Yes, I know what I'm asking is basically sacrilege in the 'Soulsborne' community but I've played quite a few Souls games and I am kind of over the whole 'challenging myself' thing. Part of the reason I was originally drawn to the Souls franchise was the difficulty but now I just want to play Fashion Souls with a cool-ass character in a cool-ass world doing cool-ass shit. The game has so much lore and such a beautiful world and just so much creativity in general that the difficulty seems like a distraction from enjoying it.
I've heard using summons is a good way to alleviate some of the difficulty. Are there any other effective ways?
Make a character that can fight at range and melee competently. This can mean making a swordsman that knows some type of offensive magic or a mage that is not a glass cannon or at least having a bow with arrows. Level VIT (the only thing that actually makes you harder to kill) and use summons/ashes for bosses. A good ash of war to use is the mimic tear or the bow puppets.
Using weapons that have some range is also a good idea, like spears.