Valgrim the Summoner

In this campaign, I’m playing Valgrim the dwarven summoner. My goal with him is to eventually become a Malconvoker, a prestige class from Complete Scoundrel that allows a good character to summon evil creatures in order to fight evil. I’ve wanted to play a summoner for a while and see if I can make one effective.

To that end, I worked up a thread on the Wizards Character Optimization board summarizing all of the legal 3.5e summonable monsters. Check it out!

To augment that now that I’m higher level, I’ve submitted evaluations of all the legal 3.5e Planar Bindable monsters too in Treantmonk20’s excellent “Mastering the Malconvoker” thread on the CharOp board. See it here!

UPDATE: They’re not completely finished, but due to popular demand, here’s my Malconvoker cheat sheets.

Also a shout out to Gnorman, a guy who is building on my work and including even more demons and devils for summoning/binding purposes – his thread is currently on Brilliant Gameologists; he was doing it both on Giant in the Playground and the Wizards forums before getting fed up with the suck. Follow along!

The campaign rules are mostly 3.5e standard. Anything from a published Wizards product is legit, with of course the additions from the Adventure Path. We also have some simplified skill rules in use. Oh, and we’re using the Action Point rules from the Eberron campaign setting – does anyone not?

Here’s Valgrim at each level. In each session summary it mentions his level at any given time.

Valgrim – Level 3 – Took the Acidic Splatter reserve feat. Reserve feats are nice because you have a use-at-will ability – the main drawback to this one, though, is the really short range; 5′ per level of the spell you’re reserving.

Valgrim – Level 6 – Took a level of Paragnostic Apostle. With our variant skill rules it’s the only way to get Bluff up enough to become a Malconvoker without waiting 4 more levels. The Fast Healing for my summoned creatures is a nice bonus (though sadly, no one ever attacks the summons so it’s largely unused). Also took Craft Wondrous Item, but we’re too poor to use it😦

Valgrim – Level 7 – finally, a Malconvoker! I was careful to craft the build not to lose any other spellcasting levels, because you lose one here.

Valgrim – Level 9 – Malconvoker 3. People are attacking my summons plenty now and the hp boost is good – I add in a Varisian Idol from the Adventure Path, a disposable item that gives summons +2 hp/HD. Took Craft Magic Arms and Armor to help out my buds – Giantbane for all!!!

Valgrim – Level 11 – Malconvoker 5. LEGION!!! At this level when a Malconvoker summons evil creatures, he gets one extra! And I get teleport. I am junior hell on wheels, and at next level with the feat/stat/skill bumps I’m going to be full impact hell on wheels.

Valgrim – Level 12 – Malconvoker 6. I am now a god among men (well, dwarves, but as I pointed out last session when my +2 on saves vs. spells saved my life from a finger of death, just being a dwarf is like a superpower to a human).

Valgrim – Level 13 – Malconvoker 7. Not much more in terms of abilities, but I got some phat lewt (robe of the archmagi!).

Advantages – I’m happy with Valgrim. Though the summons aren’t always competitive combatants at a given level, his ability to summon them as a standard action and have them immediately act has been invaluable for battlefield control. And keeping the full extended list of summonables on hand has been very useful. There’s more or less objectively useful summons, but sometimes one of the weird little ones is perfect for a given situation. Once I got Fiendish Legion the summoning was hell on wheels. And some of the new spells from the Spell Compendium are useful – I get a lot of mileage out of Benign Transposition, which allows you to teleport-swap two willing subjects. And Confusion and related enchantments have also been great, with our foes mainly being giants and giant derivatives.

Drawbacks – our group is somewhat large, so the summons don’t always get much room or time in the combat. Many of the opponents are smart enough that they never bother wasting attacks on the summons, and especially against foes higher than our average party level the summons can’t hit the enemies reliably. And when they do, DCs of special abilities often have a very slim chance of success. Also, many of Valgrim’s other spells are area effect crowd control – clouds, bursts like Glitterdust, etc. – and he seldom gets them off because *someone* charges to the attack before he can cast. His buffs like Haste have been more successful.

