Loek
2014-05-09, 05:31 AM
The purpose of this whole exercise is too see if there is a way to make summoning less overpowered. One of the reasons (I feel) that summoning is overpowered is that the mage just happens to know about all those different summon options provided by their respective spells (Summon monster (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Summon_Monster_I) and Summon nature's ally (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Summon_Nature%27s_Ally_I)).
Imagine if you will the following:
A desert mage, who has lived his entire life in the desert. Has only fought desert, fire and earth related creatures. Never in his life encountered anything even remotely fiendish.
For the first time in his life he is on a boat, being attacked by sea monsters... what does he do...
*Generic desert mage #2 summons a fiendish dire shark*
I'm sure you'll all agree with me that something like that makes no sense. There are quite a few ways to handle something like this, varying from "proper role-playing" on the part of the player to the use of UA's variant rules for summoning (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/UA:Summon_Monster_Variants).
So with all that in mind, I propose that a number of basic rules need to be met before a summoner can summon creatures of a specific type:
He must be aware of their existence
He must know enough about them
They can't be (much) stronger than the summoner
The amount of details a summoner can remember is limited (similarly so is his summoning list)
The summoner must be aware of the creature's existence
This rule is (besides common sense) a good way for a DM to limit the available summons of any character.
Find something wildly unbalancing? Just don't have your PC's find any form of books about them. And of course don't use them in encounters (or somehow prevent your players from figuring out what they encountered).
Rule wise: The summoner must have either "encountered and identified" a specific creature (type) or found and studied detailed books about them before he try to summon one of its kind.
The summoner must know enough about the summoned creature
This rule is intended to keep summons making in game sense. Think of it in a similar fashion as scrying and teleportation magic works, where your previous knowledge makes it easier/harder/impossible to achieve certain results.
Would it make sense for that character to know about that? The aforementioned desert mage would not (logically) know enough about sharks to think about summoning one, let alone succeeding in doing so. Similarly that idiot of a mage that has a hard time keeping the elf and the gnome apart should not be able to pull obscure mystical creatures out of his ass to solve every problem in his path.
Rule wise: The summoner must succeed in a knowledge check (DC: 10 + HD or CR? - Maybe allow a gather information check in some cases? - Also perhaps use these (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?247417-Fixing-Knowledge-checks-made-to-identify-creatures) knowledge DC's) before being able to summon a particular creature.
Note: Combine with the previous rule to combine pre-existing knowledge with this attempt to gather/remember information (in the style of divination magic).
A summoned creature can't be (much) more powerful than its summoner
This is mostly intended to keep from unbalancing summoners (even further). In general the SRD summoning spells already do this by limiting summons to specific spell levels.
He should be a summoner, not the guy with the "I win" button. Being able to summon dragons at low levels would make most of the party (and plot) irrelevant. Similarly, certain creatures can unbalance the game even at higher levels (think: noble genie (wish) - or anything else mentioned in "summoning handbooks" as being a great summon (if your DM allows it) and such. If someone really loves it, not just because it's the best for that spell level, it's probably broken).
Rule wise: If you go by existing summoning spells, nothing is needed. If you customize the list, use something along the following guideline (Source (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?96812-Summon-Monster-for-Equivalent-CR&p=1691670&viewfull=1#post1691670) as well as poking at the SRD summons):
Spell CL CR
Summon Monster 1 1 CR 1/2 or less
Summon Monster 2 3 CR 1
Summon Monster 3 5 CR 2
Summon Monster 4 7 CR 3
Summon Monster 5 9 CR 4
Summon Monster 6 11 CR 5 or 7
Summon Monster 7 13 CR 7 or 9
Summon Monster 8 15 CR 9 or 11
Summon Monster 9 17 CR 11 or 12
For the lower levels, a guide is roughly 1/2 CL. Later it increases somewhat. Note that these are guidelines and some creatures will end up in higher lists than their CR would indicate, while others (mostly fighter style creatures) will have a "too high" CR for their spell level.
Note: There are some creatures with awesome abilities at quite low CR's (think creatures with low level planeshift and other utility spells or SLA's that don't use costly material components or XP). Feel free to put these on a "not allowed" list. Either they are mentally too powerful to be summoned or protected by entity Y or maybe that part of the creature is so hard to understand that when they are summoned, they don't have it.
