A YouTube video I watched recently claimed that summoners might have been considered a bad class in second edition. However, it doesn't seem like that at a glance - there's opportunities for various creatures and beings to stand by your side, such as a plant monster kinda like Blossomon, a stegosaurus, dragons, and so on. Also they come with a nine level magic collection on top of the Eidolon - and the Eidolon can learn spells too with the correct feats. So you could make a druid like character with lots of magic but their main aspect being able to summon a giant sunflower, as a result of acquiring lots of Druid archetype feats for magic casting and feats related to the Eidolon casting magic themselves. Or you could make a stegosaurus man who summons a powerful stegosaurus that knows a lot about nature and fights for them. Sounds like a cool class to play, but I haven't tried the game much to see how any of this would work in gameplay.
I'm actually wondering if Summoner would be better if it got funneled 2 characters' worth of wealth per level, or if the people having a blast with it aren't unknowingly showered in gold and treasure by their GM. The general idea is, you're a mediocre (wave) caster doubled of a mediocre martial but with the full expense related to both roles. If both half aren't under-geared for their respective role to boot, it probably adds up to a full character without too many issues, except, you're always scrapping for gold, with no way to get your double skill item tax, the staff tax, the wand tax, the rune tax, etc... all at the same time
How much would Automatic Bonus Progression help with that particular issue?
Probably fully?