[3.P] The Summoner's Handbook: A Guide to the Pathfinder Summoner

[grarrrg]

Don't know if this has been asked yet, but have the new options from Ultimate Magic been judged here? I'm thinking of playing a Synthesist whose eidolon is an angelic being, much like a certain terrorist mage I'm sure many of use are familiar with, and I'm wondering if the Synthesist is a good route.

Also Ultimate Magic offers some basic eidolon setups of their own. How do they hold up compared to the ones here?

None of the options has had much discussion or chance for playtesting yet.

As for the Eidolon Setups, they are most likely weaker than the ones presented here.
The Ultimate Magic examples are based on flavor.
The ones in the handbook are based on power.

[evilbob]

As for the Eidolon Setups, they are most likely weaker than the ones presented here.

Agreed. They are focused on flavor.

As for the class options, I'm guessing they will mostly also be a bit inferior to the base class.

At first glance, I'm guessing a Broodmaster will be much less powerful, especially since (at least the way I'm reading it) you have to divide up the HD between all of your brood, and HD is what determines your BAB. Since your eidolons only have a 3/4th BAB to begin with, dividing this further will tremendously limit their ability to hit by mid-game. It might work somehow if you went the flank-buddy route, but that's already a pretty sub-par build. Learn from the 3.5 monk: lots and lots of attacks that all miss do not a fun character make. less powerful since you'll need to split the HP, feats, and evolution points between two creatures. Gaining another action isn't bad, though. This will probably be more difficult in early levels until you get enough evolution points to really go somewhere with it, but by 8th level you may be able to put together a small team of glass cannon pouncers that try to make sure they win every fight in one round. Something tells me the magic item slot restriction will make this a very sub-par option in later levels, however, since there's really no way you could outfit each of your brood properly.

The Evolutionist also seems weak: give up a bunch of moderately useful abilities in order to do something a single spell could do anyway? If it were at least something you could change from battle to battle it might be worth thinking about, but it still takes a whole day to swap things out? Only at 12th level does it become faster than the spell, but 1 minute vs. 1 hour is definitely not worth what you give up.

Personally, I think the Synthesist looks pretty weak, too, mostly because one of the biggest strengths of the Summoner is the ability to have multiple actions per round (although if you pre-buff yourself wisely, you're not necessarily giving up much). However, I'm sure there will eventually be some rules-savvy people who figure out a good way to abuse this, probably with an odd multiclass level or a certain set of feats/items (you can certainly become an amazing skill monkey, as someone suggested). All in all, it seems like a very cool thematic idea, but if you're really this keen on melee just play a fighter (or the new Magus).

To me, the Master Summoner seems like the only competitor with the base class, with the potential to be much more powerful late-game. Your eidolon effectively becomes useless thanks to the HD = BAB issue, probably around level 5 or so, but by then your summoned monsters start to get decent. At that point, you would ignore the eidolon completely, except for niche tasks (like summoning it just to cast Lesser Evolution Surge so it could fly somewhere and use Bond Senses), and just concentrate on swarming the field with monsters and buffing them. Having 4 or 5 hasted, enlarged Erinyes or pouncing dire tigers running around would be pretty amazing, and really give you tons and tons of actions each round. (Plus, they all stick around for minutes per level.) And this build saves you two feats by giving Augmented Summoning for free. The only downside is that you could just about build this same character with a sorcerer (although summoning as a standard action is pretty nice), except a sorcerer would have more versatility. And, your fellow players will all hate you because your turns take 10 minutes each.


In the end, there are a few nice options in UM but nothing that really grabs my attention as something that will effect this optimization thread in a substantial way. I could be missing something, though.

[Reverent-One]

At first glance, I'm guessing a Broodmaster will be much less powerful, especially since (at least the way I'm reading it) you have to divide up the HD between all of your brood, and HD is what determines your BAB. Since your eidolons only have a 3/4th BAB to begin with, dividing this further will tremendously limit their ability to hit by mid-game.

Not in this case.

Regardless of the number of eidolons in the brood, each eidolon has the same base attack bonus and base saving throw bonuses, but the rest of the eidolons’ base statistics must be divided between the eidolons, including Hit Dice (minimum 1), skill points, number of feats, armor bonus, Str/Dex bonus, evolution pool (but see below), and maximum number of natural attacks. Individual eidolons in the brood must purchase evolutions separately. Once a broodmaster decides on the forms and abilities of his eidolons, they cannot be changed until the summoner
gains a level.

