Welcome to Guidance, Private Sanctuary’s source for tips and techniques for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, written by Everyman Gamer Alexander Augunas. Today, we’re going to be looking at an Iconic Design for Lady Yuna!.

This build almost immediately jumped into my head when I read the spirit summoner archetype. Sorry in advance PFS folks: nothing in today’s article is PFS legal. But you’ll probably enjoy the flavorful build anyway! 😀

Background

From the Final Fantasy Wiki:

Yuna is a playable character in Final Fantasy X, and its sequel, Final Fantasy X-2. She is the daughter of high summoner Braska and an unnamed Al Bhed woman, who died when Sin attacked her ship at sea. Yuna’s mother was the sister of the Al Bhed leader Cid, who is Yuna’s uncle and the father of Rikku and Brother, Yuna’s cousins.

In Final Fantasy X, Yuna becomes a summoner like her father before her, and embarks on a pilgrimage to expel Sin. She meets Tidus who teaches her there is more to life than sacrifice.

Build Concept

Here are the components that we’re going to use to build Yuna.

• Spirit Summoner: First up, since Yuna is literally a summoner, it makes sense to give her the summoner class. Relatively low-power magic with a focus on healing works well for Yuna, but the real reason we’re going with this build is that this archetype gives her access to ….
• Life Spirit: Having the Life Spirit’s granted abilities is VERY important for Yuna because it gives her the all-important channel energy ability. This is basically a staple for any serious healer build. In addition, the Spirit Summoner adds all of her chosen spirit’s spirit magic spells to the summoner’s list of spells known, and many of the spells that the life spell grants give perfect access to many white mage appropriate spells. However, all of the cure spells are absent from this list, so the final choice that you absolutely NEED for Yuna is ….
• Samsaran: Hope you’re ready to pump Charisma, because you’re going to need a fair bit to make this build work. Specifically, you want the mystic past life ability so you can add a bunch of healing spells to the summoner’s class list. You’re going to want cure light wounds, mass cure light wounds, and cure critical wounds at the bare minimum. If you throw ALL of your ability points into Charisma, that’ll leave you with another one spell (assuming you bought an 18) left to choose from, as later increases to your Charisma don’t grant you more bonus spells to your spell list. You likely don’t want to pump your Charisma, however, as all of your spirit hexes and abilities continue to key off of Wisdom, so go for the 16. Make sure you pick your hexes carefully as a result.

Alright! Let’s take a look at this build.

Early Levels (1–7)

• Classes: Summoner (Spirit Summoner) 7
• Feats: Selective Channeling (1st), Extra Channel (3rd), Reach Spell (5th), Extend Spell (7th)
• Abilities: bond senses, eidolon, hex (enhanced cures), life link, life spirit, shield ally
• Spells (3rd Level): dispel magic, neutralize poison
• Spells (2nd Level): barkskin, haste, lesser restoration, resist energy
• Spells (1st Level): cure light wounds, enlarge person, infernal healing, rejuvenate, unseen servant
• Spells (Cantrips): arcane mark, detect magic, guidance, light, read magic, resistance

Like most summoner builds, this is exactly what you see on the tin. Spells should be nothing super interesting: a lot of it is standard arcane stuff. The only really interesting choices are those given to the class by mystic past life: cure light wounds particularly.

Since we have to use the witch class to get our healing magic AND the witch gets it at a one-level delay, I quickly begin using feats to alter cure light wounds to be more useful. First, Yuna has that cool ability from the life spirit that allows her to use her summoner level instead of the cure spell’s limits when healing damage. I picked up Reach Spell at 5th level so you can adjust cure light wound’s range from touch to close (25 ft. + 5/2 levels) relatively painlessly.

In order to mimic regain, the heal-over-time spell in Final Fantasy, I picked the only spell that grants fast healing in the game: Infernal Healing. Since you don’t have to use this in PFS anyway, I would houserule away the evil descriptor and make it conjuration (healing) myself. At that point, you’re not really making the spell any better or worse off. The evil aura thing almost never comes into play.

