A couple Summoner questions

[thecrimsondawn]

Im looking to make a summoner, and looking at the class options, one caught my eye and I wanted those with a bit more experience with pathfinder to give me their opinions on it.

Right now I am looking at the Synthesist. Right off the bat I saw its primary drawback, and that is, you no longer are 2 people, but 1. That means you have less actions per turn, limiting buffs, dealing with bad situations, ect. Taking a look at the summoner spell list however, I also notice that most of the good buff spells have really good duration, meaning I could have quite a few up later level nearly all day long.
My current build is of course a half elf for evo points, taking the 5 feats for more evo points, and more or less seeking to be a fused hard as hell to kill monster on the battlefield. While building my template however, I few questions came up.

The first is about natural attacks. Lets use claws for this example. If I go the grapple route where I get a free grapple every attack, there is a good chance that with my 6 or so claw attacks a round that I will succeed on that. Even more so when I become large and then huge at later levels. While grappling, am I correct in assuming that I can still attack with all my natural weapons?
Second, order of attacks. If I was to go multi heads and get the trip attack on every successful attack, would the target fall to the ground before my line of attacks finished? Im rather sure I get a bonus to hit when they are on the ground, so that is why I ask.

Third, the major weak point I would have with this build is to be banished or something of the sort. What ways around that do I have to protect myself?

Lastly, it says little about this but its about equipment. The base summoner says nothing about you not being able to buy magic items for your eidolon, and there are some creatures that are summoned with equipment already. That leads me to believe that while costly, there is nothing stopping you from gearing out your major class feature. Is this true?
To the same question, if I am fused with my eidolon, it says my armor aside, I can use all my magic items as normal. If the first part of this question is true, in theory, could I not have a few pairs of gloves or helmets? Maybe horse shoes of speed? Things like that?

On a final note, if anyone who has played this archetype has any advice, tips, pointers, or warnings, please do share. While early game I may be weaker, I feel I will have more fun playing this one. Depending on how many drawbacks there are however, I may decide to play base.


Edit: I thought of one more question. From the path of war book, there is a feat that allows you some basic martial move options. The broken sword I think it was called has one of its disciplines weapons as "natural" I was thinking about tossing 2 feats out to get the stance that lets all my natural attacks do 1d6 extra damage, and the boost that does the same, mixed up with the evolution that adds another 1d6. While the boost is only 1/day (or was it combat? have to look it up to be sure) that is still a HUGE damage boost when dealing with lots of extra attacks.
Thoughts on this idea too please :)

[legomaster00156]

The Synthesist's drawbacks are extremely small fries compared to its power. It turns you into a better-than-a-Fighter fighter, with full spellcasting power. It's actually among the most brokenly powerful archetypes in the game, hence why many tables (mine included) ban it.

[Vhaidara]

Except it's weaker than base summoner, since you lose the doubled actions, and the doubled pool of feats, and the doubled pool of skills, and the ability to heal your eidolon through things other than rejuvenate eidolon.

[upho]

Right now I am looking at the Synthesist. Right off the bat I saw its primary drawback, and that is, you no longer are 2 people, but 1. That means you have less actions per turn, limiting buffs, dealing with bad situations, ect. Taking a look at the summoner spell list however, I also notice that most of the good buff spells have really good duration, meaning I could have quite a few up later level nearly all day long. This is absolutely correct. The synth also has another less obvious and usually less important weakness in that the summoner is often not built for being very capable at all by himself, whereas a vanilla summoner could very well use his eidolon as expendable and would still remain very strong without it.

The Master Summoner is one of the most powerful archetypes in existence IMO, and besides being totally OP for most games, it also has a major tendency to steal a lot of time in combat with its army of critters.


The first is about natural attacks. Lets use claws for this example. If I go the grapple route where I get a free grapple every attack, there is a good chance that with my 6 or so claw attacks a round that I will succeed on that. Even more so when I become large and then huge at later levels. While grappling, am I correct in assuming that I can still attack with all my natural weapons?Normally, not if you initiated the grapple and want to maintain it, since maintaining the grapple is a standard action. With Greater Grapple though, you could also make a standard action attack with any of your free limbs. And since you're using the grab evo, you can theoretically attempt to use only the grabbing attack in question (claw in this case, it seems) to grapple the enemy, while still leaving you free of the grappled condition and able to attack with your other 5 claws (and whatever other natural attacks you have) while your claw maintains, but your grapple attempts takes a -20 penalty, so I wouldn't recommend it... The grappled enemy is free to full attack you with any light (or natural) or one-handed weapon though. With your many claw attacks, I'd suggest you simply end the grapple in the beginning of your turn, full attack shred it with your claws, and then grab it again (if anything remains to grab) with your last grab-enabled attack to keep it from running away.

