Summoning Spells for V4

[urdjur]

On Summons Duration vs. Power

I'm really fine with any balanced solution you find here Demi. I'm merely pointing out that a short duration is another way of balancing things, but if 1 round/level à la PnP 3.5 is unacceptable to you, then I'm sure you can balance these spell suites for any other durations as well. Personally, I would find it refreshing if summons would occasionally elapse due to lack of remaining time and not just lack of remaining hp. But it's not a big issue for me.

 

Well, between Electric Loop and another undead summoning I'd take the former without any doubt. The former helps increasing the # of sources of an underused damage type, and provides a little more variety. Undead summons, are almost always the same thing, melee tanks, and while a spell such as Electric Loop can remain useful for the entire game a lvl 2 summon is inevitably destined to become completely useless later on.

 

To which I retort:

1) There is probably no need for more than 3-4 arcane direct damage spells of each element (including force). It too gets redundant after a time.

2) You decide if all undead summons are melee tanks or not I suggest having a couple of caster types and/or other specialists in each suite. For example, the Death Knight would work well as Create Undead IX. Priestly caster mummy? Ability draining shadows?

3) Neither a level 2 summon nor a level 2 evocation is something an epic level caster would use in an epic situation. Both are viable to handle minor problems though, and casters must conserve resources whenever possible.

 

For example I'm not sure how many players would like your solution of having their caster completely disabled when casting a Gate spell. I fear that, unless the gated creature is absurdly powerful, the trade between a versatile high lvl spellcaster (who'd also become vulnerable in the meanwhile) and a summon will never look appealing for a player.

 

Look at it this way: If you can use a single spell to resolve a situation why your caster stays in the background, wouldn't that be interesting? Compare it to how Project Image works presently. You trade yourself for... yourself. Cast 9th level spells through a 7th level spell without paying for it or putting yourself in harms way... Now compare this to a 9th level caster "substituting" himself for a Genie with duration: concentration. For a single spell, he can accomplish a lot. Were he to deal with the situation directly, it might consume more resources. Or consider opening up a difficult battle with a powerful summon like this, and still having most of your spell power intact once the enemy has had to spend resources to deal with it.

 

Nymphs - let them keep their own slot. Compared to the rest of possible Nature's Allies they're far too humaniod and intelligent.

 

I disagree. I think a great benefit with the whole concept of spell lines (especially if we can do subsitutions for more of the lesser summons as suggested) is that stray summons will be a thing of the past. If a Nymph doesn't fit the "Nature's Ally" box, I don't know what does.

[Ardanis]

While the idea of unifying all summons into 2-3 groups may look attractive, there are few counter points. Demi has already explained them, but I'll repeat just in case.

 

1) We have to deal with the maximum spell limit of 24 spells per level, and there are often much more appealing choices than "yet another Summon XYZ".

2) Creating a new summon spell is much more time consuming than any other spell (short of Wish) might take.

 

1) There is probably no need for more than 3-4 arcane direct damage spells of each element (including force). It too gets redundant after a time.

Agreed. In fact, I'm half-worried there are too many cold/electric already.

However, the same applies to summons as well. The main MS1-9 tree, accompanied with 3-4 shorter elemental, gate, illusory, etc. groups and several random things like Mordy, Stalker and Shades is both systematic enough to not appear totally random and equally chaotic to preserve the richness of choices.

[Jarno Mikkola]

1) We have to deal with the maximum spell limit of 24 spells per level, and there are often much more appealing choices than "yet another Summon XYZ".

Erhm, doesn't the limit becomes irrelevant with the ToBEx... it does to everyone else expect the Sorcerer at least, so that actually can be counter effected if such need arises.

[urdjur]

1) We have to deal with the maximum spell limit of 24 spells per level, and there are often much more appealing choices than "yet another Summon XYZ".

2) Creating a new summon spell is much more time consuming than any other spell (short of Wish) might take.

 

The main MS1-9 tree, accompanied with 3-4 shorter elemental, gate, illusory, etc. groups and several random things like Mordy, Stalker and Shades is both systematic enough to not appear totally random and equally chaotic to preserve the richness of choices.

 

Fair points by themselves, but the system I suggest will use *less* slots for summoning than is already planned, provide *more* variety thanks to ToBEx menus, and there will be almost *no need* to create new summons beyond what's already been suggested many times before (by this I mean Good aligned Gate-options).

 

I think there's an undead summon already planned or present at each level except 1, 2 and 9. I suggest moving the Death Knight to level 9 without drawback and make room in level 1-2 by dropping evocations that we agree are redundant. The rest is simply renaming and streamlining the spells into a spell suite, requiring no more than 9 different creatures total for the entire necromantic suite.

