The Eidolon is not a minion. That fact alone lets it be useful in ways that animal companions and familiars cannot be when it is off acting on its own. The fact it gets all of your skills at your proficiency rank is just another way it is different, not to mention most Eidolon don’t require feats or spells or specialized items to be able to do manipulate actions or speak or be put away when not useful. Also picking a lock is the only application of thievery that always require’s thieves’ tools. If the trap stat block doesn’t call it out, I’ve never seen a GM require it. So even if your GM were to put a hardline down on Eidolons not being able to use required tool kits for skills, the most valuable aspect of having the eidolon disable traps remains: even if the trap blows up badly in your face, you fall unconscious next to your party where they can help you without having to walk into the trapped area.
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The Eidolon is not a minion. That fact alone lets it be useful in ways that animal companions and familiars cannot be when it is off acting on its own.
It's limited to 100' away from you and uses your actions without any boosters: you actually end up with less total actions than a PC + an animal companion [4]. It also uses your own MAP and has the same minion limitations on out of combat activities... I just don't see the same utility you seem to from the multiclass Eidolon.
The fact it gets all of your skills at your proficiency rank is just another way it is different, not to mention most Eidolon don’t require feats or spells or specialized items to be able to do manipulate actions or speak or be put away when not useful. Also picking a lock is the only application of thievery that always require’s thieves’ tools.
With the open question about item use without the Eidolon trait, it makes manipulate of questionable use. And even if you can manage to attempt to disarm a trap without the tools, you'll miss out on the bonuses they give making it much less of a boon: There are easier ways to get an expendable sap to trip traps.
even if the trap blows up badly in your face, you fall unconscious next to your party where they can help you without having to walk into the trapped area.
I mean I can use a disposable summons to also set off a trap and you don't need the follow-up heal step. Or just take a 2nd level feat, Spell Trickster Dedication, to use the skill yourself at 20' away.
I just don't see the same utility you seem to from the multiclass Eidolon.
The multiclass Eidolon is definitely worse at skill helping than the normal Eidolon. You still have a few assets:
- 2 stats array. If you allocate them properly (which you should) you ends up with bonuses to a lot of skills.- Master/Legendary Aid. As it doesn't have actions on its own, this one is more limited than a normal Eidolon. But you can use it at least for the quick skill checks (in one round you can use one action and reaction to Aid while the other one makes a 1 or 2 action skill check) which is useful for Haunts and traps (if the GM is ok for someone helping at trap disarming).
- Double immunity. It's mostly useful for passive Perception checks and Recall Knowledge checks.
- Being at 2 places at once (can prove itself useful at times).
It's not as good as a normal Eidolon, but it's definitely miles ahead a Familiar or Animal Companion, as the second one has no use for skills when the first one needs to pay every little bonus with a Familiar ability.
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- 2 stats array.
This isn't as exciting once you factor in the required cha 14 for the dedication and the preset stat arrays: it's quite hard to min/max for a dramatic difference taking these into account. If I pick an Angelic Avenger for instance, i'm them stuck with Str 18, Dex 14, Con 16, Int 8, Wis 12, Cha 10: great for athletics checks, but not great for much else. And when you look for mental stats, you're limited to a 16 cha [only 2 higher than what you need to get the dedication] or a 14 for int/wis meaning it's only a few point difference at most and your other ones are likely a 10 or 8.
I've tried various builds with various Eidolon and always ended up unsatisfied.
- Master/Legendary Aid.
This can be good [bigger bonuses] but you actually have to roll so you can still end up with a bonus of 1 if you roll a 1 even if the total would be 20+. The benefit of the various Aid abilities for familiars as that auto crit so you always get a +2 and even at low level automatically gives a +1. Now if the PC helps the Eidolon, there are some good feats for that that do similar things but that limits the usefulness of different stat arrays.
- Double immunity. It's mostly useful for passive Perception checks and Recall Knowledge checks.
Already went over Recall: unless you both have a good roll to start off with, it just means a good chance to get incorrect info and if you both DO have a good chance, then your 2 stat arrays aren't very different. Now perception rolls are always good to roll, but familiars and animal companions can do this too.
