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Btw I find it funny how people are debating the worth of summons when my original statement was that "summoner" is misnamed because it was not good at using summons.
Well, that is just a tangent conversation going on.
The response to you claiming that Summoner is a bad name for the class is one of two things.
One that "Manifesting" the Eidolon is close enough to summoning that it counts for anything other than game mechanics. So in-world, there is no real difference between manifesting an Eidolon and casting a summoning spell.
The other is that Summoners (in-class, not every build) use summoning spells better than pretty much all of the other classes. Their only competition is Conjuration Wizards and Cackle Witches (and Cackle doesn't make the summon itself better, it just lets you burn all of your spell slots and focus points to get more of them out at once).
the summoner has at best 2 10th level and 1 9th level spell,
I also seriously question the accuracy of your spell slot count.
With master summoner you get two tenth level spells, 1 ninth and two eighth.
Obviously two tenth level summon spells are still only going to be situationally better than one ninth level spells because of how situational summon spell are.
That is what Legendary Summoner does. Master Summoner allows a 7th level Summoner to have 3 4th rank slots and 2 3rd rank slots available for casting summoning spells. Which is very nearly what I would have as a Witch for casting summoning spells with.
Not everyone adventures only at level 20.
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Still not a summon just because you say it is "close enough". Again dilusional to say they are when every point of evidence says otherwise.
An Eidolon is not mechanically, according to the game rules a summon. I have never said otherwise. The rules are very clear about this.
In-game the difference is negligible. NPCs aren't likely to notice the difference. Hence the name. It is an in-game name for that type of character - one that has a mystical creature that they summon and adventure around with.
No one cares what PF1 has to say about it, and no one but you seems to care that the game mechanics don't precisely match up with the class's narrative name. It isn't really confusing to casual gamers who are learning the system and coming up with a character concept to play.
a 7th level Summoner to have 3 4th rank slots and 2 3rd rank slots available for casting summoning spells. Which is very nearly what I would have as a Witch for casting summoning spells with.
That is probably better than what you get, actually. At 7th level you would have 2 4th rank slots and 3 3rd rank slots. The Summoner still has 5 slots total, but one of them is higher rank than yours.
Still not a summon just because you say it is "close enough". Again dilusional to say they are when every point of evidence says otherwise.An Eidolon is not mechanically, according to the game rules a summon. I have never said otherwise. The rules are very clear about this.
In-game the difference is negligible. NPCs aren't likely to notice the difference. Hence the name. It is an in-game name for that type of character - one that has a mystical creature that they summon and adventure around with.
No one cares what PF1 has to say about it, and no one but you seems to care that the game mechanics don't precisely match up with the class's narrative name. It isn't really confusing to casual gamers who are learning the system and coming up with a character concept to play.
Most of the time an NPC can't tell the difference between a wizard and sorcerer, or a fighter and a Barbarian without being told or having inside knowledge. Most NPCs probably don't even know traditions of magic exist who aren't themselves immersed in knowledge of magic, and thus may even confuse a cleric and a wizard who just really likes the god they worship. More over an NPC may not even know what summoning is. I've already mentioned that narratively within the game world a summoned creature, a planar ally and an eidolon are quite a bit different. It is also just side stepping why people care about the distinction. Within the world and narrative, as well as within gameplay, an eidolon is like a stand from JoJo more than it is like a summoned creature. It shares vitality with you, it is linked to you and inseparable from you. The fact you are hurt when it is hurt makes this something very very very different in all respects, but especially in the aesthetic experience of the thing
I do think temperans is harping on too hard here about the least important difference, the summoned tag, and I do think they should not call people delusional. So I don't want to argue for them. I think their point is poorly made. I do however agree an Eidolon doesn't fit into the role of what a summoned creature is or should be
I ran an Extinction Curse game for three years (the first four modules) in which we had a conjurer wizard. He followed a distinctive bird theme, and would often use summoned birds during his circus acts.
