[3.5] FS Summoner Build

[Thurbane]

So, a build I'm hoping to play in a future game, and wanting some feedback.

Lets get sources out of the way first: official 3.0/3.5 only, no PF, no Dragon/Dungeon mag (except hard cover Dragon Compendium), no Kalamar, no Ravenloft (except EtCR), no Dragonlance (except Setting hardcover, but see below).

At my table, the less books I use, the more likely I am to get approval. Core + Completes + Spell Compendium should be OK. Setting specific books are generally frowned upon, as most of our games are Greyhawk based. Other books on a case-by-case basis. No psionics allowed. No flaws, no alternate UA systems. No Artificers.

Anyhow, I want to build a dedicated summoner, using Favored Soul as the casting base. Please don't suggest another class as the base, this is set, for reasons.

I'm thinking FS 8/Thaumaturgist 2/Malconvoker 9/Thaumaturgist +1 (not necessarily in that exact order).

Thaumaturgist 2 gets me Augment Summoning as a bonus feat, as this build is likely to be pretty sparse on spare feats.

Was considering Favored of Bahamut ACF to get a Sorc 1 spell on my list (probably Mount).

Feat wise, SF (Conjuration) is locked in, but maybe Beckon the Frozen and other summons-boosting feats?

I will be taking Summon Monster I-IX, as well as other summoning spells. Will also load up on buffs.

Race likely to be Human, and ability scores will be rolled, rather than point buy. Will be dumping Wis, and trying not to take DC based spells.

TL; DR? Help me build a viable Favored Soul-based summoner.

Cheers - T

[RandomPeasant]

I know you said "don't suggest another class", but FS + Malconvoker is really dicey for a summoner build. As an 11th level character, you're casting summon monster V, while the Druid summoner is casting summon nature's ally VI. Your ability to summon extra critters with Fiendish Legion will always be narrower than the ability of a Wizard or Cleric summoner to simply cast higher level summons and summon creatures from a lower list (and will generally be worse, unless you're all-in on the consistency it provides). If you really want to be a Favored Soul summoner, I would recommend figuring out some way to get summon nature's ally and Greenbound Summoning, because that is the best version of actual summoning (rather than binding) that you can do.

[Anthrowhale]

You could take a couple levels of Singer of Concordance to gain the Dragon Domain for Dragon Ally.

Similarly, a level of Contemplative grants access to the Animal Domain with some SNA access.

Versatile Spellcaster is always handy and compensates for slowed spell access.

Invisible Spell for summons is hilarious. Extend Spell is always useful, although there are rods for that. Imbued Summoning may have a compelling use. Rapid Spell looks handy when you need to get the summons off now.

Looking into combinations,
(1) Imbued Summoning [Sanctum Dampen Magic] allows you to summon a creature which can, at will, covert the effect into an AMF, which cripples certain opponents. Of course, you'll want a summons with high spell resistance to avoid aving it wink out.
(2) Imbued Summoning [Fell the Greatest Foe] looks potentially potent with some particularly small summons.

[Maat Mons]

In 3.5 psionics, which was essentially a spellpoint system, people tended to find that quickly blowing through all your points generating only your most powerful effects ("nova-ing") was often a bad idea. It only really worked well if you could make sure to only have one or two fights per day. And that's a circumstance under which casters tend to just be powerful in general.

Let's suppose you, in that 15th-level example, decide to use your 62 spell points to cast Finger of Death eight times. If you need to budget for four encounters per day, you're casting two spells per encounter, plus 6 more spell-points-worth of spells sprinkled in somewhere. I'd rather budget myself a larger number of lower-level spells for each encounter.

Now, you might say that four encounters per day is far from guaranteed. But that, I feel, really just highlights the flaw in giving a large pool of resources that refresh with a long rest. Doing so causes class balance to change depending on how many encounters your particular DM likes to squeeze into each day. And this problem already exists with the normal casting setup.

You could also argue that, if using up your spell points too fast with high-level effects is a detriment, rather than a benefit, then the game should protect players from themselves by not allowing them to do that. But if we're going to prevent players from leaving themselves with too few resources, it would be better to shift away from long-rest recoveries altogether. At least then, if a player spends themselves into a corner, it takes less time to get out of it.

This is why, way back in 3.5 days, I started wanting casting to move to a "per encounter" system, which is the old-edition version of 5e's short rest recovery. Though "per-encounter" abilities came back after 5 minutes of rest, rather than an hour. Yeah, 3.5 jumped straight from abilities that required 5 minutes of rest to recover to abilities that required eight hours of rest to recover.

