concerning summoner and gods

[chinchilla wizard]

Since papa Vehumet no longer gives summoners his books, is Sif Muna the only real choice left?

[Greyr]

Keep in mind that your species and god have more influence over your early game than your class. Also summoners don't really work the same way they used to back in the good ole Vehumet book gift days, but as a class are (imo) much stronger in a less cheese way.

That said here are some gods I would pick


Kiku (Why not give necromancy a shot? He gives you a bunch of nifty utilites and will brand you dat pain brand)
TSO (He let's your summons see invisible enemies with his halo, so that's a bit of a plus. Not great in the early game though.)
Deathmangoes (Stealth and meat walls have beautiful ~~synergy~~)
Sif (Not one of my favorites, but comes with some obvious perks)

Really, most gods are acceptable for a summoner... Just have some fun with it, there's no reason to pigeonhole yourself to SIf.

Spoiler: show

Sif isn't that good anyway

e: Veh isnt great

[crate]

sif, ash, tso, xom are the four gods that actually have some kind of benefit with summons, probably roughly in that order (or maybe dith but I've not tried it and have no intention to do so)
you can obviously worship other gods but if you do then I would probably question why you picked summoner

kiku and veh are pretty bad unless you dont like actually having piety (neither of them give piety for summon kills, unless it's kiku and the summon is undead) (or if you're playing a version with vehumet summoning support, in which case he's very good, but that's several versions ago now)
(I'm not sure if veh grants mp on summon kills)

[Magipi]

sif, ash, tso, xom are the four gods that actually have some kind of benefit with summons, probably roughly in that order

Ash and Xom... how?

[crate]

Ash is good because you get better summons for less investment (skill boost) and get better melee for less investment (skill boost). It's basically TSO but you don't get your spells blocked (but you have to deal with cursing equipment).

Xom because summons end up being good at amusing xom (lightning spire in particular basically always hits itself which amuses xom) and are good at reducing tension so a xom summoner mostly just ends up with several good mutations and no real drawbacks. It's really quite different from your typical Xom game. (It's also a great example of why Xom doesn't actually work the way Xom is supposed to work in some situations. Even just removing the ability to amuse Xom would be a huge improvement from a design standpoint and summoner makes this pretty obvious.)

I'm not saying that if you want to win a summoner then Xom is better than, say, Trog or Fedhas for winning (in fact trog and fedhas are probably two of the better gods if your goal is "start as a summoner and win the game", but I would question why that is your goal since the best way to do so in those cases is just to abandon your background; I'm assuming here that your goal is "play a character who uses lots of summons, and then win the game"). What I'm saying is that Xom actually becomes specifically better if you're a summoner, whereas Trog is of course worse and Fedhas doesn't do anything special.

[Greyr]

kiku and veh are pretty bad unless you dont like actually having piety (neither of them give piety for summon kills, unless it's kiku and the summon is undead) (or if you're playing a version with vehumet summoning support, in which case he's very good, but that's several versions ago now)
(I'm not sure if veh grants mp on summon kills)

I haven't played around with Veh very much since the changes, but yeah, Veh is not great for a summoner. I just checked, he does not give MP for summon kills.

Kiku on the other hand. I'd say the advantages outweigh not being able to gain piety via summons. You will have access to better spells when your beginning book starts to wear thin (and if you are planning on going crazy heavy magic investment, can forgo the pain brand for the Necronomicon).

[chinchilla wizard]

I miss Papa Vehu's book delivery service so much ;_;

[Greyr]

Tell me about it.
Talk about a one-stop-shop.

[Sprucery]

Hey, I'm currently playing an OgSu of Chei!

(Will probably splat soon.)

[Siegurt]

Makhleb and Lucy also accepts ally kills for piety, and are both fairly strong for virtually any kind of character

[nago]

I haven't checked but I remember Makhleb doesn't restore hp on summons' kills, plus I don't find his abilities so great for a summoner (more summons and a aoe which is going to rage your summons?!)
My only try with a Su of tso ended in a ragequit because every time you try to attack some non demon undead foe you get warning that's going to piss off tso so you either stop to tab by lair or just decide to spend more time waiting than actually hitting something in combat

Ash for me is the best God (aka the less annoying for an already very annoying background), for the reasons crate mentioned

[rchandra]

I'm not sure I could say that Cheibriados is a good choice for summoners, but it's an interesting one - and certainly summons are a good choice if you're with chei.
Spellpower for your spells, along with improved defenses from the stat boosts.
Having allies makes cheimoving in sight of foes safer.
Having allies lets you get away from enemies, too.
Step from time / temporal distortion may or may not do cool things (I think they allowed Malign Gateway to kill things, but I'm not sure as it was some time ago - don't think I tried them with normal summons).

[crate]

Chei doesnt give piety for ally kills, and slouch kills your allies, so I really don't think su of chei makes sense, especially since moving around in combat is actually even better for su than for most types of character.

[Sprucery]

Well, for what it's worth, my OgSu of Chei was killed in an Ice Cave. Not a combo I would recommend, for the aforementioned reasons.