At low levels he would summon giant skunks to great effect. They'd use their musk to sicken enemies, making them far easier to handle.
At higher levels, he would frequently summon drakes and dragons, primarily for their area and/or ranged attacks and extreme mobility. They held up in combat surprisingly well (though were rarely what won the day on their own). On one occasion they were instrumental in hunting down and bringing back to us fleeing foes who easily outpaced the rest if the party. As their capture was plot critical, it would have been a terrible outcome for us has they escaped. Their unusual senses helped find a few that had been hiding from us as well.
In another encounter, we used his summons to sneak past a superior force by having them cause a loud distraction, drawing guards and others away from our location. That allowed us to bypass three encounters and go straight to the boss, and then to later flee with our lives on new summons when that encounter went sideways.
He was also quite fond of fog clouds as I recall, and would sometimes summon monsters into the fog to confuse and harass enemies. We even pulled out of the cloud once and (silently) laughed as the enemy wasted several rounds fighting the wrong foe while we healed up. Concealment and miss chances are amazing for extending the lifespan of a summon.
He saved a caravan ambushed by a bulette (land sharks) because he was able to summon an earth elemental to earth glide ahead and harass the sharks long enough to for the rest of us to catch up and join the fight.
And that's just off the top of my head.
So roleplay stuff without any mathematical comparisons.
A fly spell's utility and situational importance can be shown often in the course of cooperative play. Fly is a high value spell every party should carry for those times when it is needed....
In the dragon example I posted above, our thinking was a flying mobile dragon would be able to keep up with a flying mobile dragon. What actually happened is the dragon's attack roll was too low to land consistently. It had too few actions to use it's 2 action dragon attack ability which is built off a 3 action paradigm of one action to fly and 2 actions to dragon frenzy. It doesn't have reactions and the dragon does, so it got wrecked by the AoO from the dragon.
It did not provide the help you would expect against a dragon moving at the speed it moved to get around. We ended up buffing a few martials to fly and tripping it to the ground to slow it down
This example is just... *Chef's kiss.* It is the perfect demonstration of your misunderstanding. You should never have expected a summon to go one on one with a boss monster. What you should have done was have the martial ride the summon. Fly grants a speed equal to the martial's land speed. Dragons usually have an effective speed of at least 100 feet, either inherently or thanks to abilities like speed surge on drakes. Even with Sudden Charge, there are few martials who can keep up with that. And if an enemy starts above you then gaining altitude is difficult terrain, so there's a good chance that extra speed will matter.
Had your martial rode the dragon, they probably could have tripped the enemy sooner and then gotten back into the fray sooner with an additional body which had a (low) chance to contribute damage and could provide flanking for more people to boot.
Edit: I'll note that depending on turn order and the exact distance you need to cover, a fly spell might have been more efficient than a summon. It certainly uses a lower level slot. But the nice thing about summons is that while they aren't always...
It wasn't expected to go one one. It ended up going one on one because it flies much, much faster than the rest of the group. When engaging a mobile dragon with reach, hard for PCs to keep up.
I'm stating it as an example of an ineffective summon for a multitude of reasons.
The last page of this thread is somewhat enlightening, Dev plays with modified homebrew 5e-ish spellcasters and their group runs the unbalanced meta rinse and repeat Fighter Trip+AoO, Defuff, and Action denial meta. That explains a LOT about his perspective.
This is not to say that there is anything wrong with doing that but it's very clear they're playing to optimize in what is essentially one of the only "solved" ways to trivialize encounters which just so happens to hamper build variety and choice of actions they can elect to take greatly. In comparison to that, so long as the group is okay doing rinse-repeat encounters "pushing the same three buttons" over and over and don't get bored there really ISN'T a reason for them to mix it up at all. In other words, he's arguing that for anything to change how they do things and for him to consider it worthwhile it has to be BETTER than the existing meta they're married to.
That said, I find it kinda odd that he goes on to say that easy fights are boring because what they're doing is the most straightforward way to make pretty much any completely unfair encounter against a party as easy as possible while essentially just creating a brain-off action rotation.
