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I generally go Cha, Con, Dex on a summoner. You want a high Con on a summoner to maximize hit points.
So start with an 18 Cha, 16 Dex, and 14 Con. So you can end with a 20 Dex if you focus the ability boosts on those three stats.
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This isn't a problem for experienced players because they'll know what to build around. But compare to something like Fighter which is much more newbie friendly because unless you do...
That's been my point.
I keep seeing players who are completely new to Pathfinder try it. I suspect because when I got the new DND 2024 PHB, I didn't see an entry for Alchemist, Gunslinger, or Summoner. And so yeah - guess what I keep seeing over and over again from new players to Pathfinder. While I think there's an addon book that makes a gun character of some kind, and I didn't list Inventor because DnDers keep telling me they have something for that (arcanist, machinist, I dunno and my FFXIV references are taking over)...
So yeah complete newbies are attracted to Alchemists and Summoners like flies to honey and it just so happens these are probably the two hardest classes to play. Number 3 on the popularity list has been Gunslinger and I've seen new players just ghost games mid session because of that one - yet as a player myself the best DPS I've ever had was with Gunslinger because I knew what to do with my options.
So...
I see new players on Summoner trip up over Act Together, over having two sheets yet one HP pool, over where to stand, over what to do with the caster, and some unique Foundry issues caused by the class not really being added to Foundry all that well.
Popular mistakes:
My caster is a melee DPS.
My Eidolon should move in BEHIND my caster so it's safe.
My Eidolon will protect the back line, my caster will flank the reactive-striking melee boss.
My Caster shoots phase bolt, now my Eidolon bites - why can't it hit? (forgetting about MAP).
My Caster will flank for my Eidolon against this melee boss.
I can't find my Eidolon's actions on my sheet (looking at caster sheet).
I can't find my spells on my sheet (looking at Eidolon sheet).
I clicked to apply the damage I took and nothing happened (Foundry issue)
I can't move my Eidolon token (GM not setting up pet right / Foundry issue)
I can't put my Eidolon on the map (GM not setting up pet right / Foundry issue)
Wait, My Eidolon can't use my skill feat?
And then there's all the situations where they forget to declare Act Together, mis count actions, and so on. A GM just presuming you're always using Act Together avoid half of these - but even with that you still get some confusion.
I just hope the presence of such tech doesn't make RPG designers make their systems overly complicated. Fingers crossed the next 10 years won't see new tabletop RPGs which are too complicated to play using pen, paper, and actual table.
In the long run it probably will.
The developers of World of Warcraft have admitted to building fights for certain popular mods. They both build them in attempts to get around those mods, and to have information handed to players through only methods the mods read. Specifically mods that telegraph enemy moves. But they also time actions and require player activity on a pace that the UI does not reveal, but which can only be seen through mods.
Once one side of a community over-relies on something, the other side will start to cater to it.
I suspect somewhere around the time of 'DnD 5.75' we'll start seeing options that can only be properly handled using their in-house VTT or a competing VTT that has scripted for it.
I already feel some parts of Pathfinder would just be a pain to run without a VTT.
Then I see a player playing with a summoner in a party like this with all the new players, and it quickly tries to use Electric Arc and Strike with the Eidolon and notices almost instantly from the damage it caused by landing a Strike and an EA that it is doing better alone than the martial and the caster are doing together (and in fact he is because the players still don't understand the potential of the system and its mechanics).
You have been blessed in the ability of your new players to quickly grasp things. :)
What I see when a new player hits summoner is:
Oh, now I have 2 martials.
Or: Phase bolt sounds cool, electric arc is for losers.
Which is a level beyond just the complexity issue.
Even on full casters in the hands of new to PF2E folk I keep seeing:
- "I cast phase bolt, then hit it with my str-based melee weapon."
In the last few months I have seen that from a Cleric, Druid, and Wizard. Turn after turn of misses, followed by the inevitable "man casters just suck in pathfinder."
And silently on the other side of my screen, one of my eyebrows is twitching...
I try to become aware of potential trap options and bad moves so that when I'm GMing I can at least caution new players about them and work to steer them towards something they will enjoy. As a player with assorted online GMs I've been having the experience of seeing a lot of GMs that will just throw new players to the wolves and then get short with them when they don't 'get it'.
Another reason to keep the eidolon and summoner as far apart as possible is you have two points of attack.
For those that have experienced the summoner getting attacked by a separate enemy while the eidolon is getting attacked know how much it sucks to have your hit point pool hammered at two points. One point with caster AC and one point with martial AC.
You want to focus any martial or attack roll attacks on the eidolon as they have better AC than the summoner PC. Attacks, including crits, do full damage to the hit point pool if hitting the summoner and the eidolon at the same time so you are getting absolutely wrecked if you have enemies that are attacking both the summoner and the eidolon.
You have to account for this as being too close to the eidolon to try to absorb an AOE is not worth the tradeoff at all if enemies can engage both the summoner and the eidolon at the same time.
3. There's two of you. Two sets of stats, different things each one of you can do, and being in two places at once. This is super useful, but it also means two sheets for a new player to track and more things to have to understand to play. This is harder to do well than any character that only has one thing to track for someone learning the game.For this one, at least, things like Foundry are making life easier. Click the roll and it figures out all - well, most of - the relevant adds.
Once you learn Foundry, yes. It's got its own learning curve. Great product and I GM with it even for in-person games, but I also have a player that is absolutely tech-phobic. :)
I just hope the presence of such tech doesn't make RPG designers make their systems overly complicated. Fingers crossed the next 10 years won't see new tabletop RPGs which are too complicated to play using pen, paper, and actual table.
Game design seems largely to be going the other way and getting simpler, at least mostly. Really complex games are out there but they don't seem to be the industry trend. In the case of Paizo specifically, so long as PFS is a thing they want people doing we're probably okay.
But the experience I see in practice is exactly the opposite.
Most beginner tables start at level 1. So at this level, this is what I usually see them do:
Martials like fighters and barbarians: Stride, Strike, Strike, Strike, Strike...
Casters: Stride if necessary, cast all 2-3 spell slots they have, and switch to one cantrip per round.So what happens is that I see many martials simply using Strike with the third action to try to get a 20 in most cases, and casters, either to save spellslots or because they've already run out, casting saving throw spells, because attack spells when they fail make them lose the entire turn with a terrible feeling of wasted time, and eventually using Stride to keep as much distance as possible.
Then I see a player playing with a summoner in a party like this with all the new players, and it quickly tries to use Electric Arc and Strike with the Eidolon and notices almost instantly from the damage it caused by landing a Strike and an EA that it is doing better alone than the martial and the caster are doing together (and in fact he is because the players still don't understand the potential of the system and its mechanics).
As for the eidolon caster problem, this only exists on paper and not in practice. During the character build the player already realizes that there is no eidolon caster in practice, at most there is the fey eidolon that has 2 cantrips at level 1 and that will only be able to cast some non-cantrip spell at level 7. The player quickly realizes that there is no eidolon caster, at most there is a hybrid eidolon that hits and also casts. I simply haven't seen any player have this frustration in practice because they already realize that eidolons are terrible casters before even playing. They doesn't complain about this in the game but in the building time when they are choosing their options.
