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The "skill niche" that gets brought up often with the summoner isn't usually a major consideration. They have marginally more self-contained skill utility between better stat spreads and self-aid, but optimized parties will generally abuse one for all, ageless patience and/or sleepwalker dedication as needed to maximize skills.Ageless Patience and Sleepwalker Dedication are too action expensive to be used in combat. And One for All is definitely strong on the Summoner as it doesn't need its reaction and has more actions than others.
If you want to make a maximized Disturbing Knowledge or Grapple build, you'd go for Summoner.The only skills usually worth using in combat are performance (bard stuff), diplomacy (one for all, bon mot), athletics (trip, grapple) and medicine (battle medicine). One For All isn't even needed except to maybe cover a manual athletics attempt. Combat recall knowledge is a bad joke and intimidate/fear abilities are made obsolete by dirge of doom.
Out of combat, you have time enough to use the other two as needed.
Disturbing Knowledge allows you to Confuse an entire encounter. If you go for a Dragon Eidolon, you'll be one point behind an optimized Intelligence character, with +4 from One for All or Inspire Performance, you should have at least 50% chance of success. And as both the Summoner and the Eidolon can do it, you should land it nearly once per fight.
It's a very high level build, but not one I'd disregard.
The Summoner allows for some shenanigans when it comes to skills.
Typically speaking you aren't comparing skill use as your primary action on a turn, it is competing with your second or third action. Then they make more sense. You can't keep adding in an Aid action and Reaction and saying it is the best. That has a cost for another character, even if it is just your Eidolon.
Ageless Patience is not always worth it, if you can try twice it is often better to try twice. Likewise with Sleepwalker Dedication.
If however there is a penalty to trying twice like MAP or a cooldown on skill failure. Then they can be very much worth it. Two grapple attempts for twice the chance of getting a restrained result with Vision of Foresight and adding in your one Aid to either is very good.
The calculus changes again if you have another action due to haste.
Deriven Firelion, it's perfectly ok if summoner is not your jam. There's 22 classes so some of them are bound to be duds for you. Starting a thread on the basis of "this is bad, prove me wrong" is either begging for disappointment or just a thinly veiled attempt to argue with people that liking the class is wrong.
Do you think I would spend this much time on the summoner if it weren't my "jam"? I loved this class this path in PF1. I played a Mage in Everquest. I played a Warlock main in World of Warcraft. First thing I look at in a new game system is the summon abilities.
The summoner is most definitely "my jam." It was an awesome class in PF1. One of the best classes ever added to the game in PF1. I played 3 or 4 of them.
The summoner is disappointingly bad in PF2. It doesn't feel much like the PF1 summoner at all. Not just in terms of power, but also in play. It doesn't feel like a summoner at all.
It feels like something else. Like it should be some psychic manifester or something.
My home group has just started SoT. We each DM a Book. Our Book 1 DM plans to play a Gnome Summoner (Plant Eidolon) from Book 2 onwards.
I am excited to see it live...eventually.
I don't know their criteria for their assessmentClass evaluations are typically concerned with overall gameplay from 1-20 with a primary combat focus and a secondary skill focus and also assume that the party is built somewhat optimally as well (like how just about every party that matters has a bard and/or bard archetype in it). It should also be noted that the only encounters that matter are severe or harder (any configuration). Anything less is collectively lumped together as trivial.
The "skill niche" that gets brought up often with the summoner isn't usually a major consideration. They have marginally more self-contained skill utility between better stat spreads and self-aid, but optimized parties will generally abuse one for all, ageless patience and/or sleepwalker dedication as needed to maximize skills.
The summoner's other primary issue, as stated, is their need to invest heavily in their own class feats just to reach par as a combatant. This stands in contrast to something like a rogue whose heavy investment elevates it above most other martials or fighter who has enough dead feat levels they can just steal stuff with archetypes.
To balance this inherent failing, summoners get a few spells for utility and wall control, the plant's crazy reach and eventually auto knockdown. Extreme overwhelming damage is great and all, and you can eventually tank just about anything in the endgame, but before that point prone control is important against extreme solos or duos.
The summoner is most painful to play at levels 1-3 before tandem movement. Generally fine afterward.
With all that together, the general evaluation of the summoner is A for Average. Like the barbarian, champion, etc you pick it when you're bored of being a fighter or rogue or if you just want the RP potential. Might be on the lower end of average, but still better than something like swashbuckler with their horrendous built in fail rate or a melee magus's miserable action economy.
As for the...
You get optimization. That's about as I see it.
With the magus you are at least impressed by their core ability the spell strike.
I don't want to play a plant eidolon. No real interest. I'm working real hard to optimize the summoner. I'm trying some different ideas with battle forms and some sustain spells.
We'll see what I come up with. I want to build an eidolon that can be impressive in battle.
I really don't want to rewrite the whole class, but I may because I want the summoner of all the classes in the game to be powerful and fun. It is my favorite class.
I don't really think anyone is going to convince Deriven on this one, even though I think he would love to be convinced. But his party's biggest challenge is multiple lower level enemies with AoE abilities. This situation is also very much the bane of a summoner and the summoner is never going to shine in these scenarios.
Many parties don't optimize in the same fashion as Deriven's party and thus find level +3 or level +4 monsters to be the unwinnable fights. A 14th dragon in an open city absolutely shredded my level 11 party of 4 because range and mobility are a killer when you can land devastating criticals and still move far enough away to require 2 actions from your enemies to get back in range.
Gesalt gives us their definition of class evaluations which I don't think match up with either Deriven's or my own. People will definitely look for different things. I tend to agree with Deriven about the serious issue the Summoner has with the action economy loss that happens with unconsciousness. Like Deriven, I, and the GMs I play with, very commonly fold encounters on top of each other when the alarm gets raised which can lead to lots of level -1,2 or even -3 enemies piling up on the PCs in a way where HP attrition makes it a rare encounter when a whole 10 round fight has gone by without a single PC hitting the floor. Most classes can bounce back up pretty quickly. The summoner really struggles with that, depending upon their positioning when they or their eidolon gets taken out. Especially when those lower level enemies have AoE damage that damages on a save.
