Hello! I'm working on building a summoner for our Know Direction Secrets of Magic Playest game (LIVE at https://www.twitch.tv/knowdirection on Wednesday, 6pm PST). Obviously I'll give my full feedback on the summoner at the conclusion of the episode after I've gotten to play it, but I was working on my build and was interested in the Synthesist feat. I had a few questions about it.
You can manifest your eidolon using your own body as a vessel, taking on their form. When you Manifest your Eidolon in this way, you become your eidolon, rather than them manifesting as a separate creature. While manifested in this way, you use your eidolon’s statistics. Your eidolon can act, but you can’t except to use Manifest an Eidolon to unmanifest your eidolon. When you do, you remain behind in one square your eidolon occupied when you unmanifested it.
Since you can’t act, you can’t Cast Spells, activate or benefit from magic items that normally benefit you and not your eidolon, perform actions that have the tandem trait, or use other abilities that require you, and not the eidolon, to act. Your eidolon isn’t limited by their distance to you, and you can’t be separately targeted. When you reach 0 Hit Points, your eidolon unmanifests from your body, leaving your unconscious body behind.
1) When I synthesize with my eidolon, does that glowing rune mentioned by my Manifest Eidolon action still manifest?
2) What does "use the eidolon's statistics" means, and what happens to the summoner's statistics? Does my eidolon still benefit from my magic items, for instance?
3) What, exactly, are the intended benefits of merging with your eidolon? The only benefit I can see is that if you both were caught in an area effect, you would only take damage once rather than twice. Otherwise this doesn't seem to do anything.
4) Are there any obvious design reasons that this doesn't just let you use the better of your proficiencies and your eidolon's proficiencies, grant you your eidolon's attacks and abilities, and apply your eidolon's evolutions to you?
Right now synthesist basically turns off 2/3 of your feats (skill feats, general feats, ancestry feats, and all class feats that lack the eidolon trait) and the option has zero synergy with, well, anything. Like if I were to take a dedication feat, I would basically never want to synthesize with my eidolon or I'd lose that crucial part of my build. To me, it seems like the downside of not being able to get that extra action(s) per round using tandem feats is enough of a drawback.
Thanks! Hope that was useful feedback.
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3) What, exactly, are the intended benefits of merging with your eidolon? The only benefit I can see is that if you both were caught in an area effect, you would only take damage once rather than twice. Otherwise this doesn't seem to do anything.
TLDR; I think that Synthesis is a great utility tool but what some people are looking for is a combat enhancement tool, which the playtest version of Synthesis is mostly not.
A thing I've noticed in playing around with summoner builds is that Synthesis is really useful for exploration purposes. To repost from another thread-
The dungeon is flooded and mostly underwater. As everyone else burns through consumables and spell slots to breathe underwater, swim at a speed that doesn't leave them completely outclassed by aquatic opponents, and look for ways to mitigate the penalty to their attack rolls, you simply take on the form of an aquatic dragon and automatically bypass all of those obstacles. This isn't something you can just emulate with the eidolon on the field separately, since the summoner doesn't automatically share all those abilities.
The dungeon is full of traps and small, crafty enemies who can outflank you. You minimize your weak points, remove the increased damage you'd otherwise take from area effects, and leave only the tougher and more heavily armored eidolon in play to navigate the hazards.
You're a goblin in a town full of murderous, racist rednecks. You let the angel cruise around improving the party's reputation while you keep your bouncy green head safely secured in a separate level of existence until you're back on the road to adventure (and out of town).
You're a human who needs to navigate tight, pitch-black corridors in an environment where a torch could attract unwanted attention. It's too cramped to ride and too dangerous to try and move with your senses keyed into the eidolon. You turn into an ethereal phantom who can see in the dark, is less likely to be devastated by unexpected attacks or hazards, and who can gain resistance to most forms of damage.