In general, having loads of attacks and grappling doesn't synergize very well since you can't benefit from both during a turn. A common grappling setup for eidolons (or synths) is basically to get a bite with reach and grab on a biped, get as big as possible (gargantuan or colossal), and the Impr. + Grtr Grapple feats plus Equipment Trick (Rope) Tie Up and/or later Rapid Grappler feat and/or Swallow Whole. Meaning on round one you move up to the enemy, bite it from up to 35 ft. away as a standard action, and then grab it as a free action. Round two, you may use the move action (from Greater Grapple) to tie up or swallow the grappled enemy, your swift action (Rapid Grappler) to grab another enemy with -5 to your check, and your standard to tie up or swallow that enemy as well. I wouldn't actually recommend Swallow Whole though, since the bad diet you'll be maintaining can easily and quickly do very nasty things to your little (colossal) tummy with its poor damage capacity, abysmal AC and few HPs... Simply having a lot of strong rope or chains and tie enemies up are often a better idea IME, and has the advantage of being possible from early levels. If you go the grab route, remember to get the Snatch feat as soon as you're Huge size, allowing you to dump the grab evo as you'll be able to grab with both all your claws and your bite.

In addition, grab allows for pretty amazing melee control, especially once you get really big and can threaten enormous areas with your grabbing attack. As soon as an enemy provokes an AoO, your accurate attack hits them and gives you a free grab, which in turn allows you to move them to a free adjacent space of your choice (=a position the enemy most likely won't like at all), and then simply end the grapple and wait for the next AoO. If you also have the Trip evo, a few trip feats and Combat Reflexes with a reasonably high Dex, you can gather up multiple enemies and place them flat on their bellies next to you, and also give them some well-deserved spanking with your allies (thanks to Greater Trip and for example Vicious Stomp). All outside your own turn and without needing more than one grabbing attack. (Though it's also worth noting that in higher levels you'll likely face an increasing proportion of enemies immune to trip (they just have to fly) and eventually also grapple, freedom of movement being a very popular spell or constant/at-will SLA among high CR monsters).


Second, order of attacks. If I was to go multi heads and get the trip attack on every successful attack, would the target fall to the ground before my line of attacks finished? Im rather sure I get a bonus to hit when they are on the ground, so that is why I ask.Yes, the target would fall on your first successful trip attempt. Unless otherwise stated, automatically triggered events/results happen immediately after the triggering event/action. In this case, the trigger is your trip attempt CMB roll succeeding, and the target falling prone being the result, much like your claw attack roll indicating a hit is the trigger for dealing damage (and potentially several other effects). Also note that triggers can be very specific, and it's worth checking up the exact language of your abilities that happen seemingly at the same time. For example, Greater Trip's AoO trigger is "you successfully trip an opponent", while that of Vicious Stomp's AoO is "enemy falls prone adjacent to you" (which in turn often is triggered by your trip succeeding). So in this case, the first AoO is actually triggered before slightly before the second one, which allows you to make two AoOs from one successful trip if you have both feats, which would've been impossible if the AoOs had been triggered by the same event. But if you're having multiple abilities granting free actions on a hit, which in turn may trigger AoOs and additional free actions, there are sometimes more than one correct order of events according to the rules (as a DM I just let the player decide in such cases).


Third, the major weak point I would have with this build is to be banished or something of the sort. What ways around that do I have to protect myself?Get an Eidolon Anchoring Harness (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/h-l/harness-eidolon-anchoring).


Lastly, it says little about this but its about equipment. The base summoner says nothing about you not being able to buy magic items for your eidolon, and there are some creatures that are summoned with equipment already. That leads me to believe that while costly, there is nothing stopping you from gearing out your major class feature. Is this true? Yes. With the exception of armor, Eidolons can have all magic item slots PCs have, provided they have the corresponding limbs. And IIRC, for example an eidolon with four hooves would be able to wear magic horseshoes instead of magic boots in their feet slot. Though note that you share magic item slots with your eidolon, so you cannot for example wear a magic belt if your eidolon wears one, and vice versa. (As a sidenote, in terms of actual power/versatility, I'd say the summoner's major class feature is typically his Summon Monster SLA rather than his eidolon, although that is of course often not the case for a synth.)


