Is there a means to summon a treant?

Question

So, I have a druid character who will be taking a custom feat called Beckon the Flaming (i.e. Beckon the Frozen from Frostburn with the element types switched):

When you summon a creature or creatures using any summon spell, you can opt to summon a version of the creature from an extraplanar inferno. If you do so, the summoned creature gains the fire subtype, and its natural attacks deal an additional 1d6 points of fire damage. Creatures with the cold subtype can never be enhanced with the fire subtype in this manner.

For say, something coming from Summon Nature's Ally, this is all well and good. However, one creature that Druids gain access to, but Summon Nature's Ally does not cover, is the Treant. While Changestaff and Liveoak let them have a treant at their side, they are both Transmutation school and do not use the term "summon" anywhere in their text, which means that they do not count as "summoning a creature" for the purposes of feats that apply to summons (one cannot apply Greenbound Summoning to a treant created using Changestaff or Liveoak under this interpretation, for that matter).

Does a spell (preferably a druid spell, of course) exist that summons a treant in the fashion of the other summoning spells in the game?

NB: this question appears to be a dupe, but isn't as it emphasizes creation in general, not summoning specifically -- a fellow Stackizen created it based on a chat conversation in an attempt to do me a favor but didn't put all the constraints in when they did so.

Answer 1

No, but the barn has a back door...

As the previous answer indicates, there isn't a way directly to do summon a treant. However, there is a backdoor way to get a treant that imitates summoning.

Ostensibly, you are trying to do this:

summoning a version of the creature from an extraplanar inferno

In other words, you are acknowledging that SOMEWHERE, on SOME plane, these things exist. All you have to do is pull them from that plane.

So, you could ostensibly use Gate to achieve this affect, reaching that self-same extraplanar inferno (Personally, I'd say this was some freakish layer of the Abyss). The upside is that this allows for a TON more power.

Gate's Calling function works as follows:

The second effect of the gate spell is to call an extraplanar creature to your aid (a calling effect).

There is an XP cost for this type of the spell, but there are some ways around that. Still, for a 9th level 1k XP isn't terribly bad if you are in a situation when you need this anyway. If you want intimidation, look no further, because this is based off of summoned HD and your CASTER level. And everyone knows boosting your caster level can be done Oh so well. >:}

First, if you want multiples...

You can call and control several creatures as long as their HD total does not exceed your caster level.

So, at lvl 17 when you can first use this (actually, lvl 12 if you use a creative Blighter build, and lvl 15 if you use a Ur-Priest build) you can call two of your flaming treants (due to their 7HD)...assuming you don't have CL boosts.

Now, most chars will be able to have enough boosted CL at this point (Prayer Beads of Karma are a great option) to hit 21 CL. This gives you three of those flaming treants, at rounds/CL.

Now, intimidation factor goes a step further, though, if you call just one creature.

In the case of a single creature, you can control it if its HD do not exceed twice your caster level.

Twice my caster level? Why with investment in boosting that unlocks the big brother of your little flaming trees.. The Elder Treant. At 50 HD all you need is to have CL 25 when you cast gate to get a Colossal epic-casting tree-army-creating world-smashing monster at your behest for 25 rounds, or much longer if you do this:

A task taking up to 1 minute per caster level requires a payment of 100 gp per HD of the creature called. For a task taking up to 1 hour per caster level, the creature requires a payment of 500 gp per HD. A long-term task, one requiring up to one day per caster level, requires a payment of 1,000 gp per HD.

Oh, and you can say it's from that same extraplanar forest and is flaming, too ;).

Answer 2

While creating a treant is relatively easy (if you're a druid, anyway), summoning a treant is something else altogether. So far as I'm aware, the only ways to summon a treant involve negotiating with the DM. (For example, these consolidated lists don't provide a treant option, and neither do any feats directly.)

Negotiate the use of Dragon magazine material…

Charles Dunwoody's article "The Summoner's Circle" (Dragon #302 25–28) provides alternative rules for the summon monster and summon nature's ally lines of spells, allowing a player and DM to pick the creatures that comprise casters' lists of creatures they can summon based on creatures' challenge ratings. Samples are given for both lines of spells.

For example, one of the changes that can be made to the 7th-level druid spell summon nature's ally VII [conj] (Player's Handbook 288, 289) is to have on its list of creatures that can be summoned using that spell a treant (Monster Manual 244–5).

…Or convince the DM this feat should add treant to your list

The benefit of the feat Celestial Summoning Specialist (Planar Handbook 38) says that the creature that takes the feat can "[a]dd one good-aligned creature to the list of creatures for each summon monster spell that you can cast," but to [w]ork with the DM to select creatures appropriate to the spell's list of summonable creatures." Then, "[e]ach time you gain the ability to cast a new summon monster spell, you may add one good-aligned creature to the list."

As the typical treant usually possesses an alignment of neutral good and the article that you tried to convince the DM to use in her campaign puts the treant on the list of creatures that can be summoned by the spell summon nature's ally VII, getting the DM to approve adding the treant to the list the list of creatures that can be summoned by the 7th-level Sor/Wiz spell summon monster VII [conj] (PH 185) shouldn't be that hard of a row to hoe.

(A DM that balks at a wizard summoning a regular ol' plant instead of an outsider or whatever—despite druids summoning regular ol' animals and junk all the time—might be mollified by a wizard instead summoning a treant to which has been applied the template celestial (MM 31). The aforementioned article says a summon… VII spell accommodates CR 8 or 9 creatures, and that template would make the typical treant CR 9, putting it neatly in the range of the summon monster VII spell and making the celestial treant fit in thematically with other, typical wizard-summoned creatures.)