A deadly curse or plague infests the adventure area, keyed to members of your ancestry. You tag out with your angel buddy and let them go clean up the mess while you stay safely tucked away on another level of existence.
You must fight your way across a battlefield full of evil fiends with devastating area attacks, invisibility, and other deadly trickery at their disposal. You let your angel handle this leg of the trip, trusting in its superior defenses and weakness-triggering attacks to carry the day while protecting both of you from ambush and disadvantage against the area attacks by squirreling away your squishy mortal form.
So on and so forth. I think the real disconnects for some people lie in two areas-
1) It's being viewed as a lifestyle instead of a thing you do when its appropriate to do so. Much like a fighter's Power Attack, you shouldn't use this version of Synthesis all the time, just when it's appropriate to do so. I could see it coming up almost every session, particularly later in the event as party resources are starting to run low and the group is hitting that point where they're starting to ask whether to press on or rest up. From the perspective of stretching out resources and essentially providing the utility that other casters get from a wider array of spell slots, I'd have a really hard time not taking Synthesis with Natural Ambition on every human summoner I make.
2) As written, it's a utility feat with situational combat applications and some people want it to be a default combat option. In PF1, synthesist was this big broken mess that had the mind of a powerful spellcaster and the body of a mutant barbarian dragon. While that was the primary reason it was banned at a lot of tables, it was also a thing that some people really liked about it. On this point, I think calling the feat Synthesis might have actually worked against its reception. If it'd been "Summoner Pocket" or something where it was clear that the point was to tuck away the squishy spellcaster half of the equation in areas where the eidolon's natural advantages outweigh the cost/benefit analysis of having a squishy partial caster on the field, I suspect it would have gone over significantly better.
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In the interest of not making my post ginormous, I'm going to reply to several of your points in separate posts.
A thing I've noticed in playing around with summoner builds is that Synthesis is really useful for exploration purposes. To repost from another thread-
If the purpose is for synthesist to be an exploration tool, then it doesn't do that particularly well because Synthesist is a 2nd-level feat, and by default not all eidolons give the summoner nifty exploration bonuses like this. For example, Aquatic Adaptation is a 4th-level feat, so I'd have to wait two more levels AND spend another feat to use Synthesist the way you're describing. Baseline, no eidolon in the playtest has a speed faster than that of a typical human (25 feet). Furthermore, your eidolon doesn't have any of the skill feats you might have that improve your ability to act in exploration mode, so even if you're a little safer you still might end up being less effective, especially if your eidolon is worse at a skill you'd need. For example, let's say you're exploring underwater aboleth ruins and you find a thing that you could use Occultism to Recall Knowledge about. But merged with your dragon, you use your Dragon's statistics and can't take actions of your own, so you can't Recall Knowledge without demanifesting your eidolon, where you'd arguably start drowning because there's no air down there for you to start holding your breath in the first place.
In regards to flanking, doesn't reducing yourself from two bodies to one make it easier to flank you, considering that you and your eidolon could stand back-to-back to deny your enemies a square for flanking each of you? With two characters, there are only 3 possible positions for each of you to be flanked in, while when merged into one character there are 4 possible positions. I agree with you that it reduces the impact of an area attack like fireball against both of you, but that's extremely niche for a three-action feat that turns off your tandem actions and all of your skill feats.
And I think a big part of the problem is that all of the things you're describing sound cool, but they're not actually things you couldn't do without the feat. Your eidolon can already do all of those things without you. This feat is basically just a Bag of Holding that you store your summoner character in so you only play your eidolon.
So on and so forth. I think the real disconnects for some people lie in two areas-
1) It's being viewed as a lifestyle instead of a thing you do when its appropriate to do so. Much like a fighter's Power Attack, you shouldn't use this version of Synthesis all the time, just when it's appropriate to do so. I could see it coming up almost every session, particularly later in the event as party resources are starting to run low and the group is hitting that point where they're starting to ask whether to press on or rest up. From the perspective of stretching out resources and essentially providing the utility that other casters get from a wider array of spell slots, I'd have a really hard time not taking Synthesis with Natural Ambition on every human summoner I make.
