Summon Monster spells underpowered for elementals?

[Forrester]

An arcane spellcaster in my campaign wants to do the Summoner thing -- specifically, he wants to focus on summoning elementals.

So I was looking at the spells and what he can summon, and I was surprised at the general crap available.

Summon Monster III gets a 2HD, CR1 elemental.

Summon Monster V gets a 4HD, CR3 elemental.

In other words . . . talk about your lameness! I was thinking of bumping the elementals, if not many of the other creatures, down a slot (so the above spells would be II and IV, respectively). Has anyone else done something similar?

I should point out that in my campaign, I don't allow the Whirlwind/Cleave combo, and I allow folks to completely ignore creatures if they'd like (giving those ignored major bonuses).

So a Dragon with a summoned Dire Rat on one side, and a 20th level rogue on the other, can ignore the Dire Rat (who will get a free attack at +4! Ooh!) and the rogue won't get sneak attack damage.

This makes weak summoned creatures even more useless . . . hence my concern.

Opins?

 

[Crothian]

Personally, I think all the things you can summon with these spells are on the weak side. Well, do you have a summoner in your party who ffels like he's geting screwed? If so the easy fix is to allow feats like Augment Summoning or even the Summoner class concept from Quint Wizard.

 

[Jondor_Battlehammer]

Scarred lands has a summoner class too, not a bad one at that.

Celestial dire bears are my favorite, if they could fly they would have to be outlawed

I don't think that most summoned creatures are weak. They are not meant to stand alone, only to supplement your power. Likewise, no third level spell should do 100+ points of damage. Thats why spells such as planar ally and gate allow you to summon more powerful creatures, but at a price. Then you have otyugh swarm and elemental storm. Very cool on both, though summoning in general IS weighted twards divine spellcasters.

If anything, summoning is one of the most versatile spells available, as you can sculpt it to the encounter. Have cold based creatures? send in that small elemental into melee, and center your fire balls on it. Need spells, healing? Call a celestial. Those dire bears above can beat the DR of the mightiest dragon, and shrug off some of it's breath weapon, too. Need them to stick around for a while? Summon arrowhawks and have them shoot lightning at elevation while you melee.

Also, augment summoning, and extend spell and the summoning domain from DotF really bump up your power.

 

[Forrester]

Well, I think we can all agree that at 102hp and damage reduction 10/+3, a Celestial Dire Bear (CR9) is worth the money as a 6th level spell.

On the other hand, a Medium Elemental is CR3 as a 5th level spell.

I think the jump is a bit on the heavy side.

I mean, a wizard has to be 9th level to summon a medium elemental. What the hell is he going to be facing which is going to want to make him blow a 5th level spell on grabbing a CR3 creature?

Dire Bears seem about right for a 6th level spell (if they aren't a little too good!) But the elementals still seem weenie to me.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't necessarily find the creatures summoned to be too weak for the level of the spell, but I do have some other concerns regarding the Monster Summoning I-IX spells.

First, there are too few monsters listed. Particularly when the the Fiendish/Celestial template is applied, it is applied arbitrarily. I would have no problem with a character summoning a Celestial Hawk, or a character summoning an Infernal Dog and so forth.

Secondly, the limited duration of the spells is too prohibitive at low levels. I have a hard time imagining that Summon Monster I is ever cast by anyone. At low levels its effect is too weak because the spell is too short, and at high levels its effect is too weak because the creature summoned is almost inconsequential. Even a Conjurer specialist is better off filling his 1st level slots with Mage Armor and Unseen Servant. Especially since MSI is a full round spell, I expect more of an effect. I would suggest increasing the duration of the whole series to 1 min. (10 rounds) plus 1 round per caster level. This won't greatly improve the utility of any of the spells at high levels, but will make them more valued spells at low levels. At the least, I could then see Summon Monster I able to compete with Magic Missile and Summon Monster III able to compete with Fireball/Lightning bolt.

Thirdly, the utility of summoning creatures from a lower list than the spell you are casting is greatly reduced by the fact that the results are random. I don't think anyone would cast Summon Monster II and risk the result being that they are aided by a single Fiendish Dire Rat. The results should be standardized. Taking a list one lower than the spell you are casting gets 2 (or maybe 3) creatures, and two lower gets you 4 (or maybe 5) creatures. The only problem with this solution is that you could no longer Empower and Maximize the Monster Summoning spells. Then again, I'm not sure anyone ever was Empowering and Maximizing these spells since the benefit was so small compared to the result achieved. Why would you cast a Maximized Empowered Summon Monster IV to get the aid of 6-8 fiendish wolves when you could cast Summon Monster IX to get the aid of an Elder Elemental, Vrock, or Astral Deva? There doesn't appear to be a simple solution to this because Maximize Spell is quite weak and can only be made powerful by making the random range quite high (for instance a spell that summoned d100 creatures might be effectively Maximized). Empower spell is slightly better in general, but since the monsters from a Summon Monster 'N' spell are considerably more than 50% more powerful than the monsters from a Summon Monster 'N-2' spell, I doubt we could come up with a good solution. If only because this might not be true when N is large, we might make taking one lower list give you 2-3 creatures, and two lower 4-5. Empowered this would be 3-4 and 6-7 respectively, which is still not great but marginally useful.

Anyway, that's what I think. I may have overcompensated on the duration, but I'm just trying to see these spells get cast a little more often than they are.

