 2E where one hit distrusted a spell. Some spells took longer casting times. Casters divine and arcane rule in this edition.
It could have been a golem made by magical technologyInevitable.
[...]
... and all of it aside from the friggin robohorse is possible within the confines of the rules of the unchained summoner... So...
You mistake my point, which I readily admit was muddled in the rest of that post. I address this particular statement and no other:
To be fair, a lot of those "creative themes" made no real sense as outsiders.
This is the limiting paradigm that APG Summoner could ignore. Most of the concepts that I was coming up with and hearing about made no sense as an outsider. And that was awesome.
My steampunk armor, magical golem, and clockwork horses (which, it occurs to me, you couldn't build right out of the game in APG either, unless you were small, but you could level into) can be built as inevitables. But they are NOT inevitables, nor are they related to inevitables, nor is my character one step away from Lawful Neutral. So where do I go with that? (Rhetorical, see below.)
What I love about the APG Summmoner is that flexibility of origin. You can say this eidolon body comes from anything you can imagine. UnSummoner is a limited list and if your concept doesn't match Paizo's concept of what that should be, then go play Fate.
And at the same time I realize the following things:
1) I can make perfectly enjoyable characters out of what's left (and have for my next PFS character).
2) Many GMs I am likely to play with in the future might be willing to let me handwave the alignment restrictions of Unchained or just play APG Summoner.
3) I can let people choose either version in any game I run.
4) I actually don't mind going to play Fate.
So the root of this problem is entirely academic and I don't really consider this the hill I want to die on. I will, however, reserve my right to an opinion, and that opinion is that the Unchained summoner is an opportunity wasted, is unduly limiting, and fixes nothing.
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Tedjack I never said Conjurers are better than Summoners. Of a Summoner will be better as a class that summons creatures should be better than a Conjurer. Without the Eidolon though all it has going for it are some spells and having summoned creatures last longer. While I still think regular wizards have more variety. When it comes to summoning. Summoners are the best for it followed by Conjurers.
I do take issue with someone saying that casters of all classes are weaker than martials. Only when played by a novice and caught unprepared IMO. With all due respect you can see those who have never played with a lot of summoned creatures at a table. To casually dismiss even a elementals as not being worthy of s threat. Yeah never pplayed with someone who has some level of system mastery. It's very easy even at low levels to summon disposable cannon fodder.
As for broken records red jack. your one to talk
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I do take issue with someone saying that casters of all classes are weaker than martials. Only when played by a novice and caught unprepared IMO.
I never said "casters are weaker than martials." I said there are tools out there for you to weaken casters if you wish. They are variant rules because not all of us care about almighty "balance" between those who can rearrange reality with their thoughts and those who can't.
If you care, more power to you, and 4e is that way. ---->
Yes the stamina Fightef which I think is better.
I take you never played with someone who took a Conjurer. Even without augment summoning larger sized elementals while easier to hit at higher levels have more ho and take s lot more damage. Instead of summoning a huge one. I summon a large version instead. The potential to have 1-3 large each 68 hp. Can put a decent dent in any opposition that the ask can throw at the party. My point still stands. Casters have many advantages a few flaws. Being less powerful than martials not by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe during 1e or 2E where one hit distrusted a spell. Some spells took longer casting times. Casters divine and arcane rule in this edition.
I agree that Stamina is great, but that's something you can (and should) apply to every martial. I'd let Fighters get it for free but any full BAB class should be able to buy in.
As for magic being stronger, that's a feature, not a bug - magic takes more system mastery to use effectively in a game (and is harder for characters to learn in-universe too) so it's supposed to be. But there are way better examples of that than the one you're using. 1d3 large summons is even worse - now you're wasting time and resources throwing out three CR 5 foes to fight a CR 15 encounter. Even with Augment Summoning they are speedbumps at best. A Fire Yai is hitting them on a 2 and dropping one with a single full-attack, if he even bothers to fight them at all instead of just flying over them to smash you in the face.