 

Elementals, gates, genies etc. would all be incorporated into the "planar" spell lines, requiring 3 slots (priests) or 4 slots (arcane casters) TOTAL for each spell list (arcane/cleric/druid). Stalker would be incorporated into the MS-tree as per 3.5 PnP. What remains are the evocations (no more "summons" than Melf's Minute Meteors really) and possibly an illusionary summon (unless this is incorporated via a kit ability). Yet more "richness of choice" than is currently present - however, half of the choice is tactical (when casting the spell) rather than strategic (when selecting/memorizing it).

[Incantatar]

In another topic in general mod discussion nobody answered me, therefore i'll try here: What exactly has to be done for summons to be able to transition areas? As it is, you can let them transition with the attack trick but they are not controllable anymore. Perhaps the solution is to add them to the party like ALT-Q for a limited time, if it's not possible otherwise?

[Ardanis]

There are two ways that I can think of:

1) make summons "global", and therefore accessible from other areas - except it likely won't work, because summons would need to have unique death variables, which is not quite possible.

2) check for the presence of the party in summon's area, and teleport to PCs - again may easily fail.

 

I'm not optimistic

[n-ghost]

Aerial servants.

 

Gosh, those aerial servants.

 

Games should've been called "Shadows of Aerial Servants" and "Throne of Aerial Servants", really.

 

They are permanently hasted, invisible (and have IMPROVED invisibility, that is), treated as having +3 (or something, they kill dragons, anyway) weapons, have like 100 hit points and do backstabs for 100++ damage. Also they are small and can fit anywhere.

 

And it's spell level 6.

 

The only weakness they had last time I played were saves vs charm, but it's kinda ridiculous when the outcome of battle fully depends on who charms it first\last.

 

Maybe it's possible to add negative HP regeneration to them, so they would be dissipating over time?

 

Also probably they shouldn't be affected by healing\regeneration\harming spells.

[kreso]

- which summons feel really too good? What makes them such (e.g. too tough? too powerful for its spell level? etc)?

- which ones are not appealing at all? What makes them such (e.g. much better picks at same level, no role/niche, etc.)

 

Too good? I don't really know (apart Deva/Planetar/Elemental Prince; they're brokenly good if one can micro them decently). The main problem is not the creatures themselves, but how easy it is to simply spam them around. And the fact that AI can't really cope with "mass summons" tactic. Unfortunately, BG2 has it's flaws which SCS doesn't ammend fully.

Most of all - mages, as good as their AI/target scripting is, simply fall apart when faced with an array of summons. Sure, there's Banishment. When it's used up, player can simply summon more; and more of cannon fodder - eventually, mage will die. To rework this, probably every mage in game (think Lavok or Tolgerias in Planar Sphere, or Perth the Adept in Brynlaw - they're very high level mages - usually over 20 - and in reallity - can't do squat against 3 skeleton warriors. They dismiss the first cast, and two others kill them) should get an "army" backing him up. AI's only option is to have Demon summoning, but even that is fairly limited since PC's melee grunts usually slap them down quickly.

Then, there's the Mordy sword. I never actually use this spell, but it's immunity to physical damage is exploitable in an array of different ways (cast crap summon to have mage waste Banishment, cast Mordy, laugh. Sure, it can die to MMs or ADHW. Summon few more....). Not to forget that if there's no mage around, Mordy's are free to chop whoever they want, being immune to basically everything.

Suggestions? I don't know. Adding more grunt backup to mages. Maybe Ardanis could code something up (every mage has 4 fighters which are four levels below his or similar, wielding "generic" +2 equipment or such).

This problem arises basically when a mage is solo, and isn't really prominent in "party vs party" battles (Sewers party, ToB Gromnir etc.). But a solo mage, even at level 40, can't afford more than 1 or 2 Banishment castings. After that, it really doesn't matter what summons one has, be it Elemental, skeletal, planetar or spiders. They will kill him.

[n-ghost]

Which brings two suggestions:

 

1) Is it possible to add some interaction between "opposite" summons? For example, if there are Air and Earth elmentals on the battlefield at the same time, they turn hostile on each other; if there are fire elementals mixed with some other, they make other elementals confused; if there are fiends and celestials at the same time, they turn on each other; if there are demons and devils at the same time, they turn on each other; if there are genies and efreeti... you get the picture.

 

2) How about making a HLA version of Banishment, for, say, 10 uses\day? That'd solve an issue that kreso explained in previous post.