I counter that tactic. I often add Kip Up and Nimble Crawl to higher level monsters to throw off the tactic while ensuring they have Legendary or Master equivalent Acrobatics.
My style of play is more mechanically based as in I sift mechanics because I have players constantly looking for mechanical advantages just as I look for mechanical advantages, then utilize them to gain superiority over the game math which in the game visualizes as victory over the monsters and threats in the game world.
So as a DM you take the mechanical advantages the players use and find counters within the game rules with justification that likely the monster would learn these skills or abilities for survival since enemy attackers are using these advantages to kill them.
It's a particular DM and player methodology I've developed over the years. It is something I had to develop more so in 3E than any other edition of D&D as optimization existed to some degree in previous editions of the game, but never to the same level as it reached during 3E, PF1, and the the age of player empowerment in PF and D&D that currently exists.
Fortunately, PF2 toned down some of the player empowerment and put some of the power back with DMs by making balance across levels a more important factor than during the PF1 and 3E era.
I could see the appeal of summoning being less in Deverin's games thanks to the 5e casting house rule. A big part of the spell's appeal is that preparing a single slot or spell known can potentially replace blasts, walls, flight, teleport, illusions, healing, or buffs in the right situation. But if you have house ruled to significantly increase caster versatility and on-demand access to more spells, then a single spell covering lots of space has less value.
Right? You can also potentially move multiple PCs with it, particularly when your level is high enough to summon Huge dragons. An adult gold dragon could move your entire party 360 feet every turn. Quite good for getting into the fray or fleeing a bad situation. You could also use it for my aforementioned lava example.What you should have done was have the martial ride the summon.Can't argue with that. That's pretty heckin' sweet
This is not how we rate spells. We do not view summons as a multitude of effects. We rate them by actual effect on combat.
I can even explain the mechanics of the problems which I have tried to do which it seems not many folks deal with as the DM kind of let's things happen. But I'll do so again:
1. A summon spell is competing for a slot against other spells whether it is prepared or spontaneous. Which means it must be as effective as another spell in a given situation. For it to be a high value spell, it must be a situation that occurs relatively often. 20 to 40 percent range is probably an acceptable percentage range as in 1 to 2 times per 5 encounters. Or 20 to 40 times per 100 encounters over the course of a few adventures.
2. When you use the summon, you track its effectiveness by what it does within a finite battle encounter of whatever number of rounds. Damage, damage absorption, attacks made, ease of use with the game's action economy, etcetera. You do this over the course of a few encounters to get a feel.
This is what I did during the summoner playtest to see if summons were an effective option for the summoner.
3. I have listed some of the major problems with summons above:
One other issue is the +10/- 10 crit paradigm. A creature focusing on a summon can absolutely destroy the summon, often even a mook.
Which is why when I hear someone like Raving Dork telling me a summon distracted a bunch of guards when its math would not allow it do this, I just have to shrug. A group of mooks against a summon would kill it in probably one round if they even bothered with it. Why they would follow this summon around rather than focus on the PCs is beyond me and if all the PCs made their stealth checks to bypass the creature I would have to see as multiple stealth check rolls often lead to a missed check.
How do I know this? We have used summons against mooks. They wiped it out quick. The level difference with a summon is so large that a group of mooks can rip it apart. It's not even a mook level creature. It's a speed bump.
We thoroughly tested summons in PF2. We liked summons in PF1/3E. They were overpowered in that edition even with the more limited lists due to a variety of mechanical reasons. They are underpowered or as I term it low value spells in PF2 for a variety of mechanical reasons.
They could use some sprucing up given the PF2 math, I'd prefer a template at this point with a build like battle forms, so they could tighten the math for things they might be good at.
Comparative effect would maybe be something like an equivalent level sustained mobile damage spell since those are often AoE. So a summon would be more of a single target equivalent mobile damage spell with the additional benefits and costs of occupying a physical space, dispel-able by being killed, and with some other useful functions depending on type.
