[Player's Guide to Faerun] Summon Undead???

[Mulkhoran]

Greetings, FR-haters! Time for a bone*

My group and I have recently noticed a bit of a discrepancy with some new spells from the Player's Guide to Faerun, specifically the Summon Undead series.

Since I don't have the book in front of me, I'll give you the example from the other night:

Summon Undead III, 3rd level Sor/Wiz and Cleric : You can summon, from the list, a Huge Skeleton. No restriction details, no limitations listed in the spell.

This means your 5th level Cleric or Wizard can cast this and get:

A 19HD Skeletal Dragon, with a 6-attack Full attack sequence, +17 main and +12 others, doing many many many many many dice of damage. Sure, his AC sucks, but he's got 123 HP and DR 5/bludgeoning.

We're working on our own fixes, but I just figured I'd point this out to you folks. You see something wrong here?


Thanks,

- Mike







* - Get it? Huge skeletons, bone....I so funny

 

[RigaMortus]

I thought you said you could summon a Huge Skeleton, not a Skeletal Dragon. There is a difference.

A Huge skeleton is just that, a "normal" skeleton that happens to be of size Huge.

 

[Knight Otu]

As far as I understand it, the Summon Undead spell chain has not been updated to account for the fact that skeleton and zombie are now templates. That is the main problem.

 

[Liquidsabre]

Skeletal Dragon template can be found in the Draconomicon.

Knight Otu has it. The 3.5 MM changed skeletons to template creatures. Summon Undead III gives you either a: Ghoul, Large Zombie, or Huge Skeleton. In this case (for a 3.5 tanslation) that would be a: ghoul, Large 4HD Zombie, or Huge 4HD Skeleton.

Just another relic proble from the revision and someone in the editing department dropped the ball. With the errors in Complete Divine I'm really beginning to wonder if anyone in the editing department has even played D&D at all or slack off figuring who cares, it's just a game...rather than t

Good catch that, I haven't used the spell yet and hadn't noticed. Best to leave the anti-FR comments alone however, I might have a bone to pick with ya.

 

[Awakened]

Oh man, my necromancer has been summoning Troll Skeletons. My DM won't be too happy with my incorrect assumptions. I just figured they had to mean the Troll type for Summon II because the others are way too strong.

 

[Darth K'Trava]

I've never used the spell myself as we all play in a good-aligned campaign where none of our clerics would even *dare* summon undead of ANY type....

 

[Aaron L]

Yeah, I was very upset that this spell hadn't been retouched AT ALL, as my necromancer was going to be using it all the time.

 

[Liquidsabre]

Another thought just hit me. Animate Dead is pretty sweet then as long as you can find a dead creature of a powerful type. Wow, cool. Just 25gp/HD. Hmmmmm

 

[Mulkhoran]

Knight Otu has it. The 3.5 MM changed skeletons to template creatures. Summon Undead III gives you either a: Ghoul, Large Zombie, or Huge Skeleton. In this case (for a 3.5 tanslation) that would be a: ghoul, Large 4HD Zombie, or Huge 4HD Skeleton.

Just another relic proble from the revision and someone in the editing department dropped the ball. With the errors in Complete Divine I'm really beginning to wonder if anyone in the editing department has even played D&D at all or slack off figuring who cares, it's just a game...rather than t

Good catch that, I haven't used the spell yet and hadn't noticed. Best to leave the anti-FR comments alone however, I might have a bone to pick with ya.

Har. I'm actually a big FR fan, I just figured this would attract the usual "stoopit overpowered FR munchkin drizztt garbage!" comments.

Hmm, 4HD. My RttToEE game just got a lot less challenging.....oh well...

I understand our confusion now. I was kind of under the impression the PGF was a 3.5 book, given it's release time. It seems I haven't read it thoroughly enough or I'm off on the relative release times. Bah.

 

[Mulkhoran]

Another thought just hit me. Animate Dead is pretty sweet then as long as you can find a dead creature of a powerful type. Wow, cool. Just 25gp/HD. Hmmmmm

[annoying]
2HD per caster level, remember...
[/annoying]