Tips for GMing a Summoner (Chained) Pathfinder

[Sloanzilla]

The party I'm running is now level 9. The summoner is powerful, more so than the rest of the party, but it hasn't really been an issue until recently. The Eidolon is very powerful (why is pounce only one point?) and it's a good spell list, but what is causing most of the problems is the 9 times a day he can cast a level 5 summon for 9 minutes.

Summons with at-will abilities that hang around for longer periods of time really change things a bit. In addition to providing two cure serious wounds casting, for example, each Bralani has unlimited blurs and wind walls. It's not a game breaker at this level, but that's a lot of spell like abilities with nearly unlimited use. Will the spell like abilities of various summons stabilize in a few levels, or do summoners really get challenging?

[upho]

Ah, you're far from alone in having to deal with a summoner too powerful for their game and party. And unfortunately, if the player continues to attempt to eke out every bit of advantage the class offers, it doesn't get any better further up the levels, but (far) worse. Not that this would be much different from say a conjuration focused wizard played in the same way, the difference being that the awareness of the wizard's game-breaking potential is generally much higher and thus more easily countered.

I think there's two very important points to keep in mind here:

PF (and 3.5) can be played at wildly different power levels; and PCs can be virtually anything from 20th level jokes to 1st level demi-gods.
A group often needs to agree on a power level for the game - before starting to make PCs - in order to avoid the risk of serious balance issues later on.

Unfortunately, the second point above is often easier said than done for many groups, as it typically takes quite a bit of system insight to even grasp what actually is a suitable power level and what combos of player options create a matching PC build. Not to mention that the rule books are horribly lacking in advice on how to deal with this, largely treating this very common issue as if it didn't exist.

In short, I really think you should talk to the summoner player and ask them to try and tone down their PC's power to better match that of the other PCs. Does the player understand that their PC is causing balance issues? Does the player know that you can indeed break most games by creating a horribly imbalanced PC, despite not breaking any written rules whatsoever?

[Sloanzilla]

Ah, you're far from alone in having to deal with a summoner too powerful for their game and party. And unfortunately, if the player continues to attempt to eke out every bit of advantage the class offers, it doesn't get any better further up the levels, but (far) worse. Not that this would be much different from say a conjuration focused wizard played in the same way, the difference being that the awareness of the wizard's game-breaking potential is generally much higher and thus more easily countered.

I think there's two very important points to keep in mind here:

PF (and 3.5) can be played at wildly different power levels; and PCs can be virtually anything from 20th level jokes to 1st level demi-gods.
A group often needs to agree on a power level for the game - before starting to make PCs - in order to avoid the risk of serious balance issues later on.

Unfortunately, the second point above is often easier said than done for many groups, as it typically takes quite a bit of system insight to even grasp what actually is a suitable power level and what combos of player options create a matching PC build. Not to mention that the rule books are horribly lacking in advice on how to deal with this, largely treating this very common issue as if it didn't exist.

In short, I really think you should talk to the summoner player and ask them to try and tone down their PC's power to better match that of the other PCs. Does the player understand that their PC is causing balance issues? Does the player know that you can indeed break most games by creating a horribly imbalanced PC, despite not breaking any written rules whatsoever?

Yeah, at least a wizard has a few checks and balances- a spellbook, lower hit points etc. There is no reason why a summoner should be a 3/4 BAB D8 class. From a metagame POV, I just don't see how a summoner would know that a Branali summon would even have unlimited blur spells. I've thought about forcing more knowledge rolls before a given summon is ordered to use a power. In fact, I'd really prefer to move into a system where summons all support you to the best of their ability, but aren't mindless robots. But that's not how the rules are written.

Based on previous experience, the player in question isn't going to ramp it down. The rest of the group is mostly mid tier players who optimize for damage but aren't breaking anything. The good news is that they are finally fighting some smarter monsters who will understand the idea to "kill the caster first."

[JonU]

Having just finished playing a chained summoner, I can say first hand that his character will be strong all the way to the end. That said, if he is casting summon monster using the class feature, his eidolon should disappear as if dismissed. He can't have both going at the same time. I know I picked a couple summon monster spells so I could have both up at the same time though. But really, the player should only ramp up as needed and keep himself in check with the rest of the party. Cause even a poorly optimized summoner is pretty powerful. I tried to only flex my summoning muscle when needed. If he can't stay inline with the party and adjust his power level as needed, then maybe he should find a weaker class.

