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hm...interesting choices as "best" summons at the levels.
for my purposes, i am currently playing a conj3/master spec 10, who is all about summons/teleports.
with respect to making summons viable...
1: take rapid summoning. +1 spell level, standard action to cast. nuff said...when you get major esoterica @ 13th lvl, thats a rapid summon 6 for 1d3 fiendish giant crocs, with Bite +13 2d8+12, and grapple +23 or so.
more than enough to harass the baddies, even if they won't completely stop em.
2: consider Dimensional Reach and Summon Elemental Reserve Feats. Standard action teleport things to your hand or standard action summon elemental for personal protection is pretty nice, but +2 CL on summons means you're looking at +4 all together. combined with the Master Spec bonii, thats +17 temp HP, +9 CL to dispel them, on top of aug summoning.
3: if available (its in Magic of Eberron), Augment Elemental is quite nice. basically another Aug Summoning for elementals only, and if taken @ 9th or 12th lvl, just in time to pop off a Large Elemental from Summon Monster 6, at +4 to hit, +4 damage, +4 hp/hd, and +CL in temp hp.
so, with your Master Specialist (SF Conj, Aug Summon, Aug Elemental, Rapid Spell, etc)
at 11th lvl, as a full round action, can summon
Large Elemental (Earth)
8d8+76 (120 hp)
Init -1
Spd 20
AC 18, Touch 8, Flat Footed 18
BAB/Grapple +6/+21
Atks: 2 Slams +16 (2d8+11)
Space 10/ Reach 10
Earth Mastery, Push
Dr 5/-, earth glide, darkvision 60, elem traits
Fort +12, Ref +1, Will +2
Str 27, Dex 8, Con 21, Int 6, Wis 11, Cha 11
Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave.
not necessarily the best beater in the bunch, but he can soak up a LOT of damage, gets bonuses to moving people around the battlefield, and is subject to lovely buffs like Bless, Inspire Courage, Haste, Magic Fang, or the like.
of course, that assumes the party works together.
long story short, the summon is not there for the knockout punch (summoned creature vs. Khala? yeah, not so much), but to soak up actions and damage from the enemies that would otherwise be going against the party.
That's not to mention the Wall, Fog, Orb, and Teleportation spells your conjurer would have at hand.
Or fabricate and lots of craft skills.
also: against Emraag
-the hamster
(oh, if your summoner-master-specialist is not up for the "battlefield control/tactical mastery/party support" role of the wizard, he may be disappointed, but otherwise, he's golden.)
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(Paz, look away now please!)
I’m just wondering how useful summons have been in STAP. From HTBM, one player is planning on creating a conjurer (wizard)/master specialist who specializes in summons, using the conjurer variants from UA/D20srd.org.
Will the summoned monsters be any use in these- and later- adventures? For example:Best Summons (Summon Monster) Against Adventure BBEG
HTBM- Celestial Lion- No effect.
TOD- Celestial Brown Bear- Marginal
TLD- Celestial Dire Lion- Marginal
COBI- Avoral or Celestial Elephant- No effect, more or lessFor comparison (with Summon Nature’s Ally)
Best Summons Against Adventure BBEG
HTBM- Dire Wolverine- No effect, more or less
TOD- Dire Lion- Marginal
TLD- Dire Bear- Reasonable
COBI- Tyrannosaurus- MarginalAgainst the non-BBEGs, the summoned monsters will presumably be a little more useful, BUT although I’ve not looked at adventures 8-12 yet, I’m pretty certain that summon spells (except Gate) will become even more useless as the PCs level up.
I’m a little worried that the player will become frustrated at the ineffectiveness of his strategy; plus, the summoned monsters will slow down combat further by having other participants in the combat.
Note that I’m not asking for people’s opinions on conjurers in STAP in general (this was covered in a different thread), but on being a summoning specialist in STAP. (BTW, the conjurer’s prohibited schools will be Enchantment, Evocation & Necromancy.) Anyone have experience or opinions on this?