That's a fair assessment, but do you think that it's fair to say that the feedback might point to people wanting Synthesist to be a lifestyle rather than a tactic?
In terms of balance, tandem actions usually end up generating 1 extra action for their summoner/eidolon per round, correct? While it's true that a summoner/eidolon will probably want to merge towards the end of the adventure when resources are low, isn't the fact that they're effectively down one action per turn as a resource a fair trade-off for the benefits of that? If the goal is to make sure Synthesist isn't a mandatory option, wouldn't the easiest way be to give the summoner new tandem feats that, if the summoner chose them, would add to the amount of trade-off that occurred if a summoner chose to be in synthesist form all the time?
It is 100% true that a synthesist summoner could, potentially, only choose evolution feats and completely ignore tandem feats if they wanted to stay merged all the time. But isn't that an interesting, meaningful character choice? Isn't a feat that can be a lifestyle choice or a tactic based on how you choose to build for it a good thing?
2) As written, it's a utility feat with situational combat applications and some people want it to be a default combat option. In PF1, synthesist was this big broken mess that had the mind of a powerful spellcaster and the body of a mutant barbarian dragon. While that was the primary reason it was banned at a lot of tables, it was also a thing that some people really liked about it. On this point, I think calling the feat Synthesis might have actually worked against its reception. If it'd been "Summoner Pocket" or something where it was clear that the point was to tuck away the squishy spellcaster half of the equation in areas where the eidolon's natural advantages outweigh the cost/benefit analysis of having a squishy partial caster on the field, I suspect it would have gone over significantly better.
As someone who's played a synthesist summoner in PF1 (ran an NPC one once for my players as a boss), I'm of the opinion that even if you let your summoner player pick the better of both characters' proficiencies and added the attacks and abilities of the eidolon to your summoner, you would still never get anywhere as close to the power level of the PF1 summoner. You have 4 spells per day, your combined Hit Points (while beefy) are still only about as good as a fighter / barbarian's, and evolutions in this build are much less combat oriented, with the eidolon never being able to hit Legendary unarmed strike proficiency so the party fighter is still going to outhit them.
Additionally, calling the summoner squishy isn't particularly fair; at 1st and 2nd level, you both have the same AC proficiency and share a massive HP pool. At 3rd level through 12th level, your eidolon's TEML is higher by 2, then you even out again at 13th level until 19th level, when your eidolon improves to master.
I think you're right that calling this feat Synthesist definitely set up expectations that you could use this as a fighting option when it sounds like the PFDT designed to be more like PF1's 16th-level merge forms feature. But I disagree that letting the synthesist be a cool fighting option would be broken. I think you'd see a lot of people using it because it's extremely cool and flavorful, though! All this unarmed strike proficiency means that I could summon my Dragon Spirit as a synthesist and be the Green Dragon Super Sentai/Summoner....
Another weird side effect of synthesist summoner: since I can't use my statistics, I can only speak and understand my eidolon's languages, so I might not be able to understand stuff my allies say. (Currently I don't see a note that the eidolon understands its master's languages.) Additionally, since it's not clear if I witness what my eidolon experiences while inside of them, I'd have to rely on my eidolon's limited Intelligence / Wisdom / Charisma scores to interpret what's going on around them.
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And I think a big part of the problem is that all of the things you're describing sound cool, but they're not actually things you couldn't do without the feat.
No, but they are things you couldn't do as well or effectively. Swapping out with an aquatic eidolon is like having unlimited use of water breathing (a second level spell with a 1-hour duration) and feet to fins (a 3rd level spell with a 10 minute duration). While it's possible to emulate those effects, it's more effective to have unlimited use of both abilities on a package that comes with other benefits. While you can certainly emulate that functionality with consumables or slots, things that you don't need to spend limited resources on automatically translate into those limited resources being freed for other purposes.