Fair to say that we've had very different experiences with new players and Summoner. :) I've seen people show up with one they did on their own and it was not a good experience. Given some guidance it goes a lot better, but the track record of just letting people figure it out on their own in my games is pretty poor compared to something like Fighter/Rogue/Cleric (which are generally pretty easy for a new player to build).
Honestly, it's not!
This is the impression that people who have never played a summoner think they'll have to play with it, but it doesn't happen in practice. You even have 2 "characters" with 2 different sets of attributes that probably require another sheet to make it easier to write down, but in practice the summoner shares its skills (with values based on his attributes), uses its HP, its actions and its feat slots. In the end, it's very easy to set up, to the point that some people don't even get a second sheet, they write down the skill modifiers side by side, one side representing the summoner and the other the eidolon (same thing for perception and saves and AC) and the eidolon's attack modifiers on the summoner's own sheet and the attributes in one of the note fields.
In practice, the eidolon has very little customization, it doesn't use equipment, it hardly casts spells and even though it has 2 tokens to move, its set of actions is still the same as the summoner's and anyone who wants to play with one already expects to control 2 tokens. Anyone who makes a companion token already does this.
That's the point I made, people who have never played summoner think it's much harder than it actually is, and those who are willing to play discover very quickly that it's much easier and more flexible and even powerful than they imagined.
For some reason you assume, more than once, that anyone who disagrees with you hasn't played Summoner. Except I have. I've played it many times and I've GM'd a game with it. There's a reason why I like the class.
But it's a lot to give to someone who is playing PF2 for the first time, with more things to understand and more ways to do things wrong than a simple class.
That's just the truth of the class. There's nothing wrong with a class being more complicated to play, but a new player probably should have some guidance when getting started with one.
Don't know what you guys have against phase bolt. It's awesome! Against baddies with cover or shields it's suddenly like being a fighter with +2 to hit. Great for shooting through over-eager martials too who don't know to wait before charging in the way.
Then I see a player playing with a summoner in a party like this with all the new players, and it quickly tries to use Electric Arc and Strike with the Eidolon and notices almost instantly from the damage it caused by landing a Strike and an EA that it is doing better alone than the martial and the caster are doing together (and in fact he is because the players still don't understand the potential of the system and its mechanics).You have been blessed in the ability of your new players to quickly grasp things. :)
What I see when a new player hits summoner is:
Oh, now I have 2 martials.
Or: Phase bolt sounds cool, electric arc is for losers.Which is a level beyond just the complexity issue.
Even on full casters in the hands of new to PF2E folk I keep seeing:
- "I cast phase bolt, then hit it with my str-based melee weapon."
In the last few months I have seen that from a Cleric, Druid, and Wizard. Turn after turn of misses, followed by the inevitable "man casters just suck in pathfinder."And silently on the other side of my screen, one of my eyebrows is twitching...
I try to become aware of potential trap options and bad moves so that when I'm GMing I can at least caution new players about them and work to steer them towards something they will enjoy. As a player with assorted online GMs I've been having the experience of seeing a lot of GMs that will just throw new players to the wolves and then get short with them when they don't 'get it'.
This group I mentioned, only the one who played summoner was the only newbie, the rest already had experience playing 3.5.
And curiously, the one who adapted best was the one who played summoner, because for him everything was new and he didn't bring the baggage of precepts that the 3.5 players brought (that's why the fighter made 3 attacks per round, for him this was similar to the 3 attacks that a martial makes at level 11 in 3.5/PF1) and the caster treated the third action as something for him to use to move and for metamagics spellshaping and didn't realize that it could have many more uses.
The Electric Arc part was simpler because they asked me why some cantrips were stronger or weaker than others, so I pointed out the issue of range, critical hits, targets and damage types. Then the EA already caught people's attention by default because it could affect 2 targets at the same time.
And the summoner got the point of EA + Strike when I explained how Act Together worked, where I also explained to them how the action economy worked, and then he immediately got the idea of casting and striking at the same time (because that was the example I gave), and when I saw it, he had already adapted better to the action economy than the others.
The funny thing was having to explain afterwards (because in battle I don't give explanations to avoid giving biased tips on how to deal with enemies, but I usually comment after the fight) to the fighter and the sorcerer who thought the summoner was too overpowered that it wasn't really that he was too overpowered, but rather that they weren't used to using their third action, that the fighter instead of using 3 actions to fight could use the first to Demoralize, Create a Distraction or Feint to make an enemy easier to hit, and that the eidolon didn't have a d12 weapon like him, nor could it use shields (however the summoner can use Protect Companion in a similar way on the Eidolon, but I didn't go into that detail) and the same thing went for the sorcerer, that he could use his remaining action to Demoralize, or use any one-action spell or cantrip in parallel. Although they weren't very convinced at the time, because the eidolon hit twice with 1 action :P. But then I explained to them that as they evolved and obtained new feats and spells, their action economy would also improve as they gained new usage options.
This was also one of the points that made me notice that the summoner was not that complicated for newbies and that, mainly, more experienced players tended to have more problems with the new system than those who were really new to the genre.
If you can use Boost Eidolon then most of the time you can use another action that will boost your damage much more.
Boost Eidolon + Strike < Strike + StrikeThat second +Strike comes with a lower probability to hit. It starts making less and less sense than a damage boost to the first strike the more the enemies' AC goes up.
I agree it's circumstantial. I agree that players can overuse it. I do wish the summoner started with a better cantrip.
So, I decided to do a simple comparison between the Strike + Strike MAP-5 and the Strike + Boost Eidolon, and I have to admit that I found the Boost Eidolon to be better against strong enemies:
For some reason you assume, more than once, that anyone who disagrees with you hasn't played Summoner. Except I have. I've played it many times and I've GM'd a game with it. There's a reason why I like the class.
Because that's what happened to me.
At first, I had this precept that the summoner would be a difficult and complicated class for beginners to play. But apart from the specific details with the Act Togueter, where the restriction of not being able to use 2 2-action activities is somewhat implicit, and with the shared HP that also doesn't allow the summoner and the eidolon to take a 2x damage effect, instead taking the highest damage of the 2, which is counterintuitive at first glance, the experience that both I had (I was already experienced) and that of the players I followed (some of whom were complete beginners) was as good or better than that of players who started with other classes.
That's why I assumed that those who are arguing that there is a considerably greater difficulty are more in theorycraft than in practice, and that their experience is much more of an exception for me than the common one.
It's the point I made before, I've seen more players struggle with pure casters than summoners.
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Shouldn't the summoner's second highest stat be Dex given that they have no armor proficiencies?
No, it's Con. You share your hit points with your Eidolon so you benefit a lot from high Con. Also, getting an Armor is trivial in PF2, if you really miss the few points of AC.
My Summoner has 18 Cha, 16 Con and 12 Dex, and I don't miss the Dex (but the Con saved me a few times, you don't want to drop as a Summoner).That second +Strike comes with a lower probability to hit. It starts making less and less sense than a damage boost to the first strike the more the enemies' AC goes up.
Even against a high AC enemy, it will at most break even. And you need a really high AC enemy. There's no real point in using it outside specific circumstances.
I do wish the summoner started with a better cantrip.