 

[Bonedagger]

A bunch (3-5) of Fiendish Dire Weasels can be devastating against an archer or rogue type. Let them surround him (No 5 foot step) and he cannot afford to ignore them. Once they attach (+6 attack, Average 13 hp, 40 speed) they start their blooddrain for 2d4 con damage per round.

 

[Celebrim]

Forrester: I've done some thinking about your house rule that lets you ignore an attacker completely to prevent yourself from being flanked. I think that it is reasonable to allow a creature/character to do this, but that the penalty ought to be quite high. Essentially, if you ignore the attacker completely, then you are helpless with respect to it and incur all the penalties normally associated with being helpless: enemies get +4 to attack, and your effective Dex is 0 (-5 penalty to AC). You do not threaten the square that they are in (no Attack of Oppurtunity), so they can freely grapple, trip, etc. An armed attacker can attempt a Coup de Gras.

I also have decided that it is reasonable to bump Medium-Sized Elemental down to the Summon Monster IV list, but I'm hesitant to bump down the others. I'd also think you could summon Tiny Elementals with Summon Monster II, and that you could summon Elemental Creatures (Templates are in the Manual of the Planes IRCC) off one list higher than you could summon Fiendish/Celestial/Axiomatic/Chaotic creatures. For instance an Elemental Fire Dire Bear could be summoned by Summon Monster VII, and a Elemental Air Hawk could be summoned by Summon Monster II.

I also think the following make reasonable Elementals for Summon Monster I:

Air Elemental, Diminutive: CR 1/3; Diminutive Elemental (Air); HD 1/2d8-1; hp 1; Init +9 (+5 Dex, +4 Improved Initiative); Spd Fly 100 ft. (perfect); AC 19 (+4 size, +5 Dex); Atk Slam +9 melee (1d2-3); SA Air mastery, whirlwind; SQ Elemental; AL N; SV Fort -1, Ref +7, Will +0; Str 6, Dex 21, Con 8, Int 4, Wis 11, Cha 11.
Skills and Feats: Listen +5, Spot +5; Flyby Attack, Improved Initiative, Weapon Finesse (slam).

Earth Elemental, Diminutive: CR 1/3; Small Elemental (Earth); HD 1/2d8; hp 2; Init +1 (Dex); Spd 20 ft.; AC 19 (+4 size, +1 Dex, +4 natural); Atk Slam +3 melee (1d3-1); SA Earth mastery, push; SQ Elemental; AL N; SV Fort +2, Ref +1, Will +0; Str 9, Dex 12, Con 11, Int 4, Wis 11, Cha 11.
Skills and Feats: Listen +5, Spot +5; Power Attack.

Fire Elemental, Diminutive: CR 1/3; Small Elemental (Fire); HD 1/2d8-1; hp 1; Init +7 (+3 Dex, +4 Improved Initiative); Spd 50 ft.; AC 17 (+4 size, +3 Dex); Atk Slam +7 melee (1d2-3 and 1d2 fire); SA Burn; SQ Elemental, fire subtype; AL N; SV Fort -1, Ref +5, Will +0; Str 4, Dex 17, Con 8, Int 4, Wis 11, Cha 11.
Skills and Feats: Listen +5, Spot +5; Improved Initiative, Weapon Finesse (slam).

Water Elemental, Small: CR 1/3; Small Elemental (Water); HD 1/2d8-1; hp 1; Init +2 (Dex); Spd 20 ft., swim 90 ft.; AC 19 (+4 size, +2 Dex, +3 natural); Atk Slam +3 melee (1d3-1); SA Water mastery, drench, vortex; SQ Elemental; AL N; SV Fort +1, Ref +2, Will +0; Str 8, Dex 14, Con 9, Int 4, Wis 11, Cha 11.
Skills and Feats: Listen +5, Spot +5; Power Attack

Bonedagger: True, but to get 2-5 fiendish Dire Weasels, you have to spend a 5th level spell. Assuming the opposing Rouge or Archer is also 9th level or so, he probably has an AC around 23-26, and a variety of means to avoid getting surrounded (tumble skill comes to mind). Also, I'd just like to see you try to cast a full round spell against a high level Archer.

 

[Bonedagger]

Bonedagger: True, but to get 2-5 fiendish Dire Weasels, you have to spend a 5th level spell. Assuming the opposing Rouge or Archer is also 9th level or so, he probably has an AC around 23-26, and a variety of means to avoid getting surrounded (tumble skill comes to mind).

Few NPC's a party fight are the same level. Otherwise there are usually not that many of them so that you need to keep some of them occupied while dealing with the rest.

BTW. If the archer/rogue has 23 AC then the chance that he will get hit in the first round against 5 Dire Weasels ~ 67%. He will not wan't to get hit even once. He will have enough to worry about. Tumble or not. They will hunt him down.

Also, I'd just like to see you try to cast a full round spell against a high level Archer.

Haste. (Is that spell not standard? )

 

[Thanee]

Summoned celestial/fiendish dire animals are quite potent at their respective levels, but the elementals really seem to be at the lower end of the scale.

The higher level summons are actually quite lethal (dire bear, dire tiger and so on).

Well, a simple level 1 spell automatically negates most of the summoned creatures attacks anyways.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Forrester]

After some pondering, I was wondering what people thought of the following guidelines:

Summoning II gets a CR1 creature
Summoning III gets a CR3 creature
Summoning IV gets a CR5 creature
Summoning V gets a CR6 to CR7 creature
Summoning VI gets a CR8 to CR9 creature

And so on . . . maybe a little too strong?