A summoner and eidolon pair is treated as one character. Supposedly in Pathfinder 1st Edition the summoner is sufficiently weaker than a primary spellcaster that the extra aid of an eidolon is no worse than a druid with an animal companion. In practice, the PF1E eidolon was built too strong. I also recall a game in which one player gave his eidolon more evolutions than the rules allowed, which grossly overpowered it. In Pathfinder 2nd Edition, the summoner and eidolon cannot operate as two separate individuals because they share their actions and their hit points.
A 5-member party is 25% stronger than a 4-member party, and a 6-member party is 50% stronger than a 4-member party. A 4-member party would be 41% stronger after leveling up, and the game often treats that as 50% stronger for rounder numbers. A larger party of 5 members, counting the summoner-and-eidolon pair as one member, should not be absolutely mashing the encounters in an adventure path.
Which Adventure Path are you playing? That might make a difference. If the Adventure Path does not matter, then this question should be moved to the Pathfinder 1st Edition advice subforum.
Which version of the summoner is the character using? The original summoner was considered too strong so the unchained summoner was created with the idea of balancing the class better.
The other thing to consider is that for the most part Pathfinder AP’s are usually considered fairly easy. They tend to be written with the idea that anyone can run them. This means that if the players have even moderately optimized characters they usually do very well. If the player is really good at optimizing the players often seem too powerful.
If the eidolon is seeming too powerful, it's usually because the eidolon isn't built legally. The player has probably combined things that shouldn't be combined. Probably.
Besides that, I don't think it's a good idea to up the difficulty. That will just train your players to power game to keep up. Instead, you could just make the combats easier, so the combat doesn't have as much time to shine. If the players are complaining about the low difficulty, then don't hold back and happily raise that CR.
Do not adjust the CR for the eidolon. As has been mentioned the eidolon is part of the character.
For a 6 person party the easy adjustment is to just put the "advanced" template on everything. So for a 5 person party you could put a "half-advanced" template on everything, +2 to all stats and +1 nat armor.
If anything I'm trying to balance the AP to make sure the PC's don't get bored
Have they displayed signs of being bored? I think this is a common fear of GMs, but most players aren't expecting or desiring every combat to be super dangerous. Have you had a conversation with your party about how they feel with regards to difficulty?
If you find the "boss fights" to be too easy, then you might try to spice them up through henchmen. Add NPCs that compliment the boss, like a tank for a caster or a caster for a tank.
Also, what level are you at? In my experience, the early level AP books are fairly easy on average, but they get much more lethal around level 12
that's partially on me for half-jokingly selling that there was gonna be a lot of PC death.
Ah. You may have created a self-negating prophecy. The players expected instant death around every corner and so built accordingly. That's a tough place. If they are all roughly equivalent in power, then you probably will need to amp the difficulty.
My biggest advice would be to re-evaluate the difficulty every book in the AP. Different authors work on those and have different ideas about how challenging an adventure should be.
If it's the equivalent of a room full of no-named enemies, then maybe don't go that hard. Save the difficulty for notable enemies, especially those how have names. If the story needs them to be solo, then give the advanced template. Otherwise, adding some complementary henchmen a few levels lower will make the fight more difficult and possibly interesting.
So APs are written for 4 20 point build non-optimized characters, with a non-optimized party, played by less experienced players. Anything outside of this would necessitate a bump in the CR of the encounters.
If your players are experienced, build optimized characters, or optimized parties, then you might need to up the CR to make things a bit of a challenge.
The original Summoner was overly powerful, the unchained one is more in line, but the summoner/eidolon still has a huge action economy benefit. We tend to think of the eidolon as adding a character to the party when calculating APL.
Halfway through book 1 and only at level 2 seems a little low. be sure to check the passage at the front of the book that tells you when the party should be levelling.
I think a big part of the problem is that with the size of the party the action economy is out of alignment. The APs are written with the idea that it will be a party of 4. Normally with a party of 4 the action economy is often in the favor of the opponents. In this case the party is 5 and at least one of the characters has a combat capable follower bringing the body count up to 6. With only 4 characters it is very hard to protect vulnerable characters. When your squishy spell casters have to worry about getting attacked it makes the game a lot more dangerous. At least one of the players has summing spells on their spell list. If the other characters have the ability to add to the size of the party either through combat capable followers or summoning additional creatures it is only going to get worse.
The solution to this is not to increase the power of the individual creatures it is to add more opponents. This can get out of control and end with the game slowing to a crawl. But if done sparingly it should fix the problem. Assuming there are no other combat capable followers in the party you may only need to add a few extra creatures to the encounters. Maybe having the party’s opponents use some summoning spells may be all that is needed. Again, be very careful of this so things don’t get out of hand.
Halfway through book 1 and only at level 2 seems a little low. be sure to check the passage at the front of the book that tells you when the party should be levelling.They ignored every roadblock in their way while simultaneous nailing every required disable device and/or strength check, thus allowing them to skip all of the C sections of the book. There's an NPC coming up that I can use to encourage them to turn back, but they seem to get tunnel vision as a party. I'll do my best to dissuade them, but I want them to have agency, and I've let them know I won't fudge rolls and I won't stop a TPK if that's the way things go. So if they insist on plowing through, then that's where we'll end up, and I guess we'll find another AP.
If you are using actual XP, you should still be throwing enough random encounters so that they still level at the appropriate points in the book pr the listing in the front of the book. The other option is to use milestone leveling.
either way, the party still needs to stay on track level wise per the AP.
Adding extra bodies to the encounter to raise the CR level is fine. I would suggest not making the monsters tougher especially by adding templates. First of all, that does nothing to solve the problem with the action economy, second it tends make the monsters too tough. Raising the DC of a save by 2 does not seem to be that powerful, but if done on everything it makes it more likely a player is taken down.
Increasing the numbers of opponents will also increase the XP to be split, so will help in keeping the party at appropriate level.
Adding extra bodies to the encounter to raise the CR level is fine. I would suggest not making the monsters tougher especially by adding templates. First of all, that does nothing to solve the problem with the action economy, second it tends make the monsters too tough. Raising the DC of a save by 2 does not seem to be that powerful, but if done on everything it makes it more likely a player is taken down.
Increasing the numbers of opponents will also increase the XP to be split, so will help in keeping the party at appropriate level.
Before you do any of that, audit the Player's Eidolon.
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Before you do any of that, audit the Player's Eidolon.
Good general advice, though it sounds like the summoner isn’t the one standing out in this situation.
but most players aren't expecting or desiring every combat to be super dangerous.
Most combats should not be, which is something often not understood by inexperienced players, which does little harm and inexperienced GMs, which can do a lot of harm.
The typical combat should be something the party can deal with fairly readily if they behave sensibly. If this is not so PCs will start dying every time you get a few unfortunate die results. PCs won't survive in the long term.
If you find the "boss fights" to be too easy, then you might try to spice them up through henchmen.
It is these that should be genuinely dangerous. Even so, a very dangerous single opponent can fail it's first save making the encounter seem easy.