At the moment I'm content to avoid them past a certain level, probably in the 11 to 13 range unless I'm using them to supplement a support class.
That's how I see it. They've been tested by my group across a variety of levels. I've tested them with the summoner using optimal build choices. I've put them in the low value spell category with bad scaling.
And I will leave the dead horse alone now.
Summoner is still a good class. I'm enjoying it a great deal, just not for summoning other than the eidolon.
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That is a lot of spells "summoner" just does not have that could be used for utility summons.
You can't have it both ways. And yes I realize that it is two people doing the talking.
You are arguing that a level 7 character being able to use a rank 2 spell slot to summon a creature level 1 animal such as a Riding Horse for up to a minute is a better utility spell than using a rank 2 slot on Phantom Steed and getting a mount for 8 hours. I'm not entirely sure I believe that, but that is beside the point.
Deriven, however, is arguing that utility summoning is generally useless and that since even a rank 3 summoning spell to bring out a Giant Porcupine would be completely ineffective at combat, then certainly using a rank 2 spell slot and getting a Ball Python is going to be even more useless in combat.
So, no. For my weigh-in, I don't think having low level spell slots really makes for a more comprehensively meaningful summoning spell caster than things like Ostentatious Arrival or even Boost Summons.
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I'm curious if you also think that "Magus", "Monk", "Cleric", and "Swashbuckler" are misleading names for classes since none of those names have any relationship with the mechanics of how those characters operate.
So roleplay stuff without any mathematical comparisons.
LOLwut?
I'm SO sorry we didn't stop the game to take the time to write down such specific notes at the time.
I'll be sure to tell the guys that we need to slow down and write down all the math next time.
/sarc /eyeroll
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Don't forget 'wizard' which more or less literally means wise man on a class that scales with INT.
Or Druid, that's its own can of worms though.
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Personally speaking, an Eidolon is a summon you call upon because of your bond with it, so a different form of summoning than a summoning spell. And I genuinely don't appreciate being told I'm "delusional" for thinking the summoner class is cool at being a summoner and fulfills the class fantasy of one.
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...A fly spell's utility and situational importance can be shown often in the course of cooperative play. Fly is a high value spell every party should carry for those times when it is needed....
In the dragon example I posted above, our thinking was a flying mobile dragon would be able to keep up with a flying mobile dragon. What actually happened is the dragon's attack roll was too low to land consistently. It had too few actions to use it's 2 action dragon attack ability which is built off a 3 action paradigm of one action to fly and 2 actions to dragon frenzy. It doesn't have reactions and the dragon does, so it got wrecked by the AoO from the dragon.
It did not provide the help you would expect against a dragon moving at the speed it moved to get around. We ended up buffing a few martials to fly and tripping it to the ground to slow it down
This example is just... *Chef's kiss.* It is the perfect demonstration of your misunderstanding. You should never have expected a summon to go one on one with a boss monster. What you should have done was have the martial ride the summon. Fly grants a speed equal to the martial's land speed. Dragons usually have an effective speed of at least 100 feet, either inherently or thanks to abilities like speed surge on drakes. Even with Sudden Charge, there are few martials who can keep up with that. And if an enemy starts above you then gaining altitude is difficult terrain, so there's a good chance that extra speed will matter.
Had your martial rode the dragon, they probably could have tripped the enemy sooner and then gotten back into the fray sooner with an additional body which had a (low) chance to contribute damage and could provide flanking for more people to boot.
Edit: I'll note that depending on turn order and the exact distance you need to cover, a fly spell might have been more efficient than a summon. It certainly uses a lower level slot. But the nice thing about summons
The summon didn't need to one on one. PCs could keep up by riding it.
Edit: It feels to me like you're confusing a lack of imagination with a lack of mechanical impact.
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Also, no one has debated that "summoner's" advantage is action economy. But that does not make them better at summons. That just makes them not bottle necked like other casters.