My first question is why does the character have 3 prohibited schools? Master Specialist doesn't require it, but it would if he was taking the Focused Specialist Variant. As for Summons in general, Arcane summons can be quite useful, but the player needs to understand how to use them effectively. For example, in CoBI, the Master Specialist Major Esoterica will let the summoner swift cast any conjuration spell he knows with a casting time of a standard action. Couple that with the Rapid Summoning Variant from UA, and he could summon 2 Huge Elementals in the same round. He needs to place them both a minimum of 10 ft back from their target (lets use Khala as our example here) so that they can charge simultaneously and get flanking besides. He should also have Imbued Summoning and can either add in Rage or Haste to the summoned critters as part of the summoning without increasing the spells level through use of metamagic school focus. Lets assume he summons 2 Water Elementals because of all the water in Khala's Chamber. The elementals on their charge attacks will have an attack bonus of +27 (+17 base, +2 Augment Summoning, +2 Flanking, +2 Charge, +2 Augment Elemental, +1 Water Mastery, +1 Haste). They will do 2d10+12 (+7 for str, +2 Augment Summoning, +2 Augment Elemental, +1 Water Mastery). If he can set it up with Earth Elementals, the they will have an attack bonus of +29 and do 2d10+14 damage. If they power attack down such that they will hit on a 10 or better (half the time) they can do 2d10+16 and 2d10+20 respectively on their hits. Alternatively, he could summon 2 Celestial Elephants using the same charge and swift cast dual summon trick and if smart will also have Metamagic School Focus Conjuration and Imbue Summoning so that he can get Haste onto them as well, and then have them use their smite ability on the partial charge and get two attacks at +23 (+16 base atk, +2 Augment Summoning, +2 charging, +2 Flanking, +1 Imbued Haste). They will do 2d8+29 damage each when smite is added in to their gore attack and Augment Summoning benefits. If the water is deep enough in Khala's Chamber, (I don't remember if it is), he could summon 2 Bhaleen Whales and using the smite effect like with the elephants will yield 2 attacks at +24 (base +17, +2 Augment Summoning, +2 flanking, +2 charging, +1 haste) with damage of 1d8+33 damage each with the benefit of their smite ability.
Another valid tactic is to use a swarm tactic where you have one hitter, and the rest use aid another to boost that ones hitting power. Using the Water elemental example from above, use the first summoning to summon the Huge Elemental in a position to charge. Then use the second to summon 1d4+1 Medium Elementals and have them surround Khala but not in the line of the charge from the huge one, and have all of them aid another to help boost the chargers attack bonus. So if you roll averagely, you will summon 3 mediums with this tactic on the second summon. They need to hit an AC of 10 to aid another, which they will succeed on with any roll other than a 1 (base attack +6, +2 for Augment Summoning, +1 Water Mastery). That adds another +6 (1 for each elemental)and could be as high as +10 if you manage to get 5 elementals with the second summoning. So the charging elementals attack bonus, which brings that one up to +31 (+17 base, +2 Augment Summoning, +2 Flanking, +2 Charging, +1 Water Mastery, +1 Haste, +6 aid another benefit) with damage output of 2d10+12, drop your bonus down to 23 for a hit rate of 50/50 and that goes up to 2d10+20. Using the same tactic with the Earth Elemental, your attack bonus would be +33, with damage of 2d10+14. If you power attacked down to 23 for 50/50 hit odds, then you would do 2d10+24 damage on a hit.
After the charge rounds, the hasted summons will get between 2 and 3 attacks a round. On the 2nd round you can summon in even more monsters to continue to aid another. With the elementals and Khala being large, you can have as many as 11 medium elementals on the aid another attempts which optimally can bring the Huge elementals attack up to as high as +49 on 3 slam attacks a round for the Huge Earth elemental (+19 base, +2 Augment Summoning, +2 Augment Elemental, +2 Flanking, +1 Haste, +1 Earth Mastery, +22 aid another from medium elementals surrounding Khala), If you power attack down to +33 You would get a total damage of 2d10+30. Since all 3 attacks will likely hit, you will have a total of 6d10+90 damage. Not too shabby at all for level 13. The summonings are just fine you just have to know how to use them. Applying the same concept to Water Elementals, the Huge Water elemental beater will do base attack +47 (+17 base, +2 Augment Summoning, +2 Augment Elemental, +2 flanking, +1 Haste, +1 Water Mastery, +22 Aid another from medium elementals surrounding Khala), and if power attacking as the earth elemental down to an attack bonus of 31, will do 2d10+28 per hit, and 6d10+84 damage with haste and 3 successful slam attacks.
