Building a Summoner

[holyplankton]

So I've been gearing up a Summoner to play in a campaign I have coming up fairly soon, but I'm coming across the problem of which feats to take. Do I build like a mage? Do I build like a fighter? As far as I can see from a cursory glance there aren't a lot of feats that benefit the Summoner specifically other than Summoner's Call, which is only useful for the first 10 minutes the Eidolon is around. So, my question to you fine folks, is what are good feats to take for Summoner?

 

[Sunseeker]

Generally, I build the summoner himself as a blaster/controller setup, and the eidolon as a fighter-type. If running multiple mobs and taking multiple turns(which is where the summoners real strenght is) is not your thing, build a Synthesist. Your eidolon basically becomes the greatest power-armor you could dream of. Otherwise, invest in anything that augments what you can summon.

 

[holyplankton]

by running multiple mobs do you mean utilizing the Summon Monster spells rather than the eidolon for the most part?

 

[Wycen]

You should look ahead to your spell list and see what you can cast. You'll notice you aren't stacked with many attack spells, or rather direct damage spells, until you get 3rd level spells.

As for feats it seems there are two camps; all eidolon all the time or buff your summons. So, if you want your eidolon around as much as possible your feats should reflect that. If you want to spam summons, then the Augment Summoning and Spell Focus Conjuration.

I'm not a fan of any of the archetypes, so I can't give input on any of them, but a synthesist probably wants combat feats.

My human summoner is 9th level with the following feats: Resilient Eidolon, Extra Evolution x2, Experimental Spellcaster (equivalent to Extra spell), Inscribe Rune, and Leadership. Those last 2 feats are for personal/background reasons, you'll probably find better feats for your game.

 

[holyplankton]

That helps a lot Wycen, thanks. Those are the kinds of feats I was looking for. For some reason I just didn't even look in Ultimate Magic for feats, I was just looking through the Advanced Player's Guide and the only one I could really find was Summoner's Call.

 

[Sunseeker]

by running multiple mobs do you mean utilizing the Summon Monster spells rather than the eidolon for the most part?

No, you do so in addition to the Eidolon. The Summoner is great at what his name implies, summoning. Lots and lots of summoning. They make great cannon fodder and give you lots of turns to do stuff in. This is good for the player, but often annoying for the DM and rest of the party what with how much time you take off. This is the primary reason I recommend the Synthesist. It's still significantly powerful, but it doesn't consume as much time as it otherwise would.

Since all of Pathfinder's Paizo content(and a few others) is OGL, it's all available on the Pathfinder System Reference Doc website.(www.d20pfsrd.com). Including all the nifty feats you can take.

 

[Benane]

I have the augment summoning as a backup option if my eidolon dies, and augment summoning applies afaik to the summon eidolon spell (lvl2 summoner spell)

 

[holyplankton]

from what I see shidaku, the Summoner can only use the Summon Monster spell-like abilities when the eidolon is not present. Do you mean to just use the eidolon along with the actual Summon Monster spells that are part of the Summoner spell lists?

 

[paradox42]

Shidaku will have to answer that question himself, but I'll chime in to note that there is the Master Summoner Archetype. It can not only use the Summon SLA along with the Eidolon, but also gets extra uses of the SLA and Augment Summoning as a bonus feat; however, it also limits the power of the Eidolon. So it's better if you're trying to build a "utility Eidolon" rather than the standard combat monster.

I had an idea for a Master Summoner that was sort of Pokemon-ish, which would use the Eidolon to build a critter that had the form of a book (like the "Monster Book of Monsters" in the third Harry Potter book and movie, Prisoner of Azkaban). Never got a chance to play it though. The idea would be that the Eidolon uses Evolutions to buff its INT and get skill bonuses to various Knowledge skills, so that it's the best place in the party to get knowledge of monsters the party is facing; the Summoner with the Monster Book then uses that knowledge to Summon up appropriate help (ideally while staying out of combat, and keeping his Eidolon safe, himself). The image of the character paging frantically through the living book while his friends yell for help, and then casting a quick Summon spell while reading from the book's pages seemed very cool to me. In reality of course, he'd more often use the SLA rather than casting an actual spell, and the "book" doesn't actually contain his spells. But for RP it'd be golden.

 

[holyplankton]

I hadn't seen that archetype yet. Thanks paradox, I'll look into that one as well.