ajanders
Explorer
Summoning and physics and cultures
Originally posted by GuardianLurker
Yep. Agreed, and ideally I'd like to keep the rule changes to a minimum (none preferrably). Since you're so adamant about physics first, philosophy second, let me address those options given by Tonguez.
Well, you can do that without too much difficulty, actually. I had to make two changes, one allowed for in the SRD, one a little dubious...but I don't think it's incompatible.
Most of Tonguez options: Final Fantasy, friendship, contracting, or toteming require two things: the ability to communicate with the thing you're summoning and a chance to interact with them. Communication is not too difficult to work out: PC's may not speak Abyssal or Ignan, but any outisder with interests on the Prime Plane certainly speaks Common (or whatever). And for a small additional fee, should you need to speak with a less linguistically accessible fiend, you can find a succubus to translate for only a minor additional fee. Really.
Of course, that brings up the question of how you communicate with the templated animals. I use the Animal Handling skill to communicate any instructions different from "Sic 'em!" Technically, of course, I think they're still outsiders, but a celestial badger is still pretty badgery in my book.
How you get summoner and summoned to interact is a little different problem. I use three or four different ways, none of which is quite in the SRD, but all of which could be considered setting specific material.
1. Planar Gates: Planar gates are a major McGuffin in my campaign: they exist, but not with much consistency. An exploratory azer/undine/quasit or whatever has been known to wander out onto the Prime and get stuck for a couple of weeks. Spellcasters with a penchant for summonings stay on the lookout for these visitors, striking a bargain or otherwise establishing dominance/friendship, then waiting until the outsider gets home before doing the summoning.
2. Dreams: Usually sent by powerful intelligent outsiders for a variety of different reasons, a caster can meet and interact with a variety of different outsiders this way.
3. Near-death experiences: you almost got to Elysium, but not quite. And you met some nice badgers there who said they'd be around if you needed them.
4. Native outsiders might have a lot of outsider family connections on their father's side. Sometimes cousin Christopher, the Monadic Deva, drops in to see how you're doing. He might not let you summon him, but he might send you a couple of badgers that work for him.
This is all setting stuff, but it's different ways of implementing a basic "physics" rule change: adding the optional rule about monster binding and then the clauses "The character must have met the outsider they will summon. The outsider must be willing to answer the summons."
Those are little changes: I might even suggest that some outsiders probably leave the mystic equivalent of a telephone number on the Prime. After all, Mephistopheles would hate to lose new customers just because they hadn't seen him before.
Aside from the "type" allusion, the implications behind your whimsical fiction are exactly what I'm hoping to address. Note that the implications are physics-independent (at least in this case).
Hey, at least is was whimsical.
Note that the SRD blows that fiction right out immedately:
Aligned/templated creatures change the spell's descriptor - i.e. a if the caster summons a fiendish dire rat, the spell just cast has the "Evil" descriptor.
So summoning dretch is evil, regardless of whether the dretch are being used to rescue a kitten from a tree or kill a priest.
I might be able to add more to this later
Originally posted by GuardianLurker
Yep. Agreed, and ideally I'd like to keep the rule changes to a minimum (none preferrably). Since you're so adamant about physics first, philosophy second, let me address those options given by Tonguez.
Well, you can do that without too much difficulty, actually. I had to make two changes, one allowed for in the SRD, one a little dubious...but I don't think it's incompatible.
Most of Tonguez options: Final Fantasy, friendship, contracting, or toteming require two things: the ability to communicate with the thing you're summoning and a chance to interact with them. Communication is not too difficult to work out: PC's may not speak Abyssal or Ignan, but any outisder with interests on the Prime Plane certainly speaks Common (or whatever). And for a small additional fee, should you need to speak with a less linguistically accessible fiend, you can find a succubus to translate for only a minor additional fee. Really.
Of course, that brings up the question of how you communicate with the templated animals. I use the Animal Handling skill to communicate any instructions different from "Sic 'em!" Technically, of course, I think they're still outsiders, but a celestial badger is still pretty badgery in my book.
How you get summoner and summoned to interact is a little different problem. I use three or four different ways, none of which is quite in the SRD, but all of which could be considered setting specific material.
1. Planar Gates: Planar gates are a major McGuffin in my campaign: they exist, but not with much consistency. An exploratory azer/undine/quasit or whatever has been known to wander out onto the Prime and get stuck for a couple of weeks. Spellcasters with a penchant for summonings stay on the lookout for these visitors, striking a bargain or otherwise establishing dominance/friendship, then waiting until the outsider gets home before doing the summoning.
2. Dreams: Usually sent by powerful intelligent outsiders for a variety of different reasons, a caster can meet and interact with a variety of different outsiders this way.
3. Near-death experiences: you almost got to Elysium, but not quite. And you met some nice badgers there who said they'd be around if you needed them.
4. Native outsiders might have a lot of outsider family connections on their father's side. Sometimes cousin Christopher, the Monadic Deva, drops in to see how you're doing. He might not let you summon him, but he might send you a couple of badgers that work for him.
This is all setting stuff, but it's different ways of implementing a basic "physics" rule change: adding the optional rule about monster binding and then the clauses "The character must have met the outsider they will summon. The outsider must be willing to answer the summons."
Those are little changes: I might even suggest that some outsiders probably leave the mystic equivalent of a telephone number on the Prime. After all, Mephistopheles would hate to lose new customers just because they hadn't seen him before.
Aside from the "type" allusion, the implications behind your whimsical fiction are exactly what I'm hoping to address. Note that the implications are physics-independent (at least in this case).
Hey, at least is was whimsical.
Note that the SRD blows that fiction right out immedately:
Aligned/templated creatures change the spell's descriptor - i.e. a if the caster summons a fiendish dire rat, the spell just cast has the "Evil" descriptor.
So summoning dretch is evil, regardless of whether the dretch are being used to rescue a kitten from a tree or kill a priest.
I might be able to add more to this later
