Spontaneous Summoner Conjurer Variant

[Zombulian]

So I’ve recently become aware after a decade and a half of playing this game that there is a variant specialist wizard section of UA that I’ve never paid much attention to (there’s a Wizard variant on the SRD that can have a little skeleton homeboy from level 1??? I blame my general dismissal of Wizards in general for the majority of my playtime).

As someone who has been primarily interested in Summoner as a casting archetype for the past few years I was of course drawn to the Conjurer variants. (For one thing, why did no one tell me about the Rapid Summoning feature? That’s fantastic.) And I was at first very excited by the prospect of a spontaneous summoner Wizard feature, until I noticed the obvious problem with this one - the fact that it has to be a SM spell one level lower than the spell you’re exchanging it for.

So I’m here for help with brainstorming ways to make this somewhat viable. How can we increase prepared spells’ effective spell level so if we choose to exchange a slot we’re doing it at a 1:1 rate (or if we can manage, an even better ratio*?).

Some thoughts to start:
Heighten Spell
Earth Spell
Easy Metamagic
Improved Sigil (Krau)

*I just realized in writing this that the feature does not specify that the Wizard has to know the Summon Monster spell, so this feature, if used in conjunction with metamagic reducers and heighten spell, could actually allow you to cast Summon Monster spells above your maximum spell level.

[nedz]

The Versatile Spellcaster feat ( Races of the Dragon p101) would seem to fix this issue - for the cost of two spell slots.

[Zombulian]

The Versatile Spellcaster feat ( Races of the Dragon p101) would seem to fix this issue - for the cost of two spell slots.

That’s an idea. Still leaves the issue that you can’t use the spontaneous feature to summon off of the highest list you have access to.

[sreservoir]

Note that the way this (and druid spontaneous SNA, and cleric spontaneous cure/inflict) is worded, you "lose" the prepared spell to cast a different spell, so applying metamagic or increasing the level as you cast a spell doesn't do you any good, you just get the same summon monster but with a higher spell level. You want to apply the metamagic to the prepared spells, independently of casting it, which needs something that works like Midnight Metamagic.

(Divine Metamagic might also work, since the fact that you use it as a free action implies that you're applying the metamagic as a separate step before casting, although the example confuses that a bit and litigating DMM runs into the problem that you have to assume there's a copyediting error in there because reading "apply a metamagic feat to spells that you know" at face value is either insane or nonsensical.)

Also, letting this work for the wizard kind of implies being able to trade in heightened spells for the druid spontaneous SNA and cleric cure/inflict too, along with everything else that works like those abilities, which seems a bit cheesy because some of the spells you can cleric-style spontcast include every Sanctified spell (just be a non-evil cleric), every domain spell (Spontaneous Domain Casting clerics [PH2 37], also the Domain Spontaneity feat [FoE 147]), every divination spell (Spontaneous Divination wizards [CC 52]), and any spell you can put in a runestaff?

(A curiosity I found while crossreffing this stuff: using a domain icon (FoE 154) does not work like runestaves and spontaneous cure/inflict, but substitutes "for the spell you are actually casting", i.e. you do actually cast the spell, so presumably you apply Improved Sigil (Krau), Earth Spell, naenhoon sigil &c. before deciding what domain spells you can to replace it with.)

[Zombulian]

Oh snap, you’re right. So the ol’ standbys for Shadowcraft Mage don’t work here I guess. So Easy Metamagic and Midnight Metamagic are the only things I can think of at the moment.

I realized the same thing about Clerics and Druids following this line of thought, yeah. Cleric could get pretty bonkers with spontaneous access to Domain spells, and they’re already quite good at reducing MM costs. Druid is maybe a bit less concerning simply because SNA isn’t quite as scary, though being able to summon beyond your spell level is always going to be quite strong.

So it seems like the move for a character utilizing this feature would be to pick up Heighten, Easy MM, and Midnight MM, plus whatever extra essentia and capacity feats, spells, and items they can.
Even just Easy MM and Heightening a non-maximal spell would make the feature contend a bit better.

[Endarire]

Treantmonk's Guide to Mastering the Malconvoker (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?528090-Mastering-the-Malconvoker)

The Malconvoker Report v2 (https://mxyzplk.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/malconvoker-report-v2.pdf)

May these help you when conjuring!

[radthemad4]

The Nexus Method feat from Dragon #319 lets you spontaneously turn spell slots into Summon Monster spells of the same level

[Zombulian]

The Nexus Method feat from Dragon #319 lets you spontaneously turn spell slots into Summon Monster spells of the same level

Yeah I’ve seen that! Problem I have with it is it requires membership in some obscure organization.

Edit: Another problem I have is that it has the stipulation that the spell being replaced has to be from any school but conjuration, which is kinda annoying for a character who is a conjurer and likely wants to prepare conjuration spells.