SNA: Splat Books

[Yogibear41]

Anyone know of any Splat/3rd party books that expand the Summon Nature's Ally summon list? Mostly interested in stuff for SNA 1 through 4 just to get some extra options with my lower level spells.

[Bullet06320]

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?439991-Being-Everything-Eggynack-s-Comprehensive-Druid-Handbook

i think most of the options for SNA are limited


Ashbound (ECS, 50): Double the duration on all of your summons, and give them a +3 luck bonus to attack. This isn’t the single greatest summoning feat of all time, but it’s good enough that you’re always going to want it on a dedicated summoning build. Doubled durations are fantastic, especially at low levels, and a luck bonus is going to stack with just about anything you’d put on a summoned creature. No matter what direction you take summoning, this is always going to slot into your build perfectly, and the lack of prerequisites means that you can pick it up at your convenience. This is one of my favorite summoning feats, just for how low impact and generally useful it is.

Augment Elemental (MoE, 46): Summoned elementals get +2 to attack and damage rolls, and 2 temporary HP/HD. In other words, this is augment summoning, limited to elementals, minus some of the other effects of the ability scores, and minus the feat tax. As such, augment elemental is only useful for two reasons, and it’s not even all that useful in those applications. First, this allows you to double down on augment summoning. If you’re planning to summon mostly elementals, and really want to focus your build in that direction, then you might want more summoning boosts than would otherwise be available. Second, also if you’re planning to summon mostly elementals, augment elemental could act as an augment summoning replacement, costing only one feat instead of two. Unfortunately though, neither of those uses makes for a particularly viable feat. What you’re looking at here, when all is said and done, is a crappy version of a feat that’s probably not even worth your time when you have access to resources as far afield as magic of eberron. This is thus an option that should be avoided, as there’s just more you could be doing with your feats.

Augment Summoning: Give all of your summons +4 strength and +4 constitution. This is basically the archetypal summoning feat, and has probably made it onto just about every summoning build in one form or another. This boosts exactly what you want it to boost, granting your burly meat sacks an edge in combat. The unfortunate downside of this feat is that it has a feat tax in the form of spell focus (conjuration), but in a book limited game, this is well worth the cost. Otherwise, you should probably try to get this from another source, like moonspeaker, or half-orc substitution levels.

Beckon the Frozen (Frost, 47): This lets you give your summoned creatures the cold subtype, as well as a +1d6 cold damage on each hit with a natural weapon. Giving this buff to any given summons is strictly optional, so you won’t be left out in the cold (har dee har har) against creatures with fire attacks. Beckon the frozen is a nice little buff, but it’s really not enough to be worth more than most other summoning feats. With that in mind, it’s a decent pick up after you’re done getting other summoning feats. Notably, this feat requires both spell focus (conjuration) and augment summoning, so if you’re getting augment summoning from a non-feat source, you need to pick up spell focus separately. Do not do this, as beckon the frozen is just barely worth one of your feat slots, and two is ridiculous.

Child of Winter (ECS, 51): This feat enables you to treat vermin as two intelligence animals for the purposes of your spells and abilities, and far more critical, it adds a swath of mostly vermin to your SNA list. While child of winter isn’t nearly on the level of the other list altering summoning feats, greenbound and rashemi elemental summoning, there’s very little out there that can claim that level of power otherwise. On its own merits, child of winter is pretty good, especially at early and late level, but it’s certainly not great. There are a few interesting utility options here that change up what your summons can accomplish, with swarms being a major contribution, and nearly everything being mindless granting some protection from situations that would otherwise be troublesome, but there’s nothing out of this world. With that said, here’s a breakdown of the creatures added by child of winter.



Dragon Magazine #302 has The Summoner's Circle article which gives rules for adding other critters and some templates to summon monster and summom natures ally spells

[Thurbane]

Anyone know of any Splat/3rd party books that expand the Summon Nature's Ally summon list? Mostly interested in stuff for SNA 1 through 4 just to get some extra options with my lower level spells.

Can't comment on 3rd party, but the Summoner's Desk Reference gives a lot of non-core options: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?255219

[Yogibear41]

Yeah I am pretty familiar with all the 1st party options available, just checking other things out. Playing as a Ranger so by time I get the summons they are pretty outclassed in pure stats just looking for niffty stuff I can use when the situation arises. Already have some interesting plans for the Yellow Musk Creeper once I get 4th level summons.

[eBarbarossa]

I think the Warcraft RPG books add a lot of specific monsters to that.