To the same question, if I am fused with my eidolon, it says my armor aside, I can use all my magic items as normal. If the first part of this question is true, in theory, could I not have a few pairs of gloves or helmets? Maybe horse shoes of speed? Things like that? No. First, as mentioned, you share magic item slots with your eidolon. Second, virtually no creatures have more magic item slots (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items#TOC-Magic-Items-Slots) than humanoid PCs do, and the number of slots a creature has isn't affected by having more than the minimum required bodyparts/limbs (just as having ten fingers and ten toes doesn't give humans twenty magic ring slots, despite having twenty limbs physically capable of wearing them).


On a final note, if anyone who has played this archetype has any advice, tips, pointers, or warnings, please do share. While early game I may be weaker, I feel I will have more fun playing this one. Depending on how many drawbacks there are however, I may decide to play base.A few warnings and tips:

While the synth is less powerful than the vanilla summoner, it also has a tendency even greater than the standard eidolon or wild-shape druid of stepping all over the toes of any other melee combatants in the party, typically being much better at their job while still having access to some of the strongest spells in the game at discount price and being able to summon hordes of monsters. The vanilla summoner can much more easily be built and played to not invade other PCs' main area of expertise quite as much. So talk to the other players and your DM first and make sure they understand and are fine with your synth being better at melee combat than their PCs can ever be. And especially if someone's playing a Paizo class with access to no more than 4th-level spells (rogue, fighter, barbarian, paladin, bloodrager, monk etc), I'd recommend you steer clear of the synth.
Be prepared to change your build plans and nerf your synth if it seems to turn combats into cakewalks. Even if the other players are fine with their PCs being made redundant, you'll make very hard for your poor DM to create encounters able to challenge your synth that doesn't have a significant risk of killing other party members. There's thankfully quite a few rather flavorful but near useless evolutions you may spend your evolution points on instead of optimizing your synth's combat prowess.
Try focusing on something other than damage in combat if the party contains any PC builds based on the mentioned classes, since they'll likely be bound to simply having a great damage output in order to be good at doing their thing, whereas a synth can also be effective at completely different melee concepts.
The synth is famous for having fuzzy rules or completely lacking them for certain situations. Try to not use any components without first making certain they combine without issues.
Building an eidolon can be difficult the first time, and of course much more so for a synth. Make sure you know how all the little fiddly bits actually work when combined so you won't have to take up extra time in combat or unintentionally create a broken character.


All that said, of course you should try out the synth if you think it looks fun! And I really think it can be. Just beware so your fun don't create headaches for the other players as well as the DM.



Edit: I thought of one more question. From the path of war book, there is a feat that allows you some basic martial move options. The broken sword I think it was called has one of its disciplines weapons as "natural" I was thinking about tossing 2 feats out to get the stance that lets all my natural attacks do 1d6 extra damage, and the boost that does the same, mixed up with the evolution that adds another 1d6. While the boost is only 1/day (or was it combat? have to look it up to be sure) that is still a HUGE damage boost when dealing with lots of extra attacks.
Thoughts on this idea too please :)Ah, you're thinking of Broken Blade. It's a very damage focused discipline that also includes a few known overpowered options (and will soon get some errata because of that). I'd recommend you to focus on the options which provide other things than extra damage (you don't need to have discipline weapons for many other disciplines), and that goes for evolutions as well. While I think the +1d6 or +2d6 bonuses will quickly not be much of an issue, beware of things that for example lets you boost charge damage bonuses (if you have pounce), such as Dragon Ferocity, Horn of the Criosphinx, or several Primal Fury options, and especially of things that lets you bypass the eidolon limit on natural attacks, such as the Broken Blade Stance or certain Trashing Dragon maneuvers. Likewise, try to stay away from wielding loads of manufactured weapons or firearms, it can quickly go from fun to boring and overpowered or broken in practice. If there's one thing you won't have to worry about as a synth, it's dealing enough damage. That happens basically automatically when you improve other combat abilities. And a synth can actually afford to do something different than repeating full attacks and charges, a chance I recommend you explore.


