The Rules Lawyer's Shopping Guide: The SUMMONER of Pathfinder 2e!

hi i am the rules lawyer and my video on the magus has been doing well and so i think i'll now do this video on the summoner which will also be the first video i do in a new format called a class shopping guide and the idea of the class shopping guides is to provide a source for people who are undecided on what class they want to be in pathfinder second edition and are also looking at the edition itself and considering playing it to look at what is it that makes this particular class unique and what it can do as opposed to other classes so some may do a deep dive and look over every option of a class that's not what i'm going to do i'm going to be looking at the core defining features of the class so i'm ronald i am the rules lawyer i am a lawyer who teaches and runs tabletop role-playing games with children and i run pathfinder second edition dnd fifth edition and star finder like and subscribe it's gonna help feed the algorithm and help my videos get more prominence i hope that these videos can popularize and also teach pathfinder second edition to many people and this class shopping guide uh the format is going to start with just a bird's eye view of the class in a nutshell giving it in a nutshell then some reasons why you would want to pick the class some reasons why you would not want to pick the class and then look at some core mechanics to the class that separate it from others and then do a short demonstration of those core mechanics then lastly go over uh the main choices for this class which in this case is the choice of eidolon and magic tradition so the summoner in a nutshell is a is the magical creature class it's the class that gets to have a customizable spirit or animal or whatever whatever you want to call it that can have special abilities that you can mold to be whatever you want it to be and one could also call the summoner class a half caster in that they can cast spells that full spell casters can cast and they can cast their can trips at will which like in d d fifth edition get more and more powerful as you level up but as for spell slots that have spell levels attached to them you have a significantly smaller number of those per day now does it have any analogs to classes in d and d fifth edition i would say not really the closest thing you get to the summoner is the in tasha's quadrant of everything the there's an option for the ranger to have a animal companion called a beast of the land that they can flavor any way they'd like but that's the choice for that in pathfinder second edition with the summoner you have a choice of between 10 different adolons for each of those eidolons you get to choose one of two stat arrays whether it is strength or dexterity based you get to give it special abilities uh evolutions first you get a free one at first level then you get more as you level up every even numbered level you get to add more abilities to it with your class feeds and so it's much more customizable and that gets us to why you want to be a summoner the first reason i would say is it's again the magical creature class if you ever wanted to have something that you can make into anything you can imagine this is that class and also uh it's think of it as an animal companion plus there are classes in pathfinder second edition that let you have an animal companion but they're they are minions in the system so of your three actions you can use one action to command it and give it two actions whereas the elon can use three actions per turn and what you effectively have are four actions between you and your adelon and either of you can use three and you're basically equals unlike what an animal companion is also more of your class power is in the eidolon and then with a animal companion um also your adolon has the fighting ability and the proficiencies as you level up comparable to a martial class like a barbarian or a ranger uh unlike minions which are kind of secondary to your main character another reason why you'd want to be a summoner is the sheer customizability again you can make so many choices for the adalon and in addition to choosing what magical tradition you want to have so uh the next reason would be that you want to be the magical creature this is an option for you um there's a low level feat called meld into edelon where you actually can merge with the edelon's physical form and be the edelon and have its special abilities in combat now why would you not want to be a summoner first there has to be a clarification and that the summoner is not about summoning uh the summoner can summon creatures because it has access to spells uh but that's also true with any other spellcasting class but that's not the main stick of the summoner it's the edelon which they summon and uh provide their themselves as an anchor to to this reality so the other reason why you would not want to be a summoner is uh maybe you actually want to have an animal companion instead uh that it and have your main character have the power comparable to any other class here your power is more divided between your main character and your eidolon and perhaps you also are actually looking for a familiar which is like a small pet a tiny tiny creature that has utility and small boosts that you can change every morning which is what familiars do in pathfinder second edition another reason is one of the reasons to choose the summoner another reason to not use the summoner is the customization perhaps you don't want to make so many choices when you make your character uh perhaps you just want to make something pretty quickly uh and start playing and the last reason not to play the summoner is there is a more complexity turn to turn instead of having three actions to worry about for your one character you have effectively four actions between two creatures so the core mechanics of the summoner the summoner has an adelon uh a powerful creature comparable to a fighter uh or a ranger in terms of sheer martial power that you