[evilbob]

Thinking about it a bit more, the Master Summoner could be interesting if you thought of the eidolon as more of a specialized mount - like a flying, burrowing horse that also has a +15 in sense motive, or whatever - and really ignored all the combat evolutions in favor of utility. Then, as long as you have about a minute to prepare, you could ditch your buddy and start bringing out a whole host of summoned creatures to fight with. (Of course, if you gave a wizard a minute to prepare, the battle would be over before it started, so this is still all quite relative on the "power" scale.) The main drawback would be that even with summons that last a minute per level and that cast with a standard action, you're still going to take several rounds to build up your army and buff them (and by that time, most battles are over).

[evilbob]

each eidolon has the same base attack bonus and base saving throw bonuses

Right, but they still have to divide HD, which determines their BAB and saves. The above statement effectively becomes "as each other", as far as I can tell. So, at 11th level even if you have one eidolon with 7 HD and another with 2, they both have a +7 BAB and +5 good saves. But they don't have a +9 BAB and +6 good saves, like your standard, single 9 HD eidolon would. And if you're being more equitable, having two eidolons with a +5 BAB would be awful.

I guess you're reading it to mean that the eidolon's BAB and saves are dependent on the summoner's level instead of their HD? I'm sure that's a valid way to look at it but that's not how I read it. Anyone else have thoughts?

Further edit: this interpretation is held up by the example given.

Example: A 2nd-level broodmaster can summon two eidolons. Each eidolon has 1 Hit Dice, BAB +2, +3 on its two good saves and +0 on its bad save.

In that case, the BAB is clearly not dependent on the HD.


That definitely helps them not be completely worthless, but you're also going to be dividing the effective HP, feats, and evolutions, which still means you're likely not to have two very powerful creatures. Gaining actions is nice, however.

Maybe if you focused on having two glass cannon pouncers that did as much damage as possible in round 1 (but had basically no defenses whatsoever)? That might work; in that case anything that lasted more than a round would likely mean you'd be falling back on your summoned creatures.

[evilbob]

by 8th level you may be able to put together a small team of glass cannon pouncers

Actually, this probably isn't a good strategy either, since a level 9 Summon Master with the Superior Summoning feat could call 2-4 augmented lions in one round anyway, and they seem nearly as good (not to mention 2-4 the next round as well).

[ajkkjjk52]

The synthesist looks really interesting to me, despite the fact that it looses the huge action-economy benefit to being a summoner.

It does have the advantage, though, of not having to worry about splitting items between you and your Eidolon.

The question that arises, though, is how feats work and other abilities work. If I have a martial weapon proficiency granted by my race or by multiclassing (not that I would) does my Eidolon-form also have this? What about something like dodge, or power attack? In other words, can I use both of our feats as a common pool when in the merged form?

[ajkkjjk52]

Oh fail, I should have read that more closesly before posting.

The eidolon has no skills or feats of its own.

Also, it says you can "use your gear" while merged. Does that include passive items, like cloak of resistance? And what about light armor? Does your eidolon count as wearing that armor?

[Infernalbargain]

The Evolutionist also seems weak: give up a bunch of moderately useful abilities in order to do something a single spell could do anyway? If it were at least something you could change from battle to battle it might be worth thinking about, but it still takes a whole day to swap things out? Only at 12th level does it become faster than the spell, but 1 minute vs. 1 hour is definitely not worth what you give up.

If you really sit down and think about transmogrify, having it as an SLA like that is fairly close to a solution button. You effectively have access to every single evolution at once. That also means that by proxy you have access to all the SLA's in the magic line of evolutions. Effectively you give up raw power for greater versatility.

[GDark08]

I've got a 5th-level game with friends coming up soon and would really like to give the summoner a test-run. Only problem I'm facing right now is what to do with the eidolon. I understand much of the mechanics of it, but with everything that's available to do with it, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. For a first-time summoner, what's a good, reliable build?

I will admit, I'm right now torn between just going weapon-wielder or that submitted dragon-like one.

[Slipperychicken]

Can an eidolon have multiple natural weapons on the same limb set?

Ex. Eidolon has limbs(legs) with 1 claws, 1 slam, and 1 hooves on it.

[Cieyrin]

I've got a 5th-level game with friends coming up soon and would really like to give the summoner a test-run. Only problem I'm facing right now is what to do with the eidolon. I understand much of the mechanics of it, but with everything that's available to do with it, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. For a first-time summoner, what's a good, reliable build?

I will admit, I'm right now torn between just going weapon-wielder or that submitted dragon-like one.

Go with what you want to play. Dragon Rider seems like a lot of trouble to me, what with needing to Enlarge to even mount up. I'd lean more towards a Slugger or Pouncer, personally. The Nom-beast seems like a lot of fun, though. :3

Can an eidolon have multiple natural weapons on the same limb set?

