Need help making a Support / Summoning Cleric


Advice

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First off: At lvl 12, your BAB as a cleric is too low to be a serious factor in melee, unless you focus your build severely on it. You can't expect buffs to solve this for you, because most of the time, you simply won't have time to act and buff. Buffing slows you down. Certainly, you can deal a few points of damage in a fight, but it isn't going to impress. Do yourself a favour and don't judge melee effectiveness by what the stats look like when fully buffed. Two spells cast to buff you means two rounds before you get cracking. That 111 hp/round with good to hit doesn't mean much if you spent three of the combat's four rounds getting to there. By contrast, A summon monster V with full feats and such behind it, including sacred summons, gets to do its thing starting round 1. Round 2, the hound archons get pals. The damage output is in an entirely different order of magnitude.

Second: Summoning creatures is a very peculiar strategy. At lvl 12, you will be able to drown the battlefield in creatures, even decently powerful ones. Sacred summons does this: When summoning creatures with the same alignment subtypes as your deity's alignment, you do so as a standard action. If not using mythic rules, you NEED this. Further alignment considerations then: You can't summon any creature that isopposed to either your or your deity's alignment. Ergo, pick the SAME alignment as your deity. The feats summon good monster and summon neutral monster are similarly important to expand your creature list. When I made my summoning cleric, I found NG to be brilliant. You get both the CG and LG summons, plus you can summon NGs as standard actions. As it stands, I would suggest NG, LN or CN, and avoid the LG and CG, since you are in essence going to need both summon good and summon neutral monster to maximize that setup. Just to clarify: Celestial animals do not get alignment subtypes.

Third: MANY of the creatures you can summon have various spell-like abilities, and give you a rather magnificent flexibility for this alone.

Summing up: Both meleeing and summoning will require a heavy investment in feats. Pick one. Improving your movement speed, however, is still doable. The travel domain works wonders. Invisibility isn't broken by summoning, and sanctuary can further improve your chances.


You only get the reduced cast time when summoning things which have an alignment subtype that matches your deities, not that just have an alignment which does. That pretty much limits you to things like archons, angels, devils or demons. The summon good monster feat is decent but it adds only a small number of options for standard action summons as most of the creatures do not have an alignment subtype.


Take a look at the lists. SGM adds 2-3 Sacred Summons options per alignment to the 2-3 from the original lists. SNM gives CN and LN casters Sacred Summons options that did not exist before. No creatures with those alignment subtypes were on the CRB lists.


I'll second going with the second set of stats. If you can get your summons out they should be able to take care of the damage dealing task. Lantern archons and bralani azata are both OK as standard action summons. Getting out dire tigers and such could be helpful though. A ring of invisibility might help.

Remember that you can start a full round spell on one turn and complete it on another. This can be very useful for ducking around a corner and then summoning something nasty. One tiny advantage of the slow summons is that you generally get a chance to buff them as they appear.

Another thing you could consider is having a few amulets of mighty fists to put on summoned monsters or magic weapons to hand to them. The right bane amulet can make a summoned monster much more effective.


Sissyl wrote:


Second: Summoning creatures is a very peculiar strategy. At lvl 12, you will be able to drown the battlefield in creatures, even decently powerful ones. Sacred summons does this: When summoning creatures with the same alignment subtypes as your deity's alignment, you do so as a standard action. If not using mythic rules, you NEED this. Further alignment considerations then: You can't summon any creature that isopposed to either your or your deity's alignment. Ergo, pick the SAME alignment as your deity. The feats summon good monster and summon neutral monster are similarly important to expand your creature list. When I made my summoning cleric, I found NG to be brilliant. You get both the CG and LG summons, plus you can summon NGs as standard actions. As it stands, I would suggest NG, LN or CN, and avoid the LG and CG, since you are in essence going to need both summon good and summon neutral monster to maximize that setup. Just to clarify: Celestial animals do not get alignment subtypes.

Wait, so as Neutral Good with Summon Good Monster, I'd be able to summon which as a Standard Action? The Agathion monsters? And then I'd have access still to the Azata and the Archons as a Full Round Action?

Or if I chose Summon Neutral Monster and were CN, I could summon the Proteans as a Standard action, but also the Psychopomp and Inevitables as a Full Round action?

I was looking at Lawful Good for the Archons but I cannot possibly roleplay that alignment. So there's no way for me to summon the Archons as a Standard Action without being LG.

I think I'm finally getting it.

EDIT: And I could also summon the Astral Deva as a Standard Action if I were NG, right? Should mention I have no deity, but an ideal (Valor) that I think is pretty much as NG as you can get.


