Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[Duke Flauros]

@Duke - For self-buffs, you would create a Glyph of Whatever, then step onto it? Because just directly using spells that affect you would end Time Stop.

You would use personal buffs with a long duration first, then 24 hour time stop, then rest 8 hours. Or alter the spells range with something like ray spell. You then re-prepare all of your spells. The glyph of whatever thing is a way of getting around the "can't target enemies" not the "no personal spells clause", since the DM could argue you'd still be casting a "personal" range spell, albeit indirectly. Earthbound spell can't be used with personal range spells, and essentially allows you to turn any other spell into a landmine that lasts one hour.

While time is stopped, you could just use symbol of x/glyph of warding spells. Or you could just cart in a few kilotons of TNT. Or plant explosive runes all over the place.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Okay, so, what is so good about the summoner--even restricting the game strictly to PF-original/OGL material?

I mean, the eidolin is pretty all right, but pretty all-right does not cut the mustard. Frankly, especially at mid-to-higher levels, I don't see much of an advantage to the class in the 'put beatsticks on the board' department over say, an 11th level wizard using an empower rod on their Summon Monster VI x 2 because it was contingencied for two succubi or a grip of bralani azata. Am I missing something here?

[Koumei]

"Not as good as a good Wizard" isn't exactly a real condemnation, especially in Pathfailure.

[Juton]

A Summoner is powerful class, but at high levels is there any real surprise that it isn't as good as a Wizard? A Summoner does get access to some of the higher level Wiz/Sorc spells, but doesn't get their list and doesn't have the Wizard's preparation mechanic. But as Koumei said, is not being as good as a Wizard really a criticism?

Summoners seem a lot closer to a summoning focused Druid, they each get their own fighter as a class feature and can spontaneously summon. If I where to dread encountering a Summoner at the table it would be that the class requires way more organization than any other class, I imagine that just one of these could bog gameplay down like nothing else.

EDIT: Summoners have a (Sp) that lets them summon, this lets them do so as a standard action. At least that's what I remember, I don't think that is still the case though.

[erik]

EDIT: Summoners have a (Sp) that lets them summon, this lets them do so as a standard action. At least that's what I remember, I don't think that is still the case though.

Is this a Pathfinder change from 3e? Spell-like abilities let you cast at the same speed as the spell version.

A spell-like ability takes the same amount of time to complete as the spell that it mimics (usually 1 standard action) unless otherwise stated.

Pathfinder SRD is a lot less helpful on this specific topic. "Spell-like abilities, as the name implies, are magical abilities that are very much like spells"

[edit:] ah yes, this is a pathfinder change. Found it in the Combat section. Use spell-like ability under standard actions. Yay caster edition!

[Juton]

In defense of my memory, it was explicitly stated in the beta rules. I usually only read the beta rules when something is new because they never really seem to change things based on player feed back.

[virgil]

Starting at 1st level, a summoner can cast summon monster I as a spell-like ability a number of times per day equal to 3 + his Charisma modifier. Drawing upon this ability uses up the same power as the summoner uses to call his eidolon. As a result, he can only use this ability when his eidolon is not summoned. He can cast this spell as a standard action and the creatures remain for 1 minute per level (instead of 1 round per level).

I was contemplating being a summoner for a new gaming group I found, so I learned a fair bit about the class in doing so. Granted, I dropped all that in favour of being a wizard when I found out that we were getting piles of downtime between adventures.

[Dean]

The Summoner is fucking awesomesauce and you should play that shit like yesterday. They get fantastic spells at every level and they've got a flying, pouncing, grappling member of Team Monstar around at all times. The class is a BardBarian. It's two decent classes Voltronned together into one great one with double the action economy for double the fun.

Is it less powerful than the best Wizard you can build, sure, but who the fuck gives a fuck? What kind of parameter is that? You measure a class against the opposition it will face and the Summoner would annihilate the Same Game test. Most importantly perhaps the Summoner is FUN. I mean that. Fun with a capitol F, as demonstrated earlier in this sentence. It lets you have a lot of fun, play very inventively, AND destroy level appropriate challenges. It's great and you should play it. It's the class I've had the most fun playing in years

[Lago PARANOIA]

The summoner isn't being compared against a wizard played to its very best. The summoner is being compared to a wizard using a suboptimal spell and ignoring the rest of its mojo. Improved in PF but still somewhat suboptimal.

The summoner stacks up sort of poorly when we're just looking at summon monster shenanigans. This is disregarding the fact that an actual played-to-the-hilt wizard would be using create undead if they were feeling like sandbagging, simacrulum and planar binding if not. Or we could compare the summoner to a buffing-focused evangelist cleric cleric. Or a vanilla druid.

[rasmuswagner]

The summoner isn't being compared against a wizard played to its very best. The summoner is being compared to a wizard using a suboptimal spell and ignoring the rest of its mojo. Improved in PF but still somewhat suboptimal.

The thing is, a summoner can just straight up roll all his choices randomly - random feats, random spells, random evolutions - and still make non-casters cry.

[sabs]

That's because Non-Casters aren't playing the same game. They're playing peewee league football. While the Casters are playing BloodBall.

[RobbyPants]

The summoner isn't being compared against a wizard played to its very best. The summoner is being compared to a wizard using a suboptimal spell and ignoring the rest of its mojo. Improved in PF but still somewhat suboptimal.