furthermore can customize and give special abilities to you are the anchor for it it cannot exist in this reality without you manifesting it which takes three actions for you and when you do that uh it immediately gets one action to use that it must use right then something i should clarify is that they also share their pool of actions together the summoner and the adelon have three actions and one reaction that they gain at the start of their turn uh you can act together uh when it's manifested you uh either of you uses one two or three actions and the other creature gets to use one action and it between the two of you either of you can go first you also can share senses either of you can use the senses of the other while shutting down your own senses you also have a the ability to communicate with each other telepathically and your adolon doesn't even have to be manifested here for you to do that uh one thing that may be surprising about the summoner is that it has 10 hit points per level from its class which is how much fighters get rangers get and summoners are quite squishy they don't they're not uh proficient with any armor so and these cast spells and the reason for this is because you actually share with your edelon a single pool of hit points when your your adolon takes damage that uh damage is applied to your shared pool if it affect if the same effect affects both of your hip both of you takes uh applies damage to both of you only if a greater amount uh applies so if both of you are in the area of a fireball you only count the greater damage and then subtract that from your shared pool each of you can have each of you can be affected separately by conditions such as being sick or frightened or paralyzed it's only the hit pools that are shared and also any effect that affects the number of actions you have those are shared as well and you apply the the more impactful ability the more impactful condition uh your proficiencies with with skills and with saving throws are shared between you and your adelon so if you're trained in acrobatics so is your adalon if you train that up to expert or master so is your ailon any magical gear that you have that gives you a constant bonus to a skill or to your armor class or attacks also extend to your adolon your adelon is one of ten types and we're going to go over those 10 types after the demonstration combat but the type of adeline you have also determines which tradition of magic you have and there are four traditions in pathfinder 2e there's arcane divine occult and primal which corresponds to spells that you expect wizards clerics bards and druids to cast respectively you're a spontaneous spell caster which in pathfinder 2e means that you get to choose when you use a spell slot which of the spells you know that casting will be and it's similar to fifth edition of dnd in that you can upcast your spell any of your spells at any time and and you can see from the number of spell slots per day you have a relatively small number of leveled spell slots per day compared to full casters in this edition summoners have focus spells which are for them called link spells and focus spells use a focus point from your focus point pool and your focus points you start with one point at first level uh can be replenished with 10 minutes of refocusing and your default focus point spell at level one is evolution surge which lets you give for one minute give your edel on the ability to have dark vision have scent up to 30 feet have a swim speed or get an increase in its speed of 20 feet and this can give you more abilities as you level up such as becoming large temporarily becoming huge gaining a climb speed temporarily or gaining a fly speed and this lasts for one minute you also get a link can trip it's a special can trip that's not part of your main set of cantrips called boost adalon and it only takes one action a verbal action and it makes your edolon's attacks do plus two damage and that scales up as you level up so a nice damage boost if you have an action to spare before i go into the demonstration combat just want to introduce the iconic summoner ija with her dragon edelon tuku the dragon adelon is at level one gets gives her access to the arcane magic tradition so she has access to spells that a wizard would have and the dragon adolon also has the breath weapon ability uh two actions to will say tuku has the ability to do a 30-foot cone that does 1d6 electricity damage and it can reuse this ability every one to four rounds so eja is an arcane spellcaster and has these five cantrips prepared shield to protect her because she does not have a high armor class she has a ac of 14. she knows two spells but has only one spell first level spell slot she uh is exploring the sewers and while exploring a room uh she goes up some stairs and finds that there's a zombie there so they roll initiative the zombie stands up and walks towards her being a zombie it has only two actions and what she'll do is manifest her eidolon and bring it in into this existence she spends three actions all of her actions to manifest it and the adelon gets an action as part of this activity and attacks the zombie shambler so after defeating the zombie she has tuku in front as they explore eidolons and the main character both can do exploration activities so tuku will be avoiding notice and trying to sneak up on anything that they chance upon while eja will be searching the environment looking for secret doors so when they uh go up ahead they see a super ooze uh around the corner so this sewer ooze um they'll have another encounter now ija and tuku have a number of choices here ija can cast a attack spell which would be two actions and as part of her casting that spell have tuku go forward then she has a choice of using her third action to either cast shield on herself or to have tuku strike the ooze another thing that they could do is that tuku uses its electricity breath against the sewer ooze while it uses two actions to do that she can use one action such as the cast shield and