New summon changes

[dedude]

- Some summoning spells have been overhauled! New and re-worked summons have been added to the game and existing summons rebalanced. Affected spells are Summon Monster VI, VII, VIII, XI, Lesser Planar Binding, Planar Binding, Greater Planar Binding, Gate, and Epic Gate.

Tried summon V and VI, they seem to be identical now. Chose the lion and it is back to being really small and slow. (Summoned by a lvl 5 thaumaturge)

Hidden: show

- Summons are now tied to caster alignment (good, neutral, evil).

Should this have any impact in game? My planar ally spell seems to be exactly identical to before the update. Am I missing something?

And planar ally still doesn't seem to benefit from Augment Summoning.

EDIT: The above is a cleric/thaumaturge. Here is a summon VI from a plain wizard:

Hidden: show

Not small, and clearly not the same summon VI as my cleric.

[Valefort]

What are the CLs on your respective characters ?

[Endelyon]

lol that is the cutest lion I've ever seen.

I don't think Summon Creature VI was actually changed perhaps? I may have just posted the wrong information and it might be that only Summon Creature VII, VIII, and IX (the ones that call forth elementals) were modified, I just thought VI was in that group as well.

I'll correct the post to reflect it if this turns out to be the case.

[dedude]

What are the CLs on your respective characters ?

Cleric is CL 11
Wizard is CL 15

[Valefort]

That's the explanation, summon monster line of spells scale up to caster level 18.

[Theodore01]

That's the explanation, summon monster line of spells scale up to caster level 18.

so you're saying a summon monster 1 is the same as summon monster 5 now - and the outcome depends only on your caster level now?

[Valefort]

Not exactly, it starts from the original creature then if your caster level is superior to the minimum caster level necessary to cast that spell it beefs the creature a bit, after CL 18 there's no more buffing.

It's nothing new I have to add, that system has been in since 1 year now as far as I can tell !

[dedude]

Cool, nice to know that is how it works. There seems to be a lot of undocumented changes here, and many changes are described incredibly vague. I still have no idea what the change:

- Summons are now tied to caster alignment (good, neutral, evil).

means. Is it intentionally vague to keep some mystique in an otherwise very mechanical game? I would much prefer to have mechanical changes spelled out in detail for me. Otherwise it also makes it really hard to tell if things are working as intended or you are running around using a broken feat or spell or something.

And what about the planar ally spell? Has that not been updated? I think mine summoned a lvl 4 fire mephit... No good aligned choices as far as I could see. There was an ephreet added which was a new evil option.

[disclaimer]Please don't read this as an angry rant, it isn't meant that way at all. Just some confusion sprinkled with a bit of frustration.[/disclaimer]

[Nachti]

The summons will get updated again, there are many bugs I want to get ride of.

And after they work I will update the ingame spell descriptions.

[Valefort]

- Summons are now tied to caster alignment (good, neutral, evil).

Means that an evil spellcaster can summon neutral and evil creatures, a neutral neutral creatures and a good spellcaster can summon good and neutral ones. This is pending a final DM decision though.

[Maecius]

I believe the change is that only good-aligned casters can summon good-aligned monsters, and only evil-aligned casters can summon evil-aligned monsters.

So that a lawful good wizard can't mechanically summon a balor (would need a DM event and explanation for it), and a chaotic evil summoner can't mechanically summon a celestial (same thing).

[Nachti]

I spend some hours on fixing the summon tables and came up with a slight change:

Creature Alignment:
Angels: Lawful Good
Eladrin: Chaotic Good
Genie & Otherrs: Neutral
Devils: Lawful Evil
Demons: Chaotic Evil

For the next update players will summon creatures after the following template:

Character Alignment:
Good: Can summon angels and eladrins.
Evil: Can summon devils and demons.

As there are currently only a few neutral summons, neutral characters will summon creatures based on their lawful/chaotic axis.

Lawful Neutral: Angels and Devils.
Chaotic Neutral: Eladrin and Demons.
Neutral: A mix of creatures (no they are not able to summon every creature).

Although this is still subject to change according to DMs.

[Akroma666]

This sounds lovely and all.. but isnt this just a straight up metagaming experience? No Evil pretending to be good will ever summon anything good or even try now.

[Endelyon]

This sounds lovely and all.. but isnt this just a straight up metagaming experience? No Evil pretending to be good will ever summon anything good or even try now.

The evil-pretending-to-be-good character will indeed now have to be careful about what he summons and will have to use the neutral ones available to him if trying to hide his true nature. We reached a general consensus that it doesn't make sense for instance if an evil character is able to coax an Angel to come through a Gate, and that even if he did the Angel would be innately hostile towards them considering Gate does not actually bind the creature to the caster's will.

Mechanical differences based on alignment choices are a positive thing in my opinion, and should be embraced for the RP they provide rather than scorned for that which they prevent. There are some neutral summons available to all alignments, so it's not quite as bad as the old situation where you got a Balor, a Xorn, or an Angel and were forced to show your alignment if you wanted to use a Gate spell at all.

[Akroma666]

There are some neutral summons available to all alignments, so it's not quite as bad as the old situation where you got a Balor, a Xorn, or an Angel and were forced to show your alignment if you wanted to use a Gate spell at all.

This is good to know, didn't know that.