I disagree. This cantrip is not there for effectiveness but for ease of use. With it, a lot of players don't have to think about their Summoner. It makes the class easy to play, even if it's less effective. But I agree it's also a trap: At some point (of tactical awareness), players have to realize they must play without it. They rarely do.
Distance and direction are very different tactical issues, at least to me.
But you don't choose distance. You need the enemies to be in range of your abilities, and if you are no tank you need to be outside the immediate melee range. Your positioning is also constrained by the terrain, which is very often pushing you to be at a certain position (like cramped behind a door). And then you even have GMs who draw 3 by 3 squares and ask the whole party to be inside at the start of combat. What you can choose is your positioning compared to other members of the party, if you are on the left or right front or in the middle, etc... Then, you should position your Eidolon and your Summoner close to each other.
A 3 point difference at high level can be countered by the summoner taking Canny Acumen to get Master Reflex saves, which the Eidolon cannot currently do.
I don't consider such high levels when I speak about save difference. Chances are low I'll ever get a Summoner there. Chances are low for everyone to play a Summoner there, most play happen at low to mid level.
Another reason to keep the eidolon and summoner as far apart as possible is you have two points of attack.
That's exactly the opposite: You want to get them as close as possible so you no more have 2 points of attack. As they are close (which doesn't mean putting your Summoner on the frontline, but a couple of squares behind your Eidolon) then you end up with functionaly a single point of attack.
But why?
To reduce the damage you take. You take less damage when both are close than when both are spreaded.
Also, you're really not a caster - with your teeny spell slots, focus spells dedicated to buffing your Eidolon and whatnot, you have more leeway than other casters to just 'self' buff. Runic body on you eidolon is exactly as good as it is on any other martial (better, if that martial is a Champion).
No, it's worse than on any martial, even a Champion actually outdamages your Eidolon. So I don't understand why you say that.
Shouldn't the summoner's second highest stat be Dex given that they have no armor proficiencies?
No, it's Con. You share your hit points with your Eidolon so you benefit a lot from high Con. Also, getting an Armor is trivial in PF2, if you really miss the few points of AC.
My Summoner has 18 Cha, 16 Con and 12 Dex, and I don't miss the Dex (but the Con saved me a few times, you don't want to drop as a Summoner).That second +Strike comes with a lower probability to hit. It starts making less and less sense than a damage boost to the first strike the more the enemies' AC goes up.
Even against a high AC enemy, it will at most break even. And you need a really high AC enemy. There's no real point in using it outside specific circumstances.
I do wish the summoner started with a better cantrip.
I disagree. This cantrip is not there for effectiveness but for ease of use. With it, a lot of players don't have to think about their Summoner. It makes the class easy to play, even if it's less effective. But I agree it's also a trap: At some point (of tactical awareness), players have to realize they must play without it. They rarely do.
Distance and direction are very different tactical issues, at least to me.But you don't choose distance. You need the enemies to be in range of your abilities, and if you are no tank you need to be outside the immediate melee range. Your positioning is also constrained by the terrain, which is very often pushing you to be at a certain position (like cramped behind a door). And then you even have GMs who draw 3 by 3 squares and ask the whole party to be inside at the start of combat. What you can choose is your positioning compared to other members of the party, if you are on the left or right front or in the middle, etc... Then, you should position your Eidolon and your Summoner close to each other.
A 3 point difference at high...
No. Not how it works in play.
An example is I was within 10 feet of my eidolon. Two creatures thought to attack both of us. Once they got to the summoner part of the duo, they started ripping into me with my caster defenses.
The DM surmised that most animals attack the weaker looking target. So one went after the eidolon due to proximity and the other after the summoner. I had caster defenses. They ripped me up good. I was crit and hammered while the eidolon was also getting hit by the other creature. Ripped through my hit point pool like tissue as the summoner with caster defenses is a very soft target against even lower CR monsters.
It's a bad idea to set up where the enemy can easily access you. If you get attacked by two different creatures. One on the eidolon and one on the summoner, your hit point pool is going to get ripped apart. There is no splitting this damage or taking the lowest. It's not great at all.
If you don't understand this, then you haven't experienced it. You should, because then you under it is much better to not position the eidolon and summoner close enough it is easy to attack the summoner with the weaker AC. It's very bad and can you get you wasted very quickly.
There is no single point of attack for a summoner. If any enemy knows this given the inability to hide your sigil, then they know attacking the summoner is the far more intelligent move as their defenses are weaker and if they go down, the eidolon goes down with them.
It's a bad idea to set up where the enemy can easily access you.
I've never ever said that. I'm speaking of putting the Eidolon and the Summoner close to each other but not by ignoring normal positioning for a second line character and a back line character. Unless you explain me that you put the backline characters 30+ft. appart from the frontline, but then I can tell you it's a bad idea as they will be obliterated by any rear attack.
When enemies attack from a single direction, they rarely spread damage between the frontline and the backline. Either your frontline does a good job at blocking them and the backline is safe or your backline is exposed and as such enemies will tend to go for the squishies (and as they come from the same direction they often can go all in on the backline). So when enemies attack from a single direction you functionally have a single point of attack in most cases.
The 2-point of attack issue appears when enemies attack from different directions, and as such some of them may be blocked by the frontliners and some may not. When enemies attack from different directions they tend to have some choice between the characters they can target. And you want them to choose between the Summoner and the Eidolon as much as possible as it will limit the attention you'll raise and keep it at an acceptable level. On the other hand, if the enemies have to choose between the Eidolon and another character and the Summoner and another character then you have great risks of damage spikes when enemies choose both you and your Eidolon.
To put numbers to easily understand that: If all PCs have 50% chance to be attacked by an enemy. If the Eidolon and the Summoner are close to each other then you have great chances they are targetted by the same enemy which has to choose between the Summoner and the Eidolon (with 50% chance each), and as such you are attacked by one single enemy with 100% chance.
If the Eidolon and the Summoner are appart from each other and as such targetted by different enemies then you have 25% chance that none of them is attacked, 50% chance that one of them is attacked and 25% chance that both of them are attacked by different enemies. And you really don't want them to be attacked simultaneously as the Summoner is no tank.
Keeping the Summoner and the Eidolon together reduces AoE damage and also reduces the 2 points of attack issue by very often reducing it to a single point of attack.
It's a bad idea to set up where the enemy can easily access you.I've never ever said that. I'm speaking of putting the Eidolon and the Summoner close to each other but not by ignoring normal positioning for a second line character and a back line character. Unless you explain me that you put the backline characters 30+ft. appart from the frontline, but then I can tell you it's a bad idea as they will be obliterated by any rear attack.
When enemies attack from a single direction, they rarely spread damage between the frontline and the backline. Either your frontline does a good job at blocking them and the backline is safe or your backline is exposed and as such enemies will tend to go for the squishies (and as they come from the same direction they often can go all in on the backline). So when enemies attack from a single direction you functionally have a single point of attack in most cases.
The 2-point of attack issue appears when enemies attack from different directions, and as such some of them may be blocked by the frontliners and some may not. When enemies attack from different directions they tend to have some choice between the characters they can target. And you want them to choose between the Summoner and the Eidolon as much as possible as it will limit the attention you'll raise and keep it at an acceptable level. On the other hand, if the enemies have to choose between the Eidolon and another character and the Summoner and another character then you have great risks of damage spikes when enemies choose both you and your Eidolon.
