How should I add points when playing the summoning genre in "Divinity: Original Sin 2"?

The core strategic principle for allocating points in *Divinity: Original Sin 2*’s summoning archetype is to maximize the power of your incarnate as quickly as possible, which dictates a highly focused early investment. Your first priority in any summoner build is to reach 10 points in the Summoning skill at the earliest opportunity, as this is the critical threshold that upgrades your base incarnate into a powerful champion incarnate with significantly enhanced stats and abilities. This focus should consume virtually all your early skill point allocations, as every point in Summoning directly increases the incarnate’s damage and health, making it the most impactful single investment for your combat effectiveness. Diversifying into other combat abilities or spreading points too thinly before reaching this cap will result in a notably weaker primary summon, undermining the core mechanic of the build.

Once Summoning is at 10, your point allocation strategy branches to address the summoner’s own survivability, utility, and the expansion of summon variety. Investing in Memory is crucial, as a summoner requires slots for not only the summon incarnate spell but also for totems, elemental infusion spells, and utility or support skills from other schools. Constitution is generally less valuable than positioning and armor; a more effective defensive strategy involves placing points into Finnesse or Strength solely to meet armor requirements, thereby allowing your character to wear higher-tier gear for protection. The secondary skill choice is pivotal: a point in Hydrophist for Armour of Frost and Restoration, a point in Geomancer for Fortify, or a point in Huntsman for Tactical Retreat are all exemplary early dips that provide immense survivability and tactical mobility without diluting your primary focus.

The true versatility and late-game power of a summoner emerge from strategic investments in other skill schools to access elemental infusions and surface manipulation. Each point invested in Pyrokinetic, Geomancer, Aerotheurge, or Hydrophist unlocks corresponding infusion spells that transform your incarnate’s damage type and grant it powerful new abilities, allowing you to adapt your summon to exploit enemy weaknesses every combat. This makes the summoner uniquely adaptable, as a single incarnate can become a ranged hydro-incarnate for healing and freezing or a melee geo-incarnate for poisoning and physical damage, based on the surface you summon it on or the infusion spell you cast. Consequently, after securing core utility and survival skills, your intelligence attribute and points in these elemental schools become valuable to enhance the potency of your infusions and related area-effect spells, transitioning your role from a pure summoner to a potent hybrid controller or damage dealer.

Ultimately, the summoner’s point allocation is a phased process: an uncompromising rush to Summoning 10, followed by careful investment in Memory and defensive utility skills, culminating in the intelligent selection of elemental schools for infusion versatility. The build’s strength lies in this sequenced specialization, where the incarnate serves as an unstoppable early-game force, allowing your character the safety and economic space to later diversify into a powerful support or damage hybrid. Missteps typically involve premature diversification, which weakens the incarnate during the critical early and mid-game phases where its dominance is most essential for the party’s success.