Summon Monster duration

[IceBear]

Nope - I disagree with that and so did both of you in your original posts. You both had the monster disappearing at the beginning of round 3 originally. To me, the last round of the spell is Round 3 (Maybe I'm looking at it too much from the tracking of when the spell ends than from the point of view of duration).

Anyway, I don't care too much. I don't mind the extra round and that's how my group has been playing it this campaign (so to change it now would introduce some issues).

IceBear

 

[Artoomis]

Nope - I disagree with that and so did both of you in your original posts. You both had the monster disappearing at the beginning of round 3 originally. To me, the last round of the spell is Round 3 (Maybe I'm looking at it too much from the tracking of when the spell ends than from the point of view of duration).

Anyway, I don't care too much. I don't mind the extra round and that's how my group has been playing it this campaign (so to change it now would introduce some issues).

IceBear

It's not wayyyy unbalancing the way you do it, and you present a pretty good reason to leave it alone in your campaign. Your Monster Summoning is a bit more powerful than the book's, but what the heck - it takes a whole round to cast it anyway, and the monsters are not all that powerful compared to the level of spell caster.

You're right about my changing the way it was discussed a bit earlier - that tends to happen with better anaylsis. So GreatWyrm had is almost right.

 

[IceBear]

BTW - I sent an email to the Sage on this (just for curiosity's sake)

Case 1:
Round 1 - Wizard casts spell
Round 2 - Monster appears, attacks and disappears

Case 2:
Round 1 - Wizard casts spell
Round 2 - Monster appears and attacks
Round 3 - Monster disappears

Case 3:
Round 1 - Wizard casts spell
Round 2 - Monster appears and attacks
Round 3 - Monster attacks and then disappears

IceBear

 

[Greatwyrm]

So GreatWyrm had is almost right.

Nice to know it happens once in a while.

Wonder what the sage has to say? Dang it! D&D needs a tech support hotline like in Knights of the Dinner Table.

 

[IceBear]

To me, I think the problem comes with how you look at the "During the last round the creature gets to act normally and then disappear".

Since I track spell durations by determining what round the spell disappears in I allowed it to operate normally in round 3 before disappearing (the last round = the round of the combat in which the spell ends).

Since you and Artoomis tracked it by duration (the monster has taken one round of actions and the spell is a 1 round duration spell; the last round is based on spell duratioon) then you would not.

I still feel that the context of that sentence is that the monster gets an action in Round 3, and not that it disappears in Round 2 like Artoomis states, but it doesn't bother me one way or the other.

IceBear

 

[Artoomis]

Nice to know it happens once in a while.

Wonder what the sage has to say? Dang it! D&D needs a tech support hotline like in Knights of the Dinner Table.

Well, in this particular case the rules themselves are clear and not really subject to interpretation, so I don't see Sage's ruling as needed.

Of course, as is often the case in D&D, you need to look in three different places to gather up all the appropriate rules together. Once you look at them all together, the answer sort of naturally appears.

 

[melkoriii]

IceBear has it right.

Rd 1 start spell
Rd 2 Summon mob, mob attacks
Rd 3 Summon Mob attacks and disapperas

 

[IceBear]

Artoomis, if the rules were clear, would we have this thread?

Basically, it's how you track durations is the reason for this problem.

IceBear

 

[Xahn'Tyr]

The spell has a duration of "1 round/level ". One round is NOT from the start of your turn until the end of your turn. One round is from the start of your turn until just before the start of your next turn.

Art, the way you are running summoned monsters has cut the duration of the spell from 1 round to 1 action for a 1st level caster. You are cheating the caster out of the protection, flanking bonuses, and everything else that they are entitled to for one round.

If that bit about "disappear at the end of their turn" was not there, then things would be fairly clear. Since it is there, we either have to shorten the duration by 95% of a round, or extend it by 5%. I will err on the side that favors simplicity, common sense, and less mutilation of the system.

Anyway, in this particular case the rules themselves are clear and not really subject to interpretation, so I don't see Art's ruling as needed.

 

[IceBear]

You know, the more I think about this, the more I think my original stance is correct.

If a spell (that causes damage if something should enter its area of effect) should appear in round 2, and had a duration of 1 round, it would disappear just before the caster's turn in round 3. We agree on this?

This would allow the one round spell to cause damage in round 2, and in PART of round 3, just like Monster summoning would.

IceBear