Anyway, if you convert the spell point system presented here to a short-rest recovery, there's actually a lot of parity with Warlock. Suppose you give spell points equal to class level, which is relatively close to one-quarter the amount presented here. Then figure the maximum spell level available to Warlocks, and the accompanying spell point cost. Divide one by the other, to get number of top-level spells per short rest, put it in a table, round up, and you get something almost identical the the Warlock's number of spells per short rest.

[ben-zayb]

The good ol Summoning Handbook may help

Rapid Spell helps with the long casting times, especially when you use other metamagic feats.

Metamagic School Focus helps with Rapid Spell and other metamagic feats.

Sudden Maximize is a good nova option even for summoners.

[SpicyBoi_Nezu]

Spontaneous Summoning, Greenbound Summoning, and Ashbound were the staples of my summoner (and augment summoning)

Ring of Mighty Summons and Summoner's Totem are the items that I recommend, that allows you to have more versatility than just summon monster

[Faily]

Gonna stop myself from going on a tangent over Ashbound/Greenbound feats (two different settings with two completely different fluff backgrounds!!), as OP wanted to avoid setting-specific stuff.


I'd say no to Spontaneous Summoner feat. Itss of limited use to someone who is going to dump WIS, as the requirements are dependent on WIS and the times per day you can use it also needs WIS. So I'd consider that one a wash for what you stated in your OP.

I think Thaumaturgist and Malconvoker looks like good support for what you want to do. If you could squeeze in a class that grants a domain, like maybe Contemplative or something else, I'd maybe try to do that to grab Summoner (Spell Compendium) or Animal domain (PHB). The Summoner domain is nice in that it gives +2 CL for summoning spells, while Animal domain does give access to Summon Nature's Ally 4 and 7 respectively). It is a challenge to grab SNA for non-Druids though.



For Feats, I'd look at:

Summon Elemental (Reserve Feat, Complete Mage)
The added bonus of always being able to summon a small elemental buddy is ok (but very nice depending on the party as the small elemental can do lots of things like flanking or triggering traps), though the +1 CL to summoning spells is pretty nice. The fact that it won't run out unless you run out of spells is nice too so you can always pull up a flanking buddy or a quick meatshield as long as you have spells left to cast.

Beckon The Frozen (Feat, Frostburn)
Damage boost (+1d6 cold) and cold subtype, and it's optional to use. Since the requirements are Spell Focus (Conjuration) and Augment Summoning, it doesn't take away anything else from you with demanding some other dumb feat tax. Saw you already were leaning towards this and I think it gives a quick and easy buff to your summons without worrying about metamagics too much. I do agree with the mention of Sudden Maximize for a summoning for when you just need to fill the battlemap with celestial bisons.

Imbued Summoning (Metamagic Feat, PHB2)
Like Beckon The Frozen, this boosts your summoned creatures. Imbued Summoning lets you throw in a buff spell at the creature when it's summoned (so maybe Shield of Faith or any other buff that doesn't clash with Augment Summoning which is technically built in Bull's Strength and Bear's Endurance). +1 Spell level.

Metamagic School Focus (Feat, Complete Mage)
3/day reduce the cost of Metamagic by 1 for spells from the school you have Spell Focus in (like Conjuration!).


For ACF, what about Deity's Favor (PHB2)? Depending on ruling on the timing of spells, you could technically use it to give temporary HP to your summoned monster *when* they appear. Could make them last a bit longer.

[vasilidor]

Spells from the spell compendium that may be of some help:
Summon Elemental Monolith, A level 9 summoning spell that allows you to summon a CR 17 monster from the Complete Arcane (an Elemental Monolith).
Depending on your alignment, you may get some mileage out of Summon bearded Devil or Summon Eladrin, both level 5 spells.
Divine protection may be a good spell to go with. A level 2 spell that gives allies a +1 to AC.
Cloak of bravery is a level 3 cleric spell, as is resist energy, mass.
Positive energy aura, a level 4 spell causes you to heal 1hp per 3 character levels in a 10 ft aura for 1 level per caster level and mass shield of faith is also available.
righteous wrath of the faithful grants a +3 to hit and damage and an extra attack to your allies - a level 6 spell.
Mass spell resistance is a level 7 spell.
the level 8 spell Brilliant Aura turns your allies weapons into brilliant energy weapons for a short time. Could be useful.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Imbued Summoning (Metamagic Feat, PHB2)
Like Beckon The Frozen, this boosts your summoned creatures. Imbued Summoning lets you throw in a buff spell at the creature when it's summoned (so maybe Shield of Faith or any other buff that doesn't clash with Augment Summoning which is technically built in Bull's Strength and Bear's Endurance). +1 Spell level.

