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View Full Version : Pathfinder CR/APL after giving a non-Summoner a fused eidolon?



Malaqai
2014-06-23, 07:17 PM
How much would a non-Summoner's CR increase if the character were to acquire a fused eidolon (a la synthethist) that used the character's class levels to determine the eidolon's strength?

Hello all. I am going to be starting up my first campaign (Pathfinder homebrew setting) in a couple weeks. One of the factions in the setting is a new cult heralding the Return of the gods to the world. To prove it, they have begun conferring blessings that imbue the receiver with divine strength. In truth, the blessed are opening themselves to demonic possession who are using the hosts to gain access to the Material Plane. These demons allow their hosts free access to aspects of their power while waiting for the perfect time to wrest control from their hosts and then seize control of the plane itself.

The way the possession works is that the receiver gains access to a fused eidolon that uses the host's class level to determine its strength. Eidolon's physical stats are used, mental stats are retained per usual. Ideas I'm playing with at the moment involve giving characters in the eidolon form access to a number of evocation spells as well as some bonuses from the existing demonic possession template depending on what demon the host is hosting. (Link (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/demon-possessed-creature-template)) When the demons start misbehaving (and perhaps when their powers are used to do good), hosts will need to make will saves to retain control of their bodies/use various abilities.

I suppose it may be simplest to just nix that last idea, but I'd really like to give the various possessions a sense of individuality. Regardless of whether I incorporate the demon possessed template, the question remains of how this affects CR/APL calculations. Any thoughts, suggestions, or answers?

gr8artist
2014-06-24, 04:07 AM
The fairest way to do this is probably to tally up the perks that he gets from the Eidolon, and find the rough price of each one. I believe the difference between NPC and PC wealth is worth +/– 1 CR, by extrapolating from the book.
Bunch of extra health, natural attacks and their derived usefulness, and freedom to dump melee ability scores all kinda' OP in most settings.
Alternatively, treat it as a race and use the race builder to see how many points the total perks are worth.
Each 10 points is probably worth a level, if you throw him an extra racial hit die to go along with them (or treat every HD's worth of Eidolon HP as 1 HD, and give him extra skills and whatnot)
Bottom line, we can't know until we see the blasted thing, and it will be too easy to break the game with such a thing.

Now, on a BBEG, this gets a LOT easier.
One of the more recent bestiaries had an "Unfettered Eidolon" whose CR was variable based on teh perks and EP's it had. If you give such a thing to a boss, then that boss is just treated as having such an eidolon fighting beside him; calculate the combined CR just as you would any other boss that had a hireling/companion/sidekick/groupie/BFF with him for most the fight. Once you know the CR for guy + eidolon, knock the total down by 1 or so because they only have one pool of actions, and action economy is way OP. You can negate this nerf by giving them plenty of attacks in a FRA, or lots of sidekicks, or putting them in a situation where the PC's will have trouble acting, or some similar challenge.