The summoner gets 2 saves where both characters get the crit save on save effect which can certainly help with this issue at higher levels, but that is level 11 and then 15, and it is Fort and Will. Wonderful for avoiding negative effects, but not great from preventing a lot of chip damage getting through with reflex targeting attacks. I think the class probably does very, very well in PFS, and with GMs that really hold back on combining...
All I wanted when I made this thread was to find out if after months of play, someone had figured out a way to make an optimal combat optimized summoner that didn't involve defaulting to knockdown.
A dragon or undead eidolon summoner that was played in some cool fashion that made you feel like you were powerful and not shooting a peashooter to the other class's cannons.
I can see after however long since the summoner was released, it's still about skills and playing a plant eidolon for knockdown. I don't want to play a plant eidolon.
Anyone that played a summoner in PF1 will know what I'm talking about. The number of different types of effective builds you had with a summoner whether playing vanilla summoner or unchained summoner was immense. The summoner was probably the most unique and interesting to build class in the game in PF1. It was still extremely impressive in battle.
You had the master summoner DMs hated.
You had the vanilla summoner with the multiple attacks.
You had the unchained summoner where you had a real golem or demon that received the abilities of a real golem or demon.
You had the synthesist where you wore the eidolon like armor.
You were truly the best summoner in the game with a standard action summon ability instead of a full round and multiple summons in a day.
You really stood out for being a summoner in PF1. This PF2 summoner doesn't really do anything particularly well. The eidolon isn't very modifiable or impressive in battle. Your summmons aren't better in any way really and you certainly can't use more of them per day.
It's like the PF2 game designer looked at the PF1 summoner and had some walking orders of "Make sure this summoner isn't overpowered" to the point they didn't give it anything particularly outstanding including the ability to summon or the eidolon.
It's a real disappointment after the amazing design of the original PF1 summoner. I was really hoping by this time someone had figured out how to make the new summoner somewhat powerful in play. It seems the same tactics discussed months or however long ago are still the ceiling of the summoner.
Play a plant eidolon with reach and get knockdown. You can do skills in two places. I guess for some that is the class fantasy of a summoner, but I find it hard to believe that most people wanting to play a summoner do so for skills or plant eidolon knockdown.
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I find that generally people who are most critical of a PF2 class are those who loved it in PF1, particularly when that class was well above the power curve in PF1 (personally I *hated* the PF1 summoner, but I like the PF2 version.)
The Eidolon should not be a straight up better combatant than a Fighter, Barbarian, Rogue, Monk, Inventor, Gunslinger, Investigator, Thaumaturge, or Inventor. Since if that were the case you wouldn't play whatever class gets outclassed by half of the Summoner package.
That people could build summoners that simply replaced martials was part of why I banned the class when I was GMing in PF1.
...I don't really think anyone is going to convince Deriven on this one, even though I think he would love to be convinced. But his party's biggest challenge is multiple lower level enemies with AoE abilities. This situation is also very much the bane of a summoner and the summoner is never going to shine in these scenarios.
Many parties don't optimize in the same fashion as Deriven's party and thus find level +3 or level +4 monsters to be the unwinnable fights. A 14th dragon in an open city absolutely shredded my level 11 party of 4 because range and mobility are a killer when you can land devastating criticals and still move far enough away to require 2 actions from your enemies to get back in range.
Gesalt gives us their definition of class evaluations which I don't think match up with either Deriven's or my own. People will definitely look for different things. I tend to agree with Deriven about the serious issue the Summoner has with the action economy loss that happens with unconsciousness. Like Deriven, I, and the GMs I play with, very commonly fold encounters on top of each other when the alarm gets raised which can lead to lots of level -1,2 or even -3 enemies piling up on the PCs in a way where HP attrition makes it a rare encounter when a whole 10 round fight has gone by without a single PC hitting the floor. Most classes can bounce back up pretty quickly. The summoner really struggles with that, depending upon their positioning when they or their eidolon gets taken out. Especially when those lower level enemies have AoE damage that damages on a save.
The summoner gets 2 saves where both characters get the crit save on save effect which can certainly help with this issue at higher levels, but that is level 11 and then 15, and it is Fort and Will. Wonderful for avoiding negative effects, but not great from preventing a lot of chip damage getting through with reflex targeting attacks. I think the class probably does very, very well in PFS, and with GMs that really
Summoner is my go to necromancer for having an eidelon, undead companion and 3 top level animate dead spells ready (with the right feats). Likewise, any themed summoning build I think of is best served with the corresponding eidelon and summoning spells. You can further tweak this with mini fireballs on summoning spells/ summoning your eidelon and can boost the damage of both with the summoner focus cantrip. You may not agree, but for me, my preferred summoner in the system is the summoner class. You may not consider these to be "optimized builds" but paizo specifically made this a working play style as opposed to an optimized one
...I don't really think anyone is going to convince Deriven on this one, even though I think he would love to be convinced. But his party's biggest challenge is multiple lower level enemies with AoE abilities. This situation is also very much the bane of a summoner and the summoner is never going to shine in these scenarios.
Many parties don't optimize in the same fashion as Deriven's party and thus find level +3 or level +4 monsters to be the unwinnable fights. A 14th dragon in an open city absolutely shredded my level 11 party of 4 because range and mobility are a killer when you can land devastating criticals and still move far enough away to require 2 actions from your enemies to get back in range.
Gesalt gives us their definition of class evaluations which I don't think match up with either Deriven's or my own. People will definitely look for different things. I tend to agree with Deriven about the serious issue the Summoner has with the action economy loss that happens with unconsciousness. Like Deriven, I, and the GMs I play with, very commonly fold encounters on top of each other when the alarm gets raised which can lead to lots of level -1,2 or even -3 enemies piling up on the PCs in a way where HP attrition makes it a rare encounter when a whole 10 round fight has gone by without a single PC hitting the floor. Most classes can bounce back up pretty quickly. The summoner really struggles with that, depending upon their positioning when they or their eidolon gets taken out. Especially when those lower level enemies have AoE damage that damages on a save.
