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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Buugipopuu" data-source="post: 5858192" data-attributes="member: 41173">So, you get Summon Nature's Ally III at 5th level, having spent your first level feat on Spell Focus(Conjuration) and your 3rd level feat on Augment Summoning, (which probably forces your 6th level feat to be Natural Spell and your 9th level feat to be Combat Casting), then waste a turn at the beginning of the fight casting the spell, which you can only do a couple of times per day, and stand a chance of wasting if you are hit before the start of your next turn, as summoning was one of the rare occasions where you actually had a chance of losing a spell in 3.5.  So you're 5th level and want to try out your shiny new Summon Nature's Trap Detector/Cannon Fodder III.  Of the 40-something CR5 creatures in the SRD, 9 are immune to tripping (due to magical flight, incorporeality or lacking limbs), 13 can fly, and so probably stay out of reach of your doggie, and the average Trip defence modifier of a CR 5 creature is 9.33, compared to your doggie's trip modifier (with augment summoning) of 13.  Average AC is about 18, so he'll be hitting about 65% of the time, and tripping 70% of that.  So you spent all your feats, used up your best spell, and an entire turn to have a ~46% chance of tripping one enemy, as long as it's not one of the 10-ish enemies which are immune, assuming nobody hits you after your go, and there's room to summon a Large creature.  And 14 of the 40-ish CR5 monsters outreach a Dire Wolf, so doggie will get smacked in the face with an AoO before he even gets the chance to trip a quarter of the time.That is hardly looking like the overpowered combo you're making it out to be.  And things only get worse as you level up, or encounter more difficult than average monsters.  The CR of the monsters you can summon increases slightly faster than spell level, which means slightly more than half as fast as the CR of the monsters you're facing.  By the time you're 17th level and have Summon Nature's Ally IX, you're summoning CR 11 creatures and facing CR 17 ones.  And those concentration checks to avoid losing the spell when you get ganked only get more difficult, as damage scales faster than skill rolls.  Things like incorporeality and flight don't get less common either.There are many things that made Druid overpowered, using Summon Nature's Ally to grapple and trip is not one of them.  That Wildshape let you completely dump Str and Dex and still be a better front-line melee fighter than an actual Fighter was.  But we already knew that, since Wildshape is based on Polymorph, and even Wizards admit that Polymorph was too good.</blockquote>

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