Post/Author/DateTime	Post
RadiantSoul 02-22-04, 11:10 AM	Hi folks The campaign i'm joining starts next week. I'm playing the main arcane caster (there's a half dragon/sorceror) who can blast. I decided to play a Conjurer with Evocation as my banned school. My focus is battlefield control and enhancing the party. We've got a ton of heavy hitters in the group so I'm not too worried about that part of things. At least 2 if not 3 folks with sneak attack, so flanking is important. Here's where things are stacking up. We use some 3.5 additions/rules, but at a base level its a 3.0 game. Conjurer 8 with 1 mindbender. Using the variants for Conjurer from UA (faster summons, tougher summons) so I definately want to hit lv 10 wizard before prestiging further (lv 10 will give summons another +2 str/con). Right now my feats include Augmented summoning (+4 str/con) and rashemi elemental summoning (orglash or thomil template to air or earth creatures). what I could use for assistance is 1- what are good summons besides the "basics" out of the phb. The DM will use dragon and any WOTC book, D20 stuff probably (depends if its decent or out of whack) 2- what are other good battlefield control spells? The main spells I'm planning to use include Baleful Transposition, Charm person/monster, summons of all levels, hold, polymorph other, illusions 3- what are good spells to boost the party. I'm using 3.5 haste. Thanks a ton! RS
Ipsissimus 02-22-04, 07:27 PM	I don't have the book in front of me so some of my summon monsters may be a level or two off but: I played a purely summoner type of caster, perhaps my true motivation was only to annoy my friend and long time player with a whole Yugioh theme of chacater. Ironically he was very effective. Though accurate examples might not be presented, the ideas are. Since we had decent tanks/hitters I chose summons based on primary and secondary abilities. Some of the most common summons were, lesser summons so I could benefit from 1d4+1 or 1d3 of them. Since you choose where they are summoned within ranged, 9 out of 10 times they would complete surround the enemy, causing flanking and using wolfpack tactics. Fiendish wolves, dire wolves were very common since they could make trip attacks and usually could take a hit or two. I really enjoyed summoning the Magmin, he had virtually no hitpoints but with a high Damage Reduction and a fiery aura that did damage, he was very much like a mobile inferno. Once the Forgotten Realms books were open to the game, ALL the summon undead spells became the dominant summoning for my "summoner." Huge skeletons and large zombies began to dominate the battlefield combined with negative energy bursts and waves that healed them and hurt the bad guys. We hardly ran into cleric that could actually turn undead so it was never an issue. My personal favorite was the Lantern Archon, DR/, spell like abilities and light rays which were touch attacks, it was like free damage every round. Plus, it could fly at perfect. A big issue with mid to low level summons were, either no hitpoints or they hardly ever hit their intended targets. With your feats and group buffs that shouldn't be a problem. Don't always think spells to boost the party are the best, I always prefer our wizard cast Slow on the enemies rather than Haste on us. Darkness is a great tool, especially with summons that either have blindsense or are unaffected by it. Dire bats are a good choice, I don't recall if undead are affected by magical darkness. Charm person/monster isn't a really good spell during combat, if you can get in before you become aggressive the save is much harder to resist. I like illusion spells alot, making an illusion of a large sinkhole between you and the bad guys can save you a few rounds, a create caster and a creative DM can make illusions very very believable. Infact you can make illusions of your summons to create confusion. Evard's Black Tentacles and a swarm of small summons was my most effective 2 spell combo before we ended that campaign. Not sure if 3.5 tentacles do not target small creatures but it works well. hope this helps, i'm sure there is a thread about summoners somewhere.
RadiantSoul 02-22-04, 11:35 PM	I talked to the DM about charms and he was cool with me being able to (at the very least) get monsters to run away or ignore the battle. That's good enough for crowd control which is mainly what i'm going for. Good point on Slow, i'll buy a scroll of that and add it to my list. Given my copious amounts of spells (high int, specialist) about how many spells would you dedicate to summons and how many to control and utility? Note that I don't have scribe scroll. I was looking thru PrC's today and I think Arcane Devotee will be my PrC of choice and then finally take archmage. Devotee requires enlarge (which I'd take at 12) but gives back a feat (Spell Focus:Necromancy) and gives some nice little perks and free enlarges each day. Then at 15 I can take skill focus:spellcraft and qualify for archmage (spellpower, spellpower, spellpower, arcane fire and mastery of counterspelling). Arcane Fire would give some definately useful SR piercing power (which I lack) and the spellpowers would help DC for my disintegrates/finger of death. RS
Vorpal Warhammer 02-23-04, 08:32 AM	Why are you so concerned with penetrating SR if you want to specialize in summoning? Many of the damaging spells in the Conjuration school don't allow Spell Resistance, so as long as you're summoning an army and casting spells like Melf's Acid Arrow, you should be fine.
RadiantSoul 02-23-04, 11:28 AM	Vorpal the penetrating SR is more for the battlefield control spells... Translocation trick, baleful transposition, slow, enervation, chained blindness, etc. Besides, I guess I can't see what else would be worth taking in archmage. I mean, I don't have the feats to do counterspelling *AND* have good summons, I don't blast (elements/shaping), and I'm sure as heck not taking innate spells. At that point, may as well take spell power, eh :) I'll probably only take 4 levels of archmage anyway, with the 5th coming in epic (or changing to a new epic PrC) RS