Issues with Summon Monster/Summon Nature's Ally (2004 Thread)

[smetzger]

Here is a quick way to be a heavy hitter, providing your DM will allow you to return to taking Monk levels.

Take a level of Fighter and pick up Combat Reflexes. Get a Glaive. Glaives have reach, you can hold a glaive in one hand and switch back and forth between holding the glaive in both hands or one hand as a free action.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Another option: get some ability to enlarge yourself. Can the sorcerer pick up enlarge person? Maybe a wand?
Monks, with their Improved Trip, can be very effective against equally-sized opponents. In most campaigns, equally-sized opponents are quite common (NPCs). If for some reason your campaign has more large opponents, then you may wish to see what you can do about getting bigger yourself. That will also give you reach (an advantage most Large animals don't get), which is especially useful if you have Combat Reflexes.
As others have said, the monk is first and foremost a mage-killer.

 

[hong]

I must not pimp in public
I must not pimp in public
I must not pimp in public

Ah hell, I just pimped, didn't I?

 

[Saeviomagy]

Uh, what? He has a ranged weapon.Yes, he obviously should have jumped onto the giant, or climbed up the giant, *then* pounded it.

Missed his sling, because it's not in his equipment, only on his attacks listing. And let's face it a sling is probably the worst ranged weapon he could pick.

Musta missed that "Sling +9 (1d4+4)" bit.

Mostly because I looked through your gear list which has a single dagger there. Discounting that, see above. A sling is a non-choice for a ranged weapon. Throwing something like shurikens OTOH is fantastic. Two shurikens in a full round attack, or a single shuriken then single move away. Without a charge, the guy will never get to you. See below for what balance and jump do for this situation.

And, yeah, what was he supposed to do with Balance, Jump, Climb and Tumble, again? I mean, he took no attacks of opportunity.

You were IN a town, right? There's not much reason that the giants should have ever been able to reach you, and there should have been plenty of opportunities for you to mess with them.

Jump and climb get you places they can't go. Balance lets you run across broken ground.

Surely SOMEWHERE in the city there are bad roads.

Additional facts I might have skipped about the fight. It took place on a flat place, in a town, in fact, and if my character had just run away -- or even the whole party -- two hill giants would have been smashing the village. Which might have been tactical, but sometimes I like to role-play in my RPGs and since the town in question was my character's home town he had some motivation to prevent giants from demolishing it.

A town isn't a flat place. It's on a flat place, but it's existence changes things. There's now cover, broken ground, different elevations you can get to.

Furthermore, everyone *was* in the fight. Bard singing and casting heal spells, and the druid, as you might have gotten if you'd read my original post, hurling animal after animal on the giants.

One of your posts said "if we'd had a fighter, he'd have never participated in the fight because he's too slow".

My tactics were fine. Maybe you should work on your reading skills. *eyeroll*

Your tactics were 'run up and hit monster'. AKA non-existent. If you're competing against creatures who's sole purpose is to run at things and hit them, and you're wondering why you came off second best, then chances are your tactics are to blame.

 

[Scion]

I mean, sure, if the spellcasters decided that the way to go was buff my character, he could be spiffy -- but why buff my monk for a cat's grace when, instead, that druid could be summoning up a dire wolf? In terms of tactics, it makes better sense to have the wolf out there doing damage and taking hits than to allow my character a little better AC.

For a single fight the summon is better, for a long term duration the buff(s) is/are better. If you only have one battle a day then spellcasters are going to shine way more than nons. If you have 20 battles in a day the spellcasters are going to wind up doing nothing for the majority. In the latter buffs are much more important, in the former not so much.

So it really depends on the battles for the day, and most days it is better to plan for long days then short days

 

[CPXB]

Your tactics were 'run up and hit monster'. AKA non-existent. If you're competing against creatures who's sole purpose is to run at things and hit them, and you're wondering why you came off second best, then chances are your tactics are to blame.

So, you actually think a good idea for a monk is to . . . let them pelt him with huge ass stones? Hmm. Or smash the town? Hint: when you get into an duel of missile weaponry with a giant, *you loose*.

