As a player of a Dev Critter and a mage who very literally has spells worth nothing except buffs and EDK ("summons") I laugh at your logic that a dev critter solos better than a EDK user.

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Davion Telemos - Monk of the Four Winds
Korthan Isharnos - Dragon Shaman of Thunder Spirit Zamasham

Or a spesific book of summons. I'd bet that would work better than summons bound to alignment, but who would be crazy enough to script it.

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Gagis Silvarna, the Robocop with wings who shoots lasers from his fingertips
Lily Havthorn, the Waukeenar
Silwe, the elf

Or stop with the crazy millions of different things, and make all summons of each level the same.

IE/ all summon 1's are the same thing, just reskinned and renamed for the different alignments.

It wouldn't harm roleplay at all, and may greatly help the power balance in some cases.

And best of all, it's hella easier than creating up to 27 different summons, and balancing them, and making sure they actually do what's expected of them (which is *precisely* where the current summon designers EPIC FAILED. Wonderful concepts.....but no testing & fixing to make sure the concepts actually WORKED. And sure as heck no balancing, else we wouldn't have all these unbalanced summons.)

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Role with the Punches...
Elan: A 10% chance is pretty unlikely, but everyone knows that a one-in-a-million chance is a sure thing!

Agreed.

I don't have a complete picture, but the Erynie (LE Planar Binding) seems to be much more powerful than the Succubus (NE/CE Planar Binding). The Gelugon (LE Greater Planar Binding) is a completely different thing from the Bebilith Hatchling (NE/CE Greater Planar Binding), and though the latter seemed to be more helpful in levelling, the first one has such a unique power (damage aura) that he'll always have some uses - some of them probably not really intended.

Equalization would solve some problems, and in that process, some of the weirder powers/creatures might get the axe for everyone's benefit.



That's a good one. True AND funny.

Making the game more difficult hurts those that have trouble anyhow. The l33t-pr0-gam0rz will come on top again after every nerf (until they quit), while those not so into number crunching/coffein abuse/... will reach the point where they can't beat the game anymore, are more of a burden in parties than a benefit, get frustrated and quit and so on.

Yeah, that's a better idea. Actually, I wouldn't be opposed to a nerf of the stronger summoning spells if it meant a wider selection of summons with different abilities, strengths and weaknesses.

The neutral summons appear to be a bit weaker than their evil or good counterparts, particuarly in Brogendenstein as everyone except neutrals get some kind of fire summon, and Brog is probably the best place to solo for mages after getting level 9 spells. (Red Dragon and Efreeti for evil, Azer for good) Maybe just equalizing all the summons would be better.

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Born to a [wealth level] family, you spent your early years doing [early activity] in [town type]. Your father was [father status], while your mother was [mother status]. You left your homeland at the age of [chosen age], seeking [reason for leaving].

Dont forget that the azer and efreet get totally wasted by all that cold damage the giants now put out, unless you keep casting protection from elements after each turn. Equalization of the summons is a good idea but then its also the least interesting. Part of the reason the neutral summons are worse is because none of them come with weapons that can be made +5. But true there are some huge discrepancies in summon efficacy. The succumbus is much weaker than the eryines (which actually makes sense as succumbi are not fighting demons, but then if you are going to fight, why would you summon one anyway?).

I've come to the conclusion that if Uberuce wants to nerf the summons, they probably will be regardless of what is said here. I dont personally think all of them are that powerful. Infact early on, a lot of them really arent all that special (at least levels 1 - 20). Early on, the figther solo's just as easily with Bulls might and misty potions. In fact he can solo his way right upto 15 or so. The wizard struggles upto this point. You have to use the summons because they are the only constant source of damage as has been said earlier. I still think those wraiths need some love, perhaps an ability similar to the ones the summon shadows have but i guess im the only one here who finds them useless. The evil gates are also not so useful, especially consudering there duration. Lesser planar binding is also very weak at the level you get access to the spell in your spellbook.


