Summon Monster Spells

[Old Gumphrey]

What is the game balance reasoning for only being able to summon specific creatures of a specific alignment? What is the flavor/fluff reasoning?

For example, a fiendish hawk is CE. Why? Moreover, why can we not summon a LE or NE fiendish hawk or a celestial hawk?

I'm always running into problems of "you can't do that" when dealing with cleric summoners, due to the alignment restrictions. It doesn't seem like any issue at all to change it up at will, so why bother with the set list in the first place?

What are negative impacts of allowing clerics to summon celestial versions of certain critters on these lists?

 

[Mistwell]

What are negative impacts of allowing clerics to summon celestial versions of certain critters on these lists?

From what I can tell, none. It's an artifact of flavor, not balance. People will tell you that you become more flexible if you can do it - and I say bunk to that. It wasn't written with "you summon a short list for balance reasons", as a neutral cleric can summon from either list, and a wizard/sorcerer can as well. It was written for flavor only.

Of course, I am also from the "Alignment is a juvenile concept that should be done away with" camp

 

[Delta]

What are negative impacts of allowing clerics to summon celestial versions of certain critters on these lists?

Keep in mind that you will become more flexible if you can do it.

Seriously, flexibility is power (having more animals to choose from is just like a sorcerer getting more spells known on their list). The 3E rules were definitely written to make aligned clerics more resticted summoners than wizards, and to create a campaign flavor distinction in what animals were seen on what planes.

 

[Nail]

From what I can tell, none. It's an artifact of flavor, not balance. People will tell you that you become more flexible if you can do it - and I say bunk to that. It wasn't written with "you summon a short list for balance reasons", as a neutral cleric can summon from either list, and a wizard/sorcerer can as well. It was written for flavor only.

Of course, I am also from the "Alignment is a juvenile concept that should be done away with" camp

Agreed, and well-said.

When I played a (Clr) summoner, we house-ruled it so that any fiendish animal could be changed into celestial, and vis-versa. There were no balance problems, levels 4 thru 23rd. (I didn't bother with summoning before level 4.)

 

[Old Gumphrey]

It's not really a restriction as much as an annoyance, though. Even if clerics are supposed to be worse summoners than wizards (which I doubt, due to the existence of the Thaumaturge PrC and identical summoning potential), they aren't even balanced with one another. As was already mentioned, a N cleric can summon any darn thing he pleases, but other clerics have much more limited lists. Why? Seems pointless, and kind of silly.

A N cleric can pull anything off the list, but a NG cleric is limited to LG, NG, CG, LN and N. A LG cleric is limited to LG, NG, LN, and N. So by being good or evil, lawful or chaotic, you shorten your list of available creatures? It's not a big deal for a sorcerer; you're LG and you summon evil stuff; big deal, you're LN, and if you're using them for good, you're probably still LG. It's only different for clerics because if you change alignments as a cleric you generally lose your powers.

I second the "alignment sucks", I was just kind of wondering if this ever came up in other games and what people thought about it. Being able to interchange celestial and fiendish, along with L or C would make Protection spells a lot less useful. Mainly it was just irksome that I had to tell a player "you can't do that" simply because a fiendish hawk is always CE and they happen to be LE.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

There are certainly problems with the alignment system, but that it causes Clerics of different to actually be a bit more different from each other is not one of them IMHO.

Holy Smite, Order's Wrath, Chaos Hammer, and Unholy Blight are top shelf spells for middling level spellcasters -- being able to drop a Will save spell with annoying side effects into the middle of a furball is nothing to sneeze at. Avoiding more extreme alignments has both costs and benefits, as it should.

I would also note that have the right Domain can increase the duration of summoned spell slightly. That is helpful at low levels.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

You know, just starting up a LN cleric, and was thinking of using the summon monster spells for the first time. Took a look at the list, didn't see a single LN summon. What's with that?!

 

[Old Gumphrey]

There's plenty of LG and LE to use, though. Be sure and take the Law domain, and the Summoner(ing?) domain out of Complete Divine / Spell Compendium.

 

[Particle_Man]

Game Mechanically, the Alienist has a *relative* gain in flexibility by being able to replace "fiendish" or "celestial" with "pseudonatural" when summoning creatures. Since the Alienist is otherwise relatively weak, this might be a minor consideration if you decide to expand the list of summonable creatures to all alignments.

 

[Wik]

I have a Wu Jen summoner that I just started out.

I hated the Celestial/Fiendish thing, and I wound up swapping in Earth/Air templates from a 3rd party book (kinda weaker than the base templates, actually).

As for the alignments, I really don't see why a GM would prevent the cleric from being able to summon, say, a LG Celestial Hawk.