Yes, it does. Action economy is how you use summons, or do anything else in the game. If every other class is too bottle necked to effectively do a thing, and one class isn't... Guess who is going to be best at the thing?
It is like arguing that gunslingers aren't any better at using guns than fighters. One class can reload without cannibalizing their action economy and has a ton of feats to support it, and the other doesn't.
"Utility summons" with low level slots are not enough of a thing to offset this, especially when the eidolon can already cover so much of the ground low level summons can.
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Also, no one has debated that "summoner's" advantage is action economy. But that does not make them better at summons. That just makes them not bottle necked like other casters.Yes, it does. Action economy is how you use summons, or do anything else in the game. If every other class is too bottle necked to effectively do a thing, and one class isn't... Guess who is going to be best at the thing?
It is like arguing that gunslingers aren't any better at using guns than fighters. One class can reload without cannibalizing their action economy and has a ton of feats to support it, and the other doesn't.
"Utility summons" with low level slots are not enough of a thing to offset this, especially when the eidolon can already cover so much of the ground low level summons can.
Gunslinger actually does have support for making firearms better. "Summoner" does not have such support outside of "has an extra action".
By that logic "summoner" is better at Inspire Courage because they have an extra action. This is clearly not the case because they lack all the other stuff that makes bards good. "Summoner" is thus "less burdened" by sustain, but lacks the summons to actually make use of that advantage. While everyone else just does not care because they have to spend that sustain commanding creatures anyway.
Summoners get feats to improve summoning. They do not get feats for inspire courage unless they multiclass and wait until 8th level. Where a bard can just use lingering performance from level 1.
Pretty much the only class feature that gunslingers get that make them better than fighters with guns is improved action economy and a +1 circumstance bonus to damage. It is essentially the point of the class.
And what creatures are you bothering to summon using slots 3 tanks below your max? Even max rank summons teeter on the edge of irrelevancy in combat without niche circumstances. I'm a summon spell apologist, and I can't fathom a world where preparing a summon spells in 8 different ranks is considered a good strategy.
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And I was being called pedantic? Really, nobody going to call him out on it except me when people were calling me out on it? So that's how it is...
If Summoner is a bad name because Summoners don't actually summon, then Magus must be a bad name because Magus doesn't actually ... magi - whatever that means.
Except that, to you, "Magus" isn't a bad name for the class... because you like the class.
So... The name Summoner would be fine if you liked the class. And the only reason that you are saying that the name Summoner is misleading is because you don't like the class.
It is very confusing that you claim the class name "Summoner" is misleading and incorrect when it is based solely on the fact that you don't like the class, rather than because the name is actually a misleading or incorrect name.
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I mean magus is a magic user, and in the context of pathfinder they "mix magic with martial". Also note I never said "summoner" was a bad class, I said that its selling point is not summons (hence misnamed).
I don't even know why people decided to make this into an argument. There are people in this forum who dislike the name Barbarian because they think the class should not focus on being savage. Or the people who dislike the name Monk because they can only imagine christian/european monks who stayed at monasteries but ignore all the warrior monks from popular media.
Because it is a bizarre argument. In all of those cases.
A Monk's selling point isn't how good of a Monker they are either. Or a Barbarian at how good they are at Barbarianing. The fact that Summoner happens to have a verbal form that somewhat resembles a game term doesn't really mean anything.
The Summoner was named "Summoner" because they summon an Eidolon. No that meaning of 'summon' doesn't match the game term. So what?
Why are you so fixated on this one particular happenstance and insisting that Summoner (the class) must be referring to summoning spells? Why isn't summoning an Eidolon close enough for the typical Golarion resident or the typical FLGS resident?
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So roleplay stuff without any mathematical comparisons.LOLwut?
I'm SO sorry we didn't stop the game to take the time to write down such specific notes at the time.
I'll be sure to tell the guys that we need to slow down and write down all the math next time.
/sarc /eyeroll
I accept your play-style is less rolling and role-play.
