Summoning Sorcerer

[drnuncheon]

Convince your DM to use the "summoning specific creatures" variant from the DMG - this gives you a bit more flexibility in what you use them for, and provides more roleplaying potential.

Convince your DM to let you use Monte Cook's Book of Eldritch Might. (Buying the book for him is always a good start.*) You will find some useful stuff in there like:

• Conjure Mastery (your summoned creatures have improved stats)
• bolt of conjuring - combines force attack with summon monster I
• ring of blue (or red) conjures - magic rings that boost your summoned creatures

Don't forget spells like mount, phantom steed, and planar binding, which fit in to the motif as well.

J

* - I keep telling my players this but it doesn't work...sigh...

 

[Oni]

Feats
Extend Spell
Persistant Spell
Maximize Spell and Empower Spell (Instead of getting 1d3 critters of a lower level, you get 5! Yay!)

Sadly Summon Monster has neither a personal or fixed range, so no 24hr personal aides.

 

[Zappo]

A player in one of my campaigns is playing a sorcerer/summoner. It is a very cool concept!

He isn't that effective in combat - well, not as effective as a fireball&lightning sorcerer, but he can stand his own and if he gets a few rounds he can start doing some real damage. He is however very good outside combat! Incredibly versatile for a sorcerer, if he can't do something he can summon someone who can. Plus, we get cool roleplaying occasions with his Planar Binding spells.

Here are my suggestions:

1) Get the Planar Binding spells (you'll also need a couple Circles of Protection and a good Spellcraft skill). They are invaluable for some long-term help, and with your high Charisma you can make the most out of them. Have the creatures protect you, or do special lengthy tasks.

Treat the creatures you call with those spells with respect, because you don't really control them and you never know when they may find a way back to you.

2) Metamagic! You're already taking 1 round to cast those spells, you may as well metamagic them.

Extend Spell will make your critters last longer. However, it is not that useful; most combats will be over before the spell expires anyway - either that, or the creature will get killed.

Silent Spell, because being invisible is not enough.

Still Spell, and the first time you're tied your party will love you.

Heighten Spell. Why? See below.

3) Alienist PrC, if you like it. The pseudonatural template will give a slight boost to all your summonings.

4) Take Charm Person. It's incredible what you can do with a still silent Charm Person heightened to 6th level (see?). You can't always summon, after all.

5) Take Haste. Besides being an obvious choice for any spellcaster, you can use the extra partial action to complete a full round action. Which means that you can summon immediately (with metamagic too!).

6) Augment Summoning, duh.

Practical stuff:

7) Make a list of what you can summon and their main abilities.

8) Make cards with pre-statted creatures.

DM persuasion stuff:

9) Get the DM to roll stats for summoned creatures, instead of using fixed ones. It doesn't really take long if you have all the default stats precalculated, and it makes the whole thing more cool!

10) Get the DM to allow you to use a creature's true name to call that same creature again with a Planar Binding spell (maybe that's even a rule, I'm not sure).

11) Combining the two above, make sure to get the true name of any creature for which the DM rolls exceptional stats.

12) Also get the true name of any creature you manage to become friends with.

 

[Zappo]

I forgot: get lots of languages, and/or Tongues.

 

[Jeremy]

Collin Allysar, the defacto leader of the party in my current campaign is a summoner. Probably the most powerful member of the party as well.

He aimed for the Summoner prestige class from Relics & Rituals.

About the only magic item he's got is a Talisman of Power (Dragon #290) which bumps his caster level up by 1 for everything except damage. I changed it to a ring to suit the guy who's corpse he took it off of, but other than that, his items make little difference in his competence.

You can read some examples of his strategies in our story hour (see link in my sig), or you can check his character sheet for ideas at this link...

Collin Allysar

 

[Chun-tzu]

The concept of a spellcaster specializing in summoning is great, but it is slightly on the weaker side, so I highly recommend taking a prestige class that specializes in summoning. The Alienist and the Summoner from Relics & Rituals have been mentioned. Here are a few other prestige classes to think about:

The Arcane Devotee, from FRCS, gets an "alignment focus" ability that lets them cast alignment spells at +1 (and later, +2) caster level(s). That works very well with summoning spells (celestial or fiendish creatures). The bad news is, the prerequisites for this PrC include 8 ranks of Knowledge: Religion, which is cross class for the sorcerer.

Path of Magic is a good book that has 2 PrCs that might interest you. One is the Arcane Negotiator, who is better at summoning outsiders to perform tasks other than short-term combat (they can summon monsters using the standard spells, as well). The catch is, you need to be a Conjurer.

Path of Magic also has a Summoner prestige class. This one also gets some nice summoning bonuses, and works pretty well with the Sorcerer (although you need 6 ranks in Knowledge: Outsiders).

 

[s/LaSH]

You might also want to consider beefing up the Summon spells; there are several sources for 'summon whatever you want' variants of the standard Summon spells. There's one in the House Rules section, and I've got another one that might give some interesting ideas at http://dungeondamage.keenspace.com/summon.html. I've always had serious doubts about the balance of those Summon spells, frankly... I think they're too weak in certain aspects.

But if you can't do that, at least summon with style and verve. If you've ever seen a Final Fantasy summon, you'll know that you should be describing your spell effects with far more gusto than normal spells. Plus, your creatures won't appear like normal creatures; they'll be all glowy and shiny or exude darkness and corruption or otherwise bring to mind expensive computer-generated effects. Now while you shouldn't be able to call for automatic Intimidate checks with a Summon Monster spell, you should be able to put enemies on a psychological disadvantage if you do this well.

Here's another idea: If you can convince your DM to allow it, have your monsters gain XP. If you use different monsters all the time, they won't gain all that much, but by the time you're high-level you'll have plenty of elite low-level monsters with a few extra HD or character levels. Your DM may want to run the monsters and thus tell you what they've leveled into, but hey: it's a small price to pay.

I'll leave you with my parting thought: I (the DM) have a triton mage in my campaign, and she cast a Summon for a celestial badger, but I ruled that it came out as a seal instead (because tritons are water dwellers; she even has an otter instead of a weasel familiar). The seal had the same stats as a badger but sorta floated above the ground like it was swimming in the air. The reason I encouraged this is because (a) it looked cool and (b) it didn't make a difference in the position the party was in; it didn't need to fly and couldn't take advantage of the fact.

It's all about being cool. Combat effectiveness is a pale second.

 

[The Forsaken One]

Summoned Tarrasque? you wish! In any normal game it'quite impossible

 

[Darkness]

I forgot: get lots of languages, and/or Tongues.

That's a very good point, actually...

About as good for your flexibility as being of N alignment.

 

[Oni]

Here is a question, what is a good way to use the low level summon monster spells at higher levels (sometimes I wonder about good ways to use them at lower levels, but that is part of why I want to do this to really give them a test drive before I completely dismiss them).