One example of this was us getting ambushed in a city while nobody was really prepared. I forget what we were fighting but I ended up using three of my summons in that fight in order for the rest of the group to get their gear and get in the fight. I did a lot of damage to the surrounding shops (imagine a bunch of anklyasorous having a fight in a narrow city street. Shop keepers weren't happy, but the group was alive (barely). Once the fight was over, theenemy had gone through 300+ hp of Summons, which would have otherwise killed our whole party.

[AnimeTheCat]

If the party is gaining infamy, fame, or other notoriety, it only stands to reson that the opposition would begin preparing for such things. For instance, a cleric or other caster that can cast the Banishment spell, or opposing NPCs with a scroll or two of Banishment. If the party is already fighting casters, you could create some custom spells that lock in or prevent dimensional travel, thus locking in the summons already present (allowing the Eidolon if it's always around) but preventing further summons.

[Selion]

Summoning is one of the strongest features in the game and the summoner class is a contestant among the best summoning users. Period. This thing alone should bring her easily in the tier 2 range (even unchained)
A wizard or a cleric optimizing their summoning would be worst, because they would have a ****load of abilities in addition to this strategy, so it's not different than dealing with different tiers mixed.
First of all, is that a problem? I mean, other players are fine and having a good time? If not, just try to set some specific encounters to have fun yourself (forbiddance and disruptive are your best friends) and let the power player swimming in his powergasm in other instances .
Is this a problem even to other players? Have a little talk together, playing a high tier character in a mixed group requires fair play, which is usually obtained with hard role-playing. If he likes angels so much he should dedicate his entire build to it, so no dinosaurs, no spells that sound grim and evil, just white little hard hitting angels and nothing more.
Finally, if he's upsetting the entire table and still doesn't want to change his play style, weave the HouserulesBanDMfiat hammer with righteous fury and watch his powerful build melt in your absolute glory

[Crake]

In fact, I'd really prefer to move into a system where summons all support you to the best of their ability, but aren't mindless robots. But that's not how the rules are written.

That's actually exactly how the rules are written:


It attacks your opponents to the best of its ability. If you can communicate with the creature, you can direct it not to attack, to attack particular enemies, or to perform other actions.

If you want your summon to do something particular it doesn't just happen, you need to communicate with it. Protip: If you can't communicate with it, you're out of luck, elementals for example, only speak their elemental language, so if you want an air elemental to carry you somewhere, but you can't speak auran, it's just gonna shrug in confusion. Other protip: Enemies can hear what you communicate to your summon.


If the party is gaining infamy, fame, or other notoriety, it only stands to reson that the opposition would begin preparing for such things. For instance, a cleric or other caster that can cast the Banishment spell, or opposing NPCs with a scroll or two of Banishment. If the party is already fighting casters, you could create some custom spells that lock in or prevent dimensional travel, thus locking in the summons already present (allowing the Eidolon if it's always around) but preventing further summons.

(Un)Hallow and forbiddance are two good methods for this. Protection from good/evil/law/chaos can also help, along with magic circle of protection for wider area of denial, though in those situations the summoner can just summon other alignments. Greater dispel magic also likely works better than banishment, since you can hit all the summons in a fairly large area, while also ignoring any spell resistance they might have. 3.5 also has a spell that steals summons, and I'm pretty sure pathfinder has one somewhere (I just looked it up, it's kinda terrible (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/c/control-summoned-creature/)), which could be a double hit, removing one of their summons and gaining one of your own.

[Sloanzilla]

thanks for the tips- we're running Adventure 4 of Pathfinder Kingmaker.

I'm going to have fun using the L12 wizard who is staying at Ft. Drev. He has developed a very keen interest in Eidelons after a few minions made it back to the keep to report seeing one. He's been casting scry twice a day since.

The other players very much have gotten annoyed by the summoner's overpoweredness, and he's ignored my pleas to ramp it down a bit. So I guess the smart NPCs will reasonably decide to focus fire a bit.