Imbued Spell summons options

[erik]

Okay. I've been trying to justify taking the Imbue Spell feat from Player's Handbook II, which lets a caster summon a critter and have it affected by a single spell level 3 or less, with a range of touch.

I've been looking through the lists of spells and it's really quite abysmal. Flying rhinos, okay. Displacement, blah.

One entertaining "what if" immediately leapt to the front.
- What happens when you imbue a summoned creature with Magic Circle against Evil?

Does it immediately poof? Technically the creature never enters the area of the circle, it just spawns with the circle upon it, which makes me think that it works just fine, and that that might be a decent application in fringe cases.

[technomancer]

Well, as long as you use your summon monster spell to summon good monsters, then that particular clause doesn't matter, as Magic Circle against Evil prevents non-good summons from entering. Just choose the appropriate aligned critter or appropriate magic circle and you're good.

[User3]

I like how the feat suggests Bull's Strength, even though Augment Summoning is a direct prerequisite.

Anyway, Heroism is decent, and Invisibility and Protection from Arrows are both amazing in a few situations. The feat is only really worth it if you're getting a +0 adjustment out of it, though, because higher level summons are much better than enhanced lower level ones.

[erik]

I do intend to get a +0 adjustment, at the cost of another feat (Metamagic School Focus) though. I'm thinking I'm gonna hafta find some B.S. spell in the Spell Compendium or one of the climate books or others. Unfortunately I don't have access to a spell filter for that so it'll take some time.

[User3]

There's probably a single-target Haste in there somewhere.

[Username17]

Like all the bullshit that kind of works like this, this feat is only for Druids. It's there so that you can spontaneously summon a big animal and then cast nature's favor on it without using up a turn.

It's not really for anything else but to throw down a Giant Squid that already has +5 on attack and damage rolls when it comes into play.

-Username17

[erik]

Last night I poured through the level 1-3 options in the Spell Compendium for clerics, druids and wizards. I was considering doing Giant Squids + Air Breathing so that you could summon them anywhere, but it seems that the text of the summon spell that prevents land summoning aquatic critters is still not technically circumvented (though a reasonable DM may allow it).

Anywho, here's the front-runners as I see it:

Beastland Ferocity (fight to -9 HP, so possibly +1 round to a summoned creature's life),
Aid (better than Beastland Ferocity),
Fuse Arms (to totally own someone with giant squid grapple check of +39- fused arms+augment summon),
Nature's Favor (up to +5 attack/damage),
Magic Fang (+1 damage and penetrate DR),
Magic Circle vs Evil (mostly if you just wanted to lay one down anyways),
Invisbility Sphere (another 2 for 1 deal, mostly for a summoned body guard-surprise)
and my current favorite is on everybody's spell list- Girallon's Blessing (add 4 claw attacks + rend)

I just had a realization that the best uses for this feat might not be on summoned battle critters at all (other than Girallon's Blessing and Nature's Favor, that is). It will also work on spells like Mount or Secret Chest.