Why do AOEs keep being brought up, again? They only suffer the effects once even if they both get hit. And since AOEs are AOE and their whole job is to hit several targets, I really don't think they're going to be tagged much more often than a single martial. If they're close together, that's dubious because the Summoner is more vulnerable to crits but that means the AOE being an AOE doesn't matter. If they're far apart, in different groups...congratulations, they're helping to spread fire so no one dies from these whiteroom hyper-tactical AOE-and-mageslaying-dispensers, which is probably worth an extra fistful of HP lost on one character with most of a martial chassis.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Why do AOEs keep being brought up, again? They only suffer the effects once even if they both get hit. And since AOEs are AOE and their whole job is to hit several targets, I really don't think they're going to be tagged much more often than a single martial. If they're close together, that's dubious because the Summoner is more vulnerable to crits but that means the AOE being an AOE doesn't matter. If they're far apart, in different groups...congratulations, they're helping to spread fire so no one dies from these whiteroom hyper-tactical AOE-and-mageslaying-dispensers, which is probably worth an extra fistful of HP lost on one character with most of a martial chassis.
It kinda matters? Both have to make the save and both suffer the effects of the lower of two rolls.
Sure, they only "take the damage once" but if the summoner critically succeeds and the eidolon critically fails, the summoner's roll was irrelevant (and vice versa).
It kinda matters? Both have to make the save and both suffer the effects of the lower of two rolls.
Sure, they only "take the damage once" but if the summoner critically succeeds and the eidolon critically fails, the summoner's roll was irrelevant (and vice versa).
That's the thing, though, it doesn't say they both make a save, it says they take the effects once. The Eidolon and Summoner have different stats and may be under different circumstances, so it seemed to me the point of that section was to continue the "you're basically one creature" ruleset by saying if you both get caught in a save, the person with the worse modifier is what counts — but you only roll once for both, since they're so in sync. Sure, that would sometimes downgrade a result, but it would never be anything as swingy as "Eidolon rolled a 20 but you rolled a 1".
Basically, the section is a little ambiguous and I was interpreting "the effects" as including the roll to see what happens. If it's really supposed to be taking the worse result of two different rolls then I concede AOEs are a weakness, but I think there's an honest chance they're supposed to be in step on this given the rest of the flavor and mechanics.
(On a side note, that same section suggests that taking the higher of two healing rolls is a worse effect. It's a strangely worded section.)
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
There’s another situation where it seems to me that having two bodies could be a drawback: A fair number of monsters have multiple attack abilities that are balanced by requiring them to target different creatures-e.g. the Chimera’s three headed strike.
If the chimera (or similar monster) gets the drop on the summoner and manages to split its attacks between summoner and eidolon, you’re looking at some gnarly spike damage. Unless that would somehow count as a single source?
As someone else mentioned, there’s also the issue of traps, which I’ve seen do things like ‘make an attack against a random creature in the area’. If the summoner/eidolon are both in the area, they’re more likely to eat that damage, by dint of being on the list of possible targets twice.
I don’t think either of those make them unplayable though.
I can sorta see this for randomized traps, but for mindless creatures, shouldn't they just attack the nearest target? I know the idea of mindless zombies walking right by the Fighter to attack the Wizard behind him makes zero sense to me.
For mindless, it depends. A construct might go after the shiniest helmet first if that was it's command! ;)
But for this, I was thinking of a random placement encounter, like oozes hoping out of the water,undead jumping out of the ground, constructs coming out of the fog, ect and attack player 1d10. So, while they are attacking the closest, their initial location is random therefor making who is closest random.
This exact situation happened not long ago in a game I was in: we where in a graveyard and any grave could spawn an undead.
|
Not sure who or what you're referring to.Two words:
Unmanifest and Synthesis.
There. Nonexistent problem solved.
Without being the original poster, I'm assuming they mean that both options exist for anyone who suddenly finds themselves in a situation where being two bodies on the field at once is a problem. Synthesist is literally just play your Eidolon like its a PC after all. Just turn yourself into a power ranger and suddenly the squishy summoner is off the field.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Without being the original poster, I'm assuming they mean that both options exist for anyone who suddenly finds themselves in a situation where being two bodies on the field at once is a problem. Synthesist is literally just play your Eidolon like its a PC after all. Just turn yourself into a power ranger and suddenly the squishy summoner is off the field.Not sure who or what you're referring to.Two words:
Unmanifest and Synthesis.