I’ve had mixed success with Planar Binding. It takes a while to get a successful bind due to high outsider Will saves, and you need a spell list tailored to it, so you generally need to bind “back at base,” but then the duration isn’t too long, so overland travel means bye bye to the bind. Notable successes – with our party cleric’s help (debuffs) I bound a bar-lgura, a kinda of orangutang demon which can teleport itself and someone else with it, and it was invaluable for getting in and out of dungeons, extracting prisoners, etc in Stone Giants. I bound a nalfeshnee in the Runeforge but it wasn’t all that useful. I bound a glabrezu demon to go to Xin-Shalast but its time ran out. I bound another glabrezu while in Xin-Shalast, that one did OK. I wouldn’t replace any of our PCs with it, but it helped put a whupping on a big dragon.

Geek it up:

54 responses to “Valgrim the Summoner”

Hey, I’ve been actively following your threads on the WotC boards, as well as your RotRL campaign here. Having just started a Malconvoker of my own, I was wondering if you’d be willing to email me your “full extended list of summonables”. I’ve been working on creating my own version of such a document, but if I can benefit from someone’s else’s hard work…

Hey, I’ve also been following TM’s Mastering the Malconvoker thread on the WOTC boards and began to put together a list of summons, as I’m going to be starting the Rise Of The Runelords path next weekend. Is there any chance I could get a look at the one that you have for Valgrim? I’ve resisted the urge to read through the session summaries for RotRL, but I really enjoyed your other summaries.

Love the RotRL thread. Sounds likes an amazing adventure. A favor: could you send me a copy of your expanded summoning list? I”m playing a cleric based malconvoker (I love the pathos of such a character!), and am looking at expanding his list of summons, especially with regards to demons and devils. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Followed your Mastering Malconvoker stuff on the Wizards site and it lead here eventually, to the cheat sheet. What a relief. You’ve brought order to chaos… just like my Cleric Malconvoker😀

We’re starting the campaign at level 6, so I’m Cl5 Malc1 for now. Kalashtar race, who by happy coincidence have bluff bonuses. It really was coincidence, until i realised my attempt at flavour became a rather sick bonus mechanically. I ought to take the Luck domain as my second for that fact, as not a single deity in FR seems to have Summoning.

The good thing about this build is that, besides those, you are pretty much not feat-bound. I chose the Acidic Splatter reserve feat because I love reserve feats, gives me something to do on rounds when I don’t want to burn a spell, though got increasingly less use out of it with level (when it’s hard to burn through all your spells!).

At the next level I had a hard time choosing one, finally going wiht the prosiac School Focus: Enchantment. All the other feats that seemed summoner-tuned just weren’t compelling for me. Metamagic school focus, cloudy conjuration, greater school focus, summon elemental… All OK but no must-haves.

Doesn’t sound like you need the help, but I was thinking about Demon Mastery next, for a +2 Bluff on my summons.

Now, I didn’t spend time thinking through it for a cleric malconvoker, so there may be something compelling there. But in general, it’s those base 2 feats and then “whatever tickles your fancy.”

So I decided to start up Rise of the Runelords with some new players on a Friday, and try to run two campaigns. Since one was only a half-day I figured it’d be alright, but we’ll see. Anyhow, there’s two new players (each only having played a few sessions) and two experienced players. Amusingly enough, one of the new players wanted to do a Sorcerer Summoner, and when I showed him some splat books naturally leaned towards the Malconvoker. After looking through others, he’s now thinking about a Wizard with a couple levels in Master Specialist and a level in Paragnostic Apostle…hmmmmm…sounds familiar.

We use the Pathfinder RPG rules and I’m looking a lot of this stuff over. Those three prestige classes *should* be fine and easy to convert, though I’m curious how you guys did the whole “Paragnostic Assembly” thing in Golarion. Did you just leave that bit out?

