3.5 summoning sorcerer

[carrdrivesyou]

Got a friend running his first 3.5 campaign and he wants characters to be good but not punpun broken.

I'm not sure what the party will be as he wants us to just run what we want without worrying about party consistency.

I want to run either a summoner sorcerer. Any ways to make this fun? I've been told the summoning house rule is that a PC who summons must summon thematically. That is to say someone who uses summon monster one for dogs should probably stick to wolves an the like.

Thoughts?

[Pilo]

For summoning, cleric chassis is better, even more if you can use Frostburn content, with summon ice beast spells.

So I recommand you to use Favored soul, as you will have as many Spells known and per day, except if you plan to take a Prc that require arcane caster level.

[eggynack]

What are you trying to do with your summons? If you're going for utility and spell-like abilities, then your best bet is a wizard, likely with rapid summoning (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/specialistWizardVariants.htm#rapidSummoning), and maybe with malconvoker (CS, 48) as a prestige class. If you're just trying to hit stuff in the face really hard and shield the team with piles of meat, then you're better off with a druid, because the monsters are beefier. You can go all in with that, if you want, going shifter and pulling in shifter druid substitution levels and four levels of moonspeaker, but you don't have to. Just putting together feats like rashemi elemental summoning (UE, 45) or greenbound summoning (LEoF, 8) if you're going all out, or ashbound (ECS, 50) and augment summoning if you're not, along with a ring of the beast (CC, 141) can be more than sufficient.

If you're really stuck with one variety of creature, then your best bet might be elemental, which would likely mean the aforementioned rashemi elemental summoning along with maybe augment elemental (MoE, 46) as a cheaper alternative to augment summoning, and you can even summon storm elementals (MM III, 48) for bonus points. You're not in a great place for low level summons with that plan, but I'm pretty sure that you're inevitably going to be in a bad place somewhere under this houserule, and elementals are viable along a pretty broad set of levels. If you end up needing to pick one particular subtype of elemental, you could also go crazy with earth elementals and become a goliath (RoS, 53) with goliath druid substitution levels (RoS, 151). I really dislike that particular ACF, but it could be decent in a game where you're limited along the elemental axis anyway, and where you want to tone things down a bit.

[Urpriest]

Adding that it's particularly hard to be a Sorceror focused on summoning. We can make it work for you if you really need it to, but you've essentially got all nine Summon Monster spells taking up space in your spells known, which is kind of a bummer when your spells known are limited.

[DarkEternal]

Sorcerer/Malconvoker is really, really fun. ESPECIALLY if you can get your DM to give you the rapid summoning thing for a sorcerer. Tell him that the alternative is to go wizard, and wizards can make a DM's day much worse. Also, make sure to take a dip in the Sand shaper prestige class. It gives you a whole lot of spells to play with with one level taken and I kind of think it fits thematically to play a desert like sorcerer that calls things from the Abyss.

You don't really need many more spells as a sorcerer than the ones you get with your levels and your dips. Not to mention that some of the stuff you summon can do a whole lot of spellcasting on their own.

All in all, it's pretty fun. The only drawback(and granted, it is a pretty big one) is that by taking a level in malconvoker, and a level in Sand shaper, you'll lose two casting levels since they both lose spells granted on their first level, I think.

[Blackhawk748]

All in all, it's pretty fun. The only drawback(and granted, it is a pretty big one) is that by taking a level in malconvoker, and a level in Sand shaper, you'll lose two casting levels since they both lose spells granted on their first level, I think.

You do, but sweet gods the sheer number of spells youll have at your fingertips will make a Wizard cry. Sandshaper will give you buffs, decent attack spells, aaaaaaand a few more summons, honestly when you finish Malconvoker you can take a few more levels of Sandshaper and get Improved Dust Magic. Free Metamagic 3/day? Yes please!

Oh and Bluff is a Class SKill for Sorcs, so thats nice as that will be high (never thought id mention a Sorcs class skills :smalltongue:)

[Perturbulent]

When you were saying the homebrew rule is that you stick to summons thematically, does that mean your DM expects you to only summon wolves and wolf related things if you summon one once? IE: he won't let you summon an eagle today, a wolf tomorrow, and a porpoise the next day? That would seriously nerf the utility of summon spells.

[Extra Anchovies]

If you want summoner Sorcerer: Keep a Summon Monster in your highest-level spells known, and also one two or three levels below that.

Then take one level of sandshaper to pick up forty-three new spells known. Nine of which are the Summon Desert Ally chain.

[carrdrivesyou]

When you were saying the homebrew rule is that you stick to summons thematically, does that mean your DM expects you to only summon wolves and wolf related things if you summon one once? IE: he won't let you summon an eagle today, a wolf tomorrow, and a porpoise the next day? That would seriously nerf the utility of summon spells.

He means that he would like to see it affect my roleplay a bit. For instance, as I summon some dogs is scream,' let the hounds of war be released' or some other nonsense. But he wants a caster who does his spells with a theme.

[Urpriest]

He means that he would like to see it affect my roleplay a bit. For instance, as I summon some dogs is scream,' let the hounds of war be released' or some other nonsense. But he wants a caster who does his spells with a theme.

That's definitely possible with a Malconvoker/Sandshaper build. You are the tricksy desert coyote, conning demons and devils alike into your service, while summoning natural creatures from the desert in a flurry of sand.

Malconvoker in particular means you can always make up a lie you're telling your summons to persuade them to fight for you, so there's infinite roleplay potential there.

[Blackhawk748]

Well summoning is a theme. Its not like your going straight conjuration, you are summoning a fairly specific subset of spells. So ya make up a few funny little incants for you summons, honestly that could be fun

[Extra Anchovies]

For another way to boost spells known, consider picking up a Bloodline feat from Dragon Compendium (if it's allowed in your game); they each give one spell known of each level, but you can only have one. Penumbra is probably one of the best ones, as it gives you, among other things, Evard's Black Tentacles, Shadow Evocation, and Greater Shadow Evocation. Anarchic, Draconic, Fey, Illithid, and the four Elemental bloodlines are also fairly good ones, depending on what spells you want.

[Rebel7284]

If you play a venerable dragonwraught desert kobold for a total of -4 str, +2 Dex, +3 Int, +1 Wis, +3 Cha, you can use the greater draconic rite of passage to get back one of the sorcerer levels you lose. Also, a very flavorful race for the desert theme.

[nedz]

Sorcerer 5 / Wild Soul 10
This gives you more summoning, 1 extra spell known per spell level and a few other beans.
It will cost you a caster level though, and that's front loaded.

Don't bother with the Summon X spells at 1st level, they only last 1 rd
Take Summon Monster X at each even level but then swap out the old ones 4 levels later.

[carrdrivesyou]

My overall plan is to provide the melee some meat shields and flanking. While I wittle down and debuff with wands and scrolls and spells like ray of enfeeblement.