I think you need to return to tactics school. It is standard tactics that when an enemy threatens developed areas to fight them on as little of that developed area as possible -- in short, to hold them off from going around town setting things on fire, knocking down things, killing innocent people. Maybe in your world having a running fight through populated areas is a good idea. In mine, not so good.

Not to mention that with a shuriken you can't add your strength bonus to damage. Rashad's sling does six and a half points of damage on an average successful hit. Not to mention that you can use anything as ammo (albeit with a small decrease in damage). Shuriken damage just doesn't stack up to that.

Not to mention if my character tried doing this then the other characters would have just defeated the giants as they did. My gripe is, after all, that my character was effectively irrelevant to the fight. If my character had run up, whacked a giant and ran away . . . well, the menagerie that was summoned would have just eaten the giants as they did, anyway.

I mean, dood, our tactics were good. They *worked*. The group easily defeated the menace. It was just my character was hardly a part of that.

 

[CPXB]

For a single fight the summon is better, for a long term duration the buff(s) is/are better. If you only have one battle a day then spellcasters are going to shine way more than nons. If you have 20 battles in a day the spellcasters are going to wind up doing nothing for the majority. In the latter buffs are much more important, in the former not so much.

So it really depends on the battles for the day, and most days it is better to plan for long days then short days

Ahhhhh . . . this is an interesting point. What has not been happening is multiple fights in one day. The magic using characters are basically trained to drop their whole wad as fast as possible, knowing they will likely have a chance to get spells back.

I will discuss it with my GM. It's a touchy issue. My GM prefers one big fight over lots of little ones.

 

[evilbob]

CPXB: I agree with everyone who has said you cannot base an evaluation of your character off one battle. I've seen battles where a thief in our party never got a good flank or a single sneak attack, and ended up doing ZERO damage by the time it was all over. But he can break into shops and get into chests like nobody's business, and without him, things would be so much more difficult. It's not all about the total damage dealt at the end of the day.

The monk in our party is not our main damage dealer, but if he can grab a quick Owl's Wisdom, he has the highest AC. But more than that - as many have already said - he can MOVE ANYWHERE. One time we had an enemy running like crazy for a door to escape, and the monk basically outran him without any effort - no one else could have come close to catching him. You should be maxing tumble and then looking at the battle as a whole; where would you be benefitial this round, and how easy is it for you to be there? In your Hill Giant example, your role should have been to provide flanking bonuses for those summoned monsters so they could hit the giants easier, followed by waiting until someone was tripped and then IMMEDIATELY running over and pelting a prone opponent. Trying to solo was a mistake from the beginning - your role is to support and take advantage of every opening. I have to agree with everyone else who has said that if you're unhappy with your character, you must be playing them ineffectively. There are lots of good ways to play a monk.

Also, if you're looking to beef up a monk, you should check out the Book of Exalted Deeds. You're LG, so you could pick up Vow of Poverty - which makes a monk into a demi-god.

 

[evilbob]

Ahhhhh . . . this is an interesting point. What has not been happening is multiple fights in one day. The magic using characters are basically trained to drop their whole wad as fast as possible, knowing they will likely have a chance to get spells back.

I will discuss it with my GM. It's a touchy issue. My GM prefers one big fight over lots of little ones.

Wow. Ok, so there's another issue. If the spellcasters in your party are blowing everything on one battle, then of course they are going to seem about 5 times as powerful as everyone else. Part of the point of spellcasting is that it is severly limited by the number of times you can use it; they are basically using 5 times the "assumed" consumption of resources per battle.

That's certainly a DM balance issue. If your characters had to fight two big battles in one day (and they didn't change their style of play) then you'd see a huge difference.

 

[Scion]

Actually, shurikens are thrown weapons in 3.5, you only get one per attack, and you add your strength to the damage.

but since they do d2 vs the sling bullets d4... ::shrugs:: it is a tough call. getting an extra attack per round, the ability to enchant them.. it might work out in your favor eventually. d2+1 is better than d4 when you add on the plus to hit