The summoner gets 2 saves where both characters get the crit save on save effect which can certainly help with this issue at higher levels, but that is level 11 and then 15, and it is Fort and Will. Wonderful for avoiding negative effects, but not great from preventing a lot of chip damage getting through with reflex targeting attacks. I think the class probably does very, very well
How does the undead eidolon play? Does the hit point drain help some?
I've been kind of working on a necromancer type of summoner. I like the hit point drain ability. I was trying to figure out how to spec that out. I think I have an idea for an undead horde summoner dual class I might try.
Since this is a dual class game, I was thinking of undead eidolon summoner/wizard or witch. Then take undead master with the dead wizard feats. Get an undead companion. Then you have an undead eidolon, an undead companion, and maybe try to work in a summon spell with your actions. See how that works.
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I find that generally people who are most critical of a PF2 class are those who loved it in PF1, particularly when that class was well above the power curve in PF1 (personally I *hated* the PF1 summoner, but I like the PF2 version.)
The Eidolon should not be a straight up better combatant than a Fighter, Barbarian, Rogue, Monk, Inventor, Gunslinger, Investigator, Thaumaturge, or Inventor. Since if that were the case you wouldn't play whatever class gets outclassed by half of the Summoner package.
That people could build summoners that simply replaced martials was part of why I banned the class when I was GMing in PF1.
I loved that PF1 summoner. I hope whoever designed the PF1 summoner received an award. One of the best classes ever added to the game. It really fulfilled the class fantasy and you felt like a powerful summoner sending his minion into battle.
I'm really into elementals. I'm hoping this rage of elements book has an elemental eidolon. I might give that a shot even if it is weak just because I like the imagery of summoning an elemental into battle.
It's a real disappointment after the amazing design of the original PF1 summoner. I was really hoping by this time someone had figured out how to make the new summoner somewhat powerful in play. It seems the same tactics discussed months or however long ago are still the ceiling of the summoner.
Play a plant eidolon with reach and get knockdown. You can do skills in two places. I guess for some that is the class fantasy of a summoner, but I find it hard to believe that most people wanting to play a summoner do so for skills or plant eidolon knockdown.
It would be nice if it was a little bit more powerful. I'm not really expecting time will change that.
It doesn't really feel like a summoner, IMHO it is about half way there. It works for some concepts but not others. I'd like something else as well and for summoning to be a stronger tactic.
Deriven, the main part of my post was more about trying to sympathize and recognize that the GM play style your group runs with is going to be extra penalizing to the PF2 summoner class. I think that is the issue at my table as well and why the folks who have tried it have abandon it after 4 or 5 levels of play. I think it’s biggest weaknesses are going to always be amplified in severe fights against lots of lower level enemies, especially if they have AoE attacks. That is extremely uncommon in PFS and in the way many GMs here seem to run things, so it makes sense why that concern isn’t as wide spread.
I don't think this dude really needs/deserves sympathy. Why would you make a thread asking for opinions and then totally disregard anything you didn't already believe? Please take your extremely specific o p t i m i z a t i o n ideas and go home, to the table — if you're upset it's not as strong as in PF1E, recommend it whatever home-game buffs make you happy, and in the event of discontent about the flavor, try some changes or see if some homebrew/3rd party version is out there. The actual class itself has both draws and useful ways to contribute against boss enemies, which have been noted, and mostly dismissed; this thread arguably stopped having a point in the first page and was certainly useless by the end of the second.
...though I guess if people do have experience with Undead Eidolon that's worth sharing. At the very least for onlookers.
Thinking more about it from a class design point of view, I think the main issue the hybrid martial/something classes (Summoner, Alchemist, Investigator) are suffering from is that it's impossible to design 1/3rd of a martial without ending up with something unplayable.
On the other hand, it's perfectly possible to design 1/3rd of a caster (by giving a small amount of spell slots) and 1/3rd of a skill monkey (by giving a small amount of skill increases/feats): These characters are on par with other casters and skill monkeys when it comes to cast spells and use skills but they are limited in the number of cases when they can actually benefit from their casting/skill abilities.
Using the same kind of limitations on a martial would mean a martial who can only attack a certain number of times per day (???), or who can't attack every other round (???) or who can only attack if some conditions are met, like if the enemy is Prone or Flat-Footed (once again ???). All of this would look illogical and way too gamey.
So, in the end, Paizo designed an Eidolon that is taking a massive amount of class design and still feels like a weak martial because it is a weak martial.
I wonder how this conundrum could be solved without ending with an overcomplicated class...
What I would have changed is the eidolon progression, giving them some evolution feats on the road.
The summoner would have had then the choice to invest even more in evolution talents or other class feats ( or dedications).
Even 1 evolution feat by lvl 5/10/15/20 would have been perfect to make things smoother.
If you choose a Construct Eidolon, you get a free Evolution at level 1/7/17 which is quite close to what you suggest. But it's true that it's just one Eidolon type.
I know, but you renounce everything that makes the eidolon unique.
Plus, the lvl 7 feat is given at the worst level possible ( 8 would have been acceptable ).
I'd definitely prefer an eidolon that feels different because of unique perks.
The curren situation sees a summoner unable to trade their class feats to get dedications/archetypes. If they do so, they'll have to renounce customize either the eidolon or the summoner.
The best example is still a flying huge eidolon you can ride, that you can also bring within a dungeon ( making them shrink ). It requires 6 class feats and doesn't enhance your gameplay at all ( the eidolon just get more reach for their attacks ).
I don't have the same point of view, but I feel that we are not focusing on the same kind of builds. Between the different stat arrays and the impact on skills, the different Eidolon abilities (even if I fully agree that very few of them are relevant) and the feats, you can build a lot of potential Eidolons. You can't build the crazy Eidolons you were able to build in 1e, but that's true of a lot of things anyway.