Mid Levels (8 –14)

• Classes: Summoner (Spirit Summoner) 14
• Feats: Selective Channeling (1st), Extra Channel (3rd), Reach Spell (5th), Extend Spell (7th), Resilient Eidolon (9th), Improved Spell Sharing (11th), Extra Evolution (13th)
• Abilities: bond senses, greater shield ally, eidolon, hex (enhanced cures, fortune, healing), life bond, life link, life spirit, shield ally
• Spells (5th Level): breath of life, spell turning, greater dispel magic
• Spells (4th Level): cure moderate wounds, restoration, greater infernal healing, transmogrify, purified calling
• Spells (3rd Level): dispel magic, neutralize poison, heroism, restore eidolon, remove blindness/deafness or remove curse
• Spells (2nd Level): barkskin, haste, lesser restoration, resist energy, lesser evolution surge, slow
• Spells (1st Level): cure light wounds, enlarge person, infernal healing, rejuvenate, unseen servant, grease
• Spells (Cantrips): arcane mark, detect magic, guidance, light, read magic, resistance

More standard stuff. I picked up Resilient Eidolon so Yuna’s eidolons can save her if she dies. I also picked up Improved Spell Sharing because its super useful. For Yuna’s new hexes, I picked healing and fortune for buffs. I also gave Yuna haste, barkskin, and other neat spells that she had access to in FFX. (Well, at least I always choose to teach my Yuna haste. I think that was in Tidus’s grid, though.)

Yuna’s second spell is remove blindness/deafness or remove curse, whichever you prefer. Honestly, those aren’t HUGELY important spells, so you might be more interested in picking up Cure Serious Wounds (a 6th level spell for witches) or mass cure light wounds (also 6th level). Completely up to you, although Yuna can cure both of those status aliments in game. I also opted to give her cure moderate wounds at 4th level for slightly more powerful healing. As you move towards higher levels, though, Yuna’s primary healing is going to come from channel energy, which is a thing, I guess. Despite all we’re giving her, I think its safe to say that this build is NOT going to be able to keep up with mass healing like a cleric or druid can.

Endgame (15+)

• Classes: Summoner (Spirit Summoner)
• Feats: Selective Channeling (1st), Extra Channel (3rd), Reach Spell (5th), Extend Spell (7th), Resilient Eidolon (9th), Improved Spell Sharing (11th), Extra Evolution (13th), Extra Evolution (15th), Extra Evolution (17th), Extra Evolution (19th)
• Abilities: bond senses, greater shield ally, eidolon, hex (chant, enhanced cures, fortune, healing), life bond, life link, life spirit, shield ally
• Spells (6th Level): heal, incendiary cloud, walk through space, discern location, dimensional bounce
• Spells (5th Level): breath of life, spell turning, greater dispel magic, greater teleport, greater rejuvenate eidolon
• Spells (4th Level): cure moderate wounds, restoration, greater infernal healing, transmogrify, purified calling, dismissal
• Spells (3rd Level): dispel magic, neutralize poison, heroism, restore eidolon, remove blindness/deafness or remove curse, stoneskin
• Spells (2nd Level): barkskin, haste, lesser restoration, resist energy, lesser evolution surge, slow
• Spells (1st Level): cure light wounds, enlarge person, infernal healing, rejuvenate, unseen servant, grease
• Spells (Cantrips): arcane mark, detect magic, guidance, light, read magic, resistance

I took a lot of liberties in this stage of the game. Heal is basically the summoner’s curega spell and incendiary cloud is going to pretend to be Yuna’s holy spell. Pretty much all 6th level summoner spells have nothing to do with Yuna, so feel free to pick whatever you want. I took greater teleport so I could say that Yuna is the reason why fast travel works in-game, not the air ship.