To put numbers to easily understand that: If all PCs have 50% chance to be attacked by an enemy. If the Eidolon and the Summoner are close to each other then you have great chances they are targetted by the same enemy which has to choose between the Summoner and the Eidolon (with 50% chance each), and as such you are attacked by one single enemy with 100% chance.
If the Eidolon and the Summoner are appart from each other and...
It depends on the map set up and the monster.
I do often stay 30 feet or more away, but within proximity of the healer's 2 action heal. I want cover and no easy access, but within cantrip range.
If on a wide open map or dealing with creatures that can translocate to you or use strong ranged attack, I have to adapt to that. You want to be within range of the healer and within a move of the martials, but not within any auras that apply negative effects or close enough the enemy can easily move to the soft target summoner.
Then you adapt to visibility issues and possible use of cover.
So it sort of depends. I don't think there is a hard, fast distance number as other factors will influence how you set up.
I know I don't want to be in range of martial monsters able to easily engage the soft PC part of the summoner if I can avoid it. At the same time I do want to be in cantrip range of a save cantrip, usually electric art or frostbite so 30 to 60 feet of the enemy.
I would say positioning depends on the battlefield with an intuitive idea of how to avoid a bad position depending on the enemy. I can't give a hard number distance without more knowledge of the battlefield or enemy capabilities.
Because I think it's a bit hard to understand (or I'm not clear enough) I'll go for an example, that I'll make as classic as I can (hoping to be as clear as Ravingdork with my diagrams).
Let's compare these 2 formations:
S = Summoner
W = Wizard
E = Eidolon
R = Rogue
C = Champion
S..W
......
E..R
..C..
W..S
......
E..R
..C..
Classic party formation, with a frontline composed of a Champion and a Rogue and Eidolon slightly behind and a backline of Wizard and Summoner. Obviously, depending on terrain features and map size, things can move a bit but parties tend to keep roughly the same formations outside extremely constrained environments (like 5ft. corridors).
In case A, the Eidolon and the Summoner are "as close as possible". In case B, the Eidolon and the Summoner are "as far away as possible". In both cases, the party formation is respected as it's a rather effective and obvious one.Example A: Enemies coming from the front
Let's take the classic example of a bunch of enemies coming from the front. In that case, the backline is out of reach (if the frontline does its job well, I hope it does). To access the backline, enemies will in general need to drop a frontliner.
In case A, to access the Summoner, the enemies need to drop the Eidolon... which drops the Summoner, too. So in case A, there are no "2-point issue".
In case B, to access the Summoner, the enemies need to drop the Rogue. So if the Eidolon drops the Summoner drops. But if the Rogue drops the Summoner is attacked and will certainly drop quickly. 2-point issue is real.
Case A wins!
Example B: Enemies coming from the front/rear
If enemies have access to the backline, they will in general target it. So whatever the positioning, only the Summoner will take damage. No "2-point issue".
Draw!
Example C: Enemies coming from both sides
Let's take the case where the enemies attack the party from multiple sides, namely left and right (in case someone wonders what a side means :D). And let say enemies will focus on the most readily accessible PCs, ignoring entirely the heavy armored Champion.
In both cases, the Summoner and the Eidolon will take on average 50% of the enemy attacks.
In case A, they exactly and always take 50% of the attacks: Those coming from their side. Once again, no "2-point issue".
In case B, it's more random. Enemies can choose to focus on the Wizard and Rogue, ignoring the Summoner and Eidolon, which is bad as the Summoner is a 10hp class and is able to take a bit of punishment.
Or... they can all focus on the Summoner and Eidolon (for example if they realize they face a Summoner and their Eidolon) and in that case the Summoner takes 100% of the attacks which is really bad. 2-point issue again.
Case A wins!
Of course, there are much more potential situations that can happen but you'll have hard time creating a situation where the 2-point issue exists in case A but not B. Case A significantly reduces the 2-point issue.
Example D: small area AoEs
Now, let's consider that the enemies land a small area AoE on the party, like a 15ft. cone, a 10ft. burst or a line (obviously, bigger AoEs will target everyone, so the Summoner and Eidolon positioning is pointless in their case).
If you play a bit with AoEs on these formation, you'll realize that in case A there are more chances for the Eidolon and the Summoner to be both inside the AoE. Being both inside the AoE, they will take on average 40% extra damage due to rolling twice and taking the worst result.
In case B, on the other hand, there are increased chances to get one of them inside the AoE.
And these chances are exactly equal (you can see that by "flipping" your AoE).
So if we make simple calculations: X% chance to take 40% extra damage but X% (same percent) to take 100% less damage = less damage taken on average.
Case A wins!
Conclusion:
So we see that however your consider it, case A is a better positioning than case B.
The gut feeling of positioning your Summoner and your Eidolon as far away as possible is bad. It's better to keep the Summoner and the Eidolon as close as possible (while still positioning the Summoner on the backline and the Eidolon on the frontline/second line obviously, I don't speak of breaking the party formation).
The idea you're trying to communicate i.e. keep them at their own angle separate from the angle of the other party members - is simply not communicated with the words you are using.
Well, then I was not clear. I originally reacted to a post stating they should be as far away as possible, which is a bad advice. Deriven actually repeated it, it's common, but flawed, tactics.
But I apparently failed to explain the nuance of my thoughts. I hope these diagrams explained it better.
I'm strongly sharing SuperBidi's opinion here on positioning and SMN in general.
Pf2e is a game where you cannot really position more than one turn ahead tactically speaking. It's a "soft positioning" game where you need outright wall spells to do anything like that (or magic stairs! I love that spell).
It is just too easy for actors to move around and get to a backline, etc.
This has a knock-on effect where splitting up your SMN's pair can invite disaster. In any fight with more than 1 foe, the number 1 way foes target is by proximity; if not by the very closest, then by the "closest good" target.
If you split your SMN pair, there is a good chance both halves will get engaged by different foes. This is what needs to be avoided, as your single HP pool is not 2x a normal PC, and cannot take this.
If you keep both halves in the same quadrant / area of the fight, odds are your pair will only take damage from a single foe. If the foe swaps from the Eidolon to the SMN, this is still comparatively a better outcome! The Eidolon is no longer taking damage, while a split SMN could easily be in that double-targeted danger zone.
This is also why AoE SMN stuff often favors the same positioning plan. If you split up, you basically guarantee that every cone/burst that only hits half the party will include one of your two halves. If you keep them together, then you still end up taking fewer hits to your HP, despite the worse-of-both rolls feeling bad.
.
Because every answer is "it depends" I'd like to carve out an easy to explain caveat. You *do* want your SMN to split and roughly flank any single foe. Putting the 1 foe between different ally actors is the best way to ensure that only one half can get hit in a cone / AoE, and without a 2nd foe, you know you will not get hit by multiple foes at once.
.
S.Bidi is also super correct about Boost Eidolon. It's a First Order Optimal Strategy. It's better to characterize it as a "crutch" rather than a "trap" imo. It's a decent enough action, but it is *intentionally* going to be sub-optimal, so as the levels go up and your options explode, continuing to spam Boost is genuinely a decent sign of lack of mastery.