- Being at 2 places at once (can prove itself useful at times).
I find it pretty much a net 0 as it can be good or bad, especially as it's only 100' apart. This means you might get to roll twice and take the worst save or get hit by an effect that would have miss the PC. This is especially true as you don't have the summoners d10 hit die.
It's not as good as a normal Eidolon, but it's definitely miles ahead a Familiar or Animal Companion, as the second one has no use for skills when the first one needs to pay every little bonus with a Familiar ability.
I don't find the need to 'buy' the ability for the skill I want to buff an issue, when the result is automatic and I 100% know that no matter what group I'm in, my tools will work.
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it's quite hard to min/max for a dramatic difference
I'd say luckily. If you could get a dramatic difference it would be certainly too strong. Having just a +2 is already quite nice as it's equivalent to an increase in skill proficiency.
This can be good [bigger bonuses] but you actually have to roll so you can still end up with a bonus of 1 if you roll a 1 even if the total would be 20+. The benefit of the various Aid abilities for familiars as that auto crit so you always get a +2 and even at low level automatically gives a +1. Now if the PC helps the Eidolon, there are some good feats for that that do similar things but that limits the usefulness of different stat arrays.
There are a few levels where the Familiar is competitive in terms of bonus. But at level 10+ you take the Eidolon over the Familiar any day.
Also, the Familiar can Aid on only a limited set of skills when the Eidolon can Aid on all your Master and Legendary skills.As a side note, if I go for Summoner Dedication for skills, I'd certainly do it on a Rogue/Investigator to benefit from this bonus on a wide array of skills.
Already went over Recall: unless you both have a good roll to start off with, it just means a good chance to get incorrect info
If you are rolling a skill that you are increasing, critical failures should only happen on a 1. Also, with your logic, no one would make Recall Knowledge checks unless they are maximized in the skill and associated stats. It hasn't been my experience as of now.
Now perception rolls are always good to roll, but familiars and animal companions can do this too.
Not really. Companions are in general too dumb to understand anything, so besides an ambush they won't be able to roll. Familiars are slightly more intelligent lore-wise but it stays extremely limited. My experience is that they extremely rarely roll when the Eidolon always rolls.
I find it pretty much a net 0 as it can be good or bad, especially as it's only 100' apart. This means you might get to roll twice and take the worst save or get hit by an effect that would have miss the PC. This is especially true as you don't have the summoners d10 hit die.
I was not speaking about combats. Outside combat, it can be sometimes interesting to be at two places at once with a link allowing the Summoner to see through the Eidolon's eyes.
The Eidolon scout is definitely an issue if it's over used. It's also mainly an issue when you are in a dungeon where everything wants to kill you.
In more complex dungeons, you need to interact with rooms or denizens before combat to happen, or you may sometimes want to avoid raising an alarm. It still gives you a great advantage, especially against ambushes, but it doesn't turn a dungeon into a cakewalk.
And if your adventure is not only about dungeons, then it doesn't help all the time.
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I'd say luckily. If you could get a dramatic difference it would be certainly too strong. Having just a +2 is already quite nice as it's equivalent to an increase in skill proficiency.
With most of the skills falling under mental stats, you're only looking at secondary/tertiary levels for the stats which might be better than you have but isn't at the level of someone specialized in it, especially if you can't use tools. As such, it's hard for me to justify dropping master/legendary in the skills, limiting its usefulness.
There are a few levels where the Familiar is competitive in terms of bonus. But at level 10+ you take the Eidolon over the Familiar any day.
Also, the Familiar can Aid on only a limited set of skills when the Eidolon can Aid on all your Master and Legendary skills.As a side note, if I go for Summoner Dedication for skills, I'd certainly do it on a Rogue/Investigator to benefit from this bonus on a wide array of skills.
I end up spending MUCH more time at levels 1-10 then I do 11+ so I put more importance on those. That and the automatic nature of Familiar Aid puts it ahead for me. As to familiars being limited in what skills they can aid, I'd say it's also limited on what skills you'd want an Eidolon to roll on depending on it's stats and your skill levels so I don't find it much different.
