|
On a previous thread, I asked for advice in making a "master-summoner-like" character. Basically a character that relies heavily on the creatures he/she summon to fight for her. (While able to use them for limited scouting...etc.)
After some looking around , this is what I came up with:
Race: Aasimar - Peri-Blooded +2 Int, +2 Cha
Alternate Racial Trait - Heavenborn OR Truespeaker
Class/es: 8 Wizard (Conjuration - Teleportation School.), 4 Magaambyan Arcanist
Ability scores: STR: 10 DEX: 12 CON: 14 INT: 19 WIS: 12 CHA: 10
Faction: Silver Crusade
Traits: Force of Good - Good - Aligned spells +1 caster level
Acadamae Graduate - Able to reduce casting time of summon spells, via a Fort check.
Feats leveling break down:
Lvl 1) Augment Summoning
Wiz 1) Spell Focus (Conjuration) - PFS
Wiz 2)
Lvl 3) Superior Summoning
Wiz 4)
Lvl 5) Scholar
Wiz 5) Spell Mastery
MA 1) Selects Summons Nature’s Ally from Druid’s spells list.
Lvl 7) Combat Casting / Starlight, Moonlight, Sunlight Summons.
Lv 9) Improve Initiative / Starlight, Moonlight, Sunlight Summons.
Lv 11) Starlight, Moonlight, Sunlight Summons.
The ideal is to focus on summoning good animals and extend their staying time via feats and traits that boost summoning times and making summoned monsters viable as combatants.
Magaambyan Arcanist is selected to obtain Summon Nature’s Ally without losing caster levels.
Any advice on this build is welcomed.
I like it so far. Very similar to my build in PFS currently, except I took toughness instead of spell focus at 1st level - so I'm a feat behind in that track.
I could be wrong but Acadamae Graduate seems to be a feat not a trait.
I would skip augment summoning at 1st level and grab Acadamae Graduate (Its a feat).
Acadamae graduate can only be grabbed at 1st level and it is 100% worth it. Being able to summon as a standard action for the low cost of being fatigued is awesome. Now you can summon monsters on the surprise round or summon and then move.
Take augment summoning at 3rd level. This is when you will probably start summoning creatures anyway. They just don't have enough rounds in them at early levels to be worth it.
Problem as I see it - How are you going to summon "GOOD" animals? All the animals are neutral in alignment and the celestial template does not change that. In reality you would have access to only 4 summons with the good alignment (lantern archon, hound archon, bralani azata,and lillend azata). This means that all of your +1 cl to good spells are not going to be very effective in regards to summoning.
No....you have a good shtick with the good spell CL bumps. Stick with it. Keep aasimar and take heavenborn and Force of good. This will give you a 2 cl bump to most of your summons (thanks Shin!). I would still take Acadamae Graduate at 1, push Augment Summoning to 3 and then replace one of the SNA feats with superior summoning (you don't need all 3). Your summons won't be too powerful at lvls 1 and 2 but they will be suitable (riding dog or eagle all the time). They will last 3-4 rounds, making them a good choice even at low lvl (most combats only last 2-4 rounds).
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
|
On a previous thread, I asked for advice in making a "master-summoner-like" character. Basically a character that relies heavily on the creatures he/she summon to fight for her. (While able to use them for limited scouting...etc.)
After some looking around , this is what I came up with:
Race: Aasimar - Peri-Blooded +2 Int, +2 Cha
Alternate Racial Trait - Heavenborn OR Truespeaker
Class/es: 8 Wizard (Conjuration - Teleportation School.), 4 Magaambyan Arcanist
Ability scores: STR: 10 DEX: 12 CON: 14 INT: 19 WIS: 12 CHA: 10
Faction: Silver Crusade
Traits: Force of Good - Good - Aligned spells +1 caster level
Acadamae Graduate - Able to reduce casting time of summon spells, via a Fort check.Feats leveling break down:
Lvl 1) Augment Summoning
Wiz 1) Spell Focus (Conjuration) - PFS
Wiz 2)
Lvl 3) Superior Summoning
Wiz 4)
Lvl 5) Scholar
Wiz 5) Spell Mastery
MA 1) Selects Summons Nature’s Ally from Druid’s spells list.
Lvl 7) Combat Casting / Starlight, Moonlight, Sunlight Summons.