(Believe it or not, there are even some evergreen 1A consumables that kinda put Boost to shame. While Draw-dodging takes some build investment to get online for item lovers, most SMNs would massively benefit from carrying a holly bush token in-hand to throw down once per fight)
Yes, you have to avoid the... two? casting eidolons, but that's the same as, say, outwit ranger.
Outwit rangers are awesome. People just don't know how to properly leverage its amazing abilities properly.
I have generally not found that.[...]
In these types of fights, the issues go back to the "soft positioning" detail.
If foes are going to match-pair with each PC they can, then there's not much you can do to avoid being double-hit on both SMN halves.
At the very best, this likely meant burning 1 more foe Stride action.
And imo, the disadvantages of being farther away from your Eidolon are not at all worth it.
If you *are* going to be double-hit by 2 foes, then you generally want your SMN and Eidolon close enough that they can help each other, not further apart where you, and your whole team, has to choose which half to help, and which to leave unaided.
.
IMO, the biggest "system detail/~problem" that causes outcomes / creates incentives like this unintuitive "keep the SMN pair close" is how damned short-ranged so many spells (and combat spaces) are these days.
30ft is more or less a single Stride, and that's way too close to be the "default" spell range, imo.
Unless you have specifically planned your PC around avoiding 30ft spells (*and* have invested in way above average mobility/ spd), it is almost always better for even a squishy spellcaster to be 30ft from the melee than any further. This has the knock-on effect where positioning is kinda moot tactically, because that's just 1 foe stride to the "backline."
.
(it's also kinda eye-rolling when GMs do that foe-per-PC matched type of fight. It makes 0 sense for either side of the engagement to fight like that. Each side is going to try to win, and gain whatever advantage they can. Ganging up & flanking is a natural part of even untrained RL street brawls. Deciding that foes are happy to pair off robs combat of one of the most natural and easy to understand sources of dynamism. If a HP8 PC eats an unexpected crit hit, that *should* entice foes to redirect and try to capitalize on that advantage/vulnerability. And the PCs *should* scramble in the opposite, and to try to stop the "snowball" from rolling against them.)
But for new players who aren't comparing DPS and want the exotic fantasy of being two people, the Summoner has a far simpler set of heuristics to be decent than other classes that serve more complicated flavours.
Absolutely. I think SMN is way more easy to get a handle on and know if/how well you are doing compared to something like Alchemist.
I've heard way too many horror stories where Alchs think they are playing the class "well" and are numerically contributing very very little in combat.
SMN's crutch of Boost Eidolon is a buff, meaning it can only be used in conjunction with a Strike. It certainly can be quite sub-optimal, but it can never be a trap in and of itself *because* it's not really an independent action.
In comparison, Alchemist's Quick Vials & Field Actions are actions in and unto themselves. Hearing about Chir players using their 2A, 2d6 heal in combat and having a bad time is a dagger in the heart, because those players trusted the Paizo devs to balance that option to be good-ish or at least viable. When in reality I'm pretty sure it's the very worst heal in the game. And should be avoided at just about all costs in combat.
Even the 1A Quick Vial + Quick Bomber throws are not really better than a +1 Returning weapon, and far too many trusting players do not realize that the action is *supposed* to be a poor-performing back-up.
if they're always comparing themselves to the pick fighter or giant barbarian then they should just... play those classes?
In skilled hands, the Summoner deals Pick Fighter/Giant Barbarian level of damage. The Summoner is really nasty when it comes to damage but it deals tons of small dents which are much harder to follow than big hits. But at the end of the day if you sum everything up you realize that the damage is there.
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Yes, it's an ally.
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That's the fun and interesting part. You are not your own ally but your eidolon is, so you can apply effects that usually are forbidden to be self applied to your eidolon.
As a player with assorted online GMs I've been having the experience of seeing a lot of GMs that will just throw new players to the wolves and then get short with them when they don't 'get it'.Again, surely as a player you TELL the other players why they are missing, right?
If I'm the GM sure, as I noted. As a player I keep getting pushback when I try to help players through these things. I don't push the issue because people do not like to be told how to play their character, and I refuse to be 'that guy'. But I do try to give advice.
Often I see the pushback of 'just play what you want' when anyone at a table tries to coordinate as a group.
But that's a social dynamic.
Solvable when a session 0 is done right. I've found in session 0 that people often do not like to show and tell their characters, compare notes, and pick things together. Again a social dynamic issue that when I'm GMing I forcibly push past by using Foundry to give everyone full access to everyone's sheets and openly discussing what each player is picking and asking them 'have you all thought about that as a group' when they're thinking of options.
It's only in this thread as a comment in response to the person who noted that their new players always somehow pick good choices.
My experience is they will pick random choices unless someone shows them how that will work out in play.
And to bring that back to Summoner - it has a lot of options that become bad trap choices if combined poorly. So invariably... I see new players go there.
I've yet to meet new players that will make good choices on their own before they've mastered the game's rules.
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Shouldn't the summoner's second highest stat be Dex given that they have no armor proficiencies?
No, it's Con. You share your hit points with your Eidolon so you benefit a lot from high Con. Also, getting an Armor is trivial in PF2, if you really miss the few points of AC.
My Summoner has 18 Cha, 16 Con and 12 Dex, and I don't miss the Dex (but the Con saved me a few times, you don't want to drop as a Summoner).
I just don't see that.
No amount of HPs makes up for being crit. In play I've seen Barbarian as having the worst survivability of any class I've seen people try for this very reason. Especially pre-remaster.
Also, Summoner doesn't even have light armor proficiency.
I suppose if you want to be the party tank with your eidolon - which then entails keeping your caster out of range of enemies rather than near that eidolon. I keep seeing players try to be the party tank with things like the plant eidolon - and in fact that's what a player is doing in the game I'm in. But I'm starting to feel it's not that viable a position to go for because he's got no AC and is too easy to crit because... he keeps his caster too close. Enemies just melee hit his caster instead of the eidolon.
And a few extra HP is not going to help when you become a crit sponge.
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That's the fun and interesting part. You are not your own ally but your eidolon is, so you can apply effects that usually are forbidden to be self applied to your eidolon.Okay, next Summoner I play I'm gonna free archetype into wood kineticist so I can protector tree myself...
That will work to protect your Eidolon, but not the summoner directly.
S..W
......
E..R
..C..W..S
......
E..R
..C..Superbidi, when you tell these boards your advice is to keep S and E together, what you're communicating is neither case A or B, it's case C:
R..W
.....
S..E
..C..Arcady, Deriven, me - and probably many of the lurkers - hear you say "keep them together" and take it to literally mean Superbidi thinks you should keep them in 2 adjacent 5' squares.
Yeah.
Also to add. Case C is what I keep seeing new players do.
I've yet to GM a player playing summoner so I have to be the one at the table to say "Ok folks, I need to help this guy out a bit."
Instead I'm one of the other PCs in that diagram. Maybe I'm a Champion who rolled lower on initiative and saw the summoner move into diagram C while until my turn comes up I'm back there where the Wizard belongs - and then they body block me out of the action.
