Summoned Unit Control

[Garem]

Sorry RwG, love you babe, but you're just wrong. It's not a Tidal Wave. It's not like you just instantly cast and BOOM, you have an army. And there's no way to tell that Tidal Wave to act in any manner like a Tidal Wave would act, with a massive, singular crushing motion. That doesn't happen 95% of the time and the other 5% is only when the circumstances are perfect-- open area, enemy approaches after you've spent the last 60 seconds preparing your units to stand still and do nothing. Although that is, in fact, what I'm asking to change.

What we have is a Stream that might flow the right way, or might not flow at all. Or maybe it'll run away chasing the random Nightmare bat that just happened to catch its attention. More than likely, it'll just sit there until a butterfly runs past, when it will take its AoO and then chase it all the way across the area.

As for Concentration checks, if that's what it takes to make more complicated commands function, so be it and I think it's a perfectly viable alternative to having the crappy controls we have now. I don't necessarily support the amendment, since this is already taken care of through the Summoning Point system that requires feats (much more important than skills!) to really manage these "armies" of units.

[GoblinSapper]

Is there a guide to the summoning system anywhere? I'm still foggy on how it all works.

[Garem]

Nah. It's pretty simple though.

Everything you summon (or undead animates) has a point cost associated with it. Let's use the Warrior Rat as an example. It costs 15 summoning points. You get X many points per level.

If you have Spell Focus: Conjuration, that cost is half, so the rat costs 7.5 points.

If you have GSF: Conj. it costs 1/3, so that rat is only 5 summon points.

This means that for having SF:C you can essentially have twice as many summons as someone who does not, and GSF gives three times. I believe it may have some effect on duration as well.

Now, when you first summon a creature, it becomes the "primary" summon. This has no mechanical effect, but if you use voice commands that is the only one that will talk. For Animate Dead, this has a BIG effect, because this primary summon is the ONLY one that will disappear when you rest. All others will stick around during resting.

Animated corpses also have points and are included within this same system, although their point cost is associated with having SF:Necro and GSF:Necro, not conjuration.

This is ONLY true for summons/animates from SPELLS, however. Anytime you summon a creature with an item, all other summons are immediately dispelled and you're working with the original NWN system again. Also, these creatures are not subject to the summoning points system whatsoever.

Hope that clarifies everything. Catch me in IRC if you want clearer answers or have more specific questions, I've toyed around with the system fairly extensively.