Making a Conjurer/Cleric

[Ravilah]

Okay, I'm about to start in a new campaign as a gestalt conjurer/cleric. The cleric has a homebrew god with the Mind and Summon domains (from the Complete Divine, I think).

I'm not that good at making my characters extremely cool, so any advice on the best feats, items, and spells I should be aiming for as I go up in levels? (We start as level 2.) This DM has, in the past, had a habit of making things really difficult, really fast, so it might be nice to be as effective as possible, as soon as possible.

BTW, my character has an oddly high bluff check, and has 4 ranks in Perform (juggle) because the DM gave us 4 extra skill points to put in something that added "flavor" without being strictly useful.

Thanks in advance,
R

 

[Rackhir]

Okay, I'm about to start in a new campaign as a gestalt conjurer/cleric. The cleric has a homebrew god with the Mind and Summon domains (from the Complete Divine, I think).

I'm not that good at making my characters extremely cool, so any advice on the best feats, items, and spells I should be aiming for as I go up in levels? (We start as level 2.) This DM has, in the past, had a habit of making things really difficult, really fast, so it might be nice to be as effective as possible, as soon as possible.

BTW, my character has an oddly high bluff check, and has 4 ranks in Perform (juggle) because the DM gave us 4 extra skill points to put in something that added "flavor" without being strictly useful.

Thanks in advance,
R

Well Augment Summons is pretty much of a no-brainer, though you do need to take spell focus conjuration.

Thaumaturgist is a great summoning Prc for clerics.

http://srd.plush.org/thaumaturgist.html

Though you won't be able to take it until you hit 7th since it requires you to be able to cast lesser planar ally (lv 4. - does your summoning domain let you do that earlier?). It does give you Augment Summons as a free feat at the second level. Which is kinda pointless since you probably would have already taken the feat if you are a summoning focused cleric. Perhaps you can talk your DM into letting it bump up the bonus from the augment summons, kind of like the UA summoning wizard gets.

http://srd.plush.org/unearthedSpecialist.html

I would definitely talk to your DM about giving up some sort of class feature/ability to get the rapid summoning ability. It makes a HUGE difference to the viability of summoning as a tactical choice.

I forget the requirements, but I think you can still take it as a cleric. Taking a level or two of Alienist (Complete Arcane) to get the Pseudonatural summons might be worthwhile. The True Strike pretty much guarantees that your summons will land at least one hit. They have better SR than regular creatures. As written though you have to give up any non-templated creatures. Given that summoning is already a sub-optimal choice, that seems to be unnecessarily harsh. But it is really only a problem at higher levels (13+) when elementals become some of your best summons.

Once you get past the very low levels you are generally best off summoning multiple creatures off of a lower level list, than a single creature off of the spell level list.

Celestial Bison is your best early summons (SM III). Since it has enough HD to get DR and SR from the templates. It is worth taking as a single summons if you are fighting creatures that can't beat the DR/Magic. I was using these all the way up til I could summon multiple beetles (lv11 - SM VI).

Fiendish Dire wolf at SM IV. They get a free trip attack.

Celestial giant stag beetle at SM V. They have a trample attack that can be very useful against large numbers of weak creatures.

Especially with augment summons you are best off going with creatures with a single attack since that counts as a two handed weapon and you get an extra point of damage off of the augment summons bonus as a result (+3 damage from the +4 str it grants).

Make sure you have cheat sheets with the stats for your most common summons with the augment summons and template modifiers added in. It will speed up play considerably and make your DM much happier with you.

 

[Ravilah]

Sweet. Thanks especially for the tips on the best creatures to summon.

Are there any good magic items out there especially for conjurers? Or at least ones that would be must-haves?

 

[Rackhir]

Sweet. Thanks especially for the tips on the best creatures to summon.

Are there any good magic items out there especially for conjurers? Or at least ones that would be must-haves?

There really isn't much in the way of summoning oriented items, especially for low level characters. The magic item compendium has an item that lets you put a spell on a summoned creature (like mage armor or shield), I don't recall what it was called or costs. I don't think it was horribly expensive. This could be handy at low level (ACs on summoned creatures are low enough to be irrelevant at medium to high levels, so spells like that don't really help) and it can burn through your spells quickly. IIRC the item was usable like x3 a day. There's also a feat to do the same thing.

You mentioned the character was a gestalt. Do you get spells for more than one class? That could help.

There's a runestaff of summoning (another MIC item), but it's not inexpensive (I think around 30k gold).

BTW if you do want to do summoning Druid is better than cleric. Summon Nature's Ally spells often get creatures a full spell level lower (ex. DireWolf is III vs IV) than the SM spells. Of course they're not templated (Fiendish/Celestial/etc...), but the DR they get from the templates is really only effective for a handful of levels around 5th. Much higher than that and all the foes have magic weapons or equivalent. The other stuff from the Celestial/Fiendish templates is pretty much the same story (though they are more intelligent which if you speak the languages can give you greater control over what they do). Animal growth (which doesn't work on pseudonatural summons BTW) can be a great kick in power once you're high enough.

 

[Zurai]

Don't go Alienist with a Cleric or Druid. Druids get no benefit at all from it (being unable to cast summon monster spells in the first place), and both classes take a big hit from the Wisdom penalty, losing DC, spells per day, and potentially restricting access to top-level spells.

A magic item that can be useful is the chronocharm of the uncaring archmage from the Magic Item Compendium. 1/day it lets you cast a spell that takes a full round to cast, as a standard action. Since all the generic summon monster and summon nature's ally spells are full round casts, this lets you whip one out in a single action once per day. It does take your throat slot (so no periapt of wisdom), although it's cheap at 500 gold.

 

[Rackhir]

Don't go Alienist with a Cleric or Druid. Druids get no benefit at all from it (being unable to cast summon monster spells in the first place), and both classes take a big hit from the Wisdom penalty, losing DC, spells per day, and potentially restricting access to top-level spells.

A magic item that can be useful is the chronocharm of the uncaring archmage from the Magic Item Compendium. 1/day it lets you cast a spell that takes a full round to cast, as a standard action. Since all the generic summon monster and summon nature's ally spells are full round casts, this lets you whip one out in a single action once per day. It does take your throat slot (so no periapt of wisdom), although it's cheap at 500 gold.

You can take a single level of alienist to pick up the pseudonatural summons and not take any wisdom hits.

 

[JRR_Talking]

buy frostburn

turn all your summon monster X spells into summon ice beast X spells.....it makes them ice constructs, with all the lovely immunities being a construct has

this means the huge centipede (+40hp for being a construct) you get with SM III has ~76 hp and a breath weapon or a horrid swallow-like ability.

its nice. Ive seen it in action

John

 

[Zurai]

You can also pick up the feat "Beckon the Frozen" from the same source. It gives you the ability to summon your usual monsters with the cold subtype and +1d6 damage on each natural attack.