solo adventure Master Summoner advice - firearm?

[Caedus13]

Hello all! Long time lurker, first time poster looking for advice for a Half-elf Master Summoner I'll be playing. Later this year I'm gonna be playing a solo campaign that promises to be very challenging and will expose my character to a wide range of situations. I need to be able to survive all of them, and given its power and versatility, I decided on Master Summoner.

I've played a vanilla Summoner up to high levels before and absolutely loved the class, so I'm confident in my Summoner character, and while the diminished eidolon is new to me, I've read some tactics and will be making it a stealthy scout/wand-user with natural attacks and Power Attack if it needs to fight some mooks.

My most pressing question is: how practical/useful would it be to grab a firearm for my Summoner? I will have access (Emerging Guns) and could probably squeeze in Gunsmithing on either my Summoner or Eidolon, with EWP coming from Ancestral Arms if needed. The idea of a gun-toting Summoner sounds awesome, but is it feasible for a campaign that's going to be pretty unforgiving? Having the option to whip out a gun and shoot someone who gets a little too close does sound nice, but do I have the money/feats for it?

If anyone would like to see more details of my build I'm happy to provide them. Thanks in advance for the help!

[Haywire build generator]

Half-elf firearm summoners have the potential to be the most absurd damage dealers around, by which I mean they attain significant damage by absurd methods.

Clustered shots deals with DR and you're hitting on touch, so nonmagical guns are reasonable if you can get enough of them. So pour every evolution point (including FCB) into more arms to wield more guns.

[blahpers]

I assumed the firearm was for the summoner, not the eidolon.

It's not terrible, but most of the time you'll have a better option than firing a weapon if someone gets too close. That said, I've seen plenty of characters use Vital Strike with a musket as a backup plan if things go south. Heck, if I weren't so feat-starved I'd have my druid carry a gun.

[Caedus13]

Yes, the firearm will be for the Summoner - my eidolon will be using wands or, if caught in melee, nat attacks.

I guess I figured if I'd have a bow as a weapon just in case, and I have some extra wealth at higher levels, why not take a gun instead?

[avr]

As a summoner? No, you don't really have the feats. Archery is feat-hungry and you don't have any class abilities which give bonus feats or make archery better otherwise. And with a gun you won't add any ability modifier to the damage - which makes it worse than using a bow for you. A composite longbow is not good but probably still better than a gun as far as you're concerned.

[Caedus13]

Yeah I had a longbow on my previous Summoner, but this one dumped Str so it doesn't really get me anything here. I just like to carry SOME sort of weapon so I'm not completely helpless and didn't know if there might be any tricks to make a gunslinging Summoner work

[Dasrak]

Firearms require a lot of feats, are very expensive, require expensive ammunition, are unreliable due to misfires, and deal less damage than bows. They may hit touch AC, but honestly it's not worth it for most builds. If you do want to follow this route, there's really no trick to it. Just grab the following feats: Exotic Weapon Proficiency, Gunsmith, Amateur Gunslinger (Quick Clear), Rapid Reload, Point Blank Shot, Rapid Shot, and Deadly Aim. Even if you get your Eidolon to handle gunsmithing and you use your racial bonus for proficiency, that's still all your feats up to the 9th level, so this is a pretty huge commitment for something that will just be okay at best.

[Vernon Caldwell]

As a Gunslinger, I can tell you that Firearms are expensive and feat intensive (as mentioned above). If you've got the money for a Firearm & ammo, you have the money for a Wand of Magic Missiles (wands don't trigger Attacks of Opportunity like reloading guns do). As time goes by, get yourself a 3rd level Wand for double damage, and maybe a Rod of Spell Penetration for those pesky Outsiders.