That, or maybe a wand of Banishment given to spellcasters here and there.

[n-ghost]

Speaking of mordies (and slightly off-topic), how do they behave when hostile creatures try to move through them? Will they move out the way or force the creature to change it's course?

 

I've just thought about cheesy way of defeating Irenicus in hell: standing near the wall and physically blocking the way to sorcerer charname with mordies while Jon casts timestops and blarghs around.

[Jarno Mikkola]

1) Is it possible to add some interaction between "opposite" summons? For example, if there are Air and Earth elmentals on the battlefield at the same time, they turn hostile on each other; if there are fire elementals mixed with some other, they make other elementals confused; if there are fiends and celestials at the same time, they turn on each other; if there are demons and devils at the same time, they turn on each other; if there are genies and efreeti... you get the picture.

You are talking about the aTweaks demons/devils(PnP Fiends ) ... yes. It's just a little tricky. And needs to have a clear design eye for it.

[n-ghost]

You are talking about the aTweaks demons/devils(PnP Fiends ) ... yes. It's just a little tricky. And needs to have a clear design eye for it.

 

The main trick here is to force creatures to fight each other even if other hostiles are present imo.

 

Or better yet, writing hostility priorities for each creature.

 

For example, celestials would rather attack fiends and undead than other enemies, unless those enemies are closing in on summoner.

 

Undead would rather attack living creatures first, attacking other undead back only to retaliate.

 

Fiends would rather attack celestials or each other (Blood War, rawr), then summoner and his friends (if not protected), then other enemies.

 

Air elementals would actively seek and pursuit their enemies, earth elementals would prefer to stay closer to summoner.

 

Animals would prefer to not attack undead, if possible.

 

Actually, making some powerful summons have mind of their own (i.e., "blue circle", no ways to give orders to them) sounds like a nice idea to me, if a bit difficult\tedious to script. At least some creatures should be like that — for example, elemental princes. An idea of ordering them around asking to make sandwiches is flattering, but highly unlikely in real (duh) life scenario.

Perhaps it could be done so that they become "blue" only in certain cases and timeframes (i.e., fiend seeing a celestial in wrong neighborhood and so on).

[Demivrgvs]

I'll try to update the first post of this topic asap as I did some homework since we first started it ages ago.

 

@n-ghost the Aerial Servant is indeed too strong, that's because in PnP that spell is a sort of Planar Binding, not a "free to spam" summon. That being said, I'll try to re-balance it a bit but just so you know I never made it improved hasted nor it has any backstab multiplier. o.O

 

When it comes to summon interactions I think it's a nice idea, but overall it wouldn't change much. Maybe I'm wrong, but most summons would not really fit into this (btw why would animals prioritize undead? o.O). There are only a handful cases where this would be appropriate and interesting imo:

- celestials vs. demons/devils

- demons vs devils (Blood War)

- efreeti vs djinni

- cat vs mouse

Anyway, this feature would hardly change the issue of spamming summons against AI mages imo. We are talking about high lvl summons (7th+ spell level) that cannot be spammed at all.

 

Mordy is somewhat exploitable when there are no mages around yeah. I do suggested to make it affected by Dispel as per PnP, but even that would only reduce the issue, not fully addressing it. That being said, I'm not sure it's a huge deal (is it?) considering it's a high lvl spell with not much offensive potential (it's mostly a super tank imo).

[kreso]

What I'd do for Mordy is lower their damage resistance to 95. So at least fighters have a chance.

[Jarno Mikkola]

@n-ghost the Aerial Servant is indeed too strong, that's because in PnP that spell is a sort of Planar Binding,

Actually the fact that you look at the stats from PnP source is WRONG ! There the balance comes from the fact that the player or the dungeon master can end the game when ever they want... and there rarely is 6 party members that work together...

The HPs a summoned monster gets should be the party members tanks normal HP divided by 3 or 4 & more, the first time the caster can summon the monster or if it's a lone summon(avatar), then by 2. And, I am talking about the d10 = ~5, not 10. And it wouldn't be a cheating if every one of their actual "level" would be 1. Their HP's of course would be independent fact... and the level won't be an issue as they have creature type immunities.

The monsters at dungeons and so forth are typically stronger cause they live in the place.

 

What I'd do for Mordy is lower their damage resistance to 95. So at least fighters have a chance.

Sorry, but what does a sword do with so high damage resistance ? 50% is plenty against a blunt damage type, 95% against the others. Yeah, and 10 HP's is plenty for it.