On a side note, if you use the major esoterica along with Twin Spell, Metamagic school focus, and Orb of Cold you can get off 52d6 points of damage on a creature in a single round at 13th level (each orb does 13d6, twinned for 26d6, and 2 castings in the same round with the major esoterica). If he has also taken Sudden Empower, he can bump that up to 65d6 by empowering one of the castings. That only requires a ranged touch attack twice, and doesn't allow a saving throw. On average that is 182 pts of damage, or if you can sudden empower one an average of 227 pts of damage. Again this is all at 13th level. Conjurers are amongst the most devastating specialists there are.
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One additional thought I just had, is that any dedicated summoner at 13th level needs to have a Ring of Mighty Summons. It halves the duration of your summons, but at 13th level that isn't a problem. In exchange, your summoned monsters get maximum hit points per hit die. Couple that with a Greater Rod of Extending, and you get the normal duration if you want it. Expanding on my example from above, the Huge Water Elemental would have 285 hp (16d8+80 hp base, +13 from Minor Esoterica, +32 for Augment Summoning, +32 for Augment Elemental, all at maximum possible from Ring of Mighty Summons).
The medium elementals would all have 59 hp(4d8+12 base, +13 from Minor Esoterica, +8 from Augment Summoning, +8 from Augment Elemental)or as many as 73 if you used the ring again. At the highest levels in the Abyss, Summon Elemental Monolith is probably a bit better than Gate for a dedicated summoner, because it doesn't cost XP, it benefits from all the usual elemental stuff, and coupled with the swift cast and a wave of weaker elementals to aid another, you can do some truely sick damage with say an Earth Monolith.
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quick clarification w/ Brents Orb trick.
those are 15d6 orbs, due to the +2 CL bump from Master Spec.
so, 4 or 6 more d6s of damage.
Also: Rapid Summon 7/Swift Cast Rapid Summon 6 (or another 7 if you've got it) followed by elemental monolith, possibly while you have a personal range bodyguard from Summon Elemental reserve Feat means you have a Huge, a Large, and a Gargantuan Elemental in play.
thats 3 full rounds of actions for your 2 spent (not to mention the Summon Elemental bodyguard), all of which could be "smash that bad guy" including a quite outrageous grappling Earth Elemental Monolith (or Air in vortex form if you have to smash buildings in a hurry)
Plus, all of this is discounting things like "acid fog", "wall of stone", "teleport", "gemjump" and "planar binding"/"greater planar binding".
-the hamster
Our wizard isn't using the "normal" Summon Monster spells much, but used to employ the "summon undead" line. Troll skeletons, mummies, allips and shadows are still frequently in use, the former ones as speed bumps and minion shredders, the later ones as "mobile debuffs", since their touch attacks ( with no saves) can be pretty useful against even larger opposition if they get to hit once or twice - loosing Wisdom or Strength is never a good ithing, even for BBEGs...
But as there are no variants of these spells for level VI-IX, I guess they will slowly be faded out of active use. There are also some (roleplaying) objections from the spirit shaman character, who isn't all that thrilled about seeing "cursed ancestor spirits"called up
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Thanks for the clarification Hamster. To point out how powerful the Monolith can be using the same combos described already, you would have a creature that has 583 hp (36d8+255 base, +22 Minor Esoterica, +72 Augment Summoning, +72 Augment Elemental) he also has DR 15/- and a grapple modifier of +61.
In terms of attack power, if you use the combo I describe earlier, but subbing in Summon Elemental Monolith and Summon Monster IX, by the 2nd round fighting Demogorgon, optimally you will get a creature that has an attack bonus of +71 (+40 base, +2 Augment Summoning, +2 Augment Elemental, +2 flanking, +2 Earth Mastery, +1 Haste, +22 aid another benefit) on 3 slam attacks a round with a damage output of 6d8+22. If you power attack down to +51 you will get a total of 3 slam attacks at a bonus of +51 with damage of 6d8+42. In one round, the monolith will deal 18d8+126 damage. On average that will be 207 points of damage a round.
Even that though doesn't compare to the supercharged version of the orb of cold trick. Using Twin Spell, Empower Spell, Metamagic School Focus, and Orb of Cold, you can deal a total of 90d6 damage (15d6 twinned for 30d6, then empowered to 45d6 then doubled for the Major School Esoterica effect). On average this will deal 315 pts of damage, or if you use a greater maximization rod with this combo, over 500 pts of damage in one round.
