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The four eidolons from the playtest are generic. All four are Medium size, Speed 25 feet, see with Darkvision, have Str 16, Dex 16, Con 16, Cha 10 with only slight variations in Int and Wis, have a 1d8 melee attack and a 14 agile melee attack. Their shape is never defined, so they default to humanoid with two hands, two feet, one head, etc.
Their main differences are the magic traditions and skills they give to the summoner. That is a difference in summoners, not a difference in eidolons.
Since the unchained eidolon from PF1 had basic forms, I presume that different shapes of eidolons were left out of the playtest because the Paizo developers had no need to test those features. They were tested in PF1.
Nevertheless, when I created my playtest summoner, Cirieo Thassaddin, I decided that the best form for his beast eidolon was a goat. That opened up questions, such as whether the eidolon had two hands and whether halfling Cirieo could ride his Medium-sized goat. The stat block for an eidolon needs to answer those questions.
Furthermore, in the thread Final Assessment on the Summoner Class: Current iteration KrisoyXIV pointed out that the playtest eidolon is constructed like an animal companion:
Your argument of, "take things thats better for them rather than be thematic" disproves your whole argument. EVERYONE has this opportunity with feats, heritages, backgrounds, etc. It is INEVITABLE in a system with crunch thats literally already occurring. Would you rather EVERYONE just play pregens?!Eidolons - as a class feature, and not full character - get exactly the same customization as any other class feature, including (if we're being generous) Animal Companions.
Every single customization for Animal Companions other than base type (which an Eidolon also gets) is from a class feat.
In the following discussion whether an eidolon closer to a player character or an animal companion, I responded, "Eidolons lack ancestry and background, so they are missing two aspects of a standard player character."
Thus, I want to experiment with setting up ancestry and background for eidolons as a tool for more diversity. However, upon reflection I will called the ancestry aspect Heritage, since most eidolons lack ancestors.
Experimental Eidolon Rules
First, the shared hit points of the summoner and eidolon changes from 10 plus your summoner's Constitution modifier to 8 plus your summoner's Constitution modifer and plus your eidolon's Constitution modifer.
Eidolons
Your summoner is partnered with an eidolon. You choose the Background of the eidolon from the same backgrounds that all player characters use. You also chose a Heritage for the eidolon from the list below. The base form of the eidolon is determined by its heritage, but you decide the details as the eidolon is created and levels up.
Eidolons are formed from a solid non-physical essence that mimics a physical creature. Dragon eidolons are made from arcane essence from the Astral Plane, beast eidolons are made of life essence from the Material Plane, and angel and phantom eidolons are made of spiritual essenses from the afterlife planes.
Eidolons do not need to eat or breathe. They can eat and drink, such as drinking an elixir for its magical effect. They cannot wear physical items such as clothing or amulets or belt pouches. Their only way to carry physical objects is with their hands. They can also use items manipulated with their hands, such as wielding a weapon or tying a rope.
Your eidolon's ability scores start with the Pre-Background Scores from your eidolon's Heritage and then gain the ability boosts from the Background.
Your eidolon has the same same level and the same proficiency training in perception, saving throws, and skills as your summoner. Your summoner also acquires the skill training from your eidolon's Background. The Summoner's Path section of your eidolon's heritage may also grant training to your summoner. If the summoner is already trained in a skill granted by your eidolon, then he or she gains training in a skill of your choice.
Your summoner and eidolon also speak and understand all of each other's languages.
Eidolons are also trained in unarmored defense and in every attack given by their heritage.
Whenever you would select a summoner class feat, you may select an eidolon class feat instead. If you retrain an eidolon class feat, you may revert it to a summoner class feat.
Manifested Items
Your eidolon's essense can mimic clothing and items, too, but those items are non-functional unless the eidolon's abilities give them function. A functional item made of an eidolon's essence is called manifested and cannot be used by anyone else. They can be picked up and stowed by other people, but outside of the eidolon's control they become too vague for use.
Essence items, manifested or not, appear when the summoner manifests the eidolon. These items appear as you wish, either stowed on the eidolon in essence-made sheathes, belt pouches, or other storage or worn on the body or held in the eidolon's hand ready to use. When your eidolon demanifests or remanifests, an essence item disappears along with the eidolon.
Your eidolon's clothing is more malleable than the eidolon's body. For example, an angel eidolon's clothing could manifest as robes, as formal evening wear, or as armor. The appearance of the clothing makes no difference to AC, unless the armor is manifested. Clothing used for a disguise requires the usual Deception checks from the eidolon.
Evolutions
Evolutions are eidolon traits that determine which eidolon feats you can select.
