Summoning Monsters

[Klaus]

I pretty much echo your questions and concerns. I think the solution to a lot of them would be to have monster-specific summonings that provide an inflexible but powerful summoning or a weaker spell that provides a variety of choices, at the same effective "level."

Either this (even taking a page from the PHBII Druid Shapeshifting ability, where appearance has no influence on stats) or the Craft Construct route would work nicely for me.

 

[TwinBahamut]

This would make my week.

'Course, I'm a fan of Final Fantasy summons, so take that with a grain of salt.

As another fan of Final fantasy summons (or any other videogame summon, ever), I also would like that idea.

Make it so summoning involves pacts with individual beings of great magical power, not just casting a random spell to get some poor mook from somewhere else in the world. Make it more like myths and videogames.

Actually, I wouldn't mind it if summoning is restricted to its own dedicated class or power source, so long as it was more interesting.

 

[Li Shenron]

Well now they have the at_will/per_encounter/daily framework, so they can use it to make summoning works better.

Either keep summoned critters weak and make summon monster frequently usable (e.g. per encounter) or boost them significantly and restrict the use to daily slots.

 

[sckeener]

I'd like some scalable monsters. I'd like to be able to summon the same monster I did at 1st level, but have it be good at 25th level.

I've found it annoying that sometimes the monster I need (because of skills or abilities) won't survive a round (because of AoE or saves being tossed around.)

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I'd like a summoning themed class in addition to a decent summoning spell system.

First the latter, then the former.

One where spells make up a minor part of the summons, as with Sha'irs from 2E, rather than the normal solution which is to make summons a substantial part of the spells, as with 'Spontaneous Badger' style Druids.

 

[WarlockLord]

Maybe instead of 1-second summons, make it a long pact with a creature whom you summon with a long ritual, like the planar binding spells, not just quick pokemonesque stuff.

 

[Sadrik]

Same here - because that's (partially) the image behind my inspiration. I hope they'll do that - then they can even spell "summons"-minis in their DDM line. And I'd get my summons. Everybody happy!

I agree, make the creature, the actual summon spell.

Lets back up- what do we know. They are going to have the spells be based on the "caster level" 25th level spell comes from a 25th level caster. Monsters are going to be based on a monster level and a "role". My guess is that monsters are going to be listed by level. So for instance a minotaur is going to have a range of levels and stats for each level in that range. For example that range may be 5-15. Taking these two ideas and putting them together a wizard may have a summon minotaur spell which is a spell level 5-15. Which means the wizard can cast it at 5th level and after 15th level he gets no more benefit from the spell (20th level caster still gets a 15th level minotaur).

The math on this idea seems to make sense too. A party is made up of 5 adventurers and each encounter is based on that. So, 5 10th level adventurers will face off against 5 10th level monsters. Each one of those parts has to be less than the adventurers themselves otherwise it will be a 50/50 toss up every encounter. A single 10th level monster may equal an 8th level character- I am guessing but they likely have an algorithm for this. Ok, finally the point- summoning 1 monster I don't think will be that much of a problem. So that level 10 wizard summons a level 10 minotaur for a limited duration and beats up on the other level 10 monsters in the encounter.

On the same topic, they should limit the number of creatures that a wizard can summon and control. Possibly split the summon spell into two spells one that summons 1 big creature but make it more difficult to control (move action- or even standard action) and summon a horde of smaller creatures and make them easy to control (free action).