Spell Focus: Conjuration

[Pielorinho]

Actually, Ferret, that's not exactly true. From the SRD:

Third, the spell prevents bodily contact by summoned creatures. This causes the natural weapon attacks of such creatures to fail and the creatures to recoil if such attacks require touching the warded creature. Good summoned creatures are immune to this effect. The protection against contact by summoned creatures ends if the warded creature makes an attack against or tries to force the barrier against the blocked creature. Spell resistance can allow a creature to overcome this protection and touch the warded creature.

Animals aren't good, nor are elementals; Ridley is right that this is a concern for druids.

In my experience, however, it's not too much of an awful issue, for the following reasons:

1. Druids are often summoning things for flanking bonuses; even if the creature can't hit you, it still flanks you.
2. If you can get a spellcaster to spend one round casting a spell like protection from evil, you've often got an advantage, and can spend that round casting something decent like flame strike, entangle, etc.
3. If necessary, you've always got your dispel magic to fall back on; if a caster casts PfE from a wand, you're almost certain to succeed on your caster level check.
4. Since druids can summon spontaneously, they've got some options: arrowhawks, with their ranged touch attack, don't care much about PfE.

Definitely it's not a bad tactic to use when you'll be facing a druid or another summoner (although I'd recommend instead getting the party cleric to cast Magic Circle vs. Evil -- it can protect multiple people, it lasts a lot longer, and if it's cast by a person, it's significantly more difficult to dispel). But, as a veteran druid player, I find the ability to summon spontaneously gives a great deal of power and flexibility to the class; augment summoning is a great feat in this case.

Daniel

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

But, as a veteran druid player, I find the ability to summon spontaneously gives a great deal of power and flexibility to the class; augment summoning is a great feat in this case.

(Sorry to hijack the thread....) As a newbie druid, I am curious what are your favorite critters to summon. I will probably pick up the weaker version of Augment Summoning from T&B (+1 HP per HD, +1 attack/dmg rolls). Thoughts?

 

[Nail]

(Sorry to hijack the thread....) As a newbie druid, I am curious what are your favorite critters to summon. I will probably pick up the weaker version of Augment Summoning from T&B (+1 HP per HD, +1 attack/dmg rolls). Thoughts?

RC: If you're going this route, it's worth your time to write out a chart of a few of the relevant stats of each monster on your list and at least one useful Ex or Su ability. I play a Clr 7 who focuses on buffing his comrades...and Summon Monster II, III, & IV have been very useful, especially now that I have their big stats (HP,AC,& Atks) penciled into my PH. (There is enough room in the summon monster table!)

I'm afraid I don't have my PH with me right now, or I'd type it up. IIRC, Riding Dogs, Bisons, Dire Bats, and Apes are quite handy. The effectiveness of bisons surprised me, as did the reach of those blessed apes. (Hey, I'm a good cleric; my apes are celestial!)

FWIW, Pielorinho is absolutely right about SNA and SM; SNA is better, over all. Much of that is because the lower level SMs don't get DR from the Celestial template.

Heh. Except the Dire Bats. They get DR. Heh.

 

[Legildur]

....The effectiveness of bisons surprised me....

Hehehehehe. The DM in one of my games got sick and tired of seeing Celestial Bison being summoned by our good Cleric. In fact, so sick and tired that following a TPK and a change of character types for most players, the new Cleric player was warned by the DM that there were no longer any Celestial Bison to be summoned - as they'd all been used up!!!!

 

[paranoid]

Animals aren't good, nor are elementals; Ridley is right that this is a concern for druids.

sorry to be nit-picking here, but usually foes tend to cast protection from good, which is weaker than PfE. From the SRD:

This spell functions like protection from evil, except that the deflection and resistance bonuses apply to attacks from good creatures, and good summoned creatures cannot touch the subject

.
So neutral critters can't attack creature with PfG, but they can attack those with PfE/L/C.

-p.

 

[paranoid]

RC: If you're going this route, it's worth your time to write out a chart of a few of the relevant stats of each monster on your list and at least one useful Ex or Su ability. I play a Clr 7 who focuses on buffing his comrades...and Summon Monster II, III, & IV have been very useful, especially now that I have their big stats (HP,AC,& Atks) penciled into my PH. (There is enough room in the summon monster table!)

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for that purpose, I created a spreadsheet, which I'd like to point out to you. Unfortunately, I did not yet complete the Summon Nature's Ally equivalent (holidays are always too short...)
[/advertisement]

 

[Hypersmurf]

sorry to be nit-picking here, but usually foes tend to cast protection from good, which is weaker than PfE.

Strictly by the wording, Protection from Good is more powerful than the others.

The other three spells reference Protection from Evil.

PfE prevents contact by Summoned creatures. Good Summoned creatures are immune to this effect.

PfG is as PfE... except Good Summoned creatures cannot touch the subject. All Summoned creatures except Good, plus Good Summoned creatures, is all Summoned creatures.

PfL is as PfE... except Lawful Summoned creatures cannot touch the subject. All Summoned creatures except Good, plus Lawful Summoned creatures, is... all Summoned creatures except Good, just like PfE.

Same goes for PfC - it ends up just like PfE.

They screwed up the wording horribly. PfC should allow contact by Lawful Summoned creatures... but that's not how they wrote it. PfC shouldn't allow contact by Good Summoned creatures... but it does, given how they wrote it.

They screwed up, and consequently, PfG is more powerful than the others, and PfL and PfC behave counter-intuitively.

But if you house-rule it to how it should have been written - actually rewriting PfE but substituting any instance of "Good" and "Evil" for the appropriate alignments, instead of "as PfE except" and screwing up the exceptions - they're all of equal power.

Regardless - all four spells will hedge out a Summoned Neutral creature (likean animal or elemental) even as written.

-Hyp.