The Aeons

I’m not going to go super in-depth in how to build Yuna’s aeons, but I will give some general pointers. First, some evolutions are AWESOME for every aeon, such as improved natural armor, celestial appearance, ability bonus, spell resistance, magical attacks, improved damage, and damage reduction. Those evolutions won’t be listed below. Second, for the aeons that can fly or swim, make sure you take the skilled evolution to improve your bonus in those skills further. Finally, virtually all of these aeons should eventually be upgraded to Large creatures save Anima, who should be Huge. With that, here are some tips:

Valefor

Base: Biped
Evolutions: Flight (Ex; 2 rp), Grab (claws; 2 rp), immunity: sonic (2 rp), rake, improved damage: claws (2 rp), rend (2 rp), mount (1 rp), wing buffet (1 rp)

Valefor is the flying eidolon. Focus on claw damage and wing buffet damage, as its impossible to give eidolons the ability to deal sonic damage currently.

Ixion

Base: Quadruped
Evolutions: Hooves (1 rp), bite (1 rp), pounce (1 rp), mount (1 rp), immunity: electricity (2 rp), scent (1 rp), energy attacks: electricity (2 rp), gore (2 rp), trample (2 rp), breath weapon: electricity (4 rp + 1/additional use), fast healing (4 rp), minor magic: obscuring mist (2 rp), major magic: any (3 rp), ultimate magic: lightning bolt (4 rp)

Very strong choice. Pick options that allow you to emphasize this eidolon’s speed and electricity damage. Charging stuff would also be perfect for Ixion.

Bahamut

Base: Biped
Evolutions: energy attacks: all (6 rp), immunity: all (6 rp), minor magic: any (2 rp), magic magic: acid arrow, scorching ray (6 rp), breath weapon: any (4 rp + 1/additional use), ultimate magic: fireball, lightning bolt, stinking cloud (12 rp)

Bahamut is hard to build in Pathfinder because his niche is magic, and eidolons aren’t good at magic. Personally, I would focus on pumping his strength and using claw attacks while grabbing spell-like abilities as off-use abilities.

Yojimbo

Base: Biped
Evolutions: weapon training (4 rp for katana), skilled (humanoid stuff)

Very simple. This aeon is supposed to be humanoid, so pick up a katana and give it to him. Fun, easy.

Ifrit

Base: Biped
Evolutions: minor magic: any (2 rp), magic magic: scorching ray (3 rp), energy attacks: fire (2 rp), breath weapon: fire (4 rp + 1/additional use), rend (2 rp)

Boom. Boom. Firepower!

Shiva

Base: Biped
Evolutions: minor magic: obscuring mist (2 rp), energy attacks: cold (2 rp), breath weapon: cold (4 rp + 1/additional use), immunity: cold (2 rp), slam (1 rp),

Pretty much the same as ifrit, except cold options.

Anima

Base: Biped
Evolutions: limbs (1 rp), claws (1 rp), rake (2 rp), rend (2 rp), shadow blend (2 rp), shadow form (2 rp), frightful presence (3 rp), sacrifice (3 rp), incorporeal (4 rp)

Big and scary. Pump Strength and kill people with the claw attacks. It’ll be FUN.

And that’s my build for Yuna and her aeons! Sadly the magus sisters aren’t doable without the master summoner archetype, but it is what it is. What do you think? Is this a good Yuna build, or did I miss something important? Leave your questions and answers below, and I’ll see you next week for a new topic at Guidance!

Alexander “Alex” Augunas has been playing roleplaying games since 2007, which isn’t nearly as long as 90% of his colleagues. Alexander is an active freelancer for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and is best known as the author of the Pact Magic Unbound series by Radiance House. Alex is the owner of Everyman Gaming, LLC and is often stylized as the Everyman Gamer in honor of Guidance’s original home. Alex’s favorite color is blue, his favorite Pathfinder Race/Class combination is samsaran anymage. Because seriously.