Lv 9) Improve Initiative / Starlight, Moonlight, Sunlight Summons.
Lv 11) Starlight, Moonlight, Sunlight Summons.The ideal is to focus on summoning good animals and extend their staying time via feats and traits that boost summoning times and making summoned monsters viable as combatants.
Magaambyan Arcanist is selected to obtain Summon Nature’s Ally without losing caster levels.
Any advice on this build is welcomed.
I'm not really understanding why you're trying to obtain the Summon Nature's Ally spells... you have to choose druid spells that are two levels lower than your highest level spell, so you're not likely going to be using those nearly as often as your highest-level Summon Monster spells. I wouldn't waste your chosen druid spell on Summon Nature's Ally at every level, I would pick some of the excellent buffs that druids get instead. However, the Maagambyan Arcanist levels are still super important because you get another +1 caster level boost to [good] spells at 2nd level.
|
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
|
No....you have a good shtick with the good spell CL bumps. Stick with it. Keep aasimar and take heavenborn and Force of good. This will give you a 2 cl bump to most of your summons (thanks Shin!). I would still take Acadamae Graduate at 1, push Augment Summoning to 3 and then replace one of the SNA feats with superior summoning (you don't need all 3). Your summons won't be too powerful at lvls 1 and 2 but they will be suitable (riding dog or eagle all the time). They will last 3-4 rounds, making them a good choice even at low lvl (most combats only last 2-4 rounds).
Also, Riding Dog isn't an option anymore, it's now "dog". Source is listed on the Summon Monster I table.
Also, Riding Dog isn't an option anymore, it's now "dog". Source is listed on the Summon Monster I table.
Hmm...usually I take the actual PRD over d20pfsrd but it seems that the PRD is actually wrong in this case.
|
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
|
Also, Riding Dog isn't an option anymore, it's now "dog". Source is listed on the Summon Monster I table.Hmm...usually I take the actual PRD over d20pfsrd but it seems that the PRD is actually wrong in this case.
Correct. They have not yet updated the PRD to reflect the newest version of the book.
Consequently, I really wish I could understand where our site has gotten this rep of not being correct or something... why do you take the PRD over the d20SRD, out of curiosity?
Because not everything on the d20pfsrd is from the books. Some of the material is from 3.5 because that particular rule is a black hole in pathfinder and some of the rules are paraphrased instead of direct quotes.
Don't get me wrong, I use d20pfsrd a lot, but when I want to quote something in the rules or give another advice I always double check it in the PRD.
|
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
|
Because not everything on the d20pfsrd is from the books. Some of the material is from 3.5 because that particular rule is a black hole in pathfinder and some of the rules are paraphrased instead of direct quotes.
Don't get me wrong, I use d20pfsrd a lot, but when I want to quote something in the rules or give another advice I always double check it in the PRD.
Okey doke. I've been a little over-sensitive about it since I saw someone post on one of these threads a few months ago something to the effect of "Don't use the d20pfsrd, they make un-sanctioned changes to the rules all the time just because they don't like a rule" and I was like "WHAA??"
:-D
|
In this thread, I think it would be important to note the 3rd party aspect of d20pfsrd.com, because I have seen several people in PFS games I have played in use material that was not legal, most notably the equipment. It just requires some diligence on the player's part to look at the entire page and look at the source area and cross reference it with the resources allowed list from PFS. It would be totally wrong to characterize the pagas bad for PFS, when it was just a lack of attention to detail.
On to the on the topic of a PFS creature summoner type, That prestige class would be good with using the Summon nature's Ally 2 to summon several Stirges. The Con drain can be brutal.
Also, Before you session begins, I would suggest you statblock every type of creature you would summon. Get a few for every situation (Further Target, Air targets, water targets, high melee damage, High AC, etc). This is what I did for Wildshapes and summons with my PFS druid and it works out great and saves a lot of time. Also, be wary of clogging up the battlefield with creatures and preventing PC mobility. I have had to have my characters takes down summons o other PCs just to prevent tactical disadvantage.
|
|
I'm not really understanding why you're trying to obtain the Summon Nature's Ally spells... you have to choose druid spells that are two levels lower than your highest level spell, so you're not likely going to be using those nearly as often as your highest-level Summon Monster spells. I wouldn't waste your chosen druid spell on Summon Nature's Ally at every level, I would pick some of the excellent buffs that druids get instead. However, the Maagambyan Arcanist levels are still super important because you get another +1 caster level boost to [good] spells at...
