Alternate Summon Monster List

[Shirt Guy John]

Has anyone come up with a balanced alternative to the PH's Summon Monster I-IX list? I was gonna attempt to do one myself, if it's possible, but I wanted to see if anyone already had anything good out there.

I'm already allowing the caster to replace the standard celestial or feindish template on some creatures with his choice of the Celestial, Fiendish, Anarchic, or Axiomatic templates so long as they match his alignment.

Just looking for some good ideas here.

 

[Doc_Souark]

That's what I did too after one of my players complained about the Wolf not being Celestial too.

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

I use a different summon monster list than the PHB. I made it so depending on the alignment (or intentions) of the caster will summon up one type of critter: Celestial, Daemon, Demon, Devil, Elemental, Fey, Lovecraftian (anything weird and slimy, like Fiendish Oozes, Chaos Beasts, Darkmantles, etc.), or Undead. Each uses its own summoning list, based on the HD progress of the regular spell in the PHB summon monster spell, so the best you can get if you're CE is a Vrock with Summon Monster IX. I have used most of the evil outsiders from Diablo II: Diablerie so that there are viable low HD fiends available, such as goatmen. For celestials, I just use the goatman's stats, change the weapon from battleaxe to longsword, and give them wings (fly 60), changfing their appearnce to that of winged angels or valkyries. Works great!

I also allow monsters not summoned for combat to stay 10 minutes/caster level, but they cannot initiate any hostile action (or use a gate ability) or they return to their home plane. If they are struck in combat for 1 point of damage or more, they automatically are returned to their home plane. This way, you can summon up a devil to oversee your weekly witch's coven meeting, or seek spiritual advice from a celestial, or ask an earth elemental to tunnel over that hill and spy on the bad guys, then return with a report.

 

[Angelsboi]

i use the animals mentioned in the books.

Then i allow the players to customize it with an earth air water fire shadow or wood template from the mannual of the planes or the infernal/celestial template.

works JUST fine =)