And when you speak of your Flying Huge Eidolon Mount, you can build it, so I want to ask you: Where's the issue?
Deriven, the main part of my post was more about trying to sympathize and recognize that the GM play style your group runs with is going to be extra penalizing to the PF2 summoner class. I think that is the issue at my table as well and why the folks who have tried it have abandon it after 4 or 5 levels of play. I think it’s biggest weaknesses are going to always be amplified in severe fights against lots of lower level enemies, especially if they have AoE attacks. That is extremely uncommon in PFS and in the way many GMs here seem to run things, so it makes sense why that concern isn’t as wide spread.Not being common ( or just mostly absent) on both PFS and APs ( the worst I have seen is,on EC, a lot of -3/-4 enemies, as trivial encounters) seems to point the finger to some DM who don't properly build encounters on a homebrew campaign.
If the encounter is properly built, I think the worst that can happen to the summoner is not being able to keep up in terms of damage with other party members ( but overall, encounters faced by min maxed players would result in an easy win with or without the summoner), resulting in a bad feeling for then, like "I do low damage" "Everybody but me explodes enemies" and so on.
If the summoner gets hit in addition to the eidolon ( aoe apart) seems more an electric arc issue ( or any other 30 feet spell).
Placing themselves at 30 feet from the fight to cast a spell screams "I am next to you, please consider attack me too", so it has to be taken into account that exposing themselves to cast a spell could lure enenmies, especially when they'd waste their third action anyway.
AoE are a big issue, but I have to say I was surprised seeing how many builds didn't take protective bond by lvl 10.
I expect many summoner to be like "I want to use my reaction for AoO".
What I would have changed is the eidolon progression, giving them some evolution feats on the road.
The summoner would have had then the choice to invest even more in...
There is no value judgement being made here. Just a recognition that there are different styles of GMing and GM style greatly effects class effectiveness.
Long encounters with waves of lower level enemies attacking from different places on the map are encounter types where casters really start to shine and Martials have to care about mobility and resource management because their HP pools will get tested. Players have to decide between casting heal/using consumables, or seeing what the alert enemy does with their 10 minutes. Some parties can enjoy these challenges, others will not.
Summoners have a problem with longer encounters generally, but especially against overwhelming numbers. You only get one reaction a round. A lot of enemies going between party members means the risk of an out of place character getting brought down are increased. PF2 generally is pretty forgiving on the dangers of having your character drop. The summoner is incredibly punishing compared to most other classes.
As superbidi pointed out, there are times where the summon can mitigate this well. Having the summoner drop while in a safe place to recooperate after an encounter can let you sent you pet into very dangerous situations that no other character can really explore. But the summoner needs support to make that work and that likely places the healer and the summoner in a place where they are at risk of AoEs in long drawn out encounters.
Plus, the lvl 7 feat is given at the worst level possible ( 8 would have been acceptable ).
Strongly disagree. Level 6 is strong. At least Eidolon's Opportunity and Eidolon's Wrath. Tandem Strike is very useful. The others at level 6 have a role too. Not to mention what you didn't take from level 4.
Deriven, the main part of my post was more about trying to sympathize and recognize that the GM play style your group runs with is going to be extra penalizing to the PF2 summoner class. I think that is the issue at my table as well and why the folks who have tried it have abandon it after 4 or 5 levels of play. I think it’s biggest weaknesses are going to always be amplified in severe fights against lots of lower level enemies, especially if they have AoE attacks. That is extremely uncommon in PFS and in the way many GMs here seem to run things, so it makes sense why that concern isn’t as wide spread.
I appreciate the attempt at understanding, but that isn't the problem I'm seeing.
A player could play a summoner in our group and as long as they don't look at what the other people are doing in terms of numbers and impact, they would probably do just fine. They would probably be fine if we stopped playing at level 8 or 10 as well. But we play to high level with an average campaign level of 15 and usually to something like 17. We ended in Age of Ashes at 18, Extinction Curse at 16, and are taking a break in Agents at 15.
I'm sure at some point I'll try to make the summoner work again. See if I can figure out how to optimize it without knockdown.
I have some ideas from Captain Morgan's post using sustained spells. I'll see if that works. I might try an undead summoner with an undead companion and see how interesting that is. Fortunately we use Dual Class and FA which should make some combination work fairly well if I put some thought in it.
Plus, the lvl 7 feat is given at the worst level possible ( 8 would have been acceptable ).Strongly disagree. Level 6 is strong. At least Eidolon's Opportunity and Eidolon's Wrath.You already had a lvl 6 feat to get so, for example, Attack of opportunity.
Until lvl 12 you'll be stuck with AoO, and undortunately I couldn't find a better use for my combat focus point in change of extend boost, for either damage boost and excellent action management.
I tried using eidolon's wrath instead, but ended up being drastically worse ( damaging allies, losing one action per round, etc... ). It may be viable by lvl 12+ though.
By lvl 8 choices are far more real because of hulking size and magical adept ( boost summons too is strong ).
You'll have enough room for taking anything useful from lvl 2-6, but what will slow you down in terms of choices is not having 2x lvl 8 feats /( that would allow you to also pick a lvl 6 or lower feat, if you want to ).
By lvl 10 you'd be choosing between protectinve bond and weighty impact, and even merciless rend. You'll add either magical edept or hulking size, and so on. You'll keep bringing mandatory choices for either combat purposes and aesthetic ones, making it harder as the game proceeds.
Finally, mentioning tandem strike as useful is kinda insulting, but whatever.
Keep up the discussion. Let's see what we can figure out to optimize this class.
Honestly, I feel that most Summoner feats are aesthetic ones. The "mandatory" choices are not very strong or you need to combine a lot of them to end up with something impactful. In my opinion, as long as you take Tandem Move (outside some ranged or super reach builds, I don't think you can avoid it) and Protective Bond (at high level, it's life saving) you can just go with whatever you like.