Except it's weaker than base summoner, since you lose the doubled actions, and the doubled pool of feats, and the doubled pool of skills, and the ability to heal your eidolon through things other than rejuvenate eidolon. QFT

Though as I mentioned, a synth tends to run over other melee classes' toes even more roughshod than the vanilla eidolon. So though weaker than the vanilla summoner (not to mention the Master Summoner), it's certainly better at flaunting it and making it obvious how far behind Paizo's martials really are when compared to 6/9 or full casters.

[thecrimsondawn]

This is absolutely correct. The synth also has another less obvious and usually less important weakness in that the summoner is often not built for being very capable at all by himself, whereas a vanilla summoner could very well use his eidolon as expendable and would still remain very strong without it.

The Master Summoner is one of the most powerful archetypes in existence IMO, and besides being totally OP for most games, it also has a major tendency to steal a lot of time in combat with its army of critters.

Normally, not if you initiated the grapple and want to maintain it, since maintaining the grapple is a standard action. With Greater Grapple though, you could also make a standard action attack with any of your free limbs. And since you're using the grab evo, you can theoretically attempt to use only the grabbing attack in question (claw in this case, it seems) to grapple the enemy, while still leaving you free of the grappled condition and able to attack with your other 5 claws (and whatever other natural attacks you have) while your claw maintains, but your grapple attempts takes a -20 penalty, so I wouldn't recommend it... The grappled enemy is free to full attack you with any light (or natural) or one-handed weapon though. With your many claw attacks, I'd suggest you simply end the grapple in the beginning of your turn, full attack shred it with your claws, and then grab it again (if anything remains to grab) with your last grab-enabled attack to keep it from running away.

In general, having loads of attacks and grappling doesn't synergize very well since you can't benefit from both during a turn. A common grappling setup for eidolons (or synths) is basically to get a bite with reach and grab on a biped, get as big as possible (gargantuan or colossal), and the Impr. + Grtr Grapple feats plus Equipment Trick (Rope) Tie Up and/or later Rapid Grappler feat and/or Swallow Whole. Meaning on round one you move up to the enemy, bite it from up to 35 ft. away as a standard action, and then grab it as a free action. Round two, you may use the move action (from Greater Grapple) to tie up or swallow the grappled enemy, your swift action (Rapid Grappler) to grab another enemy with -5 to your check, and your standard to tie up or swallow that enemy as well. I wouldn't actually recommend Swallow Whole though, since the bad diet you'll be maintaining can easily and quickly do very nasty things to your little (colossal) tummy with its poor damage capacity, abysmal AC and few HPs... Simply having a lot of strong rope or chains and tie enemies up are often a better idea IME, and has the advantage of being possible from early levels. If you go the grab route, remember to get the Snatch feat as soon as you're Huge size, allowing you to dump the grab evo as you'll be able to grab with both all your claws and your bite.

In addition, grab allows for pretty amazing melee control, especially once you get really big and can threaten enormous areas with your grabbing attack. As soon as an enemy provokes an AoO, your accurate attack hits them and gives you a free grab, which in turn allows you to move them to a free adjacent space of your choice (=a position the enemy most likely won't like at all), and then simply end the grapple and wait for the next AoO. If you also have the Trip evo, a few trip feats and Combat Reflexes with a reasonably high Dex, you can gather up multiple enemies and place them flat on their bellies next to you, and also give them some well-deserved spanking with your allies (thanks to Greater Trip and for example Vicious Stomp). All outside your own turn and without needing more than one grabbing attack. (Though it's also worth noting that in higher levels you'll likely face an increasing proportion of enemies immune to trip (they just have to fly) and eventually also grapple, freedom of movement being a very popular spell or constant/at-will SLA among high CR monsters).

Yes, the target would fall on your first successful trip attempt. Unless otherwise stated, automatically triggered events/results happen immediately after the triggering event/action. In this case, the trigger is your trip attempt CMB roll succeeding, and the target falling prone being the result, much like your claw attack roll indicating a hit is the trigger for dealing damage (and potentially several other effects). Also note that triggers can be very specific, and it's worth checking up the exact language of your abilities that happen seemingly at the same time. For example, Greater Trip's AoO trigger is "you successfully trip an opponent", while that of Vicious Stomp's AoO is "enemy falls prone adjacent to you" (which in turn often is triggered by your trip succeeding). So in this case, the first AoO is actually triggered before slightly before the second one, which allows you to make two AoOs from one successful trip if you have both feats, which would've been impossible if the AoOs had been triggered by the same event. But if you're having multiple abilities granting free actions on a hit, which in turn may trigger AoOs and additional free actions, there are sometimes more than one correct order of events according to the rules (as a DM I just let the player decide in such cases).

