[APG] Summoner Still Worth Taking?

[Stormonu]

Summoned monsters are... vestiges! Yeah, that's the ticket.

Actually, if they are "false replicas", that would indicate they probably are coalesced and drawn from the Ethereal Plane (crafted Ectoplasm?).

I was excited to see the Summoner in the APG. I saw, for my 10-year-old son (who is big into Pokemon, Bakugan and now Beyblades) as the perfect class for his use - a master and his fanciful pet. I'm hoping I get to try it out soon, and I'll bet we have a lot of fun with it.

 

[Dog Moon]

First of all, sorry for the necro here, but I'm really interested in running some thoughts about the pathfinder class with you guys.

Right now I'm planning to play a halfling summoner (combat mount theme) from level 1 at the living pathfinder forum, and from what I've read from the APG, the summoner seems like a nice class to play during lower levels, but loses most of its interest once you hit levels 8+ (where I would rather play a sorcerer to do the summonings plus other stuff).

Does anyone have gaming hours under his belt with the summoner class? Care to share your experience?

As a sidenote, the inquisitor class from APG really looks amazing.

I played a Halfling Summoner that was Mounted upon the Eidolon. My Halfling never really dealt all that much damage though. The Eidolon I had created ended up being a sort of Centaurish-Eidolon with a Great Axe. It dealt some pretty good damage. However, with the Summonings, I didn't want to have to worry about 6 different attacks for the pet and then a bunch more for my summons. [we started with the Beta rules, so that's how we continued even when the APG came out]

Personally, I found the pet to be cool but found some of the higher level abilities to not really be worth it. 4 evolution points to breath fire once per day and then can spend up to 2 more to give it the breath a total of 3 times per day? Too many points, not enough gain. I ended up having a lot of little evolutions and then, once the APG actually came out, used the Evolution Surge to randomly give it a high costing ability.

I actually thought the Summons were GREAT. They allowed me to be quite versatile. I could use the Summons 8 times per day. I'd started playing the Summoner during the Beta and even when the APG came out we allowed the pet and the summons to be active simultaneously. In some situations I was attacking with a lot of stuff, but in others, the Summons allowed me to stay back guarded by the pet and have the summons go into danger. For example there was one time when we had to kill some Aquatic creatures. I stayed on my beach and if it wasn't for the squids I could summon, that encounter would have been a LOT harder for us.

There's also archer summons, some of the summons have minor casting abilities, some can fly, the elementals have tremor sense and the ability to move through the ground. Since they lasted for so long, they became a great class feature. My favorite tactic had been to summon charging celestial rhinos the Smite evil opponents. Rhino Missiles, as they became called.

So... to recap, the lower levels I found the pet to be cool cause I was always finding new abilities I wanted but the Summons were sorta meh, and at higher levels, the Summons became a lot more interesting, but the pet abilities became sorta meh. I either could get all the lower level abilities I wanted or could spend a LOT of points on some of the higher level abilities.

If there's anything else you want to know, let me know. I played from levels 1-13.

 

[Dog Moon]

As for the OP, all my group did for the class was to say that it was fine to have both Summons and Eidolon out at the same time. It seemed fine otherwise.

 

[Otakkun]

My only doubt is if it's going to be a pain for the DM & other players for me to get so many actions. After all, I'll be playing with more than a single character every battle, and that can be cumbersome for the DM.

 

[Kaisoku]

The Eidolon is a fairly simple creature to run, so it probably won't be too monopolizing. It's no worse than a Druid or Ranger with an animal pet.
It moves, it resolves attacks, maybe a special ability, done.

Also, your summoner has limited spell level and list, so you are less likely going to be sitting there deciding what to do like a full arcane caster might.

I personally ran a game with a modified eidolon class ability (undead instead of outsider, with all that that would entail), and the player didn't monopolize the game much.
He did feel that it was "the eidolon show!" when it came to his turn, but he only ever played low levels... where limited spellcasters take a backseat to melee anyways. I have this feeling that his spellcasting would have been more game-impacting at higher levels had we continued that game.

 

[Stormonu]

I don't have my rulebooks handy - can you only summon one creature at a time?

If not, is it a wise idea to limit spellcasters to only being able to having one active summon spell at a time?

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

To be honest, when I first heard that there was going to be a Summoner class, I was more expecting abilities along the lines of magical effects dispensed by summoned creatures.
Sort of like Final Fantasy summoning, calling Ifrit to lay down fire over your enemies... or Carbuncle to stick around and magically protect your allies, etc.

This would have made for a different idea than just "summon monster <blah>" or the cohort mechanic that is the eidolon. Oh well...

Summoned monsters are... vestiges! Yeah, that's the ticket.

I realize I'm responding to this a bit late (don't often poke into the Pathfinder forum) but you know...

Scroll down to post 29 and you've got a handy starting list to make this happen:
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=127740&page=2

A pretty direct way of approaching the idea of the vestige summoner (maybe the FF summoning? I don't know a thing about any of the FF games) would be to grab "Secrets of Pact Magic". You can get the pdf from Paizo or hardcopy from Amazon or Noble Knight Games:
Secrets of Pact Magic

The downloads page at the Pact Magic website also includes a conversion doc to use the books with Pathfinder, so that's a bonus in terms of ease of use.

Plus... an awful lot of it is Open Game Content baby. Gotta love that.

I haven't had a chance to run a game with Pact Magic in it, but I _really_ want to.

Having a Pact Magic character visibly summon a critter to grant bonuses instead of binding the spirit inside them (the vestiges thing) is really just a tiny twist of fluff/description. It's got some interesting potential too. I mean, imagine a setting where only special people (others that are either already summoners or are capable of becoming Summoners) can see the summoned spirits/animals/whatever; but the spirits are present and gift a portion of their power to their summoner. Classic kind of anime thing going on there.

Having it be a real summoned creature that everyone can see and touch (possibly kill?) puts a different twist on things. Now those stupid animal companions of druids and whatnot make a whole lot more sense (to me at least). Monks that do animal-form kung-fu and the animal is literally there... all sorts of groovy possibility.