CR ranges for Summon Monster I-IX?

[Pax]

Summon spells take longer to cast than Dominate Monster - meaning you'r vulnerable to disruption for an ENTIRE round.

Greater risk, greater gain ... ?

 

[Thanee]

CR of just above half caster level ... is just not good enough, IMO.

Yes, the combat usefulness drop considerably with "half level", since the margin increases constantly.

Having summons be level dependant somehow and basically allow summoning of your level (NOT caster level! - so has to be calculated from the spell level, otherwise it is too easily abused) minus one to four (constantly increasing, like every other spell level) in ECL (or CR) would probably work better (as a house rule).

Maybe CR 2 points below caster level, but the majorproblem there is, 9th level spells you gt at 17th level, so as a 20th level character, you're REALLY getting stuff FIVE CR below caster level. Meh.

Well, you'd need epic summon spells to be useful beyond 20th level.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Pax]

Epic summon spells suck. To match Summon Monster IX, yuou'd need somethng like TEN seperate Epic Summon spells, and that, all told, would be five levels' worth of XP.

TheEpic Spell system is busted - too hard to do simple things, too easy to do broken things. Both of them by a wide margin.

 

[Thanee]

Heh. I don't really know how the epic stuff works, but that doesn't sound all too great.

Bye
Thanee