Does my summoner need a dragon?

[D3agle93]

I am currently running a campaign that is nearing the end of an underground dungeon, and I'm adapting the boss to the current party strength (they split the party halfway in, so some are beat to hell while others almost fresh). The party is level 7, with a scout/ranger, artificer, warblade, crusader, and an optimized spellcaster/metaphysical spellshaper. I'm planning on the fight taking place on a cliff and outcropping of stone, which might break off midfight, overlooking a pool of lava.

Now, the intent for the boss is to be a lvl 10 focused conjurer who specializes in summoning. In my group's other campaign, one of our party is a summoner, so they are aware of how infuriating a well built summoner can be. As I was looking over conjuration spells, I saw lesser dragon ally and found myself debating whether I should add a dragon into the mix or not. I haven't been playing for long, and only faced 1 dragon, so I'm not really sure the best dragon to call, let alone how to build one. And so I ask the titular question: does my summoner need a dragon? If so, what kind? Also, any tips for an evil summoner would be appreciated; I have him built, but I'm not much at optimization.

Game is 3.5, any book and most of dragon magazine is allowed. 3.0 and Pathfinder will be considered if it translates easily.

[Aegis013]

Depending on how they're built and played, dragons can be overwhelmingly powerful opponents. It sounds like your party probably has some reasonable ranged options, which will help them, but if the dragon is tricked out to the nines, it'll be an enormous pain in the butt.

Strafing Breath, Ravening psychosis (I think it's called) from Dragon Magazine, and include some nice metabreath feats and suddenly any melee are doomed, and it's hard to spread out far enough to avoid getting your entire team breath weapon'd every round or two for serious hurt.

Throw in a better selection of casting and Loredrake from Dragons of Eberron (I think) to improve that casting further and you've got a boss monster all on its own.


Of course, you can also play it as a frontline bruiser and watch it die fruitlessly against a much lower level party.

Or anything in between. It's really up to you how much to make the dragon affect the fight. I would consider it, since the Summoner may need an ally to prevent getting insta-gibbed before he can get off a Summon Monster (which takes an entire round to cast).

[BowStreetRunner]

My personal preference is for a summoner with a group of creatures that have interesting synergy. If you want to have a dragon encounter, have a dragon encounter and leave the summoner for another encounter later. If you want to have a summoner encounter, have them deploy a 'team' of creatures whose various abilities all interact with one another in different ways. The real power of a summoner is not just 'I can summon a powerful creature to fight my battles for me and buff it to make it stronger', but rather 'my summoning spells are like a swiss army knife of various tools that I can use to overcome any challenge'.

[HalfQuart]

The thing with dragons is that you need to play them with the tactics described in the MM for their CR to be appropriate. This is true with all monsters, but especially so with dragons. For example the Red Dragon entry says:

Because red dragons are so confident, they seldom pause to appraise an adversary. On spotting a target, they make a snap decision whether to attack, using one of many strategies worked out ahead of time. A red dragon lands to attack small, weak creatures with its claws and bite rather than obliterating them with its breath weapon, so as not to destroy any treasure they might be carrying.
The BBEG can direct the dragon to some degree, but it shouldn't stray too far from the written tactics.

[Gandariel]

Well you GOTTA have something jump out of the lava mid-fight.

Scenario: Boss has already summoned a bunch of monsters (low damage bruisers, but many).

While the party fights through those, the bad guy will be "chanting".

Two rounds later, a mighty roar shakes the earth.
Third round, a dragon jumps out of the lava and lands in front of the party, while the bad guy escapes laughing.

Or the dragon could be flying, circling around the heroes and using its breath weapon and spells?

You could have it try breaking the cliff (to make the heroes fall down into the lava)
He tries to dismantle the cliff one turn, you hint that it takes only three turns to break it down, so they have to react fast.

OR OR OR,

Party fights through the regular summoned minions, and they corner the bad guy.

He smirks, and jumps towards the lava... Only to reappear on the back of his dragon.

[D3agle93]

Party fights through the regular summoned minions, and they corner the bad guy.

He smirks, and jumps towards the lava... Only to reappear on the back of his dragon.

This I kinda like. I'm going to be playing the boss as a smug jerk, the kind of guy who knows he has an ace in the hole the party can't match.

Some info I missed in the original post. The area they're fighting in is essentially a Cliffside "shrine", with a broken Mcguffin artifact perched on a ledge of stone above the lava. The artificer is trying to repair it for the villians (he split the party, villians beat him down, then charmed and suggested he fix it), and partway in that ledge is breaking off, whether he's on it or not. The summoner has a familiar or cohort of some kind tailing the party so he knows that they're coming. I've given him cloudy conjuration, so every summon comes with a nice burst of cloud, and I intend to start the fight by summoning the large evil bird with the insanity causing black cloud ability whose name escapes me.

[D3agle93]

The real power of a summoner is not just 'I can summon a powerful creature to fight my battles for me and buff it to make it stronger', but rather 'my summoning spells are like a swiss army knife of various tools that I can use to overcome any challenge'.

That is how our summoner in our other campaign works. She has had some amazing moments by summoning things that effectively manipulate the environment, sometimes unintentionally. For example, she used large crocs to drown enemies in a sewer, summoned those insanity birds to obliterate an entire regiment of soldiers, hunted down unconscious party members with an entire wolfpack, and most recently used dire-somethings, I believe badgers, to dig an escape tunnel past an otherwise impenetrable wall.

My summoner is probably going to spend more time messing with them rather than outright slaughter, like a cat playing with its food. Once the ledge goes down, he's most likely out of there.

[Toilet Cobra]

The best I've seen from our party's summoner:

Me: All you find in the abandoned inn are a few sticks of old furniture and a couple smelly mattresses, infested with bedbugs.
Him: I cast summon swarm to get a carpet of spiders to devour the bedbugs.
Me: ... Wow. Ok.
Him: And then I prestidigitate away the smell.

And a good night's sleep was had.