The whole concept of the Summoner is to combine a caster and an Eidolon, something that the class does perfectly. If you want to play a martial, it's definitely not the class for you and grabbing all the potential feats on the Eidolon to catch up with martials will feel like an uphill battle (one that you'll lose whatever you do as the Eidolon can't catch up with a martial).
In my opinion, properly building a Summoner is to look for one-action actions that don't increase MAP (and to a lesser degree nice reactions). If you can combine a lot of them, you should be able to maintain a high efficiency.
First, the Summoner is no sidekick to the Eidolon, they are equal. I agree with you that martial-based feats are more appealing than caster-based ones so the Eidolon can improve way more than the Summoner and as such many builds end up focusing on the Eidolon. But that's a mistake to think that the Eidolon deserves more than 2 actions per round on average. If you don't cast spells (even cantrips), your contribution falls apart.
Also, the +10/-10 system is not impacting what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that the Summoner gets nearly the same casting proficiency than other casters (-0.6 to the save DC on average on an entire career, it's like starting with a 16 in your casting stat with a Legendary caster) and despite that doesn't feel at all like a full caster due to the spell slots limitations.
Doing the same thing to the Eidolon (giving them Legendary Proficiency with 16 starting stat) would be a massive improvement on the Eidolon efficiency that would completely imbalance the Summoner. The issue is that martials can't be limited the same way than casters, so you have to reduce their overall efficiency. But as soon as you reduce their damage output (even keeping the same proficiency and just reducing damage like in the Eidolon's case, so nothing linked to the +10/-10 system) you end up with a useless martial.
Balancing the martial part of hybrids generates weak martials everyone complains about.
This thread inspired me to tinker around with a summoner build on Pathbuilder.
Came up with a kobold with a dragon eidolon. By level 10 the eidolon attacks are +20 with an AC of 28, and with 156 hp I’d consider it competitive to other martial classes “by the numbers”. But the fun comes with the breath weapon on the eidolon and dragon’s breath on you, giving you access to an awful lot of repeatable AOE damage with a strong DC 29 save.
I dunno. Sounds pretty fun to me.
** spoiler omitted **I am not saying that the eidolon deserves more, I am saying that Paizo wrote the feats such that not focusing on the eidolon straight up feels bad.
Not at all. You can nearly ignore the Eidolon focused feats and end up with a proper character. But I'd then question why you play a Summoner. The reason players focus on the Eidolon feats is that they want to play with the Eidolon. If they wanted to play a caster, there are tons of better classes out there for that.
The caster side ends up a support for the eidolon
No, the Summoner part is very important. If you focus on supporting the Eidolon, you don't maximize your efficiency. Supporting your Eidolon is useful if you can't land a proper spell, otherwise, you should cast (and Electric Arc is a proper spell for a Summoner considering your sheer number of actions).
instead of being you know... a "summoner".
The Summoner's no Summoner, I can't disagree. But from my memories of 1e, it was already the case. All the Summoner I've played with were focusing on the Eidolon and were never casting a summon spell. So for me it's historical (but maybe it's just my experience).
The +/-10 is what makes even a slight decrease in damage output feel so bad, and martials are bound to it like glue. Everything regarding the balance is based on not wanting to break that. From the accuracy to how much damage should a crit do.
The issue is not the +/-10 but action efficiency. You can design a martial that does half of the damage of another martial, but then it means that your actions are worth half other characters'. And because of MAP, you can't just give more actions to the character to compensate for that.
Thus you cannot balance martials, its feast or famine.
I fully agree. For a martial to be playable, it needs to:
- Have enough survivability for the front line.- Have a proper action efficiency so a proper damage output per action.
This is what gives the martials extremely few flexibility. To cover these 2 points you need to be very close to every other martials.
This conversation is tangential to the subject of this discussion, maybe we should continue in private messages.
This thread inspired me to tinker around with a summoner build on Pathbuilder.
Came up with a kobold with a dragon eidolon. By level 10 the eidolon attacks are +20 with an AC of 28, and with 156 hp I’d consider it competitive to other martial classes “by the numbers”. But the fun comes with the breath weapon on the eidolon and dragon’s breath on you, giving you access to an awful lot of repeatable AOE damage with a strong DC 29 save.
I dunno. Sounds pretty fun to me.
I made a dragon eidolon. Went for a sort of storm dragon Raiden type of faux Japanese Tian Samurai that viewed his dragon eidolon as a manifestation of his katana similar to Bleach.
Visually pretty cool. I was dropped a few times and that is when I learned about the pain of getting an eidolon back in action. Not super fun. We were running an encounter from Rise of the Runelords modified for 2E. The encounter area is spread wide with multiple encounter locations you had move between to succeed.
I think tandem movement would have fixed the movement issue. It's almost a required feat to make movement manageable.
If you like the look and feel of the idea give it a shot.
I did have a low level nova movement where the eidolon crit with its attack and I hit the monsters with magic missile which killed it. But otherwise you are more martial than caster. You should focus on a martial strategy with your limited spells with the idea of having a spell up for a handful of fights a day.
I also tried a dwarf construct summoner with a construct because a dwarf with a forged suit of animated armor seemed cool. I gave him champion dedication to try to gain a MAPless reaction attack that also defended the eidolon.
But the GM derailed my idea by attacking the summoner when I closed to melee rather than the eidolon. The few times I did get to use the Champion reaction, I had trouble hitting because it is very hard to focus on your casting stat and build up your martial attack stat as a summoner for a melee summoner. It didn't work very well.
It's very easy to make a cool looking summoner with an interesting concept, but hard to make it perform well in play.
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I find the Dragon Eidolon to be uninspiring. It's abilities are mostly meh. The breath is ridiculous. And the 3 attacks for 2 actions are hardly strong.
For an AoE-based Eidolon, I find the Angel Eidolon with Eidolon's Wrath to be so much stronger. Sure, it's a focus spell, but it only affects enemies (unless you have some evil doer in the party, but it's uncommon) and it triggers one of the most common weakness.