then with their third action tuku can go up to it note that they theoretically have four actions but you can't have one of them do two actions such as dragon breath and the other one use two actions to cast an attack spell you can't have two and two because of the way act together works which is one of the two does a set of things and the other creature only has one action so another thing that they can do is they can decide well let's say the subarus is over here ija can move up to it she wants to flank the creature uh and set up a more accurate well a lower its armor class by making it flanked so she would move here tuku would move here and they to could act together and both make strikes against the sewer ooze so that is another option well another option is perhaps ija wants to not be so vulnerable if it decides to attack her so after they use two actions to both move up to it and flank it she could cast shield while tuku makes a strike against the ooze or she could in order to get the most out of a single attack she could move up to it tuku moves to the other side then she could cast the link can trip boost edelon to give a plus two status bonus to the edelon strikes this turn so and while she does that and that's a one action spell and while she does that tuku makes a strike and against this flat footed ooze and if it connects does plus two damage let's see that happens then the sewer ooze does its special ability where it bursts forth a bunch of detritus and garbage and attacking uh everybody in a 20-foot emanation around it with 1d4 damage each of them must do a reflex saving throw let's say eja fails her save and tuku succeeds on its save eja would take four points of damage tuku takes two points of damage we would only count the amount of damage that egypt took because the amount of damage he took was greater so 4 damage would be subtracted from their shared pool of 19. so they've defeated the subarus and will continue exploring they turn this corner and they hear something in the distance so initiative is rolled at this time but they don't have they're not able to see what it is uh ija uh wants to be cautious and so she's going to use her link spell spend her focus point to cast evolution search which gives a choice of buffs to her adolon in this case she wants to give it a plus 20 status bonus to its speed and that takes two actions and as part of that they are acting together here it will use its action uh immediately afterward to move up uh 35 feet and be able to see the skeleton that's right there so um with its last action with their shared third action tuku could then strike at the skeleton guard so uh this was i hope a concise summary of what the summoner's basic abilities are now for these class shopping guides i'm not going to be looking at all of the class feeds because for all of the classes in pathfinder there's a lot of them and again this is a a preview just giving you uh what you need to know to decide whether you want to be in the class in the first place so for the summoner you get many feats that can customize and improve your aidelon you can get special abilities for the eidolon such as giving it the ability to fly or it being a better mount that you can ride on or giving it the attack of opportunity reaction you can even have the edelon cast spells as well the these feats are called evolution feats and you also get a free evolution feed at level one and your choices at level one are to have it glide from a high height instead of falling to give it dark vision to add a tr a weapon trait to one of its unarmed strikes and to make one of its unarmed strikes do energy damage instead of physical damage and give it the corresponding resistance so now i for i'm going to go through the 10 uh adolons that you can choose and give a very brief argument as to why you would pick it and i'm going to go in order of the magical traditions that they grant you so the eidolons that give you the arcane magic tradition which is again what wizards can cast so these are the ones you'd have if you want to have strong offensive spells and have a lot of spells that give you utility the first is the construct adalon which is a mental essence from the astral plane and it could be something abstract like this or it can be a magical doll or a clockwork contraption those are just examples it can be whatever you flavor it as and for all the adolons they get an ability at first level and then a more powerful ability at seventh level and then yet another one at 17th level at first level the constructs get construct like resistances to things like mental effects emotion effects to stopping bleeding then at seventh level and 17th level they get bonus evolution feats that you can switch out so if you you you would want to get a construct adoleon if you want to have the ability to pile on more evolutions and have the ability to plan ahead and adapt your your adolon to what you expect to happen on that adventuring day kind of in theme with arcane spell casting next is the dragon edalon and exemplified by our iconic egypt the dragon edelon pick this if you want to have classic dragon abilities in pathfinder 2e they get dragon breath at first level at 7th level they get the ability to spend two actions to do three strikes which includes their primary attack and their two secondary attacks at 17th level they get the ability once per minute to do a much more powerful version of their breath weapon that does double damage the next spell tradition is a divine spell tradition which is what clerics get access to so it's the spells that do healing give support that buff allies that affect life and death and deals with extra planer creatures so the first deadline is the angel it's a celestial from one of the good aligned planes and it is a good aligned creature obviously and at first level they get to do one good damage with their strikes which does not sound like much but the way weaknesses work in pathfinder second edition is that if they take if an enemy and usually we're talking about demons