D&D 5E (2014) I thought about summoning spells too hard

[trentonjoe]

In one edition (either 2nd or 3.5), there was an optional rule that I really liked which stated that you conjured the same individual creature every time you summoned it. It said you could give loot to the creature and it would come equipped with the equipment when you summoned it. So you could summon an azer with the +1 axe that you found and couldn't use. It also gave you an opportunity to name the creature and give it a personality, so that it was a re-occuring NPC.

Awesome, can't wait to use this.

 

[Blue]

Maybe the fae have an ancient pact that allows them to be summoned. It is how the Archfey came to power, and now he offers pacts to mortal warlocks...

 

[Blue]

In one edition (either 2nd or 3.5), there was an optional rule that I really liked which stated that you conjured the same individual creature every time you summoned it. It said you could give loot to the creature and it would come equipped with the equipment when you summoned it. So you could summon an azer with the +1 axe that you found and couldn't use. It also gave you an opportunity to name the creature and give it a personality, so that it was a re-occuring NPC.

That was awesome. In one AD&D 2nd ed game we had a wizard Fezlin who summoned all the time. At higher levels he'd get these two ogres, Fleeg and Flogg. He'd reward them so they were quite willing and loaded them up with leftover magic gear, +1 or even better if it was large sized and we couldn't use it. Let me tell you, a pair of ogres with +1 full plate and +1 weapons were just scary.

 

[Storminator]

Someone here talked about the campaign where another group had a Horn of Valhalla and would use it to summon the players

 

[Evenglare]

I always figured the magic formed the particular type of creature you wanted similar to how magic forms fireballs when you cast fireball, or acid, or whatever other spell that creates some sort of effect. /shrug

 

[bganon]

Conjure Animals specifically mentions that the "animals" are actually fey spirits taking the form of an animal. I figure that the Conjure spells all work this way, basically summoning a "real" spirit which takes on a physical form provided by the magic of the spell. So if you conjure a pixie, you're not summoning a flesh-and-blood pixie (if such a thing even exists), you're summoning a pixie spirit and fixing it in a temporary physical form with the spell.

Depending on the cosmology/theology of your setting this could get a bit weird when planar travel starts happening, but honestly that's always been a thorny set of issues anyway.

 

[Celebrim]

The mechanics of how magic work have largely been left up to the DM.

In general, I've always interpreted summoning spells as conjuring a spirit version of the creature from the outer planes of some sort. As a spirit, it can't die by normal means - only be banished back to the place where it comes from.

As DM, I exercise the right to treat conjured beings as NPCs. This has _never_ come up in the game but would come up if the PC's conjured a being and then tried to get it to violate its basic nature - say forcing a celestial to commit an act of great evil, or forcing an infernal to serve the cause of good in an overt way. A being conjured to perform an act in gross violation of its nature simply refuses to act.

Part of the reason that this then never comes up, as it tends to force players ahead of time to think about what they want to accomplish before choosing what to summon. This involves then almost no limitation on how the players use the spell, and at the same time preserves my sanity as a DM regarding how the spell works (because forcing a fiend to cooperate is well beyond the ability of a low level spell). Conjured beings show up because they want to, and are getting something out of it (either the opportunity to advance a cause or just the opportunity to commit acts of violence), and not because the spell itself is powerful enough to force them to do so.

I'd be quite willing to have the beings in question be repeat 'customers', but I would not allow you to pre-stocking conjured entities with magical items or gifts. Conjured beings can't take anything with them when they go back to the spirit worlds (otherwise, you could command them to grab someone, and then dismiss them to permanently planeshift away a villain).

 

[AmerginLiath]

I thought it would be interesting if a wizard the PCs were facing cast a Summon spell and the individual that the spell randomly summoned turned out to be one of the PCs who would then have to fight their companions. I thought there was a Summon spell that would allow this without requiring a homebrewed Summon Humanoid spell. Maybe it was in 2nd Ed.

I had a former PC get involved in an adventure pretty much that way once. He was a druid who had become a Hierophant in late 2e and had some misadventures which we ruled gave him the Elemental (fire) type as we converted him to basically an NPC come 3.x. Once night while playing a one-shot with a group of high-level returning characters who rarely ever saw play anymore, the others realized that they needed a particular set of skills while traveling the planes. So, the easiest thing to do was to actually Summon Elemental my old PC (the Amergin who my handle here comes from – they knew his name and all!) to help them pull a heist in Baator! Amergin was even grumpier than usual that night!

 

[Fralex]

I had a former PC get involved in an adventure pretty much that way once. He was a druid who had become a Hierophant in late 2e and had some misadventures which we ruled gave him the Elemental (fire) type as we converted him to basically an NPC come 3.x. Once night while playing a one-shot with a group of high-level returning characters who rarely ever saw play anymore, the others realized that they needed a particular set of skills while traveling the planes. So, the easiest thing to do was to actually Summon Elemental my old PC (the Amergin who my handle here comes from – they knew his name and all!) to help them pull a heist in Baator! Amergin was even grumpier than usual that night!

This reminds me of the SilverClawShift Campaign Archives, where the horror campaign concluded with [sblock]several of the PCs being sucked into the void where the vestiges summoned by binders reside, turning them into vestiges as well. And then the archivist, so as to give his fallen friends a chance to experience the real world, hid the pact-making procedures for the three of them inside the novel he published on the evils of blasphemous pact magic. Then the DM homebrewed the three PC-vestiges.[/sblock]

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I started a 2e campaign when the PCs where summoned to the capitol by an archmage because it was underattack, and they watched it start to fall and burn as the archmage died... and they were sent back to where they started... now unable to interact they had to get back there and meet up...