Get an Eidolon Anchoring Harness (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/h-l/harness-eidolon-anchoring).

Yes. With the exception of armor, Eidolons can have all magic item slots PCs have, provided they have the corresponding limbs. And IIRC, for example an eidolon with four hooves would be able to wear magic horseshoes instead of magic boots in their feet slot. Though note that you share magic item slots with your eidolon, so you cannot for example wear a magic belt if your eidolon wears one, and vice versa. (As a sidenote, in terms of actual power/versatility, I'd say the summoner's major class feature is typically his Summon Monster SLA rather than his eidolon, although that is of course often not the case for a synth.)

No. First, as mentioned, you share magic item slots with your eidolon. Second, virtually no creatures have more magic item slots (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items#TOC-Magic-Items-Slots) than humanoid PCs do, and the number of slots a creature has isn't affected by having more than the minimum required bodyparts/limbs (just as having ten fingers and ten toes doesn't give humans twenty magic ring slots, despite having twenty limbs physically capable of wearing them).

A few warnings and tips:

While the synth is less powerful than the vanilla summoner, it also has a tendency even greater than the standard eidolon or wild-shape druid of stepping all over the toes of any other melee combatants in the party, typically being much better at their job while still having access to some of the strongest spells in the game at discount price and being able to summon hordes of monsters. The vanilla summoner can much more easily be built and played to not invade other PCs' main area of expertise quite as much. So talk to the other players and your DM first and make sure they understand and are fine with your synth being better at melee combat than their PCs can ever be. And especially if someone's playing a Paizo class with access to no more than 4th-level spells (rogue, fighter, barbarian, paladin, bloodrager, monk etc), I'd recommend you steer clear of the synth.
Be prepared to change your build plans and nerf your synth if it seems to turn combats into cakewalks. Even if the other players are fine with their PCs being made redundant, you'll make very hard for your poor DM to create encounters able to challenge your synth that doesn't have a significant risk of killing other party members. There's thankfully quite a few rather flavorful but near useless evolutions you may spend your evolution points on instead of optimizing your synth's combat prowess.
Try focusing on something other than damage in combat if the party contains any PC builds based on the mentioned classes, since they'll likely be bound to simply having a great damage output in order to be good at doing their thing, whereas a synth can also be effective at completely different melee concepts.
The synth is famous for having fuzzy rules or completely lacking them for certain situations. Try to not use any components without first making certain they combine without issues.
Building an eidolon can be difficult the first time, and of course much more so for a synth. Make sure you know how all the little fiddly bits actually work when combined so you won't have to take up extra time in combat or unintentionally create a broken character.


All that said, of course you should try out the synth if you think it looks fun! And I really think it can be. Just beware so your fun don't create headaches for the other players as well as the DM.


Ah, you're thinking of Broken Blade. It's a very damage focused discipline that also includes a few known overpowered options (and will soon get some errata because of that). I'd recommend you to focus on the options which provide other things than extra damage (you don't need to have discipline weapons for many other disciplines), and that goes for evolutions as well. While I think the +1d6 or +2d6 bonuses will quickly not be much of an issue, beware of things that for example lets you boost charge damage bonuses (if you have pounce), such as Dragon Ferocity, Horn of the Criosphinx, or several Primal Fury options, and especially of things that lets you bypass the eidolon limit on natural attacks, such as the Broken Blade Stance or certain Trashing Dragon maneuvers. Likewise, try to stay away from wielding loads of manufactured weapons or firearms, it can quickly go from fun to boring and overpowered or broken in practice. If there's one thing you won't have to worry about as a synth, it's dealing enough damage. That happens basically automatically when you improve other combat abilities. And a synth can actually afford to do something different than repeating full attacks and charges, a chance I recommend you explore.

QFT

Though as I mentioned, a synth tends to run over other melee classes' toes even more roughshod than the vanilla eidolon. So though weaker than the vanilla summoner (not to mention the Master Summoner), it's certainly better at flaunting it and making it obvious how far behind Paizo's martials really are when compared to 6/9 or full casters.