Eidolon Heritages
Beast Heritage
Traits beast, eidolon
Shape quadruped
Size Medium
Additional Senses darkvision, scent
Languages Sylvan
Pre-Background Scores: Str[/url] 16, [b]Dex 16, Con 14, Int 8, Wis 12, Cha 10
Evolutions aquatic, burly, instinct, mount, persistant
Hands One Option mouth, trunk, prehensile tail
Speed 30 feet
Melee [one-action] primary (unarmed) Damage 1d8 Option beak (slashing), curved horns (bludgeoning), fangs (piercing), horn (piercing), jaws (piercing)
Melee [one-action] scondary (agile, unarmed), Damage 1d4 Option claw (slashing), hoof (bludgeoning), tail slap (bludgeoning), talon (piercing)
Summoner's Path Your summoner is trained in Nature. Your summoner has primal conduit spells and cantrips.
Angel Heritage
Traits angel, celestial, eidolon
Requirements Your eidolon's alignment must be Good.
Shape humanoid
Size Medium
Additional Senses darkvision
Languages\ Celestial
Pre-Background Scores: Str[/url] 10, [b]Dex 16, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 12
Evolutions divine, good, manifested items, winged
Hands Two
Speed 25 feet
Melee [one-action] manifested sword (finesse) Damage 1d8
Melee [one-action] fist (agile, finesse, nonlethal, unarmed) Damage 1d4
Summoner's Path Your summoner is trained in Religion and in light armor. Your summoner has divine conduit spells and cantrips.
(I will post dragon and phantom heritages later.)
Sample Eidolon Feats
Aggressive Charge [two-actions] Feat 1
Eidolon, Summoner
Prerequisite instinct evolution
Your eidolon rushes forward, using their momentum to power their attack. Your eidolon Strides twice in a straight line and then Strikes, gaining a +1 circumstance bonus to the attack roll as long as they moved at least 20 feet.
Hallowed Strikes Feat 1
Eidolon, Summoner
Prerequisite good evolution
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.
Manifested Armor Proficiency Feat 1
Eidolon, Summoner
Prerequisite manifested items evolution
Your eidolon becomes trained in light armor. If the eidolon already was trained in light armor, your eidolons gains training in medium armor. If your eidolon trained in both, he or she becomes trained in heavy armor.
Your eidolon may manifest standard leather armor, studded leather armor, scale mail, breastplate, and splint plate. At 3rd level your eidolon can manifest full plate.
Special You can select this feat more than once. Each time, your eidolon become trained in the next type of armor above.
Natural Armor Feat 1
Eidolon, Summoner
Prerequisite burly evolution
Your eidolon develops dense fur, thick skin, hard scales, or some other natural protective coat. Your eidolon has a +2 item bonus to AC.
Swimmer Feat 1
Eidolon, Summoner
Prerequisite aquatic evolution
Your eidolon gains a Swim Speed of 20 feet or equal to your eidolon's speed, whichever is greater. Your eidolon does not take a –2 circumstance penalty to melee slashing or bludgeoning attacks that pass through water.
Winged Leap Feat 1
Eidolon, Summoner
Prerequisite winged evolution, trained in Acrobatics
Your eidolon cannot yet fly, but has learned to use his or her wings to aid leaping. Your eidolon learns the Catfall skill feat. Your eidolon can Leap to 20 feet horizontally and 10 feet vertically.
Brutal Jaws and Claws Feat 2
Eidolon, Summoner
Prerequisite burly evolution
Your eidolon attacks viciously with natural weapons. The damage dice of your eidolon's unarmed attacks increase by one size.
Mounted Feat 2
Eidolon, Summoner
Prerequisite mount evolution
Your eidolon serves as a trusty steed. Bipedal creatures smaller than your eidolon and non-bipeds two sizes smaller can ride your eidolon. Your eidolon's speed increases by 5 feet.
Growth Spurt Feat 6
Prerequisite burly evolution
Your eidolon grows bigger. Your eidolon's size increases by one step, up to a maximum of Large before 14th level and Huge at 14th level. At Large size your eidolon's reach increases to 10 feet, and at Huge size it increases to 15 feet. Your eidolon gains an ability bonus to Strength.
Special You can select this feat more than once. Each time, your eidolon's size increases by one step, still subject to the maximum. The ability bonus to Strength does not repeat.
Design Notes
I changed hit points to use both Constitutions because choosing your eidolon's Constitution should matter as much as choosing your summoner's Constitution. Fiddling with an average of the two modifiers would be lessen the effect of each one. To compensate for the second Con bonus, I reduced the fixed number from 10 to 8.
The manifested items are my way of giving the eidolon items like swords and armor. In the playtest, an angel eidolon with an unarmed "sword" attack would mean that the eidolon ridiculously has a sword glued to its hand all the time.