The alternate class abilities are a bit interesting too. Rapid Summoning should still be fine, especially since it’d mean he could lose the Bonded Item (which is arguably much better than a familiar). I’ve never been sure about Enhanced Summoning, getting Augment Summoning in exchange for Scribe Scroll never seemed like a fair trade, considering how often I see my Wizard players actually scribe scrolls. Enhanced Specialization would probably still be alright, seems to translate fine with Pathfinder.

Any other suggestions you can offer? There’s a LOT of material and I don’t want to overwhelm him too much, though your spreadsheets and writeups help a lot. The one spreadsheet with all the Summons is without Augment Summoning though, correct? If you have any other ‘cheat sheets’, I’d love to see them!🙂

And when I say ‘fair trade’ with Augment Summoning and Scribe Scroll, I mean to say I *never* see people use Scribe Scroll, so getting Augment Summoning seems like a no-brainer. I realized after reading my post it looked like I was saying Scribe Scroll was better.

Hey, sure, glad to help! It’s always nice to see more summoners out there🙂

As for the Paragnostic Assembly, I put it in my backstory but the DM wasn’t real interested in biting; I tried to RP looking them up in Magnimar to no avail. You could potentially replace it with many various organizations, seems like it would fit in nicely with the themes of the AP.

Being a good summoner is second only to being a good Eberron artificer in terms of complexity. And a lot of the power comes from preparation, having all the monster books, etc. If you’re just summoning centipedes, you’ll suck. I’d say prep work is the key – have a short list of key summons with all the stats on index cards or whatnot. Hopefully my spreadsheet and docs will do a lot of the initial poring and statting work for him.

Yeah, my spreadsheet is without Augment or any other buffs, it was just easier that way.

You could certainly nerf one or two things like Enhanced Summoning – we were straight 3.5e so I was much more pressed for feats. With the higher feat progression it’s not bad to make them take Augment the old fashioned way.

I’d love to have an updated Malconvoker/Summoner/Conjurer guide updated to Pathfinder. The Conjuration specialist powers in PF are OK but don’t boost your summoning much until level 20, when Summoning Master is just awesome…

There may be some good summoner things in the various Pathfinder books, I’ll have to check. Varisian tattoo from the RotR guide is good.

Do you think having all the monster books is necessary, or could the summoner be just as effective with only the core SRD? Are there just some monsters from the other books that are *too* good to miss?

Oh, yeah, you have to have a larger variety of summons. That’s more important than all the class powers, feats, whatnot.

The real power of any wizard is in his or her flexibility. If you’re dealing with just SRD monsters, there are no useful special abilities etc. – it’s just “more fight,” but the summons can seldom hit what you’re fighting at a given level because of BAB disparity. I only ever summoned the celestial bison (sweet spot, it’s the first thing with DR) and colossal centipede (because they’re just so big and make great battlefield control) out of the entire PHB list. 90% of the power is in summoning something with abilities appropriate to the situation.

I rate the different monster books in my malconvoker docs, but in retrospect I’d say Fiendish Codex II and Monster Manual IV were my best ones. MMV and Fiend Folio were also quite productive.

Hm, I might have to at least grab PDFs of those books then, at the very least. Are there any monsters you think are obviously overpowered, or is everything for the summons around the same level of goodness, just with different versatility?

Nothing broken per se. Though the diversity of 3.5 (and the joy of being a summoner) is that everything’s broken against *someone*. You just pick the thing with strengths and weaknesses complementary to your opponents.

I will note that the Fiend Folio is 3.0 not 3.5. Although we never had to convert anything really.

Sounds good. Well, I’ll start with adding everything to Summon Monster I at least, doesn’t seem like much there. Shouldn’t need the next one for a few sessions. Converting it to Pathfinder shouldn’t take long either, I’ll post it up on my site if you’re interested.

Uploaded the first two Summon Monsters. Four different word docs. One’s the original, one is with Augment Summoning (_AS), the third is with AS and the second Deceptive Summons (_AS_DS2), the final with AS and Deceptive Summons 2 and 3 (_AS_DS2_DS3). I didn’t bother editing it for DS1 since that only changes the duration.