Anecdotal evidence is extremely weak evidence which is why I don't use it much. It involves qualitative, subjective information that can't be accurately measured or the anecdotist has not bothered to measure using objective metrics.
Not a big deal. If your group has fun, then you have won the game.
My arguments are based on metrics I record during battle. It is not helpful to me to come up with theoretical uses for summons or other spells absent measuring their uses against other options to see if they are actually a superior option.
I'm not arguing, "Summons can't be possibly be useful. You can't have fun using them."
My argument is, "Summons are a low value spell that need not be employed at all as you can find much better options that you can prove are more effective with objective metrics."
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Out of curiosity - these are metrics that you, yourself, have defined, correct?
Summoner is definitely in my top favorite classes. It's an extremely simple gish concept that i dont really see in similar systems. In essence, you're a subpar caster that commands a subpar martial, now I made that sound bad but the way they made that work just makes it extremely satisfying to play. Also just being an all traditions caster makes them variable as is, the only summoner I have played is occult but I do feel that's my favorite tradition for summoners. Occult tradition does lend well to the bounded casting and makes for a great buff caster. I can also imagine once the remaster comes out and runic weapon/body starts scaling that primal summoners will be an amazing self buffing class.
also I'm still waiting for that aberration eidolon, paizo. I'll be patient but one day...
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I'm curious if you also think that "Magus", "Monk", "Cleric", and "Swashbuckler" are misleading names for classes since none of those names have any relationship with the mechanics of how those characters operate.
I suppose this is partly directed at me. I would have think about swashbuckler and do some looking around to see what the term typically means in common speech and see if it fits my impression of the word and get deeper into the mechanics of the class. My impression is it fits, but idk. Cleric is quite literally a cleric so I think that is fine. They are a clergy man, and maybe we should acknowledge that might have a higher social status in our games? Magus however is a great point. It's an archaic term for a a sorcerer/wizard/mage. Like the word mage and magician, magus comes from the word magic itself. So it would be a word you'd think would apply to a full spellcaster, but we are committing an etymological fallacy by saying this. The term isn't really used in common speech and doesn't have a common understanding and really doesn't tell us much about what the class should do. Summoner feels like a more common idea, but I believe before saying misleading I said misnamed, and I would like to say "misleading" is not the thing I'm actually concerned about and me saying "misleading" was poor communication on my part. I think the class is misnamed, and to that effect I would be fine with a better name for the magus as well, but it's less important as the term is old enough and seldom used enough I think reappropriation of it is fine.
Lastly monk, this is a hard one. So it doesn't fit the word monk when used to describe western concepts, but is clearly meant to be modelled after "Buddhist Warrior Monks" as we would call them in English. The cultivation of spiritual and physical prowess is perfectly in alignment with the concept including the use of qi and being able to create what would be called magical effects. The name fits perfectly if you're familiar with this and with Wu Xia as a genre of fantasy. My only issue is the class basically takes up all the space for Chinese fantasy ideas and tropes. One example is that the Monk class is simultaneously a Buddhist Warrior Monk and a practitioner of whatever Golarion's equivalent of Tài jí quán is. Which is a Daoist practice. Not that you can't be both, but just that they are different religions
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I think the class is misnamed, and to that effect I would be fine with a better name for the magus as well,
Do you think that anyone who picks up and reads Secrets of Magic is going to be shocked and surprised when they find out that the Summoner often only "summons" their Eidolon instead of having multiple various different creatures that they pull out of thin air constantly all day to do their fighting for them?
People coming from PF1 may be disappointed in that after playing the PF1 Summoner. But from what I hear that was the only class that had to be reprinted in Unchained in order to be nerfed.
Its like someone arguing that a vegan meat substitute is actually meat because they believe it to be so. Glad you enjoy thinking of it as meat; But no, it is not meat.
