Summoner help

[Pielorinho]

Including yourself!

True, except that, for various reasons, the first thing I houseruled in 3.5 was to make Wildshape work the same way it worked in Masters of the Wild (with fudgy rules put in place to take care of plant wildshaping). If your DM doesn't make this adjustment, and if you take natural spell, this tactic becomes even better.

Daniel

 

[Vymair]

For short term summoning, the SNA list is superior to SM list. However, as a wizard summoner, you can get into the calling line of spells (Lesser Planar Binding, Planar Binding, Greater Planar Binding). If you and your DM are comfortable with the negotiation necessary to capitalize on these spells, the wizard summoner shines.

While the Druid will only have his ally for a single fight, the wizard can summon an ally for days at a time. You can attempt to bind a Ghaele Eladrin as an 11th level wizard to pump up the party's combat power. The druid can't touch that is their wildest dreams. That is the true power of wizard summoning.

 

[mikebr99]

True, except that, for various reasons, the first thing I houseruled in 3.5 was to make Wildshape work the same way it worked in Masters of the Wild (with fudgy rules put in place to take care of plant wildshaping). If your DM doesn't make this adjustment, and if you take natural spell, this tactic becomes even better.

Daniel

Respectfully... why did you take away the Animal Growth buff from Druids, when Clerics still get it with Righteous Might?


Mike

 

[Kalendraf]

Also, be sure to take a look at the Augment Summoning feat. Gives your summons +4 to Str and Con.

Depending on the situation, a shape-shifted druid (say bird or bat form) can be just as difficult for the enemies to focus their attacks on as an invisible conjurer.

"Fire your arrows at that bird (or bat)!" "Which one? There are...dozens of them."

 

[Pielorinho]

Respectfully... why did you take away the Animal Growth buff from Druids, when Clerics still get it with Righteous Might?

[hijack]First, I took it away from my character before taking it from anyone else's. I played a druid for a long time, and when this 3.5 change came out, I decided it was too good.

That said, I took it away for a variety of reasons:
1) Animal Growth spell is already incredible enough without having it apply to the druid. If a player asked for Righteous Might to be added to the druid's list, I'd definitely consider it, but that'd be nowhere near as good as Animal Growth (which applies to multiple creatures).
2) Animal growth only works if druids change type when they wildshape. Changing type creates all kinds of problems, most especially the infamous Awaken factory (casting awaken on a polymorphed/wildshaped creature, then wildshaping/polymorphing back into an animal and repeating the process).
3) I prefer the flavor of the MotW wildshape rules and so I just imported them entirely, rather than taking bits from several places. MotW doesn't involve changing types.

As a player, I still found my character holding his own in combats with this change in place; as a DM, nothing in combat scared me as much as the druid's one-two punch of summoning 2d4+1 dire apes and then animal growthing all of them plus her companion animal tiger. So everyone seemed pretty okay with this change in my group.

But it's definitely not for everyone, and that's fine. And I probably shouldn't hijack the thread further; lemme know if you want to talk on this more, and I can start a new thread .[/hijack]

Daniel

 

[haiiro]

Does anyone have a list of the statics (modified for templates and such) of the creatures?

I didn't see this part of your question answered yet. We use this excellent resource IMC:

http://www.greyhawkonline.com/smetzger/summon/

It's got full stats for all of the SM and SNA creatures.

 

[iceifur]

Do you have the Complete Divine yet?

If so, check out the feats section. There's a Divine feat called Divine Metamagic that lets you burn turn or rebuke attempts to reduce the spell slot cost of a specific metamagic feat (chosen when you take the feat) on the fly. Basically, you burn an amount of turn or rebuke attempts equal to 1 + the spell slot modifier of the metamagic feat. When combined with the Rapid Spell metamagic feat (also in CD), which reduces the casting time of spells it's applied to by one step (1 full round becomes 1 standard action, rounds becomes 1 full round, etc.) for the low cost of +1 spell slot, you can throw Summoning spells around with a casting time of 1 standard action apiece (and 2 turn or rebuke attempts). If you don't want to actually play a cleric, take one level for the ability to turn or rebuke and move on.

There is also a variant in UA that lets a specialist Conjurer swap their ability to call a familiar for a reduction of the casting casting time of all Summon spells to 1 standard action.

Just a bit of candy for your brain.

-B-

 

[bluebudda]

haiiro,
Thanks, that is exactly what I am looking for.

iceifur,
Very good suggestion, I don't think it realistic to be effective when your bread and butter are 1 round spells - I definately like the Divine Metamagic feat. The question I have which I'm sure is being debated on the boards is if you need the MM feat that you want Divine Metamagic to affect.

 

[Voadam]

Voadam,
That is my dilemma, the druids creatures are definitely bad ass - however they run into problems vs. Damage Reduction. For some reason I've fought against allot of DR in the past so I might be a bit bias in my comparing the spells. This is why I've been playing with the idea of access to both SM and SNA (looking unrealistic though).

Kravell,
Thanks for the suggestion - I will definitely check him out. Unfortunately I am limit to Wizard products for this charter.

If you face a lot of alignment or magic DR that you can identify then SM shines. Celestial ones count as magic and outsiders have their alignment descriptors qualities. Material DR will still stump you and slashing vs. bludgeoning can be achieved with both SNA or SM.

If you want to go the DR defeating route load up on the appropriate knowledge skills so you can justify knowing what to summon to effectively fight that slaad or hellhound's specific DR.

 

[MDSnowman]

For my money the best summoner you're going to find is the Avatar, from Green ronin's book of the same name. You get a ridiculuous ammount of summoning spells, as well as the ability to polymorph into said celestials. You get all the basic summon monster spells and bind/ally spells as well as banner spells that let you buff everyone around you.

You'll want
(From the PHB)
Spell Focus: Conjuring
Augment Summonings

(From the Avatar's handbook)
Holy Summoner (Increases the duration of a summoning)
Imperative Summoning (Creatures you summon get a partial action on the round it appears, and there after can take an extra partial action every round)
Rapid Summoning (Casting summoning Spells becomes a standard action)
Summoner's Bond (Summoning a good outsider nets you a +2 Sacred Bonus to Charisma and Wisdom while that creature is under your control)

(From savage Species)
Assume Supernatural Ability (Alows you to keep one supernatural ability of a creature when you're polymorphed, for an Avatar this is a must, it lets you have some of a celestials's nifty tricks when you take their shape.)