Sometimes you make a character for the sole purpose of being a joke. A dwarf bard. A flesh golem paladin. A ranger/rouge/gunslinger/fighter/wizard/barbarian. A character that is enjoyable to play but isn’t meant to excel at anything or even be particularly useful. But sometimes, despite a lack of planning, lady luck shrugs her shoulders and gives you an edge, and that character becomes an actual benefit to the party rather than a liability.
This Steal My Idea was actually stolen from a friend of mine who had a humorous concept for a character: a goblin who focused on exclusively summoning weasels. A weaselmancer, if you will. We all loved the idea, laughing about its absurdity and how cute it must be to see someone get gnawed to death by tiny weasels. By the time Mr. Gobbs hit level six, him and his weasel army filled our enemies with dread and us with joyous laughter.
Mr. Gobbs was made using Pathfinder, so you can double check all of my work on d20pfsrd.com. Mr. Gobbs isn’t like Pun-Pun. The build won’t break your game. It’s just a hilarious idea that ended up escalating from a punchline to a deadly weasel producing factory. The game also had a low level cap, so I am unsure how many weasels you can summon after sixth level. You can always work something out with your GM if necessary.
Weasels are adorable, not fierce. Why Are Weasels so Awesome?
Weasels have an ability called blood drain. Blood drain deals automatic constitution damage to a grappled creature. Since weasels have attach, they automatically grapple when they land a bite attack.
In Pathfinder, giant and dire weasels have grab instead of attach, which is less powerful and probably more balanced. However, if your GM is using a 3.5 monster manual, dire weasels have attach instead of grab. We were using a 3.5 monster manual.
But weasels are size tiny, thus they provoke attack of opportunity when they try to attack. Doesn’t that make them less valuable?
I knew someone would bring that up. Yes, you knowledgeable reader, size tiny creatures do provoke AoO when they attack size small or larger creatures. However, most creatures only get one AoO per round. So if you have a bunch of weasels that move together, you’re only sacrificing one (with an AC of 15, it’s probably going to get hit). Alternatively, you could save a weasel and have your weasels move after something else has provoked your enemy’s AoO.
Since those size tiny weasels attach after a successful hit and do not require an opposed grapple check, they are far more likely to land the grapple and do automatic damage and constitution damage each turn until it is murdered. And what heartless monster would murder an adorable weasel?
What do I need to make a fabled weaselmancer?
Stats:
Nearly irrelevant. Just give yourself plenty of charisma if you’re a summoner, or wisdom if you’re a druid. Standard spell-casting stuff.
Class(es):
Be a summoner. If your GM is willing to fudge some rules, you can be a weaselmancer druid. I’ll bring up the details that complicate it for the druid later.
If you choose druid, you get to choose to have access to cleric domain spells or an animal companion. Take the animal companion, and choose Giant Weasel.
(If you’re using D&D 3.X, druids can summon dire weasels with Summon Nature’s ally 3.)
Summoner Spells:
Summon Minor Monster allows you to summon 1d3 tiny creatures. Weasels are on that list.
Later, you’ll want to use Summon Monster. As you may have noticed, there are weasels listed. However, if you take the feat Expanded Summon Monster, you get access to the giant weasel at level 2, the dire weasel at level 4. Use summon monster 3 to summon 1d3 giant weasels and summon monster 5 to summon 1d3 dire weasels. If you have the feat Superior Summoning you get one extra weasel each time you cast the spell.
Druid Spells:
Summon Minor Ally lets you summon 1d3 weasels.
Here’s where it gets complicated for the druid. Summon Nature’s Ally does not have any weasels listed. But if you also cast Alter Summoned Monster, you get access to the list of summon monster… uh, monsters, when you cast summon nature’s ally. You may have noticed there are no weasels there either. That’s because you’ll need the feat Expanded Summon Monster. The discrepancy comes from whether or not you can take Expanded Summon Monster as a feat. It requires the ability to cast Summon Monster, so it’s up to your GM to determine whether or not the ability to cast Alter Summon Monster counts for that.
Other Feats You’ll Want:
Spell focus (Conjuration). This is a prerequisite for more important feats.
Augment Summoning. This gives your summoned creatures a +4 to both strength and constitution, making your weasels bite harder and last longer with additional hit points.
Alter Summoned Monster, which I mentioned above.
Expanded Summon Monster, which I also mentioned above.
Superior Summoning. With this feat, every time you cast a spell that summons more than one creature, you add one more to the total number.
Quicken Spell: +4 to a spell’s level to cast it as a free action is a little too expensive for my taste, but it can be incredibly useful to conjure two small hordes of weasels in one round.
If you know of any other worthy feats, spells, items, or techniques that would be perfect for a weaselmancer, leave it in the comments. I’d love to hear it.
When it counts, may you roll high.
Jesse Galena
EDIT:
A nice Reddit user suggested a few feats for the Pathfinder weaselmancer that I (somehow) missed (despite the fact that I did a search on the PFSRD website for feats containing the word “summon”… but I’m not bitter).
Evolved Summon Monster. Probably my favorite suggested feat thus far. I love versatility.
Versatile Summon Monster. MOAR VERSATILITY!
Harrowed Summoning. It has a prerequisite feat and what it does isn’t always the same, but a bit of unpredictability can be a lot of fun.
Proxy Summoning. Useful if you want to equip your weasels with a charge of shocking grasp or another touch spell.
Tattoo Attunement. This spell is awesome for pretty much any spell caster, and I’m sad I forgot to mention it before. T_T
Feel free to make more suggestions in the comments or wherever you saw a link to this post.
RexiconJesse - Jesse Galena 