Summoning and the Hypothetical Battle Reality

I think you're being way too negative about it. Is a summoning earth shatteringly good? No, its good, but it has its limitations, just like a fighter daily that just does X[W] damage and maybe puts a condition on the target has limitations. Lets look at it reasonably:

1) The summoning can appear anywhere within range on the battlefield. I haven't read the thing, so I am not certain what that range is, but SURELY this means the summoner can put the thing in a spot that is quite valuable, like behind the monsters artillery, or in a spot where it can take on a lurker that is hammering on the warlock, or at the very least right behind the big nasty brute that's crushing the fighter so he gets flanking.

2) It HAS to require a standard action to make it attack, otherwise the summoner has a power that is out of balance with the other characters. He can still move and use minor actions (some of which can be quite useful). The summoning IS his attack. That's cool, his daily lasts several rounds and makes attacks in each round. I don't see this as a disadvantage really, given that in return the summoner can stay in a safer location.

3) Again it has to be not overly powerful either defensively or offensively or it is going to overshadow the other character's dailies. Just how strong that is, well maybe it should be more or less strong than it is, but if its as strong as a whole character that is going to be too strong. Its like the summoner gets to fight for free practically.

4) Monsters are not going to just automatically go after the thing any more than they would any other party member. It is quite feasible for the summoning to survive the entire encounter. More likely it WILL get killed, but that is more a function of the fact that the summoner isn't risking a whole lot by putting the thing in danger.

5) If you want to make better summonings then toughness and feats/items that increase your AC are the things that a summoner wants to get. Just because YOUR wizard has an AC18 at 5th level does not make you an ideal summoner. In fact I'd say quite the opposite given that is about as weak an AC as a 5th level is likely to EVER have, realistically. As a wizard summoners should have decent INT and probably learn to use a shield or a defensive weapon or staff defense etc. You can easily build a wizard that has defender level AC (at some penalty to other capabilities, but maybe that's what a summoner needs to do).

I think you need to look at the whole build of the character and also how the player's are likely to use the power and what things they can do with it, then compare it with the other powers. I think your analysis MAY be a bit simplistic so far. Experience could prove that summoning is weaker than it should be, but I don't see that at first glance being true and I think playing it RAW for a while is certainly worth doing. Too many people crunch a couple numbers in 4e and jump to the conclusion that stuff is imbalanced when they haven't actually played it as written for a while. WotC DOES have playtesters. They aren't infallible, but they have done a reasonable job of getting most stuff pretty close.

Quick question about the summoned creature's defenses, do conditional modifiers apply? For instance if the wizard has +1 to defenses against ranged, area and close attacks, does the creature also have these bonuses? If the wizard has Staff of Defense class feature, and Staff Fighting feat, do both bonuses apply to the creature? What if the wizard drops his staff?

I whipped up a 5th level wizard to see what his defense/HP's would be like (focusing on optimizing these), and he ended up with AC 21 and a bloodied value of 22. That's not too shabby for a summoned creature.

Thanks for clarifying about the Standard action to attack. That makes sense. It seems like they could give the things more HP, then, since the wizard's other Standard-action-to-attack-throughout-the-fight dailies are effectively unkillable. I guess the fact that the summon is killable makes it a target for soaking damage, so they balance that by giving it mediocre HP.

Regicide said:

In 4E if the mobs are being out-actioned, just bring in more minions.

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It has nothing to do with mobs being out-actioned. It's designed to prevent other players from feeling out-actioned.

-- 77IM

77IM said:

It has nothing to do with mobs being out-actioned. It's designed to prevent other players from feeling out-actioned.

-- 77IM

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No, it's designed that way because the 4E designers have some ideas that are just flat out wrong. They somehow think twin strike and other attacks where you get a bucket of dice and do massive amounts of damage are fine, but oh dear, can't have a summon do an attack AND the wizard do an attack... Same thing, but somehow the wizard getting two attacks on the same target breaks a law. This whole "my standard action your standard action" nonsense makes animal companions and summons feel very artificial, and all to fix a problem that doesn't exist.

Please remain on topic Regicide if you have a problem with dual/twin strike fork this thread or start a new one.

I'd like to hear more opinions about the new summoning system.

I think the main reason why it's Standard action to attack is to actually prevent the Wizard from having multiple similar effects at once. Since the Summoned creature doesn't have to maintained, the Wizard could actually have both a Summon and Flaming Sphere going at the same time. Without the attack as a Standard action, he could use both in the same turn (if it were say a move or a minor to attack). Granted, then he can't move them, but with some support from the Defender he could lock the enemy down pretty good to keep pumping the damage into them.

I also think that 77IM had it right when he pointed out that spells like Flaming Sphere are essentially unkillable (they also don't provide flanking). Since the Summons act more like a PC in that they can flank and soak up hits, this was balanced with lower hitpoints.

Like any power though, it's only as good as the build. I don't have DDI, so I don't know if they listed more specific things about the requirements or an actual power entry, but assuming that it works like the rest of the Wizard powers we can come up with a decent build. I would imagine that a Staff Wizard with like a 14 or 16 in Con would probably work best. He should spend some feats on things like Toughness (Durability if he can heal the Summons the way a Ranger heals his pet), Leather armor and possibly even Hide armor. This would give him a much better AC than a lot of other Wizard builds, and would ensure that his Summons had at least a few more hitpoints to burn. The Wizard probably wouldn't need to pump Con at all as he levels, unless it's a Secondary stat for Summons, as it would lose effectiveness over time.

So basically, like anything else, if the Wizard builds to maximize the stats that affect his power, in this case a Summons, the better it will function. Even if there were going to be items that boosted the powers of Summons attached to other implements, you can still work with that. Dump some points into STR and pick up a Light Shield, for one, or perhaps a parrying dagger. Or just make sure that if you're using something other than a Staff, that you go all the way up to Hide armor to make up for the AC loss. Either way though, it's easy to get a Wizard with a decent AC, you just have to work towards it.

Another thing to remember is that there might be other powers that work well with summons. Like a utility that lets you order it with a minor action so that you can blow an encounter attack power. We won't know until we have more context.

Black Knight Irios said:

Please remain on topic Regicide if you have a problem with dual/twin strike fork this thread or start a new one.

I'd like to hear more opinions about the new summoning system.

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I saw it as on topic. He was comparing the multiple actions of a summon and a wizard doing something to the multiple actions of dual strike or heck I guess any AoE.

How is the economy of actions broken with a summon acting on a minor action when its not broken with a wizard blasting a group and getting multiple attacks every round?

Neither Twin Srike nor AoEs grant additional actions. They give you more attacks with one action.

The additional attacks produced by an AoE are spread out among all the targets of the AoE, they can't be focused. You could focus your attacks if summons were able to attack with a minor action.

And becuase you threw it out here, how would you justify that the WIZ can now do an AoE and controll his summoned creature(s) w/o spending an action point?


But before we pass our ultimate judgement on summons, we should wait for PHB2 to arrive at our local gaming store, so that we all can check out if there are build options for a WIZ focusing on summons and wether there are magic items, feats, and PPs or not that support summons.

Black Knight Irios said:

But before we pass our ultimate judgement on summons, we should wait for PHB2 to arrive at our local gaming store, so that we all can check out if there are build options for a WIZ focusing on summons and wether there are magic items, feats, and PPs or not that support summons.

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The only class with summons in PHB2 is the Invoker.

Wizard summons are for Arcane power, Druid summons are for Primal power.