Aasimar Dwarf Angel Summoner: Let's see how it plays

[Deriven Firelion]

Made an assimar dwarf angel summoner. He doesn't look so tough on paper compared to any of my other characters, but we'll see how it plays. Here is the eidolon with a +1 striking invested weapon and +1 resilient armor.

Here he is:

Summoner Angel Lvl 9

Heavenly Golden Full Plate Armor (Traits angel, celestial, eidolon): Glowing symbol of the Iron Hammer of Torag appears on chest of armor and chest of Ashgrim.

Size Medium Alignment: Lawful Good Home Plane: Heaven

AC: 28 (+13 proficiency, +4 Dex, +1 item potency)

Saving Throws: Fort (E): +18 Ref (E): +18 Will (E): +16; +1 item bonus saves resilient

Speed 25 feet

Perception: (E): +29; Darkvision

Abilities: Str 18, Dex 18, Con 18, Int 8, Wis 14, Cha 10

Proficiencies: Unarmed Attacks (E), Unarmored Defense (E)

Languages: Celestial

Skills: Shares all skills with summoner.

Melee (1 action): +18 melee golden hammer, Damage 2d8+6 piercing plus 1 good

Melee (1 action): +18 melee golden armor spikes (Agile), Damage 2d4+6 piercing plus 1 good

Hallowed Strikes: Your eidolon’s attacks are hallowed by the celestial realms and imbued with mercy. All your eidolon’s unarmed attacks deal an extra 1 good damage; as usual, this extra damage harms only evil creatures or those with a weakness to good damage. Additionally, your eidolon can make nonlethal attacks with all their unarmed attacks without taking the usual –2 circumstance penalty.

Traveler’s Aura: Your eidolon emanates a powerful aura that protects creatures as they travel, a reflection of an astral deva’s aura of the same name. This aura has the abjuration, aura, and divine traits. Your eidolon and their allies within a 20-foot emanation are protected from severe heat and cold, and your eidolon is never flatfooted to creatures inside the aura that are of a lower level than the eidolon. When you gain the eidolon transcendence class feature, this aura evolves to the full benefits of an astral deva’s; your eidolon and their allies in the aura are protected from ambient environmental damage from any plane, including severe and extreme heat and cold as well as more otherworldly dangers.

Ability Boosts: +2 Str, Dex, Con, Wis.

1. Eidolon Weapon Specialization: Your eidolon has learned how to inflict greater injuries with their unarmed attacks. They deal 2 additional damage with unarmed attacks in which they’re an expert. This damage increases to 3 if they’re a master, and 4 if they’re legendary.

[Deriven Firelion]

After action update on the summoner:

1. Sharing the MAP of the summoner makes the eidolon weaker than the animal companion as an overall package of summoner and eidolon.

2. I don't like having to use boost eidolon every round to make my eidolon do the same damage as a monk. Damage is much lower than almost every other martial class except perhaps a monk. It has basically one ability you have to use every round to boost it's damage to equal monk damage, which limits what the summoner can do.

The summoner doesn't have many interesting actions to undertake as it is. My druid cast a harsh fireball, healed a target, used a focus spell, and cast electric arc while her animal companion moved around flanking and attacking occasionally.

The ranger's animal companion tanked a monster while the ranger peppered it with arrows.

Summoner's rounds were spent moving slower than the animal companion with no flight, casting boost eidolon round after round to do the same damage as the archer ranger and the druid and less than the swashbuckler, and had to use a shared hit point pool that dwindled quickly.

So far the Summoner is a hard pass. Not a tough class. Like a less interesting monk. Spellcasting is fairly useless. Not many spells to make the eidolon substantially better on the spell list.

Nothing like the old summoner in PF1 other than in name only. If it goes in the game as is, it will be one of the weaker class options in the game. Very disappointing.

Back to the barbarian. Going from the summoner to the barbarian is like going from being an elite NFL defensive tackle to being a practice squad defensive tackle. Big time down turn in damage and effectiveness within the group dynamic.

Summoner might be cool for those who like the concept and don't mind being a weak damage dealer for the interesting visual concept. I don't like playing second tier to nearly every other class myself, but I know some folks like the visual concept over the effectiveness.

I put the summoner near the bottom tier of classes in terms of effectiveness in it's current state. It's another class like the monk that seems to pay too steep a price for having variable abilities that aren't useful in very many situations. Once your engaged with the mob, it's just about bringing the pain, not all these clever little things you can do with evolution surge.

[Dubious Scholar]

1) I don't think shared MAP should be a huge issue, if the summoner has enough interesting non-MAP options to work with
2) You're probably correct on the eidolon focus spells. They probably need to not eat an action every turn. Give them a 1-minute duration, keep them as cantrips, so they're effectively stances the summoner swaps between. Maybe add a third option that gives a flat +1 to hit (heightens to +2 at 5th or something?) - the option of damage, accuracy, or defense stances works well in theory I think, as long as they're actually stance type durations.

I'm going to have to do some math on it, but at 9 your primary is 2d8+4 before boost, which should be equal to a monk already - the issue is your agile attack being only 2d4+4, right? (Boost going to +8 instead of +4)

I would suggest that Act Together needs to allow starting an activity with the action of whoever goes second in it (so you can act together to start a spell and move the eidolon up, for instance, then complete spell, then strike). Or, honestly, just say it's haste and stacks with other sources of haste. Mechanically the same at that point but simpler to understand? Or possibly just say you and the eidolon each get an action every turn, plus two actions to share as you please? I dunno. I'd like to be able to use it to start spells up and such, so I'm brainstorming ways to reword it for that.

A big part of the summoner lacking spells to use on the eidolon (and thus interesting options in combat) is probably that cantrips aren't very good at buffing. They're basically 100% out of combat utility or attacks, and summoner is bad at offense with spells (which plays into the "why take CHA" question - if they had at least Monk/Champion casting progression there'd be a better case for it). Splitting MAP would help make cantrips more useful (as a second weaker attack that's easy to fling to other targets)... Or if they had more focus spells to work with (evolution surge atm seems less than useful until it gets size increase - which should really boost reach at Large - and then flight later)

Now, there ARE useful things a summoner can do for an action in combat (battle medicine, intimidate, Bon Mot, recall knowledge, etc) but I can agree casting their cantrip every turn limits that. Since they can only cast it to buff the eidolon I'm not sure it needs the action cost of things like Inspire Courage or witch's Stoke the Heart. Those classes also have the advantage of being full casters and so they are using Stride less to engage enemies - a round that's cast spell+cast/sustain cantrip is viable for them, but not for summoner (because then you only have one action for the eidolon in melee).