Monster Summoning

Once upon a time (back in 2nd ed - sorry if I'm repeating myself),
Monster summoning spells weren't just to get yourself some extra
fighting power. For what appears to me to be not a very good reason we
have lost that versatility in 3rd ed.

The reason, it seems to me, that this has gone wrong is the change in
the definition of a round from 1 minute to 6 seconds. When it was 1
minute, 1 minute of doing other things for you equalled 1 round of
fighting, so a 5th level MU doing Monster Summoning I would get a
creature for 7 minutes or 7 rounds of combat. 7 minutes is a useful
amount of time in which to get a creature to perform some service.

In 3rd ed, the only option would have been to say 1 round per level if
in combat or 1 minute per level if not. Looks to me like the designers
decided instead to just make it 1 round per level and took away the
spell's versatility.

I think this was a sad loss. I would suggest re-introducing the 1
minute per level duration if the summoned creature is not fighting for
you. Any thoughts?

Richard

richard d wrote:
> Once upon a time (back in 2nd ed - sorry if I'm repeating myself),
> Monster summoning spells weren't just to get yourself some extra
> fighting power. For what appears to me to be not a very good reason we
> have lost that versatility in 3rd ed.
>
> The reason, it seems to me, that this has gone wrong is the change in
> the definition of a round from 1 minute to 6 seconds. When it was 1
> minute, 1 minute of doing other things for you equalled 1 round of
> fighting, so a 5th level MU doing Monster Summoning I would get a
> creature for 7 minutes or 7 rounds of combat. 7 minutes is a useful
> amount of time in which to get a creature to perform some service.
>
> In 3rd ed, the only option would have been to say 1 round per level if
> in combat or 1 minute per level if not. Looks to me like the designers
> decided instead to just make it 1 round per level and took away the
> spell's versatility.
>
> I think this was a sad loss. I would suggest re-introducing the 1
> minute per level duration if the summoned creature is not fighting for
> you. Any thoughts?
>

I miss the longer durations myself, and interestingly most of the CRPGs
have you limited to one creature, but with a very long duration.
Summons are not very useful because of the short duration at low level
either. At 1st lv, I spend a full round summoning a badger, so it
appears just before my next action a round later, the battle might be
over by then. And then it has just enough time to appear, attack and
pop out of existance.

There is a serious concern though if you lengthen summon durations, and
that is that a caster could summon up a cadre of monsters before hand
and basically 'do' a module in one very short swoop.

If you put a limit on the number of summons one can have at a time it
would become less problematic.

At a 1r/lv limit it becomes a much more situational, and battle
specific, a tactical decision, not a strategic one.

- Justisaur