The summoner who just can tag out with the eidolon doesn't need separate water breathing; the eidolon can breath underwater on its own and then swap the summoner back in when water breathing is no longer a selling point. A summoner who doesn't have darkvision and needs to navigate an area where torchlight prevents party tactics like sneaking doesn't need to spend ancestry feats or magic on seeing in the dark, the eidolon does it automatically. Those are all things you can do without Synthesis (and the list could go on for some time to cover all the possibilities) but not needing to spend those resources frees them for other purposes.
This flexibility grows exponentially as Transmogrify and True Transmogrification come into play, allowing you to swap more situational evolutions like Amphibious for more versatile evolutions like Alacritous.
Your eidolon can already do all of those things without you. This feat is basically just a Bag of Holding that you store your summoner character in so you only play your eidolon.
The eidolon being able to do them without you won't always be helpful. A water-breathing eidolon in a flooded dungeon can breathe; you can't. A climbing eidolon can brachiate around in jungle canopies or skitter along the side of a cavernous ravine; you can't. Some of those can be solved by e.g. riding the eidolon (devouring either action economy or requiring feats that also make the eidolon less versatile) and some of them can't. Moreover, riding an eidolon comes with the not-insignificant issue that as long as you're doing so, you and the eidolon effectively have "disadvantage" on all AoEs, making you much more vulnerable than a synthesis summoner in the same situation.
I think that Synthesis as presented is a tool, when perhaps what you're looking for is a class path. That doesn't mean one is right or wrong, and I think that if you think Synthesis doesn't actually do anything then you're probably not looking closely enough or considering the array of possibilities that come up in a regular game (one of the reasons I linked frequently played adventures to each of my "here's where synthesis could be handy" examples above), but I can totally see why it might not be what someone wants from a mechanic with that name on it. I just think it's important to see that there's a significant space between "does nothing" and "does things that I don't prioritize".
As someone who personally played a lot more summoners who used eidolons as toolboxes for exploration and skill challenges, I would take Synthesis on a lot of characters, just for what it frees me to leverage my other resources for (and as a useful counterbalance to fill what would be lower level utility spells on a "standard" caster), particularly human summoners. For someone who wants to be a sentai angel who layers angel power on top of their partial caster "social" form, I can see why the current iteration would be a disappointment. It's less clear to me whether Synthesis would be more attractive if summoners got e.g. a 1st level feat as part of class, or if e.g. subbing the feat for a subclass wouldn't hurt as much as it helps, forcing synthesis away from being an option you can deploy situationally and turning it into a thing that just means that this type of summoner fundamentally plays differently than that type of summoner to a degree that isn't really true of how any other class functions.
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But as stated above, the feat is lower level than the utilities really become available for the eidolon and what if you don't have amphibious or anything on your eidolon even after those levels given how immensely niche it is to spend class feats to adventure in an area that "if the party couldn't reasonably adventure in", the GM just flat wouldn't set an adventure in the environment to begin with.
In addition the primary method of giving utility to eidolons (the conduit focus spells) is incompatible with synthesis.
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No, but they are things you couldn't do as well or effectively. Swapping out with an aquatic eidolon is like having unlimited use of water breathing (a second level spell with a 1-hour duration) and feet to fins (a 3rd level spell with a 10 minute duration). While it's possible to emulate those effects, it's more effective to have unlimited use of both abilities on a package that comes with other benefits. While you can certainly emulate that functionality with consumables or slots, things that you don't need to spend limited resources on automatically translate into those limited resources being freed for other purposes.
In my opinion, its the 5E Warlock Power. The summoner NEEDS those stronger-than-other-caster powers because their limited resources are more limited than their peers. If the summoner had the full spellcasting of the wizard, I would agree with you. Since they have less-than-full-caster power, their feat choices should be stronger than a wizard's.