Ex. Eidolon has limbs(legs) with 1 claws, 1 slam, and 1 hooves on it.

I think, given you have the option to replace natural attacks with other ones, that you're limited to one natural attack per set of limbs. Slam would seem to be an indication of that.

[Starbuck_II]

Oh fail, I should have read that more closesly before posting.

Also, it says you can "use your gear" while merged. Does that include passive items, like cloak of resistance? And what about light armor? Does your eidolon count as wearing that armor?

Currently being debated on Pathfinder forums. 50% say you can wear armor because armor is your gear.
The other 50% say armor can't because it messes with eidolon connection according to APG.

[Retech]

Doesn't enlarge person work only on humanoids? I thought Eidolons were outsiders.

[CTrees]

Currently being debated on Pathfinder forums. 50% say you can wear armor because armor is your gear.
The other 50% say armor can't because it messes with eidolon connection according to APG.

I'm staying away from those forums, but as to "it messes with your connection to your eidolon," look at the APG. Eidolons can't wear armor, because it interferes with the connection to the summoner, but summoners can without interference (they even ignore spell failure in light armor - they were VERY MUCH intended to wear it). Nothing in the synthesist summoner description says anything to change that - if you put on armor, and then summon your eidolon, there's no mention of that suddenly interfering with the connection because you're closer (though putting on armor over the eidolon should still be out). To look at a different example, if you're wearing bracers of archery, and are a 7' tall half orc summoner, and then summon your medium, serpentine eidolon... even though you've become smaller, and no longer have limbs, you still gain that bonus, because nothing says you lose it just because your merged (in fact, the rules say exactly the opposite). Why should armor be different? (well, besides going "all my eidolon's bonuses are to NATURAL armor, and I'm wearing Celestial Armor for lolwtf total AC seeming "unfair" to some people)

[Infernalbargain]

Doesn't enlarge person work only on humanoids? I thought Eidolons were outsiders.

The summoner may cast a spell with a target of “you” on his eidolon (as a spell with a range of touch) instead of on himself. A summoner may cast spells on his eidolon even if the spells normally do not affect creatures of the eidolon’s type (outsider). Spells cast in this way must come from the summoner spell list.

Share Spells FTW.

[Retech]

Ah, thanks!

[evilbob]

"An eidolon cannot wear armor of any kind" - however, they can (and do) have an armor bonus, which "may be split between an armor bonus and a natural armor bonus, as decided by the summoner." Since this guide already advocates nicely for Mage Armor, it's probably a given that your eidolon's bonus is entirely natural armor.

So: is there any reason not to purchase Bracers of Armor for your eidolon? The only one I can think of is "because Mage Armor is cheap." It's definitely not worth it at low levels, but at higher levels you could have bracers of +8 AC that give more armor (and save a round of buffing). Item body slot issues may come into play, but are there many summoner-boosting items for the wrist slot?

(Given Craft Wondrous Item, you could even make them yourself.)

[Akal Saris]

Here's a nifty pair of low-level builds I worked out using the new synthesist option:

Build 1: Pouncing Cat Rogue

Spoiler

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Half-Elf Rogue 4/Summoner 1 [Progression R1, S1, R+3]

Encounter Fluff: You face half-elf woman in dark leathers, with a shadowy, translucent displacer beast twisting between her legs. She hisses and leaps forward, her blades and the shadowy beasts' claws extended!

Scout and Synthesist Archetypes, Favored Class HP (Rogue, Summoner)
Eidolon: Quadruped
Evolutions: Pounce, Tentacle, Tentacle
Base Stats @5th: 7 Str, 7 Dex, 8 Con, 19 Int, 16 Wis, 16 Charisma
Eidolon-buffed stats: 14 Str, 14 Dex, 13 Con, 19 Int, 16 Wis, 16 Charisma
Feats:
1: Two-Weapon Fighting
1: Skill Focus (Perception - Half-Elf racial)
3: Multiattack
3: Toughness (Rogue 2: Combat Rogue)
5: Jaguar Pounce (Only works with eidolon out until 6th due to BAB issues)
5: Weapon Focus (Tentacle) (Rogue 4: Rogue Ability)

Gimmick: Has Bite, Tentacle, Tentacle, Mainhand, and Offhand attacks along with pounce. Rogue (Scout) 4 makes a foe that you charge flat-footed to your attack. Jaguar Pounce gives you Improved Critical on all charge attacks against flat-footed foes. So on every charge, you have 5 automatic sneak attacks for approximately 3d6+1 with a high crit range (15-20 with rapier and kukri, 19-20 for natural attacks). In addition, dumping physical stats means the character has a whopping +4 skills/level from Int, and solid THP each fight from the eidolon, as well as some utility spells from summoner and whatnot.

