After the panic... the summons changes

[TastyTreat]

Since the major changes to summons I made a brand new pure wiz (with the nerfed summons in mind). I built this wiz with high con and picked the appropriate defensive spells as I leveled. This wiz is now level 17, still pure wiz and now able to tank for himself. My point being is that there are many ways to deal with nerfed summons, sometimes it just takes some planning ahead. From my experience with this build my wiz is a much better tank buffed than any summon is unbuffed. I have used summons on a rare occasion (only at lower levels)... pretty much until I got stoneskin. After that I have yet to find any use for a summons that outweighs the extra spell slot I save from not having one.

[BaconStrip]

If you have the extra pre-epic proficiencies (which you should, after all, a level 20 human wizzie gets what? 11 or so...), think about investing points into expertise and improved expertise

Last time I tried using expertise on a wiz, expertise was disabled while casting spells.

Every mod I've played under the current patch it works and every other patch for that matter.... I'm not even sure you can get around the hard-coding to disable it as far as mods go. Try it again for yourself, it works and always has.

[AlienOverlord]

I haven't had it on a wiz, but my fighter seems to lose it when using a potion or item with spell ability.

[Lokey]

Whenever a spell script is called, expertise is disabled if it's active (it's for melee fighting) but can't get around the hard coding, true...it's down for the 1 sec time post spell cast. Maybe we should be knocking you down for a couple rounds instead.

Need feedback on summons--what's good and what's bad. Is it worth using the spell for a couple encounters or saving the slot for another? Do the summons of each spell have a similar effectiveness? I'll put them on a die roll instead of alignment for now.

[AlienOverlord]

Sometimes I get a useless level 1 human barbarian who does nothing, not even follow. That was my level 5 summon. Otherwise, i'll have to test more, but the barbarian showing up really sucks.

Fixed, 1 + a rand[0,9] is between 1 and 10! Produces strangeness when you have 9 alignments Fixed at next reset. Lokey

[Kelli]

My new mage has a chicken for a lvl 1 summons, while trying to get him to "attack nearest" (there was only one rat) he turned ferocious 4 times, while the rat killed me. I think he needs a little work.

[Nemesis Revised]

True, perhaps summons need a bit more balancing. For example, a mage in garagoth finds it hard to survive even the rage of a few rats because the rats would kill the summoner first.

Two things to consider?
1) Maybe the script would be adjusted so that dumber mobs will attack the summon while smarter ones will attack the summoner

2) A bit stronger and smarter summons

My mummy from mummy dust is a bit unstable. I dont know if it's been fixed but I noticed it would rather go power attack mode and some other attack mode so many times that it wouldn't even consider attacking at all. (my mage had to take care of himself).

*** Bring back the familiars please (of course, once they've been improved). The familiars often serve as a 2nd or 1st tier before the mob gets to eat away at the mage himself. Perhaps the summon should be stronger, while the familiar would be a character that supports the mage or the summon (but not necessarily as strong as the summon).

By the way, good work on the planar binding. I've used the formian link and noticed that i can summon three beings at different times: celestial dog-man(sorry not sure about name), blue slaad (w/o the red slaad), and the incubus. Special mention to the incubus, I haven't seen a char like this (except for garagoth residents) eheeheh. Incubus by the way, is like an evil sexual spirit right? Aside from the succubus. Hmm...

Planning to see more variations on the summons too, but greater variations lead to more balancing issues. Just a thought, thats all... By the way, does the death domain of cleric have its summon shadow aligned with the shadowdancer summon or blackguard summon?

[WillPower]

Only been really playing the celestial types...

The chicken simply never attacked. It would follow but hardly ever attacked.

Between chicken and lion - nothing worth using... I dont even know exactly what to do to improve them. In fact I was thinkin maybe you might just wanna remove em in general. I mean the celestial bison? Hmmmph.

Celestial Lion - Good while running between places cuz of the fear which can make all the annoyin mobs of "no-xp-monsters" stay away while your travelling.... But then again the Bison got that too and the dog... Bad while taking on any kind of harder monsters because instead of fighting you are left with something wasting the time casting the spell that you are garunteed the monsters will save against.... what does this mean? The lion is useful for useless monsters.... Make sense? When you go to fight something "challenging" (which is the way its fun to play... cuz challenge is the best part of the game) it wont attack until your dead or youve killed the thing yourself. If you could get the lion to survive the first battles or so and it was done casting all its spells then it was actually a fairly legitamite summon.

Celestial Minotaur... good at fighting but WAY too few HP. I called him up at the undead minotaur place near NC... he could kill minotaurs fine as long as none of them actually hit him... It took like 2 hits from an undead minotaur and he was gone... I found the lion to be just as good if it survived the casting fear it did... thats a bad thing.

The Elementals in general. They are weaker then the lion and minotaur. Are they supposed to be? They get hit 10 times easier and cast spells that dont really help you fight most of the time...

OK - Now the biggest prob Ive had with the changes. Yeah Im a cleric. GATE. GOD WHYYYY!!!! That was the one summon you could always rely on when you got to be higher levels... If GATE stays the way it is right now when epic levels open up it will be a wasted spell.... all your work at "making it better" (notice the ""s) will be ignored because clerics will be forced to use other spells because GATE lasts way to short... what you summon has way too few HP, way to low AC. I guess I could stand maybe the attack it has... but other then that I have a char. that is BARELY 17 - which is when you need the summons the most (low levels) and its pointless.