This flexibility grows exponentially as Transmogrify and True Transmogrification come into play, allowing you to swap more situational evolutions like Amphibious for more versatile evolutions like Alacritous.
Interesting. I actually thought the transmogrify feats weren't great choices for the same reason I don't think synthesist isn't a good choice. None of those feats *do* anything on their own. The utility of those feats comes from how you spent your other feat choices. Synthesist can *only* do what you're describing if you take other evolution feats, same with Transmogrify and True Transmogrification. If you took Synthesist and no other evolution feats, it hardly does anything. That's what I'm talking about. The feat has no power on its own, and the power you're talking about is extremely niche; Aquatic Adaptation, for instance, is strong in PFS due to its episodic nature, but it would be all but useless in Extinction Curse or The Slithering. And how much reasonable foresight can you expect to have?
The eidolon being able to do them without you won't always be helpful. A water-breathing eidolon in a flooded dungeon can breathe; you can't. A climbing eidolon can brachiate around in jungle canopies or skitter along the side of a cavernous ravine; you can't. Some of those can be solved by e.g. riding the eidolon (devouring either action economy or requiring feats that also make the eidolon less versatile) and some of them can't. Moreover, riding an eidolon comes with the not-insignificant issue that as long as you're doing so, you and the eidolon effectively have "disadvantage" on all AoEs, making you much more vulnerable than a synthesis summoner in the same situation.
The flip side to that is that it often isn't helpful if the summoner can do it if the rest of the party can't do. For example, if the summoner can breathe underwater at will but the rest of the party can't, the party is either going to find a way to breathe underwater (in which case your feat is pulling the weight of a consumable or magic item instead of getting an option that would allow the summoner to do something money can't buy) or the party is just going to avoid the water altogether, in which case your special ability didn't matter.
I think that Synthesis as presented is a tool, when perhaps what you're looking for is a class path.
I'm looking for the Synthesist feat to provide a useful benefit without needing other feats to combine with it. If I take Synthesist and no other feats, I should get something for my troubles. I'm mentioned in previous posts why I don't think that's true.
That doesn't mean one is right or wrong, and I think that if you think Synthesis doesn't actually do anything then you're probably not looking closely enough or considering the array of possibilities that come up in a regular game (one of the reasons I linked frequently played adventures to each of my "here's where synthesis could be handy" examples above), but I can totally see why it might not be what someone wants from a mechanic with that name on it. I just think it's important to see that there's a significant space between "does nothing" and "does things that I don't prioritize".
To me, it seems like you're taking a holistic view: Synthesist plus an entire build of summoner feats. I'm looking at it as though I were a 2nd-level summoner with no other feats but Synthesist, or if I didn't want to take other evolution feats because they didn't provide me with any benefits. I also think it's fair to mention that a few of your examples require specific eidolons, so your examples aren't all things that a single summoner character could do.
For someone who wants to be a sentai angel who layers angel power on top of their partial caster "social" form, I can see why the current iteration would be a disappointment. It's less clear to me whether Synthesis would be more attractive if summoners got e.g. a 1st level feat as part of class, or if e.g. subbing the feat for a subclass wouldn't hurt as much as it helps, forcing synthesis away from being an option you can deploy situationally and turning it into a thing that just means that this type of summoner fundamentally plays differently than that type of summoner to a degree that isn't really true of how any other class functions.
Perhaps a better solution, like you suggested, is to give the summoner a class feature like how Druids have Orders? When you play a Druid, your Animal Companion choice doesn't lock your Order choice. (There's one for focusing on Animal Companions, sure, but you can be a Storm Druid and take the Animal Companion Feats.) You could call it something like Eidolonic Vessel and have an option for getting more spell slots for more summon creature spells, an option for better teamwork and coordination with your eidolon (maybe the tandem options all go here), and an option for merging with your eidolon into the Yellow Sabertooth Tiger Sentai.