Build 2: Defensive Cobra Rogue

Spoiler

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Human Rogue 3/Summoner 2 [Progression R1, S1, R1, S1, R1]

Fluff encounter: In the shadows, you barely make out the outline of a lean man, with a translucent snake wrapped around his body, ending with a cobra's hood fanning out from behind his head.,

Synthesist Archetype, Favored Class HP (Rogue)
Eidolon: Serpent
Evolutions (4): Natural Armor, Stat Increase (Dex), Tentacles
Base Stats @5th: 7 Str, 7 Dex, 8 Con, 19 Int, 16 Wis, 16 Charisma
Eidolon-buffed stats: 13 Str, 19 Dex, 14 Con, 19 Int, 16 Wis, 16 Charisma
Feats:
1: Two-Weapon Fighting
1: Toughness [Human]
3: Extra Evolution [Skilled: Acrobatics]
3: Weapon Finesse (Rogue 2: Finesse Rogue)
5: Multiattack

Gimmick: This character takes advantage of the "free stats" from synthesist, the shared temporary HP, and the natural armor boosts to become an extremely durable and high AC rogue.

Armor bonuses at 5th:
+1 Chain Shirt: 5 AC
Eidolon boosts: +2 natural, +2 from level 2, +2 from evolution for +6
Shield spell: +4
Dexterity bonus: +4
Total: AC 29, could be higher with +2 dex gloves, +2 armor, or fighting defensively

HP: +21 temporary HP from the eidolon, +5 HP from toughness, +3 HP from favored class, Con 8 becomes Con 14 with eidolon summoned for a rough average of 50 HP and 21 THP on top of that.

Attacks: Bite (10ft range), Tail slap, tentacle, mainhand and offhand for approximately 15d6+5/round with sneak attack.

[MightyPirate]

Great builds, think I may use your pouncer myself.

Gonna substitute Multiweapon Fighting for Two-Weapon Fighting and Multiattack, Replace the tentacles with an extra set of arms. Who says fighting with multiple weapons has to be feat intensive?

Jaguar Pounce only works on the first melee attack of the charge sadly.

This build would benefit from Quick Draw the way I'm doing it and I may snag Enforcer as well, combo it with the Blade of Mercy trait or just pack saps. Multiweapon fighting frees up feats for things like Hellcat Stealth, Toughness, and maybe even Improved Initiative.

My Gm has told me that perception would be very important in his campaign so I'll try to max that out a bit (like I needed an excuse.) If he's easy on me I might be able to take Vigilant Eidolon and have it stack with Perception focus, a high Wis from dumping physicals, and half-elf racial bonus.

Summoner may not like to multiclass with others and synthesist may lose out on the extra actions, feats, and skills but it sure opens things up for the rogue. What other combos would be really good?

I'm thinking multiclassing with Pally could allow for some really nasty Smite Slinging, Holy Blender style. The bonus from Divine Grace is nice too.

I'm sold on the synthesist now. It takes the great taste that is summoner and makes it the great taste that goes with everything.

[Paul H]

Hi

Did anyone mention the Synthesist?

You wear the Eidolon, granting you their bonuses.

Example:

Human Sythesist (for PFSDcampaign, 20 pt buy)
Str 12 Dex 13 Con 14 Int 10 Wis 10 Cha 18
Bipedal form. 2pts (Dex+2) 1pt (+2 Nat Armour).

So, effectively: Str 16 Dex 14 Con 13 Int 10 Wis 10 Cha 18
Nat Armour +4. BAB +1, Darkvision, Bonus 6HP. etc.

Check it out
Paul H

[riddles]

I think the brood master is being slightly underated. While you are splitting the evolution bonuses, you maintain bab and save, so your 2 eidolons still hit as hard. Its much better when you can buy the large and huge evolutions as they apply to all your brood (albeit with smaller size increases)

I think you can get a lot of milage from it, though investing in craft wondrous item and (more importantly for me) craft wand to get your short duration low level buffs regularly is very important for the class

[VladtheLad]

Does the synthetist's eidolon uses the summoners or its own saves?

[Cieyrin]

Does the synthetist's eidolon uses the summoners or its own saves?

Given the way Shielded Meld is worded, I'm fairly sure the Synthetist keeps his saves, regardless of whether he's fused with his eidolon or not.

[MightyPirate]

Well it doesn't specifically say which saves are used (on the SRD anyway) but I'd also say it's the summoner's because it pretty much spells out exactly what you get for fusing with the eidolon. You would however modify the summoner's saves but the eidolon's dex and con rather than the summoner's.