There. Nonexistent problem solved.
You could be right but without a subject, quote or mention of a poster who knows. All I know is it's something to do with Summoners, Eidolon and some kind of problem... :P
EDIT: I should also say that manifest, unmanifest and synthesis come at a substantial cost: 3 actions... and if you have your Eidolon manifested and you want to use synthesis, that's 6 actions.
|
|
People here should probably go read the Synthesist thread tbh, a lot of good points were made in its regard. Synthesist itself allows a character to basically play Vigilante with a class-built Combat form and Social form, leaving spells for out-of-combat or a contingency in case you go down (since re-summon takes forever). If you want to play a summoner but your fleshy meat-bod is making it feel too dangerous, then Synthesist really is the feat to fix that concern, afaict.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
People here should probably go read the Synthesist thread tbh, a lot of good points were made in its regard. Synthesist itself allows a character to basically play Vigilante with a class-built Combat form and Social form, leaving spells for out-of-combat or a contingency in case you go down (since re-summon takes forever). If you want to play a summoner but your fleshy meat-bod is making it feel too dangerous, then Synthesist really is the feat to fix that concern, afaict.
The consensus on the synthesist is that it sucks because it's a downgrade in combat and only makes sense for out of combat utility and movement. I don't agree with the OP's assertion but saying that the synethsist fixes his concerns is kinda laughable.
|
|
The consensus on the synthesist is that it sucks because it's a downgrade in combat and only makes sense for out of combat utility and movement. I don't agree with the OP's assertion but saying that the synethsist fixes his concerns is kinda laughable.
Okay then, second answer: Run Synthesist until you get Transpose. Retrain Synthesist out. When combat starts, swap places with your Eidolon 100 feet away. Boom, done.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I agree that being 2 bodies have an impact: You will more often than your teammates be the character who takes damage, either because your Eidolon is suffering, because your Summoner is suffering or because both of you are suffering.
In my opinion, it's not much of a drawback. Others have pointed out that if you weren't the one taking blows someone else in your party would. But one advantage is that you can focus healing magic on someone. Say, I'm a Cleric with Healer's Blessing. By putting it on the Summoner who's next to me, I maximize healing on 2 characters without having to move. That's actually awesome!
I don't like the summoner as 1 creature. I would prefer the Eidolon be a separate creature with it's own hit point pool. Give the summoner 6 hit points and the eidolon 10, much like another class with an animal companion like ranger or barbarian.
Allow the summoner to spend up to 2 actions innately to give the Eidolon three actions, otherwise use the normal 1 action for 2 actions paradigm.
I do not like this shared hit point pool as it is makes the animal companion stronger than the Eidolon and his master. Animal companion will have 6 plus Con hit points with a master that is anything from 6 to 12 plus Con plus Toughness.
That means a summoner and his eidolon would max with a 20 Con and toughness at 320 hit points.
While even a wizard and an animal companion with beastmaster would end up with animal companion 204 and the wizard with 220 hit points for over a 100 hit points more than the eidolon and his master with a vastly larger number of spells and class abilities.
If a druid, ranger, or barbarian pick up an animal companion, it's an even bigger hit point difference with a ranger adding quite a bit of power with flurry or precision to their animal companion attacks.
Seems bad at this point.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I don't like the summoner as 1 creature. I would prefer the Eidolon be a separate creature with it's own hit point pool. Give the summoner 6 hit points and the eidolon 10, much like another class with an animal companion like ranger or barbarian.
Allow the summoner to spend up to 2 actions innately to give the Eidolon three actions, otherwise use the normal 1 action for 2 actions paradigm.
I do not like this shared hit point pool as it is makes the animal companion stronger than the Eidolon and his master. Animal companion will have 6 plus Con hit points with a master that is anything from 6 to 12 plus Con plus Toughness.
That means a summoner and his eidolon would max with a 20 Con and toughness at 320 hit points.