otherworldly extra plane or evil creatures you if they take just one good damage then their weakness to good damage gets triggered so there are very high level creatures that have weakness 20 to good damage so if this angel does one good damage to that creature it does 21 damage in fact so that's very very useful uh choose this if you are having a a campaign that goes up against evil devils demons and going into other planes because the seventh level ability gives the angel a 20-foot aura that protects itself and allies against severe environmental damage and also makes the edelon never flat-footed against any creature lower than than it then at 17th level this aura protects itself and allies against all environmental damage even the extreme kinds of damage you get in other planes and it also gets uh several once a day strong healing abilities to remove curses remove diseases the next divine adolon you can choose is a demon this is a demon that is chaotic evil aligned not all the eidolons are your allies necessarily in pathfinder 2e you can have a compelling relationship that's not necessarily symbiotic between the two of you if you'd like and it's usually keyed to a particular sin and at first level they get to do plus one evil damage when they do their strikes and one of their unarmed strikes can have the versatile trait to do another kind of physical damage so their claw could do slashing and bludgeoning for example then at seventh level they get the very strong ability takes two actions called visions of sin where they target a creature and cause them to lose their ability to do reactions or lose some of their actions then at 17th level they get to cast a ninth level divine decree once per day it's a very strong uh one area spell that affects good aligned creatures and neutral creatures as well but especially good aligned creatures so why choose the demon adeline it's if you're fighting good aligned creatures uh oh alignment damage only harms creatures that are of the opposite alignment so that is important to consider their seventh level ability is quite strong and also one of their two stat arrays that they can choose from has a 16 charisma so if you like the idea of having an adolon that has strong charisma skills such as intimidate or deception this is what you'd want to choose the next day lawn is the sica pump and sick of pumps in in pathfinder 2e are the ushers that take your your un your dead soul to the afterlife and they are true neutral aligned at first level they their strikes get the ghost touch property so they get to bypass the damage resistance of incorporeal creatures and they also do one negative or one positive damage and negative damage damages living creatures and positive damage damages undead creatures and there's many undead that are more vulnerable to positive damage than they are to other kinds at seventh level they get to do every hour cast invisibility on itself on you or on both of you and at 17th level they get to several thematic abilities the ability to hunt and attack incorporeal creatures that are hiding in a physical object the ability to target a mage who is possessing somebody else via the possessee if that makes any sense a mage that projects their image uh elsewhere the adalon can attack the image and damage the original caster and they also can kill undead that would normally be resurrected after a day such as ghosts who have an unresolved something that's keeping them tied to this work plane they would send them straight to the afterlife so why choose this uh sica pump uh if you have a campaign that's going to be dealing with a lot of undead or dealing with occult themes such as ghosts the ones that have haunts in them where those things are prominent and it's interesting that it deals very well with occult dangers but it has a divine magic tradition it gives you divine spells so the next magic tradition is the occult magic tradition those that bards normally have access to these are spells that affect your mind deal with mysteries things that are bizarre cthulhu is classic occult and pathfinder to e the first oh and the edolons are usually ectoplasmic and usually spirits that are that are uh lost and so the first is the anger phantom and it's tied with the the phantoms the the occult adelines are tied with a particular emotion and this one is anger and it's uh they come from the ethereal plane and that the occult adelines do at first level uh they get a very strong ability to spend two actions to do a lot of damage with a strike and at seventh level they have something comparable to barbarians rage ability so increased damage at the cost of reduced defense and at 17th level they have an anger aura that is 20 feet that reduces the resistances of creatures so if any creatures have fire resistance or physical resistance it reduces those resistances by a certain amount unless they are doing something akin to raging which the anger phantom likely would be so why choose the anchor phantom it's if you want to do big attacks big damage and uh that high level one means your whole team can do big damage and also receive big damage there does not seem to be the ability to turn off that aura and so it's a double-edged sword the other um occult edolon is the devotion phantom now i don't think there's a picture in secrets of magic for the devotion phantom so i'm just showing the iconic from first edition pathfinder the devotion phantom is at first level has the ability to retaliate against any enemy that does damage to you that is within 15 feet of you then if your adolon is with within 15 feet of you your eidolon gets to immediately strike strike it back using your shared reaction i should clarify that the devotion phantom's reaction is triggered when an enemy uses a strike to damage the summoner and at seventh level it has significant bonuses uh against mental attacks and at seventeenth level it has a devotion aura for uh within 20 feet if an ally is damaged by anything the adelons constitution bonus is subtracted from that damage and you and the