Haven't played for years. Good PHB summoner?

[Dralnu]

Haven't played 3.5 in 8+ years and getting to play again this weekend with a new group. 3 players, one person is likely a Bard, and the other person hasn't played D&D before. We're starting 1st level and I'm assuming just the PHB.

I have an idea for a Rick Sanchez type of character from the show Rick & Morty. He's an old, cynical, jaded CN retired professor who is looking the spend his twilight years pursuing his own selfish academic interests. Fiercely loyal to his friends and doesn't go out of his way to hurt people, but he is merciless towards enemies and has no qualms pursuing dark arts to get what he wants. He summons disposable minions to do his dirty work.

Mechanically, I'd like to support the party and summon monsters to fight for us. My first thought was Wizard, but I don't know which is a good low-level summoner in the PHB. I don't care too much about being optimized, so long as the character is able to do what I want to be doing at early levels -- I doubt we'll get to level 10 or something so long-term builds are irrelevant to me. I also don't want to outshine my party. I vaguely remember Glitterdust being a save-or-win spell that I would like to avoid this time :P

[ComaVision]

Rick is definitely an Artificer and that ain't PHB, so tough luck.

Wizard would be the closest PHB class for him, and could summon.

Straight Druid is probably the best PHB summoner but pretty far from your listed fluff.

[Psyren]

No DMG? That's where Thaumaturgist and Red Wizard are.

[MisterKaws]

No DMG? That's where Thaumaturgist and Red Wizard are.

Early builds, so prestige is pointless.

I'd go with wizard for that fluff, but druids and sorcerers are infinitely better for pure summoning.

[Dralnu]

Not specifically Rick Sanchez the character, but a persona similar to him. Doesn't need to be a professor either.

I never considered druid. I don't want to deal with wildshape and all that stuff though. But if it's a good summoner, hmm, maybe. Could be a pissed off and jaded ex-tree hugger, now doesn't care at all he's summoning wildlife to fight and "die" for his whims.

Sorcerer is good too? I thought they have the exact same list as Wizard?

[ComaVision]

Sorcerer is good too? I thought they have the exact same list as Wizard?

More spells per day, if you're just going to be using a select few (ie. Summon Monster line).

[Flickerdart]

Sorcerers make excellent summoners, not compared to wizards but compared to sorcerers who aren't summoners. A normal sorcerer leans a spell and that's his spell known. You learn a spell, and that spell can summon one of a dozen different monsters to do different things, many of whom have their own SLAs or even spellcasting.

[Chronos]

Your summoning options are either the Summon Monster line, or the Summon Nature's Ally line. SNA is better for brute beatsticks (for instance, it gets small elementals a level earlier than SM), but the SM monsters often have spell-like or other interesting abilities in place of just claw-claw-bite-rake-rake-rend.

If you're going SNA, that means druid. They also have the advantage that they can spontaneously cast their summoning spells, so you can prepare spells that are only useful in specific niche situations and then just convert whichever ones you turned out not to need.

If you're going SM, that can be wizard, sorcerer, or cleric. In general, for any spell that can be cast by an arcane or divine caster, you're better off with divine: They get a better class chassis (HP, saves, etc.) and can cast in armor. The usual tradeoff here is that arcane casters get better spells, but if you're looking at the same spells anyway, you've lost that.

All that said, any full spellcaster is powerful, even if you build them a bit suboptimally. Even if you make the "wrong" choice, you'll still be effective.

[Hiro Quester]

A cleric might be better as buffer/BFC/party support, in addition to summoning monsters. And you will probably need a healer. (Esp if the newbie chooses something simple and easy to play while learning D&D, like a barbarian. They will need a healer.)

But yes, the druid's spontaneous summons is very useful. Always having the ability to prepare possibly situational spells that you might not need, but convert them to a summons as needed is very very useful.

Full disclosure: I'm playing a druid right now in a slightly less than fully optimized party. My DM asked me at 9th level to retrain the augment summons feat, for the sake of party balance because some of my summoned creatures were overshadowing some of our (less optimized) melee specialist party members. I'm summoning less now we have reached 11 level (only when we are a outnumbered). At lower levels, the augmented summoned animals have been lifesavers many times over.

If you are summoning, consider the Augment Summons feat. It costs two feats (spell focus: conjuration as prerequisite). But it adds +4 Str and Con to all your summons, which makes mediocre beatsticks much more formidable. For a summoning specialist, this will be fun.

This perhaps matters more for the Druid's summoned animals that are summoned primarily for melee attacks, rather than a wizard or cleric's monsters summoned for SLAs and special abilities. But if you are only playing to level 10 or so, it will make a big difference either way; but more so for a druid.

[gooddragon1]

Druid has another complication interaction with your fluff: You have to revere nature. Summoning wildlife to fight for you and not caring about it might run afoul of your DM. One of the many reasons I don't play druids (I hate nature).

[Hiro Quester]

Druid has another complication interaction with your fluff: You have to revere nature. Summoning wildlife to fight for you and not caring about it might run afoul of your DM. One of the many reasons I don't play druids (I hate nature).

You can thank and dismiss a summons before it dies, if you are overly concerned about the animal's well being. Summoning them to use to spring traps for you might be a bit mean, though.

[Kraken]

Well, summons don't actually die when you blow through their hit points or use some sort of SoD on them, they just wink back to where they came from. It's called (such as planar binding) creatures that are really, actually present, and will die if killed.

[Tvtyrant]

Druid summons are better than Wizard summons, and Druids are arguably better casters overall than Clerics. The real issue IMO is that summons are only going to last 1-2 rounds at low levels, which very nearly rules out summoning meat tanks.

However Druids get an animal companion which does the job fantastically, so in that way they are even better compared to other casters than before.

[nedz]

Summoning suffers at low level because of the short duration: 1 round per caster level.

A Cleric with the Summoner Domain (Spell Compendium 281) gets +2 CL which equates to 3 rounds at level 1 instead of 1 round. After a few levels this won't matter too much, but it is very good at level 1.

If you went for a Spontaneous Cleric (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/spontaneousDivineCasters.htm) with this domain then you effectively get Spontaneous Summon Monster, but you could just load up with SM spells on a prepared caster.

There is also the Domain Spontaneity feat ( Complete Divine p80) which you could apply to a standard Cleric to get a similar effect.