While playing my half-elf summoner in PFS, I came to a dark area. Lacking a source of light, and not wanting to alert possible enemies in the area to my presence, I told the GM that I was going to use Share Senses to see through my eidolon's eyes while navigating the area. (My eidolon has Improved Senses so he's practically built for this kind of thing.)
I was expecting the GM to saddle me with half speed penalties or something like that, as I imagined that it would be somewhat disorienting walking about with a different perspective.
What I wasn't expecting was for the GM to essentially say that I couldn't do that (or rather, strongly discourage doing that). When I asked why not, he said that it's ALL senses, not just sight. We couldn't just hold hands and have the eidolon lead me through; I wouldn't even be able to feel his hand. Lacking any senses of my own, the GM didn't think it would effectively allow me to follow or be pulled about by the eidolon. "You wouldn't feel the tugs, or the floor beneath your feet."
I'm skeptical that the ability is that limited, however, and so now I'm here wondering what other peoples' thoughts are on the matter. Was I unfairly shut down? How might you have run it had you been the GM?
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Hmmm
The rules are below. (A bit weird in my opinion)
Raw seems like your GM is correct. It is an ability, where you sit somewhere safe and Scout through your eidolon. But you dont get to use the eidolon senses - you use your own - so no darkvision ect. if you dont have it allready.
But the special ability where your eidolon projects its senses to you (darkvision, smell, tremorsense or what ever) and the eidolon stays behind somewhere safe could be a solution.
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You project your senses into your eidolon, allowing you to perceive through it. When you do, you lose all sensory information from your own body, but can sense through your eidolon's body for up to 1 minute. You can Dismiss this effect.
Special This action has the trait matching your eidolon's tradition (arcane, divine, occult, or primal). Your eidolon can also use this ability. When it does, it projects its senses into your body.
I'm skeptical that the ability is that limited, however, and so now I'm here wondering what other peoples' thoughts are on the matter. Was I unfairly shut down? How might you have run it had you been the GM?
Yes, I feel that having both Share Senses and Expanded Senses coming from the same class means that the two abilities should interact favorably rather than unfavorably.
The GM is within the strict letter of the law in this regard, I suppose. At least partially. But it does seem like a very antagonistic ruling to make. Basically the GM was upset that your character could easily bypass the challenge they had placed before you - just like any other character that had darkvision as an Ancestry ability.
For a less antagonistic reading:
Basically this is like walking around blindfolded, but where you are allowed to peek. Share Senses takes one action to use. Use it for a couple of seconds to get the visual input of where things are, then return your senses to yourself for a few more seconds to actually move around.
Mechanically I would make this cost you your exploration activity. One action each round on Share Senses. Your Eidolon could still use an exploration activity of their own due to Act Together. And you would have to stay adjacent to each other so that your borrowed vision isn't too far apart from your actual location.
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Just make your Eidolon to carry you. May cannot be useful during an encounter but in exploration mode may solve this question.
Yeah, I was going to suggest the same thing. Have the eidolon carry you, or drag if necessary. If your GM wants to be antagonistic about it.
Wont work in combat, but should get you through exploration stuff.
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I'd also argue that your body's senses are functionally normally, but you're using magic to substitute what you consciously perceive.
For instance, nobody is going to suggest you instantly fall over and ragdoll because you lose your sense of balance, right? (I mean, if we're being literal - the human body has more than five senses since there's subtle stuff like balance, proprioception, etc). All the subconscious/automatic stuff is still functioning.
Walking is not something you process consciously (as in, you form the intent to walk but all the sensory information is processed subconsciously to achieve it), so it shouldn't be impacted. I'd agree you couldn't feel the eidolon holding your hand, but that just means the eidolon has to hold it tight. Or you need to keep your body within the eidolon's field of vision (I would argue it's reasonable for a summoner to have tried this enough to stumble through it).
In combat is definitely fuzzier, but that's largely due to the lack of fine details on how magic is aimed. How does Electric Arc target? Stuff like Ray of Frost is clear enough, but...
I will disagree with you here.
While the consciousness has left the body only the autonome nervous system works. So the left behind (temporary brainless) body will breath (nice) and the hearth will beat (nice) the organs will digest food, fight infections, clean the blood ect. (nice again)
Reflexes will work, so the body will shake if freezing, or twitch if the tendon reflexes are activated.
