Hello all, I'm prepping to play in a RotR campaign soon, and I'm decently excited. I've never really gotten to play an actual AP before, and I hear this one is a PC Killer, so I figured now was the time to step up my A-Game.
I'm not too familiar with the Golarion lore, but the setting guide for Varisia said there were Tian Xianese(sp?) in Sandpoint, so I decided I'd go Shaman King for this and make a Synthesist summoner.
Right now, merged stats are sitting at 18/12/13/15/15/16; Amidamaru has Ability Increase (Str), and Skilled (Perception) as his evolutions. I'm playing a half-elf, and decided one of my out of combat utility things is going to be never failing perception rolls. After everything, I have a +12 Perception out of merge, and +20 in it (at level 1).
Feats are currently Skill Focus (Perception) and Arcane Strike, and traits are Seeker and Reactionary. Is there anything I should know for this AP, and should I take Improved Natural Armor (evolution) over Skilled until level 2?
You're going to be fine, and can relax. Rise of the Runelords is not the Temple of Elemental Evil. It's designed for a 4 PC party with 15 point buy, and if you start bringing in extremely high-powered classes like Summoner, you'll probably be surprised at how easy many encounters are.
synthesist summoner is widely regarded as being too powerful in many ways - you might find encounters too easy if you build for it the right way
Actually, if you have high stat rolls, synthesist is a little underpowered. The only real danger of synthesist balance is point buy, because you can tank all of your physical stats and stack your mental stats.
+20 perception? You basically won many things of the game.
Combats are brutal if your party is not organized.
I haven't experienced many not combat options in Rise, it's just go there, kill it or talk to it, and be done.
Maybe it's how the game it's run by my DM.
There weren't many options of actual stealthing besides doing a recon, but if you have 1 guy without Stealth it's kinda split the party or just go there making noises and killing things.
We had many issues due to combat strategies. Also we have 1 healer who only heals, and 2WF characters, which doesn't help.
From experience you could use Knowledges, and many of them
Yeah I kinda agree you may be going overboard, synthesist summoners are kinda obnoxious, you might find yourself overshadowing people if you overcompensate too much.
But to answer your question I think your character would be fine yeah.
Yeah, I've never actually seen a synthesist summoner in play, but have heard horror stories (largely because it allows abuse of point buy, as Melkiador infers). I'd probably roll my eyes if a fellow player showed up with one based on their reputation (fairly or not I'd be expecting the player to be a powergamer).
I'm currently playing through Book 5 of ROTR and while there were some dicey moments at times at earlier levels, I haven't felt our party was in any real danger of a TPK in quite some time. Apart from one player who kept throwing his characters to the wolves to keep re-rolling new ones (I think he liked creating characters as much or more as playing them), we haven't had a single PC death.
That may be partly due to the DM (who I think prefers not to kill PCs unduly), but I think even a moderate level of optimization would put you in good shape to survive. If you overdo it, you risk steamrolling the campaign (which is horribly boring, IMO, for both players and DM), and/or overshadowing the other PCs (which is bad player etiquette and a recipe for grief).
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I'm going to play devil's advocate for a minute with Synthesist Summoner as I have seen them in play with some pretty power-gamer people.
It has a major weakness: action economy.
One of the strengths of base summoner is the fact it has a fighter AND a wizard in one package that each get actions. The wizard throwing out buffs and spells, the fighter tearing things apart with natural weapons.
Synthesist summoner is still powerful, still shores weaknesses, but it loses half of its power from loss of actions. Sure, that character is a tough cookie, but it can't Buff AND Attack in the same round, so surprise rounds turn out to be a major weakness. Status effects will ruin it's day, and smart enemies will "rope" him down with various tactics from the intelligent use of terrain, to simple tricks like tanglefoot bags and nets.
So from someone who has seen it been played? Its not something a competent GM should fear. The base summoner is a bit scarier.
+20 perception? You basically won many things of the game.
Combats are brutal if your party is not organized.
I haven't experienced many not combat options in Rise, it's just go there, kill it or talk to it, and be done.
Maybe it's how the game it's run by my DM.
There weren't many options of actual stealthing besides doing a recon, but if you have 1 guy without Stealth it's kinda split the party or just go there making noises and killing things.We had many issues due to combat strategies. Also we have 1 healer who only heals, and 2WF characters, which doesn't help.
From experience you could use Knowledges, and many of them
No it is pretty much a combat Heavy AP. Other than book 2 which is investigation and hauntings but after you investigate, you have to just power house through killing things.
Face skills are nice but not really required after book 2. One should build their character with Combat as the main priority.
The Synth summoner is fine and will do just fine. Just try to have some kind of group coordination and abilities to cover all aspects of combat. Your group should have some kind of ranged damage dealer as there will be several big fights where range will be king and Fly on a martial just wont be enough to get them into the fight. My group had a ranged Inquisitor and a witch that had Lightning Bolt spell for those kinds of fights.
Speaking as a competent GM Well built Synthesist summoner in my campaign was broken for the encounters in the module and forced me to rebuild most if not all of the encounters in the later books. The player realising the trouble he was causing did offer to retire the character.
It is trivial to get an AC such that level appropriate encounters cannot hit you, and using size get to do massive damage , the hit bonus was it's weakness but if I made it difficult for him to hit, the only pc who could hit was the smiting Paladin.
This remains one of 2 things I refuse to allow in pathfinder the other being Mythic
Speaking as a competent GM Well built Synthesist summoner in my campaign was broken for the encounters in the module and forced me to rebuild most if not all of the encounters in the later books. The player realising the trouble he was causing did offer to retire the character.
