Got a player building an Elemental Ally and looking at the elemental eidolon, I had some questions.
They don't do any elemental damage? They're not immune to their own element? Or critical hits? What do they get?
Re reading, I see they do get some of that stuff later, but isn't it odd they don't get elemental damage until 20th level?
Well, most normal elementals don't have energy attacks either. So lets be honest- we are talking purely about the fire elementals. They are the only one that actually deal their respective element out of Paizo's usual 4 energy types.
Why are they built as late blooming eidolons when they are made of fire? ...honestly, is their attempt to make a square peg fit into a round hole- they wanted the 4 elements to fire into their nice little 1/4/8/12/16/20 system they made for subtypes, and wanted to have all 4 within the same subtype.
They wanted a 'capstone' for level 20, and their various abilities like vortex were the only things that fit that role for the set of abilities that are generically given to various elemental type abilities (like elemental body spell). And unfortunately for fire, the only equivalent ability it has to vortex/whirlpool/elemental mastery comes from its fire damage stuff.
As a side note- you can go out of your way to give it fire attacks through evo points earlier than that.
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@lemeres Sadly, the archetype specifically denies you access to an Evolution pool. This has he odd effects of making the eidolons' 4th level ability null and void, and it means your water elemental can drown until 8th level.
That all said the archetype is still pretty great because you can build each elemental for a different purpose. A small biped air elemental that uses rogue skills, a biped fire elemental that uses a martial weapon and power attack, a four legged "guard dog" earth elemental that takes Bodyguard, etc.
Eidolons in general are designed to be imperfect replication that begins to live up to the hype as it levels. Almost like a generic outsider cosplaying as its subtype (see the water elemental issue above) and its especially hard to live the dream when you can't use evolutions to patch the holes.
Good news is that you have the full druid spell list and the share spells ability to power them up. Skim the list, pick out some gems, and plan the eidolons around that.
And if you're feeling REALLY silly, you can take Nature Soul, which qualifies you for Animal Ally, which grants you an animal companion, which qualifies you for Evolved Companion, which then technically grants you one point evolutions for your eidolons. Not sure if each feat grants you one point per eidolon or one point for a single eidolon, though.
Oh yeah. I was more talking about the subtype for un-summoners. The subtype can hardly be faulted for a buggy use of it when it was coopted for a different class.
Yeah... I am not that sure about the usefulness of the druid archetype, since it does limit your options to such an extent. Rosc pretty much cites the only decent thing about it- the option to have relatively small build variation between each one.
It still seems like a whoooole lot of extra paperwork when there is only so far you can take the eidolon's build. But the fact that you lose pretty much all of your non-spell class features for the day when a single eidolon gets killed puts a hamper on things. Even summoners at least have their SLA summons and an emergency 'quick eidlon-just add water' spell.