- This has literally happened several times. Most of my uses of the 'reposition' action have involved looking up the rules for willing targets because I'm trying to get some fool caster to be behind my Champion or my Wrestler Monk in one game and one one-shot I was in. ;)
Or I'm on a ranged character and just watching the mess unfold.
As a player, I have 'limited agency' to demand how another player plays their character without coming across as rude. I use the word 'demand' there because even softly given advice can get heard as 'you [expletive] something-or-other, do I what I want you to do'...
That's a social issue not relevant to this thread as I struggle to find ways to give advice at tables that have the 'play what you want' philosophy so hard ingrained that even advice is seen as intrusive.
But... this formation C is what I hear when I hear 'keep them together' because I have seen 3 out of 4 summoner players go for it. Number 4 was only an exception because they picked the 'combine into one' ability at level 1, got annoyed at how Foundry handled it poorly, and tossed the character after one session.
Now when I think 'keep them apart' I think the examples of A and B earlier - but I hadn't considered breaking down the difference in the two though it is likely if I played one I'd have landed on B unless we got hit from multiple sides, then gone for A with an attempt to switch positions.
However even if I'm using A or B - I still want a higher AC on my caster because I am very used to being targeted in the back line by reach or range. I mostly play assorted healers (anything but cleric) or ranged martials, and once a witch - and being shot at back there was and is a whole regular thing, combined with enemies that try to rush through the front line to get to the backline. Had one GM that would always have enemies go for my water kineticist - even animals and mindless - because she was a healer. Even at the start of combat before any of us had done any actions, they'd "know" I was a healer... so I just go used to stacking on any excuse I could find for more AC. Again another one of those 'social issue' problems.
But the summoner caster has a similar magnet on it - the easier to hit one of the two. Somehow a Skeleton and a Giant Rat both know they can get crits that way with some GMs... ;)
And while they shouldn't if the GM plays right; the Elf Rogue and his Human gunslinger companion in some hypothetical encounter likely would know to go for the caster if they can get there. At which point you do not want to be a crit-magnet.
Here's another Case D - which is actually what I see new players gravitate to:
EXAMPLE D.1
H..W
.....
..C..
S.[X].E
(where S and E both get into melee along with other melee)
I have repeatedly had people at tables tell me the point of summoner is for self flanking, I point out why that's a bad move, and then they go and make a character and do it. It's a whole thing I keep running into.
EXAMPLE D.2
H..W
.....
..C..
S..E
.[X].
(where S and E both get into melee and block other melee from access)
- Where [X] is a melee opponent.
But even more I see this:
EXAMPLE D.3
H..W
.....
.S.C
..[X].E
- Notice how nobody is getting flanking here, and yet all 3 melee martials are in melee with that enemy. Me... I'm back there as H or W. Healer or Ranged DPS.
Granted I also see this all the time in a game with no Summoners. Open space all around the enemy and the martials stand in front of it side by side and me in the back saying "move just a little more" getting met with "But I like it here".
No amount of HPs makes up for being crit.
Obviously yes.
Most casters benefit more in terms of survivability from high Con than from high Dex. I've played high Con low Dex casters and they were crit and I was just shrugging. Next to me the high Dex low Con casters were crit (because you also get crit when your AC is maxxed out) and were eliminated quickly because of that.On the Summoner, you don't really care about Dexterity. The Summoner is not supposed to take hits (it happens, but once every ten fights like most casters) but the Eidolon on the other hand takes a lot of punishment by being closer to the frontline. Also, due to how often you roll twice and take the worst (or best) result, having high Reflex save is twice less important for a Summoner than for another class. And because your Eidolon necessarily has above average Dexterity (all Eidolons have a minimum of 14 in Dexterity) and shares your skills, you also don't need Dexterity for skills as your Eidolon will be the one rolling at least Thievery and very often Stealth and Acrobatics. So Constitution is definitely the Summoner second stat. High Dexterity is only useful to be sure that when you get crit it doesn't come from your low Dexterity.
I imagine people are looking at my stories about the groups of new players I've had and just wondering at what kind of weirdness am I in... I know I do that sometimes.
But a lot of these folks are coming over from games where every last dust-bunny has unlimited reactive strikes, there is no flanking, and every caster has fireball as a cantrip or something. And if you're coming from games like that some of the crazy confusion I keep encountering makes sense.
New players are often coming in with trained expectations from games that look similar on the surface, and wanting to try the most unique option possible first.
Summoner just gives you two chances to get it wrong instead of just one. :)
It's also oddly a class much easier to play in person than on a VTT because the VTTs just get all the permissions and automation wrong for it, and I play online so I keep seeing how messy that can get when the player is also trying to learn the controls in a new VTT.
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Because I think it's a bit hard to understand (or I'm not clear enough) I'll go for an example, that I'll make as classic as I can (hoping to be as clear as Ravingdork with my diagrams).
Let's compare these 2 formations:
S = Summoner
W = Wizard
E = Eidolon
R = Rogue
C = ChampionS..W
......
E..R
..C..W..S
......
E..R
..C..Classic party formation, with a frontline composed of a Champion and a Rogue and Eidolon slightly behind and a backline of Wizard and Summoner. Obviously, depending on terrain features and map size, things can move a bit but parties tend to keep roughly the same formations outside extremely constrained environments (like 5ft. corridors).
In case A, the Eidolon and the Summoner are "as close as possible". In case B, the Eidolon and the Summoner are "as far away as possible". In both cases, the party formation is respected as it's a rather effective and obvious one.Example A: Enemies coming from the front
Let's take the classic example of a bunch of enemies coming from the front. In that case, the backline is out of reach (if the frontline does its job well, I hope it does). To access the backline, enemies will in general need to drop a frontliner.
In case A, to access the Summoner, the enemies need to drop the Eidolon... which drops the Summoner, too. So in case A, there are no "2-point issue".
In case B, to access the Summoner, the enemies need to drop the Rogue. So if the Eidolon drops the Summoner drops. But if the Rogue drops the Summoner is attacked and will certainly drop quickly. 2-point issue is real.Case A wins!
Example B: Enemies coming from the front/rear
If enemies have access to the backline, they will in general target it. So whatever the positioning, only the Summoner will take damage. No "2-point issue".
Draw!
Example C: Enemies coming from both sides
Let's take the case where the enemies attack the party from multiple sides,...
Your theorycrafting doesn't stand up to real play which we cannot test.
I have far more experience in this game than you have at far higher levels against a vast array of creatures. I'm telling you that positioning farther away from the eidolon is the smarter play.
The considerations for your cases do not account for the vast differences in creatures.
I have run multiple summoners. I have run one summoner to level 20. I am DMing one right now that is level 16.
Your groupings are not how we play. I don't know how to convey to you on superior formations for setting up the hammer on enemies using forward scouting, pulling, and use of terrain, especially in dungeons with tight quarters where you can draw the enemy in and set the up attack zones very favorable to the party.
A lot of your case studies are not how we play or how the DM uses intelligent enemies.
Even for something simple like moving through the dungeon, we have a routine.
1. High perception trap character checks door or hallway for traps. Once check is done three times usually, they fall back.
