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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brother MacLaren" data-source="post: 1911621" data-attributes="member: 15999">Augment Summoning is great, particularly if your party is relatively low on melee combat potential or healing power.  (The latter because the critters soak hits, sparing your fighters.)  Spell Focus (Conjuration) has one slight benefit, in that it applies to the save on cure spells - useful against undead.  That's really all you get for it, though my DM lets it give a bonus to crafting items of that school.  Don't forget to apply the bonuses from Augment Summoning to the various special attacks and abilities of summoned critters (grapple check, whirlwind DC, poison DC, etc.)My druid actually put off Natural Spell until level 9 - was planning to take it at 6, but the need for a healing wand was just too great and I couldn't conceive of the character looking for a magic shop.  Important things to consider when playing a summoner is your ability to communicate with the critters.  Casting Speak with Animals right before combat can be useful (or having a very good Handle Animal check), as can taking ranks in the elemental languages.Combine Augment Summoning with Animal Growth and maybe Bull's Strength and you have constrictor snakes that can crush nearly anything, or rhinos that do Massive Damage Threshold on every charge.</blockquote>