Summon Nerf

[Canzah]

I am not aware if all themes are subject to the recent nerf nor the specific numbers involved, but I feel that it would be best to find some sort of middleground between the previous and current versions of the Summon Monster spell.

Recently my summons are getting veritably crushed by most things you can stumble across, and even though I may be biased, that seems like taking it a bit too far.

[Keeper of the White Wyrm]

All summon themes will differ Canzah. :( I recall shadows don't even have drain attacks though, and that is just wrong.

[Haromaro]

Iseabella's level four summon hits harder than she does fully buffed, and she's nothing to scoff at.

[Ebok]

I LOL at Harmaro's absurd statement. ^_^
( unless other theme's werent nerfed into lol 4 damage )

I ... I know why and can understand why they were nerfed. They were still useless in many situations, but in some they were invincible.

Really what ever advantage summons had over buffs just went out the window unless you were trolling around with maybe the most broken theme's under the sun, like DEMON. Maybe they suck now too, I dunno.

I think its sad.

[Mort]

I saw these elementals/insects/shadows have the AB of a level 8 fighter, the damage of a greatsword + 2d4 of elemental dmg, permanent 50% concealment, 100+ HP.  And They stacked on top of eachothers! Meaning that Ghula or anywhere with a tight choke makes them absolutely absurd.

These summons were imbalanced, and they are currently rectified. It's possible they might be tweaked again in the future.

[TheRaven]

Thus why I mentioned the middleground. As long as it is looked into I am pleased!

[Ebok]

That Ghula fight was a perfect storm. 1. Freshly rested 2. No reason to hold back any summons 3. Portal domain 4. Choke Point

The ab was that of a level 6 fighter maybe (+10 at summon IV) -- (except for bugs which was tiny and therefore even more buffed), and they can never get second attacks. The best damage they had was 1d8+1d8electric+0 it did not get impressive until summon V.

Under normal quest situations they are no where near that overwhelming. But yeah, Bugs and Air Elementals needed a power drop somewhere. Bugs and Demons were the two scariest summoning themes Ive ever seen. As for stacking summons... Sure they can pile on, but they also cannot stop anything from charging you, because anything can run right through them like they aren't there.

But now blur and endure elements makes something immune to them completely, and they cannot be effective against anything unless you have hordes of them. They were already weak in long quests or around anything that had resistance, damage shields or AoE spells.

I'm still recovering from the sucker punch the drop in power had. So I'm not definitely not seeing things clearly from a balance perspective. Until I have some time to adjust and re-evaluate everything I'm not going to know if this was too much or just enough.

[Haromaro]

Right! So maybe I did miss something. Last I checked, the level four water elemental was +11 with 1-8 + 1d8 cold.

[Howlando]

Bear in mind that the character sheet is not accurate with summons statistics.

Certainly they may be tweaked further, we want them to be useful! But not overwhelmingly powerful.

[Jagged]

I really don't bother with them anymore at higher tiers. 7 AB for a fourth circle spell? No, thank you. And I'm a GSF: Conjurer too. >.>

[Jagged]

There's like... a 1 AB increment from third to fourth tier in one of my themes, which I thought made it unworthwhile to cast even for conjuration focused casters. Some particular circles might have been over-nerfed, is what I'm saying.

We can still solo Granary at level 4 with a swarm of first circle summons + support fire.

[Jagged]

I really don't bother with them anymore at higher tiers. 7 AB for a fourth circle spell? No, thank you. And I'm a GSF: Conjurer too. >.>

[TakenByVisions]

Mort had a rather interesting idea involving a different idea and theme, but perhaps one that should be pursued in all themes. Rather than limit them by points or whatever, limit them by summoning level. As in, you can only have one fourth level summon out a time, one third, and so on. This would allow them to be a little strong and appear useful yet not be spammed in a horde that exponentially grows in power.

[Egon the Monkey]

The problem would be that would then remove the whole point of a summoner sorc which is that you can make an army with a certain level of summon. You'd have to have a summon at every level. You could always put a cap on the maximum number of summons a PC can have to maybe five. So you could have a couple of elite summons or a wave of L2s, but not a completely ridiculous horde.

@Ebok Unless I'm mistaken, Magic Fang gets around blur, applies to everything you have out and there is loot with it.

[Ebok]

You know... The reason the stackable summons are used are not because they dish out rapid damage from the same choke point. They are used because the summons don't kill your party. (the most common reason people HATE playing around corporal summoners.) They wont lock you into mortal combat with a enemy you cant run from, wont bump you into a trap or into a wall or placeable... And you can call them out of a fight without a traffic jam. (which sucks when you're trying to call them off a critter or PC)

What I garnered from Mort's point (beyond the needed HP reduction on things like bug swarms. Anything with improved invis that isn't balanced for improved invis should be considered to have 40% more hp then shown.) Was that they were capable of getting too many summons into too small a place, Overwhelming the opposition PC or NPC.

What was done has made the new standard balance assume mass mobs of them, vastly weakening their use by non-devoted summoners, and making them pathetically weak in time consuming events (or travel, mostly the travel). Why didn't we just increase the point cost for the summons up to the balance?

Air elemental are something like 10/17/25/35/45 for levels I - V. If the issue was too much damage at once... having them cost 20/30/40/50/65 would make it impossible to swarm with overwhelming force, but not cripple them when used individually.

At level 8 with 160 points you could have four level IV summons and one level II. That was 5 attacks at +13ab (flanking+bless) and about 2d8 damage per.

At level 8 with the more expensive summons you're looking at three level IV summons. That's 3(1) attacks at +13(+11) and 2d8 damage. This about halves the damage output, while not requiring 2-4 summons to handle a single panther.

Just food for thought.