Plaguestone Write Up

[siegfriedliner]

So I was travelling with a three man party a Champion,Rogue and Me. The champion seems to be our chief damage dealer, our rogue is a ranged set up and seems to spend an inordinate amount of his time sneaking so he never contributes to the damage as much as I would expect (i tend to play rogue thief as flanker).

Our first encounters was against 4 dogs, this went very quick with the champion doing most of the work with his retaliation. We survived the fight it was a quick and brutal affair.

The second battle was with a Lightning Snake, my Angel missed all but one of her attacks and she got hit once on a 16 which was a bit irritating because if she had normal martial AC she would have been fine but again we took out the snake mostly due to our fine paladin actions. We then spend 20 minutes treating wounds and laying on hands.

The final fight was kind of hilarious as a fail for my Angel, I spend two actions magic weaponing my summoner's dagger (i am not sure if this works to apply it to my eidolon but I ran it by my gm who was fine with it), we tandem actioned I dropped prone (behind cover) and she walked into a spear trap was crit on a 12 on the dice (that damned reduced AC again) and took 20 damage and evaporated. Our paladin laid on hands proceeded to move to engage the bad guy. Our Rogue was present.

I spent my next action battle medicine me and the realized I needed to spend three actions to summon my eidolon again. So I electric arced. The next turn happened and our rogue was down and the champion was battered but the boss was beginning to feel the hurt so rather than summon my eidolon I electric arced and shielded. On the my final turn I was the only one left standing but hey I had 16 hps so I had an interesting choice summon Angela or electric arc again I electric arced the boss saved I did two damage it was enough.

So lessons from today. I re-learnt that traps are deadly. I learnt that the Summoners spellcasting (or at least their cantrips) are fine at level 1 unless you cast your one spell on magic weapon and then your eidolon goes down before she gets a chance to use it.

I learnt going down is especially punishing on the summoner action economy and made re-manifesting my eidolon a very hard choice to justify because of the high opportunity cost.

Also what was really annoying is that boss was the only enemy I fought in today's session that would have taken my eidolon's 1 good damage as the rest were just beasts and she never even got near him.

In truth it was a fairly unlucky run in a difficult adventure path with 3 players and that particular boss has killed a few parties and we got out alive. So please forgive me for a little hyperbole. I am used to playing classes with a higher optimization floor like fighters and thief rogues so me feeling like my angel and summoners combined efforts were pretty ineffective in comparison was probably more a testament to how good those classes are than the shoddiness of my eidolon.

Memorable quotes from the episode "wait you mean you go down too,.... Uh huh" and "so does your angel have any uninique abilities we need to be aware off..... Nope"

[Falgaia]

Yeah Eidolons probably need Expert Unarmored AC at level 1 instead of 3, they have enough hurdles early on as is. Good damage is definitely a very feast-or-famine boost, something that will remain apparent in that AP, sadly.

Ooc, do you know if the GM scaled down to scenario any due to your party of 3? Also wanted to ask this since your party comp strikes me as an interesting one, but was the Champion using their retaliation in response to themselves being hit (which if they are would be a rules error), or was your Eidolon acting as a secondary frontliner with the Champion covering for it? Figured I'd ask since you mentioned the Rogue seemed to be avoiding the frontline.

[siegfriedliner]

My eidolon was playing as a secondary front line and so yes her getting hit actually contributed more to our parties damage than her damage.

[Falgaia]

siegfriedliner wrote:

My eidolon was playing as a secondary front line and so yes her getting hit actually contributed more to our parties damage than her damage.

Well, I guess that's kindof like contributing, right? /s

On a more serious note, might be worth looking into some potions and such at earlier levels, since Interact actions can technically be done through Act Together. I know there should be plenty of options for that type of play later in the AP, so something to keep in mind at least.

That said, yeah, I don't really know if Manifest Eidolon needs to eat 3 actions. Perhaps if they made the Manifest give the Eidolon two actions (like what normal Summoning spells do) it'd be less harsh for Summoners that have to get back up from 0.