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Okay, so it looks like OP's central question is this: How do you optimize a Summoner for raw damage output in comparison to the rest of the party?
Answer: You don't. Or rather, you can't.
Summoners are a generalist class, trading power for flexibility. Therefore, nothing they can do (save for a few silly little tricks relating to getting to have two fully-functional characters on the field at once) will be as potent as the efforts of another class firmly dedicated to that role. This is just How It Works in PF2, and why most optimization-oriented players despise the similarly flexible Alchemist.
What Summoners do well is cover a broad range of potential niches, albeit at the cost of staying power (via shared HP and limited slots) and proficiency ranks. In small or unbalanced parties, they absolutely thrive thanks to their ability to plug compositional holes and switch tactics on the fly. But at tables where everyone is expected to pick One Job and be the absolute best at it? Total anathema. While I'm hardly the expert you're looking for, Deriven--I GM more than I play, and the highest-level characters I've fielded have only been level 9--I do run for a player who's experiencing similar woes: He can't compete numbers-wise with the Magus and Rogue's burst damage, doesn't have the mobility of the Swashbuckler or the Monk, and lacks the focused spellcasting of the Druid. In this larger party of half-a-dozen players, it's difficult for him to find a role only he can fill, and since he's got a strong eye for optimization and Big Numbers like you do, he often feels... well, suboptimal.
I'm not saying the Summoner is a Bad Class--on the contrary, I think it's fantastic at what it does and am continually impressed by how I've seen multiple players use it--but that it's a bad fit for the specific kind of campaign you like to play. And I could be off-base about this, but to me this thread feels like a last-ditch effort to deny this reality before succumbing to grief over how your PF1 favorite was fundamentally changed by its transition into PF2. And that grief is totally justified: the PF1 Summoner sounds like it truly had it all, so going from godhood to just good enough is one hell of a downgrade.
However, the PF1 Summoner also sounds like ultimate exemplar of the kind of design problems PF2 is actively trying to avoid: If two classes are equally good at something, the one that can do something else on top of that renders the other obsolete. This main PF1 a train wreck of Ivory Tower Game Design and perpetual power creep. Which is... fine for certain types of players, I guess? Tons of people loved and still love the 3e family of games for that very reason. But for GMs, publishers, and people who just want to play the game without feeling like they need to build the Bestest, Most Strongest Spellcasting Big Boy of All Time, it sucks. And while pivoting away from PF1's design paradigms might give PF2 broader appeal for everyone else, it definitely stings when a publisher decides that they will no longer be catering to your tastes specifically. It's okay to feel bad about it, and the people telling you that you're wrong for not completely changing your tastes to better adhere to a newer product are jerks.
Anyway, there are two solutions I can think of to help you feel like less of a waste of space as a Summoner. The first is to embrace your role as a generalist instead of a specialist, focusing on switch-hitting and swapping tactics to provide more of the thing your party needs in the moment. That... might not work super-well for you if you've been comfortably playing the same way for 30 years, but it's never too late to try something new.
Second option is a homebrew solution I came up with to help along my own Summoner (who is honestly a bit of a Derivan Junior and would probably love to play alongside you), so it may not fly by your table, but: Consider allowing any martial-focused feats to apply to the Eidolon instead of the Summoner. Since this thread has already established that bringing both targets into melee is suicide, any feats that make your character better at hitting things are effectively dead on arrival. Letting the Eidolon enjoy those perks instead not only boosts its efficacy, but allows you to kick back and focus on control/support spells while your little buddy shreds on the front line. It's probably not "balanced" by PF2 paradigms, but I think it's a fair compromise between what the game does and what you wish it did.
Final, tangential thing, though: How the hell did you and your buds manage to maintain the exact same playstyle for 30 years without either boredom or GM adaptation shutting it down? As someone who's both new-ish to the scene (4 years lol) and NOT an optimizer, it's something I legitimately can't comprehend and would love to hear more about.
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Okay, so it looks like OP's central question is this: How do you optimize a Summoner for raw damage output in comparison to the rest of the party?
Answer: You don't. Or rather, you can't.
Summoners are a generalist class, trading power for flexibility. Therefore, nothing they can do (save for a few silly little tricks relating to getting to have two fully-functional characters on the field at once) will be as potent as the efforts of another class firmly dedicated to that role. This is just How It Works in PF2, and why most optimization-oriented players despise the similarly flexible Alchemist.
What Summoners do well is cover a broad range of potential niches, albeit at the cost of staying power (via shared HP and limited slots) and proficiency ranks. In small or unbalanced parties, they absolutely thrive thanks to their ability to plug compositional holes and switch tactics on the fly. But at tables where everyone is expected to pick One Job and be the absolute best at it? Total anathema. While I'm hardly the expert you're looking for, Deriven--I GM more than I play, and the highest-level characters I've fielded have only been level 9--I do run for a player who's experiencing similar woes: He can't compete numbers-wise with the Magus and Rogue's burst damage, doesn't have the mobility of the Swashbuckler or the Monk, and lacks the focused spellcasting of the Druid. In this larger party of half-a-dozen players, it's difficult for him to find a role only he can fill, and since he's got a strong eye for optimization and Big Numbers like you do, he often feels... well, suboptimal.
I'm not saying the Summoner is a Bad Class--on the contrary, I think it's fantastic at what it does and am continually impressed by how I've seen multiple players use it--but that it's a bad fit for the specific kind of campaign you like to play. And I could be off-base about this, but to me this thread feels like a last-ditch effort to deny this reality before succumbing to grief over how your PF1 favorite was fundamentally...
I'll try to give a succinct version.
I met my group back in the 80s when I was about 15 or 16 at a gaming convention sponsored by the local hobby store we all used to buy our gaming supplies and game in the back room with various groups. First two guys with the group wrote a module together they ran at the convention. I played in that module and also did a competitive game where groups went head to head playing the same module to see who would finish the battles and puzzles first. We ended up second place because we had the weak DM for the second half of the module and the good DM for the first half. Won a free year subscription to Dragon magazine. I haven't been to a convention since, but that one was pretty fun.
