Summon Monster I-III: Alternate Summons?

[Wolfwood2]

My DM has said that he's perfectly willing to allow reasonable substitutions on the creature list for Summon Monster, but I'm having a hard time coming up with good ideas. I find fiendish/celestial animals to be lame, especially compared to the far superior Nature's Ally list.

Does anyone have any good suggestions on alternate summons for SM I through III? I currently have a fourth level Conjurer with the Augment Summoning feat, so I want to use it to my best advantage. We only play this campaign about once a month and the DM is slow to award xp, so I don't anticipate worrying about 4th level spells or higher any time soon.

Special Note: Due to a house rule, Conjuration specialists get one extra creature than what the dice says when rolling dice to summon multiple creatures. It's just that even mutliple celestial dogs are... not that great.

EDIT: Forgot to say, fey and untemplated animals are reserved for druidic summoning per the DM, so I can't summon either.

 

[Wolfwood2]

Nothing? No ideas? I've got access to the MM III, and it doesn't have to be extraplanar creatures. The DM sees nothing wrong with summoning creatures from within the world.

Links to threads with earlier discussions on the topic would be fine.

 

[SteelDraco]

I generally go with a theme for summoning lists, if I'm bothering to do a custom one. I've played a dwarven cleric who summoned celestial dwarves with class levels, a necromancer who summoned undead, and an elementalist who summoned critters from the elemental planes of Earth and Fire. What kind of character are you playing?

 

[Wolfwood2]

I generally go with a theme for summoning lists, if I'm bothering to do a custom one. I've played a dwarven cleric who summoned celestial dwarves with class levels, a necromancer who summoned undead, and an elementalist who summoned critters from the elemental planes of Earth and Fire. What kind of character are you playing?

He's a gnome wizard Conjurer. Comes from a wealthy background and is a bit of the family 'bad seed'. Vaguely racist in that he thinks gnomes are the smartest race around. Very into pushing the limitations of magic.

The story for the campaign is that the world's most powerful archmage has announced a series of contests where teams will compete against each other and he will score them, with a mysterious reward awaiting at the end. (Cheesy, but in-game everyone finds this extremely odd behavior.) Interestingly, all competitors are 'questionable types' at the very best. Not a good-hearted or nice person among them.

My PC is the world's biggest fanboy of the archmage and has a lot of ranks in Knowledge: History in addition to the usual Arcana and Spellcraft. He wants to be 'just like him'. Said archmage is beleived to be the original creator of all the Summon Monster spells.

 

[Gerion of Mercadia]

Generally IMC, summon Monster X means any creature of CR X ... provided it has an outsider template.

Take a look at the "Monsters by CR" list... and start reading.