summon natures army

[Jgosse]

so I have a player who is a druid who relay has a thing for wolves. so I looked at the summon natures ally spell and noticed that no matter if you are casting natures ally 3-9 you still only get 1d4+1 creatures off the SNA 1list. I understand that it is just a numbers thing to keep it simple but that still seems wrong. also the fact that I can cast SNA 1 or SNA 2 and end up with only 1 creature bothers me . I was thinking maybe (1d4+1) x SNA spell level - SNA list level so SNA 9 would be 8d4+8 wolfs for a max of 40 but that still feels low for a 9th level spell.
Any thoughts on how this could work?

SNA9(Conjuration (Summoning) [see text]
Level: Drd 9
Effect: One or more creatures, no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart

This spell functions like summon nature’s ally I, except that you can summon one 9th-level creature, 1d3 8th-level creatures of the same kind, or 1d4+1 lower-level creatures of the same kind.

When you use a summoning spell to summon an air, chaotic, earth, evil, fire, good, lawful, or water creature, it is a spell of that type.

sna3
Conjuration (Summoning) [see text]
Level: Drd 3, Rgr 3
Effect: One or more creatures, no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart

This spell functions like summon nature’s ally I, except that you can summon one 3rd-level creature, 1d3 2nd-level creatures of the same kind, or 1d4+1 1st-level creatures of the same kind.

When you use a summoning spell to summon an air, chaotic, earth, evil, fire, good, lawful, or water creature, it is a spell of that type.

sna1
Conjuration (Summoning)
Level: Drd 1, Rgr 1
Components: V, S, DF
Casting Time: 1 round
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Effect: One summoned creature
Duration: 1 round/level (D)
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

This spell summons a natural creature. It appears where you designate and acts immediately, on your turn. It attacks your opponents to the best of its ability. If you can communicate with the creature, you can direct it not to attack, to attack particular enemies, or to perform other actions.

A summoned monster cannot summon or otherwise conjure another creature, nor can it use any teleportation or planar travel abilities. Creatures cannot be summoned into an environment that cannot support them.

The spell conjures one of the creatures from the 1st-level list on the accompanying Summon Nature’s Ally table. You choose which kind of creature to summon, and you can change that choice each time you cast the spell. All the creatures on the table are neutral unless otherwise noted.


I should note that the reason this is important is that latter they will be involved in a Siege and if she can summon armies of wolfs that would help the whole there side is out numbered 100-1 thing.

[eggynack]

I'm inclined to think that any sort of druid buff is a mistake. I could think of a few ways to capitalize on this change, mostly involving SLA's and/or huge elementals (the best kind of elemental, especially with an SLA). He should probably be looking at dire wolves anyway, and maybe using his non-summons as army killers. There's a good number of those, depending on the level/book access. I'm personally partial to boreal wind (Frost, 89), which has a huge area, and a good effect, but you can work out of a smaller pool and do fine. If there's a couple of trees to pull from, anywhere in the massive army setting, plant growth is strongly worth consideration. It's like solid fog, except it's infinitely selective, over a wide area, and sticks around forever. 5th level is where it's really at though, because that's where you get the real natural disaster spells like control winds and blizzard (Frost, 89). I can't think of a wolf themed army destroyer though, and I'm not entirely sure there should be one.

[Jgosse]

I'm inclined to think that any sort of druid buff is a mistake. I could think of a few ways to capitalize on this change, mostly involving SLA's and/or huge elementals (the best kind of elemental, especially with an SLA). He should probably be looking at dire wolves anyway, and maybe using his non-summons as army killers. There's a good number of those, depending on the level/book access. I'm personally partial to boreal wind (Frost, 89), which has a huge area, and a good effect, but you can work out of a smaller pool and do fine. If there's a couple of trees to pull from, anywhere in the massive army setting, plant growth is strongly worth consideration. It's like solid fog, except it's infinitely selective, over a wide area, and sticks around forever. 5th level is where it's really at though, because that's where you get the real natural disaster spells like control winds and blizzard (Frost, 89). I can't think of a wolf themed army destroyer though, and I'm not entirely sure there should be one.

She is my most inexperienced player, so I think that balances the fact most people think that the druid is OP. this is just more like a flavor Idea and I could still see Dire wolf working but it is the same problem of scale.

[eggynack]

I just get the feeling that SNA isn't supposed to have that kinda scale. It's a tactical spell, rather than something meant to be strategically powerful. I guess that it's unlikely that she'll pick up greenbound summoning, summon a massive pile of wolves, and have them all cast wall of thorns at various points on the battlefield. It's a thing though.

Anyway, if you are going to do this, the scaling seems off. You could definitely push it faster, but I'd keep it at the same rate held between one and two levels below. One level below gives 1.5 animals, and two gives 3.5, so I'd keep it at a constant growth rate of two animals/level. That'd mean something like 1d6+2, 1d8+3, 1d10+4, and so on. One animal granted through die averages, and one granted through a static bump. It's a bit less immediately intuitive, but that shouldn't be the biggest issue.

[Fax Celestis]

I would look at the animate legion spell from Heroes of Battle and make a summon nature's ally equivalent.

[Kioras]

Well you could also go ahead and just custom create some HD advanced dire wolves, for the higher level summon nature ally, say 18hd for the summon natures ally 8, and let them keep the wolf theme.

Edit : otherwise the ability of instead of summoning an army of mooks, summoning up 1d4+1 hd advanced(~15hd?) dire wolves to qualify for SNA 7 would also work.

Such big and powerful wolves might be almost as intimidating or more so then just a horde of normal wolves.

[Baroknik]

I'm AFB right now, but you may want to look into the possibility of converting 3.0's legendary animal stuff for the tier up from dire wolves