2. Champion or hard martial moves into position with secondary martial to open door.
3. Door opened champion and secondary martial moves into room to draw creatures to door.
4. Other PC members stay back until we see what's there and how it engages.
5. Then progress according to enemy capabilities.
Things we don't care about:
1. If they know we're coming. We don't care. They want to open the door first and let us hammer them, let them do it. PC parties almost always have the advantage in tactical capabilities including AOE and martial tactical options.
Things we do care about:
1. Auras, gazes, always on painful abilities that we don't have to engage with or minimize engagement with.
2. Reactive attacks and how they work.
3. AoE capabilities of enemies. Cone, Burst, how do we position to avoid.
4. Healing range.
5. Enemy healers.
6. Visibility: Concealment or straight invisibility which we build to counter always.
7. Mobility of enemy.
8. Size of room and how easily can we use AOE without hitting our party.
9. Anything else relevant.
We even sometimes position the summoner outside the room if a hard hitting AOE hits the room or they have ranged attacks because a summoner can heal the eidolon without being present in the room. NO use exposing them to rider effects from AOE if not needed.
Think more outside the box with your summoner and group set up. PC parties have a massive tactical advantage over enemies. You don't need to position close to your eidolon. Summoners don't even need to be in the room sometimes as they can heal the eidolon standing completely away from the battle. This can be a huge advantage when dealing with enemies.
You want to know one of the best ways to focus healing? Send one or two martials into the room to eat AOEs and damage, then heal them after the AOEs go off while you position the casters to enter the room after the AOEs go off.
There are so many ways to set up better if you coordinate with your group.
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The idea you're trying to communicate i.e. keep them at their own angle separate from the angle of the other party members - is simply not communicated with the words you are using.Well, then I was not clear. I originally reacted to a post stating they should be as far away as possible, which is a bad advice. Deriven actually repeated it, it's common, but flawed, tactics.
But I apparently failed to explain the nuance of my thoughts. I hope these diagrams explained it better.
Yes. Keep them farther apart is not flawed advice. I speak from experience.
I don't know why you make these statements like you can prove them when I can prove you wrong by how I and others play. If I was playing with you at a table, you would be proven wrong often by:
1. How easily we win.
2. How far apart we space.
You don't seem to get that one of the best ways to gain action economy superiority is distance. Why you keep missing this easy to see advantage in the game is beyond me.
I have taught groups for years to use distance as a major advantage in actions. One of the big advantages PCs have is they have the ability to pick attack sequences and leverage them to win in a variety of situations.
One of the earliest learned advantages in these types of games is distance. How to deal damage at a distance. How to form up for distance damage. How to use delay and ready actions to intercept attacking enemies as they close after you soften them at a distance. How to split the group to avoid AOE and ranged attacks if you have hard cover.
How do you not know these tactics and you keep selling yourself as this master of tactical play? I don't get it since some of this is really easy to see and use to your advantage.
I imagine people are looking at my stories about the groups of new players I've had and just wondering at what kind of weirdness am I in... I know I do that sometimes.
But a lot of these folks are coming over from games where every last dust-bunny has unlimited reactive strikes, there is no flanking, and every caster has fireball as a cantrip or something. And if you're coming from games like that some of the crazy confusion I keep encountering makes sense.
New players are often coming in with trained expectations from games that look similar on the surface, and wanting to try the most unique option possible first.
Summoner just gives you two chances to get it wrong instead of just one. :)
It's also oddly a class much easier to play in person than on a VTT because the VTTs just get all the permissions and automation wrong for it, and I play online so I keep seeing how messy that can get when the player is also trying to learn the controls in a new VTT.
One of the things holding me back from using a more advanced VTT is we I don't play the conventional way. Never have, never will since it is a tactically poor way to engage.
Most of the time over the years, I've seen groups kind of let the DM go, "Door is open, there are some orcs there or monster, roll initiative."
I don't enjoy this type of play in a game with this much variation and ability. Why wouldn't I use stealth to scout ahead if I can build a really strong stealth character? Why wouldn't I decide where to engage the enemy? Why wouldn't I want to hit them at a distance first forcing them to use move actions while I'm using damaging attack actions at range to leave them already hurt with lower hit points once they hit the frontline?
Most VTTs cannot handle this type of play yet. Hopefully it will get better because I'm not changing how I play for some visual bells and whistles.
I was looking at a room to determine look how we position. A 30 by 45 room connected by a hallway.
We did our standard push into the room after door check.
Four CR 14 targets against the four level 16 PCs. So a fairly easy encounter.
Door opened. Initiative order set keying off champion and fighter. Either delay actions being used to wait for champion to go in or buffing or AOE dropped into the room.
Champion and Fighter move to engage first target with large Eidolon setting up behind them and punching over them. Fighter has gang up to provide flanking advantage on target as well as Crashing Slam to drop target for Reactive Strike set up which everyone has.
Casters move into room and spread to sides behind martials around 15 feet away due to tight room size.
Looks like something like this
C F
E E (Large Eidolon behind them using reach to punch over)
Ran Archer
Spread along backwall Cl Su
We like to shade casters or ranged staggered to the side avoid cones and lines. We specifically position to avoid cones and lines if possible.
We don't want a cone or line hitting more than 2 or 3 party members at best if we can help it. Small room size can impact this, but we do our best.
We stagger formations as much as possible and we engage the targets to ensure they are hammered as fast as possible focus firing as eliminating a target on the board fast.
We very rarely use any of the formations used as an example unless we're setting up in a hallway where the advantage is preventing a large number of enemies from flanking, though we often slam that room with AOE and hold the line in round one before pushing in.
Staggered positioning around the room is our preferred formation after battle starts. Staying close together is just a recipe for a lot of effects and attacks that unnecessarily expose more PCs to unnecessary saves and damage.
Your theorycrafting doesn't stand up to real play which we cannot test.
Unfortunately, what you call "real play" is just how your table plays. I don't think anyone has your very specific experience. You are actually the only one who reacts to the formation I've given and I'm pretty sure no one on this forum uses your strategies.
I have far more experience in this game than you have at far higher levels against a vast array of creatures.
You state that as if high level play was superior. It's actually inferior... in games played. Most players don't care about level 13+ play as it's too rare (I personally don't, I play less than 1% of my games at these levels).
And if we speak of general experience with this game, well, I have hundreds of sessions with dozens of GMs in numerous types of play (PFS, APs, adventures, homebrew, Westmarches). So I think my experience is much broader than yours.So, maybe at your table it's better to keep the Summoner as far as possible from the Eidolon but as I showed it's not at all tables. We will have to agree to disagree on that.
Your theorycrafting doesn't stand up to real play which we cannot test.Unfortunately, what you call "real play" is just how your table plays. I don't think anyone has your very specific experience. You are actually the only one who reacts to the formation I've given and I'm pretty sure no one on this forum uses your strategies.
I have far more experience in this game than you have at far higher levels against a vast array of creatures.You state that as if high level play was superior. It's actually inferior... in games played. Most players don't care about level 13+ play as it's too rare (I personally don't, I play less than 1% of my games at these levels).
And if we speak of general experience with this game, well, I have hundreds of sessions with dozens of GMs in numerous types of play (PFS, APs, adventures, homebrew, Westmarches). So I think my experience is much broader than yours.So, maybe at your table it's better to keep the Summoner as far as possible from the Eidolon but as I showed it's not at all tables. We will have to agree to disagree on that.
