Summon Duration

[Egon the Monkey]

Hmm. In the same vein as a focus, could you have something you could use to summon a single long duration creature for those purposes?

Call it a Glyph of Binding, and give it Unique power 1/day. Sets the next summon to a 24hr duration. Make it available to PCs on startup and don't allow buying of them.

[WaterMonster]

This is not a wild thing to Ask, Johannes. You're argueing against this as if we were asking for a "mulligan-like" death system, were we could type /c mulligan and be alive again, if we were killed by a lag/bug! (lol)

I'm more in line with Secutor;

In spite of Conjuration's other powerful spells, short summon durations still hamper characters who are designed as minion masters. If longer durations would afford the conjuration school two feasible sub-types (minion master and offensive caster) who are relatively equal in ability and up to par with other builds, then I say lengthen the durations.

I'm all for players who seek a challenge in mechanically disadvantageous builds, but when we have numerous build possibilities on par with each other in quest-ability, then all you get is more variety! That's a good thing, says I. There are always ways to self-cripple those builds if you want...

Personally, I'm tired of seen a majority of mages acting as consumable factories or walking buff stations. If we could give little perks to those who opt for other methods of play, I'd have no complaints.

The point Johannes, is taking conjuration just for the sweet offensive spells is fine. But saying "You have access to these sweet spells, Why are you crying about summoning" Makes about as much sense as wearing a boot on your face.  Some people may want to be an offensive conjurer and not give a shit about summoning. Some people may want to be a summoner and (Sorcerers especially) may not be -able- to take the offensive spells in addition to their summons.

Other people have made good points, and one of the things I really agree with.  If I want my PC to be always followed around by water elementals and guarding me - Sure, I can do that right now. But I need to keep casting the spell every 2 minutes or so, which is kind of lame because before I can either A) finish a conversation or B) Get to where I'm going,  or C) Finish watching whatever I'm watching  -- I've run out of spells and need to go rest yet again.


5, even 8 (Maybe even 10!) rounds/level is not too much to ask, and It's such a minor change I don't see why there is any arguement against it at all.  It's not like this is a brand new script, that needs to be written from scratch and then thoroughly tested.   All that needs to be done is change ONE thing in the entire script, hit save, close the script window, hit save again, and then upload it. Any DM with 10 seconds of free time could do this quickly and easily whenever they are planning to add something else to the module anyways.


I think Egon's suggestion of ways to FURTHER increase summoning duration has merit, but I think that is for a different thread altogether. For now, Let's focus on a more practical duration before we start shooting for ridiculously long.

[Mort]

Yes, it is too much to ask. I've seen summons make or break a battle quite often.

Some notable examples:

 - The slime cube.
 - The Deva.
 - Any summon with a fear aura.
 - Any summon with DR.
 - Even that old Rothe (used to be level 4 of normal summon) against small creatures spammed knockdown and rocked most goblins and kobolds when the going got tough.
 - Most level 4-5-6 summons (which can easily be achievable through reagents found with herbalism/alchemy)
 - Those broken water elementals.
 - The Undead theme, more specifically 4th level and up which are extremely strong, can hold a spot for tons of time and cause level drain. (The spectre summoned by the Seer in the old quest is a good example of how powerful these things can be. It often wrecked entire parties and nobody could harm it, the seer isn't that high level but it felt like the duration was extremely long).

This was without buffing these summons with spells, so if you buff them, you can get some extremely strong minions more powerful than PCs at times. If we take your suggestion that this monster should last around for 9 minutes at level 9, yeah no thx. 1 turn and 8 rounds is plenty of time to make an impact at level 7.

Summoners have, like, receive TWO major revamp by johannes since the start of efu:a which made them an already interesting (if broken at first) class to play.

I'm not a fan of 'minion masters' a la diablo II, if controlling tons of monsters and crushing everything is your bag, best wait for diablo III.

MAYBE, where we could compromise is being able to find items which strengthen the bond of your summon to the prime material world making it last longer or other individual perks for well played summoners.

As it stands, I would prefer not touch summons anymore for a bit.

[ExileStrife]

Man I can't wait to blow off steam with Diablo III.