How do you handle Summon Monster spells?

What Summon Monster Rules do you use?

  • I use the Core Books only

    Votes: 62 68.1%
  • I use the Unearthed Arcana 'Themed' Monster Summoning Rules/Lists

    Votes: 7 7.7%
  • I use the Unearthed Arcana 'Build Your Own' Monster Summoning Rules/Lists

    Votes: 12 13.2%
  • I use my own Monster Summoning Rules/Lists

    Votes: 13 14.3%
  • I use Third Party Monster Summoning Rules/Lists (Specify the book/location)

    Votes: 4 4.4%
  • Other (Specify)

    Votes: 9 9.9%

Pants

First Post
I've been going through my D&D books recently and I've noticed several different ways of changing the Summon Monster lists (at least amongst my WotC books).

Fiend Folio lists creatures that can be added to the existing Summon Monster/Nature's Ally tables. The problem with this one is that a player may have just too many choices when choosing to summon a creature. Flipping through the Fiend Folio, Book of Fiends, and Tome of Horrors to come up with a suitable creature can take serious amounts of time.

Monster Manual III allows players to 'switch out' certain monsters for other monsters, creating a compact and unique list for potentially each spellcaster.

UA lists two variant ways to summon creatures, basically the 'build your own list' and the themed summon monster list, both of which I really like.

So, how does everyone else deal with this? What rules does everyone else use?
 

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Most of my players are lazy, and so am I -- we generally don't cast Summon Monster spells.

One player with a Druid PC did summon critters, and he used both Core rules and my custom elemental summons tables (see website for details), to good effect.

In general, given how little summoning I see, I'm tempted to remove it as an option and just allow Planar Bindings and Planar Ally spells instead.

(Ooo, an exception: demons & devils who can summon others just like themselves often do so. The stats are right in front of me already... I'm so darn lazy... :\ )

-- N
 

Core Rules Only

For my Alienist - Lucifus Cray
I have each creature on it's own page with adjustments made for the Augment Summoning Feat and the Psuedonatural template - with six columns with the hit points at the top.

Best thing I ever did for a specialist summoner.

However, the Complete Arcane has chosen to takeaway half the choices of the Alienist by only allowing creatures that have the celestial or fiendish template - transferred to the Psuedonatural template. All the nasty stuff gone in one hit. I'm very disappointed.

We're considering the changing in and out of Monster Manual III. This seems like a good idea in general. We're also looking at a feat to re-instate some of the creatures ripped out by the complete arcane.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise
 

Simple really..who is summoning and what purpose.

Good summoning celestials; normal if asked to attack evil. They may attack neutral creatures depending upon the threat, the caster must make a caster-level check to make them attack other good creatures; otherwise as per the book.

Good summoning neutral or animals: normal.

Good summoning evil: want to kill creatures, regardless of who or what it is. Must make a caster level check to have them not kill you or your party if you summon them not to attack something. This is not considered an "evil" act.
 

I'll use whatever system me and the player have agreed on beforehand. If they want to use the core method, that is fine. If they want to use one of the unearthed arcanna variants, that is also acceptable, after we work out the specifics for his character. If they want to use some extra variant creatures, we all need to be familiar with how to handle that. If we are using the "unique summoning" monsters variant, then we need to work together to balance those out.

Once, I even had a player who wanted to manifest his spells as summons. It was a bit too video game derived (not something I normally am bothered with, but in this particular case it seemed odd to me), but since he thought it was fun, and there were no changes to the rules (for example, a fire ball summoned a tiny fire elemental instead of a bead that traveled in a straight line and then exploded like the spell) it didn't bother me.

Basically, I'm willing to do whatever sounds the most fun for the players. I am, as a player, especially fond of the unique summoned monsters rules. I try to combine that with the unearthed arcana themed list to get the most interesting results.
 

Dragon had an article not too long ago on adding to the SM and SNA lists. I use that and the UA build your own summoning list rules to create individual lists for every caster. It sounds ambitious, I know, but virtually none of my players show any interest in playing spellcasters, so I do what I can to overpower their spellcasting characters and bend over backward to make life easy and exciting for spellcasters in my game.
 

Me and my party too

Nifft said:
Most of my players are lazy, and so am I

Of the caster's in my campaign, the cleric only tends to cast buffs and dish out healing as he's usually in the front line. The wizard is progressing down the elemental savant path and either casts fireballs or charm spells. The illusionist/rog usually just self buffs and sneak attacks.

Did have a nature cleric who did cast summon monster, but stuck to the basic book stuff until a pair of babau brought about his untimely end with a bunch of sneak attacks and a critical hit.

Bigwilly
 

I am currently only using the core books for summon monster lists. Seems to work okay for me so far. Perhaps sometime in the future I will take a look at the UA variations and see if I like how it would work.
 

Generally, we just use the lists in the PHB. In one case a player has swapped out one monster for another to better fit the character's theme.

Bye
Thanee
 

Like Nifft said; we generally avoid them. I'd see it the responsibility of the player to have something ready that doesn't slow down the game, though. If I played a summoner spellcaster, I'd put together stat blocks of options on index cards that I could pull up when needed during play. That way, I could go all fancy if I wanted, in terms of options, but it would be done between sessions.
 

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