What roles can a summoner and their eidolon fill?

[Rfkannen]

The summoner is an interaction class with a lot of different build options, but what are the main roles that each half of them can fill?

Off the top of my head:

The summoner can be a:
debuffer with intimidation and spells
buffer, with all of the inbuilt ways to buff your eidolon and spells

the eidolon could be build as:
a melee controller with grappling and tripping
a minionmancy spellcaster
a skirmisher.

What other roles can they fill?

[aobst128]

The summoner can be a healer or blaster depending on their tradition. Not the best but you gotta work with what you got. Primal is almost all blasting.

Eidolons can built to make the class as a whole a versatile skill monkey with skill feats and the ability to aid yourself with the same skill proficiency. The demon and fey eidolons can also be built for intimidation. Potentially doubling your demoralize output.

[Sanityfaerie]

Primal has Cure Wounds. From what I can see, that makes it a viable healing tradition all by itself.

Summoner also has access to summon spells, with feats such that they can be better at summoning than at most other kinds of spellcasting. Summoning isn't great against the BBEG, but can apparently be pretty useful at more efficiently handling weak-to-midrange fights, and Summoner is in a pretty good place as far as sustains.

Mostly, though, the summoner is a flex player. The bit where you lean into one side or the other in any given round is part of the point.

[AlastarOG]

Summons are good at taking hits too, a Crit on a summon is a Crit your frontlines won't take !!

Bosses often times have 2-3 minions with them, send your summon to draw away their actions while your eidolon flanks the BBEG with the barb

[Gortle]

aobst128 wrote:

Primal is almost all blasting..

Only if you want it to be. There is plenty of buffing utility and control if you want it.

[The NPC]

They can be a Laurel and Hardy or Lucy and Ethel.

If you're from Minkai they can be a Manzai pair.