|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'd like to hear some feedback on how the summoner is performing in combat. Is it doing pretty well? How do people rate it against other martials?Been playing a psychopomp summoner with a friend and so far it's been pretty effective. Not having electric arc has definitely negatively impacted my damage output, but the Summon's been a decent second frontliner after our fighter (who obviously does a lot more damage but still) and the group has appreciated that I can throw out a heal and still make two strikes in the same round.
I took Extend Boost early but I've found it hard to use, not having much Wisdom means the check fails a lot and not being able to use it with act together is awkward. It's nice when it goes off though and I can let that damage buff ride for the whole combat.
We're not very high level but I haven't really found any opportunities to cast Evolution Surge.
Thanks. Good info. I'm working on modifications right now. I don't plan to implement them until I get more information and run the summoner in a campaign first.
I definitely don't want electric arc to be the only way to be competitive. I plan to remove the shared MAP. It seems extremely unnecessary given they've already throttled down the eidolon damage and the summoner only goes up to expert. I always wonder what motivates such decisions given the mechanical effectiveness of not sharing MAP is not at all imbalanced as near I can see.
That seems really imbalanced to me.
- At 1-4 and 11-12, you are getting +5 to one or two attacks (when you make two or three attacks), and possibly getting a free attack at +10 (when you make four attacks in a round).
- At all other levels, you are getting in order (for second, third, and potential fourth attack) +3, +5, and an extra at +8.That's a massive upgrade on Ranger and Monk's multiple attack sequence, even on the levels where the Summoner is behind by a proficiency step.
At the same time, there are a few saving throw cantrips that are obviously so much better than the spell attack roll cantrips for the summoner because of this.
Maybe just make it so their Spell Attacks, when used with Act Together, don't take MAP to incentivise usage of cantrips other than electric arc and scattering scree? Kind of a janky workaround, but it would open up their cantrip usage.
1d8+4+2 with boost for an average of 10 per hit.2d8 +4 +2 +4 with boost for an average of 19 per hit.
3d8 +5 + 6 +6 with boost for an average of 30 per hit.
4d8 +7 +6 + 8 with boost for an average of 39 per hit with your main attack at lvl 20.
This doesn't include energy runes. It isn't particularly impressive using an extra action.
Then you have to look at what the summoner can do with their spells.
It seems the eidolon damage is fairly low with boost, doesn't stack with bard or witch abilities for buffing, and is very limited.
I can see when you can use electric arc early on doing decent damage to multiple targets. I often do the same thing with martials early on and do good damage. I've made MC monks with electric arc who use flurry with arc in the same round and even their damage is just ok compared to a barb, rogue, or fighter.
I'll have to see how it works.
Thief Rogue is 1d6+1d6+4 at level 1, averaging 11.
Level 7, you get 2d6+2d6+4+2, averaging 20.Level 13, you get 3d6+3d6+5+3, averaging 29.
Level 20, you get 4d6+4d6+7+6, averaging 41.
I think they're pretty comparable. The action difference is offset by Act Together or Extend Boost.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
1d8+4+2 with boost for an average of 10 per hit.2d8 +4 +2 +4 with boost for an average of 19 per hit.
3d8 +5 + 6 +6 with boost for an average of 30 per hit.
4d8 +7 +6 + 8 with boost for an average of 39 per hit with your main attack at lvl 20.
This doesn't include energy runes. It isn't particularly impressive using an extra action.
Then you have to look at what the summoner can do with their spells.
It seems the eidolon damage is fairly low with boost, doesn't stack with bard or witch abilities for buffing, and is very limited.
I can see when you can use electric arc early on doing decent damage to multiple targets. I often do the same thing with martials early on and do good damage. I've made MC monks with electric arc who use flurry with arc in the same round and even their damage is just ok compared to a barb, rogue, or fighter.
I'll have to see how it works.
Thief Rogue is 1d6+1d6+4 at level 1, averaging 11.
Level 7, you get 2d6+2d6+4+2, averaging 20.
Level 13, you get 3d6+3d6+5+3, averaging 29.
Level 20, you get 4d6+4d6+7+6, averaging 41.I think they're pretty comparable. The action difference is offset by Act Together or Extend Boost.
That is damage without boost, doesn't take into account abilities like Precise Debilitation which boosts that damage to 6d6, or taking an Elven Curve Blade or an Aldiori Dueling Blade along with Opportune Riposte as well being able to use Gang Up to flank without flanking.