Our group has had people come and go over the years from that kind of core three including one of the core three and across various editions of D&D.
We started with Advanced D&D back in the 80s. You couldn't much optimize in that game other than getting cool magic items and exceeding the recommended level limits. Or rolling some random cool feature like ambidexterity for two weapon fighting or psionic potential. 2nd edition D&D was somewhat similar until the Unearthed Arcana came out with the Paladin-Cavalier and Barbarian which were a power level above the rest. We played and made stuff up according to the fantasy characters we like. Everything was relative in 1st and 2nd edition D&D save two-weapon fighting with ambidexterity was king of melee and casters were still ridiculous. But it didn't matter what level you were, one bad dice roll and you were dead.
Everything changed with the release of 3rd edition D&D in 2000 and the subsequent release of Everquest in 2003. 3rd edition D&D introduced to the game the idea of heavy customization for characters. So you build a character in many different ways to do many different things. It was a huge new concept in D&D, not necessarily in tabletop role-playing as other systems had much greater customization.
With heavy customization, you started to see that some options were measurably worse than others in battle. So if you played those options, you were demonstrably worse than the other players in damage. No one in my group particularly enjoys being the sidekick to the boss killer in the group.
When you grow up watching 80s movies like Conan or Ramba or Predator and reading comic books and fantasy stories, you tend to want to be the hero in these games meaning everyone wants to be Batman, no one wants to be Robin. If you're customizing your character in 3rd edition and you're doing 25 to 50% less damage than the guy next to you, you're basically Robin or Mr. Side Character in the story always calling for help from the main character who is blowing everything up with his optimal build.
Then you have the release of Everquest in 2003. This takes the whole don't be Robin mentality and turns it up to 11. You don't want to be Robin in 3rd edition, but you they don't tolerate Robin in Everquest. If you want to be the top guild or do the high end content in those games, everyone has to be Batman or you will fail or have a real hard time losing experience, going on terrible corpse runs, losing your gear. You can't afford Robin's in your group, so everyone is real focused on min-maxing as the term came to be known. Guild leaders are watching the damage metrics on meters to ensure no weak players are holding everyone back from winning.
Some of my group took this to the extreme. Some of us did it, but we couldn't commit that level to a video game so became satisfied with enjoying the world. And some quit EQ altogether as that mentality was draining and the game didn't let you do much if you weren't going to embrace that mentality. After we went back to tabletop gaming, the optimizer mentality was even more engrained.
So this play-style has been part of our group since 3rd edition where character customization had such a heavy impact on in game performance. It's carried over in 5E D&D into PF1 into PF2. We didn't play much 4th edition D&D. We didn't enjoy it.
Everyone is a competitive gamer. A few of the guys got into competitive Magic where deck building was important. Some got into first person shooters. Some guys like reading the books and figuring out crazy broken combinations. So when every new edition comes out, the same process starts of trying to figure out the most powerful characters they can make.
As far as the DMs, they have different styles too. One of the DMs makes the game fun and doesn't care if the players rip the game apart. We call him the Monty Haul DM because he makes the game easy and gives out nice treasure. One of our DMs is a killer. He loves making things so you can die on a random bad roll and his campaigns rarely last very long. Fortunately he doesn't DM often because he doesn't like to learn all the rules. One guy customizes a lot of the game. He just writes super overpowered monsters that hammer the group because he overcompensated to deal with the min-maxing. When I DM I enjoy the challenge of min-maxing the enemy to challenge the players. This was a lot of work in 3rd edition and PF1, but very easy in PF2.
Why haven't we changed or done anything about it? We all like playing the hero in the game. We all want to be Gandalf or Aragorn or Rand Al-Thor or Raistlin or Captain America or Thor. No one wants to be the sidekick and we measure that by how well we do in battle. If we're doing 15 or 20% less damage with no dramatic critical hits or the like and the other guy is hammering away getting crits as a fighter or huge barbarian crits or launching a cool AOE spell with a couple of critical fails and we're hitting for 80% or less of that damage or only able to cast a big spell once or twice a day, it's not particularly fun because we feel like the weak guy on the team. Everyone is outshining our character and making us look like some Kurt Rambis coming off the bench in a Lakers blowout (you gotta be real old to know this reference) or Hawkeye shooting his arrows after The Hulk just smashed a huge alien space lizard.
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I don't see the point in getting on the OP about the way he plays his games. Not everyone (not even a majority) is going to want to play high op PF2, there's absolutely nothing wrong about chill, low optimization games where the focus is on just hitting things really hard and not on figuring out how to best exploit the system, even if that particular niche of game doesn't play to the summoner's strengths.
I find the Dragon Eidolon to be uninspiring. It's abilities are mostly meh. The breath is ridiculous. And the 3 attacks for 2 actions are hardly strong.
For an AoE-based Eidolon, I find the Angel Eidolon with Eidolon's Wrath to be so much stronger. Sure, it's a focus spell, but it only affects enemies (unless you have some evil doer in the party, but it's uncommon) and it triggers one of the most common weakness.
Yeah, I've never been a fan of most two-action abilities Eidolons get, especially the exclusively damage-based ones like the Dragon's. I'd rather use those actions on a utility or support spell from a Fey Eidolon.
Although, I've never considered using Eidolon's Wrath with alignment damage to avoid the friendly fire. I always avoided it because of the friendly fire, but I might try this out on a Demon Eidolon now.
Thanks for the play history breakdown, Deriven. It was really nice to get some perspective from someone who's been in the scene for so long. I personally don't get the appeal of everyone competing to be The Biggest Hero--I tend to enjoy ensemble casts where everyone brings something different to the table and nobody hogs the spotlight--but it sounds like nailing that fantasy is super important to you.
