Summoner Class

[HastyPudding]

Soooo, it's been a while since I last made of these threads! Recently discussions in the general chat and in-game have lead me to see just how terrible summons, hirelings, and pets are compared to players. Even builds that specialize in this sort of thing only allow their summons to become slightly tanky cannon fodder. I've seen tanky artificer iron defenders, but their damage is rock bottom and serve only as a distraction. Time to change that up.

And so I decided to theory-up a summoner class based loosely on 3.5 and 5e. I bring to you, the Summoner!

**This isn't 100% fleshed out, but if people like what they see I have more to show!**

Class Information
Hit Dice - D6
Skill Points - 2 + intelligence modifier
Class Skills - spellcraft, heal, diplomacy, concentration
Weapon Proficiency - simple weapons
Armor Proficiency - light armor
Saving Throws - low fortitude, low reflex, high willpower
Base Attack Bonus - +0.5 per level
Spell Point Progression - identical to artificers
Spellcasting Attribute - Charisma
Classification - Specialist

Class Lore Description
Summoners delve into the arcane, learning the deepest secrets of how to summon otherworldly creatures to aid them. While many spellcasters, both arcane and divine, have the ability to summon monsters, outsiders, and creatures, none are as adept or influential as the summoner. The summoner forms a close bond with their chosen summoned creature, or Eidolon, and the stronger they become the more powerful their Eidolon becomes.

DDO Class Description
Summoners are arcane specialists (like bards and artificers) that pick a chosen Eidolon at level 1. While artificers and druids (and to some extent wizards) have companion pets, the summoner is devoted almost entirely to improving their own summons. The higher level the summoner the more powerful their Eidolon becomes. Summoners can also use the traditional arcane/divine summoned creature spells, and can use them at earlier levels, in which they are more adept at using due to how the class functions. In a sense, the summoner class specializes not only on their Eidolon, but also increasing the power of charmed/dominated monsters, hirelings, and spell-summoned creatures far beyond that of any other class. Summoners are not particularly powerful on their own without their summons, but can act as a buffing/support class to their party and can help boost the abilities of the summoned creatures, hirelings, and pets of other party members.


Feats
Summon Eidolon - Granted at level 1. Summon a powerful creature that gains power as the summoner levels. This also grants you the ability to raise your Eidolon from the dead up to 3 times per rest. Requires 6 seconds to cast, and cannot be quickened. 1 minute cooldown. See more below.

Magical Training - Granted at level 1. Summoners are spellcasters and naturally gain this effect along with echoes of power.

Augmented Summons - Granted at level 3. Summoners automatically gain this feat for free.

Maker's Call - Granted at level 6. Conjure your Eidolon to your side, instantly healing it for 1d10 hit points per class level (scaling with positive spellpower). This ablity can be used once per rest, and gains an additional use at level 10, 14, and 18 (total of 4). Cooldown: 30 seconds.

Superior Summoning - Granted at level 20. You have perfected the bond between you and your summoned Eidolon. For each epic level you possess your Eidolon gains +1 attack, +1 damage, +1 PRR, +1 MRR, +1 armor class, +1 to all saves, and +5 universal spellpower.


Eidolons
Summoners select from one of five unique Eidolons, each with a different function. This is a special summons that is similar to the artificer, druid, and wizard companion pets and does not count as a spell-summoned creature or a hireling. The higher your summoner class level, the stronger your Eidolon becomes. Eidolons can be renamed like other companion pets, can use collars and armors, and have a pet character sheet. You select an Eidolon at character creation and it cannot be changed except for a feat swap.

Eidolon Attributes
All Eidolons gain the following passive traits (might seem like a lot but Eidolons are supposed to be much stronger than normal summons and this is comparable to what the average, decently-geared player gains in heroics):
- +2 attack per summoner level
- +1 damage per summoner level
- +3 universal spellpower per summoner level
- +2 armor class per summoner level
- +1 physical resistance rating and +1 magical resistance rating per summoner level
- +1 to all saves per 2 summoner levels
- +1 to all ability scores per 2 summoner levels

Eidolons
Monster Eidolon
This Eidolon is an offensive, physical attacker. Monsters use physical attacks and can rage like a barbarian, and has high hit points and moderate defenses. They also gain extra melee power as the summoner improves in levels. It assumes the form of a large elfreeti and is considered flying.

Guardian Eidolon
This Eidolon is a defensive, physical attacker. Guardians use physical attacks and while not as strong as Monster Eidolons, they have very high hit points and powerful defenses. Guardians gain +1 PRR, MRR, and armor class per summoner level on top of the usual bonuses. It assumes the form of a large, silver-colored stone golem (but is not a construct).