1e and 2e had all kinds of drawbacks for magic, sure. They were also boring as hell to have a single arrow shut down any spell. If you want to go back to that, be my guest.
May I ask how cutting back on the Eidolon's evolution points and making it impossible to create a multi-armed pounce beast till level 7 fixes nothing?
So the root of this problem is entirely academic and I don't really consider this the hill I want to die on. I will, however, reserve my right to an opinion, and that opinion is that the Unchained summoner is an opportunity wasted, is unduly limiting, and fixes nothing.
Well, the way I'm reading it, they didn't so much cut back on them so much as pre-assign them. They look about equal to me.
And your pounce beast was always limited by that "Max Attacks" column. And that hasn't changed. You could pounce and get 3, then 4 (maybe an extra with a weapon and a big penalty to attack and an investment in evolution points). If making people wait til 7th level fixes it for you (at which point they still have their multi-armed pouncey murder-beast just like before, but now the Druid has one, too), then I am willing to accept it fixed a small part of the class for some people, possibly even most people.
Actually the hardest thing to deal with for his eidolon was his ludicrous armor class at low level, and UnSummoner doesn't fix that, either.
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Well, the way I'm reading it, they didn't so much cut back on them so much as pre-assign them. They look about equal to me.
Look again. They get 1/3 the EP at level 1, and top out at a little over 1/2. That is a huge nerf. Pounce alone costs 1/5 their entire base total now, 5x as much (relatively) as it did for the old Eidolon.
Look again. They get 1/3 the EP at level 1, and top out at a little over 1/2. That is a huge nerf. Pounce alone costs 1/5 their entire base total now, 5x as much (relatively) as it did for the old Eidolon.
Well, the way I'm reading it, they didn't so much cut back on them so much as pre-assign them. They look about equal to me.
I see that, what I'm looking at is getting those base-form abilities for free, many of which used to be evolutions. It's pre-assigned points, IMO.
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I see that, what I'm looking at is getting those base-form abilities for free, many of which used to be evolutions. It's pre-assigned points, IMO.Look again. They get 1/3 the EP at level 1, and top out at a little over 1/2. That is a huge nerf. Pounce alone costs 1/5 their entire base total now, 5x as much (relatively) as it did for the old Eidolon.
Well, the way I'm reading it, they didn't so much cut back on them so much as pre-assign them. They look about equal to me.
Right, but many are evolutions that old summoners wouldn't have taken (e.g. DR 5/good at 12th level.) Effectively it reduces your EP by forcing you to spend it on a few subpar options.
I would consider the unchained fighter to be using free stamina, revised action economy, automatic bonus progression, and maybe a skill variant (any of these on the prd yet?)
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Wait so, Summoner beats Druid because you can make the Druid "fall" with a Dominate Person spell or figure out some way to make him wear metal armor?
That's...a ridiculous stance. I'm not even going to reach for the low-hanging fruit of comparing this to the Paladin (because By Arneson and Gygax, we don't need any more Paladin nonsense).
I'm going to compare this to "well, Wizards are pretty weak because all you have to do is get their spellbook".
Yeesh. Look, ANY character of ANY class can be shut down if the GM wants to be a jerk about it. It doesn't matter if they have RP restrictions or a code of ethics or whatever.
That is NOT a good argument about relative power. Making a Summoner with pseudo-alignment restrictions doesn't make him any easier to handle- there literally exist anti-Eidolon spells that you could already arm a legion of Sorcerers with and spam against any Flying Pounce Machine and make anyone regret even saying the word "Summoner".
Not to mention the already potent anti-Outsider spells. Now I hate to use "spells win everything" as my counter-example, but it's an effective one, and no more ridiculous than "Dominate Person beats Druid" so there.
The APG Summoner's problem isn't that it's stronger than other classes. It is not. It's problem is that a Summoner plays the game in a different way than most classes (and most players).
