Sacred Summons and a Neutral Good deity

[lair-master]

One of my players has taken the Sacred Summons feat. Is there a table somewhere that explains which monsters can be summoned according to aura? Because I've looked closely at the feat and still don't really get it. If no such table exists, can someone please just tell me which monsters a cleric with a NG aura can summon? What about LG? CG?

[darkwarriorkarg]

You have to look up each outsider that gets summoned.

They need to be outsiders with the [Good] subtype (Ex: Movanic Deva:
NG Medium outsider (angel, extraplanar, good)). They may not have the Lawful or Chaotic subtype (So no hound archons or lantern archons).

The feat is useful for certain specific builds. Otherwise, it's a wasted feat.

Currently playing a NG cleric in a game. I looked at the feat and saw that it was mainly useless for me.

[Sissyl]

Generally, all the outsiders have an alignment subtype, while nothing else on the tables does.

Alignment and summoning is complicated. First, your aura corresponds to your deity's alignment, and your cleric is within one step of that. So, NG deity means NG, CG and LG clerics, all with NG auras. So far so good.

Next, summoning spells get the alignment descriptors of the summoned creatures. This means clerics can't summon creatures with any sort of opposed alignment. I.e. A LG cleric can't summon CG creatures.

Finally, neutral creatures are fewer in number than others. Before the Champions of Balance book, there were no CN or LN creatures at all. Thus, you needed to choose. If you took LG or CG for your cleric summoner, you lost the other list, and the LN and CN lists you gained held no creatures. If you took NG, you could summon all the good creatures, but due to a relative lack of NG creatures, your Sacred summons feat covered very little ground for you. Which wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't the only reliable way of summoning faster than a 1 round casting time. That delay really is a problem, so you need to choose carefully. It isn't even a full round action, but 1 round, as in start round 1, finsh casting round 2, leaving you open to disrupted spellcasting etc.

Much of this got much better with the two Champions of... Books.

[downlobot]

Just to clear one thing up- while your alignment must be within one step of your deity's, your Aura matches your deity's alignment regardless of your alignment.

Also the summon good monster feat makes sacred summons as a cleric with an NG deity/aura awesome imho. Edit: it also makes it useful from Lvl 1.

[wraithstrike]

The monster's " alignment subtype or subtypes" must exactly match your aura, so if you are NG then you can only summon monster that match up to your deity. For NG deities that means monsters with only "good" as the subtype such as the astral deva unless the GM allows for monsters from the alternate summoning list. That is why this feat is not worth for most characters.

[wraithstrike]

None of the creatures than you can summon from level 1 benefit because while they have your alignment per the summon monster rules, they do not have an alignment subtype. That is different from the spell having your type just because you cast the spell.
As an example if you are good then that spell has the good descriptor because you cast it. However, it does not apply a subtype to the summoned monster.

[Magda Luckbender]

Sacred Summons is mostly useless (entirely useless without special advanced books) for a Cleric of a NG deity. It does not work well at all. It works well for clerics of a deity who is LG, CG, CE, or LE. If your cleric's deity has a Neutral alignment component then Sacred Summons is not for you.

The Reach Cleric Guide has a chart of Sacred Summons monsters, as well as some suggestions for homebrew changes that makes the feat decent for deities with a neutral alignment component.