Shadow Eidolon
This Eidolon is an evasive, physical attacker. Shadows utilize sneak attacks, uses its dexterity modifier for attack and damage, and has moderate hit points and defenses. They also gain extra attack and melee power per summoner level, as well as eventually gaining evasion and improved evasion. It assumes the form of a shadowy, black abishai.

Arcane Eidolon
This Eidolon is a magical spellcaster. Arcanes use various spells, but have low hit points and defenses. Arcanes have an innate chance to criticaly hit with spells and increase this chance as well as gaining a large sum of spellpower as the summoner levels. They do not have a physical attack and rely completely on their spells. It assumes the form of a bright purple fire elemental.

Divine Eidolon
This Eidolon is a healing spellcaster. Divines use various healing and defensive spells and have moderate hit points and defenses. When not healing it uses a light spell that deals minor light damage. Divines gain a moderate amount of spellpower, spell critical chance, and extra PRR per summoner level. It assumes the form of a white will o' wisp and is considered flying.


Ehancements
Eidolist - Eidolists specialize in directly enhancing the power and survivability of their Eidolon. This tree is devoted 100% to your Eidolon and does not affect the summoner in any way. Focusing on this tree ensures your Eidolon will act as a 7th or 13th member of your party, enhancing its power to that of the average player. (while this might seem overpowered, it still uses hireling/summons AI and obviously not as intuitive or intelligent as the average player)

Broodmaster - Broodmasters specialize in summoning magic, not just your Eidolon. Primarily, this tree gives you the ability to summon multiple, very specialized creatures (although not as strong as your Eidolon), giving you a veritable army at your disposal while providing some support to your Eidolon. This tree also has some enchantment bonuses for charming and dominating enemies. Very efficient for soloers, but can be annoying to some parties.

Synergist - Synergists are of a mind that Eidolons are not to act as servants or as a wall to hide behind, but to fight alongside as equals. Of the three trees, the Synergist is focused more on the summoner, enhancing their capabilities and working in tandem with their Eidolon in various ways. This tree has two 'paths': melee or spellcasting.


Spells
Summoners use a blend of arcane and divine spells but are considered arcane specialists (like bards and artificers). They follow the spell point and spell level progression of artificers, gaining spells at levels 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, and 15. They gain all spells upon level up and spells need to be prepared beforehand but can be changed at rest shrines and taverns. They eventually gain 5 spell slots per spell level and gain a mixture of healing, offensive, debuffing, buffing, and crowd control spells but are not very focused in any particular area. Summoners have spontaneous casting in that they always have the arcane/divine summon spell memorized at each level (making 6 total spells per level). They also gain 6 unique spells, 1 for each spell level.

[HastyPudding]

*****reserved*****

[Selvera]

In general there are 2 main problems with summon focused builds:

1) The vast majority of DDO's progression systems heavily favor character progression over summon progression. When you get new gear; it makes you tankier or deal more damage or have more powerful spells or increases your DC's etc etc, it never helps the summons. When you get a pastlife, it again makes you tankier or deal more damage etc, and doesn't help the summon. Reaper trees again are character focused, most feats are character focused; most enhancements are character focused. When you add it all up; you might have 10 to 20% of your build focused on summons/hirelings; and in a game where player tankiness and damage are practically exponential growth expressions (due to melee power, criticals, attack speed, fortification bypass etc); 10% of the investment translates into less then 10% of the damage.

Problem 1 solution: There would need to be gear which augments summons; or abilities which augments summons based on a character's gear. Same for pastlives and reaper trees. There are a few summon focused feats; but there needs to be a few more of those too.

2) DDO's AI has something to be lacking. You need to be able to see an enemy to order a hireling to attack it and you can't give your hirelings decision trees as to when to use what ability besides manually hitting the very limited selection of abilities on their hotkey bars. Your hireling isn't going to have 3 hotkey bards of actives to use in the proper situation and certainly isn't going to have 3 more hotkey bars of gear swaps and buffs to prepare it for any situation. Summons are even worse, as they sort of loosely follow the character around and occasionally attack enemies. This makes it difficult to get summons/hirelings to focus dangerous targets, avoid traps and damaging attacks and march in front of the player to pull/keep agro.