While even a wizard and an animal companion with beastmaster would end up with animal companion 204 and the wizard with 220 hit points for over a 100 hit points more than the eidolon and his master with a vastly larger number of spells and class abilities.
If a druid, ranger, or barbarian pick up an animal companion, it's an even bigger hit point difference with a ranger adding quite a bit of power with flurry or precision to their animal companion attacks.
Seems bad at this point.
Comparisons to Animal Companions consistently ignore two things -
First, and most importantly, its not an either or choice. You can have an Eidolon AND an Animal Companion, meaning they arent the same thing at all. Its not one vs the other.
Second, these comparisons ignore that the trade off is that the Eidolon is significantly more capable in all ways than an Animal Companion. For zero feats invested for the Eidolon...
I agree that being 2 bodies have an impact: You will more often than your teammates be the character who takes damage, either because your Eidolon is suffering, because your Summoner is suffering or because both of you are suffering.
In my opinion, it's not much of a drawback. Others have pointed out that if you weren't the one taking blows someone else in your party would. But one advantage is that you can focus healing magic on someone. Say, I'm a Cleric with Healer's Blessing. By putting it on the Summoner who's next to me, I maximize healing on 2 characters without having to move. That's actually awesome!
You don't heal two characters is the thing. Your healing one character with two hurt boxes, to borrow a fighting game term.
The idea that you are double healing is false.
What is true, is that the summoner has more opportunities to receive healing depending on positioning.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I agree that being 2 bodies have an impact: You will more often than your teammates be the character who takes damage, either because your Eidolon is suffering, because your Summoner is suffering or because both of you are suffering.
In my opinion, it's not much of a drawback. Others have pointed out that if you weren't the one taking blows someone else in your party would. But one advantage is that you can focus healing magic on someone. Say, I'm a Cleric with Healer's Blessing. By putting it on the Summoner who's next to me, I maximize healing on 2 characters without having to move. That's actually awesome!You don't heal two characters is the thing. Your healing one character with two hurt boxes, to borrow a fighting game term.
The idea that you are double healing is false.
What is true, is that the summoner has more opportunities to receive healing depending on positioning.
I've never said that you were double healing, but that you were maximizing healing (because of Healer's Blessing) on 2 characters. And you can use low level 1-action Heals to trigger Healer's Blessing, something that you can't do in normal circumstances. It's very interesting in terms of positioning.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Okay then, second answer: Run Synthesist until you get Transpose. Retrain Synthesist out. When combat starts, swap places with your Eidolon 100 feet away. Boom, done.
The consensus on the synthesist is that it sucks because it's a downgrade in combat and only makes sense for out of combat utility and movement. I don't agree with the OP's assertion but saying that the synethsist fixes his concerns is kinda laughable.
This isn't supposed to be how a synthesist works.
That's the thing, though, it doesn't say they both make a save, it says they take the effects once.It kinda matters? Both have to make the save and both suffer the effects of the lower of two rolls.
Sure, they only "take the damage once" but if the summoner critically succeeds and the eidolon critically fails, the summoner's roll was irrelevant (and vice versa).
No, that's exactly what it says. I don't see how else both bodies being caught in an effect that gives one of them Slowed 1 and the other Slowed 2 unless they both rolled and got different results (save and fail, respectively).
The Eidolon and Summoner have different stats and may be under different circumstances, so it seemed to me the point of that section was to continue the "you're basically one creature" ruleset by saying if you both get caught in a save, the person with the worse modifier is what counts — but you only roll once for both, since they're so in sync. Sure, that would sometimes downgrade a result, but it would never be anything as swingy as "Eidolon rolled a 20 but you rolled a 1".
It does NOT say "you only roll the saving throw once" it says "if you both take damage/condition from a spell, only apply the most extreme result." (most healing, most damage, worst debuff, etc)
(On a side note, that same section suggests that taking the higher of two healing rolls is a worse effect. It's a strangely worded section.)
"Most extreme" is a better descriptor.
|
|
This isn't supposed to be how a synthesist works.Okay then, second answer: Run Synthesist until you get Transpose. Retrain Synthesist out. When combat starts, swap places with your Eidolon 100 feet away. Boom, done.
The consensus on the synthesist is that it sucks because it's a downgrade in combat and only makes sense for out of combat utility and movement. I don't agree with the OP's assertion but saying that the synethsist fixes his concerns is kinda laughable.
