PF - Eidolon gets his wings, massacres everything!

[nbates]

I'm running a Pathfinder campaign, Serpent's Skull, and the party just hit level 5 at the beginning of the second book.

Bard
Fighter
Paladin
Summoner
Cleric

The summoner's eidolon is a quadruped with pounce, wings, and +12 to flying. The first session after gaining his wings at level 5, he flies and charges everything, constantly getting full attacks due to pounce.

It was at this point that I realized the eidolon is now going to outshine everyone in the party. I'm not particularly concerned with their ease of defeating enemies (they are already proficient at murder :smalltongue: ), just more so with making sure everyone feels they can all contribute effectively. I don't want everyone to doze off while the eidolon kills everything solo.

Assuming I'm not overlooking something, the eidolon fully complies with RAW. I don't see a rule that prevents a character from charging while flying, or one requiring a fly check when doing so.

Please note that I'm not trying to invent some rules that nerf the summoner/eidolon or take away his cool abilities, I'm just looking for some advice from anyone that played/played with/DM'd for a summoner.

I hate the concept of countering a PC via special enemies/abilities, constantly using terrain that prevents charging, or arbitrarily increasing every monster's HP so it survives more than 1 or 2 rounds.

Any advice would be appreciated! Thank you for your time, everyone.

[doko239]

Things that hose Eidolons:

- Banishment/Dismissal
- Knocking out the Summoner
- Antimagic Field
- Outsider-only effects
- "Baleful Teleport" effects (If the eidolon is more than 10,000 feet from the summoner, it takes 75% HP damage and is unsummoned)
- Protection from X effects will entirely nullify it, as it's a summoned outsider that shares alignment with the Summoner, and it's relying on natural attacks
- "Control Summoned Creature" spell

Not saying to counter him specifically, but there are a lot of things out there with one or more of the above capabilities, and they should be smart enough to use them when your uber-eidolon shows up.

Edit: As a former Synthesist player, I have to say, if the Summoner player does it right, you'll never pull anything out of your bag of tricks that will stand up to it in a fair fight except another summoner. Eidolons are just too powerful in straight combat.

Any enemy that's done even a small amount of research will know this, and will be prepared to counter the Eidolon in more effective ways; assuming that you have a "recurring villain" theme going.

Edit the second: Also bear in mind that the Summoner's biggest strength is also its biggest weakness. You have two creatures to target, with two separate sets of weaknesses, and taking out one will effectively take out the other. If you take out the Summoner, you also take out the Eidolon; if you take out the Eidolon, you're left with a sub-par Sorcerer with a lot of SMIII available.

[gartius]

How does he have a +12 to flying? You are only allowed to put ranks in fly when you get access to fly, not before.

[doko239]

How does he have a +12 to flying? You are only allowed to put ranks in fly when you get access to fly, not before.

Skilled evolution; grants a +8 racial bonus to one skill for one evolution point.

[CTrees]

How does he have a +12 to flying? You are only allowed to put ranks in fly when you get access to fly, not before.

The Skilled evolution and one rank of the Fly skill, which becomes a free class skill (carrying a free +3) when the eidolon gets a fly speed, yields +12 to flying even with a 10 Dex.

[Morbis Meh]

Things that hose Eidolons:

- Banishment/Dismissal
- Antimagic Field
- Outsider-only effects
- "Baleful Teleport" effects (If the eidolon is more than 10,000 feet from the summoner, it takes 75% HP damage and is unsummoned)
- Protection from X effects will entirely nullify it, as it's a summoned outsider that shares alignment with the Summoner, and it's relying on natural attacks
- "Control Summoned Creature" spell


If you do decide to do these only do it sparringly because it is just not cool to nerf the player constantly because of the class they chose. If you want to deal with the eidolon sommonthing everything then have airborn enemies that the eidolon can deal with and ground enemies that the other PC's can. Or just add more enemies to the encounter, pounce only means that it can wreck on thing at a time so the others get a shot in as well. Don't make enemies stronger just make more of them :smallwink:

[Eldariel]

Pounce in and of itself doesn't really mean much. It simply means it gets to full attack most rounds. The real issue is that its full attacks are shredding everything, not that it has an easy access to those. That's kind of a bug/feature of the Summoner (and Druid); their companions just so happen to be ridiculously good in combat (Druid doesn't have to give up his summoning to have one, of course).

They do rely on numbers of attacks tho so high AC is relatively more of an issue for them than for one big attack types (like basically all bruiser classes on these levels). Some kind of a house rule to enable warrior full attacking after movement without jumping through billions of hoops would also help; warriors can do a ton of damage but they need their iteratives for it and for an inexplicable reason they can only use them if they haven't moved.

