Tales from the Summoner

Ok, UserUnfriendly is now userfriendly. (problems with superboard)
Anyway, I've been playing with the various summoning spells, and have some more information on how to maximize your monster infantry.

First, even though my party has holy avenger, staff of magi, and celestial fury, in chapter 2, I still use skeleton warriors as my front line troops. my party almost always just fires projectiles to disrupt spellcasting, or supporting shock waves of skeletons.

Here is a trick from gamebanshee. While your mages can only summon 5 monsters at a time, if you cast project image or sim and cast any number you want. once had 12 skeleton warriors in an attempt to win the twisted rune. unlike a spell protection cast on a party member by a projected image, scrolls, green ones and skeletons will remain after the projection is unsummoned. so use projected image to summon skeletons, but do not use it to tank up your fighters.

two words...delayed-action fireball! I won the twisted rune by casting farsight on the room, and sent a projected image of my mage in, (won't trigger dialog) and setting up about 6 delayed action fireballs where the beholder and vampires d-door in. setup 6 traps where the lich comes in, and cast protection from evil. sent my main cahracter with 125% fire protection, potion, green scroll, and protection from energy and the lich jumped after talking tom me, and died from the traps. the beholder fried, the vampires fried, and since I was too lazy to set up far side of the room the mage gated in a pitfiend. my party was protected, so i farsighted and watched the pitfiend rip her to shreads. funny.

also killed one of teh liches in the demi lich quest that way. 4 delayed action fireballs triggered as soon as he arose, before he had a chance to summon spell protection.

morkainen swords are good for attacking targets with high resistance to magic weapons. like golems and elementals. plus, as a bonus if the monster kills your swords, the corpses contain greenstone amulets that don't use charges but provide you with a mindshield when you equip!!!!!

went into the slaver lords with them, and the mage sion cast confusion and chaos, I was still able to perfectly control my npcs.

afreets can provide a wonderful addition to the fire based family of spells. say you're troll hunting, and you run low on fireball spells, summon a afreet and you now have some more flamestrikes, fireballs and fireshields.

invisible stalkers suck. i have found no use for them that the highly resistant, lasts all day skeleton warrior can't handle. nishru sounds cool, but does not seem too sueful against liches. will try out on some human mages.

the important thing about using summoned monsters is if the target is capable of using the death spell, or casting death fog, you can kill them good bye. both will dispell all your summoned monsters in range. this is why they're of linited use against liches and beholders, unless you can get them up close. I was able to kill liches in the shade lord dungeon because by the time the lich saw the troops, the skeletons were in close combat range, and started swinging. contrary to the manual, even though skeleton warriors have only +1 swords, they can and have taken down liches.

skeleton warriors have only two flaws. they really get chomped by greater werewolves and golems, and they stick around all day. so, since you can't cast more than five without using a projection, if you're about to move from one area to another and you still have 5 skeletons, you can't cast anymore for a while. the trick is to either rest, which is another benefit since they will guard you while asleep, or just gather them together and cast a death fog on them. they instantly dispell.

against greater werewolves, lure them into the open so that several skeletons can attack a greater werewolf at once, the well known cuisinart tactic. golems, you want to mix skeletons and mordenkained swords, which can crush through the golem magic resistance.

oh yeah, spiders are good against enemys vulnerable to normal weapons, plus they move in hasted speeds. elementals are just a pain in the butt. takes too long to control them, so you can really have only 2 or so at a time. I also found no special benefit in a fire elemental against liches. would be different if my character was a cleric, however I'm not.

if anyone knows of a good use for nishru, or invisible stalker, please post.

I also have a general question. after you refuse to sleep with aerie and say you love her, is her romance dialog ended? is there any further interaction?

someone please post a reply, as I might well restart the game and explore the jahira romance if that is all that is with aerie. would hate to do that as i consider jahira only slightly less irritating than nalia.

[Zoratorak]

umm... ok.. nice information.
i totally agree with you that skeleton warriors are one of the best frontline troops since they are tough and have a high magical resistance.
ninshuru and hakaeshar (i think that is how its spelled) is really good againt mages and thier spells.

one time i knew there was a powerful mage in the next door so i just sent a ninsheru and had the mage finish all his most powerful spells on it while it was just standing there takikng all the damage (healing)