If you are rolling a skill that you are increasing, critical failures should only happen on a 1. Also, with your logic, no one would make Recall Knowledge checks unless they are maximized in the skill and associated stats. It hasn't been my experience as of now.
I see a LOT of rare/unique targets so I see crit failures higher than 1 often: as such, I rarely see everyone pick up dice and ask to roll Recall checks when they aren't close to maxed out [or have special abilities for Recall].
My experience is that they extremely rarely roll when the Eidolon always rolls.
My experience is the exact opposite of yours then: I rarely see a situation where familiars and animal companions aren't rolling Perception [only when it's for something like Lie do I see animal companions excluded since it's a Linguistic check].
I was not speaking about combats.
I wasn't limiting it to combat: things like traps, poison gases, diseases, ect can happen while scouting and where you're hiding. And no matter how you plan, it can end up turning into combat and/or danger while you're apart.
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There are two reasons the eidolon breaks the game in a way that familiars and animal companions don't, and it has more to do with how most GMs run their game instead of strict mechanical rules.
When scouting with animal companions and familiars, DMs can plausibly avoid spoiling encounters for the party, as in the familiar rat can't interact with the magical doodad / can't open a specific door etc. Same with most summons.
With eidolons, this no longer works. They have the agency, intellect and manipulation ability of a party member, so whatever dangers the room had, the party can plausibly trigger and interact with 100% safely through the eidolon.
This becomes more lopsided when the cost of losing the eidolon (having to heal the summoner from 0% to 100%) is smaller than even a lvl 1 spell slot for the first 5 levels of the game.
It's a classic problem. Every TTRPG breaks down if the party is safely able to scout ahead. It's the optimal way to play, it makes the game run slower and less interactive, it reduces the stakes and makes everyone except the scout twiddle their thumbs. In pf2e this problem manifests itself in the form of the eidolon dedication.
To be honest, there is no easy way to solve this RAW. The solution is always an out-of-game buy-in from the players not play optimally in order for everyone to have more fun. On the GM side it requires the players to trust that they don't get instakilled just for exploring/entering rooms/interacting with the world. Otherwise you can't really blame players for the 2022 flavor of bringing along 50 goats / goblins under the suggestion spell on a leash into every dungeon, which was the optimal way to play tomb of horrors for example.
I think this only a problem if you have impatient players who just want to rush in and murder stuff. Scouting lowers the stakes, but that isn't inherently bad. Being able to plan for encounters ahead of time adds a new dimension to the game which is quite fun for a lot of people.
I end up spending MUCH more time at levels 1-10 then I do 11+ so I put more importance on those. That and the automatic nature of Familiar Aid puts it ahead for me. As to familiars being limited in what skills they can aid, I'd say it's also limited on what skills you'd want an Eidolon to roll on depending on it's stats and your skill levels so I don't find it much different.
To each their own.
And no, the Eidolon is not limited per se. It will, ultimately, be able to help you on any skill. Also, if you grab Cooperative Nature, you can be the one Aiding and it becomes even faster.I see a LOT of rare/unique targets so I see crit failures higher than 1 often: as such, I rarely see everyone pick up dice and ask to roll Recall checks when they aren't close to maxed out [or have special abilities for Recall].
You're speaking about combat Recall Knowledge checks. In combat, you'll use your Eidolon to RK rarely as it costs action. Outside combat, on the other hand, RK checks are common and the difficulty is rarely high.
My experience is the exact opposite of yours then: I rarely see a situation where familiars and animal companions aren't rolling Perception [only when it's for something like Lie do I see animal companions excluded since it's a Linguistic check].
The Familiars and AC can't roll to:
- Find traps- Find secret doors
- Search a room
- Sense Motive
And then there's the issue of communication. Sometimes, the AC/Familiar will detect something but will be unable to communicate it properly. For example if the AC smells something, it can't tell you if it's sulfur, a creature, or whatever.
So, I don't understand why your GMs allow your Familiars and ACs to roll so often. Are you always ending up in ambushes?