The summoner should be limited in the amount of creatures he knows how to summon
If the wizard can only remember so many spells per day and the sorcerer only knows that X of them, why should the summoner be able to remember a near infinite (when you start including other creatures) amount of possible summons.
Rule-of-thumb: if you can't remember all the details of all your characters summons, then he probably has too many. I can't really think of any nice situations for this one, just refer back to the whole spellbook/spells known thing.
Rule wise: Have a summoner keep a dedicated book in which he records his knowledge/observations/etc of creatures he wants to summon. Each creature takes up X (1-3?) pages and when he is preparing his spells for the day have him prepare a few (3 per "summon monster *"?) possible creatures. For sorcerers have a similar preparation at the start of the day, even though he doesn't need to prepare his spells.
Beyond all this, today I had a few half baked ideas which I think might make for a more interesting summoner.
Inspiration comes from:
Pokemon (bare with me)
Any form of collectable card game
TES V: Skyrim (soultrap, thank you)
And finally some other ideas (collecting your enemies souls to get stronger/know more about them) that never quite made it into anything homebrewwy
To-be-developed class features:
Storing/Capturing fallen enemies somehow so you can summon them (store in book/gems?)
Storing up to CL=CR, summoning up to CR = 1/2 CL (plus some bonus points at higher levels)
Mix and match with certain warlock features (eldritch blast and severally limited invocations - maybe some blast shapes)
Lots of knowledge skills (and a decent amount of skill points)
"Stored" summons can either be one time use (if they are killed there is a chance you can't summon them again), miss fire (summoning creatures with too high CR might result in hostile summons - so will keeping them out too long) or be re useable (if they don't die, you can put them back into the storage medium - makes you want to keep your summons alive).
Possible invocations: dream walking/planewalking to "recruit/harvest" possible summons. (And the nasty stuff you occasionally bump into: "Meet Mr. Balor when you are hunting imps") Probably with some form of auto-success if you don't bump into something like that and you are hunting low CR critters.
System for gaining some summons per level up (you name 2 that might apply, your DM names 2 and 2 are taken randomly from SRD summoning lists, and role that die?).
Using "stored" creatures to power magic items (1-5 XP per CR?)
Anyhow, I'll be poking at this for a bit this weekend (as I don't feel like continuing with my Dragonhearted class right now). Let me know what you think (on both parts: "rules for summoning" and "basics for a class")
Imagine if you will the following:
A desert mage, who has lived his entire life in the desert. Has only fought desert, fire and earth related creatures. Never in his life encountered anything even remotely fiendish.
For the first time in his life he is on a boat, being attacked by sea monsters... what does he do...
*Generic desert mage #2 summons a fiendish dire shark*
I'm sure you'll all agree with me that something like that makes no sense. There are quite a few ways to handle something like this, varying from "proper role-playing" on the part of the player to the use of UA's variant rules for summoning (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/UA:Summon_Monster_Variants).
So with all that in mind, I propose that a number of basic rules need to be met before a summoner can summon creatures of a specific type:
He must be aware of their existence
He must know enough about them
They can't be (much) stronger than the summoner
The amount of details a summoner can remember is limited (similarly so is his summoning list)
The summoner must be aware of the creature's existence
This rule is (besides common sense) a good way for a DM to limit the available summons of any character.
Find something wildly unbalancing? Just don't have your PC's find any form of books about them. And of course don't use them in encounters (or somehow prevent your players from figuring out what they encountered).
Rule wise: The summoner must have either "encountered and identified" a specific creature (type) or found and studied detailed books about them before he try to summon one of its kind.
The summoner must know enough about the summoned creature
This rule is intended to keep summons making in game sense. Think of it in a similar fashion as scrying and teleportation magic works, where your previous knowledge makes it easier/harder/impossible to achieve certain results.
Would it make sense for that character to know about that? The aforementioned desert mage would not (logically) know enough about sharks to think about summoning one, let alone succeeding in doing so. Similarly that idiot of a mage that has a hard time keeping the elf and the gnome apart should not be able to pull obscure mystical creatures out of his ass to solve every problem in his path.
Rule wise: The summoner must succeed in a knowledge check (DC: 10 + HD or CR? - Maybe allow a gather information check in some cases? - Also perhaps use these (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?247417-Fixing-Knowledge-checks-made-to-identify-creatures) knowledge DC's) before being able to summon a particular creature.
