Specifically, how strong of a choice is using Summoner Aspect to take Immunity Fire or Greater Aspect to grab Fire, Acid, Ice?
Pathfinder seems to have eliminated immunity as an item ability and I recall it being about 200k in 3.5 per type.
Flight also seems strong, but cheaper to get and much more available through race or feats.
It seems frankly awesome.
Elemental immunity is quite strong - it not only protects you from damage, it changes tactical options as well. For instance, evocation spells of that element can be dropped right on top of you without worry, and you can set up things like Wall of Fire and constantly step through while attacking enemies, forcing them to repeatedly damage themselves if they are pursuing you.
The Epic rings of elemental immunity were 240K gp.
I think the rarity is part of the appeal to me.
There seem to be two schools of thought on powerful characters:
1.) Do something so well it ends encounters quickly.
2.) Raise your resistances and immunities so high that surprises don't kill you instantly.
The campaign I'm in has lots of awful, largely unavoidable surprises.
Lightning spells are pretty inefficient for non-custom NPC's at high level, since they don't typically have the feats to turn them into dazing murder balls. It seems like the right one of the big 4 to not get.
If you spend so much that you are immune to say Cold, I think you will find your other defenses have suffered. Yes, you won't die from cold. But your defenses against everything else are so low that you are much more likely than a balanced character to die from something else.
Resisting 20 and good saves is much cheaper and nearly as good at keeping you alive. Yes, you need some healing after. So what?
Now as mentioned. If you know you will be encountering a bunch of flame salamanders or you have an ally that likes to paint the walls with acid then it might be worth it.
Otherwise, I would have to have just insane amounts of cash that I couldn't figure out how to spend before 3 or 4 rings of immunity seemed like a good purchase.
I know that the Winter Witch archetype gives immunity to cold at level 14, and at that level I suppose immunity to a single element isn't entirely unreasonable.
Kestral pretty much hit the nail on the head in saying that in a campaign where you aren't expecting a single type of energy to be prevalent, immunity to an element will save you from maybe one or two spells or elemental abilities.
Of course, in a campaign where you expect lots of abilities to be keyed to a single element (such as fire or ice), having a single person who is immune to that element isn't necessarily game-breaking. You either have Monsters/enemy casters do something else once they realize their primary element doesn't work, or you focus on someone else.
There seems to be little wrong with letting someone use an ability that they invested their resources in, whether those resources be spells, levels, feats, etc.
I have a synth summoner (which I made at the DM's urging, so don't lambaste me for op brokeness munchkinism) who's largely a defensive build, he has an AC of around 34, immunity to fire, and acid, and flight.
We're running RoTRL, which doesn't particularly fit into one or two easy elements, but I've found immunity has been very useful and at the cost of some evolution points, I have no complaints.
There are some sections where he's nigh untouchable, and there's a great feeling when the DM says you just took 75 Fire damage, and you get to ignore it all. That said, in the later campaign, there's alot of cold weather, and cold based monsters...I hurt a bit after that, but at the same time, I could stand toe-to-toe with the ice monsters while my casters exploded fire at it without wasting spell levels on things like "Selective", this meant more show-stopping firepower and it makes everyone happy. Had some particularly handy surivability against some Runeforge denizens too, so all in all, I think it's great,but that's for a synth summoner who has easy access to it. I don't think I'd spend 230k on it.
It depends. Usually its not that powerful, but I'm playing in Reign of Winter right now, and I suspect it will be very powerful here. Even the resistance I currently have is crazy good.
In most campaigns, its much more circumstantial.
I wholly agree that spending 240k x 3 for three immunities is a very bad deal. That's enough money to win a series of encounters with consumables alone and still have 100's of 1000's left.
Greater resistance items seem much more reasonable.
However, looking through capstones on classes like the sorceror, it does seem like the Summoner's access to elemental immunities is very cheap. I'm not sure why you wouldn't take them if you have racial access to flight, other than a few racial skill bonus gimmicks.