Alternate Summoner idea, balance concern?

[Occidental]

Hey all. Recently I was interested in playing a Summoner, but I wanted to do a bit of an alternate idea (one that is soundly unimportant to where this has all wound up). I searched around and found a few things that approximated what I wanted, but weren't quite right, so I decided to make my own Summoner archetype. From there, things got even more out of control and I ended up more or less creating an entire class. What I need help with is just to determine the viability of a replacement Summoner class that:

- Has 1/2 BAB
- D6 Hit Die (D4 maybe???)
- More skills (better skill list too)
- A more versatile Eidolon (in the broader sense, gets some class features and non-trash mental scores, but lower Evolution Points)
- Akashic Veilweaving instead of spells
- A kind of customize-able summoned "squad" of more humanoid soldiers instead of the Summon Monster advancement


The idea was that the Eidolon would always be there, hanging around, and you could make it more generally versatile, helping you out in non-combat situations, or with scouting, or really with anything you can think of, or just being a combat monster like the old Eidolon is. Then for the squad, you would invest Essence into the ability in order to get soldiers, 1 soldier per Essence invested. Any soldier that died under your "command" would burn the point of Essence you used to summon it until you rested again (As point of reference, you have probably 1 point of Essence per level, and Akasha imposes a 1-per-5-levels cap on how much Essence you can invest into any one thing, that can be expanded with a feat). I was thinking that the soldiers HD and other abilities would scale up slightly as you levelled, but at most would be something like level 10-12 when you're at level 20, something in-line with what Summon Monster can give you, but bearing in mind that Summon Monster is only for a certain number of rounds. Like Summon Monster, their stats would be mostly from a rigid selection, so it wouldn't bog you down with customizing the soldiers, the Eidolon, and the character, it would just be mix-and-match when you invested 3 Essence to get 3 soldiers, whether you wanted 3 archers, or 2 archers and a big heavy-armor guy, or two speedy TWF-ers and a polearm user, etc.

Basically what I'm looking to get back from anybody who'd care to lend their 2 cents is whether or not I'm just totally blind to something really overpowered/underpowered/bad about the concept, and where to aim for how strong or weak any of the abilities should be. Like for example, how many class features the Eidolon should get, how many Evolution Points the Eidolon should lose, how fast/far to scale the soldiers, etc etc.

[khadgar567]

Hey all. Recently I was interested in playing a Summoner, but I wanted to do a bit of an alternate idea (one that is soundly unimportant to where this has all wound up). I searched around and found a few things that approximated what I wanted, but weren't quite right, so I decided to make my own Summoner archetype. From there, things got even more out of control and I ended up more or less creating an entire class. What I need help with is just to determine the viability of a replacement Summoner class that:

- Has 1/2 BAB
- D6 Hit Die (D4 maybe???)
- More skills (better skill list too)
- A more versatile Eidolon (in the broader sense, gets some class features and non-trash mental scores, but lower Evolution Points)
- Akashic Veilweaving instead of spells
- A kind of customize-able summoned "squad" of more humanoid soldiers instead of the Summon Monster advancement


The idea was that the Eidolon would always be there, hanging around, and you could make it more generally versatile, helping you out in non-combat situations, or with scouting, or really with anything you can think of, or just being a combat monster like the old Eidolon is. Then for the squad, you would invest Essence into the ability in order to get soldiers, 1 soldier per Essence invested. Any soldier that died under your "command" would burn the point of Essence you used to summon it until you rested again (As point of reference, you have probably 1 point of Essence per level, and Akasha imposes a 1-per-5-levels cap on how much Essence you can invest into any one thing, that can be expanded with a feat). I was thinking that the soldiers HD and other abilities would scale up slightly as you levelled, but at most would be something like level 10-12 when you're at level 20, something in-line with what Summon Monster can give you, but bearing in mind that Summon Monster is only for a certain number of rounds. Like Summon Monster, their stats would be mostly from a rigid selection, so it wouldn't bog you down with customizing the soldiers, the Eidolon, and the character, it would just be mix-and-match when you invested 3 Essence to get 3 soldiers, whether you wanted 3 archers, or 2 archers and a big heavy-armor guy, or two speedy TWF-ers and a polearm user, etc.

Basically what I'm looking to get back from anybody who'd care to lend their 2 cents is whether or not I'm just totally blind to something really overpowered/underpowered/bad about the concept, and where to aim for how strong or weak any of the abilities should be. Like for example, how many class features the Eidolon should get, how many Evolution Points the Eidolon should lose, how fast/far to scale the soldiers, etc etc.