I'm not using SNA at all! I just need 1 SNA spell on my spell list to qualify for the Starlight, Sunlight and MoonLight feats.
These feats affect ALL Summon spells.After picking SNA for the first level of Magaambyan Arcanist, I'm picking the other Druids buff and support spells.
-------
As for what creatures can be summoned, I always use the latest pdf of the source material. In this case the Core Rule Book.
I'm a bit confused about the feats by level - I understand (Wiz 5), but what are (Wiz 1), (Wiz 2), and (Wiz 4)?
|
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
|
I'm not really understanding why you're trying to obtain the Summon Nature's Ally spells... you have to choose druid spells that are two levels lower than your highest level spell, so you're not likely going to be using those nearly as often as your highest-level Summon Monster spells. I wouldn't waste your chosen druid spell on Summon Nature's Ally at every level, I would pick some of the excellent buffs that druids get instead. However, the Maagambyan Arcanist levels are still super important because you get another +1 caster level boost to [good] spells at...I'm not using SNA at all! I just need 1 SNA spell on my spell list to qualify for the Starlight, Sunlight and MoonLight feats.
These feats affect ALL Summon spells.After picking SNA for the first level of Magaambyan Arcanist, I'm picking the other Druids buff and support spells.
-------
As for what creatures can be summoned, I always use the latest pdf of the source material. In this case the Core Rule Book.
Ah, that makes more sense to me! I don't find the Moonlight and Starlight summons feats that exciting, but I suppose overcoming DR is a big deal at higher levels, so it's probably worth your time.
EDIT: You also might consider taking the race trait that makes you treated as a human (Scion of Humanity) and then picking up Racial Heritage (orc) because then you qualify for the Ferocious Summons feat, which will keep your summoned creatures from disappearing (since they have to be reduced to negative Con to be de-summoned)
I'm a bit confused about the feats by level - I understand (Wiz 5), but what are (Wiz 1), (Wiz 2), and (Wiz 4)?I think Secane was just trying to indicate that those would be Wizard levels, not that he/she would get to choose feats at those levels.
Ah got it. I also forgot PFS replaces Scribe Scroll, explaining the extra level 1 feat.
|
|
I'm not really understanding why you're trying to obtain the Summon Nature's Ally spells... you have to choose druid spells that are two levels lower than your highest level spell, so you're not likely going to be using those nearly as often as your highest-level Summon Monster spells. I wouldn't waste your chosen druid spell on Summon Nature's Ally at every level, I would pick some of the excellent buffs that druids get instead. However, the Maagambyan Arcanist levels are still super important because you get another +1 caster level boost to [good] spells at...I'm not using SNA at all! I just need 1 SNA spell on my spell list to qualify for the Starlight, Sunlight and MoonLight feats.
These feats affect ALL Summon spells.After picking SNA for the first level of Magaambyan Arcanist, I'm picking the other Druids buff and support spells.
-------
As for what creatures can be summoned, I always use the latest pdf of the source material. In this case the Core Rule Book.
Ah, that makes more sense to me! I don't find the Moonlight and Starlight summons feats that exciting, but I suppose overcoming DR is a big deal at higher levels, so it's probably worth your time.
EDIT: You also might consider taking the race trait that makes you treated as a human (Scion of Humanity) and then picking up Racial Heritage (orc) because then you qualify for the Ferocious Summons feat, which will keep your summoned creatures from disappearing (since they have to be reduced to negative Con to be de-summoned)
That is a nice feat. I'm just concern that since it requires 2 feats to get it, I will only get it at levels 7+. Is Ferocious Summons really worth it?
Is it better then the Sunlight feat or Combat Casting?
I've honestly never seen a PC summon get reduced to neg HP. Maybe that's just because my GM generally assumes our opponents are clever enough not to waste their attacks on summons. Still, two feats and a trait seems like WAY too much of a price for having some of your summons possibly sticking around for one more turn (and being staggered at that.)
edit: also, Sunlight Summons almost definitely isn't worth it - if you need to overcome magic DR, cast Magic Fang on the summon. I would also take Improved Initiative before any of the [X]light Summons feats, because they're so situational whereas Improved Init is always great.
