Revised Summons Discussion

[Jarno Mikkola]

Animate Dead, Monster Summoning spells...

 

Well, these spells should be made closer to that what the original BG game had; You cast the spell on level x and you get x amount of monsters.

Now if you want to balance that, you can have options like reducing the monster numbers by 2 and then reducing them also by factor of x/2 or x/3. Of course there are other ways of like upgreating the creatures with other kind, but it should be as dramatic as going from 5 skeletons to 1 super skeleton, but gratual like...

L5(cleric level)=1 Skeleton(undead 2 level melee fighter), L6=2 Skeletons, L7=3 Skeletons, L8=2 Skeletons+1 Skeleton Archer... L15=4 Skeletons+4 Skeleton Archer, L16=3 Skeletons+ 3 Archer+ Mummy...

Now as for the summoning cap, it comes after the 5 "summoned" monsters, so the spells need to cast normal creatures, not the "summoned" tag-ed once.

That will of course disrupt the death spell effects, but they can be overcommed by changing the spells to kill normal creatures that have less than say 20-50+ maximum hit points, perhaps depending on the casters level.

 

Now imagine this: You are in the drow city and you are revealed, and what do the guards do? They hide... why, because they just summoned their slaves; goblins to attack and of which there are hundreds of them... as their intent is to pave the way for the drow mages and distract the enemy so the warriors can actually do some sneak attacks etc. like in the books.

 

Now, if you want to use the summoned cap for the heavy hitters like Elementals, Invisible Stalkers, Genies etc. you most surtainly can as I have no objections for that.

I really don't like too that mages get the very same spell but as a 5th level spell instead of a 3rd (2 levels are really too much of a difference imo).

That's balance thing, and why the divine magic has only 7 levels...

PS: We need the water elementals, and not only because they are mentioned in the Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting spell description.

[Demivrgvs]

Animate Dead, Monster Summoning spells...

Well, these spells should be made closer to that what the original BG game had; You cast the spell on level x and you get x amount of monsters. ...

Well, actually I don't think players would appreciate it, unless they don't know what it would imply. Let's take for example cleric's Animate Dead. With SR it summons up to 5 skeletons at 12th level, and they already are not too tough. If we make that spell cast up to 12 skeletons at 12th level, than those skeletons would have to be half as powerful then the 5 of the current spell, which means each of them would be wiped out in a single blow in most occasions, and a single not too damaging AoE spell would disintegrate the whole group. Would this be an improvement in terms of gameplay? Not to mention that an outstanding number of creatures may create quite a mess in the battlefield, and it may considerably slow some PCs due to the amount of script running.

 

In conclusion, unless someone can convince me this would be an effective improvement on the gameplay, I won't introduce Remove Summoning Cap in SR, both for compatibility and balancing reasons. Feel free to install it separately, but the cap is there for a reason, if you want to play fair I really hink you shouldn't use such a tweak.

 

What instead I'll probably do, and may partially please you is slightly increasing the number of summons at lower levels, and I may try in the future to make the type of creatures summoned by the same spell slightly more scalable. For example instead of going from 3HD skeletons to 9HD Skeleton Warriors we may add 5HD "big skeletons" (the ones with the animation mostly similar to Skeleton Warriors), perhaps armed with both swords and swords. There's a huge potential within summoning spells, but they involve a huge amount of work, and I don't have too much spare time, thus we'll see what I can manage to do.

 

P.S How does it work the cap to limit Planetars to once at a time?

 

Now as for the summoning cap, it comes after the 5 "summoned" monsters, so the spells need to cast normal creatures, not the "summoned" tag-ed once.

That will of course disrupt the death spell effects, but they can be overcommed by changing the spells to kill normal creatures that have less than say 20-50+ maximum hit points, perhaps depending on the casters level.

I supposed the "remove summoning cap" worked that way, but I wasn't sure. In this case I'll never implement it within SR, as it would incredibly screw the AI.

 

I really don't like too that mages get the very same spell but as a 5th level spell instead of a 3rd (2 levels are really too much of a difference imo).