At this point I'm just answering how to mitigate the hypothetical issue of two bodies being on the field at once. Synthesist is the low level option for doing it, Transpose is the higher level option for it with no drawbacks. Retraining is easy in this system so you can retrain out Synthesist once you get Transpose to avoid having a redundant feat.
Looking at the other thread, if your post was supposed to be about how the synthesist is supposed to be a combat form of some kind compared to its current use, that's not the point of this thread. As far as I can tell, this thread has essentially developed into focusing on the questions of A) Is two bodies with a shared lifebar on the field a major detriment? And B) Is there an easy way to mitigate this detriment if so? My posts here so far have been dedicated to answering the second question. If you have issues with the Synthesist feat, I don't see how they're relevant to my answer without further elaboration.
|
|
Synthesist is the low level option for doing it, Transpose is the higher level option for it with no drawbacks1) Synthesis isn't suppose to be a way to just protect the summoner. It's not the same thing at all.
2) The class fantasy of Synthesis is literally combining with your Eidolon. I'd like that class fantasy back.
1) Its not the primary use, but it certainly is a use, and it is a relevant use in the context of this thread. You can argue it should do more than it currently does but that's not the point I'm making in this thread.
2)See above point, this isn't really relevant to why I brought up the Synthesist feat. Combining with your eidolon should probably give some tradeoff for lost action economy, sure, but that's not what this thread is discussing and there are other threads for that discussion to take place in.
|
|
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
Party of 4 vs party of 10. If summoner, 5 vs. 10. Let there be 3 ranged enemies (because people all say their DM's use rather few of those...) and the enemies have a modicum of intelligence.
I'm sorry, but if your GM is using encounter scaling rules as listed in the Core Rulebook, which is presumeably what we're using for balance here, then this example is citing, at absolute worst, an encounter with 10 creatures that are all at Character Level -3. Even with mooks this weak, this is still described as a fight that should be incredibly dangerous to any party despite probably evaporating in the presencevof a single fireball. I don't know if we should be balancing the Summoner against hypothetical edge-case danger scenarios that only occur in a badly balanced party anyways.
|
|
| 9 people marked this as a favorite. |
No, the DM is not using those. He is doing 10 vs 4 with the enemy level at party -1, because the difficulty rating as written makes absolutely 0 sense. And from what I've seen, if your DM sends you enemy numbers equal to your own, then he is in the minority.I'm sorry, but if your GM is using encounter scaling rules as listed in the Core Rulebook, which is presumeably what we're using for balance here, then this example is citing, at absolute worst, an encounter with 10 creatures that are all at Character Level -3. Even with mooks this weak, this is still described as a fight that should be incredibly dangerous to any party despite probably evaporating in the presencevof a single fireball. I don't know if we should be balancing the Summoner against hypothetical edge-case danger scenarios that only occur in a badly balanced party anyways.
Party of 4 vs party of 10. If summoner, 5 vs. 10. Let there be 3 ranged enemies (because people all say their DM's use rather few of those...) and the enemies have a modicum of intelligence.
"My DM" is literally the system Paizo uses to balance Organized Play, modules, and Adventure Paths. Say the encounter system is whack all you want but it is the system that we should be using when conducting a playtest. If your GM likes hard fights, that's on them; the system has clearly stated what it uses to balance classes and its disingenuous to use other metrics for a rules playtest.
Even in your new scenario, you make the mistake of treating the Eidolon as an additional Player. They are not, so the scenario should be 4+Eidolon+3 Animal Companions Because Why Not Its The Same Thing vs 4 equal-level enemies for an Extreme Level Encounter, something thr CRB explicitly states should only be used for climactic events. Much more common challenging fights would be vs 3 Enemies of Equal Party Level, or 4 Enemies of Parry Level -1 in this system for a Severe-threat difficulty.
Paizo cannot balance for your GM's homeruled encounter building and they shouldn't be forced to.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
No, the DM is not using those. He is doing 10 vs 4 with the enemy level at party -1, because the difficulty rating as written makes absolutely 0 sense
Uh, 10 creatures of Party Level - 1 is 300 exp.
