summons need more AC

[Steve]

My badly built melee fighter PCs reach 56–60 AC. That’s so far above what I think the ask here is, for summons that, especially from build by power builders ( ) are reaching now only 46-45.

Can’t we mee5 halfway?!?

[Aspect of Sorrow]

ETAo that ceiling reduction?

It's already underway, the changelog shows NPCs getting their immunities stripped away among other attributes changing, being spearheaded by Ravial to detune the overall historic power creep on the NPC side. There's a lot, so it will take some time to complete but it has been an ongoing effort in practice for several months now.

[Steve]

ETAo that ceiling reduction?

It's already underway, the changelog shows NPCs getting their immunities stripped away among other attributes changing, being spearheaded by Ravial to detune the overall historic power creep on the NPC side. There's a lot, so it will take some time to complete but it has been an ongoing effort in practice for several months now.

Fair enough. Point taken. Sorry to say I haven’t noticed any difference, but then again I don’t go out grinding mobs/bosses much at all.

I just occasionally go through and Area with mobs to get somewhere else, and watch my Summons get whacked good because their AC is weak.

[Hawke]

I run dedicated summoner/necromancers as well. If my build can fit Thaumaturge, that is best case. If it cannot, then I will still take Epic Conjuration and most of the time Augment summon and sometimes Beckon the Frozen for added damage potential.

If I don't have 2 summons out running around, I find the enhanced summons (with normal feats) to be, meh. They get hit a LOT. I do like Steve's suggestion for them having Regen +1. This won't let them recover from the brink all the time (because of summons duration) but it would help them top off and gain maybe 10 HP in between fights.

What helps in combat is the Thaum with the 2 summons (or 2 summons and Companion) because they tend to trade agro, so the damage is distributed so it seems like they are doing well.

I think that if you investing in a PrC then there should be some added benefit to either quality of life or power increase. Remember, you are burning a dozen spells to "enhance" your summons, not including yourself. So that in itself is a tradeoff.

I agree and somewhat disagree with having the summons be as good as an equal level fighter doing content. I don't think the summons should be able to solo one of the epic level bosses, and epic levels bosses shouldn't even be able to be solo'd, but I know that is the gold standard. But they should be able to go toe to toe with support from the caster.

But again, a +1 regen for summons AND companions would be a huge quality of life improvement.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

Mass Lesser Vigor is wandable to give your entire party +1 regen and is available now.
Standard Vigor is wandable per target for +2 regen, equal availability.

Wands are UMD DC 10, so a UMD investment of 9, or UMD 7 and Linguistics 5 + 1d20 ensures viable use. A lower investment with CHA mod.

Hound Archons also will self Lay on Hands as well as on the caster if using the VWD quick instruction.

Some summons, such as Hound Archons, have self buffs if you start a conversation with them out of combat.

Extended displacement and stock stoneskin from the caster cL goes a long way for the summons.

If you have hitpoints, Shield Other (UMD DC 27) cL/hr will halve the damage incoming to the NPC the rest is delivered onto the caster.

Take advantage of Wall of Stone, Bigby Interposing, Mord sword/MischImg/ProgImg/MalImg, as separate temporary "tanks".

[Ghost]

You can also gather wolf/bear/rat/boar meat, cook it on a normal campfire and it will give you basically free lesser vigor useables that you can in fact use on others (including your summons).

Also I think there are some summons that do have regeneration?

[Steve]

Below is a screenshot of the Greater Planar Binding summons Qorrashi, that I choose as an example because: a) it's a middle-of-the-road choice from all that are available with GPB; b) it's not a Gate or Named Being summons, something with a longer duration. It is fully buffed (as much as I know of except using atm Displacement), with Epic Spell Focus Conjuration feat and Augment Summons.

42 AC / 35 AB / 23 DMG avg / 29-27-23 Saves



It's far from a typical, non-min/maxed melee toon. Far from it, actually.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

42 AC / 35 AB / 23 DMG avg / 29-27-23 Saves

More than sufficient, especially if you're summoning two.

[Rask]

Below is a screenshot of the Greater Planar Binding summons Qorrashi, that I choose as an example because: a) it's a middle-of-the-road choice from all that are available with GPB; b) it's not a Gate or Named Being summons, something with a longer duration. It is fully buffed (as much as I know of except using atm Displacement), with Epic Spell Focus Conjuration feat and Augment Summons.

42 AC / 35 AB / 23 DMG avg / 29-27-23 Saves



It's far from a typical, non-min/maxed melee toon. Far from it, actually.

Try being an evil Thaum, none of your summons have good AC. At best even buffed they hit maybe 35.

I play a Thaum, Red Wizard, with Epic Spell Focus Conjur, and 10 levels of blood magus, all of these theoretically boost summons when used together and I still cant get decent AC on any of my evil aligned summons, they're all terrible. The buffs from these abilities seem to only buff things like Str, AB and CON, but not AC.

The best one I have access too is Fiendest Wolf which has over 400 HP and OK ish AB, but only reaches at most maybe 38 AC, an this is WITH buffs. They just die if they get hit by anything in higher level dungeons, they dont have enough AC to mitigate hits.

Maybe its the evil summons specifically? I dont have access to the other creatures when evil aligned, which seem to be more powerful. Gate is particularly bad as it basically summons the exact same creatures as Planar Binding does.