That's balance thing, and why the divine magic has only 7 levels...

Making the very same spell available at 5th level as a 3rd level spell for divine casters, and at 9th level as a 5th level spell for arcane casters seems the "balance thing" to you? I can't see balnace in it, the spell in this way has to be either pathetic for a 3rd level spell slot, or ok for it and pathetic for a 5th level spell slot. I'm strongly convinced that 1 level of difference between a divine and arcane version of the same spell is more than enough, and not because it's a "balance thing" but only because some spells may be more akin to one type of caster than the other (e.g. I agree things like Animate Dead and Control Undead should be more easily availble to clerics, though I'm not sure if Necromancer should be disadvantaged instead).

 

Water Elementals

We need the water elementals, and not only because they are mentioned in the Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting spell description.

"A water elemental can’t venture more than 180 feet from the body of water from which it was conjured", and almost all its special abilities are tied to being in a large body of water (e.g. Water Mastery, Drench, Vortex).

[Demivrgvs]

I'd like to discuss two global aspects of summoning spells:

 

1) 'Break Invisibility/Hostile' flag

 

2) Summon's duration under caster's control

 

 

1) In vanilla it seems some summoning spells don't break invisibility, others do. Should they?

 

2) There are too many different durations imo, and sometimes it doesn't make sense too. Why Animal Summoning's animals last 3 turns and Monster Summoning's creatures last a few rounds +1/level?

 

Furthermore with the revisions we'started to do since previous versions of SR, a summon's duration isn't something that necessarily has to be tied to caster's level imo. We already grant either more creatures or more powerful ones with higher caster's level, and thus duration may simply be fixed for most of them.

 

I propose to use only a bunch of type of different durations like:

- short duration for a few powerful summons which doesn't get better with levels (e.g. Mordenkainen's Sword). I'd say 1 round/level as per vanilla/PnP.

- a medium duration for most summoning spells. I'd say omething between 2-5 turns, what do you think?

- 8 hours as per vanilla for a few long lasting creatures (e.g. Invisible Stalker).

[Jarno Mikkola]

1) Should they?

 

2) I propose to use only a bunch of type of different durations like:

- short duration for a few powerful summons which doesn't get better with levels (e.g. Mordenkainen's Sword). I'd say 1 round/level as per vanilla/PnP.

- a medium duration for most summoning spells. I'd say something between 20-50 rounds, what do you think?

- 8 hours as per vanilla for a few long lasting creatures (e.g. Invisible Stalker).

1) They all should remove the Invisibility.

2) All fine to me... as long as the spell is capped to some reasonable extent. I would suggest something like 20 rounds, 35 rounds and actually 10 hour period.

(And if the turn in this case is 10 rounds... )

[Guest Guest]

I dunno if this is the best place to discuss it, but regarding the removal/non-removal of the summoning cap, does anyone know what EasyTutu does? I think I read something a while back about the cap automatically being removed in Tutu, but can't remember if this was vanilla Tutu or EasyTutu.

 

Whatever EasyTutu does, I'd like to keep the same system when I play BG2. Is removing the summoning cap really going to cause problems with SR in EasyTutu or BG2?

[Salk]

I like all your proposal, Demi.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Water Elementals

"A water elemental can’t venture more than 180 feet from the body of water from which it was conjured", and almost all its special abilities are tied to being in a large body of water (e.g. Water Mastery, Drench, Vortex).

Well, if the mages are able to conjure a fire elemental from the plane of fire, he should be able to conjure an elemental from the plane of water, elemental planes.

 

I dunno if this is the best place to discuss it, but regarding the removal/non-removal of the summoning cap, does anyone know what EasyTutu does? I think I read something a while back about the cap automatically being removed in Tutu, but can't remember if this was vanilla Tutu or EasyTutu.

Whatever EasyTutu does, I'd like to keep the same system when I play BG2. Is removing the summoning cap really going to cause problems with SR in EasyTutu or BG2?

