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**SPOILERS AHEAD** I will attempt to be vague on plot points while still giving a good accounting of the experience.
Last night (Saturday 9/12) I GMed the Pathfinder Society scenario 1-05 with a group of made up of all level 1 characters. We had:
-Summoner, Dragon Eidolon
-Witch, Curse
-Barbarian, Dragon (this caused some cool RP moments with the Eidolon)
-Rogue, Ruffian
-Cleric, Cloistered
-Swashbuckler, Battledancer
In the below I am outlining the Summoner's contributions to the skill challenges and combats and I'll end with general feel from a GM and Player perspective.
SKILL CHALLENGE 1 (NOBLES)
While it didn't have much of an impact on the skill challenge itself, the tactic is worth mentioning. They approached the Nobles cautiously and while some of the group marched right in, the Eidolon and the Rogue stayed out of sight and used stealth for a potential flanking situation if things went bad. Things didn't go bad, but it was interested that the Summoner was both part of the visible group marching in, and the potential ambushing group sneaking around.
As for the skill challenge itself, the Summoner contributed rather equally when compared to the others.
ENCOUNTER A (RAVEN SWARM)
The Eidolon contributed slightly with the breath weapon, but that was minor assistance as they made their basic reflex saves, the damage contributed was due to the weakness. The attacks made could not get past the swarm resistances. The Barbarian and Swashbuckler were the heroes here as their massive single attacks made the resistances trivial and took out the swarms.
AVALANCHE CHALLENGE
The Eidolon made it up just fine. Unfortunately the Summoner herself triggered an avalanche even with the extra assistance. To be fair, so did the Witch.
SKILL CHALLENGE & ENCOUNTER B (TREELINE)
The Eidolon made the climb easily along with most of the others. Once again, the Summoner and Witch struggled. When it came to the goats, the Swashbuckler and Cleric were the heroes making the checks necessary to calm the goats to avoid the combat.
As for the skill challenge, once again the Summoner contributed fairly equally compared to the others.
ENCOUNTER C (WARG)
The Eidolon's breath weapon softened up the Warg and wolves as she won initiative. the bite attack failed to hit the Warg's AC though. The rogue ultimately got swallowed whole (she was a goblin), but managed to cut her way out and do significant damage afterwards with her dogslicers (ironically). The Swashbuckler and Rogue took out the Warg singlehandedly while with the help of the Witch's "evil eye" curse. The Barbarian took out the wolves mostly himself.
In the end, the Summoner and Eidolon tried, but failed to land their hits outside of the first round. The Cleric, using Divine Lance ultimately did even damage on any single target, but the breath weapon ultimately out-damaged the Cleric. The Witch debuffed the entire fight.
ORC CAMP
The Summoner, Rogue, and Swashbuckler all contributed fairly evenly in befriending the orcs
ENCOUNTER D (OGRE)
The Ogre acted first and put a Javelin in the Eidolon's face for some big damage. It then missed the Rogue with it's second Javelin. The Summoner beat the melee's and shrews in initiative and started by moving the Eidolon in position and was able to get 4 of the 6 shrews (I bumped it up a bit considering how the team took on the Warg encounter) as well as the ogre in the breath weapon. It wasn't enough to drop any of the them, but felt quite satisfying lighting up the room in his icy breath. Unfortunately this left the Summoner with an action left to use, but she was out of range to do Intimidate, so she cast shield with the last action. This did not have any impact though considering nobody.
As the fight moved one, it was difficult overall at first because the shrew's blocked the bottle neck entrance. The Rogue was able to tumble through, but the Eidolon and Barbarian had to hack their way in. The Eidolon killed 1 shrew, then the Summoner wanted to use Summon Animal, but I had to remind them that "Act Together" couldn't be used as a part of an activity, so it couldn't be used to cast the 3 action spell since her Eidolon already attacked. Because of this she attacked boosted her Eidolon and overkilled a weekend shrew then moved to the Ogre.