Problem 2 solution: Give hirelings a second hotkey bar with more actives, have marching positions so that they can be in front of the player, and implement a customization AI system where the player can have triggers for them to attack certain targets or use certain abilities. And give an option to have a hireling move towards a direction or point on the map that the player specifies.

Example:
Trigger 1: When player drops below 50% health -> cast heal on player
Trigger 2: When enemy caster is above 50% health -> use silence the wicked on enemy caster
Trigger 3: When enemy melee is a soul of cruelty champion within 10 meters -> run away from enemy

[HastyPudding]

In general there are 2 main problems with summon focused builds:

1) The vast majority of DDO's progression systems heavily favor character progression over summon progression. When you get new gear; it makes you tankier or deal more damage or have more powerful spells or increases your DC's etc etc, it never helps the summons. When you get a pastlife, it again makes you tankier or deal more damage etc, and doesn't help the summon. Reaper trees again are character focused, most feats are character focused; most enhancements are character focused. When you add it all up; you might have 10 to 20% of your build focused on summons/hirelings; and in a game where player tankiness and damage are practically exponential growth expressions (due to melee power, criticals, attack speed, fortification bypass etc); 10% of the investment translates into less then 10% of the damage.

Problem 1 solution: There would need to be gear which augments summons; or abilities which augments summons based on a character's gear. Same for pastlives and reaper trees. There are a few summon focused feats; but there needs to be a few more of those too.

2) DDO's AI has something to be lacking. You need to be able to see an enemy to order a hireling to attack it and you can't give your hirelings decision trees as to when to use what ability besides manually hitting the very limited selection of abilities on their hotkey bars. Your hireling isn't going to have 3 hotkey bards of actives to use in the proper situation and certainly isn't going to have 3 more hotkey bars of gear swaps and buffs to prepare it for any situation. Summons are even worse, as they sort of loosely follow the character around and occasionally attack enemies. This makes it difficult to get summons/hirelings to focus dangerous targets, avoid traps and damaging attacks and march in front of the player to pull/keep agro.

Problem 2 solution: Give hirelings a second hotkey bar with more actives, have marching positions so that they can be in front of the player, and implement a customization AI system where the player can have triggers for them to attack certain targets or use certain abilities. And give an option to have a hireling move towards a direction or point on the map that the player specifies.

Example:
Trigger 1: When player drops below 50% health -> cast heal on player
Trigger 2: When enemy caster is above 50% health -> use silence the wicked on enemy caster
Trigger 3: When enemy melee is a soul of cruelty champion within 10 meters -> run away from enemy

1 - This is EXACTLY what this entire class is countering. They gain massive amounts of passive bonuses and have an entire enhancement tree devoted 100% to the Eidolon summon. I also fleshed out the Eidolon attacks and passives they gain from actual levels that counter the problems you listed. Those aren't currently in the post, I was just testing the waters, so to speak.

For example, the arcane Eidolon doesn't have DC's, just spellpower: all of its spells have no DC and deal straight damage (it wouldn't deal massive damage, but far-and-away better than any summon currently in the game). Focusing totally on your arcane Eidolon, for instance, makes it comparable to a decently geared pug wizard using arcane bolt/blast/pulse. It's not phenomenal, but far superior to any summon. It's like having a 7th or 13th party member that's not some multi-TR but knows their way around enough to be useful (meanwhile you, as the summoner, are using buffs, heals, and damage).

Another example would be the guardian Eidolon. We're not talking about a 1200 HP summons with 60 prr and a **** intimidate. We're talking 4000 HP, 200+ PRR/MRR, 150+ armor class, and capable of holding aggro in an epic hard quest.

2 - I was kind of going for this with the summoner class. The Eidolons wouldn't have another hotbar, but they would fulfill a very specific role: the monster, shadow, and arcane Eidolons focus entirely on damage, the guardian soaks up a lot of damage (instead of on your party), and the divine is basically a cleric hireling with a lot of healing potential.

The AI, obviously, needs a rework, but I designed the Eidolons to gain power and utility in exchange for a weak AI. Also, as a summoner, you're going to be focusing half your attention on healing, buffs, casting spells, attacking, etc, but also able to use special abilities that allow your Eidolon to do things such as commanding it to attack, healing it, recalling it to you to buff it, giving it a brief power boost, etc. It's more hands-on than a hireling or companion pet: it's not some pet you summon and let it do its thing, it's almost like controlling another party member. For example, I had several abilities in mind that basically act as an aura that mak

[Selvera]

To note: I think a summon class would be a cool addition to the game; I even proposed (and support the idea) that the 3rd druid tree should be focused on summoning/pets and healing. I'm not sure if creating a new summon class and making the necessary adjustments to hirelings, pets, and summon AI are completely worth it at current, but if it should be deemed worth it I'm in support of the idea.

