Variant summoning from Dragon 302

[zoroaster100]

Dragon 302 has an interesting article called "The Summoner's Circle" about variant summoning rules. The article has several great ideas for making the summon monster and summon nature's ally spells more varied while trying to keep them balanced. There is also a listing of suggested monsters from the Monster Manual, Monster Manual 2, Monsters of Faerun and Manual of the Planes for use with the various summon spells.

However, the listing of monsters on the table seems to rely almost entirely on the CR for the various monsters (counter to the advise given in the text of the article). Even monsters already included in the lists for these spells in the Player's Handbook are reassigned to different levels of summon spells based primarily on the monster's CR without any commentary of why the monster was being moved from its original spell level. I found the article very useful, but the table was disappointing in that I think it fails to consider the other issues relevant to summon monster spells such as whether the summoned monster can duplicate other spells, etc. (issues which were addressed in the text of the article).

I was wondering if anyone else had looked over this article and what you thought of the accompanying monster table, especially the author's calls on moving some of the monsters from the Player's Handbook spells to different spell levels.

 

[Terraism]

Also curious - not that I won't pick it up otherwise, 'cause I always do, and this looks like it may be my favorite in a long time (actually, this last issue was darn good, too,) - but does it touch at all on keeping monsters around for more than 1 rnd/level? That always seems so... blech, to me. I still think that the lower level summoning spells are pretty much worthless - they already summon something relatively weak, but not only that, you have to use an action to do it, and then you only get one action out of it 'fore it goes POOF! (Ooops - didn't mean to kinda rant.) Anyway, again - does the article just contain a handful of new lists, or some ideas for broadening summoning in general?

 

[Greatwyrm]

I'll admit, at low levels 1rnd/level kinda stinks. But a dozen rounds of a rampaging Dire Bear summoned by the party Druid is an eternity to a DM.

 

[Terraism]

I'll admit, at low levels 1rnd/level kinda stinks. But a dozen rounds of a rampaging Dire Bear summoned by the party Druid is an eternity to a DM.

I know exactly what you mean - that's why I was interested if they'd came up with any interesting ways of tossing in some more time in some cases without making it so very unbalanced...

 

[zoroaster100]

no duration changes

The article dealt with expanding or changing the types of monsters that are summoned, not with changing the duration of the spells. But it was not just lists of additional monsters to summon. I found the many suggestions for how to balance adding additional monsters to the selection very useful.

The article, for instance, suggests one possible variant rule where each caster can summon a certain selection of critters, which might be different from one caster to another, and which can be expanded through research through mechanics suggested in the article. That way the selection of monsters can be expanded without making the spells too powerful with too much versatility, while spicing up play with different selections of monsters for each caster.

The article also has good advice on factors to consider beyond just the monster's CR when deciding at what level spell a particular type of monster can be summoned.