TABLE 10–2: CREATURE XP AND ROLE
Creature Level XP Suggested Role
Party level – 4: 10 Low-threat lackey
Party level – 3: 15 Low- or moderate-threat lackey
Party level – 2: 20 Any lackey or standard creature
Party level – 1: 30 Any standard creature
Party level: 40 Any standard creature or low-threat
boss
Party level + 1: 60 Low- or moderate-threat boss
Party level + 2: 80 Moderate- or severe-threat boss
Party level + 3: 120 Severe- or extreme-threat boss
Party level + 4: 160 Extreme-threat solo boss
300 exp, as a budget, is double the amount of an Extreme encounter.
TABLE 10–1: ENCOUNTER BUDGET
Threat XP Budget Character Adjustment
Trivial 40 or less - 10 or less
Low 60 - 15
Moderate 80 - 20
Severe 120 - 30
Extreme 160 - 40
No, the DM is not using those. He is doing 10 vs 4 with the enemy level at party -1, because the difficulty rating as written makes absolutely 0 sense. And from what I've seen, if your DM sends you enemy numbers equal to your own, then he is in the minority."My DM" is literally the system Paizo uses to balance Organized Play, modules, and Adventure Paths. Say the encounter system is whack all you want but it is the system that we should be using when conducting a playtest. If your GM likes hard fights, that's on them; the system has clearly stated what it uses to balance classes and its disingenuous to use other metrics for a rules playtest.
Even in your new scenario, you make the mistake of treating the Eidolon as an additional Player. They are not, so the scenario should be 4+Eidolon+3 Animal Companions Because Why Not Its The Same Thing vs 4 equal-level enemies for an Extreme Level Encounter, something thr CRB explicitly states should only be used for climactic events. Much more common challenging fights would be vs 3 Enemies of Equal Party Level, or 4 Enemies of Parry Level -1 in this system for a...
These numbers are so far beyond the pale that I doubt it’s just a matter of GM “preference”.
I’m suspecting that there are either some unusual house rules involved or someone is just doing the math completely wrong.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
No, the DM is not using those. He is doing 10 vs 4 with the enemy level at party -1, because the difficulty rating as written makes absolutely 0 senseThe difficult ratings are by the far the best in the entire industry. I say this as someone who has GMed PF2 continuously since playtest (hundred+ sessions over the past few years), virtually every single time I've made an encounter the encounter building tools have accurately depicted the difficulty of the encounter.The difficulty rating is horrible. I've been running a few games, one was literally a single player campaign (player + 1 npc). I just wanted to see what would happen if I threw 5 goblin warriors and 1 goblin commander at them when both player and NPC were level 1. An encounter this so called "best in the industry" system calls "impossible"... They lost 4 HP. FOUR. In total! I reran this encounter 4 times to see if it was just the dice, but no. Worst that happened is that the player character dropped to 6 HP once. Unless the balance between enemy types shifts wildly within the same level range, this is NOT indicative of the RAW encounter calculations being any competent.
Weird. Either you're doing things hilariously wrong or you're a tactical genius!
You are almost certainly talking out your ass if you're insisting a single player fought what is probably an Extreme encounter for a normal party and got hit less than once. Are you sure you're not talking about Pathfinder 1e, where most of those enemies couldn't hit someone with even just okay AC?
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah that is... completely unfathomable to me. The Goblin Commando just by himself has access to two different debuffing skills and a +8 on his horsechopper. He's got pretty decent odds 1v1 against other level 1 martials.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Weird. Either you're doing things hilariously wrong or you're a tactical genius!No, the DM is not using those. He is doing 10 vs 4 with the enemy level at party -1, because the difficulty rating as written makes absolutely 0 senseThe difficult ratings are by the far the best in the entire industry. I say this as someone who has GMed PF2 continuously since playtest (hundred+ sessions over the past few years), virtually every single time I've made an encounter the encounter building tools have accurately depicted the difficulty of the encounter.The difficulty rating is horrible. I've been running a few games, one was literally a single player campaign (player + 1 npc). I just wanted to see what would happen if I threw 5 goblin warriors and 1 goblin commander at them when both player and NPC were level 1. An encounter this so called "best in the industry" system calls "impossible"... They lost 4 HP. FOUR. In total! I reran this encounter 4 times to see if it was just the dice, but no. Worst that happened is that the player character dropped to 6 HP once. Unless the balance between enemy types shifts wildly within the same level range, this is NOT indicative of the RAW encounter calculations being any competent.
