Favorite Summons

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Druids don't normally get Gate, so no Pit Fiends.

Pit Fiends are really nice if you're prepared for them - not just protected from evil, but from fire as well. They use fireballs that do way more damage than the player's. I also like Cacofiend and Summon Fiend a lot.

At fairly low levels the 5th level elemental summonings are very useful, because there's still so many enemies around who don't have +2 weapons to hurt them with. It's a lot of fun to have a bunch of yuan-ti waste their energy on an elemental. The duration is a bit short, though.

In terms of practicality and sheer power, Mordenkainen's Sword is damn near invincible. A bit too much so, I think, but that's just me.

 

Ice storm is a 4th level spell I love.


I don't use a lot of summons myself though. Don't know why. when I do it's usually either spider spawn or an elemental summoning.

 

Hey, what's up with Carrion Summons. That's a sixth level spell that I scribe for the XP but don't actually ever use. I mean Carrion Crawlers? Are you kidding me? And I have to hesitate in using the plural, because you'll likely only get one. I mean, come on. Low level characters in BG1 can take care of a carrion crawler. What's the deal here?

 

Just one of the many, many stupid spells than no one ever would or should use. It's fluff.

 

Carrion Summons is just way too high level for it's usefulness. It would be nice against low level parties at the beginning of the game. But it takes to long to cast to be worth it at that high of level. heh. I tried that once. They died so quickly that I only ever tried it once. Though I did get two of them. Spider spawn you can at least get some decent spiders out of as you level up.

 

Wouldn't use web OR spider spawn as a sorc?? Ugh I doubt I could handle the early levels without it. Solo'd the planar prison to rescue haer dalis at 12 with almost only using web/SS. Even the master of thralls can be webbed into oblivion

Animate dead is by far my favorite summons. Of course, that is speaking from the sorc's viewpoint. 5 summoned warriors that last for hours, are tough to beat up (even imp pit fiends take a long time chewing them up), HUGE magic resistance, and can dish out some nasty damage, especially when hasted.

Its not a wasted slot at all for sorcs to choose that at 5th, because you get breach, SI, LR, and sunfire all to boot and 6 of them all. I hardly ever cast spells off my main char, I use PI's. As such there is just NO way to replace the value you get from a mini-army of skel wars. A walking wall of bone that chews things up and lets you stand back and cast .... what could be better? Sure you could cheese and spam out countless planetars with your PI, but that imo is just too much cheese.

Nice thing with sorcs is being able to phase your battles. Lead in with spiders to soak those silly death spells then send in the skel wars and mord swords and a planetar. Summon more as they get killed and then move in to spell range and trounce all over whatever is there and weakened. You just can't do that with a wiz.

 

My low level strategy consists mostly of Melf's Minute Meteors, Sunfire, and Magic Missile with Stoneskin and Mirror Image for protection. You don't necessarily ened spiders or web. I use slow to disable and it works wonders with it's nice save penalty.

 

But if it doesn't work then you have to fire off more... instead of just tossing out a web and standing on the appropriate side until whatever you're fighting is immobilised.

You may not need web/spider spawn, but they make things a hell of a lot easier. Especially if you layer the web spells and haste your spiders (until you get sword spiders, anyway).

 

Oh no doubt it makes things easier but it's not so helpful later on so I usually don't take it.

 

True, but what are you going to take instead of them? Not like there's piles of useful second/fourth level alternatives.

 

Well I've not played a Sorcerer in quite a while but I'll try and remember.

For level two I take Mirror Image, Resist Fear, Glitterdust, Melf's Acid Arrow, and Knock.

For level four, I take Stoneskin, Improved Invisibility, Greater Malison, Polymorph Self, and Farsight.

 

Improved invisibility is a bit of a waste; you get mislead early and you'll never use it again after that.

Second level is tricker though.

 

Misleads can be killed, however, but with Spell Immunity: Divination, Improved Invisibility is much harder to get rid of.

 

Hide it behind a pillar or in a closet so it doesn't get killed. Permanent true invisibility for the duration of the spell. Once you get the staff of the magi, your mislead images can themselves become invisible at will.

 

I've not tested it, but does Spell Immunity: Divination protect your Mislead image from True Sight? If not, protecting it is much harder than protecting Improved Invisibility.

 

Nah, it doesn't. It's not hard to protect it though, you just need to cast it in advance and leave it a ways behind the action. Or if you don't want it as a liability at all, you can summon one, then kill it: now you have regular improved invisibility for the remainder of the spell's duration.

 

No, you cannot protect misled decoy, but you can just run it away from the battle, pretty doable with boots of speed I think.
I myself do not fancy imp invisible anymore, as mages are easily to deal with, and liches + bosses see thru invisible. Then again, who cares if you can get the staff of magi at lv10 ?

I'm curious though, what do you do with polymorph self ? I know mages can't do sh!t to the slime form but so does it, things get worse when smarter mages cast lower resist, pierce magic, summon, sunfire. It's obsolete later when you have shapechange (your PIs can even cast it from a scroll if you don't wanna waste a lv9 spell slot)

 

I took polymorph self too in my last game. The one time I tried to use it, it didn't work (I thought maybe I could resist a dragon's breath weapon... yeah, go me). Wouldn't bother again. Personally I could do without acid arrow too, only thing I ever use it for is killing trolls.

 

Polymorph self is used for many of the same reasons you use Web and Spider Spawn: it's helpful early on, though less universally. But then again, it only requires one spell slot. Sometimes I take Fireshield: Red over it. I know most people don't like the spell, but it handles melee mobs quite well if you're using Protection from Magical Weapons. It's a toss-up, really.

 

My mistake before - you don't even need to kill the mislead image. Just cast mislead and SI; even if the mislead gets dispelled by a hostile true sight, you still retain the imp. inv. effect for the spell's duration. You can use the spell exactly as you would improved invisibility.