There are two different important checks for what you can summon:

First:

Summon monster I wrote:
"When you use a summoning spell to summon a creature with an alignment or elemental subtype, it is a spell of that type."

and

Cleric wrote:
"A cleric can't cast spells of an alignment opposed to her own or her deity's (if she has one). Spells associated with particular alignments are indicated by the chaotic, evil, good, and lawful descriptors in their spell descriptions."

Hence, you are not going to be able to cast any spell that is opposed to any part of your own alignment, OR, if you don't have your deity's alignment, any spell that opposes you deity's alignment. So, if you are a LG cleric of a NG deity, you will not be able to cast chaotic or evil spells. The opposite situation has the same results.

Second,

Sacred Summons wrote:

When using summon monster to summon creatures whose alignment subtype or subtypes exactly match your aura, you may cast the spell as a standard action instead of with a casting time of 1 round.

Editor's Note
This feat works off of the alignment subtype of a summoned creature, not the alignment of the creature. Effectively, this means that this feat will only work with creatures in the summon monster list whose subtypes (listed in the table itself) match your deity's alignment. Creatures marked with * cannot be summoned as a standard action with this feat, as they do not have the requisite alignment subtype(s).

and

Cleric wrote:
A cleric of a chaotic, evil, good, or lawful deity has a particularly powerful aura corresponding to the deity's alignment.

Hence, for which creatures you can summon as a std action, it's only those with the alignment subtypes that perfectly match your deity's alignment. Said LG cleric of a NG deity would have a NG aura, and would be able to summon agathions as a std action. He would also be able to summon LG creatures and LN creatures, but not as a std action. As I read it, a cleric of a N deity has no aura, and thus doesn't apply for sacred summons.

Next, a few words about the creature selections. The summoned creature lists are VERY restrictive. Each specific alignment has 0-3 or so creatures over nine levels with the proper alignment subtypes. All the other creatures must be summoned with 1 round casting time. Worth noting is also that the original spell lists, IIRC, have only LG, CG, LE and CE creatures with alignment subtypes.

Thus, the Summon Good/Neutral/(Evil) Monster feats are VERY important, and expand your options signficantly. Without SNM, a cleric of a LN deity has NO Sacred Summons options. Without SGM, a cleric of a NG deity has NO Sacred Summons options.

Without looking closely at it, I would say that as a CN cleric of a CN deity with Summon Neutral Monster, you get CN monsters as std action, CG, CE, NG, NE and N monsters as 1 round summons (nota bene, not full-round).


Okay, cool. I'm going to go NG with Summon Good Monster and Sacred Summons then. The Agathions seem way more useful than the Azatas for my Evangelist, thankfully.

The Neutral Monsters are interesting but I think Neutral Good is the best alignment for me.

Silver Crusade

Sissyl wrote:
At lvl 12, your BAB as a cleric is too low to be a serious factor in melee, unless you focus your build severely on it. You can't expect buffs to solve this for you, because most of the time, you simply won't have time to act and buff. Buffing slows you down. Certainly, you can deal a few points of damage in a fight, but it isn't going to impress. Do yourself a favour and don't judge melee effectiveness by what the stats look like when fully buffed. Two spells cast to buff you means two rounds before you get cracking. That 111 hp/round with good to hit doesn't mean much if you spent three of the combat's four rounds getting to there. By contrast ...

Never waste an in-combat standard action on self-buffing.

Whisperknives wrote:
Whisper's Rule of Buffing: If combat has already started no buff is worth giving up a full round of attacks for.

The first numbers I gave were for a caught-off-guard situation e.g. STR 18 attacks at about +17 for about +26 damage with two swift-action buffs (inspire courage 1st round, grayflame channel 2nd round), or a swift and a move. That's inferior to most dedicated martial combatants of 12th level, but not by much. Later I pointed out it how to buff those numbers into the 20s and 30s. That's only viable if you can pre-buff or if there's a lull in the combat. Your Standard Action is reserved for casting a spell. Your martial attacks are freebies whenever you get an AoO. Your buffs are mostly a Swift Action.

In the unusual event you full attack (perhaps to conserve resources when a fight is winding down) you'll attack for about 90 damage without time to self-buff, or about 111 damage if you are able to buff. This is probably more martial damage output than even SM6 Augmented Superior Sacred Summons with Inspire Courage. That's worth noting. Some effect like Haste, fervor, or boots of speed is presumed. Despite your basic martial competence, leave it to a dedicated martial to face the toughest enemies front and center.


And, you do not summon once, necessarily. Another summon spell, even though the critters are comparatively weak, is usually enough to drown the battlefield, absorb a fair amount of blows, and deal more damage.

Silver Crusade

Sissyl wrote:
And, you do not summon once, necessarily. Another summon spell, even though the critters are comparatively weak, is usually enough to drown the battlefield, absorb a fair amount of blows, and deal more damage.

Well said!

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