Meanwhile people had been weakened by the Ogre's ranged attacks, so the Cleric needed to heal. The Cleric wanted to do a 3 action heal, but couldn't get the Eidolon and Barbarian if she did that. Luckily our Summoner reminded the Cleric that as long as she was in the burst, the Eidolon would get healed. This allowed the Cleric to give a well needed 3 action heal.
Ultimately when the Ogre died, the amount of damage done to it from the Eidolon was ultimately inconsiquential to it's death. It did hit and do some damage, but had the Summoner/Eidolon not been there, the Swashbuckler, Rogue, and Barbarian would have still had the Ogre dead in the same round.Of course, without the Eidolon, killing the Shrews would have taken at least 1 more round than it did (possibly 2 if the Swashbuckler tumbled through to go at the Ogre)
SUMMARY:
- Liked the coolness factor of having 2 characters linked as a single partnership. The shared HP pool was both neat and functional
- Eidolon felt week in damage compared to all 3 of the marshals in the group
- The ability to be in two places at once, and simultaneously hidden and seen was very cool
- At first it seemed the Summoner had so many options by having 2 characters and a mix between spells and melee, however as the session continued, it became apparent that the options were more of an illusion as each turn needed to be run with the same buff, move, attack, attack or move, breath, buff, attack. This became a bit redundant over the 5.5 hours of play
- In skill challenges, the Summoner seemed right on par with the others. It didn't seem more powerful or weaker
- Climbing challenges were uniquely difficult and easy. The Eidolon was good, but the Summoner had trouble due to the weak strength. While this was fine, it seemed almost like a penalty because the player had to succeed twice on those challenges
- The player was very excited about summoning at first, but when she realized that it meant a dead turn for her Eidolon AND what she summoned would likely be 1 shotted without doing damage, it lost it's appeal
- The fact that the healer could heal the front-line Eidolon without getting anywhere near it was fantastic. At one point (I forget which encounter) the Cleric even used Battle Medicine on the Summoner to heal the Eidolon quite some distance away. That was really cool!
- At the end of the day, the player liked the class and I enjoyed having her in the party. It was fun, but a little underwhelming compared to the things the other party members did at the same level.
SUGGESTIONS:
- Make "Act Together" work for using multi-action activities such as casting a spell. This one thing would have made my player's day by allowing her to use Summon Animal without feeling like her Eidolon was just sitting there like a log. This would have also given her something useful to do on a few turns such as casting a cantrip like Ray of Frost.
- The breath weapon wasn't overly powerful, but felt fulfilling. Incidentally, this was the only combat reason why CHA did anything at all for the character. Ultimately it seems like putting light armor on or using Mage Armor and investing in more physical stats for the Summoner would have proven more useful.
- Having to buff the Eidolon every turn got pretty tedius. While you could say the Swashbuckler had to do the same thing, the payout was SOOO much greater with the Swashbuckler's finisher. The Barbarian only had to invest one action once for the entire fight, and the Rogue didn't have to invest at all (unless you count the Tumble Through action to get them flatfooted if he beat his buddies in initiative).
Thank you for your assessment. It sounds like the summoner is a bit weak overall atm.
It's interesting to see. My group will play with it next week to see. But a few things do seem weird, like my eidolon player straight up gave up the eidolon action to buff choosing to instead multiclass bard.
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Thank you for your assessment. It sounds like the summoner is a bit weak overall atm.It's interesting to see. My group will play with it next week to see. But a few things do seem weird, like my eidolon player straight up gave up the eidolon action to buff choosing to instead multiclass bard.
Inspire Courage basically invalidates Boost Eidolon for levels 1-3 since they don't stack with each other and a Bard can have Lingering Performance on top of that; once your Eidolon gets 2 weapon damage dice it might be worth using for the higher +4 damage while keeping the +1 to hit.
That in mind, a Summoner multiclassing Bard can, at level 8, run both buffs at the same time with Lingering Performance, which might be the build they're planning to use.
I feel like one of the smaller annoyances I have with the summoner right now is that while the Eidolon itself isn't in a bad place, the Evolutions don't really grab me enough to make me want to take them over an Archetype feat. Hopefully they'll get tuned up for the final release, as I'd prefer it if full Summoner felt as good to play as Archetype'd.