adelon again you have a shared hit point pool take half of that in damage yourself so why would you want to choose the devotion phantom if you believe that you will be drawing threat if you want to kind of bait people into attacking you your eidolon will then get free attacks if you do so and uh be aware that that defense against mental attacks it it seems to me it's not as good as it sounds because uh even if your adeline were to be mentally controlled the way the action economy works with the eidolon you can decide to use all three actions yourself and deny your adole on those it doesn't work the other direction since you are the anchor for your adolon and not vice versa so even if your adalon gets controlled i don't see what benefit this uh ability gives because you can just deny it actions maybe there's something i'm missing leave a comment if you know so the last magic tradition is the primal magic tradition that usually associated with druids in pathfinder 2e there's not only nature themed stuff but a lot of offensive magic that like fireball that uh in dnt 5e i don't think druids get that by default at least and there's also uh the strong spell heal if you want to heal allies so the first primal uh adeline is the beast so here's your classic magical beast it embodies life essence at first level uh it basically gets the ability to charge towards an enemy to use two strides and make a strike for the cost of two actions and if they travel to 20 feet at least 20 feet and in a straight line they get a bonus to their attack at seventh level they get primal roar which uses two actions to try to demoralize all enemies that can hear it and it ignores the usual requirement to share a language with the targets and at 17th level it can use two actions to do a strike against do up to four strikes each of them against a different enemy within its reach so why choose the the beast adelon if you're okay with your eight-line charging ahead and drawing some threat like some enemies will want to attack that big creature that has charged ahead and is now probably in front of the rest of its party members and has the ability to do a lot of attacks especially at those highest levels so the next primal ethelon is the fae it can be a plant-like creature or fairy-like creature other kinds of creatures you associate with the wilderness and this one comes from the first world and the pathfinder lore at first level you basically get an expanded spell list you get not only access to primal spells but you get to treat arcane spells that are in the illusion or enchantment school of magic as primal spells and in addition your adolon gets cantrips uh which technically it's a via a level two feat but you get it at level one then at level seven they get access to a spell casting feat that is usually reserved for level eight and up that gives them some leveled spell slots and then at seventeenth level they get to during your their your daily preparations cast a contingency spell that basically defines a trigger to for another spell effect to go off so why choose the fae edelon spell casting is the obvious reason if you want those schools of spells and if you want your adalon to be casting spells as well this is your choice so oh but the eidolon's stat arrays are do somewhat less damage with their strikes so be wary of that and one of their stat arrays does have a 16 charisma option if you want to do strong charisma skill actions with your adolon the last eidolon type is the plant uh adolon and the plant adelon at first level gets to use one action to make a strike with a plus five to its reach at seventh level it gains reach so it can do if it's a medium-sized edolon it can do attacks against enemies 15 feet away and that's completely aside from evolution search to increase its size and then there are some class feeds to increase its size at 17th level they have the ability to affect basically everything within their reach with this two-action activity called field of roots where they get to do half or full of their strikes damage uh to every uh creature within their reach and also have something that is like entangle against those creatures so why choose the plant adelon you want to have melee with reach that has some control over the battlefield this per pairs perfectly with the six level summoner feet attack of opportunity or eidolon's opportunity so that anything that it tries to get within reach melee reach of your plant has to walk through its threat threatened area so i hope that this gives an informative overview of why you might want to purchase the summoner as your class of choice the summoner is very customizable it's in an addition that has lots of customization it's a v class that is the most customizable and you can pretty much think of an idea in your head and express it somehow through the adolon through the different feats the different adolon types that you can choose that and in addition you can have any of the four magic traditions also if you can get past the hurdle of complexity that is involved with playing a summoner the turns are really interesting you have effectively four actions that you can do every turn so if you liked this video please like and please subscribe the channel uh and these videos get placed higher in youtube searches if there's that kind of feedback and also please leave comments for that reason and also i uh really get motivation from the hearing from people who appreciate the videos or have suggestions for improvements oh and also tell me what you think of this class shopping guide format i'm considering doing it for all the classes and as to what the argument is for choosing each class and why you would not want to choose each class so that's pretty much it and i hope that this was useful for all of you thank you and i'll see you next time

Channel: The Rules Lawyer

Views: 20,858

Keywords: pathfinder 2e, pathfinder 2nd edition, pf2, pf2e, pfrpg, summoner

Id: 9Xb1rZQ6O18

Length: 41min 7sec (2467 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 06 2021