There are also a few other weird kinks in the fusion system, like not gaining the eidolon's speed or size. You still take advantage of their evolutions though. So a halfling synthesist would have a speed of 40 when fused with his eidolon that has 2 legs evolutions but would remain small sized even though his eidolon is medium sized. He wouldn't change size unless his eidolon also had the large evolution.

[Larpus]

Man, does the Synthesist seem to suck...loss of one action in combat, possible loss of armor boosts, close to no way to benefit from Summon Monster and very possible uselessness if your Eidolon ever goes away.

Sounds fun for flavor (mecha pilot anyone?) or to make a rather nice gish, but the Eidolon having no feats or skills hurt it bad...really, other than thematic reasons I cannot see how this is even as good as the normal Summoner...

The other options seem overall nice, Broodmaster seems quite nice at lower level campaigns, Master Summoner sounds cool with a non-combat Eidolon (though I wish he had some feature that allowed him to have more evolutions to him or apply them to summons) and Evolutionist seems kinda meh, but still decent enough I guess? Still doesn't quite deliver the versatility it boasts to, unless I'm missing something...

[The Glyphstone]

Man, does the Synthesist seem to suck...loss of one action in combat, possible loss of armor boosts, close to no way to benefit from Summon Monster and very possible uselessness if your Eidolon ever goes away.

Sounds fun for flavor (mecha pilot anyone?) or to make a rather nice gish, but the Eidolon having no feats or skills hurt it bad...really, other than thematic reasons I cannot see how this is even as good as the normal Summoner...

The other options seem overall nice, Broodmaster seems quite nice at lower level campaigns, Master Summoner sounds cool with a non-combat Eidolon (though I wish he had some feature that allowed him to have more evolutions to him or apply them to summons) and Evolutionist seems kinda meh, but still decent enough I guess? Still doesn't quite deliver the versatility it boasts to, unless I'm missing something...

Well, consider that one of the strengths of the 3.5 Druid was being able to dump your Physical stats into the dirt and still fight at full capacity while Wildshaped, and a Synthesist can do exactly that plus evolutions to customize his combat capability and the ability to self-buff himself, it's quite powerful.

[Larpus]

Well, consider that one of the strengths of the 3.5 Druid was being able to dump your Physical stats into the dirt and still fight at full capacity while Wildshaped, and a Synthesist can do exactly that plus evolutions to customize his combat capability and the ability to self-buff himself, it's quite powerful.

Well, that is somewhat what I had in mind when I said he could be a decent gish.

However, the problem I see is that unlike a Druid he can't really use some of his class abilities, especially Summon Monster (biggest problem being no option to trade it for something else like couple feats or more spells) and also, if memory serves me right, the druid gets some of the animals' feats for free, not to mention better spell versatility.

I guess that what really spoils it to me is not being able to trade Summon Monster for something else.

EDIT: Like a Mr.Hyde Alchemist can trade his bombs for sneak attack if he wants to.

[The Glyphstone]

Summon Monster sucks though, so it's really not much of a loss overall; at the levels you get it, what you can summon is grossly unable to contribute to the typical combat you'll be in - and PF stripped away all the non-combat monsters from the Summon lists, so it's not worth utility either.

[Larpus]

Summon Monster sucks though, so it's really not much of a loss overall; at the levels you get it, what you can summon is grossly unable to contribute to the typical combat you'll be in - and PF stripped away all the non-combat monsters from the Summon lists, so it's not worth utility either.

Really? No utility monsters?

That sure is a bummer, even more reason to have an Archetype that changes it for something else, bonus points if it's something also useful when you have your Eidolon out, like extra spells, more known spells, couple more evolution points or the such.

Another thing that really makes it stink for my nose is to not be able to separate from the Eidolon 'till lvl16, which also strikes me as odd that the normal Summoner can't fuse with it 'till such level.

I mean, it's not all that incredibly awesome of a feature (in the case of fusing it even makes you somewhat weaker), don't really see why is it so late in the levels, it's really not too much like the Druid who could change to a wide range of creatures with many different uses, it's closer to a more customizable, overall stronger, but also more static Animal Companion instead.

Anyway, my point is not that the Archetype totally sucks, but that it sucks compared to the base class who can achieve as much as the Archetype and even more. It might be more invaluable in point-buy games, but I still think that straight Summoner works better (after all, it's not that hard to remove yourself from combat when you're not attacking).

EDIT: Also, it got me thinking: what happens to the Eidolon when you separate from it? I mean, it says that the Eidolon has no feats or skills of itself, so it's nearly completely moronic? Or does it keep your feats/skills?