What is the best summoned fodder?

Moonheart

Simple question: What is the best thing you can sommon to serve as a fodder in this game?
- with buffs
- without buffs

MMMMK

It depends greatly on what level you are talking about. For SoA I'd say the best are Skeleton Warriors (very very handy for dealing with Beholders and Mind Flayers) and Werebears (only druids get these) for general beat-stick duty.

In ToB you have access to Devas/Planetars and those are probably the absolute best summons in the game because of their melee power and their spell casting ability.

Pantalion

Fodder?

Cleric Animated Dead with or without Haste. Virtually immune to magic, last forever, completely immune to a large selection of crowd control spells, and a level 15 cleric will be able to summon nine or so per day (which is what makes them such good fodder).

With haste you remove the speed penalty and more or less double their output, but either way, great spam spell.

wraith5641

Hands down, the clay golem. A good portion of the enemies in ToB use slashing weapons. Clay golems are immune to slashing weapons, elemental damage and have very high magic resistance. They can divert the attention away from most enemies, while doing significant damage themselves.

Heindrich

I associate the word "fodder" with "cheap and expendable"... which in BG 2 surely relates to how high level the spell is and how scarce the opportunity to cast it is, and the opportunity cost of other spells in that level... Otherwise I'd assume you'd have said "what is the best summoned creature?"

By my understanding the Clay Golem as suggested by @wraith5641 cannot be considered fodder since you only get one cast per "day" via the book.

I am going to say Fire Elemental from the Staff of Fire (or Priest spell). You can get the staff early in the game and for most of early to mid SoA it hits pretty hard against quite a lot of enemies and can survive pretty well unless Death-spelled. i.e. it's ideal for fights that don't quite warrant summoning a Planetar or dropping a Timestop bomb.

If we're allowed to move a little higher up the power curve, Mordenkainen's Sword is absolutely amazing for its level. It can single-handedly tie down some of the most dangerous enemies u come across and even does pretty impressive damage too.

lunar

Improved hasted planetar will solo SoA.
As a fodder, mordenkainen sword is best as it is immune to all damage except magic. Any enemy that can't utilise magic missile or horrid wilting or death spells can not hurt and the sword can tank hard hitter enemies like golems forever.

Arunsun

If, by fodder, you mean good tanks, then I guess Animate Dead and Sword of the Mordenkainen are what you want.
Considering how spammable it is, I'd say Animate Dead is the best, being only a level 3 divine spell, and Viccy has a freaking lot of them

Moonheart

Can we enchant a Mordenkainen sword with immunity to magic damage?

OlvynChuru

Moonheart said:

Can we enchant a Mordenkainen sword with immunity to magic damage?

You could cast Protection from Magic Energy on it.

wraith5641

The Clay Golem Manual can be duplicated with Vhailor's Helm. That's two summons per day. I haven't tried it, but I'd assume that a Shadowdancer can have 3 golems at once. One from themselves, one from their shadow clone, and one from their simulacrum. By this method, you would get three casts per day. If you're a wizard, you could effectively have as many casts per day as you like with Simulacrum. I'd say that counts as fodder. In fact, PI and Simulacrum effectively make the word "fodder" redundant. Why would I summon expendable monsters when I can have a free planetar or clay golem? There aren't loads of great level 7 spells anyway, so you can stock it with PI and use your planetars whenever you like.

If we're purely talking early game, then Conjure Animals is a useful druid spell that is underrated. Those bears are tougher than they look when you haste them.

Nuin

There are multiple such useful spells, because you don't exactly start the game with level 7 spell slots for Mordenkainen's Sword or level 9 slots for the Planetar.

Besides the ones already mentioned, the list includes:
-the monsters from the Wand of Summoning, cheap way to summon fodder and early game beggars can't be choosers
-druidic Fire Elementals (you get them by early-mid game, can hit most enemiese) and cleric Aerial Servants (massive crushing damage, Viconia can start with these)
-the bears from the Conjure Animals spell, you can summon multiple bears per cast so they work better if you just want an HP shield

Pteran

wraith5641 said:

If we're purely talking early game, then Conjure Animals is a useful druid spell that is underrated. Those bears are tougher than they look when you haste them.

Lol just think about how that looks from the enemy's perspective. Angry bears racing across the battlefield on steroids.

wraith5641

@Pteran I like to pretend they are like my version of Drizzt's Guenhwyvar.

