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Enough talk about how much of a detriment having two bodies on the field is; let's put it to use to instead create an interesting combat hypothetical for players that want to fight alongside their eidolons and not from behind them.
Strike Together, 1Action
Summoner, Tandem, FlourishYou share a special bond with your Eidolon, perhaps stemming from a shared history of strife. You and your Eidolon each make a Melee Strike against the same target, each using your current multiple attack penalty. If the second Strike is made with a weapon that doesn’t have the agile trait, it takes a –2 penalty.
If both attacks hit, combine their damage, and then add any other applicable effects from both weapons. You add any precision damage only once, to the attack of your choice. Combine the damage from both Strikes and apply resistances and weaknesses only once. This counts as two attacks when calculating your multiple attack penalty.
Tandem Striker Adept
Prerequisites: Strike Together
SummonerTime and experience have turned you and your Eidolon into a formidable duo. Remove the Flourish trait from Strike Together. When using Strike Together, it only counts as one attack instead of two when calculating your multiple attack penalty.
A better Double Slice where you get to fight alongside your Eidolon, however both of you are now on the front line and are now both likely targrts for the enemy, in addition to being further limited by Summoner's inherently bad combat proficiencies. However, it creates a unique frontliner playstyle wholly unique to the class for those willing to put it on the line.
Thoughts?
This is probably a trap option.
The poor base AC and complete lack of martial scaling on the Summoner themselves means they never want to get into melee.
It's really not a better Double Slice when one of the swords is being wielded by someone about as physically threatening as a Wizard.
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This is probably a trap option.
The poor base AC and complete lack of martial scaling on the Summoner themselves means they never want to get into melee.
It's really not a better Double Slice when one of the swords is being wielded by someone about as physically threatening as a Wizard.
What do you think it would take to turn this into a not-trap option? I think there's some interesting ground that could be worked with the Summoner as a tandem combat build, as the inherent drawback of two targets linked at the frontline with shared health could be used as a justification for some fairly powerful effects.
I'll certainly admit that as written in this version, having the Summoner not be multiclassed into something with better combat options would be a detriment, but I think the idea of fighting alongside an Eidolon would be appealing to enough players to be worth considering how it could potentially be balanced. (heck, the idea of riding your Eidolon has already been put into the playtest despite having very little mechanical benefit.)
In order for it to not be a trap option, the Summoner themselves need to be physically stronger, and there's no fair way to do that.
I put a very similar idea in the feat suggestion thread. Combine this with the option for your Eidolon to give you +2AC for being adjacent and say a shield block/champion(paladin) reaction kinda thing and I don't see a problem. As a build using multiple feats, able to strike with your Eidolon, buff your AC, reduce damage to the sorcerer and get a free reaction attack.
This is probably a trap option.
The poor base AC and complete lack of martial scaling on the Summoner themselves means they never want to get into melee.
It's really not a better Double Slice when one of the swords is being wielded by someone about as physically threatening as a Wizard.
Due to how people feel about charisma, its not hard to build a Summoner with 16 Strength or Dex.
If you remove the -2 to hit with an on-agile weapon from the original feat posted here, isn't this essentially close to a ranger two weapon flurrier?
At level 1, its two attacks at -1 relative to a Martial character. Thats probably actually a bit better compared to 0/-3 on a Flurry Ranger with a agile weapon, but at this point you are increasing your risk by actually exposing your Summoner to extra attacks - enough risk this is probably fine.
At level 5, its an attack that is every bit as good as the Flurry Rangers because the Eidolons attributes caught up, and an attack at -2 (proficiency lag) from the Summoner. Again, 0/-2 with increased risk due to required positioning.
When the Summoner's Proficiency increases, they'll be behind by 1 again due to attribute lag. And then at 15, they'll catch up by one on attributes.
I don't know that this is much of a trap for a Summoner who picks up an Archetype like Sentinel for extra AC.
Combine the effects of this with Act Together (removing that silly actions must differ limitation) and then you might have something.
Combine the effects of this with Act Together (removing that silly actions must differ limitation) and then you might have something.
See the early discussion about why you can't use Tandem Move with Act Together - the idea is that both the Summoner and the Eidolon are doing their own thing for an action.
It might not actually be intended that they can't each Strike, as each Strike is a different Strike action.
Others thing Act Together is clear, but... I'm not so sure.
I really like the idea of this, I hope they have more support for mounted summoners fighting with their eidolon.
It would be good to reduce the level of hulking evolution to enable that concept at a lower level (all characters can get a mount at level 1 or 2 anyways, it's not enough of a benefit that it needs to be restricted, that worried about combining it with extra movement modes from evolution surge?).
Just make the math work so that building the character this way has benefits over just attacking with the eidolon, can't be too hard to make the math work out.
Summoners starting with light armor would really help make this an interesting build option.
All this needs really is just one solid feat. They should make space for it.
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If you remove the -2 to hit with an non-agile weapon from the original feat posted here, isn't this essentially close to a ranger two weapon flurrier?
Truth be told, the only reason the -2 from Agile is even in the original feat is because I just copied most of the base rules text directly from Double Slice, as the idea is that you'd basically be getting Double Slice as a 1-Act by sacrificing your own safety. Intended to be a high-risk, high reward style. I don't know if it would be integral to the feat's balance, so it could probably be removed for simplicity.
Another feat I was considering was a feat that would upgrade Tandem Strike by allowing the Summoner to cast Boost Eidolon as a free action on a successful hit, before the Eidolon swung as part of the Strike Together. Haven't quite worked out the wording for it yet though, and the action economy might be too good at that point, but it might be worth looking into.