DM-you can only have a shark PC-BUT I WANT A PORPOISE

[Corlon]

For monster summoning, is there someway to judge what animals a character can summon besides what's on the list?

In one of my sessions, a water mephit went under water, and the characters weren't about to risk fighting it in it's own advirenment, so the cleric summoned a shark, but the shark could only get a max of 2 damage (with damage reduction), and with fast healing 2... you get the picture, so I allowed him to summon a porpoise which isn't as hard persay, but its headbutt can deal more than the shark's bite.

In the end, 3 of the party threw off their gear, jumped into the water, and started beating the crap out of the mephit

I also thought that at high levels, summoning dragons would be pretty cool, so does anyone have rules or house rules on this??

 

[Shayuri]

Monster Summoning Woes

My group recently had a similar problem when trying to deal with an aboleth. Our cleric could summon pseudonatural sharks, but we really NEEDED a whale of some kind, for the Blindsight ability which could defeat it's figments.

Regrettably, there's no easy formula for determining what kind of critter can be summoned with what level of spell. The CR's in the monster lists given vary WILDLY, as do hit dice and abilities!

For example, Summon Monster IX allows you to summon an Astral Deva (CR 14, a buttload of special powers) OR a Ghale Eladrin...which is basically just a powered down version of the Deva! Which would YOU pick? Oh yeah, there's always a Large Barghest...

That same peculiar pattern follows the entire series. Each spell appears to be able to summon a range of creatures from wimpy to cool, but there's no easy formula I've been able to find that gives ideas on how to add to the list. If I run a game, I'll probably house rule the heck outta that one, just to make it CONSISTANT.

Just remember though that only extraplanar creatures can be called with Summon Monster spells. Anything that would normally be found on the Material plane (such as dragons) would generally have to get an extraplanar template (celestial, fiendish, anarchic, etc...) in order to qualify.

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

Here's some summoning rules that somebody came up with a while ago:

http://dungeondamage.keenspace.com/summon.html

 

[las]

The next dragon mag will have summoning rules.

 

[Victim]

Umm, The Ghaele Eladrin casts spells like a cleric in addition to it's other powers. So I'd almost always pick the Eladrin. The large barghest is probably most useful at preventing ressurection, which would normally require an expensive spell that isn't very useful otherwise.