I am not a expert but looks good essentia per soldier nice and you still can use big guy( eidolon) for important situations only problem is evolutions but it may be solved by giving just enough points
So i really like to see the rest

[nikkoli]

I think it's a good set up, but one thing is that pathfinder did away with the d4 hit die, I would advise using the d6 if you are having 1/2 bab and a d8 hit die if you decide on 3/4 bab.

[Lanth Sor]

It seemed to me as for the evo points it front loads them when i think it should have back loaded them instead. Something like 2 base then 1/2 levels up to 10 then 1 per level 11-15 and 2/ level 16-20




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[Occidental]

I am not a expert but looks good essentia per soldier nice and you still can use big guy( eidolon) for important situations only problem is evolutions but it may be solved by giving just enough points
So i really like to see the rest

Thanks! It's actually not too far from completion, you may see it sooner rather than later.



I think it's a good set up, but one thing is that pathfinder did away with the d4 hit die, I would advise using the d6 if you are having 1/2 bab and a d8 hit die if you decide on 3/4 bab.

Ah okay. I think 1/2 BAB is definitely the way to go. The whole idea of the soldiers is to use them to strike with instead of your main dude, but yeah a d4 Hit Die would be too small for Pathfinder.


It seemed to me as for the evo points it front loads them when i think it should have back loaded them instead. Something like 2 base then 1/2 levels up to 10 then 1 per level 11-15 and 2/ level 16-20




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Opt 2


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Oooooooh you know what? I think option 2 is actually perfect. I was sort of struggling with the class' balance between levels, because in the original draft it would come out swinging at level 1 (free fighter from your Eidolon, free fighter from the soldiers, why play Fighter again?), but by the time you got to level 20 you had a bunch of dudes that couldn't actually stand up to anything important. I've been tweaking the scaling on the soldiers a lot, but I never thought to do it on the Eidolon...

[Lanth Sor]

I would advise agains lowering their HD/BAB, also i was informed Unchained addressed the spell progression issues well. Reason why not to nerf their personal combat ability is it would make them less viable to fight toe to toe with their eidolon. If you are going to do something like that you would need to add an option to make up for it. If you want to do the solider thing do it as a archetype it seems more appropriate.

[Occidental]

I would advise agains lowering their HD/BAB, also i was informed Unchained addressed the spell progression issues well. Reason why not to nerf their personal combat ability is it would make them less viable to fight toe to toe with their eidolon. If you are going to do something like that you would need to add an option to make up for it. If you want to do the solider thing do it as a archetype it seems more appropriate.


The whole point of this rewrite was creating something that couldn't fight alongside the Eidolon. The Soldiers are your combatants. They do the fighting toe-to-toe, they kick down the doors. My vision for this guy was someone who doesn't have to get his hands dirty. His mystical summoned Legions and his powerful Eidolon do that for him, he just sits back and pulls the strings. The changes to the Eidolon are to facilitate and buffer that change, since you no longer have the spells and odder abilities of your higher-level Summon Monster subjects.

(This also reduces the amount of time you spend at the table determining where each thing should go, because the Summoner is mostly handling the movement and fighting of the Eidolon and the Soldiers, instead of also fretting about the spells he should be casting, fighting he should be doing, etc.)

[Lanth Sor]

That sound bad. But as that's not productive. I strongly advise you make a new class if you want to diverge so much its like rewriting the fighter because he doesn't have spells. Your ideas for a class are good just not in keeping with what the class was and more what your fantasy of a Summoner is(IE sounds kinda like a Summoner wizard with out real magic) IF you want to make a Archetype for that I'd say go full bore but I feel you would loose some of the feel of the class by saying oh no if you get stuck in a antimagic zone GG and your only trick is Summon more things while you buff nothing and swing at nothing because you +1/2 lvl to hit.

TLDR sounds like you want a Alternate class or Archetype. Alternate class more likely. If you can get me some numbers I'll take look, but a little to theory ATM.

Unrealated but the Pathfinder Alternate class idea i find repulsive. Why can the rougue not later discover ninjerry, eidolons and phantasms i think handle the idea of like abilities best. including the clauses in the abilities.

[Occidental]

...From there, things got even more out of control and I ended up more or less creating an entire class...

I had intended to make it a separate class from the beginning. Entirely because it was so different. I intend to make any new Evolutions I add backwards compatible with the normal Summoner, unless they refer to class features that no longer exist.