But yeah, the Summoner ain't it. The flexibility the class offers does wonders in the hands of a master tactician, but none of those wonders include getting the highest score. You need raw numerical advantage for that, which the class sacrifices in favor of having more options at its disposal. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a support class, though; it's neither Batman nor Robin, but a different, third thing. It's a... pivot, I guess, if that makes sense. No other class can drop a high-level spell and apply melee pressure on the same turn like it can; only the Magus comes close, but it lacks the action economy cheats to pull it off, and thus goes for nova damage instead.
So, if you want to build an effective Summoner, you need to think beyond the optimum rotation and instead come up with a few different strategies you and your Eidolon could deploy for specific situations. Like you pointed out earlier, the Mean, Green, Tripping Machine is strong-ish but not mighty, and while the spell slots are nice, a dedicated caster will always be able to do its thing more and do it better. So yeah, you're gonna stay a few points behind everyone else, but unlike the melee guy who gets screwed at range (or the Bard who gets shut down by something immune to mental effects), you will always be able to do something valuable. It's like a consistent 75% rather than a situational 100%. If that's not something you want to do, that's fine--some people hate healing, some people get bored just hitting stuff with swords over and over--but I'd advise against trying to force that square PF1 peg into a round PF2 hole.
If you get the chance, though, let me know how much of a difference my homebrew "fix" (mentioned in my previous comment) makes. The Summoner at my table seems to be happy with it, but then again we're all kind of bumbling morons when it comes to anything more complex than Lasers & Feelings.
Although... if you miss the 2e days, before video games and complicated character builds birthed the Optimization Monster, I'd say check out some OSR titles. Kevin Crawford's Worlds Without Number (or Stars Without Number if you like sci-fi) is a particular standout in that sub-genre. I'm actually in a couple SWN campaigns myself; its looser and grittier style of play keeps the crunchy, high-fantasy beast that is PF2 from feeling stale.
Isn't a little underpowered on a demon eidoon which is by default chaotic evil?
I could understand choosing alignment damage on an angel eidolon to deal good damage ( dealing zero damage against neutral beings, but also zero damage on your allies), but unless being evildoers against the forces of good I can hardly see evil/chaotic damage as useful on any AP.
Considering that alignment (damage) is one of the most commonly tweaked/houseruled/ignored mechanics (right after Free Archetype lmao), it might not actually be that much of a problem at most tables. The no-homebrew-allowed PFS would be the only place it would for sure be an issue, but demon eidolons are banned from it already.
Hmmm... then again, I might be guilty of some sampling bias there, as very few people I know (self included) are capable of having Normal Opinions about alignment. I wonder what the actual ratio is of home games who run alignment RAW versus those who do not?
Isn't a little underpowered on a demon eidoon which is by default chaotic evil?
I could understand choosing alignment damage on an angel eidolon to deal good damage ( dealing zero damage against neutral beings, but also zero damage on your allies), but unless being evildoers against the forces of good I can hardly see evil/chaotic damage as useful on any AP.
Oh, I should've specified I was considering it for an upcoming evil campaign I'm going to play in.
Excellent choice then!Oh, I should've specified I was considering it for an upcoming evil campaign I'm going to play in.Isn't a little underpowered on a demon eidoon which is by default chaotic evil?
I could understand choosing alignment damage on an angel eidolon to deal good damage ( dealing zero damage against neutral beings, but also zero damage on your allies), but unless being evildoers against the forces of good I can hardly see evil/chaotic damage as useful on any AP.
Well... depends on who you're likely to e facing off against. If you're usually getting in fights with Good characters, then it's great. If most of the campaign is Evil-on-Evil intrigues somewhere like Cheliax, then maybe not so great.
This whole discussion made me look more at the Summoner. After toying with the values I've discovered that it's actually possible to make a damage oriented Summoner.
I've compared 2 simple damage sequence:
- Summoner with Electric Arc and Angel Dex-based Eidolon with 2 Strikes from Ranged Combattant.
- Shortbow Fighter with 3 Strikes.
Damage is extremely close, the Summoner deals higher damage against higher level opponents, the Fighter deals higher damage against lower level ones. But I have counted the Electric Arc damage only once when you should easily get 2 targets against lower level opponents so the Summoner actually outdamages the Fighter.
The Fighter is unbuffed. It's quite easy to improve both action economy and damage on a bow Fighter. Also the Shortbow has a higher range.
But on the other hand, the Summoner is dealing a greater choice of damage types, facing nearly no resistances and exploiting more weaknesses. And the Eidolon is a perfect switch hitter for no cost (it even deals more damage in melee) when the Fighter can be shut down at melee range with AoO or Grapple. On top of it, the Summoner has 4 slots for AoE abilities (or healing) when the Fighter has no multitarget abilities and roughly no versatility beyond what it can acquire through feats.
So, it depends if you consider a bow Fighter to be a good damage dealer or not, but the Summoner can be built to be competitive against it.
I have used the Electric Arc and attack combo. I do not consider a shortbow fighter a top damage dealer. I look at archers as gaining an advantage from being able to engage without having to use move actions or have to maintain a position within easy attack range or susceptibility to auras and the like. Ranged attacking has inherent defensive advantages that offset the damage.
The eidolon is usually in melee range and is almost always at risk putting the summoner at risk as well.
I've decided to give the summoner a chance again. I like the class too much and I like dreaming up summoner concepts.
So I'm going with an Undead Summoner and wizard dual class. It's not perfectly ideal, but I like the feel of a sort of true necromancner.
The undead eidolon has Energy Heart and sonic claws that are the screams of the souls it has devoured. His eidolon is the skeleton of a shadow demon (or sort of a blend of the essence what a skeleton of a shadow demon might be like). I like the idea that the Eidolon and Summoner can be healed with positive and negative energy at two points. If someone does negative AoE energy damage, you have built in resistance to it both ways.
I'll drop how I'm building it in this thread if I find some interesting combination. It's too bad Animate Dead isn't a summon spell.