I doubt an eidolon will perform as well as a rogue in damage output. Rogues are extremely vicious damage dealers whose abilities mesh together very well to rip things apart.
I don't see that kind of synergy with the summoner.
I wouldn't expect a summoner to do rogue damage. That would be too much given their versatility.
I want to see if they can keep up with a monk. I rate them about monk damage. I think they should be able to keep up with monk damage consistently. Monks are probably one of the weakest overall damage dealers unless you allow Heaven's Thunder, then they hammer as that ability is broken.
When I played the summoner, they were really clunky. I made an Angel Summoner with a champion's reaction paladin MC archetype to boost my MAPless damage a bit. With using boost every round, it was a 1 action cast to boost damage, like an action tax. This made the action economy of using boost with other abilities not so great. It seemed to lower the damage in a dynamic fight with movement.
When I played the summoner, they were really clunky.
This perfectly encapsulates my experience with them so far.
That is damage without boost, doesn't take into account abilities like Precise Debilitation which boosts that damage to 6d6, or taking an Elven Curve Blade or an Aldiori Dueling Blade along with Opportune Riposte as well being able to use Gang Up to flank without flanking.
I doubt an eidolon will perform as well as a rogue in damage output. Rogues are extremely vicious damage dealers whose abilities mesh together very well to rip things apart.
I don't see that kind of synergy with the summoner.
I wouldn't expect a summoner to do rogue damage. That would be too much given their versatility.
I want to see if they can keep up with a monk. I rate them about monk damage. I think they should be able to keep up with monk damage consistently. Monks are...
I mean, class feats throw that off by a lot, yes. But in less quantifiable things, eidolons can do sonic damage on every attack, grow to 15 feet while having 15 foot reach AoO, get Knockdown or Grab/Constrict, etc. Are they going to be able to put out the same damage as literally the most damaging possible thief rogue? No, but the summoner also exists as a person who can cast spells that aren't affected by MAP, and the fact that they remain level with the damaging rogue setup is pretty good on its own.
(Funnily enough, my party ran into a lot of swarms last session, and our primary martials are a rogue and swashbuckler. Let's just say our damage dropped by a lot.)
15 ft reach AoO seems really meh when you only have 1 reaction with no conditions. The paladin gets their special abilities and Fighters have their high to hit. But Eidolons have neither of those.
The monster abilities are nice. But they hardly matter when its effectively "spend a feat to not roll combat maneuvers after an attack". Sure its versatility, but its also not that much better than just rolling high.
Being able to do sonic damage is cool, but hardly seems relevant most of the time.
The summoner not being able to attack is a huge let down when half the fantasy is that they work together to attack as a tag team. But The mechanics makes it actively bad. Even when you get Tandem Strike.
Also I don't see in any way how an Eidolon does better vs a swarm. Maybe if you have the dragon breath, but as far as I can tell only 1 eidolon gets an "Area attack".
Sonic bypasses a lot of DR, though not incorporeal.
I don't think the shared MAP is good either even with the summoner being able to use skills. The summoner being able to grapple with the eidolon attacking at full strength for 2 actions is no different than a fighter or martial using the Knockdown feat which is an attack and a MAPless trip attempt. Even then, I don't see it doing more damage and it puts the summoner at risk in melee.
I found another example fighting a velstrac interlocuter where that might be bad as a summoner and an eidolon can take double persistent damage if they both get hit with it. As far as I know if you get hit by persistent damage, each takes it on their own.
Reach is super nice for a fighter or class that can get extra reactions, but not so great for a single shared reaction class like the summoner and eidolon.
Rogues and Swashbucklers make use of precision damage which must swarms are immune to, and most often use slashing or piercing weapons which also tend to have issues with swamrs. Meanwhile a lot of Eidolons tend to have bludgeoning which also tends to have reduced resistance in swarms.
15 feat of space, if positioned correctly can prevent enemies from reaching your back-line. Knockdown alongside your AoO and reach can make your enemies lose an action and provoke from getting up. Being able to the cmb for free means you don't have to roll which means no risk of failure, and from what I can tell doesn't increase MAP.
You can also quite easily make a Eidolon that could fly up to a flying enemy and use knockdown causing the creature to take fall damage, be prone and be easy for your allies to take down.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
15 ft reach AoO seems really meh when you only have 1 reaction with no conditions. The paladin gets their special abilities and Fighters have their high to hit. But Eidolons have neither of those.