I would note that Synthesis builds negate the exploration mode issues of double checks, since the summoner can just ride inside the eidolon. As of course does taking the size increase so you can just ride on top of the eidolon. ...
Why not just have the eidolon carry the summoner without 'riding' it? They can heft 8 bulk before being encumbered, and carrying a medium character is pegged at 6 bulk. Hooray for piggybacks!
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An excellent point, assuming it's not a climb check.Why not just have the eidolon carry the summoner without 'riding' it? They can heft 8 bulk before being encumbered, and carrying a medium character is pegged at 6 bulk. Hooray for piggybacks!
I would note that Synthesis builds negate the exploration mode issues of double checks, since the summoner can just ride inside the eidolon. As of course does taking the size increase so you can just ride on top of the eidolon. ...
In this case the scenario called for each player to make climb checks to make it up the steep mountain climb. Seems having somebody on your back should at least incur a steep penalty (carrying a person is much different than carrying an inanimate backpack). Nobody thought of having him carry another character so it didn't come up, but if it had I probably would have made the DC higher to compensate for it.
Thank you for your assessment. It sounds like the summoner is a bit weak overall atm.It's interesting to see. My group will play with it next week to see. But a few things do seem weird, like my eidolon player straight up gave up the eidolon action to buff choosing to instead multiclass bard.Inspire Courage basically invalidates Boost Eidolon for levels 1-3 since they don't stack with each other and a Bard can have Lingering Performance on top of that; once your Eidolon gets 2 weapon damage dice it might be worth using for the higher +4 damage while keeping the +1 to hit.
That in mind, a Summoner multiclassing Bard can, at level 8, run both buffs at the same time with Lingering Performance, which might be the build they're planning to use.
I feel like one of the smaller annoyances I have with the summoner right now is that while the Eidolon itself isn't in a bad place, the Evolutions don't really grab me enough to make me want to take them over an Archetype feat. Hopefully they'll get tuned up for the final release, as I'd prefer it if full Summoner felt as good to play as Archetype'd.
Oh no he plans on giving up the eidolon boosting most cases not casting both actually.
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Thanks for the feedback folks!
I am pondering changing to a state where Act Together is a variable action activity (one to three actions), where one of the two characters can use all the actions, and the other one does a single action. So for instance, Act Together for three actions, the summoner casts summon animal, and the eidolon Strikes once. This would also allow Summoner two-action-spell via Act Together while eidolon Strides, then eidolon Strikes, so it increases flexibility significantly.
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Thanks for the feedback folks!
I am pondering changing to a state where Act Together is a variable action activity (one to three actions), where one of the two characters can use all the actions, and the other one does a single action. So for instance, Act Together for three actions, the summoner casts summon animal, and the eidolon Strikes once. This would also allow Summoner two-action-spell via Act Together while eidolon Strides, then eidolon Strikes, so it increases flexibility significantly.
Mark, I have a hard time imagining this not being a universally loved improvement.
Is this a potential change that draws from elsewhere? Its a straight up power increase, but marginal I personally think the class could easily tolerate it.
I'd love it as a free change, myself.
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I like that change. Is the intention to prevent both character from using two-action activities in the same turn?
Example: Beast's Charge (1 action from Act Together) + Electric Arc (1 action from Act Together).
It is quite intentional. By preventing that situation, we can have both summoner and eidolon capable of providing powerful two-action activities (for instance, big impactful focus spells with the eidolon trait). Two-action activities like those tend to be balanced by the fact that you get just one per turn.
It is quite intentional. By preventing that situation, we can have both summoner and eidolon capable of providing powerful two-action activities (for instance, big impactful focus spells with the eidolon trait). Two-action activities like those tend to be balanced by the fact that you get just one per turn.I like that change. Is the intention to prevent both character from using two-action activities in the same turn?
Example: Beast's Charge (1 action from Act Together) + Electric Arc (1 action from Act Together).
Two-action activities like that also tend to be further action multipliers as well, right?