Drizzt's has Guenhwyvar and I have......Theodore. A battle-hardened beast raised by barbarians that charges into battle with bloodlust and no fear. Demons cower when they hear his name.

Pteran

wraith5641 said:

@Pteran I like to pretend they are like my version of Drizzt's Guenhwyvar.

Drizzt's has Guenhwyvar and I have......Theodore. A battle-hardened beast raised by barbarians that charges into battle with bloodlust and no fear. Demons cower when they hear his name.

That would actually be pretty cool if you could make it into a figurine. I haven't made an item in years, and I've completely forgotten how. Wouldn't even know what tools to download...but if you or someone could make an item to summon a supercharged bear like that, I'd play with it. We've already got Cerebus (Moon Dog figurine), Kitthix (Black Spider figurine), and Jaloon (Golden Lion figurine) for animal summons. A badass bear would be a nice addition.

Moonheart

I'm suprised nobody talker about the simulacrum. Considering it copy the gear and abilities of the character, I would have thought it could make a decent fodder.

elminster

I'd have to go with Skeletal Warriors. Clerics get them way earlier than most of the summons being talked about here. They are also useful up until ToB.

semiticgoddess

The Wand of Monster Summoning is actually quite nice. Even SCS enemies don't assess the importance of your summons, so they will gladly waste high-level spells taking down monsters that will just pop up again 6 seconds later. Unlike spells, wands are basically guaranteed not to run out in the middle of a fight.

JuliusBorisov

Spirit summons of the Totemic Druid are very strong (both buffed and unbuffed). I've used them even in ToB.

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/41826/totemic-druid-summons-resistances
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/31754/totemic-druid-summon-stats

ifupauline

Depends with what you are dealing with, in most cases Planetar should be the best, but in certain cases skelton, they are immune to petrify and death spells.

The best is Gate is on civilians.

Neverused

Shoutout to Nishruu as well, for the ability to waste a lich's entire spell book at almost no risk besides a Death Spell.

rjmacready

Nice to see I wasnt the only one thinking of mordenkainens sword. Its my go to anti-squid stick with a few skeleton warriors as backup for pesky illithids. I also love to cast improved haste on it for a calamari gore shower.

The old skeleton mobs with haste cast on them are useful too for the majority of the game.

At the other end of the scale though does anyone ever get any use out of elementals? Ive always found them to be WAY too much fuss for so little reward.

wraith5641

@Neverused I hate that. Why are liches so stupid? It doesn't even make sense lore-wise. What kind of high-level wizard would be stupid enough to obliviously chuck spells at a brick wall?

abacus

rjmacready said:

Nice to see I wasnt the only one thinking of mordenkainens sword. Its my go to anti-squid stick with a few skeleton warriors as backup for pesky illithids. I also love to cast improved haste on it for a calamari gore shower.

The old skeleton mobs with haste cast on them are useful too for the majority of the game.

At the other end of the scale though does anyone ever get any use out of elementals? Ive always found them to be WAY too much fuss for so little reward.

Try summoning them with a Druid... There's no "mental struggle" delay, and they really do prod buttock with alacrity. Immune to non magical weapons and hit as +3...

rjmacready

abacus said:

Try summoning them with a Druid... There's no "mental struggle" delay, and they really do prod buttock with alacrity. Immune to non magical weapons and hit as +3...

Ah, thatd be why then. Its rare for me to have any druid in the party. Damn treehuggers hehe.

Nuin

The big fire elementals can hit Kangaax. As I mentioned, druids get fire elementals while clerics get the aerial servant, which is basically an improved air elemental. Both summon types require no mental struggle on the part of the caster.

The elemental princes are no slouch, either. Sunnis can hit 6 attacks per round with Improved Haste (at 24 strength and 3-36 base damage), Chan has his permanent Globe of Blades and Zaaman Rul has his Fireshield which works well with Regenerate.
For some weird reason they only hit as +3 though, which is weird since the elemental princes are supposed to be stronger than planetars iirc.

sansserif

Skeleton warriors.

Skatan

Alot of good advice above, no need to reiterate the same thing. I too consider the word "fodder" meaning cheap servants that you can summon often and with little cost, so with that said I would like to bring forth my suggestion: Nymph is an early summon that works good. Not that durable, but has good spells and if you have a couple of them at the same time (even Jaheira gets enough slots very quickly) they can be quite decent at keeping eachother alive through mass heal. Also, they look and sound cool.