| Latsu |
First time on the forums (making a post, not ghosting) I was wondering if anyone else was underwhelmed by the ranged options available for eidolons.
Not including third party we have Web (50ft), Breath Weapon (30/60ft), or the the kinda sorta ones like reach, large/huge, flight, dimension door and the various magic options. I had a few ideas for some but didn't know about the evolution point costs. (trying to avoid cheese also, don't expect anything game breaking). My understanding from the guidelines and other posts I've seen is that copy and paste is OK.
Spikes
With a snap of its tail, a manticore can loose a volley of four spikes as a standard action (make an attack roll for each spike). This attack has a range of 180 feet with no range increment. All targets must be within 30 feet of each other. The creature can launch only 24 spikes in any 24-hour period.
Obviously this is from the manticore entry on the srd, it would function the same way and require the tail evolution the take, it could be taken once per tail and would be an option for the poison evolution as well (one tail spike volley could poison multiple targets). Base damage for medium size would be 1d4 and strength would add to damage.
Maybe a 2 point evolution, would it be acceptable to allow additional points for 24 additional spikes per day?
The next one would be 3.5 non-open source yatta yatta so I won't copy verbatim.
There was a spell called Blinding Spittle that required a ranged touch attack at -4 (I think it'd be best to keep the penalty) that blinded the target (spell resistance but no save) until they spent a standard action to wash out their eyes. I liked the idea of possibly attaching this to the web evolution as a higher power option (like large vs huge) costing an additional 2 evolution points looking something like..
Blinding web
An eidolon learns how to toss their web into an opponent's face, this attack is a ranged touch attack with a 50 foot range. Targets hit by the Blinding web are completely blinded until they spend a standard action to remove the webbing. Using this evolution consumes a daily use of web attacks, an eidolon who selects this evolution may use web attacks 12 times per day (rather than the normal 8) This evolution requires the web evolution.
The next one I'm not as sure about, in 3.5 there was a creature called an astral stalker who could fire throat darts at an enemy and got iterative attacks with them. The damage scaled by its hit die and they could be poisoned. Here's a poorly made eidolon friendly version.
Throat Darts
An eidolon gains the ability to rapidly fire darts from their mouth at an opponent with a range of 150 feet, these darts do 1d4 damage per 3 hitdie (1d6 and 1d8 for large and huge) but gain no bonus from a high strength score, unlike most natural attacks the eidolon gains iterative attacks with his throat darts. An eidolon may apply the poison evolution to their throat darts. This evolution costs 2 points.
Those are my ideas off the top of my head, I know at least one person will say ”give them a bow" but I was looking for more natural attacks. These sort of things may be nice in the underused serpentine base form with its high Dex and free tail evolution. The throat dart being a less than obvious attack form wouldn't raise eyebrows quite like having 8 clawed limbs would may be nice for smaller descrete forms and of course evolution surge would open these up as temporary ranged options for melee based eidolons.
Please give input on the costs and potential abuses for these (I want to see a huge eidolon with many tails and many spikes as a seige engine personally) also I apologize for any typos as I'm tired and on an awkward tablet.