I'm just pointing out the problems with a summon focused build in the current state of the game; and problems that would need to be addressed for such a class to exist.

1) Yes; you're proposing new feats and enhancements and class features for a summoner class great but... that's only a small piece of the whole puzzle. Does someone playing this class have incentives to go through the reincarnation process 80 times to get marginal benefits that will make them and all their summons stronger? When a new raid comes out; are they biting at the bit to try out the new weapon on necklace or get the newest best stat tome? Or is most of their power simply tied to the leveling process; so at level 30 they have little room to get more powerful and little incentive to go after the next shiney?

If most of the power comes from feats, levels and enhancements; What incentive would a quad-triple-completionist have to TR into a summoner class with all that uber pastlives, reaper experiance, loot and game knowledge have? Would it be powerful enough to be a viable addition to their party where 10K dps is a baseline for a dps build and 4k HP is low for a tank?

If it is strong enough to contribute to the completionist's party without having much power tied to reaper trees, pastlives and game knowledge; then why would a new player roll up a different class which won't be able to break 1k dps, 2k HP for their tank, or hit DC's and spellpen checks in low reaper, when they can roll up a summoner powerful enough to crush mid-high reaper?

[HastyPudding]

To note: I think a summon class would be a cool addition to the game; I even proposed (and support the idea) that the 3rd druid tree should be focused on summoning/pets and healing. I'm not sure if creating a new summon class and making the necessary adjustments to hirelings, pets, and summon AI are completely worth it at current, but if it should be deemed worth it I'm in support of the idea.

I'm just pointing out the problems with a summon focused build in the current state of the game; and problems that would need to be addressed for such a class to exist.

1) Yes; you're proposing new feats and enhancements and class features for a summoner class great but... that's only a small piece of the whole puzzle. Does someone playing this class have incentives to go through the reincarnation process 80 times to get marginal benefits that will make them and all their summons stronger? When a new raid comes out; are they biting at the bit to try out the new weapon on necklace or get the newest best stat tome? Or is most of their power simply tied to the leveling process; so at level 30 they have little room to get more powerful and little incentive to go after the next shiney?

If most of the power comes from feats, levels and enhancements; What incentive would a quad-triple-completionist have to TR into a summoner class with all that uber pastlives, reaper experiance, loot and game knowledge have? Would it be powerful enough to be a viable addition to their party where 10K dps is a baseline for a dps build and 4k HP is low for a tank?

If it is strong enough to contribute to the completionist's party without having much power tied to reaper trees, pastlives and game knowledge; then why would a new player roll up a different class which won't be able to break 1k dps, 2k HP for their tank, or hit DC's and spellpen checks in low reaper, when they can roll up a summoner powerful enough to crush mid-high reaper?

The one enhancement tree I was thinking up, Eidolist, basically has every enhancement to something like +20/30/40 PRR, or +2/4/6 attack, but also several things tied direction to the player such as +maximum HP equal to your heal skill, or +spellpower equal to your spellcraft skill, +armor class equal to your charisma modifier, etc. All benefiting your Eidolon summon. The stronger YOU become (because of your skills and bonuses) the stronger your Eidolon becomes, giving the player an incentive to find better gear and to try and maximize certain things to help both you and your summon at the same time.

While the summoner, itself, while no sorcerer or barbarian, you still contributes to the party: the spells they gain (again, not listed yet) and such make them adequate utility/support casters with good charm/dominate spells, acid/fire/prism spells, and back up healing, so while your Eidolon is off fighting stuff you can be healing/buffing the party, debuffing enemies, and attacking, as well.

As to playing a summoner, I think it wouldn't be super easy (like a straightforward sorcerer or warlock or fighter). You have to multitask, making sure your summons are taken care of, healing them when they need it, making sure you attack and such, keeping track of your party with back up heals and buffs, debuffing bosses, etc. The broodmaster enhancement tree would probably require more multitasking as I theorize that it would be like having a hireling, a pet, a summoned monster, and several specializes summons within the tree, making you focus on directing the flow of battle than yourself. The Synergist tree is more about enhancing yourself and your summons at the same time and would be more suited to a player that wants to focus on the summoner a bit more than the summons.

All in all, I think the summoner would be a good beginner class because you always have a strong ally with you and good for soloers, but to get the most out of it you would still have to min/max certain stats and skills.