As I have a handful of dice within reach of my computer, I just ran that encounter real quick against two Champions (to be generous) within 25 feet (to be generous).
The champions lost every time-- best they did was 4 of the 6 goblins.
Which reads, because extreme difficulty encounters are supposed to mean the heroes lose 50% of the time. If you won every time without problem then me losing every time is statistically likely!
Weird. Either you're doing things hilariously wrong or you're a tactical genius!No, the DM is not using those. He is doing 10 vs 4 with the enemy level at party -1, because the difficulty rating as written makes absolutely 0 senseThe difficult ratings are by the far the best in the entire industry. I say this as someone who has GMed PF2 continuously since playtest (hundred+ sessions over the past few years), virtually every single time I've made an encounter the encounter building tools have accurately depicted the difficulty of the encounter.The difficulty rating is horrible. I've been running a few games, one was literally a single player campaign (player + 1 npc). I just wanted to see what would happen if I threw 5 goblin warriors and 1 goblin commander at them when both player and NPC were level 1. An encounter this so called "best in the industry" system calls "impossible"... They lost 4 HP. FOUR. In total! I reran this encounter 4 times to see if it was just the dice, but no. Worst that happened is that the player character dropped to 6 HP once. Unless the balance between enemy types shifts wildly within the same level range, this is NOT indicative of the RAW encounter calculations being any competent.
As I have a handful of dice within reach of my computer, I just ran that encounter real quick against two Champions (to be generous) within 25 feet (to be generous).
The champions lost every time-- best they did was 4 of the 6 goblins.
Which reads, because extreme difficulty encounters are supposed to mean the heroes lose 50% of the time. If you won every time without problem then me losing every time is statistically likely!
Yes, but how does it go if you start the goblins 200 feet away and make the two PCs fighters with longbows?
There are ways to weight this heavily in the players favor, but your scenario feels WAY more typical in my experience.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yes, but how does it go if you start the goblins 200 feet away and make the two PCs fighters with longbows?
There are ways to weight this heavily in the players favor, but your scenario feels WAY more typical in my experience.
I get what you mean, but even in this scenario the goblins are all trained in stealth. If engagement distance is that far away then they've definitely got places to hide.
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
The difficulty rating is horrible. I've been running a few games, one was literally a single player campaign (player + 1 npc). I just wanted to see what would happen if I threw 5 goblin warriors and 1 goblin commander at them when both player and NPC were level 1. An encounter this so called "best in the industry" system calls "impossible"... They lost 4 HP. FOUR. In total! I reran this encounter 4 times to see if it was just the dice, but no. Worst that happened is that the player character dropped to 6 HP once. Unless the balance between enemy types shifts wildly within the same level range, this is NOT indicative of the RAW encounter calculations being any competent.
Yeah, no. No one believes this. Goblin Warriors have a +8 to hit, meaning that they should deal damage when rolling a natural-10 (or lower/more often) against PCs. Highest AC possible at level 1 is 18.
Their own AC is 17, so they should be getting hit on a 10 or thereabouts too, and have the same HP as a level 1 PC. So there's no way they're going down in a single attack.
There are 5 of them (I'll ignore the commando and the fact that they have ranged attacks at the moment). We'll say baseline it should take 10 attacks to kill them all (because 18 damage is more than one hit, but we'll say its less than two). That's minimum two rounds of combat, assuming every strike lands and the PC and his helper NPC doen't need to move. Lets assume that the PC acts, then the goblins, then the NPC.
That's 5 turns the goblins get to make minimum. More likely it'll be more like 8 or 9 because misses.The goblins will spend 1 moving and the other two making strikes. So that's 10 attempts to damage the hero(s). Each successful strike will do 1d6 damage.
Unless your goblin's dice absolutely hate you, there's no way that should average to 4 total damage.
