I think most NPCs should have a passing familiarity with magic, but an understanding of how a specific class works should be exceedingly rare. Like "understanding if you stop the Summoner, you stop the Eidolon" should be like "understanding that the Witch's familiar is the source of your curse."Ehm... but "understanding that the Witch's familiar is the source of your curse" is completely obvious without any magic knowledge. The moment it growls and you immediately feel bad, you want to swat it. Do you want summoner-eidolon thing to be this obvious?
I mean, the Summoner literally has a class feature to put a glowing mark on both the Summoner and the Eidolon.
The class itself wants it to be obvious.
If anything it's more obvious than Witch, because a familiar can look an awful lot like an ordinary creature or a less dangerous familiar, such as a Wizard's familiar. Those are historically common in Golarian and arcane magic is relatively well known.
It'd be pretty hard for common folk to tell what kind of familiar this is at a glance. Someone with training at identifying magic users probably can, but a more ordinary person is going to see a cat and might realize its a familiar, but that's about it.
Literally anyone can see a big glowing symbol on two entities and figure out that they're connected somehow from that.
I think most NPCs should have a passing familiarity with magic, but an understanding of how a specific class works should be exceedingly rare. Like "understanding if you stop the Summoner, you stop the Eidolon" should be like "understanding that the Witch's familiar is the source of your curse."Ehm... but "understanding that the Witch's familiar is the source of your curse" is completely obvious without any magic knowledge. The moment it growls and you immediately feel bad, you want to swat it. Do you want summoner-eidolon thing to be this obvious?I mean, the Summoner literally has a class feature to put a glowing mark on both the Summoner and the Eidolon.
The class itself wants it to be obvious.
If anything it's more obvious than Witch, because a familiar can look an awful lot like an ordinary creature or a less dangerous familiar, such as a Wizard's familiar. Those are historically common in Golarian and arcane magic is relatively well known.
It'd be pretty hard for common folk to tell what kind of familiar this is at a glance. Someone with training at identifying magic users probably can, but a more ordinary person is going to see a cat and might realize its a familiar, but that's about it.
Literally anyone can see a big glowing symbol on two entities and figure out that they're connected somehow from that.
Summoner is obvious, but there are often higher threats in a group than the summoner. Summoner is a middle threat character in my experience. Above say a damage dealing cleric, investigator, or alchemist, but lower than a fighter or rogue or a caster blasting off powerful AOE. Their damage adds up in the aggregate, but it's more bunches of hits from different sources then the heavy crits of a fighter or a barb or rogue or magus.