PRPG Advanced Player's Guide Playtest: Summoner and Witch

This week's playtest classes are up: http://paizo.com/paizo/blog

All I can say is, I wanna roll up a summoner right now. I love the idea and execution of the eidolon.

So the Summoner is like an alternate Druid (animal companion)?
Final Fantasy type summoner. Bard like casting (up to 6th).
I assume Life link is not an action (just activates when needed).
Also summon spell SLAs as a standard action that last longer.
Merging is kinda cool as is Life Bond ("I can't die while my creature lives").

Only summoning 1/day of eidolon I see (though I guess it shouldn't die too often). Can't recall till next day (but can respec it every level of it abilities).
It has full BAB, Outsider HD, and 2 good saves.
Can the creature uses a weapon as a biped form? (oh I see they can since they can evolve to learn it).

Good spell list I think.
Overall, looks like a very interesting class, but lots of choices to look through to make the eidolon though.

Witch
Charm hex is save or successful diplomacy check... it is unique. Weird as I don't think of diplomacy as charm usually.
Evil Eye is weakens a thing (AC, attack, saves, etc). Decent as the save just reduces duration to 1 rd.
Healing limited to 1/day on each creature makes it kinda weak. I guess if no other healers in party.
Slumber- sleep spell single target.
Agony is pretty good.
Flight -minute/level each day is pretty low for out of combat, but useful in combat. Granted you could just cast the spell Fly as it is on their spell list.
Force Reincarnate is a save or die (didn't think one would see them in Pathfinder). Sure they get revived, but in a new body.

On first blush, I think they're on a winner with the Summoner class although it has a bucketload of prep to get it going. I'm going to throw one in amongst my group next session (at 17th level so it's going to be a bit of work).

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

Wow, really digging the summoner class. Very, very cool. Only problem I can see is that the whole 'evolution point' mechanic might end up being very time consuming to deal with. Still, not sure how you'd get the variety of eidolons without it.

Witch is pretty neat too.

I wonder why they switched between saying '1 day' and '24 hours' in the hex mechanics. Not really an issue, just something I noticed.

While designing the eidolon will take a lot of time, at least it's all time out of game to get it to work. I for one would be more than happy to make the time commitment to build the eidolon. I had been fluctuating back and forth on Pathfinder, with part of our group wanting to play Pathfinder, and the other part not sure. Summoner has firmly put me into the "I want to play Pathfinder" group.

Really like the Witch. I was unsure on the Summoner at first, I just couldn't wrap my head around the concept of the Eidolon in terms of being a summoned creature, but unique to each caster...

Then I thought about it some more and decided that the Eidolon is the culmination of their apprenticeship, where they summon matter from the Ether and energy from other planes of existence to craft their own unique "living" creature.

Now I'm fine with it.

So far I'm impressed with the new classes. I think the Cavalier needs a tad bit of work, but overall I really like what they've done.

On first glance the Summoner looks a tad complicated, definitely not the kind of class for first time players. The witch looks a lot easier, and it's interesting to see a healing ability for an arcane caster. Both classes look like they'd play well, but the summoner doesn't look like it'd mesh with any of the existing prestige classes well. Hopefully he'll get a few prestige classes with the book.

Personally I'd like to see a summoner prestige class that gives elemental traits to his Eidolon, or one that gives them angelic/demonic abilities. Just a couple of ideas.

A class that grants a permanent ally?

Lanchester would not be happy.

Summoner is Overpowered

It gets casting in armor, a pet that's as tough as the fighter, bard casting with way better spells than a bard (haste as a 2nd level spell, greater invisibility as a 3rd level spell, for example). Plus boatloads of summon monster spells (and summon monster got way better in Pathfinder).

I think it's significantly too good.

Ken

Yeah, I could see the Summoner needing to perhaps lose the light armor and drop down to a d6 HD. The free Summon Monster spells on top of the other spells plus the Eidolon companion does seem a bit high powered.