Draconic Frenzy or the Beast Charge turn our 4 actions into 5, and we're not even Quickened yet.
I can see why that sort of action economy boosting could potentially get out of hand.
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Thanks for the feedback folks!
I am pondering changing to a state where Act Together is a variable action activity (one to three actions), where one of the two characters can use all the actions, and the other one does a single action. So for instance, Act Together for three actions, the summoner casts summon animal, and the eidolon Strikes once. This would also allow Summoner two-action-spell via Act Together while eidolon Strides, then eidolon Strikes, so it increases flexibility significantly.
Mark, I have a hard time imagining this not being a universally loved improvement.
Is this a potential change that draws from elsewhere? Its a straight up power increase, but marginal I personally think the class could easily tolerate it.
I'd love it as a free change, myself.
It's a power increase, but not by a huge amount. It wouldn't affect the core chassis. With this tweak, the only thing is that I would need to look carefully at some of the summoning feats that were based around the idea "If I cast this, my eidolon is stuck without a turn so it better do some neat things." So like maybe Distracting Summon Spell would grant a Stride for the eidolon getting it into position instead of a Strike.
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It is quite intentional. By preventing that situation, we can have both summoner and eidolon capable of providing powerful two-action activities (for instance, big impactful focus spells with the eidolon trait). Two-action activities like those tend to be balanced by the fact that you get just one per turn.I like that change. Is the intention to prevent both character from using two-action activities in the same turn?
Example: Beast's Charge (1 action from Act Together) + Electric Arc (1 action from Act Together).
Two-action activities like that also tend to be further action multipliers as well, right?
Draconic Frenzy or the Beast Charge turn our 4 actions into 5, and we're not even Quickened yet.
I can see why that sort of action economy boosting could potentially get out of hand.
This is true as well, and repeatable action multipliers usually wind up introducing flourishes into the class, which I'd like to avoid for simplicity.
But yep, even without action boosts, two-action activities can get pretty extreme when they are stacked together, especially if it allows a nova. Like, suppose the level 9 eidolon has a focus spell for like 10d6 AoE damage and the summoner has 12d6 cone of cold(this is not an actual plan, just numbers for comparison). That's a giant nova if it all comes out at once, and you can potentially do it twice in a row too.
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Two questions, Mark. Will our Eidolons be getting any reactions? (Aside from just devotion) and will dedications be effecting our Eidolons? Like any chance we can have a 2nd level evolution that gives out Eidolon a dedication?It is quite intentional. By preventing that situation, we can have both summoner and eidolon capable of providing powerful two-action activities (for instance, big impactful focus spells with the eidolon trait). Two-action activities like those tend to be balanced by the fact that you get just one per turn.I like that change. Is the intention to prevent both character from using two-action activities in the same turn?
Example: Beast's Charge (1 action from Act Together) + Electric Arc (1 action from Act Together).
Two-action activities like that also tend to be further action multipliers as well, right?
Draconic Frenzy or the Beast Charge turn our 4 actions into 5, and we're not even Quickened yet.
I can see why that sort of action economy boosting could potentially get out of hand.
This is true as well, and repeatable action multipliers usually wind up introducing flourishes into the class, which I'd like to avoid for simplicity.
But yep, even without action boosts, two-action activities can get pretty extreme when they are stacked together, especially if it allows a nova. Like, suppose the level 9 eidolon has a focus spell for like 10d6 AoE damage and the summoner has 12d6 cone of cold(this is not an actual plan, just numbers for comparison). That's a giant nova if it all comes out at once, and you can potentially do it twice in a row too.
It's only been a week so far, let's let the playtest continue first. I even have to be pretty careful mentioning something I'm considering because the internet is a telephone game, and despite everyone's best intentions, "Mark was considering X" can become "Wait, we were promised X." I usually like to have all the data and make a decision and then let everyone know, like the twitch stream at the end of the APG playtest. That way I know it's not something that will change again.
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That's reasonable. I feel obligated to point out though that it sounds like that wording might still allow 2 and 2 action splits (if the 1-action version allows one character to grab all the actions).