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
The difficulty rating is horrible. I've been running a few games, one was literally a single player campaign (player + 1 npc). I just wanted to see what would happen if I threw 5 goblin warriors and 1 goblin commander at them when both player and NPC were level 1. An encounter this so called "best in the industry" system calls "impossible"... They lost 4 HP. FOUR. In total! I reran this encounter 4 times to see if it was just the dice, but no. Worst that happened is that the player character dropped to 6 HP once.
Um...what? I can believe this happened once, but this is super unlikely to happen over and over again unless the goblins stand in a line using no tactics at all or something similarly unreasonable.
A 1st level PC basically maxes at AC 20, and that's only with a shield and spending an action. Goblin Warriors have +8 to hit, and can casually flank for +10, and do 1d6+1 damage while flanking. That's an average of 4.5 damage per turn per goblin, assuming two attacks. Or north of 22.5 damage from the Warriors. The Commando adds another 7.125. So that's almost 30 damage per turn pretty readily.
Their ranged damage is certainly worse than that, but not all that much worse, and that's vs. way higher than average AC (most PCs have an AC of 18 or so, less for casters).
I do not believe that, unless the goblins started in melee, the PCs won initiative against all of them (not likely, everyone rolls initiative separately), and the goblins utterly failed to use tactics at all, that the results you describe are plausible.
I don't like the summoner as 1 creature. I would prefer the Eidolon be a separate creature with it's own hit point pool. Give the summoner 6 hit points and the eidolon 10, much like another class with an animal companion like ranger or barbarian.
Allow the summoner to spend up to 2 actions innately to give the Eidolon three actions, otherwise use the normal 1 action for 2 actions paradigm.
I do not like this shared hit point pool as it is makes the animal companion stronger than the Eidolon and his master. Animal companion will have 6 plus Con hit points with a master that is anything from 6 to 12 plus Con plus Toughness.
That means a summoner and his eidolon would max with a 20 Con and toughness at 320 hit points.
While even a wizard and an animal companion with beastmaster would end up with animal companion 204 and the wizard with 220 hit points for over a 100 hit points more than the eidolon and his master with a vastly larger number of spells and class abilities.
If a druid, ranger, or barbarian pick up an animal companion, it's an even bigger hit point difference with a ranger adding quite a bit of power with flurry or precision to their animal companion attacks.
Seems bad at this point.
Comparisons to Animal Companions consistently ignore two things -
First, and most importantly, its not an either or choice. You can have an Eidolon AND an Animal Companion, meaning they arent the same thing at all. Its not one vs the other.
Second, these comparisons ignore that the trade off is that the Eidolon is significantly more capable in all ways than an Animal Companion. For zero feats invested for the Eidolon...
And the casters and martials that get an animal companion are vastly more capable than the summoner. Is that tradeoff a good one? I hope it is very well tested before release, because right now it does not look worth it.
You give up everything for an eidolon with a shared hit point pool. Given how much damage AoE does now, especially at high level this doesn't seem good. Both the summoner and the eidolon will be saving together against AoE attacks quite often. That joined hit point pool will go down extremely fast.
A ranger archer or wizard with an animal companion gets to stand back and let the creature take the punishment without losing hit points himself. Not the summoner.
If the ranger archer or wizard pull back their animal companion to preserve its hit points until they can heal it, they still have powerful capabilities for attack. The summoner does not. If his Eidolon pulls back to try to survive powerful attacks, the summoner is nearly useless.
This should come with a hit point premium, not a penalty. As in they should have more hit points to spend to keep their Eidolon going since so much of their power is tied to the Eidolon. Yet they have less.
Is the amount of damage they do combined worth this trade off? I will do some testing myself, but I hope this is thoroughly tested.
The summoner with such a low number of spell slots and so much power tied into the eidolon, it either stays up or their power is gone. If this trade off isn't balanced against an animal companion with their own hit point pool along with extremely powerful abilities by the character with the animal companion then it is an overall weakness.
Right now with AOE and creature damage as it is with easy crits from powerful creatures and such, the eidolon's combined hit point pull will be destroyed quickly. We'll see how that does in the playtest.
It seems will force the few spell slots they have into healing slots and the arcane caster will be in a bad spot unable to heal his eidolon.
I'm not liking that mechanic right now. We'll see how it does in the playtest.