A little bit more identity for the summon beyond "I summon X" would probably be a good thing, to be honest.
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2 Cents: I don't think it's good enough to be a feat. I think it should be like a magic item or a spell or something. It's probably too good to be a cantrip, but too weak to be a spell...it's almost like it wants to be a bonus feat at the expense of half your spells per day or something. Even then it's going to be a tough nut to crack, but I'm not a fan of it right now.
...Maybe that was more than 2 Cents. But since I've posted here it'll be easier to find this thread in the future.
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2 Cents: I don't think it's good enough to be a feat. I think it should be like a magic item or a spell or something. It's probably too good to be a cantrip, but too weak to be a spell...it's almost like it wants to be a bonus feat at the expense of half your spells per day or something. Even then it's going to be a tough nut to crack, but I'm not a fan of it right now.
...Maybe that was more than 2 Cents. But since I've posted here it'll be easier to find this thread in the future.
May Ssalarn's idea of making a "summoner subclass" is the best way to do it then.
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With two exceptions (Natural Medicine and Ostentatious Arrival) I only took feats that could be applied to by Eidolon. Here are some ways I did that with skill feats / general feats.
—As was pointed out in this thread, your Eidolon copies your known Languages, so I took Multilingual (general, skill) twice.
—Your eidolon copies your skill proficiencies, so I took Skill Training (general, skill) and Natural Skill (human).
—I used my versatile heritage to take Toughness (general) as a bonus feat. Since my eidolon uses my Hit Point pool even when I'm synthesized, it applies.
—I took Diehard as my 3rd-level general feat. We share Hit Points, my eidolon and I, so if it drops to 0 Hit Points I'm dying too (technically Dying 1 in most cases, but semantics).
—I took Natural Ambition (human) for Synthesist. My other class feats were Senses (2nd), Alacritous Evolution (4th), and Ostentatious Arrival (6th).
Overall, I consider my playtest experience to be a testament to how tightly balanced Pathfinder Second Edition is. When I transformed, I was basically just a fighter with a really limited version of Sudden Charge (I took Beast Eidolon, so I had the cool ability where you charge in a straight line) but that didn't matter too much because my attack bonuses were competitive. I think we calculated it out and I was only like 1 or 2 points behind Andrew's fighter/wizard in terms of attack bonuses when my armor was active, which is more a common on how eidolons are balanced than summoners.
To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what I would have done with my summoner in combat if I hadn't stuck him inside my eidolon anyway; it never felt like I had any options for my summoner that were better than just giving all my actions to my eidolon, mostly because spellcasting takes 2 actions. I got the sense that the playtest has a really strong emphasis on you really only playing one of these two characters each turn, which is *fine* but considering my spells were so limited it was kind of easier to just make my summoner go away and pick utility magic that I could use out of combat. I'm not sure if that's really how the devs want the summoner to play, but it's less than the summoner doesn't have anything it can do and more that anything the summoner can do usually isn't better than just letting its eidolon slap things.
That being said, playing a synthesist summoner was really fun. I did the Super Sentai hand motions on screen when I transformed and used Ostentatious Arrival to have cheap 90s-era explosions accompany my magic transformation; definitely not how these abilities were probably intended to be used, but really entertaining for the people at my table and our audience nevertheless. I hyper-specified my build to give all my advantages to my sentai form, probably to my downside because nothing ever really stopped me from walking into a room with my armor on, beating all the bad guys, and then "Powering Down" to investigate.
In our game, we tried to have comparison points between the classes. Vanessa played a conjuration (summoning) wizard to be my comparison point, but I think I kind of screwed that up because my character played so differently to hers. I basically just used my eidolon in battle and then used its primal magic to heal people out of combat. Her summons were kind of whimpy (even if they had better utility) while my eidolon was a lion-shaped suit that was also a wrecking ball. I think a better comparison would have been to the Druid, and I think the Druid would have won out. My eidolon would have hit more often than a Druid's animal companion, but they have so many more spells and their class has so many more built-in options. You don't have to be an ape druid or a dinosaur druid; you just *are* that kind of a druid.