I also agree that even giving them +1 regen would be really handy. The fact is when you're a dedicated arcane conjurer like this, you depend a lot on your summons to work properly. Also we used to be able to summon 2 Palar bindings at once and some update at some point happened and now that doesnt work anymore, it unsummons the second one, evil also lost access to all the neutral summons form Planar, and the Balor ect from Gate. While some of the summons are thematically decent, they're incredibly bad when stacked up against the neutral and good aligned summons, and even those arent very good either.

[Ithilan]

Perhaps streamlining the planar summons to be some what on par with each other would be ideal?

It is a bit sad the Hound Archon is a much better pick than anything else in the list for most places.

The regeneration could compensate a bit for the AC issues Rask describes. But I would personally prefer to see it tied in to either Thaumaturge or Epic Spell Focus Conjuration if so, rewarding the investment of a dedicated summoner build perhaps, and not a baseline global buff.

But as described by Ghost and AoS, theres a lot of consumable options to power up your summons too. Which im a bit mixed about, I would prefer a world where UMD wasnt mandatory, but it is regardless of build almost.

If you have access to spells like wall of stone, thorns and many of the other object/barricade spells, you can also create a lot of tempoary tanks for your summons.

I utilize the fog spell from the cleric spell book level 1 a fair bit to give them concealments, with various healing spells and regenerations running on them from my cleric as well as a number of wands, putting my planar summon at 50 AC when I have extended recitations up, 49 on my elemental and 60 on my animal companion, which seems to suffice for most things, if I do not just tank the boss with the cleric itself. But as an arcane caster its quite a different scenario I suppose, though you have access to far better concealment spells and an offensive arsenal that should enable a lot of the same boss killing capabilities if not more.

[Rask]

It would certainly help if more of the planar spells and such were more on the same level as each other for sure. As it stands right no2 the good and neutral aligned choices are all significantly better than the evil ones, and evil no longer has access to the neutral ones that used to be reliable. There's rewlly nothing good to choose from by comparison.

I agree that "use umd" isnt a good alternative either.

[Ghost]

But as described by Ghost and AoS, theres a lot of consumable options to power up your summons too. Which im a bit mixed about, I would prefer a world where UMD wasnt mandatory, but it is regardless of build almost.

I don't mean to be pedantic, but the case of the cooked food that I mentioned is not UMD. I actually agree that an ideal world wouldn't make UMD feel mandatory. But I do think in D&D some level of consumable use should be expected.

[Ithilan]

But as described by Ghost and AoS, theres a lot of consumable options to power up your summons too. Which im a bit mixed about, I would prefer a world where UMD wasnt mandatory, but it is regardless of build almost.

I don't mean to be pedantic, but the case of the cooked food that I mentioned is not UMD. I actually agree that an ideal world wouldn't make UMD feel mandatory. But I do think in D&D some level of consumable use should be expected.

A reasonable correction, though im afraid the non UMD consumables are quite incomparable to a few wands or scrolls. Lesser vigor also has an incredibly short duration, it takes a lot of rat meat to work with the summons health pools id imagine. A ring of nine lives could be a worthwhile inventory item for an arcane summoner though.

We used to have stone root for greater stoneskin available too, im not certain if we still do through the current herb system, but those kind of alternatives/additional consumables would help a lot for some things as well.

[Ghost]

Did you know the Essence of Deva Tears Sap from the temple of Ilmater contains 3 uses of Heal that you don't need UMD for and can be used on others? I'll admit I'm not entirely sure if it's wise for those to continue to be available!

[Rask]

But as described by Ghost and AoS, theres a lot of consumable options to power up your summons too. Which im a bit mixed about, I would prefer a world where UMD wasnt mandatory, but it is regardless of build almost.

I don't mean to be pedantic, but the case of the cooked food that I mentioned is not UMD. I actually agree that an ideal world wouldn't make UMD feel mandatory. But I do think in D&D some level of consumable use should be expected.

A reasonable correction, though im afraid the non UMD consumables are quite incomparable to a few wands or scrolls. Lesser vigor also has an incredibly short duration, it takes a lot of rat meat to work with the summons health pools id imagine. A ring of nine lives could be a worthwhile inventory item for an arcane summoner though.

We used to have stone root for greater stoneskin available too, im not certain if we still do through the current herb system, but those kind of alternatives/additional consumables would help a lot for some things as well.

I do have a repertoire of wands, including stuff like Stoneskin, and I have several of those water things that recharge every rest that give lesser vigor. It still isnt enough to compensate for having 35-38 AC on the summons. They still just die in higher level dungeons in mere moments. The enemies AB is just way too high and the consumables do not compensate for it. The summons dont do much damage either, so if they cant be used for damage, and cant be used to tank for the Arcane caster-thaum using them, then things are most certainly underpowered in these scenerios.

though it doesnt seem anyone is interested in resolving these issues. My level 30 RW is basically unable to dungeon delve at the moment so I tend to just RP and avoid it. I guess ill just continue doing that. But really an increase of 5 or so AC and +1 regen across the board is a pretty simple change that would do wonders for these. Even if you have to make it Thaum or Epic Spell Focus exclusive, it would go a long way. Even with that change, they will likely still die pretty easily too, so its a pretty minor buff.