Summon Monster spells.......yawn....
- Thread starter Darmanicus
- Start date
cmrscorpio
Explorer
I love the variants in UA for summoning. Particularly, I love the idea of summoning a particular creature when you cast the spell. Especially when you gain access to spells that allow you to travel to other planes, you can give magic items to the creature so it can use them when you summon it.
I find the most boring thing about summoning spells is their incredibly short duration. You get to use the creature for a combat and that's it.
A varient might be to allow upping the duration if you choose a single creature from one of the lower level lists. Maybe allow a summoning duration of 10 min/level if you choose from a creature two lists lower than the spell you're casting, and 1 hour/level if you choose a creature three lists lower than the spell you're casting.
A varient might be to allow upping the duration if you choose a single creature from one of the lower level lists. Maybe allow a summoning duration of 10 min/level if you choose from a creature two lists lower than the spell you're casting, and 1 hour/level if you choose a creature three lists lower than the spell you're casting.
The_Warlock
Explorer
Soel said:
Naturally I couldn't find it last night, but it is a large part of the house rule I use. Stupid me typed it up, made some additions, and didn't make note of which Dragon it is in.
Luckily Paizo is pretty good about listing articles (even if it is tedious to find which dragon it was in).
http://paizo.com/dragon/products/issues/2002/302
The article is called The Summoner's Circle in issue 302 from 2002.
What I did is rewrite the summoning spells whole hog using this system as the base. The article itself leaves the basic summoning spell where they are, and introduces fairly clear rules for creature CR vs Spell Level, and a simple method to use the character's Knowledge skills in a useful way. I highly reccomend it.
The_Warlock
Explorer
Wolfwood2 said:
See, I thought that as well. Which is why I borrowed an idea from the Kingdoms of Kalamar books. In one of their books (Player's Guide, I think), they introduced the "Scaleable Spell". In essence, a spell that has the Heighten Spell metamagic feat written into it, so it improves in output based on how high a spell slot you prepare it in/cast it from.
The only problem was, KoK executed the concept poorly in my opinion and made some deucedly overpowered spells.
I took that concept and the Summoner's Circle article and combined them.
So what I got was...
Level 1 Summons allows the Summoner Circle CRs based on what level slot you use for 1 round per level. Great for making a combat summons list.
Level 3 Summons allows SC CRs-1 based on what level slot is used, but for 1 min/level.
This continues up on the odd levels, slowly decreasing the maximum CR of the creatures, but extending the duration. This allows a summoner to have very useful/utility creatures for a long duration (can we say Dao?), but not excessively powerful creatures which would unbalance their combat contribution.
It's worked really well in my run, and made for some seriously amusing interactions with summoned entities.
Ogrork the Mighty
Explorer
What about limiting each spell level version to one specific creature (which is always the same creature) who can be outfitted/equipped by the caster (and retains the gear each time it is summoned), up the duration to 1 minute per level or maybe even 10 minutes per level, but put in the limitation that the creature can't be summoned again for 24 hours if it is slain.