The summoner stacks up sort of poorly when we're just looking at summon monster shenanigans. This is disregarding the fact that an actual played-to-the-hilt wizard would be using create undead if they were feeling like sandbagging, simacrulum and planar binding if not. Or we could compare the summoner to a buffing-focused evangelist cleric cleric. Or a vanilla druid.

Well, if the Summoner does do well against level-appropriate encounters, then I still think it's useless comparing against a summoning wizard. Unless your DM throws you up against lots of wizards, who cares?

[OgreBattle]

Important question:

as a summoner can I play something like a JoJo stand user?

That is, at the minimum being able to manifest something like my spiritual/psychic energy into a physical form that can rush out and punch things.

[hogarth]

The summoner stacks up sort of poorly when we're just looking at summon monster shenanigans. This is disregarding the fact that an actual played-to-the-hilt wizard would be using create undead if they were feeling like sandbagging, simacrulum and planar binding if not.

In my experience, GMs and players usually veto the idea of dragging along an army in a typical adventure. So I think that's part of the appeal of the Summoner, since dragging along a (small) army is his class feature and that's somehow more palatable.

[Wrathzog]

Important question:

as a summoner can I play something like a JoJo stand user?

That is, at the minimum being able to manifest something like my spiritual/psychic energy into a physical form that can rush out and punch things.

Synthesist Archetype is basically that. You don't get time stop but whatevs. You still get to be a better fighty guy than most fighty guys.

It's also the only kind of Summoner that's even remotely balanced. One of the other archetypes explicitly admits that it's kind of dumb and you shouldn't play it with other people around.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Well, if the Summoner does do well against level-appropriate encounters, then I still think it's useless comparing against a summoning wizard. Unless your DM throws you up against lots of wizards, who cares?

That's 4E D&D logic.

[Archmage]

Well, if the Summoner does do well against level-appropriate encounters, then I still think it's useless comparing against a summoning wizard. Unless your DM throws you up against lots of wizards, who cares?

That's 4E D&D logic.

Um, what?

[NineInchNall]

That's 4E D&D logic.

No, that's the 3e DMG's logic. That some classes exceed or fall short of the expectations is not condemnation of those classes that meet them.

[RobbyPants]

That's 4E D&D logic.

No, that's the 3e DMG's logic. That some classes exceed or fall short of the expectations is not condemnation of those classes that meet them.

Yeah, basically this.

Lago, I don't even know what the fuck you're talking about anymore.

[sabs]

Well, if you're the Summoner, and someone else is playing a Wizard, then you might care.

[RobbyPants]

Well, if you're the Summoner, and someone else is playing a Wizard, then you might care.

I could see that, but this was in context to Lago's original question of "what's so good about the summoner", followed by answers of why they're both competent and fun, followed by "but they're not as good as a wizard!".

It seems like a bit of a non sequitur to me.

Like NiN said, whether or not another class is overpowered is a separate issue from the summoner's design.

[sabs]

If said overpowered class is a core class. Then maybe the problem IS in the summoner's design. Course, the fighter is a core class.

Really the Wizard/Druid/Cleric should be the benchmark, not the outliers.

[Lago PARANOIA]

No, that's the 3e DMG's logic. That some classes exceed or fall short of the expectations is not condemnation of those classes that meet them.

Yeah, basically this.

Lago, I don't even know what the fuck you're talking about anymore.

What's so hard to understand? In 4E D&D, there are very few classes or class combinations that as long as you have at least 1 leader/four people can't take on level appropriate opposition. Nonetheless, the fact remains that a mid-level damaged-optimized monk does about a third of the damage of a mid-level damage-optimized wizard.

The SAME game test is a necessary but not sufficient standard of judging character viability and just because a class passes it doesn't mean that you should start saying that 'WotC made a good class!'. It's still significantly worse than about a third of the classes in the original SRD. When you start heaping praise on Pathfinder for releasing 'not as shitty as it could've otherwise been', you're enabling WotC and Pathfinder to crow that their game is more balanced and they released good classes just because they lowered the difficulty and everyone gets a participation trophy. Which is exactly what 4E D&D does and did.

The best arguments I've heard for summoner is that it lets you sandbag more conveniently and is easier for people to stealth-optimize. Regardless of how the class actually performs, that is not a quality people should be celebrating.

[Slade]

The Summoner is fucking awesomesauce and you should play that shit like yesterday.

On that they get SM 4 as a 3rd level spell, as well as Haste/slow as 2nd.
Worship Asmodeus and you can summon 1d4+1 Hell hounds*. Not to mention they spell-like summoning ability.

They get a magical ball of force reducing all damage as a 2nd level spell (coverts 5 lethal you take from any source to nonlethal) dur 1hr/lv.
And +2 Armor bonus, but mage armor provides 4 so the armor bonus uis only there is someone dispel Mage armor.

*(if you worship Asmodeus you can summon hell hounds with your Summon Monster 2 in Pathfinder, any "priest" either wizards, summoners, etc)

If you focus excelusively on summoning, Master summoner grants better use/day and augment summoning for summons. Lose Eidolon full progression though.

[virgil]

Apparently a number of people have called the shenanigans on the Summoner's spell list, as it now allows for wands of magic jar, major creation, planar binding (lesser), & wall of stone. I'm not sure how I feel about it, because one of those wands are worth nearly 38k