Note: Combine with the previous rule to combine pre-existing knowledge with this attempt to gather/remember information (in the style of divination magic).
A summoned creature can't be (much) more powerful than its summoner
This is mostly intended to keep from unbalancing summoners (even further). In general the SRD summoning spells already do this by limiting summons to specific spell levels.
He should be a summoner, not the guy with the "I win" button. Being able to summon dragons at low levels would make most of the party (and plot) irrelevant. Similarly, certain creatures can unbalance the game even at higher levels (think: noble genie (wish) - or anything else mentioned in "summoning handbooks" as being a great summon (if your DM allows it) and such. If someone really loves it, not just because it's the best for that spell level, it's probably broken).
Rule wise: If you go by existing summoning spells, nothing is needed. If you customize the list, use something along the following guideline (Source (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?96812-Summon-Monster-for-Equivalent-CR&p=1691670&viewfull=1#post1691670) as well as poking at the SRD summons):
Spell CL CR
Summon Monster 1 1 CR 1/2 or less
Summon Monster 2 3 CR 1
Summon Monster 3 5 CR 2
Summon Monster 4 7 CR 3
Summon Monster 5 9 CR 4
Summon Monster 6 11 CR 5 or 7
Summon Monster 7 13 CR 7 or 9
Summon Monster 8 15 CR 9 or 11
Summon Monster 9 17 CR 11 or 12
For the lower levels, a guide is roughly 1/2 CL. Later it increases somewhat. Note that these are guidelines and some creatures will end up in higher lists than their CR would indicate, while others (mostly fighter style creatures) will have a "too high" CR for their spell level.
Note: There are some creatures with awesome abilities at quite low CR's (think creatures with low level planeshift and other utility spells or SLA's that don't use costly material components or XP). Feel free to put these on a "not allowed" list. Either they are mentally too powerful to be summoned or protected by entity Y or maybe that part of the creature is so hard to understand that when they are summoned, they don't have it.
The summoner should be limited in the amount of creatures he knows how to summon
If the wizard can only remember so many spells per day and the sorcerer only knows that X of them, why should the summoner be able to remember a near infinite (when you start including other creatures) amount of possible summons.
Rule-of-thumb: if you can't remember all the details of all your characters summons, then he probably has too many. I can't really think of any nice situations for this one, just refer back to the whole spellbook/spells known thing.
Rule wise: Have a summoner keep a dedicated book in which he records his knowledge/observations/etc of creatures he wants to summon. Each creature takes up X (1-3?) pages and when he is preparing his spells for the day have him prepare a few (3 per "summon monster *"?) possible creatures. For sorcerers have a similar preparation at the start of the day, even though he doesn't need to prepare his spells.
Beyond all this, today I had a few half baked ideas which I think might make for a more interesting summoner.
Inspiration comes from:
Pokemon (bare with me)
Any form of collectable card game
TES V: Skyrim (soultrap, thank you)
And finally some other ideas (collecting your enemies souls to get stronger/know more about them) that never quite made it into anything homebrewwy
To-be-developed class features:
Storing/Capturing fallen enemies somehow so you can summon them (store in book/gems?)
Storing up to CL=CR, summoning up to CR = 1/2 CL (plus some bonus points at higher levels)
Mix and match with certain warlock features (eldritch blast and severally limited invocations - maybe some blast shapes)
Lots of knowledge skills (and a decent amount of skill points)
"Stored" summons can either be one time use (if they are killed there is a chance you can't summon them again), miss fire (summoning creatures with too high CR might result in hostile summons - so will keeping them out too long) or be re useable (if they don't die, you can put them back into the storage medium - makes you want to keep your summons alive).
Possible invocations: dream walking/planewalking to "recruit/harvest" possible summons. (And the nasty stuff you occasionally bump into: "Meet Mr. Balor when you are hunting imps") Probably with some form of auto-success if you don't bump into something like that and you are hunting low CR critters.
System for gaining some summons per level up (you name 2 that might apply, your DM names 2 and 2 are taken randomly from SRD summoning lists, and role that die?).
Using "stored" creatures to power magic items (1-5 XP per CR?)
Anyhow, I'll be poking at this for a bit this weekend (as I don't feel like continuing with my Dragonhearted class right now). Let me know what you think (on both parts: "rules for summoning" and "basics for a class")