You'd probably have to say the extra actions can only go to one or the other, or cap it at 2 for 3 to avoid that.
If the result is that I can do eidolon stride, strike, summoner cast 2-action spell, that removes one of the biggest pain points though.
I was stating it pretty informally, but the version I am considering has two protections against that
1) The single action goes to the one who didn't take the longer activity
2) They take a single action, they don't get to combine it with anything else.
Boost eidolon is probably staying a status bonus, that's where magic buffs live generally.
I'm personally fine with Status, but I think it'd be cool to be able to do more with it.
Changing the bonus damage to elemental types, adding weapon traits, etc.
Anything to make it more dynamic.
The fact that no mention was given to boost eidolon leads me to believe it's not getting adjusted yet Wich is unfortunate. It's really holding me back from enjoying the summoner as is.
I played some home brew where I rolled that damage into the summoner by increasing the die size of the eidolon attacks and it felt much more rewarding to play without overshadowing anyone.
ATM it's feeling like Magus despite it's issues is doing better overall.
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Thanks for the feedback folks!
I am pondering changing to a state where Act Together is a variable action activity (one to three actions), where one of the two characters can use all the actions, and the other one does a single action. So for instance, Act Together for three actions, the summoner casts summon animal, and the eidolon Strikes once. This would also allow Summoner two-action-spell via Act Together while eidolon Strides, then eidolon Strikes, so it increases flexibility significantly.
Happy to help, really!
As for this, yes that is exactly the type of thing that would make a world of difference I believe. Casting any spell was hard to justify for my player because of the action economy in the game we played, had this been an option the class would have felt much more free to make better/varied choices with their actions. This would be a huge check for the things I'd love to see. I also like the provisions I see in your other post about limiting it to only being part of an activity for either the Summoner or Eidolon (love that it could be either or btw) as both doing multi-action activities would be too strong.
There are a few other things I'd love to see adjusted, but this one would be huge. The take on this class at its core are fantastic and fun, with a few tweaks it can be both great and balanced.
I won't harp any more on the other things as they are already in my feedback *cough...CHA uses *cough cough...boost duration* :)
Thanks for listening!
Thanks for the feedback folks!
I am pondering changing to a state where Act Together is a variable action activity (one to three actions), where one of the two characters can use all the actions, and the other one does a single action. So for instance, Act Together for three actions, the summoner casts summon animal, and the eidolon Strikes once. This would also allow Summoner two-action-spell via Act Together while eidolon Strides, then eidolon Strikes, so it increases flexibility significantly.
If he casts a 3 action summon, he is suddenly committed to a 1 action sustain action every round in addition to his boost eidolon to sustain equivalent damage martial damage.
The question becomes does this play-style match his other options with limited summons? Will it do good damage on par with other martials?
Might be worth a test. Using a summoned creature with a sustain action bypasses the shared MAP problem and allows you to to flank with your eidolon and summoned creature.
Hmm. That sounds a little more interesting. Boy if you left us with 4 variable spell slots, gave us a font of summoning spells like a cleric, changed Act Together to this 1 to 3 action ability, I might come to love this class.
This may well make a real summoner effective. With that one ability that let's you boost a summoned creature as well as your eidolon. I actually like that.
So you could set up a round of attacks something like this:
1. Act Together: 1 action eidolon to move into position. 3 action summoner to summon a creature preferably with Divine Font-like ability that extends slots just for summoning creatures maybe with feats similar to how a Druid improves their ability to wild shape.
2. 1 action for 1 action act together. Sustain action for summoned to give 2 action attack with summoned creature. Move summoned creature in. Use boost eidolon to boost eidolon and summoned creature. Eidolon makes 2 attacks and summoned creature makes 2 attacks.
Wow. You had something in mind I did not see. I have to give you some credit for that. That is interesting. Then the summoner truly becomes the class best able to use summoned creatures.
I have to give this a test run. Wow Mark, that sounds really cool. If you add in a Divine Font like ability for summons, this class would absolutely rock with that Act Together change.
This would actually be more conceptually cool than the PF1 summoner as you would be the main class able to use summon monster spells better than anyone else.