The monster abilities are nice. But they hardly matter when its effectively "spend a feat to not roll combat maneuvers after an attack". Sure its versatility, but its also not that much better than just rolling high.
Being able to do sonic damage is cool, but hardly seems relevant most of the time.
The summoner not being able to attack is a huge let down when half the fantasy is that they work together to attack as a tag team. But The mechanics makes it actively bad. Even when you get Tandem Strike.
Also I don't see in any way how an Eidolon does better vs a swarm. Maybe if you have the dragon breath, but as far as I can tell only 1 eidolon gets an "Area attack".
Being able to have an AoE attack (Eidolon's Wrath), being able to do non-physical damage (which swarms resist), not being reliant on precision damage.
I also just realized that Energy Heart appears to be able to deal good damage and positive damage, which are incredibly good in certain campaign types.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I found another example fighting a velstrac interlocuter where that might be bad as a summoner and an eidolon can take double persistent damage if they both get hit with it. As far as I know if you get hit by persistent damage, each takes it on their own.
Doesn't that fall under the "same effect" clause?
Doesn't that fall under the "same effect" clause?
I found another example fighting a velstrac interlocuter where that might be bad as a summoner and an eidolon can take double persistent damage if they both get hit with it. As far as I know if you get hit by persistent damage, each takes it on their own.
It might. It usually applies to Area of effect damage, but you could argue you take the higher amount of persistent damage. I wonder how persistent damage is being run.
i'm gonna play a summoner soon, so i will have 1st hand experience, but imo, you can't really compare just the raw damage and make an assumption ust from that.
if the base eidolon damage is equivalent to base thief rogue damage, then that's good enough i think. Yes, the rogue can get more damage out of his feats, but then summoner also has his spells to either provide damage or to provide utility.
it's not as much as a full caster ofc, but it still is 4 "highest" slots per day which is quite substantial.
I don't need raw hit by hit damage. I tend to track damage battle by battle because you can't track caster damage hit by hit or you'll see a very inaccurate representation of class ability.
Early on I heard complaints about caster damage and at low level running a wizard, those complaints seemed valid. Once I played a druid and tracked damage over the course of several levels, the druid did quite well compared to martials and was often the battle by battle damage leader, sometimes by a wide margin.
The summoner looks like it will do martial damage 70 to 80% of the time and then have nova rounds where it unleashes spells. That will be interesting to see how that affects combat and damage over many battles.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
There's also the question of "What type of games do you play?".
APs are combat heavy and as such characters like Summoners (and Alchemists) who are versatile but resource constrained tend to perform worse than characters like Fighters that are all about combat all day long.
In PFS, I expect Summoner to be extremely competitive, being able to cast a high level spell every fight on top of the Eidolon martial damage.
15 ft reach AoO seems really meh when you only have 1 reaction with no conditions. The paladin gets their special abilities and Fighters have their high to hit. But Eidolons have neither of those.
The monster abilities are nice. But they hardly matter when its effectively "spend a feat to not roll combat maneuvers after an attack". Sure its versatility, but its also not that much better than just rolling high.
Being able to do sonic damage is cool, but hardly seems relevant most of the time.
The summoner not being able to attack is a huge let down when half the fantasy is that they work together to attack as a tag team. But The mechanics makes it actively bad. Even when you get Tandem Strike.
Also I don't see in any way how an Eidolon does better vs a swarm. Maybe if you have the dragon breath, but as far as I can tell only 1 eidolon gets an "Area attack".
Yes Fighters/Swashbucklers/Champions/Rogues all can fairly reliably get extra attacks out of reactions and get more reactions from level 10. In purely damage output they are going to pull way ahead of the Eidolon. Plus a whole lot bigger choice of martial feats and maneuvers. Just comparing basic strike with basic strike misses a lot.
The Eidolon is OK. But it needs it Summoner for it to be a fair comparison to the martial characters.
|
15 ft reach AoO seems really meh when you only have 1 reaction with no conditions. The paladin gets their special abilities and Fighters have their high to hit. But Eidolons have neither of those.
The monster abilities are nice. But they hardly matter when its effectively "spend a feat to not roll combat maneuvers after an attack". Sure its versatility, but its also not that much better than just rolling high.
Being able to do sonic damage is cool, but hardly seems relevant most of the time.
The summoner not being able to attack is a huge let down when half the fantasy is that they work together to attack as a tag team. But The mechanics makes it actively bad. Even when you get Tandem Strike.
