Quote:
Originally Posted by Saros  Summoned monsters do indeed have some annoying drawbacks:
1. You cannot summon(and control) more than five at a time unless you deploy the PI/Simulacrum summoning bug.
2. They tend to die easily because of enemy Death Spells and Death Rays which kill them without any checks.
3. Summons do tend to turn on you when you use Area of Effect spells like Cloudkill, Death Fog, Incendiary cloud, Meteor Swarm and so on.
4. Summons are usually weak. With few exceptions. For instance, Skeleton Warriors are valuable, because of their high Magic Resistance, good combat abilities and their immunity to Normal Weapons. Mordenkainen Swords are immune to most type of damage , have excellent THAC0 and are considered +4 weapons, which makes them a great assault weapon and also barrier for damage absorbtion. Nishruus and Harkeashars are great versus Mages and Liches of all kinds. The other summons may have its uses to a vanilla Mage, but to a Sorcerer they are quite useless because of the few new spell choices the Sorcerer has in general. For instance, there are usually much more important spells on lvl 5,6 and 7 rather than to waste them on choices like Animate dead or Summon Nishruu. On lvl 5, your essential, life-saving choices are Breach, Spell Immunity, Sunfire, Spell Shield and Lower Resistance. On lvl 6, ProMW, True Sight, Contingency, Death Fog and Improved haste are essential for a soloer. On Lvl 7, there are simply no slots for Djinni/Efreeti/Harkeashar. Well, maybe one, but then again, I prefer Spell Turning/Protection from Elements/Limited Wish/Ruby Ray as my fifth spell pick(previous four being Projected Image, Mordenkainen's Sword, Spell Sequencer and Delayed Blast Fireball). So, your sorcerer is best limited to Summon Planetar and Mordenkainen Sword summons, any more will be waste of valuable spell picks. |
I have to say that i have played a couple of times a solo sorc, and i didn't pick Sunfire, Contingency (normal, i did pick chain), death fog, delayed fireball, or proyected image. I don't remember the exact speels i chose, but i do remember i din't pick those, and still the game got way too easy after picking horrid wilting (or something like that). It just sucks everything in it's way.
For summons, i used skeletons almost all the time, later when i got mordekainen swords i used them too, but the back up summon (sk warrior) always made up for the quick vanish of the swords, and of course, one you get to have high lvl spells, planetar is a must (although in ToB they sometimes lasted less than sk warriors because planetaries can be turned against you should the save vs mind control (of the sort spells) fail, and trust me: having a planetar for an enemy is something not good.
Cheers!!!