Summoner Chassis

[Gotterdammerung]

Working on a summoner and can't decide between some choices.


Wiz 3/ demonologist 9/ heartfire fanner 1/ Sublime chord 2/incantrix 5
eventually 10 in epic.

Benefits- Cast summon monster V at summon monster IX strength. Then apply Persistent to it with a DC 45 spell craft.

Eventually easier to do metamagic tricks with summons, especially at 25 when incantrix caps.

Bonus metamagic feats.

Cons- MAD, low Caster lvl (16 for wiz and SC, 9 for demongist- +X when used with song of arcane power)

wiz 3/ demonologist9/ heartfire fanner 1/ sublime chord 1/ ultimate magus 6

Benefits- lots of spells 8th lvl wiz (0-4th lvl spells) CL 23, 9th lvl demgist (1st-4th lvl spells) CL 11, 7th lvl sublime chord 7th (4th - 8th lvl spells) CL 23

Ability to burn spells to apply a metamagic.

+4 effective power on summon monster works real well with the crazy amount of 4th lvl spells since each 4th lvl spell is a summon monster 8 effectively.

Cons- MAD



Bard 2/ Lyrical thaumaturgist 2/ demonologist 9/sublime chord 2/ incantrix5

Pro's - same as first option plus
Stronger bardic music and more bardic music attempts for powering metamagics.

Con's - same as first option except not MAD.



Anyway, I like the concept of using demonologists 9th lvl ability to get more power out of metamagic stacked summons. So 9th lvl demonologist is going in no matter what. I will probably be silverbrow human, but might be kobold.


I've looked at the possibility of working in spell thief and master spellthief for a higher caster lvl. But i can't decide where to squeeze it in.


Any suggestions, about possible other incarnations, or ideas to streamline these options, or pro's and con's i missed about a particular one.

[Paul H]

Hi

Does this have to be 3.5?

There is an excellent Summoner class in Pathfinder. You even get some nifty abilities to summon creatures as standard action a few times a day.

And it has D8 HP, Cleric BAB. Plus some nifty Archetypes in the APG (where Summoner class is listed).

Thanks
Paul H

[JaronK]

Binders make the best Summoners due to Zceryll. So you might really want to consider using Anima Mage.

JaronK

[Gotterdammerung]

Binders make the best Summoners due to Zceryll. So you might really want to consider using Anima Mage.

JaronK

I am aware of Zceryll and i do not like it.

Su: abilities have paltry options for metamagics and those options are only once per day.

Summon alien only lets you pick 1 monster off of the summon monster list appropriate for your lvl.

The summon has to be psuedonatural which changes the monsters template. This change in template removes a lot of summoner prestige class abilities.

The only way Binders could be considered "the best summoner" is if you tried to argue that no mention of a duration means that the summons are permanent, and you can summon a permanent army. Well that interpretation would not fly past any competent GM. Especially since the rules on vestiges say that if the duration of a vestige is not stated, or implied by the ability description, assume it is constant. It then goes on to say that non-constant abilities typically can only be used once every 5 rounds, just like Summon Alien. That gives any reasonable GM all the firepower he needs to say " No, you can't spend all day in you lair summoning 5 million googly eyed tentacle monsters."

Lastly, I hate the fluff behind binders. Selling your soul is one thing. But selling your soul to everyone from powerful heroes to Obscure Gods just to get power...

If clerics are spell beggars, then Binders are Spell Hookers.


So thanks for the tip, but no thanks. Keep up the suggestions though. (I am mainly looking for suggestions within the mindset of 9 lvls of demonologist. But you never know when an obscure suggestion will lead to the perfect X (x= feat, spell, skill, class, PrC, ect.)

[Gotterdammerung]

Hi

Does this have to be 3.5?

There is an excellent Summoner class in Pathfinder. You even get some nifty abilities to summon creatures as standard action a few times a day.

And it has D8 HP, Cleric BAB. Plus some nifty Archetypes in the APG (where Summoner class is listed).

Thanks
Paul H

Um let me put it this way, It will not be a pathfinder game. However, that doesn't mean you can't share something cool you like about pathfinder.

In other words, I probably won't play a pathfinder suggestion but i don't mind if you tell me about it.




Also there is lots of ways to get standard action summons. And I usually play under a houserule that changes the casting time to 1 full round action instead of 1 full round for summoning spells. So the standard action speed isn't necessarily needed.

[hex0]

Can you go Conjurer->Demonologist->Nar Demonbinder->Ultimate Magus?

UA variant Conjurer 5/Demonologist 9/Nar Demonbinder 1/Ultimate Magus 5

Or if you want to stack your caster levels, put some Spellthief in there.

