How to Play a Summoner in Pathfinder 2e

While other spellcasters channel the powers of knowledge, talent, or occult beings, you focus on a different type of power.
a huge dragon that fights for you
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[@jayknight1099]

This was great, I just think it would have benefited from explaining some of the stronger ways to play as a Summoner. Basically "How to play" and not "What is the class"

[@dmeep]

do you know any tips and tricks for the summoner class?

[@jasoncox4640]

Haha! I love how every translator says it different.

[@MidnightAge]

My main "How to Play a Summoner" advice might be kind of obvious, but curiously in my experience I see a lot of summoners miss this in the Pathfinder Society games I've played in: Act Together is your very best friend. If your eidolon is out, you should never go a turn without using Act Together in some fashion unless there's some really obscure reason not to. Also, your focus cantrips shouldn't be slept on. Boost Eidolon is deceptively powerful, especially since it scales with the striking runes on your eidolon-bound weapon. Summoner is kind of a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-few class. Depending on your build you can serve almost any niche the party needs in a secondary capacity. Does your group need a back-up tank, a back-up healer, a back-up skill monkey? Chances are very strong you can build to fill that role with summoner and have a lot of versatility besides. But in so doing you need to understand that you're likely to be outshone in those aspects by highly focused classes. You aren't the class that does the one thing very well, and those classes are intentionally designed to do that one thing better than you can. But you can back them up and/or get the job done in a pinch, making up for lack of fine specialty with just a shocking amount of utility. The ability be on the battlefield in two locations at once is extremely powerful. You can set up multiple flanks, for instance, enabling other party members in ways other classes might struggle to do as efficiently. And failing that, you can in fact flank with yourself! Always a fun trick! Not to mention you can fill two square to block a potential escape path for an enemy! There are just so many ways that having more presence on the battlefield can be leveraged to incredible advantage. The one thing to be mindful of, however, is that even though you have a high hit die (d10) and are likely to have more hit points than many characters, you and your eidolon share a single HP total. That means being in two places on the battlefield at once also means you have twice as many squares around you to take attacks from. That makes thoughtful positioning, a strong skill for any character and class to learn, more important for a summoner to master than most. In particular, knowing when to retreat one or both of your two selves from melee is vital. In exploration mode, both the eidolon and the summoner can take exploration activities! This is extremely useful in any group that uses exploration mode rules. Moreover, the psychic connection the two share can make for some handy hedge value in exploration mode when scouting or similar. Lastly and probably, to my mind, the most important and fun; the summoner and eidolon relationship opens up a ton of opportunity for roleplay and story! Don't be afraid to work with your GM to really explore the agenda and desires of the eidolon and how they relate to and/or differ from the summoner, and remember that the summoner and eidolon are, for all roleplaying purposes, different characters. They are bound intrinsically, but they might not think or feel the same way about everything that happens in the narrative. They might form different relationships with different members of the party. With a summoner, you get the opportunity to explore two characters at the same time and the dynamic they share! This is exactly why I love the summoner and witch classes more than any others. Have fun with it!

[@davidpotts7116]

You hit the nail on the head. Right now I’m playing a summoner in a Strength of Thousands campaign, a sprite with a dragon eidolon. The two have such radically different views on humanity, civilization, accumulation of knowledge, and various other things that I’m glad my DM didn’t just take over the eidolon as a pseudo-NPC. The eidolon is stern, hot-headed and inflexible, having its pride easily wounded and even becoming wrathful at times. Meanwhile my sprite is more carefree and scatterbrained, speaking in various languages out of whimsy (sometimes changing mid sentence), and often being the one to wound the eidolon’s pride as she plays tricks on and throws quips at it. Since she has the touch telepathy feature from her heritage, I sometimes even have one sided conversations with myself while speaking as the eidolon and describing my sprite’s exaggerated actions so the party has some idea of the topic of conversation between them. Below is the summarized backstory I wrote for them in case you’re interested, so it’s not a necessary read but it will give reasons for their dichotomy of opinion. The sprite found the corpse of an adult forest dragon after a devastating fire that was accidentally caused by mortals, its spirit dwelling in the place it died as its anger and hatred wouldn’t let it pass on. It was stuck in the blaze trying to assist animals in escaping, and chose to sacrifice itself in an attempt to save a small herd of animals by coiling around them to stave off the heat and smoke, though it failed as the creatures it was protecting were already too exhausted to continue on. So, day by day, my sprite would visit the dragon’s spirit to keep it company, and after a few decades it finally opened up as to why it stayed there. My sprite then had an idea, as she was raised around mortals and knew the depth of care they held for the environment. She learned various non magical techniques to safely make plant life grow faster and began using them to help part of the forest surrounding the dragon’s corpse regrow. 150 years pass and much of the forest had regrown naturally, though the area she tended grew incredibly lush and dense. The dragon’s spirit, haughty as dragons are, praised her for repairing the damage that was done and claimed that only a First World creature could have done this in such a short time. Well, lo and behold, she revealed that the techniques she used were devised by mortals and that she had no part in the restoration other than using their techniques. The dragon’s spirit then chastised her for deceiving it, though she reminded it that no deception was had as it merely assumed all the credit was hers alone. The dragon’s spirit didn’t speak to her for another 30 years after that, as she had wounded its pride. After that time passed it did speak to her again, genuinely taking her by surprise as it did so - it asked her if mortals were truly capable of such care and ingenuity and, when she affirmed it of such, asked to be taken into mortal society to judge with its own eyes. They two then formed a pact of sorts as the dragon no longer had a material form, becoming an eidolon and manifesting itself in a lesser, weaker form that my sprite had suggested - the form of a normal human, albeit retaining some draconic features. Though, they did agree to act as if she was the one bound by the pact, as the sprite was able to sympathize with the dragon spirit's insecurity about their situation. She, too, would be embarrassed if someone were to laugh upon learning a dragon was under the beckon call of a creature as diminutive as herself.

[@Alvanes]

Great Vid! My favourite way to play a summoner is to forgo charisma completely and leave it at 10 with a Dwarf or a Conrasu and focus on Wisdom and Constitution. Then go Medic Dedication at lvl 2 and become a super tanky supporter. You can use Battle Medicine on you and your Eidolon and if you just use Support spells you never need your Spell DC or Class DC anyway. With Doctor's Visitation at lvl 4 you have amazing Action-Economy.

[@curiouswind9196]

Free archetype into champion Get devotion eidolon Tag team enemies Profit

[@thedarthbear]

Great vid as always! Bonus points for FF XIV cinematic footage. :3

[@untipoirrelevante]

This channel is fucking funny.

[@RebelThenKing]

Ha, I just filmed a video in which I talk about how tough the pronunciation of "eidolon" is. I think everybody pronounces it the way you eventually did. I'm sure not out there saying eye-DOE-lon.

[@darkenblade986]

the joke at the end was good.

[@ibbyglk6769]

😂