My tactics work across editions for decades. None of it is hard. I'm surprised you don't see why given how easy it is to see why they work.
Distance is almost always an advantage. You claiming it is not means you do not know how to use it.You outlined some formations and claimed this position won when it did nothing of the kind. It was a meaningless set of examples that in no way discussed the capabilities of the creatures or the PCs.
There is no agree to disagree. There is just I don't play with you and can't show you how the tactics I use will have superior outcomes to your tactics, at least those we don't agree on as some of your tactics I agree with such as nuking first before the battlefield is crowded and depleted hit point pools make for wasteful AOE.
My strategies work at every table. I've played plenty of times with other DMs and players over the decades and have never played a table I did not dominate save when I first started. I've been playing for 45 years now going through the standard cycles of pick up tables to now where I have a set table.
Every group I walk into I usually take control of. Which I don't even hear you talk about.
Why do you think my groups plays the way they do? They all played in different games before they met me. I trained them to play the game well because I showed the group how to use tactics as a player and DM across editions.
If you want to get into the psychology of groups and RP games, we could talk on that. This is one of the major reasons groups, including pick up groups, underperform.
Most people are concerned with stepping on other people's toes, thus no one takes command of a group or coordinates it. They sit there each running their characters, not wanting to seem rude or pushy and waiting to react to another player or enemy's actions.
I don't play that way. I'm very into small unit tactics in these types of games. I very much take control of tables and require DMs to react to my tactics, not me to theirs.
I know my tactics work because of how these games work. You should be counting actions for movement versus actions for offense or other more valuable actions in combat. Distance forces enemies to use actions for movement while you use actions for offense or more valuable activities.
This includes the summoner who by positioning as far as reasonably possible from his eidolon can tactically use the space as appropriate to the encounter. It depends on what their eidolon does as well, which is why you're one size fits all philosophy is extremely strange to call "superior."
If you have a dragon firing off a cone or an elemental firing off a burst, better to use them as a cannon to open keeping yourself far enough away not to interfere with their AOE. If you can set up under full cover while still healing yourself or being healed while boosting the eidolon focusing on offense on the eidolon, then all the better.
But even this will be dependent on battlefield and enemy.
I don't want to encourage bad tactical play as "agree to disagree." People can test run what I advise them to do and see if it works for themselves or ask me about specific summoner feats or builds. I know quite a few and DMed quite a few. I can advise on those I know.
Go ahead and place the summoner and eidolon close together, then experiment with movement with feats like Tandem Movement and Act Together to see how to best to set up within your group. I think you'll see there is not a one sized fit all positioning in this game.
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That's the fun and interesting part. You are not your own ally but your eidolon is, so you can apply effects that usually are forbidden to be self applied to your eidolon.Okay, next Summoner I play I'm gonna free archetype into wood kineticist so I can protector tree myself...
I did that on a current campaign, the DM was so disgusted that he asked me to switch my FA.
As for summoner 101:
Because of how act together works, you and your eidolon cannot both use 2-actions stuff at the same time. So there are two kinds of summoners, those with loaded guns and those who dig - wait, that's not it. I mean: there are two kinds of summoners: those who emphasize melee and those who emphasize casting.
- Dragon and Beast (and to an extend elemental) are considered "melee" eidolons because they have worthwile 2-action feats. You can (and should) throw a couple spells here or there but the brunt of your efficiency will come from letting your eidolon go wild. Boost eidolon is useful there when you don't cast, and things like Intimidate (summoner) + Boost Eidolon (summoner) + Draconic Frenzy (eidolon) is a great turn. So is Intimidate (or BE) + Breath Weapon + Strike.
- Most other eidolons are considered "summoners" in that the summoner is the one who'll usually take two actions from act together and cast a spell or a cantrip, while the eidolon is here to strike and trip. A basic turn might be Electric arc (summoner) + Trip (eidolon) + strike (eidolon).
- Dragon is often considered the best melee eidolon. Plant is often considered the best summoner eidolon. Of course, YMMV and it also depends on what spell list you'd like to get.
Once you understand that, summoner is a pretty easy class to play, even for a beginner BUT it leads more than other classes to long turns when you're not used to it. Since you have two bodies on the map and a lot of things to do (including how you divide your actions), beginners will probably take a lot of time (and sometimes need to be corrected on small mistakes like using Tandem Move during Act Together). If you're a beginner and want to play a summoner, please, PLEASE think about what you want to do BEFORE your turn comes. It's important for every character, but even more so for a summoner, so you don't waste 10mn thinking about your every option ^^
If you want to get into the psychology of groups and RP games, we could talk on that.
Well, it'd certainly be an interesting discussion.
What is sure is "I very much take control of tables and require DMs to react to my tactics, not me to theirs." is not my gaming philosophy, neither one I'd advocate for.
So I'm not sure we can get much further as party formation is very much impacted by how the party coordinates. Which leads to "agreeing to disagree".
It's also oddly a class much easier to play in person than on a VTT because the VTTs just get all the permissions and automation wrong for it, and I play online so I keep seeing how messy that can get when the player is also trying to learn the controls in a new VTT.I would somewhat agree with that. I also think VTTs can, in some cases, exacerbate the 'newbies create bad positioning' problem that you mentioned. When everyone is sitting in front of screens it can be the most impatient player who goes to the door and clicks it open, before anyone has really positioned or done any "0th round" casts. Rather than the right character opening it. Whereas in a TT environment I haven't seen that. The Leeeroy problem, basically. Tools like foundry may be far less dynamic than a mmorpg, but if you've got someone who "fidgets" constantly with their token on the screen, there's a good chance they're going to step in a trap or click open a door before the slower (cough older like me cough :) screen-users have moved their tokens up into position.
But as you say, that isn't a PF2E system problem or even a 'this class is hard to play right' learning curve problem. It's more of a group dynamic social problem. Hey computer speed demon, let the eidolon move up before you click, please. Remember that that player is managing two tokens to your one. :)
Guilty, lol. Though most of the time that's because whoever is expected to be up front opening the door isn't paying attention and people get tired of sitting around waiting for them to wake up. Especially if it's not the first time and you've already prompted them that session.
Which is also another problem with VTTs and screens at game: there are a LOT of distractions readily available. It can lead to more people ignoring whats going on when its not their turn, then having to catch up when it is their turn, as well as generally not paying attention during exploration mode and either falling behind or not knowing whats going on.
Theatre of the mind exploration mode helps a fair bit I think, as opposed to doing full VTT map exploration all the time. But if you have the map in a dungeon crawl it's pretty easy to use it...
I did that on a current campaign, the DM was so disgusted that he asked me to switch my FA.That's the fun and interesting part. You are not your own ally but your eidolon is, so you can apply effects that usually are forbidden to be self applied to your eidolon.Okay, next Summoner I play I'm gonna free archetype into wood kineticist so I can protector tree myself...
Timber Sentinel annoys me so much as a GM. In fights with things like mindless creatures that can't reasonably deal with it, it can effectively trivialize entire encounters because it stops absurd amounts of damage and unlike Protector Tree the spell, is infinitely renewable.