It is trivial to get an AC such that level appropriate encounters cannot hit you, and using size get to do massive damage , the hit bonus was it's weakness but if I made it difficult for him to hit, the only pc who could hit was the smiting Paladin.
This remains one of 2 things I refuse to allow in pathfinder the other being Mythic
I disallow Synth Summoners and Master summoners in my games and make all my players use the Unchained Version of the summoner. Makes the summoner much less overwhelming.
Okay, I... don't know the composition of the rest of the party yet, so how would I go about actively NOT breaking this? I'm loving the concept of a weak looking Tian who summons an ancestral spirit of a samurai around him (with the claws looking like a katana that melds around a stick the summoner carries around).
Or just looking like Gilgamesh from Final Fantasy. Should I make sure my AC stays relatively low? I don't like gimping characters, but I also don't want to make the table unfun.
If everyone rolled high stats, I really wouldn't worry about it. Stay away from the build where you pounce with several attacks and you shouldn't be showing anyone up.
I have the biped form. The only way I can pounce is through the Dimensional Agility feat chain (Which I'm planning on taking, but that's a resource). And I'm also planning on actively NOT pre buffing unless someone else in the party is. I'm also planning on taking Skilled (Knowledge History) to reflect that Amidamaru (the eidolon) remembers things.
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If your not going to pre buff, even with long duration buffs, like mage armor or barkskin, then I'd recommend taking the natural armor Evo. Just try and stay in the same ballpark as the big full plate guys. Remember you can change evos, only at certain levels, but if things get out of hand talk to your gm and switch some around.
I forgot about Mage Armor. That ones hours per level, right? That might be my only prebuff.
You'll probably prebuff heroism when you get that. It's 10 minutes per level which is long enough for most adventuring days.
Oh okay. And should I take Arcane Strike as my feat, or something else, like Improved Initiative? I'm planning on taking power attack at 3.
Arcane strike can be devastating if you have a lot of natural attacks. Since you don't have much to do with your swift actions anyway, it's a pretty good feat for the synthesist.
Oh okay. Cool beans. So I'm looking at a 2 Claws +5 (1d4+5). Not bad for level 1. 13 AC, but can cast mage armor 2/day to raise it to 17 (for an hour lol).
UPDATE:
I'm actually thinking I won't even take the large evolution. It's closer to the source material if I just use the Evolution Surge spell to grant it (OverSoul). Flavoring the natural claw attacks as multiple sword swipes, and the rend ability to simulate a devasting one. So at level 6, four attack rolls, with a potential 5 "slashes".
Definitely avoid the most broken and cheese-laden archetype in Pathfinder... there are LOTS of very cool, very fun, very powerful builds out there that won't make the game seem like Diablo III on easy mode.
Definitely avoid the most broken and cheese-laden archetype in Pathfinder...
That's just not true though, especially if you aren't doing point buy. Master Summoner is way cheesier. And the regular old summoner is mostly superior, because it has better action economy.
One of the main reasons I'm going Synthesist is that as one creature, I won't have 7 year long turns.
Definitely avoid the most broken and cheese-laden archetype in Pathfinder...That's just not true though, especially if you aren't doing point buy. Master Summoner is way cheesier. And the regular old summoner is mostly superior, because it has better action economy.
Do we know if OP is using point buy or rolled stats? If point buy, what is the point buy number? If rolled, what were the rolled starting stats?
Seems to make a big difference on the 'cheesiness' of the archetype. I'm not disputing that the action economy of something like Master Summoner is potentially worse (especially once you account for the headaches for the table in Having a player managing multiple summons/creatures)... but the fact that there are worse offenders doesn't necessarily invalidate the concerns levelled with respect to a Synthecist Summoner.
I think my best advice for the OP is to do your best to gauge the power level of the other characters and design your character to align with that. It may involve having to rethink the concept to a different class (Medium maybe?), or just avoiding the temptations associated with certain powerful evolution or feat options. If you start outshining the other characters too much you'll find it will likely start to undermine the game (for a host of reasons I won't get into here, but just read some of the many gripe posts dealing with overpowered PCs). it's something that happens quite frequently and is very hard for a DM to control. Better for you to head it off early.
The saurian shaman Druid may be even worse. That can get you turning into a dinosaur, with a dinosaur companion and standard action summoning dinosaurs.
The saurian shaman Druid may be even worse. That can get you turning into a dinosaur, with a dinosaur companion and standard action summoning dinosaurs.
Again, no major dispute there. There may be worse 'offenders' than Synthesist Summoner (largely due to action economy and turn-clogging issues-- which can be extra annoying), but I still don't think that detracts from the valid concerns which many in the community have with the OP's chosen archetype.
It may be entirely fine in the game he/she is joining, but that will depend a lot on the other characters and the DM (including whether the DM wants and/or is comfortable with modifying the AP to match the character's power level). The choice between point buy and rolled stats is also important, of course, as you've pointed out.
How about spiritualist? I think that might fit very good.
Also take the UnSummoner as Base and just "allow" the synthesit archetype.
I know nearly nothing about the rest of the group as of right now. I calculated the class as if a 20 pt buy, but for all I know, we could be rolling stats instead.
Good stuff. Sounds like you've got time to tweak the plan if it doesn't seem to match up well with the rest of the group, etc.
I think your original concern was being powerful *enough*. It sounds like the general consensus is that isn't an issue. You can otherwise just modify your approach to how powerful you go as necessary.
Best of luck and enjoy the campaign. ROTR is a good one!
--Edited a typo.--