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%

I use a CR-based system which I derived from calculating the average CR of each level of summoned monster and extracting a CR range for each level of the spell. As per the rules, only outsiders, elementals and extraplanar animals are used.
 

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Herremann the Wise said:
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.

Interesting decision taken in Complete Arcane. Having played an 3rd Ed alienist in the past, I always felt it rather contrived to apply the pseudonatural template to all summoned creatures. While it seemed appropriate to substitiute it for the celestial or fiendish templates, things like psuedonatural succubi never really felt right to me. I know they aren't really succubi, just something alien that looks like one, but it still took away some of the flavour. Obviously you weren't too unhappy with the arrangement.

If my alienist ever comes out of retirement, I may well see if I can design some actual pseudonatural creatures to replace existing creatures on the list. I've seen a few examples of these somewhere on the web. But I'm also happy to retain many of the originals too, since I don't feel that alienists should always have to summon creatures from the Far Realms.

All in all, the more i hear about the Complete Arcane, the more I think it's my kind of book! :)
 

First, the question rarely comes up, as few of our wizards, etc., are that interested in the spells.

Second, we currently use AU, so we have an entirely different group of critters and rules to deal with.

So overall, it is kind of a moot point for the group I game with...
 

I play a Drd/Wiz (conj specialist)/MT (currently level 16) and I summon a TON of stuff and I stick to the core books only. There are plenty of things on the lists already and I tend to stick to some favorites (elementals, rhinos, t-rex). I also find that the SNA spells are far superior to SM. In last nights sessions I summoned 5 rhinos and a t-rex and then cast Animal Growth on them all. Nothing like a stampede of Huge rhinos. Fun!!
 

Most of the time I use the core PHB stuff but if I am playing a specialist summoner I realy like the idea of tweeking out the list of creatures to make the character interesting. At present I've got two that I've made (but the games they were being played in appear to have pettered out *sigh/shrug*).

One a 1st Level Human Cleric with the Summoner Domain, Spell Focus Conjuration & Augment Summoning. its an effective combonation as the revised (non Prestige-Domain version) of the Summoning domain adds +2 to the Caster level of summon spells so he can summon a Augment Summoned Celestial Badger that will stick around for 3 rounds and can take a hit or two and thus actually be able to use its rage ability!

The other is a Strongheart Halfling Conjurer (again, with both SF-Conj. & Aug. Sum.) and I basically treated the list as, the 1st level summon monster list has something like 13 creatures. The Planer Handbook had suggested templates and what their level adjustment would be for the purpose of the summon monster lists. So I used that as a guide and used all the different creatures (except ones that would obviously go against alignment. Such as having a Hellcat for a good character) and found as many templates as I could that could fulfil the same criteria. The 'Element' templates from the 3.0 Manaul of the Planes provided a big chunk of the templates I used (at least for my 1st level Summons). Then I started pairing templates up with creatures. So I have a Wood-Element Scorpion, a Ice-Element Spider, a Fire Raven and the one that seems to get the most laughs. A Spellwarped <MM3?> Monkey. Naturally for the Spider and Scorpion that are originally fiendish I stripped off that template first before applying the other template.

Ideally I'd like to realy see a well done summoner core or prestige class created. I've had idea's to do it myself but havent typed them up as of yet and just have a few notes.
 


Currently core books only, but I have a listing of every Summon Monster for the core books which makes things easier. The only difference is that we allow the celestial and fiendish templates to be exchanged if the caster wishes (so a Summon Monster I could summon a celestial dire rat).
 

We kinda use our own.

Clerics can use any creature that shares an alignment with the cerlic's god. So a cleric of a chaotic good god can summon CN, CG and NG creatures, aw well as anarchic and celestial templated ones. In addition, if a god offers an elemental domain, they can summon cratures with that elemental template - eg. if a god offers the earth domain, the cleric can swap other templates for earth. The template thing only works for animals basically, as seen on the core list. But I allow any animal on there, so a cleric could summon a celestial, anarchic or earth snake for example.

Wizards can more or less summon anything they like. They need to speak the language to summon elemental templated creatures or alignment templated creatures (fire needs ignan, celstial needs celestial etc) and they need to make a spell craft roll to add them to the list. But the list is of unlimited size. I think this is too strong, and next campaign i'll probably use modified UA rules.

As far as slowing the game down goes, it doesn't. If a player has their head around the rules and the creatures they can summon, all well and good.But there's no spending 10 minutes in a combat trying to deide what to summon.
 

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