Build guides for Guardian Spirit? If not, any help?
So I just got the Summon Guardian Spirit feat. That, plus Alter Summoned Monster + heightened mount cheese lets me have a Guardian Spirit for ten hours a day, essentially an animal companion.
The Guardian Spirit template has decent room for customization: I get to pick its feats, its skills, and some of its spells (albeit from a highly restricted list.) Are there any guides to using this? If not, is there any advice you could offer?
I'm using a Rod of Giant Summons so it's small instead of tiny, and at later levels can use Bonded Mind + the Share Spells feat to cast self-only spells on it, so it's a great target for buffs, and with the juicy stat upgrades it gets, I feel like it could be completely combat viable. Because its duration is hours/level via Heightened Mount cheese, I can even get it magic gear/barding/etc without "wasting" its duration. All this is cool, but I'm not sure what feats to give it to maximize its usefulness. I've looked at "how to build your animal companions" style threads, but animal companions can only pick feats from a specific, limited list. My guardian spirit has the whole range of feats available from any official Paizo source, and I'm not as familiar with this game as I was with 3.5.
If it matters, the base creature is a Silvanshee. (So taken because Guardian Spirits have stupid high charisma at max level, and getting that as a luck bonus to saves is awesome.)
Thanks for any help you all can offer!
Posted Apr 30, 2022, 12:45 AM UTC
Hmm.
Basically you're herding a cat here.
Probably not an issue if even heightened mount/alter summoned monster cheese is allowed, but 'When you summon your guardian spirit, the duration of the spell you use to summon it is 1 minute per level.' which doesn't have an exception for mount.
Anyway, there are no build guides I know of for guardian spirits specifically, but it'd be much like a summoner's eidolon in terms of useful feats. Piranha strike is probably a must. If there are other PCs it might be fighting with then teamwork feats like outflank are good for both it and the PCs (assuming they can be persuaded), if it's only going to be fighting with other summoned monsters then forget those.