The playtest rules said on page 15, "While your eidolon can’t wear or use magic items except for companion items that specifically mention that they work for eidolons, ..." It did not mention mundane items, so could a Medicine-trained eidolon pick up a healer's kit and use it? I decided to change that to eidolons can use held items but not worn items. That fits my vision that eidolons are kind of unreal and don't interact with physical objects well. If the eidolon companion items are designed, they can say that they become manifested items when worn by an eidolon.
Evolution traits are my way of dividing up the eidolon feats. To me, the playtest discussion made clear that some pairs of feats, such as Hulking Evolution and Winged Evolution enabling riding a flying eidolon, were too powerful in combination. I worry about developers nerfing individual feats to keep combinations under control. Yet PF2 feat design separates feats by class to prevent overpowered combinations, so I figured that eidolons should use the same methods.
Both beast and dragon eidolons will have burly evolution. I don't how which other evolution traits would be shared between angel, beast, dragon, and phantom.
I moved the initial/symbiosis/transcendence ability for each eidolon to feats. I think it simplifies eidolon descriptions and offers more choices. Unfortunately, it does make symbiosis and transcendence cost a feat each, so the design would have to compensate by giving extra eidolon feats: "Eidolon Symbiosis 7th, Your connection with your eidolon strengthens. You gain an eidolon class feat." Then I rewrite the eidolon symbiosis abilities as 7th-level eidolon feats with an evolution requirement to match it to its eidolon.
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Honestly, good job. This is my favorite suggestion for how eidolons should be given more customization/diversity. And you nailed the power level and flavor of the sample feats in my opinion.
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Nice work Mathmuse. This is a lot closer to where I would like the customization to be on the Eidolon.
If we were to entertain this concept as an idea though, I wanted to ask you about some of the things:
Hands - Eidolons I do not believe are currently limited in this way, I do see what you're trying to do here, but it does create inherent advantages to the Eidolons with Hands?
Manifested Items - I love this and I think in some form its probably a great idea, but what's concerning is the matter of Traits of the weapons. Do you gain its traits? I see the Sword has finesse, but is that mandatory or can it be something other than a sword? Comparing to the Beast, where the only choice is the type of damage for instance.
Feats
Natural Armor - This is straight up better than the Armor proficiency unless you can manifest runes in the armor proficiency, and it doesn't have a DEX cap and still provides an Item bonus (which is a bit weird but I guess I get it). I generally don't like Status bonuses being willy nilly handed out, but dropping this to a +1 and making it a Status bonus might make more sense (and it could theoretically stack with Manfested Armor)
Growth Spurt - In the actual printing this should probably just be two Feats (one at 6 and one at 14) since it would require two Feats anyways. The only reason to keep them both together is if there were automatic size increases for Eidolons, then it would matter, but otherwise not really necessary to make it a "take twice" feat.
Manifest Armor - Huge Tax if you want armor for those that have low DEX. Would probably default it to the same value as Sentinel and just raise the level to 2. Not worth it otherwise IMO.
Evolution Traits - Good concept but introduces a potentially risky situation. One thing I noticed is that Beast lacks the "Winged" trait but Angel does not, yet you have Beak as an attack option and Mount as an option. To me, this is systemic with assigning traits like this, its inevitable something will get missed. A better option here might be to allow Eidolons to pick traits but come with a default few instead of a smattering of 5 they "sort of" have already.
If you want to get further into it, I might just allow anyone to pick any Feat, and then certain Eidolons that have the Trait benefit from the Feat to a greater capacity. AKA:
Swimmer is selectable by any Eidolon, but if one of the Traits your Eidolon selected at level 1 included Aquatic the Swimmer Class Feat gains a little boost (such as 40ft swim speed instead of 20ft). Then allow traits to play a role in the Eidolon base statistics.
For instance, Growth Spurt might increase the size of the Eidolon, but not grant Reach unless the Eidolon has the Burly Trait.
Just playing with the building blocks you've set up a bit. I think Traits are a good concept enhancer, but using them as a strict limiter is prohibitive to concepts in a way that I find less than ideal (see Winged before with Angel vs. Beast).
Luckily, almost every feat you have written has a "part two" where the Trait can come into play already, so if you did want to switch things up a bit, it's kinda already written.
Persistant Trait - I dont see this used anywhere
Burly - This one is tethered to so many feats, it's a big part of what lead me to the above ideas on how to slightly restructure Traits.
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You worked pretty hard on this and what I want to emphasis is the meat and potatoes (as opposed to any of my questions and nitpicking) is deeee-liciously cool. To me, this is MUCH closer to how I would see the Eidolon working in respect to providing customization.
I know the players I had would probably have found this a little more engaging.
One thing that I think is definitely a place I would expand into where it seems you've kinda avoided thus far is the Skill space, and in particular, Manifesting kits or Skill based items as I think it would make a lot of sense.
What you've built is really cool! Can't wait to see Dragon and Spectre.