I'm soloing the GOG version as a wizard. I picked up the level 5 spell Animal Growth. But somehow the spell doesn't work on summoned monsters. I have tried the spell on the level 5 summoned monster Celestial Brown Bear and the level 4 summoned monster Fiendish Dire Wolf so far. When I cast the spell on them, there are text pop up saying something like "The spell fizzles" and "Target is not an animal". Is that a bug? Can it be fixed with console commands?
A Celestial Brown Bear doesn't count as a animal in D&D 3.5. It is classified as a magical beast. https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/celestialCreature.htm
@_doug_ Thank you. I'm not a hardcore D&D player myself, so I never thought about such a difference. I just looked up Fiendish Dire Wolf in 3.5e on the internet, and it's magical beast as well. What a lesson. Now I wonder in what way this wizard spell could be useful in the game. I can't think of any.
So it might be useful to a party which has someone who can call animal companions. But aren't animal companions not strong? If my wizard were in a party, I would rather let him memorize Summon Monster V and summon his own magical beast than let him memorize Animal Growth and buff other party members' not-so-strong animal companions.
Summon Natural Allies (ranger/druid), Charm Animal (druid), Dominate Monster, animal companions, cleric's Animal domain and wildshape synergies well with Animal Growth. At 7th level a druid can summon brown bears and cast animal growth on them (large->huge).
An animal companion has the big advanatage that you can pre buff with wizard armor, stone and bark skin, (greater) magic fang, bear's endurance, cat's grace (enhances AC) and bull's strength. Last but not least animal growth and now you have an additional fighter in your party that can seriously hit the most powerful enemies. And I like especially that wizard armor, stone skin, bark skin and greater magic fang are spells that normally last a full ingame day. So that's why Druids became my favourite character over time.
