Arcane Power excerpt: Summoning

[Rachel]

I prepare like a DM (map-making, writing scenarios, houseruling) but I mostly enjoy just being a player at the table.

@UngeheuerLich: "Knowing too much" should never hurt the game, or your enjoyment of it. In my experience, being well informed is a good thing. If players sifting throught the MM makes you uneasy, I respectfully say this: look at your players. The MM is a fantastic, fun read, and whether the players are reading the MM *just* to be better powergamers is an issue between them and the DM.

I have personally *never* read the MM just to try to gain some sort of advantage. Even if I didn't do "DMemmy"-type things (and I do alot of those) and was strictly just a player, the lore and powers monsters have is a fun read and motivates me to be a better, wiser player who can handle anything.

Totally respect your opinion, but maybe you have some bad players lurking....??

 

[Doctor Proctor]

Totally respect your opinion, but maybe you have some bad players lurking....??

It doesn't have so much to do with power gaming as it does with surprise. The first time we encountered Hobgoblin Soldier in the KotS, I was rather confused that I seemed to be missing sometimes with rolls that were hitting before. It took me awhile to figure out the fact that their AC goes up when they're next to each other, at which point I started using Tide of Iron to separate them.

Had I read the MM before hand, I would've been prepared for this power of theirs. Whether or not I used that knowledge to affect my tactics and just start Tide of Ironing immediately is one thing, but mainly, it just would've ruined the surprise.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Eh, its nice in theory to think that you'd have players that don't know the MM inside out, and a lot of my current 4e group doesn't. Yet if I were to run 1e, 2e, or 3.x they would all know the very last detail of everything. I mean most fairly accomplished players also DM at least from time-to-time. Its rare to see people that are really into the game that don't have all the books and haven't read most of them, at least that's always been my experience in the past.

As for the whole MM summons thing. What really is that gaining over just creating more summoning spells? I mean once we're on the path of home brew why not just home brew a batch of new daily powers? They aren't hard to come up with, really just minor variations of the existing ones. I think the actual summoning rules themselves should stay as they are though.

Let me transport you back to the old days of D&D when you had spells like "Conjure Elemental" which worked pretty much like Rachel is suggesting. They were almost never used. The control loss risk element was far too chancy when you could just take Disintegrate at the same level IIRC (or some SoD anyway). Summoned creatures also weren't very effective because if you brought in the type of monsters that were an actual threat then the spell was too powerful, yet the less threatening monsters were basically cannon-fodder that weren't worth the waste of a spell slot.

I actually think the 4e system is pretty good. It allows the designer of a summon spell to create something that is well tuned to the appropriate power level and mechanics to work well in a balanced way with a party. The creatures are still cool and interesting and can do fun stuff. OOC they are really excellent fun too.

Likewise I think the action economy aspect of summons is good. One problem with doing it the other way is that if say you have a party of 3 and you drop another fully autonomous monster with its own actions into the combat its a huge and essentially winning move right off. The party gains 25% action economy advantage, which is decisive. In a BIG group that isn't so much of an issue but the point is it makes summons pretty variable in their utility. Keeping them down to using player actions avoids that problem.

I do like the idea of "augments" to summons in the form of utilities or encounter powers that could be used through a summons, or something like that. They could be spells that have a rider that says you can cast it through your summons. Non-summoners would not likely take the spell, but it would mean the summoner could still do something with our without summons on the table. Weak encounter power summons would be fine too. Maybe they could have one fairly significant effect like a one-use poison attack or they damage enemies when they die or something.

 

[Rachel]

It doesn't have so much to do with power gaming as it does with surprise. The first time we encountered Hobgoblin Soldier in the KotS, I was rather confused that I seemed to be missing sometimes with rolls that were hitting before. It took me awhile to figure out the fact that their AC goes up when they're next to each other, at which point I started using Tide of Iron to separate them.

Had I read the MM before hand, I would've been prepared for this power of theirs. Whether or not I used that knowledge to affect my tactics and just start Tide of Ironing immediately is one thing, but mainly, it just would've ruined the surprise.

Point well taken about being suprised. Personally, it helps that I generally can't remember everything I read so I still get plenty of that in the form of "oh yah, that's right!" moments.

 

[Rachel]

@Necronomicon guy (AbdulAlhazred):

A great post that really got me thinking. I mean, do I really dislike the current summons system that much? No, actually I think I agree with you all-of-a-sudden that it's pretty well done. Especially in regards the the design team being able to tune the monsters to the appropriate power level. Also, great point about a summon monster sometimes being too powerful, and other times perhaps too weak.

Still, I just couldn't resist writing up a new Summoner class variant while chatting with friends on Facebook last night!