All should be updated to Pathfinder, though I may have missed a Fly skill here or there. I tried to reverse engineer everything too to make sure the to hits and damages still made sense, along with checking the skill ranks. I also tried to edit most of the Poisons and Diseases to use Pathfinder’s new rules, hopefully they don’t change *much* with the Beta (though conversion rules would be nice). The only things that are placeholder with those are the Levels, all are just ‘2’ for now.

Only creature that struck me as odd was the urEpona’s attack. With Augment on, it has a Strength of 20 and a BAB of +2. You would *think* the to hit with its hooves would be +6 (only natural attack, no secondary, -1 for size). However, it rests at a +1 for now, as it was a -1 when the strength was 16. No clue why. Everything else adds up, just not that.

Currently playing a malconvoker at the moment in a long running campaign.

I find planar binding amazing, it is a day/caster level. with the practised spellcaster feat to compensate for losing a level at Mal1 at level 10 it was 10 days. I’ve maximised bluff which is fun even on a wizard with low cha.

Started to gather persuasiony magic items to help bluffing random npc’s and binding demons.
once you have it in negotiating mode you just need to tell it to serve you for Casterlevel days. word it how you will, be careful to not leave it loopholes and then you get a realy nice cohort basically.😛

I’m playing a summoner now in a Shackled City campaign, and I’m about to hit level 3. After twelve consecutive misses with my crossbow, I’m convinced by the need for a Reserve feat. I’m struggling to choose between Acidic Splatter and Fiery Burst. Did you regret the short range of Acidic Splatter, or did ranged touch outweigh Reflex half?

I’ve been wanting to play a Malconvoker for a while now and looking at your character has given me some ways to make him a bit more effective. Sadly during our current adventure path (Rise of the Runelords) we were restricted to Core + Complete Warrior, arcane, adventurer and Divine so it’ll be a while before i can test it out. Thanks for the ideas

I’ve got another question for you mate… why did you take the levels in Master Specialist instead of staying Conjurer? Was it due to the alternative skill rules? Did you need Skill Focus: Spellcraft to free up skill points for Bluff?

My Conjurer 3 is standard 3.5 style. I’m not sure if I should just stay Conjurer and get Malconvoker ASAP, or take my time and take 4 levels of Master Specialist for the hp boost.

At the time I didn’t have Comp. Champion and Paragnostic Apostle so I thought I was going to take more levels of it. Basically just because it gives you a bit more than staying Wizard. At level 4 the wizard gets nothing, whereas I got a free feat and +2 to Will saves. At level 5, our campaign was very loot-poor and getting a new spell of my choice was a good addition. It’s not integral to a good Malconvoker build, I totally agree.

Sadly, our DM played everything with an INT above zero as just about never attacking my summons unless they really were the biggest threat around. At lower levels they went unattacked, at higher levels they got attacked more.

Note I didn’t get far enough in Master Specialist to get the hp trick from it.

The fast healing from PA only came into play a couple times really because my summons had a lot of hp and short durations. I got Lore also from Paragnostic Apostle, though, which was nice as all the other characters in that campaign were “dumb” battlewagons, so the burden of all the library research was up to me. Also I had to get Bluff onto my class spell list due to our variant skill rules and a multiclass was the only way to do that. So in my case, PA was a big win.

I also had a pocketful of Varisian Idols (+2 hp/HD for summons). So I could stack Augment Summoning (+2 hp/HD), a Varisian Idol (+2 hp/HD), Deceptive Summons: Fury (+2 hp/HD) and the fast healing (which improves with character level, not class level!) I also had a ring of mighty summons (max hp/HD for a halved duration) in case I really needed a super-hp. And of course most summons had DR. Using all of these might be overkill, but it’s good for battlefield control. Even at higher levels, say you summon a bunch of celestial bisons to plug the hole in your front lines. Normally they have 37 hp and DR 5/evil, which is about one hit from a lot of stuff – with all these trix they have 95 hp!