Still, I think Nar Demonbinder is superior to Demonologist:

Conjurer 5/Malconvoker 6/Nar Demonbinder 1/Ultimate Magus 8 etc.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

How are you going Wizard 3/ Demonologist when it requires Kn: Planes 8 ranks?

I'd say take only three or six Demonologist levels, so you'll have room to get 9th level spells by 20th level. Also, don't forget about Ur-Priest, which shares the Demonologist's prerequisite of Malign Spell Focus (renamed Spell Focus: Evil for 3.5). If you use Wizard 5 to qualify for Demonologist you can get the Domain Spell Power ACF in CC for the Summoner domain's granted ability.

What level are you starting at, and what level do you expect to play to?

[Zagaroth]

Well, here is the Pathfinder Summoner (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/summoner) Which need no prestige classing at all to do its summoning.

You get a bad-ass monster than can be out constantly until taken to zero hp (but goes away when you fall asleep/go unconscious, 10 minute ritual to recall), you get Summon Monster [Variable with level] as a spell like ability, and that eventually moves on up to being your choice of Gate or SM9 at time of use, and they have 6 spell levels of spells to help them boost their eidolon (the spells to add a quick number of temp Evolution Points to your eidolon can rock rather well. "Crap, red dragon. My eidolon is now immune to fire. Sic 'em!")

so yes, it's a summoner in a can instead of needing to throw a bunch of classes together. Oh, but you can't use your Summon Monster [X] ability while your eidolon is out. They are more like your emergency back up system.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Why not a Malconvoker? (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=289.0)

You would need to be Good thought (or at least non-evil I can't recall which exactly)

Also this might also help

Practical Demonkeeping (A Summoner's Guide to the Lower Planes) (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5573.0)

[Randomguy]

I don't know what demonologist or heartfire fanner do, but I know Malconvoquer from complete scoundrel is an excellent class that's at least worth looking at. You can extend all your summoning spells for free, you can summon evil creatures without changing your alignment, you can give your summons extra bonuses and you can summon one extra monster when you cast a summoning spell to summon an evil creature.

I don't suggest going into sublime chord: suddenly going into a different casting progression isn't that great, unless you plan on taking ultimate magus to progress both sublime chord and wizard casting. Can you even qualify for sublime chord that way? The requirements are pretty steep. On the bright side, if you do manage to qualify, you can stack your sublime chord and wizard caster levels, so the arcane spell power of the ultimate magus class would be great for you.

The practiced spellcaster feat can give you +4 to caster level for a single class, but not above your HD, which is worth considering for you. If you take arcane disciple (war domain) and 5 levels of abjurant champion then your caster level for arcane spells becomes your base attack bonus, which, with divine power, becomes your character level.

[hex0]

The practiced spellcaster feat can give you +4 to caster level for a single class, but not above your HD, which is worth considering for you. If you take arcane disciple (war domain) and 5 levels of abjurant champion then your caster level for arcane spells becomes your base attack bonus, which, with divine power, becomes your character level.

I suggested Master Spellthief over Practiced Spellcaster because if the build is going to have 2 or 3 different spellcasting sources they would all stack and only require 1 feat. But not really as good as what I'll say below :smallwink:

Edit: For better summoning there are a few options:

UA variant Conjurer 5 gets you rapid summoning, free augment summoning, and your summons are harder to dispel. No drawback really and a good start for any build

Master Specialist 4 gets you bonus HP for your summons and bonus greater spell focus (which helps qualify for Nar Demonbinder). You can also enter it after 4th level, which helps a lot. The higher Esoterica aren't as handy.

Demonologist has tough requirements but the level 9 ability is golden. Requires 3 feats and just doesn't hand out as much. Caster level sucks on it too.

Nar Demonbinder gives you nice spells and abilities AND stacks with another caster level.

Malconvoker is just fun and good for filling in holes and the only drawback is the loss of a caster level...5th level ability is nice too.

So I would do it thusly: Focused Specialist Conjurer 3/Master Specialist 4/Malconvoker 5/Nar Demonbinder 1/Ultimate Magus 7

[JaronK]

Summon alien only lets you pick 1 monster off of the summon monster list appropriate for your lvl.

You do realize you get to do that once every 5 rounds (or four with the right feat) right? So you get the whole list, and you can spam it.


The only way Binders could be considered "the best summoner" is if you tried to argue that no mention of a duration means that the summons are permanent, and you can summon a permanent army.

No, you summon it as a Sorcerer of your Binder level, so a level 15 Binder would summon them for 15 rounds. The point is that you can do it all day long and spam them all over the place, usually keeping a few up at a time (if you focus on it, you can have one every four rounds, so at level 15 you could have four up at a time).