A favored soul is unlikely to have the spells known to really make use of this.
Casting will already be delayed meaning the +1 spell level hurts, for very little benefit even under optimal conditions.
The bonus from Beckon the Frozen is also way too small to be worth the feat imo, at least without combining it with Algid Enhancement.

You'd probably be better off with Augment Elemental, Cloudy Conjuration, Rashemi Elemental Summoning or Fiendish Summoning Specialist if you're going Malconvoker.
Cloudy Conjuration in particular is generally underrated imo. It's a very useful feat for a summoner.

[Fizban]

I would say that you should take Thaumaturgist up to at least 4th for Contingent Conjuration, which is the second half of the class after the planar ally cost reduction. But it does technically say "prepare", and FS is spontaneous (not that there even were any spontaneous casters of Lesser Planar Ally when the PrC was written). Except the lawyer reading can easily say that Thaumaturgist makes no mention of needing a pre-existing spell preparation ability, never says it's part of "preparing your spells normally," so since the feature says you may prepare that means you may prepare, period. If that doesn't fly you could take Arcane Preparation, except oh wait that has Arcane in the name. Hey, there's something new for the tweak list.

Or, do what I finally did and finish re-reading the rest of the feature, which already precludes such waffling by declaring that "prepare. . . ahead of time" actually involves casting the spell beforehand, as with Contingency, so no such hemming or hawing need be done.

That's at worst a free Quicken 1/day, even if you don't make use of more contingent ideas, and one of the problems of summoning non-uber creatures is getting enough of them on the field/in combination with other spells to get the job done. This feature does the thing.

[Thurbane]

Thanks all for the feedback.

Just wondering, is the Superior Summons feat from Dragon Compendium worthwhile? It gives +1 CL to Conjuration (Summoning) spells, and for the cost of 250gp topaz per casting, summoned creatures get max HP, and you can cast touch range spells on them so long as they are in your line of sight.

It's a bit of an obscure feat, so it doesn't get mentioned much. Also, at lower level, the monetary cost really adds up quickly.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Thanks all for the feedback.

Just wondering, is the Super Summons feat from Dragon Compendium worthwhile? It gives +1 CL to Conjuration (Summoning) spells, and for the cost of 250gp topaz per casting, summoned creatures get max HP, and you can cast touch range spells on them so long as they are in your line of sight.

It's a bit of an obscure feat, so it doesn't get mentioned much. Also, at lower level, the monetary cost really adds up quickly.

I'd say no, it's not. Summoned creatures generally don't last long enough to make max HP worth it. Or spending extra spells buffing them in most cases.
You generally have much better options to spend your feats on.

You can also grab the Ring of Mighty Summons (CM, 14k gp) if you think you'll need the max HP, but i've found it to generally not be worth the money.
Imbued Summoning generally isn't worth a feat slot either. The Summoner's Totem (MIC, 3100gp) is - mostly in a "might as well" sense because of its cheap price - but it's limited to SNA.

Edit: What you should try to get your hands on if you can is the Worldmeet Glade (CM, 18k). It's limited to arcane casters by RAW but considering the disadvantage a FS summoner operates at it's not unreasonable to allow it imo.
The +2hp/HD and untyped +2 to saves, checks, attacks and damage goes a long way to letting your summons stay relevant against higher level enemies.

[Particle_Man]

Just as an odd ball idea but you might want to look at FS 2/cleric 1/master of shrouds 10 for a way to summon different stuff. Not sure if line is Morris would be approved though. (Or fs1/cleric 2/master of shrouds 10).

[Akal Saris]

Thanks all for the feedback.

Just wondering, is the Superior Summons feat from Dragon Compendium worthwhile? It gives +1 CL to Conjuration (Summoning) spells, and for the cost of 250gp topaz per casting, summoned creatures get max HP, and you can cast touch range spells on them so long as they are in your line of sight.

It's a bit of an obscure feat, so it doesn't get mentioned much. Also, at lower level, the monetary cost really adds up quickly.

I think the character will be feat-starved enough that it won't see much use. Other than Polymorph, I'm not sure what touch spells you'd want to cast on your summons, and until level 12+ that 250g is super pricy for full health. Generally rather than single target touch spells I would instead look at group buffs like haste, mass fire shield, etc.

[Endarire]

Malconvoker1 means you're a full spell level behind a Cleric in terms of casting. Malconvoker5's benefit is about half the time replaced by being able to cast higher level spells, including higher level summons where you summon d3 or more at a time.