You have to get Augment Summoning, lots of other stuff has it as a prereq. Deceptive Summons gives you all kinds of other stuff too, and Varisian Idols are cheap to keep around and burn if you think you need a boost, so no reason not to have all three of these. The ring really was overkill, only for those times where you need to flee and want to chuck a colossal centipede with zillions of hp that attackers have to hack through before pursuing you.

Probably I’d only do the fast healing again if I took Extend Spell and was going for a long-lived creature schtick. But I didn’t run up against time limitations much after getting to level 3 or so, and my Varisian Tattoo gave me +1 CL (and thus +1 round).

The only things I think are totally necessary are, in order:

1. Rapid Summoning (variant class ability from UA). Standard action to summon = win. Especially if you get initiative (buy a Belt of Battle) you get to custom design the battlefield to your tastes.

3. The combination of being a conjurer and Focused Specialist (CM) gives you +2 spells per level. That gives you a much longer useful period at lower levels and more flexibility at higher levels – you have enough slots you can take some of those “perfect in limited circumstances” spells, and still have more than enough summons.

4. Augment Summoning – anything that gets your summons’ hit/damage up is a winner and this can be from level 1.

The rest of it is all nice to have. If you’re in a rich campaign and have wands to burn, you don’t need it, but if you’re poor like we were a reserve feat – Acidic Splatter was my favorite – is good.

Nice analysis – thank you!
And after three hours of shooting crossbow bolts (and missing) at an animated suit of armour – because I’d used all my spells in the first encounter of the evening- I’ve decided to go for the Acidic Splatter too🙂

Well, yesterday was Malbek’s first outing at 3rd level and he kicked serious bottom! We’re playing Shackled City, and the skulks have been hammering us for two levels.
(Another issue, but whose idea was it to start a campaign with a huge dungeon for 1st level characters – full of critters who all have concealment and +40 hide and sneak damage!!! AND all the magic items are cursed! LOL – it’s one encounter and run for the surface)

Anyhow, last night we got ambushed by THREE skulks, and two almost TPK’d us the last time. We wiped the floor with them. My spider netted one, then Glitterdust spoiled their hiding and sneaking fun. My assistants (rest of the party) mopped them up nicely while I went back to reading my book. The DM was kind of stunned, the players were euphoric and high-fiving!🙂
I love my Conjurer!

LOL! Yep. Talk about “easy mode,” at the end of Rise of the Runelords we had this battle with wave after wave of giants and stuff – it would have been impossible, but I cast Brilliant Aura for my comrades and summoned amnizus and suddenly the slaughter was sickening in its magnitude.

Got a quick question. My Summoner is now almost 6th level and the Huge Giant Centipede with enlarged Ranger riding it is a fast party favourite – since you add your reach to the base size of the beast it gives him 25 foot reach🙂 (We’re using quickie riding rules)
Other faves – SM3 for 1d3 Varoot Nerra and 20-ish mirror images to soak attacks and the crabs are brutal – touch attack & constrict is nasty!

Anyhow – he’s Conjuror 3 Master Specialist 2 I’m wondering if I should immediately take Malconvoker next level or take another level Master Specialist first. I kind of fancy a Fortitude and Reflex boost rather than yet another +2 Will. On the other hand, one point on a save vs one level sooner getting the good stuff seems a poor choice.

Greater School Focus is properly useful though – I’m torn.

And.. a second question – would you still rate the Summon Elemental reserve feat as a decent choice for level 6?

Hey man! I would go immediately to Malconvoker. Getting Legion ASAP is the shizznit. I only waited one level because our variant skill system demanded it. Maybe go back after Legion, but then you’ll be addicted to the binding stuff.

Summon Elemental… Eh. Basically good if you want a pet/scout. Though I was kinda hard up for useful feats. After that level I didn’t really have any that made much difference to me. I used acidic splatter but once in a blue moon. Ended up taking crafting feats for kicks.