Summon creature (SC) I - IV are balanced. Some are slighly better than others but it evens out over the early levels. As for SC V, the Shadow Mastiff is feeble compared to the neutral and good counterparts. VI and VII seem fairly well balanced. VII is ok, i just wish the beholder and effigy wouldnt run out of powers so quickly, especially the beholder. Actually that goes for most of the caster summons. As for SC IX, they are fairly well balanced. The juggy has a few nifty lil advantages over the azer and Efreet which are of most benefit to the wizard himself but its probably the weakest of the 3 overall. Mummy dust and EDK are both fine. If anything, dragons duration needs to be nerfed. Elemental swarm is probably the biggest offender. 4 pretty decent summons that are permanent!


Save elemental swarm, the druid summons are probably the most well balanced of the lot, at least as far as the good summons are concerned. Never played an evil druid. The only major anomally is the fae knight. The AI just isnt smart enough to make use of its spell selection. I still dont know how it manages to cast entangle with only 18 sorc levels. BBOD isnt all that - DC 10 + CL sounds tremendous....till you take into account you first get this spell at level 17, the average fort save of most spawns post 20th level, and its measly 2 APR.


To be honest, I wouldnt mind the if the summons got weakened if it meant a wider selection of summons with different abilities, strengths and weaknesses. I would love to see more versatility added to the wiz class in general so that i dont have to use summons. The major improvement id like to see is in evocation. For example, spell foci adding additional benefits other than to the DC of spells. The greatest benefit should be rewarded to those wizards who actually choose to specialise in evocation thereby giving them something back for giving up a whole school of magic and raise scroll usage.


Using Evocation as an example, in the case of a fireball spell, spell focus just improves the DC. Greater spell focus adds maybe 1 extra fire damage /2CL. Epic spell focus improves this to +1 fire damage/CL. If the wizard is an evoker the fireball also has a chance to set them on fire on a failed reflex save. Course something like that would probably be hell to script and there are likely easy ways. Just an idea.

A lot of work, but an AWESOME concept! Oh, well.... we can all dream.

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"I once took the high road and it took me straight to hell and I stood there all by myself." -Hank III

Indeedy. Many servers have something like this, but done with haks. There is nothing but time and effort preventing it being done with Amian scripts though.

GC for example has: Book of Celestial Summons(non-evil only), Book of Fiendish Summons, Book of Abyssal Summons, Book of Elemental Summons, Book of Undead Summons and a just a Book of Summons with more but weaker choices if I have not forgotten something. They come with at least 1 option per summoning spell per book, and more by average.

Disco! Time to add it to the bottom of the priority queue and set the scripting monkeys loose!

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Gagis Silvarna, the Robocop with wings who shoots lasers from his fingertips
Lily Havthorn, the Waukeenar
Silwe, the elf

The server I briefly DM'd at, had four different summons for each spell level, and depending on summoner's level (I think), allignment and race, it would select one of the four possible. It was a random choice, but moved more towards one of the four depending on the criterias stated before. Brilliant scripting, and if my old computer hadn't been an ass and gotten disfunctional, I'd still have the module, and thus the script, lying somewhere near me.

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Profiles: DakoDako & ElWacko

Characters: Currently trying my best to stick to Beridoc Brushgale

Introducing scripts for low- and mid-level spells seems a bit inefficient, though. Variety for Summon Monster I won't come into play often.

Lowbies need love just as much as Bored Epic 35. We aren't Blizzard.

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Davion Telemos - Monk of the Four Winds
Korthan Isharnos - Dragon Shaman of Thunder Spirit Zamasham

Amen

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Gagis Silvarna, the Robocop with wings who shoots lasers from his fingertips
Lily Havthorn, the Waukeenar
Silwe, the elf

If there was a variety of summons you could use for each level of summons spell, I think it would lend to epics using low-level summons for RP reasons. There's no real reason for most people to have a giant beetle following them around for example, but if you could turn that beetle (even if it's only a re-skin of the same summon) into something like a.... I don't know..... mephit, maybe?.... I could see it would be a lot more useful for people's RP.

I know the return argument. If you want a re-skin for RP reasons why not just pay the 10 DC's. Well, what if you're a brand new Amia player and you don't have any DC's to spend? I don't know.... I just see it as being a useful tool if it was ever implemented and I'm playing a little Devil's Advocate.

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"I once took the high road and it took me straight to hell and I stood there all by myself." -Hank III

*shrug* Your time, your decision.