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Message: <blockquote data-quote="s/LaSH" data-source="post: 384407" data-attributes="member: 6929">You might also want to consider beefing up the Summon spells; there are several sources for 'summon whatever you want' variants of the standard Summon spells. There's one in the House Rules section, and I've got another one that might give some interesting ideas at <a href="http://dungeondamage.keenspace.com/summon.html" target="_blank">http://dungeondamage.keenspace.com/summon.html</a>. I've always had serious doubts about the balance of those Summon spells, frankly... I think they're too weak in certain aspects.But if you can't do that, at least summon with style and verve. If you've ever seen a Final Fantasy summon, you'll know that you should be describing your spell effects with far more gusto than normal spells. Plus, your creatures won't appear like normal creatures; they'll be all glowy and shiny or exude darkness and corruption or otherwise bring to mind expensive computer-generated effects. Now while you shouldn't be able to call for automatic Intimidate checks with a Summon Monster spell, you should be able to put enemies on a psychological disadvantage if you do this well.Here's another idea: If you can convince your DM to allow it, have your monsters gain XP. If you use different monsters all the time, they won't gain all that much, but by the time you're high-level you'll have plenty of elite low-level monsters with a few extra HD or character levels. Your DM may want to run the monsters and thus tell you what they've leveled into, but hey: it's a small price to pay.I'll leave you with my parting thought: I (the DM) have a triton mage in my campaign, and she cast a Summon for a celestial badger, but I ruled that it came out as a seal instead (because tritons are water dwellers; she even has an otter instead of a weasel familiar). The seal had the same stats as a badger but sorta floated above the ground like it was swimming in the air. The reason I encouraged this is because (a) it looked cool and (b) it didn't make a difference in the position the party was in; it didn't need to fly and couldn't take advantage of the fact.It's all about being cool. Combat effectiveness is a pale second.</blockquote>

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