I think this version of the summoner is a very stripped-down version of what the original summoner in PF1 was. I know people who liked playing the summoner for the billions of summon monster spells it had, and I definitely felt like I couldn't play that way if I wanted to (I didn't, I wanted to be a Power Ranger). This playtest has definitely solidified me on the idea that the summoner needs some sort of "class methodology" mechanic that lets you choose between the classic "flavors" of PF1 summoner, which I consider to be Minion Master (more summon creature spell slots and some of the wizard's augmenting abilities), Partner Bonded (the tandemic mechanic and focus spells that boost your eidolon), and Synthesist Vessel (a version of the Synthesist feat that lets the summoner be a Punch Summoner without so many of the restrictions on the current Synthesist feat). I think the flavor in saying that these different kinds of summoners exist not only make the class more customizable to the player, but it'll also go a long way to solidifying what makes a summoner different than a niche sorcerer, which has always been a challenge with the class.
Hope this helps!
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The AOE demoralize at level 7 is great... till you realize your charisma is 10 or 12 (if you used stats on it) and doesn't have the easiest time demoralizing.
And isn't a language based action... If you can beg the Dm into not letting the -4 for that kick it, it's mediocre but if it's in it's atrocious.
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So I don't use demoralize much but don't you just need to know the language of those you're demoralizing?The AOE demoralize at level 7 is great... till you realize your charisma is 10 or 12 (if you used stats on it) and doesn't have the easiest time demoralizing.And isn't a language based action... If you can beg the Dm into not letting the -4 for that kick it, it's mediocre but if it's in it's atrocious.
"If the target does not understand the language you are speaking, you’re not speaking a language, or they can’t hear you, you take a –4 circumstance penalty to the check." They have to hear it, you must be speaking and they must understand the language or you get a -4. Primal Roar is a specific action that doesn't include speech.
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Alex - one of the issues this class has is under level 5, compared to a martial, its super weak. They should give us a 18/16/14/11/10/8 stat array to customize our Eidolons. The AOE demoralize at level 7 is great... till you realize your charisma is 10 or 12 (if you used stats on it) and doesn't have the easiest time demoralizing.
Also at 1/2 the Eidolon has 16 AC. Thats like trying to melee as a wizard with max dex.
From 1-4, the Eidolon has 16 str and trained unarmed putting us at a +6 bonus at level 1. Barbarians are at a +7. Fighters are at a +9. Since everyone basically gets an 18 in str for martials, it would help tremendously if Eidolons could get a +18 as well for str.
That's fair. I played at Level 6, so I didn't experience all of those problems. My AC wasn't awful at Level 6 (I was an expert with an 18 in Dex thanks to boosting Dex, so 24 AC) and I had an 18 Strength compared to the Strength 19 that Andrew's fighter had.
That being said, a summoner's spellcasting (while paltry) is better than what a fighter could get using one Dedication feat at 1st level. I think the trade-off between the maximum possible bonuses (or even a barbarian's bonuses) for the baseline spellcasting is a fair one, personally.
That being said, I do think summoners need more class identity built in. In the final version of the class, I personally would like to see:
—A subclass system for summoners (think investigator methodologies) that each gave a focus spell and one or two actions. For example, moving Act Together, Share Senses, and boost eidolon out of the class as things that all summoners automatically gain and adding them to this system.
—More interplay with the action economy.
—Multiple new conduit cantrips; at-will magic that summoners can do that make them feel like summoners.
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Personally I think that might be a grey area. If I was walk around and I see a gorilla look at me and beat its chest and scream, you'd bet I'd be demoralized!
This issue has already come up with animal companions with intimidate: without an explicit exception it make it pretty useless. Even if the intent was for the roar to not need speech, it should note it.