BTW - BEING AS VAIN AS I AM I WANT GATE TO GO BACK TO SUMMONING UP SOMETHING THAT LOOKS REALLY COOL! A balor popping outa the ground always got newbies "ooohs" and "ahhhs"... no more of that

Ive yet to notice if it is scaled to match cleric level but I doubt it... maybe that should be something worth considering. Like level 17-19 you get the lil watcha-ma-call-it we get now (shows how much I like using it) - and from 20+ you can get the balor or something... maybe even from 25+ you get a dragon matched your alignment!!!!?!?!?!

I tried to post ways to improve the key summons right now... Not sure how well I did. Hope it helps a little at least.

[deathdearler1]

ok, i really don't understand this summon thing anymore. if i use summon creature 7,8, or 9 i get some barely usable creature that gets torn down. over the weekend i was making a run into Daeron and ran into a NC cleric. this cleric was pretty tough and summoned up something called a planetar. . this thing preceeded to smack me and my companion around for a good 3 to 4 mins b4 we could kill the cleric. where did that come from and why isn't my summon that good? thinking this was an isolated incident i was in RK later on and low and behold a dwarven preistess (of lower level than me) conjured up a pit fiend that took out 2-3 party members b4 we even knew what it was and where it came from. i have no idea when the npc summons got so overwhelming, but why can't mine lay waste half as good as that?

[AlienOverlord]

I have have also been testing the same summons as Will but believe that the level 2, 3 and 5 summons are useful for those levels. The first level ones don't attack enough, but have enough hp and ac to stay alive. the second level one stays alive and deals some damage. The 3rd level is a big step up and deals good damage. The fourth level (bison) does not fight enough. The 5th level lion has great AC and deals good damage and kds and I find it very useful. So far I haven't found the 6th and 7th more worthwhile than the lion (mosly because they have lower ac), so I still use the lion at level 14 and he still lends a little muscle to battle.

Here's my thought on improving summons, a standard, so that you could ecpect a higher ac and damage from higher level summons. I'll list some possible stats for neutral summons. I would change these stats a little from level to level and alignment for adding useful feats or abilities. Also, summons should go up a little each level but more for summons 3, 5, 7 and 9 since these correlate to when the pc will get equipment upgrades and move to tougher mobs.
Level 1
Hp 10, AC 15, ab 3, dmg 1d6+1
Level 2
Hp 26, AC 17, ab 6, dmg 1d6+3
Level 3
Hp 50, AC 20, ab 9, dmg 2d6+3 dr 2/-
Level 4
Hp 68, AC 22, ab 10/5, dmg 2d6+5 dr 3/-
Level 5
Hp 90, AC 25, ab 14/8, dmg 2d8+6 dr 5/-
Level 6
Hp 108, AC 27, ab 15/10/5, dmg 2d8+8 dr 6/-
Level 7
Hp 130, AC 30, ab 18/13/8, dmg 2d10+9 dr 10/-
Level 8
Hp 150, AC 33, ab 20/15/10, dmg 2d10+11 dr 10/-
Level 9
Hp 200, AC 36, ab 23/18/13/8, dmg 2d12+12 dr 15/-

Maybe evil summons could lower ac by 2 and increase ab and dmg by 2 while good could lower ab and dmg by 2 and increase ac by 2. Also, good aligned could have self heals and for there master (love it when i go unconscious and my pet can heal me) evil could have fire breaths and neutral could have daze effects. Adding special abilities should lower some of the stats, but some summons should be pure fighters (preferably a pure fighter every 2 or three levels). The type of dr could chane from level to level and by alignment (so maybe level 3 summon has good with dr to bludgeoning, neutral to piercing, and evil to slashing and then all switched around next level). Then fighting certain enemies (like tree smashers) would make you think about finding out with level summon had bludgeoning dr. Maybe the level 9 summon could have dr 10/- to one type and 5/- to the other two.

Obviously there is a lot more work to it than this, but I just hope you get some thought from reading this. And I really like that the summons were toned down and hope it stays that way, but they need some AI improvements to be more useful (like the lion should only try one area of effect attack, then attack in melee).

[Denort]

BTW - BEING AS VAIN AS I AM I WANT GATE TO GO BACK TO SUMMONING UP SOMETHING THAT LOOKS REALLY COOL! A balor popping outa the ground always got newbies "ooohs" and "ahhhs"... no more of that

Agreed. For standard summons as well. I want to summon creatures of legend, not creatures of the barnyard.

[turtlehermit]

I use animal domain..and my summons get slaughtered against any one creature that i fight and i am at lvl 21. I even up its ac 5 and give it 50 percent concealment and the elemental still died against one of the better guards in a city. Lame...Most my summons do not look cool. Animal domain is worthless at this point now cause my max summons is a punk!!!

Gate gives the planeter..not too shabby but it isnt too smart either. The undead summons seem helpless against anything cr of 15 even after i stonebone, improv invis, andsivine shield it.

I have sinced ceased even bother summoning summons now. I do not know if i wanna even put skilll points into getting mummy dust and dragon knights.

[Ragefist]

Denort, better not tell Emperor Okie your dislike for the barnyard creatures, he might become heartily offended that you show such disdain for his soft, curly haired barnyard lassies.

[tellutwurp]

I haven't played in NS4 for a bit, due to avendell/server4 problems, but on return this last few days I cannot use my animal companion. I am a ranger, lvl 18. Were these eliminated or just changed? Do I have to wait until my next level up to pick from the new companions or what? Please advise, TIA.

[Bimba the Happy Sheep]

Denort, better not tell Emperor Okie your dislike for the barnyard creatures, he might become heartily offended that you show such disdain for his soft, curly haired barnyard lassies.

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!