So all the stuff you cannot directly control consciously will continue to function.
But walking or standing is not an autonome activity, it is a automated function which the frontal cortex dont need to control because the person has years of experience and has it automated in the cerebellum.
If you lose all sensory imput from the left behind body, then your consciousness wouldn’t even register pain if some one stab your body.
If your body is choked you would properbly feel faint an instant before you pass out.
To put it short - find a safe place to lay down while you use share senses.
For that particular situation, it seems the Eidelon on its own could guide-walk your PC w/o using the ability at all (assuming you do have a light source for if you encounter enemies!). And as mentioned, you could stop and check yourself through its senses if you don't trust the Eidelon's interpretation of the environment. It should also be able to your PC running updates on exactly what's happening, albeit at a whisper. Or you could do a lot of incremental scouting with your Summoner in the adjacent section. That last seems to effectively operate the same as what you want. Share Senses, Eidelon moves 20', Dismiss SS, move self 20' in dark, repeat. Annoying, yet since it's on a pattern, just "repeat" as needed.
And yeah, it seems Share Senses isn't meant for coordinated actions between you & your Eidelon. Like at all, so it might be just for scouting, which is quite a strong ability IMO given one can retrieve Eidelons. So I agree with your GM that it's "that limited" in that it's "that useful", yet not any more than that.
To put it short - find a safe place to lay down while you use share senses.
If the ability was meant to be that restrictive, it should have specified that in the ability's rules. Otherwise it is quite a trap option.
Compare to the specific rules in Astral Projection.
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...I'd also argue that your body's senses are functionally normally, but you're using magic to substitute what you consciously perceive.
For instance, nobody is going to suggest you instantly fall over and ragdoll because you lose your sense of balance, right? (I mean, if we're being literal - the human body has more than five senses since there's subtle stuff like balance, proprioception, etc). All the subconscious/automatic stuff is still functioning.
Walking is not something you process consciously (as in, you form the intent to walk but all the sensory information is processed subconsciously to achieve it), so it shouldn't be impacted. I'd agree you couldn't feel the eidolon holding your hand, but that just means the eidolon has to hold it tight. Or you need to keep your body within the eidolon's field of vision (I would argue it's reasonable for a summoner to have tried this enough to stumble through it).
In combat is definitely fuzzier, but that's largely due to the lack of fine details on how magic is aimed. How does Electric Arc target? Stuff like Ray of Frost is clear enough, but...
I will disagree with you here.
While the consciousness has left the body only the autonome nervous system works. So the left behind (temporary brainless) body will breath (nice) and the hearth will beat (nice) the organs will digest food, fight infections, clean the blood ect. (nice again)
Reflexes will work, so the body will shake if freezing, or twitch if the tendon reflexes are activated.
So all the stuff you cannot directly control consciously will continue to function.But walking or standing is not an autonome activity, it is a automated function which the frontal cortex dont need to control because the person has years of experience and has it automated in the cerebellum.
If you lose all sensory imput from the left behind body, then your consciousness wouldn’t even register pain if some one stab your body.
If your body is choked you
Yes you are right. My fault. The consciousness stays and gets its sensory imput from the eidolon only.
I don't think it is a trap option even with that ruling. See Castilliano's breakdown.
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To put it short - find a safe place to lay down while you use share senses.If the ability was meant to be that restrictive, it should have specified that in the ability's rules. Otherwise it is quite a trap option.
Compare to the specific rules in Astral Projection.
I don’t think it is a trap option. Just a more limited option.
But the special part where the eidolon can project its senses into the players body is a bit weird.
Why can’t a familiar do that? What is the purpose?
But the special part where the eidolon can project its senses into the players body is a bit weird.
Why can’t a familiar do that? What is the purpose?
Familiars are in general pretty limited in what they can do. What would you do with the ability for the familiar to see through the master's senses?
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Familiars are in general pretty limited in what they can do. What would you do with the ability for the familiar to see through the master's senses?But the special part where the eidolon can project its senses into the players body is a bit weird.
Why can’t a familiar do that? What is the purpose?
Yes this was my thinking as well.
What can you do with at Eidolon perceiving through your senses? Why does this special rule exist?Is it as I wrote earlier that it can lend you its darkvision, smell ect.?
The wording is “When it does, it projects its senses into your body.”
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It means you are the spy drone instead of the eidolon.