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Personally I think that might be a grey area. If I was walk around and I see a gorilla look at me and beat its chest and scream, you'd bet I'd be demoralized!This issue has already come up with animal companions with intimidate: without an explicit exception it make it pretty useless. Even if the intent was for the roar to not need speech, it should note it.
In fairness, this is sort of a design issue that PF2 inherited from PF1, and it's one that didn't get addressed until Ultimate Wilderness. (I wrote the first drafts of the Animal Companion feats, and specifically wrote an Animal Companion feat for PF1 that let Animal Companions use Intimidate without relying on their own Charisma modifiers).
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Yeah I agree. Honestly, they should have 4 options. One where the summoner and Eidolon at more of a team 50/50 on. One that is synthesis. One that gives up the Eidolon for Summon Monster and one that makes it so my Eidolon is more powerful but my Summoner is barely useful for my Master Blaster build. =)
I don't know if giving up the eidolon is something that would work for the new design for the summoner. I think just giving the summoning-focused summon two extra spell slots per day of their highest and second-highest level that could only be used to cast summoning spells is probably fine. It would give them as much high-level casting as a sorcerer / wizard / druid while keeping the limiting theme (those bonus spells are summoning only).
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But I do really want Synthesis to be on PAR with that of Fighter or Barbarian in terms of martial capabilities.
I don't think it should be as mathematically good as the fighter, but mechanically it should remain as interesting as them.
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I would be ok with the E being able to match Fighter accuracy or Barbarian damage output in short bursts that are triggered by Focus Spells and limited use/situational abilities but being able to keep pace with that all day is just flat out unacceptable.
Personally, I don't think we're ever going to see truly powerful E's unless they decide to ditch Spell Slots for Summoner altogether and instead go all-in on Focus Spells and Focus Cantrips instead, there just isn't enough room in their kit to have both true martial capacity in addition to Spell Slots.
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You still have your spells, you can't cast while Synthesized, but you're not permanently cut off from them either.
There's a lot of power from being able to switch between a caster and a martial as the situation demands.
It's incredibly inefficient to be able to do that in combat. All the spells would need to be support spells or usable outside of combat.
Since it takes 3 actions to do that every time, the action economy just isn't there to do that efficiently. I think you're overestimating the usefulness of spells in such a scenario.
That would entirely depend on the spells in question. Cast before or when starting combat and then Synthesize.
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How many turns does combat -usually- last? Because you'd be wasting two turns doing nothing but buffing yourself. Rounds probably like.. 4 maybe 5 turns? So you'd be spending half the time buffing yourself and the other half trying to make up for those lost turns?That would entirely depend on the spells in question. Cast before or when starting combat and then Synthesize.You still have your spells, you can't cast while Synthesized, but you're not permanently cut off from them either.
There's a lot of power from being able to switch between a caster and a martial as the situation demands.
It's incredibly inefficient to be able to do that in combat. All the spells would need to be support spells or usable outside of combat.
Since it takes 3 actions to do that every time, the action economy just isn't there to do that efficiently. I think you're overestimating the usefulness of spells in such a scenario.
Again, depends on the spells and the combat, which again you can decide which to do having a casty half and a martial half. That's a lot of power right there having those choices every fight.
Don't really know what to say if you consider buffing "wasting" your turn.
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I don't think buff spells are great for the synthesist summoner, since most of them have really short (ie 1 minute ish) durations IIRC. That being said, in my playtest game I took heal, restoration, and similar out of combat spells and I was fine.
That being said, I would rather the summoner getting the ability to cast spells while synthesized than the synthesist summoner sacrifice more interesting options for numbers.
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Y'all are assuming:
Fights are always going to start before you can buff/plan
Fights last little to no Rounds
The need to cast and synthesize or keep the Eidolon separate are all choices the Summoner has going into a fight, and which would be best changes depending on the fight in question. Getting ambushed is going to have a different setup than when you ambush the enemy.