Well, the problem arises when we go over the level limit of 10, as then the mages have spells that can kill the summoned creatures, like the Death Spell. It's coded with a specific tag that kills all the "summoned" creatures, and the summoned creatures have a specific tag that says they are summoned and this tag also makes the limit of 5 happen. It's hardcoded to the engine, so the number can't be changed, we can only remove it from all the creatures...

[Guest guest]

Water Elementals

"A water elemental can’t venture more than 180 feet from the body of water from which it was conjured", and almost all its special abilities are tied to being in a large body of water (e.g. Water Mastery, Drench, Vortex).

Well, if the mages are able to conjure a fire elemental from the plane of fire, he should be able to conjure an elemental from the plane of water, elemental planes.

 

Are there even any water elemental in the series? I mean, any suitable model/animations? I don't recall any...but water elementals would be so cool to have if the above is available...otherwise, if it would be implemented as an air elemental model but just renamed...nvm

[Icendoan]

Yes, there are two in the Underdark, Kua-Toa lair, IIRC.

 

Icen

[Guest guest]

Yes, there are two in the Underdark, Kua-Toa lair, IIRC.

 

Icen

 

Really? Wow...I do not recall these at all...and i went through the kua-toa caverns like 3 weeks ago...er, anyone got any screenies? or can you tell me the clua command to summon thse so i can check em out...i don't wanna hijack this thread further...just want to see these though, please!

[Icendoan]

I'm really not TOO sure on this, but I will try and research it for you. I have the slight feeling it is in ToB, but I don't recall having a suitable cave network for them, save Abazigal, which is the only likelihood.

 

Icen

[Icendoan]

ELWATG01 is what you CLUA in. They are summoned by script with an "Olhydra" in Abazigal's Lair, the cell area (AR6002).

 

Icen

[DavidW]

I dunno if this is the best place to discuss it, but regarding the removal/non-removal of the summoning cap, does anyone know what EasyTutu does? I think I read something a while back about the cap automatically being removed in Tutu, but can't remember if this was vanilla Tutu or EasyTutu.

Whatever EasyTutu does, I'd like to keep the same system when I play BG2. Is removing the summoning cap really going to cause problems with SR in EasyTutu or BG2?

Well, the problem arises when we go over the level limit of 10, as then the mages have spells that can kill the summoned creatures, like the Death Spell. It's coded with a specific tag that kills all the "summoned" creatures, and the summoned creatures have a specific tag that says they are summoned and this tag also makes the limit of 5 happen. It's hardcoded to the engine, so the number can't be changed, we can only remove it from all the creatures...

 

Solving this isn't terribly problematic. Invent a new gender, give it to all summoned creatures, and then patch Death Spell and the like so they insta-kill this new gender and not the "summoned" gender. (That's basically what the Tweak component does).

[Demivrgvs]

Water Elementals

"A water elemental can't venture more than 180 feet from the body of water from which it was conjured", and almost all its special abilities are tied to being in a large body of water (e.g. Water Mastery, Drench, Vortex).

Well, if the mages are able to conjure a fire elemental from the plane of fire, he should be able to conjure an elemental from the plane of water, elemental planes.

You don't understand the point. Indeed a caster should be able to summon a water elemental, but these elementals cannot go far from a body of water in PnP (fire elementals can move wherever they wish), and even if we remove this hindrance all their abilities would still be un-implementable! They would be the weakest elementals by far unless we completely revise them, and I cannot think of anything special for them.

 

Are there even any water elemental in the series? I mean, any suitable model/animations? I don't recall any...but water elementals would be so cool to have if the above is available...otherwise, if it would be implemented as an air elemental model but just renamed...nvm

ELWATG01 is what you CLUA in. They are summoned by script with an "Olhydra" in Abazigal's Lair, the cell area (AR6002).

I don't recall them being effectively used, and NI refuses to open the ELWATG01.cre file.

[Guest Guest]

Ooh, if that is the solution, DavidW, then I'd surely love to see it implemented! I can't stand the summoning cap, and would love to see a problem-free way of removing it.