Also, Summoner gives up his best class feature if he's using his Eidolon so he's more or less a weakish support caster while the Eidolon is the main character so you should mostly treat the Summoner as the Eidolon + buffs. Granted, that doesn't prevent Summoner from sticking it to normals.

[Doorhandle]

Hmm...

Pounce requires a charge, right?
Have a tasty chew-toy stand around in full plate with a braceable weapon and a license to kill. Possibly take that feat that lets you brace as an immediate action.

Won't stop him from charging, but it will still hurt a LOT.
Also, anything that hurts a being that attacks it. It sounds like the eldion doesn't have any fire resistance, so a creature with burn would work, as would anything with spines.

Also, I am of the option that while you should not hose a player's abilities constantly, you should still send things made to counter their class against them on occasion.

[mregecko]

- Protection from X effects will entirely nullify it, as it's a summoned outsider that shares alignment with the Summoner, and it's relying on natural attacks

Just a minor correction, Protection from X spells don't actually affect Eidolons. It's called out specifically in the Eidolon Class Ability text.


In addition, due to its tie to its summoner, an eidolon can touch and attack creatures warded by protection from evil and similar effects that prevent contact with summoned creatures.

[Slipperychicken]

The Skilled evolution and one rank of the Fly skill, which becomes a free class skill (carrying a free +3) when the eidolon gets a fly speed, yields +12 to flying even with a 10 Dex.

Additionally, one gains bonuses according to his maneuverability. If it's still Medium somehow, it has Good maneuverability and has +4. If he throws down the extra 2 skill points, that bumps it up to Perfect and yields him +8. However, its size may also penalize it (since it's most likely Large, that should be a -2).

Assuming Quadraped base form, Skilled, Large, max ranks.
+4 (Ranks) +3 (class skill) +8 (Skilled) +1 (Dex. reduced because of Large) +0 (average) -2 (Large) = +12

So yeah, that sounds about right.


EDIT: If people feel overshadowed, you can just talk to him about toning it down. Divert some combat-monster evolution points into the Shadow ones or something.

[Arbane]

Put in a few opponents with DR. In my experience, that can seriously crimp the eidolon's damage-output.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Well, the cleric shouldn't feel overshadowed if decently optimized, and he can literally change his entire spell arsenal in a day, so he should be fine....

Summoner is a very powerful class, and his eidolon is outright better than the martial classes.

It REALLY annoys me when I see people who used to complain that a 3.5 Druid's Animal Companion could outperform the Fighter - which was untrue - gushing about how PF is more balanced than 3.5 even though eidolon is wildly more powerful than the AC ever was.
/rant

How do you fix the problem? Well...implement a DM style and rules that benefit the martials. Give out a ton of magic item loot, especially weapons and armor the party melee people can use. Allow extremely high point buy for stats - the eidolon is locked in at the same stats no matter what the PCs get, so the higher theirs are the weaker the eidolon is by comparison, ditto for summoned monsters.

Consider adding new class features to grant flight and pounce and so forth. Why should some primary spellcaster's pet have better class features than an entire other class does?

Ultimately, though, the problem is not so much that the eidolon is too good. It's that the non-casters in PF suck so incredibly badly. So I suggest rather than nerfing the eidolon, you just embrace a high powered game and buff the others up to match it. Because even if you nerf the eidolon, the summoner and cleric can still just cast save or lose spells and such, so nerfing the eidolon solely and specifically just seems kind of silly.

[CTrees]

Additionally, one gains bonuses according to his maneuverability. If it's still Medium somehow, it has Good maneuverability and has +4. If he throws down the extra 2 skill points, that bumps it up to Perfect and yields him +8. However, its size may also penalize it (since it's most likely Large, that should be a -2).

Assuming Quadraped base form, Skilled, Large, max ranks.
+4 (Ranks) +3 (class skill) +8 (Skilled) +1 (Dex. reduced because of Large) +0 (average) -2 (Large) = +12

So yeah, that sounds about right.

Well, according to the OP they just hit 5th level, and the Large evolution requires 8th level, so it probably is medium. I forgot about the maneuverability bonuses, though. In that case...
+4 (Good maneuv.) +2 (base Dex for a medium quadruped eidolon) +3 (Ranks, doable at 5th with on ability score increase to Int) +3 (class skill) = +12, with no effort at all

If you instead spent just a little effort buffing fly, spending the additional two points for perfect maneuverability...
+8 (Perfect) +3 (Ranks) +3 (class skill) +2 (Dex) +8 (Skilled evolution) = +24, at fifth level. Considering auto-passing the DC25 check for mid-air collisions would be rather handy for a pouncing flier, sitting at +12 seems downright minimal.