[3.X] Best Three SNA Options at Each Level

[fencepainter]

If you could only choose from among three creatures at each Summon Nature's Ally level, what would they be. That is, for example, you might say for SNA I: Eagle, Porpoise, and Wolf.

[Vaz]

Summoner's Helpdesk (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=255219).

Binder's Summon List (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=9094.0)

Might be useful.

SNA 9 is useful for its Octopus Tree for Battlefield Control all on its own, Sporebat as SNA for Su Enervation 1/round, Roc in outside area's; grapple, fly up a melee character very, very high, then disappear; splat.

Not played a Druid Summoner at lower levels, so cannot say much otherwise.

[Kelb_Panthera]

and Vaz beat me to it.

The summoner's helpdesk is the one I was thinking of.

[fencepainter]

The help desk is cool. Thanks. Is that all there is to it and no one deviates from those choices?

[chaos_redefined]

Frankly, summon lists are about as inter-balanced as the rest of core. They were written when WotC didn't know what they were doing, so there are generally 3 options that are just better than anything else in the list.

[fencepainter]

I take your point. WoTC did not balance things well in many places. That said, would you say that the helpdesk got it right for all levels of SNA or do you have your own preferences. I know lots of people play druids on these boards, and I'm wondering where people tend to go with their SNA picks. It could just be that the helpdesk says it all.

[ShriekingDrake]

This (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=282552) might be useful. I realize that its both homebrew and six (as opposed to three).

[eggynack]

The real thing that'd change when picking only three summons per level, is that you might not necessarily want the best summons. Usually, when you're summoning, you've got the one go to summon at each level, and then you have the big pile of specialist summons for when you're underwater, or fighting flying enemies, or trying to attrition the enemy out, or are fighting under a waterfall (fossergrims are weird). Thus, you're probably going to want to make sure that you've got a couple of suboptimal summons that can handle weird stuff. However, if you count "elementals" as one thing at each level, the combination of those things can fill in most basic situations, and then you just fill in the gaps with oreads or whatever. Basically, druids usually summon like wizards, but for this, you might want to choose summons as a sorcerer does. You want maximum quantities of versatility, spammability, and power. You might not want both giant crocodiles and brown bears, for example, even though you could want each at different times. If all the top options of a level are similar, then you should pick options that aren't at the top.

[fencepainter]

. . . trying to attrition the enemy out . . .

What are good examples of this--both creatures and circumstances?

[eggynack]

What are good examples of this--both creatures and circumstances?
I was thinking the yellow musk creeper from the fiend folio at SNA IV. First off, they're super defensive. Their AC is only at 17, and they have a base HP of 57, but they have a regeneration of 5, and they have plant traits. They're also huge, and basically motionless, so you can plop them down somewhere as an effective defensive fortification. More importantly, it can provide inevitability. Their musk puff ability is a +5 ranged touch attack with a fort save of 18, and if it works, the enemy is basically dead. They're forced to move into the creeper's space, and then they have their intelligence drained until they become a plant zombie. If you have a good duration from ashbound or something, you can get continuous save or dies until the end of the encounter.

On creating wars of attrition, the druid is spectacular at that. Just at a basic level, they get a ton of battlefield control. Lay down an entangle, put a spore field on top of that, and maybe add in some impeding stones, and you can keep your enemy in the same area indefinitely while you plink away with inevitable death. Moreover, those are all first level spells, so this is what you want to do anyways. You can also use grappling to achieve this effect. Have a brown bear animal companion, shoot animal growth at it, and you might as well have a grapple check of infinity against some opponents. While they're in there, you can musk puff them until they die. Granted, neither of these situations are that hard to have win conditions for, but yellow musk creepers are a pretty good one. You don't even really have to work that hard to have a natural attrition war. The best situation is if you can use the musk creeper itself to wall the enemy off into an area. Then, it provides both the impetus for a war of attrition, as well as that war's victory.

Anyways, there are a few other good hyper defensive summons. Thomils are one of the best, with a ton of layered defensive abilities, on top of stuff like augment summoning and ashbound summoning. Rashemi elemental summoning is pretty sweet in general.