There is something very amusing to me that you said this to a vegan. This isn't a fantastic example because meat is a term that has changed meaning over time and isn't very consistent. We still refer to parts of nuts and fruits as "meat". It's why the phrase referring to the important substantial part of something is the "meat." It comes from non-animal uses or the term primarily. However I won't agree that meant substitutes are meat in the sense people mostly use the word to specify animal flesh. I will say that calling it meat isn't totally incorrect
Which I think is why I don't like your argumentation. It's too rigid. Eidolons don't have the summon trait, therefore not a summon, is too... Legalistic. It's like we are in court, dealing with a genie or devil, and not having a conversation. I agree Eidolons really aren't summons, but I say this because of how they feel and function. Summon itself is a nebulous term to be fair to everyone here. You summon someone from another room by calling their name. You summon forth courage to do what is right. You answer a summons by the king. Lots of ways we can interpret this word. Which is why calling it "delusional" is just being meaning and little else
Thinking about it more, what I think you're doing, and I may be wrong, is seeing words as being a form of truth, that things in the world conform to language, but this is not the case. Language is used to describe things and through it we give meaning particularly through difference. Words don't have static true meanings and particularly with English there isn't even a governing body saying how words should be used like there is for French. Which btw the French doing this is foolish. A language is best thought of like an organism, and as an organism it is made up of processes. It changes, grows, adapts and sometimes even dies. Words don't have inherent meaning, they have commonly understood meaning. The Eidolon is in some sense "summoned" according to most uses of the term summon. This is why my argument is not over the semantic definition of a summon, but in the actual role of a thing within the mechanics, narrative and game world. The summoned tag isn't particularly important here for what either side means
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It's kind of amazing how Secrets of Magic is more than two years old and we're still getting the Temperans thread derail every time the class is brought up. They've been doing this since the playtest.
Genuinely kind of goofy.
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I think the class is misnamed, and to that effect I would be fine with a better name for the magus as well,Do you think that anyone who picks up and reads Secrets of Magic is going to be shocked and surprised when they find out that the Summoner often only "summons" their Eidolon instead of having multiple various different creatures that they pull out of thin air constantly all day to do their fighting for them?
People coming from PF1 may be disappointed in that after playing the PF1 Summoner. But from what I hear that was the only class that had to be reprinted in Unchained in order to be nerfed.
The nerf was because the spell list was broken (they got haste early) as well as rebalancing Eidolons. The summons themselves were not touched.
As for get disappointed by seeing that the class named "summoner" doesn't actually help you summon. Yeah I can see a lot of people get disappointed, specially if they try to use summons and fail. Why is it so controversial to says that "Summoner" is not good at summons and their good point is that they effectively aren't stuck with the 2/2 action economy of other companions?
As has already been demonstrated, the Summoner is good at summons. It's just that summons are not an always strong option in PF2. They have some good uses and that's it.
That's the Summons problem. Not the Summoner's problem.
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I think the class is misnamed, and to that effect I would be fine with a better name for the magus as well,Do you think that anyone who picks up and reads Secrets of Magic is going to be shocked and surprised when they find out that the Summoner often only "summons" their Eidolon instead of having multiple various different creatures that they pull out of thin air constantly all day to do their fighting for them?
People coming from PF1 may be disappointed in that after playing the PF1 Summoner. But from what I hear that was the only class that had to be reprinted in Unchained in order to be nerfed.
Also while I'm not 100% sure, I feel like most people picked summoner in 1e for the eidolon (Its the main reason I was interested in it at least). Its wasn't very difficult to make a build that just spammed summon monster I-IX as any full caster.
These two go hand in hand with what I want to say. The Eidolon is the primary feature of the summoner class and I don't think that should change and I think it's fine and well executed. I don't even think Temperans would disagree here. Being eidolon focused is where the concept should have gone, and I am glad it did go that way. It is just a different thing from a class which is a "summoner". Basically, the summoner class evolved past it's 1e name and likely will continue to do so. I think in the future if they renamed this class it would free up the name "summoner" for a different *new* class focused on summon spells in specific. Which I don't know if such a class should have summon spells all day long for every encounter or not. Maybe yes maybe no. That's for designers and playtesting to figure out