Wow, thanks for that very in depth review :3
Right now we are in a fully custom world that was made by a GM about 20 years or so ago and handed down to a new GM as time progressed. Each game takes place during, or after the events of another party, so every player changes the world (for better or worse). Things are rather messed up right now with Orcs, Elves, and Humans all at war for hundreds of years now and a heavy theme of ethics and morality with its focus on slavery. All that being said, our current party is myself (a warlord) some type of witch focused on undead, an overly curious brand new wizard player, the only reason our party is alive is my front line partner - a monk of the earth and sky, an npc that follows me since I am now a General - a sniper able to shoot dangerously accurately from 8000 feet away, and a barbarian npc that just got hired who was custom made by the DM to be stealthy until he rages.
This party is quite literately about to fight an orc army with numbers thought to be in the 100'000 range, and win or loose, most of us will need to stay in the war zone to make sure the land stays safe, so we are all making alts.

While no classes have been fully decided on yet, My initial pick was really an assassin with insane stealth, slight of hand, and a focus on small, palm able weapons. Then I found out after I made this guy that the party wanted to play a ninja, a spy master, a carnivalist and a ranged rouge...@_@
After a bit of talking tho we are spreading out our class selection. If I go summoner, we will have the carnivalist, a scout, and 2 undecided. Being a little OP on the combat side wont hurt a thing :3

[thecrimsondawn]

Picking out spells, I ran into a question.

Lets say while fused I get hit with an ability damage/drain attack. If I was to split with my Eidalon after that, would it goes with him, would we both take half? would it become invalid if it was a single target spell? Curious :3

Edit: Found a second question.
The spell Instant Restoration says it has a duration of 1rd/lv and that it can be cast as an immediate action when my summon drops below 0hp. That 1rd/lv is confusing me since its not saying its discharged or anything.
Does it stay in effect and heal every time he goes below 0 till the spell expire? If so, then this is insanely broken. Does it stay in effect after its cast until its triggered then? This would make more sense due to the whole defensive casting thing, but again, it says no key words about going away after it procs.
There some sort of ratta on this, or am I just reading it wrong?

[Spore]

Picking out spells, I ran into a question.

These rules uncertainties are the reason why Synthesist is banned from Pathfinder Society. There is no one rules interpretation.


Lets say while fused I get hit with an ability damage/drain attack. If I was to split with my Eidalon after that, would it goes with him, would we both take half? would it become invalid if it was a single target spell? Curious :3

I would rule that any ability damge still hangs onto the summoner. It would become confusing because ability drain can also affect mental stats.


Edit: Found a second question.
The spell Instant Restoration says it has a duration of 1rd/lv and that it can be cast as an immediate action when my summon drops below 0hp. That 1rd/lv is confusing me since its not saying its discharged or anything.

I'm not sure. I suppose the spell was originally intended to last rds/lv and activated as an immediate action but was ultimately changed to be just an immediate action spell. Another interpretation would be that you can "dispel the healing" but I can't support that interpretation because it is legitimate healing and not temporary hit points.


Does it stay in effect and heal every time he goes below 0 till the spell expire? If so, then this is insanely broken. Does it stay in effect after its cast until its triggered then? This would make more sense due to the whole defensive casting thing, but again, it says no key words about going away after it procs.
There some sort of ratta on this, or am I just reading it wrong?

I don't know. There's a similar spell on the Paladin spell list: Hero's Defiance. It allows you to use Lay on Hands +1d6 as an immediate action upon receiving incapacitating damage. And it's 1st level for a dilletante spellcaster (first caster level at 4th level).

Instant Restoration doesn't require and use up external ressources and it's healing is equal to a 4th level spell (cure critical wounds) while having a shorter casttime and a limited recipient. By the spell creation guidelines it is already a strong contender for a 4th level spell, even without a seemingly constructed duration.

[ThinkMinty]

These rules uncertainties are the reason why Synthesist is banned from Pathfinder Society. There is no one rules interpretation.

I thought it was a power-level thing. Huh.

[thecrimsondawn]

So I was thinking about my ability drain/damage question, and from your reply I got an answer for myself.
It says clearly that the synth keeps its mental stats and uses the summons physical stats. As such, if the fusion was to break, any mental damage would stick with me, while any physical stat damage would stick with the summon.

I still dont have a good idea on how to balance out that heal spell tho. I am welcoming all thoughts and opinions on it.