Also I don't see in any way how an Eidolon does better vs a swarm. Maybe if you have the dragon breath, but as far as I can tell only 1 eidolon gets an "Area attack".
Yes Fighters/Swashbucklers/Champions/Rogues all can fairly reliably get extra attacks out of reactions and get more reactions from level 10. In purely damage output they are going to pull way ahead of the Eidolon. Plus a whole lot bigger choice of martial feats and maneuvers. Just comparing basic strike with basic strike misses a lot.
The Eidolon is OK. But it needs it Summoner for it to be a fair comparison to the martial characters.
Which is what should be IMO.
|
|
Boost is pretty mediocre tbh and conflicts with other status bonuses (unlike most martial combat mechanics which are untyped).
Extent Boost is also awkward because it runs off a stat tied to your tradition, which means a Wisdom or Int skill... won't be as high/consistent as your Cha stuff, so the check can be weirdly hard to make sometimes.
While these issues are very obviously RAW, I'm not sure it's intentional per se so much as just... weird consequences of how things were written.
Who knows though, maybe the Devs were really worried about Extend Boost or Ostentatious Arrival for some reason.
Feedback from in-house playtest of the final version, maybe.
The Summoner is not doing much given the feats and constraints. But I understand what you mean.
The little that the Summmoner does do of itself is enough to make up the difference to the martial characters. That is the premise anyway.
I also think many people are focusing on support Summoners, with strong healing and buff. But the damage oriented Summoner can deal crazy damage, too.
For example, you have the Wand of Manifold Missiles abuse: You can use 4 of them, activate them in the first round of combat for 24/48/72/96 automatic damage per round on average. Of course, due to the cost, it's hard to get tons of high level ones, but even the level 9 ones are enough to deal a crazy ton of damage, when on top of that you add Eidolon attacks and Electric Arcs during rounds 2+. In my opinion, it's one of the biggest end game damage dealer.
how will you do that exactly?
Damn, you're right, I forgot their limitations on magic items. I made a mistake, so ignore my comment.
A little question for those who already played a summoner.
Do you think that alacritous Action is required or you found yourself comfortable enough with just 25 feet speed?
I like being able to move 35 feet, but maybe I may invest into something different.
Didn't seem necessary, but my experience is informed by the Summoner I "played" being a converted boss monster in an AP.
Evolution surge can give a +20 status bonus to speed. Depending on the type of campaign you're playing I'd wager you could use evolution surge and save the feat if you needed. And you can easily build a Summoner with a lot of focus points. I didn't find the action economy so restrictive that I think two actions would be burdensome to start off certain fights where you can take advantage of 45 speed.
On the other hand, I think hit and run tactics are going to be really easy to pull off on Summoners, so having a higher base speed and saving your focus points for something else or just not having to spend the evolution surge on speed all the time will also be good. I'm definitely always tempted by it when I fiddle with draft Summoners.
TL;DR: I think it's a competitive choice, but evolution surge might obviate it for some folks, depending on campaigns and playstyles.
A little question for those who already played a summoner.
Do you think that alacritous Action is required or you found yourself comfortable enough with just 25 feet speed?
I like being able to move 35 feet, but maybe I may invest into something different.
I like Alacritous Action. Extra movement in PF2 is always nice.
|
|
Summoner isn't really going to be a premier damage dealer, but it does have very decent support options. Weighty Impact and Grasping Limbs are probably its 3rd and 4th best feats (after the mandatory feats of Tandem Move and Eidolon's Opportunity).
In longer adventuring days (if you can get it), wellspring dedication should let you pop off a big control spell every single combat.
I suggest the following build for Summoner might be good
Any summoner (If not human, take adopted ancestry (human) - summoner has a lot of feat taxes). Weapons - 1d8 trip and 1d6 agile. Always go strength based, no reason to go dex based unless you want to use Ranged Combatant.
Plant (Reach), Dragon (Generalist) and Devotion seem like the best to me.
(1): Energy Heart (Sonic) - retrained to Advanced Weaponry - Grab at level 12.
(1): Glider Form (You only need this by level 14 - taken with natural ambition)
2: Wellspring Dedication.
4: Tandem Move
6: Eidolon's Opportunity.
8: Any, I like taking Hulking Size here, but we have no space to fit Shrink Down so could be awkward.
10: Weighty Impact
12: Grasping Limbs
14: Airborne Form
16: Towering Size / Effortless Concentration
18: Towering Size / Effortless Concentration / Any
20: Eternal Boost