Thanks – plus I forgot you need 4th level spells for it – which will be level 8 (ouch). I may go for Dimension Reach instead – grab small items at range (and get +1CL for summons).
Or Create Potion, though we’re getting very little downtime at the minute.
Ahh, decisions decisions!

Ahoy, matey! I’ve got a quick question for ya. I noticed that Valgrim is LG and summoned a Gadacro, I was wondering how he swung that. I assumed the Unrestricted Conjuration schtick from Malconvoker but that is worded slightly differently. It seems to be more of a “Let good clerics use spells with evil descriptors” rather than “seem to be Lawful Evil”.
As you may have guessed, my Malconvoker is aproaching level 8 and with him being True Neutral, he can’t get any Arcadian Avengers.
… or can he?

Sure he can. Reread Unrestricted Conjuration. “Unrestricted Conjuration: For the purpose only of casting conjuration spells, you can ignore any restrictions that forbid you from casting spells of certain alignments. In addition, regular use of conjuration spells with the evil descriptor does not threaten to change your alignment. ” Any, end of story. Of course this is even more useful for clerics, since they stand to lose more from alignment changes, but the entire point of the class is to be Good but summon evil stuff by fooling them to use them towards Good ends. (Deceptive Summons, etc. – the quote from the Class Features is “As a malconvoker, you turn the powers of your enemies back upon them, deceiving creatures into opposing those they might typically ally with.”).
Being Neutral, you can summon Arcadian Avengers just fine, and it doesn’t threaten your alignment even if you cared for some reason as a neutral mage… Though many of your class abilities work better if you’re summoning evil critters.

That’s what I think too, though it’s not a spell with an Alignment descriptor that he can’t cast – like a good cleric and the Evil descriptor. It looks (to my DM with English as 2nd language) more like an alignment restriction on the caster.
“A non-evil, lawful spellcaster can summon an Arcadian Avenger.”
“A lawful evil spellcaster can permanently replace a fiendish giant wasp with a white abishai”
Any more good reasoning?😉

I don’t understand the question. For one, when you cast a summoning spell it gains the relevant alignment descriptor based on the kind of being you summon. For two, I don’t follow your last post at all, except to say that I can’t fix ESL, but the entire point of the class including all its abilities and flavor text is about a summoner able to summon evil beings and use them for good. Is he reading the actual Malconvoker entry in the real book or some kind of rules crib from the Internet?

Basically the counter-argument seems to be this. If it said “Summoning an Arcadian Avenger is a Lawful Good spell” then a chaotic evil cleric wouldn’t be allowed to cast it… except with a level of malconvoker.
The problem is, the text in Monster Manual 5 doesn’t say anything about alignment restrictions on the spell, it puts a restriction on the alignment of the caster.
Which is the hurdle I now need to clear with a super-argument.🙂

And it’s the full text, he’s just being a bit literal with the RAW interpretation.

The ring of mighty summons works 3x/day but it will apply to anything summoned as part of that one summon – its description reads “This ring can be used up to 3x/day. While casting any Summon spell, any creature summoned…” So it applies to the spell, not the creatures, and “any creature summoned [by that spell]” is affected. So you get 3 spells worth, and anything you summon gets the bump. Though I seldom had my summons die from hp loss, the GM was all about having the monsters metagame and not bother to attack them and just focus on me🙂 (fair when it’s archmages, not so much when it’s hill giants).

Legion is great though. You have to scream “LEGION!!!!” when you do it at the table though, like you’re in the anime Bastard!. Adds to the flavor.

Thanks! I’d missed that while reading it – put it down to sleep deprivation. The smaller sprog keeps waking up in the middle (and beginning and end) of the night!
I’ll be checking out the anime immediately – you should do a blogpost on your anime faves🙂

Howdy! I’ve finally taken the Hero Lab plunge, and with the community packs it’s great for 3.5 as well as PF. Except… there doesn’t seem to be a Malconvoker in the Community pack. Did you ever find a custom Malconvoker class for it? (Or do you know anyone who could whip one up?)