Summon and Shapechange

[Sadrik]

I hope that these spells become explicit in exactly what they do.

So that a Summoning a celestial dog is different from summoning a fiendish dire rat. And furthermore, shapechange into an elemental is different from shapechange into a dragon. Basically, break them up more and make them more explicit rather than inclusive.

Here is an example in practice: The wizard summons a demon- which could be summon demon I. The cleric could summon a creature that makes sense for his deity it could be a single creature type summon divine ally, A druid could summon animal, there could also be a chain of spells to summon elementals, another to summon angels, and another to summon allies which could be fighters from your homeland.

Point is those are a lot more flavorful than summon monster and summon natures ally.

Limiting shapechange to be similar to a druid, where type (animal) and size (small) are the right ways to go with this chain of spells and effects. Alter self (humanoid at same size as caster) and so on.

 

[Kunimatyu]

I hope that summoning fiendish animals is right out -- it has an inherently lame feel ("I summon an EEEEVIL rat from the Lower Planes!") and ends up messing things up once big summons are involved.

Elementals should be retooled as primary summons, and summon spells where the caster has to give up actions to direct their summoned creature should be encouraged.

Demons and devils should be potential summons, but with serious costs. One of the little gems in Tome of Magic was the Fiendbinder, a prestige class that actually controlled powerful fiends, but they had to spend a standard action and make a check to order them to do something in a turn. If they failed, the fiend mocked them and refused to act.

 

[Rechan]

Here is an example in practice: The wizard summons a demon- which could be summon demon I. The cleric could summon a creature that makes sense for his deity it could be a single creature type summon divine ally, A druid could summon animal, there could also be a chain of spells to summon elementals, another to summon angels, and another to summon allies which could be fighters from your homeland.

Wow, you want the spell section of the PHB to be reaaaaally long, don't you?

I guess I can see the incentive to split various polymorph/shapechange spells into Polymorph (Giant) or Shapechange (Dragon). It takes the versatility out but it at least addresses other issues, and might allow you to assume the Supernatural abilities of that creature because then you know the powers are balanced.

We know that shapechanging is possible at least to some extent; from the second playtest:

We started off the session just after the encounter we had last week. Before we had time to heal up, we were attacked again. Our enemies crossed a snake theme with a fire theme, so they had a fire snake, a fire sorcerer who turned into a snake, and six azers who brought plenty of fire but forgot about the snake bit. Dessin, my warlock, mostly stayed at the back. He was just making enemies attack each other, firing some eldritch blasts, and concentrating fire on badly damaged foes (turns out that makes him do more damage). Most of the azers got taken down relatively quickly. The big surprise of the encounter was the sorcerer becoming a snake and grabbing our poor paladin. Turns out that even if you’re a snake, and even if you’re on fire, adventurers will still kill you.

 

[Jhaelen]

If they decide to keep those spells/abilities at all (rather than replacing them with specific spells, i.e. not summon monster, but summon air elemental), I hope they'll go for a generic toolkit approach rather than a list of creatures.
Something similar to astral construct would be nice: A basic set of stats and one or more special ability choices from one or more tables. Simply let the summoner choose what the creature looks like.

Shapechange could be implemented exactly the same way. Closer to the PHB2 Druid variant but with a set of options at different power levels.

 

[Malhost Zormaeril]

If they decide to keep those spells/abilities at all (rather than replacing them with specific spells, i.e. not summon monster, but summon air elemental), I hope they'll go for a generic toolkit approach rather than a list of creatures.
Something similar to astral construct would be nice: A basic set of stats and one or more special ability choices from one or more tables. Simply let the summoner choose what the creature looks like.

Shapechange could be implemented exactly the same way. Closer to the PHB2 Druid variant but with a set of options at different power levels.

I second that motion. I think Astral Constructs are lame from a fluff point of view, but from the crunch point of view an astral construct-like table would be inherently simpler to balance out than just picking monsters from the MM, because the ability screening process has already been done. On the other hand, the simpler monster-building stats may obviate the need for a separate summons table. Just mark with a § whenever a given ability is OK for summoned creatures... or the reverse, depending on the ratio to the sum total of abilities.

 

[Kraydak]

The following will be written under the assumption that the concepts of CR and LA translate well enough into 4e (even though the actual terms probably won't).

The big reason that polymorph/summons don't key off of CR in 3e is the pesky LA. Mind, I personally believe that LA is a vastly overblown deal, but no matter. However, one could image a reworked 3e MM with both a Combat Rating and a, say, Adventure Rating (roughly AR=CR+LA). Then you would have 2 different versions of polymorph and summons at each level. A short duration one which allowed you to summon/turn into something with CR=2*spell level-1ish and a long duration one which was limited by AR=2*spell level-1ish.

This would allow for combat relevant polymorph/summons while also letting the wizard turn into/summon a bird for long distance travel/message bearing. It would also solve the *hideous* power problem of keying polymorph or the planar binding spells off of HD, of all things.