15.1 Eidolons in Play

Summoning is the art of bonding with, summoning, and empowering eidolons. Eidolons are creatures from specific worlds that have the ability to jump between the worlds to the one they are bonded with, but only at the command of the summoner. They can only stay for short visits and automatically return to their own worlds if they are severely wounded.

There are several known types of eidolons from various worlds. Other eidolons can be discovered by adventurous summoners, but they are exceedingly rare. Those are handled by the Creating Eidolons rules below.

There are several powers related to summoning: Summoning allows a character to create a bond with 1 eidolon, Open Bond lets the summoner have additional bonds to eidolons, and Empower Eidolons lets the character create bonds with higher-power eidolons and strengthens the lower-power ones.

Summoning Eidolons

Summoning an eidolon counts as the summoner’s action for that turn and costs 1 plus the Eidolon’s Level in charge dice (summoning a Level 3 eidolon costs 4 charge dice). The eidolon appears instantaneously. Check out the eidolon’s entrance description to see what that looks like for a particular eidolon.

A summoner can always only have 1 eidolon summoned at any time. An eidolon that is a squad or swarm still counts as 1 eidolon for all intents and purposes).

Controlling Eidolons

Even though both the summoner and the eidolon are now in the conflict together, the player has to decide each turn which one of them acts (that is, the summoner can either act on her own or command her eidolon to do something). They cannot both act in the same turn. Their pools are separate as well. You can still describe them doing things together (and thereby aim for more maneuver dice from the GM), but you can’t take 2 actions.

Summoners can unmark one of their traits to reroll failed dice when the eidolon is acting.

The summoner and her eidolon cannot both do a combined maneuver together, but either one of them can do a combined maneuver with other PCs (and possibly eidolons). However, eidolons can never be leaders in a combined maneuver, so there always needs to be at least one PC involved in any combined maneuver.

The summoner can still be targeted with strikes while the eidolon is around, unless the eidolon has the Auto Guard power or uses the Guard power.

Dismissing the eidolon is a free action that the summoner can take at the beginning of her turn. It does not use up her action for that turn. It does not hurt the eidolon. A dismissed eidolon can be summoned back in the same conflict.

If the eidolon is defeated (that is, if it takes enough wounds to fill up all of its wound circles), it immediately disappears back to its home world and cannot be summoned back until at least 1 of its wounds has been healed.

Eidolons do not retain their Pools after a conflict. Instead, their Action Pool is considered filled and their Charge and Strike Pools are empty. Eidolons do retain their wounds, however, which can be healed through character scenes.