Master Summoner Question

[Brother Mortimer]

In PFS I am occasionally playing with a summoner, who I presume is the master summoner arch-type, who swarms the enemy with packs of dogs. He summons multiple dogs in the same summoning, appearing and attacking at once. I believe as many as five. At one point he had nine on the board at once. He is currently third level. I can't figure out how he does this.

I will inevitably be his GM at some point. I want to hold him to the rules, but I don't want to be obnoxious about it. But I am concerned that his dog pack will overwhelm many encounters in many scenarios.

So I am looking for any rules I should be sure to enforce, and any tactical advice suitable for PFS scenarios or modules.

Thanks!

[El Baron de los Banditos]

A 3rd-level Master Summoner has Summon Monster II for his SLA (which is, in fact, a Standard action and works like you described.) If he has the Superior Summons feat (as every MS should,) he can summon 1d3+1 Augmented Riding Dogs per summoning. In order to have more than one instance of summoning, however, he must not have his Eidoleon summoned. Unsummoning an Eidoleon is a Standard Action, so that can slow the process of summoning one's personal army. Finally, note that at 5th, he will be summoning 1d4+2 riding dogs per use. In any nova-friendly setting, the Master Summoner will be amazing, but he'll more than likely have about 9 Summon Monster SLAs.

[cartmanbeck]

Brother Mortimer wrote:

In PFS I am occasionally playing with a summoner, who I presume is the master summoner arch-type, who swarms the enemy with packs of dogs. He summons multiple dogs in the same summoning, appearing and attacking at once. I believe as many as five. At one point he had nine on the board at once. He is currently third level. I can't figure out how he does this.

I will inevitably be his GM at some point. I want to hold him to the rules, but I don't want to be obnoxious about it. But I am concerned that his dog pack will overwhelm many encounters in many scenarios.

So I am looking for any rules I should be sure to enforce, and any tactical advice suitable for PFS scenarios or modules.

Thanks!

He's being legit, there are Master Summoner builds who can have up to 45 riding dogs summoned at a time. It's.... insane.

One of the best things to do is to have a really beefy main guy with great cleave to cut the dogs to pieces, and possibly a hidden or invisible spellcaster casting maximized fireballs on the dog pack. That will take them down quickly. You obviously don't want to seem like you're picking exclusively on the dogs, but it's important to play NPCs tactically as long as they're intelligent enough to use tactics, and taking out all the weak little guys first is pretty standard tactically. You could also do something that hurts the summoner himself, such as slow spells, spells that can put him to sleep or paralyze him for a few rounds, etc.

[Stikye]

hmmm, when i DM'd I ruled that Summon Monster has the same limits as summon natures ally, and that made the Summon monster 1 into Dogs, since well, Riding dogs are right in the range of summon monster 3 area.

That being said, Yeah, cleave will make dog pies out of them, and AE spells will do the same.

[james maissen]

Brother Mortimer wrote:

I will inevitably be his GM at some point. I want to hold him to the rules, but I don't want to be obnoxious about it.

Most likely he's taken a feat at third level that gives him an extra creature when he summons multiple creatures.

He should be getting 1d3+1 riding dogs per use if that's the case, 1d3 if not.

The easy solution for things like this is to simply ask the player about his character. Most players are far from reticent about doing so, especially if you are nice about it and want to learn how summoners work.

Really I wouldn't worry about it. It's the summoner's main strength.. whatever the little dogs are doing that's proving effective a raging barbarian or two-handed weapon fighter would be utterly annihilating.

-James