THAT is why they're the best summoners... because they can throw a summon at absolutely anything without worry all day long, and can have a few at once, and when they summon stuff with per day limited abilities they can just summon another one (which lets them do stuff like spam Heal and Divination).


Lastly, I hate the fluff behind binders. Selling your soul is one thing. But selling your soul to everyone from powerful heroes to Obscure Gods just to get power...

You don't sell your soul, you just let others inside temporarily.

JaronK

[Gotterdammerung]

You do realize you get to do that once every 5 rounds (or four with the right feat) right? So you get the whole list, and you can spam it.

THAT is why they're the best summoners... because they can throw a summon at absolutely anything without worry all day long, and can have a few at once, and when they summon stuff with per day limited abilities they can just summon another one (which lets them do stuff like spam Heal and Divination).

JaronK

With the 9 demonologist lvls i have essentially the same freedom. I have a large amount of low lvl spells that can be used to summon higher lvl creatures for out of combat SLA abuse.

In combat, 5 rounds is forever. With metamagic options The demonologist has way more options in combat and wins in terms of numbers at least.
A summon monster VII maximized and twinned will give me 10 monster off of the summon monster 9 list for example.


Other replies:

Yes I know about master specialist, that is why, in the OP, i said I was thinking about spell thief but didnt know where to squeeze it in.


Nar Demonbinder is cool, I wish it got the same casting progression as ur-priest, sublime chord, blighter, and other classes that get the fast track progression to 9th lvl spells. It is more geared towards planar binding type summoning though. And I was more looking into summon monster support.


Ur-priest would fit better synergy wise. But I don't like the flavor of the class. Godless spell stealer. And even if i did like it, it just gives a GM easy reasons to throw too many powerful organizations at you. In other words, the class flavor is likely to piss some people off big time.

The caster lvls in the OP were already factored with practiced spell caster in mind.

The caster lvl of Sublime chord is added in with the other casting class so the only dead CL levels are the demonologist ones. And those spells from demonologist, although weaker in caster lvl, are still useful. Because every build has some way of sacrificing spells for beneficial effects. For instance, sacking demonologist spells to add a free metamagic in the ultimate magus route.

Heartfire fanner is from dragon magazine it is a way to get bardic music and still maintain casting progression.

Malconvoker is a good summoning class on its own. But it is not compatible with demonologist due to alignment restrictions. It gets to streamline the casting level, melee benefits for summons, hp boosts for summons, an extra 1 monster for summons. So it is nice. But this build is more about using the demonologists ability to pick off a higher list to take low lvl spells and then metamagic them up effectively creating a 9th lvl spell with way too many metamagics on it.

How are you prerequing?- I am using sanctum spell to cast 3rd lvl spells early, and using a series of skill checks as per tests as prerequisites alternative out of unearthed arcana to qualify instead of skill ranks (I have DM approval). I normally don't use this alternate rule for early entry, but i like demonologist a lot and felt it needed some way to bypass the inferior casting set up of the class. I.E. get in early so you can get out and use a class like Sublime chord to catch back up on casting lvls.

I am starting at 10th and expect to play into 25 (that is usually where the campaigns end up stopping) but could play past 30 (it's happened b4, if the campaign is still fun).


Reflections:

I will take another hard look at Demonbinder and ur priest.

[hex0]

Malconvoker IS compatible with Nar Demonbinder, though. :smallwink:

I hate to be a Nar Demonbinder cheerleader, but it has much easier requirements than Sublime Chord. Even though it doesn't get 9th level spells, it does get nice spells per day and I like that it stacks with a previous caster of your choice. It is just begging to be taken into Ultimate Magus, in my opinion.

[Urpriest]

Wait, how are you planning on Persisting summoning spells again? Does one of those PrCs let you modify the range sufficiently?

[Gotterdammerung]

Wait, how are you planning on Persisting summoning spells again? Does one of those PrCs let you modify the range sufficiently?

Well the incantatrix's ability "metamagic effect" says you can apply any metamagic feat you possess to a spell that is already in effect.

It doesn't say , check the prerequs to see if they are compatible, it just says you can do it. you could interpret it that way but it doesn't look to me like the ability cares much about compatibility. I mean it lets you quicken a spell that has already been cast for godssake.

You could also argue that a summon monster that has already been cast does have a fixed range. I mean if you were going to stat that specific cast spell, its entry would be different from the generic entry. So technically, it would be a fixed range spell at the time you apply persistant to it.



I like that it stacks with a previous caster of your choice. It is just begging to be taken into Ultimate Magus, in my opinion.

Sublime chord also stacks with a previous caster of your choice. But i will look at it.

I might crunch the numbers on wiz3/demonologist9/nar demonbinder1/ ur priest 1/ mystic theurge 6 too.