Personally, I like Monastic Archer stance the best. Not that its the most powerful (probably ranger or fighter is ‘best archer’, in terms of pure archery skill and feats).

But I like monks. They’ll be tankier than a ranger, and have some extra utility and lots of movement. And Stunning fist is great, if not likely to proc all that often. Ki Strike strike on bows is also cool.

And just, having ‘flurry of blows’ leaves you with usually having two actions to do other stuff with on your turn, letting you actually have actions to use other bits and bobs you may get from skill feats, gear, or other archetypes. So you have a lot more flexibility.

So, yeah, fighter will be most accurate, ranger will make the most attacks, but I still like the monk’s ability to dish out decent damage, while keeping the ability to do other stuff in the same turn.

I meant more in ‘opportunity’. Like, casters usually suck when they’re in situations where they’re just throwing out cantrips, and melee fighters suck at times when ranged combat is needed, or when utility/AOE/Elemental spells are needed.

So they can leverage their flexibility to throw 3 actions at the ‘most relevant choice’ between a ‘fighter’ and a ‘wizard’. Granted, either form is going to be weaker than a PC Fighter or Wizard.

Add to that their occasional feats like ‘Tandem Movement’ that lets them kinda sorta cheese the action economy, and things like ‘Eidolon’s Opportunity’, letting the Eidolon threaten spaces even while the summoner is acting more in ‘Wizard mode’, and I think an average effectiveness of 2/3s is fair. Yeah, they do lose out on 2 of 6 actions compared to two full characters, but that just means they dump the 2 ‘least useful actions’ rather than straightforwardly being 2/6th worse.

Yeah. In my experience (as a GM with a summoner player, going through Strength of Thousands, currently at level 12), Summoners spend the majority of their time in combat acting as a ‘fighter’, with the summoner spending their ‘at least 1 of the 4 actions’ casting Boost Eidolon. Which, on that front, makes them a ‘worse fighter’.

But, of course, they can throw out big spells when needed, since while they only have 4 spell slots, they don’t lag behind a full caster at all in ‘highest level spellslot’ (aside from 10th level spells). They get fireball at the same time the Wizard does. So the real ‘breaking point’ between them an a full caster isn’t ‘burst power’, but being able to lay out a constant barrage of lower level spells, meaning they lose out a lot on utility.

But, staffs on them are very important, as that is huge in giving them those ‘lower level utility spells’.

And, unlike a fighter, they do have access to damage cantrips, for both when ranged combat is needed, and if elemental damage is needed. Sure, those damage cantrips are worse DPS in a white-room scenario most of the time, but they are nice to have when needed.

So while they are spending 90% of their time in combat mostly being a ‘worse fighter’, 10% of the time they’re throwing out spells as strong as a Wizard, and just generally bringing less DPS but more flexibility than a fighter would. In that regard, they’re maybe more analogous to an Inventor.

Which, on the proficiency front, the Eidolon shares martial proficiency progression with most martials, so they’ll lag behind fighter and gunslinger on attacks, and monks/champions on defense, but keep pace with rangers and rogues and swashbucklers etc.

Summoners as a caster though lag behind full casters a bit, getting expert and master spellcasting 2 level later (so, more levels than not, they’ll actually have the same proficiency as a full caster). More painful though is they never get Legendary casting, since full casters get that at level 19. While I’ve not yet seen summoners at that level, having your DC/spell attack be 2 lower is painful, but able to be mitigated by focusing more on ‘party buffs’.

I don’t think they need double gold, but at the same point, having the GM drop an extra Staff or skill item above and beyond the normal loot bounds could hit right.

More so than two full characters, Summoners have felt more like 2/3s of a fighter, and also 2/3s of a caster, and while that’s a ‘gut feeling’ more than any kind of measurement, I do feel like they’re closer to ‘needing’ 33% extra gold, rather than 100% extra gold, if that makes sense.

I don’t think so, not sure what general concensus is though.

They are something of a ‘generalist’ class though, so I can see them lacking in raw power.

Magic in PF2e is lackluster in damage output, leading some to call casters weak. I don’t think that’s true, but casters do face challenges related to damage, and to needing to work around enemy saves types, and needing to deal with the fact that controlling the battlefield, and managing buffs/debuffs requires more thought than just dps.

And, since they are casters, the eidolon can’t be as strong as a pure martial.

But since they’re a bounded caster, the can struggle to actually have enough spells available to be able to bring ideal spells to bear each fight.

Add to that splitting their gold between martial items and caster items, and they’ll be lagging a level or two behind on one or the other.

And just, their core class feature of getting 4 actions semi-split across 2 bodies that share a health pool, is complicated to manage.

All of that adds up to a class that is high-complexity across multiple fronts, in a system that’s well balanced if classes are played well. So you, the player, needs to spend more time and energy planning, shopping, making decisions, to end up being as powerful as the fighter. I can see that not sitting well with some people.

For me, that’s what I like about PF2e; the complicated classes aren’t just OP if played to their fullest, so I, as the most invested player at the table, can go HAM without ruining other, less invested player’s fun.