Best way to support summons as a Pale Master

[Gable Morninglord]

What are the best ways to support undead summons as a Spell Focused PM/Wizard? My character has been using a staff, and not engaging in melee. So, my character simply stands back casting Ray of Frost, or Daze cantrips on enemies.

Are there spells to be using? Are others using a different strategy that may get my character more involved? Any suggestions?

I enjoy using the summons, but simply sitting back and watching the destruction gets a little boring. Also, my PM AC will eventually be above 60. What is the use of having such a high AC if my only strategy is to stay away, or hidden?

I am looking forward to hearing from you all. Any insight is appreciated.

[In Sorrow We Trust]

that's kind of the crux of wizard/pm, unless you try to figure out a way to go into melee, your only option is cantrips

there is a helmet that gives infinite circle of doom though, but that's not better than spamming cantrips

[Hazard]

You can actually -guard your summons now, and with 60+ ac you'd be great at it to give them a little more survivability. Just find the guard icon in your radial menu and add it to your quickslots.

Also, I really like taking the heal skill (if you can afford to). Healing kits are a great way to keep your minions in good shape, if you don't have access to other means of healing them, but wands of inflict wound can work too, and so taking craft wand can be another option.

Other than that, mass haste ad nauseam.

[AstralUniverse]

The idea with Palemaster is that you get summons early, in theory (and in practice, for the most part, except you dont get mummy dust sooner than a pure mage or cleric, which honestly kinda sucks but that's another topic) so you're not buffing them pretty hard early on, but you get more powerful (and more in number) summons. If you really want to meme out the most powerful summons for leveling as soon as possible and arent optimizing for anything else, you can do wizard necro specialist + cleric dip with undeath domain + palemaster 10 rush and you get ridiculous summons in respect to your level (because it's +2 ucl from cleric, +2 ucl from wizard and better/earlier summon abilities from pm than from spellbooks. I do not recommend doing that except for memery sake).

Wizard palemaster is imo the best summoner in the game right now. Mummy dust is almost as powerful as ant-frogs, except that it also gives you tier 6 undead on CGU spells which are spammable. How do buff the summons? empowered mass bull + negative burst = max str, stone bone, arcane sequencer, and mass bear/cat help too but not that necessary.... and most importantly Mass haste. you just memorize as many as you can. my meme wiz-pm has 6 normal m.haste and 6 extended ones. The vampire and abomination streams are kind of op in pve.

Cheers.

[Coolguy McMagic]

The idea with Palemaster is that you get summons early, in theory (and in practice, for the most part, except you dont get mummy dust sooner than a pure mage or cleric, which honestly kinda sucks but that's another topic) so you're not buffing them pretty hard early on, but you get more powerful (and more in number) summons. If you really want to meme out the most powerful summons for leveling as soon as possible and arent optimizing for anything else, you can do wizard necro specialist + cleric dip with undeath domain + palemaster 10 rush and you get ridiculous summons in respect to your level (because it's +2 ucl from cleric, +2 ucl from wizard and better/earlier summon abilities from pm than from spellbooks. I do not recommend doing that except for memery sake).

Wizard palemaster is imo the best summoner in the game right now. Mummy dust is almost as powerful as ant-frogs, except that it also gives you tier 6 undead on CGU spells which are spammable. How do buff the summons? empowered mass bull + negative burst = max str, stone bone, arcane sequencer, and mass bear/cat help too but not that necessary.... and most importantly Mass haste. you just memorize as many as you can. my meme wiz-pm has 6 normal m.haste and 6 extended ones. The vampire and abomination streams are kind of op in pve.

Cheers.

The +2 UCL from Necro Spec does not actually apply to the PM summon abilities. None of the Necro Spec boons do. The only bonus Necro Spec gives to PM is better Necromancy cantrips.

[AstralUniverse]

I was getting the +2 ucl both from pm and cleric, at lvl 13 I had the tier 5 abomination with the Create Undead pm ability as if I was lvl 17. Pretty sure. What doesnt apply to pm abilities from necro spec is the double bonus from necro foci, unfortunately, and also sometimes glitches your spellbook and you dont get the bonus from spellbook's cgu either, but the +2 ucl definitely applied.

[Ozecarin]

My favorite by far for undead summons caster build is Warlock (Undying Pact) 20 and Palemaster 10. Instead of spamming cantrips, you spam eldritch blast with 3 different damage types. And you get Epic Spell Focus Necromancy, summon UCL 7 (without wasting epic feat on Mummy Dust), Deathless Mastery (thanks to Epic Undying Pact), Epic Damage Reduction (with high constitution and undying pact can't take a lot of hits), good AB (since touch attack), and fun pact spell alternatives to make the role much more engaged than the typical summon build.