Lots of classes can already summon and fill the field with minions. A Cleric could raise an army of very powerful undead. A Wizard could theoretically create a golem or something. Whatever.
For whatever reason, I've rarely seen players bother, with the occasional exception of freaking monkey swarms. Because there are other ways to succeed that require less bookkeeping and investment of resources.
The Summoner is built to, well, summon, with a lot of those resources just handed to him. So it isn't that he's more powerful, it's that he can conjure minions effectively out of the box, from level 1. The problem isn't the Summoner- it's his tactic, which again, lots of other classes can do, but with less ease, so they generally...don't.
Since I've already written a wall o' text, I won't go into my thoughts about the Eidolon unless someone asks. There are bad elements about it's design, but they are ones shared by other things already available to other classes that haven't been scrutinized so closely, so I call it a wash.
There is, however, one other disruptive element I would be remiss in not mentioning, and that's the spell list. There's nothing wrong with it by itself, but it does rub people the wrong way (and rightly, I think), when a Summoner gets a cool spell a level or two earlier than a full caster, with no other reason than "BUFF SUMMON" or "Theme!".
The effects the Summoner has on magic items is real- but I've seen similar shenanigans with other spell lists (Restoration is a 1st-level Paladin spell as an example), so that's an existing problem that's not the Summoner's fault either.
Bottom line. Unchained Summoner will only "fix" the Summoner by making it a less popular class. It does not significantly lower the power or "brokenness" (as perceived) in any real way, and I'm guessing it will be banned by PFS eventually anyways.
I have thoughts about the Synthesist too, but again, gone on long enough, so only for the morbidly curious.
If you care, more power to you, and 4e is that way. ---->
Congratulation pal, that's the right way to mention of 4e in a post
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There is, however, one other disruptive element I would be remiss in not mentioning, and that's the spell list. There's nothing wrong with it by itself, but it does rub people the wrong way (and rightly, I think), when a Summoner gets a cool spell a level or two earlier than a full caster, with no other reason than "BUFF SUMMON" or "Theme!".
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Bottom line. Unchained Summoner will only "fix" the Summoner by making it a less popular class. It does not significantly lower the power or "brokenness" (as perceived) in any real way, and I'm guessing it will be banned by PFS eventually anyways.
Dude/dudette. You literally pointed out something the Unchained Summoner actually fixed, before going on to conclude that it didn't fix anything. Wut?
I would consider the unchained fighter to be using free stamina, revised action economy, automatic bonus progression, and maybe a skill variant (any of these on the prd yet?)
I don't mind Revised Action Economy but it can be a bit much to expect a group to adopt on the fly. Stamina is easy to drop into a new or ongoing campaign though and boosts the Fighter considerably.
That must be why they've done so much to address the C/M disparity, after years of complaints.Address it how exactly? By making spells worse than swinging a pointy stick around?
They released all kinds of tools to make martials better and casters worse, it's your job to use them if you feel the problem is so pronounced.
Really? You sure could have fooled my shaman, with the addition of MORE spells and all after that last errata....
Oh tell me again how that errata to Reposte is doing for everyone who is not a Swashbuckler... the last few erratas hurt martials more than it hurt casters...
Oh and lets not forget about how "terrifyingly broken" Crane Wing was...
@Psyren: yes, it is something they changed, what I meant by mentioning it was that while the Summoner spell list is disruptive, the reasons it is disruptive have less to do with it's effect on the power of the class.
My point of view is that the Summoner's power level isn't the problem so much as it's effect on the paradigm, the "metagame" if you will. I don't think most groups often deal with the things the Summoner does, even if they are things other classes can do as well. You can play a Wizard/Cleric/Druid that does what the Summoner does, but it takes investment, and those classes have other ways they can be played that are also effective and require less setup. As a result, it's my belief others don't actually do this very often.
So, yeah, they changed the Unsummoner's spell list. That reduces a potentially disruptive element, but overall, I don't believe it will have as large of an effect on the Unsummoner's potential.