Why would you summon elementals?

[Staffan]

No one said Elementals are outsiders. But it would work for this prereq.

Oops. I was going by what the original post said:

Why would you summon an elemental? Because you want to become an elemental savant and use it to make peacful contact with an outsider from the plane of your chosen element

He only mentioned outsiders, so I thought that's what T&B said too.

 

[hammymchamham]

Oops. I was going by what the original post said:

He only mentioned outsiders, so I thought that's what T&B said too.

an error on my part Now, I hide in embarrassment, for someone did say Elementals are outsiders

 

[Urbanmech]

The fact that elementals are immune to critical hits, stunning, and such is usually a fairly moot point for the lower level ones. Most of the small elementals have around 10 hp so that critical hit gets stopped, but at 5th-6th lv it is most likely going to die from one hit. This factor really makes the Summon 3, 5, and 6 elementals utility creatures rather than combat monsters.

Unfortunately the short duration of the summoning spells means they can't run any long errands for you. I wonder why no one has published a feat to make your summons last longer. Psions have a feat from the WotC site that extends the duration of their Astral Construct powers from rounds to minutes. I wonder why they haven't bothered to do a version for arcane and divine magic.

When I played a druid I got much more use out of the Thoqqua and the Ape as my summons of choice for a 3rd lv spell. The thoqqua is invaluable as a digging tool since it's burrowing leaves a 1' wide tunnel. If the distance you want to go is fairly short (and you speak ingan) you can have it burrow back and forth through the rock to form a tunnel that people can fit through.

 

[Pielorinho]

I agree that they'd be great utility creatures if their duration was tens of minutes, or even minutes, long. But as it is, there's only a few jobs they can do outside of combat, and generally you need to speak the appropriate language to get them to do that job.

Moving through the earth, though -- now there's a cool ability. I'll have to use it sometime.

Daniel

 

[hammymchamham]

The summoning Prestiage Domain from Defenders of the Faith allows summoning spells to last 2x as long.

 

[Storminator]

The summoning Prestiage Domain from Defenders of the Faith allows summoning spells to last 2x as long.

And Extend Spell doubles the duration as well. Is that a triple? Or a quadrupal?

Still not very long tho...

PS

 

[Nail]

A small earth elemental can scout for gems or mineral deposits.......

A small earth elemental can also be valuable in searching for pit traps in a corridor ....

I'm not sure this works like you think it does.

Question: What does an Earth Elemental "see" when underground? The earth or rock is opaque, and the earth elemental does *not* have any sort of Blindsight ability that I can see in the SRD. What is thr range of an earth elementals "sight" while undergound?

It seems to be: 0ft.

What am I missing?

 

[hammymchamham]

And Extend Spell doubles the duration as well. Is that a triple? Or a quadrupal?

Still not very long tho...

PS

I believe it would be a tripiling, like the rules for critical range (doubeling of a doubeling is a tripleing...) Still, true its not very long.

 

[Urbanmech]

The only problem with using the extend feat on the summon spells is that you get a less powerful creature for the spell slot. Now if you are just using it for utility purposes then that is probably fine. But if you end up in combat which one would you rather have a Summon IV or a Extended Summon III?

It isn't as much of an issue for a sorcerer because of the spontaneous metamagic but wizards and clerics need to be more mindful of their spell choices. The Summoning prestiege domain is pretty good if you are a cleric, but doens't do much good for wizards.

Maybe summoning should have an option in addition to summoning more monsters of a lower level. If you use a summon to summon one creature one level lower the spell lasts minutes, and if you get one creature two levels lower it would last 10 minutes per level. Any thoughts?

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

The summoning Prestiage Domain from Defenders of the Faith allows summoning spells to last 2x as long.

That's not really good enough to do interesting things outside of combat.

What you want is a metamagic feat that allows you to drastically increase the duration. I think something like +1 spell level & increase casting time to 1 hour to make the spell last 1 hour per level would work out.