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Hmmm.. Well "you lose all sensory information from your own body" seems pretty self explanatory: you don't have ANY sensory info from your body like sense of balance, touch or anything else. IMO, the DM's ruling is spot on. You can't really be led around when you can't even tell where up is or where the ground is. Now having the eidolon princess carry you around is doable. Maybe if you plan to do this often, you could get a wheelchair so they can push you around.
While that makes sense if you are using Share Senses for long stretches of time, how about using an improvised Exploration Activity of Share Senses for 1 action out of every 3? Are they still senseless and helpless for the entire time? Or are they able to use that to move around in the dark?
While that makes sense if you are using Share Senses for long stretches of time, how about using an improvised Exploration Activity of Share Senses for 1 action out of every 3? Are they still senseless and helpless for the entire time? Or are they able to use that to move around in the dark?
It doesn't really make much sense anyway you frame it unless you have someplace to stow the summoner: If you use it as an exploration activity you only get one action per round, so ALL you can do is sense or sense one round and move the next, which still means you'd be moving without the senses. If you used it as a tiring activity [2 actions/round], it wouldn't be much better as you'd see the surroundings on the 1st, lose the extra senses and still have to move around in the dark on the second: it'd be like someone clicking the lights on in a room for a second before clicking it back off and then you try to move around in it for 25'...
It's really JUST a scout with your pet ability as being insensate with your body on use and unable to borrow the senses when you can actually do something.
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It means you are the spy drone instead of the eidolon.Yes but why would the player need that? Why make that special rule?
So that the eidolon can be aware of what their summoner is up to. Could be useful in locations where monsters aren't tolerated.
Also, it might allow the summoner to ID a suspect that only their eidolon has seen.
You can still move half your speed doing 1 action things in exploration.
It's built around doing an action 1 turn and moving the next: it's put down as 1/2 move because it's a generalization looking at larger periods of time.
Or in this case have the eidolon move half (assuming it's carrying you).
You could move FULL speed as the eidolon can do exploration activities too. So the Summoner can Share and the eidolon can move [or move 1/2 and use it's own activity].
Pretty much all exploration activities that are 1 action work like that (defend, search, investigate, etc)
At base, sure but there are plenty of abilities that alter those.
Basically it's "half action move + half action 1 round thing" per exploration round (which totals to 2 actions/2turns), so total of 1 action/exploration round but split in a way that works over the longer periods of time that is exploration.
Yes, that's the generalization, but in reality, it's 1 round moving without the eidolon and one just using it's senses without moving, which is untenable as a tactic. Actually carrying the summoner works MUCH better.
every single tactic is "untenable" if you go with this rationale:
you raise your shield in one round, and you move in the next round, so you are half the rounds without a shield raised?
you are only seeking half the rounds?
Raise Shield, the effects last an entire round. Seeking or casting Detect Magic is a better comparison because they are instantaneous and non-persistent effects.
But this is also graystone you are debating with. So keep that in mind.
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every single tactic is "untenable" if you go with this rationale:
you raise your shield in one round, and you move in the next round, so you are half the rounds without a shield raised?
you are only seeking half the rounds?
I don't see the issue here. For instance, you move then seek: does it matter if it happens in the same round or not? Did a hidden door move on you? Does it have a different effect if the move happen in this round or the one before? No. As for raise shields, it just allows you to say the encounter happened in one of your shield rounds so you benefit from it: you CAN'T do so for the share senses as you have penalties in either case [either blind or unable to move].
as you said earlier, the basis is that you split the effects over a 2 round period.
NO, it's split between the whole time period of the activity as a generalization: that doesn't change what it does at it's core. The fact is that you have to be able to do the action in that base round and share senses fails that spectacularly. You can raise shields one round and move he next but you can't share senses then move the next round in situations where the senses they don't have are needed.
so you are moving half your speed but you have shared senses the whole duration.
that's how all 1 action exploration activities work over a period of time.
No. Just no. At it's core, you are blind 1/2 the time and the other 1/2 you can't move. This just isn't like the other activities: it's like making an activity where you become exhausted 1/2 way through: you don't get to just say you ignore the exhausted because it only effected 1/2 of the activity. Or, say adding fly and some other action together as you fall if you don't use a fly every round. You wouldn't get to jus say you fly 1/2 speed and do something as it fails at doing it's base actions.